The Ivy Tree (18 page)

‘Yes,' I said, ‘I know it. I'll go now.'

My one desire was to get away, to be alone, not even to have to walk back to the house in their company. But even as I spoke, half turning to go, I saw a shade of what looked like genuine anxiety on Con's face.

I realised then, suddenly, that his timely appearance on the scene had not been a matter of chance. He had not come down to see about the repair of the cutter, and then stayed to tease me; his coming had been a deliberate rescue bid. He had guessed that I had been brought down to the paddock; guessed, too, what might be happening there, and that the prolonged interview with Grandfather might be too much of a strain. He had come down solely to get me out of it, to draw Mr Winslow off. In all probability there was nothing wrong with the cutter at all . . .

And if, once here, he had been unable to resist teasing me a little, it was no more than he was entitled to, under the circumstances. He was standing now with grave patience, listening to a crisp lecture on the incompetence of a young man who could not, in twenty seconds, diagnose and correct every fault in every piece of machinery in use on the estate.

Well, fair was fair. I wouldn't worry him further. I interrupted the lecture: ‘I don't think I will go, after all. I'll go back to the house. I – I've done enough for today.'

Matthew Winslow looked at me, still with that crinkle of puzzlement round his eyes. ‘Something
has
upset you, child. What is it?'

Suddenly, absurdly, I wanted to cry. ‘Nothing, truly, Nothing. Con's right. I'm tired.' I made a little gesture. ‘It's been wonderful playing the prodigal returning, and everyone's been so kind . . . too kind. But, you know, it's terribly exhausting. I feel as if I'd been back a year already, things have crowded in so fast.'

We were back in the lane. As Con pulled the gate shut behind me, he took my arm as if in reassurance.

‘Of course it's a strain. We all understand that. You should go in now, and rest till supper.'

He spoke, as before, gently. I saw Grandfather glance quickly from his face to mine, and back again. It must be obvious to anyone that Con's solicitude was quite genuine, and I knew the reason for it, but I wasn't going to have Matthew Winslow leaping to the wrong conclusion. I withdrew my arm and said quickly:

‘I think I will.' Then I turned to the old man. ‘Have you still got the cribbage board?'

His face lightened to a grin. ‘Of course. You remember how to play?'

‘How could I forget?' (‘
She used to play with him often: it's an old-fashioned game; you know it? Good . . 
.') I added: ‘I also remember that you owe me a vast sum of money, Grandfather.'

‘Nonsense. I always beat you.'

‘Ah well,' I said cheerfully, ‘I've improved in eight years. I'll win your house and lands off you yet, so watch your step!'

At his dry little chuckle I felt Con stiffen beside me. He said abruptly: ‘Well, you'll not be playing tonight, at all events, I hope?'

‘No, no. The child will want an early night. Besides, I'll probably stay up in the seventeen-acre with you. How are you getting on there?'

Con answered him, and the two of them talked across me as we walked slowly back towards the yard where the car stood. Con's manner with his great-uncle was charming; relaxed and easy and familiar, but with just the hint of a deference which obviously flattered the old man, coming from someone as vital and as capable as Con, to a man who, for all his deceptive appearance of power, was a frail husk that the first chill wind might blow way.

Grandfather was saying: ‘Nonsense! I can give you a hand when we've got the cutter running properly.'

Con gave him that flashing, affectionate smile. ‘You'll do no such thing. Come along, by all means, and bully us, but I'm afraid that's all we'll let you do!'

‘You coddle me. I'm not senile yet, and I won't be treated like a girl.'

Con grinned. ‘Hardly that. In any case, the girl's going to work, once she's got herself run in again! Can you drive a tractor – still, Annabel?'

‘I dare say I might manage, even if I have rather lost my touch with horses,' I said evenly.

We had reached the gate of the main courtyard. Grandfather climbed, a little stiffly, into the big Ford that stood waiting there. Con shut the car door on him.

In the distance, from the fields beyond High Riggs, came the steady, smooth whirr of the grass-cutter. Unless I was very much mistaken, there was nothing wrong with it at all. As Con shut the car door and turned, his eyes met mine. There was a smile in them.

He said: ‘Over to me,' very softly, and then: ‘
Do
you drive a tractor, by the way?'

‘I have done.'

‘And,' said Con, ‘a car?'

I studied him for a moment, then I smiled. He had earned it, after all. I said: ‘I had a car in Canada; I've just burned the permit, and I don't know where my licence is, but that doesn't mean a thing. I dare say I'd qualify for a British one, if I needed to.'

‘Ah,' said Con. ‘And now, if you wouldn't mind shutting the gate behind us . . . ?'

8

Supper with Lisa and Grandfather was not the ordeal I had feared it might be. The old man was in excellent spirits and, though he was in something of a ‘do you remember' vein, and Lisa's eyes, under their lowered lids, watched us both over-anxiously, it went off smoothly enough, with no hitch that I could see. Con wasn't there. It was light late, and he was at work long hours in the hayfield while the weather lasted.

Shortly after supper Grandfather went into the office to write letters, and I helped Lisa wash up. Mrs Bates went off at five, and the girl who helped in the kitchen and dairy had gone home when the milking was over. Lisa and I worked in silence. I was tired and preoccupied, and she must have realised that I didn't want to talk. She had made no further attempt to force a tête-à-tête on me, and she didn't try to detain me when, soon after nine o'clock, I went up to my room.

I sat there by the open window, with the scent from the climbing roses unbearably sweet in the dusk, and my mind went round and round over the events of the day like some small creature padding its cage.

The light was fading rapidly. The long flushed clouds of sunset had darkened and grown cool. Below them the sky lay still and clear, for a few moments rinsed to a pale eggshell green, fragile as blown glass. The dusk leaned down slowly, as soft as a bird coming in to brood. Later, there would be a moon.

It was very still. Close overhead I heard the scratch and rustle of small feet on the sloping roof-tiles, then the throaty murmur as the pigeons settled back again to sleep. From the garden below came the smell of lilac. A moth fluttered past my cheek, and a bat cut the clear sky like a knife. Down in the neglected garden-grass the black and white cat crouched, tail whipping, then sprang. Something screamed in the grass.

I brushed the back of a hand impatiently across my cheeks, and reached for a cigarette. Round the side of the house, in the still evening, came the sharp sounds of a door opening and shutting. A man's footsteps receded across the yard, and were silenced on turf somewhere. Con had been in for a late meal, and was going out again.

I got up quickly, and reached a light coat down from the hook beside the door. I dropped the packet of cigarettes into the pocket, and went downstairs.

Lisa was clearing up after Con's meal in the kitchen. I said quickly: ‘I'm going out for a walk. I – I thought I'd take a look round on my own.'

She nodded, incuriously. I went out into the gathering dusk.

I caught him up in the lane that led down to the river-meadow. He was carrying a coil of wire, and hammer and pliers. He turned at the sound of my hurrying steps, and waited. The smile with which he greeted me faded when he saw my expression.

I said breathlessly: ‘Con. I had to see you.'

‘Yes.' His voice was guarded. ‘What is it? Trouble?'

‘No – at least, not the kind you mean. But there's something I have to say. I – I had to see you straight away, tonight.'

I was close to him now. His face, still readable in the thickening dusk, had stiffened almost into hostility, arming itself against whatever was coming. So much, I thought, for Con's co-operation; it was fine as long as you stayed in line with him, but the moment he suspected you of deviating . . .

‘Well?' he said.

I had meant to start reasonably, quietly, at the right end of the argument I had prepared, but somehow the abrupt, even threatening sound of the monosyllable shook my resolution into flinders. Woman-like, I forgot reason and argument together, and began at the end.

‘This can't go on. You must see that. It can't go on!'

He stood very still. ‘What do you mean?'

‘What I say! It'll have to stop! We were mad, anyway, even to have thought of starting it!' Once begun, it seemed I couldn't check myself. I had had more of a shaking that day than I cared to admit, even to myself. I stumbled on anyhow, growing even less coherent in the face of his unresponding silence.

‘We – we'll have to think of some other way – something to tell Grandfather – I'm sure we can think something up! You must see there's no point in my staying now, you must see! Even if I could have got away with it—'

I heard him breathe in sharply. ‘
Could have
got away with it? Do you mean he's found you out?'

‘No, no
no
!' I heard my voice rising, and checked it on a sort of gulp. We were near the gate where we had been that afternoon. I took a step away from him, and put out a hand to the gate, gripping it hard, as if that might steady me. I said, shakily: ‘Con . . . look, I'm sorry—'

His voice said coldly, behind me: ‘You're hysterical.'

Since this was undoubtedly true, I said nothing. He put the tools and wire down beside the hedge, then came up to the gate beside me. He said, as unpleasantly as I had ever heard him speak: ‘Getting scruples, my dear, is that it? A little late, one feels.'

His tone, even more than what his words implied, was all the cure my nerves needed. I turned my head sharply. ‘Does one? I think not!'

‘No? Think again, my pretty.'

I stared at him. ‘Are you trying to threaten me, Connor Winslow? And if so, with what?'

It was almost dark now, and he was standing with his back to what light there was. He had turned so that he was leaning his shoulders against the gate, seemingly quite relaxed. I felt, rather than saw, his look still on me, watchful, intent, hostile. But he spoke lightly.

‘Threaten you? Not the least in the world, my love. But we're in this together, you know, and we work together. I can't have you forgetting our . . . bargain . . . quite so soon. You're doing splendidly, so far; things have gone even better than I dared to hope . . .
and
they're going to go on that way, darling, till I – and you, of course – get what we want. Fair enough?'

‘Oh, quite.'

The moon must be rising now beyond the thick trees. I could see the first faint glimmer on the river. The sky behind the black damask of leaf and bough was the colour of polished steel. The mare, grazing thirty yards away, had lifted her head and was staring towards us, ears pricked. Under the eclipsing shadow of hedgerow and tree she gleamed faintly, like some palladic metal, cool and smooth. The yearling was beside her, staring too.

I regarded Con curiously, straining my eyes against the dark. ‘I wonder . . .'

‘Yes?'

I said slowly: ‘I wonder just how far you would go, to get what you wanted?'

‘I've sometimes wondered that myself.' He sounded amused. ‘You'd maybe be surprised what you can bring yourself to do, little cousin, when you've never had a damned thing in your life but what you could make – or take – with your own two hands. And what's wrong with that, anyway? A man who knows he can—' He broke off, and I thought I saw the gleam of a smile. ‘Well, there it is, girl dear. I'm not going to be sent on my travels again . . . fair means if I can, but by God, I'll see foul ones if I have to!'

‘I see. Well, we know where we are, don't we?' I brought the packet of cigarettes out of my pocket. ‘Smoke?'

‘Thanks. You smoke too much, don't you?'

‘I suppose I do.'

‘I knew you'd more sense than to panic at the first hint of something you didn't like. What is the trouble, anyway? I've a light. Here.'

In the momentary flare of the match I saw his face clearly. In spite of the light words, and the endearments with which he was so lavish, I could see no trace of liking, or even of any human feeling, in his expression. It was the face of a man concentrating on a job; something tricky, even dangerous, that called for every ounce of concentration. Me. I had to be got back into line.

The match went out. I thought I must have been mistaken, for his voice when he spoke was not ungentle. ‘Supposing you tell me exactly what's upset you? Something has, hasn't it? What was it? The horses this afternoon? You looked like seven sorts of death when I came down.'

‘Did I?'

‘You know, you don't have to go near Forrest's horse if you don't want to.'

‘I know I don't. It's all right, it wasn't that.' I leaned back against the gate beside him, and drew deeply on my cigarette. ‘I'm sorry I started this at the wrong end, and scared you. I don't have to tell you, I hope, that I'm not planning to let you down. I – I've had a hell of a day, that's all, and I was letting it ride me. I'll try and explain now, like a reasonable human being, which means not like a woman.'