The Ivy Tree (47 page)

It was now, with the job done, that nature went back on me. My muscles felt as weak as a child's, and I sat the horse so loosely that, if he had treated me to a single moment's display of temperament, I'd have slid straight down his shoulders under his hoofs.

But, the two of us alone again, he went as softly as a cat across the grass, let me open the second gate from his back, and after that he walked, with that smooth, distance-devouring stride of his, till we came to the river-bank.

Sooner than have to fight or cajole him, I'd have dismounted and led him across, myself thigh-deep. But he took to the water as smoothly as a mallard slipping off her nest, and in a few minutes more, it seemed, we were striding out at a collected, easy canter for Whitescar.

He swerved only once, as we passed the crashed Ford squatting down on the river-gravel, but a word reassured him, and he went smoothly on.

It was now, when I had no more effort to make, when Rowan was, so to speak, nursing me home to Whitescar, with the sound of his hoofs steady and soft on the turf of the avenue, that the spectres of imagination had time to crowd up out of the dark.

Do what's nearest . . . I had done just that, and I was right. Someone had to go to Whitescar, and warn Lisa what to prepare for. There was nothing I could have done at the lodge. And if I could do nothing for Adam, I could at least care for his horse, who was worth, in hard cash, at least as much as the garden and West Lodge put together . . .

But this way, I should be the last to know what had happened. And in the darkness, as Rowan (whom I would never be able to see as ‘hard cash' in my life) strode steadily and softly on, I was forced at last, with nerves sufficiently stripped by shock, to admit openly to myself what I had known at some other level for long enough.

It might have already happened. This night, dark and damp and sweet smelling, might at this moment be empty of all I cared about. All. If Adam were dead (I acknowledged it now), there was nothing else, nowhere else, nothing. They are fools indeed who are twice foolish. I had had my folly, eight years back, and again this morning in the early dewfall, and now, tonight, it might be that the chance to be a fool again was gone.

The colt stopped, lowered his head, and blew. I leaned over his neck, and pushed open the last gate. The lights of Whitescar were just below us.

A few moments later Rowan clattered into the yard, and stood still.

As I slid from his back, Lisa came hurrying out. ‘I thought I heard a horse! Annabel! What's happened?'

I told her everything, as succinctly as I could. I must have been incoherent from sheer fatigue, but at least she knew that a bed, or beds, would be needed, and I must have made it clear that the doctor would soon be on his way. ‘I'll be with you in a minute,' I finished wearily, ‘when I've put the horse in.'

Only then did I notice how she looked from me to Rowan, and back again. ‘Yes,' I said gently, ‘I did manage to ride him, after all. I always did have a way with horses.'

I left her standing there. As I led the lathered horse round the end of the Dutch barn, I saw her turn, and hurry back into the house.

The mare's box stood empty. I put the light on, and led Rowan in.

He went without even a nervous glance round at the strange stable. Even when Tommy lifted her head from the nest in the manger, blinking at the light, Rowan only snorted, blew, and then lowered his nose to forage for hay. I fastened the bars behind him, slipped the bridle off and hung it up, then tipped a measure of feed down in front of him. He blew again, sighed, and began to munch, rolling an eye back at me as I brought the brush and set to work on him. Tired as I was, I dared not leave him steaming, and lathered, as he was, with ripples of sweat like the wave-marks on a beach.

I had my left hand flat against his neck, and was currying his back and ribs vigorously, when, suddenly, I felt the muscles under my hands go tense, and the comfortable munching stopped. Rowan put his head up, and his tail twitched nervously. From the corner of my eye I saw a shadow leap from the manger to the top of the partition, and vanish without a sound. Tommy, taking cover.

I glanced over my shoulder.

In the doorway, framed by the black night, stood Con. He was alone. He came quietly into the stable, and shut the half-door behind him.

20

He stopped just inside the door, and I saw him reach back to pull the upper half shut, too.

I hardly noticed what he was doing. There was room for only one thought in my mind just then. I straightened up, saying sharply: ‘What's happened?'

‘They got him out. The doctor got there just before I left.' He was struggling with the bolt, to thrust it home, but it was rusted, and stuck. He added, over his shoulder: ‘I see you did get the colt over to Nether Shields. Congratulations.'

‘
Con!
' I couldn't believe that even Con could so casually dismiss what must even now be happening up at the old lodge. ‘
What's happened?
Are they all right? For heaven's
sake
!'

He abandoned the bolt, and turned. He came no nearer, but stood there, eyeing me. Beside me, Rowan stood stiffly, not eating, motionless except for that nervously switching tail. I laid an automatic hand on his neck; it was beginning to sweat again.

Con's voice was subdued, even colourless. ‘I told you. They got Seton out safely enough in the end. The cut in the artery wasn't too bad; he'd lost a fair amount of blood, and he got a bump on the head, but the tourniquet saved him, and the doctor says it won't be long till he's as right as rain. They'll be bringing him down soon.'

So fierce was the preoccupation in my mind, that only now did Con's manner – and his begging of my question – force itself on my attention. I noticed then that he seemed totally unlike himself; quiet, oddly restrained, not tired – that I could have understood – but damped-down in some way, almost as if his mind were not on what he was saying . . . or as if he was holding back what was in the forefront of it.

It came to me, quite clearly, what he was trying not to say. My hand must have moved on Rowan's neck, for the colt shifted his quarters, and his ears flattened.

I said hoarsely: ‘Why did you come down like this, ahead of the rest? What are you trying to tell me?'

He looked aside, for the first time since I had known him refusing to meet my eyes – Con, who could lie his way through anything, and smile in your face while he did it. There was a horseshoe on a nail by the door; hung there for luck, perhaps, the way one sees them in stables. He fingered it idly for a moment, then lifted it down, turning it over and over in his hands, his head bent to examine it as if it were some rare treasure. He said, without looking up: ‘The beam came down. I'm sorry.'

I must have been leaning back against the horse, because I remember how cold my own body seemed suddenly, and how gratefully the heat from the damp hide met it through my thin blouse. I began to repeat it after him, stupidly, my voice unrecognisable: ‘The beam . . .' Then sharply: ‘
Adam?
Con, you're lying! It isn't possible! You're lying!'

He looked at me quickly, then down again at the metal in his hands. ‘He wouldn't come out. The beam was shifting, you saw it, but he wouldn't leave Seton, he said, he'd have to take the chance. We did what we could, but with just me and Julie there . . .' He paused, and added: ‘It happened just before the others got there.'

While I had been riding home. It had happened then.
Then
 . . .

My hand slid up the colt's neck, and was twisted in his mane. I think it was all that was holding me up. Next day I found the cuts scored in the hand where the coarse hairs had bitten into the flesh. I said, so violently that the horse started: ‘So you let it happen, did you?' Con was looking at me again now. ‘“Before the others got there . . .”
Of course it was!
Because you let it happen! You did it, Connor Winslow, you wanted him dead!'

He said slowly: ‘Are you crazy? Why should I want that?'

‘God knows why? Do you have to have a reason? I've stopped wondering how your mind works. I suppose it suited you to let him die, just as it suited you to get Donald out alive! You think nobody exists but yourself, you think you're God . . . every rotten murderer thinks the same! So Donald's alive, and Adam—' I stopped, as abruptly as if he had struck me across the face; then I added, quite flatly, without the faintest vestige of drama or even emotion: ‘You let him die, and me not there.' And this time I wasn't talking to Con.

It must have been fully twenty seconds later that I noticed the silence. The quality of the silence. Then Rowan shifted his feet on the concrete, and I looked at Con again.

He was standing quite still, the horseshoe motionless in his hands. His eyes were wide open now, and very blue. He said softly, and the Irish was there: ‘Well, well, well . . . so it's true, is it? I thought as much, up there in your grandfather's bedroom, but I couldn't quite believe it . . . not quite; not till the clever little girl took the horse.' His knuckles whitened round the horseshoe. ‘So that's it, is it? That's everything clear at last.' He smiled. ‘Annabel, me darlin', what a fool you've made of me, haven't you, now?'

I didn't answer. The other thing was there in front of me still, a black questioning between myself and God. Con's voice seemed to come from a long way away, like a voice on the wireless, heard from next-door through a wall. Irrelevant. A nuisance only, meaning nothing.

The horse threw up his head as Con took a step nearer. ‘So it was Adam Forrest, was it? Adam Forrest? Christ, who'd have thought it? What fools we all were, weren't we, and a damned adultery going on under our very noses?' All at once his face wasn't handsome at all, but convulsed, thinned, ugly. ‘And when you heard the wife was dead, you came back, you little bitch. You saw your chance to get me out, by God, and carry on your dirty little affair again into the bargain!'

That got through. ‘That's not true!' I cried.

‘So, you wouldn't look at me . . . I thought there was someone, I thought there was. Your grandfather thought it was me you were meeting, but you wouldn't look at me, would you, Annabel. Oh no, it had to be Forrest of Forrest Hall, no less, not your cousin, who was only good enough to work for you . . .'

Suddenly, stupid and half fainting (as I suppose I was) with fatigue and shock, I saw what all this time I had never even guessed: a cold rage of jealousy. Not, I am sure, because Con had ever really wanted me, but simply because I had never wanted him. It had been bad enough that I had pushed him aside without a glance, but to prefer another man . . . And the discovery of that man's identity had scored his vanity to the bone. And at that same moment, in that disastrous moment of clarity that had come too late, I saw, too, why Con had told that preposterous lie about the child: out of simple vanity. Everybody in the district had known I would have none of him. After I had gone, his moment came. He had been my secret lover. Grandfather's anger was a small price to pay for his own satisfaction.

He took another step forward. ‘I suppose you thought he'd marry you?' His voice was cruel. ‘Was that why you came back? Was it? He's married money before, and you're well worth it now, aren't you? What was the game, Annabel? What have you been playing at? Come on, let's have it. You've been playing some game with me, and I want the truth.'

He had come right up to the loose-box bar. Rowan was standing quietly now, head low, and tail still. But his ears moved with each inflection of our voices, and where I leaned against his shoulder I could feel the tiny tremors running up under his skin, like little flickers of flame.

‘But Con . . . Con . . .' It was like groping through fog; there had been something I had to tell Con today: something about the money, that I didn't want it, and never had – that he could have it, just as he had planned, and I would take Mother's money, and go . . . Something else, too: that I had torn up his ‘confession' to me, and that he was free to destroy mine, with its useless signature, ‘Mary Grey' . . . But above all, that he could have the money; that I was glad to let him have it for Whitescar, because Adam and I . . .

I turned my head into the horse's neck. ‘No, Con . . . not now. Not any more now. Just go away.
Go away
.'

For answer, he came closer. He was right up at the loose-box bar. He had one hand on it; in the other he still held the horseshoe.

‘You've made a fool of me all this time, so you have.' The low voice was venomous. ‘Do you think I'd trust you now, with what you know about me? All that crap you talked about leaving the place, making over the money – what the hell were you playing at? Stringing me along, so you could hand me over? Or contest the Will?'

I said wearily: ‘It was true. I wanted you to have it. And you did get Whitescar.'

‘How do I know even that was true?' he asked savagely. ‘You told me, yes, but why should I believe a word you say?'

‘Oh God, Con, not now. Later, if you must . . . if I ever speak to you again. Go away. Can't you see . . . ?'

‘Can't you
see?
' asked Con, and something in his intonation got through to me at last. I lifted my head and looked hazily at him. ‘Yes,' he said. ‘I've taken enough risks over this, and I'm taking no more. I take my chances where they come, and I'm not missing this one. Lisa'll give me all the alibi I'll need, and there'll be nothing to prove. Even clever little Annabel isn't infallible with a young, wild brute like this . . . The Fenwicks said he was all over the yard with you at Nether Shields, and they won't stop to think he's so flat out he wouldn't hurt a fly.' As he spoke, he was lifting the loose-box bar. ‘Now do you understand?'