Touch Not The Cat (8 page)

"Yes, please."

Mrs. Henderson had left her apron hanging behind the door. I put it on, and busied myself at the stove. I got the grill going, and laid the sausages and tomatoes to cook while Rob took things from drawers and cupboards, and, neat-handed as a sailor for all his size, laid the extra place and sliced some bread and tipped another helping of frozen chips into the frying basket. There was no question of looking out the best china for Miss Bryony; I had been an intimate of the Granger household all my life, and had taken things just as they came. Fish and chips straight from the newspaper, and yellow shop cakes with marshmallow cream, had been the "tea at Mrs. Granger's" treat of my childhood. I watched Rob set the knife and fork and find an extra plate to heat, and I felt the blackness of the yew walk, the loss and disappointment, recede from sight. Here, with the bright fire and the tick of the cheap alarm clock, the hiss of frying chips and the smell of sausages, was yet another welcome that Ashley was holding out to me. This, too, was home.

Rob glanced up and caught the tail end of the look, but gave no sign that he understood it.

He was a tall young man, big-boned, with big hands and feet and the deceptively slow movements of the countryman. He was very dark, brown as a gipsy, with black hair, and eyes so dark that it was hard to tell iris from pupil, and harder still to read the expression in them. His speech, too, was slow, but the soft country voice and his habit of silent pauses masked a fair intelligence which should have had a better chance to develop. His mother had been the village schoolteacher, a gentle, lonely girl who had fallen for good looks and what she thought of as simple ways, and had married Matt Granger, a handsome lout who first of all neglected, and then frankly ill-used her and her child. I myself as a child had never realized why little Robbie, as he was called then, had sometimes stayed off school, or sometimes come with bruises as if he had been fighting. But when Matt Granger tumbled drunk into the Overflow one night and was drowned, Rob took on his father's job of running the home farm with no emotion apparent other than deep satisfaction and relief; and though she said nothing at all, Mrs. Granger, quiet as ever, seemed happier. She died some two years later of a neglected cancer, soon after Rob, for all his struggles, had had to admit defeat over the farm, which his father had run into the ground and deep into debt. My father, having sold the land, invited Rob to stay on as caretaker and man-of-all-work around the Court. It was something of a surprise to everyone when Rob, who understandably enough had never been devoted to Ashley, and who might have done better for himself elsewhere, accepted and stayed.

He came to my elbow, watching as I turned the sausages under the grill. "Shall I do those now?"

"It's all right. Nearly done."

"I'm sorry about your dad."

"Thank you. I brought his ashes home, did you know? That's why I came tonight. I wanted to put them in the church. Did the Vicar tell you?"

"No."

"I'm coming back in the morning to—well, to scatter them."

He had lifted the pan of peas off the stove, and was busy draining them. He added a knob of margarine and shook them to dry in the hot pan. He said nothing.

"Rob-"

"Mm?"

"You're sure you couldn't even make a guess?"

He must after all have sensed my trouble, back there in the yard. He didn't ask me what I was referring to, nor did he lift his eyes from the peas. He shook the pan thoughtfully. "If I had to, I'd have said it was one of the twins, but you know yourself they're bad enough to tell apart in daylight, let alone a black evening like this."

"Could it have been Francis?"

"Might have been, I suppose. But I'd have thought he was a mite too tall for Francis."

"But it could have been?"

He did look up at that. "I suppose so. Why, were you expecting Francis?"

"No. But if it wasn't Francis, it would have to be Emory, and—"

I stopped. I had never taken it further, even to myself, and I certainly could not do so to Rob. It could not be Emory, the secret friend with whom I had shared my thoughts since childhood. It could not. If it had to be one of those two, it must surely be Francis . . . Francis, who was nearer my own age, and of whom—where one could touch that elusive and self-contained personality—I was unequivocally fond. Emory, the eldest of the three, was, as they say, something else again. I had never had any illusions about Emory. As a child, of course, I had adored my tall cousin, so easily dominating the rest of us, but generous about allowing a small girl to tag along where he led the Ashley gang. He had grown into a tough-minded man, determined, and quietly self-sufficient.

James, his twin, had a touch of the same ruthlessness, but tempered with something less aggressive.

Francis, as tough in his own way and very much quieter about it, had opted out of most of our ploys and gone doggedly on with his own affairs. A loner, my cousin Francis. But then, I supposed, that was what writers had to be. And surely, if it were he, I would have had a hint of it from him .

. . ?

Francis or Emory . . . But, in spite of the knowledge, I found myself thinking about James as I had last seen him.

An Ashley to the fine bone; tall, with fair hair which had darkened slightly—to his relief—as he grew older. The long grey eyes of all the portraits, straight nose, hands and feet too small-boned but well shaped. Pleasant voice. A way of doing what he wanted, and doing it so charmingly that yon overlooked the self-interest and thought he was doing you a favour. Clever, yes; shrewd, yes; not perhaps over-imaginative about other people's needs, but kind, and capable of great generosity. About his attitude to women, or his relationships with them, I knew nothing.

I had my mother to thank that I was able to be so objective about my father's family. She had been a highly intelligent, incisive woman, who had written a couple of novels that had dropped dead on the market, but that had contained a good deal of quiet but acid observation of the people around her. It was she who had taught me to stand back sometimes from life and look at it, even to stand back from those I loved.

Certainly from those I thought I might love. Which brought me back to my troubled thoughts, and the cottage kitchen, and Rob saying: "Why should it?"

"Why should it what?"

"Be Emory?"

I must have looked quite blank. He said patiently: "In the churchyard."

"Oh. Because James is in Spain, and Emory's over here. He rang up from England on Wednesday, when I was in Bavaria. Look, Rob, the chips are done, can you strain them?"

"Sure." He lifted the pan over to the draining board. "Well, then, say it was Emory. Seems funny he didn't want to see you."

"Maybe. Rob, you said you saw him coming out of the vestry. Did you see when he went in?"

"No. I was down shutting up the greenhouses, you see, and when I came back I heard the dogs barking, so I took a look around, and I saw the vestry door was standing open. I didn't think it could be the Vicar—for one thing the dogs wouldn't bark for him; then I saw whoever it was was using a flashlight, so I waited to see him. I thought it might be some of the village boys out for a lark. Then I saw you going into the porch." He grinned. "Say this for you, Bryony, you don't make more noise than a bitch fox. Remember when I used to take you poaching? I never heard you till you came right up to the church door."

"Then?"

"I'd half a mind to follow you in, in case there was something wrong, but then the flashlight went out and I saw this chap coming out of the vestry, sharpish, and bolting away across the graveyard. I'd have followed him, only I saw it was one of the Ashleys. And he didn't run far; stopped right by the yew trees, and waited. I reckoned he was waiting for you. He was out of sight of me there, but I'd have seen him if he'd moved. I hung around and watched, just in case. . . . Then the Vicar came down, and went into the vestry, but the chap didn't budge. Did he see you, do you suppose?"

"I think so. If not then, he must have seen me later in the kitchen garden. The moon was quite bright."

I spoke flatly, with my back to him, but I felt him pause. Then he said: "Well, when he bolted across the wire I came home. It was no business of mine, and he didn't mean you harm, that was obvious. What was he at in the vestry, do you think? It seems funny, bolting away like that when he must have known it was only you."

"Yes, doesn't it?"

"There's another queer thing, he had a long coat on or something. Does Emory wear a cloak?

Someone told me they were all the fashion now in London."

"I don't think so." I hesitated. "Actually, Rob, he'd taken a cassock from the church. It must have been one of the choir men's—the Vicar's spare one was still there. He must have snatched it up when he heard me. Don't ask me why, I've no idea. He left it under the lych-gate."

"Funny thing to do."

"You're telling me. Did you see what he was carrying?"

"No," he said. "Look, those sausages are done."

"So they are. Can you eat four? Not too many chips for me, thanks. Oh, before I forget, the Vicar told me to tell you he won't be in the greenhouses tomorrow, he's going down to the old orchard. What are you doing down there?"

"Spraying the trees, and tidying up a bit. Things that should have got done this winter past, but there wasn't time, with all Mr. Underhill wanted doing about the house. But now, with you coming back . . . are you coming to the cot tage?"

"I think I might, for a bit anyway."

"Moving in tomorrow?"

"Yes. I thought I might see Mrs. Henderson and ask her to get things aired for me."

"You don't need to bother. It's done." He grinned at my look. "We thought you'd be back soon, and when the Vicar told us you were coming over tomorrow we got the cottage opened up.

So you can settle straight in anytime you like."

For some absurd reason I felt the tears sting suddenly behind my eyes. He could not have seen, because I had my back turned to him still, but he said, just behind me: "You've given me too many sausages. Divide them properly. The kettle's boiling; will you have tea or coffee?"

"Coffee, please. I only want two sausages, honestly. Are they from Roper's? Their sausages were always the best."

"Aye." He spooned Nescafe from the jar and made two cups. "Remember the sausage rolls we used to get at Goode's stall on a Saturday?"

"Do I not! Here, then, let's start."

Over the meal we talked easily, he of the Court and the Underhills, and of his girl who belonged to Ashley and whom he meant to marry before the year was out; I of Madeira and Bavaria and then, irresistibly unloading it all, of the accident, and the puzzle of my father's final message.

"Rob, does the phrase 'William's brook' mean anything to you?"

"William's what?"

"I think it was 'William's brook.'"

He shook his head. "Uh-uh. Never heard of it that I can remember."

"Could it be the Overflow?"

"I never heard it called anything else but that, did you?"

"No. I only asked because I'd wondered if Daddy meant you when he said, 'Perhaps the boy knows.'" I sighed a little and pushed my plate away. "That was fine. Thanks very much, Rob."

"You're welcome." He got up and began stacking the plates. "Shall I fix your bike for you now?"

"If you would. I'll wash up while you do it."

"O.K." Then, easily: "Where are you putting your dad's ashes? In the enclosure?"

He might have been saying something about the washing up. I found it oddly comforting. Family talk; as familiar as with my own cousins, and without the constraints that I had, for obvious reasons, felt there sometimes.

"No, he didn't want that. Too much like putting fences round him, he said." The enclosure was the Ashley grave plot, where, within the iron railings, the family had lain since the Giles Ashley who had died in 1647. "He said he'd had enough of that when he was a prisoner of war; he wanted the open air. So I'll be coming back in the morning, very early, before there's anyone about."

"I'll be about, very likely, but I'll not disturb you. If you want breakfast when you've done, I'll be frying up at about seven o'clock. You can go down to the cottage after. I'll take your things along. Suit you?"

"Suits me."

He disappeared whistling towards the scullery, and I began to carry the dishes over to the sink.

Ashley, 1835

Surely she was not often as late as this?

The sane part of him insisted that she was. There had been nights when she had been prevented from coming at all, and he had waited all night long in this fret and torment, raw with longing, only to rant and curse at her when, the next night, braving who knew what rough perils from her family and the village see-alls, she came again.

He spared a thought for her, hurrying to him through the windy dark, wrapped in her old cloak, the maze key clutched in her hand. "The key to heaven," she had called it, and he had not laughed at her for the phrase as he might have done, my God, yes, even a month ago. He had had to bite his lips to stop himself saying, "The key to my heart."

That had been when he first knew for sure. She was the one. Of all of them, she was the one.

With tears augmenting the fresh morning's dew. . . .

—Romeo and Juliet,
I, i

Five o'clock in the morning. England in May. The time they always used to sing about. And well they might, I thought, buzzing along the country roads on the Lambretta with the early sun brilliant on the wet hedgerows, and the meadow grasses furred with dew as thick as hoarfrost. Heaven knew when last I had been out so early; I had forgotten the light, the sweetness of the air, the newly washed smell of everything, the fat lambs' calling, the thrushes going wild in the hawthorns. Forgotten the hawthorns themselves, frothing with maybloom along the road, with cowslips and cuckoo-flowers almost hiding the hedge bottoms. Forgotten the cuckoo, shouting in the echoing distance. Forgotten, even, the other preoccupation that went with me.

But here he was, crowding me.
Hullo,
I said, but gaily, without anxiety.
Shall I see you today?