Encounters

by Barbara Erskine

  She didn’t see Jeff again for many days but she thought of him in spite of all she could do to stop herself. Nor did she go to peer through the hazels at Cae Coch. The farm too was spoiled for her now. She took to rambling on the mountain, watching the sheep as they wandered through the bracken and gorse.

  It would soon be time for her to go away to college. She put the date away from her. The rest of the summer came between her and that day. Her last freedom. She climbed higher towards the rocks and took deep breaths of the air, storing them up against a time when she would see the great open mountain sky no more.

  She saw the galloping pony a great way off and stood to watch as he rode recklessly up the pony path, great clods of peat flying up from the thundering hooves. This time he was alone.

  ‘Megan,’ he called as he reached her. ‘I’ve not seen you for ages.’ He slid from the saddle and grinned at her. Now his skin was almost as brown as hers.

  ‘You still have the book under your arm, I see.’ He smiled, his dark eyes lighting with silver.

  ‘How is your fiancée, Jeff?’ she asked, not wanting to say it, not wanting to know. She saw his face fell, his smile go.

  ‘She’s well, thank you.’ He sat down on a lump of rock and then he smiled at her again in spite of it. ‘She’s gone back to Birmingham now.’

  ‘Has she indeed?’ Megan felt her own heart lighten a little. She sat down beside him. The warm wind stroked her hair back from her face. He looked at her for a moment, then his fingers went gently to her forehead.

  ‘You have lovely hair, Megan. Soft and shiny like nut-brown silk.’ His eyes were serious as they looked into hers. She felt the message of them pierce right through her and she knew what he wanted so badly.

  ‘Is it loving me on the mountain you’re after?’ she asked him direct, and she saw his eyelids droop in assent. His hands slowly strayed to the top button of her shirt, undid it, and the next. Gently, with his warm hands, he stroked her breast.

  Towards the end of summer when the evenings were drawing imperceptibly in there was a wind; a storm from the west which brought with it the message from autumn that the leaves were doomed to fall from the trees as they turned colour and sent late harvesters scurrying to collect in the last of their store.

  Then it was that Jeff told Megan he was leaving Cae Coch. She had borrowed his comb and was kneeling in the soft-brown leaves within the walls of the ruin, combing pieces of grass out of her hair.

  ‘Back to your Rose?’ She smiled up at him wistfully, still combing. He nodded, his eyes pained. He had expected her to cry. He buttoned his shirt and went to tighten the girths of the grazing pony.

  ‘Will I see you again, Megan?’ He asked it over his shoulder half afraid to turn, to see her face.

  ‘I’ll be here till I go.’ She smiled enigmatically, slipping his comb into her own pocket. Without a word she began to walk back down towards the trees.

  He stood and watched her go, gently stroking the pony’s muzzle. In his heart there was already an ache of emptiness he had never felt before.

  When he went two months later to her cottage Megan had left for college. In vain Jeff pleaded with her mother for her address.

  ‘No son of Sarah Ann Lewis is going to follow my daughter,’ she cried adamantly, hand on hip.

  He walked back slowly through the wood to Cae Coch, his heart heavy with longing. The track he followed came out in the trees at the back by the brook, the place he had always thought he felt eyes watching him in the mornings. He smiled gently. So it had been Megan, that shy fawn of the woods whom so often he had tried to glimpse through the trees.

  He groped in his pocket for the little box. Inside lay a ring, a tiny diamond on a band of white gold. The large sapphire, returned with such venom, had more than paid for it. He kissed the cold stone and put it back in his pocket.

  Megan wilted beneath the dark city skies, but she worked hard and tried not to think of the mountain and the brook. Above all she tried to forget the image of the grazing pony and the buttercups.

  Her first vacation she spent in Swansea with her Aunt Bethan. The next she went to London and met her mother for a three-week stay in a small hotel in Bayswater while they visited the shops and museums and had tea with Great Aunty Elen who lived in Richmond.

  It was not until the sweet summer winds were blowing again over the mountains that she returned home. Granny Lewis had died at Easter and Cae Coch lay empty, the windows already broken by boys from the village.

  Megan laid aside her new town clothes and climbed at long last back up to the ruined farmhouse. The stones of the mossy wall were familiar against her back as she sat reading in the sun. The gable wall had fallen some time during the winter and already the nettles were poking up thickly amongst the scattered stones, but she felt happy here; relaxed and safe again. No one else would come to sit beside her on the warmed stones.

  She read through the long warm afternoons, watching only sometimes as the shadows of the trees lengthened across the path out of the wood the way he used to come with the pony.

  The first storm of the autumn tore some slates off the roof at Cae Coch, leaving a gaping hole. The gate was hanging off its hinges.

  Sadly Megan walked down out of the trees and stood in the yard for the first time, looking round. Raymond the Post had told her that it belonged to Jeff now. But he had never been back to see it. Never come back to the mountains.

  She heard a soft whinny and shivered in spite of herself. It sounded like a ghost from the past. The sorrel pony was tethered to the fence behind the lean-to, out the back of the cottage.

  She stood for a moment, uncertain, overcome with shyness. Then she turned and ran back towards the shelter of the wood. For a brief second she turned back to peer through the branches not letting the hope come. The yard was deserted and silent, the past a whole year away now. Sadly she made her way up the hillside, away from the brook towards the ruins of the farm.

  Whistling, Jeff came round the corner of the cottage, his shirt sleeves rolled up, a hammer in his hand. He looked at the sorrel pony, munching sleepily at the net of hay he had hung for it and then he stiffened. Was he being watched? He turned towards the wood, his eyes scanning the pale-green hazel brake hopefully.

  ‘Megan?’ he whispered softly. ‘Megan, are you there?’

  The leaves rustled to the wind, but there was no answer.

  Slowly he turned to the rucksack lying inside the door of the cottage. At the bottom was wedged the small ring box. He hadn’t looked at it for many months. The diamond winked and gleamed in the silent sun and he gazed at it for a while, his head a little to one side. Then, his mind suddenly made up he stuffed it deep into the pocket of his jeans. Hitching his jacket over his shoulder he vaulted the fallen gate and set off into the wood and up the hillside towards the ruined farmhouse she had loved so much.

  Encounters

  I knew it was a mistake as soon as I held out my hand. His eyes behind their polite disinterest were mocking. He raised my fingers ostentatiously to his lips, then delicately, almost fastidiously, turned aside to sip his champagne; to rinse away the taste.

  ‘Of course I know Jessica. Why it can’t be more than five years since the trial.’ Smiling, his teeth were immaculate as ever. I had a vision of the dentist’s bill when he had them straightened. ‘You knew she tried to murder me, surely?’ He still held my hand and as I tried to pull away his grip tightened fractionally.

  Our hostess’s eyes became like marbles. A greenish tinge had appeared around her mouth and I felt a wave of sympathy. I tried to smile a reassurance.

  ‘I expect he’ll show you his scar if you ask him nicely. No, Sara, you guessed aright. You don’t have to introduce us.’

  My fingers, draining of blood in his grasp, were beginning to tingle uncomfortably. If I had had a glass in my free hand I could have dashed it into his face. As it was I reached forward for the centre button on his shirt. The scar was so small now. The incision appeared to have been
made with such precision. A professional, considered thrust aimed, so the prosecution had maintained, with callous and cold-blooded premeditation. I felt a ridiculous giggle well up inside me and, unable to control it, let it burst forth like a hiccough. Abruptly he released my hand and groped for the button, concealing his wound.

  Sara recovered some mastery of the situation. ‘Well, dears,’ she said with commendable sang-froid. ‘Shall I leave you to talk over old times, or would you rather be parted at all cost?’ She smiled, but not with her eyes.

  His, on the other hand, were sparkling. Their appeal was irresistible. ‘Let’s talk, Jess,’ he said. He took two fresh glasses from a passing tray and handed me one. ‘There are things I want to know.’

  ‘And I. My record of Verdi’s Requiem for one. My begonia rex and the spaghetti jar from Habitat.’ I sipped and he smiled. I let the bubbles effervesce for a moment against the roof of my mouth.

  ‘Hostages to fortune,’ he said. ‘But you can come and get them whenever you like. I’ve taken cuttings from the begonia and I have the Requiem on tape.’ He put his head on one side. ‘Was it premeditated, Jess? I’ve often wondered. You must have hated me so passionately.’ Shaking his head he took a gulp from his glass. He always closes his eyes when he swallows. It’s an irritating habit when you’re talking to him.

  ‘Did you never look up in your Anatomy? X marked the spot I was aiming for. Only I could have missed so many vital organs so completely.’ I lowered my lashes modestly and he nodded, understanding.

  ‘You should have tried poison. It’s the woman’s method.’

  ‘You can’t have forgotten already that I do not like feminine compromise?’

  Silently I applauded as he intercepted a tray of canapés.

  ‘You take the plate and I’ll help myself to enough for both of us.’ He eyed my hand. ‘You don’t have a Borgia ring, I suppose?’

  I raised an eyebrow. ‘I was not expecting to meet you, and anyway, second attempts are so boring.’

  ‘I agree.’ He said it so heartily that I laughed.

  It seemed natural then to head conspiratorially for the tables at the side of the marquee and sit down together with our plate and our drinks. Catching my eye he raised his glass and grinned. ‘To the past before it went wrong,’ he said and I drank to it with him.

  We had, once upon a time, lived together for five years, he and I. We shared a love of Italian food and music. I suppose we shared a love of begonias. We certainly both enjoyed the making of our life and love together as we had enjoyed painting the flat the glorious plums and russets of autumn – ‘So very sombre, my dear,’ my mother had said once, but I could tell she was impressed.

  We had stripped article after article to the basic weather-beaten pine and scoured our Cretan holiday haven for local wares, till our home was sophisticated and cool and I was secure in my liberated mutually-free relationship.

  Then he had gone away to a medical conference. The day he was due back the doorbell rang and a woman stood there, tall and dark, her skin tanned and oiled.

  ‘You must be Leo’s sister,’ she said, walking confidently in and throwing down her bag.

  It was as much of a shock to her. She had known him only three months, but this holiday, for her the culmination of their relationship, had involved no conference that she could recall other than with one another.

  We circled each other like cats. Then, our anger turning in despair on Leo, we kicked off our shoes and drank a bottle of gin, sitting together on the sheepskin rug, gazing through blurring eyes at the sunburst of corn in the fireplace.

  It was her bitter suggestion that he deserved to die. And she admitted it at the trial, I never could decide whether from motives of self-sacrifice or malice.

  Leo had not come back that night – perhaps some secret qualm had warned him of the passions that were smouldering beneath those plum and aubergine ceilings as I staggered round the flat after she had gone, tearful at last, to find a taxi.

  When he came back the next evening and sat down to read the BMJ I gave him, silently, three minutes to explain. Then, as he closed the magazine to turn the page – he never laid a book or paper flat on the table as he read – I stood up and leaned across the table. It was laid, although I had prepared no food. I remember my sleeve catching at the carefully folded napkin as I stuck the stainless steel delicately through his sweater.

  He had looked so surprised. Then the customary mocking glance had returned and he had said, ‘Darling, Jess, was I late for supper?’

  He had phoned for the ambulance himself before he collapsed and I in a fit of masochistic rage rang the police. I wanted reaction, drama; I wanted I suppose to be vindicated. I gave myself up and was half disappointed when they did not appear with handcuffs.

  Then the game ended. They let me see Leo in hospital. We had a row, the first we had ever had, and I could remember even now, gazing at him across the canapés, how he had called out in despair, ‘All right, Jess, if that’s the way you want it, I’ll press charges. I’ll bloody well press charges.’

  That was the last time I had spoken to him, till now.

  ‘Did you qualify in the end, Leo?’ The ‘incident’, as the police psychiatrist called it, had occurred four months before he sat his finals in medicine. He certainly looked respectable now. I eyed his immaculate morning suit.

  ‘Indeed I did.’ He grinned. ‘Our little brush with the gossip columns does not appear to have harmed either of our reputations, I’m glad to say.’

  I blushed. I was recognized now as a photographer and my name, the part of it I used these days, was occasionally to be found in glossy magazines beneath portraits of society personalities.

  ‘You know what I do now?’ I had been convinced that I no longer existed for Leo in any respect. The certainty helped me to bear my shame.

  ‘My dear, I do have a certain proprietary interest in your career. Perhaps you have forgotten who lent you the money for your first decent camera.’ He smiled encouragingly.

  I couldn’t help laughing. ‘It was less than £5!’

  ‘But you never paid me back.’

  ‘I thought it was a present.’

  ‘Oh.’ He considered for a moment. ‘Yes, perhaps it was.’

  Behind his shoulder the creamy canvas of the marquee billowed slightly and a shadow was silhouetted by the sun.

  ‘They make a very nice couple, don’t you think?’ I bit into some flaky pastry. ‘Are you a friend of the bride or groom?’

  ‘The groom’s father. We’re with the same hospital. How about you? Have you known them long?’

  We were talking as strangers again. I shook my head. ‘I was here to photograph the house. I know Sara, the bride’s mother, through work.’

  He laughed. Again those beautiful teeth. ‘And she didn’t know about your murky past?’

  ‘I don’t usually tell people.’ I hesitated and then catching his eye and holding it, I found myself grinning ruefully. ‘I’m not very proud of that effort.’

  ‘Of course you’re not. You botched it. You were never one to crow over a failure.’ His face was suddenly inscrutable but I thought, I hoped, he was still smiling inside.

  Our glasses were charged and we rose to listen to the speeches. I stood bemused by champagne and the heady fragrance of trodden grass, surrounded by best dresses and hats in the cream twilight. Leo was beside me, tall, strong – alive. And then there was a surge of clapping and laughter, the formation changed and Leo was gone. I gazed round, trying to see him, but nowhere was there a sign.

  I drank the next toast without enthusiasm and, bored with speeches, edged discreetly towards the entrance.

  The garden was gaudy with roses and deserted now that everyone was crowding into the marquee. I could see a fountain playing at the end of a grassy walk. At the centre the slim bronze figure of a girl stood gazing down into the water, water trickling from her fingertips and her tresses and from the fronds that curled around her ankles.

  I w
alked slowly towards her, my heels sinking into the velvet grass. I knew Leo wouldn’t follow even if he’d seen me leave.

  I sat on the surround of the fountain and lazily trailed my hand in the water. The afternoon was very still. In the distance there was a burst of shouting and laughter from the marquee. I ignored it.

  I sat there until the light began to fade. After a time I realized that people were wandering around again. The speeches must be over. Then they began to disappear and, remotely, I heard the revving of engines as one by one the guests began to depart. One of those cars would contain Leo.

  I hadn’t told him that I was to fly to the States. Why should I? The next morning I boarded the jet at Heathrow and left England behind, leaving a cool hazy morning for the shimmering hothouse of New York and my own wedding.

  I had a premonition that my marriage was doomed. Perhaps it was the thunder and lightning that raged round the slender spire of the wooden New England church as we exchanged our vows. Perhaps it was the helpless adoration I felt for George. A love like that could not be allowed. The gods are not sentimentalists. So when the end came I was almost prepared. The small plane he was flying from New York to Montreal dropped out of the sky and buried itself in the flaming glory of the Vermont fall exactly three months and four days after we were married.

  When I came home the tawny of the English autumn wrapped itself gently around me like a familiar comforting arm. I walked in the mist and rain until the ache was dulled, then hesitantly I resumed work.

  I had been staring at his back for some time. Perhaps it was the set of the shoulders. Perhaps it was the angle at which he held the BMJ over his head to ward off the streaming rain that held my attention. I was fascinated to see the water dripping from the page almost with deliberation into the perfectly angled upturned collar of his coat.

  There were three people between us in the queue. I stood painfully hoping he would turn; dreading that he might turn. I wanted to run away, but I wanted my ticket for Trovatore.