by Mary Stewart
‘I can smell baking, even from here. Do you suppose she’ll have made singin’ hinnies for my tea?’
I had spoken quite naturally, as I turned to go, but the naked shock in his face stopped me short. He was staring at me as if he’d never seen me before.
His lips opened, and his tongue came out to wet them. ‘You can’t – I never – how did you—?’
He stopped. Behind the taut mask of shock I thought I glimpsed again what I had seen in his face at our first meeting.
I lifted my brows at him. ‘My dear Con, if you’re beginning to have doubts about me yourself, after all this time, I must be good!’
The strain slackened perceptibly, as if invisible guys had been loosened. ‘It’s only, it sounded so natural, the sort of little thing she might have said . . . And you standing there, by the yard gate. It’s as if it were yesterday.’ He took a breath; it seemed to be the first for minutes. Then he shook his head sharply, like a dog coming out of water. ‘I’m sorry, stupid of me. As you say, I’ll have to learn. But how in the world did you know a silly little thing like that? I hadn’t remembered it myself, and Lisa wouldn’t know, and it’s ten to one Mrs Bates never mentioned it to her till today, if she has even now.’
‘Yes, she has. Bates told me she’d be making them for my tea. He nearly caught me right out. What the dickens are they, anyway?’
‘Oh, a special kind of girdle-cake.’ He laughed, and the sound was at once elated, and half relieved. ‘So you just learned it ten minutes ago, and you come out with it as to the manner born! You’re wonderful! A hell of a partnership, did I call it? My God, Mary Grey – and it’s the last time I’ll ever call you that – you’re the girl for my money! You’re a winner, and didn’t I know it the minute I clapped eyes on you, up there on the Wall? If it wouldn’t look kind of excessive, besides going back on our pack and making you mad as fire, I’m damned if I wouldn’t kiss you again! No, no, it’s all right, don’t look at me like that; I said I’d behave, and I will.’
‘I’m glad to hear it. And now we’ve been out here quite long enough. Shall we go in?’
‘Sure . . . Annabel! Come along. Headed straight for the next fence; Becher’s Brook this time, wouldn’t you say?’ His hand slid under my arm. Physical contact seemed to come as naturally to Con Winslow as breathing. ‘No, not that way. You ought to know they never use the front door on a farm.’
‘I’m sorry.’ I gave a quick glance round the deserted yard, and up at the empty windows. ‘No harm done.’
‘Not scared at all?’
‘No. Edgy, but not scared.’
The hand squeezed my arm. ‘That’s my girl.’
I withdrew it. ‘No. Remember.’
He was looking down at me speculatively, charmingly, still with that glint of teasing amusement, but I got the feeling that it was no longer something pleasant that amused him. He said: ‘Girl dear, if you only knew . . .’
‘Look,’ I said, ‘if I only knew, as you put it, I imagine I wouldn’t be here at all. And we agreed to drop it all, didn’t we? It’s going to be quite embarrassing enough having to face you in front of Grandfather, without your amusing yourself by teasing me when we’re alone.’
‘I only said—’
‘I know what you said. And I’m saying that we’ll drop the subject as from now. If I were Annabel, would you want to be reminding me? Would you . . . dare? Or for that matter, would you want me to be reminding Grandfather?’
There was a tiny pause.
‘Well, well,’ said Con, and laughed. ‘All right, Annabel, my dear. A thousand times a blow. Come along into the lion’s den.’
6
She can make an Irish stew,
Aye, and singin’ hinnies, too . . .
North Country Song:
Billy Boy.
When Con showed me along the flagged passage, and into the kitchen, Lisa was just lifting a fresh batch of baking out of the oven. The air was full of the delectable smell of new bread.
The kitchen was a big, pleasant room, with a high ceiling, a new cream-coloured Aga stove, and long windows made gay with potted geraniums and chintz curtains that stirred in the June breeze. The floor was of red tiles, covered with those bright rugs of hooked rag that make Northern kitchens so attractive. In front of the Aga was an old-fashioned fender of polished steel, and inside it, from a basket covered with flannel, came the soft cheepings of newly hatched chickens. The black and white cat asleep in the rocking chair took no notice of the sounds, or of the tempting heavings and buttings of small heads and bodies against the covering flannel.
I stopped short, just inside the door.
At that moment, more, I think, than at any other in the whole affair, I bitterly regretted the imposture I was undertaking. For two pins I’d have bolted then and there. What had seemed exciting and even reasonable in Newcastle, simple in High Riggs, and intriguing just now in the yard outside, seemed, in this cheerful, lovely room smelling of home, to be no less than an outrage. This wasn’t, any more, just a house I had come to claim for Con, or a counter in a game I was playing; it was home, a place breathing with a life of its own, fostered by generations of people who had belonged here. In the shabby Newcastle boarding-house, with my lonely and prospectless Canadian life behind me, and a dreary part-time job doing nothing but stave off the future, things had looked very different: but here, in Whitescar itself, the world of second-class intrigue seemed preposterously out of place. Things should be simple in a place like this, simple and good; sunshine through flowered curtains, the smell of new bread, and chickens cheeping on the hearth; not a complicated imposture, a fantastic Oppenheim plot hatched out in a shabby bedroom with this Irish adventurer, and this stolid woman with the soft, grasping hands, who, having put down the baking tray, was moving now to greet me.
They must have noticed my hesitation, but there was no one else to see it. Through a half-shut door that led to the scullery came the sounds of water running, and the chink of crockery. Mrs Bates, I supposed. Perhaps, with instinctive tact, she had retired to let me meet the current mistress of Whitescar.
It seemed it was just as well she had, for to my surprise the stolid, ever-reliable Lisa seemed, now it had come to the point, to be the least composed of the three of us. Her normally sallow cheeks were flushed, though this may only have been from the heat of the oven. She came forward, and then hesitated, as if at a loss for words.
Con was saying, easily, at my elbow: ‘Here she is, Lisa. She came early, and I met her at the gate. I’ve been trying to tell her how welcome she is, but perhaps you’ll do it better than me. She’s finding it all a bit of a trial so far, I’m afraid.’ This with his charming smile down at me, and a little brotherly pat on the arm. ‘Annabel, this is my half-sister, Lisa Dermott. She’s been looking after us all, you knew that.’
‘We’ve already had a long talk over the telephone,’ I said. ‘How do you do, Miss Dermott? I’m very glad to meet you. It – it’s lovely to be back. I suppose I needn’t tell you that.’
She took my hand. She was smiling, but her eyes were anxious, and the soft hand was trembling.
She spoke quite naturally, however. ‘You’re welcome indeed, Miss Winslow. I dare say it seems odd to you to have me greet you like this in your own home, but after all this time it’s come to feel like home to me as well. So perhaps you’ll let me tell you how glad everybody is to see you back. We’d – you must know – I told you yesterday – we’d all thought you must be dead. You can imagine that this is a great occasion.’
‘Why, Miss Dermott, how nice of you.’
‘I hope,’ she said, rather more easily, ‘that you’ll call me Lisa.’
‘Of course. Thank you. And you must please drop the “Miss Winslow”, too. We’re cousins, surely, or is it half-cousins, I wouldn’t know?’ I smiled at her. The chink of crockery from the scullery had stopped as soon as I spoke. Through the half-shut door there came a sort of listening silence. I wondered if our conversation were soundi
ng too impossibly stilted. If this had genuinely been my first introduction to Lisa, no doubt the situation would have been every bit as awkward. There would have been, literally, nothing to say.
I went on saying just that, in a voice that sounded, to myself, too high, too quick, too light altogether. ‘After all, I’m the stranger here, or so it feels, after all this time, and I’m sure you’ve given me a better welcome than I deserve! Of course it’s your home . . .’ I looked about me . . . ‘more than mine, now, surely! I never remember it looking half as pretty! How lovely you’ve got it . . . new curtains . . . new paint . . . the same old chickens, I’ll swear, they were always part of the furniture . . . oh, there’s the old tea caddy, I’m so glad you didn’t throw it out!’
Lisa had certainly never thought fit to mention the battered old tin on the mantelpiece, but, since it was decorated with a picture of George V’s Coronation, they would recognise it as a safe bet. ‘And the Aga! That’s terrific! When was that put in?’
‘Five years ago.’ Lisa spoke shortly, almost repressively. Con was watching me with what seemed to be amused respect, but Lisa, I could see, thought I was jumping a bit too fast into that attentive silence from the scullery.
I grinned at her, with a spice of mischief, and moved over to the hearth. ‘Oh, lord, the old rocking chair . . . and it still creaks . . .’ I creaked it again, and the sleeping cat opened slitted green eyes, looked balefully at me, and shut them again. I laughed, almost naturally, and stooped to stroke him. ‘My welcome home. He looks a tough egg, this chap. What happened to Tibby?’
‘He died of old age,’ said Con. ‘I buried him under your lilac tree.’
‘He’d have died of middle age long before that, if I’d had my way.’ Lisa was back at the table, scooping hot rolls off the tin on to the baking sieve. She seemed relieved to be back in action. She didn’t look at Con or me. ‘The place for cats is in the buildings, and they know it.’
‘You didn’t try to keep Tibby outside?’
‘Tibby,’ said Con cheerfully, ‘was so hedged about with the sanctity of having been your cat, that he was practically allowed to live in your bedroom. Don’t worry about Tibby. He got even Lisa down in the end, and lived his life out in the greatest possible honour and luxury.’
I smiled and stroked the cat’s ears. ‘Not like Flush?’
‘Flush?’ This was Lisa. I caught the sudden quick overtone of apprehension, as if she had caught me speaking without the book.
Con grinned at her. ‘Elizabeth Barrett’s dog. When Elizabeth bolted, early one morning, just like Annabel, her father is said to have wanted to destroy her little dog, as a sort of revenge.’
‘O – oh . . . I see.’
He looked at me. ‘No, Annabel, not like Flush. Revenge wasn’t . . . our first reaction.’
I let it pass. ‘And this one?’ I said. ‘What’s his claim to the best chair in the kitchen?’
‘Tommy? That fat, lazy brute?’ Lisa was patently feeling the strain. A conversation about cats at this juncture was, obviously, the last straw in irrelevance. Lisa’s Teutonic thoroughness wanted to get on with the task in hand, lay the next brick or so, and slap a few more solid ties in to mortar the brand-new structure together. She said, almost snappily: ‘Heaven knows I throw him out often enough, but he will come in, and I haven’t had the time today to shift him.’
Con said lazily: ‘His personality’s stronger than yours, Lisa my dear.’ He, apparently, shared my belief that the bricks of deception could be perfectly well made with the smallest straws of irrelevance. He took a roll off the rack and bit into it. ‘Mmm. Not bad. They’re eatable today, Lisa. I suppose that means Mrs Bates baked them.’
His sister’s forbidding expression broke up into that sudden affectionate smile that was kept only for him.
‘Oh, have some butter with it, Con, do. Or wait until teatime. Won’t you ever grow up?’
‘Isn’t Mrs Bates here?’ I asked.
Lisa shot me a look, three parts relief to one of apprehension. ‘Yes. She’s through in the scullery. Would you like—?’
But before she could finish the sentence the door was pushed open and, as if on a cue, a woman appeared in the doorway, a round squat figure of the same general shape as the Mrs Noah from a toy ark, who stood on the threshold with arms in the traditional ‘akimbo’ position, surveying me with ferocious little boot-button eyes.
Lisa led in hastily. ‘Oh, Mrs Bates, here’s Miss Annabel.’
‘I can see that. I ain’t blind, nor yet I ain’t deaf.’ Mrs Bates’ thin lips shut like a trap. The fierce little eyes regarded me. ‘And where do you think you’ve been all this time, may I ask? And what have you been a-doing of to yourself? You look terrible. You’re as thin as a rail, and if you’re not careful you’ll have lost all your looks, what’s left of ’em, by the time you’re thirty. America, indeed! Ain’t your own home good enough for you?’
She was nodding while she spoke, little sharp jerking movements like one of those mandarin toys one used to see; and each nod was a condemnation. I saw Con flick an apprehensive look at me, and then at his sister. But he needn’t have worried; Lisa’s briefing had been thorough. ‘She adored Annabel, cursed her up hill and down dale, wouldn’t hear anyone say a word against her; had a frightful set-to with Mr Winslow after she ran away, and called him every tyrant under the sun . . . She’s frightfully rude – plain spoken she calls it – and she resents me, but I had to keep her; Bates is the best cattleman in the county, and she’s a marvellous worker . . .’
‘A fine thing it’s been for us, let me tell you,’ said Mrs Bates sharply, ‘thinking all this time as you was lost and gone beyond recall, but now as you is back, there’s a few things I’d like to be telling you, and that’s a fact. There’s none can say I’m one to flatter and mince me words, plain spoken I may be, but I speak as I find, and for anyone to do what you gone and did, and run off without a word in the middle of the night—’
I laughed at her. ‘It wasn’t the middle of the night, and you know it.’ I went up to her, took her by the shoulders and gave her a quick hug, then bent and kissed the hard round cheek. I said gently: ‘Make me welcome, Betsy. Don’t make it harder to come home. Goodness knows I feel bad enough about it, I don’t need you to tell me. I’m sorry if it distressed you all, but I – well, I was terribly unhappy, and when one’s very young and very unhappy, one doesn’t always stop to think, does one?’
I kissed the other cheek quickly, and straightened up. The little black eyes glared up at me, but her mouth was working. I smiled, and said lightly: ‘And you must admit I did the thing properly, dreadful quarrel, note left on the pincushion and everything?’
‘Pincushion? What did you ever want with a pincushion? Never did a decent day’s work in your life, always traipsing around after horses and dogs and tractors, or that there garden of yours, let alone the house and the jobs a girl ought to take an interest in. Pincushion!’ She snorted. ‘Where would you be finding one of them?’
‘Well,’ I said mildly, ‘where did I leave it?’
‘On that mantelpiece as ever was, which well you remember!’ She nodded across the kitchen. ‘And when I come down that morning I was the one found it there, and I stood there fair pussy-struck for five mortal minutes, I did, afore I dared pick it up. I knew what it was, you see. I’d heard you and your Granda having words the night before, and I heard you go to your room just after, which well you know I did. I didn’t never think to have the chance to tell you this, but I folleyed you along, Miss Annabel, an’ I listened outside your door.’ Another nod, more ferocious than the last. ‘I did that. Which I won’t take shame to meself for doing it, neither. If you’d ’a bin upset-like, which you being only a girl, and your Granda playing Hamlet with you, there’s times when a girl needs a woman to talk to, even if it’s nobbut Betsy Bates, as was Betsy Jackson then. But if I’d had any idea as you was in real trouble, which I never thought—’
I was very conscious of Con just at
my shoulder. I said quickly: ‘Betsy, dear—’
I saw Con make a slight, involuntary movement, and thought: he doesn’t want me to stop her; he thinks I’ll learn something from all this.
He needn’t have worried, she had no intention of being stopped until I had heard it all.
‘But there wasn’t a sound, not of crying. Just as if you was moving about the room quiet-like, getting ready for your bed. So I thought to meself, it’s only a fight, I thought, the old man’ll be sorry in the morning, and Miss Annabel’ll tell him she won’t do it again, whatever she done, riding that Everest horse of Mr Forrest’s maybe, or maybe even staying out too late, the way she has been lately, and the old man not liking it, him being old fashioned that way. But I thinks to meself, it’ll be all right in the morning, the way it always has been, so I just coughs to let you know I’m there, and I taps on the door and says: “I’m away to bed now, Miss Annabel,” and you stopped moving about, as if I’d frightened you, and then you come over to the door and stopped inside it for a minute, but when you opened it you still had all your things on, and you said: “Good night, Betsy dear, and thank you,” and you kissed me, you remember, and you looked so terrible, white and ill, and I says, “Don’t take on so, Miss Annabel,” I says, “there’s nought that doesn’t come right in the end, not if it was ever so,” and you smiled at that and said “No.” And then I went off to bed, and I never heard no sound, and if anyone had tell’t me that next morning early you’d up and go, and stay away all these years, and your Granda fretting his heart out after you, for all he’s had Mr Con here, and Julie as is coming this week, which she’s the spitting image of you, I might say—’
‘I know. Lisa told me. I’m longing to meet her.’ I touched her hand again. ‘Don’t upset yourself any more. Let’s leave it, shall we? I – I’ve come back, and I’m not going again, and don’t be too angry with me for doing what I did.’
Lisa rescued me, still, I gathered, trying to bring the straying runner back on course. ‘Your grandfather’ll be awake by now. You’d better go up, he’ll want to see you straight away.’ She was reaching for her apron strings. ‘I’ll take you up. Just give me time to wash my hands.’
