The Ivy Tree

by Mary Stewart

  ‘Well, I did. Now let’s forget it. Did you say something about tea?’

  ‘I was just going to make it.’

  ‘Do you want any help?’

  ‘Not on your first day home.’

  ‘Then I think I’ll go upstairs for a little. Am I in my old room.’

  She smiled. ‘Yes. D’you mind using the nursery bathroom? You’ll be sharing it with Julie.’

  ‘Of course not. Does she know about me?’

  ‘Yes. She rang up last night, to say she’d be here on Wednesday, and Mr Winslow told her about you. That’s all I know.’

  ‘Wednesday . . .’ I paused with a foot on the lowest stair. ‘Ah well, that gives us two more days. Oh, Lisa, I forgot, my cases—’

  ‘Con brought them in just now, and took them up.’

  ‘Oh? It was good of him to get them so quickly. I’ll see you at tea, then. Where d’you have it?’

  ‘When I’m alone, in the kitchen as often as not. But for today, the drawing room. Your grandfather’ll be down, I expect. Did he say?’

  ‘Yes. He – he wants to show me round the place himself after tea.’

  The brown eyes held mine just a moment longer than was necessary.

  ‘Of course,’ said Lisa, abandoning comment with what looked like an effort, ‘he would want to do that. Naturally. Well – I’ll see you later.’

  I turned and went back upstairs. I could see her watching me as, unhesitatingly, I took the left-hand passage past the head of the gallery.

  ‘Yours is the second door’ . . . It was a pleasant room, with a long latticed window like Grandfather’s, and the same Albertine rose nodding outside it. There was a wide window-seat, covered with chintz in a pretty, Persian-looking pattern of birds and flowers and trellis-work, done in deliberately faded colours. The same chintz appeared for curtains and bedspread. The furniture was plain deal, white painted; originally it would speak of ‘nursery’, but now a new coat of paint made it merely cottagey and very charming. The floor was of polished boards with a couple of rugs, and the walls and ceiling were plain ivory-white.

  Con had dumped my baggage on the floor near the foot of the bed. He had also thoughtfully brought up my handbag, which I must have left in the kitchen, and this lay on the bed.

  I wasn’t prepared to cope with unpacking yet. I picked up the handbag and carried it across to the window-seat. I sat down, opened the bag, and took out my cigarettes.

  As I shook one loose from the pack, I glanced at the door. There was a key in the lock. So far, so good. I had a feeling that I was going to need frequent doses of privacy to recover from the rounds of a game which, though so far it had proved a walkover, might well get stickier as time went on.

  I put the cigarette in my mouth, and felt in the little mirror-pocket in my bag where I had carried a flat book of matches. It wasn’t there. My fingers met merely a slip of paper. Surely, I thought, irritably, I had had one? I had been smoking in the bus coming from Newcastle . . . I pulled the bag wider to look for it. I saw it immediately, then, a little scarlet book labelled Café Kasbah, tucked deep in the pocket on the other side of my bag, where I kept bills and shopping-lists and oddments of that sort.

  I lit the cigarette slowly, and sat contemplating the bag, open on my lap. Now that I had noticed it, there were other signs. The top had come loose on one of my lipsticks; the few papers that I carried were shuffled hastily back into their places as I didn’t think I had put them; the slip of paper where I had scribbled down the Whitescar telephone number, which had been among the other papers, was pushed into the mirror-department where normally the matches were kept. Whoever had scrabbled hastily through my handbag, had taken few pains to cover his tracks.

  Con? Lisa? I grinned to myself. What was it they called this kind of thing? Counter-espionage? That, I was sure, was how it would rank in Lisa’s mind. Whatever you called it, it was surely a little late, now, for them to be checking on my bona-fides.

  I went quickly through what was there. The telephone number; it was natural enough that I should have scribbled that down; numbers change in eight years. A bus time-table, acquired that day on my way here. The receipt for my lodgings near the Haymarket, also received that morning. That was all right; it was addressed to ‘Miss A. Winslow’.

  Then I hesitated, with it in my hand. Was it all right, after all? It was admittedly unlikely that Grandfather would ever see it, or check on it if he did, but both Con and Lisa had visited me there. It was better out of the way. I crumpled the paper up, and threw it into the empty fireplace. I would burn it before I went downstairs.

  I turned over the other papers. A few shopping chits; a couple of used bus tickets; a folded paper of pale green . . .

  I picked it out from among the others, and unfolded it. ‘Passenger Motor Vehicle Permit . . . Mary Grey . . .’ and the address near Montreal. There it lay, clear as a curse, the Canadian car permit; the owner’s licence that you carry daily, yearly, and never even see, except when the time comes round to renew it . . .

  Well, I thought, as I crumpled it in my hand, Con and Lisa must realise what an easy mistake this had been to make. I wondered, not without amusement, how on earth they would manage to warn me about it, without having to confess that they had searched my belongings. At least they could not also have searched my cases; the key hung on a chain round my neck, and there it was going to stay . . .

  From somewhere outside I heard Lisa calling, and Con’s voice in reply. I heard him cross the yard towards the house. There was a low-voiced colloquy, then he went back towards the buildings.

  I got up, and set a match to the crumpled bill in the fireplace, then carefully fed the car permit into the flames. I picked up the poker, and stirred the burned fragments of paper till they flaked and fell away to nothing, through the bars of the grate. Then I went back to the sunny window, picked up my half-smoked cigarette, and sat for some minutes longer, trying to relax.

  The window looked out over the small front garden. This was a simple square bounded by low sandstone walls, and sloping slightly towards the river. From the front door a gravel path, weedy and unraked, led straight to the white wicket-gate that gave on the river bank and the bridge that spanned the water. The path was bordered by ragged hedges of lavender, under which sprawled a few hardy pansies and marigolds. Behind these borders, to either side, the unkempt grass reached back to what had once been the flower-beds.

  Here was confusion indeed. Lupins had run wild, all the gay colours faded back to their pristine blue; peonies crouched sullenly under the strangling bushes of fuchsia and flowering-currant, and everywhere ivy, bindweed, and rose-bay willow-herb were joyously completing their deadly work. At first glance, the riot of colour might deceive the eye into thinking that here was a pretty garden still, but then one saw the dandelions, the rampant rose-bushes, the docks in the rank grass under the double-white lilac tree . . .

  Beyond the far wall, and the white wicket, was a verge of sheep-bitten grass and the wooden bridge that was Whitescar’s short cut to town. From the other end of the bridge the track wound up through the trees that crowded the far bank, and vanished eventually into their shadow.

  My eye came back, momentarily, to the tangled garden. Two blackbirds had flown into the lilac tree, quarrelling furiously. The great heads of milky blossom shook and swayed. I could smell lilac from where I sat.

  (‘Annabel’s garden. She planted it all. Remember to ask Con what’s in it . . . if he knows.’)

  He had not known.

  I leaned to stub out my cigarette on the stone sill outside the window-frame.

  It was time to go down. Act Two. Back into the conspirators’ cell with Con and Lisa.

  I found myself hoping passionately that Con wouldn’t be in to tea.

  He wasn’t, and it was still, it seemed, going to be easy. Grandfather came down a little late, opened the drawing-room door on me discussing amiably with Lisa what had happened to various neighbours during my long absence, and thereafte
r acted more or less as though the eight years’ gap had never been.

  After tea he took me outside, and led the way towards the farm buildings. He walked fairly rapidly, and held his gaunt body upright apparently without effort. With the westering sun behind him, shadowing the thinned, bony face, and making the grey hair look blond as it must once have been, it wasn’t difficult to see once more the active, opinionated, quick-tempered man who had done so much through his long life to make Whitescar the prosperous concern it now was. I could see, too, why Con – in spite of the old man’s favour – walked warily.

  Grandfather paused at the yard gate. ‘Changed much?’

  ‘The farm? I – it’s hard to tell.’

  A quick look under the jutting white brows. ‘What d’you mean?’

  I said slowly: ‘Oh, some things, yes. The new paint, and – that wall’s new, isn’t it? And the concrete, and all that drainage. But I meant – well, I’ve been gone a long time, and I suppose I’ve lived so long on a memory of Whitescar, that now it’s bound to look strange to me. My picture of it – my imagined picture, I mean – has become almost more real than the thing itself. For one thing,’ I laughed a little, ‘I remember it as being always in sunshine. One does, you know.’

  ‘So they say. I’d have thought you’d be more likely to remember it the way you left it. It was a vile day.’

  ‘Yes. I went before it was fully light, and you can imagine what it looked like. Rain and wind, and the fields all grey and flattened. I remember how awful that one looked – at least, was it in corn that year? I – I forget.’

  ‘Turnips. But you’re quite right. The corn was badly laid everywhere that year.’

  ‘The odd thing is,’ I said, ‘that I hardly really remember that at all. Perhaps the psychologists would say that the rain and wind, and that grey early morning, were all mixed up in my mind with the misery of leaving home, and that I’ve allowed myself to forget it.’ I laughed. ‘I wouldn’t know. But all the years I was away, I remembered nothing but sunshine . . . fine, lovely days, and all the things we used to do . . . childhood memories, mostly.’ I paused for a little. ‘I suppose you could say that my actual memories of home got overlaid, in time, with dream-pictures. I know that, after a few years, I’d have been hard put to it to give a really accurate description of . . . this, for instance.’

  I gestured to the tidy yard, the shadowy cave of the barn, the double stable doors with the tops latched back to the wall.

  ‘If you’d even asked me what sort of stone it was built of, I couldn’t have told you. And yet, now that I’m back, I notice everything. Tiny things that I must have taken for granted all my life, and never really seen before.’

  ‘Mm.’ He was staring at me fixedly. There was neither gentleness nor affection, that I could see, in the clear grey-green gaze. He said abruptly: ‘Con’s a good lad.’

  I must have sounded slightly startled. ‘Yes, of course.’

  He misunderstood the wariness of my manner, for his voice had a harsher note as he said, with equal abruptness: ‘Don’t worry. I’m not harking back to that business eight years back. I’d hardly hold Connor in affection for that, would I? Only thing I have against him, but at least he came out into the open, and tried to make amends like a decent man.’

  I said nothing. I saw him glance sideways at me, then he added testily, as if I had been arguing: ‘All right, all right. We’ve already spoken about that. We’ll drop it now. I said we’d forget it, and we will. But apart from things that are over and forgotten, Con’s a good lad, and he’s been a son to me this last eight years.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Another of those bright, almost inimical glances. ‘I mean that. After you’d played the fool and left me, he stayed, and made a clean breast of things. Told me what he thought was the truth. I don’t deny that there were words, but once everything had been said and done, what else was there for me to do? I’d have done badly without him for a long time now, and this last year or two, it’d have been impossible. He’s more than made up for what’s past. He’s put everything he knows into the place.’

  ‘Yes. I know.’

  The white brows jutted at me. ‘Well? Well?’

  I smiled at him. ‘What do you expect me to say, Grandfather? It’s quite true. I played the fool and left you, and Con played the fool and stayed. One up to Con. Not forgetting, though, that it took me rather longer to get over my folly than it took him . . . or you.’

  There was a little silence. Then he gave a short bark of laughter. ‘You don’t change,’ he said. ‘So you’ve come back to quarrel with me, have you?’

  ‘Grandfather, darling,’ I said, ‘no. But I don’t quite see what you’re getting at. You’re trying to tell me how wonderful Con is. All right; I’ll give you that. He’s been telling me himself. But you can’t blame me for being a bit wary. Eight years ago, all this would have been leading up to a spot of match-making. I hoped I’d made it clear that that was impossible.’

  ‘Hm. So you said, but one never knows how much one can believe a woman, especially when she starts talking all that claptrap about love turning to hate, and so forth.’

  ‘I said nothing of the sort. I don’t hate Con. If I felt strongly about him at all, I couldn’t have come back while he was still here, could I? I told you how I felt; indifferent, and more than a bit embarrassed. I’d give quite a lot not to have had to meet him again, but since he’s here, and not likely to go . . .’ I smiled a little. ‘All right, Grandfather, let it pass. I had to see you and it’d take more than Con to keep me away. Now, you don’t usually hand out compliments for the fun of the thing. You’re leading up to something. What is it?’

  He chuckled. ‘All right. It’s this. You always knew Whitescar would be yours when I died, didn’t you? Should have been your father’s, and then it would have been yours.’

  ‘Yes. I knew that.’

  ‘And had it occurred to you that I might have made other arrangements during the time you were away?’

  ‘Well, of course.’

  ‘And now that you’ve come back?’

  I turned half to face him, leaning against the gate, just as I had leaned to talk to Con earlier that day. ‘Come to the point, Grandfather dear.’

  The old eyes peered down at me, bright, amused, almost malicious. For some reason I was suddenly reminded of Con, though there was no outward resemblance whatever. ‘I will. It’s this. They’ll have told you I’m not expected to live a great while – no,’ as I made some movement of protest, ‘don’t bother. We all know what this confounded condition of mine means. Now, you cleared out eight years ago, and, for all we knew, you were dead. Well, you’ve come back.’ He paused. He seemed to be waiting for a reply.

  I said steadily: ‘Are you accusing me of coming back for what I think I can get?’

  He gave his sharp crack of laughter. ‘Don’t be a fool, girl. I know you better than that. But you would be a fool if you hadn’t thought about it, and wondered where you’d stand. Have you?’

  ‘Of course.’

  He gave a nod, as if pleased. ‘That’s a straight answer, anyway. And I’ll be straight with you. Look at it this way. You walked out eight years ago; Con stayed. Do you think it right that you should just walk back like this, after the work that Con’s put into this place meantime – and that fool Lisa Dermott for that matter – and just scoop it all up from under his very nose? Would you call that fair? I’m hanged if I would.’ His head thrust forward suddenly. ‘What in thunder are you laughing at?’

  ‘Nothing. Nothing at all. Are you trying to tell me that you’ve left everything to Con and Lisa?’

  Again that glint of mischief, that could have been malice. ‘I didn’t say that. And don’t you go letting them think it, either. I’m not dead yet. But is there any reason that you can think of why I shouldn’t?’

  ‘None at all.’

  He looked almost disconcerted, staring at me under his white brows. I realised then what the fleeting likeness had
been between him and Con; it was a matter of expression, nothing else; an impression of arrogance, of deliberately enjoying a moment of power. Matthew Winslow was enjoying the situation just as much as Con, and for allied reasons. He liked the power that it gave him.

  He said testily: ‘I wish I knew what the devil there was in all this to laugh at.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I was thinking of Con. “The engineer hoist with his own petard.”’

  ‘What? What are you talking about girl?’

  ‘It was a quotation,’ I said, helplessly. ‘I’m sorry, Grandfather. I’m serious, really I am.’

  ‘You’d better be. Quotation indeed. You’ve been wasting your time abroad, I can see that. Some modern rubbish, by the sound of it. Well, what were you thinking about Con?’

  ‘Nothing really. Aren’t you going to tell him that you’ve made a Will in his favour?’

  ‘I didn’t say I had. And I forbid you to speak to him about it. What I want is to get things straight with you. Perhaps I should have left it till you’d been home a bit longer, but as it happens, I’ve been thinking a good deal about it lately. You knew Julie was coming up here?’

  ‘Yes. Lisa told me.’

  ‘I wrote and asked her to come as soon as she could, and the child tells me she can get leave straight away. When she comes, I want to get things fixed up. Isaacs – do you remember Isaacs?’

  ‘I – I’m not sure.’

  ‘The lawyer. Nice chap. I’m sure you met him.’

  ‘Oh, yes, of course. I remember now.’

  ‘He’s coming on Friday, and then again next week. I suggested the twenty-second.’

  ‘The twenty-second? That’s your birthday, isn’t it?’

  ‘Good God, fancy your remembering.’ He looked pleased.

  ‘Lisa’s planning a party, she told me, since we’ll all be here, Julie too.’

  ‘Yes. A family gathering. Appropriate.’ He gave that dry, mischievous chuckle again.

  I tilted my head and looked up at him, all amusement gone. ‘Grandfather—’