by Mary Stewart
‘I doubt if he cares that much about Forrest.’ I realised as soon as I had spoken how oddly my reply was framed, but she didn’t notice.
‘Then why? Why did they stay together? Why was she so filthy to him, almost as if he’d done something dreadful? It wasn’t you, because it was going on for years before that. Why?’
‘How could I know? He – he never discussed it.’ Then, out of nowhere, came a guess like a certainty: ‘She had no child.’
‘I – see,’ said Julie, slowly. ‘And he . . . ?’
‘Some men take life itself as a responsibility. Maybe that was it. Maybe he took her unhappiness as his. How could he leave her? You can’t leave people who have nothing else.’
‘You know,’ she said, ‘you talk about it all as if it was sort of remote, just a story about someone else.’
‘That’s what it feels like,’ I said. ‘Look, why don’t we go in? Come along, you’re yawning like a baby. You’ve had a long journey today, and you must be tired. There’ll be plenty of time to talk. Is Donald coming down tomorrow?’
‘I expect so.’
‘I’m looking forward to meeting him again. Tell me all about him tomorrow. I seem to have kept you on my affairs tonight, but we’ll forget them, as from now, shall we?’
‘If that’s the way you want it.’
‘That’s the way I want it.’
‘Okay.’ She yawned again, suddenly and unashamedly, like an animal or a child. ‘Oh lord, I am sleepy. No need to drink mandragora to sleep out the great gap of time my Donald is away.’ She giggled. ‘Funny how he simply will not fit into any romantic context.’
‘Maybe you’re safer that way, considering the kind of thing you appear to read.’
‘Maybe. Oh Annabel, it is so good to have you here. Did I say?’
‘Yes. Thank you, Julie. Sleep well.’
‘Oh, I shall. But this ghastly hush is devastating after London, and if that blasted owl starts up I shall shoot it, I swear I will, even if it is a mother with seven starving babies in the ivy tree.’
‘That sort of owl has three.’
She unlatched the garden gate and pushed it open. ‘You always did know everything about everything.’
‘Oh no, Julie! You make me sound like some ghastly Nature Girl hobnobbing with the owls, and charming wild horses, and flitting about the woods at night—’ I stopped.
If Julie had noticed she made no sign. ‘Aren’t you coming in?’
‘Not yet. It’s a lovely night, and I’m not tired. Nature Girl on the prowl. Good night.’
‘Good night,’ said Julie.
11
The wind doth blow to-day, my love,
And a few small drops of rain;
I never had but one true-love;
In cold grave she was lain.
Ballad: The Unquiet Grave.
If you stood on the low piece of crumbling wall that enclosed the trunk, you could just reach your hand into the hole. I held on to the writhen stems of the ivy with one hand and felt above my head into the hollow left by some long-decayed and fallen bough.
I put my hand in slowly, nervously almost, as I might have done had I known that Julie’s owl and seven mythical young were inside, and ready to defend it, or as I might have invaded a private drawer in someone’s desk. The secret tryst; Ninus’ tomb; the lovers’ tree; what right had a ghost there, prying?
In any case there was nothing to pry into. Whatever secrets the ivy tree had held in the past, it was now only a tree, and the post-box was an empty hole, the bottom cracked and split, its fissures filled with crumbling touchwood as dry as tinder. Some twigs and rotting straw seemed to indicate that a starling had once nested there. The ivy, brushing my face, smelt dark and bitter, like forgotten dusty things.
I climbed down from the wall and wiped my hands on my handkerchief.
Beside me, skirting the ruins of the lodge, the neglected avenue curled away into the shadows. I turned my head to look where, in the strong moonlight beyond the blackness cast by the trees, the white gate glimmered. I could almost make out the neat black letters on the top bar. WHITESCAR. I made a half-movement in that direction, then checked myself. If it be now, ’tis not to come. Well, let it be now.
I put away my handkerchief, and walked quickly past the ruined lodge, up the silent mosses of the drive, towards the house.
The moon was fuller tonight, and it was later. The skeleton of the house stood up sharply, with the dramatic backcloth of trees cutting its lines and angles, and throwing into relief the tracery of the bare windows. One or two sheep grazed among the azaleas. The little tearing sounds they made, as they cropped the grass, sounded loud in the windless air.
I could smell the roses and honeysuckle that smothered the sundial. I went slowly down the moss-furred steps, and over the grass towards it. The dial was covered with a thick mat of leaves and tendrils. I picked one of the tiny chandeliers of the honeysuckle and held it to my face. The long stamens tickled, and the scent was thick and maddeningly sweet, like a dream of summer nights. I dropped it into the grass.
I sat down on the lowest step where the pediment jutted into the encroaching grass, and pushed aside the trailing honeysuckle with gentle hands, till the shaft of the sundial lay bare. The moonlight struck it slantingly, showing the faint shadows of carving under the soft rosettes of lichen.
I scratched a little of the moss away, and traced the letters with a slow, exploratory finger.
TIME IS. TIME WAS . . .
Another line below. No need to trace that out.
TIME IS PAST . . .
It didn’t need the startled swerve of a ewe ten yards away, or the rustle and patter of small hoofs retreating, to tell me that I had been right. He had come, as I had guessed he would.
My hands were pressed flat on the dry mosses. I could feel the blood in them jump and beat against the chill of the stone. I waited for a moment, without moving, crouched there on the step of the sundial, my hands hard against the stone.
Well, let it come. Get it over with. Learn just where you stand. If it be not now, yet it will come.
I turned slowly round, and, as stiffly as a puppet on strings, got to my feet.
He was standing not twenty yards away, at the edge of the wood. He was just a shadow under the trees, but it could be no one else. He had come, not by the drive, but up the path from the summer-house.
I stood without moving, with the moon behind my shoulder, and my back to the sundial. I think that I had a hand on it still, as if for support, but oddly enough, the emotion that struck at me most vividly at the sight of him was that of relief. This was the worst thing that had happened, and I had had no time to be ready for it; but now it had come, and it would be got over. Somehow, I would find the right things to say . . .
It seemed a very long time before he moved. The moonlight fell strongly on him as he came forward, and even at that distance I could see that he was staring as if he had seen a ghost. His features were blanched and dramatised by the white slanting light, but even so it was apparent that some violent emotion had drained his face to a mask where the flesh seemed to have been planed from the strong-looking bones, leaving it a convention, as it were, of planes and angles, lights and shadows. The eyes looked very dark, and the brows made a bar of black across them. I could see the deeply incised line down his cheeks, and the thin line of a mouth schooled to reserve or patience. But when his lips parted to speak, one saw all at once how thin the defences were. His voice sounded vulnerable, too, half hesitating. This was a man who was by no means sure of his reception. And why should he be? Why indeed?
He spoke at last, in a half-whisper that carried no expression. ‘Annabel?’
‘Adam?’ Even as I said it, I thought the name sounded exploratory, tentative, as if I’d never used it before.
He had stopped a yard or so away. There was a pause, painfully long. Then he said: ‘I came as soon as I knew.’
‘Did you expect to find me here?’
‘I didn’t know. I thought . . . I don’t know what I thought. Does it matter? You came.’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I – I had to see you.’
I found that I had braced myself for his response to this, but he made none. His voice was so flattened and expressionless that it sounded barely interested. ‘Why did you come home?’
‘Grandfather’s ill. He – he may not have long to live. I had to see him again.’
‘I see.’ Another pause. That flat, empty voice again. ‘You never told me you were coming.’
He might have been talking to a stranger. Between lovers there are such situations, so highly charged that words are absurd; but then lovers have their own language. We had none. Adam Forrest’s love was dead, and there was nothing to say.
I answered him in the same way. ‘I didn’t know you were still here. I only heard it by chance, the other night, from something Grandfather said. I’d understood you lived permanently in Italy now. In fact, when I came back to England, I’d no idea that your—’ I stopped, swallowed, and finished stupidly on a complete non sequitur: ‘I didn’t even know that Forrest Hall had gone.’
‘You never did have much regard for logic, did you? What you started to say was, that you didn’t know that Crystal had died.’
‘I—’
‘Wasn’t it?’
‘Yes. I – I hadn’t heard. I’m sorry.’
He acknowledged this with a slight movement of the head, and let it go. He was standing perhaps six feet away. The moonlight fell between us, slantingly, from behind my left shoulder. The angled shadows it cast made his expression difficult to read. They also, which was more important, made it impossible for him to see me clearly. But he was watching me steadily, without moving, and the close unwavering regard was discomforting.
He said slowly: ‘Are you trying to tell me that if you had known – that I was here at Forrest, I mean, and free – you would not have come back?’
Behind me the edge of the sundial, rough with dried lichen, bit into my hands. Was this, after all, easier than I had imagined, or was it worse? His voice and face gave nothing away. There was nothing to indicate that he cared, any more than I did. Why should he? Eight years was a long time. I said, almost with relief: ‘Yes. Just that.’
‘I see.’ For the first time the steady gaze dropped, momentarily, then came back to me with a jerk. ‘But you came tonight to meet me?’
‘I told you. I came, hoping you’d come along. I had to see you. After I found out last night that you were coming back from Italy, that you still lived here, I knew I – well, I couldn’t just wait around and meet you in public.’
‘That was nice of you.’ The flat voice held no irony.
I looked away. Beyond the massed shadows of the forsaken garden, the house stood up, raw edged and broken. ‘Your home,’ I said, not very evenly, ‘ . . . I’m sorry about that, too, Adam. That sounds a bit inadequate, but what can one say? It’s been a bad time all round, hasn’t it? You must have been very unhappy.’
For the first time his face changed. I saw the ghost of a smile. ‘You say that?’
I stirred. Easy? This was intolerable. Heaven knew I had dreaded the interview, and heaven knew I could hardly have expected to get through it more smoothly than this. I had expected questions, recriminations, anger even . . . anything but this calm, dead voice and steady stare that (since the moment when I had turned momentarily into the moonlight to glance up at the house) had narrowed sharply as if he were only just bringing me into focus.
I stood away from the sundial and began to rub my scored palms together.
‘I must go.’ I spoke hurriedly, nervously, looking down at my hands. ‘It’s late. I – I can’t think that we have anything more to say. I—’
‘Why did you go?’
The question came so suddenly that, although it was softly spoken, I looked up at him, startled. He was still watching me with that steady, unreadable stare. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘you can’t simply walk out like this. I would have thought we had a very great deal to say. And I’d like to go right back to the beginning. Why did you go like that?’
‘You know why I went!’ I could hear how my voice shook, edged with nerves, but I couldn’t control it. I tried to thrust him back again, off the dangerous ground. ‘Don’t let’s go back over it, please! I – I couldn’t stand it! That’s all over, you know that as well as I do. It was over eight years ago, and it – it’s best forgotten. Everything’s best forgotten . . .’ I swallowed. ‘I’ve forgotten it, I truly have. It’s as if it had happened to someone else. It – it doesn’t seem to mean anything to me any more. People change, you know. In all that time, people change. You’ve changed yourself. Can’t we . . . just leave it, Adam? I didn’t come to see you tonight because I hoped . . . because I wanted . . .’ I floundered desperately for words . . . ‘I knew you’d feel just the same as I do, now. I only came tonight so that we could – we could—’
‘Agree that it was forgotten? I know, my dear.’ His voice was very gentle. There was no reason why I should have to bite my lips to keep the tears back, or why I should have to turn sharply aside and jerk a spray from the yellow rose, and be twisting it round and round in my fingers. This was nothing to me, after all. ‘You don’t have to worry,’ he said. ‘I shan’t torment you. There’s someone else, isn’t there?’
‘No!’ I hadn’t meant to say it quite like that. I saw his brows lift a fraction.
‘Or has been?’
I shook my head.
‘In eight years?’
I looked down at the bruised rose in my fingers. ‘No. It’s not that. It’s only—’
‘That people change. Yes I understand. You’ve changed a good deal, Annabel.’
I lifted my head. ‘Have I?’
His mouth twisted. ‘So it would seem. Tell me; do you – or perhaps I should say did you – intend to stay at Whitescar, now that you’re back?’
At least here was a safe and easy path. I scuttled down it breathlessly, talking too fast. ‘I hadn’t really made any firm plans. I told you I only came to see Grandfather. Until I got here, up North, I mean, I had no idea he was so frail. You knew he’d had a stroke? Actually, I’d decided to come back and see him before I knew of that. I hadn’t been sure if he – if they’d want me back at Whitescar, but I wanted to see him if he’d let me. I didn’t know what the situation would be, but he’s been very kind.’ I hesitated. ‘They all have. I’m glad I came back. I’d like to stay till . . . as long as Grandfather’s here. But afterwards . . .’ I stopped.
‘Afterwards?’
‘I don’t think I’ll stay afterwards.’
A pause. ‘And the place? Whitescar?’
‘There’ll be Con.’
I was unwinding the split and twisted rose-stem with great care. A thorn had drawn blood on my thumb. I stared unseeingly at the tiny black gout of blood that blobbed and spilt glossily over the flesh. I didn’t know he had moved until his shadow slithered forward a pace, slantingly, and fell across the grass beside me.
‘You’d leave Whitescar to Connor Winslow?’
I smiled. ‘I may have to.’
‘Don’t beg the question. You know what I mean. If the place were yours, would you stay?’
‘No.’
‘Has that decision anything to do with me?’
I swallowed. ‘You know it has.’
Quite suddenly, his voice came alive, the way flesh does after frostbite. He said: ‘You came back because you thought I had gone. When you found I was still here, you decided to go again. You make things very clear, Annabel.’
I said, as steadily as I could: ‘I try to. I’m sorry.’
There was a pause. He spoke almost as if he were reasoning quietly with me about something that didn’t matter very greatly. ‘You know, I’ve regretted everything I said and did that night, far more bitterly than you could have done. I doubt if I’ll ever quite forgive myself. Not only for losing my head and saying all that I said t
o you that last time we met, but for ever having allowed things to . . . get to the stage they did. You were very young, after all; it was I who should have known better. The sort of life I led with Crystal was no excuse for – for losing my head over you, when I could do nothing but hurt you.’
‘Don’t, please, there’s no need—’
‘Don’t think I’m trying to excuse myself for the way I spoke and acted that last night. I’d just about come to the end – or so I thought; except that, of course, one never does.’ He took in his breath. ‘So I finally lost my head, and begged you – bullied you – to go away with me, away from Whitescar and Forrest, and to hell with everybody, including my wife. And you refused.’
‘What else could I do? Look, there’s no need to go back over this. I’ve told you it’s best forgotten. It should never even have started. We should have realised where it would take us.’
‘That’s what you said then, that night, isn’t it? True enough, of course, but as far as I was concerned, much too late. I remember that you even promised to keep out of my way.’ He gave a brief smile that was more like a grimace. ‘So then,’ he said, ‘I told you that, if you weren’t prepared to do as I asked, I never wanted to see you again. Oh no,’ at my involuntary movement, ‘I suppose I didn’t put it quite so crudely, but I dimly remember a good many wild and whirling words, to the effect that either you would have to leave the neighbourhood, or I would, and since I was tied to Forrest and to my wife . . .’ He drew in his breath. ‘But heaven help me, Annabel, I never dreamed you’d go.’
‘It was better. You must see it was better.’
‘Perhaps. Though I wonder, looking back. No doubt, in the end, I’d have behaved like a reasonable mortal, and we could have found some . . . comfort. Fundamentally, I suppose, we’re both decent human beings, and you, at least, kept your moral sense intact. Then, six years later . . .’ He paused, and seemed to straighten his shoulders. ‘Well, there it is. You were young, and I behaved badly, and frightened and hurt you, and you went. But you’re older now, Annabel. Surely you must understand a little more than you did then, about the kind of life I led with Crystal, and the reasons why I was driven to act the way I did?’
