The Judas Tree

by A. J. Cronin

  At this, he stubbed out his cigarette, pushed hard on the starter button, then swung round and drove back through Markinch to the manse. Within five minutes he was there. As he parked the car and entered the drive he made out a rough scaffolding on the upper part of the tower and heard Fotheringay’s voice raised commandingly within, all of which seemed to indicate that the bell was in process of being removed. But he had no wish to meet the minister, to be embarrassed by further expressions of gratitude; and with relief, as he passed through the overgrown laurel shrubbery, he saw Mrs Fotheringay in the vegetable garden at the side of the house. He went straight towards her. She wore a man’s battered felt hat, an old stained mackintosh and heavy tackety boots, and in her hand she held a pair of garden shears.

  ‘You have really caught me in my braws,’ she exclaimed, with a wry though welcoming smile, as he approached. ‘I’ve been slaughtering slugs. After the rain they fairly go for my cauliflowers. But I seem to have done for most of them. Come away ben the house.’

  ‘If you don’t mind,’ he hesitated, ‘might I speak to you here?’

  She studied his expression frankly, then without a word led the way to a green-painted trellis summer-house that stood at the foot of the garden. Seating herself on the wooden bench, she: indicated a place beside her, then, after a further scrutiny, she said:

  ‘So Kathy has finally told you?’

  Her penetration surprised him, but it was helpful, giving him a lead.

  ‘I heard only an hour ago.’

  ‘And ye don’t approve?’

  ‘Who would?’ he said in a suppressed voice. ‘ The very idea, a young girl burying herself for life in that wilderness. I’m … I’m inexpressibly distressed.’

  ‘Ay, I thought you might be upset.’ She spoke slowly, wrinkling up her broad weatherbeaten brow. ‘And ye’re not the only one. My guid man is against it, though as the minister it’s hard for him to speak out. But I’m just the minister’s wife and I say that it’s an awfu’ pity.’

  ‘It would be bad enough at any time. But now especially, when trouble seems to be stirring in Africa …’

  She nodded soberly, restrainingly, but he was not to be held back.

  ‘She’s not fit for it. After her work today she was quite done up. Why is she going? What’s the reason of it all? Is it this uncle of hers that’s responsible?’

  ‘Ay, in a way, I suppose she’s going for Willie’s sake, But for her own too.’

  ‘You mean from religious motives?’

  ‘Well, maybe … though not entirely.’

  ‘But she is religious?’

  ‘She’s good, in the best sense of the word.’ She spoke with feeling, lapsing more and more into the doric. ‘She helps us in the church, teaches the bairns, but – she’s not the kind that aye has a Bible under her oxter and the whites of her eyes turned up. No, to understand her reasons for going, ye must understand Kathy. I don’t have to tell ye that she’s unusual in this shameless day and age, different as chaff from good Lothian corn from the horse-tailed, empty-headed sexy little besoms ye see gaddin’ around, wi’ their jazz and their rock and roll, out for nothing but a good time, or a bad one I might say. She’s a serious, sensitive lass, quiet mind ye, but high strung, with a mind and ideals of her own. Her upbringing – for her mother was unco’ strict – has had a deal to do with it. And living away out here in the country has kept her very much to herself. Then, since Willie went out to Angola, where apparently there’s baith sickness and starvation, she seems, as was only nat’ral, to have become more and more taken up with this idea of helping him. Help where it’s maist needed – service, that’s her word for’t. It’s become the one thing, ay, the mainspring of her life.’

  He was silent, biting his lip in protest.

  ‘But she can be of service without burying herself.’

  ‘Hav’na I told her that, again and again.’

  ‘Why doesn’t Willie tell her? He must realise that the whole thing is utterly impractical.’

  ‘Willie is not practical.’ She seemed about to say more but merely added: ‘He doesna’ really live in this world.’

  ‘Well, I do,’ he exclaimed, with nervous feeling. ‘I’m interested in Kathy. You must have seen that. I want to do things – for her own good. Give her all that she needs and deserves.’

  She made no reply but continued to look at him with questioning eyes, in which also there was such open sympathy that he was seized by the sudden emotional necessity to unburden himself, to justify his motives and win her completely to his side by a full admission of the past. The impulse was irrestible. Yielding, he took an agitated breath; then rapidly, at times almost inarticulately, and sparing himself considerably in the narration, he told her all that had brought him to Markinch.

  ‘So, you see, I’ve every reason, every right, to make up for the past. Why, if I hadn’t taken that unlucky voyage, Kathy,’ his voice almost broke, ‘might well have been my own daughter.’

  In the pause that followed he kept his eyes lowered. When he raised them her smile was kinder than before.

  ‘I guessed as much from the start. Kathy’s mother was a reserved woman, but once she was showing me an old album, and there, on a page, was a spray of pressed flowers. In my usual style I made a bit joke about them. She looked away and sighed, and said just enough to let me know there was someone she had cared for dearly before her marriage.’

  He flinched slightly at this too vivid evocation of his desertion, but recovered himself quickly.

  ‘Then you’ll help me! I’ve asked her to come to Switzerland to meet Willie in my home. If I can get them both there, Kathy especially, in a fresh environment, I believe I can make them see reason. And she does need a holiday, poor child. Will you persuade her to come? She’s sure to ask your advice.’

  She did not immediately answer, but continued to consider him with a reflective, womanly air. Then, as though giving expression to her thoughts:

  ‘It’s a strange thing. I’ve hoped, ay, and prayed, that something would turn up to save Kathy from this step in the dark. It’s not just the danger, which is bad enough, for Willie, the crazy loon, has near been killed half a dozen times, it’s the fact that she’s so intense, she’ll wear herself out in a twelvemonth in that ungodly climate. And she’s such a dear sweet lass, made for different things. Well, it seemed hopeless, and then at the very last, when I’ve given up and she’s on the point of going, you come along like a second father, since ye’ve put it that way, and it’s plain to me why ye’ve been sent.’ She paused, reached over and put her large roughened hand on his. ‘We all do heedless things when we’re young. It’s no matter that ye made a mistake then. I believe you’re an upstanding, generous-hearted man. There’s not many I would trust with Kathy, but I trust you. If only you can take her out of this rut, get her to travel a bit, mix with people, and, best of all, find her a braw steady young husband who’ll give her a good home and children to look after, someone who’ll look after her, then you’ll have more than made up for things.’ She pressed his hand firmly. ‘ I believe in the intervention of Providence. Although you may not know it, I’ve a sound notion you’re the answer to what I’ve been seeking, and I’ll help you all I can.’

  His eyes were still moist as he left the manse. He felt restored, purified by his confession and, aware of the worth of that good woman’s promise, sufficiently reassured to wait patiently for word from Kathy. She had warned him that she would be fully occupied at the Dalhaven hospital until the end of the week. He must not, he told himself, expect an answer till then. Yet when the first day merged into the second, and the second into the third, a restless uncertainty began to torment him, his concern returned and his mood grew less hopeful. There was nothing else to engage his attention or to relieve the monotony of waiting. The weather had turned cold and windy, the sea raged, spume and blown sand whirled across the dunes and links. Even if he had been in the mood, golf was out of the question. Finlay, the professional, had shut u
p his shop and gone back to club-making in Dalhaven. The hotel, too, had suddenly contracted, more rooms were closed with windows shuttered, the last of the autumn guests had taken their departure, and only two permanent residents, both elderly ladies, remained with Moray to share the rigours of the north-eastern gales. Since he could no longer offer the excuse of a vacation, people both here and abroad were beginning to wonder at his prolonged stay. Miss Carmichael had twice asked him if he could give her some idea of his plans, while in Schwansee his admirable servants were becoming uneasy about him. Yet all this was as nothing compared with his increasing anxiety, the realisation that time was going on, shrinking the limited period at his disposal.

  On Saturday, in an effort to distract his mind, he decided to spend some hours away from the hotel and to make inquiry in Edinburgh regarding the possibility of plane reservations. He passed the forenoon in the city; then, as the sky had brightened, rather than return early he set off idly in the car to explore the northern countryside. He lost his way, not unpleasantly, a couple of times in rural surroundings, stopped to ask directions and drink a glass of milk at a small farm-steading, started off again to get his bearings, and in the end must have wandered further than he knew, for suddenly, as he began to think of turning back, he found himself in a strangely familiar landscape. Looking about him with a tightening of his nerves, he marked one feature after another. There could be no mistake. Perhaps it was not chance but some strange subconscious prompting that had brought him here. He was in the Fruin valley, on the deserted side road that led up from the loch, through that same stretch of lovely heath-land where, on the day they came back from the hospital at Glenburn, all those years ago, Mary had given herself to him.

  A strange weakness took hold of him, made him want to turn back, but he resisted it. With a set expression he drove on for a few miles, then, pressing hard on the foot brake, skidded to a stop. Yes, it was the very spot. Undecided, he sat for some moments, a rigid figure, then he got out of the car and walked across the grassy verge to the moor which, as he advanced, presently fell away into that sheltered, unforgettable dingle where the stream ran clear and strong over its pebbled bed. My God, he thought, it’s exactly the same, everything so unchanged it might all have happened yesterday.

  Standing there, with a hollow stomach and a fast-beating heart, the past re-created itself before him. The arrival on the bike, the picnic in the warm sunshine, the laughter and tender glances, the hum of the honey bees, and then under the blue sky, while the curlews circled and called unheeded, the joy and fear of those ecstatic moments when, irresistibly drawn, they clung together. He saw it all, felt it all, lingered over it, in a bath of sentimental recollection, until with a start of panic, an actual physical shock, he pressed his hand across his eyes.

  The girl in his arms was not his long-lost love. Every sensation, every burning detail of that passionate scene, he had relived not with the mother but with the daughter. It was Kathy he had held so closely in his arms, whose soft warm lips had pressed on his, who had yielded in sweet abandon. He cried out to the deserted heath. Utterly unnerved, struck by a sudden shame, he broke away, stumbled uncertainly up the slope and through the tufted heather, back to the car. Like a man possessed he drove away. Why had he not realised it before? He was in love – not with the old, but with the new. His thought of Kathy as his daughter, a ward whom he might protect, had been no more than self-deception, a protective camouflage, of his subconscious desire. From the first moment of their meeting, his original love, long cherished as the one love of his life, had been re-created, reinforced and transposed to her. Not only was the image there, fresh, young, even more beautiful, but a living, flesh-and-blood reality as well. Staring fixedly ahead, steering automatically, he tried to stem this tide of sensation. The situation was a delicate one, quite proper of course, nothing dishonourable about it, yet somehow arousing scruples, calling for second thoughts or at least restraint, otherwise the evil-minded might discover a bad odour where none existed. But how could they? His motives were of the highest, his feelings, natural, honest, and normal, could never be construed as incestuous, he had no cause for compunction, no reason to recoil. Who could blame him? How could it have been otherwise? The thought gave him release, filled him with a sudden pulsing joy, and the future, which hitherto had never exactly taken shape, now fell into place precisely, took on colours that were enchantingly sensuous and vivid. And, God, how young he felt, rejuvenated in fact, by this exciting double passion so enticingly made one.

  Now, more than ever, must there be no hesitation, no more delay. Discretion always, of course – no ill-advised or premature revelation of his feelings. But he would telephone her at Dalhaven immediately he got back. Down went the accelerator, the car flew, as on wings. Arrived at the hotel he leaped out, made directly for the telephone booth in the hall, was about to enter when the porter signalled to him from the desk.

  ‘There’s a message for you, sir. Mrs Fotheringay called when you were out. She brought you this note with her best regards.’

  The man handed him a plain sealed envelope with his name written on it. He dared not open it here. Hurrying upstairs to his room he tore it open and with unsteady fingers drew out the cheap sheet of notepaper within. A glance told him it was from Kathy.

  Dear David,

  We have been so busy at the hospital I have scarcely had any time to myself, but yesterday afternoon I was off duty and had a long talk with Mrs Fotheringay. Afterwards I spoke to Matron who has agreed to release me and let me have my remaining two weeks’ holiday beginning Monday next. So I shall be free then to accept your kind offer to take me to Switzerland, and I have written to Uncle Willie telling him of your invitation to join us there.

  Sincerely yours, Kathy.

  I am very happy to be going with you.

  No need to telephone, of her own free will she would come with him. He sat down in a convenient soft armchair, suffused by a glow of triumph. And on the way to Schwansee, mindful of his original intention, why shouldn’t they stop off at his favourite city, at Vienna, just for a few days, to give her a taste of Continental life? He re-read the letter: so she had written to Willie. A cable would be quicker, better too. Tomorrow he would send one, a long, frank, personal message that would explain things to Willie and so ease their eventual meeting. Once again he read the postscript: I am very happy to be going with you. There was only one thing possible for a man of such taste and feeling, a man of his particular refinement, untouched by the crudity and vulgarities of this barbarous age. He raised the shabby little scrap of paper and pressed it to his lips.

  Chapter Nine

  From an altitude of twenty thousand feet the Caravelle began gradually to edge down from the starry night sky into the darker plateau of cloud below. Moray glanced at his watch: half past nine. He turned to his companion.

  ‘Not long now. You must be tired.’

  Their journey had been protracted, with delays at London and Paris, but he, at least, would not have missed a minute of it. To sit beside her, so closely, in the intimacy of the de luxe class cabin, observing with amused yet tender solicitude her reactions to her first flight, anticipating what he judged to be her wishes, though she expressed none – this, and her companionship, had afforded him a rare and precious pleasure. Since it was all so strange to her, she had not said much, and because of these silences which seemed to indicate some slight degree of tension, he now struck a note of encouragement.

  ‘I do hope you’re going to enjoy yourself, dear Kathy. Forget about slogging through the mud at Markinch and have a real holiday. Let yourself go a bit.’ He laughed. ‘Let’s both relax and be – well – human.’

  ‘Oh, I’m only too human,’ she smiled responsively. ‘You’ll maybe think I’m a regular nuisance before long.’

  The voice of the stewardess on the inter-communication system broke in upon them.

  ‘We are now arriving at Vienna Airport. Please fasten your safety belts and extinguish all cigar
ettes.’

  She was still inexpert, and helpfully he guided her fingers to make the adjustment of her belt. As he touched her small trim waist and felt the warmth of her body, a sudden joy took possession of him.

  The lights of the airport, now visible below, tilted sharply as the plane banked, then with a final turn and a perfect approach they were on the runway, manoeuvring towards the wooden customs shed.

  ‘It’s a poor little airport,’ he told her as they descended, ‘ not built up since the war. But we’ll soon get you through.’

  With practised efficiency, he was as good as his word. In less than seven minutes they came out to the main driveway and there, as his cable had commanded, was the Rolls, gleaming under the neon lights, with Arturo, in his best uniform, all bows and smiles, in attendance. Of this he had said nothing, meaning to surprise her, and he succeeded. When greetings had been exchanged with Arturo and they purred off into the night, enclosed by a fur rug and the soft grey upholstery, she murmured, in a small voice, ‘ What a lovely car.’

  ‘I’ve never appreciated it more than now.’ He patted her hand reassuringly under the rug. ‘It’ll help in showing you around.’

  The road to Vienna from the Flughaven was, he knew, a bad introduction to gaiety, being flanked by a long succession of cemeteries and, as though this were not enough, by mournful establishments for the manufacture and display of tombstones. But now the kindly darkness masked these grim intimations of mortality. Within half an hour the cheerful illuminated city welcomed them. They drew up at the Prinz Ambassador. It was not a large hotel but it was luxurious and he preferred it to the others as the most Viennese in character, with a delightful old-world situation overlooking the Donner fountain and the Kapuziner Kirche. Here, too, he was known and appreciated, quickly shown to a double suite on the upper floor, the sitting-room a period piece in brocade and red velvet with a dazzling central chandelier, crystal wall lights and a baroque gesso table where already the direction had set out a great vase of bronze chrysanthemums and a basket of choice fruits.