Dear Deceiver

by Doris E. Smith

  She thought agonizedly—I’m ruining his life.

  ‘Suzanne, you fraud,’ Rory’s voice was still light and joyful. ‘You love me.’

  Haidee closed her eyes against the checked tweed. You have put your shoulder to a wheel, Mother Mary had said, don’t depart from it. But what to do when the only hope for Rory lay in her leaving Glenglass? At that moment agony made her savage. She cared not at all for Antonia or for Jennie. It was Rory alone who mattered and for his sake she must go.

  It was the clean dramatic solution and if it meant leaving Jennie in the lurch she couldn’t help it and could she really be expected to care? But again with icy clarity she answered herself. She should care and she could help it, and there was another way.

  ‘What are you doing down there, girl?’ Rory asked teasingly. ‘Don’t you want to see who won?’

  The stags, she realized, had stopped roaring. The hummel had taken himself off and the royal was pacing proudly round his hinds. As she looked he threw up his great head, snorted and led them away.

  ‘One bundle not gone on!’ Still the voice was teasing. ‘Correct?’

  It made what she had to say all the harder, but say it she must.

  ‘Thank you for bringing me up. I’ve enjoyed it awfully.’ How silly, she thought when she’d said it. But still she went on. ‘And about what happened just now, I’m sorry. Chemistry, actually. Moonlight—that sort of thing. I couldn’t go back, Rory, not to you. Besides, it wasn’t quite true what I said on the way up. I have been thinking about Paul. Sorry, but there it is.’ As the light died from his face, she added exasperatedly: ‘Oh, honestly, I wish you wouldn’t bother me. You know I only came back to see Mother.’

  Unlike the hart royal Rory put up not the slightest opposition. ‘If I didn’t I do now,’ he said shortly. ‘And since I asked you for honesty I suppose I can’t complain when I get it. We might as well go down. We’ve had our money’s worth.’

  The words made a cold echo to the homeward trek. Only one other observation was added to them. ‘I don’t think you’ll be bothered much longer—by me or anyone else in Glenglass. The hospital were on to me this evening. There’s been a change in your mother’s condition.’

  ‘And you didn’t tell me!’ She stared at him, aghast.

  ‘I’m telling you now. There was no point earlier. It’s not a matter of hours.’ For the first time a touch of humanity laced the cold unemotional tones. ‘Let me know if you want transport.’

  CHAPTER TEN

  On no count did it seem worth going to bed. It was almost morning and she knew anguish would keep her from sleep. But it had been a long tramp and in the end her tired body took over. She woke to a bright room and Rory’s grave face. He was standing by the bed fully dressed.

  ‘Wake up, Sue. The hospital have been on.’

  ‘They want us?’ Wide awake now, she sat up in bed.

  ‘As soon as possible,’ Rory told her quietly. Antonia had opened her eyes. This after weeks of false security she had not expected. The shock hit her like a turning blade. Then there was no room for self. ‘Have you told Jennie?’

  She was surprised to see a headshake. ‘No. I thought...’

  ‘We’d better.’ She changed her mind. I will.’

  Her role, after all. It didn’t deserve the disarming flash of gratitude it won. Too soft a heart, she thought. He could do most things without turning a hair, but this was too much for him.

  ‘It’s good and it’s bad,’ he said as she threw back the bedclothes. ‘I mean for Jennie. I’m afraid It’s all been happening, Sue. While you were asleep.’

  ‘What?’ Curiously the skin of Suzanne Desmond seemed at long last to be hers. There was no strangeness about Rory standing there as though he were her husband with something in a mess that needed her to put it right. ‘My robe, please, would you?’ she murmured, and he threw it across.

  ‘The balloon went up.’ He made a rueful mouth. ‘It had to one of these days. I think she’s packing.’

  ‘Packing? Packing?’ Wasn’t that just typical? Love was the same the world over. Explosive. Snappy. Sensitive. And Rory was very snappy at breakfast time. And Jennie very sensitive twenty-four hours of the day. Good grief, how would they last out the next two or three years?

  ‘You’d want to watch yourself, Rory Hart,’ she said briskly, tying the belt of her robe. ‘You won’t always have me around.’

  He seemed to be hovering open-mouthed and slightly glazed as she whisked down the corridor. And indeed, she had to admit it, she did not feel nearly as assured as she sounded. Something about Jennie, even still, made her feel inferior. She would turn the handle now and see her in the fringed maxi waistcoat and drab trousers she wore so easily, her striking eyes accented. But Jennie was in trouble and so, in a way, was Rory, and that was all she must think of.

  ‘Jennie?’

  The chocolatey voice that always seemed to put a distance between them said: ‘Yes?’ and Haidee swung the door open. And stood—staring, blinking and incredulous.

  What looked in age like Toby’s twin was standing before her, hair-slides holding back the former seductive tresses. A child’s plump shiny face rose from a royal blue fly-fronted jacket. Sturdy knees showed under the matching mini-skirt. The cotton socks were white and pulled up very straight. And, true for Rory, on the bed was a half packed suitcase.

  ‘I’m going back to school,’ Jennie announced defiantly. ‘I hate him! I’m never going to speak to him again.’

  Haidee had been prepared to act as Cupid’s go-between, but all she could think of was that she’d been duped—or doped. This was not Jennie disguised in school uniform. It was Jennie looking exactly what she was—a child approaching O-levels. Half woman, half child, Mother Mary had said. And almost before their eyes Suzanne’s rival had stepped over from one half to the other.

  She would step back again, of course, but in her own time.

  ‘You mustn’t say things like that, Jen. You know you don’t mean them,’ Haidee reproved in the elder sister tones that up till now she had never been able to muster. ‘And now you must be brave. There’s been a call from the hospital about Mother. They want us there at once.’

  ‘Darling, it’s better,’ she added as Jennie’s face, pink and silent, looked like bursting, ‘It’s much much better. And you know you’ve got me, if you want me.’

  Jennie did not speak. It was on top of her at last and first and foremost she was frightened. But her hand was there and when Haidee reached for it the fingers linked tightly with her own.

  ‘Well, Johnny, so it’s mission accomplished.’ Rory, who never put table napkins back in rings, on this occasion did not put his table napkin back in its ring.

  Somewhat pointedly, Haidee repaired the omission. ‘Obviously not!’

  By this time tomorrow her worries would be over. No napkins to retrieve, no Toby to drive out to school, no Punch to run off with slippers and, above all, no Rory to cross swords with. You lucky girl, she told herself, and could have cried.

  ‘I’m excluded,’ he said blandly. ‘We still have some unfinished business. When did you say Freeman was collecting you?’

  ‘About three, I think.’

  ‘That’s all right. I’ll be back long before then.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘See what she’s doing, Johnny. I don’t want to cut it too fine.’

  The use of ‘Johnny’ twice inside five minutes was surprising. It had scared her so that first day when he had likened her to the old street song ‘Johnny, I hardly knew ye?’ but it was some time now since anyone but Toby had aired it. She risked a glance at Rory and it was intercepted by a poker face.

  ‘Jennie. See if she’s ready, will you? Thanks.’

  As always he had flustered her. Something to do with one-upmanship. That brown lined face of his could look infuriatingly superior. Her own face with no lines to speak of and silly crescent-shaped eyebrows never had had a chance against it.

  She went hurriedly across the hall.

&
nbsp; Four days had elapsed since the hospital summons. Antonia had died so peacefully that Haidee could not have told exactly when it had happened. One moment the calm blue eyes had been fixed on her face, the next the nurse had laid down very gently the wrist she had been holding and was shaking her head.

  An anti-climax, perhaps, after the weeks of vigil? Fulfilment would have been for her to accept Suzanne’s marriage and to die knowing that her own feeling for Glenglass lived on in her grandson. But life was no sentimental package. The most that watchers by the bed could take away with them had been a face of utter tranquillity and a gaze riveted to the spot where Haidee and Jennie sat.

  You have put your shoulder to a wheel, Mother Mary had said, perhaps inadvisedly, perhaps that great good may come. Sitting with Jennie in the back of the car as Rory drove home, Haidee could only hope that she had given comfort.

  Certainly during the next few days it was to her Jennie had turned. Whatever differences had arisen between her and Rory it was plain that, though he appeared to have forgotten them, she had not. She was polite to him, excessively so. But she was remote. And, small point perhaps, never these days out of her school uniform. That it denoted quite a famous school could have had significance.

  Was it possible, Haidee asked herself incredulously, that the Desmond blood was showing itself? Could fate be so cruel as to repeat Rory’s tragedy?

  Today he was driving Jennie to the airport on the first stage of her journey back to school and had suggested that Haidee accompany them. She had declined. It would be a golden opportunity for them to get back on the old footing. Besides, as she reminded him, she too was leaving Glenglass that day.

  ‘No rush, surely,’ he had said.

  ‘Paul’s calling for me.’

  ‘But you’ll be in Dollymount?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t think so.’ She wished lies did not make her feel so guilty. ‘Paul said something about going away for a bit.’

  ‘I see.’ His narrowed eyes recalled the night of the fire and how violently he had reacted to her quite innocent meeting with Paul. A repetition? She prayed not, and yet it was extraordinarily deflating to hear merely a tetchy: ‘I’ll have to know where to get in touch with you.’

  ‘You mean ...’ she’d quavered, ‘about the divorce?’

  ‘That and other things. The will, principally. You do realize you’ll be a beneficiary?’

  She could not pretend this appalling possibility had escaped her.

  ‘I’ve thought about that. But naturally I couldn’t touch a penny.’

  ‘Naturally?’ He peered at her.

  ‘Oh, you know,’ she said hastily. ‘Leaving home, not writing, that sort of thing. There won’t be much, I daresay, but Jennie must have it all. You can arrange that, surely?’

  ‘Me?’ he had echoed. ‘Talk sense, girl. You fight that one out with the solicitor. But I’ll go with you if you like. Kill two birds with one stone.’

  They were to talk about it again when he returned from the airport.

  ‘Ready, Jen?’ she asked gently at the door of the shabby room, and Jennie in the distinctive cloak and bonnet of her—school ran over touchingly and hugged her.

  ‘I’ll miss you terribly,’ she said.

  You had to tread warily. Haidee did so, pointing out how important school had now become. Jennie agreed very seriously. Not alone O-levels. There was the Christmas play. Fry (the name of her house) were in charge of the wardrobe and there was masses to do. Marianne (the friend with whom she shared a room) had said so in her last letter.

  ‘Will I see you again?’ she asked suddenly.

  Between sisters it was an odd question, even taking account of the fact that Jennie’s uncle, Jack Whittaker’s brother, had telephoned from Ontario insisting that she spend the Christmas holidays with him and his family. Best thing for her, Rory had said heartily, new roots, a new country, cousins of her own age. It showed a fine unselfishness. Haidee’s own position was more delicate. Eventually, of course, Jennie must know the truth, but was this the right time?

  ‘You will, if ever you need me.’

  ‘Of course I’ll need you,’ Jennie said quite naturally. ‘You’re my sister, aren’t you?’

  Fate must really be laughing, Haidee thought. When deception had been all-important Jennie had so often made her walk the wire. The day they’d visited the convent, for instance, only Mother Mary’s finesse had saved her from being denounced.

  ‘I’m only a sort of sister,’ she amended carefully. ‘And I certainly can’t trade on it. If anyone carried the can it was your father—and you.’

  ‘That doesn’t matter.’ The bonnet made Jennie look a bit like a nursing sister. Her grave eyes enhanced it. ‘It doesn’t matter what sort of sisters we are. Even if we weren’t sisters at all it wouldn’t matter. We’re like each other.’

  It could mean nothing or everything. Haidee thought it meant the latter. She thought that what she had not been brave enough to say had been said for her. And wasn’t there something about the truth making you free?

  She blinked unashamedly and felt Jennie’s arms go round her yet again.

  ‘Write,’ the younger girl commanded.

  ‘I will,’ Haidee promised.

  Down on the loading bay, Rory tapped the horn, and a few minutes later the long topaz brown car slid gently away, Jennie’s hand fluttering from the window.

  Haidee glanced at her watch and hurried back indoors. The bus to Dublin from a town in Wexford passed through Glenglass morning and evening. It was due at ten-thirty. Her case had been packed since the night before.

  She scribbled a note: ‘Paul came early. Sorry. Will write. Suzanne.’ She would have liked to add her thanks, but it was likely Suzanne would have taken all kindnesses as her due. This done, she moved the green suede jacket to the centre of the now empty wardrobe, put on her own camel reefer and picked up her case and Brand’s basket.

  The first day she had come into this old room whose only real comfort had been the new well-sprung bed that did not belong to it, the sense of Suzanne’s presence had been startling. Now it came again as she took her last look across the clearing to the polished grey of the beech trunks and the eggshell blue sky.

  No one had ever mentioned what time of year it had been when Suzanne had fled from her home. Had the forest been green or bare and brown? How had she gone? How had she felt?

  Today no men were working on the near side of the woods, so the view was just as Suzanne might have seen it, orange leaves piling on the ride, deserted nests showing in the web of branches. It was a feeling too deep for words that as she stood there, saying goodbye to Glenglass, she was not alone. Somehow it came between her and the baldness of her note so that what she had wanted to say no longer seemed out of place.

  ‘Say goodbye to Toby for me and give him my love,’ she added. ‘And thank you, Rory, thank you again.’

  Brand was in an outhouse. He had been indignant when she had swooped on him waddling across to the wood. That had been nearly an hour ago so by this time he would be seething. She hurried across what had once been the stable yard of Glenglass House and stopped dead. The outhouse door was open.

  Looking inside became a mere matter of form. She did so with annoyance. Brand was not there. Whose fault? Had she not latched the door properly? Had he managed to open it? He was a long cat and a great one for fiddling. She wouldn’t put it past him. Speculation, however, was futile. He had to be found and quickly. It was nearly ten.

  ‘Brand!’ she called briskly. ‘Here, Brand! Pish-wish! Dinner!’ He had had no breakfast, so he would be hungry.

  Twenty minutes later and now hoarse with her efforts, she was still calling. It added up to what she already knew. With his tummy empty he would come—if he were in earshot. His non-appearance could only mean that he wasn’t.

  There was one other bus through the village around midday, unfortunately a bus outward from Dublin going south. But at least it would take her somewhere. Indeed if she we
re to spend the night in Wexford or Waterford and write her explanation to Rory from there it could serve as a red herring. It only remained for Brand to appear, and she wished he would.

  She was very conscious that she was on edge, perhaps fussing unduly, but it was unusual not to see him around. He loved his new-found haunts, but he also loved showing himself. He would be an image on the parapet or a clucking weaver through legs in the kitchen. He was seldom off-stage for more than an hour and now—a cold hand touched the pit of her stomach—almost two had elapsed. He would be starving, he would be sure to come—he would want to come—unless ... unless something had happened to him.

  Deliberately she made herself face it. During those first few days she had been so anxious about traps, but since then, immersed in other matters, she’d taken his safety for granted. And how often that was the way it went. The one thing you’d been casual about turned into an eleventh-hour accident.

  ‘Brand!’ she called beseechingly, and struck out into the wood.

  The squirrels were active and cheeky. A bushy tail raced down the path ahead. An arc of red fur, rusting with the onset of winter, leaped backwards and a branch swung like a trapeze.

  She went on letting herself be swallowed by the dark mouth of undergrowth. With the men on the far plantation and Rory’s office shut, it was a little like Sunday, and if you thought too much about them the branches became menacing outstretched arms.

  When suddenly a head popped over one and a voice said ‘Hello, Johnny!’ she all but jumped out of her skin. The head was brown and tousled, the ground-floor teeth slightly crooked, the grin a little sheepish. As well it might be.

  ‘You should be at school,’ Haidee said uncompromisingly.

  ‘I didn’t feel like it,’ Toby returned as directly.

  Burdened as she was, this could not be ignored. ‘Do you do this often?’

  Rory had troubles enough without Toby adding to them.