by Ellis Peters
‘Not bad,’ he said to Jane, in the common-room during the next free period they shared, ‘but I don’t know. All right in the summer, but a bit back-of-beyond for a bad winter, I should say. You could get snowed-up there for weeks.’
‘They ought to charge you extra for that as an amenity,’ said Jane, bitterly contemplating some gem in the homework of Four B, who were not her brightest form. ‘Imagine having a cast-iron alibi for contracting out of this madhouse for weeks at a time! But don’t kid yourself, my boy. They kept that road open even in 1947. The Wastfield tractors see to that. Snow or no snow, nobody gets away with anything around here.’
She didn’t ask him what he thought of doing, or he might, even then, have gone off in the opposite direction, sure that everybody has an angle, and she couldn’t be totally disinterested. She lived in Comerford herself, he knew that, and hadn’t failed to allow for one obvious possibility. But she showed no personal interest in him; and even if she was biding her time she wouldn’t find him easy to keep tabs on, with her family’s cottage a quarter of a mile this side the village, and Fairford well out on the opposite side. He’d had plenty of practice in evading girls he didn’t want to see, as well as in cornering those he did. No, he needn’t worry about Jane.
So he went back to Fairford on the Saturday afternoon. The westering sun smiled on him all the way along that journey back into pre-history, confirming his will to stay. By the time he drove back the dusk had closed on the Hallowmount, and black clouds covered the hills of Wales; a chill wind drove up the valley, crying in the new plantation. And he might have changed his mind, even then, if he hadn’t been already lost from the moment when he rattled the knocker at Fairford, and listened to the rapid, light footsteps within as someone came to open the door to him.
He was lost, then and for ever; because it was Annet who opened the door.
There is a kind of beauty that produces wolf-whistles, and another kind of beauty that creates silence all about it, taking the voices out of men’s mouths and the breath out of their throats. Nobody but Annet had ever struck Tom Kenyon dumb. He lived in the same house with her, he’d been rubbing shoulders with her now almost daily for half a term, and still he went softly for awe of her, and the words that would have come to him so glibly with a girl who meant nothing to him ebbed away clean out of mind when he was face to face with this girl. And yet why? She was flesh and blood like anyone else. Wasn’t she?
(But why, why should she be climbing the Hallowmount in the rain and the murk in a dank October twilight? Distant and strange and elusive as she was, what could draw her up there at such an hour of such a day?)
She was not much above middle height for her eighteen years, but so slender that she looked tall, and taller still because of the lofty way she carried her small head, tilted a little back to let the great, soft masses of her hair fall back from her face. When she wanted to hide she sat with head bent, and the twin black curtains, blue-black, burnished, smooth and heavy, drew protective shadows over her face. She wore it cut in a long bob, not quite to her shoulders, uncurled, uncoloured, unfashionable, parted over her left temple, the ends curving under to touch her neck. He never saw her play with it; the most she ever did was lift a hand to thrust it back out of her way; and yet every gleaming hair clung to the sheaf as threads of silk cling, alive and vital, and even after streaming in the wind the heavy coils flowed back massively like water into their constant order and repose.
Between the wings of this resplendent helmet her face was oval, delicate and still, with fine bones that impressed their pure, taut shapes through the creamy flesh. Passionate, eloquent bones, if the envelope that enclosed them had not imposed its own ivory silence upon them. There was little red in her face, and yet she was not pale; when he saw her first she had the gloss of the summer still upon her, and was tinted like honey. Her mouth was grave and full, often sullen, often sad, quick to smile, but never at any joke he could share, or any pleasure he could afford her. And her eyes were the deep, brilliant, burning blue the sun had just found in her coat on the crest of the Hallowmount, the blue of the darkest gentians, between blue-black lashes as dark as her hair.
She had showed him the room, and he had taken the room, hardly aware of its pleasant furnishings, seeing only the movement of her hand as she opened the door, and the long, courteous, unsmiling blue stare that had never wavered as she waited for him to speak. Her own voice was deep and quiet, and only now did he realise how few words he had ever heard it speak, to him or to anyone. She moved like a true eighteen-year-old, with a rapid, coltish grace. What she did about the house was done well and ungrudgingly, but with a certain impatience and a certain resignation, as though she were making ritual gestures which she knew to be indispensable, but in the efficacy of which she did not believe.
And her attendance on him was of the same kind; it hurt and bewildered him to know it, but he could not choose but know.
For him life in Fairford had only gradually taken shape as a frame for Annet, and all the kaleidoscope of other faces that peopled his new world was only a galaxy in attendance upon her. Arthur Beck, handsome in a feeble, pedantic way, wisps of thin hair carefully arranged over his high crown, glasses askew on his precipitous nose, bore about with him always an air of vague and puzzled disappointment, and a precarious and occasionally pompous dignity. Ageing people shouldn’t have children, when they were doomed to be always so hopelessly far from them. Even the mother must have been nearly forty at the time. Who can jump clean over forty years?
Mrs Beck, solider and more decisive than her husband, was one of the plainest women Tom had ever seen, and yet revealed a startling echo of Annet’s beauty sometimes in a look or a movement. Dark hair without lustre, waved crisply and immovably, dark blue eyes faded into a dull greyish colour, like blue denim after a lifetime of washing, an anxious face, kind but troubled, a flat, practical voice.
Dull, impenetrable people, at least to a newcomer with more self-assurance than patience. And that incredible bud of their age flowered with face turned away from them, as though her sun had always risen elsewhere.
The children of ageing marriages, so he had heard, are often difficult and strange, like deprived children; in a sense they are deprived, a lost generation cuts them off from their roots, they have grandparents for parents. These were not even young grandparents at heart, but dim, discouraged and old. Sometimes gleams of wistful scholarship showed in Beck, and brought a momentary eagerness back to his face. Mrs Beck kept up with village society, and dressed like a county gentlewoman, but for God’s sake, what good was that when county gentlewomen were themselves a generation out of date, living anachronisms, museum pieces even here, where the past, the genuine past, was as real and valid as tomorrow?
At first he had thought, with his usual healthy confidence in his own charms, that he would bring a breath of fresh air into Annet’s enclosed life, and provide her with the young company she needed. But in a week or two he had found that she was, in fact, almost never in, and appeared to have gallingly little need of him. She had a job that took her away during the day; she acted as secretary to Mrs Blacklock at Cwm Hall, a privilege which gave great satisfaction to her mother, if she herself accepted it without noticeable emotion. The lady needed a secretary, for she ran, it seemed to Tom, everything in sight, every local society, every committee, every charity, every social event. Nothing could take place in and around Comerford without Regina’s blessing. Her patronage of Annet, therefore, was balm to Mrs Beck’s heart. Annet, as Tom heard from various sources – but never from Annet! – would have liked to uproot herself from this backwater and go and get a job in London, but the Becks were terrified to let her, and stubbornly refused to consent. Maybe because they knew they were hopelessly out of touch with her, and were afraid to let her out of their sight; maybe because she was their ewe Iamb, and they couldn’t bear to part with her. She was safe with Mrs Blacklock. Regina was inordinately careful and kind. Regina never let her come home alo
ne if she was at all late, but sent her in the car. Regina wouldn’t let her strike up any undesirable acquaintances, Regina saw to it that she knew everyone who was presentable and of good repute.
For God’s sake, thought Tom impotently, she was eighteen, wasn’t she? And intelligent and capable, or the Blacklocks wouldn’t have kept her. And did she behave as if she needed a chaperone?
She lived a busy enough life. Choir practice on Friday nights, dances in Comerbourne on Saturdays, or cinemas, and Myra Gibbons from Wastfield usually went with her. Their escorts to dances were vetted carefully; Mrs Beck had old-fashioned notions. But the sorry fact remained that Annet had no need of Tom Kenyon. There wasn’t a young man in Comerford who hadn’t at some time paid tentative court to her. There wasn’t a young man in Comerford who had got further with her than he found himself getting.
Remote, alien and beautiful, Annet floated upon the tide of events, submitted to parental control without comment or protest, and kept her own secrets. He didn’t know her at all; he never would.
The rest revolved about her. They had made him welcome, adopted him readily into their activities, found him a part to play; more than she ever had. Yet he saw them only by her light, at least those nearest to her: the Blacklocks, the vicar with his hearty voice and his uncertain, deprecating eyes, the Gibbons family, all the population of Fairford. Lucky for him that some of the denizens of his Sixth lived in Comerford, and their parents opened their doors to him readily: Miles Mallindine’s young, modern parents, Dominic Felse’s policeman father and pretty, shrewd, amusing mother. Policeman was the wrong term, strictly speaking; George Felse was a Detective-Inspector in the Midshire CID, recently promoted from Detective-Sergeant. The progeny of these pleasant couples tolerated him and kept their lordly distance, behaving with princely punctilio if they were left to entertain him; the parents welcomed him and never worried him. Privately they laughed a little, affectionately, at their own sons. Tom found them a pleasure and a relief. And they delivered him, at least, from feeling himself dependent upon Annet’s charity, when he had dreamed of extending to her the largesse of his own.
He drove through the dim rain, and he saw all the procession of new faces, one by one, passing before him. But always Annet, always Annet. And always with gentian eyes fixed ahead, and face turned away from him.
Eve Mallindine had given him a lift once, when the Mini was in the garage for servicing, and run him into town from the Comerford bus-stop. It was pure chance that he had mentioned Annet to her; if anything connected with Annet could be called chance. More probably he was so full of her that he couldn’t keep her name out of his mouth. Had he even betrayed that he was jealous of the young men who danced with her at the Saturday hops in town, and resented her mother’s prim care of her? He was horribly afraid he might have done. Well for him it was Mrs Malltndine. Everything a sixth-former’s mother should be, young and sophisticated and pretty, with a twinkle in her artfully-blue-shadowed eyes, and legs like flappers used to have before the fad for impossible shoes spoiled their gait and made them the same thickness from ankle to knee. Incidentally, she wore stiletto heels herself. How did she manage to walk like a proud filly in them? And how on earth did she drive so well?
She looked along her shoulder at him briefly, and returned her golden-brown eyes to the road ahead. She pondered for a moment, and then she said: ‘I’d better tell you, Tom. Do you mind if I call you Tom? After all, you’re almost in loco parentis to my brat.’
He hadn’t minded. He couldn’t remember when he’d minded anything less. Just sitting beside her was enough to make him feel a few inches taller, and he needed every lift he could get, when he remembered Annet.
‘Barbara Beck isn’t so mad as she looks to you,’ said Eve Mallindine, with a wry little smile. ‘Annet nearly made a run for it, early last spring. With my blessed hopeful. And don’t you dare let him know I told you, or I’ll wring your neck. But you wouldn’t, you’re not the kind. Excuse a mother’s partiality. I wouldn’t like him hurt. And if I’d been seventeen and male, I’d have jumped at the chance, too. They didn’t get any farther than Comerbourne station. Bill got wind of it, somehow – I never asked him how, I was far too busy pretending everything was normal and I hadn’t noticed the row going on. Bill took Annet home, and then brought the pup back and shut himself in the bedroom with him. I’m sure they both behaved with the greatest dignity – not even a raised voice between ’em! Miles was past seventeen, and nearly six feet high, and so damned grown-up – Well, you know him! Poor Bill must have felt at a hopeless disadvantage – if he hadn’t been in a flaming temper. I don’t know which of them I was sorriest for. I kept out of it, and made a cheese souffle. It seemed the most sensible thing to do, they were both crazy about my cheese souffles, and even a brokenhearted lover has to eat.’ She cast a glance at him again, even more briefly, and grinned. ‘They argued for an hour, and neither would give an inch. Poor darlings, they’re so alike. Don’t you think so?’
He didn’t. He saw Miles Mallindine every time he looked at her. Miles wasn’t the most unattractive member of the Upper Sixth, not by a long way. But all he said was, somewhat constrainedly: ‘Where were they heading?’
‘They had one-way tickets for London. Poor lambs, they were twenty minutes early for the train. A mistake! The trouble I had, getting Miles thawed out after that catastrophe. It’s awfully difficult, you know, Tom, for a seventeen-year-old to believe one doesn’t blame him. But I didn’t. Would you? You’ve seen Annet.’
‘No,’ he said; with difficulty, but it sounded all right. ‘No, I wouldn’t blame him.’
‘Good for you, Tom, I knew you were human. But poor Bill has a social conscience, you see. I only have a human one. They made each other pretty sore. Bill felt Miles ought to come right out and confide in him. And Miles wouldn’t. They ate the souffle, though,’ she added comfortably, rightly recollecting this as reassurance that her menfolk were not seriously disabled, physically or emotionally. ‘And to tell the truth, I laced the coffee. It seemed a good thing to do.’
Was he allowed to ask questions? And if so, how far could he go? There must be a limit, and the most interesting questions probably stepped well over it. Such as: why? Why should Miles find it necessary to plan a runaway affair with Annet? Many escorts a good deal less presentable were allowed to take the girl about, provided they called for her respectably at the house, and were vetted and found reliable. The Becks wouldn’t have frozen out a good-looking boy with wealthy parents, excellent prospects, and charm enough, when he pleased, to call the bird from the tree. If he’d wanted Annet, he had only to convince the girl, her parents would certainly have smiled upon him from the beginning. So why? Why run? Apparently there was no question of previous misbehaviour, no girl-in-trouble complications that made a getaway and a quick marriage desirable.
‘It’s all blown over now, of course,’ said Eve, slowing at the first traffic lights on the edge of Comerbourne. ‘Nobody else ever treated it as more than a romantic escapade. But Mrs Beck still thinks Miles planned her poor girl’s ruin. I thought I’d better tell you how the land lay, you might feel a bit baffled if it came up out of the blue.’
Somehow it was too late by then for the ‘why’ question. All he could say was: ‘And is he still – I mean, has he got over her by now?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t ask him. What he wants to tell he’ll tell, what he doesn’t nobody can make him. Me, I don’t try. But getting over Annet might be quite an arduous convalescence, don’t you think so?’
‘It well might,’ said Tom, with brittle care. She was a dangerous woman, she might see all too readily that Miles wasn’t the only chronic case.
‘Ah, well,’ she said cheerfully, putting her foot down as the orange changed to green, ‘he’ll be going up to Queens’ next year, and he’ll have more than enough to keep him busy. I hear he’s coming camping with you next weekend. Thirty juniors to ride herd on, he says. Heaven help you all!’
‘We�
��ll survive,’ said Tom. If you were the youngest male member of staff, and owned an anorak and a pair of clinkered boots, you were a sitter for all the outdoor assignments, and it was your bounden duty to look martyred and moan about it. No matter how much you actually enjoyed skippering a party of boys up a mountain or under canvas, you could never admit it. ‘Drop me along here by Cooks’, would you? I’ve got to see about some maps I ordered.’
And as he got out of the car and leaned to offer thanks for his ride, glad to be seen with her, complemented by the greetings he shared with her, the amazing woman smiled up at him confidently and calmly, and said: ‘You won’t take them on the Hallowmount, will you?’
She wasn’t even going to wait for an answer, so completely did she trust him to accept and understand what she had said. She gave him a little wave of her hand, and expected him to withdraw head and hand and close the door; and when he didn’t, she sat looking up at him with a quizzical, slightly surprised smile, no doubt thinking him as endearingly male and stupid as her own pig-headed pair.
‘Not take them on the Hallowmount?’ said Tom cautiously, to be sure he had not mistaken her.
‘No – but naturally you wouldn’t. Silly of me!’
‘Why not, though? Or is that a stupid question? And why naturally not?’ He had been feeling so close to her, so comfortable with her, and suddenly he felt alien and out of his depth. There she sat, in her amber-and-bracken autumn suit that wouldn’t have looked abashed in Bond Street, with her smooth brown beehive of hair and her long, elegant legs and incredibly fragile and impractical shoes, as modern as tomorrow, as secure and confident as money and education and travel and native temperament could make her; and without mystery or constraint, as though she were reminding her husband to lock the garage door, she warned him off from taking his week-end camp on the Hallowmount.
‘Oh, we just wouldn’t,’ she said, vaguely smiling, eyes wondering at him a little, but making allowances for him, too, as the incomer, the novice in these parts. ‘We just don’t. I wouldn’t worry too much myself, but some of their mothers might. You weren’t thinking of going there, were you?’
