She sat quietly on a bench, watching the luggage being wheeled out to the aircraft. There went part one; part two, herself, would shortly follow the neat hostess and take the last-minute seat and count the time that must elapse before she saw Paris and Richard.
She heard, dimly and with a sense of dawning happiness, the flight number. So, perhaps, St. Peter would summon those outside the gates, and open them, and check the numbers of the new arrivals.
But in the meantime, she was to join the other passengers in Bay Number Four.
The neat—and very pretty—stewardess ran an eye over her charges.
“This way, please. Will you follow me?”
Claire took two steps in the wake of the group—and then took no more. A hand had closed round her arm. She was being turned slowly. She was face to face with Richard.
There was, she saw, no need to speak—but he was saying something.
“There are”—he led her in the direction of the exit—“telephones. And telegrams. And—”
“My—my luggage. They . . . it’s on the plane.”
“I hope it has a safe journey—there and back. As I was saying, people nowadays telephone, or send telegrams, or even write.”
“How did you—?”
“Your stepmother, so much wiser, so much calmer, so much more economical than you, telephoned my office this morning. I was in the middle of something particularly pressing, but I left it.”
“When did you—”
“The plane from Paris—the one you’re not on now—touched down an hour ago.”
“But I’ve been here—”
“An hour ago. But I told myself that girls sometimes change their minds. They go so far—and then they don’t go any farther. I could tell myself—watching you—that you looked very much in love, but I couldn’t really be sure until you gave every sign of pushing past the other passengers in your anxiety to be first aboard. Then I knew that you were indeed going—and so I saved you the trouble—and the fare.”
“My ticket—”
“The money will be refunded in due course. If you’ll come this way, we’ll collect my sparse luggage; I didn’t have time to put in more than my wedding suit.”
He led her outside in search of a car.
“There are coaches up to London,” she pointed out. “You mentioned economy.”
“Coaches don’t go to Hallowes.”
He chose a fast car with a stolid-looking driver. He put Claire into it and sat beside her and took her hand and held it lightly.
“There are,” he told her, “before we begin to be happy, certain things to be said.”
“Not now,” she begged.
“I think yes, now. I wanted to say, chiefly, that I’m glad you loved him for a little while.”
“Can’t we forget him?”
“No. I don’t think we’ll ever see him again, but I’d like to salvage something and keep it. Don’t judge him. You can’t judge him, because you never knew the whole story. Neither did I; I only came in towards the end, but I saw enough of his mother, and of his life with her, to understand why he did what he did—in the way that he did it.”
“He wanted—”
“He wanted you. His letters after you’d said you would marry him were all but lunatic. He wanted you and he wanted the house he was born in and brought up in. Not at once, but when it came to him in due course, after his mother’s death. I think—and I’ve had a lot of time for thinking since I last saw you—that he must have begun to worry about Lotty before his mother spoke to him about leaving her a share in the house. She was so obviously making her home there—for ever. I’m not sure that his suggestion about her painting seriously wasn’t a hint, a hope that she’d take it up, go to a school in London or abroad, get away and perhaps stay away. But she didn’t. She simply turned her part of the house into a studio—as you saw. All Grant was doing, in his own way, was what I did at last in my way—that is, prise Lotty out. I don’t think I would have been able to do that if she hadn’t lost that letter.”
“What did the letter have to do with it?”
“It was written nearly eight years ago, but she had treasured it — I thought. But when she told me she’d lost the letter, she showed so little emotion that I realized she’d forgotten—or almost forgotten. She had been happy with Geoff, and she was young, and she had come out of the shadows. She didn’t really feel the loss of the letter — and what appalled me was the realization that she hadn’t the faintest idea of what would have happened if it had got into Mrs. Tennant’s hands.”
“But you didn’t realize that it had?”
“No. It’s clear that I read detective fiction for pleasure—not for profit. The clues built up, one by one—and I missed them all. I saw them, without seeing their significance. Perhaps I was thinking of you. Perhaps not. It wasn’t until the end that I could look back and realize that I had seen the beginning. And the beginning, of course, was the letter. But when I saw it, I didn’t recognize it.”
She turned to look at him. He was staring at the pane of glass that separated them from the driver, and his voice had become dreamy.
“I was there that morning, you see. Grant and I were there, at Spenders. It was snowing, and my visit was short and not sweet, because I had run into the worst-yet row with Mrs. Tennant. She had turned Ronnie out and she was going to hang on to Lotty and Paul, with a share in the house thrown in as additional weight. I told her it was a nice plan, but I’d see to it that it didn’t work. Then it was my turn to be booted out. I looked for Grant but couldn’t locate him. Then Mrs. Peel told me that he was looking for some papers which she’d been asked to find, and which Grant had told her would be among Lotty’s papers. She’d asked Lotty if she might look, and Lotty said yes—but Mrs. Peel had asked Grant to go, because she was sick of searching. As I was ready for the road, I went outside, because it was the quickest way of getting hold of Grant—if you remember, the desk in Lotty’s sitting-room had a window on either side of it and—”
“Yes, I remember.”
“Well, I approached from the side of the house. In summer, the gravel would have scrunched and the windows would have been open and he would have seen me. But the windows were closed and there was a snow bank preventing me from leaning over and knocking on the window, and I didn’t care to shout and risk being heard by his mother — so I decided to go inside again. But in the short time—not more than a moment or two—that I stood there, I saw that he was reading a letter. I could see it, and him, clearly. But after eight years, and in a state of rage, and in a hurry, and standing in snow, and loathing the house and longing to be away from it…a man doesn’t, in those circumstances, say to himself: 'Why, Grant’s reading that letter from Paul that Lotty showed me seven or eight years ago.’ All I was thinking of was getting away — and so I went into the house, said I was sorry I’d had another clash with his mother—and left. When you saw me looking for the letter, I was simply trying to make sure that it wasn’t anywhere where anybody could lay hands on it. Even when you mentioned the letter in the hospital, things didn’t fall into place. And when they did, I could only feel that Grant had acted as he did because it seemed to him the only way to ensure that one day you and he would live at Spenders. And now it’s over, and Grant. . . How did you tell him?”
“I drove to Spenders last night. He was alone. I said I’d found out that I didn’t love him and that I loved you. And that was all. And if I seem to say harsh things about him, you’ll have to forgive me, because it’s just to…to make it easier.”
“To make it easier to forget him?”
“No. To bear it. He wanted the house, and he was there, alone in it. He didn’t know that I knew the truth or that you knew the truth or that Mrs. Peel knew the truth. He only knew that the house was his. And he looked . . .” She turned to him and let the tears pour unregarded—“he looked dead. Doomed. He knew what I was going to say. I said it, and I went away—ran. Ran out to the car and drove away and left hi
m there alone in his house. It”—she let him wipe away her tears—“it seemed such a terrible price to pay for what he did. Just to slip a letter into an envelope . . . Richard, where is the letter now?”
“It’s buried with Corinne. She saw the beginning; she watched Paul and Lotty fall in love. She was with Lotty when she learned of his death. Nobody should ever have read that letter but Lotty. Nobody ever will again. Grant will go to Canada, and if you want my guess I’d say that Mrs. Peel will follow him there.”
“Will she ever tell him?”
“I don’t think so. Claire, Claire—my darling—”
She was in his arms. The driver glanced at them now and then in his mirror and thought of his wife and four children, and sighed.
“I love you, Claire.”
She was weeping, so that it was difficult to hear what she said in reply. It was, he discovered at last, a request for the loan of a handkerchief; her spare ones, she explained, were on their way to Paris.
THE END
The Friendly Air
“He said something about cards. What did that mean?”
“Exactly what it sounds like, my dear Emma. If I had consulted the cards before coming down to Yorkshire, I should still be in my house in Edinburgh. But I didn’t, so as you see, here I am.”
“What sort of cards?”
“Ordinary, everyday cards. Playing cards. If you follow certain rules in setting them out, if you believe the answer they give you, you can save yourself from making a good many serious mistakes in life. I can’t tell you what they’ve done for me! Have you heard that I now have a great deal of money?”
“Yes. The Terrazone boom.”
“Mr. Delmont can’t even talk about it without raising his blood pressure. You see, he advised me to buy shares with the money that I got from the sale of my house. So I got out the cards when he had gone away, and the answer that came out was T and Z. I went at once to my bank manager, and he found lots of shares with T, but the first T and Z we got was Terrazone. The bank manager didn’t want me to buy them, I can’t think why, because they were very cheap. I did buy them, quite a lot of them, and I gave some of them to Mr. Delmont and Morag, but he said they were worth nothing, and advised her to sell them, which she did. He thought they were worthless simply because they were at a low ebb, but as I pointed out to him, how could I have got them so cheaply if they hadn’t been? Everybody who knows the first thing about shares and so on, should know that you must buy them up before they go up. That was the mistake Mr. Delmont made, but he didn’t behave very well when I told him so. He asked me where I’d learned about them, and when I told him that it was from the cards, he hinted that I was demented. So I shall certainly not tell him that I consulted the cards again when I got all that nice money. They said I was to buy a house.”
“Did they say where?”
“No. They don’t tell you everything; they give you a lead and then you must decide the rest for yourself. But I didn’t want to go back to Edinburgh, so I thought I could get myself a really warm, comfortable house in York. I went to a house agent and I found this nice—were you going to say something?”
“I was going to ask you why you chose a house next door to Mr. Delmont’s.”
“Next door to ... Emma, what a fantastic notion! Mr. Delmont lives in one of those dreadful villas out on the—”
“I didn’t know that. Where did he move to?”
“Next door to the house you’re buying.”
“Next door to...You mean to tell me that he has actually moved to a house in which he would be my neighbour? No, Emma, you’ve made a mistake. If there’s one thing that he would loathe more than I would loathe being next door to him, it would be being next door to me.”
“Well, he is. I mean, he will be.”
“Then I shall do all I can to prevent it.”
“You can’t. I saw him yesterday. He’s—”
“Next door!”
“Yes.”
“You’re quite, quite certain?”
“Quite.”
“Then I shall cancel the whole thing. I shall go and see the house agent and I shall—”
“Did it have to be York?”
“Did what have to be York?”
“This house. If you’re going to move, couldn’t you move to London?”
And that, she realised with amazement, was exactly what Gerald and his father had asked her to say—but she had not spoken on their behalf. The words had been the culmination of all that she had been feeling since she had come here. She could not have said whether she considered Lady Grantly entirely normal, but crazy or not, she liked her. She liked the look of her, she liked the flutelike voice, the mixture of sense and nonsense, the intriguing blend of silliness and shrewdness. She liked her, and she wanted to see more of her. Most of all, she wanted to... to what? Protect her. She was old, she had money, she was about to launch herself on the world alone. People would think her odd, and would either laugh at her or try to take advantage of her. Few of them would want to stay in her company, far less dream of enjoying it, as she was doing. Gerald had asked what she and Lady Grantly had in common, and now she could tell him that it was something more than having suffered under his father’s advice. But if she tried to put her feelings into words, they would sound absurd; what would Gerald make of an assertion that she and Lady Grantly were kindred spirits? How could she explain that she felt completely at home in this old woman’s company?
“London?” she heard her saying, and there was a note in the voice that told her persuasion would be of no use. “No, Emma; not London. All that turmoil. I never liked it, and I would like it even less now that I’m old. Not London.”
“And not back to Edinburgh?”
“No. I should never have left, but I shall never go back.”
“Then where?”
“We shall put it to the cards.”
Emma said nothing. Lady Grantly walked to the window and gazed out.
“Come and look, Emma.”
Emma looked. The mist, descending once more, was shutting out the view. The road had vanished, then the hedge and the rose bush on which the postman’s hat had hung. Soon there was nothing but greyness and gloom.
“Would you like me to switch on a light?” she asked.
“Yes, please. And draw the curtains and tell me how I could have endured this for so long. You know, I was born in Barbados, in the sunshine. Such a lovely house, such a heavenly garden, such a view! My parents sent me to school in England; it was a very expensive school, but they didn’t succeed in teaching me anything at all, except embroidery. So when I was sixteen, I was allowed to go back to Barbados, back to the sunshine. When I married, my husband’s work took him to India, and there was more lovely sunshine. I shall get out the cards, and you’ll see—they’ll give me a lead to some charming place where there are flowers all the year round. Will you stay on and have a little light meal with me afterwards?”
“Thank you. I’d like to.”
“Can you cook?”
“Quite well, when I have to.”
“Then you shall make an omelette and I shall whip up some little thing with fruit and cream. And there’s cheese, and I have good coffee. It will be delightful to have you. And now I’ll get out the cards. You must watch how I set them out.”
Emma, watching, realised that Gerald would consider this a clear proof of craziness, and perhaps by some standards, it was. But then who could have been more odd, towards the end of her life, than her own grandmother, who gave the birds names and titles, who never went past the little bust of Queen Victoria in the hall without curtseying, who decided to change her name to Ethelfleda and called her husband Ethelred? Nobody ever called her crazy, only eccentric. If Lady Grantly wanted to plan her future with the help of playing cards, why stop her? If it came to that, how? She was her own mistress and she could pay for her mistakes out of the Terrazone profits.
“Eight lines of four—are you paying attention, Emma? Cards fa
ce downward. That makes thirty-two, and I’m left with twenty. Do you follow?”
“So far, yes.”
“I learned this, you know, years and years ago, in Sark. There was a most evil-looking old woman who used to follow us—my husband and myself—whenever we went for a walk; one day, when I was alone, she came up to me and said that if I went to her cottage, she would tell me how to make a fortune. Well, we were always rather poor, so I couldn’t resist going, although I felt a little nervous. When we got there, she asked me for five silver coins, and when I gave them to her, she taught me this way of setting out the cards. I feel so sorry that the fortune didn’t materialise until my husband was dead, but if he’d been alive, he wouldn’t have let me spend it, so perhaps it’s just as well. Now I shall show you what to do with the twenty cards that are still left. You put them out, face upward, in lines of four—like this. There they are. Now what I must do is see what I can learn from them.”
Silence fell. Lady Grantly counted, murmured to herself and turned over, one by one, the cards. Emma, watching dreamily, had a feeling that she was floating in space, freed from a world of political parties, politicians, commentators and tycoons. She was about to join Gerald on the social treadmill —round and round, and then round again and again. But at this moment, September seemed a very long way away.
“Now, Emma.”
She roused herself.
“You buy the house where?” she asked.
“That is what we are now going to find out. I’ve done all the preparation, but I don’t think your mind was on it. Now we simply have to count.”
“Count how many?”
“I don’t know yet. Let me see... fifteen. No, sixteen. We have to count sixteen, and then we shall know the answer. What is the sixteenth letter of the alphabet?”
Letter To My Love Page 15
