I put the last bit away for further examination later. It gave me a glimmer of warmth, but I did not want to make too much of it. I said, ‘Do you come into the wood much, then? I’ve never seen you.’
She nodded. ‘I have at times, yes. I think if we’re going to talk I’d rather we went back along the path a bit. Do you mind?’ She turned and went off along my twisting track. I said, ‘Of course,’ and followed her. The circulation had come back into my leg, and I could walk without actually cannoning into things. She went between the crowding hazards like an animal, threading them in her stride without hesitation or apparent contrivance. She was a great deal smaller than I was, but she was still a beautiful mover. After a bit she stopped by one of the trees I knew and turned to face me. Like most of the trees in the wood, it grew slightly off the vertical. She leant back against the slightly leaning stem, feet together, arms crossed in front of her, and looked up at me. I had a moment of something very like panic. I was over the brink now and falling irretrievably. I did not know for certain whether I had ever been in love before, but now at least I was completely at Carol Wainwright’s mercy, and did not think I should ever be anything else.
I said, ‘Why did your husband buy this wood, do you know? Does he like trees? He doesn’t seem to have done much to it so far.’
‘I don’t know. Do you know why your uncle sold it to him?’
‘I don’t even know why he left me the house. I had never had anything much to do with him. I don’t think I ever set eyes on him after I was at school. He was rather the black sheep of the family, I think. But I never heard what there was against him.’
‘He was quite a friend of Dennis’s. At least, Dennis used to be round at the Holt House quite a lot. I don’t know what they had in common.’
‘Straight misanthropy, perhaps.’
‘Not exactly. I don’t think Dennis is against people. He just doesn’t want any more to do with them than he can possibly help. I got the idea your uncle was the same. I thought perhaps they had both been so successful in shutting everyone else out that there were more or less only the two of them left. Do you see what I mean? I don’t think Dennis bought the wood because he likes trees. He doesn’t particularly. I don’t know of anything he does like particularly. But it bulks very large in our landscape. We didn’t call the house Holm Oaks, but we haven’t called it anything else. I rather imagine that Dennis didn’t like the idea of anyone else owning it once your uncle was dead. But what he’ll do with it now he’s got it I haven’t any idea.’
‘There’s a lot needs doing to it that could still be done. Is he likely to do anything, do you think?’
‘Not if it costs money.’
‘He wouldn’t cut it down?’
‘I’ve told you – I don’t know what he’d do. I never have known. About that or anything else.’
‘And in the meantime you walk here on occasion?’
‘On occasion, yes.’
‘Do you mind if I do, too?’
‘I don’t mind what you do so long as you stop lurking in the trees and gazing at the front of our house.’ She spoke, still perfectly seriously, but there was the faintest suggestion of a smile at the corners of her eyes. I said, ‘You know—’ and then stopped helplessly.
‘I don’t know anything,’ she said. ‘But I’ll come into the wood at this time tomorrow and walk straight along the centre path. I might meet you, perhaps. But I can’t if you’re back there by the road, sitting on a fallen branch with your head between your knees, getting pins and needles.’
‘I shan’t be. I shall be walking along the centre path in the opposite direction to you. We might, as you say, meet. In fact, I don’t really see how we can do anything else.’
She left her tree and came over to me and put a hand on my sleeve. She said, ‘Don’t be unhappy, Mr Haddon. You’re no use to anybody if you’re unhappy.’
I said, ‘Could I be of use to you, for instance, if I’m not?’
She considered this, carefully, for what seemed a very long time. All the time her hand was on my sleeve, and I was looking at the hand, not her face, which was turned down and away from me. The hand was miniature, like the rest of her, and very white, but of no particular delicacy. Subject to its natural limitations of size and strength, it looked very capable. The leaves kept up their stealthy rustle over our heads.
Finally she said, ‘I don’t know. You might be. I don’t really know whether anyone could be. But not if you’re going to be unhappy.’
‘I shouldn’t be then,’ I said. ‘It goes round in a circle, rather.’
She took her hand off my sleeve and gave me a quick upwards smile. It was the first time she had really smiled at me, leaving aside her proper politeness when we were introduced. It made her look suddenly and disastrously young. She said, ‘We’ll see, anyhow.’ We picked our way back to the main path, nodded gravely to each other, and went our opposite ways. When I came out of the wood, the breeze was blowing steadily from the south-west, and the voice of the sea on the beach had changed already. The sky was still clear overhead, but the horizon, which had been clear for nearly a week, was covered by a climbing grey haze.
The path from the gate to the front door was flagged and the door was open. I was wearing rubber-soled shoes, but had no intention of creeping up on anybody. In point of fact I assumed that Elizabeth and Stella were both out, as they had been when I left. I heard the voices only as I put my foot into the hall. I was going to speak, hesitated at the first words I heard, and stopped dead.
Elizabeth said, ‘If it’s Jake you’re worrying about, you can stop worrying. Jake is quite capable of looking after himself, and always has been.’ They were in the sitting-room on the right of the hall.
Stella said, ‘It isn’t only Jake, Liz. It’s both of you. I think you’re making a mistake.’
‘But I love it here. And if Jake doesn’t want to stay, he can sell at any time. You heard him say so.’
‘Of course he said so. That doesn’t mean he’s capable of doing it. Not if he knows you’re set on staying. The only thing that will get you out of here is a lead from you now. In six months’ time it will be too late.’
‘But why? And why should I give him a lead if I don’t want to go? What have you got against the place?’
There was silence for several seconds. I stepped back gingerly until I was just outside the door. I could see, as clearly as if I was in the room, Stella staring at her sister with that fixed, direct, rather lowering look of hers. When she spoke, I could still hear her perfectly clearly from where I was. She said, ‘I don’t think it will do you any good. It’s too – too concentrated.’
‘I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.’ Elizabeth’s voice was edgy. She could never stand up to Stella’s persistence without losing her temper, and Stella got quieter as she got shriller. ‘Do you mean we’re going to be too much thrown together and get on each other’s nerves? Is that what you mean? And what business is it of yours, anyway? There’s no need for you to stay here if you don’t want to.’
‘I know that.’ Stella’s voice was so low now that I could hardly hear her. ‘But Jake can’t get away, can he? Not once you’re dug in here.’
I went back down the path, as far as I dared without being seen from the window. Then I turned and walked up to the door. If it had been in the least in character, I should have whistled cheerfully, but it would not have been, and I could not think of anything suitable to whistle. Instead I slapped my feet rather noisily on the steps and walked across the hall and straight into the sitting-room.
I thought Elizabeth had been walking down the length of the room away from the door. As I came in, she was standing stock still, her body facing at least three parts away from me, and her head turned to look at me over her shoulder. Her eyebrows were up almost into her hair and her mouth drawn down petulantly at the corners. To anyone who knew her, she was clearly near boiling-point. It always spoilt her looks, but she never learnt. Stella wa
s sitting sideways on the arm of a sofa just inside the door. Her legs were gathered comfortably under her and one hand rested on the back of the sofa. The other hand, her right, hung down where only I could see it. The fingers, slightly paint-stained, were rigid, and the thumb widely separated. Her eyes flicked sideways to me and back again to Elizabeth.
Reluctantly – they were neither of them anxious to surrender the tension they had been so laboriously building up – Stella said, ‘Hullo, Jake.’
I did not look at either of them longer or more directly than I could help. I said, ‘The weather’s on the turn. We’ve had our St Luke’s summer. It will be blowing before morning, I think. Any tea yet?’
Elizabeth revolved slowly till she faced the door, still holding herself very straight. ‘I’ll get some,’ she said. She walked past me and out of the door, and went off along the hall towards the kitchen. I looked at Stella. She shook her head. ‘Bad timing,’ she said. ‘You should have come in five minutes later. Or sooner. But not just then.’
‘Oh?’ I said. ‘Sorry. Would you like me to go out again and let you fight to a finish?’
She shook her head again. ‘It’s no good,’ she said. ‘It’s never any good. I don’t know why I bother to fight at all.’ The competence and independence were suddenly and rather shockingly missing, and she looked utterly desolate. Then she got up and put her shoulders back. ‘Is it really blowing up?’
she said. ‘I’d better go and collect the rest of my gear. I didn’t pack up properly.’ She hurried out, pulled, as always, by the invisible forces that dragged her after them. I sat down, folded The Times to bring the crossword uppermost and began to think about Carol Wainwright.
When Elizabeth brought in the tray she said, ‘Where’s Stella?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I think she went to get her stuff in off the beach.’
She nodded, poured out two cups of tea and handed me one. Then she sat down opposite me, looking at me speculatively over the top of her cup.
Twice, to my certain knowledge, she got herself lined up to speak but thought better of it. Then she said, ‘Is it really blowing up?’ She said it so exactly as Stella had said it that I almost jumped. It was easy, as a rule, to forget how alike their voices were, because they said such different things. It was only when they meant nothing that the likeness came out, and Stella at least very seldom did.
‘I think so,’ I said. ‘The house-warming’s over. Now we’re going to see what this place can really do.’
I went out after tea and walked in the last of the daylight, not into the wood, which had for the time being lost its mystery, but westwards along the edge of the rising tide. The seas were coming in steadily now in endless lines. They hit the beach a little obliquely, so that the broken water swirled sideways across the grating pebbles before it was sucked back under the feet of the next breaker. It was a mean-looking sea, even with its malice hardly extended.
It was nearly dark before I came back, with the wind half under my tail, to the lights of the house above the beach and the long shadow of the oak-wood stretching away in front. Twice, as I turned to go up what was left of the beach, I thought I heard a shot from further east, but the wind was against it, and I could not be certain.
CHAPTER FIVE
Where I slept, on the east side of the house, you heard the sea, in these conditions, almost more than the wind. There is a lot of comfort in letting a house take the weather round you at night, provided, of course, you do not have to worry about the house. I did not worry about the Holt House at all. For one thing I had already seen too much of it to suspect any weaknesses. For another there was its history and position. It had stood where it was above the beach, turning a stiff back to the prevailing wind, for what looked like two hundred years at least, and it was not going to let the first freshening of autumn wind upset it. I did not sleep much, for other reasons, but I lay snugly enough during the early part of the night and let the wind spend itself on quite unmoving masonry. It was only later that the noise of the sea began to obtrude itself into my consciousness, and once it was in, it was very difficult to get it out. It was quite impossible to shut out physically. It was a steady pulsation that permeated everything. To pull the bedding round my ears brought it home to me more solidly. The only hope was to shut it out of my mind, or at least to let my mind absorb it without comment; and this I found I could not do.
I lay for a very long time, consciously listening to it and, after a bit, consciously wishing it would stop. In the end, of course, I went to sleep, but I woke, tired out and early, to a grey light very different from the daffodil-yellow we had woken to for the past week. It was still too early for Elizabeth. Stella, as in other matters, had no very fixed rules, but I never saw her in the early mornings. I got up, dressed warm and went out on to the beach. It was not, in fact, much before eight, but it felt earlier. It was not blowing hard, not by the standards we learnt to use later, but the whole world was changed and very comfortless. The sea was grey, not yet flecked at all with white, but ridged endlessly with slate-grey advancing crests. They came in on the slant, kicked up over the fierce undertow that came back off the beach, and burst in a smother of white foam and flung pebbles, which sluiced off sideways to undercut the next advancing hummock of grey water. I turned my back to the wind and walked eastwards through the incessant, repetitive tumult that had kept me awake during the night. When I came to the end of the wood, I moved up closer to the edge of the trees. They were still full of darkness, but I found their stability comforting. I walked almost the whole length of the wood, farther, certainly, than I had ever walked along the beach before. The trees blocked all the landward view. Every fifty yards of beach was exactly like the one next to it.
On the beach itself nothing moved at all. Anything the wind could move it had moved during the night, and it blew steadily, without gusts. I was nearly at the far end of the wood when I saw something flopping and lolloping over the pebbles ahead of me. It was coloured like them, grey with black and white touches, and was almost invisible except when it moved. It kept its distance ahead of me. At times I nearly caught up with it, then it would be off again, slithering irregularly over the rounded stones. When I saw, as I came fairly close to it, a momentary flap of wing, I realised it was a dead bird, and ran to catch up with it. When I caught up with it, I realised it was not dead.
It was a tern of sorts, grey with a black cap that had been shot and left. One long swallow-wing was intact and one red leg. The other wing was a crumpled mess. I could not see the other leg at all. The eye was bright, watching me as I came up to where it lay in a tumbled heap on the stones. Then it got under way again with its two sound limbs, doing its best, now it was too late, to keep its distance from man on the beach.
I stopped and tried to think sensibly, but even commonsense told me there was no help for it, and my instinct clamoured to catch it and kill it quick. I had nothing to kill it with but my hands, and perhaps a larger than average pebble. I ran at it, stumbling over the stones in my desperation, but it flapped away under my grabbing hand, and I came down on my knees with the bird still making its systematic, demented way in front of me.
I said, ‘Oh God,’ and got to my feet again. I think I was almost sobbing. ‘Come here, sweetie,’ I said, ‘come here,’ calling desperately to it to come and be killed for its own comfort and mine. It could not keep away from me for long, and the next time I made sure of it. It was nothing in my hands at all, but the round dark eye still looked sideways at me out of the grey cheek-feathers, and the heart ticked furiously under one of my fingers. I looked up and down the beach, but there was nothing anywhere but a wilderness of grey pebbles between the dark stooping trees and the white breaking edge of the sea.
I said, ‘I’m sorry, sweetie,’ apologising comprehensively for my race and for what I had to do. Then my fingers closed on its neck, and I shut my eyes and got it over with a convulsive jerk of the wrist. It flapped once as I let it fall, and then lay still.
I had to make sure it was dead, but did not want to touch it again for fear it was not. I picked up the largest stone I could find and, standing over the bird, threw it down with all my force at the tucked-in head. The stone missed the head and came down on the spread wing. The whole grey body leapt with the shock and collapsed again. I grabbed at the stone and smashed it savagely down, fairly, this time, on the neat black-capped head. Nothing moved at all. The bird had been dead all along, and now the skull was beaten to a pulp. I piled pebbles over it until nothing showed. Then I turned and went back along the beach, walking into the wind.
I wondered what could be done about people who shot down small sea-birds in the dusk and left them to flap about on the beach all night. My thinking was almost wholly fantastic and not really very creditable. I did not intend to tell Elizabeth and Stella about the bird. It could do no good, and it would hurt them both considerably in different ways. But mainly it was because it was my secret. I assumed, until the contrary was proved, that it was Mr Wainwright who had shot the bird, and my war with him was a private one and fought mainly for reasons Elizabeth could not be expected to approve of. If she came in on my side, the thing would get too mixed altogether. I guarded my hatred of Mr Wainwright from her as jealously as I guarded my love for his wife.
I found breakfast in progress and Stella packed up to go. For the first time, almost, that I could remember, I was glad she was going. In some way I did not examine very closely, she would be more of a difficulty than Elizabeth in the way of whatever developed between Carol Wainwright and myself. I assumed her emotional detachment, but knew that my mind was much more vulnerable to hers. My whole thinking was already dominated by my feelings for Carol Wainwright and, even with next to no evidence to go on, the incident of the bird coloured, and was coloured by, these feelings. It was, substantially, a different woman I went to the wood to meet because of the dead bird under its cairn of grey pebbles on the beach below.
The Holm Oaks Page 4
