The Holm Oaks

by P. M. Hubbard

I thought two could play surprises. ‘I’ve just been talking to your husband,’ I said. ‘He was in the wood, and we met as I was coming along.’ I repented the moment I had said it, because the shot went home much harder than I had ever intended it should. The reaction was always the same. Her eyes flew open and her face froze. All she said was, ‘Oh? Then he’ll be wanting his tea.’

  They walked on down the path, the tall rose-and-gold woman and the small ivory-and-ebony one, and I stood still by the door and let them go. Their voices were utterly different. I have said, I think, that Elizabeth and Stella were totally unlike except for their voices. Here, for all the obvious physical contrast, there was more difference in the voice than in almost anything else. I have made no fist at all of trying to describe Carol’s voice, but to me it was the key thing about her. I suppose that was why I had come out of the wood murmuring ‘J’aime ta voix’, to the still doubtful edification of Dennis Wainwright. Elizabeth had never learnt to use her voice properly. It shifted too much with the shifting wind of her thought. Stella, as I have said, had the same voice, but used it very differently. Carol’s was an altogether different instrument.

  When Elizabeth came back from the gate, she looked at me doubtfully. I have no doubt something had got through to her on one of the various levels of extra-sensory perception women go in for, but she was not reading it loud and clear. There was just something that gave her momentary pause. The top layers of her mind had noticed nothing special about Carol. I wondered, almost desperately, what Carol had made of her, because I had no doubt this was of the utmost importance. But it must wait. Elizabeth said, ‘I think she’s rather nice, don’t you? Not very forthcoming, but very pleasant. Much better than one might have expected from the house, anyway.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘that was my impression. Not giving much away, but quite friendly disposed. The husband’s a different matter.’

  ‘I think I must see this monster. Shall I ask them to dinner?’

  I could think, off-hand, of few more appalling prospects than entertaining the Wainwrights to dinner. It was also, I think, true that a good look at Dennis might make Elizabeth think harder about Carol. I said, ‘Better have a quick look at him first. Then if you’re sure you want to ask them it’s up to you. So far as I’m concerned, I’m quite happy to leave then at the far end of the wood, despite the apparent pleasantness of Mrs Wainwright.’

  ‘All right. I’ll do a return drop-in on her, and then perhaps I’ll see him. It would be nice to have someone we could ask in, don’t you think?’ She looked at me doubtfully again. Elizabeth’s social urges were unpredictable. There were times when she wanted no company but the birds, but other, luckily intermittent, patches when the, I suppose, formal feminine wish to entertain and be entertained reasserted itself. The difficulty, as far as I was concerned, had always been to spot the onset of a social urge and guide it into fairly congenial channels. Otherwise, there was no knowing whom I might find myself suddenly called upon to help entertain.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘We ought to make the effort to find some company here, I suppose. It’s always a slow business in rather remote places like this. But you want to be doubly careful. Once get yourself saddled with the wrong company, and they’re on your backs for the rest of time, unless you’re prepared to risk bad blood by choking them off. Anyway, have a look at our Dennis and see what you think.’

  ‘I’ll do that. Oh, by the way, Stella’s coming tomorrow. Did I tell you?’

  ‘Oh? No.’ I did not add ‘Good.’ I did not want Stella back yet, any more than Elizabeth did.

  ‘She hasn’t been away long, has she, this time?’

  ‘Doesn’t seem so. I suppose it’s the best part of a week.’

  Elizabeth was looking at me doubtfully again. She said, ‘You’ll be glad to have her to talk to, anyhow.’ Then she went into the house.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Stella got out of the car and said, ‘My God, Jake, what have you been doing to yourself? You look as if you hadn’t slept for a week.’ She shook her hair back into the rampaging wind and stared at me fixedly. Then she jerked her head towards the sea. ‘Does it go on like this all the time?’ she said.

  ‘Pretty well. But I don’t think it keeps one awake. It’s just that if one is awake, one notices it.’

  ‘That I can well believe. What does Liz say?’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘About what the place is doing to you. Or hasn’t she noticed?’

  ‘I don’t think it’s really the place. Not entirely, anyway. I don’t think, in fact, we’ve discussed it.’

  To say that Stella sniffed is perhaps not quite fair. She lifted her head and took a short, sharp breath, as if to say immediately and violently what she thought; but in fact she said nothing. Instead she grabbed her case out of the car and started in at the gate.

  I said, ‘Stella,’ and she stopped short and turned back to me. I wanted very badly indeed, at that moment, to tell her about Carol Wainwright and the dilemma I was in, but my instinct stopped me. What I actually said was, ‘I don’t dislike this place, you know. It doesn’t make me unhappy being here.’

  She put her suitcase down where it was and walked back to me. She put a hand out, thought better of it and stood there facing me with her hands dangling rather helplessly in front of her. I do not think, now I come to consider it, that I ever actually touched Stella, except for the inevitable accidental contact. She said, ‘Well, what is making you unhappy? Something is. You’ve grown a whole fresh set of lines in a week. You’ve got to get away from here, Jake.’

  ‘Don’t you think that’s for me to decide?’

  ‘Oh, it’s for you to decide all right. But I don’t think you’ll make the right decision. Not in competition with nycticorax and a gaggle of visiting geese.’

  ‘I’m not in competition with nycti. I’m rather fond of him, actually. He has his uses, you know.’

  ‘I know that. But are you bound to go through whatever it is you’re going through?’

  ‘I’m trying to decide,’ I said.

  She took her eyes off me and turned back to her suitcase. ‘It’s no good,’ she said. ‘It never has been any good.’ She picked up her suitcase and went on into the house. I heard her calling ‘Liz! Liz!’ in the hall and up the stairs, but I knew Elizabeth was out. There was nothing I could do, and I turned and went off towards the wood. I had no reason to think Carol could be there at that time, but at least it would be quiet there, quieter than anywhere else unless you went a mile or so inland.

  The noise of the sea died away behind me as I went along the central path, but there was to be no quiet in the wood either. As soon as I got near the far end of the path, I heard men’s voices ahead of me. I stopped and listened. I was not sure, but I thought they were coming towards me. I turned aside into the trees and waited for them, but after a bit I decided that they were stationary at or near the far end of the wood. I went back to the path and made my way cautiously along it. I still could not tell who they were or what they were saying. I believe I could pick out Dennis Wainwright’s rumble alternating with lighter, local voices, but this may be wisdom after the event. I certainly never heard anything that was said.

  You could not see far along the path at any point. It had been straight enough to start with, but it was being grown into from both sides, and the clear line was seldom perfectly straight now for very long. But the main thing was that it undulated. The slope of the land to the shore was seamed with drainage lines and shallow dips, and the path cut straight across them, plunging up and down like a miniature scenic railway. At two of the deeper drainage lines, which were more or less chronically wet, it was carried on low culverts with earthenware pipes under them. At the rest it merely dived into a greener hollow, where the foot hesitated for a moment in softer soil before it climbed again on the harder slope beyond. One way and another, it was seldom possible to see much further than twenty yards ahead. You could go quietly enough, which off the path was very di
fficult; but once admit the possibility of a menace in the wood, and you went very cautiously from sighting-point to sighting-point. The last sighting-point was daylight on the tarmac. Until that came, the next kink in the path might bring you to anything.

  I went very cautiously indeed until I realised that now the voices were going away in front of me. Then I hurried, but by the time I saw daylight they had gone altogether, and a car had started up and moved off up the road. I did not go right to the end. I turned, and had not gone fifty yards back along the path when I heard Carol calling, ‘Jake! Jake!’ from among the trees on my left. I turned and went straight to her, crashing through the thicket regardless until I had her in my arms.

  She said, ‘Did you see anybody?’

  I shook my head. ‘It was your husband, wasn’t it? Who was with him?’

  ‘I don’t know. There were two of them. They came in a car, and he went straight out to them, and they all went into the wood together. I came in along the beach as soon as I could, but I never got near them. I don’t like it, Jake. He’s never had anyone in the wood before.’

  ‘Was there nothing to show who they were? Did you see the car?’

  ‘Yes, but nothing special about it. A Ford, I think, with a local number. Not a van or anything. Did you really meet him in the wood yesterday?’

  I nodded. ‘Just after I left you. He was waiting on the path. Didn’t he tell you?’

  ‘No. But that doesn’t mean anything. What did he say, Jake?’

  ‘I asked him about the wood. I actually asked him whether he’d sell it to me, but he said he had other plans for it. Then he more or less shook his club at me and told me to keep off his property altogether. I still don’t know what that was meant to include. And he didn’t mention any of this to you at all?’

  ‘No, but then he wouldn’t anyhow. He never tells me anything if he can help it. Jake, I don’t think I like your wife much. Do you mind?’

  I shook my head and said, ‘I should have thought that made things easier all round,’ but I knew the tone was wrong, and Carol laughed at me. ‘Poor Jake,’ she said. ‘You have all the proper attitudes, haven’t you? I can’t help it. And yes, of course it makes things easier. But I don’t think she really knows you exist. Or only intermittently, when there are no geese about. I don’t know whether it’s always been like that.’

  ‘It’s difficult to remember. It all seems a very long time ago. But I know I never felt her existence as I feel yours. You’re part of the air I breathe here. Or the noise of the sea, or something. You pervade everything.’

  She gave me her quick upward smile. ‘I wonder how far the pervasiveness extends inland. No, don’t bother to protest. You don’t know, that’s the truth. You haven’t tried. But I think that’s fair enough for a man. Women don’t go for places on the same scale, not generally. To me you’re as much part of me as my right hand. If you were cut off, there’d still be a ghost you. It would take me quite a long time to persuade myself it wasn’t real.’

  ‘I don’t intend to be cut off,’ I said.

  ‘I know, I know. But we needn’t meet much, socially, need we? I shouldn’t like it at all.’

  ‘I don’t think so. My wife talked of asking you to dine. I tried to head her off by giving her a horrific account of your husband.’

  ‘Oh for God’s sake, no, Jake. Head her off at all costs.’

  ‘Would your husband frighten her off, in fact?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’ve told you – I never know. It would depend, I think.’

  ‘On whether he suspected anything?’

  She turned me, suddenly, a blank face. ‘He mustn’t,’ she said. ‘No, I mean it would depend on what he felt like. He can be quite charming when he wants to, you know.’

  ‘It must be a pretty sinister charm.’

  ‘Well, your wife might like that.’ She smiled up at me again. ‘It would make a change,’ she said. ‘You are not at all sinister, Jake. And why in the world,’ she said a moment later, ‘a man should mind being told he is not sinister is really beyond the wit of woman to understand. It’s not a reflection on your virility, Jake darling. I don’t want you to be sinister. I’ve had all of that I can bear. Can’t you see that? I must go. I only came out to see what was going on. Later, perhaps.’ She pulled my face down and kissed me. Then she was off. I walked back under the shifting roof of leaves until the noise of the surf came in to meet me along the path. I felt the wind on my face a few seconds before I heard, carried on the wind, the sound of women shouting at each other in voices that were far too much alike.

  I was conscious simultaneously of a determination not to get involved and a strong wish to know as far as possible what course the quarrel was taking. I knew that if she suffered defeat, as she usually did, Elizabeth would before long vent her baffled indignation on me, and I needed both the right to claim ignorance of the issues involved and a knowledge of the weaknesses of her position. Otherwise I should have to choose, when the storm broke, between a suspect and probably provoking silence and some sort of a commitment on which I should infallibly, when the occasion next arose, be misrepresented to Stella. My position was an ignoble one but, to me at least, apparently unavoidable. I went to the gate, placed the quarrel in the sitting-room on the right as you went into the front door, and turned behind the skirting wall to that side of the house.

  As I came close to the end window I heard Elizabeth say, ‘You’ve no right, don’t you see? It’s not your business and you’ve no right to say it.’

  ‘Anybody’s got a right to say what’s true. Being married to a man doesn’t give you the right to burke the truth about him. And you know it’s true. You know it as well as I do. Or if you don’t, you ought to. It’s obvious enough, if you’d give Jake a fraction of the attention you give the geese.’

  ‘And who the hell are you to tell me how much attention to give my husband? Why can’t you get a proper husband of your own and turn your attention to him instead of being so solicitous about mine?’

  There was a moment’s pause and then Stella said very slowly and very clearly, ‘You’re a vulgar little thing, aren’t you, Liz? It’s Daddy’s side of the family. He didn’t do us badly, but he was a vulgar little man, God rest his soul. I suppose that’s where you get it from. You’ve always had it, ever since I can remember. You’ve only got to let your hair down a bit, and out it pops. I imagine it was rather attractive when you were younger. A touch of vulgarity can be. But it’s wearing a bit thin now. Don’t you think it’s time you stopped reducing everything to the lowest possible level? It doesn’t help to settle anything. Let’s forget me and my spotted spinsterhood and get back to the question of this place. You know it’s doing Jake no good at all. If you don’t know, have a good look at him, next time you’ve a moment to spare. The question is whether you’re going to give it up and go somewhere else.’

  I had expected Elizabeth to break in long before this, but even now, when Stella stopped, she said nothing for quite a long time. It was so long that I began to wonder whether physical action had replaced verbal argument, and I ought to go in to prevent serious violence. I was in fact on the point of moving back to the gate when I heard the last sound I expected to hear at that point. Elizabeth was laughing. It was not hysterical laughter. On the contrary, it had a strong dash of theatricality about it. It was calculated and full of malice. Against all previous form, Elizabeth was in control of herself and, at least apparently, of the situation. When she had stopped laughing she said, ‘All right, my little spotted spinster, that’s torn it right up in little pieces, hasn’t it? You know that, don’t you? I’m not having you here any more after this. And if you think that’s not for me to decide, you’re quite, quite wrong, my sweet. I’ll decide it all right. I have decided. Nothing dramatic. I’m not turning you out bag and baggage this evening. But you can find some excuse to take yourself off tomorrow and then after a decent interval you can come back once more and collect your stuff. But not any more after that. Never
in any circumstances. And if you try to swing Jake on this one, you know what’s liable to happen, don’t you? Oh no. You’re going right out of our lives, little sister. You know it now you’ve done it, don’t you? Now get out of my way. I’ve got things to do.’

  There was nothing after that, nothing more said, no sound at all. The wind went on worrying at the corners of the house, and the sea pounded on the beach, and sucked the pebbles back, and pounded down again as it had done all day and God knows how many days before that. But inside the house no one said anything or seemed to move at all. I walked back round the skirting wall and in at the gate. I was half-way up the path when Stella came out of the side door into the hall and turned out of the open front door to meet me. She walked quite slowly. She had a book in her hand. It still had its jacket on, and I remember thinking I had not seen it before and she must have brought it down from London with her. She looked at me in a curious, calculating way, as if she was meeting me for the first time. She said, ‘Hullo, Jake. Been in the wood?’

  I nodded. ‘Our Dennis was there,’ I said. ‘He had some chaps with him. I kept out of their way and couldn’t see what they were up to. I hope he’s not up to anything. I don’t trust that man a yard.’

  ‘You can’t get hold of it yourself?’

  ‘No. I tried. He won’t sell.’

  She walked right past me and stood just inside the gate, staring reflectively across at the dark mass of the wood, which in this wind moved, altogether, so little and yet was never still. She said over her shoulder, ‘It mightn’t be a bad thing if he cut it down. Shall I suggest it to him?’

  I said, ‘Not if you don’t want a murder on your hands.’

  She nodded, and walked, still quite slowly, out of the gate and right-handed in the direction of the beach. I went on up the path and into the house. There was no one in the sitting-room on my right. I wondered where Elizabeth was, and then heard her doing things in the kitchen. She was moving about briskly. It sounded as if she was getting supper ready. I put my head round the door and looked in. She did not see me at first. She looked very cheerful and was humming to herself, very quietly. When she saw me she said, ‘Hullo, Jake.’ As with other things of no particular significance, it sounded exactly like Stella.