A Hint of Witchcraft (20 page)

He didn't mind. Company would ease the monotony, not to say the slightly depressing business of sharing the long table with his grandmother. He must rearrange things now that he was to be more at home. The small sitting-room could be converted for use as a dining-room when there were just the two of them. And later, when Margot joined them.…

It was of Margot that he was thinking as he went downstairs – when was he not thinking of her? – and it was as friends of Margot that he thought of the Greys. He had barely remembered Mrs Grey. He had met Linden at the Humberts several times: had danced with her two or three times and had found himself entertaining her to lunch here one day last summer. He knew that Alex was in love with her. Odd that he should have gone off to Africa.

The ladies were speaking of the Humberts as he went into the room. He heard the name – was aware that the voices were subdued – sensed bad news even before his grandmother spoke.

‘There you are, dear. We have just heard such very sad news from Langland Hall. Sit down, dear. I know it will upset you. Mrs Humbert has died. Late last night.'

‘A very dear friend. We were at school together. However will he manage without her?'

‘The removal must have been too much for her. I understand she had been ill ever since they left Monk's Dene.'

He heard the voices, reverent, concerned, vibrant with interest, with only one thought in mind: he must go to Margot at once – as soon as he could get away, but he was drawn in the wake of the ladies to the dining-room. He had already kept them waiting. He was genuinely shaken by the news. Mrs Humbert, still youthful, had seemed to him all that a mother should be: kind, loving with a quiet humour – all qualities she had passed on to Margot. Would her mother's death delay his plan to propose, marry her if she would have him and bring her as soon as possible to Bainrigg, or – anxiety gave way to a thrill of excitement – would the prospect of an early marriage be all the more acceptable? Not immediate, naturally, but in a few months. She could not be left on her own at the Hall, some arrangement would have to be made. How soon would it be decent to speak to her father?

At dinner nothing else was talked of. Absently he was aware of their voices – sympathetic, speculative, mournfully absorbed and passionless. Two voices. Linden, never talkative, dined like him in silence. He had never heard her say anything of interest. He knew the sound of her voice but could attach to it no memory of anything she had ever said.

But when Linden did choose to speak, she did so effectively.

‘A very sweet-natured girl, I remember.' Mrs Rilston was speaking of Margot whom she had seen once, years ago.

‘Margot is sweet to everyone,' Linden said. ‘She will make a wonderful doctor's wife. Lance Pelman is a very lucky man.'

She smiled, a charming smile suitably modified in the circumstances by sadness.

*   *   *

For a few minutes he must actually have lost consciousness and revived to find the scene unchanged: china, fruit, flowers were as they had been before the anguish seized him. He was troubled by a loss of direction: an explosion had shattered his entire being and yet he was still aware that in the distance people were talking about the disaster with quiet interest, with kindness, as if the subject were a pleasant one.

‘Is it an engagement?'

‘I don't think so. Not yet. He's not in a position.… An attachment. They have always been close from childhood … so much at ease together.… I felt it from the first.'

‘… a comfort to her now that her dear mother is gone.'

‘… a dreadful loss. She will be heart-broken.'

‘But in other respects she is so fortunate. I have envied her a little. What must it be like to have father, brother and sweetheart all doting on one and giving the security every woman needs?'

‘They may marry soon. It won't be suitable now for him to be at the Hall as if it were his home.'

At first it was not the full realization of his loss that overpowered him, that would soon come and would never leave him, it was shame for his own dense stupidity that he found almost unbearable. To have blundered into a situation with such insensitivity was like staking a claim on territory in total ignorance of the landmarks, not knowing the language and incapable of reading the signposts. What had he been thinking of – a man who knew nothing whatever about women, who barely remembered his own mother, a man without friends, a clodhopper in human relationships? He had actually believed.… ‘She is sweet to everyone.' He had had the presumption to imagine that the sweetness was for him alone.

Whereas from the beginning it had been little more than the kindness she felt due to a lonely stranger, a guest. She had found him stranded in the hall and had rescued him, talked about wireless sets and music – and years later had persuaded him to act as first-foot, still wanting to encourage him and draw him, an outsider, into the hospitable warmth offered to every visitor. He had seen it as a special quality in their relationship because it was the only one he had known. It was over. There would never be another. Loneliness was his lot. He saw himself deluded by hope: a traveller lured by a glimpse of
ignis fatuus,
then left to stumble on in the dark.

Thank God he had been saved from embarrassing her. In a frenzied moment he could almost have been grateful for his grandfather's death: it had prevented him from rushing to take her in his arms as if confident that his embrace would be welcome, when all the time she belonged to someone else. He felt physically ill, robbed of all comfort. He could bear neither to remember the times they had spent together nor to face a future without hope. As for the present.…

‘Will you excuse me…?' Pride came to his rescue. With an effort he got to his feet, murmuring something about having business to attend to.

‘He looks tired,' Marian said with concern.

‘A long journey … tiresome business. He is so careful of every detail. Punctilious like his father.'

He caught the word as he closed the door. It was true that he had been punctilious in not making love to Margot. That was the one unregrettable thing. What could have induced him to think that she cared for him? How presumptuous, arrogant, inept was it possible for a man to be? All the old diffidence she had helped him to overcome, all the old sense of being an outsider, revived with such force that he would gladly have died. Racked as he was by every disquieting thought a fertile mind could conceive, one thought escaped him: not for an instant did it occur to him that it might not be true.

The house was unbearable. He must have rushed out in desperation and found himself on Beggars Way without knowing how he had got there. As he passed the stone-pit he was for a moment soothed by the memory of Margot's presence there, only to suffer the realization that they had lingered there for the last time. But he went on walking in the direction of Langland, instinct drawing him there because every other place now seemed to exclude him.

For once the quiet of the wood, the subtle changes of light and the cool fragrance of the air meant nothing to him. Instead he remembered their conversation about Lance. ‘I suppose that's rather wonderful,' she had said, speaking of his sense of purpose. Even then he had been blind to the implications. He remembered, too, that he had seen her in Lance's car – and a particularly malicious quirk of memory brought back an incident when he had first seen them at the War Memorial. For some reason Margot was crying and Lance handed her a handkerchief. Neither had spoken, there was no need; they were so close.

Torn between the need to cut himself off from her forever and the longing to see her again, he walked with such speed that he was soon within sight of the priory. The rapid movement had had a stimulating effect. Was there any harm in telling her, now that it was too late, that he had loved her and had not known that it was Lance she loved? A faint hope stirred. Perhaps after all she would tell him that he had not been mistaken.…

From the gatehouse he looked down on the Hall. There were several cars. Distress had dulled his perceptions: he should have foreseen that there would be visitors. Alex and his father had been quick to come to him when his grandfather died. Ought he to pay his respects as friend and landlord and offer help?

As he hesitated, a taxi wound its way up the long drive. Margot had seen it, had perhaps been watching out for it, and went quickly down the steps to meet the visitor. It was Lance, obviously come hotfoot from Glasgow after receiving a telegram. They stood close. He put his arm round her and they went indoors.

Miles turned and walked slowly back, through the ruined priory and into the green solitude of the wood.

CHAPTER XV

Margot came out of her mother's room and closed the door. She did it noiselessly and crept across the landing without a sound. The habit had grown on her in response to the overwhelming silence now that her mother had gone; to the emptiness of her room: the emptiness of all the rooms. The merest tap of a heel on the polished floorboards might raise an echo. Even a whisper would disturb the stillness that occupied the house from roof to cellars.

At the top of the stairs she paused, as if to go down would be too significant an act to be taken without thought. It was mid-morning. The task she had set herself – except that it had come upon her without her conscious intent like everything else in this time of passive waiting – was completed. All her mother's things had been taken care of: sorted, washed, ironed, brushed, labelled and put safely away according to the need of each precious object. In time, the clothes would go where they could give comfort to the needy, but the rings, watch, necklaces, locket, work-basket, letter-case, pen and all the trivial things a woman feels unable to throw away, together formed a legacy of memories to be cherished for a lifetime. She had found letters from Alex, only two of them from Africa. He had presided over a native dispute involving a cow: he had shot a wildebeeste and wished that he hadn't.

She went slowly and quietly down and stood with her back to the newel post, inactive, not even wondering what to do next. Presently she would be mechanically impelled to do something and must wait until the impulse came. She heard the distant metallic ring of a saucepan lid, the eerie crowing of a cock. Someone had opened the windows. It was July, the weather perfect. Faint recollections of how one behaved and what one did on perfect summer days came and went. What did one wear? Without looking down to see, she didn't know what she had on. Not black. Her mother had said more than once, ‘If anything happens to me, for goodness sake don't wear black.' As a girl she had spent years in black for dead relatives, one after another.

The dining-room door was open. Margot could see straight through the room and beyond the window to the flagged terrace where two people were standing in conversation, their backs to the house. Ewan Judd and Toria Link. For some reason it had been necessary to worry when those two were together. Was it still necessary now that her mother was dead? It was also, confusingly, supposed to be a good thing that those two got on well together. Conscious of a lack of sequence in her thoughts about Ewan and Toria, Margot looked to her right. The study door was also open. Her father would be at his desk. He was always there.

The desk, placed cornerwise with the window to the left, was covered with a disorderly mass of papers. He sat, head bowed, unmoving.

‘Margot.'

She went and put her arm round him. He laid his head on her shoulder.

‘You're my one comfort now,' he told her. ‘What would I do without you? I've made such a mess of things. What can we do? You can't be expected to live like this.'

They had talked everything over, several times. It was worse for him, she thought, he blamed it all on himself: her mother's illness, Alex's absence from home. (‘He didn't take to this place,' Edward said, unaware of Alex's reason for leaving.) She grieved for him with the bewildered feeling that their family, compact, strong and secure had fallen apart. He didn't know that it was not his fault. Her conviction that it was Linden who had set in motion the whole sad train of events had sunk too deeply into her mind to be easily uprooted.

It's worse for her, he thought. Without Sarah, without Alex, no neighbours apart from the two families in the cottages, Lance banished except for daytime visits and at present taking a midwifery course in Glasgow. He was missing Lance.

‘We must pull ourselves together,' Margot said. It had become a weary joke; they had made it their slogan. ‘Let me help you with all this stuff.'

They made a little progress. She was too apathetic to do more than make lists and put papers into separate piles. She had already gathered that there was need for economy and was aware that amid the welter of papers there were more bills than receipts.

Even before Sarah's death, Edward had realized that his plans for Langland must be curtailed. To do him justice, he could not have foreseen the collapse on Wall Street in three months' time and the subsequent Depression. As a result mines would be closed and the shipping company on which his personal income depended would come near to collapse owing to the reduced demand for pit-props.

He was not without capital but it must remain safely invested. Fortunately he would be able to extend his work as a consultant: closures raised almost as many problems as working pits. He had the advantage of experience at a time when fewer young men were training as mining engineers and he would never be short of work, but it was work that would necessitate his being a good deal away from home. They must remain at the Hall until the lease expired. He was already doubtful as to whether he would renew it.

In future he would be dealing with young Rilston. It was too soon to discuss future plans with him. It occurred to him that they didn't see much of Miles these days. Well, naturally, they couldn't have young men calling at will now that Margot was alone. Something must be arranged. A housekeeper-companion? Did such a creature exist, a sort of hybrid like a mermaid?