A Hint of Witchcraft (25 page)

Marriage would be his salvation. It would give him an aim in life. Drifting from day to day was the very worst thing for a young man of his temperament. She had thought at one time that Miles himself was disposed to marry. Only a few months ago he had been so much more cheerful and active than he had ever been before. Of course, Frederick's death had been a great shock to him.

As for Miles, the duty to exert himself as host had at first been stimulating but as the evening wore on he relapsed into the dreamlike state that had become habitual. It was as if he moved alone against a background peopled by others with whom he felt no affinity: they were there, as the Greys often were, slightly more animated than the pictures on the wall but beyond his reach. Between himself and them no messages were interchanged from heart or mind. Half-a-dozen people substituted for those in the room would effect no change: he would barely notice the difference.

At ten o'clock the guests began to take leave. There was a general movement into the hall. They had their own cars. As a rule Chapman drove the Greys home though sometimes Miles took them in his own car so that Chapman need not leave his fireside again: he was getting on in years. On this occasion the Fenwicks naturally offered to take them.

‘How very kind!' Marian Grey looked round. Miles and Mr Fenwick had already gone out; of Linden there was no sign: she had gone upstairs for her wrap and had not yet come down. ‘I should be delighted.'

‘Miles will drive Linden home.' Mrs Rilston and Mrs Fenwick exchanged meaningful looks which Marian was careful not to notice.

Miles had gone out to see the guests off. His goodbyes were interrupted by a summons to the telephone to speak to his agent in Lancashire, who apologized for the lateness of his call and explained that he had that evening been in the company of a gentleman who had shown interest in Fothering Farm which was up for sale. Were there any special instructions if he should make an offer? It was good news.…

Miles was still at the telephone when Linden came slowly downstairs, wearing the white fur stole she had worn at Christmas. She smiled, with a little wave of her hand which he interpreted as a farewell. He nodded and gave his mind to the possible sale of Fothering Farm while Linden joined the Roberts and Gillings on the gravel sweep in front of the house.

‘Can we take you somewhere?' The offer was polite but unenthusiastic. Both couples lived a few miles away in the opposite direction from Elmdon.

‘Thank you. I mustn't trouble you. Miles will take me.'

She didn't mind waiting on the drive. The night was cool, but after an evening indoors she found its freshness pleasant and walked up and down, admiring her kid evening shoes and occasionally looking in at the windows. Minutes passed. Her loitering took her further from the front drive, beyond the light from the hall, along the unlit eastern side of the long façade. At the corner she turned to look back. The sound of the cars was now distant. Moments later, Bainrigg was lapped in the deep silence of a country house at night. Beyond this point lay the gardens and beyond them empty fields shrouded in darkness. In her light dress and white fur she was the only creature visible, mothlike against the dense background of the shrubbery.

*   *   *

Miles hung up the receiver as his grandmother passed on her way upstairs.

‘You are taking Linden, aren't you?'

‘Good Lord! Is she waiting?'

In the drawing-room, coffee cups and glasses had been removed and all the lamps but one switched off. He glanced into the other downstairs rooms and ran down the steps. The drive was empty of guests and cars. He went indoors.

‘She must have gone with the Fenwicks.'

‘Then I'll say goodnight, dear. Don't stay up too late.'

Miles went back to the drawing-room. He put logs on the fire, a record on the gramophone and lay back to listen. It was one of Chopin's nocturnes, No 8 in D flat major, his favourite. The limpid notes seemed to convey both the memory of lost happiness and yearning for its return. His mood was passive. Fate was unalterable: there was nothing he could do but bow to its implacable and arbitrary decrees. He entertained such thoughts but knew them to be self-indulgent and unsound. He genuinely suffered, but perhaps in the very depths of his being he felt, slight and ineffectual as a candle in a vault, a melancholy pride in his graceful acceptance of rejection, forgetting that what is never offered cannot be rejected.

He moved only to lift the needle when the gentle sounds ceased and to switch off the lamp, then lay back again, thinking of Margot. She had gone from him, become a half-forgotten dream, a beloved memory.… An hour passed and another. The silver chime of the French clock on the mantelpiece roused him. He must have slept. It was past midnight; the logs had burnt to white ash and the room was almost dark. Between sleep and waking he was vaguely troubled. Having thought of Margot, he had dreamed of her and in trying to recall the dream he was aware that it was not only the chiming clock that had roused him. Turning sharply, he saw a movement at one of the long windows. There was someone outside, a pale figure against the outer dark, a wraith pleading to come in.

His head cleared. It was no phantom but a woman leaning against the window. She raised her arm and tapped on the pane. He sprang to his feet.

‘Linden!' He pushed open the window, put his arm round her, lifted her over the low sill, switched on a light – and was flabbergasted.

‘Oh Miles. Thank God you're here.' She cringed, barely recognizable, shivering, dishevelled, cheeks streaked with mud and tears, one shoe gone, the velvet dress spattered and evil-smelling. In one limp hand she held the white fur stole, now wet with slime and earth-grey like the pelt of an animal drowned in mud. ‘I would have died if anyone else had seen me. You'll help me.' She burst into tears.

‘Come to the fire. Tell me – how has this happened? Where have you been all this time?'

Immaculate, elegant, poised, self-contained, she had made no impression on him at all. But now he was genuinely distressed for her. His heart warmed to her as it would to a stray kitten or a lost lamb.

‘I had to wait. I waited in the summer-house until all the lights were out. Until they'd all gone to bed. I didn't know what to do. I couldn't bear to let anyone see me like this and I would have stayed there all night, but it was so cold – and what would I have done in the morning?'

She had ventured out of the summer-house and had seen the faint light of the dying fire in the drawing-room, she told him, sobs shaking her slim body.

Disregarding the state of her clothes, he put his arm round her and stroked her wildly ruffled wet hair, his hands tender and comforting. She clung to him, ruining the corded silk lapels of his dinner jacket with her tears and muddied sleeves. He put her in a low-chair, replenished the fire, rubbed her numb fingers.

There were two men, she told him. They had come out of the shrubbery. No, she hadn't seen their faces: they had something on their heads so she hadn't really seen them at all. She thought they meant to kill her but no, they had not hurt her. They had hustled her through the gate into the field. One of them had pulled off her fur and thrown it into the ditch, a sort of pool of muddy water. She couldn't see it – it was too dark – but she could feel the mud under her feet and there was a horrid smell. Then suddenly, still without speaking a word, they had gone. She heard them running down the path, towards the bottom of the field.

She slid from the chair and crouched nearer to the fire, shuddering. It was an outrage – and on his own land. He had never been so angry or so deeply stirred to pity. Such compassion as he would naturally have felt for any creature ill-treated had never yet been roused by human need. To see the victim actually here at his feet, a girl entitled to his protection, a guest in his own house reduced to such a state; to see her tears and feel the softness of her cold hands; to be near enough to take her in his arms and stroke her hair; to burn with anger and the compulsion to help and comfort her – together roused in him a spirit altogether unfamiliar. Her very nearness was a revelation. The mud and tears and the pathetic small foot without a shoe moved him as no glamour could have done, and because he felt her weakness and dependence on him, he felt too his own contrasting strength. This was a situation he must – and could – handle.

‘You must have something hot.' He went swiftly to the kitchen. The fire there was never out; a kettle was still warm. He brewed a stiff rum toddy. Her hand shook so violently that he had to hold her and guide the mug to her lips.

‘They were not Ashlaw men,' he assured her. ‘None of the local men would dare do such a thing – or want to. They may have come from Fellside. I believe they have a rough lot there. It's probably too late to catch them but I'm going to ring the police.'

‘But they didn't take anything.' She indicated the gold chain at her neck, the gold bracelet on her wrist. ‘And they could have done. Please, you mustn't ring the police. I can't bear to have it known. I feel so humiliated. If I thought people knew about it I could never come here again.' Tears hung on her long lashes; her look of defeat was touching. His anger revived, but he understood that it would be folly to risk waking the servants, or worse still, his grandmother.

Linden drank the rum but went on shuddering as if she would never be warm again.

‘You'll have to get out of those clothes. I'll find something warm for you to put on and then I'll take you home.'

‘You're wonderful,' she said. ‘I'm so relieved and grateful that I could come to you for help. Just to have you here.…' The tears spilled.

If she had stayed out there much longer she might have died of cold. Even now she might go down with pneumonia not to mention the shock to the poor girl's nerves. He brought the copper hot-water jug from his room, a sponge and towel, and gently washed her face.

‘There, that's better.' The words and manner came instinctively from the forgotten world of childhood.

Back in his room he found sweaters, a warm singlet, the long socks he wore with plus-fours, a dressing gown and travelling rug. When he went down she had struggled out of her dress and was taking off her stockings. ‘Look. They're ruined.' She pushed away the unsightly pile of garments and once again dissolved into tears.

‘They can be replaced. I'll see to that – and your fur.' No one had ever called him wonderful before. ‘What happened to your shoe?'

‘It must still be there in the ditch. When they'd gone I tried to reach my fur and I fell.…'

‘Here, put these on. I'll help you.'

She stretched out a slim white leg. He knelt to ease the coarse sock on to her small foot, looked up, smiling at the incongruity and saw that she was beautiful, her eyes pleading and unhappy. Lovely and lost. The phrase pleased him. Lovely and lost and needing him. He drew her to her feet to pull the warm garments over her head, covering her bare flesh. It seemed quite natural to take her in his arms to kiss and console her. It was hard to let her go when she drew away.

‘We mustn't. I'm not.…' She drew his attention to her half-dressed state though there was no need. Unwillingly he helped her into the thick dressing gown and went to bring out the car.

She made no protest when, having wrapped her in the rug, he picked her up and carried her out. If she had, he would have ignored the protest, buoyed up as he was by a confidence he had never felt before. Never had he felt so completely master of his own house; never had he acted with such efficiency on someone else's behalf; never had he thrilled to the sight and feel of a woman's body close to his own, his lips on hers. At the wheel he drove with a dash and speed to match his mastery of the entire situation.

‘You've managed it so well,' she breathed, as they drew up in Gordon Street. ‘Oh Miles.' She lingered over his name. ‘I don't know why you have been so kind to me.' She raised her face to his again, her lips soft and tremulous. ‘So very sweet and kind. And I know I can trust you to keep our secret. No one else need know. Only you and I, dear Miles.'

The intimacy and secrecy intrigued him. To be drawn into closeness and relied on because of his strength seemed infinitely precious to one who had always been an outsider, incapable of measuring up to other people's demands as he imagined them to be. For once, thought was abandoned; he could only feel, the feeling as much for his own newly discovered self as for her.

‘You have a key?'

She had rescued her little silver mesh evening purse from the mud.

‘It was so pretty.' Her mouth drooped.

‘Don't think of it. Leave all that to me.'

He carried her to the door, held her while she reached to unlock it and set her down on the carpet at the foot of the stairs, smiling down at her – she was so frail and slight – when she turned to thank him again.

He had crossed the river on the outskirts of town when he remembered the bundle of sodden clothes on the back seat. He reversed, drove back to the bridge and dropped them one by one over the parapet; the ruined dress, the foul-smelling fur – the one small kid shoe.

*   *   *

At Bainrigg House, the maids shared the big attic. Its window was on the front of the house. The sound of a car engine long after the other three cars had gone woke Bella. Who could it be? She couldn't see the fingers of the alarm clock but it must be late.

‘What are you doing?'

She had roused Jenny by pushing open the casement to lean out and look down. The headlights were on and the engine was running.

‘Here. Just you come and look. It's them.'

Elsie also woke. The three crowded into the window, but as Bella said afterwards it was all done so quickly that the others were too late. She was the only one that saw Mr Miles carrying
her
to the car.

‘And she wasn't wearing what she was wearing at dinner, that's for sure.'