A Hint of Witchcraft (28 page)

‘You never told me' – she trembled with the thrill of it, disregarding the odd way he had put it – ‘that you loved me.' Oh, she had been right to come. Why had she waited so long?

‘I was going to, longing to, waiting until it would have been the right time to tell you, hoping you might feel the same for me. I thought of nothing else. I had no idea then that I would have been too late.'

‘Too late?'

‘It simply hadn't dawned on me that there was an understanding between you and Lance, not until Linden told me that you'd always.…'

‘Linden told you that Lance and I…?'

‘He's a fine fellow. But I couldn't face being with you, knowing there was no hope for me. And then.… There's Linden. I felt sorry for her and I thought since there was no one else for either of us, we might.… Linden and I are engaged.'

Happiness drained from her so suddenly that it seared her from head to foot. Daylight seemed to have dimmed. She looked round in disbelief at sheep still browsing as if in mist on grass from which the green had faded. She understood it all: the cool lie, the successful ruse, his ignorance of women like Linden. But there were no women like Linden. Wherever she went someone must suffer. It was as if she darkened the air and filled the surrounding space. Nothing was safe from her as Katie in her simplicity had known from the beginning.

She shivered, her eyes dull with misery. She and Miles should never have met. Their ways had crossed, that was all. She would say nothing: there was nothing to be said. He need not know how she suffered. An unfamiliar pride held her rigid.

‘Margot.'

The stupor left her. She turned and walked away. The walk became a frantic run.

‘Margot. Please.…'

She fumbled with the wicket gate and was gathered into the merciful shade of the trees. For the rest of her life she would remember his voice calling her name: remember that she had not looked back or spoken a word of comfort or reproach. Still running, she stumbled over a tree root and into the arms of Lance. In her distress there was no room for surprise that he was there. He set her on her feet. She shook herself free and they walked homeward.

‘He told you?'

‘You knew?'

‘Yes.'

‘He thought you and I were in love, or engaged or something.'

‘Did you tell him that it wasn't true?'

‘No, I didn't tell him. He should have known that it isn't true.'

Presently as the ice that gripped her melted, she began to cry. Silently Lance handed her a handkerchief. She took it without a word, unaware that the man at her side was only a little less unhappy than the one she had left.

*   *   *

When Margot left him he stood for a while clutching the leaflet, the camera slung over his shoulder. He watched as the wicket gate closed behind her and the green she was wearing merged with the green of leaves and mossed boughs. To turn away had the finality of an execution. He glanced unseeing, at the leaflet. There had been awe and rapture in her voice as she spoke of music coming from the air, if one waited.

If only she had stayed away! If only she had not burst in upon him again, bringing a flood of light when he had been almost content to make his way in semi-darkness. Terrible as the past few minutes had been they were only a prelude to the future he faced: a lifetime to be spent with Linden Grey. A glimpse of Margot – it had been no more – had clarified his view of Linden. Knowing that Margot's emotions were not involved, he was puzzled by her reaction. Was it anger – against himself – against Linden? He remembered that Alex had been in love with her and had suddenly gone away. But his own situation was sufficiently grievous to occupy all his thoughts. His head ached; his temples burned; he felt physically ill.

He moved at last – not to go home, he never wanted to go there again – but towards the wicket gate. There was just a possibility that she might come back. But if she did, what good would it do? What could he say to her? What could he say to Linden? He was finding it hard to think clearly or to single out each problem and confront it rationally. Later, perhaps.

He had gone to the gate. Behind him fields lay open to the sky: it was high and clear, with no more than a wisp of white cloud to mar the blue. A perfect day for flying. For leaving it all behind? In sudden weariness he leaned on the gate. It was restful to trace between boughs vistas of green and grey. In all the intricacies of light and shade there was nothing harsh, nothing urgent, nothing clear-cut to rivet the gaze. Not until the woman came.

He was first aware of movement between the trees, the tread of foot on fallen leaves. Then he saw her, a tall woman dressed in brown or black. She was walking steadily and quickly. He undid the latch and opened the gate to let her pass. But she came up to him and stopped. She was bareheaded, her hair done in a coronet of twisted plaits; a gaunt-faced woman, unsmiling. He remembered having seen her at Langland Hall.

‘Mr Rilston, sir?'

‘Yes.'

‘I was coming to see you. There's something you ought to know.…'

It didn't take long to tell him and when she had done she did not linger but went quickly back the way she had come. Here and there a larch bough quivered and she was gone. The quiet had never been more intense. He turned his back on the wood, on its green depths and voiceless mystery, its capricious changes of light, its endless variations of shape and colour, and looked up with confidence at the day's unclouded blue, its brilliant clarity, its emptiness of people.

So – he had been right after all. For once in his life he had been right, no matter what a mess he had made of things afterwards. He was happy – as if eased of a burden – all the happier for having learned how transient a mood it was, how rare, how fragile. There was only one way to avoid its inevitable decline into misery. There wasn't much time. At any minute doubt, self-hatred and bitter regret would come crawling back.

He smiled, remembering her delight as she came out of the shade into the sunlight – delight at having found him there – and how she had stood, feet among the daisies, head in air, as if waiting to hear the airborne music he had promised. It must end on a high note. The thought pleased him. He went quickly back to the house. There was nothing he needed. He got into his car and without a farewell backward glance drove off to Howlyn.

CHAPTER XXI

The day was warm, a spring day with all the features that poets love: blossom, bird-song and the indescribable sweetness in the air that seems both new and long familiar. Seated on the base of a vanished column in the south transept, Margot had her back to the priory wood. She used to look that way, hoping he would come.

The thrush in the cherry tree stopped singing and presently the blackbird on the gatehouse piped a few tentative notes. They had both preferred blackbirds. Miles said that thrushes were classicists, formal and self-assured, whereas blackbirds were romantic, striving after the unattainable, She had agreed; and now the plaintive phrases of a song left unfinished were as sad as they were sweet.

What had possessed her to leave him like that without a word? He had called after her and she had left him desolate with only a few more hours to live – and then no life at all. There would have been time to go back and find some way – some words – to make things better. It was too late now.

Since she had heard the news two days ago she had been tormented by the thought that in leaving him like that she had driven him too far. They said there had been mist and low cloud over the Cumbrian mountains and although he was more than competent, he was not yet used to sudden changes in visibility. If he had intended never to come back, he had left no sign, no message. Yet, she felt in her heart that he had meant it to happen, that life had been too much for him to manage alone. He was not equal to its awful realities.

She heard the back door of the Hall open and close. Toria was coming through the garden and up the hill to find her. There was no escape. In Toria's movements there was always a relentless quality. She came near and stopped, deliberately, as if the purpose of her entire life had been to arrive at that spot and at that time. She had something in her hand. The post? She must write to Alex. He would be devastated by the news. Being so far away made things worse. When the news of their mother's death had reached him he had gone out into the bush alone and, as he wrote ‘got through it somehow'. As he grew older his language was becoming simpler.

Toria sat down on a portion of what was left of the south wall. There was no barrier between them. When Ewan brought the news, Margot was alone in the house and it was Toria who told her. She had little to say but she had supplied a rock-like reliability that was better than sympathy.

‘This is for you,' she said, when she had sat for a while without speaking. She indicated the object she held but didn't part with it. ‘Mr Rilston asked me to give it to you.'

‘Do you mean Miles?' There was no other Mr Rilston. There was now no Mr Rilston at all. The long line had come to a sudden end on the grey screes of the mountain above Wastwater. ‘How could that be when he…?'

‘I went to see him.'

‘When?'

‘Just after you saw him.'

She had set off for Bainrigg before Margot did and with the same intention, to see Mr Rilston. The news of his engagement had alarmed her. She had been wrong in waiting instead of speaking to him when Ewan first told her of Miss Grey's intentions. It might now be too late. Hearing Margot at some little distance behind her in the wood, she had diverged to a higher path and waited there – it was not long – until Margot came back and was met by Dr Lance.

‘Why did you want to see him?' Margot had listened with growing anger. ‘What possible reason could you have?'

‘There was something I thought he ought to know.'

‘You thought! You don't mean…?' Surely there was only one thing Toria was in a position to tell. ‘You promised not to tell. Didn't you realize that it would distress him? In fact you may have been responsible for.…' She stopped just in time. ‘I had grieved him enough. If I had behaved differently he might have been happy – it couldn't have been for long.'

‘You're wrong about what I had to tell him. I promised not to, didn't I? In any case I don't want those words nor even her name ever to pass my lips again. It's not for me to wreak vengeance on her. That's in higher hands. The truth about her will come out in time without another word from me, and from what I hear it's coming out already.'

Margot's brief anger left her. Toria's interference was preposterous, whatever form it had taken, but she had had good reason to resent Linden who had been responsible for her relapse into vagrancy. Burdons' had been the only home she had: no wonder she bore a grudge. Except that there had always seemed a peculiar intensity in her resentment as if from some other unknown cause.

She herself had now cause for even deeper resentment. Grieving for Miles, she had been mercifully free from thoughts of Linden as if subconsciously avoiding the latest demonstration of her baneful influence, the most cruelly effective of her lies. Now, to be reminded of her was to feel unable to think of her as a normal, if flawed, human being. But what else could she be? With a tremor she recognized as superstitious, Margot turned with relief to Toria whose humanity was not in doubt.

‘You had something else to tell him?'

‘It was for your sake, to bring you and him together again. I knew he could not love her: I knew her too well for that. She had inveigled him as she nearly did Mr Alex. What I did was for the best but I judged wrong. I grieve for it. The only comfort is that with her there would be only misery for him. But it doesn't do to interfere in people's lives. We're all in higher hands.'

It was a lesson Margot too was beginning to learn.

‘What I told him made him happy, I do know that.' Toria's whole aspect had softened. ‘But what it may have led to – I don't know. I told him you loved him.'

It was outrageous. No one else in the world would have behaved in such a way. Margot's indignant protest would have been justified but not for the first time Toria's ability to sweep aside the trivial silenced her. Toria dealt only in essentials whether lofty or base.

‘It was true, wasn't it?'

‘Yes, it was true.'

‘When I said it, his face lit up. He was suddenly at peace. “I understood that there was someone else”, he said. “No”, I told him, “only you”. I haven't often seen happiness in a man's face, much less been the one to bring it, but I saw it then. “If only I'd known”, he said. “If only I'd been sure”. Then when I was leaving him he said, “I have nothing to give her – except this”. He took it out of his pocket. “Give her this with my dearest love”.' Toria held out the envelope. ‘I waited to give it to you. You haven't been wanting to see anyone.'

‘It's a roll of film.'

And when, a few days later, Margot opened the packet of photographs, she saw again the gate by the ash tree where they had parted for the first time; the stone-pit full of last year's flowers; the priory ruins taken from the edge of the wood. (He had come as far as that.) She kept them to herself until she felt calm enough to show them to Toria.

‘And this one of you, Miss Margot. It's the most beautiful photograph I ever saw in my life.'

‘He never saw it.'

‘But he saw you looking like that. Looking at him like that.'

Had he understood that it was love for him that made her look like that? In the moment of meeting she had felt the thrill of pure happiness in loving which no other thrill can equal, and had seemed to see it mirrored in his face. And that was all: the recognition of mutual love instantly doomed. Such ecstasy could not have lasted but need it have been so brief, so ruthlessly ended in the absolute finality of death?