Dorothy Eden (11 page)

Dove answered unsuspiciously. “We came up three months ago when Mr. Blaine and his mother moved into the big house and sent that awful Bates couple away. Actually,” she said, “Tom, that’s my husband, doesn’t like it here much, but the money’s good and there’s nothing to spend it on, and we want to get some capital. I persuaded him to come. To tell the truth I think it’s the loneliest spot on earth, but I stay here because of trying to save some money.”

“Then you were the one who applied for the job?” Julia said.

“You mean, did I interview Mr. Blaine? Yes, I did. Tom would have made a mess of it.”

(Oh, Paul, did you hire Lily, too? With her seductive body. Then why bring me across the world like this?)

Julia was almost certain now that Dove, with her red hair and impetuous temper, was the one who had written the anonymous letters. If so, they were harmless enough, for Dove, tied to a dull husband, could not provoke much trouble. The thing was pathetic, really. The most disturbing factor was Paul’s weakness for attractive women. But perhaps these low round hills covered with their coarse snow-grass and brooded over by the chill mountains had frightened him with their loneliness, too. Now she was here, she told herself firmly, it would be different.

“What I came for,” she went on, “was to see if you could help me make some curtains. I’ve found some absolutely gorgeous material that’s never been taken off its roll. Old Mrs. Blaine must have bought it once and never got round to using it. It would make wonderful curtains for the living room downstairs.”

“I could cut them for you,” Dove answered. Her voice was not friendly yet, but it was a little less grudging. She was recovering from the embarrassing fact of what Julia might have overheard at the door.

“That would be wonderful,” Julia said. “Could you come over this afternoon? I thought I’d try to get them done while Paul is away. Lily might be able to help, too.”

But there Dove’s eyes flashed with contempt.

“Lily,” she said, “I would
hardly
think so, Miss Paget.”

Julia was left to read what she would into that remark. Was it Lily’s inefficiency Dove despised? Or was she simply jealous of her?

The material Julia had discovered was a heavy cream brocade decorated with fleurs-de-lis. It was rich and ornamental, and it gave Julia great pleasure to handle it and experiment with ways of hanging it. She tried to concentrate entirely on it, and not allow herself to brood at all on the small, disturbing facets of Paul’s character which were gradually being disclosed to her. Supposing she discovered that she had been in love with a person who existed only in her imagination? But that couldn’t be so. For she had that very precious letter to prove that Paul was really the man she loved.
You are my sun, moon and stars
… he had written.

So she knew that under Paul’s careless light-hearted exterior there dwelt that sensitive imaginative person who drew her to him as inexorably as tides to the moon.

Nita said she was useless with a needle. Anyway, she was not even politely interested in Julia’s plans, and sat curled up on the couch smoking interminably and watching with that scarcely veiled contempt in her eyes. (Why was she always contemptuous? Julia would not let herself fret about that any more than she would about Paul’s flirtatious habits.) Kate bustled about, and seemed on the verge, all the time, of proffering eager advice, but clearly Nita’s presence prevented her. Kate did not like being weighed down by grief. She would prefer to turn from it and pretend it did not exist. But Nita’s dark tense face constantly reminded her that life was not all the bright frothy thing Kate ardently desired. So she was unhappy and uncomfortable in the presence of her bereaved daughter-in-law. Kate did not face realities, Julia decided.

Dove Robinson proved to be surprisingly clever with a pair of scissors, and Lily, under instructions, moved the step ladder about and made measurements.

It should have been fun, Julia thought wistfully. But there were too many women in the room, and all of them were secretive. It was clear that Lily despised Dove as much as Dove despised Lily, and Nita was sardonically amused about them both. The conversation was limited to the commonplace. The only consolation was that Georgina was upstairs taking her afternoon nap so that one did not have her vague distracting remarks to cope with.

“The house needs more light,” Julia said energetically, tugging at the old faded red-velvet curtains that darkened the room to a constant twilight.

“You’re wasting your time,” Nita observed. “You’ll never get light into this house.”

Was that remark double-edged, as were most of Nita’s? The girl waved her cigarette idly, and said, “All those awful trees.”

“Oh,” said Julia, inordinately grateful for a simple statement at last. “But I plan to have a lot of them cut down. I intend to speak to Davey about it later.”

“Davey? What’s it got to do with him?”

Julia was aware of the sharpness of Nita’s voice. But before she could ponder over it, her tugging at the old hangings disclosed an enormous grey moth that flopped clumsily into her hair.

Julia promptly rumbled off the chair on which she had been standing and screamed, flapping her hands madly.

Kate rushed to her. “What is it, dear? Did you hurt yourself? Is it a spider?”

“No, it’s a moth. Ugh!” Julia was shuddering violently. “I can’t bear them. I have a phobia about them.” She began to laugh shakily as the moth, dazed and half dead, settled on the window sill and folded its wings shiveringly.

Kate expertly gathered it up and flung it on to the fire.

“You silly child! Is that all it was? I thought you had sprained your ankle, at least. I’m afraid you’re going to discover more than moths if you set about cleaning out this house.”

“Yes,” Nita said in her thin sardonic voice, “moths will be a mere trifle.”

It shouldn’t have been so unpleasant as it seemed. But suddenly Julia longed passionately for Paul’s gay presence to dispel this peculiar secretive atmosphere. I can’t cope, she thought, and in her head she began a letter to Uncle Jonathan.

“Paul has been a naughty boy, letting too many attractive women fall in love with him, and now they are taking out their jealousy on me. I can feel them hating me, even though they never say a word. I am afraid they are going to spoil things.…”

Then to herself she added, “I won’t let them! No, I won’t! I’ll show them they can’t do this.”

But the big gloomy room, covered now in a film of dust from the pulled-down hangings, was suddenly too much for her. She left the work in Dove’s capable charge (at least it was easy to see that she respected good material too much to ruin it from mere spite), and throwing on a coat went down to Davey’s cottage to ask him about cutting down some of the encroaching trees that shut out the sunlight.

There was no one at home. After knocking uselessly Julia turned the handle of the front door and went into the living room. She was sure Davey would not mind her waiting there for him. She would rock gently in the old rocking chair and look at the little dusky Canaletto that she was sure was an original.

Who was Davey? How did someone who owned a valuable picture come to be a shepherd on a lonely hill station? Why did Nita look interested at the sound of his name? Why had she imagined that Nita may have been down at this cottage last night when Timmy was crying? She was almost sure that Nita had not come to Heriot Hills merely to visit relations. Ah, no, that young woman would always have a solid purpose behind her actions.

Julia suddenly thought of the two dented pillows in Nita’s bed, and she began to rock violently, disliking the thought in her head so much that she tried to dispel it by movement. The rocking chair slithered a little on the polished floor, and she came up against the half-open drawer of the writing desk.

It was merely the corner of her eye that caught the name Paul written several times on a sheet of paper. She didn’t want to look closely. She could not bear to pry. She shouldn’t be in this room at all, after all it was Davey’s private place while he remained at Heriot Hills. But the name shouted at her.

Paul! Why was the name written several times, and in Paul’s handwriting, but a clumsy version of it, as if he had been drunk when he had done it?

Or had Paul written it himself, Julia wondered slowly. Davey Macauley with his self-contained air, his educated voice, his enigmatic eyes that always seemed to be mocking her? Who was he? Paul had met him casually and employed him without references on the rather flimsy and high-flown reason that Davey wanted solitude while he wrote a book Certainly there was enough paper strewn about to make it look as if he were writing a book.

But why this name written so carefully, a little better each time, the way an intending forger would practise a word?

It was all too much. Those women in the house with their malicious secrets had been enough, but that Davey, whose eyes always looked at her with mocking laughter should also be in some intrigue that she couldn’t understand was unbearable. She remembered the way he had thrown his coal round her and she had grown warm, the way he had put his hand reassuringly round her elbow and the tears sprang to her eyes.

At the same moment there was a thin wailing sound, and footsteps at the door. In one swift movement Julia pushed the drawer shut behind her and turned.

Davey stood in the open front door with a new-born lamb under his arm. For a moment it looked as if he were pleased to see her. He smiled in a wholly friendly way. Then his face grew deferential and he said,

“This is a surprise, Miss Paget. Did you want me for something?”

“Yes, I did,” Julia said confusedly. “I was thinking all those trees round the house that shut out the light—oh, but the poor little lamb!” she cried, coming back to reality.

Davey set the tiny skeleton-thin creature on the floor and looked up quizzically.

“Think you can save it?”

The lamb tottered on its weak legs and collapsed. Julia went down on her knees and felt for its mouth with her finger.

“Of course we can. Warm some milk quickly. I’ll get it to suck.”

“This will only be one of many,” said Davey.

“Oh, how dreadful! But even one is worth while. Don’t stand there. Go and heat some milk!”

Davey went and Julia heard him rattling pans in the kitchen as she let the feeble creature nibble at her fingers. It’s those mountains, she was thinking. That’s why I hate them. They’re the enemies of these small defenceless ones. They pour down the icy winds, and send the snow.

“What happens if there’s a snowstorm?” she called to Davey in the kitchen.

“We do what we can,” he called back. “The ewes should have been brought down into more sheltered pastures long before this.”

“Why weren’t they?”

I’m afraid you must ask Mr. Blaine that. I haven’t been here long enough.”

“Davey, is it true Paul doesn’t like farming?”

“What makes you ask that?”

“Oh, just something Tom Robinson said.”

“Perhaps he hasn’t settled down to it yet. He’s been away a long time.”

“But he did once,” Julia insisted. “When I knew him in England he was terribly homesick for this place. I remember all one evening—we were supposed to be dancing and having a good time—all Paul could do was talk about Heriot Hills. If he loved it like that, surely he must like farming. Why has he been away so long? Why didn’t he come back straight after the war, or at least straight after his operation? Because Dove told me that must have been done quite some time ago.”

“Why don’t you ask him?” Davey suggested.

Julia could make no reply to that. Already she was sorry for her impulsive questions. There was some peculiar thing about Davey that made her confide in him. It was embarrassing and unnecessary. She fondled the tightly curled greasy wool of the lamb until Davey came in with a bowl which he put on the floor. Then she encouraged the lamb to snuffle and splutter while she held her finger in its mouth in the warm milk.

Presently she said delightedly, “He’s sucking quite strongly. He’ll be all right. I must get a bottle for him. He’ll be mine. Can I have him, Davey?”

She looked up and saw the man’s long brown intent face above her. Suddenly that inexplicable warmth swept over her again.

“Who are you?” she said.

Instantly his face closed. He indicated the sprawled lamb.

“The badge of my trade,” he said lightly.

Julia knew that he would say no more. She knew, too, that she could never ask him about that handwriting in the drawer of the writing desk. Nothing would ever be said about it unless some eventuality… For a moment she closed her eyes, desperately hating even the thought. Then she pulled herself together and began to tell him calmly about the trees to be trimmed and cut down. From now on her association with Davey Macauley would be purely on a business footing. Because somehow she was afraid of letting it be anything more.

I
T WAS THAT NIGHT
that the moths were in her room. She turned back the sheet of her bed, and they fluttered drunkenly at her, half a dozen, she didn’t know how many of the hateful creatures, bumping into her face, slithering over her arms in a mad flurry of feelers and furry wings.

She was nearly demented. She screamed in an ecstasy of terror until Kate, Nita, and Lily came running. Kate instantly summed up the situation, and began flapping at the moths with the voluminous skirts of her negligée until they had all ceased to flutter.

“Goodness,” said Nita in her cool drawl, “you do have a thing about moths, don’t you.” She picked up one of the extinguished insects and carelessly flipped it out on to the balcony.

“Someone put them there,” Julia gasped.

“Where, dear?” asked Kate agitatedly. “Didn’t they come in the window? You should have it shut if you dislike moths so much.”

Lily, who was attired only in shapeless cotton pyjamas that yet could not hide the grace of her body, said, “It’s a bit early in the year for moths to be about. I expect we shook them out of all those curtains we took down today.”

“But why should they come up to Julia’s room?” Kate was almost as distressed as Julia. Her eyes seemed to implore Julia not to take the episode too seriously. “I think they have come in from outdoors. It’s very mild tonight. Julia dear, I think you need a sip of brandy.”