Dorothy Eden (24 page)

Julia glanced at Lily whose fair head was bent over a baking dish. She was beating a mixture vigorously, her voice above the beater was only a whisper, “It’ll all be wasted.”

Kate flung round, her little full-lipped mouth open, the flush high in her cheeks.

“Why do you say that?”

Lily neither answered nor raised her head.

“You mean the snow may prevent the wedding?” Momentarily her voice, extraordinarily, held hope. Then she shook her head and said, “It isn’t likely that my son will allow snow to defeat him. He’s a very determined person.” She smiled at Julia brightly, the fear naked in her eyes. “Isn’t he, Julia?”

“Where is Paul?” Julia asked.

“Oh, he’s had the crazy idea of going over to the Clarkes to see if their telephone is working. He has an urgent call to make, he says. It’s quite five miles. He’ll be worn out. Darling, don’t stay down at the cottage. It’s far too cold.”

“No,” Julia murmured, and went out into the snow.

Was it odd, she wondered, that both Paul and Davey had urgent things to do, that took them on long difficult journeys? Did the two facts tie up? But Davey’s journey, she suspected, was a blind. He would be in the cottage taking off his wet boots.

The wind had dropped, and the feathery snow drifted down, gentle as a caress. With rising excitement Julia observed the fresh footprints leading down the track through the orchard. She set her own feet in them, noticing that they were an easy distance apart as if someone had walked with short careful steps. They led right to the front door of the cottage. The door was closed.

Julia reached it and rapped sharply on it.

“Davey,” she called, “I want to see you.”

She waited a few moments. There was no sound or movement from within. From the back she heard one of the lambs bleating. She rapped again impatiently.

“Davey! I must see you.”

When there was still no answer she peremptorily turned the handle of the door. To her astonishment she found that the door was locked.

But the fresh footsteps leading in, the scuffed snow on the doorstep! Surely Davey was not childishly refusing to come to the door. She would soon settle that. Determinedly she plunged through the drifted snow to the back door. Under a lean-to the three lambs were tethered and bleating hungrily. The back door was shut. When Julia tried it she found it too, was locked.

The thing was ridiculous! She knew there was someone inside for the footsteps led in and had not come out again. Thoroughly angry and impatient, Julia began to call and rap at the windows. They were misted and half-snowed over. She could scarcely distinguish any object within. The living room showed her dimly Davey’s desk and the rocking chair. There was no fire burning. The room looked frozen and deserted.

Completely puzzled, she groped her way to the next window, that of Davey’s bedroom.

She didn’t mean to peer in. She was only going to stand there and knock on the glass. It was a movement within that arrested her. A slow movement, a dim white square shape rising slowly against the glass, then another following with the same deliberation.

The hands! The monstrous white hands!

Julia stumbled backwards, staring, filled with inexpressible horror. The hands! What were they doing in Davey’s room?

As she stared one of them moved in a grotesque beckoning movement. The cold within her was rising dizzily to her head, making her feel faint. Unable to shift her eyes from the window she took another step backwards blindly, and stumbled into a snowdrift. The cold entirely enveloped her and quenched the day.

G
RADUALLY OBJECTS BECAME CLEAR
again, the dark square shape of the bureau with its crocheted mats and long empty cut-glass perfume bottles, the carved bed posts, the rosewood chair with its faded tapestry seat, Timmy’s cot, the slightly open door of the wardrobe that hinted at the shadowy space within. Her wedding dress hung in there, like a white crocus just beneath the surface of the cold, black earth. Tomorrow…

Realisation came to Julia and she opened her eyes wide. She was in bed. How did she come to be in bed? She had thought she had fallen in a snowdrift, but here she was tucked up with hot-water bottles and there was a delicious warmth seeping through her weary limbs.

She had imagined it all, the locked doors of Davey’s cottage, the lambs bleating, the shadowy movement within and the grotesquely beckoning hands. It was a nightmare. Thank heaven for the blessed relief of that.

Someone moved at her bedside. She turned her head and saw Georgina’s tiny, stooped figure, wrapped in fleecy shawls, an angora rabbit peering and snuffling.

“Who pushed you in the snow?” she was demanding with malicious glee. “You should know better than to go out snowballing with Harry. He’s too mischievous.”

Julia started up, knowing that the nightmare was reality after all.

“No one pushed me,” she said. “I fell.”

“Ah, that’s what Nita said. All you women protect him. I can’t think why. It must be his wicked charm.”

“Now, Granny!” That was Kate’s voice, suddenly authoritative. “You’re talking nonsense again and disturbing Julia. She has to rest. She had a nasty accident.”

“What happened?” Julia asked. “I fell in a snowdrift. That’s all I know.”

“And you’d be there still if Lily hadn’t followed you down to the cottage. It was very wise of her. She thought something like that might happen. But you’ll be none the worse for it, Dove says. I’ll get Granny back to bed, and then I’ll bring you a sedative that Dove says you should have. She says you show symptoms of shock.”

“I must have fainted,” Julia said dully.

Kate leaned over the bed. For one moment she lost her determined briskness, and the unmanageable fear showed in her eyes.

“What made you faint, dear?”

Julia closed her eyes, fighting the waves of cold that were sweeping over her again.

“Was it something you saw?” Kate insisted in her low urgent voice.

“Harry’s being naughty again,” old Georgina declared with her impish satisfaction. “You should speak to him, Kate. You’ve spoiled that boy abominably. Paul was never like that.”

Kate, with an exclamation of impatience, seized the old lady by the arm.

“We know who’s being naughty,” she said. “I’ll be back in a moment, Julia.”

But it was Lily who stood over her a few minutes later, a steaming glass of milk in her hand. Her hair, Julia noticed, was draggled and wet, and her slanted eyes had a blazing look of excitement. She was a little out of breath.

“What a job you gave us, miss. You had passed out in that snowdrift. It was the cold that did it. I had to get Dove to help me get you up here. It’s a mighty lucky thing I went after you.”

“Why did you go after me?” Julia asked.

For the merest second Lily hesitated.

“Because just what I thought might happen did. I thought you’d get yourself into some sort of trouble.”

“Did you go into the cottage?”

“No, there’s nobody there. Davey went away early this morning to get the mail. He was expecting an important letter—”

“There was someone there,” Julia interrupted.

“Someone?” Lily repeated blandly.

“Yes. Or something.” She began to shiver violently. She tried to speak again, tried to tell Lily about the ghostly hands, but her teeth chattered too much. The words would not come out. And anyway Lily seemed to be smiling, a superior pitying sort of smile as if this poor little bride-to-be of Paul Blaine’s was a pathetic harmless creature after all.

“Drink this, miss,” she was saying. “It’s got a sedative in it. It’s what you need.”

She slipped her strong young arm beneath Julia’s shoulders and lifted her, at the same time putting the glass of milk against her lips.

“You’ve got nothing more to worry about. It’s all up,” she whispered.

Or those were the words she seemed to be whispering when Kate came flouncing in.

“What are you saying, Lily? What are you upsetting Julia about? Give me that glass. I’ll see that she drinks the milk.”

It seemed for a moment as if Lily were going to refuse. She flicked Kate a glance of utter contempt. Then, with a shrug of her shoulders as if the matter were not worth a thought she relinquished the glass to Kate and went out of the room.

Kate said, “There, there!” as if she were speaking to a child. That made Julia remember Timmy and she glanced agitatedly at his empty cot.

“Where’s Timmy?”

“He’s downstairs. He’s perfectly all right. Dove’s looking after him.”

Then suddenly Kate was leaning over the bed, her plump sagging little face not six inches from Julia’s.

“What did you see, dear? What made you faint?”

“Hands,” she said. “White enormous hands. I should know what they were. If I could think, I would know.”

But she could not think, beyond realising vaguely that the terror she felt was expressed in Kate’s face. Its two façades, the one of gay frivolity and the weeping mask of tears had both gone, and there was only the shrinking, trembling fear.

“Where were—these hands?” Kate asked.

“Against the window. Davey—But it
couldn’t
be Davey!”

“No,” said Kate, and suddenly her voice was quite lifeless. “What should enormous white hands have to do with Davey? Drink this, dear. It will make you forget.”

She tipped the glass compellingly against Julia’s lips. Julia took the warm milk slowly, swallow by swallow. Did it taste a little bitter? Who could possibly care?

“Paul?” she queried at last.

“He’s not back yet. He’ll come up the moment he returns. You sleep.”

The sedative Dove had put in the milk must have been powerful, because almost at once she was asleep, and when she awoke it was dark. Through the window, with its curtains undrawn, she could see that the sky was clear and a yellow moon was shining on the snow. The mountains were etched dazzlingly white against the scarcely darker sky.

It was going to be fine tomorrow, was her first drowsy thought. They would get to the church after all. Happy the bride the sun shone on…Even if the bride were surrounded by snow and wanted to weep because of the dreadful lonely purity of it.

Instinctively she closed her eyes to shut out the angular shining mountains, then opened them sharply at the sound of a footstep.

A flickering light shone on her face. For a moment she could not see who stood beyond it. Then Paul set a candle down and gathered her suddenly and violently into his arms.

A pain went through her head. The room tipped up and down, a pool of light and then a vast dizzy shadow. She was crushed and breathless. She thought Paul’s violent angry embrace would finally kill her. She had evaded falling off a broken balcony and dying of exposure in the snow only to be smothered by a too-passionate lover.

Bride by candlelight…
The words ran through her head and now at last it seemed as if her vague apprehension about them was becoming reality. For she caught a glimpse of Paul’s hand tightly over her breast and for a dreadful moment it seemed distorted, too large, too pale…A moment, and the flickering light showed her his normal square masculine hand with its gleam of golden hairs.

Then a low ironic voice from the passage said, “Come along, darling…” And at once Paul picked up the candle and went, leaving her in darkness.

She struggled up, bruised and still breathless.

“Paul! Kate! Where’s everybody? Somebody come! Oh, somebody come!”

It was Kate who came, a few moments later.

“I’m sorry, dear. I didn’t know you were awake. How do you feel now?”

“Better,” said Julia. “But as if I’m not quite here.”

“That’s the way you should feel. Now I’m going to bring you another hot drink and then you’ll sleep all night.”

“Not another,” Julia protested. “They make me feel too peculiar.”

“Ah, but you won’t be in the morning. You’ll be beautifully fresh and rested.”

Kate seemed sad and affectionate and almost motherly, Julia reflected, puzzled. She was dressed in a dark-coloured suit as if she were ready for the wedding now. Which was even more peculiar. But since she was being so kind one had to obey her instructions.

“Yes, I’ll need to be rested,” she said obediently. “I imagined I’d stay awake with the jitters all my wedding eve, but I expect this way is better. Spread my dress over a chair, would you mind?”

Kate hesitated. Then abruptly she opened the wardrobe and took out the dress and spread it over a chair. “There you are,” she said roughly. It seemed as if she were crying. Julia wanted to tell her that her own mother had died when she was still a child, and it was so nice to have Kate say goodnight to her on her wedding eve. But before she could do so Kate had left the glass of milk on the table beside the bed and left the room.

Julia looked at the dress dreamily. It was so lovely, so unreal. She would not be flesh and blood, but just a stiff and shining creation of M’sieu Lanvin tomorrow. Davey would not have tolerated her like that, she thought, still dreamily. He would have wanted her gay and alive and shabby…But this was for Paul…

It was only after she had drunk the second glass of hot milk that she began to think again of how, for a moment, Paul’s hand had seemed distorted, like that phantasmic hand she had seen through the window. And suddenly, in a panic, she thought, “I don’t love him. I never did love him. I can’t marry him tomorrow.”

She was asleep before she had begun to grow too overwrought, and it was in a dream later that she heard Paul’s voice saying in angry defeat, “I tell you, it was only because she was such a pretty thing.”

When she awoke completely at last it was morning, and the sun was shining.

Julia moved her limbs carefully. They felt a little stiff and bruised, but otherwise unhurt. Her head was clear, she felt wide awake and extremely hungry. She began to listen for Lily with her morning tea. The house was very still. She concentrated on thinking of Lily’s footsteps and the fragrant cup of tea, because she didn’t want those nightmarish things of yesterday to come into her mind.

It was her wedding day and the sun was shining. She climbed out of bed and went on bare feet to the window. Already in the warm clear spring sunshine the snow was melting. The snowgrass was emerging in dry burnt-looking tufts, the matagouri’s spidery thorns had broken clear. The trees surrounding the house were bowed with the weight of snow, and no longer obstructed the view across the low hills to the mountains. In the rising sun the high peaks were flushed a delicate, ineffable pink. They were like a blushing bride, Julia thought, and suddenly she was conscious of her bare feet freezing on the floor, and the cold enveloping her body.