Dorothy Eden (5 page)

“Granny?” said Julia. “You mean Georgina Heriot?”

“Georgina Blaine. My late husband’s mother. Poor little soul, she’s very frail. Paul or Davey carries her up and downstairs. You’ll meet her tomorrow, but don’t be upset if she doesn’t know who you are. Her memory has gone. Now I won’t chatter any more because you’re asleep on your feet. Goodnight, dear child. And don’t get up in the morning. I shall bring you your breakfast myself.”

When she had gone, closing the door behind her, Julia could hear only the wind. It breathed heavily against the house, and forced itself through cracks in the window frames, so that the blinds moved in and out with a hooshing sound. The two candles set on the dressing-table wavered constantly.

Julia sat on the edge of the big bed where Kate had sat, and tried to think over the events of the day. She had had another of those stupid poison-pen letters, she had thought Paul had deserted her in Timaru, she had been cold and Davey had lent her his coat, Paul hadn’t recognised her in the enveloping coat in the dim light. Kate, in her satin nightdress and negligée, with her perfumed skin and waved hair, had been incongruous in the old dusty house, like a butterfly in a spider’s web. Paul had kissed her in a new way…

Julia’s lips softened as she thought of that kiss, and the tension went out of her. Someone had brought up her overnight bag and the bag that contained her wedding dress. It could have been no one but Davey, for only he knew about the wedding dress. (Was he being sympathetic at last?) She picked up the bag and opened it and took out the dress. Somehow it was her talisman. She could not bring herself to hang it in the dark cavernous wardrobe which looked as if it might hold spiders or moths, each equally repulsive to Julia, so she spread it over a chair, and she could see it glimmering there even after she had blown out the candles and was lying warmly in the enormous bed.

The house was dreadful, but it would be fun replanning it. She was glad she had come before it was done. This room she would have in yellow and white, because with all those trees shading the house one had to bring in an illusion of sunlight. It would be hers and Paul’s room, she thought, as she drifted into sleep…

She wasn’t quite sure whether she heard the voices outside or not, the fearful one that said, “Whatever was Davey up to, bringing her out like that? What are we going to
do?”

It was Kate speaking, although Julia had not heard her use that tone before. She knew that Paul answered, although he only made a “S-s-sh!” and then said something inaudible.

There was a tiny nervous ripple of laughter, then Kate spoke again. “Yes, I agree. She has a charming face. We could have had a
beautiful
wedding.”

There was the sound of tiptoeing feet. Without seeing anything, Julia knew that Paul had led his mother, with her anxious questioning, farther along the passage, out of her possible earshot.

It was much later that the fingers touched her face. She had been asleep and she thought it was part of a dream that the scrabbling tree branches outside had got into the room and were moving over her face. Then she became aware of breathing and she started up in the darkness, repressing a scream. The fingers, with their feel of dry twigs, drew sharply back. A voice whispered caressingly, “Harry’s wife! I’m so pleased you have come.”

“Who is it?” Julia could scarcely make the words audible.

But they were audible enough for her visitor to shuffle backwards quickly. Julia groped for matches. She found them at last and struck one. Instantly the draught from the ill-fitting windows blew it out. She had caught no more than a glimpse of the tiny dark figure that went out at the door.

She knew who it was, of course. It was the owner of that fleshless hand she had seen momentarily silhouetted against the window as she had arrived.

I
T WAS CHEAP MELODRAMA,
of a piece with the anonymous letters, she thought, and awoke for the second time to find that it was daylight and Paul, in his dressing gown, was sitting on her bed. She had the feeling that he had been there for a long time, and that he had been staring at her. For although he was smiling, his mouth soft and easy beneath the faintly golden moustache, there was still speculation in his eyes.

She sat up.

“Paul, who’s Harry?”

His smile stiffened. Did he hesitate for the merest second? “Harry was my brother. He died of pneumonia in Australia.”

“Oh, Paul, I’m sorry.”

“It was a great blow to my mother. He was only twenty-six, and he was her favourite son. She likes cities and lots of people and things happening, and so did Harry. If he were alive she would never have come to this place, as you can imagine.”

Julia thought of Kate’s fussy, feminine night things, and golden curls and perfume, so incongruous in this old tumbledown place. She was relieved by the simple explanation. She hadn’t realised that Kate’s out-of-character appearance had nagged at her so much as those silly letters she had been getting.

“She came when she heard about you,” Paul went on. “She knew you would feel strange coming to such a lonely place after a city life, and of course she was longing for a pretty daughter-in-law anyway.”

“That’s very kind of her,” Julia murmured.

“Oh, we’re all kind people,” said Paul lightly. He leaned towards her. She anticipated the feel of his lips and her blood began to stir. But suddenly he drew back.

“What made you ask about Harry?”

Some instinct made her hesitate to tell him. She had a queer feeling that she had to protect that strange little figure who had crept into her room last night. And what did she know of Paul, really? Had she learned that she could trust him?

For heaven’s sake! she thought impatiently. Paul’s the man I’m going to marry. Of course I trust him. Of course I shall have no secrets from him, except perhaps about those letters, which might hurt and upset him.

“Someone came into my room last night and touched me and said ‘Harry’s wife,’” she told him. “When I tried to light the candle she went away.”

“Oh, that would be Granny. She must have heard your arrival. She’s quite senile, poor old thing. I’m sorry you were frightened, darling.”

“I wasn’t frightened,” said Julia calmly. “But why did she say “Harry’s wife’?”

“For some reason she’s got it in her head that Harry is in the house. She’s been like that ever since she was told that he had died. The extraordinary thing is that he scarcely ever came here, anyway. But he was rather a charmer, that lad. Women remembered him. The old girl said he took after her.”

“She must have had her points,” Julia said. “There’s my Uncle Jonathan who isn’t a woman hater by any means, but he’s been faithful to her all his life.” Then she said softly, “Poor Paul.”

He looked at her questioningly.

“It can’t have been much fun having a brother whom everyone petted.”

His eyes twinkled with their confident mirth.

“I got by,” he said.

“I’m sure you did.”

The funny thing was that Paul had not had this confidence three years ago. Then his shy behaviour could have been that of someone who had been ignored for a more amusing and charming brother. Had Harry’s death given him the assurance he had lacked? That was not altogether a happy thought. More likely it was the maturing experience of the war.

But Julia had no time to be introspective about it, for now Paul’s arms were under her shoulders and he was kissing her very completely.

“Do you love me?” he demanded.

She nodded, her lips still held beneath his.

“You’re not going to let my brother’s ghost come between us?”

“Paul, how absurd! I didn’t even know you had a brother.”

He laughed, with a reckless air.

“It’s me, and me alone?”

“Paul, you are so silly. Of course it’s you alone.”

“How long have you loved me?”

She considered. “Well—a little that week we met, but you hardly ever wrote and I thought you had forgotten me. Uncle Jonathan used to say, ‘Haven’t you heard from that scallawag?’ Then”—her voice softened—“there was that absolutely wonderful letter you wrote me saying all those things.”

“It was rather a good letter, wasn’t it,” he said smugly.

“Oh, Paul, don’t tease. If you do I’ll think you didn’t mean the things you said in it.”

“You sentimental little goat! Falling in love with a letter. You know that I would have written long ago if it hadn’t been for my face.” He kissed her again, and this time his fingers were fumbling against her breast. As last night when he had become too intimate Julia felt a tremor of distaste running through her. Was she a prude, she wondered uneasily. She loved Paul, soon she would be his wife, surely this slight familiarity was not objectionable. It couldn’t be that she disliked his touch… She gently drew away from him, but made herself touch the scar running parallel with his nose, the nose she didn’t quite know. Or was it the mouth, untouched, uninjured, that she had least recognised? It was because this was a Paul she didn’t entirely know that the feel of his hands made her sensitive. In a day or two she would be at ease with him. For she understood completely what had happened. Not only had he had an injured face, but he had an inferiority complex induced by a younger and more popular brother. He had had to get one mended and the other out of his system. Now he was a different person, whole and sane and uninhibited. And after all wasn’t he the person who had written that beautiful tender letter?

“Well, you two lovebirds,” came Kate’s gay voice from the doorway. She was still in the peach-coloured satin negligée, and she carried a fray. She looked older by daylight, her little full-blown mouth at variance with the deep lines on either side of it, her hair a too-improbably pale gold.

“Julia, darling, you must be starving. I hope you like eggs for breakfast. Lily will be back later this morning, and then you can have what you please, but I find boiling an egg absolutely all I can do first thing in the morning. Now Paul, get off the bed and let me put this tray down. My God, isn’t this room a mausoleum! I think Julia is extremely charitable even to sleep in it.”

“Serves her right for barging in like that last night,” Paul said unsympathetically.

“Darling, how rude you are! Isn’t he, Julia? Personally I think it was tremendous fun having her arrive like that. Paul, should you be on that ankle?”

“It’s much better this morning, Mother. Mrs. Robinson is going to fix it later.”

“Is she? Julia, I’m warning you, you’ll have to watch this man. The women fall over themselves to do things for him. Mrs. Robinson will walk miles to put a bandage on his little finger, and as for Lily, she just goes gooey-eyed the moment he appears.”

Lily, Julia thought rapidly, had been away for a week because her mother had been ill. She could have been in Wellington two days ago, and in Timaru yesterday. Was she the poison-pen person? And who was Mrs. Robinson?

Paul grinned, his eyes almost wickedly confident.

“Julia will take care of all that, Mother.”

“Will I?” Julia murmured. Would she have liked him to be just a little less assured? But when he was used to his newly acquired confidence he would settle down to a more balanced state.

Before she went downstairs she began a letter to Uncle Jonathan.

“I am here, Uncle darling. I am so excited—” she hesitated. Then she wrote firmly, “—and happy. Paul is the same, yet different, excitingly different, and as he seems to be a popular young man among the women I shall have to watch myself to see that I do not become a jealous wife. His mother is a dear, too. She is tremendously interested in my beautiful trousseau—”

Julia paused again, remembering Kate opening the door of the wardrobe and then standing staring, her little ripe-plum mouth falling open with an expression that seemed to be not only admiration but dismay.

—and the sight of my wedding dress left her speechless. I am afraid I have upset their plans, as Paul wanted to be married quietly in Wellington as soon as I arrived, and Kate was going to have the house here renovated while we were on our honeymoon. I must admit I can’t help wondering why something wasn’t done about the house sooner, as they have known for three months that I was coming. However, it is rather fun seeing it in its original state, with all the furniture Georgina and Adam Blaine had. My room has a window that opens on to a balcony, and when I stand out there I can see through a gap in the trees all the way to the Southern Alps. The mountain air is icy, but all the same I shall go out on my balcony every morning and breathe it in until I get used to it. The climate in the South of France has made me soft. This house is in a very isolated position, and they say if there is a bad snowstorm it is quite cut off…

Julia stopped there, thinking of what it would be like to be shut up here alone with Paul. She threw down her pen, because suddenly she had an imperative desire to see Paul again. She had lingered long enough upstairs, anyway. The morning was slipping away, and there was still all the house to see.

She ran downstairs, then hesitated in the hall wondering where to look for Paul. He would not be far away, with that bad ankle. She was going to look in the library where she had found him last night when voices coming from the direction of the kitchen arrested her.

There was a woman laughing. There was Paul’s voice, and then the woman laughing again.

“Oh, go on with you!” Julia heard her say.

“My little dove!”

Dove! thought Julia indignantly. Dove, indeed! Here, probably, was the author of those stupid anonymous letters, here was the jealous woman who was afraid of losing Paul.

But she would play fair. She strolled casually towards the kitchen, humming.

The voices stopped. Paul called, “Is that you, Julia? Come and meet my nurse.”

In the kitchen Paul was sitting on a low chair with his leg outstretched. The bandage was off his ankle, and a buxom red-headed woman with sparkling green eyes was bathing the inflamed flesh.

Paul said, “This is Mrs. Robinson, Julia. She has the quite absurd name of Dove.”