Ivy Tree (29 page)

He laughed. "Professionally speaking, I'd say it all depends if they were abandoned long enough ago. If a thing's old enough, it's purged, I suppose, of all die nastier wreckage—-like the rusty iron, and that old boot there; and can you tell me where in the world that pram can have come from?—like finding a nice clean skeleton, instead of a decaying body."

"For goodness' sake! You give me the creeps. Did you bring me here to show me a body?"

"No." He pointed down through the water towards one of the slanting slabs of stone that showed like a buttress shoring up the side of the pool. "Do you see that bit of rock?"

"The one that's lying on a slant? Yes. It looks as if it had been shaped, doesn't it? Such a nice, regular oblong."

"It has been shaped." Something in his voice made me look at him. He said: "Look at it again. Don't you see the marks?"

I peered down: "I... think so. I can't be sure. Do you mean what looks like a sort of rough scoring, diagonally across the block? That's not artificial, surely?"

"I think it was. Those marks would be sharply scored originally; chisel-marks. That block's been under water a long time, and even still water will smooth out a stone surface, given time." I stood up and looked at him. "Given time?"

"I don't know how long, because I don't know when this part of the quarry was flooded. But those stones down there were quarried about two thousand years ago."

"Two thou—" I stopped short and said, rather blankly: "You mean the Romans?"

"That's my guess. About two thousand years ago they opened a quarry here. Later, possibly much later, the 'white scar' among the woods was re-opened and worked again. Perhaps the Roman workings were already flooded; at any rate, new ones were started, and the original ones left to the weather. And now, this year, with this dry spring, and the drought, the water-level sinks a couple of feet just when I chance to be poking about in this part of the world, and I see the stones. That's how things happen."

"Is it—is it important? Forgive me, I'm terribly ignorant, but what does it tell you, apart from the fact that they got building stone from here, for the Wall?"

"Not for the Wall. Hardly, when they were driving that along the whin sill anyway. They quarried the stone for the Wall on the spot."

"For the fort at West Woodburn, then? Habitancum, where you're working?"

"The same applies. There's stone there. They dug the local stuff whenever they could, of course, to save time and transport,"

He seemed to be waiting, eyeing me in amiable expectation. It was a moment or two before the very simple conclusion presented itself.

"Oh! Yes, I get it. But, Donald, there's nothing Roman hereabouts, is there? At least, I've never heard of anything, and surely, if there were, the one-inch map would have it marked?"

"Exactly," said Donald.

I stared at him stupidly for a moment or two. "I... see 1 You think there may be something? Some Roman work that hasn't been found yet?"

He pushed his pipe down into a pocket, and turned away from the water's edge. "I've no idea," he said,

"but there's nothing to stop me looking, is there? And now, if you're ready, I'll be taking you down to Whitescar, and then I'll get along to see Mr. Forrest, and ask his leave to go poking around in his policies."

I cannot get to my love if I wad dee,

The water of Tyne runs between him and me.

North Country Song.

WHEN we got to the farm, it was to find a slightly distracted Lisa watching for me with some tale of disaster that involved a cream trifle, and Tommy, the black and white cat,

"And I'll wring his neck if he comes near the dairy again," she said, violently for her. I said mildly: "We've got to remember he's eating for eight."

"Nonsense," said Lisa, "he had them days ago. Oh, I see what you mean. Well, even if he is feeding seven kittens, and let me tell you if only I can find them I'll drown the lot, that's no excuse for taking the whole top off the trifle I'd made for your Grandfather's birthday dinner."

"Just a minute," said Donald, "no doubt I'm not just at my best today, but who has taken the trifle?"

"That beastly Tommy."

"The black and white cat? The fat one I—the one who was in to tea the other day?" Donald liked cats, and had made friends with them all, even the little half-wild tortoiseshell that lived like a wraith under the hen-house.

"That's the one. And not so fat either, now he's had his kittens, but after half the trifle and a pint of cream—"

I said helplessly, seeing Donald's expression: "It's all right. Nature has not suspended her laws, not yet. Everyone was wrong about Tommy—except that marmalade brute from West Lodge, at least I suppose it was him, because now that Tommy's unmasked he's the only torn for miles. Oh lord, I'm getting muddled too. And poor Tommy's figure wasn't due to incontinence—at least, not of the kind we thought; it was just kittens. Seven of them."

"And Annabel saw them in the loft, and didn't tell me till next morning, and by that time the brute had shifted them, and he's too fly to let us see him going to feed them." Lisa slapped a basket down on the kitchen table.

"You wouldn't drown them all? All?" Donald spoke in the carefully non-committal voice of the man who would sooner die stuck full of arrows than seem to be soft-hearted over an animal.

"I certainly would, and Tommy too, if he gets in the dairy again."

"You can't change a personal pronoun overnight," I said apologetically, to Donald. "I'm afraid Tommy won't even decline to Thomasina. He'll be Tommy till the end of his days."

"Which are not," said Lisa, "so far distant, though even I have not the heart to have the brute put down, and leave those wretched kittens to starve to death somewhere. But if I find them before they're too big, they'll certainly have to drown. Did Mr. Seton say he was going over to West Lodge now? Annabel, would you be an angel and go across with him as far as the gardens, and get some strawberries? I rang up, and Johnny Rudd said he'd keep them for us. They should be ready, so hurry back, if you don't mind; we'll have them all to pick over."

Something must have shown in my face, for I saw her recollect herself for the first time for days. She must have forgotten that I had not yet been across to the gardens.

I saw her eyes flicker with a moment of calculation, and then she turned to Donald, who spoke first. He must have seen something too; he saw more than one thought, I reflected; but of course he put my hesitation down to simple physical causes.

"Annabel's tired. Look, I can easily drop in at the market garden for you. You go past it to get to the Lodge, don't you?"

I said: "It's all right, Donald, thanks all the same. I'm not tired, and if you've to see Mr. Forrest at the Lodge, time will be getting along by the time you manage to get away, and besides, you don't want to have to hurry. I'll come along with you now, if I may, and walk straight back with the strawberries by the short cut, and then we can get on with hulling them. I'd like to see Johnny Rudd, anyway. He'll be in the garden?" This to Lisa.

"Yes." Her eyes were on me. "You haven't seen him since you came back, have you? His hair's going grey now, but he hasn't changed much. He's the only one who'll still be working there by this time; he said he'd wait if he could. The two boys go off at five. But if Mr. Forrest should be in the garden—"

"Oh, did I tell you?" I said. "I saw him the other day."

"Did you?" The question only just missed being too sharp. "To speak to?"

"For a moment. I forget what we talked about, but I thought he'd changed, rather a lot." I picked up the basket. "I'll be as quick as I can," I said.

•••

What had been the old walled kitchen-garden of Forrest Hall lay beside the stables, about a quarter of a mile from the West Lodge, where Adam Forrest now lived. It was reached by the road that led from beside the Hall gates, through the plantations above Whitescar, and over a mile or so of moorland in the centre of the peninsula. A rough track from Whitescar led steeply up to join this road, which finished at the Lodge. Even here, at West Lodge, some pomp remained from the once palmy days of the Forrests. The entrance to the stableyard —now worked as a small farm—was a massive archway, with shields bearing the same heraldic beasts that flaunted their improbable attitudes on the gateposts at Forrest Hall. Over the arch stood the old clock-tower, with a gilded weather-vane over it. Trees crowded close on the other side of the lane, and the river glittered just beyond them. The road was rutted, and green with weeds, its verges deep in wild flowers, but the cobbles of the yard, glimpsed through the archway, were sparkling clean, like the shingle on a seaswept beach. A little way off, beyond a clump of laburnum and copper beech, the chimneys of West Lodge glinted in the sunlight. Smoke was rising from one of them. Life at Forrest Park had shifted its focus. Beyond the stableyard stretched the twelve-foot-high wall of the kitchen garden. There was a wrought-iron gate set into it.

"This one?"

"Yes."

Donald stopped the car, and I got out.

"Now, don't bother about me. It's just as quick taking the cut back across the fields. I'll go that way." "If you're sure—"

"Quite sure. Thanks for the lift. I'll see you at dinner."

The car moved off. I pushed the gate open.

The last stretch of the lane had been deep under trees. Now, I walked through the gate, between two massive yews, and into a brilliance of sunshine that made me blink and narrow my eyes. It wasn't only the brightness, however, that gave me pause. Here, the contrast with the moonlit derelict at Forrest was both striking and disturbing. In this garden, filled with sun and warmth and scent inside its four high walls, everything, at first sight, was at it might have been in the eighteenth-century heyday of the place. AH along one wall was the glass, and under it I could see the peaches and apricots and grapes of a more luxurious age, still carefully pruned and trained, and beneath them the homely forests of tomatoes and chrysanthemum seedlings, and the occasional splashes of colour that meant hydrangeas or begonias coming into flower for the market. Along the other three walls were the espaliered fruit-trees. The fruit, small, green and shining, crowded thickly on the boughs against the warm sandstone. Down the centre of the garden went a broad walk of turf, beautifully cut and rolled, and to either side of this was a flower border, spired and splashed and shimmering with all the colours of an English June; lupins, delphiniums, peonies, poppies, irises, Canterbury Bells, all held back by lavender swags of catmint, and backed by a high rustic trellis where climbing roses held up their fountains of bright flowers. At the far end of the walk, at the focal point, as it were, of the vista, I could see the basin of some disused stone fountain, with a couple of bronze herons still on guard over what had been the pool. This was set round with flagstones, between which were clumps of lavender, rosemary, thyme, and sage, in a carefully-planned confusion as old as the garden itself. They must have left the old herb-garden, I thought, and this one avenue of flowers. The rest was all order and usefulness—peas and beans and turnips and potatoes, and regimented fruit-bushes. The only other thing that spoke of the glory that had departed, was a tall circular structure in one corner of the garden, a dove-house, columbarium, with honeysuckle and clematis running riot over its dilapidated walls. The pegged tiles of its roof sagged gently over the beams beneath, as canvas moulds itself to the supporting ropes. The tiles showed bronze-coloured in the sunlight, their own smoky blue overlaid and softened by the rings of that lovely lichen that spreads its amber circles, like water-lily leaves, over old and beautiful things. The dove-doors had decayed, and looked like empty eye-sockets; I saw starlings fly out.

But elsewhere all was order. Not a weed. I reflected that if Adam Forrest and Johnny Rudd kept all this themselves, with the help of a couple of boys, I could hardly taunt him with not understanding the meaning of labour. The place must be killing work.

At first I couldn't see anyone about at all, and walked quickly up the grass walk, towards the green-houses, peering through the rose trellis to right and left. Then I saw a man working among raspberry-canes over near one of the walls. He had his back to me, and was stooping. He was wearing faded brown corduroys, and a blue shirt, and I could see an old brown jacket hung near him over a stake. He had dark hair with grey in it.

He didn't seem to hear my approach, being intent on fastening a bird-net back securely over the canes. I stopped on the path near him. "Johnny?"

He straightened and turned. "I'm afraid—" he began, then stopped.

"You?" For the life of me I couldn't help sounding unbelieving. This was certainly the Adam Forrest I had met and spoken with a few nights ago, but now, facing him in the broad glare of the afternoon, I could see how different he was from my remembered picture of him. What I had seen on that last, almost dreamlike meeting, had been something like seeing a sequence from a film taken years ago, when he had been ten, no, fifteen years younger. Some unreality of the night had lent itself to him: I remembered the fine planes of his face, the smoothness of skin young in the moonlight, the darkness of hair and eyes dramatised in the drained light. In the moonlight he had seemed merely tallish, well enough built, and had moved easily, with that air of self-confidence that goes with strength—or with inherited wealth. Now, as he straightened in the sunlight to lace me, it was as if the film had spun along swiftly, and the actor had, with skilful make-up, confirmed the passage of years. His hair, which had been very dark, was showing grey, not gracefully, at the temples, but in an untidy flecking all over, like the dimming of dust. The fine structure of strong bone couldn't be altered, but there were lines I hadn't seen by moonlight, and he was thinner than the size of his frame should have allowed. Before, he had been conventionally dressed, and I had noticed neither the cut nor the quality of his clothes; but now the light showed up a working shabbiness that—so unconsciously he wore it—must have been part of every day. Some part of my mind said that of course it was only common sense to wear rough clothes for a rough job, but another part, that I had not known existed, linked the shabbiness with the lines on his face, and the greying hair, and winced away from them with a pity I knew he didn't want, and that I had no right to feel. I noticed that he was wearing gloves, and remembered my taunt about his hands, and was sorry.