The Ivy Tree (21 page)

Presently the timber thinned again, and the path shook itself free of the engulfing rhododendrons, to skirt a knoll where an enormous cedar climbed, layer upon layer, into the night sky. I came abruptly out of the cedar's shadow into a great open space of moonlight, and there at the other side of it, backed against the far wall of trees, was the house.

The clearing where I stood had been a formal garden, enclosed by artificial banks where azaleas and berberis grew in a wild tangle. Here and there, remains of formal planting could be seen, groups of bushes and small ornamental trees, their roots deep in the rough grass that covered lawns and flower beds alike. Sheep had grazed the turf down to a close, tufted mat, but underneath this, the formal patterning of path and lawn (traced by their moon-slanted shadows) showed clear. At the centre of the pattern stood a sundial, knee-deep in a riot of low-growing bushes. At the far side of the garden, a flight of steps mounted between urns and stone balustrading to the terrace of the house.

I paused beside the sundial. The scent of the small, frilled roses came up thick and sweet, and mixed with honeysuckle. The petals were wet, and the dew was heavy on the grass where I stood.

The shell of the house gaped. Behind it, the big trees made a horizon, against which the moon sketched in the shapes of the broken walls and windows. One end of the house, still roofed and chimneyed, thrust up looking almost intact, till you saw the forest through the window frames.

I crossed the damp, springy grass towards the terrace steps. Somewhere an owl hooted, and a moment later I saw it drift past the blind windows, to be lost in the woods beyond. I hesitated, then slowly climbed the steps. Perhaps it was here that I would find the ghosts . . .

But they were not there. Nothing, not even a wisp of the past, stirred in the empty rooms. Peering in through the long windows, I made out the shapes of yesterday . . . The drawing room – a section of charred panelling, and the wreck of a door, and what remained of a once lovely fireplace. The library, with shelves still ranked against the two standing walls, and a damaged chimney-piece mounted with what looked like a coat of arms. The long dining room, where a young ash sapling had thrust its way up between broken floor-boards, and where ferns hung in the cracks of the wall . . . On an upper landing, one tall window had its lancet frames intact, standing sharply against the moonlight. For a moment it seemed as if the leaded tracery was there still, then you could see how the ferns grew in the empty sockets, with a plant of what might in daylight show to be wild campanula, its leaves and tight buds as formal as a design in metal.

No, there was nothing here. I turned away. The weedy gravel made very little sound under my feet. I paused for a moment at the head of the terrace steps, looking back at the dead house. The Fall of the House of Forrest. Con's mocking words came back to me, cruelly, and, hard after them, other words, something once read and long forgotten . . .

Time hath his revolutions, there must be a period and an end of all temporal things, finis rerum, an end of names and dignities, and whatsoever is terrene, and why not of De Vere? For where is Bohun? Where's Mowbray? Where's Mortimer? Nay, which is more and most of all, where is Plantagenet? They are intombed in the urnes and sepulchres of mortality
 . . .

Magnificent words: far too magnificent for this. This was no noble house ruined, no Bohun or Chandos or Mortimer; only the home of a line of successful merchant-venturers, with a purchased coat-of-arms that had never led a battle charge; but they had built something here of beauty and dignity, and cared for it, and now it had gone: and beauty and dignity had gone with it, from a world that was content to let such things run through its fingers like water.

There was a movement from the bushes at the edge of the clearing; the rustle of dead leaves underfoot, the sound of a heavy body pushing through the thicket of shrubs. There was no reason why I should have been frightened, but I jerked round to face it, my heart thudding, and my hand on the stone balustrade grown suddenly rigid . . .

. . . Only a ewe with a fat lamb nearly as big as herself, shoving her way between the azaleas. She saw me, and stopped dead, head up, with the moon reflecting back from her eyes and from the dew on her clipped fleece. The lamb gave a startled cry that seemed to echo back into the woods and hang there for ever, striking the sounding board of their emptiness. Then the two of them vanished like clumsy ghosts.

I found that I was shivering. I walked quickly down the steps and across the clearing. As I hurried under the layered blackness of the cedar, my foot struck a cone as solid as a clock weight, and sent it rolling among the azaleas. A roosting blackbird flew out of the bushes with a clatter of alarm notes that set every nerve jumping, and jangled on and on through the trees like a bell that has been pulled and left swinging.

It brought me up short for the second time. I was just at the entrance to the river path, where it plunged out of the moonlight into the wood.

I took half a step forward towards those shadows, then paused. I had had my hour of solitude; enough was enough. I had a home of a sort, and it was time I went back to it.

I turned aside to where the main drive entered the clearing, then hurried down its wide avenue, past the banked rhododendrons, past the ruined lodge and the ivy tree, till I reached the painted gate marked WHITESCAR, and the well-kept road beyond it.

9

Julie arrived just before tea on a drowsy afternoon. Everywhere was the smell of hay, and the meadowsweet was frothing out along the ditches. The sound of the distant tractor was as much a part of the hot afternoon as the hum of the bees in the roses. It made the sound of the approaching car unnoticeable, till Lisa looked up from the table where she and I had been slicing and buttering scones for the men's tea, and said: ‘There's a car just stopped at the gate. It must be Julie.' She bit at her lower lip. ‘I wonder who can be bringing her? She must have got Bill Fenwick to meet her train.'

I set down my knife rather too carefully. She gave me one of her thoughtful, measuring looks. ‘I shouldn't worry. This'll be nothing, after the rest.'

‘I'm not worrying.'

She regarded me a moment longer, then nodded, with that little close-lipped smile of hers. In my two-days' sojourn at Whitescar, Lisa seemed to have got over her odd fit of nerves. Indeed, she had taken my advice to her so much to heart that sometimes I had found myself wondering, but only momentarily, if she really had managed to persuade herself that I was Annabel. At any rate she seemed to have adopted me as genuine; it was a sort of coloration for herself.

‘I'll go out and meet her,' she said. ‘Are you coming?'

‘I'll let you meet her first. Go ahead.'

I followed her down the flagged passage to the back door, and waited there, just in the door's shadow, while she went out into the sunlight.

Julie was at the wheel of an open car, a battered relic almost as old as she was, carefully hand enamelled a slightly smeared black, and incongruously decorated in dazzling chrome – at least, that was the impression one got – with gadgets of blatant newness and dubious function. Julie dragged ineffectually at the hand-brake, allowing the car to slide to a stop at least four yards further on, then hurled herself out of the door without even troubling to switch off the engine.

‘Lisa! What heaven! We've had the most
sweltering
run! Thank God to be here, and I can smell new scones. How's Grandfather? Has she come? My dear, you don't mind Donald, I hope? It's his car and he wouldn't let me drive because he says I'm the world's
ghastliest driver
, but he had to at the end because I wouldn't get out and open the gates. I asked him to stay – I hope you don't mind? He can have the old nursery and I'll do every
stroke
of the work myself.
Has
she come?'

She had on a white blouse, and a blue skirt belted tightly to a slim waist with a big leather belt the colour of new horse-chestnuts. Their simplicity did nothing to disguise the fact that they were expensive. Her hair, which was fair and fine, shone in the sun almost as pale as cotton-floss, and her eyes were grey-green, and very clear, like water. Her face was tanned golden, and her arms and legs, which were bare, showed the same smooth, amber tan. A heavy gold bracelet gave emphasis to one slim wrist.

She was holding Lisa's hands, and laughing. She hadn't kissed her, I noticed. The ecstasy of welcome was not personally for Lisa, but was so much a part of Julie's own personality that it sprang, as it were, unbidden. Fountains overflow. If people are near enough, the drops fall on them, sparkling.

She dropped Lisa's hands then, and turned, with a swirl of her blue skirt, towards the man whom I now noticed for the first time. He had been shutting the yard gate behind the car. Now, before responding to Julie's hail of ‘Donald! Come and meet Lisa!' he walked quietly across to where the car stood, with her chrome glittering in the sun as she shook to the vibrations of the engine. He switched the engine off, took out the key, put it carefully into his pocket, and then approached, with a slightly diffident air that was in startling contrast to Julie's ebullience.

I found later that Donald Seton was twenty-seven, but he looked older, having that rather solemn, withdrawn look that scholarship sometimes imposes on the natural reserve of the Scot. He had a long face, with high cheekbones, and eyes set well under indecisively marked brows. The eyes were of indeterminate hazel, which could look shallow or brilliant according to mood. They were, indeed, almost the only inclination that Donald Seton ever varied his moods. His face seldom changed from its rather watchful solemnity, except to let in, like a door opening on to bright light, his rare and extremely attractive smile. He had fine, straight hair that refused discipline, but tumbled forward in a thick mouse-brown thatch that showed reddish lights in the sun. His clothes were ancient and deplorable, and had never, even in their fairly remote past, been ‘good'. They reminded me somehow of his car, except that his person was not ornamented to a similar extent. He was the kind of man who would, one felt, have stigmatised even the most modest brand of Fair Isle as ‘a bit gaudy'. He looked clever, gentle, and about as mercurial as the Rock of Gibraltar. He made a most remarkable foil for Julie.

She was saying, with that same air of delighted improvisation: ‘Lisa, this is Donald. Donald Seton. Darling, this is Lisa Dermott; I told you, she's a kind of cousin, and she's the most
dreamy
cook, you've no idea! Lisa, he can stay, can't he? Where have you put
her
?'

‘Well, of course he may,' said Lisa, but looking faintly taken aback. ‘How do you do? Have you really driven Julie all the way up from London? You must both be tired, but you're just in time for tea. Now, Mr – Seton, was it?—'

‘Didn't Grandfather
tell
you?' cried Julie. ‘Well, really, and he's always jumping on me for being scatter-brained! I
told
him on the phone that Donald was bringing me! Why, it was the whole
point
of my coming now, instead of August, or almost, anyway. Donald's the most terrific big bug in Roman Remains, or whatever you call it, and he's come to work up at West Woodburn where there's a Roman camp—'

‘Fort,' said Mr Seton.

‘Fort, then, isn't it the same thing? Anyway,' said Julie eagerly, ‘I thought if I came
now
, I'd be up here when he was,
and
be here for the birthday party Grandfather's talking about, and anyway, June's a heavenly month and it always rains in August.
Has
she come?'

For once, Lisa's not very expressive face showed as a battleground of emotions. I could see relief at Julie's gay insouciance about her reasons for coming to Whitescar and the birthday party; avid curiosity and speculation about Donald; apprehension over the coming meeting between Julie and myself; pure social embarrassment at having another visitor foisted on her without notice, and a swift, house-proud calculation that she would manage this, as she managed everything. Besides – I could see her assessing the smile Julie flung at Donald – it might be worth it.

‘Of course we can put you up, easily,' she said, warmly, for her. ‘No, no, it doesn't matter a bit, there's always room, and any friend of Julie's—'

‘It's very good of you, but I really wouldn't dream of putting you to the trouble.' Mr Seton spoke with a quiet lack of emphasis that was as definite as a full stop. ‘I've explained to Julie that I'll have to stay near my work. I'll be camping up there on the site, when the students come, but for a night or two, at any rate, the hotel expects me.'

‘Ah well,' said Lisa, ‘if that's what you've arranged. But of course you'll stay and have tea?'

‘Thank you very much. I should like to.'

‘That's
absurd
!' cried Julie. ‘Donald, I
told
you, it would be
much
nicer staying here. You don't have to do the polite thing and refuse just because Grandfather forgot to tell Lisa you were coming, for goodness' sake! As a matter of fact I may have forgotten to tell Grandfather, but then I was so excited about Annabel and then it was three minutes and it's a call-box in my digs and you know Grandfather's always been as mean as stink about reversing the charges. Anyway, Donald, darling, you can't
possibly
camp at West Woodburn, it's the
last
place, and I've seen that site of yours; there are
cows
. And you've got to escape your dreary old Romans sometimes, so obviously you'll stay here. That's settled, then. Lisa, I can't bear it another moment. Where is she?'