The Ivy Tree (24 page)

‘Julie, I wouldn't know. I've never got these things straight with myself yet. And on a rainy day I find I believe quite different things from on a fine one. But you might be right. Being cruel's the worst thing, after all, so kindness might be the best. When you come to think about it, it covers nearly everything, doesn't it? One's whole duty to one's neighbour.'

‘And the other whole duty?'

‘My dear, I don't even pretend to know what that duty is. My duty to my neighbour will have to do. Maybe it'll count.'

She had reached out an idle hand to the bush beside her, and broken off a small spray of hawthorn-blossom, not yet dead. The milky heads hung bunched; I could smell their thick, sleepy scent. She twisted the stem between her fingers, so that the flower-heads swung out and whirled like a tiny roundabout. She seemed all at once very young and uncertain as she hesitated, apparently on the brink of some confidence.

I spoke almost nervously. ‘Julie.'

‘Mm?' She seemed absorbed in the twirling flowers.

‘Julie – don't ask me about it at the moment, but . . . well, just keep quiet for the moment about the state of affairs between you and Donald, will you? I mean, if people want to jump to conclusions, like Betsy, let them.'

The flowers stopped twirling. She turned her head, her eyes wide and surprised. ‘Heavens, why?'

‘I'm sorry. I can't explain. But if you've really made up your mind to have Donald when he asks you – and if you can't make him in the next three weeks, I wash my hands of you – well, quarrel with him all you like in private, but don't let other people see you having too many doubts.'

‘Honey!' To my relief she sounded amused. ‘Is this Aunt Agatha's advice to young girls, or do you really mean anyone special when you say “other people”?'

I hesitated. I believe that at that moment I very nearly told Julie the whole story. But I said, merely: ‘You might say I meant Grandfather. I think this stroke he's had has frightened him, rather, and he's fretting a bit about the future – our future.'

She sent me a glance that was all at once adult and wise. ‘“
My
” future, do you mean, now that you've come home?'

‘Yes. You know what men of his generation are like, they think there's really nothing but marriage . . . I know you're still very young, but I – I know he'd like to think of your being settled with someone like Donald. I'm sure he liked him, too. So – don't rock the boat too much, Julie, at any rate not while you're here.'

‘The boat? Mr Isaacs and all?' She laughed suddenly. ‘I
thought
there was something in the wind! Don't you start worrying about that, Annabel, good heavens, all
I
want is to get on with my own life in my own way, and I think – I
think
– that includes Donald!' She dropped a hand over mine where it lay on the bar. ‘But don't you ever go away again. Promise?'

I said nothing, but she took this for assent, for her hand squeezed mine softly, and then withdrew. She added, cheerfully now: ‘All right, I won't rock any boats. All the storms of my love life shall be – passed? blown? raged? waged? – up at the Roman camp.'

‘Fort.'

‘Oh, lord, yes. I
must
learn to be accurate about the more important things of life. Fort. Look, there's Mr Forrest's horse, over there, like a shadow. He looks awfully quiet. Don't you love the way everyone shakes their heads over him and says “He won't be easy to school”?'

‘I do rather. But I expect it's true. Blondie's foals do have that reputation.'

‘Do they?'

‘Didn't you know? And Grandfather tells me this one is by Everest.'

‘By Everest? Oh, I see, you mean that's the name of the father?'

‘The sire, yes. Don't you remember him? He was a bit of a handful, too, like all the old “Mountain” lot.' I glanced at her, amused. It seemed that Con had been right; this was not Julie's
métier
. She had shown the same cheerful ignorance in the drawing room over tea, when the talk had turned on the affairs of Whitescar. Grandfather had noticed; I had seen him eyeing her; and Con had noticed, too. And now she had made it obvious that she realised my return would deprive her of her place here; she had also made it apparent that she didn't care. She wasn't only making things easy for me: I was sure it was true. For Julie, this place was a holiday, no more. I felt a real rush of relief, not only for my conscience' sake, but because Con could now bear no grudge against her. What sort of grudge, or what shape that grudge would take, I hadn't yet allowed myself to guess at.

She was holding the flowers close to her face, watching Rowan with the uncritical admiration of complete ignorance.

‘He's lovely, isn't he?' she said dreamily. ‘Like something in a book. And the field smells like heaven. Pegasus, in the Elysian fields. He ought to have a manger of chalcedony and a bridle of pearl.'

‘Have you the faintest idea what chalcedony is?'

‘Not the faintest. It sounds wonderful. Have you? It ought to be like marble shot with fire and gold. What is it?'

‘Something looking a bit like soap, the healthy kind. As big a let-down as jasper, anyway. The gates of Paradise are made of that, according to Revelations, but really it's the most—'

‘Don't tell me! Let me keep my gates of jasper just as I've always seen them! Is this what the New World does to you? Have a heart, won't you? And admit that he
ought
to have a manger made of fire and gold and cedar-wood and turquoise at
least
!'

‘Oh, yes,' I said. ‘I'll give him that.'

The horse was grazing steadily along the hedge where a tall guelder-rose broke the yard-high barrier of hawthorn. His shoulders brushed the pale saucers of bloom, and, through the leaves, the growing moonlight touched him here and there, a dapple of light shifting over moving muscle; then a sudden liquid flash from the eye as he raised his head to stare.

I heard him blow a soft greeting through whickering nostrils. He seemed to eye us uncertainly for a moment, as if he might come forward, then he lowered his head again to the grass. ‘I thought he was coming,' said Julie breathlessly. ‘They all used to, to you, didn't they? Will you help school him? Johnny Rudd says he'll be the very devil, he won't let anyone near him in the stable, and he's next to impossible to catch in the field.'

‘He sounds a useful sort of beast,' I said drily.

She laughed, ‘What a way to speak of Pegasus! You can't deny he's a beauty.'

‘No, he's that all right. What colour is he in daylight?'

‘Red chestnut, with a pale mane and tail. His name's Rowan. Aren't you going in to speak to him?'

‘I am not. This isn't my night for charming wild stallions.'

‘It seems a dreadful pity that all the horses had to go. It must have been a dreadful wrench for Mr Forrest – though I suppose it would only come as a sort of last straw, considering everything else that had happened.'

‘Yes.'

There was a little pause. Then she said, with a curious soft abruptness, her eyes still on the horse: ‘You know, you don't have to pretend with me. I know all about it.'

The dusky trees, the shapes of hawthorn, the ghost of the grazing horse, all seemed to blur together for a moment. I didn't speak.

‘I – I just thought I'd let you know I knew,' said Julie. ‘I've known all along. Have you . . . have you spoken to him yet?'

The confusion in my mind blurred again, swung into another shape. I said: ‘Have I – what do you mean? Spoken to whom?'

‘Mr Forrest, of course.'

Silence again. I couldn't have spoken if I'd tried. Before I could grope for words, she looked at me again, fleetingly, sideways, and said, like a nice child who confesses to something that she may be punished for: ‘I'm sorry. But I did want to tell you that I knew all the time. I knew that you and Mr Forrest were lovers.'

I said: ‘Oh dear sweet
heaven
.'

‘I'm sorry.' She repeated the words with a kind of desperation. ‘Perhaps I shouldn't have told you I knew. But I wanted you to know. In case it was difficult or – or anything. You see, I'm on your side. I always was.'

‘Julie—'

‘I didn't spy on you, don't think that. But I saw you together sometimes, and people don't always notice a kid of eleven hanging about. I was always around, all that spring and summer, in the hols, and I knew you used to leave letters in the ivy tree at the old Hall gate. I thought it wonderfully romantic. But I can see now that it must have been pretty awful. For you, I mean. You were younger than I am now.'

My hands were pressing down hard to either side of me on the bar of the stile. ‘Julie . . . you . . . we . . . I didn't . . .'

‘Oh, I know there wouldn't ever be anything
wrong
. I mean, really wrong . . .'

Let her talk, I thought, let her tell me just what she saw, what she knew. At worst she might only remember having drifted like a shadow round the edges of romance. Romance? Adam Forrest?
Con?
The two names burned in front of me, as if they had been branded in the bars of the stile . . .

‘You couldn't help it. One can't help who one falls in love with.' Julie was offering this shabby cliché as if it were the panacea still sealed all glittering in its virgin polythene. ‘It's what one does about it that matters. That's what I meant when I said I knew you'd had a bad time; I mean, if one falls in love with a married man there
is
nothing to do, is there?' It seemed that, to Julie, falling in love was an act as definable and as little controlled by the will, as catching a disease in an epidemic. That there came a moment when the will deliberately sat back and franked the desire, was as foreign to her as the knowledge that, had the will not retreated, desire would have turned aside and life, in the end, have gone as quietly on.

‘One can only go away,' said Julie. ‘It's all there is to do. I knew why you'd gone, and I thought it marvellous of you. Do you know, I used to cry about it?'

I said, in a very hard, dry voice: ‘You needn't have done that.'

She gave a little laugh: ‘Oh, it wasn't all tragedy to me at that age. It was sad, yes, but beautiful too, like a fairy tale. I used to try and make up happy endings to myself in bed, but they could never really work, because they meant that she – his wife, I mean – would have to die. And even if she
was
awful, it's always cheating, in a story, to kill off the person who prevents the happy ending. And I suppose I did see it more as a story, in those days, than as something that was really happening to people I knew. Was it so very dreadful, that time?'

‘Yes.'

‘I've sometimes wondered, since,' said Julie, ‘if life isn't just a little too much for all of us. Sometimes one thinks . . . oh well, never mind. You don't mind my having told you? I rather wanted you to know I knew. That was all. We won't speak of it again if you like.'

‘It doesn't matter. It's over.'

She looked almost shocked. ‘Over?'

‘My God, Julie, what d'you take me for? One can't tear a great hole in one's life pattern and expect the picture to be unspoiled till one chooses to come back and finish it. One can't fit straight back into the space one left. Nor does one want to. Of course it's over!'

‘But I thought—'

I said, and I could hear myself how nerves had sharpened my voice: ‘Do you seriously think I'd have
dreamed
of coming back if I'd known he was still here?'

‘
Didn't
you know?'

‘Of course I didn't! I thought I'd made very sure he wasn't, or I'd never have come, except perhaps just a flying visit to see Grandfather again, and make things up with him. But as for coming here to stay . . .
No
.'

‘But . . .' her voice sounded all at once as frankly disappointed as a child's . . . ‘but it's not the same now, is it? I mean, now that you
have
come, and he
is
here, and . . .' The sentence trailed off.

‘You mean because Crystal Forrest's dead?' I said flatly.

I heard her give a little gasp. ‘Well . . . yes.'

I laughed. ‘Poor Julie. Your happy ending at last. I'm sorry.'

‘Annabel—'

‘Forget it, darling. Oblige me by forgetting it. And remind me one day to thank you for forgetting it as far as Con and the rest are concerned. I'd have rather hated them to know. Con has his own – theories – as to why I left.'

Her voice was suddenly mature, and curious. ‘You dislike Con. Why?'

‘Heaven knows. And “dislike” is the wrong word. Say I distrust him. Julie . . .'

‘Mm?'

‘Just what, exactly, did you know about me and – about me and Adam?'

‘Only what I told you. I knew you met, and I knew you wrote quite regularly, and put the notes in the hole in the ivy tree. And I think I knew that it – it was a hopeless passion – what are you laughing at?'

‘I'm sorry. Your vocabulary. Go on, it was a hopeless passion.'

‘All right,' she said without rancour. ‘I suppose I do read all the wrong books. But
you're
taking this the wrong way. I believe you really don't care any more.'

‘No.'

‘Ah, well.' It was a sigh almost of disappointment. ‘I'd hoped it would come right in the end. You see, everybody knew they were unhappy, him and his wife, I mean. You couldn't ever tell what
he
was thinking, but she didn't try very hard to pretend, did she? I mean, it got sort of painful when they were anywhere together in public. Even I noticed, though I was only a kid. It's true, isn't it?'