Dear Deceiver(11)

The face of Skipper's mistress changed. 'Aren't you very good? Just what  your mother would have done if she'd had her legs. Do you know what I  sometimes think? I think, when two people are close, the way you and  your mother-God rest her-were, the one that dies puts a bit of  themselves into the one that's left. I have that belief and I have it  very strongly.'

True or false, the thought was a cushioning against not second but at  least fifth or sixth thoughts. On the strength of it Haidee finished her  packing and took Brand's carrying basket from the top of the wardrobe.  The sight of it sent him scurrying on short agitated legs under the  sideboard. He had known it, of course, felt it in his whiskers. Besides  which, snoozing on the morning paper he had seen that the day's star  point for Aries was 'Care necessary'. When the basket lid closed he gave  a howl of such misery that the expedition was very nearly abandoned.  But at that moment Skipper's master, who came home for lunch and had  been appraised of the situation by his wife, knocked to offer them a  lift into town.                       
       
           



       

The Enniskerry bus left from a historic site. Eleven hundred years ago  marauding Danes had rowed their black boats up the bay to a dark pool  where they had moored and landed. The black pool was to become Dubh Linn  or Dublin, the landing place Poolbeg Street.

Friday afternoon traffic made city progress slow. There was the  south-east corner of Stephen's Green, almost unrecognizable with its  concrete multi-storeys and the National Film Theatre. There was the  canal at Charlemont Bridge and a pub called the Barge Inn. At Milltown  they crossed the Dodder with tinkers' skewbald ponies standing in the  rain, and ahead the Dublin Mountains looking on this afternoon of low  cloud like the backs of elephants. Next Dundrum village and beyond it  the country opened out. The mountains were low and brown with white  houses and spinneys of orange leaves. At Lamb's Cross the fields held  sheep. Near Stepaside the first dark slashes of conifer plantations made  whiskers on the cheeks of the hills. At Kilteman a herd of Jerseys  grazed and a scuttle of brown hens ran into a cottage garden. In Golden  Ball the Catholic church had blue and white weather boarding and a brick  red belfry.

Ahead now on the left were landmarks, the mountain called Katy Gallagher  with the chimney of the old lead smelting works making a finger on its  crest, and near it the cone of the Sugar Loaf. These were lost as the  road plunged through the Scalp. On the right a tide of red bracken  washed up to boulders, incredibly poised. On the left the softwood  plantings of Enniskerry Forest ran to the skyline.

The road came out again, ran highly over green dips peppered with gorse  and suddenly-beautiful even in misty rain-the spire of Enniskerry church  came up in a gap dead centre and the rest of the village, trees, roofs  and clouds filled in about it like a frontispiece. It is a view most  people have photographed and hardly one has seen without a lift to the  heart. Haidee was the exception. She looked at it dry mouthed and with  sinking spirits.

It was the point of no return.

The bus descended into the market square which was more like the hub of a  wheel with roads, signposted Glencree Youth Hostel, Dublin and Bray,  Delgany, Glen O' the Downs branching off it like spokes. It swung round a  tall-towered war memorial with a green dome and the straggling remnants  of summer roses and stopped. Haidee took Brand by the handle of his  basket, the bus conductor took her case. All three of them got out.

'All right?' the conductor inquired.

Brand thought it far from all right and said so. If he could know how  truly he spoke, Haidee thought scaredly, as her eyes sought vainly for  the timber lorry that certainly was not there. The only vehicle in sight  apart from the bus was a rakish car in a smart shade of topaz brown. It  was parked outside the Powerscourt Arms opposite.

Had the bus run late and Rory Hart's driver not waited? Haidee would not  have put it past the forester to have instructed him to give her no  grace. She was looking forlornly at the black and white hotel and the  winged grey horses that supported the Powerscourt coat of arms when a  booted burly figure strode out of the doorway. It glanced across, saw  the bus and spotted her beside it. The wave that followed was amazingly  friendly.

'Hullo there. Sorry to keep you!' Rory Hart called. Next instant he  stopped and stood as though rooted to the ground. 'What's that?'

You would have thought Brand's inoffensive basket was a case of gelignite.

'If it's what I think it is,' Rory Hart continued, 'it's not coming here.'

Very silly, lord knows, because it had come. 'It's Brand, my cat,'  Haidee said defensively. 'I had to bring him. I had no alternative. I  asked someone to mind him, but she couldn't.'

'Well, I'm sorry,' the brown head shook, 'but some arrangement will have to be made. You can't have him at Glenglass.'

'Then you can't have me either,' Haidee retorted unwisely, and could have bitten her tongue out. 'I mean...' she began.

'I know,' he said smoothly. 'I'm out of the boys' department. I know  what you mean.' For a moment amusement glinted in his face. It soon  sobered. 'You're welcome,' he added shortly. 'It's been a long time.'  The eyes, curiously steady, were fixed on hers.                       
       
           



       

'Thank you. And Brand will be no trouble, I promise you,' she said nervously.

'He'll be more than trouble. Sooner or later he'll be a tragedy,' she  was answered uncompromisingly. 'Have you forgotten Bambi and Honey and  all the rest of them, because I haven't. However, your eyes should be  open by this, lord knows, so on your head be it. Don't say I didn't warn  you and don't come crying to me.' He took up both case and basket and  marched across the road.

It sounded like intimidation and as such it had succeeded. Haidee,  watching the basket bobbing from the strong wrist that held it, seemed  suddenly to have no knees. In the past few seconds they had turned to  water.

Rory Hart stopped at the topaz-coloured car and unlocked it.

'Yours?' Haidee asked. Yesterday's car had been black.

He looked gratified. 'Yes. Still a new toy. I only picked it up after  I'd left you at the hospital. Like it?' Suddenly he seemed disarmingly  young and pleased with himself.

'Very much. I was expecting a timber lorry.'

Again he gave a friendly laugh. 'Oh well, you are coming home, you know.'

Doubtless intended to put her at her ease, it had the opposite effect.  She had schooled herself to face dangers and difficulties. Kindness made  her feel a snake in the grass.

Taking in the terrain without appearing to do so was not easy. Rory had  taken the road which was posted Delgany and the Glen O' the Downs. It  went between high green hedges past a turreted bridge and came out on a  wide dual carriageway. Much of Wicklow is downland and this was a  typical stretch.

The rain had blown off and the sky had patches of blue. To the right, a  low-lying white hotel rode the green slope, to the left was forest. A  gate with firebeaters in readiness flashed past. She saw 'Forestry  Division' on a board and wondered if this could be Glenglass. Rory,  however, showed no sign of stopping.

'Bellevue,' he said casually. 'Bellevue Wood.'

Was it a trap? She had been straining to read the name and hoping he  would not notice. Plainly, it was one Suzanne would have known.

'I hadn't realized,' she ventured. 'It looks bigger.'

'It is,' he stated, and for a second the dark blue eyes seemed to be  appraising her. By the mercy of Providence, it seemed she had said the  right thing, but the scrutiny made her uncomfortable. It was as though  he had not expected quite that observation. 'All this that you can see  is the same of course.' He gestured. 'It's mixed forest. Amenity. Pro  bono publico. Bord Failte don't permit felling. But on top and away to  the left there's a big softwood acreage not yet open to the public.'

The strange thing, Haidee realized sharply, was that he was handing out  the information as though it were natural for her not to know about  amenity woodlands and 'mixed' as opposed to 'softwood' afforestation.

'Open to the public?' she began knowledgeably. 'You mean, these nature  trails I've read about?' They had been widely publicised as a feature of  Conservation Year. At least she knew enough to be sure they had not  been in operation fifteen years ago.

'That's right. Bellevue has a good trail. I've been along it-business  and pleasure. It's the only one open in this area at present and I  wanted to see how it's done.'

'For Glenglass?' Surely he wouldn't like that. His thing to tall intents and purposes was not conservation.

'It's to come. Next year, I believe. They're hinting at a deer enclosure, but I don't know.'

'A deer enclosure?' Were there deer on Glenglass Forest? In the nick of  time she checked. This was something else of which Suzanne would be  aware.