Dear Deceiver(13)

The only light relief was provided by someone who certainly would not willingly have done so.                       
       
           



       

'Is there something in the basket?' Toby asked excitedly as he plumped down beside it.

'A cat,' he was answered laconically.

'What's it doing there?'

'I devoutly hope-nothing.' The atmosphere seemed to be lightening a  trifle. Haidee saw Toby grin at the back of his father's head.

'The cat and Miss Desmond will be here for a while,' Rory volunteered.  'Say hello to her and apologize for scaring her like that.'

'Oh, please,' Haidee said deprecatingly. Far too much had been made of  that unpremeditated dash. 'Hello, Toby,' she added. 'We spoke on the  phone last night.'

It had seemed then an engaging voice. Its owner matched it exactly. He  was sitting forward with his knees spread; both they and his hands were  grubby and his fringe was like a garden fork, but no one could meet that  healthy grin without smiling back.

'Hi!' said Toby as though, amazingly, he too liked what he saw. 'I don't know what your name is.'

Haidee knew a moment of mischief-and daring. 'I've a lot of names. Johnny will do.'

It brought a small sound of disbelief from the seat beside her. Toby, however, seemed easy, not to say approving.

'Okay. Hi, Johnny,' he said at once.

Glenglass House had been built deep in the woods. It looked to Haidee  like nineteenth century and she was sorry to see that a modern thick  glass door had replaced the original. Three storeys of white-framed  windows peeped from the rowan red creeper. In such surroundings even a  'pre-fab' would not have looked unromantic; Glenglass with its hand  railed steps and the scattering of scarlet leaves on its forecourt gave  its prodigal daughter a tremor of delight. Not that this time she made  the mistake of showing it.

Rory Hart was the first to speak. 'Welcome,' he said as they pulled up. 'Welcome to my bed and board.'

'Thank you, but it is Jennie I'm staying with,' Haidee assured him. 'In Jennie's part of the premises.'

'Same thing.'

How could it be? she questioned. Was he trying to tell her that the  Whittaker apartments were not self-contained? 'I presume my mother has  her own flat?'

'Your mother,' Rory said smoothly, 'still thinks she has the whole  house. In point of fact she has half the top floor. It's a pro tern  highly unsatisfactory arrangement for all concerned and my bosses are  doing their damnedest to get her out. The place is overdue for  demolition.'

'Demolition?' No acting was needed to convey 'Suzanne's' horror; it was  so utterly Haidee's horror too. The old house blended so kindly with the  old trees. 'You couldn't.'

'No trouble at all,' he assured her. 'Walk on some of the upstairs  floors. That's all you'd need to do. Anyway, come on.' He opened his  door. 'You'll soon see for yourself.'

At the top of the steps another door had opened and Jennie's slim figure  was visible. It was the moment which more than all others had been in  Haidee's thoughts. She had put herself into Jennie's shoes, she had  analysed how she herself would feel. And it had all come back to the  classic behaviour pattern of teenage resentment.

Now she watched anxiously as Jennie approached. First of all, was it  possible that she was only fifteen? The long midi dress she was wearing  made her look at least nineteen or twenty. It was a dark sludge colour  with a white motif, drably smart and suiting the wearer's Madonna-like  face and long straight parted hair. Somehow she made Haidee who was five  foot five and only a pound or two over eight stone feel like a  carthorse.

For all that the speech had been rehearsed and had better be made.

'Jennie,' she said softly, 'I hope you understand. I'm here because  Mother asked it, to help you in any way I can.' Jennie Whittaker had  never seen her half-sister, so in theory the brown eyes looking her over  could not possibly spot any difference. Just the same it seemed an age  before the slightly plummy but beautiful Desmond-Whittaker tones made  themselves heard.

'Yes, of course,' they said. 'Won't you come in?'                       
       
           



       

'You're sleeping with Rory. I hope you don't mind. I'm there too,'  Jennie said calmly as they went into the hall. 'It was his idea,' she  went on in that pleasant informative tone which might have belonged to  an Establishment for Young Ladies. 'The top floor's unsafe-dry rot, that  sort of thing.' In face of such refinement Haidee's slightly hysterical  thoughts on the safety rating of Rory Hart's bed were discreditable.  Anyway, the situation was not as it sounded. 'Sleeping with Rory' meant  occupying a room on the first floor of the mansion where he had his  quarters.

Gentry was a much abused word, but Jennie's every bone proclaimed it. So  did her courtesy. But Haidee did not deceive herself. It was the  unwritten law of noblesse oblige. The Desmond forebears fighting duels  would similarly have permitted their adversaries to recover a dropped  weapon.

The room into which she was shown was aesthetically a misfit. The  wallpaper, once a virginal white and gold, had faded and the carpet was  worn, but the wide bed looked new. So did its fringed dark blue  bedspread.

'I daresay you're glad to have this room again,' Jennie remarked. The  look of curiosity in her eyes told Haidee she had been waiting for some  reaction.

The room. It must have been Suzanne's. Confound it! Another round she  had lost. She walked somewhat wearily to the window and in the pier  glass of the out-of-date dressing table a girl moved along with her, a  girl in a dull gold belted waterproof with her hair, up and a curling  tress at each ear. Herself. But at that moment she could easily have  believed that a third presence was there, resting her eyes on the tiers  of oak and ash, beech, chestnut and larch. Was it from this window that  Suzanne Desmond had said good-bye to Glenglass and had gone like the doe  in the ballad 'where nobody wist among the leaves so green-o?'

'Yes, I'm glad,' she said quietly. 'I always loved the view from this window.'

There had been something touching about the seedy bedroom with the new bed. Someone had done their best. Had it been Jennie?

The other rooms, however, required no apology. The grey and white  bathroom had striking delft blue tiles and along the corridor a door  half open showed a bright green wall and a bed cover vividly checked in  emerald, royal and white. Toby's billet, by the look of the boots which  were lying just where one would fall over them.

The living-room was also a surprise, not only on account of the feeling  for colour which it demonstrated, floor-length topaz brown curtains,  paler brown walls and a carpet midway between brown and honey, but  because some of its pieces were so good. The wing chair, for instance,  and the chest of drawers with its bow-shaped handles.

The third surprise was her host. Manners maketh man, they said. There  had not been much manners about the booted man who had scowled at  Brand's basket, but now, in the setting of this charming room, with his  boots off and his working clothes exchanged for a collar and tie and a  suit in mire green tweed with a safari jacket he was distinguished, even  courtly.

She had two thoughts as she went forward, how well he wore the new  fashion and did she do as well in front-laced plum midi skirt and  high-necked printed blouse. He was certainly staring at her and not all  the gloss of brushed hair and impeccable shirt could hide the challenge  in his eyes. Dear heaven, she thought anxiously, is this the way Suzanne  would come into a room?

Until that moment the masquerade vis-a-vis Rory Hart had been a game of  skill. Emotion began and ended with Antonia and Jennie. Now, suddenly,  unfairly, here he was, freshly groomed and-even worse-obviously about to  set out drinks-for her-because he thought she was Suzanne and because  some time, somewhere he and Suzanne had had a boy-and-girl love affair.

It made her feel unclean. She longed to say: 'Not for me, please. I'm  not the right one.' In fact she said: 'What a delightful room.'

He returned disconcertingly: 'You've seen it before.'

'Oh well...' She could have kicked herself. 'I mean-the way you have it-the furniture.'

'You've seen that before too. Most of it, at least. This chair-' was it  imagination that the eyes had narrowed slightly?-'is from home. Remember  the night you got in a tear and thumped the stuffing out of it?'                       
       
           



       

Leave the chair out, Haidee thought, her heart was thumping now.

'You've had it covered.' A safe guess. Those chestnut, gold and magenta stripes were as smart as tomorrow. And as new.

'Clever girl,' he commended lightly. 'So I have.'