The angry pink that flagged his cheekbones was suddenly reminiscent of the plump-faced country boy whose dreams Suzanne had trampled on. It was the spurt of an old flame, the echo of an outrage that would never completely die. He would not scathe Haidee Brown like that because what she felt or blamed him for would matter less than walking on the blue-green Sitka needles.
The thought may have made sense, in fact it did. Strangely, however, in the making of comfort its failure was total.
Haidee had spent years being careful for her mother; it was odd to have the boot on the other foot, but certainly, as a protector, Jennie excelled herself. She held back branches in case Haidee would get her face slapped, she guided anxiously over awkward bits of track, and she was assiduous about giving a helping hand over a gate.
At the point where a forage harvester was digging out the new fire line Rory left them. 'If you're near Cats Spinney and see Tom,' he suggested to Jennie, 'ask him to call to the office on his way home.'
They went on to the wood in question and located Tom who was spraying heather growths. He looked very little older than Jennie herself and it seemed he had just left school and was gaining practical experience before applying for an appointment as Forestry trainee.
'They only take boys, worse luck,' Jennie confided. 'I wish Women's Lib. would do something about it before it's too late. Too late for me, that is. I've only five years left. You have to be under twenty. Have an apple,' she invited, hitching herself on to a gate. 'Can you manage? I should have helped you. Sorry.'
You couldn't say you were up against a stone wall. Nobody could have been more polite or co-operative. And friendly with it. Sitting there with apple juice on her lip and her hands on the fence rail, Jennie talked forest quite as knowledgeably as Rory himself.
Soil acid brought on the peat which in turn supported the heather covering Tom had been spraying. Herbicides were used a lot these days. They were very effective.
'On birds and animals too, or don't they bother to find out?' Haidee could not resist the thrust.
The brown eyes turned on her, wide and compassionate. 'You shouldn't worry so much, honestly. It's the law of nature. Actually, that's not the point. They are careful about poisons and the Forestry Service supports wild life, they make a point of it, they do, honestly ... but if rabbits burrow into the nursery beds-or badgers-there aren't many rabbits now because of myxomatosis, you know, that sort of thing, they've no option.' Her face seemed all round eyes and snub nose. 'I'm lucky, I suppose. I'm like Father. You're like Mother, I think, and she's been dreadfully unhappy. It was awful. There was nothing we could do.'
She talked and Haidee listened, swinging her toe and letting her eyes adjust to the gloom of the conifers and the still green ferns beneath them. It was a good camouflage for what she took a moment to distinguish, a dead rabbit and a living one crouching beside it. Even when she called Jennie's attention to it, the rabbit did not run. It did not even stir.
'You'd better not look,' Jennie said thoughtfully. 'It's blind. It's got myxomatosis. You know what I've got to do.' She did it, without emotion and faultlessly. The rabbit punch, she called it. It was instantaneous.
Walking back from Cats Spinney through the main wood, Haidee had to pass the Forester's Office. As she did so, its door opened and Rory emerged. He seemed surprised to see her alone. 'Where's Jennie?'
It had been slightly mysterious to Haidee too. Jennie had suddenly asked to be excused. Someone she wanted to see, she'd said, and had ducked swiftly under the fence and gone running across the moor.
'Ah yes.' Rory nodded acceptance. It registered with a stab of curiosity that he knew the answer. 'So you came back on your own? Find the way all right?'
She had already thanked providence yet again that direction was one of her strong suits. 'Of course. Why shouldn't I? I used to live here. Remember?'
'I'm hardly likely to forget. So why keep telling me?'
Had she? Was she over-playing her hand? It jolted her into attack.
'You seem to need it. The day before yesterday you practically asked for my credentials.'
'And if I may jog your memory.' The voice was unpleasantly creamed off. 'Last night you refused to give them to me.'
Suzanne probably would not have turned a hair. Haidee was almost annihilated. She fought desperately against the tide of mortification until at last anger, as much at herself as at him, came to her aid. 'If I may jog your memory we had broken up. I'd left you. It's asking a bit much-'
'Of you, Suzanne?' The mocking words seemed to contain a truth, horrible but not to be questioned. She floundered, her mind boggling and hotly conscious that her face could be her betrayal.
As though in confirmation, Rory put a hand to the wooden door of the office. 'Come in here. We'd better have this out.'
Inside, he thumbed off his hat and laid it on the table. 'Sit down. Not exactly the Hilton, but we won't be disturbed.'
She sat nervously, looking at the map on the pitch pine wall, the blue green tweed in the hat and the record sheets alongside it. Rory sat too, but without a trace of nerves. His mouth was wider than she'd realized and its line was arch. 'Why are you looking at me like that?' she challenged.
'I was wondering what we could do about your eyes.'
She started.
'You're not wearing your glasses. Don't you know they're a necessary protection?'
It was true she hadn't put them on that morning. She remembered it, blinking. 'No, Just for travelling. Car and train, actually.' His own eyes had the depth of pools, very quiet, very shadowed. Sunlight settled slowly and pinpointed them. 'And for bird-watching.'
'Bird-watching?'
'Yes. On the Bull. I go quite often. I like to know what I'm looking at.'
'Yes,' Rory said quietly, 'so do I. Actually.'
Her blood had started to chill when unexpectedly his lips quirked. 'All right. This could go on for hours. You don't need them, I do. Wear them, girl, as long as you're in Glenglass.'
Most of this was a riddle. She took issue on the last part.
'I'm not. Won't be, I mean. I told you last night-I'm going.'
'Last night you were hysterical.'
'I wasn't. You took me by surprise.' She was beginning to think that after all glasses would be a protection. The eyes boring into hers not only looked like blue steel but had an almost physical and a terrifying effect. She felt her own open wider in protest. 'When my mother asked me to come here, I was prepared to meet you again but not to live with you. I thought Jennie was on her own. If I'd known you were looking after her, there would have been no need for me.' Truth gave her voice a ring. 'If, of course, I could persuade her to come back with me to Dublin...'
'You'd be wasting your time. Jennie won't budge from Glenglass.'
'I realize that. And here she doesn't need me.'
'I disagree.'
Haidee blinked astonishedly.
'You can be a body,' he said calmly. 'Not somebody pretending to be something they're not.'
The map of the forest on the wall in front of her seemed to be going round. 'I beg your pardon!' she gasped.
'I don't beg yours,' the implacable voice went on. 'You were never a mother figure. You proved that with Toby. And as for loving Glenglass, that's absolute cobblers. You ran off because your stepfather was determined to see it properly looked after by those who knew how. Beech grows faster than oak, for instance, so there are places where, big as it is, you have to watch out for the oak. Jennie understands this, you call it destruction. You see a rabbit with myxo and you weep and kid yourself it'll recover. But it won't. Nature's laws are inexorable. Jennie wouldn't think twice about what had to be done.' He broke off impatiently. 'Don't look at me like that. It's only an instance.'
'More than that,' Haidee submitted. 'It happened this morning. A blind rabbit, actually.'
He was silent for so long, gazing at her, that she felt uncomfortable.
'I interrupted you. Sorry. Did I put you off?'
You put me off twenty-two years ago,' he said with a gleam. 'When you were ten and told me off for trespassing because I was the grocer's boy. You don't do it any more, I'm glad to say.'
It was Haidee's turn to be silent, pricked by something illogical and unfair. She was not the culprit, she was not the spoiled daughter of the big house. Why should she feel such remorse?
'Anyway, I'm going,' she said. 'You took a long time to say all that. It wasn't necessary. I knew it already.' She pushed the chair back and rose. 'And oughtn't we to be getting back? For lunch, I mean. You do eat lunch?'