Dear Deceiver(22)

But to a still crestfallen Toby having cocoa in bed after his bath, it  had to be a different story. 'It wasn't my fault,' he complained.

'Yes, it was,' Haidee told him forthrightly. 'You didn't look properly. I  know. I do it too. So what about making this a "Keep Your Eyes Open"  week? Both of us. We'll remind each other.'

He had looked so unimpressed that she was astonished to hear next  morning at breakfast. 'I don't think I'd better go to church. Johnny and  I are having a "Keep Your Eyes Open" week and I want to check on a few  things at Cats Spinney.'

'Such as?' Rory's masklike face should have warned him.

It didn't. 'Deer might be getting in,' Toby offered.

'Hm.' The face was still solemn. A forefinger crooked and beckoned.  Haidee watched as Toby sidled towards him. 'Look up there,' Rory  commanded. 'What do you see?'

'The sky.'

'And how does it look this morning? Pretty secure?'

'Yes,' Toby said doubtfully. He turned round, his quizzing eyes making  him more like his father than she'd yet seen him. It was enhanced by his  Sunday suit having a safari jacket the miniature of Rory's.

'Good,' he was told drily. 'Then I don't think we need worry about deer  in Cats Spinney. Good grief, Toby,' the forester added irritably, 'catch  yourself on! If you'd had something sensible in mind I might have said  yes.'                       
       
           



       

By lunch, however, he mellowed. 'Anyone who's interested in keeping their eyes open had better come with me this afternoon.'

It was astonishing that November should hover like this, its touch so  delicate that hardly one shrivelled leaf curl had been disturbed. They  packed into the car with a festive air, Haidee, as commanded by Toby, in  the back with him, Jennie, with a flush of pleasure in the front with  Rory.

'If you're sure. I don't like taking the best seat.' In amber blouse and  belted long-length skirt she was looking too mature for anyone to  resurrect the question of school.

Clothes were nice just now. There was almost a touch of the State  Trumpeter about Haidee's flared sleeveless tunic and matching hunting  pink trousers and her long pointed printed shirt. Nor had she the  monopoly of colour. Rory's near-to-the-ears sweater was peacock green  and Toby's had a breastplate of gold and yellow diamonds. Jennie,  however, with her puffed sleeves and long buttoned cuffs, was the one  who spelled elegance. She sat very easily, her elbow resting on the back  of the seat, her chubby profile alight at what Rory was doing.

Rory was singing. Unexpectedly. Haidee had not heard him sing since the  day he had brought her to Glenglass and discomfited her so much by  lilting 'Johnny, I Hardly Knew Ye.' It was not 'Johnny' now but a song  about St. Patrick and less than reverent.



'St. Patrick was a gentleman,

Who came of decent people:



He built a church in Dublin town

And on it put a steeple.



His father was a Gallagher,

His mother was a Brady.

His aunt was an O'Shaughnessy,



His uncle an O'Grady.'



In the village the car stopped. 'See if Tom's there,' Rory said, indicating a house. 'Ask him if he'd like to come too.

'I have a conscience about Tom,' he explained as Jennie set forth with  no palpable show of joy. 'He comes from Cork and doesn't get home every  weekend. Besides which he'll be company for Jennie.'

Again, however, there seemed no particular exuberance as Jennie returned  with Tom, the young trainee, somewhat pink and bashful, at her side.

'You three in the back,' Rory ordered. 'You come in here, Johnny. I  thought we'd run down to Glendalough, but first I want to look at  something.'

They turned and drove into forestry land again, stopping at last in a  fenced-off tract whose stands of conifer and white-topped marking posts  did not look greatly different from other plantations. The ground,  however, was densely brown and springy to walk on and Rory explained  that it was part of the peat bog on to which, at this point, Glenglass  Forest ran. Not reclaimed, he added, in the sense of having been  cultivated or dressed with mineral soil. After draining and trenching,  these trees-Serbian spruce-had been planted on cut-over peat.

A bigger experiment had been carried out with species at Clonsast in the  Midlands. There, in fifteen years they had stands of nineteen feet.  Rory's 'bog' had been going for only three years, but already his stands  were up to Christmas trees and he had the highest hopes of them. He and  Tom bandied terms like 'cubic feet hoppus per acre' which Haidee found  unintelligible.

Intelligible, however, in any terms was pride and joy. There were, for  instance, trenches of Norway and Sitka spruce which had only been  planted last spring. Then as now the weather had been dry and many had  lost too much water and died. Those that survived, however, were making  progress. He kneeled on one knee beside the baby trees and touched them  gently.

'Do you talk to them?' Haidee teased.

He flashed her a look like a match flare and then saw her twinkle and grinned.

'I wasn't laughing. At home I often talked to the roses.' Too late she saw the danger and stopped.

'Mrs. Brown?' he queried.

She nodded.

'A woman I'd like to have met.'

'She'd have liked that too, actually.'

Her mother had been friends with everyone, a good neighbour even with  her infirmity. And each year she'd greeted the first roses. For a second  Haidee had to look away.

'Well, let's make tracks,' Rory suggested as though he had noticed nothing.                       
       
           



       



'The Wicklow Hills are very high

And so's the Hill of Heath, sir?



The song about St. Patrick continued and, suitably, the smoky blue hills  around them now had new grandeur. Statistics set County Wicklow's  seventy-two thousand acres of State Forest second only to County Cork's  eighty-three. The road from Laragh to Glendalough was proof enough.

Plantations were everywhere, crowning the furze-cushioned slopes,  striding over the brows of mountains, zigzagging in giant's writing  above browned heather. Haidee had only one anxiety-the usual one. It was  her first visit, whereas Suzanne, brought up within six miles of  Glendalough, must often have gone there.

It helped that Rory wanted to inform Toby on its history. 'You two  wander off if you like,' he told Tom and Jennie. 'This pair,' indicating  Haidee and Toby, 'have a "Keep Your Eyes Open" week to live up to.'

Tom was losing his shyness. 'Come again,' he invited, and when the  situation was explained he plucked masterfully at Jennie's sleeve. 'Not  for me, thanks. Come on, Jen.'

'Oh!' Jennie began, startled. Her cheeks had gone quite pink and her  nose had that sudden childish shine. 'I can't walk very far in these  shoes, I'm afraid.'

'Okay, we won't walk, we'll have tea,' her escort conceded without loosing his hold.

At the same moment Rory's arm descended, quite as masterfully, on  Haidee's shoulder. 'Come on,' he said sotto voce. 'This is no place for  an old married couple.'

It came out so naturally that she was dumbfounded. 'Please be careful.'

'Careful? Of what?' The dark eyes looked cool and amused. 'The truth?  You are my lawful wedded wife. I have the certificate in my desk to  prove it. And it's high time we had another talk.'

'Talk? What about?'

'Us,' he drawled. 'I'm acquiring quite a taste for your cooking.'

'Oh no!' It came out before she could help it. Tragically. The eyes went cold. The face was instantly gaunt.

'I see.'

Such a misnomer, she thought helplessly. He saw nothing, he understood  nothing. And at that moment neither did she. She'd felt so happy,  hearing him sing, watching him with the seedling trees, looking sideways  in the car to his broad-topped arm and his chin jutting over the vivid  sweater roll. Rose-coloured spectacles, perhaps, but every detail of the  approach from Laragh had seemed so melodic ... beehives on a slope, the  Round Tower pointing through the trees, the brick and cream hotel, the  donkey and cart on the sign outside the tweed shop.

Now the scene had clouded. Alice was falling out of Wonderland. Worse,  she was turning into pain, a welling pain not unlike the slow dark lap  of the lake. 'I mean-not here,' she stammered.

It was a hand that somehow she had to put out, whether to seek aid or to  give it she was quite unsure. Strangely, it seemed to have served both  purposes.

'No, well, I didn't mean here either,' Rory agreed, the tautness leaving his face. 'Come on.'

As guide, he was a natural. He put together the pieces that a thousand  years had scattered and made them live. St. Kevin's monks chanted again  in the ruined chapel, students memorized their lessons in the remnants  of their round huts, the gate-house opened its arched entrance door, the  look-out in the Round Tower alerted the settlement to the danger of a  Viking raid. As for stories, he knew them all. No birds sang now in the  valley of the two lakes; they had ceased when Kevin died. A shelf of  rock in the cliff overhanging the Upper Lake was Kevin's Bed. Retreating  there one day, the saint had been followed by one Kathleen, and had  thrown her ungallantly into the lake. A gentler tale was that of the doe  commanded to give her milk to a motherless child. The marks of Kevin's  fingers as he'd sat milking her were embedded for all time in the stone.  Rory's hand guided Haidee's into them.