Dear Deceiver(23)

'A doe?' she repeated. 'Are there any here now?'

'With this lot?' He drew derisive attention to the other visitors, the  cars and the postcard stall. 'No. But they're not a hundred miles away.'  There were red and fallow deer in Glenmalure-he pointed south over the  mountains-a stag had been shot this summer. And some even nearer, home,  he added. 'We'll see if we can find them for you before you go.' Go? It  was an icy little word. And yet how could she be so foolish? She had to  go-she wanted to go-she had come only because she'd been tricked.                       
       
           



       



Most Irish children could recite:



'Glendalough whose gloomy shore

Skylark never warbles o'er:



and certainly the lake in the gorge was not cosy. Haidee thought 'sinister' would not have been too strong a word.



Only baguettes of light on the dark water showed that above the ceiling  of pine trees the sun was shining. It made bright the spits of gorse  and, more strikingly, the plumage of swans on the black surface. If you  looked down for too long at the water rippling past the branches of  cones it made you feel dizzy, and if you were imaginative the shades of  Kevin and Kathleen were not too far away.

'Why do you suppose he threw her in the lake?'

Rory's lips twitched. 'That's one for history. I should say myself self-preservation.'

It seemed ludicrous. A horrific price to exact for too much love.

'Love?' It was a sharp humourless sound. 'She could have destroyed him. And I mean that.'

They were theorizing on a legend, Haidee reminded herself-or were they?

'It wasn't a saint on that ledge,' Rory went on reflectively. 'It was a  desperate man. That's if the story's true and round here you'd have a  job denying it. As I see it, Kathleen was Kevin's canker. He had his  moment of truth there, thirty feet up.'

Toby had gone ahead, tagging willingly on to a bushy-tailed mongrel who  was also feeling left out. Rory stopped walking and lifted creased eyes  to the polished grey of the opposite cliff.

'There are women like that, you know. Women who drive men mad. Harpies.  Flames. Something we keep on burning our wings at. Until the only thing  to do is to run. That was your man's trouble. Up there it was no road.'

'Now wait a minute. She wasn't exactly playing hard to get.'

'Not then. Lucifer gathers his choicest spoils in his velvet hand. He  has to feel merciful to use the grenade. And don't forget the  traditional tool-in-trade. He is the father of lies.'

'Are we-speaking personally?' Haidee faltered.

Rory turned round to her, slowly, deliberately, as though he had come a  long way. His face had a wiped dean look. It was probably no more than  seconds but it seemed a long time before he spoke. And then he said  simply:

'No. No, Suzanne. Time put that right-and Mrs. Brown.'

They had walked to the tip of the lake to a plateau of sheer rock, snow  posts and pale blue sky. The inlets below were a clear brown and a white  gull was flapping in to a strip of biscuit sand. Back towards  Glendalough the lake itself stretched blue. Now it was a pretty view,  friendly-and forgiving.

'Do you think people ever get completely away from their past?' Haidee asked tremulously.

'Some do, some don't,' he said laconically. 'I think you have,' he added devastatingly. 'That's why I want us to talk.'

'Oh...' Her eyes had widened and she knew she wasn't wearing her  glasses. Prolong this conversation and she'd be in dead trouble. She  knew that too and yet against all reason she felt a glow of excitement.

And then: 'Daddy, make the echo!' Toby came galloping back. 'I tried. I can't.'

'Of course not. You want to get back in the gorge,' Rory said shortly.

Impossible to tell his thoughts as they walked back along the path.  Still more so when he cupped his hands to his mouth and sent a hail  flying out over the black lake to crash and splinter on the rocks near  Kevin's Bed. Time and again he sent it and always the echoes came back,  plaintive and unearthly. One word. One searching word. Suzanne.

Tom and Jennie were waiting in the car park. Haidee hoped it was  imagination that they reacted to Toby's call as though glad to be  relieved of each other's company. The tea, Jennie said with eager  politeness, had been 'very nice', but the soft pinkness her cheeks had  started out with had faded sadly. Walking across to the car, Haidee had  to accept the fact that, though Jennie was the reason she had come to  Glenglass, she had not as yet performed any service for the younger  girl. Rather, it seemed, the reverse.

It was a large car park, and newly constructed, a table between the  hills and today, back end of autumn as it was, the fine Sunday had  brought out a capacity crowd. Long hair and bright clothes, and here and  there an outrageous Stetson or a cloak gave a surprisingly medieval  air. Non-Irish accents abounded and two Indian girls, each with a  scarlet dot in the centre of her brown forehead, were waiting to enter a  car near Rory's. In contrast to the oriental reds, purples and gold in  their saris, a black-habited nun was approaching with two elderly  companions.                       
       
           



       

The nun herself was elderly, her face a network of wrinkles against the  smooth white band of her wimple. Even in age, however, it was a handsome  face, and to Haidee, who in passing had had the full of it, as clearcut  an example of Celtic bone structure as the Indian girls were of their  country.

Rory, feeling for his keys, had dropped a pace behind and now quite  suddenly his voice sounded: 'Good afternoon, Reverend Mother. Great  weather.'

It was warmly answered: 'Mr. Hart. And-Jennie.' Hands went out and were  clasped. Introductions were murmured. From the nun: 'My brother and  sister-in-law,' and from Rory: 'You know my son, I think. Toby.'

Haidee went back as Toby's small hand was being given. The nun was  saying: 'Indeed I know Toby. There aren't many in Glenglass who don't.  His smile is as big as himself.' It caused the first shocked inklings to  percolate. 'Reverend Mother.' 'Glenglass.' She's Mother Mary. The hair  rose on Haidee's spine. I looked at her, she looked at me. And we walked  past each other.

'And here's someone I needn't introduce.' Was it imagination that Rory's  voice also sounded strange? 'Forward, Suzanne. Don't be shy.'

'Suzanne!' The astonished 'about turn' was elastic as a girl's. Blue  eyes over high cheekbones stared for a second as though they could not  believe what they saw. And then: 'My dear child,' the old nun said  simply, and held out not one hand but two.

Rory disdained returning by the same road and instead of veering towards  Laragh he swung left climbing through Wicklow Gap, and past Ireland's  controversial first pump storage scheme on Turlough Hill. The road was a  lizard slithering through brown and sandy country. There were wire  fences with wool on them and sheep grazing in the long shallow dips. A  trail of smoke among the blue creases of the hills marked strip burning.

Bleak and beautiful it stretched, mile after mile, fold after fold, a  brown prairie, man's only touch the snow markers. A place, Haidee  thought longingly, where one could stretch not only one's legs but one's  mind. And rest one's eyes and forget...

Forget many things-Mother Mary not recognizing her, the swift movement  in Jennie's eyes as she'd realized what had happened, and then the aged  Mother Superior affectionately making it worse: 'Dear child, you look so  different. You've come back as we always prayed you would-a new  person.'

It was unusual for Jennie not to be fully immersed in any discussion on  forestry, but on this occasion taciturn wasn't the word for her. Mother  Mary? Haidee wondered uneasily, looking at the heavy eyes and pinched  cheeks. In the end she decided to risk a snub and when they reached home  she drew Jennie aside: 'Are you all right, Jen? You don't look it.'

A touch of cramps, Jennie whispered, looking embarrassed. It was  nothing. Honestly. She was used to it. When Haidee prescribed bed and a  hot jar she said touchingly: 'Heavens no. I don't bother.'

High time someone bothered, Haidee decided. 'Well, let's make history then, shall we?'

The bedroom was as shabby as all those rooms which had not been handed  over for Rory's use and chilly. Fortunately there was a power plug. She  carried in the electric fire from her own room and filled a hot water  jar also her own. 'Cuddle that and tell me what you'd like for supper.  You're going to stay put for a while.'

'Suzanne,' Jennie observed in a surprised tone, 'you're very bossy.'

' 'Fraid so. Always was,' Haidee returned with a pat to the bed-clothes. 'Do you mind?'

Abruptly distressingly the child's face crumpled and she jerked her head  away. Release would have been good for her, but it was quickly  controlled. 'Promise you won't tell Rory.'

'Not if you don't want me to,' Haidee assured her. 'But he'd understand,  love. He knows how hard it is and he's very fond of you.'