Dear Deceiver(26)

'What did you say?' Rory demanded incredulously.

'He's telling lies again. There was only one hare and he never went near it. We saw. We were on the bank.'

'What were you doing on the bank?' Toby asked sweetly. 'Were you afraid to come down?' He sucked revoltingly at his spoon.

'Oh, heavens!' Jennie said with a shudder.

This time Rory leaned to her side. 'Do that once more,' he informed his son, 'and you can forget about the pup.'

'Pup?' It was a thread of sound. Toby's eyes opened unbelievingly. His spoon stopped halfway to his mouth.

'Watch the cloth,' Rory said curtly. 'If you don't want the dog say so.'

Speech returned but action spoke louder. The plate still half full was  pushed aside. 'Can I get him now-' Toby demanded hoarsely. 'If I run all  the way can I get him now?'





CHAPTER SEVEN



On Saturday Rory tapped the barometer and said with satisfaction that  rain was on the way. Other parts of the country had had some, but in  Glenglass the precipitation for nearly five weeks had been nil. It was a  worry Haidee by this time appreciated to the full. In the woodlands the  bone-dry broadleaves with their copper shell foliage would blaze like  tinder and for the seedlings up in the peat trenches the need of water  was nearly as desperate as it had been in the spring.



The morning, however, remained dry. Rory was marking spruce for thinning  and further along felling was actually in progress. It was a rhythmic  and disciplined business. First, the axe blade chopped out bark-covered  wedges, then the saw bit into the trunk and steel wedges were driven  into keep the cut open. Eventually the tree leaned and crashed to the  ground. It was then prepared for transport. Two men sawed the trunk into  lengths while another lopped off the branches.

Haidee got into conversation with him and put the question which Rory  could not be asked. Where in Glenglass would you find deer?

The young worker grinned and shook his head. 'You'd do better to ask Mr.  Hart. I've never seen any myself, but then I haven't been here that  long. Joe,' he called to a companion, 'the lady wants to know where she  can see deer.'

'Do you know Powerscourt?' Joe, who had been heaping branches, came  across to join them. 'Do you know the waterfall? There's a place up near  the back of the waterfall. I've seen them there. I don't know if I  could describe it to you from here, but you'll see bits of antlers first  lying round on the ground.'                       
       
           



       

It sounded exciting, but it was a disappointment. 'Not in Glenglass?' Haidee pursued.

'Near enough,' Joe allowed. 'This forest goes back in the general  direction of Powerscourt, goes back a long way. I don't know myself now,  I'm not sure, but I think there's a way out of here brings you up near  the place I mean. You could ask the boss, miss. There's not many twists  and turns he doesn't know.'

'He's very busy,' Haidee hedged. 'I really don't want to bother him.'

'Or I tell you what you could do,' her companion suggested. 'If you  don't want to ask Mr. Hart you could go and see Willie Byrne and ask  him.'

Willie Byrne, the men explained, was an ex-forestry worker pensioned off  last year because of failing health and now living with a married  daughter on the back road past Powerscourt Demesne. Willie had had a  natural affinity with animals and used to spend nights badger-watching  and deer-stalking. 'Used to take the boss with him sometimes when he was  a kid,' Joe volunteered. 'Used to take all the kids, in fact.'

'Oh, Willie was a great character in his day,' the first young worker  affirmed. 'Nothing he'd like better than to tell you about it.'

It seemed a line of approach, but Powerstourt was some miles away, so it  depended, on being able to get transport and perversely it looked as  though this could not be. At lunch Rory declared his intention of making  a further check on his peat beds and soon afterwards Haidee saw him  getting into the van.

With members of the public now allowed access to most parts of State  Forests the weekend seldom passed without visitors, and a car-load was  driving past at that moment.

'Afternoon, sir,' she heard Rory address the driver from the cab of the  van. 'No camp-fires, please, and careful with cigarettes and matches.'

A pity he had taken the van. It would have been a good chance for  research. Jennie had gone off on some ploy of her own, Toby was taking  Punch for a walk. 'Keep Your Eyes Open' week had suffered a slight  eclipse. Since Tuesday Toby had had eyes for only one object, the pup.

Haidee was wondering about overtaking them when a car pulled up and a  tall figure sprang out and slammed the door. The flop of brown wavy hair  and the sleepy-lidded eyes whisked her back over the weeks to Brompton  Road Air Terminal, 'Brown Waves' and 'Fair Chignon' and how she'd  admired their looks. It had been fateful admiration landing her in a  packet of trouble, but even now the smile was hard to resist. She went  quickly to meet it.

'Paul, am I glad to see you!'

'Is it safe to talk? Where's the "Wicked Woodman"?' He shuddered  playfully when she started to explain. 'Spare me, lily maid. The  question was rhetorical.'

'Rhetorical or not,' Haidee retorted, 'he'll be back soon. Let's not  invite trouble.' With luck they could talk undisturbed in the woods and  Paul might even be able to drive off again without being recognized.

'Carried unanimously,' he said cheerfully. 'How quick can you be?' His  eyes seemed quite unaffected by her state of bewilderment. 'My child,  this is a rescue operation. Get moving.'

'I don't understand...'

'Well, it's not that difficult. I got you in, I admit it. Now I'm getting you out.'

Her head spun. 'I can't go just like that.'

'Why?'

'They don't know.'

Paul's laugh sounded a trifle hysterical. 'That is the purpose of the exercise.'

'Paul, I can't. Not Like that.'

'Like what, then? Tell me.'

'Honestly, for a start. You needn't smile. I've thought it out. When  Antonia dies and Jennie's over the shock and back at school, Rory won't  need me any longer. I'll tell him the truth and go.' It was a relief to  put it into words.

'Bringing me into it, I suppose?' Paul challenged.

She was silent. They had gone quite a distance into the woods. He pulled  nervously on his cigarette. She had said: 'Watch that match. Is it  out?' and he'd gestured irritably. He was afraid of something, that was  obvious.                       
       
           



       

'I won't be bringing you in. You're there. You brought me. And you'd better tell me, hadn't you? Honestly. What was the idea?'

'Old friends.'

'No, Paul. I said-honestly.' The suspicion she had been harbouring,  though unbelievingly, had to be faced. 'Was it the reward for tracing  Suzanne?'

The answer was written in his discomfited expression. "Don't labour it,  for Pete's sake. Don't you think I'm kicking myself? The ad. was in the  paper before I went to Sweden. A hundred pounds. At that time it was  like money for peanuts. I thought I could find her between changing  planes in London. I couldn't. Nor on the way back. And then I bumped  into you.'

'And thought why not?' Suddenly she could keep cool no longer. 'Paul, you idiot!'

'Don't look at me like that as though I'm a petty thief. I mightn't have  got the cash anyway. I wasn't going to put in for it, not officially. I  was just going to tell them Suzanne had come and leave the rest up to  them. I can spend a hundred pounds as well as the next one. Why let it  go to waste?' It made things no better but more comprehensible. Paul was  not a criminal. He just liked easy money, finding a bargain, doing a  deal. He was a flier of kites, a gambler. She knew the type.

In a different way she herself had been as rash, as eager to play God.  Thread after thread had tangled into a noose. Simple things like asking  where the deer were would expose to Rory her complete ignorance of  Glenglass. And yet, wrong as the enterprise had been, it should not go  for nothing. On Friday Antonia's pulse had been weaker. Time was at last  running out. Then, as she'd said, she would face the music, but in her  own way. Paul was too slick an operator. He had deceived her once  already.

'You knew Suzanne a little better than you told me,' she said  straightly. 'Didn't you? I don't mean fifteen years ago when she lived  here. I mean ten years ago in England.'

'What of it? I'm not a prude. We did team up for a while.'

'And afterwards?'

'We were two free people.' He shrugged. 'I couldn't keep her. As a  matter of fact that time I was in Tokyo. She found someone else, I  guess.'

A thought struck, something she had left out of her calculations. Even now how much did Paul know?

'Supposing she had been married. Would you still have lived with her?'

'Suzanne? Married?' It seemed to amuse him. 'I don't think anyone would make that mistake, least of all Suzanne herself.'

He was quite wrong, Haidee thought dully. Suzanne had made it and  someone else along with her. Toby was the product. And it was still  mysterious. Why had Rory never told Antonia? Above all, where was  Suzanne?