Dear Deceiver(33)

There was silence.

But it's not true, Haidee thought despondently, it's what I hoped, perhaps, but it hasn't worked.

'It's no good,' she sighed. 'You saw Jennie. She suspects and she's wretched. She'll never let me help her.'

Eyes, old and very wise, looked into hers. 'Perhaps not, but then you came to her in the worst possible disguise.'

'You mean ...'

'Yes, I mean Suzanne. Is it so strange, my child? Can you not see the  problem? Jennie has grown up in the shadow of Suzanne. She's been a  legend here. Her disappearance gave her a romantic aura and her poor  mother kept her on a pedestal. It must have been comforting, I should  think, to feel that that kind of competition was not around.' Were the  eyes twinkling? Haidee could not be sure.

'You have been very innocent, my dear,' she heard Suzanne's old friend  say very kindly. 'I, who am not supposed to know about such things, can  tell you that. And time is against you. Last year or next year, it could  have been that much easier.'

'Please, Reverend Mother, you're too clever for me. Won't you explain?'

The wimple moved again, slowly, from side to side. 'No, child, I've said  too much. But think a little. Put on another pair of shoes. You're  fifteen, not child, not woman, you know how to love but not how to lose,  and a year still seems eternity.'

The conversation looked like ending. It had revealed no startling facts.  What Mother Mary had said Haidee, in part, had guessed at. What it had  done was to put Jennie in true perspective. She was not primarily the  custodian of the family fortunes with a duty to question a newcomer's  bona fides, but someone standing to lose the man she loved. And standing  to lose him only to the one who had chained him for fifteen years.

'Then if I told her I wasn't Suzanne ...' Haidee spoke her thoughts, 'it could make things right.'

'Could it?' Mother Mary echoed enigmatically. 'I said I wouldn't advise  you child, but I will say this. It came to me just now as I let my  thoughts dwell on the name of this church. You have put your shoulder to  a wheel, perhaps inadvisedly, perhaps that great good may come. Don't  depart from it. Take each step as it presents itself. The Holy Spirit  will end it for you in the right way.' She stood up and the folds of her  long skirt fell to the floor about her. 'We must go now. Jennie will  not have stayed long with Sister Gabriel.'

Back once more in Glenglass the visit was hardly discussed.

'Did you like the chapel?' Rory asked, and received Haidee's enthusiasm  with a nodded: 'Yes, I thought you would.' After supper he went out to a  meeting.

'If Mother gets better,' Jennie asked abruptly, 'will you stay with us for good?'

Damn this waiting, Haidee thought angrily, it's cruel.

'Darling, don't hope,' she said softly. 'That only makes things harder.  No, I won't stay,' she added. 'I have a life of my own now. I'll be  going back to it.'                       
       
           



       

'Does Rory know?'

'It's got nothing to do with Rory,' Haidee returned firmly. 'Only with  you. In case you ever need me. Do remember that, Jennie, please.'

It was typical of human nature that it would not let her feel one thing  at a time. The light in Jennie's eyes, slow and deep like a smouldering  wood fire, was satisfying. The constriction in her own breast gave  exquisite pain.

Next morning she was hanging some of Toby's garments on the line in the  clearing at the back of the house when scuffling sounds came from a thin  screen of young beeches on the forest perimeter. Brand had a weekly  'bag' of blackbirds some of which he did not always kill. Haidee was not  as skilled as she wished at rescuing them, but at least she tried.

She tried now, dropping the peg basket and rushing into the undergrowth.  Brand was there as she'd guessed, dragging out something quite large  and furry. She gave a yell and Rory in the act of getting into his van  heard her and came running over. He whistled when he saw the prey.

'God's fish, a weasel! Clutterbug you're coming on.'

Haidee thought the reverse. She was not pleased with Brand. The weasel had a charming little face and it was dead.

'I'm impressed,' Rory said. 'Look how he's done it.'

The teeth marks were not on the throat but on the stomach.

'That's very neat,' Rory went on approvingly. 'He must have got it on  its back. Good work, Buggy. Didn't think you had it in you.' He looked  from the smirking cat to Haidee's face. 'Hasn't she congratulated you?  Shame!'

'If you want to know I wish he hadn't,' Haidee said.

'I don't want to know-actually,' he returned, mocking her. 'I'd rather  remain in ignorance and hope you were getting sense. However, when you  get back to this life of your own you speak of, doubtless you'll be able  to make him a feather duster again.' He took the weasel by the tail and  marched away with it.

It left as always a pricked sensation. How poorly he rated her. How  contemptuously he had spoken. Relations with Suzanne, hectic as they had  been, had never, she felt sure, had the greyness of contempt or deceit.  It was Suzanne he had chosen to bear his name and his child and,  miserably as she had treated him since, she had given him his son.

They all seemed to be stacking up against her, the things Suzanne had  been, blazing, fearless Suzanne of whom she herself was such a pale  shadow.

She went back dispiritedly to the kitchen.

It must have been an hour later that she realized something was going on  in the near side of the wood. Men's voices were audible and the orange  tractor was travelling along a ride. She saw young Tom go by with a coil  of rope over one shoulder. Someone called something and Rory's voice  shouted back: 'Right, take her away!'

Curiosity sent Haidee to investigate. The little group and the tractor  were some distance in from the clearing and as she went diffidently up  the path the tractor moved in her direction. She stepped aside into a  low-lying clump of laurels and stood watching.

Axes had been swung in the wood for days, but this part, which  romantically she thought of as Big Oak Territory, was the area she knew  best and she began to feel quite hot with concern. Would the owls find  themselves homeless, or the badgers' earthworks be damaged? Had 'the  Gallows', a pair of beeches, straight, slender and joined by a  horizontal branch, been marked down? Anxiety for all these swept through  her.

The tractor was dragging a rope. She saw it on the ground curling  through the leaves like a serpent till suddenly it came up in a great U,  went taut and vibrated. Behind it the whole grey-brown background  seemed horrifyingly to quake.

She saw then, sickeningly, where the other end of the rope had been  attached. It wasn't 'the Gallows' or the tawnies' pitch. It was the big  oak, the king itself. Rory was having it torn out by the roots.

It leaned and she caught her breath, a child again, praying: 'Don't let it, God, do something!'

It was surely a sign that just then should come a hissing sound and the  cruel stretch of rope turn into two frayed ends. They dangled feebly as  the giant, still unconquered, settled back into its stance.                       
       
           



       

Haidee could have cheered.

'I thought that,' Rory observed. 'The rope won't do it.'

He walked up to the tree and studied its gnarled trunk. He had grown,  she thought fancifully, in the same shape; an oak man rather than a  beech or a poplar; strong, heavyshouldered, of average height. That tree  was a part of his life. It would have seen him at Toby's age cycling  round to the back door with his basket of groceries, it would have seen  him as a forestry pupil, his round cheeks firming and his chin becoming  more rugged; it would have seen him coming back without Suzanne but with  their child. And trees, she fancied, had the uncompromising sagacity of  an animal. It would have seen her stand with Rory that morning when he  had shown her the name carved on its bark, but never for one moment  would it have thought, that old tree, that here was Suzanne come home...

Old tree, stout, faithful old tree, clinging so determinedly to its place...

Unable to bear it any longer, Haidee turned away. She knew the snapping  of the rope would not spare it for long. It had in any case been shaken  to the roots. And yes, she had been right. The torn end of rope was  already being cut from the towbar of the tractor and a steel cable  fastened instead.

It was only another proof that in Glenglass nothing was sacred, nothing stood before man of iron and heart of flint.

Some minutes later over the sound of the vacuum cleaner came a distant rumble and crash.

She was back in the kitchen rolling pastry when the door opened.

'Any coffee going?' Rory asked.

The kettle had just boiled. She poured milk into a pan and put it on to heat. He found cups and saucers and the jar of coffee.

'Sorry about that,' he said abruptly. 'I know you'd grown fond of it.'

She darted a wide-eyed look.

'I've been putting it off for months,' he continued, meeting it. 'I knew  it was rotten, but it's almost history, that tree. And oaks aren't very  common in Glenglass. I'll tell you how old it was if you like when I've  had a chance to count the rings.'