Dear Deceiver(34)

'Rotten?' Haidee murmured. It had looked imperishable. She said so,

'You can't always tell,' he answered quietly. 'You can now, of course,  now that it's on the ground. You can see the split bole. But perhaps you  wouldn't want to.'

The voice, different and gentle, might have belonged to another person.  It was not the first time she had heard it so and it seemed to fit the  occasion though so far as she herself was concerned a little poignantly.  Suzanne had loved the tree and, autocratic as Rory was about most  things, the chinks she'd made in him remained.

Haidee thought that here Suzanne would probably have refused to see  reason. To be in character she ought to rage and storm. Somehow she  couldn't. Angry as he'd made her over the dead weasel, he was at this  moment a man who had had to make a difficult decision.

'I will. I can be sensible when I have to. Quite hard, actually.'

Amusement washed his long face. It wasn't a thousand miles from tenderness. Hard to believe, but true.

'Did you hate having to do it?' she asked breathlessly.

'Yes, as a matter of fact I did.' He was not the man to give away his  feelings, but as she knew him better his unadorned comments seemed less  remote. About this particular tree he had cared a great deal.

'I'm sorry,' she said.

'Well, let's have the other side now, shall we?' He gave her a brisk  merry look. 'The thing that makes the world go round. We've practically  missed the boat, but I think tonight mightn't be too late!'

What was he getting at? She stiffened, feeling her eyes go round.

The deep-set dark blue eyes looked merrier and more mischievous than ever.

'Johnny, you are giving me ideas,' their owner mocked. 'I was merely thinking in terms of deer.'





CHAPTER NINE



'What have you got to wear?' Rory asked after Haidee had given her amazed acceptance of the invitation.



This, it seemed, was important. Nothing brightly coloured or plain  white. Her waterproof was also frowned on because it could rustle. It  was typical of fate, she thought humorously, that she had to go on this  their first and last date in the oldest clothes she had with her, tweed  pants and sweater, woody brown, the pull-on tea-cosy cap and the  loose-fitting camel-hair reefer. Rory shook his head at the latter.                       
       
           



       

'You're not going to be warm enough. Wait a minute.'

He came back with a suede jacket, in an elusive olive shade, one of  those lovely timeless garments with a knitted lining and cuffs and a  turn-back knitted collar. Unsexed too. In fact she thought it was his  own until he held it for her and she saw it did not approach his  measurements. Saw too his embarrassed expression, almost as though he  were saying: 'Sorry to do this to you.'

It fitted, warmly and snugly, and it was beautiful to wear, giving a line to her waist and shoulder, suiting her tucked-up hair.

'Will I do any harm to it?'

'That's your funeral,' he said with over-casualness. 'It's your coat, after all.'

Realization came like a thunder-clap. She was silent, pink-cheeked,  afraid to commit herself. What had Suzanne been thinking of to leave  such a garment behind? Why had Rory not produced it weeks ago? And what  was he thinking of her at this moment? She had made it so obvious that  she had never seen it before.

'Yes,' she said hesitantly. 'I'd forgotten how nice it was.'

Luck was with her. 'I'd believe that all right. You hardly wore it.'

Relief was emboldening. 'I must have been mad.'

'I don't know about mad, you were pregnant.' Eyes swept her  uncompromisingly. 'Two or three weeks after I bought it you had a bump  it wouldn't meet on.'

To Haidee's intense irritation she blushed. So silly. She had not  baulked at being Toby's mother and she didn't think she had found him  under a gooseberry bush. But neither had she thought overmuch about  those months when supposedly she had lived with Rory and looked forward  with him to the birth of their child. Had Suzanne been sensitive about  her shape? Had he teased her? Had he been fit to burst with pride? Was  that the reason for giving her a present?

Rory's voice cut in: 'You'll know better with your next husband. Tell him in time and save each of you a red face.'

She had the feeling this was not as light as it seemed. And, truth to  tell, it did not seem all that light. Perhaps Suzanne had not wanted the  baby. Perhaps she'd put off telling him in case he would fuss and some  way cramp her style. All this was logical, and likely. It was also very  sad. And none the less so because Suzanne had left his present behind  her, unwanted, unappreciated.

'It's a long walk,' Rory had now returned briskly to the present, 'so I  hope you're ready for it. Just hang on till I tell Jennie.'

Jennie might not be too pleased, Haidee thought, and she was right. 'Not  pleased' was understatement. Jennie came to the door of the  sitting-room, bright pink and stormy-eyed. 'I'll come with you.'

'No, you won't,' Rory said flatly. 'It's too long to leave Toby.'

'You wouldn't rather have taken her than me?' Haidee asked anxiously as they set out.

'If I had I'd have asked her,' he returned bluntly.

It was fair comment, but had they heard the last of it? In the past week  a new word for Jennie had suggested itself. She was intense. At first  she had seemed one hundred per cent her father, now Haidee could see  much that linked up with Antonia and Suzanne. What was she thinking at  this moment?

'Make up your mind, girl,' Rory bade irritably. 'Deer or Jennie? Which is it to be?'

A second made the decision. This was something no scruple should make her lose. 'Deer.'

It was nine o'clock, dry and frost-sharp. In the wood the ride showed up  smoke-pale for a matter of yards and then lost itself in the tunnel  ahead. The banks above them were cliffs of darkness, the whole of the  lower level a bottomless pit. She guessed they were not following the  main path, though at one point she recognized the thin trunks of 'the  Gallows'.

And as her eyes got used to it, the darkness became a page to read-the  long greedy clutches of exposed roots, the light patches made by laurel  and hart's-tongue, the screwing note of an owl, a blackbird waking  querulously. A dog fox barked in the distance; Toby had told her they  bred in the fields nearby.

'If you want to talk here, you can,' Rory remarked surprisingly. 'You won't be able to later when we come to a gallery.'                       
       
           



       

A 'gallery', it seemed, was the path a deer wore for itself in thick cover.

'There is something.' It had puzzled her for weeks, but she felt shy of  voicing it. 'Something personal, actually. Will you mind?'

'Try me and see.'

'You never told-my mother we'd married.' It was still hard to say. 'Ten  years ago. All that time, I mean.' It was not particularly clear what  she did mean and it was not helped by her foot catching in a trail of  ivy. 'Sorry,' she jerked as he grabbed her.

'If you can't look where you're walking,' he said reprovingly, 'you'd better take my hand.

'Now then,' he went on when he had hers firmly in custody. 'You want to  know why I didn't tell your mother. Funk, I suppose. I was hardly likely  to forget how she looked on me in the past. Glenglass House set more  store than most by its tradesmen's entrance.'

'Oh, but that's silly!' Haidee expostulated. 'I didn't take any notice  of that. I married you because...' Horrified, she pulled herself up.  What had she been going to say?

Haidee Brown, you nitwit, thinking like a book, you were going to say 'because I loved you'.

'Yes, Suzanne?' It was a voice dry and mirthless. 'Say it, why not? It  can't hurt either of us now. You married me because I was all you could  get.'

She could have protested. Words indeed were rising to her lips, words  she felt sure must be true. 'Even if I did, I loved you afterwards, when  I understood you, when we'd had Toby.' But feeling was one thing, fact  another. Suzanne could not have felt like that because she'd deserted,  put Paul in front of Rory and Toby, gone off ... mad silly creature, it  was absolute cobblers, but she'd done it.

'And you never told my mother.' The only safe thing was to go back to  the starting point. 'And I don't think it was because you were afraid.'

'Don't you?' He sounded most uninterested.

'Of course you could have been paying her back, not letting her know she  had a grandson. Was that it?' She felt quite astonished at herself for  going on when his eyes staring at her were so round and angry.

'That most emphatically was not it. How could I tell her, girl? What in  the name of God was I to say? "Please, ma'am, you've lost a daughter  but, lucky old you, you've gained a son, and he's going to be the boss  round here!" ' He drew a breath. 'In the beginning it was funk. If  that's so strange to you I can't help it. I was pretty green and  insecure in those days. I'd dreamed of you for so long that getting you  and losing you all in the space of months was a knock-out. I couldn't  believe you wouldn't come back and I waited. If you had, I might have  brought you home. I don't know. When I came myself years later it was  too late. Your mother was in the thick of her campaign against the  Division. She used to paint slogans on my car and she'd got the press  taking an unhealthy interest. If they'd got wind she was my  mother-in-law we'd have been a nine days' wonder. And I'd probably have  been moved. That's why I held my tongue, girl, no other reason.' He  glared.