Dear Deceiver(35)

Haidee considered him. 'If you want to know what I think, no reason why  you should, of course, but if you do, I think you were being  deliberately kind and thoughtful. My mother should thank you. As she  can't, I do.'

For a second the blue eyes met her, candid as a child's and pleased.

'Thank me by minding where you walk,' Rory commanded.

They were still in the woods, but 'Big Oak Territory' and Cats Spinney  had long been left behind. These could be tagged 'the Deep Woods', and  their sootiness had a brooding air. In it, she felt sure, every bank and  bough and burrow held a pair of eyes and all were trained on her. The  feeling was not new, but it had never been so strong and, of course, it  was logical since this stretch of woodland was on the farthest boundary  of the forest and had not been opened up.

There was a sudden crash as something broke cover. Unseen, but the branches were shaking. A squirrel, Haidee supposed.                       
       
           



       

'Getting tired?' Rory asked. 'You're sticking it well,' he commented  when she reassured him. 'Not so young now after all. Thirty-two.'

'Do you think I look it?' The woman in her spoke. For the first few days  it had seemed impossible that twenty-five should pass for the early  thirties and she had dreaded his challenge. It had never come and now,  perversely, she had descended to wanting it.

'No-o. But I suppose it comes out of a bottle.'

She was so furious she could have choked. Fortunately the darkness hid her face. 'No. No bottle, actually.'

'Then it must be a clear conscience.'

Mute and hot-cheeked, she blessed the fact that his torch was beamed downwards on the path. Clear conscience. If he only knew!

'I think you have got more honest, Sue,' he observed. 'And for once  you've put your cards on the table, told me why you came and convinced  me that it's no good asking you to stay. Will you and Paul make it legal  this time? After we get ourselves sorted, of course.'

'I don't know. I haven't thought about it.'

'I think you should,' he said gravely. 'You're not getting any younger  and he's fond of you. I saw that the other day. Made me think there's  truth in one man's poison.'

'I have no plans to marry.' Thank heaven her voice had steadied. 'Neither Paul nor anyone else.'

'Well, there I'm not with you,' Rory announced amiably. 'I have.'

He lifted the torch slightly so that it picked out a small dark shape scurrying noiselessly across the path.

'Mole,' he said laconically. 'I like moles. Best earth I ever got for  the garden the moles dug up for me. It's a fact. I used to watch where  they were working and take the soil home with me. It was lovely stuff,  pure loam, very rich. But what was I saying?'

'You were about to get married,' she reminded him tightly.

'Not immediately, worse luck.' He chuckled. 'I'm having to bide my time,  but between you and me and the deer I've got high hopes of her.'

The pause was so expectant and the voice so boyish and confiding that  Haidee had to put self aside. The last thing she wanted-she couldn't  understand why it should be the last thing, but it was-the last thing  she wanted was to hear about the girl he planned to marry, and the last  lips she wanted to hear it from were his. But there it was. He was  obviously bursting to talk about Jennie and he sounded about twenty-two  years old.

'Is she anything like me?' she asked lightly. 'Or have you learned from experience?'

'She couldn't be more unlike you, Suzanne, and that is exactly what I've  done,' Rory returned happily. 'And what's more I've got you to thank  for it. These past five weeks you've opened my eyes. I've really seen  you. And the past. And I know exactly where I'm going.'

'And who you're going with?'

'That too, I hope.' He stopped for a minute and shone the torch about  them. 'Entries,' he said, pointing to places in the thickets where a  passage seemed to have been worn. 'They get in here. They think they  fool me, but they don't.'

Her blood ran cold. 'You-don't shoot them?'

His 'no' was short and discouraging. With it came a change of subject.  'As I was saying, this girl I'm going to marry-if you're interested?'

'Of course.'

'Well, naturally, since I haven't asked her yet I can't tell you her  name. Guess at it if you like.' Did he have to be so heartrendingly  young and naive? 'She's super, really super. You might think a puff of  wind would blow her away, but she's game as a lion. And true. True as  steel. She sets a goal for herself and she'll get there if it kills her.  Not, please the pigs, that she'll ever get far from Glenglass. She  loves it just as I do.' He stopped and she thought: 'How different from  the way he thinks of me.'

'You're quite a poet,' she said frostily.

'Am I?' he chuckled elatedly. 'Well, I've got inspiration.'                       
       
           



       

You love Jennie, Haidee reminded herself, you've worried about her,  you've prayed for her future. Be glad for her-and a thousand times for  Rory.

'She sounds a paragon of virtue. Is she as nice to look at?'

'She's gorgeous,' he said simply.

Ahead, a grey veil hung over the capsule of darkness. Beyond it,  features swam mistily, a wire fence, scrubby bushes, a moon-pale stretch  of heath. On both sides of the fencing the herbage had been pressed  down.

'Abatures,' Rory said, grinning. 'Deer beds to you.' He seemed to be  ignoring the fact that Suzanne knew about deer. Uncanny that, but Haidee  did not complain. Her own ignorance was total and she welcomed the  pointers he gave her, trees from which in places the bark had been  stripped, one or two which had been used as fraying-stocks, and branches  which had been racked by deer entering cover.

'Then you allow them in the forest?' she asked.

'They get in. We don't encourage them, but where it's possible they have  unofficial sanctuary. Well, took at it this way. In Ireland there are  no Deer Laws, a lot of poaching and very little private preservation. We  have to watch them, of course, like the squirrels, but there are only  little herds here at the moment and no fear of being over-run. The fear  is much more for them, that they'll become extinct. So I know my deer  and where to find them and the less number of other people that know it  the better I'm pleased.'

A point of view absolutely her own though it was in contrast with the garrulousness of old Willie.

Rory held the wire and she scrambled under it.

'Quiet now,' he warned. 'Don't talk till I tell you. They're not far off and they're timid.'

Once more he was carried away, this time by his feeling for the  creatures he protected. It was the more touching because like their  whereabouts he kept it so secret. Why suddenly had he let out this  hidden self, young, full of tumbling words and glowing with enthusiasm?  Hers not to reason why, Haidee decided, following him across the heath.  The future might be Jennie's, but for herself there would always be  this, down all the years until she was an old, old woman full of days,  this night when he had admitted her to what he really was.

Another sweet wonder was that their communication no longer depended on  words. Rory pointed to a ruin in the distance and she divined that this  was their goal. Shortly afterwards he pointed again, this time to  droppings, and once he stooped and picked up-quite thrilling this and  just as the woodmen had told her-portions of cast antlers.

She was examining them eagerly when she felt his fingers on her arm and  saw that he was staring across the tufty lawn. He had not moved a  muscle, she didn't either, except for her eyeballs.

Unmistakably, it was a deer. A very small one standing against a tree.  It could have been doe or fawn and it was so motionless that it might  have been painted on the trunk. She was gazing entranced at the slim  goat-like shape which moonlight had blanched to the colour of a unicorn  when the pressure of Rory's fingers increased. Plainly, he was directing  her eyes to the left. She looked and at first saw nothing. The fawn was  alone, or was it?

The movement just above the ground was barely perceptible, a flick was  all, it seemed. But it was enough to show, silly perhaps, but Haidee's  heart missed a beat with excitement, that what at first sight had looked  like twigs on the heath were antlers. They flicked again as she  watched. At the same time Rory's hand began guiding her back. For the  first time he spoke, in a whisper: 'We'll have to get down wind.'

She had read that deer had wonderful vision, excellent hearing and an  acute sense of smell, and when at last after a wide detour and an amount  of taking cover, they reached the ruined cottage, she understood how  true this was. Three bucks and five or six does were sitting where  stunted trees formed a rough circle. Each set of antlers from the tops  to the brow tines were statue still, as were the pale spoon-heads of the  young bucks, but each and every ear in the group seemed to be rotating  like pedals.