Dear Deceiver(39)

'Looks like you've got me,' she said crisply. 'And something else as  well coming to you from your father, you lucky boy. But now that you are  here, I don't suppose you've seen Brand?'

'Buggy? Yes,' Toby said promptly. 'Up there.' He jerked his head. 'I saw him in the bushes near the deer part.'

'Thank heaven for that,' she breathed her relief, and responded  willingly to his: 'Come on, I'll show you.' All the same, the occasion  could not be overlooked. 'Toby, do something for me. Don't cut school  like this again. It's not fair on Daddy. He's got a lot tied up in you.'

'Investments, do you mean?' The brow tramlining with interest made him very like Rory.

'Bang on!' she approved. 'There's everything invested in you,  Toby-money, time, thought, and a great deal of judgment. You're the  biggest thing he has and sometimes the biggest headache. But not always.  When you discovered the hare netting that day he was so proud of you.  We all were, of course, but Daddy most of all. Do you know why?'

The head shook, quickly and selfconsciously.

'Because it proved he was right about you. Backed his judgment. Showed how alike you are. The spit of each other, actually.'

His glance was bashful and peony red. His smile was bashful too and  short-lived. In the next second he was swaggering again, hitting at the  bracken. And looking ridiculously like his father.

He was like him also in the way he knew the forest. They were making for  the deer lawns as she had done five days ago under Rory's guidance, but  now in daylight it was possible to see that over the right-hand rim of  ivy and bramble was a boulder-strewn precipice.

'See down there!' Toby pointed. 'That little house. Willie Byrne lives there.' They went sometimes to visit 'Willie'.

'Not that way, I hope?' Haidee remarked. In places there seemed to have  been a landslide. In others the drop was very nearly sheer.

' 'S'all right,' Toby said, pleased at the impression he had made.  'There are roots and things to hold on to. You could do it in ten  minutes. The road takes nearly an hour.'

Haidee, who in fear and trembling had just checked that no mangled  flame-gold body was lying at the bottom, said she would take the road.

'You couldn't if you were in a hurry,' her companion countered. 'I mean a  real hurry. When we had the big fire here last year he did it to ring  the Brigade.'

Toby habitually referred to his father as 'he'. Haidee shuddered,  picturing Rory's body making that perilous descent. For herself, she was  not brave. She could not imagine herself ever responding to a situation  with such reckless physical courage.                       
       
           



       

They went back to the left-hand side of the wood strip and she  recognized the deer entries Rory had previously shown her. It seemed a  long way for Brand to have travelled, but Toby was confident of his  whereabouts. He had seen him skulking in the bushes.

'Oh, leave it,' Haidee said at last. 'He's moved on. He's probably home by now.'

Toby, however, loath to give up, had darted off the track. She saw him  duck under a green overhang and noticed despairingly that he had a rip  in the seat of his pants. Nothing she could do about it now. Rory would  just have to woo back his former cleaning lady. And then she heard a  gasp, rather a frightened gasp, and after it nothing.

When, heart in mouth, she dived in her turn into the tunnel of laurels,  Toby was standing crimson-cheeked, his hands by his sides. A man was  staring down at him. She knew the man was not a forestry employee and  she did not like the look of him. On the other hand, just because a  person was unkempt... She hesitated and to her shame the initiative came  from Toby.

'I suppose you know you're trespassing,' he said squeakily. 'It's private round here.'

'D'ye tell me?' the man returned. 'I think you're a bit out of date, you  know. What about all them notices around welcoming the public?'

'That's only when there's a nature trail open. There isn't one up here  and you're not allowed. Sorry.' Toby's cheeks still carried tell-tale  blotches of red. But he had made his mark. The intruder shifted  irritably.

'Okay, sonny, keep your hair on. How do I get out of here?'

'I'll take you, I think. That way we'll know you're not dropping  cigarettes about.' The near-perfect reproduction of Rory's blunt tones  was fascinating, if not to the addressee who in his turn, had coloured.

'Show us, then,' he mumbled sulkily.

Haidee, who would not for diamonds have left Toby alone with such a  person, accompanied them to the boundary fence. On the other side of  this stretched the heath and in the distance was the ruin where they had  waited for the deer.

'Cross there,' Toby directed. 'Keep bearing right and you'll come to the  road. It takes you down past the waterfall. Don't fall in!'

The humour was not appreciated. Face like a thundercloud, the man edged under the wire and shambled off across the scrub.

'Bleedin' kids,' he muttered under his breath, and Toby sent Haidee an  elated grin. She was about to compliment him on his performance when out  of the corner of her eye she saw a flash of golden red. Toby saw it  too.

'There he is! There's Buggy! Over there.'

He dived under the fence and Haidee went hot-foot after him.

'Brand!' she called. 'Here, Brand! Pish-wish!'

'Why is he running away?' Toby complained. 'He knows us. Silly old Bug.'

After the way he had handled the trespasser, she hadn't the heart to  reprove him for the hated 'Bug', and anyway, what had got into Brand? He  liked to tantalize, but he always let himself be seen.

'There's his tail. He's in there,' Toby hissed, and sure enough there it  was, sticking out from under the wire-Brand's golden brush with the  tuft of white at the end.

They grabbed for it simultaneously. It swished from their reach and the  same red-gold streak bounded through the undergrowth. A few yards away  it stood and looked at them, its body tapering down to its slim black  paws. It was laughing fit to break its heart. Or so it seemed. The jaws  were open, a pink tongue lolled and the long pointed face was merry. But  it wasn't Brand.

'Golly, it's a fox!' Toby shouted. 'It was a fox all the time. Well, what do you know?'

Haidee knew that she was a little tired and a lot distracted. She had  not found Brand, she would never make the noon bus, and yet she must  leave Glenglass before Rory returned. But at that moment Toby spoke.

'Johnny, do you see those men up there?'

Haidee could see three figures standing on a hillock. She did not recognize them.

'The small one walking over,' Toby said excitedly. 'He's one of the ones  we caught with the hares. Do you remember we met him afterwards talking  to that man Daddy doesn't like?'                       
       
           



       

Yes, she remembered that. Paul had come over to the car and she'd been  worried in case it would lead to trouble with Rory. But worried only for  the sake of peace. Surely Toby was not suggesting anything more  sinister?

She glanced back to find him biting his lip. 'What's the matter?'

'I'm trying to think,' he muttered. 'He doesn't like people coming up  here. It's the most private part of the forest. It's where the deer  come.'

That she could endorse from experience, but in this instance there  seemed no sign of the men coming close enough to scare. They were still  on top of the hill. She strained her eyes to see if she could  distinguish the features of the man Toby had recognized. Impossible. She  was much too nearsighted, but as she looked she realized that the three  figures had become four.

'That's our one!' Toby gasped. 'He was in here looking for them. That's it, Johnny. That's it. He was going to rouse them out.'

Suddenly his wide-open eyes and the passionate feeling in his voice were  portrait-plain. So often Suzanne, like the elusive doe, had come so far  but had always receded again. Now, Haidee realized, she was here at  last, in her son, blazing with fury, ready to leap into action. But this  could be a dirty business and Toby could get hurt.

He had darted off and she followed, dropping on all fours when he  motioned her to do so. Below them the ground shelved into a dell and in  it a number of fallow deer were quietly feeding.

Haidee had her invariable first impression of unreality. The delicate  gold-brown shapes embossing the green were straight out of a book of  legends. She stared silently at the arch of a down-bent neck, a comical  black button nose, a pair of ears rotating wildly as one of the group  looked up. It was a doe group. The rut was over and the herd had  reverted again to segregation of the sexes.

And that it was real, only too bitterly so, was evident. A man's figure  had appeared on the slope some distance to the right. He seemed about to  climb down and he was carrying something-what she could not be sure  until the sun caught it and the barrel glinted.

'It is a gun!' Toby's voice cracked painfully. As in her own case, sight  of the weapon had turned any excitement he might have been feeling to a  cold sickness. It was in his face and in the murmur which she was sure  she was not meant to hear: 'Oh, golly, what am I going to do?'