Dear Deceiver(42)

He had gone into the house and after a few abortive calls she followed  dejectedly. Every man's hand seemed against her and Brand's continued  absence was the last straw. That fox they'd seen could have savaged  him-or a trap as Rory had so heartlessly suggested.                       
       
           



       

A moment later she heard a door open. 'Come here!' he called resignedly.

Brand had been ill-treated, starved, imprisoned, thrown on a hard cold  world. In such circumstances a chap could be said to be living rough.  Brand was offended. He sat flatly on the eiderdown on Rory's bed not  looking at them. His face was turned to the wall, his bosom and  tucked-over paws a little like a plaited cholla loaf.

'But he can't have-how did he get in...' Haidee began incredulously.

'Don't look at me,' Rory said shortly. 'I don't care for animals on my bed.'

Of course he didn't. How like Brand, and how in heaven's name had he  sneaked back into the house without her seeing him? She was cross with  him; she was overjoyed to see him, of course, but he was provoking. She  gave him a tip of irritation and he drew pettishly away.

'Come on, take him out of here,' Rory commanded.

He followed them into the corridor, closing the door behind him rather  more ostentatiously than was necessary. 'And another thing. What's this  supposed to mean?' He pulled the note she had left him out of his pocket  and flourished it. 'Are you here or are you gone or are you going?'

'I'm going!' she flashed angrily. 'And the sooner the better.'

'All right. Why the cloak and dagger act? I'm not stopping you. I'll give you a lift.'

'I don't want a lift,' she said crossly.

'Suit yourself.' He looked with interest at suitcase, cat basket and  various other odds and bobs. It was a strange fact that that morning  they had not looked heavy. Now they did. They looked overpowering.

'It's nine miles to Enniskerry,' Rory remarked triumphantly. He glanced  at his wrist. 'That's where I got you, that's where I'll leave you. But  first I have to look at something. You'd better come with me, it won't  take long.'

As she hesitated he flicked a finger at Brand. 'Shut that cat up somewhere. What about the stable?'

'Oh no! He can open the door.' She checked uncertainly. 'At least I think he can.'

'Do you?' Once before he had looked at her like that, eyes solemn,  cheeks straight, mouth buttoned against laughter. 'S-m-a-r-t g-u-y' he  spelled as though the praise might go to Brand's head.

Light, or at least half light, dawned. 'It was you! You let him out!'

He said neither yea or nay, but his eyes twinkled.

'I've been terribly worried,' she reproached.

'What do you think I've been?' It was not asked urgently, but next instant it was back to business. 'Come on, then, let's go.'

Haidee had known that the Division had a building in course of erection  about a quarter mile from Glenglass House, but she had never seen beyond  the wooden hoarding that enclosed it. Today the hoarding had been taken  down and on an island of green stood a new bungalow.

Whatever about the commercial rewards of conifers, no such trees were  here. Limes and little rowans flanked one side, three holm oaks, their  green dappled with sunshine, bordered the other. There was a  satin-trunked beech and a great oak in a pool of its stalkless mitred  leaves. Only a quarter mile from the big house, but it could have been  ten times as far, and because the wild life of the forest had been there  before the bungalow it was likely they'd hang on to what they held.  Squirrels would play in the beech, owls pitch on the oak, vixens lie up  with their cubs in the green banks. And was it symbolical that the steep  new roof was green?

Growth was the message of life, for branches that had been lopped, for  fawn and leveret, for boys with lopsided grins and for hearts that had  mourned. Here even in winter the days would be green and burgeoning.

She came back with a start to the bungalow itself. It had a lot of  windows, some bow-shaped; she liked that. Better still was the sun porch  along one side.

'I thought it was time to let the dog see the rabbit,' Rory observed.

Haidee could not tell which of them was the dog, but it was a very nice rabbit.

It gripped her. She saw a flower arrangement on the window in the hall  and in the long white sitting-room she saw a plain carpet, cornflower  blue, and over the chiselled stone fireplace a Wicklow landscape in oils  with a lot of deep blues. A piano would go beautifully inside the door.  How silly. Few people these days had pianos. She saw Rory's dark honey  carpet in the little dining-room and in the bathroom she saw a blue  bath, a blue and green paisley decor and a pot of ivy. It did not matter  that it was not her house, that in fact she hadn't the slightest idea  whose it was.                       
       
           



       

'It's mine,' said Rory. 'And I'm not falling over any pot plants while I'm having a bath, that's for sure.'

He had thought of a dark green bath and a pitch pine effect vinyl.

'I should hate that.'

'I thought you might, actually,' he mocked.

At that moment, however, all that was uppermost in her thoughts was that  it was all over. The deception was known and pardoned and there were no  more traps. She was laughing-at least she should be. In fact, she was  seeing a face that had everything on offer in the way of quirks, lines  and mischief. She was looking at a long brown chin, a green waterproof  jacket and the sweater she had washed last week. She was thinking of  Jennie who would some day come home again and she was knowing that for  herself it was 'Peace go with you', and that she didn't want peace. It  had been such a lovely war.

'There's a rush on, you see,' he was explaining. 'My marriage date's come forward.'

To the end of her days Haidee thought she would associate the ring of  bare boards with an ebbing away of feeling. There was no sense in  putting off a personal black spot, but she realized that was exactly  what she had been doing. Telling herself that he couldn't marry Jennie  for two or three years. Giving herself only one bad thing at a time.

How spineless. If a part of her had to be cut off far better get it over and done with.

'Congratulations,' she said composedly. 'I hope you'll be very happy.'

'I will if I can get these chaps to meet their deadline.'

She felt her head spin. 'I think I've been very wide of the mark. Are you not marrying Jennie?'

'J-Jennie!' Eyes went wide. He said it again, stuttering: 'Marry Jennie! Are you mad? Jennie's a child.'

'She loves you.'

'Not now! Not since I washed her face. Didn't you hear about that? I had  to do something. I've seen it coming for ages and that morning you  slept in she turned up to breakfast with green muck on her eyes and  purple muck on her mouth. She wouldn't clean it off herself, so I did it  for her. I told her the rut was over.'

'Rory! How could you! She wouldn't...'

'Wouldn't understand? She understood perfectly. So did I. When someone  has their eye on me I can see it a mile off.' The twinkle was deep and  infuriating, the lips stayed firm.

Rory for red, she thought, hart for a ten-pointer stag and forester-as  he had told her himself-an old Somerset name for a wild deer. Add them  up and even for one who didn't get her sums right you had one arrogant  monarch of the glen.

'You're just like your name,' she accused rashly. 'You think all the  hinds are running after you.' Could he-appalling thought-have felt that  about her?

The emptiness of the room made her words echo the louder and she was  ashamed of them. If like his namesake he were to roar in anger she  couldn't blame him.

But Rory didn't roar. 'Not all, unfortunately,' he said artlessly. 'The one I want is running away.'

Haidee had never known anything like the stillness except perhaps in the middle of the night when she'd awakened from a dream.

The dark blue eyes themselves were still, as though they'd come to rest.

'How do I catch this one?' Rory asked gently. 'There are no more cats to  shut up.' He raised her hands and held them against his chest.

'It looks like you've done it-actually,' she said.