Dear Deceiver(6)

'Then it's on?' The sun had come out again in Paul's nice 'pointer' face.

'So long as we tell the doctor. He'll know what to advise.'

'Good idea,' Paul agreed. 'Only he's off duty. I'm sure I could phone him though tonight or tomorrow.'

'Then will you?'

'For you, lily maid-anything,' he promised. 'And bless you. I'm very grateful.'

The next twelve hours or so went in settling in at home, Brand, as  though by accident, always turning up. He was a flat bored-looking heap  under the hydrangeas when she cut the back grass and a watchful eye and  nose with a mantilla of the sitting-room curtain when she cut the square  in front. When she went upstairs he galloped after her shaking his  golden fleece.

Breakfast was still on the table when Paul telephoned. He had spoken to  the doctor and the odds against Antonia having any more lucid periods  were long. This notwithstanding, he had told him about Haidee.

'And did he buy the idea?' Haidee asked.

'Of course. Just one thing, love, I'm afraid I won't be with you for a  while.' He had been given an unexpected directive to Waterford to do a  piece on glass which would be followed by other pieces on industries in  all the provincial cities.

It was a dismaying, not to say terrifying, prospect. 'You mean I'll be on my own? Oh, Paul, I can't! Must you go just now?'                       
       
           



       

'There's a short answer to that one, lily maid. It's my bread.' He went  on to say yet again that all she had to do was to show herself 'and make  the right noises'. 'It won't be for more than a day or two. It can't  be. And she's more or less comatose. It's a piece of cake.'

The expression grated, but she supposed that was being pedantic. Paul  had spoken lightly. He did not mean it as it sounded, and now again he  was rattling on: 'They have your address and phone number. Naturally  they asked for it.'

Natural, no doubt, but it sent an icy shiver down her spine. She said so  and, surprisingly, Paul did not laugh. 'If you're really that worried,  pack it in. I just thought you were God-given.'

He'd got her thinking too-the eyes that had tried to open, the one  uninjured hand that had tried to move the bedclothes, the longing that  had lived on when almost everything else of Antonia Whittaker was dead  ... her daughter, her home and now two husbands gone ... and Haidee  herself, had she been God-given?

'I suppose now that the doctor knows about me I needn't be word-perfect. It won't matter.'

'Oh, darling, you do go on!' Paul said irritably. It was almost as  though he were beginning to lose interest. Not that that could possibly  be, of course, when he cared so much about Glenglass and the fortunes of  its owners. 'Play it by ear, that's all. If you think it's getting too  hot for you, have sense. Drop out. Just say when they ring that  Suzanne's gone and you don't know where. It'll be in character, after  all.'

The conversation over, Haidee went to call on Skipper. Skipper was  another friend. He belonged to the next-door neighbour and being a young  dog needed a lot of exercise. Haidee was certainly god-given so far as  Skipper and Skipper's mistress were concerned.

'He's missed you, I can tell you,' the latter now observed. 'We all have. Come in tonight and tell us about the holiday.'

'I will,' Haidee promised gaily.

It was a sparkling morning. Which way to go? Skipper was keen on the  grass plots which bordered Clontarf Promenade. The company was good  there, it was a recognized canine meeting place. And perhaps she should  not go too far as it was now past eleven. She hesitated, looking up  river at the frieze of storage tanks and the red and white chimney on  the generating station. But hard luck Skipper, and hard luck Brand, who  from eleven o'clock each morning began talking about lunch. Today, late  as it was, it had to be her old and favourite funkhole.

'Trying to make up my mind!' she called to Skipper's owner who had come  into her front garden to tie up a clump of chrysanthemums. 'I'm going on  the Bull.'

The North Bull had started life as a sandbank only visible at low tide.  It had stood up as dry land only after the building of the north and  south walls of the river. For a period it had been a chain of islands  and called the Bull and the Calves, but soon the Bull had swallowed the  Calves and grown to its present two miles. It could be reached by a  bridge at its nearer extremity or by the new solid causeway midway  across. It is an area of beach, sand dimes and salt-marsh, and a bird  sanctuary. From October to April its tidal mud is a feeding ground for  wild geese, duck and wading birds from beyond the Arctic Circle.

Haidee enjoyed walking. She strode zestfully along James Larkin Road,  the name-an honoured one in Dublin-which had been given to the new  coastal thoroughfare. A woman and a small boy with field-glasses were  sitting on the sea wall, another boy was cycling along the footpath, his  eyes not on where he was going but bent right towards the island. As he  passed Haidee he wobbled, but she did not blame him. It was low tide,  the mud flats were uncovered and the chocolate brown of them white with  gulls. The Bull itself, so mellow was the morning, looked more yellow  than green and each time a breeze stirred the water holes on the flats  they trickled silver. She called Skipper and turned right along the  causeway.

It was a spread of brown and blue. Two dunlin stood plumply on the  rippled mud. A curlew rose from grass on the estuary side. Knots of  Brent geese swooped and soared over her head, one minute dark, the next  flashing white as their undersides caught the sun. Their cries came on  the wind, thin, high, exquisitely sad. Like perhaps the pipes and  pennons of that long ago day in Limerick when their human namesakes 'The  Wild Geese of Ireland' had marched to the ships and embarked for  service in France. School lessons about the Irish armies routed at the  Boyne and the Treaty of Limerick which had spared their leaders,  provided they accepted exile, always came alive for Haidee when the  geese sang over the marshes. But today she thought of another exile -  Suzanne, supposed to have been so like her. How like? Would anyone,  apart from Antonia to whom it would be fed, ever take one of them for  the other?                       
       
           



       

She'd been walking out along the causeway almost directly in the line of  Howth Head, today a purply blue. A car passed her slowly, drove on and  stopped.

The door opened and a man got out. At first she took him for a  bird-watcher-there were already two on the causeway, a tall girl in a  muddy anorak, and a middle-aged tweed-capped man-but as he came towards  her the purposeful stride struck home. No! It was too fantastic. What  coincidence could have brought her and this man face to face within  forty-eight hours of disembarkation? Wait now, don't run away with it,  she told herself sharply; you know he's Rory Hart from Glenglass, but he  doesn't know you, he never saw you, remember.

She felt secure then, secure enough to let the scene impress, the steel  blue water, the long ramp, the whirring of wings and the striding  figure. The word was-power. A blunt-faced head, held erect. Legs that  moved easily. A fit man. And then-a few yards away the striding stopped.  Dark blue eyes focused directly on her. The lip curled slightly.

'So this is it. Miss Brown of Dollymount. Good grief, you've done some crazy things in your time, but this beats all!'

Haidee would not have disputed it. Her head was spinning. The dark  brocade-like surface of the mud flats, the harebell blue of the sky and  the white fans of the gulls wobbled like melting jelly.

Rory Hart's face did not wobble. It remained dour, the mouth set, the  eyes impatient. 'Come, come, don't give me surprise. When you came back  to Dublin you must have known we'd meet. And don't tell me you don't  know what to say. You may have changed your name, my dear Suzanne, but  not your spots, I'll bet.'

Suzanne! For all that he'd spoken quietly the echoes were flying like  the geese, out to sea, up the lagoon, across the saltmarsh ...  Suzanne-Suzanne-Suzanne-my dear Suzanne.

Minutes ago she'd been wondering how like Suzanne she really was. This  terrifying moment was the answer. A forward step and his hands came down  on her shoulders.

'What are you doing?' she jerked.

'I'm looking,' he said calmly. 'I want to make quite sure.'

She knew weasels mesmerized their prey before they killed it. If she'd  been told that the Glenglass weasels passed on the tricks of their trade  she would have believed it. No power, it seemed, could draw her eyes  from the dark blue ones searching her face and they did it quite as  pitilessly. Most nerve-racking of all the moment when one of the hands  rose and whipped off her glasses. 'How long have you worn these?'

Shock jolted her into unvarnished truth. 'A few years.'

It was all so impossibly silly. The deception at no time was intended  for anybody but the dying Antonia Whittaker. She had only to explain as  Paul had explained yesterday to the doctor in charge of the case. 'I'd  like...' She stopped as the glasses were at once extended to her.