To her surprise he rose to the bait. ‘I don’t really see what business it is of yours. Of course I know; it’s my family, isn’t it?’
‘Is it private – secret – that you can’t tell?’
‘It was all in the war. Simon was in a bomber squadron, his plane went in the sea, he was saved; they invalided him out – in ’44, I suppose . . . His sister came home to look after him – she’d been on war work. Then one of Simon’s friends fell in love with Marion. Simon didn’t like it. He disapproved. But it didn’t stop them. After the wedding they were going to spend their honeymoon in Ireland. On the way across their boat was sunk and they were both drowned.’
She stared at Gregory’s reflection. ‘Sunk? By a U-boat or something?’
‘No, it was a storm.’
‘But – this was in the Irish Sea?’
‘Where else?’ he said impatiently.
‘But – I thought . . .’ She stopped and saw him watching her. ‘I knew Marion had been drowned, but I thought it was . . .’ She stopped again, no longer willing to go on. ‘Why did Simon disapprove?’
‘He wanted Marion to stay with him. He thought he owned her. He said that here was where she belonged.’ Gregory hunched his shoulders and moved off towards the car.
II
They had tea at a little café and drove home in the scarlet evening with the sun shafting unconvincingly through clouds that crouched over the mountains and threatened storm. When the sun finally gave up, large sparse drops of rain began to fall on the car and distant thunder rumbled. Climbing the long winding valley out of Cardiganshire in the premature, brooding, thundery twilight, Norah thought she had seldom seen land wilder or more desolate.
When they got home Simon went straight to his room and Norah slit open a letter which had not arrived by post. It said:
‘The cloud effect was great, you should have come. But our meeting now has another purpose, connected with the Symes, and I think it important I should see you. Will walk over late this evening – say ten-thirty – and hang around the conservatory door at the back. Try and make it. C.’
Dinner was a quiet meal. During it Simon was at his most charming to Norah, as if no thought that he had asked her to leave had ever entered his head. When he was in this mood it was impossible not to respond. But after dinner he went early to bed, while Gregory played the piano and Althea took on Croome-Nichols at chess.
Norah half listened to Gregory, half read a magazine, thinking of her own life and the complexities of making the right decision. If she were to leave tomorrow, just ask for the car and leave and catch the next train back to London, what did London offer? She could put up probably for a while with Olga; it was a bit squalid but warm and comfortable and undemanding. An employment agency would soon find her a ‘temp’ job while she looked round. But the prospect wasn’t ravishing. Perhaps there is a loneliness to all independence. She still very much missed her father. His even temperament had acted as a leaven upon her own. It was not only his age that enabled him to see events in clearer perspective: it was an innate sense of balance. She was much more like her mother – tended to be contrary and to make mistakes out of an excess of temperament but to recognize them as mistakes soon after she had made them.
She got up and wandered down the passage and into the library. As she had thought, the tape machine had been carried back there and set on a table between the shelves. She lifted the lid and looked in. A tape was on the deck, and it looked very much like the one that had been played last night. She wondered how it worked. It looked fairly simple. There was a switch marked On which when she pulled it produced a green light. There was a knob with four slots: Record, Wind on, Wind back and Play back. There was a switch marked Start and a button marked Press to stop. The knob was set at Play back. She glanced round the shadowy library to see that no one was sitting hidden in one of the big chairs, then pressed the switch for Start.
Marion’s voice loud and clear instantly filled the room.
‘ – love shall not.
And death shall have – ’
In a panic she jabbed the button to stop. Silence settled again on the library like a heavy curtain that has been parted by a gust of wind.
After a minute she saw a knob marked Gain and turned it right back. Then she switched on again, slowly turning up the sound until the recording came through as an undertone.
There was silence and some clicking. Then Marion began to sing in a thin but sweet voice. At first she was just humming a tune, then she sang a little nursery rhyme,
‘Once there was a little boy
Wouldn’t say his prayers
When he went to bed one night
Away upstairs.
Mamma heard him shouting
Dadda heard him call
When they went to look for him
He wasn’t there at all!’
There was laughter at this, a man chuckling and the girl joined in. After that silence fell. It was queer waiting, not knowing what was to come.
Then the girl said sharply: ‘Simon, come and look at my engagement ring! Don’t you think the sapphire matches my eyes?’
The man laughed again and said: ‘Don’t be stupid, darling, your eyes are green. Anyway, Simon’s sulking.’
‘No, he’s not. Are you, Simon. Simon never sulks for his Marion. Simon . . . !’
There was silence. Then a little whistle. It was a girl’s whistle. Then the man’s voice:
‘Oh, whistle, and I’ll come to ye, my lad,
Oh, whistle, and I’ll come to ye, my lad,
Though father and mither and all should gae mad,
Oh, whistle, and I’ll come to ye, my lad.’
Silence and clicking.
Marion’s voice: ‘Simon, come and look at my engagement ring. Simon . . . ! Simon . . . . ! Simon . . . ! Simon . . . ! Simon . . . !’
She went on repeating the name in a tense whisper. Unable to take any more, Norah switched off. The tape was not helping. It was not helping at all.
She rubbed her hands on her handkerchief as if to remove some dust or doubt. Then she walked out of the library and back to the drawing-room. Here the game of chess was just breaking up with the orthodoxy in the shape of Mr Croome-Nichols triumphant. He opened his mouth at Norah in saturnine good humour, and she smiled back. Didn’t she play chess? Good for the mind. Do her mind all the good in the world. Didn’t her father ever teach her? A pity. There was no way of making up for lack of parental tuition. Same with formal education. If you didn’t get the best, well, you missed it; and that was something you could never make up. Not that it was quite the same these days. All these free scholarships and things . . .
‘They may be the salvation of England,’ said Althea as she fitted the chessmen into their little felt compartments. ‘To create a peaceful revolution.’
Mr Croome-Nichols sniffed, twisting his long nose at her. ‘No doubt they have their uses. In exceptional cases, that is. But like everything else these days, it’s carried too far. Exaggeration: spirit of the age. Met a man last month – son of a butcher – been up to St John’s for next to nothing, and just been given a fat living. Son of a butcher. Couldn’t do it in my day. It’s turning the world upside down, and – er – hm . . .’
‘You’re a little out of date, Rupert. It seems . . .’
‘And a good thing too. Who wants to be up to date in this modern world? Look what that fellow Carew was telling us only last night . . .’
Norah glanced at her watch. In half an hour that fellow Carew would be waiting to meet her outside the conservatory door. Would she go? Did she keep night trysts like a love-sick servant girl? But he had worded his note cunningly.
She shifted in her chair and watched Mr Croome-Nichols making his nightly preparations to retire: the book, the glasses, the change of slippers, the winding of the watch, then unfolding himself from his chair like a rusty jack-knife. Be honest (because if you can’t be honest with yourself . . .), if you go to meet Christopher
it may partly be to discover what he has to tell you about the Symes, but it will also be curiosity to explore your own feelings. A sophisticated man, good-looking, well orientated, making a dead set. He was obviously very much at home with women, very expert. Great charm. Given encouragement, any sort of encouragement, he’d take charge. Would you be willing?
Surely not so soon, surely not after the hurting break with Robert. Life didn’t arrange things very well. That lack of perspective that she had recently regretted was inevitable here. How could one begin again so soon and know anything for certain, what was truth, what was emotion on the rebound?
Everyone retired to bed, conveniently, at ten-fifteen. Christopher had estimated their movements well. She went up to her room, lit the lamp there, peered in at her sitting-room; nothing moved. She shut the door, sat on the bed for ten minutes, then kicked off her one good pair of Parisian evening shoes – cream lace court shoes – and put on a pair of suede shoes, swung a cardigan round her shoulders, took up a pocket torch and went down to the library. The conservatory opened off a short passage beyond.
All the lights in the house had been put out except for two small lamps which stayed on all night as pilot lights in the main hall and on the main landing. Once in the library she flickered the torch from wall to wall, anxious not to surprise or be surprised by Doole and Alice again. The room was quite empty except for chairs. It smelt dusty and old.
She went through the passage into the conservatory. The sky had split open, and a thickening slice of moon low down above the mountains peered between monuments of cloud. She reached to pull the bolt back and saw it was already drawn. Careless. But then what tramp or burglar would wander here? They’d be too scared. She stepped into the garden.
This side of the house you were protected from the breeze and it was not cold. A scent of late roses was in the air. All the same the garden was a place of secrets tonight, in which harmless and mundane shrubs took on a mysterious humped significance. She wondered what it would be like down by the lake. Of course Marion might now just be on her way up with dripping hair and staring eyes to ride the rocking-horse in her nursery. Perhaps that was why they left the door unlocked. (But had she not died in Cardigan Bay?)
Something moved not far away, and she started before she knew he was already there waiting.
‘Good,’ he said, ‘you’re dead on time. Hullo.’
Because her heart had bumped she was angry both with him and with herself. As he loomed up, tall and grey in the half dark, she said: ‘This – this jumping from behind stones is rather trying.’
‘You let me down this afternoon. I waited two hours.’
‘Sorry . . . we went to Aberystwyth. I couldn’t let you know. Anyway, it was not . . .’ She stopped.
‘Important? Well, it was to me. But I’ve made use of the extra time with another session at the Dyfri Arms.’
‘What’s that?’
‘The little pub at Llandathery. I told you. I go there sometimes to pass an idle hour, and this time the hour hasn’t been wasted. Look, can we sit somewhere?’
‘There’s a bench by that tree. But I mustn’t stop long. Supposing Doole came round and locked me out.’
‘Maybe that would be a good thing.’ He waited until she was seated and then sat down close beside her. ‘It would force a decision.’
‘A decision for what?’
‘Well, you could come back with me to my cottage now and fetch your things away from here in the morning.’
‘Tonight? But why? What’s wrong?’
He groped for and found her hand. She let her hand be taken but was slightly restive at the possessiveness with which it was done. ‘That first day I was half joking, saying this house wasn’t for you. I meant it was stuffy, old, depressing, not your style. Now I mean it in a more positive way.’
She said: ‘I’m perfectly capable of looking after myself, Christopher. I can’t see why everyone’s so concerned for my safety. Just because you . . .’
‘Everyone?’ He bit on the word. ‘Who else is concerned?’
‘Did I say everyone? Well, you seem to be, anyhow.’
‘Who else?’
She was reluctant to speak now. ‘Oh . . . Simon last night – said something – when I went after him. It probably meant nothing.’ She told him a few of the less vague of Simon’s statements. To her annoyance Christopher was silent for a while, as if impressed. She didn’t particularly want people to be impressed.
He said: ‘Simon’s the key, isn’t he?’
‘If there is one.’
‘It’s him I’ve come to talk to you about . . . Last night, of course, was the first time I’d met him, and as soon as I saw him I thought there was something pretty devious about the whole thing. First of all, he was lying about having been to America. Several questions I asked him he didn’t know the answers to.’
‘America’s a big country.’
‘But there are some things anyone who’s been there knows.’ The moon went behind a cloud and the garden was dark. A night bird was crying down by the lake.
‘So?’
‘So I asked about him at the Dyfri Arms. It’s not much fun at first, going in there, because they all speak Welsh, and when they condescend to speak English and then switch back to their own language you never know whether they’re going on talking about you and making jokes at your expense. But they come to know you after a while, and I met an old chap last night who has farmed round here for forty years and knows most of what goes on, so I asked him about the Symes.’
‘What did you ask him?’
‘Are you cold?’
‘No, no.’
He seemed about to put his arm round her shoulder, but just refrained. She was not yet amenable.
‘I’ve known the Symes three years, but it never really occurred to me to ask about them outside. One more or less takes a household for granted. I didn’t like them as individuals but wasn’t sufficiently interested to enquire, Until you arrived . . .’
‘Well?’
‘He was reluctant at first to say much, this chap – to display his prejudices to an Englishman. Obviously he thinks they were a pretty unscrupulous lot in the old days – made claims to land they’d no right to – that sort of thing – and the house has a bad name; one of the maids died here and the locals have fought shy of it for a long time.’
‘So you told me.’
‘Soon after Simon’s parents died the house was closed, because the two children, Simon and Marion, were away – it was during the war. Then Simon was invalided out of the RAF and came back to recuperate. Then Marion came down with another RAF pilot she’d fallen in love with and they were married here. Apparently Simon objected.’
‘Yes, I heard that this afternoon. I persuaded Gregory to tell me.’
‘Did he tell you why Simon objected?’
‘He seems to have been over-fond of his sister.’
‘Yes – obviously – after last night. But he had another reason. Richard Healy, the bridegroom, was going to desert.’
‘Desert – from the RAF?’
‘Yes. He was Irish – Southern Irish – he’d flown on goodness knows how many bombing missions, and now he’d fallen in love and wanted to opt out. Apparently he argued that since he was a volunteer he ought to be able to leave when he chose. He was a high-spirited, irresponsible sort of chap, according to old Evans. He thought Simon, who had been invalided out, would understand. Simon didn’t. They quarrelled. But Simon couldn’t stop the wedding. They were married at Llandathery, went on to Shrewsbury for three days’ legitimate honeymoon and then came back here before leaving for Ireland. Healy argued they could lie low there until the war was over. Simon had to go along with the idea, though he said that Healy would be a wanted man for years and that they would know no peace.’
‘Your farmer seems to know a lot.’
‘Well, his cousin used to work here, Abigail John; she died last year. She was here through it all – the only one.’
/>
‘And what has this to do with me?’
‘Well, apparently it was pretty nasty here when they got back from their three days’ honeymoon. Simon had always been a bit neurotic and had been brooding on the marriage while they were away. There was only Abigail in the house besides them. She said Simon would not speak to either his sister or Richard Healy during the day they spent getting ready to leave. But he consented to drive them to the coast. Sometime during the following month, after they had left, that is, he tried to commit suicide.’
‘Simon . . . ?’
‘Yes. But they found him in time. The news had just come through that the boat the honeymooners were in had been lost at sea. Simon was breaking up and Mrs Syme came down to look after him.’
‘Breaking up? In what way?’
‘Well, I was right, he hasn’t been to America. He. was put away. He spent the first year in the Redesdale, which, as you know, is a mental institution. Then he was transferred to the Conran Nursing Home in Norwich. I’m not sure of course exactly what type of illness Simon’s is, but I rang a man this afternoon and he says the Conran specializes in cases of schizophrenia.’
CHAPTER SEVEN
I
He kissed her before he left, his hands holding her pleasurably, taking no liberties but promising what might come. She had been unable not to respond. It would have been ungenerous to seem cold, and for her quite out of character, but, perversely she had wanted not to respond, partly like the burnt child and because she hoped to keep their relationship unchanged for a while longer, partly because some other and perhaps deeper layer of her emotions was in a state of shock from what he had told her. She felt sick with the news.
He had again made the suggestion that she might be happier leaving tonight and coming to his cottage, but she had scotched the idea, arguing that there was no reason at all to suppose she wasn’t perfectly safe and secure at Morb House, yet fully aware that she was withholding from him the one vital fact which would have given a fair and valid reason for persuading her to leave. He did not know of her likeness to Marion.
So why had she not told him?