He finished. Then, because this was Jeffrey Underhill, and because I respected him, I came straight out into the open with what, in delicacy, he had not said.
‘You’re taking Cathy away from Emory.’
This time a pause that could be felt. Then he said, flatly: ‘Yes, I am. I think it best. I’m sorry.’
‘You needn’t be.’ I said it equally flatly. ‘I respect your reasons, and what’s more, I think you’re perfectly right. But what will Cathy say?’
‘That I can’t tell.’ He spoke a trifle heavily. ‘She’s been in and out of love, the way these kids understand it now, ever since she was fourteen years old, so we’ll hope this is no more serious. Right at this moment the only thought she seems to have in her head is that we’re going to live in Paris, France. I told you that it makes no difference to me where we live, and it will certainly be more convenient to live in Paris than in Ashley village. I’ve given that as the reason, and I’m just hoping that Nature will do the rest.’
I laughed. ‘You’re a clever man, Mr Underhill, and she’s a lucky girl. I doubt if even Emory can compete for long with Paris, France.’
He got to his feet, and I followed suit. He stood there on the hearth rug, seeming to dwarf the little room. He looked down at me. ‘I find it a great pity that we should leave the Court just when you come home, Miss Ashley. You are a very lovely girl, and I’m proud to have met you. I reckon you know how hard this has been, and it’s good of you to understand. May I hope that you will come and visit with us in Paris? I know the girls would appreciate that very much.’
I didn’t point out that I wasn’t quite in the bracket that makes weekend visits to Paris. I just thanked him, and saw him to the door, and down the flagged path towards the wicket gate.
‘Shall I be able to say goodbye to Mrs Underhill? I expect she’ll be far too busy packing and so on, but perhaps I could telephone her in the morning?’
‘She’s certainly hoping to see you soon. I’m not sure how she’s fixed tomorrow, but she’d like to have you call her, I know. She had some plan that she wanted to put to you, and I was hoping that Cathy—’ He paused with a hand to the gate, and turned his head. His face changed subtly, and he cleared his throat. ‘Why, here’s Cathy coming now. I kind of thought she would.’
Cathy was coming down through the orchard. She had a frock on this time, of some pale summery stuff that gave a floating movement to her walk as she came slowly through the dusk of the old grey trees. The effect was romantic and ethereal, like those soft focus films they use for television advertisements, but when she saw us at the cottage gate and waved, the half-hearted quality of the gesture gave her away. She was taking her time, and being self-conscious about it, because she was nervous. In other words, she was coming down to apologise.
As I waved back and called out a cheerful greeting, I realised that Jeffrey Underhill had left me. He had melted from my side as quietly as a real jungle cat, and was standing over by the ruined wall, looking out at the sunset light on the water, and making quite a ceremony of lighting a cigar. He was just nicely out of earshot. Yes, a smooth performer, Mr Underhill. I liked him very much.
‘. . . Had to come to tell you I was sorry.’ Cathy hurried it out in a small, breathless voice, like a child who wants to get it over, and is not sure of her reception.
She had stopped on the other side of the wicket gate, and was gripping the top with both hands. I dropped mine over them. I was almost four years older than Cathy, and just at that moment felt about four hundred. ‘It’s all right,’ I said quickly. ‘You don’t have to say any more. Your father’s been talking to me about it, but I knew already. I know you only did it because you were fond of Emory, and it’s his fault and not yours. I mean it, really. I’m not just saying it to comfort you . . . How could you be expected to know what’s right or wrong in English law? And besides—’ I smiled ‘—I know my cousins rather well. If I started to tell you now about the things they’d pressured me into doing that I knew I never should have done, we’d be here till midnight. So forget it, please.’
‘Oh gosh, I wish I could! You’re just sweet, but honestly, you don’t fully understand.’ The pretty Pekinese face was intently earnest. She hadn’t put on the mink eyelashes, and her eyes looked oddly unprotected. I thought there were tears there. ‘Honestly, Bryony,’ she repeated, ‘I wouldn’t have done such a thing to you, but I thought it was all on the level, and it was just a case of getting a few things out for the boys to use, to save all the fuss with those people who fix the tours. And then I found those pictures upstairs, in the cupboard along with the books, and when I found they were valuable, too, why, I just took them as well . . .’ She swallowed. ‘And then you came and started asking about the things, and I began to think it wasn’t okay after all, and then I found the pictures were really yours, your very own, all along . . . And honest, Bryony, I just feel so awful I could die. Will you ever forgive me?’
‘I did, just as soon as they told me about it. Hey, Cathy, don’t cry.’ I slid my hands up to her wrists and gave her a little shake. ‘I told you I never thought it was your fault. It’s all over and done with, and there’s no harm done, and your father’s going to get the pictures back for me, so let’s forget it, shall we?’
I talked on for some time, reassuring her, being careful not to throw too much of the blame on Emory, for fear of putting her on the defensive for him, though I thought that she was a little less than starry-eyed about him herself; in fact, I got the distinct impression that she would rather not have talked about him. So far, so good. The very fact that she had come to talk to me like this, when it would have been so easy for her to go tomorrow and never see me again, showed that Cathy Underhill must have a grain of her father’s toughness in her after all. I didn’t share her father’s fear that she might revert to her teenage ‘problem’, but it was no thanks to Emory that she had not done so. I found myself feeling a little better about mailing that photograph to Bad Tölz. About James, I refused to think at all.
Cathy, however, had him on her mind. ‘You know, James didn’t have anything to do with it. Truly he didn’t. And I know that when he saw those pictures he would have wanted to come straight and make me put them back. James is very, very fond of you, and he wouldn’t do a thing that would hurt you.’
‘I know.’
One freak shaft of sunlight, molten red, shot through the horizon clouds and touched the highest tip of the pear tree. The thrush was there, sitting preening his breast feathers, ready for a song.
I looked back at Cathy, watching me with those vulnerable, anxious eyes. ‘And now,’ I said, smiling, ‘what’s all this about Paris?’
Jeffrey Underhill’s cigar was about half smoked through before Cathy, talking now about Paris, and her mother’s plans, came gradually back to her sparkling norm.
‘And we’re going tomorrow, and there’s this fabulous party, and we want you to come! Please say you will, Bryony! Mom particularly told me to ask you.’
‘Well,’ I was beginning doubtfully, when Mr Underhill, catching the new tone of his daughter’s voice, turned away from his scrutiny of the Pool, and came back to us across the grass.
‘Cathy means to London, Miss Ashley. I left her to invite you herself, but I don’t think she’s explained. We’re giving a party tomorrow night. It’s been planned for quite a while; it’s our anniversary, so we’re having a few friends along to celebrate, and we’d be honoured if you would join us. As I told you, we’re settling down in London for a few days before we go on to Paris, so we thought we’d make this a goodbye party at the same time. Stephanie’s been on the telephone all afternoon, and she’s wild for you to be there, too. Say you will come.’
‘Please say you will!’ urged Cathy.
‘It’s terribly kind of you, and thank you very much. I’d love to, of course, but—’ I hesitated.
Cathy immediately looked anxious. ‘Bryony, we wouldn’t want to pressure you into doing anything you didn’t wan
t. Maybe it’s too soon after losing your father?’
‘No, it’s not that.’ I was thinking that if the party had been arranged some time back, then no doubt Emory and James would both be there. Unless, of course, Jeffrey Underhill had let Emory know that he would no longer be welcome? I thought him quite capable of it.
‘Then please do come,’ urged Cathy. ‘It’ll make me really feel as if you forgive me for the awful thing I did. When I think about it –’
Jeffrey Underhill, at my shoulder, intervened. ‘Perhaps Miss Ashley has too much to do here, Cat. Remember, she has only just got home.’ Then to me: ‘It would be wonderful if you could spare as the time, Miss Ashley, but you mustn’t let Cathy pressure you. I know she and Stephanie would feel very honoured if you could come, but please don’t trouble to decide now. If you like to call us in the morning, when you’ve had time to think it over—?’
‘Look,’ I said warmly, ‘I’d love to come, I really would. I can get the late afternoon train.’
At this they both joined in, with such enthusiasm that you would have thought the party was being given solely for me. They would drive me there themselves in the morning; they would put me up – ‘hire a suite for you’ was Jeffrey Underhill’s way of putting it – at the Dorchester; they would bring me down again next day, or whenever it suited me. They would do anything, if only (they seemed to be saying) I would grace their party by being there. I could hardly tell them what was in my mind; that if my two cousins had indeed been invited earlier, and if Emory, who could be as impervious to snubs as he wished to be, took the trouble to come, and to lay on the charm . . . It was for Cathy’s sake as much as anything else, that, in the end, I accepted, thinking grimly that, even if I had to use blackmail again, I would see that my eldest cousin kept his distance from her, and gave her breathing space. Then, glancing at Jeff Underhill, I saw that he had read my thoughts. He gave a half nod, threw his cigar away towards the water, and said: ‘Don’t you worry; I can take care of that.’
‘Take care of what?’ demanded Cathy.
‘I’m sure you can,’ I said.
She looked from one to the other of us. ‘What are you two talking about?’
Her father let himself out through the wicket, put an arm round her, and scooped her up towards his side. ‘Nothing to do with you. Now say good night, and we’ll leave Miss Ashley in peace.’
‘Good night,’ I said.
They went together through the dusking apple trees, arms round one another, his head bent to listen, hers raised in excited talk. A child who had been let off punishment, and a man who could take care of anything. So that, I thought, was that. And now, back to my own problems.
The thrush, unnoticed, had been singing for some time. Soon the owls would be out, and after them the stars.
Rather drearily, I latched the wicket and went back into the cottage, fished William’s Brooke out from its hiding place, and turned on the reading lamp.
Ashley, 1835.
He threw back the coverlet and, still naked as he was, trod lightly across the carpet to the window. Beyond the open shutter the daylight showed an oblong of grey. He pushed the glass wide and leaned out. The hedges of the maze loomed dark, but with a faint shine on them of dew.
It was later than he had thought. Already a thin plume of smoke was rising from the kitchen chimney-stack. No matter, though. No lights showed yet, and no one would be there to see him as he let himself in through the side door.
And she – she would be home by now, and they were safe.
16
My dreams presage some joyful news at hand.
Romeo and Juliet, V. i
I had had supper, and read for an hour, and had still only reached line 357.
‘What hap have I,’ quoth she, ‘to love my father’s foe?
What, am I weary of my weal? What, do I wish my woe?’
So Arthur Brooke’s Juliet . . . Sighing, I lowered the book and sat back, pushing my hand through my hair as if I would clear a quicker way through the shuffling press of words. It would have been dull reading anyway, but I found it hardly possible to take in any meaning, with my brain running ahead looking for something, no matter what, that might be the tenuous clue to this other Ashley maze. But look I must – even, if I had to, as far as line 3020 . . . I tried again.
But when she should have slept, as wont she was, in bed,
Not half a wink of quiet sleep could harbour in her head,
For lo, an hugy heap of divers thoughts arise,
That rest have banished from her heart, and slumber from her eyes.
And now from side to side she tosseth and she turns,
And now for fear she shivereth, and now for love she burns.
I soldiered on for perhaps twenty minutes more, then shut the book with a snap. It could surely wait. It was impossible to get right through it tonight, and if I was going to London tomorrow, I would take the book with me and hand it over to someone at Christie’s who would know how to value it. It would have been civil to let Leslie Oker look at it first, but he would surely understand.
I put it to one side and picked up William Ashley’s New Romeo. Here again, from the centre of the maze on the bookplate, the wildcat snarled and clawed. ‘The map?’ Certainly the map. But why? I turned a page and ran my finger down the list of contents.
The Catamountain.
The Maze.
Corydon’s Farewell.
The Minotaur’s Lament.
What Palace then was this?
The Lover leaves his Mistress.
The Lover Returns.
And so on. Well, the poems could not be worse than Arthur Brooke’s and at least they had the merit of being short. I turned to the first one, The Catamountain.
What hunter is there who could think to meet
In these low lands the leopard from the sun?
Long hath he lain here, silent ’neath the feet
Indifferent, which all unknowing tread
Across the spotted catamountain’s head.
See! By his side the wine-god Bacchus runs,
His basket brimming o’er with lusty grapes
And in his train the lesser godlings go . . .
The Romans again, it seemed. Probably, I thought, only the usual classical conceit. But no, here was the cat I was looking for . . .
And now in this late age he comes anew.
From Scotia’s heights, the catamountain wild,
Brought here by thee, my gentle lady mild.
As Venus led him locked in flowery chain,
So thou, my Julia, bring’st thy wildcat tame.
A shadow fell over the page. I looked up with a start, but it was only Rob, pausing outside the casement. The thrush hadn’t even faltered in its song.
‘I thought you were going to be careful. Sitting here with the window open, and so deep in a book that you never even heard me coming.’
‘Well, but it’s early still. I never thought . . . That is, I thought you meant tonight.’
‘I did, mainly. I just came down to see you were all right, and properly locked up.’
I shut the book and put it with the others, making rather a play of it, to hide a touch of embarrassed shame for my cousins’ sake. ‘You’re taking this very seriously, aren’t you?’
‘Aren’t you?’
There was no answer to that one. I got up. ‘All right, I’ll shut the window now. Are you coming in?’
‘For a minute, then.’
I shut the casement and drew the curtains. I heard his voice speaking to the collie, then a vigorous scrubbing of shoes on the doormat, and he came in rather gingerly.
‘Sorry about the shoes, but I think they’re dry now. I came across the orchard after I’d shut up the greenhouses.’
‘Would you like a cup of Nescafé?’
‘I wouldn’t mind.’ As I went into the little kitchen he picked up Romeus and Juliet. ‘What’s this?’
‘I forgot to tell you. That’s what Daddy must
have meant by “William’s brook”. See it? William Ashley’s copy of something by a chap called Brooke. It’s awfully rare, apparently. Daddy must have found out how valuable it was.’
‘Hm.’ He turned the small volume over, weighing it in his hand as if that would somehow give a clue to its worth. ‘Maybe so, but I wouldn’t have thought he’d be troubling himself about that; not then. What else was it he said? Something about a paper or letter in it?’
‘There’s nothing. I looked. I was reading it to see if there was something in the text that would give me a clue, but it’s next to unreadable.’
‘Looks it.’ He put it down, and picked up the New Romeo. ‘Is this valuable, too?’
‘Oh, no. That’s just William Ashley’s own poems. They’re not much better than poor Brooke, but I like the pictures.’
‘“What palace then was this?”’ read Rob, and puzzled his way through a few more lines. Somehow, I thought, the artificially stilted verses sounded even worse in Rob’s voice with the soft country vowels. Worse than hothouse, somehow; distorted, wrong.
He put the book down and followed me into the kitchen. He leaned against the jamb and settled down companionably to help me watch the kettle boil. ‘Is that stuff supposed to be good? It sounded terrible to me, but then I’m no judge.’
‘I’m not, either. I don’t think it’s anything great.’
‘What was all that about, anyway?’
‘Heaven knows,’ I said. ‘I haven’t read that one yet. I got bogged down over Ariadne’s clue in The Maze.’