Black Is the Colour of My True Love's Heart

CHAPTER XI

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PAST SIX O’CLOCK. The darkness was purplish, thundery, the air still as before a storm. It must be her turn soon. Why had the old man kept her until last?

“And now for Liri. She promised to sing us ‘The Queen’s Maries’ in the full text, which is by way of being a marathon performance, so I’ve reserved enough time for her to do herself justice. But now she’s whispering in my ear that she’d like to change her choice. It’s a woman’s privilege. So I’ll leave any introduction to Liri.”

“I thought,” she said, clearly and quietly, “that everyone knows the story of Mary Hamilton, and there are so many fine stories that very few people know. I warn you, this is a marathon performance, too, but I hope you won’t find it dull. I’d like to sing the ballad of ‘Gil Morrice.’ Anybody know it?”

Thank God, nobody did. She knew the proud, proprietary emanations of those who find themselves one up on the rest, and here there was nothing like that, only pleased expectancy. It’s still true, people love to be read to, to listen to stories. Even those kids who are so with it that they’ve completely lost contact with most of it – “it” being the total body of mental and spiritual fulfilment and delight, the mass of music, the body of books, the entire apparition of art – even they will shiver and thrill to this blood-stained tragedy, though they won’t recognise their excitement as something dating back into prehistory. They’ll think it’s because this is “folk,” of all the odd labels. This is human, which is more than being folk.

“Here goes then. ‘Gil Morrice’.”

She curled over the guitar, felt along its strings with a sensuous gesture, and raised her face, filling her lungs deep. The guitar uttered one shuddering chord, and that was all. She began in the story-teller’s level, lilting voice:

“Gil Morrice was an Erle’s son.

His name it waxed wide;

It was not for his great riches

Nor for his mickle pride.

But it was for a lady gay

That lived on Carron side.”

So much for the introduction, and straight into the story. The guitar took up a thin, fine line of melody, low beneath the clear voice, that had as yet no passion in it, but remained a story-teller, uninvolved, unwrung:

“ ‘Where shall I find a bonny boy

That will win hose and shoon.

That will go to Lord Barnard’s hall

And bid his lady come?

‘And you must run my errand, Willie.

And you may run with pride.

When other boys gae on their feet

On horseback ye shall ride.’

‘Oh, no, oh, no, my master dear.

I darena for my life

I’ll not go to the bold baron’s

For to tryst forth his wife.

‘But oh, my master dear,’ he cried.

“In greenwood ye’re your lane.

Give o’er such thoughts, I would you rede.

For fear ye should be ta’en.’ ”

The guitar had enlarged its low comment, the thick chords came in rising anger. A stillness began to bud in the centre of the audience, and opened monstrous petals in the gloom. A little more, and she would know she had them; but whether she had Audrey she had no way of knowing. The pulsing excitement of the telling took her like a trance. She heard her own voice deepen and grow harsh, and she had done nothing at all, issued no orders:

“ ‘My bird Willie, my boy Willie.

My dear Willie,’ he said.

“How can ye strive against the stream?

For I shall be obeyed.

‘Haste, haste, I say, go to the hall.

Bid her come here with speed.

If ye refuse my high command

I’ll gar your body bleed.’

‘Yes, I will go your black errand.

Though it be to your cost.

Since you by me will not be warned.

In it ye shall find frost.

‘And since I must your errand run

So sore against my will.

I’ll make a vow, and keep it true.

It shall be done for ill.’ ”

The guitar came crashing in now with the dark themes of the page’s hate and love, and the rapid, rushing narrative of his ride to Lord Barnard’s castle. He swam the river and leaped the wall, and burst in upon the household at table. She had them in her hand, and the instrument sang for her, passionate and enraged beneath the far-pitched thread of her voice stringing in the words like pearls. Oh, God, let her understand what’s coming before he does, let her listen with every nerve. All I want is that she should have time to get her armour on, and be ready for him.

The page was in the hall now, striding in upon the assembled company. The voice sang full and clear, almost strident to ride over the meal-time talk:

“Hail, hail, my gentle sire and dame.

My message will not wait.

Dame, ye maun to the good greenwood

Before that it be late.

‘See, there’s your sign, a silken sark.

Your own hand sewed the sleeve.

You must go speak with Gil Morrice.

Ask no bold baron’s leave.’

The lady stamped with her foot

And winked with her ee.

But for all that she could say or do.

Forbidden he wouldna be.

‘It’s surely to my bower woman.

It ne’er could be to me.’

‘I brought it to Lord Barnard’s lady.

I trow that you are she.’

Then up and spake the wily nurse.

The bairn upon her knee:

‘If it be come from Gil Morrice

It’s dear welcome to me.’

‘Ye lied, ye lied, ye filthy nurse.

So loud I heard ye lee.

I brought it to Lord Barnard’s lady.

I trow you are not she.’

Then up and spake the bold baron.

An angry man was he.

He’s thrust the table with his foot.

So has he with his knee.

Till silver cup and mazer dish

In flinders he gar’d flee.

‘Go bring a robe of your clothing

That hangs upon the pin.

And I’ll go to the good greenwood

And speak with your lemman.’ ”

Her mouth, as always when she attempted these appalling feats, was sour and raw with the myriad voices that spoke through it, and the bitterness that century upon century could not sweeten or abate. There was sweat running on her lips, and until this moment she had not been able to raise her head and rest, letting the guitar speak for her again. Now it sang softly, unalarmed, waiting in serenity, and she cast one urgent glance towards where Audrey sat beside the open window. There was a tension there, something braced and ready and wild, to which her own heart rose with answering passion; but whether it was really more than the tension that held them all was more than she could guess. There was so little time, because the thread of this compulsion rested in her, and she must not let it flag. The sylvan song had been prolonged enough, and here came the ultimate test of her powers, the key verse that must reach Audrey before the rest had time to aim at understanding:

“Gil Morrice sat in good greenwood.

He whistled and he sang…

It had dawned upon George already that for some reason of her own Liri was re-telling the whole story of what had happened here. Perhaps not to the end, for how could any ballad encompass everything that had happened? And this was genuine, no doubt of that. The effort he had to make to tear himself out of its spell for an instant was like tearing the heart out of his body. This girl was marvellous. Listen to her now, the voice light and careless again, and yet with an indescribable overtone of premonition and doom disregarded:

“ ‘Oh, what mean all these folk coming?

My mother tarries lang.’

The baron came to the greenwood

With mickle dule and care.

And here he first spied Gil Morrice.

Combing his yellow hair…”

The word, the unexpected, the impossible word, had passed George as it had been meant to do, drawn away before his mental vision in the tension of the story. But suddenly as it slipped away from him he caught it back, and the stab was like a knife-thrust into his consciousness. “My mother…”

My mother!

What did she know, and what was she about? How could she know? This couldn’t be accidental, it couldn’t be purposeless, and it couldn’t be wanton. What Liri Palmer did was considered and meant, and he doubted if she ever took anything back, or regretted much.

He cast a quick glance round into every corner of the room, but everywhere the tension held. She had them all in her hand.

“ ‘No wonder, no wonder, Gil Morrice.

My lady loved thee weel.

The fairest part of my bodie

Is blacker than thy heel.

‘Yet ne’er the less now, Gil Morrice.

For all thy great beautie.

Ye’ll rue the day ye e’er were born.

That head shall go with me.’ ”

The rage and grief of the accompaniment remained low and secret, hurrying bass chords suppressed and stifled. For a few moments she let her instrument brood and threaten, and looked down the room. Inspector Felse was sitting forward, braced and aware. Beside him Lucien was shadowed and still, very still; there was no way of knowing, with all her knowledge of him, what he was going through now. After all, it was not Lucien she was trying to reach.

But there was a movement now in the folds of the half-drawn curtain at the last window. Audrey’s little solitude lay in comparative light, but the curtains were of heavy brocade, and lined, there would be no shadow to betray her. Softly she got up from her place, and softly, softly, with infinite caution, she slipped back step by silent step from her chair, towards the unlatched window. Audrey had understood.

Now cover her, whatever happens. Don’t let any of them look round, don’t loose their senses for an instant. Cry out and cover her with the steely shriek of murder and the savagery of mutilation:

“Now he has drawn his trusty brand

And whatt it on a stone.

And through Gil Morrice’ fair bodie

Has the cauld iron gone.

And he has ta’en Gil Morrice’ head

And set it on a spear.

The meanest man in all his train

Has gotten that head to bear.

And he has ta’en Gil Morrice up.

Laid him across his steed.

And brought him to his painted bower

And laid him on a bed.

The lady sat on castle wall.

Beheld both dale and down.

And there she saw Gil Morrice’ head

Come trailing to the town…”

The clamour of violence died into the lamentable threnody of death. The guitar keened, and the voice extended into the long, fatal declamation of that which can never be put right again. The tension, instead of relaxing, wound itself ever tighter until it was unendurable. The singer’s face, sharpened in the concentrated light upon her, was raised to look over the heads of her audience. The lady was at the window, easing it silently open, melting into the outer air.

And this might well have been her voice, if things had gone differently, high, reckless and wild, as she came down from her tower to welcome her lover, her life laid waste about her for ever:

“ ‘Far better I love that bloody head.

But and that golden hair.

Than Lord Barnard and all his lands.

As they lie here and there.’

And she has ta’en her Gil Morrice

And kissed him cheek and chin.

“I was once as full of Gil Morrice

As the hip is of the stane.

‘I got ye in my father’s house

With mickle sin and shame…’ ”

To the last moment Audrey kept her face turned towards the singer; and as she slipped back through the window the freer light found her face, and showed Liri its white and resolute tranquillity, and the already irrelevant tears on her cheeks. The two women who loved Lucien exchanged one first, last glance of full understanding and acceptance, that paid off all the debts between them.

The spell-binding voice soared in fearful agony to cover the moment of departure:

“ ‘I brought thee up in good greenwood

Under the frost and rain… ’ ”

Audrey was gone, lost to sight at once, across the blind end of the terrace, and down the steps.

George felt the boy beside him strung tight to breaking point. He saw the bright lines of Liri’s face drawn silver-white in the light of the lamp on the dais, the huge eyes fixed and frantic. Something was happening, and yet nothing was happening, not a movement anywhere in the room, she wouldn’t let them move, that long, strong hand of hers that plucked the strings was manipulating them all like marionettes, the generous, wide-jointed fingers that drummed a funeral march on the body of her instrument held them nailed in their places.

“ ‘Oft have I by thy cradle sat

And fondly seen thee sleep.

But now I go about thy bier

The salt tears for to weep…’ ”

In the changing temperature of the evening the normal small dusk wind arose, as suddenly as was its habit here over the open sward. It took the unlatched window and swung it wide against the curtain, seized the folds and set them swinging. A chill draught coursed along the wall, and fluttered the skirts of gold brocade at every window embrasure.

George heard and felt the abrupt, cold whisper from the outer world. He came to his feet with a leap, lunged silently along the wall, and whisked round the curtain to the open window, now swinging fitfully in the fresh currents of air.

Far down the slope of grass he saw the fair head receding. The curtain shook, and he, too, was gone, down the steps and after her in a soundless run. And Lucien, the thread of his passionate concentration broken by the sudden movement beside him, came out of his dream to the sharper and more personal pains of the real world. She saw him rise, and felt the belated shock of knowledge and realisation sear through him; but there was nothing she could do, as he groped his way blindly after George, except sing on to the end, prolong the postlude, cover the slight, the very slight disturbance, and make those few who had noticed it forget it had ever been.

“ ‘And syne she kissed his bloody cheek

And syne his bloody chin:

‘Oh, better I love my Gil Morrice

Than all my kith and kin.’

‘Away, away, ye ill woman.

And an ill death may ye dee.

Had I but known he’d been your son.

He’d ne’er been slain for me.’ ”

Five minutes more, to preserve the integrity of the course, and nobody, certainly not the professor, would dream of filling in with something smaller after this monstrous tour-de-force. Liri knew her worth. But don’t let them go yet, hold them fast, keep them from looking out of the windows yet, tie their feet from following. She didn’t know what she had done, but she knew there must be no interference with it now, no well-meaning onlookers, no witnesses to tell the story afterwards.

She raised the volume and passion of her instrument to a crisis of anguish, improvising in a galloping rhapsody that bore the fortunes of Lord Barnard and his lady and Gil Morrice racing to ruin together, away down the wind and into the distance of antiquity, where old hatreds and old agonies lay down together between the four lines of a ballad verse as in a bed, and slept, and dreamed. The threnody sobbed away beneath her fingers, diminuendo, and died on a mere breath, one muted quiver of a single string.

She felt the sweat cold on her forehead and lip, and the silence came down on her stunningly, like the fall of a roof. It seemed to last for a long time, while she could hardly breathe or stir for weakness; and then a sigh like a gust of wind went through the room, and they were all on their feet roaring and clapping together, and Professor Penrose had his old arm round her shoulders and was shaking her in a joyful embrace, while out of the contortion of her mouth that passed for a smile she was howling at him over and over, under cover of the din:

“Get them away, quickly! Get them out of here… get them out… get them out!”

After they were gone, with all that merry racket of cars and voices and horns, like a wild hunt of the twentieth century – and some of them still singing – the house was awesomely quiet. So quiet that it was hard to remember that somewhere downstairs some dozen or so resident staff still remained, few of them ever seen by visitors.

Celia Whitwood had tucked her harp lovingly into the back of the huge old car she drove, and set off westwards for home with Andrew Callum as a passenger. The Rossignol twins and Peter Crewe had clambered gaily into the station wagon, bound for the London train, and after them the professor, embracing his inevitable notes and leaving behind in his bedroom the same case of recording tapes he had forgotten at Comerbourne station on Friday evening. Even Dickie Meurice was gone with him, edged competently and civilly into the transport by the deputy warden, with his consuming curiosity still unsatisfied. From his front seat, for once in the audience, he had not seen Lucien appear or Audrey disappear. To him it was only a matter of time, of a little patience, and Lucien’s arrest was a pleasurable certainty. Let him go, let him sit and gloat in town, waiting for the flare headlines he was never going to see. He had never been of much importance; now, in this immense calm after the whirlwind, he was of no importance at all.

Liri sat in a deep chair in the gallery, her eyes half-closed, exhaustion covering her like a second skin. She saw the growing dusk take away the small possessions of the Cothercotts one by one into shadow, the fan that concealed a dagger, the empty place where the sword-stick had hung, the silver-chased pistols, the miniatures on ivory; and then whole pieces of furniture, the love-seat with its twisted arms, the spinet, the inlaid cabinets, the entire end of the long room. Darkness crept in upon her, and was welcomed. She seemed to have been there alone for so long that it was strange to hear a movement in the room with her. It could have been Felicity’s fictional ghost; but it was only Tossa Barber, sitting just as quietly on a high-backed chair by the library door.

“It’s only me. It’s all right,” said Tossa simply, “I’ll go away when they come.”

“I don’t mind. I thought everybody’d gone.”

“We have to wait for Mr. Felse. We’re driving back with him, if… ” She let that fall. Nobody knew when George would be ready to go home. “Dominic went down to see if he… to find them…” Every sentence flagged into silence. All they were really doing was waiting.

It must have been nearly eight o’clock when they heard the first footsteps crossing the terrace, the clash of the window-latch, a heel on the sill, stumbling, uncertain. Two people, the second closely following the first, but never touching him. A hand reached over an oblivious shoulder to the light-switches at the end of the gallery, hesitated, and chose the single lamp that made only a faint pool of radiance in a corner of the twilit room. Nobody said anything; but Dominic caught Tossa’s eye, and Tossa rose softly and slipped past Lucien Galt, who neither saw nor heard her, Dominic took her hand, and drew her away with him, and Lucien and Liri were left together.

He saw her, and his eyes came to life in the shocked grey mask of his face. He pushed himself off from the doorway, and walked into her arms without a word, and without a word she opened them to him. He slid to his knees at her feet, and she held him on her heart, along with the chill and the dank smell of the river; and she knew where Audrey had gone. After a while he stopped shivering, and locked his arms tightly round her body, and heaved a huge sigh that convulsed them both; and neither he nor she would ever know whether it was of grief at his loss, or involuntary relief at this vast and terrible simplification of his problems, or both, and in what measure.

“I called to her,” he said presently, in a voice drained and weary. “She was on the parapet. I wanted to tell her that we… that you and I… that we didn’t care, that it didn’t matter any more…”

“It wouldn’t have been any good,” said Liri. “It did matter to her.”

No, it wouldn’t have been any good, even if she had listened to him. How can you convince a person like Audrey Arundale that she no longer has to sacrifice everything to respectability, to public reputation, to what the world will say? What’s the good of arguing with her that her parents are dead now, and Edward’s dead, and the people she has left simply don’t look at values that way, simply won’t care, that they would welcome her back even after years of prison, and damn the world’s opinion? How do you set about convincing her of that, when she’s been trained to subdue everything else to appearances all her life? She couldn’t be expected to change now. This way there wouldn’t be any murder trial, there needn’t even be much publicity of any kind. The police are not obliged to make public the particulars of a case which is closed to their satisfaction, when the person who would otherwise have been charged is dead, and the public interest wouldn’t be served by stirring up mud. They simply say the case is closed, no prosecutions will be instituted as a result of it, and that’s the end of it. General curiosity only speculates for a very short time, till the next sensation crops up. This way everything would be smoothed away, everything hushed up, everything made the best of, just as it had always had to be. Maybe they’d even succeed in getting an open verdict on Edward’s death, and the locals would evolve improbable theories about a poacher or a vagrant surprised in the park, and hitting out in panic with the nearest weapon that offered. Audrey wouldn’t care. Audrey had observed her contract and her loyalties as best she could to the end. Edward would have wished it.

“I got her out,” Lucien’s labouring mouth shaped against Liri’s heart. “They’ve been all this time trying…trying…”

Yes. Trying to revive her, of course; but Audrey, it seemed, had made quite sure.

“All I meant to do was warn her,” Liri said. “I’d just found out that he knew… It was the only way I had…”

Her voice flagged, like his. They had no need of explanations, and speech was such an effort yet that they could afford to use it only for the ultimate essentials. With her cheek pressed against his wet black hair: “I love you,” said Liri gently, and that was all.

“She was my mother,” he said, “and I can’t even bury her.”

The ambulance had come and gone. Henry Marshall had had a fire lit for them in the small library, and left the handful of them there together in the huge and silent house. Lucien had bathed and changed, and put on again with his fresh clothes a drained and languid calm. Liri sat across the hearth from him and watched him steadily, and often he looked up to reassure himself that she was there. Two dark, reticent, proud people; in the intensity of this unvoiced reconciliation their two young, formidable faces had grown strangely alike, as though mentally they stared upon each other with such passion that each had become a mirror image of the other.

“I’ve got to sit back and let Arundale’s relatives do it for me, because I can’t compromise what she wanted left alone. All her life keeping up appearances, doing the correct thing, and now she has to die the same way.”

“She chose it,” said George.

“She never had a choice, being the person she was. If my father hadn’t been killed…”

“You do know about your father?”

“Do you?” challenged Lucien jealously.—

And neither of them was speaking of John James Galt, though he had done his part well enough, no doubt, during the year or so he had been in the place of a father.

“I know the Galts re-registered you as theirs when you were only a few months old, presumably as soon as the adoption proceedings were completed. I’m reasonably sure that your real father must have been one of the Czech pilots who were stationed at Auchterarne during the war. I guess that he must have been killed in action in 1942. But adoption certificates carry only the Christian names given to the child, and the name of the adoptive parent. His name I don’t know yet. I shall get it eventually either from Somerset House or from the service records. But that’s unnecessary now,” said George gently. “You tell me.”

“His name was Vaclav Havelka. I know, because she told me about him. Vaclav is the same name we call Wenceslas. That’s why he gave her his Saint Wenceslas medal. He hadn’t got anything else to give her. He hadn’t even got a country, then, only a job and a uniform. He was twenty years old, and she was sixteen, nearly seventeen, and they met at some innocent local bunfight when her school was up there in Scotland. There wasn’t a hope for them. Her people were set on her getting into society and marrying a lord, or something, not a refugee flyer with no money and no home. So she did the one thing really of her own that she ever did, she gave herself to him. Maybe she hoped to force her parents’ hands, and maybe she might even have managed it, but it never came to that, because my father was shot down six months before I was born. After that, she didn’t put up much of a fight for me.”

“How much chance did she have?” said Liri in a low voice.

“Not much, I know. With my father gone she hadn’t got anybody to stand by her. She had to tell her folks, and they took her away from school quickly and quietly, and then set to work on her, for ever urging her to have it all hushed up, to spare them the shame, to think of her future, when she hadn’t got any future. She gave way in the end. She’d have had to be a heroine not to. She let them hide her away somewhere to have me on the quiet, and then she let me go for adoption. But she insisted on meeting the Galts before she’d sign. They were decent, nice people who badly wanted a child, she knew I’d be all right with them. So she asked them to make sure that I kept my father’s medal, and then she promised never to trouble them again, and she never did. And after the war they married her off to Arundale, a big wedding and a successful career, everything they’d wanted for her. You know how he first met her? He gave away the prizes at her school speech-day, the last year she was there. It must have been only a few weeks before my father was killed.”

A school speech-day, George thought, dazzled, why didn’t I think of that? The white dress, the modest jewellery permitted for wear on a ceremonial occasion, the radiance in her face – Arundale must have had that vision on his mind ever afterwards. And she without a thought of him, or of anything else but her lover, the bridal gift round her neck, and the child that was coming.

Liri was frowning over a puzzling memory. “But you know, what I don’t understand is that Mr. Arundale practically told me that his wife couldn’t have any children. Not in so many words, but that was what he meant.”

“Felicity told me the same thing,” said George, unimpressed. “That’s not so strange. Can you imagine a man like Arundale being open to the idea that the fault might possibly be in him?”

“No,” she agreed bitterly, “you’re right, of course. Even in the Bible you notice it’s always barren wives.”

“And how,” asked George, returning gently to the matter in hand, “did you come to meet your mother again?”

“It was at a party the recording company gave, about six weeks ago.” Lucien turned his face aside for a moment, wrung by the realisation of how short a time they had had together. “She’d lost sight of me all these years, but after I started singing she began to follow up all the notices about me. I kept my own name, you see, so she knew who I was. She began to edge her way into the folk world, to get to know people so that she could get to me. And I… it’s hard to explain. I’d grown up happy enough. After the Galts were killed it was the orphanage, of course, but that was pretty good, too, I didn’t have any complaints. They told me I’d been adopted, naturally, they always do that, because you’re dead certain to find out one day, anyhow. We had one committee-woman who’d known the Galts slightly, and she told me how this medal I had had belonged to my father, who was dead, and my mother had let me go for adoption. I never had anything against my father, how could I? But there was always this thing I had about my mother, pulling two ways, wanting her because after all you’re not complete without one, and hating her because she just gave me up when the going got rough. And then this one day, at this party, there I was suddenly alone in a corner with this beautiful, fashionable woman, and she said to me: ‘I’ve been trying for ages to meet you. I’m your mother.’ ”

He doubled his long hands into fists and wrung them in a momentary spasm of anguish, and then uncurled them carefully, and let them lie still and quiet on his knee.

“You can’t imagine it. Not even you, who’ve seen her. She wasn’t like she is… was… here. The way she said it, with a terrible kind of simplicity, sweeping everything that didn’t matter out of the way. I thought I hated her, I even felt I ought to hate her, but when it happened it wasn’t like that at all. It was like falling in love. The way she was, it wiped out everything. She wasn’t courting me now because I was a lion, she’d just found her way back to me because she couldn’t keep away any longer. All she wanted was to be with me. Edward – that was a contract, and she must keep it. You know? She was even very fond of him, in a way, and very loyal. But loving… I don’t think she’d loved anyone or anything but me since my father died.”

“And you?” asked George with respectful gentleness.

“It was queer with me. If I’d always had her I should just have loved her casually, like anyone else with a mother, and that would have been it. But getting her back like that, quite strange, and beautiful, and still young… and so lost, and to be pitied! Sometimes I didn’t know whether I was her son, or her brother, or her father. I knew I was her slave.”

Yes, of course, from the moment he saw that she was his. Her adoration might well have disarmed Lucifer, pride and all, grievance and all. She had loved her Gil Morrice better than all her kith and kin, how could he help returning her devotion?

“We had to meet sometimes, we couldn’t help ourselves. We had so much time to make up. But then there was Liri… Liri broke it off with me, and I knew it was because of her, but I couldn’t explain, you see, it wasn’t my secret. We could never let it be known what the real connection was, my mother’s whole life, and his, too, all this build-up, would go down the drain if we did. We must have been mad to start this week-end course, and bring the thing right here into the house. And it was awful here, always so many people, we never could talk at all. And I had to talk to her, I had to. Because when Liri followed me here I saw she wasn’t absolutely finished with me, I was sure I could get her back, but only by telling her the truth. And I couldn’t do that, even in confidence, without my mother’s consent.”

“So the message you sent by Felicity,” said George, “was a genuine message, after all?”

Lucien shook her head, wretchedly. “It was a lot of things… I don’t know… I’m not proud of that. It was a vicious thing to do, but there she was offering to do anything for me, and I wanted her out of my hair, I needed to think and she wouldn’t let me think. And I did want my mother to come, while the whole place was nearly empty. I thought he’d be away by then, safely on his way to town. So I told Felicity what she could do for me, if she meant it. I knew what she’d think, I knew what she’d feel, I knew I’d hurt her. I meant to, though I wished afterwards I hadn’t. But I did believe she’d give the message to my mother, and I was sure she’d come.

“And instead, it was Arundale who came, with that damned murderous toy. It was like an unbelievably bad film. It was even funny at first, because I couldn’t believe in it seriously. I tried to talk to him, but I swear he never heard a word. I think in a way he was mad, then. All he wanted was to kill me, and he’d have done it, but then suddenly she was there… She must have heard us right from the gate, because she came running with the latch in her hand, and hit out at him like a fury, almost before I realised she was there. And then he was on the ground, and it was all over. Unbelievably quickly. He was dead in minutes.”

Lucien passed a tired hand over his face. “She hit out in defence of me. She never thought of killing, only of stopping him from killing. But afterwards she knew she had killed him. She was totally dazed, but quite docile. It was up to me. She did whatever I told her. I taught her what to say when you questioned her. But it was partly true, you know, he did behave like she said, after Felicity left them. He did put it all aside as a piece of childish spite, and made out he was leaving for town, just as he’d planned. It was only after he’d gone that she got frightened, and came herself, to make sure…”

“You didn’t know, of course,” said George, “and neither did she, that he’d telephoned to both bodies he should have addressed in Birmingham, and called off the engagements. Yes,” he said, answering the quick, dark glance, “he was going to make good use of those two days’ grace, too. He intended murder.”

“My own fault, I snatched the world away from under his feet. But that was something I never intended. I told her to go back to the house, and to be sure not to be seen on the way. And she did whatever I told her. Ever since her heart broke, between my father and me, she’s always done what people told her, what they expected of her. When she’d gone I tried to bring him round, but it was no good, and I knew he was dead. I threw him into the river, and the sword-stick and the latch after him. And I sneaked up to the yard and took his car and ran for it. I thought I was taking the whole load of guilt away with me, and she’d be all right. I should have known better, but I was in a pretty bad state myself. How could she ever be all right again?” He shook his head suddenly in a gesture of helpless pain. “How did you know? Why were you sure it wasn’t me? I thought I made out a pretty good case.”

George rose from his chair. It was late and it was over; and if these two could sleep, sleep was what they needed.

“I haven’t even read your statement yet, but if it’s any consolation, you convinced Rapier, all right. Don’t worry, we shall never be asking you to sign it. I knew the latch was still in its place when Felicity left you. And what did Arundale want with it? Like Lord Barnard, he came with a sword. And he was between you and the gate, he and forty yards of ground. You’d never have had the slightest chance of getting to it. No, someone else, someone who followed him there, dragged that latch out of its wards.” He cast a summoning glance towards the corner where Tossa and Dominic had sat silent throughout this elegiac conversation. “Come on, I’d better get you two home before I go in and report.” And to Lucien: “You’re staying here overnight?”

“Mr. Marshall was kind enough to suggest it. Then we can move into Comerbourne, if you still need us. I suppose we’ll have to stay within call until after the inquests?”

“Probably, but we can talk about that to-morrow.”

“I realise,” Lucien said abruptly, “that there must be a good case against me as an accessory after the fact.”

“Then so there is against me,” said Liri at once. “I warned you, and I warned her.”

She would probably never realise, George thought, how grateful he was to her for that. “What fact?” he said dryly. “There isn’t going to be any primary prosecution, why should I go out of my way to hunt up secondary charges? Much better just get on with the business of living. It may not always be easy, but it’s still worth the effort.”

“Is it?” Lucien raised bruised eyes in a challenging stare. “What did she ever get out of it? In her whole life she never had any real happiness.”

“You think not?” said George.

He walked suddenly to the door and out of the room, and they heard his footsteps receding along the passages now populous only with echoes. In a few moments he was back with a half-plate photograph in his hands. He dropped it in Lucien’s lap.

“Here you are, a souvenir for you. And you can add me to the crime-sheet – petty theft from Arundale’s estate. Incidentally, that makes you a receiver, too.” He watched the flooding colour rise in the boy’s dark cheeks, and the warmth of wonder ease the tired lines of his mouth. “Taken at that last prize-giving, unless I miss my guess. If I’m right, then he was still with her, and you were on your way. Maybe it didn’t last long, but believe me, she had it.”

Lucien looked down in a daze at the Audrey he had never seen before, with the bloom and the radiance and the spontaneity still on her, and caught at their height. If ever he doubted that he had been the child of love, he had only to look at this, and be reassured. And it was, for some reason, almost inevitable that he should look up in suddenly enlarged understanding from Audrey to Liri, whose eyes had never left him.

George wafted Tossa and Dominic quietly out of the room before him, and they went away and left those two to come to terms with the past and and the future in their own way.

Nobody had bothered to draw the curtains. Dominic looked back from the courtyard, before he climbed into the car, and there were the last two guests left over from Follymead’s folk-music week-end, framed in the softly-lighted window of the small library on the first floor, locked in each other’s arms. They must have sprung together and met in splendid collision as soon as they were alone. Their cheeks were pressed together as if they would fuse for all time, their eyes were closed, and their faces were timeless, as though love had fallen on them as a new and cosmic experience, original and unique in the history of man.

Dominic climbed hastily into the car and slammed the door, ashamed and exalted.

George Felse drove round the wing of the house, and out upon the great open levels of the drive, suddenly moon-washed and serene after the thunderous sulks of the evening. Follymead receded, the partial rear view of it grew and coalesced, became a harmonious, a symmetrical whole, making unity out of chaos. Gradually it withdrew, moonlit and magical, a joke and a threat, a dream and a nightmare, deploying its lesser shocks on either side of them as they retreated. Even those who escaped always came back; there was no need to set traps for them.

“ ‘Black, black, black,’ ” sang Tossa softly to herself in the back seat, her chin on her shoulder, “is the colour of my true-love’s hair…’ ”

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[scanned anonymously in a galaxy far far away]

[this is a fresh scan from the edition specified and proofed from print]

[A 3S Release— v1, html]

[July 20, 2007]