undoing, for the wall had been clothed in ivy, and die ivy had reached for the tree, crept up it, engulfed it, all now the trunk was one towering mass of the dark gleaming leaves, and only the tree's upper branches managed to thrust the young gold leaves of early summer through the strangling curtain. Eventually the ivy would kill it. Already, through the tracery of the ivy-stems, Some of the oak-boughs showed dead, and one great lower limb, long since broken off, had left a gap where rotten wood yawned, in holes deep enough for owls to nest in. I looked up at it for a long time, and then along the neat sunny track that led out of the shadow of the trees towards Whitescar.
Somewhere a ring-dove purred and intoned, and a wood-warbler stuttered into its long trill, and fell silent. I found that I had moved, without realising it, through the gateway, and a yard or two up the drive into the wood. I stood there in the shade, looking out at the wide fields and the cupped valley, and the white-painted gate gleaming in the sun. I realised that I was braced as if for the start of a race, my mouth dry, and the muscles of my throat taut and aching.
I swallowed a couple of times, breathed deeply and slowly to calm myself, repeating the now often-used formula of what was there to go wrong, after all? I was Annabel. I was coming home. I had never been anyone else. All that must be forgotten. Mary Grey need never appear again, except, perhaps, to Con and Lisa. Meanwhile, I would forget her, even in my thoughts. I was Annabel Winslow, coming home. I walked quickly out between the crumbling pillars, and pushed open the white gate. It didn't even creak. It swung quietly open on sleek, well-oiled hinges, and came to behind me with a smooth click that said money.
Well, that was what had brought me, wasn't it? I walked quickly out of the shade of the Forrest trees, and up the sunny track towards Whitescar.
•••
In the bright afternoon stillness the farm looked clean in its orderly whitewash, like a toy. From the top of the rise I could see it all laid out, in plan exactly like the maps that Lisa Dermott had drawn for me so carefully, and led me through in imagination so many times.
The house was long and low, two-storied, with big modern windows cut into the old thick walls. Unlike the rest of the group of buildings, it was not whitewashed, but built of sandstone, green-gold with age. The lichens on the roof showed, even at that distance, like patens of copper laid along the soft blue slates. It faced on to a strip of garden—grass and flower-borders and a lilac tree— whose lower wall edged the river. From the garden, a white wicket-gate gave on a wooden footbridge. The river was fairly wide here, lying under the low, tree-hung cliffs of its further bank with that still gleam that means depth. It reflected the bridge, the trees, and the banked tangles of elder and honeysuckle, in layers of deepening colour as rich as a Flemish painter's palette.
On the nearer side of house and garden lay the farm; a courtyard—even at this distance I could see its clean baked concrete, and the freshness of the paint on doors and gates—surrounded by byres and stables and sheds, with the red roof of the big Dutch barn conspicuous beside the remains of last year's straw stacks, and a dark knot of Scotch pines.
I had been so absorbed in the picture laid out before me, that I hadn't noticed the man approaching, some thirty yards away, until the clang of his nailed boots on the iron of the cattle-grid startled me. He was a burly, middle-aged man in rough farm clothes, and he was staring at me in undisguised interest as he approached. He came at a pace that, without seeming to, carried him over the distance between us at a speed that left me no time to think at all.
I did have time to wonder briefly if my venture alone into the Winslow den was going to prove my undoing, but at least there was no possibility now of turning tail. It was with a sense
Somewhere a ring-dove purred and intoned, and a wood-warbler stuttered into its long trill, and fell silent. I found that I had moved, without realising it, through the gateway, and a yard or two up the drive into the wood. I stood there in the shade, looking out at the wide fields and the cupped valley, and the white-painted gate gleaming in the sun. I realised that I was braced as if for the start of a race, my mouth dry, and the muscles of my throat taut and aching.
I swallowed a couple of times, breathed deeply and slowly to calm myself, repeating the now often-used formula of what was there to go wrong, after all? I was Annabel. I was coming home. I had never been anyone else. All that must be forgotten. Mary Grey need never appear again, except, perhaps, to Con and Lisa. Meanwhile, I would forget her, even in my thoughts. I was Annabel Winslow, coming home. I walked quickly out between the crumbling pillars, and pushed open the white gate. It didn't even creak. It swung quietly open on sleek, well-oiled hinges, and came to behind me with a smooth click that said money.
Well, that was what had brought me, wasn't it? I walked quickly out of the shade of the Forrest trees, and up the sunny track towards Whitescar.
•••
In the bright afternoon stillness the farm looked clean in its orderly whitewash, like a toy. From the top of the rise I could see it all laid out, in plan exactly like the maps that Lisa Dermott had drawn for me so carefully, and led me through in imagination so many times.
The house was long and low, two-storied, with big modern windows cut into the old thick walls. Unlike the rest of the group of buildings, it was not whitewashed, but built of sandstone, green-gold with age. The lichens on the roof showed, even at that distance, like patens of copper laid along the soft blue slates. It faced on to a strip of garden—grass and flower-borders and a lilac tree— whose lower wall edged the river. From the garden, a white wicket-gate gave on a wooden footbridge. The river was fairly wide here, lying under the low, tree-hung cliffs of its further bank with that still gleam that means depth. It reflected the bridge, the trees, and the banked tangles of elder and honeysuckle, in layers of deepening colour as rich as a Flemish painter's palette.
On the nearer side of house and garden lay the farm; a courtyard—even at this distance I could see its clean baked concrete, and the freshness of the paint on doors and gates—surrounded by byres and stables and sheds, with the red roof of the big Dutch barn conspicuous beside the remains of last year's straw stacks, and a dark knot of Scotch pines.
I had been so absorbed in the picture laid out before me, that I hadn't noticed the man approaching, some thirty yards away, until the clang of his nailed boots on the iron of the cattle-grid startled me. He was a burly, middle-aged man in rough farm clothes, and he was staring at me in undisguised interest as he approached. He came at a pace that, without seeming to, carried him over the distance between us at a speed that left me no time to think at all.
I did have time to wonder briefly if my venture alone into the Winslow den was going to prove my undoing, but at least there was no possibility now of turning tail. It was with a sense
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