The House Above the River (6 page)

“Sorry about this,” he said, as a wave hit the bows of the dinghy and spray flew over them both. “I ought to have warned you, perhaps.”

“Much better not,” she laughed. “Or I mightn't have come.”

“I don't believe it.”

They both laughed, and neither felt that rain or spray or any other discomfort counted at all beside the pleasure of being there together.

The house, that had seemed so gloomy and forbidding on the sunny day of their first visit, now appeared in a much more welcoming guise. Compared with the general discomfort of a yacht at anchor in a gale of wind and rain, they found dry warmth, and room to stretch their legs, and a firm surface under their feet, most heartening.

When they arrived, Susan told them to dump their bags in the hall, and then led them to a small, pleasantly furnished sitting-room, where a log fire, recently lit, crackled on the hearth.

“This is Miriam's room,” the girl explained. “I thought she'd be here. I'll go and find her while you thaw out.”

The three friends waited in silence. Phillipa sat down to warm her hands, cold from the rain; Tony got out a pipe and filled it, but put it back in his pocket unlighted; Giles wandered about the room uneasily, wishing he had not come. When the door opened, they all started. But it was only Francine, in her neat black dress, covered now with a small flowered apron.

After greeting them all politely, she said, in her precise, high-pitched French voice, “Would you like me to show you to your rooms?”

She spoke with the slight burr of a Breton accent, reminding Giles of the English west-country dialects. Her French, however, was perfectly intelligible to all of them.

They followed her up a wide staircase, along a passage and round a corner into a short corridor, with a window at the end.

She opened two doors, on either side of this corridor, waving the Marshalls towards one, and Giles towards the other. They separated and went into their respective rooms.

Giles noticed at once that his bag was there already, placed on a chair under the window. This room, being further from ground level than those he had already seen, was less shut in by the trees, though the view was equally restricted to the woods that closed upon the house from all sides. While he was still looking out of the window, he heard the door of the room close behind him, and turning, saw Francine, standing just inside it, her hands clasped over her apron.

“Monsieur must forgive me,” she said, “if I speak to him about Madame.”

“Which Madame?” he asked, smiling, and wondering what on earth she meant.

“Madame Davenport.”

He frowned, and was about to refuse to listen to her, when she came forward a few steps, and went on in a hurried, pleading manner that quite astonished him.

“Madame is ill. She has been ill for many years. Here, you understand.” She tapped her forehead significantly. “Everyone is afraid for her, and a little afraid of her, too. Now Monsieur has arrived, so unexpectedly, and it has had a most profound effect on Madame. The depression is gone, but she is overexcited, she seems to be in a fever. We have had these crises before, but this is worse than any.”

“What has it all to do with me?” asked Giles, steadily.

Francine drew herself up. She said, with great dignity and respect, “It is quite clear to us all that you are a very old friend of Madame.”

“Did she tell you that, herself?”

“Of course not. Monsieur Davenport told me. He must have learned it from Madame.”

“Monsieur Davenport talks to you about his private affairs?”

She smiled.

“I have known him since he was a little boy, tearing his clothes in the woods, getting them wet in the fishermen's boats.”

“I see.” He thought for a moments then said, gravely, “It is quite true that I used to know Madame Davenport. But I have not seen her for eight years. I did not know whom she had married; I did not know she was living here. If I had known it,” he finished, with slow emphasis on every precise French word he used, “I should not have come into the house.”

Francine met his eyes with a gaze as frank and serious as his own. But she only said, as at length she turned to open the door, “You speak very good French, monsieur. You have no accent at all.”

“I spent my war in the British Navy,” he answered, “and that included the west coast of France, North Africa, and later Normandy. Also I come to your side of the Channel nearly every summer in my yacht. I have been to Tréguier twice before!”

“But you have never visited us till now.”

“I never even knew there was a house above the river. I never noticed the landing-stage till it appeared out of the fog.”

Francine sighed. As she opened the door she said, in a low voice, “It would be better that Madame did not know I have spoken to you like this.”

Giles answered, “May I remind you that I am not in Madame's confidence?”

He hoped the old busybody would understand from his tone of voice that he did not want to be in Madame's confidence, and would damn well see he was not exposed to it. Watching Francine's set face as she left the room he thought he had succeeded.

Meanwhile Tony and Phillipa, finding their bags also set out on chairs, had unpacked the simple contents quickly, and Phillipa had changed her slacks for a skirt. They went back to the sitting-room downstairs. This time Miriam was there, full of apologies for not having been in time to greet them when they first arrived.

“I'm afraid I get up very late,” she explained.

There seemed to be no suitable answer to this. But Miriam evidently did not expect one. She went on at once to ask them about their voyage over from England, their friendship with Giles, their home surroundings and his.

“How lucky for you to have grandparents for your children, who will look after them when you go away.”

Phillipa agreed warmly.

“Giles seems to have no family?”

“Oh, no, he isn't married,” Tony said, and added, “In the six years we've known him he hasn't taken more than a passing interest in any of the nice girls we keep throwing at his head.”

Phillipa laughed, but Miriam said, in a husky voice, “He was not always like that.”

“You know him, don't you?” Phillipa asked, boldly. She was determined to clear up the implied mystery.

“I nearly married him. Eight years ago,” answered Miriam, enjoying the effect of this speech.

“I'm so sorry. I wouldn't have said …”

“You need not be sorry! Giles is not sorry. Anyone can see that!”

The Marshalls felt very uncomfortable at this outburst. Miriam laughed, rather wildly. “I am obviously not sorry,” she declared, looking from one to the other. “He walked out on me, but Henry walked in. So who is the loser?”

Tony and Phillipa exchanged glances. The woman was quite terrible, their looks conveyed. Why didn't Giles come, or Susan, to relieve them of their embarrassment?

Miriam seemed to realise the unfavourable reaction in her audience. She stooped to put another log on the fire. When she sat back again, her expression and manner were quite different.

“So you two and Giles live in the same part of the world,” she said. “When I knew him he had just left the Navy, and was looking for a civilian engineering job.”

“He came to my firm six years ago,” Tony explained. “He's done very well. Full of ideas outside the routine jobs. In fact he invented a most useful gadget a few years ago, and patented it.”

“And does very nicely out of it, bless him,” said Phillipa. “This present boat of his came out of the proceeds. Much superior to the one he had when we first knew him.”

Miriam was eager to hear more of Giles's prosperity. So eager that Tony quickly changed the subject, and was relieved a few minutes later when Giles and Susan came into the room together, and the conversation turned inevitably to the weather and its prospects.

Henry did not appear at luncheon. He sent a message by Francine, begging to be excused. He was working, she explained, and would have a tray in the library.

“Henry writes,” said Miriam, slowly, when Francine had delivered her message and gone away, “Nothing is ever published. But he writes. Perhaps a great book will emerge some day. I don't know.”

“What sort of things does he write?” asked Phillipa, genuinely interested.

Miriam shrugged her shoulders, but Susan answered for her.

“Stories,” she said. “Fiction, I suppose, but most of them are war stories, and I expect they are founded on fact. And it isn't true that they are never published. They come out quite often in magazines.”

“I meant books,” said Miriam, and the subject languished.

The rain stopped during the afternoon. Giles, still feeling restless and frustrated, proposed a walk. Miriam exclaimed in horror at the idea, but when Susan welcomed it enthusiastically, she looked annoyed and said she supposed she had better take some exercise. However, when it came to the point of leaving the fireside and dressing up for the rigours of mud underfoot and a tearing wind, she changed her mind, laughingly stretching out a graceful hand towards a book on a table nearby.

Giles felt more kindly disposed towards her at that moment than at any time since her unwelcome reappearance. He put out his own hand to give her the book. Their fingers touched. In spite of a furious resentment something of her old power swept through him. He found himself looking deep into her dark eyes: it was difficult to take his hand away.

“I think I must write some letters,” he heard Phillipa say, in a dry voice, and realised, with a sense of shock, that they had all been watching him.

The walk with Susan was not a success. They covered some four miles, going briskly along uneven muddy lanes between hedges. Occasionally there was a distant view of the sea, savage, white-capped waves hurling themselves against rocks in a smother of flying spray. But most of the time it was hidden behind tall hedges with round-backed fields beyond.

They passed a group of men cutting the grass at the verge. There were eight of them, in loose blue blouses and jeans, with black tight-fitting berets on their heads, and wooden sabots on their feet. They worked with scythes and billhooks and long wooden-toothed rakes of ancient design. Giles thought of the modern tractor-driven rotor scythes used on the verges of English roads, one man driving, covering miles in a day. The Bretons might be living in another age, in another world altogether. But they seemed contented enough, exchanging their occasional remarks as they moved slowly forward. He made a mild joke about their slow progress, but Susan did not respond.

So what, thought Giles, glancing at her stern profile. Let her mind her own business, he thought, rudely, only too conscious of her obvious reaction to his unexpected moment of intimacy with Miriam. He wanted very badly at that moment to tell her about Miriam. If she had not taken up this silly, school-girl attitude, he would have done so. But not now. She could think what nonsense she liked.

They parted in the hall of the house with the briefest of mutual thanks. Susan went up to her room, and Giles, after leaving his sea boots and oilskin jacket in a cupboard for such things built into the side of the dark hall, went back to Miriam's sitting-room, where he expected to find his friends.

They were not there; only Miriam herself, who put down her book, and rose to her feet as he shut the door.

“I hoped you might come alone,” she said, in a low, tense voice, that roused his instant opposition. “I hoped and prayed for it.”

He stood still, at a distance from her, cursing his luck. It was Susan's fault, of course. If she hadn't been such a clot, they would have come here together. Now he was in for a scene. He knew the drill. She was working herself up to it, grand drama, about the fatal misunderstanding that had parted them. Her self-deception was boundless. Or did she know she was playing a part? He felt slightly sick, and bored, unutterably bored. Miriam was the eternal adolescent, he found himself thinking, but he was now eight years older. Physical contact had disturbed him, but this sort of thing, however intensely put on, made no impression at all.

He prepared to resist the coming flood of explanation and reproach. But instead his complacency was shaken by her next words.

“Giles, you must help me! I told you I was afraid. Now I am
terrified
!”

He stared at her. Against his will he found himself moving forward until he stood on the hearthrug near her. She put a hand against his coat and again he could not move away.

“I have not been happy here, Giles. Henry has never loved me. We live quite apart, and alone. We hardly ever go away. Our visits to Paris are spent seeing doctors about his spine.”

He gave a short laugh at this, and moved away at last; her hand dropped to her side.

“You are angry. You jeer. You don't want to hear about my life, do you? You used to live for every moment of it.”

That touched his strong sense of the ridiculous. He laughed again.

“Really, Miriam! It's hardly decent to talk like this. Straight out of the lowest type of melodrama.”

Tears stood in her eyes.

“You laugh. Go on laughing! But if I tell you I am in real danger?”

“What danger, for heaven's sake?”

She drew close again, lowering her voice.

“I swear I am in danger. It may sound impossible, but it is true. Why did Henry ask his cousin to come here?”

“To be with you, I was told,” Giles said, in a surprised voice.

“
To be with him
! I live here in the house with them, and I know. Henry is working out a scheme against me, because of Susan.”

“You mean he wants to divorce you, or get you to divorce him?”

“Worse than that. He wants to kill me!”

Giles remembered what Francine had told him. Perhaps the old woman was right. For there was nothing whatever of the villain about poor Henry. A quiet, rather dull, rather ill man.