The Judas Tree (30 page)

‘All that you've said only convinces me that you still can do great things.'

He was too moved to reply and they continued in constrained silence. But her words vibrated in his mind and he felt that she was right – the potential for high achievement still lay within him. What was that line? ‘ Do noble deeds, not dream them all day long.' He remembered suddenly the last advice Wilenski had given him on leaving New York: ‘ When you get over there, for heaven's sake find yourself something worthwhile to do, something to do with other people, that'll take your mind off yourself.' Why had he ignored, forgotten this? It had taken Kathy to remind him. Her sweetness and goodness, the purity of her being – he did not shrink from the phrase – had worked on him unconsciously, affected him without his knowing it. How could it have been otherwise?

He was about to speak when, looking up, he saw they had reached the mountain hut where on a previous occasion they had stopped for coffee. It was a poor brew made from some inferior powder, but it was hot, Kathy had appeared to like it, and the peasant woman, skirt kilted over her striped petticoat, was already welcoming them. They sat down on the wooden terrace, in the I cold sunshine, both conscious of something momentous and unavoidable developing between them. Nervously, he began drumming on the table, took a quick incautious sip of coffee, spilling it slightly, for his hand shook, then said suddenly:

‘I do admit, Kathy, that everyone ought to have some worthy objective in life. I had hoped to find it in devoting myself to you here. But now – it begins to seem as though something more is being demanded of me.'

‘What, David?' Her lips were trembling.

‘Can't you guess? You're the one who's made me feel it, not only by speaking out now, but simply by your presence. Kathy,' he murmured, in a low, reaching-out voice, ‘all other considerations apart, do
you
really need me?'

She looked at him, drawn beyond endurance.

‘How can you ask that?' Then with a sudden weakening of control, pitifully avoiding his eyes: ‘I need you so much … I want you to come with me.'

It was out at last, she had been forced to say it, the unspoken longing that until now she had kept locked up within her breast. He gazed at her in a shaken silence of revelation, realising that he had wanted and waited for that plea through all these recent days of strain.

‘You mean,' he said slowly, demanding more, at least a repetition, ‘to take the trip out with you?'

‘No, no … to stay.' She spoke almost feverishly. ‘As a doctor, there's the greatest need for you. Uncle Willie is planning a little hospital adjoining the orphanage. You would find there the very work you are fitted for, which in your heart you are seeking. And we would be together, working together, happy.'

‘To be with you, Kathy,' he conceded feelingly, ‘I'd give my right arm. But think of the changes it would mean, in my – my way of living for one thing. Then again, it's some time, since I took my medical degree.'

‘You could brush up quickly – you're so clever. And you'd get used to the life.'

‘Yes, dear Kathy, but there are other difficulties.' The inordinate desire to be pressed further made him go on. ‘Financial affairs that require constant attention, responsibilities; then as regards the mission, you know I'm not a religious man. While agreeing with what you've just said, I doubt if I could surrender my mind to your spiritual convictions.'

‘The work you'd do is the best kind of religion. In time, David, you would know the meaning of grace. Oh, I can't speak of such things, I never could, in words they become stiff and wooden, I can only feel them in my heart. And you would too … if you'd only come.'

Their hands glided together. Hers, from inner strain, was cold, a marble hand; he held it tightly until the blood began to throb. Never had he felt closer to her. All her soul seemed to flow into him.

The arrival of the peasant woman cut into this splendid moment. While he looked up at her, unseeingly, she pointed to the northern sky and said, practically:

‘Es wird Schnee kommen. Schau'n sie, diese Wolken. Es ist besser Sie gehen zurück nach Schwansee.'

‘She's advising us to get back home.' Returning to earth, he answered Kathy's inquiring glance. ‘Snow is forecast and it's already clouding over.'

He paid the score, leaving generous
trinkgeld
, and they set off back along the ridge, now in total silence, for he was deep in thought. The air had turned grey, cold and very still and the sun was dropping fast behind the mountains like a great blood-orange. Within the hour they had descended to the flatlands and, worried for her in the chill twilight, he looked forward to reaching the villa quickly. But as they were about to cross the short stretch of main road that intersected the path to Schwansee, a red sports M.G. flew past, hesitated, screeched to a stop, and noisily reversed towards them.

‘Hello, hello, hello,' came the effusive greeting in high-pitched tones. ‘I felt sure it was you, dear boy.'

Jarred out of his meditation, Moray recognised with misgiving the brass-buttoned blazer of Archie Stench. Leaning airily out of the window from the driver's seat, smiling with all his teeth. Stench extended a gloved hand which Moray accepted with the forced affability of extreme annoyance. The solemn pattern of the afternoon was shattered.

‘This is Miss Urquhart, daughter of an old friend,' he said quickly, bent on extinguishing the suggestive gleam already glittering slyly in Stench's eye. ‘Her uncle, a missionary in Central Africa, is joining her in two days time.'

‘But how inter-esting.' Archie split and stressed the word. ‘ Coming here?'

‘For a brief visit,' Moray nodded coldly.

‘I should like to meet him. Africa is in the news, and
how.
The wind of change. Ha, ha. Dear old Mac. It's quite a breeze now in the Congo. Are you enjoying your stay, Miss Urquhart? You are staying with Moray, I presume?'

‘Yes,' Kathy replied to both questions. ‘But I shall be leaving soon.'

‘Not for wildest Africa?' Ogling, Stench threw out the question facetiously.

‘Yes.'

‘Good Lord!' Stench thrilled. ‘You're really serious? Sounds like quite a story. You mean you're in the missionary racket – sorry, I mean business – yourself?'

Kathy half smiled, to Moray's annoyance, as though taking no exception to Stench's persistence.

‘I am a nurse,' she explained, ‘and I'm going out to help my uncle – he's opening a hospital at Kwibu, on the Angola border.'

‘Good work!' Stench glowed. ‘ While everyone's running away from that windy area you're rushing in. The nation ought to hear about it. We British have to keep the flag flying. I'll drop over when your uncle arrives. You'll give me a drink, dear boy just for old lang syne? Well, got to be off. I'm all in. Been down at the Pestalozzi Village doing a conjuring show for the kids. Sixty kilometres each way. Damn bore. But decent little brats. Cheerio, Miss Urquhart; chin-chin, dear boy. Wonderful to have you back!'

As he drove off Archie called out, ensuring his prospective visit:

‘Don't forget, I'll be giving you a ring.'

‘He seems nice,' Kathy remarked conversationally, when they had crossed the road. ‘ Good of him to entertain those children.'

‘Yes, he's always up to something like that. But – well, a bit of a bounder I'm afraid,' Moray answered in the tone of one unwillingly forced to condemn, adding, as though this accounted for everything, ‘Correspondent for the
Daily Echo.
'

The unfortunate meeting at this particular moment, when vital soul-subduing issues surged in his mind, had thoroughly put him out. Stench was a menace. Confound it, he thought, brought back to the mundane, in half an hour news of his return with Kathy would be all over the canton.

Indeed, no sooner had they got back and taken tea than the phone rang.

‘Put it through to the study,' he told Arturo briefly. ‘Excuse me for a few minutes, dear Kathy. Friend Stench has been at work.'

Upstairs, he unhooked the receiver, pressed the red button with an irritable premonition immediately confirmed by Madame von Altishofer's contralto overtones.

‘Welcome home, dear friend! I heard only this moment that you were returned. Why did you not let me know? It has been so long. You have been missed greatly; everyone is talking about your mysterious absence. Now, how soon may I come to see you, and your exciting young visitor who has designs on darkest Africa?'

It was amazing how disagreeable he found this intrusion – not only what she said, but her manner, her inverted English, even her modulated well-bred voice. He cleared his throat, launched into a perfunctory explanation, the essence of which was simply that the demands of old family friends had detained him much longer than he had anticipated.

‘Relatives?' she queried politely.

‘In a way,' he said evasively. ‘When my other guest arrives I hope you'll come over and meet them both.'

‘But before, you must come to me for a drink.'

‘I wish I could. But I have so many things to attend to, after being away.' Looking out of the window he saw that the first frail snowflakes were beginning to drift down. He seized upon the topic. ‘Good gracious! It's actually snowing. I'm afraid we're in for an early winter.'

‘No doubt,' she said, with a little laugh. ‘But are we reduced to speaking of the weather?'

‘Of course not. We'll get together soon.'

Frowning, he hung up, terminating the conversation, annoyed at her interference – no, that was totally unjust; despite her Germanic strong-mindedness she was a thoroughly nice woman and he had perhaps over-encouraged her. He was very much on edge. Again he had a strange feeling that time was closing in upon him. Downstairs he was disappointed to find that Kathy had gone to her room. She did not appear again until dinner, and then he saw, that, to please him, she had put on the green dress. Touched to the heart, he knew that there was only one woman in the world for him. He wanted her with a need so extreme he had to turn away without his usual compliment, without a word. All evening, despite his efforts to entertain, he was not himself – preoccupied, obsessed rather, with the need of achieving some decision, in the ever-dwindling hours at his disposal. After he had played a few records she must have seen that he wished to be alone, for on the plea of fatigue she went early to bed, leaving him in the library.

When she had gone he stood for several minutes listening to her light movements in the room above. Then, automatically, he began to slip the long-playing discs into their polythene covers and to replace them in the cabinet. He half opened one of the three tall windows and peered across the terrace into the night. The snow, beginning with light flurries, had fallen steadily all through the late afternoon, gentle, silent, clouding the air with great drifting flakes. Now the garden was blanketed, nothing visible beyond, life seemed extinguished. No sounds disturbed the unnatural stillness but the abandoned wail of a paddle boat groping its way across the shrouded lake, and the faint whine of the
bise
springing up, imperceptible at first, but gaining in force. He well knew that wind, spiralling down from the mountains with immediate violence, and recognised through all his senses the portents of a storm. Within five minutes, as he had foreseen, the wind was howling round the house, creaking the shutters and tearing at the roof tiles. The air, turned colder, edged the whirling flakes with ice. They fell sharper, mixed with a heavy spattering hail and clots of driven snow. The trees, unseen but plainly audible, had begun that familiar mad fandango which, mingling Berlioz with the blast, he had so often dramatised for his own entertainment.

But his mood was too disturbed to permit of Berlioz. Wagner would have been more appropriate, he reflected grimly, something like the Ride of the Valkyries, but he had no heart for anything, could think only of the fateful decision he must make, and of her. He shut the window and pulled the tasselled cord that drew the pale pink quilted curtains, wondering if she were asleep, or if, as seemed probable, the storm had disturbed her. The thought of her lying there, alone, listening wide-eyed to the harsh discords of the night! If only he might go to her. But of course he could not. God, how restless he was, he must compose himself, try to clear his mind. Taking a book from the shelves, a new biography of Lord Curzon, he threw himself into a chair. But he could not settle to read, not even of Curzon, a man he deeply admired, had in fact unconsciously adopted as an exemplar. His attention wavered, the words ran together into a meaningless blur. He got up, looked at the Tompion longcase clock: only half past ten: too early for bed, he'd never sleep. Never. In the drawing-room he began to pace up and down, head bowed, without a glance towards his paintings, so often a consolation in the past. He felt unendurably hot, suppressed an inordinate impulse to go out on to the snowbound terrace, went instead to the pantry and turned down the thermostat. No sounds came from the kitchen; Arturo and Elena had retired to their own quarters. Even they had shown signs of disquiet lately, as though waiting, uneasily, for an announcement. Returning to the drawing-room, he was about to resume his pacing when forcibly he drew up short, facing at last the core of his problem.

Once it had been established, finally, that she would not stay, only one possible course of action remained open to him. Though he had stubbornly evaded the issue, he saw that from the beginning, when he set eyes on her in Markinch churchyard, the end had been inevitable, part of his destiny. It was the pressing need to amend his life that in the first instance had brought him back to his native land. Now she offered the very opportunity he sought, and with it all the wonder of her love. How could he refuse? She had become an absolute necessity to him. If he should lose her through vacillation or stupidity, life would be impossible. Hadn't he learned that lesson from his sad youthful mistake? He must accompany her to Kwibu, give himself up completely to the work ordained for him. And why not? It was splendid work. He truly wanted to be the new person she would make of him. And he would be. It was not too late. It was not impossible. Others had found that saving spark, and in comparable manner. He had read of them, tortured men in spiritual travail, who discovered themselves in strange suspenseful backgrounds, habitually tropical, and at the last gasp.