Darkwater (26 page)

‘Nolly darling—was it the white bird you saw? You know, it would have been a pigeon, or even a white owl who thought it was night time with the dark clouds.’

‘No, it was black,’ Nolly’s voice was shrill. ‘It was black, black, black!’

‘But you wouldn’t be frightened by a harmless little blackbird. You often see them in the garden.’

Nolly’s fists beat at her.

‘You are stupid, Cousin Fanny! Uncle Edgar says you are stupid! It wasn’t a little blackbird. It was big, big like this!—’ She stretched out her arms dramatically.

‘And where was this bird? In a tree?’

‘No, it was on the ground. Marcus didn’t see it. I told him to run. We both ran. I tore my dress.’

Suddenly she had flung herself into Fanny’s arms, trembling and saying in her high shrill voice, ‘You are so stupid! You have to keep saying it was white when it was black.’

Once, in the dark, she had gone out to look for Ching Mei. Now it was only twilight, the half-light. Dawn and dusk, Lady Arabella used to say, were the times when frightening things happened, when nothing was quite real.

Fanny wasn’t afraid now, only tense and just vaguely apprehensive. She was sure she would discover the thing that had frightened Nolly, a dead hawk perhaps, or even something that wasn’t a bird at all. What was echoing in her mind was Nolly’s insistence that she was stupid because Uncle Edgar had said so. Nolly’s hysteria had given the remark a significance out of all proportion, and now, in the gloom of the copse with its tangle of bracken and brambles, it came back to haunt Fanny. Why was she so stupid? What was it she hadn’t seen? That black was white, or white was black?

Now she was allowing her fancies to take possession of her just as Nolly’s had. She must concentrate on what she had come to do, pick her way, her skirts held up, down the vague track which Nolly and Marcus had followed.

The bracken shook with raindrops. The heat had been swept away with the storm, and the air was full of a damp chill, as if autumn were truly here. The young birches shivered audibly in the dying wind. A blackbird, a real vociferous blackbird, plummetted out of a bush and flew scolding into the dusk. Fanny stopped at a glimmer of white on the ground. It was an uprooted toadstool, obviously dropped by Nolly in her flight. So she was on the right track.

The strange thing was that as she stopped there was the faintest crackling of bracken which ceased almost at once, as if someone else had stopped, too.

She must have imagined it. She stood very still, listening. There was no sound but the shiver of the beeches. The half-light gave very little perspective. Surely nothing moved behind that broad tree trunk!

She gave herself a little shake, telling herself that if she were going to be afraid she should have sent someone else to find out what had startled Nolly; George, or Uncle Edgar, or Adam, or one of the gardeners. It was foolish to think that they might not have eyes to recognise what would frighten a sensitive child, or perhaps they would not tell the truth about what they found.

Was there anything to find? The children could not have gone very far through the tangle of bracken and moss-grown logs. There was a strong smell of damp rotting leaves and earth. Had she noticed that before? But of course she had. The bracken seemed to have been trampled down a great deal as if indeed a wild pig, or some animal had crashed through here.

A twig snapped behind her. She was instantly motionless, petrified. Her own footstep hadn’t snapped that twig. She turned her head, listening. Her thumping heart deafened her. It seemed to have grown very dark.

Who was following her?

‘Who’s there?’ she called softly. ‘Is it you, George?’

There wasn’t the faintest sound.

‘George, I’m not an enemy to be stalked.’

But supposing she were to stumble on to something she shouldn’t see, just as Nolly had…Just as, perhaps, Ching Mei had…
Fanny is so stupid…The white bird is a black one… There is no escaped prisoner tonight
…

Was that someone breathing? Or just the whisper of the beech leaves? It was so dark, she couldn’t
see
. The tree trunks were men. She had to go back, but somebody, something, barred her way.

To George, with his blurred brain, everything that moved in the dark was an enemy. She found she didn’t dare to go back. She had to go to the left, in the direction of the lake, leaving the half-formed track behind and plunging through the nettles and fallen logs and drifts of dead leaves. It couldn’t be very far. She would come out on the far side of the lake directly opposite the pavilion. She had been crazy to come here so late in the day. She shouldn’t have waited for Nolly to talk, she should have come immediately the rain had stopped.

Had that other person come then, and waited ever since?

She didn’t stop to listen now for pursuing footsteps. She was intent only in bursting out of the copse, as out of prison. Her skirts would be ruined. She would have to ask Uncle Edgar for another dress. She would have to explain she had ruined this one in running away from his son, and Lady Arabella would tell him not to be so foolish as to encourage her to run away from George, let George have his way…

The light hadn’t gone from the sky after all. When Fanny at last emerged only a few yards from the lake she saw that the water held the last glow of sunset, and was the colour of candlelight. It looked beautiful and reassuring, and even warm. And a few yards away a figure stood motionless, watching her.

Fanny froze. She could feel her feet sinking into the damp rushy ground. She couldn’t have turned and run. Her breath had left her.

‘Fanny! Whatever are you doing bursting out of the woods like a witch.’ Adam Marsh was standing over her. ‘Your hair is tumbling down.’

‘What are you doing here?’

‘Reflecting, in the quiet of the evening. But my aunt will be getting impatient. It’s time we were leaving.’

‘Weren’t you in the copse?’

‘A short time ago, yes?’

She searched his face, his figure. She saw that he was perfectly calm, that his clothing was unruffled, no dead leaves clung to his trousers as they did to her skirts.

‘I thought someone was there,’ she said uneasily.

He looked over her head to the dark line of the trees.

‘Perhaps there was. I believe we’ve all been down at one time or another searching for Nolly’s scarecrow. Or perhaps it was that wild pig your uncle said was there.’

‘Uncle Edgar said there was a wild pig?’

‘Both he and George and one of the gardeners found indisputable evidence, I believe. So there is Nolly’s ghost.’ His eyes searched her. ‘And what did you find?’

‘Nothing at all. It was too dark.’

‘What did the child finally tell you?’

‘Oh, only some exaggerated story about a black bird. Nolly has this unnatural fear of birds. I’m afraid it’s Great-aunt Arabella’s fault. I expect it was a crow or a starling. Nolly has a weakness for exaggerating. But I wanted to reassure myself, all the same.’

‘And you didn’t reassure yourself?’

‘I thought someone followed me.’

Adam took her arm.

‘It wasn’t me. It should have been. Pin up your hair, my dear. Or we will look guilty when we are innocent.’

She was still too disturbed and distressed to notice the regret in his voice.

‘W
ELL, AUNT, WHAT DID
you think of her?’

‘She’s a nice enough child. Empty-headed, of course.’

‘Empty-headed! Fanny!’

‘How was I to know which one you meant. You give so much attention to the other.’

They stared at each other across the jolting carriage. Adam saw the humorous gleam in his aunt’s eyes and knew that she hadn’t been missing anything. He laughed softly, in appreciation.

‘And sometimes at that I fancy Miss Amelia isn’t so empty-headed.’

‘She must be if she is taken in by you.’

Adam stopped laughing, and frowned.

‘Yes. That’s what I hope and count on. Then she won’t be hurt too deeply. But don’t you agree that I must go on. There is something. That child wasn’t in a state of absolute terror today over nothing at all.’

Miss Marsh leaned forward.

‘What do you imagine it was?’

‘Not the wild boar everyone is talking about. Although I grant you there were traces of a boar. I saw them myself. No, I haven’t the slightest idea, aunt. Or if I have, it’s too fantastic to put into words. No, no, aunt, I don’t know. I thought I was in the copse before anybody else, but there was nothing to find, nothing that hadn’t flown away.’

‘If you ask me, Adam, it’s time you stopped being so secretive.’

‘No, I disagree entirely. As I explained to you, it isn’t only the children, it’s Fanny.’

‘Tut, boy! You have no grounds whatever for your suspicions. Besides, Fanny is a grown woman, and by the look of her, very capable of taking care of herself. The children—’

Miss Marsh sighed, it seemed with longing. ‘You shouldn’t have let Mr Barlow get away like that without having it out with him.’

‘How was I to know he would behave like that? Like a sulky child, not like a man at all. Good lord!’

Miss Marsh tapped his knee with her fan.

‘And how would you behave in similar circumstances?’

Adam looked out of the window at the darkening moor.

‘You must have noticed her beauty, aunt,’ he said in a low voice.

‘I have noticed that, and all her other qualities. You have my sympathy, but not my patience. I’m nervous, Adam. I confess it. Find out whatever it is you have to, and be done with it.’

‘Another two months,’ Adam murmured. ‘I don’t think it can be any longer than that.’

‘Winter,’ said Miss Marsh. ‘The leaves fallen, that old house full of draughts. Rain, wind, snow. Why must we wait until the winter?’

‘Because that is when Fanny becomes of age.’

I
T WAS LATER THAT
Fanny thought how strange it was that Adam Marsh seemed always to be there at the unexpected moment. On the railway station on that first day of all, in the church in the village, at the lake in the dusk when she had been so frightened, and when the other men had been indoors—or were when they themselves returned. All those meetings could not have been accidental. Perhaps none of them had been…

Once she had had the thought that he was watching over the children, because, having come to their rescue on their arrival in England, he fancied he had some responsibility for them. But lately he had seemed always to look first at her. If he were trying to warn her about something, why didn’t he tell her what it was? Or didn’t he know? Was he, too, haunted by this feeling of premonition?

Nothing was different, and yet somehow everything was. Nolly had never quite recovered her spirits since her mysterious fright, for some time she refused to be left alone and cried at a shadow moving. It was never established exactly what she had seen, but it seemed certain it had been a wild pig, for Uncle Edgar organised a shoot a few days later and two boars and a sow were slaughtered.

Lady Arabella told her rumbustious stories, as usual, and was in high good spirits when the children visited her, letting them handle all her treasures, and even coax Ludwig to play with a ball of wool. But she ended every session with the words, ‘I’m so glad, Fanny, you had the good sense to send that little red fox of a man back where he came from. We’ll keep her safely here, children, won’t we?’ Later, she had secret sessions with the children from which Fanny was excluded. It was something to do with making her a birthday present, an occupation that made Nolly’s eyes shine with happy importance.

Amelia was quite openly talking of an Easter wedding, although no one had yet proposed to her. Her thoughts were easy enough to read. And George, with just a shade more confidence and possessiveness, kept trying to persuade Fanny to bring the children down to the stables where they could grow accustomed to the horses before beginning riding lessons. He was shrewd enough to know that that was the only way he might persuade her to go with him, since she refused to be in his company alone.

Aunt Louisa had dismissed Miss Egham, and told Fanny that if she needed a good workaday gown to wear in the schoolroom she was at liberty to choose the material and make it herself. That was the way the wind blew in that quarter. Poor Aunt Louisa, Fanny thought, stuck with her unwelcome niece after all, but perhaps making the best of it, since when Amelia married the house would be very quiet.

Uncle Edgar was exactly as he had been before the Hamish Barlow episode, affable, good-tempered, laughing just as heartily at his own jokes, becoming a little more conceited, perhaps, in his dress, and showing a great propensity for social occasions. There were always visitors at Darkwater, or the carriage was ordered for some dinner party or another. Uncle Edgar vowed every morning that he was exhausted, worn out, too old for all these gaieties, but that it was his duty to arrange them for the sake of the girls.

That was the subtle difference. Whereas previously Fanny had been allowed to make excuses for her absence, now Uncle Edgar insisted that she accompany them everywhere.

‘You know why Papa is behaving like this,’ Amelia said. ‘He’s giving you another chance to find a husband. He’s quite forgiven you, you see. He’s so kind-hearted, dear Papa.’

But Fanny didn’t think that was the reason at all. She thought that Uncle Edgar was merely making it publicly known once more how generous and worthy a man he was, and how sincerely he loved the waifs thrust on him. It would have broken his heart if his dearest Fanny had gone to live in far-off China…

It was the only way she could reconcile his present fond demeanour with his previous emphatic insistence that if she did not marry Hamish Barlow she would never be forgiven.

The letter with the London postmark arrived for her one late October morning when she had just returned from a walk with the children. Usually all mail was taken to Uncle Edgar who enjoyed distributing it, though the bulk of it was for himself. But today Amelia happened to be there when the postman arrived, and caught sight of Fanny’s name on the top envelope.

‘Fanny!’ she shrieked. ‘Have you an admirer you’ve never told me about? Do you think this is from Mr Barlow? Do open it quickly and tell me.’