Tilly (16 page)

Tilly nodded.

“And always I am very correct. I wear the print dress in the daytime and the black silk at night.
Eh bien
, tonight, to celebrate your happiness, I would like to wear a color. Something very plain. I would not wish to appear not to know my place.”

“Of course, Francine,” said Tilly, amazed. “I have masses of gowns. Take anything you want. We are now about the same size.”

“That is very generous of you, Lady Tilly, but I do have a suitable dress of my own. Your gowns would be too elaborate for a lady’s maid.”

“As you wish,” said Tilly. “Isn’t life marvelous, Francine? Nothing can happen to hurt me now.”

Tilly had been rejoicing at the thought of only Cyril Nettleford being present that evening, but as she walked into the drawing
room it was to find herself faced by two high-nosed, formidable ladies attired in the latest fashions in mauve silk and the latest in hard, frosty stares.

The marquess introduced his aunts, Lady Mary Swingleton and Lady Bertha Anderson. Both were wearing feathered headdresses and, as they nodded their heads to Tilly, they looked remarkably like a pair of well-bred, high-stepping bridling horses. Both had remarkably fine complexions, each appearing to boast a natural, doll-like circle of color on each cheek. Tilly only learned later that the aunts had had the color of their faces tattooed on by no less a practitioner than George Burchett. A faint smell of sweat was still considered attractive to the opposite sex, being called “
Bouquet de Corsage
” and to Tilly’s fastidious nostrils, the aunts appeared to have it in abundance.

“So you’re the bride,” said Lady Mary, staring down her nose at Tilly’s slim figure in its white, demure lace dress. “Saw you at your wedding. You’ve changed a lot. Hasn’t she, Bertha?”

Lady Bertha produced a lorgnette and studied Tilly with a pair of hideously magnified eyes.

“Quite,” she said.

“At least she’s correctly dressed,” barked Lady Mary. “Not like some I could mention.”

Both aunts turned as one person and glared at Cyril Nettleford, who was lounging in a chair by the fireplace in a blue velvet smoking jacket. He scratched his spots angrily and stared back.

“My dear,” said the marquess, drawing Tilly to him, “my aunts assured me they sent us a wire announcing their arrival and find it hard to believe that we never received it. But you are always unfortunate with your communications, aren’t you, Aunt Bertha? My father always swore that you never sent them, but it was probably his idea of a joke. And we have another guest, Tilly. You remember Mrs. Plumb, of course.”

Tilly looked carefully around the room. It was like one of those competitions in the illustrated papers—“What Is Up with This Picture?” After some minutes she was able to make out Mrs. Plumb lying on a dark-green sofa, wearing a dark-green dress. Mrs. Plumb smiled faintly and closed her eyes.

Lady Bertha turned her attention to Francine. “You haven’t introduced me to the lady,” she pointed out.

“My lady’s maid, Mademoiselle Francine,” said Tilly.

“
Indeed!
” said both aunts in outraged tones and, as one, they turned their backs on Francine and began talking to Toby Bassett, who was communing with a glass of lemonade over by the windows.

Francine certainly looked every inch a lady—and a very attractive one at that. She wore a deep burgundy silk dress cut low on the bosom and swept up into a bustle at the back. Her black hair was dressed in a looser, less severe style.

“I’m sorry about this, Tilly,” said the marquess quietly. “They are very bad-mannered and make a habit of dropping in on people without warning. I shall let them stay for two days and then I’ll get rid of them.”

“How?” asked Tilly.

“In the usual way,” said her husband, smiling. “I shall simply tell the servants to pack their baggage and bring their chariot round, and I’ll insist that they told me they were leaving. Mrs. Plumb won’t inconvenience us. She sleeps the whole time.”

“Where are their husbands?”

“Both dead. But they both have marriageable daughters. It’s a miracle they didn’t bring them along as well to show me what I’m missing.”

“Are they so very pretty?”

“Not as pretty as you, anyway,” he said, smiling into her eyes in such a way that Tilly wondered whether a slow, delicate courtship was a good idea after all.

Dinner was served earlier that evening, the host wishing to pack his unwelcome guests off to bed. Lady Bertha, feathers nodding, regaled Tilly with various stories that all seemed to deal with the marquess’s soft heart—“… always helping lame ducks,” and “… quite a terrible reputation with the ladies, my dear, but I am sure you will keep a
firm eye
on him.”

Toby Bassett seemed even more stormy and brooding than ever and was drinking iced lemonade in great gulps. Tilly hoped it was the influence of the pretty vicar’s daughter, and when Toby at last joined the conversation with a vague remark that he had once wanted to take holy orders, Tilly was sure of it and quite glared at her husband, who had collapsed in an unmanly fit of the giggles.

Cyril excused himself before the dessert was served. He said he had just remembered that Sir Charles Ponte had asked him to drop over that evening. Sir Charles was a military martinet whose estates bordered the marquess’s to the south. Lady Bertha acidly expressed
her amazement that a
gentleman
like Sir Charles should wish the company of a young man like Cyril, but Cyril had already left.

Mrs. Plumb was the next to go, protesting faintly that late nights gave her the headache. She seemed unable to stay awake for longer than an hour at a time.

Then the marquess was called to the telephone, which was, as in most country houses, situated in the draftiest and darkest corner of the hall.

He came back looking worried, and bent over Tilly’s chair.

“That was some relative of old Crump’s,” he said. “He’s one of my tenant farmers. He has had a heart attack and I really must go and see him. They’ve called the doctor, of course, but you know how it is, Tilly, in these family emergencies…?”

“It’s all right,” said Tilly, her heart sinking. “I will entertain your aunts until you get back.”

Then Toby Bassett muttered that he was feeling unwell and begged to be excused, and Tilly was indeed alone with her two formidable tormentors, who proceeded to make the most of it.

In sugary-sweet tones, they recounted all
the marquess’s amourous adventures, until Tilly felt ready to sink under the dinner table. In despair, she led them through to the drawing room, hoping for the support of Francine, but the lady’s maid was unaccountably absent and Masters, who answered her summons, sent a footman in search of Francine, but that young lady was not to be found anywhere in the great mansion.

I am a married woman
, thought Tilly fiercely,
and this is my home. I don’t want to endure another minute of these horrible women.
Aloud, she said, “You must excuse me, ladies, but I have a headache and I am going to bed,” and before they could open their painted mouths (coral pink—the
latest
shade) to reply, she had left the room.

Tilly bounced into the sanctuary of her sitting room and leaned her back against the door, all that the aunts had told her of her husband’s love affairs pounding in her ears.
But that’s all over
, she thought.
It must be over
. And then she saw the flowers and the card on the low table in front of the fireplace.

The card was typewritten and carried a brief message: M
EET ME OVER BY THE
B
ATCHETT
’
S
S
PINNEY AND WE CAN HAVE A FEW MOMENTS TOGETHER
. P
HILIP
.

Even his name was typewritten. Tilly, who
had never seen her husband’s handwriting, assumed he was one of those unfortunate people with handwriting that looked as if a drunken spider had staggered over the paper, and he had therefore sensibly resorted to the typewriter, even for the writing of personal notes. The flowers were beautiful deep red roses nestling in a bed of maidenhair fern.

Then she frowned. He hadn’t mentioned any particular time but, the evening was beautiful, so it would be pleasant to wait for him, faraway from the house and its contingent of unwanted guests.

She threw a warm cashmere shawl over her shoulders and, still wondering about the whereabouts of the absent Francine, slipped quietly down the stairs and across the hall. The sound of muted conversation filtered from the drawing room. The aunts were hard at it—
No doubt taking my character apart piece by piece
, thought Tilly as she quietly let herself out of the main door. She suddenly realized she did not know the whereabouts of Batchett’s Spinney.

An elderly gardner was weeding a rose bed at the side of the drive. He stood up and touched his forelock as Tilly approached. Aye, he kenned fine where Batchett’s Spinney
was. It was the other side of the Home Wood. Ye couldn’t miss it. There was a big swing hanging over a bit pool, where the village bairns had a bit of a swim.

Tilly thanked him and the elderly Scotsman bent once more to his work. It was a beautiful evening with the leafy branches of the Home Wood stretching up to a tender green sky that faded to pale pink near the horizon. Birds chirped sleepily from the trees and vague rustlings from the undergrowth showed that the nocturnal animals were already on the prowl. Tilly picked her way carefully through the darkness of the wood. A pheasant suddenly rocketed up in front of her, sending her heart flying into her mouth.

She came out of the wood and found she was standing almost on the edge of the pool, which was fed by a bubbling stream. The pool looked cool and calm, its black surface mirroring the dying light of the sky above. On the far side was a stunted fir tree with one long branch sticking out at right angles high above the pool. On this, someone had suspended a swing by long ropes, the seat of the swing being a worn plank held by large knots. It was tied back against the trunk of the tree at the top of a tall, rough ladder. When released, the swing would dangle out over
the pool a good twelve feet above the water. Tilly guessed that the village boys must use it as a diving perch.

There was no sign of the marquess.

Great boulders were piled higgledy-piggledy around the pool, as if thrown down at random by a giant hand. White bramble flowers shone in the gloom of tangled shrubbery beside the water and a stand of wild roses trailed thorny tendrils on the calm surface.

Tilly eyed the swing. Francine would not approve and it would be a tomboyish thing to do, but the lure was irresistible. She climbed gingerly up the ladder, hampered by her long skirts, and untied the knot that held the swing and, seating herself on it, swung out sideways from the tree until she was suspended high above the pool. Tilly was happy just to sit there, high above the ground, drinking in the peace of the evening, waiting for her beloved husband to arrive.

Perhaps he would take her to the seaside, thought Tilly happily. Tilly had never seen the sea, her father preferring to remain immured at Jeebles, letting the world come to him. Tilly remembered how amazed her husband had looked at dinner when she had confessed she did not know how to swim. He probably thought such a tomboy—or
ex-tom-boy
,
Tilly corrected herself severely—would know how to swim. She had been about to ask him if they could not possibly visit somewhere like Brighton, but the aunts had closed in with their malicious remarks and the question had never been put.

The sky deepened to a strange dark green and the first stars began to appear.

Tilly swung dreamily to and fro, the fine lace of her dress fluttering out behind her.

Suddenly she received an enormous shove from behind and seemed to go sailing up, up toward the stars.

She came hurtling back, trees and sky and pool tumbling dizzily before her eyes.

“Philip!” shouted Tilly, half laughing, half screaming. “You are an utter beast! Stop it or I shall land in the water!”

Another massive shove in the middle of her back nearly sent her flying from her perch and she clutched hard at the ropes as the night sky seemed to swing down to meet her.

Her cashmere shawl went fluttering down and lay like a dying swan on the surface of the pool.

As the swing started its dizzying rush back Tilly wildly twisted her head around—and screamed in earnest this time. A creature out of her worst nightmares was crouched halfway
up a tree behind the fir that held the swing, so that he could catch it on the backswing. He, or it, was dressed in black, except that where there should have been a human head was a grotesque pink carnival mask fixed in an evil grin.

Another vicious push sent her flying off the seat of the swing and she clung with both hands to one of the ropes, while again the night sky rushed to meet her and the now brightly shining stars flared and danced before her terror-stricken eyes.

In a flash she realized that whoever it was—and dear God, it could not be Philip—planned to throw her forward toward the pool, so that if she did not drown in the pool, she would surely crack her head against the rocks. Poor Lady Tilly, they would say. What a terrible accident!

All this rushed through her mind in a second and as the swing rushed down and back and up toward her assailant she twisted around so that the seat was pointed toward that nightmarish figure.

But it deftly caught the other rope and held on, the nightmarish mask staring into her terrified eyes. Then, in a strange, sibilant, sexless whisper that was to haunt her dreams for many nights to come, the figure said, “You’ll
soon get tired. Your arms will get so very tired and then you’ll drop… drop to your
death
.”

Another almighty shove and off and up she went again. The swing was so high above the ground that each massive push seemed to send her flying nearer to the sky.

Tilly found her voice and began to scream. With an acrobatic skill borne of sheer desperation, she caught hold of the other rope at the last minute and swung herself over, drew back her legs, and kicked out with all her might. The grotesque carnival figure crashed back down through the branches and Tilly swung back out, with less momentum this time, hanging on for dear life, screaming and screaming and then hearing an answering shout from the woods.