Dear Intruder Page 6

  ‘I hope you corrected the impression!’

  ‘Dear, I laughed and laughed, remembering what you two are like together. Why, if you ever got engaged, you’d never agree for long enough to arrange the date of the wedding! No, I told Gordon that Dion was just brotherly with both of us.’

  ‘“Brotherly” covering a good deal!’ Bridget commented drily.

  ‘Yes, I know—the squabbles of you two, as well as the nice feeling I have that we could lean on Dion, whatever happened. “Brotherly” is exactly what he is, and I’d rather have him for a brother than anyone I know,’ claimed Jenny stoutly as she left the room.

  One morning in their mail there was an invitation—‘Cocktails. Bridge. Dancing’—to an evening party at Cion Eigel. Jenny had heard from Gordon Trent that it was to introduce the new staff to the local people, and Bridget felt glad that it contradicted his idea that there was no social life to be had in Tullabor.

  That was one of the rare mornings when Dion was breakfasting with them. He was in dark formal clothes, a fact promptly remarked upon by Jenny.

  ‘Dublin,’ he said in explanation of what Jenny had called ‘the gents’ natty suiting.’

  ‘Discussing a nature series for TV.’

  ‘How exciting! Will you be broadcasting?’

  ‘If the idea comes off.’

  ‘Could we come and hear you?’

  ‘You wouldn’t be let into the studio. But if you could rustle up another man we could all make an evening of it afterwards.’

  ‘Oh, I could—’ began Jenny, and stopped in an embarrassment which Dion did not notice, as he was looking through his letters. But Bridget knew that Jenny had been thinking of Gordon Trent for herself, pairing Dion to her, and had realised in time what an uneasy party personal antagonism might make of it.

  From the next envelope Dion opened he took a square card which he flicked across the table to Bridget.

  ‘Any of your doing?’ he asked.

  ‘No. Why should it be?’ She had recognised an invitation similar to their own.

  ‘I just wondered. I’ve not been on the Cion Eigel visiting-list for some time.’ His tone was dry.

  ‘But you know Mr. and Mrs. Steven?’ (Why was it important to hear his reply?)

  He looked at his watch, gathered his letters and stood up. ‘Catching the nine o’clock from Ardvar,’ he said. ‘Pegeen alannah? Minna? You can save Jenny’s legs and have a lift to school if you’ll scuttle like mad—’ Over his shoulder to Bridget, ‘Yes, we know each other. But the occasion of our last meeting wasn’t particularly favourable.’

  As the door shut behind him Jenny asked, ‘What did he mean by that? I suppose he isn’t going to accept?’

  Bridget shook her head. ‘I don’t know. I suppose not.’ She knew that she had been waiting for him to say how well he knew the Stevens, to make some casual reference to having known Tara. It would have been the most natural thing in the world to mention her if he had no secret reserves about her. But he had said nothing. He did not want to be questioned about Tara...

  After breakfast Kate asked, ‘How long will Mr. Dion be in Dublin?’

  ‘For the whole day, I think,’ Bridget told her.

  A gleam came into Kate’s eye. ‘Then wouldn’t it be the golden chance for the tidying of his room?’ she urged.

  Bridget agreed. But remembering Dion’s earlier comments, she decided she had better stand by herself to rescue ‘all thim bits of rubbish of Mr. Dion’s’ from Kate’s more drastic fervour.

  They worked all the morning. For Bridget it was a labour of growing respect for Dion’s work, and she was careful to leave undisturbed the typewritten sheets of his scripts, together with some unfinished rough sketches which lay with them.

  She and Kate waited a little fearfully for the explosion to follow when Dion returned that evening. But none did, and when Bridget went to call him to supper he was typing swiftly, scattering manuscript to right and left.

  He looked up to accuse her, ‘You let Kate at this room!’

  Then he frowned and drew one of the sketches towards him. ‘I wish I were better at getting these things down to strict scale,’ he muttered.

  ‘To scale? May I look?’ She went to look over his shoulder, hesitating before adding, ‘I know something about scale-drawing.’

  ‘You do? How? Why?’

  ‘My job in London was with an architect.’ Fleetingly she wished she could claim that designing skyscrapers or bridges was child’s play to her. ‘I was only in the drawing-office, but we used to prepare scale-drawings, and of course we had to be a hundred per cent accurate.’

  ‘Could you scale up—or down—anything like a section of a bird’s wing, for instance?’

  ‘I should think so. I could try after supper, if you like.’ It was the first time he had asked of her a skill which he lacked himself, and she felt a little glow of pride in having it to give.

  When they returned later he told her what he wanted and sat watching in silence as she made her calculations and presently submitted an accurately scaled diagram for his inspection.

  ‘That’s fine,’ he nodded in approval.

  ‘It’s as true as I can get it without using a Vernier—a slide-rule, you know.’

  ‘But I’ve got one somewhere.’

  ‘Have you? If you could find it I could give you a lesson.’

  ‘Let me think where I last saw it.’ After making a tentative dive into one of the desk drawers he glanced towards the top of the taller of the two open bookcases. It was more than wardrobe height but there were a couple of boxes on top of it. ‘In one of those, I believe.’

  At full arm’s length he could grasp the edge of the topmost shelf. With a foot on one of the lower shelves he swung up to snatch at the box with his free hand.

  ‘Careful!’ warned Bridget standing beside him. ‘The bookcase isn’t plugged to the wall up there—’

  It had swayed outward when Kate had brushed the top of it that morning, she recalled. But her warning came too late. The leverage of Dion’s full weight caused it to sway forward again and though, abandoning his reach for the box, he was able to jump clear, enabling it to sway back into position, a torrent of heavy books thudded from the top shelf, striking Bridget sharply about the head and shoulders as they fell.

  ‘Oh—!’ Instinctively she clapped a hand to her cheek just below the eye as the sharp corner of one of them tore into the flesh there. The shock brought tears welling and, partially blinded, she put out a hand to grope for the table edge for support. But instantly Dion had the groping hand fast in his and with his other arm about her, he led her to a chair and put her into it.

  He knelt beside it. ‘The clumsy fool that I am!’ he muttered. ‘What have I done to you, alannah?’

  Alannah—the endearment he had used to Pegeen, and now springing readily to his lips for her? Through the mist of involuntary tears Bridget stared at his upturned face, saw his eyes concerned and tender—for her!

  She blinked back the tears and looked again, then down at his brown hands clasped over hers in her lap. It was absurd! He was looking as if he had half killed her instead of pelting her with a shelf-full of books ... As her numbed feeling crept back the blood throbbed in the laceration of her cheek, stabbing with a pain against which she would have cried out if she had not laughed instead.

  The laugh emerged as half sob, half crow, the first note of an hysteria born of shock. Ashamed, she heard the weakness of it and laughed again to prove that she was not crying too ... She had a sudden sense of being misunderstood when Dion stood up abruptly, shaking her passive hands roughly as he did so.

  ‘That will do!’ His tone was sharp. ‘Quiet now, do you hear? I’ll call Jenny and we’ll see to your cheek. The doctor then—’

  She wanted to protest that she did not need a doctor, but she sat quietly and obediently while he went for Jenny. More than the pain of her cut cheek, she was aware now of a dull ache at the back of her neck, a pain which confused thought. Conf
used, that is, all but one thought which stood out clearly enough to be analysed.

  Dion had been betrayed into tenderness for her, had called her ‘alannah’ because, hurt and dazed, she had been a ‘hapless thing’ meriting his pity. That was all. When she laughed, showing she had little need of his compassion, he had jerked back at once into brusquerie, almost unkindness ... At least to his usual self.

  She was quite drowsy by the time he returned with Jenny and with dressings for her cut. But she was aware of their combined, gentle ministrations and in a mist she heard Dion’s whispered, ‘She was so near to hysteria that I thought I’d need to be slapping her face!’

  Hysteria indeed! She wanted to deny that but could not, and her next glimpse of clarity was not until after she was in bed. Dion was there looking down at her. Her cheek was very painful, but her head was aching more, and when he said ‘Husheen’ and laid his hand gently upon her forehead she was glad to let her eye-lids droop again beneath its shadow.

  Later still, when the doctor had stitched her cheek and had diagnosed a slight concussion which would react favourably to a short rest and sedatives, again a single thought emerged from the mist which surrounded her consciousness.

  It was, One day I’d like to hear someone calling me ‘alannah’—just like that. But someone who was fond of me and meant it, of course ... The thought persisted until she fell deeply asleep.

  By the day of the Cion Eigel party she could hide the yellowish bruise mark with powder and the cut itself was a clean, healing line. She had had bad headaches for a day or two after the accident, but these had soon passed and she felt perfectly fit again.

  On the day itself Dion had to go to Dublin again but said he would be back in time to bath and change and to drive them over. It was their first intimation that he had accepted the invitation for himself, and when he had gone Jenny seemed to be embarrassed by his offer.

  ‘How could I have known he meant to go? Gordon said he would drive us,’ she complained.

  ‘Well, you can go with him. I’ll come with Dion,’ said Bridget, knowing that was what Jenny wanted.

  But Dion had not returned by the time Gordon Trent came over for them. ‘You won’t wait, of course?’ he asked when the situation was explained to him.

  ‘One of us ought to,’ said Bridget. ‘Jenny is phoning Ardvar now to see if he came on the train he meant to catch. He wouldn’t keep us waiting if he could help it.’

  ‘No? According to Jenny he’s a young man to whom time doesn’t signify much, so he probably thinks nothing of letting you down.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think so—’ began Bridget, wishing she could be sure that Dion thought enough of his obligation to them to be punctual. She was unaccountably relieved when Jenny came to report that his train was late but was running into the station at that minute.

  Trent stubbed out his cigarette and rose. He said, ‘Well, that’s that. Christie must find his own way over, or, if you insist that anyone must wait to hold his hand, it’ll have to be Jenny. I’m supposed to get you there a bit early. You won’t mind if I go on with Bridget, will you, Jenny?’

  Bridget saw the hurt look which passed across Jenny’s face, but, supposing that Mr. Steven wanted to see her in some connection with the children, she could hardly refuse to go without her.

  As the car gathered speed Trent said, ‘I had to prise you away from Jenny somehow.’

  ‘Do you mean that there wasn’t any need for me to be early?’ asked Bridget in surprise.

  ‘Not that I know of. But you’ll admit Jenny would be hurt if she knew I wanted to take you instead of her?’

  ‘She was hurt, as it was.’

  ‘Does that mean that you think she knows she has cause to be jealous of your attraction for me? If not, what did you mean?’

  ‘That if she is becoming fond of you she can be hurt by even an imaginary slight from you. But certainly she has no need to be jealous of me!’

  ‘But I’m afraid she has,’ he cut in blandly. ‘She’s a sweet child, but a man can have too much of mere sweetness, and I don’t disguise from you that I’ve made use of her company in order to keep a tag on you. You’re an elusive person, aren’t you?’

  His voice had lowered and, steering with one hand, he laid his left arm tentatively across the back of her seat. Bridget did not know whether he meant to touch her; perhaps he was surprised by her sudden movement as she said ‘Please—’ sharply and sat forward. She only knew that she felt his fingertips close and tighten upon her upper arm as another car—Dion’s, she saw at a glance—swept towards them over the crest of the switchback road a few yards ahead. Dion looked across as the two cars met and passed. He could not have failed to see Trent’s arm around her, but the next moment their own car was over the crest and his was out of sight, racing back towards Tullabor.

  Bridget sat rigidly, waiting for Trent to withdraw his hand. He did so with an easy, ‘A pity about that. For preference, I’d rather not do my courting in public. But I find you awfully hard to resist, and if you’d only relax a little you and I might enjoy ourselves, even given the limitations of Cion Eigel and Tullabor.’

  ‘I doubt if we could ever enjoy—or tolerate’—Bridget laid a cold emphasis on the word—‘each other’s company for long.’ She was counting the minutes until the end of this téte-a-téte into which he had tricked her. Thank goodness, here were the gates of Cion Eigel at last!

  Turning in, Trent excused himself from accompanying her into the house as he must garage the car. But as she alighted he added on the same assured, confident note, ‘You’re determined to play hard to get. But that only intrigues a man, you know. So I’m keeping my fingers crossed...’

  To the colossal, thick-skinned vanity of that, there seemed no adequate reply but the cool silence with which she left him.

  Cion Eigel was a mansion built in the heyday of the rich English landowners in Ireland. So far, Bridget had visited only the school buildings and had not met Mrs. Steven, who had not been well enough to meet her on any of her early brief visits to Tullabor. But to-night Mrs. Steven—a frail woman with a skin already drawn into premature wrinkles and hair which had faded too early—was seated at her husband’s side, greeting their guests with them.

  While Bridget waited behind the group of friends about them she had opportunity to look about her in unobtrusive admiration. The wide hall alone was of the area of a small cottage; there was a nobly curving staircase of Connemara marble; the ceiling was intricately embossed and in the room beyond her hostess’s seat the evening sun was illuminating to brilliance a magnificent chandelier. Suddenly a voice at Bridget’s side asked: ‘And what do you think of Daniel’s showpiece of a staircase? It takes some living up to, I always tell him! It calls for the grace of knee-breeches or crinolines, doesn’t it? But tell me now—how are you settling down in Tullabor?’

  Bridget had turned, to see Mr. Meath, the solicitor.

  She smiled, ‘Very well—thanks to you!’

  ‘Ah, I did nothing at all. I was glad to put you in the way of being able to keep on the house and nurse your sister back to full health. And Dion Christie is back with you, I understand?’

  ‘Yes, we came to an arrangement which suited us both.’

  The old man nodded. ‘I’m glad of that. There’s not a man in Eire I’d trust better than Dion Christie, even if he hasn’t the silken manner with him and doesn’t suffer fools gladly. Ah, Mary my dear, it’s good to see you looking so well—’

  The last words were addressed to his hostess as he took both her hands in his and bent over her chair. At the same time Mr. Steven, greeting Bridget and asking her why Jenny was not with her, was being signalled by one of his staff.

  ‘Excuse me, won’t you?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, of course—’ Bridget, included in Mrs. Steven’s smile for the old solicitor, had no choice but to stand by and listen as they spoke to each other. Mrs. Steven was saying, ‘Why shouldn’t I look well, when I’ve the best reason in the world? But y
ou won’t have heard our news, of course? That we are expecting Tara to-night?’

  Mr. Meath straightened slowly, retaining his grasp of her hands. ‘Tara—home at last? Coming to-night? But I saw Daniel in the city only two days back, and he said nothing then!’

  ‘We didn’t know two days ago. She telephoned from London yesterday, saying she was flying over, but asking us not to meet her at the airport. Daniel told her we’d be having a party and asked her whether she’d like us to cancel it if—if she wanted her homecoming to be quiet, you understand? But she begged us not to, as she wouldn’t arrive until late. So now I’m trying to wait patiently.’

  ‘How long has she been back in England?’

  ‘We don’t know for sure. Only that the company—Tara had been acting too, we think—broke up after her husband’s death, six months ago, and that she didn’t come back straight away.’

  ‘Had he provided for her?’

  ‘We don’t know that either, though in a bitter mood last night Daniel suggested that that might be why she was coming home...’

  ‘But you don’t believe it, and neither does he! And if you did itself, knowing you and Daniel as I think I do, you’ll still allot no blame for it.’

  They were oblivious of her, Bridget knew, and she had already heard too much. Tara Steven—no, Tara Brent, now widowed—was returning to Cion Eigel after an absence of three years ... Why should it be news that mattered? She only knew that it did.

  She made to slip quietly away behind Mr. Meath’s back. But she was not to escape, for Mrs. Steven laid a gently detaining hand upon her arm.

  ‘I’m being a very poor hostess!’ she smiled. ‘I’m not wrong, am I? You are Miss Haire, with a pretty sister whom I’ve seen in the school grounds from my window? Of course I’ve heard all about you and the happy arrangement for the Brett children—’ As Mr. Meath nodded and moved off she laid a finger thoughtfully to her lip. ‘Now I wonder whom to introduce you to? Yes, I’ll hand you over to Mr. Byrd, I think. He is our games master and new to the staff, though we’ve known him since he was a little boy and he in turn knows everyone here. There he is now—’ She beckoned to a freckled young giant who stood a few yards away, and when he came over she shook an admonitory finger at him. ‘Now, Patrick, I’m giving Miss Haire to you. But you’re not to monopolise her for the whole evening. Do you hear?’