“I got her out,” Lucien’s labouring mouth shaped against Liri’s heart. “They’ve been all this time trying…trying…”

  Yes. Trying to revive her, of course; but Audrey, it seemed, had made quite sure.

  “All I meant to do was warn her,” Liri said. “I’d just found out that he knew… It was the only way I had…”

  Her voice flagged, like his. They had no need of explanations, and speech was such an effort yet that they could afford to use it only for the ultimate essentials. With her cheek pressed against his wet black hair: “I love you,” said Liri gently, and that was all.

  “She was my mother,” he said, “and I can’t even bury her.”

  The ambulance had come and gone. Henry Marshall had had a fire lit for them in the small library, and left the handful of them there together in the huge and silent house. Lucien had bathed and changed, and put on again with his fresh clothes a drained and languid calm. Liri sat across the hearth from him and watched him steadily, and often he looked up to reassure himself that she was there. Two dark, reticent, proud people; in the intensity of this unvoiced reconciliation their two young, formidable faces had grown strangely alike, as though mentally they stared upon each other with such passion that each had become a mirror image of the other.

  “I’ve got to sit back and let Arundale’s relatives do it for me, because I can’t compromise what she wanted left alone. All her life keeping up appearances, doing the correct thing, and now she has to die the same way.”

  “She chose it,” said George.

  “She never had a choice, being the person she was. If my father hadn’t been killed…”

  “You do know about your father?”

  “Do you?” challenged Lucien jealously.—

  And neither of them was speaking of John James Galt, though he had done his part well enough, no doubt, during the year or so he had been in the place of a father.

  “I know the Galts re-registered you as theirs when you were only a few months old, presumably as soon as the adoption proceedings were completed. I’m reasonably sure that your real father must have been one of the Czech pilots who were stationed at Auchterarne during the war. I guess that he must have been killed in action in 1942. But adoption certificates carry only the Christian names given to the child, and the name of the adoptive parent. His name I don’t know yet. I shall get it eventually either from Somerset House or from the service records. But that’s unnecessary now,” said George gently. “You tell me.”

  “His name was Vaclav Havelka. I know, because she told me about him. Vaclav is the same name we call Wenceslas. That’s why he gave her his Saint Wenceslas medal. He hadn’t got anything else to give her. He hadn’t even got a country, then, only a job and a uniform. He was twenty years old, and she was sixteen, nearly seventeen, and they met at some innocent local bunfight when her school was up there in Scotland. There wasn’t a hope for them. Her people were set on her getting into society and marrying a lord, or something, not a refugee flyer with no money and no home. So she did the one thing really of her own that she ever did, she gave herself to him. Maybe she hoped to force her parents’ hands, and maybe she might even have managed it, but it never came to that, because my father was shot down six months before I was born. After that, she didn’t put up much of a fight for me.”

  “How much chance did she have?” said Liri in a low voice.

  “Not much, I know. With my father gone she hadn’t got anybody to stand by her. She had to tell her folks, and they took her away from school quickly and quietly, and then set to work on her, for ever urging her to have it all hushed up, to spare them the shame, to think of her future, when she hadn’t got any future. She gave way in the end. She’d have had to be a heroine not to. She let them hide her away somewhere to have me on the quiet, and then she let me go for adoption. But she insisted on meeting the Galts before she’d sign. They were decent, nice people who badly wanted a child, she knew I’d be all right with them. So she asked them to make sure that I kept my father’s medal, and then she promised never to trouble them again, and she never did. And after the war they married her off to Arundale, a big wedding and a successful career, everything they’d wanted for her. You know how he first met her? He gave away the prizes at her school speech-day, the last year she was there. It must have been only a few weeks before my father was killed.”

  A school speech-day, George thought, dazzled, why didn’t I think of that? The white dress, the modest jewellery permitted for wear on a ceremonial occasion, the radiance in her face – Arundale must have had that vision on his mind ever afterwards. And she without a thought of him, or of anything else but her lover, the bridal gift round her neck, and the child that was coming.

  Liri was frowning over a puzzling memory. “But you know, what I don’t understand is that Mr. Arundale practically told me that his wife couldn’t have any children. Not in so many words, but that was what he meant.”

  “Felicity told me the same thing,” said George, unimpressed. “That’s not so strange. Can you imagine a man like Arundale being open to the idea that the fault might possibly be in him?”

  “No,” she agreed bitterly, “you’re right, of course. Even in the Bible you notice it’s always barren wives.”

  “And how,” asked George, returning gently to the matter in hand, “did you come to meet your mother again?”

  “It was at a party the recording company gave, about six weeks ago.” Lucien turned his face aside for a moment, wrung by the realisation of how short a time they had had together. “She’d lost sight of me all these years, but after I started singing she began to follow up all the notices about me. I kept my own name, you see, so she knew who I was. She began to edge her way into the folk world, to get to know people so that she could get to me. And I… it’s hard to explain. I’d grown up happy enough. After the Galts were killed it was the orphanage, of course, but that was pretty good, too, I didn’t have any complaints. They told me I’d been adopted, naturally, they always do that, because you’re dead certain to find out one day, anyhow. We had one committee-woman who’d known the Galts slightly, and she told me how this medal I had had belonged to my father, who was dead, and my mother had let me go for adoption. I never had anything against my father, how could I? But there was always this thing I had about my mother, pulling two ways, wanting her because after all you’re not complete without one, and hating her because she just gave me up when the going got rough. And then this one day, at this party, there I was suddenly alone in a corner with this beautiful, fashionable woman, and she said to me: ‘I’ve been trying for ages to meet you. I’m your mother.’ ”

  He doubled his long hands into fists and wrung them in a momentary spasm of anguish, and then uncurled them carefully, and let them lie still and quiet on his knee.

  “You can’t imagine it. Not even you, who’ve seen her. She wasn’t like she is… was… here. The way she said it, with a terrible kind of simplicity, sweeping everything that didn’t matter out of the way. I thought I hated her, I even felt I ought to hate her, but when it happened it wasn’t like that at all. It was like falling in love. The way she was, it wiped out everything. She wasn’t courting me now because I was a lion, she’d just found her way back to me because she couldn’t keep away any longer. All she wanted was to be with me. Edward – that was a contract, and she must keep it. You know? She was even very fond of him, in a way, and very loyal. But loving… I don’t think she’d loved anyone or anything but me since my father died.”

  “And you?” asked George with respectful gentleness.

  “It was queer with me. If I’d always had her I should just have loved her casually, like anyone else with a mother, and that would have been it. But getting her back like that, quite strange, and beautiful, and still young… and so lost, and to be pitied! Sometimes I didn’t know whether I was her son, or her brother, or her father. I knew I was her slave.”

  Yes, of course, from the moment he saw that she was his. Her adoration might well have disarmed Lucifer, pride and all, grievance and all. She had loved her Gil Morrice better than all her kith and kin, how could he help returning her devotion?

  “We had to meet sometimes, we couldn’t help ourselves. We had so much time to make up. But then there was Liri… Liri broke it off with me, and I knew it was because of her, but I couldn’t explain, you see, it wasn’t my secret. We could never let it be known what the real connection was, my mother’s whole life, and his, too, all this build-up, would go down the drain if we did. We must have been mad to start this week-end course, and bring the thing right here into the house. And it was awful here, always so many people, we never could talk at all. And I had to talk to her, I had to. Because when Liri followed me here I saw she wasn’t absolutely finished with me, I was sure I could get her back, but only by telling her the truth. And I couldn’t do that, even in confidence, without my mother’s consent.”

  “So the message you sent by Felicity,” said George, “was a genuine message, after all?”

  Lucien shook her head, wretchedly. “It was a lot of things… I don’t know… I’m not proud of that. It was a vicious thing to do, but there she was offering to do anything for me, and I wanted her out of my hair, I needed to think and she wouldn’t let me think. And I did want my mother to come, while the whole place was nearly empty. I thought he’d be away by then, safely on his way to town. So I told Felicity what she could do for me, if she meant it. I knew what she’d think, I knew what she’d feel, I knew I’d hurt her. I meant to, though I wished afterwards I hadn’t. But I did believe she’d give the message to my mother, and I was sure she’d come.

  “And instead, it was Arundale who came, with that damned murderous toy. It was like an unbelievably bad film. It was even funny at first, because I couldn’t believe in it seriously. I tried to talk to him, but I swear he never heard a word. I think in a way he was mad, then. All he wanted was to kill me, and he’d have done it, but then suddenly she was there… She must have heard us right from the gate, because she came running with the latch in her hand, and hit out at him like a fury, almost before I realised she was there. And then he was on the ground, and it was all over. Unbelievably quickly. He was dead in minutes.”

  Lucien passed a tired hand over his face. “She hit out in defence of me. She never thought of killing, only of stopping him from killing. But afterwards she knew she had killed him. She was totally dazed, but quite docile. It was up to me. She did whatever I told her. I taught her what to say when you questioned her. But it was partly true, you know, he did behave like she said, after Felicity left them. He did put it all aside as a piece of childish spite, and made out he was leaving for town, just as he’d planned. It was only after he’d gone that she got frightened, and came herself, to make sure…”

  “You didn’t know, of course,” said George, “and neither did she, that he’d telephoned to both bodies he should have addressed in Birmingham, and called off the engagements. Yes,” he said, answering the quick, dark glance, “he was going to make good use of those two days’ grace, too. He intended murder.”

  “My own fault, I snatched the world away from under his feet. But that was something I never intended. I told her to go back to the house, and to be sure not to be seen on the way. And she did whatever I told her. Ever since her heart broke, between my father and me, she’s always done what people told her, what they expected of her. When she’d gone I tried to bring him round, but it was no good, and I knew he was dead. I threw him into the river, and the sword-stick and the latch after him. And I sneaked up to the yard and took his car and ran for it. I thought I was taking the whole load of guilt away with me, and she’d be all right. I should have known better, but I was in a pretty bad state myself. How could she ever be all right again?” He shook his head suddenly in a gesture of helpless pain. “How did you know? Why were you sure it wasn’t me? I thought I made out a pretty good case.”

  George rose from his chair. It was late and it was over; and if these two could sleep, sleep was what they needed.

  “I haven’t even read your statement yet, but if it’s any consolation, you convinced Rapier, all right. Don’t worry, we shall never be asking you to sign it. I knew the latch was still in its place when Felicity left you. And what did Arundale want with it? Like Lord Barnard, he came with a sword. And he was between you and the gate, he and forty yards of ground. You’d never have had the slightest chance of getting to it. No, someone else, someone who followed him there, dragged that latch out of its wards.” He cast a summoning glance towards the corner where Tossa and Dominic had sat silent throughout this elegiac conversation. “Come on, I’d better get you two home before I go in and report.” And to Lucien: “You’re staying here overnight?”

  “Mr. Marshall was kind enough to suggest it. Then we can move into Comerbourne, if you still need us. I suppose we’ll have to stay within call until after the inquests?”

  “Probably, but we can talk about that to-morrow.”

  “I realise,” Lucien said abruptly, “that there must be a good case against me as an accessory after the fact.”

  “Then so there is against me,” said Liri at once. “I warned you, and I warned her.”

  She would probably never realise, George thought, how grateful he was to her for that. “What fact?” he said dryly. “There isn’t going to be any primary prosecution, why should I go out of my way to hunt up secondary charges? Much better just get on with the business of living. It may not always be easy, but it’s still worth the effort.”

  “Is it?” Lucien raised bruised eyes in a challenging stare. “What did she ever get out of it? In her whole life she never had any real happiness.”

  “You think not?” said George.

  He walked suddenly to the door and out of the room, and they heard his footsteps receding along the passages now populous only with echoes. In a few moments he was back with a half-plate photograph in his hands. He dropped it in Lucien’s lap.

  “Here you are, a souvenir for you. And you can add me to the crime-sheet – petty theft from Arundale’s estate. Incidentally, that makes you a receiver, too.” He watched the flooding colour rise in the boy’s dark cheeks, and the warmth of wonder ease the tired lines of his mouth. “Taken at that last prize-giving, unless I miss my guess. If I’m right, then he was still with her, and you were on your way. Maybe it didn’t last long, but believe me, she had it.”

  Lucien looked down in a daze at the Audrey he had never seen before, with the bloom and the radiance and the spontaneity still on her, and caught at their height. If ever he doubted that he had been the child of love, he had only to look at this, and be reassured. And it was, for some reason, almost inevitable that he should look up in suddenly enlarged understanding from Audrey to Liri, whose eyes had never left him.

  George wafted Tossa and Dominic quietly out of the room before him, and they went away and left those two to come to terms with the past and and the future in their own way.

  Nobody had bothered to draw the curtains. Dominic looked back from the courtyard, before he climbed into the car, and there were the last two guests left over from Follymead’s folk-music week-end, framed in the softly-lighted window of the small library on the first floor, locked in each other’s arms. They must have sprung together and met in splendid collision as soon as they were alone. Their cheeks were pressed together as if they would fuse for all time, their eyes were closed, and their faces were timeless, as though love had fallen on them as a new and cosmic experience, original and unique in the history of man.

  Dominic climbed hastily into the car and slammed the door, ashamed and exalted.

  George Felse drove round the wing of the house, and out upon the great open levels of the drive, suddenly moon-washed and serene after the thunderous sulks of the evening. Follymead receded, the partial rear view of it grew and coalesced, became a harmonious, a symmetrical whole, making unity out of chaos. Gradually it withdrew, moonlit and magical, a joke and a threat, a dream and a nightmare, deploying its lesser shocks on either side of them as they retreated. Even those who escaped always came back; there was no need to set traps for them.

  “ ‘Black, black, black,’ ” sang Tossa softly to herself in the back seat, her chin on her shoulder, “is the colour of my true-love’s hair…’ ”

  —«»—«»—«»—

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