How well he remembered that evening. Regina talked with passion, leaning towards him across the deep, blonde sheepskin rug; a big woman, red-haired but greying a little, interesting bands of silver in the short, russet hair; a broad, rather highly-coloured, energetic face, smooth and blonde, ripe blue eyes, arched brows plucked rather too thinly; a plump, full, firm body in good country tweeds. And Peter Blacklock in his elderly, leathery-elbowed sports jacket and Bedford cords, comfortable and distinguished, as though he had been born to the game. And the vicar, a contemporary, hard and athletic in body, eager and juvenile in mind, genuine echo to Mrs Blacklock’s full song. There were no pretences here, these were the real people. Tom had never known such, and bludgeoned as he was, he could not fail to be fascinated by them.
And in the background, of course, distant, indifferent and aware, but as though her soul remained absent, Annet. Working a little late that night, as she sometimes did, bored, probably, with them all, waiting to go home. Large-eyed, motionless of face, thinking of God knew what, she watched them all and was herself so withdrawn that she might have been in another world. The heavy, soft curve of her hair shadowing her face was like the undulation of one of the cords that held the world in balance. The whisky had been so sympathetically large that it affected his vision, and endowed her with, or perhaps only uncovered in her, cosmic significances.
‘In the seventeenth century,’ said the vicar, glowing with ardour, ‘we’re told there was a witch-coven in these parts that used to meet on the hill-top.’ His voice sounded somehow light-weight and breathless, emerging from that big, lean, shapely body. I’ll bet he was a Rugby blue, thought Tom inconsequently, and felt a small shock again at the uncertainty and shallowness of the face. For all his regular features, he looked more like a sixth-form schoolboy than sixth-form schoolboys themselves do nowadays. And why should he be so anxious to get in his Black Mass and his coven and his devil? But of course, he had, in a way, a vested interest in these blasphemies. Where would his profession be without them?
‘Coven, nonsense!’ said Regina roundly. “There isn’t a particle of evidence for that tale, and I don’t believe a word of it.’
‘But how can you dismiss Hayley’s diary so lightly? One of my predecessors in office, Mr Kenyon, the incumbent in the mid-seventeenth century, left a very circumstantial journal—’
‘Your predecessor was a demented witch-hunter,’ objected Regina firmly. ‘He left a reputation, as well as a journal, and personally I think I’d rather be called a witch than the things some of his contemporaries called him. By all accounts he’d have had half the village searched and hanged if he’d had his way, but luckily the local justices knew him too well, and were pretty easygoing country fellows themselves, so he didn’t do much damage. But don’t quote him as evidence! No, Mr Kenyon,’ she said, fixing Tom with a smiling but authoritative blue eye, ‘the occasional people who strayed into fairyland, or limbo, or whatever is inside magic mountains, I’ll stand for. I don’t mean they necessarily happened, these Rip-Van-Winkle vanishings, but I do accept that people here believed they happened. But witches, no! There never have been and there never will be any witches on the Hallowmount!’
And that was the sum of what he had got out of the evening, that and the fifteen minutes of unbelievable anguish and bliss on the way home, with Annet silent beside him in the passenger seat. That was the night he began to realise fully that this was different, that he couldn’t make use of it and wasn’t capable of disentangling himself from it; that he would never get over her, and never again be as he had been before he had known her. What he had thought to be a mild infatuation, only a little more serious than half a dozen others he had lived through and exploited, had grown and deepened out of knowledge, until it filled all his world with its new sensitivity, inordinately painful and disturbing. Annet was like that. He should have known at sight of her. But at sight of her it had already been too late to back away.
And then this afternoon, half-term Thursday. He had had a free last period, and got away early to pick up his case and set out on the drive home; and as he slid out of the car at the gate Annet had come out in her dark-blue coat, a nylon rain-scarf over her hair, three letters in her hand. At sight of him she had checked and recoiled very slightly, and the kind, careful, palpable veil of withdrawal had closed over her face. She knew his wants, and was sorry; she did not want him, and was a little sorry for that, too, or so it seemed to him. If she had not liked him she would not have troubled to evade him, she would not have shrunk from so small an encounter; but she liked him, and preferred not to have to remind him at every touch that she had nothing to give him that could ever satisfy him.
‘You’ll get wet,’ he said fatuously, ‘it’s coming on to rain. Let me take them for you.’
‘I don’t mind,’ she said. ‘I want a breath of air, I don’t mind the rain.’
‘I’ll run you down, then, at least let me do that.’
‘Thank you, but no, please don’t. I just want to walk.’ She saw the next plea already quivering on his lips, and staved it off rapidly and gently. ‘Alone,’ she said, the deep voice making it an apology and an entreaty, while her eyes stood him off with the blue brilliance of lapis lazuli in an inlaid Egyptian head.
‘I’m sorry!’ she said. ‘Don’t be hurt. I should only be horribly unsociable if you did come, and I’d rather not.’
She had even gone to the trouble to find several small, kind things to say to him, she who had no small-talk, softening her enforced rejection of him – and why had he forced it? – with reminders of his family waiting at home, of the long journey before him, and the advisability of making an early start and taking advantage of the remaining daylight to get as far as the Ml. And he had followed her lead gratefully, glad to return to firmer ground.
‘Your people must be looking forward so much to having you home again.’
He said he supposed they probably were. What could he say?
‘Have a pleasant journey! And a nice week-end!’
‘Thank you! And you, too. See you on Tuesday evening, then. Good-bye, Annet!’
‘Good-bye!’
She went up the lane towards the postbox outside the Wastfield gate. He went into the house, drank a hasty cup of tea, finished the packing of his single case, and set off again in the Mini towards Comerford.
And chancing to lift his eyes to the long, rain-dimmed hog-back of the Hallowmount as he drove, just as the clouds parted and the quivering spear of light transfixed it, he saw the moving sapphire that was Annet climb the hillside and vanish over the crest.
CHAPTER II
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It was after eight o’clock on Tuesday evening when he lifted and dropped the knocker on the front door of Fairford, and listened with pricked ears to the footsteps that advanced briskly from the living-room to open the door to him. He hadn’t taken his key south with him. There were only two, and the whole family would be in on a Tuesday evening, so there was no question of his being locked out.
He said afterwards that he knew as soon as the knocker dropped that something was wrong; but the truth was that the hole in his peace of mind really showed itself when he recognised the footsteps as belonging to Mrs Beck. There was no reason in the world why that should be a portent of any kind; but we make our own superstitions and our own touchstones, and it had been Annet who opened the door to him first, and she should have opened it to him now. If she had, he would have believed that he was being offered another chance, a new beginning with her, if he had the wit to make better use of it this time. But the steps were heavier and shorter than hers, the hand that turned back the latch was sharper and clumsier with it; and he knew Mrs Beck even before she let him in.