Finally she got dressed then and when she walked back up the path not far away from me — the other woman had vanished by now — I saw that she was smiling, an almost too radiant smile, like someone in a toothpaste advertisement.
I forgot my hunger, watching her disappear in the distance up the path. War whoops and that bronzed skin — was she a Red Indian? I began to doubt my senses, before I remembered the actual timbre of her whoops, sharp, light, a tremulous excitement in the tone, a voice that cut through the muggy afternoon air like a romantic announcement. Was it this woman, then, who had brought the roses to the long-dead pair on the island? It seemed very possible. Yet could she be forty, middle-aged? Her acts were more those of a child or some dream-filled adolescent girl. Or was she just a madwoman, simply deranged, someone from the big house, a relation, a visitor, a servant?
But then I realised suddenly how nothing she had done was actually mad at all. Working too long in the pretentious school, among dull or frightened people, in a country that had lost all its confidence in sharp personality or adventure, I had come to think of such behaviour as extreme, whereas the spirit of fun and energy which she had expressed just now was in fact quite natural. It was I who had gone sour, hemmed in by too many formalities and compromises. And it was I who was mad now, if anyone was, I who had gone to such unlikely extremes, up in my oak tree, running away from the world, almost a crazed hermit already. So that after the woman disappeared, I longed to throw it all in, to follow her — up the path back into civilisation. Instead, an hour later, I was up on the rim of the old quarry, behind the barbed-wire fence, wondering how I might kill a sheep: or a lamb.
But even if the fence had not been in my way the sun was in my eyes, slanting down across the long green fields from the west, and the animals were much too far from me in any case, way out of bowshot. I thought of waiting till dark, climbing the fence somehow and then taking the sheep by surprise, storming them, wrestling with one of them before cutting its throat. But despite my hunger this idea didn’t appeal.
I began to wonder about the vegetable garden behind the great house. I’d seen this more clearly the previous day through Spinks’s binoculars, from near the top of the beech tree that gave me access to my oak, from a spot very high up in its branches that I’d made over into a look-out post, which gave me a good view from the top of the valley right over most of the parkland, together with the side of the house where the great conservatory was and all the yard buildings behind. The kitchen garden, I could see, surrounded by a large redbrick wall, was the last stonework attached to these out-buildings. Beyond it was an orchard and then the thick cover of beech trees. The path down to the lake, which the woman had taken, obviously ran through this orchard and then into, or near to, the vegetable garden. It was worth the risk; there might be some early carrots or late cabbage. Even an old onion would do. Anything would be better than the watercress or cutting a sheep’s throat.
The moon was less of a scimitar and more of a bright gas globe at about twelve o’clock that night. But there were clouds too, now and then, which suddenly darkened the sky, when I had to stop completely or grope my way forward along the path up from the lake. However, by the time I’d come to the end of the orchard and saw the garden wall rearing up immediately ahead of me, there was a long cloudless spell and I could see as much as I needed. There was a door in the wall here. I waited behind it, listening, for five minutes. A dog was what I feared, or worse, some electrical device, a burglar alarm set against all the precious pictures, even this far away from the house. But there was no sound. A totally still, white, early June night. I lifted the latch and pushed. Inside I found myself not in the garden but in a long greenhouse, sloped against the wall on the other side. Small tomato plants were tied with string to overhead wires down almost the entire length and there were trestle tables next the wall crowded with petalled shrubs and flower pots. The moon shone down directly through the glass. At the far end was a workbench piled with trugs, with a stack of garden implements to one side, very old garden tools by the look of them. There was a faint smell of iodine and some booklets on the bench. I picked one up. It was a seed catalogue. Suttons. I could just see the name on the cover. But this must have been pretty old, too, for the paper was thin and dry, crumbling in my fingers. But there was nothing I could see anywhere to eat. Leaving the greenhouse I moved up a path next the garden wall. Again I could see nothing on the beds. It was too early in the year, I realised, and I certainly couldn’t risk digging about, pulling things up.
I saw the figure then, in some sort of slouch hat and long, old-fashioned coat to my right, arms wide, suddenly menacing me. And there was a second’s blind terror before I saw it for the scarecrow that it was. It got me out of the garden, though, sooner than I intended. There was nothing here for me in any case. It was just the wrong season.
Since the moonlight was still good when I left the garden, I decided to move along the outside of the wall, through the end of the orchard, and take a closer look at the house itself. A hundred yards further on there was a thick beech hedge and beyond that, as I’d seen from my look-out post, the pleasure gardens which ran down in a series of grass terraces from the great conservatory.
As soon as I’d pushed through this hedge I saw the strange spotlights piercing the dark fronds in the conservatory again. I was much closer to them now, of course. But still, since the pleasure-garden rose above me here in a series of shallow herbaceous borders, I couldn’t see anything or anyone beneath, at ground level in the glasshouse: just the hidden lights again, moving gently to and fro, caressing the greenery inside. I was drawn to them like a moth.
Keeping close against the rising beech hedge, I moved slowly up one side of the pleasure-garden until I reached the castellated stone balustrades which surrounded the house. There was a gravel walk behind this and then the conservatory itself, less than ten yards away. Peering through an arch in the balustrade now I could see right inside the glass building at last. And I saw the woman then, a moment later: the Red Indian woman by the lake.
The space beneath the exotic shrubs and trees had been empty at first, before she had moved into it from the shadows, moved into the light, carrying a silver goblet in one hand, talking over her shoulder to someone apparently right behind her.
Her face was lit then, with almost theatrical effect, as she stood for several moments in one of the hidden spotlights: a startlingly white face in the brightness. Or perhaps she was made up. The narrow, perfectly arched eyebrows seemed too good to be true, while her wavy dark hair was precisely parted in the middle, no longer a helmet against the sun but a discreet Victorian-style cowl, set carefully out over her temples, just touching her high cheekbones. She had changed: no longer the carefree outdoor girl by the lake, she seemed involved now in something contrived, even forced. Her face showed the strain: the huge smile by the lake was long gone. She wore what looked like a sort of Camelot outfit: a long, loose-fitting flimsy white dress with brightly patterned Etruscan borders, held tight, right up beneath her breasts and flowing out from there in folds of silken sheen. Her lips moved. She was still speaking, though no one had yet joined her. She turned then, swirling round in her thin dress, to greet someone at last as I thought. But instead she simply gazed up at the lights wandering about in the air above her.