Painted Wings Page 11

  CHAPTER TEN

  THEY sat by the river just above the weir, shaded f. from the direct sun by the trees, a light breeze tem pering the summer heat to a pleasant coolness and ruffling the surface of the river so that it flashed f and sparkled like a thousand small mirrors., ' It was quite quiet and so still and quite beautiful, and it should have been idyllic, but somewhere, somehow, a persistent and niggling little doubt pre vented Deryn from enjoying it with her usual relish. She felt restless and uneasy, and Gerald's deter minedly gloomy company did nothing to alleviate it. He was looking at her now in an almost sulky defiance, his thin face looking set to defend the words he had just said, and which had caused Deryn to leave her painting and frown at him. 'You don't have to worry,' he assured her. 'I only said you might change your mind at the last minute. I haven't really committed you to anything.' 'I should hope not,' she said. 'Because I shan't change my mind, Gerald,, not even at the last minute. I do wish you'd take no for an answer.' 'I hoped.' 'Well, don't,' she told him shortly. 'You'd better ring whoever it is who's arranging it all and'tell him not to keep it open any longer, because I've decided, I've definitely decided, that I shan't be going with you.' i59 He looked at her steadily for a moment or two, then down at his hands clasped together under his knees. 'I just thought there might be a chance you could have second thoughts,' he said. 'Well, there isn't.' Neither of them said anything at all for several minutes, but Deryn made no attempt to resume her painting, but twirled the"brush between her restless fingers. It was perhaps rather unfair of her, she thought unhappily, to be so short with him even if his persistence did annoy her. He had. had such high hopes of the African trip, but she was so afraid of allowing herself to be coaxed into going with him for all the wrong reasons, and was perhaps being more severely adamant than she would normally have been. He had, after all, been a very good friend to her over quite a few years now, as well as a working partner, and he had spent a lot of time and money these past weeks travelling backwards and forwards between London and Llanwellon, just to be near her. The latter fact, of course, could be accounted for by the fact that he disliked Dominic to the point of hatred and would do anything rather than leave her there with him for very long. For all that she should not have refused him quite so tersely, she thought, perhaps been a bit more gentle about it. He looked up suddenly, almost as if he sensed something of what was going on in her " mind, and he half smiled and reached for one of her hands, holding it tentatively as if he expected her to withdraw it. 'I really thought I could persuade you,' he said. 160 ' .'Itonly goes to show how wrong I can be, doesn't it?' Deryn sighed, shaking her head. 'I'm sorry, Gerald.' 'But not sorry enough to take pity on me?' She took a deep, deep breath and pushed her SUMglasses firmly up the bridge of her nose. 'N , I'm sorry.' 'Oh well,' he shrugged resignedly, 'I shall just have to break it to George gently. You see, I more or less said you would becoming,' he confessed. 'Well, you had no right to do that,' she told him. 'Committing me to something like that without my consent was even less likely to persuade me, Gerald. You should have known that. You know how I hate being being organised.' 'Yes, I know you do,' he admitted, a little impatiently. 'But I just hoped you'd see the light, I suppose.' Pale blue eyes looked at her then with a challenge behind their curiosity. . 'I suppose I thought the fact thathe was going would have some influence on you, if nothing else did. In a way I'm glad it hasn't.' Deryn stared at him blankly for a moment, unsure if.she quite followed his meaning. 'I don't under. stand you,' she said at last. 'Who's going where?' 'Why, your friend, thegreat lover, of course,' he jeered. There was a bitter twist to his mouth that she would have regretted if she had given any thought to it at all. But at the moment her mind was too busy.coping with what he was tryingto convey, to bother about anything else. 'You you mean Dom?.' 161 " 'Who else?' He nodded, and was quite evidently pleased to have sprung such a surprise on her. 'Don't tell me you didn't know,' he said, relishing the fact. 'You do surprise me!' 'Gerald, don't be sarcastic, please,' she said quietly. He looked vaguely uneasy, but there was still a stubborn, stiff look about his mouth, and he did not look at her when he spoke. 'Well, I am surprised,' he insisted. 'Hasn't he told you?' 'Told me what?' 'That he's going abroad again.' She shook her head, a small, tight feeling in the pit of her stomach. 'No. No, he hasn't said anything to me.' 'Odd.' He shrugged. 'Oh well, maybe he didn't realise how interested you'd be, although I can't really believe that.' She flicked the painty bristles of the brush she held, backwards and forwards on the tall head of a clover and tried to sound matteroffact. 'Gerald, I know you don't like Dom,' she said quietly, 'but please don't sharpen your claws on me.' His thin face flushed, but he stuck to his guns determinedly. 'I'm still amazed he hasn't told you he's going,' he insisted, and Deryn's jumbled thoughts suddenly remembered something. Last night, when Dominic had given her such a start by arriving so unexpectedly, she had questioned his reason for being there at all and he had said something about having some news for her. She had even questioned him about it, mentioning the girl in the photograph as the possible cause, and 162 he had told her it could wait until breakfast time this morning. Only this morning she had forgotten about it and he had said nothing perhaps he even regretted having said anything at all to her, for he had gone off very quickly after he had had his meal and she had not seen him since. She looked at Gerald's curious face and smiled wryly. 'I've just remembered,' she told him. 'Yesterday he told me he had some news, but ' She hesitated to tell him about last night's episode, or he would surely think the very worst. 'Well, "he said I was crotchety and he'd leave it until today only I forgot to ask him at breakfast time.' 'I see.' He was, she thought, only half believing her, but he vifas not prepared to argue the point at the moment. Deryn looked at him curiously, having recovered from her initial surprise. 'How do you know about him going?' she asked, and he shrugged. 'I saw Ivor Rhys in town yesterday,' he said. 'It's the first time I've seen him for weeks and he said Gwyneth had told him Gregory was leaving Llanwellon. He knew I'd be glad to hear that,' he added. Deryn was deep in thought again and he eyed her curiously. 'Did did he say where Dom was going?' she asked, and he nodded. 'I don't suppose it'll be any more of a surprise to you than it was to me,' he told her. 'He's going to Africa Tunisia, to be precise.' 'Where he was before,' she mused, and he looked at her sharply. 'Was he? I know it was rumoured, but no one knew for sure as far as I know.' 163 Deryn shook her head hastily. 'I don't really know,' she assured him. 'I've just heard the rumours too.' 'As soon as I heard he was going abroad,' Gerald said shortly, 'I knew it'd be Africa.' 'But hardly the same place you're going to,' she retorted. 'It's right the other side of the continent, and if you're implying anything, Dom didn't know about our your proposed trip until the day before yesterday.' 'So you think.' 'Well, how could he?' she demanded. 'Anyway I can tell when someone's being that false, and I'd swear he didn't know until I told him.' ''And the following day he books himself a passage to the same country?' 'The same continent,' she corrected him. 'It's not the same country, Gerald, and you're being quite idiotic about it. If it comes to that,' she added, 'why should he bother?' Gerald laughed, a short, bitter sound that grated on her nerves. 'Oh, be your age, darling!' Deryn wiped more green paint on to the dusty white clover, her expression uncertain. 'If you think what I think you mean,' she told him, 'Dom knows I'm not going with you, I told him so at the time. You're just just trying to make something out of nothing, and I refuse to listen to you any longer.' He looked at her speculatively. 'Won't you even change your mind about coming with me, now that you know he's going out there too?' he asked, and she frowned. 'No, I won't. And I wouldn't even if he wasn't 164 : going thousands of miles away on the other side of the con tinen t, ei ther.' Gerald looked up at her, and it was evident from the expression in his eyes, that he did not believe that particular statement either. Deryn was sorry in a way when Gerald announced his intention of going back to London that same afternoon. He would not even stay and have lunch, he said, and she suspected he was more than ever relu
ctant to share a table with Dominic. It made her rather unhappy to think that she had arrived at some sort of crossroads where "her relationship with Gerald was concerned, and she wished she could have persuaded him to accept her refusal to go on the African trip as less of a personal rejection, He walked up from the river with her and left her at the cottage door, holding her hand for a long , moment before kissing her in such a way that it i seemed terribly final. She had stood at the door and watched him go with a faint misting of her eyes, and , then a moment later scolded herself for being such a sentimental fool. She had never had any intention of settling down with anyone, but Gerald had succeeded in coming much closer to persuading her .than anyone else had so far. . Dismissing her temporary depression, she set I about getting lunch ready, and listening for Hound's barking as he came nearer. Heaven knew where I Dominic had gone, but it couldn't be anywhere very t close at hand or she would have heard Hound's s noisy and unmistakable barking during the mom ing. Perhaps they had gone in to Glanreddin or . 165 maybe even over to the far side of the valley to the hills. There were so many places to go and Dominic was an insatiable walker and explorer. Usually he was in for. his lunch by about one o'clock at the latest his appetite never allowed him to be any later and when half past one came and went she frowned crossly and ate her, own meal, leaving his on the table under cover. By twothirty her initial anger had given way to a niggling worry that something was wrong, a worry she hastily dismissed as stupid because he was a grown man and perfectly capable of taking care of himself. He was probably lunching somewhere in some expensive restaurant, quite unconcernedly, and not giving a. ' thought to her or to the fact that he had seen fit not to let her know he would not be in for his meal as usual. She went down to the river again tor a while, but found she was unable to concentrate and came back after only an hour and nothing done. She glanced anxiously at the summerhouse as she came across the garden the new and startling idea in her head that perhaps he had simply packed up and gone, disappeared as he had done once before when the heiress business was at its height. It was possible, she thought ruefully, that he had taken exception to her going into his house when he had had time to consider it, and had decided to go. Not for anything would she have gone in there again in case he returned while she was there. It seemed so gloomily quiet there somehow and there was a wind blowing now, grown from that cooling breeze of the morning. Now it felt cold and heavy 166 : as if there was rain in the air. She prepared dinner, but found herself unable to eat much and was ashamed to find herself with the awful need to cry as she looked out of the cottage window at the first big spots of rain. The roof still leaked and this time she was obliged to carry the old bath upstairs by herself, feeling the little cottage suddenly and strangely alien as the first drips plopped down. It was absolutely ridiculous, of course, but she could not rid herself of that idea that Dominic had simply left without saying anything to her, and by the time she came downstairs again she was actually . crying bitterly because he had not even said goodbye to her. , The rain had stopped by the time she went up to bed, but the wind was still quite wild and made whistling and tapping noises on the windows and wooden doors, so that she doubted if she would 'sleep. Lying there in the darkness she thought about Dominic and felt that lump in her throat again. He :had meant to tell her he was going, she felt sure, but she had not raised the subject again at breakfast time, and perhaps he had thought her uninterested, even glad to be rid of him at last. She lifted her head from the pillow suddenly, her eyes wide and startled as a long, loud and spinechilling howl split the night and shattered even the restless wind into brief stillness. 'Hound!' She sat up in bed, never doubting for a minute who it was, 'scrambling out of bed and peering down, tryingto Ipierce the darkness below in the garden. . She could see nothing, but that awful chilling . 167 howl went up again and she shivered, then hesitated no longer. She did not bother to light the lamp, but hastily donned most of her clothes, uncertain what she was to do but driven by some indefinable urgency. She grabbed a torch from the bedside table and went downstairs while the dog still howled mournfully at the front door. She flung the door wide and took the full force of the wind in her face. 'Hound ' He stood in the beam of the torch, not waving his tail in the usual way but making urgent little grunting'noises and half turned back into the stormy wind. Deryn lit the oil lamp on the table and tried to coax him in, but he stood his ground, refusing to budge. 'What is it?' she begged, knowing now that something was wrong and her instinct had not been playing her tricks. It was obvious that Hound was urging her to go with him, and after only a brief hesitation she fetched a coat and tied a scarf over her hair, then joined him outside. 'Come on then, boy she told the labrador, and slammed the door on the cosy lamplit room, hanging on grimly to the dog's collar with one hand and the torch with the other. He tried to take her too fast over the rather uneven ground once they were clear of the garden and she had to hold him back as best she could, although it was not easy. 'Find him, boy,' she urged. 'Show me where he is. Hound, good boy.' They passed the curve in the river and went on out towards where the valley sloped up towards the nearest rocky hills, and where her lightly shod feet slipped and slithered on the wet grey rock. She had walked this way alone once, and found it beautiful, 168 but now it struck her only as hostile and dangerous. There were hidden caves in the hillsides, she knew, for she had barely missed falling into one of them, even in broad daylight, and she felt a momentary flick of panic when she considered what she could possibly do alone if Dominic had fallen into one of them. He could be lying somewhere hurt, perhaps badly hurt, and she could do little on her own. It was too late now to have thought of bringing rope or something like that, she could only follow Hound blindly and hope that he would take her to the right place. He led her on up the hillside, round bushes that loomed sudde'nly out of the darkness and swayed scaringly in the wind and the yellow beam of the torch. Hound suddenly broke loose from her and ran ahead, and she felt the increased thud of her heart as she stood there for a second breathing heavily from the exertion of climbing and perhaps something else that she did not immediately recognise. The torch seemed so pitifully inadequate on the vastness of the dark hillside, but it was all she had and she swung its beam this way and that trying to pick up Hound. She saw him at last, some six or seven feet in front of her, his legs stiff and shivering, standing by a mass of tangled scrub and whimpering urgently. She moved at last, up to where he stood, the torch held in front of her, her heart thudding wildly. It was possible the scrub hid the top of one of the caves and she bit on her lip anxiously as she ap169 preached. Sure enough as she came near enough to see there was a black gaping hole in the hillside, half concealed by the bush, and she went right to the edge of it and shone the torch down into the blackness. Dom?' . She heard a deep, hollowsounding sigh of relief and shone the torch on the spot she thought it came from. 'Deryn! Thank heavens ' 'Are you all right?' She could not see him very well, for the feeble light she had did not quite reach him, but he did not sound too bad. 'I'm frozen stiff and soaked through, but otherwise I'm O.K.,' he assured her. 'Are you alone?' Her heart sank. 'Yes, I'm afraid so He said nothing more for a moment, then she heard him move down there in the ringing, echoing darkness. 'Look, Deryn, I can get up on to a sort of shelf about a couple of feet up. Did you see a smallquarryman's hut as you came up the hill?' She shook her head, realised the futility of it and shouted down to him instead. 'No, I didn't, but I expect I can find it.' He hesitated. 'O.K.,' he said at last, 'but for God's sake be careful and don't fall into one of these damned things as well, or we shall be in a mess.' 'Whereabouts is this hut?' 'About fifty yards further down on the left no, right if you're going down. Ypu might find something there that will be of use a rope or something.' 'I'll go and see,' she promised, and turned away, 170 swinging back hastily when he called up to her again. 'Deryn!' 'Yes, Dom?' 'Please be careful.' She smiled to herself in the darkness and hooked a finger into Hound's collar. 'I will,' she promised. 'I'm taking Hound with me for a guide dog
.' .'Good idea.' Hound left his master again only very reluctantly, but he went with her eventually and they made their way down the hillside again, the torch beam swinging back and forth searching for the hut he had spoken of. She was about ready to give it up as a hopeless quest when she saw something briefly as she swung the light. There it is ' she whispered to an anxious Hound, and made her way cautiously over to the tumbledown hut. Most of its roof was gone and it smelled damp and musty with rotted wood, but a swift search soon discovered a length of wet rope and, unbelievable stroke of luck, a piece of what had been a longer ladder with only one or two rungs missing. When she tested the rest of the rungs they seemed not too bad, so she hauled it out as best she could and found that dragging it behind her was the best way of transporting it. That way she could hold on to Hound's collar and use his sharper instincts to avoid other cave entrances. It took her much longer to go back than it had to come even and she thought that by now Dominic must be thinking she had come to grief herself, but 171, ' . at last, enlightened by Hound's eager pulling, she knew she was nearly there. She shone the torch down into the hole again and this time managed to see him better because he had climbed upon to the ledge he had spoken of. 'Good girl ' he approved when he saw the light. Did you find something useful?' He sounded as if his teeth were chattering and she wondered if he was worse than he sounded. I found some rope and a piece of ladder,' she informed him, and was startled to heat a deep chuckle echo round the rocky walls of the cave. That's my girl!' he said. 'Lower the ladder down, darling, I'll try that first.' Obediently she sent the makeshift and. partly broken ladder over the side of the hole and down into the darkness, trying to give him as "much light as possible from. the torch as she did so. There was an awful lot of scraping and sounds of heavy breathing, but at last she felt it touch rock bottom and wondered if it was down far enough or if it had caught on another ledge out of reach, 'Just about right,' he called up, and she breathed a sigh of relief, remembering a second later those broken rungs. 'Dom, be careful, in case the other rungs aren't safe.' I will,' he promised. 'Hang on to the top end. Deryn, in case it sways, will you?' She clung to the wet, mustysmelling wood as hard as she could and closed her eyes, offering a silent prayer as she felt the flimsy contraption move when he started to climb it. It seemed like an inter172 minable time that she clung there and she was beginning to think he would never make it when she opened her eyes in time to see his hands come over the edge of the rock. She saw no more for the tears that rolled down her face and blinded her, and Hound was barking like fury and dancing round in an ecstasy of pleasure now that his master was safe again. She reached out instinctively to take his hands and draw him up the last few feet, feeling the moist wetness of his hands where he had cut them on the rocks in earlier efforts to get out. He fell to his knees as he came over the edge and she realised with horror that he was exhausted and much worse than she had .thought. She went to him and helped him to his feet and he smiled wryly at her in the yellow light of the torch, putting an arm round her shoulders. 'It was damned cold down there,' he told her gruffly. 'I guess I'm a bit wobbly on my pins from exposure.' 'Hold on to me,' Deryn told hini, 'We'll get you back and get something warm inside you.' Surprisingly he did not argue or even make a comment, as he would once have done, and that alone told her as much as anything. They said little on the way back, and even Hound made sedate and : careful progress, guiding them down the treach erous hillside again and towards home, never going more than a short distance in front. As they came in through the garden gate at Llan wellon she did not even look at the summerhouse, r but went straight on towards the cottage, and he 173 said nothing about that either. It was no use taking him to his own place, she thought logically, for there was no heating, and he needed warmth above all. She took him to the foot of the stairs when they went in and he looked at her enquiringly and with a hint of the old wickedness hovering in his eyes. 'There're plently of extra blankets in a big trunk up there,' she informed him. 'You go and get into bed and I'll sort some out.' 'In your bed?' In the bed belonging to the cottage,' she told him, not looking at him. 'You need warmth, and it's much warmer here than it is in the summerhouse.' He was shivering violently and looked pale even under that dark tan, and she wondered if she should try and get a doctor, but when she suggested it, he refused adamantly. Tm not that bad,' he insisted. 'Just a bit cold.' 'Suffering from exposure,' she said knowledgeably. 'Now go and get into bed and I'll find those extra blankets, then I'll make some really hot coffee. I suppose,' she added with a raised brow, 'you haven't anything stronger and warming in your hut, have you?' 'Not a drop,' he said, with a wry grin.,'The coffee'll be fine, Deryn, honestly.' She rummaged in the trunk and tucked in three extra blankets round him, much to his amusement, then went downstairs again to make the coffee. Hound was a little bemused by all this nocturnal activity and he did not need much persuading to stretch out on the rug by the range, and sleep. i74 'What about you?' Dominic asked her when she sat on the edge of the bed, watching to make sure he drank it while it was hot. She shook her head. 'Oh, I couldn't drink hot coffee at this time of the night,' she said, and he smiled. 'I wasn't thinking about the coffee,' he told her. 'But about your bed.' She got up and walked to the window, suddenly feeling quite extraordinarily gauche and telling herself she was behaving like some silly romantic. Her head was spinning with the most fantastic ideas, and the pulse on her forehead was hammering away relentlessly. 'I'll be all right,' she told him. 'You try and sleep when you've drunk that, and we'll see how you feel in the morning.' He was waching her, she knew, but she refused to turn round and meet his gaze, for there was no telling what idiotic thing she would have done if she had. 'I take back all I said about you not being domesticated,' he said softly at last. 'You're a real little Florence Nightingale, in an emergency.' 'I haven't done anything much,' she denied. 'I should probably have got that doctor with or without your consent, but I don't like being ordered around myself, so I hesitate to do the same to others.' 'I'm perfectly all right.' 'We'll see in the morning. If you're not I am going to get the doctor.' 'Whether I want him or not?' 'Whether you want him or not,' she affirmed, and turned round at last when she heard him put the i75 empty coffee cup on the bedside table. 'Now get some sleep, Dom, and I hope you're all right in the "morning, or I'll never forgive myself.' He held out a hand to her as she stood near the foot of the bed and, after a brief hesitation, she put her own into it and allowed herself to be drawn closer, until she looked down at his pale and already perspiring face. 'Deryn!' Something in his eyes, in his voice and in the way his hand held on. to her, made her shiver, as if she too was cold, and she shook her head as if to free herself of something she did not yet recognise, but was wary of just the same. 'You must get some sleep, Dom,' she told him huskily, as she tried to control her voice. 'I'll see you in the morning.' He gazed at her for a moment longer, then raised the hand he held to his lips and held it there for a long moment. 'Goodnight, little bird,' he said softly. 'Thank you for finding me.' 176