I would have seemed an even bigger fool had I funked appearing for dinner and, besides, having missed half the meals since my arrival, I was far too hungry to consider spending another evening of deprivation on my own. So, brazenly, I rang the bell for Betsy, who chattered of the feud she was having with one of the parlour maids as she laid out my clothes and did not mention my attempted departure once.
The pink mousseline de soie dinner dress embroidered with beads was my best, a Christmas present from my mother, but chosen by myself. It was low waisted and loose fitting, with pannier drapes from the hips softly trimmed with marabou. It had been my intention to wear it the next day on my birthday, but, still stung by Archie Joste's scathing remarks about my clothes and needing to raise my self-confidence, I let Betsy slide it over my head before I clipped on a pair of pendant paste earrings and went downstairs with my chin held high.
James came out of the drawing room, his lips compressed and his eyes metallic. Quite a deep line, which I had not noticed before, cut down one side of his forehead into his left eyebrow. He was braced with anger and, behind him, I saw Frederick the footman moving silently towards the green baize service door, obviously having already made his report.
As I reached the hall, my cousin approached me, his arm half raised and, for one extraordinary second, I thought he was going to hit me, although he might just as easily have been about to embrace me. Instead, his arm wavered for a moment before falling back to his side and he stopped and stared at me. The suave man I knew was not in evidence. Instead, James looked almost helpless.
"Sally, darling... Sally. How will you ever forgive us?" he began, starting to reach towards me and then changing his mind again. "I cannot believe, I simply cannot believe what happened to you this afternoon."
I opened my mouth to give an expected response. Please not to concern himself. It was nothing at all, quite funny really... but he was not listening.
"How anyone on this estate, on our island, for God's sake, could have been so crass, so bloody insolent... Darling, I don't know what to say, how to begin apologising to you.
"I've sent for Stidler and you can be absolutely certain he will never work again and, furthermore, ....
"Oh James, don't blame him," I interrupted, assuming Stidler must be the boatman. "He was only doing his job."
"Any employee who is uncivil to a member of the family is being uncivil to me and that cannot be tolerated," he declared emphatically.
"Really, he wasn't rude to me...." As I began to explain, Richard came into the hall in his socks, having kicked off his boots by the door, and James swung round.
"I suppose you've heard that those fools at the harbour stopped Sally from boarding the steamer this afternoon?" he said. "Why in God's name didn't you go with her and make sure she was all right?"
"I told her she wouldn't get on without a ticket," Richard replied laconically.
James' face was flinty. "You should have gone down there and organised her passage."
Richard shrugged, purposely baiting his brother I was sure.
"My presence wouldn't have made the slightest difference. I don't make the laws here," he said and turned his back.
James swayed forward onto the balls of his feet. The electric force of his rage enveloped him like an aura, charging the air. Suspecting he was on the point of physically attacking his brother, I touched his shoulder and felt the current as his muscles tensed and he brought himself under control with punitive effort.
He regarded me, without really seeing.
After a very long pause and obviously still distracted, he said, "You must be dying for a drink, darling. A cocktail, perhaps." And his hand on my elbow propelled me into the drawing room.
There he mixed the driest of dry martinis and gave it to me without another word before crossing the room to stand at the window, so that I had to twist round on the ottoman in order to see him. He was wearing a dark green velvet smoking jacket, superbly cut to show his wide shoulders and militarily straight back to full advantage. Even before she saw his face, any woman would have found him a devastatingly attractive man .
"I was not aware that you wished to return to London today." Now, he sounded forbidding and I knew he expected an explanation.
"I couldn't find you, you see," I said, hoping my voice would not shake. "David.... my employer... he telephoned. There's some crisis... to do with an exhibition. I felt I really ought to return ... to help."
"Ah." He did not believe me. Of course, he would know that I had received no calls from the mainland.
When Hornby informed us that neither Richard nor Archie would be dining, I wished I had taken the coward's course and stayed upstairs after all. James and I sat one at each end of the long mahogany table facing each other, but as the butler ladled out the soup from the serving table and a footman placed the plates before us, I could not make conversation. One of the dogs, sensing my trepidation squirmed under the table to lie across my feet and I was too craven to shift him. Besides, even this loyal gesture was appreciated.
With agonising slowness we ate our way through the whitebait which followed the soup, then the steak which followed the fish and, finally, Angels on Horseback, in almost complete silence. At last, after the savoury, the table was cleared, finger bowls and fruit plates were put in front of us and port glasses set out. When these had been filled, Hornby and the footman left the room.
"I had particularly hoped you would be here at Trewythian tomorrow," James said, as the door closed behind them. "To celebrate your birthday with us."
Every word was measured as though he had examined the sentence in his mind before speaking. I felt faint with guilt.
"I'm terribly sorry," was all I could mutter.
"A telephone call, you say ... from David..."
The atmosphere was now intolerable. My behaviour had been inexcusable. Since my arrival, James had put his house, his servants, his horses at my disposal: he had done everything possible to make me welcome. I had been nursed after the fall from the mare and comforted after Nanny's death. He had been a consistently attentive and entertaining companion and, in return, under cover of a pack of lies, I had been quite prepared to leave without even thanking him, or saying goodbye. I knew I had hurt him and I could not keep up the charade any longer.
Sitting very straight and almost glaring at him, I confessed. "There was no telephone call."
"No," he agreed.
"The reason I want... I feel I ought to leave is...."
"Shall we go through to the drawing room?" he interjected, standing up and pushing back his chair. "It's so much more relaxing there."
This time I was ushered rather than propelled into the room and my cousin, who had brought the decanter with him, filled my glass again and brought out his gold case.
"Have a virgin," he said, and we both smiled as I took one of the Virginian tobacco cigarettes.
He sat in the armchair opposite and I saw that an expression of concern had replaced the hauteur he had assumed over dinner.
"This has been a dreary visit for you, I suppose," he observed before I could speak. "First the riding accident and then I know you've been cut up over Nanny's death. All extremely tedious and you can't be blamed for wanting to get back to gay old London."
"No, James! You're quite wrong!" I couldn't let him continue. "You've been marvellous to me and I could never find the house and the island tedious, I love them too much. If I could choose, I'd never leave Trewythian again."
He rested against the back of his chair and studied me.
"So what's the trouble, little coz? Why were you running away today.?"
The mixture of martini, wine and port was already raising my temperature and drawing blood into the fine vessels near the surface of my skin. Each evening I spent here with him, I seemed to finish up tipsy I realised. If I told him of my conviction that someone was trying to murder me, he would think I was mad. I was lost for words.
James leant forward suddenly and said in a low voice, "It must be to do with Richard? He's upset you in some way."
I was startled. "Why on earth should you think that?"
He passed a hand over his forehead and jerked his head slightly, as though trying to avoid some unpleasant speculation.
"Something's happened to Richard recently and I don't understand it." He spoke in the same undertone, swiftly, but barely audible.. "I supposed he might have offended you."
"He hasn't," I reassured him. "Though I have noticed the change in him too."
James pressed a finger against his lips and glanced over his shoulder towards the door. Had I not known how self-assured he was, I might have imagined he was apprehensive. He crossed in front of the fireplace and sat conspiratorially beside me on the sofa.
"My brother's become ... difficult to live with. I don't know what he's up to and we can't talk about it here. One never knows whether he might be listening." James was actually whispering now. "You are quite sure he has not distressed you?"
The image of Richard wading into the sea under the full moon to collect the mysterious packet from an unknown fisherman was haunting. I thought back to the bullets which had terrified Damson Girl, and that weapon in the back of the shooting brake, and to the roaring attack of the reaper-binder the previous afternoon.
Had James not seemed so uneasy, I would have told him all then and there, but after the uncomfortable meal we had just taken together, I could not bring myself to upset him further. My years away from the island had reduced my natural instinct to speak out and, besides, I would be leaving in the morning. So I answered in a deliberately normal tone that Richard had always behaved perfectly towards me. I hoped James would change the subject.
Of course, he did not.
"Well, you must have had some reason for deciding to rush off today," he insisted.
But by then I had had time to construct an answer, not a very clever one, but at least one that was half true.
"You're right in a way. It has been a rather eventful visit, not quite as I expected." To agree with his original assessment might be the most persuasive response. "I had no idea anyone here would remember my birthday and I had this sudden impulse to spend tomorrow in London. It was unpardonable of me, I know, and I was going to write, hoping you'd forgive me and maybe even invite me back later in the year."
He seemed immensely relieved, visibly unburdened, as though a calamity had been avoided. It was an unexpected reaction and I felt moved that he cared so much about my wellbeing.
"Shocking bad form." Genial once more, he returned to his normal dry humour. "What a goose you are, Sally. The whole point of my asking you to come back Trewythian was so that we would celebrate your birthday here."
"Was it?" Although he had mentioned this earlier during dinner, I had been too discomfited then to consider it. "But why?"
"Ahh," he answered, mysteriously. "That's the surprise."
By then, it was almost midnight.
"It'll be my birthday in five minutes and I adore surprises. Tell me at twelve o'clock," I cajoled, elated that the rift between us was closed again.
"No. As punishment for trying to sneak off today, you'll have to wait until morning." He moved close, drawing me into his arm, holding my face with his hand. "So, we'll just have to think of some way of passing the time until then."
I closed my eyes. He smelt smoky and male and the velvet of his jacket rubbed against my skin like a musky, pelted animal. The effect was hypnotic and I could feel my lips part and my fingers spread through his honey coloured hair and my body in its embroidered cage of beads press against his. I was letting go so easily and my cousin James was taking control.
I remembered the chasteness of his first kiss. And then I remembered Archie Joste.
Instinctively, I resisted and turned my head away. James drew in his breath with a sharp hiss and we remained frozen for seconds.
"It was because of me. You wanted to leave Trewythian because of something I have done." He spoke at last, very slowly.
"No!" The quick succession of emotions from desire to revulsion had left me flustered and I knew I sounded more evasive than convincing.
He took my hands in his and held them too tightly for me to pull away.
"Darling, I wouldn't annoy you for the world. Surely you know that," he said, earnestly. "Whatever it is you're so piqued about, you must tell me so that I can try to put it right."
"Really James, it hasn't anything to do with you." I wished he would let me go, so that I could leave the room without more unpleasantness.
"You're a hopeless liar, coz," he said. "Your eyes become shifty and you turn pink with guilt. If I were a police constable, I'd arrest you on the spot. Now, what have I done wrong?"
He was not going to free me until I gave him some explanation and my lies had always been transparent.
"You've done nothing wrong , I promise," I began. "But I reacted like an idiot when we were in here the other night and it is all rather shaming."
"Shaming?" Obviously caught off guard, he let go my hands at once. "Well, I certainly wouldn't have described it as that. Actually, I thought the whole evening quite delightful.
"James, I know you were being kind...I mean, girls must bore you dreadfully..." I had got myself tangled, already. "... I did rather throw myself at you..."
"Did you?" His eyebrows arched. "I wish I'd noticed, darling. And what's all this about girls boring me?"
He was mocking me again and I was floundering. "It's just that I know that Archie..... Archie's ...your friend."
James sat back with an expression of utter astonishment on his face.
"Sally, what are you talking about? What has Archie Joste to do with this?"
My blundering had led to a nightmarish predicament. In trying to bluff my way out of one jam, I had somehow managed to create an infinitely worse situation. Miserably, I twisted my fingers, unable to produce the quick-witted password which would secure my deliverance.
James' eyes were growing wider and more disbelieving as I sat there, speechless, before him. "You can't mean what I think you mean," he gasped and stared at me even harder. "My God, you do mean it. You think I'm a ........"
Once, as a child I had torn a frock while climbing a tree. Confronted by mother, I had lied, blaming one of the dogs for jumping up at me. Pointing to the green stain left by lichen growing on the bark, she had given me a look of withering disdain and dismissed me without a word. The same feeling of disgrace overwhelmed me now.
"Honestly, James, it doesn't matter." But there was to be no assistance from him.
"It may not matter to you, cousin, but it certainly matters to me." He gave an incredulous little grunt. "What on earth put the idea in your head in the first place? Surely you didn't expect me to rape you the other night when we were both drunk just to prove my virility?"
"Of course not." A hysterical urge to laugh was beginning to form in my throat and I swallowed on it, hard. There was no longer any point in being anything but brutally straightforward. "I overheard you and Archie talking in the library and Archie seemed to feel I had come between you...."
After a hesitation he understood at last and shook his head, casting a look of exasperation towards the ceiling.
"Archie, dear Sally, is unquestionably a twank. Even at school he was always mooning about round me, but he's also a first class designer and quite a gifted painter, and I happen to like him." James faced me, sternly. "I like him, cousin Sally. And that's all.
"In fact, I do vow and swear my most solemn oath upon all the skeletons in Trewythian cupboards and upon Great Aunt Alexandra's whalebone corset that I have never indulged in unspeakable acts with Archibald Joste, that only the most manly thoughts have ever passed through my mind and that girls do not bore me."
His hand was held in a boy scout's salute throughout this ridiculous affirmation and his eyes gradually began to gleam with amusement until, as he finished, a great belly laugh exploded from him and he threw back his head and spread his arms and flung his legs out before him in complete abandon, just as my father used to do. My own hysteria emerged as a nervous giggle and he turned like a golden bear and hugged me to him.
"Oh Silly Sally, what a wild imagination you must keep under those curls," he chuckled, stroking my hair. "I had no idea you knew about such sordidness. You've read far too much about Oscar Wilde. But you mustn't just take my word for my devotion to beautiful women."
There was a subtle change in our laughter, a slowing down, a sense of daring, as though we were standing beneath an overhanging bank of snow which the mere sound of a sigh would release as an avalanche over us.
Then my cousin James moved fast, bending over me and kissing me. There was nothing innocuous about this kiss, no unsure boy behind this mouth. James kissed me expertly and lusciously, bruising my flesh in pain and pleasure, his probing tongue prizing my teeth part, the roughness of his stubble rasping against my chin. He tasted of butter and cinnamon and for a time I lost my senses. He left me no will of my own and I became no more than a doll.
Then his hand moved from my calf over my knee, and my thighs felt damp under the white silk stockings and my passive trance was shattered. The self-control and repression exercised when I had been forced to leave Trewythian, when my father had died and when Max had discarded me, were blown to smithereens by a desperate, anarchic surge of lust. I wanted him ravenously, as though he was an over-ripe peach into which I could bite so deeply that mouth and tongue and throat would be flooded and choked on its juices. The hot-blooded instability and greed of ancestral adventurers toppled the well-bred modern girl I thought I was, and a virago took her place. I wanted him not prettily, not sweetly, but savagely and, as I cried out his name, my nails dug into his neck.
James lay on me with all his weight, took hold of my wrists and raised my arms over my head, and looked down with glittering eyes.
"Not yet," he said quietly. "But soon."
It was as though I had glimpsed Pan, with his prancing hooves and lickerous breath, who had tossed his beckoning head at me and then vanished. I closed my eyes tightly and released my breath, blowing dust off the memory. It was the leitmotiv of our song
James, the long-legged, godlike boy, striding off with an uncaring wave; James cantering ahead on his thoroughbred, leaving me trailing hopelessly on Briar. Village girls giving him saucy smiles and sidelong invitations, while I stood in his shadow, ignored and sulking. James, elusive, unattainable, always just too far ahead for me to catch up. And he had left me behind again.
He was still looking at me, only now there was that becharming smile I knew so well.
"I am worth waiting for," he teased.
Some of my dignity had to be salvaged.
"So am I," I retorted archly.
He lit two cigarettes at the same time, took one from his mouth and placed it gently between my lips.