Lady of Hay: An enduring classic – gripping, atmospheric and utterly compelling. Barbara Erskine

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      ‘I didn’t call him in!’ Jo glared at Nick repressively. ‘It was Nick’s idea.’

      ‘Because he is obviously enormously concerned about you.’ Stiffly Ceecliff pulled herself to her feet. ‘Now, no more fighting, children. I wish to enjoy my lunch. Come inside and later Jo can tell us what she found out about her Matilda.’

      They took their coffee in the conservatory at the back of the house as huge clouds massed and foamed over the garden, blotting out a sky which had become brazen with heat. Ceecliff sent Nick out to bring in the garden chairs as the rain began to fall in huge sparse drops, pitting the surface of the pond. Then she turned to Jo.

      ‘You’re going to drive that young man straight into her arms, you know!’

      Jo was pouring the coffee, frowning with concentration as she handled the tall silver pot. ‘It’s where he wants to be.’

      ‘No, Jo, it isn’t. Can’t you see it?’ Ceecliff leaned forward and helped herself to a cup from the tray. ‘You are being very stubborn. Especially as you obviously love him. You do, don’t you?’

      Jo sat down on the window-seat, her back to the garden. ‘I don’t know,’ she said bleakly. Her hands were lying loosely in her lap. She stared blankly down at them, suddenly overwhelmingly tired. ‘I’m not sure what I feel any more about anyone. I’m not sure I even know what I feel about myself.’

      ‘That’s ridiculous.’ Ceecliff leaned forward and picking up Jo’s cup put it into her hands. ‘Drink that and listen to me. You’re getting things out of perspective.’

      ‘Am I?’ Jo bit her lip. ‘Either Nick or Sam lied to me and I don’t know which.’

      ‘All men are liars, Jo.’ Ceecliff smiled sadly. ‘Haven’t you discovered that yet?’

      The rain was growing stronger now, releasing the warm scents of wet earth which reached them even through the conservatory windows. Jo could see Nick hastily stacking the deckchairs in the summerhouse.

      ‘That’s a bit cynical, even for you, Grandma.’ She reached forward and touched the old woman’s hand as Nick sprinted back towards them across the grass. Behind him the horizon flickered and shifted slightly before Jo’s eyes. She blinked, watching as he opened the door and came in, shaking himself like a dog. He was laughing as she handed him a cup of coffee. ‘You’re soaked, Nick,’ she said sharply. ‘You’d better take off your shirt or you’ll get pneumonia or something.’

      He spooned some sugar into the cup and sat down beside her. ‘It’ll soon dry off, it’s so hot. Go on with what you were telling us at lunch, Ceecliff, about Jo’s grandfather.’

      Ceecliff leaned back against the cushions on her chair. ‘I wish you remembered him better, Jo, but you were only a little girl when he died. He used to love talking about his ancestors and the Clifford family tree, which was more of a forest, he used to say. The trouble is I never used to listen all that carefully. It bored me. It was about yesterday and I wanted to live today.’ She paused as another zigzag of lightning flickered behind the walnut tree. ‘I didn’t realise how soon the present becomes the past. Perhaps I’d have listened more if I had.’ She laughed ruefully. ‘Sorry. You’ll have to allow for an old lady’s maudlin tendencies. Now, what I was saying was that hearing you talking about your William de Braose being a baron on the Welsh borders reminded me that of course that is where the Clifford family originally came from. I’ll find Reggie’s papers and give them to you, Jo. You might as well have them and you may find them interesting now you have decided the past could have something to recommend it, even if it is only a handsome son of the Clares.’ Again the impish twinkle. She sighed. ‘But now you are going to have to excuse me because I am going to lie down for a couple of hours. One of the compensations of old age is being able to admit to being tired and then do something about it.’ With Nick’s help she pulled herself out of the low chair in which she had been sitting and walked back slowly through into the house.

      ‘She’s not tired,’ Jo said as soon as she was out of hearing. ‘She has ten times more energy than I have.’

      ‘She thinks she is being tactful.’ Nick stooped over the tray and poured himself another cup of coffee. ‘She thinks we should be given the chance to be alone.’

      ‘How wrong she is, then,’ Jo said quickly. She flinched as another shaft of lightning crossed the sky. It was followed by a distant rumble of thunder. ‘There’s nothing we need to talk about that she wouldn’t be welcome to join in.’ The heaviness of the afternoon was closing over her, dragging her down. Her eyelids were leaden. She forced them open.

      Nick was standing with his back to her, looking at the rain sweeping in across the garden. ‘I do have to talk to you alone,’ he said slowly. ‘And I think you know it.’

      Jo moved across to her grandmother’s vacated chair and threw herself into it. ‘Well, now is not the moment. Oh God, how I hate thunder! It’s thundered practically every day this week!’

      Nick turned and looked at her. ‘You never used to mind it.’

      ‘Oh, I don’t mean I’m afraid of it. It just makes me feel so headachy and tense. Perhaps I’m just tired. I was working all last night.’ She closed her eyes.

      Nick put down his cup. He moved to stand behind her chair and, gently resting his hands on her shoulders, he began to massage the back of her neck with his thumbs.

      Jo relaxed, feeling the warmth of his fingers through the thin silk of her dress, the circling motion easing the pain in her head as a squall of wind beneath the storm centre sent a flurry of rain against the glass of the conservatory.

      Suddenly she stiffened. For a moment she could not breathe. She tried to open her eyes but the hands on her shoulders had slipped forward, encircling her throat, pressing her windpipe till she was choking. She half rose, grasping at his wrists, fighting him in panic, clawing at his face and arms, then, as another rumble of thunder cut through the heat of the afternoon she felt herself falling.

      Frantically she tried to catch her breath, but it was no use. Her arms were growing heavy and there was a strange buzzing in her ears.

       Why, Nick, why?

      Her lips framed the words, but no sound came as slowly she began the long spiral down into suffocating blackness.

       12

      Two faces swam before her gaze. Absently she tried to focus on them, her mind groping with amorphous images as first one pair of eyes and then the other floated towards her, merged, then drifted apart once more. The mouths beneath the eyes were moving. They were speaking, but she couldn’t hear them; she couldn’t think. All she could feel was the dull pain of the contusions which fogged her throat.

      Experimentally she tried to speak, but nothing happened as she raised a hand towards one of the faces – the blue eyes, the red-gold moustache, the deep furrowed lines across the forehead coming sharply into focus. It drew back out of reach and she groped towards the other. It was younger, smoother, the eyes lighter.

      ‘I’ve phoned Dr Graham.’ A woman’s voice spoke near her, the diction clear, echoing in the hollow spaces of her head. ‘He was at home, thank God, not on that damn golf course! СКАЧАТЬ