The Hunter's Moon (Timeless Classics Collection) Read online

  The next time she came out of the darkness, the light was brighter, she saw smudges in it, which she presumed were furniture, or people, it did not seem to matter which, and the voice spoke again, kindly reassuring.

  ‘You’re the luckiest girl there ever was. You’re all right.’

  She heard herself gasp. She had now come to the stage when she could associate herself with sound; until now sounds had not been connected, but now they linked up. ‘Where … where am I?’ she asked.

  Her voice sounded peculiarly unreal.

  ‘There was a little accident, and you were knocked unconscious, so they brought you here. It is a nursing home, the Home of St Lucille.’

  It meant nothing, in fact it conveyed no set impression at all, because she had not reached the state when she could be impressed. She dozed off again, or thought she did. Maybe she drifted in and out of consciousness as though she were in a tube train, making a burring noise, and moving fast, stopping at times, but never long enough for her to know where she was. After what seemed to be an eternity, she woke again, and now she could outline a figure sitting beside her, and a few seconds later recognised it as being her mother.

  ‘Mummie?’

  ‘Now don’t move.’ It was the proper mother voice rapping out orders in an emergency. ‘Now don’t be silly, dear, or you’ll only hurt yourself, and that would be stupid. You are all right, darling. Oh, I am so thankful.’

  ‘What happened?’ and the words did not run as they should have done.

  ‘Not now.’ Mother was wise to that one. ‘Later on, and now you are to drink this. Just swallow it down, because it will help. You’ll be lots better later.’

  ‘I feel awful.’

  ‘Yes, of course, but that will pass. I promise you that it will pass, and you know your mother never breaks her word to you. Now doze off again.’

  She did doze off, because there was something about the directing voice which demanded obedience. She got the idea that her mother had been here all the time, only she had not known it. She woke next morning, and drifted into consciousness very pleasantly, and those waves of understanding which came and went, flickering like clouds driven across the stormy face of an angry sky, had finally gone. She was fully conscious, though she felt absurdly weak, and she had internal pains which threatened to be disturbing.

  ‘It’s the baby,’ she said.

  The nurse beside her nodded. ‘I’m afraid …’

  ‘You mean … it isn’t going to be?’ she asked sharply.

  ‘It was quite a nasty accident.’

  ‘I see,’ she said.

  It was curious to realise that there is a destiny which shapes our ends, but this was the first thing that she thought, and so she said no more. Perhaps for the moment she was not sufficiently interested, for she was passing through phases of semi-consciousness. She saw that her right arm was bound.

  ‘Just a collis, nothing serious,’ said the nurse over-briskly. ‘Nothing to worry about.’

  ‘The baby?’

  The nurse became definitely not quite so bright. ‘That has been the worry.’

  ‘It’s all right?’

  ‘We hope so. Don’t get bothered. Give us time.’

  Old Dr Jenkins came in to see her, kindly solicitous; he was attentive, but still evasive. He told her that she was suffering from shock, mustn’t get fussed, just lie still and wait for the clouds to pass by. He went off in an aura of good wishes, having said exactly nothing.

  She lay there then, and somehow she knew that all thoughts of the baby had gone. Somehow she realised that she had rounded a corner in her life, and was not sure what lay ahead. She dozed off, and the light shadows seemed to come out into the room, shadows which were nothing more than ordinary greyness to others, but to her always seemed to have some life of their own, and to represent presences. She looked at her arm bound up. Too bad, she thought. Then for no known reason she curled her fingers. She had the most extraordinary sensation of forming something within that hand. As though she were holding dough in it, and moulding it. A soft material, yet she knew that it would be hard when she had done with it. She fell asleep with her hands shaping something, and she was unsure of what it could be.

  Hours later her mother came in.

  Sarah had sent down flowers for her, and knowing Diana’s dislike of chrysanthemums, now everywhere, had spent a fortune on flowers which she would really love. The first St Brigid anemones from Cornwall, the fat bunches of dark violets which smelt so sweetly, and a sheaf of paper-white narcissi, and of Soleil d’Or. It was a burst of spring.

  ‘How wonderful!’ she gasped when she saw them.

  The flowers did something for her, inspiring her with the longing to recover, to get back to life, to put the immediate past behind her and forget it.

  Her mother did not stay long, but came back with the evening, when Diana had had further sleep and was far more refreshed. The moment the door had shut on the nurse, Mrs Richardson drew her chair closer to the bed, and took her daughter’s hand.

  It was Diana who asked the question near to her heart. ‘The baby?’

  ‘I know, dear. I’m afraid there was nothing anyone could do, it just happened that way. It was a shocking accident, for the man never looked, and you might easily have been killed.’

  ‘And the baby died?’ She did not know why she asked it when all the time in her heart she was so sure.

  Her mother swallowed hard, and then she made a valiant attempt to speak reassuringly.

  ‘Dear, dear Diana, maybe it was better this way. Who are we to judge? I felt from the first that, however brave you were, and you were always so very brave, this was going to be difficult, and more so as time went on. We had to think for the poor little thing. It’s over.’

  ‘She ‒ she ‒ went?’

  ‘Don’t cry, dear. Tears are never a help and all we want now is to get you really well again. I always feel that life works out well in the long run.’

  ‘But it was mine.’

  ‘Yes, I know, it was your baby, and I realise how you feel, for I lost three of them before you came to me. A woman frets more for the child she never sees, but can’t forget. Now we have to look ahead, my darling, not back. Looking back helps nobody, and life does go on.’

  For a moment the girl did not speak, but lay there trying to check the tears, realising how difficult it was, for self-control seemed to have disappeared. Her mother went on calmly talking. She was one of those wonderful women who could do this, and slowly she changed the subject, and together they began to speak of other things. The plans she had for Tall Trees, those modern improvements which she could add, and which probably her aunt had never even heard of. The second bathroom, the Wastemaster for the sink, glass doors for the small room opening into the drawing-room, or the room which Aunt Chrissie had used as a drawing-room, all those little additions.

  Her mother smoothed her hair. ‘For now you have got to do just what the doctor says, and get really fit and better.’

  ‘If I go away (they may want me to have a long holiday), you’ll come with me?’

  ‘Oh no, dear. Your father would never stand for that. Mrs Brown would not work for him alone for that long. Take Sarah, or someone your own age, it would be lots better.’

  ‘I wonder.’

  ‘Lots better for you. Dr Jenkins wants you to go somewhere warm, the Riviera, or Spain, or one of those places.’

  ‘But I’d never dare.’

  ‘You’ve never tried, so how do you know if you’d dare or not?’

  ‘No, I’ve never tried.’ Then she changed the subject again. ‘Does John know?’

  ‘Nobody has told him. I don’t see why I should disturb him, it is nothing to do with him.’

  ‘It was his child,’ and she said it in the way one refers to a finality. It ended there. Nothing more.

  ‘Don’t you see, darling, you don’t want to start all that again? It isn’t worth it. Forget John for now. Life has helped you, and it will be easi
er for you. Forget and start life all over again. Remember not many of us get second chances, and maybe you are one of the lucky ones.’

  She thought about that a lot after her mother had gone back to Tall Trees. Then they drugged her again, for Dr Jenkins wanted as much sleep as possible for her, and she seemed to slip into and out of consciousness in a strangely evasive manner. When she eventually came to and woke, it was one of those sweetly lovely calm days which come in the winter. A robin chirruped outside the window, she imagined that the dark twigs on the trees had already thickened. She felt that spring had woken in her own heart.

  Two days later Sarah came to see her. Sarah arrived entirely without warning, a new bed-jacket in one hand, and a huge pot of hyacinths in the other.

  ‘They weigh a ton,’ said she, putting them down, and then, ‘You were pretty quick on that one! Saw what was the right thing to do, and did it! Good luck to you!’

  ‘Sarah!’

  They clasped each other. ‘You got out of all the bother in the one act!’ said Sarah. ‘And I hear you are going abroad the moment you can?’

  ‘They say so, but I don’t want to go. I’ve never been abroad because my father was against it, said they were all rogues and we could never go.’

  ‘How like him!’ and Sarah laughed. ‘There are rogues in every country, of course, that only makes it more exciting if you ask me. Christian James knows of the right place.’

  For an instant Diana felt uplifted, enthusiasm touched her, and somehow lit up the loneliness which for some time had lain within her. The feeling of being apart from the world. Away. ‘Somewhere where he has been? It would be nice, but …’ and then, ‘I have awful regrets about all this.’

  Sarah brought out an extravagant compact and powdered her face. ‘Do you remember the French au pair girl we had at Chatterworth? They weren’t au pairs then, but it was the same thing. She was always coming into the room and saying, “Have much regrets”. How we laughed at her!’

  ‘I was regretting the baby,’ and after a pause, ‘I wanted it, you know.’

  Sarah snapped the compact to. ‘And most girls would be thanking God that, although they wanted it, they had not got it. Take the joys of today and accept them, darling. You’ve got fun ahead, and much to come. Forget all this.’

  ‘I wonder if one ever really forgets life?’

  ‘Wise people do,’ Sarah told her. ‘What you need is a good holiday somewhere, and something to cheer you up.’

  Christian James came in just when Sarah was about to go. He came into her room wearing country clothes, a rough brown hacking coat, a scarf of vivid dark red and sienna; he was a man with a smile, and a confidence which she knew would give her confidence, too! It is the gift so many good doctors can bestow freely, the power of handing on happiness.

  ‘You look fine,’ he said, ‘far better than I would have done after that rotten accident, and you’ll be home soon.’

  ‘Dr Jenkins says this week.’

  ‘Don’t do too much, and what about a good holiday? Somewhere warm, and luscious, and different.’

  Devonshire had been all those things, and memory stabbed her, reminding her how dangerous Devonshire had been. ‘Where would you suggest?’

  He laughed at that. ‘I was brought up on the Riviera, you should go there; lots of sunshine, an idle part of the world, but that is what you want, and nothing ever seems to matter too much, which is nice.’

  ‘I never fancied it.’

  ‘Only because you don’t know it. St Grave is still unspoilt, not advertised, a tiny village away from the fuss, where artists go to paint and there are hazy islands in the sea.’

  It was absurd to feel herself reaching out to touch the picture of a small French fishing village by the Mediterranean, ‘with hazy islands in the sea’. ‘It’s a nice name,’ she murmured.

  ‘It’s a mistake to visit somewhere because it has a nice name, better make it a nice place. I’ll give the details to Sarah. La Cloche is the hotel, standing round an odd little bell tower, once a château, now just Madame to run it. And let me warn you, Madame is something!’

  Instinctively Diana knew that she would go there, she saw it almost as the writing on the wall in her own life.

  She stayed at the nursing home four more days, but now feeling better, she was anxious to return home, even if they had been so kind. On the day that she went back the world seemed to be unbelievably cold, and her body unprepared to face the raw atmosphere of the outside world. She shivered in the big car as she drove back to Tall Trees.

  But it was nice to be back in her own bedroom again, to get into a comfortable bed, for, whatever the world may think of them, hospital and nursing-home beds are made to be practical not comfortable. She lay back on the pillows with the realisation that everything had happened, and that she had turned a corner in her life. She had lost something which now she knew that she had not wished to lose, but life moves for the best. She dozed peacefully, and was awakened by the telephone ringing beside her bed. Almost automatically she picked up the receiver, and then heard a man’s voice at the other end.

  It was John.

  ‘You ‒ you shouldn’t have telephoned,’ she gasped in some dismay.

  ‘Nobody tells me a thing. I’ve been worried stiff. You were knocked down ‒ but how?’

  ‘I wasn’t, I was in a car accident, a young man ran into me, and after that I lost touch with time. That is all there is to it. I’m going to be quite all right, and I shall get a holiday away for a bit, I need that.’

  ‘And the baby?’

  ‘There won’t be a baby,’ and she said it slowly, suddenly realising quite definitely how far she had come with all this. She heard the hesitation at the far end of the ’phone, and somehow she got the impression that he grieved for the baby. Perhaps there was more to John than she had really known, perhaps she had not known him too well. Then he spoke.

  ‘I am so sorry.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. They always say that everything works out for the best.’

  ‘Yes, but … May I come to see you?’

  She recognised the danger of that. The door was shutting on the past, it would be far wiser to close it for ever. ‘John, I’m going abroad as soon as ever I can muster the strength for the journey, to the south of France,’ for this had become a certainty in her life.

  He said, ‘It’s far too soon. It’ll only take it out of you most dreadfully, you know, and you’ll be scared of flying; you always said you’d hate it.’

  ‘I’ll be all right. Maybe the accident has taught me that one has to accept life.’

  ‘Let me come and see you, for just half an hour?’

  She said ‘No’ quite firmly, and then he said that he would follow her wherever she was going. She told him that it would be costly.

  ‘By the by, I’ve changed my job. I’ve got something which is lots better, less work and more pay, and I’m getting a new flat. The moment you get back, you must come and see it.’

  She knew that the conversation was rapidly becoming rather silly, and pretended that suddenly she felt ill, and excused herself. He would have talked longer, but she hung up, half ashamed to do it, but doing it because she recognised this as being the only thing.

  She lay back then, and she thought of St Grave. Within the week the brochure had arrived, with the most flattering letter from Madame, stating that she had been asked for it by M. le docteur. The brochure gave pictures of a fairy place. How did I ever suppose that Devonshire was so lovely? Diana asked herself, and for a moment a quickening pulse disturbed her. This was a fishing village almost on the beach, with tall cliffs on either side of it. There were hazy islands on a pale blue sea, the colour of love-in-a-mist in June. Maybe it was those early associations with Birmingham which made her fall in love with the brochure which Madame (the wily) had sent her. There was, wrote Madame, a sweet little pavilion in the garden where there was a charming room which Madame was keeping for her. They had their own oranges and lemons. It was
curious that the mere suggestion of this sent enthusiasm vibrating through Diana.

  She knew that she was going to forget the past, and because Dr James had said that the place was lovely, and because that shrewd old Madame had sent a most attractive letter with the brochure, she would go. It was the land of pretty compliments, and after all that was something.

  She wired back that she would come down the third week in January, and realised that Madame would accept this with that flattering insistence of hers. For Diana, a door was shutting behind her, and every moment now she was moving further away from John. Her father would never forgive her for holidaying in the part of the world where the feckless rich went. He had ever despised it as being dangerous, but her mother would understand.

  It was the day before her mother returned to Solihull. Her father had written that he would go mad if he had much more of what he termed ‘the woman’; he had been served up with four ginger puddings in a week, and was a man who loathed ginger, which he thought everybody knew.

  ‘For me the bell tolls!’ said her mother, and she laughed.

  ‘Oh Mummie, I wish I could help you; you’ve been such a dear, quite wonderful, and to me a new woman.’

  ‘We’ve come closer together, and that is what matters. I’ll miss you, darling, but enjoy yourself at St Grave.’

  ‘I’m worried that it could be the wrong thing.’

  ‘I’m not worried. You have bought your experience, and now try to forget it. Enjoy yourself. The doctor wants you to do it, and with this sort of trouble I believe the whole cure depends on a good holiday afterwards.’

  The girl nodded. This was her new mother, someone to whom she clung, someone she knew for the first time. Before this, Mrs Richardson had always been a silent woman standing in a shadow, now she was real. She was very much alive, and very much part of Diana’s world.

  ‘You were always so quiet,’ Diana said softly.

  ‘I know. Your father silences me. Perhaps I learnt the hard way, for there could be only one master in the home,’ and then with a smile she said in a voice behind which a whole world of disappointment lay, ‘I thought I was the luckiest girl in all the world the day I married your father. But time marches on, and things change.’