Taken at the Flood - Agatha Christie [35]
Slowly the shadows lengthened to twilight and dusk. Lynn sat motionless, her chin cupped in her hands on the outskirts of a small copse on the hillside, looking down over the valley. She had lost count of time, but she knew that she was strangely reluctant to go home to the White House. Below her, away to the left, was Long Willows. Long Willows, her home if she married Rowley.
If! It came back to that — if — if — if!
A bird flew out of the wood with a startled cry like the cry of an angry child. A billow of smoke from a train went eddying up in the sky forming as it did so a giant question mark:
???
Shall I marry Rowley? Do I want to marry Rowley? Did I ever want to marry Rowley? Could I bear not to marry Rowley?
The train puffed away up the valley, the smoke quivered and dispersed. But the question mark did not fade from Lynn’s mind.
She had loved Rowley before she went away. ‘But I’ve come home changed,’ she thought. ‘I’m not the same Lynn.’
A line of poetry floated into her mind.
‘Life and the world and mine own self are changed…’
And Rowley? Rowley hadn’t changed.
Yes, that was it. Rowley hadn’t changed. Rowley was where she had left him four years ago.
Did she want to marry Rowley? If not, what did she want?
Twigs cracked in the copse behind her and a man’s voice cursed as he pushed his way through.
She cried out, ‘David!’
‘Lynn!’ He looked amazed as he came crashing through the undergrowth. ‘What in the name of fortune are you doing here?’
He had been running and was slightly out of breath.
‘I don’t know. Just thinking — sitting and thinking.’ She laughed uncertainly. ‘I suppose — it’s getting very late.’
‘Haven’t you any idea of the time?’
She looked down vaguely at her wrist-watch.
‘It’s stopped again. I disorganize watches.’
‘More than watches!’ David said. ‘It’s the electricity in you. The vitality. The life.’
He came up to her, and vaguely disturbed, she rose quickly to her feet.
‘It’s getting quite dark. I must hurry home. What time is it, David?’
‘Quarter past nine. I must run like a hare. I simply must catch the 9.20 train to London.’
‘I didn’t know you had come back here!’
‘I had to get some things from Furrowbank. But I must catch this train. Rosaleen’s alone in the flat — and she gets the jitters if she’s alone at night in London.’
‘In a service flat?’ Lynn’s voice was scornful.
David said sharply:
‘Fear isn’t logical. When you’ve suffered from blast — ’
Lynn was suddenly ashamed — contrite. She said:
‘I’m sorry. I’d forgotten.’
With sudden bitterness David cried out:
‘Yes, it’s soon forgotten — all of it. Back to safety! Back to tameness! Back to where we were when the whole bloody show started! Creep into our rotten little holes and play safe again. You, too, Lynn — you’re just the same as the rest of them!’
She cried, ‘I’m not. I’m not, David. I was just thinking — now — ’
‘Of me?’
His quickness startled her. His arm was round her, holding him to her. He kissed her with hot angry lips.
‘Rowley Cloade?’ he said, ‘that oaf? By God, Lynn, you belong to me.’
Then as suddenly as he had taken her, he released her, almost thrusting her away from him.
‘I’ll miss the train.’
He ran headlong down the hillside.
‘David…’
He turned his head, calling back:
‘I’ll ring you when I get to London…’
She watched him running through the gathering gloom, light and athletic and full of natural grace.
Then, shaken, her heart strangely stirred, her mind chaotic, she walked slowly homeward.
She hesitated a little before going in. She shrank from her mother’s affectionate welcome, her questions…
Her mother who had borrowed five hundred pounds from people whom she despised.
‘We’ve no right to despise Rosaleen and David,’ thought Lynn as she went very softly upstairs. ‘We’re just the same. We’d do anything — anything for money.’
She stood in her bedroom, looking curiously at her face in the mirror. It was, she thought, the face of a stranger…
And then, sharply, anger shook her.
‘If