Mingled With Venom

‘Mother is still downstairs,’ she said. ‘Perhaps she wants to speak to me alone. I think I will go and find out.’

Chapter3

Headlands

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Because neither of them was related by ties of blood to Romula and because both of them were her dependents, Fiona and Ruby maintained an uneasy truce and were even, in some respects, in one another’s confidence.

On the morning after the dinner party both rose early and walked over to the stables where, without previous arrangement, they met.

Ruby arrived first. She greeted the groom: ‘Morning, Mattie. How’s tricks?’

‘You’d better take Brutus this morning. He can do with a gallop. Great doings up at the house, I hear. Seem Redruth was ferrying folks there and yon all day.’

‘Yes, we had a family get-together.’

Owing to their having shared a common background in that both had attended the same State school, although Ruby from an orphanage and Mattie by bus from her village home, there was a free-and-easiness still between the two young women, for Ruby was afraid of Mattie and dared not put on airs and graces in her presence.

‘What’s new, then?’ Mattie enquired, as she led Brutus out.

‘What’s new,’ said Ruby, ‘is that, unless we all take care, that black boy the other lot adopted is going to scoop the pool.’

‘Oh, yes? How come, then?’

‘Mrs Leyden has taken a fancy to him.’

‘She took a fancy to me once. Wanted me to go in for show jumping or eventing or something of that. “My neck’s my own,” I said. “I’ll break it my way, not yours”.’

‘This wretched boy is playing up to her.’

‘Not to worry. She’ll see through him in time if that’s what he’s up to.’

‘She hasn’t seen through me yet.’

‘That’s different. She’s got ambitions for you and I reckon they’re the same as you got for yourself.’

At this point Fiona turned up at the stables. Mattie, who was facing that way, had seen her leave the house. But for her breeches and boots, Fiona would have walked well, but in her riding clothes she needed to be in the saddle before she became graceful once more, thought Mattie.

‘Hullo,’ Fiona said, coming up to the other two. ‘Oh, I see Ruby is taking Brutus. What do I get, Mattie?’

‘Emperor. You’re longer in the leg than Ruby.’

‘I’d rather have Clytie.’

‘I had her out yesterday. Emperor needs a run. You’ll find him frisky. Don’t let him gallop you over the edge of the cliff.’

‘That’ll be the day.’ Fiona mounted and soon put the good-looking horse to a canter over the downland turf. The June morning was fresh and cool at that early hour, but there was a mist over the sea which gave promise of heat to come.

There was half a mile of level ground before the cliff-top dipped between the two headlands. The canter changed to a gallop, but as they approached the downward slope Fiona pulled up. The horse tossed his head and snorted, but otherwise stood steadily enough while his rider looked southward at the sea.

Far beyond her, the headland called Scar Point, craggy, dark and forbidding, stretched out its long neck towards a single rocky island. Around this the sea creamed and snarled. When, letting the reins fall slack, Fiona turned sideways in the saddle to look back, the great bulk of St Oleg’s Head stood guard over one of the many tiny coves by which the surf-thundering waters encroached, as far as the rock-coast would allow them, upon the turf-clothed land.

On the cliff-top clumps of gorse hid rabbit burrows.

Rabbit droppings and those of the downland sheep were everywhere. A solitary Scots pine, either an invader or the last sentinel left behind by an army of trees long gone, was growing almost on the edge of the cliff. The wide, unbroken sky was too nebulous and pale to be called blue and, so early in the morning, there was no distinction to be drawn between it and the misty sea, for the vague horizon could not be defined. A herring gull swooped, dipped and glided, and then took powerful wing towards the tiny harbour where the fishing boats came in.

There was the regular rhythmic drumming from the hoofs of a cantering horse and then Ruby reined in beside Fiona and said: ‘I want to talk to you.’

‘This is neither the time nor the place. I’m out for a ride, not an argument.’

‘You know how difficult it is to hold private conversations up at the house. Madame calls it ‘whispering in corners’. I suppose being so rich makes her suspicious when two of her hangers-on start getting together and going into a huddle.’

‘You may be a hanger-on; in fact I think you are one. I happen to work for what I get.’

Ruby was not prepared to take umbrage. ‘Look, I know you don’t like me very much,’ she said.