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

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! He’ll be here in five minutes. How is she?’

      Jo frowned. Ceecliff. That was Ceecliff, standing close to her, behind the two men.

      She breathed in slowly and saw her grandmother’s face near hers. Swallowing painfully, she tried once more to speak. ‘What happened?’ she managed to murmur after a moment.

      As Ceecliff sat down beside her Jo realised she was lying on the sofa in the dimly lit living room. Her grandmother’s cool, dry hand took hers.

      ‘You fainted, you silly girl. Just like a Victorian Miss!’

      ‘Who’s there?’ Jo looked past her into the shadows.

      ‘It’s me, Jo.’ Nick’s voice was taut.

      ‘Why is it so dark?’ Jo levered herself up against the cushions, her head spinning.

      ‘There’s the mother and father of a storm going on, dear,’ Ceecliff said after a moment. ‘It’s dark as doomsday in here. Put the lights on, Nick.’ Her voice sharpened.

      The three table lamps threw a warm, wintry light in the humid bleakness of the room. Through the window-panes the sound of the rain was deafening on the broad leaves of the hostas in the bed outside.

      ‘Where’s the doctor?’ Jo stared round.

      ‘He’s not here yet, Jo.’ Ceecliff smiled at her gravely.

      ‘But I saw him –’

      ‘No, dear.’ Ceecliff glanced at Nick. ‘Listen. That must be his car now.’ Above the sound of the rain they could all hear the scrunch of tyres on the gravel. Moments later the glass door of the entrance hall opened and a stout figure let himself into the hall.

      Ceecliff stood up. She met David Graham in the dim, heavily beamed dining room, which smelled of pot pourri and roses, and put her finger to her lips.

      ‘It’s my granddaughter, David,’ she murmured as he shook himself like a dog and shed his Burberry on the mellow oak boards.

      David Graham was a fair-haired man of about sixty, dressed, despite the heat, in a tweed jacket and woollen tie. He kissed her fondly. ‘It’s probably the storm, Celia. They affect some people like this, you know. Unless it’s your cooking. You haven’t been giving her that curry you gave Jocelyn and me, have you?’ He did not wait to see her mock indignation. His case in his hand, he was already moving towards the door of the living room.

      Nick smiled down at Jo uncertainly. ‘I’ll leave you both to it, shall I?’

      ‘Please.’