Lady of Hay by Barbara Erskine (reading an ebook TXT) 📕

she held it to her ear. The room was spinning slowly around her.

"Jo? Jo, are you there?" Bet's insistent voice cut slowly through the pulsing in her head.

Jo managed to speak at last. "Where did he get the story from?"

"He doesn't say. Quote "Close friend of Nick's" unquote. He's timed it well with Nick abroad. It is true, I suppose?"

"I don't know, " Jo said. "He never told me he'd been regressed. I asked him but he avoided telling me. It's... it's grotesque. " Her voice sank to a whisper.

Her suspicions, her worst secret fears—they were true, then, and now the whole world knew. She suddenly felt sick.

"Are you going to call him?"

"No. "

"But you must! You've got to ask him if it's true. "

"Over the phone? When he's three and a half thousand miles away? If it's true and if he had wanted me to know, he'd have told me. " Jo took a deep breath and closed her eyes. "Leave it, Bet. I can't cope with all this. Not now. Please, leave it alone—"

"But, Jo—"

"Bet, you told me Nick wanted to kill me. It wasn't Nick. It was John. It was John who ordered Matilda's death. "

There was a long silence. At the other end of the phone Bet's eyes had begun to gleam. "Jo, " she began cautiously.

"No, " Jo said. "I don't want to talk about it. " She changed the subject abruptly. "I called your Mr. Clements in Brecon. "

"Oh, good. " Bet contained her excitement about Nick with an effort. "When are you going to interview him?"

"On Tuesday. I'll drive down on Monday afternoon and stay with Mrs. Griffiths again. That'll give me a week to write and polish the article for you. "

"I knew you'd do it, Jo. And then, if while you're there anything should happen—"

"It won't. " Jo's voice was repressive. "Believe me, Bet, it won't. Especially now. " Her last words were barely audible.

Bet bit her lip, trying to keep her voice casual. "When was Nick planning to come back?"

"He didn't know. It depended on how things were going in New York. "

"And you'll still be going out there when you've finished the article?"

There was a long silence. "I don't know, Bet, " Jo said at last. "I'll have to think about it now. "

The lane was steep and very rutted when Jo finally arrived at Pen y Garth. Nervously she put the MG into first and crawled up it, waiting to hear the hard-crusted earth ripping out the bottom of the car. At the top of the hill the pitch debouched suddenly onto a mountainside ablaze with gorse and ended in front of a low, whitewashed farmhouse. After drawing up with relief, Jo climbed out and reached for her bag. The familiar smell of mountain grass and wild thyme and bracken filled her lungs, mixed with the acid sweetness of the pale-pink roses that clung and tumbled around the sentry-box porch at the front of the house. Above the white walls there was an uneven roof of thick Welsh slates, green with lichen and speckled with yellow stonecrop.

Jo stared around. The farm faced east toward the Wye Valley. She could see for miles.

"You like our view?" A figure had appeared in the doorway.

Jo smiled. "It's quite breathtaking. "

Ben Clements laughed. "In every sense, if you'd walked up from the road. Come in. "

She followed him into the single large room that made ap the ground floor of the farmhouse. Half kitchen, half living room, the stone floor was scattered with brightly colored rag rags and littered with toys, the walls crammed with books and pictures.

Jo looked around, startled by the color and the untidiness of it all. "I didn't realize you had small children!" she hazarded as she avoided a wooden train set.

He threw back his head and laughed. "One of the penalties of growing old is insanity in our family! I got married at the age of fifty-seven and, unequal to the horrors of family planning, found myself pregnant, as you might say. Have a drink. I never ask anyone up here before twelve and then I don't have all this silly social nonsense of poncing about with coffee and what not. You can have Scotch or beer. "

Jo grinned. She could feel she was going to like this man. "Scotch. Please. "

He nodded approval. "I hope you didn't want to see Ann and the kids particularly. She's taken them to Hereford for the day to see some cousin or other who's paying a flying visit. "

Jo felt her heart sink. "It would have been nice. I'm writing for a woman's magazine. So the woman's angle is important. "

"Ah. " He grimaced. "I've screwed things up, haven't I? Conceited male thought it was me you would want to see. My usual interrogators are nearly always men, my dear. Forgive me. " He handed her half a tumbler of Scotch, undiluted.

Jo laughed. "I wanted to see you both. Perhaps I could come back when Mrs. Clements is at home and interview her then, and interview you now?"

It would mean staying longer in Hay. Was that what she wanted really? Pushing away the thought, Jo concentrated on the gentle face of the man in front of her. He was still smiling. "Fair enough. So, do you want to see the farm at all?"

Jo reached into her bag for her notebook and camera. She nodded. "I'm going to take some snaps if I may, then we'll send down a proper photographer if mine aren't good enough!"

"Of course they'll be good enough. " He led the way to the door. "You mustn't be defeatest, my dear. That won't do at all. " He turned. "Ann told me you were a formidable lady, whose articles are nearly always very scathing. That true?"

"Often. Does it worry you?"

"Not a bit!" He ducked under the low doorway and preceded her around the farmhouse to the back, where a stone wall surrounded a large vegetable garden.