'No, it's not too bad, really,' he said.
He was a charming liar, and I told him so. Laughing, he put his head to one side and, satisfied that I had regained my composure, said, 'Look, I tell you what. If you're bent on helping me with my work, why don't you come on out for a minute and let me show you what everything is?'
'I thought you didn't like people mucking about in your gardens.'
'It's an ugly rumor, that.' He smiled. 'Come on, it won't take a moment.'
As I stepped across the threshold, following him, I bent to pick up the mangled plant that he had so gallantly discarded. This wasn't a South African something, was it?' I asked cautiously.
He looked at me with eyes that twinkled only slightly.
'It was not,' he assured me emphatically. 'If you'd pulled up one of those, you'd have heard about it, tears or no.'
It was, I realized afterward, exactly what I had needed—a half hour of messing about in the dirt, feeling the dry, dusty feel of earth against my fingertips and smelling the pungent sweet scent of leaves and flowers warmed by the sun. It comforted me, reassured me, grounded me once again in reality. Iain proved to be quite a good teacher, actually. With painstaking thoroughness he identified each flower and plant in the garden, pointing out the almost invisible shoots of flowers that would not be seen until late summer. He told me what needed to be done, and showed me how to do it, so that when he had finished I felt quite confident in my ability to at least weed the garden without destroying it.
'You'll get the hang of it,' he promised. 'It just takes practice.'
'You're sure you won't mind?' I wrinkled my forehead skeptically, and he turned an impassive face toward me.
'D'ye not trust me?'
'Well, Vivien and Geoff seemed to think that I was taking some sort of mortal risk....'
He grinned, and reached to snap a dead blossom off a nearby stalk of iris. 'I won't mind,' he said. 'Besides, it'll do you good to get out here once in a while. Keeps you healthy, gardening does.' He checked his wristwatch and stood up, stretching. 'I'll leave you to it, then. Time I was getting home.'
I had no idea myself what time it was, but the sun was lying low in the sky and it must have been close on seven o'clock. I stood up with him.
'Thank you,' I said. I was thanking him for a number of things, really. For not being angry with me, for understanding my mood, for being so damnably nice....
He just shrugged, and smiled.
'It's no trouble.'
He took his leave of me and strode away across the field, while I turned to face the dying sun, fitting my back to the smooth, crumbled stone wall behind me, half closing my eyes dreamily. It was a perfect, fairy-tale sunset, golden red with cotton-wool clouds whose gilded edges gave them an almost artificial appearance, as though they belonged in one of my own illustrations. To complete the picture, all that was missing was the rider under the oak, a romantic dark knight on his noble charger, watching the distant hills for dragons. I turned my head to look toward the hollow with eyes that were almost hopeful, but there was nothing there.
Above the oak, a hawk drifted lazily in an aimless circle, and his voice was a lonely cry.
*-*-*-*
The days passed, quickly and quietly, and I applied myself to my illustrations with a diligence that was completely foreign to my character. I was procrastinating, and I knew it. In a strange way, learning that I had the power to transport myself into the seventeenth century at will had made me reluctant to do so. All that week, while I sketched and painted and carried on with my normal routine, I think I was secretly hoping that something would just happen in a nice, spontaneous way, so I wouldn't be consciously responsible for what might follow.
But of course, nothing did happen, although by the end of the week I was completely surrounded by watercolors in various stages of the drying process, which made me feel—if nothing else—terribly productive. On Friday, Geoff telephoned to let me know that his week up north had been stretched to two weeks, and did I mind waiting a little longer for that dinner? I told him of course not.
To be perfectly truthful, dinner was the furthest thing from my mind at that moment. My preoccupation with my work was, as usual, making me antisocial in my habits. For several days I slept and worked and saw no one, eating my meals from tins and crawling off to bed in the small hours of the morning. When Vivien rang me up shortly before lunch on the following Tuesday, she couldn't resist commenting on the rusty quality of my voice. My explanation— that I hadn't spoken in three days—only made her more curious.
'Don't you even talk to yourself?' she wanted to know.
'No.' I smiled against the receiver. 'I have a cousin who does that, and I'd rather not be bracketed with her, thanks all the same.'
'I see. Well, do you fancy getting out for a bit this afternoon? Or is the creative flow flowing at the moment?'
'Oh, I'm sure I could be persuaded to tear myself away for a few hours,' I told her. 'What did you have in mind?'
'Tea at Crofton Hall.'
I frowned. 'Geoff's not back yet, surely?'
'No, no, he's still up north. Actually, the invitation comes from my aunt Freda. She's been after me for several days now to bring you round for a chat, but this is the first day I've been able to take the time off. Ned's been down with the flu, you see.'
So the White Witch of Exbury was inviting me round to tea. It sounded a thoroughly delightful prospect.