A Dark and Distant Shore (101 page)

Airily, she said, ‘Jermyn never takes time to write to me, but I had a letter from Bella the other day. She says the baby is very well, and very forward for her age. She has just had her first tooth, and Bella is as gratified as if she had written her first symphony. I can’t imagine why Jermyn ever married that girl!’

‘She’s perfectly pleasant.’

‘Exactly! She doesn’t have as much personality as one could put in a thimble. My own opinion is that Jermyn became so tired of Vilia telling him it was time he was married that he asked the only girl he knew who wouldn’t make any demands on him, not even conversational ones. Do you remember her mother at that party of ours during the Great Exhibition, sitting sandwiched between Grandfather Randall and Ian Barber, and not uttering even a murmur the whole evening?’

‘Yes, but Bella isn’t quite as tongue-tied as Mrs Armstrong! Would you like some tea?’

‘No, because then the servants would be in and out all the time, and I want to talk to you very privately.’ She fixed her bright hazel eyes on Juliana, and said, ‘I’ve never asked you before, but how do you like being married to Theo?’

Juliana’s own eyes widened a little. She had agreed to marry Theo because her father and Vilia had both seemed anxious that she should, and she hadn’t cared enough not to. She still had no particular feelings about him, except an occasional puzzlement, just as she had no feelings about marriage. It was a convenient enough state for her, and it meant she didn’t have to live at Kinveil, or even in Edinburgh. Theo had celebrated their engagement by deciding that Lauristons’ needed him more in London than at the foundry, and had bought a handsome house in Belgrave Square that Juliana thought too large for them. But her father had said it was a good thing to have spacious nursery floors, and Theo had smiled, and Juliana had never again referred to the size of the house. Only once had she even mounted the last flights of stairs to the empty, echoing top floors, and had suggested to Theo afterwards that the servants might be moved into one of them, instead of lying in cramped conditions in the attics. But Theo had replied, ‘My dear child, think of all the trouble we would have persuading them back up to the attics again when we need the space! No, leave things as they are.’ That had been almost four years ago, and the nursery floors were still unoccupied.

How did she like being married to Theo? ‘Well enough,’ she said. ‘What a funny question.’

Lavinia shifted slightly on her sofa and then, bending, proceeded to free the buckle of her smart cerise shoe from between the two lowest hoops of her crinoline cage. Her face was conveniently hidden when she went on, ‘I asked because – well, you’ve been married before, and I wondered whether you had noticed anything – anything different this time?’ She sat up again, her cheeks scarlet.

‘Different? Well, of course.’ Juliana’s eyes, momentarily unseeing, slipped past her cousin to the tall windows overlooking the square, but she didn’t, as Lavinia had half feared, relapse into a reverie. Instead, she said calmly, ‘Richard was young, and full of spirits, and he adored me. As I did him. Theo is not young, and he is reserved by nature, and although I think he is fond of me, he has other interests. There isn’t really any basis for comparison.’

Although Lavinia was a modern young woman, she found it even more difficult than she had expected to go on from there. ‘I wasn’t talking about that kind of thing. I meant, aren’t things different in – in... What I am trying to say is... Oh, Juley, for heaven’s sake! Can’t you see I’m trying to ask you about your more – your more
intimate
moments?’

Juliana gave a little gasp of laughter. ‘Does he hold my hand when we’re alone together, do you mean?’

‘Damnation!’ Lavinia exclaimed violently, and with extreme impropriety. ‘That is
not
what I mean. Must you be so obtuse? I mean in bed!’ She flounced to her feet and staggered, as her shoe buckle caught again. ‘Oh,
perdition
!’

Lips slightly apart, Juliana stared at her, scarcely even noticing that one of the occasional tables had gone flying under the impact of the swinging hoops.

Lavinia’s voice, still uneven, floated back from where she stood looking out of the window. ‘What I want to know is, do you even
have
intimate moments?’

‘Yes, of course.’ Not very often, for which she was grateful, but Theo was forty-eight now, after all. And she couldn’t complain that he was lethargic when he came to her. Rather the opposite, for although in the early days of their marriage things had been strained and unhappy, he had learned not to try so hard, and now came to her only when he was in a particular mood, already half aroused and sometimes almost febrile in his eagerness. It was one of the most surprising things about cool, amused, supercilious Theo, but Juliana had accepted it as she now accepted whatever life inflicted on her, without comment, or complaint, or any real interest. At least it meant that everything was over quickly.

Lavinia had come back to stand facing her. ‘And do you enjoy them?’

Juliana couldn’t imagine why she wanted to know, but there seemed no reason to lie about it. ‘Not particularly,’ she said.

And then Lavinia – pert, modern, self-assured Lavinia – let out a childish wail of misery and sank abruptly to the floor in a billow of skirts, her face sunk in her hands. ‘Even
that
would be something!’ she sobbed. ‘I’ve never had the chance to find out!’

It seemed the most extraordinary thing to say. Dominic Harvey was a handsome, charming man, if somewhat opinionated, and he and Lavinia had always seemed perfectly contented. Mystified, and a little touched by Lavinia’s distress, Juliana leaned forward and, taking her cousin by the wrists, pulled her hands away from her face. A small, uninvolved voice in her head remarked that crinolines might have been invented to stop people from doing such things; it was almost impossible to approach anyone closer than a yard. ‘What on earth are you talking about?’

‘Oh, Juley, I’m so unhappy! Dominic can’t – can’t –
do
anything. And he doesn’t want to either. I don’t know what a proper marriage is!’

‘Heavens!’ Juliana sat back and surveyed her in astonishment. ‘You mean you were really trying to ask me whether it was enjoyable? Well, it can be. Richard, dear Richard, made it a joy for me.’

Lavinia’s strangled voice asked, ‘And Theo doesn’t?’

‘No. But our whole relationship is quite different.’ She wouldn’t allow the ordinary, vulgarly inquisitive part of her mind to follow Lavinia’s revelation through.

And then Lavinia raised a streaming face. ‘That’s because he’s like Dominic. Didn’t you know? Theo just doesn’t
like
women. That’s why I was asking, to find out whether we were both in the same rotten, miserable boat.’ She had brought her sobs a little under control, and sniffed drearily as she began to fumble for a handkerchief.

After a stunned moment, Juliana said, ‘For goodness’ sake, get up. I don’t care whether you want it or not, but I am going to ring for tea. You can stand over at the window when the servants come in. You look a mess, and your gown will be ruined if you sit on it like that any longer.’

When the servants had gone, she held out a plate. ‘Have a pastry.’

‘I couldn’t! It would choke me!’

‘Don’t put on airs, Lavvy. Besides, they’re from Gunter’s.’

‘Oh.’ She took one.

Juliana said at last, ‘I assume you know what you’re talking about. Perhaps you could start at the beginning.’

With frequent relapses when her words were reduced almost to incomprehensibility, Lavinia stumbled through the whole pitiable tale, and before long Juliana began to feel quite sorry for her. For someone like Lavinia to keep such unhappiness bottled up inside her for three years must have been an appalling strain, and went far to explain why she was so distracted and unlike herself now. Juliana felt like a priest in the confessional. Sympathetic, but in a detached and lack-lustre way neither very surprised nor very involved.

‘It was all my fault,’ Lavinia declared. ‘I was so anxious to marry him. I never dreamed that he agreed only because marriage is a kind of protection for people like him. Everyone thinks that if a man is married he
must
be all right. But he wasn’t in love with me. He was in love with Theo.’

Juliana said, ‘Go on.’

‘It’s so dangerous for men to be like that. They can be sent to prison for life if anyone finds out! So he and Theo decided to take out – to take out insurance! That’s what they called it.’ Her voice dissolved into a wail again.

Very slowly, Juliana was remembering what it felt like to be angry. She didn’t really care that Theo wasn’t like other men. She did care that he had coldly made use of her. If he had told her, she would still have married him. She didn’t want him in her bed; she didn’t want children; she didn’t care whether she inherited Kinveil or not. But her father cared, and because of that, and from the mental and physical apathy that possessed her, she had done what everyone wanted her to do. If it meant that her father would die happy, it made no difference at all to her. But it seemed that Theo, smiling, reassuring Theo, had been dishonest with her from the first. One thing she had learned in Lucknow, where everyone had been stripped down to their essential selves, was to value honesty at its real worth. Afterwards, coming home, she had been repelled by the hypocrisy of civilized society. She hadn’t known what hypocrisy there was in her own house.

‘I don’t understand,’ she said. ‘You say that Dominic can’t – can’t
do
anything? But Theo can.’

‘Dominic says that Theo’s past isn’t as
refined
as his. He says if Theo is roused by – by someone else, he can manage, even with a woman.’

‘By someone else?’

‘Or something else.’

‘What on earth do you mean?’

‘Dominic says perhaps Theo asks you to beat him.’

‘To
beat
him?’ Juliana was floundering now. ‘What... ?’

Even in her distress, Lavinia was surprised. ‘Don’t you know that some men need pain to excite them?’

She shook her head.

‘Oh, yes! There are some women who do it professionally. Did you really not know that?’

She shook her head again.

‘Well, I can tell you that Theo likes it! That, or men, or...’ Lavinia’s voice dropped a little. ‘Or boys.’

‘
Boys
?’

‘Oh, not children! But someone between about twelve and sixteen. The ancient Greeks were like that, too, you know. Dominic says it was an attitude of mind that was responsible for all the creativity of Classical Greek art and sculpture.’

‘Indeed?’ Juliana’s voice was unwontedly caustic. ‘And that, I suppose, makes it all right for a modern art critic?’

Lavinia pouted. ‘Of course it doesn’t. I’m only telling you what Dominic says.’

Roused by someone, or something else. And then Theo could manage,
even with a woman.
Was that why he was always so urgent when he came to her room? Brought already by someone or something else to a state where he could ‘manage’? Juliana, queasily, thought of the sturdy, rosy-cheeked, fifteen-year-old boy Theo employed as a messenger. He was in and out of the house at all hours. Juliana tried to avoid him because he was so impertinent to her.

‘Is Dominic still in love with Theo?’

‘I don’t know and I don’t care. Because I’ve decided I can’t stand it any more. I really came to tell you that I’m going to seek an annulment of my marriage. I can do it, on the grounds of non-consummation.’

‘But Lavinia, the scandal!’

‘I don’t care. I
won’t
spend the rest of my life like this, covering up for someone who doesn’t want me. And what does the scandal matter?
I’m
the one who has suffered.’

‘You know people don’t look at it like that. Their sympathy’s always with the man.’

‘I don’t care,’ Lavinia repeated stubbornly. ‘The family will probably cut me off, but I don’t care about that, either. It’s
my
life, and it’s time I began to live it.’

‘Papa will have a fit!’

‘He’s your papa, not mine.’ Lavinia’s face changed. ‘As for my papa – you know, Juley, I don’t believe he will live much longer. He looks so ill since that trouble he had with his heart. His eyes are all pouched, and he – I don’t know how to put it – he has none of his old energy. He sags when he walks. Mama is in a dreadful state, because you know how close they have always been.’

‘Nonsense, Lavvy. He’s younger than Theo! You’re making mountains out of molehills. He uses up too much energy, that’s all. He needs a holiday.’

‘No. It’s gone far beyond that. So bright and beautiful he used to be, do you remember? Oh, well... What are you going to do about Theo? I don’t know whether I’ve done right or wrong in telling you. I half thought you knew.’

‘I didn’t, although I understand some things better now. Do? Nothing, I suppose. His hypocrisy sickens me, but it hardly seems worth making a fuss about. I really don’t care, you know. And my father is almost eighty now, and I should be sorry to ruin his hopes, even though I know what they’re worth. Perhaps, when he goes, I may think again.’

A few nights later, Theo came to her room and she found that it was not going to be as easy as she thought. All very well to face her new knowledge impersonally, and decide it didn’t matter very much. The reality was different.

Juliana was in bed reading when he tapped on the door and walked in without waiting for an answer, then turned the key in the lock. Her eyes took in the beautifully damasked scarlet dressing-gown, floor length, that he wore only when he was wearing nothing else, and the feverish glitter in his eyes that meant he was in a hurry. ‘Good evening, my dear wife,’ he said, as he always did on such occasions, his voice soft and reverberant like a satisfied cat’s.

Wretchedly, knowing that it did matter after all, she drew the coverlet higher about her shoulders, and said, ‘Not tonight, Theo, please. I would much rather not, if you don’t mind.’

His expression didn’t change. ‘But I do mind, my dear. Very much. You must not neglect your – what do they call it? – wifely duty.’ He smiled, as if the phrase amused him.