A Dark and Distant Shore (105 page)

‘What an eventful life everyone leads!’

There were changes at the foundry, too, it seemed. After Drew’s death, Theo had overridden Peregrine James’s objection to being involved in something as vulgar as business, and it had been agreed that P.J. would take over the London end where, as Lavinia said, it didn’t much matter if he didn’t know a tuyer from a trip hammer. His legal mind would be very handy when it came to contracts and things. Theo was going back to the foundry.

‘And what does Juliana feel about a move back to Edinburgh?’ He saw at once that there was something wrong, and very wrong.

After a moment, Lavinia said, ‘Juliana? Well...’ And then, in a rush, ‘Well, it was all very unfortunate. A few weeks ago, she left Theo. For good.’

‘Left Theo?’
My poor darling, my poor love!
‘Where has she gone? Kinveil?’

‘That’s the trouble. We don’t know.’

‘You – don’t – know? What do you mean?’

‘Theo wouldn’t agree to a divorce, and she ran away, and no one knows where.’

It was difficult to say, but he managed. ‘Was there some other man?’

‘No, I’m sure not. Theo thought she might have gone to Paris, to Gaby, so he went there, but Gaby said no. Then he thought of Petronella Barber. She’s just back from America, and quite insufferable about women’s right to do what they choose. But she hadn’t seen Juley either. Much too busy supporting Mr John Stuart Mill’s election campaign, and now that he’s come out in favour of women’s suffrage, and...’

‘Oh, to hell with that!’ Gideon was on his feet, towering over his niece. ‘It’s Juliana I’m concerned about. Is that all Theo’s done?’ She nodded. ‘Did Juley take anything with her? Clothes? Money? Jewels?’

‘Don’t bully me, Gideon! It’s not
my
fault, it’s your horrid brother’s, and I don’t blame Juley one little bit! She didn’t walk into the river, if that’s what you’re worried about. She took three trunks of clothes, and every jewel she possessed, and as much cash as she could raise. Quite a few hundred pounds. Really, she won’t starve.’

‘What do you mean, it’s Theo’s fault?’

They had both forgotten Amy was there. She, acutely sensitive in everything that concerned her husband, had always known that there was someone else in his life who was, or had been, very important to him. Now she knew who it was.

Lavinia exclaimed, ‘For heaven’s sake, you know as well as I do! I’m not acquainted with the polite word, if there is one. He’s a she-shirt, a pooff, a nancy, and you can hardly expect any self-respecting wife to live with
that
!’

He stared at her for a long moment. ‘Sodomite is the word you want. Lavinia, did you go through the same thing with Dominic? Was that the reason for the annulment?’

‘More or less.’ Her colour high, she went on. ‘Dominic was impotent with – with women, which made the annulment possible. It wasn’t necessary to give the reason why, in court. But I gather it’s different with Theo.’

‘I see.’
I see what I sent her home from India to face alone. God forgive me.
‘Has everything possible been done to find her? Do you think Theo has seriously tried?’

‘He seems to have. I can’t tell, for he and I have never been on the best of terms. But, Gideon, if he finds her, the law will force her to go back to him! There was a case when the court ruled that a husband was within his rights in
kidnapping
his runaway wife and keeping her under
lock and key
to protect her from the wicked world. And she was a very respectable lady!’

‘Nonsense.’

‘It’s true! Peregrine James told me. It happened about twenty years ago now, but he says precedents can be very dangerous things.’

Gideon was silent, and Lavinia went on after a moment. ‘You can’t do anything, Gideon. All that would happen would be that Juliana would be forced to come back to live with Theo again. She’d be worse off than before.’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I suppose you’re right. It’s just that she’s so very much alone, and it makes me think of Lizzie. And even Lizzie had young Savarin, and me, however little use we were to her. Juliana has no one, and she has been so lost, all her life, when she has had no one to lean on.’

Amy intervened gently. ‘Lizzie was scarcely more than a child, my dear. Juliana is a woman.’

‘Is she? I don’t see it as a sign of maturity to run away.’

‘Perhaps not. But she may have run
to
something, as well as away. I could understand that. How can one turn one’s back on a hateful past, except by starting life again, somewhere else?’

During the course of the next four weeks, Gideon and Amy found themselves a house in London, and Gideon went to Paris to see Gaby Savarin.

Amy expressed a desire for ‘quite a small house, with a garden. A garden all round. Why does everyone live in terraced houses with only a pocket handkerchief at the back?’

‘Because until fifty years ago, it was a matter of cramming maximum people into minimum space, and unless you were a Duke, you lived in a terraced house and liked it. Unless, of course, you were prepared to be shabby-genteel and live out in a village like Kensington or Islington.’

‘Let’s be shabby-genteel!’

‘No need. Most of the outer villages are inner suburbs now! I favour St John’s Wood.’ He offered her his arm. ‘Shall we go, madam?’

They found an enchanting villa, faintly Gothic without, simple and pleasantly proportioned within, and Amy said, ‘Perfect! Quite perfect!’

And then Gideon said, ‘Will you forgive me if I leave you to see to the furnishings while I make a foray across the Channel to see the Marcabruns? I feel responsible for Juliana. Can you understand?’

She understood better than he knew. ‘Of course,’ she said. It would be time enough to fight if things ever came out into the open. A little to her own surprise, she found herself thinking, ‘Poor Juliana! Poor Gideon!’

He did find out something. Juliana had foreseen that Theo would look for her with Gaby, and had not gone there until she thought it was safe. ‘But I have to tell you,’ Gaby added, ‘that I would have protected her from him, even had she been here. I do not care for your brother,
mon cher.
’
And then Juliana had gone again, and Gaby had no idea where. ‘She would not tell me, so that I have no need to lie.’

‘No hint?’ Gaby shook her head.

Worried stiff, Gideon found it difficult to settle in the new house, with its highly unconventional mixture of Queen Anne and Mr William Morris. He didn’t know how Amy had dared, but, fortunately, he wasn’t a purist and he liked it. It was just that there was something that had to be got over before either of them could face the very private problems of adjusting themselves to married life in their own home.

In the middle of October, therefore, they set out for Scotland, to stay at Marchfield for a few weeks and possibly go on to Kinveil.

If any ghosts from thirty years ago hovered over the threshold of Marchfield House as Gideon entered it with his second American bride, only the stones were aware of it. It was a bright afternoon, and the hall was warm and welcoming, and there was a smile on every face. Instead of a distraught Vilia and a pregnant Shona, there were Shona as sweet and serene, despite her mourning, as if she knew Drew were still there beside her, and Madge, two weeks past the birth of her son, Neil, and standing with an expression of friendly interest on her pretty, heart-shaped face that instantly endeared her to Gideon. He had been afraid that she might resent yielding the limelight, however temporarily, to Amy. And instead of Theo and Drew, there were Theo, Jermyn and Peregrine James. Theo’s smile was bland and satirical, as it always was and always had been, but it altered almost imperceptibly as he noted the coolness in Gideon’s eyes. Jermyn hadn’t changed much, but Peregrine James, who had been seventeen when Gideon last saw him, was very different.
Very
like Perry Randall, as Theo had written, but without Perry’s aura of leashed power. P.J. had his own power, but it was of the sleek and faintly inhuman kind.

And then, in the background, Gideon saw another familiar figure, who had changed distressingly in the last eight years. ‘Sorley!’ he exclaimed with genuine pleasure. ‘What are you doing here? How splendid!’ But he had become an old man, his shoulders bent a little under the smoke-coloured velvet tunic with its old-fashioned white neck-cloth, and his hair untrimmed and bone white. He looked as if he hadn’t shaved for a day or two, and the pouches under his eyes were portmanteau-sized, but his smile still had the same awesome beauty.

‘Och, Gideon, it iss good to see you, and your lady, too.’ He bowed to Amy with charming politeness. ‘Mistress Vilia went back a few days since, but she wass wanting me to take home some of Mistress Shona’s things, so I am still here.’

Shona said, ‘Admit it, Sorley! It isn’t that at all. You want to hear Ian Barber speaking at the National Reform League meeting in Edinburgh tomorrow night, don’t you!’

‘Och, well. I will not be wanting to miss that. It iss chust that I will like to know if there iss any chance of me getting the vote before I die.’

‘Oh, God!’ Gideon exclaimed. ‘Electoral reform? I suppose we all have to turn up, do we?’

He cornered Theo the next afternoon and had it out with him, or tried to.

Theo wasn’t cooperative. ‘My dear wife,’ he said coolly, ‘was upset to discover the catholicity of my tastes. It was Lavinia, of course, who let the cat out of the bag. Before that, we had been managing perfectly well.’

Gideon repeated astringently, ‘The catholicity of your tastes?’ but his brother didn’t respond. ‘Did Juliana leave as soon as she found out?’

‘No.’ Theo leaned back and surveyed the tips of his well-kept shoes.

‘Why not?’

‘Magnus, of course. She didn’t want to depress dear papa, who cherished hopes of an heir to Kinveil.’ He sighed extravagantly.

‘But she stayed on after that. She stayed on for more than a year after he died. Why?’ He was trying to make it sound as if he were no more than mildly curious.

‘If I had been in my dear wife’s confidence, I might be able to answer that. But I was not. I knew nothing until I came home one evening to discover she had gone. I imagine she may have been trying to gather some ready money together.’

With hard-held calm, Gideon said, ‘Have you really found no trace at all? A girl like Juliana can’t simply vanish, just like that. She must have made some arrangements in advance.’

‘No doubt. What would you have had me do? Call in the Peelers to look for her?’

‘Of course not.’

‘Precisely. I have done everything possible, short of that.’

Gideon felt his temper rising. ‘But now you’ve washed your hands of it, have you? That’s the end, and you don’t intend to go to any more trouble. Don’t you care that she may be in difficulties? She’s always been so damnably helpless!’ He didn’t know why he was stirring everything up. Lavinia was right. Juliana shouldn’t be forced to live with Theo again. But Gideon was frightened of her being on her own, and thought, in a muddled way, that now he was home again he might be able to put pressure on Theo to give her the divorce she wanted. If only they knew where she was!

Theo steepled his fingers before his lips, and studied Gideon. His eyes weren’t bland any more, but ice cold. ‘Be careful, dear boy. I want my wife back, and I want her in an amenable state of mind. I know what I’m doing. We could still produce a son and, as I told her, a child would almost certainly persuade her to see our marriage in a different light. Don’t, by the way, think I can’t perform, dear boy. I can, when I must. Yes, Juliana
is
ignorant of the world. After a few months, or even a year or two, of fighting it all on her own, she’ll come back to me of her own accord.’

Gideon sprang to his feet. ‘Are you telling me you
want
her to be hurt? Because you think that will bring her to heel? God damn you, Theo. I always thought you had a normal, human heart under that supercilious exterior of yours, but you haven’t, have you! Well, I tell you – if Juliana should ever come to me for help or advice, I’ll do my utmost to see that, under no circumstances, does she ever return to you. What she needs is warmth and loving, and what you have given her is...’ His disgust was so great that it robbed him of speech. Abruptly he sat down again and buried his face in his hands.

After a very long time, Theo said, ‘Gideon, dear boy!’ It was like acid dripping, and Gideon looked up. ‘I would prefer – I really
would
prefer you to keep your prying journalistic nose out of my affairs. My wife is
not your concern.
’

Gideon met his gaze squarely. He had never quarrelled with Theo before, seldom even criticized him. They had scarcely seen each other since Gideon went to the Crimea, where he had lost the vast self-satisfied tolerance that had always characterized his dealings with Theo, as with others. He knew now that tolerance was a fine thing in its place, but that there were some places where it didn’t belong.

He said, ‘Your wife may not be my concern, but Juliana is. Have you no pity at all for her? Already, she has suffered more than most people do in a lifetime.’

He might have saved his breath. Theo had said all he intended to say. Smiling, he rose to his feet. ‘You sound quite like a Biblical tract, dear boy! Now, shall we set out for this tedious Reform meeting? Jermyn and the others have gone ahead.’

As soon as they walked into the hall, they could see there was going to be trouble. The place was packed, every seat taken, and more than a hundred people standing at the back and spilling down the passages at the sides. Most of the early arrivals had the look of honest craftsmen and small tradesmen, although there was a sprinkling of the middle and upper classes, but the men at the back were of a different order. Even from the door, which was in the middle of one of the long sides of the hall, Gideon caught the mixed blast of axle grease and linseed oil. ‘The Amalgamated Society of Engineers, I would guess,’ Theo murmured. ‘Ah, there’s Jermyn! Such a dear boy, but surely he might have found seats nearer the door?’