A Marriage of Convenience (4 page)

Theresa sat smoothing the folds in her dress, her face betraying no hint of what she was thinking. She asked without apparent interest:

‘Could you help him if you wanted to?’

Esmond grimaced and thrust his hands into the pockets of his frockcoat.

‘He’d want at least ten thousand. Not the sort of sum anyone lends at the drop of a hat on indifferent security. Frankly there’s no reason why I should try to raise it.’

‘I suppose,’ she began diffidently, ‘if you were fond of him, and trusted him to repay you …’ She raised her hands. ‘I’m being very stupid. He got everything that should have been yours.’.

‘That wasn’t his fault.’ He managed to smile. ‘I don’t hate him if that’s what you’re driving at. I’m not sure how I feel. He was only seven when I left home … in some ways we’re more like
acquaintances
than brothers.’

‘And that’s all you’ll tell me?’ she asked coming up and laying her head against his shoulder. She saw his frown. ‘Not about him, Esmond. About you. and what mattered to you.’

He looked down at her upturned face and smiled, the whole of his personality conveyed by the self-deprecating sadness of his hooded eyes and the folds of irony at their corners.

‘You really want me to bare my wounds?’ He kissed her forehead gently. ‘Ah, you want to share the pain. It’s all gone, you know. Only a reminiscent twinge every now and then.’ He moved away, shaking the bunch of seals on his watchchain. ‘The odd thing is … how on earth such little scratches troubled me for as long as they did.’ He sat down on the sofa which Theresa had just left. ‘Your husband died, leaving you with a daughter of three and no means of support. Nothing I’ve ever known has made me suffer like that. My parents were unhappy … like thousands of others. They eloped; father was cut off by his family; he was robbed by money lenders. A bad start for a marriage; but nothing exceptional. Granted, I made it somewhat worse by arriving before the wedding day. A little bastard isn’t the best addition to a bride’s trousseau. But I won’t flatter myself—the recriminations and quarrels would have come along nicely without me. Anyway I was about four when my father started to stay away. As children often tend to, I blamed myself … if I’d done this or that better, shown a greater liking for horses, he would never have left me. It sounds pathetic, but that sort of guilt can be quite a comfort; it’s much better to feel one’s had some kind of say in events, even if a disastrous one. Also I worshipped the man and didn’t want to blame him. I was a fool of course, but not without a few excuses, I like to think. He was as tall as a mountain with a voice like God’s; a hero in the Opium War, famous sportsman, excellent raconteur—though his mistresses would be better judges of that. Come to think of it, he was just about everything I was never going to be. Clinton’s a lot more like him.’ He looked at Theresa. ‘How am I doing?’

‘I’ll tell you when you’ve finished,’ she murmured, sitting beside
him again. As she took his hand, the wry smile, that had seemed engraved on his face, faded.

‘When I was ten, he left us for the best part of a year. I took it worse than mother. The other women had finished it for her. After a time, I think he revolted her. That didn’t worry him though. One day he came home, quite out of the blue, and announced he was back for good. If I’d been older, I don’t suppose it would have surprised me much. After all, what does every nobleman want sooner or later? Years later, mother told me he didn’t beat about the bush. Either she agreed to try and give him the legitimate heir he wanted, or he’d divorce her. I’m sure he would have done, if she hadn’t given in. I didn’t know what was going on, but I’d have been blind and deaf if I’d not realised how miserable she was. I pleaded with father not to upset her any more. The first couple of times he kept his temper. After that he hit me whenever I said a word about her. There’s an aphorism about it being harder for a man to forgive the person he wrongs, than the person who wrongs him. At any rate, I forgave, but he didn’t. Now, I suppose I can see the humour in it. In effect I was begging him not to give her the child who would disinherit me. My innocence must have made his guilt worse. After Clinton’s birth, I didn’t really exist in his eyes; even though I did get better at shooting and managed to ride passably. I knew there wasn’t going to be enough money for both of us to go into the army or get equal shares of anything, but the gap in our ages softened the disappointment. I got over it after a while; but … and this is the strangest bit—I went on thinking that one day I’d win back his good opinion. I used to sit imagining him saying that he knew how sad he’d made me and wanted to make it up. I went on making excuses for him, trying to please … Then they separated. Mother and I were sent to Ireland—father had a small estate there—and Clinton stayed on at Markenfield. Father kept him most of the time. He spent a few months a year with us in Ireland. That went on a year or two; then I came to London. Father died in a shooting accident when Clinton was eighteen. The coroner said it was an accident. It looked like suicide to me from what I heard. Who knows? I hadn’t seen him for five years. Clinton got all the land and property; we share a family trust, which is just about the only reason we still see each other. News filters through from time to time. A while ago he bit some high class whore’s leg and was taken to court by her. He covered himself with glory in China; was lucky to get out alive. He nearly caused a scandal with a cabinet minister’s wife a year ago. An active sort of life …’ He shrugged and stared at the floor.

‘How strange,’ said Theresa, ‘and now you’re the one with the whip hand. I wonder how you’ll use it.’

Esmond rose and held out a hand.

‘I’m tired and it’s late.’

She seemed on the point of asking another question, but instead she nodded and took his hand.

*

The following day, Esmond did not go to the city, but took Theresa and her daughter Louise to Greenwich Fair. He had kept the outing a surprise till the last moment; but, as with most of his surprises, the careful planning was soon evident. The picnic, bottles of chilled wine, and all the other requirements for the day, had all been stowed away in the landau before he made his announcement.

Louise was precocious for eleven, but the experience of driving through the streets in an open carriage with a liveried coachman on the box was still enough of a novelty to delight her. Often she tried to seem unimpressed by the trappings of her new life, and the result was a juvenile sophistication that made Theresa cringe. Later, alone with Theresa, Esmond would say that he found the child’s gaucheness touching or innocent. Her positive views, many of which had first been uttered by her grandfather, usually made Esmond laugh. Unaccustomed to children, he had no preconceptions about what she already knew, or what she might want to talk about; and this meant that he rarely spoke to her mechanically or with condescension. At first Theresa had half suspected that he might be trying to win over Louise as a matter of policy; but later, she had revised this opinion. He seemed quite simply to enjoy giving the child pleasure.

In his immaculate frockcoat and silk top hat, Esmond always looked out of place in places of popular entertainment: as if he had lost his way and ended up mysteriously in a circus tent or fairground without knowing quite how. This was the impression Theresa got that afternoon at Greenwich, watching the trapeze artists, and the caged lions and tigers from Wombwell’s Menagerie with him. Apart from a definite disinclination to have his fortune told, and an equal aversion to visiting the booths which housed the freaks and
prodigies
, he seemed to enjoy himself. The main event of the afternoon was the ascent of a richly painted hot-air balloon high above the gingerbread tents and hucksters’ stalls.

At home again afterwards, drinking hock and seltzer in the principal drawing room, while Louise chattered to Esmond about the fair, Theresa was troubled by the undermining guilt that had rarely been entirely absent ever since she had refused to give Esmond a positive answer about marriage. He had assured her many times that he cared nothing for the social position he had thrown
away by having her live with him. Yet this had not made her feel better. Considerate to a fault, it would be typical of him to conceal his regrets. Just as he would inevitably conceal any losses in the city that he suffered as a result of scandalous rumours. She was fond of Esmond; admired him. Louise was capivated; Theresa’s father had frequently told her that she would be the greatest fool in the country if she lost her chance of marrying Esmond. And yet, she could not steel herself to decide.

At twenty she had married because she could not endure days, or even hours, away from the man she loved. Her husband had been poor, and arrogant as only the young and ambitious can be. From the start he had made it plain that neither love nor marriage would ever be permitted to hinder him in his pursuit of fame as one of the great actor-managers of the day. Illusion or not; just a glance or a touch had made her heart race and her breath come fast. She had accepted him without thought for what had gone before and what would very likely follow. Long before consumption had killed her husband, Theresa had recognised that the real life of romantic love, after its first bright soaring, could be a poor twilight thing, doomed by the false images and expectations that had once sustained it.

Now, in her early thirties, she told herself she had finally left that delightful and delusory world where love is always true, and always going to last. Never again, if she had any sense, would she grant handsome youthful men all desirable qualities simply because she delighted to look on them. And Esmond after all was a striking man, and not yet old. He was not frivolous or vacillating; he had principles; was loyal. Though distinguished, he never sought, as many actors did, to use conversation as an opportunity to impose his personality and trumpet his achievements. She had come to like his long angular face and heavy-lidded eyes, which perfectly reflected his sardonic humour. His low quiet voice, which had at first seemed a little monotonous, now appealed to her; just as his formality and shyness had come to do. Often she was sure she loved him. So why subject him to suspense which his kindness made cruelly undeserved?

At times she very nearly relented, but never reached the point of no return. Before she did, from out of her restless searching past came ghosts of faces—not more than three or four, and none of them extraordinary at first sight, though undeniably attractive in their ways—but each one, for a brief month or two, had once been magically transformed and made beautiful beyond expectation. And choice, resistance, reason had all been swept away like gossamer. When she thought of this, Theresa could not escape the difference between such devastating changes and her slowly altering perception
of Esmond’s qualities. In truth, he had acquired rights of possession almost without her realising it, by patience and the kind of imperceptible encroachment, which, given time, can establish rights of way to the most unyielding hearts.

Perhaps in three months she would know whether such things mattered; whether a love built so consciously could justify the sacrifice of an independence not easily won. Her other fears were harder to define. Sometimes she wondered whether his refusal to be demanding or possessive was quite as reassuring as she had once thought it. His ability to maintain such close control of himself, when deeply committed and involved, often struck her as uncanny. A man who trusted a woman, and praised her as a paragon of every virtue, was imprisoning as well as flattering her; for how could she ever disillusion a person who thought so well of her? There were times when she felt obliged to resemble his exalted picture; not making a scathing remark, not saying what she thought, but acting out involuntarily the gentle role his kindness had cast her in.

Theresa and Esmond dined early that evening, as they always did before she left for the theatre. As dinner drew to a close, Theresa reminded him of the weeks before she had agreed to live in his house. With an exhausting provincial tour just finished, and another looming close, she had been tired and dispirited. Nor had she been happy about Louise, who had been sent away to board at a convent school, when a dearth of leading roles in London had forced Theresa to work with touring companies. Often too downcast to express much pleasure at seeing Esmond, Theresa had been amazed that he continued to visit her when he got so little in return.

After the butler had set down a bowl of fruit and decanters of port and madeira, Theresa began to speak about a particular afternoon when she had been even less welcoming than usual, and had asked him point blank what he thought he achieved by coming.

‘I’ll never forget what you said,’ she continued, snipping off some grapes with a pair of silver fruit scissors. She looked at him, past a vase of roses between them on the shining table. ‘Do you remember?’

He cupped his chin in his hands and thought for a moment: a man completely at ease.

‘I suppose I said something about finding it enough just being with you.’

She shook her head and watched him, but he added nothing.

‘You said you came so that I’d think about you a little after you’d gone away.’

Esmond smiled ruefully.

‘Did I specify
what
you were meant to think?’

‘No, you said that didn’t matter.’

He adjusted a white cuff where it left the sleeve of his embroidered smoking jacket and raised his eyes.

‘Well, you have to admit that
any
thoughts are better than no thoughts.’ He shrugged apologetically. ‘Perhaps it wasn’t very manly of me.’

‘I did sometimes wonder why you put up with me.’

‘You mean most men would have had too much pride to go on?’ Although he said this lightly, Theresa knew that he was curious what answer she might give. She looked at him intently.

‘What do
you
think, Esmond?’

‘A man’s never the best judge of male conduct.’

She sipped her wine and watched for the tell-tale brackets of irony at the corners of his mouth.