A Song Twice Over (69 page)

‘Is it wrong of me, Gemma dear,' Amabel enquired timidly, ‘to invite company?'

‘No mother. It is what father would want you to do. And if you would like to go out sometimes there is really nothing against it.'

But ‘outside'had always seemed somewhat menacing to Amabel. She much preferred the security of her own home where she knew the servants and the lay-out of the rooms and was less likely to be startled or taken by surprise. And, quite soon, the Misses Sedley and Mr Dudley Stevens got into the habit of driving over to Almsmead most afternoons in his carriage to drink tranquil cups of tea, play tranquil games of cards, chat pleasantly to a much-relieved Amabel – not of the sophisticated, cosmopolitan world of Linnet and Mr Adolphus Moon, nor the high-bred, hard-riding, existence of Linnet and Sir Felix Lark, but of ordinary, everyday,
tranquil
things. The very life, in fact, envisaged by her husband when he had first purchased Almsmead.

And so it continued, Amabel in her drawing-room. Linnet out and about in the great world of Far Flatley and Frizingley. Gemma quietly, effectively, in control.

She spent most of her father's waking hours in his room, continuing to treat him as an intelligent man rather than the fractious and frightened child he was so rapidly becoming. And when she had to go out she made certain he understood where she was going and why, and when she could return.

She guarded his dignity. She knew he was afraid without her and although his fear alarmed her and broke her heart as much as his loss of authority did Amabel, she nevertheless squared her shoulders and came to terms with it. She was often tired and harassed and so very far removed from any kind of personal satisfaction that it seemed pointless even to think about it. But she was here. She had accepted her duty. And it would be foolish now and unproductive, she decided, to resent it.

No problems could be solved that way, nothing achieved. She was here. And Daniel had gone. There was a task to do and, having agreed to do it, it was in her nature – as it had always been in her father's – to do it well. She closed down, therefore, the parts of herself which were not adapted to this tragic matter in hand, putting them not merely in abeyance but in a suppressed and dormant condition from which she knew it would be better if they did not wake.

There was a task to do. The woman who loved Daniel Carey to the limits of her heart and soul existed, and she had no intention of denying her. But it was John-William Dallam's daughter who was needed today, this month, this
year
it seemed as Christmas approached, then passed mournfully away. Amabel Dallam's daughter who ran down to the drawing-room for five minutes every afternoon at tea-time to reassure her mother that it was not sinful, nor proof that she had ceased to love her husband, should she enjoy a game of cards and a cosy, mildly animated chat.

And she was also Tristan's wife.

He had been in Lincolnshire at the time of her father's attack, a trip she had encouraged him to take because of Daniel, and she had supposed his speedy return to be due to Linnet who, not expecting John-William to last the night, had thought it in her brother's interests to be on hand. But John-William had lived, both against his will and the expectations of his doctor, and although Linnet, on seeing this, had been glad enough to accept extended invitations to stay with Lady Lark, where she could see as much as she liked – or as much as seemed wise – of Mr Adolphus Moon and had even spent a week as the guest of Mrs Colclough in Frizingley, Tristan had remained at Almsmead.

‘I expect there'll be some errands to do,' he said vaguely, his smile suggesting, with considerable charm, that even a man like himself, good for nothing but chasing about the countryside after a pack of hounds as John-William had often said, might have his uses at such a time.

‘If you ever need the doctor in the middle of the night I reckon I could get there faster than the groom on his cob. And apart from that I'll be as good as gold. No need for cook to start worrying about wining and dining me. I'll just have something on a tray for luncheon like you do and grab whatever I can in the evenings. I'm a simple soul really. Linnet is always telling me so. And if I get desperate I can always drop in to see the Larks at dinner-time. They'll be sure to feed me.'

How beautiful he was. It was the only word strong enough to describe him. How incredible, therefore, that he could mean so little to her, beyond a quick and solely artistic appreciation of his silver-and-ivory looks, and her thankfulness that he was indeed a simple soul, taking the pleasures of each day as they came to him, easily contented, predictable, blessedly incurious.

Without for one moment doubting his good intentions she did not expect him to stay long in a house now organized entirely for the care of a dying man. He was merely saying what he thought to be the right things and meaning them, of course, as he said them, which would not prevent him from convincing himself just as easily, as soon as he grew bored – not long, she estimated – that he was really in the way. Soon Felix Lark would be organizing a party to go off somewhere after deer or salmon. Or to those shooting-parties she had always avoided at the homes of related Larks in Lincolnshire and Leicestershire.

Tristan would find good reasons for going too. But somehow, perhaps because she no longer troubled to supply the reasons for him, he seemed content to hunt locally that year, rarely more than twice a week and to take out a companionable rather than a competitive gun with Dr Thomas or the vicar, neither of them a match for him. While he passed the rest of his time training a new puppy in the meadow, walking in the woods, hanging rather aimlessly about, thought Gemma, unless she gave him something to do or Linnet took him off somewhere to dinner or required his escort to some local excitement like the ceremonial opening of Frizingley's railway station by a famous duke.

Ben Braithwaite and Uriah Colclough and Jacob Lord had all been presented to that duke, along with their ladies. Even Captain Goldsborough had shaken his hand – possibly not for the first time – and Linnet had certainly considered that, as a representative of the Dallams, she ought to have been invited to enjoy that ducal handclasp too. But Ben Braithwaite, who appeared to be in charge of the ceremonies – or perhaps Ben Braithwaite's skinny, sharp-eyed wife – had not looked with favour on Linnet's application. That John-William Dallam had a right to be represented was beyond question. His wife, therefore, or his daughter, would be most warmly welcome to make the duke's acquaintance on the station platform and to dine at his table afterwards at the banquet for which Frizingley's Assembly Rooms had been specially redecorated. But the sister of the Dallam son-in-law did not seem – to the Ben Braithwaites – to be quite sufficient to merit the honour; nor even the son-in-law himself without his wife. And since neither Gemma nor Amabel could be persuaded to accompany her, Linnet, a vision of pale, pure elegance, had been obliged to stand in the crowd at the station – while Magda Braithwaite in one of her gaudy outfits preened herself at the ducal elbow – and to endure considerable annoyance at the banquet when she discovered that she had been seated no nearer to the ducal table – where one of her prospective husbands, Mr Uriah Colclough, was smugly sitting – than certain local artisans, including Miss Cara Adeane.

Tristan's heart had ached for her. It made no difference to him where he sat. The whole thing was a bore in any case and there was nothing he wanted out of it. Nothing much he knew how to get for Linnet either, worse luck, so that it was a relief to him when she was finally rescued from her obscurity and integrated into the ducal party by Christie Goldsborough, of all people. The evening was nearly over by then, of course, and becoming much more informal but nevertheless, there she was, spending her last half hour drinking her champagne with a parliamentary private secretary on one side of her and a railway baron on the other, looking as if she was exactly where she
ought
to be, making the Braithwaite and Colclough women look vulgar or dowdy.

Very decent of Christie.

Yet, noticing a certain rather feline smugness in her manner on the drive home, which deepened whenever Captain Goldsborough's name was mentioned, her brother felt inclined to give her a word of warning. In so far, that is, as his easy nature permitted.

‘Linnet, my darling, I don't know what you're up to and wouldn't care to ask …'

‘No darling, don't ask,' she sounded highly diverted. ‘With luck I may never have to tell you.'

‘Well, that's up to you, of course. But if you're setting your cap at Christie Goldsborough then it's not on, my darling.'

‘
Tristan
. How shocking. Are you trying to tell me that he's not a marrying man?'

He sighed, very patiently. ‘Don't tease, Linnet. I'm not up to it right now. That claret was very good tonight – I expect Christie picked it – and there was nothing else to do but indulge.'

‘Darling, I'm only too glad that you did.' She put her light, narrow hand on his, the cool touch he had loved and trusted all his life. ‘Are you worried about me, Tristan? How sweet. But there's no need – not when I'm going to be Mrs Adolphus Moon any day now, with Uriah Colclough put by just in case of need. Christie Goldsborough is useful, darling, that's all. He got me an introduction to the duke, didn't he, when Magda Braithwaite most positively didn't want me within a mile of him. Or within a mile of her precious Benjamin, which is far more likely. And Tristan – you do know, don't you, darling, that things are going to be very different now? Don't you, Tristan? I mean – when the old man dies.'

But, for a while longer, he continued not to live precisely, but not to die.

He bore Christmas impatiently, grunting nothing but contempt at the wife he had so cherished when she came tripping to his bedside with gifts wrapped in silk ribbon and gold paper. Hell's flames would have suited him better so long as it meant shaking off this useless deformity of flesh and congealed blood, this grotesque burden that was his body, and be free again. At the start of the New Year he closed his eyes and opened them, thereafter, very seldom, eating little, no longer trying to communicate beyond irritable noddings and shakings of the head. He was not in pain. There was nothing the doctor could do for his body nor the vicar for his soul. Both, he would have said, being beyond redemption and strictly his own business in any case. His measure of time was over. And on a morning of high wind and blue and white March skies, he died.

Amabel was not present at his funeral, being of a generation which did not expose the grief of its widows to the public eye. But Gemma, having protected her father's pride for so long, did not wish to relinquish the task now until its true completion, for there was still his spirit, she supposed, perhaps not far away, which might take serious offence should there be too much humbug preached in the church, too much snivelling and wafting about of fine cambric handkerchiefs, too much nonsense talked about keeping his room forever intact as he had left it, or about printing his virtues in gold on white marble headstones with white marble angels clustering above them.

A plain funeral for a plain man. A polished, granite cross with his name and dates. A respectful but not heartbroken congregation, a certain amount of business discussed by the Colcloughs and Braithwaites and by Mr Ephraim Cook, his own mill manager, as they followed him on his final journey. She knew he would have approved of that. And then those same gentlemen solemnly taking her hand, telling her how sorely he would be missed in the Piece Hall – what a sad loss – her poor mother – nobody quite like him – Good Heavens, was that really the time? They had better be getting back to Frizingley before the rain came on.

Yes. Life went on. Her life too. And now, with the great weight of her father's impotence lifted from her shoulders, now that she was free from the daily struggle against her own pity so as not to offend him by showing it, now that the demands of his death-in-life no longer devoured her energy and swallowed her time, how could she continue – as she had been doing – to avoid herself?

‘Look after your mother,' he had told her. A dose of laudanum, on this evening after his burial, had done that. And while Amabel slept and Tristan and Linnet took the air together in the garden, she was suddenly assailed with the force of a great wind, by the most terrible restlessness of her life.

What was it? She was worn out, of course, and had been under intense strain for so long that it would take far more than a good night's sleep to cure her. When rest had become impossible, this past month, she had simply learned to do without it, succeeding so well that she had lost the habit of rest altogether. Her body ached with fatigue yet she did not know where to lay it down nor how to convince it that its service as John-William Dallam's daughter was over.

Amabel's daughter now. And Tristan's wife. Was he talking of her now, out in the garden with his exquisite sister? She doubted it. Nor did he appear to find this empty marriage of theirs particularly unusual. Many couples, she supposed, in the sophisticated London world of his childhood, lived as much apart as they did, and were as sparing of physical contact when they did happen to be together. Arranged marriages. Marriages of convenience. But it was she who had arranged this one. And, having done so, having no one but herself to blame, she would be obliged to live with it. The marriage would continue, one way or another, and there was still that strong voice in her – her father's voice – reminding her that once one had agreed to do something, once one had taken it on, then one did one's level best with it. And she had made no effort at all with Tristan. Must she do so now? It was a long time since he had touched her. During her father's illness no doubt he had thought it unmannerly to trouble her. Now, with the illness over, would he think it equally unmannerly to keep away?