A Song Twice Over (78 page)

Her mother had written to her very nervously from Almsmead begging her, for the sake of the dear villagers of Far Flatley, to keep away while the epidemic lasted. Two of her maids had left her service preferring the risk of unemployment to what they believed to be the certainty of infection. Neither her cook nor her housekeeper would consent to touch the tin bowls and wooden spoons used for the daily soup ration. The tenants of the mill-cottages around the school house where the famine victims gathered every morning had voiced horrified complaints to the mill manager, Mr Ephraim Cook, that it was no longer safe for their children – who had been known to join the soup queue – to play in the streets. And there had been several unpleasant attempts to drive these infected paupers away by stone-throwing, jeering, and dogs.

It made no difference to Gemma. She continued to purchase her shin beef and her neck of mutton at the best prices, to order cabbages and turnips by the cart-load direct from the farm, sacks of oatmeal and barley wherever she could get it, to carry out the task in hand without apparently paying much attention to what anyone had to say about it. A little brown sparrow of a woman, she was well aware of it, beside Linnet's bereaved and sorrowing eagle, but a sparrow who held the keys, the purse-strings, the authority. A sparrow whose cage, at last, was open – she knew it too – although she did not fly away. Too soon for that. Much too soon to enjoy a freedom which had been won only through the deaths of the men who had cherished and chained her. Her father and her husband. And it would take her a while longer – if ever, she sometimes wondered? – to come to terms with that.

‘A gentleman to see you, madam.'

She did not ask the name. She simply nodded and, as he came into the room, was standing by the tea-table to greet him, her hair tidy now but very plainly done, parted in the middle and coiled low on her short neck, her small, square hands folded one around the other very quietly, her black mourning gown completely unadorned.

‘Daniel, I am glad to see you.'

Her calm voice said exactly and only what it meant. ‘Do please sit down.'

She gave him tea which he drank hot and very sweet to store up energy, and wafers of bread and butter and chocolate cake which he ate without appetite for the same reason.

‘Tell me,' she said, ‘about Ireland.' And he told her rapidly, fluently, concisely, finding it easier than talking of the past in which he still believed he had not given her her due, or the future in which for him, the pursuit of personal happiness no longer existed. She had loved him. Now she was free to love him again. But looking at her in her black widow's gown, her figure upright and resolute, her brown eyes clear and wise and steady, the idea of it seemed indecent. She had suffered and
overcome
, as he knew he had failed to do. She had learned resignation, tolerance, compassion from her pain while he had learned resentment. But he had always known her heart to be greater than his. He was not surprised.

‘Now tell me about your electioneering and the progress of the Charter.'

He told her that too, talking on at length, drinking more of her hot, sweet tea, while she listened, her neat head on one side, gravely weighing and measuring his opinions, giving him her whole attention while a summer fire burned low in her comfortable hearth, an unseen clock ticked away the minutes of that tranquil, solacing hour. A gift of time to span the gulf between the lovers who had parted and the man and woman who had met again.
Her
gift. He realized that. As all gifts had come from her to him, not in the other direction. A bridge for him to cross – or not – as best suited him. A double gift of consideration and freedom.

‘I think,' she said, ‘that you have been in poor health, Daniel – recently – have you not?'

Yes, indeed. He had had the same famine fever which had killed her husband, lying alone in a lodging-house behind a locked door and a boarded-up window. And he had lived. Could he tell her that?

He told her.

‘How very brave you were, Daniel.'

‘Ah no. You're wrong there. I wasn't after saving mankind from my fever. I just didn't want to catch his on top of it. That's all.'

‘And you lay alone for days on end by the sound of it. Tristan only lasted a day and a night. One would hardly have thought it possible – remembering him.'

And seeing how much pain that memory caused her, he said quickly, ‘It was so in Ireland, with the fever. Doctors and priests and good ladies like yourself, all untouched by famine, going down with it in their hundreds and never getting up again. While the poor, starving wretches they'd been looking after sometimes recovered.'

‘Yes.' She had obviously thought it over very deeply. ‘It occurs to me that they may have been exposed to the infection before, in childhood, and thus acquired some kind of immunity. Whereas men like my husband …'

Men like Tristan. Rich in health and energy. A superb physique. Good blood and bones and sound, clean muscle. Taking the world in his long, thoroughbred stride. He had simply looked at her in bewilderment, still trusting her, still believing in his delirium, that she would know how to save him. And died.

‘Tell me,' said Daniel, seeing a fresh spurt of pain in her. ‘How is your mother?'

She smiled and, very gently and carefully, put the image of Tristan away.

‘She is well. Indeed, she is planning to remarry – as soon as her period of mourning for Tristan is over, I think.'

‘I see.'

‘Do you?' Her voice told him that she did not think so. ‘She has made the acquaintance of a gentleman at Almsmead, who reminds her of my father.'

‘Would your father take that as a compliment?'

She smiled again, her eyes unmistakably twinkling. ‘Perhaps not. But he would wish to see her safe and settled, and Mr Stevens is a most reliable man. A retired wool merchant with a very adequate income, who will never startle her or surprise her.'

‘You approve, then?'

‘Oh – shall we say I understand. My mother married at sixteen, Daniel. It is the only life she knows. It is what she
is
– a married woman.'

And widowhood, as a garment, had been many sizes too large for her, a child sadly parading in her mother's clothing with no John-William to tell her what to do next, until Mr Dudley Stevens had begun to speak to her with his voice. And then with what magical, merciful ease – how quickly – had the telling phrase ‘If John-William says it's all right, then it will be'become ‘If Dudley says one should, then one really
ought
to …'

What a blessed relief to Amabel.

And to Gemma. Even though, once or twice, she had caught the faint muttering of a voice in her head which she recognized as her father's. ‘Well – I'll be damned. The woman didn't hide in a corner and pine away for me after all. Who would have thought it?'

‘So there was really no need,' said Daniel slowly, ‘for all that worry on your mother's behalf.'

Bound feet, it seemed, could walk after all, in their fashion. Or had simply acquired the art of getting others to carry them.

‘There is no disloyalty,' Gemma said firmly. ‘To my father, I mean. If she had not been happy with him then she could hardly have wished to live the same life twice over. Even though I – or you – might think it unwise –
unjust
, even – to rely so heavily on another person – to make such a total demand –'

Tristan's voice again. ‘
If Gemma says it's all right, then it will be
.' No, she had not wanted to inspire that degree of devotion in him, she could admit that now. But once it was there, offered to her with all his diffident charm, she had felt bound to value it, taking it from him with surprised yet reverent hands. Not the love she had wanted but love, nevertheless, the most precious of human emotions, the ultimate human treasure given to her by a man she had judged incapable of truly loving. Not the man she had wanted, either, but who had become the sweetest of her responsibilities.

And now those responsibilities were over, each one of them resolved in its separate fashion. The cage door indeed was open, yet the wings she had once felt beating with such vigour, such frustration, had become very still. Not weakened, she thought, but waiting to be very sure of their direction.

‘Daniel,' she said, ‘do you really believe that your Charter could have saved all those poor starving people?'

‘I do.' And it was Daniel Carey the visionary, the cold flame of his adherence plainly visible, who leaned towards her. ‘The vote would have saved them, Gemma. There is no doubt about it. One man one vote. Every man with at least
that
much of a voice,
that
much power to speak out about what he wants, or doesn't want, done to him. Democracy. And then those “poor starving people” would have had no need to beg for the government food depots to be opened. It would have been done as a matter of course – by right. Since what government could afford to offend so many voters? And it is rights that are needed, Gemma. Not charity. Not crumbs from the table but a right to share in the feast. Opportunity. Justice. Dignity. The Charter offers that. It gives the people the right to elect their own men to office, as the gentry have been doing forever, and the ‘millocracy'for a good few years now. Men who understand hunger. Not only what causes it but what it feels like. Such men will act against it.'

‘Men like you?'

He nodded.

‘And if you are elected, Daniel – one day – will you keep your faith? Not everyone does.'

‘Not everyone has been hungry, Gemma. I had never been hungry myself until last winter. And now my appetite for justice is so keen that I don't expect ever to fill it …'

‘Although you have made up your mind, I think, to spend the rest of your life trying?'

‘Yes. That I have.'

Like a knight dedicating himself to the service of a holy cause for which he would first make sacrifice of the luxuries to which no initiate of holy causes can feel entitled. The cumbersome, personal possessions of friendship and love and happiness, and then, quite possibly, his life.

She understood.

‘Then I will help you in any way I can,' she said, since what was love, after all, but the gift to the beloved of what he desired most? Even if it turned out not to be oneself.

‘After all,' and she was smiling now, ‘there is a limit to the good that serving soup can do. And I have a great deal of money, you know.'

Horribly embarrassed, he dropped his eyes, unable, for a moment, to answer her. He knew she had not offered money personally to him, but the very mention of it was enough to make him uncomfortable. More wealth than he could probably imagine of which she, with her father and husband gone, was now in absolute control. Until she married again, that is, bestowing herself and her fortune with her upon another man. And it struck him most forcefully that, could he be considered even remotely as a marrying man – which he could not – her fortune would stand as an impassable barrier between them. Even if he loved her to distraction he knew he could never climb that mountain of riches and tell her so.

‘I have a poor understanding of money,' he said, in order to fill the silence.

‘Oh, I know that, Daniel. Luckily I understand it very well. I have an inbred aversion to paying tuppence for something worth only a penny. Which is not meanness, you know. Just good business sense. So you need not fear I shall throw my substance to the winds.'

No, he knew she would not do that. He knew too that she was smoothing his path again, as she had done on the day he left her, easing away his embarrassment, his awkwardness, offering him with all the free-flowing abundance of her generosity the riches, not of her bank balance, but of her friendship; since he had made no sign that he wanted her love.

‘A moment will come,' she said, ‘when perhaps just a little cash in hand could make an enormous difference. It would give me pleasure – when it does – if you would apply to me …'

‘Gemma …'

‘
Apply
to me,' she said firmly. ‘Although of course I may find your application wanting.'

‘Very likely.'

‘In which case I shall reject it.'

He did not think so.

She stood up and gave him her hand, signifying, he supposed, that the conversation was at an end.

‘Daniel, you must not deny me my right to be of service, you know. You would take it very much amiss if I tried to deny you yours. And when the Charter comes to pass, you must also bear in mind that my right to speak out and be heard – my right to a share in that democratic feast – will be every bit as valuable as yours. I may be a woman, and of the “despised millocracy” at that. But if we are to have justice and dignity and opportunity then it must be for
all
the people. For me and mine, as well as for you.'

He could not argue with that.

Needing to make a gesture he bent his head over her hand and kissed it, only briefly, the contact disturbing him in a manner far too complex to be desire. Or even close to it. The best woman in the world. She was still that. But her world was not his and the bridge she had offered him seemed very fragile beneath his feet.

For he was booted and spurred now, a soldier, a crusader, marching on stones to battle. How could the gentle pathway of her good intentions bear the angry weight of him?

‘The world has become divided for you, Daniel, hasn't it,' she said, ‘between those who have been hungry and those who have not?'

But there was hunger of another kind. She saw, with love and sorrow, how completely he had forgotten that.

The Charter, then. Nothing else would save the Irish peasant from famine or the English labourer from exploitation in mill and mine. Nothing else would free Ireland from England's yoke and England herself from the remote grandees of the ‘ruling class'that governed her. It was the quickest and surest way to the human dignities of education and opportunity, a breaking down of barriers so that men of all classes might come together to use the gifts they had been given. A new society where what counted would be a man's integrity, what he had in his heart and his head rather than in his pocket. The Charter. The Vote. Freedom and Justice for all through the Ballot Box with which no grandee of any persuasion would have the power to tamper.