Adam Gould (26 page)

Pulling off her riding hat which leaves a pink indentation on her forehead, Kate leans back on her elbows, arches, gazes at the breeze-blown birch leaves and says, luxuriating like a happy cat, ‘Remember I told you I had money? Maybe
I
’
m
your crock of gold.’

‘Why mine?’

‘Your family’s, then.’

‘Sorry, I’m being thick.’

‘Guess who else has been teaching me to jump fences. Your papa.’

‘My ...?’ Adam’s impulse is to sort this claim under the same heading as crocks of gold and spectral cousins-in-clown’s-trousers. Delusions! What else? How could a busy man who has not yet found time to ride a dozen miles to talk to his own son be teaching someone else’s daughter to jump fences?

To Monsieur le Vicomte Hubert de Sauvigny

Monsieur le Vicomte
,

He who writes this note has been trained to know his place and would not divulge private information if the need were less urgent
.

Your niece has fallen into dangerous company at Dr Blanche
’
s asylum where an Irish adventurer is taking unscrupulous advantage of her affections. Worse: he is just as unscrupulous in his treatment of the unfortunate inmates of that place and has been heard plotting to give a lethal dose of poison to the most distinguished of them, the writer Monsieur Guy de Maupassant. If there is a scandal, your niece risks being touched by it unless someone rescues her first
.

It was twilight.

‘I’ve had an odd telegram.’ Danièle’s shiver was restless. ‘Uncle Hubert may be coming to say goodbye.’

‘In what way is that odd?’ Adam had been savouring the moment, telling himself, ‘We’re together now,’ then trying to make the ‘now’ last. It was a game children might play. ‘Because he’s in Brussels, and his ship sails from Antwerp.’ She shivered again. ‘Coming here is the wrong direction for him.’

Leafy reflections shone. In their radiance her limbs looked ready to escape human embraces. Her shiver had flicked the thought into his mind.

She said, ‘We don’t want Philibert hurt!’

‘Philibert?’ He took moments to understand. Then: ‘Are you afraid that if your uncle comes he will guess about us, then report to your husband? In Africa?’

She was watching his face. ‘You think I’m fanciful?’

They laughed, aware that without fancy, they could hardly have talked at all. So many topics were embargoed, among them his dream that one day she might get a divorce or – here it was his turn to shiver guiltily – be widowed. The sorest was their lack of funds. Backing from it, they returned, with relief, to their transgression. Desire was so obsessive that the stealth of their arrangements could seem the healthiest thing about them. At least, while deceiving other people, you gave them your attention. Surely that was better than spending your waking hours in a clammy smoke of lust?

‘If you do go to Ireland, could I join you there?’ A pause. ‘Discreetly.’

‘I don’t know.’ His mind slid between cunning and impulse. Both their minds were tossed coins turning in the air: heads, tails, heads ...

Solemn as bookies, they reckoned up their hopes. Her readiness to run off to the pastoral wilds of Ireland reminded him of how those wilds had failed love in his parents’ case.

He had had another letter from there, this time from His Grace John Joseph, who wrote,

I make this appeal on your father
’
s behalf. Have you got it in you to forgive him? In person? He
’
d die happier if you came. His marriage was not a good one and, though I can
’
t expect you to pity him, I do ask you to help him die in peace – especially as that might bring you peace too. You cannot be totally at ease over what you did
.

Adam’s father, Tobin reminded him, had not in the end married the young English heiress – ‘
you
’
ll
remember why’ – but an older, less well-dowered neighbour who had proven barren. The estate, Tobin warned, was again encumbered and run down.

Mention of the heiress – Kate – brought back aspects of the story which Adam had managed to forget. Discomfort pricked. What had the dying man been saying?

The possibility that his father might think himself a victim was startling. But then, being a victim excused a lot, and the old man had a lot to excuse. Emerging from some sour cellar of memory rose a Gaelic jeer often flung at a loser: a
mí-ádh
. Gaels, being connoisseurs of loss, were quick to deride misfortune’s stratagems, self-pity for one. Had Adam and his father, each in his own mind, played the
mí-ádh
?

Tobin seemed to take no position on the matter. Clearly, the years had taught him to sit on the fence.

Danièle, when shown his letter, took a cheerful view. Of course Adam must go to Ireland! For his father’s sake – but also for
them
!

‘Adam, how can you hesitate? One doesn’t pass up possible legacies. I’ll bet that the estate isn’t all that run down. What might you get?’

This, though he tried to think of it as candour, shocked him. Remembering talk of how King Leopold aimed to milk the Congo before handing it over to Belgium, he reflected that the wellborn were not brought up to be mealy-mouthed.

So where, he wondered, did we small folk get our prayerful dreaminess? Where but from an education tailored to suit the interests of the propertied! If we were to manage their affairs without bilking them, we needed scruples – and humility. Amused, but also a little sour, he recalled Sauvigny’s opinion that the lower clergy should be sent to eat in the kitchen. That for all his eccentric airs, Sauvigny was self-servingly shrewd, was an insight which Adam owed to his reading of poor Guy’s lucid and indignant tales.

So, if scrupulousness went with low birth, might not Adam, as his father’s son, have a streak of the opposite? Indeed, if he wished to prove himself a true chip off the old block, might filial piety consist in being callous? A thought to keep to oneself!

‘Could we live,’ Danièle was back in the embrace of fancy, ‘on your father’s estate?’

‘On it, but not off it,’ he told her, practising plain speaking. ‘The land is poor; the income, here or in London, wouldn’t be much. On the spot, though, you could have a great life.’

‘There’s no reward here or in heaven,’ she told him forthrightly, ‘for failing to claim your inheritance.’

‘What about
noblesse oblige
?’

‘The
noblesse
,’ she said tartly, ‘might, like my poor Philibert, feel obliged to kill if insulted but never to give up money. They need to have it so as to serve their ideals.’

‘What drew him to the Congo? Adventure?’

‘I told you. He killed someone in a duel and was advised to make himself scarce.’

A duel! Lord! Should Adam learn to shoot? He asked: ‘But why there especially?’

‘Romance. King Leopold’s speeches. Philibert has a bit by heart about how “the universe lies before us, steam and electricity have abolished distance; all the unclaimed lands on the surface of the globe are ours for the taking.” That thrills him – or did.’

‘But isn’t it an invitation to steal other people’s land? We Irish are touchy about that. It was done to us.’

‘It’s not the same, though, is it? Africans don’t
use
land any more than animals living in a forest develop or claim it. So how can we say it’s theirs?’

‘Is that
his
argument?’

‘Yes.’

Cherishing his contempt for her dashing, bone-headed husband, Adam said no more.

But, while handing out blame, he couldn’t absolve himself. What about his promise to Guy? Might some noble callousness make that easier to keep?

Racing in the wind, a cloud passes overhead, the sun’s dazzle returns, and perspiration shines on Kate’s forehead. She rubs it with the back of her hand. ‘You don’t believe me, do you?’ She gleams as if suppressing a laugh. ‘About your papa giving me lessons.’ Then, after an artful pause: ‘What if he were courting me? How would you feel about that? Seriously, would you like me as a stepmother? I’d promise not to be a wicked one.’

‘As a ...’ Telling himself to stop parroting her words, he says with dignity, ‘I don’t think you should be making jokes about things like that.’

‘I’m not. I wouldn’t. Look, I know he’s twice my age, but you see I’ve always wanted to marry someone older. I want to be
cherished
.’ She is grave and seems – foolishly? – to swell with hope. ‘I never have been, you see. Cherished! And I know I’m not beautiful, so a younger man would never ...’

‘Stop! You mustn’t talk like this. Not to me. Not about my father.’

‘Nor,’ he could have added, ‘about yourself.’ He feels as if he has opened a privy door at the wrong moment. Has she no instinct for self-protection? She seems not to have. How, he wonders, can anyone like that survive? Could living with French nuns have turned her into a misfit? Maybe she was sent to them
because
of being a misfit?

Or maybe English people, being cocks of their walk, don’t need – or think they don’t need – caution? Maybe she fits among them? Not here. He likes her, though. Her forthrightness excites him. Nobody he has met till now ever exposed their private selves like this.

‘But Adam, I don’t want to do things behind your back! I want things to be above board if I’m to join your family.’

‘How could you join it? Is that what you were after last year? Why you came looking for me?’

She is shocked. ‘What do you mean? Last year we were children. We were closer in age to each other than to anyone else in our party. That’s why you helped me place a bet. Don’t you remember? I didn’t even know your papa then. But some months ago in London, he approached my mama with a view to ...’

Adam covers his ears.

‘No? All right. I’ll let
him
tell you. All I need to know is whether you would object.’

‘You’re cracked!’

‘Look, I’m sorry. You’re right. I shouldn’t have spoken.’

But of course he can’t leave it there. ‘You,’ he guesses suddenly, ‘must be the one who upset my mother and ...’ He trails off, unwilling to fit the bad jigsaw bits together: his father’s absences, the cousins’ sniggering. She couldn’t have caused all that. Could she? Might she? His world has begun to wobble.

But now – another surprise! – it is she who seems shaken. She stares at him. ‘Your mother? She’s dead surely? Isn’t your papa a widower?’

‘My mother is not dead. My mother is Ellen Gould. You’ve met her.’

Her hand flies to her mouth. ‘Ellen Gould? The housekeeper?’

‘She is not a housekeeper. She’s my mother.’

‘She is? But then what can your father have been thinking of? I don’t see how both my mama and I could have misunderstood him.’

‘No?’ Adam is shaken.

‘Not really. No.’ Her voice trembles.

Noting the tremble, Adam takes heart. ‘Perhaps,’ he argues defiantly, ‘he was joking and you didn’t realize. People here joke a lot! And flirt. It doesn’t mean anything. It’s a game. You’ll have heard of Irish charm? Blarney? We call it
plámás
. It’s a sort of practical joke to lead people up the garden path! We like things to be double-edged and to get people eating out of our hands while, inwardly, we’re laughing.’

With laborious patience he lays out a view of things that calms his fright and aims to baffle off unwelcome news. And as he elaborates his argument he starts to believe it. Clearly, he decides with satisfaction, it is she who has got the wrong end of the stick. Famously, the gullible English often do. Sobersides! Simple Simons! He watches her ponder. She is brave, he thinks, in spite of himself, as she turns away then, abruptly resolute, back. Plucky! His papa must have thought of her as a child and teased her the way you do a pert little Miss. Maybe he’d been a bit thick-skinned? Teasing – Adam has seen this happen – can go too far.

‘Adam!’ Her face is on fire. ‘I must – I have to ask you: are they married? Your father and mother? Is she his wife?’

Is she his ...? Is his mother
married
? ‘Of course she is!’ But even as he speaks, doubt ruffles his certitudes. He gets to his feet. ‘I think we should stop talking about this.’ He feels an answering flush blaze up his own cheeks. ‘I have to go. Maybe we’ll see each other at the hunt.’ This is not meant to be taken seriously. He hopes never to see her again. And waits for her to remove herself from his mackintosh.

But she stays sitting on it. ‘I’m sorry.’ She shakes her head. ‘I didn’t mean to upset you.’ And watches him with the same – he guesses it to be the same – offensive pity with which he watches his cousins. Seeing her come to a conclusion, he half reaches it himself: for what if his mother were
not
his father’s wife? That would explain everything! All the jigsaw spats and hints and innuendos! What are the odds? Fifty-fifty?

No, it’s worse! In a reluctant bit of his brain, he has sometimes, hazily, half guessed this without accepting it, yet braced himself for the day he might have to. An eldest son’s first duty – this dogma, having been obliquely conveyed, feels hard to refute – is to preserve and hold onto his estate. A natural law? And
is
Adam such a son? Or not? His father
is
and so may feel obliged to marry money, even if this entails taking a wide-eyed, helpless, puffy-faced, sixteen-year-old heiress into his bed and betraying his true family.

‘I didn’t,’ Kate pleads, ‘plan any of this when I came to look for you today. All I wanted was to get things straight. You see I didn’t just chance by. I knew you’d be riding here. One of the grooms gave me directions. I guessed things were being arranged behind your back and thought I should find out how you would feel if – but it may not matter now.’

‘If what?’

‘I think it doesn’t matter.’

‘Goodbye then.’ He has to get away.

Later, reviewing her image in his mind’s eye, he will notice that she was crying. Later still, it will strike him that she was the first person he ever met who had the nerve to go straight for the truth – and that he thought her mad.