Distant Choices (31 page)

‘A plant,' Susannah put in quickly, wishing to impress, and knowing, as the member of a large family, that unless she spoke at once she would not be heard at all.

Kate stared at her coldly. ‘I don't remember asking you.'

‘A herb,' said Oriel, quite quietly, making a point of noticing neither Kate's hostility nor Susannah's clumsy bid for notice. ‘It grows in long spikes about two feet tall, with blue or pink flowers.'

‘And it has uses?'

‘Oh yes. You can dry the flowers for pot-pourri because they smell so sweet. Or you can put the leaves in salad.'

‘Is that all?'

‘No. You can make cough medicine out of it. Hyssop tea is good for catarrh and colds on the chest.'

Kate wrinkled her nose. ‘Yes. That must be it. It would have to be.'

‘Kate – what
are
you talking about?'

‘Oh – the last squire's lady, boring old Mrs Ashington that she was – my predecessor. She kept the village alive all winter with hyssop tea, according to the vicar. How do you know about such things, Oriel?'

‘My friend, Miss Woodley, in Ullswater, has a herb garden.'

‘And you see the sense to it? I mean – it pleases you? It gives you interest – and occupation?'

‘Yes.'

‘Ah well.' She refilled her glass from the tall jug of lemon juice and drained it briskly again. ‘I think I will do better with the dances and dinners.'

‘Kate …'

‘Yes – I have quite made up my mind to it. Oh – by the way, Susannah, I met your brother Quentin on my way here, on
his
way to Merton Abbey. On very important business, of course. What else does Quentin concern himself with? But he says he will call here for you, nevertheless – in about an hour from now – and take you back to High Grange, to save Oriel the trouble. So you will want to go and get yourself ready, won't you, Susannah. Don't worry about leaving Oriel and me alone together. We'll just sit here, while you do your packing, and talk about “married” matters, I expect – such as why I really shouldn't be riding that horse.'

Remembering both her manners and her Christian principles, reminding herself that women in Kate's condition were permitted to be strange, Susannah made her excuses and went off as if it had been her own idea, pretending as she walked up the garden path, that she had neither heard Kate's unkind burst of laughter nor seen Oriel's smile.

‘That was very rude of you, Kate.'

‘Yes. I know.' Was this too a kind of freedom? ‘Why do you put up with her, Oriel? You don't have to. I won't – ever again.'

‘Well, maybe that's why I do it. Because nobody else will.' In spite of herself Oriel was laughing, seeing Kate and only Kate, without the shadow of Francis – as she had feared – hovering at the edge of her vision. Her lover who did not seem to be the same man as Kate's husband, who, at the moment of his engagement to Kate, had changed identity so completely that it had become possible to think of
her
Francis as dead. Possible, far more merciful, a blessing even, if it meant she could welcome Kate into her life again. Did it even mean, she wondered, that all the time she had loved Kate more than she had loved him? Truly, she hoped so.

‘Kate – what
is
this talk about dinner and dances?'

‘Oh –' Kate shrugged. ‘How best to pass the time, I suppose. If Francis is to become the perfect country squire, then – since I think hyssop tea quite out of the question – I had better be a social success.'

‘And is that what – Francis – means to do?'

Beneath her daring hat Kate's smile looked almost painful. ‘So it would seem. He can't leave me, you see, at present. He says he doesn't want to leave me …'

‘You should be glad – surely – of that?'

‘So I should. He says Mecca will wait.'

‘Well – since it has been there such a long time already – I suppose it will.'

Her chin on her hand Kate stared for another long moment at the lupins, unblinking in the strong sunlight, deep in her thoughts – of Mecca, perhaps, which, in the sense Francis wanted it, would wait for no man – until she suddenly shook herself out of her contemplations and said, ‘Now then, before Susannah comes back again, tell me why you married that man. The truth. It matters.'

‘Yes.' Oriel saw that it did. ‘Well then – because he is very clever, and very generous. Because he asked me. Because I wanted to be married.' She was smiling, making light of it in the expert manner of Evangeline who had always laughed anything too serious or dangerous or too likely to make trouble clean away.

‘Are you in love with him?' Kate very bluntly said.

‘Kate – Kate –
of course
I am.'

‘That means not. I didn't think you were. And he? Can we have a
real
conversation, Oriel? Can we stop talking in fairytales about everybody living happy ever after – like they taught us – and look at life as it is – in the eye …?'

‘Better not,' said Oriel.

‘Does he love you?' snapped Kate.

‘Ah well …' But suddenly her imitation of Evangeline no longer sufficed. ‘He wanted very much to marry me. And now he would go to any lengths, I think, to provide for me, and protect me …'

‘And you understand it all, don't you? You know what to expect from him, and what he expects from you?'

‘Yes. I know.'

‘I don't.'

‘Kate – how is that?'

‘Because I don't, that's all. Because something – somewhere – has never been right with me. Never. And it's not right now. There's a false note that I can hear – oh yes, I hear it – but I don't know which note it is, or what I have to do to put it right. All my life there's been something ringing false about me – something off-key. As if I'd got into the wrong skin, somehow. As if I wasn't really who they said I was. I used to hope they'd found me, when I was a baby, on the doorstep in a basket.'

And now? Suddenly, to Oriel, the lupins and the tidy rose-beds seemed very far away, all the colour and vitality of the garden bleached and absorbed by Kate's bewildered anguish, and her own horrified response to it. For, if Kate was telling her that her marriage to Francis had turned out to be another ‘wrong identity', not love at all but just another attempt at self-discovery which had already foundered, then how could she – who had truly wanted to be his wife – possibly bear it?

‘I suppose it is Dessborough,' Kate said, biting her lip, twisting her riding-gloves together as if she planned to use them as a sling for casting stones. ‘And all the village talk and the farming talk and sitting up straight in the Ashington pew twice every Sunday. And then the hunting talk – dear God! Yes – yes, I know I've heard it all before at High Grange. Except that I never listened. And I didn't expect that –
now
– I just didn't think it could be …'

What? The same? Her jaw clenched so tight that the muscles in her cheeks and her neck began to tremble, she clearly could not go on. Nor could Oriel break the taut and dangerous silence without a struggle.

‘Kate,' she said at last, very quietly. ‘You married a country squire.'

‘Yes.' Kate's eyes were fixed, unblinking, on the lupins again, her hands abandoning her twisted gloves and falling empty, palms down, on the table. ‘Yes, I know. Except that I didn't see him like that.'

Silence again, Kate's stare fastened, still painfully unblinking, on the flowers, one hand clenching now into a tight little fist until Oriel's hand, so much longer and cooler, came down and covered it.

‘Then you were not looking at him very closely, were you?' she said.

Little sister, did you break my heart by mistake, then? Just another basket at the wrong doorstep? Except that this time it has to be final, and forever. If I can accept that – and cope with it – then so must you.

‘When is your baby due, Kate?' she said. And, under the impact of the question, Kate's entire body gave a violent shudder.

‘They say in December. Poor mite, what a time to be born – although that will be the least of its troubles …'

‘Kate – don't say that.'

But, freeing herself from Oriel's grasp, Kate twisted both her hands together and then brought them down as savage, anguished fists striking once, and then twice, against the garden table, setting the jug and glasses rattling.

‘Oriel, I can't be a mother, don't you understand that? I don't even know what a mother is. Well – tell me then? What is it? Letty? Or Maud, taking her revenge? I won't revenge my slights and disappointments on a child. Or will I?
Could
I – if those disappointments went on long enough? Or is it my own mother, Oriel? Is that what's troubling me?'

And, speaking of Eva Kessler, Kate's voice sank to a whisper which sent a chill through Oriel's bones.

‘I didn't know her, Kate.'

‘Of course you didn't.' Kate's eyes had gone into the far distance again. ‘She would have hated you on sight and told you so. Oh yes, even if you hadn't been – Evangeline's daughter – she would still have hated you because you were pretty … No. Not even that. She'd have hated you because you were
female
. Her jealousy had gone as far as that. One man. One love. Nothing else in the universe. I've seen her on her knees to him, Oriel, screaming and clutching him, and him standing there looking as if – yes, as if nothing was happening at all, as if he hadn't noticed her, even though she was nearly knocking him over. She once cut her wrists and bled all over him and all he did was ask Maud to get his jacket cleaned. And I – well – nobody seemed to be doing anything about bandaging her wrists and I
knew
it ought to be done – but I ran outside and hid. Because I thought if I went near her she'd turn her knife on me …'

‘
No
, Kate …'

‘Oriel – even suspecting she might was too much for me to bear. Even suspecting
I
might be capable of doing something like that – gets to be more than I can almost bear now. And don't shake your head, because you don't know what happens in me, what comes to the boil sometimes – or very nearly. You don't know how – people like me – can be swept away. No, you don't. Oriel, have you ever seen the pictures in the attic? My mother's pictures? No. I thought not. Portraits – of him, and herself, and a few of Evangeline. Terrible pictures. Don't ever be tempted to look. I don't know why my father keeps them. Unless – yes, unless he's afraid to burn them – unless he thinks all the hate and jealousy might come out in the smoke and
get
him at last. I understand that.'

Oriel, with nothing she could bear to say, shook her head in a denial Kate would not allow.

‘Oh yes, Oriel. You can take my word for it, because I understand jealousy and the fear that goes with it. I'm her daughter, Oriel. I'd be bound to know. Just as I know she'd have skinned me alive and served me up to my father on a platter if she ‘d thought it the way to his attention …'

‘Kate.'

‘Oh yes she would. Yes – yes –
I
know that very well – too well – because I have enough of her in me to … Yes – to frighten me. So that's my notion of motherhood – frightening and vengeful. Or just foolish like Letty. I don't want to be any of those things.'

‘You won't be. If it's there at all then it can be overcome.'

‘Stop saying the right thing, Oriel. Stop soothing me.'

‘No, I can't. Because you have to face this – and fight it. You were the one who wanted to be honest. You'll have your baby and then …'

‘Yes. A good governess, a good school, will help to take the pain away.
Your
mother told me that. Poor mite, I shall just be its receptacle – like Letty says – and then leave the rest to other people who know what they are and what to do about it. I expect Francis will be a perfect father.'

‘Yes, Kate. I expect he will.'

Silence fell between them. And then, suddenly shaking her head as if something had struck her between the eyes, causing her pain, Kate cried out, ‘She hurt me, Oriel. My mother. That's the memory I have of her. That's what “mother” really means to me. Hurt. Always has. And what strikes me now – the really terrible thing that's just occurred to me – the real tragedy … Yes. This is it. I've just understood she probably didn't mean it – didn't even know she was doing it. She didn't
know
. And in that case – since I seem to be like her – I could do the same – couldn't I? Spread chaos and havoc and hurt – and never know it. And I don't want to do that – no, I don't. Oriel – have you ever seen me hurting people? Have I ever hurt you? Have I, Oriel …? Please tell me …'

Silence again.

‘Oriel …?'

Holding Kate's hands and Kate's eyes firmly in her own, Oriel leaned towards her. ‘No,' she said.

‘Thank God,' Kate answered, her breath escaping in a long sigh. ‘Thank God at least for that.'

‘Exactly. So now shall we get back to the real world – without any unnoticed damage – where we lead our real lives?'

For a long time, or so it seemed to both of them, they looked at one another, Kate's tight-clenched misery dissolving gradually into a tendency, by no means new, to laugh herself to scorn.

‘So you see what I meant about the dinners and dances. I have to do something to earn my keep at Dessborough, after all. Do I not?'

For a moment more they continued to look, one at the other, both of them unblinking now, each one wholly intent upon the other, a contact from which they were dragged unwillingly by the sound of footsteps on the path, someone approaching them through the lupins, an intruder on whom they turned dazed, puzzled eyes, until a release of nervous energy crackled abruptly through Kate, propelling her to her feet with a cry of far too enthusiastic welcome.