Distant Choices (44 page)

She knew him to be intolerant and not the least inclined to anything even resembling self-sacrifice. She did not suppose for one moment that he would show much sympathy should she suddenly collapse into physical frailty, and none whatsoever should she take refuge in nervous hypochondria, like Letty. She knew, for certain, that he would tolerate no social-climbing nonsense from her in the manner of Evangeline, no caprice, no criticism of the least of his actions, nor even very much in the way of Christian charity which, in his opinion, began and ended at home. She knew he desired her and was fond of her, that he would defend her with the single-minded ferocity of a lion and, should circumstances ever require it, would go hungry himself to ensure she was fed. Yet she also knew how quickly and completely these sentiments would evaporate should she ever deliberately cease to fulfil what he saw, most precisely, as her part of their bargain.

Why not keep that bargain, therefore? Not just to the letter but beyond, employing her sensitivity, her powers of invention, her good-will, to give him more than he had even thought to ask for, thus gaining not the romantic love of which she did not think him capable, but his warm appreciation, his generous approval, a strong, personal friendship which – if it lasted – she believed she might come to value more than anything else in her life.

And when he was pleased with her – and he
was
pleased, she knew that – his generosity could extend even to giving her things, or permitting things, he would really have preferred her not to have. Her lakeland cottage, for instance. Her constant gleaning of news of Kate through Quentin Saint-Charles. Her visits, even, to the Ashingtons, father and daughter, at Dessborough Manor, although these visits, by unspoken agreement, were never returned to Lydwick Green. Her long patience with the tantrums and miseries of Susannah, which he would have preferred her to reserve entirely for his children, who had tantrums enough. Most of all her visits to Merton Abbey, disapproving strongly – as he did – of the goings-on of the aristocracy in general and of her mother very much in particular, although – she noted with some appreciation – he had always stopped short of actually saying so.

Just as she, even when pressed, had stopped short of admitting that she found his daughter Elspeth shallow, his daughter Morag deep and difficult, his son Jamie a boy like any other, since only had she loved these children would she have felt free to criticize. And not loving them, liking two of them well enough, sometimes pitying, sometimes putting up with the third, she learned – during the years when, quite placidly, her beauty undimmed, she reached her mid-twenties – to compromise, to value exactly what she had without yearning unrealistically for something more or something else; to accept, without plaguing herself as to the reasons why, that she liked her husband rather more than she liked his children and had even learned to desire him, not so passionately as to cause her any embarrassing restlessness when he was away, but quite enough to send her happily to bed on his return and to keep early nights, late mornings, several very private afternoons, for several weeks thereafter.

No sign of pregnancy had ever shown itself and neither of them had ever mentioned it. If a child came then he could afford to give it a royal welcome, but if not, then he had children enough, particularly the boy, Jamie, big-boned, loud-mouthed, pig-headed – a real
boy
, thank God – who would stand well over six feet tall like his father, and who, when he left Hepplefield Grammar School in a year or two would be apprenticed, whether he liked it or not – although he appeared to like it well enough – to the hard, hectic, risky, yet while it lasted supremely lucrative trade of the railway contractor.

Oriel would see little of him then, the Gore Valley line being already finished and officially opened with an elaborate ceremony in Hepplefield Station with banners and speeches, in the presence of every imaginable species of local grandee, civic dignitary and railway director, as well as quite half a dozen Lord Mayors; Oriel in black fur and velvet with a white osprey feather in her hat and a great many diamonds; Elspeth and Morag in blue with rather more gold chains and pearls than she – although not their father – had thought appropriate; Evangeline a marvel of sophistication in dove grey with a diamond on her finger which, by the way she displayed it, might well have been the Koh-i-Noor itself; Lord Merton – and Oriel refused to discuss with anyone the possibility that he might have given that scandalous diamond to her mother – barely reached Evangeline's shoulder; Matthew Stangway standing remote and immaculate at her other side, taking absolutely no notice; Garron's army of navvies drawn up in quite military formations, resplendent in scarlet velveteens and pale, well-brushed moleskins, sporting their gold charms and chains and earrings like medals as they waited to be congratulated.

A great day, bringing to the Gore Valley what it had asked for and believed it wanted, ending in an unwise bonus of barrels of ale for the navvies, the more distinguished guests adjourning to a banquet at Hepplefield's Assembly Rooms which Garron Keith had been obliged to leave in something of a hurry to do what he could – not much – to calm his now drunken and therefore riotous labour-force in the streets outside.

Every ale-house and gin-shop in Hepplefield's lower quarters had been smashed that night, windows put through just to hear the music of breaking glass, benches and tables thrown out into the alleyways and – because what else could one do with rotten wood? – set alight, Hepplefield's whores, of whom, since industrialization, there was a notable multitude and variety, relieving so many scarlet velveteen or moleskin pockets of their final wages that Garron Keith had little trouble the next morning in finding enough bankrupt, still far from sober men to complete the work-force at a contract he was undertaking in a particularly remote and therefore, from the navvying point of view, particularly unpopular part of Scotland.

Oriel's own position in Lydwick had suffered quite severely during the months the railway line had been going through, few of her neighbours caring to include her in their invitations when the main topic of conversation could only be the devastation her husband's labourers were bringing to their quiet, and above all dignified little town; Oriel receiving only the coolest of nods, the most pained of smiles from anyone who had failed to see her approaching in time to cross the street and avoid recognizing her altogether. A bleak time for Morag who suffered it in tight-lipped silence, and for Elspeth who, at fourteen, believed her prospects for a good marriage irrevocably dimmed, a hey-day for Jamie whose black eyes, skinned knuckles, cut lips and burst noses had become facts of everyday life to Oriel.

But the navvies had moved on, the plight of the tobacconist's parlourmaid and the young wife of the admittedly elderly cobbler who had moved on with them gradually forgotten, Oriel's connection with the Mertons and the Ashingtons remembered as Lydwick returned to normal, despite the brand new railway station which, on the whole, was seen as an advantage, if one could make allowances – that is – for the rather coarse-grained men from Hepplefield who kept emerging from it with their stonemasons and architects to talk, in loud city voices, about getting away from their own mill-yards and building themselves houses on pleasant tracts of good, arable land.

Oriel felt in no way responsible for that, being very pleased to make the acquaintance of a French milliner who – to a certain clicking of reproachful tongues among the wine merchants and saddlers – soon opened a shop in Lydwick's High Street, Oriel buying a great many hats and spending pleasant afternoons in the pretty bow-windowed little shop sipping white wine and nibbling ratafia biscuits and learning as much from her hostess as she learned from Quentin Saint-Charles himself about events in France. Predictable events, in fact, involving the transformation of Prince Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, with a certain amount of bloodshed, from President to the new Republic, to a fully-fledged emperor, Napoleon the Third.

There could be no doubt that
this
Napoleon knew how to get the most out of his chances, Oriel's milliner showing great enthusiasm, not only for the man himself, but for his plans to rebuild Paris, to construct wide boulevards, grand squares, splendid hotels which would make her native city – which was quite lovely enough already – the wonder of the civilized world.

Was Kate still there. Oriel wondered? Yes, indeed, Quentin told her, and finding much to interest her in this new regime, these opportunists with every intention of turning themselves into multi-millionaires, these clever men – and women – intent on profit, clustering around this latest majesty who had a very precise understanding of such things. As men who had spent most of their lives in exile often had. Yes, Kate had seemed rather taken by the atmosphere of high-risk and high-fashion Napoleon the Third was creating, not a particularly moral climate, of course, since one could hardly expect a man who had survived so long in exile and then climbed to power in just about the only way he could – that is, over the aims, the best interests, and, alas, the bodies of others – to set much store by saintliness.

‘And those friends of hers you told me about, Quentin, who were going to man the barricades …?'

‘Ah yes. I believe they did so. She has other – rather older – friends now.'

They had died, then, some of those young people in their revolutionary efforts to achieve – what? Oriel had no idea. She only hoped they had been quite clear about it themselves.

‘Quentin, would there be any point, do you think, in me giving you another letter for Kate the next time you go over?'

‘Oriel – if you do then I will certainly deliver it.'

It did not occur to her, at any time, that he would do less than he had promised. Nor that he would ever mislead her or manoeuvre her in any way. Although she did not always take his advice, particularly when it concerned Susannah of whom she once again fell foul.

The living of Dessborough church became vacant that year. Susannah's fiancé was a curate in search of a living. Francis – as Squire of Dessborough – now had a living to bestow.

‘Quentin,' suggested Oriel, ‘why don't you ask Francis to give it to Mr Field and your sister Susannah?'

‘Because,' he answered promptly, ‘my sister Susannah does not want to be Mrs Field.'

‘Oh – surely …'

‘Yes. Surely. She wants to be a missionary. Not to darkest Africa, I hasten to add. The navvy sites are quite enough for her. And so long as Mr Field remains a curate he can escort her to any camp she takes it into her head to visit with her Bible. But if she becomes a vicar's wife she will have her husband's church and congregation to attend to on Sundays. And her vicarage and, one can hardly doubt, her offspring, every other day of the week …'

She saw his lip curl slightly at the word ‘offspring', the likelihood of Susannah proving as fertile as her mother and Constantia causing him such evident distaste that, wondering if the memory of so many mismanaged babies, so much inefficient, downright messy maternity throughout his own childhood had caused him – since Kate – to avoid marriage, she rather forgot about Susannah, thinking Quentin far worthier of her consideration until later that same afternoon when, in an unguarded moment, she repeated what he had said about the Dessborough living to her mother. Whereupon Evangeline, in a spirit of pure mischief, promptly drove over to Dessborough and asked Francis to oblige her by offering his church at once to Mr Field.

‘Why not?' she said, in answer to Oriel's reproaches. ‘They have been so appallingly droopy of late, at Letty's. It can do no harm to stir them up.'

As indeed it did, to such an extent that Oriel, in the manner of one taking flight, had herself gone to Dessborough where Francis, with wry good humour, had agreed just as readily, to cancel the offer on any pretext they could muster.

‘Perhaps,' she said, thinking as Evangeline had taught her, ‘an old friend of yours could turn up? Or better still, a distant cousin with a better claim …?'

He was instantly, and with the same wry humour, willing to oblige. ‘Yes – of course. Although I don't know where I am to get him from.'

But she, as Evangeline's daughter, could not be dismayed by a mere detail such as that. ‘Oh' – from nowhere at all. He could just write to you – from China, perhaps? – saying he is coming back and asking you to keep the living open. Couldn't he?'

He bowed, smiling to her ingenuity. ‘He could. If that is what you would like him to do. And China seems most suitable.'

‘Yes.' She knew of no one who would be likely to go there unless Garron, of course, had any plans about building Chinese railways. ‘And then, in a little while, it will blow over and you can take someone else.'

‘Poor Mr Field,' he said.

She had not thought of that. ‘Oh dear – yes. I see what you mean.'

He smiled again, quizzically, quite warmly. ‘Yes, indeed. I am quite ready to do it, of course, but I thought I ought to mention that we are sacrificing Mr Field rather – aren't we? – for Susannah.'

And was she worth it? Of course not. But what was Mr Field worth? She had no idea and did not believe, moreover, that she had any right to judge. Not on that cool, pale January morning, at any rate, with another lavish Christmas just behind her, another year just starting to unroll itself through the sun and storm of three hundred and sixty-five more days, most of them pleasant and steady and soon over, coloured by her own subtle tints of harmony and compromise, of a sense of purpose and a job well done: one of them – towards the year's end – her twenty-seventh birthday, another of them Kate's twenty-fifth.

What more would the year contain than that? She had never spoken of Kate to Francis, preferring to wait discreetly, courteously, until he mentioned her himself. And, until he did so – if ever – she was happy to talk of Celestine, of the garden, of life's pastel-tinted, well-mannered surface, of good humour and good order, of the everyday tasks which, in their dozens, came always so obligingly to hand, ignoring the folly of ‘what might have been'so thoroughly, so mercifully, as to banish all restraint between them. Enabling them, in a manner they both found delightful, to talk freely, lightly, easily about anyone but Kate and each other.