Dorothy Eden (16 page)

He had tucked her arm in his, leading her out of earshot of the too inquisitive porter.

“Then your husband isn’t home?”

“He was, but he’s gone over to Limerick to look at his estate. How long can you stay?”

“I must be in the House tomorrow.”

She was determined to spoil nothing this time by disappointment or resentment.

“I had hoped you might stay in your room for a day or two.”

“Not this time, my love. But soon. We might think of some other arrangement less dangerous.”

“Then you must leave before dawn,” Katharine said equably. “And dawn begins awfully early nowadays.”

“If we can find a fast horse we’ll have a full three hours.”

“Yes.” Katharine leaned her head on his shoulder.

“I believe I can see a sleepy cab driver over there.” Charles lifted his arm to hail the man. “Don’t move your head, my darling. The fellow can see that you’re my wife.”

She hadn’t dared to sleep for fear of oversleeping. But it gave her the greatest pleasure to hear his quiet breathing beside her and know that he was resting, however briefly. She felt calm, deeply happy, deeply satisfied. She would like to have a baby from this night. It would be a happy and perfect child, conceived in love and tenderness.

But dawn was getting near. A sudden thought came to her, and she slipped carefully out of bed, put on a wrap, and groped her way downstairs. The french doors in the downstairs sitting room led into the garden. As she opened them the scent of roses came to her. It was not yet light, but the setting moon shed its faint illumination over the garden. She tiptoed across the dew-wet grass to the rosebed, and saw the just opening white roses glimmering. She cut one with her manicure scissors and returned swiftly upstairs.

It was time for Charles to wake.

Lighting the lamp woke him instantly. He started up, at first not knowing where he was. Then he saw her bending over him, and a look of the greatest happiness came over his face.

“Katie,” he said softly.

She held out the rose. “Look, it’s just opening.”

“White. Your rose.”

“No, yours. I planted the bushes for you last year.”

“And they’ve bloomed already! I count this the happiest augury.”

“Yes, but now you must get up. It will be light in another half hour. The summer is all very well for roses, but it does have short nights. Where did you put your clothes?” She looked round and picked up his jacket lying over a chair. “This needs brushing and pressing. It will have to make do with a brushing. The next time you come to stay—properly, I mean—”

“As opposed to improperly?”

“When Willie’s here,” she said severely. “Then the servants can attend to all your clothes. You need a valet. What are these things in your pockets?”

“Take them out. I get all kinds of queer trophies thrust at me when I’m campaigning.”

She spread the quaint collection on the table. There were religious medals, handkerchiefs embroidered with shamrocks, and other sundry strange objects.

“What’s this?” Katharine asked, holding up an extremely dirty frayed bit of rope.

“That, I’m afraid, is a gruesome relic. It’s supposed to be a bit of rope that hanged a martyr. And I believe there’s another equally gruesome object there, a bullet that’s gone through a man’s heart. I imagine it’s supposed to have gained some mystical power. Throw it away.”

“And this?” She was looking at a shiny coloured stone.

“The children give me things. ‘A quare bit of a stone’ or ‘a farden me mither give me’. Keep them for me Kate.”

The room seemed suddenly to be filled with the faces and the thrusting hands of the people who pressed about him on his journeys. The dirty tangle-haired children eagerly giving him their small treasures, their parents donating their more sophisticated and horrible holy relics. Once again the dark hungry land had come into this peaceful English bedroom.

“They must love you,” she said reluctantly.

He sat on the edge of the bed pulling on his trousers.

“They do. Too much. They’re insatiable.”

He came to stand by her. “You keep my sanity.”

Her throat was aching.

“I hope I always can.”

A bird twittered in the garden.

“You must hurry, Charles.”

He was dressing rapidly. “Put the rose in my buttonhole with your own fingers. When are you going to Brighton?”

“On Saturday, but only to find rooms. I’ll come back for the children.”

“Perhaps I’ll see you before then. I’ll let you know.”

The lamp was growing pale as the early daylight filtered through the windows. He bent his head to kiss her. His lips were gentle now, different from their hungry passion in the night.

“Bless you, my darling.” He turned at the door to look at her with twinkling eyes. “When I’m thrown out of politics I’ll take up burglary. The most silent enterer and departer of houses in the country.”

She laughed, although her eyes were wet.

He had left in such haste that he had forgotten the portmanteau he had brought with him. Katharine stared at it in dismay. Then she smiled. It would bring him back, perhaps sooner than he had intended.

She removed it to the bedroom at the back of the house where he slept when Willie was home, and put it in the wardrobe out of sight. The servants wouldn’t see it there. Then at last she went back to bed, to sleep a little before the day began.

The next day she went to the Ladies’ Gallery and sat there for two hours, but Charles did not appear. She could see several other members of the Irish party. But the House might have been empty when Charles was not there. She left, and carried out another plan, taking a cab to Hatton Gardens and going into a jeweller’s shop which she chose for its reputable but inconspicuous appearance.

She wanted a signet ring for a gentleman. It was to have an inscription engraved on the inside. Could it be done quickly?

“If it is a simple inscription, by tomorrow, madam.”

“Yes, it is a simple one. Just the letters K and C intertwined.”

“Ah, yes. A nice sentiment.” The jeweller was elderly, and appreciative of his well-dressed customer. “A charming gift for your husband.”

“I hope he will think so.” Katharine had a pleasant warm feeling in her heart. She loved all these anonymous people, hotel waiters, cab drivers, shopkeepers, who shared her secret. They cast their benevolent eyes on a happy couple. What did it matter if the rest of the world did not?

J
UST AS KATHARINE ENTERED
the hotel on the Marine Parade at Brighton someone tapped her on the shoulder. She turned sharply to see a stranger wearing a white muffler well-wrapped round his throat and jaw. He had the ragged remains of a beard. He looked gaunt and quite unfamiliar. He was Charles.

In the first moment her surprise was greater than her pleasure.

“What have you
done
to yourself?”

“I cut off my beard in the train with my pocket scissors. Do I look unrecognisable?”

“You look horrible!” But she was beginning to laugh. “Oh, Charles! Did you know I was on that train?”

“You said you were coming down on Saturday so I watched all trains until you arrived, and then followed you here. Shall we register?”

“We?”

He wrapped the muffler disguisingly round his face, and marched to the desk, to ask for a room for Mr. and Mrs. Stewart. The manageress looked at him with deep suspicion. Katharine was trembling. They had been recognised already!

“I hope you’re not suffering from an infectious disease, sir?”

“No, no, only a bad toothache.”

“Oh, that’s all right sir, I was afraid you might be catching.” The woman smiled in the friendliest way and handed him a pen with which to sign the register. “I can recommend a dentist if you wish.”

“That’s very kind of you. But I have a little laudanum which I find very effective. Is this a room with a good outlook?”

“Over the sea, sir. I’m sure your wife will like it.”

It was a very nice room with a flowered carpet and a large double bed. Safely in it, Katharine collapsed with laughter.

“Really, Charles. That was the most audacious thing! And I haven’t told anyone at home that I will be away all night.”

“Send them a telegram. Say you find the sea air so bracing.” He threw off his hat and coat and muffler. “Isn’t this wonderful? Don’t you enjoy being audacious?”

“Not with you looking like that. Oh, Charles, your beautiful beard. Where is it?”

“Decorating the Sussex hedgerows. Luckily I had a compartment to myself.”

“Take a look at yourself in the mirror. You look like a tramp. You must go to a barber and get properly shaved.”

He studied himself critically, fingering the stubbly whiskers.

“I’m afraid you’re right. I’ll go at once.”

“No, not at once. I can bear the sight of you for a little while.” She was beginning to realise the marvellous thing that had happened. They were to have a whole day and night together. But already she was grudging the time he must spend at the barber’s.

“Look at the sea. It’s even blue for us. And I have a gift for you.”

“Then you must have known I was coming.”

“No, it was only in my bag for the next time I saw you.” She took out the box that held the ring. “See if it fits.”

She watched him slip it on his little finger. Impatiently she made him take it off to look at the inscription inside it.

“It’s our marriage lines,” she whispered.

The flames burnt deep in his eyes.

“I’ll wear it to the last day of my life.”

They walked up and down the front, her arm tucked in his, quite openly, like any other married couple. They had tea in the Palm Court and even danced to the music of a piano and two fiddles. Katharine wished she had brought a prettier gown. Then they would have made a good-looking couple, she and her tall clean-shaven romantically pale partner.

“What will your friends say about your beard?”

“Let them say what they like.”

“Charles, do they wonder where you disappear to?”

“They can mind their own business.”

“But do they?”

He grinned.

“Oh, they have trouble in tracking me down sometimes.”

“Then do they suspect anything? About us?”

He frowned slightly. “If you must know, they suspect I have a woman somewhere. But they don’t know it’s you.”

“
Have a woman somewhere
” … The words jarred.

“Kate, have I said something to upset you?”

“No. No, of course not.”

“You asked me those questions.”

“And you answered them.”

“Then why are you looking like that?”

She had always to tell him the truth.

“I was suddenly seeing us as the world would see us.”

“And you didn’t like what you saw?”

“Charles, don’t speak in that cold voice.”

“If you hate this, Kate, I’m not forcing you to stay. I’m not forcing you to do anything. I only thought that you were as happy as I was.”

Was … “But I
am
happy!” she cried. “It’s only that—it would be so wonderful—why isn’t it complete?” Her words were clumsy, stumbling, inevitable, and she hated herself passionately for bringing that look of cold withdrawal to his face.

“I shouldn’t have said that, Charles. After all, it’s my fault. It’s I who am married.”

“We could go to Europe if you would leave your children.”

“Now you are blaming my children, when you know very well you would never desert Ireland!”

“But, Kate!” He was intensely hurt. “I thought you were with me over Ireland.”

“Sometimes I am. Sometimes I hate it, with all its misery, coming between us.”

“Then let’s leave it to its misery, and go off and save our own happiness.”

“Then you would begin to hate me. I’ve told you that before. No, we’re caught. Hopelessly.”

“I never intended you to think this a trap that you’re in.” He stood up. “Come, my love. I think we’d better go home.”

“You mean not stay here?”

He fingered his chin. His voice was humorous but his eyes were not. “It seems I sacrificed my beard for nothing.”

She was acutely distressed.

“Oh, no, don’t go. We have our lovely room. I’m sorry for those things I said. Tell me you’re sorry, too, and let’s be happy again.”

“Even in your cage?”

She stamped her foot. She was almost in tears.

“Don’t
be
like that! I’m not in a cage. I’m with you, and I love you.”

He sat down slowly. “Then perhaps a plush-lined cage? For it’s no use protesting. It is one, and we’re both in it, and I never saw it so clearly before.”

But he didn’t apologise for the things he had said. She remembered now that he had once told her, after an argument with some of his party members, that he could never keep his rabble together if he were not above the human weakness of apology.

Well, she was not above it. She was deeply warmheartedly repentant for the mood that had come over her. She wished he would take her up to their room and kiss her and laugh, and let the strain ebb out of his face. Then it would be a good thing that these things had been said openly, and not merely brooded silently over.

But, although now friendly and courteous again, he remained a little aloof. Even in bed the shadow remained. She hadn’t thought his lovemaking would ever be without tenderness. She went into his arms willingly, and he took her hungrily, passionately, but his eyes blazed almost as if he hated her already. Perhaps, for a little while, he did. She was getting too deeply into his life. She was even threatening his beloved country.

Two weeks later, after she had returned from her holiday at Brighton with the children, the package arrived at breakfast time. She opened it unthinkingly, then surreptitiously covered the photograph it contained with the wrapping paper. The note that had fallen out she could not resist reading immediately.

It said simply, “
I had this taken wearing the ring you gave me.
”

She realised that this was his apology for their quarrel. She wanted to go to her room immediately and study the photograph in solitude and cry for happiness.

But the children were at the table and demanding her attention. They had been discussing whether they might begin going to dancing classes.