Grahame, Lucia (19 page)

"I want to know more about this... aversion of yours,"
he said. "Is it that you dislike being touched? Or that you don't want
me
to touch you?"

What could he be thinking? That I was betraying him with somebody
else? It was so absurd that I gasped with shocked laughter.

"I've told you," I exclaimed. "It's not you. It's
me."

"Yes, so you've said," he conceded. "And it was the
same with Frederick, too?"

"I've already told you so."

"So you have. You must forgive me for not quite understanding
how you managed to have the happiest marriage in Paris although you couldn't
stand your husband's touch. How did you make it work so well?"

"How can you ask me something like that?"

Now it was his turn to laugh.

"How can
I
ask you
that?"
he cried. Then
he dropped his voice slightly. "Because I want to know, Fleur. I want you
to tell me
bow
you and Frederick were able to make each other so
happy."

I felt a flash of rage. How dare he bring Frederick into this! But
I knew it would be unwise to reveal my anger. "Maybe I didn't make him
happy," I said sulkily. "Oh," he said. "Then I wonder who
did." I didn't answer.

"Well? Is
that
how you... managed, Fleur? By sharing
him?" His voice dripped with something—whether it was disdain or sarcasm I
couldn't tell.

I flung up my head.

"I don't know what Frederick did when he wasn't with me. I
never asked."

I knew what he did. He drank. I'd shared him with wine, absinthe,
champagne, and various aperitifs. His other loves were no mystery to me. They
usually announced themselves fragrantly as soon as he got into bed. But it was
no one's business but my own.

"And
I
thought you loved him," my husband was
saying.

"You
know
I did!" That time I couldn't quite keep
the anger out of my voice.

"I don't know anything, Fleur. If I did, I wouldn't be
asking."

The house of cards was already beginning to fall.

I moved round to the back of the chair, so that it was between him
and me.

"I don't believe what you've been telling me," he was
saying. His voice had softened a little; it wasn't quite so icy, but it was
still much harder than usual. "I don't believe that you couldn't bear his
touch. I don't believe that you loved him but didn't care what he did or with
whom he did it when he was apart from you. I don't believe that you could love
any man the way you loved him and not give a damn whether or not he went to
other women. Maybe it's true. But I don't believe it."

"Well, I can't help that," I said. "That side of
marriage that you're so concerned about... for some people it's not all that
important."

To my amazement, my husband began to laugh again.

"I'm sure you're right," he said. Somehow I felt he was
mocking me. "But
I'm
not one of those people. And I don't believe
that you are either. Or that you always were."

He waited.

I looked down at my hands. They were clutching the back of the
chair. My knuckles were white.

"What happened, Fleur?" he asked softly. "What
happened to you between the day we went to Fontainebleau and the day you
married me?"

I felt myself go pale.

"I don't know what you're talking about," I whispered.

He gave me a long stare and then shook his head, as if I were some
kind of equation he couldn't solve.

"That won't do, Fleur," he said. "It's time we got
to the bottom of this." He sounded tired now, and he looked tired as he
lowered himself onto the edge of my bed. "It may take a while; why don't
you sit down."

I didn't move.

"What is this, an inquisition?" I asked.

I hadn't intended for it to come out the way it did. I suppose it
was fear that put the cutting words in my mouth and gave my voice its defensive
edge.

I saw my husband's face darken with anger. Then it became
impassive.

"Well, if that's how you feel, I'll end it," he said
with a shrug. He stood up. "But not until you've answered one question. I
want to know what you were feeling when you kissed me last night."

That was easy.

"I wanted to make you happy," I repeated.

He met this with another short laugh.

"No, Fleur," he said. "That's not what I asked you.
I asked you what you were
feeling."

I thought of the intoxicating river of happiness, warmth,
pleasure, and desire that had carried me along as I'd given myself over to his
confident lips, his warm, wandering tongue. There were a thousand words I might
have used— seduced, subverted, lost, longing, scared, captivated, hungry. But
one word kept racing ahead of the others. Happy. I had felt dangerously happy.

"Nothing," I whispered.

"Nothing," he repeated. "You mean it gave you no
pleasure, no pleasure at all. You simply did it to please me. But it didn't
please you."

"That's right," I said. "I've told you, that whole
aspect of marriage is disagreeable to me. I know you were hoping that if you
waited long enough, I might change. But I
can't
change. I can see how
much you want to give me pleasure. But you can't. I wanted last night to be
different, too. But I can't help what I don't feel."

He turned away from me then and seemed lost in his own thoughts as
he crossed the room to the doorway. Then he lifted his head.

"It's clear that you don't want to talk about this," he
said. I stood in guilty, frozen silence, not looking at him.

At last he spoke again.

I was so nervous about facing him the following day that I did not
come down to breakfast until very late. I hoped I would have the dining room to
myself, but he was still there. I could tell from the way he greeted me, and
from the note of his voice as we avoided the subject that weighed upon both our
minds and instead spoke of insignificant things, that he regretted the harsh
note he had struck with me the previous night.

I felt inordinately relieved. Now that the uncomfortable subject
had been thrust back into the shadows again, I hoped he would leave it there
for a long time.

Late that same morning my husband left for London and stayed there
for a day or two. His manner to me, when he returned to Charingworth, was as
kind and patient as ever. But no longer did he come to my bedroom—not to brush
my hair, not to lie beside me and talk idly about the events of the day, not to
take my hand or to taste my lips.

Although I hoped that this alteration in our relationship would
make our life easier, by eliminating the greatest source of tension between us,
it did not improve matters. I knew that he had a profound sense of honor, and
his manner told me that he still loved me. That alone would keep him faithful,
although I had given him nothing to be faithful to.

I could not shake off my bitter awareness of how greatly I had
failed him. I brooded upon this constantly; it did not improve my spirits. The
self-accusations did not remedy the trouble; they merely affixed the blame.

And although I knew that I was being unreasonable and unjust, I
began to grow more critical of my husband, as well. My impression of latent
power, which had once made his slow, lazy grace so attractive to me, had been
false. He was merely phlegmatic. How else could he have come to accept the grave
imperfections of our marriage with such calm imperturbability, leaving any
responsibility for trying to overcome them entirely to me?

What could I do? I had already tried everything—and everything had
failed.

Sometimes I tried to imagine the kind of woman who might have
pleased my husband better, but this was a futile exercise. I was never able to
envision some wonderful lady whom I might take as a model. All I could see were
wispy images of myself—not as I was now, but as I had been in the early years with
Frederick.

I knew now I could never produce a convincing imitation of
that
glowing creature—she had been dead for years and was now as unfathomable a
stranger as I sometimes felt my own husband to be. And although he might yearn
for some modest signs of passion,
that
could not be the woman he looked
for in me. He had never laid eyes upon her she had vanished long before he met
me.

And she was surely the last woman who could have pleased him. She
was the reckless, shameless creature who had posed for the paintings that were
the source of all the trouble.

Of all the staff at Charingworth, it was Watkins, my husband's
exacting head groom, by whom I felt most overawed and yet with whom I was most
comfortable. Upon my arrival, I had expected the entire household to treat me
with thinly veiled scorn due to my plebian background and my inexperience with
the role of chatelaine. But this was not the case.

Nearly all the staff, however, had a somewhat independent air.
They had welcomed me cordially and behaved respectfully. But while there
appeared to be no underlying disdain, it was clear that they were observing me
carefully, reserving judgment, always watchful.

Watkins was the most forthcoming. He seemed to approve of my passion
for riding and the readiness with which I welcomed any advice he could offer
that might improve my skill and knowledge. He also provided me with a
circumspect family history by means of anecdotes from the stables. From these I
gathered that my husband's father had not been particularly fond of horses and
was, in fact, somewhat intimidated by all but the most docile mounts. In
contrast, Watkins confided to me, the former Lady Camwell, now Lady Whitstone,
had a heavy, rather cruel hand with the bit and used the crop too freely. But
my husband was a real horseman, he told me.

"He's not like his father, you know," the old groom
said. He gave me a keen look. "Sir Anthony holds the reins very lightly.
But don't let that deceive you. He always knows exactly what he's doing."

Since I was well acquainted with my husband's skill in the saddle,
I wondered what had impelled Watkins to make this point so portentously. I
supposed it was pride in his employer.

But if it was, there was nothing servile in it. And, conversely,
it seemed that my husband was able to dispense with his stiff admixture of
hauteur and diffidence when he was around the shrewd old man—at least when I
was not present. I knew this because I came upon them once, unexpectedly.

I remember the day, because I had quarreled with my husband that
morning—well, perhaps it was not exactly a quarrel, for we never quarreled, but
we had had another slight disagreement.

I thought I had glimpsed a small but unmistakable flicker of
distaste in my husband's eye when I had appeared at the breakfast table in one
of my very oldest and plainest gowns, and somewhat later he interrupted the
silence of our meal by saying, "I shall be going to London at the end of
the week. Would you care to join me?"

I thought this an odd request. It had been some time since he had
sought my company in town.

"I really have no reason to go to London," I said
thoughtlessly, and then wished that I had chosen more tactful words of refusal.

My husband looked down at his empty plate as if he were committing
the design on it to memory. Finally he raised his eyes again and said, "I
would like to have you fitted for some new clothes. You seem badly in need of
them."

I would have dearly loved some new gowns, but it had become a
peculiar point of pride for me to wear my old ones. By this means, I was able
to assure myself that I had not married him basely, to indulge my appetite for
luxuries, but only to save myself from ruin.

"No, thank you," I said. "Perhaps my gowns do not
meet
your
exacting standards, but they suit me very well. My tastes are
simple. Besides, I am sure I would find the fittings very tiresome."

My husband pushed back his chair and stood up abruptly, bestowing
upon me a look of sheer exasperation. I thought he was about to speak, but he
seemed to swallow the words that trembled on his tongue.

"You are angry," I said, surprised.

He bit his lip and then either his expression changed or I was
able to read it better. He almost looked as if the insignificant rebuff had
wounded him.

"No," he said. "I don't wish to impose my tastes
upon you."

For a moment I wished that he would. It does me no credit, I know,
but that is what passed through my mind in the brief interval before he turned
and left me: I thought what a great relief it would be to be swept forward
under the power of a personality stronger than my own, to be carried away
despite my own leaden inertia, and with little or no regard for my will.

The feeling passed, or perhaps I pushed it away. I merely shrugged
as he departed without another word. It was a fine day, and after lingering
over my breakfast, I decided to change into one of my riding habits—for in this
department, I was not too proud to accept my husband's generosity—and to take
Andromeda out.