Gwendolen (21 page)

‘But then when Dan went away to Eton I was lonely,' Sir Hugo told me. ‘I was forty-five and troubled at having no legitimate son and heir. I wrote to tell him I had married Miss Raymond, of whom he had never heard. I am ashamed of how he must have felt as he read my letter.'

I recalled how devastated and cast out I felt when mamma told me of her marriage to Captain Davilow.

Sir Hugo said I should not imagine he was disappointed in Lady Mallinger, she was the sweetest soul and they delighted in their daughters. He called the absence of unhappiness a freedom and a privilege. He enjoyed family life, his political work, the Abbey, friends, the social exchange, his London clubs, the ordinary things of every day. ‘But, dear Gwendolen,' he said to me, ‘our lives seldom go according to plan. We must accept what we cannot change.

‘I thought Dan would choose a profession: barrister, politician, writer. When he said he wanted to travel abroad to understand other points of view and rid himself of merely English attitudes I was supportive, though I asked him to keep an English cut of clothes, smoke English tobacco and not carry difference too far. “Know where to find yourself,” I told him.'

Sir Hugo felt he had failed you and your mother. ‘He will return,' he said to me, with hesitancy in his voice and loss in his eyes, and I cried for him as well as myself for the pain we felt. All you turned your back on: the pastures of England, the seasons of the year, your beautiful Abbey and the secrets coded in its flagstones. And I knew nothing of the world in which you were uprooted, though I had seen engravings in books of such a place of desert and scalding sunlight.

*

As executor to Grandcourt's will Sir Hugo was compelled to meet with Lydia Glasher and Lush. I told him of the poisonous letter to me on my wedding night and how it lay like a nemesis on Grandcourt's foetid parure of diamonds, the diamonds I loathed and wanted sent back to her. Sir Hugo suggested I pawn them, then gamble away every penny they fetched for that might at least give me diversion. More seriously, he said to return them would be open to misinterpretation, as if I were intent on moral victory. My inheritance was not large. He would arrange for their sale in Hatton Garden.

He viewed Mrs Glasher as trapped, and warped by Grandcourt's years of ill-treatment of her, described her as avaricious, said she spewed jealousy and resentment of me despite the triumph of her inheritance, and as for Lush it was a pity he had not gone overboard with his master, for they belonged together on the ocean floor.

Lydia Glasher's life, Sir Hugo said, was shaped by impulse, punishment and desperation. Aged twenty-eight, after five years of violent marriage to Colonel Glasher, she left him and their three-year-old son for Grandcourt. The Colonel challenged Grandcourt to a duel. ‘The bullets merely grazed the air,' Sir Hugo said. At first Grandcourt wanted to marry, but Glasher would neither divorce nor allow her to see their son. The boy died within two years, uncomforted by his mother.

She and Grandcourt moved from place to place abroad and had their four children. When her beauty faded he tired of her. Her social isolation grew, she felt tainted by the irregular relationship and it became her dominant wish for him to marry her. Her husband's death removed all impediment in law but Grandcourt no longer wanted the family he had created. Three years back he broke free and banished them all to Gadsmere out of view of Society.

In that bleak outpost she aroused no comment. In church she was viewed as a widow, tenant of a house owned by a Mr Grandcourt, a name not known in the district. Grandcourt visited her, stayed and left as he chose, while appearing in Society as the most eligible of bachelors. She and their children were entirely dependent on him. He provided two ponies, dogs, toys, a wagonet, good clothes, but would make no commitment except through a will. She had no contract, no binding agreement, no sense of belonging anywhere.

*

Listening to Sir Hugo I felt dread lest my future too be infected by such isolation. I was alarmed to hear that Colonel Glasher, like Grandcourt, was violent and punishing. I wondered if both Lydia Glasher and I were victims who sought out pain and punishment, or doomed alike for seeking to build happiness on another's pain. Perhaps I, like her, would find no place I might safely call home, no true address. You travelled to find your roots, Sir Hugo was assured of his, she and I could not plant on shifting sand. I recalled her words at Cardell Chase, the venom of her second letter:

‘When he first knew me I too was young. Since then my life has been broken up and embittered. It is not fair that he should be happy and I miserable and my boy thrust out of sight for another … The man you have married has a withered heart … His best young love was mine; you could not take that from me …'

Perhaps with Grandcourt's death and money her life would be less broken up and embittered. She could speak of ‘best young love'. ‘The rest' for me meant loathing and ice-cold diamonds. She must have had more strength than I to withstand his treatment of her. That afternoon when she stood with their children in Rotten Row and he rode past without acknowledging her or them … Why did she subject herself to such humiliation? Why did she want to marry such a man? Compelled to more time with him I would have murdered with that steel blade, lost my reason, drowned myself in the Thames without your rescue. I could not tell Sir Hugo of my self-loathing nor confide my disturbed dreams and memories, but I confessed to my relief at having borne no children to remind me of Grandcourt, and to my wish to forgive myself for my impulsiveness and Lydia Glasher for her bitter desire for revenge.

*

Sir Hugo learned that Lydia Glasher intended to keep the repellant Lush as her factotum: employment that absolved him from the effort of providing for himself, allowed him limpet-like to adhere to her in the same way as he had clung to Grandcourt for fifteen years, have his own rooms in all and any of her houses, feel superior to any servant, be impervious to insult, intervene over scheming arrangements of her heart and carry out all poisonous errands.

I was shielded by Sir Hugo from further dealings with him. Did he think, I asked, Lush more resembled a toad crouched in a damp dark corner, or a parasitic wasp that feeds on its host? A cross between the two, Sir Hugo said.

Lush tried to turn Sir Hugo against me. He told him I married Grandcourt in haste to avoid the humiliation of work as a governess and penury for my family. He said he had warned Grandcourt if he married me he would have to provide for mamma and my sisters and would repent of it within a year. He admitted he would have found Catherine Arrowpoint acceptable as a wife for his master because of her inheritance.

‘Put Lush, Grandcourt and Mrs Glasher from your mind,' Sir Hugo told me. ‘You need never see any of them again.' His advice was welcome though not easy to achieve.

*

My stay at the Abbey was a time of enlightenment and transition. I recalled the New Year's Eve there, so soon after my marriage, when you and I looked out at the moon and I asked what I could do, should do, to bear the guilt I felt and the punishment to which I could see no end, and you said, ‘Look on other lives besides your own. See what their troubles are and how they are borne.'

With the kindness and counsel of Sir Hugo and Hans I more clearly saw your troubles and the tribulations and struggle of those who shaped my destiny. I dared to hope my actions were no worse than those of the other players and less heinous than Grandcourt's and his henchman Lush. Better, too, than those of my uncle, who was so forceful in thinking himself right.

That New Year's Eve you also exhorted me to ‘Try to care for something in this vast world besides the gratification of small selfish desires' and for ‘what is best in thought and action'. I like to think, that with the encouragement of Sir Hugo and Hans I was freed from the worst thoughts that had warped me. But I had learned too much of what I could not do and did not care for. I do not know if my desires had ever been small and selfish. I had not found much gratification. I had hoped for love and ambition to guide me.

*

In mid autumn Hans accompanied me home to Offendene. As our carriage neared the lane that led to the house I felt excitement and delight. Mamma, Alice and Fanny greeted us in the porch. Mamma was so happy to see me well, at ease with myself and in the company of a young and cheerful friend. The house looked small and shabby after the grandeur of Topping but entering it I felt reunited with a loving friend. I again was proud to have restored the house to mamma and my sisters so that they need not sew for sixpences or go cap-in-hand to anyone.

Bertha, to mamma's pride and concern, was now living away from home. Hans took her room and I went back to the little bed beside mamma's. Bertha was emphatic that for herself she would consider neither marriage nor a governess's post. She said having observed mamma's marriage then mine she would sooner be a strumpet. She was working at Upton Manor, twenty miles away, as a gardener. Mamma praised her talent for botanical drawing. I was surprised. I had always thought Bertha slow and unimaginative and had derided her artistic efforts, but she so impressed the owners of the Manor, Sir Roland Myre and his wife Anne, with her horticultural knowledge, they hired her to help maintain their arboretum and commissioned her to illustrate a calendar with a different tree for each month of the year.

Mamma adored Hans but I think was relieved not to have to view him as my suitor. If a button was loose on his shirt she sewed it, if his boots were scuffed she saw they were polished, if he sneezed – as he did much of the time because of the flowers, the grass, the horse, the dog – she tended him with balsam and menthol. He made her laugh and that was a joy to hear. She plied him with cake, hot chocolate and sweets. He called her Mrs D and said she was his country mother. It amused me to see how mamma would have loved a son like Hans, boyish and mischievous, a bit wayward but vulnerable and good-natured too. Most of all I think she adored him because he watched out for me in his concerned yet carefree way.

At ease with my sisters, Hans teased and flirted just a little, amused them, gave them sketches he did of them. A spirit of joy and ease imbued the house. Together we walked the lanes and picked crab apples in the woods. I was glad to be reunited with Criterion and to ride fast each day. Alice had cared for him all summer and was rueful to be consigned to Twilight, the slower horse.

One fine warm day Rex and Anna joined us – my sisters, Hans and me – for a long walk and then a picnic near Cardell Chase. I was apprehensive about Rex's state of mind and expected Anna to be subdued and watchful. But the countryside was pure and lovely, mamma had seen to it we had a pie, cheese, sourdough bread and apples, we spread ourselves under a beech tree, and our joy was light and without care or undercurrent.

Rex made no mention of my troubles. I was glad again to see his honest, intelligent face and hear his respectful voice. I had heard Lord Brackenshaw's eldest daughter, Beatrix, was smitten by him but I did not know if he was flattered at her interest. He asked what my plans would be if I went to London and I said I did not know, that I hoped to find a creative path but was unsure what that might be. He said whatever I put my mind to he was sure I would excel myself and that I enhanced any gathering. Hans reiterated the important thing was for me to enjoy myself. Neither of them made any mention of you.

Anna was enamoured of Hans. She transferred her devotion from Rex to him and fussed that his fair skin might burn in the sun or that he might have chosen the lesser piece of pie. At ease with her attention, he teased and complimented her. It occurred to me she would love the man she married with the same wholeheartedness and ease as Mirah Lapidoth loved you, whereas I could never be unequivocal or entirely straightforward.

*

The days and weeks passed. I thought often of Sir Hugo's words ‘Not to be unhappy is a freedom'. I was no longer unhappy, incessantly watched, or answerable to the command of a savage keeper. Safe again at Offendene, with mamma and my sisters provided for, not lavishly but adequately, with Sir Hugo as my protector and Hans as my friend, I rejoiced in my freedom. And though a weight of guilt and wrongdoing burdened me, and I could not quite see how I might meaningfully occupy the days, I dared to admit that the greater conflict would have been had Grandcourt lived. He was mourned by no one.

But I could not go back to who I was before my marriage, or to the life I had lived. I did not want to appear in Wancester society as the ill-treated widow, nor could I again be mamma's spoiled darling, sharing her bed, her coiling my hair. When suffering so with Grandcourt I thought the old routines were all I wanted: mamma and the house, reading by the fire, dinner parties, charades and picnics, the archery contest, the hunt, galloping over the downs. But I could not settle to such a life again and I refused the social invitations with which mamma tried to tempt me.

My fear had gone, of the dark, of the vast night sky, the face in the wainscot, the serpent in the diamonds. I could think of death without particular dread. But Offendene, though loved by me, was not a place where I now could stay. The ghosts of the past confined me. If I was to become an adult, if I was to become Gwendolen Harleth, I knew I must move away from mamma and Pennicote.

*

Soon after Hans returned to London I followed him there. Mamma agreed to my going. I believe she would have agreed to any move I wanted and thought might bring me a chance of happiness. Hans promised to chaperone me and that his family would care for me. Sir Hugo assured her of my safety and well-being in his Park Lane house, with his servants to look after me, and he, Lady Mallinger and their daughters frequently in town, and I assured mamma of my frequent visits home. I said she would see so much of me she would grow bored, that I needed her company more than she needed mine and she and my sisters must stay with me at Park Lane when in town.