Gwendolen (5 page)

I was the most beautiful woman there. In perfect surroundings, with admiring eyes on me, I felt exhilarated, less in awe of Klesmer, less wounded. I loved sport and I excelled at this. Luck came into it but it required skill. Though I was a newcomer my prowess astounded participants and guests. I promised to get one of the best scores. Among those superior people with their money, titles and airs, I so wanted to win the golden arrow – to be better than them or at least on a par. Catherine Arrowpoint had won it the previous year.

Brackenshaw took out his watch and said Henleigh Mallinger Grandcourt was late. He added he was always late and quite probably would not appear at all because he cared nothing for archery.

I did not want to hear that. Whatever Mr Grandcourt's failings, I wanted him to appear and admire and desire me over and above Miss Arrowpoint. That was part of the competition, part of the day.

*

I assiduously avoided looking towards him when he arrived. I concentrated on the shooting and, unlike when I subsequently met you, consciousness of his presence spurred me to win. Your presence made me vulnerable; his, at first, made me bold. There was applause when I scored three hits running in the gold contest. I was awash with compliments. Lady Brackenshaw pinned the gold arrow to the shoulder of my dress. I needed such triumph and for Klesmer to see it. Then Lord Brackenshaw came up and said, ‘Miss Harleth, here is a gentleman who is not willing to wait any longer. Will you allow me to introduce Mr Mallinger Grandcourt.'

*

It was as if my fate was decided; a smooth beginning to what would change my life from happiness to despair.

Mamma had given permission for the introduction. I knew in her mind she was further along than that. We all were: mamma, uncle, Grandcourt and, I have to admit, myself. Our momentous decisions are made on impulse. We decide in seconds and repent with our lives.

*

Face to face I was flustered, I blushed, resented my confusion and struggled to correct it. He was unlike my expectation, though I had no clear preconceived image. He was handsome in the English manner, his complexion fair, his features well-proportioned and chiselled. He was bald with a fringe of reddish hair, his hands elegant, his fingers tapered. He was an inch or so taller than I, our eyes were on a level; his, long, narrow and grey, expressed … I don't know what, indifference perhaps or calculation. There was no hint of self-consciousness or unease in his bearing. He raised his hat and scrutinised me, a confident appraisal, but he did not smile.

*

That was how I perceived him. Before every bit of him became hideous to me. Before I hated him with a force stronger than my love for you.

He told me, with a smooth compliment that seemed bleached of intention, that he thought archery a bore until he saw me shooting. He drawled when he spoke, with a pause between each utterance. His gestures were as languid as his voice. He intrigued me. He gave nothing away; I waited. He then asked if I liked danger. Such a non sequitur startled and thrilled me, though now I see I should have viewed it as the threat it undoubtedly was. No sport or adventure could prove more dangerous than his viciousness. I told him I was never happier than when on horseback, galloping, thinking of nothing, and that then I felt myself strong and free. (I wondered if he might give me a faster horse than Twilight.)

He said I might like tiger hunting and pig sticking, that he had done such things but now they bored him. His manner and demeanour suggested that all there was to do he had done, all there was to be killed he had killed, and that anything he wanted he might have, including me, but that at heart he wanted nothing. He affected boredom with everything. I told him I was bored with this neighbourhood, there was so little to do in it. ‘You have clearly made yourself queen of it,' he said, and I protested that if so I was queen of an insignificant kingdom.

When the contest was over mamma asked him if we might meet again in the ballroom. Yes, he replied in his bored, laconic way.

‘You can't find anything ridiculous about Mr Grandcourt's appearance and manner,' mamma said as a coachman drove her and me the short distance to the Castle. I replied I was sure I could if I tried but that as yet I did not want to.

*

At the Castle, at Lord Brackenshaw's ruling, women dined separately. He liked to quote Byron's opinion that a woman should never be seen eating, unless the meal was of lobster salad and champagne, the only acceptable feminine viands. I was scornful of this segregation: the lesser room, the smaller chairs and the assumption of lesser conversation.

I told the assembled women Lord Byron was mad, and in order to be thin ate only hard biscuits, or potatoes drenched in vinegar, and drank only soda water. The women thought me sharp-tongued. Only Catherine Arrowpoint talked to me in a friendly way.

After dinner we moved to the ballroom. The chandeliers glittered, the perfume of jasmine and lilies wafted from the conservatory. I loudly informed mamma I would dance only the quadrille and not waltz or polka with anyone. The ladies viewed this as attention-seeking and the dancing men, who all wanted me as their partner, thought me deliberately cruel. But the truth was I could not bear being held close by any man, I hated their breath on my face, the feel of their rough clothing against me, the proprietorial sense of being led in a dance.

Grandcourt, I noticed, positioned himself so he could see me. Klesmer commented on it: ‘Mr Grandcourt is a man of taste,' he said to me. ‘He likes to see you dancing.'

‘Perhaps he likes to look at what is against his taste,' I said, mindful of Klesmer's insult about liking to
see
me sing. ‘He may be so tired of admiring that he chooses disgust by way of variety.'

Klesmer chastised me for impertinence which he said ill-fitted my beauty. I explained it was a joke but Klesmer was worse than ponderous over the weighty business of jokes.

My attention was then caught by a fat man with a florid face and bulbous eyes staring at me with an expression that made me recoil as if a slimy reptile had crawled all over my skin. I asked Klesmer if he was a friend of his; he told me no, but that he had met him socially. He was Grandcourt's factotum and his name was Lush. He dismissed him as an amateur, ‘too fond of the mechanical-dramatic, too fond of Meyerbeer and Eugène Scribe'. I did not understand the reference but it was clear that as Klesmer thought him unworthy he must be so.

*

I took refuge with dear mamma. Suddenly Grandcourt was at my side. He asked me to dance the next or another quadrille. I looked at my card. Every quadrille was booked. I was glad to withhold, to be obliged to refuse. ‘I am unfortunate in being too late,' he said without a smile. I said I thought he did not care for dancing, that it was one more thing to bore him.

‘Yes, but I have not begun to dance with you,' he drawled. ‘You make dancing a new thing. As you make archery.' It was another of his considered utterances – between pauses as if in parenthesis, a cool compliment, like a morsel thrown for a dog who might please itself about ignoring it or picking it up.

I asked if novelty was always agreeable to him.

‘No, not always.'

‘Then I don't know whether to feel flattered or not. When you once had danced with me there would be no more novelty in it.'

‘On the contrary,' Grandcourt said. ‘There would probably be much more.'

‘That is deep. I don't understand.'

‘It is difficult to make Miss Harleth understand her power,' he said to mamma, who smiled at me and replied, ‘I think she does not generally strike people as slow to understand.'

‘Mamma,' I said with self-deprecating delight, ‘I am adorably stupid and want everything explained to me when the meaning is pleasant.'

‘If you are stupid, I admit stupidity is adorable,' Grandcourt rejoindered.

*

Such was our pretty exchange. What a light flirtation it was. Interest shown, conquest achieved. Grandcourt's stamp of purchase was put upon me. I saw delight in mamma's face. And then, in one of those chance happenings we view at least as serendipity and at most as fate, I had space on my card for the next quadrille. Lady Brackenshaw came up to say Clintock was
au désespoir
but his father the archdeacon had called him home on some all-important matter.

*

Grandcourt walked the quadrille, eyed me gravely and did not touch me. His seeming reticence so suited me. I did not know, I could not read, that his cool charm and flattery were as false and dangerous as the bright flies fishermen use to deceive their catch.

*

Grandcourt was my crowning triumph on that winning day. Among all the contenders I was prized to walk on his arm. He promised wide horizons, good fortune, jewels, luxury and servants. But there was a shadow: Lush lurked nearby, like Iago, watching, listening, scheming.

Catherine Arrowpoint came up to give Grandcourt and me details of the next archery meeting, a roving outdoor affair in three weeks' time, followed by a picnic at sunset
en plein air
at Cardell Chase, a pretty place of glades and elms which, Miss Arrowpoint said, would feel more poetic than a formal dinner under chandeliers. Lush interrupted her to inform Grandcourt that Diplow was more suitable for such a gathering: ‘between the oaks towards the north gate', he said, and I realised with revulsion that he was entirely familiar with Grandcourt and his residences, and in his confidence. And while Grandcourt provided me with pleasant anticipation, Lush, fat bulging-eyed Lush, with his oily voice and scheming manner, seemed to forebode harm.

To be freed from his proximity I told Grandcourt I should like to view the conservatory. Lit by Chinese lamps, there was the scent of flowers in the evening air and we walked in silence. Grandcourt asked me if I liked ‘this kind of thing'. I replied yes, not knowing quite to what he referred.

When we returned, mamma was talking to the slimy Lush. ‘Gwendolen, dear,' she said, ‘let me present Mr Lush to you.' I turned my back and said I wanted to put on my cape. Lush held it out. ‘No thank you,' I said. Grandcourt took it, said, ‘You had better put it on,' slipped it over my shoulders, asked permission from mamma to call at Offendene next day, then left with Lush.

*

And so it began: life-changing decisions made by sudden inclinations, vanity and rash daring. Had Grandcourt vanished at that point I would have forgotten him within a week. I did not stop to consider what it meant truly to know another person, or myself. I knew nothing of the world beyond the drawing rooms of Pennicote and the bewildering nowhere places of my childhood travels: nothing of the war in America, the struggles of the suffragists, the suffering of the workhouse, the customs and mores of other societies. And nothing whatsoever of the motivations of men, or of qualities that might matter, beyond chandeliers, paddocks and diamonds, when choosing a husband.

*

Within a minute of seeing me, Grandcourt decided I should be his wife. I believe he thought, ‘I shall have that.' Or ‘I shall break that.'

Even his name, and certainly his manner, suggested stately homes, servants, fine carriages and Mediterranean yachts. I saw his coolness as a haven. He implied boundaries, reserve, and distance from intimacy. I could not face my own terror of intimacy, its roots and implications. I had not so much as kissed a man, or held a man's hand. Over the next fortnight by some arrangement or other I saw him almost every day. Mamma and uncle viewed the marriage as made.

We looked splendid together: both tall, I beautiful, he haughty and understated. He had a habit – how I grew to loathe it – of lightly stroking his moustache. He said little, and exuded self-importance. I expected him to make few demands on me, allow me anything I wanted, indulge my caprices, love my follies, grant me freedom. I expected him to admire me and that I would control him. He would be proud to be seen with me on his arm in High Society: in London, Paris and Cannes. I would sparkle and be impulsive, witty and independent. I would take singing lessons, enrol in classes to study acting and dance.

*

Grandcourt arranged a lunch party for mamma and me at Diplow. His cousin Mrs Torrington, a steel-eyed woman with a slight limp, was in charge of preparations. Before lunch we all toured the grounds. By the lake, Grandcourt's spaniel Fetch amused us by plunging into the water, bringing a water lily to the bank and dropping it at his master's feet, like the spaniel Beau in William Cowper's poem ‘The Dog and the Water Lily'.

Grandcourt then invited me to walk with him to a hilly part of the garden. Alone together he said he thought Offendene too sombre for me and asked what sort of place I liked. I told him of my restlessness and resentment that I could not go up in a hot-air balloon, meet unusual people, or travel to Africa or in search of the Nile. I swept my hand towards the herbaceous borders. ‘Women must stay where we grow,' I said, ‘or where the gardeners like to transplant us. We are brought up like the flowers to look as pretty as we can, and to be dull without complaining. My notion about plants is they are often bored and that is the reason why some of them become poisonous.'

He looked inscrutable and asked if I was as uncertain about myself as I made others be about me.

‘I am quite uncertain about myself,' I said. ‘I don't know how uncertain others may be.'

‘And you wish them to understand that you don't care?' he asked.

‘I did not say that,' I replied, and ran off, back to mamma.

*

What did I feel? Anxious, exhilarated, flattered, hopeful, confused? All of those things. I hoped I had not been so capricious as to deter Grandcourt from this courtship. He appeared in thrall to me: he fixed on me and sought me out. I wanted the dignity and luxury I thought marriage to him would bring: the power to do as I liked, hats and finery and outings to the opera with mamma. I thought I could manage such a cool, undemanding husband, so restrained and free from absurdities. Rex was a boy, Grandcourt a man. I did not wonder about Grandcourt's life of thirty-six years, I had no curiosity about him beyond his interest in me. He told me he had travelled and hunted the tiger. I did not consider whether he had ever been romantically involved.