Snow Angels (39 page)

‘She wouldn’t have me.’

‘Was this before you seduced my wife or afterwards? Look at yourself, Gil, what success, what achievements and what cost. And as for Father, you took away everything, even his dignity.’

‘You hated him too.’

‘Not sufficiently to make him watch the house he loved fall into ruin and the gates of his shipyard locked against him. I didn’t reduce him to taking handouts from his elder son, or dying in a mean, shabby hovel. How could you hate anybody that much?’

‘He turned me out.’

‘Oh yes, now we come to it. You bedded your brother’s wife, deceived your own wife and each of them in her way killed herself over it—’

‘No!’

‘Yes, they did. But Helen won. Her child lives. And you think that he’s yours.’

The sickness was a headache now and a dizziness but Gil said calmly, ‘Are you going to tell me that he isn’t?’

‘No.’ Edward looked clearly at him. ‘The plain fact is that my wife had you and me together, if you’ll forgive the bluntness. Contrary to what you believe, I do like women, I have enjoyed their bodies and even though my wife chose to give herself to you, she was so beautiful and I wanted her so badly that I took what she offered me. How naive you were. We were both bedding her. I don’t think she knew whose child it was. I certainly don’t.’

‘But you let me think … and you let me take him. You let me take the blame. You watched Father put me out because of it. You let me leave with him. If you thought he was yours, why didn’t you fight for him?’

Edward’s gaze was patient.

‘You’re the most capable person I’ve ever met. You had more to offer—’

‘I had nothing!’

‘I knew that if you believed he was yours, you would move heaven and earth for him. And you have. He’s happy and that’s all I care about. How happy would he have been if there had been more fighting, if the truth had come out? How could he have been shielded from it all? It was bad enough that he should lose his mother. He needed a solid background. You’ve provided that very well. I have no intention of upsetting things and I’m about to make the life for myself that I want. I have Toby. In a way it’s so much easier to love another man, and he loves me as no one else in my life ever has, completely and to the exclusion of everyone else. All I want is a little peace. I owe you nothing, you took what you could. I have to go. Toby is at my house making a daube, practising his French cooking. The smell of it will be halfway down the street by now. I don’t suppose we shall ever meet again. I hope not. Goodbye, Gil.’

When he had gone, Gil went to bed. He pulled a pillow to him and closed his eyes and willed sleep to come to him. At least it was night, at least it was cold, at least it was October. He couldn’t have borne that it should be summer and the stones of the house should be baked hard and the white curtains should catch the breeze beyond the bed and billow like sails upon the water.

That autumn Gil went out to the country to see Bamburgh House and was ashamed of his handiwork. The house itself looked affronted. Birds flew in and out of the empty windows. Inside, everything was wet and in bad repair. It looked worse in the winter weather. The lawns were knee high; the bare trees were as black as mourning and there was about it an unnatural silence such as he had heard only in graveyards before now. He had to suppress the desire to close the outside doors in some futile form of protection or reparation. He wished that he had not gone there and when he went back to his neat house in Jesmond images of the house haunted him. Even at work he could not put from his mind the sadness which he felt. He no longer remembered with bitterness being thrown out of there or the bad way that his father had treated him. All he could remember was standing in the drawing-room and hearing Helen play the piano. He had had to stop himself running toward the sounds.

He wanted to pull it down so that all evidence of her would be gone, but he couldn’t. His inclination was to repair it and go and live there. It was, he knew, the only way in which he would get his mother out of that awful little hovel where his father had died. She insisted on living there as though it was some kind of shrine, rather than a gloomy little street house. Gil gave her
money, but she mourned William and insisted that she could not move since Edward would be coming back. There was no point in telling her that he would not do so. She believed that he would and she would not listen to the gossips who said that Edward had run off with Toby. Her son could not have done such a thing and therefore he had not. She told everybody that Edward had endured a dreadful life because of what Gil and Helen had done, that it had been too much for him and he had gone, but he would come back. Many other people did not believe that men could do such things; his mother was not alone in her ideas. They could not have run away together, they had both gone but they had gone differently, separately. The Emorys, anxious to stem the talk, agreed with this and put about a tale that their son had worked too hard and that his mind was affected. Insanity was the easier option.

Charlotte would not see Gil. He did go once, but she would not answer the door and took to shouting at people through the letter-box. After that, when Abby went to see her, the doors would be locked and the house in darkness. Abby knew that Charlotte rarely went out. She thought that people were speaking about her and laughing on the streets. Abby tried to persuade her to come to them, but she would not move.

‘There is one thing which would work,’ Abby said, confronting him in the little office one November evening when the rain had poured down the windows for two days.

‘What’s that?’

‘You could take her to live at Bamburgh House again.’

He was surprised at her perception.

‘She wouldn’t.’

‘I think she would.’

‘It’s in very bad repair.’

‘You could put it right. You have nothing else to do with your money. I think you owe her that.’

‘I owe her nothing!’ He got up. He didn’t intend to, but he couldn’t talk about this calmly.

‘What will you do then? Let her stay there and go out of her mind, because that’s what she will do.’

‘Always straight to the point,’ he said savagely.

‘Don’t you care about her at all, not even a little?’

‘No!’

‘Then why did you let her see Matthew?’

‘That was for his sake.’

‘He’s not going to think very highly of you if you don’t help her.’

‘I don’t want to go back there.’

‘I think you should.’

Gil looked at her. She hadn’t changed from being a young girl. Her eyes were so blue and intense and there was that strength, that steeliness, which insisted on doing the right thing.

‘I’ll do it on one condition,’ he said.

‘Which is?’

‘That you come with me.’

‘Me?’ Abby’s blue eyes rounded. ‘I’m not going to live there. I always hated it. Besides, I love this house. Are you trying to tell me that you can’t afford to keep two houses?’

‘No.’

‘Well then, I shall stay here.’

‘Then so will I.’

‘Gil, this is my home. I was born here. I spent the happiest childhood anyone could have. My mother and father both died in this house. I love it.’

‘Then we won’t go anywhere,’ he said.

*

Abby couldn’t move him. She knew it was wrong. She tried telling herself that it was his fault alone that his mother was behaving as though she should be locked up, but as the days went by and all she could get from Charlotte was crying from the far side of the front door, she lay awake at night worrying about the responsibility. All she knew was that she had been unhappy away
from here, that all those supposedly exciting times in London and Venice and France and all the other places Robert had taken her were times when she had longed to be here in Newcastle. She could not give up this house for anybody, much less for a woman she had always despised as weak and stupid.

Even Matthew could not get his grandmother to open the door. All the contact they had was that if they left groceries outside, Charlotte would take them in. She allowed no visitors and she did not leave the house. Abby looked around at the four walls she had chosen instead of Charlotte and despised herself. She despised Gil even more for making such terms and didn’t talk to him, but when he did come home, which wasn’t often, he had missed tea and had to eat separately. Abby, from politeness’ sake, had to endure his company and make conversation and not throw her wine glass at him across the table as she longed to do.

‘Couldn’t we keep the house on?’ she asked eventually.

‘What would be the point?’

‘It’s always better to own property. We could rent it out.’

He looked at her across the table.

‘Have you ever considered what you might do if your parents really died?’ he said.

Abby went white; she could feel herself.

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she said.

‘Yes, you do. You’re keeping them alive by staying here. You still have your mother’s books and your father’s cufflinks and—’

‘Those are keepsakes. I’ve changed a lot of things in the house and you shouldn’t say such a thing!’

‘Have you ever loved anybody as much as you loved them?’

‘No, I haven’t and if you had an ounce of decency you wouldn’t hold your mother to ransom over something as stupid as a house! You waited until your father died before you did anything. Are you going to wait until she does?’

‘I don’t know, am I?’

‘You’re low!’ Abby was on her feet with temper. ‘Low and
devious! I don’t think you care about anything. You unscrupulous bastard!’

Gil sat there as though somebody was being rude at a dinner party and it was nothing to do with him.

‘When I think of what you used to be like,’ Abby said breathlessly, ‘when I think—’

‘Don’t think too long,’ Gil said and he got up and walked out.

*

Abby lasted three more days and then she went to Charlotte’s house, shouted her name through the letter-box and, when she could hear her breathing from the other side of the door, she said, ‘What if I told you that you could go back to Bamburgh House?’

There was no answer.

‘Charlotte? Can you hear me?’

There was another short pause and then Charlotte said, ‘I can’t though, can I?’

‘If Gil had it repaired you could. Would you like that?’

‘We were happy there when the children were little and we were young. We were happy. We had everything. I had jewellery and furs and beautiful gowns from London. And we had lots of servants and grey horses and … William was a good husband to me. I miss him.’

This had not occurred to Abby. Nobody thought of William like that, but his wife obviously did.

‘I couldn’t live there alone.’

‘We would come with you.’

The sentence was out. Abby heard it and knew there was no way in which she could retract it. There was silence from beyond the door. She wished that Charlotte would refuse, prayed that she would. Abby thought all that was keeping her upright was the fact that she was living in the house that she loved so much. She could not give that house up for Charlotte, there was no
reason why she should, yet things were not good at home. Gil had given up any pretence at family life and was coming home less and less. Abby was haunted with the way that Gil had behaved as they had grown further apart. She tried to reason with herself. They were not married; she was not responsible for him, but since Edward had left and his father had died, Gil seemed barely to notice anyone or anything beyond work and whatever he did when he was not at work and not at home. And Abby knew very well what he was doing. She had to tell herself not to panic, that Gil was not weak like Robert. He would not ruin them financially no matter what vices he took up and he would not take a gun to himself, he wasn’t made like that. William had been strong in some ways and Gil was like him. She was quite certain that, no matter what happened, Gil would be at his desk at work by seven in the morning. She wished sometimes that she could just go over to make sure that he was, because more and more he didn’t come back at night.

The day after she had made this announcement to Charlotte she actually tested this theory. Gil hadn’t come back that night and she had wanted to talk to him and not wanted to. Wanted to won and so, early the next morning, she got up and made her way across the town to the number two yard. It was the big place and he spent most of his time there. Work was fully started when she reached the office. The clerk in the outside office looked surprised to see her, but ushered her inside without a word. There was Gil looking as though he had gone home early the evening before, had dinner and gone early to bed. He was bright-eyed, immaculately neat and scrupulously polite. Abby did not know how to get past this kind of defence. She wondered where he kept his clean clothes, whether whores were offering a laundry service as well as the other kind these days. Nobody who had drunk brandy half the night and screwed some little bitch into the mattress could look like that, Abby reasoned.

‘Coffee?’ he said, having greeted her.

She shook her head.

‘Tea?’

‘No! I didn’t come here for—’

He looked at her attentively.

‘I want to talk to you,’ Abby said. ‘When are you coming back?’

‘Six o’clock?’

‘No, I mean when are you really coming back?’

He didn’t look at her. He leaned back against the front of the desk and regarded the rug in front of it with rapt concentration.

Abby sighed.

‘I have suggested to your mother that we should go and live at Bamburgh House and she has agreed. If I come with you and give up my father’s house, will you come home?’

He stood for a few moments before he said, ‘All right.’

Abby only remembered to breathe when she had left the office.

*

It cost her a good deal to say goodbye to the house she had loved so much. She felt wretched, but there was nothing practical to be done. Gil sold the house quickly, presumably in case she should change her mind and as though he had had buyers waiting in the wings. Once it did not belong to them, Abby was downhearted and wished to be gone before she could bear no more. Charlotte came to live with them and Matthew spent a lot of time with his grandmother. He and Georgina stayed up for dinner, although Georgina was inclined to nod before it was over. One such night, just before they moved, Matthew surprised Abby by saying, ‘All my friends are going away to school soon. Do you think I might be able to do that?’