The Sleeping Sword (24 page)

‘I know it's past midnight, Grace—an hour or two past, I daresay. But look at it like this—if I never did anything wrong then you couldn't scold me and I couldn't coax you into granting me a pardon. And you do enjoy that, you know. Don't you?'

Yes, I enjoyed it, particularly at the end of a tense evening when the beef had been too rare, Venetia too flippant, when I had just—and only just—managed to keep Gideon and Gervase apart. I enjoyed his comic but slightly anxious apologies, my own grudging forgiveness quickly turning to laughter, his head nuzzling into my shoulder, those teasing, tender, enraptured conversations, his body still held with mine. I enjoyed it, even the taste and smell of the bar-room about him not displeasing me, bringing me a glimpse of a wicked, masculine world which—like many an indulgent, affectionate woman before me—I could not feel to be as wicked as all that.

He came back to me, we made love, and when he took himself off to Galton without warning and his father complained of it, I defended him, insisting I knew his whereabouts—for my own pride's sake, perhaps—when I did not.

‘Well, then, Grace, since he keeps you so perfectly informed perhaps you can inform
me
when I'm likely to see him again?'

‘Tomorrow morning, at the mill.'

‘Can you guarantee it?'

‘Oh—'

‘Good girl, Grace Barforth. Goes against your commercial instincts, doesn't it, my lass, to give guarantees when there aren't any. I'm glad to see you understand that.'

Yet his absences, even in that first year, grew longer, and an evening soon came when he strode into the house white with anger, his father a menacing step behind him, their quarrel locked in the library for half an hour before I heard the door slam, Gervase's step in the hall, and ten minutes later the sounds of a carriage going fast and precariously down the drive.

‘It would appear that your husband will not be dining,' Mr. Barforth told me, looking like a thunder cloud at the drawing-room door, his massive body still so full of rage that an outlet was clearly required.

‘Oh? Why is that?'

‘Because your husband, by his incompetence, has lost me a certain sum of money. Not a great deal—not by his standards at any rate—but that is not the point, is it?'

‘I suppose not.'

‘No, because money lost is money lost, and worse than that, for it involves an order, a contract—God dammit it involves a reputation. Because your husband was not where he should have been
when
he should have been, a certain gentleman who has done business with me for years has placed his order—his trifling little order—elsewhere. And if he gets good service and good quality he may do likewise with the next one—which may not be so trifling. Do you follow me?'

‘I do.'

‘Apparently your husband—my son—did not.'

‘Where has he gone?'

‘Gone? To his mother, I suppose. To his bolt-hole in that damned abbey cloister. He can stay there—believe me—for as long as he pleases.'

‘Then perhaps I had better join him.'

‘I beg your pardon?'

‘If he is to be at Galton for any length of time, I should go there too. I will set off in the morning.'

He crossed the room, lit a cigar and stood for a while with his back to the fire, frowning, the anger that had been spilling out of him in almost visible sparks subsiding now, the eyes he eventually turned on me losing their ferocity.

‘He has a treasure in you, Grace. I hope he appreciates it.'

‘Oh—as to that—' And then, approaching him carefully, for even in this softer mood he was still a very awesome gentleman, I said quite hesitantly: ‘Father-in-law, he has no natural aptitude for business as you have, as Gideon has. It is not easy for him—perhaps sometimes he needs to get away. And he has tried. Until recently I think he tried very hard.'

He listened as my voice, lacking the resolution at the last moment to complain of Gideon, trailed away. And then, drawing deeply on his cigar, he smiled at me with his rare, astonishing charm.

‘Until recently? You mean until Gideon came? Yes, I know he doesn't like Gideon being here. He was never intended to like it. He has to learn to compete, Grace, if he hopes to succeed. You know that. And if he can't learn—if he can't cope—then at least he has to make up his mind. Had he convinced me he was ready to take on the management of his mother's estate, I might have released certain sums of money which have been set aside for him. He has not convinced me. Has he convinced you?'

I shook my head and, his own head wreathed in smoke, he leaned towards me and gave what in any other man I would have called a grin.

‘There is a lot of money, you see, Grace. And if he parted company with me now, who knows where I might leave it? In his place I'd be inclined to wait for me to die. But if that's his purpose, you'd oblige me by telling him this—he can't have it all ways. Sooner or later he has to make up his mind, and if I were you, Grace—since I know you don't want to live at Galton—I'd set about making it up for him. I reckon you'll know the way.'

Perhaps I still believed that I could and so—short-sighted if not entirely blinded by self-confidence, by faith in my own future—it was Venetia, under my eyes all day and every day, who worried me more than Gervase.

Her docility had survived her honeymoon and had changed, very gradually, to a passivity I could not like. She had been eager and vivid. Now she seemed always half asleep and very far away. In her swirling apple-green silks she had been quite lovely. In her tall shiny hat and the mannish cut of her riding-habit she had been an enchanting madcap, worthy of any man's admiring eye. But her charm had stemmed from her fierce joy in living, her tumultuous eagerness for the future, and now, with that joy removed, her future irrevocably decided, she seemed unlit and empty.

She had no interest in the wedding-gifts which, her father's commercial reputation being world wide, continued to arrive by every train.

‘Heavens! what use are they? The cupboards here are full of such things.'

Nor could she be persuaded to apply herself to the writing of letters of thanks.

‘Venetia, I can't do it for you.'

‘Of course not. I'll make a start tomorrow.'

‘Why not now? Here is your pen, Venetia, and paper.'

But although she sat down with a good will, I found her an hour later fast asleep at the table, the one letter she had started crumpled in her hand.

‘Oh dear! I just couldn't
concentrate
, I don't know why. And then this wave of absolute weariness came over me.'

It was a wave which swamped her very frequently, washing her away to some hidden, comfortable shore each evening after dinner, so that even when our menfolk joined us in the drawing-room she would remain curled up in her chair, dozing and yawning and rubbing her eyes.

‘I'm so
sleepy
.'

‘Then go to bed,' her father told her.

‘Oh—' and her eyes would dart nervously to Gideon like a little girl who was asking ‘May I?'

She was still so pathetically anxious to please him that her very eagerness became a source of irritation, and ere long there were tenser moments, for Gideon's notions of how a wife should conduct herself were as exact as his notions of
haute cuisine
, whereas Venetia on both these issues had no precise notions at all, believing the sole purpose of food to be the keeping of body and soul together, the sole purpose of marriage to be love.

‘Venetia, I happened to see Mr. Rawnsley today and he happened to mention that his wife had been expecting you to tea and was—shall we say puzzled?—at your non-appearance.'

‘Lord!—oh lord!—next week, surely?'

‘No, Venetia. This week. Yesterday, in fact.'

‘Gideon, I am so sorry. And one day is so much like another.'

‘I daresay. Mrs. Rawnsley, however, had gone to some trouble, I believe. She had other guests—not local people—who were expected to meet you and who must have taken offence. Naturally you will be able to put matters right, won't you?'

‘I shouldn't bother,' said Gervase from the depth of an armchair, barely lifting his eyes from their perusal of the sporting press.

‘Wouldn't you?' enquired Gideon, his jaw tightening.

‘I reckon not. Mrs. Rawnsley don't rate so high in my book, nor in my sister's either, for that matter. And as for those other guests who were not local people, don't trouble about
them
. Venetia. Businessmen's wives from Manchester, stout old bodies whose husbands might be of interest to Gideon, I grant you, since he's rather new, after all, to this sort of thing. But we've met them all before, Venetia, you and I, and we've never cared for them.'

‘Oh—' She said quite helplessly, sensing, as I did, the snap of Gideon's temper, which we had not yet seen but assumed to be monumental. And for a moment my own voice speaking against his pent-up anger—against the pent-up resentment of Gervase—sounded hollow and false.

‘I don't think much harm was done. I met Amelia Rawnsley this afternoon and she seemed happy enough with my invitation to dinner. If we step in to see her for a moment or two tomorrow, Venetia, and admire the silver she worked so hard to inherit from that great aunt of hers, then—'

‘Please
do
that, Venetia,' snapped Gideon Chard to his wife and strode out of the room.

‘Well done!' drawled Gervase Barforth to
his
wife, withdrawing himself from the scene as effectively as Gideon by closing his eyes.

We made our peace with Amelia Rawnsley the next morning, Venetia becoming very quiet on the homeward journey, very listless as she drifted into the hall at Tarn Edge, totally disinclined for the task of sorting out the drawers of her writing-desk as she had promised, in case other forgotten invitations should be hidden there.

‘I believe I will go to bed for an hour before luncheon.'

But a great many notes and cards had been delivered to her of late, many of them, I suspected, unread, and since it was easier to give in to me than resist me, we went together into the back parlour where both our writing-tables had been placed and set to work.

‘Venetia, how can you find anything in such a muddle?'

‘I can't. That seems to be the problem.'

‘Good heavens! there is a note here from Miss Mandelbaum asking you to bring Gideon to meet Miss Tighe. Did you every reply to it?'

‘I don't think so.'

‘And this letter from the Sheldons has not even been opened.'

‘Tom Sheldon is a pompous ass.'

‘I know, but a talkative one, and a Member of Parliament—which always has its uses. Why do you think we contribute so heavily to his campaign funds? Obviously there are things we want him to do. And this note could be about anything.'

She shrugged her shoulders.

‘Don't you even mean to open it and find out?'

Again she made that odd, jerky movement of the shoulders, her head turned abruptly away, and then, quite shockingly, two fierce hands swept the desk clear of all it contained, scattering pen and ink and sealing-wax, letters opened and unopened, all of them unanswered, to the floor while she threw herself across the desk top in a storm of grief, beating her forehead and her fists against the wood in a deliberate search for pain. And when at last it subsided, all she could say, her face drained and pinched and horrified, was: ‘What happens to me next, Grace? What next?'

But she knew the answer, and getting up unsteadily she began to pat her face and her hair, making an effort to be as brave and sensible as her father had told her to be, and as she had truly intended. She had been in a state of shock and terror from which now she was most painfully emerging. Her speedy marriage, designed to screen a pregnancy which had not occurred, had removed the terror. And now the shock which had numbed her and cushioned her from reality was receding too, opening her eyes fully to her exact condition and the knowledge that it could never change. She had herself told me, many times, that she had one life and but one chance to get it right. The chance had come and gone and she had neither taken it nor refused it. Others had decided for her, manipulated her, moved her this way and that, and having submitted she had no choice now but to submit again.

‘Nothing else will happen to me,' she said. ‘I see that. This is all there is.' And I could have told no one how deeply her words and her calm, sorrowing figure moved me.

‘Venetia—?'

‘Yes, I see that. And I shall manage, I suppose.'

‘Do you care nothing at all for Gideon?'

‘Lord, yes! He is very clever and tries to be patient, and I fail him in everything. He will end by detesting me.'

‘I cannot believe that.'

‘Oh, but you may as well believe it for it is the exact truth. Poor man—he has a man's needs after all, and I cannot—Grace, let me tell you this for it is eating me away.'

‘Yes, of course.'

‘It will shock you, I know.'

‘That doesn't matter.'

‘Grace—when he touches me—in the dark—oh lord! what a state I am in, for sometimes he becomes Charles Heron, which I suppose is natural enough, but sometimes—and this is horrible—sometimes it seems to be my father lying there.'

‘Venetia—oh, Venetia, how dreadful!'

‘Yes. Quite dreadful. It makes my skin crawl. It freezes me. And how can I explain to him? How can I tell him why I have to turn away—how can I ever tell him that? And then I forget invitations from his friends and don't trouble to read their letters. Poor man! He has a sorry wife in me.'

‘Darling, it will pass, surely?'

‘Do you think so?'

‘I do.' And struck suddenly by her air of contrition and apathy, I found myself urging her: ‘Venetia, there is no reason to be so humble. He is not perfect.'