The Sleeping Sword (29 page)

But the
Cullingford Star
, from its squalid little offices in Gower Street, expected it, and availing himself of the services of a chemist—paid for, one supposed, by Grandmamma Elinor—Liam Adair had purchased loaves from every baker in Cullingford and its environs, sent them for analysis and published his results, naming the place of origin of all bread in which traces of chalk or alum or any other dubious ingredient had been found.

The ground-floor windows of the
Star
had been broken a night or two later, and for the sake of expediency had been roughly boarded up again, since the following week he had printed a tale of dried ash leaves added as a makeweight to someone's tea, and mentioned the sour welcome he had received in certain ale-houses, which had caused him to suspect that their landlords had
something
to hide.

He had, of course, increased the circulation of his paper and thoroughly enjoyed himself, but Liam, while not for one moment forgetting either his profits or his pleasures, had the Irishman's instinctive sympathy for the oppressed, and Disraeli's Act to control the sale of food and drugs had pleased him at a more personal level than he cared to admit. He had no real conviction that it would be adequately enforced, no real convictions about anything, or so he insisted; but sitting at ease in my mother-in-law's parlour, his long legs stretched out to the fire, he could easily be persuaded to tell us, with a chuckle, about the shopkeepers who put up their shutters rather than sell him a pound of tea or coffee, and of the landlady who, as the sister of a local baker, had felt obliged to ask him to return the keys of his lodgings and move on.

‘What next, Liam?' breathed Venetia.

‘Oh, something will turn up. There's always a crusade.'

‘A crusade? I hadn't thought of that. Now
I
would have gone on a real crusade, Liam—sold all my possessions and set off without even a map to rescue the Holy Land. But not you.'

‘No, not I. I'd get myself a map all right, which would make me a useful man to meet in the desert. Because one has to get back, you know.'

But Venetia laughed and shook her head. ‘Oh no, Liam, if one thought about getting back safe and sound that wouldn't be a
crusade
, don't you see—just an expedition. The whole point of a crusade, surely, is that one gives everything—one just goes forward and does what must be done, without a thought for what happens after?
That
is what I call a crusade. Had I been a knight in the Middle Ages—yes, do you know, I would have been very comfortable with that. I would have been right for it—don't you think so?'

I did, and for just a moment I felt a prickle of unease, a premonition, perhaps, which began to take shape and was then scattered by her frank, wholehearted laughter. She had been constrained and silent with Liam for a long time after her marriage. She had been constrained and silent with everyone, but now, in her mother's house, it was a delight to see the return of her vivacity.

I asked her no questions, for the facts of her life remained the same. She, who had believed so ardently in love, had married for convenience, and it would have been too much to expect that Life, or Destiny or whatever one might choose to call it, should now arrange by way of compensation for her to fall in love with her husband. But human nature finds its own compensations, acquires the good sense to compromise—at least
my
nature intended to do so—and perhaps she too was learning now to live with herself and with Gideon. I hoped so, and was dismayed to be so soon proved wrong.

There was a day of strong sunshine and sparkling frost, glorious holiday weather which had Venetia and her mother out of doors by early morning, so that I was alone when Gideon came, his arrival producing in me a condition I could only describe as flustered, an enormous reluctance to admit, even in the veiled phrases of good society, the physical and sexual nature of my malady. At Tarn Edge I concerned myself with his dinner, ordered his carriage to take him to the station, kept his bed well aired for his return, and was as remote from him as the owner of a good hotel is remote from her guests. But here, where we were both guests together, it was not the same. Here I was obliged to meet him, not as a brother-in-law or a second cousin, but as a man whose presence, for reasons I saw no sense in examining too closely, embarrassed me so much that I was glad when the excited yelping of a dog advised us of the approach of Venetia.

She had been heaven knew where, following the wind and weather like a gypsy, her arms full of heather gathered for good luck, the tangy fragrance of the moorland all about her; unkempt perhaps—for the hem of her dress was splashed and stained, and her hands clutching the purple heather were not clean—but enchanting, a woman, surely, who was like no other?

‘Good God, what have we here?' said Gideon, by no means displeased with her, looking, on the contrary, as if this gypsy charm could please him enormously, could please her too if she would allow him to show her the way. But it was not to be.

She had not seen him for ten days and now—taken completely unawares—she stared at him aghast, as if she had forgotten his very existence and was now most painfully remembering, her vivacity draining from her and leaving her no longer a captivating woodland nymph but a rather awkward young lady who no longer knew what to do with that armful of heather.

She put it down on the table and spent a moment retrieving the sprigs which fell to the ground, the dog which had come in with her yapping around her heels in shrill excitement, leaping on and off the chintz-covered armchairs, treating us all to the antics of a half-trained, muddy and extremely boisterous pup until Gideon, who was no longer smiling, said coldly, ‘Should that dog be allowed in the house?'

And when, looking as flustered as I had felt ten minutes before, she failed to retrieve the playful little hound, he eventually took it by the scruff of its neck and dropped it none too gently through the parlour window.

‘Until a dog can behave, it should stay outdoors.'

‘I suppose it should.'

‘There are no dogs allowed inside, ever, at Listonby.'

‘Well, you country people don't really care for animals. You eat them, or ride them, or train them to retrieve your game-birds for you—
work
for you, in fact—but you don't
like
them.'

‘Really?'

‘Yes, really. And of course you kill them too. But never mind. Have you been here long, Gideon?'

‘No,' he snapped. ‘Not long. And I cannot stay long either. I thought you might care to come home with me now, since Grace comes back tomorrow.'

‘Yes, of course,' she said, because those were the words assigned to the role she had been given to play in life. ‘That seems a good idea. I will tell them to pack my things. How long before we must leave?'

‘An hour.'

‘Yes.'

And smiling, she turned dutifully away, her manner telling me that there had been no compromise, no adjustment, that these ten happy days had been, quite simply, a reprieve which now was over.

I remember no precise moment, no single event, no threshold between the condition of a woman who, having once been happy and loved, believed she could be so again and a woman in true emotional disarray, whose marriage—like so many others—was no more than a financial and physical convenience, a hollow but indissoluble sham. The two conditions, it seemed, had blended together, had perhaps always simultaneously existed, the condition of failure gradually becoming the stronger until it had absorbed the other.

I had allowed the silence to fall between us because I had been too weak to break it and when I regained my strength I could think of nothing to say. Gervase brought me home from Galton. He enquired carefully as to the progress of my health, ate his dinner more often than not at my table, slept in my bed. He gave me his escort and his company when the social niceties required it. He behaved, in public, as a husband and I as a wife, and in private we remained polite.

We even became lovers again, or rather he reclaimed his conjugal rights, since I could not glorify what passed between us by the name of love-making; his body, which had turned its fastidious back to me all night, being drawn to mine sometimes in the moment of half-waking, a performance part duty, part need, which any nameless female could have satisfied and during which I lay quite still, as nameless females do, despising myself for this submission, despising him for accepting it. But the law, which called me his wife, forced me to give him free use of my body whenever he required it. He was not even obliged to ask, simply to take, and gradually, as the rift widened, I learned how to insult him with my passivity as his hurried satisfactions insulted me. And when we had reached that dismal stage I was no worse, perhaps, than those many thousands of other women for whom this side of marriage had always been a burden, or those many thousands of others who prided themselves on their skill in avoiding it altogether; except that it had not always been so with us.

Nor could I recall any single moment when I became certain of his infidelity. I merely anticipated it, so that by the time I became aware of it I understood that it had already been taking place for some time; and although I suffered I was not surprised. He was not, at the start, unfaithful to me with Diana Flood, as I might have expected, nor with anyone else I could identify. I simply knew that there was someone, and then someone else, learning with a delicate species of self-torture to read the signs, an indefinable but to me quite unmistakable air about him that fluctuated from wariness to nervous gaiety, from a brooding self-disgust to a bruised and satiated fatigue, his humour varying with the woman who—for the days or the hours these affairs lasted—had tempted him, amused him, consoled him, briefly delighted him, left him only half satisfied, or who had revealed, in a few cases, some new aspect of his carnal nature which in the clear daylight appalled him.

And I did nothing.

Even on the summer night when, strolling into the cloister at Galton, I saw him at the far end of the tunnel kissing the bare shoulders of a woman I vaguely took to be one of Blanche's London friends, I did nothing. I simply turned and hurried away, thankful he had not seen me, hoping the woman had not seen me either. I did nothing because I was proud, and afraid, and for the stark and simple reason that I could think of nothing to do. I was a betrayed wife. So were hundreds of thousands of others. Woman was, by nature and by necessity, a faithful animal. Man was not. Brood mares stayed peacefully with the herd. Stallions ran wild. ‘My dear,' I could imagine a dozen female voices murmuring to me, ‘men are simply made that way. You must forgive him and understand.' And above the other voices would be Mrs. Rawnsley's shrill, smug whisper; ‘Make him buy you something, Grace, to apologize—something really expensive. I always do.'

I could not tolerate those whispers.

There was, of course, the time-honoured and possibly effective method of running home to my father. But I could not do that either, knowing as I did what my happiness meant to him. He had had few joys in his life. His main concern now was that I should have joy in mine, and I was determined above all not to let him down. He desired to see me happy. He
would
see me happy. He
did
see me happy. It was the least I could do for the man who had done so much for me. And even had I been tempted to weaken—and I was not tempted—I could never have contemplated the possibility of sharing a home with Mrs. Agbrigg again.

But even so, had I retained just a small measure of hope, I might not have been so scrupulous. Had I believed it possible to be truly reconciled, I might have turned to anyone, resorted to anything which might have brought it about. But I well knew that Gervase's neglect of me and his infidelity were in themselves only symptoms of the disease. The real tragedy—and so I named it—lay in the one simple fact that my husband, who had thought he loved me, no longer did so, no longer found me desirable nor even interesting. And how could I, or anyone, remedy that?

There had been no physical violence, no public humiliation, no tangible insult with which his father or mine could grapple. He was not, after all, keeping a mistress in style and leaving me to starve. Nor did he flaunt himself and his women in local places of entertainment as Mr. Rawnsley had been known to do. He had never subjected me to any unnatural form of lust, nor infected me with any form of disease. He ‘pleased himself', as Cullingford put it, rather too often, but so did plenty of others, and although it was all very regrettable no one would really have thanked me for making a fuss.

I did not make a fuss, for my own and for my father's sake. I had chosen to marry a difficult man and those who had warned me against him—Mrs. Agbrigg the chief among them—had been right. I had believed in his love and it had not lasted. And I preferred to suffer the lack of it than make any attempt to force him or shame him into some feeble pretence.

The love and the need, then, were both over, but the marriage would last for the rest of our lives. The shell remained. I could leave it empty or I could fill it with venom, but either way I became obsessed with my determination to keep that shell intact. No one must know. And when I realized the impossibility of this—since the women who received Gervase's attentions knew, and their friends, and their maids—I once again adopted the shameful device of pretending not to care.

What did not trouble me need trouble no one else—I had learned that on the night of the Listonby ball and had lost my baby—and I became an expert at the indulgent smile, implying, ‘Heavens! of
course
men are made that way, the poor darlings. What can it signify?'; expert too at the unruffled greeting, making no more and no less of the suspected mistress, the current fancy, than of anyone else, introducing Gervase's name into my conversation no more and no less than I had always done and keeping myself busy—busy—busy, so that it could be said ‘Dear Grace, she is so occupied with her organizing and her entertaining that it is hardly surprising she does not notice—', or ‘Grace Barforth—good heavens! of
course
she notices. What of it? She has that mansion to live in, hasn't she, and what does she care for the man so long as she can have the spending of his money?' And if the rumours climbed the hill to Fieldhead, then I knew that Mrs. Agbrigg—who could not be eager to share her home with me either—would have the good sense and the skill to keep them from my father.