Theirs Was The Kingdom (11 page)

With her ear pressed to the panelling, however, she thought she detected another sound, together with a smell that did not suggest rats. It was the sound of suppressed breathing and the smell that came to her, faintly but unmistakably, was that of cigar smoke. After a moment or so she was quite sure of it, sure enough to cross the room and put on her bedgown and slippers, but as she groped for the gown in the dark closet she heard a click and a scurry beyond the door, as of someone passing swiftly along the corridor towards the stairs. She went out then but the corridor was dark and she could hear Ponsonby’s high-pitched voice coming from the stairwell, calling out something to Sir Gilbert. She went back to her room for a candle and then returned to the spot where the corridor turned, opening the door of a large broom cupboard and holding the candle high, the poker still grasped in her right hand. Then she lowered it, for inside there was no mistaking the whiff of tobacco, and holding the candle at floor-level she could see flakes of cigar ash among the handles of the upended brooms. She saw something else, too, a small circle of light in the lowest section of the recess where it sloped away to meet the crossbeam of the bedroom wall. The light centred on a very small knothole and by stooping low she found she could see more than half her room, including the fireplace, the armchair she had been sitting in, and even a pile of underclothes on the chest beside the bed.

It took a moment or two to absorb the implication of her discoveries. Somebody, certainly a man, had been making a habit of following her upstairs, crouching in this cupboard with his eye to the knothole, and watching her undress, and the Peeping Tom could only be one of three, for whilst it was entirely possible that one or other of the broken-down old racing men about the house was capable of such an act, none of them would be likely to smoke a cigar whilst engaged upon it. That left Sir Gilbert, Ralph Ponsonby, and Lester himself.

She went out, closing the door, and returned to her room, sitting before the fire and forcing her mind to study the problem objectively, as though she was solving someone else’s dilemma. She kept the burning shame and indignity of her discovery at arm’s length, as something not to be contemplated, for she realised now that whoever had used that cupboard on successive nights during the winter must have seen her mother naked not once but a score of times. She thought, with relief, that she had never once used the close stool they provided, but had preferred to walk the length of the draughty passage to the huge, high-seated water closet, the only privy that existed in this primitive house; but it was bad enough to know that the wretch, whoever he was, had been able to study the most private areas of her body when she was washing in the footbath. The thought made her flesh crawl, as though she was being marched over by an army of bedbugs.

She pondered the suspects one by one. Sir Gilbert? Lester? or that ever-smiling hanger-on Ralph Ponsonby, and she decided at once that Ponsonby was the most likely, although she could not be sure. There was a factor here that made it possible the culprit was Lester.

She concentrated on him first, wondering if there was a link here with his deliberate avoidance of her that might be due to a terrible shyness, camouflaged by truculence. She remembered how unwilling he was at all times to be left alone in her company. There was something to be said for this theory. It was all of a piece with his baffling elusiveness, his obvious reluctance to consummate the marriage and, above all, his near panic when she had summoned him on the occasion her corset hook caught in the thread and had asked for help. He had appeared, on that occasion, almost instantaneously, and this might well mean that he had been concealed in the cupboard when she called and would assume, for a few seconds at least, that he had been discovered. All three of them smoked cigars, but somehow, although he had the reputation of having been a rakehell in his younger days, she could not imagine the old man hiding in a broom cupboard and squinting through a knothole at his nineteen-year-old daughter-in-law. He would be more likely, she thought, to do something more positive—pinch her behind, perhaps, or convert a paternal kiss into an embrace, letting his hands stray down the front of her bodice in the manner of some of the younger men who had embraced her.

Finally she eliminated him and that left her a choice of two, one who might prefer spying from ambush rather than taking what he had a perfect right to take, the other a man capable, she would say, of any small infamy that did not require courage.

It was a delicately poised balance, about fifty-fifty she would say, and she realised then that the identification of Peeping Tom was of terrible importance to her. If it was Lester, then one could find, within his odd conduct, reason for hope. At least it showed that he was interested in her as a woman and might, with careful handling, be coaxed to claim his rights as a husband. She wondered wretchedly if she was equipped to perform so delicate a task, regretting that she had not availed herself of all the opportunities she had had of learning more about men. Obviously they were not, as she had assumed, uncomplicated creatures, but could be even more devious than women. She remembered then, with a sudden insight into the sex, whispered talks among the girls at a party she had attended a year or so ago, concerning Mr. Ruskin’s recent divorce from the beautiful Effie Gray, who had subsequently married the famous painter, Millais.

She had forgotten the details, unfortunately, but remembered it had something to do with Ruskin’s inadequacies as a husband and that Effie had been a virgin after years of marriage. There had been a great deal of giggling concerning this, and the divorce had been a forbidden subject. So proscribed, in fact, that one of her friends, a very forward young lady called Caroline Coutts, had been put across her mother’s knee and slippered for daring to mention the subject at the breakfast table.

Perhaps Lester was like Mr. Ruskin? Perhaps he had something wrong with him, an injury from childhood possibly, that made him different from other men, and as she thought this there came to her, unbidden but vaguely welcome, a feeling of compassion for the sulky, elusive, boorish man she had married in such a prodigious hurry. If, indeed, it was Lester who followed her upstairs, then she could find it in her to be sorry for him, although she understood now that it was a situation that would have to be resolved one way or another. She could hardly continue like this, a married woman who was not married, deprived of all prospects of babies and the companionship of a husband. If, on the other hand, it was Ponsonby who was doing the peeping, then he had put a weapon into her hand that would surely lead to his instant dismissal from the family circle, even if exposure resulted in a scandal. In the meantime she had to be sure, and she suddenly saw a way, or fancied she saw a way, to tip the balance one way or the other. She would go down the backstairs, looking in at Lester’s room en route to make sure he was not there. If he was then it surely followed that he was the one who had scuttled down the corridor when she had advanced, poker in hand, against the imaginary rat. If he was not, then she was still left with the choice of two Peeping Toms and would make an innocent suggestion about putting down rat poison in the stairhead broom cupboard when they were all assembled at breakfast-table. It should be very easy, by studying their expressions, to decide who was the guilty party.

She went out and along the corridor to Lester’s room, tapping on the door, getting no response, opening it, and glancing inside. He was not there and she felt a slight stab of disappointment, closing the door again and standing, indecisively, at the top of the backstairs. She was still there when she heard the rumble of voices from the kitchen below and it occurred to her then that she might, conceivably, have been mistaken in eliminating the staff, for it was unusual for any of the servants to be up and about in the kitchen quarters at this hour.

Treading very carefully, for the old stairs squeaked abominably, she went on down, pausing at intervals to listen in the hope that she could identify one or other of the voices. At the bottom of the staircase, where a short stone passage led directly to the kitchen, she realised they were not those of the servants but of Lester and Ralph Ponsonby, the former’s voice predominating, with only the odd word or two contributed by Ralph.

If it was unusual to find servants in the kitchen after midnight it was even more unusual to discover either one of the menfolk in the rear quarters of the house at night, or indeed at any other time. She knew that they very rarely penetrated there, leaving the entire management of these regions to the slatternly cook, Mrs. Wighouse, and her motley staff of men and boys who had direct access from kitchen to stables.

Standing quite still in the passage, she realised that someone was eating at the kitchen table, for she could hear the scrape of knife and fork on pewter and this again struck her as odd, so that she advanced a couple of paces and, holding her breath, stooped and peeped through the giant keyhole. What she saw in the first glance made her gasp, so that instinctively she drew back, pressing herself hard against the stillroom door, her hand to her mouth, her body shaking and quivering.

Ponsonby was seated at the table, demolishing the remains of a cold duck and being waited on by Lester, whose attentions were those of an obsequious servant in that he bobbed and grimaced as he moved to and from the larder with pickles and potato salad and finally, a tankard of ale drawn from the barrel on the lowest of the slate shelves. Ponsonby, she noticed, was entering into the game, if game it was, acting out the part of the master as he flourished his knife and fork in a gesture that was half jocular, half menacing, and whenever he did this Lester cringed and smirked. Then, as he set down the beer mug, Ponsonby did something more positive, grabbing Lester round the waist and pulling him towards him, so that they stood for a moment pressed together, grinning at one another like a couple of sportive Cheshire cats.

The tableau was so bizarre, so out of key with all she knew of both men, that it was then Stella drew back, not knowing what to do yet realising instinctively that to intrude would provoke a scene she would be quite unable to sustain in the presence of Ponsonby. Intense curiosity, however, brought her back to the keyhole almost at once, but, although prepared for almost any development, what she saw now had the power to shock her half out of her wits.

Lester had a long sliver of duck protruding from his mouth and as she watched he bent within close range of his friend’s face and Ponsonby seized the loose end of the meat in his teeth and began to nibble so that their lips met in a kiss and Lester’s hand went round Ponsonby’s neck so that they remained in a loose embrace, exactly like a pair of lovers, and unsavoury lovers at that, with that scrap of half-chewed meat linking them.

Suddenly she felt violently sick, pushing herself clear of the door, groping for the handrail of the stairs, and somehow negotiating the stairway as far as the closet before she vomited, holding herself—half erect, one hand encircling the rusty pipe connecting the closet to the cistern in the loft. What she had witnessed had no precise meaning for her. It was outside the range of her comprehension and yet she knew, somehow, that it represented the end of her involvement with this man, this family, this house, and that it was absolutely imperative that she should leave it and them at once, before association with them involved one more night under their roof. She saw, too, dimly but with a curious certitude, that here was the real reason behind her isolation and deprivation, for she was not married to a man at all but to some poor creature who was neither man nor woman but a kind of freak, with tastes and habits that were foreign to every other male she had ever met or heard about.

The prospect of immediate escape braced her, at least momentarily, so that she put off thinking where she might go at this hour of the night and in a raging gale that was shaking the house. She only knew that she must put distance between herself and the two young men downstairs so that she was startled, on entering her room, to find Sir Gilbert sitting in her basket armchair, warming his slippered feet on the hob, just as she had been doing when the scuttle behind the wall launched her on this sickening adventure.

She had entirely forgotten Sir Gilbert, but at first it did not seem odd that he should be sitting there in his shirt and breeches, with his cravat removed and his sinewy old throat exposed, his lined face wearing a paternal expression and his silvered hair newly dressed with a pomade that emitted a scent that she associated with lavender soap Phoebe Fraser had introduced into the nursery when she was a child.

His presence there, serene and relaxed, caused her to falter on the threshold, but he rose at once, extending a thin, blue-veined hand as though to welcome and reassure her, and his voice carried reassurance as he said, gently, “My dear… you’re unwell… something you’ve eaten… Take a tot…” and he lifted a wineglass and a bottle of his favourite table wine, producing both as though by magic from somewhere near the fender.

She accepted the wine gratefully and without uttering a word, but when she had emptied the glass and set it down on the night table, she said, in a voice that did not seem to be hers, “I… I must go… Go home… At once!
At once
, you understand?”

He did not seem in the least surprised by the statement but replied, taking her hand, “There now, my dear, don’t talk of such things. Give the wine a chance to settle your stomach. Come over here by the fire,” and very courteously he made way for her so that her wits, so widely scattered, began to remuster and she looked at him closely for the first time, noticing not only that he was half-undressed but was studying her in a curiously intent manner, as though making some kind of assessment of her panic. She said, stifling a hiccough, “Was it
you
in the cupboard?” and he said, with a look of surprise that was obviously genuine,