She rose from the seat and went and stood looking down on the child, who was sound asleep now, and she thought, I wonder what the doctor said. I wonder what’ll happen now. If the report is bad, I wonder how it’ll affect him. She was thinking, not of the child in this moment, but of the master.
How it affected Konrad was to make him start a drinking bout such as he had not indulged in since the child was three months old and Florence had proffered her weakness as an excuse against resuming the duties of a wife. And this was the opportunity for which Bella had been waiting.
Two
Konrad did not begin to drink heavily until the day following that on which he had seen the last of the doctors to the train, promising him his instructions would be followed during the coming three months, and receiving in return the promise of a further visit to see what progress had been made.
Getting into his carriage outside Newcastle station Konrad had ordered Art Dixon to drive him to his club, and it was there he began his drinking in earnest. In an hour he put away an amount of whisky that would have knocked flat a lesser man; then, his gait still steady, he got into the carriage again and was driven back to the house.
It was dark when he arrived and supper was about to be served. Sitting in his accustomed place he refused all food, but had his glass repeatedly filled, and with an ironic twist to his lips he would raise each fresh glass of wine silently to Florence.
Florence sat at the opposite end of the long silver-gleaming, candlelit table, and from time to time cast a startled glance towards Bella sitting in her usual place halfway down the table to her right.
Bella sat facing the great open fireplace where the logs spluttered and hissed and sent out a red glow that mingled with the orange of the candlelight and warmed and mellowed everything it touched, with the exception of her face.
In answer to Florence’s last look of appeal she made an almost imperceptible movement of her head that only Florence herself could interpret, after which she applied herself to her food, keeping her gaze directed away from the figure dominating the table.
But Florence could not keep her eyes from the man whose presence not only dominated the table, the room, the house, but the world, her world. She remembered the last time he had sat like this, silently drinking and raising his glass to her; it was after she had held him at bay with her malaise as a fortification against his attacks on her body—thus did she think of his loving.
She told herself now to think of Gerald, to think of nothing or no-one but Gerald. She always felt braver when she thought of Gerald. Oh, if only Gerald were at the head of this table. But then he would not have sat at the head, he would have sat next to her, close to her. And he would not have held up his glass to her in condemnation, blaming her for bearing him a crippled son, which was outrageous on the face of it; but he would have made her sip from his glass, and fed her with sweetmeats as he had done only a while ago in London. At night, alone in bed, she shivered with delight at the memory, but now she shivered with fear as a decanter toppled over onto the polished table and the wine spread among the dishes and the silver while Konrad laughed as at some side-splitting joke as Slater hastily mopped it up.
As if fascinated, Florence stared at her husband through the candlelight. If he could become almost demented because of the doctor’s verdict on the child, what would be his reaction if ever he were to find out the truth? Even the thought made her feel faint.
Her eyes moved slowly now towards Bella, Bella who had been the mainstay of her life, Bella who had directed her course, and a hate rose in her of such power and strength that it overrode her fear and her body trembled with it, whilst at the same time she was amazed that she was capable of such feeling, for she owned to enough self-knowledge to know that she was a weakling, without course. But there was no grain of weakness about this hate; in this moment she hated Bella more than she did Konrad, for Bella had saddled her with the child of a tramp, a cripple who might also be an imbecile—these things went together. And what was more, if Konrad were to find out he would kill her. She knew for a certainty he would kill her.
When the thought came to her it was not new; she had been aware of its smouldering presence for a long time; but now she knew for a certainty she must get away from him and Bella. Oh yes, she must get away from Bella. There was only one escape route open to her; Gerald, and Gerald would be willing. It was only the fact that he was finding existence very difficult at present that prevented him from putting into words the meaning in his eyes; of this she felt sure, but the time would come. In the meantime she would be wily, and gather to herself provision. She would in future take to wearing her jewels, the new jewels, more often. In such ways she would accumulate enough to provide for herself and Gerald when the time came…for were not the jewels hers by right?
Bella would have been utterly astounded if she could have read her protégée’s mind; Florence, to her way of thinking, would never grow up, never mature, so was, therefore, without guile. At this moment Bella, for her part, was also feeling a certain excitement. The time had come at last to put her weapon into Konrad’s hands; the weapon that would surely rid her of that creature, who was not only the irritation of her days but filled her nights with such thoughts that she shuddered at the consequences of them, even as she contemplated following their dictation. In a way she acknowledged to herself that she was fighting the creature for her very existence.
She looked now towards Konrad. He was very drunk, but not as drunk as he would be later on tonight when his state would make his present one resemble sobriety.
For weeks now she had itched to tell him where that creature took her outings, but had she done so she knew that after storming and ranting at the girl and forbidding her to go across the river, he would thereafter deal with her in a reasonable manner, for the sly, cross-eyed witch that she was had inveigled herself into his good books. She could do no wrong; he treated her almost on a par with herself, in fact he used a tone to her that had in it a tenderness that a man might use to his daughter. No, she knew it would be no use accusing the creature of disloyalty when Konrad was sober; she knew she would have to wait until he had drunk deeply, then the very mention of the name Flynn would be enough, let alone the knowledge that his son’s nurse—she made a sound like a huh! inside herself even as she thought of the word son—was hobnobbing with the family who had frustrated him for years over the matter of the walled land, the eyesore, the cankerous thumb protruding into his sacred domain.
She actually jumped in her seat as Konrad, springing up from the table, gripped the top of the heavy armchair and sent it whirling across the room to crash into the panelled wall, the impact snapping its arm clean in two.
After the sound of the splintering had died away the room became quiet for a moment. He was now standing with his back to the silver-laden sideboard. Florence was sitting gripping the edge of the table, and Bella was on her feet, and they stayed like this as if transfixed waiting for his next move. But all he did now was to laugh loudly, then turn on his heel and stagger towards the communicating door that led into the drawing room.
Immediately he was gone Florence, trembling visibly, pulled herself upwards, and Bella, rushing towards her and taking her arm, guided her quickly from the room, but through the opposite door to that which Konrad had taken; and in the hall she hissed under her breath, ‘Go to your room.’ She did not say, ‘Lock yourself in’; there was no need.
Having watched Florence run up the stairs, she paused for a moment longer, then went towards the drawing room, deciding as she did so that he was mad enough now to listen to what she had to say; whereas perhaps later tonight, with too much drink in him, he’d be too fuddled to act.
The drawing room was empty and she stood for a moment gazing about her; then going out into the hall again she made her way to the library. There she paused outside the door listening, but she heard no ranting, not even his heavy breathing, and when, having quickly thrust the door open, she found this room, to
o, was empty, she looked back towards the stairs. He had forestalled them; he had known from experience what Florence would do; he was likely waiting in the bedroom for her.
She was halfway up the stairs when she had evidence that her surmise was not quite accurate, for now his thick, fuddled bellow rang through the house; even a glass candelabrum on the landing shivered. ‘Open this door! Do you hear me? I give you one minute to open this door before I kick it open…one, one minute I say!’
When she reached the top of the stairs she stopped and remained rigidly still. The passage leading from the landing was empty, which meant he was either in his dressing room on the right of the bedroom or in her boudoir on the left.
The house seemed now to be floating in silence; no servant moved, but she knew that they’d all be at their listening posts. The indignity of it curled her lip. Then she was lifted forward by the sound of splintering wood, and when she reached the boudoir door it was open and there he was taking a second aim with his high-booted foot against the communicating door.
She hunched her shoulders when the lower panel of the door gave way as his heel went through it, and he staggered and rolled as if he would fall. The door was not of the same stout quality as the outer doors leading onto the landing, its value being mainly decorative, and it was surprising that it had a bolt attached. Perhaps the answer to this lay in the fact that at one time all the rooms on this corridor had been guest rooms and the earlier Knutssons had occupied the suite that was now the nursery.
When another kick finally pushed the panel out, he thrust in his arm and shot back the bolt and the opening door brought him stumbling on to his knees. After a while, all the time shaking his head like a wet dog, he grabbed at the jamb and, having pulled himself upwards, supported himself by it as he glared across the room to where Florence was standing against the open window on the far side of the bed. It was when he left the support of the jamb and took two stumbling steps forward that she screamed at him, ‘Come near me and I’ll jump! I will! I will!’ and at this she scrambled up onto the broad window sill.
Perhaps it was the sight of her standing thus silhouetted against the backcloth of the night that sobered him somewhat, for he shook his head again, then drew the back of his hand across his mouth and stared at her for a full minute before yelling, ‘Jump, then, jump, and damn you! Do you hear me? Go on, jump!’
He made no further move towards her and they both remained rigid until he cried, ‘Well? Why don’t you jump? I’ll…I’ll tell you why, ’cos you wouldn’t hurt a hair of that bloody-vain-stupid-empty little head of yours. You let your child be crippled ’cos you were afraid of your figure. Your figure!’ His head went back and he let out a bellowing laugh. ‘What is it after all? Look at you! As flat as a yard of pipewater. And I’ll te…tell you something, madam, something that may surprise you. I, I want none of it any more; I didn’t burst in here ’cos I wanted to bed you. I burst in here ’cos it’s my right to burst in here. You’re my wife, and I’ll take you or leave you as the humour pleases me. But it doesn’t please me any more to take you, madam…Aw! Phew!’ His lips moved back from his teeth as he swayed on his feet; then bringing them together again he thrust them out and spat in her direction before staggering from the room and into the boudoir again.
Bella was waiting for him there, and he stopped and looked at her where she was standing with one hand gripping the top of the chaise longue, and he laughed now, deep down in his belly a rumbling, sardonic laugh. Then putting out his hand to an oak cabinet to support himself, his head moving with a small bobbing movement he said quietly, ‘Cousin Bella. Dear, dear, cousin Bella, go and comfort your lamb. You know, Bella—’ He now stumbled towards her, and when he reached the couch he put both hands on it to support himself and turning his head onto his shoulder and resting his chin against it and his tone thick and fuddled and deceptively casual, he said, ‘If you hadn’t come across her you would have married…Ah, yes, you would; you had to have something to coddle. Perhaps it would have been an old man, eh? But begod!’ His voice now lost the quiet bantering tone and became filled with bitterness, not against, but for her as he said, ‘He would have given you more comfort, Bella, than your pale little orchid. There’s strength in you, Bella, and you have a m–mind. Do you know something Bella? I’ve always admired your mind; you’re the only woman I’ve met in this country who has a m-mind. In Sweden I know two women with m-minds. My grandmother Knutsson, she’s got a mind, as clear as a bell, seventy-six she is, and her body straight, an’ her mind clear; and her sister the same, Great-Aunt Brigitta. You know somethin’ Bella?’ He still clung on to the back of the chaise longue but his head moved further sideways towards her now, and his voice just above a thick whisper, he ended, ‘That time I first saw you both, you know something? If, if I’d had any sense I’d have gone for you, wouldn’t I, Bella?’
He watched her thick pale skin redden, he watched the colour of her eyes darken, he watched her breathing deepen and then her teeth draw her lower lip into her mouth, and he wasn’t drunk enough even now for the reaction of his word to escape him. He turned from her, his head bowed, and was staggering from the room when she said in a thin whisper. ‘Wait. Wait. There’s, there’s something I think you should know…’ He had his back against the stanchion of the door now, his hands hanging loosely at his sides; his big face mottled with his drinking looked weary; but she hadn’t finished the sentence, saying, ‘about…about the nurse…’ before the weariness was replaced by a wariness, and he was asking with a defensive quietness, ‘What about her?’
‘She’s…she’s been going behind your back.’
His broad nostrils crinkled upwards questioningly as if he didn’t understand her inference.
‘I’ve…I’ve warned her not to but she’s kept at it.’
‘Kept at…? What…what you talking about, woman?’ He moved away from the door. ‘Kept at what?’
‘I think it’s time you knew that she’s a regular visitor across the river at that Flynn man’s house. I…I understand she carries all the news of your doings across there.’
‘Flynn!…Him!…Flynn! Over there! She goes over there?’ His tone, from being low and incredulous, was rising, and Bella nodded her head to his jerking statements. ‘Yes, every time she takes her leave.’
He turned his head first to the right and then to the left, and then he gazed down at the floor, blinking all the while, before looking at Bella again and saying, ‘You don’t like her do you? You’ve never liked her. You’re making this up…You tried to kill her once…Oh yes, you did.’ He was wagging his finger at her. ‘You’ve made this up to get me wild, mad.’
‘I have not, Konrad, believe me. I have watched her with my own eyes. Also I have seen him escort her across the river onto this land.’
She had touched off the right spark now. A Flynn, that particular Flynn, the one who had dared stand up to him, the one who had a feeling for land, to grab land, had dared put his foot on his land after he had warned him. By God, he’d have none of this! No! No! This was the one thing he wouldn’t stand for.
He swung round now and staggered down the corridor, across the landing, through the red-carpeted gallery, lurching against the couches and occasional chairs in gold and green which were dotted along its length, and, having thrust open a double door at the end, he crossed a small hall with a high, deep-silled window on each side, and went down another corridor until he came to the nursery door. Here he stayed his foot only at the last second from lifting upwards to burst it open. Pausing for a moment, he gripped the handle slowly, then pushed the door wide and entered the room.
A candle glowed gently in a red Venetian night-holder, and he staggered with exaggerated caution towards it where it stood on a table by the side of the cot, and in its light he stared down at the child. The hair that had been fair had darkened; the closed eyelids were like unshelled almonds; the skin was moist and warm tinted; the full mouth wet and seeming to smile. His son was beautiful, beautiful, th
e top part of him anyway. He forgot for the moment the reason for his visit and had a desire to shed maudlin tears over the boy, until a movement in the next room brought his body lumbering round and he glared towards the door before walking across the room. Again he stopped his foot from going out into a kick, but he thrust the door open none too gently, and there she was, the young traitress, divesting herself of her apron, her hair free of cap and ribbons, standing looking innocently but, nevertheless, surprised towards him.
He stopped in his shambling walk when she said, ‘Yes, master?’ He looked across the width of the little table between them and saw she wasn’t afraid of him, the eye hadn’t flickered. The pupil was almost on a level with its mate; she must be calm inside. Women, from young to old, they were the devil. Why wasn’t there some way to produce a child without a woman? He would burn the whole creation of them this minute, this one into the bargain, because this one played the innocent, and he had been stupid enough to have an affection for her. Yes, begod! He’d had an affection for her. He had imagined she was different. He had been sorry for the waif who had been washed up onto his land by the flood water. He had imagined seeing breeding in her features and unconsciously in her manner. But what was she after all? A tinker and a turncoat, a sly little turncoat, feeding in two camps at once. He would have none of that, by God, no!
‘Tell me, right out now, you go across the river to, to Flynn?’ His lips could hardly frame the word, for in mentioning the name he had the idea that he was elevating the young snot to the position of an equal. One didn’t make enemies among the common people.
Her eye flickered just the slightest now as she said, ‘Yes, master.’
‘You stand there…an’, an’ you…you tell me you go across to that man’s house?’
The Slow Awakening Page 16