“You wrote a letter to The Times?”
“Supporting Stead, and no bones about it. I’m sorry if it annoys Alexander's colonel, and Giles has to apologise for me to his prospective father-in-law, but they’ll get over it. If they don’t they can keep their damned favours, the pair of them. I have enough trouble with my own conscience, and my wife into the bargain!”
She did not seem particularly interested in his commitment. Either she had had time to think about it and had dismissed the entire subject as too dull to bother about, or her mind was on something more immediate. She said, with a shrug, “Well, I daresay you know what you’re about. Blow out the lamp and come to bed. You needn’t bother to shave, either. I’d sooner be sandpapered than lose myself in this great bed. It's like a desert when you’re away. I was hours getting to sleep last night. I cried, too, after you’d stormed off in that way. It was like—well, never mind, do as I say.”
He was tempted then to take her at her word but thought better of it. “I’ll shave,” he said, “while you take a quick look at this. I got it from Stead when he called on me this morning.”
That did rattle her a little but he went on, quickly, “It won’t take a minute to read, and might help you to understand why I broke my golden rule by writing to a newspaper,” and he took Elsie Griddle's dossier from his pocket, laid it on the bed, and went into his dressing room.
She called, “You’ll need hot water,” but he called back, “It's lukewarm in the can. The temperature was still in the seventies when I left town.”
After that there was silence, broken only by the rasp of his razor, the soft flutter of turning pages, and once, as he stepped out of his breeches, a stifled exclamation from her, coinciding almost exactly with a nightjar's screech from the paddocks. She was still reading when he came back into the bedroom.
“Well?”
“It's awful,” she said, “too awful to think about.” Then, “Why did you have to give it to me now? I was so gay and happy when I woke up and found you were back.”
“It’ll save a lot of tiresome explanation in the morning. At least you’ll have an attitude of mind when the children start asking questions. They’ll surely do that when they see that letter I’ve written.”
“Nonsense! I’ve never seen any of them except Giles open The Times, and he's sure to side with you.”
“One of the servants will tell them. Then they’ll all read it, take it from me.”
“Suppose they do. If you’re not there what on earth could I tell them if they did ask?”
“The truth, what else? We don’t want them growing up as green as you were, do we?”
She said, looking at the two photographs again, “Fifteen. That's Helen's age. And I still think of her as a child. Adam?”
“Well?”
“What's wrong? In this way, I mean. Whatever makes some men find pleasure in… well… haven’t they children of their own?”
“Some have. But they wouldn’t be likely to confuse them with Elsie Griddle.”
“I didn’t know,” she said. “That's all I can say. I just didn’t know. Most women wouldn’t, would they?”
“Most British women wouldn’t. That was one of the points Stead was trying to make. If they had let him make it, without falling on him like a pack of wolves, I wouldn’t have joined in, Deborah or no Deborah.”
“But they wouldn’t?”
“No. They’re out there now, crucifying him and licking their slobbering lips over it. He seems to think they’ll go as far as prosecuting him, though personally I doubt if they’ll oblige him to that extent.”
“If they did, would Debbie be involved?”
“No. He was man enough to guard against that.”
“But surely… I mean… if a man publishing a newspaper gets hold of things like this, isn’t it his job to make them public? To see everybody knows about it and stop it happening? What I mean is, those girls in houses and on the streets, the ones you’ve told me about, they’re different, aren’t they? I’ve always thought of them as women, old enough to do as they please, even though it always did strike me as quite dreadful that anyone could… well, sell themselves in that way, to a lot of different men, all kinds of men. I mean, it's hard to imagine anything worse from a woman's viewpoint and difficult too to imagine most men would want that kind of woman. It can’t be the same, can it? Not like you and me, all these years?”
“No,” he said, “not like that in any way at all. But we’ve been lucky in that respect. I’ve always told you so, haven’t I?”
“Tell me something else, then.”
“Yes?”
“Would you get any pleasure out of using a girl like Elsie Griddle? Would you?”
“Now? No, I wouldn’t. But I might have once.”
“When?”
“Before I learned about women from you.”
She sat up, her mouth slightly agape.
“You learned anything from me?”
“A great deal.”
She was deeply interested now, and flattered too, if the sparkle in her eye was anything to judge by.
“Tell me then. Tell me what difference I made, for I always thought of myself as a perfect goose in that way, and as ignorant as a baby about men. Sometimes I think I still am, in spite of having a long family. Is that what you mean about altering your outlook? Being a father, I mean?”
“No. The children are incidental.”
“Then tell me. That's something I should like to hear. Any wife would, even after all these years.”
He sat on the edge of the bed, looking down at her. As always on these occasions she seemed to him unchanged in any marked respect from the saucy girl he had hoisted into the saddle on the moor all those years ago, a little hoyden chock-full of impudence but capable of any amount of impulsive affection that she had used to light the lonely recesses of his heart. And even that was not all. She had brought him a loyalty equal to any he had ever enjoyed in the field, so that he had always been able to think of her, even on the many occasions she had infuriated him, as a comrade. Without her, what would he have made of his life? Would he have survived those early years, when it was touch and go from one day to another? Would he have thrown it all over in a fit of pique, returned to soldiering and taken the easier road to half-pay and the sidelines, like so many Swanns before him? There were so many imponderables. He might have made a god of money, like most of his contemporaries. He might even have married some desiccated girl for her money and grown into one of those old goats who found a few moments’ forgetfulness between the legs of strays like Elsie Griddle. None of these things had happened to him and it came to him now, not for the first time perhaps, that her gaiety, youth, and steadfastness had given shape and sanity to his life, regulating the demands of his body and bringing so much warmth and willingness to the exercise that his spirit had been set free to range and develop in a never-ending quest for an identity. It would not be possible, of course, to explain this to her in those terms, but there was something he could tell her that might help her to understand the contribution she had made to his life.
He said, “You asked just now what kind of man would pay money for an hour or so with a half-grown child of that kind. Not necessarily the kind you imagine. The desperately lonely, maybe, with no aim beyond physical gratification. I should know, for I was one of them once. Years before I met you, when I was in Scutari after that shambles in the Crimea, I paid a Turkish pimp for the use of a Circassian girl no older than Elsie Griddle. It wasn’t quite the same, perhaps. She had been schooled as a harlot before I met her. They have a different approach out there. Cruel and callous it might appear to Westerners, but kinder in the long run, if only because it's traditional. I tell you that now because I wouldn’t care to have you think of me as a man incapable of such an act, and because it's important that you shouldn’t undervalue your part in my life. If I’ve been faithful to you all these years it's to your credit, Hetty, not mine, for the plain truth is, in all
that time, I’ve never wanted to bed another woman, a stranger. That's the most valuable byproduct of marriage, I imagine—a growing together so that ultimately, at our time of life, two people are virtually one. It's been that way with me at all events, and sounds pompous when it's put into words. A poet might make a souffle of it but I’m no poet. I sense these things but I never find a way to express them well. I follow my instincts and instinct has governed my approach to you from the beginning. You had what I wanted and needed and were always prepared to give, freely and unconditionally. Why should a man with that need a harlot, trained or untrained? Do you follow that?”
“Yes, I understand, but there's more isn’t there?”
“Aye, there is that. It wouldn’t have worked if you had fallen back on that mock-modesty they’ve been cultivating in women, married and single, over here for the last couple of generations. Maybe that's the real root of the trouble. A full-blooded man wants a bit more from a woman than complacency, and when he doesn’t find it at home he goes looking for it elsewhere. That's why, to my way of thinking, the British are less moral in the real sense of the word than other tribes. They expect prudery and carnality from the same woman at the same time and what the devil can that lead to but hypocrisy in a marriage? It was time someone like Stead opened the window.”
He stopped, aware that he had been addressing himself rather than her, and feeling a little foolish when he realised that she could have understood no more than the drift of what he was trying to say. He was not surprised therefore to see her smiling, as though instead of struggling to enlighten her, he had set himself to amuse her. She said, “You do make it sound frightfully complicated, Adam. Even more than before I was married and had to rely on guesses. Put out the lamp and come to bed.”
“Damn it, woman,” he said, “you did ask me to try and explain, didn’t you?”
“You paid me the nicest compliment,” she said, “and I was fishing for a few more. All I seem to have hooked is a lecture and it's far too late for lectures.”
He turned his back on her then, partly to unstrap his leg but also to hide a grin. “Twenty-seven years married,” he thought, “and I still waste breath trying to teach her more than she cares to know,” and was confirmed in the view when, as he balanced himself beside the bed preparatory to lowering himself, he heard her pulling her nightgown over her head. She had always done that when she needed him, ever since an occasion in the early days of their marriage when he had compared its rucked-up folds to a bundling bag.
Yet he misjudged her for all that. She had understood, more or less, what he was trying to say and might, indeed, have expressed it more directly, although only to herself, with whom she had held so many interesting conversations on this absorbing subject since the first night he had held her in his arms. She cared about the Elsie Griddles of this world. Anyone with daughters of their own was obliged to care, she supposed, but she was neither tempted nor equipped to cross parochial frontiers into the territory of the Steads and the Deborahs who, unlike Adam, seemed incapable of striking a balance between the general and the particular. On reflection, and in the light of that pitiful story he had brought home as evidence of his own commitment, she was prepared to admit she had been a fool to quarrel with him on such an issue. He was right, too, to dismiss repercussions that sprang to mind concerning Alex's promotion, and Giles's engagement to that predatory little miss, Romayne. If those concerned hadn’t the good sense to see both as boys worth their salt then so much the worse for them.
He was beside her now and his arms were round her, but with half her mind she was still able to conjure with fancies prompted by that extraordinary admission of his concerning her role in his life. In so many ways men were unbelievably dense and he was no exception, or not when it came to evaluating the mechanics of a partnership such as theirs. Was he really such a fool as to imagine that she was primarily concerned with solacing him when he had her in an embrace, with the door slammed shut on the Steads, the Deborahs, the choked chimney sweeps, the ravaged Elsie Griddles, and even the long row of children that had resulted from their frolics in this bed? Did it never occur to him, for all his years of experience as her mate, that she had her own moments of exultation, that they were not merely physical but were nonetheless capable of transforming her into a person of tremendous consequence, who could patronise every other woman she had ever known or read about? He had his bonuses, she supposed, but they were paltry compared to hers. The act of possessing could surely never equal the act of being possessed, for how could it gorge the ego, as hers was gorged every single time she inflated him and emptied his mind of all those weighty concerns he lugged about with him all day and seemed unable to shed until the moment he could run his hand the length of her spine, fondle her buttocks, feed on her mouth and breasts, and ultimately, usually too soon for her liking, spend himself between her thighs and slip away into his own world again, until the moment came when physical awareness of her would reduce him to the same state of servitude. That was real power, power of a kind no man born of woman ever had or ever could exercise, whereas she had it in abundance, would always have it so far as he was concerned, and wanted for nothing more.
Lying there, still locked in his embrace, she thought she could tell him things about marriage, and love within marriage, that would amaze him, but there it was. Nothing would be gained by divulging her secrets, for one of the facts she had learned about men from him, and from his regular handling of her, was that they could never, ever, surrender the role of the aggressor, or regard themselves as anything other than the hunter and initiator. Why not let them live and die with this harmless fiction?
One
1
IT SEEMED TO ADAM, POTTERING DOGGEDLY ABOUT HIS CONCERNS, THAT THE pattern of his life was a long, uneven haul across a varying landscape, with an ascent here and a descent there, interspersed by long, flattish stages that could dull the senses and impair his judgement, so that a jolt, or a series of jolts, would leave him baffled and self-abusive, telling himself he had been a fool to lower his guard. For in his world, a world of catch-as-catch-can, to lower one's guard was to invite a bloody nose.
It had always been this way. He could look back on a dozen occasions when he had been caught napping on the box, and had had the devil's own job to prevent him and his concerns being run down or tumbled into a ditch. The financial crisis of the early 'sixties blew up out of a serene sky. So did the rail crash that cost him a leg, and after that, down the long, busy reaches of the sixties and seventies, there had been any number of rapids and collisions, cross currents and shoals. But always, being by nature a cautious optimist, he had backed himself to level out, adapting to new stresses in the way that had proved so successful when he shed most of his packload by making the managers custodians of their own pocket. As to the family, with the watchful Henrietta as his sergeant-major, he was still confident it could be chivvied along without much trouble and taught, in time, to look to itself, as he had had to do when he was younger and less wary.
The period between the late summer of 1885 and the early spring of 1887 was a passage over level ground. He was approaching his sixties then and inclined, more and more, to take the leisurely conciliatory course, prompted by his private philosophy that nothing mattered much, or not so long as a man retained his dignity and continued to trust his own judgement far beyond the judgement of others. Out along the network things prospered, and at home, after that one brush with Henrietta over Debbie's involvement in Stead's campaign, life went off the boil, nothing dire resulting from his enlistment in the social sanitary squad. Most people, he supposed, were getting a better social focus these days, were coming to understand that the countinghouse was not the powerhouse of tribal concerns but only the repository. Tub-thumpers like Stead, Booth, and that woman Butler were making a noticeable impact on the national conscience and this, in turn, was being reflected at Westminster, where some kind of compromise was emerging between the thunderers like Gladstone and the i
nheritors of Palmerston's laissez-faire society, men like Salisbury, who had just sent his rival packing.
In the meantime, in contrast to politicians who were obliged to promise miracles, the men of affairs—men of his ilk—occasionally achieved them. They had just driven tunnels under the Mersey and the Severn. A spread of new docks had been built down river at Tilbury, to handle the ever-increasing volume of Far Eastern trade. Catesby's dream of the fifties and sixties, the creation of a federalised workers’ force strong enough and united enough to strike bargains with the captains of industry, was all but fact. The final nails were being driven into the coffin of the eighteenth-century pastoral economy by the arrival from dominions overseas of the first cargoes of frozen mutton. In short, after a frightening wobble or two, the British had resumed course, the only course open to them now if truth were told. For under the flag of Free Trade they could continue to smelt, delve, and fashion for half the world, while the laggards of the era packed the holds of British vessels with the cheap food it would not pay home-based farmers to grow. Son-in-law Denzil Fawcett might rumble and grumble over this but, for himself, he faced up to it, had always faced up to it, ever since he had first read of Stephenson's iron road between Manchester and Liverpool, completed when he was a toddler.
As for the rest of the world, with its incessant clamour and its sporadic attempts to challenge British enterprise and British expertise, that was well lost so far as he was concerned. Sitting high in his truncated tower, overlooking the busiest river in the world, he had time, these days, to scan the foreign as well as the home news in the armful of journals that appeared on his desk each morning. What he read in them confirmed him in his belief that foreigners, one and all, were a noisy, clownish, posturing bunch, too occupied in striking attitudes to make a success of big-scale commercial pursuits. Sometimes their antics irritated him, exacerbating his impatience with the human race, but more often they amused him, so that he came to see them as a raggle-taggle assortment of anarchists, organ-grinders, sabre-clankers, peasants, pot-bellied, purple-cheeked trombonists, and mountebanks of one kind or another who would rather spend themselves throwing double somersaults and quarrelling outside taverns than roll up their sleeves and settle to an honest day's toil.
Theirs Was The Kingdom Page 64