Dark Angel

by Sally Beauman

  There it was in her hands: a piece of clay. She could shape it. She would not be shaped by others any longer. She glanced toward Boy as she thought this, and saw he frowned, possibly daydreamed. She had half an hour at most. She must come straight to the point.

  “Boy.” She cleared her throat. Her hands jerked in her lap, and she clasped them.

  “Boy. I brought you here because I want to ask you something. I want to ask you to release me from our engagement.” There! It was said. Boy turned to her with a blank look.

  “Release you?”

  “I think we should end it, Boy. You know, in some ways we should never have embarked upon it. No, please listen, Boy, and hear me out. It’s better if we are honest with each other. We like each other, I think. We respect each other. But we do not love each other, and we never did. It was an arranged thing.” Jane drew in a deep breath. “You did it to please your father. I did it … because I was afraid to be a spinster. There! That’s the whole truth of it, Boy. And look at it—look how foolish we’ve been. It’s gone on and on, postponed until you finished Sandhurst, postponed again when my father died, postponed a third time when the war came. Boy, we’d go on postponing it forever if we could—you know that. All it does is make us both unhappy. So, please, Boy, may we not end it and be friends? You know—when the war is over—I feel sure you will meet someone else then, someone you love and truly wish to marry. Isn’t it better to admit our mistake now—to be honest sooner, not later?”

  “You don’t want to marry me?” Boy was looking at her, Jane felt, in a most curious way.

  “No, Boy, I don’t,” she replied, as firmly as she could. “And you don’t want to marry me either.”

  “You’re sure of this?”

  “Absolutely sure. This is not an impulse.”

  “Well.” Boy sighed. He gave a shake of the head. “If you put it like that, I suppose I have no option.”

  The alacrity with which this was said surprised Jane, who—knowing Boy to be stubborn—had expected more argument. There was also a lack of grace in the way he spoke, and this surprised her, too, for Boy had excellent manners. He was looking at her intently, his eyes fixed somewhere on the bridge of her nose. Jane had the impression he did not see her at all, but looked through her and beyond. Whatever he saw there seemed to evoke mixed feelings: Boy looked anxious, gratified yet fearful, and a touch smug. After a silence he turned back to the lake. Jane, expecting him to make a few conventional remarks about a continuing friendship, a continuing and unaltered esteem, waited. She felt she had done her part. Boy said none of the conventional things she expected. He seemed to ponder the matter, or possibly to count the rowboats. He remarked that it would be difficult to explain to his father.

  “Would people need to know, do you think? Would they need to know at once? I go back to France tomorrow.”

  This, Jane had anticipated; she was firm. She would tell Gwen, but Boy must tell his father. He must tell him at once, that night. Only then could Jane continue to visit the house without hypocrisy or misunderstandings.

  “Papa will be furious.” Boy shook his head. He touched his ear, and wiggled it.

  “Initially; perhaps. But it won’t last. He’ll come to accept it in time. Boy, you can’t let him rule your life.”

  “It’s just that he’s so set on it. He always was.”

  “I know. Because of the estates, I think. He might have liked to see them joined.” Jane hesitated. She reached across and laid her hand on his arm.

  “Boy, if it will help, you can tell him that would not happen in any case. I’ve decided—I’ve almost decided—to sell.”

  “Sell?” Boy turned to her in astonishment.

  “Oh—don’t you see, Boy? Why not?” Jane tightened her grip on his arm. Her cheeks flushed. “I’ve been thinking about it so long. Why hang on to that huge house, all that land? I don’t even want to farm it—I know nothing of farming. Boy, think: Do you know what that land is worth? Even now, with the price of land low, it’s worth a great deal. Think, Boy, what I could do with that money! There are so many organizations crying out for funds. It could do such good! Clinics, for instance. Just the price of two fields would be enough to set up a clinic. Three fields, and you’d have a supply of medicines. Boy, some of the people I nurse—they have things wrong with them that have been curable for years. They have rickets, for instance, because they can’t afford the right food. Or they contract tuberculosis because their houses are damp and cold. I know you can’t cure their lungs, but cold and damp can be cured, Boy. You can cure them with money….”

  This was Jane’s vision. It made her words race and her eyes brighten. She spoke of it with an excitement she could not disguise. It was some while, well into her speech, before she realized that Boy was regarding her with gentle distaste. Jane broke off. Her hand faltered to her mouth. Boy patted her arm.

  “I say, you are worked up. Slow down a bit, don’t you think?”

  “Slow down? Why should I slow down?”

  “Well, you’re a woman, for one thing. Women are not usually endowed with a good business sense—they haven’t had the training. Besides, it’s a big step. A very big step. After all, your father loved that place—”

  “Boy. My father is dead.”

  “And then you have to be practical. Clinics, medicine—that’s all very well. I’ve nothing against them. But what about yourself? What about investments? Presumably you want to ensure you had something to live on—”

  “When I’m an old spinster, you mean?”

  “No, no, of course not. That wasn’t what I meant at all. I just meant—well, that you must be practical. You ought to take advice—sound advice, financial advice …”

  Male advice, Jane thought. “I already have. I discussed the matter with Montague Stern, as it happens. Just in a very general way. He advised me to wait, for the present. But he saw no reason not to sell in the long term. He said he was certain I could find a buyer, and at a more than reasonable price—”

  “Oh, well, if you’ve talked to Stern.” Boy sounded annoyed. “If you’re prepared to take that man’s advice …” He rose.

  “Is there something wrong with his advice?”

  Boy shrugged. “There are … rumors. There always were. You can’t ignore his race. Shall we go back?”

  He held out his arm. Jane rose. She took his arm, which made her angry with herself. They turned back toward the path.

  One hundred yards in complete silence. Boy seemed unconcerned. He was back inside himself, protected by his uniform: male, mysterious, possibly anxious, possibly morose.

  “Was it here?”

  He spoke for the first time as they moved toward one of the park gates. The sudden question startled Jane.

  “Was what here?”

  “The accident to Constance’s dog. Floss. You remember. Was it here?”

  Jane looked about her. She gestured behind them, toward the sand track.

  “Yes. Just over there. It was very quick.”

  “It always is.”

  Boy turned away. He began to walk again. His cap brim shaded his face and his eyes.

  “Why do you ask, Boy?”

  “Oh, I don’t know.” Boy jiggled at his ear. “I gave her the dog. She wrote to me about it, you know. And then she was ill…. No reason—I’d just like to picture it, that’s all.”

  Boy was courageous enough in war, but he was afraid of his father; he told him of his broken engagement, but he took the coward’s way out. He delayed the interview to the following morning. He timed it so that once the news was given, he would have to leave for the station and his train to the Channel port almost immediately. No time for rage. He faced his father in his father’s study. Denton sat by a fire, with a rug across his knees. He seemed displeased to be interrupted; he was writing to generals and brigadiers.

  These men—to whom Denton now wrote every day—were all old. They were history! They had served in battles now remote enough to be in schoolbooks: Th
is one had fought in the Crimea; that one had lost an arm at Sebastopol; yet another had survived the siege of Lucknow and been a famous scourge of the Northwestern Frontier. These men had been Denton’s father’s contemporaries; he remembered them in all the splendor of their uniforms, when he was a small boy and they were the British Army’s Young Turks. To Denton they were ageless. He wrote to them because he believed they still had power and influence. He wrote to them because he was sure one of them would make inquiries (at the highest level), write back, and reassure: There had been a mistake. There had been a typical army cock-up. They had sent the wrong telegram to the wrong family about the wrong man. It was all an error, and his son was still alive.

  Many of these old men were dead; of those still alive, some replied. They wrote courteous, considerate letters from their retirement in Cheltenham or the English south coast. They regretted they could not help. Denton was not deterred. He crossed out their names and moved on. He was already exhausting generals. The brigadiers, Boy knew, were the first stage of his defeat.

  In his father’s study, Boy looked at these letters with a sense of despair. He had seen the war. He had seen men shredded. He knew only too well what was likely to have happened to Acland. It seemed terrible to him that his father should delude himself in this way; he felt a bitter anger against Jane, who had forced him to give his father this second blow—now, at such a time. Nevertheless, he had promised. The information was duly spelled out.

  Boy then discovered that Denton would not accept the reality of the broken engagement; it was no more actual than the death of Acland.

  “A lovers’ tiff,” he pronounced, and plucked at the rug. Boy found the room insufferably hot. “A lovers’ tiff. Nothing to make a song and dance about. You’ll make it up.”

  This sounded like a prophecy, or possibly a command. Boy had begun to sweat.

  “No, Papa,” he replied, as firmly as he could. “There was no quarrel. We remain friends. But it is decided. There is no going back.”

  “Time you left.” His father picked up his pen. “Pass me the blotting paper.”

  Boy knew when he was dismissed. He left the room. He was agitated. He paced up and down the black-and-white flagstones of the hall. He looked up the vertiginous well of the staircase, past the four landings to the yellowish glass dome that surmounted it. Boy felt dizzy.

  His bags lay packed in the hall; his father’s ghostly Rolls waited outside the door to convey him to the station; his farewells to his mother and to Freddie were said. Freddie had already left for his ambulance duty. In Boy’s pocket was a small leather box containing Jane’s engagement ring, which, the previous afternoon, she had returned to him.

  Boy juggled this box in his pocket; he shook his head and pulled at his ears. He did not know what to do with the box. Take it with him, or leave it here? It seemed a decision he could not make. He paced up and down twice more. He did a thing he had not done since childhood: He navigated the expanse of the hall one way on the white stones; he navigated it back on the black ones. Steenie came racketing down the stairs.

  “Where’s Constance?” Boy said. As soon as the words were pronounced he knew that was why he paced: The words needed to be said.

  Steenie fluttered about the hall, gathering up letters, a long scarf, a walking stick with a silver head, a pair of gloves whose color made Boy shudder. He gave Boy a curious look, and a suspiciously pink smile.

  “Connie? She’s out.”

  “Out?” Boy felt aggrieved. Military engagements awaited him. His return to the war surely deserved more ceremony than an empty hall and a distracted brother.

  “Boy, honestly! Your memory is like a sieve! Connie said goodbye at breakfast.” Steenie fiddled with his gloves. He put them on. He smoothed supple yellow pigskin against his fingers.

  “I need to speak to her. Out where?”

  “Aren’t these divine?” Steenie was still admiring the gloves. “I only bought them yesterday. Now, Boy, I must rush. No long farewells—I hate them.”

  Steenie hesitated. It occurred to Boy that, beneath the fuss with the gloves, Steenie was embarrassed. They looked at each other. Steenie tossed his scarf over his shoulder. He moved toward the door. Steenie had a new way of walking that Boy distrusted, a walk that resembled a glide, the hips advancing, the upper part of his torso at an exaggerated angle, leaning back. He touched the doorknob, turned back. He laid one yellow-gloved hand on Boy’s uniformed arm.

  “Boy, I shall think of you. And I will write. You know I always write. You will take care?”

  Boy did not quite know what to do. He was touched, for it was true that Steenie did write, often; his letters were long, amusing, undaunted, decorated with drawings. Boy, who read and reread them in the trenches, had found—somewhat to his surprise—that they were comforting. Oblique—but comforting. He felt he might like to embrace his brother, but, in the end, he shook his hand. A military handshake; his eyes watered.

  Steenie always fenced with emotion. He at once backed off. En garde: quick glittering blocking swishes of his foil. He made one, two, three inconsequential remarks: the weather, the waiting motorcar, his impending visit to a new gallery.

  These remarks shamed Steenie, a little. Boy stood on a white stone flag; he stood on a black one: he saw himself and his brother from a distance, two figures on a chessboard, blocked. Boy could not say what he felt, because he believed it right to be manly; Steenie could not say what he felt, because he distrusted the spoken word. As he had said to Wexton, it was always too approximate. With this, Wexton did not agree.

  “How absurd we are,” Steenie said, foil glittering. Then, repenting, he made a rush at Boy and gave him a hug.

  Steenie was wearing scent; Boy recoiled.

  “I’ll give Connie a message if you like.” Steenie was repenting still.

  Boy picked up one of his bags and inspected the label on it. “No. It doesn’t matter. It was nothing important.” Boy continued to inspect the label, as if it contained some secret message. It was addressed by rank and title, followed by numbers.

  “Where is she anyway?” He straightened up.

  “She’s gone to Jenna’s wedding. Boy—you know that.”

  Steenie knew he was about to burst into tears. When Steenie cried he made an exhibition of himself: The tears spouted; they smudged his mascara; they made runnels in the rice powder he applied to his cheeks. He distrusted tears as much as words; he knew he cried too easily.

  Meanwhile it was possible—always possible—that he would not see his brother again.

  Steenie made another rush, this time for the front door. He called his final goodbye over his shoulder.

  “It was terrible,” he said to Wexton some while later. “Boy can’t say what he feels, and neither can I. What’s wrong with us, Wexton? I do love him, you know.”

  Wexton smiled. “I expect he’s noticed,” he said.

  The wedding was in a church. (Jane did not believe in registry offices.) The church was south of the river, august Victorian gothic, an island surrounded by slums. The church was cold: as cold as charity, Constance thought. An English summer could not be relied upon: Outside, the weather was squally.

  The congregation was sparse. On the bride’s side of the aisle sat Jane and Constance, side by side in a front pew. Constance’s small feet rested on a tapestry hassock. She sat and flicked at the prayer book; Jane knelt and—presumably—prayed.

  On the bridegroom’s side of the aisle there was a better turnout. Hennessy’s family was not present. He was represented by the Tubbs family, out in force. There was one large woman with a worn but kind face, and several girls of varying ages who must be Arthur Tubbs’s younger sisters. There were five of them; the youngest was about four years old, the eldest about fifteen. The fifteen-year-old, Jane had whispered, was Florrie, with whom Jenna shared a room. Florrie worked nearby, packing shells in a munitions factory that was one of several south of the river owned by Sir Montague Stern.

  Florrie looke
d thin and jaundiced; her skin was yellowish. Like the rest of the family, she wore serge. On her feet were buttoned boots, which looked several sizes too large. The youngest child wore woolen mittens with the fingers cut out. All looked excited. To the serge, they had pinned nosegays. Constance sniffed; she could smell poverty. It emanated not just from the Tubbs family but from the church itself, which had an air of keeping up appearances in grinding circumstances.

  Once, perhaps, more prosperous families had worshipped here. Ranks of stained-glass saints and dragon-slayers celebrated their memory and their acts of piety; there were neat slabs commemorating them upon the walls. Constance could hear their ghosts, these merchantmen and their wives; she heard the men rustle the pages of their hymn books; their beards brushed her cheek.

  Outside, the streets stank. The houses had a bowed, hopeless look, cramped in upon one another, seething. The children ran in the stinking streets in bare feet; they made toys from rubbish. These streets shocked Constance (who rarely ventured far south of the park, let alone the river). She felt they shocked the fabric of the church also, but in a different way. The church was affronted by this decline in the neighborhood; it reared up its black iron railings, the granite of its headstones; it slammed its great oak doors. It turned its back. It did its best; it smelled of incense, but also scrubbing buckets. There were two arrangements of flowers, provided by Jane. They stood either side of the altar, framing the backs of the bridegroom and best man. Dahlias, with large spiky heads and stiff stalks; they were orange and scarlet, acid-yellow and ineptly arranged. Constance looked at them with hatred.