“Such a sad face.” He drew back, tilted her face up to look at him. “Such a very sad face. Why is that? Have I made you unhappy?”
“A little.”
“Tell me why. It was not my intention.”
“I’m not sure. I might not want to live at Winterscombe. Or anywhere near Winterscombe. It reminds me too much of the past. Of my father—”
“Then we will forget that idea and build our little empire somewhere else. Think about it for a while, and then, if that is what you decide, we will change our plans.” He paused. “I think … it is not just Winterscombe, is it? There is something else?”
“I suppose so. I … Do you like me, Montague?”
“Such a question, from a wife to her husband! Of course I like you, Constance. I like you very much.” He frowned. “Perhaps I do not express myself very well. It’s my nature to be indirect. I have tried to make you see—” He stopped.
“Could you … almost love me, Montague?” Constance darted out her hands and caught his in an impulsive and pleading way. “It would be enough, I think—if you could almost love me.”
“Shall I tell you something?” Stern drew back. “It may answer your question. I’ve been certain—of my interest in you, of my concern, for a long time. Would you like to know when it was that I first noticed you?”
“Yes.”
“When we went to the opera, to see Rigoletto. And we stood in Maud’s drawing room. You told me what it was you thought happened in the opera—after the curtain went down.”
“Then?”
“Oh, I think so. The device about your mother, and her race—none of that was necessary, you know. I knew that I would marry you some months before you proposed.”
“I don’t believe it! You’re making fun of me.” Constance sprang to her feet.
“As you like.” Stern shrugged. “You are wrong. I would not risk making fun of you, nor would I want to. I’m telling you what I thought. That we would marry. That we might have children—in due course.”
“But you were still with Maud then—”
“Even so.”
“You made a decision—just like that, so coldly?”
“It did not feel cold at the time, though decisions are best made in such a frame of mind. I imagine you calculated your assault on me quite coolly. You see? We are two of a kind. If you would learn to trust me a little—”
“Do you trust me?”
“I try.”
“You won’t make me … live at Winterscombe?”
“No. I shall try never to make you do anything against your wishes.” He paused. “I had thought—obviously I was wrong—that you had an attachment to the place.”
“To the house? No.”
“To someone in it, perhaps?”
“No. Not now.”
“To Acland, for instance?”
“Why Acland? Why should you say that?”
“No particular reason. It was just an impression I had.”
“Oh, Acland and I were old enemies. He was my sparring partner, that is all. I do not think of him now. Acland is dead. I have a new antagonist, Montague. Look—I wear his ring upon my finger.”
“You wear a great many rings on your fingers,” Stern replied, examining the small hand Constance displayed to him.
“Only one of any significance.”
“Is that true?”
“Of course. I am a wife now. I am … almost a wife.”
“Shall we make you a complete wife?”
That was Stern’s reply, and it is there that Constance’s account of that particular night, and of her honeymoon, breaks off. There is a gap—literally a gap, of half a blank page. Then the following sentences, written in a hand which is almost illegible:
Montague was so good, so kind and patient and gentle. No games now, and no words. I did not manage very well. I bled. I waited. I thought he would say I was scrawny and clumsy, but he never did. I thought his eyes would hate me, but they didn’t. I think this confused me. I did a terrible thing. I cried out your name, Papa—three times.
I have managed better since. Montague never questions me. He is considerate at all times. When he touches me, I feel dead. He cannot wake me up. I want want want to wake up. We have to keep trying, both of us; we can’t stop. If I stand next to him, I have to touch him.
I shall have to tell him. I’m afraid to tell him. All those secret stories. All those little boxes. Shall I open them all—or just some of them?
“Tell me then, Constance,” Stern said to her.
It was still the night of Steenie’s preview party; Constance and her husband had returned home to the latest of their opulent rented houses. It was ten in the evening, and the telephone call that would so change their lives was still one hour away.
Stern sat by the fire, and Constance, her face set and concentrated, paced about the room. Punctilious in such matters, she was wearing half-mourning for Boy—a dress of advanced cut, made up in a muted lavender-colored material: a compromise between chic and the conventions of grief. There were signs, even so, that Constance rebelled against these strictures, for in her hands she held a most beautiful scarf, of the brightest colors: indigo, vermilion, violet. As she paced back and forth, she passed this scarf through her hands, sometimes winding its colors about her fingers and her rings.
She prefaced her explanation by saying that part of it had been told to Steenie earlier that evening, but, not wishing to hurt him, she had given him an edited version.
“And am I to have the uncensored account?” Stern asked in his dry way.
“Yes,” Constance replied, winding her scarf about her hand. “But even if you are angry, you must not interrupt. I see now that you have to know everything. I should have told you before. You see, Boy liked to photograph me—you know that. What you do not know, no one knows, is that Boy also liked to touch me.”
Constance then told her husband the following story. Since the only other witness to that story was dead, I have no way of knowing whether the story was true or whether Constance—unable to tell her husband the whole truth, even then—invented it. Perhaps parts of it are true; perhaps it is all true; perhaps it was a complete fabrication. Constance was not an ordinary liar, and she often used fiction, as a storyteller does, to convey a deeper truth.
You judge. One thing is sure: Constance’s role in all this is unlikely to have been as innocent as she made out. Remember how she posed for Boy’s photograph, in the King’s bedroom? Remember Freddie? If there is a hidden tempter in this account, a serpent carefully disguised in the long grass, I very much doubt that it was Boy. To portray herself as a victim would have been accurate had Constance been telling Stern the story of her father—but a victim of Boy? That I cannot believe. My reaction, however—and even yours—is less important than Stern’s. The question is: did Stern believe her?
It began with talking, Constance told him; talking developed into a series of games. The first game had clear-cut rules: Boy was the father and Constance the daughter. She was required to call Boy “Papa,” and when she visited him in his room, she was required to confess to this “papa” all her childish misdemeanors. Sometimes this new father was benevolent: He would say that her small crimes—rudeness to her governess, a torn skirt, a quarrel with Steenie—could be forgiven, and he would give her an absolving kiss. On other occasions (for no clear reason) this new father would decide the crime was more serious. “Inattention in church,” he would say. “Now that is very serious.” Or: “Constance, your reading of the book is slipshod. You must pay better attention to your lessons.” He would pause, frown. “Constance,” he would say, “I shall have to punish you.” The method of punishment was always the same. Boy would lean her across his lap and administer several stinging slaps. When this happened, a change would take place in Boy which, to begin with, Constance did not understand. His eyes would become fixed and glazed; he would stammer; the timbre of his voice would change; he would also have an erection
; She did not, then, know what an erection was, Constance told her husband; all she knew was that when Boy played this game, when he pressed her down across his lap, she would feel something stir, then thrust against her rib cage. This seemed to make Boy ashamed; after the spankings he would never look at her.
Some while after this, Boy invented a new game, a form of hide-and-seek—an odd form, since they both hid and there were no seekers. In his bedroom at Winterscombe, Boy had a very large wardrobe, a huge mahogany affair. Inside, it was lined with fragrant cedar wood. It was like a small room—even Boy could stand upright inside it. In the game they both climbed into this wardrobe; then Boy pulled the doors closed. It was one of the rules that they must both be absolutely silent.
Inside, Constance would be as quiet as a mouse. She would be pressed up against evening cloaks, tweed jackets, the fine khaki of Boy’s officer uniforms. Boy, a poor performer at this game, always breathed heavily. There was no light. Constance, stealing her hand out, found she could not see it. She would start to count, and tell herself that when she reached fifty, Boy would end the game. She would pray to be let out; she could not breathe in there.
One day, or one night, perhaps the third or fourth time they played this game, Boy whispered: He said they might hold hands in the dark, because he knew she was frightened. He held her hand for some while; then he made a strange noise, which was somewhat like a sigh and somewhat like a groan. He guided her hand so it touched him.
There was that strange thing again, as stiff and hard as before; it made a bulge beneath his trousers, and Boy made her hand into a cup shape, so it fitted over him snugly. He moved about, twisting a little from side to side so that he rubbed against her hand. His movements became urgent; he rubbed faster, in a surreptitious and frantic way, never speaking—until suddenly he gave another groan, and a tremor ran through his body. He released her hand at once. When he lifted her out of the wardrobe, he gave her a little kiss on the corner of her mouth. He said this was their secret; they could play this game because Boy was her papa and her brother and he loved her.
They played it in this way for several weeks, never speaking once they were inside the wardrobe. Then Boy began to introduce variations. One day he unbuttoned her dress; another day he knelt and stroked her ankles. A third day, inside the wardrobe, there were shuffling and fumbling noises; then, when he guided Constance’s hand, she found the bulge thing had been unbuttoned. She could feel it, standing up in the dark like a big stick. It felt warm and damp, and Boy told her to stroke it, but the instant her hand closed around it, Boy shuddered convulsively.
Constance was afraid of this thing, but she was also fascinated by it. She was not sure whether Boy produced it out of love, as he said he did, or whether it was an instrument of punishment.
As the weeks passed, Boy grew bolder. Now, they did not always go into the wardrobe, and into the dark. Sometimes Boy would produce this thing when he took her photograph. He liked to pose her, load the film, set up the camera, and then—before he took the photograph—sit opposite her with this thing in his hands.
He never looked at her face when he did this. He liked to stare at the small slit between her thighs. Constance hated this part of her body, her own secret place, but Boy would stare at it and stare at it while he stroked. Then he would close his eyes. Sometimes he would groan in a way Constance hated. Afterward, he would wash. He always washed next. The soap he used smelled of carnations.
Finally, a long time after this first began, Boy introduced his final variation. One last game: it was called “caving.”
This game was always played in the same way and in the same position. Boy would sit down; Constance would sit astride his lap. Once, Boy kissed her on the mouth, but he never did that again. He did not like mouth kisses. Boy would put his hands around her waist, and he would raise her and lower her.
When he reached the cave—he always called it reaching the cave—Boy’s face would contort. This game hurt Constance, and she thought it must hurt Boy, too, because whenever he reached the cave, he looked like a wounded man. She could not understand why he liked this game so much, when it hurt them both, but Boy would never explain.
When it was over, he would help her dress. He was always very kind and gentle. He might give her a kiss or a small present. Once he gave her a ring with a blue stone; another time he showed her a box in the corner of the room, and there, fast asleep under a rug, was a tiny tricolored spaniel, a puppy. After the present giving she would leave his room. She would have to be very careful never to be seen—and for a long time she was not. Then, one day in that long hot summer when war was first declared, and Boy was on leave from his regiment, she was caught.
It was a Sunday morning, and just as she crept out onto the landing, there was Acland at the top of the stairs.
He stopped. He looked at her. Constance knew he could see into her. He never said one word to her, but he went into Boy’s room, and from the far end of the landing she heard the sound of voices raised in anger. Something must have happened; no one explained, but the visits ended then. No more photographs; no more hide-and-seek; no more caving.
Acland had rescued her, and Constance was grateful for this. She was no longer a child by then; she knew the games were wrong. She did not exactly blame Boy—she thought he really had loved her—but all the same, it was a sin, and sometimes she hoped Acland had punished him.
This was her secret, Constance said, turning back to her husband and winding the bright scarf tight about her hand. It made her ashamed. She felt sullied.
“Do you see?” she said. She was trembling. “That is what was done to me. I cannot always forget. It has made me into a circle of air, a nothing. I cannot be like other women. Boy locked me up in that wardrobe of his, and I am trapped in there, with no air to breathe. It killed Boy, and now it is killing me. Even now. You are the only one who can release me.” Constance began to weep as she said this: one of her sudden and violent storms of emotion. She covered her face with her hands.
Stern, who had been sitting silent all this while, rose to his feet. He did not go to his wife at once, but walked back and forth in the room. When Constance looked at him, she saw his face was white with anger.
“It’s as well for him that he killed himself,” Stern said. “Had he failed, I would have done the job for him.”
Constance, looking at her husband, did not doubt for one second the truth of what he said. There was no bluster in his voice; he spoke coldly, with decision. As she had before, once or twice in Scotland, she glimpsed some extremity in her husband, an ability, a willingness to step over the edge. As before, it excited her: Constance was drawn to people who allowed violent emotion to take them beyond the boundaries of civilized behavior. She liked it out there, in bandit country—and perhaps she liked it even more when she knew the crossing of the frontier had been provoked by herself. Stern, her avenger: more deadly than any such fictive creature in a novel or a play, more satisfying, too, for this drama was real and her life was the plot. Her tears stopped. She gave a shiver. Stern, who had turned away from her, turned back.
“Boy gave me his word. That day in the club. He said he never once touched you.”
“What would you expect him to say?” Constance cried. “He was scarcely likely to confess then—and to you, of all people—”
“But the way he said it. I thought I understood—”
“Believe him then!” Constance began to cry again. “That is always men’s way. They will always trust another man’s word against a woman.”
“No. No. It is not that. Constance, don’t cry. Of course I do not doubt you. No one would say such a thing unless … Come here.” Stern put his arms around her. He drew her close, tight against his heart. He began to stroke her hair. He kissed her brow. “Constance,” he went on, in a different voice, a gentler voice. “I wish you had told me this before—I would have behaved very differently. I blame myself now. If I had known, I would have … Constance, when did this begi
n?”
“The night my father died.” Constance clung to her husband. He stopped stroking her hair. Constance wound her arms tight about him. “That makes me even more guilty—do you see? My father was outside, and he was dying, and I never even knew. I was inside. I was with Boy—I was with Boy all night. From the end of the comet party until almost five o’clock in the morning. I sat in his room with him and we talked. That’s all it was then, just talking. But that was the night it began. And that was what I told Steenie tonight. Not the other things, the later things. Just that we talked. I wanted Steenie to understand that all those things Boy had said to him were lies. It wasn’t Boy who killed my father.”
Constance stopped. Stern’s hand rested against her shoulder. She could feel a new tension in his body and, when she looked up, saw a new alertness in his face.
That was when he drew back from her, all signs of anger gone. He held her hands. He looked down into her face. A clock in the room ticked. Several minutes of silence went by.
“It was not Boy?” He frowned.
He drew her toward a sofa. They both sat down. Then Stern said to her: “Constance, explain.”
Explaining anything to her husband, Constance was later to write, could be difficult. It was like explaining a sequence of events to a barrister, under cross-examination. As she spoke, Stern would from time to time interject questions. It was then Constance began to sense that all these details he requested—time, place, circumstances—were being cross-checked against other information already stored away.
“You see,” Constance said, “Boy had already taken my photograph that day—the first picture he ever took of me alone. It was in the King’s bedroom, that morning. I had never paid much attention to Boy before then, but that day—I could see—he was trying to be kind to me. Then, later that night, Steenie and I were allowed to stay up. We watched the comet. Nanny put me to bed, but I knew I wouldn’t sleep—I was far too excited. I used to pry in those days—I’ve told you that—but that night I just wanted to watch the party. I wanted to look at all the beautiful dresses. I crept downstairs in my nightdress, and I hid in a place where Steenie and I used to hide from Nanny Temple. It was in the conservatory, behind a high bank of camellias. You could see into the drawing room from there.”
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