Dark Angel

by Sally Beauman

  It still shocks me when men weep [she wrote], and my heart went out to him. I loved him so very much. My whole body ached with it. I’d planned what I would say, and all the arguments I would use—but when it came to it, all the love and the anger and the indignation mixed up. I think I did not speak very clearly.

  I wanted him to see that no matter what had happened in France, no matter what he did there, or what he witnessed—he had survived. He had been given the most precious gift of all, life. How many thousand men—how many million men—had been denied that gift? They would never come back. Time would pass, the battles would be recorded, but the men, the individual men, they would be forgotten.

  They will build their war cemeteries, I suppose, when this war finally ends—and people will visit them. The anniversaries will be marked. But will we remember them? Every one of those graves, a man; every cross, a life story. Those who loved them will remember, but when they are gone, too, what will be left? Anonymity. People forget wars very quickly.

  I think I began to cry then. My voice shook. I could not steady it. I wanted to make him see that what he did was wrong. It was more than a waste—it was a sin. God gave him his life—and he was throwing that gift back in His face.

  That was a stupid thing to say—I knew that at once. Acland does not even believe in God—unless the war has given him faith, and that isn’t very likely. I tried to begin again. I tried to be coherent. To be given so much, to have had every advantage in life, to come back from the war whole, not maimed, to be here where he has every comfort, more than any man could need, to be with his family, who love him—I couldn’t go on. I felt so strongly, but I knew I must sound banal, trite, stupid.

  That made me angry with myself—and so I told him. I said, I love you, Acland. I’ve loved you for years and years, for as long as I remember.

  He did not move. He did not turn his head or shift his hands. Nothing. I was sure he could hear me. I was sure he could understand what I said. But he didn’t care enough to give me the smallest sign. Oh, I felt such a bitter anger and regret.

  I let go of his hands. I stood up, and I told him what I had decided. I said that if I could not help him, there were other people to whom I could be of use. I had a life to live. I can remember exactly what I said then, because what happened next was so amazing.

  I walked past him to the window. It was dark outside. An owl hooted from the woods. My ribs felt too tight, and my throat hurt to speak, but I felt strong. I knew I was right—and that doesn’t happen often. I said: My life, Acland. I do have one. I shall stop nursing you. I love you, but I shall stop. I would help you to live if I thought I could. But I won’t help you to die—not when there is no need for it. I despise you for this. I hate what you’re doing to your mother and the rest of your family. There are people out there far far worse off than you are. You know what that wheelchair is—and that silence? It’s cowardice.

  I did not look round. I stared out at the dark. I thought: I am twenty-nine years old. I thought about houses and money and trying to do good. I heard a small sound. I wasn’t sure, at first, what it was. Then I realized. It was Acland’s voice. He was saying my name.

  He said her name three times. Jane turned, and Acland held out his hand to her. He said:

  “I can speak. And walk. And think. And feel. You make me—very ashamed.”

  Jane gave a low cry. The light was very poor. She could just make out the shape of the wheelchair, and Acland’s figure. The pallor of his face was indistinct. For a moment she was almost sure she had imagined this, his figure was so still; then she knew she had not. Tears sprang into her eyes. She took a step forward, then another. She looked at the hand held out to her. Then, clasping it, she knelt down.

  “You’ve cut your hair.”

  Acland’s fingers brushed her throat. He rubbed a strand of hair between finger and thumb. Jane looked up.

  “I recognized you. In the caves—at Étaples.” His voice was slow. It hesitated at the consonants, as if it distrusted them. Something flickered in his eyes, Jane saw; then his face became still and concentrated again.

  “I recognized your voice. Long before you came across to my bed. I could hear your voice. I could hear all the things I thought I had lost. England. This house. Something more than that—something much more important than that. I wanted to call out, and I could not.”

  He bent his head. In the half-light his hair was bleached of all color. He sighed. Slowly, Jane reached up to touch his face.

  “I always thought of you—” He stopped, then went on. “I thought of you as my brother’s future wife. I—couldn’t see you—”

  Jane drew her hand back. “It’s all right, Acland,” she began. “I know that. I understand that. But we were always friends.”

  “No. You don’t understand. You don’t understand at all. I feel so terribly tired. I don’t think I can explain. If you would just look at me—”

  It was then Jane began to hope. She tried not to hope; she told herself not to hope—but it was impossible. There the hope was; it would not be denied. She looked at the pallor of Acland’s face. She looked at his eyes, whose disparity of color had always perturbed her, whose resonance she had always loved. The expression in these eyes was one she had never seen before, and had never expected to see.

  “Acland—” she began.

  “I know. Isn’t it strange?” His hand tightened over hers. “I would never have predicted this. And yet, it is so very strong. When you spoke just now. When I look at you. I think—perhaps it was always there. Just out of sight. I think I have—glimpsed it. Once or twice.”

  He lifted his hand. He rested it against her cheek. He traced, with one finger, the line of her brows.

  “Your eyes are full of light.” He let his hand fall. “And your hair—your hair is like a helmet. You sounded so fierce just now.” He hesitated. “It was brave, to say those things. Were you always brave? Why did I never notice?”

  “No. No. Not brave,” Jane said quickly. “Not brave at all. If I have changed—”

  “Come over here.”

  Acland stood. He drew her with him, toward the window, where they stood looking out over Winterscombe. Jane watched a cloud move across the face of the moon, the light darken, then shine.

  Then he looked down at her. “You’ve changed? When did you change? Why did you change?”

  Jane thought: I am not invisible to him, not now. I might never be invisible to him again. “My work, perhaps,” she said. “And growing older. And the war—”

  “Ah, the war,” Acland replied, and he took her in his arms.

  When I had read this account of my mother’s, I left Wexton slumbering in his chair and I went out into the gardens. I walked down toward the lake, and the birch grove; I walked through the view that had been there, outside that bay window, on the night of my father’s recovery.

  I heard my mother’s voice, that day, more clearly than I had for thirty years. It made me a child again. I could see her as she used to be: a quiet presence, and a secure one. For the first eight years of my life, she had never given me cause to doubt her love and her concern, for me and for my father. She did not become angry (as Constance did) at trivial matters, a dress the wrong shade, a haircut that failed to please. She was without vanity. Lies might make her angry; injustice certainly did. There was my mother. I could feel her force now, and her strength. A good woman; and how had I repaid her? With disloyalty.

  I had allowed her to slip away from me; I had allowed myself to forget; I had allowed Constance to usurp her place. I knew I could make excuses for this. My mother died young; the living almost always usurp the dead. Goodness is, perhaps, not the most vivid quality—the good are not the people who first draw attention in a room. Goodness lacks charisma. Goodness can seem dull. Oh, there were plenty of excuses. I despised myself, even so.

  I sat down by the lake. I thought of married love, which can seem dull, too, I suppose—although I believe it can bring the very
greatest fulfillment. I sat by the lake, and I knew what I wanted to believe: I wanted to believe my mother’s account. I wanted to believe in her love for my father, and his love for her. I wanted to believe that it was her love that had restored my father first to speech and then to health. We are all children, I think, in this respect—that we have a continuing need to believe in the love that brought us into the world, long after we have reached an age when we know that need may be irrational. Enduring love, that happily-ever-after of the bedtime stories: I passionately wanted to believe that in my parents’ case it had been true. But there were doubts, of course. Constance had planted them.

  I came close to hating Constance then, the closest I had ever come. I hated her for the sublime confidence with which she wrote, her blithe assumption of the bond between herself and my father, her unshakable conviction that it was she who contrived my parents’ marriage, that it was a mercenary affair, a marriage of convenience.

  Nothing I remembered of my parents together would have suggested such a thing; I would have thought that, to my father, such an idea would be anathema. But there were doubts even so, and they would not go away. The father in these notebooks had already treated Jenna shabbily. The volatile iconoclast of the prewar years was not the father I remembered; the bearded figure in the caves at Étaples, the silent figure in a wheelchair—all these were strangers to me.

  By the time I turned back to the house, I was sure that Constance’s gift of the past was malevolent in intent. I looked at her journals with suspicion and dislike. Wexton, waking from his doze, yawned and stretched.

  “So,” he said, “what happened next?”

  I already knew, to some extent, for I had read a short way ahead. I had read (it had better be admitted) with a certain malicious pleasure.

  “Constance gets her comeuppance,” I replied.

  “Oh, good,” Wexton said.

  When the news of Acland’s engagement to Jane reached Constance (and there was a delay of several weeks before even Acland’s immediate family were told) she danced about her rented drawing room in London. The news came to her from Gwen; Constance tossed its pages in the air. She let them scatter upon the carpet. She picked them up. The power of her own will was extravagant, irresistible. She kissed the pages one by one.

  She hugged her knowledge to her all day. She stored it up until her husband returned. Even then, she kept it a while longer to herself. When should she break the news? How should she break the news? The pleasure—Constance loved to nurse secrets—was intense.

  All through dinner she said nothing. She performed for her husband as an actress might upon a stage. Her eyes were brilliant; her cheeks were flushed; her tiny hands made jeweled circles as she spoke. She wore her hair loose, as her husband preferred. She wore a new, vivid, and beautiful dress. Her snake bracelet coiled about her arm: once, twice, three times. I have outwitted him this time, Constance thought.

  After dinner she hung upon her husband’s arm. She kissed first her little dog, then him. She played one of her favorite roles, that of the childish coquette. She reminded him, with a little sideways glance, that there was a party they had promised to attend; she suggested, with a small caress, that it might be more amusing to stay at home.

  At ten she drew him toward the stairs, with kisses and whispers. At ten-fifteen, first coy then bold, she undressed. At ten-thirty she drew Stern into her bed. She climbed upon him. She linked her small arms behind his neck. She wound her legs about his waist. I shall give him an ecstasy, she said to herself—and I shall tell him after that.

  There was a mirror behind her marital bed. Constance watched herself perform. She rose and fell. Her skin was the color of roses. Her hair was long and very black. Her lips were as red as blood. “Talk to me, shock me,” she whispered: “I like that.”

  When it was over, she lay for a while in her husband’s arms. She acted languor beautifully. She pretended, briefly, to sleep. She bided her time, eyes closed. How long should she wait, fifteen minutes? Ten? And then, having revealed the engagement, should she mention living in Peel’s house at once, or wait? No, she could not bear to wait. She would reveal the engagement, then—stressing Acland’s newfound devotion to Jane—raise the question of the house.

  Constance sat up. She gave a pretty little yawn, then a stretch.

  “Montague,” she began, “I have some news—”

  “One moment, my dear.” Stern rose from the bed. He crossed to his desk, unlocked it, then turned. “A present for you, Constance,” he said.

  Constance was diverted at once. She took a childish delight in all presents—and Stern’s were always generous. This was an odd present though: two envelopes. With a politeness that at once made her wary, he placed them in her lap.

  Constance opened the envelopes. She considered their contents for some while. The skin prickled on the back of her neck. In her hand were two tickets for an ocean liner: single tickets, from Southampton to New York.

  “What are these?” she said at last in a tight voice.

  “Why, reservations, Constance. One for you and one for me. Look, our names are upon them.”

  “I see that.” Constance kept her head bent, her face hidden. “I see the date too. It is next month.”

  “December. Yes. By Christmas, my dear, we shall be in New York.”

  “New York? How can we be in New York? There is a war on.”

  “Even so, these liners still sail. The journey is in no way impossible.”

  Constance knew that even and imperturbable tone of voice. She risked a quick look at her husband. He was seated beside her, regarding her with equanimity, a slight smile on his lips.

  “And how long shall we stay there, Montague? A month? Two months?”

  “Oh, longer than that. I thought we might stay there … for good.”

  Constance did not like the tone in which this was said. A certain icy triumph could be discerned beneath the surface politeness. She risked a small wail.

  “For good?” She drew her husband closer. She coiled her small arms about his neck. “Dearest Montague, don’t tease me. How can we live in New York? All your work is here. The bank. The munitions factories—”

  “Oh, I have disposed of those,” Stern replied easily. “Did I not mention it? The intervention of the Americans in the war has been decisive, I feel. It cannot last much longer. I sold—for a better price than I would get a year from now.”

  “But, Montague, the bank—”

  “I have partners who can run the bank. It has links with Wall Street, in any case. Surely you remember. I have mentioned it.”

  “I don’t remember at all.” Constance drew back with a sulky expression. “You never mentioned New York. Or America.”

  “Perhaps you did not attend. Does the idea not please you? I thought you would be delighted. You always wanted to travel, my dear. You like change. New York is a city of change. It will make London seem very dull—”

  “I don’t want to live in London,” Constance burst out. “I told you. We discussed this. I want to live in Peel’s house—”

  “In Peel’s house?” Stern appeared surprised. “But, Constance, that is no longer possible. I have sold it.”

  Constance became perfectly still. Color mounted in her face.

  “Sold it?” she began slowly. “When did you do that?”

  Stern shrugged. “My dear, this week, last week—I forget the exact date. Constance, you change your mind so very often. I thought your wanting Peel’s house was just a passing whim. It never once occurred to me—”

  He stopped. It was now clear to Constance that her husband was lying. Never occurred to him! Why, she was perfectly certain he knew how much she wanted Peel’s house—and worse still, might even have known why.

  Constance bit her lip hard with her small white teeth. Tears pricked behind her eyelids. To have been so close, for every one of her plans to have fallen obligingly into place, and then to be outwitted by this husband of hers.

  Dev
il, devil, devil, she said to herself. She clenched her small hands into two tight fists.

  “Darling,” Stern said (Stern, who scarcely ever used such endearments). He leaned forward to embrace her. His voice (how she resented his acting ability) was contrite. “Constance, my dear—you seem distressed. If only I had known. An offer came up, to buy both Peel’s house and the Arlington place. The price was good—”

  “Oh, I’m sure it was,” Constance muttered. “I’m sure it was.”

  To her fury one small angry tear ran down her cheek. To her greater fury, her husband kissed first the tear, then her lips.

  “Constance,” he went on, putting his arms around her. “Think a little. In Scotland you were very definite. Not Winterscombe, nowhere near Winterscombe—you said that. And besides, our little empire—you remember we spoke of that? That empire has been shrinking these past weeks. Peel’s house has few attractions, don’t you think, without the Winterscombe land or the Conyngham estate? And those, I fear, I shall never acquire—not if these rumors I hear are true—”

  “Rumors? What rumors?”

  “That Denton’s debts may be miraculously repaid. That Acland and a certain heiress are much in love. Those sorts of rumors, my dear.”

  “Acland and Jane, do you mean? In love?” Constance struggled free of his arms. She tossed her head. “I never heard anything so silly in my life.”

  “More than in love, or so I hear. Devoted.” Stern rose. “Devoted—and engaged to be married,” he added, with some emphasis.

  Constance lay back upon the pillows. Since she was very angry, she knew better than to speak. Malice, she told herself, in that last remark of Stern’s—or, if not malice, an unmistakable desire to wound. Worst of all, since she was supposed to be indifferent to Acland, she could not show that hurt.

  She should, of course, have been more careful, more subtle—she saw that now. Maud had warned her; she herself, in the early days of their courtship, had been well aware of Stern’s skill as an adversary—and yet what had she done? She had schemed and, while she did so, had forgotten the possibility that her husband might scheme too.