Dark Angel

by Sally Beauman

  A foolish mistake. Constance considered her husband. If he felt triumph at outwitting her, he disguised it well. She watched as, with his customary composure, he returned the liner tickets to their envelopes. As she watched him, she felt her anger first abate, then transmute into admiration. More than a match for me, Constance said to herself, and, since it pleased her to be combative, she began to scheme anew. Stern had won this battle, yes—but to win a battle was not to win the war. There was a small but discernible gap in her husband’s defenses.

  “Montague …” she began in a thoughtful voice.

  “Yes, my dear?” Stern replied, somewhat warily.

  Constance held out her hand to him and drew him down beside her. She gave him her most innocent smile; her husband, she noted, tensed.

  “Montague,” she began, “tell me the truth now. Have I made you angry?”

  “Angry?” Stern replied, somewhat stiffly. “Of course not. Why should that be? Besides, I am rarely angry. I was blessed—or cursed—with a cool temperament. To be angry wastes time.”

  “Does it?” Constance said, with a small sideways glance. “Are you never angry then?”

  “Occasionally.” Stern’s eyes met hers. “I do not like to be crossed, Constance.”

  “Crossed!” Constance made a little face. “Heavens! I’m sure no one would dare to cross you—I certainly would not. How strange. It cannot be anger then. Yet I thought, looking at you, when you gave me those tickets—”

  “A present, Constance. A surprise.”

  “Oh, and a lovely surprise, of course. But still I wonder. If you were not angry, were you jealous? Do you know, Montague, I suspect that you were! Ah, there!” She raised her eyes. “I see it in your face. I have hit upon it. You are jealous—of Acland. That is why you dispose of Peel’s house so conveniently, why you spirit me off to the other side of the globe. I suspect, Montague, that you want me a long way away from the … temptations of Winterscombe.”

  To Constance’s irritation, Stern took this suggestion with an urbane and unruffled amusement.

  “Constance, my dear, I hate to disappoint you. I know women like to attribute such motives to men. It is part of their feminine thinking. But in my case, alas, you are wrong. I have many failings. Jealousy is not one of them.”

  “Truly, Montague?”

  “I regret, but it is true. Acland is nothing to you, my dear. I know that, because you have told me often enough. So the sad truth is, my motives were purely financial.”

  “Have you never felt jealousy then, Montague?” said Constance, who did not intend to give up.

  “Not so far as I recall,” he replied shortly. “I try not to be possessive.”

  Constance, sensing at last a vulnerability insufficiently disguised, gave a little frown. She lay back upon the pillows.

  “Of course, I remember now,” she said, in a meditative voice. “What was it you said? That you did not set great store by physical fidelity—yes, that was it. Goodness, you are so very high-minded, Montague. I am not like that at all—”

  “Are you not, Constance?”

  “Never!” Constance cried, sitting up again and clasping his hand. “I am as jealous and possessive as could be. If you so much as looked at another woman, I should begin to die inside. If you went to bed with her … Oh, Montague, how horrible it would be! I should feel cut into little pieces, with sharp little knives—”

  “Constance. Don’t say such things.” Stern’s hand tightened over hers. “You must know—there is no danger—” He checked himself. “There is no immediate danger of that. I am … content with you. I have no desire for other women.”

  Constance gave a small cry. She pressed herself against him. An admission, she thought, as she clung to him: an admission, at last. She felt a rush of triumph and then, almost immediately, a flurry of more contradictory emotions. To be embraced by Stern, to feel his hands stroke her hair, to feel his lips against her brow, these provoked in her rebellious truthfulness. To be truthful was to be exposed, however, and that she would not risk—with Stern least of all. She drew back.

  “So, there we are,” she said in a calmer voice. “I have a jealous nature, and you do not. Though I cannot quite believe you are as cold as you claim. Suppose I were to take an interest in another man … Suppose I were to take a lover. I never shall, of course—but if I did? You must mind then? A little? Not to do so would be inhuman, Montague.”

  “Very well. If you insist.” Stern gave a small gesture of annoyance. “I would not be without feelings, obviously, in such a case. But I would try to contain them. I told you. There are other forms of faithfulness between a man and a woman which seem to me of greater importance. When I said that—”

  “Yes, Montague?”

  “I was … looking ahead many years. I was thinking of the disparity in our ages. I was trying to be … realistic. After all, you are very young.” He hesitated. “When you are thirty, Constance, I shall be approaching sixty—”

  He stopped. Constance watched him carefully.

  “Oh, I see,” she said at last, in a small voice. “I understand. You were speaking of the future, not now?”

  “Obviously. Constance, we have been married only a year, less than a year—”

  “A year?” Constance gave an odd little cry. “Is it only a year? It feels so much longer than that. You make me happy, Montague. When I am with you, I have no sense of time. I feel … you change me—” Leaning forward in an impetuous way, she began to cover his face with quick kisses.

  “I do! It’s true. If I were with you all the time—if I were never alone—I might change even more, I think. I could become—” She stopped. “Still, never mind that. That is not important. I just wanted to say: I’m glad you bought those tickets, Montague.”

  “Is that true?” Stern tilted her chin, turned her eyes to his. He looked at her with some sadness. “Is it true? With you, Constance, I find I am never sure. Perhaps you mean what you say. Perhaps you would like to mean what you say. Perhaps you simply pretend—”

  “It is true. I do mean it. I mean it now. Of course …” Constance lowered her eyes. She began to smile. “Of course, I cannot speak for the future. What I mean now I may not mean five minutes from now, or five years…. You see? I am honest, Montague. I know my own nature. I give you … little snatches of sincerity—and that is a great deal more than anyone else ever receives at my hands. So: the truth. When you gave me those tickets, I was not so very pleased. But now—I am. I think you have been clever, and wise—and I think we shall be happy in America. Just think …” Kneeling up in the bed, she put her arms about his neck. “A new world for us to conquer, just as we planned. Who cares for London and Winterscombe and all the people in them? We can leave them behind. We can begin again. Oh, I wish we were leaving tomorrow! You’ll see—I’ll be such an asset to you. Why, I shall toil and scheme—we shall have all the best parties, all the best guest lists. The whole city shall be at our feet! I shall be … a splendid wife for you! You’ll look at me and you’ll think: Constance is indispensable….”

  “But my dear, I think that already,” Stern said in a dry voice.

  “You will think it more,” Constance cried, rushing on, missing the implications of the compliment; and she began, as she liked to do, on a flurry of plans: where they should live, how they should live, detail after detail.

  Stern, listening with some amusement, was touched by this. Constance’s optimism, on occasion, could be as artless as a child’s—and as poignant. Stern did not expect that this excitement or optimism would endure, yet he found that he was wrong. His wife’s spirits remained unflagging, her affection toward him undiminished, throughout the following weeks.

  She besieged her friends; she telephoned; she lined up addresses and introductions. She shopped for new clothes, new jewelry. Every night when Stern returned, she would display her small triumphs for him.

  Stern warned her, once or twice, that these social triumphs might be more complex than she
envisaged: His race, he explained, might well close many doors to them in New York.

  Constance pushed such suggestions aside. She tossed her head. She said that if they encountered prejudice, they would disdain it; they would treat it with the contempt it deserved.

  “No one like that shall come to my parties,” she proclaimed.

  “Constance, they wouldn’t come in any case. That’s what I’m trying to explain to you.”

  “So much the better then,” she cried, “for I shan’t want to know them!”

  This energy and excitement faltered only once, and this was when they were aboard ship. The crossing was rough, and Stern enjoyed it. Constance teased him for liking to pace the decks, for standing at the rails overlooking the space of the Atlantic. The water was the color of lead, the sky a wash of gray; by day and by night, there was always a narrow band of light at the horizon.

  Stern tried to persuade his wife on deck, and she went once, their first evening. He showed her the finger of light the moon made upon the waves. He led her to the stern of the ship, so she might watch the wake churn. He spoke of the power of the turbines.

  Constance looked at these things and shivered. She hated the sea, she said; it frightened her. She returned belowdecks and remained there for the duration of the voyage. She played bridge every evening, for high stakes, usually winning. She made many acquaintances who would later be useful to her in her advance upon New York society. She flirted with one of them in particular, a young man from one of New York’s oldest families who was returning, on honorable discharge, from the war.

  On the day they landed, Constance’s spirits were high. She looked at Manhattan with love and with expectation. Standing on the deck, she kissed her husband with some passion. The face she lifted toward him was dazzling.

  “Darling,” she said (she had begun to call him this on the voyage). “Darling Montague. You have made me very happy. I can’t wait to be ashore. I am a land creature, you see.” She gave him a teasing glance. “I like pavement under my feet. That way—I run faster.”

  It was at this point in the journals that, for some time, I broke off. It was strange to read a story with a combination of hindsight and foreknowledge, and when I reached the point of that Atlantic voyage, I felt uneasy. I knew what happened next; I almost knew.

  Do you see? A pattern was being fixed. It was a pattern that was to remain fixed over the next twelve years, a span of time that divided 1918 (when the war ended, and my parents married) from 1930, the year of my birth.

  During that time my parents lived at Winterscombe. My father, for a few years, took work as a partner in a merchant bank in London—in an effort, I imagine, to repay some of the financial debt he owed Jane. It was work he disliked, for which he had no aptitude—his quick mind, his keen intelligence, his gift for abstract argument, his interest in literature, history, and philosophy, did not adapt well to the stringencies of finance. In this respect he was, perhaps, a prisoner of his class: The pursuit of profits made his lip curl.

  Once his father died (it was an apoplexy, or as we would say, a heart attack; the year was 1923) my father gave up the merchant bank to devote himself full time to Winterscombe. He became caught up, increasingly, in my mother’s many charitable projects, particularly in the architectural design of orphanages. He wrote several pamphlets on the subject and even, at one point, campaigned energetically for parliamentary reform regarding the care of the destitute in society. He came to believe that the actual design of institutions (not just orphanages but also prisons) had a profound effect on the mentality of those confined within them: If you caged people, he said, then obviously they would behave like animals.

  In many of these arguments—that prisons for minor offenders should be more open; that orphaned children should be placed with families and not institutionalized—my father was far ahead of his time. I think he knew his schemes were a lost cause, but that did not deter him. He liked lost causes. Lost causes cost money; Winterscombe cost money; over the next twelve years a number of my mother’s charitable schemes would come to successful fruition—but successful or less successful, they ate into her capital. She was, I think, somewhat easy prey to con men and charlatans, at least in the early years. Certainly some of her investments (and all these projects were being funded by investments) were unwise. Year by year, idealism inched my parents toward that genteel poverty of my childhood. I was proud of this, and I am still—but I could see the pattern ahead of me as I read. At Winterscombe, idealism and financial decline; across the Atlantic, pragmatism and an inexorable advance toward worldly success.

  In New York, Constance and Stern prospered. Stern was to become as feared on Wall Street as he had been in the City; Constance danced her way to dominance in New York drawing rooms. “The meek shall inherit?” she liked to cry. (Constance was never averse to mild blasphemy.) “What nonsense! The meek go under.”

  Every year, once a year, these two factions met, when Stern and Constance traveled to Europe, to England, and to Winterscombe. The last such visit was made in 1929, the year of the Wall Street crash. The following year I was born, and Constance attended my christening without her husband. It was her last visit. She was then banished from Winterscombe.

  Something happened then; something happened to interrupt that twelve-year pattern. I still did not know what it was, but I did know one other fact: 1930 was also the year in which Constance’s marriage to Stern ended.

  Do you see my predicament? I knew something of the past and something of the future—and it seemed to me that the link between the two had become obvious. Constance’s obsession with my father was a small time-bomb; it ticked away for twelve years. At the time of my birth, presumably, it exploded. For me, many years later, the detonations continued.

  And so one night, about a week after Wexton arrived at Winterscombe, I decided. I would not continue. I was afraid to continue—and you will see exactly why, shortly. I did not admit that to myself at the time. I simply packed all those letters and diaries away. I packed up the past and confined it to desk drawers and packing cases.

  Wexton made no comment. I think, in fact, that Wexton had already decided where I needed to go next and was waiting for me to catch up with him. He took the disappearance of all those disorderly papers in his stride.

  “I’ve booked us some seats for Stratford,” he announced one morning at breakfast.

  We went the next day. For that day, and several afterward, we edged away from the past.

  The play we would see was Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida, one of Wexton’s favorite plays, and one that reflected his current obsession with war.

  We drove to Stratford-upon-Avon that morning, had lunch, walked about the town, saw the play in the evening, and then drove home, on dark and peaceful country roads, to Winterscombe.

  I think this visit was a kind of pilgrimage for Wexton, part of his process of saying goodbye to my uncle Steenie. We had often made expeditions to Stratford before, but always with Steenie making up the party. It was the first time Wexton and I had ever been there alone. Wexton never mentioned this, of course. He never once showed the least sign of melancholy. We ate lunch at Steenie’s favorite riverside pub. After lunch we strolled about the town, Wexton deciding which of the numerous Olde English Tea Shoppes would be the one we would patronize later. Having selected the worst of the half-timbered places on offer (it provided an Anne Hathaway cream tea—Wexton was delighted), we took the route I knew we would take, because we had always taken it with Steenie: along Waterside to Holy Trinity Church, where Shakespeare is buried.

  Wexton never visited Stratford without paying his respects to Shakespeare’s tomb. This must have been our twentieth time there.

  We made our way into the church. We approached the tomb. Wexton appeared blind to the school party (bored) on one side of him, and the Japanese businessmen on the other (disappointed; inside the church, they were not allowed to use cameras).

  He stared down at the inscription on
the gravestone for some time. Later, he struck up one of his instant friendships with a Japanese businessman, with whom (walking back from the church) he discussed charabanc outings, the meaning of Hamlet, and the likelihood of Anne Hathaway’s having provided cream teas for her husband.

  When we had finished that tea, Wexton (happily oblivious to the nudges and stares from across the café—there were students there; he had been recognized) lit a cigarette. He smiled at me amiably. His thoughts, obviously, were still back at Holy Trinity Church, and the inscription on the tomb which he had again been reading.

  Good friend, for Jesus’ sake forebarel to dig the dust enclosed here.

  “Excellent advice,” Wexton said. “Got it right, as usual. When we go back to Winterscombe, let’s have a bonfire.”

  The next day, we did. I discovered the contents of those two mysterious suitcases with which Wexton had arrived at Winterscombe: Inside them was a mess of papers. Wexton dumped them in a great pile. Neither he nor I was allowed to examine them.

  We had selected a place not far from the lake. Wexton’s preparations were meticulous. “A funeral pyre,” he said cheerfully. “We have to build it properly.”

  There was plenty of kindling, plenty of dry timber. We lugged logs back and forth. We made a fine bonfire. Wexton tipped out the contents of the suitcases: There were certainly letters there; I think there were also poems. Then, when it was all arranged, Wexton lit the first match. The funeral pyre burned beautifully. The paper caught; the dry sticks crackled; the breeze fanned the flames, and the flames licked and mounted.

  The heat became intense. We had to step back from it. Occasionally, when some scrap of paper threatened to flutter out from the pile, Wexton—using a long stick as a poker—would shove it back in again. He was—there was no doubt in my mind—enjoying this very much.

  I was more hesitant … at first. I felt I ought to have argued more, dissuaded more. It was one thing for Wexton to consign letters, his private life, to the flames—that was his choice—but I hated to think he was also consigning poems to oblivion. Wexton, however, took such pleasure in the whole enterprise that I was caught up in it too. Fires produce a certain excitement; a pyromaniac lurks in all of us. Within a very short time we were both feeding the fire energetically. At one point, when the flames gushed, Wexton (normally slow-moving and staid) almost capered.