The Missionary's Wife

by Tim Jeal

  Charles had held out for only three days, after learning that she had returned, before succumbing to his desire to call on her. She might reject him to start with, he thought, but what a mistress she would make in the end! All the amusing things she had said came back to him as he walked up the path to the door of her father’s house. She had greeted him politely, but the moment he had given her a hint that his ultimate purposes might be amorous, she had become imperious.

  ‘How dare you come here with your grubby proposition?’ Her slanting, angrily averted eyes delighted him.

  ‘That’s not what I’d call it.’

  ‘What would you call it? I give you the whole dictionary.’ Mockery twisted the corners of her delicate mouth.

  ‘An opportunity for mutual enjoyment,’ he murmured, daring everything on outrageous honesty.

  ‘When I’m carrying my husband’s child?’ she cried.

  ‘I’m very sorry … I didn’t know.’

  His tone had been wonderfully contrite, though really he had not been sorry at all. Lovely Clara would not easily find a second husband with the missionary’s brat in her stomach. If he kept pressing her over a number of months, she would fall into his lap in the end. She had once been infatuated with him, and early passions invariably left the deepest marks. A sneaking smile flickered on his lips. The next moment, something whistled past his head and crashed to the ground near the gate.

  ‘Laugh at me, would you?’ she gasped, her hand still raised after hurling a ceramic pot. For years this ugly vessel had stood on her father’s hall table. Now it lay in pieces across the path, along with the fern and the earth it had contained. ‘Go away – you arrogant, ridiculous man,’ she whispered with a throbbing tearfulness that overjoyed him. Recalling the way her lips had once opened in softly yielding response to his, he advanced a step. But only one. At that instant, she plucked a stick from her father’s cast-iron umbrella stand and, with a deft flick, caught Charles on the shin. The door slammed in his face, and he had been left hopping on one leg in the middle of the path.

  Vyner gave Francis a man-to-man smile. ‘So you knew Robert Haslam?’

  ‘Not well,’ replied Francis, surprised that his host should even be aware of the missionary’s name.

  ‘Wasn’t he killed on the day you were wounded?’

  ‘That’s right. A very brave man.’

  ‘I used to know his wife. She came from round here, you know.’ Vyner passed Francis the port. ‘Was she happy with Haslam?’

  ‘Nobody’s happy in a rebellion.’

  Vyner grinned at Francis. ‘You don’t want to tell me, do you?’

  ‘I don’t, really.’

  ‘Aha. So you knew Clara well.’

  Francis shrugged. ‘She and her husband were with my column at a dangerous time.’

  ‘Meaning what?’ Charles shook some ash off his cigar and waited. When it was clear Francis did not intend to answer, Vyner said quietly, ‘She came home pregnant, you know.’ Charles was amazed to see the colour drain from the soldier’s cheeks. ‘She didn’t tell you?’

  ‘I haven’t seen her since I left Africa.’

  Vyner clapped him on the back. ‘Bad luck, old man!’

  ‘I don’t really want to talk about her, Mr Vyner.’

  ‘Don’t be so prim, man.’

  Francis managed to smile. ‘I’d call it propriety rather than primness. But perhaps you’re right. I’ll be frank with you, Vyner – I’d like to see her while I’m staying here.’

  ‘Perfectly understandable,’ murmured Vyner, with his characteristically ambiguous grin. ‘My coachman will take you over tomorrow.’

  *

  The phaeton rattled into a small gaslit square, where the shops were down-at-heel and dowdy. There was a draper called J. & H. Ince, with rolls of material in the window and one or two dusty made-up dresses on dummies. It moved him to think that Clara might once have patronized such a place. Next door was a building society, where aspiring clerks would pay in their weekly shillings to finance a move from back-to-back terrace to bay-windowed semidetached. Through drawing room windows, Francis glimpsed orange-coloured gas globes; every third or fourth house boasted terracotta embellishments. Clara’s presence behind the walls of one of these modest houses made the whole town touching to him. His heart was beating faster as the carriage slowed down where granite sets gave way to cobbles. She was pregnant, perhaps with his child, but had made no attempt to contact him through his regiment. Must this mean that she had not forgiven him for Mponda’s death? If it did, she might refuse to see him.

  They bowled along past the sooty lodge gates of a municipal park and swept on towards the neo-Gothic Free Trade Hall. At last they turned a corner and entered the small enclave of Georgian streets that was all that was left of the old town. As the carriage came to a halt at the end of a Regency terrace, Francis tried to fortify himself with anger but failed. That she had chosen not to tell him that she might be carrying his child was something to weep over, not rant about.

  The coachman pointed past a monkey puzzle tree to a dark-green door. ‘That’s the one, sir.’

  ‘Did Mr Vyner sometimes come here?’

  ‘He did, sir. A few years back.’

  A maid came to the door, then Francis heard Clara’s voice from the stairs. ‘Who is it, Helen?’

  ‘A gentleman.’

  She came down to the landing and froze as she saw him framed in the doorway. ‘Show him into the dining room,’ she said softly to the girl. Francis assumed that someone else was in the house and that she did not want this person to see him. But he went into the dreary room like an obedient boy and waited. Two blue Bristol vases with cut-glass pendants cast reflections on the surface of the mahogany table. At the far end of the room hung a devotional painting by a follower of Holman Hunt, called Christ Walking on the Water. He wished that he could pray for a miracle, but he thought of Robert Haslam, and his prayer died unuttered. It came to Francis that this might be the last time he would ever be alone with Clara. He remembered Belingwe Camp and their first meeting. What advice would Heywood Fynn give him now?

  The moment she entered the room, Francis took a long breath to steady himself. Outside, a street hawker was crying his wares. Clara closed the door and gestured to Francis to be seated. As she sat down opposite, he remembered her facing him accusingly across another table, while drums were beating and dying men cried out. He smiled, although his mouth felt taut and unyielding.

  ‘It’s so strange to see you here,’ he murmured.

  ‘Did you come specially from London?’ She sounded alarmed by the possibility.

  He explained about his job in Chester and the coincidence of his staying at Holcroft Park, then ended lamely: ‘I would have come anyway, in the end.’ She was wearing a tie and a wide white collar on a darker shirt, as if she were a schoolteacher. Her hair had grown, but she still wore it pinned up. He wondered if he had ever known her at all. Perhaps their affair had been an aberration, while her marriage to Haslam had been wholly in character. The sideboard was thickly strewn with fragments of coloured earthenware – presumably samples brought home by her father for scrutiny.

  She rested her elbows on the table and looked straight at him. ‘How do you like staying at Holcroft Park?’

  ‘Not a lot. My host keeps asking me questions about your marriage.’

  ‘He once wanted to marry me himself. Lucky I was jilted. Lady Alice never looks happy.’

  An overwhelming attraction drew his gaze to her face. How charming she looked in her simple clothes. How young too. She had been through two years that would have destroyed many people, and the only evidence of it was a slightly more watchful expression about the eyes. He could not fathom her. ‘Are you still angry with me, Clara?’

  She shook her head. ‘Nobody ought to be faced with the choices you had to make.’

  ‘Why didn’t you write to me?’ He tried not to sound querulous but feared he did.

  ‘I was pregnant.’

/>   ‘What difference did that make?’

  ‘You might have felt obliged to me. I think it’s Robert’s child.’

  ‘You still should have told me,’ he said unhappily, wondering how her pride would ever allow her to admit she needed him. ‘I don’t care who the father is,’ he insisted. A long silence stretched his nerves to breaking. ‘You can’t really doubt why I’m here. It’s nothing to do with staying at Holcroft Park – that just made it sooner.’ He could feel himself blushing. Why had he rushed on like this before getting any sense of how she felt?

  She stretched out her hands on the table. ‘When you killed that poor man … I can’t describe what I felt, except that I was a vile, abominable woman to have loved you.’ She withdrew her hands, leaving a slight smudge on the polished mahogany. The silvery morning light shone on her black hair. He wanted to lean forward and touch her. She said quietly, ‘I went back to Mponda’s kraal, you know. Makufa hadn’t come home yet. I realized that there wouldn’t be a civil war when he did.’ She looked past Francis at the heavy muslin curtains, as if reluctant to catch his eye. ‘It was a wonderful relief. I’ve had time to go over it all, Francis. Whatever the rights and wrongs of everything, you did what you thought you had to. I know I owe my life to you.’

  He tried to speak and failed at first. Finally he blurted out, ‘It means everything to hear you say that.’

  ‘It shouldn’t,’ she said, almost sternly. Her eyes were sad and repentant. ‘I wept when I heard about your hand.’

  He managed to smile, though his throat felt tight. ‘I wasn’t pleased about it myself. I’m afraid it spells finis for my career. I thought I might become a desk wallah, but it won’t do. Not in the long run.’

  ‘At least you won’t be killed charging at elephants.’ Her lips started to tremble. ‘I’m sorry, Francis. That came out wrong.’ She stared at the table. ‘I saw you in Cape Town, but I couldn’t say anything. I was outside the Castle. I went there specially to see you.’

  ‘You did?’ His joy was quite open.

  ‘Of course.’ She raised her hands to her face for a moment. ‘I was ashamed of how I’d treated you.’

  ‘Oh, darling,’ he said. ‘You needn’t have been.’

  ‘I can’t believe it,’ she cried. ‘Can’t believe I’m looking at you. I really loved you, Francis.’

  ‘But now?’ he faltered, feeling as if he were tottering on the brink of great misery or great happiness.

  ‘Of course I love you.’

  Although she smiled, he sensed a reflective sadness. Was she remembering how guilt had made her walk down that valley of death with her husband? And did she still need to think herself good? He feared he had made his love too obvious to her and had invited her pity by parading his lost career. He recalled a childhood prayer: ‘Whatsoever things are good, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, think on these things.’ It would not be good or lovely to shatter a wounded man’s dreams.

  ‘Promise me …’ he whispered, ‘promise not to lie to me.’

  She said gently, ‘Why should I need to lie? In a few months I shall give birth, and in the meantime you can be with me as much as you like. Isn’t that enough for now? Remember when we couldn’t even see a day ahead?’

  He found himself looking at Christ walking on the water. The saviour’s clean white feet under his striped robe hovered several inches above evenly spaced green wavelets. A sigh escaped Francis’s lips. Miracles could not reasonably be expected. He and Clara had loved each other in exquisitely perilous circumstances, as unlike the safe and sober present as it would be possible to imagine. But without fear of death to spice each moment, quieter pleasures could surely be enjoyed.

  He asked pleasantly, ‘What can one do for amusement in Sarston?’

  She cast her eyes upwards, as if assessing an infinity of choices. Then she said briskly, ‘Get drunk, or go shopping for a hat.’

  A grandfather clock boomed in the hall. Francis imagined Clara in front of a mirror, twisting her beautiful neck to look at a feathered hat from every angle. They would discuss other styles, and he would have the perfect excuse for gazing at her as much as he wanted for an hour. ‘The hat,’ he declared, having no difficulty in sounding enthusiastic. ‘Shall we choose it now?’

  Copyright

  This ebook edition first published in 2013

  by Faber and Faber Ltd

  Bloomsbury House

  74–77 Great Russell Street

  London WC1B 3DA

  All rights reserved

  © Tim Jeal, 1996

  Preface to the 2013 Edition © Tim Jeal, 2013

  The right of Tim Jeal to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly

  ISBN 978–0–571–31176–7