by Sara Seale
She went a little white and her face became pinched and sharp with spite. The last of that whipped-up desire for him withered in a wave of malice, leaving only the dead desire to smash and destroy.
She held out her empty glass with an automatic gesture for more champagne, but Duff was already on his feet, filling two fresh glasses, and if he saw the proffered glass he chose to ignore it.
“I’m taking a couple out to those two doing all the work of clearing up. They must need a drink. Perhaps you wouldn’t mind opening the door for me as my hands are full?” he said, as if nothing of moment had passed between them at all, and she got up with a little shrug of bored dissatisfaction and opened the door.
The hall was nearly in darkness, for the candles on the tree had been extinguished. Here and there an ornament or piece of tinsel caught a shimmer of light from one small lamp in the bend of the stairs, and another tiny point of light sparkled for a moment at some movement on a high settle and was gone.
Duff stood for an instant in the doorway, a glass in each hand, unaware of Samantha behind him, peering over his shoulder. The little movement had been furtive, or so he had thought, and as his eyes became accustomed to the darkness, he saw them quite clearly; Harriet curled up on the settle where he remembered laying her the night he had brought her in out of the fog, Rory’s arms round her and her face raised for his kiss. Her body seemed to be a mute, confiding curve of surrender as she pressed against him, and the small movement brought another flash of fire from the clasp of her pearls.
“Well, well ... the gypsy warned you,” Samantha murmured softly behind him. “History is certainly repeating itself... only Kitty was found in more compromising circumstances, I understand. Still and all, one place is as good as another, I’ve always found, myself.”
“Shut up!” Duff snapped at her with bitter intensity, and at the sound of his voice the two on the settle disengaged themselves.
“Did you want us?” Rory asked with blithe unconcern. “We haven’t done much clearing up yet, I’m afraid, but Harriet was a bit upset.”
“I can see she was,” Duff replied with such unmistakable irony that Rory paused in his leisurely passage across the hall.
“Hey, now!” he said, amusement and incredulity mingled in his voice. “You aren’t getting ideas, are you, Cousin Duff?”
“What ideas should I get?” Duff replied, still with that bite of controlled anger. “If I’ve interrupted at an inconvenient moment it was merely to bring you both some champagne to help on the domestic chores, but I can see you haven’t wasted your efforts in that direction. Here, you’d better take your glass.”
Harriet was still huddled on the settle, only now aware of the fresh tension and Duff’s tall figure. She had been indulging in such a bout of crying which, at a casual word from Rory, had loosed the pent-up emotions of the day that she had been past noticing. She got up now, brushing away the tears, hoping that in the dim light he would not notice her swollen eyes or, if he did, that he would refrain from commenting on that irritating habit of weeping. But as she took the glass of champagne from him and saw the expression on his face, she hurriedly swallowed too big a gulp of the wine which made her choke.
“I’m sorry,” she said, not yet understanding what had caused this icy displeasure. “I’m afraid we haven’t made much progress with the tidying up. I—I was a little tired.”
“Excuses can wait till later, I think, when our guest has gone,” he said, and Samantha, whose social sense seldom failed her when there was no more to be got from labouring a point already nicely stressed, took the hint and strolled out with a nonchalant wave of the hand.
“Bitch or no bitch, darling, history does have a habit of repeating itself, doesn’t it? Goodnight, everyone, and thanks for the party.”
A gust of wind and rain drove in upon them as she opened the front door with difficulty. Neither man offered to see her into her car and the door closed upon her, shutting out the wildness of the night again.
“Samantha’s seen to it that none of us should forget, that other Christmas, hasn’t she?” Rory remarked.
Duff’s fists clenched at his sides and for a moment it looked to Harriet as if he might strike his cousin. She had said nothing all this time, aware that they had forgotten her, and she had the curious feeling that she was encased in glass and had no part in their bitter exchanges.
“That,” said Duff, replying to Rory’s taunt and controlling himself with an effort, “was both vulgar and uncalled for. Are you trying to excuse yourself by putting me in the wrong, or are you just trailing your coat?”
“Trailing my coat is as good a way of putting it as any—I don’t have to make excuses.”
“Don’t you? Is it excusable to trade on our relationship, accept my hospitality and then steal from me?”
“Is it stealing to accept the offer of something you have no use for yourself?” said Rory with insolent bravado, and Duff suddenly turned on his heel and walked off to his study.
“Why did you say that?” Harriet asked in a small, lost voice. “Why did you let him think—”
“Because,” he replied still with a trace of bravado, “that’s what your king-of-the-castle husband needs to think to stir him into some kind of action. Isn’t it what you wanted—to be recognised as a woman and not treated like a child?” The bitter note in his voice was very reminiscent of Duff and for a moment he seemed a stranger.
“Yes...” she said on a tired little sigh. “But not like this ... not just to be a reminder of a failure in himself ... that would hurt him too much to be able to think of me kindly.”
He put a hand under her chin to turn her face to the light coming from the snug and his eyes were suddenly gentle.
“Why, Princess—I believe you’re in love with him, after all,” he said softly, and brushed a last remaining teardrop from her swollen lids.
“I thought you knew,” she said simply. “I thought that was why you’ve been so nice to me.”
“Oh, Harriet, my poor innocent child! No wonder Cousin Duff sometimes finds it hard to see what’s under his nose! Did you think my small attentions were purely altruistic? I’ll admit I thought it might be a good move to provide a little competition to shake him out of that self-imposed avuncular forbearance, but don’t imagine that I haven’t enjoyed your lessons in the art of flirtation. Had things been different I could have fallen for you very easily.”
“Could you, Rory?” she said with such surprise that he laughed.
“Yes—but don’t let it deflect you from your more serious ambitions. I’ll be going away soon, I think. Cousin Duff won’t care for his style to be cramped much longer, I suspect, and I should hate to have a real showdown with the old chap. Come on back to the snug and get warm. It’s damn cold out here.”
She followed him into the snug and sat on the fender stool, too drained of emotion to do more than marvel that a single day could hold so many conflicting and catastrophic incidents. The scent Samantha used still hung on the air as a reminder, and Harriet said with ample bluntness:
“Do you suppose she’s still his mistress?”
Rory replenished their glasses, bidding her drink the champagne slowly and let it do its work of reviving a weary spirit, then sat down in Duff’s armchair and stretched his legs.
“Well, that I wouldn’t know since my proud cousin climbed on to his high horse the only time it was mentioned, but I should doubt it, knowing Duff’s views,” he replied. “Is he a good lover, Harriet? That’s not an impertinent question, merely one of concern.”
“My marriage has never been con—consummated, if that’s the right expression,” she said simply, stumbling a little over the word. “That was the agreement between us, you see.”
“Well, for crying out loud!” Rory exclaimed. “Now I’ve heard everything! What on earth possessed you both?”
“It sounds crazy now, I suppose, but at the time, I didn’t think. It made it easier in a way to marry a perfect stranger.”
“And did you imagine that any sane and healthy man would abide by that for long?”
“I didn’t know. I thought, you see, as long as there was Samantha he wouldn’t need me.”
“Lord preserve the pigs!” If you want him why don’t you try a bit of seduction yourself?”
“I don’t know how,” she said, so ashamedly that he had an impulse to sit her on his knee and treat her like a little girl.
“No, I suppose you wouldn’t, you being you,” he said impatiently. “Well, it’s up to your husband to teach you—I know I wouldn’t waste much time.”
“Dear Rory...” she said, and seemed half asleep. “It’s nearly supper time. I think I’ll take a tray up to the nursery and have mine with Nonie, if you and Duff will look after yourselves. It’s only cold left-overs.”
“Running away and leaving me to deal with the wrath to come?”
“No—just a respite to get my breath back again. Could you—could you explain a little, do you think, if you get a chance at supper? You know Duff better than I do, and wouldn’t say the wrong thing.”
“All right, all right—if tempers have cooled by then, although I have a suspicion that Cousin Duff has just been biding his time and will prefer to work out his own curious pattern of behaviour. Take yourself off now, Princess. I’ll clear up the party clutter.”
But Rory found himself eating alone. Whether Duff too had caught the prevailing habit and taken a tray to his study he had no means of knowing, but he was relieved that he would not have to face his cousin tonight when later he heard the front door slam and knew he had gone out.
Harriet was in bed when she heard Duff come up, trying to warm her feet on the sleeping Uriah, since no one had thought the replace her leaking hot water bottle with another. She sat up against her pillows wondering if she should call out to Duff, but even if he was still upset surely he would not omit to say goodnight at Christmas. So she waited, listening for the familiar sounds as he moved about in his room, so acquainted now with each unvaried stage of his nightly routine that she could almost tell to the minute when he was ready for bed. Now he was putting his shoes outside to be cleaned ... now he was drawing the curtains and opening a window ... next he would turn down the lamp, but before that he would knock and put his head round the door to call goodnight to her, and she would invite him in make her peace with him ...
His light went out. Harriet sat up, hugging her knees, incredulity and bitter disappointment choking the small cry of protest in her throat. He could not, he would not, let the sun go down upon his wrath, she thought childishly, the tears beginning to force their way behind lids already tender with weeping, and even as she licked her lips to call out his name, the intervening door opened and he came in without knocking.
“Oh!” I thought you’d forgotten!” she cried, and relief and gladness made her hold out her arms in unconscious welcome and invitation.
“Did you, Harriet?” he said, and she thought his voice sounded odd.
“Well, I saw your light go out, and that’s always the last thing you do before you get into bed.”
“I was merely following my usual practice.”
“Oh! But you generally look in to say goodnight before the lamp goes out.”
“There’s a first time for everything,” he said, and walked unhurriedly to the bed, picked up Uriah quite gently, carried him into his own room and shut the door on him.
“Why did you do that?” Harriet asked, more from surprise than anything else, and Duff came back to the bed and stood there looking down at her, his hands thrust into the pockets of his dark dressing-gown which made him look so tall, his shadow thrown in distortion on the wall as she remembered it once before.
“As we shan’t need either the dog or the lamp for the rest of the night, they might as well share my room,” he said quite pleasantly, and sat down on the bed.
Harriet, sitting bolt upright against the pillows, was so still and her face so expressionless that he wondered if she had understood him.
“Do you—do you want something of me, Duff?” she asked, and knew even as she spoke how naive the question must sound. What he had in mind was only too plain, she thought, but she did not know how to show him she understood, how to meet him half-way by calling up those feminine tricks and wiles which were said to be instinctive.
“How innocent you sound,” he replied quite softly but without tenderness, without even humour, and she realised that he was still holding down a bitter anger which shut him off completely from her own stumbling efforts to reach him.
He had been watching her face with a stranger’s dispassionate interest, and she remembered that old habit he had of taking a lucky shot at her thoughts and scoring a bull’s-eye when he said suddenly:
“Yes, it was, wasn’t it? A ridiculous agreement that no one in their senses would have expected to work. Well, the time has come for reviewing the contract, I think. Do I alarm you, Harriet? Isn’t this the cue for tears and protestations?”
“What am I supposed to protest about?” she asked, left with only the weapon of provocation which she knew to be rash, but she was tired out, both from the day’s disastrous chain of events and the cat-and-mouse game he seemed to be enjoying.
“At the propositioning of your hitherto complaisant husband, I would imagine, but perhaps you’re no longer so inexperienced as when you married me.”
“If by complaisance you mean a—a forgoing of m-marital rights, you, made the rules,” she said, stumbling a little over the words, and he smiled without amusement.
“Rules are made to be broken,” he said. “It’s time I exercised these marital rights you talk of so glibly, and it’s time you came down to earth, my dear, and stopped living in cloud-cuckoo-land. Why should I be denied for the sake of a principle what you’re willing to give to another?”
She stared back at him incredulously, too astonished even to be alarmed. No one, surely, could have interpreted that little scene with Rory in a sinister light once tempers had cooled!
“Oh, really, Duff!” she exclaimed, feeling almost maternal towards him in the relief of having got to the bottom of the trouble. “As if anybody would choose a draughty hall for illicit pleasure with doors in every direction which could open at any minute! Didn’t Rory explain over supper how that silly scene arose?”
“Rory would doubtless explain away anything to his satisfaction, if not to mine, but I don’t happen to have seen him all the evening,” he replied, and she could hear the suppressed anger beginning to rise in his voice as he went on: “You would seem to have grasped the disadvantages of the hall, but there are other less public spots, and other uninterrupted opportunities. Rory has been here for well over a week, and do you suppose I haven’t noticed the change in you? Don’t think I blame you entirely, my dear. It was only natural, I suppose, that seeing him again should revive those adolescent hopes of Prince Charming, but you happen to be married to the Wicked Uncle, if we must stick to fairy-tales, so you’ll have to adjust your romantic notions and take the consequences.”
She stared back at him mutely, looking suddenly very young and rather plain, and was left with nothing to say. Had theirs been a normal marriage she could understand that her innocent pleasure in the company of a younger man might well have aroused jealousy, but to imagine Duff—her thoughts suddenly swivelled with frightening clarity to that other Christmas party so long ago. Had she stirred up bitter memories by her foolish insistence on reviving old customs which he had turned his back on, and was his answer to be the same—to demand his rights and get his wife with child?
“I see you’re beginning to treat the matter a little more seriously,” he said. “The tears aren’t far off, are they? I must confess you’ve surprised me by having refrained for so long, since weeping comes so easily to you. Now, since we at last understand one another, let’s have done with all this fencing and sparring.”
“No!” cried Harriet, pressing back against the pillows. “Not in anger and
bitterness—can’t you understand?”
“What should I understand? I told you long ago that a man has basic needs that have nothing to do with love. Anger can spark off passion just as well.”
“The sleeping wolf...” she murmured, remembering the motto.
“Exactly. Wolves, after all, only have natural animal appetites, and if you rashly persist in waking one, you must take what’s coming to you, mustn’t you?”
“It isn’t in me, unfortunately, to wake up wolves or any other living creature. Why don’t you go back to Samantha if all you want is physical satisfaction?” she flung at him, and his long-suppressed anger erupted with a violence that startled them both. He took her by the shoulders, shaking her until her teeth chattered, then flung her back against the pillows and reached out a hand to turn down the lamp.
“Throwing up an old affair in my face won’t help you now, my dear,” he said. “I’ve learnt my lesson, now you must learn yours. I see you’re shivering again—are you scared?”
“No, I’m cold. They forgot to give me a hot water bottle,” she replied, a truthful nature compelling her to correct a misconception even in that moment, and he felt the savage bitterness begin to drain out of him.
“Well, move over. I’ll soon warm you up,” he said harshly, and put out the light.
There was still a faint glow from the dying fire to lighten the darkness. Her face and thin bare shoulders were pale blurs of stillness as if she had not heard him, then with a little sigh she obediently moved over to the other side of the bed to make room for him.
“That would be kind. My own hot water bottle leaked, you see, and Uriah was warming my feet,” she said, sounding like an overtired little girl who still feels a polite explanation is due, and the last of the anger and bitterness which had sustained him all the evening seeped away, leaving him drained and without desire.
“Oh, for God’s sake!” he exclaimed, his voice harsh with self-disgust. “Go to sleep, Harriet, and forget, if you can, this rather undignified exhibition.”