A breeze filtered through the silky net curtains and as the coolness of it ran over her skin, she shivered from neck to ankles. The day was over and night had fallen. They had dined alone in the splendour of the dining-room downstairs, furnished in lacy Indonesian teak, with Iceberg roses on the table, and candles flickering in silver holders. They had dined on hothouse asparagus and a delicious combination of roast bird and cool tangy wine in crystal goblets on silver stems. Suddenly the wine had rushed to her head and she had cried out recklessly, down the length of the gleaming table, ‘You’re so rich, Edwin. Able to buy whatever you fancy. No wonder you look at the world with such fearless eyes.’
His unsparing gaze had answered her all down the length of the table, and he had toyed with a silver fruit knife, his darkness set against a background of long sapphire silk curtains, closed across the French windows that reached almost to the ceiling, where the ceiling curved into a dome of painted panels.
In his dark velvet dinner-jacket, tailored to fit him without a wrinkle, and with his dark, distinctive face, marred all down the left profile, he had seemed to her even more unapproachable than in the church, where m the tinted windows the Gothic angels had watched with sun-filled eyes as they were married.
‘I might have learned how to master fear,’ he said, ‘but that doesn’t mean that I never feel it.’
‘I’m sure it’s been a long time since you felt fear,’ she scoffed. ‘What have you to fear, you with your masculine authority and your persuasive power? What devils can alarm you, or harm you? They’d be too afraid to even try.’
‘Do you think my face would frighten them?’ He cut a grape from its stalk and the fruit was bloomy-purple against the white glimmer of his teeth as he bit it.
She studied his face in the candlelight and saw shadows in the hollows under his cheekbones, and a sculptured look to his jaw that made him seem ruthless. His eyes seemed dark in the shadow of his eyelids, as the sea was darkened when night fell. The flames of the candles moved back and forth, shining on his hair, and on the dark, arrogant tilt of his eyebrows.
‘You know,’ he murmured, ‘you should know me by now.’
At once she flushed and could not control it. She saw a glint behind his lowered lashes, like flickers of fire seen way back in a forest clearing. It could have been amusement or anger ... she just wasn’t sure.
‘You aren’t easy to know,’ she said. ‘You’re far too subtle to disclose yourself to anyone.’
‘Even my wife?’ he murmured. ‘Come, I don’t plan to remain a stranger to you, Heron.’
She could not mistake him this time, and though she sat very still and straight in her high-backed Indonesian chair, she could feel how she was fighting him with every fibre of her body. Across the room in a small alcove a lovely domed clock ticked away the minutes, and outside in the night an owl gave a hoot of mockery.
‘Anyway,’ he leaned back in his chair with his wine glass in his hand, the fine stem gleaming in his fingers, ‘can anyone say “I know myself”? Aren’t we all as mysterious to ourselves as we are to other people? Is not that mystery the most exciting part of being alive?’
‘Exciting,’ she admitted, ‘but none the less a little frightening.’
‘You keep harping on words like fear and fright,’ he drawled softly. ‘Are you so afraid of me, Heron? Am I such a dragon? Are you not yet able to look at my face without wondering how I came to get slashed into the semblance of a devil?’
‘There’s a devil in you!’ She could not control the words; they leapt from her lips and hung in the silence that followed them.
‘And you?’ With deliberation he sipped his wine. ‘Are you such an angel?’
‘No—I’m just an ordinary human being—’
‘Are you now?’ His eyebrow arched and gave him a look of lazy sarcasm. His eyes flickered over her, taking in her dress of pale supple silk girdled by a pale green sash. Somehow she gave the impression of a tall, pale lily, framed by the lacy teak of her chair.
‘ “O Swan, My eyes watch you through the willows,” ’ he quoted. ‘Do I honestly look the sort of man to marry an ordinary sort of woman? What would I do with nice, sweet submission from a girl of sweet suburban charm? If I’d wanted that I shouldn’t have married you, Heron. You are a wild bird, Heron, like your name. Your wings are not for clipping, but for flying through night skies and sapphire dawns. Ordinary? You? With your pale, flame-tipped beauty!’ His crystal wine glass rang on the surface of the table as he set it down. ‘You aren’t that modest! You know your own rarity, so don’t pretend with me. I have the distinction of being a man you don’t have to pretend with, and that’s why you married me. There’s a certain devilish pleasure, my pet, in being with someone in total confrontation of the truth, with no sweet lies; no honey that turns bitter after the first taste.’
It was strange about the truth, she thought, as without falseness or fear he let her know that love played no part in their relationship ... the real truth cut clean like shining steel, leaving a wound so fine that it didn’t even show.
Suddenly a candle flickered and three flames were left burning together. ‘It’s unlucky!’ Heron leaned forward and blew out one of the flames.
‘You don’t believe in tempting the devil, eh?’
‘No,’ she said, and felt the jump and jangle of her nerves as the little clock began to chime. She counted each stroke and when the total came to nine, she felt almost faint with relief. Not yet—not just yet would Edwin be ready to go upstairs.
He threw down his table napkin. ‘I’ll go and smoke a cigar in the conservatory,’ he said. ‘You look dazed and want to be alone for a while. Will you have your coffee and cognac in the drawing-room?’
‘Yes—I think so.’
And so for an hour they parted, and after Chandra had left beside her a cup of coffee and a tiny glass of cognac, she remained in thought for a little while, and then went over to the lovely grand piano and sat down to play for a while. Music always soothed her nerves ... and she drifted into the Autumn Sonata by Ghaminade, a piece she particularly loved, and her fingers as they caressed the keys seemed to be seeking for total involvement with the idealistic beauty of the music. She wished to drift away with it, into an autumnal dream of days that were past and gone, when she had been her own person. Now she had given herself into the hands of a husband, and the compulsion behind that giving was too fearful to fathom.
She didn’t want to think about it, not just yet ... oh, not just yet. With only a single lamp lit in the room she played her way into the deep mystic realms of Brahms, unaware that the music was drifting into the garden in the direction of the conservatory, where a man sat alone in a cane chair, the smoke of a cigar drifting about his head, keeping at bay the night moths who on filmy wings came seeking the exotic plants which had been carefully shipped from a far-off land, to scent the conservatory with their musk and their spice.
All at once the music broke off, for Heron abruptly realized that she was playing Cradle Song. She jumped to her feet and hastened from the drawing-room. There in the hall she gazed a little wildly at the firmly closed front door ... beyond that door lay the night and the sea and escape from this marriage, which like that newel-cage at the foot of the stairs had closed around her, holding her a prisoner. Yet not quite a prisoner! She could open that door, she could run, and the way back to Memory was downhill.
Yet what would they all say, and think, if she suddenly appeared there on her wedding night? Uncle Saul and Lilian would assume her to be crazy ... and she didn’t doubt that Edwin would come after her, and it would be mortifying to be brought home again like a truant child.
She wasn’t a child, after all. She was a woman and she owed it to herself to behave with dignity. So, shoulders braced, she made her way upstairs and along the deep-carpeted landing to her suite. Her footfalls were as silent as those of a ghost, and passing a panelled mirror she saw that in her pale dress she looked ghostly. Only her hair had life and warmth,
for her body felt crystal-cold, and her grey eyes looked haunted.
When she entered her bedroom she gazed around it in a kind of wonder. The silky wallpaper was a shade of soft orchid-mauve, and all the furniture was a soft shade of white. There were crystal containers on the vanity-table, and little lamps shaded gold to match the silken drapes at the long windows. The wall-to-wall carpet was mauve, with small white islands of vicuna rugs. And there above steps was a great carved bed ... like a setting, thought Heron, for the suffocation of Desdemona.
Heron stood there, aware that her teeth were torturing her underlip, and yet unable to stop the torture. Across the pale mauve coverlet of the bed lay her silk-chiffon nightdress, and her negligee of champagne silk edged at the full sleeves and the hem with softest fur. These she had bought herself, for her uncle had given her a most generous cheque. They were part of her trousseau, the rest of which hung in the wardrobe and reposed in the satin-padded drawers built beneath a range of well-stocked bookshelves.
She was surrounded by a sensuous luxury other girls would have revelled in, yet it left her cold. It left her haughty, and somehow disdainful, for it was meant to recompense her for being a mere object of a man s desires. A harem creature, lapped in silk and scent. A white, flame-haired plaything, to be displayed against all these pastels.
With statuesque disdain she ungirdled her dress, unzipped it, and stepped out of it. She unpeeled her few items of lingerie and reaching for the nightdress she slipped it down over her hair and her slim bare body.
It was her person which Edwin had bought, and which she had sold. Neither he nor she harboured any illusions about the arrangement. He was a virile man who didn’t wish to live alone; she was a girl who had lost her home at a vulnerable age, and the offer of another had been too much to resist.
She stroked the silk chiffon down over her hips, and when she turned to the mirror her hair had fallen forward, curling above her eyes in a flamy wave. The disarray was attractive, so she left it that way. Men liked a little wanton disarray, so she had heard, and tonight she made her first payment for the privilege of having for her home a fantastic oddity of a house perched above the seashore, so that morning and evening she might enjoy the beauty of Jocelyn’s Beach.
Holding around her the silk and fur of her robe, she went out on to the balcony of her bedroom—she leaned out over the balustrade, a little like Juliet seeking Romeo, and she breathed the sea air and heard the rustling of the lichens that cascaded below her balcony. In daylight they were patterned like a rainbow; a living curtain of dusky reds, mottled greens, and glossy royal purples, softening the century-old bricks of which the house was built. Erected in the days of Victoria, to last until the sea finally encroached on the headland, the Turret as it was called, and the Glass Castle tumbled down into the water.
But that would not happen for a long, long time, and as the sea air blew Heron’s hair from her brow, she thought of the years ahead that she must spend with a man who had married her to make a possession of her—like the other carefully chosen objects in his house. The engraved pewter and silver plate, the graceful Indonesian furniture of glossy, honey-dark teak, the sea-coloured fabrics, and the intricate lamps hung on chains from the high, domed ceilings.
Heron wandered into the boudoir attached to her bedroom, and here again she saw lovely things, possessions for the possessed. The recliner upholstered in mauve velvet, the rich folds of pale mauve velvet at the windows, the boudoir lamps of porcelain, painted with violets. The Adam mirror in a golden frame, a slipper chair with a satin seat, a carpet that hushed her footfalls. And most attractive of all a circular writing alcove, complete with a small Regency lady’s desk, adorned with tiny drawers, and a Faberge writing-set with a matching menagerie of tiny jewelled animals.
She could have wept at the beauty of it all ... like a jewel-box, created as a setting for the living creature Edwin had obtained for himself.
Her fingers caressed the velvet and the satin, and toyed with the Faberge animals on the Regency desk. Her fingertips stroked across the Faberge egg in rose enamel, which suddenly clicked open to disclose a basket of tiny flowers made from pale jewelled petals and jade leaves. It was so fascinating that Heron picked up the egg and held it in the palm of her hand. Made a century ago for the court of Russia, for possibly a princess, and now Edwin gave it to her, and she had to accept it not as a gift of love, but as a toy for his toy. A pretty plaything to beguile away an idle hour—she quickly closed the egg and replaced it on the desk, where it acted as a paperweight. But before she turned away from the desk her eyes dwelt on the little clock that ticked there. Her heart seemed to miss a beat, for it was now eleven o’clock and she knew that soon Edwin would come upstairs. His suite was next door to hers and there he would prepare for bed before coming to her.
Fear of that moment hooked itself into her heart, and she glanced round wildly, again like a caged creature. She hurried into her bedroom and stared at the door that adjoined Edwin’s room. She went over to it and stared at the lock, and she felt almost choked by her heartbeats as she saw the key that jutted there and knew that it lay within her power to lock Edwin out of her bedroom. The key would be bound to fit the landing door as well, so if she used it, if she turned it against him, he would have to spend his wedding night alone ... unless he forced the lock, or had a key of his own.
Her fingers touched the key ... and then her heart cried out, ‘Cheat! Coward! Child!’
Yes, she would be all those things if she turned that key, and because she had to stop thinking ... thinking of his arms, his lips, his demands as a husband, she sought relief in the books ranged on the white shelves. She carefully examined the titles and needing escape, quite desperately, she selected a copy of Morte d’Arthur, which had beautiful illustrations which she could study, her mind being in too much of a turmoil to be able to make sense of the words.
She sat down in one of the Queen Anne chairs and opened the book at random. Something fell out from between the pages, slipped across her lap and fell to the carpet. She bent to retrieve the object and discovered that it was a photograph. She examined it and found that it was slightly discoloured around the edges, which meant that it wasn’t a recent photograph, and she gazed carefully at the pictured face and the lean figure of a young man clad in military uniform, which she didn’t recognize as being British, or even of the Commonwealth.
The man inside the uniform she recognized almost at once, even though he had been very much younger when the photograph was taken.
It was Edwin, with close-cropped black hair, and his lean face unmarred by the slashing scar. He was smiling slightly and leaning against the thick, rough plaiting of a gigantic palm tree. His skin looked swarthy from the sun, and his body had the whiplash hardness of a young man at the peak of his strength and fitness. His eyes gazed with challenge at the camera, and he looked as if never in his life had he feared anyone.
Heron sat there looking into those fearless eyes, and she remembered that first date with him, and their meeting in the foyer of the theatre with a man who had said they had been in the Army together. Very slowly Heron turned over the photograph to see if it was dated.
There was no date, but in the firm, dark handwriting which she knew were scrawled the words: ‘Paid to kill, or die.’
It was then that she knew what sort of a uniform he wore. It was that of a mercenary army corps, fashioned for men who fought not for glory but for money. Men who killed, or died, for mercenary reasons.
Heron felt as if her heart had come into her throat ... so this was the secret in his past! This was what he never talked about! This was how he came to be scarred! And how ironical that his photograph as a mercenary should be hidden in the pages of a book about knights and honour and the search for the Holy Grail.
With a hand that shook slightly Heron replaced the photograph and closed the book. She left the book on the chair and went to the vanity-table, where she gazed at her reflection as if looking at a stranger. Of its ow
n accord her hand reached for one of the scent flagons and removed the stopper. She spilled scent into the palm of her hand and tipping back her head she applied the scent to her throat, feeling it cool and musky against her skin.
Let Edwin take her quickly, like those women he had taken in those days of mercenary fighting. Let the night not break her heart, for now she knew how much she had longed for love ... the storms, the joy, the heavenly kinship of body and soul.
Her face whitened and her hands gripped the edge of the vanity-table as in the mirror she saw the door of Edwin’s room open behind her, and she saw in the aperture the tall figure of her husband, clad in a dark silk dressing-robe, beneath which were dark-blue pyjama trousers.
So absorbed in her thoughts had she been that she had not heard him come to his room.
Now he came into her room and closed the door behind him. The action was so meaningful that Heron stood frozen where she was, her eyes fixed upon the mirror as it reflected his approach, until he was directly behind her, looming dark and tall.
‘Turn round,’ he said quietly. ‘Look at me, Heron, and see that I’m just a man and not a kind of monster.’ But she couldn’t move. Her legs felt useless, and her tongue felt tied.
‘Don’t be foolish,’ he gripped her elbows and swung her round to face him. She stumbled against him and at once his nostrils flared and his fingers bit into her arms. ‘My good girl,’ he snapped, ‘you’ve doused yourself in perfume and you smell like a tart!’
‘Isn’t that what you want?’ With defiance crying out in her heart she flung the words in his face. ‘A tart?’
The Glass Castle Page 15