by Tim Jeal
‘Forgive my clumsiness. But at least it has given me time to think who it can be.’
‘And have you guessed?’
‘You mean to marry Helen. I applaud your choice.’
‘Thank you.’ He studied Charles carefully to try to gauge his real feelings. ‘Probably you think twenty years is a great disparity?’
Charles shrugged his shoulders.
‘As you yourself said, marriage like shipbuilding is an experimental science.’
Sir James laughed, delighted that Charles seemed able to joke about what he had feared might disturb him.
‘My analogy was unfortunate. In fact I feel we have certain advantages. We’ve both suffered in different ways; and then women who’ve suffered at the hands of a young man, often see much to commend the kindlier, less dramatic qualities of an older one. I also have the advantage of having had children of my own.’ Charles looked puzzled. ‘A man who does not understand a mother’s love might fear a child from a previous marriage as a rival. I believe the boy likes me, and that will count for something.’
‘And she herself?’ asked Charles, as naturally as he knew how. ‘Has she given any sign . .?’
‘I have an instinct, no more than that.’
Charles nodded attentively, careful not to betray the definite relief this caused him.
‘When will you ask her?’
‘When the right moment comes,’ Sir James replied with an enigmatic twinkle of amusement at Charles’s curiosity. ‘Would you like to tell me when my stars will be right? Perhaps I ought to let a phrenologist feel my bumps.’ He got up and took his son’s arm. ‘Catherine will think we have forgotten her.’
Leaving the room, James stopped Charles and said warmly:
‘I am a lucky man to have a son with whom I may talk freely of such things.’
*
On a clear crisp January morning, Charles rode through Flixton apparently in the direction of Hanley Park, but a mile beyond the village he turned left onto the Trawden road and dismounted at a small bridge. Sitting on one of the coping stones, he listened to the stream flowing noisily over a bed of flat stones. The sun was warm for the time of year and had brought out a number of birds, and across the water, Charles noticed some primroses in flower. In the surrounding fields the winter wheat was already covering the bare earth with a pale green film. He pulled out his watch and then glanced anxiously up the road.
Some twenty minutes after his arrival, a dog-cart swung into view between the high hedges. The driver was a lady in a dark green habit and a black beaver hat with a veil. Charles raised his own hat and jumped down from his seat on the side of the bridge. Helen reined in her bay mare and waited for Charles to come over to her; she looked flushed and irritated.
‘Forgive this irregularity, Helen. I did not want it to be known that we had met.’
Her colour deepened and she twisted the reins.
‘Am I permitted to know the reason for this strange reticence?’
‘My father called on you several times before Christmas.’ She nodded impatiently when he hesitated. His mouth felt dry and his chest constricted. When he went on he spoke rapidly as if to get over a matter too awkward to dwell upon. ‘My father has recently come to entertain feelings for you, which I fear may prove unwelcome if openly expressed.’
‘Then do not express them,’ she replied sharply.
‘The matter has become sufficiently important to him to make me dread the effects of disappointment.’
She said nothing for a moment; Charles studied her face but learned nothing from it.
‘What is your suggestion?’ she asked quietly.
Charles blushed and looked down at his polished riding boots.
‘Suggestion? It is not for me to guess your feelings in this.’
Helen frowned and let her whip fall on her lap.
‘Forgive me, Charles,’ she replied with a forced smile, ‘but you have already done so. Your fear is that he will be disappointed.’
‘A fear – precisely. No more than that.’
A thrush was singing loudly in the hedgerow; the mare had started to crop the grass at the side of the road. Helen caught Charles’s eye.
‘I admire your concern, but think it is misplaced. Would you have welcomed his intrusion had your positions been reversed?’
‘The desire to spare another humiliation and pain is not an ignoble one. I think your ladyship has misunderstood my intentions.’
She held out a conciliatory hand and got down from the box to be at the same level.
‘Charles, what am I to do? Refuse to see him unless I intend to marry him? It would be a hard life in which a woman had to turn away every man she did not intend to make her husband.’ She smiled. ‘And if she did so, how would she ever know who might suit her, or give that eligible visitor a chance to make himself plain?’
He had listened carefully but had not understood her words; instead his only desire was to tell her that he loved her, to go down on his knees on the grass in front of her and admit his hypocrisy. Say that no words would make him happier than to hear her laugh at the thought of marrying Sir James, that the only purpose of their meeting was for him to discover that he could still hope. She took his hand and whispered:
‘I am not unkind, Charles. I will never knowingly hurt your father. You have my word.’
‘Thank you.’
He paused momentarily before walking back towards the bridge.
21
In the weeks following her meeting with Charles, Helen noticed nothing different in Sir James’s behaviour. His visits became no more frequent, neither did his manner seem less relaxed. Without appearing to be making efforts to do so, he fitted in with her moods. When she wished to talk, he was an excellent listener; if she seemed tired, he would make his visit a short one, and when she was depressed he usually managed to divert her with light-hearted reminiscences. One story she had particularly enjoyed had concerned an event in the year after Waterloo, when Sir James had been a midshipman in a frigate stationed in the West Indies. The First Lieutenant, who hated the Captain, had been rebuked by him for the slackness of the entry-port guard, and had been ordered not to call the same guard again. While the Captain was ashore, his subordinate got together twenty-five after-guard and placed them on their hands and knees like horses with swabs for tails and manes, and mounted mizzen-topmen on their backs all armed with cutlasses. Last of all he himself clambered onto the quartermaster, both of them in full-dress with cocked hats and swords. This guard received the Captain at the entry-port with the usual honours on his return aboard. Having saluted with his sword, the First Lieutenant deferentially inquired whether the Captain found a cavalry guard more to his satisfaction than the old one. His sense of humour had cost him three years seniority. Humphrey also enjoyed such anecdotes, although, as Helen was aware, he was always disappointed that Sir James so rarely talked about fighting.
By the middle of March, Helen was beginning to wonder whether Charles had been mistaken about his father’s intention. But by then Charles had been ordered to Shoeburyness to take part in gunnery trials aimed at discovering the relative resistance of wooden and iron ships to explosive shells, so she had not been able to question him. Through February and March, Helen’s attitude to Sir James was ambivalent. She was fond of him certainly, but at times doubted whether this went much beyond the affection and admiration a young girl might feel for a favourite uncle. Her previous relationship complicated rather than simplified matters. She had entertained a particular image of him for so long that now she could not dispel it sufficiently to see him afresh. Often she felt certain that his age was of no account – certainly he did not look old – but at other times she felt unsure. Remembering her overwhelming love for Harry in the early days of her marriage to him, there were occasions when she longed to recapture that same self-annihilating passion. But probably, she told herself, she was no longer capable of love so intense. After twelve years of unhappiness could any woman h
ope to feel more for anybody than affection and companionship? Only the young could idealise people enough to love them with that strange mixture of selfless and self-absorbed intensity she recalled so well. Without her past innocence and her blind faith in the future, Helen was certain that she could never have loved Harry as she had. And now, was she too scarred by disillusion, ever again to possess the reckless courage needed for that unthinking leap into the unknown which was the prelude to all great love?
Usually she was prepared to think herself truly past such emotion, and this helped her to see Sir James as a possible husband; yet even then her memories of that other love kept her doubts alive. Only when he went to London in early April and stayed there a month, did she discover more positive feelings. His absence taught her how much she had come to rely on his presence. She felt lonely and adrift, and Humphrey too seemed morose. Before his departure her godfather had spoken about his unease over the situation in the eastern Mediterranean. He had said nothing about having been summoned by the Foreign Secretary or the First Lord, but with Derby recently gone, and Palmerston in Aberdeen’s new cabinet, she had little doubt that this was what had happened. His part in the Syrian War and then his years in Greece would inevitably make him one of the few men in the country with a detailed first-hand knowledge of the origins of the crisis between Turkey and Russia. Realising this, it took her little time to conclude that Sir James might suddenly be sent to Constantinople as a diplomat or to the Black Sea as a flag-officer. She was amazed to find herself frightened by this possibility, especially since there had been days when she had dreaded his making the proposal which Charles had predicted; but now that it seemed he might leave the country, perhaps for several years, she was bitterly disappointed that he had made no mention of marriage. She mocked herself for being suddenly overwhelmed by Sir James’s new power and influence, but knew that this was insignificant in comparison with the simple fear of losing him. She even reproached herself for ever having thought that she might have done better. From that day onwards, although it was not her usual habit, she read the papers thoroughly the moment the butler brought them in, still warm from being ironed.
*
On a sunny day in early May, Sir James called at Hanley Park as though he had never been away. He had brought a new sketch book, and soon after arriving, he suggested with an easy smile that if Helen could face a stern artistic test, she might care to come with him to draw the buds of the unfolding beech leaves. Still laughing at so precise a choice of subject, Helen put on a bonnet, and while a footman brought two chairs and her maid hurried off to fetch her parasol and water colours, she walked out across the fresh green of the lawn. With the servants following, they headed for the woods on the far side of the meadow skirting the eastern shore of the lake. She lifted her black skirt as they reached the rough grass, and he took her arm, pointing out the golden celandine and buttercups near the water. Occasional butterflies floated past, and as they came closer to the trees birdsong grew louder.
When a suitable clearing had been found, the servants placed the chairs where required and withdrew. Sir James picked some purple flowers from the boughs of an ash tree and looked at the blossom; then with a slight sigh he let the twigs fall and sat down to begin his work on the beech buds on the tree facing him. Helen sat too and watched him choose a pencil and begin to draw. She could imagine the impeccable if lifeless representation that would finally emerge. Sir James, like many naval officers, owed his skill to a training that had included compulsory sketching of coastlines for purposes of recognition. She started a perfunctory sketch of the whole clearing but without enthusiasm; for her, drawing had never been more than a socially expected accomplishment. Five minutes later Sir James saw her come towards him.
‘James, I really can’t sit drawing beech trees until you’ve told me what you did in London.’
‘I saw Sir James Graham and Lord Clarendon among others, and a great relief it is to be here again.’
‘Can things be so bad that you cannot speak of them?’
In the distance they heard the sounds of a gun; a keeper shooting rooks. Helen had learnt enough from the newspapers to know the gravity of the Eastern crisis and to realise that the dispute over the guardianship of the Holy Places was merely a pretext for a possible invasion of Turkey by Russia. Even in her father’s lifetime, Helen remembered naval officers talking heatedly about the Tsar’s ambition to dismantle the crumbling Turkish empire and seize Constantinople, the gateway to the Mediterranean. Sir James frowned.
‘Nothing’s too bad to talk about until the worst’s actually happened.’ He smiled at her and then continued with his drawing.
‘If the Russians invade Turkey,’ she went on doggedly, ‘will we fight to stop them controlling the Bosphorus?’
‘Hand them the eastern Mediterranean on a plate and Constantinople with it? We’ve not come to that, I trust.’
‘So there’ll be war if the Tsar invades?’
Sir James put down his pencil and gazed across the clearing at a vivid patch of forget-me-nots.
‘Undoubtedly.’
‘But will he?’ she asked, finally losing patience.
‘Not if we send the fleet to the Bosphorus tomorrow and promise to declare war the moment the first Russian soldier crosses the Danube.’ He closed his eyes for a moment and sighed. ‘That might be enough to deter them, but the cabinet’s divided about whether to threaten or conciliate. At the moment we’re doing just enough to annoy the Tsar and nothing like enough to scare him.’ From quite close they heard the clear inconsequential notes of a cuckoo. ‘The damned bird’s right, I fear.’
Helen felt suddenly irritated by his weary fatalism.
‘If members of the cabinet disagree with the Prime Minister’s policy they should resign.’
‘Quite useless until the public are prepared for war; they’ll take a little persuading that Turkey is worth defending.’
His dismissive tone hurt her. Either he found the subject too painful to talk about, or he thought her incapable of understanding even the broad outlines of the situation.
When he had finished his sketch, they walked deeper into the wood, the damp leafy soil deadening their footsteps. Only when she saw the dark shadows under his eyes and the hunted preoccupied expression of his face did she sense that he was probably involved personally in the government’s deliberations. All around them the ground was dappled with sunlight, filtering golden-green through the delicate canopy of pale new leaves. Helen did not bother to hitch up her cumbersome bombasine skirt, caring little if it caught on briars or brambles. But for most of their walk among the silver-grey trunks of the ancient beeches, there was little impeding undergrowth. Sir James pointed to the moss-covered roots of one of these patriarchal trees and said with an apologetic smile that they reminded him of anchors mooring a ship. Here and there cowslips and bluebells were still in bloom, merging with patches of white ransoms and purple wood-anemones. He turned to her and glanced around contentedly, as if responsible for the mass of spring flowers and the gentle crooning of the wood-pigeons in the branches above. Certainly without him she would never have visited the beech woods in this their most beautiful season, and yet the calling birds and the gentle rustling of the leaves did not dispel her feelings of anxiety and dissatisfaction. She understood his enjoyment of nature after the stresses of his time in the citadels of power, but for her there were too many unanswered questions to derive pleasure from the pale wind-flowers and the swooping lapwings. They had stopped to watch some swarming bees finding new quarters in a hollow tree, when she took his arm and asked diffidently:
‘What will you do, James?’
‘Bees never cease to amaze me; the survival of that entire swarm bound up in the Queen and all the others blindly following and dying just as blindly when their work is done.’ He turned over a mossy stone with the tip of his cane and said without looking up: ‘My Lords Commissioners are sending me to Constantinople. The Admiralty want me to be a direct link wit
h Stratford cutting out the Foreign Office.’
Lord Stratford de Redcliffe’s reputation was well-known to Helen, not only as Her Majesty’s Ambassador to Turkey, but also as a man of outstanding ability and arrogance, notorious alike for his independence and his hatred of Russia. Sir James’s position would be a delicate one.
‘Will Lord Stratford approve of the arrangement?’ she asked.
‘Strangely enough he wants me himself – to advise on what the navy can do as the situation develops. If Admiral Dundas says the fleet can’t do something, I’m meant to be able to explain away any disagreements that may follow: a sort of go-between; it’ll be little short of disastrous if Dundas and Stratford don’t understand each other.’
‘When do you go?’
‘I’m expected to sail on the 20th.’
‘I’m very pleased for you.’