Next morning, having reached the same conclusion, Crispin was pale with anxiety as I walked towards Old Sarah’s Rock. He began immediately to talk about nothings a great rush of words, weaving themselves skilfully, whimsically around my good intentions, telling me that our parting, like all painful events, would come in its own good time and that there was nothing I need do about it today.
He was, of course, more deeply in debt than ever, for no one seemed to pay for either his lectures or the journeys they involved, while the Cullingford Star and certain residents of Simon Street could be relied on to devour his meagre allowance well before the month-end. And although he would not take a penny from me, declaring no gentleman ever borrowed from a lady, his ban did not extend to all members of my sex.
He had borrowed, quite substantially, I knew, from a spinster aunt somewhere in Wensleydale, and there was always his bold-faced landlady, Mrs Dinah McCluskey, widow of the terrible, seventeen-stone landlord of the Red who had died, some two years ago, in a brawl involving her honour.
‘She’s a good soul,’ Crispin said cheerfully. ‘And pretty well fixed since her husband died. She doesn’t mind if I’m behind with the rent. It pleases her to have what she calls gentleman living in her attic, and I amuse her too.’
‘I daresay. She couldn’t be in love with you, could she?’
‘Well, I honestly don’t see why she couldn’t, except that I’m a trifle lightweight for her taste. Her husband was mighty man, and there are one or two just like him at her beck and call. And I cannot even dazzle her with learning since she sees very well that I fail to make a de living by it. If she were a man, you know, and loved you as do she would run off with you whether you liked it or not. And when your husband came to repossess you would make short work of him too.’
And I saw no point in protesting that I was no mere object, to be repossessed like a bale of dress goods, sir that was my condition exactly.
Yet my awareness of defeat corresponded with a great flowering of Elinor’s spirit, a lovely reaching out that put peach bloom and rose bloom in her skin, gave depth to her voice and the colour of her eyes, thrusting her from her prolonged, neurotic girlhood to a wonderful, gold-tinted maturity. And I watched, with sympathy and envy, as she passed from her trance of sexual desire to that far more perilous state of love.
‘What do you mean to do?’ I asked her, as my mother only last summer, had asked me. ‘What future has Elinor?’
As I spoke the words, my mother’s voice came to from that same long-past season warning me – or warning Elinor through me – that melancholy men like her husband, to whom life appears a burden, are usually very slow to lay it down.
‘I shall be patient,’ she said. ‘What else is there? I shall be sensible for the first time in my life – and patient.’
‘You mean you will wait for your husband to die?’
‘Yes,’ she said, settling herself down against the black velvet upholstery of her carriage, her eyes quiet, her totally serene, as if the death of Morgan Aycliffe was natural to her as the blending of one season into another. ‘That is exactly what I shall do. Does he deserve more of me than that?’
‘And will Mr Adair wait too?’
‘Oh yes – can you doubt it?’ she said, her eyes sparkling with mischief, her mouth gentle with the knowledge and acceptance of the man she loved. ‘Of course Daniel will wait Verity. I am not such a goose – I know how much the money – Morgan Aycliffe’s money – means to Daniel. I know that is why he flirted with me in the first place and worked so hard to make me rely on him. I know, darling. But that is not the way of things now. He loves me now, Verity.’
And I had no cause to disbelieve her, for Elinor had always been lovable, and now, glowing with these new vibrant shades of womanhood, she would have been hard any man to resist. And Daniel Adair, at least, was not a cold man. Ambitious and hardheaded, certainly, but with a reckless side to him and a romantic side, with a heart that could be moved to love and persuaded to faithfulness.
‘He will probably cheat your daughters of their dowries,’ I told her, quoting my mother again. ‘And he may beat you when you misbehave. But I think you’ll be happy – I hope so, at any rate, Elinor. I do hope so.’
‘And you’ll continue to receive me when I’m plain Mrs Adair, and Emma-Jane Hobhouse turns up her nose at me cause my mother-in-law was a washerwoman?’
‘I will.’
‘Even if Joel condemns me for giving Daniel control of the business, instead of him? Because he won’t be able to top me, Verity – there’ll be nothing anyone can do to stop me.’
And clasping my hand suddenly with a fierce, desperate she closed her eyes and said, ‘Pray that it happens, verity, for if I pray myself I may give offence, and then it could all go wrong. Please, Verity, it’s not that I want him dead, it’s just that I want to be alive myself, which doesn’t sound quite right, but you’ll know what to say. I don’t shock you, do I? It’s not my fault, dearest; surely it’s law to blame, and those who made it – the ones who allow no escape from an unhappy marriage but death. No divorce, no separation without the husband’s consent, just death – his or mine. I could have died, last year, many a time, without even weeping for myself, and he wouldn’t have wept for me, either. But not now. I have never felt strongs Verity. I wake up in the mornings – and you know how frail I used to be in the mornings – and now I could fly. Really I could; straight through the walls and away above the smoke. And I can’t lose that feeling, can I? I can’t let anything stand in its way.’
No escape from an unhappy marriage but deaths yet had never thought of Joel as anything but overpowering alive, a vital force dominating the lesser lives around him as my grandfather had done. And when I tried to place myself in widow’s weeds, with Joel’s money – my money – in my hands, and the freedom to dispose of it, and myself as I thought fit, my mind faltered. I could not, in fact, even contemplate Joel’s death, much less welcome it, and when I attempted to force myself, I was shaken, totally appalled.
Yet a great distance had opened up between us lately, a coldness that made him difficult of access and difficult to please. He was an irritable presence at table that summer, behind a newspaper, a drift of cigar smoke on the stairs, a closed study door.
Apart from his infidelities, of which I was supposed to know nothing, he had never treated me unkindly. He had been unfailingly generous, had made me lavish gifts, never, questioned my spending, had praised me and protected, me. But now, since the night of the dance, his easy, tolerant affection had gone.
‘Is it veal again? Do we eat nothing else at this house?’
‘But, Joel—’
‘Damnation – I’m sick of it.’
‘Then what would you like to eat? You have only to tell me.’
‘The housekeeping is your affair, madam, and I’d hope after all these years, that you could get it right.’
And when, the following evening, there would be beef or lamb, salmon or pheasant from Dalby Hall; all of it succulent, well seasoned, well garnished he would eat in a silence I found more unnerving than his complaints.
Nor did his displeasure confine itself to the dining room. It came to bed with us too, invading an area of our lives upon which I preferred not to brood. I had feared, after Crispin’s first lovemaking, that my body would be unresponsive to Joel and had been amazed, had wondered about myself, when this had not always proved to be the case. Yet how there were nights when Joel would take me roughly, without skill, deliberately denying me the pleasure he had once been so determined to arouse; there were other nights when pleasure eluded us both, when his mood would fluctuate alarmingly from annoyance to something I dared not call tenderness, from an urge to blame me for my inadequacies to an even more alarming urge to apologize, almost, for his own. And at such times, as tense and awkward as I had been on my wedding night, I was confused, intrigued, often very afraid.
‘Does he suspect you?’ Crispin asked, looking out over the dry, summer moor
as if it made no difference.
‘No. I am sure he does not. He wouldn’t brood about that, not Joel… Crispin, it’s time, isn’t it? Isn’t it?’
‘No,’ he said, hands painfully on my shoulders. ‘Not yet. I don’t know why, but not yet. Just a little longer, Verity. I have a strange feeling something may happen to help us.’
But as I walked back alone that morning towards Lawcroft it seemed far more likely that something would happen to destroy us, or to destroy me, at any rate, since, if the storm broke, I would warn Crispin, somehow or other, to make his escape. And so heavy-laden was I by this certainty of my doom that I was not surprised, just terribly afraid, when Joel’s phaeton, which should have been at Tarn Edge or Low Cross, swept in through the gates and hurtled sickeningly towards me.
It could, of course, be nothing more than a spot of engine grease on a shirt cuff which brought him home, to change it for a fresh one, but my whole guilty body flooded with a blind panic that, ironically, tragically, became my own punishment, the cause of my heartbreak.
‘Dear God,’ I heard myself whisper, and my dog, my companion of these ten years past, pressing close to my side, caught the spark of my fear and, before I could stop her, went streaking off down the drive towards the man and the carriage, the hooves and the wheels that menaced me.
He made, I think, an effort to avoid her, for his horse had cost him several thousand guineas and he had no mind to break its legs, nor his own, by taking a tumble. But my bitch, who had been a coward all her life, having founds her courage, persisted, snarling at those long, lethal legs snapping through the flying dust and stones and curses the screaming, rearing horse, as the phaeton swayed, righted itself, and went clattering on, leaving behind at twitching sprawl of yellow limbs.
She was dead when I reached her, blessedly, for I could not have borne the helpless, bewildered ending of a good beast who has never heard of heaven, much less learned to I hope for it. But even without that, it was too much and I was myself amazed at the grief that forced me to my knees on the gravel beside her, and unlocked a flood of tears I thought would never end. She was dead and, putting my face against hers, paying her the only tribute I could, I saw, on the insides of my eyelids, my brother Edwin, who had given her to me on my sixteenth birthday, a hundred-years ago. And remembering him, my tears flowed faster than ever, my sobs became clamorous, painful, hurting not only my chest but my ears.
I neither knew nor cared what had happened to Joel, whether he had overturned or bolted, or simply driven on regardless, but suddenly his boots were there, and his hand clenched around his driving whip, Joel standing over me as he had done once before, when my brother lay dying in my arms. But he had been excited then, exhilarated by the violence of the night and by another man’s murder he knew he could use to suit himself, whereas he was angry now and disgusted and more than, ready to be unkind.
‘Get up,’ he said. ‘Get up – get up. It’s a dog, no more. It’s not one of your children lying there. It’s a damned dog.’
And when I couldn’t get up, could in no way explain to him that I was weeping again, for my brother and my father, for Elinor and for myself – for him too, perhaps, in some recess of my mind – he hauled me to my feet and snarled, ‘Stupid girl – you have no one but yourself to blame. If you can’t control your damnable animals then you shouldn’t keep them.’
‘I could control her.’
‘The devil you could. Well, that’s an end to it, and I’m not sorry. You can stay at home in the mornings now, like other women, for there’ll be no more dogs – hear me? – no more. Do you hear me?’
‘I hear you.’
‘And if you bring one into the house behind my back I’ll shoot it – understand?’
‘I understand.’
‘Now get inside,’ he said, at a point of fury where he would have struck me, I think, had not the grooms and the gardener and Mrs Stevens all come running. ‘Get inside, before they all see what a disgrace you are. Get your work basket and sew, like your mother, or sort out your linen cupboard – do something women are supposed to do. Get inside.’
And recognizing my peril, I ran.
But I was bereaved, brokenhearted, inconsolable, not even wishing to be consoled, since I could tell no one what that nervous, obliging animal had meant to me. And although I grieved for her own sake, her death had also been the symbolic ending of my love for Crispin, a brutal amputation performed, just as symbolically, by Joel. I had no dog now, no reason to walk to Old Sarah’s Rock, and I would never have another, for even if Joel would permit it, no other dog could ever take the place of that foolish, faithful yellow bitch, given to me so casually by Edwin on the last day but one of his young life.
I dreamed of my brother that night, my sleeping brain, in the moment he fell mortally wounded across my knees; giving him Crispin’s face, so that it was Crispin I mourned, cradling his body in my arms, hard gravel underneath my knees, until he became in turn my dog, my brother again, and I awoke suffocating in the heavy dark, my ears straining for a new anxiety. And there it was, the noise outside my door, a clumsiness that could not be Joel, who always entered silently in the night, whether he had been drinking or not, or who, if he wished to wake me, did it decisively, with a branch of candles in his hand. And because I had been dreaming of violence, of that kitchen knife in my brother’s chest – in Crispin’s chest – I sat up and waited, trembling, with no thought of escape. A sacrifice.
But then as the door was shouldered open and I saw the familiar silhouette, the height and breadth I recognized, I called out ‘Joel?’ enquiringly, wondering what ailed him.
‘Who else?’ he snapped. ‘Damnation – take the filthy things from me, for I must be out of my mind.’
And suddenly, in the darkness, something landed on my chest, an amazing, squirming tangle of limbs and sharp claws and cold noses that gradually, a tail here, a bright saucy eye, an eager little tongue there, became not one but two puppies, one gold and the other a dark brown chocolate. I don’t want another dog, I thought. No, I don’t want either of you. But the feel and the smell of them enchanted me, and within seconds I was laughing – and crying – fighting them off and hugging them, squealing myself now as their sharp excited puppy teeth made free use of my bones.
‘You said I couldn’t have another dog.’
‘Yes, and I meant it too. And then I got to thinking how it was your brother who gave you that crossbred bitch, so now you have two from your husband. Purebred, the very best gun dogs money can buy; wasted on you, I reckon. And I’d be obliged if you’d keep them out of my way, and make damn sure they’re reliable before we move to Tarn Edge. Now, get them out of my bed, Verity. Fifteen miles I had to go for the little brutes, to Keighley and back, with half a bottle of brandy inside me or I might not have gone at all. I’m tired.’
‘Thank you, Joel,’ I said, ‘Thank you very much.’
And by the time I had settled them down in my old dog’s basket by the kitchen fire, laughed at them, cried over them, and hurried back upstairs, he was almost asleep.
‘They’re beautiful, Joel,’ I said, my hand on his shoulder. In that state of half sleep, half unknowing, he turned his head against my shoulder and murmured, ‘Of course you’re beautiful – I’ve always thought so.’
And I have always believed that, had it not been for Elinor, the coldness between us would have been over.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
In July of that year the Prime Minister, Lord Grey, resigned, an event leading, some weeks later, to the return of Morgan Aycliffe, who, like others, had come home to test the mood of his electorate should the Whig government topple altogether. And the day of his homecoming brought me a hastily scribbled note from Elinor, begging me to dine with them.
‘Bring Joel if you can, but if he is engaged come yourself with Hannah or alone – please, please, don’t fail.’
But when I arrived in Blenheim Lane, with Joel and Hannah and even the Reverend Mr Ashley in tow whate
ver panic she may have felt at facing her husband again had subsided, and she greeted us calmly, warmly displaying, in fact, so much self-possession that even Mr Aycliffe himself seemed impressed.
‘How very nice,’ she said, ‘that we are all together, again,’ and as she shepherded us gracefully into the dining room I saw her husband’s eyes slowly assessing her wondering, perhaps, if this new, mature Elinor was a mate for him after all.
‘The beef is excellent, Mrs Aycliffe,’ he told her; obviously if pleasantly surprised, and, leaning back in the chair, eating little herself, she acknowledged his compliments with immense composure, surveying us all quite lovingly, as if, in the overflow of her heart, she had more than enough tenderness to spare.
‘Really – quite delicious, my dear,’ he said, and she nodded, smiled very slowly, a woman at last, serene and perfectly balanced and beautiful: a worthy partner of any man’s labours.
She showed, that evening, a most enchanting courtesy to all of us, listening with a rapt attention she certainly could not feel as her husband and mine talked of business and politics, drawing from Mr Ashley the tale of the bad repaired parsonage at Redesdale, which had occasioned, yet another delay in Hannah’s marriage, showing more affection to Hannah herself than I had seen in years.
‘My little girls will be your bridesmaids,’ she declared. ‘Prudence and Faith in pink and Cecilia in white, I think since she is so much smaller – and it will all be quite perfect. We shall have such pleasant summer days together. Hannah, for I will often bring the children to visit, and Jonas Agbrigg may come with us any time he likes. I know you will wish to keep yourself informed of his progress and if I keep an eye on him you may worry less. Everything is going to work out so well, darling – everything – I feel it.’
‘Are you all right?’ I whispered as the confusion of leave taking enabled us to have a private word, and, smiling once again, as if her great inner joy would be more than enough to sustain her, she pressed her cheek briefly, lovingly, against mine.
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