‘Excuse me,’ Miss Ormonde says. ‘I feel rather faint.’
‘Sit down, my dear. Standing up certainly won’t help.’
‘I’d like to go outside. It’s very hot in here.’ She looks straight at me. ‘Could you show me the garden, please?’
‘Certainly. Excuse us, Mama.’ I hold out my arm. She crosses the room to me. She’s almost as tall as I am. I lead her out into the passage and through the back door into the garden. As we leave the drawing room the piano tinkles the beginning of the Wedding March.
It’s freezing. The sky is white, criss-crossed by bare branches. She tilts back her head and blinks up at it. Then, without looking at me, she sets off down one of the paths. I follow her. My shoes slide on the snow-slick stone. When I catch up with her she’s standing in the circle of yew hedges, staring at the white-capped Cupid. She reaches out and touches his golden arrow with gloved fingers. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says.
‘Don’t be.’
‘Your mother—’
‘I know.’
She turns and meets my eyes. Her face changes, moving through a frown to something else. ‘You don’t want to marry me, do you?’
It’s so still I can almost see the shape of words in the clouds of her breath. ‘I don’t want to marry anyone else,’ I say.
She laughs. It’s a quick, bright sound, like a single note of birdsong. But then she’s serious again. She pulls a leaf from the hedge and lets it fall. She walks away, down the narrow yew-lined avenue that leads to the end of the garden. She reaches the locked wooden gate and tries the handle. ‘Where does this go?’
‘The river.’ Water murmurs and rattles on the other side of the wall.
The key is under an ornamental urn. When I pick it up the metal is stinging cold. I push it into the lock as quickly as I can. I throw the gate open and beckon Miss Ormonde through. We stand on the muddy, tufty riverbank, watching the current swirl round tree-roots and nibble the ice.
I blow out a plume of breath and watch it disperse. ‘Do you want to marry me?’
‘More than I want to marry anyone else.’ She looks at me sideways.
‘That’s … satisfactory, then.’
She takes a few steps through the deep grass. The snow clings to the hem of her skirt. A knobbly willow shudders as the river tugs at its branches. Then she swings round to face me. Her cheeks and nose are rosy with cold. ‘You don’t love me. That’s all right.’
‘I never—’
‘It’s all right, I said. But you have to promise to be … kind.’
‘Of course.’
Her eyes narrow. She comes closer to me. I take an automatic step back and she clutches my arm, suddenly fierce. ‘My sister married three years ago. Before that, she was an artist, a painter, she was going to … But now she’s no one. Her husband … My mother says he’s very understanding, because he pays for her gin and her laudanum and her bindings.’ I pull away from her. ‘A book binder comes once a month. You must have heard of them. They make books of people’s lives.’
‘I know what a binding is.’
‘I don’t want to be like her. Please, Lucian. I’ve seen what you men do to people who don’t fit in. Who make a nuisance of themselves. Promise me—’
‘I said, of course.’
She blinks. Then she turns away. The wind whispers through the trees and sends stray snowflakes drifting past. She picks her way through the long grass back to the gate. ‘It’s very cold, isn’t it? I wonder if it will snow again.’
I clear my throat. The icy air stings as it hits my lungs. ‘Miss Ormonde … Honour—’ It’s the first time I’ve called her by her first name.
‘Perhaps we should go inside. I don’t want your mother to think I’m rude.’
She goes through the gate. She walks down the path ahead of me, holding up her skirts even though they’re already wet round the bottom. Her hair is in a shiny elaborate knot, the colour of polished wood. Below it her neck is white and thin, flecked with moles. Her back is narrow and straight. She doesn’t look back.
I hurry after her. As we get to the edge of the lawn, Betty steps out of the back door. She bobs a curtsy. ‘Mr Lucian?’
‘Yes?’ In front of me, Honour pauses, waiting for Betty to move out of her way.
‘There’s a gentleman to see you.’
‘Did he give you his card?’
‘No.’ She hesitates. ‘He said you were expecting him.’
‘If it’s the man from Esperand’s, just tell him the grey is fine.’
‘It’s the binder, sir. The one who came to see to Nell.’
Honour looks over her shoulder. She gives me a long, weighing look. Then she slips past Betty, into the house.
‘To see my father, you mean,’ I say.
‘He particularly said, to see Mr Lucian Darnay, sir. Shall I tell him you’re not at home?’
The door bangs. Through the drawing-room window I see Honour sit down, carefully arranging her damp-hemmed skirts. My mother gestures and smiles. No doubt she’s talking about clothes again. Honour’s face is set and blank. She doesn’t glance at the window.
‘No, thank you, Betty. I’ll go and see what he wants.’
‘I put him in the Blue Room, sir.’ She steps aside.
It isn’t until I’m halfway across the hall that I realise how fast my heart is beating. I stop in front of the mirror and stare at my reflection over the mass of ferns. I can see enough of myself to straighten my collar and smooth my hair. But there’s a strained, hot look in my eyes that I can’t get rid of, no matter how much I blink.
When I open the Blue Room door, Emmett Farmer is staring up at the water-nymph picture. He’s wearing thick, baggy trousers and a brown collarless shirt. His hair is tousled, uncombed, and he hasn’t shaved. When he swings round at the sound of the door he’s as pale as the water nymphs. There are shadows under his eyes.
‘Mr Farmer.’ He doesn’t answer. I raise my eyebrows. ‘How can I be of service?’
‘Lucian – Darnay,’ he says. Something catches in his throat. He swallows.
‘Yes. What do you want?’
‘To see you.’ He stammers, ‘I mean—’
The clock grinds a warning that it’s about to strike. Farmer jumps and looks round. A cascade of chimes fills the room. As the notes die away I cross to the window and look out at another stretch of white-speckled lawn. The clouds are sagging over the town and the light is starting to fade. ‘Whatever it is, I’d be obliged if you’d be brief. I’m expecting my tailor to call.’
‘Your tailor?’ I can’t place his accent exactly but he’s from somewhere even more provincial than Castleford. He sounds like my uncle’s cook.
‘Yes, my tailor. I’m getting married in just over a week and he hasn’t finished my suit.’ I don’t know why I bothered to tell him that. I cross my arms and wait, determined not to say anything else. He doesn’t speak. He reaches out and takes hold of the mantelpiece as if the floor is about to give way. ‘If this is something to do with the letter you sent, I haven’t read it.’
He’s staring at me. The skin under his eyes is so dark it looks bruised. Finally he says, ‘Why not?’
I shrug.
‘You’re getting married?’ His voice cracks. He clears his throat. ‘I didn’t know.’
‘Why should you?’ I pick a loose silver thread from the curtain.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘What?’
‘Nothing.’ He shakes his head, twisting away from me so that I can’t see his face. When he turns to me again his eyes are wet and I look away.
I pick another thread from the curtain. It puckers the embroidery. ‘What do you want, Farmer? I really don’t have time for this.’ He doesn’t answer. ‘Is it something to do with Nell’s book?’
‘No. Not exactly. I wish you’d read my letter. I don’t know.’ He grimaces.
‘Did it say anything important? Your letter?’
‘Yes.’ He gestures, as if he can see something I c
an’t. I was moving towards the door. I stop. His outstretched hand is wide, muscular and blunt-fingered, the sort of hand that can sharpen a knife or build a wall. ‘I need to tell you something.’
‘Go on, then.’ I flip open my watch and glance at it.
‘When I was an apprentice out on the marshes – I mean, before I came to de Havilland’s bindery …’ Suddenly his voice sounds strange, distant and unintelligible, like someone calling underwater. It only lasts a second. Then I can hear clearly again. There’s a silence. He stares at me. ‘You’ve been bound. I’ve seen your book.’
‘That’s absurd.’
‘No. It’s all right. Listen—’
I try to put my watch back in my pocket but it won’t obey me. I almost drop it. ‘You’re lying. Why are you lying? What the devil are you playing at?’
He steps towards me. His mouth is still moving but the room glimmers and slides. The blue-grey drapery shimmers silver. My breathing is so loud it rings in my ears. The floor is dissolving under my feet, like sand sucked away by the sea. I steady myself on the back of the chair but the world keeps tilting. It’s like being drunk. ‘Lucian?’ He touches my wrist.
I jerk away. ‘Get off me!’
He takes a long breath. ‘No,’ he says, and it’s like the answer to a question. ‘You didn’t hear any of that, did you? And you wouldn’t have been able to read the letter, even if you tried. Damn it, I should have known.’
‘Any of what?’ But when he starts to speak I cut him off. ‘Get out.’
‘What?’
‘Get out. Now. Or I’ll ring for someone to throw you out.’
‘But – you understand, don’t you? Somewhere there’s a book of your memories. I can’t tell you what you’ve forgotten but you have to believe me.’
‘Why should I believe you? This is outrageous. An outrageous lie.’
‘Why would I lie?’ There’s a pause. A draught hums in the chimney and rustles the papers on the desk. I catch the sharp, elusive scent of ash.
‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘You still haven’t said what you want. Blackmail, is it?’
He stares at me. Finally he says, ‘No.’ He puffs out a mouthful of air. ‘I thought … I don’t know what I wanted.’
‘You’d better go.’
He looks around, as if he’s lost something. At last he says, ‘Goodbye, then.’
‘Good afternoon, Farmer.’
He pauses at the door. He swings round. ‘Do you love her?’
‘What?’
‘The girl you’re marrying.’
I blink. The room is dim, lit only by the last bluish snow-light from the window. Farmer’s clothes merge into the gloom. His face is all shadows and skull.
I reach for the bell-pull. It’s so cold to the touch it feels damp. ‘Ask one more impertinent question,’ I say, ‘and I will make sure you regret it.’
‘What?’
‘I don’t know what you thought you were doing, coming here to threaten me—’
‘I wasn’t – I’m not.’
‘—but you are treading a very dangerous path. If my father hears about this …’
I don’t finish the sentence. I don’t have to. He stares at me, and even in the growing murk I can see how wide his eyes are. I ring the bell.
In the silence after the distant jangle, he bows his head. ‘I’ll go,’ he says. ‘You don’t have to call anyone to throw me out.’ He makes a strange, stiff kind of salute and goes through the door. ‘I’m sorry, Lucian,’ he says, without looking back at me.
‘If you come near me or my family again …’ I call after him. His footsteps pause, halfway across the hall, and I’m almost sure I hear him laugh. He stays still so long I think I’ve misheard, and he’s already gone. Then he walks to the front door. ‘Oh, and …’ he says, only just loud enough for me to hear, ‘congratulations.’
The hall is full of lilies. They hang in swags from the walls and spill over the tops of benches. Everywhere I look there are banks of stiff green leaves and white waxy flowers. They open their star-shaped mouths. The pollen drifts down. A few grains land on my shirt. I try to wipe them away. They leave a wide ochreous smear across the perfect linen.
There’s a whispering, rustling hush behind me. The noise of two hundred people trying to be quiet. A hundred starched shirts rasp, a hundred whaleboned bodices creak as they turn to look.
I can’t move. I stare at the shimmering mass of lilies. The perfume is so sweet I can’t quite breathe. I try to inhale and the scent is like a pillow over my face. I struggle but suddenly I’m smothering, panicking.
I open my eyes. The air rushes into my lungs with a gasp. I’m lying down and there’s a dark grey window above me. Before-dawn grey, and I’m in bed. I’m not getting married. Not today, not now. It’s not real. Pre-wedding nerves. Everyone jokes about it.
I breathe until my muscles loosen. I sit up, wipe the clammy moisture off my face and huddle in my blankets. But closing my eyes brings it back: the growing featureless fear, the flowers. A year ago I would have reached automatically for William Langland. I would have let the book lull me back to sleep, let it conjure up the high downs, the chalk land rippling in the summer heat, the smell of thyme. But it’s no good. It’s lost its old magic. Now it just makes me think of Langland, and what it must have cost him. And of Nell, and my father, and Emmett Farmer.
I don’t believe him. Why would I? He came to our house, saw how rich we were, and thought he’d try his chances. It’s an old trick. Like the fortune-teller who clawed at my mother’s arm at Midsummer Fair one year, gasping, ‘You’re cursed, madam, you must let me break it!’ I’m not enough of a fool to fall for that. If Farmer seems guileless, and honest, and strange, it only means he’s clever as well as a liar; and if he’s beautiful – well. That only means that I should be even more careful not to trust him.
It isn’t true. But if it were … I bring my knees up to my chest and shut my eyes. What would be so bad that I’d put it in a book? If I could wipe my life away now, I would. My father’s secrets. The bruise on my face. The way Honour looked at me, open-eyed, illusionless. My mother, and her gaze deliberately sliding away when the maids enter the room. My own past, the sordid fumblings with other boys at school, the women in town. The dirty itch of desire, my cold determination never to be the one to show weakness. The whores that I leave as soon as it’s over, without saying thank you; the moment I saw my old Head of House at the White Stag and stared at him blankly as if I didn’t remember letting him kiss me on the last day of term. Since the night when I found my father’s books – and those desolate, corrosive months with my uncle – I can’t even summon a face to go with my fantasies. Only fragments of a body, orifices, obscenities. There’s nothing about me I’d keep. There’s only one thing to hold on to: that, no matter how perverted I am, I’ve never forced myself on anyone. I’ve never done what my father does.
As far as I remember, that is.
I scramble out of bed, pull on a robe and go downstairs. The house is silent. It’s too early for my family to be awake. The only sound comes from behind the servants’ door. I go into the Blue Room and light the fire that’s already laid in the hearth. Then I ring for tea.
I draw the curtains and look out. The snow has melted and there’s a fine drizzle falling. It sweeps across the drive like gauze. Grey, grey, grey. I want to drink it until it turns my blood into water and my brain to nothing.
‘Good morning, sir.’
I was expecting Betty, but it’s Nell. She looks how I feel: red-eyed, shadowy, as if a nightmare is still loitering at her shoulder.
I order tea. She leaves. I go to the window. The silver pattern on the curtain is still puckered where I pulled at the loose thread. That means I was here, and Emmett Farmer was here, and it all happened. I clench my jaw. What was I hoping for? That I had dreamt that, too?
I go to the desk and look down at the piles of letters and ledgers. I flip the top of the inkwell back and forth on its hinges. When
Emmett Farmer left yesterday I went back to the drawing room, sat beside Honour and went on chatting about the wedding and whether Esperand’s would send my suit in time. I heard my own voice and marvelled at it. Once I glanced down and saw my hand pressed against my solar plexus, as if I was trying to staunch a wound. But if I’d been bound, I’d know. There’d be a hole in my brain somewhere. Trying to think about it is like rolling my eyes back to try to see inside my head. And there’s nothing. Only the greyness. Grey as the day outside, soft-edged, almost kind.
‘Shall I pour it, sir?’
Nell’s voice makes me jump. Ink flicks off the lid of the inkwell and blots the front of my dressing gown. I move away, wiping uselessly at the stains with the blotter. ‘Yes. Thank you.’
She starts to say something, and stops. The china clinks as she sets out the tea things. I go on dabbing at the ink-stains for longer than I need to.
‘Mr Lucian, sir.’ Nell has arranged everything in a neat cluster. Now she looks up at me. Her eyelids are red, and her mouth looks swollen. She hesitates.
‘What is it, Nell? Is something wrong?’
She fumbles with the teacup. She almost knocks it off the table and then stands rigid, as if she’s expecting me to box her ears. ‘I wanted to say thank you.’
‘What for?’
‘You told me.’ She takes a breath. ‘You tried to help.’
‘Forget it.’ It’s meant to sound kind, but it makes her shrink away from me. ‘I mean … Never mind. Just … Run along now.’
She lowers her head and picks up the tray. Her dress gapes at the collar where it’s too large for her. There’s a shadow or a bruise on the side of her neck.
‘Wait.’ I reach for my waistcoat pocket. But I’m wearing my dressing gown and I don’t have one. I go to the desk and rummage in the box in the drawer. It takes me so long to find a coin that my scalp prickles with embarrassment. I shouldn’t have bothered. I hold it out to her. I see, too late, that it’s half a guinea. In the darkness of the drawer I thought it was half a crown.
She stares at it.
‘You’re a good girl, Nell.’ I push the coin at her and pour myself a cup of tea without looking up.
The Binding Page 31