She knew a moment of sheer panic when she feared she might scream and push him away. Betraying herself. And then it subsided. ‘Sweet Gemma …’ he went on crooning to her, the joining of their bodies taking place even as she protested. It had happened. Easily. No pain. The beginnings even of an excitement she knew to be purely physical, mechanical, her body claiming its own right to pleasure which she saw no reason to deny.
It had happened. She was a wife again. And if her husband exchanged a knowing glance with his sister the next morning she preferred to take no notice. She heard him whistling very cheerfully as he went into the garden with his dog and could not fail to be amused, after dinner, when he began to yawn excessively and declare that what he most needed was an early night. It was not love or anything like it. It was good will. It had to be done. It might even have succeeded had not Mr Adolphus Moon gone to Frizingley on a particular March Wednesday to meet a legal gentleman from the London train, a specialist in the dissolution of unsatisfactory marriages who might have saved himself the trouble, Mr Moon’s problem being solved not at all in the way he had intended when a newspaper, blown by a sudden gust of wind, caused his horse to shy and Miss Linnet’s prospective bridegroom to break his neck.
At the funeral she wore mourning veils down to her ankles, leaning on Uriah Colclough’s arm, his angel again and his only, since who was left now but him to marry her? Although Gemma noticed that she did pause a while at the church porch with Captain Goldsborough who whispered something to her which Gemma half-heard and then entirely discounted, since it had sounded like ‘Bad luck, Linnet. But cheer up – the next gust of wind might always take off our darling Magda.’ Could he really have said that? Of course not. Although Ben Braithwaite had certainly looked at Linnet a great deal, and his wife had been very unfair to her at the ducal banquet. And if it had been Magda Braithwaite who had fallen off her horse that windy morning would Linnet be clinging now so hard to Uriah Colclough’s bony arm? Probably not. How false all these people were. And it was then that she heard, for the first time, ‘Poor Mrs Moon. How pale she looks.’
Pale indeed. And very lovely. Yesterday’s adulteress, madwoman, whore, to be shunned and abandoned and stripped as bare of property and possessions as the law would allow – which was very bare indeed – transformed, by a chance gust of wind, into the wealthiest widow for many hundreds of miles around. For it was known, at once, by the way in which the legal gentleman from London – who had come all this way to get her locked up – now threw himself at her feet, that there was a valid will in her favour. Why Mr Moon had been so very remiss no one knew or cared. And as for contesting it, one could tell by the way that lawyer fellow was dancing attendance on her, that there was no chance of that. Mr Moon’s children were provided for in any case, it seemed, by the estate of their mother, so no one need feel the slightest pang of guilt – least of all Marie – about her absolute possession of those fortunes in spices and sugar.
Lady Lark went home at once and wrote to her amorous young nephew Gussie, who had been packed off in disgrace, out of the toils of ‘that woman’, ordering him to return to them at once.
Uriah Colclough began to talk of the forgiveness of sins, to dream, perhaps, of his own hand placed in benediction on a bent, still very lovely, and exceedingly wealthy head. And since riches were a heavy responsibility surely poor, frail Mrs Moon would need advice and assistance? Uriah Colclough was not the only one in Frizingley to think so.
One morning, while partaking of Madeira and lemon biscuits in the spacious, blue and gold showroom of Miss Adeane’s new shop, Linnet found herself suddenly deserted by Mrs Colclough who sprang to her feet at Mrs Marie Moon’s arrival and hurried, all solicitude, to her side.
‘My dear lady, you look quite worn out. Do come and sit a while and take a sip of wine.’ And the chairs had been so placed that Linnet was obliged to move aside, a ‘back seat’in every sense, from which she could hear the conversation of the other two, but could not participate.
It was too much for Linnet to bear. Therefore she would not bear it. She would not stay here to see Marie Moon lionized as she knew she would be, invited everywhere, praised and petted and then splendidly married for the fortune that had so nearly been her own. She did not hate Marie. She had never even thought of her as an individual.
To Linnet she had been an obstacle to be removed, a barrier between herself and the life for which she was increasingly desperate. And now, having shown Marie no mercy, she expected none.
From now on her life in a Frizingley ruled by Marie Moon and Magda Braithwaite could only be one humiliation after another. A living death. A nightmare of resentment and frustration from which she must, at all costs, get away. She went for a long, lazy stroll, therefore, with her brother, her cool hand on his arm and told him how wonderful it would be if they all packed up their trunks and boxes and went off to live happily ever after in London. Why not? Impossible, of course, when that gruff old cross-patch of a John-William had had the reins in his hands. But now … Well, Aunt Amabel would go where she was taken and, as it was certainly, and morally and legally and every other way besides, a woman’s place to follow her husband, there could be no trouble about Gemma.
‘And you and she seem so very cosy together now, darling. Just make her love you a little more and she’ll come running after you all the way to Timbuctoo.’
Tristan did not think so. For his part he did not care where they lived. But there was the mill. Did they need it, wondered Linnet? It could be of no possible interest to him and since it did not seem likely now that Gemma would have any children, why not sell it? It must be worth a great deal. Only think of the civilized life its sale could give them.
‘I’m not sure it can be sold,’ said Tristan. ‘The old boy left a damn complicated will. I don’t understand it.’
Linnet urged him to consult the Dallam solicitor, and try.
Gemma was furious when she heard of it, an emotion rare in her and therefore very deep-rooted and long-lasting when it came. Did Tristan really have the power to sell her possessions? She knew the simple, legal answer to be ‘yes’, of course he did, a married woman having no identity of her own in law, being considered one and the same person as her husband who, as her legal guardian, could do exactly as he liked with her. She had always known that. But what of the arrangements her father had made to safeguard her against it? Did they not hold good? Certainly, her solicitor accompanied by Mr Ephraim Cook, assured her. She had her marriage contract, settling upon her substantial sums of money which could not be touched by anyone. Very substantial sums. But if her husband decided to sell the mill it seemed to both gentlemen that he could probably do so. Her father had taken every precaution to ensure the profitable management of his business, but had not apparently envisaged that it might be sold without his daughter’s consent. An understandable oversight since these matters were usually done with the full agreement of the wife who, more often than not, had no decided financial opinions of her own. But in this case, both gentlemen having met Miss Linnet Gage, they believed there could be cause for concern.
Alarm even.
Returning to Almsmead, cold with anger, Gemma saw her husband throwing sticks for his dog at the end of the carriage drive and passed him by without a word. She believed her contempt for him to be total. What could he ever be but a pawn in somebody’s game? And she knew her business was with Linnet.
She found her alone in the parlour working on a fine and perfectly useless piece of embroidery, the purpose of which was to show off the skill and delicacy of her hands.
‘Linnet,’ she moved at once to the attack. ‘I believe you have been interfering in my affairs.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Yes. I think you should.’
Linnet laid down her embroidery, looking both faintly perplexed and faintly amused.
‘Dearest – whatever can it be? Heavens – you look so fierce. I believe you are positively scaring me half to death …’ Her li
ght voice trailed off on an airy note, as it often did, signifying that nothing, surely, could be bad enough to risk frown lines across one’s brow and that far-from-becoming squaring of the jaw.
But John-William Dallam’s sturdy, straight-souled daughter had no inclination for the dainty thrust and parry of verbal sword-play.
‘I understand you wish to go to London and live on my money …’
‘Gemma.’
‘To which end you want Tristan to sell my mill and have already sent him to my lawyer to discover how best to do it behind my back.’
There was a short silence, broken only by the sound of breathing, Gemma’s heavy and angry, Linnet’s shallow as a trill of wry laughter. And then Linnet, picking up her embroidery, said sweetly, ‘My dear, a woman must submit herself to her husband in Christian marriage. Surely – that is what one vows to do beneath those sweet little veils and those wreaths of orange blossoms?’
‘It is. To her husband, Linnet. Not to his sister.’
‘Oh dear. And if the brother and sister are of one mind?’
‘Your mind, Linnet. Yes, I know that quite well. Tristan does not think of these things for himself. He is perfectly happy with his dogs and his guns and his good dinners. He has to be told what to do. By somebody. And in this case I am about to tell him that I will fight tooth and nail against any suggestion of selling my father’s mill. He did not build it up over thirty hard years to be frittered away by you, Linnet. Or to buy you a husband either. You should have set your sights lower, as he told you, instead of making a fool of yourself chasing rich men …’
‘How dare you!’
‘I dare, Linnet. And I am not to blame now if you have ended up with nothing. My father refused to pay out what it would cost to make you Mrs Colclough and so will I. And if you go on trying to get it through Tristan then I shall oppose him in every court in the land. I have the money to do so. I may not win. In fact most probably I should not. But it would all take a very long time, Linnet. Years, perhaps. And where would you live in the meantime? Not here, certainly, for my mother has the power to turn both of you out and she would not keep you here against my wishes. And what would you live on? My father settled the bulk of his money on me, Linnet, with adequate provision for my mother. What remains is property which has to be sold before you can spend it. And I can block that sale long enough to make it hardly worth waiting for – at your age – Linnet. I can also ensure that when the mill does come into your possession it will be worth only a fraction of its value today. You do not understand business, and neither does Tristan. I do. If you go on trying to rob me I shall ruin you, make no mistake about it. You will end up living on whatever Tristan has left of my dowry, which can’t be much, and with your reputation in shreds. Because I shall blacken your precious character too, while I am about it.’
And her anger was so great, her contempt for this woman so absolute, that she did not take heed of the sudden alertness in Linnet’s white face, the air of a vixen who, with the hounds baying all around her, suddenly catches the scent – desperate perhaps, but what now has she to lose? – of salvation.
‘No Gemma – I think not.’
‘Linnet – do not imagine for one moment that I shall weaken. For I shall not. Everyone’s sympathy will be on my side. People don’t like it, Linnet, when men marry girls like me for money and then try to make off with it the minute her father dies. Judges and the like have daughters of their own, more often than not. So do the editors of newspapers. The brand of fortune-hunter sticks, Linnet. And I really don’t know with what name they would brand you.’
Linnet stood up, her embroidery falling to the ground, her empty hands gracefully and easily clasped before her, her face still very white but her pale eyes alive, vibrant and glowing as Gemma had never seen them before. With malice? With hysteria? With gloating it almost seemed, although what on earth she could have to gloat about Gemma could not imagine.
‘I see, Gemma. So you are condemning me to a lifetime of serving tea from other women’s china, here, in this place of your choosing, taking scraps, in effect, from your table, among women my mother would not have allowed to cross her threshold? Suffering insult from those women. Wasting myself. Wasting the talents which I do – oh yes I do – possess. Ageing. Becoming an object of pity when my looks fade. Oh yes – isn’t that always the way of it? Poor Miss Gage, she must have been quite pretty once. What a dire fate, my dear. What a charming prospect for the future.’
‘I think you have brought it on yourself, Linnet.’
She shook her head, smiling very strangely. And then, leaning forward from the waist with the darting movement of a snake coiled to strike, she said, ‘No, Gemma. You will not do that to me. You will do, in fact, exactly what I tell you. Oh yes, dearest. You will go to Tristan – straight away, I think, since it is worrying him rather – slip your little hand in his, gaze trustingly into his so beautiful eyes and tell him – dear Gemma – that since he has started making love to you so very sweetly and so very often, his wish has become your command. You want only to go wherever he takes you. If he wants your mill then of course he must have it. You only wish you had two or three so that you could really spoil him, really make it worth his while to go on giving you all those lovely kisses. That’s what I want to hear from you, Gemma. That’s the attitude I want to see. That’s the life you’re going to have.’
She paused not for breath but for savour and then, straightening her back, said very quietly, ‘Otherwise I shall just have to go and tell my brother about the Chartist candidate, won’t I? He was your lover for almost a year, Gemma. There would really be no point in denying it. I have all the evidence I need.’
The first shock passed.
‘Evidence?’
‘Yes. My informant is reliable and thorough.’
Hardly necessary, since, with or without evidence, Frizingley would be only too glad to believe it. And it was true in any case. Anger seeped out of her slowly, aware of its own futility. She had no defence.
Linnet smiled. ‘Tristan will not take it kindly, Gemma. He has his pride. He cares about gossip and scandal. As all our sort of people do. And he will follow our code. He will cast you off, Gemma, as an adulteress. Only think what that will do to your mother. And where will public sympathies be then? Not with you, dear. When he puts your mill up for sale everyone will say “Poor man he is trying to rid himself of her memory.” People don’t like unfaithful wives, Gemma. All those judges and newspaper editors you were threatening me with just now are husbands too. So – dearest – do confess – have I not turned the tables very nicely?’
So it seemed.
‘Then hadn’t you better run along, Gemma, and tell Tristan he can sell your last petticoat if he has a mind to? Scandal is always better avoided. So be a good, sweet girl and there’ll be absolutely no need for me to say a word.’
‘Until the next time you want one thing and I want another.’
‘Ah well – should the occasion arise when you may seem in need of guidance I should do my duty, of course.’
‘Yes.’ Gemma sat down and, rather slowly, folded her hands. ‘Then you had better go and do it now, hadn’t you. Your duty, I mean.’
However smug she might be feeling Linnet was too perceptive, too completely the seasoned drawing-room campaigner, to be other than instantly alert.
‘Now don’t be silly, Gemma. No attacks of virtue, please. They seem hardly appropriate.’
But Gemma had no choice to make. Between a lifetime at Linnet’s beck and call or social disgrace what choice existed? Death, perhaps? But she did not suppose that one died so neatly.
‘Gemma – I most strongly advise you to think of your mother.’
Not even for her.
She shook her head.
‘I shall not relent, Gemma. And once I have told Tristan he cannot be untold. He will know and there is no doubt at all that he will be incensed and humiliated and very eager for revenge …’
‘I imagine, Linn
et, that he will do very much as you say.’
‘Are you challenging me to turn him loose on you?’
‘I am telling you,’ and she was speaking through tight-clenched teeth, her pugnacious jaw shaking, ‘that I will not consent to place myself in your power. I will not live my life according to your whims and fancies. I will not come when you call me and go where you send me – which is what would happen. I will not hand over to you my position and my property, and the effective control of my mother – which is what you are asking. You have not earned any of it, Linnet, and you do not deserve it either. And I will not have this threat hanging over me – most of all I will not have that.’
‘I am not bluffing, Gemma.’
‘Nor I.’
‘Gemma, I have nothing to lose.’
‘Nor I, Linnet.’
It went on a while longer. It would have gone on interminably had Gemma consented to participate, which she did not, answering every one of Linnet’s threats and pleadings, occasional insults, frequent attempts to shame her and terrify her with the one, terse phrase – ‘I will not have it.’
Both women had come face to face with a future they could not tolerate and, in this mood, were dangerous to themselves as well as to each other.
‘We shall see – my girl – what you will have when this is over.’ And, totally beside herself, having, indeed, nothing to lose but that lifetime of other women’s china in Frizingley, the slow death of herself by bitterness and frustration which she could not, would not bear, Linnet spun round on her heel and ran out of the room to find her brother.
Had he left the house, perhaps – who knew? – she may have calmed sufficiently to reflect, to devise some other plan, even to submit. But he was still there, on the drive, working off his uncomplicated high spirits with his dog. Looking out of the window Gemma saw Linnet flying towards him, watched them come together, and then sat down again, her head slightly bowed, not in penitence but in simple waiting.
A Song Twice Over Page 54