by C F Dunn
We had met on a number of social occasions, but it was the first time she had asked to see me because of my work. She occupied a study in one of the old rooms of the college into which she had grown over the preceding decades. Books lined every available surface, interspersed with geological specimens: knobbly geodes and fossils acted as bookends and a spiky lump of quartz made do as a doorstop. She settled into her chair, light shining through her sparse grey hair, and studied me through her varifocals.
“Emma, I knew your grandfather.” That wasn’t what I expected to hear and my surprise must have shown. “He was an especially dear friend and I respected him greatly. If it weren’t for him I would have made a very grave mistake and one that I would have regretted for the rest of my life. It is because of what he did for me that I offer you a word of advice – not, I am sure, that you will want to hear what I have to say.” She folded her hands on the desk. “Emma, I know how hard you have studied to get here, but your work is going to the dogs. You are one of the most promising students we’ve had for a while and you are more than living up to your grandfather’s hopes for you. However, if you carry on as you are, you’re at risk of jeopardizing your degree, and I’d be failing both you and your grandfather if I didn’t tell you as much.”
A delicate mineral, the shape and shade of a pale pink rose, acted as a paperweight on her desk, soft dust gathered in its petals. I studied it as I thought about what she said. Her words didn’t come as a surprise, which made it all the worse, because I had let my principles drift and betrayed my grandfather’s faith in me. I still achieved top marks in Seventeenth-Century Studies under Guy’s uncompromising supervision, but at the expense of my other courses. I couldn’t fail now, not after everything I’d done to get here; I must get myself back on track. I made a mental note to talk to him about it.
“There’s one other thing,” she said. “Are you aware that Guy Hilliard is married?” The shock must have registered on my face because she took off her glasses and squinted at me. “No, I didn’t think he’d told you.” A bee buzzed frantically outside the open window.
“M-married?” I stuttered.
“Yes, I’m sorry.”
“He can’t be, it’s a mistake. He… he didn’t tell me.”
“So it seems.”
She said nothing as my heart withered and shrank. Married. Of course he was married; it made sense.
“Does he have a family?” I asked.
“I believe so – three children, I think.” The bee’s frenzied attack bore an accusation each time its soft body collided with the glass – thump, thump, thud – one for each child.
Hussy.
I stared at the spine of a book without reading it, as shattered thoughts coalesced. “He didn’t tell me,” I said again. She let the enormity of her revelation sink in as heat rose, then fled, from my face.
Harlot.
“Emma, is there anyone you can talk to about this? Friends, your parents?”
I had neglected my friends too much to be called one myself, and of those who might have been, Guy had effectively driven them away. As for my family I felt too ashamed to tell them, and I wouldn’t give Dad either the satisfaction or the ammunition to tell me that he had been right all along.
Whore.
“Are you sure?”
She gave a little sigh as if she expected such a question, and proceeded to detail all the facts I needed to work it out for myself. When she finished, she replaced her glasses and repeated her earlier question. “Is there someone you can talk to?”
My head still reeled and her words didn’t mean very much any more. “No, I don’t need anyone. Thank you for letting me know.” I rose to leave.
The older woman placed her hand on my arm. “I hope I’ve done the right thing in telling you. You can’t live a lie, Emma – it’s what your grandfather told me and he was right, although I didn’t see it that way at the time. Of course, you’re free to continue your relationship if you choose – I won’t report it – but you have the right to put in a complaint against Dr Hilliard if you want. What he’s done is unethical.”
I would do no such thing, although that represented all I knew at the moment. “Thank you,” I told her, “I’ll think about it.”
“Of course. You know where I am if you need me.”
“Thank you, you’ve been very kind,” I said mechanically, but I didn’t hear her, I wasn’t listening – I was miles away, planning what I would say to Guy.
I didn’t shed a tear, not one drop did I let fall for what I had lost. I locked myself in my room and didn’t eat or sleep until I had worked out what to do.
Guy was alone in his study. I closed the door behind me and leant against it without saying a word. He looked up from the essay he was marking. “Emma? We didn’t arrange to meet.” He did a double-take and put his pen down. “You look awful. What’s happened?”
I continued staring at him, not sure how to begin because once I did, I couldn’t be sure I would stop. He stood up and came over, and bent down to kiss me. I averted my face and he took a step back. His eyes widened momentarily as I saw the flash of recognition that something had changed. He dropped his arms, but kept up the act. “Are you ill? Is it the essay? For Pete’s sake, Emma, say something…”
“You’re married,” I said flatly.
For once wrong-footed, he thought about denying it but saw it was pointless. “I… I couldn’t tell you.” He licked his lips nervously. “Things haven’t been too good at home for some time. Sarah and I, we’ve drifted apart – it happens. Look, I’ve been thinking about getting my own place…”
“Does she know about me?” My voice sounded harsh and tinny in the space of the room.
“No – no of course not…”
“Then you’ve lied to both of us.”
“I was going to tell you… tell her…”
I snorted with derision. “When were you going to tell us, Guy? When were you going to tell your children, your parents?”
“My parents?” He looked puzzled and I realized too late that they were just another fabrication. How many more had he woven to protect his lie?
“We can still be together, Emma. I’ll get a place in town. We can…”
I cut in. “So you’ll marry me?”
“Marry you?” A look of panic crossed his face. “I can’t. I can’t get a divorce; it’s a sin.”
“A sin? What do you call this? Since when has adultery not been classified as a sin? ‘Grave sins and shameless vices…’ 1540 – Heinrich Bullinger – remember, Guy? You should do, you taught me. ‘The reason for all this is that the vices no longer bear their proper names and therefore no one judges them properly as they are upon themselves and before God.’ Don’t you dare talk about sin; don’t you dare moralize with me.”
“Nobody need know anything about us. Nobody need get hurt.”
It took only an instant for the penny to drop. “You mean you needn’t get hurt – your career, your precious job, your marriage. As long as you’re all right, it’s OK, is that it? Damn your wife, damn your children, and damn me. What was I – a quick screw, an easy lay as long as nobody knew? Too late – I know now and I’m not the only one.”
For a fraction of a second he looked frightened. “What do you mean?”
“How on earth do you think I found out?”
He eyed me suspiciously. “Who have you been talking to? Who else knows?”
“Why?”
“What do you mean ‘why’?”
“Why does it matter who else knows, Guy?”
“You little fool, of course it matters. My wife…”
“You already said your marriage is over.”
“I did not.”
I raised my eyebrows and lowered my voice, hearing it drip with bitter irony. “Ah. So I was nothing more than an interregnum. How stupid of me, I should have known better. Let’s just hope your wife doesn’t find out, poor woman. At least I haven’t a family to consider, only my honour – wh
at’s left of it.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“It means, Guy, that you have so much more to lose than I have. Goodbye.”
“No, Emma, get back here…” He made a grab for my arm but I shook him off angrily. “Why can’t you do what you’re bloody well told just for once in your life!”
I turned, opened the door, and left with as much dignity as I could muster, but inside I was no more than a beaten child: small, crumpled, and defeated. He had made a whore out of me, an adulteress, a marriage-breaker, and I let him. I hadn’t heeded the signs: the hasty phone calls from behind closed doors, the sweet wrapper on the back seat of his car. He never once held me, never slept by me. A hurried affair – brisk and to the point – without tenderness, lacking in affection; a sham, a falsehood, a lie. And because I assented, it was as much my shame as his.
Two things happened as a result of ending our relationship: I threw myself at my studies with a new-found fervour, qualifying – as he had always assured me I would – with a First Class Honours degree. Secondly, I found within myself the reserves of strength to carry on. But I hurt; I ached inside because of what had been done to me and, by default, what I had done to this other woman.
Betrayal: a tangle of deceit where every step is quicksand, and nothing is what it seems.
I would never let it happen again.
CHAPTER
1
Threshold
The hum the tyres made on the road changed as we left the highway. I sat up and rubbed sleep from my eyes. “Where are we?”
“Just coming into Howard’s Lake. How are you feeling?”
I stifled a yawn. “Still tired. I can’t seem to shake it off.”
“I think you should reconsider and come back home with me, at least for the next few days. The college is no place for you to be right now and I’d be happier knowing you won’t be alone.”
“You mean so that Pat can force-feed me every four hours?”
He looked sidelong at me. “Among other things.”
“Or is it because there would be at least one doctor on call all the time, if not three? I thought you said I’m going to be fine?”
“You are, but your heart ceased to beat for over seven minutes, Emma, and I’m not taking any chances. In the natural order of things you shouldn’t be here at all and I don’t want to tempt fate. I know I said there shouldn’t be any complications, but I could be wrong and it’s soon, too soon…” He trailed off; he wasn’t only referring to my near-death during the last day of the trial.
“I know, Matthew, you’re right, but it is too soon for me to come home with you now, not just for you, but for Henry and the family as well. We’ve been through this. You know how I feel. It wouldn’t be decent somehow so soon after Ellen’s death. Even if she said she’d understand, even if she never lived there with you, it’s like crossing a threshold – it’s significant.”
“Emma, I’ve just buried my wife and I can’t risk losing you as well. I appreciate your sense of propriety and, had these been normal circumstances, I would agree. As it is our lives go so far beyond the norm that the same rules cannot apply… what the…?!” We had driven out of the screen of trees and into the gravelled forecourt of the college, narrowly missing a car parked half across the drive. The normally empty turning circle swarmed with vehicles. People waited in little groups on the steps and they moved towards us as they heard the sound of the powerful engine.
Matthew slammed on the brakes, simultaneously spinning the car in a tight arc before accelerating across the snow-covered lawns, slush ejected by the wheels. Once back on the drive, he checked the rearview mirror. “That was close and settles the matter – you’re coming home with me.”
Henry opened the passenger door when we drew up in the courtyard, his usually calm face crowded with worry. “Are you all right? I’ve just had a message from Joel – someone’s tipped off the press that you’re out of hospital and headed back to college. They’ll be there now.”
Matthew helped me out onto the crinkly ice. “That’s where we’ve come from, the place is crawling. Henry, Emma will be staying here for a few days until things have settled down a bit.”
I stole a quick look at Henry to gauge his reaction but he smiled down at me.
“It’s good to have you back here, Emma, and Pat will be delighted to have you to fuss over. I imagine she will want to feed you up.” I suppressed a groan and he chuckled. Despite my fears that it was too soon after his mother’s death, Henry made me feel as welcome now as he did at Christmas. He steadied me as I rocked a little and his smile lessened. “I expect you need to rest. I think Pat’s already made up the bed for you in your room just in case. I’ll go tell her there’ll be another mouth to feed.” He walked back to the Barn, his light step more that of a fifty-year-old than the seventy-odd he was supposed to be. He might be the same age as my father, but that was the only similarity between them. Matthew put his arm around me and together we walked across the snow to the door to his kitchen.
“Do you think it counts if I cross the threshold through the back door?” I asked him, a yawn coming out of nowhere to catch me unawares.
“I think,” he smiled, “that the only thing that matters at this moment is that I get you into bed – to sleep,” he added, before I misconstrued.
It was all that I could do to keep my eyes open long enough to hear that my father’s flight had taken off safely and that Harry was on his way back home from the airport. I wondered how much of the last few days’ events Dad would disclose to my mother, or whether he would neglect to mention that she had nearly lost her daughter to a massive cardiac arrest brought on by an overdose of caffeine. At least he would be able to tell her that the man who had attacked me would probably be institutionalized for the rest of his life, and, even if my reputation had been tarnished by the trial, I was exonerated of any culpability. But although my father would no doubt let her know that Matthew had suffered a bereavement, he remained unaware that it was not his ninety-six-year-old grandmother that he had buried only two days ago, but his wife.
I shouldn’t be here. I mean, I shouldn’t be here, but circumstances dictated otherwise and – as Matthew drew the quilt over me before settling in the chair by the window to watch – I wondered not for the first time: where do we go from here?
“The Dean will never forgive me,” I said gloomily as I read the local newspaper the next morning. “Shotter won’t tolerate the college being brought into disrepute with scandalous gumpf like this.” I waved the offending article in Matthew’s direction. “That’s another nail in my job coffin.” I closed the paper, folded it, and chucked it on the bedside table. “Sorry,” I said as he winced. “At least the story no longer makes headline news and has been relegated to page three. How fitting.”
Matthew came over from where he had been standing with his face to the sun, and put the paper in the bin. “The Dean can go hang. Your year’s secondment is up in the summer anyway and he won’t terminate your contract before that; he wouldn’t have the audacity after what you’ve been through. Besides, would you want to continue at the college if you had the choice of working elsewhere?”
I considered for a moment. Although I had come to the research college primarily to pursue a lifelong ambition to study the unique journal, I had grown very fond of my little group of post-graduate students, whose MAs I oversaw.
“I’d like to stay. I’ve enjoyed working with my group, despite all the interruptions we’ve had to put up with. Even if it hadn’t all been ruined by Staahl and the trial, and Shotter wanted me to continue, I don’t think it will be an option. There’s my position at Cambridge to consider.”
“It’s a very long way to commute, I agree,” he jested, “unless you were thinking of going back permanently.” Despite his smile, I detected an undercurrent of uneasiness.
I pulled him down to sit by me.
“Only if I have no alternative. Of course, I might apply for another overseas po
sition – Auckland, perhaps?”
He bent his head so our eyes were level. “Mmm, couldn’t you think of something a little closer to home than New Zealand?”
“Birmingham Uni has an excellent Byzantine Studies department,” I suggested, fighting the temptation to laugh.
“That would certainly be a change in direction for a Medieval and Early Modern historian, Emma. Anyway, when I said closer to home, I didn’t mean England.”
“You didn’t?”
“No,” he nuzzled my hair, “I didn’t, as you know perfectly well.”
Yes, I knew, but I wanted to hear him say it, to say, “Home – here in Maine – with me, Emma.” I held my fingers against his cheek, serious for a moment.
“I don’t like to take things for granted, Matthew; that way I don’t get hurt.”
His smile drifted and he took my face between his hands. “The one thing you are safe to assume, my love, is that I want you here… no – no that’s not what I mean. I want us to be together, wherever that is. We don’t have to live in Maine; we can go anywhere, including Auckland if you really want to. There are no ties here, not any more.”
I understood what he meant; Ellen’s death released him in more ways than just from the marriage vows that had kept us apart, but he was wrong if he thought himself entirely free.
“Your family is here, Matthew, and your research.”
He played with the end of my dressing-gown cord, coiling it and letting it unwind a couple of times before answering. “We’ll have to move in the next couple of years anyway when I can no longer conceal my lack of ageing. I can continue my research anywhere. As for the family, we will discuss it, of course.”
They would discuss it, yes, but they would leave the final decision to Matthew as head of the family. If truth be told, for weeks I hadn’t dared think beyond the next twenty-four hours. I hadn’t risked hoping for anything more than getting through one day at a time. I felt as if we had been stuck in stasis forever although, in reality, I had known of Ellen’s existence for less than a dozen weeks, and met Matthew only a matter of a few months before that. Yet it seemed an eternity – separated by his secret and his marriage. Now, with her death and the end of the trial, all that changed, and the possibilities were endless – so much so that I felt daunted by them.