by Anne Perry
“I’m sorry,” he apologized, and was about to turn and leave.
“No!” she said hastily. She was dressed in muslin, near white, with a green-and-white shawl over her shoulders. He was surprised how it became her. It made him think of summer, cool shaded mornings when the light is clear, before anyone thinks of what will be done in the day.
She smiled. “Please stay. How were your visits?”
“Unremarkable,” he replied honestly. He never thought of being other than honest with Clarice.
“But nice to be out,” she said perceptively. “I wish I had some reason to escape. Waiting is the worst of it, isn’t it?” She turned away and stared at the lawn and the fir trees. “I sometimes think hell is not actually something awful happening, it’s waiting for something and never being absolutely sure if it will happen, so you soar on hope, and then plunge into despair, and then up again, and down again. You get too exhausted to care for a while, then it all starts over. Permanent despair would almost be a relief. You could get on with it. It takes so much energy to hope.”
He said nothing, trying to think.
She looked at him. “Aren’t you going to tell me it will all be over soon?”
“I don’t know that it will.” Then he was ashamed of being so candid. He should have tried to comfort her, instead of unburdening himself. He was behaving like a child, and he was nearly twenty years older than she. She deserved better of him than that. Why did he think of her as stronger? If he could protect Vita, then he should far more try to protect Clarice. “I’m sorry,” he apologized. “I expect it will. Pitt will discover the truth.”
She smiled at him. “You are lying … not in a bad way! A white lie.” She shrugged a little, pulling her shawl tighter. “Please don’t. I know you mean to be kind. You are doing your pastoral duty. But take off your priest’s collar for a few minutes and be an ordinary man. Pitt may find the truth. He may not. We might have to live like this forever. I know that.” Her mouth curved very slightly, as if mocking herself. “I have already decided what to believe, I mean what I shall live with, so I don’t lie awake at night torturing myself, turning it over and over in my mind. I have to have a way to function.”
Half a dozen starlings flew up out of the trees at the end of the lawn and spiraled upward on the wind, black against the sky.
“Even if it isn’t true?” he said incredulously.
“I think it probably is,” she answered, staring ahead of her. “But either way, we have to go on. We can’t simply stop everything else and go round and round the same wretched puzzle. It was one of us. That is inescapable. We can’t run anymore; we are better accepting it. There is no point in thinking how dreadful it is. I have been lying awake a lot, turning it over and over. Whoever did it is someone I know and love. I can’t just stop loving them because of it. Anyway, you don’t! If you didn’t love someone anymore because they did something you found ugly, no love would last. None of us would be loved, because we all do things that are shabby, stupid, vicious from time to time. You need to love from understanding, or even without it.”
She was not looking at him but at the fading sunlight and lengthening shadows across the grass.
“And what have you decided?” he said quietly. Suddenly he dreaded that she was going to say it was he. He was amazed at how it would hurt. He cared intensely that she should not think he had had an affair with Unity here, under her father’s roof, and then, in a moment of rage and panic, pushed her to her death, even if she could believe he had not meant it. Certainly he would be intentionally allowing Ramsay to be blamed. And after all Ramsay had done for him, that was inconceivable.
He waited with the sweat prickling on his skin.
“I have decided that Mallory had an affair with Unity,” she said quietly. “Not love. I think for him it was a temptation. She wanted him, because he had sworn to be celibate and to believe something she found preposterous.”
The starlings wheeled back again and disappeared behind the poplar.
“She wished to show him he could not do it, and that it was all pointless anyway,” she went on. “She set out to seduce him from his path, and she succeeded. It was a kind of triumph for her … not only over Mallory himself but over all the male-dominated church that patronized her and shut her out because she was a woman.” She sighed. “And the terrible thing is that I can’t entirely blame her for that. It was stupid and destructive, but if you are rejected often enough, it hurts so much you lash out wherever you can. You pick the vulnerable people, not necessarily the ones that attacked you. In a way Mallory represents religion’s most easily wounded point: human vanity and appetite. She tried Papa’s doubt as well, but the victory over that was so much harder to see or measure.”
He watched her as if in a strange state of disbelief, and yet there was sense in what she said. It was the fact she said it which was extraordinary.
“Why would Mallory kill her?” he asked, his voice catching in a cough, his mouth dry.
“Because she was blackmailing him, of course,” she said as if the answer had been obvious. “She was with child. Pitt told Papa, and he told me. I daresay everyone knows now.” A gust of wind blew her hair and tugged at the loose ends of her shawl. She hugged it closer. “It would ruin him, wouldn’t it?” she went on. “I mean, you cannot start out in a great career as a Catholic priest leaving behind a pregnant woman you have seduced and then deserted. Even if it was really she who did the seducing.”
“Does he want a great career?” he said with surprise. It was irrelevant, but he had never thought of Mallory as ambitious. He had believed the contrary, that he was using the Catholic faith as a prop to hold him up, to fill the void in certainty and authority where he thought his father’s church had let him down—let them all down.
“Perhaps not,” she agreed. “But with that behind him, he wouldn’t even have a mediocre one.”
“Have you any reason for this belief?” he asked, uncertain what he expected her to say. He realized in some ways how little he knew her. Was she clutching at straws, being wildly brave or quite practical? He had been in the house for months, and he had known Ramsay for years. He had taken Clarice too much for granted. “If you have a fact …” he started, without thinking, moving closer to her. Then he realized that Mallory was her brother. Her loyalties could only be desperately tangled. He could see the complexity and the pain of it in her eyes.
“The way he behaves,” she said quickly. “He has quite changed since Unity’s death, which isn’t very intelligent. But then I don’t think Mallory is, in the ordinary living from day to day and dealing with people.” She looked down at her arms, huddled in the shawl. She was obviously cold. The sun had gone down behind the poplars. “He’s very good at books, like Papa,” she said as if to herself. “I can’t see it’s going to be the remotest use to him as a priest. But then there is a lot about the church that I can’t see. I’m sure she was making him do things.” She was obviously referring to Unity again. “She enjoyed it. I could see it in her face. The less he liked whatever it was, the more satisfaction it gave her. I can understand it.” She was struggling to be fair. “He can be impossibly pompous at times, and so condescending one would want to scream. I would probably have made him squirm a bit myself if I’d known how to.”
The wind was sighing in the trees, and neither of them had heard Tryphena come through the withdrawing room door onto the stones. She was wearing black, and she looked sickly pale. She was obviously extremely angry.
“I believe you would very easily have made him squirm,” Tryphena said bitterly. “You’ve always been envious, because you don’t know what to do with yourself. Mallory has found something he cares about passionately, something to give his life to. I know it’s ridiculous, but it matters to him.” She came forward onto the terrace. “And so have I. You have nothing. All the education you insisted Papa give you, and you do nothing but wander around criticizing and getting in the way.”
“There’s very
little I can do with it!” Clarice retaliated, turning to face her sister. “What can a woman do, except be a governess? There are generations of us, each teaching the next generation, and nobody doing anything with the knowledge except passing it on again. It’s like that stupid party game of Pass the Parcel. Nobody ever unwraps it and uses what is inside.”
“Then why don’t you fight for freedom, as Unity did?” Tryphena asked, stepping further onto the terrace. She had changed into a wool dress and was not cold. “Because you haven’t the courage!” she answered her own question. “You just want somebody else to do it all for you and hand it to you when the battle’s over. Just because you think you were as good as Mallory in the schoolroom—”
“I was! In fact, I was better.”
“No, you weren’t. You were just quicker.”
“I was better. My exam marks were higher than his.”
“It doesn’t matter, because the most you could ever be would be a minister’s wife, if you could find a minister who would have you. But you don’t need any learning for that.” She dismissed it as worthless with a wave of her hand. “Only tact, a sweet smile and the ability to listen to everybody and look interested no matter how daft it is or how boring—and to never repeat anything anybody says to you. And you couldn’t do that if your life depended on it!” Tryphena’s look was withering. “No minister wants a wife who could write his sermons for him. And you can hardly teach theology—you aren’t supposed to be able to know about it. If you had any intestinal fortitude, you would fight for the right of women to be accepted as equals, on their own terms, instead of trying to blame Mallory for something that’s utterly ridiculous.” She was staring out at the dying light. “Unity would never have stooped to blackmailing anybody. That just shows how little you know of her.”
“It shows how little one of us knows of her,” Clarice said pointedly. “Somebody fathered her child. If you knew her so very well, I assume you knew who it was?”
Tryphena’s face tightened, the lines hardening. If the color had still been in the light one would have seen her blush. “We didn’t discuss that sort of thing! Our conversations were on a much higher level. I don’t expect you to understand that.”
Clarice started to laugh, a slightly hysterical note creeping into it.
“You mean she didn’t tell you she seduced Mallory, and then blackmailed him, for fun,” she jeered. “That hardly surprises me. It wouldn’t fall in with your hero-worshipping idea of her, would it? That isn’t the stuff great women martyrs are made of. Let the side down rather hard—it’s even a trifle grubby. When it comes down to it—”
“You are disgusting!” Tryphena said between her teeth. “You will blame anyone but your precious Papa. You’ve always been his favorite, and you hate Mallory because you think he betrayed Papa by joining the Church of Rome.” She gave a sharp little laugh. “It threw back all his love in his face. It showed up how weak his own faith really is, that he couldn’t even convince his own son, let alone a whole flock of his congregation. You can’t stand the truth! So you’ll even try to get our brother hanged rather than face it. You’ve never forgiven him because you think he had the chances you should have had and you could have used them so much better. You would never have disappointed Papa. It’s easy enough to think that when you didn’t have to live up to it and actually do anything!”
Clarice bit her lip, and Dominic could see that she kept her composure only with the greatest difficulty, and perhaps for the first moment she was too shocked to find words. Such rage was almost like a physical blow.
Dominic himself was shaking, as if he too had been attacked. He intervened without thinking first. His argument had nothing to do with reason or morality, simply outrage and a passion to protect. He turned on Tryphena.
“Whatever happened in the schoolroom has nothing to do with Unity! Whoever got her with child, it wasn’t Clarice. You are just furious because you thought she told you everything, and obviously she didn’t. There was something absolutely fundamental she omitted.” He was aware as he spoke that he was approaching extremely dangerous territory, but he rushed in anyway. “You feel left out because she didn’t trust you enough to tell you, so you are trying to blame everyone else.”
Tryphena looked at him with eyes blazing. “Not everyone!” she said very pointedly. “I knew her better than to imagine she would blackmail anyone. She wouldn’t stoop so low. None of you had anything she wanted. She despised you! She wouldn’t have … have soiled herself!”
“Of course,” Clarice said scathingly. “The Second Coming. Another Immaculate Conception? But if you’d read a little more theology, if you were as good a student as Mal, let alone as I was, you’d know the Lord is coming down out of the heavens next time, not being born again. Even to Unity Bellwood!”
“Don’t be ridiculous!” Tryphena snapped. “And blasphemous! You may have studied theology, but you haven’t the faintest understanding of ethics.”
“And you haven’t of love!” Clarice retorted. “All you know is hysteria and self-indulgence and—and obsession.”
“Whom did you ever love?” Tryphena laughed, her voice rising out of control. “Unity knew what love was, and passion and betrayal, and sacrifice! She loved more in her life, cut off as it was, than you’ll ever know. You’re only half alive. You’re pathetic, full of envy. I despise you.”
“You despise everyone,” Clarice pointed out, catching at her shawl as the wind tugged it. Her hair was coming undone. “Your whole philosophy is based on the fact that you imagine you are better than anyone else. I can imagine how Unity hated being with child—to a mere mortal man. She probably threw herself downstairs hoping to lose it.”
Tryphena whirled around, eyes wide open, and slapped Clarice so hard across the face she knocked her off balance, made her stumble against Dominic.
“You evil woman!” Tryphena said. “You despicable creature! You’d say anything, wouldn’t you, to protect someone you love, whatever he’s done? You have no honor, no truth. Haven’t you asked yourself where Papa found your precious Dominic?” She waved her hand in his direction but without looking at him. “What was he doing there? Why would a man his age suddenly want to join the church and become a minister, eh? What has he done that is so terrible he wants to spend the rest of his life in penance? Look at him!” She jabbed her finger towards Dominic again. “Look at his face. Do you think he really gave up women and pleasure? Well, do you? It’s time you looked at the world as it is, Clarice, and not as your theological studies told you!”
Dominic could feel himself shivering, the fear icelike inside him. What had Unity told Tryphena? What would Clarice believe of him? And far worse in its real and terrible danger, what would Pitt learn? He could not keep the delusion anymore that Pitt would not at least find a part of him only too glad to be able to blame Dominic. He had never truly forgotten Charlotte’s early romantic dreams about him, though dreams were all they had been.
He wanted to fight back, but how could he? Where were the weapons?
Tryphena began to laugh, her voice high with hysteria.
“That’s why you are an atheist,” Clarice said quite calmly, cutting across the laughter. “You don’t like people, and you don’t believe that they can change and put the old things away. You don’t really believe in hope. You don’t understand it. I have no idea where Papa found Dominic or what he was doing, and I don’t care. All I care about is what he is like now. If his change was enough for Papa, it is enough for me. I don’t need to know about it. It is none of my business. Somebody got Unity with child—somebody in the last three months. About the only places she went outside here were the library or the concert hall or those dreadful meetings about politics. And you went to all of those. So it is almost certainly someone in this house. You knew Unity. Who do you think it was?”
Tryphena stared back at her, her eyes suddenly filled with tears. She was utterly alone again, the rage gone, swallowed up in loss. Anger did not drive the emptines
s away for long, and when the anger evaporated she was left with even less than before.
“I’m sorry,” Clarice said very quietly, taking a step closer. “I said it was Mallory only because some kind of certainty is better than tormenting ourselves from one fear to another. I think he is the most likely. And if you wish to know what I think actually happened, I think it was an accident. I expect they quarreled and it ran away with them, and now Mallory is terrified to admit it.”
Tryphena sniffed, her eyes red-rimmed. “But I heard her call out ‘No, no! Reverend!’ ” She gulped.
Dominic passed her a handkerchief, and she took it without looking at him.
“She was calling for help,” Clarice said decisively.
Tryphena blinked. She gave a tiny shrug, more a gesture of pain than acceptance, and turned and left without glancing at Dominic.
“I’m sorry.” Clarice looked at Dominic. “I don’t suppose she meant most of it. Don’t—don’t think about it. If you don’t mind, I think I shall go up and see Papa.” And without waiting for an answer, she went through the withdrawing room door also.
Dominic stepped off the terrace and walked slowly across the grass in the growing darkness. The dew was heavy and soaked his shoes, and at the edges where the lawn had not yet been mown, it caught the bottoms of his trousers as well. He was barely aware of it. He should not be surprised at the sudden flash of temper tearing the skin off old wounds. Fear did that. It exposed all sorts of ugly emotions which might otherwise have lain unknown all life long. It showed resentments no one wanted to own. It brought to the tongue thoughts that in wiser or kinder times would have been suppressed and anyway were only partially true, born of his own fear and need as much as any truth.
There were things better not known.
He had not realized how hurt Tryphena was, how isolated she felt herself to be, how alone now that Unity had gone. Clarice had seen it. She was frightened, too, for her father and for Mallory, but she was kinder. She struck to defend, not to hurt for any pleasure in it. And she had certainly defended him. He had not expected her to. It gave him a sharp realization of pleasure that she should wish to.