‘I think such enquiries would be a waste of time in our case, Gideon, and had you thought otherwise you would have already made them.’
‘Come, darling—really, I had to seize my opportunity and could hardly equip myself with every detail—’
‘Oh yes, you could—and did—for the truth is that you do not wish, whatever the law may say, to marry a divorced woman, do you?’
‘Darling—’
‘And I think you will never call me darling in public, Gideon, because—well, because your mother, the Duchess, would be likely to throw a fit at the very idea, and your brother, the baronet, would not like it. And moreover—and far more to the point—I think your own sense of good taste and expediency is rather revolted by it too.’
‘Grace—that is not kind.’
‘No. But true, I think, because—Listonby and Westminster apart—the Goldsmiths and the Fauconniers would not care to associate with me either. A divorced woman is a social embarrassment. I have been warned of that often enough, and that would not do for you, Gideon. After all, my skills as a hostess would be no good to you, would they, if no respectable—useful people could be persuaded to accept my invitations. But if I remained your sister-in-law, safely married to Gervase who would never be there, then I could be a social asset, I quite see that. And if at the same time I discreetly shared your bed, your friends would not mind that at all and—well, how very much more convenient to have a mistress waiting in one’s own home than to be obliged to pursue one in the Park. I see that too. Yes, I could be of great use to you, Gideon, until your mother found you the earl’s daughter or the merchant princess she has always dreamed of.’
I saw the colour leave his face, felt his body harden and turn cold, and then, stepping away from me, he bowed, not, I thought, accepting defeat but disdaining to make any defence.
‘I am sorry your opinion of me should be so ill,’ he said curtly. ‘If you would care to give me the parcel you spoke of, I will see that it is delivered to Fieldhead.’
But there could be no question now of parcels for Fieldhead or anything else. If Gideon remained in this house tomorrow, then I would be obliged to leave it, for I could face him neither as the man I had insulted nor as the man I had desired and might—very probably—desire again. But I came downstairs in the morning to find all changed, for news had been delivered in the night that Noel Chard had indeed been wounded at Ulundi, how seriously was not known. Blanche was in despair, had already sent a flurry of telegrams to her father in Cullingford who, she said, would have contacts, would know what to do; while both Dominic and Gideon were arranging to leave for Natal at once.
I remained in London with Blanche through a stifling August, a September that was wet in patches, hot and overcast in others, my own concerns overshadowed by her agonized waiting for telegrams, letters, casual, unfeeling gossip that prostrated her on her bed, struggling with the first passion of her hitherto passionless life, terrified as a child because, like a child, she believed it would go on hurting forever.
I gave what comfort I could, sat with her and shared her vigil, the Season being over now and all her acquaintances gone to their shooting-parties, their country estates escaping her demands only rarely to walk alone in the empty autumn streets. And it was on one such solitary outing that I came face to face with Gervase.
It was not, of course, by chance, and seeing my shock and my inability to conceal it, he came hurrying forward, light and pale and thinner, I thought, than I remembered, the skin at his eye-corners crinkling as he smiled, his hat tilted at the rakish angle he always wore it, carrying himself with all the accustomed young man’s dash and swagger but his face hollower somehow, and a little older.
‘Grace, you look as if you had seen a ghost. Don’t worry. I know the court order has nearly expired, but I have not come to comply with it and ruin your life all over again.’
‘They said we should not see each other.’
‘I know. But we shall not tell.’
And for the first time in our lives the hand he put on my arm was firm and purposeful while mine was trembling, the strength of his will the greater, since I was too shaken to have any strength at all.
‘One moment only, Grace. I am in London on other business and it seemed ridiculous to go away without seeing you, since there may not be another chance.’
And to avoid the certainty of bursting into tears I could not ask him what he meant to do, could only question him by a glance, a movement of the hands, the whole of my mind overwhelmed not by pain but by a deep sadness. There was no bitterness left, no need to strike out, no sense of outrage, no sustaining anger. I felt like the parkland and the trees all about me, waterlogged, fog-bound, wet and weary.
‘It seems I have a son,’ he told me, and through the mist which seemed to have settled around me I smiled weakly, knowing full well that I was here, wide awake, hearing this and believing it, yet feeling myself to be in a dream.
‘Yes—and what now, Gervase?’
He shrugged, smiling too, his eye-corners creased again, those first marks of age sitting oddly on his boyish face, a mask he might suddenly remove and throw away.
‘Well, I shall see Diana settled first, one way or the other. And then I shall go abroad if I can.’
‘Settled?’
‘Yes. Compton Flood is to be Lord Sternmore any day now, and Diana is still rather keen on that. At first he said no, wouldn’t hear of it. But the title has no money to go with it, you see, and at the moment he’s having a good long think about that. If Diana goes abroad for a bit after you’ve done with her, to let the talk die down, and comes back a little richer, then he might forgive her. I expect he will. But if not she’ll have to go abroad again, with me.’
‘Gervase, are you still in love with her?’
‘No. I’m not in love with anybody, Grace.’
And feeling misty still and far away, I nodded and smiled.
‘Do you understand why I’m going through with the divorce?’
‘I do. Otherwise I would have come back to you, wouldn’t I, like the court order said, and saved Diana. That’s what they wanted me to do. I didn’t—for what it’s worth to you.’
‘It’s worth a great deal. Where are you going?’
‘Oh—sheep-shearing in Australia, perhaps—or herding cattle in America. It doesn’t really matter. Not running, as I suppose you think. Searching might be nearer the mark. But why I’m here now is to put your mind at rest. I’ll raise no sudden obstacles in your way, Grace. That’s all.’
He took my hand and pressed it, the cool, light touch I knew, the sad smile I had not met before, my own sadness settling around me like a cloud, insubstantial but impenetrable, weighing me down.
‘Goodbye, Grace—and good luck.’
‘Gervase—take care.’
‘Well, I don’t know about that.’
He walked away and the cloud was all over me, a soft barrier dimming my sight and my senses, making it impossible for me to cry out, since all sound must have died away in that thick, sorrowful air. And I walked back to Blanche’s tall, tense house, tears dripping from my eyes like raindrops from those sodden trees, remembering that he had had no cloak, thinking of the dust and dangers of cattle stations, sheep stations, his eyes that betrayed lack of sleep, his fancies and his fears; his tendency to take cold.
Chapter Twenty-One
And so it was done. I entered a bare court-room in the company of lawyers whose main concern was for their fee, and placed before a judge who did not like me the better for it the evidence of servants and of a new-born child that my husband had committed adultery with the wife of Colonel Compton Flood—Lord Sternmore any day now. I proved conclusively that the guilty pair had lived openly together for some months at Cullingford Manor and before that had been seen in the most compromising of situations, quite regularly, by Mrs. Flood’s maid. I proved that my husband had abandoned me and refused to return. I tore to pieces the reputation of the aforesaid Mrs. Flood, ca
using her to seek refuge abroad. I broke the heart of Colonel Compton Flood who, while the trial was in progress, finally became Lord Sternmore, leaving his uncle’s death-bed a nobler and, if he chose to compromise, a richer man.
I forced my own husband to abandon his home, his inheritance and his mistress, to hide his disgraced head in rough colonial pastures, very likely never to return. I branded a tiny baby boy with the stigma of bastardy. Or so a certain section of the Press implied, finding more drama and consequently more sympathy in the plight of the disgraced but evidently warm-blooded Diana Flood than in the cold-hearted wife who had taken her revenge. Had I plunged a jealous knife into Mrs. Flood’s heart perhaps I would have been more easily forgiven. But my vengeance had been cool, calculating and very mercenary, since far from making any sacrifices I had actually gained by it. A little womanly compassion, the newspapers thought, would not have gone amiss among so much self-righteousness; while certain among them suggested—in general terms—that when a husband went astray it might only be realistic to assume that he had his reasons.
The judge, in the moment of pronouncing the decree, could not conceal his distaste for it. The barrister who had represented me, although an old college friend of my father’s, treated me with great caution, feeling, perhaps, that a woman who could divorce her husband might be capable of anything, while his clerks and the officers of the court stared at me speculatively, rudely, and did not always drop their eyes when I caught them at it, as they would have done had they still considered me a lady.
Our marriage had taken a whole day to perform, flowers and white horses, organ music, champagne, two hundred happy guests. A few caustic words accompanied by a bad-tempered sniff ended it. But I knew that our divorce had really taken place on a wet afternoon in Hyde Park when he had made no excuses, asked no pardon, but had simply said ‘Goodbye—good luck’, and I had replied ‘Take care’. He had brought me a gift that day, not of love, for I believed him when he said he loved no one, but of understanding, and I had wept—could still weep—with gratitude and with loss.
I walked from the court a single woman again, an adult with a legal identity of my own. Mrs. Grace Barforth now, no longer Mrs. Gervase. I went to bed, slept the rest of the day and the night, and the next morning came North again to Scarborough where my Grandmother Agbrigg, who had decided she was too old now either to understand or to criticize, was nevertheless deeply shocked when she noticed I had taken off my wedding ring.
‘I am being honest, grandmamma.’
‘You are asking for trouble, my girl. There is a mark, plain for all to see, where the ring has been. And since no one will take you for a spinster, one must assume the worst. Since you insist on travelling alone you will oblige me by not removing your gloves on the train.’
Blanche was appalled by my decision to remain in Cullingford.
‘Darling, are you entirely mad? They wouldn’t know what to do with you. There’s simply nowhere to put a divorced woman in Cullingford. You’d do far better to get that little house in London we talked about—and it won’t be easy even there.’
But her mind, and Aunt Caroline’s mind, the attention of most of the family was blessedly distracted from my affairs by the needs of Noel Chard, who, crippled by an assegai-thrust at the base of the spine, had seemed at first unlikely to walk again. He had been discovered by his brothers in exactly the fevered, squalid conditions Blanche had feared, plagued by flies and heat and overcrowding from which they had deftly extracted him, bringing back a yellow, hollow-cheeked man who could have been their father.
But the clean air of Listonby, the determination of Aunt Caroline, the devotion of Blanche, who was herself embarrassed by the extent of it, soon restored him. He would not walk again without a limp or a stick, would no longer spend whole days in the saddle, but he would remain now on the land where Blanche could keep an eye on him, enabling Dominic to go about his Parliamentary duties in peace. He would be at Listonby when Blanche was at Listonby, which would be rather more often from now on. He would come down to London when she needed him, or would suddenly appear at South Erin during those duty visits she found every year more tedious. He would be here to supervise her growing sons, to teach them to ride and shoot and know their manners, as Dominic had no time to do. He would be here to talk to her, to understand that there were days when she felt less beautiful—less cheerful—than others.
‘You see, Grace,’ she told me, ‘or at least you should see how it is. If one can arrange one’s affairs sensibly—if one can get what one wants without hurting others—then why not bend a little? Why be strictly honest and lose, when by just making it look right—It did Venetia no good, being honest, you know, and sometimes, Grace, I am quite afraid for you.’
I stayed at Fieldhead for a while, accustoming myself slowly to insolence, treading warily like an invalid after a long and weakening disease, until the averted heads and pinched lips of Cullingford’s carriage trade no longer troubled me. I entered the draper’s shop in Millergate to find myself suddenly invisible as Mrs. Rawnsley’s glance passed straight through me. The first time it was painful, then awkward, quite soon it meant as much to me as she did, which was very little. I saw the timid Miss Fielding risk a trampling to death by carriage horses as she scuttled across the street to avoid me, and I stood in embarrassed perplexity, since I too had reason to cross over. The first time I remained on the opposite side of the street until she was out of sight, greatly to my own inconvenience. The third or the fourth time I strolled nonchalantly over to the shop I wanted, bade her a good morning, made my purchase and went away. I accepted Miss Mandelbaum’s invitation to tea with surprise and gratitude, yet found her so jittery with nerves, so overwhelmed by her own daring and so fearful for her reputation that I did not go a second time. I returned Mrs. Sheldon’s bow, made when her carriage was at a safe distance, in the knowledge that the distance would be maintained until her husband had calculated the number of votes he might lose by permitting his wife to acknowledge me against the loss of favour at Fieldhead. I endured a short, sharp lecture from Miss Tighe who, caring for no one’s opinion but her own, marched up to me in broad daylight and made me aware that, although I might now choose to consider myself a single woman, she did not, and hoped I would make no attempt to claim the voting rights which might one day be granted to the truly unwed.
But it hurt me immeasurably to be cut dead by Mrs. Winch, the housekeeper from Tarn Edge, when I happened to meet her in Market Square, although the butler, Chillingworth, was not ashamed to raise his hat to me and stood one Sunday morning for fifteen minutes beside my victoria, regretting both my departure and Mrs. Winch’s now all too evident incompetence.
She did her best, of course, he didn’t doubt it, but Mr. Chard was difficult and Mr. Barforth gloomy. Ah no, the child would make no difference, for yesterday morning they had sent the little mite to Listonby to be brought up with her cousins, Sir Dominic’s boys, which seemed an excellent idea to Chillingworth. The nursemaid, it seemed, had got above herself, the wet nurse had twice had to be changed, Mrs. Winch had declared herself unequal to the responsibility and Listonby, where the nurseries were well-staffed, well-organized, well-supervised by Mr. Chard’s mother, the Duchess, appeared a good and permanent solution to one and all. Unless, of course, Mrs. Nicholas Barforth should take it into her head to leave Galton Abbey after all these years and return to her rightful home, a suggestion much favoured in the servants’ hall, since Mr. Barforth had been spending a fair amount of time at Galton lately, he and his wife having lost both their children in a manner of speaking, the daughter in the graveyard and the son gone to the devil, for ought they knew, in Australia, begging my pardon. A fair basis for reconciliation, thought the servants’hall, although, between ourselves, Mrs. Winch was already looking for another situation, and if Mr. Chard continued to make those scathing remarks about his dinner, no one expected Mrs. Kincaid to last long either. As for Chillingworth himself, yes, he would very likely stay on until th
ey pensioned him off, and in any case, although I was sorely missed, his work was easier now. No mistress meant no visitors and he need hardly stir from his pantry in the afternoons. Mr. Barforth was rarely seen, while Mr. Chard could always get himself upstairs to bed whatever state he might be in, not at all like Mr. Gervase.
My hands were shaking as I drove away, my parasol unsteady against my shoulder, images inflicting themselves like small wounds upon my memory; the tiny, elf-face of Claire Chard who was not really a Chard at all, the child I had not wished to touch because I had known how easily love for her could have detained me at Tarn Edge; and then Gervase, who had been very much my child, wending his uncertain way upstairs in the small hours of the morning, humorous and somehow gentle in drink, the sharp edges blurred from his vision. I didn’t know what had happened to his son. No one would be likely to tell me and I could not ask. My own miscarriage came back to me, not the fear or the pain but the sense of failure, for there had been no sign of pregnancy since then and could be none now. I felt defeated, sterile, and then—to complete the agony—I began to remember Gideon.
But I was not always so feeble. It was spring again, an excellent time to make changes, and having examined the state of my finances and found them healthy, I shocked Cullingford further by quitting my father’s house, where it was felt I might have had the good taste to languish, and purchased a home of my own in Blenheim Crescent, a short, curved terrace of houses designed for those who aspired to gentility but could not quite afford the greater elegance of Blenheim Lane.
It was a narrow building with a long front garden, a flight of shallow steps to a door with a fluted, many coloured fanlight somewhat too grand for its surroundings. The hall was narrow too, accommodating a thin staircase which led to two large bedrooms on the first floor, three small ones above. I had a drawing-rooom with a dining-parlour behind it on the ground floor, a square, dark kitchen behind that, more steps, very steep this time, leading to a stone-flagged yard which offered me a view of houses very much like my own.
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