by Rosie Thomas
‘Don’t start all that again,’ Gerry said. ‘Now that we’re all here, why don’t we go somewhere for a nightcap? You’ll come, won’t you love?’ He grinned at Helen.
‘No thanks,’ Tom said coolly. ‘Helen and I are on our way home.’
Oliver frowned in belated surprise.
‘It is you, Hart. Thank God for someone civilised. I’ve had enough of Gerry. But what are you doing with my brother’s fiancée?’ He squared up to Tom in a parody of gentlemanly offence.
‘Buying her dinner and a ride on the roundabouts. I delivered a present to her, to celebrate her engagement to your brother, and she is thanking me with an evening of her company. Does that satisfy your curiosity?’
Thank you, Tom, Helen said silently. Thank you for your tact and sensitivity.
Oliver had forgotten his question. He thrust his arms through theirs and said, ‘Good job you’ve turned up. Gerry and I’ve lost the car somewhere. We’d’ve had to walk back.’
‘Do you good,’ Tom muttered, and then ‘Come on. I suppose we’ll have to drive you home.’
Helen shivered. The mood of the evening had changed so sharply that she felt sick and shaken. Confusion and the first stab of guilt warred inside her as they trailed in silence across the wet grass. The five-barred gate appeared through the mist with the car beyond it. Once inside Oliver slumped in his corner and fell asleep while Gerry kept up a stream of disconnected talk, impervious to the lack of response.
Tom glanced quickly at Helen, then his face contracted in a black frown.
‘We’ll leave them at St Aldate’s and then go home.’
‘No,’ Helen said tonelessly. ‘Take me back to Follies too.’
They drove on in silence.
Outside Christ Church they roused Oliver and saw him wander in under the tower. Tom stopped again on Folly Bridge and Gerry hauled himself out.
‘So grateful,’ he said. ‘Can’t think how I’d have got Oliver home otherwise. Let me escort you inside, Helen.’
‘I will take care of Helen.’ Tom was dangerously quiet. Gerry shrugged and went away down the steps.
Alone in the car Helen and Tom looked bleakly at one another. The carelessness that had set them free on the wheel above Port Meadow was utterly gone. They were sombre and apprehensive.
Tom ran his fingers through his black hair.
‘Rather a mess,’ he said.
Helen took a deep breath. ‘It wasn’t real, that fair,’ she told him. ‘None of it really happened. I’m going to go inside now, and we can both forget it all.’ She forced conviction into her words.
Tom rounded on her furiously.
‘Don’t be a fool. Of course it happened. And we both know why, and what it means. How can you pretend that it didn’t?’
‘I can. I must.’ Helen was urgent. ‘Darcy …’
‘Screw Darcy. Oh, I’ll bet you haven’t. No, forget I said that.’
The door banged open and Helen leapt out on to the bridge. ‘I thought you were clever,’ she heard him call after her. ‘Obviously I misjudged you.’
Helen ran down the slippery mossed steps to the island. Up on the bridge she heard the engine roar and then a scream of tyres as Tom wrenched the car away. It was very dark in the cavernous hallway. She was almost on top of Gerry before she saw him, and had to bite back a gasp of fear. He was sitting on the bottom stair with his hands hanging loosely between his knees. She tried to edge past him.
‘Don’t worry about me, love,’ he said. ‘As far as I’m concerned, I didn’t see a thing.’
His low chuckle followed her up the stairs.
For once Helen’s room felt less than a sanctuary. She had come back to it this evening, so few hours ago, and Tom had been sitting there. Now she felt that he was still with her, dark and impatient. She sat down on the bed and stared at the dim rectangle of the window. Think, she kept telling herself. You know how to think. But all she could manage to focus on was a series of disconnected images. Tom’s face close to hers, Gerry’s insinuating Having a nice time?, the dizzy blur of the hobby horses, Oliver’s unfocused gaze, and Tom yet again. ‘We both know why, and what it means.’ What does it mean? she asked herself helplessly. How could she have forgotten herself so far, and – more – forgotten Darcy too?
At last she shook herself.
It was the fair. An isolated, intoxicated minute. Perhaps it had been prompted by her Venetian dream and then by the mystery of the sparkling mirage in the dark meadow. None of that assuaged the guilt and self-distrust that afflicted her now, but at least it was the thread of an excuse to cling to.
Then she thought painfully, I can’t use that as an excuse. It wasn’t just the fair. All this began long ago, and it goes back and back.
Back from tonight, when I found Tom here and knew that I was lying when I told him I was happy. Back to Venice, and my dream. Back to the play, and the days when we shared our anxiety for Oliver. Before that, to New Year’s Eve. I knew now why I was so angry and afraid when he kissed me. Even after all the pain of Oliver I must have sensed that there was a chance of it happening all over again with Tom.
Even before that, I must have been drawn to him. In Addison’s Walk, when I wanted to hide from everything against his shoulder. Even on the first day, when I saw him in Oliver’s rooms, I thought how different from everyone else he looked. If I hadn’t been blinded by Oliver then, I would have seen at once how special.
Helen sat motionless, uncomfortably hunched on her bed in the cold room, too shocked by the labyrinths of her self-deception even to move.
And what now?
Darcy, she reminded herself deliberately. When her imagination captured his face, it was with his half-habitual anxious frown. She was aware of the mixture of tenderness, loyalty and unshakeable affection that she felt for him. Love, too. But nothing like the insistent force that had assailed her tonight. She had never felt anything like that before.
Slowly Helen began to understand. She saw that the obscure irritation and sense of unease that Tom roused in her was rooted in attraction, physical as much as emotional. She admitted it to herself as clinically as she could. But she had made that mistake once, disastrously, with Oliver. She could never, ever, let it happen again.
Funny, she thought, with a wry flicker of amusement. I’d never have thought of myself as particularly hot-blooded. And I once thought I knew myself quite well.
Wrong, and wrong again.
Suddenly Helen felt coldly afraid. She didn’t understand or even trust herself any more, and she felt unpleasantly adrift in a dark, threatening sea. A single certainty flashed like a beacon at her. It was Darcy’s worth, unchanging and pledged to her with utmost generosity. As she had pledged herself in return. She had promised to marry Darcy, and that remained a single fixed point.
It was impossible, impossible, to think of turning to him now and saying that she had made a mistake. And although the deepest core of herself longed blindly for Tom, the careful, practical Helen who was just as much a part of her told her that she should cling to the security of Darcy. Part of her recoiled from the ferment of her feelings for Tom, and groped blindly backwards to safety.
Time, she whispered out loud. I need time. Time to distinguish between two kinds of love, and to gauge which one is real.
Tomorrow, she promised herself, she would talk to Darcy. She would explain – not about tonight, there must never be a whisper of that – but about needing time, and peace, to think about their marriage.
Darcy would understand, because he always did.
And because she was afraid that she could not trust herself otherwise, she made one other resolution. She must not see Tom alone any more. To see him was to succumb to him, and for Darcy’s sake that must never be allowed to happen.
At once a little of her fear abated. Yet at the same time the inner, reckless Helen cried out No. I love him. I need to see him. The voice was so passionate that she almost wavered.
To silence it, Helen reached ou
t and turned on the lamp. The room was lit with the familiar glow, every outline reassuringly the same in spite of the upheaval of her world.
She would stay true to Darcy. She would, because she must. The other way was to gamble everything, and now the stakes had risen too dizzyingly high.
But even time was to be denied her.
Darcy came early the next morning, and she saw the resolve in his face at once. He took her hands and made her stand still to listen to him.
‘I want you to come with me to Montcalm. We must tell them, Helen, and I want us to do it today. I’ve telephoned, and they’re expecting us to lunch. Father was going racing, but I’ve told him it was important and he agreed to stay. So they will almost know already.’
Helen went cold.
‘I can’t, Darcy, we can’t do it today. I want to talk to you. It’s important and it’s something we have to understand between us before we see your mother and father.’
The thought of Montcalm and the cold, surprised faces of Their Royal Highnesses made her feel shaky with fear.
Darcy was immediately concerned.
‘What is it? Is something wrong?’
‘Not wrong.’ Helen searched uncomfortably for the right way to say her piece.
‘It’s just that I’m … afraid. All this has happened very quickly. I’m only just beginning to understand what I’ve promised you. I need some time now, to think about it and to be sure that what we’re doing is right.’ She was talking more quickly, gaining confidence.
Darcy’s face cleared.
‘You can have all the time in the world. I’ve already told you that. And of course you are afraid. Do you think I’m not? And do you think every couple who promise to marry walk blithely into it without a tremor of doubt? I’m happy to be afraid, because it means I understand how serious it is. But it’s why I want to tell everyone, too. It will be easier once there is a clear statement between us, no murky areas and nothing to misunderstand.’
Oh, but there is, Helen thought bitterly. And does he really think that announcing our engagement to Lord and Lady Montcalm is going to cement it?
Disconcertingly, the current of her thoughts changed direction. Perhaps it would do just that. There was something to be said for burned boats.
She looked at Darcy, and saw the honest conviction shining in his face.
‘We-ell,’ she said, knowing that she was being weak. Sensing his advantage, Darcy produced his rare, stubborn expression, all the more effective because she had seen it only once before.
‘We must go,’ he said. ‘They’re waiting for us.’
Helen bowed her head and made to follow him. Her legs felt as if they were lifting lead weights. Darcy stopped her at the door.
‘And there’s this.’ The blue box again.
Helen took out the ring, and he slid it on to her finger. The wide gold circlet fitted perfectly now, but the ruby felt too heavy and too obvious.
‘Please wear it,’ he said. ‘I want them to see our ring on your finger.’ He hugged her and then kissed her forehead, cajoling.
He’s afraid of them too, Helen realised dismally. He’s a grown man, but somehow they reduce him to a small boy, who thinks that presenting them with a fait accompli will make his disobedience easier to swallow.
Sadness engulfed her as she followed Darcy down to the echoing gallery and out through the heavy door on to the island. For the first time she was struck by the appropriateness of the name of the old house.
The drive to Montcalm was unbelievably short. It seemed they had barely left Oxford before they reached the lodge at the great gates. The ticket booth was open and there was a small queue of cars in front of it. Darcy swung round them and the ticket man looked up sharply, and then straightened into a half salute. Helen and Darcy didn’t look at each other.
She saw the house on the skyline again, and now it seemed more threatening than fantastic. Darcy stopped the car at the centre of the gravel sweep between the two towering side-wings of the house. There was to be no momentary shelter in the safety of Jasper Thripp’s yard on this formal morning. Darcy ushered Helen out of the car and up the shallow rise of steps to the huge doors. The doors swung silently open in front of them and Maitland, black-coated, stood against the brilliance reflected from within the dome.
‘Good morning, my lord. Good morning, madam.’
Helen’s breath was coming in short, painful gasps and her heart seemed to pound with audible thumps. Darcy was pale, but he turned at the door to the private wing and smiled at her, then clasped her hand.
‘I love you,’ he whispered. Helen prayed that she was only imagining the effort at conviction she heard in his words.
‘His lordship and her ladyship are in the private drawing room, my lord.’
‘Thank you, Maitland.’
A few steps, they were at the door, and then inside the room.
Lady Montcalm was sitting at her embroidery, a spaniel asleep at her feet. Lord Montcalm was standing stiff-backed against the fireplace.
Helen saw, just as she had imagined, the cool and distant surprise in their faces, and her flickering courage died inside her. She knew, as fatally as if it had already happened, that she would fail miserably to impress these frosty people as a future daughter-in-law and heiress to the towering pile around them.
For a moment nobody spoke. Then Lady Montcalm put down her embroidery and smiled, a little tired smile.
‘What a surprise, Darcy. And Helen too. Come and sit down, won’t you?’ She patted the sofa cushion beside her, looking at Helen as if she had no idea who this intruder could be. Her ladyship was perfectly coiffed and manicured, and dressed in a grey pleated dress with about a hundred tiny covered buttons. Helen felt shabby, and hot, and awkward as she crossed the pale green carpet.
Darcy’s father shook his heavy handsome head. ‘What is all this? I should be at Cheltenham.’
Darcy didn’t hesitate. Only Helen heard the tremor in his voice. ‘Helen and I are going to be married.’ He lifted Helen’s left hand, keeping it tightly clasped in his, to show them the ring. Incongruously, she felt like a winning prize fighter and had to suppress a wild desire to laugh. A shocked silence spread across the room. The spaniel stirred and sighed in its sleep, the silky fur rippling.
Lady Montcalm said, ‘Darling, I had no idea you were so romantic.’
The silence deepened, and Helen wished that she could be anywhere else in the world except where she sat now. But her fear was beginning to ebb away. It was replaced by shame for Darcy for his parents, and a determination to love and support him where they had so clearly failed.
Lord Montcalm said, ‘This is very sudden.’ His manner showed a stupid man’s embarrassed reluctance to confront real feelings.
‘It’s not sudden at all,’ Darcy answered. He seemed more than ever the stubborn schoolboy, and Helen defensively longed for him to reveal more of the real Darcy that she herself knew.
Lady Montcalm laughed, a light, pretty laugh. ‘This is lovely. I’m so pleased for you both, but you must forgive us for being a little surprised.’ She stretched her hand out to Helen’s. ‘The ring, too. What slender little hands you have. Half the size of mine, and I remember thinking how huge the ring was when Aubrey produced it for me. The ruby is much too heavy, Darcy. Couldn’t we find something more suitable for Helen? A pretty diamond?’
‘No, Mother. I want Helen to wear the proper ring.’
There was another tiny silence. Lord Montcalm looked at his watch.
‘This all seems perfectly suitable. There’s a great deal to discuss, arrangements and so forth, but I think that can wait. Jane?’
His wife was precise. ‘Yes. I think it can wait.’
‘In that case, I’ll be off. The stewards are expecting me.’ Lord Montcalm held out his hand to his son. ‘Congratulations, old boy.’ And then, to Helen, ‘He’s a good chap. I’m sure he’ll make you happy.’ He leaned towards her and almost kissed her cheek. Helen understood that Lord Mo
ntcalm had no particular objection to her. She was, at least, not quite blatantly unsuitable. Her future father-in-law was too intent on his afternoon’s racing to disturb himself any further.
It was Lady Montcalm who was her real adversary. Helen felt her determination strengthening.
After Lord Montcalm had gone, she turned the full light of her attractive long-suffering smile on Helen.
‘Well,’ she sighed, ‘we must have a lovely long talk. I want to hear all about you and your life, and your family. I feel at such a disadvantage, not knowing you at all. Do you know, I thought you were a friend of Oliver’s. Weren’t you his guest at Christmas?’
Helen lifted her chin. Her grey eyes were very bright, and there was a faint flush across her cheeks.
‘Oliver and I are friends, yes. We met at Oxford.’
‘Helen lives in Rose Pole’s house,’ Darcy put in.
‘Oh yes. Poor Rose. I should go and see her one day. But I hear …’ Lady Montcalm’s fingers fluttered delicately. Plainly, belonging to the Follies circle was not much of a recommendation for Helen.
After sherry in the drawing room, they went in to lunch. Helen was reminded of her first visit to Montcalm. Then it had been Tom and not Darcy at Lady Montcalm’s side. Helen remembered admiring his suave self-possession. Now Darcy sat quietly. It was Helen who had to bear the steely focus of attention. The questions came one after another, subtly put and charmingly expressed, but Helen knew that she was being grilled. She made her answers as brief and dignified as she could, reflecting that she had nothing to be ashamed of. She was proud of her loving, supportive family. Prouder than she would ever be of her parents-in-law.
Suppressed anger put a bite into her voice. As she talked, Darcy watched her with pride and affection.
‘My father died last year. My mother is a part-time schoolteacher and I have a younger brother still at school. No-one else, really. Some cousins in Sunderland.’
‘Sunderland?’
Helen might have said Tashkent.