Daisy's Betrayal

by Nancy Carson

  He gave an embarrassed smile. ‘Yes. I confess it’s somewhat allegorical, Daisy. How astute of you.’

  ‘You called me Daisy,’ she said softly, catching his eye.

  ‘Do you mind? I apologise if you don’t approve. I wasn’t trying to be forward. Forgive me, it was a slip of the tongue.’

  ‘No, please, I don’t mind a bit. It is my name, after all.’ She smiled and touched his arm to put him at his ease. ‘Yes, please call me Daisy. And, if you have no objection, I’ll call you John instead of Mr Gibson. Agreed?’

  ‘Agreed.’

  ‘So, I take it then … John … that you and this Fernanda … that she was special to you …’

  He sighed with melancholy. ‘Yes, she was rather special to me.’

  ‘Were you in love with her then?’ She sipped her wine as she waited for his reply.

  ‘Oh, yes … I was very much in love with her.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Daisy, and put a consoling hand on his arm again. ‘I didn’t mean to pry. It’s none of my business but … it’s so evident from your painting … You waiting for the girl to say yes, she’ll marry you – while she’s looking all wistful as if she has so many things, so many options to weigh up before she gives her answer. When did you paint this?’

  ‘Oh … about Easter time. I really was waiting for her answer at the time.’

  ‘And she let you down.’

  ‘Yes …’ He sighed again. ‘She had already agreed to marry this Frenchman – another artist. I had no idea … They moved to Paris soon after.’

  ‘Oh, John, I feel so sorry for you,’ Daisy said and it came from the heart. ‘Has the pain subsided just a little bit since then?’

  He nodded. ‘It’s the main reason I left London. It wasn’t entirely the lack of money. There were too many painful memories. It’s not been so bad up here. Quite therapeutic, in fact. I’ve had things to occupy me that I wouldn’t have had in London – like buying this old furniture for instance, organising this party … even entertaining my landlord’s wife when she decides to drop in on me …’

  ‘Be warned. She might drop in on you again … Unannounced.’

  ‘Would you, really? You’d be surprised how it helps, talking to you, Daisy.’ There was a look of openness and honesty in his eyes. ‘I … I don’t mix easily, you know … I have the greatest difficulty making friends … I’m uncomfortable with people. But I find you very easy to talk to … I think Lawson Maddox is a very lucky man.’

  Daisy smiled sympathetically, almost tempted to tell him about Lawson’s intolerable indiscretions, but she thought better of it. If she did, she would no doubt break down in tears, as she had every day since discovering his infidelity for certain. ‘Tell me about this next painting, John.’

  ‘It’s called An Idle Hour,’ he informed her as they shifted along. In the foreground was an array of red and white sweetpeas that looked real enough to be wavering in a breeze.

  ‘It’s the same girl,’ Daisy said. ‘And wearing the same headbands. She’s beautiful, isn’t she? Such a lovely face and figure. Is her skin really as smooth as it looks?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ he whispered.

  ‘I can see why you were so captivated … But why did you use an Italian girl? Apart from the fact that she’s beautiful, I mean. There must be other beautiful models?’

  ‘Because she had the right colouring, the right demeanour. I want my pictures to look authentic. A fair-haired, pale-skinned woman wouldn’t look right in an Italian setting. Others have done it, but it never looks right.’

  ‘Why did you become an artist, John?’

  ‘Oh, I couldn’t help it,’ he replied as if any other reason was unthinkable. ‘I have an inner need to paint. There’s nothing else I could possibly do. There’s nothing else I want to do. I could never work in my father’s business, for instance. I would die of boredom. I’d shrivel up with spiritual starvation.’

  The two musicians who had been seriously threatening to bombard everybody’s ears, had evidently sorted out a selection of tunes and struck up in earnest. The hips of several of the women present started swaying to the gentle rhythm and some started singing along with the accordionist who, it transpired, was a cousin of John Gibson.

  John showed Daisy the rest of the pictures hanging on the wall in that room and she listened intently to what he told her.

  ‘I mustn’t monopolise you any more, John,’ she said eventually.

  ‘It’s no hardship, I can assure you.’

  ‘But you have other guests. You mustn’t neglect them.’ She took a sip of wine.

  ‘On the other hand, it would be very ungallant of me to leave you to your own devices when you are here unescorted. Let me introduce you to some of the guests you might find interesting. That way I’ll be mingling with them as well.’

  ‘All right.’ She was pleased he suggested it, since the only other people she knew there, apart from the Cooksons, were Alexander and Ruth Gibson. John introduced her as his landlady to a be-satinned Mrs Guest, his mother’s sister. While they chatted, Robert Cookson brushed past her. She turned and smiled at him in polite acknowledgement.

  ‘No Lawson tonight?’ Robert queried, and Daisy could not determine whether he was being facetious or whether he was ignorant of events.

  ‘Not tonight, Mr Cookson,’ she responded deferentially. ‘I have no idea what Lawson’s plans were for this evening.’

  ‘Some meeting of the Puritan Lobby, I’ve no doubt,’ Robert Cookson said with a smirk. He turned to his overdressed companion, who wore so many bangles and beads that she clinked as she moved.

  After speaking to Mrs Guest for some time, John diplomatically drew Daisy away again. ‘Would you like to see what I’ve done with my studio?’

  She allowed herself to be led away to the back of the house, through the scullery and away from the main party.

  John Gibson had installed a workbench that was strewn with tubes of paint, sketches on odd sheets of paper, messy palettes and glass jars with brushes soaking in a browny coloured liquid. It all smelt of linseed oil. Standing against the wall around the periphery of the studio were stretched canvasses, some untouched, some finished. Behind one canvas Daisy noticed a growth of fungus that looked like a half-cooked rasher of bacon sprouting from the dirt crack between wall and floor. Four marble busts were grouped in one corner like a collection of redundant Roman effigies in a stonemason’s yard. Another table was strewn with various rags, candles and a random pile of books.

  ‘It certainly looks and smells different,’ she remarked.

  ‘Like an artist’s studio.’

  ‘I see you have some more paintings leaning against the wall.’

  ‘Not quite dry yet. I’ll show them to you when they are.’

  ‘And another you’ve started.’ Daisy walked over to his easel and peered at the few lines and rough areas of paint. ‘What’s this one to be called?’

  ‘I think I’m going to call it At the Garden Shrine in Pompeii.’

  ‘Isn’t that a bit of a mouthful?’

  John smiled. ‘You know, I think you are right.’

  ‘So, is this to be Fernanda?’ she asked, lightly tracing the outline of a female figure with her finger.

  He nodded. ‘I had her sketched already in this pose, sniffing a rose.’ He uttered a little laugh of self-mockery.

  ‘Let’s hope she’s happy with her Frenchman,’ Daisy suggested.

  ‘Oh, yes, I really hope she is,’ John said sincerely. ‘I want her to be happy, whichever way she has chosen …’ He perched his backside on the corner of his workbench, careful to avoid any drips of oil paint in case it was still wet. ‘You’ve only been married a short time yourself, I understand.’

  ‘Not yet three months. We married at Easter.’

  ‘An Easter bride …’ he mused quietly. ‘I expect you looked astonishingly beautiful.’

  Daisy laughed. ‘Oh, astonishingly,’ she said with self-effacing sarcasm.

  ‘My moth
er speaks highly of you.’

  ‘That’s reassuring. And your father?’

  ‘Oh, my father makes no comment on anybody. Unless he particularly dislikes them – then he can be rather outspoken. He hasn’t said he dislikes you, anyway.’

  ‘Am I to be reassured by that? But then, he’s a friend of my husband, isn’t he? Some business connection they have. Although I haven’t yet worked out what it is exactly.’

  ‘How did you meet Lawson, Daisy?’ he asked, changing tack.

  She emptied the glass of wine that had accompanied her from the party room. ‘I was … Well, to put it bluntly, I was in service at the Cooksons’. I was their housekeeper. We met at their New Year’s Eve party.’

  ‘Good God!’ he exclaimed, evidently delighted, and burst out laughing. ‘You really were their housekeeper?’

  ‘Is it so funny?’

  ‘Oh, it’s beautiful. I have to admire a man who shocks his family and friends by marrying somebody from below stairs. For all their stuffiness, I bet they all envied him.’

  ‘Well, he had no family to shock, John. No close family at any rate.’

  ‘Even so, I could just imagine my father in a similar situation. Had I been successful with my suit for Fernanda, I’ve no doubt I would have incurred all his derision and wrath. More especially since she was foreign.’

  ‘But it wouldn’t have stopped you going ahead?’

  ‘Of course not. I have no time at all for such petty social prejudices. One person is much like another to me. There are good and bad in all classes and all races. To my mind, an honest pauper is much preferable to a corrupt nabob.’

  ‘I’ve always thought so.’

  ‘It must be quite … exciting,’ he commented. ‘The early days of marriage, I mean.’

  ‘Oh, you can’t imagine,’ she replied evenly, but feeling emotional at his comment; it stirred up again the hurt, the heartache, the anger she still felt about Lawson. She pushed back tears that were pressing for release. ‘I think maybe I’d better return to the others, John. People will talk if they see us alone like this.’

  ‘For my part, Daisy, people can say what they like. But to protect your reputation, you’re right. We should return to the party. I mustn’t monopolise you. But I’ve so much enjoyed talking to you.’

  ‘And I to you,’ Daisy said. ‘Do you know what time it is?’

  He lifted his watch from his pocket. ‘Nine.’

  ‘I asked my groom to collect me at ten. I hope you won’t regard my leaving early as a slight.’

  ‘Of course not. I understand.’

  ‘Thank you. It’s just that I feel I should be back at home before Lawson. That’s all.’

  ‘Of course. I quite understand.’

  Over the next few days Daisy began to feel ever more detached from Lawson. Her anger was still rampant within her, and her love for him, like sweet, fresh milk exposed to a heated atmosphere, was turning sour. When she thought about what she had witnessed in that house in Netherton – and the image plagued her frequently – her heart still thumped momentarily and she felt a sickening revulsion. Thank God that she did not know how many other times, how many other women there had been. Judging by the regularity with which he was away from home there must have been dozens, for he certainly had a way with women. Her only wish now was that she herself had never been subjected to it.

  She was deeply hurt by his infidelity and did not feel she could ever forgive him. All week they had slept in separate rooms and she saw no reason to alter that arrangement. She had no further physical desire for him; just the thought of him touching her was repulsive. During the day and at mealtimes she avoided him as far as possible. When they had to speak, they were direct and economical with words. This absolute transformation in her feelings for him surprised Daisy no end. If he found so much pleasure with Caitlin then let him pursue it with Caitlin and leave her alone. Daisy did not intend to compete, she had no wish to. Competing for a man, who was in any case her own husband, was beneath her. Lawson still went out every night and might still have been cavorting with Caitlin for all she knew. Caitlin, however, would doubtless soon be eclipsed by some other susceptible female who, like all the others, would think the sun shone out of his backside till he did the dirty on her as well.

  The overriding problem, as she saw it, was that she was irrevocably married to Lawson and there was no escape, whatever he’d done. Divorce was not a remedy easily available to her. Adultery by itself was not enough; she needed another matrimonial crime to bolster her claim, such as cruelty or desertion. But he had been neither cruel nor deserted her. Additionally, the only courts available to sanction divorce were in London and the costs involved in going through with it were prohibitive. In any case, settlements still favoured the husband outrageously, however erring he might have been.

  Daisy was not vindictive by nature, however. She sought no revenge and desired none. If Lawson preferred to find his pleasure in drink and other women, then so be it. Just so long as he left her alone now. She was simply sorry that this marriage, which had promised everything at first, had proved too soon to have no future in it.

  She wondered how he felt about it. Whether he felt any genuine remorse for what he had done.

  Chapter 16

  Lawson Maddox was genuinely sorry that he had upset his wife. He had married her with noble intentions, with unequivocal if not pure, unbounded love in his heart. He had a problem with women, though; he could not leave them alone. He was obsessed. He moved in circles where women were plentiful. Most were willing enough. Some were of elevated social classes, yet that did not mean he favoured them. The only qualifications they needed were to be very young, very attractive, and untouched. Class was immaterial. Indeed, he had served his apprenticeship in voluptuousness with brickyard and pit bank wenches. Not all were single either. In his formative sprees, he was just as likely to tempt a young and good-looking married woman as a single one. There was less of a risk with married women; if you made one pregnant for instance, it would only ever be her husband’s child she was carrying, wouldn’t it?

  One of the reasons Lawson had not pressed his seduction of Daisy before they were married was that he found her virginity and innocence something of a novelty in a girl older than eighteen; a novelty to be preserved and savoured on the first night of their marriage. Delaying the pleasure would only increase his appreciation of it later. In the meantime, he was not short of available women. Women fell at his feet.

  But for all his philandering, he loved Daisy in his own capricious way. She was the only woman he had ever really esteemed. She was untainted. For all her lowly upbringing, she was a lady in every other sense and he was quick to spot it. She was endowed with innate good judgement and level-headedness, and a sense of moral decency that he distinctly lacked. She knew her own worth and would neither compromise nor devalue it. He needed those exceptional qualities in her to establish some respectability in society for himself, to influence him positively; for he knew his failings well. In his view, need was the very thing that engendered love. If only he could make her see that she was the most important thing, the only steadfast entity in his life, that he needed her, that he depended on her for her innate stability, for her reasoned opinions, for her gentle guidance. The way he had behaved, however – or rather, the way he had been found out – she would never believe it.

  Lawson knew there was only one way of winning back his wife, and that was by example, by proving to her that he could remain faithful. The thought almost made him laugh. How could he sustain fidelity? He could not; not under any circumstances, and he knew it better than anybody. All his waking hours he thought about women and the sexual favours they had bestowed upon him from an early age. He contemplated them in all their modes of submission, in all their ecstasy as they writhed with unbridled pleasure beneath him and sometimes on top of him. Many an afternoon, even as a youth, he had hired rooms in bawdy houses, where he had entertained kitchen maids and nursery maids and chamber ma
ids to an hour or two of unrestrained romping during their time off. He would never spend money paying for prostitutes though. Let others do that. Why should he, when he could have women for free?

  He had an insight into women that few other men possessed. It was a common enough fallacy that women did not enjoy sex. Well, his experience told him the exact opposite. They relished it. Some relished it so much they would risk anything, would go to any lengths for it, no matter how degrading, giving the lie to their manifest primness, their feigned protestations and shock at his bawdy talk. While such willing women existed, he must devote his time to them, even at the expense of his marriage.

  It was a fundamental flaw in his character; Daisy would have to understand and accept this if they were ever to have a successful marriage. Yet there was no prospect at all that she would accept him on such terms. Never. Nor would unlimited gifts and material generosity gain her acquiescence. Not now she had discovered what he was really like, not now she had discovered his real weakness. If he was not able to persuade her to change her mind in a short time, however; if he did not quickly win her back, his own impatience at being rejected would turn to vindictiveness.

  And only he knew just how malicious that vindictiveness might be.

  Lawson thought he saw a chink of light in Daisy’s defences at breakfast on the morning of the following Tuesday. He had almost finished his, and she was under the impression that he had already left the house. As she entered the breakfast room, he was sitting there deep in thought, elbows on the table, a cup of tea held between two hands.

  ‘I thought you might be still asleep,’ he said.

  She made no reply but, after hesitating a moment, sat at the opposite end of the table as far away from him as she could get. She reached for the teapot and poured herself a cup of tea without looking at him, adding milk and a little sugar. The summer sunshine streaming through the window behind her enhanced the rich dark gloss of her hair and lit the edge of her cheek, accentuating its elegant, feminine curve. Lawson saw this and was, of course, moved by it.