Dark Angel

by Sally Beauman

  When they entered the house they were greeted by the steward, and by a telegram. Constance, who had not mentioned to Stern the note Boy had given her, knew what that telegram was likely to say. She sank down into one of the enormous chairs in the huge and vaulted hall. Her eyes rested on the vastness of the room, on windows some twenty feet tall, on a massive fireplace that burned eight-foot tree trunks. Her small feet rested upon a tiger skin; the beady eyes of dead stags looked down at her from the walls. She clutched her little handbag very tight. She felt that her husband, who saw everything, saw through the leather of the bag, saw through the vellum envelope, and read the contents of Boy’s last letter inside it. Stern gave no sign of anxiety as he opened the telegram; as he read it his expression did not alter. Looking up, he said with perfect calmness: “Boy is dead. A shooting accident. I will telephone Winterscombe.”

  It took time to make the connection; once it had been made, Stern dealt with the situation with his customary imperturbability. He expressed shock, regret, condolences; a perfect readiness, if it would help, to curtail this honeymoon and return to Wiltshire. In view of the lateness of the hour, he suggested the decision be made the following morning.

  “I don’t think that it was … an accident,” Constance said in a small voice, once they were alone.

  “I imagine not. In the circumstances,” Stern replied.

  He said nothing more. The question of suicide was not discussed; there was no examination of his own culpability or his wife’s; no reference to the photograph shown to Boy in the Corinthian Club. Constance found his composure alarming; in an odd and furtive way, she also found it thrilling. Schadenfreude: as she had on the train north, she found all instances of her husband’s ruthlessness thrilling. A secret man—death is his familiar, she thought. She felt a quick nervous excitement. What would this husband of hers do next, when they were upstairs in the bedroom?

  What he did was disappointing. With a cold politeness Stern escorted her to her room, summoned her maid, informed her that he understood she must be both exhausted and shocked, and then left her to rest and to recover.

  Constance did not want to rest. She spent a sleepless night. The wind howled outside. It rattled the great doors and windows. The next morning Stern came into her room and drew back the curtains. The light was bright and unnaturally white.

  “It has snowed during the night,” he said. “Heavily. I’m afraid there is no question of returning to Winterscombe, Constance.” He turned back, his face expressionless. “We are cut off,” he added, and then he left her.

  Cut off indeed: they were marooned, Constance discovered. Snowfall had made the one road to the house impassable. No one could reach the house, and no one could leave it. The telephone lines were down. It seemed to Constance that her husband was pleased by this; he exulted in this enforced isolation.

  Constance did not. Despite the vast fires burning day and night, she was always cold. The rooms and the corridors echoed. The view from the windows was of loneliness.

  “What can you see, Constance?” Stern said to her some five days later, when the snow remained but the storm had abated. They sat in the great hall, Stern by the fire, Constance curled up on a window seat.

  She pressed her face to the glass. She dug her nails into the palms of her hands. For five nights she had slept alone; for five nights her marriage had remained unconsummated. No explanation.

  “What can I see, Montague?” she replied. “Why, twelve thousand acres of white. The same view, from every window.”

  The next day, Stern gave instructions to the steward. His wife, he said, found the house confining. Estate workers were dispatched to dig a path through the snow. When the work was complete, Stern drew Constance to the doorway. Smiling, he displayed to her this path, cut for her benefit. A glittering pathway, just wide enough for two people to walk side by side, it led straight from the door to a balustrade. This balustrade marked the boundary of Gwen’s unsuccessful attempt at a garden. Below it, the ground fell away to a viewpoint overlooking a Highland wilderness. Constance looked at this path, at the bright sky without clouds, at the high sun. The air was icily fresh, with a tang of salt in it. The glitter of the air tempted her; Stern smiled.

  “You see?” he said. “Freedom.”

  Every day for the next three days, morning and afternoon, Constance and Stern took the air. They would walk along this path, arm in arm and side by side: a slow progress, from the house to the wilderness, from the wilderness to the house.

  “A little like exercising in a prison yard, don’t you find?” Stern said once as they paced back and forth. He glanced at Constance as he said this, as if the remark amused him, as if it held a meaning he would like her to understand.

  “A little,” Constance replied, clasping his hand. Gloved fingers; a slight and reassuring pressure; she decided the remark had no edge.

  “Shall we walk to the wilderness?” Stern would say in the same tone of amused irony, and walk to the wilderness they would. One hundred paces each way; sometimes Constance would say to herself that when they had taken fifty, or a hundred, when they reached the balustrade, she would speak. It shouldn’t be so hard, after all, to turn to him and ask why he left her still to sleep alone, her husband.

  One day, two days, three days. She never did. The words would stick in her throat, the way thanks did when she was a child.

  By the afternoon of the third day, she had decided: No matter what, the words would be said. No more hesitation. She would pronounce them the very second they reached the balustrade. One hundred paces, Stern accommodating his longer strides to her smaller steps. She clenched her gloved hands tight, rested them against the stone of the balustrade, opened her lips to speak, looked at the view, and was silenced.

  Such a majestic view and, to human beings, so diminishing. All color was bleached out: The peat bogs, the heather, the outcrops of rock—all these were invisible beneath the snow. Snow upon snow, in the distance the white bones of mountains and then, below them, ringed by them, the flat black water of the sea-loch.

  This loch had a deathly and forbidding air. The sun rarely reached its waters; protected from the prevailing wind by its flanking mountains, its surface was without ripples. In the distance, some three miles away but clearly visible in this crystalline air, she could discern the point where the waters of the loch flowed out into the open sea. Two black sheer rock faces fronted this boundary, making a narrow channel through which, at high and low tide, the water sucked and hurtled. A dangerous stretch of water this, notorious for its currents. Constance, who could not swim and was afraid of water, had always hated it.

  “How deep is it?” she had asked Acland once when she was still a child. Acland, indifferent, had shrugged.

  “God knows. Very deep. One hundred—two hundred fathoms.”

  No, she could not speak. The loch would not allow her. It trapped the words on her tongue. With a sense of fear and despair Constance looked up at her husband.

  He had not spoken for some while. Now, as he gazed out across that landscape, she saw it again on her husband’s face, that expression of exultation.

  Stern, she saw, did not shrink from this place, as she did. He gloried in it. For a moment, watching him, she thought he was engaged in a silent battle of will with the savagery and desolation of this landscape; it was as if he matched himself against it, as if he challenged its dangerous beauty. He seemed oblivious to her presence; locked in that private struggle of his own. Constance was humbled by this. It was on that occasion, in profile to her, his face fixed and pale, etched against the sky, that she saw for the first time how little she had understood her husband. Stern the Machiavelli, Stern the power broker, exercising his influence in clubrooms, corridors, drawing rooms—that was how she had thought of him, and she had been wrong. Today, I saw Montague’s soul, she was to write in her notebook. It was in that terrible, beautiful place, in that loch, in those mountains.

  After a little while, when Stern still did not
speak and seemed to have forgotten her presence, she stole out her hand and laid it upon his arm. She would have liked to tell him what she had seen in his face, but the words would not come out correctly. She said only that his liking for this place surprised her; she would not have expected it. Had she been asked to describe a location that matched his character, she would have selected the very opposite of this place.

  “A classical house, and a classical park—I should have chosen that,” she said. “Somewhere a little austere, a place men had tamed for generations.”

  “I can like such things,” Stern answered in an absent way, his eyes still fixed on the horizon. “But I prefer this. I never came to Scotland before.”

  There was a silence. Stern continued to look out over the snow. His eyes traced the line of the crags against the sky. In the far distance a bird—an eagle or a buzzard, great wings outstretched—soared upon the thermals.

  “Shall we have this?” Stern turned to Constance suddenly, startling her. He gripped her hand. She saw his face unmasked, freed from all his customary restraint, naked to her gaze for the first time, his eyes lit with a dark excitement.

  “Shall we?” His grip on her hand tightened. He gestured toward the landscape before them. A wide arc of the arm: rocks, mountains, water, sea.

  “We could, Constance, if you wished. We could have all this. It could be ours. We could … claim it.”

  “This place?”

  Constance was drawn to him. Stern offered her all this, and more. Such recklessness! For a moment the air sang in her lungs; she, too, was lifted up on those invisible thermals. There the world lay before their feet; one word and it was theirs. No, not even a word, for her husband bent toward her now; all she had to do was kiss his mouth.

  She looked into his eyes; she reached up for his kiss; his arm tightened around her waist. At the very last moment, one tiny second of time, she shivered. She was afraid. She shrank back.

  She gave a small and hopeless gesture of the hands; tiny kid gloves against the elements. She looked at the ring of mountains, the water of the loch beneath. Did she think of her father? Perhaps, perhaps.

  Too far north, after all, she said to herself. Too cold, too extreme. She turned away with a hateful little shrug, a pout of distaste she despised but could not suppress.

  “This place? It’s well enough in August—if you like to kill animals. But in winter?”

  She stopped, appalled at what she had just said. When she turned, the light had gone from Stern’s face. One more chance, she wanted to cry out: just one more chance. Instead she said, “Why do you ask?”

  “No reason,” Stern replied, turning away his face. He took her arm. “Shall we return to the house?”

  “Montague—”

  “You’re cold. We’ll discuss it another time,” he said in a curt voice.

  Constance felt that voice shrank her; it shriveled her up. One hundred paces back to the door. By the door, Constance lingered. It was unbearable to go in. If she went in now, if she did not speak, it would be an end. But how to speak? She bent and picked up a handful of crisp snow. She crushed it tight in a ball between her fingers.

  “Over dinner tonight,” Stern said in an indifferent voice. “We can discuss it then.”

  He opened the door. Constance did not move. She did not believe him. They would not discuss it over dinner. This was not something that could be … discussed. She crushed the snow tighter in her hand.

  “Montague …”

  “Yes, my dear?”

  “Do you ever feel confined? Shut up, closed away—so—so you cannot breathe, so the air is like a prison, so you reach out your hand and all you touch is bars—” She stopped. Stern was watching her now with attention.

  “Yes,” he began in a cautious way. “I have felt this. I imagine most people have—”

  “You could let me out,” Constance cried, clasping his hand, scattering the snow. “You could. Oh, I feel sometimes that you could. If I dared just a little bit more. I think then—I should be so free. So marvelously free. And you might be too. We might free each other. Oh, Montague—” She raised her face to his. “Do you understand me? Do you think I’m right?”

  Stern looked down into her face, which was lifted to his, which was imploring. His own expression became gentler. Drawing her to him, he kissed her brow, then traced, in a tender, yet regretful way, the lines of her face.

  “That is why I married you,” he replied quietly. “Did you not realize that?”

  “When we return to London, Constance,” he began, after dinner that night, watching her down the length of the table, “we shall have to decide where to live. Do you have a preference?”

  “Somewhere in London. And a place in the country, I suppose.” Constance spoke with care; she knew Stern was leading up to something. “Then, after the war, I should like to travel. I don’t care to feel too settled.”

  “I know that.”

  Stern looked down. He gave his attention to his wineglass. He moved the glass back and forth in an arc across the dark polish of the table. The servants had withdrawn. Between Constance and Stern was a monstrous pyramid of fruit, an epergne, flanking lines of silver candelabra some two feet tall. Constance looked about the room with a sense of despair. Massive chairs, vast banners with tattered heraldic emblems, great mauve paintings of Scottish glens. Everything in this house is too big, Constance thought; even the chairs dwarf me.

  “I could have Winterscombe within the year—if we wanted it.” Stern spoke suddenly, without looking up. “The house is security against my loans. I can call those loans in at any time. I see no possibility of their being paid back.”

  He looked up. Constance stared at him.

  “I could have Winterscombe,” he continued in an even voice, “but not just Winterscombe. Did you know I owned the Arlington estate?”

  “No, Montague.”

  “I bought it, after Hector Arlington’s death. I also own Richard Peel’s estate—you remember Peel, Denton’s old crony, who was quite happy to take investment advice from a Jew, rather less happy to have that Jew eat at his table? He died last autumn. I bought his estate from his executors. He had no children.”

  “The Arlingtons’ and Peel’s and Winterscombe? Those estates adjoin.”

  “Obviously. And then there is the question of Jane Conyngham’s land. She has the largest holding of all. She tells me she intends to sell.”

  “And her land borders the Arlington land.” Constance watched Stern closely. “You could take four estates and make them one?”

  “I could.” He seemed almost bored. “This place, too, perhaps. I like it here.”

  “If you did that, how much land would you have?”

  “Fifteen thousand acres—discounting the twelve here. Together with four houses—which would give us four to choose from. Winterscombe is not greatly to my taste, though it may be to yours. Jane Conyngham’s house is fine. Peel’s is even finer. We could look them over. If you disliked them, we could build.” He gave a dismissive gesture of the hand. “Houses do not greatly interest me. I have owned several. I feel obliged to fill them with things, and once they are filled, they rather bore me.”

  “You mean it is the land that interests you?”

  “Yes. I suppose that it is.”

  “Why is that, Montague?”

  “I like space.” Stern rose. He stood, looking down the table at her. “When I was a boy I dreamed of space. The house I grew up in had only three rooms. You could never be alone in it. However—you do not like to discuss Whitechapel, as I remember.”

  Stern turned away. He moved to the windows, drew back the heavy curtains, and looked out. There was a full moon; Constance could just glimpse it over her husband’s shoulder, riding high in an unclouded sky. The stars were ice in the dark. She looked at their patterns. She looked down at her plate.

  “Is that the only reason, Montague—your love of land?”

  “Not the only reason. No. I have always wanted�
�this may surprise you—I have always wanted to have something I could pass on. You said once that you thought the subject of children did not interest me. You were wrong. I should like … a son. I should like to pass my land on to my son. Perhaps I have dynastic leanings.” He paused. “I have a dream, a recurrent dream, which I’ve had for many years. In that dream I see my son quite clearly. His face, his hair, every feature. We walk together, through our estates. We—survey them, perhaps. And we know, as we walk, that they are virtually limitless. We could walk all day and still not reach our boundaries. Sometimes we stand in the center of all that land. We look at it. And I say to him: ‘This is yours. Take it.’” He broke off. “My son is different from me, of course. He is freer than I have ever been. Anyway. That need not concern you. It is just a dream.”

  “I would have thought it might concern me,” Constance said in a low voice.

  “But of course. I’m sorry. I did not intend any slight—”

  “Are you always alone with your son in the dream, Montague?”

  “Yes.”

  “I am never there—even now?”

  “Not so far, my dear. I’m sure that will change, and you will make an appearance. My mind takes time to adjust, perhaps, to our marriage.”

  “I’d have liked to be there.” Constance continued to stare at her plate.

  “You manifest yourself in my dreams, Constance—you have for some time.”

  “You’re sure?” She turned to him anxiously and held out her hand to him.

  “But of course.” His tone was gentler now. He took Constance’s hand, then bent to kiss her.