Dark Angel

by Sally Beauman

  She began to walk very fast, catching Jane by the arm and pulling her along beside her. She turned down first one side street and then another. They came to a lodge and a pair of tall iron gates. These Jenna leaned against before starting to walk once more, even faster this time, so Jane half-ran to keep up with her.

  It was a large cemetery, one of the largest in South London, and it is there still. You could retrace the path Jenna took that day, even now: past the stone angels, the carved urns, the stone catafalques of the more prosperous dead, to the smaller, more closely packed tombstones of the poor.

  Here, in a corner shaded by a yew, Jenna paused. There, up against the wall of the graveyard, overgrown with brambles and rank grass, was a line of small wooden crosses no more than eight inches high, some leaning at an angle, some bare of all inscription, some inked with initials and dates already fading from sun and rain. These, too, are still there, although they are very overgrown now, and most of the crosses have rotted. They were the paupers’ graves. Jenna looked at them with indignation.

  “He was a lovely boy. I was proud of him. I didn’t want him lying there. I hate those graves. I couldn’t have rested, not if he’d gone there. The money you gave me—you see, look. It’s Welsh slate. It takes the carving well, the man told me.”

  She turned and drew Jane back, beneath the yew. There was a small mound, newly turfed, a stone vase containing violets, and a tombstone of blue slate. It bore the name Edgar—no surname—and the dates of the baby’s birth and death. Beneath it was the inscription: MUCH LOVED AND MUCH MISSED BY HIS FATHER AND HIS MOTHER. REST IN PEACE.

  The letters curled across the slate. A most violent anger and pity rose up in Jane’s mind. Money could do this much, she said to herself; money could do this little.

  “I wish you’d seen him,” Jenna went on. “I understand. I know it wasn’t easy for you to come, and then, when he was ill, it was very quick. He was a fine baby—everyone said. He never cried. He’d grasp my finger—he could hold on so tight! And he’d smile. He knew it was me, when I came back from work. I’d take him in my arms, and … I think maybe he should have cried more. Babies do. Maybe I should’ve known, when he was so quiet. Maybe he wasn’t very strong, right from the first. He took his milk, though—he always took that, right up till the day before. And then we thought it was just a cold—just a cold, nothing serious. The house is damp, you see, and we couldn’t always get coal. Florrie ran for the doctor, but he was busy, and so I wrapped Edgar up in this shawl, and I ran with him down to the clinic. It’s only five streets away, and I ran as fast as could be, but it was raining, and it was getting dark. Maybe I shouldn’t have done that. Maybe I should have stayed in. And waited. But his mouth was blue. He couldn’t breathe. I don’t think he could breathe—so I thought I must. He still felt warm—when I reached the clinic, he still felt warm. But he’d gone. He must have gone then—when I was running. And I didn’t even know. I didn’t … I would have liked to … speak to him. Kiss him perhaps. Just one last time. I’m sorry. This helps—it does help. To know he’s here, with a proper stone, that it’s done right. I do thank you for that. It’s just … I’ll be all right again. In a moment. Yes. Yes. You’re very good.”

  Jenna knelt. She bent her head. Her body shook as she wept. Jane remained standing. It had begun to rain, a fine drizzle from a sky pale as milk. The rain spotted the leather of her gloves. She looked down at these gloves, which were modest, plain, serviceable kid. One pair of these ordinary gloves cost two weeks of Jenna’s wages. Jane regarded them. They looked unjust.

  After a while, with a sudden impatient gesture, she pulled the gloves off and screwed them into a ball. She threw them down into the long grass. She removed her hat also and threw that down too. She lifted her face and her hair to the rain; she took in deep breaths of the damp and sooty air. She thought of all her estates, of her houses, of her money, which lay in a bank, and her investments. Meaningless stupid things, as unneeded as those gloves.

  With the rain on her face, and Jenna’s stooped figure at her feet, she listed one last time all the factors that had caused her to delay: convention, and her own timidity; Boy; then nursing; then, finally, Acland.

  At this, the rebellion sensed upon the train came back to her. She ran to meet it; it flooded her mind with a light of the most brilliant intensity. She shook back her wet clipped hair and felt its assurance. Her hands trembled a little with the strength of the emotion welling up in her, and she pressed them tight together, so the knuckles showed white. She bent down and helped Jenna to her feet. She put her arm around her shoulders and walked back with her, more slowly this time, to the house.

  She stayed with Jenna two hours; then, as promised, she crossed the river to see Maud. The time seemed to Jane both very slow and very fast. It was necessary to pass through it; she was also impatient to reach the event that lay on its other side.

  My great-aunt Maud was fretful; deserted by several friends, including Lady Cunard, she was perhaps lonely.

  “Do you know the latest thing?” she asked over tea, in a tone nicely balanced between disdain and outrage. “These paintings”—she waved her hands at the walls, at the pictures Constance had once found it so useful to admire—“they were a gift, and now it seems she would like them returned. Quick-smart. I have been sent, if you please, a list.”

  This, from Maud—who was usually very careful of her own dignity, who considered it ill-bred to exhibit either pain or jealousy—was a major indiscretion. She perhaps regretted it almost at once, for having flapped the offending letter, she pushed it aside. To Maud’s great surprise, Jane did not change the subject, or exhibit tact. Instead she sprang to her feet, and in the most impassioned way she clasped her hands together and looked at Maud with flushed cheeks.

  “Oh, but don’t you see?” she cried, in what seemed to Maud the most immoderate tones. “That’s exactly what you should do. Send them back. Send it all back—you would feel so much freer, so much better!”

  “My dear. What a delightful notion. I could live like a gypsy. Of course.”

  Maud—aware that if all Stern’s gifts were returned, as recommended, she would be without a roof over her head—poured tea and changed the subject. She found herself a little irritated with Jane, who was displaying a romanticism and an emotionalism that were most unexpected.

  “You’ve been working too hard, my dear,” she said in a reproving way, when Jane took her leave. “Your eyes look very bright, and you are still quite flushed. Do you think you could have a fever?”

  “No,” Jane replied, in a way Maud found peremptory. She took Maud’s hand and, smiling, pressed it against her forehead, which indeed felt cool.

  “It was good of you to come, Jane. I’ll remember what you said …”

  Maud felt quite at a loss. Her eye strayed to the cool brown lines of a Cezanne landscape, which hung close to the door. From certain angles it represented a place; from others, it took on an abstraction Maud had never liked. She thought about these paintings. She thought about Montague Stern, whom she missed greatly.

  “Perhaps you are right,” she said thoughtfully. And then, because the question would not be held back: “How is Monty—well, I hope?”

  Jane considered this. She frowned. “Unhappy, I think,” she said at last, as if the thought had just occurred to her. “Yes. Well. But unhappy.”

  Such frankness, at that juncture, was too much for Maud. She embarked upon a flurry of farewells. Jane, distracted again, scarcely listened to these.

  She found herself impatient to be outside, impatient to reach the street, the train.

  As the door of the house closed she looked at her watch. It was three-thirty in the afternoon. If she caught the right train, she would be home shortly after six. Acland waited for her. It made no difference whether he replied or not. For once, Jane knew exactly what to say to him.

  Constance reached Acland first. Even so, she was delayed, which made her angry.

  First, Gwen insiste
d that she, Gwen, must spend most of the morning with Acland, wheeling him up and down the terrace outside, then returning him to his room, where she read to him. When Gwen finally departed, Denton puffed his way up the stairs to spend half an hour with his son. Then Freddie and Steenie must look in. When they withdrew, the hired nurse insisted her patient must rest. Miss Conyngham had left explicit instructions.

  By the time this rest was over, luncheon was served. After luncheon, Montague Stern—to Constance’s fury—insisted she accompany him on a walk. He took the route she most disliked, past the lake, through the woods, and down to the river.

  Constance was afraid that her husband, who watched and saw everything, might know what she intended to do. She was therefore at great pains, first to accept the suggestion of a walk, then to appear unhurried.

  So, as their walk began, she chattered. She hung upon her husband’s arm; she fixed her gaze upon his face; she teased and provoked. Stern perhaps enjoyed this display; he gave no sign of suspicion or displeasure. He walked at an even pace, his eyes on the landscape ahead; from time to time, when Constance was droll, he smiled.

  Constance was encouraged. Although he was silent, and there was a brooding quality to these silences of his, Constance had grown accustomed to them. Once, they had made her cautious, but with familiarity, she began to grow more careless.

  When they had walked just over a mile, they crossed the river by a small bridge and strolled to a rise of ground near the boundary of the Winterscombe estate. From there, looking west toward the house and east across fields, it was possible to survey the extent of the Cavendish land, marking the point where it joined the rougher country which had once been Sir Richard Peel’s estate. Stern liked this view. Releasing Constance’s arm, he walked a few paces farther and leaned against a gate. He looked out over fields and hedgerows; he turned his eyes in the direction of the Arlington estate, farther north, and then toward the hill where the Conyngham land began. Since his back was turned, Constance looked at her wristwatch; it was almost three.

  “Montague—”

  “Yes?”

  Stern did not look around. His gaze, Constance saw, was now fixed upon a long avenue of chestnut trees and, beyond them, on the gray bulk and slate roof of a house. Peel’s house, once upon a time, and now in Stern’s possession.

  Constance hesitated, and then—seeing that this ill-timed walk might be turned to advantage after all—she advanced a step or two. She laid her arm on the sleeve of Stern’s coat.

  “It is a beautiful house.” She glanced up at Stern. “Jane’s may be grander, but Peel’s is the more perfect—even I can see that. An eighteenth-century house—”

  “In an eighteenth-century park.” Stern smiled.

  “Restrained. Classical. An Adam façade. Gainsborough painted it, you know, with one of the Peel ancestors in the park.”

  “So Peel never tired of saying.”

  “The ancestor was rather plain. But she had a charming dog. A spaniel, like my Floss.”

  “Well, well.” Stern gave a gesture of irritation. “It is just a house.”

  “One you own. One you like, I think. An austere house. It suits you, Montague—do you remember? In Scotland, I once said—”

  “I remember.” Stern looked away. “I took it for one of your pleasantries. An austere house? Why should that suit me, when my fame is for being vulgar?”

  “Ah, but you are not vulgar at all.” Constance crept a little closer, then closer still. “You pretend to vulgarity. Perhaps it amuses you to do so. But you do not fool me with your waistcoats and your white cuffs and your new shoes. I know your mind, and a little of your heart. You are not a vulgarian. Won’t you kiss me, Montague? It is days since you kissed me.”

  “I might—since you ask,” Stern replied. He took her in his arms. His embrace ruffled Constance. She felt as if all the boxes in her mind, so neatly stacked a second before, now wavered and shifted and threatened to collapse.

  She took a step back.

  “That was a passionate kiss.”

  “Abstinence has its advantages.”

  “Don’t sound bitter.”

  “I was not sounding bitter. I was simply stating an obvious truth.”

  “Montague …”

  “Yes?”

  “I might have changed my mind, you know.”

  “You change your mind frequently. It is one of the more charming things about you. Changed it about what?”

  “About the estates. Where we should live—all the things we discussed in Scotland.” Constance came closer once more. She rested her gloved hands against Stern’s chest, then insinuated one of those hands beneath coat and jacket, so it lay warm against his heart. She bit her lips so that they reddened. She looked up into Stern’s eyes.

  “I could perhaps live near Winterscombe after all. I feel less violently now. I begin to let the past go, after all. We must live somewhere—we cannot rent houses forever and ever. I think I could live in Peel’s house, if I lived there with you.”

  “You flatter me.”

  “Nonsense, Montague. I would not dare. I am just being practical, that is all. We must settle the matter. Now that we are back at Winterscombe—together—I find I cope with it quite well. It has pleasant memories for me, as well as uglier ones. Besides, we should not be here—we should be nearby. So, it is worth an experiment, surely? Then, if we find the Peel house does not suit us, we can move. What could be simpler? It is not an irrevocable thing. As you say, it is just a house.”

  “Indeed. What you say is very sensible.”

  Constance was encouraged once more by this lack of opposition. She looked up at her husband’s face, at the heavily lidded eyes, which disguised his expressions, at the tawny hair, brushing against the white linen of his shirt collar. She reached up her small hand and fondled a strand of his hair. She coiled her arm once more through his.

  “Say yes, Montague. Please do. I’m bored with moving from place to place. I’m bored with looking at houses. Think what fun we could have—we could redecorate from top to bottom. Your paintings—they would look very fine in the library there, don’t you think? We—”

  “What made you change your mind?” Stern turned as he interrupted her. He fixed upon Constance his most even gaze. Constance gave a vague wave of the hand.

  “Nothing in particular. I told you. We have been married almost a year. Things change. I—”

  “Is it because of Acland?”

  “Acland? Of course not. Why should that be?”

  “When you believed Acland dead, you had no wish to live here. With Acland alive, you change your mind. Perhaps you like the idea of him as a near neighbor.”

  “What a ridiculous notion!” Constance drew back. “How you harp on Acland. Besides, he won’t be a neighbor, will he? You can have Winterscombe any time you decide. Call in your debts, Montague—”

  “Now?”

  “Well, perhaps not immediately—not when he is still so ill. That might look a little …”

  “Vulgar?”

  “Rapacious.” Constance smiled. Reaching up on tiptoe, she kissed her husband’s cheek. “Well, you can be rapacious—and so can I. We both know that. But it might be prudent, for form’s sake, not to appear so. A little patience—you see, Montague? You have taught me how to wait. The end of the year, perhaps—call in your debts then. After all, in his present condition—and that is unlikely to change—Acland will not even know what is happening. Winterscombe, or a nursing home somewhere—it is all one to him. Speaking of which”—she glanced down at her watch—“I promised Jane most faithfully that I would sit with Acland a while this afternoon. You know how she fusses! I am to read to him, from one of his dreary books. We had better go back.”

  “Of course. Take my arm. The path is a little slippery here.”

  “Thank you, Montague.”

  Constance, who was sure-footed, nevertheless clung to her husband’s arm. Feeling that quickening and gaiety she always experienced when she succe
eded in getting her own way, she began the walk back in high spirits.

  “Do you remember, Montague—” she began, and then launched herself upon a wave of memories, incident after incident from their brief married life. She left out all the occasions when their encounters had been difficult or pained, and concentrated upon those that could be considered joyous. The kiss by the altar, their walks in Scotland through the snow.

  “Do you remember that, Montague?”

  “I think of it religiously.”

  “It was so cold—and then so warm when we went inside. You liked it there. You should take that house, too, you know—after all, it has special memories for us. We could renew our honeymoon there, every year.”

  “We could.”

  “And then, that day in London. Oh, Montague, I often think of that! Do you remember—I came in from the park, and you listened to your precious Verdi, and you did not even realize I was there—”

  “Wagner.”

  “Wagner then—no matter. You surprised me that day. You took me—by surprise. That is why you suit me so well, I think. Because you can always surprise me. So cool and contained one moment, and so … forceful the next.” She tightened her grip upon his arm. They had left the woods and begun the approach to the house.

  “Do you remember, Montague, the night in Scotland, when you told me about your estates? When you told me your dream about your son? Did you think I had forgotten that? I have not, you know. Those words are very precious to me. Your holy words—that is how I think of them. It was then we became truly married, I think. And do you know, I feel quite sure that if we were to be settled, if we move to Peel’s house, it might happen then. Our child.” She pressed one small hand against her heart. Stern’s pace slowed.

  “Child? What am I saying?” Constance came to a halt. “Why should we stop at one child? I should like us to have a whole tribe. Four boys and four girls. Would you like that, Montague? Peel’s house is the most perfect place for children. All those attics and passages to explore. That huge garden—Montague, what is the matter? You’re hurting me.”