Too Close to the Sun

by Jess Foley

  A little silence went by. The house was so still, but then into the quiet came the distant harsh and eerie sound of the barking of a fox. The sudden noise only served to emphasize the silence that surrounded the pair on the bed. ‘Why are you telling me all this?’ Grace said.

  ‘I’m your husband. A wife should be close to her husband. If she doesn’t know what there is to know about him, who should? I’m telling you things.’ He was sitting up beside her in the bed, looking ahead of him into the candle-lit dark. ‘I might not feel like saying these things again.’

  She was growing increasingly uneasy. She could not understand why he was talking in such a way. Although all desire for sleep had left her, she wanted only that he would stop and find sleep for himself.

  ‘I shouldn’t have had to do some of the things I’ve done,’ he said after a moment. ‘But there are times when you’re left with no choice. There’s no other way out.’ He turned to her, looking her directly in the face. ‘You’re not stupid,’ he said belligerently. ‘You can add two and two together.’

  ‘Edward …’ She put a hand to her mouth. His manner was a little alarming. ‘I’m sorry, but I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘You don’t know what I’m talking about,’ he said contemptuously. ‘You’re not an idiot, and you must have heard the gossip over the years.’

  ‘Gossip? I don’t listen to gossip.’

  He laughed derisively. ‘Well, my God, if that isn’t what they all say. And they’re the first to listen to any bit of tittle tattle that comes along. Don’t play me for a fool, Grace. I’m anything but that, and you know it to be so.’

  ‘I haven’t heard any gossip,’ she insisted.

  ‘No, well, I s’pose that’s because of who you are, who you’re married to. You’re involved, so you and I would be the last to hear it.’

  ‘I remember my aunt telling me about Mrs Spencer,’ Grace said. ‘She told me she’d inherited all her uncle’s property.’

  ‘And did she tell you anything about Joseph Gresham?’

  ‘Not that I recall. Should she have?’

  ‘He had an eye for the women. Weren’t you told that?’

  ‘Oh, yes, now that I think about it. There was something.’

  ‘Well, the way I was told it, his own marriage wasn’t up to much. A loveless, childless thing it was.’

  ‘And how do you know all this?’

  ‘From my mother. She knew a lot about him.’

  ‘Did you know him?’

  ‘Me? No.’ A little pause, and he turned and looked at her. ‘You’re not getting the picture, are you?’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ She turned to face him. ‘I told you, Edward, I don’t understand what you’re saying.’

  ‘No, you don’t, you truly don’t. Are you that naïve? Perhaps you are.’

  ‘Perhaps I am.’

  ‘Well, to spell it out for you: I’m his son. I’m Joseph Gresham’s son.’

  The fox barked again into the quiet. And as the echo of the sound died away Grace became aware again of the beating of her heart. It was almost as if she had been anticipating some such revelation from him; that he had been preparing her for such. And perhaps he had. Perhaps all of it tonight had been leading to this.

  She did not speak. But at the same time she knew her silence would not end it. After a few moments he said:

  ‘Did you hear what I said?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m Joseph Gresham’s son.’

  ‘Yes. I heard.’

  ‘Not that he ever recognized me. Certainly not publicly, and barely in reality in any way. Afraid, you see. Afraid of it getting out. The scandal. Nothing was allowed to besmirch his good name. So when I was born there was no whisper of who my father was. It couldn’t be allowed to get out.’

  ‘Is Spencer your mother’s name?’

  ‘No. She was born Tatten, Ellen Tatten. Spencer was Thomas Spencer, a farmhand who lived nearby. And I suppose he always had an eye for my mother. She was a beautiful young woman, by all accounts – which of course was how she came to attract the attention of Gresham in the first place.’

  ‘So she married Mr Thomas Spencer.’

  ‘Yes. She was pregnant with me when they married. He must have known, of course. But he was so taken with her that he accepted it, her pregnancy, or so I believe. Anyway, he gave me his name, and cared for me as if I’d been his own son. My birth certificate gives his name as that of my father – and I always called him that. I didn’t know any better. There were no children born to my mother after me, so I think perhaps this helped to cement the relationship between me and my stepfather. Later, when my mother told me the truth she said that Gresham gave her money when she was pregnant with me – and you can bet your life that this was partly to ensure her silence. I know the rest of her family never knew – her mother and sister, she never told them.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘She told me so. They asked her so many times, but she never told them. She didn’t tell her husband, my stepfather, either. I know that; she told me,’

  ‘Did no one have suspicions?’

  ‘Well, of nothing that was near the mark, I believe. People can keep their counsel when they absolutely need to. And I think my mother’s relationship with Gresham was unexpected and very brief. I doubt anyone knew of it, other than those concerned. And those who knew weren’t talking.’

  ‘When did you learn about – Mr Gresham being your father?’

  ‘When I was eighteen. My stepfather was long dead by then, and it was just the two of us at home. My mother had become ill, and I think she decided I had to know then or perhaps I never would. I suppose she thought that if she waited she might take her secret to the grave. I don’t know what good she thought it would do, telling me. I suppose she just thought it was something I was owed. Which I was.’

  ‘What did you think – when she told you?’

  ‘Well, obviously I was very surprised. First of all that Thomas Spencer, whom I’d always thought of as my father, was in fact not. And then to learn that my real father should turn out to have been a rich man, a powerful man. Not like poor old Thomas, poor as a church mouse.’

  ‘Did you believe it – when your mother told you?’

  ‘Why should I not?’

  ‘Well – it’s quite a piece of news to tell a young man.’

  ‘Oh, it was that.’

  ‘You must have been very curious about so many things. Did your mother tell you very much?’

  ‘She told me a few things. Of course after her death I thought of so much I wanted to ask her. But that’s always the way. I remember I asked her where he was then – my real father, Gresham. She said he’d died when I was ten. And it turned out that he’d acknowledged me to the point where he sent my mother money every year at Christmas. Apparently there was never any letter or note with the money. It was just the money, wrapped in paper, sealed in an envelope. No sender’s name or address. I don’t know why he chose to send it at Christmas – perhaps he didn’t know the date of my birthday. Though I suppose Christmas is as good a time as any.’

  Grace could hear the note of bitterness in his voice, and thought perhaps it was not so surprising.

  ‘I remember my mother saying to me that everything should have come to me. Asterleigh, the mill. “It was yours by rights,” she said. “You’re his only child.” Unfortunately it didn’t come to me.’

  A little moment of silence, then Grace said, ‘It went instead to his niece.’

  ‘As I said, he left no will – so it all went to his niece, his niece Miss Eleanor Addison. And she didn’t particularly want it. She didn’t move into the house. It was too much for her to deal with. She was accustomed to a quiet, very simple life. She was not one for activity and getting about and meeting people, and having lots of servants at her beck and call. No, so she didn’t move into the house; she came and looked it over and that was it. She decided to stay put in her little cottage o
n the outskirts of Swindon.’

  ‘Then who looked after it, the house?’

  ‘Oh, she kept on a couple of Gresham’s servants to run the place and keep it from falling down. And her solicitor arranged for payment to be made to them. Like with the mill. She had no interest in that, either. She told me she never even visited the mill. And the place was making hardly anything. I think the whole thing would have collapsed if I hadn’t come along when I did.’ He turned in the bed and leaned towards her and she could smell the warmth of his breath. His hand touched her shoulder, grasped it for a moment then let go. ‘Aren’t you going to ask me, then?’ he said. ‘Eh? Aren’t you going to ask me how I got it?’

  She kept silent, while a deeper chill seemed to invade her blood and her bones.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ignoring her silence, ‘it didn’t drop out of the sky into my lap, did it?’ He hooted a laugh that rang in the room, and made Grace grip the sheet around her. ‘I told you just now, that whatever I set my mind on getting I usually get. Like you, when I saw you in your father’s yard one day. I saw you and –’

  ‘Edward –’ she broke in, ‘please …’

  ‘What? What’s the matter? You think it’s a bit indelicate, do you? Well, maybe it is, but on the other hand you should be flattered. It’s true – what I set my mind on I generally get. And I set my mind on you.’ He gave a deep sigh, reflective, as if looking back over the years and examining the past. ‘Yes, I did. And before that I set my mind on Asterleigh.’ He was looking directly at her now, his face only inches from her own, as if determined not to miss one nuance of any change in her expression or the tone of her voice. ‘But don’t run away with the idea that that was easy, because it wasn’t. I had to plot and plan for it.’

  ‘Edward – why are you telling me all this?’ She did not think she could stand to hear any more. In her heart there was a growing fear, a fear of what other possible revelation she might be forced to listen to.

  ‘Aren’t you interested?’

  ‘I don’t know why you’re telling me it all.’

  ‘I thought you’d be interested,’ he said. ‘After all, I’m your husband. You should be interested in everything about me – particularly in learning a little about my past.’ He paused briefly. ‘And I’m not ashamed of it. You don’t think that, do you?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  He hiccuped, and it sounded loud in the room. She heard him hold his breath, and then hiccup again. He sat in silence until the momentary disturbance had passed, then said, ‘Miss Eleanor was not an easy woman to get to know. At least she wouldn’t have been in the ordinary way, but I managed without too much trouble.’

  ‘Mrs Spencer said it was through her paintings.’ Grace said.

  ‘That’s right. But not quite in the way she thought.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Yes. I made all kinds of enquiries about her, and over a short space of time learned a great deal. I found out so much. She kept to herself, I found out, and hardly went anywhere. Her one passion was her painting. You see, that’s where a person is vulnerable, did you realize that? In their passions. Find out what it is that drives them, find out the nature and the subject of their passion, and you’ll find you have power.’

  ‘Is that what you wanted? Power over her?’

  ‘Well, that’s a rather brutal way of putting it, isn’t it?’ He waited for a moment or two as if she might answer, then went on, ‘Yes, her passion was her painting. She’d had no great loves in her life. Due to her damaged leg she hadn’t done all those things that girls of her age had done. She hadn’t gone to dances and soirées, she hadn’t played tennis or gone skating. Even a walk could prove tiring for her, the way her leg put so much strain on her back.’ He sighed. ‘So there she was – a very inexperienced woman, well into middle age, and seeing nothing before her but a continuation of her life as it was, living alone with just one maid to help out, and spending her days at her easel.’

  It was so easy for Grace to see the late Mrs Spencer in her little house, sitting over her easel. She could picture it all, so clearly see the scene.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘aren’t you going to ask how it happened? How we met?’

  Grace did not need to ask; she had already learned an answer to this. She could recall the exact moment when Mrs Spencer had told her. But Edward was insistent; he wanted to tell her his own version.

  ‘Don’t you want to know how it happened?’ he said. ‘I was no sluggard, I can tell you. No great general could have come up with a better strategy.’

  ‘Tell me,’ she said. ‘Tell me how it happened, your meeting with her.’

  He gave a little sigh that smacked of self-satisfaction. ‘Well, by a stroke of luck I found out that there was to be an exhibition of paintings done by local artists – from Corster and the surrounding areas – and one of the exhibitors was to be Miss Eleanor Addison. It was written up in the papers. The exhibition was to be held in Swindon at the town hall. So as soon as it opened I wasted no time in going to see it. I got there on the first day. She had three paintings on show. I bought all three. And it went on from there. I wrote to her and said I’d like to see other examples of her work, and I was invited to call on her.’ He shrugged. ‘That’s how it began.’

  ‘Did you – did you tell her that you knew about her having inherited Asterleigh, and the mill?’

  ‘No. Not at first. I did a little later. I had to. One could not make many enquiries without being informed of it. I mean to say that it was fairly common knowledge, and it would have looked rather suspicious if I’d still pretended not to know.’

  ‘So – you were married.’

  ‘So, eventually, we were married.’

  Grace, knowing part of the story, half-feared to continue listening, but heard herself say, ‘Were you happy?’

  ‘Me? Happy? I had the house, didn’t I?’

  She shrank from the callousness of the sentiment, the matter-of-fact tone in his voice. ‘Is that all it meant to you?’ she said.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ His voice rose. ‘It was through me that this house was opened up, that it began to be lived in again. It’s through me that it’s been improved so much. Just look around you at your home – it wasn’t like this when Eleanor and I moved in. It was made like this through me. And I’m not only talking about the house. The business too. It was through me that the mill began to show a bit of a profit – though it isn’t doing so well now, I grant you that. But I got hold of it, took it out of that useless manager’s hands and shook some life into it. And I helped Eleanor herself, too. It was through me that she began to live – I reckon so, anyway. Without me she’d have been stuck in her little house, never leaving it from one day to another. And don’t forget that she had me, too. And she loved me. Although I venture to say it myself, her life was a lot richer for having known me.’

  Was it? Grace wondered. Perhaps the first Mrs Spencer would have been happier left as she was, growing old with her one servant and her painting. But who was she to say? She had no doubt that Edward had been loved by his first wife.

  Throughout all Edward’s alcohol-tinged meanderings, his passionate words, there had been something else, other words waiting to be said. And the longer he had gone on the more clearly Grace had felt they were there – just waiting in the dark – though she dare not ask the questions that would bring them into the light. She could not, would not allow herself to search for those questions that lay waiting to be discovered, perhaps merely acknowledged.

  ‘I’m tired, Edward,’ she said. ‘I’m so tired. Please, let me sleep. We can continue this another day.’

  He made no response, though she could hear his heavy breathing continuing unchanging as she turned away from him on her side. She tried to close her eyes, but sleep would not come. And she was still awake when, an hour later, she heard the rhythm of his breathing change and realized that he had at last fallen asleep.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  A week late
r the sculptor approached by Edward arrived at the house to look at the figure. Following his examination, the commission was accepted and two weeks later two workmen came to take the statue away. Grace did not observe the undertaking, but heard of it from the maid, Effie, who had been present when the men had carried it down the stairs. Later, gazing up at the high gallery, she looked at the vacant niche and thought how much she preferred it so. She would be happy, she thought, if the unattractive figure was never returned.

  Edward did not feel the same way. As she stood there he came towards her from the rear of the house and stopped at her side. Following her glance, he looked upwards.

  ‘So he’s gone.’

  ‘It looks strange,’ Grace said, ‘seeing the niche without the figure. It looks so empty.’

  ‘It does. But it’ll be a good job done – to get that restored. The hall will be nearly complete then; it’ll look the way it was meant to look.’

  Thinking of his attitude towards her, she remarked to herself that he had been morose all week, and had had little to say to her beyond the usual everyday expected words. Certainly there was no reference ever made to his drunken outpourings when he had admitted to courting his first wife solely for possession of the house.

  And then last week, he had revealed, he had decided to sell the soap factory in Milan. He had not volunteered the information to Grace; it had emerged when she had asked him when next he would be travelling to Italy. He not been there in some little while, she had noticed, and wondered how the business there was faring.

  ‘I shall only be going back two or three more times,’ he had said. ‘Soon I shan’t have a business there any more.’

  He had then told her that he was disposing of it, selling it to one of the major soap manufacturers in the country. The problem with the company was, he said, that he couldn’t be there all the time, and that was what was required; it was essential that there was someone present with the right power and the right interest. Without his continuing, unrelenting hands on the reins of the business it had gone downhill. The economic situation in the country had also worked against him, as had the fact of him, the owner, being a foreigner. Further, he had not invested in new machinery, and the existing machines there had long past seen their best days. So, when some of the machines had begun to malfunction – he suspected sabotage, he had said – he had decided to throw in his hand and sell up.