‘You know where my room is?’
‘Ah … yes.’
She smiled again. ‘Good. Until later then.’ She moved away, as if to leave, but paused by the bookshelf where I’d been and plucked down the book I’d been reading. ‘Have you seen the essay in this volume by my husband’s first wife?’ She must have known I had.
‘Yes. I was looking at it when you came in.’
‘I thought you must have been. Sad, isn’t it?’
‘Oh yes. Very much so. But it’s good that you and Lord Powerstock should have been able to … make up for each other’s loss.’
She replaced the book on the shelf. ‘That’s not quite what I meant. I think it rather sad that the Diocesan Committee should have put its name to this … convenient fiction.’
‘Fiction? Surely the lady did work among the poor?’
‘She was certainly a regular visitor to Portsea.’ So saying, Olivia moved to the door and opened it. ‘The question is: why?’
The sunlight faded from the wall and the room grew cold. Outside, the wind gusted a scatter of leaves across the flagstoned terrace.
I missed lunch and went for a long walk round the lanes to clear my head. The weather was in a washed-out, windless lull, though the dark clouds bunching over the downs to the west were ominous.
My return journey, perhaps inevitably, took me through the village. With my mind still on the book in the library and Olivia’s dismissive remark about it, I diverted into the churchyard and ambled amongst the stones, in search of … what I knew I would find. A four-square, railed-off memorial to three previous Lords Powerstock and there, in its shade, a smaller, newer stone:
IN LOVING MEMORY OF MIRIAM ABIGAIL HALLOWS, LADY POWERSTOCK, DEAREST WIFE, MOTHER AND DAUGHTER, TAKEN EARLY TO HIS ARMS, 30TH MARCH 1905, AGED THIRTY-EIGHT YEARS – GREATLY LOVED AND SORELY MISSED.
Hallows had never spoken to me of her, yet how often must he, as a younger man, have come to look at this stone, one of the few reminders of his mother, and wondered … how it would have been had she lived? I turned aside and made for the kissing gate into the path that led towards Meongate.
As I did so, a figure emerged from the south door of the church and glanced towards me. It was Leonora, calm and regal in a plaid dress and dark cape. She smiled, but only faintly.
‘We meet here again,’ she said.
I doffed my hat. ‘But this time I am surprised. May I walk back with you to Meongate?’
‘Of course.’ We went out on to the field path that led down towards the river. ‘Were you examining the family plot?’
‘I noticed it – in passing. The memorial to John’s mother is very moving.’
‘I think they all felt it so unfair that she should die as she did.’
‘I imagine it must always be risky to work in such areas. Do you know Portsea at all?’
She looked at me. ‘Not at all.’
‘Surely we weren’t far from it on Wednesday.’
‘No. I believe not.’
We made our way down over the river and up through the woods to join the lane that bridged the railway line and curved east towards Meongate. There, still a mile or so short of our destination, we were caught in one of the heavy showers rolling in from the west. We took shelter in a Dutch barn just off the road and sat on two bales of straw watching the rain sheet across the fields beyond.
It was an opportunity I’d yearned for but also dreaded: a chance to offer Leonora some alternative to the proposition from Mompesson which she seemed unaccountably bound to accept. It was too soon, of course, too great a presumption on her bereavement, but her words in the rhododendron glade, echoing so often in my mind, had convinced me that unless she understood the depth of my feeling for her, she would soon be lost to me for ever.
I muttered some semblance of a casual remark. ‘I don’t think it’ll rain for long.’
‘Sometimes,’ she said softly, ‘I think it’ll rain for ever.’
I looked at her. ‘Do you miss him so badly?’
She glanced away. ‘More than I can say.’
‘For you it is bound to be worst. But it might help you to know that I miss him too. The men under his command mourn him still. One said as much in a letter to me recently.’
She looked back at me, her voice full of the tears she would not allow to flow. ‘It’s worse than you can possibly imagine.’
‘I’d like to try to understand.’
‘I realize that. But I don’t think it’s possible.’
‘Why not? I hope I’m not being presumptuous when I say that I think John would not have wanted you to mourn him … too long. Would not have wanted you to … abandon life.’
‘No. He would not have wanted that.’
‘This war won’t last for ever. When it’s over, we’ll all have to rebuild our lives. Perhaps we should start now. Perhaps we could do so … together.’
It wasn’t how I’d intended to put it, but Leonora had the good grace not to condemn me for that. Her response, instead, seemed weighted with the sadness which, for all her misfortunes, still seemed, at its core, unaccountable. ‘You were my husband’s friend, Tom, and therefore you are my friend. More than that I cannot offer.’
‘Such things take time. I’m not trying to take John’s place: nobody could do that. But I do think I could restore something to your life, as you could to mine. If you ever felt able to consider … matrimony, I’d be deeply honoured.’
She rose from the bale and walked slowly to one of the pillars supporting the roof, put one arm about it as she turned to face me as if to anchor her thoughts as much as her body. ‘You are a good man, Tom. Too good for what is happening here. I can never marry you. Please understand that.’
I too rose to my feet. ‘But that’s precisely it. I don’t understand. There’s nothing wrong in the idea of a young widow …’
‘I am pregnant.’ She spoke the words softly but decisively, stopping my words and thoughts in their tracks.
‘What?’
‘I am three months pregnant. I presume I need not tell you what is wrong in the idea of a young widow being three months pregnant when her husband is more than four months dead.’
I could not speak. I did not know what to say.
‘I had hoped to spare you the information. I had hoped you would leave Meongate before concealment became impractical.’
Resentment flared within me. ‘It’s Mompesson, isn’t it?’
‘I have told you what I felt you were entitled to know. That is all.’
‘He’s already told me he intends to marry you. And now I’ve no doubt you will marry him, since you’re carrying his child.’
She looked momentarily shocked by what I’d said, then recovered herself. She took a deep breath and looked straight at me. ‘The subject is closed. Now please excuse me. I’m sure you’ll understand that I would prefer to walk back to Meongate alone.’
It had stopped raining. She walked out into the lane and moved slowly away in the direction of Meongate. I did not follow, but shouted after her before bitterness could stem my anger: ‘I’m glad John’s not here to see Mompesson seduce first his stepmother, then his wife.’ But Leonora did not look back. She walked on at a steady pace and passed from view.
I lit a cigarette and smoked it, leaning against the pillar where she’d stood. I had no wish to catch her up, no wish to be insulted again, as I felt I had been. It was not her fault that I’d hoped for so much, not her intention that I should have been made a fool of, yet, in my heart, at that moment of bleakest resignation, I blamed her for every facet of my humiliation. I forgot all the many things that were at odds with what I now believed about her and Mompesson. I remembered only the friend I felt she’d betrayed and the vision of a future which was now denied me.
By the time I’d finished the cigarette and crushed it against the pillar, I was determined to be rid of Leonora and all the other occupants of Meongate who so fascinated and repelled me. It seemed the only way to preser
ve some vestige of my dignity, the only course by which I could still honour Hallows’ memory. Swallowing the worst of my resentment, I headed back.
I reached Meongate in the middle of the afternoon. The wind had died and the house was in silence: a mood of siesta was upon the place. I went up to my room, glad of seeing nobody on the way, and lay on my bed, staring at the floral-patterned curtains and the washed blue sky beyond my window. I fell into a light and troubled slumber.
Something was crawling towards the bed: I could hear it slithering, slowly and painfully, across the carpet. With a clutch of panic, I knew that it was Hallows, blind and bleeding, dragging himself back from no man’s land, as on that night when he did not return.
‘Hallows?’ I spoke his name as I lurched from the bed and stared, with waking eyes, at what had been only a dream. There was nothing there, except … a white envelope on the carpet by the door.
I moved across then picked it up. It must have been slipped beneath the door while I slept. I tore it open. A key fell out on to the floor and I was left holding the note it had been wrapped with.
‘Tom: this is the key to the observatory. If you wish to understand what is happening in this house, go there at seven o’clock this evening. L.’
I slipped the key into my pocket and, almost without thinking, burned the note in the grate. I had not expected to hear from her again, but, now that I had, my resolve to have done with her vanished before the frail hope that all could yet be made right: I would do as she asked.
I looked at the clock: it was a quarter to five. Then I remembered my appointment with Olivia. Why not keep it, I thought, if only to see Mr Bartholomew’s famous picture and tell her that I was leaving.
I washed and changed and made my way to the wing of the house. Still, silence reigned. I passed the stairs to the observatory and came to the door where I’d seen Mompesson but a week before. I knocked, as he had not.
‘Come in.’ It was Olivia’s voice, but muffled by distance.
I opened the door and went in. The room was empty. ‘Lady Powerstock?’
‘Is that you, Lieutenant?’ Her voice came from an adjoining room, to which the door stood ajar. I took it to be the bedroom.
‘Yes. You said I might see the picture.’
‘Of course. It’s on the wall facing the window. I’ll join you presently.’
I turned to where she had said. It was unmistakably a companion piece to that in the library, its heavy gilt frame blending with the richly patterned bronze wallpaper. I walked across to study it.
A sequel, she had said, and she had been right. The same bedchamber of some mythic castle, the same sickly, morbid air of medievalist obsession, but gone a little further, sunk a little deeper into the mood of the place and the portrait of it. The woman on the bed had rolled over and now lay supine, one knee raised to preserve a hint of modesty. The man in mail had knelt upon the bed and stooped across her, his head lowered to kiss her left breast. She had grasped his left hand and placed it over her other breast. It was a depiction of sexual conquest at once total and tantalizing, tantalizing because the woman’s face was angled away from the man, gazing out of the picture with an air of abstracted superiority, as if she, as much as the artist, was merely a spectator, merely an observer of somebody else’s deception. Was it Olivia? I looked at the face and knew I could never be sure, knew that that – as much as any brushstroke – was the painter’s triumph.
‘What do you think?’
I turned to see that Olivia had emerged from the adjoining room and stood looking at me, as intent upon my reaction as I was upon the picture. She wore a pale green, silken dressing gown, loosely tied at the waist, with her hair let down as I’d only seen it once before.
‘I was resting after a bath. I’d forgotten you were to call.’ The lie was as transparent as the gown hinted at being, where the sunlight shone through its shifting folds from the window behind her.
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to disturb you.’
‘It’s no matter. Do you like the picture?’
What could I say? Blatancy silenced me with its hideous, unconfessed appeal. ‘Your husband must have been a remarkable man.’
‘But a troubled one. Deeply troubled, especially towards the end – as these pictures imply.’
She moved as she spoke, turned slightly so that the gown stirred and parted momentarily to reveal a bare and rounded thigh beneath. Our conversation was a sham, a mannered prelude to something I could not believe would happen and something she was determined should not be hurried. ‘He drowned – I believe.’
‘Yes – as was fitting.’
‘In what way?’
‘Philip was a drowning man all his life.’
She moved closer and stood beside me, gazing at the picture with a rapt attention that hovered on the edges of declaring its falsehood. There was a heady scent in the air now she was near me, the perfume she wore blending its allure with the warmth of her body. I looked at her, not the picture, at the proud and beautiful profile of her face, the long and haughty neck, the rise and fall of her bosom beneath the gown, the caressing touch of the silk where it moulded the unconstrained roundness of her breasts. I looked at her, as I was meant to, and fought desire with failing strength.
‘You have not asked the question most people put to me.’
‘Which is?’
‘Am I the woman in the picture?’ She glanced towards me, capturing and confronting the direction of my gaze.
‘And are you?’
‘What do you think, Lieutenant?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘She is beautiful, is she not? And cruel also. Is that how my husband thought of me? Is that how you think of me?’
I looked at her in the long suspension of an absent smile. ‘It might be.’
She clicked her tongue in teasing mockery. ‘You disappoint me. I had expected you to be more decisive.’ She tossed back her head and walked away towards the window. I watched her go, saw the material of the gown flex and slide around her hips as she moved, heard the faint kiss of the mobile fabric slip into my furtive mind and knew my indecision to be more appalling than she could guess.
She stopped between the window and the bedroom door and looked at me. ‘What do you know of me, Lieutenant?’
I grasped at a chance to restore my dignity. ‘More than you might think, your ladyship.’
She smiled. ‘That, I doubt. The loose wife of an elderly husband throwing herself shamelessly at every young man who crosses her threshold. Isn’t that how it is?’
‘That is for you to say.’
‘But you have been saying what you thought about it all the time you’ve been here – to my husband, to Leonora, to that dotard Charter. Why stop now?’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘Come, come. Why not admit it? You’ve been taken in by the false purity of Leonora and the hallowed memory of John’s mother: the whole sham of family honour we practise here.’
‘Is it a sham?’
‘What do you think? The ghost of that woman drags her good works round this house till I’m sick of the sound of her name. And what did those works amount to? What you call shameless in me I call honest.’
Her bosom was heaving with controlled anger at all the reasons why she stood condemned, but did she know how right she was? Did she know the truth about Leonora? I dared not ask. I could only fend off my sense of guilt with an accusation of my own. ‘I know all about you and Mompesson, Lady Powerstock. If there’s corruption in this house, it’s in this room.’
She laughed. ‘Isn’t that why you’re here?’
Then I was angry. I advanced across the room towards her. ‘I’m here at your invitation.’ I stopped a few feet from her.
‘No. You’re here to prove you’re more than just a peeping Tom, more than just a carrier of tales.’
‘Then why did you ask me?’
‘To see if you’re half the man Ralph Mompesson is.’
&nb
sp; She stood between me and the light, between me and reason. Before I knew what I was doing, I had taken a step towards her and raised my hand to strike. But before I could strike, the gloating defiance in her eyes had stopped me. My hand fell to her shoulder, where the silken gown curved around her neck. It was too much – too lusciously late – for me to refrain. I slipped my hand inside the gown and cupped the large, firm breast beneath in my palm. I felt the nipple stiffen between my fingers. Then Olivia smiled and loosened the sash at her waist. The gown fell open: she was naked beneath. I saw my own hand fastened on her left breast and knew the horror I felt could not eclipse the pleasure I took from her offered flesh. She knew it too: the knowledge aroused her even more, I sensed, than my touch ever could.
‘Perhaps, after all,’ she said softly, ‘I’ve under-estimated you. Perhaps you’re more than half a man.’
‘We’re going to have to find that out,’ I replied, my voice husky with nervous anticipation. I took my hand from her breast and slipped the gown off her left shoulder. The material glided, with fashioned leisure, round her back and, as she straightened her right arm, slid to the floor. She stood naked before me, the mature curves and lingering bloom of her body drawing me past the last moment when I might have called a halt.
‘Then follow me.’ She spoke the words softly: only her smile revealed the pleasure she took from being able to command me. She turned away and pushed open the door to the adjoining room: I could see the bed within, drawn back in readiness, as I should have known it would be. But I spared the fact little thought. My mind feasted instead on the vision it could not resist: Olivia Powerstock, stripping my desires barer than her own unfettered flesh, padding slowly across the carpet away from me towards the bed where I would certainly follow.
She reached the bed, propped one knee on the coverlet and looked back at me. On her face was the expression she had worn in Bartholomew’s picture, the picture I understood now for the first time. The knowledge of her baseness was not enough. Still our minds succumbed – and our hands reached out to trace – the curving line of her propped thigh and proffered hip and half-turned back and profiled breast. I moved towards her.
In Pale Battalions - Retail Page 13
