And then, dragging me close against her, her face almost touching mine, she muttered, ‘Don’t think I want to do this, because I don’t. I don’t care what happens to you – however bad it is, you’d deserve it – and you’ll get it, my lass, soon enough, if you stay here. The lads are still mostly down at the fire, but they’ll be back ere long and they’d gobble you up alive, little lady, make no mistake about it. So I’ve got to take you to Crispin, darling, haven’t I, because if I leave you here and he finds out about it, he’ll lose his good opinion of me. And I wouldn’t want that to happen. So come on, love, come to Crispin. It’s what you want, I suppose, same as he does – and if you’re even half a Barforth you won’t be slow to take your opportunities.’
And fascinated, overpowered, with no more will to resist than Ann Agbrigg, I followed her.
Chapter Twenty-Four
I had never seen the Red Gin at close quarters before; I knew of it simply as the haunt of brawlers and malcontents; of godless, rootless men and immoral women – of whores. Now, with my hand firmly in the grip of one of these – a bareheaded, brazen creature swinging her hips, tossing her long black hair – I found myself walking down a passage as narrow and unpleasant as a greasy ribbon and then mounting a rickety, littered back stair to a room I most certainly should not have entered.
‘Wait here,’ she said. ‘I’ll fetch him.’
Although I heard her turn the key in the lock and had no guarantee that she had really gone for Crispin, I sat down almost like a well-behaved child at school, with no thought of escape.
There was a lamp burning on a scarred wooden table, bare floorboards, bare walls, a narrow iron bedstead, a kitchen chair, books in tidy piles, writing materials: the bare essentials of existence. A monk’s cell, I thought obsessively neat – where Morgan Aycliffe, not Crispin, could have taken refuge to scourge his soul. And, from the inn below it, the noise of unkempt revelry seeping through the floor, the tight-packed anthill of the street across the way, of the room next door, the intimate functioning of strangers’ bodies constantly within range of eye and ear and nostril, no longer separated from me by the thickness of stone walls, an acre of rose garden, a carriage drive. And although it was troublesome, it was in some ways a protection.
He was a long time in coming but when the door finally opened I could see he had been running.
Unprepared for the emotion in him and the emotion in me leaping forward to meet it, I said, quite harshly, the first words that entered my head. ‘Who was that woman?’
And because he had not expected me to say that, it steadied him, gave us both a breathing space.
‘She is Dinah McCluskey, the landlady here. She told me what happened, and, Verity, your coachman should be whipped. He should never have left you to make your way alone.’
‘Oh, he was thinking of the horses, I expect, for they would cost a great deal of money to replace, whereas women come cheap enough. Only think, if the horses had been damaged, Joel would have been obliged to send to Tattersalls in London and pay out a thousand guineas or more. And what could I cost? Just a rather splendid headstone, and he wouldn’t even have to go out of Cullingford to replace me. So Thomas knew what he was about.’
‘Verity,’ he said, ‘are you – quite well?’
‘No. I think I am probably hysterical but I expect I shall be able to contain it. And if I did have a fit, would it matter – here? Would anybody trouble to enquire?’
‘I am very sure they would not. In fact, you could scream your head off and no one would dream of interfering. It would simply be assumed I was beating you – which all women deserve from time to time and some of them enjoy – and if you opened the window and shrieked “Murder,” they would only suppose you deserved that too.’
‘I am in your power, then.’
‘No,’ he said, his voice losing its forced lightness, his face tightening. ‘You are not in my power. You know that very well. I think you must stay here awhile, for there is still an ugly-tempered crowd in the streets, and then I will arrange for you to be taken home. I have nothing to offer you but brandy, I am afraid, and even Dinah may have difficulty in finding tea at this hour.’
‘Brandy, then. It won’t harm me. It kept my grandfather alive during his last years – or so he said – and he was never wrong.’
The glass he gave me was of fine-cut crystal, incongruous in those meagre surroundings, and the brandy may well have been superb, although, as I crossed the room and stood by the window looking down at the putrid alleyway, it burned, then numbed my tongue. And I knew that whatever happened between us would be of my choosing; he would remain cool and polite, convincing me, perhaps, of his indifference, if the woman, Dinah McCluskey, had not said to me, ‘Come to Crispin. It’s what you want, I suppose, same as he does.’
‘Were you in the square?’ he said quietly. ‘Did you see the burning?’
‘Yes. And I saw Joel salute the crowd afterwards. I don’t know what I should have felt about that, but actually I was proud of him.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘You shouldn’t be. I’ve told you before – he’s my cousin. I understand him. My father would have been shocked and upset, and my brother would have blustered and tried to break a few heads – and got himself killed all over again. But my grandfather would have done exactly as Joel did, and whether you liked my grandfather or not – and I didn’t like him at all – you had to admit that he was magnificent. I don’t always like Joel too much either, but that has nothing to do with being proud of him, of giving him credit for courage and audacity – or for wishing he was on your side. Because he’d do a lot more for your cause than Mark Carey – if he believed in it, or if he could see a profit in it.’
He smiled, ruefully, unhappily, his face very pale in that uncertain lamplight; thinner, I thought, the fine, fair skin creasing at his eye corners, the eyes themselves a paler blue, as if they had been washed by fatigue. And, knowing beyond question that I loved him, I wondered why I had made my voice so hard, why it seemed so essential to explain that I had an odd, unlikely respect for Joel, too.
‘Barforth pride,’ he said, trying to make his voice light again. ‘Is there no end to it? I have never seen you so fierce.’
‘I daresay, and you may well see me fiercer, for I want to know how that woman was aware of a connection between us.’
‘Because I told her of it.’
‘Crispin, for heaven’s sake, how could you do that?’
‘Because she is kindhearted and intelligent and can be trusted to listen when the brandy talks and to keep quiet about it afterwards. She is exceedingly common, I grant you, but if she had not followed you from Market Square. I dread to think what might have befallen you. You should be grateful.’
‘So I am, grateful indeed. What did you tell her?’
‘Would there be any purpose in repeating it?’
‘There may be.’
‘Verity,’ he said, his voice no more than a whisper, his eyes closing briefly as if, suddenly, his head ached. ‘Don’t do this to me again. Don’t come close to me and then disappear in my hands like smoke – not again. It may hurt you, too, but it crucifies me, Verity.’
‘What must I do, then?’
‘Nothing, for nothing has changed. I am no more able to support you than I was before – less able, for the election cost me dear and I am in debt for every penny. And now that my face is well known, and my opinions, people apply to me for assistance and I am rarely able to refuse. If we ran away together we would have a merry procession following us, your husband and my creditors – you may as well know it.’
‘Yes – yes. I know it. Now tell me what you have said to Mrs McCluskey.’
He walked a step or two away from me and back again, catlike in his tense, delicate testing of the air around me, making a valiant effort to persuade himself not to touch me not to attempt my downfall, reminding himself how much I had to lose, vowing he would do nothing to harm me even if I, foolish woman that I
was, seemed so strangely willing. And his resolve made me smile, for I knew – in my mood of foolishness and strangeness – that he could not keep it.
I had asked him, long ago, not to take me, to allow me the chance to give, and now, watching his painful hesitations, his longing to commit himself and his fear of commitment struggling inside him for mastery, it struck me that for the first time in my life I was free. No one – except Crispin and Dinah McCluskey – knew at this moment where I was, and if people were searching for me they would not look here. Liberty, brief perhaps, but liberty just the same, and what did brevity matter since life itself was short and uncertain and I could have been killed down there in the street or could have died months ago of the fever. And suddenly, basking in a newfound strength that had all the warmth and fragrance of sunshine, I saw no shame in acknowledging not only my love but my desire for this frail, beautiful man, not only the matching of our minds but my body’s sheer, basic need to possess him, to give itself into his possession.
‘I can’t ask you to be my mistress,’ he said, a school master lecturing me, lecturing himself. ‘Can I? Not again. I asked you once and you gave me no reply – there could be no reply, I understand that, and so we parted.’
And, reaching out my hand and winding an arm around his neck, I told him, ‘I’m not so sure. I think it was because you feared I would persuade you into some little villa and make a respectable man of you. But now, since your creditors would not allow that in any case.’
‘Verity, don’t laugh at me. I love you. I don’t always know why, and God knows I’ve tried not to, but I love you.’
‘And I love you.’
And in those first moments, our delight had the wondrous, almost innocent quality of children discovering, the scents and shades of the world, a slow wandering through enchantment as his hands gently removed, one by one, the pins from my chignon, his mouth smiling and tasting, his nostrils deeply inhaling, as I shook my hair loose against his face. We had waited a long time, yet now there was no hungry falling upon each other, no cause at all for haste And standing a breath away from him, I understood at last the pleasure of display, no longer submitting my body to a man’s eyes but offering it, pausing at the unfastening of each tiny pearl button, raising my arms above my head with a rich, sighing content as my bodice fell away, glad of the lamplight on my bare shoulders and the contours of my breasts, proud suddenly that those breasts were still smooth and firm, that my legs, emerging from the froth of my petticoats, were long and slender at the ankles, loving my own body at that moment, beneath the caress of his gaze, because he loved it.
And even then, when the fine, lightly boned moulding of him, the fragile blond skin with its silk-scattering of fair hair, had moved me to an immense, wondering tenderness, we gazed a while longer until, with the very tips of his fingers, he touched my forehead and my cheeks, my mouth, the outline of my ears and throat, the length of my breastbone and thighbone, while I, stretching my arms above my head again with that same languorous sighing, turned slowly round, my body ready now to dissolve in his, to flow over him and into him like a rich, unhurried stream.
The bed was hard, with a lumpy pillow and a scratchy blanket, and there were still the street noises, still the raucous merriment of whores and drunkards from below, squalid and wicked, if any of it had been real. But it did not concern me, for the real world had become very small and I had nothing to do in it but devote myself to the pleasures of Crispin Aycliffe, pleasure far more complex and delicate and nervous than the forthright explosions of male joy to which I was accustomed. I was, in that hour, his most devoted and willing slave, lost and bemused with adoration, wanting nothing but the rich reward of his skin against my skin, the lightness of his bones beneath my fingers, so drunk with giving that my own pleasure took me by surprise and left me too mindlessly content to remember that I was now an adultress, who ought to be ashamed and afraid.
‘Truly,’ I told him, breathless and laughing, wanting him again already in my mind, knowing he needed to be reassured, ‘truly that must have been perfect.’
And he smiled. ‘Of course. Did you think that I could ever be less than a perfect lover?’
And then, leaning over me, his elbows one on either side of my head, his smile gone, he said quickly, ‘I was never more nervous in my life – terrified of offending you or hurting you or not pleasing you enough. Love me, Verity.’
‘I do.’
‘More than you love anyone else?’
‘Easily – but then, who else do I love?’
‘Your children,’ he said, sitting up. ‘You love your children.’
‘Yes, I do.’
‘I have seen it in your face, sometimes, when you look at them. Your tenderness has moved me.’
‘That displeases you?’
‘Dear God, no. It delights me, except…’
‘Yes – except?’
‘Except that I am honest enough to care that our love could harm them, and base enough to know that I will not sacrifice it.’
And brushing my hand the length of his tense, anxious back, an indulgent, comforting gesture that was not unmaternal, I told him, laughing at him, loving him, ‘Crispin Aycliffe, you have spent years of our lives trying to entice me into your bed, and now that you have me I do believe your complicated nature is looking for reasons to regret it.’
‘Ah – then you must hold me in your arms a while longer and smooth my fears away, for I am soon melancholy, particularly when I have been very joyful. I need a great deal of cosseting and spoiling, Verity – I warn you.’
And so, taking him in my arms, his head nuzzling; against my shoulder, I turned his fine, fair hair around my fingers, dropped light, quick kisses on his eyes and ears and chin, the hollows and angles of his delicately moulded I face, kissing the hurt child in him that was still lost in the dark until the man awoke and he made love to me again quite briefly but with an assurance that enabled him to open his eyes in the moment of pleasure and smile.
It was time, then, to go and, disengaging myself from him with the infinite care one bestows on objects of enormous value, enormous frailty, I got up and stood for a moment, surveying the bare little room – the monk’s cell smiling at the, cheap, ugly furnishings, the damp patches on the walls, the scarred boards underfoot, as if they were priceless treasures.
‘I thought this would be the worst part,’ I told him. ‘Getting up, getting dressed, hurrying out into the street – I thought it would seem sordid – that I wouldn’t be able to bear it. Yet here I am, doing it, and the only thing in my mind is that I love you.’
‘Thank you,’ he said, getting up, the rueful smile back on his lips. ‘I believe you said that to put me at ease, because you knew I would be worried about it, too. You will come to me again, Verity?’
‘Yes. I don’t know where – for I don’t know that I could possibly come here alone without discovery – but I’ll find somewhere. People think me placid and easy to manage but, in fact, when I am determined, I can generally get my way. Now – you will have to help me with these tapes and these infernal little buttons – and I do not think I can do up my hair alone.’
We dressed without embarrassment, wound my hair into a plain but convincing knot, laughed at the frothy burden of my petticoats and their awkward fastenings, and instead of the shame, the dry-mouthed dread of discovery that I should have felt, my mind refused to be distracted from its rich glow of remembered happiness.
‘You have committed adultery,’ reason accused me, and my conscious mind replied, ‘Next time I will bring a big, deep-brimmed bonnet so that I can simply cram my hair inside it and run.’
‘Adultery is a crime,’ reason said. ‘Before God and before the law. And it is not the same law for a woman as for a man. Society excuses a man, but an adulterous woman is worse than a leper. And Joel, whatever he may do himself, would hurt you if he caught you.’
But my mind, raising an impatient finger to its lips, answered, ‘Hush – don’t interrupt
– don’t annoy me – don’t distract me from looking at him, from remembering from planning how I can come to him again.’
And then, standing at the door and seeing Crispin in the good blue coat he had worn at the hustings, growing shabby, I noticed, at the lapels and the elbows – reminding me of the debts he could surely never repay on his fifty-pounds a year – I asked him, ‘Crispin, how long have I been here?’
‘Well, I have never been a man for the exact time, especially since I let my watch go, but it cannot be less than two hours.’
‘Dear God—’
‘No,’ he said, quite sharply. ‘Don’t ask God to help you. You can rely on me for this. You are not accustomed to deceit, but I served a long apprenticeship. My mother taught me to lie, for my father surrounded us with so many rules that the only way we could breathe was to deceive him. And so I know what I am about. You cannot walk home in those foolish slippers, which saddens me, since would enjoy a long stroll in the moonlight, and unless we happen to meet your coachman on the way, the only things for it is to go to the Swan.’
‘Will Joel still be there?’
‘Oh, I imagine so. He will have cause to celebrate his own triumph, for it is not every man who is elevated to the level of Guy Fawkes. Oh yes, he will still be there – and he will be very much obliged to me, I imagine, for rescuing his wife.’
As a spasm of discomfort, a prickly, unpleasant thing, briefly crossed my mind, he put a hand under my chin; forced my head up, and made me look at him.
‘Do you doubt me already? Do you think I have made love to you only to humiliate your husband? Do you think he even entered my head just now? And if you tell me he entered yours you will mortally wound me.’
We walked, hand in hand, down the rickety staircase, the greasy passage, into the alleyway, picking our way through noise and stink and litter, and, with his arm around me, my whole body was still dazzled by his nearness, throbbing with a blissful, butterfly joy that extended no further than every footstep, every single intake of breath. Enchantment and then, too soon, the glimmer of gaslight, the windows of the Swan beckoning in the distance, so that I paused in the shadows, my feet growing heavy and unwilling to tread a paved road again, and the outline of the square, the Market Cross, the Piece Hall that I knew so well striking me as alien, hostile, dangerous.
The Clouded Hills Page 39
