EIGHT
SORRY I COULDN’T face you with this, Daphne. It’s not that I distrust you. I distrust myself. I look on you as a friend now. I remember you warning me not to do that, but some things can’t be helped. The result is I’ve started wanting to spare your feelings. I know you still believe we can get on top of this thing, but I don’t. I’m not sure I ever have. Now I’m certain, though. What’s worse, I don’t really want to try any more. I can either give in to it or run away from it. Those are the only choices. So I reckon you may as well be spared the agony of trying to find some other way that doesn’t exist. But I know you’ll want to hear what brought it all to a head, and it really does help to talk about it. There’s no-one I can talk to apart from you. That’s what I’m doing, even though you’re not sitting across the room from me as I speak. But you’ll listen. I know you will. And you’ll understand. I hope.
We went down to Somerset on Christmas Eve and everything seemed fine to start with. The weather turned cold and there wasn’t much incentive to leave the hotel fireside. Conrad threw himself into the parlour games that were organized for guests and took me on occasional tramps round the local lanes. But he didn’t suggest revisiting Lacock or going into Bath, and I didn’t either. Apart from anything else, I was afraid I might bump into Niall Esguard. I felt safe in the vicinity of the hotel and planned to sit it out there until we went home.
If Conrad had stuck close to me, I’m sure that’s what I’d have done. But he’d booked himself a day’s hack on the Mendips, courtesy of some arrangement the hotel had with a local riding stable. Since I’ve never ridden, that meant I had the day to myself. It was a long day, too, because Conrad wanted me to drive him down to the stables for an eight o’clock start and pick him up again at four. The place was near Shepton Mallet and on the way back to the hotel – navigation’s never been my strong point – I took one wrong turning after another and found myself on the Bristol road. I turned east off that and the signs started reading closer and closer to Bath, so I pulled into a lay-by and tried to make sense of the map.
It was early on a Sunday morning in the middle of a long holiday, so, as you can imagine, there was nobody else about. I got out of the car to try to get my bearings. There was a wooded hill away to my right that I thought was probably the one named on the map as Stantonbury Hill, but the sun was in my eyes and I couldn’t really be sure of anything. It was so bright and low in the sky that it blinded me for an instant. I turned away and blinked, waiting for my sight to clear. As it did so, I realized the colour of the fields was suddenly sharper, the hedgerows and patches of woodland a mellow gold, as if they were in full autumn leaf. The sunlight that had dazzled me was noticeably warmer on my back. The chill was gone from the air, the frost from my breath. The car had vanished and the road had changed. The white-lined tarmac had become a dusty earth-and-flint lane. I felt a flutter of something like a ribbon at my throat.
And at once I realized I was in Barrington’s barouche, returning to Bath from a drive into the country west of the city. Barrington himself sat opposite me; the splayed girth of his long yellow coat seemed to magnify his bulk, which had surely increased even since the summer. His plum-coloured waistcoat was stretched to bursting point over his stomach, which his slouched posture did not show to advantage. Every burrow in his pocket for his snuffbox was a struggle. I could not help wondering whether Susannah, who was sitting beside me beneath an excess of travelling rug, found the prospect an edifying one. If not, it would have explained the determination with which she gazed at the hilltop to our right.
‘We had an altogether delightful picnic with the Aislabies hereabouts in June, did we not, my dear?’ she remarked.
‘What?’ Barrington’s attention appeared to have been elsewhere. I had the discomforting notion it had been fixed on me.
‘The Aislabies. In June. Yonder. Was that not where Mr Aislabie pointed out to us the course of the Roman dyke?’
‘Wansdyke,’ Barrington specified.
‘Quite so. Mr Aislabie knows much of such matters, Marian,’ Susannah continued, turning towards me. ‘You will find him to be a very well-informed gentleman.’
‘I’m sure I would,’ I said. ‘If I were ever to meet him.’
‘Oh, but you shall. The Aislabies are of the party this evening.’
‘I did not know you were to have company this evening.’
‘You must remember this is Bath, my dear, not Tollard Rising. Company of a sociable and stimulating nature is the guiding purpose of the city.’
‘Yes,’ said Barrington in a sour tone. ‘Of sociability and stimulation there is no end.’
‘Exactly,’ said Susannah, not apparently detecting the slightest hint of sarcasm in her husband’s voice. ‘And I can conceive of no better tonic for your oppressed spirits, Marian. We are pleased to have this unexpected opportunity to share with you the benefits of life in Bath. Are we not, Barrington?’
‘Uncommonly’ was his grudging reply, merging with a snort as he inhaled enough snuff to quench a candle.
It was obvious to me, as it must have been to Susannah, that Barrington was anything but pleased to be acting as my host. I was in no position to complain, since I was an equally reluctant guest. I had been wished upon them by Jos in circumstances that were embarrassing and disagreeable to all three of us. Jos’s resolution to govern me with a close and strict hand had endured for less than three months, though what I had suffered during those months had made them seem more like years. I had to guard my memory not to dwell upon the cruelties and indignities he had inflicted upon me at Gaunt’s Chase in the weeks following Mr Byfield’s departure from Legion Cottage. There were things he had done to me which I knew now were things he had always longed to do and which he falsely justified on account of my supposed misbehaviour. All he had accomplished, however, was to free me of any sense of obligation to him. Abomination reaps its own reward. I no longer regarded myself as his wife.
Tiring of the effort involved in torturing me, Jos had decided to return to London, but not, as he had originally threatened, with me. There were corners of his life he still did not want me to glimpse, even though, had he but known it, my opinion of him could sink no lower. I had hoped, with little confidence, that he would leave me to my own devices at Gaunt’s Chase. Then, little by little, I might reassemble my heliogenic laboratory and return to the researches which, since their abandonment, had sometimes seemed as distant as dreams. But Jos had no intention of restoring any degree of liberty to me. I was consigned to his brother and sister-in-law for safe keeping, until such time as he wished to reimpose direct supervision of me.
What Jos had told Barrington, and what Barrington had told Susannah, I had no means of knowing and no wish to enquire. The truth of my position in their house – that of a comfortably accommodated and courteously treated prisoner – was apparent from the first. I had been there for just over a fortnight without succeeding in having a waking hour to myself. The servants had clearly been instructed to warn their master or mistress of any attempt on my part to leave the house unaccompanied. A secret rendezvous with Mr Byfield was what they feared, of course. His name was never mentioned. The reason for what Susannah termed my ‘oppressed spirits’ was never alluded to. But it was understood plainly enough.
As gaolers, however, Barrington and Susannah lacked the vital ingredient of zeal. They embarked upon the role conscientiously enough, but tired rapidly as one week stretched to two and beyond. Barrington had become first bored, then discontented. Susannah had grown excessively talkative and short-tempered with the servants. I irked them and they irked me. We were united by an unspoken desire to be free of each other. And in that desire lay my opportunity to test the strength of the shackles Jos had sought to fasten round me.
‘We shall be returning to Bath by way of Weston, I take it,’ I remarked in what I judged to be a casual manner.
‘Indeed,’ said Barrington.
‘Miss Gathercole lives by the churchyard t
here, does she not?’
‘I believe so.’
‘She entreated me to call for tea if ever I was in the neighbourhood.’
‘She did?’
‘I said that I would be charmed to do so.’
‘Good God.’
‘She is a meek and solitary creature, Barrington. We can surely show her some small consideration.’
‘She is a liability as a whist partner and a sore test of patience as a conversationalist. I do not know what greater consideration I can be expected to show her than that of refraining from the direction of her attention to such pitiful truths.’
‘It would be embarrassing not to take up her invitation.’
‘I could bear such embarrassment with fortitude.’
‘But I could not.’
‘Go then.’ The words were out of his mouth before he could weigh them against his obligations to Jos.
‘If you will set me down by the church, I will devote an hour to Miss Gathercole and enjoy a bracing walk back to Bentinck Place across Sion Hill. It is a fine afternoon. I feel I would benefit from the exercise and I am sure Miss Gathercole would appreciate the company.’
‘No doubt.’ Barrington wrestled his hunting watch out of his waistcoat pocket and consulted it. ‘Well, well, there’s time enough, certainly.’
Susannah cleared her throat ostentatiously. ‘My dear, should we not—?’
‘Damn it, let her go if she will. Where’s the harm in it?’ He smiled at me awkwardly, aware he had come dangerously close to acknowledging the delicacy of his position as my custodian. ‘Pay your charitable call, Marian, by all means. I would not wish to come between you and a kindred spirit. A twittering spinster is, I feel sure, just the counsellor you require at this passage in your life.’ His smile broadened disingenuously. But I knew better than to rise to his bait. What was Barrington’s lumbering satire compared with the torments his brother had devised for me? And what did it matter anyway, when I had achieved no less than I desired?
We were approaching the village of Corston and were within sight of the outskirts of Bath. The autumn sun flattered the pale stonework of the buildings and would have enchanted those disposed to be enchanted, as I had certainly been when I first visited the city as a girl of fifteen in the company of my parents. But I had not heard the name Esguard then, nor learned how much more bitterness there was than sweetness in the world. The vista left me unmoved.
As doubtless it did my brother-in-law, not least because he had his back to it as we approached and was listening, though scarcely attentively, to his wife’s third discourse of the day on the recent tragic death in childbirth of Princess Charlotte. This had occurred the previous week, at Claremont House in Surrey. The child she had borne, a son, was also dead. The Queen, who had been in Bath partaking of the waters, was reported to have returned to London. It was a lamentable business, but it had given me some grim comfort. I would never bear Jos a son, nor die in the attempt. God had cursed him with a barren wife, so he complained. But, if he was right, then I could only regard it as a blessing. I wanted no child of his, nor any child of mine to have such a father.
‘It is as melancholy an event as can be imagined,’ doled Susannah. ‘The Prince Regent is left not merely bereft, but without an heir.’
‘He’ll find some way to assuage his grief,’ growled Barrington. ‘And there’s always an heir, if one searches hard enough. The failure of one line is the success of another.’ He looked at me and I could not help blushing. It seemed clear he intended some reference to the advantage his odious son Nelson would ultimately derive from my childlessness. ‘Thank God I married a robust woman.’
‘Barrington, please!’ objected Susannah.
‘I’m complimenting you, madam,’ he retorted with a smirk.
‘How is dear Nelson?’ I enquired, well knowing that the infrequency of his letters was the despair of his mother. ‘I have heard so little of his exploits since my arrival.’
‘His schoolmasters seem pleased enough,’ was Barrington’s grudging reply.
‘How proud you must be of him.’ The sentiment was genuine. I imagined Barrington would indeed be proud of a son who was maturing as rapidly as Nelson was into a prig and a bully.
‘Nelson’s a fiery little fellow,’ said Barrington, a paternal gleam lighting his eye. ‘He has the Esguard up-an’-at-’em.’
‘How gratifying.’ And now it was my turn to give a disingenuous smile.
I sustained the cut-and-thrust of our conversation all the way to Weston, calculating that it would encourage Barrington to be rid of me. So it proved. His expression as he helped me down from the barouche outside the church suggested that his subservience to Jos’s whims was being sorely tested.
I watched them pass out of sight along the road into Bath before approaching Miss Gathercole’s cottage, one of a terrace adjacent to the churchyard. Her insistence, conveyed at a whist party three nights previously, that I should take tea with her could indeed have been the desperation of the lonely. I had detected some greater significance to it, however, some depth of meaning which spoke of an altogether more subtle and perceptive character than Barrington and Susannah believed her to possess. It scarcely mattered if I was wrong. This interval of liberty would be a joy, however I spent it.
The door was answered not by Miss Gathercole herself, nor yet by some maid-of-all-work, but by a stockily built fellow in a pea-jacket. He had a broken nose, a scar over his right eyebrow and swollen knuckles. He also had a direct and challenging manner that marked him as neither servant nor gentleman. ‘Would you be Mrs Esguard?’ he asked before I could get out a word.
‘I would, yes.’
‘Step inside, ma’am. You’re expected.’
A short, narrow passage, which he seemed more or less to fill, led to the rear of the cottage. A door to his right, towards which he extended his hand, gave on to a small sitting room, in which I could see Miss Gathercole in a chair by the crackling fire, smiling at me in welcome. As I stepped into the room, I realized that someone was sitting in the chair on the farther side of the fire. He rose as I entered and bowed towards me. For a second I hardly dared believe the evidence of my eyes. My astonishment must have been apparent, for Mr Byfield gave me a warm and reassuring smile before stepping forward to take my hand.
‘I cannot tell you how good it is to see you again, Mrs Esguard,’ he said. ‘I can only hope that you know without the need for me to say.’
‘It is an inestimable pleasure for me, too, Mr Byfield,’ I responded.
‘That is fortunate,’ put in Miss Gathercole, as she rose and joined us in the middle of the room, ‘since I find that I have to leave you for a while. I do beg your pardon, Mrs Esguard.’ She smiled at me like the kindest and most indulgent of dimple-cheeked aunts. ‘You have happened to arrive just as I am compelled to attend to urgent business elsewhere. I trust you will excuse me.’
‘Yes. Why, yes, of course, Miss Gathercole.’
‘Mr Byfield will, I am sure, entertain you in my absence.’
‘Rest assured I’ll do my best.’
‘May I take Poulter for the fetching and carrying?’
‘Please do. And work him hard, Emily. He’s like a horse too long in the stable at present. All huff and no puff.’
Miss Gathercole laughed and went out, closing the door behind her. I saw her pass by the window a moment later, accompanied by the barrel-chested Mr Poulter.
‘I am no stranger to Bath, Marian,’ said Mr Byfield, detecting the puzzlement in my gaze. ‘Emily and I are old friends. Your brother-in-law probably regards her as a person of no consequence.’
‘Yes, he does.’
‘So people of unsuspected depths often appear to the shallow and foolish.’
I smiled. ‘I feel sure that is true. And Mr Poulter?’
‘A retired pugilist whose services I have had need of these past months.’
‘Why, pray?’
‘Because your husband has set some dubious folk
on me, against whom I have been obliged to protect myself.’
‘He has done what?’ My grasp on his hand tightened. ‘Lawrence, I had no inkling of this. I thought your departure from Tollard Rising was sufficient for Jos’s purposes. Had I realized he meant to—’ I broke off and stared at him, aware, as he must have been, of the tension between us that communicated more certainly than any words the strength of our mutual attraction.
‘Had you realized, you might have written to me? Is that what you were about to say?’
‘I did not write because … there was nothing you could do for me.’
‘There is nothing I would not do for you.’
‘You cannot unmarry me.’
‘Has Jos not done that already, Marian, in the only sense that truly matters?’
‘I am pledged to him in the sight of God.’
‘As he is to you. But can you stand here and tell me he has honoured his vows?’
‘No,’ I replied in scarcely more than a murmur. ‘I cannot.’
‘Just as I cannot stand here and tell you I do not love you.’
‘Lawrence, I—’
‘Do you love me, Marian?’
A silence fell. We looked at each other and I saw in his face the mirror image of a passion I had sought too long to deny. ‘Yes,’ I said, nodding in slow and certain acknowledgement of the truth of what I was about to declare. ‘I do love you.’
He took me in his arms at that and kissed me, as I wanted him to, as I would not, for all the world, have had him do other than. ‘I will not let us be apart any longer,’ he whispered as he held me. ‘I will not let you renounce our love.’
‘I could not renounce it, Lawrence. Not now.’
‘I have been in hell these past months.’
‘I too.’
‘Then let us make a heaven for ourselves.’
‘How can we?’
‘We will go abroad. I am a man of modest but independent means. We will not starve.’
‘I should not care if we did. So long as we starved together.’
Caught In the Light Page 19
