Cashelmara

by Susan Howatch

  “And I never really understood why. Why was she unable to share a room with me unless she thought that we might conceive a child? This was obviously the only way in which she felt able to live with me as my wife, but why? Was I at fault? What did I do? Was there anything I could have done? I loved her so much. Before our final estrangement I was always faithful to her, and that wasn’t easy. The doctor always advised her against marital relations when she was pregnant, and so there were often months on end when she slept in a separate room. But I accepted that because I loved her and because I knew that despite all our difficulties she loved me.”

  I looked at Marguerite again. There was an element in her expression that hinted I was on the brink of some deep, painful understanding, but instinct told me it was safer not to understand. “Eleanor really did love me, you know,” I said, uncertain why I repeated the words but knowing it was vital we should both believe them. “Good wives always love their husbands, don’t they, and Eleanor was such a perfect wife.”

  VII

  Marguerite had fallen in love with Switzerland. By the time we reached my favorite inn overlooking Lake Lucerne she had bought fifty prints of various views, three dozen slides for her magic lantern, untold yards of Swiss embroidery and three cuckoo clocks. The weather was warm, each day brilliant with long hours of sunshine, and from the balcony of our room we could look across the lake to the soaring heights of Mount Pilatus.

  “So this is what it’s like to be in one’s dotage,” I said, amused, to Marguerite one afternoon. “I have no idea what’s happening in Parliament. The entire British Empire may be in a state of collapse and I neither know nor care. I have no desire to read a newspaper, no desire to read a book—although I might consider a frivolous novel—no desire to write a thesis and no desire to do anything except stay here with you. I had always thought contempt led people to condemn those in their dotage, but now I know it’s not contempt at all. It’s jealousy.”

  Marguerite, who was busy filling her journal with elaborate descriptions of our surroundings, looked up. “If you’re in your dotage,” she said severely, “my new name isn’t Marguerite de Salis. Edward darling, I wish you wouldn’t think so much about your age. I don’t think about it, so why should you?”

  “I don’t think of it much, but I can’t help wishing occasionally that I was a few years younger.”

  “What difference would that make? Age is a state of mind, like lying on a bed of nails,” said Marguerite obscurely and added as if to dismiss the subject, “Anyway, you’re so fit and strong you’ll probably live until you’re a hundred.”

  “But what a dreadful fate that would be for you!”

  She laughed. “I shall love you forever and ever,” she said in that confident way people have when they are very young. “Don’t you believe that?”

  “I … would very much like to believe it.”

  My cynicism, that razor edge of my sadness, must have shown despite my flippant tone of voice. Abandoning her journal, she jumped up, ran across the room and kissed me. “Then you must believe it!” she said earnestly, “because it’s true. Dearest Edward, you’ve given me everything I could possibly want. Indeed, I feel as if I’m an entirely new person. Do you truly think I shall stop loving you just because you’ll reach old age before I shall? What a poor opinion of me you must have!”

  “You know very well what kind of opinion I have of you!” I said, smiling at her, and suddenly all sadness vanished and I was myself again. I looked at her, and to my eyes she was beautiful, so small and neat, so smartly dressed, so fresh and vivacious and gay. “I love you very much,” I said, and suddenly age no longer mattered; we had slipped into an emotional dimension in which time did not exist, so that now she was simply Marguerite, who loved me and who would love me as long as I lived to love her in return.

  VIII

  When we reached Zurich I wrote to my nephew George to ask him to send Patrick to London shortly before Marguerite and I returned from the honeymoon. I thought at least one of my children should he at St. James’s Square to welcome their stepmother to her new home.

  To Patrick himself I wrote, “You will to a great extent redeem your unfortunate behavior if you can present yourself to Marguerite in the best possible manner. When we arrive I want to see you well dressed in your best suit with your hair properly cut and brushed. I shall expect you to be civil, welcoming and attentive. This will not, I trust, be too much to ask of you.” When I had signed the letter I added as an afterthought, “P.S. If you have grown again, you may summon the tailor and have a new morning coat made for the occasion with trousers to match. You may also have a new waistcoat, but on no account is it to be made in one of those loud tartans or checks. Ask the tailor to advise you about a color that is both tasteful and subdued.”

  Knowing how young men of his age often had no idea how to dress sensibly, I thought it well to be specific on this point. I had no wish for him to present himself in some dreadful Tweedside lounging jacket gaping to reveal a rainbow-striped horror beneath.

  At the beginning of September we left Switzerland, journeying north through Bavaria to Munich before bearing east through the Grand Duchy of Hesse to Frankfurt, Coblenz and Cologne. We traveled mostly by train, although for a time we journeyed by steamer up the Mosel past the vineyards which for mile after mile covered the slopes of the valley. I had decided it was preferable to avoid France entirely, and when we left the German states at last we proceeded to Ostend, where a channel steamer conveyed us to England. On the whole it was a very pleasant homeward journey, although Marguerite thought the Lowlands unimpressive after the Alps.

  Late in the afternoon of September 19 my carriage drew up outside my house in St. James’s Square.

  “So much has happened since we were last here!” said Marguerite, already overcome by nostalgia for the honeymoon, and I smiled as I took her arm and led her up the steps to the front door.

  Patrick was waiting to receive us in the hall. I was glad I had foreseen how much he had grown again. He was almost as tall as I was now, and his hair, fair as mine had been at his age, was parted and arranged immaculately. His height made him look older than fifteen, and I thought what a pity it was that his behavior was so much less mature than his appearance.

  “Welcome home, Papa,” he said dutifully, stepping forward to shake my hand. “I hope you had a good journey.”

  I smiled to show him how pleased I was with his manners. “The journey was very pleasant, thank you,” I said cheerfully. “And now let me present you to your cousin Marguerite. My dear …”

  And then as I turned to introduce her I looked upon her face and saw with a terrible clarity that she was dazzled by him.

  Part Two

  MARGUERITE

  Fidelity 1860–1868

  QUEEN MARGARET WAS YOUNG enough to be his daughter, and was sometimes, indeed, ally and spokeswoman of her stepchildren in their quarrels with their father.

  Cambridge Medieval History, Volume VII

  —HILDA JOHNSTONE

  Chapter One

  I

  EDWARD WAS FIFTY-NINE WHEN I met him and sixty by the time we were married, but as I never thought of him as being any particular age it was useless for well-meaning people to say that he was too old to be my husband and that marriage in such circumstances would be foolish. The fact was I did not care a rap whether I was being foolish or not. I wanted to marry him, and that was that.

  Of course everyone believes he or she marries for the purest possible motives and I was no exception, but now, looking back, I can see I wanted to marry him for all the wrong reasons—to escape from my home, from a society that considers a plain girl a failure, from the despised spinsterhood to which, I was already convinced, I was irrevocably doomed. Edward’s proposal floated strawlike past me as I floundered in my sea of troubles, and since I was convinced I was drowning I made the traditional gesture of the drowning victim and grabbed the straw with both hands. The straw became a raft; I was saved, and
in the first flush of relief and gratitude I decided I was passionately in love with my savior. That was an illusion, needless to say, but it sustained me all through that dreary winter before we were married, even though I lived in constant fear that he would change his mind and end my hopes for salvation.

  But he did not change his mind, and when at last I saw him again a curious revelation took place in my feelings. I saw him as if for the first time. When we had met in New York I had been so preoccupied with my troubles that I had not bothered to acquaint myself properly with his character and had retained only the most fleeting impression of his looks, so when we met again months later in Liverpool it came as a considerable surprise to me to be reminded how handsome he was. He was very tall, at least two inches over six feet—why had I not remembered he was so tall?—and very well proportioned, without trace of any such unsightly disadvantage as a middle-aged paunch or a bald pate. His hair was not, if truth be told, as thick as it might have been, but it was still plentiful. It was a dark straight brown tinged with gray at the temples. He had blue eyes, set deep, a charming smile and a fine-drawn but unmistakably pugnacious jaw.

  I once again decided that I was passionately in love with him, and once again it was in fact nothing more than a fond illusion, but after we were married I did indeed discover what passion meant and then at last my wishful thinking became reality. I know it is not considered seemly for a young girl to own to passions which in novels are reserved only for the most earthy peasant females or notorious adventuresses, but since I intend this to be a truthful memoir I must confess that I enjoyed every moment of my honeymoon and daily became more enrapt with the stranger who was my husband.

  No race on earth is as clever at being strangers as the British. They wrap themselves in formality, they withdraw behind veil after veil of exquisite politeness, they hide cunningly behind a bewildering array of carefully chosen façades—and what is a poor American, accustomed to demonstrativeness, democracy and demagoguery, to make of it all? Is it surprising that Americans, when confronted with such enigmatic behavior, make such dreadful mistakes? At first my brother Francis thought Edward was effete and eccentric. I disagreed, thinking Edward quaint in a mild Old World fashion, but it never occurred to either of us that beneath his aristocratic manners Edward was as tough as any New Yorker who has just made his first million. Americans think a man can be tough only if he talks loudly, clenches his fists and puffs out his chest, but Englishmen think this very crude behavior and have long since learned the art of annihilation with a smile. Edward was kind and considerate to me, good-humored, gentle and patient, but there was a hard streak in his nature that I never saw before we were married, and he had a will of iron that ensured he always got his own way.

  He was, in fact, as an older, wiser woman might have suspected long before I did, not an easy man to live with.

  I am not sure why he wanted to marry me. He said of course that it was because he was desperately in love with me, and of course I believed him; but love is such a flexible word, and I often wonder if his motives for marriage were as clouded as mine were. He was lonely; he made no secret of that, and he was also, I soon noticed, bitterly resentful of his increasing age. He could not have fallen in love with my looks, for I was very plain when we first met, but I think he did fall in love with my youth. So many snide comments are made about middle-aged men harboring passions for young girls that the temptation is to deny the significance of my age in our relationship, but although his age never mattered to me I suspect my age was very important to him.

  Yet after the honeymoon I knew he did truly love me, just as I truly loved him, and when we returned at last to his house in London neither of us foresaw that we would plunge immediately into our first fully fledged marital quarrel.

  II

  I was not accustomed to marital quarrels. My parents had died when I was very young, so I had no memory of their marriage, and although my brother Francis and his wife were far from being infatuated with each other they had reached an arrangement with the result that their relationship was at least outwardly agreeable. When I was growing up I enjoyed thinking of myself as a poor unloved orphan doomed to stagger through life beneath a multitude of misfortunes, but as usual my imagination far outpaced reality. I might have been orphaned at a tender age, but since I was a member of one of the wealthiest families in New York I could hardly complain of poverty, and since I had an indulgent brother and an affectionate sister I could hardly complain either that I was unloved. Francis was so much older than I that I could look upon him as a father, while Blanche was near enough to my own age to ensure that I was never at a loss for companionship.

  There was a strong family resemblance between the three of us. Blanche and Francis resembled each other physically; both were very good-looking. But Francis and I resembled each other mentally; we liked to learn and enjoyed best of all the puzzles of mathematics. When I was small Francis even taught me some algebra, but when he married his wife disapproved of such an unfeminine pursuit and the lessons ceased. I never cared for Amelia after that. At about this time my father’s partner died; Francis took full control of the family fortunes, and his time for me was necessarily reduced. I went on adoring him from afar, just as any girl will adore an older brother who is clever and good-looking, but his preoccupation with other matters hurt me, and as I grew older I sensed also that he was disappointed in my plainness and feared I would be a failure when the time came for me to make my debut.

  This makes Francis sound unkind, but he never deliberately meant to be unkind to me. He simply wished me to be successful, and when it seemed clear I would be a failure he could not help but be mortified. Francis was obsessed by success. Our father had expected a great deal of him, and for many years he had been not merely the only son of the family but the only surviving child. The whole future of the family’s prosperity rested on his shoulders. My grandfather had founded a prosperous mercantile house, but my father had preferred to double his money on Wall Street, and Francis, with his mathematical inclinations and his gambling streak, had been well content to follow in my father’s footsteps. He worked hard, he married well, he maintained our place in the forefront of New York society, but somehow in the stress of achieving so much the better side of his nature became bruised and he changed. He was disappointed in his marriage, and no matter how much money he made it always seemed necessary to make more.

  By the time he was thirty-five he was privately bitter, but still his passion for success would not let him rest. He had to come first; the family had to come first; New York and America had to come first. The craving for success turned mere patriotism into chauvinism, so that he had no alternative but to hate Edward on sight. It was not Edward himself that Francis disliked—although their characters were hardly compatible—but the civilization which Edward represented, the civilization which held America second-rate and New York little better than an overgrown market town. Edward was by no means offensive on the subject of America. Indeed he paid many compliments to my country, but as with most Englishmen it was his unstated belief that all people but the English were “foreigners,” inferior citizens of the world to whom the English, as good Christians, were obliged to be charitable.

  The very phrase “second-rate” was enough to send Francis into a frenzy, and since Edward could not help but arouse Francis’ worst instincts it was hardly surprising that they failed to become friends.

  However, I loved Francis despite all his faults and even despite his growing preference for my sister. Blanche and I had been happy together as children, but once childhood lay behind us our relationship rapidly deteriorated. As the years passed I became jealous of her looks, jealous of Francis’ awakening pride in her, jealous of her social success and jealous of her rosy future.

  Jealousy is not an attractive emotion. I regret to say I became unnecessarily unpleasant toward her—poor Blanche, it was hardly her fault she was so pretty!—and although she begged me tearfully not to be so unkind, I
hardened my heart and drove away all her offers to remain friends. Presently she too hardened her heart; she no longer needed my friendship anyway, for after she came out she had dozens of new friends in addition to all her beaux. Blanche hardly suffered from my foolishness, but I suffered very much. The fact that I had only myself to blame merely made my loneliness the more intolerable to me.

  By this time I was seventeen, skinny, freckled and frustrated. I had already been to two formal dances and knew the dreadful humiliation of being a wallflower. Hating everyone and wallowing in self-pity, I spent my days either playing chess by myself or else writing reams in my journal about how miserably fate had treated me. I contemplated entering a convent, becoming an actress and even, I blush to relate, applying at the new pleasure house on Madison Square to see if they had a vacancy for a courtesan. So naïve was I that I thought that all such women did was to hold hands with their gentlemen callers and exchange kisses, but I yearned passionately to be kissed by a gentleman caller, and I was certain that if I gave my earnings to charity God would forgive me for my evil ways.

  It was at that moment that I first met Edward. No wonder I did not care how old he was. At first it did not occur to me to think of him as a gentleman caller, but when he proposed I was certainly not about to ape the heroine of a romantic novel and refuse him with the conventional sigh that “it could never be.” My immediate reaction was: Well, why not? And if that sounds grasping, practical and not at all conduct befitting a heroine, I can only apologize and repeat that I want this to be a truthful memoir.