by John Burke
‘David’s back, and I haven’t seen him?’ Judith complained.
‘He appears to be occupied elsewhere.’
‘Not still fussing over that carriage wheel?’
Her mother-in-law tipped the faintest inclination of her head towards the edge of the lawn where the descent to the grove began. At its southern extremity, framed between uprights of the rose garden pergola, Bronwen and David were engaged in earnest conversation. In the twilight their heads were close together. Once Bronwen put a hand on David’s arm. He shook his head, raised the arm in one of his sweeping gestures, and then went on shaking his head.
Within the window embrasure there was a silence more awkward than the most halting conversation.
‘They seem to have a great deal to discuss,’ said Lady Brobury.
Caspian moved away from the two ladies and strode down the slope, too resolutely to be casual. He stood beside his wife yet in some way they looked farther apart than Judith had ever seen them.
‘I wish I knew what had happened to Pippin,’ she fretted. ‘Obviously he’s not down there.’
‘You’d do better to concern yourself with more important things. As that Dr, Caspian of yours is doing.’
‘Important in what way?’
‘From the look of the man, I’d say he’s waking up to facts rather more quickly than you.’
‘Mother, whatever are we supposed to be talking about?’
‘If you can’t see, or don’t want to see, I should be the last one to cause mischief.’
Judith saw one of David’s most characteristic lunges of the arm as he turned towards Bronwen, emphasizing a point, either lightly striking her shoulder or just missing it. In this light it was hard to be sure. But even in this light there was an instant when she could have sworn that Caspian had half made a move to knock the arm away.
‘I never did understand why you let David invite such extraordinary people here.’
‘They are old friends of ours,’ said Judith
‘Both of them?’
‘Yes, both of them.’ It came out more defiantly than she had intended.
‘Hm. Personally I find her most peculiar. A woman in her position, and in trade.’
‘You can hardly call it that, mother. She’s a very highly esteemed specialist in her own field.’
‘In trade,’ repeated Lady Brobury. ‘Well, if that’s what he fancies.…’
‘Caspian? He’s devoted to her, of course.’
‘Don’t be so naive, my dear. I’m talking about your husband, not hers. It’s time you realized: husbands go through humours of their own at a time like this.’ Lady Brobury glanced at the swell of Judith’s waistband and made a moue of disgust. ‘That young woman’s very attractive, and well she knows it. So does David. Just like his father.’
It was all irrelevant. David was her husband, father of the child waiting to be born, and they had been so happy and would be happy again. A few weeks from now there would be the baby and so many things new, and the months and years would strengthen a boy to run and romp between them, down those lawns and out over the lands which would one day be his. He would see what she saw now, but all of it—the pastures, the parkland, the quiet woods and smooth-bosomed hills—bright and sharp and fresh in the eyes of innocence.
But the onset of evening was darkening her own vision of the landscape. As well as a child’s happiness there were the other things: childish disillusionment, nursery fears. The moss creeping over the edge of the terrace took on the shape of a clawing hand. Something reached for her. If she turned her back it would scuttle closer and cut off her escape. Twilight’s last orange glow on the hillside was a dim ember that could swiftly be rekindled to scorch its way down and engulf her.
I shall be torn open, and my baby will die before it has ever lived.
Something waits down there in the shadows.
No, It’s to be a girl, and born not here but far away. I’ve already said that, and I did mean it, didn’t I?
She pictured David and herself romping down that slope with a stumbling, chuckling little shape between them. Then saw them desolate, with an aching gap between them, an emptiness which could never again be filled.
The doctor had told her that all women had absurd fears at this time. They would pass.
The swish of her movement as she went indoors might have been a signal: a maid came in with a large oil lamp, followed by a footman with a taper to light the wall lamps. When the windows had been closed and the curtains drawn, Lady Brobury warmed her hands at the fire in the grate and said with implacable maternal authority: ‘You surely know something of a man’s deplorable appetites by now. What they demand of we poor women!’
‘I don’t find my husband’s affection deplorable.’
‘I always found that kind of thing revolting, quite revolting.’ Lady Brobury grimaced again. ‘And even more despicable that they should be so without restraint, all of them. An unchaste wife would enrage them; yet they revel in unchastity wherever else it can be found.’
‘Mother, if you think for a moment that—’
‘Just like his father. The moment it was confirmed that I was enceinte, I made Mortimer keep his distance. As any respectable woman would. But while I waited obediently to do my duty and provide him with an heir, there he was, off across the fields. Riding off to this village and that one. Not just Mockblane but Lenhale and anywhere else he might gratify himself. Even with serving girls in this very house, while I was abed.’
‘You weren’t imagining all this?’
‘Not then and not now, my girl. Not like some. Where do you suppose David spends all those days now that you’re of no use to him?’
‘I don’t believe it. I won’t.’
‘Go away to Hereford and leave him, and there’ll be the nights as well as the days.’
‘Is that why’—Judith was startled by the hoarseness of her own voice—‘you’ve been so set against my going?’
‘What other reason should there be?’
There was the sound of Bronwen and the two men returning, coming in by the side door past the gunroom. Footsteps went upstairs; others approached the drawing room, and Judith recognized her husband’s tread. She braced herself to meet him.
Lady Brobury was already on her way to the door. ‘It has lasted too long,’ she said. ‘High time there was a reckoning, for all our sakes.’
She swept past David as he came in.
He looked hesitant—a gawky, nervous boy uncertain of the best way of breaking some bad news or asking a difficult question. When he kissed her on the forehead it was a tentative peck of a kiss, and he must have felt her flinch away.
At once he was blustering. ‘Look here, my love. What exactly does go on in that maze?’
‘I think I’ll have half an hour’s rest before dinner.’
‘You haven’t answered my question.’
‘There isn’t any answer. Nothing goes on in the maze that I know of.’
‘But you’re always in there.’
‘I occasionally stroll in there, just as I stroll everywhere else in the grounds.’
‘There’s something unhealthy about it.’
‘Unhealthy? In wanting a brief spell to myself now and then?’
‘Spell…yes, in every sense, that’s it, isn’t it? A spell. First mother’s drawn under it, and now you. And neither of you can tell me a word about it. Why this craving? Do the two of you go in together?’
‘Whyever should we do that?’
‘Bronwen tells me there’s something in there which is having a bad effect on you.’
‘Bronwen does, does she? What has it to do with her?’
‘You know how she and Caspian work together—the close rapport they have. I asked them to stay on a few days, to keep you company. To see what they might do to help.’
‘You think I need help?’
‘I just wanted them to be with you, to…well, to sense your worries and see if the maze or anything else offere
d any clues.’
‘To spy on me.’
‘No, Judith, that’s not true. They’re friends, old friends, we both trust them—’
‘Do we, indeed?’
‘For your own good!’ His awkward reasonableness snapped. ‘They felt something disturbing when you were in the maze. What they call emanations. I don’t understand, and they think you remember nothing of it. Do you remember…understand any of it?’
‘I understand one thing,’ she said. ‘That’s not why you asked them to stay. You thought I’d be away in Hereford, you wanted her to be here while I was well out of the way.’
‘I didn’t ask them until after—’
‘I know why,’ she said.
Then she went upstairs and sat alone until it was time to make ready for dinner.
At dinner the conversation proceeded in fits and starts, all on uncontentious topics and yet at cross-purposes. When Caspian spoke to Judith she was only half listening, straining to catch what David might be saying to Bronwen even though she knew that here, at this table, it would be of no consequence. For David’s part, whenever he caught his wife’s eye he hurriedly completed what he was saying and tried to draw her into some more general talk; whereupon she immediately retreated, leaving a chasm of silence.
Caspian said: ‘Did you see anything of Laura Hinde before you left London?’
‘Not as much as we used to,’ said Judith without interest. ‘I think there was some young man in the offing, and her father approved, so they were all fully occupied.’
She did not pursue the matter: it had occurred to her that the Hindes had been involved in one of those odd thaumaturgic investigations about which the Caspians were so discreet—or secretive—and that his apparently offhanded query might be meant to lead on to a skilled inquisition into her own private world. That, after all, was why David had postponed the Caspians’ departure. Or that, at least, was his excuse. And if it were no more than an excuse, she did not know which alternative she hated the more.
What were David and Bronwen talking about now? He was growing more animated, leaning towards her.
Judith had lost all appetite for food. Her child filled her to overflowing, there was no comfort. Laying down her knife and fork, she made a pretence of wanting to join in David’s and Bronwen’s conversation. At once it faltered. David straightened up and went on eating.
It struck Judith that Caspian, too, was watching them: watching his wife and David. The tilt of his head indicated an alertness for some faint echo—for which she, too, was listening.
Out of the hush they all began to talk at once, and floundered to a halt. Lady Brobury joined in briskly: of all of them, she was the most truly contented.
That night as David removed the gold cufflinks which Judith had given to him on their wedding day, she said: ‘You were very attentive to Bronwen at dinner.’
‘Isn’t that one of the pleasures of having guests at table—a change of atmosphere, and a change of everyday topics?’
‘I bore you.’
‘That’s ridiculous. Because one makes polite conversation—’
‘That’s the current name for it, is it?’
‘For what?’
‘Flirtation. Philandering. Deception.’
‘Judith!’
‘I’m fat and uninteresting. And who made me thus? Whereas she is a well-read and entertaining young woman from the city who is clever enough not to be weighed down by children. It’s a pleasure talking to her, a bore talking to me.’
‘Ridiculous.’ He looked at her, not directly, but sidelong through the looking glass.
‘I look ridiculous, I know that. And I sound ridiculous. You need not keep repeating it.’
His lips started to speak, then stubbornly tightened. She knew she deserved his disapproval, but that did not make it any better.
She said: ‘I’m not well enough to entertain. It’s too much to ask of me. I would like your friends to leave as soon as possible.’
‘Our friends.’
‘To leave,’ she said, ‘as soon as possible.’
‘They have already asked if they may do so,’ he said grimly.
‘You surprise me.’
‘Caspian feels that—’
‘Ah, Caspian. I can guess what Caspian feels. Like myself, he would like to see this shabby business brought to a conclusion.’
‘I don’t understand a word of all this.’ He pulled his shirt over his head. His strong, tautly bowed back with the birthmark under his left shoulder tempted her to reach out and touch him. She rejected the impulse. She would not be gullible, would not be manipulated by him or her own weakness for him. ‘But since this feeling appears to be general, I’ll drive them to Lenhale in the morning.’
‘No.’
‘One minute you say you want them to go, the next—’
‘Crampton can drive them. Or one of the grooms.’
‘Unnecessary. And discourteous.’
‘A last ride together,’ Judith heard herself sneer, ‘as the late Mr. Browning so romantically put it—is that what you must have?’
‘There’s no reasoning with you. One day we’ll talk about this, my love, and laugh at it. And not believe a word of it.’
A flicker of doubt taunted her momentarily: doubt about what she half remembered, what she ought to have made herself remember, from the maze. She brushed it off. She was not allowed to doubt. A shutter clanged down to protect her from such vagaries, and she said:
‘You won’t object to my having a bedroom to myself from tomorrow night onwards?’
‘This is absurd.’
‘On the contrary, it’s very sensible. I know I’m growing heavy and displeasing. I must be a great nuisance heaving to and fro in the night, disturbing your rest. You’ll sleep the better for my absence.’
‘I’ll do no such thing.’
‘So that’s how it will be? But if you absolutely must seek diversion elsewhere, at least it won’t be with a friend’s wife, under our own roof. Tonight, at least, I’ll make sure of your presence.’
He was incapable of answer. Only when he was turning down the lamp did he manage: ‘It’ll be only the one night, I suppose, until Margaret comes for you.’
‘Margaret?’ she said vaguely. ‘Oh, oh yes.’ In some way Margaret had ceased to be of any consequence.
It was a groom and not David who brought the trap round in the morning. Whatever awkward explanations David had forced himself to make, they did not seem to have offended Caspian: indeed, when the two men stiffly shook hands there was positive relief in Caspian’s face, a positive readiness to turn quickly away and be carried quickly from Ladygrove Manor.
David, relieved yet hurt, kept pace with the trap to the gates and stood there waving after his guests.
Judith stood beside Lady Brobury and said: ‘I shall need to have one of the maids to help Nancy today—I’m moving into a room of my own for a while.’
‘It would have been more seemly for you to have done so many months ago. I’m glad you’re taking your responsibilities more seriously.’
‘Perhaps it’s a lot of trouble, really, just for a night or two. If Margaret comes back tomorrow—’
‘Oh, Margaret. I wouldn’t count on her coming tomorrow or any other day.’
‘But she was most insistent.’
‘And now is doubtless being insistent with somebody else about something quite different. No, once Margaret was back in the town I expect she forgot all about us out here.’ Lady Brobury watched the last sign of the trap as it went below the trees, towards the bridge. ‘With those two out of the way as well, everything’s going to be so much easier.’
* * * *
They had never been apart until now. They had been in different places, had gone about their separate professions and pursued their own personal interests, but had never truly been parted one from the other: there had always been that instinctive communion. Now they sat with knees touching in the cramped space of the trap; and there
was a great void between them.
If David had been driving there would have to be some show of banal, non-committal conversation. But behind the groom’s rigidly impersonal back there was nothing they could say. They dared not reach out in intimate telepathy: each was afraid of a rebuff, both so much at odds that their talent was blunted and unusable.
This was what Caspian had so often feared. A rift between them was a danger not only to that unique talent but perhaps to the very essence of their being. It robbed them of a necessary faculty just as surely as a street accident or some serious error of judgment on the stage of Count Caspar’s theatre could rob the victim of a limb or an eye.
And it was Caspian’s fault.
Rationally and analytically he knew this. Of course his wife could not have yielded herself willingly to the ravisher. They had experienced trials and terrors just as disorientating before, surrendering themselves through other minds in order to understand and cure those minds and had come through shaken but unscathed. This case was no different. Yet here, against all his scientific and philosophical principles, he was playing the crudely jealous husband.
In the silence as they jogged their interminable way round the end of the valley to Lenhale he wondered if Bronwen was, like himself, agonizing over those recriminations which had bruised and then broken their rapport. Once there would have been no need to guess: his mind would have nudged hers and she would wordlessly have answered—unless, in mischievous mood, she chose to tease him with half-glimpses and evasions before they came lovingly in tune. Now he could not reach her.
Back in their own environment, away from Ladygrove, things must surely settle gradually back to normal. Anything else was inconceivable.
He hated turning his back on a task unfinished. At the same time he could not have exposed Bronwen again to what he had felt exulting through her body when she was, by proxy, in the arms of David Brobury.
‘Because that’s what it was,’ he had fiercely accused her when they were shut away in their room on the southeast corner: ‘unfaithfulness by proxy. No phantom, no revenant, nothing psychic: simply a depravity in your own lower consciousness, willing itself to life.’
