by Anne Perry
Charlotte knew what Tryphena was doing. For some reason Unity Bellwood’s death had wounded her more than she could contain, and her anger was against everyone else who did not share her loneliness and loss, or whose fear she could not see. Charlotte looked up at Ramsay Parmenter, sitting at the head of the table, nominally presiding, but in effect doing nothing.
She turned to Vita and saw a shadow of an old tiredness cross her features, and she wondered how many times before Vita had had to make the decisions, mark where the boundaries of behavior should be, when she had expected it of him. Perhaps that was the ultimate loneliness, not the bereavement of death but the isolation of failure to share in life, to find yourself linked to the shell of your dreams when the substance has gone.
“Well, fortunately the church will pick up our shortcomings and say all the appropriate things.” Mallory passed his soup plate to the maid who was collecting the dishes. “At least as far as it goes.”
“It goes far enough,” Dominic responded for the first time. “The rest is up to God.”
Mallory turned to him sharply. “Who gave us the sacraments of Confession and Absolution for our salvation, and Extreme Unction to fit us to accept His grace and be saved in the end, in spite of our frailties and sins.” His long, slender fingers were lying on the white linen of the tablecloth, stiff and held still with an effort.
“That’s totally immoral!” Tryphena said with disgust. “You are saying that in the end all it comes down to is magic. Say the right words and the spell will remove guilt. That is really and truly wicked!” She stared around at them each in turn. “How can any of you believe that? It’s monstrous! This is an age of reason and science. Even the Renaissance had more enlightenment than this…”
“Not the Inquisition,” Clarice pointed out, her dark brows lifted. “They burned anyone whose belief differed from theirs.”
“Not anyone,” Ramsay corrected pedantically. “Only those who had been baptized Christian and then reverted to heresy.”
“What difference does that make?” Tryphena’s voice rose in disbelief. “Are you saying that makes it all right?”
“I am correcting a misstatement,” he replied. “All we can do is the best we know, according to our faith and our understanding, and leave the rest. We shall have a funeral for Unity and observe the formalities of the Church of England. God will know that we have done what we believe right for her and will accord her His due mercy and forgiveness.”
“Forgiveness!” Now Tryphena’s voice was an octave higher and shrill with emotion. “It isn’t Unity who needs forgiving. It’s whoever killed her! How can you sit there and talk about forgiving as if she were the one in the wrong? It’s preposterous!” She pushed her chair back roughly, almost upsetting it, and stood up. “I can’t stay and listen to this. It’s a madhouse.” She swept out of the room without looking back, leaving the door swinging on its hinges and only just missing the footman coming in with the next course.
“I’m sorry,” Vita murmured, looking apologetically at Charlotte. “I am afraid she is very upset indeed. She and Unity were very close. I do hope you will excuse her.”
“Of course.” Charlotte made the only reply possible. She had endured enough family life to have sat through many such scenes. She blushed slightly now to remember a few she had created herself, more than one centered on her infatuation with Dominic. “I have suffered bereavement, and I know how very shaken you can be.”
Vita flashed her a bright, shallow smile. “Thank you. You are very generous.”
Clarice was looking at Charlotte curiously, but she did not say anything. The rest of the meal was finished with Dominic and Vita making polite remarks and Charlotte joining in in order to keep some semblance of courtesy. Ramsay agreed as was appropriate, and politely asked Charlotte’s opinion once or twice. Mallory made no attempt to join in, and Clarice kept a modest and uncharacteristic silence.
In the afternoon Charlotte accompanied Dominic as he had invited her to. They rode in the second-best carriage. It was open, but the weather was dry and breezy, and with a rug over her knees, she was very comfortable. Dominic sat beside her after first giving the coachman his instructions.
“It was very nice of you to come,” Dominic began ruefully as they set off. “I wish we had not had to meet again in these circumstances. Luncheon was dreadful. We are all so raw, it seems the slightest touch and we lose control.”
“I know,” she said softly. “I do remember …”
“Yes, of course you do.” He smiled quickly. “I’m sorry.”
“So much has happened since we last met …”
“You don’t look very different.” He swiveled to face her as he said so, regarding her carefully. “Your hair is just the same.” There was admiration in his eyes, and she felt a warmth of pleasure which embarrassed her, but she would not have forfeited it.
“Thank you,” she accepted. She smiled in spite of herself. “A good few years have gone by, and I would like to think I have become a little wiser. I have two children—”
“Two?” He was surprised. “I remember Jemima.”
“I have a son as well, two years younger. His name is Daniel. He’s six and a half.” She could not entirely keep the pride or the tenderness out of her voice. “But you look different—very. What happened? How did you meet Ramsay Parmenter?”
The humor was reflected in his eyes, but there was hurt in there as well.
“Detecting again?” he asked.
“No.” This was not entirely truthful. “Detecting” had become a habit with her, but this time she was thinking primarily about Dominic and how this tragedy would affect him. Also, she could not rid herself of the image of Ramsay Parmenter’s face as he sat at the head of his dining room table seemingly adrift in a confusion which all but drowned him. “No,” she said again. “You have changed so much, extraordinary things must have happened to you. And I can see that you are very concerned for him, not simply because of how it will affect his family but for his own inner distress. You don’t believe he pushed her intentionally, do you.” It was a statement, not really a question.
He hesitated a long time before he answered, and when he did it was slowly; he was frowning, and looking not at her but straight ahead of him at the blur of the street and the other traffic.
“It is completely unlike the man I know,” he said. “When I first met Ramsay I was at the lowest point I have ever been in my life. Every day seemed a gray desert with nothing beyond the horizon but more of the same pointless struggle.” He was nervously chewing his lower hp as if even the memory of that time still disturbed him, the knowledge that it was possible to feel such an utter inability even to hope. It was an abyss whose existence was a fear in itself. The darkness of it was naked in his eyes.
She wanted to ask why, but it would be intrusive, and she had no right to know. She wondered if it had anything to do with Sarah’s death, even though it must have been several years after. She wanted to touch him, but that also would be too personal. It was too long since they had known each other so well, and one could not bridge that gap in an instant.
“I despised myself,” he went on, still not looking at her, and speaking only loudly enough for her to hear, but not the coachman in front of them.
“For feeling despair?” she said softly. “You shouldn’t. It is not a sin. Oh, I know religious teaching says it is, but sometimes one cannot help it. Perhaps self-pity is, but not genuine despair.”
“No,” he said with a dry laugh. “I didn’t despise myself for my misery; I was miserable because I despised myself. And I had cause.” His hands tightened in his lap. She could see the leather of his gloves shining as it stretched over his knuckles. “I have no intention of telling you how worthless I had become, because I don’t wish you to think of me like that, even in the past. But I had sunk into being completely selfish, thinking of no one else, living for the moment and my immediate appetite.”
He shook his head fractionally. “Th
at is no life for any creature with the intelligence to think. It is less than human, a waste of life, a denial of the mind, the spirit, the soul, if you like. It is killing by neglect all that makes anyone worth valuing or loving. There is no kindness, no courage, no honor or grace or dignity in it.” He glanced at her, then away again. “I despised myself for being almost nothing of what I could have been. I was wasting all my possibilities. You can’t truly condemn anyone who had no chances, but you can those who had them and threw them away out of cowardice, laziness or dishonesty.”
Excuses came to her mind, but she saw in his face that he would not have found them a kindness, only a failure to comprehend, so she remained silent. They were coming into a street with shops on either side, and they would shortly reach the haberdasher.
“And Ramsay Parmenter helped you?” she prompted.
He straightened his shoulders again, a slight smile touching his lips as if the memory were sweet. “Yes. He had the charity and the strength of faith to see far more in me than I saw in myself.” He gave a jerky laugh. “He had the patience to persevere with me, to put up with my mistakes and my self-pity, my endless doubts and fears, and continually help me to the point where I believed in myself as strongly as he did. I can’t tell you how many hours and days and weeks that took, but he never gave up.”
“You didn’t take the cloth to please him, did you?” she asked, then wished the moment after that she had not. It was insulting, and she had not meant to do that. “I’m sorry …”
He turned to look at her, and he was smiling fully now. The years had suited him very well. His face was less beautiful in an obvious way, but the lines in it made it subtler, more refined. There was nothing bland or unfinished in him anymore. It was a greater beauty because it had meaning.
“You haven’t changed, have you.” He shook his head. “Still the same Charlotte, saying what you think the minute you think it.”
“I have changed!” she defended herself instantly. “I do it far less often. I can really be both tactful and devious, if it is called for. And I can say nothing and listen very well.”
“And not voice your own opinion when you feel passionately about stupidity or injustice or hypocrisy?” he asked with his eyebrows arched. “Or laugh at all the wrong times? Please don’t say so. I don’t want the world I know to have changed all that much simply because I have taken to the ministry. Some things should stay the same … always.”
“You are making fun of me, and we are at the haberdasher’s,” she said cheerfully, a little bubble of warmth inside her. “Would you like me to go in and purchase the ribbon and the veiling?”
“I should be greatly obliged.” He pulled several shillings from his pocket and held them out to her. “Thank you.”
She returned nearly fifteen minutes later, the footman handed her up, and she gave Dominic the package and the change. The carriage moved forward.
“No,” he answered the original question. “I did not join the ministry to please Ramsay. It would have been unworthy of him, or of me, and it certainly would have been of little use to the parishioners I would one day serve.”
“I know,” she said contritely. “I’m sorry I asked. I was afraid for you because it would be such an easy thing to do. We all feel gratitude an intense weight and want to repay. It is natural, and what better honor than to try to be like him? Haven’t we all done right things for wrong reasons at one time or another?”
“Oh, yes!” he agreed. “And wrong things for what we thought were right reasons. But I joined the ministry because I believe in all it teaches, and it is what I want to do with my life. Not out of gratitude to anyone, or as a refuge from the past or from failure, but because I love it. I have faith in its meaning and its purpose.” His voice was strong when he said it; there was no hesitation.
“Good,” she said quietly. “You had no need to tell me, but I am very glad you did. I am happy for you …”
“If you care for me in the slightest, then you should be—” He stopped and blushed hotly. “I … I didn’t mean …”
She laughed outright, even though her own cheeks were a little hot. “I know you didn’t! And, yes, of course I care for you. I have long considered you a friend as well as a brother-in-law. I am truly pleased you have found yourself.”
He sighed. “Don’t be too satisfied. I don’t seem to be any help whatever to poor Ramsay. What use is my faith if I can’t help another person, the one who gave me so much of what I have?” The frown was back between his brows. “Why am I so empty when it comes to offering him back some of all that he gave me? Why can’t I think of the right words? He did it for me!”
“Maybe there are no right words,” she replied, searching to say what she meant and yet not distress him, or lose in him the strength or the pity she admired.
The carriage came to a stop as they reached the crossroads. An open landau passed in front of them, a group of fashionable young ladies giggling and pretending not to stare at Dominic. They failed miserably. One of them was twisted around in her seat as they passed. Dominic himself seemed unaware of the stir he had caused. Last time she saw him he would not have been.
“Then there is a right time and a right gesture,” he argued urgently. “There is something I could do! He never gave up with me, and believe me, it would have been extremely easy. I was obstinate, argumentative, angry with myself and with him for wanting me to succeed and for believing that I could. It was such hard work! I resented him for making me do it, for making me believe there was a purpose in trying.”
“Did you want to be helped?” she asked.
He looked at her. “Are you saying Ramsay does not want to be?”
“I don’t know. Do you?”
His eyes widened, very dark.
“You are asking as if I think he murdered Unity.”
That was true. “Do you?” she pressed. “Why would he? Was she really so dangerous to his peace of mind? How can one doubter shake a true faith?” She searched his face. “Or is that not what it is about? Was she beautiful in any way, not necessarily conventionally?”
“She was …” A shadow crossed his eyes. Something in him ceased to be as open as it had, and she felt it immediately, a withdrawing from the intimacy of the moment before. “She was very full of … vitality, life …” He was seeking the right words. “It’s hard to think of her being dead.” He sounded surprised as he said it. “I suppose I don’t fully believe it yet. It will take a while … weeks, perhaps. Part of me expects her to come back tomorrow and give her opinion on all this, tell us what it means and what we should be doing.” He smiled fleetingly; there was humor in it, and a touch of bitterness. “She always had opinions.”
“And always gave them?” she asked.
“Oh yes!”
She looked at him steadily, trying to read his expression from his profile as he stared down at the leatherwork and the railing at the front of the carriage. She did not know whether he had liked Unity Bellwood or not. One moment there seemed a smoothness in his face, almost a relief she was gone, as though her death had taken some weight from him; then it changed to the sadness, the oppression one would have expected at the closeness of violent death. Once she caught a self-mockery about his mouth, but there was no explanation for it in his words.
“Did you work with her, too?” she asked, meaning had he liked her, but afraid to ask so directly. She had no right to probe his feelings. Their friendship was tenuous, more a thing of length of time than a depth of understanding or trust. They had many shared experiences, grief and terror which they both felt. Looking back on it now, it seemed the same, but at the time they had been very different, very separate, aware then only of aloneness.
“No,” he answered, still with his eyes forward, as if he were concerned where they were going. “It was Ramsay’s personal scholarship she was involved in. I had nothing to do with that. I expect I shall be posted to a church somewhere else quite soon. As it is for Mallory, my situation here is only tem
porary.”
She had a feeling he was leaving unsaid something far more important than the factual details he spoke about.
“But you must still have seen her at table and in the evenings, times when they did not work,” she pointed out. “You must know something of her and of what he felt for her.…” She was pressing him, but she was too anxious not to.
“Yes, of course,” he agreed, pulling the rug across her where it had slipped away. “As well as one knows anybody whom one … with whom one shares no common perception or belief. It all seems such a waste. We shall have to try to make sense of it for the others. I suppose that is my job … to make sense of pain and confusion, and people doing things which seem ugly beyond all possible explanation. Are you warm enough?”
“Yes, thank you.” Her comfort did not matter in the slightest; she was hardly aware of it.
“It takes a great deal of courage,” she said sincerely. For the first time since he had come to Cater Street courting Sarah, over fourteen years ago, she felt an admiration for him which was based on the man he was, not the beauty of his face. This time there was no mirage, no preoccupation with her own dreams or her needs for him to fulfill. She found herself smiling. “If I can help, please allow me.”
He swiveled to face her. “Of course.” He put his hand on hers in a momentary gesture of warmth. “I wish I knew how. I’m guessing it step by step myself.”
The carriage stopped. They had reached the undertaker’s establishment, and there were formalities to arrange, times, places, choices to be made. He alighted and offered her his hand.
Isadora Underhill watched as her husband paced the floor of the withdrawing room, back and forth, every so often running his fingers through his thinning hair. She was used to his being preoccupied with anxieties of one sort or another. He was a little older than she, and bishop of a diocese where a great many influential people lived. There was always some sort of crisis which commanded his attention. Many duties were required both of him and of his wife, but when she was not needed she had learned to occupy herself in other pursuits both with people and on her own. She had great pleasure in reading, especially about the lives of men and women in other lands or of other times. During the spring and summer she spent many hours in the garden, doing more of the physical work than her husband thought suitable. But she had entered into a tacit conspiracy with the gardener that he would solemnly take credit for much that was actually her work if the bishop should happen to notice and comment, which was very infrequently. He did not know a hollyhock from a camellia, or have any but the faintest notion of what care went into the beauty which surrounded him.
