Distant choices, p.51
Distant Choices, page 51
‘Yes,’ she said, moving two short steps forward, as much as had ever been needed to cover the distance between them. ‘It is love, Quentin.’
And although it may only have entered the forefront of her mind a day ago, a week ago perhaps, she knew it had been living and growing in her heart for years. Not the passionate love of a stranger but the commitment, both natural and total, to a man who could be the other half of herself.
Chapter Nineteen
She lay awake on her herb-pillow for a long time that night, aware of Kate and Francis below her in the garden, their voices rising intermittently for what seemed several hours after midnight, aware even of the dog heavily patrolling the staircase, throwing himself down with a wheezing thud, every now and then, outside her bedroom door, guarding her, she supposed, from the man who remained downstairs, even though he was occupied with another woman, and from the man who had gone away immediately after bringing her down from Martindale but who – in that jealous canine opinion – might always come back again.
They had remained under the yew tree for perhaps half an hour, an act of physical communion too deep for mere sensuality which could be aroused, after all, by so many men, so many women, with whom one had no need to be in love; beginning when she had walked into his arms and ending, after an embrace any observer would have thought quite innocent, with a kiss to which her lips and her heart had opened with happy ease, as if to open herself to him had, through long years of serene loving, become wholly natural.
They had then walked back down the lower slope of Hallin Fell to the lake, darkening with autumn sunset, his arm around her as they bent beneath the willow trees and alders along the water’s edge, emerging to the field path to her garden gate where he had left her, saying only that he would come again tomorrow.
She had gone inside, merely smiling at Kate and Francis as she passed them and, having directed the housemaid she had borrowed for the day from the Buck Inn as to the correct clearing away of the birthday luncheon, had taken her dog for a long ramble in the dark along stony paths of tufted grass and ever-present, suddenly emerging water over which she had leapt without need for thought or even too much vision, her mind still open to Quentin, as her arms had opened to him earlier in the yew tree cave of Martindale; as open as her whole body which even though he had never entered it, already knew him with all the impulses of a deep-rooted, tender, wholly welcoming desire.
A revelation she found disturbing mainly because it did not even surprise her as it should have done, her acquaintance with desire so far throughout her womanhood having been mild and good-mannered rather than urgent, troubling her at first by its very absence and then progressing – not far enough, she readily admitted – to a rational, pleasant, but rather less than essential part of marriage. She had never desired any man in his absence, had burned and then grieved far more emotionally than physically for Francis Ashington, had responded to Garron’s caresses with no more than good-will and good hope to begin with, leading to sensual pleasures which she had found thrilling and moving from time to time, occasionally glorious, but never addictive. She had never refused her husband, even when the headache her mother had advised her to manufacture had been quite genuine. She had responded, sometimes with real enthusiasm, sometimes with a pretence motivated by affection – by an honest wish that he should have satisfaction even when she did not – to every one of his sexual moods and methods. Yet, on the morning of his every departure, she had put the need for such excitements away as easily as the many other domestic needs his presence created, not even a dream of erotic delight much less any waking languors or amorous imaginings disturbing her until he came home again.
Her desire had always been conditional, entirely dependent on the presence of a far more urgent male desire to direct and stimulate it. She had believed herself capable of nothing more extreme. But now, striding along the roots of Swarth Fell, leaping the puddles, neither the chill night air nor the stern exercise could still the longing at the pit of her stomach, the length and depth of her limbs for Quentin’s hand and mouth upon them, a clamorous urgency for the splendours and sufferings – following fast upon each other, it seemed – of her suddenly released sensuality which she had never before understood.
She understood them now, sleep at first eluding her on her return to the cottage and then leading her, as she had known it would, into dreams of love’s consummation, the delicate miracle of heart and mind and orgasm blending together as, in her, they had never yet blended, the elements of trust and honest liking, of fun and faith, the fierce heights of emotion and the surfaces of happy, everyday belonging entering her body as Quentin entered it repeatedly through the night, the seeds of all these diverse wonders flowing with his seed inside her and mingling there essentially; waking her early and reluctantly to a cool dawn, a grey hint of rain in the sky, her dog still whimpering outside her door, the cats to be let out and given their breakfast, vegetables to be scraped and cleaned for luncheon, fires – by the look of that steel-coloured sky – to be lit.
Yet these normally pressing everyday tasks failed to move her this morning, fading into the category of things to be left for later, things unlikely to tilt the earth on its axis in any case, compared to her need to lie back on her pillows, permitting no nonsensical leaping of her heart or the newly liberated pulse of her sensuality to distract her and think, clearly this time, even chastely if she could, about Quentin. An honest intention quickly defeated by the impression of his love covering her against the chill of this possibly difficult morning with a blanket as warm as fur and as fine and subtle as silk; as Quentin himself was both subtle and enduring. At every perilous or painful corner of her life he had stood beside her, discreetly, often at an acceptable social distance, but there, nevertheless, to support her at need, to show her, if only by hints or remarks she might have thought, at the time, to be merely ‘clever’, which way it seemed best to go. On the morning of Kate’s elopement she had turned to him by instinct, knowing – without knowing how she knew – that he would not let her down. He had guided her through the day of her mother’s death and the days thereafter as no one else could have done, bringing Kate – with an effort she could well imagine – to her side. When her chaste, well-ordered life had collapsed under false accusation his name, his face, had been the only ones to enter her mind.
She had wanted to go to him then just as she did now, the wanting alarming her only because it still seemed so wholly natural, so right, and so inevitable that had he now opened her door she would have felt a familiar, unmixed joy, a sense of who else had a better right, or any right at all to enter her bedroom, although ten minutes or so later it was Kate who came in, wrapped in her exotic Oriental silk, her hair unbrushed, her feet bare, two mugs of cinnamon chocolate in her hands and no intention at all of allowing the dog to follow her.
‘Get out,’ she said, her voice never gentle at seven o’clock of any morning. ‘You’re a male. Go off and rape some poor pedigree greyhound somewhere.’
‘My word –’ Oriel, at both her dog and her sister, was smiling. ‘What have you against well-brought-up young bitches this morning?’
‘No more than usual.’ Sitting down on the edge of the bed, by no means carefully, she handed Oriel a mug with cream, pink-tipped roses painted all over it. ‘Breakfast, madame.’
‘My goodness – how kind.’
‘Not really. An act of sheer desperation, love. Brought on by the gruntings of that damned dog, and those cats scratching all over the place – including my door.’
Smiling, Oriel sipped her chocolate, finding it, as she politely murmured, not bad for Kate.
‘Thank you, kindly. I got your paper and sticks all ready laid out for the parlour fire too, which I thought very good of me. But just how to light it I’m not certain. One never had to, you see, in France and Italy. And in Germany I always stayed with the Kesslers who are so good to their servants that they have a great many. Thank goodness the kitchen fire kept going all night.’
Oriel raised her mug of hot chocolate in a solemn toast to Kate’s domesticity. ‘You mean the fire under the stove, I expect.’
‘I do. Or you’d have been drinking cold milk, my girl, or spring water. Are you well this morning, Oriel? It seems to have come rather early for me.’
‘You stayed up late, I expect, doing – whatever seemed good to you.’
‘Ah yes.’ Jumping to her feet, her own cup luckily half-empty, she crossed to the window-seat and, drawing her knees up to her chin, grinned companionably at the speculating Oriel. ‘Quite so, Mrs Keith. And should you be expecting to find Francis when you go downstairs trying to look as if he had just called in for breakfast, then I shall have to disappoint you.’
‘My dear Mrs Ashington,’ murmured Oriel, ‘what could I possibly have to say if I did? Since he is your husband and this house – remember – does belong to him.’
‘Oh no – no, no,’ Kate clicked her tongue and shook her head. ‘That’s just the legality of it. And what can that mean to us? It’s reality we’re dealing with. And by that reckoning the house is yours and Francis and I are definitely not a married couple. If I’d shared a bed with him last night I’d have been feeling very much a mistress this morning, I can tell you.’
‘You didn’t then?’
Her arms around her knees, her black and gold kimono slipping aside to reveal thin, amber legs with neat ankles, Kate rocked herself up and down for a moment in a blithe fit of laughter. ‘I did not. I sent him away. And I feel certain it never once entered his head to say, “I am your husband, my good woman. Take your clothes off at once …”‘
‘Kate – I hardly think he would.’
‘Oriel – you don’t realize how coquettish I was down there, in the garden – until what must have been the middle of the night … Heavens, I set out to tempt him as far as I could and when I got there, to the point that comes just before commitment, I drew back exactly as if we’d just met and it was too soon. And he did the same, knowing better than to rush a woman he’s just met, and being all whimsical and sweet and teasing about it. A very polished performance I thought. Just as if I’d been one of those London ladies who dash over to see him all the time from Merton Abbey. He’s quite a flirt, isn’t he? I suppose he always was. Although never with me.’
Finishing her chocolate Oriel put her cup down carefully on her bedside table and, smiling, shook her head. ‘Is it any wonder? You were eighteen and thought he was Adonis.’
‘Exactly.’ Kate hugged her knees again, pressing her cheek against them. ‘Poor man. So impossible to live up to. And so unlike him, as it turns out. I didn’t know him at all when I went away. You’re quite right. I thought he was Adonis coupled with – well, yes, the side of my father you may never have thought particularly charming, but which could have charmed me, I must confess, if he’d ever taken the trouble. That was the image of Francis I took away with me. And although I realized – fairly quickly – that he wasn’t Adonis because nobody is, and he wasn’t that idealized version of my father either – well, that was as much as I could honestly say about him for certain.’
‘In fact you’d lost your Adonis Stangway.’
They laughed together. ‘So I had. Not that it worried me. I soon lost the taste – or the need – for mythical heroes.’
‘And now?’
She wrinkled her nose. ‘I came back to meet him as a stranger. I knew I’d have to meet him because of the money and the child, and because of my conscience. I didn’t know what kind of man he’d turn out to be. Dull, I may have thought, and getting somewhat pompous as squires do. Willing to split the money with me, perhaps, but not wanting me near his daughter. Possibly – in fact quite likely – with another woman he didn’t want me to upset either. I was quite prepared for that. But to tell you the truth, what I didn’t expect was to find him so attractive.’
‘Oh dear,’ murmured Oriel, ‘dear me …’
‘You might well say so. Which is what made me take an extra glass or two of champagne last night and end up so flirtatious. Heavens – such fun. And that’s the last thing – surely – we ought to have been having, a couple with all the agony and desertion and sheer dreadfulness there’s been between us? Fun? I was quite ready, if he had another great lady-love, to go abroad and pretend to be dead – so long as he promised to keep up my income … Then he could have pretended to be married to her and move her into the manor. Don’t laugh. Such arrangements work very well so long as everybody involved goes on properly pretending. It’s only to satisfy the “friends and neighbours” – like most of the things those of us in “good society” think we have to do.’
‘Did you mention it to Francis?’
‘Yes. He suggested I might like to change my name and use a foreign accent and move back as his mistress myself. It sounded very amusing last night, I expect, sitting under your willow tree in the moonlight. Flirtation is one of my very favourite things, so long as one conducts it properly. By which I mean verbally, and cleverly …’
‘Of course.’
‘Yes, Oriel. I suppose Quentin is accomplished in that direction too.’
‘Ah well. Are we going to talk about Quentin now?’
Oddly it neither worried nor surprised her.
‘We are. That’s what I really came for.’ And coming back to sit on Oriel’s bed she said, very clearly, ‘Did he tell you he loves you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did you know?’
‘I did when he told me.’
‘And you love him?’
‘Yes. I love him.’
‘Oh Oriel – Oriel – I thought so.’
‘Don’t worry, Kate. I also know he wants to be a famous Member of Parliament and have a place in somebody’s government – I don’t think he much minds whose – and make a lot of money and have influence and prestige, so that he can do what he has to do for his family and a lot for himself. I know he’s worth the influence and prestige. The money goes without saying.’
Taking one of Oriel’s hands in both hers Kate squeezed it gently. ‘Yes, Oriel. I know all those things about him myself. You’re quite right. I also know he wants you too. I’ve known it for ages. He used to tell me about it very nearly every time he came to see me in France.’
‘Did he?’ It pleased her to imagine it.
‘Oh yes. So I know for certain what you mean to him. But Oriel – listen – you’re not the reason he’s never married. If he’d met a woman capable of financing his way into politics, and upwards towards that influence and prestige you were talking about – and which we both know he’s capable of – then he’d have taken her, Oriel …’
Smiling, she returned the pressure of Kate’s hand. ‘Darling, I know – I know. That’s Quentin. It doesn’t shock me. It doesn’t make any difference, either, to what there is between us. No matter what we actually do about it in the end.’
‘Oriel, just do the right thing, that’s all.’
‘For me? Or for both of us?’
‘Oh Lord.’ Kate shook her head, biting her lip quite hard. ‘Both – if you can. If not, then you. It has to be. Although he means a great deal to me too.’
‘Thank you, Kate.’
Kate once more shook her head. ‘You know you’ll have to go abroad if you decide to live together, don’t you?’
‘I do. I also know he’d be unlikely to get any government appointments there.’
‘And you know if you stayed in England as his mistress you’d be forever in the shadows of his life – waiting up here while he made his name in London, or wherever he thought likely – and then when you’re both forty or fifty he could still marry some young heiress, if he’d made his name well enough, and leave you in this cottage, with your cats and that abominable dog – and possibly me.’
They were both laughing, on the very edge of tears, love and the need to defend each other, the need to go on crusade for the other’s cause and be ready, with anything that might bring comfort, if it failed, rushing through the air between them, even reaching the dog, still at his post behind the door, who – seeing no reason why anyone else should usurp his readiness to defend – tried to growl it down.
‘I know,’ promised Oriel. ‘I know. I’ll take care. Don’t worry.’
‘Worry?’ Biting off a sharp laugh Kate shrugged her shoulders. ‘Good old worry. That’s what I’m made of, love. Aren’t you? We’re women, after all, and how many of us manage to escape it? So I’d better say now what I’ve been sent to tell you …’
‘Sent? By Quentin?’
‘Of course. You do know him well, I’m glad to see. All right. He gave me a message for you, yesterday – round about the time he told me to make some excuse to go upstairs and keep out of the way for a while. You remember the apple sauce on my sleeve?’
‘Yes. So he told you to tell me …?’
‘All right, Oriel. Here it is. He came up on the train from Lancaster to Penrith yesterday with your husband. Quite by chance, of course. Your husband came up to him and said he wanted to see you. Quentin explained your house would be full of guests for the next few days but your husband said he didn’t want to come here in any case. He’s staying at the George in Penrith and the message is that he’ll ride over here to the Buck Inn at ten o’clock this morning and wait half an hour. If you decide not to walk over and see him, then he’ll ride back to Penrith. Quentin didn’t say whether or not he thought you ought to go, but I expect he does. He asked me to wait until he’d gone back to wherever he’s staying – Askham, isn’t it? – before I told you. I don’t know why.’
