A Marriage of Convenience (23 page)

‘Stop being so condescending.’

He threw back his head as if appealing to heaven to justify him.

‘
You
try not to be, with people who insist on licking your boots without giving you time to stop them. Deference breeds
condescension
as often as the other way round.’ He frowned and gave the fire a few vicious stabs with the poker. ‘The worst of all the grinning and fawning is that really they’d love to see us in the mud.’

A moment before, his arrogance had chilled her, but now the sight of his sad proud face filled her with remorse. Of course he would feel bound to mock and treat as insignificant the world he intended to give up for her.

‘Aren’t you giving them their chance by bringing me here? Feeding their hate?’ He gazed into her troubled eyes and ran his fingers down the line of her cheek. ‘Please answer me,’ she murmured.

‘What they feed on is their affair. I owe them no duty.’ He paused and moved away impatiently. ‘So they can have their balls and Drawing-rooms, I went to Killarney …’ With a sudden movement he drew back a curtain. ‘Come here.’ Standing beside him she looked down into the street and saw a silent crowd of ragged men and boys waiting in the rain, watching the departing carriages and the silks and knee-breeches. He let the curtain fall back into place. Without moving, he said softly: ‘Why aren’t they at home knitting socks or mending their roofs? I don’t know. Because their landlords are abroad, must they live with their pigs and leave a dunghill by the door? They could build a shed and dig a drain … they’re generous … there’s scarcely any pitch of misery they’ve not endured; they love their children as few people do; they murder without mercy or remorse, and often the very landlords who tried to improve their lives. I don’t like or understand them.’ He smiled bitterly. ‘You saw them down there. How dare they for the sake of a little poverty go out begging and interrupt gentlefolks in their pleasure?’ He sat down next to her on an ottoman and stared at the fire. ‘When I’m sent out to fight the likes of them…’ he gestured in the direction of the window, ‘to protect that flummery at the Castle, I tell you I’d rather …’ he checked himself with a deep breath and went on more calmly: ‘I’d rather face any ignominy than be dictated to by such people.’

‘You mustn’t ever be,’ she whispered fiercely, ‘never, my love.’

‘I won’t be,’ he replied in a small hard voice. ‘I’m getting out.’

‘Selling your commission?’ she murmured faintly, with a depth of dismay that astonished him.

‘It’s not the end of the world. I knew it ages ago. Ireland only makes it easier.’

‘Don’t lie to me,’ she begged him. ‘I know I cost you Esmond’s help.’

‘I lost it for myself.’

‘No,’ she cried, ‘if you’d promised to give me up, he would have …’

‘You think I should have pleaded with him?’ he asked bitterly.

‘Didn’t you sell Markenfield to save your career? I know what it means to you.’ She looked at him fearfully. ‘Don’t give up anything because of me. Don’t hold that over me.’

‘I give you my word it would have happened anyway.’ Her distress had started to alarm him. She had come horrifyingly close to saying that he ought to abandon her and make his peace with Esmond. He slipped an arm round her waist and said calmly: ‘I’ve told you the truth and you must believe it.’

She turned away and shook her head back and forth.

‘I don’t know what I believe, Clinton.’

‘Listen,’ he murmured intently, ‘you can help me.’

Her obvious fear as she swung round to face him, made him catch his breath.

‘I only meant that you could soften the blow,’ he added quickly.

‘In what way?’ she faltered.

‘Why are you so pale?’

He tried to turn her face to him, but she drew back.

‘How can I help you?’ she asked beseechingly, as if begging him to end some unendurable suspense. As though a bolt had been shot back in his brain, he sensed that she had thought him about to propose and had been in terror of it.

‘By coming to the barracks,’ he replied flatly. ‘Watch church parade, riding school … It would be easier for me to leave if you’d seen it all.’

‘Of course I’ll come,’ she returned with an eagerness that appalled him, since it spoke so clearly of her relief that he had meant no more than this. He sat next to her mutely staring, clasping his hands until he could trust himself not to show his bitterness. At first all he wanted was to speak the words and be done with it. Like a man in a rage set to unravel a knotted rope, he longed to tear it free by force. Then slowly, like a pulse of lost feeling, resolution grew in him. He had time to wait his moment, and if that was his only asset, he would not throw it away. Whatever her reservations about marriage, he did not doubt that she loved him. Should he
ultimately succeed in changing her mind, it would not be the first time love had worked such a change.

She had been looking at him with deep concern.

‘What will you do,’ she asked, ‘when you’ve left the army?’

He shrugged his shoulders and smiled, determined to lift the gloom.

‘What would
you
do if you left the theatre?’

‘Eat precious little.’ She stroked his hair fondly. ‘You’re very generous to think our positions comparable.’ She smiled. ‘If they really were, I probably wouldn’t love you.’

‘Do I always make my rank so obvious? In China the mandarins have special little buttons and drive different coloured carts.’

‘That’s not the point at all,’ she laughed with the low slightly hoarse note he loved. ‘You don’t need the buttons. You are what you are. Nothing could be more plain. Of course rank means nothing to you. People only get excited over what they haven’t got.’

He took her wrist firmly, as if threatening to turn it.

‘Tell me you love me only for myself.’

‘I can’t tell you that. Your rank is part of you. Acting’s part of me.’ She looked at him with gentle mockery. ‘Do you love me because I’m an actress?’

Without warning he swung her to her feet and lifted her up until her head nearly touched the ceiling. Taking no notice of her cries to be put down, he shouted up to her:

‘I love you in spite of what you are.’

‘I’m not an acrobat,’ she implored, as he raised her still higher, holding her only by the knees.

‘I have you in my power.’

‘Monster!’

‘Angel!’

Moving his hands to her waist, he tipped her upside down; her skirts and petticoats muffling her cries. When he put her down, they faced one another breathing hard; she trying to look angry, he doing his best to seem contrite, until they both burst into laughter that died as suddenly as a squall of wind, leaving them dazed. With the softness of an almost indiscernible caress he laid his hand against her flushed cheek. The strain and tension she had felt ebbed from her in a slow sigh of relaxation as she leant against him. The men with their little swords, the beggars in the rain, and all her fears became no more than driftwood in the sweep of an incoming tide. At the first touch of his lips, she burrowed deeper into his shoulder, pressing against him. No words now; only incredulity that they had ever spoken when there could be this urgency of wanting.

Yet for Clinton there was no such loss of cares. Her earlier
reaction, confirming the fears her letter had started, convinced him that unless he could bind her by a coup de main before their long separation began, he would lose her irretrievably. The ease with which she yielded her body to him, was scant comfort when he thought how soon she would be returning to the stage. He would have little time to work in; perhaps too little.

Early next morning when the mist and fog still hung in the streets, Clinton left St Stephen’s Green and headed down York Street in the direction of the Liberties. He had told Theresa that he had to spend the morning presiding at battalion orderly room, which was in part true, since he would be on duty there after eleven. But now it was barely nine and he was in a part of town nowhere near his barracks.

Long into the night, Clinton had weighed the options open to him, and it had occurred to him that even if he persuaded her to accept his proposal, her immediate departure and the long delay dictated by her career would provide ample opportunity for her present doubts to reassert themselves. If she were to have a great success with Beatrice, if Louise were to take against him before a wedding could be arranged, if Theresa should realise that his leaving the army would indeed be brought about by the loss of Esmond’s assistance—then any one of these possibilities might persuade her to go back on her word. And the more he had thought about these problems, the more he had come to believe that his only sure way of keeping her was to marry her before she left Ireland. Even if he got over the highest hurdle of all and won her consent, there would be a daunting number of other obstacles to clear; and they would have to be dealt with first.

Not the least of these was the need for the ceremony to be kept secret. Since Clinton was certain that his uncle would disinherit him if he learned about the marriage, the utmost discretion would be essential. Because Theresa was a Catholic, and her church did not recognise civil contracts, a priest would have to be found, willing to condone a secret marriage. Though Clinton remembered his mother’s claim that marriages between Papists and Protestants were invalid if celebrated in Ireland by Catholic priests, he found it hard to believe that such archaic laws could still be in force. To the best of his recollection, the events of his mother’s story had taken place upwards of twenty years ago. What alarmed him more was a strong premonition that most priests—for no better reason than straightforward
religious bigotry—would be extremely reluctant to marry any man or woman who had not been baptised a Catholic. Though he had no intention of taking one priest’s refusal as final, Clinton was still acutely nervous about the outcome of his first encounter.

Skirting the grey walls of St Patrick’s Cathedral, he crossed the squalid ghetto of Patrick’s Close with its booths and rag stalls spilling out across the sloping street. Here, old women, mothers with babies, and barefooted boys picked their way through piles of soiled bedding, blackened cooking pots and cracked china, as though searching for hidden treasure. His mind fixed on other things, Clinton eyed them absently, only briefly perplexed that such objects could be of service to anyone.

Looking to right and left down the narrow side streets off the Coombe, Clinton at last saw a church and rapidly made his way to the door. At the far end of the nave near the altar a single pale light was glowing; closer at hand, clusters of candles lit a crudely painted statue of the Virgin. Over the chancel arch hung a massive crucifix, Christ’s twisted body running with blood as luridly red as the heart on the Virgin’s breast. A young woman dipped her fingers in the holy water, crossed herself and genuflected before moving to a pew. Without sharing his uncle’s prejudices against Catholics, the rituals were alien to Clinton and struck him as extravagant and faintly distasteful. The reverential mutterings of the handful of black shawled figures increased his unease.

A woman with a broom came out of a small door in the wall to the right of the sanctuary. Clinton asked her in a low voice where he could find the priest.

‘In the presbytery,’ she replied brusquely, moving away to brush the carpet within the altar rails. Not knowing whether the
presbytery
was the priest’s house or some room within the church like the vestry or sacristy, he pursued her and asked her to explain.

‘He’ll be here soon enough,’ was the curt reply.

Ten long minutes passed, and then, through the door used by the cleaning woman, came the priest. He was a small man with a bald skull and grey comb-like fringes of hair above his ears. Beneath unruly eyebrows, his deepset eyes were intelligent but strangely impassive. Clinton rose at once.

‘May I speak to you, father?’ The priest inclined his head in silent encouragement. ‘I want to marry,’ murmured Clinton, looking at the stout-soled shoes sticking out beneath the frayed hem of the priest’s soutane. He continued softly: ‘The wedding must be kept from my family.’

‘Banns must be read, my son.’

‘Is there no way to avoid that?’

‘In certain circumstances.’ He looked at Clinton closely. ‘You’re not of this parish?’

‘Nor of any other.’

‘Why is that?’

‘I’m a soldier.’

The priest, who was holding a heavy bunch of keys, moved them from hand to hand, as if weighing them in his palms.

‘You attend mass wherever you’re stationed?’

‘I’m not a religious man.’

The priest looked at him with the same immobility of expression; the merest hint of disparagement and pity momentarily apparent in a slight movement of his hands.

‘But you’re a Catholic?’

The hint of questioning was so faint that Clinton for a second thought the remark was simply one of reproach. He gazed at the row of cloth-covered buttons down the front of the soutane, then looked up and knew from the man’s watchful and expectant face that he would have to give a direct answer. His heart was beating faster.

‘I have no religion,’ he whispered, meeting a suddenly cold and unsympathetic gaze.

The woman in the sanctuary was still vigorously sweeping. The muttering of prayers was very faint now, as though all ears in the church were attentive to this muted conversation between priest and petitioner.

‘Were you baptised a Catholic?’ Clinton shook his head. ‘Were you baptised into any other church?’

‘I was christened but not confirmed. I’m no Protestant.’

The priest looked at him steadily, as if some unpleasant doubt had finally been resolved. He seemed relieved.

‘There’s no priest will marry you.’

‘An infant has no choice in baptism. I’ve never been an Anglican communicant.’

‘That makes no kind of difference at all. You’re a Protestant in my eyes. Apostasy from your church makes no odds.’ He paused and thrust the keys into the deep pocket of his cassock. Masking his anger and cruel disappointment, Clinton said calmly:

‘The woman’s a Catholic; would you have her live sinfully and her children grow up heathens?’

In the dim light, Clinton thought he caught a shadow of doubt in the priest’s downcast eyes. He said rapidly:

‘If you wish to be received into the church and place yourself under instruction …’ Seeing the almost imperceptible negative
movement of Clinton’s head, he broke off and began to move towards the sanctuary rails.

‘Wait, father. If I become a Catholic, what would I have to do to have the banns waived?’

The man moved with a gesture of impatience.

‘Wait till you’ve been received, my son.’

He turned his back with finality and opened the wooden gate in the rails.

An hour later, in the colonel’s absence, Clinton, as adjutant, was presiding at morning battalion orderly room. From the square he heard the sergeant-major’s commands; the usual wearisome routine.

‘Escort and prisoners, halt! Front turn! Fall in the evidences. First man cap off! Escort and prisoners, right turn … left wheel … quick march. Left, right, left, right.’

Clinton looked up from the baize-covered table as the first man halted inside the door between the fixed bayonets of the escort. As the orderly officer handed Clinton the charge sheet, the sergeant-major barked out:

‘Number 432 Trooper Williams, C Troop. Neglect of duty when orderly man and making an improper reply to a non-commissioned officer, Corporal Harrison. State your evidence, corporal.’

While Clinton listened with half an ear to why and in what manner the trooper had refused to clean a ration tin, he was thinking of quite different words spoken in the dim interior of a church and what they meant to him. The corporal was rambling to the end of his evidence.

‘… and he said if it wasn’t clean enough for me, sir, I could do the other thing.’

‘Which was what?’ asked Clinton gravely.

‘It was obscene, sir.’

‘His exact words, please, corporal.’

‘Stuff it up your arse, you cock-eyed bastard, sir.’

Clinton nodded and raised an eyebrow.

‘Your vision is normal, corporal?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And you are legitimate?’

‘Yes, sir.’

Clinton looked at the prisoner.

‘Do you wish to be tried by court-martial or be dealt with by me? I give you the choice because you’d been drinking.’

‘By you, sir.’

‘Your remark was slanderous and you disobeyed an order personally given by a superior.’ He paused. ‘Two months’ imprisonment
with hard labour and ten days confined to barracks after that. March out.’

The seven other cases he dealt with at a similar pace, handing out the routine punishments for the usual crimes. Once he had found it hard not to smile sometimes during the reading of the charges, but now he could hear anything without moving a muscle. When the others had gone, Dick Lambert, that week’s orderly officer, grinned at him.

‘Weren’t you a bit soft with the first one?’

‘Justice with mercy, Dick.’ He frowned and unhitched his sword slings from the side of his chair. ‘Do you love Kate?’ he asked abruptly.

Lambert looked at him in astonishment and then laughed.

‘I sometimes think so.’

Dick had lived with his shop-girl mistress for two years in England, and on coming to Dublin had immediately taken a villa for her a few miles south of the town at Blackrock. Clinton stood up and sighed.

‘What’d you do if Kate wanted to come here? Asked to see a parade or riding school?’

‘Tell her not to be a bloody idiot.’

‘It must be hard for her.’

Lambert looked puzzled.

‘You been drinking, Clinton? If I brought her here, what the hell would Lady Spencer say to Mrs Hanbury? Talk about being cut in the mess … I’d be hacked to bits. Old Spencer would bust a blood vessel.’

‘Does she mind being hidden away?’

‘What the hell’s the alternative? When in Rome, don’t you know …?’

Clinton smiled briefly and moved to the door.

‘Rules of the game,’ he murmured lightly and walked out onto the square. A mistress would expect her existence to be denied, but it would be a very hard thing for a wife not to be able to avow her marriage in public. Yet if she accepted him, he would have to ask that of Theresa.

Ever since leaving the church, it had become more and more apparent to Clinton that the sudden marriage, which now obsessed him, would prove impossible unless he lied about his religion to a priest. As he entered the mess ante-room his thoughts were hopelessly divided. When noon came—the time he had asked Theresa to come to the barracks—and the brisk chimes of the stable’s clock rang out across the parade ground, he was still undecided what he would do.

*

Theresa climbed down from the outside-car and paid the driver. Outside the gates, a sentry was marching to and fro, stoically ignoring the jeers of a couple of small boys scampering ahead of him. In the grey shabby street his neat yellow-corded uniform and brilliantly burnished scabbard looked bizarrely out of place.

As instructed by Clinton, she walked under the arch and told the sentry outside the guardroom that Lord Ardmore was expecting her. The man clicked his spurred heels together and went inside. Moments later another soldier emerged and set off across the gravel barrack square towards the mess. The buildings were stark and unembellished save for the royal coat of arms in the centre of the pediment above the stables. Everywhere a soulless neatness: scrubbed brick-work, whitewashed stones marking the perimeter of the square. At first she did not recognise the uniformed figure approaching from the far side of the parade ground, and when she did, had no time to feel emotion; at that moment she started violently as the sergeant of the guard roared out behind her:

‘Guard, turn out!’

She watched with a mixture of perplexity and interest as men tumbled out from the guardroom, buckling on sword-belts and fastening buttons as they ran; completing these tasks while forming two ranks.

‘Guard, open order march. Ranks right dress. Eyes front.’

The stamping of feet and jingle of spurs distracted her and she was surprised that Clinton was already only yards away. As she moved forward with a smile on her lips, she was frozen by another deafening shout:

‘Guard, present arms!’

With a clash of boots, the hussars brought up their carbines, hands slapping hard against the stocks in unison. Clinton raised a hand to his forehead, and waited a moment, for the sergeant to bellow: ‘Guard, right turn. Dismiss!’, before shaking Theresa’s hand and murmuring:

‘Welcome to Richmond Barracks.’

‘How often does all that happen?’ she asked with a flicker of amusement.

‘Whenever an officer passes the guardroom, or a troop comes in or out.’

‘I’d think twice before walking about if I caused all that trouble.’

‘Rubbish. Guards like a little exercise to break the tedium.’ He saw her looking at his plain black frogged braid and pill-box forage cap with what he took to be disappointment. ‘You’ll see us in full
dress on Sunday parade. Plumes and sabretaches. No end of frippery and toggery.’

‘It looks gorgeous and you know it.’

He gave an ironic shrug and smiled.

‘A thing like a lady’s muff on one’s head with something like a red jelly-bag at the side. Enough plumes to make an undertaker’s horses look naked … Yes, it’s gorgeous. Like a dress rehearsal for Waterloo.’

He returned the salute of a passing trooper. Across the square near the Riding School, a column of defaulters were being marched up and down, turned and halted, brought to the double, and set to mark time with an arbitrary speed of command that struck Theresa as positively sadistic.