A Marriage of Convenience (34 page)

‘Better put in some candles. They may give us mutton dips for all I know.’ As Harris picked up his razor, Clinton laughed drily. ‘Think I’ll be allowed to keep that? Isn’t Lancaster said to be the worst debtor’s prison in the country?’

‘Quite comfortable after Peking, I’d imagine, sir.’

‘Or the black hole of Calcutta.’ After a silence, Clinton said: ‘What happens if the judge is a tartar?’

‘You can apply for habeas corpus to bring you up to the Queen’s Bench. Wherever you are bail application takes six days.’

‘And I’ll get it on disclosure?’

‘Captain Haswell always did.’

‘They give him a room of his own?’

‘Most times. Surprised if you don’t dine with the governor. Great ones for peers, my captain used to say.’

Theresa heard them talk about what food to take and how much china and linen. Then the valet went out into the bedroom. Listening to them, Theresa could not help comparing the man’s reassuring matter of fact manner, and efficient attention to detail, with her own fruitless anxiety. Together, master and servant had sounded as unruffled as if planning a stay in a badly equipped hotel or a posting to a new barracks.

Feeling an intruder as she entered, Theresa dreaded that her presence would only drag out the pain of parting. A waiting emptiness seemed to hang about the room. Deep lines across his forehead made him look stern and inaccessible, as if, she thought, only by deliberately denying memory could he endure the future. She walked past the table where he was sitting, aware of the creaking of the wardrobe door. She saw herself briefly in the cheval glass, protective hands clutching her elbows tightly, like a coatless woman in a wind. Glancing at him, her momentary awareness of his personality was so sharp that her own seemed to fade. She stared at the rosewood clock on the mantelpiece: nearly noon. She would not have been surprised to have found it hours later.

Under his silent scrutiny, she let her arms drop, trying to seem more composed, but could not help clutching her hands together, nails driven against knuckles; her whole body ached with tension. On the dressing table was a vase of roses; without thinking she brushed a scattering of petals to the floor.

‘Please.’ he murmured, ‘stop looking as if we’re going to be fed to the lions. Bailiffs are serving writs all over the place. It’s really very ordinary.’ The window was open and the wind bellied in the green
curtains with a sudden rattling of rings. Torn rags of blue had opened between the heavy clouds. He stood up, resting his hands on the back of his chair. ‘Such a wind. At Markenfield the stables’ weather vane was a ship; I used to shoot at it when I was bored. God, how it used to spin.’

‘You needn’t say anything. I only wanted to be with you.’

‘It’s like being in a train,’ he said, ‘nothing to be done till the next station. Perhaps life shouldn’t have gaps, but it always seems to.’ He smiled. ‘Like intervals in a play. We used to laugh a lot about melodrama. The hero saved in the nick of time. Imagine … at this moment, a solicitor’s clerk spurring up the drive, leaping breathless from the saddle. “Your uncle’s dead, Lord Ardmore. I have five hundred guineas in this purse.”’

He reached out a hand and touched her hair, but she drew back, not knowing whether his light tone was intended to comfort or prevent her speaking from the heart.

‘Just a gap,’ she repeated softly, looking at the portmanteau and the trunk by the door, imagining them roped to the bailiff’s chaise. In Clinton’s mind, she fancied he was already looking out across windswept cornfields while the carriage rattled south. For the first time she had no wish either to hasten or prolong the moment. Grief spread through her like a slow stain. ‘I don’t want to see you go,’ she whispered, thinking how much easier it was to go than be left behind. She kissed him and walked away.

*

Two days after his committal to Lancaster Castle, Clinton was visited by his solicitor and the barrister briefed to argue his case for discharge before the judge later that week. A complication, he was informed, had arisen. News of his arrest had reached the ears of several of the tradesmen in the town who had supplied him with goods on credit. In alarm, they had lodged detainers with the sheriff, which would prevent his release even should the judge be satisfied with the measures proposed by counsel for settling the original debt. Since judgment could not be expected on new proceedings in anything under three weeks, Clinton was advised to enter an application for bail. Well aware that any delay would expose him to the risk of items in the local press being picked up by London papers with a nose for aristocratic scandals and
misfortunes,
Clinton did not need his lawyers to tell him that this could alert his metropolitan creditors, and so lead to service of further writs.

A post-dated mortgage deed secured on the Hathenshaw lease, and affidavits disclosing his assets, would, in his lawyers’ opinion,
get him bail in spite of the detainers, since the unexpired period of the lease was worth considerably more than all the debts which had so far been brought to the court’s notice. But any intimation of heavier liabilities would extend his imprisonment until a general settlement with all his creditors could be contrived—a process which the transfer of stock and the sale of chattels would inevitably make lengthy. Even if bail were granted, another judgment
summons
could see him back in prison in a worse predicament than before. Yet bail, albeit achieved by the forced sale of his present lease, was now essential. A visit to his uncle could not safely be postponed by as much as a fortnight.

After the departure of his legal advisers, Clinton flung himself down on his bed. He had slept very little the night before; and, though his room was in few respects like a cell—having been comfortably furnished a year ago by the extravagant younger son of a marquess—the silk curtain concealing the iron door did not palliate the fact of being locked in. At times Clinton came close to dashing his head against the wall. When waking from brief periods of sleep, he was scarcely aware of having lost consciousness.

Because bail could not be obtained before the middle of the following week, Clinton knew that he would have to offer some explanation for his continuing detention to Theresa. Longing to see her, he also dreaded such a visit. Her pity would emphasise the wretchedness of his predicament and perhaps, worse still, fuel his bitter fears that all his happiness with her had been possible only when shielded from everything that might have challenged it. In the past, happiness for him had been perfect or nothing. His present mood and the strangeness of the prison, especially in the hours of darkness, left him so low that he was soon convinced it would be folly to allow himself to see her through the distorting glass of his present uncertainties. Beyond the possibility of failure with his uncle, loomed the shadow of events that made his imprisonment seem a trivial affliction.

When later he began to write, he betrayed nothing of this. Optimism alone would prevent her coming, and this was the mood he grimly sustained.

The positive tone of Theresa’s reply was a considerable relief to him, and slowly his spirits began to improve. His conditional
discharge
took place as his lawyers had predicted on August 20th—a date which in other years had been significant to him as the last day of the black game close season.

On a hot and windless afternoon, several days before Lord
Ardmore
was expected back in Lancashire, an elderly man stepped down from a dilapidated ‘fly’ just within the lodge gates of Hathenshaw. After the oven-like heat inside the hackney, Major Simmonds was thankful to breathe the cooler air in the shade of the elm avenue leading to the house. The glaring light had made his head throb, and his mouth felt parched with the dust thrown up from the cracked and crumbling roads. Stooping slightly as he walked, his thin tailcoated figure, crowned by a tall hat and encased in tight-fitting white trousers, seemed a ghostly reminder of an age before the Norfolk jacket and tweedside suit.

He was considerably taken aback to be admitted to the house by a servant wearing cavalry overalls and smoking a cigar.

‘I want to see your mistress,’ he said stiffly, reddening when the man looked at him with what he took for an ill-concealed smirk.

‘What name, sir?’

‘I’m her father, so don’t go sticking your hand out for a card.’

‘Please come this way, sir.’

Overcoming her surprise, Theresa embraced her father.

‘Why on earth didn’t you write and tell me you were coming?’ He made no reply, but put down his hat and the gingham umbrella which served as a sunshade in summer. Theresa squeezed his hand affectionately. ‘You’re here, which is the main thing. I hope you’re going to stay?’

‘The inn at Browsholme suits me nicely.’ He stared awkwardly at the fender and did not see her smile.

‘My dear father, if you’re worried about meeting Clinton, he’s staying with his uncle.’

‘Worried?’ he muttered gruffly. ‘Can’t see why the deuce
I
should be worried.’

‘Don’t pretend you’ve forgotten what you’ve said about him.’

‘I’m not pretending anything. I don’t want to stay under his

He sat down and said sharply: ‘Does he let his servants smoke in front of you?’

‘Of course not.’

‘What about the one who showed me up here?’

‘He obviously wasn’t expecting anybody. Perhaps he thought you’d be a tradesman.’

‘At the
hall
door?’

‘Isn’t it really rather a little thing?’ she asked softly.

‘Damned if I think it is. An insult to you. That’s my view.’

‘I’ll have a word with him. What about tea? The maids don’t smoke.’

‘I’d like a glass of water.’

Though used to her father’s habit of exaggerating his often genuine irritation over trifles, she had not been slow to recognise that his present testiness concealed a more serious grievance. Since they regularly wrote to each other, his unannounced visit could hardly be explained by a desire to exchange routine news.

When the maid had answered the bell and returned with the water, Theresa sat next to her father.

‘Did you think if you’d written asking to see me, I’d have tried to fob you off?’

He put down his glass and sighed.

‘Wouldn’t have surprised me. Louise wrote that you were ill enough to need the doctor a dozen times or more.’ He turned his monocle on her. ‘Not a word to me. If I did that to you, what’d you think?’

‘That you didn’t want to worry me.’

He let his eye-glass drop down on its black ribbon.

‘Do you think I’m not worried now? What was wrong with you?’

‘What did Louise tell you?’

‘Nothing … said she wasn’t told.’

‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered, looking away. He made no reply, but when she finally turned, his bowed head and unhappy eyes cut through her previous resolution to say nothing.

‘I lost a child.’

He got up and paced over to the window, his movements jerky with agitation.

‘The blackguard … dirty blackguard. Small wonder the servants show no respect. If I was younger …’

‘If he married me, his uncle would disinherit him. He’s virtually penniless.’

‘That so? And this is the poor house?’ He gestured around him, the sweep of his hands taking in the porcelain, portraits, and gilded
chairs. ‘A man’s penniless who keeps his coppers separate from the silver in his purse. You tell his lordship that.’

‘Father, he needs no telling. Please believe me.’

The major stood motionless, his chin sunk in the folds of his cravat.

‘Nothing can excuse degrading you.’

‘You never accused Esmond of that.’

‘He wanted to marry you … and no threat of a child to force his hand. A different story with his brother. What did he offer you instead of marriage, when he knew you were with child? Restitution for a blighted career? A covenant for the child’s upkeep if you parted? Or did he plead poverty?’

‘If I was some sweet young innocent, I’d understand …’

‘Better if you were,’ he cried. ‘A few years wasted then wouldn’t have harmed you. Past thirty it pays a woman to be thrifty with her time. Think on ten years … I’ve next to nothing to leave you. Very well, let him squeeze you like an orange, but make sure there’s some juice left when he throws away the rind.’

‘He’ll never throw me away.’

‘Will you never learn?’ he asked, in a voice choked with emotion. With the passing of his bitterness, her father seemed changed: an old man unable to pass on the lessons life had taught him, not understanding how she could fail to see what was so obvious to him. She was tempted as never before to tell him about her marriage. The stiff way her father sat, due to the vanity of stays, his tight high collar cutting into his wrinkled neck, the clear definition of the bones in his hands, all moved her intolerably. He drew back his head like a man about to make a speech in public and for a moment she expected a further onslaught, but when he spoke, his voice was faltering.

‘Not every girl’s a martyr who’s seduced. Only fools say that. Takes two to play that game and to share the fun. The rub comes later, and when it does, sharing’s a thing of the past.’ He leant forward with pathetic eagerness. ‘Leave him, dear … leave while you can still help yourself. I beg you to.’

‘I can’t.’

‘You must tell me why.’

‘The reasons aren’t material.’

Fearing his collapse, Theresa was astounded by the quite different effect of her words. During a long silence, he looked at her with intent reproachful eyes.

‘I’d much rather you’d confided in me.’ He paused and stared ahead of him, before facing her with a sudden turn of the neck. ‘Louise heard a maid say you’d married Ardmore in Ireland.’

‘How would servants entertain themselves without silly
suspicions
?’

‘Louise claims the girl mentioned the name of a priest and a place.’

‘I wonder what I wore? Perhaps she mentioned that?’

He twisted his monocle on its ribbon and shook his head.

‘Only a place, a priest and a date, when I happen to know you were away.’

‘Louise knew it too. You realise she doesn’t like him?’

‘Can’t say I’m surprised.’

‘Well it explains a deliberate piece of mischief. We’d better talk to her. Or perhaps start with the maid? I wonder if Louise named her as well as the priest?’

The major slowly shook his head, and said:

‘There’s a better way. I intend to make inquiries over there.’

‘Suppose there was a secret marriage, can you imagine the priest telling the first person to come asking about it? I daresay if you fail with him, a few pounds in a country place would secure whatever information …

‘I’m sending a lawyer to take sworn proofs. People don’t perjure themselves when they can be prosecuted for it.’

A scream seemed to struggle up through her silence; her lungs ached withholding it, but she made no sound. The effort of control she had needed to reach even this far with conviction had drained her; only dull anger at his mistrust enabled her to go on. She got up, the same sceptical smile on her lips.

‘Suppose you buy these
proofs,
what will you do with them?’

‘That’ll depend on Ardmore.’

‘Don’t you see what harm you’ll do me?’

‘Worse than the harm he’s already done you? What frightens you if he’s honourable?’

‘People make promises,’ she blurted out, losing the sense of his words, immediately horrified by her admission.

‘What sort of a man forces a woman to keep a promise that dishonours her? God in heaven … you were with child.’

She raised her hands to her temples, dragging back her hair savagely, wanting to punish herself, aware of the stage inanity of the gesture as she sank to her knees. He touched her shoulder lightly but she rocked back on her haunches.

‘You have no right,’ she moaned, in a voice not like her own, high pitched and hysterical. Then jumping to her feet, she shouted: ‘My life, mine, mine.’

She expected the relief of tears; but though her eyes were congested and her lips quivered, no sound came. At last she rose slowly to her feet.

‘Get your proofs if you must,’ she murmured. ‘If you do anything without seeing me first …’ She stopped, suddenly remembering a play—the father of the heroine bemoaning his daughter’s sins, and later the pathetic girl destitute at his door. So much of her own life seemed parodied in the melodramas she had acted in. Before she knew it, she was laughing, more in panic than amusement. ‘How did we get through them? How, father?
The
Maid
of
Milan,
Crazy
Jane,
Love’s
Frailties
… three in a month sometimes. No wonder we’re half mad. Simple morality suits a play … life blurs the lines. If villainy’s not punished in life as it should be, so much the worse for life … Isn’t that what you think?’ She gazed at his unsmiling face, knowing she was right.

‘Would you have the good go unrewarded?’

‘Fate isn’t in my gift or yours.’

He took her hand emotionally.

‘Don’t mock what we did together. What’s wrong with letting people hope that life can be better? That’s what we did.’

‘Then give
me
hope. Wait and let him prove you wrong.’

He paused, sucking in his cheeks, as though drawing on an invisible cigar.

‘Two months,’ he said abruptly, ‘And I’ll find out something in the meantime.’

‘Is that necessary?’

‘I believe so.’

He picked up his hat and was reaching for his umbrella when she snatched it from him.

‘You’ve no need to send a man asking questions.’

‘I have every need. What if someone else gets there first? You were right to say money begets lies.’

She looked at him beseechingly.

‘The priest promised secrecy. He might write warning Clinton that questions were being asked. In his place, who would you suspect of breaking faith? Don’t destroy Clinton’s trust in me.’

‘Then tell me this,’ he said with the same stubbornness, ‘Why should
I
trust any man who makes his wife swear to deceive her father? If I’d been rich or titled, he’d not have dared insult me so. If you were an earl’s daughter, could you see him shutting you away miles from anywhere? A different story with my daughter … let her be laughed at by servants, let the country quack think her a whore. Too bad if she gives birth and half the county thinks her child a bastard.’ He paused, wiping sweat from his brow with a cambric handkerchief, dropping his hat in the process. ‘And if his wife has the humanity to tell her father the truth, he’ll never trust her again. But
I
’m
to trust
him
… I can’t do it … can’t for the life
of me. I’ll wait before seeing him, but I’ll have proofs of this marriage.’

Theresa left the room and returned a few minutes later with the certificate, knowing that otherwise he would see the priest, and possibly return to confront Clinton in person. She waited till he had finished reading.

‘Do you want to have a copy witnessed by your solicitor?’ ‘I can’t see the need.’ He seemed dazed.

‘Perhaps you trust him now?’

She had spoken bitterly, but if she had screamed, her father would not have been troubled by it. He raised her hand to his lips.

‘My dear Lady Ardmore,’ he murmured, ‘My dear dear Lady Ardmore.’