A Song Twice Over (71 page)

‘How dare you!'

‘I dare, Linnet. And I am not to blame now if you have ended up with nothing. My father refused to pay out what it would cost to make you Mrs Colclough and so will I. And if you go on trying to get it through Tristan then I shall oppose him in every court in the land. I have the money to do so. I may not win. In fact most probably I should not. But it would all take a very long time, Linnet. Years, perhaps. And where would you live in the meantime? Not here, certainly, for my mother has the power to turn both of you out and she would not keep you here against my wishes. And what would you live on? My father settled the bulk of his
money
on me, Linnet, with adequate provision for my mother. What remains is property which has to be sold before you can spend it. And I can block that sale long enough to make it hardly worth waiting for – at
your
age – Linnet. I can also ensure that when the mill does come into your possession it will be worth only a fraction of its value today. You do not understand business, and neither does Tristan. I do. If you go on trying to rob me I shall ruin you, make no mistake about it. You will end up living on whatever Tristan has left of my dowry, which can't be much, and with your reputation in shreds. Because I shall blacken your precious character too, while I am about it.'

And her anger was so great, her contempt for this woman so absolute, that she did not take heed of the sudden alertness in Linnet's white face, the air of a vixen who, with the hounds baying all around her, suddenly catches the scent – desperate perhaps, but what now has she to lose? – of salvation.

‘No Gemma – I think not.'

‘
Linnet
– do not imagine for one moment that I shall weaken. For I shall not. Everyone's sympathy will be on my side. People don't like it, Linnet, when men marry girls like me for money and then try to make off with it the minute her father dies. Judges and the like have daughters of their own, more often than not. So do the editors of newspapers. The brand of fortune-hunter sticks, Linnet. And I really don't know with what name they would brand you.'

Linnet stood up, her embroidery falling to the ground, her empty hands gracefully and easily clasped before her, her face still very white but her pale eyes alive, vibrant and glowing as Gemma had never seen them before. With malice? With hysteria? With gloating it almost seemed, although what on earth she could have to gloat about Gemma could not imagine.

‘I see, Gemma. So you are condemning me to a lifetime of serving tea from other women's china,
here
, in this place of your choosing, taking scraps, in effect, from your table, among women my mother would not have allowed to cross her threshold? Suffering insult from those women.
Wasting
myself. Wasting the talents which I do – oh yes I do – possess. Ageing. Becoming an object of pity when my looks fade. Oh yes – isn't that always the way of it? Poor Miss Gage, she must have been quite pretty once. What a dire fate, my dear. What a
charming
prospect for the future.'

‘I think you have brought it on yourself, Linnet.'

She shook her head, smiling very strangely. And then, leaning forward from the waist with the darting movement of a snake coiled to strike, she said, ‘No, Gemma. You will not do that to me. You will do, in fact, exactly what I tell you. Oh yes, dearest. You will go to Tristan – straight away, I think, since it is worrying him rather – slip your little hand in his, gaze trustingly into his so beautiful eyes and tell him – dear Gemma – that since he has started making love to you so very sweetly and so very often, his wish has become your command. You want only to go wherever he takes you. If he wants your mill then of course he must have it. You only wish you had two or three so that you could really spoil him,
really
make it worth his while to go on giving you all those lovely kisses.
That's
what I want to hear from you, Gemma.
That's
the attitude I want to see. That's the life
you're
going to have.'

She paused not for breath but for savour and then, straightening her back, said very quietly, ‘Otherwise I shall just have to go and tell my brother about the Chartist candidate, won't I? He was your lover for almost a year, Gemma. There would really be no point in denying it. I have all the evidence I need.'

The first shock passed.

‘Evidence?'

‘Yes. My informant is reliable and thorough.'

Hardly necessary, since, with or without evidence, Frizingley would be only too glad to believe it. And it was true in any case. Anger seeped out of her slowly, aware of its own futility. She had no defence.

Linnet smiled. ‘Tristan will not take it kindly, Gemma. He has his pride. He cares about gossip and scandal. As all
our
sort of people do. And he will follow
our
code. He will cast you off, Gemma, as an adulteress. Only think what that will do to your mother. And where will public sympathies be then? Not with you, dear. When he puts your mill up for sale everyone will say “Poor man he is trying to rid himself of her memory.” People don't
like
unfaithful wives, Gemma. All those judges and newspaper editors you were threatening me with just now are husbands too. So – dearest –
do
confess – have I not turned the tables very nicely?'

So it seemed.

‘Then hadn't you better run along, Gemma, and tell Tristan he can sell your last petticoat if he has a mind to? Scandal is always better avoided. So be a good, sweet girl and there'll be absolutely no need for me to say a word.'

‘Until the next time you want one thing and I want another.'

‘Ah well – should the occasion arise when you may seem in need of guidance I should do my duty, of course.'

‘Yes.' Gemma sat down and, rather slowly, folded her hands. ‘Then you had better go and do it now, hadn't you. Your duty, I mean.'

However smug she might be feeling Linnet was too perceptive, too completely the seasoned drawing-room campaigner, to be other than instantly alert.

‘Now don't be silly, Gemma. No attacks of virtue, please. They seem hardly appropriate.'

But Gemma had no choice to make. Between a lifetime at Linnet's beck and call or social disgrace what choice existed? Death, perhaps? But she did not suppose that one died so neatly.

‘Gemma – I most strongly advise you to think of your mother.'

Not even for her.

She shook her head.

‘I shall not relent, Gemma. And once I have told Tristan he cannot be
untold
. He will
know
and there is no doubt at all that he will be incensed and humiliated and very eager for revenge …'

‘I imagine, Linnet, that he will do very much as you say.'

‘Are you challenging me to turn him loose on you?'

‘I am telling you,' and she was speaking through tight-clenched teeth, her pugnacious jaw shaking, ‘that I will not consent to place myself in your power. I will not live my life according to your whims and fancies. I will not come when you call me and go where you send me – which is what would happen. I will not hand over to you my position and my property,
and
the effective control of my mother – which is what you are asking. You have not earned any of it, Linnet, and you do not deserve it either. And I will not have this threat hanging over me – most of all I will not have that.'

‘I am not bluffing, Gemma.'

‘Nor I.'

‘Gemma, I have nothing to lose.'

‘Nor I, Linnet.'

It went on a while longer. It would have gone on interminably had Gemma consented to participate, which she did not, answering every one of Linnet's threats and pleadings, occasional insults, frequent attempts to shame her and terrify her with the one, terse phrase – ‘I will not have it.'

Both women had come face to face with a future they could not tolerate and, in this mood, were dangerous to themselves as well as to each other.

‘We shall see – my girl – what you will have when this is over.' And, totally beside herself, having, indeed, nothing to lose but that lifetime of other women's china in Frizingley, the slow death of herself by bitterness and frustration which she could not,
would
not bear, Linnet spun round on her heel and ran out of the room to find her brother.

Had he left the house, perhaps – who knew? – she may have calmed sufficiently to reflect, to devise some other plan, even to submit. But he was still there, on the drive, working off his uncomplicated high spirits with his dog. Looking out of the window Gemma saw Linnet flying towards him, watched them come together, and then sat down again, her head slightly bowed, not in penitence but in simple waiting.

She had always known the risk she ran. She knew that Daniel himself had often feared for her. At least, thank God that he was gone. Thank God, even, that she did not know where. That she would somehow endure it, survive it, she had no doubt. She would have to. But it would be terrible. Humiliating. Vile. She closed her eyes, her stomach quaking. If Tristan would just come, would do and say whatever his Code and his sister required of him, then at least she would know the extent of the disgrace that threatened her. And, knowing it, she could come to terms with it, could learn to think of herself as others would then think of her. A fallen woman like Marie Moon, who could not be received in the homes of decent people, the hem of whose dress must not be allowed to brush one's own hem in passing. A woman to be shunned by other women and made light of – made sport of – by men.

The prospect appalled her. Sitting tight-clenched with growing panic in her mother's hushed and sheltered drawing-room – the only world she really knew – she dared not hazard even a guess as to whether she could cope with it or not. She would be free, of course, from all restraints and responsibilities, at perfect liberty to come and go as she pleased. But how far could her pampered feet really carry her, being as unaccustomed to rough going as the lotus-feet of those Chinese concubines Daniel had told her about, who could only totter a few graceful, doll-like paces before falling down? Probably not much further. With pain she remembered Daniel on the night before Brighouse, examining her feet, grieving over them almost.

She understood.

If only Tristan would come. Why was he so long? But when she tried to get up and go to the window to see if they were still there on the path she found she could not. Her bound feet would not carry her.

When enough time had passed –
his
time, she understood, no longer hers – he came, his feet loud and firm enough in the hall, his hand rattling the door-knob in the noisy way men had, pushing open the door and striding, all hale and hearty from the fresh outdoors, into the closed and suddenly airless room. Tristan. Frivolous. Shallow. Irresolute. And who now had power over her.

Lifting her head she saw that he was biting his lip as if he had not the least idea what to say. Well – it was hardly her place to help him. Let Linnet see to that.

‘Oh Lord,' he sounded horribly embarrassed. ‘I'm not going to be much good at this.'

But then, was he good for anything? Staring at him she lifted a haughty, enquiring eyebrow. He had been a very long time, she thought, out there with Linnet. But not long enough, it seemed, to learn his lesson.

Let him flounder. He took a deep breath. Clearly hating every moment of it, wishing himself anywhere but here, playing the outraged husband for his sister's benefit. Was that the trouble?

‘Well – there's just this, Gemma – first of all – Look here – if you really think I'm the sort of chap who'd sell off your property over your head – without so much as a by your leave – Well, if that's what you think then I'm sorry – I'm really sorry, because – Anyway – there's not the least chance of it. Dash it all, Gemma, it would be like stealing.
I
see that. And if Linnet hadn't taken such a beating lately she'd see it too. In fact – well, yes – she does see it, right enough – of course she does, it's just that she's – well, desperate, Gemma. And scared stiff at the bottom of her. So there it is. I can't do it. I might even wish I could, for Linnet's sake. In fact, to tell you the honest truth, I thought I
could
do anything for her. But not this. There's no chance of it.'

Had she heard him aright? But she had no time to gather her startled, incredulous wits together before he shattered them yet again.

‘And as for the other thing – Well, there was no need for her to tell me about that because, the truth is – Oh Lord, I already knew, Gemma. I've known for ages.'

She put the tips of her fingers to either side of her head and pressed hard, as if she needed to be sure that it was still there, and functioning, on her shoulders.

‘Tristan.' She could say no more than that.

‘Oh I know,' he said, still hating it. ‘I may be a bit of a fool at times and I know I'm too damned easy-going, but I'm not a complete fool, Gemma. Not by a long chalk. I'm your husband, for God's sake. I'd have had to be an oaf not to notice the change in you – after he came along. I was the first man to touch you, Gemma. I knew you didn't love me and I could tell when you started to love somebody else. So I had a look around and eventually I saw you with him – Oh, not doing anything, just standing by that school-house talking to him and
looking
at him – It told me what I needed to know. And I thought, if that's what she wants – and I could see it was – then – Well – I'd never given you anything, had I? Done plenty of taking, mind. I'd already started worrying about that. So I thought, right, I'll give her this. And that's what I did. When you told me to go off shooting and hunting, I went. And I never came back without letting you know well in advance. Never bothered you much when I
was
at home either, no more than a chap really has to, sometimes. I did my best for you, Gemma.'