Brunswick Gardens (46 page)

A
STRANGE PEACE
had settled over the house in Brunswick Gardens. It was the kind of relief death brings when the illness has been long and filled with pain. The bereavement is there, the sense of loneliness and loss, but it is momentarily dulled by sheer exhaustion. For a little while all one can feel is that at last one can sleep without fear, without the gnawing anxiety and the guilt if even for a moment one relaxes and forgets to be watchful and afraid.

On the evening when Pitt was listening to the man in Haverstock Hill, Clarice and Tryphena had both retired early, Tryphena because she still preferred to mourn Unity alone, knowing no one else shared her feelings, and Clarice because she was hurt beyond bearing by her father’s death. Mallory chose to study. It was an escape from the present world, which he found too oppressive and in which he felt he had little place.

Vita had not wished to retire. She was dressed entirely in black and had behaved all day with solemnity, but there was a kind of ease about her, as if at last she had been able to let go of the foreboding which had gripped her ever since Unity’s fall. The color had returned to her face. She looked vulnerable as she sat on the large, overpadded sofa, and extraordinarily young in the soft gaslight.

“Would you prefer to be alone?” Dominic asked with concern. “I should understand perfectly if—”

“No!” she answered before he had finished speaking, looking up at him with her amazing eyes wide. “No—please! I should greatly prefer not to be alone. It is the very last thing I want.” She smiled with a trace of self-mockery, a shadow of laughter in her eyes. “I want to pretend for a little while that none of this has happened. I would like to talk about other things, ordinary things, just as if we were two friends with no tragedy between us. Does that sound miserably selfish?”

He was startled, uncertain how to answer. He did not want to sound dismissive of her grief, or as if he could take it lightly on her behalf, or indeed on his own. Was she thinking of herself, as she implied, or was it her generosity, knowing his own sense of failure, the near despair which weighed upon him because he had watched Ramsay drowning in pain and done nothing?

“Dominic?” she said gently, reaching up towards him and putting her fingers on his arm. Her touch was so light he saw it rather than felt it. He looked at her.

She smiled, and there was extraordinary warmth in it. “Grieve for Ramsay, my dear, but please don’t blame yourself. You and I are in the same position, only I even more. We must both believe we could have done something, how could we not? Failure is a bitter thing to bear.” She lifted her hand in a tiny movement of denial. “There is little else which hurts so constantly, which clouds everything else we try to do, which cripples other effort and in the end makes us doubt ourselves in everything, and finally even hate ourselves. Please don’t let that happen to us. It is the last thing Ramsay, in his true self, would have wanted.”

He did not answer, thinking of what she had said. It was profoundly true. She was right, and he wanted and needed to believe her. And yet it was not the entire truth. He could not walk away from the memory of Ramsay lying on the study floor in
his own blood. That would be irredeemably callous. Decency owed more than that, let alone friendship—and gratitude.

“Dominic!” She repeated his name very softly. She was standing now, only a couple of feet away. There was no sound except the flickering of the fire. He could smell the fragrance of her skin and hair and some flower delicacy she wore. “Dominic, the kindest thing you can do for Ramsay is to remember him as he used to be, at his best, his wisest and kindest, when he had control of himself and was the man he wished to be … before he was ill.”

He smiled, a little halfheartedly.

“My dear,” she continued. “If you were in his place, if you were to become ill in your mind, would you want those you had loved to think of you as you were then, in the extremity of your illness, or as you had been at your best, your very finest?”

“At my best,” he said without hesitation, looking at her clearly at last.

Her face eased, the lines of anxiety disappearing from her brow. Her body relaxed, but she did not take her hand from his arm.

“Of course. So would I.” Her voice was urgent, charged with emotion so intense he was aware of nothing else in the room. “I should want it passionately,” she went on. “It would be the greatest kindness anyone could do for me, and from those whose opinion I valued the most, I should most want it. And he did care about you, you know. He thought you were going to be a great minister to the people, but far above that, he thought you were going to be a leader.” There was a warmth in her eyes and a faint flush of color to her cheeks. “We desperately need leadership, Dominic. You must know that! Everywhere there is increasing worldliness. All sorts of people are only too eager to step forward and proclaim themselves in politics or exploration or arts and ideas, but no one has the conviction to lead us in religion anymore. It is as if all the fire had gone out of everyone….”

Unconsciously she clenched her fingers, and her body was rigid with the power of her own feelings and the frustration that she could not lead herself. “Where are the voices of passion and certainty that we need, Dominic? Where are the men no new theories can shake, no worldly wisdom can make afraid or undermine, the men who have the courage to face them all and defy them, and lead us as we should be led?”

She gave a little gasp. “There are new scientific inventions almost every day, certainly every week. Because we can do so much now, we imagine we can do everything. We can’t! We shouldn’t!”

It was true. He knew exactly what she meant. There was a feeling not just of euphoria—that would have been all right. It was the arrogance, the delusion that man was supreme and all problems were capable of a purely human solution. There was a driving hunger to learn but little capacity to be taught.

“You will need all your courage,” Vita was saying urgently, her hand tightening on his arm. “There will be times when it will be terribly difficult, so many people will be against you, and they will be so sure they are right, your own faith will have to be a rock against all weathers, even the greatest storms. But I am sure you can do that. You have a strength poor Ramsay did not.” A smile of certainty crossed her mouth. “Your faith is rooted in goodness, in knowledge and understanding. You know what it is to suffer, to make mistakes and to find the courage and the trust in God to climb up again and go onward. It has given you the power to forgive both others and yourself.” Her hand was so tight now it hurt him. “You can be all the things Ramsay believed of you. You can take the place he was unable to. Is that not the best thing, the finest gift you could give him? Does that not make his life worthwhile?”

The chill inside him started to ease away. Some of the pain dissolved. Perhaps something was retrievable after all?

“Yes … yes, it would,” he answered her with immense gratitude.
“It could be the best way possible, the only way with real meaning.”

“Then come and sit down,” she offered, letting go of his arm and leading the way towards the sofas by the fire. The flames burned up brightly, filling the room with a soft, yellow glow, reflecting on the table beside one of the sofas and making the wood seem even richer than it was. Vita sat gracefully, one hand flicking her skirt almost as if she were only half aware of it. The light was warm on her cheek, blending away the lines of tiredness and grief. She looked as if she could have obeyed her own injunction and for a few hours forgotten all memory of tragedy.

He sat down opposite her, relaxing at last. There was no sound in the room but the fire, the ormolu clock on the mantel with its enamel sides painted with cherubs, and the very faint rustle of the wind and tap as a branch bumped against the window. The rest of the household need not have existed for any intrusion of its presence upon the peace in the room.

Vita wriggled a little deeper into her seat, smiling. “Shall we talk of something that doesn’t matter at all?”

“What would you like?” he asked, falling into the mood.

“Well …” She thought for a moment. “I know! If you could go for a holiday anywhere you wished—expense making no difference at all—where would you choose?” She sat still, watching him, her eyes calm and happy, intent upon his face.

He gave himself over to dreaming. “Persia,” he said after a moment. “I would love to see ancient cities like Persepolis or Isfahan. I would love to hear camel bells in the night and smell the desert wind.”

Her smile widened. “Tell me more.”

He elaborated, describing what little he knew and all he imagined. Now and again he quoted verses of Fitzgerald’s translation of Omar Khayyam. He lost count of time. All their present griefs and suspicions disappeared. When at last they said good-night and parted at quarter to one, he was physically almost asleep where he stood on the landing near her bedroom
door, but he felt less weary to the core than he had since Unity’s death—in fact, since long before that, perhaps since her arrival at Brunswick Gardens and the first awful horror of seeing her again.

    He slept deeply and without stirring until morning, and woke with the room full of sunlight. It was late, after eight o’clock, and it took him a moment or two to remember why he had slept in. Of course! He had sat up for hours talking to Vita. It had been most pleasant. She was excellent company. She gave her attention completely, as few people did. It was as if for that space of time no one else existed for her. It was very flattering.

He rose, washed, shaved and dressed. By the time he got to the dining room Mallory had already been and gone. Tryphena was taking breakfast in her room. Clarice and Vita were at the table.

“Good morning.” Clarice regarded him sadly and with a faintly hostile look.

He replied, then turned to Vita. She was still wearing black, of course, but she looked wonderful in it.

“Good morning, Dominic,” she said gently, smiling at him, her eyes very direct.

Suddenly he felt self-conscious. He mumbled his reply and helped himself to breakfast, unintentionally taking more than he really wanted. He sat down and began to eat.

“You look as if you’ve barely slept,” Clarice said pointedly.

“We were up rather late,” Vita explained, her smile widening slightly. She looked calm, very much in control of herself. Dominic admired her courage. It must be an immeasurable help to her family. How much harder their grief would be to bear were they having to support her also, instead of the other way around.

Clarice had obviously been weeping. Her face was pale and her eyes pink-rimmed.

“ ‘We’?” she asked sharply, looking from Vita to Dominic.

“We were just sitting talking, my dear,” Vita replied, passing
her the butter although she had not asked for it. “I am afraid we rather forgot how late it was.”

“What is there left to talk about?” Clarice said miserably, pushing the butter away. “It has all been said, and none of it helped. I would have thought a little silence might have been advisable now. We have said too much as it is.”

“We didn’t talk about the things that have happened here,” Vita tried to explain. “We spoke of hopes and dreams, ideas, beautiful things we could share together.”

Clarice’s eyes were wide and hard. “You what?”

It had sounded too bold, far too insensitive. It was not at all how Dominic had seen it or intended it.

“What your mother means is that we spoke of travel and other countries and cultures,” he amended. “We escaped the present tragedy for an hour or two.”

Clarice barely regarded him. Her food was forgotten. She looked at Vita again, waiting.

Vita smiled in memory. “We simply sat by the fire and dreamed aloud of where we might travel if we were free to.”

“What do you mean ‘free’?” Clarice pressed. “Free in what way?” Her brows drew down, and she looked frightened and angry. “What sort of freedom are you talking about?”

“Nothing specific,” Dominic interrupted, rather too quickly. The conversation was becoming uncomfortable. An innocent evening was being misconstrued into something quite different. He could feel his face warm at the thought. And it surprised him how painful it was that Clarice, of all people, should be the one to misunderstand. “Only a little daydreaming,” he rushed on. “After all, one cannot simply throw away all one’s responsibilities and go careering off to Persia, or Kashmir, or wherever one has in mind. It would be expensive and probably dangerous …” He trailed off, looking at her face.

“And you spent all evening talking about it?” she said blankly. Her eyes were full of misery.

“And similar sorts of things,” Vita agreed. “My dear, you should not allow it to disturb you. Why should it? It was only a little happiness in the midst of all our troubles. We must remain as close as we can to each other. I cannot begin to say how grateful I am to Dominic for his understanding and the courage and the strength he has shown throughout this nightmare. For a while it was a perfect companionship. Is it strange that I should be happy to share beautiful ideas with him?”

Clarice swallowed. She seemed to have to force herself to speak.

“No …”

“Of course not.” Vita reached over and patted her hand. It was a familiar gesture, gentle, comforting, and yet oddly condescending as well, as if Clarice had been a child, on the periphery of things.

Dominic was suddenly acutely uncomfortable. Somehow the conversation had run from his control, but it was impossible to cancel the misimpression without churlishness. To say it had meant nothing personal would be absurd. It would be denying something no one but Clarice had thought. It would embarrass Vita, and that would be inexcusable. It must be the last thing she had thought.

Clarice pushed her plate away, the toast half eaten.

“I have things to do. Letters to write.” And without further excuse she went out, closing the door behind her with a sharp snap.

“Oh dear,” Vita said with a sigh. She gave a quick little shrug. “Was I indiscreet?”