God Is an Englishman (110 page)

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Improvisation attended her like a well-trained lady’s maid.

Experience in his field of operations helped. Before she booked in at The Garland as “Mrs. Wickstead” paying a surprise visit, she had traced him via a stableman, who told her that Swann’s agent had arrived last night with a string of fagged-out Clydesdales and left early for Bringewood Chase, where the pasture was situated. She said, carelessly, “What a nuisance! Would you get a message to him for half-a-crown?” and the man said he would go all the way to Leominster for that and the farm where Mr. Wickstead could be found was only a mile from his own hearth and he could run the errand as soon as he went off duty.

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“I’ll write a note and bring it out,” she said, and sought the house keeper. She had then to think herself into the kind of role he must have played over the years, bland, casual, and friendly but with over tones of patronage. She had no intention of installing herself in his room but booked one of her own, the best in the house, giving as a reason the fact that Mr. Wickstead had to leave early the following morning and might or might not cancel his own room when he learned she had joined him. That way, she reasoned, he could stay or go without loss of face, and as to supper, well, they might or might not partake of it, depending upon how soon he returned. She played her part well and the housekeeper seemed not to find anything unusual in such an arrangement. Keepers of inns, Edith reflected, were proof against the vagaries and eccentricities of guests.

She had her writing case and took it into one of the public rooms to write the note. “Dear Tom,” it said, “I arrived at ten after five
in my own time, not Swann’s,
and booked separate accommodation. If you are back before I retire I suggest supper up here, but leave the decision to you, Edith.” To any other man in the world, she supposed, the message, loosed like an arrow from ambush, would be incomprehensible, but not to him, a man who had once lived on a diet of bluff and bluster. In a sense he was being matched at his own game and would probably recognise as much. He might be amused and he might be indignant, but he would not be surprised. How could he be after their original confrontation over the matter of Beckstein’s diamonds?

She sealed the note, went out to the yard, and gave it to the stable man, together with his tip. Then, fortifying herself with two glasses of gin and bitters, she went up to her room, where the maid had al ready turned back the bed and laid out her slippers, robe, and night gown, setting a can of hot water on the washstand.

She felt calm to the point of resignation, the way he must have felt when, in his own terminology, he was “inside a crib and sifting the swag.” It did not seem in any way remarkable that she should be here in a strange town, under a false name, bluffing or blackmailing a man into sharing her bed. On the contrary, in a devious kind of way, it seemed a fitting climax to their association. She dipped her fingers in the can, finding the water lukewarm. It was only just after seven and there was ample time, she reasoned, for a makeshift bath in the copper bowl they had provided. Unhurriedly she removed her dusty clothes and sponged herself from head to foot and there seemed little point in dressing again. She put on nightdress and bedgown and rang for the girl to carry the water away, declining her offer to send up supper on a tray pending the gentleman’s arrival.

She had eaten practically nothing during the long crosscountry journey, but she GodIsAnEnglishman.indd 592

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did not feel hungry. She opened the window and stared out across the yard and stable buildings to a belt of woodland threaded by the river Teme, looking down on a peaceful, fruitful, settled England more tamed than the north, more lush and civilised than the flat farm-studded areas of her own patch, a country that hadn’t changed much since the great-battlemented castle that dominated the town had been garrisoned by those same Nevilles who occupied Middleham in her native Yorkshire. It was strange that—the way these Neville ghosts seemed to follow her around, as though they found ad venturers like Matt, and Adam, and now Tom Wickstead, far more to their taste than the tophatted merchants who had succeeded them as the policy makers of England.

She stood at the window for a long time, watching the westering sun tip molten gold over the wooded hills of the Marches. Dusk stole into the valleys and the sky over Wales turned coral pink, streaked with crimson and heliotrope.

Hobnailed boots clattered on the cobbles and the murmur of voices reached her from the stables and street below. Her sense of detachment, that had never left her since she had resolved upon this crazy enterprise, settled in the room and suddenly the prospect of stretching herself on that comfortable-looking bed was irresistible. She thought, “Suppose he makes a night of it with that farmer out at Bringewood Chase? Or suppose he calls my bluff, lights his pipe with my note, and comes rolling back here drunk as a fiddler at three in the morning?” and suddenly she was too tired to care one way or the other. She half-closed the window, shrugged her self out of her bedgown, and slipped between lavender-scented sheets. In a matter of seconds she was asleep.

The rattle of china awakened her and she sat up, at a loss to know where she was and then, half recollecting, astonished to find it still daylight.

The door was opening and the maid appeared, a smile on her rosy face, and before Edith had knuckled her eyes he appeared, striding across the room in his high, brown riding boots, saying, with quite unnecessary gusto, “Why,
there
you are, my love! God bless my soul, what a pleasant surprise! Have I disturbed you?” and to the girl, “Over there by the window and draw the curtains. Here, catch!” and he spun her a coin that earned him a curtsey. Then she was gone and he was standing over the bed looking down at her with laugh ter in his eyes and the corners of his mouth puckered with the jovi ality he had apparently assumed for the benefit of the girl. The expression left him, reluctantly she thought, as though he had not yet made up his mind what expression should succeed it.

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Suddenly, and treacherously, all the confidence that had carried her across the full width of England was banished from the room by his presence and she saw now, when it was too late to do anything but blink, that she had lost the initiative by falling asleep in that inexplicable fashion and that he was not a man to let her regain it. She wondered why, having gone to such pains to obtain the advan tage, she had neglected to rehearse a speech, or at any rate an atti tude. As it was, with him standing there like a doctor attending a scared child, her mind had never been so blank, or her tongue less ready to frame words, and this sense of bewilderment persisted, even when he sat down on the bed, saying, “Oh, come now, don’t look at me as if
I
was demanding the ransom. I was obliged to put on some kind of show, wasn’t I? They said you had gone to your room supper-less, but it didn’t occur to me that you…” and suddenly he stopped and she saw, with tremendous relief, that his quick wits were already at work on the reason for her stupefaction. He said, laughing, “You didn’t intend to be caught asleep. You just dropped off,” and she nodded, so that the expression in his eyes was tolerant and he lifted his hand touching her hair, still dressed in its chignon, with the care fully poised coils specially arranged to offset the new puff bonnet she had travelled in.

His touch was light and playful, and again she had a vivid sense of being whirled back to her girlhood, this time into the presence of a cheerful young doctor, who was kindness itself but represented, by his presence at the bedside, a crisis of some magnitude. She said in a voice that did not seem to be hers, “You…

you don’t
have
to stay, Tom. Not from kindness, that is,” and then, despairingly, “It seemed a simple thing to do. I just thought of it and then…well, I did it. Without thinking. In a kind of trance.”

“You regret it now?”

“Yes, I do. Very much. It’s a trick. A silly, shabby trick, and I can’t begin to think…” and she stopped because suddenly the enormity of her behaviour, and the cold, calculating way in which she had gone about the business, revealed her to herself as someone who was incapable of unselfish affection.

“Not a trick. Let’s say a hoax.”

“No, not a hoax! I didn’t come here to play a joke on anybody. I had quite a different idea when I set out and after I actually got here until…well, until just a moment ago, when you came in with that girl.”

“I see. And then?”

“Now it seems quite monstrous that I should do this to you. For the purpose I did do it.”

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“You left the backdoor open. The woman said something about my room being available, on account of an early start I’m supposed to make. That puzzled me but I played up. I said I’d take the key, and perhaps go to my room after supper, and that puzzled
her;
that a man should occupy two beds in one night.” His tolerance began to mellow her, not dramatically but gently, so that she was at least capable of peeping round the door of incredulity and contemplating anew the motives that had brought her to this sorry pass. She said, “That note…I must have been coming to my senses even then. I said it was up to you, didn’t I, and it is, even now. You’ve got your key. Take your supper along and go about your business in the morning.”

“Don’t make my decisions. Make your own, Edith.” She considered, thinking it strange that he could command that much generosity, and also, perhaps, that he should confuse her em barrassment with fear, or modesty.

“I made mine by putting myself in this position.”

“That’s true, but you mentioned the word “trance.” People can think themselves into extraordinary situations and still be scared of the consequences. That’s something I have to be sure about, my dear.”

It was true, she supposed, and it meant that she owed him an ex plicit explanation.

“I haven’t the least doubt that I’m very much in love with you, Tom. I didn’t think myself into that.”

“It’s possible.”

“Not at my age it isn’t. What’s the time?”

“What the devil does it matter what time it is?”

“It matters very much.”

“About ten.”

“In two hours I’ll be thirty. That’s one reason why I’m here. If you hadn’t written, to say you couldn’t get back as arranged, it’s possible I shouldn’t have made such a fool of myself.”

He put his hand in his breeches pocket and drew out a little pack age that he tossed on the bed. ‘‘Open it.”

Her fingers plucked awkwardly at the wrapping and it came away, revealing a small, five-sided leather box, fitted with a tiny thumb-spring. She pressed the spring and the lid popped up. Inside, on a bed of blue velvet, was a thin circlet of gold, set with three small dia monds, hardly more than large chippings.

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deflected her attention from the ring so that she set the box in the hollow of the coverlet and unwrapped the paper. It was a broader, heavier ring, gold and unembellished.

She held it in the hollow of her hand, sensible of its weight and peering down at it in the fading light. She heard him say, “Not quite up to Hatton Garden standards but I at least acquired both conven tionally. They’re the first rings I ever handled in that respect.”

She could have wept for him and for herself too. She knew very little about jewellery but enough to tell her that what she held in her hand represented about two months’ wages on his rates. She won dered why, since he had gone this far, he had not tossed the latest batch of Headquarters’ directives over the nearest hedge, and come flying to her from wherever he was the minute he walked out of the shop with that package in his breeches pocket, but then she saw that this would have undermined the flimsy structure of a life he was re building, not only for himself but for her.

She said, “Dear God, Tom, if I’d known…guessed…This makes my coming here so wrong…so unfair. I should ask you if you’ve got second thoughts?”

“Well, now,” he replied, with his characteristic blend of irony and gaiety, “that’s one way of looking at it, for you do have a tendency to stampede a man. But I’d be a fool to hold that against you. No body could say I was much of a catch and to have a busy woman chase one across England could be regarded as very flattering.”

She held out her arms and he threw himself forward, showering her face with kisses. The box slipped away in the folds of the bed clothes and her hand blindly pursued it, capturing it and pressing it or him but without separating her mouth from his.

“Slip it on, Tom. Now!”

“You mean both, I take it?” and, finding her hand, “Since you announced yourself as Mrs. Wickstead. didn’t it occur to you to wear ring?”

“I kept my gloves on.”

He slipped both rings on her finger with a flourish that seemed to her to proclaim all those aspects of him that she found so boyish and endearing, aspects that most men seemed to leave behind with their childhood. He was tremendously elated by the neatness with which he had trumped her ace, and she supposed many women would have thought of this as naïve but she did not. It was an essential part of him explaining, to her mind, both his male gentleness and his joie de vivre. He said, kissing her ringed hand with a final flourish, “Are you hungry, GodIsAnEnglishman.indd 596

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