Grahame, Lucia (46 page)

Did I imagine that little flicker of compassion in her face?

"Work!" I said, forgetting myself. "What 'work' is
it that cannot wait even an hour or two!"

"I'm sure I do not know, my lady," she replied in such
an opaque way that I rather imagined she
did
know but that not even the
threat of the rack could have persuaded her to reveal it.

I pushed back my chair and started to rise. I had lost my appetite
completely, and I could not bear the thought of sitting in that huge hall
alone, staring down one delicacy after another until the interminable torture
ended.

Mrs. Phillips gazed with bleak eyes at the beautifully laid table.

I sank back into the chair.

"Well," I said, "you may as well tell them to bring
on the soup."

"Yes, my lady."

Although I could eat very little, I scrupulously sampled each
painstakingly prepared dish: the
saumon, sauce verte,
the
Ch
â
teaubriand
aux pommes...
. If anything could have tempted a sluggish appetite, it was
these.

I barely tasted them.

My head was splitting when I left the table. However, I did not go
to my bedroom. I went to the library, where I picked up one dismal book after
another and stared at meaningless pages of type. I heard the clock strike
ten... quarter past... half past... and then my eyes fell shut.

"There you are," said my husband. He sounded surprised.

I pulled myself upright, too befogged and uncertain of myself to
speak.

"I've been wanting to have a word with you," he said,
"but it is already past eleven, and I thought you would be in bed by now.
Is it too late?"

"Not at all," I said.

I thought he seemed as ill at ease as he had been earlier in my
sitting room. Again he appeared to be at a loss for words.

"You will be pleased to know that I have lost the taste for
my exercise in revenge," he said finally. His voice was flat and
dismissive; his eyes were hard and distant. As I stared at him, bewildered, he
turned and disappeared into his study, whence he shortly returned with a check
folded inside a sheet of notepaper which bore the address of Smalley &
Brown, his London solicitors. The check was for a princely amount.

"You may leave anytime," he said. "I have
instructed my solicitors to send you checks for this amount every quarter. You
need only keep them informed of your whereabouts."

Even if words had come to me, I could not have spoken them. I was
mute with shock.

"I return to London tomorrow and shall stay there until you
are gone from Charingworth." He reached into his pocket and pulled out a
crisp little stack of bank notes. "Here is something to help you on your
way. How much time do you want to make arrangements to leave? Will two or three
weeks suffice?"

"Two weeks will be more than enough," I managed faintly.

"If the money I have arranged for you to receive proves to be
inadequate to your needs, or if you wish to communicate with me for any other
reason, I must ask you to do so through Smalley & Brown."

"Was it to tell me this that you came to my room today?"
I said after another long silence.

"Yes," he said.

He seemed reluctant to meet my eyes.

I waited, longing for him to hold out one glimmer of hope. He said
nothing more.

"Then why did you put your hands on me?" I whispered at
last.

He turned back to me. The hard, distant gaze was gone; now I saw
that gentler look which I'd glimpsed in his eyes when he'd left me at the
station. I hadn't known how to interpret it then; I soon learned that all it
expressed was pity.

"It was a... a reflex, if you will," he said. "I
felt sorry for you. You were trying so hard to be pleasant this afternoon—I
could see what an effort it was for you. It made me realize what a scoundrel
I've been to hold on to you for the sake of exacting my revenge. That's over,
Fleur," he concluded. He sounded exhausted. "I want you to go."

After a while I said, with a coolness that rivaled his own,
"I suppose you will want a divorce then."

He shrugged.

"I have given you the justification you need," he said.
"Whether or not to use it is entirely up to you. For my part, I have no
wish to marry again. My experience of marriage has done nothing to recommend
the institution to me. Good night."

He turned quickly and left the room.

I took what little clothing I thought I would need, but I could
not bring myself to take the diamond collar, which had been mysteriously
restored to the case in my dressing room, nor any of my husband's other gifts
of jewelry, except for the broken chains of white brass.

There was very little that I carried away from Charingworth—a few
old dresses, some books and sketches, and my father's last letter to me. I left
a note for Mrs. Phillips with instructions to have my remaining possessions
shipped to Marguerite's house in Paris.

Shortly before my departure, I took Andromeda out for a long ride.
To her patient ears, I confided all my confusions and regrets. I knew it was
foolish, but I didn't care. She was steadfastly unjudgmental and offered me no
useless advice. Finally my eyes blurred, so I slipped from her back and stood
against her with my arms wrapped around her neck and tears sliding down my
face, until she whinnied softly and bent her lovely head to nuzzle me.

Watkins gave me a curious look when I returned. I supposed my eyes
were still red. He knew I would be leaving that afternoon, for I had asked him
to arrange for someone to drive me to the railway station. But he could not
know— could he?—that I had been told never to return.

I spent a little time in the stables, making my sad farewells to
the other horses. I had become fond of all of them. Magnificent Perseus, my
husband's favorite, who held his head so proudly and moved with such flair and
grace. Patient old Canute. Older even than Canute was Hadrian, who had long ago
outlived his usefulness. He had been stiff and half blind for years, but was
still cherished and indulged. My husband could have never sold him off or sent
him to the knacker's yard.

And the others, so well trained and so lovingly cared for. In a
burst of unjust and irrational self-pity, I wondered how much better I might
have fared had I been one of my husband's horses.

After leaving the stables, I went to my room to change into my
traveling clothes. That done, I took a sheet of notepaper from my desk and the
check my husband had given me. His instructions had been to communicate with
him only through Smalley & Brown, but I ignored this command.

"Dear Anthony," I wrote. "I hope you will
understand why I cannot accept this check from you. I shall be gone from
Charingworth by the time you receive this, so I hope you will feel free to
return as early as you like.

"I am not able to take Marie with me, and, under the
circumstances, I am sure that any reference I might give her would do more harm
than good. But you will agree that it would be unjust to let her suffer because
of a situation that is in no way her fault. She was an excellent maid to me in
every respect. I know I can depend upon you to look out for her interests.

"If you can give Andromeda a little special attention, that
she may not feel suddenly abandoned, I would be very grateful. I truly regret
whatever unhappiness I have caused you, and I wish you only the best. Believe
me. Fleur."

I folded the note around the check and put them into an envelope,
which I addressed to him at Grosvenor Square.

There was a certain irony in the comfort I gleaned from knowing,
beyond any doubt, that he would have concerned himself about Marie whether or
not I had asked it of him. His earnest sense of responsibility, which I had
once scorned as a lack of spontaneity, guaranteed that she would never suffer
for my sins. I knew he would do everything in his power to find her a new
situation as a lady's maid, and that if he could not, he would keep her on at
Charingworth.

Shortly before I left the house, I had a very odd impulse. I went
into my husband's bedroom, where I had scarcely ever set foot. It was very
different from his bedroom in London; I liked it better. It reminded me of him
powerfully.

It was chastely furnished, almost Spartan in its simplicity, but
filled with a haunting, verdant sweetness, for the windows were open to the
mild summer air, open to the bird-song soaring from the treetops, open to the
flowers in the gardens below.

I lay down upon his bed and thought about all the things I would
never have the opportunity to say to him. I had barely ever had a warm word for
him, and certainly never an affectionate one. I wondered why this had continued
to be so, even after my feelings for him had softened.

Perhaps it was because I could not bring myself to trade in the
coinage I had debased. Long ago, when he'd asked me whether I loved him, I had
answered yes; I had corrupted the language of the heart. How can it hope to
reveal its secrets, when words have lost their meaning?

I contemplated this now with regret but without despair. I felt
open to every sad truth, yet strangely peaceful. The realizations came, I
accepted and acknowledged them, and let them pass on. The unrestrained tears I
had shed earlier had left me with an exhausted sense of calm. I did not resist
the currents of my thoughts.

My mind drifted back to Andromeda. I wondered whether my husband
would take her out occasionally and let her run. He had never ridden her; I had
had a proprietary attitude where she was concerned. Now I hoped he would. I
knew he admired her passion for speed.

As I contemplated this, I felt a curious twinge of envy for my
little horse. I let myself imagine what it would feel like to be his mount,
controlled by the warm pressure of his knees and calves and by the delicate,
assured touch of his hands on the reins. My blood sang softly at the vision of
having the passionate impulse liberated and at the same time skillfully
directed.

Now, as the scent of new-cut grass drifted up from the lawn and
the curtains rustled softly in the breeze, unsettling images sprang into my
consciousness like water rising from a subterranean stream to replenish a
woodland pool.

Perhaps if I had been able to transmute myself into a beautiful,
four-legged creature, built for speed and schooled to respond to the most
subtle, expert hands, my husband would have kept me—might, in fact, have taken
some delight in me.

The idle fancy was seductive, compelling. To be prized and petted,
curried and groomed, to be coolly, masterfully used, to have nothing more
demanded of me than silent, sensitive responsiveness.... Oh yes, this was the
adventure I craved, the experience to which I ached to surrender. As I
acknowledged the secret hunger so long disowned, I understood at last why my
husband had been able to unleash such an astounding torrent of sensuality on
that distant night in London, why he had awakened in me a response of such
profound obeisance.

He had stopped talking of love. He had offered me the only thing
my frozen heart could accept. He had catered to my deepest, most inadmissible
wish—to surrender myself, not to love, but to a power worthy of respect and
admiration, a power that weighed and measured its demands instead of insisting
that it must have everything.

Could he have perceived that dormant yearning when he married me?
And if he had, why had he waited so long to assert his own appetites, which so
perfectly complemented my own? My mind wandered back to the beginnings of his
courtship. I knew, from what he had told me when we had stood together on the
Pont-Neuf in that gentle rain, that he had always been aware of his own darker
desires—the lust for power, the joy in exercising it—and that, although he had
guarded against these, he had never disguised his hungers to himself as I had
mine.

Perhaps, at the very beginning, his recognition of me had been
only barely conscious, and untrustworthy in the face of the smooth,
unassailable facade I had presented to him once we were wed.

But I did not blame myself now for the huge gulf between the woman
I had seemed and the woman he had revealed me to be. How could I have known
that other aspect of myself?

I thought of my beloved Frederick, easy, laughing, and indulgent.
Frederick, who had not shrunk from passion, but who, on the other hand, had
never insisted upon it. Never could he have steeled himself to such sublime and
necessary ruthlessness. Never could he have exercised such glorious, implacable
severity. Even the paintings that brought me down had been done in a playful
spirit; they had never affected Frederick's perception of me.

But my husband, seeing them through the lens of his own
self-knowledge, would have recognized exactly how much I had withheld both from
him and from myself, would have discerned in them instantly that capacity for
passionate submission that the artist had unwittingly captured.

I stood up. I supposed this greater awareness, so painfully
acquired, could help to clarify the past, with all its confusions and
ambiguities, but it would serve me little in the future. The opportunity for
that was gone.