Half Moon Street (25 page)

“You always said . . . you said you loved him . . .” she began. “He was so . . . such a wonderful man . . . you said you were so happy!”

The old lady felt the bitter heat of shame in her cheeks. “What would you have said?” she asked. “The truth?”

“No . . .” There were tears in Caroline’s voice. “Of course not. I don’t know . . . I don’t know what I would have done. I can’t imagine it . . . I can’t . . . I don’t know. It . . .” She did not say it was not true, but it was there in her voice, her face, the stiff, tight angle of her shoulders.

“You can’t believe it!” It was a challenge, laying bare her own humiliation and her cowardice all those years. No one would believe that Alys left, her courage, her dignity, and Mariah remained, to be used like an animal.

“I . . .” Caroline stopped, lifting her hands helplessly.

“Why didn’t I go . . . as Alys did?” The words were torn out, like barbed wire. “Because I am a coward.” There it was, the lowest ugliness of all, the loathing, the self-disgust, not just that she had been reduced to bestiality, her human dignity stripped from her, but that she had stayed and allowed it to go on happening. She made no excuses. There were none. Whatever Caroline thought of her, it could not equal the contempt she had for herself.

Caroline looked at the old woman’s face, tight and crumpled with pain and years of bitterness. The self-hatred was naked in her eyes, and the despair.

She rejected the idea. It was obscene. And yet it made a hideous sense. Part of her believed it already. But if it was true, it shattered so much of her world, the ideals and the people she had trusted. If behind the self-composed manner, the smile and the Sunday prayers, Edmund Ellison had been a sexual sadist, submitting his wife to humiliating cruelties in the secrecy of their own bedroom, then who, anywhere, was what he seemed? If even his familiar face hid ugliness so appalling her imagination refused to grasp it, then what was safe . . . anywhere?

And yet looking at the old woman in front of her, she could not push the truth of it away. Something terrible had happened to her. Something had precipitated the years of anger and cruelty she had exercised on her family. The hatred she seemed to feel for the world, anyone and everyone, was really for herself. She saw the worst in others because she saw it in her own heart. And for years she had despised her inability to fight against it, to defend her humanity from degradation and pain. She was a coward, and she knew it. She had submitted, and endured, rather than run away into the dangerous and unknown as Alys had done, alone, penniless, with nothing but her courage and her desperation. No wonder Samuel admired his mother so profoundly.

Mariah had stayed with her husband, living with it, night after night, putting on a brave, smooth face every day, then going up to her bedroom knowing what would happen . . . and it had, year after year, until he had finally died and set her free. Except that she was not free, she was as much imprisoned as when he had been alive, because the memory and the loathing were still there, locked inside her.

“Did you really think Samuel would tell anyone?” Caroline said gently, not knowing why these words came to her lips.

There were tears in the old lady’s eyes, although no one else would ever know whether they were grief, rage or self-pity.

“He knew . . . at least . . .” Suddenly her eyes were hollow with doubt. “I think he did. He might have told, but I couldn’t live with the uncertainty . . . if he . . .”

Caroline waited.

The old lady sniffed. “I’m sorry for what I did to you. You didn’t deserve that. I . . . I wish I hadn’t.”

Caroline reached forward and very tentatively touched the ancient hand lying on the black skirt. It was stiff and cold under her fingers.

“There are many kinds of courage,” she said softly. “Running away is one of them. Remaining is another. What would have happened to Edward and Suzannah if you had gone? You could not have taken them with you over to America. It would be illegal. The police would have come after you.”

“I could have tried!” The words were angry, grating.

“And made it worse for yourself,” Caroline pointed out. “To go was brave—but to stay and make the best of it you could for your children, that was brave too.”

A tiny spark lit in the old lady’s black eyes, a flare of hope.

They had cordially disliked each other for years, living under the same roof, circling around each other with chill, occasionally open, hostility. Now all that seemed unimportant. This was a consuming reality which overrode all the past. The moment was now, in a new light, with new knowledge.

“No, it wasn’t. I was afraid to go.” The old lady said the words carefully, looking at Caroline all the time.

Caroline spoke honestly. It was not difficult, which surprised her.

“Perhaps Alys was afraid to stay?”

The old lady hesitated. It was obvious she had not thought of that. In her mind Alys had always been the one who was brave, the one who did the right thing. This was hope from a quarter she had never expected.

Caroline smiled very faintly, just an instant. “It takes strength to endure and tell no one, never to run away, simply give up. Did you ever allow Edward or Suzannah to know?”

The old lady stiffened. “Of course not! What a monstrous question.”

“You hid it from them for yourself . . . but for them also.”

“I . . . I hid it . . .” The struggle for honesty was so plain it was painful. “I don’t know. I hid it for myself. . . . I couldn’t bear my children to know I had . . . I had been . . . to see me like . . .” At last the tears spilled over onto her cheeks and she began to shudder uncontrollably.

Caroline was horrified. For a moment she was paralyzed. Then pity swept away everything else. She could not like the old woman—there was too much cruelty, too many years of criticism and complaint to forget—but she could feel the wrenching sorrow inside her, the guilt and the self-loathing, the unbearable loneliness. She leaned forward and put her arms around the old woman’s shoulders and held her gently.

They stayed like that, motionless, neither one of them speaking, until Caroline felt a kind of peace settle over them, perhaps no more than a temporary emotional exhaustion. Then she let go, and sat back in her own chair for a moment.

Was there something else she should say of comfort, or honesty, something which if left silent now could not be recaught later? Should they agree on some story to tell Joshua? He had to know.

For a moment she was cold, frightened.

She looked at the old woman in front of her, head still bent, face hidden. How could she explain the letter? It had to have been someone in the house using her name. She and Samuel had never been seen together in public, except at the theatre the night they met. No woman in Samuel’s life, presuming there was one, could be jealous enough to do such a thing. Caroline was his brother’s widow. Who more natural for him to call on in a strange city?

But she must explain yesterday to Joshua. That was insistent, at the front of her mind.

She looked at the old lady, and pity ground hard with a unique pain, but she had brought that upon herself; her own actions had made it inevitable. Caroline was not going to wound Joshua, and herself, to save Mariah Ellison. She could not believe Alys could have told her son something so terrible. But even if he knew, Samuel had not behaved towards them as if he knew. Joshua would remain. What should she say?

Her own decision was made. She rose to her feet and went quietly out of the room, closing the door. In the hall she saw the maid.

“Mrs. Ellison would like a little time alone,” she said to the girl. “Please see that she is not disturbed for a while, half an hour at least. Unless, of course, she rings for you.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Caroline went upstairs deep in thought. It would be very difficult to tell Joshua. Perhaps she could avoid the details. She had never kept a secret from him before. She had been used to discretion all her married life with Edward, but Joshua was different . . . or he had been, before this.

Perhaps she could tell him that there was an agonizing, humiliating secret but not what it was? Maybe he would not ask.

She crossed the landing to her bedroom. She had no particular purpose in going there, simply to be alone. Her mind was in far too much turmoil to be concentrated on any household task, and there was none outstanding that mattered.

She closed the door and sat down in the dressing chair with its pretty chintz flowers. She loved this room. It was what she had wanted for years, in Edward’s time, but he would have disliked it. He would have found the flowers too large, too bright, and the whole thing not dignified enough.

She tried to remember him clearly, bring back his presence into her mind, everything that was good and gentle about him, the reality of his feelings. How he had grieved for Sarah. He had disliked Pitt so much, to begin with. He had never really come to know him well. But then like a lot of men, he had loved his daughters deeply, even if he had not often shown it, and no man was good enough to marry them and care for them as they should have been. Emily’s first husband had had the money and the breeding, but Edward had always worried that he would not necessarily be faithful to her.

And of course Pitt had no money to speak of, and no social background at all. How could he ever give Charlotte all Edward thought she was worthy of ?

And how Dominic had treated his beloved Sarah was an old pain best forgotten now. Sarah was dead, and nothing could retrieve that.

Then her thoughts skipped to Edward himself, and Mrs. Attwood, whose lovely face Caroline could still picture quite easily, even after all these years. She remembered exactly how she had felt when she had first realized she was Edward’s mistress, not the invalid widow of an old friend, as he had claimed. She had discovered a part of Edward she had not known. What else might there have been that she never knew?

She was beginning to feel a coldness inside her. Her hands were trembling. She had been totally duped by her father-in-law. She had seen him only as the dignified man she met in the withdrawing room, or presiding at the dining table, saying the family prayers. The other man, the creature Mrs. Ellison described, was a monster living in the same skin, and she had neither seen nor felt anything of him at all. How could she be so utterly blind, so insensitive?

What else was she blind to? It was not only that she had been wrong about her father-in-law, it was that she had been so wrong about herself ! All that cruelty, that misery and humiliation, even physical pain, had been there behind the daily masks, and she had seen nothing of them.

In who else’s face had she seen only what she wanted to? What had Edward asked of Mrs. Attwood that he had never asked of Caroline? How much did she really know about anyone? Even Joshua . . . ?

She did not feel in the least like going out that evening, but it was the first night of Joshua’s new play. Normally she would be there, whatever the circumstances. Not to go would make a statement she could never retrieve.

She ate a light supper alone—the old lady remained upstairs— then she dressed with great care in a magnificent royal blue gown. She added the cameo pendant that Joshua had given her, and a long velvet cloak, then took the carriage to the theatre, feeling cold, shivering and uncertain. Joshua could not be more afraid of this evening than she was. He could not have as much riding in its success or failure.

For a while the buzz of excitement carried her along and she had no chance to think of anything other than greeting friends and those who wished her well. They congratulated her for Joshua and were filled with anticipation of the audience’s reaction. She desperately wished him to succeed, to be praised, and yet not to portray any of the disturbing passions she saw in Cecily Antrim.

At last the lights dimmed, the audience fell silent, and the curtain rose.

The play was superb, subtle, intelligent, and funny. Many times she found herself laughing aloud. During the first interval she glanced across and saw Mr. and Mrs. Marchand, smiling and at ease. She was too far away to read their expressions in detail, but their gestures made their pleasure evident.

Suddenly Caroline was aware of hurt, even defensiveness. She did not want them to be disturbed; she liked them and understood them, she wanted their friendship and perceived both its values and its limitations. And yet complacency was a kind of death. Something that did not stir thought, awaken new emotions or challenge preconceptions was agreeable, but no more than that. And she knew that Joshua would despise himself if that was all he did. He did not wish merely to entertain. That was at least in part why he admired Cecily Antrim so profoundly. She had the courage to say what she believed, whether one agreed with it or not.

The second act was swifter moving, and it was almost over before she realized there were deeper emotions drawn from her than in the first, and becoming more complex. It was painful, and it was also a kind of relief. She began to think again of Mariah Ellison and how the sudden knowledge of her suffering and anger over all these years had changed her own life.

Twenty-four hours ago she would not have believed that civilized people would even think of the things the old lady had said Edmund Ellison had forced on her most nights of her married life. And yet even sitting here in this exquisite theatre, watching drama so perfectly performed, acted, pretended with consummate skill, surrounded in the half dark by hundreds of exquisitely dressed people, she did believe it. That darkness might lie behind any number of these calm, smoothly groomed faces. She would never know.

She thought of the old lady sitting in growing terror every time Samuel called, then at last planning her terrible, destructive escape. Had she thought that if Joshua left Caroline, threw her out for immorality, just what that would mean? Surely she had. And yet she had known nothing but bitterness and humiliation in marriage, and she could not live with the thought that her family, to whom she had perpetuated the lie for so many years, would at last know that.