Justine Elyot (31 page)

‘Charles –’

‘But it won’t be, you know,’ he said fervently after taking a deep drag. ‘You’ll never see the back of me. I’ll pursue you until I wear you down.’

‘Charles,’ she said, pinching his arm to shut him up. ‘Stop it. Don’t presume to speak for me. Give me a minute to straighten my thoughts.’

‘All right,’ he muttered. ‘I’m sorry. I told you – I’m nervous.’

He smoked on, Edie pressed into his side, holding on to his arm for dear life, until the cigarette was spent. He threw it into a wet flower-bed, causing Edie to tut slightly, then they walked on.

‘I wish things had been different for my mother,’ said Edie.

‘So do I.’

‘She had to rely on men, and their good opinion, all her life. She had no way around it. Her world was ruled by them and she had to subject herself to its strictures. Be glamorous, be beautiful, be fascinating to men. Those were her commandments. If she’d only been born twenty years later …’

‘Things aren’t so different now,’ said Charles.

‘Not as much as they should be, no. But the war changed things. Women’s voices are being heard at last. We are starting to assert ourselves and to insist on being seen as people. That’s all we really want, Charles. To have our humanity acknowledged as being parallel to that of men. Not the same as men, but capable of many of the same things, and certainly no less important to the world.’

Charles held up his hands. ‘You don’t need to preach to me, Edie. I’m with you. Votes for women, etcetera.’

‘Good. So you’ll understand that I don’t want the life my mother wanted. She knew she wouldn’t be truly secure unless she had the patronage of a very rich and powerful man. Once she had it, though, she realised how short it fell of what she really needed.’

‘You don’t know what she really needed. Pa loved her. She did not love him. She wasn’t some suffering victim.’

‘They both were. Victims of a world that accepts it as natural that a rich man will want a beautiful woman. An adornment. It’s all so false, Charles, and so damaging. Don’t you see?’

He shrugged. ‘Perhaps, a little.’

‘It isn’t what I want for myself.’

‘What? So because I’m rich and you’re beautiful, we can’t truly love each other? That’s wrong, Edie. Quite wrong.’

‘That’s not what I mean. I want the freedom she never had. The freedom to be flawed and to make mistakes and to love whom I want, how I want. She was imprisoned by society’s expectations of how women should be – I refuse to live in a prison.’

Charles smiled and kissed her forehead.

‘Bravo,’ he said. ‘They should put you on a soapbox at Speakers’ Corner. You’d be very good.’

‘Don’t tease me.’

‘I’m sorry. I don’t mean to. But, much as I agree with your lofty sentiments, my love, I’d like to know how you mean to apply them to
me
.’

‘I won’t ever be Lady Deverell,’ she said, looking him straight in the eye.

He winced.

‘I can’t live that life, Charles. I’m sorry. I’ve seen it and it’s not for me. But … don’t look so crushed. It doesn’t mean I won’t love you and be loved by you.’

‘I don’t understand. If you won’t marry me …’

‘“Come live with me and be my love,”’ she quoted, closing her hand over the one that held the umbrella’s crook.

‘Like a shot, darling. But how is that possible?’

‘I mean to go back to London, if not today then within the week. It is for you to choose whether or not you will come with me. We can live as man and wife – we can even marry, if you must – but I don’t want that title and I don’t want to come back here. Ever.’

‘Good God,’ said Charles, feeling reflexively in his pocket for another cigarette. ‘That’s quite an ultimatum. Pa …’

‘I know. It’s not really fair to ask it of you. And if you can’t bring yourself to give up all of this – your birthright and all that – then of course I’ll understand. And I’ll miss you terribly and love you always but I’ll know that it can never be.’ Her voice jolted, the tears forming rapidly.

‘Edie, think about this. We needn’t live here, of course. We have a place in London, you know that. We can stay there, all the year round. Tom can manage the Hall in the event of pa’s death.’

‘Your father won’t be happy.’

‘He never is. Let me speak to him.’

‘All right. If there’s a compromise we can reach, then so much the better. I don’t want your title, though, and I don’t want your riches. Make quite sure he understands that.’

Charles looked at his unlit cigarette and put it back in the box, rejecting it in favour of a tight embrace.

‘You’re like nobody else I’ve ever met,’ he said, stroking her hair with his free hand. ‘What’s the opposite of a gold-digger?’

She laughed, huddled happily in his arms. Perhaps, after all, something could be salvaged from this terrible tragic mess.

‘I know you’ve been groomed for this all your life,’ said Edie, waving to indicate the Hall and its surroundings. ‘If you can’t give it up … but I won’t say any more. It’s really up to you.’

She tried to disengage, bent on running full pelt back to the funeral party, but he would not let her go. Instead, he held the back of her neck and kissed her, through her tears and the rain, until the sound of footsteps on gravel interrupted them.

‘Young lovers.’

They looked at the source of the words.

‘Sylvie,’ said Charles with a polite bow.

‘You are dancing on her grave,’ she replied, her face twisted with disgust.

Edie felt the force of the accusation. Perhaps it was not proper to be kissing her mother’s stepson at her funeral after all. Embarrassed and ashamed, she crossed her arms and stepped away from Charles.

‘No, don’t,’ he said, pulling her back into his side. ‘I don’t think we have anything to hide. Sylvie, on the other hand … It was you, wasn’t it? Who wrote that anonymous letter to papa?’

‘Charles, this isn’t the time or place,’ urged Edie, but Sylvie had already answered with a sneer and a nod.

‘Thus,’ he persisted, ‘setting a chain of events in motion that led to her death. Whether by accident or suicide I don’t suppose we shall ever know. Why did you do it?’

‘Why do you think? It’s obvious, surely. She gave my place to this … girl. I was angry. Furious.’

‘So you betrayed her to my father.’

‘You were going to do it anyway.’

Charles flinched and Edie turned swiftly to him. The accusation was just. He could not deny it.

‘There was a time,’ he admitted. ‘But I’d changed my mind. Besides, I wouldn’t have told pa she did anything with
me
. That’s not the tack I would have taken, for pretty obvious reasons.’

‘You wanted to get rid of her.’

He shrugged.

‘It’s not my finest hour,’ he said. ‘But at least I held back in the end. Whereas your little stunt has left us with one person dead and another devastated. Pa’s just about made up his mind that the accusation was a spiteful lie, but I don’t think he’ll ever look at me in quite the same way again, all the same. The wedge has been driven in between us, Sylvie, and it’s all thanks to you.’

Sylvie’s face changed from a mask of vengeance to tired and grey. She went to sit on a garden bench, apparently insensible to its wetness, and put her head in her hands.

Edie, recognising utter desolation when she saw it, went to sit beside her.

‘No, go away. You have taken everything from me.’ Sylvie’s voice was hard and tight. ‘I wish you had died, not her. I loved her. I loved her and now she is dead.’

‘Whether you hate me or not, I am sorry. So sorry,’ said Edie. ‘I hope you will find peace.’

‘
Putain, va-t’en!
’

Edie got up and ran back to the house, knowing she would easily outpace Charles, whose feet she could hear, crunch crunch crunch, behind her.

‘Don’t go,’ he cried. ‘Edie. Don’t go.’

She had gone to her room and packed her belongings within the hour.

* * *

Alighting from the train at Paddington, Edie leant heavily on her father’s arm. She was quite light-headed and wobbly from the tempest of weeping that had kept any other passengers from joining them in their compartment during the journey.

And now, even dear old London could not soothe her, with its sooty air and its solemn station clock and its eddying tides of people everywhere.

It just seemed grey and noisy and firmly unsympathetic. Where was the space for the finer feelings? Where was the respect for grief and tender-heartedness when a gang of yahoos elbowed one out of the way, cheroots in the corners of their mouths, with a cheery ‘Is your face long enough, love?’?

Her experiment had been the very worst kind of failure. Instead of gaining a mother, she had lost one. And that was not all. Her heart seemed to be somewhere out of her keeping too.

‘I shall invite the McCullens for supper,’ declared her father. ‘They will be delighted to see you. It’ll do you good.’

‘Oh, please, don’t,’ said Edie. ‘Let me have the evening alone. I cannot bear company just yet.’

She staggered and he helped her regain her balance.

‘You seem terribly weak, Edie. Come to the station buffet. I’ll get you some coffee and sandwiches.’

Ensconced by the window, looking out on to the busy concourse, Edie tried to address herself to potted-meat sandwiches but they were too hard to stomach and she concentrated instead on the coffee.

‘Have you eaten at all, since it happened?’ asked her father.

‘Barely. Or slept.’

He shook his head.

‘I wish you had felt you could have told me your plans. I would have written to her. Perhaps she might have visited us.’

‘At least I knew her. However briefly.’

‘Yes. At least you knew her.’ Her father gave her hand a sympathetic squeeze.

‘Did you love her?’

‘When we were together? Not that it was ever a conventional kind of romance. Yes, I did. Of course I did, Edie. Especially when you were the result of that union.’

‘Did she love you?’

He smiled sadly. ‘Not enough,’ he said.

‘Some people are better at loving than others.’

‘Yes.’ He watched her toy with the crusts of her sandwich for a few moments, then said, ‘Edie. I couldn’t help noticing at the funeral …’

She looked up.

‘Yes?’

‘There seems to be … something, a little something, I don’t know what … between you and Lord Deverell’s elder son.’

She escaped into the coffee cup, avoiding his eye.

‘I’ve never seen you look at a chap like that,’ her father persisted. ‘Tell me he hasn’t …’

‘Hasn’t what? Made me fall in love with him? Because I can’t tell you that.’

‘Oh, my poor child.’

‘But never mind,’ she said, putting her coffee cup down with a decisive thump. ‘He has to stay and be a lord and all that. There’s no alternative. I have to find a way to do without him.’

Without him.

‘For what it’s worth,’ said her father gently, ‘the way he looked at you was no less remarkable than the way you looked at him. He cares for you, I think.’

‘Well, he shouldn’t. I don’t even like him.’

Edie laughed, a little hysterically, then tears stung her eyes.
Not again.

She took out her handkerchief, but it already needed wringing out.

Amongst the milling crowds she saw in the corner of her eye, something moved with greater urgency, drawing her gaze towards it. A well-dressed man with a stick, hurrying as best he could, but seemingly with no destination in mind, for he stopped and doubled back and went to the edge of the platform and peered along it a dozen times. Their train still stood in the station and it was not until he broke free of the throng and began opening and closing carriage doors, looking into each compartment, that she realised who it was that she watched.

‘Oh,’ she said, half-standing.

She looked at her father, and uttered another ‘Oh!’ before running out of the buffet without further explanation.

He was still opening and shutting doors when she stood at the end of the platform and called his name.

‘Edie!’ He closed the final door and limped along the platform towards her. ‘I thought you must have caught another train or got off somewhere else or …’

‘We were in the buffet.’

‘I had to drive like a maniac to get here before you – no easy task with a gammy leg like mine. Nearly got myself killed. And then you didn’t come out … oh. Come here.’

He grabbed her and swung her into his arms, kissing her face all over while people passed them, tutting or murmuring with nostalgic sympathy.

‘I had to leave,’ she said through tears and kisses. ‘I couldn’t stay another minute. I’m sorry.’

‘You didn’t say goodbye.’

‘I know.’

‘I wouldn’t have let you. Perhaps you knew that.’

‘But Charles, I can’t come between you and your birthright, so –’

‘Hush. So nothing. Birthright nothing. I don’t want all that – any of it. All right, a little private income doesn’t go amiss, but as for the Hall and the name … hang it. I asked pa to write me out of the succession. Told him to give it to Tom.’

‘Oh, you didn’t. What on earth did he say?’

‘I don’t know. I didn’t hang around to listen. Too intent on chasing you to London.’

‘He won’t agree.’

‘Whether he agrees or not is neither here nor there. Perhaps I’ll have to keep the title and Tom can manage the Hall. Whatever works best for everyone. The important thing is that you and I are together. Don’t you think?’

‘Yes. I do.’

‘Then everything else can settle itself.’

They kissed again, oblivious to all the bustle and drone and roar and clank and hiss. Nothing existed for them but their love. There would be no more secrets now.

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