Rutherford Park (39 page)

She shook her head. “I don’t know what to say.”

“Say you’ll come out at Christmas. Say you’ll come out in the spring. I’ll wait here, or in London. I’ll wait anywhere.” Tears had come to his eyes; he looked away from her in an effort to compose himself.

She gazed at the other walkers who passed them by. She envied their worlds, their seeming peace and calm. The pain was knotted inside her, an inanimate obstructive thing; it was as if it had invaded her, taken possession of her. “If I went anywhere, I would have to go with Louisa and Charlotte. And I would want to have Cecilia.” She looked directly at him. “It’s one thing for us to go
together,” she said. “It’s quite another to take three others away, and one of them a tiny child who has never known her father.”

“William has told you this. You’re following some sort of order.”

“No,” she said. “William has said nothing at all. But he…”

“He what?”

“I’m not sure that he’s well. He seems to be in pain from time to time.”

“What kind of pain?”

“His heart, I think. He won’t admit it.”

“Then perhaps he doesn’t feel it. Perhaps it’s you who feels it. Perhaps you think you’ve made him ill. It’s guilt, Octavia. Your guilt, that’s all.”

She was frowning hard. “I can’t be sure.”

He was trying to read her expression. “You don’t love me,” he murmured. “You don’t want me. This talk of William being ill is just an excuse.”

She turned on him, eyes blazing. “You think that I don’t want to live as we lived this summer?” she said. “You think that I want to lose that, to never have it again?” She made a fluttering gesture of helplessness.

“Then let’s go now,” he urged her. “This week. I’ll book a passage for you and the girls. They’ll want for nothing. I’ll book the best suite. I’ll build that fine house.” He made a pathetic attempt to be jaunty and to smile. “I’ll hire a nursemaid; I’ll buy a piano. I’ll be domesticated, if you like. I’ll clean the grates; I’ll haul in the coal.” His feigned cheerfulness lasted only a second, however. As he saw her face, his expression dropped through a thousand degrees of grief. “It’s no use, is it?” he asked. “You won’t come with me.”

She couldn’t reply. She wasn’t able to form the words.

“Don’t you know how I love you?” he asked. “Tell me what to do. Tell me.”

A long moment passed. “I can’t tell you what I don’t know,” she whispered.

They watched the people pass by; at last, they heard the clock strike the half hour. She looked long and hard at him, as if to remember every detail. And then she stood up. “My train is at one o’clock,” she said.

He got to his feet. “I’ll walk you to the station.”

When she looked back on those thirty minutes, she tried to reconstruct how they passed the time, what they saw, or how the crowds were, or how long they waited, side by side in a desperate caricature of normality, until they heard the steam engine coming along the track. She tried to remember whether she had said anything at all as he handed her into the carriage of the train. But there was nothing left, only his own words.

“I will come back,” he said. “Don’t be under any illusion about that, Octavia. I will come back for you.”

* * *

I
t was not the last scene that Octavia had to endure that day. On the way back on the train, she set her mind firmly to what she had to tell William. He met her again at the station, searching her face just as John had done and with the same intensity.

He started the car and they drove in the direction of Rutherford, but just before the village Octavia put her hand on his on the steering wheel. “Will you stop the car for a moment?” she said. When they came to a stop, she nodded towards the church. To his puzzled frown she made no answer, simply getting out of the car, and when he followed her, she went through the church gate and around the churchyard, picking her way through the ancient stones until she came to a flat piece of grass with no marker and no monument.

“Do you see this?” she asked him.

He looked around. He could see only a slight mound with a few sparse green weeds growing over it. “Can I ask what I might be looking for?”

“A grave with no marker,” she said. “It belongs to Emily Maitland. The girl who tried to drown herself. The girl who died last Christmas.”

William looked at the ground. “You want there to be a stone of some kind?” he asked, perplexed. “Some memorial?”

“Yes. That would be appropriate.”

Of all the things that William had expected to discuss this afternoon, this was not one of them. “But we do not raise memorials to the staff,” he pointed out. “That is the responsibility of their own families.”

Octavia looked at him steadily. “Precisely,” she said. “This girl was the mother of your granddaughter. The child she bore was Harry’s. The child is alive; she’s at Rutherford this afternoon.”

If William was shocked, he did not show it. In fact, something in his face told Octavia that it was a long-buried suspicion. “Harry told me in Paris…” he began. He put a hand to his forehead. “But only that he had known the girl, and…” He looked up. “The child survived, and you never told me?”

“I asked for her to be taken care of. I went to see her in the New Year. I simply knew…. I didn’t have to ask Harry. The moment I heard that Harry had been at the river, and that Jack Armitage had struck him, I knew it in my heart. And if further proof were needed, one has only to look at the child. She’s the image of Harry at that age, William. There can be no doubt.”

“Does Harry know?”

“Not yet.”

“My God,” he muttered. He began to shake his head bemusedly. “And you never felt that you could tell me?”

“There were so many things we could not discuss,” she said levelly.

“But you could not even discuss this at all with Harry?”

“Harry? In the condition he was in while we were London?” she asked. “How could that be broached?” She shook her head. “I could not tell Harry before I had told you. It was something that you and I together would need to present to him, and reconcile ourselves to. It is still.” She paused. “It might have been possible then if we were close, William. But we were not.”

“You blame me.”

She considered him calmly. “I don’t censure you, necessarily. But Harry, once his word was given, could never discuss it with us. We have both failed him, in fact.” She looked down thoughtfully at the grass. “We have tried to set an example, but we have both failed.”

“And I transgressed my own rules of behavior. I suppose you think that.” Octavia gave no reply, and William made a confused, almost desperate gesture. “Charles was never my son. I have told you all that Helene told me in Paris. What more reassurance can I give you?”

“Not that reassurance, certainly,” she told him. “I accept that. It was never the issue of his being your son or not that divided us. It was that you had not told me; it was that you allowed Helene de Montfort to come between us, in however circumspect a fashion. And through it all…” She gave a little shrug. “I was very much the loose cannon who must be taught how to behave.” Her voice was full of sad irony.

“You have never for one moment embarrassed me, Octavia.”

“Oh, I think I have,” she said. “And we have each hurt each other, William. We’ve done that most efficiently.” They allowed the silence to develop between them, each with their own thoughts. Then, “I shall stay at Rutherford and carry out my duty to my
children,” she said. He noticed acutely that she did not say she had any duty towards him as her husband. He wondered whether her heart was quite closed to him, whether there was any chance of her love returning to him. “I’ll stay here to see Louisa well, and Charlotte grown,” she continued. “And I’ll be here when Harry comes home. There will be continuity for them. There will be security.”

A flush had come to William’s face. “And John Gould…?”

She looked away, at the church, at the lane beyond. “I don’t know what John Gould will do,” she murmured. “I won’t see him again.”

Despite himself—despite his wish to keep his dignity—the relief showed eloquently in William’s body; he slumped slightly, and the impenetrable expression—the face of superior calm cultivated over a lifetime—momentarily vanished. As the mask slipped, a man was revealed in the throes of relief: desperate, barely contained heartfelt relief and thankfulness. But he did not move. He gazed at Octavia, and then, very slowly, very hesitantly, he smiled. “I feel that I have had rather too many pieces of news recently,” he said. “I wonder if there might be a limit to them.”

She returned the smile sadly. “At least in that we feel the same, William.”

She walked back, swiftly, in the direction of the car. It was only after some moments that he felt able to follow her.

* * *

T
he daylight began to fade in the orchard at around nine o’clock that evening. Paper lanterns hung from the branches of trees among the apples and leaves, the breeze that had been blowing all day died, and the brass band from the village began to play.

At first, the dances were formal. Octavia and William, as was the custom, danced the first. Octavia was dressed in pale yellow, an
old-fashioned dress that fell to her feet, tied with a broad white sash. Dancing with her, William thought that she looked so much younger than her age; her shoulders were bare and she wore no jewelry at all. He wondered what the war might bring them; whether she would ever again look like this, or whether they both might bear signs of anxiety, or terror, or grief. He tried not to think of it. Instead, he looked across at the staff lining the edges of the orchard, clapping their hands to the music and at the same time dutifully applauding them.

He saw Nash take hold of Mary’s hand; saw him lean down to whisper something to her. Years ago, when William had first inherited Rutherford, such a thing would be unheard-of; no footman talked to a maid, and certainly not in the sight of the master of the house. William smiled to himself at Mary—fair, short, square shouldered; she and Nash, who was so tall and dark and lean, were hardly a match. But then, he wondered, what did match in these strange and darkening days? A man to a girl, a hand to a task; no one knew. The world he understood, the world that he thought he knew, was blowing away like husks blown from corn in a mill. Each one of them was inside that mill, and the grindstones were rapidly turning.

William and Octavia stepped from the floor; it was the time-honored signal that the staff could begin their own celebrations. For a turn or two, William encouraged Charlotte to dance with him, but his daughter, laughing at her own two left feet, turned back towards the knot of women who were fussing over Cecilia; as she reached them she pointedly stared at her father and then at Octavia. William smiled as the boys of the village rushed in, each with a girl on his arm, and the musicians began to stamp time on the board stage on which they stood. He followed where Octavia had gone, to the door of the canvas tent.

They walked out onto the close-mown grass under the apple trees; Octavia, glancing over her shoulder, saw Louisa look up from her lap to the hand extended to her. She saw her daughter gaze into Jack Armitage’s face. He was standing solicitously over her; she shook her head but did not take her eyes from him, and her own hand fluttered to the empty seat alongside her. Jack sat down slowly at Louisa’s side, and then the dancers obscured them from Octavia’s sight.

“Will Harry come back before he is sent to France?” she asked William.

“I shall ask that he does,” William said. “Although, my dear, what influence I have now is hard to imagine.”

“He must come,” she murmured. “He has someone to meet.”

They looked at each other. Keeping silence, they walked a little farther, until the dancers, and the apple trees, and the swaying lanterns, now bright against the shadows, were left behind.

“Do you remember the time when Harry was a boy,” William mused, “and you were with him on the banks of the river? And you came back across the grass here, and I walked out to meet you?”

Octavia did. It was the day that her husband had lectured her for walking barefoot. He had told her that she had a role to play, a place to keep, a reputation to protect.

“Yes,” she said. “It was hardly something to forget.”

In the darkness, she could see that he was smiling. He dropped her hand. “I have walked across here a thousand times,” he said. “Perhaps five thousand—ten thousand—who knows? But I have never touched the grass.”

To her surprise, he suddenly stretched down and untied his shoelaces, and took off his shoes and socks. Then, with one shoe in each hand, he began to walk, slowly and self-consciously at first, feet lifted exaggeratedly. She suppressed a smile. He picked up his
pace, hopping comically from one foot to the other. Eventually, out there in the warm green darkness, he dropped the shoes and began to run. After a few more yards, he looked back at her. He was out of breath, and laughing. “Quite extraordinary,” he called. “You really ought to try it.”

Even if it had been broad daylight, he would not have been able to read the expression on her face. She was standing stock-still; he saw her framed against the great tawny-colored walls of the house that rose far behind her.

His overriding instinct was to go back, and grasp her around the waist, and force her to walk with him. But he resisted the temptation.

Instead, he walked on, his head thrown back, and, looking up into the vast darkness, he prayed that she would follow him.