A Dark and Distant Shore (117 page)

Theo’s left hand was in his trousers pocket, and with his right he carried his after-dinner cigar to his mouth and drew the smoke in thoughtfully. ‘Did I teach him? He didn’t need teaching, dear boy. Just – how shall I put it? – encouraging. Even you would have found your enthusiasm for the female sex flagging if you had grown up as one lonely little male swaddled in a blanket of Grace, and Isa, and five sisters, and Aunt Petronella.’

Gideon shook his head. ‘It won’t do, Theo. The instinct may have been there, but it takes more than that. It takes knowledge he didn’t find in his nunnery. Don’t play games with me. I want the truth.’

‘Yes,’ his brother said pensively. ‘That prying journalistic nose of yours. You know so much, don’t you? But you’re soft. You always have been. I’d have liked you more, you know, if you’d thrown a fit that day you found me in Theresa Berkley’s brothel in – when was it? – ’33? But you didn’t. You nobly kept quiet about it. And about friend Hugh in the village, and dear Dominic, and no doubt some of the others. You think you have a charming little dossier on me, don’t you?’

Taking a breath of salty air, and wet seaweed, and Havana smoke, Gideon said, ‘That wasn’t the way I saw it. I was simply leaving you to lead your life, as I led mine.’

‘Not quite. You’re forgetting Juliana, aren’t you?’ Turning, Theo hitched himself half up on to the sea wall and sat, one hand resting loosely on his knee, his eyes inimical.

That was something Gideon didn’t dare to pursue. ‘Perhaps. But what
you’re
doing is evading the issue. You can’t just ruin the boy and then shrug it off as if your duty stops with sending funds abroad to him. I want to know what you’re going to do to set things right.’

A slow and quite delightful smile spread over Theo’s face. ‘What am I going to do to set things right?’ he repeated.

But before he could say more, Vilia’s voice cut in from behind them. ‘Why, pray, should he do anything?’ She was bundled up against the damp air, shawled and bonneted like some old henwife, and the almost phosphorescent quality of the light made her eyes intensely green. ‘After all, if Jay daren’t set foot in this country, he can hardly inherit Kinveil, can he? I have written to ask Peregrine James about having Magnus’s Will contested. The courts might well agree to pass over Jay in favour of Neil or Callum. Did you know Jermyn and Madge have christened the new baby Callum? I’ve no idea why.’

All the knowledge, all the suspicions that Gideon had been staving off for months began to fall into place. Because there were great pieces missing, he had tried to persuade himself there wasn’t a pattern, although he knew there was. Dully, he said to Theo, ‘So it wasn’t just casual destructiveness? This was what you were aiming at?’

Tossing the butt of his cigar into the sea, Theo remarked, ‘Well,
someone
had to give Vilia some help, dear boy!’

‘
Help to do what
?
Ruin people’s lives?’

‘Really, Gideon. There’s no need to be melodramatic,’ his mother said. ‘No one forced Jay to get into trouble.’

‘But he’s only sixteen!’

‘Almost seventeen. Quite old enough to know what he’s doing.’ She tapped her stick peremptorily on the flagstones. ‘I want to sit down. You may bring me that chair from the corner.’

He brought it, and lent her his hand as she lowered herself into it. Then he said, his voice grating, ‘What else have you done?’ He didn’t want to know, but he had to.

After a moment, she replied, ‘I’ve no idea what you mean. Please go and tell Fraser to have some tea sent out to me.’ But he didn’t move.

Theo, watching Gideon, twirled his moustache and said affectedly, ‘I don’t think you’re going to get away with it as easily as that, Vilia dear.’

She was in a tetchy mood, and Theo’s mannerisms irritated her more and more these days. She didn’t want him living at Kinveil. ‘I don’t need your advice,’ she snapped.

There was a moment’s silence while Theo fought to hold on to the suavity that was the façade he presented to the world. And then it cracked. It was the first time Vilia had seen it happen in all the sixty-six years since she had borne him, and it gave her considerable satisfaction. The prospect of Theo being honest for once had a real, if dubious, charm. It was clear that he was going to be rude to her, and, inside her head, she chuckled. It was quite a while since anything entertaining had happened, and she waited to hear what he had to say with the same morbid fascination she would have brought to reading her own obituary.

But what came was more than she had bargained for.

All his life, Theo had been cleverer than most people at anything he turned his hand to, and that had been enough to justify what his acquaintances regarded as his pose of Olympian superiority, especially as he had enough of the Cameron charm to carry it off. The truth, however, was that it was no pose. It pleased him when some railway baron congratulated him on his mastery of new techniques, or when one of the puddlers remarked, ‘There’s no doubt you’re the best, Mr Theo,’ but only because they were acknowledging the obvious. It didn’t alter his contempt for them; it didn’t even flatter his self-esteem. He simply thought it right and proper that they should recognize that he was second to none.

Unfortunately, over the last ten years or so, they had gradually stopped recognizing it. Not even to himself had Theo ever conceded that his excellence was founded, at least in part, on the fact that what he couldn’t do better than anyone else, he didn’t attempt. Equally without conscious thought, he had kept the foundry to the type of work over which he had complete mastery. But then had come Jermyn, with the talent that was very near genius for something that Theo at first didn’t trouble to, and then found he couldn’t, master. And Peregrine James had put his oar in, too, by insisting on having Lauristons’ turned into a limited company. Theo hadn’t foreseen the disastrous effect that would have on his own authority.

He had always found it satisfying to appear to know everything; even more satisfying, sometimes, really to know and yet remain silent, hugging the knowledge to his exulting heart. But now, still rankling within him, was the memory of an episode that had happened a few days ago. He’d given an order to one of the foundrymen, and turned away; and, too soon, another man had murmured to the first, ‘Aye, well, Jock. That’s only Mr Theo’s view. You’d better see what Mr Jermyn thinks. He’ll know better.’

And tonight, Gideon had had the insolence to criticize him, and Vilia was speaking as if he were of no account. Vilia, the only person in the world who had ever made him doubt – just a little – his own supremacy, about whom he had always felt competitive, and who was more secure in herself than he was. It was too much. Everyone thought he was past it, but by God he’d prove that he was still to be reckoned with. ‘Omniscient Theo,’ Gideon had always called him, and he still was, and knowledge was power. He’d show them.
He’d show them!

His eyes glittering and his smile fixed, he repeated, ‘You – don’t – need – my advice? You have no idea, have you, how very tired I am of you underrating me and condescending to me! You never even listen to what I say, because you think you know what it’s going to be. You played the same trick with Magnus, I remember. Well,
you know nothing
about me! Whereas I know everything about you. I could undergo a very stiff examination indeed on the details of your insalubrious career, mother dear. You have never told me anything, except when you’ve been thinking aloud, and let something slip, but it’s never mattered. Because I can read you, like a book.’

It was not what she had been expecting, and she didn’t like. ‘That will do, Theo,’ she said tightly.

‘Oh, no. I’ve been saving it up for years, what I know about you. And especially I’ve been saving up the things I know,
and you don’t.
’

She would have risen, if she could, and walked away. But her rheumatism was always bad in damp weather, so that she needed help, and she could see from Gideon’s face that there was no help to be had from him. And she certainly wasn’t going to try – and ingloriously fail – to rise on her own. Gritting her teeth, she waited. Perhaps it was time for the truth to come out. If it had been one of her good days, she might even have enjoyed it.

‘You want me to prove it? Well, let’s start with Guy, shall we? You didn’t just bring him up here hoping that he would put Magnus off him for life. You hoped he might seduce Juliana. He was certainly the type. And then Magnus would have cut
both
of them out of his Will. It didn’t work, but at least Guy obliged by seducing Lizzie instead, so you did achieve something.’

Vilia flashed a glance at Gideon, and then put her hand on his arm. ‘I was genuinely sorry about that, my dear. I wouldn’t have had it happen for the world. Guy was a most unsatisfactory young man, but I’m afraid Lizzie failed to recognize it.’

She didn’t realize that she was virtually confirming what Theo had said. Gideon stared at her. Poor, dependent little Lizzie, caught in the toils of Vilia’s obsession. ‘I see,’ he said after a moment. ‘I’ve never understood why you didn’t put a stop to it.’

‘I tried. I did try. But Lizzie defied me.’

Cuttingly, Theo interrupted. ‘It was her chance to escape, don’t you see? She knew Vilia didn’t care a button for her. Or you, Gideon. That was why she died.’

‘Spare us this nonsense,’ Vilia said. ‘The child simply took an accidental overdose of laudanum.’

Theo crowed, and then, like an obnoxious little boy, chanted, ‘I know something
you
don’t know! Not accidental, Vilia dear. I found the note she sent Juliana.’

It shocked Vilia more than it did Gideon, who had lived with the suspicion of it for twenty-five years. His mind was more taken up with wondering whether Theo was really right, or whether he had put two and two together and come up with five. It all seemed too devious, too much a bow at a venture. Turning to Vilia, he said, ‘You didn’t put a stop to Juliana going to India, either.’

She shrugged irritably. ‘Don’t, for heaven’s sake, start talking about the graveyard of the British again. We all had quite enough of that from Magnus.’

‘But it was worth a try,’ Theo said. ‘It could have been a master stroke, except that she survived everything the place could throw at her.’

Gideon remembered Juliana telling him how surprised she had been that Vilia, whom she would have expected to be indifferent, had actively encouraged her in her marriage plans. But he rejected what his brother was saying, because it meant that Vilia had hoped Juliana would die. And that went too far.

Taking another thin cigar from his case, Theo clipped it, and lit it, and blew out a delicate cloud that hung on the muggy air like a halo. ‘A pity Juley and I didn’t generate any brats to settle the inheritance once and for all. She took a dislike to me; Lavinia’s fault, mainly.’ He grinned. ‘I suppose I deserved it. Something else you don’t know, Vilia dear! It was I, sure he’d be impotent, who coaxed Dominic into marrying Lavinia. Pure mischief, I’m afraid. I never liked the girl.’

Gideon could see that his mother was feeling as queasy as he was, but Theo rattled on, impervious. ‘Anyway, I told Juley I wouldn’t cavil if she wanted to find another father for our child – yes, Vilia, I was past the stage of caring whether it had Cameron blood or not! – but she didn’t like the idea. She even finished by cursing me on the rowan tree! It was really quite funny. And considering which of us is still alive and well, I feel it rather blows the gaff on the rowan tree as one of the forces of destiny!’

Somehow, it caught Gideon on the raw in a way nothing else had. Theo was still laughing when he stepped forward and jerked his brother to his feet, twisting his hand savagely in the neat black tie. ‘You’re mad,’ he said, his voice shaking. ‘Do you realize it? You’re mad, and decadent, and disgusting. Christ, but you make me sick! You’re like a child sticking pins in insects. There you sit, lord of creation, looking down on human beings as if they’re some inferior form of life to be pricked and prodded as the fancy takes you. I’ve always known you were spiteful and self-satisfied, but this...’

He stopped and, abruptly releasing his grip, took a handkerchief from his pocket and began to wipe his fingers fastidiously. When he looked up again, Theo was still choking, and there was naked hatred in his eyes. Gideon met it levelly. ‘It’s you,’ he said, ‘not Vilia, who’s the evil genius of this family.’

Half retching, Theo managed to whisper, ‘Is it?
Is it
?
You think that despising people is worse than murder?’

Vilia sighed theatrically.

But Gideon went on staring at his brother. He was exaggerating to make himself seem important, just like a child. Making mountains out of molehills. That was all. Murder? No. All Gideon’s instincts rejected it. Civilized people might manipulate others, play havoc with their lives, even drive them into corners where suicide was the only way out. But they didn’t go in for murder. This was Vilia –
this was their mother
Theo was talking about.

Yet still there was the pattern Gideon had sensed; his recognition that nothing connected with Vilia’s passion for Kinveil was simple, unassisted coincidence. His mind flew backwards over the years. Ian Barber’s death had been accidental; Guy Savarin’s unquestionably the result of chloral addiction. Vilia couldn’t have had a hand in those. Juliana, Magnus, Lizzie – no, however malign her influence on their lives. Then his mind stumbled for a moment. Juliana’s mother, whose death had left the way free for Vilia to marry Magnus?

He looked at her. ‘Juliana’s mother?’

Exasperated and in pain, she said, ‘This is the stupidest conversation! Julia Osmond died in childbirth, poor girl. There was nothing at all sinister about it.’

Theo said nothing.

It had been cholera with Lucy Telfer, and there had been a hundred witnesses to Luke Telfer’s accident. Mungo? Impossible. But Duncan Lauriston... Vilia, sick and hysterical, pushing; and Sorley trying to save him; and the big man falling and being trampled to death. Was that what Theo meant? Manslaughter at the very worst, unless you were determined to read something into it!