A Dark and Distant Shore (78 page)

The truth of what he said was incontrovertible. Vilia smiled.

Then, ‘It’s a dull game, chess,’ Magnus announced, not troubling to smother a yawn. ‘I’ve never seen any point in it. Do you really enjoy it, Gideon?’

‘Yes.’

‘I can’t imagine why. Never understood what people find in games like that.’ There was a gurgling sound as more brandy disappeared down his throat. ‘Play cards much?’

‘Sometimes.’ Gideon, trying hard to concentrate, moved a pawn.

‘Funny how people can get obsessed with card games. I’ve seen fellows sit playing whist for hours at a stretch. You’d have thought their lives depended on it. I don’t understand it. I’ve never found cards very interesting.’

Vilia’s hand, hovering over the bishop, had begun to tremble slightly.

Gideon knew how she felt. Moving his queen, he said, ‘Check.’

‘Beating her, are you?’ Magnus asked with satisfaction. ‘Good for you. Won’t do her any harm. She always wins when she plays with me. I’m not interested in chess, you see, so I never really work at it. It would be different if I did, of course.’

Vilia’s concentration on the board was almost tangible.

‘Look at her! Poring over it like that. And it’s only a game. That’s one of the reasons I don’t care for it much. People take it so seriously. You can’t even make a casual remark without getting your nose bitten off. Very boring, I think.’

Picking up his knight, Gideon found that his own hand was shaking, and was aware of a powerful desire to pick up the board and clout Magnus with it.

Magnus remarked, ‘It’s supposed to be good mental exercise, don’t they say?’ There was no mistaking the scorn in his tone, even through the slight thickening of alcohol. ‘Did they teach it to you at school, Gideon?’

Gideon took a firm grip on himself. ‘They didn’t have to. Vilia taught us all when we were quite small. In any case, it would have come a pretty poor second to natural science and geometry and logic and navigation, and all the other subjects they were concerned to din into us at the Academy.’

But Magnus wasn’t listening, although he did have the courtesy to wait until Gideon had finished before he said, ‘Talking of school, there’s something I forgot to tell you, Vilia. You know our parish schoolmaster joined those pigheaded Free Churchmen? More fool he. Well, I hear he’s been dismissed for it. That’ll teach the fellow!’

There was a small, sharp clunk as Vilia, white-knuckled, slammed her king down on the board. Her voice tight, she said, ‘And what happens about the children’s education?’ The atmosphere, suddenly, wasn’t just irritable.

Magnus looked at her glassily. ‘How should I know? They’ll send someone else, I suppose.’

‘And do you think Free Church parents are going to send their children to an Established Church schoolmaster?’

‘How should I know?’ Magnus said again. ‘Anyway, that’s their problem, isn’t it?’ He rose to refill his glass.

Vilia watched him, her green eyes ice-cold in a face suddenly turned white. Gideon could feel her struggling to control herself.

Magnus had difficulty lining his glass up with the neck of the decanter, and some of the brandy spilled on to the tray.

Of all his stepfather’s more trying characteristics, Gideon had always found least supportable his habit of reacting to pettifogging irritations as if they were mortal insults. A teaspoon slipping out of his grasp was enough to rouse him to fury, as if the whole world, animate and inanimate, had entered into some kind of conspiracy against him. He would turn scarlet, and his face and voice would begin to shake, and he would blurt out a string of extraordinarily silly complaints. The teaspoon was badly designed, or slippery with grease, or not properly dried, or too well polished. His spurts of rage were quickly over, but they induced in Gideon, brought up to regard self-control and courtesy as the first of the ten commandments, an almost physical revulsion.

Now, watching the spilled brandy drip from the base of his glass, Magnus ran true to form. With more energy than he ever displayed in any useful cause, he pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and began to mop furiously at the tray, exclaiming, ‘Why are there never any cloths when they’re needed! This stupid decanter never pours properly. The lip’s badly designed, and you can never get a decent grip on the neck. How’s anyone supposed to pour from it, I ask you! I’ve been telling you to throw it out for years, but you never pay any attention, do you? Oh, no! It’s got the Cameron crest on it, so that means it has to be perfect, no matter what
I
say!’ He threw the sodden handkerchief down on the tray, and raised the glass to his lips.

Finally and irrevocably, Vilia’s temper snapped.

There was release from five years’ self-discipline in the violence with which she jumped up from her chair. It toppled over with a crash, and Magnus turned, the automatic grievance springing to his lips and the high, swift colour returning to cheeks from which it had just begun to fade. But she didn’t, for once, allow him to have his say. Instead, her voice rose high-pitched and bitterly angry over his.

‘You don’t care, do you! It doesn’t matter to you if the children grow up illiterate because of some idiotic quarrel between fanatics who don’t even know what true Christianity is about. All they’re concerned with is proving
they
are right. All
you
’re concerned with is that your side should win. Because that will allow you to feel superior, won’t it, Magnus?
What have you ever done, to be superior
?
What do you ever do but wallow in your own self-esteem? What do you know about ordinary people’s struggle for existence? What do you know about anything other than your own comfort?
Nothing, nothing, nothing!’
Her voice searing, she went on, ‘Oh, yes! You’re a big man, Magnus. You’re rich and handsome and distinguished-looking. You’re good at impressing people who don’t know you. But inside, you’re still only four years old, a spoilt little boy who thinks the world has been made for his convenience. You’ve never grown up, and you never will. Because you don’t want to. I thank God –
how
I thank God! that your father isn’t alive today to know what a hollow man you have become.’ Her voice was breaking, and she was quivering from head to foot.

Gideon, almost as stupefied as Magnus, stared at her. Never in his life had he seen her in a rage, and he didn’t like it. Yet even while he sympathized – within limits – he wasn’t going to be involved in what promised to be a very nasty quarrel. Hoping he would be allowed to get away with it, he rose to his feet and made for the door. He was almost there when his mother’s voice rapped, ‘Gideon! Where are you going?’

‘I – er...’

‘Stay!’

Magnus, looking very much like an outraged cod, suddenly found his voice. ‘So that’s what you think, is it? My, but you
have
changed your tune. I wonder what happened to all that sweetness and charm you had when you were so anxious to marry me? You don’t need it, now you’ve got what you wanted. I know you think I’m stupid, but I’ve always known it was Kinveil you wanted, not me. Don’t interrupt!’ He stopped for a moment. ‘Perhaps you’re right, though, in a way. Perhaps I
am
stupid. I was always surprised you’d stayed a widow for so long. It didn’t dawn on me that other men had too much sense to ask you to marry them. They must have seen what I didn’t – how self-centred and arrogant and
cold
you are under all those fine looks!’ It was obvious that he thought he had scored with the word ‘cold’. His tone was hectoring as he went on. ‘But just take care what you say to me! Don’t dare criticize, and don’t ever raise your voice to me again. Just remember whose house this is, because if you don’t, by God I’ll make you sorry for it!’

Vilia laughed. It wasn’t a pleasant sound. ‘You’ll make me sorry for it?
How,
you stupid man? There hasn’t been an hour in these five years when I haven’t been sorry I married you. If you tried from now until Doomsday, you couldn’t think of any way to make me sorrier than I already am!’

‘Oh, couldn’t I?’ His mouth was viciously tight. ‘Just remember that I hold the purse strings, madam! You live here because I permit it. I pay for every stitch on your back and every mouthful you eat. I can throw you out of this house any time I want. What would you do then, eh? Go back to your wonderful sons at Marchfield? I wonder how pleased they’d be to see you back after five years of having things their own way? Oh, no. Make no mistake about it. You need
me.
But I don’t need you!’

Be careful!
Gideon willed his mother not to give Magnus the answer that must have sprung to her mind, as it had done to his. For before she had married Magnus she had made arrangements to safeguard her independence. Gideon wasn’t supposed to know about them, but Theo had told him. ‘Our mama is not a fool, dear boy. Anything but. She doesn’t trust Magnus, and who can blame her? So she has set up an arrangement to cover almost three-quarters of her capital – in my favour, though not outright. Can it be’, he had wondered mournfully, ‘that she doesn’t trust me either? Ah, well. It’s all exceedingly complicated and terribly, terribly legal. Ingenious, too. The income comes to me for seven years – nominally, of course. I imagine she’d have a fit if I were to spend it. And at the end of seven years, she can review or revoke it. A very pretty notion, and it means that she will be able to stalk out of Magnus’s life whenever she feels inclined. Always remembering that she would have to stalk out of Kinveil, too, about which she might be more hesitant.’ Gideon had been not only amused but admiring. It had always seemed inhuman to him that a married woman’s property should belong, in the eyes of the law, absolutely to her husband.

To let Magnus find out would be disastrous. As long as he didn’t know, there remained some possibility of patching up the quarrel, and Gideon knew that, for the sake of Kinveil, Vilia
would
patch it up when she recovered her equanimity, no matter what it cost her in strain and nervous tension and secret grief. Kinveil. Her dark and distant shore, her haven and her grave. Remembering the words, Gideon felt a shiver run through him. But, strangely, they reassured him, too. This outburst was too uncharacteristic, too unrelated to the things that really mattered, to have any lasting effect – even if it would take some time to smooth Magnus down again. Magnus, Gideon supposed, must never have seen Vilia in a rage before.

He, himself, couldn’t even remember seeing her helplessly upset except on two occasions – on the night when the Duchess was dying, and again, a few months later, on that harrowing day in Clarges Street. Even in his most private thoughts, he never defined The Day more clearly than that. A funny thing, emotion. With the vast majority of people, Gideon believed, emotion dominated the mind. In the case of the minority – among which he included himself – it was the mind that was in control. Now, for the first time, he wondered whether he was inclined to over-simplify. Was there another group of people for whom mind and emotion existed in a state of balance? He knew that Vilia’s feeling for Kinveil was emotional, but he suspected that her mind was capable of assessing the fact; that she knew, coolly and rationally, how obsessed she was. He
thought
that she had learned to accept it. But had she, perhaps, begun to make concessions to her emotions in the interests of peace of mind? To feed them deliberately, as one might lay out rabbits to divert the golden eagle from the new-born lamb, or tie out a goat to divert the man-eating tiger?

He blinked. Perhaps, he thought, himself a little light-headed after too much fresh air and too much tension, Magnus wasn’t the only one who’d had more than enough to drink. Certainly, Vilia wasn’t going to tip rat poison into Magnus’s brandy! Although, if the old fool tripped on the stairs, Gideon had the feeling she wouldn’t precisely rush to save him.

Showing scarcely a sign of her forty-eight years except for the tiny lines, shallow but incised now for life, round the eyes and at the corners of her mouth, Vilia stood there and confronted her husband. Her eyes, as luminous and green as they had ever been, glittered inimically in the candlelight. ‘So you think you don’t need me, Magnus? You don’t even need me to run the castle, and manage the servants, and deal with the estate, and pamper you, and give in to your whims, and listen to your endless monologues? Well, we’ll see. I’ll give you the opportunity to find out. Gideon is returning to Marchfield tomorrow, and I will go with him. I’ll take Juliana with me.’ Surprisingly, Magnus made no protest. ‘I don’t know how long we’ll be away. Certainly for a few weeks, possibly for some months.’

‘Good!’ Magnus responded with an exaggerated sneer. ‘I won’t sit up for you. G’night, Gideon.’ Turning, he made his slightly unsteady way towards the door.

He almost collided with Sorley, who was just outside.

Sorley looked after him, his face expressionless.

‘Damn you, Sorley!’ Gideon exclaimed, venting some of his nervous unease. ‘Have you been listening at the Laird’s Lug?’

‘Would I do that, Gideon?’

‘Like a shot!’

There was a scarcely perceptible crinkle of amusement about Sorley’s narrow hazel eyes as he turned to Vilia. ‘I came to ask if you wanted anything before I smoored over the fires for the night?’

‘Yes,’ Vilia said. ‘I want my maid and Juliana’s nurse here, right now. And pack your own traps. We’re leaving for Marchfield in the morning, and we’ll be away until New Year at least.’

‘Yes, mistress.’

As she picked her way through the iron jungle of the engineering shop, Vilia had to fight hard to still the fluttering in her diaphragm and the scurrying chaos in her head. The place was full of unfamiliar hazards, of massive chains, hooked and lethal, hanging from the roof; giant cogwheels, relentless as the mills of God, revolving within inches of her skirts; great pistons thudding with the undeviating violence of anvil hammers in some steam-powered hell. There were machines crammed into every available foot of floor space, and a great many men she had never seen before, who glanced at her curiously before they turned back to the job in hand. The smell was suffocating, a compound of hot metal and axle grease and dust and unwashed humanity, and the noise and vibration shook the earth, the air and the walls, making Vilia feel as if her very bones were rattling in their sockets and her brains ricocheting around in her skull.