Dark Angel (16 page)

Was Gwen right about this? We shall see. Certainly she was right as far as her eldest son was concerned. Boy—honorable, devoted to his mother, in awe of his father—could not conceive of either parent as an adulterer. As far as Boy is concerned, his parents must love each other, for they are man and wife. As for Shawcross, he is a good, loyal, trusted friend. Boy cannot understand either his books or his jokes—and this makes Boy feel humble.

Now, setting up his tripod, screwing the last nuts into place, Boy sees only a room, a room whose photograph may please his father; he has sensed no undercurrents before and he senses none now. It is simply … a bedroom. He regards the undulations of the bed, the billowing curtains that divide the sleeping quarters from the dressing room; he frowns at the heavy draperies across the windows and, fussily, adjusts them to let in more light. Why, someone could hide in this room and never be discovered, Boy thinks, and then forgets the notion at once, to concentrate on technical matters.

Indoors, with less natural light, the exposure must be longer. Two minutes, Boy decides, hoping no one will come in to spoil the shot. Two minutes …

Remember this bedroom, please. It is important.

“Why are you called Boy?”

Boy looks up from his camera, startled. The girl has come into the room silently, has perhaps been there for some while, watching him. Luckily, his photographs are complete, and Boy—busy dismantling his Adams Videx—had thought himself alone. The girl is standing just inside the door and seems uninterested in the answer to her question, for she is already looking away from him, a small frown on her face. Her gaze circles the room; it takes in the royal arms, the fat bed, the undistinguished oils of Denton’s Scottish estate, and the curtains. Boy hesitates and she looks back at him.

“You’re not a boy. You’re a man. You look like a man. So why do they call you Boy?”

Her tone is irritable, almost accusing. Boy, easily embarrassed, finds himself beginning to blush. He bends his head to hide it, hoping the child will go away.

To be truthful, Boy does not like Constance, and this makes him ashamed, for he is generous-hearted and he knows it is uncharitable. After all, Constance is motherless, does not even remember her mother, Jessica, who died of tuberculosis in a Swiss sanitorium when Constance was just two years old.

Yes, Constance is motherless, and her father treats her coldly, almost cruelly. Boy, observing this, seeing how Shawcross mocks his daughter in front of friends, has told himself that Constance must bring back painful memories, must remind her father of the loss of his wife. But even if there are reasons for this behavior, it is not kind, and Boy feels sure Constance must be very lonely. He should not dislike her; Constance should be an object of pity. After all, it is not as if she stays at Winterscombe all the time. Surely, on those brief occasions of her visits he can afford to be friendly?

On the other hand, to be friendly to Constance is not easy. Constance obstinately repels pity; whenever Boy feels it welling up in him, the child seems to sense it and deflects it at once. Her manner is abrupt, prickly, rude. She seems to have an unerring instinct for the weaknesses of others; she homes in on those weaknesses at once, and Boy can never make up his mind whether this is policy on her part or accident. He tells himself it is accident. After all, Constance cannot help her manners; it is just that she has never had the right guidance. She must have a nurse or governess to help her, but such a figure is never in evidence at Winterscombe, and perhaps Eddie Shawcross cannot afford to employ a lady of the right type.

If there were such a person, Boy thinks, looking at the small figure in front of him, she would insist that something be done about Constance’s appearance. Her hair is always unkempt; her face, hands, and fingernails are often grubby; she wears cheap, ugly, unflattering clothes. No, Constance deserves kindness; her rudeness must be caused by lack of training, not ill-nature. After all, Constance is only ten years old.

Now, Constance is waiting for an answer (yet again, she has homed in on a weakness), and Boy does not know what to say. He loathes the nickname Boy, wishes his mother and family would drop it now and forever. He fears (correctly as it happens) that this will not occur. Now, trapped, he has to say something. He shrugs.

“It doesn’t mean anything. Mama called me that when I was little, and it stuck, I suppose. Lots of people have nicknames, family names. It isn’t important.”

“I don’t like it at all. It’s foolish.” The child pauses. “I shall call you Francis.”

To Boy’s surprise, Constance then smiles at him. The smile lightens her normally tight, sullen little face, and Boy’s guilt and shame at once deepen. For Constance, too, has nicknames, though she may not be aware of them. Her father refers to her simply as “the albatross.” “Where is the albatross now, I wonder?” Eddie will remark archly to his audience, and will sometimes even mimic the weight of that ill-omened bird around his neck.

Boy and his brothers use a different name: Constance Cross, they call her. It was Acland’s idea. (“Well, she is always cross,” he explained. “She is also a cross we have to bear. Several weeks a year.”)

Constance Cross, the albatross. It is very unkind. Boy decides, there and then, that he must make amends.

He smiles at Constance shyly and indicates his Videx.

“I’ll take your photograph if you’d like. It won’t take long.”

“You took it this morning, earlier.”

A flat answer. His overture is rejected as usual. Boy perseveres.

“Yes, but that was with the others. This will be just you. On your own …”

“In here?” The child’s face shows a sudden glimmer of animation.

“Well, if you liked—I suppose I could. But the light’s difficult. I really meant outside—”

“Not outside. Here.”

Her tone is now definite, even demanding. Boy caves in. He begins to remount tripod and camera, bends over to screw the tripod legs into place.

When he looks up again, he is startled, almost shocked. The child has struck a pose for him. She has clambered up onto the King’s bed and is now sitting on it, legs swinging, her skirts slightly hitched up. Boy stares at her in dismay, glances toward the door.

It is not just that the child is sitting on the sacred bed and probably creasing the counterpane, which would make Denton Cavendish roar with rage; it is the
way
she is sitting.

Boy stares fearfully at a pair of dusty buttoned boots that end at the ankle. Above the boots he can glimpse wrinkled white cotton stockings and a layer of none-too-clean petticoats.

Constance has tossed back her long, untidy black hair, so that it snakes over her thin shoulders. Her face is pale and concentrated, its expression taunting. As Boy looks at her, she first bites her lower lip with her small white teeth and then licks her lips so that they appear very red against the pallor of her skin. Boy stares, wrenches his gaze away, and concentrates on his camera. A few adjustments; he pulls the black hood over his head and adjusts the viewfinder.

An image of Constance Shawcross is in his gaze, upside down but perfectly in focus. He blinks at it. It seems to him that there is now an even greater amount of stocking visible, less drab skirt, more grubby petticoats. He clears his throat, tries to sound magisterial.

“You must keep absolutely still, Constance. The light is poor, so I need a long exposure. Turn your face a little to the left….”

The child turns her head, tilts her small pointed chin. Boy sees that she is posing stiffly and self-consciously, as if anxious the photograph should be a flattering one. She is a plain child, and Boy is touched.

Under the hood he reaches for the shutter bulb, adjusts the aperture. A half-second before the bulb is pressed, too late for Boy to stop, the child alters her position. Two minutes; silence and whirring.

Boy emerges from the hood, scarlet. He stares at Constance accusingly and she stares back at him. In that half-second she parted her thighs and altered the position of her hand. She has posed with her left hand lying across her thigh, her fingers outstretched, pointing downward into her lap. A garter, a patch of bare skin, a knicker-leg are visible. It is a gesture capable of innocent interpretation … just. It is also (coupled with the brazenness of her stare) the lewdest, the most lascivious gesture Boy has ever seen in his life.

To his horror, to his shame, his body has stirred. He remains behind his camera, grateful for its protection, telling himself that he is foul, evil. Constance is a ten-year-old child; she is motherless, innocent….

Constance bounces down from the bed. She seems now in an excellent humor.

“Thank you, Francis,” she says. “You will give me a print of the photograph, won’t you?”

“Oh, yes—that is, certainly. If it comes out … I’m not sure about the exposure I used, and—”

Boy lies badly. He has already decided to destroy the plate, although later, when he sees it, he will change his mind.

“Oh,
please,
Francis—”

To Boy’s utter consternation, Constance reaches up (Boy is over six feet tall) and, as he bends awkwardly, plants a childish kiss on his cheek. Boy drops, and loses, one of the wing nuts from his tripod, although in his confusion he does not realize this. It rolls across the carpet to rest under a desk—from where Boy will have to retrieve it, somehow, later. Constance, kiss over, skips to the door.

“I shall give it to my father,” she says, with one backward glance over her shoulder. “Papa will like that, don’t you think?”

“Fetch out the traps.” Denton takes a large swallow of claret. “The hell with the law. This is my land. Fetch them out—see how the beggars like that! Traps rusting away in barns—what’s the sense in that? Set them. I shall tell Cattermole. Patrol the woods. Get four men in there, six if necessary. I won’t stand for it. I must have lost fifty birds this past month. Fifty! Three last night alone. How they get in I don’t know, but I intend to find out, and when I do, they’ll damn well regret it. Blast of shot up the backside—only thing they understand, these fellas. Blast of shot, then up before the magistrates. Old Dickie Peel—been on the Bench since the year dot. He knows how to deal with them. Maximum sentences, the full weight of the law. Mind you”—another hefty swig—“prison’s too good for them. Poachers? You know what I’d do if I had my way? Ship ’em out, that’s what. Ship ’em off to the colonies—America, Australia. Get rid of ’em for good. No respect for a man’s property. It makes my blood boil.”

Denton does indeed look as if his blood could have reached one hundred degrees centigrade: His face is livid as an overripe plum; one large index finger is raised in admonition at the entire table; he waggles it, glares from face to face, as if his luncheon guests might be guilty of poaching his pheasants, given half a chance.

He fixes each of his three elder sons with his gaze, glowers at Mrs. Heyward-West’s mild-mannered little husband, scowls at Jarvis (a friend of Eddie Shawcross, invited at his request—something to do with Art; no one is sure exactly what).

Jarvis is wearing a cravat that is perhaps a trifle bright; in St. James’s London this cravat pleased Jarvis; now, as Denton’s ripe gaze fixes on it, Jarvis feels less certain of its shade. He winces, and Denton’s gaze roves on. It fixes finally on the trim person of Eddie Shawcross, seated on Gwen’s left at the far end of the table. Staring at Shawcross, Denton’s features become, if possible, even more empurpled.

“Poachers. Trespassers.
Interlopers
,” Denton pronounces with special savagery, and Shawcross, more used to these outbursts than some of the other guests present, amused enough by them to recount them in malicious detail in his journals, returns him a polite even smile. Denton makes a gurgling noise in his throat, indicative to his family of extreme fury, and Gwen’s treacherous heart gives a tiny leap. Seizure? Apoplexy? Now, at her luncheon table, in front of her guests? But no, it is merely the residue of rage, the result of Denton’s inspection of his woods with Cattermole that morning, the honest indignation of a man whose most passionate belief is the sanctity of property. It is not directed particularly at Eddie Shawcross, and it is even now subsiding.

Gwen’s instincts as a hostess rise to the surface. There are ladies present, which Denton seems to have forgotten. They have already endured “backside” and the clumsy emendation of “buggers” to “beggars”; it is more than possible that, even with his rage spent, Denton might actually swear or blaspheme.

Gwen leans forward to intervene, but Acland is quicker.

“One small point, sir,” he says into the silence that has fallen. “Just that the Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776 … which means America hasn’t been a colony for quite a long time.”

“So? So?” Denton looks up with new belligerence.

“Well, it might be difficult to dump our felons there. Even the poachers. The Americans might object, don’t you think?”

Acland’s voice is exceedingly polite; his father, head lowered like a bull about to charge, is regarding him with suspicion, sniffing for heresy, but he is deceived by Acland’s tone.

“Inconvenient, I grant you. But a bit of a poser nonetheless.”

There is another silence, during which Shawcross smirks behind his napkin. Mrs. Heyward-West (charming and tactful Mrs. West, Gwen thinks) comes to the rescue. She is seated on Denton’s right, and she leans forward, her hand brushing his arm. She is still a well-preserved, a handsome woman.

“America!” she says in her deep voice. “How I love that country. And the Americans themselves—so welcoming, so very very kind. Did I tell you, Denton my dear, about our last visit there? We were staying in Virginia, with some friends who breed quite magnificent horses. Now I know, Denton, what you are going to say. You’re going to say I’m no judge of a horse at all, and I’m sure you’re right. But—now this will interest you—”

The miracle has been achieved; Mrs. Heyward-West has his full attention; Denton’s somewhat bulging blue eyes revolve, then fix on her. Everyone relaxes (even Jarvis of the lavender cravat), and at the far end of the table Gwen and Shawcross exchange glances.