Farrier's Lane (46 page)

Charlotte gave up without further struggle. To continue to argue would lose her far more than she could possibly gain. And the look in Adah’s eyes still haunted her mind.

“That must have been a wonderful experience,” she said dutifully. “Are there good Greek exhibits here?”

“Most certainly. Let us go and see some of the urns and vases. This way, I think!” And with a sweeping gesture Adah led the way out of the Egyptian hall and into the next chamber.

Charlotte passed Clio and Kathleen on the steps. She smiled, then hurried after Adah, catching up with her just as they entered the room where the Greek artifacts were displayed.

“How very fortunate of Mr. O’Neil to have been able to go to Greece,” she said conversationally. “Was it recently?”

“About seven years ago,” Adah replied.

“Did Mrs. O’Neil go with him?” Charlotte kept her voice
politely interested, although she knew Kathleen had been married to Kingsley Blaine then.

“No,” Adah said flatly. “That was before their marriage. But no doubt they will go again some time in the future. I take it you have not been to Greece, Miss Pitt?”

“No, I am afraid not. That is why it is so fortunate to be able to come to the museum and see such lovely things here. Have you been, Mrs. Harri more?”

“No. No, I never traveled. My husband did not care to.” A look of bleak unhappiness crossed her face, a tightness of the skin and of the muscles beneath as if a pain uglier than mere grief had been reopened.

“It does not suit everyone,” Charlotte said quietly, answering the words because the feeling was too private to acknowledge, and too subtle to understand. “Some people become quite ill, especially at sea.”

“So I believe,” Adah said through thin lips.

“And it can be very costly,” Charlotte went on, walking in step with her. “If the family is large. One does not always wish to leave younger children behind for long periods of time, and yet one also does not feel advised to take them where the climate may not be healthy, the food will certainly not be what they are accustomed to, and one has no idea what medical help may be available. There are many reasons for such a decision.”

Adah stared at a large marble figure of a woman clothed in fine drapes, her body solid, massive, and yet the very lines of the stone giving it all such a simple and fluid grace one felt a draft might move the suggested fabric. It was chipped, the face disfigured, and yet it still had a grave loveliness.

“We were not a large family.” Adah spoke to the statue, not to Charlotte. “There is only Prosper, no more.”

They stood close in front of the statue. Clio and Kathleen had followed them and were admiring some exhibit at the far end of the room, and out of earshot. Adah seemed to have forgotten them, and there was no one else except two elderly gentlemen, one apparently lecturing the other on the artistic merits of a vase. Her emotions consumed her, as if
she had found a place of complete privacy where she could relax her inner vigilance for a few moments before taking up the burden again. She looked tired, and oddly naked.

Charlotte wished she could touch her, extend some comfort less crass than words, but it would have been intrusive and impertinent on so short an acquaintance—and considering their respective ages. And always at the edge of her mind was Aaron Godman. Funny how she had given him a face, although she had never met him, nor seen a likeness.

“What a shame. Mr. Harrimore is a man of such character …”

“You do not understand.” Adah stared at the stone figure ahead of her a moment longer, then moved on to a fine black and terra-cotta vase with figures around it in a scene of debauchery Charlotte was quite sure the older woman did not see, in spite of her fixed eyes. Her expression would never have retained that intense, painful immobility if she had. “You are very naive, Miss Pitt, and no doubt your remarks are well meant …”

Such damnation in the turn of a phrase. But Charlotte quashed her instinctive rebellion and continued.

“I—I don’t think I see—”

“Of course you don’t,” Adah agreed, “You have never had to, and with God’s grace you never will. He is flawed, Miss Pitt.”

Charlotte was confused. It was an extraordinary thing for a woman to say of her son, and yet, looking at Adah’s face, there was no doubt she meant it passionately. It was not a passing remark, but something which troubled her so much it remained in the forefront of her mind.

Charlotte fumbled for something to say in reply.

“Are we not all flawed in one way or another, Mrs. Harrimore?”

“Of course we are none of us perfect.” Adah moved on from the vase to a set of shards which composed pieces of dishes of an earlier period, again without seeing them as anything but a faint blur. “That is trite, and perfectly obvious. Prosper has a clubfoot. I cannot believe you failed to notice it.”

“Oh—yes, I see what you mean.”

“What did you imagine I meant? Never mind! Never mind. It is not serious, not a crippling thing, not fatal. But other children—once the well is poisoned …” Suddenly she recollected where they were and pulled her shoulders back sharply as if coming to attention. “I should not have spoken of myself. It is hardly the uplifting and educational experience you were seeking. Talk of my husband”—again the bitterness crossed her face—“is not edifying for you. Let us go and see some of the Chinese exhibits. A very clever people, not even European, let alone English, but I believe most civilized, after their own fashion, and a great many years ago. Heaven only knows what they are now, of course! We were at war with them over something or other when I was a girl. We won—naturally.”

“Would those have been the opium wars?” Charlotte struggled to recall her fairly recent history. “In the eighteen-fifties?”

“Quite possibly that was the name of them,” Adah conceded. “Certainly it was just after the war in the Crimea, and then the awful mutiny in India. We seemed to be always at war with someone in those days. Of course our dear Queen had only been on the throne for twenty years. Now it is quite different. Everyone knows who we are, and they have more sense than to start wars with us.”

Such monumental assurance was unanswerable, and Charlotte was happy enough to see Clio and Kathleen O’Neil in the distance, and attracted their attention with a smile.

Some thirty minutes later they left the exhibits and retired to take afternoon tea and converse about various subjects such as fashion, one’s health, the weather, the Princess of Wales, the books one had read, all harmless and quite suitable for such an occasion.

“How is your dear Mama?” Kathleen enquired courteously, looking at Charlotte over the cucumber sandwiches. “I do hope she will be able to join us, perhaps for an evening at the opera, or the theater?”

“I am sure she would love to,” Charlotte said with more
honesty than they knew. “I shall tell her that you mentioned it. It is most kind of you to ask. She has taken something of an interest in the theater lately. My Papa died some few years ago, and since then she has not gone out to such places as much as she used. She is just beginning to enjoy it again.”

“Very natural,” Adah agreed, nodding her head. “One has to mourn for a certain period. It is expected. But after that, one must continue one’s life.”

“I know she has become fast friends with Joshua,” Clio said quickly, smiling. “Indeed, it is really quite romantic.”

“Romantic?” Adah said stiffly. Then she swiveled around to Charlotte, her eyebrows raised.

“Well …” Charlotte hesitated, then she took a decision she was afraid she might desperately regret. “Yes—yes, it is. I have—I am not quite sure how I feel. Perhaps the word is
apprehensive.”
Clio continued to eat and reached for a tiny cream cake.

Kathleen glanced at Adah, then at Charlotte, and changed the subject.

When they rose to leave, Adah grasped Charlotte by the arm and drew her aside, her face tense, her eyes full of pain.

“My dear Miss Pitt, I do not know how to put this to you without seeming intrusive in what is your most private affair, but I cannot stand by and say nothing. Your mother is in a most vulnerable situation, bereaved of her husband, alone in the world, and quite naturally wishing to move into society again. But really—an actor!”

Charlotte agreed with her intensely, and at the same time instinctively rushed to defend Caroline. “He is very agreeable,” she said with a gulp. “And a pillar of his profession.”

“That is immaterial!” Adah’s voice was fierce, her grasp on Charlotte’s arm painful. “He is a Jew! You cannot possibly allow your mother to have—to have anything but—how can I say this with the remotest delicacy? For love of heaven, my dear, you cannot allow her to have relations with him!”

Charlotte felt herself blushing hotly. The idea was repellent
to her, not because of anything to do with Joshua Fielding, but because she could not imagine her mother in such a situation. It was profoundly … distressing, offensive.

“I can see you had not thought of it,” Adah went on, misreading her reaction entirely, thinking only of the word
Jew.
“Of course not. You are innocent. But my dear, it is not impossible—and then your mother would be ruined! Of course it is not as if she were still of childbearing age, so it would not contaminate her, but all the same.”

“Contaminate?” Charlotte was confused.

“Naturally.” Adah’s face was twisted with pain, pity, memory of something too ugly for her to speak of. “Having”—she hesitated on the word—“union—with a Jew—will leave a person … different. It is not something one can explain to a maiden lady of any sensibility at all. But you must believe me!”

Charlotte was speechless.

Adah mistook her silence for doubt.

“It is perfectly true,” she said urgently. “I swear it. God forgive me, I should know!” Her voice was raw with shame and misery. “My husband, like many men, satisfied his appetites beyond the walls of his own home, only he did it with a Jewess. I was with child at the time. That is why poor Prosper is deformed.” She caught her breath on the word as though the act of forcing it through her lips was a further wound to her. “And why I never had another child.”

Suddenly Charlotte saw the barren years, the shame, the sense of betrayal, of being unclean, which had lasted even until now. She felt a pity so intense she longed to reach out and put some kind of balm on the wound. And yet she was also revolted. It was alien to all her beliefs to imagine that there was a kind of human being who was so different that union with them was unclean, not because of immorality or disease, but simply by the nature of their race.

She did not know what to say, but Adah’s passionate face demanded some reply.

“Oh.” She felt idiotically inadequate. “I am sure—I am
sure my mother is unaware of that.” It was the only thing she could think of to say, and at least that much was true.

“Then if you have any care for her at all, you must tell her,” Adah urged intensely. “Never mind her age in life,” she went on. “It is the beginning of downfall. Who knows what may be next? Now we must join the others, or they will wonder what is amiss. Come!”

    The day after the trip to the museum, Charlotte accompanied Caroline, at Caroline’s invitation, to visit Joshua Fielding and Tamar Macaulay at the theater, after rehearsal and before the evening performance. Charlotte felt acutely uncomfortable. It was one of the least enjoyable times she had ever spent in her mother’s company. She longed to be able to tell her that Pitt knew Aaron Godman had been innocent, but she had promised Pitt she would not, and she knew his reasons for demanding such a thing were excellent. But still she felt deceitful, and she doubted Caroline would understand, even when she knew the full truth.

She was also horribly afraid that perhaps Joshua Fielding was the one who had murdered and crucified Kingsley Blaine, and then poisoned Judge Stafford because he was going to reopen the case—and now killed Constable Paterson because he also knew the truth.

And if he were not guilty, but it was Devlin O’Neil, or someone else, then what if Caroline did have an affair with him? How could Charlotte possibly govern her emotions about that? She could not be happy for it. And all the reasoning in the world, and Pitt’s arguments, which were so sensible, still did not alter the way she felt.

So she accompanied Caroline, who looked less smart than was her custom a few months ago, and definitely younger. She was not in the height of fashion at all, rather more in the romantic vision of the pre-Raphaelites, her gown with a design of flowers and leaves, her hair more loosely dressed, and no hat at all.

They were welcomed at the theater door and permitted in as if they were old friends, which in itself disturbed Charlotte. The rehearsal was just coming to an end. It was a
comedy, although there were highly dramatic elements. Even as an amateur with very little experience of the theater, Charlotte could see the skill in the timing of a line, the precise inflection of a voice, the gesture of a hand, the line of the body. It fascinated her to see how much greater was the skill of Tamar Macaulay than that of any of the others on the stage; and how much more her eye was drawn to Joshua than to the other men. It was not that he concerned her personally, or that Caroline never took her eyes from him, it was that he had a magnetism which would have compelled anyone.

When the final line was delivered, almost before Mr. Passmore gave them leave to go, Tamar turned and came towards Charlotte, her vivid face tense, her eyes searching. Charlotte was taken by surprise. She had not even thought Tamar aware of her presence; her concentration had seemed total. She did not bother with any formality.

“Charlotte! How good to see you. I had feared you had abandoned us. I would hardly blame you.” She took Charlotte by the arm and guided her away from the wings where they had been waiting and along a bare-board passage. “We have been trying for five years, and achieved nothing. It was most unfair of me to place my hopes upon you, and in a matter of weeks. I am most sincerely sorry, and the inexcusable thing is that I shall certainly go on doing it. I cannot help it.” She took a deep breath, facing Charlotte, her black eyes burning. “I still do not believe Aaron was guilty. I don’t believe he could have killed Kingsley, and I am quite sure he would not have done that to him afterwards.” A brief, ironic smile crossed her lips and there was a catch in her voice. “And he cannot have poisoned Judge Stafford.”