Original Sin (7 page)

Her dining table was still set when he arrived. She always ate with some formality even when alone, but he could see that the meal had been as simple as his own. The cheese board and the fruit bowl were on the table and she had obviously had soup but nothing else. He could see, too, that she had been crying.

She said, smiling, trying to make her voice cheerful: 'I'm so glad you've come up. It gives me an excuse to open a bottle of wine. It's odd how much one dislikes drinking alone. I suppose it's all those early warnings about solitary drinking being the beginning of the slide into alcoholism.'

She fetched a bottle of Chteau Margaux and he came forward to open it. They didn't speak again until they were settled, glasses in hand, before the fire, when, looking into the flames, she said: 'He

should have been there. Gerard should have been there.'

'He doesn't like funerals.'

'Oh Gabriel who does? And it was awful, wasn't it? Daddy's cremation was bad enough but this was worse. That pathetic clergy-man who did his best but who didn't know her and didn't know any of us, trying to sound sincere, praying to the God she didn't believe in, talking about eternal life when she didn't even have a life worth living here on earth.'

He said gently: 'We can't know that. We can't be the judge of another's happiness or unhappiness.'

'She wanted to die. Isn't that evidence enough? At least Gerard came to Daddy's .funeral. He more or less had to, though, didn't he? The crown prince saying farewell to the old king. It wouldn't have looked good if he'd stayed away. After all, there were important people there, writers, publishers, the press, people he wanted to impress. There was no one important at today's cremation, so he didn't have to bother. But he ought to have come. After all, he killed her.'

Dauntsey said more firmly: 'Frances, you mustn't say that. There's absolutely no evidence that anything Gerard did or said caused Sonia's death. You know what she wrote in the suicide note. If she had planned to kill herself because Gerard had sacked her I think she would have said so. The note was explicit. You must never say that

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outside this room. This kind of rumour can be deeply damaging. Promise me - it is important.' 'All right, I promise. I haven't said it to anyone except you, but I'm not the only one at Innocent House who's thinking it, and some are saying it. Kneeling there in that awful chapel I was trying to pray, for Daddy, for her, for all of us. But it was all so meaningless, so futile. All I could think about was Gerard, Gerard who ought to have been sitting there in the front row with us, Gerard who was my lover, Gerard who isn't my lover any more. It's so humiliating. I know now, of course, what it was all about. Gerard thought, "Poor Frances, twenty-nine and still a virgin. I must do something about that. Give her the experience of her life, show her what she's missing." His good deed for the day. His good deed for three months, rather. I suppose I lasted longer than most. And the ending was so sordid, so messy. Isn't it always? Gerard is very good at beginning a love-affair, but he doesn't know how to end it, not with any dignity. But then, nor do I. And I was deluded enough to think that I was different from his other women, that this time he was serious, in love, wanting commitment, marriage. I thought we would run Peverell Press together, live in Innocent House, bring up our children here, even change the name of the firm. I thought that would please him. Peverell and Etienne. Etienne and Peverell. I used to practise the alternatives, trying to decide which sounded better. I thought he wanted what I wanted marriage, children, a proper home, a shared life. Is that so unreasonable? Oh God, Gabriel, I feel so stupid, so ashamed.' She had never before spoken so openly to him, never shown the depth of her anguish. It was almost as if she had been silently rehearsing the words, waiting for this moment of relief when, at last, she was with someone she could trust and in whom she could confide. But coming from Frances, who was always so sensitive, reticent and proud, this uncontrolled pouring forth of bitterness and self-disgust appalled him. Perhaps it was the funeral, the memory of that earlier cremation, which had released the pent-up hatred and humiliation. He wasn't sure that he could cope with it but knew that he must try. This fluency of pain demanded more than the soft pabulum of comfort; 'he isn't worth it, forget him, the pain will pass with time'. But that last was true, the pain did pass with time, whether it was the pain of betrayal or the pain of bereavement. Who knew that better than he? He thought: the tragedy of loss is not that

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we grieve, but that we cease to grieve, and then perhaps the dead are dead at last. He said gently: 'The things you' want - children, marriage, home, sex - are reasonable desires, some would say very proper desires. Children are our only hope of immortality. They aren't things to be ashamed of. It is your misfortune not your shame that Etienne's desires and yours didn't coincide.' He paused, then said, wondering if it were wise, whether she would find the words crudely insensitive: 'James is in love with you.' 'I suppose so. Poor James. He hasn't said so, but he doesn't need to, does he? Do you know, I think I could have loved James if it hadn't been for Gerard. And I don't even like Gerard. I never did, even when I wanted him most. That's what's so terrible about sex, it can exist without love, without liking, even without respect. Oh, I tried to fool myself. When he was insensitive or selfish or crude I made excuses. I reminded myself how brilliant he was, how handsome, how amusing, what a wonderful lover. He was all those things. He is all those things. I told myself that it was unreasonable to apply to Gerard the petty standards one applied to others. And I loved him. When you love, you don't judge. And now I hate him. I didn't know that I could hate, really hate, another person. It's different from hating a thing, a political creed, a philosophy, a social evil. It's so concentrated, so physical, it makes me feel ill. My hate is the last thing I think about at night and I wake up with it every morning. But it's wrong, a sin. It has to be wrong. I feel I'm living in mortal sin and I can't get absolution because I can't stop the hating.' Dauntsey said: 'I don't think in those terms, sin, absolution. But hate is dangerous. It perverts justice.' 'Oh justice! I've never expected much in the way of justice. And hate has made me so boring. I bore myself. I know I bore you, dear Gabriel but you're the only one I can talk to and sometimes, like tonight, I feel I have to talk or I might go mad. And you're so wise, that's your reputation anyway.' He said drily: 'It's easy to get a reputation for wisdom. It's only necessary to live long, speak little and do less.' 'But when you do speak you're worth listening to. Gabriel tell me what I must do.' to get rid of him?' Fo get rid of this pain.'

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ere are the usual expedients; drink, drugs, suicide. The first two lead to the third, it's just a slower, more expensive, more humiliating route. I don't advise it. Or you could murder him, but I don't advise that either. Do it in fantasy as ingeniously as you like, but not in

reality. Not unless you want to rot for ten years in prison.'

She said: 'Could you stand that?'

'Not for ten years. I might manage three but not more. There are better ways of coping with pain than death, his death or yours. Tell yourself that pain is part of life, to feel pain is to be alive. I envy you. If I could feel such pain I might still be a poet. Value yourself. You're no less a human being because one selfish, arrogant, insensitive mfin doesn't find you lovable. Do you really need to value yourself by the standard of any man, let alone Gerard Etienne? Remind yourself that the only power he has over you is the power that you give him. Take that power away and you take away the hurt. Remember, Frances, you don't have to stay with the firm. And don't say that there has always been a Peverell at the Peverell Press.'

q'here has since 792, even before we moved into Innocent House. Daddy wouldn't have wanted me to be the last.'

'Someone has to be, someone will be. You owed your father a certain duty in life but it ceased with his death. We can't be in thrall to the dead.'

As soon as the words were out of his mouth he regretted them, half expecting her to ask What about you? Aren't you in thrall to the dead, your wife, your lost children?' He went on quickly: %Vhat would you like to do if you had a free choice?'

'Work with children, I think. Perhaps train as a primary school teacher. I've got my degree. I suppose it would only mean another year's training. And then I think I'd like to work in the country or in a small country town.'

rhen do it. You do have a free choice. But don't go searching for happiness. Find the right job, the right place, the right life. The happiness will come if you're lucky. Most of us get our share of it. Some of us get more than our share even if it's concentrated into a little space of time.'

She said: I'm surprised you don't quote Blake, that poem about "joy and pain being woven fine, a clothing for the soul divine". How does it go?

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Man was made for Joy and Woe; And when this we rightly know, Thro' the World we safely

Only you don't believe in the soul divine, do you?' 'No, that would be the ultimate self-deception.' 'But you do go safely through the world. And you understand about hate. I think I've always known that you hated Gerard.' He said: 'No, you're wrong, Frances. I don't hate him. I feel nothing for him, nothing at all. And that makes me far more dangerous to him than you can ever be. Hadn't we better start a game?' He took out the heavy chessboard from the corner cupboard and she moved the table between the armchairs then helped him to set out the pieces. Holding out his clenched fist for her to choose black or white he said: 'I think you ought to give me a pawn, the tribute of youth to age.' 'Nonsense, you beat me last time. We play even.' She surprised herself. Once she would have given way. It was a small act of self-assertion and she saw him smile as with his stiffened fingers he began to set out the pieces.

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6

Miss Blackett went home every night to Weaver's Cottage in West Marling in Kent where, for the past nineteen years, she had lived with her older widowed cousin, Joan Willoughby. Their relationship was affectionate but had never been emotionally intense. Mrs Willoughby had married a retired clergyman and when he died three years after the marriage, which Miss Blackett privately suspected was as long as either partner could have borne, it had seemed natural for his widow to invite her cousin to give up her unsatisfactory rented flat in Bayswater and move to the cottage. Early in these nineteen years of shared life a routine had established itself, evolving rather than planned, which satisfied them both. It was Joan who managed the house and was responsible for the garden, Blackie who, on Sundays, cooked the main meal of the day which was always eaten promptly at one o'clock, a responsibility which excused her from Matins although not from Evensong. It was Blackie who, rising first, took early morning tea 'to her cousin and made their nightly Ovaltine or cocoa at half past ten. They holidayed together, for the last two weeks in July, usually abroad, because neither of them had anyone with a stronger claim. They looked forward each June to the Wimbledon tennis championship and enjoyed the occasional weekend visit to a concert, theatre or art gallery. They told themselves, but did not say aloud, that they were lucky.

Weaver's Cottage stood on the northern outskirts of the village. Originally two substantial cottages, it had in the 95os been converted into one dwelling by a family with definite ideas about what constituted rural domestic charm. The tiled roof had been replaced with reed thatch from which three dormer windows stared out like protruding eyes; the plain windows were now mullioned and a porch had been added, covered in summer by climbing roses and clematis. Mrs Willoughby loved the cottage and if the mullioned windows made the sitting-room rather darker than she would ideally have liked, and some of the oak beams were less authentic than others, these defects were never openly acknowledged. The cottage with its

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immaculate thatch and its garden had appeared on too many calendars, had been lhotographed by visitors too often for her to worry about small details of architectural integrity. The main part of the garden was in the front, and here Mrs Willoughby spent most of her spare hours, tending, planting and watering what was generally admitted to be West Marling's most impressive front garden, designed as much for the pleasure of passers-by as for the occupants of the cottage. 'I aim for something of interest throughout the year,' she would explain to people who paused to admire, and in this she certainly succeeded. But she was a true and imaginative gardener. Plants thrived under her care and she had an instinctive eye for the placing of colour and mass. The cottage might be less than authentic but the garden was unmistakably English. There was a small lawn with a mulberry tree which in spring was surrounded by crocuses, snow-dops and later the bright trumpets of daffodils and narcissi. In the summer the heavily planted beds leading to the porch were an intoxication of colour and scent, while the beech hedge, trimmed low so as not to obscure the view of the glories beyond, was a living symbol of the passing seasons from the first tight, tentative buds to the crisp gold and reds of its autumn glory. She always returned from the monthly PCC meeting bright-eyed and invigorated. Some people, Blackie reflected, would have found the fortnightly skirmishes with the vicar about his partiality for the new liturgy over the old and his other minor delinquencies dispiriting; Joan seemed to thrive on them. She settled herself, plump thighs parted stretching the tweed of her skirt, feet firmly'planted, before the pie-edged table and poured the two glasses of amontillado. A dry biscuit cracked between the strong white teeth, the cut glass, one of a set, with its delicate stem looked as if it would snap in her hand. 'It's inclusive language now, if you please. He wants 'Fhrough the Night of Doubt and Sorrow" at next Sunday's Evensong, but we're supposed to sing "person takes the Hand of Person, Marching Fearless through the Night". I soon put a stop to that, supported by Mr Higginson, thankfully. I can forgive that man the price of his bacon and the way he lets that mangy old cat of his sit in the window on the corn flakes when he acts with sense at the PCC which, to do him justice, he usually does. Miss Matlock suggested "Sister Takes the Hand of Sister".'