Past Caring (19 page)

“I’ll call a cab to take you to Putney,” I said. “I’ll walk to the
Home Office and . . .”

“When will I see you again?”

“Before the day is out. There is a Cabinet meeting at eleven ,
where I’ll hand my letter of resignation to Asquith. Afterwards, I’ll
come straight to Putney and take you to the Court of Faculties, so
that we can apply for a special licence.”

“Come as soon as you can. It will seem an age however soon
it is.”

“Are you worried about Mercy?”

“Only because she will be worried. My return will put her
mind at rest.”

“Then we had better arrange it in short order.”

We went outside and I hailed a cab. Elizabeth lingered by my
front door as the cab drew up.

“Are you not anxious to return to Putney?”

“Of course, but, somehow, this parting now seems wrong.”

“A brief but necessary one, I promise, whilst I perform the obsequies in Downing Street and you settle your aunt’s nerves. It will
only be a few hours before we are re-united.”

“Yes. I’m sorry to be so silly.”

“Never silly, Elizabeth, only lovely. Go now and remember, I
will love you forever.”

We kissed as lingeringly as we could with a cabbie on hand,
then Elizabeth climbed aboard and they clopped off along Mallard
Street, I waving after her. “Look out for me this afternoon ,” I cried.

“I will,” I heard her faintly call, words I thought soon to hear
her use in more ceremonial setting—but never did.

I returned to the house to pack what official papers I had into a
valise, then set off for the Home Office. There, Meres was his usual
efficient self, unaware that my only task that morning was to write
one letter. It was swiftly done—an unadorned one-sentence notification of my immediate departure from office. I sealed the envelope

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and, with it, my fate and walked smartly round to Downing Street
to join my fellow-ministers at number 10.

The Cabinet meeting was unremarkable. I said nothing, not
even when the matter arose of the bill to enfranchise female occu-piers. It came as no surprise to me that Lloyd George spoke in
favour of giving it a second reading, nor that Asquith quietly acquiesced in this. I cast a last ritual vote against, but finished in the minority.

As the meeting was breaking up, I drew Asquith aside and
handed him my letter.

“I’d be obliged if you found an early opportunity to read this,
Prime Minister,” I said.

“Of course, Edwin , of course,” Asquith muttered, but his attention was on a conversation with the Foreign Secretary. I slipped quietly away, content to go without further ado.

I lunched at the House of Commons, then strolled down to the
Embankment and, so fine was the afternoon , decided to walk all the
way upriver to Putney.

I arrived at about four o’clock in the orderly precincts of
Mercy’s house and knocked at the door, expecting it to be opened
either by Elizabeth or their maid. Instead, a stranger appeared before me—a stockily built young man with a querulous set to his expression.

“Can I help you?” he said, with no hint that he meant to.

“I don’t believe I know you, sir, but my name is Strafford and I
have called to see the young lady of the house.”

“Miss Latimer is not at home.”

“Really? Then the elder Miss Latimer?”

“Is in , but has asked not to be disturbed.”

“And who precisely are you?”

“A friend of the family.”

“A new one, it would seem, for I’ve never met you. Kindly stand
aside.”

He had nettled me by his tone, but it was the unexpected coolness of my reception at this customarily welcoming door that was
trying my patience. The man did not clear my path and I might
have had to force an entrance, but Mercy appeared then in the hall,
clearly upset, and asked him to admit me.

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“What’s going on , M?”

Mercy’s usual smile had vanished. She spoke in a manner she
had never used before. “How dare you come here? Haven’t you done
enough?”

“What are you talking about?”

“You know full well, young man. If my brother were still alive,
he would know how to deal with one such as you. As it is, all I can
say is that the hospitality of this house, which you have so vilely
abused, is forever denied you.”

This was surely not dear old Aunt M speaking; I had called at
the wrong door, stepped over a threshold into a nightmare in which
I did not belong. There was only one way back.

“Where is Elizabeth?”

“She is upstairs with Julia, distraught, as you must have known
she would be when you were shown in your true colours.”

“What colours? What does this mean?”

“It means that a man I respected and my niece loved has been
exposed for what he is: a fraud and a villain.”

The man at the door had come up behind me. “Shall I make
him leave, Miss Latimer?”

“I think that would be best . . . unless he will go of his own accord.”

“M, this is madness. I’m not leaving until I see Elizabeth. Has
she told you of our intentions?”

“Her intentions—her hopes—are shattered. Yours do not bear
description. Cannot you be content with that?”

The young man laid a hand on my shoulder. I made a last appeal to reason , as much my own as that of those around me.

“Call this young lout off before I hurt him. I demand to see my
fiancée.”

The man seized my collar. This was too much. I shook him off,
spun round and lashed out in all my baffled fury. My fist caught
him square on the chin and sent him reeling back into a mirror that
hung on the hall wall. He and it crashed to the floor. Mercy
screamed. My own violence had only made the nightmare worse.

“Stop this!”

The voice was Elizabeth’s. She was speaking from the top of the
stairs. I looked up to her there, expecting to see my dearest love in

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all her radiant calmness, hoping even now that she could turn my
world back upright again. She was still in her grey dress, but all else
had changed. Her face was a mask, tracked and puffed by tears. She
was trembling and sobbing even as she spoke.

“Edwin , you have ruined me—you have ruined us. Why come
here to twist the knife in my wound?”

I ran to the foot of the stairs and looked up at her imploringly.

“What wound, Elizabeth? For God’s sake, tell me my offence.”

She grasped the banisters for support. “It is too much to ask me
to put into words the depth of your deceit. You compound it now by
feigning ignorance.”

A young lady appeared at her elbow whom I recognized from a
previous encounter as Julia Lambourne. At sight of the figure
sprawled on the floor behind me, nursing a split lip, she cried out and
rushed down past me to attend him. I remained staring up at
Elizabeth, searching in her eyes for the trust I had somehow forfeited.

“Elizabeth, I will say it once more. Remember all that we have
meant to each other and believe me: I do not know of what I stand
accused. I have stood by you and my word in all our dealings. This
very day I have resigned office for your sake. What has happened?”

“I remember what you meant to me, what I thought I meant to
you. But it was a lie, a mockery. You cannot escape the truth, Edwin.

It has found you out, but not soon enough to save me. If my pleas can
in any way touch you, grant this one: leave now and never attempt
to see me again. One day, I may be able to forget, even forgive, but
only so long as I never have to hear your voice or see your face—

that were once so dear to me—ever again.”

“Elizabeth, this morning you agreed to marry me.”

Elizabeth cried out, put her hand to her face and ran back from
the head of the stairs, out of my sight.

“Mr. Strafford, please leave.” Mercy had spoken unevenly from
behind me.

I turned to confront them, Julia now supporting the man as he
stood glaring at me, Mercy trembling visibly beside them. Julia
spoke.

“Mr. Strafford, you have assaulted my brother and piled further distress upon that which you have already caused Elizabeth.

We would all be glad if you now left.”

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I stood in the hall, poised between that tableau of accusing faces
and the hurt and wrong I felt from the words flung down at me by
Elizabeth. I was dumbstruck, adrift in a nightmare, the real, sure
world of the night before, the year before, receding from my faltering grasp. With every denial I was held to further my guilt, with
every wild flailing I descended further into the morass. A silence
hung over the motionless group until I felt I would cry aloud at all
its mute injustice. Instead, I walked quietly to the door, Julia and
her brother parting to let me go, opened it and strode from the
house.

Before I had gone a hundred yards, a sense of hopelessness and
loss overwhelmed me. A short distance ahead was the church where
I had thought to marry Elizabeth one day soon. I could not bear to
enter a building with such associations, but sat on a bench amongst
the gravestones and wept. After a little while, a lady passed by,
bearing flowers to a grave. At this, I composed myself somewhat
and left, wandering east by streets I knew not in no particular direction; motion was all I sought, as if by pounding a pavement through
throngs of strangers I could beat out the shock of my rejection.

In Wandsworth, a tavern was opening its doors for evening
trade as I passed. So I abandoned my grim patrol and entered, hoping to drink myself into a merciful oblivion. The publican was
clearly curious that such a well dressed and spoken customer should
cross the threshold of his large, sawdusted alehouse, but my money
satisfied him. Hunched in a corner as the inn filled slowly through
the evening, I drank cheap beer until all my senses, even of loss and
sorrow, were blunted. Then I could bear to be alone, so left and took
to the streets again.

Some hours later, I found myself on Westminster Bridge, the familiar bulk of Parliament before me. Now I no longer felt part of its
hectic life, dislocated in a self-imposed exile from love and politics—from all that I had thus far lived for. I stared down into the
murky, turbid waters of the Thames, tempted to think, for a moment, that there, if anywhere, my hurt could be healed.

“Don’t I know you, sir?”

A voice had spoken from behind me. I turned from the parapet
to face a policeman.

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“Yes, surely it’s Mr. Strafford.”

“No longer your master, Constable.” I must have reeked of
alcohol.

“Don’t you think you should be going home, sir?”

“But where is home?”

“Where the heart is, according to the poet, sir.”

“Then that’s why I’m on this bridge, Constable. My heart is
with the river, flowing out to sea.”

“I’ll call a cab to take you home, sir.”

He walked me to the Embankment and put me aboard a han-som. But I discharged the fare some way short of Mallard Street
and wandered again wherever my steps took me.

At last, with dawn breaking, I did return home, for want of
anywhere else to go. A milkman was on his rounds, whistling as he
went. He passed a word with a postman , who had just stepped back
from my door. All was unforced jollity in Mallard Street, until my
bleak homecoming.

I opened my front door and, in so doing, stirred a letter on the
mat. Recognizing the hand as Elizabeth’s, I seized it and wrenched
it open , desperately scanning the contents for some sign that all
might yet be saved.