Silver (26 page)

             
“It gives me no pleasure to see you squirm so.”

             
“Then let me explain...”

             
“Oh, for pity’s sake. Please! No more seed stories.” She threw her arms to her sides and stalked across to the foot of the bed where she sat down, a little defeated. He waited whilst she closed her eyes. Her chin was thrust upwards and her neck was pale above her high collar. He tried to push the image of how, only a week or so ago, he had pressed his lips to that same flesh. Before he had time to consider his urges, he stood and was beside her in a few strides. He sat awkwardly beside her, the dress clinging about him in ungainly folds. Elizabeth opened her eyes.

             
“What the? What are you….?” she had a panicked look as Avery leant in to kiss her.

       
Elizabeth stood, pushing him away, and stepped to the side of the large bed frame. For the longest of minutes, there was nothing but the sound of Avery biting back his frustration in angry breaths and Elizabeth chewing her nails. She eventually stepped away from the bed and in two long strides was beside the door.

             
“I can see we will have to start with a lesson on personal space. My aunt wants to see you at eleven in the drawing room.” She opened the door as Avery said softly.

             
“Elizabeth. I truly am sorry.”

“So am I,”
she muttered, closing the door.

When I arrived home a few hours later
, I felt energised. Though I had slept little over the last few days and eaten even less, I felt that my real emotions were finally beginning to come to the fore. Where before I had only felt a shock that had numbed me, I now felt alive with indignation. Listening to Heston in that room and how he had shown such loyalty had made me cringe. I had watched as John shrank in embarrassment as the story unfolded.  I was not ashamed of Heston and I was not ashamed of my father. I was angry at him. I was angry at him, not for deceiving me but for not trusting me. I was grateful that only Stokes was waiting for me upon my arrival home, and as I walked upstairs to my bedroom, I felt relieved that I had managed to avoid a confrontation with John. All the way home, I had rehearsed what I would say in response to any one of his, by now, predictable statements and, though fresh on my lips, I lacked the physical energy for an argument. I mounted the stairs and tiptoed cautiously past the bedroom in which he had been sleeping those last few nights. There was no light from beneath the door to his room and I hurried to our marital bedroom. It was empty and the last of the strength I had felt on the journey home dissipated with the sigh of relief, I exhaled as I slumped on the pillows.

“
Immy?”

       
I started with surprise.

“Is that you?”
John’s voice was slightly slurred and I gripped the sheets with stifled anger.

             
“I’m tired John. I just want to go to sleep.”

       
The form of his shadow loomed out of the dark from the chaise longue in the bay window from which he now roused himself.

“
I hoped you would come home.” His voice was needy like Thomas when he could not sleep. “What time is it?” he added.

             
“It’s late John. Go to bed and let’s talk in the morning.”

       
There was a clump as he stood up and he stumbled a little.

             
“I hoped you would be home Immy.”

       
There was a rustling as the sheets lifted beside me and he slipped in between them. I rolled away from him, turning my shoulder towards him, hoping my back would signal my intent to sleep. Instead, he moved closer to me and propped his head on my shoulder. His heavy chin dug into my clavicle, the sharp fresh whiskers on his chin scratching my flesh.

             
“You’re cold Immy! Here, let me warm you up.” His voice was thick with a smile and he inelegantly ran his hands over my thighs, rubbing harshly. His breath was sour with alcohol and I tensed from his touch, trying in vain to prevent his large hands from pulling up my nightdress.

             
“John! Please!” I turned on to my stomach, hoping he would quit but he rolled along with me and I was suddenly pinned under his weight against the mattress. He moaned with delight and slurred once more into my ear.

“Oh
Immy!”

       
With the indelicate hands of a stranger, he leaned on me and raised himself up to begin tugging at my nightclothes, drawing the fabric up to reveal my naked bottom, as he did so I could feel him grow hard against me and I cried out again.

“John! What are you doing? Stop!”

        My pleas went unheard and unheeded, and he fumbled with the drawstring of his pyjamas, and his hot member fell firm against my buttocks where he rutted for a few moments, his fingers trying to prise my thighs apart.

             
“John! No!” I screamed out. The pitch was high and it shocked even me. Had anyone within the house heard, I expected them to immediately rush to my aid. Whilst time would prove that no-one would spring to my defence, it had reached inside John’s foggy head and he appealed to me one more time.

             
“Imogen! I am trying to help you!” he slurred angrily.

       
He had lifted himself off me to examine my face, evidently surprised that I was not submissive to his advances. It was enough and I rolled out from underneath him, landing indecorously in a heap beside the bed. He leaned over and his expression was of great amusement.

             
“What are you doing, Imogen? Come back to bed.”

       
He pulled back the covers, his pyjama bottoms loose around his thighs and his eyes danced over my half naked form. He smiled at me and held out his hand to pull me back to bed. I took his hand and drew myself back up and slipped beside him whilst he caressed me clumsily.

“
I’m sorry Immy. I’ve not been gentle have I?”

             
“No,” I agreed, not tonight, nor this week. As he slipped an arm beneath my head and drew himself above me, I cast around for a recent memory of John being gentle or supportive. The night my father’s death had been announced hadn’t he been protective, hadn’t he held me close? But that was before the scandal. Since then, he had treated me like a problem, like a conspirator, like a foe. The man, who eased himself between my legs and slipped inside me so intimately, was like a stranger to me, and I felt ashamed of him. The effects of the drink wore quickly and he was finished much sooner than was normal, and I breathed a sigh of relief, as he rolled his weight from me and fell into a deep stupor.  Despite my relief, I found I could not move and remained, as he had finished with me, legs spread wide, a wet slick forming on the sheets where I lay; his scent upon me like an animal.

       
As I lay there in that way, the image of my father swam before me and then without warning, my mother in the same position. I frowned and drew my legs up towards my chest, turning on to my side, away from John. Had my mother lain beneath my father in the same way? How could she have? How could they have shared what John and I had just experienced? Surely, they were never Man and Wife if they had not? Again, I thought of how my mother’s role in all of this was diminished and yet surely she was just as much, if not more, guilty? They had always seemed to me to be a paragon of happiness and, with John, I had tried to emulate them. The fact was, they had never been able to share such intimacies and surely as a result, they could never have been truly intimate. Or had they been? I wondered where their intimacy came from. Did they experience one another’s bodies like John and I had done once? The thought confused me and I could not imagine ever feeling desire for someone who had a woman’s body, no matter how much I loved him. Against my wishes, my mind lingered on an image of my own mother lying stiff under the body of my father as he laboured above her but I could not imagine it. I screwed up my eyes and tried to shake the thought from my head. Eventually, a troubled sleep came over me and I thought only of my mother and I could not see her anything but content, happy and whole.

~o~

              Breakfast the following morning was awkward. John avoided looking at me and spoke monosyllabically. It was not only inconvenient, it was almost impossible and I eventually abandoned any attempt to talk to him about what I had thought after leaving Heston yesterday evening. As he quit the table for work, folding his newspaper as he did so, he leant down from habit to plant a kiss on the top of my head but as his lips came close he was unable to make contact. Instead he rose stiffly and left the room without a word. I was unaccustomed to considering the staff around me but the abruptness of his departure left me feeling embarrassed in front of Stokes and I, too, rose and left the room.

             
“Ready a cab for me, Stokes. I will be downstairs in ten minutes.”

             
“Yes Ma’am. Where to?”

       
I hesitated. Stokes was a good twenty years younger than Heston and of a different generation. I had never considered whose man he was, as John and I were always of one accord. Though he had shown some discretion with Mrs. Evesham in recent days, I felt I wanted to have some space to myself.

“
I haven’t quite decided yet. Have him available for a few hours and I will decide en route.”

“
Very good Mrs. Bancroft.”

       
If he thought it unusual, his expression did not betray him and, as I left a short while afterwards, he saw me out of the front door with no discernible opinion. As the cabbie saw me into the cab, I offered him our destination.

             
“Where to Ma’am?”

             
“Brompton Cemetery, please.”

       
Within a quarter of an hour, we were drawn up outside the North gate, farthest from the small church. The cab rolled off to wait for me and I walked down the central avenue in the quiet of the winter’s morning. There were already several mourners fresh upon the day and I was careful to avoid eye contact; their raw loss was palpable and I needed to keep my own at bay for what I needed to do. After a short walk, I found the avenue of headstones which I had come for. It had been a while but I was drawn to my mother’s grave as if she herself were sat upon it. Though it had been several months since last I was here, and so much had happened since, the familiar feeling of her presence washed over me as reassuring, and I forgot that I was angry with her and tears rolled down my face. I could almost feel her draw me to her, her small frame enveloping my adult self as if I were a small girl again. Though I had steeled myself to remain strong, my shoulders shook with the lonely grief I had been carrying. For several minutes, I stood weeping, the headstone blurred through my tears.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”
I sobbed.

       
Time seemed to melt away and I could imagine her face before me. Where only a few months ago I had been upset because I found that could not remember the turn of her mouth when she smiled or the shade of her eyes, here was her face pristinely in my mind’s eye. She was looking at me without shame and she refused to avoid my eye. I closed mine in order to see her more clearly.

             
“Why didn’t you tell me?”

       
And what would she have said to me? And when would she say it? As I thought of my own two children, what age could she feasibly have told me? When I was twelve? When I was sixteen? Could I imagine myself telling either of my sons something so important and so devastating? What if there was a secret about their own father, one so monstrous that could change their relationship with him forever. Would I be able to take that from them? From him?

       
I could imagine her dilemma. The truth that started so small but with every day that I believed it, it became larger and larger until it was too big. ‘
Your father isn’t your father Imogen, he’s a woman.’
The absurdity of it struck me and I laughed out loud. My father had been the most wonderful father I could have wished for. Wasn’t that the only truth?

       
I stayed for a further half hour allowing all of my mother’s reasons and love, but not apologies, seep into me before I finally understood. I laid four roses beside her headstone. As I read her name and pondered the blank beneath her own, which had been left for my father, my heart surged with heat as I remembered with horror the conversation I had overheard John having at the undertakers.

       
The church had refused to allow my father to be buried with my mother citing reasons of decency. John had begun proceedings to secure a more secluded, ‘private’ plot and the thought made me feel distraught. I walked back to the hansom and the driver, pleased at the opportunity to move in this cold and opened the cab door.

             
“Will you please drop me at the vicarage?”