The Bohemian Girl (11 page)

It was on his account that Lady Blentham had decided to accept Sir Walter’s invitation: if Charles had not told her that Fitzclare would be present, she would have declined for herself and the girls.

She left the men, and they went on their way, walking rather faster than before. ‘Dear Angelina,’ said Lord Blentham, and added: ‘Violet’s the least like her mother of all the girls. Didie’s really rather like her – so’s Maud.’

‘All women are mysterious, don’t you think?’ said Sir Walter.

Lady Blentham went back into the house, feeling a fool because she had just acted on impulse as she almost never did. She climbed the stairs, walked along the little passage reserved by Sir Walter for unmarried women, and stood for a moment coldly looking at the little brass-bound card on her daughter’s door which said:
‘The
Honble.
Violet
Blentham.’
She went in and said: ‘Violet’ to the mound in the bed. ‘Violet.’

‘Mamma?’ Violet struggled a little, then raised herself, and blinked at her mother in the half-darkness. Angelina decided not to open the curtains. ‘It’s awfully early, isn’t it? You’re dressed …’

‘I want to talk to you, my dear.’

‘About my marriage?’ Violet said clearly, a moment later.

‘About your – marriage. Because I think that like most girls – you have very little idea of what marriage implies.’

‘Oh.’

‘Some girls are told nothing by their mothers, Violet, and when it happens – when they marry – they get a considerable shock.’

Violet guessed what was coming, and thought of Fanny Hill, but she only stretched her toes and said: ‘Yes, Mamma? What sort of considerable shock?’

Lady Blentham walked over to the window and fingered the curtain. ‘Don’t you think this is a very ugly, bleak sort of house, Violet?’ She hated Scotland, and all unruly moors.

‘Oh, I rather like it,’ said Violet. ‘Do go on, Mamma!’

‘Well, my dear,’ Angelina sighed, ‘do you promise me not to repeat a word of what I’m going to say to you to Diana?’

‘Yes, I promise,’ said Violet, drawing up her knees under the bedclothes, and hugging them.

Angelina sat down on a hard chair, and folded her hands in her lap like a good child. ‘You know, of course,’ she said, ‘that married people often share a bedroom? People who move in Society, even the middle classes, have separate bedrooms, of course, but usually connected?’

‘Yes.’

‘They have to share a bed,’ she continued. ‘Even if they do have separate rooms. My dear, have you read the marriage service?’

‘Yes, Mamma.’

‘Perhaps certain passages – certain words – have made you wonder? “Fruitful”, for instance – the mention of children?’

‘Actually, no, Mamma.’

‘Then it’s time they did!’ said Angelina. There was a pause, and she looked down at her lap. ‘Violet, I must explain that married men and women – come together, in bed, to make babies. Men are made very differently from women and they – they enter us.’ She closed her eyes. Nearly all men repelled Angelina, but she thought Sir Walter remarkably attractive, and found it hard to imagine his taking a wife to bed. She
wondered how in the world Violet had attached him, for she was so plain. Breathing deeply, she continued: ‘They have an instrument attached to their – stomachs – to enter between our lower limbs. Men suffer from desire, Violet, the lust of concupiscence as they say, they
want
to do it, gain pleasure from it, constantly, that is what I mean. But it’s
painful
for women – often very painful. Even with a man of whom she’s fond, a woman cannot – it’s only our duty, our absolute duty, to submit. That’s marriage, Violet. Do you understand me?’

‘Yes, Mamma,’ said Violet in a very muffled voice. Even in the dim light, she could see that her mother’s cheeks were bright red.

‘Now, do you see why I have told you? Can you still want to marry Sir Walter – such an old man, really so plain? Isn’t it vile? He
must
seem so to you!’ There was no answer. Angelina’s voice rose. ‘Girls nowadays, one can never … Perhaps you know something about all this. Perhaps you thought such an old man wouldn’t want it! But he will, Violet – I promise you.’ She did not really think it possible that Violet could know anything, and she knew she was becoming over-excited.

‘Oh,’ whispered Violet.

‘And childbirth – producing a baby – through a tiny hole, is quite agonisingly painful, Violet. Even chloroform helps only a little!’

‘Mamma, don’t you think someone might possibly hear you?’ said Violet anxiously. ‘The maids, I mean …’

Angelina swallowed. ‘Do you wish to marry him? Do you? The thought of your being married to him makes me very, very angry. How dare he, at his age, even
think
of – oh, in the old days a mother would have been quite
glad
for her daughter to marry him, for mere social reasons, even though he can’t have much more than five thousand a year! And would she have told you what I’ve just told you? But my affection for you – my caring for your happiness – matters very little, perhaps you’d
rather
…’

‘Oh, don’t be upset,
darling
Mamma, please.’

‘Have you listened to what I’ve been saying to you?’

‘Yes.’ Violet sat up in bed, and pulled the pillows into shape behind her, looking at her mother meanwhile.

‘Do you insist on marrying him – now that you understand?’

‘Yes. I love him, you see. I shan’t mind his – doing all those things to me.’ At last, Violet began weakly to laugh.

Lady Blentham got up from her chair and said very clearly: ‘Violet.’

‘Y-yes, M-mamma?’

‘Did you know before. Did you allow me to tell you, quite unnecessarily?’

Violet realised then that, for the first time in her life, she had been consciously unkind, and to her mother; but she could not stop giggling. ‘I did know a – a
little,
Mamma. Other girls talk, you know – people
do
find out!’

Angelina’s teeth chattered. ‘Then I see that I shall have no need to say anything at all to Diana, ever. Very well, Violet. Marry Sir Walter, though I can’t think you’ll be happy. How you can
know
and think you
love
him? Young girls’ natural feelings, towards handsome young men – when they think that marriage will be a few kisses, that they’ll be treated with
respect
– that one can understand, but you are quite, quite different, I see! No, I won’t say it. Marry him. I shall send the notice of your engagement to
The
Times
tomorrow. Well, how little one knows one’s own children. Stop it, child!
Violet
!’ The girl was still laughing. Lady Blentham strode over to the bed, and slapped her daughter’s face: but she could not bring herself to do it as hard as she wished, and she sobbed.

*

Diana walked up and down the little yew-tree avenue which was the central feature of the garden at Auchingilloch. She was smiling, occasionally laughing, over one of Shakespeare’s sonnets, which Julian Fitzclare had copied out and put under her door in an envelope. He had included a note, which asked her whether she did not think it original and moving. He said he would like to have her opinion as a poet, and she meant to give it:

It was immensely kind of him to make such an effort to court her with poetry, and to be original too. He could not have enjoyed being so intellectual, thought Diana, even though he worshipped her.

She sat down on a wet wooden seat, concealed from the main path in an alcove, and thought of Violet’s engagement, which was now the main topic of conversation at Auchingilloch Lodge. Lady Blentham let it be known that she had contrived a wise match for an unusual daughter; and the other ladies staying with Sir Walter were busy spreading the news round the neighbourhood and communicating it by letter. Julian Fitzclare very much approved of Violet’s choice, and quite believed that Lady Blentham was right to have encouraged it. This pleased Diana, though she did not tell him of her mother’s original reaction, or of her own outburst when Violet told her; which had surprised her at the time as much as it had her sister.

Diana and Violet had made up their brief quarrel, as soon as Violet had enjoyed a cuddle with Sir Walter and told him about it, but Diana still felt guilty. As she had told Violet, she was unhappy too, because she knew how badly she would miss her sister; how she would hate living alone with her parents and Maud. There would be no more smoking cigarettes in the old schoolroom at Dunstanton, or long hair-brushing talks about sex and other people’s stupidity, about their parents and about themselves. Her sister congratulated her on these feelings.

Diana disliked knowing that she was jealous of Violet, when she had never had the least cause to be so before. She did
not like discovering that Violet had a hard streak in her character, and would never in her life forgive Angelina, or be brought to think Sir Walter a rather silly man. It had been very unpleasant, Diana thought, to discover that Mamma was capable of handing out slaps.

She looked down again at the poem in her hand; and the sight of it made her feel panic. It made her think she would never really have a chance to marry and be like Violet, even though Julian’s copying it out for her seemed to point to the opposite. She was not normal, and never could be.

Julian Fitzclare had been the first to make Diana see that a part of her wish to go to university had been the desire to leave Dunstanton: even though she loved her parents. Violet’s engagement, and all the troubles surrounding it, simply confirmed this. So, two months ago, had
Memoirs
of
a
Woman
of
Pleasure
– she could hardly think of education now.

She wanted to be a fully dignified grown-up, a clever woman with a house of her own, able to treat Angelina as an equal. Since yesterday, when Fitzclare had taken the opportunity to kiss her behind a rock on the moors, she had also felt an increased need for a man. Diana thought he had made her see that
Fanny
Hill
was not just a most intriguing fantasy; that real men who danced and shot could be like the courtesan’s better lovers. They did kiss with sexual passion, only slightly mixed with fear; and she would learn to enjoy the reality, not only the thought, in time.

‘You know he won’t propose, he’s merely a little infatuated,’ she said aloud, in a sensibly teasing voice, as though speaking to Violet.
Reeking
breath,
she thought. Diana brushed her teeth once a day, and always gargled with eau-de-cologne after smoking a cigarette. She smiled again, and wondered whether he could be made to smile too. Diana did like Julian, but she did not think he would ever make her a serious proposal. She wished more than anything else that he would, and swore she would accept him.

*

Julian Fitzclare felt that he had deeply wronged Diana behind
the stone on the moor. She had been shyly unresponsive as any girl ought to be, but her hot colour and the look in her eyes, and her perfect silence then and after, confirmed his view that she was unique. Only the other picknickers, wandering towards them, chattering and looking, had prevented him from proposing then. Since that day, he had not found her unchaperoned even for a moment, and he wondered how on earth he was ever to marry. He did not believe she would even consider accepting him. He was sure that she liked him, but he quite accepted that she could not love him as he loved her. He would have been rather shocked if she had, for he only wanted to serve and adore her.

On Sunday, the first of September, there was no shooting; Sir Walter’s household planned to drive over to Smallburn Castle, where its owner, Mr Maclean, would give them both luncheon and tea. Several carriages were needed to transport the whole party, but it turned out on Sunday morning that the second landau had a broken shaft and was unusable. There was consternation when Sir Walter and his devouter guests returned from the local kirk.

‘Well,’ said Sir Walter’s widowed sister, Mrs Lejeune, quickly planning excellent arrangements in her head, ‘I can’t think what’s to be done. I simply can’t imagine – it’s a disaster.’

‘Very unfortunate,’ said Lady Blentham.

‘I told Walter, of course, that hiring job-carriages for a party like this is always a risky business. They’re
never
sound. A pity, I must say, he doesn’t keep a proper number of his own, but I’m sure Violet will manage him better than I do. Do you think, Lady Blentham, that it would look
very
odd if he drove her in the governess-cart?’ she said quickly.

‘No, not odd in the least. They’re engaged.’

‘Violet is such a dear.’ Mrs Lejeune, who had no children, looked forward to staying at Auchingilloch, making friends with her brother’s little wife, and supervising her nursery. ‘Mr Fitzclare – Captain Fitzclare, I always forget – might perhaps drive your younger daughter? We do have a pony-trap, and … so difficult!’

‘I see no reason why he should not.’

‘You and I can follow them, of course, in the landau.’

‘Yes,’ said Lady Blentham. She had been so horrified by her own folly, her emotion, and the violence she had shown to her daughter, that she was now sincerely in favour of the marriage. Her old feelings were so perfectly buried that she did not remember them, and she was being meek.

When Mrs Lejeune told him that he was to drive Diana over to Smallburn, Julian blushed.

‘Shan’t you be pleased?’ said Mrs Lejeune.

‘I’ll be d-delighted,’ he gulped. ‘Delighted, I promise you.’

It was a warm day, and there were midges in the air. Diana and Julian drove in virtual silence for a while, commenting only on the weather and the state of yesterday’s bag. About twenty minutes after leaving Auchingilloch, Diana said: ‘Thank you for sending me that sonnet. I think it’s one of Shakespeare’s best, don’t you?’