The Emperor (7 page)

‘
Where is everyone?' James asked. 'Have I been missed?
Are search parties abroad for me?'

‘
I believe your absence was noted, sir,' Durban said. 'The dressing bell has gone, and everyone is upstairs. The coast is
clear for the moment, sir.’

James dismounted, and patted Durban's arm in acknow
ledgement of the sympathy. The house was before him,
waiting, but today his childhood home looked forbidding in the fading light. It contained his unloved wife and her sharp-
eyed father, his anxious mother and cynically amused sister.
It threatened him. Everyone wanted something from him,
he thought, clenching his fists in frustration. Why would they not just leave him alone?

‘
I think I'll walk in the gardens first,' he told Durban. 'It
may clear my head a little.'

‘
Very good, sir,' said Durban, but the non-committal
words held a clear note of warning.

In the Italian garden, there was privacy.
It
had been laid
out more than a century ago, and was too dark and formal
for modern taste, with high, carefully clipped yew hedges,
narrow gravelled paths, and gloomy alcoves containing
marble benches and statues brought back from Italy by
some long-dead Morland from his Grand Tour. Its coolness
was sometimes sought on hot summer days, but the servants
shunned it, especially after dusk. There was one place where
the grass grew differently, and the story was that Lord
Ballincrea fell there, run through by his step-brother in a duel: his blood soaking into the ground was said to make
the grass come up discoloured, and his ghost was thought to
haunt that spot.

James was not afraid of the Ballincrea ghost, and the
effect of drinking brandy all day while eating nothing was to
produce a mood of such gloom and depression that the
atmosphere of the Italian garden could hardly deepen it. He
sat down on a bench, sank his chin in his hands, and gave
himself up to reflection.

His life seemed to him to have gone wrong from the very
beginning. He had been isolated as a child between the two
extremes of the family, with no companion but the chaplain-
tutor, Father Ramsay, a man of strange humour and a satur
nine turn of mind, who had influenced James intellectually, without being able to give him the warmth and affection the
boy's nature craved. James had grown up thoughtful,
reserved, inward-looking, too lonely to be happy, too
sensitive to be able to ask for love where there was any
chance of rejection.

His passion for Mary Loveday, some years his senior,
and her subsequently arranged marriage to John Skelwith,
had confirmed him in his view of the world. When she bore
his child, she refused to leave her husband and run away
with him, and his share of the shame and scandal had been
unrelieved by any share in her love or that of their son.

And then he had met Héloïse. He lifted his head and
stared sightlessly round the dark garden. Here – she had
been here, in this very place. These hedges had heard her
laughter; he had walked with her along these paths, holding
her hand. His memory retained the exact impression of her
hand, its size and shape, the warm grip of her child-small
fingers, though he found it hard now to bring her face to mind.

She had come here as if to a home which had long
awaited her, come to be queen of a kingdom which was glad
to be hers. She had loved everything, from the least kitchen
boy riddling the grate to the swans on the moat. From the moment of her arrival, the servants had seemed to accept her, without its ever being discussed, as Jemima's natural
successor; and she had opened her guileless heart to him and chosen him king.

The loss of her was like endless darkness. With no further
chance of happiness, he had turned to duty. Morland Place
needed an heir, and neither of his elder brothers seemed
likely to provide one, so in a fit of noble self-sacrifice he had
proposed the match between himself and Mary Ann
Hobsbawn. The difficulty was that the momentary spasm of
self-sacrifice involved a lifetime of living with the reality,
and commonplace, day-to-day disappointments were harder to bear than great tragedy and noble grief. He found it hard
to think about Mary Ann as a person, or even as his wife:
she simply loomed in the background, an inescapable fact; his gaoler.

He sighed deeply, and then started violently, as he came
back to reality to find the inescapable fact standing not ten
yards away, watching him. She was a tall woman, well-
formed, handsome, with a statuesque calm of bearing which
made her easy, for him, to dismiss. She had evidently
changed for the evening, for she was wearing a gown of
twilled lilac silk, with a heavy, expensive Persian shawl over
her shoulders. James did not recognize it – probably a new
gift from her father, he thought. Her hair was up, and bound
by a fillet of purple velvet ribbon. It was fine, light-brown
hair, thin and silky like a child's,
difficult
to manage, and
alread
^y
it was slipping the battery of pins Dakers had used
to confine it, and escaping in wisps about her brows. She
ought to have it cropped, he thought: it would suit her, with
her long, graceful neck; but he did not speak the thought
aloud.

‘Had you not better change?' she said at last. 'It is almost
dinner-time.' Her voice was light and cool and careful, with
no hint of her father's accent, or of any emotion of her own.

‘
What are you doing here?' James asked. It sounded
accusing: he might as well have asked why she was spying
on him.

‘
I wished for some air,' she said unemphatically. 'I was
just going in.' She did not move, however, and at length
James felt obliged to rise and walk with her back towards
the house.

‘
You should not walk out at dusk,' he said after a
moment, since some speech seemed necessary. 'You will
catch cold.'

‘My shawl is very thick,' she replied.

‘
Have they all done, in there? Is it all signed and sealed
and witnessed?' he said next. She assented with a silent nod.
‘And so now Fanny is an important heiress.'

‘
She will inherit your mother's and my father's estates, to
be held in trust until her majority, provisionally, of course –'

‘
Provisionally?' James leapt upon the word so sharply
that Mary Ann almost flinched. 'What do you mean, pro
visionally? Fanny is to have everything. That was the bargain.'

‘
Indeed, she will – unless the next child is a boy.
Naturally a boy would take precedence. If we have a son, he
will inherit the estates, and Fanny will have a very hand
some dowry, enough to see that she marries as – '

‘No!' said James furiously, and he turned to face her and
backed off a step, like an animal at bay. 'That was not the
bargain! I do not consent!' They were trying to cheat him:
he had done his part, and now they were trying to cheat him
of the reward.

Mary Ann regarded her extraordinary husband with
puzzlement. 'Your consent was not required,' she said.
‘Your mother and my father may dispose of their wealth as they please, and you surely – '

‘They were to leave everything to our child!’

– and you surely must realize that my father, at least,
needs a male heir for his spinning mills. A daughter could
not follow him
there,
whatever your mother –'

‘
I'll have
you
realize one thing, madam,' James said
fiercely. 'I married you for the sake of producing an heir for
Morland Place, and that is what I have done. Fanny
shall
have everything. Do you think I will stand by and see her cheated? Do you think I would have anything to do with breeding a boy to steal what is rightfully hers? As to your
father, he may keep his promises, or go back on them; he
may leave everything to Fanny, or give it all to the next
beggar he meets on the street. But there will be no more children of this marriage, of that you may assure yourself.’

The ordinary sounds of the garden at dusk fed themselves back into the space where his voice had been: a
movement of leaves, a last sparrow chipping away at the
grey half-light, the dabbling of some water-bird on the
moat, and farther off the sounds of the house and yard, a dog rattling its chain, a cockerel, the clank of a bucket, a
man's voice calling.

For a long time they stood still, looking at each other.
She seemed farther from him than a star, yet he was aware
of every breath she took, almost of every heartbeat, as
though he were feeling with her nerve-endings. He had said
something that could not be unsaid, and now for the first
time he wondered what she was feeling, what she had ever felt, about being married to him. It would have been appro
priate if she had stretched out her hand and blasted him
with retributive lightning, like an enraged Juno, and in that
long moment he felt her powerful enough to do it. He
waited for oblivion, aware that he would have welcomed it, done nothing to evade it.

Then she turned and left him without a word, walking
lightly and gracefully, her thin slippers hardly disturbing the
gravel of the path. James, unpunished, watched her go.
Always in his life, less happened than he expected, or hoped
for: that was his tragedy. When she was out of sight, he
turned the other way, and went in through the barbican. The
night beacon had been lit in the window above the archway, and its yellow light made the dusk seem suddenly greyer.

 
Mary Ann was woken abruptly by the crash and rattle of someone knocking down the poker into the hearth. A soft human sound of distress, followed by muted noises of reparation told her that it was a housemaid making up the fire, something that was usually done silently without her knowledge before she woke.

She opened her eyes. Above her and around her were the red sarsenet tester and curtains of the enormous Butts bed.
They were old, and a little faded, and really ought to have
been replaced for her marriage to James. Someone had
failed in their duty there. She pondered for a moment on colours and materials. The heavy carving which covered the ancient oak of the frame demanded the splendid rather than the dainty; something brocaded with gold, perhaps? She knew from the light coming through the curtains that
it was still early, but she was wide awake. Yesterday her
father had gone back to Manchester: once the business of
wills and settlements had been concluded, he had begun to be anxious about his mills. She had clung to him, wanting foolishly to beg him to take her with him, back to Hobsbawn House where she belonged, where she had been mistress for
so long, where everyone loved and admired her. Pride
sustained her, and she swallowed her tears and waved him
goodbye with a watery smile. She was married to James, and
nothing but her death or his could change that: she had no choice but to stay here and make the best of it she could.

Morning brought new counsel. She looked at the faded curtains some other mistress of Morland Place had ordered, and thought, this is my home for the rest of my life. I must
make something of my situation, carve contentment out of
the materials to hand: that is the Christian way. It was a philosophy which owed as much to her father as to the nuns who had educated her, a restless energy which despised weakness and could not be content merely to endure. I will
make myself useful to Lady Morland, and take some of the
burdens from her shoulders; I will learn to he mistress of
this great estate, and then teach my daughter all I have
learnt. With these resolutions, she pushed back the
bedclothes and slipped out of bed between the curtains.

A shriek and a more prolonged clattering greeted her,
and she gained her feet to find herself facing a diminutive
housemaid whose clothing had evidently been designed for
someone better-nourished, and who had just dropped the
box in which she carried around her rags and brushes. Her
eyes were wide, and her hands were clasped where her
bosom would he in a few years' time.

‘
Oh, you startled me!' the child exclaimed, and then,
remembering herself, curtseyed and said, 'I beg your
pardon, m'lady. I'm very sorry, m'lady.'