The Misbegotten (30 page)

‘Perhaps you’ll join me to talk for a moment, when you’ve finished your reading?’ said Mrs Alleyn, as they turned to climb the stairs.

‘It would be my pleasure,’ Rachel replied.
And during that time I must somehow work out how to ask for my payment, or Mr Weekes will want to know why I have not.

‘I had hoped Jonathan would come down today, but . . .’ Mrs Alleyn trailed off, apologetically.

‘Men were ever stubborn, and wont to have things their own way.’ Rachel smiled, to imply no criticism, but Mrs Alleyn’s face went stiff.

‘How right you are, Mrs Weekes,’ she murmured.

Jonathan Alleyn didn’t rise as she entered the room – he hadn’t before, and this simple omission put her on edge. She had never known a gentleman not rise for a lady’s entrance; she didn’t know if his failure to do so made him less the gentleman, or her less the lady. Jonathan had opened one fold of the shutters, and the window just a fraction, so that the frigid morning air drifted in. He wore only dark blue breeches and a white linen shirt, the sleeves of it rolled up. The fire had died in the hearth and the room was heavy with cold, scented with wood and the damp grass of the crescent. Rachel squared her shoulders and went over to him. She could see gooseflesh on his bare arms, but his face had a faint sheen of sweat, where it was not covered by several days’ growth of whiskers. An empty wine bottle and a stained glass were on the floor beside him; the stale smell of his unwashed body hung about him.

‘Mr Alleyn . . .’ Rachel trailed off as he turned abruptly to look at her. He seemed to have trouble focusing his eyes. ‘Are you well? You look feverish . . . It’s so cold in here. Let me call for a servant to make up the fire—’

‘No, leave it. I am too hot . . . only this cold is keeping me alive, I think,’ he said, in a rough voice.

‘But, if you have a fever, we must call a doctor to—’

‘To bleed me? I have bled enough, Mrs Weekes. Please sit, and say no more on it. I am quite well.’ Shivering slightly, Rachel complied. Jonathan’s eyes followed her every move; they were the only lively thing in his gaunt face.

‘I brought a book from home this time. It’s the new poems by Keats . . . a wedding gift to me from my husband,’ she said. ‘And a selfless one, since I think he cares not one jot for poetry,’ she added, more softly.
Perhaps my husband would prefer Byron.

‘Why would he, Mrs Weekes?’

‘I beg your pardon, sir?’

‘Why would Richard Weekes care for poetry? He is an unlettered oaf, and a covetous fool, for all his pretty face. Or, at least, he was when I last knew him.’ Jonathan took a deep breath and sat up straighter in his chair. He propped his elbows on the arms of it, steepled his long fingers in front of his mouth. His nails were bitten and ragged.

‘Well, I . . . I suppose a person might change, and improve,’ Rachel murmured. Only a few weeks ago she would have leapt to Richard’s defence. Now it seemed loyalty enough to say as little as possible about him.

‘They might. But such improvements tend to be skin deep only, in my experience. Tell me, how came you to be married to him?’

‘How do you imagine, sir?’ said Rachel, with some asperity. ‘We met at the house of my former employers. I was governess in Sir Arthur Trevelyan’s household, at Hartford Hall. Mr Weekes and I met when he came to discuss wine with Sir Arthur . . .’ She thought back to that moment, the moment she’d seen love storm through Richard like an invading army. It gave her a strange pang almost like nostalgia, or perhaps regret.

‘And it seemed a good match to you? You who are clearly educated, and have been raised a gentlewoman . . .’

‘Aye, sir, it seemed a good match. I would scarcely have consented to wed if it had not.’

‘I’m curious, that’s all. I would understand more of the ways women think, if I could. More of the reasons why they act the way they do.’ He gave her a tiny, wintery smile.

‘Not all women act in the same way,’ Rachel pointed out, carefully.

‘No indeed, though everything they do has the one thing in common – that it is unfathomable to me.’

‘What about the situation is hard for you to understand, Mr Alleyn?’ Rachel felt tension clipping her words.

‘Well, you cannot love him. I wonder what, then, made him seem a good match, when he is . . . what he is, and you have all the semblance of a lady. Was it simply his handsome face?’

‘I’m not a child, Mr Alleyn, to be so confused by good looks. A good many years have passed since you were . . . out in society. Perhaps a good many things have changed since then. And he loves me . . .’

‘Does he? Truly?’ Jonathan leant forwards in his chair with sudden intensity.

‘Yes!’ She thought of Richard’s anger, of the way he sometimes spoke to her; his unwanted touch, and the way her body had begun to recoil from it. She hoped none of it showed in her face.

‘And do you love him?’

The question hung in the air between them, and Rachel felt a flush begin to spread up from her neck. The choice was between truth and loyalty, between integrity and propriety, and it was not one she knew how to make.

‘You cannot ask me such things,’ she said at last, quietly. Again came his fleeting smile, as cold as the crystals of frost on the window glass.

‘Your reticence is answer enough. And here I am torn – for I could not have admired you for loving such a man, yet nor can I admire you for marrying beneath you, when you did not love him . . .’ Humiliation made Rachel angry.

‘Why should it matter whether you admire me or not, Mr Alleyn?’ she said stiffly. ‘When we first met you told me that all women are whores, be it for coin, status or safety that we sell ourselves.’

‘Did I say as much?’ Jonathan leant back, his eyes sliding away uncomfortably. ‘I can’t remember it.’

‘But you stand by it, perhaps? Well, ask yourself this, sir, if it is true: what
choice
does a woman have but to settle herself somehow, for one of those three things?’

‘And which one made you settle, Mrs Weekes?’

‘It is none of your concern. Your mother pays me to come here and read to you, and that is what I shall do.’

‘Whether I will it or not?’

‘Do you wish me to leave?’

‘Far be it from me to thwart another of my mother’s
great
plans.’ He leant back with a scathing wave of his hand.

‘You are too kind, sir,’ said Rachel, stung, in spite of herself. Jonathan watched her steadily for a moment, through narrowed eyes. Then he blinked, and his eyes softened.

‘Forgive me,’ he said curtly.

In the uncomfortable silence that followed, the sound of children’s laughter drifted up through the window from the street below. Clearing her throat, Rachel began to read. As often happened, she soon got lost in the words, in the beauty and intensity of the images they conjured, and time passed rapidly, without her noticing. She felt a deep sense of calm, of being outside of herself, and of the world. Her heartbeat was slow and steady until Jonathan interrupted her, as she was halfway through ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci’.

‘Enough. Please. Read something else,’ he said hoarsely. Rachel returned to the cold gloomy room with a start, and to the thin, haunted figure sitting opposite her.

‘You do not like the poem?’

‘It speaks of things I have no wish to hear about. Enchantment, and betrayal . . .’

‘But I have not yet read to the end, you will see that—’

‘He is alone, is he not, and driven half mad by his love?’

‘Well . . . yes. In truth,’ Rachel admitted.

‘No more of it, then. ’Tis a lie, that misery longs for company. The suffering of others does nothing to ease my own.’

‘And what do you long for, sir?’ she asked. Jonathan stared at her for a moment, as if bewildered by the question.

‘I want what I cannot have. I want to unsee things I have seen, and undo things I have done . . .’

‘And surely you know that can never be done? So another way must be found.’

‘Another way?’

‘A way to be at peace with what is past, and to . . . turn your back on it.’

‘Really? Another way?’ Jonathan laughed then, but it was a bitter sound. ‘And if those things took the very heart and soul of you, and left only the brutish parts? What other way is there then?’

‘No one but God can take your soul,’ said Rachel.

‘Aye, madam – God, or the devil.’

‘You should not say such things. I’m certain—’

‘No, you are not certain. You are naive, and inexperienced. Go now, and leave me in peace. I made no promise to hear a sermon.’ He shut his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose with his fingers. With anger making her hot in spite of the chill, Rachel stood and walked smartly over to the door, where she paused.

‘I’m no child or servant, sir, to be commanded
stay
and
go
,’ she said, her voice tight with emotion. ‘Perhaps I know nothing of you, and what you have seen, but do not forget that the reverse is also true.’ She shut the door behind her with greater force than was needed.

Josephine Alleyn was in the garden. The sun had burned through the low cloud and mist and was slanting down, touching the dying plants with a lemon-coloured light, the ghost of summer’s warmth. The garden was as wide as the house, and twice as long; surrounded by high walls and laid out in the Italianate style, with pathways curving this way and that between dwarf box hedges and naked rose bowers. An ornamental pond was at the centre of it all, its fountain still and silent, a thin sheet of ice over the black water. Mrs Alleyn was sitting in the far corner, where the sunshine was strongest, and she cut such a lonely figure that Rachel felt a stab of pity for her. She was well wrapped in furs and woollen shawls, but she was not reading, or writing, or drawing; she was simply sitting, with her face turned to the sun and her eyes closed. Rachel cleared her throat quietly, so as not to alarm her.

‘Forgive me, Mrs Alleyn,’ she said. ‘I have finished with Mr Alleyn for today.’ Josephine Alleyn opened her eyes and blinked at the light. The sunshine was so bright that it smoothed the years from her face, and Rachel was struck again by her beauty, which in her youth must have been truly exceptional. For a long moment Mrs Alleyn did not speak, and Rachel waited uncomfortably, her toes going numb in her shoes.

‘Mrs Weekes. Thank you,’ she said at last, and her voice was thin and frail.

‘Are you quite well, Mrs Alleyn? Shall I call for somebody?’ said Rachel. The older lady waved her hand, and seemed to come back to herself.

‘No, no. I was only . . . lost in thought, for a moment. The older one gets, the more power memory has to enthral, I find. To enthral, and sometimes to overpower. Do sit with me a while, Mrs Weekes.’ She twitched her cloak to make room for Rachel to sit down beside her. The stone bench was bone-achingly cold. ‘How did you find him today?’

‘He was . . . calm. He seems to have a touch of fever, however. It would be prudent, perhaps, to watch him these next few days, in case it turns any worse.’

‘Yes.’ Mrs Alleyn blinked. ‘Yes, I will do so. I will be sure he is checked,’ she said.

‘Forgive me, Mrs Alleyn . . .’ Rachel began. ‘I can’t help but notice that your son seems to be . . . resentful of you, for some reason? When it seems to me that you have only ever supported him in his infirmity . . .’

‘Resentful?’ The older woman smiled sadly. ‘That’s a gentle euphemism, my dear.’ She turned her face to the sun again, and took a steady breath. ‘In truth, he barely tolerates me.’

‘But why should it be so? He can’t blame you for the war, or for his abandonment by Alice Beckwith.’ Mrs Alleyn winced at the mention of Alice’s name.

‘Of course he blames me, Mrs Weekes. Children always blame their mothers, sooner or later. Even if he can’t put into words what it is that angers him so . . . We raise them in love, you see. We raise them in love, and teach them to find the world a wonderful place. And when it is not, they feel betrayed. They feel as though we have betrayed them. So no matter how much we love them, how much we try to make all well for them, sooner or later they blame us, and are wroth with us.’

‘That is a sorrowful thought, Mrs Alleyn,’ Rachel murmured.

‘Indeed. We are a sorrowful little family these days, Jonathan and I.’ Mrs Alleyn turned to Rachel with a touch of urgency, as if needing to mitigate. ‘I tried to warn him, you see. When I found out about his . . . liaison with that girl, I tried to warn him that she was beneath him. That she was unworthy of his heart and not to be trusted with it. He wouldn’t listen of course. Young men never do.’

‘You had objections to the match?’

‘Objections? Alice was little better than a farmer’s child! She was my father’s ward – an act of kindness on his part, performed for an old acquaintance when the girl was born in . . . unfortunate circumstances. She was merry-begotten, you see – nobody’s daughter. She was of no name, of no connection, of no fortune. Jonathan was betrothed to another, from birth . . . Foolish boy; he threw the match over for a wench only kept from ruin by my father’s good heart.’ Mrs Alleyn shook her head angrily. ‘Oh, he wept over it, he was sorry to grieve us, but he would not give her up. Thank heavens the war took him off before he could do anything as foolish as marry her.’

Rachel absorbed these words, and was puzzled.
Thank heavens the war took him off? The war that near destroyed him?
There was a touch of steel about Josephine Alleyn, she saw then; a touch of the indomitable.

‘So, when Miss Beckwith abandoned him in his absence . . .’ she ventured.

‘He blamed me, of course; though I had no contact with the wretched girl. Still he blamed me, as the one who always told him that she was not worthy of him.’
But he loved her. He loved her enough not to care.
Rachel said nothing for a while, feeling a strange sense of outrage on Alice Beckwith’s behalf.
She was nobody’s daughter.
Those words gave Rachel a faint prickle of joy. They spoke of mysterious origins, of a foundling child. Yes, whispered the echo in her mind.
A child that was lost
.

‘May I speak frankly, Mrs Alleyn?’ she said.

‘You may, Mrs Weekes. Manners and propriety have little place in this house any more, as you have must already have gathered.’