The Sleeping Sword (26 page)

‘Gervase, that is nonsense—'

But he was gone.

All around me were faces I recognized, my everyday neighbours transformed by those mirrored walls, those rivers of candle-lit crystal, into glamorous creatures of silk and satin who, just the same, would chat very cosily to me. And although as a younger matron I did not expect to dance, since it was neither the duty nor particularly to the advantage of any gentleman to dance with me, there was a great deal to observe, and a decided pleasure in the company of Aunt Faith, who so long as the Barforth family feud endured could not visit me at Tarn Edge. And so for a pleasant hour or two we talked quietly together of Blanche, who was so serenely content, and of Venetia, who was perhaps not made for contentment, although she seemed better that night, dancing a wild polka with some London stranger, than I had seen her since her marriage.

‘She is recovering her glow,' Aunt Faith murmured, ‘and her madcap spirits. Just look at her now, with her skirts flying—what a pity we married ladies are not supposed to enjoy ourselves quite so much as that. I fear her mother-in-law is about to call her to order.'

And sure enough Aunt Caroline, appearing purposefully on the edge of the dance-floor, extracted her third son's wife from that frenzied polka with a single wave of her hand.

‘Venetia, you are
breathless
.'

‘Lord, yes! Aunt Caroline—and loving it.'

But Aunt Caroline, for whom a ballroom was no place for enjoyment but for the serious business of social advancement, shook her head.

‘No, dear. Sit down
there
, by Grace and Aunt Faith, and compose yourself. We have certain “politicals” here this evening who could be useful to Dominic and may wish to speak a word to his brother's wife. A
word
, dear, no more—and should they enquire as to the extent of your father's commercial reputation, all that need concern them is that it is
vast
.'

‘And my brother's part in it?'

‘Really, my dear!' Aunt Caroline said vaguely, drifting off, her nonchalance telling us very clearly that, so far as Dominic's political friends were concerned, Venetia had no brother, the whole of Mr. Nicholas Barforth's commercial empire being destined—they had been given to understand—for Gideon, who in true feudal fashion would not hesitate to place it at his brother's political disposal.

‘So Dominic is to be Prime Minister is he?' Venetia enquired pertly of Aunt Caroline's retreating back.

‘Hush, dear,' murmured Aunt Faith, ‘for the sad thing, you know, is that Aunt Caroline would do the job of Prime Minister far better herself.'

I did not expect to see Gervase in the ballroom again and it was not until my generous Uncle Blaize offered to dance with me that I glimpsed his reflection in the long mirrored wall, lounging beside a chair that contained Diana Flood. There was nothing in the sight to disturb me. I was very definite about that. She had been married a year ago to a military, rather older cousin, thus changing her status but not her name, and I had attended her wedding without any particular feeling of involvement. She had been a thin, excitable girl who three years ago had wanted to marry Gervase. Instead he had married me, Diana had married her Major Compton Flood and had increased neither in weight nor in composure, retaining the nervous but not unattractive restlessness I had often remarked in her thoroughbred uncle. There was no more to it than that, no reason at all why Gervase should not be sitting with her and her foxhunting friends—
his
friends until the demands of commerce and matrimony had made such friendships inappropriate. And in acknowledgement of the rightness and naturalness of it all, I smiled at her very civilly as I danced by, receiving in exchange a startled movement of her head, a trill of nervous laughter which told me I had been the subject of their conversation. They had been whispering together, intimately, unkindly, enjoying their own high-bred malice, their own wit; and I had been the subject of it. I stared for a moment aghast, recoiled, and then, taking a deep breath, drew myself together with an almost cruel resolve, my back very straight, my head high.

I had received my first lesson in the defence I was to practise so skilfully and for so long; the proud but painful art of pretending not to care.

I went down to supper with Uncle Blaize and Aunt Faith, keeping up a flow of reminiscences and observations to which they calmly and easily replied. I ate what it was proper for me to eat and in the right quantity, refusing to notice that my husband, in a corner of the same room, was entertaining another woman; refusing to wince at the consistent, high-pitched note of her laughter; refusing, absolutely, to wonder how much of that giggling was directed at me. And to make my performance complete, when her mirth became too persistent to ignore, I turned and smiled indulgently in her direction, letting it be clearly seen that what did not alarm me need trouble no one.

Pride? Very possibly. But there was bewilderment underneath it too, the numbing sensation of a blow not really felt because I could not quite believe in it. And perhaps my fresh awareness of physical unease, and ache at the small of my back, the return of nausea, was a relief to me.

A few hours before and I would simply have found Gervase, told him I was unwell and gone to bed. Now I could not. Nor could I get up and take my leave without loss of self-esteem. If I did so then he would think me jealous.
She
would think me jealous. There was nothing to be done but sit and chat and smile—nothing at all—and it was not until the ballroom crowd was growing thin and I had seen Sir Julian Flood take his niece away that I accepted Aunt Faith's advice and went to bed. And then, half-way up the stairs, it struck me most unpleasantly that I had perhaps erred in the opposite direction, exposing the jealousy I resolutely
would
not feel by lingering too long.

But as I entered one of Listonby's spacious, rose-pink bedrooms a fresh assault of nausea erased such considerations from my mind, and when it became necessary to ring for assistance and two worried maids had brought me a clean water jug and basin and installed me gingerly between clean sheets, I was too weak for anything but a few self-indulgent tears.

I drifted into a shallow sleep, my head filled with racing, half-coherent thoughts, my body still unreliable, and I was too feverish and confused on waking to find it strange that Gervase should not be there. And when I understood, a while later, that it was very strange indeed, I was too weary, too sick and too unaccustomed to sickness to feel any real alarm. I fell asleep again, beyond anxiety, waking this time to panic, for he had still not come to bed, would surely not come now, and what could I do about it? Was there, in fact, anything that should be done? Of course not.
Of course
not. He could quite simply have fallen asleep in the smoking room, a brandy glass at his elbow, as happened to some gentleman or other at every party. And, failing that, there would certainly be a card game in progress somewhere in this house tonight and no reason why Gervase should not be involved in it. He played cards. He drank brandy. He also rode fast and ill-tempered horses over dark fields, high hedges, to settle some stupid wager. And as a pang of terror twisted my stomach—for he could be lying dead somewhere in a ditch, there was no doubt about it—I swung myself out of bed and was sick again, as neatly as I could contrive, in the basin.

I took the quilt from the bed and spent what little remained of the night in an armchair by the window, shivering and sweating in turn, yet not trusting myself to lie down or close my eyes; crushed, in that crowded house, by an appalling isolation, my world shrunk to the dimensions of the jug and basin, regulated by the heaving of my tormented belly. And it was when I was empty, my energy and my will all spent, that I thought of him with Diana Flood and burst into a storm of hot and exceedingly foolish tears.

I had seen her hands on him, plucking at his sleeve as they sat in the supper room. I had seen her fingers touching his as he gave her her glass. I had seen her thin figure swaying closer to him than was proper and then withdrawing, laughing, swaying forward again. I had seen hundreds of women—hundreds of them—go through the same flirtatious performance with hundreds of men. And what did it signify? Who remembered it, even, in the morning? But supposing, when her uncle came to fetch her, she had called out to Gervase: ‘Why don't you ride home with us? What a lark!', would he have refused? Could he, in fact, have answered: ‘Let's ride to Galton on the way and drink champagne in the cloister.' Of course he could, for there had been champagne parties often enough in the cloister in the days when I had been warned against him, and she was no virgin now but a married woman who went about without her husband.

Yes, quite definitely they could be together, for he had been angry enough to hurt me, had started the whole shabby nonsense on purpose to hurt me, and it would be like him to carry it on too far. And once again that persistent wave of nausea made it impossible for me to decide in any detail what ought to be done, what
could
be done.

I was resolute enough by breakfast-time and, determined not to be the first downstairs, entered the crowded dining-room with a smile, although the smell of so much fried food revolted me, and there was still that gnawing ache at the bottom of my back. I had toast and coffee, spoke a few words to strangers—Blanche and Aunt Faith being still in bed, Venetia, it seemed, in the billiard room, where no lady had any business to be, the Ghards and other kindred spirits out long ago with the hunt. Could Gervase be with them? And the realization that I could not possibly enquire jolted my tired brain a fraction away from reality to a confused, nightmare sensation of frantic hurry, of constantly opening wrong doors.

‘My dear,' a London lady told me, ‘you are looking very pale.'

‘Yes, I think I need a breath of air.'

And it was then that I found him, coming across the grass with half a dozen others, young bloods still in their evening clothes, moving with the careful step of men who, emerging from their drunken oblivion, are finding the world a very loud and very garish place.

‘Good morning, Gervase.'

‘Good morning, Grace.' And he would have walked on had I not put out a hand as imperious as Aunt Caroline's and detained him, seeing no reason to wait a moment longer for an explanation.

‘Later, Grace—'

‘Now.'

‘Grace—I'm not up to it.'

But seeing the set of my jaw he sighed, shrugged, and turning to his waiting friends—all strangers to me—he made a grimace that said ‘Good God!—women—'

I was too hurt to speak. My throat seemed stiff and all my terrible anxiety—my dread of finding him with his neck broken like his uncle Perry Clevedon—seemed converted, now that he was safe, into a fierce anger. And striding forward around the corner of the house, my whole body trembling, so hurt—so hurt—that I had to find release, I spun round intending to be glacial, dignified, to insult him certainly, but with propriety, and hit him instead, hard, across his cheek.

Perhaps I expected him to hit me back. Perhaps I wanted him to hit me, was ready for it, needed his savagery to match and encourage my own, but my blow seemed to have taken the malice out of him, stunning him so that he could do nothing for a long moment but stand and stare.

‘Christ!' he said at last, ‘Oh, Christ!', and even with my vision blurred by outrage, I could see he had not the least idea how to cope with me. ‘Grace, for God's sake! Whatever you may have been thinking, it wasn't all that bad, you know—'

But nothing he could have said just then, no apology, no threat, would have made any difference, since I could not bear to listen to it. Nor could I bear to look at him or stand beside him, and having fretted over his absence for so many tortured hours, all I now desired was for him to go away again. And since he seemed unwilling to move, I set off myself, still trembling, going anywhere so long as it was far away.

‘Grace—'

‘Just leave me alone.'

‘Good God—!'

‘Leave me alone! Don't follow me. Just leave me.'

‘All right,' he shouted after me. ‘All right. If that's what you want—I will.'

But one does not carry one's personal conflicts into the homes even of one's closest relations and when we met at luncheon I was outwardly very calm. Nor did I feel able to cancel that long-arranged visit to Galton Abbey, my relationship with my mother-in-law being too delicate to risk a misunderstanding, and I set off as arranged in the early autumn afternoon, the small portion of roast chicken and
crème caramel
I had managed to swallow pressing like a dead weight against my stomach.

I made the journey in one of the Listonby victorias, Gervase on horseback very far ahead. Although we had only five miles to go, they were all uphill and then, quite sickeningly, down again, narrow lanes and jolting, rutted tracks that jarred my back as they descended, through a sharp, spiteful little wind, the slope that let to Galton. And although I knew, because everyone had told me so, that it was a glorious day, a vivid blue sky streaked with hurrying cloud above the deep reds and golds of October, I was too intent on ignoring the reminder of that
crème caramel
, that infuriating ache in my back, and did not notice.

‘What a glorious day!' my mother-in-law called out, lifting her pointed face with keen enjoyment into the spicy, smoky air. And because there were other horses standing beside Gervase's bay on the drive, I kept the smile on my lips as I walked through the hall and into the untidy, chintzy parlour where Diana Flood, pushing a cat from her knee, got up and held out to me a well-bred, ill-manicured hand.

Her uncle, Sir Julian, was with her, and another man, somewhat younger but very much like him, thin and dark and nervous like all the Floods.

‘Mrs. Barforth, you will remember my husband?'