To Have and to Hold (19 page)

On Sebastian's right, Kitty took time off from massaging his calf with her stockinged foot to ask, "How long were you locked up altogether, Mrs. Wade?"

She lifted her head. "Ten years."

"Good Lord! Wasn't it awful?"

"Yes."

Her low, fervent agreement stopped Kitty, but only for a second. "What was it like? Tell us everything."

She stared back as if the question made no sense.

"I . . ." She put her fork down. "What do you— particularly want to know?"

"Well!" Kitty shrugged her shoulders animatedly. "What was the food like?" she asked, laughing, as if a lighthearted game were beginning. "Did you sit in a dining hall with the other prisoners?"

Rachel sagged slowly against the back of her chair. "No. We took our meals in our cells."

"Did you have a roommate? A cellmate, I suppose it's called."

"No."

"No? You had to eat all by yourself?"

She nodded slowly.

"What sort of food did you get?" asked Bingham.

Every question was like a knife prick to her skin. Sebastian wondered if they could tell. Not the extent of it, he didn't think. They knew they were wounding her, but they couldn't know how much. But she was a novice and they were experts; it wouldn't be long before they found her out.

"The food ... was shoved through a trapdoor in the wall. It was always the same."

"What was it?"

"Bread and stirabout. Potatoes—"

"Stirabout?"

"A kind of gruel. Meat sometimes. Soup. And cocoa. Six things."

Sebastian watched them all look down at their plates, smiling self-consciously, mentally contrasting the delicacy and variety of Judelet's repast with Mrs. Wade's stirabout and potatoes.

"Well," Kitty decided, "at least it was filling. At least you had enough.''

Rachel stared at her until Kitty had to look away. Sebastian pushed away a memory of how she'd looked at the magistrates' hearing. Half starved. A week ago, when he'd taken her clothes off, he could see her ribs.

Sully put his hand on her shoulder; she controlled a start and began to turn a spoon over and over on the tablecloth. "What was your cell like? Hmm? How big?"

It was starting. Sebastian signaled the footman for more wine, and when his glass was full he drank half of it down without pausing.

"It was . . . eight feet by five feet. A seven-foot ceiling of stone. An iron door. Corrugated iron walls."

"No window?"

"A window. High in the wall. Thick glass. It looked out onto the interior of the prison."

"Was it cold?"

"Yes."

"I once had a groom who spent nine months in Millbank," Bingham put in. "Said the bed was a wooden board. Said you woke up feeling as if you'd been flogged in the night with planks."

They stared at Rachel, Flohr openly, the rest in secret glances; they were avid now, their curiosity whetted.

"What did you wear?" Kitty wanted to know.

She was growing smaller before their eyes. If they kept at her long enough, would she disappear?

"A dress. Brown, made of serge. A white cap."

"I've heard they pay the prisoners to work."

"At Dartmoor. Not at Exeter."

"What did you do?"

"I worked in the prison laundry at first. Then the library. The tailor's shop."

"What did you do all day at Exeter?" Kitty again.

It took a moment before she was able to say, "I picked oakum in my cell.''

Oakum. Filthy, tar-covered rope, used for caulking. Sebastian looked at her clean, short-nailed fingers, remembered her calloused palms.

"How do you mean? What's 'picking,' exactly?"

She took a deep breath. "The ration was three pounds a day. Raw rope, thrown in through the trapdoor. We had to pick it—separate all the strands until it was a pile of soft flax. In the evening they weighed it, to make certain we'd finished our quota."

"How very . . . tedious. There's no real purpose to it, is there, no reason for it. Wasn't it tedious?"

Rachel lifted one eyebrow in a way that finally made Kitty flush. "Yes," she agreed. "You could say it was tedious."

The, muted show of spirit caused Kitty to narrow her eyes, then smile. "How interesting. Now tell us about discipline, Mrs. Wade," she said in a soft, silky tone. "What did they do to you when you were a bad prisoner?"

Sully leaned in closer. She must be able to feel his breath on her cheek. But she didn't move, trapped between him and Bingham. Kitty's smile turned crafty. Flohr licked his thick lips. Sebastian had a sudden, rabid desire to get drunk.

Her pale face slowly suffused with blood. "One was sent to the refractory cell." They waited, poised like cats over something still twitching, still trying to get away. "I must see to—"

"Were you sent there? What had you done?"

In spite of Sully's arm, she managed to push her chair back and stand up. "I must go and help—excuse me, I'm needed downstairs now. Pardon me. I'll—" She looked at Sebastian, but only for a second. No help from that quarter, she knew by now. "I'll come back," she said hopelessly, and fled.

But she didn't come back. He had to send for her, after they'd reassembled in the drawing room. He didn't wait for Sully or one of the others to ask him to do it; he did it on his own, deliberately, coldbloodedly, because baiting Rachel was to be the evening's entertainment. Everyone knew it. The fact that he'd lost the stomach for it himself didn't signify; on the contrary, it pointed to a new and dangerous weakness in himself he didn't like and was determined to snuff out. Sully and the rest could be his proxies while he regrouped, reminded himself of who he was and of what his purpose in life had always been—the pursuit of selfish pleasure.

Sully called for cards. The sharp-faced maid named Violet brought them, and stayed by the door afterward until Sebastian noticed her and told her to go.

"A little game?" Sully proposed with cunning in his eyes. He began to go through the two decks, culling out the crown cards and laying the others aside. "It's called Truth. Know it?"

No one did. Kitty, on the floor, inched closer to him until she was sitting at his feet. She laid her hand over the instep of his shoe and asked, "How do you play?" Her long hair gleamed blue-black in the lamplight; she pulled it over one shoulder and stroked it lovingly over her bosom with her open hand.

"Nothing to it. I'm the dealer. Since we're six, we'll have two cards apiece. Ladies are queens, gents are knaves and kings. Mrs. Wilson, you'll be the black queen, spade and club."

"I like that," Kitty cooed, squeezing his foot.

"Mrs. Wade, you're the red queen, if you please. Heart and diamond."

Rachel nodded. She sat straight and stiff in a ladder-back chair she'd pulled as far from the group as she could and still pretend she was part of it.

"Bertie, you be king and knave of diamonds; Tony, you're king, knave of hearts. Sebastian, king, knave of clubs.
Et pour moi,
king and knave of spades. Do we all know who we are?"

"Yes, yes. What's the object?" Bingham demanded. His dinner had made him sleepy; he lay backward on the chaise longue, supine, with his knees cocked over the top.

"It's quite simple. What can I use for a table? This." He found an old issue of
The Field
in a basket by the sofa and put it on his lap. "TWo stacks of cards, notice, twelve each. I pick one from the left—king of hearts. That's you, Tony."

"Right-ho."

"And one from the right. Ah, the black queen."

"Me," smiled Kitty. "Now what?"

"Now the king gets to ask the queen a question, any question, to which she's bound to respond with the truth and nothing but. Hence the name."

"Any question?" Bingham asked, turning on his side.

"I have said so."

"Gor blimey."

""Your slang is becoming tiresome, Tony," Kitty complained. "Amusing for the first year or two, you know, but not anymore."

"Oh, do you think so?" Bingham's vapid face formed a sneer. "Answer this, then. Who was the first man you cuckolded Wilson with?"

She didn't even blush. "George Thomason-Cawles," she answered readily. "We met him in Athens on our honeymoon.''

Everyone laughed, even Flohr. Sully shuffled all the cards again and drew two more from each pile. "Queen of clubs may ask queen of diamonds anything she likes."

Kitty took her hand off his knee and sat up straight. "Oh, lovely. Mrs. Wade, I want to know what a refractory cell is and what you did to be sent there."

"That's two questions," Bingham pointed out.

Sully said, "The dealer, whose word is law, will allow it."

Sebastian had been playing a one-fingered melody on the piano. He stopped suddenly, and the room fell quiet.

Rachel sent him one last glance, but this time it was more of an acknowledgment of his complicity than a plea for help. She was drowning, but the look said she knew for certain that there would be no lifeline flung to her from him.

She directed the answer to her knees. "The refractory cell is a room. It has no window. No furniture, no bed. No light—the walls are painted black. Two doors, to make sure the silence is ... complete. It's a dungeon."

He couldn't bear it. He looked down to see his hand clenched around the stem of his empty brandy goblet so tightly, his fingers ached when he released it. He got up and went to the drinks table for a refill.

"Second part of the question," Sully reminded her. ' 'Why were you sent there?"

"The first time, for looking about in chapel."

"Looking about?"

"It's forbidden in prison to look at anyone."

"My God. How long did you have to stay?"

"Ah, ah," Sully corrected Kitty. "That's too many; you'll have to wait for another turn."

He shuffled the cards again. "Knave of spades— that's I—demands the truth from king of clubs. You, D'Aubrey. Hmm." He scratched his head, pretending to ponder. Kitty giggled, pulled on his trouser cuff. He bent down and she whispered something in his ear. He smiled when he straightened. "What I would like to know, Sebastian, is whether or not you've bedded Mrs. Wade yet."

He said, "Yes, of course," as quickly and casually as possible. It worked: except for the inevitable laughter, they let the subject drop, sensing no tension, no undercurrent. Like sharks, they smelled no blood and swam on.

Rachel, of course, said nothing; he didn't look at her, but from the corner of his eye he saw that she remained motionless, expressionless, not moving a muscle.

The questions and answers continued. Sex was usually the topic, who had slept with whom, who wished he was sleeping with whom, what sleeping with so-and-so had been like. The sameness of it began to numb; nothing sounded coarse or shocking anymore, only dull. The unimaginati veness of his friends' preoccupations ought not to have surprised him, but it did. Had they always been this shallow and insipid? This vicious? What made him think he was any different from them?

Rachel was the target of the questions too often for Sully not to be engineering it on purpose, but no one called him for it. Indeed, the conspiracy against her became more obvious as the evening wore on, until no one even snickered when every second or third question was directed to her. Whether they could admit it consciously or not, she was the only interesting one among them, and now they wanted to know all about her.

Sebastian drank steadily and heavily, but he couldn't get drunk. Kitty came and sat on his lap, pushed her hand inside his waistcoat, squirmed on his thighs. When his turn came to ask a question, he asked her how old she was. It cooled her ardor for a while. Her perfume was lilac, powdery and more than cloying; suffocating. Her long hair repelled him. He thought of Rachel's shorter hair, the way the silver in it shone uke speckled jewels in candlelight. He remembered the precise shape of her skull when he'd molded it in his hands.

Horror after horror she enumerated for his jaded friends, forced admissions of constant hunger, petrifying monotony, despair. Bingham asked her about the "dry bath," a degrading, dehumanizing strip search she'd endured once every month for ten years. So: in prison they'd even robbed her of the freedom of her own body. So had her husband. So had he.

How long would she let it go on? For as long as he'd known her, she'd never surrendered to anything, not really, no matter how callously he'd treated her. But this was different. This was worse. He was letting it happen, watching it grow more beastly by the minute, because he wasn't testing her anymore. He was testing himself.

Sully was the smartest, and the most dangerous. While the others kept asking Rachel their lewd questions about prison—had a guard ever touched her? did the women prisoners ever seek each other out for amorous comfort?—Sully asked her about her husband. She tried to be circumspect, but eventually they caught on. Randolph Wade, they began to realize, had been a pervert. Bingham vaguely remembered the story in the newspapers; Kitty went on blind instinct, uncannily accurate in her guesses; Flohr followed it all with his dark, ophthalmic eyes, obscenely fascinated.