Grahame, Lucia (41 page)

"Perhaps," said my husband. "But you talk as if
there is no difference between making a cult of grief and simply allowing
oneself to weep. What could possibly be more natural and healing than
tears?"

"What have tears ever healed?" I asked bitterly.

"I'm sure I don't know," said my husband, who did not
seem disposed to argue the point any further. "Is your face dry now? Let
me see."

I lifted my damp eyes reluctantly to his. It was too dim in the
carriage to see very much at all.

"Why don't you tell me something about your daughter,"
he whispered. "Just a little. Only as much as you feel you can."

For a moment I was at a loss for words. No one had ever acknowledged
her reality, that there might have been something—some
one
—to talk about.
Everyone, even my darling Frederick, had behaved as if the only tragedy was
that she had never existed. I had never demurred. But she
had
existed;
that
was my tragedy—or my weakness—to have entertained, as I had whispered
foolish, loving bagatelles to my distended belly, the absurd fancy that I could
feel the force of her tiny personality's response to me. To have watched her
fight for her life, and die, and then to have had to seal my lips and pretend
that she had never been, because
that
eased the disappointment for— I
cut off the thought.

"What did you call her?" asked my husband gently.

How could he have suspected my folly—the silly nicknames I had
given her when I didn't even know her sex?

I almost smiled. I opened my mouth to answer him, but before I
could say more than a few halting words, I started to sob. Once I had started,
I couldn't stop. I no longer even cared about stopping. I buried my face in my
hands and wept as heedlessly as Niobe.

My husband, beside me, put a tentative hand upon my shoulders.
Rather than recoiling from the comfort he offered, I turned to him. He drew me
into his arms and wholly absorbed that flood of tears. Between my sobs, I told
him things I had never told anyone.

I pulled myself upright in a daze and tried hastily to arrange my
tumbled hair and rumpled clothing when the carriage came to a halt in Grosvenor
Square. But then my husband called out to the coachman and asked him to go on,
to drive us around Hyde Park.

"If you don't mind, it will give you a little more time to
compose yourself," he said to me.

Mind! He must have understood completely how I would have detested
having to exhibit my reddened eyes to the butler and Marie.

I leaned back into the soft upholstery with a sigh. I was still
feeling my sadness more profoundly than I had ever permitted myself to feel it,
but now it seemed to expand, like a shimmering, trembling bubble, to encompass
not only my lost little daughter, but my poor, weak Frederick and my fierce,
devoted grandmother. And, not least of all, the man sitting silently beside me,
whose love I had betrayed and forfeited.

Yet now, rather than being overwhelmed by sorrow and remorse, I
had a curiously buoyant sense of relief. It did not mitigate my regrets but
blended with them, both softening them and deepening them.

"I thought
you
had the stiffest upper lip in
England," I remarked after a while. "Where did you learn about
tears?"

"Oh, I'm not half so unflappable as I like to appear,"
he replied. "My father died when I was still a boy—it was the summer I
turned fourteen. He'd been planning to take me on the Grand Tour of Europe that
summer, but by then he was too ill. I adored him."

This was something I had never known and had never even suspected.

"I was completely devastated when he died. I had really not
thought it was possible, and I had no idea what to do. When I was among other
people, I was so afraid I might break out in tears that I simply refused to
speak to anyone at all. That lasted for days. It drove my mother wild. But I knew
exactly what she would have said otherwise. 'Show your breeding, Anthony. Have
some backbone, for heaven's sake! You don't see
me
sniveling like a
girl.'" He mimicked her to perfection. "Of course, whenever I was
safely alone, I cried like a baby."

The thought of such private, extravagant emotionality lying under
his cool self-possession gave me a dusky thrill. That he would admit to it so
freely surprised me. Of course, I reminded myself, he had been much younger
then, only a boy.

"What was your father like?" I asked.

"Oh, rather retiring and scholarly. Hardly dashing or heroic.
And certainly not as... demonstrative as one might have liked. But he was kind,
very kind, and very gentle. Too much so, I think, for his own good. But I loved
him for it."

Outside my bedroom door, we hesitated for art awkward, silent
moment. I longed to reach up and take his face between my hands, to bring my
lips to his. But I was too overwhelmed by a peculiar shyness and a deep, incomprehensible
and debilitating tenderness. It was so disarming that I wanted to hide.
Scarcely knowing what I was doing, I dropped my fingers to the door handle.

On the following day, I was despatched to Charingworth, where my
husband joined me several days later, but only to attend to some business
there.

I saw very little of him, and when we did encounter each other, we
behaved with extreme politeness. By unspoken, mutual consent, we had once again
laid down our weapons. But the few meals we took together during this state of fragile
peace were almost silent; it seemed that, having ended our sparring, we were
left with nothing to say.

My husband retreated behind his customary air of remoteness, and I
reminded myself of his remark about being unable, ever, to forgive me. It was
better, really, that he was not tempted to sweeten his revenge by exploiting
the dangerous softness he had discovered in me.

But the tender weather of late June did not assuage my vague
longings. It was easier to keep them at bay during the blue, sweet days; but
the evenings, all muted violet shot with glowing red and gold, and cruel with
seductive and unfulfilled promises, undid me.

Everything about my life had become ambivalent. My husband
lingered at Charingworth longer than one would have thought necessary, but
barely spoke to me. What his intentions might be I could not guess. He had
hinted at releasing me without extracting his full due—yet now he made no move
either to set me free or to collect the final payments.

Meanwhile the moon fattened. On the night it came to fullness, my
husband had dined elsewhere. I had not seen him since breakfast, yet I had
rather deftly managed to ascertain from Mrs. Phillips that he had not returned
to London. Now, as I lay in bed, I heard my husband's light tread upon the
stairway. Soon it faded down the gallery toward the wing where he slept. I
tried to imagine how he had occupied himself that day and with whom he might
have dined. But I could not. I knew virtually nothing about him; for nearly the
entire duration of our brief marriage, I had absented myself as much as
possible from his company. I had shared neither his troubles and worries, if he
had any, nor his pleasures. I had shunned his pastimes and allowed anything he
might have revealed about himself to pass over me like smoke.

The moonlight spilling through my window illuminated everything
except the small mysteries which occupied my restless mind. It coaxed me from
my bed. The night was mild; rather than merely standing at the window, I put on
my dressing gown and stepped out into the empty gallery. The great house was
dim and still; there was no danger, at this hour, of running into my husband or
anyone else.

Barefoot, I stole down the angled wooden staircase, with its
quaint turned banisters and elaborate newel posts, each one surmounted by a
fabulous mythical beast. I crossed the chilly tiles of the great hall, passed
through a dark passage, and entered the music room, which lay on the same side
of the house as my own bedroom.

The polished piano gleamed in the moonlight. I thought of the
expensive lessons my grandmother had insisted upon, and of how rarely I had
ever opened the piano at Charingworth. I ran my hand over the cover longingly,
and then passed to the French windows. I unlatched them and stepped outside.

The grass was cool and moist underfoot as I wandered over the long
terraced lawns and then down to the edge of the river, where the light
shimmered like silver foil on the water. A few birds, deluded by the brilliance
of the sky into believing it was daylight, chirped and twittered in the
tree-tops.

I turned my face to the moon. For how many hundreds of thousands
of years had she stared down upon her sleepless subjects with that same cool,
archaic smile? Now, for all but a few of those whose paths had brought them
under her detached, beneficent gaze, whatever sorrows, labors, or joys kept
sleep at bay had long ago waxed and waned and vanished forever, beyond even the
reach of memory. The Greeks had made a minor deity of her. To me she remained a
goddess, silent, remote, and constant. A goddess for everyone who walked in the
shadows while quieter souls lay cushioned in the slumber of the righteous and
the just. I thought of my husband dreaming quietly in his own dark bedroom.

But this only exacerbated my loneliness, and the beauty of the
night, which seemed made for magic, impressed upon me only more heavily the
weight of my own empty existence. I sent a brief prayer skyward. I asked my
goddess only to lighten my heart for a few hours. But now her blank, closed
smile no longer appeared benign, and feeling melancholy indeed, I turned back
toward the house.

As I approached the last turn of the stairway, I heard a door
close and the sound of boots striding along the gallery. I looked up. There was
my husband, dressed in riding clothes, and as startled at seeing me, it seemed,
as I was to see him.

"Where have
you
been?" he demanded.

"I went out to look at the moonlight on the river," I
stammered. "Were you looking for me?"

"Why would I do that? It never occurred to me that you were
not asleep in your bed until I saw you drifting up the stairway like a
ghost."

"I could not sleep."

"How unfortunate. Neither can I," he said coldly, and
started to pass me on the stairway.

"Where are you going?" I asked.

The words were scarcely out of my mouth before I realized my faux
pas. Of course he would be going to a woman.

It made me ache. He had made love to me so seldom and, I was
pretty certain now, intended never to again. I was certain, too, that he must
still be conducting his careless infidelities in London. He had a real taste
for such pleasures, and no reason to give them up. I tried not to think of this
too much. But I had not divined, until this very minute, that he could also
betray me so close to home.

He had already reached the second landing; now he paused and
looked back at me.

"I beg your pardon," I said, trying to muster some
dignity. "I did not mean to pry."

But he was gazing at me thoughtfully and appeared more conflicted
than annoyed.

"Well, if you can't sleep, put on your riding clothes and
come out with me," he said, somewhat ungraciously, and then added,
"if you like."

My heart leapt.

"I'll just be a minute," I said. "Shall I meet you
in the stable?"

"As you wish," he replied indifferently, as if he
already regretted the invitation. He hurried on down the stairway.

At Charingworth I never rode sidesaddle. It was scandalous, of
course, to ride like a man, but my husband did not object at all and had
cheerfully paid for my outre riding habits. Now I dressed quickly, not
bothering with stays, not taking even the time to pin up my hair—I pulled it
back and tied it with a red velvet ribbon.

But once I was dressed, I lingered, despite my promise to be
quick, to inspect my mirrored image carefully and to make the countless tiny
adjustments by which I hoped to render my appearance more fetching.

When I reached the stable, I found Andromeda already saddled for
me.

We trotted out of the stableyard together and down the long
avenue. The strange cool light and the stark black shadows had altered the
pleasant landscape from its daytime aspect and made it as newly glamorous as
the first snowfall. Every cluster of trees was touched with wonder and mystery.
I felt altered as well, dazzled and expectant. To have found druids gathering
beneath the oak trees could not have amazed me more than had my husband's invitation
to ride with him.

"Can you keep up with me?" he asked when we reached the
high road.

"I'll try," I said.

He brought Perseus to a gallop; Andromeda needed no urging to
follow. The sound of the hooves, the rush of the night air over my cheeks, the
blur of hedgerows and meadows on either side were as intoxicating as the
moonlight. I drank the fragrant breeze. At the crossroads, we turned onto the
road that ran along the river. We raced for miles over the still, silent
countryside. Andromeda never faltered; she might have been flying. Each
hoofbeat seemed to strike a burden from my heart; useless regrets, petty
concerns, and grudges fell away. I wondered how long I might outrun them; would
it be days or hours or only minutes before they found me again?