Original Sin (7 page)

Her sitting room stretched the whole length of the house. Everything in it was attractive; the elegant proportions of the original marble fireplace, the oil of an eighteenth-century Peverell with his wife and children above the mantelshelf, the small Queen Anne bureau, the mahogany bookcases on each
side of the fire, topped with a pediment and with two fine Parian heads of a veiled bride, the Regency dining table and six chairs, the subtle colours of the rugs glowing against the gold of the polished floor. How simple, now, to establish an intimacy which would open to him this gentle feminine comfort so different from his own bleak and underfurnished rooms below. Sometimes, if she telephoned with an invitation to dinner, he would invent a prior engagement and take himself out to a local pub, filling the long hours in the smoke and clatter, anxious not to return too early since his front door in Innocent Lane lay directly under her kitchen windows.

This evening he felt that she might welcome his company but was unwilling to ask for it. He wasn’t sorry. The cremation had been depressing enough without having to discuss its banalities; he had had enough of death for one day. When the taxi drew up in Innocent Walk and she said an almost hurried goodbye and unlocked her front door without once looking back, he felt a sense of relief. But two hours later, after he had finished his soup and the scrambled eggs and smoked salmon which was his favourite evening meal and which he prepared, as always, with care, keeping the gas low, drawing the mixture lovingly from the sides of the pan, adding a final spoonful of cream, he pictured her eating her solitary supper and regretted his selfishness. This wasn’t a good night for her to be alone. He telephoned and said: “I’m wondering, Frances, whether you would care for a game of chess.”

He could tell from the joyous rise in her voice that the suggestion had come as a relief. “Yes, I would, Gabriel. Do please come up. Yes, I’d love a game.”

Her dining table was still set when he arrived. She always ate with some formality even when alone, but he could see that the meal had been as simple as his own. The cheese board and
the fruit bowl were on the table and she had obviously had soup but nothing else. He could see, too, that she had been crying.

She said, smiling, trying to make her voice cheerful: “I’m so glad you’ve come up. It gives me an excuse to open a bottle of wine. It’s odd how much one dislikes drinking alone. I suppose it’s all those early warnings about solitary drinking being the beginning of the slide into alcoholism.”

She fetched a bottle of Château Margaux and he came forward to open it. They didn’t speak again until they were settled, glasses in hand, before the fire, when, looking into the flames, she said: “He should have been there. Gerard should have been there.”

“He doesn’t like funerals.”

“Oh Gabriel, who does? And it was awful, wasn’t it? Daddy’s cremation was bad enough but this was worse. That pathetic clergyman who did his best but who didn’t know her and didn’t know any of us, trying to sound sincere, praying to the God she didn’t believe in, talking about eternal life when she didn’t even have a life worth living here on earth.”

He said gently: “We can’t know that. We can’t be the judge of another’s happiness or unhappiness.”

“She wanted to die. Isn’t that evidence enough? At least Gerard came to Daddy’s funeral. He more or less had to, though, didn’t he? The crown prince saying farewell to the old king. It wouldn’t have looked good if he’d stayed away. After all, there were important people there, writers, publishers, the press, people he wanted to impress. There was no one important at today’s cremation, so he didn’t have to bother. But he ought to have come. After all, he killed her.”

Dauntsey said more firmly: “Frances, you mustn’t say that. There’s absolutely no evidence that anything Gerard did or said caused Sonia’s death. You know what she wrote in the suicide
note. If she had planned to kill herself because Gerard had sacked her I think she would have said so. The note was explicit. You must never say that outside this room. This kind of rumour can be deeply damaging. Promise me—it is important.”

“All right, I promise. I haven’t said it to anyone except you, but I’m not the only one at Innocent House who’s thinking it, and some are saying it. Kneeling there, in that awful chapel I was trying to pray, for Daddy, for her, for all of us. But it was all so meaningless, so futile. All I could think about was Gerard, Gerard who ought to have been sitting there in the front row with us, Gerard who was my lover, Gerard who isn’t my lover anymore. It’s so humiliating. I know now, of course, what it was all about. Gerard thought, ‘Poor Frances, twenty-nine and still a virgin. I must do something about that. Give her the experience of her life, show her what she’s missing.’ His good deed for the day. His good deed for three months, rather. I suppose I lasted longer than most. And the ending was so sordid, so messy. Isn’t it always? Gerard is very good at beginning a love affair, but he doesn’t know how to end it, not with any dignity. But then, nor do I. And I was deluded enough to think that I was different from his other women, that this time he was serious, in love, wanting commitment, marriage. I thought we would run Peverell Press together, live in Innocent House, bring up our children here, even change the name of the firm. I thought that would please him. Peverell and Etienne. Etienne and Peverell. I used to practise the alternatives, trying to decide which sounded better. I thought he wanted what I wanted—marriage, children, a proper home, a shared life. Is that so unreasonable? Oh God, Gabriel, I feel so stupid, so ashamed.”

She had never before spoken so openly to him, never shown the depth of her anguish. It was almost as if she had been silently rehearsing the words, waiting for this moment of relief
when, at last, she was with someone she could trust and in whom she could confide. But coming from Frances, who was always so sensitive, reticent and proud, this uncontrolled pouring forth of bitterness and self-disgust appalled him. Perhaps it was the funeral, the memory of that earlier cremation, which had released the pent-up hatred and humiliation. He wasn’t sure that he could cope with it but knew that he must try. This fluency of pain demanded more than the soft pabulum of comfort: “he isn’t worth it, forget him, the pain will pass with time.” But that last was true, the pain did pass with time, whether it was the pain of betrayal or the pain of bereavement. Who knew that better than he? He thought: the tragedy of loss is not that we grieve, but that we cease to grieve, and then perhaps the dead are dead at last.

He said gently: “The things you want—children, marriage, home, sex—are reasonable desires, some would say very proper desires. Children are our only hope of immortality. They aren’t things to be ashamed of. It is your misfortune not your shame that Etienne’s desires and yours didn’t coincide.” He paused, then said, wondering if it were wise, whether she would find the words crudely insensitive: “James is in love with you.”

“I suppose so. Poor James. He hasn’t said so, but he doesn’t need to, does he? Do you know, I think I could have loved James if it hadn’t been for Gerard. And I don’t even like Gerard. I never did, even when I wanted him most. That’s what’s so terrible about sex, it can exist without love, without liking, even without respect. Oh, I tried to fool myself. When he was insensitive or selfish or crude I made excuses. I reminded myself how brilliant he was, how handsome, how amusing, what a wonderful lover. He was all those things. He is all those things. I told myself that it was unreasonable to apply to Gerard the petty standards one applied to others. And I loved him. When you love, you don’t
judge. And now I hate him. I didn’t know that I could hate, really hate, another person. It’s different from hating a thing, a political creed, a philosophy, a social evil. It’s so concentrated, so physical, it makes me feel ill. My hate is the last thing I think about at night and I wake up with it every morning. But it’s wrong, a sin. It has to be wrong. I feel I’m living in mortal sin and I can’t get absolution because I can’t stop the hating.”

Dauntsey said: “I don’t think in those terms, sin, absolution. But hate is dangerous. It perverts justice.”

“Oh justice! I’ve never expected much in the way of justice. And hate has made me so boring. I bore myself. I know I bore you, dear Gabriel, but you’re the only one I can talk to and sometimes, like tonight, I feel I have to talk or I might go mad. And you’re so wise, that’s your reputation anyway.”

He said drily: “It’s easy to get a reputation for wisdom. It’s only necessary to live long, speak little and do less.”

“But when you do speak you’re worth listening to. Gabriel, tell me what I must do.”

“To get rid of him?”

“To get rid of this pain.”

“There are the usual expedients: drink, drugs, suicide. The first two lead to the third, it’s just a slower, more expensive, more humiliating route. I don’t advise it. Or you could murder him, but I don’t advise that either. Do it in fantasy as ingeniously as you like, but not in reality. Not unless you want to rot for ten years in prison.”

She said: “Could you stand that?”

“Not for ten years. I might manage three but not more. There are better ways of coping with pain than death, his death or yours. Tell yourself that pain is part of life, to feel pain is to be alive. I envy you. If I could feel such pain I might still be a poet. Value yourself. You’re no less a human being because one
selfish, arrogant, insensitive man doesn’t find you lovable. Do you really need to value yourself by the standard of any man, let alone Gerard Etienne? Remind yourself that the only power he has over you is the power that you give him. Take that power away and you take away the hurt. Remember, Frances, you don’t have to stay with the firm. And don’t say that there has always been a Peverell at the Peverell Press.”

“There has since 1792, even before we moved into Innocent House. Daddy wouldn’t have wanted me to be the last.”

“Someone has to be, someone will be. You owed your father a certain duty in life but it ceased with his death. We can’t be in thrall to the dead.”

As soon as the words were out of his mouth he regretted them, half expecting her to ask “What about you? Aren’t you in thrall to the dead, your wife, your lost children?” He went on quickly: “What would you like to do if you had a free choice?”

“Work with children, I think. Perhaps train as a primary-school teacher. I’ve got my degree. I suppose it would only mean another year’s training. And then I think I’d like to work in the country or in a small country town.”

“Then do it. You do have a free choice. But don’t go searching for happiness. Find the right job, the right place, the right life. The happiness will come if you’re lucky. Most of us get our share of it. Some of us get more than our share even if it’s concentrated into a little space of time.”

She said: “I’m surprised you don’t quote Blake, that poem about ‘joy and pain being woven fine, a clothing for the soul divine.’ How does it go?

Only you don’t believe in the soul divine, do you?”

“No, that would be the ultimate self-deception.”

“But you do go safely through the world. And you understand about hate. I think I’ve always known that you hated Gerard.”

He said: “No, you’re wrong, Frances. I don’t hate him. I feel nothing for him, nothing at all. And that makes me far more dangerous to him than you can ever be. Hadn’t we better start a game?”

He took out the heavy chessboard from the corner cupboard and she moved the table between the armchairs then helped him to set out the pieces. Holding out his clenched fist for her to choose black or white he said: “I think you ought to give me a pawn, the tribute of youth to age.”

“Nonsense, you beat me last time. We play even.”

She surprised herself. Once she would have given way. It was a small act of self-assertion and she saw him smile as with his stiffened fingers he began to set out the pieces.

Miss Blackett went home every night to Weaver’s Cottage in West Marling in Kent where, for the past nineteen years, she had lived with her older widowed cousin, Joan Willoughby. Their relationship was affectionate but had never been emotionally intense. Mrs. Willoughby had married a retired clergyman and when he died three years after the marriage, which Miss Blackett privately suspected was as long as either partner could have borne, it had seemed natural for his widow to invite her cousin to give up her unsatisfactory rented flat in Bayswater and move to the cottage. Early in these nineteen years of shared life a routine had established itself, evolving rather than planned, which satisfied them both. It was Joan who managed the house and was responsible for the garden, Blackie who, on Sundays, cooked the main meal of the day which was always eaten promptly at one o’clock, a responsibility which excused her from Matins although not from Evensong. It was Blackie who, rising first, took early morning tea to her cousin and made their nightly Ovaltine or cocoa at half past ten. They holidayed together, for the last two weeks
in July, usually abroad, because neither of them had anyone with a stronger claim. They looked forward each June to the Wimbledon tennis championship and enjoyed the occasional weekend visit to a concert, theatre or art gallery. They told themselves, but did not say aloud, that they were lucky.

Weaver’s Cottage stood on the northern outskirts of the village. Originally two substantial cottages, it had in the 1950s been converted into one dwelling by a family with definite ideas about what constituted rural domestic charm. The tiled roof had been replaced with reed thatch from which three dormer windows stared out like protruding eyes; the plain windows were now mullioned and a porch had been added, covered in summer by climbing roses and clematis. Mrs. Willoughby loved the cottage and if the mullioned windows made the sitting room rather darker than she would ideally have liked, and some of the oak beams were less authentic than others, these defects were never openly acknowledged. The cottage with its immaculate thatch and its garden had appeared on too many calendars, had been photographed by visitors too often for her to worry about small details of architectural integrity. The main part of the garden was in the front, and here Mrs. Willoughby spent most of her spare hours, tending, planting and watering what was generally admitted to be West Marling’s most impressive front garden, designed as much for the pleasure of passers-by as for the occupants of the cottage.