Painting The Darkness (45 page)

‘The doctor is very pleased with you,’ he ventured.

‘Yes,’ James replied. ‘He proposes to cut back his visits to every other day and says I may spend some hours downstairs each afternoon.’

‘Splendid.’

‘He attributes the speed of my recovery to the excellence of my nurse.’

‘Constance has been a tower of strength.’

‘I know.’

Richard sat down beside the bed. ‘Do you remember what I said to you that day at Staple Inn, James? Do you remember what I said about Constance?’

James smiled. ‘You told me that she wanted to prove her love for me. I have not forgotten, Richard.’

‘Since you’ve both been living here, I’ve grown fond of her – concerned for her happiness.’

‘Do you think I’m not?’

‘No, of course I don’t, but …’

‘What are my intentions? Is that it?’

Richard flushed. ‘I suppose it is, yes.’

James reached out and patted his forearm. ‘Never fear, Richard. We’ll find a way. I shall aim as high as Constance permits. Friendship, if that is all she will allow. Ultimately, marriage, if she will have me. Either way, I’ll not desert her.’

‘What of her husband?’

‘I pity Trenchard, I really do, but I don’t believe Constance should be shackled to an insane husband. In time, I hope she will come to believe the same.’

‘Divorce, then?’

‘Eventually, yes, but it must be Constance’s decision. And it’s one I can’t ask her to take until I’ve won this case. There’s no sign of Hugo backing down, you know.’

Richard hung his head. ‘I had thought he would see reason. It seems I was wrong.’

‘It’s my mother who won’t see reason. She can’t forgive me for coming back – nor you for siding with me.’

‘A trial,’ Richard mused, ‘will be a long dark road for all of us.’

‘Yet, at the end of it,’ James countered, ‘I pray we will emerge into the light.’

Later, alone in the darkness of his bedroom, Richard pondered all that James had said and implied. There had been modification and caution aplenty, but at heart, he was clearly determined to force his claim to its ultimate conclusion: to deprive Hugo of the baronetcy, to force Catherine to accept him as her son, to win Constance as his wife. His brush with death at Trenchard’s hands seemed only to have strengthened his resolve. And why not, after all? None of it was any more than his due. Yet,
at
the thought of it, Richard could find no sleep. At the end of that long dark road down which they must all go, he could see no glimmer of light.

IV

It was a still clear night of unnatural warmth, on which the full moon imposed a strange and colourless day. Plon-Plon was running headlong through the Cleave Court maze, plunging down yew-hedged shafts of moonlight, flinging himself through slashing branches and vast invisible cobwebs. He had heard them before he had seen them: their breathing and his seemed one. As he rounded the last bend, a bat swooped across his face. He flailed with his arm to clear his sight … and then he saw. Atop his pillar, Sir Harley Davenall’s dead frozen grin. Beneath him, two bodies entwined on the grass, two bodies joined and straining, their bare flesh starkly white in the moonlight. As Plon-Plon stepped from the shadows, Vivien Strang’s eyes moved to focus on him. Twisting her head towards him, she opened her mouth, as if to …

Plon-Plon sat upright in bed, panting from the exertion of his nightmare, certain he had screamed at its end even though he had not heard himself do so. He was regaining control now, listening for some sign that others had been disturbed. But there was nothing: dumb silence reigned throughout the house.

It was as well, Plon-Plon reflected, that Marie Clotilde was wintering in Turin. She might have taken his distress for a sign that he had seen the light. As for the servants, even if they had heard him, they would merely have hoped he had died in his sleep.

He hauled himself from the bed and groped his way to the dressing-table. There he poured brandy into a glass, swallowed too much at the first gulp and coughed convulsively. At least it cleared his head. He sat down heavily
on
the edge of the bed and sipped the rest, waiting for his senses to restore themselves to their normal complacency. To find, so late in life, that he had a conscience: it was more than he could stand.

Not that conscience was really the cause, he knew, of this recurrent dream. Three times since he had read of Norton’s victory at the hearing in London, this vision of Vivien Strang’s betrayal had come to disturb his slumbers. Why? Why now, when it was all so far too late? He swallowed more brandy and felt the warmth of its false courage seep into his soul. He had drunk brandy that night, too, had dosed himself into resentful oblivion when Gervase had not returned by the due time, had masked his sight with insensibility rather than face the truth. But the truth, whatever it was, could no longer be kept at bay. Vivien Strang, whose dreamed scream tasted of the blood she had thrown in his face at Scutari, and James Norton, whose claim encompassed every debt owed to a wronged woman, would allow him no rest.

Plon-Plon raised the glass again, but found it empty. He set it down on the bedside table with a crash, then lowered himself on to the heaped and rumpled pillows. She had warned him, after all. She had warned him, and he could not pretend otherwise. It was not enough, he knew, to have closed his curtains and drowned a frail remorse in floods of brandy. She had warned him and he could not forget.

December 1846, wanting a week to Christmas. A fine frosty night in London, with a sky of deepest velvet cushioning the gemstone stars. Young Plon-Plon felt more than usually pleased with himself as he strolled along King Street, twirling his cane. He had dined with his cousin, Louis Napoleon, and had worsted an opinionated American guest at the table in an argument about slavery. Louis Napoleon had looked quite shocked by his radical remarks. As well he might, Plon-Plon thought. What he was really shocked by was how a true Bonaparte conducts himself.

Plon-Plon paused at the corner of St James’s Square to light a cigar. There was nobody near him when he turned aside to cradle the flame and take the first few puffs. Yet, when he turned back to discard the match, she was standing only a few yards away.

Her cheeks were hollowed by hardship, her clothes worn by use. Only in the severity of her piercing gaze was Vivien Strang unaltered. He did not know what to do, whether to ignore her and walk ahead or admit that he recognized her. In the end, she decided for him.

‘I have followed you for three days,’ she said. ‘Since I saw you leaving the theatre.’

He did not ask why, because he knew. They had not met since the night of the ball at Cleave Court. Gervase had boasted of the prize he had won, the night after, in the maze. If nobody else knew why Colonel Webster had dismissed his daughter’s governess, Gervase did, and Plon-Plon at least suspected.

‘Have you nothing to say, Prince? Nothing to say to the woman you ruined?’

Arrogance found a voice where honour was mute. ‘
Je ne comprends pas, mademoiselle
.’

‘Speak English, Prince. I know you can. You wrote English – in that note to me.’

‘I wrote no note—’

‘I went to the maze because I thought you would be there. But you deceived me. You were his partner. And I was your dupe.’

‘This is not true.’

She stepped closer. ‘What did he tell you? That I consented, perhaps? If so, he lied. What I might have given you freely, he took by force.’

‘He raped you?’

‘He did worse than rape me – he destroyed me. When the Websters threw me out, I still thought, God forgive me, that there had been some mistake, that he had forged the note perhaps, that you did not know what he had done in your name. But when I came to seek your help you had
vanished
, scuttled away from Bath because you knew all too well what he had done.’

‘You exaggerate—’

‘No! I exaggerate nothing. The proof of it I carry within me. I am pregnant by your vile friend,
mon prince charmant
. I am pregnant and disgraced, rejected by my family, turned away by my friends. I am destitute – because of you.’

The truth of her words shone in the vehemence of her gaze. But the shame it inspired in him he was young enough to believe he could yet evade. He reached into his pocket and drew out a wad of notes. ‘For you,’ he said, holding out a handful. ‘And for the baby.’

As she reached out to take the money, Plon-Plon saw her expression alter. Every instinct of her pride told her to reject what every experience of her fall compelled her to accept. For this – the making of an offer she could not refuse – she hated him more deeply still.

He made to move past her, but her hand on his sleeve detained him. She was closer now than before, close enough to leave him in no doubt of the sincerity of her words.

‘One day, Prince, you will regret how you and your friend treated me.’

‘Never.’

‘But, by then, it will be too late.’

‘
Bonsoir, mademoiselle
.’ He shook her arm off and marched away, not daring to look back. He struck out diagonally across the square, bolstering with each step his naïve belief that he could have done with her, outpacing with every yard a hatred he thought too slow to touch him.

Slow, but not slow enough. Thirty-six years later, Plon-Plon raised his stout creaking frame from the bed and shuffled to the window. He parted the curtains and looked out along the empty cobbled length of the Avenue d’Antin. There was nobody there, no figure in the night
beckoning
in the guise of a forgotten sin. And why should there be? What was Norton to him? What did it matter if Vivien Strang had advanced her son to claim a birthright which, in one sense at least, was truly his? He would stay in Paris, or follow his wife to Italy. He would stop his ears and blind his eyes to their conspiracy. It did not concern him. He would tell himself so until he believed it. Norton had no claim on him. He would cling to the thought until the danger was past.

Plon-Plon returned to the dressing-table and poured some more brandy.

‘She shall not cheat my son,’ Gervase had said.

‘Cheat Hugo?’

‘No. Not Hugo. My son.’

‘I do not understand.’

‘Nobody does, Plon-Plon. Nobody does.’

But that, thought Plon-Plon as he swallowed the brandy, was Gervase’s error. Somebody did understand. Somebody whose bulky shape he could see, dimly reflected, in the mirror before him. He understood all too well.

V

The Bow Street magistrates proved as compliant as Bucknill had predicted. On Wednesday 22nd November 1882 they dropped all charges against William Trenchard and consigned him to the care of Ticehurst Asylum. After his brief appearance in court, Trenchard was taken down to the cells, there to await transport to Ticehurst. And there, in the hour or so that he waited, he received a visitor: Richard Davenall.

‘How are you, Trenchard?’

‘Mad. Didn’t they tell you?’

‘You must see that this is in your own interests.’

‘I see that it’s in Norton’s interests.’

‘You’ll find they have every facility at Ticehurst.’

‘Except liberty.’

‘Bucknill is an excellent man. He believes he can help you.’

‘Nobody can help me.’

‘You must try to put all this behind you.’

‘Why? What have I to look forward to?’

‘Listen to me, Trenchard—’

‘Listen to me! Have you read my statement?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then you know it’s true.’

‘At Ticehurst, you will come to see these delusions for what they are.’

‘At Ticehurst, I will remember what others wish to forget.’

Richard stood up, exasperated by his inability to refute what Trenchard had said. ‘I see you’re not to be reasoned with.’

‘Tell me, where is Constance?’ Suddenly, Trenchard’s voice was meek and pleading.

‘She is staying with me.’

‘And Norton?’

‘In the circumstances, I cannot tell you. Constance is well. As is your daughter. Perhaps, in time, they will be able to visit—’ He broke off. Trenchard was weeping, his head bowed in shame, his shoulders shaking with each strangled sob. ‘I’m sorry,’ Richard said. ‘Truly sorry.’

Suddenly, Trenchard rose to his feet, the legs of his chair scraping back angrily across the stone floor of the cell. He looked straight at Richard, his face trembling with the effort of self-control. ‘Where is she?’ he murmured. ‘Where is Melanie?’

‘Perhaps … she never existed.’

‘If I’d kept the photographs, I could have asked Fiveash to identify her.’

‘But you destroyed them?’

‘Yes. I threw them into the river and watched them float away … watched her float away.’ He paused for a moment, then said: ‘Bucknill told me the name Melanie derives from the Greek word
melaina
.’

‘So?’

‘It means
black
. Black as her hair. Black as her heart.’

‘You must forget her.’

His eyes opened wide, reaching past Richard into the mystery which had claimed her. ‘I cannot forget her … until I see her again.’

Two warders escorted Trenchard to Charing Cross station in a covered van, Bucknill and Richard Davenall following in a cab. During the journey, Richard sought to draw the doctor out on the subject of Trenchard’s obsession with Melanie Rossiter.

‘In my opinion, Mr Davenall, the connection between Dr Fiveash’s sometime secretary, Miss Whitaker, and the prostitute called Melanie exists only in Mr Trenchard’s imagination. I doubt Melanie was even her real name.’

‘Trenchard imagined that, too?’

‘Quite possibly. From a subconscious layer of knowledge, he might have chosen the name to fit his image of the woman he believes to be persecuting him. He could never have found the Miss Whitaker he was looking for. Therefore, he invented her. She appeared out of the fog: by day a damsel in distress, by night a succubine temptress. Until we have cleared the fog from his mind, he cannot be rid of her.’

‘And you can clear it?’

‘As to that, only time will tell.’

‘But you are confident there was no conspiracy against him?’

‘Of course. His delusions are classical and unmistakable, Mr Davenall. Rely upon it, that is all they are: delusions.’