Susan Speers (25 page)

I’d made no visits, received no company during the first months of Jeremy’s new tenure at Hethering. Letters from Thérèse and Genie, a dashed scribble from Laura, notes sent back and forth to Amalia, these were my contacts with the outside world. Once a gruff, rather insulting missive arrived from Rutherford Dane, but its strong language and lack of artifice made me laugh. Was that his intent?

The Picketys’ warm welcome came at the end of my walk. I detected relief beneath their serenity. They were delighted to hear of Jeremy’s progress, but concerned about his interrupted sleep.

As I babbled on, suffering a kind of hysteria to be in company, I saw them exchange a glance. I stopped, and of warmth flooded my face.

“I need to speak with you, Lawrence, about a particular matter.”

I so seldom used Mr. Pickety’s Christian name, I surprised us both.

He smiled to encourage me, but all at once I was tongue-tied.

“I don’t like to break a confidence,” I murmured. As if my stolen glances at Jemmy’s despairing words could be termed ‘confidence’.

“I should look in on the nursery,” Amalia said. “It’s too quiet up there. I’ll bring tea when I come back.”

In her absence I was able to tell Lawrence about finding Jeremy’s agonized scrawls amid his careful catalogue entries.

“He cries out, he cries God’s name,” I said. “I’ve done what I can with good food and exercise, with Dickens and Mozart and Chopin. I’ve used Hethering’s bounty to help him, but —” I raised my hands in a helpless gesture.

“You mustn’t discount the gift of your care,” Lawrence said.

“It’s not enough. He needs more. He needs God’s help. He begs for it.”

“Clarissa, I truly believe you are God’s instrument to heal Jeremy,” Lawrence said. “But I’m his pastor. It’s clear my part must begin.”

“Jeremy is proud, even now.”

“He’s made his life without benefit of a strong relationship with his Maker,” Lawrence said. “He supports this church, his gift funds my living, he reads the lesson when he attends Sunday service. Beyond that, though, I’ve not seen a connection.”

Lawrence paused. He matched his fingertips. “I can’t wait help for him to ask aloud.”

Amalia came in and he leapt up to help her with the tea tray.

“Mrs. Pickety,” he said with quaint charm, “Dr. Hazzard tells me my sedentary habits have a sad effect on my health.” He patted his waistcoat which did harbor a rounded stomach. “Too many happy family meals, too little exercise.”

“What does he prescribe?” Her eyes twinkled. They could have gone on stage with this act.

“He suggests a lengthy walk each day. I’m a gregarious fellow. I wonder if Jeremy would give me the kindness of his company.”

“I’ll approach him.” I would use subtlety. I would cajole. If all else failed I would shout “walk!” in Laura’s stern voice.

*****

My quiet days with Jeremy continued. I woke at dawn in the library, bathed and dressed and spent the hours before breakfast on Willow’s book. My publisher, Mr. Mosely, was a taciturn man, but his letters grew warm with encouragement. There was no news from Genie. Her last letter mentioned she’d been appointed driver for a general, his name blacked out by the censor.

Lawrence and Jeremy tramped the countryside. In the worst of spring downpours they stayed closeted in the library. Jeremy made no move to take the reins of governance over Hethering, so after lunch I was busy with accounts and tenants. More than once I was late to tea.

 One rain swept afternoon my work ended early and I stopped in the library to find Jeremy kneeling before the hearth fire burning pages dark with his handwriting.

“Not your catalogue, Jem.”

“No.” He fed in the last page and gave it a vicious poke with the fire iron.

“What then?”

He sat back on his heels and sighed. “Lawrence advises,” he began and faltered.

“Don’t disappear from me, Jemmy.” I knelt down beside him just as I had when we were children. In the flames, the last paper became an ugly black curl then disintegrated into ash.

He took a deep breath. He struggled to form his next words. “Lawrence says I must rid myself of unbearable memories by writing them out.”

Make a record of what tormented him into silence?

“Then I burn them. Symbolic oblivion.”

“Does it help?”

“A little. They come back. I burn them again. Again and again until they are ash. Or they will consume me.”

“I see.” I did, a little. Men are creatures of action, women of conversation. Dora dulled the pain of her lost babies by counseling me. So many evenings Laura listened to me speak of Dickon. Jeremy couldn’t voice his pain. Lawrence devised this action to help him.

“Lawrence says that through the fire in my life, what I saw, what I did, I can emerge a better man.”

“Better?”

“I have been unkind and impatient and manipulative, Clarry.” He swallowed hard and stared at the fire.

“I won’t hear those words against you,” I said.

“I was dishonest with Caroline from the beginning and impatient with poor Arthur. I saw him as a bind, an impediment to what I wanted. And imperfect. That wounded them both.”

“Worst of all, Clarry, I hurt you again and again. I only thought of my pain, my desire. I seduced you, I abandoned you. Were you less strong I might have coerced you into dishonor.” In the hearth, a log collapsed in a shower of sparks.

“When you forgave me, Clarry, I used our promise to bind you here with no thought of your feelings.”

He didn’t mention the night in Willow’s cottage, our farewell in Watford. Had he forgotten? How could he? Perhaps for him, like me, the memories were too sacred to speak.

“Jemmy, I chose every day at Hethering, every hour with you with my full heart. Don’t regret a moment we’ve spent together.”

“Not even my remark about Dickon’s fingerprints?”

I could not suppress a smile. “You were punished.”

“And then I abandoned my love and my family to chase after glory.” His voice was so soft I might have imagined it. “Not for me a common death.”

“You did what you thought right.” I didn’t agree then and I didn’t agree now.

“I’ve been punished for that, too,” he said. “A living death of indelible memory.” He buried his face in his hands.

“Use the fire,” I said. You must.”

“I’m using you again.”

“I want to be here.” My voice was low, but my words were fierce. “I belong here with you. Even Caroline thinks so.”

“No matter what?”

“No matter what.”

*****

Our hearthside confessions proved painful for us both. My husband’s name lay between us now, and Caroline’s and Arthur’s too. We retreated into Dickens and Chopin, walking and knitting, keeping accounts, making catalogues.

I made certain Jeremy spoke each day. Our conversations were pleasantries, remarks about the weather and praise for Cook’s inspired dishes, concocted in defiance of rationing. She was my staunch ally. Jeremy’s pitiful appetite improved with her tempting fare. He stayed whippet thin, but grew stronger from her food and great drafts of fresh air.

I began to consult him on estate matters, though the final decisions were mine. His library catalogue grew. Every morning there were pages to stack and pages to burn. I often woke in my chair as he banked the embers.

“Good,” I’d say.

“Yes.” Sometimes there was the hint of a smile beneath his moustache. Sometimes he meant it.

One morning at April’s end we lingered over breakfast. It was as fine a day as Adam and Eve knew in Eden. The sky was an azure dome where cotton floss clouds cavorted like lambs. The grass was brilliant as an exotic serpent.

“Let’s have a look at the follies,” Jemmy said with an eager smile I’d not seen since war began. “One by one. We’ll begin at the Roman pillars.”

And end at Madison’s folly on the hill, I thought. Jemmy’s enthusiasm convinced me to put thoughts of Willow’s cottage and its tangled memories out of my head.

The warm, sweet air intoxicated us. Violets carpeted the ground around the Roman folly. Jemmy picked a fat bunch of them. He tied their stems with a bit of worn blue ribbon from his pocket.

“That looks like one of my old hair ribbons,” I said, and buried my nose in the violets’ soft petals and woodsy fragrance.

“It is,” he said. “I’ve had it forever, and I’ll thank you for its return when the flowers fade.”

He held my free hand as we walked to the Bridge of Sighs. Its gold picked paint glinted in the bright sun. I saw places that needed touch up, but Jemmy’s happy smile told me the imperfections didn’t matter.

“This is lovely, Clarry.”

“I mixed the paint myself.”

The lake was swollen with spring rains, its rowboat tied at least ten feet from the spongy shore. I kept the oars beneath dry pilings at the bridge’s first rise.

Jeremy stopped when we came upon the Pagoda. “Arthur was here.”

“You heard me before?”

“I hear every word you say. Did he like it?”

“He’s your son. He loved it.”

“He wasn’t ill?”

“A little breathless. He recovered.”

I ran my hand along the flawless rebuilt wall at our Medieval Tower.

“Where are the costumes, the cloaks?” Jem asked me.

“Laundered and mended in the nursery cupboards.”

I didn’t look down on Willow’s cottage when we crossed the meadow above it. Jem slashed at fresh growth on the woodland paths beyond. Mud clung to our boots but we pushed on.

The fifth folly was pure and white and circled by thorns. Jem pulled them apart to make a space for me to pass. We ignored the cuts in our hands and clothing.

A clear cold wind blew around us, filling our eyes with tears. Below us Hethering lay like an enchanted kingdom, no sign of war’s damage evident.

Jem took my hand and squeezed it. “Such beauty,” he said. “Pity we stand on Scard land.

“It is Scard land,” I said. “It’s mine.”

Jemmy’s face had been so set, so stoic, so devoid of emotion in the past several months, I was shocked by the emotions that crossed it now. Surprise, realization, greed, anger and, finally, sorrow.

He caught me watching him and turned away.

“What are you thinking?” I asked. He didn’t turn back. “Don’t go away from me,” I said.

“I’m not.” But he stepped back to lean against a column. “I am trying,” he said after a long silence, “to be the better person Lawrence thinks I can be.”

I waited.

“Dickon gave you this land,” he said.

“I inherited all the Scard holdings,” I said. “I returned them to his brothers and sisters. I was Dickon’s wife for less than a year. We had no — we had no children.” My voice broke.

“You gave away land,” he said, shaking his head.

“It was never mine,” I said. “Not by right.”

“But you kept this portion.”

“He wanted it for my bride gift,” I said. “The Scards knew Dickon’s wishes. They insisted I keep it.”

“It seems the world is peopled by people finer than I can ever hope to be. Clarissa, your generosity —”

“The Scards took me as one of their own,” I said. “I wanted what was best for them, what was right.”

“And they in turn kept faith with their brother. Of course, your gift turned them sweet.”

“Stop it,” I said.

He looked ashamed. “I’m jealous you know. I gave you Willow’s cottage, but he gave you this.” His arm swept the panoramic view.

“He wanted the old quarrel settled,” I said. “We have to honor that.”

“An honorable man, an honorable end,” Jeremy said. “And I live on, a dishonorable man with a ruined life.”

“You have the chance he didn’t get.” I was angry and too upset to hide it. “Your life from now on is what you make it.”

“Clarissa, my life is what they made of it and what they made of me.”

“Defy them,” I said. “Defy what they did. You can do it. I still see that in you.”

“How can you?”

“Because I know you better than anyone else.”

“I don’t know.”

“It’s easier to give in isn’t it?” I knew what would goad him and I used it without mercy. “Dickon told me you have to go through the bullets, go through the fire to win. If you retreat, if you hide, you will perish, and the men who harmed you will win.”

“Dickon didn’t —” He stopped, his voice ragged, and it was a full minute before I realized he held back his words to protect me. “He was a better man,” he said.

“A different man, not better.”

“Even now?”

“Even now.”

“We should go.” I saw his retreat, I allowed it. He’d nurse his wounds, gather his strength and come back to me.

“I want to come back here,” he said, “when I can accept this gift, when I’m better worthy of all I can see from it.”

We pushed our way down the hill through the bracken.

“I’ll come back to clear a better path,” he said.

“It’s my land. You should ask me, not tell me.” I couldn’t the tease.

“And in your will?”

I sighed, caught out. “Like Willow’s cottage, it reverts to Hethering.”

“Good girl.” That was some of the old Jeremy.

“You’re insufferable.”

We were almost through the Marchgate Wood when he asked “What about your Cornwall property?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?”

My saucy answer sobered him. “No. I spoke foolishly, I never want to know. You belong to Hethering.”

We crossed the lawns, our pace slowing, his arm a light weight on my shoulders. I felt so shy, yet I craved his touch. Like the land, I was growing green.

As we entered the hall, Henry waited. “You have a visitor, Miss.” Jeremy vanished. He shied from visitors.

I raised my eyebrows.

“Dr. Sachs arrived half an hour ago. He asked to wait.”

“Of course.” I had to change my muddy, torn clothing. “If you would give him tea. Tell him I’ll hurry.” I wanted to see the doctor alone before he saw Jeremy.

I dressed as fast as I could and redid my hair. In fifteen minutes’ time I entered the salon and stopped. Jeremy sat across from Dr. Sachs. They rose together, one face with a smile of greeting, the other a smoldering scowl.