The Misbegotten (34 page)

Long minutes later the cold begin to work on her, stiffening her fingers, making the joints ache. To keep herself from thinking about Richard, she thought about Jonathan Alleyn instead. Somehow, during her visits to him after the first one, she had written off his violence towards her as an aberration; he’d been so much calmer since, more sober. Black tempered, and alarming, but never violent again; yet she couldn’t deny that she’d witnessed that tendency in him, even if Starling’s story hadn’t had the ring of utter conviction. And all her conversations with him told her one thing above all – that he was tortured by regret and self-loathing.
Could he have killed Alice? Is that what torments him so?
The thought made her mouth go dry, and anxiety flutter in her stomach.
Let it not be so.
Yet she was confounded to find that she feared him no more now than she already had; though the thought of how she would even begin to discover where he kept Alice Beckwith’s letters was already troubling her. The one and only time she’d mentioned Alice’s name, he had cut her off abruptly.
At least he is no worse than he appeared to be when I first met him, unlike someone else.
She stood up from the wall and set off with greater purpose, towards Duncan Weekes’s house.

The old man had been sleeping, though it was early in the evening; he opened the door with a befuddled expression and his cap still on, blinking owlishly. His cheeks were rough with coarse white stubble; he smelled of stale skin, tallow and brandy.

‘Mrs Weekes . . . dear girl . . . I had not expected you,’ he mumbled. He stood up straighter, but it caused him to wince.

‘Forgive me, I . . . I wanted to talk to somebody. I shouldn’t have called at this hour . . .’ Rachel stammered. Duncan seemed to focus on her face; on her puffy, red eyes.

‘Come, come.’ He ushered her into the chilly room. ‘Are you all right? Has something happened?’

‘No, that is . . . yes . . .’ Rachel put her hands to her face and tried to keep hold.

‘Please, sit, Mrs Weekes,’ Duncan said kindly. ‘Be easy, you are safe here.’ Rachel glanced up at this; it seemed an odd thing for him to say. As though he expected her to be unsafe elsewhere. ‘You look chilled to the bone. Can I pour you a tot of brandy, to warm you?’

‘Yes, please.’ Rachel noticed that he poured himself one as well, and swigged it down before he handed hers to her. She sipped it, felt the fire in her throat, and coughed. Duncan smiled briefly and set about reviving the fire, which had all but burnt out while he slept. The few sticks and coals he tipped onto it were the last in the bucket.

‘Ah,’ Duncan murmured, indistinctly.

‘I will fetch more, if you tell me where the bunker is?’

‘No, no. Do not trouble yourself,’ he said, and looked so uncomfortable that Rachel suddenly guessed the truth.

‘There is more coal, isn’t there? You do have more?’

‘Not today, not today,’ he said, with fragile good cheer. ‘I’ve been in a bit of bad bread, lately. But tomorrow I have some work, down on the wharf. I shall buy coal when the day is done, and be warm as toast by nightfall.’

‘But what of tonight?’

‘Well. I have your company to warm my heart, do I not?’ He smiled wearily as he sank into the chair opposite her, and Rachel felt tears well up in her eyes again.

‘Mr Weekes . . .’

‘Here now, none of that. Tell me what troubles you, my dear, and do not fret over me. I’m a tough old bird, you’ll see.’

‘I . . . it’s Richard. My husband.’
And your son.
Rachel was suddenly unsure whether to continue, but Duncan gazed at her with such sympathy that the words were out before she could stop them. ‘I found out that he . . . he has been wenching. Right up until the very moment we wed!’ She hung her head, ashamed, and wept again as much from embarrassment as sorrow.

Clumsily, Duncan Weekes put out a gnarled hand and patted hers.

‘Oh, my poor girl. And my foolish boy!’ He shook his head.

‘What should I do?’ said Rachel, desperately.

‘Do?’ Duncan Weekes smiled sadly. ‘Well, you can do nothing, my dear.’

‘Do nothing? But . . . but he has . . . he has . . .’

‘He has kept his wedding vows, you say?’

‘As far as I can discover, yes.’

‘That then is something to be thankful for, is it not?’ said the old man, softly.

‘
Thankful?
’

‘My dear girl, young men with pretty faces – and even those without them – will always know more of . . . the world, than young ladies. It was ever so. The world is full of rantipole girls who’ll accept a promise, or even a compliment, as betrothal enough to consummate. Of course you’re shocked – you have been brought up good, and virtuous. But a good many young women have not that advantage, and are led more by their senses than their good sense, if you follow me. Richard has always drawn the morts to him; and like any young man, full of vigour and good health, to expect him not to indulge himself would be like setting sweet flowers before a bee and then bidding it not to sup.’

‘Then such behaviour is to be condoned? Accepted?’

‘Condoned, no, not at all. I say only that it would be a rare and virtuous young man who approached the altar on his wedding day as pure as the day he was born. Perhaps it is behaviour that is to be . . . expected. The sadness here is that you have found it out, and been wounded by it. Far better that a young lady continues in marriage happily unaware of such past transgressions.’

‘You mean to say that ignorance is bliss?’ said Rachel, bitterly.

‘Sometimes, aye, it is.’

‘Then restraint and virtue in men is naught but an illusion.’

‘Not an illusion, a reality, my dear. It perhaps only wants, now that you know of his folly, an adjustment to what you can understand as virtue. I say again, he has kept to his vows to you – that is something to take comfort in, surely?’

‘Perhaps,’ said Rachel, listlessly. She glanced up, and Duncan Weekes smiled apologetically. ‘I should not have brought this complaint to you. You are his father. It was wrong of me, and I’m sorry.’

‘No, it was not wrong. You are to come to me whenever you need to.’

‘Nothing is turning out the way I had envisaged it,’ she murmured.

‘Ah, my dear girl – nothing ever does! Only try to forgive my boy. What’s done is done, and can’t be altered. He loves you, I am sure of that.’ Rachel considered this, but said nothing.

They sat in companionable silence for a while, as the coals began to seethe and smoke in the hearth – the brandy warmed Rachel far more than the meagre fire. Through the ceiling and walls came a faint, sweet song, repeated over and over, and the thin wail of an unhappy baby. Rachel fumbled in her pocket and drew out her purse. There was money in it to buy supper, and she passed it all to Duncan.

‘What’s this?’ he said startled.

‘Please, take it. Take it and buy some fuel for your fire.’

‘You need not provide for me, my dear. Thank you, but I—’

‘Please take it, or I will be forced to go myself to buy the coal, and then I’ll have smuts all over my dress. Take it. It’s not right that Richard and I dine in warmth by a merry hearth, while you shiver here alone; and I have had my fill of wrong things for today.’

‘You have a kind heart, Mrs Weekes.’

‘Please, call me Rachel. We are family, are we not?’ Duncan Weekes’s face showed his pleasure, even as he fingered the coins uneasily.

‘I do not think Richard would thank you for giving me this, Rachel.’

‘He will not hear of it.’
With luck, he will not notice.
‘I’ll say I bought ribbons with it. Ribbons always befuddle a man, my mother used to say. They know that women must have them, but cannot fathom out the why.’ She smiled, and Duncan chuckled. Rachel finished her brandy and rose to leave, then a further thought occurred to her.

‘May I ask you one more thing, sir? Mrs Alleyn said something to me that lingers in my mind. She said that Richard had been exceptionally loyal to her, during a time of strife. I understood that she meant in years past, while you both were still in her service. Perhaps it is not my business, but I am curious . . . I wondered if you knew when she might mean?’

She arranged her skirts and shawl, and only then realised that the old man hadn’t answered. She looked up, and was struck by the expression on his face. Duncan’s jaw hung slack, a little open; his eyes were huge and uneasy.

‘What is it?’ said Rachel, startled. Duncan shook his head slightly, and closed his mouth.

‘I cannot say,’ he said, his voice rough. He cleared his throat nervously and rubbed the palms of his hands against his shirt. Rachel stared at him.

‘Mr Weekes?’ she said. ‘Do you know what time she spoke of?’

‘No, child. I do not know. Whatever it was, it’s long past now. I would not trouble yourself with wondering.’ He could not look her in the eye. He patted his pockets as if searching for something, and ran his tongue over his cracked lips.

‘Perhaps you’re right,’ she said softly.
What frightens him in my enquiry?
‘It was only a passing curiosity.’ Duncan Weekes sagged visibly in relief, and nodded. She took her leave of him and went back onto the deadened street, where the darkness was complete, the sky a fathomless black. She walked back to Abbeygate Street with a sense of foreboding that bordered on fear. She thought of the welt on the side of Starling’s face; she thought of the two of them lying together, all the time Richard had been courting her. She had no idea how she would react when she next set eyes on her husband.

The house was in darkness, and Rachel waited a while in the kitchen, with dinner set out all around her. She found she had no appetite for it, as the evening grew old and Richard did not appear. Her own relief at his absence troubled her too much.
I am bound to him, for all time. What will life be, if I am already pleased when he keeps away?
She went upstairs to bed, and sat awhile with her trinket box on her lap, carefully unpinning the lock of her mother’s hair from the lining and holding it to her lips. The hair was smooth and cool; scentless, unfeeling. She shut her eyes and tried to conjure Anne Crofton into the room; tried to hear what advice she would give her daughter.
I must learn to love him, there is no other choice.
She knew that her mother would have said something similar, if she could. She sent out a different prayer instead.
I might have found her, Mother. Tell Papa – I know you are with him. I might have found her. And she will anchor me, when now I am cut adrift.

For a second, Rachel could almost hear her mother – the gentle creak of the boards beneath her tiny, slippered feet; the swish of her skirts and the soft sound of her breathing. But when she opened her eyes the room was empty, of course, and she felt the ache of despair, like a bruise that didn’t heal, but grew deeper all the while. A memory came to her then, unexpectedly – of her mother’s voice rising in fear. Rachel concentrated, frowning, trying to make it clearer. A sunny day, and water sparkling; excitement, laughter. Her father’s hands around her ribs, lifting her; and then that shout from her mother, high and panicky, and in its wake was emptiness. Nothing more would come but the shine of summer colours on water: blue and green and white.

Rachel wanted to sleep with the lock of hair in her hand, but didn’t dare in case she ruined it somehow. In case the ribbon came undone, and scattered the precious stuff. She pinned it back to the velvet, stowed her box away in the drawer, and went to bed. When Richard came in it was night, Rachel didn’t know the hour. The room was frigid, and pitch-black. He came in with no candle, stumbling and loud, and landed heavily on the bed. Rachel lay perfectly still with her knees drawn up in front of her and her elbows tight to her ribs. She fought the urge to scramble away from him, and tried to breathe evenly, so that he would think her sleeping.

‘Rachel,’ he said, his whisper loud enough to rattle the darkness. He reeked of spirits. The mattress sagged as he leaned over her; still she did not move, nor speak. ‘Rachel.’ He pulled her shoulder, trying to roll her towards him. For a second she resisted, but then realised she could not do so and yet feign sleep. So she let him turn her onto her back, and could not keep her breathing steady. It juddered in her chest. She felt his lips on hers, his skin ice-cold from the frosty night; felt his hand brush clumsily across her breasts, cupping each one and squeezing, too roughly; he moved it lower, to her crotch, and pushed his fingers inside her, and the casual, thoughtless way he did so appalled her. Yet still she did not move; she barely breathed, paralysed now by the dread of what he would do next, whether she was sleeping or awake. She felt entirely powerless to stop him, to dissuade him. She
was
entirely powerless in that, and always would be. But then he sagged bonelessly against her, his head heavy on her chest. ‘Oh, why?’ he murmured, indistinctly. ‘Why can’t you love me?’

Rachel held her breath and made no reply. She had no reply to give him, after all; only that she had wed in hope of coming to know and love him, but that the more she knew him, the less she loved. Soon he was asleep, still lying heavily across her, making it impossible for her to either escape or rest.

After meeting Starling in the abbey, and hearing what she’d had to say, Rachel felt Alice’s absence even more. As though the gap she’d left was a tangible thing, a space with edges and depth and echoes; as unfathomable as the way she’d vanished, so completely – like a murmured word in a crowded room. Rachel felt it everywhere she went, but nowhere stronger than in the house on Lansdown Crescent, where the residents wove their lives, one way or another, around this gaping hole. Treading carefully on such dangerous ground. But Rachel felt it in her own home, too, where Alice had never been. Strangely, she felt the girl missing from her own side; she felt Alice missing from her memories, and from her dreams of the future.

Rachel visited Jonathan Alleyn twice each week, reporting to his mother afterwards, when she could be found. The lady of the house was often secreted away in some part of the house that Rachel didn’t know. She sensed that Mrs Alleyn was lonely and might perhaps welcome somebody to talk to; but at the same time, she had not been made welcome enough to feel comfortable knocking on doors in search of the lady. The weather grew ever colder, and stormier. Rachel came to dread the wind, rolling down the hill as she climbed to Lansdown Crescent, making the strenuous walk even harder; blinding her eyes and tugging at her clothes. She wore the weather like a garment by the time she arrived – stained and dripping for rain; pink-cheeked and sniffling for frost; dishevelled and breathless for wind.