The Sleeping Beauty (22 page)

‘So we have only been through what newspapers call “a form of marriage”,’ Emily said, drying her first tears. ‘I have sometimes read those reports. They call the women by their surnames. Why must they do that? How can it help matters to be so rude? I should seem a different person to myself for ever afterwards if I heard them referring to me in that way – without a “Mrs”. Or “Miss”,’ she added, beginning to weep again.

‘You will not be referred to at all, my darling angel. And the occasion shall never arise when you are in danger of it.’

‘This makes a mockery of the law – when you and I are so happy and harming no one, yet in such a situation.’

‘We cannot blame the law. There has to be some order, some protection.’

‘You have too much respect for rules and regulations. It has brought us to this pretty pass. And I thought that married people shouldn’t have secrets.’

‘This secret went with the marriage.’

‘Oh, love me, hold me! Why need we have married in the first place? You are always so prim and proper and now it has made you break the law. It will be forever like living at the edge of a volcano.’

‘Our lives are that nowadays, no matter how we behave.’

‘Oh, bombs!’ she said in a contemptuous voice. ‘They are hardly to the point. Don’t drag bombs in to try to make this seem any better. There may never be another war; or it may be years ahead: but this trouble is with us now; this absurd, indecent word is with us.’ He kissed her, silent. Then she said, turning her head from him: ‘How can you trust her … your wife?’

‘I forbid you to give her that name. She has never been given it by me. Rose and I call her “that woman”, and I should do the same, if I were you. How can I trust her? Oh, I think with the best and safest trust – an enemy’s. I have been a victim of the other kind, and it seems to be a victim itself; of the first lonely moment; the slightest temptation to talk in confidence. This trust is more wholesome, I believe. There are no illusions and no obligations. Just the advantage of us both. No harm can come to you, you know; but it is very important that we never speak of it, or use those tiresome words – which you so rightly call indecent.’

‘You have had to lie beside me at night thinking of these things.’

‘No, I have thought of other things.’

‘I can bear anything, but not your being taken from me, being sent to … being sent away. I could not imagine such a thing happening. You are not cut out for it.’

‘That is the very worst, and will not happen. If we face it now, for a moment, we will never face it again. I should not be there so very long – in the place where I shall never have to go – a few months, perhaps.’

‘Yes, we will face it. It would be an experience,’ she said, wiping her tears away roughly, ‘which, as you say, may never come to you.’

‘I once heard … years ago, before it had any application to myself … that men who commit … who make this sort of mistake, are the worst treated by the other … by men who have made different mistakes. They are said to resent the tendency in their colleagues and look down on them.’

‘You mean, in this place it would be such an experience to go to?’

‘Yes.’

‘I wonder why?’

‘It is a thing above others that they moralise about.’

‘How very strange! There might be bullying, then?’

‘I saw my way through that at school. And this could not be as bad, because not for so long. And might only be ostracism; easily borne.’

‘And perhaps may never happen.’

‘It is too remote to contemplate, in a world where one expects much worse.’

‘Yes, there is that comfort. And if it did happen, could you write to me?’

‘I suppose my weekly letter. As at school.’

‘And would it be censored?’

‘Yes, it would be on a printed form and read and signed by someone else.’

‘You know a great deal about the whole subject.’

‘It has interested me for some time.’

‘We will have a secret code for our loving messages – though what is the use of love on paper? I shall send you presents.’

‘And books.’

‘The books would be presents. I am beginning to choose them already in my mind. You will lie and think of me in your … little bedroom? Oh, my darling, it could not be true!’ She pressed her cheek to his and closed her eyes. He stroked her throat, which tightened again in her struggle not to weep.

‘And I should mark off the hours until the holidays,’ he said. ‘Do not cry inwardly, my love. Your tears are my worst punishment, and Rose would think it wrong for me to escape them.’

Hearing footsteps, she went over to the window and stood with her back to the darkening room, hoping to hide her tears.

‘Oh, excuse me!’ Mrs Siddons said. ‘My handbag! Philly and I are going for a little stroll to give her an appetite. Thank-you so much.’ She ducked under Vinny’s arm before he could properly open the door for her.

‘What would
she
think of all this?’ Emily asked. ‘Don’t put on the light yet. Oh, there they go, down the drive. I might have grown like Mrs Siddons in the end. Those little strolls, as she calls them. At this time of the year, I remember them especially – so sad, sad – smelling of bonfires.’

She watched the two figures in their dark coats going down the drive. Pale leaves drifted from the branches above them. Philly’s walk was uncertain. She collided with Mrs Siddons, then, trying to straighten her course, tripped at the grass-verge. Mrs Siddons took her arm. They disappeared behind the trees.

‘There is so much to be sad about,’ Emily said. ‘We should be selfish to think of ourselves.’ But she went on doing so; and
then said: ‘It is wrong of me, but I begin to admire you more. I didn’t know you had this in you. And I admire myself more; for bringing it out.’

She leant against him, smiling at last. It was some time before they spoke, and then Vinny said: ‘Rose is the one I am worried about. Our love has harmed no one but her and now she is alone. We must do something for her.’

Sympathy expanded in him. Pity stirred his old longing to console. Emily, seeming to sense this, drew his arm round her again, claiming all consolation for herself.

‘Yes, we must,’ she agreed.

Elizabeth Taylor

Introduced by Hilary Mantel

‘Quietly and devastatingly amusing’ Hilary Mantel

Fifteen-year-old Angel knows she is different, that she is destined to become a fêted author and the owner of great riches. Surely her first novel confirms this – it is a masterpiece, she thinks.

After reading the novel, the publishers are certain
The Lady Irania
will be a success, in spite of – and perhaps because of – its overblown style. But they are curious as to who could have written such a book: ‘Some old lady, romanticising behind lace-curtains’ … ‘Angelica Deverell is too good a name to be true … she might be an old man. It would be an amusing variation. You are expecting to meet Mary Anne Evans and in walks George Eliot twirling his moustache.’ So nothing can prepare them for the pale young woman who sits before them, with not a seed of irony or a grain of humour in her soul.

‘A masterpiece … Angel is a brilliant creation’ Lesley Glaister,
Guardian

‘How deeply I envy any reader coming to her for the first time!’ Elizabeth Jane Howard