"The Slightest Provocation" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rosenthal Pam)

Chapter Six

“I’m hardly surprised.” Richard Raddiford Mor rice’s northern voice made a soft rumble against the cluttered room’s bookshelves, paneling, and purple drapery at the windows.

“For the two of you would wait until the last possible moment,” he continued, “to build up the suspense, set the level of histrionics as impossibly high as you could manage. Your final night on the continent-quite banal, really, Mary.” His steel pen glinted in the lamplight above a sheaf of papers, held with a slightly unsteady hand.

Mary groaned from the depths of a plush armchair in the room’s far corner. “You’ve been writing your newspaper’s theater criticism of late, Richard.”

“To my shame. But for the next issue I’ll be taking on a new chap to do it. Young and eager, far better educated at his dissenting academy than Kit and I at Oxford-got more learning in him, for that matter, than Kit, I, and a goodly percentage of the House of Lords taken together…”

“But in the main,” she continued, “you’re quite correct. We were worse than histrionic. We were stupid, impatient, and less tolerant of one another than ever. Without even our youth to excuse us.”

For a few minutes, the only sound in the dimly lit room was the low fire’s crackle.

“Still, it’s the only thing.” Richard’s response seemed to come from a distance away. “Divorce, I mean. Both of you starting your lives afresh-it’s what you need. Though I must confess that I’d rather hoped otherwise.”

“You’re very forgiving,” Mary said.

“I’d like Kit to forgive me as well,” Richard replied.

She’d made Richard’s acquaintance soon after her marriage. Kit had sometimes spoken of a friend and protector at Eton. But their paths had diverged at university, Richard passing his examinations in the undistinguished fashion befitting his station while Kit got sent down for dueling and riotous behavior. Bumping into each other in London, however-Richard setting up at the Albany just when Kit and Mary had taken the house in Curzon Street-the two had enthusiastically resumed their friendship and Kit had invited Richard to dine with them at home.

She hadn’t been eager to have a guest before they’d gotten the furniture in proper order (though in truth, they never really got the furniture in order). But Richard professed to find it refreshingly informal. He brought a Meissen clock for the mantelpiece, played with their dog, praised the turtle soup, and in all ways made them feel quite the clever pair for having run away together.

He’d shared his reminiscences as well. Lord Kit had gathered a certain notoriety at school, Richard said, for never crying when he was caned-and given how many times he’d been caned… well, he must have set some sort of record, for the lower forms anyway. And so I was obliged to make him my fag, send him on errands and so forth, just to keep him out of the way of fighting and mischief.

Kit had bowed modestly, and Richard had winked. He’s good at errands, he said; don’t hesitate to set him fetching and carrying, Mary. And who would have expected-he raised his glass, sentimental or perhaps just tipsy-that such a skinny, scrappy little chap would go get himself such a trump of a wife.

After which the three of them were often seen in town together. A bit timid with members of the opposite sex, Richard hadn’t seemed to mind when Mary and Kit would begin making eyes at each other around three in the morning, to disappear soon after. Anyway, he’d soon be going home to Yorkshire, to become squire and magistrate, master of the hunt, and husband to the nice enough young woman everyone expected him to marry.

It hadn’t worked out that way. Aimlessly at first, he’d begun a course of reading, his lodgings cluttered and later choked with pamphlets and periodicals from obscure bookshops, broadsheets picked up along the street.

Well, one can’t play and carouse all the time, can one? he’d asked.

One can try, Kit had said, drawing Mary closer to him. She laughed and kissed his cheek, and Richard had laughed too.

No, really, Kit had insisted. Better to carouse than bury one’s nose in poisonous screeds that wish you and me and our families dead or at least starving.

Why not?

In his modest way, Richard had been remarkably logical-minded. If you were going to frequent dangerous neighborhoods in the hours before dawn, he asked, why not also entertain some dangerous ideas? As for reading, best to try something that would shake you up a bit, make you think about your place in the world and how others saw you.

Which is all very well for Richard, Kit had commented to Mary later that evening. Because Richard’s never felt a moment’s real doubt about anything.

How somber he’d looked. When just a moment before he’d been so charming, pulling off her stocking with his teeth and running his tongue from her knee to her instep; it was all she could do not to nudge his head back downward.

But no matter how seductively she kissed, stroked, and nuzzled at him, her senses heightened but also befuddled by the opium they’d been eating-it seemed that he would talk, about the things nobody talked about.

He’d stared into space. Richard, he said, has never had to wonder about himself or his origins, or… anything.

His place in the world, he’d added, in a very low voice.

It doesn’t matter, she might have replied.

She might have winced, with the guilty knowledge that marrying her hadn’t done much for his place in the world. Or perhaps she’d laughed. Isn’t the world agreeable enough? You’ve got the Stansell name, there’s plenty of money settled on us, and you’ve got me wanting you, at this very moment, more than I can fairly stand.

But most likely she’d made a small moue of impatient desire.

The opium set a strict order to one’s wants. And uppermost among hers right then had been the absolute necessity that he remove her other stocking, the pink silk being so constricting against her skin and the color so… well, so jarring and out of place against the more subtle and gorgeous hues of his and her naked flesh in the lamplight, the stocking being the only item of clothing either of them was wearing at the moment.

Please, darling?

And so he’d shrugged, dipped his head downward, and proceeded with the serious business of making elegant, complicated love to his very demanding wife.

Even as Richard continued scandalizing his fellows at White’s with dangerous ideas. Pamphlets gave way to slender and then thicker books; he allowed his club membership to lapse at the time (as he confessed much later) he’d come to fancy himself in love with Mary.

Which also had been when Kit had almost stopped coming home at night, and Mary became quite frantic and in need of all the attention and affection she could get.

What a relief, she’d thought, to have Richard to pour out her rages and fears to. What a comfort to confide in someone who knew Kit as well as she did.

And what a pleasure that there was someone who obviously still found her pretty. For she was only twenty-one and she was still pretty, even if her bloody damn husband preferred to spend his nights with garishly painted doxies and had got a nasty inflammation for his troubles.

Could it really be taking such a long time to heal?

She’d wept and wailed, drenching her handkerchief and quite ruining Richard’s coat, her head against his shoulder and the rest of her body shuddering in his arms.

Until her sobs subsided, and he and she drew back to opposite ends of the settee, each staring at the other as they smoothed hair and straightened disordered garments.

Richard didn’t call for the week after that. Good, she thought, for she wouldn’t be inviting him. Even better if she took a holiday. She’d go to Glasgow as soon as her nephews got over whatever illness Julia had written was keeping them bedridden and wrapped in flannel this time.

She congratulated herself upon these excellent resolutions until the day when Kit didn’t come home at all. Half past one in the afternoon: she’d been weeping and wringing her hands since shortly after midnight.

No use continuing to agonize over his safety. He was probably passed out in a gutter somewhere-or sleeping off his inebriation in the arms of… but even thinking the name of his soi-disant actress felt like grasping a fistful of nettles.

Kit deserved to feel as miserable as she did. Not that he actually would be hurt; well, how could he be? He was never home anymore. And not that she’d want to hurt him-but if he did saunter in, well, she’d like to see the look on his face when he saw what she was capable of, in her own bed and with someone who admired and appreciated her.

Though of course she hadn’t liked it at all when, in the way of a folk tale’s wishes coming horribly, literally true, he’d strolled upstairs with torn coat, dirty, grinning face, and scuffed boots. She could remember all too well his words in the hall as he’d approached, “And so I says, ‘Please, sir…’ ” doubtless the beginning of a wickedly entertaining tale of fisticuffs and night wardens, just before he reached the bedroom door and did, indeed, get his eyeful of what she was capable of.

Even now, she could hardly bear the memory of how his words and grin had melted away, mouth fallen open, unshaven cheeks caved in and red-rimmed eyes like ice, before he stumbled backward and disappeared from her sight, and she began pushing at Richard and screaming and pleading for Kit to come back.

She could summon up Richard’s image with equal clarity; how young, how pale and frightened he’d looked without his shirt and neckcloth. But they’d all been young, at least until that moment. It rather robs you of your first youth, to comprehend how cruel it is to use someone you don’t love, to take revenge on someone you do.

They’d also been too young-or at least Kit and Richard had been-to grasp the absurdity of dueling over it. Too proud of what they’d called their honor, too stupidly enamored of their reputations; it still sickened her to know that one of them might have killed the other out on Hampstead Heath, while she sobbed and hiccupped, and Jessica patted and hugged her and gave her doses to make her sleep.

And when Kit did come home again-the only time she’d seen him until Calais-they’d been too furiously incoherent to do anything but hurl invectives and some rather good porcelain at each other. The Meissen clock had been reduced to shards, powder, and a few crazily spinning gearwheels beneath their feet, while their little dog yelped piteously from behind the fire screen.

Richard’s right hand still trembled from where Kit’s bullet had torn the nerves in his forearm. He was clumsy at attaching his papers together, and many of the pins had fallen onto the Turkey carpet.

“We all wronged one another,” she said now. “But you must cease hoping. Kit will gather evidence on me, prepare a case, sue Matthew for ‘alienating my affections,’ and then we’ll finally be free of each other. As though my affections were anyone’s to alienate but my own…”

Their laughter gave way to the rustle of the fire and the scratching of pen on paper, many sheets of it strewn about, some held together with pins that winked under the lamps. A few pages were splashed with tea, Richard having coughed and spluttered in dismay at Mary’s announcement that Kit wanted to work for the Home Office.

No matter, he’d told her-the pages were just early proofs. He’d been making his first corrections for the next issue of Everyman’s Review while Mary replied to the letters she’d found waiting for her at his house in Lincoln’s Inn Fields.

She hadn’t provided a great deal of detail about Calais. But Richard wouldn’t have needed much, knowing Kit as he did, and continuing to love him-though a gentleman might not have expressed it that way.

Bless him for remaining such a good friend to her. And bless his wife, Anna, for having become her friend as well.

The three of them had enjoyed a gay supper upon her arrival last night. Finishing off several bottles of good claret, they’d laughed, gossiped, and interrupted one another for hours, speaking of art and history, Mary’s travels and the affairs of the nation. A satisfying, wide-ranging conversation, and yet constructed with some art to exclude any reminder of long-ago events at Curzon Street.

Astonishing how meticulous we can be, Mary reflected, who profess our shared contempt for petty social convention. But Anna was the true artist among them.

The offhand announcement, over this morning’s muffins and marmalade, of a shopping expedition in Bond Street, and would Mary care to accompany her?

The bright nod in Mary’s direction, coffee cup clinking against gold-rimmed saucer for emphasis.

The significant pause: chin raised, cornflower-blue eyes so coolly communicative of their owner’s wishes that Mary had no choice but to plead exhaustion and the necessity of catching up on her correspondence.

“Yes, of course. How foolish of me. Well, I’ll leave you to Richard. You two can shut yourselves up in his dreary study with your papers and some strong tea. Just finish it up quickly, will you, so we all can go for a drive later.”

Brava, Anna. And bravo to Richard for finding himself such a perfect mate.

“Please do come in,” he called now, in response to Anna’s rap on the door, precisely two hours after he and Mary had closeted themselves in his study.

Mama and Papa had sometimes arranged their affairs in this manner (“I shall disturb you and your guest in an hour, Joshua.” “An hour and a half would be better, my dear.”). Watching a smiling Anna make her way to the table and begin repinning the papers, Mary allowed herself an instant’s pure envy.

But only one, she reminded herself. You’re entitled to only one such moment for every visit with these good friends, so snugly and smugly sure of each other, their beliefs, and their roles in the universe’s scheme for humanity’s betterment. Anna doubtless spent part of every day in this “dreary study,” helping Richard keep his work in order so he could produce the twice-monthly newspaper he was so proud of.

But Mary’s spite had already given way to bemused affection for a good friend’s more than good opinion of himself.

Richard’s political convictions had outlasted his infatuation. By now he was a familiar presence in drawing rooms where the furniture was worn but the ideas glittered like fresh-minted coins. He’d first encountered Matthew Bakewell at one of these venues last year, and presented him to Mary soon after.

And when he’d come into his fortune, he’d simply poured it into the Review, publishing the opinions of everyone he admired, treating his moral and artistic heroes to good food and excellent drink, and occasionally providing more substantial help as well. Even Mary had once contributed an essay, a rather dry thing on the Corn Laws under the name of Edward Elyot (she’d only shrugged this morning when Richard had wondered if Mr. Elyot might like to try something else).

His life with Anna was amiable and exceedingly comfortable, his kitchen and wine cellar superb. His opinions were bracingly radical, but (Mary had to allow) in certain particulars comfortably static as well. Although Kit had professed to have no political sense whatsoever, he’d been most prescient when he’d told her years ago that historical events wouldn’t ever cause Richard to alter his hero worship of Bonaparte, the Scourge of Tyrants.

(And yes, she thought now, some of the rulers Napoleon had deposed were tyrants. And no, some of them were not. It would be a neater world if one could have it all one way or the other. But then, it would be a neater world if she weren’t plagued with all these thoughts and memories.)

“Would anyone care for some luncheon?”

She blinked; Anna had opened the drapes to let in some midday sunshine.

“Yes, thanks,” she heard herself saying. “I’m quite ravenous. And then what about that ride in the park you promised us?”

Park Lane stretched away to the right of the Morrices’ barouche; Hyde Park lay in front of them. Mary kept her eyes straight ahead until their carriage entered the park.

No, she told Anna and Richard, she wouldn’t be able to stay an extra day. “Thanks so much for inviting me, you darlings, but Jessica needs me; I shall have to depart quite early tomorrow.”

Not that her sister wasn’t an excellent manager. “There was the period when her steward took advantage of her grief to rob her, but she’s got a good new man helping her now. Still, she needs companionship-of someone more her age than her daughter. Julia’s been there, and now it’s my turn to help her prepare for the Midsummer’s Eve party. There wasn’t one last year, of course, while she was mourning for Arthur, and also because things were so bad in the neighborhood. At least things are a little better now; nobody’s breaking any more knitting frames.”

Richard cleared his throat. “Very little machine breaking these days. The actions of the last few years were actually quite successful; the men got better wages out of it. Good that they were so scrupulous about only disabling the frames that belonged to cheating owners-and that produced inferior stockings. Luddite machine breakers weren’t stupid; they weren’t out to destroy their own livelihoods.”

He paused. “Though of late the recession in the textile industry has caused new hardships. Together with the bad harvest and worse weather.”

Jessica had written about whole families living on oatmeal, and not much of that.

“But I hear good things as well,” he continued. “Hampden clubs, Parliamentary reform societies springing up in the countryside. Luddite victories seem to have made the men confident of themselves and curious about what else can be changed, speaking more broadly. They’ve taken to reading Paine, Cobbett…” He paused.

Mary took her cue. “They’re even reading Every-man’s Review, I expect. And perhaps a few women are reading it as well.”

He nodded. “Bit of a rise in circulation; an honor to contribute to the spread of ideas. For there’s a sentiment growing, you see, that government should represent more than those that own the land. Shocking, ain’t it, that Manchester has not one MP to represent it, with all that industry? Of course, if our esteemed government chooses to label such thinking as anarchy… if they make it illegal to discuss these things in public meetings and then suspend habeas corpus so as to more easily arrest those who do speak out… and then last January, to ignore the men who petitioned for the reform of Parliament…”

“Appalling to treat them that way,” Anna said. “Although one could also wish that someone would petition for Mary’s and my right to vote.”

Richard shrugged. “You should read the report, written by a bunch of Parliamentary blowhards who call themselves the Committee of Secrecy-pompous asses equating free discussion with the ‘total overthrow of all our institutions,’ hyenas howling that the reformers are ‘undermining the people’s habits of decent and regular subordination.’ ”

The report that Kit had found so alarming. In case Mary needed any further proof of how unsuited he and she were to each other.

She sighed. “Perhaps I will try another essay,” she said, “about the hardships poverty-stricken wives and mothers are suffering in the country at a time like this. Poor things, to be so bereft in a place of such beauty.”

“You’ll be happy to get back there,” Anna said.

“I expect that I shall. I couldn’t live there all the time; I’m too fond of theater and lectures and painting exhibitions-not to speak of the brilliant society of people like you. Life does rather creep by in the country.”

Though at least one wouldn’t have to wonder whom one might catch sight of, as one did driving past Park Lane.

“But while I’m home-yes, I guess it is my home, really-I enjoy helping the Friendly Society, and Cathy Williams’s school for girls. I take tea with the vicar, accompany Jessica on her charitable errands, go on long, solitary tramps through the meadows. And then there’s my niece. I like being a favorite aunt and having her confidence. Betts will be eighteen now.” She paused. “No, not Betts. I’m told she wants to be called Elizabeth now.”

“I envy her, whatever she calls herself,” Anna said. “For I should have loved to have you for an aunt when I was at that dreadful age-one day so fearful of growing up, the next so eager and impatient for it. Of course, you’ll be awfully busy helping your sister-with the estate, the charities, and the midsummer preparations. We look forward to seeing your entire family-and dear Matthew Bakewell as well-when we come down for the festivities. It’ll be an especial treat for us, you know, because we’ll be coming after a week spent dozing by the fire with Richard’s Yorkshire aunts.” Her tone was soothing. As was Richard’s, when he hastened to add that Mary must not forget the essay she’d promised him.

Had she appeared to need so much soothing?

Of course she hadn’t.

She’d be busy and contented at Beechwood Knolls. Kit wouldn’t be a bother; he never came down to the country. The Calais encounter was already receding in her memory; the divorce proceedings, when they came, could mainly be left in the hands of the solicitors. And though she hadn’t quite known how to finish her letter to Matthew this morning, she was sure to think of just the right words by tomorrow.