A Winter's Child (73 page)

She was not in any way shy with him. She had consented to this, in her own mind, months ago. He had needed simply to choose the moment. He had chosen it now and she was ready – just that – not eager nor inflamed but deeply, gladly prepared; her body too well acquainted with his for reticence, her mind reading between the lines of his too well for fears. They were friends who were about to be lovers. Perhaps that was the right order, the way it should be done. Opening her arms to him, allowing him, with none of the awkwardness she had felt with other lovers, to remove her stockings and to kiss her ankles and her knees, she hoped so, smiling with comfortable ease, with sheer cosiness, as he undid, one by one, the tiny pearl buttons of her blouse, in no hurry himself, taking time and thought over each one – a hundred would not have been too many – until the garment parted and he removed it carefully, his fingertips caressing with delicate, infinite leisure every inch of skin as it was revealed to him. He had wanted her for a long, patient, wary time and now he rewarded his patience minutely, tenderly, turning her body around in his arms and back again, exploring the whole of it with unhurried hands and mouth and eyes, not once only but again, as often as he chose, the whole night before him, a whole new day in which to possess and re-possess her tomorrow. He had had sex with more women than he could remember. He had never made love before and recognized it, like the natural
gourmet
he was, as being far too rare and precious for haste. It was to be tasted drop by drop, held on the edge of every appetite, absorbed, luxuriously and totally enjoyed. And when he had done all that so often, so thoroughly that he could hear her very bones purring, he entered her still very slowly and gently, with no thought of all the sexual techniques, the prowess, the erotic games of skill and stamina which had made his reputation with other women, seeking only – with this woman – to join his body to hers, feeling her pleasure grow beneath him with triumph and with gratitude, nurturing it, coaxing it to its conclusion and then releasing his own pleasure into it, through it, with an urge to possess and protect her, to enslave and enthrone her which he knew to be wholly primitive.

‘I love you,' he said.

‘Kit.' She was laughing, but so was he. ‘You don't
have
to say that-really?'

‘I know.'

Was it even true? He rather hoped so. He would like it to be.

‘I don't suppose you'd marry me would you, Claire?'

‘I – I hadn't thought of it. Is it necessary?'

‘If you come up here with me the locals might prefer it. So would I.'

Lying on her back among the fragrant pillows, shafts of moonlight drifting like pale feathers through the open windows and across his handsome, easy, familiar face, she raised her hand and trailed lazy fingers along his cheek.

‘You'd be unfaithful, Kit – you know you would. From habit. All those pretty barmaids and voracious opera singers and adoring mayoresses. You couldn't resist.'

He thought she was probably right. Perhaps not.

‘I'd try,' he said, kissing her hand.

‘That's honest.'

‘Of course. I can promise to be that. Perhaps it's better that way, Claire. Honesty rather than the crazy promises youngsters make, which nearly always get broken. You're right about me, of course. I've been a faithless man with women all my life. I never promised to be otherwise. It was just part of the life below stairs. The wages were poor but the living was good. A magnum of
Moe:/t & Chandon
here, a parlourmaid there, and move on. The army was the same, except that the parlourmaids got to be stockbrokers'wives. You know how it was. And so I'm not by nature or by training a marrying man. I don't want a wife to cook for me and keep my house clean. I can make other arrangements for all that. I've no particular opinion either way about children. If they come I reckon I can cope with it. If they don't I wouldn't fret. I'm not on the lookout for somebody – wife or child – to prop me up when I'm old. If I ever get that far I'll see to it myself. No child of mine would stay at home so long anyway. But I'd like to be with you, Claire. I'm not saying I need you in the sense that I couldn't manage without you. But I don't want to be without you. If I can have you and keep you then I'd be a fool to throw it away for a night at the Viennese Opera, wouldn't I? And I'm nobody's fool. We could have a good life together, Claire.'

‘I think you're right.'

In the feathery moonlight, lulled by the fresh breeze from the fell and the nearby lapping of clear water, she was sure of it.

‘But you can't decide.'

She smiled, sighing and snuggling against him ready for sleep.

‘Perhaps you should drag me off by the hair – except that I suppose it's not long enough.'

‘Don't let that worry you,' he said, folding warm, firm arms around her, ‘there's enough to get hold of. And I won't let go.'

They made love again in a fragile daybreak, pale-grey light falling in patches across the counterpane, another leisurely exploration leading to a slow building, deep-rooted joy.

‘Shall we stay another night?'

‘Won't the Crown fall down, Kit, without you?'

‘I'd like to think so. Probably not.'

They stayed, looking over the house again as a token gesture to Mrs Roe's conscience, walked the lake path and spent an hour throwing pebbles in the water, Kit's skimming boldly half way across, Claire's sinking fast. They had a ham and pickles and gingerbread lunch and spent the afternoon in bed, Mrs Roe's grim smile when they appeared for dinner indicating that the lecherous inclinations of her under-footman had not, in her view, improved one bit.

‘She knew my mother,' he said, when she had set plates of roast duckling before them and gone off to serve their bread and butter pudding. ‘That's how I came to work here. My mother and Emma Roe came from the same village in Northumberland. There was never a Mr Roe, of course. Mrs is just the courtesy title they give to housekeepers. There was never a Mr Hardie either. My mother had to go home in disgrace for a while to have me. But Emma Roe didn't go in for that sort of thing and so she got on quicker and better. My mother brought me here when I was sixteen with everything I owned in a carpet bag. She'd come down in the world by then, poor old girl. She'd worked in some big houses, cooked quality for the quality all right, but her health had started to let her down and she was cook-daily to a clergyman, while Emma Roe was housekeeper at Wansfell Howe. My mother was nervous. Emma was patronizing. Couldn't resist it, I suppose, since my mother had always been the best-looking girl in the village and even if she'd got into trouble – well, let's hope she had fun doing it. So Emma looked down her nose and my mother let her do it. She wanted to see me in a good place and she needed Emma to put in a word for me with the butler. I got the place and she died a month after. I'd like her to see me now. I'd like that a lot.'

Leaning across the table she kissed him, a friend's kiss of understanding and sympathy and then a lover's kiss, disarranging the cutlery and almost putting out the candles, which said to him ‘I wish I could give you that.'

‘She'd be proud of you.'

He sighed wryly and shook his head. ‘No she wouldn't. When I was butler at High Meadows she'd have been proud of me then. She'd worked under butlers all her life and she understood that. But now all she'd see is that I'm doing something above my station which is the same as heading for a very bad end. She believed in knowing one's place and keeping one's place, my mother. She'd die all over again with shock if she heard me offering Emma Roe a job. And as for being so bold as to lay a hand on you Mrs Swanfield …'

‘Lay a hand on me again, Kit.'

Emma Roe, standing in the doorway with a hot dish of bread pudding in her hands, raised pained eyebrows, set the dish down between them and marched off, her stiff back registering only token outrage, accustoming herself slowly to this tragic, tumbledown new world in which she served duckling to Sally Hardie's bastard son and had been glad of the five-pound note he gave her.

They walked the lake path again after dinner in the dark, waiting to make love, drawing out the moment of their return to make the anticipation finer, the appetite keener and then lingering on the verandah so that the waiting became a longing they had only to climb the stairs to satisfy.

‘Lay a hand on me, Hardie.'

‘With pleasure, madam. And I'll take you by the hair too when I'm ready – and force you.'

‘I expect I'll come quietly.'

‘My mother would never believe this, Claire, but I'm the right man for you.'

‘I think I'm beginning to believe it.'

‘Good. So what we have to do now is decide the ways and means.'

They made love and then, lying on his back, his arm across her stomach in a gesture of possession which did not press heavily upon her but was not, for all that, in any way casual, he swiftly outlined his plans. He would buy the house as soon as he could raise the money. And then he would make it
his
house. Wansfell Howe, rescued from decay to make, not his fortune perhaps, and certainly not at once, but an ample living, a satisfying living, chancy – like everything that was worth anything – but rewarding, challenging,
fun.
And for the first time in his life he'd be his own master. That was what mattered. He'd always kept faith with himself and he wouldn't let himself down now. This was what he wanted. He was going to have it.

‘You really don't need me, do you?' she said.

‘I want you. That's better. Come adventuring with me, Claire. I suppose that's what I'm asking.'

‘It's a fair offer.'

‘I've never made it to anybody else. Shall I make you take it when the time comes?'

They slept late the next morning, Mrs Roe having failed to call them early because, she explained primly to Kit, she had judged them to be tired out after their ‘exertions', walking up and down so much on the lake path.

He smiled, gave her another five-pound note for her trouble and her impudence and – although he did not say so – in memory of his mother and asked her to make sure the pony-cart was ready to take them to the next train.

‘Why don't you ask me to stay another night?' asked Claire pertly, knowing his answer.

‘Because, my darling, I have an urgent appointment at my bank.'

Once again Mrs Roe, who had thought his mother a flighty, feckless woman and had not judged Kit himself, in his youth, to be worth much, raised her eyes to Heaven.

‘The pony-trap is waiting –
Major
Hardie.'

What a world, she thought, although gradually, grimly, she was becoming resigned to it, where all three of her young gentlemen, had they lived, would have been obliged to salute Sally Hardie's son.

The journey in every way had been a success. They had put into it all they had intended and got out of it everything they had desired. A rare achievement, one of life's bonuses which didnot come readily to hand and for which – knowing such bonuses to be in short supply – they were properly grateful. And returning to Faxby, it did not surprise them to see the Crown still standing, nor did it interest them quite so much as it would once have done. They had other concerns now. They were, imperceptibly but surely, not quite the same people who had left Faxby three mornings ago and so, walking back into the full flood of a chaotic Friday night, it took them a moment to register at any significant level what Mr Clarence and Mrs Tarrant, then Gerard and a badly shaken, far-from-sober MacAllister all whispered to them.

The Swanfield engagement had been broken off.

And Toby Hartwell was dead.

Claire knew she would have to go to High Meadows. In common decency and humanity she could do no less than that. She also knew that Kit, who would never be a Major to Miriam, could not go with her. Who then? Dorothy perhaps to provide the safeguard she ought not to need – not now – against Benedict. Borrowing John David's old Talbot she drove to Faxby Park finding her mother more than ready to pay a visit of condolence, sorry for Toby of course who had always been very kind to her, but all agog at the rumours that were flying around all over Feathers'Teashop and every department of Taylor & Timms about Roger and Polly. And there seemed no doubt that Roger Timms'desertion of glorious, golden Polly for a brazen harlot, well over thirty they were saying, from the Crown, had moved Dorothy rather more than the lonely ending of Toby Hartwell early that morning on the road to – well, Dorothy could not say just where he had been heading.

Neither – when they were shown into the drawing room at High Meadows – could Miriam. It was inexplicable. Dreadful. Sitting alone in the middle of a wide sofa, perching rather on the edge of the cushions like a child, her diminutive feet just touching the ground, she looked smaller than Claire had ever seen her, the rouge and powder she was supposed
never
to employ quite visible on her round, smooth cheeks, her need for a mask outweighing, today, her concern for propriety. Yet, however badly shaken, she was able to offer a choice of tea or sherry, perhaps a wafer of fruitcake, not only to Dorothy and Claire but to the elderly second cousins and aunts and ‘dear friends one has known forever'who were gathering like crows behind a storm, her brave smiles, the grave but steady tone of her voice, making it clear that the social niceties of bereavement would be obeyed.

Eunice was upstairs in what had been her girlhood bedroom, heavily sedated, a nurse in attendance. Polly, too, had collapsed at the tragic news and was, therefore, better off in bed, particularly as she, poor child – and here the elderly relatives pricked up their ears like so many inquisitive terriers – had suffered a setback of her own. Benedict was – well, at the
scene,
ten miles away, taking care of the appalling details, doing what had to be done in cases of accident where … Oh dear. It was by no means so straightforward as when one died in one's bed. And for a moment she sounded just a little aggrieved with Toby for driving that extravagant, highly-powered car of his off the road and over the edge of a disused quarry instead of ‘going'more conveniently at home, like Edward Lyall, of a heart attack.