Brunswick Gardens (37 page)

“Perhaps not,” she agreed. “But with that behind him, he wouldn’t even have a mediocre one.”

“Have you any reason for this belief?” he asked, uncertain what he expected her to say. He realized in some ways how little he knew her. Was she clutching at straws, being wildly brave or quite practical? He had been in the house for months, and he had known Ramsay for years. He had taken Clarice too much for granted. “If you have a fact …” he started, without thinking, moving closer to her. Then he realized that Mallory was her brother. Her loyalties could only be desperately tangled. He could see the complexity and the pain of it in her eyes.

“The way he behaves,” she said quickly. “He has quite changed since Unity’s death, which isn’t very intelligent. But then I don’t think Mallory is, in the ordinary living from day to day and dealing with people.” She looked down at her arms, huddled in the shawl. She was obviously cold. The sun had gone down behind the poplars. “He’s very good at books, like Papa,” she said as if to herself. “I can’t see it’s going to be the remotest use to him as a priest. But then there is a lot about the church that I can’t see. I’m sure she was making him do things.” She was obviously referring to Unity again. “She enjoyed it. I
could see it in her face. The less he liked whatever it was, the more satisfaction it gave her. I can understand it.” She was struggling to be fair. “He can be impossibly pompous at times, and so condescending one would want to scream. I would probably have made him squirm a bit myself if I’d known how to.”

The wind was sighing in the trees, and neither of them had heard Tryphena come through the withdrawing room door onto the stones. She was wearing black, and she looked sickly pale. She was obviously extremely angry.

“I believe you would very easily have made him squirm,” Tryphena said bitterly. “You’ve always been envious, because you don’t know what to do with yourself. Mallory has found something he cares about passionately, something to give his life to. I know it’s ridiculous, but it matters to him.” She came forward onto the terrace. “And so have I. You have nothing. All the education you insisted Papa give you, and you do nothing but wander around criticizing and getting in the way.”

“There’s very little I can do with it!” Clarice retaliated, turning to face her sister. “What can a woman do, except be a governess? There are generations of us, each teaching the next generation, and nobody doing anything with the knowledge except passing it on again. It’s like that stupid party game of Pass the Parcel. Nobody ever unwraps it and uses what is inside.”

“Then why don’t you fight for freedom, as Unity did?” Tryphena asked, stepping further onto the terrace. She had changed into a wool dress and was not cold. “Because you haven’t the courage!” she answered her own question. “You just want somebody else to do it all for you and hand it to you when the battle’s over. Just because you think you were as good as Mallory in the schoolroom—”

“I was! In fact, I was better.”

“No, you weren’t. You were just quicker.”

“I was better. My exam marks were higher than his.”

“It doesn’t matter, because the most you could ever be would
be a minister’s wife, if you could find a minister who would have you. But you don’t need any learning for that.” She dismissed it as worthless with a wave of her hand. “Only tact, a sweet smile and the ability to listen to everybody and look interested no matter how daft it is or how boring—and to never repeat anything anybody says to you. And you couldn’t do that if your life depended on it!” Tryphena’s look was withering. “No minister wants a wife who could write his sermons for him. And you can hardly teach theology—you aren’t supposed to be able to know about it. If you had any intestinal fortitude, you would fight for the right of women to be accepted as equals, on their own terms, instead of trying to blame Mallory for something that’s utterly ridiculous.” She was staring out at the dying light. “Unity would never have stooped to blackmailing anybody. That just shows how little you know of her.”

“It shows how little one of us knows of her,” Clarice said pointedly. “Somebody fathered her child. If you knew her so very well, I assume you knew who it was?”

Tryphena’s face tightened, the lines hardening. If the color had still been in the light one would have seen her blush. “We didn’t discuss that sort of thing! Our conversations were on a much higher level. I don’t expect you to understand that.”

Clarice started to laugh, a slightly hysterical note creeping into it.

“You mean she didn’t tell you she seduced Mallory, and then blackmailed him, for fun,” she jeered. “That hardly surprises me. It wouldn’t fall in with your hero-worshipping idea of her, would it? That isn’t the stuff great women martyrs are made of. Let the side down rather hard—it’s even a trifle grubby. When it comes down to it—”

“You are disgusting!” Tryphena said between her teeth. “You will blame anyone but your precious Papa. You’ve always been his favorite, and you hate Mallory because you think he betrayed Papa by joining the Church of Rome.” She gave a sharp little laugh. “It threw back all his love in his face. It
showed up how weak his own faith really is, that he couldn’t even convince his own son, let alone a whole flock of his congregation. You can’t stand the truth! So you’ll even try to get our brother hanged rather than face it. You’ve never forgiven him because you think he had the chances you should have had and you could have used them so much better. You would never have disappointed Papa. It’s easy enough to think that when you didn’t have to live up to it and actually do anything!”

Clarice bit her lip, and Dominic could see that she kept her composure only with the greatest difficulty, and perhaps for the first moment she was too shocked to find words. Such rage was almost like a physical blow.

Dominic himself was shaking, as if he too had been attacked. He intervened without thinking first. His argument had nothing to do with reason or morality, simply outrage and a passion to protect. He turned on Tryphena.

“Whatever happened in the schoolroom has nothing to do with Unity! Whoever got her with child, it wasn’t Clarice. You are just furious because you thought she told you everything, and obviously she didn’t. There was something absolutely fundamental she omitted.” He was aware as he spoke that he was approaching extremely dangerous territory, but he rushed in anyway. “You feel left out because she didn’t trust you enough to tell you, so you are trying to blame everyone else.”

Tryphena looked at him with eyes blazing. “Not everyone!” she said very pointedly. “I knew her better than to imagine she would blackmail anyone. She wouldn’t stoop so low. None of you had anything she wanted. She despised you! She wouldn’t have … have soiled herself!”

“Of course,” Clarice said scathingly. “The Second Coming. Another Immaculate Conception? But if you’d read a little more theology, if you were as good a student as Mal, let alone as I was, you’d know the Lord is coming down out of the heavens next time, not being born again. Even to Unity Bellwood!”

“Don’t be ridiculous!” Tryphena snapped. “And blasphemous!
You may have studied theology, but you haven’t the faintest understanding of ethics.”

“And you haven’t of love!” Clarice retorted. “All you know is hysteria and self-indulgence and—and obsession.”

“Whom did you ever love?” Tryphena laughed, her voice rising out of control. “Unity knew what love was, and passion and betrayal, and sacrifice! She loved more in her life, cut off as it was, than you’ll ever know. You’re only half alive. You’re pathetic, full of envy. I despise you.”

“You despise everyone,” Clarice pointed out, catching at her shawl as the wind tugged it. Her hair was coming undone. “Your whole philosophy is based on the fact that you imagine you are better than anyone else. I can imagine how Unity hated being with child—to a mere mortal man. She probably threw herself downstairs hoping to lose it.”

Tryphena whirled around, eyes wide open, and slapped Clarice so hard across the face she knocked her off balance, made her stumble against Dominic.

“You evil woman!” Tryphena said. “You despicable creature! You’d say anything, wouldn’t you, to protect someone you love, whatever he’s done? You have no honor, no truth. Haven’t you asked yourself where Papa found your precious Dominic?” She waved her hand in his direction but without looking at him. “What was he doing there? Why would a man his age suddenly want to join the church and become a minister, eh? What has he done that is so terrible he wants to spend the rest of his life in penance? Look at him!” She jabbed her finger towards Dominic again. “Look at his face. Do you think he really gave up women and pleasure? Well, do you? It’s time you looked at the world as it is, Clarice, and not as your theological studies told you!”

Dominic could feel himself shivering, the fear icelike inside him. What had Unity told Tryphena? What would Clarice believe of him? And far worse in its real and terrible danger, what would Pitt learn? He could not keep the delusion anymore that
Pitt would not at least find a part of him only too glad to be able to blame Dominic. He had never truly forgotten Charlotte’s early romantic dreams about him, though dreams were all they had been.

He wanted to fight back, but how could he? Where were the weapons?

Tryphena began to laugh, her voice high with hysteria.

“That’s why you are an atheist,” Clarice said quite calmly, cutting across the laughter. “You don’t like people, and you don’t believe that they can change and put the old things away. You don’t really believe in hope. You don’t understand it. I have no idea where Papa found Dominic or what he was doing, and I don’t care. All I care about is what he is like now. If his change was enough for Papa, it is enough for me. I don’t need to know about it. It is none of my business. Somebody got Unity with child—somebody in the last three months. About the only places she went outside here were the library or the concert hall or those dreadful meetings about politics. And you went to all of those. So it is almost certainly someone in this house. You knew Unity. Who do you think it was?”

Tryphena stared back at her, her eyes suddenly filled with tears. She was utterly alone again, the rage gone, swallowed up in loss. Anger did not drive the emptiness away for long, and when the anger evaporated she was left with even less than before.

“I’m sorry,” Clarice said very quietly, taking a step closer. “I said it was Mallory only because some kind of certainty is better than tormenting ourselves from one fear to another. I think he is the most likely. And if you wish to know what I think actually happened, I think it was an accident. I expect they quarreled and it ran away with them, and now Mallory is terrified to admit it.”

Tryphena sniffed, her eyes red-rimmed. “But I heard her call out ‘No, no! Reverend!’ ” She gulped.

Dominic passed her a handkerchief, and she took it without looking at him.

“She was calling for help,” Clarice said decisively.

Tryphena blinked. She gave a tiny shrug, more a gesture of pain than acceptance, and turned and left without glancing at Dominic.

“I’m sorry.” Clarice looked at Dominic. “I don’t suppose she meant most of it. Don’t—don’t think about it. If you don’t mind, I think I shall go up and see Papa.” And without waiting for an answer, she went through the withdrawing room door also.

Dominic stepped off the terrace and walked slowly across the grass in the growing darkness. The dew was heavy and soaked his shoes, and at the edges where the lawn had not yet been mown, it caught the bottoms of his trousers as well. He was barely aware of it. He should not be surprised at the sudden flash of temper tearing the skin off old wounds. Fear did that. It exposed all sorts of ugly emotions which might otherwise have lain unknown all life long. It showed resentments no one wanted to own. It brought to the tongue thoughts that in wiser or kinder times would have been suppressed and anyway were only partially true, born of his own fear and need as much as any truth.

There were things better not known.

He had not realized how hurt Tryphena was, how isolated she felt herself to be, how alone now that Unity had gone. Clarice had seen it. She was frightened, too, for her father and for Mallory, but she was kinder. She struck to defend, not to hurt for any pleasure in it. And she had certainly defended him. He had not expected her to. It gave him a sharp realization of pleasure that she should wish to.

He looked up as the clouds parted and a pale, three-quarter moon made him realize how dark it was. He could only just see the grass behind him, and the branches were black against the sky, the house a silhouette, the color gone.

Clarice surprised him. But then thinking back on the time he
had known her, he had very seldom been able to predict what she was going to say or do. Her sense of the ridiculous was alarming. She would make outrageous remarks, laugh at embarrassing things, appalling things, see humor where no one else did.

He remembered individual instances, wincing at some of them, standing in the gathering darkness unaware that he was smiling. Once or twice he even laughed aloud. They were excruciating. Absurd. But when he thought of them, none he recalled had been made simply to draw attention to herself or to make herself seem superior. Certainly they were not always kind; if she thought someone a hypocrite, she exposed him without mercy. Laughter could destroy as well as heal.

He put his hands in his pockets and turned and walked back towards the house and the lights across the terrace. He went upstairs to his own room with the intention of studying. He preferred to be alone and it was the best excuse. However, when the door was closed and he picked up a book he found his eyes did not focus on the page. He was thinking about Mallory, and the more he turned over in his mind what Clarice had said, the more did it seem the likely answer. He knew he himself was not the father of Unity’s child, and he could not believe it was Ramsay. It was not that he imagined Ramsay to be too ascetic or too self-disciplined ever to feel the hungers for physical comfort, or that Unity could not possibly have tempted him. He believed that if Ramsay had yielded to such a thing, he would have felt so different afterwards that Dominic at least would have noticed. And frankly, he thought Unity would have been different also. The constant need to attain small victories over Ramsay would not have remained so sharp. She would have proved his vulnerability to both of them. It would never need testing again to that degree.