Distant Choices (60 page)

She had brought him the most complex and personal crisis of her life, as she hoped – with a flicker she recognized as intensity – that he, in a like situation, would come to her. Two complex minds, two minds much given to self-protection, to personal caution, to emotional restraint, who, nevertheless, for years now, had been open to each other.

‘Tell me …' And, slowly, almost precisely, she told him every detail she could remember of betrayal and destruction, of Garron's blind, furious pain and what she feared it might still do, not just to him and to herself, but to Francis Ashington who was wholly innocent, and to Morag who must be floundering now so badly unaided in a nervous agony of guilt.

‘Fuelled,' he said, ‘by my sister, who has caused this. I'm sorry, Oriel.'

‘Yes. I know. But I suppose she truly believed me guilty of adultery. Do you, Quentin?'

‘Oriel,' he said softly. ‘It would not cause me to change my estimation of your real worth even if I did.'

‘Quentin …' She had been about to say how glad she was of his trust, how grateful, and then paused, knowing it to be inadequate.

‘There is no need,' he said with his brief, brisk smile, ‘to defend yourself in my eyes, Oriel. And it will give me the most undoubted pleasure to defend you in the eyes of others. Your husband has earned at least
my
gratitude by appointing me as your legal adviser. Although I can do nothing for some hours yet – not until tomorrow morning, I think, when those of us who know about it have slept on our knowledge, and those who don't are poised to hear it. You are reprieved until then.'

He gave her another glass of wine, the quietness of the sombre, immaculate, quite richly furnished room spreading itself into an oasis around her, its library odours of leather and tobacco, its landscape of dark browns and deep crimsons making no demands upon her rapidly strengthening nerves. The wine was dry and cold and fastidiously chosen, the fire in the polished hearth calculated most carefully to give neither too much nor too little warmth, the heavy mahogany desk, the carved chairs, the books, the expensively framed pictures of sedate Flemish ladies and exotic Latin courtesans all untouched by the hand, breath, or eye of any aunt or mother, his possessions all entirely free – like herself – of the untidy complexities of family life.

‘So this is where you live, Quentin.'

Naturally, she had never visited a bachelor apartment before, particularly one with a series of handsome housekeepers in residence who had caused such grief to the bachelor's mother. How ridiculous, it seemed now, sitting by his carved mahogany fireplace, her own virtue in ashes, her future certainties extending no further than the contents of the blue velvet bag in her cloak pocket, to have heeded such a prohibition, to have denied herself the rational comfort of this fire, the discreet warmth of this man who had won so awesome a reputation for coldness and yet who was so essentially, so thoroughly, like herself.

‘Yes, Oriel. This is where I live.'

‘Are you happy?'

‘No. I am ambitious. The two do not go much together.'

‘Then do you have what you want?'

‘No, Oriel. Something I wanted quite acutely has been denied to me. And as for the rest – well, I
am
ambitious. And wanting more, and then twice as much, is a natural condition of that.'

She smiled at him, easing her position in his deep, leather chair. ‘Well, since you are so very clever, Quentin – which
does
go with ambition – will you tell me why I am sitting here now, having a pleasant conversation, instead of screaming and shaking in my shoes and wondering how I am to hold up my head tomorrow? Or how – the week after – I shall even manage to eat?'

He leaned very slightly towards her. ‘Perhaps because you know you will manage.'

She nodded. Yes, somehow or other, in ways she could not at this moment even imagine, she would manage. As Evangeline had always done. How could it be otherwise now, when she could no longer afford the screen of respectability which her mother, by managing for her, had provided? Yes, Quentin was right. She may never be secure, or satisfied, rarely happy in this new phase of life so brutally thrust upon her. But she would manage.

‘Although,' he went on, ‘it seems only fair to warn you that you may not feel quite so much in the mood for pleasant conversation tomorrow.'

Where would she even be by then? He told her. ‘When you are ready, Oriel, I will take you just across the road to Kate. She will be very glad to have you. And it would be putting another hatchet in your wounded giant's hand, rather, if you stayed the night with me.'

Of course. She got up very quickly, finding herself close to Quentin who had risen at the same moment.

‘Have I troubled you, Oriel, by calling him a wounded giant?'

She shook her head.

‘Then why do I see tears in your eyes?'

They were, indeed, standing very close together, hemmed in by chairs and stools on one side, the fire on the other, a disgraced woman alone with a man well-known for his cool philandering, who saw no need to insult him by moving away.

‘Because a wounded giant is what he is,' she said. ‘And I don't somehow feel – just now – that I'm much of a healer.'

Nodding briskly he gave her a smile she was aware of greatly valuing, not of man to child, not of man to frail or flighty woman, not of man to a woman he plans to exploit or cherish, but of one logical, steady adult, so deeply familiar to another. ‘That is a useful attitude,' he said. ‘Try to maintain it a while longer.'

She slept the night in Kate's bed, believing sleep to be impossible yet sleeping – as Kate had warned her she might – so deeply that her waking mind was tranquil and empty until memory tore into it again, nailing her to Kate's extravagant pink silk sheets tucked around the narrow, rooming-house bed, while the shock receded. And then, after the shock and the trembling which succeeded it, she lay quite still, attempting, between bouts of panic and even sharper bouts of anguish, to acknowledge her new reality. And then, reaching nothing beyond the conclusion that no matter what that reality might be, her only real choice was to make the best of it, or not – bleak choice, perhaps, but exceedingly real, nonetheless – she got out of bed and sitting at Kate's untidy toilet table began to do up her hair; and then, her first effort failing to pass muster, did it again until it met her satisfaction.

She found Kate sitting on the hearthrug of her shabby rented parlour, wearing a vibrant but decidedly crumpled robe of black and orange striped satin with no evidence of anything underneath it, her hair hanging loose, a pile of newspapers on the floor beside her, a pen in her hand, a bottle of ink and a cup of strong coffee sitting side by side on the stained but conveniently wide fender.

‘Good morning, dear sister,' she said.

‘Good morning. You look exactly as poor Aunt Maud always said you would. Do you know that?'

It was perhaps a compliment. Certainly it was spoken with affection.

‘I know,' laughed Kate. ‘But have some coffee while you're thinking about what a ruin I am. It's over there on the sideboard with bread and boiled eggs and cold ham. Quentin found me a timid little woman who scuttles in every morning to “look after me”, and looks quite grateful every time I tell her she can scuttle out again. She's left some kind of meat and potato pie in the oven for luncheon. I'll accept your judgement as to when it's done. And she did mutter something about a rice pudding and not leaving it too long. You'll understand rice puddings too, I expect. Good. So have breakfast now. There's nothing wrong with feeling hungry and tragic both together. And we'll be lucky to see Quentin before midnight. He called in very early, while you were still asleep, to say he was going first to High Grange, probably to murder Susannah, and then on to Lydwick. And yes, in case you don't quite like to ask, I
did
receive him in this awful dressing-gown. We even had a pot of coffee together, which seemed to cause my poor housekeeper some pain. She kept looking at Quentin as if she wanted to save him from his evil ways – or mine …'

Walking over to the sideboard, filling a cup for herself and another for Kate, Oriel murmured, ‘How evil is that?' And, walking back to the hearth across a further scattering of newspapers and what looked like half-written letters, possibly unpaid bills, sat down, gave Kate her cup and, putting her feet on the fender beside the ink-bottle, began to sip her own.

‘This place is so untidy, Kate.'

‘Yes, isn't it.' Kate sounded as if she had been paid a compliment. ‘It was bare and puritanical as a workhouse when I came in. Two little bedrooms, this poky parlour, a kitchen that feels two inches wide and three long. A clerk from one of the Hepplefield factories lived here before me with his wife and four children. Lord knows how she kept it so clean, even when he lost his job and then fell ill with one of those awful coughs you hear all over Hepplefield. They got behind with their rent, it seems, the man died, and the landlord threw the woman out, with her children. Of course. My clutter tends to cover it over somewhat, I find.'

Feeling a slight trembling in her hands Oriel put her cup down on the floor among the jumble of papers, an act of domestic carelessness she had never performed before in her life.

‘Are you telling me – little sister – that I could be far worse off than I actually am?'

Kate's smile was one of sheer delight. ‘Oh yes – I am bullying you, Oriel. I'm saying “Don't cry because you have no shoes when I can show you plenty who have no feet” – which is what Maud used to say to me once upon a time. Boring nonsense, of course, because if it hurts, then it hurts. No matter what it is. And should it be worrying you, as it seemed to be last night, that you've been accused of adultery with
my
husband, then please don't worry
at all
on my account. Good Lord – what right have I to complain? And as for Francis – well – unless your Garron is thinking of shooting him – and I expect Quentin will manage to talk him out of that – there's no need to give a thought to
his
reputation. Because the very same people who'll surely condemn you to the social gallows for kissing him in your garden will just think him a lucky dog for getting the chance. They'll be congratulating him with one hand, love, while they're stringing you up with the other. But you must know that.'

She knew.

‘I'll just go and look at that rice pudding,' she calmly said.

And she was half way to the door, locating the kitchen by her sense of smell, her back to Kate, when Kate said, tonelessly, very much as a matter of course, ‘Let's say, shall we, Oriel, that anywhere I am is home to you – and vice versa? Which would make it a waste of time, rather, to wonder where the meal after this one is coming from. Or on which pillow one is next to lay one's head. Pillows and meals, my dear, we can always manage. Thank goodness, of course … Even though it does give us so much extra time to think about – well – so many other things. Just like men do.'

They ate the meat pie from plates on their knees like maid-servants gossiping around the fire, Kate having changed her exotic robe for a dark, English dress, but not the tone of her conversation, intending – it seemed to Oriel – to distract her from her present troubles until Quentin should arrive to tell her exactly how numerous and troublesome they might be.

‘No point in crying over spilled milk,' Kate announced, ‘until you know just how much has gone over. So listen, instead, while I tell you about my mother's pictures. I took two of them to Paris with me on my last trip, and what do you think? A little primitive, my art-dealer friends said, but well – yes, indeed –
promising
, certainly that. Possibly, giving the artist a year or two to develop of course, very promising indeed. And then – do you know – every one of those dealers approached me later, in strict privacy, and offered to buy them. I've rarely been so pleased about anything in my life. They thought
I
was the hopeful painter, of course, and although I can't imagine what my mother would have made of that, I was rather touched by it. She was an artist, you see, and not a madwoman, as Maud kept telling her. I only hope she knew. Although it strikes me she didn't. Maybe her passion for my father was just a wrong turning. She ought to have felt all that burning and boiling for her work – don't you see? – and couldn't, because “ladies” aren't supposed to get beyond pressing flowers and painting water-colour landscapes for the drawing-room. Poor mother. And the Kesslers would have been so proud of her.
That's
the real tragedy.'

‘Will you sell her pictures?'

‘Oh – one day, perhaps. Maybe when Maud and Letty are dead – which is actually very kind of me, since they'd be horribly upset by the portraits she did of them. I'll show you, when you're feeling better. In fact I'll give you the one of your mother. Yes – just think how appropriate that would be, if her work ever became valuable. The jealousy of my mother for your mother converted into a fortune for the daughter who surely wasn't to blame for it. You could sell it and buy yourself – well, whatever you want most.'

What, she wondered, did she want more than her cottage by Ullswater, which Garron would have sold to strangers long before the art world could be brought to recognize the talent of Eva Kessler? And to save herself from the draining of energy that too much grieving for her own quiet acre would cause her, she asked, very quickly, ‘Have you made up your mind to talk to Francis yet?'

Sitting once again on the floor, leaning her back against the shabby but nevertheless warm tiling of the fireplace, Kate smiled. ‘Yes, of course I've made up my mind to talk to him, Oriel. Not quite when, of course. And please don't bully me. Quentin does quite enough of that, forever telling me to think of Francis, and choosing not to believe me when I keep on telling
him
that that's just it. I am thinking of Francis. And that little girl as well. Perhaps I was an unfeeling monster to run off and leave her. Certainly I was unfeeling to entice that poor young fiancé of Dora Merton's into coming with me, since I gave him nothing to make his trip worthwhile. And Dora would have been quite kind to him, really. I might have been unfeeling never to have answered your letters. And when Francis went on sending me money, and I went on taking it without a word, he'd be entitled to think that unfeeling too. Well, I had reasons – excuses, if you like – which meant a whole complexity of things to me. Excuses I could live with. But where that little girl is concerned, my excuses desert me. She has a loving father and a peaceful home. Did you ever have that, Oriel? Did I? So I'd really be a monster, wouldn't I, to fly into her life – unless I had something to offer, beyond the sight of me flying out again, that is. One of my Kessler cousins once told me – after several bottles of wine, I must admit – that the best thing I can find to give my daughter may turn out to be my absence. In which case my absence she shall have. Is she a nice child?'