Distant Choices (62 page)

‘A sweet little note, I expect,' said Kate, ‘telling him he needs a shoulder to cry on and, whatever he might think, she knows she can bear the weight.'

‘Let's not worry about that just yet,' suggested Oriel, taking a long drink to ease the parched effort of words.

Quentin smiled at her.

He had gone next to Dessborough, first to warn Francis of the accusation and then to dissuade him from going at once to see the husband he declared he had never wronged, and to champion the lady's innocence.

Laying down her plate and glass Kate put her hands together in a gesture of applause. ‘One expected no less of him.'

‘Quite so,' agreed Quentin.

There had then been a convenient train back to Hepplefield and a long wait at the station hotel although, during the strained hour before Mr Garron Keith would consent to see him, he had managed a few hurried words with Morag.

‘Quentin –' Oriel heard, with dismay, the break in her own voice. ‘How was she?'

‘Oh – not well. She looked quite ill, in fact, which I am sure you would expect. Luckily she understood my position as your lawyer and your friend, and was anxious – I think – just to know that you were safe. She and her sister had stayed up all night worrying themselves it seems into a dismal state about you. Missing you, I believe. But I feel it only fair and right to tell you that although Morag pleaded desperately with Susannah to return her letter and then quarrelled with her most bitterly when she would not, she still believes her assessment of your conduct to have been true. In her honest opinion, Oriel, she has not misjudged you. She has forgiven you. She has come to believe that you are worth forgiving. When her father came striding into the house last night with her letter in his hand, demanding an explanation, that – I am quite certain – is what she told him.'

‘I have to see her,' said Oriel without realizing she had spoken, both Quentin and Kate reaching out a hand to hold back if not her physical then at least her emotional need for flight, to rush to the girl who could have become, who had
almost
become, her child.

‘I'll come with you,' said Kate. ‘When we can.'

‘Later.' And there was no doubt at all in Quentin's voice. ‘Much later, I think, Oriel. Because her present loyalty, of course, is to her father. He needs her. You don't. And although she might well need you, I don't think she'll allow herself the indulgence.'

‘You rather like her, don't you, Quentin,' said Kate.

He nodded. ‘Yes. She'll be a strong woman one day, at this rate. And strong women please me.'

‘Good Heavens.' Kate's show of astonishment was no more than disguised amusement. ‘Then why on earth have you involved yourself so much with me and Dora Merton?'

‘If I write to her, Quentin,' said Oriel, not listening, ‘will you make sure she gets my letter?'

‘Of course. And having spent some time today with her father I understand why you think the postal service could hardly manage it.'

‘Quentin?' This was the moment she had been dreading.

‘Yes. Your husband.' She saw how perfectly he understood. ‘Not well, of course. One assumes he had spent the night in drink – a not unnatural refuge for a man with that kind of weight on his mind. And one could see how weight and whisky had combined in a most painful fashion. He bore it well, of course, neither alcohol nor infidelity being at all new to him – although the infidelity, one assumes, had always been on his part before. I will be as brief as I can, Oriel, which, in fact, presents small difficulty since he was in no mood for any detailed discussion. He accepted me simply as your legal adviser and, as such, made it abundantly clear that he has no intention of taking you back.'

‘Did she say,' enquired Kate, ‘that she wished to go?'

Raising his shoulders in slight exasperation, Quentin preferred, it seemed, to otherwise ignore her. ‘Sadly, Oriel, I failed to persuade him even to discuss the question of your guilt or innocence. He condemns you utterly, not only on the evidence of his daughter, who stood before him last night and confirmed, in no matter how heart-broken a manner, her belief in all she had written to Susannah, but on his own investigations. Thorough investigations, I believe. It may be that he set out to prove you innocent and only managed to find you more and more guilty instead.'

A great silence descended upon the room, an awareness in Oriel's mind of how dark it was, no moon outside the window, no lamps lit.

‘If you are thinking
I
might find you guilty,' said Kate, ‘– of making love to my husband, I mean – then please don't. And even if I did believe it, the only thing I'd feel entitled to do would be to congratulate him …'

‘Congratulations, dear Kate,' murmured Quentin, ‘are not in order.'

‘Ah well – just in case.'

‘Quite so. Your husband – Kate – tells me he spent ten days walking the Roman Wall, which I find easy enough to believe. Although
your
husband, Oriel – being barely acquainted with Francis – merely brushed it aside when I mentioned it. And, since he slept on the ground like a pilgrim – possibly imagining himself on the way to Mecca – one has no means of proving …'

‘I'd rather we didn't talk about Mecca,' said Kate, surprised at the pang it had evidently given her.

‘No,' said Oriel, ‘Garron couldn't believe it. He's had to sleep on the ground too many times himself because he couldn't afford a lodging. So he'd find it hard to see why a man should do it for pleasure.'

Again Quentin smiled at her. ‘Particularly a man with money to burn and an invitation to Lowther Castle.'

‘Yes. But will he leave it there …?'

‘Do you mean will he take action against Francis? Apparently not. I gather – from certain remarks of his I could hardly repeat to you – that he rather thinks men are entitled to take their sexual opportunities where they can find them. And having taken such opportunities himself – in the past, of course, with other men's wives, he sees no satisfaction in punishing Francis for doing the same. It's you he wants to punish, Oriel. It may be that he separated himself from you last night from fear of punishing you too much. But having done it he seems to consider it final. The only matters he was prepared to discuss with me were financial. He had already decided how much, and in what instalments, you are to be paid and refused to listen to any suggestions – for improvement, I must admit – of mine. You will have what he calls “enough” – but with very little to spare. My role is to be simply as go-between and he made it clear to what extent he would lose his temper should I try to exceed it. He has told me to find you a house, at a value he has specified, outside this area. He has also set a limit on the furniture you are to buy. Nor will he release the more valuable of your jewellery, including your mother's. To prevent you, I suppose, from selling it and thus managing to purchase something without his permission. I have the impression he rather wishes you to be poor. I am afraid he has the law on his side. As I expect you know.'

‘Yes, Quentin.'

Kate was less agreeable. ‘And is there nothing else you can do? Good Heavens, Quentin, did you go to Cambridge all those years just to learn about whose
side
the law is on? Didn't they teach you how to get round it?'

‘Kate dear,' but he was smiling at her. ‘One cannot get around the law, only around a man's determination – or need – to enforce it.
Your
husband's need – Kate – was to give you more money than he could, at the time, afford, and rather more than you required, when one remembers how often you frittered it away. Oriel's husband needs to expose her to a financial struggle and there is nothing I can do, as a lawyer, to prevent him. And, furthermore, should she find some means of earning money in the future he will be fully entitled to take her wages away from her, should he feel the need to do that.'

‘And Oriel's need?'

‘What need? She is his wife and her identity, in law, is identical to his. I can do nothing about it. If she had a child of her own body, I could not even arrange for her to see that child without her husband's permission, much less ensure her right to be consulted on any matters concerning its upbringing. A woman has no such rights. I don't make the law, I merely operate it. Do forgive me, Oriel. I am talking as if you were not here. I tend to seize any opportunity to show Kate what Francis could have done to her had he desired.'

‘Ah yes.' Kate smiled into her wine, reflectively, perhaps sadly, although it was not clear just where her sadness was directed. ‘So you do, Quentin. But Francis felt deeply sorry for me. I suppose he still does.'

‘Is that wrong of him?'

‘No – no. It proves the excellence of his heart – of his judgement. But what you don't know, Quentin – since neither do I – is whether I might have preferred him to come after me with a carving knife. As one rather feels Mr Garron Keith might like to do.'

‘Quite so,' he said, rather coldly.

‘
Quite
so, Quentin. So what is it you now advise Oriel to do?'

‘I presume she may stay here, for the present?'

Once again they were talking as if Oriel was not there. And, leaning her head on the back of her chair, half-closing her eyes, it seemed to her that indeed she had slipped a little aside, inwardly retreated, turned off the more enquiring sections of her brain the better to contemplate, the better, quite simply, to take in, to come to terms, to bear the full impact of all she had just heard. And she was tired now, weary to the marrow of her bones and the inner fibre of her heart with the burdens she already understood and would have to find a way – her own way, she rather thought – to carry.

Let them talk around her, for as long as they felt the need, her own need being to recover her damaged strength and get it all healed and improved and – hopefully – doubled at least, by tomorrow.

‘She can stay with me forever,' said Kate. ‘We all know that. What we don't know – at least Oriel and I don't – is exactly how much punishment one needs to take.'

‘From a husband? My dear – I know of no limit.'

‘And what of divorce, Quentin?'

‘Kate – for Heaven's sake – what of it?'

‘I am asking you. For my own information as well as my sister's.'

He raised his eyebrows. ‘Very well. The first thing one learns about divorce is that it is impossibly expensive. The second that it is – realistically if not legally – only available to men. The third, that the number of divorces granted rarely exceeds two a year. One begins by obtaining a Private Act of Parliament, if one can, followed by a suit in the Ecclesiastical Courts. If this goes well then the husband is next obliged to bring a case for damages against his wife's alleged lover – a lover being absolutely necessary. If guilt is again proved and damages granted then the husband has won the right to apply to the House of Lords for an Absolute Decree containing permission to remarry. But even if the Lords are convinced, they will do no more than send the case down to the House of Commons again, for their approval which, if granted, leaves the poor husband with nothing more to do than ask for Royal Consent.'

‘Dear God,' said Kate.

‘Indeed. And even if you – or Oriel – possessed the wealth and determination and all the friends in high places required to bring this about, I feel it only right to warn you that while a man needs to prove nothing more than adultery, a woman does not get off so lightly. Adultery in a husband, my dear ladies, has never been considered serious enough. Not serious at all, in certain circles. Therefore a wife needs something else to back it up. Extreme physical cruelty, for instance, by which I mean something rather worse than a few black eyes or broken teeth – something so painful that no woman could be suspected of having asked for it. You will follow my meaning.'

‘Do you think this right, Quentin?'

‘No,' he said. ‘In fact no one who actually thinks about it possibly could. Which does not mean, of course, that they would all be prepared to change it.'

‘So you are telling us we have no choice but to stay married?'

‘I am.'

Watching them from her increasing distance, Oriel was aware that they had had this conversation before, were having it now only for her sake, to instruct her without any effort on her part, with no need for her to ask questions, Kate asking them for her, Quentin supplying the smooth, sharp answers she most wished to know.

‘Thank you,' she said.

‘I beg your pardon,' they both spoke together and, getting to her feet, she held out a hand to each of them.

‘You know what I mean. You have been having an old conversation for my benefit, full of the things I need to be milling over and managing to live with. So, if you don't mind, I'd rather like to go to bed now. I have never felt quite so tired in my life.'

Kissing them both with careful affection she left them alone together to finish off the wine, smiling from the doorway to reassure them that she would survive the night.

‘She
is
tired,' said Kate.

‘Yes. And so am I. So perhaps I can recruit you now to the plan I have made …'

‘Quentin. A plan. Have you really?'

‘Of course.'

‘A good one?'

‘Certainly. With your co-operation.'

Refilling her glass, squatting now rather than sitting on the rug by the still blazing fire, she gave an enquiring shrug. ‘Of course. You have only to tell me …'

‘Very well. Her husband mentioned to me, in a manner indicating his wish that I should mention it to her, his firm intention of selling her house by Lake Ullswater.'

‘What a brute he is.'

‘Possibly. But – since he is hardly likely to handle the sale himself – it would be possible for me, through a series of agents
his
agent will not suspect, to buy it …'