Dorothy Eden (29 page)

‘You’re telling me that you’ve been conducting a correspondence with that drunken Irishman all this time!’

‘Yes. I have.’

If he had not been so outraged, Gilbert would have noticed how well she looked, with her eyes flashing, and her head high. But all he wanted to do was to slap her face hard, making the mark of his palm on her cheek. He had to clench his hands.

‘Eugenia, you’re not in love with him. That’s impossible. You had a flirtation. But that’s more than a year ago.’

‘How long is a year?’

‘Long enough,’ he shouted. ‘You’ve had my child in that time. Are you mad?’

‘Your child died,’ she said. ‘And I’m not mad.’

‘Then what? Have you an obsession for living in letters? You wrote enough to me once upon a time. Don’t you remember?’

‘I remember.’

‘Then didn’t I live up to your dreams? Do you think your drunken Irishman would live up to them if you had him falling into your bed every night? Do you?’

She winced. Suddenly she covered her face with her hands. Gilbert pulled them away, making her look at him.

‘Well, drunk or sober, I intend to come to your bed tonight. I’ve had enough of this farce. Being patient because I thought you were grieving for the baby, and all the time I find you writing sentimental rubbish to another man! Is that a fair way to behave? Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?’

‘You’re being horrible,’ she whispered.

Abruptly he vented his anger on her desk, kicking at it until the delicate wood splintered. When Eugenia gave a cry of pain, he said furiously,

‘I’d like to knock it to pieces! You sit here all the day living in your damned dream. Wake up, for God’s sake! That black Irishman had no substance even when he was with you. You both only lived in the past. I’ve listened to you. Mourning for Irish rain and English mist and snowdrops and God knows what. Let me tell you something. If you went back to your beloved English mists you’d hate them. You’d fret for the sun. You think you have too much of it, but wait until you lose it. You’ll find you can’t live without it.’

‘No, it’s the other way,’ Eugenia cried. ‘I can’t live with it. It’s burning me up!’

‘Why are you two making such a lot of noise?’ came Mrs Ashburton’s querulous voice from the doorway. ‘You’ve ruined my nap. Are you quarrelling? I declare to goodness!’ Her eyes protruded with surprise, as she saw their stiff hostility. ‘I don’t suppose you want to listen to an old woman’s advice, but if you do I can tell you the best place to make up a quarrel. And high time, too, if I may say so.’

‘You may not say so,’ Eugenia said icily. With deliberation she took the piece of notepaper Gilbert had been holding, tore it to shreds, then, with the same deliberation, lifted up her skirts and walked from the room. She went straight upstairs. A little later there came the distant but distinct bang of her bedroom door.

‘I declare to goodness,’ said Mrs Ashburton again, ‘it’s time that young woman had another baby.’

‘And so she shall,’ Gilbert promised.

But no one could make love through a locked door. And it seemed that Eugenia had no intention of opening it.

Her voice was far-off, chilly with distaste.

‘I would like to be alone. It would be a good thing if you could refrain from waking the whole house.’

‘Eugenia! Damn you!’

Gilbert had thought he had lost his temper pretty thoroughly when he had nearly kicked her writing desk to pieces, but this was worse. He never remembered being in such a rage. He stamped down the stairs, and out of the house. At the stables he shouted until someone came running. It was young Jem McDougal.

‘Can you saddle a horse in the dark? Then give me a hand.’

‘Yes, sir. Is there trouble, sir?’

‘None of your damned business. Keep your mouth shut.’

He leapt on the saddled horse and rode to Parramatta, galloping all the way. At the first hotel he came to he dismounted, strode in and ordered rum.

The barkeeper recognized him.

‘Mr Massingham! I heard as you never drank anything but your wines.’

‘Then you heard wrongly.’

There had been occasions in the past, before Eugenia had come to Australia, when Gilbert had looked for and found a woman in one of these small shabby places. The two of them had wandered down to the river and lain on the hard dry earth, and it had been good, swift, relieving, temporary. He was telling himself, as he drank the now unaccustomed fiery rum, that it could be good again. It would ease the hot anger and resentment that throbbed through the whole of his body. He had been faithful to one woman for three whole years, and she a pretty cool woman, too, who at the best of times had done no more than tolerate him.

Now she had had the effrontery to lock him out of his own bedroom, and yet here he was, brooding over his drink, realizing that he no longer had any taste for a blowsy barmaid. He must have become addicted to his wife’s fastidious elegance.

But surely not to chastity!

Even the drink, fuddling his brain and relaxing his knotted nerves, couldn’t make him accept this incredible fact.

Nevertheless, before midnight he was on his horse and riding home. It was a still soft night, the warmth of the early summer in the air. The ride cooled his brain slightly, but still left him tense and restless, his mind full of images of soft breasts and slender legs. Hair spread over a white pillow, lips seeking. Damn it, damn it, damn it!

And there, as he rode slowly up the drive towards the house, was one of his images in reality. Surely that white form walking in the garden was Eugenia.

Eugenia, anxious, and looking for him?

He sprang off the horse, dropped the bridle over the gatepost, and walked across the lawn a little unsteadily, the rum getting at his legs.

The figure had moved behind the bushes and disappeared. No, there it was going softly, along the verandah in the shadow.

‘Wait!’ Gilbert hissed, and the figure abruptly stopped. He saw the pale blur of the back-turned face.

Someone in a long wrap, her long blonde hair falling over her shoulders.

‘It was warm. I couldn’t sleep,’ whispered Molly Jarvis.

‘Neither could I,’ said he.

They stood absolutely still, a few paces separating them.

‘I heard you riding off,’ Molly said.

‘And that was why you couldn’t sleep.’ It was a statement, not a question.

‘No. No, I was hot. It’s going to be an early summer.’

Gilbert made one quick instinctive inevitable movement.

‘It’s summer now,’ he said, holding her warm soft ample body in his arms, seeking for her lips among her thick falling hair.

‘Your room?’ he said a little later. ‘We can’t stay here.’

‘Rosie!’ she protested.

‘She won’t wake.’

He thought dazedly that if she had let go his hand he might have been able to come to his senses. But their fingers were locked together, hers as tight as his. He could hear her fast breathing.

The trench doors to the little room at the end of the verandah were open. A small cautious part of his brain registered that the next room was the dairy. They would not be overheard.

It only remained for them to tear off their clothes, he his shirt and trousers, she her loose wrap and nightgown which she let fall to her feet.

And it seemed as if he had never been with a woman before. It was fresh and amazing and miraculous and he had forgotten how triumphant it was to hear that female cry of pleasure.

Afterwards she was silent for so long that he thought she must have fallen asleep.

‘Molly!’

‘Yes, love.’

‘I’ve always wanted you. I tried not to believe it.’

‘And I the same,’ she said simply. ‘What are we going to do?’

‘Love each other.’

She moved her head.

‘Stop doing that with your fingers in my hair. It makes me daft. I mean, what about the mistress?’

‘She has locked me out tonight. I expect you knew.’

‘I heard something. I feared.’

‘You feared right.’

‘I can’t be disloyal to her in her own house.’

‘Too late,’ he said, without irony.

He kissed her forehead, the tip of her nose, her throat. His head moved down towards her breast. She could not prevent a sigh of pleasure.

‘We must talk, love.’

‘Not now. We’ll wake the baby. You said so yourself.’

She gave a little gurgle of amusement, not denying it.

‘Tomorrow she can be moved to another room,’ Gilbert said. ‘She’s big enough. Kit sleeps alone.’

‘Tomorrow? But, sir—’

‘Shut up with your sirs. You’re a beautiful woman, Molly. You’re as starved as I am.’

She nodded in simple acquiescence.

‘Eugenia—I love Eugenia. But she doesn’t starve, Molly.’

‘Oh, sir! Oh, love.’

‘Talk later,’ he muttered, his lips coming down fiercely on hers.

E
UGENIA SURPRISED GILBERT BY
coming down to breakfast the next morning.

She was dressed in one of her immaculate muslins, her hair was arranged in glossy ringlets. She was pale, and had dark stains beneath her eyes, suggesting a sleepless night. But her manner was composed and gentle. She was perfectly in control of herself again, even when she began a difficult but charmingly humble apology.

‘Gilbert, I lost my temper and behaved very badly last night. It was wrong of me to lock the bedroom door. I promise never to do so again.’

He looked at her, not speaking, his own feelings a mixture of guilt and elation. Both of them! he was thinking irrepressibly.

‘And I also promise,’ a look of pain was fleetingly in her eyes, ‘not to write any more letters to Mr O’Connor, since this displeases you. Except a short one of explanation, of course. You must permit me that.’

When he still didn’t speak, she said in alarm, ‘Gilbert, you are going to forgive me, aren’t you?’

The faint imperiousness in her voice amused and pleased him. He wanted an amenable but not a servile wife.

‘I had good reason to be displeased,’ he said. ‘Love letters to another man.’

‘But only letters,’ she pleaded.

‘I should hope so.’ His voice was gruff, his own guilt troubling him. But only slightly, for guilt seemed no part of last night’s love-making, rich and inevitable as it had been.

‘Are you doing this from what you conceive to be your duty?’ he asked.

‘Naturally. What else? If we are to live all our lives together we must make up quarrels. You told me that I was living in a dream, and I realize that this was true.’

‘You must have done quite a lot of thinking in the night.’

‘Yes. I heard you come home.’

He looked at her sharply.

‘But I didn’t hear you come upstairs.’

‘I slept on the sofa.’ He had not intended to remind her of another sleeper on that sofa, but his chance explanation was fortuitous, for she winced, and said no more.

Then, by another chance, Molly Jarvis came in carrying a coffee jug. She hesitated when she saw Eugenia. She must have expected Gilbert to be breakfasting alone, as usual, and had not been able to resist the chance of words with him.

They would have to be clever about that sort of thing, he thought, with the ruthless logic the circumstances required.

But the rest?

The contrasting images of the two women were printed on his mind, his wife cool, elegant, graceful even in her humility, and the big-bosomed quietly moving Molly with her smooth cheeks and downcast eyes.

There they were, the vintage and the
vin ordinaire.
Each, he realized, an absolutely essential part of his vineyard and his life.

In a stabbing moment of perception he knew that he could part with neither.

Without intending it to be, his voice was sharp.

‘Where’s Ellen, Mrs Jarvis? Why are you waiting on table?’

She didn’t raise her eyes. She put the coffee pot in front of Eugenia, saying quietly, ‘Ellen is giving Master Kit his breakfast. He slept late this morning. Will that be all, ma’am?’

‘Yes, thank you, Mrs Jarvis. There’s nothing wrong with Kit, is there?’

‘No, ma’am, he’s perfectly well.’

‘I’ll come up to the nursery presently. Gilbert, we must begin to think of lessons for Kit. He’s so lively, he must have something serious to occupy his brain.’

Mrs Jarvis had withdrawn, and Gilbert was thinking irresistibly of the tumbled bed in her room and the smell of honeysuckle coming in from the verandah.

‘Gilbert!’

‘Yes, my love? Oh, Kit? He’s a little young for a governess, isn’t he? But do what you please. And why talk of this now?’

‘To make conversation,’ she said, and that was the only time that there was a hint of despair in her voice. ‘I don’t care for the servants to know that we have quarrelled.’

‘You’re perfectly right, as always.’ He stood up. ‘I’ll send in a carpenter to mend your desk. I’m sorry about the damage.’

Eugenia abruptly bent her head. He was afraid she was hiding tears. He was embarrassed. The logical thing would have been to kiss and embrace her, but his mind was too full of the memory of another woman in his arms. He wanted to leave her, cool and dignified, on her pedestal for a little while.

With immense care and discretion it should not be impossible to make two women happy. Or content, at least, and who could reasonably hope for more than contentment?

He dropped a swift kiss on the bowed neck. Sanity, today, lay in his vineyard. Yesterday he had noticed signs of furry caterpillar on the Malaga vines. He would want them gone over leaf by leaf. The day looked promising, fine and sunny.

He had given enough time to women and their problems for the moment. He walked out, whistling, crossing the courtyard outside the kitchen without turning his head.

Eugenia, left alone, bit her lips furiously. What had she expected? The scene had gone off very well, hadn’t it? Gilbert had been generous—though not over-generous—in forgiving her. Anything more would have been false to a man of his pride. False to a woman like her, too, if she had admitted that after locking her door last night she had suddenly and most inexplicably wanted him to break it down.

She had crouched against it, feeling strange shivers of fearful delight go over her. He had looked magnificent in his rage. When he had kicked her desk a violent pain had clenched her stomach. And when he had ceased to pound on her door she had sat for hours in the dark telling herself that violence was horrible. There must never be such a scene again.