Season of Light (18 page)

‘Saw it myself,’ continued Shackleford, watching Asa, ‘the one time I visited my father’s plantations. Abject fear. Not the blacks, no, though they had cause enough. It was us, the British. What we feared was rebellion. So we were brutal.’

‘Same with animals, see,’ said the squire. ‘Vicious when they’re afraid. Never find yourself cornered in a stable with a frightened horse.’

Fortunately Shackleford had the tact to depart immediately after the meal, although he was full of apologies for breaking up the party. As he drew on his gloves in the hall, he and Asa were alone for a moment. ‘Miss Ardleigh, I am well aware of what you think of me but I’m not seeking to hound or torment you. All I ask is your understanding.’

‘I understand you very well, Mr Shackleford.’

‘Not entirely, perhaps. Please give my compliments to Mrs Dean, for the dinner. And never forget that my first wish, Miss Ardleigh, is that we might be friends.’

His horse had been brought to the gate and a couple of village women watched as he mounted and rode away. Madame stood at the bottom of the stairs, her face contorted into sharp angles and hollows as she pleaded a headache.

The squire was still at his place in the dining room. Asa went in and closed the door, sat beside him and drew the decanter close, as if to study the facets cut into the crystal.

‘So that was Shackleford,’ said her father. ‘The one all the fuss was about. Seems amiable enough, I suppose, though I can’t see him running an estate. Doesn’t know the first thing about animals or land, I’d say. He’s very taken with you, Asa. What d’you think of him, eh?’

‘I visited Mrs Dacre in Chichester Gaol this morning,’ she said.

He looked surly and took a deep swig of wine.

‘She is with child but I expect you already knew that. What are you going to do, Father?’

‘I? What should
I
do?’

‘Good God, it is your duty. Is that so difficult? I know that the child is yours.’

He pushed his glass so that it struck the decanter, scraped back his chair and made for the door, but Asa got there ahead of him and clung to the handle. ‘If you do nothing that woman will hang. They’ll be baying for her blood. You have to act on her behalf. Get her a lawyer.’

‘What is all this? I will not be ordered about by women or held to ransom by a sluttish thief and I will not have my own daughter talking to me in this way.’

‘We must face up to what has happened, Father. I don’t understand why you are allowing her to be punished. I believe she was fond of you.’

Asa knew him so well that she could have numbered the moles on his hand but she had never pushed him so far. His bloodshot eyes were piteous. ‘You will persist in probing what you cannot understand. We had an agreement, she and I. She promised me there was no danger of a child. Good God, Asa, you have no idea what passes between a man and a woman.’

Asa felt her self-control slip another notch as she recalled that narrow bed behind a painted screen, whispered avowals:
I have kept you safe … we will be married
…

‘You must claim the child. We must pay for its upkeep.’

‘It will do the woman no good. The tailor’s dead and she as good as killed him. She lied to me and told me Dacre would not care what she did one way or another. Then he went and hanged himself.’

‘You could get her released, I’m sure, if you tried.’

‘It’s the law, Asa. Even I can’t go against the law. Where would we be if I could? Do you want us to become like the French, dammit? Besides I have no money to pay for bail or the child, let alone a lawyer. Now if you were to marry Shackleford …’ He shot her a wily look.

‘There’s no point now in Georgina trying to marry me off to Shackleford, since our name is tarnished. You have fathered another infant – doubtless not the first since Mother died – oh, don’t look at me like that, Father, I know it’s true – and it won’t even have a name. Its mother is in prison and its father is refusing to own it.’

Flinging himself into the nearest chair, he dragged off his wig, ran his fingers through his hair and looked at his daughter pleadingly. ‘I’ve said I have no money.’

‘Then sell things. Sell horses. Sell a saddle. Sell your land, any that isn’t entailed. But don’t sell me.’ Seizing him by the lapels of his jacket she shouted: ‘You love me too much for that. Surely you wouldn’t want to sacrifice me?’

As he took her by the shoulders and tried to quieten her, he was weeping too. It was the most dreadful moment, to see tears seeping down his cheeks.

‘Father, you have to act. You have to save us.’

But he fell back and covered his face. ‘You’ll have to forgive your old pa. It’s because of your mother dying like that. I never could bring myself to take another wife.’ He fumbled for his pocket watch, a wedding present from Asa’s mother, so worn that the etching of their entwined initials on the silver cover was all but gone.

‘That’s just an excuse, Father. However sad and lonely you are without Mother, it’s no reason to treat the tailor’s wife like this.’

‘Sad and lonely. That’s how it’s been, Asa.’

‘Just do the right thing, Father, please.’

‘The right thing. Ah, now, if only I were your Mr Lambert, how straightforward I would find it, to do the right thing.’

Asa left the room and went to the parlour. Though her hand reached for the key to the drawer containing Didier’s letters she didn’t have the heart to seek her usual comfort. Instead she climbed the stairs and began faltering preparations for bed. She had expected Madame to be asleep, but as she brushed her hair there was a knock and her companion, in a trailing nightgown, slipped inside and closed the door. ‘I have brought you a tisane. You should drink it. You need to calm yourself.’

This display of softness was so unexpected that Asa wept again while Madame stood behind her, studying their two faces in the glass. After a moment she reached out both hands, lifted Asa’s hair and dropped it behind her shoulders so that she could rub her temples with her fingertips.

Turning back the sheet, Madame urged Asa to lie down. ‘I will sit here beside the pillow and keep you company for a while.’

‘You are so kind,’ said Asa.

‘Sometimes we all need kindness. I have a true example of loving kindness always in my heart. The one I loved, my dear brother, he was a kind man.’

‘I wish I had known him.’

‘All his life Gabriel cared nothing for himself. We used to argue about it because I thought he could have been a great statesman or revolutionary. Instead he chose to serve the poor.’

All but one candle was snuffed out. Asa was soothed by Madame’s gentle voice, the herbal tang of the tea. Madame held Asa’s arm by the wrist and elbow and pressed it to her breast so that through the softness of muslin Asa felt the beating of her heart.

‘Even when he was a priest,’ Madame continued, ‘his choices seemed perverse. He chose not the cathedral or the church frequented by nobles, but a village parish, where few people could read or understand his fine sermons. I used to tell him he was crushing his own nature, choosing the most difficult path – that village where he hardly knew what was going on in the world and where his parishioners didn’t care so much for his words as for the next meal. But Gabriel laughed at me. I see it always in my mind’s eye, that boyish smile of his. He said it didn’t matter where he lived or what he did, only that he should serve God and love.’

‘Do you have a portrait of him, Madame?’

‘I do not.’ Pause. ‘He would not allow a picture. He had no time.’

‘From memory. Perhaps you would sketch him? I should like to see his face.’

‘Perhaps. One day.’ Madame took a fan from her pocket and flicked it open. ‘You will sleep now.’ But then, as the air began to stir above Asa’s forehead, she heard Madame whisper: ‘My God, how that man loves you.’

‘Shackleford?’

‘He came because he could not keep away. His eyes never leave your face. He is a man in torment. And yet you will not see.’

Asa’s eyelids were heavy and as she fell asleep she was conscious of a myriad-coloured thing wafting back and forth, a soft breeze on her cheek and neck, and those impenetrable black eyes.

Next morning Asa rode to Littlehampton to visit Caroline Lambert. Most unusually Madame de Rusigneux said she would stay at Ardleigh and paint. While conscious of the blessed relief of a journey in the sole company of a groom, Asa’s thoughts strayed back to Ardleigh Manor and the card table in the parlour at which Madame sat. The previous night, as Asa fell asleep beneath the soft sway of air, she had felt loved like a daughter. And this morning there had been a hint of wistfulness in Madame’s eyes as she said: ‘You will have much to say to Mademoiselle Lambert. There is not a place therefore for a stranger such as me.’

Asa was greeted with joy in Littlehampton. Caroline’s eyes were a greenish grey, as serene as a saint’s in an Italian painting. She wore a faded rose-coloured gown and her fingertips were purple with cold. As she served tea (fresh leaves that would be dried and reused when there were no visitors) Mr Lambert reached for the open book on his desk. His hand, on which the veins were as prominent and thick as the bones beneath, was palsied so that he had to rest the volume on his lap to steady it. ‘I have been rereading Tom Paine, Thomasina, because I want to understand why everyone is so excited about him all of a sudden. Why the marches through London and the demonstrations against him?’

‘Surely it was Burke’s
Reflections on the French Revolution
that did all the damage,’ said Asa, roused by the prospect of rational discussion. ‘Even my sober brother-in-law, John Morton, is joining a political society to counter the revolutionary threat.’ The Lamberts’ cottage was working its customary magic; the appropriateness of every bit of furniture, each possession; the old teapot with its design of bluebells webbed by hairline cracks in the glaze, the threadbare chintz curtains. Books were covered reverentially in brown paper and the room smelt of ink and the sea and Mr Lambert, who emitted a faint odour of tobacco, though he hadn’t smoked for years. An ancient pipe was still upended in a little bowl on the mantel, a reminder, said Lambert, that he had nothing to yearn for.

‘I agree that Burke incites fear in people when he talks of the dangers of the mob and the horrors of revolution,’ said Caroline. ‘Ironic, don’t you think, that his own language should be so savage when it is of savagery that he accuses the French?’

‘And since the French killed their king, Burke appears to have been vindicated,’ said Lambert. ‘Of course, there has been far too much bloodshed and more will follow, I fear. Marat and his cohorts are ruthless in their determination to crush dissenting voices. The French have given those of us in England who would like to see changes to our own constitution a hard time. Did Caroline tell you that I received a visit from our local justice, warning me that if I don’t disband the Abolition Society I shall be arrested? Well, that is too much. Just because the French revolutionary government is in favour of abolishing slavery, it seems that here in England we must all condone the wretched practice.’

‘Will the French really outlaw slavery?’

‘They say they will and I believe they must. Very powerful people in the new Convention have pleaded for it; my friend Professor Paulin’s son, for example, and Brissot, for whom I’ve always had great respect, though I fear the pair of them don’t see eye to eye on other matters.’

Was it possible that neither father nor daughter noticed the quickening of Asa’s breath? ‘Have you heard from the professor recently, then?’ she asked.

‘Indeed I have. Not on the whole good news, I’m afraid. Paulin is at loggerheads with his firebrand son. In his last letter, my old friend wrote that he has become increasingly concerned about the factionalism among those who lead in Paris and fears that the Revolution may fall into the hands of zealots. They have reinstated the Revolutionary Tribunal because there is famine in the country, the war is failing and they fear counter-revolution. Paulin asked me not to write to him for the time being because anyone receiving letters from England is likely to be under suspicion.’

Guildford’s lamplit High Street, the exchange with the clerk in the post office, seeing Madame in the graveyard: at that moment Asa would have given her life not to have sent the letter to Didier. And now? Was the letter resting on the blotter of some interrogator? Had Didier Paulin been clapped in irons because of Asa’s moment of weakness, her selfish plea?

‘But the Paulins, all of them thus far are well?’ she asked, and was conscious of Caroline’s faint smile.

‘I believe so. Young Didier Paulin has been entrusted with a mission in northern France. His father disapproves of his son’s prominence because he thinks the French government is now too centred on Paris, and in any case he is against the war. He dare not say so to Didier, of course: things are so sensitive that a father cannot even risk arguing with his own son. The one encouraging thing is this business of abolition. Young Paulin seems prepared to stand firm, even though many of his friends show less enthusiasm.’

After tea Caroline suggested a walk; her father had work to do and they should leave him in peace. Once clear of the house, though, Caroline murmured that in fact she wanted him to rest. The sun was warm on their shoulders. In the harbour they were soon beyond the fishwives with their flashing knives and squirming infants, and striding along the west cliff. ‘I’m sorry that you didn’t bring your French companion,’ said Caroline. ‘We are longing to meet her. She seems to be an exceptional woman.’

‘Indeed she is. She has turned out to have such astonishing qualities that I am put to shame. She has a way about her, an understanding so acute that it’s as if she sees beneath the skin. She watches me – watches over me, even – but out of affection, I sometimes think, rather than duty.’

‘And what has she taught you?’

‘Nothing you would wish to learn unless you were to develop a sudden interest in the language of the fan or how to alight from a carriage when wearing a train. But the trouble is, Madame de Rusigneux misses nothing. We are very exposed at Ardleigh. Your lives here in Littlehampton would stand up to any kind of scrutiny but at Ardleigh we have far too many murky corners.’