The Victory (57 page)

‘
Haworth!' she cried as she entered. 'Haworth, I am so glad
you are come!' He stood by the fire, his clothes shabby and
crumpled, his face drawn and weather-beaten. 'Where is he?
Have you a letter from him?’

She started across the room to him, and then stopped
halfway, puzzled by the atmosphere which only now
impinged on her. Wiske was looking at her with anxious eyes,
Haworth's expression held no gladness or welcome. Behind
her she heard Docwra come in and say, 'My lady —'

‘
What is it?' she asked, tilting her head, frowning at
Haworth. 'What's the matter? Why do you look at me like that?'

‘
Lucy,' he said, a world of reluctance in his voice. He put out a hand to her. 'It's bad news. I don't know quite how to
tell you.'

‘
Is
he hurt?' she asked, feeling her heart beating faster,
though the apprehension did not seem to belong to her, but to
someone else nearby. 'It's all right, you can tell me. How bad is it? Where is he?'

‘
Lucy, my dear.' He took a step towards her, and she
backed instinctively.

‘No,' she said.

‘
It was after the battle. There was a terrible storm. Our
ship ran on board his. He saved a young midshipman's life.'

‘No,' she said again. She could back no further now. There were people behind her, blocking her escape. Would nothing stop that inexorable voice?

‘
Lucy, I'm sorry. There was nothing anyone could do. He
died when we got to Gibraltar.’

His face, and Wiske's, were before her, horrible with pity.
She turned. Docwra was there, and Ollett, and Hicks,
clustered by the door, and beyond them, Parslow. Her eyes
met his, and he came forward. The others parted to let him
through, and he came close and laid his hand on her arm, and
as he touched her, she shuddered, and knew it was true. He helped her to a chair by the fire and sat her down, taking up his position beside her as she faced Haworth like a soldier facing execution.

‘Tell me,' she said.

BOOK THREE

The Anchor

For who, to dumb Forgetfulness a prey,

This pleasing anxious being e'er resigned,

Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day,

Nor cast one longing ling'ring look behind?

Thomas Grey:
Elegy written in a Country Churchyard

 
The night seemed endless. Lucy sat by the window in her
bedchamber, staring unseeingly into the dark street, until all
the sounds of to-ing and fro-ing, the carriages, the footsteps,
the last late revellers, had ceased, and the night was silent, but
for the chiming of the church clocks on the hours and the
quarters. Then, in the stillness, there was nothing to distract
her thoughts from the endless circle they prescribed.

It seemed an age ago that she had sat in the bright
drawing-room, listening while Haworth put an end forever to
all joy. The scene had been so calm — no great explosion or
outcry, only the small, quiet, deadly words, and then she had
got up to go away and try to understand them. Only Parslow
had come with her. She had seen out of the corners of her
mind the little silent exchange between him and Docwra as she walked out of the drawing-room. He knew she couldn't
have borne Docwra near her.

Parslow sat in a chair on the other side of the room, not
speaking, not moving except occasionally to get up and tend
the candles; and Lucy sat with her hands in her lap, and
struggled alone with pain and incomprehension. The dark
hours passed, the world turned slowly. Eventually the sun
would rise again, and a new day would begin, but Weston
would still be dead. Hardest of all hard things to understand
was that he would always be dead from now on.

The darkest hour. There was no sound anywhere, and the
silence was absolute, black and suffocating.

‘Parslow?'

‘Yes, my lady?' His voice came gentle out of the darkness to
reassure her. He had always been there, before Docwra,
before any of them.

‘What time is it?'

‘A little after four, my lady.'

‘
Dawn is still a long way off. I don't want dawn to come.'
She turned towards the pale glimmer of his face across the
room.
'I
know what you're thinking — it will come, whether
I
want it to or not. One has no choice in the important things.’

 
‘
No, my lady,' he agreed.

‘
That's why —' She paused, pursuing a thought. Was it a
great
sin, do you think?'

‘
Only you can tell that,' he said. His voice was unobtrusive,
sliding in amongst her thoughts like one of them.

The Church would say it was. But
I
can't regret it, you
see. Not any of it.' She turned again to the window. She felt
as though she were convalescent from a long illness, restless
and weary and parched.
'I
don't want day to come.' Here in
the dark there was a brief respite. At the end of it, she would
have to know and accept.

Later she said, 'He was everything to me.'

‘He knew that.'

‘Yes. We didn't waste anything. I'm glad of that.’

An hour passed. The candle nearest her guttered and sank
with
a
hot smell, and went out, and she saw then that there
was a greyness in the sky. Her time was running out.

Across the room, Parslow had fallen asleep, his chin sunk
on his chest, his large, leathery hands resting on the frail,
carved arms of the little gilt boudoir chair. She looked at him
with enormous, weary affection, and then got up, moving
quietly so as not to wake him, across the room to her writing
desk.

Lying on it was the letter Haworth had brought to her, the
letter Weston had begun two days before the battle, when the
enemy first began
to
come out of harbour. She sat at the desk
and read it again, slowly, while the faint daylight broadened
outside.

Then she opened a drawer and brought out a small, ormolu
casket which she unlocked with a key. Inside were all his
letters, read and reread until the paper grew soft at the edges.
She took out one or two and handled them. She did not need to read them: she knew them by heart. Then she sighed, and
folded up the letter Haworth had brought, reached for her
pen, dipped it in the standish, and wrote on the outside of it
in her even, childish script, 'His last letter.’

She
sat
and looked at
it
until the ink was dry. She held it
against her cheek for a moment, as if
it
were his dear hand,
and then she placed it on top of the others in the casket, and
closed the lid, and locked it, and put the casket away, with an
air of finality, in the drawer.

Outside the windows, the pearl of before-dawn was bleach
ing out the candles, and the first scattered threads of
movement were binding into day. She stood up, stretching
her aching limbs, feeling her eyes burning with tiredness, and
saw that Parslow was awake and watching her.

‘There will be so much to do,' she said.

*

Chetwyn came back from Wolvercote on receiving Captain Haworth's message, apprehensive as to what he would find.
Docwra met him in the hall.

‘How is she?' he asked.

‘
Very calm, my lord. I don't like it.' She shook her head.
'She doesn't cry or carry on, just works away, writing letters
and such, as if nothing had happened.'

‘Writing letters?'

‘
She's sorting out the captain's affairs, my lord,' she said
with some embarrassment. 'On account of he hadn't any
family at all. But I wish she'd cry, my lord. It'd be more
natural. And she won't have anyone near her, barring
Parslow, my lord.’

Chetwyn found her in the breakfast parlour, neatly dressed
in a grey-blue round gown, seated at the table, writing, with
Jeffrey curled up on her lap. She didn't look up as he came in,
didn't even seem to notice that he was there.

‘Hello, Lucy,' he said at last. 'How are you?’

She looked up. She was very pale, but otherwise there was
no outward sign that things were not as usual. What had he
expected? Widow's weeds? Extravagant grief? And yet there
was a difference. There were shadows under her eyes, and
two lines of tiredness or pain at her mouth corners; but more
even than that, she no longer looked like a child masquerad
ing as an adult. For the first time it was possible to look at her
and believe that she was the mother of three — four — child
ren.

‘
You
look
tired,' he said.
'You must
take
care of
yourself.'
She did not answer. He cleared his throat awkwardly.

‘
Lucy, I want you to know I really am sorry.' She looked at
him impassively, as if she were simply waiting for him to finish so that she could go on with what she was doing. 'I
know what you must be feeling. Truly, I never would have
wanted it to end like this.’

She drew a tired sigh. 'Go away, Chetwyn,' she said.