The Victory (81 page)

Edward looked at him unhappily. 'It must have been very
quick,' he said, trying to offer comfort. 'They were taken ill at
night, and died the next morning. They couldn't have
suffered much.'

‘
My son,' Aislaby said, watching James's face, 'let me offer
you the consolation of faith. Father Rathbone was there at
the end, and gave them absolution. Prayer can comfort you,
too.’

Only Lucy said nothing, knowing from her own experience
that nothing could help.

‘
But — a fever amongst the poor people — how could she
and the boy catch it? Hobsbawn is not ill? I don't understand,'
James said.

Aislaby answered. 'She was engaged in charitable work
amongst the poor. When the fever began, she helped to nurse
them —’

James stood up abruptly, pushing his chair away so
violently that it fell over backwards. 'Why didn't they send
for me?' he said. 'My wife and son! Why didn't Hobsbawn
send for me?'

‘
There wasn't time,' Edward said, gesturing with the letter.
‘It says here —'

‘
I don't believe it!' James cried. 'The old man wanted them
to himself. It's what she wanted too. Why else did she spend
half of every year there? I don't know why she ever bothered
to come back. She always thought Morland Place wasn't a
patch on her precious Hobsbawn House!'

‘
Jamie!' Edward protested, but James rushed from the
room, and when Edward made to follow him, Lucy caught his
eye and shook her head.

‘
Leave him alone,' she said. 'He won't want anyone with
him just yet.’

Edward's face creased. 'That poor, poor woman! And poor
little Henry! It's so hard to believe. Alive one day, dead and
buried the next! And she had such an unhappy life, poor
creature. James treated her very badly.'

‘
I don't suppose he meant to,' Lucy said with a shrug. 'She
just wasn't one of us. She didn't fit in.'

‘We didn't give her much help,' Edward said.

Lucy shook her head. 'She didn't want help. Jamie was
right, you know — she always thought herself superior to us: that's why she wouldn't adapt to our ways. She just wanted to
make this house as much like her father's as possible.'

‘
Surely this is a moment for thinking forgiving thoughts,'
Aislaby reproved her gently.

But Lucy faced him robustly. 'I'm sorry, Father, but her
being dead doesn't change the facts. I never much liked her,
and I certainly didn't like the way she changed things here.
That doesn't excuse Jamie for the way he treated her, of
course, but she got her own way in the end and went off to
stay with her father, and now she's died there, so she'll never
need to come back.'

‘
Oh Lucy,' Edward said reproachfully. 'You're so hard.
Don't you feel any pity for that poor little boy, at least? And
what about Fanny? How ever are we going to tell Fanny?'

‘
Fanny won't care two straws,' Lucy said, 'though I dare
say she'll pretend to, if she thinks it will get her treats.' Father
Aislaby refrained from comment, knowing that Lucy was
right about that, at least. 'As to Henry, well, he was a nice child enough, as far as it went, but one can't feel the same
sort of regret about a child's death as about an adult's.
There's simply less to them. You're just being sentimental,
Ned.'

‘
You're just being provoking,' Edward retorted. 'I think someone ought to go after Jamie. He was obviously really
upset. She was his wife, after all, and Henry was his only son.'

‘
I wonder how old Mr Hobsbawn will leave his property
now,' Lucy said. 'He always said he wouldn't leave the mills
to Fanny, but now Mary Ann's gone he may change his mind.
Fanny's his only kin now.'

‘
Don't be so mercenary,' Edward snapped. 'Anyone would
think —’

Father Aislaby decided the sibling quarrel had gone far
enough, and intervened to say, 'We ought to hold a requiem
mass for them in the chapel as soon as possible. May I talk to
you about the arrangements, Mr Morland? I doubt whether I
ought to trouble Mr James with the details at the moment.'

‘A requiem mass! Yes, that's the thing to do,' Edward said,
glad to be brought back into the paths of right thinking. 'And
we must write our condolences to Mr Hobsbawn. The poor
old thing must be heartbroken. He thought the world of his
daughter.’

Aislaby sat down, and he and Edward began to discuss
letters, mourning clothes and masses with proper solemnity,
and Lucy went on eating toast, her face impassive. She really
could not care about Mary Ann, or the child. She had
had so little to do with them of recent years, that their deaths
seemed quite remote from her, unreal. Her thoughts were
with her brother, whom she really did love, wondering what
he was feeling, and how he was going to conduct his life from
now on.

*

When James ran from the unwelcome attention of his family,
he turned instinctively towards the one accessible friend he
had in the world. He crossed the inner court and went out
through the bakehouse passage and the back door, skirted the
orchard wall and came up to the rails of the home paddock,
where Nez Carr was turned out.

The old horse was twenty now, but apart from the salt
cellars over his eyes, and the grey hairs in his mane, he didn't look any different to the eyes of love. He lifted his head from
his grazing at James's whistle, and came at once, breaking
into a graceful trot as he neared the fence. James climbed
over, and Nez Carré whickered, his ears pricked and his eyes shining with welcome, and as he reached his master he thrust
his nose under James's arm, a gesture remembered from foal-
hood, his greatest act of love.

‘
There, old fellow! Good old boy!' James murmured,
pulling the long ears, while Nez Carré nudged further under
his arm, his eyes closed with content. Here was perfect
accord, James thought. He did not ride the old horse much
any more, except for a gentle amble around the estate, but he never let a day pass without coming to see him, and bringing him a carrot or a handful of oats. He reached into his pocket,
and Nez Carré felt the gesture and jerked his head back, and
was mumbling with his lips at James's arm before he had even
got his hand out of his pocket.

‘
Greedy, that's what you are,' James laughed, and
extracted the carrot, holding it by one end. Nez Carré's lips
felt their way half way down it, and then he bit it through,
and crunched contentedly, nodding his head up and down
and blowing with pleasure. James gave him the other half,
and watched him eat, enjoying the horse's simple, concen
trated pleasure. Then he stood still while Nez Carré investi
gated both his hands and pockets to make sure there was
nothing else good to eat, and then felt with his lips all over
James's face, and finally took hold of his hair and gave it an
affectionate tug. James stroked the smooth neck and cheeks,
and finally allowed himself to think about what he was
feeling.

Guilt; shame; remorse. These were the sensations that
crowded in on him when he thought of his wife and child
dead. Sadness, yes, on their behalf, the sadness he might have
felt for any young life cut off untimely; but more than that, most of all, guilt, that he had never valued her, or made her happy. He had brought her humiliation and sadness; he had
condemned her for so many years to loneliness; he had
treated her so badly, that she had been driven to take refuge
from the hostile world he had created around her, in the
home of her childhood.

Well, she had been happy there, he had no doubt, but it did
not assuage his self-blame. He was aware, too, of a painful
regret that now it was too late ever to make amends to her, or
to come to know her. She had good qualities, of that he had
always been sure, and if he had taken the trouble to try to
understand her, he might have held her in sufficient esteem
for their marriage to have been more than an emptiness with
a name.

He tried to think of Henry, tried to attach to him the
feelings that ought to go with the words 'my son', but he
could not find them in him. He found himself thinking of the
other boy he had begotten, Mary Skelwith's son, who was
twenty now, a boy no longer, but a grown man. James saw
him from time to time about the city, where he was taking up
the reins of his father's business: a good-looking young man,
well-grown and sensible, if rather solemn. James saw him
without a pang. To beget a child is not to be its father: that
was a lesson he had learned long ago, with the pain that
betokens true self-knowledge. And in that sense he was not Henry's father. He had quite deliberately shut himself away
from Henry, refused to love him or know him, left him to his
mother; and she, of course, had been happy enough to
consent to the division. And having refused the loving part of fatherhood, he was not now entitled to its grief.

It was as well, perhaps, that Henry had died. As a little boy,
he was happy enough with his mother's love and attention; but as he grew older, he would have begun to look towards
James, would have wanted fatherhood from him; and when it
was denied, he would probably, seeing Fanny loved, have decided that the fault lay in him, that he was in some way
unloveable. James would not have wanted that for him.

Perhaps, he thought, I ought only to have daughters. The
thought stirred up a new pain. He rested his face against Nez
Carré's broad cheek, felt the warmth of him under the
smooth, hard hair, smelled the good, sweet horse-smell of his
skin. He loved this horse. There was in him, as in every horse, the holiness of a creature which could only be as God made it,
moved by simple hungers and simple loves to do what it was
made for and nothing else, to praise God and know Him in its innocence.

He remembered the day Fanny was born, how he felt when
she was first placed in his arms, pearly and tender and damp
like a rose-petal just that instant unfurled. He remembered
how in that moment he had felt her completeness and unsul
lied perfection, and wanted to protect her. I have spoiled
Fanny, he thought with a sudden, searing understanding. I
have loved her unwisely, and too well, and I have spoiled her,
and changed her from that perfect, innocent thing into a copy
of all my worst faults. A father of daughters? There was
Fanny and there was Sophie, and what had he ever done for
either that they might thank him for?
Nez Carré sighed with content and let the weight of his
great head rest on James's shoulder, and James blinked away
the tears of remorse, which were perilously close to self-pity,
and thought, but I can make amends, to both of them. Guilt
and shame are wasteful. The thing is to put matters right.
And that brought him to the place he had been avoiding in his
thoughts, that he had been circling not from fear or distaste,
but because it was too beautiful.