Theirs Was The Kingdom (76 page)

She must have been sleeping soundly, however, for when he lit the dressing-table lamp he saw her lying with one hand pushed under the pillow and the bedclothes half thrown back. She was breathing deeply and regularly, so that he paused to look down at her, telling himself that it was remarkable how effortlessly she defied the years. She still had the pink and white complexion of a girl, and her tawny bedtime plaits, one spread across her shoulders, and the other concealed in a dip of the pillow, held no traces of grey. Her lips were slightly parted, showing her small regular teeth, twenty-nine of them still perfect as she had boasted a day or so ago, when he complained about a forthcoming visit to the dentist. What was it that Debbie had said? There were times when he pretended to abdicate in her favour? Well, it was a half-truth, he supposed, as far as Tryst and the family were concerned, and they had even struck some kind of bargain about it that night at the George more than twenty years ago, when he had come home to her with a flea in his ear, put there by Edith Wadsworth, and learned from the Colonel that she had been playing the fool with that young gunner. But real abdication had never been thought of seriously, for she wasn’t that kind of woman. When it came down to it she wouldn’t have felt properly married if he hadn’t bullied her now and again.

The sight of her lying there in that great Conyer bed soothed him, prompting a tenderness he hadn’t felt for her downstairs. She looked so young and strong, and so—what was the right word—wholesome? He supposed he was the more aware of this because he had been grubbing about in the midden all day. He bent and kissed her on her nose and she stretched, rolled over, and opened her eyes.

One of the things he had always envied her was her ability to emerge from a deep sleep into full wakefulness in a matter of seconds. It always took him ten minutes or more to come to terms with daylight.

He noted that she was pleased to see him and pleased to be awakened in that manner. It relieved them both of tiresome explanations, of the chitter-chatter most married couples would need in similar circumstances. She said, sitting up, “What time is it?” and when he told her an hour after midnight, “I didn’t expect you back for a day or so. Debbie’s here.”

“I know. She waited up.”

“You’ve had your supper? There was a veal and ham pie…”

“I’ve finished it. I was damned hungry.”

She smiled then so that he thought, “Why the devil did I waste time working out an approach. People like us shouldn’t bother with approaches… that’s for courting couples, poor devils…” And suddenly her pertness and prettiness made a fresh appeal to him and he threw his arms round her and kissed her mouth, holding the kiss until she squirmed and gasped that he was badly in need of a shave. It was only her time-honoured way of teasing him, however, for even as she said it she levered herself into a kneeling position, put both arms about his neck, and said, gaily, “I really think I might have been a little rude to poor Debbie. If she isn’t asleep I’ll go tuck her in,” so that he laughed and said, “You’ll do no such thing. For God’s sake get it into your head that she isn’t a child any longer. Besides, what passed was between you and me and it’s settled now, as you’ll see for yourself when Stillman brings
The Times
from the village tomorrow. Providing they print my letter, that is.”

“
You
wrote a letter to
The Times
?”

“Supporting Stead, and no bones about it. I’m sorry if it annoys Alexander’s colonel, and Giles has to apologise for me to his prospective father-in-law, but they’ll get over it. If they don’t they can keep their damned favours, the pair of them. I have enough trouble with my own conscience, and my wife into the bargain!”

She did not seem particularly interested in his commitment. Either she had had time to think about it and had dismissed the entire subject as too dull to bother about, or her mind was on something more immediate. She said, with a shrug, “Well, I daresay you know what you’re about. Blow out the lamp and come to bed. You needn’t bother to shave, either. I’d sooner be sandpapered than lose myself in this great bed. It’s like a desert when you’re away. I was hours getting to sleep last night. I cried, too, after you’d stormed off in that way. It was like—well, never mind, do as I say.”

He was tempted then to take her at her word but thought better of it. “I’ll shave,” he said, “while you take a quick look at this. I got it from Stead when he called on me this morning.”

That did rattle her a little but he went on, quickly, “It won’t take a minute to read, and might help you to understand why I broke my golden rule by writing to a newspaper,” and he took Elsie Griddle’s dossier from his pocket, laid it on the bed, and went into his dressing room.

She called, “You’ll need hot water,” but he called back, “It’s lukewarm in the can. The temperature was still in the seventies when I left town.”

After that there was silence, broken only by the rasp of his razor, the soft flutter of turning pages, and once, as he stepped out of his breeches, a stifled exclamation from her, coinciding almost exactly with a nightjar’s screech from the paddocks. She was still reading when he came back into the bedroom.

“Well?”

“It’s awful,” she said, “too awful to think about.” Then, “Why did you have to give it to me now? I was so gay and happy when I woke up and found you were back.”

“It’ll save a lot of tiresome explanation in the morning. At least you’ll have an attitude of mind when the children start asking questions. They’ll surely do that when they see that letter I’ve written.”

“Nonsense! I’ve never seen any of them except Giles open
The Times
, and he’s sure to side with you.”

“One of the servants will tell them. Then they’ll all read it, take it from me.”

“Suppose they do. If you’re not there what on earth could I tell them if they did ask?”

“The truth, what else? We don’t want them growing up as green as you were, do we?”

She said, looking at the two photographs again, “Fifteen. That’s Helen’s age. And I still think of her as a child.
Adam
?”

“Well?”

“What’s wrong? In this way, I mean. Whatever makes some men find pleasure in… well… haven’t they children of their own?”

“Some have. But they wouldn’t be likely to confuse them with Elsie Griddle.”

“I didn’t know,” she said. “That’s all I can say. I just didn’t know. Most women wouldn’t, would they?”

“Most British women wouldn’t. That was one of the points Stead was trying to make. If they had let him make it, without falling on him like a pack of wolves, I wouldn’t have joined in, Deborah or no Deborah.”

“But they wouldn’t?”

“No. They’re out there now, crucifying him and licking their slobbering lips over it. He seems to think they’ll go as far as prosecuting him, though personally I doubt if they’ll oblige him to that extent.”

“If they did, would Debbie be involved?”

“No. He was man enough to guard against that.”

“But surely… I mean… if a man publishing a newspaper gets hold of things like this, isn’t it his job to make them public? To see everybody knows about it and stop it happening? What I mean is, those girls in houses and on the streets, the ones you’ve told me about, they’re different, aren’t they? I’ve always thought of them as women, old enough to do as they please, even though it always did strike me as quite dreadful that anyone could… well, sell themselves in that way, to a lot of different men,
all
kinds of men. I mean, it’s hard to imagine anything worse from a woman’s viewpoint and difficult too to imagine most men would want that kind of woman. It can’t be the same, can it? Not like you and me, all these years?”

“No,” he said, “not like that in any way at all. But we’ve been lucky in that respect. I’ve always told you so, haven’t I?”

“Tell me something else, then.”

“Yes?”

“Would
you
get any pleasure out of using a girl like Elsie Griddle? Would you?”

“Now? No, I wouldn’t. But I might have once.”

“When?”

“Before I learned about women from you.”

She sat up, her mouth slightly agape.

“
You
learned anything from me?”

“A great deal.”

She was deeply interested now, and flattered too, if the sparkle in her eye was anything to judge by.

“Tell me then. Tell me what difference I made, for I always thought of myself as a perfect goose in that way, and as ignorant as a baby about men. Sometimes I think I still am, in spite of having a long family. Is that what you mean about altering your outlook? Being a father, I mean?”

“No. The children are incidental.”

“Then tell me. That’s something I should like to hear. Any wife would, even after all these years.”

He sat on the edge of the bed, looking down at her. As always on these occasions she seemed to him unchanged in any marked respect from the saucy girl he had hoisted into the saddle on the moor all those years ago, a little hoyden chock-full of impudence but capable of any amount of impulsive affection that she had used to light the lonely recesses of his heart. And even that was not all. She had brought him a loyalty equal to any he had ever enjoyed in the field, so that he had always been able to think of her, even on the many occasions she had infuriated him, as a comrade. Without her, what would he have made of his life? Would he have survived those early years, when it was touch and go from one day to another? Would he have thrown it all over in a fit of pique, returned to soldiering and taken the easier road to half-pay and the sidelines, like so many Swanns before him? There were so many imponderables. He might have made a god of money, like most of his contemporaries. He might even have married some desiccated girl for her money and grown into one of those old goats who found a few moments’ forgetfulness between the legs of strays like Elsie Griddle. None of these things had happened to him and it came to him now, not for the first time perhaps, that her gaiety, youth, and steadfastness had given shape and sanity to his life, regulating the demands of his body and bringing so much warmth and willingness to the exercise that his spirit had been set free to range and develop in a never-ending quest for an identity. It would not be possible, of course, to explain this to her in those terms, but there was something he could tell her that might help her to understand the contribution she had made to his life.

He said, “You asked just now what kind of man would pay money for an hour or so with a half-grown child of that kind. Not necessarily the kind you imagine. The desperately lonely, maybe, with no aim beyond physical gratification. I should know, for I was one of them once. Years before I met you, when I was in Scutari after that shambles in the Crimea, I paid a Turkish pimp for the use of a Circassian girl no older than Elsie Griddle. It wasn’t quite the same, perhaps. She had been schooled as a harlot before I met her. They have a different approach out there. Cruel and callous it might appear to Westerners, but kinder in the long run, if only because it’s traditional. I tell you that now because I wouldn’t care to have you think of me as a man incapable of such an act, and because it’s important that you shouldn’t undervalue your part in my life. If I’ve been faithful to you all these years it’s to your credit, Hetty, not mine, for the plain truth is, in all that time, I’ve never wanted to bed another woman, a stranger. That’s the most valuable byproduct of marriage, I imagine—a growing together so that ultimately, at our time of life, two people are virtually one. It’s been that way with me at all events, and sounds pompous when it’s put into words. A poet might make a souffle of it but I’m no poet. I sense these things but I never find a way to express them well. I follow my instincts and instinct has governed my approach to you from the beginning. You had what I wanted and needed and were always prepared to give, freely and unconditionally. Why should a man with that need a harlot, trained or untrained? Do you follow that?”

“Yes, I understand, but there’s more isn’t there?”

“Aye, there is that. It wouldn’t have worked if you had fallen back on that mock-modesty they’ve been cultivating in women, married and single, over here for the last couple of generations. Maybe that’s the real root of the trouble. A full-blooded man wants a bit more from a woman than complacency, and when he doesn’t find it at home he goes looking for it elsewhere. That’s why, to my way of thinking, the British are less moral in the real sense of the word than other tribes. They expect prudery and carnality from the same woman at the same time and what the devil can that lead to but hypocrisy in a marriage? It was time someone like Stead opened the window.”

He stopped, aware that he had been addressing himself rather than her, and feeling a little foolish when he realised that she could have understood no more than the drift of what he was trying to say. He was not surprised therefore to see her smiling, as though instead of struggling to enlighten her, he had set himself to amuse her. She said, “You do make it sound frightfully complicated, Adam. Even more than before I was married and had to rely on guesses. Put out the lamp and come to bed.”

“Damn it, woman,” he said, “you did ask me to try and explain, didn’t you?”

“You paid me the nicest compliment,” she said, “and I was fishing for a few more. All I seem to have hooked is a lecture and it’s far too late for lectures.”