A Marriage of Convenience (31 page)

Dinner, to Clinton’s relief, progressed quite unremarkably until almost over, and Theresa seemed entirely herself again. Then shortly after dessert had been served, Lambert mentioned that the senior subaltern in the 15th had recently married.

‘And what about you, captain?’ asked Theresa. ‘Do you ever think about marriage?’

‘Often.’

‘What discourages you? Perhaps you’re too fussy.’

Lambert pensively ran a finger along the bevelled edge of a wine coaster.

‘Fussiness isn’t the problem. In a way it doesn’t matter who one marries. At the end of a month one’s sure to find one’s married somebody else.’

Alarmed by Theresa’s sudden tenseness, Clinton could think of no way to end the conversation. Instead he listened helplessly as Theresa said with feigned good humour:

‘How can bachelors know so much about the changes marriage can make in a woman?’

Lambert laughed softly.

‘One listens, you know.’

Theresa nodded and took an unhurried sip of wine.

‘It’s always seemed strange to me that people who call themselves gentlemen are so ready to moan about their wives in public.’

‘I daresay the fair sex does its share of grumbling too.’ Dick frowned. ‘I’ve never been too sure what a gentleman is … far easier to say what he isn’t.’

Clinton took his chance gladly to keep this new subject alive.

‘My father used to say a gentleman should be too proud to be useful and too indolent for enterprise. Need I say this qualified him excellently.’

‘What about noblemen?’ asked Theresa, looking coolly at
Lambert.

‘Ask his lordship.’

‘You’ll succeed to a title, captain.’

Dick raised his hands in a gesture of self-disparagement.

‘I’m a disgrace to my class. Not nearly ruthless enough. It’s a fact. Aristocracies never last unless they murder their rivals. At least the French flung away their privileges in an orgy of depravity. We’re losing ours without even enjoying ourselves.’

‘Is that your experience?’ murmured Theresa turning to Clinton.

‘Of course not. I may say that when we’re alone together, Dick doesn’t spend his time saying things for effect.’

Lambert stared hard at the table and coloured slightly.

‘I was trying to make civil conversation in the face of …’

‘Of what?’ demanded Clinton.

‘Exception being taken to every word I say.’ Lambert rose and inclined his head to Theresa. ‘Please accept my apologies.’

After his friend’s departure, Clinton’s protracted silence made Theresa want to scream. At last she said thickly:

‘Why don’t you blame me? You’d have been talking quite happily if I’d never joined you.’ She wanted to stop and say she was sorry but some other force drove her on. Her bitter voice shocked her, as if she were listening to a stranger—a person utterly unlike herself, consumed with resentment. ‘How can you love me when you hide
things from me? When you destroy letters you promised to show me? Now I’m to blame for offending that cynical man.’

He did not move or even raise his eyes. Eventually he said in a low voice: ‘He happens to be one of the bravest, most generous, men alive.’ Theresa said nothing. ‘Don’t you see?’ he murmured, ‘We were imprisoned together in Peking.’

‘Isn’t that something else you should have told me?’

‘I don’t say it now to place you in the wrong, which seems to be your attitude. I simply don’t like to remember it.’

‘Isn’t modesty about bravery just affectation?’

At last he was angry; his eyes seeming to concentrate the fading light, glinting with the same hard gleam she remembered from his confrontations with Esmond at Kilkreen. ‘There’s a sort of maggot in Chinese jails. It breeds in the earth floors and burrows into wounds. Hundreds are killed by it. My ankles were raw where the iron chafed; a perfect meal for the maggots. Dick risked his life and saved mine … He sucked them out—that cynical man.’

‘I don’t understand,’ she shouted.

‘Why I don’t like to think of those months?’

‘Why you said nothing.’

‘If you’d lived as we did … in daily terror of death; foul in our excrement, beaten by our guards. We all have a secret idea of ourselves; something to measure ourselves against. We all fall short … but I lost every shred of faith in what I’d thought I was. I could face brief danger afterwards; a few days of it, but not month upon month, when nothing’s to be done but see oneself weakening.’ He looked away, hands clenched tightly. ‘I’ll tell you when I last thought of it—in the gun room with those damned letters you want to share.’ He pushed back his chair abruptly. ‘All right … see them now if you like. Esmond’s ruined me. That’s what they’ll tell you.’ He smiled a curious lopsided smile and got up. ‘And you think, how can he mean this when he’s happy to fool around with his friend as if nothing’s changed. I’ve funked it. Esmond said there was still some hope; but I didn’t go racing back south again in case I lost that scrap of comfort, didn’t run to my uncle in case that failed. So I’m waiting … hoping a little while I still can.’

When Lambert opened the door a little later, he saw Theresa and Clinton sitting like statues. Her face was wet with tears, while he stared ahead of him as though nothing in the world would ever reach him or change by the smallest fraction the fixity of his expression. Lambert, who had hoped to repair any harm his going might have caused, closed the door softly, leaving them alone like figures suspended in a nightmare.
The day after Dick Lambert left Hathenshaw, Clinton set out for London, intending to see Esmond and the trustees and then to consult his solicitor about possible counter measures.

On the first night of Clinton’s absence, Theresa slept badly, waking at intervals, her heart racing. For hours she did not sleep at all; panic rising in her as she imagined what might happen if Clinton failed to retrieve his position. It would not cause her great distress if they had to leave Hathenshaw, or were forced abroad to escape their creditors. No stranger to poverty, its humiliations were real to her but not impossible to imagine surviving. Yet to a man who had lived as Clinton had done, a life of hand-to-mouth and the dwindling of all choices would come as intolerable and degrading affronts. And if he were forced to suffer them, how long, she wondered, would it be before he turned against the wife who stood between him and reconciliation with his brother? Would he one day fling in her face the marriages he might have made if he had behaved less
honourably
? Memories floated through her mind, merging and fading with the eery unreality of a waking dream—Sophie at the Castle, the church at Rathnagar, the day Clinton had come to her in York.

She slept a little before dawn, and woke to hear a thrush singing in the lilac bush under her window. The day ahead of her loomed empty and long. During the morning her thoughts touched on a dilemma unrelated to Clinton’s difficulties. In recent weeks she had been worried that without a certificate proving her marriage, there might be problems over the baptism of her unborn child. Two or three times she had come close to raising this with Clinton but had hesitated in case he objected to a church christening on the grounds that it might imperil the secrecy of their marriage. Now that he had so much else to trouble him, she found herself even more reluctant to consider broaching this with him. She told herself that it would be absurd and pointless to argue about such matters until nearer the baby’s birth. But strangely, though she was overtly far more anxious about other things, once the thought of the certificate had entered her mind, she could not dismiss it.

Her marriage was a fact to her as plain as her own existence. But, just as had happened when Clinton had last been away, she was plagued by irrational misgivings that she could neither master nor fully understand. Seeing Harris exercising Clinton’s stallion, her fears took definite form. If Clinton should die, she thought suddenly; if there was some riding accident, a mishap with a gun …? The priest would still have his private register, but suppose that were lost, or he left Ireland, what else would she have to prove her marriage but the signet ring which still served as her wedding band?

Later she felt slightly ashamed that her spirits had sunk so far
that she could yearn to hold a scrap of paper to feel secure. But below the surface, in spite of more serious forebodings about Clinton’s trust money, this lesser fear persisted.

It was late the following evening when she finally decided to write to Father Maguire about a certificate and her head was aching with fatigue. But she went on with her task. Only when she had finished the letter did she feel apprehensive. If Clinton saw an Irish postmark he would certainly be curious. At Sowerby where she went to Mass, Theresa had met and talked to the village dressmaker: a Catholic like herself. She added a postscript asking the priest to write to her care of Miss Waller of Sowerby. In time she would tell Clinton about the certificate, just as she would talk to him about the baptism. In a month or two his problems might be over. When the letter had been posted, Theresa still felt the same sharp anxiety about the news Clinton would bring on his return, but one small weight of care had been lifted from her.

‘Esmond!’ he yelled. ‘Esmond!’ His voice echoing through rooms and corridors, astonishing the servants but bringing no answer. Decorous silence mocked him as his shouts died away, deadened by swagged curtains and oriental carpets. Clinton passed from landing to landing, flinging open doors, sure that the footman had lied to him about his master’s absence; but everywhere Clinton went, only the sightless eyes of statues returned his gaze, and no sound reached him except the unhurried ticking of clocks and his own heart’s beating.

Returning to the hall, he sat down on the broad staircase. Below him stood the same footman he had sent chasing after his hat a year ago. Then as now the tall figure of Ceres dwarfed them both. Above the goddess’s head, Clinton saw the upper landings and the banisters through which he had caught his first glimpse of Louise. A year ago—only a year.

‘Where would your lordship care to wait?’

‘Here.’

The footman showed no surprise, but, with a slight inclination of the head, murmured:

‘If your lordship should require anything …’

‘Just leave me.’

After a while Clinton wandered into the principal reception room on the first floor but did not stay there long. In the library, Clinton remembered Theresa sitting by the sunlit window as the church bells rang. The memory sent a dull ache to his heart. His ironic detachment on that day now seemed remoter than childhood—part of another life.

*

When his brother entered the library almost an hour later, Clinton ignored the hand he held out to him.

‘I’m going to sue the trustees, Esmond.’

Esmond made a soft clicking noise with his tongue.

‘Of course you can prove fraud or gross negligence amounting to a fraud?’

The calmness of Esmond’s voice angered Clinton as much as open mockery.

‘If it isn’t gross negligence for a trustee to authorise investment in an insolvent company, you tell me what is?’

‘I’m not the judge. I’d imagine you’d have to show the company was insolvent at the time of the transaction and then prove the trustees had reason to know it was. You can’t defraud without intent.’

‘But
you
knew the company’s position, and your intent was plain enough.’

Esmond seemed puzzled.

‘Surely not? I was buying shares for myself at the very time I advised the trustees to do the same on your behalf.’ He sat down, carefully lifting his coat tails to avoid creasing them. ‘Look,’ he went on eagerly, as if his one aim was to help his brother, ‘if they bought those shares and then knowingly misrepresented the fund’s condition, that’d be quite another matter.’ Getting no response from Clinton, he pulled out his gold fob watch. ‘I’m dining out. It’d be quicker if you read counsel’s opinion.’

‘You took counsel’s opinion?’

‘It’s better to avoid litigation when one can.’

‘Opinions tend to differ from counsel to counsel.’

‘A great deal,’ agreed Esmond, pausing slightly. ‘…at any rate in a complicated action. Happily the law’s perfectly clear about the liability of trustees.’ He snapped down the lid of his watch and returned it to his pocket. ‘You’d lose.’ He sat back in his chair and looked at Clinton benignly. ‘Don’t worry; ruined peers always command public sympathy. To hell with the tradesmen they wouldn’t pay, the servants they couldn’t keep; laugh at the banker who trusted their word.’ He folded his arms. ‘It won’t come to that anyway. You can reassign the iease on that place in Lancashire and buy a commission in an Indian regiment. I’ve heard of officers who’ve managed to live on their pay out there. You’d only have to stay a couple of years till you get the balance on Markenfield. Think of the poor devils there for life.’

‘There won’t be a balance on Markenfield,’ Clinton shouted. ‘You know as well as I do that on completion the mortgages were to be redeemed with the trust capital. No trust money means no balance. In the meantime I’ve no income and can’t borrow a shilling against those worthless shares.’

Esmond raised his hands helplessly.

‘Uncle Richard’s got to die some day.’ He paused. ‘I hear you saw Miss Lucas in Ireland.’

It was no worse than anything Esmond had already said—no worse, Clinton told himself, and yet now he felt such hatred that he believed he could have watched Esmond being tortured without raising a word of protest. On the man’s face a faint sardonic smile still lingered at the corners of his mouth.

‘You know,’ Esmond continued, ‘I’d have been perfectly willing to help you if you’d …

Clinton leapt up, but Esmond anticipated him, jerking at the bell pull by his chair. He smiled apologetically as they heard hurried steps on the stairs. White-faced, Clinton moved over to the window and gazed out at the peaceful square, while Esmond sent away the two footmen. Under the plane trees a nurse was wheeling a perambulator with a white sunshade. Esmond said:

‘Since you never actually told me you’d married Theresa, I don’t think my remark about Miss Lucas was so very tasteless.’ He looked at Clinton appraisingly. ‘I presume I’m right about why you were so angry?’ Clinton nodded. ‘My congratulations to you both. I know you won’t believe it, but if you’d asked for help, instead of threatening law suits, I might have been more eager to assist.’

‘Without conditions?’ sneered Clinton.

‘Just one.’ His eyes rested absently on an embroidered
polescreen,
as if his mind had passed on to quite different matters. ‘Perhaps,’ he murmured, ‘I’d be more favourably disposed if she came to do the begging.’

Without a word, Clinton turned on his heel, knowing if he stayed he would not be responsible for what he did. On the stairs his gaze fell on the colourless face of the statue of Ceres looming beyond the banister rail. The goddess’s features seemed to tremble, giving an illusion of sentience—a calm and distant smile, vanishing as he perceived it. His cheeks were still prickling with anger and his skin felt clammy under his shirt. With a sudden movement he leant his weight against the statue’s shoulder, bracing his knees against the banister. The figure tilted on its massive base but tipped back into place. Heaving again, he rocked it, and then gave a second push, watching it hang at the point of balance and then crash down to the stone floor, smashing a console table, and splitting apart across the torso. The detached head rolled away crookedly like a lumpy ball.

The violence of the noise brought servants running. Without speaking, or looking at the devastation he had caused, Clinton walked on down the stairs and left the house.
The following day Clinton’s solicitor confirmed what Esmond had said about the inadvisability of bringing an action against the trustees. If
intent
to misapply funds could not be proved against them or their agents, there would be no case to answer. Incompetence, unless due to gross negligence or fraudulent intent, would not be enough to sustain an action. The lawyer undertook to seek disclosure of all trust documents relating to sale and purchase of securities during the past year, but he held out little hope of incriminating revelations. Intent to defraud was notoriously hard to prove. And negligence, which was easier, often only gained a successful plaintiff derisorily small damages.

Without an income, and unable to raise money on his trust shares, Clinton knew that the balance due to him on Markenfield was also worthless as security because of the unredeemed mortgages on the property. Apart from selling the Hathenshaw lease and any chattels not listed as heirlooms in his father’s will, he now saw that his chances of survival had been whittled away to one.

An appeal to his uncle’s generosity was all that could save him from the bankruptcy which the loss of the trust otherwise made inevitable. But, wanting to keep this last resort in being for as long as possible, Clinton decided against an immediate visit. He would allow himself one more carefree month with Theresa before admitting his true position and grovelling to his uncle. To gain this month’s respite, Clinton knew there was only one way to acquire the necessary funds without having to wait for them.

*

In an unpretentious Soho thoroughfare like Pulteney Street, not many houses contained anything of value. One notable exception was a property housing choice pieces of Carolean, and William and Mary furniture, also pictures and silver of a quality to delight the eyes of the foremost dealers in the capital. These treasures were disposed not in an auction room, but in the floors above a coal merchant’s counting house. And very strange this would have been if that merchant’s business had been concerned exclusively with coal. In fact Jabez Norton’s more profitable transactions lay in another commodity.

The numerous unredeemed pledges, ranging from large canvases by Dutch and Italian masters to tiny silver snuff boxes and vinaigrettes, therefore caused Clinton no surprise as he was ushered into the money lender’s parlour. Less than two weeks earlier, he had borrowed three hundred pounds from Norton. He now desperately needed to increase that loan; and, since he had drawn from this particular well on at least a dozen occasions, he knew that failure
would make his chances of success elsewhere exceptionally slender. But though he was nervous, the heavy interest he had managed to meet in the past, gave him grounds for optimism. This mood received a slight check when he learned that Norton himself was not available and that he would have to be content with the attentions of his chief clerk.

Before proceeding to the business of a more substantial loan, Clinton thought it prudent to dispose of the formality of renewing the bill he had accepted on his previous visit. To leave it till later, might serve as an excuse for Norton to add a couple of per cent to the interest on any new loan. To Clinton’s alarm, when he lightly introduced the subject of renewing, the clerk said nothing, but went to a fat ledger which he opened, but then abruptly closed as if remembering something.

‘I’m sorry, Lord Ardmore.’

Disbelief, and an unpleasant tightness in the chest, left Clinton speechless. Before leaving Hathenshaw, he had promised Theresa that he would have little difficulty in raising funds to tide him over till the truth about the trust were finally established. The mistrust his earlier reticence had already caused would be made worse were he to return empty-handed. The clerk seemed to be waiting for him to put another proposal; he was a small elderly man with slack jowls and a wen under an eyebrow, that depressed the lid, giving the disconcerting impression of a perpetual wink.

‘You can’t mean that. The bill was only for a month.’

‘I sold it myself in settlement of another debt. Common practice, my lord.’

‘With short-term bills?’ asked Clinton, staring at the clerk’s snuff-stained lapels, doing his best to keep his voice down.

‘With every sort of bill. Money can be lent … bills can’t.’ The clerk saw Clinton’s gaze shift to an elegantly veneered secretaire. ‘Now chattels is different. Mr Norton likes chattels a deal better than paper.’

‘I was paying fifteen per cent,’ said Clinton with a mixture of anger and incredulity.

The clerk coughed, showing strong yellow teeth.

‘And now someone else is paying fifteen per cent on what I got for your bill. More than makes up for the discount I paid on the sale. Paper should circulate … that’s Mr Norton’s view.’

‘I’d better tell you now … I was misled by Norton. I’ll default unless you make me another loan.’

‘On what security?’

‘My reputation. I’ve borrowed from Norton often enough.’

‘You’ll have to see him. I can’t make advances without security.’

Clinton looked at him severely.

‘I trust I can rely on you to make my position plain to Mr Norton over that bill?’

The man’s humility seemed to conceal mild amusement.

‘It’s not in his hands, Lord Ardmore.’

‘He knows who bought it.’

‘I’ll do what I can,’ he replied grudgingly, before unexpectedly smiling with a genuine air of encouragement. ‘Of course if Mr Danvers was to give us some guarantee, I’m sure there’d be no …’

‘My debts are not my brother’s business,’ snapped Clinton.

‘Pity, that,’ murmured Norton’s minion. ‘We’ve a great respect for Mr Danvers here. He knows what’s what where paper’s
concerned
.’ Ignoring Clinton’s anger, he went over to his desk and leafed through some papers, before examining one particular sheet which he folded and then handed to Clinton. Half inclined to throw it down, Clinton thrust it into his pocket. ‘Mr Danvers’ signature to that would more than satisfy,’ the clerk added in a tactfully muted voice. ‘Witnessed of course.’

A sudden suspicion occurred to Clinton.

‘Has Norton seen Mr Danvers recently?’

‘Mr Danvers?’ The clerk shook his head with a sad reflective look. ‘He used to discount some of our best bills.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Very distressing to sell in perfect good faith and be let down by the acceptor … a nobleman he was like yourself. Mr Danvers recovered on a judgment summons, but since then …’ He broke off with a wry smile that completely closed his deformed eye. ‘Stands to reason we’d like to oblige his relatives … put things right.’

‘Provided he knows it.’

‘In a nutshell.’

Clinton drew himself up.

‘I’ll seek credit elsewhere.’ The clerk looked at him blandly.

‘Messrs Drummonds’?’

‘Say that again,’ shouted Clinton.

‘Hard not to hear rumours, my lord. Only rumours, mind you.’

‘How many bank clerks does Norton bribe?’

‘Your little joke, Lord Ardmore … just between us, eh? Mr Norton doesn’t have my sense of humour. Have to watch my tongue … he’s a sensitive man. “Add a nought on Norton” one client called him. Slander he said. No humour.’

Walking briskly towards Piccadilly, Clinton’s anger had already given way to leaden depression. Though confident that Norton would pay up on the bill if he defaulted, charging an exorbitant rate of interest until the debt was settled, he now saw that without collateral or a guarantor he would never be able to negotiate any sort
of loan, whatever interest he might offer. This being so, he would now have to arrange for the sale of whatever unentailed items of silver and jewellery Drummonds held for him in their vaults. However black the future he did not intend to change his mind about enjoying one more month at Hathenshaw.