Brunswick Gardens (36 page)

He met Vita coming out of the morning room with a bowl of
hyacinths in her hands. She stopped in front of him, her eyes steady, wide and searching. He knew she must have overheard at least some of the quarrel, if only the raised voices.

“They’re getting dry in here,” she said pointlessly, not looking at the hyacinths. “I suppose it’s the fire. I think I should put them back in the conservatory for a while. Maybe there’s something else in there that would do.” She started to walk across the hall, and he went after her.

“May I carry that for you?”

She passed the bowl to him, and together they went into the conservatory. She closed the glass doors and led him to the garden end, where there were other pots of flowers on the bench. He put the hyacinths down.

“How much longer is it going to go on?” she said softly. She looked close to tears, as if she were mastering herself only with difficulty. “It is breaking us, Dominic!”

“I know.” He longed to be able to help. He could feel her pain and fear in the air as tangibly as the scent of the winter lilies and the paper-whites.

“You were quarreling with Mallory, weren’t you?” She spoke still looking down at the flowers.

“Yes. But it was nothing important, just nerves getting both of us.”

She turned and smiled at him, but there was reproof in her expression. “That’s kind of you, Dominic,” she said gently. “But I know that is not true. Please don’t try to protect me. I can see what is happening to us. We are frightened of the police, frightened of each other … frightened of what we may learn which will change the world we know forever.” She closed her eyes tightly; her voice trembled. “Something has started which we cannot stop, cannot control, and none of us can see the end of it. Sometimes I am so afraid I feel as if my heart will stop.”

What could he possibly say or do that would not make it worse, sound stupid or insensitive, offer false comfort neither of them believed?

“Vita!” He used her Christian name without realizing it. “There is only one thing we can do. Live each hour as it comes and do the very best we can. Behave with honesty and kindness, and trust in God that somehow in the end it will be bearable.”

She stared up at him. “Will it, Dominic? I think Ramsay is having some kind of breakdown.” She gulped. “One moment he is the man we are all used to, patient and calm and so reasonable it is … almost boring.” She shivered. “The next he loses his temper completely and is a different person. It is as if there is a terrible rage inside him against the world, against … I’m not sure … against God … because He is not there and Ramsay has spent so many years, so much time and energy, thinking He was.”

“I haven’t seen … anger,” he said slowly, trying to remember the times he had talked with Ramsay and the emotions there had been. “I think he’s disappointed because it isn’t as he thought. If he were angry, it would only be with people, those he may feel misled him. But if they did, then they were misled themselves. That can only make one sad … you cannot blame them.”

“You can’t, because you are honest,” she continued, a twisted little smile on her lips. “Ramsay is very confused, very … I am not sure. I think in a way frightened.” She searched Dominic’s face to see if he understood what she meant. “I feel so sorry for him. Does that sound arrogant of me? I don’t mean to be. But sometimes I can see the fear in his eyes. He is so alone … and I think also ashamed, although he would never admit it.”

“Doubt is nothing to be ashamed of,” he answered, keeping his voice very low. He did not want some passing servant to hear. “In fact, it takes a special kind of courage to keep behaving as if one believed when one can’t anymore. I don’t think there is any more terrible loneliness in the world than to lose one’s faith when one has once had it.”

“Poor Ramsay,” she whispered, knotting her hands together, looking down at them. “When people are afraid they do strange
things, far outside the character you think you know. I remember my brother once, when he was afraid …”

“I didn’t know you had a brother.”

She gave a little laugh. “Why should you? I don’t speak of him very often. He was older than I, and he did not behave very well some of the time. My father was very upset and terribly disappointed. When Clive got into debt gambling once, and couldn’t pay, he lost his head completely and took silver from the house and sold it. Of course, he didn’t get nearly as much as it was worth, and Papa had to pay twice as much to redeem it. It was all horrible, and not like Clive at all. But he did it because he was frightened.”

Dominic felt a great heaviness inside him.

“You think Ramsay killed Unity, don’t you?”

She shut her eyes tightly. “I am afraid of it … yes. I know it could not have been you.” She made it a simple statement of fact, unquestionable. “And I don’t believe it was Mallory. I … Dominic, I heard her call out!” She gave a little shudder. “That in itself wouldn’t be enough, but I’ve seen him lose his temper.” Almost unconsciously her hand went up to her cheek, where the bruises were still dark and painful. “He had no control at all. He was a different person. He would never have done that to me in—in his normal self. He has never raised a hand to me in all our lives.” She shuddered. “Something is happening to him, Dominic. Something very terrible … as if there is something inside him which is broken. I—I don’t know what to do!”

“Neither do I,” Dominic admitted unhappily. “Perhaps I should try talking to him again?” It was the last thing he wanted to do, and he felt intrusive even thinking of it, but how could he leave her to face this alone? Ramsay was the man she loved, and she was watching him drown in some emotional vortex she could neither understand nor help. He was being sucked away from her, from them all. Dominic knew only too well what it was like to be dragged down and suffocated by despair. He had wanted to kill himself during those few weeks at Icehouse
Wood. It was only cowardice which had held him back, not any love of life, or hope. But Ramsay had not backed away from him or allowed embarrassment to keep him from stretching out his hand.

“No …,” Vita said gently. “Not yet, anyway. He will only deny it, and it will make him upset. I am sure you have tried already … haven’t you?”

“Yes—but …”

She laid her hand on his arm. “Then, my dear, the kindest thing you can do is visit people who are expecting him. Do his duties that he is at present incapable of doing for himself. Keep up the dignity and respect he used to have for people, and do not let them see what has become of him. Do it for their sakes also. They need what he could do for them if he were himself. There are things to be organized, decisions to be made which are beyond him at the moment. Do it for him … for all of us.”

He hesitated. “I don’t really have the authority …”

She spoke with absolute certainty, her head high, her voice clear. “You must take it.”

He wanted to do that, to find an honorable excuse to leave the house with its suspicion and anger, the fear that seemed to permeate everything like a coldness into the bones. He did not want to quarrel with Mallory again, or face Tryphena’s grief, or try to think of a way to approach Ramsay without badgering or being intrusive or accusatory, and leaving him feeling even more alone than before.

The only person he found he could think of with any sense of relief, surprisingly, was Clarice. She was outrageous. Some of the things she said were appalling. But he could understand why she said them, and in spite of his better judgment, he did think they were funny, even if no one else did. There was an honesty of emotion in her which he respected.

“Yes,” he said decisively. “Yes, that would be the best.” And without allowing time for any further discussion he bade Vita
good-bye and collected the necessary addresses and information, then took his hat and coat and left.

It was one of those spring days when the wind drives the clouds across the skies so that one moment everything is bathed in light and the next there is chill and shadow, and the moment after, silver and gold again as the sun slants on falling rain. He walked briskly. He would have run had it not been ridiculous, such was his sense of momentary freedom.

He fulfilled all his errands, extending them where possible. Even so, at half past five he had no further reason to remain away from Brunswick Gardens, and was home again by six.

The first person he encountered was Clarice. She was alone on the terrace in the early evening light. The terrace was sheltered and warm, out of the wind, and she was enjoying a few moments of solitude. His immediate thought was that he had intruded.

“I’m sorry,” he apologized, and was about to turn and leave.

“No!” she said hastily. She was dressed in muslin, near white, with a green-and-white shawl over her shoulders. He was surprised how it became her. It made him think of summer, cool shaded mornings when the light is clear, before anyone thinks of what will be done in the day.

She smiled. “Please stay. How were your visits?”

“Unremarkable,” he replied honestly. He never thought of being other than honest with Clarice.

“But nice to be out,” she said perceptively. “I wish I had some reason to escape. Waiting is the worst of it, isn’t it?” She turned away and stared at the lawn and the fir trees. “I sometimes think hell is not actually something awful happening, it’s waiting for something and never being absolutely sure if it will happen, so you soar on hope, and then plunge into despair, and then up again, and down again. You get too exhausted to care for a while, then it all starts over. Permanent despair would almost be a relief. You could get on with it. It takes so much energy to hope.”

He said nothing, trying to think.

She looked at him. “Aren’t you going to tell me it will all be over soon?”

“I don’t know that it will.” Then he was ashamed of being so candid. He should have tried to comfort her, instead of unburdening himself. He was behaving like a child, and he was nearly twenty years older than she. She deserved better of him than that. Why did he think of her as stronger? If he could protect Vita, then he should far more try to protect Clarice. “I’m sorry,” he apologized. “I expect it will. Pitt will discover the truth.”

She smiled at him. “You are lying … not in a bad way! A white lie.” She shrugged a little, pulling her shawl tighter. “Please don’t. I know you mean to be kind. You are doing your pastoral duty. But take off your priest’s collar for a few minutes and be an ordinary man. Pitt may find the truth. He may not. We might have to live like this forever. I know that.” Her mouth curved very slightly, as if mocking herself. “I have already decided what to believe, I mean what I shall live with, so I don’t lie awake at night torturing myself, turning it over and over in my mind. I have to have a way to function.”

Half a dozen starlings flew up out of the trees at the end of the lawn and spiraled upward on the wind, black against the sky.

“Even if it isn’t true?” he said incredulously.

“I think it probably is,” she answered, staring ahead of her. “But either way, we have to go on. We can’t simply stop everything else and go round and round the same wretched puzzle. It was one of us. That is inescapable. We can’t run anymore; we are better accepting it. There is no point in thinking how dreadful it is. I have been lying awake a lot, turning it over and over. Whoever did it is someone I know and love. I can’t just stop loving them because of it. Anyway, you don’t! If you didn’t love someone anymore because they did something you found ugly, no love would last. None of us would be loved, because we all do things that are shabby, stupid, vicious from time to time. You need to love from understanding, or even without it.”

She was not looking at him but at the fading sunlight and lengthening shadows across the grass.

“And what have you decided?” he said quietly. Suddenly he dreaded that she was going to say it was he. He was amazed at how it would hurt. He cared intensely that she should not think he had had an affair with Unity here, under her father’s roof, and then, in a moment of rage and panic, pushed her to her death, even if she could believe he had not meant it. Certainly he would be intentionally allowing Ramsay to be blamed. And after all Ramsay had done for him, that was inconceivable.

He waited with the sweat prickling on his skin.

“I have decided that Mallory had an affair with Unity,” she said quietly. “Not love. I think for him it was a temptation. She wanted him, because he had sworn to be celibate and to believe something she found preposterous.”

The starlings wheeled back again and disappeared behind the poplar.

“She wished to show him he could not do it, and that it was all pointless anyway,” she went on. “She set out to seduce him from his path, and she succeeded. It was a kind of triumph for her … not only over Mallory himself but over all the male-dominated church that patronized her and shut her out because she was a woman.” She sighed. “And the terrible thing is that I can’t entirely blame her for that. It was stupid and destructive, but if you are rejected often enough, it hurts so much you lash out wherever you can. You pick the vulnerable people, not necessarily the ones that attacked you. In a way Mallory represents religion’s most easily wounded point: human vanity and appetite. She tried Papa’s doubt as well, but the victory over that was so much harder to see or measure.”

He watched her as if in a strange state of disbelief, and yet there was sense in what she said. It was the fact she said it which was extraordinary.

“Why would Mallory kill her?” he asked, his voice catching in a cough, his mouth dry.

“Because she was blackmailing him, of course,” she said as if the answer had been obvious. “She was with child. Pitt told Papa, and he told me. I daresay everyone knows now.” A gust of wind blew her hair and tugged at the loose ends of her shawl. She hugged it closer. “It would ruin him, wouldn’t it?” she went on. “I mean, you cannot start out in a great career as a Catholic priest leaving behind a pregnant woman you have seduced and then deserted. Even if it was really she who did the seducing.”

“Does he want a great career?” he said with surprise. It was irrelevant, but he had never thought of Mallory as ambitious. He had believed the contrary, that he was using the Catholic faith as a prop to hold him up, to fill the void in certainty and authority where he thought his father’s church had let him down—let them all down.