Freddie’s account had shocked Acland, although he had tried to hide that fact from his brother. He had been shocked by what Freddie told him, and shocked by what he was sure Freddie left out. Freddie censored his story. There were gaps, and Acland found it was these gaps that obsessed him. He tried to concentrate his mind on the facts Freddie had imparted: the fact that Shawcross had kept journals; the fact that both Constance and Freddie had read them; the fact that Freddie now knew of their mother’s affair; the fact that, in some physical way, Constance had seduced his brother.
“She liked to go to places where we might be caught,” Freddie said. “I don’t know why. Father’s study, or the back stairs. We went to your room once.”
“
My
room?”
“We went to everyone’s room, except hers or mine. Then … she’d touch me. Or I’d touch her. You know, Acland …”
Acland, standing at the window, watching the storm recede, turned back to the bed.
My room,
he thought.
Constance still slept; her cheeks were flushed, her hair disordered, spread out upon the pillows. She was a child still, Acland said to himself. He knew at once it was untrue. Constance had never been like a child, even in the days when he first met her. Even then her gaze—defiant, watchful, as if expecting hurt—had been that of someone much older.
Someone had robbed her of her childhood. Acland took a step toward the bed. Constance cried out. She had begun to dream; he saw her eyelids pulse. She began to struggle, wrestling with the sheets. She pulled at the ribbons that fastened her nightgown. She cried out again. Then, eyes still tight shut, breath coming quickly, she lay still.
Acland moved to the bed. The sheets had been kicked to one side; they were tangled with her legs. Her nightgown was disordered. Constance now lay as if a man had just made love to her: her arms flung out, her hair tumbled about her throat and face. One leg was still covered, the other bare. He could see her thigh, the darkness of sexual hair through the thin material of the nightgown. Her right breast was covered, the left exposed. That this child possessed breasts, that they remained full, the aureole wide and dark, despite her thinness, checked Acland.
He reached across to draw the nightgown across her breast. His fingers touched its ribbons. Constance stirred. Her hand closed over his.
“Touch me,” she said, eyes still tight shut. “Oh, yes. Touch me like that.”
He felt the curve of her breast against his palm, the point of her nipple. Constance shuddered. Her eyelids flickered.
Acland snatched his hand back. Constance opened her eyes. She pushed back the tumble of hair. She stared at him, her eyes wide, dark, and blank. Then comprehension flickered.
“Oh, Acland. It’s you. I had a bad dream. A horrible dream. Take my hand. Please hold it. There. I’m better now. No—don’t go. Acland. Stay with me. Talk to me a little.”
“What shall I talk about?”
Acland felt wary; he hesitated, then sat down by the bed.
“Anything. It doesn’t matter. I just want to hear your voice. Tell me, where is everyone else?”
“At the opera, with Stern. They’ll be back soon. The nurse is here, and Jenna, too, if you want them.”
“No, I don’t want them. That nurse is so grim. And Jenna fusses so. What a time I’ve slept. Has she married Hennessy yet?”
“Not yet. Rest, Constance. Hennessy is in France. He joined up, don’t you remember? They’ll marry after the war, presumably.”
“Don’t let’s talk about them. I don’t want to hear of them.” She moved her head on the pillows. “I hate Hennessy. I always did. He killed beetles. He would pull off their legs, shut them up in a box—he showed me once, when I was little—”
“Constance. Rest. Forget Hennessy.”
“He’s simple, just a little. That’s what Cattermole says. But I don’t believe it. I never did. I think he’s clever. Clever and grim. So huge. Does Jenna think he’s handsome, do you think? I suppose he is. Like a great oak. But he killed beetles. And moths. And spiders. He killed my father, I used to think—”
“Constance, stop this. You shouldn’t talk. You’re feverish. Lie still.”
“Am I? Am I feverish? Is my forehead hot?”
She struggled against the pillows. Acland, growing alarmed, wondering if he should ring for the nurse, laid his hand against her forehead. It still felt dry, a little hot.
“You see? No fever. No fever at all.”
She lay back on the pillows. She fixed her eyes on his face.
“I don’t think that now. I was younger then. Now I think—who took those Purdey guns?”
“What?”
“Francis’s guns. Someone took them. They were missing—Francis told me. He might have lied, of course. He might have taken them himself—”
“Constance. I’m fetching the nurse.”
“Don’t you know about the guns then, Acland? I thought you might. Or your father might. Don’t fetch the nurse. Wait. I’ll tell you a terrible thing—”
“Constance—”
“My father and your mother were lovers. They were. On and on. For years. Even Francis found out in the end. He saw them, that very day. Your mother, going into my father’s room. He’d lost something—Francis had. What was it? Something he needed … for his camera—that was it! Yes, he’d left it, and he went back and there she was, just closing the door of the King’s bedroom. Francis wept.”
“Lie still.”
“And Freddie. Both of them. Such tears. Did you weep, Acland? Oh, no—you knew. You already knew. Of course. I’d forgotten that. Acland, my head aches so. Hold my hand. No, tighter. There, you see? I’m calmer now.”
“Constance. You must forget all this. It was a long time ago, five whole years—”
“Acland, will you tell me one thing? Just one? That night—the night he died—where were you, Acland?”
“I was at the party, obviously—”
“Yes, but later. Acland, Francis says he looked for you, when the party was over. He couldn’t sleep; he wanted to talk. And he couldn’t find you. You weren’t in your room, you weren’t downstairs—”
“Boy says that?”
“He said it once.”
“Well, he wouldn’t have found me. I wasn’t there. I was with … someone else.”
“With Jenna?”
“Yes. Now, can we leave this?”
“All night?”
“Yes. All night. It was dawn when I left. I never went to bed—”
“All night. With Jenna.”
Constance gave a deep sigh. All the strain and anxiety left her face. She lay back against the pillows.
“There. You see? You have put my mind at rest. I knew you could. You see, I was so afraid—”
“Constance—”
“No, truly. I feel as if there had been this terrible weight on my back, pressing me down. And now it’s gone. You’ve cured me, Acland. Cured me twice. Once on the balcony, and once in here. I’ll never forget that—not as long as I live.”
She stopped. She took his hand once more.
“Stay a little longer. Talk to me. Tell me quiet things. Ordinary things. Then I’ll sleep. Tell me about your work. Where you go. What you do. Who your friends are. Please, Acland, don’t go.”
Acland hesitated. For a moment his instinct was still to fetch the nurse, to leave the room—but Constance drew him to her. He wanted to leave; he was reluctant to leave.
He looked around the room and found it lulled him. The stillness of a sickroom, the warmth of the firelight, the red of the coverlet. Constance’s eyes rested quietly upon his face. A strange evening, he thought, an evening out of time, set aside from the rest of life.
“Very well,” he began. “My work. My work is very dull. Pieces of paper: I read reports and I write reports. I draft memoranda. I attend committee meetings. I am assigned to the Serbian desk, and the more I learn about events there, the less I understand. I have two wooden trays, Constance, one on the right side of my desk and one on the left, and by the end of the day I have to transfer all the pieces of paper from the left to the right, and that is what I do. Every day.”
“Do you come to decisions?”
“Decisions? No, not for at least the next ten years. No, I make recommendations—and then watch them being ignored.”
“So it doesn’t suit you?”
“No. It doesn’t suit me.”
“What would you rather do?”
“I wish I knew. I’m not trained to do anything. I’m trained to read Greek and Latin and philosophy. I’m being trained—now—to take up some sort of position in the world, a powerful position, I suppose. It’s the expected thing. It doesn’t greatly interest me.”
“Why not?”
“Because it is so very predictable, I suppose. Look at us: Boy will return from the war. One day he will inherit Winterscombe. They’ll find some suitable profession for Freddie, just as they found one for me. Steenie may escape—but the rest of us?” Acland paused.
It surprised him that he should say these things, since he had never voiced them to anyone else, not even to his friend Ego Farrell. Acland looked down at his own hands. They were narrow and pale; the skin was soft: the hands of a gentleman.
“I lack will,” he said, and surprised himself again, for it was not his habit to admit weakness. He looked away. “We were all given too much—perhaps that’s it. Too much, too soon, too easily. So we never learned to fight.”
“You could fight.” Constance struggled to lift herself against her pillows. She reached across and grasped his hands. “You could—you could, Acland. You could go anywhere, be anything, if you chose. Look at me. There! I can see it in your eyes. I recognize it. I always could….”
“Constance, you’re tired—”
“Don’t patronize me. It’s there in you, just as it is in me. We’re alike. You’re not meek and weak, any more than I am. You’re not one of nature’s Christians, Acland.” She smiled. “You’re like me. A pagan.”
“Nonsense.” Acland returned her smile. He lifted his hand and began to count off upon his fingers. “Christened, Church of England. Confirmed, Church of England. Eton and Balliol. Son of a High Tory squire. Grandson of a High Tory squire. The imagination in my family died out years ago. It died out as soon as they acquired money. In a few years’ time, Constance—maybe not quite yet, but it will come—you’ll look in my eyes, and you know what you will see? Complacency. The sang-froid of the Englishman. I shall have it to perfection by then, because it takes at least three generations to acquire—ten, probably, if you want the truly finished article.”
“You’re lying.” Constance’s eyes had remained fixed on his face. “You’re lying, Acland—and you’re also leaving something out. What is it? There’s something else, isn’t there? Something you haven’t told me?”
“I’ve joined up.” He extricated his hands from Constance’s grasp. There was a silence.
“I see,” Constance said at last. “When?”
“Three days ago.”
“Which regiment?”
“The Gloucestershire Rifles.”
“Ego Farrell’s regiment?”
“Yes. Ego is dead.”
“Ah—” Constance drew in her breath. “You mean to replace him then?”
“In a sense. I felt I owed him something—that I owed him that. No one knows yet. I shall tell them tonight. Tomorrow perhaps. I have to train first, in any case. I’ll have to learn to kill. They’ll send me to officer training camp.”
“Draw back the curtains, Acland.”
“You should rest now—”
“In a minute I will. But not yet. Stay five minutes more. It’s raining again, I think. I can hear the rain. Draw back the curtains. Just for a moment. I want to look.”
Acland hesitated; then, as much to placate her as anything, he did as she asked. He returned to the side of the bed.
“Switch off the lamp for a moment. Look …” Constance’s thin face strained toward the window. “Look, there is a moon.”
Acland turned. He looked through the shadows of the room, at a moon almost full and at clouds scudding. They obscured the light one moment; the next it shone forth. Acland looked and, as he gazed, found he saw not just the moon and the clouds, but thoughts, possibilities, and imaginings. They sped formless through his mind, opening up a bright space and then clouding it. A moon, glimpsed; a sick girl, who had been intent on dying.
He remained still, with his face turned to the window, yet the proximity of Constance beat in upon him. He could feel her hand, a few inches from his own, as surely as if he touched it; her hand, her skin, her hair, her eyes. At the same moment they turned to look at each other.
“Acland. Will you hold me? Just for a moment? Will you?”
Constance lifted her arms; Acland bent. It happened, a curious embrace, although he was not conscious of moving, or of taking the decision to move. One moment he still stood by the bed; the next he felt Constance’s thinness strain against him.
He could feel each bone in her rib cage; he could have counted the hard knot of each vertebra. He could feel the heat of her face, which she pressed against his neck. Her hair, made lank by her illness, felt damp, a little greasy against his skin. He lifted a lock of this hair between his fingers, as he had done once before; this time, he pressed it against his lips. Constance was the first to draw back.
Her hands gripped him, so she forced him to look down into her face. When she began to speak, she did so with great intensity.
“No explanations,” she said. “No repercussions or promises. Just this. Just this one time and this one incident. I always knew it was there. You knew it was there, too—the day by the lake, you knew then. Did you know then? No. Don’t answer me.” She pressed one hot thin hand across his lips. “Don’t answer me. I don’t want answers any more than questions. Just this. I need it—to give me strength.”
She broke off. She lifted her hand and touched his hair, then his face, then his eyes. She covered his eyes with her hand. When she removed it, Acland saw she was smiling.
“Later, you’ll tell yourself this was my illness peaking. That’s all right—later. But don’t believe it now. I won’t let you believe it now. I’m not feverish. I was never more calm. You can go in a minute—but not yet. Before you go, you have to promise me something.”
“Promise you what?”
“Promise me not to die.”
“It’s a little difficult—to promise someone that.”
“Don’t smile. I mean this. I want you to swear. Lift your hand—press it against mine. Like that. Promise me.”