Road to Berry Edge, The (29 page)

Three days before the wedding Faith went into Durham for a last few things. It had rained earlier, but had cleared, and she hoped that it would settle in time for Saturday. She lingered in the shops but it was funny how, now that she could have anything, she wanted nothing. Nothing held her interest but the man who was at work in Berry Edge. She could not see enough of him, he could not kiss her enough or hold her enough. She longed for the very sight of him, even though they had been parted for only a few hours. She lingered, leaning over the bridge looking at the castle and cathedral, missing them already because she would be leaving for Nottingham straight after the wedding. It was her one regret.

In the middle of the afternoon she made her way up the narrow street towards the cathedral. A woman was coming the other way with a pram. Faith recognised her
immediately. She lived with Susannah Seaton. The pram was new, bright and shiny. She wouldn't have stopped but Faith smiled and said, ‘Good afternoon.' The pavement was narrow and the pram was cumbersome. Faith looked at the baby, thinking of how beautiful the child had seemed, as she would with a mother like Susannah Seaton. The woman would even then have brushed past and gone on, except that Faith was in the way. Faith was about to make a complimentary remark about the baby, because she loved babies, and had of late spent many happy hours thinking of the children that she and Rob would have, and then she looked at the baby. Something happened inside her head, and she knew that she was his child. There was just something about her that was completely him.

She let the pram past, she even smiled and said goodbye, but she knew. She felt as though she was going to faint, her head was dizzy and her feet didn't know where to go. She went up the bank towards the green which had the cathedral on one side, the castle on another and houses on the other two sides, and she went into the cathedral and sat down there in the cool quiet, and tried to think. She could not believe what her heart was telling her.

It could not be true, such a thing could not happen to destroy the only real happiness that she had felt in ten years, and yet there was a part of her which knew with a clearsightedness that it was.

Faith went home. She walked back to the station, she stared out of the train window, she went slowly back to the house where soon Harry and Rob and Vincent would finish their work and come home to eat. Presents had arrived, the house was festive, it had an air of excitement about it as though it would burst with joy. Her mother was so pleased, her father was smiling at her, and Rob's mother. Faith thought he had finally managed it, he had managed to please his mother. He had got something right, his mother spoke softly to him, smiled on him. Faith did not think that
she had ever seen Mrs Berkeley look like this since before John died and everything went wrong.

Rob came home. He looked different to Faith now. He no longer looked to her like the young man she had loved. He was somehow all at once profoundly not John, and Faith wondered how on earth she had ever thought she loved him. He looked like the man she had thought he was before he came home, the careless, uncaring, selfish person he had always been who went around thoughtlessly destroying other people's lives. He was the person who was John's brother.

Dinnertime came and went. The talk was all of the wedding. Faith must have eaten something, but didn't remember doing so. After dinner, because it was pouring with rain, the older people sat around the fire and Rob and Harry went into the billiard room. Faith followed them there.

‘I want to talk to you,' she said.

‘Just a minute.' He executed a perfect shot, which had to cannon off the cushion to sink a red ball, and Harry laughed and called him names.

‘I want to talk to you,' she said.

‘In a minute. I could do this.'

‘On your own.'

He wasn't even listening. He was lining up the next shot and Harry was laughing. They were neither of them paying any attention and why should they, she thought? Their world had come together. They were rich and successful. They had everything.

‘I want to talk to you about Susannah Seaton.'

That stopped them; their laughter was silenced, and whatever shot it was that Rob was boasting about to Harry, he didn't make it. He stopped, looked up.

‘What?' he said.

They left the room. He closed the door. In the hall he looked at her, but Faith went into the dining room which was now cleared and empty, although the table and chairs
took up a great deal of space. It was not a room which got the sunlight and was not a room which she had ever liked, and with the summer rain excluding what light there was from the window it was quite gloomy in there. It could have done with a lamp or two, though none were lit because after dinner nobody went in there.

‘I want you to tell me all about her,' Faith said softly.

‘Why?'

‘Just tell me about Susannah Seaton and you.'

Rob stopped leaning against the door and moved further into the room. ‘For a short while after I came back to Berry Edge she was my mistress.'

Faith looked at him. ‘At the time I used to hear stories about Harry. I believed them about him, but I didn't think that you would do such a thing.'

‘Why not?'

‘Because I saw you differently.'

‘You saw me as John.'

‘Yes. Yes, I did. Perhaps that was how I wanted to see you. I should understand now that I've been about a little in the world, because I know that in places like London it's quite common for men like you, men who call themselves gentlemen, to sleep with prostitutes.'

‘I never did,' Rob said.

‘But you did. Not there, but here, where most people already disliked you. Didn't it seem reckless?'

‘I loved her.'

‘You loved Susannah Seaton, knowing that she gave herself to other men for money?'

‘It wasn't anything to do with that. I didn't care what she did, at least I did but … she gave them up.'

‘And that made it right?'

‘No, I didn't say it was right. This was last spring and summer. I haven't seen her since then. I'm not so bad a person, I wouldn't do that to you or to her. It's done and finished. It's over a year.'

‘But you weren't going to tell me, were you?'

‘About something that happened before us? No, why should I?'

‘I think,' Faith said slowly, ‘that if that had been all, though God knows it's enough that you should pay a woman to go to bed with you, if that had been all I think I might have forgiven you—'

‘Forgiven me?' He was staring at her.

‘But there's a child, isn't there?'

He went on staring at her, his eyes darkening. ‘A child? No, it can't be anything to do with me. She would have told me. She wouldn't risk that happening.'

‘I've seen the baby. It looks just like you.'

‘No.'

‘Yes, it does.'

‘Susannah wouldn't do that to me.'

‘You can go there and see for yourself. The whole world can see. It's obvious.'

Rob said nothing. His head went down and he leaned back against the door again.

‘You don't think I'm going to marry you now, do you?' Faith said, her voice shaking badly. ‘You should be relieved. You didn't want to marry me.'

‘I did.'

‘Don't pretend either to yourself or to me that you have any honour, because you don't, you never did have. You didn't want me because what you wanted was Susannah Seaton. You preferred a whore to me, a woman who has been with countless other men. You preferred that to me.'

‘No.'

‘You disgusting liar. The only reason that you offered to marry me was because you felt guilty.'

‘No.'

‘Yes, it was, Rob! You feel guilty over John. You always will, and as far as I'm concerned you always should. You destroyed him with your stupidity. You spoil everything
that way, just like you've done this time. I thought you were different but you aren't, you're still the stupid boy that you always were, and you ruin everything because you don't think about anything but what you want. You've taken everything away from me, even yourself. You couldn't bring yourself to be honest and say that you had never cared for me. You would have married me while you love another woman.'

The room was quite dark now. Faith wanted to get out because her throat was full of tears, but he was leaning against the door like he had forgotten how to move.

There was a knock on the door, and when Harry pushed it open Rob moved away. As soon as Harry came in Faith ran past him into the hall. She was already crying. Her mother came out of the sitting room.

‘Faith?' she said.

Harry closed the door.

‘Did you know that Susannah was back?' Rob said.

‘No.'

‘Don't you ever go into Durham?'

‘No, I don't.'

‘Why not? Are you a reformed character or something?'

‘Something like that.'

‘There's a child, Harry.'

‘Oh God, is there? How the hell does Faith know? Is it a boy or a girl?'

‘I didn't ask.'

‘Well, that's typical of you. That's what you do in important meetings, stare out of the window like bloody Henny-Penny, waiting for the sky to fall. I won't get my best suit pressed for Saturday then, eh?'

Rob made for the door. Harry got hold of his arm. ‘Just a minute. You can't go off to Durham and beat the truth out of Susannah. It won't help at all.'

Rob looked at him. ‘Do you know what this means, Harry? It means that I was right, that Susannah never did care about
me or she wouldn't have let this happen to hurt Faith so much. She would know that I was trying to repair things that can't be repaired. She must hate me. I was just another stupid man paying for things I was not entitled to.'

‘That's not true,' Harry said.

Rob pulled away, left the house. Faith's father was first into the room.

‘Where is he?'

‘He's gone.'

‘That's what he always does, runs away.'

Vincent came in. ‘Where's Rob?'

‘I don't know.'

‘Is this true? Is there a woman with a child? What is he, a bloody imbecile?'

*

Harry left the house. He went back to the office for a while, but Rob did not go there or to the house. When it was late on the summer's evening Harry walked the streets, trying to decide whether to go to Durham.

The streets of Berry Edge were not as they had been. It was not yet a prosperous place to live, but it would be. There were still many houses where nobody wanted to live, but not nearly as many as there had been, and a lot of them were still being altered. Rob had been so excited about it and it was clean now, the streets were almost rubbish free and the works itself went night and day in the old ‘time's money' code that industry had.

The shops were full of goods because there was money and the children played games in the street. The rain was well stopped and the sun was creating a brilliant sheen on the roads and pavements. The houses had that just-washed look which made them more handsome than they were. Here and there people greeted him - not all of them, some hated him because he was the boss, but most of them accepted him now. He walked the streets until well after they were deserted, until the children had gone to bed, the
women to their houses and the men to the pubs or to work. The only noise was the midweek clamour of beer-happy workmen.

Harry couldn't go back to the house. He went past it on his way up the hill, he went through the park and then out to the top and walked right along the road, past the terraced houses and further on to where his own house was. He found the key in his pocket, unlocked the door and went inside. There wasn't much furniture in the house. He was planning to move in within a few days but he hadn't had time to buy things. There weren't any glasses. He found a bottle of Scotch in the kitchen and emptied some into a thin fluted china cup. He stood around even though there were hard chairs, and when he had swallowed half a cup and refilled it he wandered up to the garden room which Faith had so much liked. He stood there while the summer evening turned into night.

He had not wanted Faith to marry Rob, and now she was not going to. He wished that he had been more generous. He remembered her crying and the stricken look on her face. She had found out that Rob was not his brother because, from what Harry could gather, John Berkeley would never in a million years have gone with a prostitute, much less got her pregnant. Harry wondered what the baby was like. If Faith deplored Rob's conduct what would she think of a man like himself? Rob was a saint by comparison. Rob had been Faith's last chance because he was the one man in the world who seemed like the only man that she had ever loved. Harry doubted that she was capable of loving again.

He drank the rest of his Scotch as the day disappeared and the sky came down to meet the fell in darkness, and he thought about himself. He wondered whether he had fallen in love almost on purpose with a woman he could not possibly have so that he would not have to marry her, so that he could be forever free in that solitary way to which he had become accustomed. At least it was a comforting
thought, and he wouldn't go mad if he thought like that. He might go mad otherwise. Sometimes he wished that he had never come to Berry Edge, never met Faith Norman, never discovered the pain of unrequited love. He had heard that it was the only kind that lasted, which made things about as difficult as they could be.

*

It was late evening by the time the doorbell went. Susannah was lying on the bed with Victoria, who had just fallen asleep. The doorbell rang again, and she hastened down the stairs for fear that the baby should hear it and awaken suddenly, crying. Claire had gone out.

She threw back the bolts and opened the door. Evening light spilled into the house, and there on the doorstep stood the man she had told herself she never wanted to see again. When she saw who it was she tried to shut the door, but Rob was too quick for her and too big, so she stood back until he had closed the door and they were enveloped in the gloom of the hall.