The Lorimer Line (43 page)

Claudine had grown fat, and was not very much cleaner than her son, but her smile as she recognized Margaret was as warm as ever. During her brief reign as nursery governess she had never behaved like a servant and now, mistress of her own house, she greeted her visitor without deference. Jean-Claude was chivvied away with a series of shrill instructions to remember his duties with the geese. Then she turned again to Margaret.

‘You will understand, Mademoiselle,' she said, speaking her native language more slowly for the benefit of a foreigner, ‘that he believes himself to be the son of my husband.'

The words were a caution. A surprise as well. But one which was likely to suit the Lorimer plans. Margaret assured Claudine that she had no intention of saying anything which would disturb the life of the family, and was at once rewarded by an invitation into the kitchen.

Three other children playing on the floor there were shooed away, swept out by a flapping of their mother's skirts as though they were geese or pigs which had strayed into the wrong part of the farm.

‘So!' Claudine poured two cups of coffee from a pan which stood on the hob and motioned Margaret to sit on one of the wooden chairs. ‘It is a great pleasure to see you again, Mam'selle. I hope that all your family are in good health. Your father, for example. He was very generous to me. I remember him in my prayers every day.'

‘My father is dead,' said Margaret.

‘I am sorry,' said Claudine. ‘Is that the reason for your visit?'

She lowered her voice out of respect as she spoke, but Margaret noticed that her eyes had brightened at the news. What they expressed was not precisely greed; rather a natural acceptance of the possibility that a rich man would wish to remember all his grandsons in his will.

‘Before he died, my father lost all his money,' Margaret told her. ‘The bank …' she searched for the right word and failed to find it. ‘All his business was in ruins. There was nothing left.' Noticing that her appearance was under scrutiny, she added - almost as though she needed to excuse herself - ‘I have to work for my living now.'

Claudine shrugged her shoulders, not allowing herself to be depressed by disappointment in a possibility which had occurred to her only a few seconds earlier. ‘You have my sympathy, Mam'selle,' she murmured.

‘Tell me your own news, Claudine,' said Margaret. ‘How long have you been married?'

‘As soon as I returned to my family. It was necessary for me to find a husband at once so that my baby should be born in wedlock.' The word she used was unfamiliar but its sense was clear enough, and startling.

‘But - I understood …' Margaret stopped to consider. Had Claudine not realized that the ceremony which Ralph had arranged was one of marriage? If that were the case, was it wise to speak of it now? Claudine, cheerful again, was shrewd enough to follow her visitor's train of thought.

‘Your brother told you, perhaps, that he had married me,' she said. ‘I was very happy when that happened; because I could say to my father that my child would not be a bastard. But the priest spoke to my mother and told her that in the eyes of Holy Church what had happened was no marriage at all.'

Margaret found it difficult not to laugh. Ralph, a schoolboy at the time, could be excused for not realizing that Claudine must be Roman Catholic. It was more surprising
that the point had not occurred to William. His own smug Anglicanism must have blinded him to the implications.

‘The priest said I should send for Monsieur Ralph so that a second ceremony could be performed,' Claudine continued. ‘But how could I ask such a thing? It was brave of him to escape from his father for the first time. He would not be allowed to come to France, and I had promised that I would never return to England. Besides …' she looked down at her apron, laughing to herself, ‘if he had come and the priest had married us, I should have been tied for the rest of my life to a man I could never see again. In England, I was frightened. But here at home I decided that was not the way a woman should live.'

Margaret said nothing, but sipped the bitter coffee.

‘It was easier to look for a husband in my own village,' Claudine continued. ‘In the country it is not the same as in Bristol. Here, a man does not marry a girl until he is sure that she will bear children. True, he prefers his sons to be his own, but your father's dowry was generous. With it, Guillaume was able to buy this farm. We breed Périgord geese - to make the pâté de foie gras, you understand -and we enjoy a good living. I am content.'

‘So you don't think of Monsieur Ralph as your husband?'

‘He is not my husband,' said Claudine emphatically. ‘The priest explained to me most carefully that the words in England meant nothing. And from the moment Jean-Claude was born, Guillaume has been his father. If your brother has sent you here as a messenger, because he wants his son, the answer is that he has no son. Will you tell him that? I ask for your promise.'

To Margaret, translating the French word by word in her head, the request came as a demand. It was reasonable, she supposed. If Claudine had suffered at the hands of the Lorimer family once, it would hardly come as a recompense now to split up her own family and challenge the validity of her marriage. Margaret's first reaction to her discovery had been that Jean-Claude should be rescued from poverty
and offered whatever comforts the Lorimers were still able to afford. But Claudine's anxious expression showed her how selfish such a thought had been. Here in France the boy was part of a loving family, a secure community. The Lorimers had nothing comparable to offer.

And there was no real choice. Jean-Claude's mother had taken a decision, and it must be respected. Margaret looked into Claudine's eyes and Claudine stared steadily back. Margaret nodded her head slightly. It was the nod with which John Junius had been accustomed to signify his acceptance of a situation as the prelude to dismissing it from his thoughts. The two women shook hands, both happy that the matter was settled. As she left, Margaret paused to take a last look at the urchin chasing geese. For a Lorimer, he did not seem very successful in his profession.

For the rest of the stay in Sarlat, she joined Matthew on his expeditions to the paintings and carvings which had been made in the prehistoric days when this area, it seemed, was the cultural centre of Europe. She had intended, once she had investigated the situation at her first meeting with Claudine, to take Matthew to the farm for a reunion with his one-time governess. But now she realized that if she was to keep her promise, her two young nephews must not be allowed to meet. Matthew's introduction to the art of portraiture in the Paris galleries had led him in the following days to scrutinize faces and study features. It was by no means inconceivable that he might notice the resemblance between the boy on the farm and his uncle Ralph. Fortunately, no one had ever mentioned to Matthew the true reason for the journey to France.

Back in England Margaret reported her discovery to William, who rubbed his hands in satisfaction.

Then we need worry no more about it,' he said. ‘Ralph can be told that he is a free man.'

That is not exactly the case. The marriage may not have been a valid one for Claudine, but surely Ralph is bound by it.'

‘Nonsense,' said William briskly. ‘Ralph was too young. Without his father's consent, whatever ceremony he went through was merely a form of words.'

‘If that was the case, it was hardly necessary for me to go to France, was it?' It did not occur to Margaret to doubt her brother's word, but she was annoyed by the implication that her journey had been for nothing.

‘We have to think of Ralph's moral position, not merely his legal one,' William pointed out. ‘Without the news you have discovered, we could never have persuaded him that he could honourably abandon Claudine. He was married in his own eyes and in the eyes of
his
Church, if not of Claudine's, and we know that his religious feelings are strong. A man of less firm principles would have forgotten the whole affair long ago. I will tell him to forget it now. The interests of all three of them lie together. Claudine and her son wish to hear no more of Ralph, and Ralph wishes to hear no more of Claudine. Leave it to me to speak to him. For your part, if you have an unmarried friend whom he might find pleasant company, please feel at liberty to invite her to visit you at Brinsley House. Sophie too will put her mind to the subject. Ralph's furlough is not a long one, and he has made his wishes clear enough.'

Margaret realized, as she accepted her congé, that there was a good deal to be said for decisive action in such a situation. Even so she was unprepared for William's method of handling it. Less than an hour after their conversation, Ralph came striding across the upper lawn to join her as she leant against the parapet on her favourite part of the terrace.

‘William tells me that your travels in France took you near to the place where Claudine's parents lived,' he said. ‘I was grieved to hear of her death last year.'

Margaret stared at him without trusting herself to speak. She was horrified that William should have put such a lie
into her mouth - but now that it had been told and believed, would it be wise to contradict the falsehood?

‘And did William also tell you about the child?' she asked.

‘That there never was a baby. Yes. It was foolish of me to believe the story. William has been trying to console me with the assurance that many young men are deceived in such a way, and I suppose it is true.' He had shown a genuine grief when speaking of Claudine's death, but now he smiled shyly. When he spoke again, it might have seemed to anyone but Margaret that he was changing the subject. ‘We have wasted too much time talking about my foolishness. Tell me more about your own plans. Now that you are coming to live in Bristol, what does Miss Morton intend to do? Will she stay on in the lodgings which you shared in London?'

‘That was her intention when I left, but I suspect that she will soon be driven out of London by her own high standards. She has specialized in questions of public health and hygiene, and the capital is intractably large and dirty. While I was there we had a pleasant way of life together. But I think she will now be looking for a post in some smaller place, where projects can be set afoot not just for the running of a hospital but for the improved health of a whole community. Since she has a few days' holiday due, I am about to invite her to visit me here for a week. Perhaps she will find something in Bristol, suited to her talents. You will be able to talk to her yourself about her ideas.'

‘I shall look forward to meeting her again,' said Ralph. His intentions were transparent, and Margaret's wish to be truthful about Claudine was overruled by the thought of the obstacles she would be placing between her friend and her brother merely for the sake of her own conscience. She had suffered so much herself from an ill-fated love that she could not inflict the same unhappiness on two people for whom she felt such affection. Her silence in Ralph's
presence did not, however, prevent her from expressing her anger when she was next alone with William.

‘You are too squeamish,' said her brother, amused rather than disturbed by her indignation. ‘And too selfish as well. Look at it from Ralph's point of view, which is all that matters now. What I told him has made no change in the actual situation. Claudine is dead to him by her own request, and you reported to me her own words that Ralph has no son by her. All I have done is to change a metaphor into a fact in order that there can be no possible feeling of guilt or regret.'

‘At the sacrifice of truth,' Margaret pointed out.

‘To be honest at the expense of others is a self-indulgence. You may discover for yourself one day that it can be kinder to express the spirit of a situation rather than its bleaker facts. Ralph feels himself free to marry. He would have been free in any case, but now he is not restrained even by doubts. I have done him a good turn.'

The lie had been such a definite one that it could not bear amendment, only acceptance or outright challenge. For a moment longer Margaret hesitated. She was by nature truthful, and knew that she would never be able to live easily with a deception of this kind. But on the other hand, she had made a promise to Claudine, who had the right to expect that it would be kept. If Ralph were to learn the truth, conscience might drive him to see his son, even if he made no greater attempt than that to interfere in Claudine's life. Two forms of integrity - the truth and the promise - struggled for precedence in Margaret's mind. Truth was the loser, as William no doubt had always taken for granted it would be. The lie he had told would keep five people happy - the boy himself, Claudine and her husband, Ralph and, probably, Lydia. The truth would benefit only Margaret's conscience, so that to insist on it would be mere selfishness. Still angry, she confined herself to one last attack.

‘I trust, William, that you will never take it upon yourself
to decide where
my
best interests lie without referring the matter to me first.'

He made no answer and Margaret - although she had expected none - felt a second's uneasiness at his silence. But when she looked at him suspiciously, he merely smiled.

‘And you will write to one of your friends?' he urged, pressing her into complicity.

She nodded and went straight to the morning room; but stopped to think before she took up her writing materials. This was no ordinary invitation. It was almost certain that if Lydia came to Brinsley House, Ralph would make her an offer of marriage. If Lydia accepted it, she would be committing herself to a life of poverty on an unhealthy island far from all her friends. If she refused, Ralph would be made unhappy again. Would it be best to consider …? Margaret checked her own thoughts with the same impatience she had shown to William. She was making the same mistake that she had just criticized in her elder brother. People had the right to make their own decisions.