‘Do you think I only want your body?’ he asked in a tight rasping voice. ‘I could buy women for that. I want the whole of you … heart and mind. I’d rather be refused than have you give yourself like this … sooner embrace a corpse. If you ever know the pain of being alone in a lover’s arms … know how it is to feel grasping, when all you wanted was to give … I’ll pity you.’

  She leaned forward and embraced him, her eyes soft with sorrow, yet to him as empty as a sky without stars. The shadow of dependence lay heavily on his heart. When he felt her cheeks wet against his, he still knew no certainty; there could be a thousand reasons for grief, and love was only one. He walked away from the bed and left the room without speaking.

  His mother glanced at him with questioning eyes as he sat down beside her in the carriage.

  ‘A headache,’ he murmured. ‘She said another day. Was sorry …’ He shrugged his shoulders and attempted a smile which scarcely moved his lips.

  Lady Ardmore looked away as the barouche lumbered into motion. Her face was as impassive as before her son had entered the carriage. Inside her muff, her hands were squeezed together. A headache, she thought derisively, and Esmond had sucked it in, probably scared of brain fever. At night she herself sometimes woke from her drugged sleep with pains in her chest; her skin clammy with sweat, breath coming in shallow gasps. But what did Esmond care about that, when a girl’s headache could make him look like death? As they rumbled into the beech woods, she laughed softly to herself.

  ‘Something to amuse you,’ she said abruptly. ‘That girl’s fool of a governess … O’Flaherty took her into Westport to buy wool and she saw a boy running after the dog-cart naked except for his jacket. She asked O’Flaherty whether the lad had no other clothes. Ma’am, said he, that boy could have clothes enough if he chose, but he’s so wonderful ticklesome he never could stand to let a tailor take his measure for a pair of breeches.’

  Esmond smiled but did not laugh. His mother looked at him for a moment with feigned disappointment and then gazed through the dirty window at the falling leaves. If things went on like this she would have to talk to Miss Simmonds before she left and tell her a few things that would give her more than a headache.

  *

  Long after Esmond had gone, Theresa still felt angry and ashamed. Was it her fault he made himself responsive to her slightest smile or frown? He had woven her so closely into the web of his emotions that he could no longer recognise the true causes of her moods, but always with a lover’s egotism took upon himself the blame or credit for her every shift. Unable to remain idle any longer, she went in search of her daughter. Still apprehensive about Clinton, she badly wanted the distraction of Louise’s company.

  The child was not in the library, her temporary schoolroom, nor in her bedroom. Theresa walked through dark rooms where shafts of light picked out curved legs of cabinets and dim tapestries. She passed the assortment of potted palms, sticks, and pruning knives in the hall and continued into the less frequented part of the house, where, the day before, Esmond had shown her matchless Catherine of Braganza chairs shrouded under brown hollands. In a small unused sitting room, her eye took in wax flowers under a glass dome and a blue Chinese vase on a marble chiffonnier. From here she entered a servants’ passage and found a door leading into the stable yard.

  High up, on the back of a large black mare, Louise was being led round the yard by Corporal Harris. The radiant pleasure of Louise’s face brought a lump to Theresa’s throat. The child’s expression was full of the trustingness Theresa remembered so well from the time when Louise had been a little girl of five or six. How contented, and pleased with everything she had been then—before her father’s death and the more extravagant expectations of her new life had changed her. On the child’s head was a cavalry forage cap and in her hand a crop held up like a sword. Harris was saying in a gruff parody of a military voice:

  ‘So when you comes level with the trough, on the command “eyes right”, you brings down your sword to the salute.’

  Louise nodded solemnly, and, as Theresa heard Harris say, ‘Eyes right’, she saw Clinton step out from the shadow cast by the door of a loose box. A moment after raising his hand in salute to Louise, he came forward smiling and patted the horse’s neck.

  ‘Nothing to it was there? If you can manage the march past by squadrons at review, we’ll soon have you leading a troop.’

  Moving back a little to remain out of sight, Theresa felt relief so intense that for a moment she had to lean against the wall. Not even hurt, he was standing there as calmly as if he had just returned from a walk through the gardens. Just seeing him, as he lifted Louise down, made Theresa incredulous that she had ever imagined he could come to any harm. His coming seemed as inevitable as the sun’s rising or the rooks return to the elms at nightfall. The early evening sunshine filled the yard with dancing motes and gilded the pools of water between the cobbles. Harris drew the bridle over the horse’s head, loosened the buckles of the girth and lifted off the saddle; then covering her with a blanket, led her into a loose box. Looking at Clinton, Theresa was overwhelmed by a feeling both frightening and exhilarating; a slow yielding of the heart like a plant’s inclination to the sun. Afraid to move in case she should speak either with the forced gaiety of a juvenile lead or the incoherence of a flustered child, she stayed hidden a little longer. He’s just another man, she told herself light-headedly, at the same time wanting to laugh at such absurdity. In a score of plays she had kissed so many men without awareness of their sex; but with everything Clinton said or did, she sensed his maleness. And because of this, the aura of remoteness she had clothed him in fell away, and she felt able to treat with him on terms that made birth and position irrelevant. And yet Louise, Esmond, the future? Was she never again to be free and irresponsible, never know the heedless courage able to seize the moment at whatever cost? And suddenly her fear was greater than her elation. Through a mist of doubts she heard him speak her name.

  He said that Louise wanted to see his horse being groomed. She was aware of the rattle of a pail and a metal shoe ringing on the cobbles.

  ‘Of course,’ she murmured.

  When she had followed Clinton into the stable the mare was eating wisps of hay, while Harris washed the hocks, shaggy with their passage through the undergrowth. The man was patiently looking for thorns and scratches with a small bull’s-eye lantern, and as he worked he explained to Louise what he would do next. The air was warm and damp, filled with the soft noise of horses feeding. After a brief silence, Clinton said: ‘I’ll show you the saddle room; it ought to be opened as a museum of an age before saddlesoap.’

  She followed him past some empty stalls to a large room lit by a smoking lamp, where the saddles, hung high on rusty nails, cast brown shadows on the peeling walls, and bridles dangled like creepers in a conservatory. On the far side of the room she saw some dusty carriage lamps and a cracked dashboard, piled up near a heap of shafts and springs. He took down a bridle and with a sharp tug pulled it apart.

  ‘As well my mother’s riding days are over, or they very soon would be.’

  She stared down at the broken strip of leather where he had let it drop and looked up at him.

  ‘Why have you brought me here?’

  He laughed easily.

  ‘I’d better tell you I’m a clergyman and married; this should assure you it cannot be my intention to do you the wrong you may expect.’

  ‘Where did that come from?’ she asked with a faint smile.

  ‘God knows. A play with a marvellous vicar who couldn’t stop trying to save fallen women. I can’t remember the title.’

  ‘What happened with the Irishman?’ she whispered.

  ‘He’s coming to pay his rent. With some help from his wife he turned out quite amenable.’

  ‘Like everybody else?’ she asked with sudden bitterness.

  As she turned her face to him Clinton was confused by her unexpected anger. He had wanted to talk to her, away from Harris and the girl, but without any clear idea of what he would say. He had come to enjoy the uncertainties and needling undertones in their brief conversations.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ he said softly. ‘Would you like me to go?’

  And at once, seeing the subdued fire in her eyes, he felt the tension in the air around them, dense as the lamp-smoke. As though he had been running, he drew breath, and with effort sufficient for a great leap, moved back a single step. At last, averting his eyes, he said with harshness strange to him:

  ‘You play at your profession on the stage to keep your talents for real life.’

  ‘Do what?’ she asked faintly, from a distance like one in pain. The pale light from the windows and the lamp cast soft shadows on her face. ‘Are conquests worthless to you unless fought for through every trick of false pride and modesty?’

  As she pushed past him, he caught her hand in a grasp at once rough and delicate.

  ‘I want no kindness … no superior sympathy.’

  ‘Believe me …’ he whispered, raising her hand to his lips and kissing her palm and then her fingers. No longer trying to look away, he met her eyes with a sadness she had not seen till then.

  ‘Oh God,’ she said softly, hesitantly. ‘Was it because … because a man who refuses is crushed by satire? That modesty in men is …?’

  He shook his head and for answer embraced her and kissed her lips, his hands moving down the length of her arms to her waist, with so firm a pressure that they seemed to mould rather than caress her body. After the pain of hesitation, their joined lips brought respite as much as desire. A warm long kiss, neither tranquil nor devouring, which sent a shiver down her spine and slow waves of warmth; a suspension of time and thought behind closed eyes. They parted breathing heavily, their eyes soft and misty. For minutes afterwards Theresa could still feel the pressure of his hands.

  As they walked back between the stalls towards the loose box where they had left Louise and Harris, Theresa’s desire to reach out and touch him changed to incredulity at what had happened. Watching Harris at work on the mare with a brush and curry-comb, Clinton smiled at Louise.

  ‘Do you see what it means not to turn a hair?’

  And Theresa seeing the other meaning to his words, resolved that whatever might be said or done, she would keep their secret. Minutes later as the old green coach rattled into the yard, she felt the first sharp pangs of fear, and a dread of the future which made her knees shake, but she walked on towards the house at the same unhurried pace, smiling at Louise chattering by her side.

  When Theresa and Louise had left the stables, Clinton leant against the manger, absently watching each evidence of the understanding between mare and groom; the way the horse inclined her head to the man as he brushed vigorously at the little valleys and folds where the ears grew from the skull. When Harris put down the brush and picked up his comb again to start on the mane, the mare curved her long neck and nibbled him fondly on the shoulder.

  As if he had been drinking, Clinton tried to reassemble his thoughts with ponderous deliberation, but, like the fragments of a brittle dream, they split apart, leaving him bemused. Everything around him—stables, horses, each familiar sight and sound, seemed distanced and unreal.

  9

  After dinner, Clinton and Esmond stayed on in the dining room for cigars and port, while Lady Ardmore and Theresa retired to the only large reception room still in regular use. Since there was no piped gas at Kilkreen, at night the house was lit entirely by oil lamps and candles, which left dark pools of shadow in the corners of rooms as cavernous as the Cedar Drawing Room, in spite of two massive Waterford chandeliers.

  While Theresa waited for Lady Ardmore to sit down in one of the tall-backed Carolean chairs by the fire, she glanced at a hanging to the right of the carved marble fireplace: a piece of fraying embroidery richly decorated with birds, fishes and plants. In a central rectangular panel was a hand holding a pruning knife against the stem of a vine and under it a Latin maxim on a scroll: ‘Virescit vulnere virtus.’

  ‘The Danvers motto,’ murmured Lady Ardmore, who had been watching her attentively. ‘Shall I translate it for you?’

  ‘Courage grows stronger through a wound,’ replied Theresa after only momentary hesitation. The old woman nodded as if surprised by Theresa’s erudition.

  ‘Our version is: “Virtue flourishes by a wound.” I’m not so sure myself. The weak often grow weaker in adversity.’ She paused. ‘Do many actresses know Latin, Mrs Barr?’

  While Clinton always called Theresa by the maiden name she retained for the stage, Lady Ardmore invariably used her married name.

  ‘I spent six years at a convent in Boulogne. Latin and French were almost the only subjects.’

  ‘Your parents liked France?’ asked her ladyship, her raised brows expressing suspicious disapproval of a country popularly associated with libertinism and scandalous novels.

  ‘My father lived there to escape his creditors.’

  ‘So you were brought up a Catholic?’

  ‘Yes. As a child I was very devout.’

  ‘Too little to eat and too much to swallow,’ muttered Lady Ardmore; but Theresa did not bother to comment on this much quoted description of Catholicism. She could feel the woman’s hostility in the air around her almost as a physical presence, not directly from what she said, but rather from the stiff unyielding way she sat in her high-necked black velvet dress, her hands tightly encircling the handle of her ivory cane. On her head she wore two strips of velvet matching her dress as a bandeau, from which grey strands of hair fell over her temples like straws escaping from a nest. The skin around her lips was slightly puckered as though she had recently bitten into an acid fruit. She said at last:

  ‘Most mothers pretend their sons’ mistresses don’t exist. Don’t you wonder why I agreed to receive you here?’

  ‘I assumed your fondness for Esmond ….’

  Lady Ardmore shook her head impatiently, and the sharpness of her voice contrasted strangely with her dispassionate gaze.

  ‘Why d’you stay with him? Money, I suppose?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then why didn’t you clear out when you turned him down? Waiting for somebody else, I daresay.’

  ‘Would he like you to ask her questions?’

  ‘He’d hate it. Will you tell him?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  Silence for a while except for the cracking of burning logs in the grate. Lady Ardmore lowered her head.

  ‘I suppose he begged you to stay?’

  Theresa shook her head.

  ‘I wanted time to make up my mind. He was generous enough to agree.’

  ‘He’s a fool then, and you’re no better. If you don’t know to start with, you’re never going to. All you do is make your refusal ten times worse.’

  ‘He may refuse me.’

  Lady Ardmore looked at her derisively.

  ‘If you’re nasty the whole time. But the moment you’re civil, he’ll be keen as mustard again …. Hope’s an absurdly healthy plant in our family.’ She sighed and Theresa was surprised by a sudden change in her face, its aquiline features and hollow cheeks no longer hardened by lack of feeling. ‘He may seem hard-headed to you, but in many ways he’s naive and far too trusting for his own good. Even when his father sent us here, he still didn’t think ill of him. Even blamed himself. When something’s too painful to face for what it is, he usually pretends it’s something else.’

  From the darkness of the garden came the sudden raucous screech of a peacock. Lady Ardmore unexpectedly got up and came and sat down on a low chair next to Theresa. ‘I wanted you to come here so we could talk to each other. You’re not at all the little minx of a vaudeville trouper I expected, smoking cigars and wandering round in arabic trousers singing yodelling songs. Or perhaps you’re on your best behaviour.’ She smiled at Theresa for the first time; a fleeting nervous little smile which for a few seconds hinted at the beauty she had once possessed. ‘It’d be so easy to set him free, my dear, so very easy. Invite some actor to the house and let yourself be discovered, sell one of his precious things, let him find a letter from another man. The best cures are the sharpest. Perhaps our motto isn’t a bad one after all. But instead of wielding the knife, you feed his infatuation.’

  ‘That isn’t true.’

  ‘Then prove it isn’t. Accept him now.’ After a brief pause, she said with a wry twist of her lips: ‘I thought so. In that case, I wonder if I can help you to be cruel, Mrs Barr?’

  ‘You mean you’ve made some sort of plan?’ asked Theresa faintly.

  ‘You could get to Westport in the trap by early morning; be on the first post-coach to Dublin before anybody knew you had gone. Just wait till he’s asleep and go. The servants will do anything I say to help.’

  ‘But he’d come after me … it’s absurd, like some play … And what could I tell my daughter? She’s fond of him.’ Theresa tried to sound amused.

  Lady Ardmore spread out her fingers on the arms of her chair, and went on as if she had not heard Theresa’s response.

  ‘Tell your daughter the truth. She can’t have led a sheltered life. I can give you money, unless the idea offends you. Far better he should be with me after you’ve gone, and not in London on his own.’

  ‘Perhaps I don’t want to go,’ replied Theresa affably, as if politely tolerating a tasteless joke. She smiled archly. ‘Could you stop him pursuing me?’

  ‘Nothing easier, Mrs Barr. All you need do is leave a letter.’

  Again the same bland delivery; her tone as soft as silk or a moth’s wing, but all the time in the old woman’s eyes, an almost inhuman coldness of penetration; as though she saw Theresa merely as a construction of flesh and bones, an object to be moulded to her will, rather than an independent being. An expression inconceivable except in a woman who had spent many years alone harbouring past resentments.

  ‘And what would your ladyship have me write?’ asked Theresa still smiling.