Approaching a wood, he lifted a shot-gun from behind the dash.

  ‘Why are we travelling in darkness?’ she asked.

  ‘I had things to do in town. We’re too near the Curragh Camp to meet any Fenians.’ He patted the stock of the gun. ‘Better safe than sorry. In the south or west we’d have been tempting providence.’

  ‘Why no servants? I’ve never known you go anywhere without a valet.’

  ‘Don’t you like it better being alone?’

  ‘But you don’t care what they hear or know; you never did in the past. And leaving so late …’

  ‘I’m not going to murder you,’ he replied laughing. But though she asked him no further questions, he sensed that she was still dissatisfied. He was angry with himself for not having explained matters to her before they left. The trouble with waiting for inevitable moments to say certain things, was that these perfect occasions had a habit of slipping into the future; and since Father Maguire would be waiting for them the following day, there was precious little future left.

  The best hotel in Portarlington displayed the usual Irish genius for dilapidation: armchairs leaking stuffing, candlesticks with only the faintest evidence of having once been plated, a peevish waiter flicking scraps of food from the dining tables with a dirty napkin. After a dinner of undercooked duck and disintegrating peas, they went up to their bedroom to escape the melancholy music of a piper in the bar and the thick turf smoke issuing from the kitchen. Since Theresa was still cold, Clinton sent for more logs and demanded a bath filled with water that was hot and not merely lukewarm.

  When the last jugs had been brought up, he looked down at the square through a gap in the curtains. The roofs and pavements were rimed with frost, glinting in the starlight as if sprinkled with powdered glass. Behind him, a dented copper hip-bath steamed in front of the fire. He remained at the window for several minutes, and when he turned, Theresa was already almost naked. The unembarrassed way in which she loosened drawstrings and slipped off petticoats with a cheerful ease and absent-minded immodesty, roused him more powerfully than any conscious coquetry had ever done. She tested the water with a cautious foot and then let herself down into it with a luxurious sigh. The logs cracked and hissed, spurting out thin blue and green tongues of flame where the red heat reached veins of moist sap. The glisten of reflected firelight on her wet limbs and her lazy movements as she soaped herself, made Clinton’s skin tingle as though a warm wind was ruffling every light hair on his body. As she lay back, knees breaking the water’s surface, he tried to recall the expression on her face under the stars; another woman, another world. How much did he ever see? How much imagine? Out of a million movements of a face, only a few poor frozen images remained of so much subtlety. Never to be without her, always to have another morning and another day in which to store up more of her—only that would bring him peace.

  He knelt down next to the bath, kissing her wet lips, drawing her arms around him, oblivious of the water slopping over the sides onto his waistcoat and trousers. Then with sudden restlessness he got up.

  ‘Don’t you think,’ he began hesitantly, ‘that there are certain cases when the choice is either giving up or not reasoning at all? Hasn’t that been true for us almost from the start?’ He kicked at a rucked up corner of a rug and swore quietly. ‘And that isn’t what I meant … more how I’d like things to be … how I feel …’ He broke off and came closer to her again. ‘I should have said it before, like a dozen other things … I can’t marry you openly. The reason’s money … I spent the morning writing down the whys and wherefors …’ He pulled an envelope from his pocket and ripped it open. ‘I was going to hand it to you, walk round for an hour or two and then ask if you’d marry me on my terms. It seemed quite logical until we came here.’

  ‘Marriage is marriage on any terms.’

  ‘If you can’t tell your daughter or your father?’

  ‘They’d keep any secret.’

  ‘I can’t accept that risk. I know you’ve lived with poverty; perhaps you despise me, but if you’d always lived in a certain way … They say it’s a virtue to know one’s limitations. I’d be a bad pauper and that’s the truth of it. To ruin myself would do you no service, married to me or not. The worst losses are things one takes for granted.’

  ‘I know how you’ve lived.’

  She stood up and reached for the towel on the fender. As she wrapped it round her, he watched her in agonised suspense. Unable to bear her silence, he burst out:

  ‘I know how little a secret marriage holds for you … that people will think you no more than a mistress. Do you think I’m not ashamed to say I can’t acknowledge you? It cuts me to the heart … but what’s to be done? If I lose my uncle’s fortune, I’m ruined.’ He moved closer, his eyes pleading and yet burning with frustration. ‘I don’t exaggerate … if you want proof …’

  She put on a flannel gown and met his gaze.

  ‘You’re selling your commission. What other proof should I need?’ She held out her hands, in a gesture of solemn appeal. ‘Is it so you can support me? Unless you tell me, I won’t answer you.’

  ‘I might have stayed another year.’

  ‘And with Esmond’s help?’ she insisted in a voice that shook.

  ‘All right,’ he cried in desperation, ‘I don’t deny it. I could have saved my career if I’d given you up. But think what I’m asking you.’ He paused and stared into the fire. ‘I ask you to deny your name in public … my name. I bind you by a secret marriage and swear you to silence till my uncle dies. Should I make no sacrifice for you when I ask so much?’

  She looked at him with misting eyes.

  ‘You owe me sacrifices?’ she faltered. ‘You deny yourself marriage to others who could have brought you riches … could have saved your career and ended all your worries …’

  ‘Your answer,’ he shouted, striding to her and grasping her shoulders. ‘I love you … can’t endure to be without you. Isn’t that enough?’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ she whispered, her voice throbbing between tears and joy. ‘What you’ve just said … Don’t you know why I was scared before? I thought you would marry me openly—would risk everything.’

  ‘Then marry me tomorrow,’ he blurted out, pressing her to him. ‘You wrote that marriage was impossible, wouldn’t answer me before … Do you think I’ll let you run off again?’

  ‘Tomorrow?’ she gasped in amazement. ‘How can we? What about banns?’

  ‘I’ve found a priest who’ll dispense with them.’

  ‘You did this before knowing my answer?’

  ‘I can’t lose you, Theresa. I wasn’t confident enough to be patient. I’ll never forget what I went through when you left Kilkreen. I didn’t presume on your answer.’ When she said nothing, but still looked at him in incredulity, he broke away from her impatiently. ‘Will you? What should I think if you refuse?’

  ‘I won’t refuse,’ she murmured. She kissed him gently and smiled. ‘Did you even buy a ring?’ He nodded and she started laughing. ‘You say you weren’t confident. Darling, you’re the most insufferably confident man I’ve ever met.’

  ‘Never with you.’

  Later, when they were lying in bed after making love, he opened his eyes and saw that she was studying his face.

  ‘Do you mind being married by a papist priest?’

  He smiled at her and shook his head.

  ‘I’m sure God’s above quibbling over a few differences in ceremonial.’

  ‘Please, Clinton.’

  ‘I don’t much care for the crossings and mutterings, but it doesn’t worry me.’ He closed his eyes. ‘You know in Scotland you can just read the marriage service in front of a witness and no priest need come into it. I believe we bind ourselves by our vows … the rest doesn’t matter to me.’

  She seemed about to answer him, but instead laid her head on his shoulder and was silent. The candle by the bed had started to gutter, but when it burned out neither of them moved to replace it. Moments later he heard her crying in the darkness.

  ‘What is it, love?’

  ‘I thought of you seeing a priest, not knowing what I’d say. Poor Clinton.’

  ‘Not now.’

  ‘I’ll be a good wife to you.’

  ‘I know. I’ve never felt surer of anything.’

  ‘And you’re happy, my love?’

  ‘Very.’

  From somewhere behind the hotel came the faint cackle of geese and from further off the mournful howling of a dog. Between the curtains the stars shone with the same brittle and unearthly clarity.

  22

  Because it was Sunday, and Father Maguire had been insistent that they arrive early, Clinton had aimed to reach Rathnagar with time in hand to be married and leave the village before the people began setting out for Mass; but a wrong turning outside Ballygowan, followed a little later by some disastrously bad directions from a farm labourer, delayed them by almost an hour, so that there were already small groups of villagers huddled in the street outside the church when they drew up.

  The doors were locked, and when they had knocked and been admitted by the priest, he looked at Clinton reproachfully.

  ‘If it’s secrecy you’re wanting, sir, you’d have done best to come at the time I asked. I had the witnesses come all the way from Lisnama so there’d be no talk in the village. I had to send them away when the people started gathering.’

  ‘You sent them away?’ echoed Clinton, in fear that the man would now refuse to marry them.

  ‘Would you have wanted them to walk out in front of the people when the doors had been closed and none but themselves and the two of you in here? A couple of strangers like themselves? They’d have been asked questions right enough. And wouldn’t they just have seen your two names in the book when they signed their own?’

  ‘But people will see the lady leaving with me.’

  Maguire looked at him wearily.

  ‘I suppose they’ll question gentlefolk like yourselves? Of course they won’t.’ He gave a little cough and looked at them more sympathetically. ‘You needn’t be worrying yourselves. It’s not the witnesses that make a marriage but your own consents given before myself in God’s house.’

  When Theresa asked Maguire to hear her confession before marrying them, the priest at once moved towards the confessional, though Clinton could tell how reluctant he was to lose more time. While he waited for them to come out of the box, Clinton reproached himself for having allowed his preoccupation with secrecy to blind him to any accurate imaginings of how things would be. The shabby little church and the hole-and-corner furtiveness of everything dismayed him far more than any doubts about the validity of the proceedings. Before proposing to Theresa, Clinton had carefully reviewed his earlier conversation with Maguire, and had found no reason for feeling qualms of conscience. The priest had made his position plain. He would celebrate a marriage in the proper form, and would never claim that he had done anything but marry them, unless challenged at a later date with having married a Protestant. In that single unlikely eventuality, he would excuse himself on the grounds that he had understood that a civil marriage had already taken place, and would say that he had gone through the church service merely as a blessing on that existing union—his desire being to satisfy the lady’s Catholic conscience. Since Clinton believed that he himself would rather die than ever attempt to escape the effect of his vows, he saw no possibility of the marriage being called in question. Even so, he had made up his mind to tell Theresa about the Irish Marriage Act and to undergo a civil ceremony placing the matter beyond doubt. But he could see no way of doing this for several months; since to tell her within days, or even weeks, might be to cause her unnecessary pain while the ceremony itself remained a powerful emotional memory. Anything seeming to detract from it, should not be spoken of in haste.

  A few minutes later, Maguire led them to the altar where they knelt and spoke their vows at his prompting. The priest’s hurried utterance upset Clinton, but in Theresa’s face he saw only happiness and serenity, and wished that he too could distance himself from their surroundings and give himself as entirely to the meaning of the words. But the creak of the priest’s boots and the broken veins in his cheeks, and other details kept intruding, and he was badly distressed that the ring he had purchased the day before in Dublin was too small to slide over her knuckle. Later, when the correct moment had passed, he took off his own signet ring and placed it on her hand with the seal facing inwards. After Maguire had pronounced the final blessing, he led them to the vestry where he asked them to sign what he described as his private register. As soon as Clinton had handed over his fee, the priest apologised to them and hurried away to admit the villagers for Mass. They were left alone to leave by the vestry door.

  Walking out after Theresa, Clinton dreaded seeing evidence of disappointment in her face. But when he looked at her, he saw the same soft calm light in her eyes that he had observed in the church, A gust of wind lifted her veil and she smiled as she caught it. Rough grey-bellied clouds swept across the sky. He saw Theresa point to a clump of snowdrops in the rough grass between the tombstones; he bent down and picked some for her. As the chapel bell began to toll with a harsh clanging noise, he took her hand.

  ‘Even the bell’s an insult,’ he groaned.

  ‘Remember those lies you once told me about the wedding you were going to have at Hanover Square? The frills and ribbons … Wasn’t this better?’ He did not answer her as the bell clanged on. ‘But you said it yourself,’ she cried, ‘only the vows matter. I wouldn’t feel more truly married if a cardinal in all his glory had held the service.’

  ‘That dismal black cassock of his,’ sighed Clinton.

  She smiled.

  ‘You wouldn’t have thought much of his precautions if he’d welcomed his flock in wedding vestments.’

  ‘You didn’t mind about the furtiveness … the witnesses sent away like thieves, the private register …?’

  ‘Why should I have? I knew you wanted secrecy.’ She squeezed his hand. ‘I’m married to you; what else could matter to me?’

  He gazed at her in silent gratitude before walking on. When they turned the corner into the chapel yard, bare legged women in blue cloaks and their men decked out in suits of baggy tweed and frieze were going in at the west door. Theresa stopped Clinton and looked up at him.

  ‘I’d like to go to Mass on my wedding day. Come with me this once. They can’t know who we are.’

  Though wanting to go away at once, Clinton agreed. The thought of the priest’s creaking shoes, the empty faces of the plaster angels, and the words he would not understand, weighed upon him. But when he had got used to the coughing and the sour smell of unwashed bodies, and he saw the unaffected piety of the people, his depression lifted. Their concentration on the prayers and their fervent responses moved him in a way the placid Protestant rituals of his boyhood had never done. Soon he could not understand how so many trivial things had worried him during their wedding. He remembered Theresa’s clear soft voice: ‘To love and to cherish, if holy church will permit, according to God’s holy ordinance, and thereto I pledge thee my troth,’ and his heart was filled with tenderness. It had been years since he had been to any church, except with his men, and even longer since he had prayed. Now, watching Theresa’s closed eyes and slightly moving lips, he felt that she was praying for them both. Memories of his father’s disdainful bearing in church still made Clinton feel awkward when he knelt, but he did so with the rest, listening to the words of the Kyrie and later to the Sanctus bell.

  ‘Hoc est enim corpus …’ The bell again, and the priest holding up the wafer. ‘Hic est enim calix sanguinis …’ Another bell, and then the repeated: ‘Domine non sum dignus,’ as the congregation moved to the communion rail, Theresa with them—a viscountess with these peasants, about to drink from the same cup. He felt an instinctive shudder; a feeling more powerful than difference of caste, for contained in it was a barbed jealousy that these men and women could share with her an experience from which he was excluded.

  When she returned to his side, her presence soothed him; she completed him, as if till then he had been a man with no centre, rootless. Never to be without her, he thought with a light shock: to live with her, be happy, quarrel, be amused, bored, enchanted. Everything; and time, so much time together, so that no disappointment or reverse need ever last or part them. Always days ahead of them for reconciliation; always—until the last of them had come and gone. As the responses began again, he felt an enveloping humility which sprang from no process of the mind, but from spontaneous joy in all that was most elusive and incommunicable in his love for her.

  PART THREE

  23

  The state of Clinton’s and Theresa’s relations remained a mystery to Esmond for the first three months of the New Year. He knew that Clinton had stayed on with his regiment in Ireland till the end of March; and since Theresa had been appearing nightly in Much Ado About Nothing from late January till the beginning of April, it had struck him as unlikely that they were seeing much of each other at this time. Although he had resisted the temptation of trying to see her, Esmond had been unable to suppress a growing optimism and a return to the scarcely admitted hope that one day she might come back to him.

  Then in April he had been shocked to learn that Clinton had sold his commission and taken a lease on a house in Lancashire. With the help of an inquiry agent, Esmond discovered that Theresa had joined Clinton there. Her success as Beatrice had been so striking that Esmond thought it unlikely that she would suddenly have agreed to live in the country unless Clinton had given her good reason. And what could that be but marriage?