Sincerely, yours in Jesus Christ,

  Bernard Maguire.’

  When the major had finished, he put the letter in his bureau and stood staring out of the smudgy little window at the sad-looking sky; across it, dark clouds ran into one another like ink stains on wet paper.

  ‘I wonder how much he had to pay the man to write that.’

  ‘I’m sure it’s the simple truth.’ She moved towards the desk, but he stood in her way. ‘I’d like it back.’

  ‘Not till my lawyer sees it.’

  ‘If you’re hoping to get money out of him, you’ll have to wait your turn with the rest.’

  ‘I want justice, not money,’ he shouted. The noise of water drumming in a metal basin came from the kitchen. The major crossed the room and slammed the door. Theresa sat down by the smouldering fire and said gently:

  ‘Even if you managed to prove a marriage, it still wouldn’t comply with the Irish Marriage Act. You admitted your lawyer told you that.’

  ‘He said,’ replied her father, stabbing at the fire with the poker, ‘that it wouldn’t be binding if Ardmore can show he was a professing Protestant at the time.’

  ‘You know it’s a formality,’ sighed Theresa, saddened and exasperated by the old man’s doggedness. ‘We both read your man’s opinion. Why not get it?’ When he made no move, she said patiently: ‘All right, stop me if I misquote … Any baptised Anglican is considered a professing Protestant, within the meaning of the act, unless he proves himself something else by contrary religious observance—and the example given was regular attendance at Catholic Mass. It’s hardly ambiguous, is it?’

  The major was labouring with the bellows to make the damp coal ignite.

  ‘I don’t care if we lose. He dishonoured you and ought to pay for it.’

  ‘At law the loser does the paying.’

  ‘It’d finish him though. He’d be hounded out of the country … Yes,’ he gasped, still pumping at the fire, ‘thousands would be up in arms against an archaic law that permitted such a thing—even if it only happens in Ireland.’ He straightened up, wincing a little as though his back hurt, and then looked at her beseechingly. ‘If you’d only bring an action for restoration of conjugal rights, he wouldn’t dare contest it.’

  ‘But I agreed to let him go … How many more times must I …?’

  ‘Why?’ he groaned. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because, whatever the law says … whatever he intended, his lies made it a sham. How could there be any happiness for us after that?’

  ‘Happiness?’ he burst out. ‘What about justice?’

  ‘Do you think he isn’t punished?’ she cried, beginning to lose her temper.

  ‘I expect he’s laughing at his success. By God, I’d go to court without you if I could.’ He coughed harshly as an eddy of wind from the chimney blew smoke into the room. Abandoning belligerence he eyed her sadly. ‘Try to explain it to me. I want to understand. You went to church, exchanged vows, the priest went through the marriage service, you signed your name afterwards as Lady Ardmore. He said you’d become his wife.’ He raised his monocle. ‘Surely you believed you’d married him?’

  ‘I’d never been more certain of anything in my life.’

  ‘Then why,’ he burst out, throwing up his arms, ‘don’t you still believe it? Because of that damn fool law?’

  ‘No, not by itself.’ Theresa paused a moment. ‘There were three of us at the altar. Take the priest first—he believed he was salving my conscience … conferring a blessing. He spoke the words because Clinton had told him we were already married. He thought I wasn’t happy with a civil ceremony, so he read the service in church for my peace of mind. That’s what his letter says. He didn’t intend to marry us.’

  ‘But he spoke the words, and so did your husband.’

  ‘Clinton spoke them,’ murmured Theresa, ‘knowing there was a law that made them void. He didn’t believe he was marrying me. He knew the priest only intended a blessing. How can I think myself married now I know he never meant to give his consent? He lied to the priest and lied to me. He never told me about the law, never said a word about what he’d told the priest. He knew his vows were worthless.’ Her voice had risen and she was close to tears. ‘I was the only one who believed in it. It was a fraud not a marriage.’

  Her father raised a conciliating hand.

  ‘He may have meant every word he said at the time. Suppose he learnt about the law later? He could have dreamt up all the lies to get you to release him.’

  ‘There’s the priest’s letter,’ Theresa replied wearily, ‘and I don’t believe any priest would accept money to deny what he thought was a perfectly good marriage, so don’t suggest that again.’

  ‘He sent you a marriage certificate.’

  ‘Because he thought we were already married. Of course he didn’t want to deny the child a proper baptism. He said in his letter I shouldn’t use the certificate for any other purpose.’ She looked up reproachfully. ‘I have given it all a lot of thought.’

  ‘So have I,’ the old man replied quietly, ‘and I think he’s your husband.’

  ‘There’s no point in arguing about it.’

  ‘None.’

  Theresa had very much hoped that Maguire’s letter would finally persuade her father to abandon his persistent efforts to get her to reconsider her position. Seeing she had failed to change his mind, she nonetheless decided to make one more effort to settle another matter.

  ‘I’ve brought the money to repay what you lent me.’

  ‘I’ve told you I won’t take it. A husband’s responsible for his wife’s debts. Get him to pay me or forget about it.’

  ‘The loan was to me. I have a right to repay it.’

  Simmonds shook his head and smiled.

  ‘A married woman can’t make an independent contract. If she borrows money, the legal debtor is her husband and not herself. You pledged your husband’s credit, not your own.’

  Theresa got up and walked to the door; beside it the broken barometer still pointed to “fine and dry” as it had done for a decade. Without turning she said:

  ‘You took some papers of mine when I was here. I want them back.’

  ‘I don’t deny it. I was surprised he had the decency to return the letters you wrote him. Do you want to burn them?’

  ‘They’re mine.’

  When she faced him, he did not look away.

  ‘They’re evidence.’

  ‘Which you can’t possibly use.’

  ‘Unless you change your mind about going to court. It’s my duty to see the choice isn’t thrown away in case you ever want to take it.’

  He followed her into the dark little hall and stopped her.

  ‘I’ll give them to you when they’ve been copied.’

  She turned on him furiously.

  ‘Can’t you understand what I said? I’ve finished with it all. Finished.’

  Before he could answer her, she was walking down the court towards the mews, the wind catching her bonnet ribbons and puffing out her skirt. He stood watching her from the doorway, until she turned the corner and was gone.

  35

  Around him décolleté busts and jewelled dresses contrasting with black evening coats; a hubbub of conversation punctuated by the discreet popping of champagne corks; footmen and waiters moved silently behind the chairs, as course followed course in stately progression; and all the time, Esmond could not help admiring the Lucases’ spirited hypocrisy. Clinton had treated their daughter abominably, yet here they were, laughing and smiling, marking the day of Sophie’s betrothal to her former tormentor with a magnificent celebratory dinner, and appearing for all the world to be as proud and pleased as if the girl had been accepted by a royal duke.

  From the moment he had received his invitation, Esmond had looked forward to this December evening with keen anticipation. The wedding itself would not take place until the spring, but for all the chances of escape now open to him, Clinton might just as well have undergone ten marriages. Yet somehow this event, which Esmond had so often lived through in imagination, in reality brought only a fraction of the happiness he had expected. Ever since losing Theresa, he had made the present endurable by looking to the future, and the habit had become so engrained that even Clinton’s downfall could not prevent him running on towards the days to come when he would make his bid to win Theresa back.

  Looking down the long table between the branched candelabra and flower-filled epergnes, Esmond caught occasional glimpses of Clinton’s face. And though he could feel no sympathy for him, at moments when Clinton’s mask of brittle gaiety slipped, Esmond sensed an emptiness of feeling so ghastly that he could not look at him without shuddering. After dessert, before the ladies withdrew, Mr Lucas rose, his face very red above his white ruffled shirt. As the sounds of conversation subsided, faint chords of music came from the ballroom beneath, where the orchestra was getting ready for the dancing. Through all the clichés of his future father-in-law’s speech, Clinton’s smile did not falter.

  ‘I have the good fortune to have known Lord Ardmore since boyhood, and if as the poet says, the child is father to the man, any defects of character would long since have been apparent to me.’ He paused briefly to mop his forehead with a napkin, while the ripples of polite laughter died away. ‘Until Cromwell fought the King, Ammering and Markenfield were part of one estate. The Lucases were Roundheads, the Danvers Cavaliers. Well, you know who won that battle. The third viscount lost half his land and was lucky not to lose his head. We Lucases got the land on that occasion and kept it. We’re all royalists now, so I’m not complaining that the time of restitution is at hand. When Sophie weds Clinton, Ammering comes home to Markenfield, ladies and gentlemen … if not at once, it will when I join the majority. I make bold enough to say that I predicted this years ago when his lordship first entertained Miss Sophie in his nursery …’

  As the speech ground to a close, Esmond looked up and met Clinton’s gaze. The glance was brief, but Esmond read the ironic complicity, as though his brother were once again saying those well-remembered words: ‘I, mortgaged acres, take thee, money in the funds, to have and to hold …’ A moment later, Clinton got up to reply and did so with a perfectly judged blend of banter and seriousness ideal for such occasions.

  If Ammering coming to Markenfield sounded a bit too much like High Birnam wood coming to Dunsinane for his taste, it was not spears and branches that had brought him to his knees, but two far more formidable weapons—the character and beauty of an English lady. And for Esmond, almost every word his brother spoke rang with irony. Afterwards amid prolonged applause, Clinton solemnly lifted his glass to Sophie, who rose by his side like Aphrodite from a foaming sea of tulle and muslin. The sight of the betrothed couple raising their glasses to each other was one that would haunt Esmond for many weeks to come.

  *

  Shortly after midnight, a footman attracted Clinton’s attention as he was dancing with Sophie. Minutes later, having murmured his apologies, Clinton left Sophie dancing with a cousin, and hurried from the ballroom to the hall. Already dressed in hat and cape, Esmond was waiting for his coachman to drive round from the mews.

  ‘I’m sure you won’t refuse me a favour on this night of nights,’ murmured Clinton, placing a hand on his brother’s shoulder. ‘I’d like to leave with you.’

  *

  Under the portico of the Lucases’ town house, Clinton moved away from his brother and looked up at the overhanging balconies and tall lighted windows.

  ‘Do you think,’ he said, ‘that Judas would have killed himself if it’d been thirty thousand pieces of silver?’

  Esmond stared in silence at the bare black branches in the square; beyond them, on the other side, carriage lamps and gaslights showed indistinctly through the fog. Clinton laughed as they got into the carriage.

  ‘Poor Esmond, you never had much humour.’ As the coachman spread rugs over their knees, Clinton chuckled to himself. ‘You know something, Esmond? There’s not much to separate one woman from another when all’s said and done … I mean take Sophie and Theresa …’ He paused as the landau swung forward and began to gather pace. ‘Sophie hasn’t quite managed the queenly dignity, but she’s good at pretending to be languishing and sentimental; they’re as tough as each other in different ways. There aren’t many who’d have shrugged off the humiliations I dished out to Sophie over the years. Between the two of us, I even told her about Ireland. Of course she was upset. But I think it’s going to help her in the long run. She can despise me, which should take the edge off her worries about buying me … She’s also vain enough to believe that I’ll come to love her for herself. Actually I’m already giving her definite signs that …’

  ‘I can’t listen to this,’ cried Esmond.

  ‘Because you’re to blame? Don’t be so sensitive. I’m going to be an excellent husband. I admire her … the way she stood out for what she wanted against every kind of opposition. I don’t love her, but that isn’t my fault. Anyway I’ll give a very creditable performance … the best sort of distraction.’

  As they passed the gates of Apsley House and clattered into Piccadilly, Esmond glanced at him.

  ‘What did you want to say to me?’

  Clinton looked at him intently as they passed a street lamp, but said nothing until the carriage drew up outside his hotel in Half Moon Street. His face no longer bore traces of ironic insouciance.

  ‘She’s in a new play.’

  The tight harshness of his voice did not escape Esmond.

  ‘You don’t mean you’ve been to see it?’

  ‘Certainly. Can’t say I cared for her kissing that actor but I stayed in my seat. What about you?’

  ‘I haven’t seen it.’

  ‘Good,’ he breathed with chilling quietness.

  ‘What do you mean by that?’ asked Esmond, affecting not to feel the powerful pressure of his brother’s hand on his arm. Clinton released him and flicked aside the rug on his knee.

  ‘Only that if you try to wheedle your way back into her favour by acting the faithful friend, I’ll put a bullet through you.’

  A moment later he was walking briskly to the door of his hotel.

  36

  There is no gaiety as gay as the gaiety of grief, and the majority of those who met Clinton during the weeks after his engagement found him excellent company. As the future husband of an heiress, his social value was far greater than it had ever been when he had merely been an impoverished nobleman. His uncle had paid his debts and now he had money to spend. In the Cavalry Club he was envied and became the recipient of numerous invitations to dinners and house parties. On various excuses he refused all of them, but he still paid visits to the club.

  In private he was a different man. Unable to come to terms with what had happened, his moods shifted with dizzying speed from sullen anger to icy detachment. The pain he suffered was unlike anything he had ever known—as if a vital part of him had been sliced away. By any normal laws of anatomy he ought not to have survived the amputation; yet somehow a little of him lived on. Even when behaving quite naturally, he often felt that a stranger was speaking and acting for him. His life was alien to him and seemed to continue its most real existence in other people’s minds. For the benefit of the Lucases he gave a spirited imitation of himself, fleshing out the part with little details rather as an artist might add tints and shadows to a face. Such pretences formed the most effective distractions he could discover. Alone, when he was sober, his yearning for Theresa was savage, humiliating and not beginning to be tamed.

  He had told Esmond that he had been to see Theresa act, not because he really had, but because it had helped him make the point he had been determined to force home. But the temptation had been constantly with him, ever since he had seen notices of the play in the papers. One evening he gave in. He hardly thought it possible that his unhappiness could be increased. On his way to the theatre he tried to persuade himself that the sight of her might bring some alleviation: a theory he knew to be as false as an habitual drunkard’s plea that one more glass will end his craving.

  She was on stage when the curtain rose, standing still for what seemed an age to him, but might only have been seconds. He felt stifled and faint; unable at first to follow her words. Her voice was as natural as he had ever heard it; the words seeming to flow as if they had never been spoken before. As the play progressed, the tightness in his throat eased, and he found mixed with his pain, a bewildering pleasure in simply watching her. Through an opera glass, her face seemed close enough to touch; isolated from the rest of her body and the other actors, it floated before him, lips forming words he did not hear, eyes wide and expressive. Suddenly he fancied himself at Hathenshaw alone with her. He found he could no longer hold the glass steady. Longing to rush backstage, he knew that every other man in the theatre had a better right than he. Twenty yards away, she remained for him as remote as the furthest planets. With violent abruptness he rose from his seat and hurried from the theatre. A row of hansoms saved him from indecision; like a man wading through water, he tore his eyes from the lighted sign above the stage door and crossed the street.

  Later he lay on his hotel bed like a wounded animal and wondered how he would endure the night ahead and the day after it. Though he did not feel it, reason told him that if he stayed away from her, his memories would slowly fade. Just as unconsciousness saved men from unendurable physical pain, grief too had its limits—either the sufferer bore it or went mad: survived or broke.

  During the next few weeks, Clinton began to feel less apathetic and detached. His attitude to Sophie and her parents gave him his first inkling of this. Their trust in the person they took him for bound him to sustain the role of honourable man. Though he had told Sophie everything about Theresa, she still firmly believed that he had been ensnared by an older and cleverer woman. Her determination to see only good in him, ran much deeper than flattery, and often Clinton could not help being touched. Sometimes he was so bitterly aggravated by her happiness that he deliberately said hurtful things. Though she never wept, her misery was so obvious that he invariably felt ashamed afterwards.