Suddenly she was breathless with excitement.

  ‘But don’t you see, Clinton, that changes everything? You trust me.’ His silence scared her. ‘Say something to me.’

  ‘What’s happened stays the same.’

  ‘No,’ she said vehemently, ‘our view of things changes them.’

  He looked mystified.

  ‘My view of things? Will it help me when I’m sued for breach of promise? When I have to pay your father’s costs? Will it wipe away what was said in court?’ He glanced at her and took her hand. ‘Of course I’m glad they didn’t make us hate each other. Don’t think I’m not. But I’m still done for.’

  ‘Only if you believe you are.’

  He smiled at her and shook his head.

  ‘It’s kind of you to say so. But I’m afraid belief doesn’t come into it. It’s very uplifting to think one can adapt to anything. I only wish it was true.’

  They drove on in silence towards the house.

  Before Theresa had come to Kilkreen, Clinton’s mother had told him that she would not leave her room while ‘the woman’ was in the house. For this reason Clinton and Theresa dined alone. The meal was well-advanced when he began to talk about the trial, but very soon, in spite of his ironic manner, Theresa understood what hurt him most. The idea that counsel’s jibes and mockery had made their suffering absurd. Though he did not mention the worst questions, she recalled them all. Did you defile her in there? Would you not have gone in if the sun had been shining? Everything reduced to grotesque indignity. Tragedy made farcical.

  ‘Did it make what we did together seem futile to you?’

  He put down his knife and thought for a moment.

  ‘If I could find words for it, it might not seem so bad.’

  His calmness and resignation suddenly made her angry.

  ‘Why did you ask me here, Clinton? Why? Why?’

  ‘To ask what you want.’

  ‘You’ve already decided—annulment. I didn’t dream what you said.’

  ‘Tell me then,’ he murmured.

  ‘We’re married. We ought to try again. Are you too proud to accept a second chance, simply because you didn’t choose it?’

  His eyes were fixed on the tureen between them. He did not raise them.

  ‘I was accepted by another woman after deserting you …’

  ‘But the reasons,’ she cried.

  ‘Oh yes, reasons.’ He met her eyes at last. ‘Do you think it’s a good foundation to build on?’

  ‘How do I know? Don’t we have to try first?’

  He rested his chin in his hands.

  ‘I don’t know. I can’t say what I feel. Perhaps in a month or two.’ He paused. ‘No, I admit I thought you’d want an annulment. I wanted to tell you what sort of settlement I could manage … before the lawyers made an even greater mess of it. I thought you ought to know I’m not going to appeal. I came here to put the estate in order. Not just money … I needed something to do.’

  ‘And what are your plans after leaving here?’

  ‘To go abroad.’

  ‘It wouldn’t have occurred to you to try to change my mind about an annulment?’

  ‘I doubt it.’

  ‘Even if you still cared for me?’

  ‘Even if I still cared for you.’

  ‘Why?’ she whispered fiercely.

  ‘I betrayed you.’

  ‘And if I don’t care?’ Her voice had risen and she was trembling. She saw him looking at her closely, a glint of anger in his eyes.

  ‘When I left you, remember what you said … I’d killed your desire to try to stop me going. Was that not caring about what I’d done?’ He drained his glass and looked at her blankly. ‘Perhaps I don’t understand anything any more … perhaps it’s perfectly possible. You know the way quite little things can make people give up … What I did wasn’t a little thing.’ He brushed her cheek gently with the tips of his fingers. ‘So give me a few weeks. Will you?’

  She nodded, sure he had already made his decision. She said:

  ‘I can’t believe everything we went through can have been for nothing.’

  He looked at her with great gentleness but did not reply. When she thought of the man who had sat in the same chair on the day he had gone out to break the rent strike, the change in him struck cold horror to her heart. And over again she thought: Did I do this? The stuffed birds in their cases along the wall, the dense black glass of the windows, and the white candlelight became blurred as her tears rose. But then he started to talk about buying tenant-rights, and how a new Scotch manager would din into ignorant heads the advantages of clover and turnips. And after a while she asked questions, which he answered, and the evening went on somehow, until eventually they went to bed in their separate rooms, treading gently as they passed the dowager Lady Ardmore’s door.

  *

  Next morning when Theresa came down, Clinton had evidently been up for several hours. When he came into the dining room, where she was having breakfast, his clothes were splashed with mud and his cheeks were glowing from the cold morning air. He pulled a chair over to the fire and called for Harris to help him out of his riding boots. And though nothing was said while this went on, Theresa could sense that something was different. His face seemed relaxed and carefree, as though some inner conflict had finally been resolved. He smiled at her, reflections of firelight kindling in his eyes. When Harris went out, Clinton rose and pouring himself some coffee paced over to the window, his cup chinking in its saucer as he walked. When he stopped and looked at her, he seemed excited and yet slightly bemused.

  ‘I think I know,’ he said hesitantly, ‘It really is clear to me at last. Isolation … I’ve been alone too much these last few months. That’s what’s been wrong. Not just that, obviously …’ He smiled at her. ‘Don’t look so doubtful. I can’t cope with myself single-handed—that’s what it amounts to. When I was always doing things I was all right. Now I can’t survive on my own without that sort of active life. Self-sufficiency’s just affectation for someone of my temperament …’

  ‘So what will you do?’ she asked; puzzled and alarmed not to know what he meant. He spilled some coffee and put down his cup.

  ‘Surely you see?’ he said urgently. ‘I need you … that’s what I meant. I’ve been a fool.’ He kissed her with cold lips and placed his hands on her shoulders. Behind him the sun shone palely from a pastel sky. When she did not speak, he went on rapidly, as if to persuade her: ‘You know how it feels when you don’t sleep for several days? Everything’s strange—not quite solid … faces, rooms, streets are all different … not quite there. Like things in a mirror. You know the way noises seem louder than they are, when you’ve heard nothing for hours? I’m trying to explain about solitude … being cut off. That’s how it was yesterday. I couldn’t reach you.’ He touched her hair and turned her face towards him. ‘Can’t you understand?’ She nodded dumbly and pressed his hand against her cheek.

  ‘Why don’t we go away, Clinton? Go now … go anywhere you like. But away from everything that’s hurt us.’

  ‘We will, we will, my love.’

  ‘Why not now, Clinton? For God’s sake why not today?’ Her arms were round him, pulling his face to hers. He disentangled himself gently, kissing her as he did so.

  ‘In a few days, when I’ve finished here.’

  ‘But if it happens again? Like yesterday …’ Her voice trailed off. With an effort she calmed herself.

  ‘How can it?’ he said softly. ‘I tried to root out the past … I found it was the ground under my feet. I know better now.’

  ‘Then come today,’ she implored him one more time; but again he refused, and talked to her very calmly and rationally about his reasons for wanting to finish what he had set in hand. The costs of the trial would mean … but she did not listen; she accepted it; they would need money; he would have to stay a little. There must be no cause for future reproach. She knew that now.

  Later, in the drawing room, she went up to the fireplace; she had been about to talk about what they had said in this room before they drove out together for the first time—the way she had taunted him—but her eye was caught by the embroidery to the right of the carved chimneypiece. She saw the knife held to the stem of a vine and under it Clinton’s motto: ‘Virescit vulnere virtus’ and remembered the first time Lady Ardmore had drawn her attention to it. ‘Courage grows stronger through a wound,’ she repeated to herself wonderingly. And at that moment, thinking back over everything that had happened to them, she saw that nothing had been gratuitous. In ten days he would come to London; ten days. In her heart she no longer felt any fear; the pattern of their lives was unbroken. Because she had once lived there, Clinton spoke of going to France. Louise’s education would be easier there than in many other countries. His words enfolded her like gentle hands. Later that day she would leave, but the thought did not trouble her any more. At that moment a spirit of intercession and tenderness seemed to be watching over them. The same events that had brought on them the disaster of the trial, had now carried them beyond it.

  45

  After Theresa had left Kilkreen, Clinton was puzzled that he had ever supposed matters could have turned out differently. And yet before her coming, he had clung to a frail thread of hope. If even a little of what they had once been, had survived the trial, a miracle might still be possible. What appeared broken past all mending, might magically be made whole again. But for Clinton that was all dead and buried now.

  Theresa’s optimism and passionate faith in the future had only caused him dismay and disbelief—as if he had blundered into a room where two strangers were talking, and somehow, without rhyme or reason, found himself not just the object of what was being said, but also one of the speakers; or so it had seemed until another illusion had taken hold of him. It was as though they were walking together but could not manage to keep the same pace. Either he kept falling behind, or she was forever moving ahead; one way or the other, their words had constantly fallen into empty air.

  Then during dinner he had suddenly seen her again—really seen her as he had always done in the past before they parted. Not just the shadows of her hair, or the softness of lips, but the warmth in her, the life. She was moving forward because she still felt with her whole being that there was more ahead of them than a rickety imitation of past happiness. And looking at her, hearing her, his own hopelessness had overwhelmed him. He had thought: this is what it’s like to be over, to have ended, to be a ghost watching someone who is still alive. Everything she was saying was as real as the room was real, as the minutes they were living through were real. And yet he could not believe in it. Even their past suffering seemed remote; almost nothing to do with them. She had worn a white dress in York, they had swum together in a mill pond on summer days; like other lovers had seen significance in trifling things. He had not forgotten even the most unremarkable facts of their relationship; but without the emotion that had given them meaning, they dropped through his mind like beads from a broken necklace.

  From the moment on the beach when he had first realised that she wanted to revive their marriage, Clinton had known himself lost. To feel as he did, yet not find it in him to end her hope was madness. But her refusal to admit defeat had touched a deep nerve of sympathy. Ashamed of himself for doubting her during the trial, he had not had the heart to reject her a second time. Before her arrival he had known he would only escape the ruinous damages of a breach of promise action by fleeing the country. He had reconciled himself to the prospect of a lifetime abroad—but on his own, without anyone there to pity him or make comparisons with what he had been.

  That night he had imagined precisely how it would be, living with her in a succession of foreign towns. Whatever their privations, she would rarely admit to being downhearted. He would never hear her blame him for what his betrayal had done to them. However isolated they might become, she would still say that being together mattered more. Out of honour and compassion he would agree, feigning an optimism he did not feel—pretending to be still the man he had been before he left her for Sophie. For a time he would convince her; but when she read his despair—as sooner or later she would—and knew the humiliation he felt for everything he had lost, even her courage would waver. No love could survive for long if forced to bear the weight hers would be called upon to bear. Her disillusion, when it came, would be more terrible after so much hope.

  As the night had worn on and the sky had grown lighter, a strange sense of ease had washed through him; a feeling of peace which sometimes follows the crisis of a serious illness. She had asked him to honour their marriage. Very well, he would agree to do so rather than endure the guilt of a new betrayal. By pledging himself to live out a life that was impossible, he would seal his fate. There could only be a single way to avoid failing her. He felt no sadness. The same feeling after he had been taken prisoner in China: relief to be beyond the reach of false hopes.

  In the past, the doors of choice had been slammed against him from outside; this last remaining door he would close himself; close it against his future. As soon as this course was clear to him, everything that had happened, which he had thought perverse or nonsensical, now fitted precisely. This was the point he had been travelling towards all the time; and as if he had been there before, he recognised it perfectly.

  So he had dressed himself and shaved, and gone out for his usual morning ride before returning to persuade Theresa that he had changed his mind. And when he had convinced her that he was sincere, he had talked realistically about that future which would never happen. He had felt calm, and as near contentment as he had been for many months. And all the words he had spoken had seemed right and inevitable, as though all the time they had been waiting to be used.

  After she went away, not much had remained to be done—though what there was had to be done well.

  Absolute normality was the first rule. For two days Clinton went on with his tasks on the estate; trying to persuade the tenants he had asked to quit to do so peacefully and accept other holdings. He visited the resident magistrate at Westport and arranged for notices to be served a week hence on the hardest characters. Wherever he was seen, he showed no signs of any change. The land agent and the servants saw nothing to remark upon. His apparent indifference to his humiliation in Dublin evinced grudging respect in the neighbourhood, though those likely to be dispossessed in the clearances inevitably saw it as added evidence of inhumanity. He had two bitter arguments with his mother about the impending evictions and on both occasions left her in tears. He had already made it clear that he would not discuss anything to do with Theresa or any legal steps he might be contemplating. His relations with her were neither better nor worse than they had been at any time during the past few years. He wrote an affectionate letter to Theresa, reaffirming what he had promised and giving her a definite date on which to expect him in London.

  *

  Late on the evening of the fourth day after Theresa’s departure, Clinton went to Harris’s room and stayed talking to him for almost an hour. A maid passed through the stable yard under the lighted window and heard shouting, but did not stop to listen. She had been meeting a married man near Clonmore and did not want to be seen. After leaving his valet, Clinton paused in the harness room and leant heavily against the wall. What had seemed so natural and so firmly fixed to him, had been violently attacked by the servant whose obedience he had taken for granted. The man had said that he was mad, that the woman was not worth his little finger, that the judge ought to be hanged; and not a word Clinton had said could get across the reasons which were so obvious to him. When he had finally told the man that he would do what he proposed either with or without help, Harris had broken down and agreed to do what was asked of him. From the harness room, Clinton heard the sounds of harsh sobbing.

  Over by the window, an oil lamp was burning dimly. Clinton stared at it with deep preoccupation. Behind it the black window. Before birth darkness—after death the same darkness. A lamp was no worse off when it was put out than it had been before it was lit. Dozens of times since reaching his decision, Clinton had found new proofs of the logic of his proceedings in a wide variety of trifling events. Almost anything could become a sign or omen. Already he felt absolved from all personal responsibility. Earlier the same day he had seen a dead hedgehog and even that had served him with further reinforcement of his purpose. The animal with its bloody snout and dirty spines had been living too, just as flies and lice lived. There could be nothing very remarkable about this spark of life that was shared with such humble creatures.

  He walked out across the stable yard under the stars and felt the cold air on his face, saw squares of yellow light in the black silhouette of the house. Life was this act of seeing and feeling—that was all it could be: squares of light, shadows, the noise his shoes made on the ground. A beating in the chest. Only these things. Wine tastes a certain way, love feels like this or that; fear and pain were known to him, pride and courage. What else could there be? Some unexpected sensation or pleasure? More likely boredom and the pretence of still liking what was stale. And what then? Complain about life, like those wearisome people disparaging what they had forgotten how to enjoy? To hell with that. Anyone dissatisfied with the terms, should submit with a good grace or get out. The length of a play never mattered; only how good the acting was while it did.

  Clinton locked the door of his room and took off his coat; then with great care he cut several small rents in it and ripped the fabric so that the tears concealed the cuts. He also tore his shirt at the collar. He would have liked to have drunk a lot but that might have looked wrong afterwards. Instead he lit a cigar. Attending to these details, he knew none of the nervousness he had felt when forging Esmond’s signature or waiting for Norton. The despair and wild hopes he had lived through that summer seemed improbable now—touching but a little theatrical. But then the consequences had been unknown; the odds of success imponderable. This time the end was not in doubt. He was all-powerful now.