Distant Choices (69 page)

Feeling the tension in him, the tight-clenched pain, she began to say, ‘No, Garron – please let me …' but shaking his head, making a gesture of absolute refusal to hear, to learn, to be tormented by any more than he
knew
already, he silenced her. ‘No. Let me say this, Oriel. It's not easy. I know Kate was supposed to meet him at your cottage and cancelled at the last minute. Which means what happened between you wasn't planned. I know he'd been up on the Roman Wall but came down one night before he turned up at Lowther Castle. I know he didn't spend that night at any inn or hotel in this region. I know there was something between you before he married Kate. I know what Morag saw. So it was one night. Wasn't it, Oriel? One night and never again. I have to believe it.'

She could not answer.

‘Oriel – you have to say it – you have to tell me. If it was more, then I swear I won't lose my head – I won't touch you. All I'll do is walk out and go away, I swear it, to work it out on my own – if I can. But I have to know.'

Still she could not speak.

‘Oriel …?'

And on a strange wave of something that seemed partly resignation, partly something else, she understood the uselessness of trying to prove her innocence, realizing, at a deep, vital level of her judgement, that he had spent so long coming to terms with her guilt, even longer striving to forgive her. that he was blind now to anything else.

‘Oriel. One night. Tell me. I'll never ask again.'

Lowering her eyes against the pain in his, she whispered, ‘Yes Garron. Once. Only once. No more – because – because more would have been impossible – always …'

‘Christ,' he said and, hearing plainly in his voice the cry that meant, ‘I can't bear it,' she held out her hands to him and said what she knew he needed to hear: ‘Garron – what did our marriage really mean before then? Where was the real feeling between us until we had to face disaster together and found we could? The bank failure broke other couples apart, but surely it brought us together. Which must mean something too important to be thrown away? I was your wife then – truly your wife – you must know that. I felt you valued me and I know I valued you – so much, so constantly. And Garron – believe me – had you failed then we'd have failed, truly, together. I'd have matched what strength I have with yours and worked with you –
wanted to be with you
– please understand …'

‘Aye,' he said, and with a heightened, most precisely disturbing vision, she saw him wince, his eyes narrowing against the painful tumult behind them which he had struggled so continuously, these past months, to control. ‘Aye. I've worked all that out myself, Oriel. You were a perfect wife. And then suddenly, by God, you were
my
wife. And there was one hell of a difference. The first six years were what I'd ordered. The last three months were more than I'd ever believed in – much less realized I wanted – until you gave them to me. Love – if that's the word – I've never given much thought to, Oriel. Responsibility – yes. That I understand. That's what I felt for my first wife. Responsibility, generosity, a fair measure of sorrow when she died. But I didn't need her. Needing you has been the hardest thing I've ever had to come to terms with. Needing. And wanting. So what do I do – tell me that – to get you?'

The whisky bottle stood between them and carefully moving it aside with the tips of her fingers she touched the back of his hand which abruptly closed around hers, their arms twisted together to the elbows like a pair of stern and silent wrestlers. And then, the tension leaving him, he pulled her forward against his chest, his coat coming around her, wrapping her into the urgency of his need for the woman who may not have been the whole and absolute Oriel Blake but who, nevertheless, for those three splendid, perilous months, had been his wife.

‘Come back to me, Oriel. Christ – when I think of half the things I've done I'd be a fool to go on blaming you. There's no reason to talk about it again. Just come home.'

He paused, breathing heavily into her ear. ‘Come home, Oriel. And let's be faithful to one another. Listen to me, my bonny lass – listen – I think I'm asking you to marry me.'

Walking back alone up the field path and through her garden gate she found the three of them meandering, glass in hand, among her autumn flowers, the day having turned fine, and looking straight at Kate, said, very pleasantly but not intending to be disobeyed, ‘Why don't you take Francis for a drive in the Buck Inn's gig? I thought you might like to spend the afternoon in Penrith. There's so much to see there. The landlord will have his horse ready by the time you walk down there.'

‘Oh – what a
wonderful
idea,' cried Kate, clapping her hands together with obedient enthusiasm. ‘Just what I should like. Wouldn't you, Francis?' And hardly waiting for his reply that nothing could please him more, she dashed inside, returned in no more than half a minute with her hat and gloves and, planting a kiss on Oriel's cheek, took the arm Francis smilingly offered and strolled off with him, exclaiming loudly about the sudden beauty of the day and how clever of Oriel to know that for ages now – simply ages – she had been longing to explore the ancient glories of Penrith. So ardently, in fact, that she could not imagine being back again a minute before – should one say? – six o'clock?

Oriel watched her until the chattering, loving voice had died away and then turned to Quentin, watching and waiting as fastidious and elegant and as apparently aloof in his caring as the cats who were themselves scrupulously aware of her. blinking their gold eyes at her in muted anxiety, immaculate, understanding, from their basking place beneath the valerian. Only the dog showing so fundamental a need to grapple with whatever might be troubling her, to chase it out of her and worry it to death between his murderously adoring teeth that she was obliged to lock him up in the kitchen, leaving him to sulk by the fire while she took her trouble, and herself, to Quentin.

He was waiting by the parlour window, a glass of wine already poured for her, Quentin's wine, tasting dry and subtle and valuable on her tongue.

‘You saw your wounded giant then?' he said.

‘Yes. He has gone to Penrith now, on his way to Scotland. His daughter Morag is coming over from Watermillock to stay with me tomorrow. And on his way back, in about ten days, he will call to collect her here.'

‘And you too?'

‘I think so.'

‘You're going back to him then?'

‘Ah – yes,' And only because she knew him as she knew herself, her brother and lover who was actually neither, always both, did she glimpse the pain behind his subtle smile.

‘Am I wrong, Quentin?'

‘To go back to him? No, Oriel. Had I thought it wrong I would never have allowed you the chance to do it. I would have claimed you for myself by now – had I been able.'

‘Quentin.' Her smile was as subtle and painful as his own. ‘You would have been very easily able – very happily, I think. If only to begin with.'

He smiled again, although very briefly this time. “That knowledge may comfort me eventually, I suppose. And I accept your judgement, of course. “Happy – if only to begin with.” Yes. That strikes me as an accurate opinion of our chances together. I wish I could deny it. I do love you, Oriel. Indeed – I have loved no one else in my life. I grew up thinking it an affliction for fools – believe me – in no way applicable to any decent, intelligent man. From a young age – a fearfully young age – I looked at my mother and shuddered. With pity, of course, mixed in with the confusion, the boy's fear of getting caught and smothered, spurred on rather by the sight of my father forever locking himself away behind his study door. Yet what respect could I ever feel for a man whose sole contact with his wife was the one that made her pregnant – again – and again – with children he barely seemed to recognize in the street? Then there was Maud, who wanted to live through me and soon turned away when she realized she couldn't. As Susannah does. I understood all that fairly soon. I understood Matthew Stangway and your mother. I understood life well enough – to my own satisfaction. I understood the direction I wished to take, and why. Love had no part in it. Until I loved you, Oriel, so naturally and inevitably that it never even surprised me. Indeed – nothing in you has ever surprised me. You've been the other half of myself, my darling – the better half. And what would we ever have known but joy in each other had our lives permitted it – if so many other lives, not all of them foolish ones, or grasping ones, hadn't come between us? So that now you are chained by others who love you, quite hugely, I know. And I am finding it best to be just ambitious.'

Putting down her glass, mainly because her hands were shaking, she moved slightly away from him.

‘Oriel – would you prefer me to leave now?'

Looking at him for a moment of perfect stillness she smiled and shook her head. ‘No, Quentin.'

‘I'll stay, then …?'

And going back to the window seat where he was still sitting she leaned over him, taking his lean, so finely, so familiarly moulded face between her hands and kissed him, her closed mouth touching his lightly to begin with, offering the love of her mind, her intuition, her careful heart, and then, as her mouth opened, following it naturally – so naturally – with the potent maturity – so natural still – of her body's need, blending with her mind, to love him.

‘Oriel,' he said, almost groaning. ‘Don't let me hurt you …' But laying a finger across his lips, she shook her head.

‘No, Quentin. Please don't talk to me of guilt and shame and all the things I have suffered quite long enough already. Just tell me this. I am a convicted criminal in any case, surely, am I not, my darling? I have been charged and found guilty and quite thoroughly punished for an act I never even thought of committing. I have even confessed to it. Oh yes – for good reasons, I think, necessary reasons – I really didn't mind. And through all the turmoil of being branded as a fallen woman these months past I have made as little fuss – you must admit – as I possibly could. For the sake of the people who were branding me, of course, rather than mine. I suppose I would do the same again …'

‘Yes. I think you would.'

‘So would you, Quentin. So will you always. The right things, in accordance with your role in life – whether it was your first choice as a role or not. As I will. Happily, as things have turned out for me, I think. Perhaps very happily.'

‘I hope so, Oriel.'

‘I know you do. But is it too much to ask now – for ourselves – to take one afternoon out of a lifetime? I told my husband I had been unfaithful to him only once and would never be so again. I never will, Quentin. But that once – you know …'

‘I know,' he said. ‘Is it waiting for us? My darling, Francis said this house was an oasis – do you remember? …'

An interlude, he had said, the tide of reality, of necessity, receding, detaching the whole of that afternoon entirely from the mainstream of their lives, a time they knew to be short but which, nevertheless, had space enough to contain the progress of their love, following them through courtship, declaration, the outpourings of youthful romance to the final joining of mature bodies, every emotion she had dreamed of the night before entering her body as he entered it, and remaining, within and around her as his pleasure embraced hers, and grew with it, seeding the heights and depths of her with joy.

‘My darling, you have committed your crime.'

But she shook her head. ‘I will remain criminal, I think, until the end of the afternoon.'

It passed; and Kate, returning not one moment earlier than the hour she had named, found Oriel alone, talking to the cats by the valerian flowers, the dog prowling a jealous circle around her, as immaculate in her appearance and manner as ever, except that her eyes were a trifle heavy and her pale hair hanging loose down her back.

‘Oriel,' said Kate, her own manner flurried as a March wind, blowing from good cheer to no cheer at all and back again. ‘I suppose Quentin has gone?'

‘Yes. To Hepplefield, if he can catch the train.'

‘You're going back to your husband, then?'

‘Yes. Are you?'

‘Yes. I am.'

‘Darling – what do you feel about it?'

‘Oh Lord –' Kate shook her head, her hair escaping a little from her elegant chignon, her long jet earrings dancing. ‘So much of everything I can hardly name it. One minute it's so much more than I've ever dreamed of I can't get over my luck, the next minute I can get over it only too well. You know. It's glorious, then it's a disaster, then it's half one and half the other. Let's hope the glory wins.'

‘Shall we have some supper?'

Sitting at the kitchen table, the dog keeping a close eye on them, they ate bread and cheese, chocolate cake and gingerbread, drank several cups of tea, love, as Kate pointed out – if love it was – playing unreliable tricks on the appetite.

‘First I'm dying of hunger, then I can't eat anything. Francis wasn't too hungry today, either. He says he wants to look after me. How odd. Now that I don't need looking after, the idea rather pleases me. I hated it before, when I did. It was one of the things I most ran away from.'

‘Take care,' said Oriel, refilling the tea-pot, ‘not to run away again.'

Kate smiled, her elbows resting lightly on the table, her head, despite the tumbling curls, suddenly elegant again, few doubts, if any, to be glimpsed in her eyes.

‘My dear, a woman of my age doesn't run away. I am at least one hundred and five, as you must surely know.'

‘I do. Does Francis?'

They were laughing together. ‘Darling – absolutely not. I have never met a man anywhere who could cope with that.'