The Round Tower Page 13

  When he groped over her knees for her hands she felt herself shrinking inwardly, yet she allowed him to bring them to his chest and press them there as he said, ‘Oh, my darling, Vanessa, if only we could. If only we could. But it’s impossible, child. There’s so many things against it. You see, it would be difficult, almost impossible, for me to get started again at my time of life. And I haven’t any money by me, and we’d have to live somewhere. What is more, Irene would never divorce me, never. I know that. And there’s…’ He stopped abruptly. It was impossible to say to her, ‘And there’s this house and the wood. I couldn’t live long away from either.’ What was more he couldn’t bear the thought of starting a family again. He had no real love for children, which was likely why his own sons, with the exception of Paul, had never responded to him. You only got back what you gave out. He was well aware of that. When he heard her catch her breath on a sob he wondered if he would have been kinder to lie and tell her they were going away, say tomorrow or the day after—but in the long run that would only make things harder for her.

  From five minutes after he had entered the house this afternoon he knew exactly what he was going to do. As he listened to Irene pouring out her spleen, openly gloating over what had befallen Vanessa, he knew then what he must do, and now, holding the child’s hands, his decision was firmer than ever. If only he had the courage to take her away. But he hadn’t. He hadn’t the courage to start all over again, to face up to the responsibilities that would attend such an action. Yet at the same time he hadn’t the courage to live without her. He was a weak man and he knew it. Life had been pretty bleak before the night he had come down into the wood to send Angus Cotton packing; but since then it had been sheer hell.

  When she withdrew her hands from his he said, ‘It’s going to be all right, Vanessa. Everything is going to be all right. It wouldn’t work with you and me. In a year’s time, even in a few weeks’ time, you would regret having tied yourself to me. You’re young; you haven’t started to live yet. I’ve done you a great injustice, a great harm, but…but do what they advise and it will be all right. You can start again, and tomorrow morning,’ he coughed here, ‘you can tell your mother and father just how it happened and they’ll understand.’

  ‘You mean…you mean I’m to tell them, not you?’

  ‘Yes, my dear. They must have kept at you to know.’

  ‘Yes, yes, they have.’ Her voice sounded far away. ‘But they think it’s Angus, Angus Cotton.’

  ‘What!’ He was on his feet. He seemed to have come alive for the first time since their meeting. ‘You mean…? Have they tackled him with it?’

  ‘Yes. Father…Father brought him to the house yesterday. Emily…Emily’s left. She was in a state.’

  ‘And you let them think this.’

  ‘No, no! I told them flatly that it wasn’t him but they wouldn’t believe me. You see, Irene came over and told Mother that she had seen us together a number of times…and then Ray and Michael had seen us too.’

  ‘Irene came and…’ His voice trailed away.

  ‘Yes, and from what I understand she seemed very pleased about it all.’ There was a sound of bitterness in Vanessa’s voice now. ‘She’s never liked me and she’s jealous of Susan marrying well. I think she hopes that this will, in some way, put a stop to it. Mother and Father are afraid of the same thing. I’ve to be got out of the way, hushed up. They’re going to send me to Great-Aunt Jean’s, up in the wilds of Scotland, after I come back from London.’ She was talking dully now as if she was accepting what had been arranged for her.

  He asked quietly, ‘Have you seen Angus?’

  ‘Only yesterday morning in the study. He was very angry.’

  Brett made no comment on this but, putting his hand out blindly until he found her arm, he drew her to her feet, saying, ‘Come along, dear. Come along. And believe me, it’s going to be all right. Tomorrow you can explain everything. It’ll be all right.’

  ‘What…what about you? What will happen to you?’

  ‘Don’t worry about me, dear, everything will work out tomorrow. You’ll see.’ He led her up the bank and through the wood, and at the gate they stopped and he drew her into his arms and, putting his lips against her brow, he held them there tightly for a moment, then said thickly, ‘I just want you to remember one thing. No matter what happens remember this. I love you. I’ve loved you for a long time, but I’ve only been aware of it in the past few months. Thank you, dear.’ When he pressed her away from him she muttered, ‘Will I see you tomorrow?’ She was crying bitterly now.

  ‘Yes, you’ll see me tomorrow.’

  He stood on the same spot for almost ten minutes after she was gone, then he walked slowly up through the trees. He let himself in by the side door and went upstairs; but he didn’t go to his own room, he went to his wife’s.

  After he had switched on the light he stood with his back to the door. Irene, blinking, pulled herself up in the bed and said, ‘Yes, yes. What is it?…Oh!’ She focused him through narrowed lids, then asked, ‘Is it Michael? Is he sick?’

  ‘No, it’s not Michael.’ He moved slowly towards the bed, and by the time he had reached the foot she had pulled the coverlet up under her chin. The action was a defensive one that a timid woman might take, but there was no timidity about her voice when she said, ‘We’ve had all this out. No, do you hear, no.’

  He stood staring at her, not speaking. He watched her thin mouth form into a button that aged her.

  She was hissing at him now. ‘You’re not back five minutes and this starts again. I thought you would have learned more sense.’

  ‘Do you know something?’ His voice was quiet, even gentle. ‘I wouldn’t want to take you, Irene, if you were stark naked doing a fandango. I saw a naked woman doing that dance when I was abroad. She was fat and ugly and her skin was greasy. Moreover, she smelt. But you know something? Given the choice, I’d take her any day in the week rather than touch you with my little finger…Does that surprise you, Irene?’

  Her mouth had slackened. It was slightly agape. ‘You’ve been drinking,’ she said under her breath. ‘You could never carry your drink.’

  ‘No, I haven’t been drinking, and you know it. I’m solid and sober and I’m going to talk to you. We’ve never talked for years, and this will be the last time I’ll talk to you, and for that I’m grateful.’ He paused, and they stared unblinkingly at each other, until he said, ‘Do you know what you are, Irene? Fundamentally, you’re a mean, narrow-minded bitch. You’re a woman who has fought her way into positions in this town on my name, on my father’s name, and his father’s name. You’re uneducated, unintelligent and without the slightest scrap of breeding. You’ve had a shot at imitating these various qualities, and you’ve hoodwinked a few into believing they are your own, but they’re only a few. Besides which, Irene, you’re cruel. It’s a hobby with you, cruelty.’

  Her lips trembled before she put in, ‘Are…are you quite finished?’

  ‘No, not by a long chalk. I’m coming to our neighbours now. Jonathan did me a dirty turn some years ago, but what happened was my own fault. Jonathan got the post over my head because he was ambitious. I’m not. And you’ve never forgiven him or his, not, let me stress, because of me but because of how it affected you. You saw yourself as the wife of the manager of Affleck and Tate’s. You would have carried it off with a high hand, but not half as successfully as Jane has done. She’s a snob of the first water, she’s a social climber, but, unlike you, she came from a decent family.’

  ‘Get out!’

  ‘I’m not going out until I’m ready, Irene. As I said, we’re going to talk. I’m going to talk. Now you, in a way, are on a par with Jonathan. You both came originally from the gutters of Fellburn. Your father was an elementary schoolteacher; his father had been a little grocer and his grandfather…You didn’t know I knew this, but his grandfather, together with your great-grandfather were well known taggereen men in Bog’s End. They both had donkeys and flat cart
s and they gathered scrap. A couple of Steptoes, but not quite so famous I should say.’

  Her hair was pulled tight back in curlers held in place by an invisible net, and the skin at her temples now showed the veins standing up like pieces of thick blue string.

  As he paused again they held each other’s glance, hers wide, bitter, full of hatred, his scornful, sad, and bitter too. He moved from one foot to the other before going on. ‘Your chagrin gave you sleepless nights when Susan burst into the titled set, didn’t it? So you looked around for something to spoil, something to smash, and you found it, didn’t you? You found it when you saw Vanessa talking to Angus Cotton. Your mean little mind put two and two together and made a dozen. They couldn’t be talking unless they were up to something, and so what did you do? You flew next door and named the man, the father of Vanessa’s child, didn’t you?…DIDN’T YOU?’ His voice had suddenly exploded in a shout and she leant towards him, gritting out between her teeth, ‘Stop it! Stop it! Do you want to raise the house?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I would like to raise the house. I have something very interesting to say.’ There was a considerable silence now and his voice had dropped when he spoke again. ‘First, I want to ask you. Do you really, in your heart of hearts, think Vanessa was having an affair with Angus Cotton?’

  ‘There was no need to think,’ her voice was thin, low and bitter, ‘there’s enough proof. And I’ve seen them together again and again. And the children—’

  ‘Yes, I know all about that. The children saw them together. But…but he’s not the father of her child.’

  ‘How do you know? What do you know about it? You’ve been away for weeks, and you took your time in coming—’

  ‘Yes, I took my time in coming back, because I was afraid to face up to my responsibilities. I still am.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘If you weren’t so dull, woman, you’d realise without me having to put it into words…I’m the father of Vanessa’s child.’

  Slowly she leant back against the bed head. She thought for a moment she was going to have a seizure of some sort. She had to wait seconds, minutes, before her heart stopped racing. Then she muttered, ‘You’re mad. You’re sex mad. It’s because you wanted her. I don’t doubt but that you wanted her. You’ve thought of nothing but sex for years. But you, you, wouldn’t have dared…You…’

  ‘Well, I did dare. I had one short amazingly glorious moment of living down in the summer house.’

  Her eyes were like pieces of flint piercing him. ‘I—I don’t believe you; you’re just making it up. Wishful thinking, that’s what it is, wishful thinking. I deal with people like you every week in the courts, people who say they’ve done things because they want to do them but are afraid to. I don’t doubt but you wanted one glorious moment, but you would never have dared, never.’

  ‘Well, I tell you I did dare, Irene. And Vanessa has been waiting for me coming back before she’s spoke. She’s been very, very brave. She wanted me to take her away. And oh, I would have dearly loved to have done just that. And I would if I’d been younger, and with more nerve and some money behind me. Yet if I could have done this she wouldn’t have been happy. She’s made for someone young, and she’ll get someone young. A girl like her must be made happy, because you know why? She’s kind, and kind people, even if they’re the biggest rogues or scamps in the world, they’re happy, they’re made happy in some way. I’ve seen it again and again…Of course there are exceptions. I was kind to you, Irene. And my people were kind to you. But my mother’s last years were made miserable through you, and all my married years have been made miserable through you…Well, it’s finished. Or nearly so. By the way, I’d better tell you I made another will some time ago. Funny, but I must have known this was coming. I’ve made a stipulation in it that the land and house, when it is sold, mustn’t be divided, and it must be sold as one and the money that it brings is to go into trust until Michael is twenty-one. Then it is to be divided between the three boys. I’ve also left special pieces of furniture to Paul alone. You, my dear, will have the interest on the money until Michael comes of age. After that you are at the mercy of your three sons.’

  She was unable to speak. Her whole body was shaking as if with an ague. When he said, ‘Goodbye, Irene,’ and turned slowly from her she knew what he was going to do. The only thing she didn’t know was how he was going to do it. But she didn’t get out of bed or say one word to stop him.

  Five

  Vanessa had sat by her bedroom window until almost two o’clock in the morning, and when she eventually did go to bed she didn’t sleep, at least for a long time. When she heard her mother’s voice saying stiffly, ‘Vanessa! Vanessa! It’s almost eight o’clock. Come along,’ she imagined she had been asleep only a few minutes.

  At half-past eight she went downstairs and into the morning room. She had stopped being sick these last two or three mornings and had felt hungry, yet at the same time she thought it wasn’t right somehow that she should eat at all.

  She had the morning room to herself; her father had already had his breakfast and would now be in his study where he would stay until after nine. There was some bacon under cover on an electrically heated plate, and as she served herself she thought, ‘I can’t eat, I can’t,’ yet she ate the bacon and had two cups of coffee and some toast and marmalade.

  The sun was shining full into the room and she looked about it, seeming to see it for the first time. It was a beautiful room. Pale grey walls, thick pink satin curtains, two large mushroom-coloured rugs on the polished parquet floor. The sideboard with its gleaming silver, most of which was now going to be put away, and the period dining chairs with their seats and backs upholstered in rose. This had always been her favourite room, and perhaps after today, or tomorrow, or the next day she wouldn’t see it any more. After she had told them about Brett—and how she was going to deliver this bombshell she didn’t really know—she was going to tell them something else. She was going to tell them she meant to get a job of some kind, any kind, and, what was more, she was going to have the baby because the prospect of having the baby in six months’ time was less frightening to her than having it taken away now. She knew that when she told them what she intended to do her father would bring his authority to bear, and if he couldn’t force her to go to London he would send her somewhere. It wouldn’t matter much to him where she went during the next few weeks as long as she was out of his sight, and not an embarrassment to them all until the wedding was over.

  But she was fully aware that she couldn’t stand up to her father on her own regarding the baby, particularly when he knew it was Brett’s. He would be madder than ever at this disclosure. He would see it as a personal affront, and she daren’t think of his reaction. She would need a higher authority to fall back on and she knew she would find that authority in Doctor Carr. She would go to Doctor Carr and say, ‘I want to have this baby, I don’t want it to be taken away.’ And she could hear him now exclaiming loudly, ‘If you want to have it, you have it; you’re strong and healthy. Don’t let me hear any talk of you having it taken away.’ After that, let her father try and send her to London. Abortions were illegal and people could go to prison for doing them, or aiding them.

  One minute her chin was jerking upwards in support of her thoughts, the next she had her face buried in her hands biting on the pad of her thumb to stop herself crying. She wished she had someone she could talk to. She felt dreadful inside; lonely, lost, all mixed up and confused.

  She sat now, telling herself that she didn’t know her own mind from one day to the next, because this time yesterday she was just longing to see Brett, knowing that he would take her away, and last night when she knew that he was going to do no such thing she had been sick. Even when she saw him as a timid, vacillating old man, she had still been sick with disappointment, and fear of what was going to happen to her. Yet this morning, when her mother had wakened her, she was filled with relief that they hadn’t gone away t
ogether, that she wasn’t going to marry him.

  It was as she sat wishing that the day was over and shuddering inwardly at the repercussion her news would have on the two households that she heard the screaming. It was quite near, it seemed to be in the garden.

  When she hastily pulled open the French windows and stood on the paved terrace the screaming filled the air. She saw her mother come to the drawing-room window, then her father come round by the side of the house. He looked along towards her, then her mother came through the morning room and onto the terrace beside her and she asked, ‘What is it? Who is it?’

  ‘Next door.’ Jonathan Ratcliffe moved down the garden, saying over his shoulder, ‘It sounds like Michael.’

  The screaming now seemed to come from the top of the trees, and when her mother followed her father she followed them both, and then they were all standing by the gate looking into the wood, looking at Irene and Colin Brett. Irene was standing with one clenched fist pressed against her cheek, she was looking upwards into the tree house. Colin, too, was looking upwards. He was calling, ‘Michael! Michael! Do you hear. Come down. I’ll only have to come and fetch you. Come down.’

  ‘What is it? What’s the matter?’ They all went through the gate and into the wood, Vanessa still walking a few yards behind her parents. As another series of screams came from the tree, Colin mounted the rickety ladder.

  ‘What is it, Irene? What is it? What’s upset him?’