It must not demand perfection. What would perfection know or understand of the frailties of a vulnerable person, the failures of someone brave enough to try what is difficult?
Margaret had been immature.
Rathbone had been immature also. He should have been gentler with her. Certainly he should have been wise enough not to undertake Ballinger’s defense alone. But if he had taken assistance she would have blamed him for not having thrown his whole weight behind it. She would have said his backing away from the case in any regard would make the court assume he thought Ballinger guilty from the start.
He had still not told her the whole story about the dreadful legacy her father had deliberately left to him, his final vengeance. She would still blame Rathbone, and hate him the more for it. It would mend nothing.
Was it a gentleness in him that stilled his tongue? Disillusion is one of the bitterest pains anyone can face. Some people cannot bear it; they break under the weight. Margaret was one of those. Maybe he still had some lingering tenderness toward her, a need to protect her from the truth if she did not have to know it.
Or was he simply too bruised and too weary inside to face another series of quarrels and rejections? Not that it mattered. There was no need to tell her.
He had never had to face the worst of disillusion himself, not one that came anywhere near hers. His own father was the best man he had ever known. Even standing here on the edge of the empty summer garden, watching the birds and the few butterflies sitting on the silent, brilliant flowers, he smiled thinking of Henry Rathbone. Of course, his father was fallible, and he himself would be the first to admit it. He was a mathematician and inventor, a man whose mind was brilliant, yet when others spoke of him it was his kindness they spoke of first.
He could remember his mother only as a slim figure from his childhood, someone warm and safe who made him laugh, comforted his early pains and fears, and who told him he could accomplish anything, if he tried hard enough. She believed in him totally.
She had died when he was twelve and away at boarding school. She had said he could do anything; he had thought then if he had been at home surely he could have saved her. He remembered the sharp, twisting pain of loss and the disbelief in his boyish mind, and then the guilt. He should have been there. Why had she not told him, not trusted him? What was wrong with him not to have seen it himself? She must have been ill for a long time before. It wasn’t sudden.
All that had gone through his thoughts. Only later, several years after, did he realize she was protecting him. He was twelve, thinking himself almost a man, but she knew what a child he was. Had he been there, he would’ve wanted to save her, and he would’ve failed-and that would’ve hurt him deeply. She had known that.
There was only the echo of those memories left now, a gentleness in the mind when he thought of her and the things she had cared for, when he imagined her presence. She had never lived to see him pass the bar examinations, see his mounting success, his triumph in battles for justice that had seemed impossible. Had she ever imagined he would be knighted by the Queen, would be Sir Oliver? And now he was a judge. She would have been so proud!
Margaret likely had none of those emotions when she thought of her father. To lose someone you love because he dies from illness is a sweet ache. To lose everything good you believed of him is a pain that stains all he left behind. It poisons the very air of memory.
Ballinger had had his revenge on Rathbone, from beyond the grave. He had bequeathed him the obscene photographs at the heart of the case. They were hidden away now, locked in a safe so well concealed he doubted anyone else would ever find it. He had used one of the photos once. He loathed doing it, and he had sworn he never would again.
Maybe he should have destroyed them when they were first delivered to him after Ballinger’s death. He knew how they had come about, why Ballinger had created them, and how he had first used them and why. It was what had happened later that was the terrible wrong.
Was all power like that? You use it for good, then for less good, then finally simply because you can. Surely he was strong enough to resist that kind of temptation? He was not like Arthur Ballinger. He would not even look at them again, and perhaps one day soon he would smash the glass photographic plates to pieces. The paper prints he could burn.
He heard a noise of wings and looked up at a flight of birds across the soft blue of the sky. It must be after six o’clock. The breeze was stirring the poplars, shimmering the top leaves. It would be a long, delicate evening, too good to waste in pointless remembering.
He made the decision easily. He would go out to Primrose Hill and have supper with his father. He had a really good Belgian pâté, one of Henry’s favorites. He would take it, and the plum pie that his cook had made with rich, flaky pastry. Maybe he should take half a pint of cream as well, in case Henry didn’t happen to have any.
Henry Rathbone had been sitting in the garden reading one of the German philosophers he was so fond of. He had finally fallen asleep with the book upside down on his lap.
Oliver walked silently over the grass and stopped just short of where his shadow would fall across his father and, in all likelihood, wake him up. He stood still for a few moments then turned and went back to fetch another chair. He sat down a few yards away and allowed the peace to settle over him. He was comfortable enough to go to sleep, but instead he chose to bask in the pleasure of it.
There was no sound but the birds and the faintest wind occasionally stirring the leaves of the elms. The quiet settled into his bones as heat does, easing out the hurts.
When Henry woke up he would be delighted to find Oliver here. They would talk of all manner of things, funny and sad, interesting, new, or odd. They always did. Perhaps Henry would have some new jokes. Oliver had a limerick he knew would amuse him. Henry liked dry humor, the more absurd the better. Oliver wanted to talk about what disturbed him most at the moment: the complex moral issues surrounding the idea of loyalty. Henry would advise him without making it personal or emotional, without laying blame. Oliver would speak without having to worry about every word being judged, or misunderstood.
He looked across at Henry now, still sound asleep. He was well into his seventies. His hair was very gray, his face was getting a little gaunt, but his mind was as strong as ever, except that he repeated himself now and then.
Oliver never told him so. He received every remark with interest, as if he had not heard it before. Usually he hadn’t.
But even as he saw the shadows lengthening in the garden and the color deepening in the light to the west, he knew that he would not always be able to come here and find Henry. One day it would be the last.
This was the most important relationship in his life. Maybe it always would be. If Margaret had loved her father like this, how could he blame her for her inability to cope with the loss? The destruction of everything she had believed she had-the smearing of it, the shattering of the beauty and the safety of that relationship, the pieces laid bare for strangers to tread on-was terrible, perhaps more than anyone could bear. In a way it was worse than if she herself had been the one sitting in the prosecution box.
How was he going to deal with Henry dying, when it happened? It would be a new loneliness, such as he had never experienced in his life.
How childish of a man his age to think of such a thing. The great gift of a marvelous father had been given him, and here he was wondering how he would deal with losing it at some time in the future.
But what faith did he have to nourish him with hope? What did he really believe in? The law. The morality of the Church, more or less, but what about the passion and the faith of it? He did not know the answer to that. Perhaps he should! With the disillusion in her father, and all that she had believed of him, Margaret was alone as Oliver never would be, robbed of the past as well as the present. How had he not seen that before?
Monk was not alone. As long as Hester was alive he never would be. And if there were a time after that, then the memory of her would sustain him and drive him to be all that he could, all that she had believed of him, even as he would hurt from missing her.
Henry moved a little and the book slipped out of his grasp. Its fall to the ground woke him up. He reached for it and saw Oliver sitting a few feet away. For an instant he was startled; then his face broke into a smile of pleasure.
“Didn’t hear you,” he apologized. “Have you been here long? How about a cup of tea? Can you stay for that?”
