her, to sit in a nice house, to tease her and admire her. But me as a man she found very difficult. She was young. She knew nothing at al realy about the realities of love or marriage. I think part of her couldn't believe I could want to do something so horrible to her. I didn't have time to get to know her before she was pregnant. Then she lost the baby and was devastated. Al she wanted was another baby. When she knew she was pregnant again, that made her happy. Totaly, utterly happy.'
He wondered whether he was entering territory that was far too personal to discuss with a woman he had not known long, however intensely he had felt a connection, but he kept on talking. Mary looked interested but not shocked at his openness.
'Once she was pregnant she didn't want me to share a room with her. Of course she was terrified about losing this baby too but it was more than that. I think it al revolted her. Al the same, I hated myself for being dissatisfied with her, and yet wanting the comfort of her so much. And meanwhile the war had come.
'When I came back on leave the gulf between us was even greater. Al she talked about was the baby or if she discussed the war it was simply how we were winning every battle. She wouldn't hear anything that contradicted that. She wouldn't see what was right in front of her eyes. A couple of times I read reports to her from
'Perhaps she was frightened to bring a baby into a world where victory wasn't a certainty?'
Mary stood up as she spoke and he thought she was going into the kitchen. For a second he thought his frankness had disappointed her or even repeled her.
However, she leaned over to touch the side of his face. When he didn't pul back she put out her other hand and raised his face to look at her. Then, astonishingly, she bent down and kissed him gently on the lips. 'I'm so sorry,' she whispered.
He looked back at her and her gaze didn't waver. She walked on into the tiny sculery and ran herself a glass of water. He loved watching her take his rooms for granted.
'It was the war,' she said as she came back through the door, 'and it was like nothing else. It complicated things. Not just for soldiers.'
He sensed she was pondering whether to continue.
'I wasn't honest with you,' she said finaly. 'Sins of omission and al that.'
His heart sank. He wasn't sure whether, after al this time, he wanted to know any secrets she'd been holding back.
'There was somebody.'
Laurence felt a terrible sadness, then simultaneously—and, he knew, demeaningly—a hope that the past tense meant just that.
'He was married,' she said, sitting down next to him on the floor, her back against a chair. 'It was a very unhappy marriage. Among other things, his wife found she couldn't have children. Very sad for them both. Although she found someone else, they were Catholic; hers was a very old recusant family so the world turned a blind eye. Richard found himself sort of in limbo. He loved the estate—just two farms and a beautiful Tudor house, though a very dilapidated, very cold house.'
She smiled, apparently in recolection, and Laurence's heart sank again.
'My father was dead. My mother, wel, you've seen her. She seldom thinks of anyone or anything outside the effort of just living her life. So there was nobody to inveigh against my unsuitable relationship.'
She looked straight at Laurence but he found it hard not to avoid her eyes, hoping she didn't mistake jealousy for disapproval.
'Nobody to tel me that my reputation would be besmirched or that I'd never find a decent husband. Of course we didn't know there'd be a war, but if we had, we'd probably just have seized the day.'
Although the grin she gave him was partly bravado, he thought, it made her look like a schoolgirl.
'Anyway, Richard was as much a husband as I can imagine any man being. Not at first, not for a long time—I was quite young, of course, and he was dreadfuly anxious about protecting me from scandal, whereas I didn't realy give a fig myself—but, in the end.'
Laurence desperately wanted to swalow but she was looking at him too closely. She seemed to be testing his response despite her apparent certainties.
'Anyway he stayed in the country in Sussex, in the old, cold house overlooking the Downs. He'd been born in that house. His wife, Blanche, lived in their flat in London. He was lonely but he loved the countryside. The cloud shadows over the hils, the foam of hawthorn in spring: he used to say the whole landscape echoed the sea. His house was a bit like an old ship, stranded inland. It was al faded reds and silver wood, overhanging upper storeys, barley-sugar chimneys.
'We met at the house of mutual friends one weekend. I think we each sensed loneliness in the other. We took to meeting just to walk and talk. Over the next months and years we must have explored the whole county in every season and every kind of weather. He liked the crumbling cliffs, the sea mists and the rattle of the sea on the shingle; he tried to go into the navy when he saw the way things were going, but it was quicker'—she grimaced —'and easier to get a commission in the army.
My own favourite place was the Long Man of Wilmington—a huge chalk figure with a stave in each hand—and a little medieval priory or something near by. A place of ancient peace. I often go back there now.'
Laurence felt the tiny satisfaction of incorporating another bit of her life into his understanding of her. This was the scandal Charles had spoken of and also why he had bumped into her in Sussex. He wanted to ask the identity of the man she had met but not introduced him to at the Wigmore Hal, but it stil wasn't the right moment.
'I expect people talked,' she said. 'But it was a long, long time until he asked me if I would consider being his. He was such an extraordinarily decent man. He told me he could never offer me marriage. Never bring me to his house as its chatelaine. Not in his wife's lifetime. That people might despise us and we would have to be terribly careful not to have a child. But he loved me. He loved me and I loved him, so it was an easy decision. And I was never happier.' She stopped. 'Do you think the less of me?' she said almost triumphantly.
'Of course not,' he said. His chest hurt with it.
