Chapter Two
Honor
It was her own fault, Honor thought, when her husband Chips came upon her in the library.
She should have gone up as soon as she came home.
Should have been safe in her room, behind the pretence of sleep, by the time he came back.
But she had found the sandwiches Andrews had left in the library, and a decanter of wine, and then a novel she had borrowed from the lending library, Rebecca; brand new and ‘simply thrilling’ according to cousin Oonagh.
It had been such a dull evening. A ball, quite in the old manner, with ancient royals in dusty knee breeches and tiresome formalities around supper, so that Honor had eaten almost nothing, so determined was she to avoid the sycophantic line of nodding and smiling ball-goers.
Even among them, her husband had stood out for the depth of his nod, the broadness of his smile.
All around she had seen gnarled hands, cold and stiff, winking harsh diamonds and precious stones under swollen knuckles. When had they all got so old?
She had left early, coming home alone. And then she had sat beside the fire in the library, planning to read only a few pages while she ate the sandwiches.
But she had drunk a glass of wine, and kept reading, and now it was after four in the morning according to the dusty bong of the library clock, and here was Chips, swaying slightly in the doorway.
‘Darling! What a pleasant surprise.’
‘I was just going up,’ Honor said hastily, marking her place and putting the book down.
‘Don’t. Stay. I will ring for more sandwiches and we can have a lovely talk.’
‘It’s too late, Chips. The servants are all in bed.’
‘Well then I will wake them,’ he said peevishly.
She could hear the brandy in his voice, thickening the vowels.
‘They are my servants.’ He rang the bell and asked a sleepy footman to ‘bring another plate of sandwiches. Bring some of that fruit cake too.’ Then, ‘Wasn’t it a delightful evening?
’ he asked, crossing to the high-winged armchair opposite her and sinking into it.
‘No,’ Honor said. ‘Deathly, I thought.’
Nevertheless he began to dissect the night, just as he always did.
‘Lady Furness can’t think much of our hostess if she only wore her second necklaces,’ he said, ‘she has far better pieces than that.’ He was, she had discovered, particularly clever at deciphering jewellery – finding meaning in the stones their friends chose to wear; the when and how of a brooch or a set of earrings.
The sleepy footman brought sandwiches. Honor thought how much she would have loved a cup of tea, but decided it would be unfair to ask. ‘Do go to bed, Robert,’ she said.
The light from the fire fell on Chips’ face, burnishing his broad forehead and straight nose.
He was still handsome, she thought, but – like all aging beauties – now only in certain lights.
Daylight, morning especially, was cruel to him, showing the pouches beneath his eyes, the pallor of his skin and lines about his mouth that spoke of disappointment.
But there, lit by soft flames, with the glow of brandy still in him, and the excitement of a topic close to his heart, he seemed, again, the man she had married five years ago: smooth with the confidence of his own good looks, lit by purpose and certainty.
‘Did you see how the Duchess of Gloucester has already the royal trick of never sitting down?’ he asked eagerly.
He loved these after-sessions almost as much as the parties themselves.
Once she had been happy to turn it all over with him, cut the deck a thousand different ways to see how the cards would fall. But not anymore.
‘Must we?’ she asked after a while. ‘Wasn’t it bad enough to live through it once, but I must now do it all again, in memory?’
‘I simply thought you might be interested,’ Chip said stiffly.
‘In what? Parsing every detail and finding what bits of it all might benefit you?’ she responded rudely. ‘I am going up.’
‘May I come with you?’ he asked, reaching forward to put a damp hand on her arm. Sometimes, she noticed, he seemed to almost enjoy her displays of contempt. Finding in them an excitement that repelled her. That was another reason she was careful to keep them under control.
‘Not tonight.’ She shook his hand off and stood up.
‘Not tonight. Not any night. How long has it been?’
‘Please, Chips, not now.’
‘I know exactly,’ he responded. ‘As do you. Certainly not since Paul was born.’
What could she say? It has been a great deal longer.
Not since the day you knew I was expecting.
Once he knew she was pregnant, he had turned to mist and vapour, as she had thought of it then; as though his duties were discharged.
Had left her entirely alone. It was only when Paul had reached his first birthday that he had begun to try to come to her at night again.
And by then it was too late. She no longer wanted him.
‘You know I have had a long and confidential natter with Dr Low,’ he said, pouring a dash of brandy into a cut-glass tumbler.
‘Have you indeed?’
‘Yes. And we are agreed, he and I, about the cause of your nerves and difficulties with sleep.’ He turned the glass this way and that so the deep slashes in its crystal sides caught the firelight.
‘Are you?’
‘We are.’ And, when she said nothing, ‘Aren’t you going to ask what it is we agree on?’
‘No, because I do not at all want to know.’ She stood with one hand on the high back of the armchair, ready to leave, but not quite able yet to go.
‘It is a delicate matter, granted,’ he said, ‘but one we must talk about.’
‘I feel certain that we must not.’
‘I know it is difficult to resume marital relations once they have been allowed to lapse, but Dr Low is certain this can only be of benefit to you.’
‘To me?’
‘And to me, of course,’ he added hurriedly, politely, ‘my dear.’
‘I don’t wish to discuss this. Not now.’
‘But Honor, darling, Paul is nearly three. It is time there were more children.’
More children. How much, a year or so ago, she had wanted to hear those words.
How she had clung to the idea of them, when the world of Nanny and the nursery, where she felt always a visitor – like a cat that has snuck into the kitchen and found a warm spot, but knows it will be ejected – closed around her baby son.
Taking him from her, briskly, efficiently, cruelly; always in a way that meant she didn’t know how to resist: ‘It is time for his nap.’ ‘He must have his bath.’ ‘It is better for him if he is not spoiled.’
Perhaps Chips took her silence for contemplation, because he put the glass down and came to stand close beside her, putting a hot hand on her arm.
‘It’s time,’ he said again. He stood so close that he breathed into her ear and, with his thumb, began to stroke the inside of her elbow.
Already his breath was fast and jagged. Honor’s stomach lurched.
She imagined capitulating. Allowing him to move his hand further up her arm, to her shoulder.
Imagined him pulling her forward and pressing his mouth on hers.
Imagined the wet brandy taste of him. Imagined going upstairs to her bedroom and the way his body would feel against hers after all this time.
‘I don’t wish to discuss it,’ she said again.
‘I’m going up. Please do not fall asleep here.
It makes things so difficult for the maids if they must dust and set fires around you.
’ He shot her a nasty look. It was the first time she had acknowledged that she knew this was how he had ended too many nights recently: sprawled across the sofa, decanter empty beside him.
Upstairs, she barely had energy to unhook her dress and wished she had told the maid to wait up.
She didn’t bother brushing her hair but fell straight into bed.
Molly would have to wash it in the morning anyway.
Wash away the smell of cigars and hairspray.
The memory of another dull night. She must try to be kinder to him, Honor thought as she fell asleep. Only it had become so hard.