Chapter 21 #2
It continued with news of a business he was going to invest in with a friend who he had met through Veronique, whom he hoped to marry.
He was going to come into a lot of money once it paid off, and he would be able to come back to visit.
He might even bring his beloved Veronique with him (he warned his father that he would not tolerate any rudeness towards her).
At the bottom was Archie’s familiar signature, carefully scribed.
She put the letter back in the envelope and was so consumed by her thoughts that she did not realise Archibald had entered the bedroom.
‘What are you doing?’ he asked.
‘I was looking for your old spectacles because you complained about the new pair,’ Gwen answered. She held the letter out. ‘I found this letter from Archie.’
‘You’ve been through my drawer?’ Archibald swept to her side as he growled the words.
He gripped her by the shoulders and shook her violently.
Gwen’s head jolted and pain cracked down the side of her neck so sharply she thought she might black out.
She put her hand to her neck and rubbed, staring accusingly at Archibald.
‘I’m glad I did! I thought he hadn’t written, and you know how concerned I’ve been. How could you keep this from me? How many more letters has he sent since this one?’
Archibald glared at her. ‘I didn’t show you the letters, because he is a disgrace. He has set himself up with a native and has now married her. If he had taken her as a mistress, I could understand that, but to permanently tie us to such a connection is intolerable.’
‘How frail of mind do you think I am that I couldn’t bear that knowledge?’ Gwen snapped. ‘You let me think my son wanted nothing to do with us! I don’t know whether to be angry or amused.’
‘Clearly you should be neither. There is nothing amusing about his situation, nor the fact that I chose to keep it from you, and you certainly have no cause to get angry.’
‘Have there been any more letters?’ Gwen asked again. ‘How is his business doing? Will he be able to visit soon, as he hoped?’
‘You wish to know about his business?’ Archibald’s face contorted in disgust.
He shuffled across the room, swearing beneath his breath as he did so, opened a leather folder and removed a handful of letters, if such scraps of paper could be called that. He thrust them towards Gwen.
‘I take no responsibility for what the contents might do to your mind.’
Gwen picked up the scraps of paper. Some were written on fine paper, others appeared to have been torn out of books, and one or two were scrawled on the back of advertisements.
The most recent one was dated the seventeenth of January.
It did not even bother with niceties. Instead, it began with a reproach that Archibald had not answered the previous letter and insisted that he send money to St Helena as a matter of urgency.
The next one on the pile was dated two weeks prior to that and as it progressed, it became a plea, then a demand, for funds to pay off creditors.
Archie would be rich soon, he claimed, and he would be able to pay his parents back, tenfold, et cetera.
‘The rest are in the same vein,’ Archibald said, his face blank of emotion. ‘Now you know, does it make you happy? Is this a son you can be proud of?’
Gwen shook her head slowly, her mind crumbling at the news.
‘If we’d helped him the first time he asked,’ she said quietly, ‘if you’d sent him the money to bring him home, all this could have been avoided.’
‘I did. When his first letter arrived. But he did not return home, did he? What do you suppose he did with the money?’
Archibald stood over her, staring down with an unpleasant smirk on his face. ‘He gambled, drank or whored it away, or gave it to his woman. I don’t know, I didn’t ask. And now, curiously, I find I am beyond caring what happens to him. He is no longer my son.’
‘How can you be so unfeeling?’ Gwen sprang to her feet. Archibald seized her around the wrists in a vice-like grip.
‘Calm yourself! It’s bad enough that my son has brought such shame on me, but I will not have my wife do the same.’
He let go of her wrists and pushed her hard in the chest, causing her to stumble backwards onto the bed.
‘The last missive I received was written by a prison warder, in whose charge Archie now resides, informing me of his sentence. It was a month ago, and I have heard nothing since. Nor do I expect to.’
He lifted his chin and stared at Gwen with the nastiest expression on his face that she had ever seen. His eyes were still slightly milky, but there was a spark of malice in them that was chilling.
‘But his wife, why has she not written to us for aid?’ Gwen asked, shocked at what she was hearing.
‘I imagine she has left him, now that he has invested his money. I don’t blame her. Our son is not an upstanding member of the Foreign Office. He’s a degenerate and a gambler, rotting in a foreign jail. I pray daily that his death is speedy and relieves me of my constant shame.’
‘You bastard!’
Gwen raised herself up again, furious at his brutal dismissal of their child.
She wasn’t sure what she would do, but Archibald must have been anticipating an assault because she was met with his fist across her jaw, knocking her back to the ground.
The pain was an explosion and she almost vomited.
She didn’t exactly faint, but it was easier to lie on the floor and let the world continue around her.
When she opened her eyes next, she was alone, surrounded by the scraps of paper.
She sat in the middle of the floor, hugging her knees to her chest and sobbing.
Unsure whether knowing what her son was, was worse than what her husband was.
When she thought about Archie, her heart broke and she wanted to scream aloud for the disaster that was his life.
When she thought about Archibald, there was nothing but a knot of blackness.
On reflection, it had been coming for a while, but now there was no space left in her heart for affection, only misery and contempt.
For him, she had stolen and dealt with the worst in society, and put others at risk, and he was not worthy of that sacrifice.
At that moment she decided her marriage was at an end.
The thought of staying under the same roof as him for a day longer was agonising, but she couldn’t leave with the amount of money she had saved or before the situation with Augusta was resolved.
She began methodically going through her belongings.
She had a wedding ring that she could pawn or sell, and a brooch that had belonged to her mother, but nothing else of value.
Archie’s toys and his outgrown clothes might bring in something, but it wouldn’t see her very far. She didn’t care.
She took everything up to the attic room and packed it in the travelling trunk which had come with her when she left Wales, and that set her mind to thinking. Archie needed help, that was clear. Gwen didn’t know the first thing about debts or prison or trials, but she knew someone who did.
Gwen went to Danny’s hotel and walked up to the desk where the same clerk was standing.
‘I need to speak to Mr Parry, please. Is he in residence? I came to visit him a few days ago,’ she added, unsure if he would recognise her.
The clerk checked behind him on a wall of numbered hooks, some hung with keys, others empty.
‘Mr Parry is in. Please give me your name. If you wait there, I will send a porter up to inform him you are here.’
‘I need to speak to him myself in private. Please, just tell me which room he is in and I’ll go up myself.’