Chapter Nine 1892 #6
It clearly bothered her that he hadn’t decided what to do next, or even where to go when the time came to vacate Bishop Hatfield’s Hall.
Then there was the fact that he still hadn’t proposed, despite an over-enthusiastic letter he’d written to his parents, primarily because he’d been desperate to send them good news.
And despite a note he’d dashed off to Lily, after one of his tutor’s sherry parties, suggesting that she and Tom travel down with him to meet his family. He hadn’t mentioned it since.
He punted them along in silence, trying to ignore the growing sensation that he was acting in a play, the script of which had been written by someone other than himself. It was the perfect moment, the perfect setting to propose.
‘Lily . . .’
She looked up, eyes shaded by the brim of her hat, unreadable. Toby swallowed. The words would not come. Lily cocked an eyebrow, and went back to her book.
She had every right to be expecting it by now; failure to do so would inevitably disappoint her, and cause affront.
Tom might never forgive him. And he liked her well enough – she was clever and witty, and somehow both very forward and very decorous, which was never dull.
There’d been a moment, during a tennis tourney on his birthday, when she’d come to shake his hand with her face flushed and her hair coming loose.
His nostrils had filled with her hot skin and fresh sweat, and the smell had shot directly to his groin in an alarmingly animalistic way.
He’d turned away abruptly, but not before their eyes had met; not before she’d seen the flare of desire.
When she finished studying Lily wanted to teach, which she could do until they wed.
But Toby had no idea what work he would be doing to support himself, let alone her.
And however rationally he turned the idea about, the fact remained that he didn’t feel ready to be married.
Not practically, not financially, not mentally.
It was a thing to be done down the line, when he’d made something of himself.
When he’d mastered himself. Lily had only ever seen him when he was in the mood for company: she’d never experienced the uproar that could sweep over him without warning; she had no inkling of the agonies that confined him to his room sometimes, or made him pull the oars until he couldn’t breathe.
Tom had, and didn’t seem worried by it; so Toby supposed it didn’t look as bad from the outside as it felt on the inside. He decided that was a good thing.
Three days before the results were due to go up, Toby was called to sit a viva voce in Latin – an oral examination before of a panel of three professors.
It meant he was hovering between grades with his written papers.
Not far enough clear of the watershed to be awarded his first. And it was his first – he’d earned it.
‘Don’t look so horrified, Meriwether,’ Tom said easily, clapping him on the shoulder. ‘The world’s doors won’t slam shut on you if you take second class.’
Tom was in line to scrape a second, if he was lucky, and was perfectly reconciled to that. It would get him where he wanted to go.
‘But I must take first class,’ was Toby’s terse reply, at which point Womersley decided to pick his battles.
Toby went directly to the library and started to revise. He had four hours. He did exactly what the guidebook said not to do. Working at high pressure is ruinous.
Standing outside Professor Kemble’s room when the time came, Toby thought about throwing up.
He was completely sure that he was going to be sick, so it seemed better to get it over with out there in the vestibule.
There was a large Chinese vase in one corner, holding a few umbrellas and a riding crop.
It was the perfect size. Toby was standing over it, breathing deeply, when the door opened and Kemble poked his head out.
‘Ah! Meriwether,’ he said. ‘Do come in.’
So, the opportunity for a strategic spew was missed.
Toby’s ears rang with a continuous high note.
He had a vague sensation of floating. Then he sat down and became very, very calm.
It was a strangely serene, almost dissociated state, in which he watched himself from one side, answering all of their questions, translating everything he was asked to fluently and with little apparent effort.
A touch of arrogance, even – not enough to be obnoxious, but a good facsimile of a confidence he didn’t feel.
For those fifty minutes, he knew it all.
Afterwards, standing on unreliable legs on the cobbles of Palace Green, he felt spent but liberated. It was now completely out of his hands. Eric Phillips and Tom found him there.
‘Well?’ Eric said. ‘How did it go?’
Toby shook his head. ‘I have absolutely no idea.’
‘But you must have some impression?’
‘I can’t remember it at all.’
Tom peered at him. ‘Right. Come along – brandy is required.’
At around two in the morning the night before the results were due, Toby gave up trying to sleep.
He lit a lamp and put on his coat against the perpetual chill of his room.
Stilled by the peculiar loneliness of being wide awake in the dead of night, he sat silently in his chair for a while.
Then he reached into the bottom drawer of his desk for his journal – his Hallewell journal, of the castle’s symbols.
He couldn’t bring himself to throw the book away.
It wasn’t only because the sketches and jottings represented so many hours of thought and effort.
It wasn’t only because the puzzle was still unsolved.
It was because looking through it felt a little like going home.
He hardly ever let himself do it. He didn’t want to be comforted by thoughts of Hallewell – it was surely perverse, given all that had happened.
He certainly didn’t want to be there. And yet the journal cleared his mind, and set his feet squarely on the ground if he was drifting.
The symbols, which might be runic or alchemical or figurative or nothing at all, were rich with abstract memories of warm stone and the smell of trampled grass; wide afternoon skies, the thump of Kit’s running feet, and catching sight of a willowy figure with unbound hair, wearing a pale dress and ugly boots.
Full, conscious thoughts of it were too painful; the journal gave him just enough.
A stack of envelopes slumped to one side in the drawer: Theo’s letters.
She’d sent so many to begin with; then there’d begun to be gaps of weeks or months, before another flurry.
He tried not to expect them; thought only absently about why she persisted, and wished she would stop.
In the early days the arrival of a letter from her would ruin his day – a churning stomach, and poor concentration.
Anger billowing up, disorganising his thoughts.
But their effect had weakened over time, and now he barely looked at the envelope when one arrived.
He never read them.
He didn’t want to hear anything she had to say.
He didn’t want news of home. And if she’d included any poetry, he might suffer a fit of some kind.
The self-same anger made him keep them. There was something satisfying about shutting them away in a drawer, silenced.
Not opening them was vengeance of a kind – one that he managed to feel equally justified in and faintly belittled by.
Besides, if he never opened one, he couldn’t be tempted to reply.
He straightened the pile, shut the drawer, then began turning the pages of his journal.
The forked symbol that might be antlers, or a strange kind of crown.
The circle with the cross overlaying it, like the addition sign in mathematics; another circle with a notched vertical line bisecting it, like the eye of a goat – or of the devil.
The arrow pointing upwards that might be just an arrow, or the Anglo-Saxon rune tir, meaning glory.
A triangle that might be a banker mason’s mark, or the alchemical symbol for fire.
No one symbol had any one meaning. Toby was matching them up, trying different pairings, when he fell asleep.
The results went up on the noticeboard. Toby not only had his first but also the Classics exhibition, which meant that his viva voce must have been to determine who had the highest mark outright: his first-class honours had never been in doubt.
Toby grinned sheepishly as he was barracked and thumped on the back, even by Phillips, who was far more magnanimous in defeat than Toby would have been.
‘There you are, then!’ Tom said, delighted. ‘You’ve beaten everybody. Now, for heaven’s sake let’s hear no more about it, eh?’
‘All right,’ Toby agreed, still smiling.
There was to be a reception with the Principal that evening, and wine with supper, but until then Toby ducked away from the whooping and cavorting and throwing of caps.
His relief was so huge he felt fragile, almost tearful, and needed time alone for it to settle.
He was meeting Lily for a walk in the terraced gardens behind Hatfield Hall, so he went there, very early, to sit on a bench.
He realised he hadn’t even asked about Tom’s degree.
He also realised that his first didn’t solve the problem of what to do next.
A letter had arrived from his mother that morning. He took it out of his pocket, thinking it would be wishes of luck that had come a fraction too late. So, the news that Theo was engaged to Dr Ralph Anscombe blindsided him completely.
It landed a stunning blow. That high-pitched whine was in his ears again; that pressure building in his head.
The very man who had stood in court and testified against Kit – not directly, perhaps, but damning him nonetheless by refusing to allow that anything else could have caused Missy’s death.
Theo had begged him for an iota of doubt, as had Noah Cornwallis, but to no avail.
Toby didn’t know how she could conceivably marry him; how she could dare to.
He thought bitterly of Anscombe’s Byronesque profile, his flouncy curls of hair.
The debonair doctor. But he was so old – so very much older than Theo.
But then, Toby still pictured her as a girl, when in fact she was rising nineteen.
Only a few months younger than Lily Womersley.
He read Mona’s letter three times, but it kept saying the same thing.
There’d been a reception at Hallewell House to celebrate the engagement, with a display of fireworks that the whole village had enjoyed.
Toby stood. He paced. He crushed the letter in his fist. He shouldn’t care, yet it felt as bitter a betrayal as her refusal to visit Kit or speak at his trial.
Her request that Abrecan’s coin be returned to her.
And all the while she had carried on writing to Toby – albeit far less often these days.
He’d thought, at least, that her letters were proof that she hadn’t forgotten what had happened, and why.
Yet she must have absolved herself completely, to dare marry the doctor.
It was sickening. He’d been right to ignore her letters.
Did they contain details of their courtship?
Their plans? He would burn them, the second he got back to his room.
‘Toby?’
Lily touched his arm and he spun around. Her smile faltered.
‘Goodness, that’s hardly the face of a man who’s just won the . . .’ She trailed off. ‘Toby, what on earth has happened?’
‘Nothing,’ he managed to say.
‘Is that a letter?’
‘From my mother.’
He couldn’t look at her; he felt humiliated, and didn’t know why.
‘Has something happened? Is she well?’
Lily laid her fingers on his sleeve and he snatched it away.
‘I’m sorry, Lily – forgive me. I . . . I must go.’
‘Toby, please wait! Won’t you tell me what’s happened? Perhaps I can help?’
He almost laughed at the idea of explaining it to her – or trying to. Her eyes were round with concern and he couldn’t stand it.
‘Forgive me,’ he muttered.
‘Sit down,’ she instructed. ‘Exhale. You do not have to tell me.’
He did as she said. Elbows on his knees, head down until it was bearable.
The pressure eased and his heart slowed.
He began to question why he should care, and answer that he did not.
What Theo Hallewell did was no concern of his, and never would be.
She had not loved Kit, she had not loved him; and if he hadn’t known it when she’d refused to testify, then he knew it now.
Toby looked up. Lily was sitting beside him with a large leaf in her hands, tracing the veins with her fingertips, thoroughly absorbed in its design and not at all impatient.
‘Lily,’ he said quietly, taking her hand, though his was damp and unsteady. ‘Would you . . . will you marry me?’