Chapter Ten 1893 #2
Audrey smiled tentatively. ‘Really? Can you? But . . . maybe I won’t take to it.’
‘Nonsense. You’re more than clever enough, and I know you’re going to love it.’
Ralph had reservations, when she told him.
‘What cause has she to read, my love?’ he asked, from the far end of their new dining-room table.
Theo ducked her head to one side, to see around the new candlesticks and the elaborate arrangement of wax fruit in the centre of the table.
‘Well, the same cause as anyone, Ralph. Ease of day-to-day life, and the enjoyment of a good book on a rainy afternoon.’
‘Hasn’t she sewing to do then, or suchlike?’
‘Before bed, then.’
‘She has got this far in life without it.’
‘She’s never had a letter, Ralph – imagine that. Nor a written invitation. She might like to write to Kitty, back in Hallewell. She’s never read a poem, or a newspaper . . .’
‘What was that, my dear?’
‘I said, she’s never even read a newspaper, or a . . . a handbill. She relies on word of mouth for everything, and Mrs Meredith can’t send her on any errand that requires a list – unless she manages to memorise it all . . .’
‘Theo, wait – this is ridiculous.’
Ralph picked up his plate and glass and came to sit beside her.
‘That’s better,’ he said. ‘It’s a very grand table, but I despise anything that places me at such a distance from you.’
‘It’s a mere minnow, compared to the great whale at Hallewell.’
‘Well, that’s as may be,’ Ralph said stiffly. ‘I hope the reduction of your situation isn’t too disappointing.’
‘Oh, no – that’s not what I meant at all,’ Theo said hurriedly. ‘This is far, far better.’ He still looked hurt, so she tried again. ‘I am happier by far here, with you.’
‘Are you?’
He searched her face and she saw hope in his: that he was on the brink of full happiness, and yearning to topple. That his own contentment depended upon hers. That was love, she supposed.
‘I have but one worry.’ She gestured the length of the table. ‘How many children will we need to have, to ever fill all these chairs?’
Ralph laughed. ‘I would never put you through such travail. But . . . three? Perhaps four?’
Theo smiled to hide her sudden nerves, because it would happen, sooner or later.
She would fall pregnant, and they would become parents.
That was the way of it. Nineteen was young to start, but not the youngest by far.
She wasn’t sure she was ready. To be a mother seemed a fixed point, an unchanging state, when she felt shifting, uncertain, and often at odds with herself – fighting against feelings that arose naturally, and trying to cultivate others that would not come at all.
One thing she was sure of, however, was that when she had a child she would love it completely. She would hug it whenever she could, praise it often, and never make it feel as though it were in any way a disappointment.
‘Anyway,’ Ralph went on. ‘This table is for guests, not for children. Is there anyone you would like to invite?’
‘My Uncle Crudge?’ Theo said, without hesitation.
‘Well, yes, perhaps,’ he said, with a subtle creasing of his brow. ‘I was thinking more of . . . fashionable society.’
‘Oh.’ Theo felt a flush creeping up her neck. ‘I’m afraid I . . . I don’t know anybody to invite.’
Ralph stared at her for a moment.
‘How tactless of me,’ he said, covering her hand with his own. ‘Of course you don’t. I am too much at my work. I’d thought that, in my absence . . . But no – I see it now. I shall help you, of course. We’ll go together, and begin to know our neighbours. Forgive me, Theo.’
‘For what?’
‘For forgetting how very different this all is for you, and leaving you to simply . . . get on.’
‘But I ought to be able to simply get on. Mrs Meredith despises me, I can tell.’
‘Mrs Meredith is your servant,’ Ralph said firmly. ‘And you mustn’t reproach yourself. To have lived all your life in such an out-of-the-way place . . . But, fear not – we shall conquer Shaftesbury society together.’
Theo pictured a procession of dinner guests, and long hours of polite conversation, and carefully hid the way her heart sank.
Their honeymoon, which was finally organised in the spring, was a week at a hotel by the sea in Lyme Regis.
‘We’ll have another, I promise,’ Ralph said. ‘A proper one – Italy, or wherever you want. But if we wait any longer for me to be able to take sufficient time away from my patients, we shall have our first anniversary before we make our escape.’
‘I once said to my uncle that he could take me to Lyme and I would be every bit as excited as if it were some far-flung place,’ Theo said, ‘and it was entirely true.’
‘Indeed.’ Ralph considered. ‘Mr Crudge is not actually your uncle, though. Is he?’
‘Not by blood, or marriage. But we adopted one another a long time ago.’
Theo smiled fondly, but Ralph’s expression had cooled, and it gave her an uneasy feeling. But he couldn’t possibly distrust the innocence of their affection, and would surely like Crudge better once he got to know him.
The hotel overlooked the sea, very near to the Cobb.
A weak sun lit their arrival but the offshore breeze had teeth, and made Theo’s nose run.
Bundled up for warmth, they hunted for fossils in the rocks along the beach, and hiked the cliff path to the top of Golden Cap, and bought cider from a farmer’s wife through a hatch in her wall to drink with their picnic lunch.
As she sipped it from the flagon, Theo tried not to remember a warm night at the castle, the ruins half gold with candlelight and half as black as ink.
Uroboros. Endless return. It felt so close.
‘A penny for your thoughts?’ Ralph said, sitting shoulder to shoulder with her on a borrowed rug with a view of the dazzling sea below.
‘Oh . . . they aren’t worth that much.’
‘Tell me them anyway.’
‘I was thinking . . . I was thinking how far I am from Hallewell. From all that happened there,’ she lied, with a prickle of unease. Waiting for Ralph to guess the truth.
‘It is all behind you now,’ he said. ‘Like a bad dream.’
Theo smiled, but the truth was that it was now that sometimes felt dreamlike.
A dream she couldn’t escape from – the kind where events follow one another in what seems to be an orderly manner, and yet the whole makes no sense at all upon waking.
She took her husband’s hand and meshed their fingers together, wanting to feel for him what he felt for her.
But where that feeling should have been she had an emptiness instead, that nothing seemed to touch.
That night, she noticed a subtle shift when Ralph made love to her.
In the first few months of their marriage he’d been almost reverent; undressing her breathlessly, with hands that shook, and watching constantly to see that she was not frightened, or in any discomfort.
And she hadn’t been, despite her mother’s cursory warning that there was likely to be blood and pain to begin with.
Instead, there’d been a peculiar kind of embarrassment that here was Dr Anscombe, her physician – her friend – stark naked.
As though he’d stripped off between the fish course and the meat at dinner.
But she hadn’t felt pain and she hadn’t been afraid; it had been strange and after a while almost pleasant – like having her hair brushed. But that was all.
It had been similarly embarrassing to witness Ralph’s growing excitement: his handsome face turning the colour of gammon, mouth gaping, eyes sliding out of focus.
She’d put her arms around his neck and pulled him closer so she wouldn’t have to see, and so that he wouldn’t see she was unstirred, and not at all ecstatic.
But it didn’t seem to matter, so she supposed it only happened to men.
It had carried on like that for weeks, two or three times each night to begin with, until Theo got a bladder infection.
Once that had cleared they’d resumed, most nights at least once, and his trembling reverence diminished in a steady curve – which she supposed was bound to happen, once the novelty had worn off.
But he was always gentle, until the final moments, and he always asked her first; though she had no idea what would happen if she refused.
Sometimes she felt that pleasurable sensation and repositioned herself, focusing all her attention on it, trying to make it increase.
Mostly she felt nothing at all, and foresaw a time when it might all start to seem a bit of a chore.
Unless she did begin to love him, as people had said she would.
There was nobody she could ask, and no book she could read, to discover whether any of this were normal.
Ralph was a doctor, she reasoned, and he seemed perfectly happy.
So, it was ironic that it was on their honeymoon, six months after the wedding, that Theo first noticed his lovemaking becoming .
. . perfunctory. A means to an end – the end being Ralph’s pleasure, and the conception of a child.
He remained gentle but he didn’t take his time.
There were still kisses and smiles, but he didn’t check how she was faring, and he dropped off to sleep on top of her while she sweated underneath.
It was late afternoon. Theo watched through the window as the sky lost its colour, and the sun dropped into haze towards the horizon.
Gulls criss-crossed on the wind, and she allowed her thoughts to stray.
On the third day a telegram arrived, and Ralph was called back to Shaftesbury to treat a man who’d been kicked in the head by his horse. He went down at once to summon a cab, then packed hurriedly.
‘Forgive me,’ he said.
‘Can’t Dr Fortescue see to him?’ Theo said.
‘Hardly, my darling – he’s not a surgeon.’ He kissed her knuckles. ‘I am sorry. You wouldn’t have me leave the fellow to die?’
‘No, of course not.’