Chapter 47 #2
Ivy may have dismissed my throwaway comment that evening in the conservatory, that she and I are Walter and Alice, but it’s true.
We are. We’re the couple that gets turned on by ferns.
That geeks out over the rococo scrollwork on the aviary and drool over the way the trees filter the light when it’s late in the day.
She’s shown me, with every delicate stroke of paint on this little canvas, how she sees my home. How she sees me.
And my fiancée gave me cufflinks for Christmas. Not that I’m slighting her for it—they’re every bit as tasteful and safe and unimaginative as the diamond studs I picked out for her.
The words my brother uttered at my stag have been ricocheting through my brain for the past few days.
If I were you, I’d be far more worried about the next fifty years.
A lifetime.
Such an abstract concept.
It’s easy, and tempting, to tell myself I’ll take this life sentence one day at a time.
But today’s torture is still fresh enough in my mind that the idea of fifty or more years of that is unbearable.
Fifty years of ill-concealed apathy towards one’s life partner, or, at best, slow-won fondness.
Fifty years without the vibrance, the aliveness, that comes from being with a woman like Ivy.
Not a woman like Ivy.
Ivy.
Fifty years of not being seen, or understood, or loved for precisely who you are, with all your flaws and idiosyncrasies.
And for what? A birthright? A sense of duty, so impressed upon our family through centuries of genes that it surely imprints itself on your DNA? A calculated act by two families to secure bloodlines and cash flow, reputation and control, with their firstborns the sacrificial lambs?
Fuck that.
A tear teeters, threatening to fall on my precious gift, and I wipe it away.
When I glance up at the room, my gaze drags past the Gainsborough and the Constable that Ivy so loved and along the line of my ancestors—my illustrious, po-faced ancestors.
A line of ghosts, firstborn men who marched straight into the front lines of duty and endured the subsequent battery in service to the gods they had been told to worship: king and country, blood and title.
Did any of them actually know what it was like to brush a strawberry-blonde tendril of hair off a bare shoulder and feel incandescent with awe and happiness? Perhaps not. Or perhaps they had their cake and ate it: a wife like Selena and a mistress like Ivy.
We try to do better, these days. We say we know better.
So why are families like mine trotting out men like me to fulfil some onerous birthright?
Why can’t I work on the Oxford estate, which I already do—very fucking hard, thank you—and go home to the woman I love?
Why must my wife fulfil arbitrary criteria that could just as easily be filled by a few good hires in the office?
And why on earth should I live the next fifty years or more as a ghost of a man, only to preserve the status quo for the next one when I finally expire?
The simple answer is that I shouldn’t.
I lay the painting reverently on the rug. ‘Ivy thinks I’m crazy, marrying Selena. It’s not sour grapes. She just thinks it’s antiquated and pointless and cruel.’
‘And she’d be right,’ my sister says. I’ve noticed that she’s far more outspoken about this sort of stuff than she was before she met Ivy, and I’m privately pleased.
‘It’s convenient,’ Ben says. ‘Let’s call a spade a spade here.
Well, convenient for everyone except the two of you.
Slinky’s not marrying you—no offence. She’s marrying the title and the land and all the other shit.
And you’re marrying a luxury empire and the billions that come with it.
Honestly, it’s seemed a fairly good gig all round—except for the fact that you’ve inconveniently fallen for someone else.
’ He shrugs. ‘A little Ivy-shaped fly in the ointment.’
‘You make it sound like a fucking chessboard.’
‘It is. And you’re not the king, mate, in case you were harbouring any delusions. You’re the pawn.’
He means it flippantly, I think, but fuck if it isn’t damning. I grab the claret and pour myself a generous serving, holding the wine well clear of my beautiful painting.
You’re the pawn, not the king.
‘Say more.’
He and Flora exchange a bewildered look.
‘Well, I suppose I’m saying that you think you have all this agency,’ he says, ‘but really, Ma and Pa have been moving you around since the day you were born. You just go where you’re told.
Yeah, you’ll get the title, but that means fuck all.
We all know that. It’s a pat on the back for allowing yourself to be sacrificed. ’
I stare at him in horror and anger and despair… and something else.
Something that feels a lot like fatalism, like that moment when you finally, finally run out of fucks to give. And I’m a guy who has made giving a fuck his entire identity, up until now.
I’m the chosen one. The chalice from which I’ve always known I will pour forth until I’m empty.
Well, I’m not even married yet, and I feel pretty bloody empty already.
Is this really the point? To allow my parents to sacrifice me, and for what?
I’ve seen what real duty, real sacrifice, is.
Ivy has modelled it so beautifully for me, these past few months.
It’s endless small, invisible, exhausting acts of service, carried out with patience and care, performed willingly, because they touch the people you love.
They make their lives that tiny bit better.
I know enough about Dawn’s condition now that I can only imagine the burden these acts put on her.
Bathing, and feeding, and changing soiled clothes, day after day, knowing that every task will need to be repeated, over and over, but doing them because they provide dignity and comfort and the knowledge to your loved one that they are worth the effort.
Ivy has chosen Dawn, over and over. She’s chosen her sisters, fought to keep her guardianship of them. She has unfailingly chosen what is right, understood what is important, and who has chosen her in return?
No one.
She’s the best human being I’ve ever met, and I didn’t choose her.
I walked away.
I chose Selena, who not only doesn’t actually need me, but hasn’t, frankly, done much to warrant being chosen.
I put her, and her parents, and my parents, above my favourite person.
As I said earlier, fuck that.
I sit up straighter and address my brother. ‘If what you’re saying is true, then the only way to stop the game from fucking me up the arse is to quit the game.’
‘That’s right.’ He stares at me as if he’s beginning to accept that I might just come good. ‘Quit the game. All of it.’
‘Yes. Yes. God, I can walk away. That’s all there is to it.’
‘I mean…’ Flora cocks her head. ‘Not quite. There’s parental wrath, and endless logistical chaos, and poor Selena’s public humiliation.’
That stops me in my tracks. Fuck. There is all of that. If I do extricate myself from this thing, I’ll be wading uphill, waist-deep in shit. I shake my head.
‘Those are all very real, and very unfortunate. But they’re near-term. This is my whole life we’re talking about.’
‘Right.’ Flora leans forward, eyes glittering with emotion.
‘And if I’m to take back control of what I do with the rest of my life, then I choose Ivy.’ That’s my North Star. That’s what I have to remember.
‘And I will ask you one more time,’ my brother drawls. ‘Are you sure you’re not saving her?’
‘No. Categorically not. I’m choosing her, and nothing else matters, not really. But she’s bloody well saving me.’
‘In that case,’ he says, ‘I feel more comfortable telling you that I was at Alchemy the other night—little festive bash—and I got talking to Gen. Not a fan of yours currently, by the way, though she did concede the nursing home move was a classy stunt.
‘Anyway… she happened to mention that the lovely Ivy is in urgent need of cash and will be back in The Playroom from the fifth of January’—he clicks his fingers in my aghast face—‘so I suggest you pull your finger out and put a stop to this wedding.’ He shrugs.
‘Just in case the fact that said wedding is six fucking days away isn’t enough of a motivation. ’