The Memory Palace. Christie Dickason

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СКАЧАТЬ the light of the flame.

      ‘Tell me again,’ he said.

      ‘I said, yes.’

      He gave her the glass of wine. He had rolled back his cuffs from strong broad hands flecked with age spots. Then he refilled his own glass. He pulled out a second back stool from the wall and sat on the other side of the fire. He raised his glass. ‘To friendly union, then.’ The greying bristle of his chin glistened in the firelight.

      Now that she had agreed to marry him, she had difficulty in looking straight at him. From quick uneasy glances, she saw he had a scar on the edge of his slightly box-like jaw, and deep lines from nostril to mouth. And a strong nose with a square tip, where two paler points sat just under the skin. Grey hairs curled from the open neck of his shirt. His wool stockings were wrinkled, his feet shoved into soft, scuffed leather house slippers. She smelled wormwood against moths and a faint alcoholic mist when he exhaled.

      The firelight coiled at the bottom of her glass. She did not know whether or not she had responded to his toast.

      For forty pounds a year, Wentworth occupied this small parlour and an equally small sleeping chamber beyond. He lived frugally, without a manservant. Through the far door, she saw the dark shape of a narrow bed, with curtains on plain square-sectioned posts. She had seen these rooms only once before, with his permission, when she first took stock of her new realm. Wentworth had otherwise forbidden all entrance to his rooms, except twice a year to clean.

      His floor now seemed to slant. The corners of the room were not quite true. Thirty feet beyond his door, the corridor leading from the back stairs to what had been the front of the house dived suddenly downwards and opened onto the night.

      ‘What if the rest of the corridor gives way?’

      ‘I’m not going to retract my offer,’ he said.

      She nodded mutely.

      ‘Drink a little,’ he said. ‘It’s no small thing we propose to do. But not so great as I suspect it feels to you just now. Drink a little. Steady yourself.’ He drank. ‘It helps me to sleep.’

      Her chin jerked up. ‘Before I lose my courage altogether, I must speak honestly…’ In spite of herself, she looked at the bed. ‘You might yet want to withdraw.’

      He smiled and waited.

      ‘You said this morning that you hoped only for friendship. But you might have said that just to win me round. So that we have no misunderstanding, I must make it clear that I cannot love you.’

      ‘How many marriages insist on love?’ He poured himself more wine. ‘I might, in time, aspire to your affection. Does that terrify you? As for the rest…’ He nodded over his shoulder at the bed. ‘I’ve put all that behind me.’

      Their eyes met briefly. She sighed.

      ‘I want you to be certain,’ he said.

      ‘I do have one other condition.’

      Wentworth looked at her sharply, then raised his eyebrows in good-humoured question.

      ‘I know I have no right to impose any conditions at all…’

      ‘It has never been your unassuming meekness for which I admired you.’

      She blinked at the idea that he had admired her at all, then plunged onwards. ‘I must know who you are.’

      The good humour vanished. His face set into thin, tight lines. ‘I said I used to be a soldier. Is that not enough?’

      ‘No. I need to know if Philip Wentworth is your true name. Will I truly be Mistress Wentworth, or should my name be something else? What sort of adventurer were you? Why did you bury yourself here?’

      He shook his head.

      ‘I beg the truth from you as a wedding gift.’

      ‘I can’t give it.’

      ‘I swear that nothing you tell me will change my mind about the marriage, but you must see that I need to know more of the man I will be living with.’

      ‘Live with the man I am now. That other one has nothing to do with you.’

      ‘It was only the promise of making his acquaintance that got me down from the roof.’

      Wentworth closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead.

      ‘Can’t you see that the more you refuse, the more necessary it becomes for you to tell me?’ She stood up and handed him her empty glass. ‘Otherwise I retract my acceptance. How can I pledge myself, even in friendship, to a man so vile that he can’t confess what he has done even to his own wife? If you can’t tell me more, then you should never have confessed anything at all!’

      Philip Wentworth shook his head again, but this time with wry humour. ‘Caught in my own snare.’ He crossed the room to set their glasses on his worktable, where he stood for several moments with his back to her. ‘Is your condition absolute?’ he asked without turning around. ‘Will you really retract if I don’t agree? Think what that means and take your time in answering.’ He leaned his weight onto his clenched fists and waited.

      ‘Would you still help me to die, as you first promised?’

      ‘Yes.’

      She shut her eyes. After a long while, she said, ‘It is absolute.’ Watery knees tipped her back into her chair.

      ‘I was merely a soldier, as I said. Nothing more. But it’s not a world a man wants to share with women.’

      ‘Master Wentworth,’ she begged, ‘please understand! All my life, the things I did not know and could not expect have always brought me the greatest grief.’

      ‘You have nothing to fear from me.’

      ‘That may be, but I have learned to fear ignorance more than I fear death. I can’t bear knowing that I don’t know and waiting for something to happen that I can’t see coming. I can’t bear what I imagine. And that’s the truth.’ She blew out a deep breath. ‘Reasonable or not.’

      He turned and studied her with a slightly chilly expression. She saw no trace in either his eyes or bearing of the genial old hermit who had proposed marriage.

      How far we have already moved, she thought, even from where we were on the riverbank.

      ‘I can’t go on living on any other terms.’ She looked at him pleadingly.

      ‘What if I said that I was lying, up there on the roof? That I had nothing to confess? No other life than the one you see?’

      ‘I would know that you are lying now.’

      This answer seemed to please rather than anger him. He eyed her a moment longer. ‘Concedo,’ he said at last. He held his arms out to the side like a defeated swordsman exposing his front to his foe. ‘I accept your terms. You shall have your gift of truth, on our wedding night.’

      Scalding relief told her how much she had wanted him to agree.

      ‘But СКАЧАТЬ