Taking Liberties. Diana Norman

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      Beside her, Robert babbled of the extra benefits to be provided for her: use of one of the coaches when she wanted it, free firing, a ham at salting time, weekly chickens, eggs … ‘Christmas spent with us, of course …’

      And she knew.

      Alice, she thought. Not Robert. Not Crawford and the lawyers. This is Alice.

      Ahead, the end of the tunnel framed a view of the house. The mourning swags beneath its windows gave it a baggy-eyed look as if it had drunk unwisely the night before and was regretting it. Alice would still be asleep upstairs; she rarely rose before midday but, sure as the Creed, it was Alice who had decided the amount of her pension.

      And not from niggardliness. The Dowager acquitted her daughter-in-law of that at least. Alice had many faults but meanness was not among them; the object was dependence, her dependence. Alice’s oddity was that she admired her mother-in-law and at the same time was jealous of her, both emotions mixed to an almost ludicrous degree. It had taken a while for Diana to understand why, when she changed her hairstyle, Alice changed hers. A pair of gloves was ordered; similar gloves arrived for Alice who then charged them with qualities that declared them superior.

      Diana tended old Mrs Brown in the village; of a sudden Alice was also visiting the Brown cottage in imitation of a charity that seemed admirable to her yet which had to be surpassed: ‘I took her beef tea, Maman – she prefers it to calves’foot jelly.’

      Yes, her pension had been stipulated by Alice. She was to be kept close, under supervision, virtually imprisoned in genteel deprivation, required to ask for transport if she needed it, all so that Alice could forever flaunt herself at the mother-in-law she resented and wished to emulate in equal measure. Look how much better I manage my house/marriage/servants than you did, Maman.

      Nor would it be conscious cruelty; Alice, who did not suffer from introspection, would sincerely believe she was being kind. Dutifully, the Dowager strove to nurse a fondness for her daughter-in-law but it thrived never so much as when she was away from her.

      No. It was not to be tolerated. She had been released from one gaol, she would not be dragooned into another.

      The Dowager halted and turned on her son.

      He was sweating. His eyes pleaded for her compliance as they had when he was the little boy who, though hating it, was about to be taken to a bearbaiting by his father, begging her not to protest – as indeed, for once, she had been about to. Let it be, his eyes said now, as they had then. Don’t turn the screw.

      If it were to be a choice between offending her or Alice or even himself, then Alice must win, as his father had won. He would always side with the strong, even though it hurt him, because the pain of not doing so would, for him, be the greater.

      So protest died in her, just as it always had, and its place was taken by despair that these things were not voiced between them. She opened her mouth to tell him she understood but, frightened that she would approach matters he preferred unspoken, Robert cut her off. Unwisely, he said: ‘If you think it too little, Mama, perhaps we can squeeze a bit more from the coffers.’

      Good God. Did they think she was standing on a street corner with her hand out? All at once, she was furious. How dare they expect that she might beg.

      ‘Thank you, Robert,’ she told him with apparent indifference, ‘the pension is adequate.’

      He sagged with relief.

      Oh no, my dear, she thought. Oh no, Alice may rule my income but she will not rule me. She had a premonition of Alice’s triumphs at future gatherings: ‘Did you enjoy the goose, Maman?’ Then, sotto voce: ‘Dear Maman, we always give her a goose at Michaelmas.’ Unaware that by such bourgeois posturing she reduced herself as well as her mother-in-law.

      Oh no. I am owed some liberty and dignity after twenty-odd years. I’ll not be incarcerated again.

      So she said, as if by-the-by: ‘Concerning the Dower House, it must be held in abeyance for a while. I am going visiting.’

      He hadn’t reckoned on this. ‘Who? When? Where will you go?’

      ‘Friends,’ she said vaguely, making it up as she went, ‘Lady Margaret, perhaps, the De Veres …’ And then, to punish him a little: ‘I may even make enquiries about Martha Pardoe’s son, Grayle as she now is – I believe you saw the letter she sent me.’

      He was horrified. ‘Martha’s …? Mama, you can’t. Involving oneself for an American prisoner? People would think it … well, they’d be appalled.’

      ‘Would they, my dear?’ He always considered an action in the light of Society’s opinion. ‘Robert, I do not think that to enquire after a young man on behalf of his worried mother is going to lose us the war.’

      She was punishing him a little; he should not have been niggardly over her pension but also, she realized, she was resolved to do this for Martha. It would be a little adventure, nothing too strenuous, merely a matter of satisfying herself that the boy was in health.

      ‘Well, but … when do you intend to do this?’

      This was how it would be – she would have to explain her comings and goings. And suddenly she could not bear the constraint they put on her any longer. She shrugged. ‘In a day or two. Perhaps tomorrow.’ To get away from this house, from the last twenty-two years, from everything. She was startled by the imperative of escape; if she stayed in this house one day more it would suffocate her.

      ‘Tomorrow? Of course not, Mama. You cannot break mourning so soon; it is unheard of. I cannot allow it. People would see it as an insult to the pater’s memory. Have you taken leave of your senses?’

      ‘No, my dear, merely leave of your father.’

      She watched him hurry away to wake Alice with the news. She was sorry she had saddled him with a recalcitrant mother but he could not expect compliance in everything, not when her own survival was at stake. People would think it a damn sight more odd if she strangled Alice – which was the alternative.

      I shall go to the Admiralty, she thought. Perhaps I can arrange an exchange for young Master Grayle so that he may return to his mother. Again, it can make no difference to the war one way or the other. We send an American prisoner back to America and some poor Englishman held in America returns home to England.

      Odd that the subject of John Paul Jones had arisen only yesterday. Had not Jones’s intention been to hold the Earl of Selkirk hostage in order to procure an exchange of American prisoners? Goodness gracious, I shall be treading in the path of that pirate. The thought gave her unseemly pleasure. She stood at the edge of the yew-scented Dark Arbour, marvelling at how wicked she had become.

      When had she taken the decision to act upon Martha’s request? Why had she taken it? To outrage her family in revenge for a niggardly pension? Not really. Because of the picture Martha had tried to draw of her son? If she understood it aright, Lieutenant Grayle had a physical likeness to his maternal uncle.

      An image came to her of Martha’s brother, a young man in a rowing boat pulling out to sea with easy strokes, head and shoulders outlined against a setting sun so that he was etched in black except for a fiery outline around his head.

      Dead now. He’d joined the navy and one СКАЧАТЬ