Paddington Green, page 29
Castleton was moving away now, deep in conversation with one of the actors but he looked back over his shoulder at the sound of Jonah’s voice and said shortly,.’To Madam L’s. You didn’t think she’d still be here, after all that, did you? It was bad—really bad. She’ll not be here for a long time—’
‘If ever!’ said a perky voice beside him, and he turned to see a heavily-painted little face peeping up at him from under a lacetrimmed bonnet, and the girl giggled as she caught his eye and said, ‘You talking about poor Madam L? Shocking, wasn’t it?’ But she spoke with a curious relish and went skipping cheerfully away, throwing one roguish glance back at Jonah before she disappeared into the shadows.
Castleton laughed. ‘Understudy,’ he said briefly. ‘Well, naturally she’s pleased! Gives everyone more of a chance, so everyone’s pleased. But don’t tell her I said so.’
And then too he was gone, leaving Jonah among the swearing, sweating scene-shifters, puzzled and more deeply alarmed than ever. He did not know why he felt that undertow of fear, but it was stronger now, and pressing up into his throat so that he had to swallow.
Grosvenor Square. Was that where she lived now? Had she reached that sort of splendour? He stood there hesitating for a moment, and then took a deep breath and went plunging back through the darkness to the stage door and the comparative peace of the traffic in the Haymarket. He had to find Celia and if that was where she had gone then that was where he would have to go to find her. He could not have said for the life of him why he was so sure Celia had gone to Lilith. He knew of the implacable hatred that had so long lain between her and her mother and yet, somehow, he believed that Lilith would lead him to Celia. She had never before, in all their difficult married life, behaved as she had today, disappearing without a word like this. Where else could she have gone but to the past she had lived before their married days? And what did that mean but her mother?
So he stood hesitating at the corner of the Haymarket for a moment, but then pulled his collar up about his ears and thrusting his hands deep into his pockets went striding through the strolling entertainment-seeking crowds of Londoners towards the elegancies of Grosvenor Square.
Again. It was as though there had been no gap of ten years. The footman who answered the big front door to him merely opened it wider when he asked, in some embarrassment, for Madam Lucas’s daughter, and he went in and gave the man his coat and hat and stood there in the big black and white squared hall looking about him and rubbing his hands a little nervously together. Although this was not the house he had lived in for those few months ten years ago, it was so very like North Audley Street that the weight of familiarity again filled him. The same gilt furniture, the same rich paintings and hangings, the same overwhelming aura of wealth and possessions; this house had it multiplied thrice, but still it was so very much what he had known of Lilith Lucas so long ago.
The footman took his coat and went padding away to the stairs and he followed him; clearly Lilith was receiving in her drawing room tonight, and he put up his hand to straighten his cravat and to smooth his hair. As long as Celia was willing to come with him and did not make any difficulties they could, he told himself optimistically, be out of the house and on their way home within minutes. He would not have to spend too much time with Lilith’s mocking eyes upon him, which thought comforted him; for he did not relish the thought of meeting her at all.
He was so sure that Celia would be waiting for him there in the drawing room that when the footman led him instead to a small sitting room at the back of the house he stood blinking in the doorway a little stupidly and let the man go away and up the stairs to the next floor without asking him why he had been brought here.
And when he did turn to go out of the room and seek some understanding of what was happening it was to see the black-gowned figure of Hawks coming towards him along the wide carpeting of the hallway. He opened his mouth to speak to her and then closed it as she came near enough to be clearly seen, for her face was so ravaged and so altered that he wondered if he had been mistaken, and this was not Hawks at all.
But she lifted her eyes to his and he knew it was her, and she said harshly, ‘Well? What do you want? Come to crow, ‘ave yer? Come to gloat over what she done?’
‘Where is she?’ he said stupidly. ‘I’ve been so worried, Hawks! I could not think where she might be, and then it seemed to me that she might have come here—a—I do not wish to see your mistress, Hawks, to be straight with you. If Celia is here, please to tell her I have come seeking her and—’
Hawks was staring at him with her eyes so widely open that a rim of white showed all round the iris, giving her a look of real horror and involuntarily he stepped back and said uncertainly, ‘Hawks? Is she here?’
She shook her head at him, and opened her mouth in a wide grimace and then swallowed and to Jonah’s appalled surprise tears suddenly appeared in her almost lashless eyes to go spilling down her face into the harsh lines drawn there. He looked away, embarrassed, and then felt his gaze pulled back to her in a sort of horrified fascination.
‘ ’Ere? That ’ellcat, ’ere? After what she done to my poor darlin’, do you think if she was ’ere she’d be in any fit state to be told anythin’? Oh, I tell you, you stinkin’ piece of gutter meat, I tell you that if that bitch was ’ere I’d have killed ’er, I’d have set about ’er with my teeth and my nails and anythin’ I could lay my ‘ands on! I knew ’er all ’er life, I knew what she was, none better, for didn’t I ‘ave the rearin’ of’er from the month? If I’d a known what she would do, ‘ow she’d a turned out, I’d a strangled ’er in ’er cradle and it’s my shame and punishment that I never did and—’
And now she was weeping with a vast fury that was so great that she could only stand there and let the tears run down her face, carving it into ever deeper and craggier lines. He stared at her, feeling as though he had been physically kicked and wanting to set his hands to her shoulders and shake her, but unable to move.
The moment passed, and she regained control, scrubbing viciously at her wet face with one black-sleeved arm and she said dully, ‘So she ain’t ’ere. Nor likely to be, neither.’
‘I don’t understand you,’ he said then. ‘Hawks, you must tell me what all this is. I don’t understand—’
‘Don’ understand, don’t yer? Don’t—ain’t you seen ’er since she done it?’
‘What has she done? You speak in mad riddles, Hawks! I told you, I came seeking Celia. She is—I am worried about her, for she has some maggot in her brain that makes her—she is not herself. She left home this afternoon and I did not know where she had gone, so I came seeking her, and thought perhaps, even after all this time, she might have gone to her mother, for after all there is that bond, even though they parted so long ago. And even in mutual hate people have a need sometimes—’
She was staring at him with her eyes glittering still with tears and her face set and hard, and now she nodded heavily, and again turned away.
‘She come to ’er. She come to ’er at the theatre. God ’elp me, I was dahn in the wardrobe gofferin’ ’er frills, and that bitch of yours come to ’er. An’ if you want to know what ‘appened, you can come an’ look for yerself—’
And he had to follow her, the confusion on his own behalf and fear on Celia’s churning within him to make him feel ever more physically ill.
She led him up the next flight of stairs, past the ornately framed paintings and the niches with the creamy alabaster figures posed in eternal maidenly surprise as they gazed out from their rigid worlds through blank and sightless eyes, along the crimson carpets and polished wooden floors until they were standing before the pair of big double doors that led to a room at the front of the house. And Hawks, with a gesture that was curiously theatrical, pushed both doors open at once and led the way in and he had perforce to follow.
A big room with deep pale carpets and walls covered with the most costly of Chinese silk hangings, a huge bed bearing cream silk curtains with golden tassels and cords, standing on a raised dais. The room was full of light from crystal lamps and from the fire that burned brightly in the great marble fireplace, and he shook his head a little against the scented heat of the atmosphere as Hawks led him soft-footedly across the expanse of carpet, until he was standing there beside the bed looking down.
It was heaped with silk lace-encrusted cushions and sheets, and a soft merino blanket was thrown casually across it, and in the middle lay Lilith, both arms flung above her head on the pillows, her head tipped so that her chin pointed at the ceiling.
He knew it was Lilith, knew the colour of those wide open green eyes as surely as he knew the colour of his own; knew the curls of that hair, the curve of those shoulders; but it was not Lilith, not the Lilith he had known, the Lilith he had watched moving weightlessly about the stage of the Haymarket, had watched beguiling all the people around her with one glance from those glittering green eyes, one lift of that dimpled mouth.
For the face was marred with an angry raw weal that spread from the nose across the right cheek and down on to the throat, a weal so reddened and angry, so blackened about the edges, so excoriated, that it made his chest heave. The hair, those curls that had been used to bounce so enchantingly on the white shoulders, was almost gone on that side, a mere thatch of blackened singed ends through which the scalp shone redly, and the shoulders, those curving white shoulders, bore the same great weal that so disfigured the face, but spread hideously wide, halfway down the arm.
He shook his head in horror, and turned his head away to look at Hawks, who was standing beside him staring down at Lilith with a look of such misery on her face that involuntarily he put out one hand to her.
She turned her head and stared at him, and when she spoke her voice was so hoarse and cracked that he could hardly hear it.
‘She did that. That bitch of yours—she did that. I come in and saw ’er standing there, ‘oldin’ the dish in ’er ‘and and laughin’. You ’ear me? Laughin’ she was, fit to bust, an’ my darlin’ standin’ there screamin’ and burnin’—oh, God, the wickedness of it!’ She bent over Lilith and touched her unburned cheek with one rough forefinger; but Lilith did not move, and just lay there staring at the ceiling with those wide eyes, and he could not tell if she were awake or asleep, had the benefit of her senses or was in a deep coma, so still and controlled was she.
Hawks straightened up again and still staring down at Lilith said in that same harsh tone, ‘I told ’er—I told ’er as what she’d done’d get ’er ‘anged, that I’d not rest till she was ‘anged for what she done, but she just stood there and said nothin’. She watched me put the fire out and wrap my darlin’ up and never said no word, nor moved to ’elp, she just stood there and stared, the dish in ’er ‘and—’
‘Where did she go?’ Jonah’s voice cut across the room sharply, and he coughed, and looked round almost embarrassed, but there was no one else there, and Lilith had not moved; but he spoke again more softly. ‘Where is she?’
‘I don’ know! I daresay there’s some as are lookin’ for ’er. I told the Peelers, and the Inspector said as they’d get ’er, for this is grievous bodily ‘arm, and it’s a toppin’ offence—’ She raised her eyes to stare at him. ‘An’ when they do get ’er, I’ll be there to see ’er turned off, one way or another, for she’s as evil a creature as ever—’
He shook his head, furiously, and set his hands over his ears and she stopped talking and grinned suddenly, so that her face looked even more ravaged and hideous, and nodded her head, and then turned back to Lilith, to stand there with one hand gently stroking the unmarked white cheek. And he turned and went, walking out of the room with his head up and without knowing quite how he moved at all.
All he knew was that he had somehow to find her. His fear for her was now so great that he could not feel anything at all. Just the knowledge that somehow she must be found.
26
‘You should not have done it,’ Gideon said, and though his voice was soft and controlled it was full of feeling, and his father moved uneasily in his chair and twitched at the rug over his knees. But Gideon did not come at once to help him as he usually did at any sign of discomfort on his father’s part. He just stood there between the windows of the drawing room, his back very straight and holding the letter in his hand. ‘You should not have done it,’ he repeated, and bent his head to look again at the letter.
‘Already she has changed you,’ Leah’s voice came quietly from the shadowed corner of the room where she sat beside her little desk. ‘You, who have never shown your father anything but the respect and the duty that you owe him, to upbraid him for his care of you—for you to behave so must show you how right your father was and still is. She has changed you, and will change you more. For the worse.’
He lifted his head and looked across the room at her. ‘Mamma, you do not understand the matter of which you speak. You have seen my love and concern for my father—both of you—all these years and you have interpreted it only as some sort of blind faith? If you have seen it so you misjudge me, and diminish yourselves. I have loved you all my life as I love you now not for some reason of unthinking obedience, but because, simply, I love you! You are people who are easy to love. But you hurt me bitterly in your response to my need for a life of my own in addition to my care for you. I am not so limited that I can care only for my parents. I am a grown man, and it is time I sought a wife. I have found the wife I want, and you reject her, not for the woman she is, not for any cause that is based on reason—’
‘The reason is deep and real, and you are not the man I took you for if you turn your back on it.’ Nahum said, his voice hard. ‘To marry out of the faith! You know the effects of such a happening on the congregation! I will never again be able to hold up my head, to look my fellows in the eye and—’
‘Do you care more for your pride than my happiness, father?’ Gideon said softly, ‘I had thought better of you.’
‘No!’ The old man almost roared it, leaning forwards in his chair with both hands set on his knees in a tight clasp. ‘It is concern for your happiness that fills me, as it always has! I know as surely as I know I shall never again stand on my own two feet that marriage out of the faith will destroy you. That your need of your roots, your religion, is something that is so much a part of you that you do not even know it is there! I know how you will suffer if you cut yourself off and I spoke of the effect on me as a way of showing you what you will suffer! You are as much a man of our people as I am, Gideon! If it would be agony to me to see my friends, the men of the congregation who have always been my brothers in God, turn away from me and reject me as an outcast, it will do the same to you! You are my son. I feel for you as I feel my own hands. It has always been so—we are a part of each other!’
Gideon came across the room to crouch beside his father’s chair and look up into his face, and very gently he shook his head.
‘You are wrong, Papa. You have misunderstood so sorely! You recognize my concern, my awareness of you and how you feel and how you think, and it has made you deny the fact that I am a separate person. It is my fault as well, I know, for I have not tried, ever, to show you any part of my separate life, but the greatest error is with you. You and Mamma may be one flesh, as the Torah tells us man and wife should be, but father and son—no, Papa. I feel for myself, know for myself, love for myself. Cannot you see how much better it is that I should be separate? If we were as you try to believe we are, but two parts of one person, any love I might bear you, or you me, would become a tawdry thing, a mere self-love, and what satisfaction is there in that? Try to understand, Papa. You are a man of great intellect—you can comprehend.’
The old man sat there and stared down at him, his eyes deep and dark and quite expressionless.
‘You are telling me that the matters about which both of us have always concerned ourselves, the laws of God, the way of life that our people have followed through almost two thousand years of dispersion, do not matter to you? You are telling me that the loss of your faith will be of no matter to you?’
Gideon shook his head. ‘I am not saying that. I do not believe that marrying Abby would mean the loss of my faith. I was born a Jew, and a Jew I will always be. Nothing can alter that.’
‘A Jew cannot exist alone. The years of persecution prove that. If you are expelled from the congregation, then you are alone. And you will not be able any more to regard yourself as one of us.’
Again Gideon shook his head. ‘I have the same respect for tradition that you have, Papa. I know the history of our family and of our people. I know of the sufferings of the Inquisition, and what it has done to us. I do not reject any of that. But I cannot believe that God will exclude me from the life of a Jew simply because I have chosen to love a Gentile. No, not chosen—in some way this love is God-given. If we live our lives by God—as you have always said we do—then I must see Abby as part of his plan for me, and for you and—’
‘You speak blasphemy,’ the old man said and leaned back in his chair, pulling away from Gideon’s hand, and there was a silence for a moment and then Gideon stood up and moved back to the window embrasure.
‘I think, Papa, that there is no use in speaking of religion, of laws and customs. We do not agree and that is our misfortune. Instead, we will speak of our personal situation.’
He lifted his head, and stared into the shadows towards Leah. ‘Mamma, I speak to both of you. And I speak from love of you as well as—as respect for my own life and needs. And I will tell you that unless I marry Abigail Caspar, I do not marry at all. For many years I have tried not to love her, as aware as you are of the difficulties, the problems, the possible pain. But this is the way it is to be, and I am not going to fight it any longer. She is mine, and I will have her, whatever you say. I would wish us to remain as loving and close a family as we have always been—it would be a great tragedy to me to lose you. But I tell you, if you make me choose between you, the choice is already made. I will have her, if she will have me.’
