A Marriage of Convenience (9 page)

Esmond made his first serious mistake with Theresa in the last week of August and knew at once what a damaging one it was. For some years now, in the early autumn it had been his habit to spend a few days with his mother at Kilkreen, the family’s small estate in the west of Ireland. He had first told Theresa about this annual event some months before, hinting obliquely that he would like her to come with him. Then later he had been unable to resist the temptation of asking her directly.

Her refusal had been immediate and vehement. How could he possibly think of taking a mistress to stay with his mother? The idea was insulting and absurd. Esmond had done his best to mollify her. His mother’s elopement and broken marriage had left her not merely indifferent to convention but positively hostile to genteel respectability. If he chose to bring a milliner or shop-girl to Kilkreen, she would be treated with as much respect as a peeress. But nothing he had said had in any way softened the antipathy of Theresa’s original response; and after his solitary attempt to justify himself, Esmond had not tried again.

The real reason for Theresa’s resentment, though she never said so, had been obvious to him without any need of words. His invitation had been a violation in spirit of the three months’ respite he had promised to give her before pressing for a final decision about marriage. Had she agreed to be his mother’s guest, Theresa would virtually have acknowledged herself his fiancée. The fact that he had understood this before asking her, and yet through
overconfidence
had pressed ahead, did not make it any easier for Esmond to live with his miscalculation. Like a cautious chess player, who had concentrated hard and long to achieve a winning position, only to lose it by a single impatient move, he endured the bitterest regret of all—the kind that allows the sufferer no chance to place the blame anywhere but on his own poor aching shoulders.

Acceptance of his invitation would have banished every anxiety; refusal made him fear that in spite of many contradictory signs she might yet reject him. And though he hid his dejection, knowing
how little he himself liked displays of self-pity and defeatism in others, the effort cost him reserves of composure he could ill-afford to lose with another crisis fast approaching.

In mid-September,
Masks
and
Faces
was due to close, and Esmond knew that he would have to decide whether to try to influence her against taking another engagement or leave her free to make her own choice. Dangers seemed to lie in either course, but intuitively he felt that the worst risk lay in the line of least resistance. By not making his preference known, he would merely be postponing a clash which could have deadlier consequences nearer the time of her more important decision about marriage. To face the issue bravely now as a matter of choice might win him back some of the respect he had lost over the Kilkreen episode. Gentle but unyielding
firmness
had served him well in the past, and he did not intend to fall victim to nervous vacillation at the very moment when resolution was needed as never before.

*

Esmond very rarely collected Theresa from the theatre except on a Saturday night. Only on that particular evening, with the prospect of a whole day to come, unmarred either by his departure for the City or her daily expedition to the theatre, did he feel entirely carefree. For this reason he was convinced that Saturday would be the right day for broaching the delicate subject of her theatrical intentions. After any disagreement, there would be the whole of Sunday for reconciliation.

Sitting in his landau, concealed by the raised hood, Esmond lowered the window and watched the departing audience milling on the pavements, waiting for carriages or competing for the dozen or so cabs in sight. The night was still and warm and Esmond was aware of the distinctive exhalation of well cared for and scented bodies gently perspiring in the sultry air. Beneath the babble of talk, and rumble of wheels, he sometimes caught a softer sound like a thin breeze—the whisper of scores of silk and muslin dresses as their owners moved.

It would be ten minutes at least till Theresa emerged from the stage door, and for the moment Esmond felt calm and clear-headed. He started to think ahead. Before Theresa took her bath, they would sit together and drink chilled wine in the garden arbour. He closed his eyes, imagining. Scent of flowers, quietness after the clamour of the theatre, seclusion after public scrutiny, peace and gentleness. He would say that before meeting her his life had not been worth much; that he had stumbled from day to day, pleased if he was not anxious or sad; sure that the not quite painful tedium of
his existence was the common lot—the inescapable way of the world. Then he had learned from her what happiness could be; and from that moment of discovery had been ready to give up society, and reputation, had gladly risked loss of business and broken
connections
in the City. He would speak without regret, lightly; but
because
he had never before spoken of his sacrifices, she would be the more affected by them. Instead of letting her reproach herself, he would quickly add that such losses were nothing to him beside the necessity of loving her. In love and in marriage, wasn’t it always essential to choose what mattered most and let the rest go to the devil? Could one ever realistically expect to get what one wanted most as well as the next best thing? And slowly he would lead her to acknowledge the need to abandon secondary aims and ambitions in the interests of a greater good. Even if she refused to accept this and he finally conceded, his generosity would deepen her sense of obligation.

All this was very clear to him until Theresa appeared at the stage door. She was clutching a number of packages that kept slipping as she laughed with several members of the cast before looking around for the landau. After she got in, the groom handed in her parcels and shut the door. Moments later the horses were heading homewards at a spirited trot with traces flying. Theresa waved to her friends and then kissed Esmond on the cheek. She sat back briefly before resting a gloved hand on his arm.

‘Why don’t we go to Giraudier’s or Quinn’s? We haven’t been anywhere for weeks.’

‘I didn’t think you wanted to,’ he replied, seeing their
conversation
in the arbour receding. Recently her moods had been far more changeable than usual.

‘I’d rather get back,’ he murmured.

‘Don’t be so staid. I need to do something amusing.’

Beneath the brim of her black tulle hat, her eyes glittered in the back-glow of the carriage lamps.

‘How about dancing at the “Gyll”?’ he asked in a lightly ironic voice.

‘Splendid,’ she laughed. She glanced in the coachman’s direction. ‘Aren’t you going to tell him?

‘What do you think?’ he replied, keeping the reproachfulness out of his voice. The thought of dancing with Theresa in the Argyll Rooms was deeply repugnant to him. The mirrors might be opulently gilded and the band famous for its sentimental dance music, but the place was still little better than a vast public assignation house, where maids and shop-girls vied with professional whores to take what they could from the young toffs who went there. In his youth Esmond had not been above going, but now,
memories of the hot frenzy that had driven him there left a strong aftertaste of disgust. And yet he had loved the smaller vaudeville halls or any dimly lit cellar full of outlandish goings-on: nude tableaux vivants, bawdy songs and acts; but never quite without guilt. These were the places his father had liked; places where men forgot their obligations to wives and families, where adulterated drink was sold and inexperienced gamblers were mercilessly fleeced. As he had grown older his new professional gravity and the City’s demands on his time, and energies had made him turn his back on questionable pleasures. Yet how dull at times he had felt without that seductive glitter of gaiety, no matter what foul pools its bright surface hid. Even now this ambiguity remained, attracting and repelling.

There was something of this in his love for Theresa; a quality he scarcely dared admit; not just the lure of her profession or beauty, but a sense in which she shared the demi-monde’s dangerous freedom from the conventional scruples which restrained him and his kind. She did not need to argue against prejudices, she simply walked through them as if they did not exist. She would not have minded dancing in the Argyll Rooms or being seen there. He knew that she had occasionally got up on the dais at Evans’s Supper Rooms to sing or to parody the regular entertainers. And while he admired this absence of reserve, it scared him, making him feel
self-conscious
and wooden by comparison—a middle-aged man who had never known how to let go.

Because she could also be gentle and subtly responsive he had deliberately emphasised this milder more ladylike side of her nature, as if by doing so he could somehow damp down those wilder impulses that captivated him but made him jealously mistrustful.

Theresa twisted round sinuously and stretched her legs across his knees, her graceful slender ankles just showing beneath her skirt. Leaning back against the side of the carriage she watched him with benevolent amusement.

‘When I was young and just married,’ she sighed wistfully, ‘I used to dream of riding in carriages like this. The whole night ahead of us … money to go anywhere.’

‘Fine. We’ll go to Giraudier’s.’

She thought a moment, then shook her head. ‘We’ll go to Cremorne.’

‘We won’t get there till past midnight.’

Her mouth rounded and her eyebrows went up.

‘I love it when you scold me and look straight into my eyes. Please, love, look straighter … Now tell me how wicked it is to go to Cremorne at night.’

He smiled in spite of himself.

‘Not wicked. Just depressing.’

‘Depressing? Chinese lanterns in the trees, ferneries, grottoes … dancing out of doors.’

‘Drinking fictitious Moët.’

‘There may be fireworks.’ She hung her head. ‘Perhaps we’re too old for pleasure gardens.’

They were not too old; but Esmond did find the place quite as depressing as he had expected, in spite of the welcome breeze from the river and the operatic selections fading, swelling under the massive elms. As they walked along the narrow lamplit paths between the geranium beds and the brightly painted refreshment boxes, he saw, as he had known he would, that most of the men were young and well dressed and the women invariably tarts of the class to be met with in the Strand. On the ‘crystal circle’, the largest dance platform, the band drowned not animated talk but thick silence, as the sexes eyed each other warily, assessing possibilities carnal and financial. The contrast between the bubbling gaiety of the music and the calculating lustful faces of the dancers amused Theresa but struck Esmond as grotesque. When seated, they overheard a drawling diminutive youth at another side-table abusing a waitress for bringing him too small a glass of brandy. She returned contemptuously with a larger one.

‘Careful you don’t fall in and drown yourself.’

He made a lunging attempt to pinch her retreating backside, but missed and spilled his drink down his pleated shirtfront. The girl laughed stridently and flounced away. After drinking hot negus, Theresa and Esmond left the more frequented parts of the gardens and crossed the deserted bowling greens in the direction of the Thames. Looking back from the banks, the lights in the trees, the glowing Rotunda and the distant music created an effect of fairyland. On the dark river two barges were slipping downstream on the tide, their sails and hulls jet black against the brilliant reflections in the water. Eastwards above the city, the sky was tinged with coral.

‘You see,’ she murmured, slipping her fingers between his, knitting them together.

‘Like most old harlots, Cremorne looks best from a distance in the dark.’

‘You’re not sorry we came?’

‘I’m never sorry to go anywhere with you.’ He smiled at her tenderly. ‘Unless a gang of desperadoes spring out and rob us.’

‘But, Esmond, I’ll look after you. I’ve one of the best screams in the business.’

‘If they take no notice?’

‘I’m ready for that,’ she whispered, reaching up and producing a villainous hatpin.

Esmond looked at it gravely.

‘In that case, madam, I feel entirely safe.’

She laughed and then took his chin between thumb and fingers, and standing on tiptoe kissed him twice on the forehead. As the band began a polka, she danced ahead of him on the way back to the carriage, pretending to push away the hands of an indecently amorous partner as she went.

Speeding towards Brompton, she asked him what he remembered best. He mentioned the young man with his spilled drink.

‘My God, Esmond, I believe you’re sorry for him.’

‘Maybe I am,’ he replied softly.

For all his firm intentions of two hours ago, Esmond found
himself
no nearer to saying what he had meant to. His eyes strayed over her parcels lying on the carriage floor and rested on the hem of her dress. As the trim villas and building plots gave way to streets and crescents, he tried to think of a fresh approach but he was tired and the horses’ hoofs drummed insistently in his skull. Not far to go now.

The sleepy porter opened the door for them, then shuffled away to put out the lights. Upstairs Theresa’s maid had fallen asleep in a chair, having waited up to undress her. Theresa sent the girl to bed at once and sank down on the low ottoman in front of the heavily curtained window. Everything in the room was bathed in the soft opal light of glass-shaded candles: exquisite carpets, tapestried walls, and the gauze draperies hanging from the bed’s gilded tester. The heavy scent of flowers made the atmosphere oppressive. After the open vistas of Cremorne the house closed in around them like a luxurious cocoon.

‘I wish they wouldn’t stay up like that,’ she said, taking off her hat and letting her pelisse slip to the ground.

‘It’s their job.’

‘It makes me feel even more like a pampered convalescent than having a footman carry my parcels from the shops …’ She broke off, remembering. ‘I left them in the carriage.’ About to ring the bell, she grimaced and left the room to bring up her afternoon’s purchases herself; but the porter had forestalled her and they were lined up outside the door.