The First of July(41)

In the word “volunteers,” Harry felt the slightest reproach. “Your father was a great cavalry officer in his youth, of course,” said their neighbor.

“He’d have been sorry to miss this fight,” said the Lord Lieutenant.

Harry looked for a way to deflect them both. “A friend of mine, a military man,” another half-lie, although Wilding was indubitably some kind of expert, “says it will be an infantry war.”

“Our cavalry and navy are the best in the world,” said the Lord Lieutenant.

Harry was going to speak, but then his neighbor said, more firmly, “And artillery can destroy a cavalry charge in minutes. But yes, we have our expensive dreadnoughts. If the war stays at sea.”

Marina and Teddy materialized at his side and the whole awkward conversation was diluted by their presence, although not before the Lord Lieutenant had said “My dear Lady Sydenham,” taking Marina’s hand and then holding it for slightly too long. “What a superb addition you and Harry will make to local society.”

The long day faded. It was exhausting, Harry thought, just responding to polite condolences, overhearing local gossip that meant nothing to him, or being taken back to his childhood by the well-meaning and the curious. He both longed for and dreaded their departure and being alone with his wife. All the time, Marina was perfect: kind, serious, interested. Again and again, friends of his father’s and their wives told him how lucky he was. She was the same to him. No more intimate than with the mass of strangers she was confronted with. Teddy was helping the cook, Marina said she wanted to lie down, and Harry wandered back to the church.

The family graves were together by the main door. His grandparents, a sister who had died in infancy, and his mother, her grave bordered in granite. A bunch of yellow roses had been laid on the plot. Under a weeping angel, the letters spelling out Maude Alice Sydenham, 1855–1887, were softening now. The lichen on the stone measured the distance since her death. Finally he stood by his father’s grave, the fresh, warm earth half disguised by a bank of already-weary wreaths. He wasn’t sure whether or not he was praying.

He felt as much as heard footsteps and looked up to see Isabelle. She was bareheaded, her wiry black hair loosely gathered at her neck. She came and stood next to him and was silent for a while. Looking down, he focused on her feet, the black stockings and buttoned shoes just visible below her dark hem.

Eventually she said “I’m sorry you had to return like this. But glad you could be here.”

“Did he really have no idea?”

“No. I would have said he was in good health and spirits. We planned a big party for his sixtieth birthday. With dancing.” She looked amused and sad all at once. “He was a little tired, perhaps, but then he wasn’t as young as he’d been.”

“Has Teddy taken it all right?”

She shrugged slightly. “Who knows with twelve-year-old boys?” She gave a small laugh. “But I think so, although he loved his father and brought him great happiness, I think.”

“Whereas I brought him nothing of the kind.” It was a statement, not a question, but she answered immediately.

“What do you want me to say? That it was all right? That he didn’t miss you, want to see you? That he understood?”

“No, of course not.”

“You were his heir,” she said. “His first-born. Of course he was sad. But it was superficially comprehensible, even admirable; you’d shown initiative, gone to America. It was the sort of life he might have dreamed of himself. And you wrote from time to time, to start with, anyway. . . .”

He flushed.

“But he knew you could come back. That was the hard part. To start with, he expected it would be in a year or two. But he always made excuses for you, even to himself, I think.”

“If you want me to feel guilty,” he said, “I can assure you that I do.”

She touched him briefly on the arm. “Don’t,” she said.

“You think it’s an indulgence to talk of guilt now?”

“I think it’s pointless.” After a further silence when she looked into the distance with her eyes screwed up against the setting sun, she said “I know about guilt, Harry, believe me. I lived with him for well over a decade. And you think I betrayed you, too.”

“It’s all history,” he said. “Ancient history. I expect you loved him—”

“No,” she said, her voice slightly raised. “I didn’t. Not at first, although I liked him very much. He was a good man, an amusing man, and, in time, especially when Teddy was born, I came to love him.”