Philippa Carr: The Adulteress

“How they seem to clutter our family,” murmured Dickon.

“That leaves you,” went on Sabrina. “Your father was a man Uncle Carl highly approved of, so the Jacobite strain is far removed and possibly wiped out, particularly as your father once fought for King George. So you are redeemed. The point is your mother wants you to come over so that we can discuss it all and decide what should be done.”

“Jean-Louis couldn’t leave the estate just now.”

“It would only be for a short visit. Anyway, think about it and come over today.”

“I’d like to go to Eversleigh,” said Dickon.

His mother smiled at him fondly. “Dickon wants everything that’s available, don’t you, Dickon? Eversleigh is not for you, my son.”

“You never know,” said Dickon slyly.

“Talk about it with Jean-Louis.” said Sabrina to me, “and we’ll go into it thoroughly. Your mother will show you the letter. That will put you in picture.”

I saw them off and went back to the daffodils.

Jean-Louis and I walked to Clavering Hall from the agent’s house which had been our home since we had married. I had told Jean-Louis of old Carl’s desire to see me and he had been a little disturbed, I think. He was very happy managing the Clavering estate, which was not large and where he had everything working peacefully and in perfect order. Jean-Louis was a man who did not change.

We walked arm in arm. Jean-Louis was saying that it would be difficult for us to leave Clavering just at this time. He thought we might go later when there was less to do on the estate.

I agreed with him. We rarely disagreed on anything. Ours was a very happy marriage. That was what made my actions all the more incomprehensible.

The only real cloud on our happiness was what appeared to be an inability to have children. My mother had spoken to me about it for she knew it grieved me. “It is sad,” she admitted. “You would have made such good parents. Perhaps in time, though … perhaps a little patience …”

But time went on and still we had no child. I had seen Jean-Louis look at Dickon sometimes, with that rather wistful look in his eyes. He, too, was inclined to spoil the boy. It might have been because he was the only child in the family.

I did not take to Dickon in the same way and I never tried to analyze my feelings until afterward, when I started to become introspective—looking for reasons and finding only excuses. Could I have been jealous of him? My mother, whom I had loved only slightly less than my glamorous father, cared greatly for Dickon … more, I suspected, than she did for me, her own child. It was something to do with that long-ago romance with Dickon’s father, but it was Sabrina who had had his child.

Our moods and emotions—Jean-Louis’s and mine—were woven together in an intricate web and at this time I was not concerned with them. I was still the old Zipporah—quiet, unassuming, above all predictable.

When we reached the house my mother was waiting for us. She embraced me warmly; she was always tender toward me, but I think because she was so sure I would always do what was expected, and she would have no need to worry about me, she could dismiss me from her thoughts.

“It was lovely of you to come. Zipporah dear. And you too, Jean-Louis,” she said.

Jean-Louis took her hand and kissed it. He was always very grateful to my mother and had never stopped showing it.

That was because she had kept him when he was a very young boy and had been terrified of being taken away to go off with his own mother, who could not have been a very pleasant person because she had been involved in some murder mystery. But that was years ago.

“I want to show you Lord Eversleigh’s letter,” she said. “I don’t know what you’ll think about it. It will be strange if he should leave Eversleigh to you, Zipporah.”

“I can’t think he will. There must be someone else.”

“We seem to have lost touch since your great-grandparents died. Yet Eversleigh used to be the very heart of the family. It’s strange how things change.”

It was indeed strange. Things had certainly changed when my father had disappeared suddenly from my life. Although my life had been so uneventful, there had been a time when I had lived on the fringe of great events. I should never forget my father; after all, I had been ten years old when he had gone. That was twenty years ago, but a man like him could never be forgotten. I had loved him more than anyone. He never cosseted me as my mother had done. He had laughed a great deal, had smelt of sandalwood and had always been exquisitely dressed, being what was known as a dandy. I had thought he was the most handsome person in the world. It was unfair—I knew even then—but I would have bartered all the loving care and attention of my mother for five minutes with him. He had never asked how I was getting on with lessons; it had never occurred to him that I might catch cold. He used to talk to me of his gambling feats. He had constantly gambled and he had made me feel the excitement which gripped him. He had treated me as though I were one of his cronies instead of his little daughter. He used to take me riding. We would race together and we had made little bets. He would bet I could not throw a conker a certain distance; he would wager things carelessly—the pin in his cravat, one of his rings, even a coin … anything that was to hand. My mother had hated it. I heard her say more than once: “You will teach the child to be a gambler like yourself.”

I had hoped he would. There was nothing I wanted so much as to be exactly like him. He had gaiety and great charm which came from a certain carelessness toward life. Nothing had ever appeared to perturb him; he had shrugged his shoulders at life and later he had had the same attitude toward death. I did not know how he went to his death on that early morning—but I could guess.

That event devastated our household, though there had been rumblings of disaster before it happened. I couldn’t help overhearing certain things. I knew that he had died—as the servants said—defending my mother’s honor. This was because a man had died and in his bedroom had been found something belonging to my mother that indicated she had been with him at the time of his death.

It had been the end of a way of life—deeply upsetting to a girl of ten. We had gone to the country—not that that was new to me. We had always spent some part of the summer at Clavering Hall because it was part of my father’s country estate.

Terrible days they had been, and made more so because I knew only half the story. Sabrina was involved in it. I heard her once say to my mother: “Oh, Clarissa, I am to blame for all this.” And I knew that she had been the one in the dead man’s bedroom, though everyone had thought it was my mother, and my father had died for that reason.

It had been bewildering, and when I asked questions I was told by Nanny Curlew—whom I had inherited from Sabrina—that little children should be seen and not heard. I was careful, for Nanny Curlew could relate gruesome stories of what happened to naughty children. If they listened to what was not intended for them, their ears grew long so that everyone knew what they had done; and those who grimaced or scowled or put out their tongues—unless told to by nurse or doctor—were often “struck all of a heap” and stayed like that for the rest of their lives. Being a logical little girl I did say that I had never seen anyone with enormous ears and a tongue hanging out. “You wait,” she had said darkly, and looked at me so suspiciously that I hastily went to a looking glass to make sure that my ears had not grown and that my tongue was still mobile.

Somebody said that time is the great healer, and that is certainly true, for if it does not always heal, it dims the memory and softens the pain; and after a while I became accustomed to my father’s absence; I settled into the country life at Clavering. After all, I had my mother, Sabrina and Jean-Louis as well as the redoubtable and omnipotent Nanny Curlew. I accepted life. I did what was expected of me; I rarely questioned why. I once heard Sabrina say to my mother: “At least Zipporah has never given you a moment’s anxiety, and I’ll be ready to swear never will.” At first I was delighted to hear this but later it made me ponder.