Philippa Carr - The Adulteress

“But she saw us together.”

“Why shouldn’t we walk in the woods?”

“I suppose I feel guilty.”

“Dearest Zipporah, please don’t. You’ve made me so happy.”

“I’m glad,” I said. “I’m being foolish. I’m trying hard to forget what I’ve done. I want to be happy. Do you know, I think that the only way I can live through all this is by being happy for a time. It’s like the laudanum … it gives me respite and then I can go on and fight.”

He gripped my hand. He understood.

Lottie had come back from Clavering in high spirits. She had had a wonderful holiday and chattered to Jean-Louis about Sabrina, Clarissa and Dickon. He liked to hear her and I was sure he was better for her presence.

I tried to prevent her—and so did he—seeing the pain. I felt she was too young to be disturbed, as she undoubtedly would have been.

It was a great joy to have her back. She was running about making sure that her dog and horse were all right. She must go over to see Hetty Fenton and the children. She had brought jars of my mother’s jams and preserves for Hetty and little gifts for the children—a chocolate mouse and ball and skittles.

She played with them, and was always welcome, I knew, at Hetty’s house.

Miss Carter seemed primmer than usual.

“Miss Carter is so good because she believes that if she’s not she’ll burn forever,” Lottie told me.

“Poor Miss Carter,” I said.

“Why poor Miss Carter? She’ll go straight to heaven. It’s the rest of us who she thinks are going to burn in hell.”

“My dear Lottie,” I said. “I am sure none of us is going to burn in hell.”

“Not even the wicked ones? Miss Carter says that’s God’s words.”

“I’m sure it’s her way of interpreting it. If you repent you’ll be forgiven. That’s in the Bible, too.”

“Sometimes I think Miss Carter would be disappointed if people didn’t burn.”

“Look here,” I said, “you stop worrying about it. You be good and kind and thoughtful … which you are most of the time … and you’ll be safe from the fires of hell.”

She laughed with me, but I did wonder whether Miss Carter was too fanatical to have the care of a young girl.

I should have liked to talk to Jean-Louis about it but of course I could not worry him with such matters. I had to confess that when I was with Charles there were so many other matters with which to occupy ourselves. I did discuss it with Isabel, who thought that it was probably good for Lottie to think about the way she was acting.

Hester came over often to help me. I became very fond of her; she was a gentle person and I think that perhaps because of her experiences I felt at ease with her.

One day I was preparing to go to see Charles on the pretext of getting more laudanum and when I went to the cupboard I found that there was a new bottle there.

“I thought I’d save you the trouble of going into, town,” said Hetty. “I knew where you kept the key and I noticed last time you used it that you would soon be wanting more.”

I felt deflated. I wondered what Charles had thought when expecting me he had seen Hetty. I could not go in after that. I was very disappointed and felt angry with Hetty. Poor girl, it wasn’t her fault.

She was with me on one occasion when I had to give Jean-Louis a dose of laudanum. She saw my anguish and I knew she was very touched.

We sat in the dressing room talking in whispers after he had fallen into that deep unnatural sleep which was his only way to get relief.

“Life is so sad sometimes,” she said. “To think that this could have happened. I remember Jean-Louis when I came back to my family. He was so different then. Everything was different then.”

I said: “But you’re happy now.”

She hesitated. “I never forget,” she said.

“But you must. It’s all behind you.”

“Everything that happens is there forever … in your memory. Everything makes its mark on your life. Things happen because something else has happened. I shall never forget.”

“But it turned out well for you. You have James and the children.”

“Yes … but the memory is there, it still haunts me. Sometimes … I wonder …”

I did not prompt her and she went on with a rush: “I wonder whether … I really wanted that to happen.”

“What do you mean?” I said.

She said, and there was a faraway look in her eyes so that I knew she was there at Clavering on the night of the party: “I went into the garden with him … I think of him sometimes.”

“Dickon!” I said. “He is evil. He causes disaster wherever he goes … and yet he saved my life. I must not forget that.”

“Yes … you see. Nothing is all black or all white. Nothing is entirely good or evil. … I sometimes wonder if I was not under some spell. … Whether he didn’t fascinate me in some way. I hated him. Yes, I hated him. I nearly died of shame and yet … and yet …”

I said briskly: “I should dismiss him from your mind.”

“I do … for long periods … and then sometimes I dream … and I ask myself how much of what one believes happened really did … and whether one interprets it the way one wants it.”

“You’re getting too introspective, Hetty. It’s much better to live life simply.”

Live life simply! What a hypocrite I was! I wondered what Hetty would say if she knew that I was having a love affair with the doctor.

What if she did know? What if we failed to disguise it? I knew the way in which Charles sometimes looked at me … even in company. I saw it in his eyes. Did others? Had her trip to his house to get the laudanum been to prevent my going?

When one is as guilty as I was one suspects everything. First Evalina because we met her in the woods … and now Hetty.

The weeks slipped by … one very like the last. Nothing changed. Jean-Louis’s pain was perhaps a little more frequent—the periods of respite fewer and less far between. And Charles and I deeper and deeper in our torrid love, with each passing week demanding more of each other, unable to keep apart, contriving meetings, loving, loving madly, hopelessly.

The summer passed and it was autumn.

There were letters from Clavering.

They longed to see me but they would not make the journey to Eversleigh because they knew how ill Jean-Louis was. But let Lottie come again with that nice governess of hers. It wasn’t good for the child to spend Christmas in a house where there was sickness.

So Lottie and Miss Carter left for Clavering and Christmas passed for us at Eversleigh quietly. Hetty and James came with Isabel, Derek and Charles and we were all together on Christmas day. Jean-Louis was not well enough to be brought down but we spent a lot of time in his room and I was thankful that he felt no pain on that day.

Evalina sent messages. She was near her time and unable to come herself; but Jack Trent came over and brought little Richard with him. He was a bright boy and amused us with his chatter.

It seemed to me that he had a look of Dickon already and the thought depressed me.

So we passed into a new year.

The weather turned cold and it was hard to keep the rooms warm. Old houses were notoriously draughty and Eversleigh was no exception. Beautiful as the high-vaulted ceilings were they meant that the rooms needed great fires and even then much of the heat they provided was lost.

The cold was not good for Jean-Louis. One afternoon in February I sat with him. He had had a bad night and I had slightly increased his dose because the normal one seemed ineffective.

He talked to me in a low voice. He was so exhausted.

“Sleep,” he said. “It came at last. What a relief sleep is. ‘Nature’s soft nurse,’ Shakespeare called it. What an apt phrase.”