Philippa Carr - The Adulteress

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.”

“Rest,” I said, “don’t talk.”

“I feel at peace now,” he said. “You sitting there with the firelight playing on your face. I’d like to stay like this forever, Zipporah beside me … and no pain … just nothing … Sometimes I wonder …”

I did not speak and he closed his eyes. Then he said suddenly:

“You keep the key in that secret drawer of yours, don’t you?”

I was startled and did not answer immediately.

I heard him laugh softly. “You do. … You always liked that little desk and you liked it because of the secret drawer.”

“Who told you that was where I kept the key?”

“Dearest Zipporah … am I a child not to be told these things? Even a child can reason. It’s the obvious place.”

“The doctor said: ‘Put the key in a safe place which you know and no one else does. … You must be the only one who gives him the doses.’”

“Doctors think of their patients as children, don’t they? The key is in the secret drawer. Sometimes I think it would be better if I drank enough of the stuff to let me slip quietly away.”

“Please don’t talk like that, Jean-Louis.”

“Just this once and then I’ll say no more of it. Wouldn’t it be better … Zipporah? Be honest, wouldn’t it?”

“No … no!”

“All right. I won’t talk of it. Zipporah, you ought to be happy. Not sitting here with an invalid.”

“I am happy. You are my husband, Jean-Louis. We … belong together. I want to be with you. Don’t you understand that?”

“Oh, my dearest … you are so good to me.”

“You excite yourself. You should rest.”

He closed his eyes. There was a peaceful smile on his lips.

I prayed that he might rest peacefully that night. That the demons of pain might be kept at bay.

I could not sleep. I lay in my single bed in the dressing room and listened. He was quiet. He must be sleeping peacefully.

I thought of all he had said to me, of his tenderness and his trust; and I saw myself as a worthless woman, an adulteress who should be branded as they used to brand them, I believe, in the old days, with an A on their foreheads. He loved me absolutely and I was unworthy of his love. At times I wanted to give up everything to look after him; I did look after him, none could have nursed him better. But at the same time I was creeping off, when I could, to the bed of another man.

Life was so complicated. People were complicated. Nothing was plain black, plain white. I was kind to him; I was tender; I was never irritable. I smiled all the time; I soothed him. I had to because that was some balm to my conscience.

And as I lay there I heard movement in the room. Slowly, laboriously, Jean-Louis was getting out of bed. Had the pain started? No. It could not be. He could not get up and walk if it were so.

There was silence and then I heard the movement again. I heard the faint tapping of a stick.

Jean-Louis was coming toward the dressing room.

I lay very still. Something urged me to. Something kept saying to me: “It’s for the best … for him … for you … for Charles … for everybody.”

Before Jean-Louis entered the dressing room, I knew.

I lay still. He was there now … walking cautiously, feeling his way in the light from the stars which came through the dressing room’s small window.

He was at the desk now. He had found the secret drawer. He had the key. He opened the cupboard door.

I knew what he had taken.

I must get up. Take it from him. Tell him he must not do this thing.

I thought of his poor face distorted with pain and the years ahead when there was nothing for him but more pain. How could he endure that? Wasn’t this better?

I heard him go back to his room. I lay still with a thudding heart which shook the bed.

I lay … waiting. …

No sound. Only the faint starlight in the room to show me the unshut door of the cupboard which told me it had really happened.

I listened. I could hear his stertorous breathing.

I rose from my bed and went into the next room.

There was no sound now.

I lighted two candles with an unsteady hand and carried one to the bed.

He seemed to be smiling at me. A happy smile … the lines of pain were no longer visible. He looked as young as he had when I had married him.

Dear Jean-Louis, he had made the supreme sacrifice.

I DON’T KNOW HOW long I stood there looking down at him. I felt numb and a terrible sorrow swept over me.

Tenderness welled up in me for his kindness, his sweetness and all his goodness to me. And how had I repaid him?

I sank to my knees and buried my face against the bedclothes. Pictures kept coming and going in my mind. I saw him as a boy when he had let me go with him, when we played our games; and later when we had loved and married and everything had seemed right—until I met Gerard and realized that I had never known passion and erotic love and that I was of a nature to find them irresistible.

I don’t know how long I stayed there but when I arose from my knees, stiff and cold, I saw that it was nearly four o’clock.

I took his hand. It was very cold; and the peaceful smile was still on his lips.

I must call Charles. Though there was nothing he could do for Jean-Louis now.

Somehow I could not take any action. I felt that I wanted to be alone with Jean-Louis for the last time. I wished there was some way of letting him know how much I had appreciated him. I fervently hoped that he had never had an inkling of my infidelity. Then a terrible fear came to me that he might have known. Had I changed when I came back after that visit to Eversleigh and I did have a child … the child which he could not give me? Did he suspect that Charles and I were more than friends?

Dear Jean-Louis! One thing I did know was that if some instinct had told him the truth he would understand.

I kept my vigil by his bedside until six o’clock. Then I went to the bell rope and pulled it. The clanging rang through the house. They would guess that I needed help with Jean-Louis.

The first person to arrive was Miss Carter. She looked pale and different from usual with two plaits hanging over her shoulders tied at the ends with a piece of pink wool.

I said: “My husband died in the night. …”

She looked at Jean-Louis and turned pale. She closed her eyes and her lips moved as though she was praying.

She said: “I will go and get help.”

“I think,” I said, “that someone should go at once for the doctor.”

She ran away and I noticed then the laudanum bottle which Jean-Louis had left on the table. I took it and locked it in the dressing room cupboard.

It was a great relief to see Charles.

He came hurrying into the room, and taking one look at Jean-Louis, went swiftly to the bed. He stood looking down at him. Then he took his hand and touched his eyelids, drawing them down over his eyes.

“He’s been dead for some time,” he said.

“Yes,” I answered.

Charles bent over and put his face close to the dead one.

“Charles,” I said, “he did it. He took the bottle from the cupboard.”

“I thought …”

“Yes. I had the key in the secret drawer … but he knew it was there. It was the obvious place to put it … and he knew about the drawer in that desk. He came and got the key and the bottle. … He had talked to me about it just before. He had said it was the best way. I told him not to talk like that … but he must have had it in his mind to do it.”

“Where is the bottle?”

“I put it back in the cupboard.”

“Go and get it.”

I did so. He looked at it. “When did you get this? Two days ago? My God, he’s had enough to kill three people.”

“It was what he wanted. He couldn’t endure the pain anymore.”

“Zipporah,” he said quietly, “there mustn’t be talk about this. In view of everything … we can’t have it said that he died of an overdose of laudanum. … People might say …”

“That I gave it to him?”

“People will say anything.”

“Charles … you don’t think … ?”

“Of course not. I understand how it happened.”

“In a way I did kill him,” I said. “I knew he was going to do it … and I let him. That’s as bad as killing, isn’t it? I’m a murderess … as well as an adulteress.”

“Hush. Don’t say such things.” He looked round him. “For God’s sake be careful. It may be that … never mind. The thing is now that Jean-Louis is dead. Life was intolerable for him. He suffered a great deal of pain and naturally it weakened his heart. He died of heart failure. It was to be expected. I expected it.”