For the first time since the war he felt as though he might have recovered something of himself. Not his innocence, never his brothers, but something wonderfully important. A will to live beyond the need to spare his mother further pain. Only a few days prior, if he’d heard word of his mother’s death, he might have boarded a train home, kissed her corpse’s forehead, then turned his father’s old Purdey shotgun on himself and drawn the trigger with relief. At last.
Now, though. Now he felt like he might stick around another few days, just to see what happened. When he held Agatha in both his arms, good and bad, Chilton believed, the way a person does in that first miracle of reciprocated ardour, that one night of passion could translate to forever. And why not run off with her now? As far as the whole world was concerned, she was already gone.
When Chilton parked his car at the hotel, he saw Mr Race, smoking and pacing out front, thin curls of smoke followed by thicker exhalations of breath. The sight made Chilton realize he’d forgotten to smoke himself, for hours, even for an entire day. He reached into his inner coat pocket for his cigarette case and then stopped himself. He wanted nothing in common with Mr Race, whom he imagined to be the same breed as Archie Christie. The kind of man for whom Chilton felt nothing but disdain. Not that they’d care or notice. They considered disdain their own particular province. Belligerent and concerned only with themselves, even at their most generous. Men who served in the trenches and men who served in the air. Race may have been too young to belong to either group but Chilton placed him firmly in the latter.
I must say, Chilton’s opinion of Archie was unfair, having never so much as laid eyes on him, let alone having spent the better part of the night and morning making love to his wife. He knew that. But clinging to his bad idea of the man was part and parcel of clinging to the woman.
As Chilton stepped out of the car, he saw Race do something that surprised him. He dropped his cigarette to the dirt, ground it up with his foot, then scooped up the remains, tucking it into his palm as if he meant to throw it away later. Chilton hadn’t pegged him as the sort to clear away his own mess. Mrs Race emerged from the hotel a moment later, bundled up in a hat and coat. Upon seeing her husband, she broke into the happiest smile and stepped immediately into his arms, looking up at him with profound delight.
Chilton knew enough of the world not to be surprised by a woman returning to a beastly husband. But something about this did not look right. They might have been two entirely different people. Mr Race, who had seen Chilton, seemed aware of the discrepancy. He placed his hands on his wife’s shoulders, and she looked over to see Chilton. Whereupon she stepped back rather abruptly.
‘Good day, Mrs Race,’ Chilton called out, trying his best to be jaunty. ‘Mr Race.’
They murmured hello, newly subdued.
Inside the hotel, Chilton waited a moment. Then he stepped back outside. The Races were gone. He walked quietly round the back, where they stood together, quite close, holding on to each other’s elbows. They appeared not only loving, but trusting and intimate.
He didn’t dare creep close enough to hear what they were saying, or they surely would have seen him. But from where he stood, observing in secret, he tried to listen. And although no words became distinct, he could have sworn they both spoke with Irish brogues.
Earlier, Finbarr and I had driven back to the hotel in the grey winter dawn.
‘I’ve been thinking,’ I said. ‘Can’t a person train dogs in England as well as Ireland?’
He pulled the car over to the side of the road and turned towards me. ‘What are you saying, Nan?’
I saw I’d given him false hope. I couldn’t offer him precisely what he wanted. But I could offer him a version of it. ‘I’m saying—’ I stopped trying to think how to word it. ‘My plan could stay in place. And you could be a part of it. Think, Finbarr. Archie travels. He works all day. Why, just two years ago, he left England for an entire year. We could be together often as not. I could even bring Genevieve to you sometimes.’
‘Good Lord, Nan, what have you become?’
The pilot light of shame, always ready to be struck into full flame, flickered inside me. I doused it with anger. ‘I’ve become what I’ve been since August 1919. A mother who loves her child. And a woman who’s ready to do what’s necessary. That’s what I’ve become.’
He didn’t move for a long moment. ‘We could take her, then,’ he finally said. ‘The two of us. Out of England, to anywhere you like, and raise her as our own.’
‘How can I do that to her, Finbarr? Kidnap her? If she were still a baby, fine, but now? What would that do to her? And if there’s an army searching for Agatha Christie, what will there be to search for her child? I’ve no way to prove she’s mine. It’s too late for that kind of justice. I wish it weren’t, but it is.’
‘And what if you discover a month from now you’re carrying my child again? What will you do, then?’
(Oh, Finbarr. Oh, Reader. Must I know and provide an answer for everything?)
I closed my eyes against tears and he gathered me up in his arms. Holding me tight, he spoke into my ear. ‘How can you stand that man touching you, if you truly believe he stole our child?’
I was silent a while, as if reasoning it out in that moment, though in truth I’d thought it through a long time ago. I didn’t blame Archie, not fully. He’d availed himself of something readily on offer, without considering how it came to be so. The way all men like him do. He might inhabit the world unthinkingly, in the manner men of his station were allowed. But Archie hadn’t invented the world; he’d only been born into it like the rest of us.
‘It’s the same way a diplomat makes peace after war,’ I said. ‘And having me as his wife will be punishment enough. Especially if you live nearby.’
‘I’m not meant for that. To be on the sly. I’m meant to be your husband. You know that, Nan. What’s more, I’m not sure I could lay eyes on that man without killing him.’
This might have been hyperbole but I knew that urge well enough to take him at his word. And, of course, I couldn’t risk it, Finbarr losing his freedom over killing Archie. Or Archie being killed, for that matter. Whatever he was guilty of, nothing he’d done was terrible enough to merit death as punishment.
‘The only answer,’ Finbarr said, still holding on, ‘is for us to leave this place together.’
I didn’t agree out loud. Neither did I disagree. Somewhere in our embrace, in the tightening of his grip on me, I could feel Finbarr take heart in my silence.
By the time Chilton arrived at the Bellefort, I was already back in my room. He knocked on my door, and when I opened it, he pressed the Galsworthy novel into my hands.
‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘How very kind. Though I don’t imagine I’ll have time to read it before it needs to be returned. I do need to get back to London before long.’
‘Do you?’ he said. ‘I thought perhaps you’d be returning to Ireland with Mr Mahoney.’