I said to Samuel Fitzwilliam, “I suppose it’s possible he visited them. Obviously, he wouldn’t have told me about it, if your parents were awful about the whole thing. He hates to upset me.”
Samuel stared at me without replying. The breeze lifted the hair on his monumental forehead, but that was all that moved. The muscles of his face lay still; the knuckles of his right hand pressed into his waist, while his left fingers braced against his thigh.
“You don’t know anything, do you?” he said. “Of course you don’t, or you wouldn’t have married him.”
“I know everything I need to know about Simon. I know how good he is—”
“Did he tell you about Lydia?”
“Of course he did. He was awfully upset. Drowning like that—”
“Drowning! Is that what he told you?”
“Yes. He thinks it was suicide.”
“Suicide. Oh, that’s rich. That’s priceless. Suicide. Tell me something. You never thought it was a little bit convenient, that poor old Lydia—what was it?—that she vanished into the sea, after proving so unexpectedly difficult to divorce?”
The strangest thing. The sun still shone, in its feeble April way, but I felt as if a cloud had swallowed it. I felt as if the small warmth lighting my cheek had winked out.
“Of course I didn’t think it was convenient. What a horrible thing to say. I didn’t even know she was gone, until after the . . . after the . . .”
My voice faded.
“Ah. Didn’t he bother to tell you until after you were good and married, then? How odd.”
“But the divorce wasn’t contested,” I said. “Not at all. She agreed to everything. She wanted Simon to be happy.”
“Really? Did you ask her?”
“Of course not. I’ve never met her. Did you ask her?”
He glanced at the sea. “No. I hadn’t seen her since the end of summer. But I do know that her father kicked up an almighty fuss and said that if they divorced, he’d take back her inheritance.”
“Simon didn’t care about that.”
“Didn’t he?”
“He said that her father”—I tried to concentrate my memory—“he said that her father needed the capital anyway, to replace the shipping he’d lost to the U-boats. So it wasn’t even worth the trouble.”
“Hardly that. There might not have been much cash left, but the ships remain, the ones still afloat and the ones being built, and I daresay they’re worth a great deal to somebody. And in order to inherit it, Simon and Lydia had to remain married, because that was the point, of course, the whole point of the marriage, combining the ships and the orchards. The dream of some future empire to rescue the family fortunes. Lydia’s father was obsessed with it, God knows why. So you can see why his death was a marvelously timely development indeed for my dear brother, coming before the divorce papers were signed, so that Simon and Lydia get the whole lot, without any irksome clauses. And then Lydia drowns herself soon afterward.”
I thought I might be sick. The seconds passed, the wind stiffened. This time a cloud did scud by, sending a shadow across Samuel’s face.
I thought, Just like Mother.
“It’s not true,” I said. “It can’t be true. I’m sure Simon will explain everything.”
Samuel laughed. “Oh, I’m sure he will. He was always terribly clever at explaining himself afterward. Let me guess. You find out some inconvenient fact from another party. You start to have doubts, to renounce him in your head. And then he turns up at just the right moment, brimful of some wonderfully reasonable account of the crime, allowing just a touch of human fault but largely exculpating himself of anything but the very noblest of intentions. Does that sound at all familiar?”
“Excuse me.” I pushed past him, down the hill toward the cottage. In my mind I tried to fight back the creeping blackness. To think of Simon’s face, heavy with emotion as he placed the ring on my finger. With this ring, I thee wed. With my body I thee worship.
“She didn’t just drown!” Samuel called behind me. “He went to visit her because she’d lost her nerve, she was thinking about rescinding the divorce petition because of her father. She wanted to try to make the marriage work instead, because that’s what her father wanted. And the next day she was gone.”
“Stop! Just stop!”
He took me by the arm. “Can you honestly say it wasn’t Simon? Can you honestly say he didn’t want it badly enough?”
“Want what badly enough? Her money?”
“No,” he said. “Not hers. Yours.”
“I don’t have any money.”
“Stupid girl. I mean your father’s money. His millions.”
“But he doesn’t know about that. Not how much, anyway.”
“Yes, he does.”
“I never told him!”
“You told me.”
He looked even larger now, looming over me, a step or two higher on the steep, pebbled path. At that moment he looked astonishingly like Simon, though his expression had changed to one of anger: eyes fierce, mouth clenched. The sea crashed below us. One good push, I thought, and in my madness I didn’t know whether I meant I should push him or he should push me.
Simon’s voice: Of course it was venal. But it did the trick, didn’t it?
“And naturally you had to tell him,” I whispered. “You had to taunt him with it. You had to test him. Because you didn’t think he meant to marry me.”
“Dear girl, nobody thought he meant to marry you. Nobody at home knew a thing about you. He hadn’t said a single bloody word to anyone, least of all his wife.”
“Then how did you find out?”
“The usual gossip. You can’t easily hide a love affair from your fellow officers, it seems, however discreet you imagine yourself. Any number of well-meaning chaps stood ready to tell me the fascinating news.”
I stood there, panting. Unable to speak.
Samuel went on. “But of course, he wouldn’t say anything to us. A gentleman never speaks to his family about his mistress.”
I slapped him then. I didn’t think about it; I just lifted my open hand and struck Samuel across the face. He flinched and touched his cheek with one finger. “Well done,” he said calmly. “But I’m afraid you’ve got the wrong man.”