Page 143 of The Fortunes of Ashmore Castle

‘I’ve decided to accept my lot,’ she said at last, ‘instead of railing against it.’

Since that night in Portsmouth, Mr Cowling’s difficulties seemed to have disappeared. He had successfully completed the act many times since then, and the difference in him was noticeable. The tense, faintly anxious look he had always carried had gone. He seemed to have grown and filled out – it was absurd to think that, but it was the only way she could describe it to herself – like trodden grass straightening, or a pinched bud opening in unexpected sunshine.

It had made her feel guilty to realise how much he had been affected by what she had considered unimportant, even faintly ridiculous. And she wondered, guiltily, whether she had added to his difficulties. She had always withheld herself from him – not obviously, but there had been a core of herself that she had kept back for herself, and she wondered now whether in some way he had always known it. She had married him, but she had never been his. He had fulfilled his part of the bargain, but she had kept only the letter of the contract, not the spirit. She had not been fair to him.

Secretly, she had been waiting for her life to change and present her with her hidden desire. But Portsmouth had made her realise that this marriage was not a temporary aberration. It was her life, for the rest of her life.

Lepida was waiting for more explanation, and she said, ‘I kept thinking, ‘Is this all there is?’ I kept thinking that at some point I would be woken from a dream and my real life would begin.’

‘You were very young when you married,’ Lepida observed.

Nina shrugged. ‘Most girls are.’

‘The great pity,’ Lepida went on, ‘is that there is no way to prepare a female for it. They dream of palaces with gilded turrets and knights on white horses. Reality is decisions about mutton or beef, when to get the chimney swept, whether the cook is using too much butter. Reality is a man who’s bad-tempered in the morning and complains if his favourite shirt isn’t ironed just right.’ She smiled at Nina’s expression. ‘Don’t look so surprised! I live with my mother and father. I’ve observed them for years. There isn’t much I don’t know about marriage in our wonderful age.’

‘Well,’ Nina said, with reservation.

‘Yes, of course, there is the other side of it that no-one will ever talk about,’ Lepida went on. ‘But even I know it is not a sigh and a languishing gaze, but flesh and blood and sweat and smells and pain and discomfort.’

Nina didn’t want to ask her how she knew that. ‘Did you never dream of palaces and sighs?’ she asked.

‘Never,’ said Lepida. ‘It’s the consequence of reading too much. They are right about that, at any rate – educating females only makes for misery. If we are to endure a woman’s lot, better we have nothing between our ears at all.’

‘You don’t believe that,’ Nina exclaimed.

Lepida gave a small quirk of a smile. ‘Yes and no. In reality, women have minds and some of them have enquiring minds, and once you start to think you can’t go back. So we have to do what we can to make things better. But part of that is understanding the limitations of what’s possible. It seems to me that you have reached that understanding by yourself.’

Nina didn’t answer. But she thought, Yes, I’m married to Mr Cowling, and I must make the best of it.

They rode on. It was a small enough thing, she thought, to make him happy. It took up very little time. She could not be part of it, but she had to receive him, because he was her husband and it was her duty. And, because she understood now, she had let him think she was part of it, and that it made her happy too.

The tragedy was that she now knew what the physical act could mean. In that sense, Lepida was right – better not to know. But however difficult it made it to adjust to her life as it was, she would not have missed that. She buried it deep in her mind and tried never to think about it, but it was there, like a distant source of warmth, like the faint luminosity of the sun behind the solid cover of clouds on a winter’s day.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Lepida saw how glad Mr Cowling was to be back, and how tenderly he kissed his wife – he had always been fond, but now there was a confidence in his caresses. She studied him that first night as they waited in the drawing-room for dinner to be announced. She had known him through her father for many years, and he had been just another business acquaintance of her father’s age, no-one of particular interest to her until Nina had taken his fancy and accepted his offer of marriage. He was a pink-faced, healthy-looking man with greying hair, not handsome but not repulsive; a man of decided opinions, not highly educated, a great expert in an area that did not interest her very much. She had no need to ask herself why Nina had married him – it happened all the time. Nina could have been a teacher, but had no great liking for the idea. Instead she chose a rich man to give her the freedom of his money and name. And so she had to live with him, and obey him, mould herself to his wishes, sleep in the same bed with him and endure those activities Lepida knew about as a matter of biology.

The human condition, she thought, was very strange.

On the second evening, Decius joined them for dinner, and Nina invited a local couple, Mr and Mrs Girton, to make it more of a party. They were acquaintances of Mr Cowling, and not the most fascinating people, but it was a full-moon night so everyone else was engaged. But Mr Cowling was in great good humour, and Decius was always an asset in company. Nina had cherished an idea that something might develop between him and Lepida, that her dear friend might fall in love and marry him and become part of her home circle. But though there seemed a spark on Decius’s side, her recent conversation with Lepida convinced her that she had no interest in marriage. It was a pity.

At dinner, the conversation inevitably touched on the increasing likelihood of a general election. The coalition, which had been in power since 1895, was looking worn out; the Conservatives under Arthur Balfour were increasingly unpopular; the Liberals had split over free trade and tariff reform. There was rising unemployment, and the working classes were worried about the price of bread. Recruitment for the Boer War had exposed the poor general health of the population – 40 per cent of recruits had been found to be unfit for service – and the Rowntree survey of 1902 had shown that a third of the population lived below what the report named ‘the poverty line’, which had led to increasing calls for social reform. That was expected to favour the Labour Representation Committee, which had won only two seats in the 1900 election.

So it was widely assumed that Balfour must call an election in the next few weeks, and protest meetings, marches and demonstrations were gathering pace all over the country. It was in answer to a question put by Lepida, which Nina didn’t catch, that Decius mentioned the protest that had taken place in October in the Free Trade Hall in Manchester.

‘Oh, it seems the WSPU felt that the general excitement about an election was pushing the women’s issue to the margins, so they had to do something to get themselves into the news.’

‘Oh, you’re talking about women’s suffrage,’ said Mrs Girton. ‘There was something in the newspaper about a disturbance – didn’t you mention it, dear?’

Mr Girton didn’t look pleased with the subject. ‘Some misguided females made a display of themselves at a public meeting, that’s all. Nothing important.’

‘But what did they do?’ Nina asked.

Decius answered her: ‘Interrupted Sir Edward Grey – who was addressing the meeting – to ask him, “Will the Liberal Government give women the vote?”’

‘Ask him?’ Mr Cowling said. ‘They stood on their seats and yelled and shrieked like banshees, so the meeting couldn’t go on. The chief constable had to go and quiet ’em down, said they could send up a written question like civilised people.’

‘When they did,’ Decius said, ‘Grey ignored it.’