Which was why we heard such a very great deal about what it meant to be a Macarthur. By Mr Macarthur’s account, his grandfather had been the Laird of Strathclyde in Argyllshire, and so had his grandfather’s father before him, and so on into the mists of time where, it was implied, the original Arthur from which the line descended was none other than King Arthur himself.
But the grandfather, along with his seven sons, one of whom was Mr Macarthur’s father, had chosen the wrong side in the battles of those times, and had been supporters of the King Across the Water. Not, Mr Macarthur was quick to reassure us, that he was a Papist, but for reasons of politics and the greater glory of Scotland. After the defeat at Culloden they had been stripped of their lands and titles, and Mr Macarthur’s father, after vicissitudes, had come to rest in Plymouth. There he married Mr Macarthur’s mother and produced his sons. Mr Macarthur was the younger of the two, and that chafed at him. Not that he had ambitions to be a draper, but he was bitter that the brother had the family business in Plymouth for no other reason than that he had been born first, while Mr Macarthur was rusticating at Holsworthy waiting for a future.
– My dear fellow, Mr Kingdon said at last with rich sympathy. What a shocking story. Your father must feel it deeply.
– He does, Mr Macarthur agreed. It is a wound that will never heal, a daily affront.
There was feeling in the words. Mr Macarthur spoke of his own wound too, his own daily affront that he, descended from the Laird of Strathclyde, and perhaps from King Arthur, should be explaining himself in a modest vicarage in Devon. He was too proud to want to prove himself a gentleman but, in the cold reality of his present situation, was obliged to do so.
Captain Moriarty was propriety itself, bland as soap always, but Mr Macarthur blazed inside with something restless, something dark and acidic. There was a banked fire in him, and there was a quality about that banked fire that I found intriguing. Let me be frank: I was drawn to it.
He could be stony and silent, sitting there while Captain Moriarty made the running with Bridie. But in the garden, with Bridie and her captain within sight but out of earshot, he might set himself to amuse. He was a fine cruel mimic, could take off precisely the habit Captain Moriarty had of speechifying at solemn length. Mr Macarthur’s lean features could take on precisely his friend’s admiring astonishment at what a very great deal he knew.
It was nasty, and a nasty streak in myself responded to it. I found that there was a mimic within me too, who could perfectly take off dour Mr Kingdon and his rumbling pieties. I was not proud of mocking the benefactor who had been so good to me, but could not resist unleashing the sparkling and playful self who could amuse this aloof Mr Macarthur.
More than amuse. Through glances and hints too slight to be marked except by an eager girl, Mr Macarthur let me understand that I was the source of some interest, and I rose to his interest. It was not flirtation. If Bridie had said, Lisbet, you are flirting with him! I would have denied it, perhaps joked that what I was doing with Mr Macarthur was nothing more than rehearsal for when another more eligible suitor might make his way to the Bridgerule vicarage. That would not have been untrue, but it was not the whole story.
I did not see it then, but I can see it now: I was not watching him, but myself. Aspects of myself that had never revealed themselves were becoming visible to me, and the discovery was exhilarating.
The boldest moment came—my memory is as clear as if someone had made an engraving of it—the afternoon before Midsummer Night. Mr Macarthur and Captain Moriarty had paid us a visit and we sat in the parlour arranging to meet the following afternoon to stroll down to the village, where the people would have their bonfire and dancing. We, of course, being gentlemen and ladies, would not dance by the light of the bonfire, would not grow rowdy as the village folk would, red in the face and shining with the freedom of Midsummer Night, when all rules were suspended. But we would marvel at the way the fire blazed and crackled, how wildly the sparks flew when Axtens the blacksmith threw on another great piece of wood, how everything familiar was made strange by the night. And mark how, in pairs, figures made obscure by the firelight slipped away together.
Our visitors were leaving, there was a bustle of departure: Mr Moriarty and Bridie on the gravel outside, Mrs Kingdon going down the steps to join them, Mr Kingdon upstairs fetching a book he had promised to lend Mr Macarthur, and myself just outside the front doorway. Mr Macarthur had lingered in the drawing room and when I looked back there he was, framed by the two doorways so that the hallway was a tube of empty air along which we looked at each other. The air between us, that narrow line of sight, joined us in a kind of intimacy. At one end of that tube was the young woman who wondered how it would be to feel a man between her legs, and at the other a young man whose gaze was full of a pressing urgency of attention.
We had but seconds, and he knew how to use them. He put his hand on his heart with a delicate movement, a caress of himself, fingers spread on his coat, and tilted his head questioningly, submissively, yearningly. How much a person can say by nothing more than a tilt of the head!
That picture—lasting a second, no longer—entirely disarmed canny Elizabeth Veale. As I would not for an instant have believed words, I believed that hand on heart and the whimsical appeal of that tilted head.
Then Mr Kingdon came down the stairs, Mrs Kingdon looked back towards me, Mr Macarthur put his hat on, and Miss Veale sailed out ahead of him down the steps and out into an afternoon that, all at once, seemed so lovely as to make my heart race.
TREMULOUS AND STRANGE
Midsummer Night, myself and Mr Macarthur. Mud thick around our boots as we walked down towards the field where the bonfire illuminated the trees in strange upside-down ways. Bridie and Captain Moriarty were ahead of us, not glancing back, and Mr and Mrs Kingdon were taking the longer way by the road. And there was Mr Macarthur’s strong hand, steadying me around my waist as I got over the stile, and his cheek close to mine.
– A particularly tricky stile, he said. I have heard of folk taking this stile much too lightly, Miss Veale, and regretting it—here, take my hand, I beg you!
Of course the stile was no better or worse than any other. Bridie and I had got over it without the slightest difficulty a hundred times. But I put my hand in his, and what with the darkness, and the unaccustomed and needless assistance, I somehow lost my balance, so that I briefly leaned, almost fell, against him. He did not let go of my hand, but led me along beside the hedge: not the quickest way towards the bonfire, in fact hardly a way to the bonfire at all, but I followed.
The darkness was full of rich complicated smells of vegetation under dew and shivers of breeze: underhand, low-to-the-ground, so different from day’s frank gusts. The night was like a creature that lay hidden until, when humans slept, it lived its private life, shifting and breathing in subtle currents of cool air now from this side, now that, whispering among the leaves and drawing me into its secrets.
COLOSSUS
It was curiosity, as much as anything, that made me let events take their course. Curiosity—and, of course, his flattery. Oh, his flattery. And my vanity, in believing.
– Sweet, he murmured. Sweet mouth!
I heard the catch in his voice, felt his fingers trembling as he touched my cheek, traced the shape of my lips.