He got up and returned to the fire, relit his pipe.
She got up, began clearing the table, and said casually, ‘He laughed then.’
‘Who laughed?’
‘Mr Blair.’
‘Mr Blair?’
‘He knows all about your following that woman about. I told him straight out how worried I was about you, and he laughed again.’
‘Laughed again?’
She was suddenly so close to him that he drew back as the words came from between her teeth. ‘I only said that I thought you would be left with an empty chapel. It was horrible, the way he smiled at me and said that the Archbishop of Canterbury had once voted for private buggery in the House of Lords, but it did not follow that the church had fallen. “Nor will your brother’s chapel empty,” he said.’
‘Margiad!’
‘Buggery,’ she shouted in his face. ‘That’s the world, Mervyn, the world.’
He followed her to the door. ‘You are upset,’ he said, ‘I’m sorry, Margiad, I’m …’
‘Leave me alone,’ she said, and banged the door in his face.
He leaned heavily against the closed door; he thought to himself. ‘Perhaps she is right. Perhaps I am going mad.’ And he went upstairs, knocked on her door, and receiving no answer opened it.
‘Margiad! Please speak to me.’
She had gone to bed. ‘Margiad!’
Her finger went to the light switch. ‘Don’t speak to me.’
‘I must,’ and he went and stood over her. ‘I cannot help myself.’
‘Go away.’
But he stood there, speechless, aware only of a feeling of emptiness all about him, and suddenly she turned her face to the wall.
‘Please,’ he said, ‘please.’
‘Go away.’
‘Listen.…’
‘I have,’ she said.
‘Try to understand my feelings,’ he said.
‘I have done my best. Soon I will not be able to leave this house.’
‘I mean no harm to anybody, Margiad’ he said.
She turned over, stared at him. ‘You throw your duty into the gutter,’ and then he sat down on the edge of the bed.
‘Nothing is simple, Margiad, nothing.’
‘People are talking about you.’
‘I don’t hear them.’
‘You’re stupid, blind,’ she said.
She felt his hand on her shoulder, she shrugged it away.
‘The first time I saw her in the chapel,’ he began, and she sat up, suddenly smiled in his face, and said, ‘I expect she’ll marry the Colonel.’
The expression on his face shocked her, and he got up, made as if to speak, and didn’t, then stuttered it slowly out, ‘Colonel? What Colonel, what .…’ stumbled across the room and collapsed in the chair. He went quite limp.
‘Mervyn!’
His head drooped lower still, ‘Oh no, not that, not that.’
In a moment she was stood over him, but he did not see her, and she never realised the blow she had struck.
‘I’m sorry, brother, I am, I am,’ leaning over him, clutching him, ‘Mervyn, Mervyn.’
‘I can’t believe it, I can’t,’ and she could not close her ear to that sudden break in his voice.
She threw her arms round him, held him tight, ‘Mervyn, Mervyn.’
