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“Go on, then,” she tells you, her eyes as bright as coins and certain you won’t do it.
You don’t even know how it came up. Since you took Sylvia back, you have shared her bed, but there could be a chasm between the two of you, for the way you turn your back on her. It is a silent sort of defiance, the only kind you’ve ever been any good at.
She’d made her case very well. Think of Michael, she’d said, straight backed and as imperious as a Roman statue. For the whiteness of her skin and the calmness of her gaze, she could be formed of marble, and you would never know. Only the soft rise and fall of her chest, and the occasional flickering smile that the Serpent in Eden must have worn, you’re sure. But does that make you Eve, or the tree?
Do as you will, Christopher. Keep the Walnop girl on the side. But for the love of God, if you care for our son at all, do not threaten the legitimacy of his claim. Whether he will be the master of Groby is his decision alone. You cannot make it for him.
Honour prevented you from making Valentine your mistress. While you are fully aware your code is antiquated bordering on obsolete, if anyone in the world deserves honour from you, it is Valentine. You’d told her you were returning to Sylvia, after the party with your friends; one last breath of freedom before the yoke descended once more. Her youth had shown, in that moment: she had wept and then screamed, begging you to change your mind. But you had been resolute then and you remain resolute now: Michael is the most important thing in the world. And if you must live with your wife as though she loves you, then so be it.
Sylvia, for her part, seems to be making an attempt to take an interest in your doings. It is not the true, keen interest that Valentine showed, but something born of a deeper desire, a subterranean inclination to make this marriage work. Or it could just be another of her games: there are many of them, some subtle and some less so, and you would be a fool to think Sylvia can change completely.
Sylvia is a product of her upbringing. Spoiled and denied by turns, she hungers for all the things she cannot have. In another life she might have been a queen or an empress; you like to think that, if Valentine and the suffragettes have their way, women like Sylvia might someday become prime minister. All that analytical thinking and idealistic fervour, sharpness and sweetness by turns: in frustration and fury, all her thwarted brilliance has turned inward. It is like caging a wild, ferociously intelligent animal and then blaming the poor creature when the confinement turns it wicked.
You see everything, now. The war has cleared your eyes and haunts your dreams; you are grateful for one and tormented by the other. It is a rare night that you do not wake with the rattle of shells in your ears and darkness falling across your eyes.
The change begins one of those nights. The nightmare is more violent than usual, and you are startled awake by a pair of small hands on your chest, pressing you down. “Wake, Christopher,” Sylvia entreats. “The war is over. You are safe.”
“I know,” you reply but you don’t, not truly. Not with the panic still racing through your veins and the horrors firmly embedded in your mind. You swipe with your sleeve at the shameful tears that linger yet, but Sylvia is there with a handkerchief and blessed silence, gently blotting at your cheeks.
“Do you wish to talk of it?” she asks quietly. You want to reply, but your throat is locked tight. You shake your head, foolishly considering the dark, but Sylvia comprehends. Her hand is still on your cheek. “Very well,” she says, and lays back down. For a long while, or so it seems, there is nothing but quiet and the raggedness of your breathing, fading slowly into the silence.
“Christopher?” Sylvia asks, and you shift onto your side, facing her.
“Yes?”
“I’m thinking of doing something foolish,” she says, and you stiffen. You can’t help but think, here we go again. She’s going to run away with some bloody fool and the whole wretched parade will begin again.
“I would advise against it,” you reply. She makes a soft noise of frustration.
“You don’t even know what I’m speaking of,” she retorts.
“I can guess.” Something of your suspicions must make their way into your voice. It is odd, lying beside someone in the dark. A vast and terrible intimacy, and yet a wall between you.
“I suppose you think I’m considering running off with another imbecile like Potty and shaming you before the whole country.” She is angry, you can tell from the sharpness of her tone and the edge to her words.
“I make a point of not attempting to predict your actions, Sylvia. I find them too changeable and contrary to even guess at your motives.”
“And I make a point of trying to make this wretched marriage work, but you continue to hold the mistakes of the past against me.” You roll onto your back, and feel more than see her prop herself up on one elbow, looking down at you.
“This marriage is in name only, as well you know. We are here for the sake of Michael alone.”
“Then why do we continue to share a bed?” she asks, and she has you stumped. Why indeed have you not sought out a bedroom of your own?
“Appearances,” you bite back, and she huffs in raw exasperation.
“Lie to me if you will, Christopher,” she snaps. “But for heaven’s sake don’t lie to yourself.”
Once, she would have rolled over and given you her back to stare at (or ignore) for the rest of the night. Once she might have thrown something valuable or even stormed out of the room to sleep on a sofa somewhere. And over breakfast the next morning she would be vicious and vituperative, savaging you with tiny little words like knives fresh from a furnace.
But there has been a war and a child and a lover and an (almost) mistress since then, not to mention the ragged stump of a tree, and all you know of Sylvia has changed.
She is quick beneath the sheets. She straddles you, caging your hips with her thighs, and for a moment you can only blink in astonishment. There are layers of cloth and a world of betrayal between you and your wife, but there is a world of possibility, too. “Christopher,” she murmurs, in that magnificent voice you’ve never been able to forget, not even in the trenches, and kisses you. Not like she usually kisses, all wildness and possession, but with a gentleness you’d forgotten she possesses. When Michael was born she had held him for hours on end, as though afraid to let go. Touching his round little cheeks and tiny lips, pressing butterfly kisses to the top of his head. A tenderness like wildfire, and just as consuming.
It is only a moment’s worth of a kiss and you are pushing her away. You lock your hands around her upper arms and shove, hard, for an instant forgetting she is only a slight woman. You use far more force than necessary but it is for your sake infinitely more than hers. For you are within a hairsbreadth of breaking, of sinking into the terrible splendour of her touch and the rising tide of desire.
“Christopher! You’re hurting me.” Her voice breaks through the roar in your ears, and you release her as though she is made of flame. Perhaps she is, in a way, or perhaps the flames are yours.
“Sylvia. Forgive me.” She makes a small noise like a wounded animal, and you feel a wretch.
“No. Forgive me. I should not have.” There is a rustling, and she is peeling back the sheets, the mattress springing up a little as she rises. “I won’t force myself on you again. I’ll find somewhere else to sleep.”
Alone again, and you find you don’t like it at all.
You enter Sylvia’s dressing room. From the dark shadows under her eyes and the hard line of her lips, she didn’t get a wink more sleep last night. For that matter, neither did you. You stared at the ceiling for hours and contemplated going to visit Michael in Yorkshire. But running away solves no problems. Hasn’t Sylvia taught you that by now?
She is still in her nightgown, and blue-black fingerprints have begun to bloom on her upper arms. Her gaze in the mirror is steady as she pulls a brush through her tangled hair.
“Good morning, Christopher,” she says, proper down to a fault, and you perch gingerly on the sofa.
“Good morning, Sylvia.” You hesitate for a moment. “I owe you an –”
“You owe me nothing,” she replies sharply. “You want a marriage in name only. I shouldn’t have tried to change your mind. Christopher, what are you –”
You are on your feet, sweeping her into your arms and holding her tight against your chest. Ever were you gentle with Sylvia, even knowing her capacity for wantonness, but the world has shifted into an unfamiliar axis and you crush your mouth to hers. Her small hands flutter only a moment before she is fitting them to your cheeks and framing your face with her fingers.
“Christopher, Christopher,” she is saying as you trail kisses down her throat, sinking her hand into your hair and twisting to angle your head up, to press her mouth against yours. “You beautiful fool. Of all the times –”
“I should let you dress,” you agree, but you don’t want to let her go. Sylvia smiles, a thin blade of a thing, almost too quick and sharp to catch.
“You should,” she says. “I’ll be out shortly.”
True to her word, she is out in the hall in half an hour. But she is dressed to go out rather than in a house dress; she must have eaten breakfast in her rooms.
“You’re going out,” you state. Sylvia nods.
“I have an appointment,” she says, and you arch an eyebrow.
“With whom, may I ask?” Sylvia’s eyes narrow.
“None of your concern,” she replies, gathering up her coat and her gloves. You sigh, and prepare yourself for what needs to be said.
“Sylvia. We have been through this before. I don’t require you to be honest with me, but I do require your fidelity.”
“For the love of God, Christopher!” Sylvia explodes, but as you watch, she makes a visible effort to calm herself. “I have an appointment,” she enunciates clearly. “With a doctor who specialises in psychoanalysis. I have been attempting to attend to the faults in my character. He is… very helpful.”
“Psychoanalysis,” you repeat. “Sylvia, you can’t imagine that truly works.” Sylvia’s face falls, and she looks at the floor.
“Whether it does or not, I have no choice. Christopher, I do not wish to live like this!” she exclaims. “Never knowing whether I will be painfully exuberant or violently angry or miserably unhappy. Do you think it is easy for me? That I want to be at best half mad and at worst, completely deranged?”
You have never thought to think of how Sylvia feels about the violence of her moods.
“Surely you have noticed some improvement?” Sylvia says, and there is a sudden terrible, beseeching look in her eyes. Please tell me I’m better, it seems to say. And you cannot honestly deny her. Have you not been wondering where her fits of rage have gone, why the frenzied, wild nights of partying into the dawn have vanished?
“You seem… calmer,” you reply finally. “More stable. More…” Yet you cannot bring yourself to speak the words.
“More what?” she asks warily, and you swallow the lump in your throat where the words have got stuck.
“More. Ah. Affectionate?” The word emerges with an upward inflection on the last syllable, and Sylvia is smiling.
“Is that a question?” she asks, and puts a hand on your arm. You eye the innocuous looking limb as though it is a snake.
“No. A statement.” Sylvia withdraws her hand, but you are aware you will feel its phantom presence for hours after. It is the very depth of foolishness, to indulge in these feelings. Yet you are finding more and more than you have no choice.
“Then thank you,” your wife says soberly. “I will see you this evening, for dinner?” You nod, and gracefully Sylvia steps out into the street.
Now that you know the truth of what she has been trying to do, you see a thousand little changes to her behaviour. Clothes folded tidily instead of strewn on the floor. She sleeps the night through instead of tossing and turning or drinking herself into unconsciousness. The only broken crockery is broken by accident, not flung to the floor in a fit of rage or sheer perverseness. There is still a thread of wildness to Sylvia, one you suspect takes more than this dubious psychoanalysis, but she is tempered, there is no doubt about that.
You have a sneaking suspicion she is doing it as much for you as for herself.
Absently, you wonder what this man she is going to see would have to say about your nightmares.
Sylvia is back before lunchtime. More than anything, the time that she returns convinces you that she was not out at an illicit assignation. She was a night-time lover, before. And she looks… lightened, somehow, relieved, like a thread of the poison that runs through her has been alleviated.
Sylvia calm is a Sylvia you have very little experience with.
Night falls, and you’re in your study. You don’t peruse encyclopedias anymore for mistakes; your post in the war ruined any appreciation you ever had for tedious minutiae. But you can’t bear the thought of returning to your marriage bed.
It is almost midnight, when you stand and shuffle off to your rooms. Your knees and hips ache from too long in the same position, but it is an ache that eases with movement. You are not so old yet that the pain has settled that deep into your bones.
You thought that waiting so long would mean that Sylvia would be asleep. She is not. She is awake, and she is steaming mad.
“It is a relief to see your habit of avoiding your wife has not alleviated with time,” she clips out. “I was concerned you might have had a screw or too knocked loose when that shell went off, and that you might come and talk to me like a mature adult rather than skulk in your study and avoid me.”
“I was not… avoiding you,” you say, aware it is an outright lie. “But even if I was, after your behaviour since before we wed – and prior to it, for that matter – you might consider that I have just cause to be wary about you.”
Sylvia huffs, and swings her legs out of bed. She stalks across the room, but turns back before she’s made it more than ten paces, her arms folded across her chest, utterly infuriated.
“More chalking up my mistakes to me,” she replies bitterly. “What will it take for you to allow the past to be the past? How many more times must you remind me before you have had enough? By God, if you wish to spank me for my transgressions like a naughty schoolgirl, you need only say the word.”
At the utterly absurd comment, your head flies up, and you’re staring at her like you’ve never seen her before. And she notices. The fight drains out of her like water through a sieve. You can’t think why.
“Is that what you want? To punish me?” she asks sharply. You shake your head wildly.
“Sylvia – of course not –” But she’s always been able to read you better than you can yourself. She is quiet for a moment; all you can hear is the thumping in your ears.
“Maybe you should,” she says at last.
“What?” you snap. “You can’t be serious.” But she is nodding.
“Just the thing, to get all that anger and resentment out of that enormous brain of yours. Start clean, with a fresh slate.” She nods authoritatively, as if that has decided it. “Best to get on with it, then.”
And that, somehow, is how you got to here; your wife standing several feet away from you, daring you with every inch of her body, from her folded arms to her cocked hip and insouciant expression.
“Go on, then,” she tells you, her eyes as bright as coins and certain you won’t do it.
“Sylvia –” you begin, raising a hand warningly, as much to curtain any further discussion of it as to deny to yourself the fact that you don’t find it completely horrifying.
“Christopher,” she retorts. “We cannot continue as I am. Vent your frustrations.”
“My frustrations?” you explode. “Sylvia, for the love of God. You – you… want me to do this.” There’s no denying it now: her cheeks are flushed and her breathing is noticeably sharp and fast, even from this distance.
“I want you to stop sulking,” she huffs, but you’re not falling for the ruse; you know what desire looks like on Sylvia.
“Come here, woman,” you say, and you don’t intend it as a growl, but it rumbles out of you all the same. You catch her by the wrist, drag her closer, suddenly aware of the inequality of your strengths, how you could bend her, break her, if you chose. Sylvia resists.
“No! I didn’t mean it!” she protests. You can’t tell whether she means it, and then you realise you don’t care.
“No,” you murmur, and move backwards until the backs of your knees hit the bed, and you drop down onto it, pulling her with you. She fights, but only a little, not enough to really mean it. “Come on, Sylvia,” you repeat, and finally you have her positioned over your lap, shoving a pillow under her face to protect her neck. You have your wife over your knee like a misbehaving schoolgirl, and it shouldn’t make your heart race but oh, the thunder of it.
“You wouldn’t dare,” Sylvia says, but you can feel her trembling. “I know you, Christopher. You’re a gentleman. A man of honour. You wouldn’t –”
You bring your hand down on her swiftly, and she gasps. “Beast,” she says, and it lights up in like your blood like flame set to gunpowder; you strike her again, the soft flesh under your hand quivering with the stroke.
“Be silent,” you mutter. “Or I’ll tan your hide until you can’t walk.” The words are barely audible – you can’t bring yourself to say them any louder – but Sylvia hears regardless. She laughs, sharp like the crack of a whip. Like the crack of your palm on her skin.
“You can’t even say it, can you,” she taunts, and anyone listening would think she wasn’t in her current position, but for the sounds of flesh striking flesh, the fine tremble in her voice that warms your blood. “Christopher, more. You can hit it but you can’t say it?”
“Christ, Sylvia,” you snap, soothing your hand over the cotton of her chemise before swatting again. “It’s your – your –”
“Arse, Christopher,” she hisses, and you hit her twice as hard just for that alone. You bend your head forward.
“Is that what you want?” you rasp in her ear, and she’s trembling like a leaf in a gale, she’s purgatory and Elysium in one warped package, and you think you might be in love with her. You might never have stopped being in love with her. “You want me to be a brute?” You puncture each word with a blow, and she’s squirming on your lap but not like she wants to get away.
“Yes,” she hisses. “I want you to be a brute, damn it.”
It rings through you like a bell, and you hadn’t realised until this moment how bloody angry you are at her. You could be living with Valentine now, man and wife, if not for this Catholic bitch who convinced you with nothing more than her voice and her bedroom eyes to make love on a train. Who ruined your life.
You hit her again, and you’re not sure who you hate more, Sylvia or yourself. You rain the blows down on her until you lose track, aware of little more than her firm backside against your hand, the curve of her over your waist, the fingers of one hand clinging to your knee in a vice grip and her face buried in the pillow. It’s the most physical thing you’ve ever done with Sylvia, lovemaking be damned. This has your shirt sticking to your back and your skin buzzing, and it’s immersive, the rhythm of it, the pleasing thrum of impact that shudders up your arm. You can almost forget you’re striking a person, but for the sound. You can almost forget that Sylvia is there at all.
You’re so deep in your head that you only barely notice when it changes. When Sylvia’s cries become suddenly distressed and she twists under your hands, fighting your grip. You hit her once more, already moving your arm into the blow even as you perceive her anguish, and Sylvia outright howls.
“No,” she whimpers, the word little more than a sob.
You stop immediately, beyond appalled. “Sylvia,” you begin, trying to manoeuvre her so you can haul her into your arms, properly but she struggles. She looks up at your, tears streaking down her face.
“Please don’t stop, Christopher,” she begs, as open as you’ve ever seen her. “Please don’t.”
How are you meant to resist that?
You strike her harder now, every blow falling only seconds from the first. Sylvia’s sobs become louder and it tears at your soul even as it pleases some deep, animalistic part of you that never imagined such things are possible. But you are more man than animal and when Sylvia utters a bitten back scream into the pillow, you cannot continue.
“Sylvia,” you murmur, pulling her up into your arms, and this time she doesn’t fight. She is crying without restraint, tears falling down her cheeks and ugly hiccupping sobs coming from deep in her throat. The guilt of it threatens to rise up the back of your throat and choke you into death. “Come here, darling.”
Sylvia makes a soft noise in her throat and buries her face in your neck, the heat of her tears burning your skin. You rock her through the worst of it until she’s merely trembling, like a thousand volts have run through her skin. When she’s almost calm again, you break the fragile silence.
“I’m so sorry,” you tell her, your voice shaking. “Sylvia. I don’t know why I did it. I’m so sorry.” Sylvia sniffs.
“Christopher,” she says, her voice faint but with that familiar arch note that never fails to frustrate you, “Thank you.”
You blink. You were expecting screams and recriminations and possibly even threats of divorce, but not that. “But I hurt you,” you say dazedly. “I hurt you so much.” But Sylvia is shaking her head.
“You did what I asked,” she replies, and snuggles her head back into the crook of your neck. “Dear, foolish man.” You choke out a laugh, and Sylvia charitably ignores how it sounds slightly wet, like you’re holding back tears yourself.
Now that the crisis is over, you find the words sticking in your throat in that same old way you are so accustomed to. But Sylvia doesn’t seem to notice. She strips you out of your clothes almost fondly – unfastening your tie, untying the laces of your shoes, slipping each individual button from its hole before easing your shirt over your shoulders.
You’ve never seen her so at ease.
When you climb into bed beside her at last, she rolls towards you immediately. You stiffen a little in alarm at her approach, but all she does is wrap her arms around you and fall asleep. You’re not surprised. You’re exhausted, and you weren’t the one being struck until tears.
It takes longer for you to fall asleep. Your wife is in your arms, asleep with the innocence of a child, curled against you like a shield. And you? You lie on your back, Sylvia’s head on your chest, with one of your hands resting almost possessively against the welts starting to rise on her skin.
Things will be different now, you are sure.
But then, you’ve been sure before.