Jeal A Marriage of Convenience

Main
ISBN: 978-0-571-30396-0
Verlag: Faber & Faber
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 408 Seiten

'A majestic Victorian tale... Wealthy lawyer Esmond, discarded illegitimate son of a peer, has pinched his way to the top of his profession, while his handsome, debt-ridden cavalry officer brother Clinton has inherited the title and the ancestral home. Beautiful actress Theresa, a widow, a fierce free spirit with a sinewy wit, is the woman both will love.' Kirkus Reviews 'It is rare in this field to meet the realities of passion, its shifts and treacheries; when this combines with rich historical details, including recondite legal and financial ones, the result is outstanding.' Observer 'The novel does imperatively make you want to know what happens next. Three cheers for narrative.' New Statesman 'A superb novelistic situation, starkly worked out as it would be in real life... I was intensely concerned for the fortunes of these people.' Elizabeth Jenkins, Kaleidoscope (BBC)

Tim Jeal is an acclaimed novelist and biographer, whose Stanley: The Impossible Life of Africa's Greatest Explorer was published by Faber in 2007 and was a BBC Radio Four 'Book of the Week'. Stanley was named Sunday Times Biography of the Year, and, in the US, won the National Book Critics' Circle Award in Biography for 2007. Tim's memoir Swimming with my Father was published by Faber in 2004 and was also a BBC Radio Four 'Book of the Week' and was shortlisted for the PEN Ackerley Prize for autobiography. In September 2011 Faber will publish Explorers of the Nile: The Triumph and Tragedy of a Great Victorian Adventure, which, thanks to much original research, will shed fascinating new light on the 'Search for the Nile' and its colonial consequences. In 1973 Tim Jeal's Livingstone (1973) was selected as a 'Notable Book of the Year' by the New York Times Book Review and one of the 'Best and Brightest of the Year' by the Washington Post Book World.Livingstone formed the basis for a BBC TV documentary and a film for the Discovery Channel. It has never been out of print. Nor has Tim Jeal's Baden-Powell (1989), which was a 'Notable Book of the Year', and was chosen by Channel 4 for its 'Secret Lives' strand. In 1975 Tim was awarded the John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Jeal, Tim

Leseproben

‘To be illegitimate is a misfortune. To be illegitimate and the elder son of a dead peer is something worse, because nobody’s going to have to be a genius to work out why you’re plain Mr Danvers and not my Lord Ardmore like your father before you.’

This much at least Esmond Danvers would sometimes volunteer to friends about his origins. Occasionally he might also remark, in the same ruefully ironic tone, that he was only born out of wedlock because his mother’s divorce proceedings went on longer than expected and delayed her remarriage to his father by a small matter of two months. Anybody hearing him, who also happened to know that his younger brother, now serving in the cavalry, had inherited the Ardmore title and everything else in the family worth inheriting, would inevitably have been impressed by the apparent lack of resentment in his voice. But that was only to be expected in a man, whose two decades in the city might have served as a useful text for a sermon on self-help.

From solicitor’s articled clerk, Esmond had progressed in five years to a partnership in a practice dealing mainly in company law. An invitation to join the board of a small private bank had followed; and because a number of the largest borrowers were bill brokers, he had learned a lot about the discount market. Attracted by the large sums to be made discounting bills of exchange in a rapidly expanding market, he had ventured everything on winning a substantial slice of this lucrative field. Nine years later, at forty, he had found himself sole proprietor of one of the three most successful discount houses in the city.

Among men of business, who measured strength of character by a man’s capacity for hard work, Esmond’s ruthless exclusion of most human pleasures in pursuit of his financial aims had made him seem a man of iron. And though some were perfectly aware that the men who strove hardest to seem invulnerable were often those with the worst weaknesses to hide, very few of Esmond’s associates would have thought this in any way applicable to him. Esmond himself knew very well that boyhood rejection by his father had played an important part in his early determination to prove himself; but this, he considered, had long since ceased to have any relevance; especially after his father’s death, a decade ago.

Every now and then he wondered whether something obscurer than the logic he believed he lived by, had been responsible for his avoidance of close relationships until his fortieth year—until his success and wealth had become incontestable. Had he really denied himself so much for so long, just because it had been logical to establish an unassailable position in the city before allowing competition from other distracting influences? Perhaps—and this thought had crossed his mind once or twice, only to be swiftly dismissed—perhaps he had needed to succeed before he could believe himself worth loving; had needed to feel invincible before he could once more risk dependence and possible rebuff. Far better to claim love as the just reward of success rather than sue for it humbly from a position of weakness. He wasted little time on such thoughts, preferring facts to theories; and the facts of his own life seemed straightforward: at forty, he had swept every obstacle aside and made a fortune; the time had come to fall in love, marry and have children. Time had inevitably become more important than it had been. When Esmond finally made up his mind that he had found the perfect woman, he very soon convinced himself that ultimate failure with her would destroy him. Success had become more than a habit to him.

A year before, if told that he would fall in love with an actress, and worse still a widow with a young daughter, he would have thought the prediction laughably improbable. Indeed to start with he had tried to persuade himself that his liaison with Theresa Simmonds was just another of the clandestine affairs that had supplied his wants in the past; but when she had refused to let him set her up in a house, the intensity of his fears that she might be seeing other men had shattered any pretence of limited involvement. Without any claims on her and unable to see her except when she chose, he was wretched enough to consider proposing marriage, but his caution would not allow that until he knew more about her. Instead he had asked her to live with him in his own home. She had refused on the grounds that it would ruin his social existence and harm his business, but he sensed that the sacrifice he had been prepared to make had won him a new respect. In fact, mixed in with genuine nobility of motive, there had been an element of calculation on his side. Believing that his love was greater than hers, he had concluded that the surest way to cement their relationship was to make the comfortable life his money made possible indispensable to her. This could only happen if she lived with him. Certain that his true strength lay, not in passionate avowals but in maturer virtues—understanding, dependability and loyalty—Esmond made himself her rock to cling to. At times this role made him feel like an athlete in a straitjacket but calm persistence finally overcame her scruples about living with him.

Two months after this first victory Esmond felt sure enough of himself to propose marriage. She had avoided a decision by promising an answer in three months time if his feelings were still the same. Knowing Theresa too well to suppose he could force her hand, Esmond had accepted this. Though disappointed, he knew that if he showed no signs of reproach but continued to behave with undemanding devotion, she would find it very hard to refuse him. By making him wait, she would realise that she had given him cause to hope.

*

On a warm August evening, with almost the whole three months still to run before he could expect her final answer, Esmond was less optimistic than usual. Theresa had been late back from the theatre, and this always made him uneasy. The fact that other men desired her, both deepened his pride in possession and disturbed him—just as he was disturbed and inflamed by her physical closeness to the leading man on stage. The differences between her stage self and her real self fascinated him. He loved the contrast between her feminine gentleness and the toughness it concealed. Because she had often lived from hand to mouth, and knew what it was like to plunge from luxury into want, she lived intensely for the moment—an irresistible trait to a man who for years had mortgaged the present to the future.

When Theresa entered the room where he was sitting, Esmond wanted to ask what had delayed her, but as usual he suppressed the urge. Having frequently expressed his absolute trust in her, he did not intend to spoil this by seeming suspicious. In fact the pleasure of seeing her immediately banished the irritation he had felt while waiting. As she crossed the room, the lamplight kindled copper glints in her hair and lent her face a misty softness.

‘How was it?’ he murmured.

She kicked off her shoes and sank down on a low sofa. ‘Another audience like that and I’ll run screaming through the auditorium.’

The exaggerated pathos of her expression made him smile.

‘You musn’t let me miss that.’

‘You mean it might make you come near the place?’ She laughed in the low slightly husky tone he loved and then looked at him intently: ‘Why don’t you come any more? You know I like talking to you between the acts.’

‘I feel out of place backstage.’

‘You could sit in front and only come behind in the intervals.’

She took the combs from her hair and let it fall loosely to her shoulders. Esmond turned away and glimpsed himself in the mirror above the console table near the door. A dignified rather solemn man with greying hair and impeccably tailored clothes stared back at him. In general Esmond did his best to avoid conversations about Theresa’s career. Before she accepted him, he thought it would be most unwise to admit that he would expect her to give up the stage after marriage. He met her green enquiring eyes for a moment; she was waiting for him to answer.

‘It’s not so much where I sit,’ he began slowly, ‘I suppose I don’t like to see you in that part.’ A discussion of the play and her performance seemed safer than a dissection of his attitudes to the theatre.

‘Peg isn’t virtuous enough?’ she asked with a faint hint of ridicule.

‘You’re not her, that’s all.’

‘I do try, you know.’

‘I meant it as a compliment. I didn’t mean that you don’t play the part well … it’s just that for me, knowing you …’ He broke off, seeing how unconvinced she looked. She motioned him to sit next to her. As Esmond obeyed he tried to divert his attention from the soft rise of her breasts under the lace chemisette in the yoke of her dress. Close to, she looked pale and rather tired. She might joke about the strains of her profession, but they were real enough. Saturated with tenderness, he longed to say aloud what he so often thought: why work and tire yourself when you can depend on me for everything? But that was what she refused to do; neither letting him buy her clothes nor any of her daughter’s necessities.

‘Why not be honest?’ she said coaxingly. ‘It’s nothing to do with the play. You don’t like the theatre or the people.’

‘Nothing of the sort. I’m an intruder there. Anyway that’s how I feel; and when I’m on edge, I can’t help giving a false impression. I know they think I’m superior … even contemptuous.’ He paused, aware of the close scrutiny of...