A Loveless Marriage

Chapter 10: Harriet

The shine of Paris had already started to dim and I saw the place for what it was, a dirty, hurried city that put elegance above comfort.  Maybe my discontentment was because my beloved spouse had quite unreasonably forbidden me to spend another franc on clothing or that he had sulked since we'd gone to that dreadfully modern gallery and I had failed to appreciate the art enough for his liking. Marriage was hard and I had hoped that Paris would be the remedy, that somehow we would be swept away with the romance of it all and find relief from the mundane frustrations of married life.  For a while, it seemed to work and Daniel was warmer to me than he had been for months, but a chill wind had blown and my husband was taciturn once more.

One evening, as I was struggling to choose between two evening gowns that had both started to disappoint me, I threw them down in a temper. I felt so dowdy and provincial surrounded by the sophisticates of Paris and the spousal shopping ban weighed heavily on me. My husband peered over his newspaper and shot me a look of disapproval.

     "What now?" he said sharply.

     "I have nothing fit to be worn," I said.

He leapt to his feet and rescued the evening dresses with a frown, dusting them off and placing them on the bed with care. I wished he'd show as much solicitude to me as he did those gowns.

  "You have plenty of clothes," he said sternly.  "And you are not buying any more."

  "What is the point of coming to Paris and hardly visiting a  couturier?" I said.

   "You've already spent more than we can afford," he said.  "And asked your father for more money too! Do you have any idea how humiliating that was for me?"

My husband's handsome face was taut with anger, I looked into his eyes and my frustration subsided.  I had been a plain girl who had grown into a plain woman, I knew the faults of my face even better than my mother did, and yet here I was married to the most handsome man in Kent. I had been in love with Daniel Mordaunt for as long as I could remember and ignored by him for almost as long. But he couldn't ignore me now I was his wife, try as he might, and if I couldn't get him to stare at me in adoration, I would at least get him to look at me with anger.

   "It's only money," I shrugged.  "And Papa has plenty of that."

  "I don't want to sponge off your father," he said, his grey eyes blazing into mine.  I was the price Daniel paid for my father's fortune and he resented every penny my father flung his way.

  "Well Paris is boring without shopping and you need money to shop," I said.

  "Paris is boring?" he said, shaking his head with disbelief.  " I thought Paris was your dream!"

 "It was never my dream, it was Mary's," I said.

Mary. Her name hung in the silence between us, still casting a shadow on our marriage.  The distant look in his eyes told me that he was reminiscing, I wondered what memory of Mary he was lingering on now as I too reluctantly slipped into thoughts of the past.

       * * *  

The lake was our favourite place to spend a summer's day, Mary loved to sit on the banks to read worthy books and I loved to sit and braid her soft golden hair.  My life had really been quite lonely before she came, I was my parent's only child and my homely face repulsed my mother so she showed very little interest in me.  Mary was beautiful like a wax-doll, doe-eyed and gentle but with a delicious streak of tragedy beneath her surface. I adored her with an intensity that surprised everyone, not least myself.  

The day after he returned from university,  Daniel came strolling by the lake and headed to the jetty that our respective families shared.  The border of our estates split the lake right down the middle and for decades the jetty and boat house had been the site of neighbourly goodwill between us. As I saw his fair-head come into focus, my heart beat faster.  I knew this summer he would no longer see me as a girl, but as the woman I had become.