Tales of Disturbance

The Ruin

We are staying overnight with Lord Aubrey, one of Henry's friends from Cambridge. We arrived here last night, so I couldn't see much. But this morning all was light and beauty, a beach, and an ocean outside that seemed to be made of ink and stars.

Aubrey showed us the way down this morning himself, which I thought was considerate of him. He wore a long coat like some Romantic hero, and underneath his tie and tweed jacket didn't match. He walked with some urgency, his deep prints darking the sand ahead of us, his coat open and flapping in the wind. Henry stared nonchalantly out to sea and pretended not to notice his mood. 

He walked ahead of us like this for some time and I became uncomfortable. It crossed my mind that Aubrey wanted to avoid conversation with us altogether which I thought was strange. Why offer to give us a tour if he did not wish to talk? He was normally so buoyant. 

I don't like to stereotype but this sort, in my experience, is usually so full of himself. His own high-importance, offices, flat in Parliament Square, family history, that kind of thing. Eagerly told tales of coming over with William the Conqueror. 

Walking along the beach, the sun on our faces, I felt uncomfortable. We were his guests after all, and I wanted to be friendly and let him know how much I appreciated his hospitality. I left Henry in his blank, faraway state and hurried to catch up with the Aristocrat powering over the sand.

'Henry tells me' I said, trying to catch my breath, 'that you have two boys away at school?'

He didn't slow down, or even look at me.

'You have been correctly informed'

I was still practically running to catch up with him.

'Wonderful place.' I rejoined. 'My father went there. Praised it to the skies. Do your boys come home often?'

'No.'

He said nothing else, and there was only the crashing of the wind the swis of the wind and the squawking of gulls dipping headlong over the waves. 

Suddenly his sharp voice came again and he said:

'Would you like to see the Norman chapel, Miss Alliance?'

I assented, too eagerly probably. Smilingly I skipped after him as he drove the pace. The wind started picking up then. The sea whipped up, a frenzied, thousand shades of blue. I said something to that effect when he said suddenly,

'Are you a spiritual person, Miss Alliance?'

I didn't know how to reply to this, so I looked out to sea and stammered 'I –well...Do you mean - church and such?'

'Spirituality can take many forms, can it not? But no. I think you are not Spiritual' he said, as if to himself, as though disappointed. 

'Some people are simply not' 

This was true, but I took offense at his confidence. What gave him this certainty? He barely knew me.

 He continued, 

'Though I often wonder how one survives  this life without it.'

I did not know what to say to this - what response was required of me? 

His tone was so strange. As if he knew.

'Indeed' I ventured. 'I think it must help. A great deal with - things. Something larger than ourselves to put our trust in.' 

I found myself looking down at my feet on the sand as I said this. I was wearing the wrong shoes. Actually, I realized that everything I was wearing was wrong. Everything too gaudy or not in season. Lord Aubrey could see right through me. 

I would never pass for an Aristocrat or even an intellectual. It was abundantly obvious that my roots were in Wigan, that my father had been abjectly poor; working class; a miner to be exact; a man who crawled though the black underworld  breathing in the dust that would eventually corrupt his lungs and kill him as he struggled home one fateful Tuesday on his bicycle, just to put bread on the table for his family. Yes, my entire life was a lie; my whole existence. Even Henry didn't know. I had schemed my way up society's slippery, core- rotten ladder- through marriage. I had lied through my teeth. 'My father went to Raleigh'. What a joke.

'Indeed' he said finally. 'If one ever stopped to think about it, which one rarely does, we need spirituality because we are such a danger to ourselves. Who can survive the perils of their own ineptness for example? Their own incompetence and flaws and inadequacies and prejudice and insufficiencies? Their own willful blindness to what really matters in life?'

I was at a complete loss by now, as to what to say. It was all so strange. I had never been spoken to like this in my life! 

'Who' he went on, 'can survive, their own endless capacity for deceit and self deceit and selfishness and folly and manipulation? Or face up to their inane tendency inflate their own imperfect understanding to hurt or harm or deceive others? Their blind blatant incapacity to tell something as simple as the truth. The truth is simple Miss Alliance, don't you agree? Yet, sadly, people do not tell it often.'

I looked around for Henry. I was suddenly quite distressed. My chest seemed to be constricting. My throat closing in. The waves beat their pulse as they broke on the shore.

'What are we without a higher power, Miss Alliance? To forgive us the sins of this life. To lean on? We are nothing.'

He knew. I was certain that he knew. Suddenly I remembered something. 

'I'm - I don't know what you think, sir, but I'm not a journalist.' 

It was a risky thing to say, but so relieved that I had remembered it in the nick of time. I would rather take the consequences of this, than allow him to expose me which I felt he was about to do. He bristled notably. He knew what I was referring to. The residue of a recent scandal that had reached the papers. I couldn't remember what it was - some sort of premature death? An affair? I remembered only the family name and that it had been a scandal of some sort. 

There was no response, but he was distracted which is what I was aiming for. He continued to look vaguely angry and carried on powering forwards as if I hadn't spoken. 

Henry caught up with me. He had a ridiculous anecdote about a lobster that seemed designed only to make me laugh. Our host ignored it though we only saw his back. He seemed to have returned to his silent self. 

Dinner that night was a black tie, candle lit affair as it is in these great places. I wore a green silk dress. I never know what I'm doing at these things. Aubrey was dining out so it was Henry and I at the long, dark table, the oils of ancestors staring down at us and into our souls. After dinner, we took tea in the drawing room by the fire, side by side on a yellow chaise longue - French revolutionesque, Henry informs me, through I didn't know whether he was right.  There was a life size oil painting of Lord Aubrey above the fire. He had that same anger in his eyes. He was wearing the same coat.

'A strange character' I said to Henry. 'Eccentric, certainly. Were you close at Cambridge?'

'Very close. I was devastated when it happened.' 

'Wife left him you know. For his brother. He was heartbroken. Went straight down to the beach and shot himself, poor chap. Two boys still at school. Terrible tragedy, terrible'.