Matthew Chard declined to eat his Christmas dinner at Tarn Edge that year, his responsibilities as squire anchoring him, he explained, to Listonby. Nor could he risk engaging himself for the day after, since Chards and Floods and Wintertons rode traditionally to hounds on Boxing Day, an occupation which did not allow the making of firm promises. But, depending on the vagaries of the hunt, if they did not draw for an afternoon fox, he might ride over at some unspecified hour to take a glass of wine, possibly with a party of friends.
‘Very handsome of him,’ Uncle Joel said dangerously. ‘And he’d best ride in to make his intentions clear, or he’ll ride out again in no doubt at all as to mine.’
And so Caroline spent Christmas day in a sulk, finding no consolation in her over-laden present table when she could have been making herself gracious to Sir Matthew’s tenants in the Great Hall at Listonby, while on the morning after she was on such tenter-hooks that her very presence was painful.
Uncle Joel’s mills, of course, were back at work by then, his engines having shuddered to a halt at ten o’clock on Christmas Eve, to start up again at five o’clock on Boxing day morning, a circumstance which would take Nicholas and Blaize if not my uncle himself, to the sheds. But Aunt Verity had secured their early release, unwilling, perhaps, to remain too long alone with the tormented Caroline, and Blaize was already in the drawing-room when we arrived, looking as if he had never seen the inside of a weaving shed, Nicholas coming soon after, galloping hatless up the drive, his neck-cloth askew, calling out from the hall ‘I’ll only be a minute,’ intending the words, I knew, for me.
‘Must you make such a racket?’ Caroline called after him. ‘And you’ll need more than a minute to make yourself decent. Not that green jacket again, Nicholas—Blaize do tell him, for in the distance it looks like nothing but a workman’s corduroy. Goodness—who is arriving now?’
But it was only Aunt Hannah, delayed by her husband—since Mayor Agbrigg too had been required at the mill today—but well-pleased with herself just the same, having finally prevailed upon him to call a public meeting to invite subscriptions for the concert hall.
‘I have already seen Mr. Outhwaite,’ she told Uncle Joel, mentioning the name of a local architect once closely associated with my father, ‘and we have fixed on a minimum fifteen thousand pounds, to be raised in ten pound shares, do you think, Joel? He has promised to let me have his thoughts on design by next Wednesday at the latest.’
‘Twenty thousand,’ my uncle said, luxuriously at ease by his fireside, the inevitable cigar in his hand. ‘You could do it for less, but if you’re going to do it at all, Hannah, then do it right.’
And as she settled down beside him to discuss her views on the site most likely to be chosen, the suitability of Corinthian pillars, who should be invited to lay the foundation stone, and her husband, having given my mother the latest information regarding Celia, who had not cared to venture out, began to talk quietly to Prudence. I went with Caroline to the sofa on the first-floor landing to await the good pleasure of Sir Matthew Chard and to endure the almost visible agony of her nerves.
He would not, of course, put in an appearance. She had quite made up her mind to it and could offer a dozen excuses. The hunt would be unlikely to pass this way. Having started out in the crisp air of that Boxing day morning, a white haze on the horizon, frost pitting the ground, he would have found himself miles away by noon, too dishevelled and weary to call on a lady, even though that lady would be more than willing to send him home in her carriage and stable his horse most lovingly until he required it. It would be unreasonable to expect him, foolish to regard his absence in any way significant, since, having inherited his great-uncle’s position as Master, he had been obliged—absolutely in honour bound—to attend the hunt.
‘He may even have broken his neck.’ Blaize told her, coming to sit beside us. ‘Have you thought of that? He may be lying in a ditch somewhere, gasping out a dying message to his groom. Go tell my lady that, regrettably, I shall not be dining.’ Now that, dear sister, has a certain style to it you must admit.
But Caroline’s mind was too full, too busy straining for the sounds of hooves and doorbells, for real anger.
‘Nonsense, he is too good a horseman for that—isn’t he?—for he has been riding all his life.’
‘So have we all.’
‘Oh, not like you,’ she said, magnificent even in this absent-minded disdain. ‘Not like you and Nicholas on your showy hacks that can take you to the mill yard and back or to the train. I mean real riding—days in the open country jumping fences—steeplechasing. And when did you and Nicky ever go hunting?’
‘Never.’ Blaize said with an exaggerated shudder. ‘Too hearty for me, I’m afraid.’
‘You mean you haven’t the courage.’
‘No he doesn’t.’ Nicholas said, appearing suddenly behind us in the green jacket Caroline had affected to despise, although there was nothing about his grey brocade waistcoat or the neat white folds of his cravat about which she could complain. ‘He doesn’t mean that at all. He means hunting pink don’t suit him and even if it did he’d see no profit in risking his neck or riding down some poor devil’s crops to catch what? A fox. There’s no money in foxes that I ever heard of.’
And he sat down beside me, not touching me, but his long, hard body making contact, somehow, with mine, a most comfortable homecoming, a sense of naturalness, rightness, that we should be sitting here together.
‘You know nothing about it,’ Caroline said loftily, rising with ease to their combined bait. ‘And why should you? How can one expect it? Blaize will not go hunting because he never does anything at which he knows he cannot excel. But you wish you could. Blaize, even if you won’t admit it. Oh yes, you do—you’d love to be the dashing hero, leaping those hedges and lording it afterwards—hunt balls and steeplechases by moonlight—yes, you would, if you thought you’d be any good at it. Whereas you, Nicky—you’re just not made for such things.’
‘No,’ he said bluntly. ‘I’m not, and I’ll tell you why. I can’t afford the luxury of a broken leg. I’ve got a living to earn, as your father would be the first to tell you, and a man who needs to be in his mill yard at five o’clock every morning can’t work up much enthusiasm for steeple-chasing at midnight. Now, if there was a profit in foxes I’d chase’em all right—in a pink coat if that was the best way to do it—and I’d catch’em too. Except that I’d find an easier way to go about it, or get somebody to invent a machine to do it for me.’
‘If you’ve nothing more intelligent to say than that.’ Caroline informed him, ‘then I’ll thank you to hold your tongue when Matthew comes—he wouldn’t understand.’
‘If he comes.’
‘Oh, he’ll come,’ Blaize said, smiling an altogether false reassurance. ‘And don’t worry about anything Nicky may say to him, for he’ll only think it quaint. And he’ll be too busy, in any case, telling you where they found and when they killed, and how many hounds it took to tear the poor beast apart.’
‘Foxes,’ Caroline said, getting up, ‘are vermin. They kill chickens and—and—other things. If you were a countryman, a gentleman, you’d know. And you, Blaize Barforth if they paid you, you’d tear one apart with your bare hands, unless you happened to have your best jacket on. And you, Nicholas, you’d do it in your evening clothes if the price was right. Not that I care—oh, why must you provoke me—it’s not fair—it’s simply not fair!’
‘I don’t think she much cares for hunting either,’ Blaize said quietly, as, gathering her skirts together, she swept away from us to find her father, doubtless aware that he, too, would be unlikely to hazard his horses, certainly not his person, for pleasure.
‘Then she’d best accustom herself,’ Nicholas replied, ‘for what else is there to Matthew Chard? He hand-rears his game birds and his foxes for half the year and then slaughters them the other half. And when he’s not doing that he is playing whist and faro, which is something else she don’t much ca
re for.’
‘He’s not a bad fellow, Nick.’
‘I never said he was. He’s not our kind that’s all. Put Lawcroft or Tarn Edge in his hands and we’d be in queer street at the end of the month, whereas Caroline—she may look like a duchess, but she’d keep those looms turning, one way or another.’
‘So she would,’ Blaize said, affection warming his perpetually quizzical smile. ‘And she’d wear her coronet too while she was about it. Dear Caroline, she’ll find a good reason for not following the hunt, and if Matthew Chard lives with her for fifty years he’ll never know it’s because she can’t ride. Believe me, once she’s Lady Chard she’ll know more about horses, from the ground than the rest of them put together. And there’ll be no better stirrup-cups served anywhere in the county than at Listonby.’
We went downstairs then, companionably smiling, pausing before the huge, Germanic pine-tree that dominated the hall, its open arms bravely bearing their load of tinsel and candles, a new innovation this, spreading north from London, inspired by our queen’s serious-minded, much-loved Teutonic husband.
‘Can it really be comfortable indoors?’ I wondered, remembering it, aloof and stately, in the garden a week ago.
‘The roots are still there,’ Nicholas said, smiling, but Blaize taking my arm murmured. ‘Let’s ask it. A little nearer. Faith—that’s right—just there, under the mistletoe.’ And one cool hand tilting my chin, he took the traditional Christmas liberty, his lips, as cool as his fingers, curving into a smile as they kissed me, a fresh, sharp scent about him a man, as Caroline had said, who performed only those acts in which he knew he could excel: and in their performance, was truly most excellent.
‘Merry Christmas,’ he whispered, his cheek brushing mine, ‘or should it be Happy New Year? That’s better. I think, since it lasts longer. Don’t move. We’ve not done with you yet.’
And his teasing eyes moving behind me he said. ‘Your turn, brother. It’s the only time we can do it and get away with it—supposing one wishes to get away.’
‘Blaize,’ Caroline called from the drawing-room. ‘They’re serving tea.’
‘I’m coming,’ he said, and their voices were very far away, heard through forest trees and water, the other side of a meadow, as Nicholas touched me not at all as Blaize had done, although perhaps no casual observer would have seen the difference.
It was only a piece of nonsense, after all this Christmas kissing, a breach in the walls of etiquette and propriety, acceptable between young people at this season, something to be whispered about afterwards. ‘I turned quite dizzy—my word. I declare if it had lasted a moment longer, I would have swooned.’ Or: ‘Odious boy, for it is the second time this Christmas day and if he comes after me again I shall tell mamma.’
But now there was no swooning, no recoil; a smile, simply, of welcome, as he leaned towards me a feeling of space condensing around us, his mouth polite at first, as Blaize’s had been, and then opening slightly, his hands not touching me since he must have known I would not back away.
‘Happy New Year,’ he said and kissed me again, holding me now in case the alien sensation of his tongue parting my lips should startle me, unaware, perhaps, in his effort to seem not too urgent, of the giddy overflow of my senses, a joyful movement of my whole mind, my whole body towards fulfilment.
‘Good heavens. Nicholas!’ Caroline called again, still at the drawing-room door, seeing only his back screened by the branches of the tree, a fold of my skirt, too intent on her own heart-searchings to notice ours. ‘We must get tea over and done with, don’t you see that? Aunt Hannah is wanting to be off for Celia is not well and has only Jonas to sit with her. Nicky—what are you doing out there?’
‘He’s kissing Faith.’ Blaize said, appearing beside her. ‘What else should a sensible man be doing out there?’
And we went in to take tea together.
The afternoon was drawing in the early winter dark settling, fog-tinted, behind the windows, a sudden tapping on the glass, half rain, half snow, warning us that no horsemen, surely, would venture to Tarn Edge today.
‘Come then, Mr. Agbrigg.’ Aunt Hannah said, worried as always about her horses’legs on the wet cobbles, especially now, since, with a donation towards the concert hall to find, they could not be easily replaced. ‘We’ll be on our way then, since I like to take my time going down the hill. I’ll see you at Lawcroft tomorrow, Elinor, and the young ladies? Well, Faith at least, since Prudence finds so much else, to occupy her these days. Jonas, of course, will look in although I cannot be sure of Celia. I have told her repeatedly how mistaken she is to shut herself away so much—what she is suffering from is hardly a disease. But she has grown quite morbid, Elinor, and you should really have a word with her. You are welcome to come too, Verity—yes yes. I know how you are situated at present, but if there are to be storm clouds ahead you may appreciate a change of scene. I leave it up to you. Tomorrow then, at tea-time.’ And it was as her carriage was moving carefully away, and my mother, surveying the remains of plum cake and pepper cake and hot mince-pies somewhat ruefully, her stomach still queasy, perhaps, from yesterday’s champagne, was about to suggest we should be leaving too, that the drive erupted with hoof-beats again, not the patient plodding of Aunt Hannah’s ageing nags, but, a wild-riding, hell-raking sound that brought Caroline to her feet and held her in an appalling, quite helpless rigidity.
‘Here they are.’ Blaize said. ‘Young lords at play.’
And quite abruptly, the hall seemed full of them, their size and their noise, their superb self-command diminishing the towering pine-tree, overpowering the bronze stag, a pink-coated army, mud-spattered and most viciously spurred, an invasion as alarming as if they had ridden their foaming mounts directly up the stairs.
‘Boots.’ Uncle Joel said ominously, his eyes on the carpet, but young gentlemen such as these, accustomed to their stone-flagged ancestral halls, where such carpets as they possessed hung moulderingon the walls, did not share my uncle’s precise awareness of the cost per yard—and mill price at that—of these brand-new, deep-pile floor coverings; would have shown no interest had they been told. And it was a measure of his affection for Caroline that he did not tell them, allowing Aunt Verity to move forward with her smooth ‘How very nice of you to call,’ separating them into individuals so that we realized, with surprise, they were but four in number. Matthew Chard. Francis Winterton, another man and a girl.
She was not, I thought at that first glance, a person about whom Caroline need be concerned, a thin, breathless figure, laughing and swaggering among the men, every bit as hearty and arrogant, and as dirty, as they. She was nineteen or twenty, auburn hair escaping from her tall hat the lamplight picking out a hint of red, a dusting of freckles across her nose, a pointed face, wide at the cheekbones, tapering to a kitten’s chin, a wide mouth talking, talking, half-sentences unfinished, ending in sudden laughter. She had a riding habit which had seen better days, a long, flat patch of mud on the skirt, a rust-coloured stain on her cheek, fox-blood, one assumed, proclaiming her the first lady to reach the kill—laughing, I had no doubt, as they had daubed her face with the dismembered tail.’
‘Glorious day,’ she told Aunt Verity, a high, clear voice, the long vowel-sounds of privilege. ‘Is that a Christmas tree? I never saw one before. The rage in London, now they tell me, but I hate the city—and my grandfather is too old-fashioned for Christmas trees. You know my grandfather? Surely? Matthew—do come and explain me.’
And, stretching out her hand to Aunt Verity, an abrupt movement followed by a wide, disarmingly frank smile, she said, ‘I am Georgiana Clevedon, and very pleased to make your acquaintance. I am by way of being a cousin to Matthew, or something very like it. My grandfather is Mr. Gervase Clevedon, and we have the Abbey—Galton Abbey, although I never remember to call it so, since I cannot really believe there is another like it. There, I have explained myself, haven’t I? And you must be Caroline.’
‘Indeed,’ Caroline sai
d, considerably displeased by this unsolicited use of her Christian name, a liberty to be taken, in our experience, only with parlourmaids. ‘I am delighted to meet you, Miss Clevedon.’
But Miss Clevedon, unabashed, held out her grubby hand again. ‘Heavens, Miss Barforth! Please do excuse me for I am sadly lacking in manners. And when I have been all day in the saddle I lose them altogether. Matthew, do come and aid me, for I have blundered. And Perry, do come over here and be presented to Miss Barforth. Miss Barlorth, this is my brother. Peregrine—who has no manners either. Although one day he will have the Abbey so we are glad to excuse him.’
I stood in the drawing-room doorway, near enough to observe, too far away to be noticed or overheard, Blaize and Nicholas standing a step ahead of me, close together; and I was still excited and happy, still very far from the notion that these boisterous, brash young men, this strange young woman, could have anything to do with me.
‘Now that,’ Blaize said, his eyes narrow with careful appraisal, ‘is a very rare bird of the wild wood, brother—very rare indeed.’
‘Difficult,’ Nicholas replied, his own eyes just as calculating, the hint of coarseness in them, both comforting me, I think, since I believed this was the way men looked at actresses and adventuresses, the kind of women, in fact, men did not marry, and who could be no threat to Caroline—no threat to me.
‘Difficult, Blaize—damn difficult to tame.’
‘Couldn’t tame it.’ Blaize said, clearly forgetting my presence. ‘Wouldn’t want to. I told you it’s straight out of the wild wood, and there’d be no point any more if you managed to get it to eat out of your hand. But I wouldn’t mind a scratch or two making the attempt.’
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