Flint and Roses

by Brenda Jagger

  ‘We shall be quiet for a day or so,’ Aunt Verity said, ‘and I confess I shall be glad of it.’

  But the Barforths were never quiet for long, the very next morning bringing a smart, highly polished landau to the door containing a dimpled, mischievous little lady—my mother—peering at us from the shade of an enormous ruched and frilled bonnet and an elaborate, ivory-handled parasol, accompanied by a gentleman I had never seen before, a curly-haired Irishman somewhere in middle life but by no means in the state of decay of which my mother had been complaining. He was well-fleshed, square-cut, with dark eyes that were never still, a smile perpetually tilting the corners of his restless, possibly insolent, but certainly well-formed mouth.

  ‘Good heavens!’ Aunt Verity said, scattering the rose-petals she had been gathering for pot-pourri. ‘Surely—it is Mr. Adair?’

  ‘The very same, ma’am,’ he told her. ‘Absolutely at your service. You’ll pardon the intrusion, I know, for I couldn’t resist the temptation of making the acquaintance of Elinor’s daughter.’

  And feeling that this was perhaps a man not much given to the resisting of temptation—a man, in fact, who liked to be tempted—I held out my hand, finding his grip firm and warm, if a trifle too much inclined to linger.

  ‘Mrs. Ashburn,’ he said, his merry eyes concentrating totally on my face, inviting me to believe that for as long as his hand was in mine no other woman existed.

  ‘Mr. Adair.’

  ‘She’s beautiful,’ he said to my mother, still gazing at me, a man, it seemed, who appreciated his own charm and knew how to use it, who had relied on it, perhaps, more than once to ensure his survival.

  ‘Of course,’ my mother said. ‘Could any daughter of mine be otherwise? Faith, this is Mr. Daniel Adair who was employed—a long time ago—by your father. You will give us tea, Verity, will you not? And then I am afraid we cannot stay. I simply thought you may care to renew your acquaintance with Mr. Adair, and would be interested to see that had renewed mine. We are returning to London later in the day. Daniel, you may take my arm across the grass, for I declare the sun has weakened me—or something has at any rate.’

  And, understanding from the sparkling quality of her laughter, the languorous, faintly wicked but completely joyful glances she had once bestowed on M. Fauret and Signor Marchetti, that she had taken another lover, I was amused at the thought of Mr. Oldroyd—who might still become her husband—and I was glad for her.

  Georgiana arrived with her maid the following Friday, worn out, she said, and bored to distraction by London, her views on crystal palaces, on internationalism, on this pandering by royalty to the middle classes, exactly matching Matthew Chard’s.

  ‘Well, the city was always a poxy place,’ she said. ‘I must get it out of my system one way or another,’ and helping herself, not to the suggested tea and cakes, but to a bottle of red wine, she went out into the garden and remained there, sprawling gipsy-fashion on the grass, drinking and dozing, plaiting daisy-chains with a listless hand, so that when Nicholas and his father appeared she was sufficiently mellowed to throw her arms around her husband’s neck and bite him, quite hard I thought, on the ear.

  ‘You’ve got grass in your hair,’ he told her.

  ‘Yes. And I’ve been asleep with my face in the sun, which is going to make me as brown as a peg-hawker. I’ve had a glass of wine too, darling, which has made me feel—oh—very glad to see you.’

  They went off to their bedroom to change for dinner, my aunt and uncle to theirs, and, spending a moment or two longer in the garden, since my own dressing, with no one to help or hinder me, would take less time, I eventually followed them. My black-beaded evening dress and its half-dozen petticoats were laid ready on the bed, a cheerful, fresh-faced girl of the type Aunt Verity always had about her waiting to assist me. My silver-backed brushes, my black velvet ribbons, the perfume my sister Celia considered too exotic for a lady, scandalous for a widow, were all to hand. And, as I brushed out my hair, peering at myself in the mirror with accustomed concentration, it could not matter to me that in the room next to mine Nicholas Barforth was very probably making love to his wife. It did not matter to me. I had not spoken a dozen words to him these past three years beyond the bounds of common politeness. I was better acquainted now with the unusual, annoying, fascinating creature he had married than with Nicholas himself. But I had been obliged recently, by events totally beyond my control, to admit that my body, like my mother’s, had acquired the need for a man’s caresses and had proved far less docile these past few months than I liked.

  Emotion did not trouble me. Emotionally I was cool and serene, indulging myself, as I had always done, with a little humour, a little vanity, remembering, even in these mourning garments, how to make my hair paler by running a black velvet ribbon through it, the effect of dark jet earrings against a fair skin, nothing to break the stark elegance of black and white but a pair of blue eyes which, because they were short-sighted and weak, looked vague and cloudy and—one hoped—mysterious. And I took these pains, resorted to this artifice, not for the admiration of Nicholas or anyone else, but because beneath them I was still the plain, lanky girl my father had despised; and I would not let her show.

  Cool, then, in the daylight; composed, even, with a branch of bed-time candles in my hand; less so when my disobedient body woke me in the night, or, worse than that, carried me in my sleep to the brink of an unfulfilled sensation and abandoned me there, the pit of my stomach burning, my limbs aching, straining to grasp that extra moment which would give me the relief I craved, and which was always denied. Relief, not love. Yet, as I well knew, the only relief available to me was in remarriage, and since that was still unthinkable I had no choice but to endure—as my father had taught me—with dignity.

  I was the first to join my aunt and uncle in the drawing-room that night, Nicholas and Georgiana lingering upstairs, Blaize not yet arrived, my uncle by no means pleased at the delay.

  ‘He left London two days ago, and in a damned hurry at that. And now where the devil is he?’

  But Blaize, who was fond of a good entrance, made one now, heralded by a mighty clattering of hooves and tearing-up of gravel, flinging his hat and cane to an eager parlourmaid and sauntering to greet us already in his evening clothes.

  ‘I changed—en route’he said, the perfection of his attire proof enough that it had not been in a carriage. ‘And, if I’ve kept you waiting, I know you’ll forgive me, mamma, since I am your favourite son—which leads me to wonder where your other son has got to?’

  ‘He’s here.’ Nicholas said, coming into the room. Georgiana a step or two behind him, her green silk dress certainly expensive, its lace trim quite exquisite, but put on anyhow, shrugged on at the last moment with laughter and whispering, her body, still languorous with pleasure, her bright hair ready at the first abrupt movements to come swishing and tumbling down.

  ‘I presume we may eat now?’ Uncle Joel said, and so we ate, a delicious meal, as Aunt Verity’s meals always were, Nicholas eating to satisfy his appetite, Blaize with a shade more appreciation than that, Georgiana pecking sparrow-like at this and the other, drinking, ‘to drown the memory of London’, she said, raising her glass, and then, ‘to the memory of green meadows and pastures’.

  ‘To ploughed fields and muddy ditches,’ Blaize answered her, refilling her glass, leaning across the table to tuck a loose strand of her hair back into its uncertain, copper-tinted coil, his eyes straying, perhaps only from force of habit, to the low neck of her dress.

  ‘To wet moorland mornings,’ she toasted him.

  ‘To wind and foul weather,’ he replied.

  ‘Don’t you hate London, Faith?’ she asked me.

  ‘No. I like it. I like cities altogether.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, considering me, her head on one side, her glass, I noticed, empty again. ‘I suppose they suit you—you’re so polished and sculptured and poised. I can’t even imagine you in a flutter. Oh Faith—Faith—why is
it you always do things right, whereas I—? It’s not fair. Why do you look like a swan, when I’m such a bedraggled duck? Doesn’t she look like a swan, Nicky? Blaize, doesn’t she?’

  ‘She does,’ Blaize said raising his glass to me. ‘A very gracious, clever swan, my Faith.’

  ‘Your Faith?’ Nicholas said, looking up sharply, scowling through the candlelight.

  ‘Oh my!’ Georgiana chuckled, her tipsy face alive with delighted mischief. ‘Goodness gracious—wishful thinking, eh Blaize? My brother Perry took a fancy to her too—oh yes he did—he saw her at that dreadful concert hall and very nearly had a fit. Who is she? How is she? Possible, likely, not one chance in a million? Get her to Galton, little sister, and—’

  ‘That,’ Nicholas said through his teeth, ‘is enough, Georgiana, I warn you—’

  ‘Oh lovely, he’s angry with me,’ she said, bathing us all in her smiles. And then, just as abruptly, her flaunting recklessness changed to a quite touching remorse.

  ‘Oh dear. Faith, I do apologize. I like you so much, and I wouldn’t upset you for the world.’

  ‘I’m not upset.’

  ‘You must be.’

  ‘Only if you insist on it. I think I’d rather feel flattered instead, although I can’t agree that you look like a duck, Georgiana.’

  ‘Nor I,’ Blaize murmured, smiling at me. ‘A little bird of the wild wood, perhaps, swimming all bewildered and amazed in a duck pond. How’s that?’

  We went back into the drawing-room, disposing ourselves suitably. Aunt Verity’s eyes watching both her sons with care, ready, as she had always been, to step between them.

  ‘Shall we go for a walk in the moonlight, Nicky?’ Georgiana said, offering a reconciliation.

  ‘Presently. Blaize, I met a friend of yours from New York yesterday morning. A Mr. Grassmann.’

  ‘Oh yes. A pleasant fellow.’

  ‘So he seems. But before you make promises about delivery dates you could check with me that they’re possible.’

  ‘Ah well,’ Blaize shrugged. ‘It’s just that I have such confidence in you, Nicky—never so much as crossed my mind that you wouldn’t be able to manage.’

  ‘It should always be possible,’ Uncle Joel cut in from the luxurious ease of his armchair. ‘I don’t want to hear excuses about deliveries that can’t be met. I always met mine.’

  ‘Well, you’re damn well going to hear them, father,’ Nicholas snapped, ‘unless you can make him understand that, when the looms are working to capacity, he ought at least to know about it and make his arrangements to suit. I’m not complaining about the orders he brings in. He looks after his side of the business all right, and I look after mine. But we’ve got to keep each other informed. And you’ve got to follow things through, Blaize. This Mr. Grassmann was looking for you, the other morning, not me. And where the hell were you? And what am I supposed to say to him when he tells me what you’ve promised him, and I know there’s no chance of it—unless we expand again.’

  ‘Which is what you want, Nick,’ Blaize murmured.

  ‘Do I?’

  ‘I reckon so—unless you’re finding it too much, with the Wool-combers on your hands’

  ‘And what would you know about it?’

  ‘It’s so warm in here,’ Aunt Verity informed us, intending to be believed. ‘Joel, come out into the garden—if we’re to expand again there’s no need to do it tonight, and I have a most interesting word to say to you about Elinor. Nicholas, do take your wife for that walk in the moonlight. Faith will go with you—and Blaize, one supposes, will do—well—exactly what Blaize supposes.’

  ‘Mother dear,’ he told her, laughing, ‘you couldn’t possibly be cross with me, could you? No—of course you couldn’t.’

  ‘Sometimes I think I could make the effort, dear—really.’

  But they were smiling at each other, even my uncle—although he muttered that in his case it was no effort at all—looking good-humoured enough as he took his wife’s arm and led her outside.

  It was an intense blue midnight, velvet-textured, quite beautiful, the grass fragrant with sleeping poppies, the sea moving in a gentle, lullaby-rocking some way below us; a time, it seemed, for steady pathways, for breathing deeply, quietlyvfor listening. But after a moment or two of strolling, Georgiana, abandoning her little-girl air of decorum, became a restive colt again, impatient of all restraint.

  ‘Let’s go down to the sea, Nicky.’

  ‘You said a walk in the moonlight. This is a walk in the moonlight.’

  ‘Oh, I suppose it may be thought so in Cullingford. But when there is sand down there, and sea-water and rocks, how can you bear to stay so tamely on the grass?’

  ‘I can bear it.’

  ‘I can’t,’ she said and, taking up her skirts, she was off, flinging down a challenge as I had once seen her do at Galton Abbey, except that this time nobody followed her.

  ‘It’s wonderful,’ she called up to us. ‘Oh—do come down—it’s not living, up there, on the path, it’s just doing the right thing. And who really cares about that? Do come down here—we could fetch some wine and fruit and stay up all night to watch the sun rise. Why shouldn’t we? It’s something to do, something we can remember. Not the night we slept in our comfortable beds at Rosemount, but the night we spent on the beach—the night we did something different, that we—well, I won’t say it, Nicky, because you’ll kill me—but you know what I mean. We’d never forget that. Do come.’

  But Nicholas, who may have been excited by her earlier in the day, was moved now to do no more than shrug his shoulders and turn his head away, the better to light his cigar against the wind.

  She disappeared, hidden by a curve of rock and, as we paused, Blaize glanced at his brother and said, ‘I can see you don’t mean to go after her.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, it’s none of my business, of course, but she’s had more than a glass or two, and she could fall—’

  ‘I doubt it.’

  ‘Or she could wander off and get lost.’

  ‘She’ll not do that.’

  ‘Ah well, I don’t want to get my feet wet either, but really Nicholas—I suppose the answer is that if it worries me I should go and fetch her myself.’

  ‘That’s about it. My guess is you won’t find her, and she’ll be back here before you are. You’ll ruin your shoes for nothing—but, as you say, if it worries you—’

  Blaize shrugged and walked off gingerly towards the beach, not liking his task at all since he was a man who cared about his shoes and appreciated their value, leaving us quite alone and for a moment completely silent.

  ‘She will be all right, you know,’ Nicholas said.

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘Are you cold?’

  ‘No. I’m perfectly all right.’

  ‘Faith—’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’m sorry—about your husband, I mean. I didn’t know him very well but he seemed a decent man. How have you been—since he died?’

  ‘I can cope with it, Nicholas. Georgiana was extremely good to me, during the epidemic’

  ‘Yes. She can be very kind.’

  Silence again, waiting and listening to the night, wishing that Blaize would return, feeling, not awkwardness exactly, not emotion, but something akin to sorrow that even now, when so much time and pain and joy, so much living, had flowed between us, I was still not at peace with him.

  ‘You are like a swan,’ he said suddenly, making the words into an accusation, and because it was the only possible thing to do I laughed—my mother’s laugh—airy, without substance.

  ‘You mean I have a long nose and large feet? Thank you, Nicholas.’

  ‘I have never really seen your feet, and your nose looks well enough to me.’

  Silence again, heavier this time, no possible thought now of laughter, no thought either of making any of the dozen pretty excuses that would have obliged him to take me back to the house, to his mother, who would know as well as
I that he was unhappy, dissatisfied, angry, that in such a humour he could be dangerous.

  He lit a cigar irritably, not asking my permission, inhaling deeply like his father, scowling at the sea.

  ‘Faith,’ he rapped out at me sharply. ‘I don’t have to warn you about Perry Clevedon, do I?’

  ‘Heavens—you certainly don’t.’

  ‘Good. I think I have never met a more worthless man. Stay clear of him.’

  ‘Goodness.’ Georgiana said, appearing in the unlit dark behind us, the hem of her dress soaked in sea-water, her hair coming down with all the abandon that suited her so well. ‘Are you quarrelling with Faith now? I could hear you growling at her as I came back on to the path. What on earth can she have done to make you angry?’

  ‘Nothing,’ he answered, and then, tossing his cigar away in the direction of the sea, he said quietly, ‘Faith knows what I mean.’

  Chapter Eighteen

  The New Year at once offered us two events of considerable importance. My uncle, in recognition of his services to industry, his charity, his willingness, no doubt, to support Prince Albert’s Exhibition which had meant so much to our Queen, received a baronetcy, becoming Sir Joel Barforth of Tarn Edge, while my mother, taking advantage of the general mood of celebration, announced her forthcoming marriage not to the decaying Mr. Oldroyd but to the unknown, excellently preserved Mr. Daniel Adair.

  He was by no means, it seemed, a stranger to us all.

  ‘Have you lost your senses, Elinor?’ Aunt Hannah demanded, striding into my mother’s house as if she meant to burn it down, infuriated by the loss of the Oldroyd money, certainly, already mourning the death of her hopes of seeing Jonas at Fieldhead, but considerably shaken at a more personal level too. ‘I have never been so shocked in my life and I must give you notice that if you go through with this preposterous marriage I shall disown you.’