Flint and Roses

by Brenda Jagger

  I would not—before Blanche was born—have described myself as being fond of children, was not, even now, fond of all children, but, having gone through the dangerous agonies of childbirth, I saw no point in leaving the result of it entirely to nanny, contenting myself by playing the mother for ten minutes at tea-time as my own mother had done. I had been Blaize’s wife for almost four years now. Within the limits he had set for us, I was by no means unhappy. But in restless moments—when I knew I could not fill my life with lace and ribbons and table-talk—moments when I asked myself uncomfortably, ‘What next? What else?’, I believed I could find the answer in Blanche.

  I had no wish for more children. This one silvery little elf sufficed me, but, from the start, my sister’s daughter Grace had always moved me, her dark curls, her solemn heartshaped face, her wild-rose prettiness offering such startling contrast to Blanche, her response to my attentions sometimes hesitant, sometimes eager, since her mother was too tense these days for caresses, too concerned with grassstains on her daughter’s skirt, mud on her shoes, to take her romping on the lawn, too prone to her sick headaches to endure anything so harrowing as childish laughter.

  And so I spent the fine weather, when Blaize was not at home, tying ribbons in my niece’s black curls, my daughter’s blonde ones, letting them preen themselves in my earrings and bracelets, shawls and bonnets, taking them to pick rose petals for pot-pourri, to find wild blackberries and stray kittens, against Celia’s instructions, since roses have diseased thorns, blackberry juice cannot be removed from a dress, kittens have claws to disfigure a child for life and fur to give a child fleas.

  We had picnics on the lawn at Elderleigh, braving the earthworms, the moles, the bird-droppings, the general nastiness with which Celia believed it to be infested. We walked in the woods beyond my garden—Blanche astride my shoulders more often than not—trailing our feet through the fragrant October leaves, ignoring the squirrel, that most vicious of beasts, which might descend from its tree to savage us, the quagmire into which we might tumble, the gipsy who, with blandishments and chloroform, could overpower a lone woman and steal two little girls away.

  A lovely child—Miss Blanche Barforth—taking her world for granted, knowing herself to be at its centre, the reason for its existence, taking me for granted too, finding me commonplace, I think, in comparison with her far more interesting but frequently absent father. A sedate child—Miss Grace Agbrigg—and a careful child, sensing the atmosphere around her before plunging into it with the caution of a wary kitten, accustomed to be told ‘Hush—mamma is poorly. Hush—you will make her worse’, so that she was puzzled, sometimes, because I did not suffer from the headaches which, in her slight experience, were the normal condition of women, even more puzzled that such things as gloves carelessly left on a chair, forgotten newspapers in the drawing-room, a cigar butt in an ashtray, did not produce in me the spasms they invariably brought on in Celia.

  ‘Is she really no trouble to you?’ Jonas invariably asked me.

  ‘No—no. Please don’t stop bringing her, Jonas. I really want her.’

  I did not want Liam Adair. I could think of no one, in those early years of our acquaintance, who could possibly have wanted Liam Adair, but increasingly I found him abandoned on my doorstep and, meeting his insolent twelve-year-old eyes with foreboding, was obliged to let him come in.

  ‘Darling—if you could just have him for an hour,’ my mother would call out, not even getting down from her carriage. ‘I am obliged to run over to the Mandelbaums and, really, they have so many things one can see at a glance are valuable—and breakable. Those harps and violins—you know what I mean—and since he has been sent home from school again in absolute disgrace, and poor Miss Mayfield is having the vapours—Just an hour, darling.’

  But the hour would prolong itself to luncheon, to teatime to breaking point, to violence on one memorable occasion when Blaize, who had raised a hand to no one in years, took a riding-crop to him in atonement for a stray dog let loose in the stables, which had caused considerable turmoil, and a horse to bolt.

  ‘If I were never to see that young man again it wouldn’t break my heart,’ Blaize said, considerably irritated, not only because he had torn a shirt-cuff in the scuffle-cuff but because Liam, who was big for his age, had taken not a little holding down. ‘In fact, Faith, you could arrange matters so that I don’t see him.’

  But Blaize was so often away, and on the fine afternoon that Liam tossed a half-dozen live frogs into my kitchen, occasioning so great a flapping and clucking of housemaids that I at first thought my house was on fire, I raised a fist in retribution and then, seeing those pompous, portly little creatures at their hopping, entirely unaware of the havoc they were creating, I suddenly found myself obliged to bite back my laughter. And then, catching the merry Adair sparkle in his eyes, did not bite it back, but laughed out loud, forfeiting my cook’s good opinion as I helped him to retrieve the invaders and carry them back to their pond.

  ‘Don’t do it again, Liam Adair.’

  ‘Oh no—there’d be no fun in doing it again.’

  Then don’t do anything else. Why are you such a nuisance. Liam?’

  ‘I don’t know. It’s just what I am, that’s all—a nuisance. Everybody says so.’

  And so he was, a nuisance to my mother, to his father, to his schoolmasters, who sent him home at least twice a week for fighting, so that often, instead of going to Blenheim Lane, he would arrive on my doorstep with a torn jacket, a cut lip, blood pouring from his nose, a grin invariably on his lips.

  ‘Liam—good heavens! By the look of it you didn’t win.

  ‘’Course I did, and there were three of them—two Hobhouses and a Rawnsley—that’s why I look so beat. But I smashed them all right—Headmaster wouldn’t have sent me home otherwise.’

  ‘And what do the Hobhouses look like?’

  ‘Not pretty. But they weren’t pretty before.’

  ‘Neither are you.’

  But in a way he was, a big-boned, lanky boy as black as any woodland gipsy, a heavy, overcrowded face lightened by the Adair smile, the whip of Adair insolence and humour that would make him one day a man as attractive and possibly as reckless as his father.

  ‘Liam—your coat’s in ribbons. Did you get a thrashing today?’

  ‘’Course I did. The big Hobhouses came looking for me, after I’d smashed their brothers, so I smashed them too—or very nearly. Well, not very nearly, but it wasn’t as easy as they thought it would be. And then when Mr. Blamires came to stop it, and I wouldn’t stop—because whatever he says they weren’t killing me—he gave me a flogging for good measure. So what I want to know is, can I stay for tea, because my dad’s at home this afternoon, and if he catches me he’ll give me another.’

  And, understanding that three floggings in one day were more than enough for any man, I fed him, darned his coat, and, when he believed the coast would be clear, sent him home.

  ‘Liam—why do you fight so much?’

  I don’t know. It’s what I do, that’s all.’

  I won’t have him across my threshold,’ Celia told me. ‘And my mother knows it. I’m sorry, but there are limits to what one can endure. I have enough with my own child to look after, and my own home to run. I hope you had them scour your kitchen floor with lime after he brought those frogs in—and how you can laugh about it, Faith, I’ll never know. It would have made me ill.’

  But so many things made Celia ill—so many things had always done so—that I paid little attention until my mother pointed out that she was indeed taking a turn for the worse.

  ‘My dear, she never goes out. She sits in that house and watches them polish it, and it can’t be right. If I’ve invited her once I’ve invited her a hundred times, not just to Blenheim Lane but to teas and concerts and trips to Leeds, and there’s always a reason, at the last moment, why it can’t be done. She’s not well, or Grace is not well or her housemaid has just given notice—she’s had eight girls this yea
r, Faith, and not one of them lasted a month. I declare, I go into her house feeling something a little less than my age and come out feeling a hundred. And Hannah, of course, is far from pleased about it, which is only to be expected since it is bound to effect Jonas, although she does no good at all by lecturing Celia so often and telling her she is letting him down. Of course she is letting him down—one is obliged to admit it—but there is no need to say so quite so often, and so strongly. If it did any good I might not object, but in fact it makes her worse. Well, I never expected to say it, but sometimes I feel sorry for Jonas. There are to be no more children, you know. Strictly between ourselves, Jonas consulted Dr. Blackstone and then told Celia that he could not risk her life again, so that is the end of it. Not that Celia will care about that, although I cannot answer for Jonas, since after all he is a man—’

  But Celia, when I finally persuaded her to refer to the matter, did care, not for the end of her physical relationship with Jonas, which she had always found somewhat inexplicable in any case, but because any kind of domestic failure troubled her, reminding her too closely, perhaps, of a childhood where she had never been placed higher than third. Not only the sex act, it seemed, was difficult for Celia to understand, but life itself, the injustice of a world in which she had obeyed all the rules, and yet had not succeeded in making herself valued. She was the only one of my father’s children who had not only obeyed his teaching but had believed in it, had pinned her faith and her heart’s hope on the security it had offered. He had told her that, if she did certain things and avoided others she would be happy. She had done these things—had made herself a model housekeeper, a domestic angel, devoted herself entirely to hearth and home, had safeguarded her reputation, had never made herself conspicuous, had been innocent, dependent, respectable—yet somehow the formula had not worked. She was not happy, was listless, confused, uneasy. She had done nothing wrong. My father, should he return from the grave, could only approve of her, could only shudder at his, frivolous daughter Faith—who had even been scandalous, and got away with it, for a month or two—his strong-minded daughter Prudence, who had flaunted every one of his decrees, laughed in the face of his known intentions. Yet we were well and strong, and she was not. It was not fair.

  ‘Do spend a little more time with her, Faith dear,’ my mother asked, and listening to her through those dreary afternoons when I, setting out to cheer her, came away with my own spirits depressed, I understood clearly that after the solitary triumph of her marriage—of beating every one of us, even Caroline, down the aisle—nothing else had lived up to her expectations.

  ‘It’s this house that makes me ill,’ she said. ‘It is far too small and dark—I can hardly see into the corners. If we could move to Cullingford Green, or right away to Patterswick—

  But when Jonas suggested a number of houses she might like to view, her objections were enormous, the difficulties immense—the staff, the furniture, the problems of selling the house they already had—and although Jonas promised to see to everything himself the project was shelved.

  ‘If I could go to Scarborough for the summer it would put me right.’

  But to exist in lodgings was unthinkable, a rented house full of hazards, for what would she do if nanny gave notice, what would she do in any case in a town where she had no friends; since she could never bring herself to speak to strangers?

  ‘If Jonas would not always be accepting invitations without asking me, and then looking so put out when I cannot manage it. I am not at all fond of eating in other people’s houses as he very well knows, especially since one is obliged to ask them to dine here afterwards—and it worries me to owe hospitality all around.’

  But when the invitations ceased she complained that her friends and her husband were neglecting her.

  ‘Oh, so you have come to see me, have you, Faith? Well, no one else has been near me for a week or more, and Jonas can think of nothing to do but spend his time playing schools with Prudence.’

  ‘She’s not interested in anything, that’s all,’ Prudence said, her own interests legion, her vitality a blazing beacon.

  ‘She hasn’t enough to do and doesn’t want to do anything anyway. Why worry about it? We know dozens of women like Celia.’

  And because it was true, and because she was indeed so very gloomy, I found myself easily distracted on the days I had intended to see her, very ready to drive on past her house and go somewhere else; and when I did pay a visit I managed not to linger too long.

  I went now and then to Galton with Georgiana, for she knew of no reason why she and I should not be friends, and saw nothing to concern either of us in the growing tensions between Nicholas and Blaize.

  ‘I did not think it possible for anyone to quarrel with Blaize, but I see Nicky has managed it,’ was her sole comment, showing no curiosity as to the nature of their conflict, assuming, as most people did, that it was financial rather than personal, Cullingford being very ready to understand why they should watch each, other—and their own backs—so keenly, since no Law Valley man is averse to stealing a march on another.

  ‘Never mind them, Faith,’ she said. ‘It’s a lovely day. Let’s go and see my grandfather’; and, bundling her amber-haired Venetia into the carriage—my dainty Blanche usually managing to get more than her share of carriage-space, being careful, at a tender age, not to crumple her skirts—we would set off at the spanking, nervous pace with which Georgiana did everything. And more often than not Gervase would accompany us—far too often—since she would seize any opportunity she could to keep him away from school.

  ‘He hates it. He’s not good at it. If Nicky had been willing to send him to a decent school, then it would have been different. What could Cullingford grammar school possibly have to teach him in any case? Heavens—a grammar school. He’ll profit far more from half an hour’s conversation with grandfather.’

  And there was no doubt that the squire of Galton’s example could do a child no harm, for when I had accustomed myself to the extreme formality of his manners I found that his company had a soothing quality, as if the very nobility of his spirit had somehow extended itself to form a barrier between Galton and a rude, money-grubbing world. He was, I felt, a man who may have been all his life autocratic and narrow of outlook, but never mean, a man who, with the barbarians at his gate, would have changed his coat for dinner, who would, even if his heart was breaking, offend no one by a display of unmannerly emotion. A fine and gallant gentleman, assisting his granddaughter from her carriage as if she were a duchess, shaking his great-grandson by the hand with the courtesy due to the heir apparent of a nation, rather than a few hundred acres of moorland.

  ‘How do you do, Master Gervase?’

  ‘How do you do, sir?’ So that even young Gervase, who was tense and excitable, an odd child in many ways, who could chatter with the shrill persistence of a starling or sit for hours on end in an unnatural silence, relaxed in his atmosphere, obeying this august great-grandparent with a readiness he did not display elsewhere.

  Yet who, indeed, would not have obeyed Mr. Gervase Clevedon?

  ‘Come,’ he would say very quietly, and everyone within earshot immediately came. ‘We will go now,’ and everyone would stand up and follow him. ‘We can’t have this sort of thing, I’m afraid’; and, whatever it was, from village youths brawling in the market-place to the practice of diluting ale in the Galton taverns, one felt the evil would instantly cease.

  He had no money, existing entirely on his rents, no coal deposits, no mineral deposits having been found on his land. It was well known that many of his tenants being elderly, he had not increased his rents for some considerable time. He would take no money from Georgiana—since a gentleman did not impose upon a lady, and he was concerned at the state of her marriage in any case—yet at his advanced age he continued to fulfil all the responsibilities to which his station had called him, sitting in Petty Sessions in his own home, a back, downstairs room being reserved for the purpose, to di
spense justice in matters of drunkenness, common assault, falsifying of weights and measures, poaching and paternity. He rode considerable distances, in all weathers, to take his place on the Bench at Quarter Sessions, where more serious offenders would be committed to prison, to Australia, or to the gallows. He spent long, tedious hours in the saddle, busying himself about the affairs of his tenants—his people—making improvements he could not afford, since he believed it his duty to do so. He was, at all times, available to defend the interests of anyone who resided on his land, anyone who had ever eaten his bread and his salt, or whose father had eaten the bread of his father.

  ‘I love him,’ Georgiana said, breathing deeply. ‘My Gervase will be just like him—don’t you think so, Faith?’

  Yet young Gervase had another grandparent, the shrewd, indestructible Sir Joel Barforth, a head taller, a stone or two heavier than Mr. Clevedon, who had set his own sons to work at an early age in his weaving sheds and his counting-houses, teaching them that, although the gentry may consider service to be its own reward, it was the business of a Law Valley man to buy when prices were cheap and sell when they were dear.

  ‘Aye,’ he would say, looking down from a height which his grandson dearly found awe-inspiring. ‘His manners may be very pretty, I grant you, but can he do his sums?’

  And Gervase, wild-eyed and unsteady as a colt, would turn for protection to his mother, who could not do her sums either, the pair of them more often than not ending in a fit of giggles under Sir Joel’s grim eye.