Flint and Roses

by Brenda Jagger

  Most men in his position, of course, would have been thinking along the lines of some sober, sensible woman of mature years, a lady, certainly, of some gentility and a little money, but selected mainly for her skills as a housekeeper, her patience with motherless children. But Aunt Hannah, who had been obliged to take what she could get for him last time, acquired, quite suddenly, what seemed to be a new lease of life, all her old ambitions rekindling to such a fever-heat that his frequent visits to Prudence’s school, where several ladies of the mature and sensible type were employed, caused her immense alarm.

  ‘I do not care to see him hob-nobbing quite so much with those schoolmistresses,’ she told me. ‘And I am relying on you, Faith, to keep your eyes open. You are a woman of experience, as I am, and it can be no secret to you that men have certain requirements which often lead them into great foolishness. I have no intention of allowing Jonas to be trapped by one of Prudence’s spinster ladies, I do assure you, since there is no doubt that each and every one of them would give their eye-teeth—and very likely their virtue—to have him.’

  Prudence herself, of course, had she not been placed within the forbidden degree of kinship, would have been an ideal choice, being richer than Celia, infinitely more energetic, her very independence of mind a quality which would have been of great use to a man embarking on the political life. But, failing Prudence, there was Rebecca Mandelbaum who, having been deceived by her Austrian musician, was still languishing at home, a virgin of thirty-three summers and large financial expectations, who could find consolation for her own loss, perhaps, in a man who had also suffered. And if she could not, then there was the youngest Battershaw girl, not yet in her twenties but old, it was felt, for her age, and—perhaps best of all—the daughter of Mr. Fielding, our Member of Parliament, an alliance in the grand Whig manner which rejoiced Aunt Hannah’s heart.

  At her suggestion I invited these ladies, suitably chaperoned, to dine with me in their turns, seating Jonas beside them at table, letting it be seen, in accordance with my aunt’s specific instructions, that any arrangement with the Agbriggs would include the Barforths too. But Angelica Battershaw, I felt, was too giddy, the twenty-five-year-old Miss Fielding too plain, Rebecca, although sweet-natured enough, handsome enough, still dwelling on her departed musician, and—quite fiercely and irrationally—I wanted Jonas to have some warmth in life, some joy, a little gaiety.

  ‘It could well be Rebecca,’ I ventured when my aunt pressed me, having learned that Jonas had spent a comfortable evening at the Academy, thrashing out some knotty philosophical problem in the staff sitting-room over red wine and ratafia biscuits.

  ‘He seems to enjoy her company, Aunt Hannah.’

  ‘Good’she said. ‘I confess I would have preferred Maria Fielding, but the Mandelbaums are well placed and I shall not complain. I shall leave Rebecca to you, Faith. Flatter her and coddle her a little, show her some new way of doing her hair and lend her one of your lace shawls—that sort of thing. And while you are about it, I shall get to work on the parents. Naomi Mandelbaum is a good soul who has always been easy enough to manage, and George is a sensible man. His daughter may be rich, but she is no longer young, and after that unfortunate attachment if he can get her decently settled he’ll, be glad of it. You could introduce her to Grace and work on her sympathies, and then, if Jonas makes his intentions clear around Christmastime, they could be married as soon as his full year is up. After all, she’ll be thirty-four by then and no one would expect her to delay. Really—it will be very suitable.’

  So it was. A sizeable dowry, a sedate, healthy woman who would do her duty and cause no trouble, who was not brilliant yet perfectly able to entertain his guests without strain, and be kind to his daughter. Yet I too had been present that evening in Prudence’s sitting-room when Jonas had entertained us with wine and philosophy, had seen him relax easily into the academic atmosphere of his youth, and, having taken more than a glass or two myself—enough to remind me of lost loves and opportunities—I flung my arms around him at parting and told him, ‘When you marry again, Jonas, I want her to be beautiful and generous and madly in love with you. I want you to adore her—’

  ‘How kind,’ he said smiling, steadying me, since it must have been apparent to everyone that the second Lady Barforth was well in her cups. ‘But I think I may have passed the season for such things, you know.’

  ‘Oh dear—is it winter already? Then I’d best invite Becky Mandelbaum to dinner again, I suppose.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said very quietly, a man, I thought, who had never allowed himself to neglect his opportunities, however burdensome he had known they would prove. ‘I believe you should.’

  In the spring, Mayor Agbrigg’s final term of office came to its close, an event deemed worthy of some expression of gratitude and respect, since he and Aunt Hannah between them had been responsible for the Concert Hall, the reservoirs, the Giles Ashburn Memorial Gardens, the passing of an Improvement Act which had resulted in the lighting and paving and, in some cases, the widening of streets, the knocking down of old, dangerous buildings, and a set of building regulations—at which my father would have shuddered—to oversee the more solid, more hygienic construction of new ones.

  The Agbriggs had brought both water and culture to Cullingford, had concerned themselves with both public health and public buildings, had worked hard and often successfully to transform what had been little more than a mass of humanity huddled together in one place into a community with a sense of civic pride. A debt, clearly, was owing, and since we paid our debts in Cullingford a banquet was held in honour of our Mayor and his lady at the Assembly Rooms, followed by speeches and praises, the presentation of a silver salver that would not have disgraced a baronial hall, and of a gold mayoral chain, twenty-eight ounces in weight, worth a lordly two hundred and forty pounds, which Mayor Agbrigg wore for the first, if the last, time that night.

  Every gentleman who had held civic office since the date of our incorporation was present, with the exception of Mr. Hobhouse, who had rather tactfully declined, every industrialist, members of all the professions, several politicians of several parties, Jonas, who would soon have that chain of office around his own neck, sitting beside Rebecca Mandelbaum who would soon be his wife, Aunt Hannah, showing, at the only public banquet in Cullingford for years which she had not arranged herself, the face of a woman who is seeing not all, perhaps, but a sufficiency of her dreams come true.

  There was still the Town Hall to build, with its banqueting hall and mayor’s parlour, where she herself would be unlikely to hold court, her husband having firmly announced himself unwilling to stand for re-election. There was the art gallery and museum to be completed in the Ashburn Park, the growing need for a library now that so many people were learning to read. But Jonas and his placid Rebecca could do all that for her—because she had made it possible for it to be done at all—and I had never seen my aunt so gloriously, almost girlishly happy as on that night.

  I took Blaize to the station in my victoria some five days later, presented my cheek to be kissed as he boarded the train, smiled, pronounced my calm good-byes—asking no questions so as not to be reminded that he would give no answers—and, walking out, chilled suddenly, into the station yard, I found myself unwilling to go home, could see no reason, no use in being there, and drove instead to Lawcroft Fold.

  It was a calm, commonplace day, nothing, as I drove in at the top gate—wishing to avoid the mill yard and the possibility of Nicholas—to disturb me, nothing to surprise me at the sight of the equipage I believed to be Jonas’s standing outside the door, until Jonas himself appeared and drove off without greeting me, his wheels almost shaving mine on the carriage-way, the glimpse of his face telling me something was awry.

  Mayor Agbrigg was in the drawing-room when they announced me, standing at the window looking down into the mill yard, his hunched shoulders frailer than I had realized, the lines of his face deeper, dustier somehow, like crevices in old stone.


  ‘Faith, lass—‘

  ‘Uncle Agbrigg—what is it?’

  And in reply he gestured towards the old lady scarcely recognizable as my aunt, a grey face with two raw streaks of crimson beneath the cheekbones, grey hair—why had I never noticed her hair was so grey?—escaping in impossible disorder from its pins as if she had tugged at it in fury or despair, shaken her head and screamed out some total protest. ‘Never! I will not have it.’ And Jonas—for it could only be he—had walked away from her, leaving her to grapple with her first defeat.

  Had he refused to marry Rebecca Mandelbaum after all, since I well knew nothing had been settled, much less announced? Had he decided to sell his practice and go into some rash academic venture, some scheme that would relax and humanize him, even if it made him poor? I hoped so. Fervently I hoped so. Yet Aunt Hannah and her husband had helped me once, and I too had a debt to repay.

  ‘Aunt Hannah,’ I said, kneeling on the floor by her chair. ‘Let me help, if I can. Or if you would like me to go away again—?’

  ‘No,’ she said, the movement of her lips hard and painful, as if she feared they would crack. ‘Stay a while. You will have cause to avoid me soon enough. Tell her—Mr. Agbrigg—what has been done to me.’

  ‘Not I. I’ll have nothing to do with it.’

  ‘He’s your son, Ira Agbrigg.’

  ‘No,’ he said, turning to face her, the bitterness in him shocking me, amazing her. ‘Your son, Hannah. You had the moulding of him. That was the condition you made when we married, and I accepted it. Your son—not mine and not his mother’s—yours.’

  She got up slowly, her body aching, I thought, from some inner violence, some grievious wound that, because she was Hannah Barforth, she chose to ignore, and would ignore even if it killed her.

  ‘Quite so, Mr. Agbrigg. I feel sure that my niece, Lady Barforth, cannot wish to be bothered with that.’

  And, turning to me, her face a mask of false, quite painful cordiality, she said brightly, ‘You will be interested to learn, Faith, that Jonas is to be married.’

  ‘Yes, of course—but we supposed, surely—in the spring.’

  ‘Ah yes. Then let us suppose no longer. He is to be married the very minute he is out of black arm-bands—and eager young bridegroom of something over forty, a blushing bride of forty-five, or fifty, or sixty beneath her paint, for all one knows. Yes—he is to marry the second Mrs. Oldroyd, the luscious Mrs. Delaney, the widow of a dozen husbands and not a single wedding ring to show for it, if the truth be known. And I warn you, Faith, if you ever allow her to cross your threshold, then I shall not have you across mine.’

  She sat down again. Mayor Agbrigg returned to his silent scrutiny of the mill yard. I stood between them, uncertain as to what consolation I could offer, what they would be willing to receive, seeing, with Aunt Hannah’s eyes, the tarnishing of that gold mayoral chain, that princely salver, feeling her bleak conviction that she would be remembered now, not as the woman who had built the Morgan Aycliffe Hall, but as the mother of a man who had made himself master of Fieldhead by marrying a whore.

  ‘Your sister Celia was not such a goose after all,’ she said, her voice harsh, her face very cold. ‘The mill was not sold, the house was not sold. Celia knew why and none of us would believe her. She said the servants were whispering about Jonas and Mrs. Delaney—yes, so she did—and perhaps they had good cause.’

  ‘Aunt Hannah, I don’t believe that.’

  ‘Why not? He called on her often enough, didn’t he? And when Celia complained we said it was natural for a lawyer to call on his client. But now you may as well believe the worst of him, Faith, since everybody else will. He used to call on her before Matthew Oldroyd died—before Matthew Oldroyd married her—to advise on her investments, or so he said. But can you prove to me that they were not lovers even then? They could have worked together to persuade Matthew Oldroyd into that scandalous marriage, for which I was the first to condemn him, and still condemn him. Why not? Emma-Jane Hobhouse said there was a conspiracy, and we ignored her just as we ignored Celia. Well—I must write to Emma-Jane and give her the good news. If it crosses her mind that Jonas may have pushed your sister down those cellar steps, I wouldn’t be the one to blame her.’

  ‘Aunt Hannah—no! I won’t listen to that—’

  ‘Then you’ll be the only one who won’t listen to it, and gloat over it. It fits—it’s a good story—and who asks, who cares, for the truth of it?’

  ‘Aunt Hannah, you can’t believe such things of Jonas.’

  But, getting up again, her fists clenched, those raw red spots once more mottling her cheeks, she took a quick stride to her work-table and back again, and staring straight at me, hissed through clenched teeth, ‘Yes, I can.’

  ‘No, Aunt Hannah.’

  ‘Oh yes, Faith Aycliffe. Yes. You don’t know what he is capable of. He would sell you, or me, or his own daughter to the highest bidder, and now he has sold himself to a brothel-keeper. He is going to live on the earnings of a whore, for what else is Fieldhead now but that? He is going to marry a woman I cannot receive, that no decent female could ever be asked to receive; and when I pleaded with him, reminded him of all I have done for him—of all I still could do for him—he answered me—he said, “Such a fuss, mamma! For when all is said and done I am only following your teaching.” Yes, he said that to me.’

  And after a moment of anguished silence, her breast heaving with her poisoned emotions, she said hoarsely, ‘I used to love him—just an hour ago,’ and sat down again.

  There was nothing I could say to her. There would have been no point at all in telling her she would eventually forgive him, since most probably she would not; no point in suggesting that the rumours and the gossip would soon die away, since even in commercially minded Cullingford there was a dividing line between good money and bad, and Jonas’s reputation would never recover. Men would do business with him, of course, would even dine with him eventually, and privately, at the Swan. But that gold chain of office, that splendid Town Hall with its stained-glass windows and Doric columns would pass now to others; and what would happen to Grace?

  An hour ago my aunt’s life had been full, her intentions plain. There had been Jonas’s wedding to arrange and then his election. There had been his term of office, during which the Town Hall would have been completed, the grand opening banquet with herself beside him, encouraging his taste for public life so that he might at last make that momentous journey to Westminster. There had been the possibility of more grandchildren, and, failing that, there had been Grace’s début into West Riding society, another marriage contract, in due course, to negotiate. And now, at one stroke, he had taken away everything she cared for, had tarnished her respectability by tarnishing his own, had robbed her of her committees, her functions, her grandchild; had broken her heart.

  ‘What am I to do?’ she said, not with Jonas, I thought, but with herself, for her days now would be long and empty, shrinking one after the other to the dimensions of a ‘woman at home’who was not much needed anywhere else.

  ‘I’m not well,’ she said, pressing her hands to her head, the first time I had heard her speak those words, or seen her make that gesture—my mother’s gesture—of feminine frailty. And, rushing for the door, the strongest woman knew and the stateliest collapsing before my eyes, she disappeared, going upstairs to hide, as my mother and Celia used to do.

  ‘Shall I go up to her, Uncle Agbrigg?’

  ‘Nay lass, it’s not you she wants. And Jonas won’t be going up those stairs again.’

  ‘Someone should.’

  ‘Aye. I’ll go myself presently. There’s nobody left but me now, I reckon—whether she likes it or not.’

  ‘Uncle Agbrigg—you don’t mean to forgive him either, do you?’

  ‘Nay, lass,’ he said, his craggy face relaxing into a brief smile, ‘And that surprises you, does it, since all he’s doing is marrying for money, same as he did before, same as I did myself. No—n
o—I’ll not hold that against him. I could even admire him for it, because even when a man recognizes himself as a callous, scheming devil it takes guts to say so. And as to the woman, yes, she’s a whore all right, but I take a different view of that to your Aunt Hannah. I reckon poverty can make a whore out of any lass—when it comes down to whoring or starving there’s not much choice at all—and we don’t know what Mrs. Delaney was like at her beginnings. A lass from Simon Street, maybe—or somewhere like it—abused by her mother’s husband one night when he was drunk and pushed out of the door the morning after. And when that happens to a lass she’ll be sure to find the brothel-keeper waiting. Nay—it’s not Mrs. Delaney who troubles me. Maybe I got to thinking just now of another lass from Simon Street and wondering what she’d make of her Jonas now. Maybe it crossed my mind she’d tell me it was all my fault.’

  He crossed the room and sat down heavily, closing his eyes in pure weariness. ‘I reckon you don’t know how I came to be acquainted with your Aunt Hannah, Faith. It might ease me now to talk about it, and you’re a good lass. I clawed my way up from the very bottom of the muck-heap, Faith—a muck-heap neither you nor your aunt can even imagine. And by the time I met Hannah I’d got as far as Low Cross, from mill-hand to overlooker to shed-manager to manager of the whole lot, doing Joel Barforth’s dirty work for him when he had any—and there were times when he had. Sickness came. I lost three bairns—nearly lost my wife—I did lose her, I reckon, because she couldn’t bring herself together. And Miss Hannah Barforth helped—found me a woman to clean the house, saw to it that Ann, my wife, was fed, had a look at Jonas and made up her mind he was wasted on me, and on my Ann. And it was Hannah who put the shame into him—shame of his beginnings and his mother. I saw it happen and I let it happen because, even if I didn’t like it, I thought it would spur him on, making him fight that much harder—and I knew how hard he’d have to fight. You don’t mind if I smoke, lass?’