I was Joel’s wife. That was my reality, and all else was illusion. And although I had been too young and too dazed on our wedding day to understand the vows I made, I knew they could not be broken. In my heart, perhaps, I could neither love nor honour him, but my only hope of living in peace was to pretend that I did.
As so often before, it was Elinor who tested my resolve.
The possibility of her husband’s election as Cullingford’s first Member of Parliament had at first meant little to Elinor. But once the implications had been pointed out to her – prolonged visits to London, even a house there – she had taken on a new lease of life.
‘I must have something fit to wear,’ she announced, finding no difficulty at all in jumping out of bed now that she had something to get up for, and when I called again it was to find her upstairs, certainly, but surrounded by lengths of satin and silk brocade, lace and beads and feathers, and by a tall, dark woman I almost recognized.
‘No, no,’ Elinor called out. ‘No need to ask me how I am, for I am very well. Tell me, how do you find this blue brocade? That is more to the point, for Rosamund here swears it matches my eyes, and I am afraid it turns them green. Oh, Verity, you are acquainted with Miss Boulton, are you not?’
And although our acquaintance could not be a happy one since she, being still single, could not be expected to forget that Joel had deserted her to marry me, we bowed and smiled and talked at some length about fabric and design and the pleasure she took in creating gowns for others to wear.
I calculated that she must be around thirty now, a slender woman who would, in ten years, be gaunt and elegant rather than beautiful, with a great deal of charm but little softness in her dark face; a woman who had tried to marry several times since Joel and who now, her family’s affairs not having prospered, was obliged to supplement her income with her needle.
‘I make a great many wedding gowns,’ she told me. ‘When Estella Corey, Colonel Corey’s daughter married last spring, she wore one of my creations and ordered her entire outfit from me for her London season. Oh yes, I am kept very busy in Blenheim Lane.’
And, knowing what was expected of me, I murmured, ‘You must make something for me, when you have the time to spare.’
‘With great pleasure, Mrs Barforth – and for your little girl too, should you ever require it. And dare I ask you to visit me in my new premises? Yes, I am about to embark on a new venture: a shop for the sale of ready-made children’s clothes of the very highest quality. The latest London designs and a few ideas of my own to make them really exclusive. The very first shop of its kind in the area; and, depending on its success, I mean to add ladies’ wear, bonnets and shawls, slippers, fans, perfumes, all the little luxuries I am sure you are accustomed to sending to London for. Why go to so much trouble and have such a long wait and then find they have sent the wrong colour or that it was not really what one had in mind when it can all be obtained here, from me, in Millergate. Oh, I am so excited, Mrs Barforth, so full of plans—’
And noting down Elinor’s instructions, making a quick sketch of something she declared could be safely left to her judgement, she picked up her fashion books, her pincushions, the tools of her trade, and hurried briskly away.
‘Well, and I don’t know why she should be so abominably pleased with herself,’ Elinor muttered, suddenly very cross. ‘Always running here, running there, in and out of everybody’s houses, tittle-tattling as she goes. Well, she may think herself very clever, but she wearies me, that’s all – just wearies me.’ And her small, smooth fingers flexing themselves as if they needed something to break, she gave way to a sudden, spiteful impulse, her mouth turning hard and crafty as she said, ‘And perhaps she is clever at that, for her new shop is really very smart – all powder-blue velvet and little gold chairs – and knowing the price of property in Millergate and the kind of stock she intends to carry, I’d dearly like to know where the money is coming from. A partner, she says, smug as a cat in a cream pot, but who? Yes – what I would give to know that.’
Silence for a moment, a brittle thing, easily passed over. But I was in no mood suddenly for social conventions, and instead of replying, ‘Who indeed?’ and talking of something else, I said slowly, quite pleasantly, ‘I doubt you would give a great deal, Elinor, since you must know already.’
‘Oh,’ she said, startled. ‘And what do you mean by that?’
‘I mean that if someone has invested money in Miss Boulton’s shop, then it is probably Joel, and if you didn’t think so, – or know so – you would not have mentioned it to me in the first place.’
‘Verity,’ she said, her cheeks flooding with pink, her eyes with tears, for she was fond of me and wished me no harm. ‘Verity, I’m so sorry. I don’t know why I said that. I felt so miserable suddenly – seeing that woman so full of energy when I have none at all, and seeing you so serene – and now I feel so wicked and so – so – dreadful—’
And, for a moment, it was dreadful, for this was a name I knew, a face I knew, no anonymous expensive woman in London or Manchester. This was different – frightening.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said.
‘Oh, but, Verity, it does matter.’ And, fearful now, knowing that her brother Joel would not take kindly to this gossip, remembering what a clever, vindictive enemy he could be, she whispered, ‘What are you going to do? You won’t ask him, will you? Tell him?’
‘Oh – what should I do? I imagine I’ll order a dress from her, and one for Caroline, for if the franchise comes, there’ll be parties and dinners, and we must look our best. And I have to agree that it will be most convenient not having to send to London every time one wants a decent cashmere shawl.’
‘Don’t you care at all?’ she asked, still speaking in that sad little whisper, her face, emptied of its vivacity, seeming quite plain.
‘Oh – as to that – what good would it do me to care? And since it would be foolish, I fully intend not to put myself in the trouble.’
‘You can order your emotions – just like that?’
‘Well – so it seems. Or perhaps I simply behave as if I can.’
‘How like your mother you are, Verity.’
‘Yes. I believe so.’
‘But I am not,’ she said, her hands clenched into those futile fists again. ‘I am not. I thought I was so clever once, Verity – being a woman, getting all this without having to work for it, curling up on a cushion like that girl in the nursery rhyme and eating strawberries and cream all day. But I didn’t know how long the days are – I just didn’t know … He doesn’t want me now, Verity; he just thinks about politics and makes me feel I’m in his way – makes me feel a nuisance, a failure. And he wants that election so badly it’s making him peevish, making him ill. Don’t you think he looks ill?’
Her next question hovered unspoken between us, for how could she say such a thing, how could I listen to it? Yet her mind spoke, and mine heeded.
‘Do you think he’ll die soon, Verity? Do you think he’ll die and set me free?’
Chapter Sixteen
September brought the coronation of our new King William, a less than wholehearted event, perhaps, since he was elderly and ailing and arrangements had already been made for a Regency in case he should die before his niece, twelve-year-old Princess Victoria, had reached eighteen. But we gave a dinner, nevertheless, loyally toasting him in champagne, and, the Reform Bill being almost won, it was suggested that evening, around my dinner table, that a committee be formed to erect a hall in some suitable part of Cullingford, where the nation’s great events could be celebrated in style.
‘It will not be easy to find a site,’ Morgan Aycliffe said dryly, as if it mattered little to him in any case. ‘However, on reflection, there may be one possibility. Not cheap, of course, but central – most convenient – and the committee, I feel sure, would not wish to pinch pennies.’
Nor, it seemed, should we wish to economize on the question of architecture.
‘You w
ill be wanting a room large enough for dancing, I imagine,’ Morgan Aycliffe said wearily, ending it all a great nuisance. ‘And a reading room and lecture hall too, one would suppose, and if one is to follow the fashion of Leeds and Bradford and add a billiard room – well – the cost, of course, must escalate accordingly. The Bradford Public Rooms, too, I fear, are sadly ornate, a deal of fancy, stonework and ironwork, which can never be cheap and may be thought unnecessary – unless, of course, it would grieve the ladies should we seem to lag behind. Yes ballroom, lecture hall, reading room, billiard room, adequate facilities for the convenience of patrons and the preparation of refreshments, a reception hall with a staircase – for I fear the ladies will expect a staircase of decent proportions where guests can be received – and a retiring room. Hmmm, yes, I doubt it could be done for less than ten thousand pounds, although, of course, I cannot commit myself to an estimate made off the cuff.’
And although everyone knew that Mr Aycliffe had certainly worked out his figure most carefully in advance and would lose nothing by it, no Law Valley man would blame him for that.
The money was to be raised in thirty-pound shares, each share – conveying – a vote on its owner and ladies being permitted to vote by proxy. And since Joel, by speedy purchase of shares, had placed himself, perhaps from force of habit, in a position of command, the Assembly. Rooms became yet another outlet for Hannah’s fierce energies.
‘If we are to do it at all,’ she announced, quoting an old Barforth maxim, ‘then we must do it right,’ and, taking Mrs Stevens with her as chaperone – at some inconvenience to me – she set off on a visit to inspect the public buildings of Bradford and Leeds, returning with copious notes, drawings, and measurements, and a few warnings.
‘Naturally I do not wish to put myself forward,’ she told the more important members of the committee, assembled once again informally in my drawing room. And, given my religious commitments, I do not think anyone can accuse me of encouraging frivolity. The Reverend Mr Brand, I must admit, does not approve of dancing, but I am inclined to feel, like the Reverend Mr Ashley, that in moderation it can do no harm. And the practice of giving charity balls, as they do in Bradford, is a most practical and pleasant method of doing good. I must point out, however, that should we hold such functions the price of the tickets must never be lower than one guinea apiece, and that the tickets themselves should only be purchased at the invitation of a committee member. Naturally not even this system is foolproof, and undesirable elements will, from time to time, slip through the net, but if it is strictly adhered to one may at least have the satisfaction, of feeling one had done one’s best. It is also the custom in Bradford to admit visiting businessmen on a yearly subscription basis, and I must tell you that this custom, although exceedingly popular with the young ladies, is not entirely without risk. In the main these men are of good standing and place too high a value on their business connections in the town to seriously misbehave. But very, little is known about some of them, and, in any event, one would in no way wish to be accused of organizing a marriage market. However, that must be left for others to decide. Now, as to the question of design.
And, with a few well-chosen phrases, Hannah, excessively demure yet somehow totally dominating in her eternal brown silk dress with the mourning brooch of my brother’s hair still on its collar, demolished Morgan Aycliffe’s dreams of a highly ornate, highly priced Gothic palace quite beyond recall.
I believe we should think along simple, classical lines, she announced. ‘Doric columns, elegance rather than ostentation. I happen to have with me a drawing …’
And, anticipating no more difficulty with this group of hardheaded businessmen than her two devoted, obedient parsons gave her, she produced a neat, sketch almost from thin air.
‘Here it is,’ she said. ‘Most competently done, and, besides its artistic merits, perhaps Mr Aycliffe could tell us if it is feasible, if – should we have cause to celebrate enfranchisement this year – it could be ready in time. And then, of course, there is the matter of decoration, curtains and floor coverings and furnishings – and colour. White walls, I fear, are unwise, for they soil so quickly and give off so much glare. I think one must have a little more imagination than white. I may go to Bradford again for a second glance.’
But soon there was less cause to hurry for, on October 8, after passing successfully through the Commons, the Second Reform Bill was thrown out by the Lords, resulting in riots in most of our major centres of population, a new bitterness in the conflict between industrialists and squires. In Cullingford the windows of the Coreys and the Corey-Mannings, our most prominent representatives of the gentry, were broken, an event not entirely lacking in prestige since the Duke of Wellington’s London house shared the same fate. There was a great deal of arson, too; the Duke of Newcastle’s Nottingham home and a large proportion of the city of Bristol went up in flames, while the traditional November 5 bonfires were livened up that year by effigies of unpopular bishops – twenty-one of whom had voted against the Bill – burning away beside Guy Fawkes and the Pope.
Troops were called out and a great many people died – some of them for their convictions, some of them by mistake, not a few because they were too drunk to get out of the way. Yet they could all have saved themselves the trouble, for the government was in no mood to give way, and, in December, a Third Reform Bill was placed before the Commons, not much different from the first, while our Whig Prime Minister, Lord Grey, made it clear that if the Lords persisted in refusing it yet again, he would ask the King to create enough new Reform-minded peers to push it through.
The main problem, of course, was the Duke of Wellington, who, when the Bill showed its monstrous head for the third time in the Lords, rose to his feet – too deaf to hear criticism or protest, too proud to care even if he had – and duly talked it out, bringing us closer to revolution than we had ever been.
The government resigned, leaving the King with no one but the Duke of Wellington with courage enough to try to form another. There was an immediate run on the Bank of England, as industrialists like my husband withdrew their funds in obedience to the Radical slogan ‘To beat the Duke go for gold’ and, in addition, declared that they would pay no taxes until they had their way. In the northern cities, men of a more violent nature – who saw middle-class freedom as a steppingstone to their own and who fully shared the Duke of Wellington’s view that once Reform had begun there would be no stopping it – began to barricade the streets. Suddenly the country was on a war footing, class against class, and once again, as in the year my father died, there were tales of armed gangs drilling in the woods and of soldiers sharpening swords that would not all be used – if matters came to that – against the mob.
I did not expect myself to be attacked, for I could see no profit to anyone in that, but so ugly was the mood of the streets, so haphazard the violence brewing beneath the very cobbles, ready to slay as indiscriminately as the typhoid, that I stayed close to home, confining my children and my dogs to the garden. Yet when I did walk out, drawn once again to the pathway above the mill, I could still see that faceless bee swarm of women in the mill yard, waiting with the patience of weariness and need for the gates to open, totally submissive, as men know women must always be submissive when there are children to be fed. And I wondered just what the Reform Bill meant to them.
I had accompanied Hannah often enough, these past months, on her missions of mercy in Patterswick for her Reverend Ashley, and in the grey-faced, mean-spirited alleys behind Ramsden Street, where the gutters ran foul with sewage water and the occasional rotting carcase that had once been dog or cat. And although I could do no less than admire her zeal, I returned always unsatisfied, for Hannah visited only the ‘good poor’, carefully selected by her two reverends, who could be trusted to behave decently before a lady and who, if they failed to act upon her advice, at least knew how to thank her for it. And, indeed, Hannah’s advice was, in most cases, perfectly sound. She was undoubtedly just
ified in advising a young mother that her eight or nine small children would do better if they showed clean faces and clean pinafores to the world, although with their living in one of Morgan Aycliffe’s two room cottages, where the sole source of water – a solitary tap in the middle of the grimy street – was only turned on for an hour or two every day, she did not state how this should be achieved.
‘I think,’ she lectured, gently but firmly, ‘that eight children – or is it nine? – are quite enough, for there is no more space, either upstairs or downstairs, for another mattress, and your older boys and girls are getting too big now to sleep together. It is high time you thought about hanging a curtain to separate your bedroom, half for your husband and yourself, half for your daughters, while your I boys must use the floor downstairs as best they may. My sister-in-law may have some curtaining fabric to spare – oh good, Verity, I felt sure you would – and if Mrs Stevens could make it up and we could supply some brass rings and a rod – yes? I think we may make all decent, in that case. But really, my dear, there must be an end to it – large families are all very well for those who can afford them, but you must remember that you cannot.’
And although the young woman gave her most fervent agreement, it was not kind of Hannah, in my view – since she had not specified just how further pregnancies could be avoided – to be so cross when, on a subsequent visit, she found the girl with tears in her eyes and a tenth child already showing under her none-too-clean pinny.
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