‘So you’ll give them your blessing?’
‘Hardly. Listen, Verity, go and see Agbrigg this afternoon. Find out just where he stands in, the matter, for it strikes me it was all Hannah’s idea. He still talks about his wife as if she were waiting for him at home with the kettle on instead of being in her grave, and, for the life of me, I can’t believe it ever entered his head to make love to my sister. So, if he’s unwilling, or uneasy, if she’s bullied him I into it, then I want to know, because then I can, bully him out of it and still keep him on at Lawcroft. Understand? I’ll be at Tarn Edge around four o’clock. See me there.’
The millhouse at Lawcroft was cool and quiet as always when I arrived, my old home invaded by strangers, one of them, the boy Jonas, coming out to greet me, his pale narrow face and slanting, colourless eyes informing me that he was aware of the situation and gloried in it. And as he went off to the mill to fetch his father, with shoulders hunched in the fashion of one who spends much time stooping over his books, I understood that whatever private reservations Mr Agbrigg might have about taking a Barforth wife, young Jonas had no doubts at all that a Barforth stepmother was just his style.
The surviving Agbrigg girl, Maria, hastily installed me in the parlour, much smaller than I remembered it and overcrowded now with the old horsehair sofas and ungainly schoolroom chairs of the Agbriggs, but just the same it was the room where my brother Edwin had announced his intention of marrying Hannah, where Joel, on my own betrothal day, had congratulated me on my good sense, the room where I had last spoken to my father.
‘Will you take some tea, Mrs Barforth?’ Maria Agbrigg enquired, a prim, plain little mouse unlikely to inspire more than casual kindness in Hannah and declining the complication of cups and saucers, I was almost tearful with memory – with the perilous, painful game of wondering what might have been – when the door opened to admit my new prospective brother-in-law.
He had first come to this house as a hungry young man, cap in hand, to lay information against his workmates, desperate enough for anything that would release the trap of his poverty. And I saw now that, beyond the dark frock coat and well-pressed, well-cut trousers, beneath the cambric shirt and the sober but expensive necktie, he was still dissatisfied. He had lost his poor, sad Ann and nine of his children, and with them, perhaps, the last thread of gentleness in his nature, the last whispering hope of any real personal joy in life. But Ann’s favourite son still remained – and one of her daughters with Ann’s thin, fair hair and a touch of her frailty. I needed no more than ten minutes of Mr Agbrigg’s time to realize he knew exactly how useful Hannah wanted to be to Jonas, how useful she could indirectly be to Maria, and that he had no intention of denying them their opportunities. Perhaps the idea of her as a woman had not even occurred to him until she decided that it should, but once the offer had been made, once it was all there before him, he would not let it go.
He had always felt the deepest admiration for Miss Barforth, he told me, keeping his eyes on the carpet. He believed her to be a truly marvellous woman and had no hesitation at all in placing his future, his children’s future, in her capable hands. He was, of course, well aware of the vast social gulf between them. She was far above him and would always remain so, he would never dispute that, nor would he dispute the right of anyone to be surprised annoyed – at her decision to marry so far beneath her station. But – and here he did, for a moment, glance palely at me and then away again – no one could deny that he was hard-working, which counted for a great deal in the Law Valley, and good-living, which may count for rather less but which, in a matter of this kind, was surely of value. Nor was there any question of financial gain on his part since Miss Barforth had no fortune and no expectations and would be more likely to empty his pocket than fill it. Their decision to marry had been taken logically, he felt, and carefully, and since Miss Barforth was now a lady of some maturity and immense determination, one could, safely credit her with the ability to know her own mind.
A speech, I thought, which bore Hannah’s signature as clearly as those delivered from the hustings by Morgan. Aycliffe, Hannah’s voice speaking through her half-willing, half-eager bridegroom, saying, I am thirty-four years old and single, and I will do as I please.’
‘She is very fond of my boy Jonas,’ Ira Agbrigg said as he handed me into my carriage, speaking his own words now, as if he thought some kind of emotion appropriate to the occasion. ‘Thinks she can make something of him. And I drove away quite sadly, hardly knowing what could say to Joel.’
The afternoon was fine, the treetops already gold with approaching autumn, a thin, blue sky hazing to saffron on the horizon, the road to Tarn Edge shorter than usual since I was in no hurry, and empty of anyone who could delay me from reaching the spot where Joel’s house was rising, from the ground like a small cathedral.
The outer shell was completed now, the graceful Gothic spires giving height and presence to massive stone, walls which sprouted, in every possible crevice, a midsummer profusion of carved fruit and vines and mythological heads of tangled hair. The front entrance was wider, had more steps, more columns, more ironwork on the heavy oak door than the Assembly Rooms in Cullingford; the hall, still bare, was several square feet larger and had more doors opening from it; the sweep of the staircase was grander, climbing upwards to a landing as wide as the millhouse parlour, and a mighty window of ruby and emerald and sapphire glass. Joel’s house, the shop front of his achievement and success, with Joel’s phaeton already standing on the uncompleted drive, and another carriage I didn’t recognize, a smart equippage with a coachman lounging moodily, thirstily perhaps, at the horses’ heads.
Joel’s house, smelling of new plaster and new paint; vast, empty spaces, a cool refuge from the dusty, sticky day, the silence shattered, not unpleasantly, by the unseen tapping of a workman’s hammer, a saw slicing busily through wood, a house beginning to come alive. Bare boards under my feet, a happy clattering as I ran upstairs, a willingness to lose myself in these unknown rooms to furnish them, in my mind, not merely with chairs and tables, but with Blaize and Nicholas and Caroline, with my puppies’ excited yelping, with Mrs Stevens stirring her broths and her medicines and her perfumes, with Hannah bringing her clever, spiteful Jonas and her embarrassed husband to call, with Elinor, drawing her chaise longue to the window, forgetting about the letters that never came, forgetting everything, perhaps, except that she was weary. And, with a sudden acute pang that took my breath away, I did not know if I would ever live here and forgot, for a terrifying moment, what I was doing here now, forgot my intentions and aspirations, my very name. And, closing my eyes, I could see nothing but an alleyway leading to the Red Gin and could hear a voice – not Crispin’s, my own perhaps – telling me I had only to open the door.
But it was the window that came first to my hand, the new frame lifting jerkily to fulfil my need for air, and, leaning out a little, breathing greedily, gratefully, I saw Joel coming across the as yet unlandscaped garden, with a bare-headed, long-limbed woman I recognized as Estella Chase.
I had seen her last at the Assembly Rooms, arriving late with the Coreys and the Corey-Mannings and my mother looking at Joel in a way I understood, letting her long, narrow hand linger on his arm, displaying her lean, thoroughbred body so that it would linger in his mind, And I saw that now, recently returned once again from London, she was doing the same, offering enough of herself, as she swayed close to him and then away again, to arouse – or re-arouse – his appetite. And although there was no reason in the world why I should not have called out to them, waved from the window, and gone tripping downstairs to greet them, I drew back a little and kept silent, even when they paused almost directly beneath me
‘We are dining with the Floods tonight,’ she said, ‘which is always a vast production, so I must be on my way. But now I have let you know I am home again, perhaps we shall not be strangers?’
‘Surely not,’ he told her, ready enough, I thought, to let her go since there w
ere stonemasons and carpenters awaiting his instructions and the claims of his house, just then, were more important, more exciting, than any woman.
‘Let me take you to your carriage,’ he said, holding out a hand to steady her across the rough ground.
It was then, I think, that he looked up and saw my face at the window, my eyes somehow connecting with his, so that we were still looking at each other when he drew the surprised Estella Chase into his arms and kissed her very slowly, so that I could see the tip of his tongue against her lips, her own tongue flicker greedily to meet it, the excitement of her body nailing itself to his, which may not have been excited at all.
‘Joel – darling – I thought you’d forgotten.’
‘How could I ever do that?’
‘Easily – wicked as you are. I’d quite decided to forget you.’
As she lifted her face once again for his kiss I found myself pressed hard against the bare wall, invisible now to them both, fists clenched, every nerve in my body clenched, it seemed, against the onslaught of my anger, the roaring, red-flecked Barforth fury which now, pounding inside my body, needed violence to be at peace.
I’ll hurt him, I thought. I’ll hurt him badly. He’ll pay me for this.
Through the painful clamping of my teeth on my lower lip, the, clawing of my own nails against my palms, hurting myself and willing him to feel the injury, I heard my mother’s cool voice telling me how it could be done. He had kissed that woman without desiring her, simply to wound me, hoping to wound me, and so there would be no wounds, or none that he could see. I would not delight him with tantrums, nor flatter him with jealous tears. I would give him what his vanity least desired, my indifference, and hurrying, running almost, I left that bare room behind me, reaching the landing, the stairs, flew down the hall, paused to catch my breath, and, walking through the heavy, iron-studded door, met them head on as they came around the side of the house.
‘Ah, there you are,’ Joel said, his face quite blank, although I could feel the calculation behind it, the cruelty, the eagerness for my reaction.
‘Yes, dear,’ I replied, with no idea at all how I made my voice, so calm and bright when everything beneath the surface of my placid skin was trembling. ‘Here I am. Here you are too, and Mrs Chance. It is Mrs Chance, isn’t it? How nice to see you again.’
‘Chase,’ she said. ‘My name is Chase. Oh yes, Mrs Barforth, I was driving by, and having heard you are building a palace, I could hardly restrain myself from taking a look.’
‘Of course you could not restrain yourself, Mrs Chase. I do so perfectly understand. Well then, now that you have let us know you are home again, perhaps we shall not be strangers.’
And it could not have possibly escaped her that I had quoted the very words she had used to Joel a moment ago.
‘Oh,’ she said, her pale eyes staring. ‘Quite so. But heavens, the time: I really must fly, Mr Barforth, Miss Barforth.’
We watched the carriage drive away in a taut silence.
‘It won’t please her,’ he said, ‘that you forgot her name or appeared to.’
‘If that is supposed to worry me, then I find I can hardly bring myself to care.’
‘So I see. That surprises me, Verity. I don’t think I’ve ever known you to take the trouble to dislike anyone before, and whatever can Mrs Chase have done to deserve the favour?’
And growing hard suddenly, I answered, ‘I merely find her type of woman tedious. She has a great opinion of herself but, really, if it were not for her London gown her London manner, I doubt if any man would give shilling.’
‘Ah, so you think her a light woman?’
‘Yes, when I think of her at all, which is seldom.’
‘That I grant you,’ he told me, coming to an abrupt halt. ‘She is a light woman. And what I want to know, Verity, is why that should bother you? My sister Elinor is a light woman, too. We both know that, and yet you were a tigress in her defence. Really, I continue to marvel at it.’
‘Elinor has nothing to do with it.’
‘Has she not? And has she nothing to do with the change in you?’
‘What change? I am not changed.’
‘Are you not?’
‘No, I am exactly as I have always been, and if you think otherwise, then it can only be that you have never looked.’
‘So, I neglect you, do I? Have you any particular complaint to make?’
And because I could hear, beneath his words, the voice of his will urging, ‘Fight me, Verity. Come, girl, bite me, scratch me,’ and because I had found another, infinitely more subtle way to bite him, I said with all my mother’s deliberate vagueness, ‘Why no, darling, absolutely not. What an idea.’
But as we went back to the house, side by side, civilized again and cool, to talk of floor coverings and wall coverings and Ira Agbrigg, I was not sure who had won or why the battle had been fought at all. I only knew I felt sick at heart, desolate and bereaved and exceedingly weary, and that I did not wish my life to continue in this way.
Chapter Thirty-Two
In September, after a day in the saddle clearing his land of foxes, Squire Dalby felt a pain across his chest which, growing more and more acute, not only confined him to his bed for six weeks of glorious hunting weather but, by reminding him of his mortality, increased his determination to marry my mother.
‘It is all because of his heir,’ she told me when I drove over to visit them both. ‘It is his grandson who inherits from him since he has lost his son, and as he has never seen eye to eye with his daughter-in-law, who has married again, he feels that she and her husband will turn me out of my cottage as soon as he is dead. Dear man – the world is full of cottages, and although I tell him repeatedly that I have money enough for all my needs, he simply cannot bring himself to believe it. He is totally convinced that the young squire will order me out of Patterswick with threats to set his dogs on me if I return, and he will not be persuaded that I would simply move to Redesdale or Floxley, or even come to you.’
‘Perhaps you had better marry him, then.’
‘Well, dear, I think I must consider it – in fact, that is the very least I can do after all his kindness. My dear old Dalby has convinced himself he is not long for this world and it is his gallantry, alongside his whim to annoy his daughter-in-law, which inclines him to take me for a wife. But, between ourselves, I think, with proper care, he may live along time yet, and although I had made up my mind never to marry again, think I might not altogether dislike the position of squire’s lady.’
The wedding took place at Patterswick in the middle of November, in a church somewhat fittingly decorated with the richly tinted blooms of autumn, although my mother, coming down the aisle on Joel’s arm, looked young enough to cause some consternation on the bridegroom’s side of the church, where certain elderly Dalbys, having been informed that the bride was a widow and a grandmother, seemed unable to believe their eyes.
She was attended, once again quite fittingly, by a procession of children, Caroline and the three Aycliffe girls in white, flouncy dresses and pink sashes, Caroline in a temper because she had wanted a blue sash or a yellow one or, failing that, a pink dress, anything to make her stand out from her Aycliffe cousins.
‘It is my grandmamma,’ she had said, mutiny writ large across her scowling Barforth brow. ‘She’s only their mother’s aunt, which makes them her second nieces, and that’s nowhere near as close as me. I should come first, by myself in a pink dress, and they should just bunch along behind me – they’re narrow enough to get down the aisle all three together, side by side.’
And Caroline, flying off in a rage at the denial of what she considered a perfectly reasonable request, was not to know that if Hannah had had her way, the Aycliffe girls would not have been there to trouble her at all.
‘It is quite out of the question for them to be bridesmaids at such a time,’ she had declared. ‘Altogether ridiculous when one considers the state that family is in.’
B
ut Hannah herself was in something of a state just then, having suffered greater humiliation than she had anticipated at Cullingford’s reaction to her new engagement, led by Emma-Jane, who, conveniently forgetting that Hannah had jilted both Mr Ashley and Mr Brand, expressed great astonishment at the lengths some spinsters would go to in order to get themselves off the – shelf.
‘I was never so shocked in all my life,’ she told me gleefully, looking better than I had seen her in years. I wonder Joel doesn’t put a stop to it. But then he and Mr Agbrigg have always been so close – always whispering secrets together and I suppose they’re just like Lucy Oldroyd and me. We can’t afford to have a fall-out because we know too much about each other. But, just the same, it’s going to be awkward for you, isn’t it, having him in the house, using your first name and making your children call him uncle. Naturally the rest of us can get out of inviting him, but I don’t see how you can avoid it, Verity. Oh dear, you poor thing, you do have my sympathy. Thank goodness we won’t have to come to the wedding, because should cry, all the way through – I wouldn’t be able to stop myself.’
Having this to contend with, Hannah was perhaps less vigilant than usual in the matter of my mother’s bridesmaids, allowing herself to be taken by surprise when my mother, bypassing her authority, wrote directly to Mr Aycliffe in London, informing him of her marriage to a gentleman of considerable local importance and requesting that his daughters should attend her.
‘Permission granted,’ she told us, floating into my house one morning with a letter in her hand. ‘Mr Aycliffe congratulates me on my forth coming marriage and although he doesn’t quite say it – and I didn’t quite say it, either – he appears to agree with me that a refusal to allow his daughters to be my bridesmaids would appear not only churlish but rather odd. And Mr Aycliffe does not wish to appear odd. I must invite Elinor too, you know – to avoid that slight suggestion of oddity – for if we are to play happy families we must do it right. Yes, absolutely, I must invite her and I see no cause for alarm, Hannah. We can hardly, hope to see Mr Adair on a white charger come to carry her away. And since neither the Hobhouses nor the Oldroyds will be there, I think we may manage her tolerably well. You had best get her a new gown, Verity, for unless her husband agrees to release her clothes, she will be a sorry sight.’
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