Not that it had done Oliver Rattrie any good, since he’d been caught the day after by those same Chartist women who had marched into Halifax singing the One Hundredth Psalm; sheep no longer but howling Furies who had seized him, puny little thing that he was, and thrown him in the canal where, in his struggle to keep himself from drowning, he had lost every last shilling of the blood-money in his pockets. Unless it was true, as he’d alleged, that the women had robbed him before tossing him in the stinking water.
Perhaps they had. With husbands in prison, or disabled, or thrown out of work by Oliver’s treachery, who could blame them? But when he had had the effrontery to go whining to the constable, attempting to get back the money for which he had, after all, sold his twisted little soul, no one in St Jude’s Street could remember seeing or hearing anything about the accident at all.
Sairellen herself had met the constable on her doorstep and kept him there, her arms folded across her impassive chest, her eyes like chips of granite. Oliver Rattrie? Had he fallen into the canal? Well – and what of it? He’d have been drunk, she supposed. Like his father. In her opinion anybody with any sense would let the matter rest there.
There it had rested.
But Sairellen knew all too well that had Luke not been delirious with fever that day he would surely have marched to Halifax; not with a pitchfork or a flail or a home-made pike in his hands, since he had never been a ‘physical force’man but there, just the same. A voice for moderation and good order – like many others – but his head as bare as the rest when the bricks started to fly, his body as vulnerable to sabre cuts as his father’s, his countenance indistinguishable to those young and possibly nervous soldiers from the real ‘physical force’brigade they were supposed to be looking for, who had raised everybody’s temperatures by ambushing and stoning a military escort at Salterhebble.
And if Oliver had betrayed him, as he had betrayed all the others, what would she have been able to do for the Chartist candidate then?
Was it even safe to be helping him now? But she would be a sheep indeed to be ruled only by that.
‘You’ll take some treacle tart,’ she told Daniel, the set of her pugnacious jaw warning him that she was not asking a question so much as issuing a command.
‘So I will.’ He gave her a slanting, quite roguish smile, cleverly designed to appeal to her both as a woman and a mother. A charmer, she thought, although she had long passed the season for such things. And a wanderer, a political vagabond as she would permit no son of hers to become. An Irishman too which was not, in her eyes, the best of recommendations. What would he be likely to know or care of children worked half to death in English factories?
‘You’ll be after Home Rule for your own country, I expect,’ she said.
‘I’ll be after justice and freedom for everybody, Mrs Thackray.’
‘Aye. I reckon you will.’ She had heard those words too many times before to be impressed by them. ‘My husband died at Peterloo for that, my lad. Twenty-four years ago.’
Had it really been so long? Sometimes it seemed another lifetime. Sometimes no farther than yesterday. But Luke, she remembered, had been four years old, tall for his age but thin as a stick and pale with excitement, that day, at the journey to Manchester, the speeches, the exalted, psalmsinging atmosphere of the crowds. Was he outgrowing his strength, she’d wondered, as her other children had done, her vague fears of wasting fevers and rickety limbs vanishing to be replaced by incredulous horror as the soldiers on their tall horses had begun to charge. Why had she brought him here? She ought to have known there would be trouble. She had known it. There had simply been nowhere to leave him. And Jack, her husband, had had some high-flown notion of dedicating the lad to the cause. In blood, it seemed. ‘Damn you, Jack Thackray,’ she’d screamed. ‘Now you’ve killed us all.’ Even now, in the night, she was sometimes startled from sleep by the sound of those words; that scream.
She had thrown Luke to the ground, herself on top of him, and when the yelling and the thudding and the terrible, high-pitched howling of collective terror had been over, when the cavalry had charged through the crowd like a scythe through a cornfield and silence – such a silence – had fallen, she had opened her eyes and seen blood everywhere, in her hair and her hands, all over the stupefied, half-suffocated child. Jack’s blood. Jack, who had thrown himself across them both and had died in her arms, an hour later, without speaking a word.
Radical Jack Thackray. Her last words to him had been a curse yet she had felt him at her side on the day she had marched to York with Richard Oastler. It was for him that she had raised Luke to be the man he was. It was for him that now she was entertaining this arrow-straight, dark-eyed young scoundrel who would be likely to repay her by seducing her daughter, she thought, if she still had one, and who would probably forget everything he’d ever heard about hunger in St Jude’s, or in County Kildare for that matter, should he ever find himself well-fed in Westminster.
Handsome young rascal with hands that had never lifted anything heavier than a pen by the look of them. She would prefer to put her trust in a plainer, simpler, hard-handed man. Like Luke.
‘You’ll like your tea strong.’ Once again she had given him an order.
‘I would.’
And then, giving no sign of either self-disgust or self-betrayal, although he was feeling both in full measure, he very casually mentioned. ‘I knew an Irish family once who lived nearby. Just across the street from here, I think – although after so long I may well be mistaken. A mother and daughter and the daughter’s little boy?’
He found, to his immense distress, that he could not persuade his tongue to pronounce ‘Adeane’, much less the simple, lovely name of ‘Cara’.
Sairellen felt no such restriction.
‘You’ll be meaning the Adeanes.’ It did not surprise her. She had judged him, all along, as one of their kind.
‘Yes. That was the name. They will have moved on by now – surely …?’
And having asked the question it now occurred to him that with this woman’s shrewd, sharp eyes upon him, he may be unable to bear the answer.
‘Aye, you’d think they’d have moved on, wouldn’t you? Folks like that. But no. You’d be wrong.’
‘They’re here?’ He would have given a great deal to have sounded less incredulous.
‘They are. Odette and the bairn still across the street just where they used to be.’
‘And – Miss Adeane?’ He still could not trust himself to say ‘Cara’.
‘Come up in the world. Or so the world calls it. She has a shop in Market Square. Miss Cara Adeane. Dressmaker and Milliner. Like she always said she’d be.’
‘Yes,’ he said very quietly. ‘I see.’
Clearly, in fact. Beyond all possibility of error. For she could not have risen so far on her own. He knew that. It was a condition of life in St Jude’s. A condition of life everywhere, to one degree or another, for a woman. And he would just have to learn, and quickly, to be glad of it. To accept that whatever she had done or promised or performed to maintain her position in Market Square then her choice could only have been that or the workhouse. Or the brothel. Or to become the pregnant drudge of a working man.
No choice at all.
‘Are they – well, Mrs Thackray?’ He knew she was watching him very keenly.
‘Marvellously well, I’d say. Never better.’
‘And Miss Adeane lives over her shop, does she?’
‘Aye. She finds it more convenient, I reckon – for her visitors.’
‘Mother.’ Luke Thackray’s warning served only to increase the sarcasm in his mother’s face.
‘I’m telling no secrets, Luke lad. You’ll not be denying what everybody knows for certain?’
He put down his knife and fork tidily, his rough-hewn, overcrowded face completely calm.
‘No. But I won’t be judging either, mother.’
‘Then I reckon it’s high time you did. Where Miss Cara Adeane’
s concerned, at any rate.’
He shook his head, unperturbed it seemed, not in the least put out yet altogether immovable, a man whose quiet strength struck Daniel suddenly as impressive, a steadily burning, dogged persistence which would be likely to endure far longer than his own vivid bursts of fire.
‘She does the best she can, mother. And, considering the alternatives, I’m not much inclined to blame her.’
‘I’ve never seen her crying over her lot, Luke my lad – whatever we might choose to call it. Nor hanging her head with shame.’
He looked up at her, with a sudden, whole-hearted grin. ‘No mother. I reckon you never will.’
No more was said. Having finished his dinner the candidate retired to the spick and span little room no bigger than a cubbyhole they had placed at his disposal and, when he had put his thoughts and his speeches in good order, stepped out for a breath of air, a short stroll which led him – as he had known it would – to the newly painted door of Odette Adeane.
His memory of her had been indistinct, a little Frenchwoman speaking only in soft whispers, so frail and quiet and hesitant that she had seemed almost transparent beside Cara, hardly there at all. An old woman, anxious and harassed half to death, wearing some colourless kind of garment which had seemed to hang on her, fitting where it touched. Shabby, he’d thought, and plain, so that he was taken aback by the neatly-rounded woman who answered his knock, a most presentable person in a dark, well-cut woollen dress with what looked like a gold brooch at the neck, her smooth oval face miraculously ironed of the creases he remembered, her mouth smiling the serene welcome of a woman who has no reason to expect trouble from a knock at her door, a woman who eats well and sleeps well and can settle all her bills. A contented woman, subject to no alarm. Until she recognized him.
‘It is Mr Carey, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, Mrs Adeane. May I speak to you?’
‘Of course.’ For when had Odette ever resisted an appeal? ‘Do come in. Please do. Please be at ease.’
Although she was not at ease herself and did not expect to be until she had told him all the painful things he would surely wish to know. Until she had wounded him, perhaps. And then carried the news to Cara.
He no longer recognized the room into which she bade him enter, a bare place once furnished with the haphazard gleanings of pawnshops and charity, now beautified beyond anything in St Jude’s by rugs and armchairs and a chintz-covered sofa, heavy red plush curtains at the window, a table with a fringed, red plush tablecloth to match, pictures on the walls, china ornaments, a good fire burning, something savoury and appetizing in the coal oven beside it.
The wages of sin, he supposed, trying to be glad, for Cara’s sake, that they appeared to be so good.
No dog, he noticed, but Cara’s son, the silent child who had always made him feel so ill at ease, still sitting by the hearth as if he had grown there from a morose three-year-old into a clean and tidy, almost dandified five. A handsome child, Cara’s bold image, it seemed, with Odette’s timid spirit, apparently engrossed in a book – or was he? – from which he did not lift his eyes.
‘Daniel,’ said Odette, already faltering. ‘She is not here, you know.’
‘I know. I have come from the Thackrays.’
‘Oh yes …?’ Her face was blank.
‘I am here for the by-election, Mrs Adeane. I shall be here for a little while. As the Chartist candidate. I thought you would have been gone, all three, long ago.’
‘And so we would, had she not …’
‘I know. Is she – well, Mrs Adeane?’
‘Oh yes. Yes. I am sure she is. She has the shop, you see. Nothing grand, as yet. Quite small, indeed – and there is still Miss Ernestine Baker across the street, making all the trouble she can. But Cara is so clever and she works so hard. She never stops working. It is all she thinks of. I supervise the workroom for her and keep the girls in order as best I can …’
‘Yes – to be sure.’
She smiled at him a little wildly, not knowing what to say except that it seemed best to keep on talking.
‘Yes indeed, because dressmakers can be very excitable, you know. Someone must keep them calm or the scissors soon start to fly. One wonders that murder is so seldom done. And I do the fine embroideries. And teach others, which I find very pleasant … I live here, with the child because … Well, it is not suitable for a child, is it, to be too much in a workroom among so many foolish women? He goes to school now, of course. She insists upon that. And then he comes home with me. She finds it convenient to live above the shop … Naturally one cannot leave business premises unattended. But the accommodation there is too small for the three of us …’
He was unprepared for the pain the room gave him, the fierce memory of the last time he had been here, when only that impulse of chivalry, or folly, had prevented him from taking her, as he could have done, from making her his own instead of handing her over to whoever had got her now. From forcing her, by an act of love, to follow him through the world, not barefoot as she’d accused him but in no great luxury, instead of ‘obliging’the man who had given her her chance. Was she happier this way? Through clenched teeth he hoped so. He had no right to do other than wish her well.
Yet it scorched him that he had been unable to give her that chance himself. Unable to give her anything but the bitter regret which struck out at him afresh, raising a sting of tears behind his eyes, an abominable tightness in his chest.
He must get out of this house and out of these memories as quickly as he could.
‘I am so sorry,’ whispered Odette.
He could not answer her quite at once. It took a moment. And then, rapidly, he said, ‘I understand. I do realize … Mrs Adeane, there is someone – of course – who helped her – a man …’
‘Oh yes. I am so sorry.’
‘No. Please. Please don’t distress yourself.’
‘My dear boy, it is you who are suffering …’
‘Yes.’ Why hide it? She had seen it in any case and she was not Sairellen Thackray who would look down her granite nose at him and sneer. This gentle little lady would sit down and suffer at his side.
He could not bear that.
‘But I must bear it,’ he said. ‘It is my own fault. And I have no right – none – to criticise. No rights of any kind. I want – I would be happy if you could tell her …’
‘Oh yes – anything …’
‘Just that. That I could not ever blame her. For anything. Could you tell her so in a manner she would tolerate?’
Odette shook her head and smiled sadly. ‘I will try.’
‘And should she wish to see me …?’
Her narrow, fluid hands came apart in a wide, pitying gesture which said ‘My poor boy. I do not think so.’
‘I cannot suppose she will. But I cannot hide my presence from her either, Mrs Adeane. I am here to make speeches and take part in processions. She will be bound to hear of me. Of course, why should she care? I cannot imagine she does.’
Odette had nothing to say to that.
‘But …’
‘Yes, Daniel?’
He drew himself up very straight. ‘If she would like me to call on her, then I will gladly do so. If not then I will do everything possible to keep out of her way. It is entirely for her to decide. Whatever is best for her.’
He meant it. He had given her nothing so far. Indeed, he had left her only in the full knowledge that he never could give her the things she wanted. He was ready, therefore, to submit to her wishes now whatever they may be. To make any sacrifice. At least he could give her that.
Odette had not meant to return to the shop in Market Square that evening yet, nevertheless, having given Liam his dinner and left him – happily for him – sketching railway engines with Luke Thackray, she did so, finding her daughter in the room at the back of the shop which served her as both office and sitting-room, going through the day’s accounts.
Miss Cara Adeane. Dressmaker and Milliner.
A handsome, elegant woman, thought her mother, although a woman of course, in no way a girl; twenty-two years old yet looking at least five years older, her gleaming hair drawn back into an intricate chignon which made her cheekbones higher and caused her brilliant turquoise eyes to slant upwards a little at their corners like the eyes of a sleek and haughty cat; her figure the most perfect in Frizingley, in Odette’s opinion – and she had measured most of them – a tiny, supple waist, high, firm breasts, long legs, a thoroughbred arch to her back, the shoulders of a queenly Amazon.
A regal temper too, these days, imperious and unpredictable, working herself too hard, of course, and expecting the same of others, so that Odette spoke very carefully to her now as she described her interview with Daniel Carey.
But the storm did not come. It was not in Odette’s nature to inflict pain without suffering it herself. Yet Cara listened to her now, looking remote, polite, her ledger still open before her, her pen in her hand, waiting, as if it had been a matter of a badly-cut bodice or a late delivery of thread, for the explanations to come to an end. And when they did she said calmly. ‘It’s all right, mother.’
‘Darling – how can it be?’
‘It just is. So there’s no need to talk about it again. And if you do happen to see him just tell him … to get on with what he has to do, and so will I. Which reminds me, I had Mrs Maria Colclough here today, just after you left. How about that? One of Miss Ernestine Baker’s best customers asking me to make suggestions for her youngest daughter’s wedding gown. And nervous as a cat about it too, in case Miss Ernestine had seen her slipping in here – as she probably had. I’ve made some sketches. So if you can do some samples of embroidery – by tomorrow afternoon – then I’ll call on her. Because if we can get the Colclough wedding, mother …’
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