‘That’s what I supposed he was doing, Cara.’
He sounded so reasonable, so calm, that she could have slapped him.
‘Oh yes – yes – of course you did. And that won’t stop you from going to the hustings on polling day, will it, and letting everybody see just where you stand …?’
‘No. It certainly will not.’
‘Luke.’ Inwardly she knew that she was wringing her hands in anguish. ‘Why do you take so little care?’ He shook his head and, once again, without any need for touch, she felt his hard, steady hand in hers.
‘Nobody could call me a wild man, Cara. But I’m not a sheep either. And if safety is all you’re thinking of, then sheep aren’t even safe – are they?’
‘No. Only the wolf is that.’ She believed it and could have slapped him again when she saw his grin.
‘He may think so. I expect he does. But wolves get caught in traps, don’t they, and starve to death in hard winters, or get shot at and bleed to death – like everything else. And where’s the sense in trying to hide what I feel and what I am – even if I wanted to – when my father was Radical Jack Thackray and my mother is giving bed and board to the Chartist candidate?’
More than anything else she had wished to avoid any mention of Daniel. She had found it hard enough to speak of him to Odette. Impossible, surely, to anyone else? Yet acknowledging the necessity, she said now with stiff lips and an ungainly, unwilling tongue, ‘I know. Daniel Carey. I met him once, years ago, on the boat from Ireland.’
‘So he said.’
And when the desire to ask ‘Is he well? Is he happy? Is he in danger?’ became a need that was almost – never quite – impossible to deny she endured it as one endures physical pain until it had eased, receded, had almost – never quite – gone away.
Was it even necessary to enquire? He would not be happy because the capacity for true happiness was in neither one of them. He would be well enough. As she was. Of course he would be in danger.
Yet at least she had succeeded in speaking his name without any visible emotion, a knack for which she grew increasingly grateful with the approach of polling-day. Not that the by-election – or any election – was of much importance to Cara when compared, for instance, with her negotiations for the Colclough wedding. Although – as she set about persuading Mrs Maria Colclough of her ability to transform her awkward daughter Rachel into a bridal lily – her discovery that the Whig candidate had been selected, sponsored, bought, in fact, and paid for by the town’s manufacturing interest, including the Colcloughs, did have the effect – so long as she remained in Maria Colclough’s drawing-room – of making an ardent Whig of her.
An attitude she at once discarded, on her return to Market Square, when she found the truest of Frizingley’s Tories, Lady Lark, awaiting her to be fitted for the accoutrements of several country-house visits.
The Larks, of course, were sponsoring their own candidate, along with the Covington-Pyms and the generous contribution of Mr Adolphus Moon who would have liked to stand for election himself had it not been for the handicap of his lovely but socially unacceptable wife. But a minor Lark cousin had been discovered, just as a minor Lark or Covington-Pym could always be found to do their duty as master of foxhounds or vicar of Far Flatley church, a gentleman who resembled Sir Felix Lark as closely as one Rattrie to another and whose wife – should she ever get there – would know exactly how to conduct herself at Westminster.
And it irked Lady Lark excessively that the desired result should even be in doubt.
‘In my younger days,’ she said as Cara pinned her skilfully into a true blue dinner gown, ‘my father chose his member of parliament just as he chose his lawyer and his doctor, and that was that. One knew everyone personally, you see, who had the vote and one never dreamed of asking what they meant to do with it. One knew. So simple. So terribly right, somehow. One had the feeling that that was what the Deity intended. One knew one’s leaders. Oneself, in fact. And there is no denying that ordinary people – most people – really like to be led. We looked after them, you see, as they knew we should. But now, Good Heavens, such chaos. All these new people and this new money which has been enfranchized. All this talk of opening our ports to cheap foreign corn which, apart from all the other foreign things which might come in with it, would absolutely ruin my brother – Lord Urlsham, my dear – who grows acres and acres of the stuff in Kent. Unthinkable. And really, although the Dallams and Braithwaites and Colcloughs have become one’s friends, although one dines with them these days quite freely and so forth, one wonders – quand même – whether they really have enough experience of power? Without wishing to be unkind one feels bound to remember how very new they are and one would not wish to see them – well – in error.’
‘Make fools of ourselves, she means,’ said the strident Lizzie Braithwaite to Lady Lark’s departing back. ‘Well we won’t. We’ll win because we work harder. And she’ll lose because her blue blood has gone thin. And if she wants an occupation for all those spare nephews and cousins of hers then she’d better put them in the army – since they’re fit for nothing but fancy uniforms – and send them off to conquer a few more heathen countries to provide markets for our manufactured goods. But what we both have to do is keep the Chartists down – stop them from poisoning the minds of honest workers against people like us, who are in a position to look after them.’
‘Certainly, madam,’ murmured Cara.
‘Give us a living wage,’ said Daniel Carey from the hustings and Luke Thackray from the street. ‘Give us education. And opportunity. Give us the vote. And we’ll look after ourselves.’
‘So they will,’ said Christie Goldsborough across his silken pillows to Cara. ‘Until such of them who are shrewd and ambitious – and there’ll be plenty – start using the others as a ladder to get to the top of the heap for their own ends. One wonders who they’ll vote for then.’
‘I don’t care,’ said Cara, thinking of her shop-window which any stone – Chartist, Whig, or Tory – could just as easily splinter; remembering the drunken havoc of last polling day.
‘Should you feel the need of a guard,’ murmured her lover, ‘I could hire some Irish muscle for your protection. No? Well then, if you don’t care for that, take Oliver Rattrie.’
She declined. Coldly. One Rattrie being more than enough – although Anna, so quiet as to be almost invisible caused her no trouble, applying herself without much talent but with an almost painful diligence to the ‘apprentice pieces’, the bonnet linings and trimmings, tedious hemming and tacking with which she was kept busy all day. A little shadow at night, making her bed in the workroom and mistaking it for luxury; denying, with a petrified shake of the head, that she was nervous of Cara’s dog, although her face blanched with terror every time the animal approached her; ready to run errands at all times and in all weathers for Odette and Madge Percy; ready to lay down and die, supposed Cara, for Luke. Was she content with her lot? No doubt Luke would know. But little had the power to hold Cara’s attention just then beyond the problem of having new, stout shutters fitted in a hurry, before polling day, and her sketches for the Colclough wedding which compared ‘adequately’ – thought Mrs Colclough – to Miss Baker’s so far as style was concerned, but not in price.
Could Miss Adeane cut her cost, rather considerably, without in any way skimping on the quality or ornamentation of her original designs? And even then …? Oh dear. Perhaps Miss Adeane was just a shade too young and daring, and had there not been some talk, once, about debts and lovers? And since – as every Colclough knew – there could be no smoke without fire, perhaps Miss Baker would be safer. As well as cheaper. Both safety and cost being of great importance to Mrs Colclough’s son, Uriah.
‘Miss Adeane’s designs are best,’ said Mrs Colclough’s awkward daughter, Rachel.
What was a poor mother to do?
She returned to Miss Adeane’s shop on the eve of polling day accompanied by her son, the clerical Uriah, by
his ‘angel’ – not yet his fiancée – Miss Linnet Gage and by her sister-in-law, Mrs Tristan Gage, now well recovered, it seemed, from her ‘accident’in December. Miss Adeane, with her flair for knowing just what was required, at once invited them all to be seated – no mean achievement in itself in such a limited space – and produced an extra cushion for Gemma’s back while judgement was passed on the proposed wedding dress.
‘Beautiful,’ said Gemma, the sketch in her hand. ‘Really, Mrs Colclough, I do not believe you could do better anywhere.’
‘Is it not – perhaps – just a little severe?’ murmured Linnet, willing the enamoured but not amorous Uriah to remember her in the diaphanous draperies she had worn for Gemma’s wedding; to think of her less as an angel and more as a bride.
And it was perhaps because he suddenly and most distressfully thought of her neither in lily-white satin nor feathered tulle but with no garments at all, nude and therefore, to one of his pious disposition, decidedly sinful, that he jumped to his feet and, in urgent need of distraction, began to peer out of the window, his equilibrium unmistakably disturbed.
‘What is it, Uriah?’ his mother, herself very easily agitated, required to know.
‘Oh …’ It would have to be something immediate and convincing. What, indeed? ‘Oh yes … Look here –’
‘At what, Uriah?’ His mother’s eyes were very sharp.
‘At that Chartist fellow – yes, that’s it – and his rabble, coming across the square. They’ll be walking past your window, Miss Adeane, in a minute or two, bold as brass. If I had my way I’d have them pushed off the pavement. I can tell you, and straight into the gutter where they belong. Candidate, indeed! Just come over here and see him swaggering …’
They came.
‘Why are such things allowed?’ enquired Mrs Colclough, addressing herself, it rather seemed, to God.
‘What a terribly quaint little assembly,’ said Linnet, her high, light voice reducing the Chartist candidate and his considerable crowd of supporters – far more than either Whigs or Tories could hope to show – to a few ragged children at a charity-school party, grubby and noisy of course, ill-mannered and ill-lettered, but who probably meant no harm.
Mrs Tristan Gage had no comment to make.
Nor had Miss Adeane, her eyes searching hastily through the crowd for Luke, her mind drawn far beyond her control to Daniel at the head of it, walking like a vagabond-king in his shabby green jacket, the same jaunty elegance in his step, the same hard, arrow-straight lines of him, the same slanting smile which, as he turned his head towards her window, caused her heart to thud so painfully that it seemed to bruise her chest.
She could see him plainly. She did not know how much if anything, he could see of her from the street, with the Colcloughs and Gages all around her. And so she had no way of knowing whether it was for her or simply a hostile, staring group of manufacturers that he paused, swept off his hat with a flourish and made them a dancing-master’s bow that sparkled with impudence.
There came a roar of pure delight from the crowd as it closed around him and carried him on.
‘Such effrontery,’ breathed Linnet as if she had been threatened and was inviting Uriah to defend her.
‘I’d have that one flogged at the cart-tail,’ he said darkly, ‘if I had my way.’
Mrs Colclough was speechless. Mrs Tristan Gage too, although when Cara, badly in need of distraction, looked at her she seemed to be having some difficulty with the brooch on her lapel, an amethyst and diamond cat which had come loose and with which she was fiddling rather helplessly, thought Cara, in an attempt to pin it back.
‘Please let me do that for you, Mrs Gage.’
Standing taller than Gemma, her long hands sure and steady, she removed the amethyst cat entirely, carefully disengaging its pins from Gemma’s velvet collar and then, having smoothed the material down, quickly replaced it.
‘Thank you, Miss Adeane. Most kind.’
‘Not at all. Perhaps you should have someone look at the pin, Mrs Gage. It may be faulty.’
‘Yes. I suppose so. I have had it rather a long time you see.’
‘All the more reason, then, not to lose it.’
‘Oh yes …’ She sounded rather breathless, as if she had been running. ‘I did lose it once …’
‘Oh …?’ Cara waited politely, without much interest, for the rest of the story, registering no particular surprise when it did not come.
‘Would you care to sit down again, Mrs Gage?’ Her miscarriage, after all – Cara remembered – was only three months past and these middle-class women were brought up to be delicate. But Gemma smiled and shook her head.
‘Thank you, no. We must really be going. Linnet …?’
‘Are you not well, my love?’ Linnet, at once, was at her most angelic.
‘Perfectly. It is just rather late.’
‘So it is.’ Mrs Colclough, who had not yet made up her mind about the wedding dress, was quick to see her excuse to get away. ‘Come Uriah. You know I am uneasy at being outdoors after dark in these unsettled times. And it must be almost seven o’clock. Come, Rachel. Gather yourself together. I will let you know tomorrow, Miss Adeane – or thereabouts.’
‘Whenever it suits you best, madam.’
Tomorrow? Polling day? Cara doubted it. Yet, as she sat behind her locked shutters the following afternoon, listening to the tumult at the hustings outside, she received a somewhat ungracious note to say that the wedding order was hers. Triumph. And richly deserved. She absolutely and utterly believed that. And with whom could she share it?
In order to avoid having her women molested in the street by men who had sold their votes for liquor she had closed her workroom for the day. Madge Percy, who had an ‘understanding’ with the landlord of the Tory Rose and Crown had gone off to decorate his premises with blue bunting and serve strong ale – paid for by the Larks and the Covington-Pyms – to such ‘undecided’voters as were able to stagger across the street from the free barrel supplied by the manufacturing Whigs. Odette had taken Liam in search of fresh air to Skipton. Or was it Knaresborough? Anna Rattrie had slipped away at first light to help Sairellen brew tea and serve bread and lard to the Chartists.
Even the grocer next door, who rarely emerged from his dingy shop, had been occupied since early morning supplying over-ripe fruit and dubious eggs to the persistent and well-paid gangs of hecklers who – using either Lark or Braithwaite money – could afford to pay his prices. Nor could she hope to see so much as a solitary customer either, for the simple reason that no lady’s husband would allow her to risk his horses, his carriage, or her reputation, in Market Square until the hustings were taken down and the poll over.
Who could she talk to? She would have liked it to be Luke Thackray. ‘Luke – I’ve done it. I’ve got the Colclough order. I’ve taken it away from Ernestine Baker.’ But Luke had far more than his hands full, out there in the streets, with his justice and his freedom, which might lead him nowhere but prison. And Daniel. Whereas Christie Goldsborough, with whom she did not wish to share her glow of achievement but who would assuredly have understood it, had left town early that morning, so as not to declare his hand at the polls, she supposed; although she was to dine with him that evening when the votes would all have been cast and somebody’s will had been done.
Only the dog remained, squat and ugly and almost reliably malicious as he came waddling across the room at her call, not in affection but to investigate what she might have to give him.
‘All right, damned dog. Come here and listen. I’ve just got the order I wanted. The best one of my life. Isn’t that wonderful? Well – isn’t it?’
His two baleful, bloodshot eyes offered her no encouragement.
‘Well it is, I’m telling you. The golden opportunity. And I’m going to make that gawky Colclough girl beautiful. That I am. For my sake, damned dog – not hers. Since I’m beautiful anyway. Don’t you think so?’
Clearly he did not.
&
nbsp; ‘Well, you should – foul brute – since I feed you better than they feed their children in St Jude’s.’
He lay down with a heavy thud, expressing total indifference.
‘And I took you in – didn’t I? – when your master kicked you out?’
His master. And hers. Only rarely, these days, did she try to deny it. Miss Adeane. Dressmaker and Milliner. Woman of independence and authority in Market Square who, nevertheless, did not lose sight of the fragility of her position.
But had she ever been other than fragile, precariously balanced, her roots in shallow, treacherous soil that could so easily change to sand? She was accustomed to it. She had known worse. Seen worse. Could imagine much, much worse – dear God – that she could. And now, with the Colclough order in her hands and who knew how much more to come, surely her freedom from Christie Goldsborough – from any man – was not impossible. Why not? Holding the prospect on the tip of her tongue she savoured it, finding it ambrosial. Why not? So many things could happen. One day she might even grow rich enough to snap her fingers at him as she snapped them now at his dog. Or – if that seemed unlikely – perhaps he might lose all his money. Or somebody might put a knife between his ribs. Marie Moon, perhaps. Or Ned O’Mara. Or any one of a hundred others who had no cause to wish him well.
How long could it be, in any case, before he took a fancy to somebody else? And, in the meantime, if she had to be his slave, then that – surely – was the lot of all women, one way or another, at one time or another; and if she could not break free, then she would employ a slave’s weapons against him. She would cheat him whenever she could, wheedle out of him anything and everything she could get and steal the rest, which was no more than the system she had heard the Braithwaite and Colclough ladies telling each other they had always employed against their legally wedded husbands.
A Song Twice Over Page 28