The envelope contained a cheque for two thousand pounds and a letter.
"Who's Ermyntrude Prendergast?" She pointed to the signature on the cheque.
"His aunt, I think. A nominee. He'd never associate himself directly. Too cautious." He read the letter quickly. "He doesn't even mention it here—see."
He passed it to her and she read:
Dear Stevenson,
I write on behalf of the Board of the Manchester and Leeds Railway Company, who have appointed me to conduct a preliminary Audit of your Books. This we are bound to do, as you are an Appointee and Agent of the Company. I cannot see my way clear until the New Year, but would be grateful, if you would be ready to present yourself and your Books at the Company's Offices at a mutually agreeable Date in the second Week in January.
Yours…etc.
Nora laughed in delight. "At least we can forget our Church-o'-England until after Christmas. And we can easily do a false set of books by January!"
But he was not cheered. "Nay—'e must know that. There's more in this than floats to't top." He sighed. "It's no case for false books. Our biggest outgoin' is wages, an we can't falsify't wage bill. An' if we doubled every other receipt, we'd still show four times the profit we want Prendergast to see. Nay"—he shook his head—"this is a case for spinnin' an' weavin', see tha. I must play 'im like a pike on shoddy thread." He turned more cheerfully to the cheque. "As to this—I think 'e means us to understand 'e's a man of 'is word. Of all 'is words."
"What'll we do with it?"
"Send it straight to Bolitho and Chambers!" He laughed. "That's justice. An' when we draw the double line on Summit's books, 'e s'll 'ave this back, plus interest, plus five undred for 'is silence—it's worth that. But as for ten thousand… 'e can kiss me royal Yorkshire arse, as one of the great financial geniuses of the age once put it to me."
After supper, she could see he was still uneasy in mind. She tried to distract him by talking of the arrangements to be made for their removal to Rough Stones—the servants and furniture to be hired, the linen and cutlery and utensils they would have to buy, and so on—but it seemed to distract him very little.
"What is it?" she asked at length. "What's fratchin' thee?"
He breathed in, as if preparing for an ordeal. "You mentioned Gorsey Wood this afternoon—where Town House Brook rises."
"Yes?" she said guardedly.
"That would be…uh…" He looked away staring deep into the fire. "The old cemetery up there…that was."
"Our dad's buried there," she said feeling even greater misgiving.
He said nothing more.
"What of it?" she had to ask.
"Do you not want him properly interred? Thinking of what Robert Stephenson said about Trevithick's grave. How they couldn't find it."
She knew he was seeking to head her off—that this was not what concerned him. "Nay," she said. "We s'll let him rest."
"I hoped not to distress you with mentioning it."
"If I lived away from here for a hundred years, I'd find the place again."
"Aye. Of course," he said to soothe her. "And your brothers? Do you want to get the sentence on Daniel reviewed? And the other that's in service—d'ye want us to find him a post?"
Now it was her turn to be silent so long that he had to prompt. "I'd not mention it, only I thought you'd have said owt before this."
"I've thought," she said. "I think…let's not raise any hopes until we're sure. I s'll write to Mr. Sugden in Leeds, who was always a good neighbour to us, to see if he may find Sam's whereabouts." She leaned across the table and squeezed his arm.
Later, when he pulled off his boots and sprawled with his stockinged feet steaming before the fire, picking his teeth with a goose quill, she came and curled herself up beside him, leaning on his shoulder and reaching her arms around his huge torso. "There's somethin' still on your mind," she said. "You'll fret all night unless you tell it. I know you."
"And I know you!" he said. "That is my problem."
She squeezed him; with her ear on his shoulder and only his shirt between them, she could hear the swish of his blood and the gurgle of his bowels. It almost distracted her but she squeezed again in case he might think he could let the matter slide.
Once more he breathed in, facing that imagined ordeal. "I wish to propose something," he said. "Something we should do. And I fear—I know—it will disgust you to the very depth of your soul."
She neither moved nor spoke.
"What are your feelings toward…Metcalfe?" he asked.
It so astonished her that she sat upright, pulling her hands away. "Metcalfe!" she cried. "Toward him?"
"About him, then" he corrected himself. "What's your opinion of him? You saw him in court today."
"Aye," she said. "He's me brother Daniel all over again. I don't understand them. His sort. Bigots. They always want the impossible now. And every benefit they gain, they turn to dust and ashes before they sample it. Daniel's strike were a dead copy o' this one. He got the demand for a limitation of hours granted but they'd not acknowledge't union. An', o' course, 'e struck out for acknowledgement. I told 'im 'e were daft. I said: 'If't threat to combine is enough to achieve the demands, then ye need no actual combination. Threat'll serve well enough every time. Bloody sight cheaper an all.' But 'e'd not see it. It's 'ow they're made, men o' that sort. Eay! Hark at me!"
"What would you say then…more important, what'd you think…if I said I want to see Metcalfe's wife and children don't suffer, he's two bairns? I want to give em ten bob a week while he's away."
She was scandalized at the thought. "Disgusted to the very depth of her soul" was not too far off the mark. "I'd say—and I'd think—tha'd gone addled in't brains." She sighed and forced herself to speak more calmly. "He'd not thank you, you know. He wants them to suffer."
"No!" he cried.
"Take it from one as knows. There was a certain…satisfaction…in Daniel, seein' me left with young Sam and the two little bairns and no money and the fields gone. It suited all he said about injustice and the need for revolution. You could see satisfaction painted all over him."
Her bitterness took him by surprise. But he quickly recovered. "You mean to say," he asked innocently, "if we helped his family, it'd be like a kick in the bowels to him?"
Not having thought of it that way, she suppressed a smile and replied with equal innocence: "I'm not one to kick a man that's down."
He pulled a punch on the point of her chin. "I'm right to fear thee," he said. "Tha'rt slape as a bloody eel."
"Fear me?" she asked in astonishment. It had never crossed her mind that Lord John would fear any man or any thing, much less any woman, much less her.
"Aye. I've pondered all day how to ask it of thee. I want it to seem as I know nothing of it. I want it to seem as thy notion, and thy action, kept secret from me. I want thee to go weekly to Tom Metcalfe's place in Caldermoor and give his wife ten bob. Knowin how thou would feel, I want to ask that of thee! 'Course I fear thee."
Swifter than thought she reached a hand under his jaw and turned his face to her. "'Oo do'st tha think I am?" she asked.
He stirred uncomfortably and tried to look away but she turned him to her again. "I'm Nora Stevenson," she went on. "Thy wife. Fear to ask me? Tha may ask anything of me. There's one master in this marriage, one master on this contract—on any contract. I s'll discuss anything with thee an' give thee my honest view. I s'll argue with thee an' all. But in't end it's thy will to rule."
Relief and gratitude lighting his face he pulled her into his arms and settled her head once more on his shoulder. But it did not stop her speaking. "I may argue with thee," she added. "I may disagree. But I'll never cross thee, an' I s'll never work contrary when thy back's turned." He hugged her and patted her back and hugged her again. Still she spoke on, with even greater urgency to convince him. "How can you go out on yon workin'—how can you plan owt—if ye're never sure what you may bid me to?"
"Will ye t
ake this money each week?" he asked, still not quite believing that she would.
"I s'll still think it good money wasted. Let them three Chartists look after the prisoners—they can take one apiece. But I s'll do it because you ask it. And in all the world there's no better judge of men and actions than you."
He lifted her from him a little, to bring her face close to his and to see her dark eyes, softened in the candlelight, and to see her lips, full and warm, and to kiss them, long and tenderly.
"I'll tell you," he said when they broke apart and there was no tension between them. "It's nine chances in ten that you've got the right of it. Metcalfe may have become a fanatic beyond cure. But there is still that chance, d'ye see, that onein-ten chance he could be a useful man to us. Did ye see when he questioned me in court today?" She nodded. "He wasn't even trying to prove his innocence. He'd abandoned all that. He was laying claim to a wider hearing. He just used that court."
"I thought he was using you, too. The answers you were giving him!" She chuckled. "I should've known."
"He was. Or I let him. I wanted to see his mind at work. And I kept thinking 'If I could get that mind to work for us!' He's young as yet. He's still too rash. But three month on the treadmill can do a lot to steady a man—if he's stopped from becoming bitter. Young Metcalfe could be everything Jack Whitaker ought to be. Whitaker's had education, Metcalfe's had next to none. But Metcalfe could walk circles round him if he got the right experience. I believe that one-in-ten chance is worth the outlay of six, seven pound."
"It's not that I grudge the money…" she began.
"Bloody liar," he interrupted.
She laughed ruefully and lay back on him. "Aye. You're right. I know. I grudge every last farthing. But even so, that's not my objection. It's the loss of pride. I walked from the Dog and Duck, proud. I was proud of you. And proud of the justice that had been done. Now to go and hand over ten hard-earned shillings each week—and pretend I do it of my own will and contrary to thy wish…It tarnishes that pride."
"You young people!" he said loftily. "When you get to my age, you'll understand that pride is a commodity like any other. And—like any other—it has its price."
She hissed like a cat in his ear and then put out her tongue to lick it. He shivered. "I'll say one thing," she said softly, almost whispering. "You taste a lot sweeter since we took to bathing!"
He made a deep, relaxed growl and eased a hand inside her bodice.
"No," she said. "Come to bed."
Later, after he had fallen asleep, she cursed herself for letting a chance go by. How easy it would have been to say, as they had sat on the sofa, "There's something I've been feared to tell thee, and all." Why had she shirked it? Was it the memory of all those past stillbirths? Did she want to get into the fourth month—which would be about February—and so be sure before she spoke? How would he take the news?
With all these doubts still unresolved she fell into a shallow sleep only to dream that every room in Rough Stones was tenanted by mendicants and depradators— all claiming to be Lord and Lady So-and-so and the Duke of Somewhere.
Chapter 29
When he left at five the next morning, the snow had gone, swept away by a rain that felt almost warm. He came round from the stables, where his mackintosh coat had to be kept on account of its stink, and kissed her goodbye. "We s'll have another breakthrough today," he said. "Four and five." The thought of it appeared to put an extra jauntiness into his walk as he vanished into the dark and rain.
She was glad to go back to their still-warm bed and listen to the steady downpour on the road and watch the sky grow slowly pale. But she could not get back to sleep. Thoughts of Metcalfe's wife and two children kept crossing her mind. What were they like? she wondered. The woman was probably the demanding kind—a bigot, just like her husband. Soon find out. She'd go and visit them this afternoon.
But she hadn't been up half an hour before she knew she'd have to make the visit at once and have done with it; she couldn't let the thought of it hang like a pall over the day.
Soon after eight, the rain eased off and she went out of Littleborough on the Caldermoor road—which, by chance, happened to be the shortcut she had taken on her way to Summit that fateful August day…was it only three months ago? She tried to remember this particular stretch of it but the whole journey had been such a weariness that all its parts had, as it were, coalesced into a single nightmare road from which no one element could now be retrieved; it was as if she had never been this way before.
Finding the Metcalfes was less easy than she had expected. No one seemed to want to admit to knowing them or where they lived or anything of them. But at last, one brave soul, defying her neighbours, pointed to the alehouse, where, she said, the Metcalfes had rented an outhouse from the landlord, a man called Sutcliffe. "But 'e've kicked em out," she said. "Yesterday. When th'news come through bout 'im."
Nora's face darkened. "Were they be'ind with the rent?" she asked.
"They paid up the month," the woman said. "It's a shame, I say."
According to her, the place was called The Acorn, though no sign proclaimed the fact. And the landlord, as if to underline this indifference to the trade, proved to be still abed.
"What?" he shouted down from an upstairs window when Nora's insistent battering on the door at last dislodged him.
"Mrs. Metcalfe and the two bairns."
"Gone!" He slammed the window shut.
She hammered again on the door until he returned.
"What now?"
"Where?"
He looked extremely angry. "How should I know? Try Rochdale workhouse at Wardleworth!" He was on the point of slamming the windows again when the sight of her stopped him. She stood shivering with rage, pointing up at him, with a single accusatory finger.
"Now hark here, Sutcliffe…" A tigress gifted with speech would have had such tones. "I shall come back to this place at two o'clock this afternoon. If they are not here by then, I shall go myself and seek them and return with a constable and have you put in charge."
He stared at her, open-mouthed, too astounded to reply.
"When you take rent, Sutcliffe, you make a contract. If you break that contract, you go to jail."
Her voice still ringing in the dumbfounded street, she turned and stumped away, back down the hillside to Littleborough.
The intensity of her anger astonished her. It could not be—it could not possibly be—that Sutcliffe's action had discovered and unleashed in her a hitherto unsuspected love of abstract justice. She asked John about it at lunchtime. "It's daft," she said. "I went up there with a little taste for the meeting and so you'd think I'd be glad Sutcliffe had saved us the trouble. Instead of that I stood beside meself with fury."
He laughed. "I've had that happen. On the London–Birmingham, when I was a navvy. There was one place we went through a cesspit. Someone 'ad to go in and clear it. Me as it happened. So we go off that night and I get all ready—in my mind, like—to do the job next morn. And when we get there, we find the disturbance to the soil has cracked it and it's all drained away. Nowt left for me to do. And they all clapped me on the back and laughed and called it 'Lord John's luck.' But d'ye know—I was disappointed! Same thing, in't it?"
She returned at two o'clock to find that her words, and her fury, had proved effective. A fire burned in the outhouse hearth (for it formerly been a washhouse) and two bonny children, a girl of nine and a boy of seven, were playing a counting game with stones.
"Mam!" the elder one called.
"We never stopped in't workhouse," the boy told Nora while she waited.
"I know you didn't," Nora said.
A plain, tall woman with dark hair and eyes red from weeping came to the door. Incessantly, she wiped her hands in her apron and on her thighs. "Aye?" she asked. From her appearance, one would have put her in her late thirties though she could not have been much over twenty-seven. Nora wondered briefly whether the girl was Metcalfe's since he was only twenty-
five.
"Mrs. Metcalfe?"
"Aye."
Nora summed her up. She was no bigot—just a simple, frightened soul, unable to understand what wrong her husband had done and why the punishment had extended to them.
"I had little sleep last night on account of you."
She had hoped to arouse the woman's curiosity, but the poor creature took it that she was in some way to blame for Nora's insomnia and so faced her accuser with weary resignation.
"I mean," Nora said, "that last winter I were left with two bairns of four and three—me young brother and sister—an' a brother of fourteen to look after. When me other brother, the elder one, got transported for swearing oaths of combination."
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