Chapter Six
We heard the shot as we sat drinking tea in the chintzy, firelit parlour, and although Venetia winced and Mrs. Barforth looked as if she badly wanted to rush outdoors, she sat down again while Blanche continued to pour and to murmur ‘Sugar and cream?’ as if nothing had happened at all.
‘The afternoon is drawing in,’ she said brightly, ‘we must soon be on our way. I have had such a pleasant afternoon, Aunt Georgiana.’
‘I am so glad, dear.’
But Venetia, as always, disdained these social posturings.
‘I must see Gervase before I leave,’ she declared and, since the Chards had already gone, I soon found myself pressed into her service.
‘He will not be in the house. I will look in the stables, Grace, while you look in the cloister.’ And when I began to protest that I would not know what to say to him and should one not respect his evident wish to be alone, she stamped her foot and almost flew at me. ‘Heavens, Grace, how stubborn you are! All you need say is that I want to see him, and I am sure he will not bite you for that.’
‘But Venetia—the cloister?’
‘Lord—what is there in the cloister to bother you? I don’t ask you to go to the stables because I know you are nervous of the horses and ladylike about the muck. But there is nothing in the cloister except, one hopes, Gervase—and even that is not likely.’
And so, trusting her, I hurried to the little side door she indicated and the short covered walk which took me to the cloister, the only part of the original abbey to remain intact, a hushed and airless place, too old for comfort, where I found Gervase—as she had known I would—leaning against one blank wall and staring at another.
There was no point in prolonging a silence that could only be awkward and, realizing he had seen me, I called out at once, ‘Gervase, I am so sorry but we are leaving now, and Venetia is looking for you.’
‘Is she?’ he said, his voice, to my great relief, perfectly under control, the lounging, drawling young squire again, hard and insensitive, although still rather pale. ‘I imagine she knows where to find me.’
‘Well—she has gone to the stables.’
‘Then that means she wanted you to find me.’
‘Oh—well then, since I have found you, shall I go and find Venetia and tell her so?’
‘How very busy that sounds. Have you nothing to ask me about the horse?’
‘What should I wish to know?’
‘There must be something—if only how I am to raise the twenty guineas I have lost to the Chards.’
‘You are not short of money, surely?’
‘No,’ he said, a ripple of nervous laughter running through him. ‘I surely am not. Twenty guineas might have been a problem to Gideon Chard, but hardly to me. You think me a coward, I suppose.’
‘You might be.’
‘How kind—’
‘But not because you disliked shooting a horse. It would have upset me greatly.’
‘Ah yes, but in your case, you see, you would have been allowed your emotions. It would even have been expected of you. It was not expected of me.’
‘Does it really matter, since you did it in the end?’
‘Did I?’
‘I heard the gun.’
‘Which proves what? Only that a gun was fired. But did I fire it? Or, once the coast was clear—once you had cleared it for me—did I fetch one of the grooms to do the dirty deed in my place?’
‘Gervase, does that matter either?’
There was a pause, the silence of the ancient walls closing in on us, creating a strange distortion of time and distance, a little space, perhaps, where time overlapped and we stepped forward, without knowing it, to a moment which might never come to pass, a threshold of familiarity we might never actually cross, but which enabled us somehow to speak freely.
‘It matters to me,’ he said. ‘One thinks of oneself as a certain type of man, and it is rather galling to prove oneself so wrong. The Chards would not have behaved as I did. Whatever they may have felt, they would have concealed it admirably, as old Etonians have been trained to do, so that no one need have been embarrassed by it. Our great public schools specialize in the building of “character”, you see. After today the Chards will feel entitled to say that I—as a mere product of Cullingford Grammar School—have none.’
‘Do you care?’
‘Yes. I care. Feeble of me, perhaps, but I care both for their opinion and for my own estimate of myself.’
‘You mean, I suppose, that if you are not the man you thought you were, then who are you?’
‘Is that what I mean? How very profound of me!’
‘I also think you did shoot that horse.’
‘Do you indeed?’
‘Yes, I do. And the Chards will think so too—because they lack the imagination to think otherwise.’
He bowed very slightly, hardly easing his body away from the wall, and meeting his gaze—because it has always seemed best to me to look people straight in the eye at awkward moments—I found his eyes so light a green that they seemed quite transparent, the fine skin around them crinkled by his habit of keeping them half-closed, something in his regard which was not open and frank like Venetia’s but which—for just a moment—seemed every bit as vulnerable.
‘What do you think of this place?’ he said abruptly, settling his back once more against the old stone, making contact with it, I thought, or possessing it.
‘Of Galton? Well, I—’
‘You may speak the truth.’
‘I shall. When I came here as a child it scared me. I expected to see a ghost at every bend of the stair. When we arrived today I thought it—austere. And so it is, but I am beginning to think it should be like that.’
He nodded very lightly, his eyes skimming along the passage, the pale grey walls, the fan-vaulted arch of the ceiling, before coming back to me.
‘Yes, it has something about it, this place—some power … My mother once tried to leave my father, you know—really leave him—and it was Galton that held her back. She really thought she could do it, I suppose, but when it came down to it, when he actually told her “Do as I say or the estate goes under the hammer”, she couldn’t let it happen.’
‘Gervase, should you be telling me—’
‘Yes,’ he said, his eyes showing that bitter, transparent green again, his thin mouth very tight. ‘There’s no “should” or “should not” about it. I’m a spoiled and vicious young man, everybody knows it, and it’s what I want, not what I ought, that counts. If Uncle Peregrine had lived, it would have been different. The estate would have passed to him and he—well, he’d have been in his fifties by now, just about ready to take a fifteen-year-old wife and get himself an heir, so there’d have been no need for me. My mother could have left my father if she’d wanted, or she might have settled down with him and given Uncle Perry her pin-money every month, which is what she used to do when he was alive. But Uncle Perry broke his neck—’
‘Doing what you were doing this afternoon.’
‘Quite so—or something very like it. And instead of leaving the estate in trust for me, as he could have done, my mother’s grandfather left it to her—which, as Miss Grace Agbrigg will be sure to know, was the same as leaving it to my father.’
‘And your father wished to sell it.’
‘No—threatened to sell it—used it as a lever, a weapon, whatever seemed useful to him at the time. One day, according to their agreement, it comes to me. But until that day dawns—and it will be of his choosing—he has her and can hold her fast. For if he sells Galton—well, Grace Agbrigg, there are three hundred years of Clevedons in the graveyard over there. How can we let him dispose of that?’
He paused, from indignation or pity or the sheer weight of that three-hundred-year-old burden I couldn’t tell, although it gave me time to ask the question that was uppermost in my mind.
‘Your father is very determined to keep your mother by him. Why is that?’
‘Gervase, I asked you a serious question.’
‘I answered it. I answered it. I don’t really know. Venetia has something to do with it, I suppose. He is her father, after all, and he can’t wish her to be involved in an open scandal. No one could accuse him of doting on her, but he’s never been one for shirking his responsibilities. The Barforths are like that.’
‘So am I.’
‘Yes, I believe you are. So he may want to avoid a scandal for Venetia’s sake. He may even want to protect my mother from herself—or from Julian Flood. He’s not likely to tell me. We don’t stand on such friendly terms as that. Gideon Chard may know, of course—perhaps you’d care to ask him?’
But I was unwilling to be distracted.
‘If those really should be his motives, then I don’t think you could call him either wicked or peculiar—really, I don’t.’
He grinned, the first real amusement I had seen in him.
‘You approve of my father then, do you, Grace Agbrigg?’
‘I am not in the habit of making judgements—’
‘Are you not? I thought quite otherwise. You seem so very determined and so positive to me. And I would know, wouldn’t I—being so negative myself.’
‘Being so full of self-pity, you mean.’
‘You don’t pity me? I rather thought you might. After all, you were very efficient and very prompt just now, out in the long meadow—taking them all away in case I couldn’t manage to pull myself together and they should begin to laugh at me.’
‘Gervase—was it only the horse?’
‘My word, are you a philosopher too, besides all the other marvels I hear of you? No—since you ask—not only the horse. I was—tired. There are times when I do tire rather easily—rather suddenly. A little instability of temperament, perhaps, which you might find interesting?’
‘I don’t believe so. In fact I am beginning to find this whole conversation quite pointless.’
‘Then you shouldn’t linger, should you, Grace, in lonely places with strange men.’
‘You are not a strange man.’
‘Am I not?’ He threw back his head and laughed, as delighted as any other far less complicated man would have been with the trap he had set for me and into which I had fallen. ‘Well—at least in one respect I am not strange. I can prove it, if you like—in fact I really think I ought—’
‘You’ll do no such thing.’
But as he moved away from the wall and took a step towards me, I was not afraid of him as I had been afraid of Gideon Chard. It had nothing to do with weight or size, for although Gervase was lighter and smaller, he was strong enough to hurt me and more likely, I thought, to offer me violence than Gideon, who would not see the need for it. It was simply that nothing in Gervase’s lean, over-wrought body menaced me as Gideon’s had done, the very absence of fear—which I had too little knowledge to recognize as the absence of desire—unchaining my curiosity, my eagerness to participate, to experience, to grow; for with Blanche already married and Venetia so rapturously in love, it was irksome to me that, at eighteen, I had still to receive my first kiss.
And having made up my mind to it, I remember quite distinctly willing him to stop talking and to get on, surprised, when his hand brushed my cheek and slid to my neck, to find his touch so cautious and so cold, having expected a deliberate coarseness in this wild young squire, a mouth which demanded or took by force instead of asking so hesitant a question. I made no response, no answer, simply allowing his lips to touch mine, his tongue to part them, remaining calm and still, no pulse-beat leaping inside me but no awkwardness, a rather pleasing consciousness at the back of my mind that, although this was very pleasant and rather daring, I was still very much in control.
‘Grace Agbrigg,’ he said, his mouth against my ear, his quick, nervous laughter making my spine tingle. ‘I have misjudged you. I thought you a schoolroom innocent, and now I am bound to ask myself what did they teach you in Switzerland?’
To which I replied, with studied composure, ‘Good heavens! Gervase, at eighteen years old I am not likely to swoon on account of a kiss.’
When he rode over to Listonby the next morning and asked me to marry him, my first reaction, quite simply, was to wonder why, so that my answer, far from being romantic, sounded even in my own ears like a scold.
‘Really, Gervase, if it is because of what happened in the cloister, I can tell you that I do not feel in any way compromised. If you have come out of a sense of obligation or because you imagined yourself committed—’
But he would not allow me to continue, his odd, light eyes slitted with anger. ‘So—I kissed you in the cloister and what of it, Grace Agbrigg? I’d not be here, asking this, unless I wanted it, even if I’d done far worse than that to you.’
And when he was calm enough to accept my refusal and went away, I was obliged to endure, an hour later, the recriminations of his sister, whose heart, she insisted, I had also broken.
‘There is no question of broken hearts, Venetia. Gervase is not in love with me.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Because I know. And anyway, he didn’t say so—’
‘Of course he didn’t. He wouldn’t know how. But what I know—absolutely and beyond question—is that it was not done because father told him to. That in itself would be enough to make him not ask you. And the fact that he did ask means he wants you—and I want you—and father wants you. And the reason I know how much he wants you is because mother doesn’t—simply doesn’t at all—and he hardly ever goes against her. You could do so much for him, Grace.’
‘And what could he do for me?’
She smiled and tucked her hand into mine.
‘Well—first of all he could make you my sister. And then, of course, he’s very rich. And don’t you think he’s rather beautiful?’
‘I suppose I must say he is, since he looks like you.’
‘Thank you, darling. And will you say yes when he asks you again?’
There was no danger of that, I decided. It had been a whim on his part, no more, some quirk of his complicated nature which had picked up my sympathy that day at Galton and converted it into something which had briefly attracted him. Certainly he would not ask again, would be more inclined, I thought, to thank me for my good sense in refusing him, and if he still felt the need of a wife would already be gravitating towards Diana Flood. Yet it was Miss Flood herself who showed me my mistake, for when I met her a day or so later, having extended my visit to Listonby at Blanche’s request, her manner was taut and miserable and she had no more to say to me than a forced ‘Are you well, Miss Agbrigg?’
Miss Flood herself clearly was not well, and I felt myself wince slightly at Venetia’s casual, ‘Oh—Diana. Well, she’ll just have to find herself a real squire, won’t she—the genuine, beefy variety—and make the best of him.’
I returned to Fieldhead and to the centre of a storm, a glacial Mrs. Agbrigg losing no time in enquiring why I was so little to be trusted, for Gervase, it seemed, had not only informed his mother and possibly Miss Flood of his intentions, but had ridden home to Tarn Edge that same day and for the first time in years, perhaps the first time ever, had asked his father’s help. Mr. Barforth had driven at once to Fieldhead and made his proposition to my father. I was the girl he wanted for Tarn Edge. My father might have some reservations about Gervase but the marriage-contract could be as tight as my father liked. I could have, in the way of pin-mon
ey and housekeeping money, anything I desired. Mr. Barforth was ready to be generous, and although he would expect my father to be the same, he made it clear that my welfare would be his personal concern. Gervase Barforth, in fact, would make me happy or would answer to Nicholas Barforth for it. And feeling the need to finalize the matter in case Gervase should change his mind, he went next to Galton and warned his wife—to my everlasting regret—that she would be well advised to be pleased about it too.
‘You should not have told your father,’ I reproached him when next we met.
‘I know that. But a desperate man will stoop to anything.’
‘I wish you would not describe yourself as desperate. It sounds very foolish.’
‘My father seems highly delighted with the state I am in. And I can’t quite get over how natural it seemed to turn to him.’
‘Perhaps you should make a habit of it.’
‘Do you think so?’
‘I think you would be happier if you could.’
‘I’d like to. I need you to show me the way.’
‘What nonsense, Gervase—’
‘No,’ he said, his eyes turning that wild transparent green again.
‘No—not nonsense at all, I’m afraid. Grace, you won’t stop me from coming to see you? I’ll be calm. I’ll behave—’
The only ally I found was, of all people, my father’s wife.
‘This is all quite ridiculous,’ she said. ‘Jonas—you must put a stop to it.’
The Sleeping Sword Page 10