The Sleeping Sword

by Brenda Jagger

  ‘Serves him right,’ said Venetia when Liam explained this to us. ‘Insufferable creature that he is. Lord! Why do I talk to him?’

  But talk to him she did, of freedom which she insisted to be impossible, of equality of opportunity which aroused her derision, of social justice which she declared to be a fool’s dream, all these discussions taking place beneath the watchful eyes of Liam Adair and myself, who could see no threat in this shabby revolutionary, our idea of a crusader—and we both knew Venetia was ready for a crusade—being someone tall and bold and handsome like Liam himself.

  ‘What an idiot he is—what a child!’

  But when I decided to give a ball at the start of the winter and wondered if Robin Ashby should be invited, she flew at me in a quick burst of temper, caused not by her unreadiness to see him at Tarn Edge but by the embarrassment my invitation might cause him.

  ‘Grace, have you no tact? You must know that he can have no evening clothes.’

  ‘Well, he is a Wiltshire Ashby and will know where such things may be obtained.’

  ‘Grace, he is not striking attitudes, you know. He means what he says. And why should we ask him to waste his time borrowing evening clothes, which would not fit, I daresay?’

  But nevertheless he was an acquaintance, and a gentleman. He should, I decided, be given the opportunity to refuse. But the next time we visited the Star, Venetia, marching ahead of me, walked straight up to him and burst out: ‘Grace is having the dithers because she wants to invite you to her dance.’

  ‘And you do not.’

  ‘No. I don’t.’

  For a fleeting moment there was something beneath the studious intensity of his face, his habitual concentration on the task in hand, which could have been hurt.

  ‘Well then, since you do not wish to see me in your home, Mrs. Chard, there is no more to be said.’

  ‘Yes,’ she told him, her face, drained of its mischievous sparkle, looking very small beneath her dashing, high-brimmed hat. ‘You would not like my home, Robin Ashby. I think you would find it rather a poor place.’

  I had chosen to give a ball for no better reason than that the ballroom at Tarn Edge had not been used for its proper purpose for years. The time seemed opportune, for Blanche, who had produced her second son the year before with the same gracious ease as his brother, was at Listonby for the season, the Goldsmiths were once again in our area, staying with cousins in Manchester who would be delighted to cross the Pennines. And since the Goldsmiths were coming, since the affair was not to be confined to our local industrialists and our local squires, it crossed Gideon’s mind that a certain Monsieur Fauconnier of Lyons and a Mr. Ricardo of New York were both in London with their wives and might appreciate an opportunity to travel north.

  ‘In fact,’ he said, coming into my breakfast parlour one morning and handing me a list of names and precise directions as to where their owners might be located, ‘you might care to consider these. Merely suggestions, of course, but if one is to give a ball one may as well make the most of it.’

  And I understood at a glance that his ‘suggestions’would involve me, not merely in a larger and more formal dance than I had intended, but in a considerable house-party, since the Fauconniers and the Ricardos, the Goldsmiths, the Brisbane Matthewsons and the Auckland Faringdons, could not be asked to stay at the Station Hotel.

  There would be bedrooms which had not been used for years not merely to be ‘got ready’but to be made inviting, accommodation for foreign maidservants and foreign manners, trains to be met, gallons of hot water available at any hour of the day, the transformation of my home, for a day or so, into a luxurious, well-managed hotel.

  It was a feat which Aunt Caroline had regularly performed for twenty-five years at Listonby, which she continued to perform at South Erin and at her elegant house in Mayfair. For me it was a challenge flung down by Gideon, and for his own good purposes, to which I eagerly responded, planning the whole affair, as Venetia said, like a military operation, immersing myself for days on end in railway timetables, dinner menus, breakfast menus, place settings, supplying Mrs. Winch with lists of everything I expected to find in each guest-bedroom when I came to inspect, lists of the dinner services I wished to be used, of the lace and damask table-linen I wished to be got ready, lists of who must be sent to meet which train and of the type of refreshment I wished to find awaiting each guest on arrival.

  There would be a dinner-party before the dance, a shoot the following morning at Listonby for those who cared to sample the English sporting life, a tour of the Barforth mills for those who did not. There would be a house-party from Listonby—a small matter Gideon mentioned to me in passing—containing a few ‘politicals’, no one frightfully important, of course, or so Gideon said, but one or two of them better placed than they might seem. And in view of Sir Dominic’s budding career at Westminster, Gideon supposed I would have a quiet room ready with some decent brandy and a few good cigars in case anyone should want to have a quiet word.

  ‘Yes, of course, Gideon.’

  ‘Good—and a card table or two, since these fellows don’t usually dance. And by the way, I hear the Fauconnier son and daughter-in-law may be in London on the seventeenth. Would it be too much to write and extend a friendly hand?’

  I wrote. Fauconnier fils accepted my verbal handshake gladly, assuring me that the journey north would in no way tire his very delicate wife. I ordered another room to be prepared, then two rooms when Gideon happened to mention that the young Madame Fauconnier’s nerves were too fragile to permit the sharing of a bed.

  ‘She drinks goat’s milk too, for some reason,’ he said, and I went off at once to make arrangements for a goat.

  I worked hard and long, to the exclusion of everything else. I got up at dawn with Madame Fauconnier’s invalid diet in my head and sank exhausted into bed long past midnight with the violins I had hired from Manchester singing in my ears. And when the evening came, when the house was filled with light and fragrance and music, when the chrysanthemums I had pillaged from every available greenhouse were massed in my hall and on every step of my stairs, when my supper-table groaned with every kind of roasted fowl and game, with two dozen different kinds of savoury tart and two dozen different kinds of sweet, with ices and sorbets, soufflés and creams; when my champagne was chilled, my musicians in their places, my dinner guests mingling happily together and my ball guests eagerly arriving, then I became as taut as any fine-strung violin and would have been glad to send them all away again.

  But such poor spirits could not last as I began to feel that the evening would be a success. There were partners in plenty for those who wished to dance, comfortable chairs for all who wished to sit, a convenient back staircase where a young lady could escape her chaperone. There was conversation for the serious, gossip for the frivolous, cards and fine wines, acquaintances to be made. There was Blanche, in gleaming blond satin, royal secrets and scandals whispering in the hem of her gown, and the Duchess of South Erin setting herself—on Gideon’s behalf—to fascinate both Mr. Goldsmith and Mr. Ricardo. There was Sir Dominic, who paid me the compliment of treating my home as if it belonged to him, looking worthy of a seat in any man’s Cabinet. And if Mr. Disraeli himself was not present, there were among the Listonby party one or two who knew him well, somewhat to the disgust of the Sheldons, Rawnsleys, Fieldings and Mandelbaums, who were Gladstonians to a man.

  I even remember the dress I wore, a fine apricot silk cut straight and tight with almost no bustle, draped at the back of my knees with lace frills and falling into a fluted train. I was bare-shouldered, my hair dressed very high, not by Sally, who, finding she was not pregnant, had left my service, but by a French maid Aunt Faith had lent me. I had seed pearls and apricot silk roses in my hair, pearl earrings, the diamond ring Gervase had given me four years ago and the sapphire my father had given me the previous Christmas. I thought I looked composed, not beautiful like Blanche nor striking like Venetia, but elegant enough to be interes
ting, forceful enough to be noticed in a crowd.

  I remember Venetia in a green gown so vivid, cut so tight and so low that Gideon had raised a sardonic eyebrow at the sight of it; a guest as always in her own house and a very gay one that night, dancing, laughing, chattering, flirting, not with the younger Fauconnier, which might have served a purpose, but with a young lieutenant of Hussars, a young clergyman, the young squire of Winterton Park who was known to be just a step away from bankruptcy.

  I remember her well. But most of all I remember Gervase and the exact moment when our relationship, which had been shredding away from me like mist for so long, finally evaporated, was dispersed as mist can be dispersed by a sudden wind, blown away, and gone.

  He was not very much on my mind that evening, for I had a multitude of names, faces, last-minute details to remember, so many introductions to make, so many conversations which looked like flagging to bring to life again, so many wallflowers for whom partners must be found, so many tours of inspection to check that all was well, that no one would have cause, tomorrow, to feel neglected. And I remember—quite distinctly—my start of surprise when I saw Gervase in the supper room, not because he was with Diana Flood but because he was still in the house at all.

  They were not touching, not even standing very close together. They were not flirting, not even talking very much. And it was their stillness and the stillness they had created around them which struck me the first warning blow, for had I been a stranger entering the room I would have known, instinctively, that I must not speak to them, must not disturb them, must make no sound that might spoil their deep and blissful concentration on one another.

  They did not notice me. But I saw her bold face grow timid, her eyes cast down, Gervase’s eyes turning almost transparent with feeling as they had done long ago when he had cast his puzzled, despairing glances at me. I walked quickly away, upstairs, opened the first door I came to and sat in the dark until I could stop trembling, sickened and shocked with the certainty that what I had seen was no sexual caprice, no London socialite easing her boredom, no provincial actress earning her fee, but the giving and the acceptance of love.

  How long he had been in love with her I didn’t know. Nor could I tell how long it would last. But he loved her now, I was sure of it, and I was just coherent enough to be surprised that the pain should be so deep-rooted and so terrible. His promiscuity had been bearable—just—because it had been faceless and because I had grown accustomed to it. But Diana Flood’s face was engraved on my mind, and how was I to accustom myself to that?

  But one does not sit in a darkened room and shake when there is work that must be done, a house full of curious, not always kindly, eyes and plenty of spiteful tongues. One does not give way to private sorrow when one’s services are urgently required by others. A woman worth her salt—thank God!—gets on her feet and, having invited these guests in the first place, attends to their needs. She tidies her hair, walks down the stairs and smiles, and should anyone question the state of her health or her heart she answers ‘Very well’, which is as much as anyone really desires to know. And when it was over and the carriages were already rolling away, the house-guests preparing for bed, I stood on the terrace, the empty ballroom behind me, the thin light of a winter morning already in the sky, unable to release the hurt I had clenched so tight, unable—for the rest of my life it seemed—to shed a tear.

  Silence; in which to think of failure, of sterility. Silence; in which to contemplate the futility of all my efforts, the petty little tasks which I had welded together into a life. Silence; in which to confront myself with solitude. And then, very suddenly, Venetia appearing beside me, perhaps looking for silence too, one ear-ring missing, I noticed, and, incredibly, a cigar in her hand.

  ‘Ah, yes,’ she said, holding it aloft with a flourish. ‘You might well stare, for everyone else did so. I have won fame tonight, Grace, as the first woman in Cullingford to smoke a cigar.’

  ‘Have you really?’

  And she was too deep in her own disillusion to see that I did not care.

  ‘Yes, really. Here on the terrace with a dozen people watching—with Gideon watching.’

  ‘Whatever for?’

  ‘For freedom, Grace—because I remembered a remark someone made to me about the petty restrictions with which women are shackled. Why—this person wanted to know—is it improper for a woman to smoke when all the men we know do so? Why?’

  ‘I haven’t a notion.’

  ‘Neither have I. Just a petty, futile shackle, I thought, and I decided to break it.’

  ‘And did you?’

  ‘Of course not,’ she said, ‘of course not. Oh yes, I smoked a cigar all right and had a fine time shocking a few old ladies. A fine time—like the cursing and the cock-fighting—and what’s the good of it? I’ll tell you what I’ve achieved. I’ve made myself sick—that’s all—like they knew I would—like Gideon said I would.’

  She threw the cigar down into the garden and went away, my voice too weary to say good-night, my head too weary even to turn and watch her go. Yet there were things still to be done, lamps and candles to be seen to, a final check that no gentleman—or no footman—had fallen asleep in some unlikely corner with a cigar burning in his hand. There were things to be done. Practical things, necessary things, safe things that would not shun me or hurt me. And crossing the ballroom and turning down the corridor beyond it, I saw Gideon at the smoking-room door, doing my work for me.

  He had been, all evening, a careful but unobtrusive host, for he was not the owner of this house and he had borne that very much in mind. But he had been there, ready to step into any conversational breach, had danced a great deal and taken at least a dozen happy women, one by one, to supper. He had known—as I had known—the exact atmosphere of every grouping, had removed very adroitly a certain gentleman from the vicinity of a certain lady and introduced her to another gentleman whose attentions had proved more welcome. He had watched—as I had watched—had seen what was required and had supplied it. And now, being as full of brandy and champagne as anyone, he was still watchful, had remembered as his mother always remembered—that servants, if left to their own devices, will put off until morning the many things which he, and I, wished to be done tonight.

  I had a word to say to Mrs. Winch about the arrangements for breakfast. Gideon wished to be assured that Chillingworth knew exactly who to call at what hour in the morning, and their eventual destinations. We settled everything to our liking and then, finding ourselves in the smoking-room, he drew up a chair close to the fire, handed me into it, poured out two glasses of brandy and held one out to me.

  ‘You will rest better for this—for I believe you have gone beyond sleep.’

  ‘I believe I have.’

  ‘Then shall we drink to your success? It has been splendid, Grace.’

  ‘Thank you, Gideon.’

  ‘It is I who should thank you.’

  ‘Oh, no—’

  Yet no one else had thanked me, no one else had cared whether I gave a ball or not. And now they had all gone off, happily or otherwise, to their beds, leaving me with the remains—and Gideon.

  ‘I am so glad,’ I said hesitantly, for, after all, I had not done it for him, ‘so glad you enjoyed it—’

  He raised his glass to me and smiled, his teeth flashing very white in his dark face, a wolf’s smile I had often thought, although it seemed gently enough now. ‘I did. And you did not. But a hostess never enjoys her own dances—at least so my mother tells me. She always took a brandy or two with my father—in the old days—when all was over.’

  Aunt Caroline? I had not thought her so human. And imagining her now, kicking off her shoes as I longed to do, holding out her glass to her husband, asking him ‘Matthew, did it go well?’; imagining him reassuring her—as Gideon had just reassured me—‘It has been splendid, Caroline’, I realized that this was his fantasy of how a marriage should be.

  I had not believed him capable of fantasy
. Now I recognized it, entered into it, for it had been my fantasy too, and in order to break the silence which was settling around us—dangerous because, astonishingly, it was so comfortable—I said quickly, ‘I hardly knew your father.’

  ‘Oh, he was a fine fellow. I suppose of the three of us Noel is the one most like him. I believe he and my mother did very well together.’

  Aunt Caroline? And once again I saw her through the fatigue and the brandy in my head, smiling at her Matthew as he refilled her glass.

  ‘Come, darling, drink up—you have earned this.’

  ‘Oh Matthew, did you see?—did you notice?—heavens! I nearly died laughing when—’

  ‘Yes, I saw it all.’

  The fantasy beckoned to me again and, blinking, I pushed it away, swallowed the last drop of the spirit and set down my glass.

  ‘I am very tired now, Gideon.’

  ‘Yes, so you should be. Grace, would you accept a gift from me?’

  ‘Why on earth should you wish to—?’

  ‘To show my appreciation of all you have done. You have worked like a slave these past weeks, and although it was not on my account I have certainly benefited from it. It would please me enormously if you would take this. It is nothing of value—’

  It was, in fact, quite beautiful, a bracelet of fine chains, each one a different shade of gold, coiled together into a delicate, intricate web sprinkled here and there with tiny amethysts. And it was exactly right. Not valuable enough for a husband to question it—and I did not really have a husband in any case—but so very tasteful, so different, that whenever I wore it some woman would exclaim ‘My dear, how exquisite. Where did you get it?’ And every time that question was asked—had he been my lover—I would indulge myself by remembering.

  He was not my lover. But he could be my lover. In this huge house, where we were thrown so much together, it would be possible—had he thought of that, did he want it? Had he understood—or had I—that the distance between us could be so easily crossed, should we ever wish to cross it? The thought struck out at me, held me for a moment in a kind of fascination, appalled me, and then—blessedly—became ridiculous, for this was Gideon Chard, the materialist, the opportunist, the fortune-hunter, who would not risk his share of the Barforth inheritance for a folly such as this.