‘No, darling. You are suffering and don’t know how to show it, like Nicholas. I am giving you the opportunity to hide.’
Suffering, I thought. Never. She’s giving him the chance to go and tell them he’s free and that Aunt Caroline can advertise him on the marriage-market again. And my heart felt like a stone.
‘Grace,’ Aunt Faith said, ‘please come with me’, and slipping her hand into mine she took me upstairs, tears flowing gently down her cheeks. I thought, for a moment, that she wanted to see Venetia and started to tug my hand away from her, knowing I could never enter that room again.
‘No, dear,’ she said, and we went up another flight of stairs to the nursery wing, which I suppose she remembered from her own childhood when she had come here to play with Aunt Caroline.
The nursemaid sprang instantly to her feet and dropped a curtsy, beaming her relief that some older woman was here to take the responsibility, for the child was very small, the wet nurse a clumsy fool, and the poor dead lady’s mother had been put to bed now, on the doctor’s orders, with a dose of laudanum inside her strong enough to knock out a donkey.
‘She’ll not wake till morning, ma’am.’
‘Good,’ said Aunt Faith. ‘I think we shall manage very well, nurse, until then. Grace, dear, do come here and look at this lovely little elf.’
It took me a long time, a dreadful time, to cross that room; and when I did reach the cradle I could not bring myself to look down but bent my head, at first, with closed eyes.
‘Look, dear,’ she said, her voice telling me those tears were still pouring from her eyes, and eventually, her hand on my rigid shoulder stroking me, urging me, I obeyed and saw the tiny dark head, eyelids already long-lashed peacefully closed, the shallow but even breathing, the fingers of a minute hand delicately curled in perfect innocence.
When I left the room my tears were flowing as freely as Aunt Faith’s, my head clearing sufficiently to admit the thought of Gervase, a realization that my protective impulses towards him were far from over. If I held out my hand to him now—for he would need a hand—would he take it? Did I want him to need me again? Could I need him now? Was this our final opportunity? I heard his voice in the hall and ran, finding him face to face with Gideon, the precarious balance between them almost visibly tilting in an atrocious direction. And having dreaded this confrontation for years, having held myself for so long in readiness to prevent it, I stood now aghast with some kind of fog in my mind, and watched it happen.
‘What should I offer you, Gideon? Congratulations?’
And although I had had the same thought an hour ago, the terrible mockery in Gervase’s voice chilled me.
‘You can go to hell, Gervase.’
‘I shouldn’t wonder. And where are you going, Gideon? To Listonby to tell them the good news?’
‘Get out of my way.’
‘Oh—I reckon you’ll make sure of that.’
‘I reckon I might.’
And with an accompanying obscenity I had not heard before but easily understood, he put the flat of his hand on Gervase’s chest and pushed hard.
I shook my head, cleared it, and somehow put myself between them, relying not on strength to keep them apart but on the fact that as boys they had been trained not to hit girls, that gentlemen did not strike ladies. And even then there was some more pushing and shoving, Gideon rock-hard, his eyes completely blank, Gervase like some kind of cold flame, my intervention merely making it harder for them to get at one another.
A scandalous, ridiculous performance in any circumstances, appalling in these. ‘Stop it!’ I shrieked, becoming ridiculous too, striking out with my fists in all directions, this feminine violence which ordinarily would have amused them reducing their own to a point where insults began to seem more appropriate than blows.
‘You didn’t know what you had in her,’ hissed Gervase, shaking now with hatred and hurt. ‘Talk about pearls before swine—and you were the swine all right, Chard.’
‘I don’t have to defend myself to an idle parasite—and a bloody alley-cat, like you.’
‘Then try defending yourself to a hanging judge—that’s what I’d like to see.’
‘I told you, Gervase—get out of my way and out of my sight—now.’
‘And out of your house too, I reckon. Is that it, Gideon?’
There was no answer.
‘I see,’ said Gervase. ‘Then listen here, Chard, and I’ll tell you what you can do with this house, and those mills, and everything else that goes with them.’
He told him, explicitly, obscenely, with a total and damning contempt. And when he had done—when he had entirely slaughtered the Barforth side of himself—I ran after him down the long, stone steps into the garden and caught him on the carriage-drive, walking fast towards the stable block.
‘Gervase—oh Gervase, not like this—just a moment—’
But his nerve had snapped now, he was wild and very close to tears, and shook off my hand with a shudder as if it burned him or soiled him.
‘Leave me alone.’
And when I would not, he stood for a moment in front of me, took my shoulders in hands that hurt and shook me just once but very hard.
‘You heard me, Grace. I told him what to do with the house and the mills and whatever else goes with them. That includes you, Grace. You ought to know that. Now will you leave me alone?’
I watched as he disappeared around the corner, and then turned and walked back to the house, each step taken as if through water, my skirt an impossible weight around my legs, the sensation one has in dreams of movement impeded by unseen hands, of running through a barrier of weariness and going nowhere.
Gideon was standing in the open doorway, the light behind him outlining the powerful set of his shoulders, the extent of his self-assurance and his authority; Gideon, controlled and immovable, the natural leader of the herd thriving on his power to drive his rivals away. Fortune-hunter no longer, since the fortune was assured, but the dominant male of the clan, the old man in the house behind him no longer desiring to challenge him, the young man who might have challenged him having proved unwilling and unequal.
‘Let him be,’ he told me calmly, in no doubt that I—a woman of the clan—must obey him. ‘Let him go to earth for a while—it can do no harm. And you, Grace, come back inside.’
Chapter Eighteen
She had made many mistakes in her life, which had, in the end, proved fatal to her. In her place I would not have been deceived by Charles Heron, and had I consented to a marriage of convenience I would have accepted its limitations far better than she had done. I would not have gone away with Robin Ashby, but had I done so I would have been less easily broken and quicker to mend. Being made of tougher, coarser stuff, I would have survived where finespun Venetia had not. Being less hopeful, I was less prone to disappointment. Being less honest, I was better able to compromise. But I expected no one, when my time came, to mourn me with the intensity so many of us mourned for her, no one to feel, as I now felt, that the world had grown cooler and dimmer, infinitely impoverished, for the sorry waste of her.
I had been unable at first to contemplate her funeral, but the mundane requirements of mourning had occupied my mind and I managed to stand at her graveside on that blustery March day without dwelling too closely on what the coffin contained. I had not looked at her, had refused all blandishments to try from those who assured me she was only ‘sleeping’, that she looked ‘so very beautiful’when I knew she was dead and could find nothing beautiful in that.
I stood in stony immobility, irritated by the tears of Miss Mandelbaum and Mrs. Rawnsley, by the stately gesture with which Mrs. Sheldon lifted her veil and dabbed a wisp of cambric to her eyes, by the hushed and overblown condolences of Thomas Sheldon M.P., who always attended the funerals of his richer constituents; irritated most of all by the vicar, a great favourite with Mrs. Agbrigg, who appeared to find it a matter for rejoicing that she had been too good for this world and was now a
resident in a ‘better place’.
The funeral was, of course, a major event, all five of the Barforth mills being closed for the day, so that the steep slope of Kirkgate leading to the parish church was lined six deep with Barforth employees craning their necks to watch the spectacle of upper-class Cullingford on parade; the black silk gowns beaded with jet, the hats with their black satin bows and black feathers; the women of the immediate family in knee-length mourning veils; the black-draped carriages and the black horses; the fun, I suppose, of identifying each party as it arrived, Aunt Caroline’s coach with its ducal crest proving a firm favourite.
There were mourners, too, from far afield, coming to pay their respects not to Venetia, who was unknown to them, but to her husband, her father, her grandfather, Sir Joel Barforth, whose name lived on and whose widow was here today, standing for the first time in twenty-five years between her sons; Aunt Faith clinging to Sir Blaize’s other arm, my mother-in-law standing up very straight and then suddenly leaning—for the first time in years—against her husband.
The widower stood among his own kin, maintaining a grave but otherwise impassive countenance, Aunt Caroline scarcely knowing what expression to adopt since she had not liked Venetia but was troubled by so young a death, Blanche looking tearful and out of sorts, Sir Dominic, who was probably very bored, looking every inch a baronet.
I stood with my own family and with a tightly controlled, not quite sober Liam Adair, my hand on my father’s arm, glad even of Mrs. Agbrigg to shield me from Gervase, for I had not seen him since the night of Venetia’s death and refused to demean myself by looking too closely at him when he appeared on the fringes of the crowd, his face as sickly and unreal as candlewax.
We walked away, all of us in the same direction, except Gervase who, remaining at the graveside a moment, went off down a path which would lead him nowhere but away from his family, and from me. We got into our carriages and drove back to Tarn Edge, where I served tea to the ladies, spirits to the gentlemen, conferred with Mrs. Winch about luncheon for those mourners who, having some distance to travel, might require it; functioned, in fact, like the machine I had become.
But the animosity to which I had become accustomed among my relations was absent today, Sir Blaize Barforth taking and holding his brother’s hand for a long moment in the churchyard and thereafter staying closely at his side, while Aunt Caroline had no wish to pursue her feud with a woman who had lost her only daughter. They sat all together by the drawing-room fire when the guests had gone, the three children of Sir Joel Barforth, Blaize, Nicholas and Caroline, with their spouses and their mother, united if only imperfectly by distress, and talked quietly among themselves of neutral subjects, happier days.
‘What is to become of the poor infant?’ said Aunt Caroline, sensing a threat to Gideon, since this was not his child and already it was paining her to be obliged to pretend otherwise. But Mr. Barforth, never one to brook interference in his affairs, merely shook his head, and instead of informing her that the child, whatever else she might be, was his granddaughter, said wearily, ‘No need to fret, Caroline. There’s enough to go round—more than enough, I reckon.’
‘I should hope so, Nicholas, considering the healthy state of the business my father left you. But I was not only referring to that. The child must be looked after, “brought up”—Grace, dear, should you need advice at any time, I shall be very happy, for babies are not quite so simple as one supposes.’
‘Grace will manage all right,’ said my father-in-law, and there was an immediate chorus of family approval. ‘Of course she will.’ ‘Grace does everything so well.’ ‘How fortunate you are, Nicholas, to have her here—what a comfort to you—how very convenient!’ ‘Grace is so fond of children.’
Was I fond of children? What difference did it make? Here once again was a female task that must be performed. I was the obvious female person to perform it. It had occurred to no one that I might object, that I might have some other plan—some other hope or dream or desire—for my unique and unrepeatable life.
‘I suppose you will be expecting to use the Chard christening gown,’ Aunt Caroline said to me with extreme reluctance a few days later, assuming already that I had taken on the authority, the responsibility of a mother.
‘Of course she will,’ Blanche answered for me, being far less subservient to Aunt Caroline than she used to be. ‘I have brought it with me in the carriage. It was made for giants, Grace, I warn you, and you will have to stitch it around that little mite.’
The christening was very painful. Blanche and I were the godmothers, still in our funeral black, Gideon, who should, I thought, have insisted on using the chapel at Listonby, looking just faintly embarrassed in this parish church of Cullingford, where he had married the wife who had left him and was now baptizing her child, not his. While Gervase, who was a blood relation and should have offered himself as godfather to his sister’s daughter, was not there. Nevertheless the ceremony was performed, the duty done. We took an anonymous little creature wrapped in costly lace to church that day and brought home with us Miss Claire Chard, riding in the victoria with her Aunt Blanche—who had chosen her name—her Chard cousins, Matthew and Francis, and her Aunt Grace; the man who had agreed to call himself her father riding alongside with the man who would allow her to call him Uncle Dominic, while behind them, in his own carriage, there came the man with a sudden sprinkling of grey in his hair who was most decidedly her grandfather.
I had dinner that night with my father-in-law, the two of us alone in the high, panelled room among a splendour of crystal and silver, served as deferentially as if we had been at a banquet. The child was upstairs in her nursery, expensively tended. Gideon had taken the London train and would be back the day after tomorrow. Gervase was not there.
I left Mr. Barforth to his brandy and cigars and sat alone in the drawing-room, drinking my coffee and glancing with resignation at the pile of letters of condolence to which I must reply. This was my life. Gideon would return with his fine cambric shirts to be laundered, his well-cut coats to be pressed, and before long there would be his friends to entertain again, his recherché little dinners, his sophisticated appetites. I would visit my father on Sunday afternoons and go to London occasionally to see Blanche. I would argue mildly the tea-table issues of the women’s cause as understood by Miss Mandelbaum and would be mildly irritated by the narrowness of Miss Tighe, the noble insistence of Mrs. Sheldon in considering herself not as a person in her own right but as Thomas Sheldon’s wife. The child would grow. Gervase would not be there. Eventually Gideon would marry again, a woman whose wealth and solid family connections would make her a power at Tarn Edge. My father-in-law would not live forever. Where would Gervase be then?
‘Grace, are you not well?’ Mr. Barforth said, coming into the room and sitting down heavily in the chair opposite mine.
‘Oh yes—quite well.’
‘Aye—so you would tell me even if you were in agony. Grace—there is something I ought to tell you.’
‘Yes?’ But I was suddenly very tired, my eyelids aching for sleep, and could muster no curiosity.
‘It concerns the Galton estate.’
And even then, knowing how closely it must also concern Gervase, I could not stir myself to more than a faint interest.
‘I have made the Abbey over to my wife, Grace, in such a manner that it is hers absolutely, to be disposed of at her wish, not mine. I wonder if you know what that means?’
‘That you have set her free.’
He smiled. ‘She may see it that way. But there is rather more to it than that.’
‘I know. It means she can give it to Gervase and that he, with the income from his ten per cent of your business, can live like his Uncle Peregrine, except that Gervase has turned thirty now and I believe Peregrine Clevedon never got so far.’
‘And you feel I’ve let you down?’
‘Why should you concern yourself with me?’
‘Don’t talk like a fo
ol, girl,’ he said brusquely. ‘It can’t suit you to have that estate in your husband’s hands. I knew that very well when I took my decision. My choice was between what suited you and what suited my wife, and I chose my wife. Something was owing to her. I paid—and since you may have to pay too—well, Grace, I rarely feel called upon to explain myself but I think you’d best listen to me for a minute or two. You haven’t lived in my house all this time without knowing how matters stand between me and Georgiana. It might make things easier for you to know why. She married me for my money. That’s no secret and it seemed fair enough at the time. I married her because I wanted her, and I suppose it wasn’t all her fault that I got more than I bargained for. The fascination didn’t last and I’m a poor loser—always have been. It struck me that I wasn’t cut out for close relationships and so I made up my mind to keep to the things I was suited for—running the mills and making a profit. There’s no reason to be ashamed of that. Well—I could have kicked that lad of mine into shape, I reckon, if I’d got myself involved with him. And when he didn’t shape up on his own, I gave up too soon. I can train my managers and my son-in-law—by God, I can! The training I put them through is so damned hard that the job itself seems easy by comparison. But I can keep my distance, you see, from them and it would have brought me too close to Gervase. So—if you feel the need to blame somebody for the way he is, you can start by blaming me. You can call me a fool too, if you like, Grace—a damned fool. I kept my distance from Venetia, too. I denied myself all the things she could have been to me and what have I gained by it? It hasn’t made losing her any easier—by Christ it hasn’t!’
We sat for a moment in a strangling silence and then, gruffly, quite painfully, he demanded: ‘What else could I have done when she went off that first time? And I didn’t drag her down the aisle to Gideon. Damnation! I even thought she’d put up more of a fight than she did, which was no fight at all, just “Yes, father—if you think that’s best”—just that, no argument. And it was best. I had my own reasons for wanting him but I knew he’d look after her, do the right thing—I knew he could look after her, for he’s got a head on his shoulders and an eye to the main chance—And what’s wrong with that? So—when she didn’t argue—it struck me that, at the bottom of her, she probably fancied him. He’s a good-looking man—why shouldn’t she have fancied him? What else could I have done?’
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