The Sleeping Sword

by Brenda Jagger

  Terrible enough, of course. But sharing a practical disposition, Dr. and Mrs. Stone preferred to offer their assistance to the slightly older children, the girls of twelve and thirteen and fourteen one could find in abundance any day of the week at the railway stations of any city, girls from the country sent off to fend for themselves, particularly in these days of agricultural depression, because there was no room at home, or girls who had left home respectably to take up employment and had not given satisfaction, little nursemaids and kitchenmaids discharged without a reference for the crime, sometimes, of being too young to understand what was required of them, and with nowhere to go.

  ‘Good’girls, of course, and usually quite innocent, unlike the urchins we bred in our cities. And Mrs. Stone was in a position to assure me that every train, in every city including our own, was met regularly by sharp-eyed, soft-tongued women who traded not in simple prostitution but the highly profitable marketing of virginity.

  ‘Really?’ I said and Mrs. Stone smiled, realizing I had believed virginity to be of importance mainly to husbands desirous of producing an heir they could be sure of. But no, for virginity, she told me, within her working memory had been valued as high as sixty or seventy pounds, a sum which had shrunk in recent times to a discreetly profferred five pound note, not for want of customers, she hastened to add, but because the commodity was now so much easier to come by and had lost the value of its rarity.

  And why should it be so valuable in the first place? Well, of course, there were men who found the deflowering of virgins moving and mysterious, others who required it as an added titillation, but mainly it was seen as a sanitary precaution, a virgin being presumed free from venereal disease. There was no cure for syphilis, she told me, clearly wondering if I had heard the word before, and, as any doctor would tell me—or, at least, any doctor like Patrick Stone—there were times when it reached the proportions of an epidemic. It was a terrible, shameful way to die, but, men’s needs being what they were, the risk continued to be taken, and since supply is created by demand she had met several women who had dealt for many years, and very lucratively, in virgins, procuring for some of their regular customers as many as two a week.

  The girls were picked up, hungry and frightened, at the stations and in the public parks, persuaded, or in some cases given an entirely false impression of what would be required. Just a kiss and a cuddle, they would be told, a deceit which necessitated the use of rather isolated houses for such transactions, since when the truth dawned some girls would kick and scream, while others—suspected as likely trouble-makers by the procuress—would have been so heavily dosed with laudanum in advance that they would have to be carried inside.

  An evil trade, necessitating a rapid turn-over, since the same girl, obviously, could not be used twice. And when the damage was done she would be bundled back into a closed carriage, driven away from that very secret address and abandoned somewhere in an alien street, with perhaps a guinea from that purchase price of £5 in her hand. Sometimes the Stones would find her. Sometimes a more conventional brothel-keeper who did not deal in maidenheads would find her first. Often enough some man would pick her up and take her home with him for a night or two, which would lead, of course, to the brothel in the end. Sometimes, if she was badly torn or badly shocked, she would spend a longer time than usual in the Stones’s garden, performing small tasks about the house, and even then the final reaction varied. Some girls would hang their heads in shame and creep tamely away, others would shrug their shoulders and realize they had now learned a trade. And so long as these disease-conscious gentlemen were willing to pay, neither Mrs. Stone nor my friend Camille could see an end to it.

  I worked throughout the spring and summer almost obsessively, my enthusiasm and my indignation marking me, I knew, as an amateur, although Liam—professional to his fingertips—made full use of it, sending me, when the St. Mark’s Fold survey was done—to equally appalling dens elsewhere in the city, thus proving the evil to be widespread. I listed the sordid details of every house in Commercial Close and the older, rat-infested Silsbridge Street, cowering a mile away from the splendid, Italianate façade of Nethercoats Mill; checked and cross-checked, with a novice’s determination to get it exactly right, so eager to inform the world of these injustices which everyone in Cullingford, including myself, had always known and not wished to think about, that personal relationships—the stuff of which my life had hitherto been made—became slightly blurred, faintly unreal. And so it was that the sudden dreaminess of Camille escaped me, or, if it did not, then I had no time to think about it, and consequently missed the choicest scandal to hit Cullingford since my own, which had been going on right under my zealous nose.

  ‘Do you know,’ she said to me one warm and, for me, extremely busy afternoon. ‘Mr. Nicholas Barforth is a very attractive man.’

  ‘My father-in-law? I suppose he must have been.’

  ‘But he still is, you may mark my words. That type of man improves with age. The ruthless mellows and the—well—the attractiveness remains. And he is not so old.’

  Of course she had been giving me a clue, worried—as Liam told me afterwards—that her unlikely yet obviously very satisfactory affair with my father-in-law might shock me; as indeed it did. Not for any reasons of morality but simply because he was my father-in-law, because she was beautiful, whimsical, adorable, and because I had rather hoped to see him reconciled to his wife.

  It had happened very quickly, taking her so much by surprise that she had told no one, being herself barely able to believe it. They had met at my house and she had been a little irritated and very much amused at his insistence on taking her home in his carriage. They had measured each other, and although she acknowledged his attractions—power, shrewdness, toughness and wealth being a potent blend in any man—she knew they could have little in common and did not expect to get on with him. And they had not got on together. She had sat in his carriage for over an hour, outside her front door, while he poured disapproval—scorn almost—on the life she led, shredding her ideals to pieces while she, just as quickly, patched them up again. The horses had grown restless and he had simply driven off with her to the station, and since it had been nearly dinner-time by then and they had not eaten—well—they had gone to Leeds and dined, she couldn’t—or wouldn’t—say where, except that it had been extremely elegant and probably outrageously expensive.

  They had met again twice that week and on the Friday she had gone with him to Scarborough—yes, so soon—how very shocking!—and had stayed with him until Sunday night, at a house right on the cliff-edge where they had—and here she swallowed and blushed, not from guilt, I thought, but from some quite blissful memory—where they had found themselves in harmony in every possible way. She had been seeing him since then as often as she could, which turned out to be very often, and yes, it was altogether a fit of madness, she would readily admit it, but the mere thought of him caused her to glow and tingle—how utterly insane, yet so wonderful, and to feel shivers down her spine—caused her to long for him, and she wasn’t ashamed of it. She had been to Scarborough almost every weekend since then, surely I had noticed her unseemly haste, the way she had rushed to catch the train? And what of Mr. Barforth, my father-in-law—whom to my amazement she now called Nicholas? Did he long, too?

  ‘Don’t be unkind,’ she said. ‘I know you can’t believe it of him, but he does. He’s beautiful, Grace. Perhaps you can’t believe that either. But he is.’

  I could hardly bring myself to face him when next we met, not because I blamed him for desiring Camille—how could any man be blamed for that?—but because her blissful, sighing ecstasies had forced me to think of him not so much as an elderly relative but a potent, sensual male, and it embarrassed me. But, whatever his ultimate intentions might be, he made no secret that at present he could not have enough of Camille, and had called to see me solely for the pleasure of talking about her to someone who knew just how desirable she was.

&n
bsp; ‘Why not?’ said Liam Adair, finding me alone in the office the following Thursday morning. ‘So she’s gone a day early this time, has she? Well, I didn’t think the affair could get much hotter, but it seems I’m wrong. And why not? Every rich old man deserves a young woman to round off his life—or so most rich old men will tell you. Good luck to her.’

  ‘I rather thought that you and she—?’

  ‘Ah well—I rather thought myself, at one time, that she and I—But no, she’s met too many men like me, and at least Nick Barforth is different. I reckon we might send our congratulations to Gideon Chard, for if old Nick’s in Scarborough every Friday to Monday—or every Thursday to Tuesday—with Camille, he’ll hardly be troubling Gideon overmuch at the mills.’

  The story, as yet, was by no means common knowledge, Cullingford needing to be sure of its facts before spreading rumours about its most powerful resident, but I knew they must have been seen together, the gossip would be bound to start, and it would have been a kindness to go over to Galton in case my mother-in-law—his wife—had heard. But I delayed, shirked, fearing to be confronted by a too visible memory of Gervase, and in the end she came to me, bringing fern-scents and tree-scents in the folds of her plain green skirt, her hair spilling out of a hat she had crammed on her head at a rakish and very becoming angle.

  ‘Now then, my dear,’ she said, sitting down and taking off her driving-gloves. ‘I know you are much occupied and very businesslike these days, so I shall not give you reason to accuse me of beating about the bush. I have come to enquire about this gorgeous Camille I have heard so much about. Yes, yes, don’t look so astonished, Grace, for we are none of us children, and it is my husband himself who has told me. Now then, the fact that she is gorgeous I do not dispute. I can trust Nicky to be accurate about that. But what else is she, Grace? That is what I want to know, for to tell the truth, Nicky has been very disappointed in his women, including myself, and I should not like him to be disappointed again—not now when time is no longer quite so available. So tell me about this paragon.’

  I told her and she listened, her head on one side, concentrating hard, and when I had finished she nodded, brisk, assured, a woman who, against all the rules, appeared well content.

  ‘Well, I did not expect to see him with a social reformer, which sounds a humourless breed, but you tell me she has a great deal of laughter—and generosity. Good. And she is quite besotted with him?’

  ‘She is in an absolute trance.’

  ‘That is very good. I think he has always needed that.’

  ‘Mrs. Barforth, I rather thought that you and he—?’

  And, as Liam had done when I asked him a similar question, she gave what amounted to a roguish smile.

  ‘Yes, I could see you did, and I confess it crossed our minds. When Venetia died we realized how much we had wasted, and we were able to approach each other again, but not as lovers, darling. Yes, we did think about it, but the time had gone by for us and it would have been foolish to pretend. Yet Nicky has worried me lately—how strange, for I always thought him so self-sufficient and strong, so distant by his own choice, which of course he was. But since Venetia died I think he has been lonely. He never spent much time with her but I suppose he knew she was there—poor Nicky!—and because she was so frail in spirit he knew she might need him. He wouldn’t admit it, and perhaps doesn’t know why, but he has been lonely. I have been very far from that. And now that this wonderful thing has happened to him I find that I am glad. I confess to you—and only to you—that there was a moment when I could have felt quite otherwise, but no—on the whole I am glad.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘Yes, that is something else I have to tell you, and you may not be pleased with me. Please remember, dear, that men—and women—who can afford what they want do not wait for it at our age—Nicky’s age and mine. Do you understand that, Grace?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘So—what my husband intends is to take his Camille off quite permanently, to Scarborough, I suppose, which is where Blaize and Nicholas Barforth used to take their lady-friends in the old days. He is comfortable there and it is time he got away from the mills. If she will give up her freedom—give up everything for him—and if they are happy, then I—yes—I shall be happy too, not alone, of course, and not, my dear, in wedlock, for I am a woman of my own generation and divorce is far too extreme for us. But I shall be happy, just the same, with my dear friend Julian Flood—he in his house and I in mine, of course, but happy. Do I disappoint you?’

  And when I did not answer she leaned forward and patted my hand, very brisk again, a vital and energetic lady with her mind made up.

  ‘He is my friend, Grace. I realize he was rude to you but he was defending his own kin, which is what one would expect of him, and he was most distressed afterwards at the things he had said to you. He is loyal, you see, in the way I am loyal myself—and he is not so dangerous now as he used to be. Even the wildest of men settle with time and there is no denying that he has waited twenty years—not celibate, of course, but single—for my sake. He has denied himself the heir he should have had and which his ancestry demanded of him—all because of me. Nicky says he is the nearest I could ever come to my brother, Perry, and perhaps he is. But what is wrong with that? Perry was so close to me that it was difficult, sometimes, to tell ourselves apart, yet nothing took place between us that should not have taken place between a brother and sister. We simply belonged together, fitted together. Julian, of course, is not my brother. We can love each other differently, yet almost with the same belonging. It contents me, my dear. It is Nicky who needs the total devotion, the grand passion, not I. Be happy for me. And as for you, dear—well, to begin with, there is a place now vacant, is there not, at your so enterprising Star.

  Liam’s articles on St. Mark’s Fold, Commercial Close and Silsbridge Street had appeared in consecutive weekly issues, liberally peppered with the facts I had supplied him, and had caused a great deal of angry murmuring, his judgement of callous landlords who expected men to live in worse conditions than pigs and callous millmasters whose wages were too low to permit them to live any better giving offence to some, satisfaction to others, fanning the resentment that had always smouldered very near the surface in Cullingford. Letters came pouring in thick and fast, indignant, self-righteous, abusive, offering threats or congratulations, provoking, when we printed the best of them, a controversy on social justice and responsibility that seemed to be raging fiercely enough to carry us through until Christmas. Letters began to arrive in direct reply to our readers’letters, arguments, we heard, began to flare up in common beer-houses and the saloon bars of our better hotels as to who was to blame, who ought to put it right. Who were the demon landlords of Silsbridge Street and St. Mark’s Fold and Commercial Close in any case? Would the editor of the Star name them? The editor made no promises. One would have to buy next week’s edition, and perhaps the week after, to find the answer to that.

  ‘This is all very inflammatory,’ Mrs. Agbrigg said, ‘and very dangerous. Jonas, dear, do you own any property in that area?’

  But Liam, I believed, was merely intent on selling his newspaper, for those guilty landlords could have been anyone, my Grandfather Aycliffe having built his workmen’s houses in many areas of the town, throwing them up, in fact, and tacking them together in the interests of speed not durability; somewhere to put the mill-hands and fill the factories until something better came along. But that workforce, rushed in from anywhere when the new, power-driven machinery had sparked off the industrial boom, had doubled its size eight times since my grandfather’s heyday, his terraced cottages—never substantial to begin with—sinking beneath the weight, their walls dripping damp, their floor-boards rotten, their sanitary facilities so haphazard as to be virtually not there at all. Who owned them? Dozens of people, hundreds, Grandmamma Elinor very likely among them, with not a few held in trust for Aunt Faith, Aunt Prudence and myself, since one had solicitors, after all, to ar
range the collection of one’s rents and a lady was not expected to know exactly what she owned nor to concern herself with damp walls and doorless, overflowing privies.

  Cullingford owned them. We were all their landlords, guilty because of our indifference.

  ‘That’s a very good line, Grace,’ Liam said. ‘I might use it presently. Now then, what about these peaky little bairns in the workhouse? Our Miss Tighe has got herself elected as a Poor Law Guardian again, so if you could make it in your way to have a word with her? She’d talk easier to you than to Camille—even if Camille could take an hour or two off from Paradise.’

  I saw Miss Tighe, who told me so firmly to mind my own business that the workhouse, the low, grey building which had scowled down at me all my life from a patch of wasteland above Sheepgate, began at last to cross the barrier between the things I saw without observing and the matters which had lately begun to prey on my mind. I visited Patrick and Anna Stone at least once or twice a week. I accustomed myself to the smell of unwashed humanity until it became bearable, then hardly noticeable, I passed from the burning, crusading fervour which Venetia had never lost, to an uneasy suspicion that I should give my money away, and from there to a calm realization that it would do no good. Charity, Anna Stone had said, was a crutch, a dependency like alcohol or opium which, when removed, like any other crutch would cause the addict to fall down. The answer, she said, was education, the widening of opportunity, some sure and just system in which men and women would be helped to help themselves. She did not believe her theory to be possible, simply right.

  I was alone in the office one September day—Camille in Scarborough, Liam heaven knew where—when a man dressed with almost painful neatness came stepping into the room with the air of one who feels certain of encountering something nasty underfoot, his pinched expression and the curtness of his tone making no concession to the fact that he was addressing a lady.