Ravenscliffe

by Jane Sanderson

  He was fascinated by Amos. He’d heard him in full flight at a union meeting, and it was as if Enoch’s own ideas and principles were being given voice. Enoch had none of Amos’s powers of oratory: not for him a soapbox in a pit yard. His own strength was with pen and paper – the mechanics of union work, not the drama of it. While Amos was never happier than when he was in front of a crowd promising to change the world, Enoch’s preference was for paperwork – the hard physical evidence of the fact that their union was growing in size and power. They valued each other’s skills, each recognising in the other man qualities that he didn’t have himself, and they complemented each other; the two of them combined made one perfect recruiting agent. However, this symbiosis didn’t stop Enoch from badgering his colleague this morning – not for the first time – to look beyond the YMA and stand as an Independent Labour Party candidate in the forthcoming Ardington by-election.

  ‘It’s not too late, by t’way,’ he said now, casually, as if they’d just been talking about nominations of candidates.

  Amos looked at him questioningly.

  ‘To stand,’ said Enoch.

  ‘Oh give it a rest, man,’ said Amos. ‘It’s Liberal territory, Ardington.’

  ‘Aye, it is,’ said Enoch. ‘But if you stand for Labour you’ll give ’em a run for their money. Politics isn’t always about winning. It’s sometimes about making a stand.’

  This was true, and Amos knew it. In Parliament Labour still danced to the tune of the Liberals, relying on their numbers and their money to forward the cause of the working man. But outside Parliament, in the country at large, the Labour cause was growing apace and not just among the miners: dock labourers, railway engineers, textile workers – they were all beginning to see the possibilities of an independent Labour party with its own clear voice. Enoch firmly believed that in this changing climate, Amos’s rabble-rousing talents deserved a wider audience.

  ‘What about funding? We can’t run a campaign on fresh air,’ Amos said, which was encouragement indeed for Enoch.

  ‘If you’ll stand, I’ll find t’funding,’ he said. ‘I know more folk than you do. Friends in ’igh places.’ He winked knowingly but Amos regarded him coolly. There were, it was true, wealthy men with socialist leanings, men who liked to divide the Liberal vote by bankrolling Labour candidates, but Amos hadn’t realised that Enoch had access to their wallets. Clearly, there was more to his colleague than he had imagined.

  Amos still hadn’t replied, but Enoch sensed a weakening in the silence and he closed in.

  ‘When Keir ’ardie stood in Mid Lanark, did ’e win? No. Did ’e care? No, because ’e knew ’e couldn’t win that seat, and ’e knew ’e’d win another somewhere else, some other time. But ’e cut ’is teeth on those early campaigns and put t’Labour cause on t’ballot papers. That, my friend, is what you should be doing.’

  He smiled at Amos, who he knew was pondering his words. And indeed, Amos was thinking that his colleague had a point. There was currently no Labour candidate in the Ardington by-election. The Liberals would hold it, the Tories would be second. But perhaps, thought Amos, victory shouldn’t be the only goal.

  ‘I’ll think on it,’ Amos said, non-committal. But Enoch felt a surge of hope anyway.

  A rich, sweet tomato sauce simmered in a cast-iron pot on the back of the range, and side by side at the worktop Alice Buckle and Eve stood in an easy silence, both of them engaged in the same task: wrapping the largest leaves – blanched until soft enough to fold – from the outsides of eight Savoy cabbages around small, soft balls of uncooked sausagemeat. They flew from the kitchen whenever they made these pig parcels, an innovation from Anna’s native Russia, but a mainstay on the menu for over a year now. Occasionally, just to break the monotony of making them, they’d experimented with the filling: cooked rice and peas, minced lamb, even – disastrously – mashed potato, which Eve had thought might be a creative nod towards bubble-and-squeak, but turned out to be nothing of the sort. They were bland and sloppy and they didn’t even go on sale; instead, Alice had taken them home for Jonas’s pigeons. In the end, Eve had abandoned all attempt at variation, returned to the original recipe and stuck with it, innovation being deemed less important than contented customers.

  Eve always enjoyed working with Alice: she was such a peaceful individual and had been trained through fifteen years of marriage to a demanding husband to do exactly what was required of her, exactly when it was required. Also, she didn’t need to chat or sing, like Ginger, or complain about anyone, like Nellie. Alice just peeled, chopped, stirred, whisked or – as today – folded, with an expression of contentment on her sweetly plump face.

  So they were each lost in their own thoughts when Lord Netherwood rapped on the window and nearly scared them both out of their wits. They looked up simultaneously and saw the earl outside in the courtyard, indicating with a pantomime of gestures and grimaces that he couldn’t come inside because his boots were too muddy. Alice looked down again, immediately bashful: she would never, she thought privately, be able to look the Earl of Netherwood in the eye and greet him as if he was nobody special. Eve, though, gave him a casual wave.

  ‘Back in a mo’,’ she said to Alice, then she stepped outside to talk to him.

  ‘Sorry to distract you from your endeavours,’ he said as she emerged. ‘Came up through Bluebell Wood with the dogs and hit a bit of a bog, what.’

  He smiled at her. He looked tired, she thought: paler than usual. Beside him two black Labradors, also caked in mud from the haunches down, sat panting solemnly, gazing at Eve without any particular interest.

  ‘Not at all,’ Eve said. ‘It’s nice to see you. Business is quiet, mind, at t’moment. It ’as been since …’

  Eve blushed and tailed off. There was talk that the earl’s position of privilege might not protect him from censure, a suggestion that he might be somehow culpable this time. This wasn’t something Eve was willing to believe – he could have no stronger advocate than her. But she felt awkward now at having raised the spectre of the accident, and it hung momentarily in the air between them. Then he said brightly: ‘No, no, I’m not here to keep an eye on my investment. I’m here on another matter entirely, Mrs Williams. Your marriage to my head gardener.’

  He spoke mock-sternly and Eve smiled at him, relieved that the moment had passed.

  ‘I ’ope you don’t mind,’ she said.

  ‘Mind? I think it’s absolutely splendid, my dear. He’s a lucky chap. I think the countess may take another view if you distract him from his work, however, but that’s by the by. No – I couldn’t be more delighted. And I wanted to offer you our own chapel for the service.’

  ‘At Netherwood ’all?’ said Eve, touched by his warmth and enthusiasm but a little thrown by the suggestion.

  ‘That’s the idea, yes. It’s a beautiful little church, and, well, the Methodist chapel …’

  He faltered, sounded uncharacteristically unsure of himself, but she took his meaning immediately. Bleak and painful memories – Arthur’s coffin being lowered into the hard earth, Eve blank-eyed with trauma, the Methodist graveyard crowded with mourners – rose up between them like a cold wind. She appreciated his impulse to protect her from the past.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, and though she spoke simply, her eyes conveyed a fuller meaning. ‘I shall talk to Daniel.’

  ‘I think he would happily marry you in a pig-pen if that’s what you preferred, my dear,’ said the earl. ‘Now, I gather you’re living in Ravenscliffe?’

  ‘Yes. Just moved in.’

  ‘Interesting property. I expect Mr Blandford is pleased to have let it. He doesn’t like my houses lying idle.’

  ‘Yes, I expect ’e is,’ she lied. How to begin expressing her misgivings about the bailiff? She really wouldn’t know where to start.

  ‘Quite an adventure for you. New house, new husband, what? I must say, my dear, your news has been a welcome bright spot in a rather grey few days.’

  He smiled,
but sadly, and she felt terribly sorry for him; if he’d been anyone other than Lord Netherwood she’d have given him a hug.

  ‘Can I tempt you to a pie? For t’journey ’ome?’ she said, alighting on the one way she could offer comfort without taking liberties.

  ‘Do you know, I think you could,’ he said, his face brightening. He leaned in and spoke confidingly. ‘We have a Frenchman in the kitchen now, you know. The countess has always rather longed for it and now it has come to pass. But I doubt he has a recipe for pork pie.’

  Eve laughed. ‘Well, that’s something you need never go without,’ she said and she stepped back inside to fetch one for him. Like the dogs, he watched her go, then he turned to survey the courtyard with its ironwork tables and fountain centrepiece, where a soft jet of water played over the old grey stone of the former grist mill. The dogs, denied anyone to stare at, wandered across the cobbles to lap disconsolately at the wet stone, more out of boredom than thirst. Teddy remembered the same stone when it was inside, two floors up and caked in bird muck. Then, all that stood here was an abandoned and overlooked old flour mill fit for nothing but roosting pigeons and eventual demolition. Now, it was a thriving professional kitchen and café. But more than that, it was also a facelift for this corner of Netherwood, a new meeting place for townsfolk, a draw for people from further afield; in short, an unqualified success. Something to be proud of, in fact, and this small triumph was consoling, he found. By the time Eve emerged with a pie wrapped in waxed paper, the earl was feeling already a little restored.

  He lifted the flap of his jacket pocket and slipped the parcel inside. ‘The secret,’ he said, ‘is to make the pie last the journey home, yet to finish it before the countess catches me.’

  ‘Watch out for crumbs, then. Dead giveaway.’

  He smiled at her and she returned it. Then he cheerfully saluted a mortified Alice, who was peeping out of the window, and walked at a lick out of the courtyard. The dogs galloped joyfully after him.

  The walk up to Ravenscliffe was a bit of an effort with a climbing rose under each arm, so Amos was puffing with effort by the time he cornered the track that led to the house. Anna was out at the front, in what would one day be the garden but for now was simply an extension of the common hemmed in by a picket fence. She welcomed him with a smile and a wave. Her hair was tied back from her face and the sleeves of her white blouse were rolled up above the elbows. She looked rosy, fresh, newly minted: she was beautiful, he thought, although he knew he never used to think that, and this puzzled him.

  ‘’ow do,’ he said. ‘These ’ere need a drink afore they’re planted.’

  She opened the gate for him.

  ‘Roses?’ she said.

  ‘Ramblers. Pink. They’ll do champion over there.’

  He placed them down carefully, one on either side of the front door, then looked at her for approval. She smiled, stepped forwards, and kissed him, once on each cheek and he had to look away to hide his confusion and pleasure. He wished he could do that, just step up to her and kiss her, but it wasn’t how people here went on. Anna, though – she had foreign blood coursing through her veins and had doubtless grown up bestowing kisses. He knew it didn’t mean anything, didn’t make him special to her.

  She walked into the house and he followed her through to the kitchen. Eve was in there, stirring something on the range, and Seth sat at the table with his head in a book. Tomorrow was his twelfth birthday; there was a cake already baked, and a small pile of presents already wrapped, but there was little being said on the subject because the day after he would start at New Mill. Amos had given him the benefit of his advice, but the lad was pressing ahead with the plan. So be it. Let him learn the hard way, was Amos’s view.

  ‘Now then,’ he said, by way of greeting.

  Eve smiled and Seth said: ‘It says ’ere that veg that grow above ground, like peas an’ such, should be planted in t’mornin’ an’ veg that grows underground should be planted in t’evenin’.’

  ‘That, my lad, is what’s commonly known as an old wives’ tale,’ Amos said.

  ‘It’s summat to do with sunrise and sunset.’ Seth had read it in a book and the written word, to him, was sacrosanct.

  ‘It’s nowt o’t’sort.’ Amos sounded brutal but he’d learned from experience that unless the boy’s more fanciful notions were nipped in the bud, they had a habit of becoming enshrined in allotment law.

  ‘Tea?’ Anna said.

  ‘Grand.’

  He sat down by Seth, who had resumed his reading. Anna placed a mug in front of him and sat down too.

  ‘So?’ she said, meaning, What do you have to tell me? She had known the moment he arrived that he wasn’t just here for the roses. He laughed.

  ‘Well. As it ’appens I do ’ave a bit o’ news.’

  ‘I know you do,’ Anna said. ‘What is it?’

  ‘I’m standing for Labour in t’by-election.’

  Seth looked up from his book, Eve stopped stirring, Anna nodded. She sighed a deep sigh of satisfaction.

  ‘This is good news,’ she said.

  ‘I can’t win t’seat,’ he said.

  ‘You might,’ Eve said.

  ‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘It’ll go to t’Liberals. But still …’

  ‘I’m proud of you, Amos,’ Anna said. They looked at each other across the table, held each other’s gaze, and smiled.

  PART TWO

  Chapter 21

  The drawing-room window of the house at the western end of Caledonia Place provided a perfectly framed view of the Clifton Suspension Bridge, and this had been the principal reason why Silas had bought the property. He liked a striking view: insisted upon it. His plantation house near Port Antonio was high in the hills overlooking the startling turquoise waters of the Blue Lagoon; his London house in Mayfair had an unrestricted view of Hyde Park. This was his favourite, though, this view of the bridge across the Avon Gorge, and what it lacked in glamour it made up for in symbolism. The sheer ambition of Brunel’s vision; the triumph of endeavour and brilliance over the facts of the case; the realisation of the seemingly impossible. These things appealed to Silas. These, and the endless comings and goings of people on foot, in carriages, in motorcars: life – and sometimes death – running its course. Once, on a summer’s evening, standing at this window, he had watched a young man in evening dress walk from the Clifton end to the centre of the bridge then, without even a moment’s hesitation, vault over the iron rail and plummet into the broad brown waters of the Avon below. He had jumped with insouciance, as if he was clearing a five-bar gate in a field. Silas hadn’t been horrified by this spectacle: rather, he was thrilled by it. He told his friends in Bristol, why pay to visit the Theatre Royal when real life is played out in such entertaining fashion through his own drawing-room window?

  It was a long walk from here to the docks: an even longer one back. Bristol’s hills were steep and unforgiving and Clifton was up at the top on the edge of the downs where the air was sweeter. But Silas always preferred to walk. He didn’t enjoy the trams – too much proximity to fellow passengers – and he didn’t own a motorcar, because from what he could see, a motorcar made a fellow fat and lazy. So always he would walk, whatever the weather, and his brisk pace down through the teeming streets of Bristol towards the warehouse and dock kept him connected to the boy he once was: lean, sharp, energetic, ambitious. He had a strong sense of himself and this was because he was aware of being watched by others. If he was convinced of his superiority among men, he could hardly be blamed; he saw himself as they saw him: uncommonly handsome, moving through them with the strength and grace of a cat, elegantly fashionable in his London tailoring.

  ‘Whittam! Hey there!’

  The voice hailed Silas from across the street, but the pavement was crowded and it took him a while to identify its source: a tall, thin, sallow man, the only stationary person in the tide of humanity, who waited patiently for Silas to spot him.

  ‘Trencham,’ Silas said wh
en he finally picked out the familiar face. His greeting lacked enthusiasm, though he waited while the other man crossed the street, which he did incompetently, with scant regard for his own safety. Wilberforce Trencham was Bristolian born and bred, but he walked about the city like a bewildered newcomer.

  ‘One day,’ said Silas, ‘you’ll be hit by a tram or a horse and that’ll be the end of you.’

  ‘Wishful thinking, Whittam?’

  ‘Not at all, Trencham. You add spice to my life, and it would be the blander for your demise.’

  Wilberforce laughed.

  ‘Are we travelling in the same direction or are you merely trailing me?’ Silas said pleasantly.

  ‘Both, as a matter of fact. I’ve an article to write on Fyfield’s new ship from Swan & Hunter. Lovely vessel, don’t you think?’ The question was clearly intended to rankle, so Silas remained stoically unruffled. Wilberforce Trencham, shipping correspondent of the Bristol Mercury, was determined to uncover pernicious professional rivalry between Whittam’s and Fyfield’s, even if he had to fabricate it, which he wasn’t at all averse to doing.

  ‘Haven’t seen it. I’m just back from Yorkshire,’ Silas said mildly.