Ravenscliffe

by Jane Sanderson

  Chapter 39

  She had been so set against it, so determined to resist, but there she was anyway, making the lonely journey down Oak Avenue to see Absalom Blandford. It took her back, as she’d known it would, to the time many months earlier, when Anna and Samuel Farrimond had chivvied her into asking the earl to invest in her business. She felt chivvied again now: her instinct had been to let it lie, believing that if the earl intended her to have the business, he would have somehow made sure that she did. Nonsense, Anna had said. Lord Netherwood was dead. Yes, Eve had said, I know.

  ‘Then you must go, as you promised earl you would, and see Mr Blandford. Yes, yes,’ – Eve had been grimacing at the prospect – ‘he is horrible man. But what matter? You’re there on business, not in friendship.’

  Daniel had agreed; it would be disrespectful to the earl, he said, to stay away. And Eve, stung by this suggestion, had capitulated. But she walked the mile down the tree-lined avenue with less confidence in her mission than either her husband or her friend. Daniel, at work somewhere in these grounds though she couldn’t see him, had told her that she must look the bailiff directly in the eye, state her business, and sign whatever papers needed signing. And that would be that, he said. He’d offered to come with her, but she had declined; if she had to face Mr Blandford, she would do it in her own right, as the late earl’s business associate. I am Mrs Daniel MacLeod and I have a perfect right to be here, she said to herself. It would have been a useful mantra, if only she had believed it.

  There was a motorcar outside the hall, a little black two-seater with a drift of leaves at its right side, so it must have been parked there for a while. The doctor’s car, perhaps. By all accounts Lady Netherwood was keeping him busy, now that there was nothing he could do for the earl. Eve wondered at the scene inside; Lord Netherwood laid out in his room, and life tiptoeing on outside his closed doors. When Arthur died, she couldn’t have his body at home because it had been mutilated by the rockfall; it was a terrible admission, but she’d been glad of it. A corpse in the parlour was a bad custom, in her view, especially when there were bairns in the house. She shuddered. No cause to think of it all now.

  Her boots on the ground announced her arrival in the courtyard behind the great house. A pall of inactivity hung over the stables. There must have been boys around, but there was no sign of anyone at all and the long row of stalls where the horses usually stood was empty. She crossed the yard to the estate offices and saw the pristine profile of Absalom Blandford; he was seated at his desk, though he appeared not to be working, but to be simply gazing ahead. The neighbouring office, Jem Arkwright’s, was empty, the door closed, the window shuttered. Eve faltered, losing heart, and she might have turned tail but for the fact that Mr Blandford suddenly executed a swift and efficient turn of his head like a buzzard sensing prey and, propelled by his chilly gaze, she approached his door, knocked twice, and entered. For a disconcerting moment he held his position, scrutinising the now-empty stable yard as if, after all, it had not been Eve who had caught his attention, but something else far more noteworthy. And then he looked at her and though he didn’t speak, his expression invited her to explain her unwelcome presence here in the sanctity of his office.

  ‘On my wedding day,’ she said, plunging in without preamble, ‘Lord Netherwood told me he wished me to ’ave full ownership of t’mill. I was to come to your office, ’e said, and see you. Lord Netherwood said that …’

  Her voice cracked and her eyes brimmed. He continued to stare, coldly.

  ‘Of course, ’e would’ve been ‘ere too,’ she reached for her handkerchief, wiped her eyes, struggled on, ‘if ’e was able to be.’

  ‘Really?’ said Absalom, his voice laced with scepticism.

  ‘I’m sure ’is lordship spoke to you about it, Mr Blandford.’

  ‘Are you? How interesting. I fear you presume too much. I had no such conversation with the late earl. Certainly I would have remembered an exchange as remarkable, as … fanciful … as the one you describe.’

  She was silent. He continued to watch her, his mouth twisted with contempt. Could she possibly have misinterpreted the earl’s words, she wondered? Caught in the hostile sights of the bailiff her thoughts swam and she struggled to recall the exact conversation. But no! He had mentioned a solicitor and papers to sign. There was no mistake, she was sure of it. She took a breath.

  ‘Lord Netherwood told me you were to speak to ’is solicitor and that paperwork was being prepared. I wouldn’t make up such a thing, Mr Blandford. I can’t believe ’e would make such an offer and forget to discuss it with you.’

  ‘No indeed, we can agree on that much at least. The earl would never take such a step without involving me in the process. And try as I might, however strenuously I rack my brain, I can call no such matter to mind. So I must conclude, Mrs’ – there was a pause, while he appeared to be searching for the word – ‘MacLeod, that it didn’t take place. Now, are we to continue with this entertainingly circular conversation, or am I to be allowed to return to my many business matters of a less fantastical nature?’

  She looked at him, at his sneer, at his manicured fingers rifling through a bowl of pot pourri, the only item on an otherwise empty desk, at his abundant hair oiled back into a sleek mane, at his cold, feral eyes; and she felt, for the first time in her life, the hot, unstoppable, incurable rush of pure hatred. It coursed like lava through her veins. She hated him, and would always hate him. There could be no forgiveness. He raised his eyebrows questioningly, as if mystified at her continued presence.

  ‘You’re a wicked man, Absalom Blandford,’ she said. ‘A wicked, wicked man. Lord Netherwood spoke to you, I know ’e did. I don’t ’ave proof, but I know it. But I shan’t fight you, because I’ve no cause to. I ’ave a life filled with love. You, I should imagine, have nowt: nowt at all, except for t’power to go against a dead man’s wishes. Well, go on, and see if I care. Yours is a sad excuse for a life and I pity you.’

  He stood so abruptly that his chair crashed backwards onto the floor.

  ‘Get out!’ His voice when raised hit a strange falsetto, quite different from his usual controlled, oleaginous tone. It was almost comical, but Eve didn’t laugh. Instead she gave him a look so fierce, so direct, that he felt utterly exposed, entirely vulnerable, and then she turned and left, slamming the door behind her so that the glass in the windowframes rattled.

  Amos’s rooms were at the nicer end of Sheffield Road, where the run of terraced houses overlooked not their mirror image, but a patch of open countryside to the west of Netherwood. He had a bedroom, a parlour and a small kitchen, which he rarely used, since Ida Birtle, his landlady, provided dinner for her lodgers if they gave her enough notice and paid the shilling in advance. He had moved in here with his scant belongings and Mac the bulldog, each of them considering it a drop in their respective circumstances – ‘Back yard?’ Mac had seemed to say as he stood bow-legged and bulky, looking at Amos with reproach in his brown eyes. They’d managed well enough, of course, and Amos had reminded the dog that there were plenty of landladies who wouldn’t let a dog over the threshold, but still, it felt like a temporary measure. He didn’t like to share a staircase with anyone these days, didn’t like running the risk of meeting a fellow lodger on the early-morning dash to empty his chamber pot. He didn’t like Mrs Birtle’s habit of glancing pointedly at the hall clock whenever she saw him coming or going, as if his movements were suspiciously erratic, though he rarely altered the pattern of his days. And he didn’t like the sound of snoring coming through the wall at night. Not only snoring, either: other noises, highly suggestive of a poorly stifled quest for solitary sexual ecstasy, emanated regularly from the lodger next door, a bank clerk called Trimble, with a furtive habit of dropping his eyes – as well he might – whenever he and Amos passed on the landing.

  His little house in Brook Lane – the one he’d lost along with his job at New Mill Colliery – had been his entirely: his and Julia’s, before she die
d, but then his own alone for the many years after that. He could walk, if he wished, stark naked from bedroom to kitchen, whistling as he went, and only the dog would be any the wiser. Amos had acquired Mac as a bit of welcome company, truth be told, when fate threw him into his path. One of a litter of six puppies he found in a sack in Milton Pond, the only one still with a chance of life. The tiny creature had managed to crawl up the pile of bodies and out of its watery grave, so that when Amos gingerly untied the neck of the sack, the puppy had rolled out onto his hand, disconcertingly cold and hairless and with only the faintest trace of a pulse. Amos had kept him warm by his stove then fed him drops of milk, little expecting the puppy to survive. But here he was now, a permanent, meaty fixture in Amos’s life, breathing noisily with effortful concentration as he watched Amos preparing a shepherd’s pie.

  ‘Bitten off more ’n I can chew ’ere,’ Amos said to the dog. ‘You think it’d be simple, a shepherd’s pie, but it’s ’arder than it looks.’

  The lamb base hadn’t thickened and it ran into the dish from the pan with the consistency of soup.

  ‘Now ’ow am I going to get t’mash to sit on top o’ that?’ he said. He looked at Mac, who looked right back at him. ‘Let’s ’ope she’s not ’ungry.’

  With infinite care he began to drop spoonfuls of potato onto the meat sauce and watched gloomily as each one sank like a stone beneath the surface. He cursed himself for not just grilling a couple of chops. He had wanted to demonstrate the esteem in which he held her by making a meal that required a bit of effort. But he hadn’t made a shepherd’s pie in a long while: years, perhaps.

  ‘Not a lot of point, faffing about wi’ pies when it’s just me,’ Amos said. ‘Well, and thee,’ he added, to Mac. ‘I expect you’d trough this in no time.’

  ‘Do you always talk to yourself?’

  Anna’s voice came from the parlour and Amos jumped as if he’d been shot by a dart. She came to the door and looked in at Amos and the dog.

  ‘Ah, you’re talking to Mac. That’s all right then.’ She smiled.

  ‘I never ’eard you knock,’ Amos said, and it came out sounding churlish.

  ‘I didn’t.’

  They looked at each other. She wore a coat of blue wool, tightly buttoned, and a blue felt hat shaped a bit like a bell, pulled down low. She always looked different from other women, Amos thought: the same, but different. Her clothes were always individual, though he couldn’t have put his finger on why.

  ‘Your landlady was there, in hallway. She said to come straight in, she said you were here.’

  ‘Aye, sounds about right,’ Amos said. ‘She’ll be there when you leave an’ all, accidentally on purpose.’

  ‘Stew and dumplings?’ Anna said, looking at the shepherd’s pie.

  ‘Aye, sort of,’ Amos said. ‘Lamb stew and potato cobblers.’ He started to laugh, and she smiled at him.

  ‘Pop it in oven then. I’m hungry as horse.’

  Amos looked at Mac. ‘Uh-oh,’ he said.

  ‘I saw Mrs MacLeod, leaving the bailiff’s office,’ said Mrs Powell-Hughes.

  Parkinson was polishing the silver plate with a linen rag. He rubbed as if he might reveal another colour altogether if only he worked hard enough.

  ‘Can’t Abel do that, Mr Parkinson?’ If indeed, she thought, it must be done at all.

  ‘Not as well as I can,’ said the butler. ‘Anyway, he’s needed in the cellar.’

  Truly, life goes on, thought Mrs Powell-Hughes.

  ‘I wonder what business she had there,’ she said. Parkinson looked up from his task.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Mrs MacLeod. Mrs Williams-as-was. With the bailiff.’

  ‘There are all manner of possibilities,’ he said. ‘I suppose she’s concerned for the business. His lordship was very involved.’

  ‘Mmmm. So many people affected. So many ramifications. Not just the immediate family, though heaven knows they’ll feel the loss for years. That little girl …’

  She meant Isabella, whose condition had now usurped her mother’s as the principal cause for concern to Dr Frankland.

  ‘No improvement?’ said Parkinson.

  ‘None. Hysterical, poor mite. I wonder she has the energy to continue at it, wailing and carrying on. Maudie’s been billeted in her bedroom to keep watch over her. Lady Henrietta’s sharing Flytton.’

  Parkinson tutted sadly. Such upheaval. Lady Netherwood seemed to have rallied, at least, and to everyone’s immense relief had stopped insisting that the earl was merely sleeping. Almost herself again, although still not quite; she had about her a disconnected air and she certainly hadn’t risen to the challenge of the funeral arrangements, which were being managed entirely by Lady Henrietta, who sat in her late father’s study as if she belonged there. Tobias, heir to the earldom, showed little interest in the proceedings. He had wanted the funeral to be held in London for reasons that Parkinson suspected were entirely selfish, and the moment his petition had been quashed by the rest of the family – not to mention the weight of tradition – he had grown petulant and obstructive, and could never be found when his presence was required. Parkinson knew that he must strive to correct his own tendency to opprobrium; it was not his place to judge the new master and find him wanting. But the butler deeply mourned the late earl. He was not ready, quite, to submit fully to a new regime. He had been in the room with Tobias, Henrietta and Dickie when a London burial was mooted: so much easier for everyone to attend, Tobias had said. Parkinson, one hand frozen above the silver coffee pot, might have shocked everyone – including himself – by vehemently protesting, had Lady Henrietta not done so first. Disingenuous, she had said. Tobias mustn’t use their father’s death as a convenient excuse to see Thea. All in good time, she had said. She was little more than a year older than her brother, but she had spoken as an adult to a child. How safe the reins of Netherwood would have been in her hands: how very uncertain in her brother’s. Parkinson allowed the thought to form, then instantly dismissed it. No good could come from insubordination, however private it might be. And he could take comfort from the fact that Lady Henrietta had triumphed, easily and swiftly, in the matter of a Yorkshire funeral. Anything else was utterly out of the question, of course. The late earl had always loved his Yorkshire home; Netherwood was his pride and his passion. It was absolutely right that he should rest in peace here, among his forebears, where he belonged. Tears sprang into the butler’s eyes. He dipped his rag into the jar of paste, picked up another candlestick, and began to rub.

  Chapter 40

  ‘So you’ll let it lie?’

  ‘I shall, yes.’

  ‘Then you’re a fool.’

  Eve gave Ginger a hard look.

  ‘I’m sorry, Eve, but this business should be yours now, and you’re lettin’ that lizard get t’better of you.’

  ‘I can see ’ow it looks, but what am I to do, Ginger? Stand on t’town ’all steps and call ’im a liar?’

  Eve banged down her rolling pin on the mound of pastry and sent up a small cloud of flour from the worktop. The pie lid could take the pasting she should have given Absalom Blandford. You weren’t meant to bake when you were cross, but Eve was no longer convinced of the truth of this old wisdom; she was getting through these pastry lids like nobody’s business, and the glorious smell of those already in the oven suffused the kitchen. As much as anything, she was cross that Ginger had so easily winkled out of her the cause of her ill humour. She’d vowed to keep it to herself – well, herself, Daniel and Anna, and Silas was going to have to be told in due course – but Ginger had a sixth sense when it came to matters such as these, going after the truth like a ferret down a rabbit hole. Now that she knew, she’d been sworn to secrecy and Ginger wasn’t known for spreading tittle-tattle, but it seemed to Eve that the more people she confided in, the more likely it was that soon everyone would know. Daniel had said: ‘So what? Where’s the harm in folk knowing that Blandford’s a treacherous bastard?’ but Eve had shushed him;
she felt differently about this. It was, after all, her word against the bailiff’s and while he wasn’t much liked, he was also known to be a loyal foot soldier to the late earl. Also, the offer to her had been wildly extravagant – she’d been barely able to credit it herself, even as he insisted. What likelihood was there that anyone would believe her? There were enough people in Netherwood who thought Eve had already climbed too far above her station in life: she’d find little sympathy if she went around crying injustice now. No, she had said to Daniel; the earl’s promise to her had evaporated when he died.

  ‘Does your brother know owt about it?’

  Ginger was a canny soul. She looked at a problem and saw its component parts, the numerous small difficulties that added up to the whole. Eve thought about her brother’s feverish excitement at the wedding party, and felt dull dread at the knowledge that she would have to disabuse him.

  ‘Only ’alf of t’story,’ Eve said.

  ‘I see. Wrong ’alf, I suppose?’

  Eve nodded.

  ‘Well I’ll tell you this much for nowt, your Silas won’t like it.’

  ‘No, well, if I can bear it, I’m sure ’e can.’

  Eve paused to drape a sheet of pastry over another dish of meat and potato. She crimped its edges, snipped the top twice, then pushed it to one side.

  ‘Anyroad,’ she said. ‘It’s not Silas’s business, is it?’

  ‘’appen not,’ Ginger said. ‘But ‘’e’ll take a view.’ She left it at that, but her expression suggested she had more to say on the subject of Eve’s brother.

  ‘What?’ Eve said.

  Ginger opened her mouth to speak, then closed it again. ‘Nowt,’ she said.