Ravenscliffe

by Jane Sanderson

  He pushed himself up on his elbows, but didn’t risk standing. Gingerly he touched his cheek and felt something warm and wet, though whether it was blood or tea, he didn’t know. His vision swam and the right side of his face throbbed and tightened. In front of him, two men had Morten pinned by the arms, though he made no struggle, so their efforts at restraint looked hammed-up, like a pantomime arrest. For a moment, victor and vanquished looked at each other, then Morten said: ‘My lad’s lost ’is job because o’ thee. Sacked for pocketin’ your stupid fuckin’ pamphlet. It were my good fortune that I weren’t on afternoons wi’ ’im, else I’d ’ave been tarred wi’ t’same brush.’

  ‘Morten, good God man, that’s criminal.’ Amos, still ignominiously prone on the wooden floor, struggled to his feet with some difficulty. His head felt implausibly heavy on his shoulders and his right eye was almost closed.

  ‘Aye, well. You came where you shouldn’t ’ave come. What did you think? That Whittam’s all ’ot air? That you can do as you please?’

  There was pain in Morten’s eyes. He was a decent man, a peaceable man: Amos knew this. His captors on either side pulled at his arms as if to frogmarch him off the premises.

  ‘Let go,’ Amos said to them. ‘’e’s done nowt wrong.’ Then, to Morten, he said: ‘I’m sorry. If I can mend it, I will.’

  Morten’s face was unreadable but his words were unambiguous enough. ‘If you set foot in Dreaton pit yard I’ll fuckin’ kill you,’ he said. Around them, the crowd was entirely silent, transfixed. Amos hung his head and Morten began to move away towards the door.

  ‘Nob’dy saw,’ Amos called out, suddenly. ‘There was nob’dy there when I talked to your Edward.’

  Morten turned. ‘Whittam lined up every man in t’pit yard and ’ad ’em searched. Our Edward ’ad your leaflet shoved in ’is jacket pocket. Do you know what’s funny? T’lad can’t even read.’ And he walked out of the silent hall and into the night.

  Chapter 53

  Breakfast at Fulton House. In attendance: Clarissa, Toby, Thea, Dickie, Isabella and a newcomer – a friend of Isabella’s named Bryony, whose mother and father were in the throes of a marital scandal and who had placed their daughter in the temporary care of the Hoyland household in order to give full vent to their emotions at home. The presence at the table of an outsider, young and harmless though she was, had a beneficial effect on the assembled company; small ceremonies were carefully observed, small kindnesses politely acknowledged. Beneath the surface, of course, familiar tensions and resentments still flowed freely, but Bryony, to a large extent, was protected from them. She was the youngest child of the youngest son of an obscure branch of the Chester-Moreleys, a Midlands family whose fortune had been made in tea a long time ago, but not quite so long ago that it no longer mattered. ‘She’s one of the lesser Chester-Moreleys,’ Clarissa tended to say when asked about Bryony and her circumstances. That she had welcomed this little nonentity into the hallowed halls of Fulton House – and a nonentity who now had the whiff of social disgrace about her – was the closest Clarissa had ever come to an act of real charity. She was pleased with her own conduct in the matter; she enjoyed the role of benefactress and felt that the child’s chances in life could only be enhanced by an association, however brief, with one of England’s finest families.

  ‘Bryony,’ she said now. The girl peered up through a thick, black fringe. ‘Bryony, please help yourself to more eggs.’

  This sounded rather like an order, and Bryony made to stand.

  ‘Bryony, sweetie, only if you actually want eggs,’ said Thea.

  ‘Well, naturally,’ said Clarissa. ‘I shouldn’t want you to have more eggs, Bryony, if you didn’t want them. I shouldn’t want anyone to have more eggs on my account.’

  ‘In all my life you’ve never encouraged me to have more eggs.’

  This was Henrietta, late to the table. She looked different, thought Toby, though he couldn’t quite say why. She took a plate from Munster, the lugubrious London butler, and worked her way along the hot buffet.

  ‘Yes, well, I’m sure you understand why that might be,’ said Clarissa.

  ‘Late night, Henry?’ said Toby.

  ‘Not madly so.’ She took her place at the table and began to eat. All of them, except Bryony, waited for Clarissa to begin the interrogation: where had she been? With whom had she spent the evening? What time had she returned? But the moment for asking arrived, bloomed, then passed, undisturbed. Clarissa cut splinters from a semi-circle of pineapple and ate them delicately, one by one. Her children swapped guarded looks. Here was their mother, undoubtedly: but where was her waspish insistence on propriety? It had increasingly begun to seem as if she didn’t much care what any of them did any more. She was interested in Bryony, in the way that a person might display enthusiasm for a new hobby, but her own offspring were getting away with murder.

  ‘And was it an instructive evening?’ Toby seemed to relish this situation. It amused him to discover just how far his mother could be pushed before she finally tuned in to the meaning of their conversation.

  ‘Very. Perhaps you should come next time. Open your eyes to what’s happening in the world.’

  Clarissa snipped at a bunch of grapes, taking only three for her plate. With a small sharp knife she cut one into four sections and, spearing them with a fork, she ate each tiny segment with a preoccupied air.

  Toby laughed. ‘Women’s suffrage? I hardly think so.’

  Everyone – except Bryony – looked at Clarissa, but still she sat and sliced and nibbled, and on her face was a beatific smile. Clearly, she was elsewhere. Henrietta could have stood on the table and demanded votes for women without provoking more than a yawn. She smiled across the table at Toby.

  ‘I believe I’m a naturally combative speaker. I learned this about myself last night. Among other things.’

  He shrugged. ‘Really?’ he said. ‘I learned that about you a long time ago.’

  Henrietta had been drawn in to the circle the night before by Keir Hardie, who introduced her to the rest of the gathering. She barely heard the names – her mind was swimming with the novelty of this situation – but as well as Eva Gore-Booth, there was Sylvia Pankhurst, her young brother Harry, a woman called Teresa something-or-other and a slightly later arrival who slipped into the room soon after her: a tall, thin, owlish man whose name escaped her entirely. Space was made for her, a chair drawn up. The accommodation was humbler than a servant’s bedroom at Fulton House: one room, shabbily furnished, its separate functions delineated by smoke-stained curtains, strategically placed where a wall should be. Mr Hardie offered to make her tea, which she accepted, but then watched with some misgiving as he spooned leaves into a saucepan, added cold water, then set it to boil on a small griddle over the open fire. It reminded Henrietta of the outdoor adventures she’d had as a child in the grounds of Glendonoch. The brew, supplied to her in an enamel mug, was black and bitter but she sipped at it politely, and listened to the discourse. Teresa was confident and argumentative and her upper lip had an unsettling habit of curling upwards on one side, giving her an expression of great contempt for the rest of the world. Sylvia seemed a more comfortable creature, although her long, heavy face made her look rather sad. Henrietta warmed to her, though: her ardent convictions were tempered by a willingness to listen, especially to Mr Hardie, who sat close to her, smoking a pipe. Henrietta wondered if the famous Miss Pankhurst might be a little in love with the charismatic Scotsman. He seemed solicitous of her, too: they were familiar with each other, clearly.

  For the first hour of the evening Henrietta sat, endured her tea, and nodded here and there to show she was paying attention. The conversation was wide-ranging: the injustice to women of being deprived a voice in the government to which they paid taxes; inequalities between the sexes in the labour market; the iniquities of the divorce laws. Henrietta felt daunted by how much she didn’t know. Even the boy, who couldn’t have been much more than sixteen, seemed well versed in the
rhetoric; he shared the floor equally with his adult companions and drew regular agreement from Mr Hardie, who paid him the compliment of listening gravely to each new point. For all that the themes were injustice and inequality, it was a harmonious assembly, but for the man in the round, wire-framed spectacles, whose role seemed to be devil’s advocate; however forthright, informed or intimidating the speaker, he remained implacably opposed to the principle of women’s suffrage.

  ‘When working men lack a vote, middle-class women must wait their turn,’ he said, then sat back in his wooden chair and watched the gathering combust. Then, when the dust settled, off he went again: ‘Really you should ask yourselves if it’s democratic freedom you’re after, or self-aggrandisement.’ Once more, he sat placidly while eloquent abuse rained down on him. He was a Yorkshireman, thought Henrietta, with a Yorkshireman’s stubborn streak, and recognising the type gave her the confidence to speak.

  ‘You think, do you, that men are more deserving of the vote than women?’ she said, and all faces turned to her.

  ‘Not exactly, no,’ he said. ‘But pragmatically speaking, if t’vote is granted to all working-class men, all t’changes you’re seeking will follow on.’

  ‘Then women must wait patiently with the lunatics and criminals until such a time as you men deign to pay proper attention to our plight?’

  ‘That’s about t’long and t’short of it, though I wouldn’t phrase it that way in a pamphlet.’

  ‘Ignore Enoch, Miss Hoyland,’ said Eva Gore-Booth. ‘He’s a Fabian, and their record of support for the cause is patchy, to say the least.’

  ‘I don’t see you lot campaigning for t’vote for all womankind,’ Enoch said. Like Mr Hardie, he had a pipe, and he puffed contentedly at it, entirely unperturbed by his minority position in the room. ‘Just middle-class women, like yourselves. Women of property. The iniquity of that strikes me as very troubling indeed.’

  Henrietta shifted in her chair. She thought of Fulton House and Netherwood Hall and wondered what this collection of activists would think of her if they knew from where she had sprung. For the rest of the evening she held her tongue, feeling humble in the face of their erudition and commitment. However, she told herself as coats were fetched at the meeting’s end, she had made a start. True, she had the comforts of a vast fortune, the delights of three elegant homes – one of them palatial – and a combined staff of more than 250 servants to ease her passage through life, but she had made a start.

  ‘Lady ’enrietta ’oyland, I believe.’

  She jumped at the voice, which was deliberately low and discreet. The owlish man was just behind her, and he had her coat in his hands. He held it out for her and smiled.

  ‘Enoch Wadsworth, district organiser of t’Yorkshire Miners’ Association. I recognised you when you walked in. Fancy you fetching up ’ere.’

  ‘Have we met?’ She tried not to sound supercilious, though she was aware that her high-born vowels made this a possibility.

  ‘Not likely. But your family’s quite well known in our parts.’ He said this with an ironic smile and she felt foolish.

  ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘I suppose I should have corrected Eva when she introduced me, but she just assumed …’

  ‘Aye, well, she would. But there’s no shame in a title, y’know. You inherited it, just as some folk inherit poverty.’

  ‘Indeed,’ Henrietta said. ‘And I’ve never considered it a difficulty until very recently.’

  ‘Well, for what it’s worth, and knowing what I know of your suffrage pals, they won’t ’old it against you.’

  She really didn’t know what to make of him. Here was a man who, were she in Netherwood, she would expect to doff his cap as she passed – not, she told herself sternly, that he should have to. Yet he was so casually self-assured, so entirely unfazed by her rank and title; sympathetic, even, as if he was sorry for the burden she carried.

  ‘Thing is,’ he said, ‘it’s what you do that counts, not who you are.’

  She nodded. She remembered how, in the week before he died, when she still imagined her father would be always there, Teddy had quoted an English philosopher at her – an attempt to express his own new modus vivendi. She couldn’t remember the philosopher, but she could remember the words.

  ‘I have always thought,’ she said, ‘the actions of men the best interpreters of their thoughts.’

  ‘John Locke,’ Enoch said at once. ‘A fine mind.’ They smiled at each other and then he said, ‘I shall be seeing you, then, Miss ’oyland.’

  ‘You shall, Mr Wadsworth. And thank you for your discretion.’

  ‘Any time. If I were you, though, I’d nip out quick before they all spot that liveried coachman waiting for you on t’doorstep.’

  Now, eating kedgeree and drinking tea poured from a china pot, not a saucepan, Henrietta felt buoyed by possibilities and purpose. A new world had presented itself last night: a world where she might become someone else and, by so doing, be more herself. Thea, next to her at the table, placed a bold, proprietorial hand on her shoulder, caressed her neck, trailed her fingers down her back. These were the actions of a lover, but here in the dining room, under the unsuspecting eyes of the family, their significance was lost.

  ‘Will you come to my room?’ Thea said. ‘I need your undiluted company.’

  ‘Oh, pardon us for spoiling things,’ Toby said.

  ‘Pardon granted,’ said Thea. She stood and held out a hand. ‘Henrietta?’

  ‘Not now,’ said Henrietta. She smiled, though Thea looked stunned, as if she’d been slapped. ‘I’ll join you presently,’ Henrietta said, gently.

  ‘Very well,’ Thea said. ‘Though I may be gone.’

  ‘Oh?’ said Toby. ‘Anywhere interesting?’

  She glared at him. ‘Would you like an itinerary of my movements?’ she said.

  ‘Dorothea,’ said Clarissa, looking up from her grapes. ‘Before you leave, there’s something I have to say, and it may as well be now.’

  Everyone turned to her. Thea sighed, as if inconvenienced beyond belief.

  ‘I am to be married. I shall wait until next year for the sake of form, but then I’m to be married.’

  The silence was almost comical, and indeed a bubble of nervous laughter floated up from somewhere inside Bryony; she clutched her hand to her mouth, appalled. Beside her, Isabella took immediate refuge in tears, though they had no impact on anyone, least of all her mother, who popped the last morsel of grape into her mouth and smiled benignly at the table in general.

  ‘Mama!’ said Henrietta. ‘Who to?’

  ‘Archie Partington.’ Clarissa wiped her fingers fastidiously on her napkin and set it carefully down beside her plate. ‘He has been kind enough to propose and I have been’ – she paused, searching for the right word – ‘generous enough to accept.’

  Again, silence. The older siblings looked at each other for enlightenment, but found none.

  ‘You don’t mean the Duke of Plymouth?’ said Henrietta at last.

  ‘I do, as a matter of fact. And furthermore, I find your tone impertinent.’

  ‘Sorry, Mama. But you must permit me to at least show surprise. He’s rather …’

  She tailed off, daunted by the challenge in her mother’s eyes.

  ‘Ancient,’ said Dickie. ‘Archie Partington is ancient.’

  ‘He’s sixty-two, in fact,’ said Clarissa. ‘But, yes, rather older than I am.’

  ‘I say, Ma,’ said Toby, ‘you’ll be a duchess.’

  She smiled at him. ‘Darling boy,’ she said. ‘I knew you’d understand.’

  Chapter 54

  Anna, walking along King Street on her way home from Netherwood Hall, saw Hugh Oliver before he saw her. He was strolling in his characteristic, unhurried fashion, but he was looking down rather than ahead, so that when she said, ‘Good evening, Hugh,’ he jumped and she laughed.

  ‘You have paint in your hair,’ was the first thing he said to her and then: ‘Forgive me, good evening,
Anna,’ which made her laugh again. It was months since he’d last been in Netherwood and she’d forgotten how much she liked him. He offered his arm and she reminded him that until they’d met, he had been walking in the opposite direction to her.

  ‘But aimlessly,’ he said. ‘For want of anywhere to go.’

  ‘Then you must come back with me to Ravenscliffe,’ she said and he nodded his approval at the suggestion.

  ‘I should be at Dreaton Bridge,’ he said as they began to walk. ‘I should be staying this evening at the Bridge Tavern.’

  ‘And yet here you are.’

  ‘Indeed. Have you ever been to Dreaton Bridge?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Never have I seen a bleaker place,’ he said.

  ‘It can’t be worse than Grangely,’ she said. ‘Grangely is worst place I’ve ever seen. I lived there, you know, with Leo, when Maya was born. Grangely killed my husband, though everyone said it was tuberculosis. I was lucky to leave when I did, or Maya might have been next to die.’

  She looked so pale and grave and his heart went out to her. He had thought about Anna a good deal since leaving Netherwood for Bristol. Her spirit and her confidence had remained with him, and from time to time he had heard her voice in his head, her very particular way of speaking. Occasionally and – he told himself – irrationally, he had imagined a life in Bristol with her by his side. Nothing that had occurred between them in his last visit had given him encouragement, but he needed no more, it seemed, than what he’d had: lively conversation, shared laughter, and the surprisingly stirring sight of Anna in the wind, bringing in sheets from the washing line. This chance meeting now was serendipitous, perhaps: Lady Luck had diverted him from Dreaton Bridge and directed him instead to King Street in Netherwood. Thus ran the dialogue in his head as they walked out of town towards the common, talking back and forth in friendly fashion. Only when she asked why he had come did the mood – inexplicably, to him – alter, and not for the better. He was back from Bristol, he told her, because Silas had returned to Jamaica and there were concerns about the smooth running of Dreaton Main. His function, he said lightly, was simply to cast the shadow of management over the pit yard to be sure everything was as it should be. Beside him, Anna stiffened and withdrew her arm, and he stopped in surprise.