Ravenscliffe

by Jane Sanderson

  ‘What is it?’ he said.

  ‘You do his dirty work, then,’ Anna said.

  ‘I don’t see it that way. I’m second-in-command, after all.’

  ‘You know he sacked that young boy?’

  ‘For breaking colliery rules, yes.’

  Anna laughed bitterly. Hugh, anxious to swing the conversation back to its pleasant beginnings, said: ‘Look, it’s just business. Tell me what you’ve been up to, to end up with blue paint in your hair.’

  She ignored him. ‘Silas sacked Edward Wakefield to hurt Amos Sykes,’ she said.

  ‘Well, yes, it was partly to teach a lesson to all concerned.’ Hugh, desperately underinformed where Anna’s love life was concerned, sensed no danger.

  ‘Amos was attacked, did you know that? Attacked by Edward’s father. This, too, was because of Silas.’

  ‘Well, yes, indirectly. But if Sykes had stayed away, it wouldn’t have happened.’ Hugh’s voice was level, reasonable; what he said couldn’t be denied, and even Anna – after the event, when she first saw his damaged face – had wondered at the sense of Amos walking into the lion’s den of Dreaton Main, courting controversy and confrontation with Eve’s brother. But still she bridled at Hugh’s calm assessment; he had no notion of the complexity of the situation, no understanding of the welter of emotion. Amos may have been rash and ill-advised, but he was a passionate, principled man, driven by a desire to fight injustice. She was proud of him and would defend him, always. With her silence now, she hoped to convey this. Hugh, silent too, watched her warily.

  They were at the gate to Ravenscliffe now, and Anna wondered if she could withdraw her invitation to come inside. Then the front door was flung open and Eve was there, all smiles of surprise and warm greetings for Hugh, offering him dinner and a bed for the night, and there was nothing to be done but to follow Eve into the kitchen where the children, seeing who accompanied her, fell into a tumult of excitement at the unexpected arrival of the charming, affable, handsome Hugh Oliver. There was roast chicken just out of the range, and a salad so fresh from the allotment that Ellen triumphantly plucked a caterpillar from the underside of a lettuce leaf and Maya began to clamour because she didn’t have one too. It was a merry scene, and Anna’s anger subsided under the relentless balm of Hugh’s warm, good-natured conversation. He had the children rapt with a story of a cargo of animals sent in crates from Africa; they were unloaded at the Avonmouth docks and a crowd gathered to see the spectacle. In the first crate, he said, was a zebra.

  ‘But when they opened it the poor beast was almost dead,’ he said. ‘It couldn’t support itself and when the sides of the crate fell away, it simply slumped to the ground.’

  Eliza, eyes instantly full of tears, stared at him.

  ‘What was wrong with it,’ she said. ‘Was it seasick?’

  Seth tutted and said, ‘Dehydrated, I expect,’ and Hugh nodded at him. ‘Correct,’ he said. ‘The zebra was thirsty. A young man from the zoo knelt by its side and dripped water into its poor, dry mouth.’

  ‘Poor zebra,’ said Ellen.

  ‘Poor zebra,’ said Maya at once.

  ‘And did it do t’trick?’

  This was Eve, as engaged as the girls by the zebra’s fate. Hugh nodded.

  ‘Eventually, though it lay there for a long while first. There was a camel too, and a pair of lions, male and female. All on the dockside, not in cages, not even tethered.’

  Seth said: ‘Too weak to attack anyone, were they?’

  ‘Indeed. Nearly dead, all of them. The shipping company loaded them up in the hold in Africa, then practically forgot they were there.’

  ‘Are they in trouble now?’ Eliza said.

  ‘No, since all the beasts pulled through. Poor show, though.’

  ‘I want to see t’docks at Bristol,’ Seth said. It sounded to him like a place where reality met fantasy.

  ‘Did you know Anna’s getting married?’ Eliza said, in the way she had of taking a conversation and making it her own. Hugh put down his knife and fork and the smile left his face, only for a second, but long enough for Eve and Anna to register the meaning.

  ‘Are you?’ he said, steadily. ‘To whom?’

  ‘Amos,’ Anna said.

  ‘I’m to be bridesmaid again, aren’t I, Anna?’

  ‘You are, Eliza, yes.’

  ‘Anna,’ Hugh said, after a moment’s pause. ‘I wonder if you’d mind coming outside with me for a moment? I need your advice on a personal matter.’

  Eve and Anna glanced at each other across the table.

  ‘Of course,’ said Anna, for, with the children all about them, there really wasn’t much else she could say.

  He held open the door for her and they stepped out into the garden. He walked towards the gate, as if he meant to go out onto the common, but she stayed put on the doorstep, arms folded, so he came back towards her. The June evening was warm and light and the scent of roses – Amos’s roses, planted last summer – was all around.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘If I’d known, I wouldn’t have spoken about Mr Sykes as I did. The last time I was here, I don’t think there was even a suggestion of romance between you and him.’

  She raised her eyebrows; what did he know of the secrets of her heart? She remained silent though, letting him speak.

  ‘Is the date set?’

  She shook her head, no.

  ‘Then I shall take that as my one, slender hope that I haven’t yet lost you.’

  She was shocked now into speaking. ‘You cannot lose something you didn’t have,’ she said.

  ‘In my mind, and from a distance, you were becoming mine,’ he said. ‘You sprang to mind so often, so clearly, that I began to think of you as part of my life in Bristol – at least, to imagine that you could be part of my life there. Anna …’

  He faltered, searching for the words. He had been thrown into crisis by her news; vague and pleasant thoughts of a growing mutual attachment had turned in a moment to an urgent need to press his case. She held up a hand as if to stop his words, but instead he seized it with both of his and went on: ‘Anna, I do believe with all my heart that I have never and will never meet anyone so perfect for me as you are. I do understand that this alarms and startles you, because we were friends, not lovers, last time we met. But I know I could make you and Maya happy, and you would make me the happiest man alive if you would allow me to.’

  His eyes beseeched her to give him encouragement and it struck her how very odd this was, to be suddenly and unexpectedly wooed by a handsome man of business, in his suit and handmade shirt and soft leather shoes that were made for city streets. He still had her hand clasped in his. He smelled of sandalwood soap and his fingernails were as perfectly white-tipped and oval as her own. When Amos held her hand, she could feel the lines in his skin and his nails, even now, a year after leaving New Mill, were never clean. She opened her mouth to speak.

  ‘Anna?’

  The familiar voice was full of trepidation. Amos stood at the fence that separated Ravenscliffe’s garden from the common and his face was stricken: truly stricken, as if he gazed upon the scene of a terrible disaster. He began to shake. At once, Anna dragged her hand from Hugh’s grasp.

  ‘Amos,’ she said. ‘It’s all right.’

  He cut an alarming picture. The swelling around his right eye had diminished but an ugly purple and yellow bruise had bloomed across his cheekbone; the affected eye was bloodshot and still not fully open. Hugh, sleek and exotically beautiful, turned to look at his rival and then back again at Anna.

  ‘Him?’ he said. ‘Are you quite sure you want him?’

  Amos seemed unable to speak. He might have raged: thrown himself in furious self-defence at the challenger. Instead he stood like a dumb animal and watched what he thought was his future unravelling. But he kept his eyes on Anna and saw that she ignored Hugh’s question and walked past him to the gate, which she opened and passed through. Transfixed, Amos’s gaze never left her and now she stoo
d before him.

  ‘It’s all right,’ she said again. ‘Really it is.’ She stroked his head softly then let her hands rest at the back of his neck and kissed him carefully, again and again, on all the unbruised parts of his face, so as to cause him no more pain. Tears fell down his cheeks and he felt not shame, but profound relief, as if he had just stood at the brink of hell, felt the heat, seen the horror, then been granted a reprieve.

  When she stopped kissing him and looked back at the garden, Hugh had gone inside. The door to the house was closed.

  Amos didn’t come in. Within the walls of Ravenscliffe lay a grave threat to his peace of mind and he didn’t much fancy maintaining a front of studied neutrality for the sake of Eve and the children. So they walked up the common from the house and sat for an hour or so on the long, gnarled trunk of a fallen oak. He looked shocking; Morten Wakefield had a damaging fist for an affable man, and had split the skin, as well as bruised it. Amos had gone home to Sheffield Road after the event, in the belief that the worst might be over by the time Anna had to see it, but in this he was much mistaken. Mrs Birtle hadn’t helped, applying iodine to the cut, which had stained his cheekbone a lurid shade of orange, and the following day when the bruising presented itself fully, the variety of blues and yellows was marvellous to behold, from an objective point of view. Anna was used to it now, a few days on, but she could see what an unlikely beau he must have appeared to Hugh. She smiled.

  ‘What?’ Amos said.

  ‘Nothing. I was just thinking how handsome you look.’

  He cut a rueful glance at her, not yet quite ready to laugh. She took his hand and laced her fingers through his.

  ‘We should be married, Amos.’

  ‘That’s t’plan,’ he said.

  ‘Soon, I mean. Let’s not wait till after election. Let me fight it with you, as your wife.’

  He smiled at her, and winced.

  ‘When, then?’ he said.

  She leaned in towards him and kissed his good cheek. ‘When it doesn’t hurt to smile,’ she said. ‘When both sides of your face match.’

  ‘And where shall we live as Mr and Mrs Sykes?’

  This was a large question, the answer to which he hardly wanted to hear. Ravenscliffe had a powerful, talismanic significance to Anna and to Eve, he knew that. But she didn’t hesitate, not for an instant. ‘Anywhere. Ardington’s nice.’

  He looked at her gravely. ‘Will you be sorry to leave Ravenscliffe?’

  She shrugged: a gesture so familiar to him and so dear. ‘I made it for Eve,’ she said. ‘My home is where you are.’

  Chapter 55

  The noble ears of Archie, Duke of Plymouth, must have been burning for quite a few weeks after Clarissa made her announcement: again and again he was discussed, and not always – in fact, rarely – in a flattering light. Isabella – who, although she was assured she had met him, couldn’t call him to mind at all – formed a mental image entirely from the conversations she overheard among her siblings. That he was vastly rich was a given, and not particularly reassuring or interesting. That he was as old as the hills was a worry, since at only thirteen she supposed she had many years ahead of being obliged to call him Papa. That he had a pronounced limp and needed a stick was alarming, since Isabella detested physical imperfection and felt not pity but loathing for the afflicted. That he had a house in the South of France was, at least, quite glamorous, but that he used it in the long English winters to ease his arthritis was humiliating, and detracted entirely from any potential cachet of being able to casually claim familiarity with the French Riviera.

  ‘I know she doesn’t love him,’ Isabella said to Bryony.

  ‘Well, obviously not,’ Bryony said. ‘They’re both far too old for that.’

  They were side by side on the train, travelling back to Netherwood from London. They had been allowed a carriage to themselves – bliss – with their own hamper full of crab-paste sandwiches and lemon cake – double bliss – and the privacy to discuss quite openly the intriguing matter of Clarissa’s engagement to Archie Limp, a name chosen by Bryony and embraced wholeheartedly by Isabella. Bryony’s stay with the family had been wordlessly extended beyond the end of the Season; divorce proceedings had now begun, vile accusations cast by each party. Bryony, as yet, was ignorant of this detail, but her paternity was being called into question in the most insulting terms, and it was true that the black-haired girl looked very unlike her fair-haired father. Clarissa feared for her; the Chester-Moreley name might not be much, but it was all the child had. Meanwhile, Bryony was happy as a lark that her tenure in Isabella’s comfortable nest had been extended, and for her part Isabella found Bryony an entertaining and instructive companion, if – occasionally – a little too sure of herself.

  ‘I don’t think Mama’s too old to be in love,’ Isabella said now. She paused, and considered for a moment, then added, ‘And she’s very pretty.’

  ‘Prettiness is neither here nor there and love doesn’t figure in these matters anyway. It’s all about status.’

  Isabella was stumped by her friend’s easy command of the adult world. Bryony was fourteen – only six months older than herself – and yet she was terrifically in the know. She was a dark horse, too. In company, thought Isabella, Bryony could seem as quiet as a clam. But what she was doing when her hands were clasped in her lap and her eyes were dipped to the floor was listening; she listened closely to everyone, stored up their words, then used them to express her own opinions in a most impressive way.

  ‘You see,’ Bryony continued, ‘as wife of Archie Limp, she’ll be a duchess, not dowager countess. And since Thea is only a countess, your mother will take precedence.’

  ‘But Mama, married to Archie Limp.’ Isabella grimaced. ‘Imagine, Bryony. Do you suppose they’ll …?’

  Bryony shook her head firmly. ‘They won’t bother with that side of things,’ she said. ‘At least, not with each other. In any case, once men are over the age of fifty, they lose the urge and turn to other pastimes. That’s why the shooting season’s so long.’

  Isabella fell silent. For a while she distracted herself from the subject by trying to deduce, from the view through the window, exactly which part of the country they were in. This proved too dull, and impossible, so she closed her eyes and pretended to doze. Bryony’s worldliness could be unsettling at times; Isabella’s very real and understandable concerns about the future were nothing to a girl who had spent half her life being buffeted like a falling leaf in the emotional maelstrom of her parents’ disastrous marriage. Isabella was glad to have Bryony for company, but sometimes – now, for instance – her pearls of wisdom made Isabella feel sad. She rested her head against the window of the carriage and thought that perhaps if she pretended hard enough, sleep might actually come to her and she could forget that her mother was taking her to live in a place called Denbigh Court with an old man whose stick, when he made his way across a wooden floor, sounded like a third leg.

  There were motorcars to meet them at Hoyland Halt, and a carriage for the dowager countess. Atkins took Toby, Thea and Dickie; a junior chauffeur, Phillips, took Isabella and Bryony; and Henrietta, out of kindness, rode with her mother in the landau, which looked increasingly like a museum piece amid the fleet of motors garaged in the stable yard at Netherwood Hall. Toby’s love of the motorcar exceeded even that of his late father: since the earl had died last October, three further Daimlers had been added to the collection and a plan had been hatched to hold speed trials in the grounds. Toby was hoping to make a circuit incorporating the oak and elm avenues and Thea was to have driving lessons with Atkins so that she could take part. September, they thought: shooting and racing. She had returned from London in high spirits. Clarissa’s shock announcement had done Thea a power of good – she couldn’t have hoped for better news – and she bounced up the wide stone steps of the house on her husband’s arm, smiling warmly at the household, which was gathered in tidy formation to welcome the family home, with Parkinson and Mrs
Powell-Hughes at the helm. Parkinson bowed respectfully at the earl and countess, but it was the dowager countess for whom he reserved a special, dignified twinkle. She returned it, stopping by him as she mounted the steps with Henrietta.

  ‘May I say, it’s extremely good to see you again, your ladyship,’ he said.

  ‘Dear Parkinson. So much more handsome than Munster,’ she said, and they laughed. ‘Is all well here at Netherwood?’

  ‘Everything is as it should be, your ladyship. Tea will be served in the drawing room in half an hour.’

  She smiled again and moved on. To Henrietta she said: ‘They do all seem very dear, now that I shall be leaving.’ And Henrietta said, ‘They are all very dear, Mama, whether you’re leaving or not. I think they’ll miss you tremendously.’

  ‘And shall you?’

  ‘Need you ask?’

  ‘Evidently, yes.’

  ‘Nothing will be the same without you, Mama.’

  ‘What a clever answer, Henry,’ said Clarissa. ‘If you ever tire of the mining industry, perhaps you could consider the diplomatic service.’

  This made Henrietta laugh out loud.

  ‘Actually, I was thinking of a career in politics,’ she said.

  ‘Super,’ said Clarissa. ‘One way or another I’m quite sure you’ll be notorious.’ She moved away and Henrietta watched her go. She didn’t think she would miss her mother at all, was the truth of it, although she liked her better now that she seemed to have washed her hands of her. Clarissa had announced on the train that she planned to spend September at Denbigh Court, in order to establish what must be altered there before she moved for good. It was as if none of them mattered very much any more: or, rather, she had done with them what she could, and now she could do no more. Except for Isabella, of course. Isabella was still Clarissa’s great hope. Henrietta had denied her the vicarious pleasure of a triumphant season, a brilliant marriage, an exalted son-in-law. Isabella, Clarissa was sure, would prove more obliging.