Eden Falls (42 page)

‘If I described to you a handsome young man with an exotic complexion…’

‘I’d tell you it was Mr Oliver of Whittams,’ Sarah said obligingly. ‘Why?’

‘He’s in Netherwood,’ said Mrs Powell-Hughes.

‘I could ’ave told you that, an’ all,’ said Sarah. ‘They’ve a colliery at Dreaton Bridge, where my brother lives. They come up from time to time, Mr Oliver or Mr Whittam. Keep an eye on things, like.’

Mrs Powell-Hughes lowered herself on to the step because it looked so pleasant in the sunshine, and Sarah knew so many interesting things.

‘He seemed very pleased to see Mrs Sykes,’ she said meaningfully.

Sarah raised a worldly eyebrow. ‘’e’s gorgeous,’ she said.

‘Sarah!’

‘Just saying.’

‘Does he know Mrs Sykes well, do you suppose?’

Sarah shrugged. ‘Silas Whittam, Eve MacLeod, Anna Sykes, Hugh Oliver – there’s your connections. I expect they know each other well enough, yes. This step’s a right suntrap, int it?’

‘It is. I can see why the cats like it.’

They sat on, wilfully and uncharacteristically idle, in plain view of the estate offices across the courtyard where the bailiff, a diligent oddball named Absalom Blandford, twitched and fumed at their audacious time-wasting, and jotted down their conduct in his special ledger, under the day’s date and with the precise time recorded alongside.

L
ike a pair of bookends, Enoch and Amos sat side by side in the sunshine, watching boaters on the Serpentine from underneath the brims of their hats. They both wore pewter-grey Homburgs – neither would be seen dead in anything made of straw – so each perspired gently around the hatband and felt the occasional bead of sweat breaking for freedom towards the collar. They didn’t have a lot to say. They were both brooding, pondering the consequences of recent events: in Enoch’s case, entirely political, in Amos’s, wholly personal. Their expressions repelled those passers-by who might have thought of sitting too. They looked stern, in their contemplative state: as if they might judge a fellow and find him lacking.

For his part, Amos was considering the irony of being back in London now that Anna was in Ardington. He’d been called down on party business and he felt a small stab of shame – not for the first time – at the drama he’d made of trying to fetch her home, and then the drama, again, when she’d gone to Asquith – Asquith, of all people! – on an errand for the earl. He had raged, as if her sole intention had been to betray his principles: as if he was the centre of the universe and all actions were significant only so far as they related to him. Anna had heard him out in white-faced, dignified silence, then had withdrawn to pack a suitcase. They had travelled north together, in a train carriage so full of their mutual discontent that there was barely room for themselves. Later, in the sanctuary of his old office at the miners’ union building in Barnsley, he’d had a talking-to from Enoch. It was high time that Amos conquered the black dog of his temper, his friend had said: Send it packing otherwise you’ll drive her away. His words had sounded overblown and theatrical at the time, but now, in the clear light of a summer’s afternoon and with a hundred and seventy miles between him and Anna, it seemed like sound advice.

On the water, young men and women larked about in wooden boats and their laughter bounced across the lake like skimmed stones. To Amos there seemed no point to their activity; what was the purpose of a boat on a body of water that went nowhere? He thought this first, then he asked it out loud.

‘Merriment,’ Enoch said.

‘I’d want a river, me.’

Enoch didn’t reply.

‘On a river,’ Amos said, ‘you get somewhere. T’landscape changes, t’river widens, there are mills, bridges, villages, towns, all that sort o’ thing. This,’ he said, gesturing towards the hilarity on the lake, ‘is just going round in circles.’

‘Very apt,’ Enoch said.

‘What is?’

‘That. Going round in circles.’

‘Well, they are.’

‘And so are we, except we’re ’avin’ a lot less fun than that lot.’

Amos fell silent. He was supposed to be the pessimist, Enoch the optimist; he hated it when Enoch lost his pep. How could he, Amos, fight the good fight without Enoch’s wilful, stubborn buoyancy?

‘It’s an ’iatus, that’s all,’ Amos said. ‘A short interruption to our upward progress.’ He tried to put a spring in his words, a jokey lilt, but it sounded stilted and unconvincing; certainly, it was uncharacteristic.

Enoch snorted. ‘More like a bloody big brick wall.’

‘Claptrap,’ said Amos, reverting to type. ‘There’s no brick wall, and don’t you be building one.’

‘I’m not,’ Enoch said flatly. ‘It’s not of my making.’

‘They will deliver less than they promise,’ Amos said. He was quoting directly from one of Enoch’s Fabian Society pamphlets. ‘The Liberals, ultimately, will fail the working classes, because at heart it is the party of compromise
–
Enoch Wadsworth,
The Impoverished Liberal Legacy,
11
^th
April 1909.’

If Amos expected a smile he was disappointed. ‘All well and good,’ Enoch said, ‘but if this budget of Lloyd George’s delivers even ’alf of what it promises, we’ll be pushed so far to t’margins of politics that we might as well join t’ighland Land League and start campaigning for crofters’ rights.’

‘Good cause that,’ Amos said. ‘Except we don’t want an independent Scotland. We need Scotland.’

Enoch tilted up the brim of his hat and let the sun fall on his face, which was pallid and softly lined: the face of a scholar, Amos always thought. It was hard to imagine that Enoch had ever worked underground, except that he had a way of heaving his shoulders when he breathed, and when he coughed he sounded as if he was trying to bring up half a lifetime of coal dust. Amos could tell, now, that his friend was cogitating; his political uncertainties never lasted very long.

‘The problem, as I see it, is one of faith and respect,’ Enoch said.

This was better. Amos waited as Enoch formed his thoughts.

‘Faith in our own future as a viable political party, and respect for ourselves as a radical force entirely independent of t’Liberals.’

There was a pause, a thinking silence.

‘We’ve fallen into a trap set years ago by Gladstone,’ Enoch said. ‘We’ve been patronised by t’Liberals, we’ve been grateful for t’crumbs they’ve thrown, stepping back for us ’ere and there so we can fight seats they don’t need. We’ve been used, in effect, as a gauge of working-class opinion, nowt more.’

Enoch turned and looked at Amos. ‘They don’t feel threatened by us. They don’t feel us nipping at their ’eels.’

‘Their folly, then,’ Amos said, taking his cue. ‘And our triumph will be all t’sweeter when it comes, for being completely unexpected.’

‘Soldier on,’ Enoch said. ‘We mun soldier on and stay true to our founding principles. From now on, we fight every by-election, irrespective o’ MacDonald and ’is Liberal appeasement. We educate t’unions so they follow t’miners and affiliate wi’ Labour. We push for a sea change in our way o’ thinking, so that every Labour MP sees ’imself in government, not forever agitating for change from t’fringes.’

‘Hallelujah,’ Amos said. ‘And amen.’

‘One day, we’ll run this country…’

‘…fair and square…’

‘…without Ramsay MacDonald and ’is Lib-Lab deals.’

They turned to each other and grinned, because they’d enjoyed this conversational journey before, and it always led them towards a better frame of mind. Then they shook hands, as if sealing a deal, and individually, privately, tamped down the fear that it was all pie in the sky.

There were a few catcalls from the landings when Henrietta left Holloway, but otherwise she was ignored. What a difference to her arrival, she thought. Back then there had been a series of degrading encounters, in which first her possessions, then her clothes and finally every last scrap of dignity had been taken from her. She had been dressed in a prison-issue frock, harangued with a long list of rules and lectured on what she may and may not expect in terms of contact with family and friends. When the time came to leave, however, she was simply shown the door. Her own clothes, the ones she had arrived in, had been brought to her, wrapped in brown paper, the night before. Her silk camisole, drawers and waist-petticoat had all been laundered, but her skirt and blouse had been neither washed nor hung, so they were marked here and there with smuts and were horribly crumpled. The WSPU sash, on the other hand, was pristine, carefully folded and placed almost respectfully on top of the pile of garments like a gift. The sight of it had given Henrietta a jolt, in the same way that an old photograph can startle a person: showing them, perhaps, who they once were.

On the morning of her departure Henrietta dressed herself – this took time; the buttons and laces resisted her fingers – and then sat on the edge of her bed with the sash on her lap. She held it at one end and let it unfold in a noiseless stream to the floor. Purple, green and white: dignity, hope and purity. Mary Dixon was a skilled seamstress; Henrietta traced a thumbnail along the tiny, near-invisible dots of silk thread and wondered at the patience required for such a task, and the perfectionism. She wondered, too, at the pride and passion for the cause that seemed to her to be miraculously embodied here, in this lovingly worked length of cloth. A small part of her wished to keep it as a memento, but when a warder rapped on her door and she stood to leave she carefully hung the sash over the end of the metal bedstead. It looked festive in the plain, grey cell.

Unaccompanied, she crossed the cobbled yard and passed through the great fortified entrance to the world outside the prison. When the door swung shut behind her she felt the vibration in her bones. Tobias was there in a voluminous linen car coat that flapped open on either side like two vast wings as he strode towards her. He enveloped her, pulling his coat around them both. She breathed in his cologne, a sharp, delicious mix of lemon, lime and lavender, and surrendered herself to the utter relief of freedom, the certain promise of comfort and the safe, firm embrace of her brother. All their lives she had regarded herself as stronger than him. Now she could see that she had been wrong; or rather, if he was weak, she was weaker still.

Tobias had brought a two-seater Daimler, pillar-box red with a hood lined in tartan. This was folded back, and Henrietta’s motoring hat and cape were on the passenger seat. He placed the hat on her head and tied the chiffon scarf into a soft, floppy bow under her chin, then took the cape and arranged it on her shoulders, fastening the row of mother-of-pearl buttons as if she were a child and indeed, like a child she submitted to his attentions. He held her face, and with his thumbs he stroked the blue-grey shadows under her eyes and looked at her with such loving sorrow that tears of self-pity welled in her eyes.

‘Come on then,’ he said. ‘Let’s get you home.’

He held open the door of the car and she climbed in. She was glad to be sitting down. Her head spun with the effort of so much movement after so many days of torpor. She leaned back in the seat and closed her eyes to ease the giddiness. Tobias glanced at her with concern.

‘You look all in,’ he said.

She nodded. It hurt to speak.

‘I haven’t told Ma that you’re out today,’ he said. ‘I thought the very last thing you’d want is any kind of reception committee, or fuss of that kind.’ He was driving now, but he kept darting anxious looks at her to gauge her reaction. She smiled wanly to show her approval.

‘I’ll tell her you’re coming out tomorrow. She’s delighted, you know’ – again, a sideways glance – ‘that you’re being released, that is. I know she hasn’t been to see you, but that’s not to say she doesn’t think about you.’

Henrietta held up a hand. ‘Tobes,’ she said in a strange, rasping whisper. She coughed, and held a hand against her throat. It felt damaged, but the pain was deep inside and if there was scarring, it was hidden. ‘It’s quite all right,’ she said, trying again. ‘Don’t make excuses for Mama.’

He laughed ruefully. ‘Righto,’ he said. ‘Fair do’s.’

The little coupé was performing well, and even in the present rather strained circumstances he could take pleasure from that. Tobias generally drove as if each new journey were a rather speedy game of chess. There was nothing more disappointing to him than an entirely empty road, free of other traffic. What he enjoyed was the check, cross-check and checkmate of motoring strategy: the triumph of getting ahead in the nick of time and against the other fellow’s will. Now he nipped through a narrow channel, between a Buick and an old-fashioned brougham, and was rewarded with shouts of protest from either side as he sped on

‘Tight squeeze,’ he said without the slightest concern.

‘The horses,’ whispered Henrietta, ‘didn’t like that.’

He couldn’t hear and whizzed on, jinking through the traffic as they negotiated the teeming urban swathes of Holloway. Henrietta reached over and tugged at his sleeve, and when he turned she half spoke, half whispered, ‘Please can we go via Bedford Square?’

He pulled a face. ‘Must we?’

She nodded, and he opened his mouth to argue then closed it again, as it seemed, after all, a small thing to ask. She didn’t speak again until they got there, and then she only said, ‘Wait here, Tobes,’ when he started to get out. He watched her make her way to the front door of the Sykes house and felt like a bounder because she looked so vulnerable, and so unsteady on her pins. She had doubtless hoped to find Anna, but it was Amos Sykes who opened the door and Tobias’s heart sank for his sister: she’d get nowhere fast with him. He adjusted his position in the car seat so that he had a clearer view of Sykes’s expression which, for a tub-thumping left-wing zealot, was relatively benign. Henrietta was obviously doing most of the talking; Tobias could see Sykes leaning towards her, straining to hear. Tobias did the same, but he couldn’t hear a thing over the engine and from this distance. Sykes nodded, answered, grimaced – unless that was a smile – and then closed the door as Henrietta turned and made her way back to the motor.

‘All well?’ said Tobias. ‘Message delivered?’