Flint and Roses (30 page)

My sister Prudence went to the Infirmary that day, against everybody's orders, to tend the wounded, helping Giles Ashburn to patch them up before they were taken to York to be imprisoned, or hanged, and by April, with the Chartist agitation at its height, the Royal Family—fearing, as so often before, a revolution of the bloodier, Continental variety—had been removed from London for safe-keeping, the Whitehall area garrisoned and provisioned to withstand a state of seige, and two hundred thousand special constables sworn in to obey the Duke of Wellington's command.

‘My word, how very stirring,' my mother said, glad of anything to relieve her boredom.

‘They're hungry,' Mayor Agbrigg told us once again.

‘They're greedy,' Aunt Hannah replied.

‘They're inefficient,' said Uncle Joel, greeting with laughter the news that the Chartist leader, Feargus O'Connor, planned to assemble half a million desperate men and march to Westminster to present—or enforce—their petition for Parliamentary Reform; to persuade, in fact, a reluctant government to grant the vote to every working man, or, if they refused, to turn them out and govern in their stead.

‘Half a million men, indeed,' my uncle repeated, his bulk firmly planted on my mother's hearthrug, the fragrance of his cigar smoke offending the very memory of my father. ‘Yes, half a million, which to the naked eye would look like ten million. Excellent—for if O'Connor could get that half million to follow him then he'd get everything he asked for, and more besides. But where are they to come from? Agreed—we have the railways now, but has Feargus O'Connor offered to pay the train-fare for all those desperate men? Does he have the money? And, supposing they've all been told the name of the meeting-place, has he remembered to tell them how to get there? And, when the day dawns, has it crossed his mind to wonder how many will manage to get out of bed on time, how many are likely to call at the ale-house on the way to the station, and stay there; or how many will have thought better of it? Half a million. He'll be lucky if he gets a thousand. And if it's a good summer, and a good harvest, and trade picks up, next year he'll get none at all.'

And so it was. There were, in fact, more than my uncle's scornfully predicted thousand—twenty-three thousand, Giles Ashburn reported sadly having received the news from my half-brother, Crispin Aycliffe, who had been one among them—but so far short of the expected numbers that, with those special constables poised for the attack, with cannon stationed at the ready on Westminster Bridge, and gamekeepers'rifles sprouting from the windows of the rich and famous, Mr. Feargus O'Connor, with true political flexibility, abandoned his march, and instead of leading an army to Westminster in triumph, drove there alone and sedately in a cab, his petition lying in forlorn bundles at his feet.

‘I could have told him so,' Uncle Joel announced.

‘Aye—so could I,' Mayor Agbrigg added, his meaning, I thought, not at all the same.

‘I'm so sorry,' I told Giles Ashburn, thinking of the men who had made that wild goose chase to London, the men who had kept faith, as I tried to do, and who would be wandering now, footsore and disheartened, in an alien city; remembering the undernourished bodies he had himself stitched together, only a few weeks ago, and sent to York.

‘It's always the way—people, quite simply, are like that,' he said, and, taking both my hands in his, he bent his head and pressed not his lips but his forehead against them, a gesture of tenderness and weariness that held me quite still, a gesture of need which frightened and fascinated me, and from which I could not turn away.

The fight was over. Chartism, without doubt, was in ashes, its preposterous demands stowed away in some Whitehall archive, best forgotten. The Queen and all her special constables came home again, the English, after all, not being a people much given to wasteful, foreign ideas like revolution, and there was nothing to mar Caroline's wedding-day that June but a slight shower of rain as she left the church, and the indisposition of my sister Celia, who, being pregnant again, was unable to attend.

It was—as had been intended—the most sumptuous wedding Cullingford had ever seen, Caroline an imperial splendour in her satin and Honiton lace, her bridesmaids, myself and Georgiana Clevedon among them, wearing lesser copies of her gown which, as I had suggested they would, made her seem even more magnificent. And aware of Miss Clevedon standing directly behind me in the bridal procession, and of Nicholas not far away, I felt the stab of panic and saw with disgust that my bouquet was shaking in my hand.

I must not think of her now, should not think of her at all, yet I could think of nothing else, could not forget the fierce protest, followed almost at once by the weakness of pure anguish which had swamped me at the sight of her own wedding invitation, which had reached me some days ago. Just a plain, square card, gilt-edged, my name meaning no more to Miss Clevedon than the several dozen others Aunt Verity had listed for her, Barforth relatives and friends who would expect to see her married; my heartbreak meaning, nothing to her since I was draining myself to my very dregs to conceal it. And as my mother handed the card to me, gingerly, pityingly, my senses, very briefly, had escaped their bondage and I had cried out, ‘I can't go, mother.'

‘Yes, you can,' Prudence had said quietly, barely raising her eyes from her own breakfast-time correspondence.

‘I think you must, dear,' my mother had murmured, looking away. And so I replied to the card in my own hand, instructed our coachman to deliver it, and on Caroline's wedding-morning I began to smile and continued to do so throughout the day, as blankly, as brilliantly, as a society hostess who knows none of her guests by name, and cares even less, but is quite determined to impress them all.

There were white roses heavily massed about the altar, baskets of white petals waiting to become a carpet for Caroline's satin-shod feet as she left the church. Lady Chard now, of Listonby Park, a Barforth no longer, although she would be a Barforth in spirit, I believed, until the end of her days. And I heard nothing of the service, remembered little but my Uncle Joel, holding his daughter's hand for a moment with an unlikely tenderness before he gave it to Matthew Chard, and then, stepping aside, taking Aunt Verity's hand, for comfort perhaps, since emotion in this hard man was as rare and difficult as it had always been in Nicholas.

‘Is this right for her?' his sudden frown seemed to be saying. ‘I've bought it and paid for it, but is it right?'

‘Darling—she wants it,' Aunt Verity may well have replied, and as Caroline walked back down the aisle no one could have doubted her ability to fulfil her new role in life.

Celia had been pretty on her wedding-day, Caroline, quite simply, was magnificent; and, as the Wintertons and Floods swallowed their mortification and came to congratulate her, I found myself, for a moment, in the confusion of the church porch, pressed close to Nicholas and understood that all my efforts had been in vain. I could not, after all, endure it—could not—it was as simple as that, and it was as well for me that, succumbing to the emotion appropriate to such a day, Mrs. Hobhouse and my mother. Miss Battershaw and Miss Mandelbaum and all the other bridesmaids except Prudence were crying too.

There was a pealing of church bells, and Caroline, her bridegroom looking very aristocratic but somewhat unnecessary beside her, was driven away in a carriage lined with white silk and drawn by high-stepping white horses, to a wedding-breakfast specifically designed to overawe both the manufacturing and landed sections of our community. There was a marquee on the lawn at Tarn Edge, silver trays of champagne served by careful, professional hands, mountains of confectionery, a cake weighing—Aunt Verity had told my mother—a full two hundred pounds, decorated with sprays of white roses bound up with white satin ribbon, surrounding a figure of Caroline herself in gleaming satin, and Matthew bravely attired in hunting pink, an assortment of Cupids cavorting at their feet.

There was Mrs. Hobhouse, telling each bridesmaid in turn, ‘You'll be the next one, love, it's always the way'; my mother in dainty, springtime yellow, holding out her hand for more wine; Prudence talking quietly to Mayor Agbrigg; Jonas Agbrigg raising his glass to me, his eyes watchful, his mouth sarcastic. There was a certain division of ranks as the landed interest installed themselves at one side of the marquee, the manufacturers at the other, the Floods and Wintertons gravitating naturally towards the Tempests, the manorial family of Bradford, the Ramsdens of Huddersfield, the sporting squires come down from the North Riding and up from Leicestershire, the willowy young dandies and languid ladies from London, while, facing them from the other side of that festive table, the mill-masters and brewmasters and ironmasters, the master cutlers from Sheffield, the worsted spinners of the West Riding and the cotton spinners from across the Pennines stood their ground firmly, knowing they could buy out a Tempest or a Flood ten times over, pretending they did not care a fig for any man's pedigree. There was Giles Ashburn, finding his own level too, with Mr. Outhwaite, the architect, who was to design Aunt Hannah's concert hall, the vicar of the parish church, the headmaster of the grammar school: a knot of professional men coming between the commercial and aristocratic giants. There was Blaize, moving freely from one group to the other, quite certain of his welcome anywhere, but Nicholas not much in evidence, keeping Georgiana to himself.

There was Caroline—Lady Chard—a plain gold ring on one hand given by her husband, a diamond cluster on the other which had come from her father, circling among her guests with a royal composure, and then dashing upstairs to change into another white gown, embellished with swansdown, which would take her on the first stage of her wedding-journey to London.

And eventually, knowing that I must somehow release the iron grip I had again imposed upon myself, or, be crushed by it, I walked off, as others were doing, a simple stroll, in their case, about the garden; in mine, a taking-flight which led me beyond the formal rose-beds, the lily-pond, the lawns falling in smooth, terraced levels down the gently sloping hillside, to the summer-house behind its screen of chestnut-trees and willows. And since a young lady who wanders so far alone in the romantic setting of a summer bridal-day may well be in search of other things than solitude, it was no matter for astonishment that Giles Ashburn chose to follow me.

He stood for a moment in the wide-arched entrance-way looking at me, seeing, perhaps, the image of me he had himself created, and I at him, seeing little—my eyes unaccustomed to the shade, and with the sun behind him—but the figure of a respectable, respectful man, medium of height and build, medium of colour, a face my memory retained only as pleasant, unremarkable, brown hair touched to auburn by the sunlight, brown eyes, I thought, with flecks of green in them, although for a moment I was not sure. A man who thought he loved me at a time when I was bruised and lonely and so desperately needed to be loved that his emotion seemed altogether miraculous, even though I knew full well that there could be no good reason for it, that I had done nothing to encourage it and, most likely, did not deserve it.

‘You looked quite luminous in the church, Faith.'

‘Did I? I don't think I know what that means.'

And, coming towards me, instead of saying, ‘Will you marry me?', although had that not been his intention I knew he would not have come here at all, he took both my hands once again and said simply, ‘I am so very much in love with you.'

It was not the first time I had heard those words. There had been a young Frenchman, and an old Frenchman, a noble Roman who, having transferred his aspirations from my mother to myself, had made me the same declaration.

‘How kind of you,' I had replied to each of them, borrowing a whisper of my mother's sophistication, protected from the folly of believing them by my dream of Nicholas. But that dream was over. This man believed what he was saying, whether eventually he would find himself mistaken or not. And the simple, basic need to be warm again, to bask in the devotion he was offering, drew me towards him, the terrible rigidity of my spirit easing as his arms came around me, an almost childlike, entirely trustful nestling of myself against him, the relaxation of a tired body sinking into a healing sleep.

‘My darling,' he said, ‘I can't tell you—I can't tell you—'; and, closing my eyes because his face, so close to mine, was still unfamiliar, I lifted my own face to be kissed, his mouth resting at first very carefully on mine and then, meeting no resistance, opening, his lips and his whole body still gentle, trembling with a need that thawed my own chilled senses not to passion but to gratitude.

Perhaps if he had made me a formal proposal, if he had listed for me his income and expectations, attempted to explain his feelings in words, I would have remembered a dozen reasons for refusing him, would have thought of my sister, and the sure fact that I—with Nicholas still engraved on my heart—could not be worth this outpouring, could neither match it nor merit it. But instinctively he had said only that he loved me and I had offered him my mouth to be kissed in reply, an unmistakable gesture of consent in our narrow world; and, as I continued to accept his kisses, to remain passively in his arms—the first man who had ever shown his need for me—I sensed beneath his quiet dignity, his quiet endurance, something fragile in him to which both my mind and my body responded.

‘I want you to be so happy,' he said. ‘That is all I want, Faith—you, and our happiness together.'

And even if I had wanted to reject him—which I did not—I had committed myself too far and could have found no way to do it.

I attended Georgiana Clevedon's wedding three weeks later, an ordeal made bearable by the simple fact that my determination never to hurt Giles Ashburn had risen above all else. I had promised to marry him and, whatever my motives had been, it was a promise I would keep. And, far more than that, I would not only give him my hand in marriage, my dowry and my most willing body, I would be the wife he wanted and deserved.