Flint and Roses (67 page)

‘Get that lad to school,' he bellowed at Georgiana. ‘And then get yourself back here and do something useful—look after your home and your husband, and see he has something fit to eat when he gets back from the mill. Yes, just you do that, my girl, since it's the mill that pays for your fancy thoroughbreds and your Arab stallion. And look pleasant about it—God dammit!'

‘I am not an employee in your weaving sheds, sir,' she told him coolly, and, the veins swelling in his forehead, his answer was immediate and damning.

‘That you're not, lass, for you'd not have lasted so long in my sheds. I get value for money from my weavers and you'd have been told long since that you didn't suit me.'

And whether or not this was an opinion which Nicholas might privately share, he could hardly allow anyone else to express it, his defence of his wife resulting in the most uncomfortable dinner-time the maids at Tarn Edge—who talked to my maids—could remember, Georgiana drinking glass for glass with her warring menfolk and retiring to bed in a state which even her greatest well-wishers could only have described as drunk.

‘It can't last much longer,' Blaize said, having by no means abandoned his Russian trip, whether ballerinas and balalaika-players were included in it or not. ‘I don't precisely think of him as an ill wind, but he'll blow himself out eventually, at least as far as Bournemouth. And by the time he realizes I've gone to Moscow I shall be on my way back. I may be late tonight, darling—I promised to call in and pay my respects to the punch bowl at the Swan.'

But he was back in the middle of the afternoon, his cabriolet coming up the drive so fast that I met him in the hall, his distress alarming me the more profoundly because I had never seen it before.

‘Faith—get your hat. It's father. He had some kind of an attack in the yard at Tarn Edge. We took him up to the house and the doctors are still with him. It must have been two or three hours ago. Faith—I think he's dying, but I don't believe it. It's not a thing I ever expected him to do. I was furious with him this morning, Faith, ten minutes before it happened. I couldn't wait to see the back of him, and now—'

Aunt Verity was believed to be already on her way to Cullingford, having arranged to join her husband and have a look at her school, but messages had been sent off in case she had delayed, train times had been checked, a carriage already waiting to fetch her from the station. But Caroline was somewhere in the home counties visiting with the South Erins, and there could be little hope of reaching her. Nicholas and Georgiana were already at Tarn Edge when we reached it. Georgiana in her dark green habit, having just come in from riding, Nicholas leaning against the mantelpiece, scowling at the fire, remembering his own explosive desire to see the back of his father, perhaps, and regretting it, knowing that it couldn't now be mended. And a great deal of the afternoon went by, straining towards a cool spring evening, a great deal of clipped, meaningless conversation, mainly between Georgiana and myself, before Dr. Overdale appeared and invited us upstairs.

Sir Joel Barforth was in the centre of his vast canopied bed, supported by pillows into a sitting position, the scraping sound of air struggling to enter his diseased lungs dominating the room, dying, there could be no doubt of it, of the same engine fumes, the same factory smoke, the same five o'clock trek to the mill yard which killed so many of his operatives. And because he knew it, and, having believed all his life that time was valuable, was not prepared to waste it now, he gestured to Blaize and Nicholas to stand done on either side of him, refusing—apart from a brief pressing together of the eyelids, which may have been the chasing away of tears—to permit himself the luxury of emotion, since his spending-power was coming to an end and he had need in this extremity to be thrifty of what remained.

‘Listen,' he said, ‘and pay heed—since it's for the last time.'

And because it was no more than a hoarse whisper rising up to them through layers of pain, they leaned towards him, so that, raising one hand and then the other with enormous labour, he took each of them by the arm and held them fast.

‘Listen
—stick together, lads. You need each other. You, Blaize. You don't understand those machines and never wanted to—don't underestimate the man who does. Nicky—it's not like it used to be. You could have built that business up from scratch like I did—I know it—you're like me, lad, and you could have stood on your own in my day. There was just me and Hobhouse in the Valley with anything worth selling, and the world was our market. There's hundreds now, Nick, producing the same, wanting their share of the market. And the world's not getting any bigger. It's getting smaller. Somebody has to go out there now and sell. They won't come knocking on our door like they used to. They had no choice before. Now somebody has to go and tell them we're the best.'

His voice quite suddenly disappeared, a terrible moment, when for a split second there was panic in his face because he hadn't said enough and thought he could never speak again, but, if death had actually touched him, he snarled at it, shook it away, his knuckles showing white as he clung to Nicholas's arm.

‘Stick together. And if you can't, then remember this—you'll need a good man in your sheds, Blaize. You'll need a salesman, Nicky.
Find
one, both of you, before you split the business. Christ—do you understand me?'

‘Yes, father,' Blaize said. ‘It's all right—we understand.'

‘Nicky?'

‘Yes,' he said. ‘Oh God—yes.' And, having fought each other, exasperated each other, loved each other so well, I don't know why it surprised me that they were crying.

‘Look after your mother,' he said. ‘Whatever you do to one another, and to anybody else, keep her out of it. See to it that she's all right. Georgiana—you'll not be sorry to see the back of me. I reckon, but do the best you can. Now then—they tell me I've got to rest, so leave me to get on with it. Faith—you can stay. The rest of you go downstairs. I'll see you again, I reckon—presently—'

‘Faith?' Nicholas said sharply, but Blaize simply nodded ‘Of course.' and went out, taking Georgiana's arm, Nicholas following, leaving us alone.

‘Come here,' he said and I moved to his bedside, not knowing what he wanted of me, aware only that his power, his glorious fighting spirit was dying far more slowly than his body, and whatever it was I would perform it.

‘I'll need you closer than that,' he said, reaching out a hand that, from weakness and failing vision, missed mine by several inches. ‘No—I've no mind to pry out your secrets, if that's what you're thinking. Just come here, and hold my hand.'

And I was amazed by the strength of his grip, the cruel effort of will that fastened his hands to mine and kept them fastened, a man raising himself by agonizing inches from a quicksand, knowing exactly what must befall him should he let go.

‘Hold on to me, lass,' he said, ‘for I can't go before my wife comes. And I'll have to work at it—concentrate—and by God I'll do it! I reckon you know something about loving, Faith—so hold me fast—rouse me if it seems I'm slipping away, for I'll not go before I've seen her again. And keep the damned doctors away from me, lass. They'll be in here in a minute, earning their fees, fretting me and giving me something to make me sleep, I reckon—which won't do, because I might never wake up again. Can you do that for me, Faith Aycliffe?'

‘Oh yes. Yes, I can.'

And for those next hours I sat and held him—as I had not been allowed to hold Giles—joining my spirit to his as death very slowly began to lay claim to his body, paring him down, stripping away one layer of life after another, until there was little left but the fierce whispering of his will, forcing those exhausted lungs to take another breath and another, that failing heart to take another beat, dragging enough of himself away from extinction each time it threatened to engulf him so that there would be something left of the man who had loved her when his wife came.'

‘How long now?'

‘Not long.'

‘I can't feel your hands, Faith. Are you still holding me?'

And I dug my nails into his flesh, pinched him, strained every muscle I had to jolt him just a moment or two nearer to train-time.

‘How long now?'

‘Just half an hour. They've gone down to the station.
Now
, listen, there's the train—she's on the platform.
Now
, Joel Barforth—she's in the carriage.
Now
—she's coming.'

But I had heard no train, the carriage had left but not returned, the doctor had leaned over me, pursed his lips a dozen times. ‘I think, Mrs. Barforth, that the rest of the family should be called. His sons will expect to be with him at the end.'

And when the man persisted and would not obey me when I ordered him to leave us alone and said that the responsibility would be mine, it was the remnant of Joel Barforth himself that raised a head somehow from those pillows and spat out a last obscenity that chased the doctor away.

‘I'll make it, lass—by God, I will! And if I don't, if the train should be late, tell her—'

‘I'll tell her nothing. You'll do so yourself.'

But I had believed him dead twice already, had shaken him and screamed at him, had grown hysterical with his need, her loss, the strength and beauty of their combined passion, had exhausted bone and muscle, ached, sweated, bitten my lips until they bled, before I heard the carriage and she came running across the room to him, his wife of thirty-five years, to throw herself into his arms with the passion and despair of a girl of seventeen. And there was nothing for me to do but close the door very quietly and walk away.

They were, as before, in the small drawing-room, Georgiana in the big armchair, Nicholas, leaning against one corner of the fireplace, Blaize at the other, both of them smoking, empty tea-cups and brandy glasses on a tray, Georgiana's riding crop carelessly abandoned on the hearth-rug, and it seemed a hundred years since I had last met them, another place, their taut, untidy lives having no bearing on mine since they had not witnessed the suffering I had just shared, had not been privileged to see that out pouring of devotion.

They had moved, in one sense, a little ahead of me, in another had fallen far behind, for they had had time now to come to terms with bereavement and were already making room for other things. They had shed their tears, had their tea; to them their father was already dead, and whatever they might privately feel about his loss—and I think they each felt a great deal—they were faced now with the task of living without him, and with one another.

Nicholas threw his cigar into the fire and immediately lit another, his face full of the scowling anger he always used to screen emotion, his voice curt, aiming itself at Blaize rather than addressing him. And because I had entered the room in the middle of their conversation, with no idea of what had gone before, it seemed doubly strange to me.

‘So—you'll be Sir Blaize Barforth, second baronet, tomorrow, by the look of it. How does that suit you?'

‘I imagine I can handle it.'

‘You'll have seen the will, I reckon?

‘Yes. I had my half-hour with Jonas Agbrigg. I expect you did the same.'

‘So I did. And you understand the implications?'

‘Do I?'

‘I reckon so. Fifty per cent of the business to you and fifty percent to me.'

‘Which seems reasonable enough, brother.'

‘I'd say so—provided we're both ready to earn it.'

I walked past them, ignoring them, feeling their unspoken questions in the air behind me: ‘What did he ask you—tell you—give you? Is he dead?'; ignoring them too, and stood at the window looking out—away from them—aware mainly of my own hands clasped tight together,, the knuckles as white as my uncle's had been when he had clung to me a moment ago, his voice, still in my ears, infinitely more real to me than the voices behind me, which were no more than the shrill twittering of birds, incomprehensible, irritating.

‘In certain circumstances,' Georgiana said, ‘Blaize would have everything, since he's the eldest son.'

‘Ah yes,' Nicholas told her, ‘the good old rule of primogeniture. But that's in good society, darling. This is, Cullingford, and we all know a title doesn't pay the rent.'

‘But just the same,' Blaize drawled, ‘you think he could have left you a little something extra in compensation, do you?'

‘Maybe he did. He left me the sense to know that unless we pull together—now that he's not here to stand between us—we're going to waste a lot of time, and a lot of moneys, getting nowhere.'

‘Ah—I take it then that I'm to pull in
your
direction. Is that what you're saying to me?'

‘I might be—and then again I might just be telling you not to pull against me for the sake of it, because it tickles your sense of humour.'

‘Telling me?'

And their bird-twittering got inside my head, senseless little noises cheapening the real words I had heard upstairs, my aunt throwing herself across that room, her whole body saying ‘I love you, Joel', knowing that she had fulfilled his whole life's purpose, and he hers; and I couldn't bear it.

‘Stop it!' I said, ‘Stop it—now!' And my hands became fists crashing down on the window-sill before I swung round and shouted at them again, ‘Stop it!'

I saw Nicholas's brows come scowling together, Blaize make a movement of surprise, and, as I backed away from them, although neither had attempted to touch me, my legs gave way and I fell down on the window-seat, appalled not so much by the violence of my tears as by the knowledge that I could not control them. I was a grown woman who knew that no grief lasts forever, yet, huddled there, I was a child sobbing and howling in the dark, beyond the reach of my adult logic, alone and terrified until Georgiana flung herself down beside me and took me in a thin, nervous embrace, her slight body-shielding me as best it could from those keen Barforth eyes. And even, then I continued to weep, releasing the pain of my entire lifetime against her narrow shoulder, the inner chamber in which I had stored it wide open, the flood-gates broken.