Flint and Roses (72 page)

I had made my confession to Nicholas in good faith. Like his mother, I had felt that bitter shell hardening around him and had wanted to pierce it, however slightly, to reach the part of him that could still find joy in life, not necessarily with Georgiana, certainly not with me, but somehow, with someone. But once, again I had blundered, I had not reached him. Possibly there was nothing left to reach, and I had done no more than lay myself, and Blaize, open to his malice. I had dredged deep into my store of courage, drained it and myself with it to make that revelation, and he had laughed at me. What would he do now? Would he keep it to himself, or, appreciating its worth, would he toss it casually at Blaize the next time they quarrelled. And how would Blaize react to it? I had rarely seen him angry, never with me, but how could he live in peace with a woman who had put such a weapon into his brother's hands, a woman who understood full well how lethal that weapon could be, and that Nicholas would not hesitate to use it.'

I had no defence. I had wounded Nicholas long ago before the granite had encased him and he was still vulnerable to pain. The wound remained, if only in his pride, and he would hurt me now if he could, not in anger but in calculation, as a lever to dislodge Blaize from Tarn Edge. He would use me as he had used the Hobhouse debt, a few thousand pounds well spent to bring Nethercoats to its knees, a cheating woman to do the same with his brother, and, waking suddenly in the middle of one tormented night, it seemed to me that I had nothing more to lose, that I might as well go to him and beg, as abjectly as he liked, for mercy. I was in his power, as I had been all my life in the power of one man after another. I was a female, one of Nature's penitents. I would accept the role assigned me and plead. But by morning I knew that by doing so I could only drag myself further into the mire, for, knowing him as I still did, the dark side of him as well as the light, I knew he would take my pleading and anything else it pleased him to extract from me, would play cat and mouse with me for as long as it suited him, and would still betray me.

I would not wait then, and, delving inside myself once more for my feeble content of courage, decided that I would tell Blaize myself as soon as he came home. I would prepare him so that he could have his defence ready, and would accept whatever retribution he chose to inflict, aware that the punishment itself could hardly be worse than my dry-mouthed dread of it. But, when he arrived with the fur cloak, the Russian boots, the gorgeous Oriental robe, the icons, the samovar, his cool quizzical gaiety, it was easy to convince myself that, after all, he would not take it hard that he would shrug this off as lightly as everything else.

‘My word!' he said when we had dined and made love, when he was lounging easily among the pillows, and I, the encrusted Eastern robe draped around my satiated body, fear again in my heart, had told him about the Hobhouse debt as a means of introducing Nicholas's name.

‘Yes—I quite see your sister's dilemma. Shall I solvent it for her? Nothing prevents me from lending Hobhouse the money to pay Nicky, and I doubt I'd require any better interest-rate than the look on my brother's face.'

‘No, Blaize. Don't do that. Please don't.'

‘Darling—?' And, leaning forward, supporting himself on one elbow, he turned his cool, grey eyes full on my face. ‘Is there any particular reason why I shouldn't?'

‘Yes. Yes, of course. There'd be another great explosion, you know it, and—well, I think your mother has had enough to bear. She was telling me just the other day how concerned she is about the pair of you.'

‘Yes, I believe she is. Well then, I shall try not to aggravate her fears—although she could lend Hobhouse the money herself, of course. I doubt if even Nicky would do too much snarling at
her
.'

‘Blaize, for goodness'sake! Can't you leave things alone—just for once?'

‘Darling,' he said, with his unique smile, ‘are you accusing me of meddling?'

I didn't know what I was accusing him of, didn't know what he was thinking or feeling, what he wanted, cared about, if, indeed, he cared for anything. I had lived pleasantly, sometimes very happily, with the surface of him and had no idea what lay beneath it. I had worn my lovely clothes for his entertainment, had given him my body in every mood and manner his imagination could devise. I had laughed with him, enjoyed with him, preened myself with him, had not precisely trusted him but had believed he could trust me.

I spent five days of silent agony, an earthquake stirring beneath my feet each evening when I heard his carriage, the qualms subsiding only when his smile told me that all was well. I went to Aunt Verity, determined to make my confession and ask her help, and could not. I made up my mind to lie, when the blow fell, to brazen it out by declaring that Aunt Hannah herself—or Jonas—had said something to make Nicholas suspect the truth, and I had merely confirmed it. I doubt if I could have done either.

‘My brother has been making himself very pleasant,' Blaize said on the sixth evening as we were dining alone, a bowl of late roses on the table between us, the curtains drawn against the chill of the November night. ‘I wonder why? I agree, the orders I brought back from Moscow are altogether stupendous, but why, I ask myself, is he so pleased about that? It merely proves I was right to go in the first place, and gives me an excellent reason to go again.'

And, throwing down my napkin, my eyes fixed on the candle-flame, I said harshly, ‘I'll tell you why. He knows about Aunt Hannah and Scarborough.'

A long time went by. The candle-flame got into my eyes, filled them, and when they had regained their focus I saw his hand lifting the wine bottle from its ice, filling my glass and his own, his face so entirely without expression that for a sickening moment I wondered if I had actually spoken at all.

‘Blaize, did you hear what I said?'

‘Oh yes,' he said, raising his glass and sipping reflectively, his face telling me nothing. ‘I heard. Thank you, Faith. That was splendid—absolutely splendid.'

I got up, impeded for the first time by my crinoline, walked to the window and to the fire and back again, alone, it seemed, in the room, although he still sat there at the table, drinking his well-chilled wine, enjoying, for all I knew, the excellence of its bouquet, the effect of the candle-light on his silver and his crystal, these things adequately consoling him, perhaps, for the betrayal of his silly, sentimental wife.

‘Blaize—say something to me.' And perhaps my voice reminded me of Georgiana's. ‘You must want to know how—and why. At least that much.'

‘Darling, if he knows, it can only be because you told him.

‘Yes—yes I did. And, if you want to know, I have bitterly regretted it.'

‘Well—that's something, at any rate.'

‘He came to Galton while I was there, to fetch Gervase away. He was upset—'

‘And you consoled him.'

‘I broke the only promise you ever asked of me.'

And once again a Barforth male, from his height, or his depth, had it in him to laugh at me, although this time there was no cruel explosion of mirth, merely a chuckle that had a wry sound to it, his amusement directed at us both.

‘Ah well—as to promises and their making and breaking, perhaps I am not the man who should complain. Faith—do sit down. Now that you've just stabbed me in the back don't add to my discomfort by all that nervous pacing.'

‘Blaize, don't you care at all?'

‘Yes, as it happens, I do. I think I'll just step outside and smoke my cigar in the garden, if you don't mind. I'll join you for coffee presently.'

I had them clear the table, ordered coffee to be served in the drawing-room, sat by the crackling autumn fire and drank one cup, then two, aware, I think, of the beauty of the room, the light-green silk walls, the creamy Aubusson rugs, the discreet elegance which had marked our lives together, which had contented my nature almost completely, as Blaize himself had almost contented me. And, although I was no longer afraid, I was inexpressibly saddened, the misty, quite gentle sorrow one feels sometimes at the summer's end, the first glimpse of age in the face of a woman who has lived by her beauty.

‘I am sorry,' he said, coming in through the long windows, ‘I've kept you waiting rather a long time, haven't I, for the pronouncing of your sentence.'

And, knowing the qualities he most admired in a woman, I answered calmly, ‘Shall I send for more coffee?'

The tray was removed, another brought in its place. I filled his cup, adding sugar, no cream, in the way he liked it. He drank, replaced the fragile Wedgwood cup on the tray and, since we were alone, lit another cigar.

‘I find,' he said, ‘that we have evolved a very agreeable way of life together. Am I right in assuming that you value it too?'

‘Yes, I value it.'

‘Well then—what more is there to say? I'm very loathe to lose anything I find pleasant, Faith, you must know that. I was inclined to be rather put out, half an hour ago, but then, thinking it over, I'm bound to admit that, had you been my mistress in the first place and then eloped with him, I'd soon have found a way of persuading you to tell me why. So I can hardly be surprised that Nick has done the same.'

‘And you're not—disappointed?'

‘In you?'

‘Of course in me.'

‘I shall get over it. And at least I'll be ready to defend myself when Nicky mentions it—if he ever does. Really—it makes very little difference.'

‘I'm glad you think so.'

‘Faith,' he said, leaning as near to me as my skirts allowed. ‘Did you expect me to throw the soup tureen at your head or brain you with the candelabra? That's not quite my style, you know. I'm altogether the wrong Barforth for that sort of thing. And, in any event, that's not the way of it—is it, my love?—between us? If you want to make amends you can treat me with very obvious affection the next time we are all together—it won't hurt to let him think you like me best. It won't hurt me, that is—'

And, although it was not forgotten, although from time to time I saw, or imagined I saw, a certain coolness, a certain watchfulness, we did not speak of it again.

Mr. Oldroyd, of Fieldhead, died very suddenly that November, his demise occasioning an inevitable if discreet rejoicing at Nethercoats, where it was assumed that Freddy at least, who had been a favourite nephew, must surely benefit, if not in entirety, at least substantially enough to settle the Barforth debt.

‘Only think,' my mother breathed, quite ecstatically, ‘if Freddy should get it all, for I cannot think what else Matthew Oldroyd can have done with it. Prudence could then be mistress of Fieldhead, which even
she
would find most agreeable. And just think, too, darling, that it could all have been mine. Well—I would have given it up twice over for my Daniel, but, I confess, I would be well pleased for my daughter to have it in my place. Do give her a little push, Faith. Earning a living is all very well, but Matthew Oldroyd was very rich, you know, and if it all comes to Freddy there will be a hundred young ladies ready to share it with him. Tell Prudence that.'

But Prudence had no need to be told, for, although Freddy himself was still her devoted slave, his mother, in the interval before the will was read, made it plain that, with the Oldroyd millions at his disposal, Freddy would have no need to settle for a self-willed schoolmistress no longer in her first youth, whose opinions were, to say the least, peculiar.

‘She thinks he may help himself to a biddable little chit of fifteen,' Prudence said. ‘One of my pupils, in fact, rather than myself. Well I do not at all blame her for disliking me. I merely hope that if Freddy is to be so rich he will have the sense to keep it away from her, and from his father—for if he does not we shall see Nicholas Barforth at Fieldhead as well, five years from now. Poor Freddy, he will allow them all to impose upon him, you know. He will give his father the means to ruin Nethercoats all over again, and provide so handsomely for all his brothers and sisters that they will be too busy spending it even to thank him. Poor Mr. Oldroyd too. They say he was very mean, very careful with his money, and it must have saddened him to know how recklessly the Hobhouses would throw it away.'

A prophetic utterance, certainly, on my sister's part, for it had clearly saddened him so much that he had, in the end, found himself unable to give them the opportunity, the Oldroyd will providing a scandal which contented Cullingford for many a long day, acting as a stone flung into murky waters, its ripples spreading wide and, to some of us, most painfully.

As expected, provision had been made for a certain Miss Jamison in Leeds, a few trifling bequests to household staff, an insulting five hundred pounds apiece to his brother-in-law, Mr. Bradley Hobhouse, and to Emma-Jane Hobhouse, his wife. To his favourite nephew, Mr. Bradley Frederick Hobhouse, he left the sum of ten thousand pounds, with the suggestion that it be used for the setting up of some personal enterprise; but the bulk of his estate, his spinning mill at Fieldhead and Fieldhead mill-house, his railway shares, his brewery shares, his substantial bank deposits, were to become the property of one Mrs. Tessa Delaney, who, it appeared, was not Mrs. Delaney at all, but for the past year had been the second Mrs. Matthew Oldroyd of Fieldhead.

‘Oh dear,' my mother said. ‘I fear there will be trouble. My poor Celia.'

And, although it was not immediately clear to me why my sister Celia should be involved, I was soon enlightened by the visit of a distraught Mrs. Hobhouse who, with nothing more to hope for, nothing more to lose, would have been glad, I think, to see the whole of Cullingford consumed in flames. She was not herself to blame for her family's ruin. She would not blame her husband. Who then? A conspiracy, no less, the greedy, evil-hearted. Barforths standing solidly behind Nicholas to rob her of her home, to put her and her children out in the street. She was no fool. She could recognize criminal practice when she saw it, and what had it been but that? Who had persuaded Mr. Oldroyd to change his will? Nicholas Barforth. Who had drawn up that new will? Jonas Agbrigg, who happened to be married to Nicholas Barforth's cousin, whose father, Mayor Agbrigg, was a Barforth employee, whose mother was Nicholas Barforth's aunt. And who had suggested that Mr. Oldroyd should marry his disgusting hussy in the first place, who would have thought of such a thing but the lawyer Jonas Agbrigg, since he would know how easily they could otherwise have overset the will? Who had attended that abominable ceremony of marriage? Jonas Agbrigg, she announced, her soft bulk quivering with fury, for she had inquired, had been informed, had found him out in all his perfidy. Who had dined at her table, looked her in the eye and smiled, knowing all the while of the dagger he had helped to thrust in her back? Jonas Agbrigg. Who, in his capacity as the Hobhouse family lawyer, had advised her husband time and time again to sell out? Jonas Agbrigg. Who was brother-in-law to Prudence Aycliffe? And what had he told her that had prevented her from marrying Freddy years ago? How much had Jonas Agbrigg been paid for his treachery? What bribes had he taken from Nicholas Barforth and from the whore Delaney? And what had happened to the first Mrs. Oldroyd's jewels? Could we expect to see her diamonds in that trollop's ears, and her pearls around the scrawny neck of Mrs. Jonas Agbrigg, who had been Celia Aycliffe, another cousin to Nicholas Barforth?