Road to Berry Edge, The (14 page)

After the meal she announced that she was going out and he offered to go with her, thinking that she meant a walk because it was such a nice day, clear and warm for December. But she said softly, ‘I'm only going to the churchyard,' and went.

After a little while the day changed and became foggy and he wondered whether she didn't feel strange in a graveyard in the fog, so he set off after her.

There was nobody about in the short afternoon, only her beside the grave, and it was difficult to see more than a few feet around you.

‘It's just me,' he said, so as not to startle her.

‘I was thinking about you. I'm sure this seems very dull to you. Didn't you tell me that you usually spend Christmas in London? That must be very exciting.'

‘Not unless you can get away from my father. He wears thick yellow checked suits.'

She laughed. He liked to hear her laugh, she didn't do much of it.

‘I don't believe that.'

‘It's true. Ask Rob.'

She looked down again at that.

‘It seems awful laughing here.'

‘You suit those earrings.'

‘It was very kind of you and quite unnecessary.'

‘How could it be unnecessary? It's Christmas. Would you like to spend Christmas in London?'

‘I should like nothing better.'

‘I think next year my parents will probably go, and if they do I shall ask my mother to invite you. She loves company.'

‘I couldn't do that, I don't know them.'

‘Yes, you could. You know Rob and me.'

‘He would be there?'

‘I should think so.'

‘You spend a great deal of time together. Is that because Robert works for your father?'

‘He doesn't actually work for my father. You could say that we both work with him.'

‘And you're both going back to Nottingham in a day or two, I understand.'

‘Only for a few days. My father gets nervous when Rob's not there.'

‘Don't you resent him?'

‘Of course I do, he's an old fool.'

She laughed again.

‘I mean Robert.'

‘Rob? Hell, no, he's the brother I didn't have.'

The moment the words were out Harry tried to drag them back but they seemed to hang in the air like washing. Even so, above John Berkeley's grave he added, ‘We've had so many good times together. I'd shield him from the lightest rainfall.'

Faith tried a smile. ‘Men in Berry Edge don't say things like that.'

‘I know. We went into the Station Hotel. Did I tell you about that?' She shook her head. ‘There was this great big man in there who didn't like Rob. Rob floored him. It was beautiful. The place was full but they cleared like the Red Sea parting.'

‘He always was good at fighting. Everywhere he goes he creates trouble,' she said.

‘You could try forgiving him, you're big on religion.'

‘I doubt he cares.'

‘No, I meant for you.'

‘For me? How would that benefit me?'

‘You could stop kissing a ghost and try for somebody real.'

‘I don't … you have a strange way with words. I could never find anybody I liked.'

‘How hard were you looking? The world is full of men.'

‘Not men like John.'

‘Was he really like that, Faith, or is it just that you choose to remember him like that?'

‘What do you mean?'

‘Well, can you think of anything you didn't like about him?'

‘I loved everything about him.'

‘You couldn't have done. He must have had at least one unendearing habit, every man has.'

‘Do you?'

‘A dozen.'

‘Like what?'

‘I'm sarcastic, impatient, I swear, I drink a lot, I smoke cigars, I tread on people's toes when I dance …'

Faith was smiling.

‘I don't think those are particularly unendearing,' she said.

‘Don't you really? No wonder John seemed a paragon.
So must every man. Perhaps you didn't give anyone a chance.'

‘I just know that I couldn't love anyone again.'

‘You've decided.'

‘No, I haven't decided.'

‘Wasn't there anything else you wanted to do?'

‘There was a time when I wanted to go to college. I could have gone to St Hild's in Durham but my parents wouldn't hear of it. They thought it was unladylike.'

Harry screwed up his face.

‘What do you think about education for women?' she asked him.

‘Education at its best is enlightenment. How could it be wrong?'

‘I'm too old. I feel as though everything has gone past me. I just keep busy.'

*

‘You ought to marry Faith,' Rob's mother said to him that night when they got home.

‘What?'

His mother looked at his father.

‘We think you should,' his father said. ‘She hasn't married and neither have you. I think the reason for that is because there's no one else you could marry. You owe her that much. She'll never marry anyone else now and you could hardly expect her to go to her grave a spinster.'

Rob said nothing. He was only glad that Harry was there. The evening was unendurable. When it ended and he went to bed, Harry followed him into his room within minutes, enquiring as he shut the door,

‘Are you all right?'

‘Do you think it's going to snow? It looks so heavy.'

‘How can you see anything?' Harry went to the window. He stood for a few moments and then turned to Rob. ‘You haven't told them anything about Sarah, have you?'

‘No.'

‘Don't you think it would alter things if you did?'

‘It's nothing to do with them.'

‘They probably wouldn't expect you to marry Faith if you told them.'

‘I don't think I could stand them knowing, asking questions or worse still not asking them. They don't care about what I've done and I don't want to spoil my memories of Sarah - people talking about her who didn't know her.'

‘Would you seriously consider marrying Faith? She hates you.'

‘Nothing on earth would make Faith marry me but I'd like to make peace with her, I'd very much like that.'

‘And what about Susannah?'

Rob didn't answer that.

‘You love her, don't you?' Harry guessed.

‘I didn't want to tell you because of Sarah.'

‘Why not when it was my idea to go there in the first place? From what I hear dozens of men have fallen in love with her and most of them weren't allowed anywhere near. Does she love you?'

‘I don't know. I hope so,' Rob said.

While they were in Nottingham they worked. Vincent tried to make it obvious that he couldn't manage without them whereas Rob felt certain that if he had tried he could have. He had plenty of competent men around him in his foundries and factories, and everything ran smoothly because Rob had spent years making sure that it would. When things did not, Vincent could cope alone, at least for a while. More and more he felt as though he should be back in Berry Edge where nothing was going right and he knew that Harry felt the same. Whenever they were alone they talked about the Berry Edge problems, but never in front of Vincent. He didn't want to know.

On the second evening after dinner they were sitting by the library fire talking, and when he came in they stopped. Harry even got up and walked out.

‘Do your parents know anything about us?' Vincent said.

‘No.'

‘Do they know anything about your life or the work you've done?'

‘No.'

‘Why didn't you tell them?'

‘They're not interested.'

‘You let them go on thinking that you're the stupid person who let your brother drown.'

‘I
am
the stupid person who let my brother drown.'

‘People die every day. Do you think other people have to take on the responsibility? What are you going to do, carry the guilt to your grave? How could your father love you so little, and how could you feel so bad that you go to that godforsaken place to rescue some badly managed foundry which is nothing to do with you?'

‘It is to do with me, Vince.'

‘Let him fail, for God's sake.'

‘He's old, tired and hurt.'

‘So are we all before we're through. Why can't you let it go?'

‘You don't need me here that much, Vince.'

‘I miss you. Sarah seems even less here when you're not here,' Vincent said steadily. ‘I was afraid that you would go back there and stay for good. I didn't know whether to be more afraid that your father would take you back affectionately because I didn't want to lose you, or that he would treat you like he has and you would stay anyway because you think the debt is insuperable. And now I've lost Harry too.'

‘He's thirty, Vince, he had to leave home sometime.'

Vincent stood there for a few minutes by the fire and then he said,

‘So, are there any decent women in Durham? You must be screwing somebody.'

‘Vince—'

‘Go on, tell me you're not. I'll kick your bloody arse through the door.'

Rob grinned suddenly.

‘I love you, Vince,' he said.

‘Oh, go and bugger yourself,' Vincent said.

*

Ida had planned a New Year party.

‘I've invited several young women and I don't want you two to do what you did last time.'

‘Which was?' Harry asked.

‘Pissed as rats,' Vincent said.

His wife looked hard at him.

‘Vincent, I will not have that kind of language in my drawing room.' She looked severely across the room at Rob. ‘Promise me. I have invited several of the most beautiful young ladies in the county, and you will dance with them.'

Rob said nothing. Vincent waited until the two young men left the room and then he said, ‘You're pushing him too hard, Ida.'

‘It's been long enough,' his wife said. ‘I won't have him grieving the rest of his life over it like he has done over his brother. I won't have it, Vincent.'

*

The following afternoon the guests arrived. Most of them were staying and had come while it was light. Some of them had been there for lunch. Rob had never seen so many beautiful young women. That night he danced with as many of them as he could, one dance each. He didn't drink, he didn't leave, he made conversation and when the night was almost over and he was able to go to bed, he wished more than anything in the world that he could just go to Susannah's and lose himself in her. She didn't laugh at what she thought were meant to be amusing remarks, she didn't agree all the time and turn widened eyes on him. He thought of Faith and how beautiful she had been once. Some of the girls here tonight were ten years younger than her, and he could have had any one of them because he was rich. Faith would have looked plain and old beside them, their sparkling eyes and sweet smiles, their giggles, their pert figures. At least Faith knew how to make conversation. This was another world. Faith would have been at one of her Bible classes that day. He wondered how long it was since she had danced, whether she had ever drunk champagne. He doubted if she had been kissed in ten years. It was strange to think that the last person
to place his mouth on hers had been John. She was too old to marry now, everybody was married around her. There was no one left. If he didn't marry her she would live at home with her parents, lie in her own bed for the rest of her life because of him.

Rob tried to talk himself out of this line of thought because he knew that he wouldn't sleep, but his mind conjured him the children Faith would not have, the marriage she had not known, the wedding day, the man, and then again, for the thousand upon thousandth time, that drunken evening in Durham when he and his friends had been partying all afternoon, and John arrived, and Rob encouraged him to have a drink. John wouldn't, but somebody laced his lemonade. It had seemed so funny, John happy like that, John almost on his level, not the aloof young man he had turned into. John had long before that time learned to despise his brother who worked in the foundry. John had been brilliant at university and had tried to stop Rob from drinking, gambling, partying all night. He hated those things, so it seemed the funnier for John to be drunk. John hadn't thought it funny. They had argued, and then fought. John was no good at fighting, he had never done any. Rob gave up in disgust. John was so drunk, swaying, shouting at Rob how much he hated him. Rob had left, gone into the pub with some friends and John, drunk and upset, had lost his balance, gone over the bridge into the water. Rob went in after him when somebody ran inside and told him, but it was too late. John was knocked unconscious and had drowned by the time Rob got to him.

Rob left the dying fire and went to the window. He pressed his face up against the cold pane. The road to Berry Edge was his nightmare, but he had to go back. His parents would never forgive him for what had happened, but that didn't matter. He had to try and save the works somehow.

*

The following morning Ida was down to breakfast. She and
Rob sat there alone and she said, ‘What did you think of Miss Castleton?'

‘Which one was she?'

‘You could hardly miss her, Robert, she was the beautiful blonde girl with the blue eyes and—'

‘Oh yes, she had a dress you could see down,' Rob said. ‘Very nice.'

Ida looked disapprovingly at him.

‘She's a very clever girl. She plays the piano and can talk French. Didn't you like her?'

Rob looked up.

‘I have no desire to talk French, Ida, or to listen to fetching young women mangling Beethoven.'

‘You didn't like her then?'

‘The only interesting thing about her as far as I could judge was the fact that she had perfect breasts. I had a hell of a job keeping my hands off them.' Ida was silent. ‘And if you think that parading half the beautiful girls of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire in front of my eyes is going to make me marry one of them, you're mistaken, Ida. I loved Sarah. I'm never going to love anyone like that again and I don't understand why you are apparently so keen to become my ex-mother-in-law.'