Road to Berry Edge, The (31 page)

‘Does he like her?'

‘He likes parts of her,' Harry said.

*

That autumn Susannah began to run out of money. She had been badly advised on what investments she had made, the income from them was tiny and she had spent too much trying to put Rob from her mind with shopping and luxury. When they had stopped taking men into the house she had bought all kinds of new things as though everything could be changed, and now she would lose the beautiful house because she could no longer afford to pay the rent on it.

They had to move very reluctantly in the middle of the autumn into a much smaller house with no view and try to think of other ways of making money. No one would
employ them, they were too well known and they had no skills.

‘I don't know what kind of work we could do,' Claire said. ‘I can't add up. We don't sew. What are we going to do, go back on the game? I'm getting so old they'll start asking for me cheap next.'

‘I hate this poky little house,' Susannah said. ‘All I can see is the house across the street, and I can hear next door shouting at each other.'

‘Maybe Robert Berkeley's coming back for Christmas. You could ask him for money for his bairn.'

‘I wouldn't.'

‘You might have to.'

*

After a while the people of Berry Edge accepted Faith back among them. Sometimes she awoke in the night and knew for certain that none of it had happened, that she had never gone shopping in Bond Street or been invited to the big houses, four storeys high, near Marble Arch. She persuaded herself that she had not seen Harrods in Knightsbridge, not gone to dinner parties where six courses of delicious food was the norm, or been to parties, receptions, balls and dinners in London, or cantered her horse beside the shining Serpentine. She thought of the opera - the most fashionable entertainment, where people wore formal dress; she thought of the liveried footmen and starched nursemaids in the houses where she had been, the West End plays, the musical comedies, the luxury fruit and confectionery, the hairdressers, the new hats, everything she had been so delighted with. She could not believe now that she had ever left the dismal scene of Berry Edge. Her finger was bare, the diamond had gone, and she heard nothing from Rob nor wanted to. It had been a glorious dream but it was over, and she must accept that because it would never happen again.

The first time that she saw Harry was not even difficult.
She had told herself that he was on many committees and involved in almost every part of Berry Edge life, and there was no way to avoid him, so when she was handing out tea after a meeting in the church hall and he walked into the room, Faith looked up and tried to act normally.

She had not seen him for weeks. She thought then that there was something jaunty about Harry, something that brought a new dimension to Berry Edge. It was not just Rob who had brought changes. Harry stood out here, it was possible that he did so deliberately, as manager of the works and the collieries and everything of importance.

He was tall and slender and bright-eyed and well dressed, and the women who sat on the committees and ran a great many things in Berry Edge liked him very much. How could they not, Faith thought. He always remembered their names after first meeting them, and he remembered details about their lives and their families. He gave them attention and they warmed to him.

Harry was not a Berry Edge man. He had brought flirtation to a fine art. He must have known well that these were modest women who kept their homes and families clean and neat, that they would never have seen inside a pub, that they knew he had been rather wild but was not any longer. How he managed to give off this dual role perplexed Faith. He ought to have been beyond the pale but was not because he ran the works with authority, lived alone without scandal and was seen to be in all the correct places when he should have been. And they respected him for it. He treated them as they wished a man would treat them, and he did it without giving offence. He praised the cake he ate, he held a cup and saucer though Faith was convinced he drank barely half of his tea, and he talked to everybody in the hall.

It was therefore a long time before he reached her. He didn't need to come near for a cup of tea, willing hands always provided what he needed, and so it was late and she was washing up by the time Harry had talked to
everyone, smiled at everyone, pleased a great many people and learned whatever he had intended to learn by being there that evening, Faith felt sure.

She was not taken in by him as they were. She knew that he was like Rob, that he preferred whisky and bad women to anything else on earth. When he finally came in search of her alone there with her hands covered in soapsuds, having refused the offers of help until other people went back to tea and gossip, she was quite ready to be coldly polite.

‘Hello, Faith, how are you?' he said genially.

Faith turned a little, though she didn't look at him. ‘I'm very well, thank you.'

‘You have no help.'

‘I'm quite able.'

To her consternation he picked up a teacloth and began to dry the dishes. Faith stared. ‘When did you learn to be useful?' she said.

‘Since I've been living alone.'

‘Don't you have a maid?'

‘Yes.'

‘If anybody sees you …'

‘They won't,' he said comfortably, ‘they're all busy.'

‘How was your cake?'

‘Perfectly abominable, it had seeds in it. As though one were a budgerigar.'

‘Mrs Leslie made it.'

‘Indeed. Remind me not to accept her invitations to tea.'

‘Has she made them?'

‘She has,' he said solemnly and then pulled a face.

‘You're dreadful,' Faith said.

‘I know, but I can't talk like this to anyone else in the whole area, so you will have to forgive me.'

‘You haven't learned to be serious here, have you?'

‘I've learned a great many things. I'm a pillar of society. I notice that you don't come and see me, though, and that you don't send me invitations to tea at your house.'

‘I don't think my mother could stomach it,' Faith said, as she finished washing the dishes and concentrated on drying her hands.

Harry looked at her.

‘Guilt by association? Hardly fair,' he said. He looked at the cake stand and cloth in his hands and put both down with an air of sudden distaste.

‘Has Rob gone back to Nottingham?' Faith asked, surprising herself as well as him with the question.

‘Yes, for the time being. Then he's going on to London. He didn't intend to stay here. If it hadn't been for his father's illness he wouldn't have come back at all.'

‘That was the problem,' Faith said. ‘Rob always stood out, he was never of Berry Edge even though he was born here. He didn't fit in, he thought differently from other people. He would never have talked to people in there like you just did.'

‘It's easier for me.'

‘Why is it?'

‘Because nobody thinks I murdered my brother. Somewhat fortunately, I often think, I have no brother. Perhaps one is always inclined to help him lose his footing so that he will not be there to be the preferred child. Families are such vexatious things, doomed to be a disappointment.'

‘I'm a great disappointment to my parents,' Faith said, smiling a little in remembrance. ‘I now have two wedding dresses in my wardrobe, neither of which will ever be worn, almost a collection.'

‘Put them in a trunk in the attic and forget about them.'

‘I would but my mother won't hear of it. I think she almost enjoys the way that I see them daily.'

‘While you search for the dullest of your dresses,' Harry said, looking woefully at her.

‘This is the dullest one,' she said, indicating the grey dress.

‘I don't think it's as bad as the blue one you wore the first time I saw you.'

‘How could you possibly remember?'

‘How could I help it? I'd never seen such a shocking garment on such a pretty woman.'

Faith looked disapprovingly at him. ‘I'm not Mrs Leslie, you know.'

‘Indeed, I do know. Aren't you going to invite me to tea?'

‘Certainly not. You'd only complain about the food as you always do, and my mother would be offended since she does some of the baking herself.'

‘On the contrary, your mother cooks very well for someone who thinks that the height of culinary sophistication is individual custard tarts.'

Faith started to laugh. ‘You're very rude about my mother. You're a snob.'

‘A man who chooses to live in Berry Edge cannot be called a snob, Faith. He could barely be called discerning. There now, you're laughing.'

‘I'm not laughing, Harry Shaw.'

‘Yes, you are. Look at you.'

Faith was indeed, she had to quell the laughter as one of the committee ladies came in, frowning at the noise. The committee lady collected Harry and went off with him. Faith went on with the clearing up.

*

By the time Vincent and Ida went home that autumn, Rob had left Nottingham and gone to London. He hadn't done that deliberately, at least he didn't think so, but other than work there was nothing for him there so he did what was necessary in Nottingham and then left.

He had expected to be alone in London for Christmas. He was asked everywhere just as usual, and he knew that there were plenty of girls' mothers who were relieved that he had somehow got rid of the drab little northern woman and was
eligible again. Rob missed Faith, that was the stupid part; he did wish they had got married. It would have been so much easier than this, and they would have grown to love one another, he thought. He drank a lot of whisky late at night and couldn't sleep, and then couldn't get up and couldn't work and couldn't eat. He did do all of those things, but it was not easy.

He thought that Ida and Vincent might have had enough tact not to come to London before Christmas, but they didn't. When he got back from work on the Tuesday before Christmas, he came face to face with Vincent in the hall. Vincent looked straight at him.

‘Well, Robert, and how are you? You look like Hell warmed slightly.'

‘Don't worry, Vincent, you're not responsible,' Rob said and brushed past him.

He lingered in his room beyond dinnertime, and there was a soft knocking on the door. When he called out Ida ventured inside.

‘I've missed you,' she said.

Rob went over and kissed her and said, ‘I'm sorry, Ida.'

‘I'm not. I never did think it a good match, though I do wish occasionally that you would do the right thing. Why isn't Harry coming to London for Christmas? I begged him.'

‘Too much work, I expect. He'll come for New Year.'

‘It's some woman,' Ida said. ‘You know what he's like.'

‘We've caused you a lot of grief.'

She smiled at him. ‘Fortunately I know the difference between grief and dismay. You and Harry have upset and dismayed me, but I love you both very much. Couldn't you persuade him to come home just for a little while? I miss him so dreadfully, and I won't go back to Durham. I want to spend some time in my own homes, not other people's. Come downstairs and have some dinner, my darling, you look as though you haven't eaten in a week.'

Vincent was civil all the way through dinner. Afterwards, drinking his brandy by the fire, he said to Rob, ‘Do you hear anything from Harry?'

‘No, don't you?'

‘I shudder to think what dreadful thing either of you will do next that I shall have to countenance. My God, Robert, illegitimate children? Why cannot you learn to be respectable? You let us all down.'

‘Did I, Vincent? Do accept my apology.' And Rob walked out of the room.

In his own room - with the whisky bottle - Rob sat down by the fire and allowed himself the rare luxury of thinking about Susannah and the baby. He didn't understand how a man could miss a child he had seen for only a few seconds. The missing of Victoria was a space inside that was getting bigger and bigger, and there was nothing he could do except bathe it nightly in alcohol.

In the mornings he would think that if he could just get through the day he would not need whisky, and in the evenings he would think if he could just manage without a drink then he would sleep, and wake refreshed and energetic, and the pattern would halt. But it didn't because he couldn't get through any of it, and it repeated itself again and again except that it got harder all the time. Just before Christmas the days had been short and dark and wet which made it worse somehow.

He didn't want to go to work, he didn't want to go out, he didn't want to go anywhere, he didn't want to do anything. Most especially, he didn't want to eat, because it took the whisky so much longer to do its job through all that food.

Nightly his failures danced before his eyes. His bed was empty and so were his arms, and the London house tortured him with memories of Sarah. Worst of all was knowing that Susannah was in Durham. To know that she was there, and that she would not have him or let him go to her, was unbearable.

Faith saw Harry a dozen times before Christmas. He was at the Chapel Christmas service - she suspected that he had gone to all the Christmas services, thinking it part of his job - and at the works dinner, at lunches that the various societies and committees in Berry Edge saw fit to celebrate Christmas. He was even at the few Christmas parties she was invited to. Every time he treated her as though he was pleased to see her, even though they didn't manage any private conversation.

Faith thought often of the Shaws, of their country mansion, of their smart London house, of their rich successful friends and many influential acquaintances.

She wondered how Harry saw the little north-country nobody she now was. She knew from visiting the Shaws and seeing how highly they regarded themselves that they were proud people. Their son, however easily he might pretend to fit in here, only did so for the sake of his works, his achievements, to prove that he could be successful here where the Berkeleys had failed. Harry would leave in time, just as Rob had done. Rob was as much a Shaw as Harry in his way. Harry would become bored in Berry Edge eventually, when he had mastered the work completely, and where there was no high class entertainment, no luxury, no people like himself.