The Reckoning (40 page)

He became aware of her at last, glanced up for an instant
distractedly, and then down again, saying, 'Ah, there you are, Marmoset. I wanted to speak to you.'

‘
So I understand,' she said, crossing the room. 'But first, my James –' She leaned over to kiss his brow, the only part
she could reach, and he grunted an acknowledgement. The
smile deepened. 'The grunt is all very well,' she said reason
ably, 'but though I know you work very hard, I do not wish
you to become any more like a steward interviewing an
under-gardener.'

‘Eh?' he looked up, startled.

‘
That's better,' she said, and cupped his face with her hands and kissed him again, this time on the lips. They smiled under
hers, and his inky hands came up to hold her. 'Hmm,' she
said a little breathlessly as she straightened up, 'you must be
the only thing in the house that does not taste of plaster dust.
What did you want me for, my love?'

‘
Do you need me to tell you that?' he said, smiling at her in
a way that took her back ten years to the eve of their mar
riage. He got up and pulled a chair across for her to sit beside
him.

‘Well – but in particular?'

‘
In particular, I wanted to talk to you about the financial situation. I'm afraid things are not going very well for us at
present.'

‘
Explain,' she said, settling herself and resting her forearms
on the edge of the table. They distracted James briefly: her
wrists were so tiny they made him think for an instant of the
impossible fragility of robins' legs. But his business was
important. He restrained himself from gathering her passion
ately into his arms, and explained.

The long French wars had been profitable for the
Morlands. To begin with, there had been the extra demand
for their horses: war is wasteful of horseflesh, and a contract
with the Inspector General for three- and four-year-old
remounts had proved highly lucrative. Then there was the
contract with the Navy for wheat with which to make the
sailor's 'hard tack'. Demand for corn was so enormous, and
the price of wheat so high, that Edward had considered it
worthwhile buying up all the extra land he could, to bring
under cultivation. Land prices were very steep during the war
but loans were easy to come by, and the estate's income was high enough for the interest repayments to be hardly notice
able.

But with the outbreak of peace, all that had changed. No
more cavalry remounts; no more Victualling Yard corn.
Suddenly everyone was poor – nobody was buying new hunters or riding horses; they were making do with two
carriage horses instead of four. The price of wheat fell, and
though the operation of the Corn Laws meant it was still too
high for the unemployed to be able to buy bread, it was too
low for the farmers to make a profit on all the extra land they
had put under cultivation. Income disappeared – but outgo
ings still had to be met. Now the interest on those loans
seemed appallingly high.

To add to that, last year had been disastrous, with the
terrible wet spring taking its toll of the sheep – foot-rot, sway
back, husk, staggers, broken limbs – and the lambing losses
had been dreadful, in both ewes and lambs. Sheep, hardy
creatures in many ways, proved curiously vulnerable to
prolonged wet weather. And then the ruined harvests had left
them without enough corn to sell, or enough hay to feed the
beasts through the winter without buying in. Héloïse
 
listened, and looked obediently where his finger
pointed. 'I don't really understand the figures,' she said, 'but
I see there are a lot of minus signs. Are things very bad?'

‘
Yes,' he said. He looked up from the books and held her
eyes. 'I've been keeping it from you, seeing you had so much
else to worry about; but after all, Morland Place is yours, and
you have a right to know. Things are very bad indeed.’

She frowned. 'But we've always been so comfortable.
Perhaps if we retrench a little –'

‘
In normal times that might have been the answer. But
it's
income we need, real money to pay the interest on these
loans.'

‘
Can't we sell the land again?' she asked.

‘
It wouldn't help. When we bought the extra land, farms
were going for anything up to forty-five years' purchase. Now
the price has dropped to fifteen, sometimes less. We wouldn't
make enough from the sale even to pay back the capital; but
we have to go on paying the interest. While our incomes have
fallen, all our outgoings have increased. Taxes, for instance –they fall most heavily on us landowners. There's the land tax
to begin with; and then the county rate has gone up seven
fold in the last ten years, and the poor rate has quadrupled.
There's the highways tax, tax on farm horses, tax on harness
– and our tenants owing God knows how much in unpaid
rents. And if we throw them off the land for debt, what then?
They'll just become an extra burden on the parish, which
we'll
have to pay for.'

‘
I had no idea it was as bad as this,' she said. 'No wonder
poor Edward was so worried.'

‘
And now there are the repairs to the house to pay for. God
knows where we'll get the money for that, and we can hardly
expect John Skelwith to wait for ever.'

‘
We might sell the plate and jewellery,' she said doubtfully.

‘
It may come to that, though I should dislike it very much.'
He frowned, tapping the open page with the end of the ruler.
‘Economies alone won't do it – though there's enough room
for them. In the kitchen for instance – either our servants are
living as high
as
coach-horses, or there must be tremendous
wastage.'

‘
Oh, no, nothing is wasted,' she said quickly. 'All that is left
is made into parcels every day, for the poor at the gate.'

‘
The poor at the gate!' He smiled reluctantly at the expres
sion. 'We're not a monastery, my love, to be giving food away
like that. And in such quantities!'

‘
There are a great many to feed,' she said. 'Some are our
own people who are old or out of work, and others are poor beggars passing through. We cannot turn them away unfed.
Besides,' she added, remembering her order about the soup
and refusing to feel guilty, 'if we do not feed them at the gate,
they will come on the parish, so it will be the same thing.'

‘
Charity begins at home,' James said. 'Or it ought to.’

The kitchen left-overs', and the parcels of food that were
carried out to cottages where there was sickness or want, were
not the only drain on the household, as he very well knew.
Morland Place leaked like a sieve. There was the school and
the hospital, both of which had been endowed by long-ago
Morlands, and which therefore felt obliged to apply first to Morland Place when extra funds were needed for repairs or
equipment or special occasions. The Founder's Feast, for
instance, at St Edward's School, was no longer a matter of a
hundred penny buns to distribute to the pupils; and there was
the annual prize-giving, and scholarships for especially able
boys who were brought to Morland attention as worthy cases.

And what about the small army of Morland Place
pensioners – former employees, who all seemed to enjoy an
extraordinary longevity, and who seemed to live in houses
needing constant repair? Even here in this house there were
elderly servants who did virtually nothing for their wages, but
who ate heartily three times a day none the less.

‘
Well, my James, I will try to find some way to
faire les
économies;
but you said that would not be enough.'

‘
No. As I said, we need income. I think it's time to find out
what is happening with the other half of your estate: the
Hobsbawn Inheritance. I know things are bad in the manu
factories these days, too — I suppose they could hardly be worse. But if your mills cannot turn in an income, perhaps
they might at least be sold for enough capital to pay for the
repairs to the house. Or perhaps we might be able to sell the machinery and rent out the mill-buildings as warehouses. At all events, it would be better than selling the family plate, or
than selling land at a loss. What do you think, my love?’

She thought many things quite quickly — of old Mr Hobs
bawn and his lifetime's devotion to his business; of Jasper
Hobsbawn's blazing eyes as he gave her the mills so that they
might not be destroyed by the costs of litigation; of all
Fanny's scheming and burning ambition. If it were true that
Fanny's journeying to Manchester so late in pregnancy had
caused her miscarriage and stillbirth, it could be said that she
had given her life in order to possess the Hobsbawn Inherit
ance.

So many people had wanted those mills so badly; but
Héloïse did not hesitate for more than a second. 'I think you
are quite right,
mon time,'
she said. 'We shall sell them, if you
think it necessary.’

 
Stainton was a small estate in the Chilterns, brought into the
possession of the Marquesses of Penrith by an heiress of two
hundred years before. It had served sometimes as a dower and
sometimes as a cadet home, but in the last hundred years the
house had more often stood empty but for a caretaker.

It was a small manor house in the black-and-white Tudor
style, full of dark panelling, beamed ceilings, and cavernous
fireplaces which smoked more than they warmed. Though
perhaps beautiful in its way — the School of the Picturesque would have admired its crooked roof and the wavy, greenish glass in its diamond-paned windows — it was uncomfortable
and badly positioned to modern ideas.

It was set in a damp, green place in a wooded fold of the
hill — a small pocket of a clearing, carved out of the primaeval
woodland. It was on low ground, and the tall trees grew close up to it, so that even the immense height of its chimneys was
not enough to make the fires draw properly when the wind
was in three of its four quarters. Little would grow in the
garden except ferns and laurels. Moss flourished on its north-
facing walls, and the narrow brick paths around the house
were slippery with it.

The approach to Stainton Manor was through winding,
sunken lanes. Black tree roots writhed in the steep banks, and
the trees grew high above the traveller's head. In summer it
was a cool and sweet-scented approach. A dappled light
filtered through the canopy to touch the remote, pale flowers
of the woodland: the delicate white stars of sweet woodruff
and the faint, greenish lace of angelica. The air was damp and
rich with leaf-mould, the woods silent but for the secretive
rustle of birds foraging through the leaf-litter, the liquid
cooing of wood pigeons, and always, somewhere, the sound of
water.