The Sleeping Sword (23 page)

It had been founded in the ‘bad old days', almost fifty years ago now, by a group of radical intellectuals, a member of my own family, my mother's half-brother, Mr. Crispin Aycliffe, among them, who had wished to shatter Mr. Roundwood's complacent middle-class dream. The
Star
had not ignored vice, although it had located it in places far removed from our gin-shops and our unlit, unpaved alleys. It had reported violence in our streets but also in our weaving-sheds, where, before the legislation the
Courier
so abhorred, five-year-old children had been regularly beaten to keep them awake at their labours. It had reported the filthy condition of our working classes, and pointed out the unpalatable fact that they were unwashed largely because they had no water; ignorant because education was either not available or beyond their means; of inferior physique because their employers, the readers of the
Courier & Review
, were in the habit of keeping wages so low that they did not always get enough to eat.

But the readership of this volatile little publication, which now appeared only once or twice each week, had always been small, the excessive stamp duty on newspapers in its early days putting it beyond the purchase of the working man for whom it had been intended. And now, although it was cheap enough to be within anyone's reach and it was estimated that at least half of Cullingford's population could read, it had somehow not ‘caught on', deteriorating from its crusading fervour to mere peevishness, one of its main obstacles being the odd but undoubted ambition of a large proportion of the working classes to be middle class, and consequently to take the
Courier & Review
.

‘What do you know about newspapers, Liam?' I asked him.

‘Nothing,' he cheerfully replied to that as well.

‘And can you tell me just who reads the
Star
.'

‘Well now, Grace, I reckon
you
might if I started to advocate votes for women.'

‘Do you believe in woman suffrage, Liam?'

‘I don't see why I shouldn't. It never crossed my mind to give it a thought before. But now I do think of it—well, I can't say that I
believed
in Barforth cloth, when it comes down to it. But that never stopped me from selling it—thousands and thousands of miles of it, all over the world. So I think it might pay me to drink a pot of tea one of these days with Miss Mandelbaum and Miss Tighe.'

‘It seems to me you'll need more than Miss Tighe.'

‘It seems to me you're right. I'll need—well, there's our mutual relative, Grandmamma Elinor, and her good friend Lady Verity Barforth. I've never known either of them refuse to support a worthy cause. And then there's Grace Barforth, of course, my stepmamma's granddaughter, who might care to invest her pin-money.'

‘Liam Adair, you are preying on women.'

‘I wouldn't put it quite like that. But if I should be, then at least I'll make sure they get some enjoyment out of it.'

‘Liam—do you regret leaving the mill?'

‘Well now, whatever your reason for asking me that question, Grace, I reckon you'll know my reason for thinking it was time I moved on. And I expect you'll have your hands full now, won't you, Grace, with an extra appetite to feed—and a fine, fierce appetite at that.'

It had entered no one's head, with the possible exception of mine, that Gideon and Venetia should look for a home of their own. Tarn Edge was an enormous house. It suited Mr. Barforth's convenience to have Gideon in it. There was no more to be said. A large front bedroom was prepared for them and an adjoining dressing-room with a bath-tub in a tiled recess. I had the wide, canopied bed aired and scented with herbs and lavender. I put daffodils on the broad window-sill, a bowl of fragrant pot pourri on the toilet table. I had the brass fender polished, a small fire laid in the grate, and wondered, not for the first time, about the inevitable tensions of a house with two mistresses and two—possibly three—masters.

But Venetia had so little interest in domesticity that my suggestion of shared responsibility positively amazed her. She could have responded to the challenge of keeping house for Charles Heron on a limited income, the sheer novelty of scrimping and saving, the satisfaction of seeing each economy, each effort, as a brick in the building of their life together. But Tarn Edge—her father's house—held neither challenge nor novelty and had always functioned adequately with no effort of hers.

‘Heavens! Grace, I don't mean to interfere. You do it all so beautifully and we all know I can do nothing right in any case.' And she sank back quickly, perhaps gratefully, into her position of ‘daughter-at-home', shedding her garments and leaving them where they lay, ordering her tea without the slightest notion of how it was purchased or prepared, littering the hall table as she had always done with her riding gloves and crop, her tall shiny hat, coming and going with no explanation and no regard for either the weather or the hour, the only real change in her circumstances being that now she went to bed every night with a man.

But—as I had known, as I had feared—the house could not absorb Gideon's presence so lightly, for his nature, like his mother's nature, was definite and precise in its requirements, his temperament exacting. When he entered a room one became instantly aware of him, the tone and temper of one's conversation altered to accommodate him, one realized—at once—that he was not a person who could be taken for granted, the more so since the past eighteen months spent in his uncle's employment had not been easy for him.

He had come late to the textile trade from a world where trade itself was held in contempt, so that he had encountered prejudice from all directions, from his old schoolfriends and hunting friends who were puzzled and a little embarrassed by him; from the Barforth managers who thought he was getting too much too soon and too easily; from the weavers who laughed at his accent and made jokes about his masculinity, since no
man
ought to talk like that. And although his brother the baronet and his mother the duchess both loved him and would have defended him to the death, they had made it plain that when he was a visitor at Listonby or South Erin or Mayfair they would prefer him not to be too explicit about what he did for a living.

It was a difficult time for him. I knew it and although I thought him mercenary and predatory and kept a sharp look out at all times for the dagger I believed him capable of stabbing into my husband's back, I could sympathize too, knowing that in his place, had I been ambitious and poor and a man, I might have fought just as hungrily and with as little scruple. He had told me that he had no particular knowledge of textiles, merely some appreciation of how things were bought and sold. Mr. Barforth had insisted from the start that he should learn—as Gervase had never been made to learn—every process of cloth manufacture, scouring, combing, spinning, weaving, dyeing and finishing, not merely by observation but by his own toil, his own sweat, so that he would know the skills, the snags, the tricks involved, without relying on the explanations of mill-managers who might know a trick or two of their own.

‘If they tell you it can't be done and you want it done, then you've got to know how,' Mr. Barforth decreed. ‘
I
know how. My brother Blaize only thinks he knows. That's why he's got one mill and I've got half a dozen. He can sell cloth. I can spin it and weave it, mend my own looms if I have to, and then I can sell it too. Nobody can cheat you, lad, if you know their job better than they do.'

Alien notions these, perhaps, to a Chard of Listonby Park, who would not dream of enquiring into his tenants'affairs so long as the rent was paid, nor his gamekeeper's so long as the grouse and the pheasant were plentiful. But Gideon, nevertheless, applied himself with stern calculation and unflagging energy to this task for which, after all, he had been hired, enduring his employer's often unreasonable demands and tempers, enduring the sheer discomfort a man brought up in the open air was bound to feel for those close-confined weaving-sheds, the screech of machinery, the heat, the dust, the stench of raw wool and engine grease—enduring the painful hesitations of a wife who, despite all her efforts, could not love him—enduring the whole of it not patiently, not meekly, but with a deliberate purpose, since he had long recognized Mr. Barforth as a grand master of his chosen craft: that of becoming and remaining a wealthy man.

Long working hours, frequent absences from home in those early months, relieved or delayed the tension I had feared between him and Gervase, yet Gideon, who might never be the owner of Tarn Edge, knew exactly how he and everyone else ought to be served within it, and I was soon to feel the strain of his demands.

He had survived the harsh discipline of his public school, had been obliged to wash every morning of the winter term in cold water at a stand-pipe in the school-yard, had been flogged and bullied and humiliated, the better to force his character into the sparse, unyielding mould of an empire-builder. He had followed the hunt since he was five years old, and when he took a tumble had learned to bother no one with such trivialities as cuts and bruises and a cracked ankle. He had learned to control both his lusts and his emotions, to appreciate the importance of good taste and good manners, the underplaying of anything from a spear-thrust in his side to a broken heart. But his mother's drawing-room and the drawing-rooms of her friends were all luxurious, their tables superb. At Listonby he was accustomed not only to the highest quality but to the utmost variety, no dish appearing twice among the hundreds Aunt Caroline presented every month, no wine ever leaving her cellars that was not merely old but venerable, unusual; her cuisine a delight both to the palate and to the eyes. These were his standards. He had not expected to lower them, and although he made no complaints, being far too well-mannered for that, he had a way of toying with the food when it displeased or bored him, prodding it gingerly with a fork in a disdainful manner that once or twice caused Gervase to look up sharply and say, ‘What is it, Gideon? The food not to your liking?'

‘The food?' Gideon replied, the faint question in his voice so clearly implying ‘Food? Good God! is
that
what it is?' that I winced, while Gervase's eyes—as always in moments of suppressed emotion—lost their colour. And determined that there should be no conflict if I could help it, my interviews with my cook, Mrs. Kincaid, became every morning more difficult.

‘No, no, Mrs. Kincaid, not haddock and certainly not cod—nothing so commonplace as that.'

‘Turbot then, madam?'

‘Oh yes—turbot is very well, I suppose. But since we had it twice last week it will have to be done in some other fashion than a lobster sauce.'

‘Salmon then, Mrs. Barforth.'

‘Yes—but how might it be served?'

‘Oh—with mushrooms and truffles in béchamel sauce.'

‘Why yes, Mrs. Kincaid—how clever!'

‘And as to the haddock, madam, I could make it into a mousseline and wrap it in slices of smoked salmon.'

‘Excellent, Mrs. Kincaid. Please do that.'

‘Yes, madam, but hardly for luncheon since—as you will know—a mousseline takes time.'

‘Oh, not for luncheon, Mrs. Kincaid. Mr. Chard will not be here for luncheon. You may please yourself as to luncheon.'

‘Thank you, madam.'

‘So we have settled on the salmon with mushrooms and truffles, and the sauté of lamb in
sauce chasseur
, and a really good rich
créme Chantilly
for dessert, do you think? And a strawberry syllabub? No, perhaps not, since they are too much alike in consistency—both creamy.'

‘Pears marinated in brandy, madam. Or a
mille-feuilles
with strawberries and whatever else is available and of good quality?'

‘Yes, Mrs. Kincaid—the
crème Chantilly
, and the pears—and yes, the
mille-feuilles
too—all three to be on the safe side.'

‘Very good. And the soup, Mrs. Barforth? Will you leave that to me?'

‘Oh yes, but something
different
. Or at least something that cannot be easily identified.'

The wines, of course, were beyond my province, Mr. Barforth stocking his cellars to suit his own preference for the heavier clarets, a taste which Gideon shared but not exclusively, Gervase quickly seizing the opportunity to express his wonder at the extreme sensitivity of the Chard palate and the amount of titillation it required. There was trouble too about Gideon's linen, the pressing of his trousers, the polishing of his boots, trouble not violently but fastidiously expressed, his attitude reminding me rather of the Englishman abroad who, with the best will in the world, cannot always quite understand the natives.

‘Is it possible to have something done about this?' he enquired, indicating with that faint, infuriating curl of distaste what looked like a perfectly respectable shirt.

‘Lord! I don't know,' answered Venetia. ‘Ask Grace.'

‘I wouldn't dream of troubling her.'

Yet he did trouble me, his insistence on being well served, well valeted, well nourished, on observing what he considered to be not the luxuries of life but its common decencies, offering me both a challenge and a practical method of keeping the peace.

‘Are you protecting him against me, Grace, or is it the other way round?' Gervase wanted to know.

‘I am trying to be a peacemaker so that I might inherit the earth.'

‘Ah—if we are talking of inheritance and if you are doing all this to watch over mine, then I suppose I cannot complain.'

Yet his own behaviour, quite soon, became less watchful and perhaps—although who can say?—had I spent less time fretting over lobster sauces and cambric shirt-frills I might have noticed it, might even have understood it in time.

Every morning Mr. Barforth and Gideon left early for the mill, Gervase sometimes accompanying them, sometimes not. They returned late and separately each evening, dined and retired to Mr. Barforth's library, where Gideon would invariably stay the course and Gervase would more often than not slip away to drink his brandy in the bar parlour of the Station Hotel or the Old Swan. And because he would have the appealing air of a naughty schoolboy on his return—and perhaps because his very absence had made the evening glide by much smoother—I made no greater fuss than could be turned to other purposes when he had persuaded me to forgive him.