The Sleeping Sword (59 page)

‘They'll look after you, ma. I can hardly look after myself. And I'll get you out when I can.'

‘It's a pernicious system,' Liam decreed. ‘I think I'll make a little mischief again.'

But when the
Star
printed a sketch of an unnamed but easily identifiable Bastille, portraying the superintendent as a fat tabby cat, the matron as a weasel, the inmates as tiny skeletons of mice, Miss Tighe, who would not visit the
Star
and could not set foot in the lodgings of so notorious a bachelor as Liam Adair, brought her complaints to me.

‘Good-morning,
Mrs
. Barforth,' she icily greeted me, a martial light in her eye. ‘I have one thing to say to you. I have here Miss Mandelbaum's copy of the
Star
, since I do not take it myself. It will have to stop.'

‘The
Star
, Miss Tighe?'

‘Preferably. But I am referring to these attacks not only on the workhouse, which I believe to be the most efficiently managed in this union or any other, but on its employees, Mr. Cross and Mrs. Tyrell—for that is what they are, Mrs. Barforth, just employees. I would have thought such attacks to have been beneath even so dubious a publication as your own.'

‘I will convey your opinions to my editor, Miss Tighe.'

‘I daresay. And while you are about it you would do well to note my further opinion that while your editor, as you call him, is moralizing about the Poor Law and hinting that my superintendent is somehow making his fortune out of it, he turns an entirely blind eye to the scandalous conduct of his friends, Dr. and Mrs. Stone.'

I was for a moment, astonished.

‘I know of no scandal concerning the Stones.'

‘Do you not? Then regretfully, Mrs. Barforth, I must tell you that you cannot be speaking the truth. Come now, my house is directly opposite theirs in Blenheim Lane, Miss Mandelbaum's a few doors above, and we have
seen
, Mrs. Barforth, the use to which they put their garden shelter—it is the talk of the neighbourhood. Can you deny that Dr. Stone, if indeed he
is
a doctor at all, goes on the prowl at night and brings home—well, I shall not say the word—
persons
of the lowest character, diseased minds and diseased bodies too, I shouldn't wonder—'

‘Miss Tighe, you must know as well as I do that Dr. Stone's purposes are the very opposite of immoral.'

‘I know no such thing. What I do know is the evidence of my own eyes. I have seen that man set off alone and return accompanied by some creature who quickly disappears with him into that shed. I have heard cries and screams on many occasions, and the unmistakable sounds of drunkenness. I have seen girls who had no business to be in Blenheim Lane and would never have come there had he not brought them, running out of his gate and past my windows in a state of terror. And I have asked myself what it is that could terrify
them
. What is going on in that garden, Mrs. Barforth? Is it a shelter for vagrant women, as he declares, or is it a bordello to accommodate the perversities of his friends?'

‘How
dare
you, Miss Tighe—especially when you know it to be entirely untrue?'

‘Are you accusing me of lying, Mrs. Barforth. How dare
you
?'

‘This is all nonsense, Miss Tighe.'

‘Really? Then the whole of Blenheim Lane is nonsensical, for I am not the only one to watch and complain—not the only one by a long way.'

‘Dried up old stick,' Liam said, grinning broadly when I reported the interview. ‘She enjoys it. There's nothing she can do.'

Yet I was uneasy and mentioned the matter that evening hesitantly, to Anna Stone.

‘Poor Patrick!' she said calmly smiling. ‘They broke our windows in Liverpool and threw stones at his horse. He is quite accustomed to it. But the really sad thing, you know, is that if Martha Tighe would only broaden her views a little she could be most useful. She really believes that her workhouse is humane and orderly—certainly it is clean. And if it is ever proved to her that Liam's suspicions are true, then that superintendent and that gimlet-eyed matron will have a very angry Miss Tighe to deal with. There was a girl here last week who lost her baby in Miss Tighe's Bastille. There is an allowance of two pints of beer a day given to nursing mothers until their infants are weaned, not only for the extra liquid to make the milk but because the hops and malt are strengthening. It was never given, although one assumes it was charged for. The girl lost her milk, other forms of feeding did not succeed, and the child died. Well, perhaps it would have died anyway, for the mother was very undernourished, somewhat beyond the remedy of two pints of beer, nor was she too badly grieved by her loss, for a baby would have been an encumbrance to her and would have obliged her to stay longer in the Bastille. She went off quite cheerfully, knowing just how to get another baby whenever she wanted one. But Miss Tighe, had she known the truth, would have been very grieved indeed.'

I returned home preoccupied as always by the extent of Anna Stone's tolerance, to find two notes awaiting me, one from Mrs. Barforth, the other from Aunt Faith, both telling me that Gervase had returned to Galton.

‘Will you be dining, ma'am?' the maid asked, and for an instant I could barely understand the sense of her question, much less answer it. Would I be dining? I had not the faintest notion. But there was something I must do, although exactly what it was eluded me. I must hurry. But where? And why? I must make arrangements. But for what purpose?

‘Yes, Jenny. I will be dining.'

But even then, seated at my plainly set table, eating the kind of food servants choose when left to themselves by a mistress who does not care—the kind of food which would have revolted Gideon—I could not lose the feeling that there was something I had neglected or forgotten, something to which I absolutely must attend.

‘He is looking well,' Aunt Faith told me the following Sunday. ‘Very well indeed. I was at Galton on Wednesday and he had walked in quite unannounced, half an hour before me. Georgiana was in ecstasies of course, for she had feared never to get him back again. Well, he is here, very bronzed and healthy, and I believe on Friday he went over to Scarborough to see his father. My dear, if he means to stay you must be prepared to meet him.'

A letter from Camille reached me on the Monday morning.

‘Grace, I was terrified, for if he had come to accuse me of blighting his mother's life what could I have answered? What he actually said was: “I believe you have become, more or less, my wicked stepmamma?” We laughed and
I
could have wept with relief. “I suppose you have come a-begging?” Nicholas said to him, which sounds ungracious except that it was said with a twinkle in his eye and that unwilling little smile, as if he didn't really mean to smile at all. We dined very pleasantly, Gervase telling us his traveller's tales, which made me laugh until I ached and even made Nicholas grunt once or twice in the way he has when he is actually very amused but doesn't want to show it. He says he wishes to settle at Galton and farm the land and I suppose there is some suggestion that if he sticks to his plan Nicholas will buy him more land in compensation for the fortune he could have been making in the business. I certainly hope so. He is much quieter than I supposed. And of course we talked a great deal of you.'

I waited, still prone to that sudden need for haste when nothing required it, until another letter was delivered to me, and holding it in a carefully steady hand it seemed incredible that I had never seen Gervase's handwriting before. It was pointed and slanting, rather fine, suggesting that, since we certainly would meet, it might be easier for both to meet by arrangement rather than chance, and in the privacy of Galton, without danger of observation by any Mrs. Rawnsley, any Miss Tighe. Did I agree? I did. He wrote again appointing a day and an hour he hoped would suit me. It suited me. I informed my coachman, begged a day off from Liam, and found that my mind had wandered rather foolishly to the subject of hats, a certain blue velvet confection veiled with spotted net and topped with a pile of blue satin roses which I had glimpsed in Millergate only a day ago.

I bought it that evening on my way home from the
Star
, knowing as it went into its box that it would not do, that it was a hat for high days and holidays, for garden-parties and fashionable churches, fashionable promenades; a hat for the life that used to be mine.

In the end I put on a smart but not extravagant cream straw with a black velvet ribbon, a cream silk dress draped up to show an underskirt patterned in cream and black and hemmed by a black fringe, a cream parasol with a black handle, cream silk gloves and cream kid shoes. And as we drove away from town, up Blenheim Lane, past Lawcroft Fold and Tarn Edge, past Aunt Faith's suburban Elderleigh to the narrow crossroads which led one way to Listonby, the other to Galton, I was pestered by a fly-swarm of senseless anxieties, the probable muddiness of the Abbey grounds that would spoil my shoes, the specks of soot which could ruin my silk gloves, a conviction that I was too smart—or not smart enough—which occupied my mind and helped me not to admit that what really ailed me was cowardice.

It was early June, the sky a soft, light blue streaked here and there with gauzy cloud, the hillsides around Galton fragrant with new grass, the hedges dotted with unexpected flowers. The house looked empty as I approached, the river which almost encircled it sparkling and hurrying in the sun, the massive oaks just coming into leaf, since spring had been late and cool, a tender, delicate green running riot now on those venerable branches.

I busied myself a moment with gloves and parasol, the cream velvet reticule embroidered in black which I had picked up from my toilet table without checking what it contained. I should, most assuredly, have brought an extra handkerchief. Had I done so? I opened the reticule, saw that I had, closed it with a snap, and there he was, waiting to help me down from the carriage, looking—and that first impression remained with me ever after—quieter than before, as Camille had said; not a quietness of speech or movement, but
quietness
for all that, an absence of restlessness which, for a moment, since restlessness had been the deepest shade of his nature, made him almost a stranger.

‘Grace, I am glad you could come.'

‘Yes. How are you?'

‘I am extremely well. You are looking very smart.'

And to ease our way carefully through those first vulnerable moments we employed the device of etiquette, making the enquiries one can make with such perfect safety as to the state of the weather and of the Listonby road, the convenience of living in Blenheim Crescent so near to town, the extent of his journeyings, how long it had taken him to get there, and how long to get back again. I took off my gloves, smiled at him, asked my courteous questions, made my courteous replies, so that a listener would have taken us for casual acquaintances who were suffering no particular strain.

The stone-flagged hall was cool and dim as it had always been, the family portraits so dark that, after the strong sunlight, it was hard to distinguish one Clevedon from another. There was no fire today, branches of purple lilac standing on the hearth in great copper jars, the long table, more scarred and battered even than I remembered it, set with wide copper bowls full of blossom, their perfume blending pleasantly with the scent of beeswax, the dusty odours of old wood and stone.

‘What can I give you, Grace? Tea—or a glass of wine?'

‘Is your mother not here?'

‘No, she has gone down to Leicestershire with Sir Julian, I believe.'

‘You don't mind, then—about Camille and Sir Julian?'

‘No. I don't mind. And Venetia would have been glad. Grace, will you take some refreshment now or shall we walk a little first? The ground has dried up wonderfully already after yesterday's rain.'

We went outside again, walking towards the stream, the old wooden bridge, the stepping-stones leading across the water to a gentle green hillside, a dog I had not noticed getting up from the chimney corner and padding after us, the black and white collie, so nervous last year, who now kept correctly and closely to heel.

I had not yet discovered just what had so changed in him for in appearance he was remarkably the same. His auburn hair had faded, perhaps, or been bleached lighter by the sun, certainly his skin was browner than I had ever seen it, the cobwebbing of lines around his eyes much deeper, the eyes themselves keener somehow, as if they had grown accustomed to scanning horizons far wider than one found at Galton, or in Cullingford.

‘What a lovely day!' he said and took a deep breath, inhaling the moist green land, the heavy earth, the hint of moorland on the brow of the hill, the warm air bringing the fragrance of small, pastel-tinted flowers, newborn oak leaves, no tropical flaring of violent colour but the slow and gentle unfolding of an English June.

‘How very lovely!'

‘You missed Galton then, Gervase?'

‘Yes—happily I did.'

‘And now you are going to live here and look after the estate?'

‘I am. And if you are wondering why I could not have taken that decision years ago and spared myself—and you—all this trouble, then that is why I asked you here today. To explain myself and to tell you that I am sorry.'

We had reached the bridge, the dog still closely to heel, looking up at Gervase enquiringly, wagging a hopeful tail.

‘Yes,' he said, ‘go'; and daintily, almost cautiously as a cat, she went down the river-bank to take a well-mannered drink, looking back at him from time to time to make sure he was still there.

‘That dog was not so well behaved when last I saw her.'

‘No, my mother never manages to train her dogs. However, this one appears to be my dog now. Grace—I went away to find out what it was I
would
miss, and had it turned out to be nothing I would not have come back. In the end it was Galton. It struck me that I really was a Clevedon and that what had caused the trouble before was that I was trying to be the wrong Clevedon. Do you understand?'