The Sleeping Sword (60 page)

I nodded, my mind releasing the memory of his taut, white face years ago as he had forced his horse over a fence beyond its stamina and his nerve, and his shame afterwards at the distress Perry Clevedon could never so much as imagined. And suddenly I felt, not love, not even affection but
akin
to him—closely akin.

‘I understand. I think you would have been afraid of that Clevedon.'

‘My dear, that Clevedon—Peregrine Clevedon—
was
frightening. Unfortunately from my early childhood I thought it absolutely necessary to be like him. I have only one clear memory of him. My mother had taken me and the Chard boys out with the Lawdale, when we were all six and seven years old, the Chards on reliable ponies because Aunt Caroline was nervous about them breaking their necks, and me on a brute about sixteen hands high because I was a Clevedon and wasn't supposed to bother about trifles like that. No hanging back and keeping out of the way for me, as Aunt Caroline had told her boys to do. I had to
keep up
like my mother and my uncle had kept up at my age—they weren't asking me to do anything they hadn't found easy and enjoyable themselves—and, of course, because I was scared, I couldn't. I did take a tumble that day, head first into a ditch, and at first I thought they hadn't noticed and would just leave me lying there—damned uncomfortable and freezing cold, of course, but at least I wouldn't have to go on sitting that terrible horse. Then Uncle Perry came at me at the gallop, heaved me out of the ditch by the scruff of the neck and threw me at my mother—what seemed to me a mile away. And she just tossed her head and laughed, because they'd both had plenty of rough treatment when they were cubs and taken no harm. I remember how very splendid they both looked. Poor Uncle Perry! His horse reared up and fell over backwards on top of him that same afternoon, and neither of them got up again. They buried him over there, in the Abbey churchyard, and my mother brought me here after the funeral and explained that the land and the house would be mine now. The trust that would have been Perry's when old Mr. Gervase Clevedon died would now come to me, the family traditions, the holding of the land for future generations, the responsibility of making sure there would be a future generation. And every time I went into the village or round the farms some sentimental old woman would start telling me I was the “image” of Master Peregrine.'

‘And so you simply thought you had to
be
Peregrine, and do the things he used to do.'

‘So I did, which would have been bad enough even if I'd had the nerve, as well as the face, for it. But unfortunately there was somebody else I was expected to be, was there not? A second Perry Clevedon at Galton. Another Joel Barforth at Tarn Edge. I loved my mother the best and so I tried harder for her, but there were times when I couldn't have said what scared me most, riding one of Peregrine's wild horses or standing in those weaving-sheds and in the counting-house knowing I was supposed to understand those machines and those columns of figures and give orders to men who
did
understand. And it wasn't merely a question of courage. It was the sense of failure that really troubled me. I stood between two splendid inheritances and was not fit for either. Consequently what was I fit for? Not a great deal, perhaps. It has taken me all these years to find out and I have hurt you and some others in the process.'

‘You said when I arrived that you wished to apologize. For what? For marrying me?'

‘Dear Grace, how could any man be sorry for that?'

‘Yes—well, that is the
right
answer, of course. Now tell me the truth.'

‘That I regret marrying you? For your sake I must regret it. I treated you abominably. I was like a wilful child constantly seeing how far he could go, except that I was playing adult—and very cruel—games.'

I sighed, remembering.

‘Yes, I know. You thought I could make everything right for you—as if I had some kind of magic formula. And when I hadn't—and couldn't—you were angry with me. You resented me, I think.'

‘Yes. And when your magic failed me I turned to Diana, thinking she could do the same. I had formed the habit of clinging to strong women, you see. My mother—then you. The failure was entirely mine and I reacted as I always did, by running away. Not far, just into other women's beds to start with. I believed, for quite a long time, that those casual affairs were as much as I was capable of.'

‘Until Diana.'

‘Yes,' he said quietly. ‘Until Diana. I was in love with her, and it turned sour like everything else I had attempted. I was so full of self-disgust when I went away that I hardly expected to survive it. After all, how could I possibly survive without my father's bank account to draw on, or my mother to provide me with a bolt-hole? Or without you to blame for all my shortcomings? I found that I could. And for a while the blessed relief of being with total strangers who had never heard of Perry Clevedon or Joel Barforth—of Galton or Tarn Edge—was the most marvellous experience of my life. For a while all I wanted to do was relax into it. For a while. Then I stood still and found that, after all, I could look at myself squarely and coolly and live with what I saw. I hadn't been cut out to run the mills. My mother was right about that. And my father would have accepted it—as he's accepted it now—if I'd been able to show him something else I wanted to do. But I was never sure. I needed first to discover that I really was a Clevedon, but of an entirely different breed to Peregrine.'

He smiled once again into that far distance, quietly, easily, the hectic rhythms of his nature slowing, it seemed, and mellowing, no longer driven by his old, fast-burning uncertainties but at the gentle pace of the seasons.

‘If you came here with Venetia, Grace, when you were children, then you must have met my great-grandfather, the old squire? He was a man who occupied the one place in the world which suited him best. He had never been rich, because a life of service in keeping with the Clevedon code is no way to make a fortune, but he understood the land, as my mother understands it—as Peregrine did not—and he understood the needs of those who farm it and graze their beasts on it. I don't know if he could bring down eighty grouse with eight shots like Peregrine—certainly I can't—but he looked after his fields and his moor and he looked after his people. That is the kind of Clevedon I am. Not in the least exciting like Peregrine but—amazingly—quite solid and rather sound. Who ever would have thought it?'

We turned to retrace out steps, smiling and easy with each other, the dog, aware of Gervase's slightest movement instantly leaving her game in the water to follow after him, and then, recognizing the path he must take, frisking ahead of us into the cloister, our quickest way back to the house.

‘How peaceful it is,' he said, breathing in once again the scents of his heartland, the perpetual dusty twilight of this strange corridor where nuns had once walked with bowed head and folded hands. Yet I had never been at peace here, and quickening my step had almost reached the far end—the strong uncomplicated daylight of every day—when I heard someone call out, a quick burst of laughter, and a child, presumably escaping from the house and with his nursemaid in hot pursuit behind him, came toddling towards us.

I stood quite still for a moment because I was unable to move, watching the sturdy little legs, the self-important step of a child already three years old, the eager, explorer's hands outstretched, expecting to encounter nothing in the whole world but affection and pleasure, as mine had done at that age.

‘This is my son,' said Gervase quietly.

‘Yes, of course,' and I bent down as any other woman would have done and reached forward to welcome him as anyone—certainly the child himself—would have expected me to do. He looked like no one in particular, light brown hair in soft, loose curls, a rounded, rosy face, light eyes which could have been green but which reminded me far more of two bright little buttons than of Gervase or Venetia, or Diana Flood. There was nothing there of the sharp-etched, auburn profile, the birdlike delicacy which could have disturbed me—which
my
child might have had—yet to my complete horror I knew that I could not touch him, that even if he stumbled I could not put out a hand to prevent his fall.

I straightened up swiftly and turned my face to the wall, tears spilling from the corners of my eyes, utterly ashamed, while Gervase retrieved the little boy, gave him back to his nurse, and then put a cool, steady arm around my shoulders.

‘Grace, I am so sorry. I should have warned you.'

‘Heavens! I can't think why I am being so stupid.'

‘Can't you? When you lost your own child here, in this house—our child? I grieved for him too. I couldn't tell you then. May I tell you now?'

‘No. Tell me about
him
—the child you have. Please. It's better.'

He gave me a moment to dry my eyes and then, understanding that I could not bear to speak of my own loss, he shrugged and smiled.

‘Very well. He is called Peregrine, I fear. My mother's choice, of course, and since it seemed, at the time, that she would be left to bring him up, one could not complain.'

‘I thought he had gone abroad with Diana.'

‘No. Diana did not wish to grow accustomed to him, for she knew Compton Flood would never take him. Had he been a girl possibly, but with a title in the offing a boy was out of the question. She understood that and once she had made up her mind to be Lady Sternmore she planned accordingly. She wanted that title badly and now she has another son. My mother was to have had this one, but, like the sheepdog, I seem to have acquired him. Will you take that glass of wine now?'

I took, in the end, rather more than a glass, sitting at the scarred oak table beneath the portrait of Peregrine Clevedon, Gervase, who still looked so like him, lounging beside the hearth telling me once again his traveller's tales, easing our way from the past, where love had been difficult and had not succeeded, to a future that might offer us friendship.

‘I must go.'

‘Must you really? May I come and see you in Blenheim Crescent and scandalize your neighbours?'

‘Please do.' And I knew I would be very disappointed if he did not.

He had changed, and as I drove away, my head pleasantly confused by his excellent wine, I knew that I had no need ever again to feel anxiety or guilt on his behalf, no need to worry on sharp, raw nights if he had found a place to lay his head, no need to concern myself with his tensions, since he was not tense, nor with his nervous rages, since he was neither nervous nor angry. He had changed far more than I—had done better, perhaps, than I had done, at picking up his pieces. Who ever would have thought it? And I could not deny that this assured and steady Gervase Clevedon intrigued me.

These fresh outbreaks of scandal in the Barforth family, rather surprisingly made my own social position no easier. Mr. Nicholas Barforth, defying all conventions, had gone off to live in open and apparently most enjoyable sin with a woman half his age. But Mr. Nicholas Barforth had always been a law unto himself. Mrs. Georgiana Barforth was known to be, if not precisely living, then spending far too much of her time with Sir Julian Flood. But Mrs. Barforth had simply transferred her affections from one gentleman of distinction to another, a procedure which Cullingford might abhor but was well able to understand. And it was I, who had not abandoned my husband for a lover but for a solitary and unseemly independence, who remained Cullingford's true disgrace; the woman who had betrayed her sex and her class by shunning the charitable duties and the unsalaried employments appropriate to a lady and selling her services, like a common housemaid, for money.

And I suppose it was only natural when, the better to account for my perversity, it was whispered that I must surely be the mistress of Liam Adair.

‘They flatter me,' Liam said. ‘And they tempt me too—I'll not deny it.'

But Liam, whatever else he lacked, could find temptations—and mistresses—in plenty and had more than that to occupy his mind just then. There was the eternal problem of finance, or the lack of it, the printing-presses which he still could not afford to replace, the salaries—including mine—which had to be paid, the advertisers who could not always be convinced they were getting value for money. But more pressing than that was the problem of the demolition of the streets around Low Cross, and, as the first hammers began to fall, Liam was quickly aware that he had unleashed rather more than he had, I think, intended.

I knew that the houses in St. Mark's Fold had not been fit to live in. I knew that those who can help themselves must be allowed and encouraged to do so. I knew that progress in all its forms has always displaced and often destroyed the weak, the sick, the unnecessary, and that enough of them had survived each fresh catastrophe to implant its memory in their children. The power-looms introduced into this valley by Joel Barforth had thrown a whole generation of hand-loom weavers out of work. The combing-machines, brought in twenty years later by Nicholas Barforth, his son, had made the occupation of hand-comber a thing of the past, causing some to starve and thousands to emigrate. I knew that Gideon Chard, who could not comprehend poverty in any case, did not expect and was not expected to make himself responsible for the hundreds who had been living in debt and near destitution in St. Mark's Fold.

Millmasters built houses, as landowners built farm cottages, for the simple reason that they required workers who in turn required somewhere to live. That was the extent of the obligation, and if the farm labourer or the mill-hand turned out to be idle or ill-tempered, fell ill or in some other way failed to give satisfaction, then he was turned out of his job and the cottage that went with it. Everybody in Cullingford understood that and few were prepared to dispute it, taking the view that, when employment and accommodation were tied together, a man with any sense at all took good care of both, and in the case of accident or sickness or a slump in trade, well, these were hazards which all working men must face and, however much one might sympathize in some cases, no one could expect a landlord to find alternative accommodation for his tenants. Cullingford's landlords did not expect it. The
Courier & Review
did not expect it either. By far the greater part of Cullingford stood solidly behind Gideon Chard in his plans for expansion and improvement, well aware that he was about to dispossess only those tenants who had been undesirable in any case, those who would take no care of their squalid cottages even if they were allowed to remain in them, and who, quite often, could not pay their rent.