Flint and Roses (33 page)

But, more often than not, she would reject the high-piled curls of my devising, would not allow me to spray her with the perfume I still ordered from the Rue Saint Honore, insisting that a married woman should not embarrass her husband by making herself conspicuous, that a gentleman—according to her father's teachings—required his wife to be self-effacing in public, efficient at home, a model of propriety at all times of the day and, one assumed, of the night.

‘You should take care,' she told me. ‘Wearing such light colours as you do and such low necks in the evenings, one could be forgiven for thinking you flighty. And how you ever find the time to do your hair so often, and in so many different fashions, I can't imagine. I have never a moment for such things. I am quite surprised at you, Faith, for those cats of yours are everywhere—and it would destroy me, really it would, thinking of those sharp claws anywhere near
my
furniture. You know quite well that father would never have a cat in the house—not even in the kitchen.'

Yet, however much she disapproved of my slovenly habits, the next time some gentleman of awesome importance was invited to dine, a client or a political connection and his sharp-eyed lady, I would heed her distress signals and spend a tedious afternoon draping her candlesticks in ivy, arranging small sprays of moss and roses at the corners of her table, giving her a centrepiece of brightly coloured blooms surrounded by drifts of pink gauze strewn with single rosebuds—any novel thing I could imagine, while she, more often than not, having worn her nerves to shreds, would retire upstairs to be violently sick.

‘What does it matter?' I asked her. ‘They're only people. Heavens—we've known Mr. Fielding for years. And what if he is a Member of Parliament? So was father.'

But nothing could ease her torment, and, knowing full well that her house contained not one single speck of dust, since she followed her housemaid upstairs and down every morning to make sure; that no guest of hers could have found anything, even in the most intimate recesses of her cupboards, but a most perfect order; she would nevertheless fret herself into a raging headache, so that when those guests finally arrived she had nothing to say to them but a distraught ‘Good evening', her mind dwelling in agony on the progress of the roast, the French sauce I had suggested and which she knew would never thicken.

‘It's all right for you, Faith—you've never cared about such things. You just drift through life in your come-day-go-day fashion—and your husband doesn't seem to care either. A place for everything and everything in its place, that's what father always said, and I agree. I can't bear to see things disarranged. I must have everything just as it should be. I can't help my nature—and I wouldn't expect
you
to understand.'

Yet, in spite of my shabby hall carpet and my inadequate dining-room, I entertained in my haphazard fashion far more, and I believed more successfully, than Celia.

Situated on the road most people took on their way out of town, my house was a convenient calling-place. Mayor Agbrigg—Alderman Agbrigg now that his term of office had expired—stopped in almost daily for a cup of Mrs. Guthrie's strong tea, while Giles's bachelor friends, comprising the whole of our town's younger professional men, saw no reason to forgo the comfort of his fireside once they had ascertained that I, like Mrs. Guthrie and the easy, well-worn chairs, was perfectly agreeable.

Blaize came too, at unlikely hours sometimes, his high-stepping horses blocking the way, the hem of a satin skirt, the crown of a feathered hat just visible, often enough, inside his carriage, indicating the presence of a female who could not be presented to me. He would occasionally involve me in his escapades, as he had done before, although now that I was married and allowed to know of such goings-on, instead of ‘If you should happen to see my father and he should happen to ask, do please say that you haven't seen me here at all,' it was ‘Dear Faith—because you understand me so well—if you go to the Assembly Rooms tonight and you should meet Mrs. Woodley—yes, dear,
Mrs.
Woodley—do make it in your way to tell her I have been called away to Manchester.'

‘And how long do you expect to be away?'

‘As long as I can contrive. Three days. I think—in fact we'll make it five, and tell her it is London. If it troubles you, you may say you simply think that is where I have gone—since who knows?'

‘Should it trouble me?'

‘I daresay it should. But you'll tell her, won't you, just the same?'

‘I may.'

‘Oh, you will. You've always been a good girl, Faith.'

‘I daresay, but Blaize—Mrs. Woodley. She's such an ancient creature.'

‘Thirty-five,' he said, smiling. ‘And she has—enthusiasm. You'll know what I mean.'

But quite often he would come alone, spending lazy evenings by the fire, hot coffee and toasted muffins consumed at midnight; Prudence sometimes, having called at tea-time and stayed to dinner, engaging him in verbal combat, demolishing the easy philosophies he invented expressly to tease her, deciding, more often than not, that she would not trouble to go home at all and calmly sending a note to Blenheim Lane claiming her freedom of movement, of speech, of action, in a way which amused and delighted him.

‘I believe your poor mother trembles before you.'

‘Nonsense. She never notices me now that Mr. Oldroyd has started to call so often.'

‘So—clever Mr. Oldroyd. Does she mean to marry him?'

‘She would be ill-advised to do so. And I would not consent to live with them.'

‘Ah—you are thinking of getting married yourself then, I take it?'

‘Why should you say that?'

‘Why, Prudence, my dear—if you will not live with your mother, then you must live with your husband, or with his mother. What else can a young lady do?'

‘I will not always be a young lady. I am almost twenty-two. Eventually I shall be thirty and forty—as you will be one day, Blaize, dear—and capable, I imagine, of handling my own affairs.'

‘Now why on earth should you wish to do that?' he asked her, his smoky eyes brimming with mischief. ‘Why trouble your very charming head with the sordid details of everyday life, when you could easily find a husband to do it for you? I really can't understand your poor opinion of marriage. Believe me, Faith does not share it, and I—well—I will confess, hand on heart, that I envy Giles all this.'

‘Nonsense. If you wanted it, you could have it. You could be married tomorrow—except that you would probably fall in love with one of your wife's bridesmaids on your wedding day.'

‘Do you know,' he said, as if the idea had just struck him, not at all unpleasantly, ‘I believe you may be right. And you have done me a great disservice. Prudence, by putting the idea into my head. It sounds so very apt that, now you have suggested it to me, I doubt if I could bring myself to resist it should the occasion ever arise.'

‘Don't concern yourself. It never will. You will chase moonbeams all your life, looking for that one rare creature you are always talking about, who surely doesn't exist—or else you will marry a fifteen-year-old when you are ninety-three.'

‘Prudence,' I told her, laughing, although what she had said was not impossible, ‘that is not kind.'

‘Oh,' Blaize murmured. ‘I don't know—' And later, when Giles had been called out and Blaize, making light of at, had accompanied him, declaring he might as well hold Giles's horse in Simon Street as go home and explain his absence at the mills that day to his father, I asked her, ‘Prudence, do you think you could ever care for Blaize?'

‘Fall in love with him, you mean? No. I could not, and he wouldn't thank me for it should it be otherwise. A man like Blaize doesn't wish to be troubled by emotion.'

‘There is more to him than he likes to show.'

‘I'm well aware of it. He drove Giles over to Sunbury Dale this morning, didn't he, risking his beautiful sporting curricle on those moorland pathways so Giles could get there in time. Were you not afraid Giles would break his neck? Oh—they didn't tell you. Well, Giles was needed in a hurry. I'm not certain why—a mill chimney had collapsed and fallen into a shed, I believe, and I suppose when Giles got the message it was already too late. Anyway, Blaize drove him there because Giles's horse would have surely foundered in this weather. And when they arrived he made himself useful too—I heard it from Uncle Agbrigg, so there is no call for you to look so put out—which is why Blaize was not at the mill today and is in trouble with his father. Of course, he will not tell Uncle Joel he was at Sunbury. He will let him think what he pleases. And I know it amused him, driving like a madman over the top moor, or he would not have done it. But he did go, he did help, which is more than his brother Nicholas would have done. Yes, Faith—Nicholas may have lent his carriage and paid someone to drive it, but he would not have gone himself. He wouldn't lose a day's business—not for anybody in Sunbury Dale at any rate. I expect you will be calling at Tarn Edge to deliver your bride-gift, now that they have been back from honeymoon for several weeks. We can go together.'

Caroline, Lady Chard, was not expected back until the New Year, having married into a world where a wedding-journey could last a twelvemonth or more, the happy-couple returning, often enough, with their first child in tow. But the Barforth mills, unlike the tenant farmers of Listonby, could not be left to take care of themselves, and the new Mrs. Barforth had been installed at Tarn Edge for so long now, that I knew my failure to visit her would cause comment unless soon remedied. Aunt Verity had already called on me, bringing me a magnificent matching pair of Sèvres pot-pourri vases, a fortune casually bestowed, and placed just as casually on my altogether unworthy mantelpiece. I had already purchased the dessert service I intended for Nicholas, a dainty, flowery, yet quite impersonal gift that had been standing for weeks now, ready wrapped, on the hall table, reminding me constantly of its need to be delivered. And when a day or so later I encountered Blaize coming out of the Piece Hall, and he, perfectly understanding my hesitation and the need to put an end to it, said quietly, ‘Faith, if you should have a moment to spare for my sister-in-law, it would be a kindness, since she is very much alone.' I begged the carriage from Giles that very afternoon.

There had been no question of a separate establishment for Nicholas and Georgiana. Tarn Edge was plenty large enough to accommodate a second family; it was essential for Nicholas to be near the mills; and Georgiana herself, having been brought up to think of marriage as a transfer from one ancestral mansion to another, had neither expected nor wanted one of the smart new villas so dear to acquisitive and possibly, in her view, vulgar middle-class hearts. She had simply taken up residence among the Barforths as she would have gone to the Chards or the Floods, as ready to leave everything to her mother-in-law as if Aunt Verity had been a duchess with three hundred years of domestic tradition behind her.

She was the wife not even of the heir, but of a younger son, a position which, in a noble family, would not have carried great weight. Had Uncle Joel been a Chard, Blaize would have inherited his title, his land, the house that stood upon it, in accordance with the rules of primogeniture, which ensured that ancient estates were not broken up, that ancient names remained tied to the land that for centuries had nurtured them. Blaize's wife would have taken precedence over Georgiana on every occasion, would have become mistress of Tarn Edge at the very moment of Uncle Joel's death. Aunt Verity retiring just as immediately to some dower house or smaller dwelling, leaving little for Nicholas but a younger son's portion—not usually large—and a career of sorts in the army or the Church. And, although Georgiana must have known that in the world of commerce the labours of both brothers would be equally rewarded, the profits divided, that Nicholas could even be a far wealthier man than Blaize one day, while Tarn Edge itself, for which neither of them greatly cared, would probably be sold in due course, its proceeds divided between themselves and Caroline, it seemed very strange to her, her instinctive deference to the first-born amusing no one but Blaize himself.

‘She has the quaintest notions,' my mother had told me. ‘She talks to her horse more than she talks to Verity. You will find her wildly entertaining.'

Yet there was something almost forlorn about her that afternoon as she received me in Aunt Verity's small parlour—as large and considerably more luxurious than the Great Hall at Galton—and, although she could not at first remember the exact nature of our relationship, I believe she was relieved to see someone of her own age and sex.

‘Of course,' she told me, accepting my dessert service with only token enthusiasm, since, I supposed, in that superbly equipped house, where the cupboards were bursting with Wedgwood and Coalport, she could see little use for it. ‘I remember now. You are an Aycliffe. Your mother and my father-in-law are brother and sister.'

‘Yes, except that I am no longer an Aycliffe. I was married in October, while you were still away.'

‘Good lord! October. So you are newer to it even than I. And your husband, does he have a place nearby?'

‘A place? You mean an estate?'

‘So I do, if that is what you call it. And I am sorry to be so awkwardly spoken, for I suppose he must have a mill or—something of that nature?'

‘No. He is a doctor.'

‘Really?' she said, honestly surprised, since I suppose the possibility of marrying a doctor had never occurred to a Clevedon. ‘Do you know, I have never consulted a doctor in my life. Not even when I took a tumble out hunting last season and dislocated my collar bone. My grandfather just tugged it back again and told me if I wanted to be sick to get on with it and then go home. Yet the ladies here who call on my mother-in-law seem always to be ailing. There was a Mrs. Agbrigg the other day, younger than me, I think, who seems altogether an invalid.'