Flint and Roses (41 page)

‘You'll dine with me, all of you, at Fieldhead,' he announced, almost a declaration in itself, since Fieldhead had seen no guests since the day his thin, eternally ailing wife had been carried out of it. And, seated at his table, I concluded that, if my mother chose to make herself mistress of this sombre but substantial house and of the splendid mill just across the way, then it was her concern, and Prudence's concern, not mine.

‘If she marries him,' I told my sister, ‘then I think we might extract their permission for you to live with me.'

‘If she marries him,' Prudence replied, ‘then she will regret it, for he is as gloomy and pernickety a man as my father. If she marries him, I will not be the only one obliged to ask his consent every time I wish to cross the street. He will keep a tight hold on her purse-strings, and she will not enjoy it.'

But Aunt Hannah, mistrusting the lightness of my mother's character and anxious to see her settled before she disgraced us all, was more concerned with Mr. Oldroyd's finances than with his personality.

‘It would be an excellent arrangement,' she told us, having quite made up her mind to it. ‘Matthew Oldroyd has no children and no close relatives. The Hobhouses may behave as if they were his kith and kin but in fact Mr. Hobhouse was only his first wife's brother, which would count for nothing should he marry again. Depend upon it, if your mother takes him she will inherit a second fortune and Fieldhead Mill with it. My word, I have never spoken to Jonas about the spinning trade, but I do believe that, if Elinor ever found herself with Fieldhead on her hands, Jonas would know how to manage it most profitably. And, since one third of it would be bound to pass eventually to Celia, it could be a very great thing for him—for them both; for between ourselves I have given up all hope of Celia ever making herself into a political wife. I believe the very idea of Westminster would throw her into a fit of the vapours. Yes—Fieldhead—my goodness, girls, I must consult most carefully with Jonas, for if a marriage is to take place then the contract should be very precise.'

But, although Prudence bristled and retaliated in kind. I knew how much my aunt and her husband had done for me and was less susceptible now, in any case, to small irritations.

I was calm now. I brushed my hair again, night and morning, until it shone silver in anybody's candlelight, valuing it again as my only claim to beauty. I wore a black velvet ribbon around my neck at dinner-time, long drops of jet in my ears, scented my skin, listened with smiling attention to anyone who chose to talk to me. But I did it, as I did everything these days, not to please my family, not to please a man, but to please myself. My house was warm now and well-polished, my cat purring amiably in her basket by the fender. I had
wine
for my guests, and conversation, my windows were open in the good weather, letting in air which many considered unhealthy, and light they thought imprudent, since it would damage my carpet and my complexion. I came and went as I pleased, although in fact I did not venture very far, an occasional visit to Listonby or to Tarn Edge, a weekly pilgrimage to Giles's grave, although I found very little of him there, a stroll in the Ashburn Gardens, which I had myself declared open by unveiling a statue supposedly of Giles, but which could have been any frock-coated, top-hatted gentleman. I was quietly, almost imperceptibly, free. Mrs. Guthrie, whose loyalty had been to Giles, having left me to the ministrations of a Mrs. Marworth, who was loyal to nothing but the twenty-five pounds a year I gave her. I was not happy. I did not even think about happiness. I was calm. And it was enough.

In June Caroline gave birth to a third son, exactly two years after her twins, a Master Gideon Chard, even bigger and darker than his brothers had been, so noisy and so imperious in his demands for attention that Nurse was soon ordered to take him away.

‘I suppose this one will go into the Church,' Caroline told me, receiving me in the lavish, deep-armchaired comfort of the Great Hall, having got out of bed a scandalous seven days after her confinement, since as always she was expecting guests and had no time to play the invalid. ‘Yes—that is the way it is done, Faith. The second son for the army, the third for the Church, the fourth for the high seas—and, if there is a fifth, one sends him out to the colonies, I believe, to make his fortune, so that when he comes back one can pretend his money was not got from trade. Well, young Gideon can have the church here at Listonby, to begin with, since our vicar will be quite senile and happy to step down when the time comes. But I think he had best go to Oxford first, to make some suitable acquaintances, especially when one considers that all the fashionable parishes seem to be in the South.'

‘In fact you mean to make a bishop of him?'

‘Well, of course I do, Faith. Naturally I want to see him at the top of his tree, whatever it is. If one takes the trouble to do something, then one should do it right.'

‘Yes. I have heard your father say so many a time.'

‘And what is wrong with that?' she asked sharply, ready as always to do battle at the slightest hint that Barforth values could in any way be criticized, so ready, in fact, that I concluded they often were. I will tell you this much, Faith. I am extremely fond of Matthew's family, but if some of them would listen to my father they would not suffer for it. One has only to look at the Clevedons. My goodness, it is all very well to be charitable, but Mr. Clevedon simply cannot afford it, and if one dared to suggest that Peregrine should give some thought to
earning
a living—well. I have learned not to make suggestions of that kind. Matthew merely smiled when I did so, but Georgiana was quite scandalized. ‘He is the heir,' she said. ‘There is the land! And that was that. Well, my Dominic is the heir and he will not be required to earn a living either. But our land is not encumbered and if he shows an interest in politics I shall not discourage him—even though he is bound to be a Protectionist and want the Corn Laws back again.'

‘You will have a Prime Minister, then, as well as a colonel and a bishop.'

And although we laughed together we both knew that, if Caroline made up her mind to it, it was not impossible.

‘I do not see enough of you, Faith, these days,' she said. ‘As soon as you are out of mourning, or into half-mourning, then I want you to come on a really long visit. In fact, since widow's weeds go on so long, I see no reason to delay longer than the autumn—and I would be glad of you then. The house will be full to bursting from September to March, and you know how it is in the hunting season—so many women sitting around all day in need of entertaining. And although the men are out from dawn to dusk they enjoy a change of female company in the evenings. One would think so much fresh air might make them sleepy, but not a bit of it. Some of them tend to be quite giddy, and it would be a relief to have a woman in the house I can trust. You will be going to the Exhibition, of course? Yes, so I supposed. Well—I shall not, for Matthew and his friends have made up their minds to ignore it, which seems quite ridiculous since it has spread itself out all over Hyde Park. But there it is. They are all Protectionists, you see, who do not care for Free Trade, and are telling each other that the Exhibition is strictly for the middle classes—an opinion I find hard to understand when Prince Albert virtually organized it single-handed, and the Queen has been going there every day. In fact, Matthew and I have had our very first quarrel over it. If I want to look at industrial machines, he tells me, then I may go and stand an hour in my fathers weaving sheds. Naturally he was sorry afterwards—extremely sorry, in fact—and I was sorry too. I could see how hurt he was when I declared I would go with my father. I rather expected him to forbid it, but he actually said, “Please don't,” which touched me, I admit it. Anyway, I have decided not to go, so all is well again. Come to see me as soon as you return and tell me how easily my father has won all the prizes.'

To begin with, even Cullingford itself had not thought too highly of Prince Albert's Great International Exhibition, this scheme of displaying manufactured goods and the machines that made them beneath an extravagant glass-house in Hyde Park—Cullingford being more concerned with getting its own manufactures out of the country at advantageous prices than with letting possible competitors so freely in. But, as Aunt Hannah had said, when it became known that there were prizes to be won, at the discretion of a jury half British and half foreign, Law Valley men concluded they might as well win them, and there was no doubt that Barforth fancy worsteds would be most prominently displayed.

The monster conservatory—Prince Albert's Crystal Palace—had been duly completed, its transparent walls covering an incredible nineteen acres of Hyde Park, enclosing within its structure the elm trees which no one had wished to cut down. It was more than three times larger than Saint Paul's Cathedral, was constructed in such a way that it could be dismantled and moved elsewhere at need, and had taken, in all, just seven months to build. It was magnificent, impossible, a brilliant conception, a madman's folly, according to one's point of view. It would not take the strain; it would fall down and shatter, killing thousands; it would be a breeding ground for the diseases, the vice and corruption so many foreigners would be certain to bring with them. Something would surely go wrong with it, and when it was discovered that there were sparrows happily nesting in the branches beneath the glass roof, ready to foul exhibits and exhibitors alike with their droppings, and that shot-guns obviously could not be used to dislodge them, one saw more than a few complacent smiles, a multitude who were very ready to say ‘I told you so'. But they, and the sparrows, had not reckoned on the Duke of Wellington, who, stamping irritably from his retirement at the Queen's request, had spat out the one deadly solution: ‘Sparrow-hawks'; and within days the sparrows had fled.

The Exhibition opened on the first of May to a salute of guns which did not—as had been predicted—shatter the glass walls and remained open until October, Queen Victoria and her children coming regularly, drawing more stares herself, perhaps, than the acres of industrial and agricultural machinery, the triumphs of engineering and architecture which had given such prosperity to her reign.

Aunt Verity and Uncle Joel, the owners now of a pleasant house near Bournemouth, went south in April, my uncle prepared, it seemed, if only temporarily, to leave his personal empire in the hands of Nicholas and Blaize. And, since the railways were offering cheap rates—Cullingford to London and back for five shillings for the duration of the show—and London was sprouting with lodging-houses where respectable working-men could obtain bed and board for as little as threepence a day, a great many of our mechanics and artisans went south too, for the first time in their lives.

‘London is teeming with them,' my mother wrote from the house of an old political friend of my father's, ‘so quiet and well-behaved you can't imagine, dressed up in their Sunday best. No drinking, no fighting, such as one sees in Cullingford. Incredible. And, of course, the foreigners, darling—quite sinister, some of them. One sees quite well that they are all revolutionaries come to lose themselves in the crowd, since they are welcome nowhere else. Do come, dear. The Exhibition itself is nothing but a vast bazaar, I must warn you, for one can have a surfeit, quite quickly I find, of gazing at machines, and there is little else to see that one could pick up easily enough in Millergate. However—there are certainly acquaintances to be made, and naturally, if all goes well, there may even be knighthoods to be won. They tell me the Queen is in a mood to be very gracious to certain gentlemen who have offered her husband their support—who have backed his scheme, in fact, when the Protectionist fox-hunting set can do nothing but hope for hailstones, which would certainly tear his Crystal Palace down. Do come.'

And once again I was aware of the division of ranks I had seen in operation all my life: the fox-hunting gentlemen of the Shires, to whom the whole concept of internationalism was repugnant, who saw this princely exhibition as no more than a vulgar display of trade-begotten wealth; and the cool, commercial men of the cities, who regarded no wealth as vulgar, and for whom the world and its markets could not be opened wide enough.

My sister Celia, disliking crowds, disliking heat and noise, disliking anything, it seemed, which would take her from the shelter of her own drawing-room, had no inclination for the journey, but Aunt Hannah, having secured a fortnight's accommodation in the London house of Mr. Fielding, our Member of Parliament, was ready to include both Prudence and myself in her party.

‘Jonas will explain it all to you,' she told us. ‘He will take excellent care of you.' And we believed her, for, although she had not gone so far as to regret the impossibility of his marrying all three of us, she was increasingly anxious that we should learn to depend on his judgment, to submit ourselves, in financial matters at least, to his authority.

Jonas, of course, was no longer a poor man, but both he and his step-mamma were aware that he had still a long, expensive way to travel before reaching that golden pinnacle of which his childhood brilliance had encouraged her to dream. And perhaps because, in Aunt Hannah's view, Celia had let him down, proving too timid, too nervous to suit his needs, she had come to regard it as logical and right that Prudence and I should make up the deficiency.

Should we remain unmarried, we would be very likely to leave what we had to Jonas's children, in the event of Celia managing to carry one to full term, and, if not, to Celia herself. Should we remain unmarried, our social skills, which Celia sadly lacked, could without any impropriety be devoted to Jonas, since the world would have nothing but praise for a woman who graced her brother-in-law's table, entertained his guests, supported his ambitions, disciplined his children, in order to relieve the burdens of an ailing wife. Should we remain unmarried. And so, without meaning either of us the slightest harm—being quite convinced that we would be much better off, much safer with Jonas—she kept a watchful eye on Freddy Hobhouse whenever he approached Prudence, making short work of both Mrs. Hobhouse and Mrs. Mandelbaum when in turn they offered to take us to London.