Flint and Roses (69 page)

Perhaps I could have been. Blaize had not slept the night his father died nor even tried to, remaining alone downstairs, smoking, brooding, refusing both my comfort and my company.

‘Darling, do go back to bed,' he had told me. ‘I'm restless and wide-awake, and—really—I can manage very well.' And I supposed that Nicholas might have said much the same, if more bluntly, to Georgiana: ‘Leave me alone. I don't need you.'

They had stood at their father's funeral as granite-faced as any Flood, any Chard, and had gone, both of them, to the mill that same day, Blaize returning very late, his face unusually strained and grim. Yet which particular thing had worried him, angered him, hurt him the most, he would not say.

‘Brother Nick is preparing to be unreasonable, it seems.'

‘And will you be unreasonable too?'

‘I imagine he will think so.'

I was still very careful of Nicholas, a relationship resting entirely on ‘Good evening, are you well?', not even listening to the answer, a dryness in my throat even now when I encountered him a chair or two away from me at the Mandelbaums'dinner-table, a refusal to discuss him at those gossipy, feminine tea-times which—in view of the known hostility between him and Blaize, and of Georgiana's supposedly scandalous conduct—won me an undeserved reputation for family loyalty.

‘Faith will not say a word against any of her relations,' they said of me in the better areas of Cullingford, but I was obliged, often enough, to hear others speak those words for me, to learn—from Mrs. Mandelbaum, Mrs. Hobhouse, Mrs. Rawnsley—that the Nicholas Barforths, far from living in peace, were scarcely living together at all.

‘My dear, there's no point in inviting them to anything, since she's always at Galton and he's always at the mill. If she bothers even to come, the chances are she'll come abominably late and unsuitably dressed. And if he comes without her he never has a word for the cat—just scowls and makes cutting remarks, and drinks. Well—she drinks too, there's no doubt about it, for the maids at Tarn Edge make no secret of it. She can match him glass for glass, I hear tell, which is more than my poor husband—Mr. Rawnsley, Mr. Hobhouse or Mr. Mandelbaum—has ever been able to do. Poor Verity—my heart goes out to her. It can't be easy, when she's brought up a family of her own, to be saddled with those grandchildren while their mother goes a-gallivanting. And they're not
easy
children. That little Venetia is a handful—anyone can see it; and I wouldn't want a boy of mine to look so peaky and so over-strung as that Gervase—which is not at all to be wondered at, since, when she has him at Galton instead of sending him to school, he's allowed to sit up until all hours of the night, playing cards and drinking her brandy too, if the truth be known.'

I heard—in Blenheim Lane, at Nethercoats, at Albert Place—of the terrible evenings at Tarn Edge when husband and wife would not exchange a word. I heard of the glass a frantic, probably tipsy Georgiana had hurled at her husband's head, the fork she had hurled after it, both missiles striking the back of his chair, ‘Speak to me, dammit!' she had shrieked at him. ‘Curse me to hell if you like, but say something.'

‘I'll say good-night, I reckon,' he had told her, calmly brushing the splintered glass and the drops of brandy from his sleeve. ‘I'm expected at the Swan and I ought to change my jacket. Sleep well.' And he had left her.

I heard about her screaming rages; the slap he had once been seen to administer, not passionately, but merely to silence her; the night he had dragged her upstairs, pushed her through her bedroom door and locked it, remaining himself on the outside, his motive once again no passionate revenge—no passion at all—but simply to prevent her, at a late hour of the night, from taking Gervase to Galton. I heard of the night she had returned from Galton wet through, having driven herself in her brother's old curricle.

‘Nicky, I came—It occurred to me—in fact, I've come to say I'm sorry.'

‘And you've driven ten miles in the rain to tell me that?'

‘Yes.'

‘And you've left Gervase behind you at the Abbey?'

‘Oh—yes.'

‘Then how is he to get to school tomorrow? Isn't that the very thing you should be sorry about?'

I heard it all, and all of it, every word that was spoken, every word that was implied, hurt me. I had cared for Nicholas all my life. He had been my hero in childhood, the tremulous dream of my adolescence; as a woman I had loved him, I had committed myself to another man and would fulfil that commitment to the letter. But there was no magic ingredient in my marital fidelity, my maternity, to obliterate that caring. Most of the time I cared for him only at a submerged level. I did not burn for him, no longer thought of him in that way—managed, for periods of varying lengths, not to think of him at all. But I continued to care, to be concerned, to suffer acutely, at unguarded moments, from a surge of guilt against which I had no defence. I wanted to ask, ‘Am I entirely to blame for his bitterness, his stubbornness? And if so what can I do to mend it?' But, since Blaize was the only person I could have asked, and I was not certain I could cope with his answers, I kept silence.

Yet in other ways Blaize talked of Nicholas quite freely, enjoying the fast-accumulating tensions which he, from time to time, quite deliberately set himself to aggravate.

Nicholas had always been ambitious but now, with no one to restrict his management of the mills, his appetite for expansion became keener, his requirements more exacting. With Blaize so often away, he was the Barforth Cullingford knew best, the man who commanded instant attention when he entered the Piece Hall, the man his operatives looked out for in the mill yard, since he was known to be a hard master—as autocratic and shrewd as his father had been, not always quite so fair—and nothing went on at Lawcroft or Tarn Edge, at Low Cross, or the Law Valley Wool-combers, or at Sam Barker's dyeworks either, now that it was his own, that he wasn't aware of. He worked long days, long nights, taking the escape, perhaps, of many men who are not content at home, and the feats of endurance he performed himself he expected in others.

Joel Barforth, to ensure punctuality, had locked his factory gates at half-past five every morning, obliging the late-comers to stand outside, patiently or otherwise, until breakfast-time, considering this loss of three hours'earnings to be punishment enough. Nicholas Barforth continued to lock his operatives out, but, finding that the saving of three hours'pay did not compensate him for his loss of production, fined them as well, a practice which improved the time-keeping in his sheds but won him no popularity. Joel Barforth, to some extent, had been approachable, capable of exchanging a word or two with a familiar face in a loom-gate, capable, if reminded in advance, of offering congratulations and an appropriate ribaldry to an overlooker who was to be married. Nicholas Barforth was not concerned with personalities, only with efficiency, did not wish to be acquainted with the private lives of his operatives nor to recognize their faces. He came to his sheds for the sole purpose of work. He paid others to do the same. That was the extent of the relationship between them and he would tolerate no other. He understood the machines. He knew exactly what they could produce and exactly the time needed to produce it. And, if his targets were not met, his shed-managers would be warned no more than once that others were waiting to take their places. Yet, for those who could survive his demands, his tempers, his sarcasm, his refusal to accept any excuses, his apparent conviction that everybody enjoyed hard labour as much as he did, although he gave no praise, no thanks, his financial rewards were good. He wanted value for money, but when value was given he would pay, and it was a constant thorn in his side that the man he valued least was the only one he could not dismiss, and who made sure of paying himself most handsomely.

‘Brother Nick was in good form today—do you know, he's a year younger than me and I believe he looks ten years older. My poor mother. She'll have a miserable dinner-time with him tonight, for he'll plague her half to death about my Russian trip.'

‘Are you going to Russia, Blaize?'

‘Of course I'm going to Russia, darling—a week on Tuesday as it happens—and he'll growl, I imagine, until I'm back again. Poor mother, and poor Nicky too, because he tried so hard to stop me and couldn't manage it. We had the whole gala performance—my word, he could have been father, except that father
would
have stopped me, I suppose. And since we both knew that, and I said so in any case, it hardly improved his temper.'

‘Must
you provoke him, Blaize?'

‘Yes, I think I must. It makes him that much more anxious to get rid of me.

‘Can he get rid of you?'

‘He's not sure. He could buy me out, of course, but the cash for one half of Joel Barforth and Sons is too steep for any man I ever heard of. Even if he did find it, or came up with some scheme to pay me off over a number of years—to give me a good living and nothing to do for it—there's no guarantee I'd accept. The only thing he can do is to split the business—give me my share and send me on my way, if I'd agree to go. And he's tempted to ask me. Not that he likes the idea of parting with a fraction of the business, but then, if I'm really such an incompetent fool as he likes to thinks I'll make a mess of it, won't I, and might be glad to sell it back to him at a price he can afford. But—and it's quite a substantial but—he may be well known in Cullingford, but the only face the Remburgers and the Grassmanns know is mine, and it must have crossed his mind that if I leave I'll be likely to take my customers with me.'

‘Wouldn't it make your life a little harder, Blaize—if you split?'

‘You mean, wouldn't I have to go down to the sheds rather more, and stay at home a bit more often? So I would—but darling, don't join with my brother in underestimating me. I may not understand the machines but I do understand commerce. I can add and subtract and work out my percentages every bit as fast as Nicky.'

‘Then why don't you try to get on with him?'

‘Ah,' he said. ‘Yes. Why indeed? If you can give me a reason, darling, I'd be grateful, for I'm running out of mine.'

He left for Russia even earlier than he'd planned, giving me no exact idea of when I might expect to see him again. I knew I would hear no word from him unless there should be a little task he wished me to perform, or should take it into his head to have me meet him in London or in Paris, where, on arrival, I might discover from some casual comment that he had already spent a week in Berlin or in Rome, with no explanation as to why he had gone there. But, far more likely, I would be taking tea with Aunt Hannah one afternoon and she would say, ‘I understand from Mr. Agbrigg that the Russian trip was worthwhile after all.' And it would transpire that Blaize had arrived in Cullingford that very day, on the morning train, gone straight to the mill, eaten his luncheon with Mayor Agbrigg at the Old Swan or at Tarn Edge with his mother, and when I unpacked his treasure chests that night there would be something among the trinkets, the luxuries, the costly little toys for Blanche that could not possibly be Russian.

‘Good heavens!—I didn't realize they had such exquisite glass in Moscow.'

‘No, darling, they don't. It's Venetian.'

‘And how was Venice?'

‘Perfectly lovely. Gondolas floating in the moonlight just as one imagines it.'

And I couldn't suppose for a moment that he had floated in a moonlit gondola alone.

I took tea with Aunt Verity the day he left, finding some slight suggestion of tears about her, an unusual frailty that prompted me to ask her if she was unwell.

‘No—dear. Merely tired. To tell you the truth I have been indulging myself. My husband wrote me very few letters, since, we were rarely apart, but naturally the ones I did receive I have kept—quite curt little notes, some of them, reminding me to do this and that—not love letters at all. But, reading them just now, I could see him scribbling away with not a moment to spare, probably growling out instructions to somebody or other while he was doing it, And—well—I allowed myself to realize that I shall never stop missing him and that there is nothing I can do about it. I began to dwell on the finality, and to frighten myself with the idea that I couldn't cope—which is nonsense, of course, since one can cope with anything. But I was rescued from my misery—-before it had gone on
too
long—by Nicholas. He came up from the mill to make sure Gervase had gone to school—which unfortunately he had not—and he spent an hour with me.'

‘Is he well?'

‘No,' she said gently, ‘I am sure he is not. Oh—his health is good, of course. But I would not say he was well.'

‘I'm sorry.'

‘Yes. I believe he is in danger of becoming a very hard man and I shall regret that. People say my husband was hard, and so he was in many ways. But he had areas of great warmth. He loved me, and Caroline, and he loved the boys too—and would have made great sacrifices for any one of us. Nicholas is growing hard in quite another way—a very cold way, and I am afraid that quite soon all that will matter to him is the accumulation not so much of money as of the power it conveys. He tells me he will own the town and then the Valley, and I am ready to believe him. I can even understand it. I have lived all my life surrounded by ambitious men, and I have seen ruthlessness often enough before. I have even appreciated it on occasions, when there was a purpose to be served. But lately Nicholas has shown himself to be ruthless without cause, as if he took pleasure in it for its own sake—and he can do himself no lasting good.'

She paused, looked at me for a moment very reflectively, and then, shaking her head, she sighed.

‘I may as well tell you, Faith, since you will eventually hear it, and in fact it must be of great concern to Prudence. We all know that the Hobhouses have been struggling for a long time to keep their heads above water. Just as we all know that Nicholas has offered several times to buy them out—and has not increased his offer, I might add, after each refusal, but quite the reverse. Well—he has now done something which must surely sink them at last. Oh dear—I don't know if it is commercial practice or downright bullying or calculated fraud, but whatever one may call it I seem to be caught in the cross-fire and don't much like it. Some time ago Mr. Hobhouse was—as Mr. Hobhouse often is—quite desperately short of cash. His borrowing from Mr. Rawnsley's bank had reached its limits. Mr. Oldroyd of Fieldhead—his brother-in-law—is not famous for generosity, and in any case it has always been Hobhouse policy not to upset him, because of his will. Mr. Hobhouse looked around him and saw Nicholas, or Nicholas put himself in Mr. Hobhouse's way—I don't know—but what I do know is that when Nicholas advanced him the money he must have been well aware that it could never be repaid. Yes—yes—Mr. Hobhouse is very rash and much too hopeful, I know it. The tide, in his view, is always on the turn—that is his way—we all understand him. I suppose he was relying too much on your sister's dowry, and since he is kind-hearted himself he felt that Mr. Oldroyd, deep down, must be the same and wouldn't really abandon him with his back to the wall. Well—my son Nicholas is demanding his money. Mr. Hobhouse cannot pay. Mr. Oldroyd will not oblige. Mrs. Hobhouse came to me in tears, for she has a large family and is a woman I have known all my life. I spoke to Nicholas and I could not reach him. The law is on his side. He wants Nethercoats. He has found not only the way to get it, but the way to get it cheap. He didn't ask me to admire his cleverness. He simply shrugged his shoulders. It was not easy for me to hear Emma-Jane Hobhouse describe him as heartless and greedy—especially when there was no defence I could make. Yes—I could lend Mrs. Hobhouse the money to repay him. I could easily afford it, as she wasn't slow to point out. But to do that would be to damage my own relationship with Nicholas—and, whether he values that or not, it is about the only thing he has left.'