Sons of Fortune (51 page)

For most of that walk his thoughts dwelled joyfully on the positive aspects of his future with this paragon of a wife. They would build a large house somewhere, in the Midlands probably—about a hundred rooms—with its own chapel and chaplain, and, with his help, they would try to walk with God in everything. Theirs would be the perfect village. Poverty would be unknown there. So would every kind of indulgence and excess. It would become a centre of Christian temperance and vigour. A beacon—a pharos, in Brockman’s sense—in an increasingly ugly and materialistic world. Linny and their daughters would daily visit the poor and needy, the sick and disabled, with nourishing baskets of food and words of cheer. The hale and fit would all be found work about the estate or, farther afield, in Stevenson’s. Above all, their own frugal, pious, and industrious example would percolate down to all their tenants and servants, making one hive of industry, sobriety, and happiness. He was sure that he, with Linny at his side, would represent a new and more noble kind of master and landlord, one who stood at the very opposite pole from the drunken, dissolute, swashbuckling squire of barbarous Georgian days.

He could not wait to begin. He saw himself having very little to do with Stevenson’s. It was one of the largest undertakings in the country and could hardly grow larger now; certainly he had no ambitions to see it get any bigger. In short, it could more or less run along of its own momentum, with an occasional prod from a general manager. This test of his father’s was just a way of showing everybody how well he could manage if he had to.

The contract up in the Lake District had him more worried than his courtship of Miss Sherringham. Time and again he had asked his father to spell out the most basic rules about managing a contract of that size, and all his father could say was things like: “Keep an ear to the ground. Listen for grumbles among the men—especially between the different trades.” That was all very well, but it didn’t tell you what to do. All his father could say there was, “Use your Stevenson instinct!”

Another thing his father said was: “Keep a close eye on all your costs. Do anything to avoid going over your allowance.” But in the next breath he’d say: “Never fear to spend boldly to avoid a disaster.” Well, where did that leave you! In fact, the guvnor was very fond of contradictory advice. He’d say: “In thirty years of railway building we’ve met and solved every problem. Never fear to ask the main office for advice; and never fear to listen to the man with the shovel. There’s more native sense in a navvy camp than in ten books on engineering.” But he would also tell Boy to use his own initiative and not go crying to head office at every turn—and also to learn to sort out the chatterbox workman, “all gas and gob,” from the true tradesman.

In short, all he had to do was be a parsimonious bold-spender, who heeded the advice of navvies that he sent away with a flea in their ears and, when he was in real trouble, to use an instinct he had not yet proved himself to possess.

His mind shied away from such difficulties and focused again on the far more alluring prospect of a spiritual union with Linny Sherringham.

In these snows they hunted more for a good ride than in the hope of a kill. Most people, once they had winded one good hunter, retired, glad of the exercise, but already looking forward to the hot punch, the mulled ale, the spiced frumenty that awaited their return.

All the Stevenson children joined the hunt that afternoon of Boy’s and Caspar’s return; even baby Sefton, just two and a half years old, was sat upon a little Shetland pony and allowed to watch them away from one draw. But by half past three, with evening falling quickly and no prospect of a good chase, the hunt broke up and they all came home—a grand sight, Nora thought, as she watched them trotting down the long drive, all in their pink and black against the driven white of the snow.

Clement, who was supposed to have squired Abigail over the jumps, was annoyed that she had always sneaked ahead of him in the last few yards—most dangerously—and taken the fence before him. All the way down the drive he kept trying to cut in on her, sharply enough to make her horse shy up. But his horse and hers were such friends that they simply arched their necks and leaned inward, head upon head, in a most loving way. Abigail, knowing full well what Clement was at, kept saying it looked so pretty and how kind of Clement, thereby adding to his fury. Abigail, a world expert at fury herself, affected not to notice.

Hester and Mather tried to get their ponies to walk in perfect step with each other; but the only aids they had to mark out the timing of the pace—hands, heels and voice—carried quite different connotations to their mounts, who, accordingly, halted, trotted, shouldered in, piaffed, and tossed their heads in growing confusion and alarm.

At last Mather’s pony, near to home and tired of this muddle of commands, took the bit in its jaws and bolted. Boy and Winifred had to gallop up, one on each side, and seize a rein apiece to pull it to a halt. It was a display of concerted horsemanship of which Nora felt proud, though she would have a sharp word to say to young master Mather.

When they had dismounted and were walking back across the yard Winifred suddenly remembered something. “Oh, Steamer,” she called, “come and see what you think of Diana’s left fore. I think the shoe has spread.”

For form’s sake she lifted the hoof and for form’s sake Caspar looked at it. “We’ve got to talk,” she murmured.

He looked around. “Up in the hayloft.”

They took a lantern up. Caspar sprawled across some bales. Winifred was too restless to sit.

“Caroline Sherringham will be here in an hour or two,” she said.

“There’s nothing we can do about it.”

Still Winifred paced about, saying nothing.

“You might think more clearly if you sat down,” he told her.

She obeyed, with a reluctant sigh. “D’you think she’s right for him?” she asked.

“I hardly know her. She just seems a nice, ordinary, rather plain young girl.”

“Hah!”

“Am I wrong?”

“You ought to take more interest in people, Steamer. You only show an interest if you think they’ll be some help to you. Or threat.”

“Even that’s hard enough.”

“Yes—well, you see the disadvantage now. Linny Sherringham is a very real threat. And you know nothing about her. Nice! Ordinary!”

“Ah! Then you enlighten me.”

She looked angrily at him. “Damn you!” she said.

“Why so?” Her outburst startled him, made him sit up.

She stood again and went to adjust the lamp wick. “There are some things one hardly discusses about…people. Especially girls.” She was shivering with nervousness. “Of our class…you know.”

He was now as embarrassed as she. “You mean…Linny is…”

She clenched her fists and turned to him, squaring up. “Let’s not pretend, shall we? I’ve taught a term in a girls’ school of the highest class. It would be crass to pretend.”

“Pretend what?” He did not want her to say it.

“Oh, Steamer!” She stamped a foot. “We all know that people are supposed to be one thing when they are really another. I mean, Boy acts like a saint in grade-one marble. That’s his public face. But he may in reality be the most terrible old reprobate.”

“Not him!” Caspar said heavily.

“Are you sure?” She seemed a little disappointed. “Do you know him so well as to be absolutely sure?”

“Believe me.”

She slumped. “Oh dear!”

“Why?”

“You see the difficulty, Steamer. I mean, you’re a very different character, different sense of humour, and so on. But on that subject, that particular subject…you do know what we are talking about, don’t you?”

He blushed and nodded.

“On
that
subject, Steamer, you seem the same as Boy. And so do Nick and Father—and all the men one meets. Yet it can’t be, can it.”

“Can’t it?”

She sighed, knowing how hard it was going to be to make Caspar forthcoming—yet how important it was, too. “I’ll put it the other way: How do girls seem to you?”

He coughed once. “Attractive?”

“Caspar!”

When she used his real name she was angry.

He grew angry then, too. What right had she to force him into this most distasteful conversation? But, if she insisted, he’d show her. “We are taught,” he said, “that the sexual passions of girls of good class…that
is
what we are talking about, isn’t it, Winnie? Sex?”

“Yes.”
In the gloom of the single lantern he could not read her face.

“Say it.”

“Sex,” she said. There was no tremble in her voice.

“We are taught that their—you know—passions are not awakened until they marry. And even then…” He was so hot and embarrassed that he had to pause. “Why on earth are we discussing this?”

“And even then,” she finished it for him, “it needs a considerate and understanding husband to quicken it?”

“Something like that.”

She sat down, deflated, on the haybales facing him. “Oh, Steamer. How did we get into such confusion?”

“You started it.”

“Not us, silly. People in general. Society.”

“Confusion?”

“Well! Are all you men the way you behave toward us? You say Boy is a saint. Are you? Is Father? Is Nick? Is his father?”

Caspar shrank into himself, like a trapped animal. “Why should I answer?” he asked.

“Because we should know the truth. Because it’s important—especially now.”

At last her meaning—the particular point she was trying to make—penetrated that thick crust of protective idealization. “You mean…Linny is prone to…”

“I mean Linny. I mean me. I mean nine out of ten of the girls I teach. I mean if you truly think our passions are hidden even from ourselves until considerate and understanding people like you give us a new name, you are living in a world of delusion.”

He sat dead still, bolt upright, looking at her, trying to assimilate this new information.

“Steamer,” she said, made uncomfortable by his silence and his fixed stare, “do you really mean that you thought it was any different? You? So worldly wise?”

“All right.” He nodded firmly. “I accept it. I accept the fact of it—and your rebuke. I’d still like to know how you know it of Linny Sherringham.”

“Because of what she still thinks I didn’t see her doing with Nick when we played hide-and-go-crush at Palace Gate last Christmas.”

Caspar gave an involuntary laugh. “Well! With
Nick
!”
Then he saw how agitated she had become and he stopped. “I’m sorry,” he stammered. “I thought that was all over with. I mean, I thought it was nothing anyway.”

She shook her head; he fancied he saw tears filling her eyes.

“You see?” she said quietly. “He has never ventured the faintest impropriety with me. And yet—three seconds in that cupboard with Linny and…”

“But then he can have no respect for her. And he must have enormous respect for you.”

“Why d’you say it like that? Is he such a reprobate?”

“He…has his moments.”

“I suppose she made him do it, really. She took his hand and placed it…here.” She touched her breast. “I saw that.”

“Why on earth are we talking about all this, Winnie? Is there any point?”

She beseeched the ceiling for strength. “With Linny practically on our doorstep? About to be thrown to Boy? Linny, who will probably behave the way men are supposed to behave—and Boy, who (if you’re right) will behave the way we women are supposed to? The irresistible force of Linny and the immovable object of Boy? Is there any
point
?”

Caspar laughed; all tension had gone, now. “I suppose so.”

“I must say, though, that was not my fear when I raised the topic. I was…”

“What topic was that, Winnie?” he teased.

“Sex,” she said firmly and deliberately.

This time he laughed.

“My fear,” she went on, “was that the irresistible force would meet the irresistible object. You’d better be right about Boy or a lot of sour hopes will be dashed.”

“We’d better go,” he said.

She took his arm as they crossed the dark stable yard.

“Winnie,” he said. “About you and Nick—would it help at all if I dropped a hint? I’d be very tactful.”

She squeezed his elbow. “Bless you, Steamer, I know you would—but, no, thanks.”

“Don’t you…wouldn’t you like to marry him?”

“Of course I would.” He heard the strain in her voice. “But I told you, years ago. I want to teach. I want to do something about the deplorable state of female education in this country. And I could not do it as a married woman. It is not Nick I reject. Nor male companionship. It is the state of marriage. I want to possess my own school. How could I do that if it became my husband’s property and all its income was really his? I could not expose it to such danger. I have to sacrifice something. So it had better be…all that.”

Caspar laughed and shook his head. “One term at Cheltenham and you want your own school!”

They were inside the big house now, approaching the grand staircase—grand only because, in 1812, the owner of Maran Hill had commissioned one of England’s greatest architects, Sir John Soane, to remodel the house. Soane, with his exquisite taste, had fitted what looked like a great sweeping stair into what was really quite a small well in the heart of the house. Despite that, it was easy going and Caspar and Winifred swept up without slackening their pace.

“Miss Beale is so wrong,” Winifred said.

“Of course!”

“No, I’m serious, Steamer—though I know you’ll side with her. She is set against any form of competitiveness. We have no examinations. No top or bottom of the class—or middle. No competitive sports. We play no other schools. Everything is co-operation. All help each other. Community spirit!”

Caspar looked at her open-mouthed. “Why on earth should I agree with that! It’s the very opposite of what I think education should be.”

Winifred sprang the trap. “For
girls
,
Steamer?”

“Ah…yes, I see.”

“She says that a girl’s nervous constitution is too delicate to face competitive examinations And in any case, since her girls may always look to the protection of a man—a husband, a father, a brother—their roles will always be domestic. Their natures must be trained to be co-operative, subordinate, uncompetitive, submissive.”

They had reached the door of his bedroom; hers was at the other end of the passage.

“There’s a lot in that,” he said.

“I knew you’d agree,” she sneered. “But that’s why I want to start my own school. On quite different lines.”

“But you can’t answer her argument.”

She shook her head pityingly. “I suppose,” she said, “if it were the law—and the universal custom—that all bed knobs were to be painted red, you’re the sort of person who would conclude that bed knobs were inherently red.”

“I thought we’d left that topic behind,” he said.

At first she did not understand. Then she saw it and gave him a withering look. “Sometimes, Caspar,” she said as she walked off down the passage, “you are not grown-up at all.”

He laughed. All the same, he thought as he went in to dress for dinner, it was an odd image for her to choose, especially after all that insistence that girls’ minds weren’t so very different from boys’ minds.