The Sleeping Sword (50 page)

‘I am being honest, grandmamma.'

‘You are asking for trouble, my girl. There is a mark, plain for all to see, where the ring has been. And since no one will take you for a spinster, one must assume the worst. Since you insist on travelling alone you will oblige me by not removing your gloves on the train.'

Blanche was appalled by my decision to remain in Cullingford.

‘Darling, are you entirely mad? They wouldn't know what to do with you. There's simply nowhere to
put
a divorced woman in Cullingford. You'd do far better to get that little house in London we talked about—and it won't be easy even there.'

But her mind, and Aunt Caroline's mind, the attention of most of the family was blessedly distracted from my affairs by the needs of Noel Chard, who, crippled by an assegai-thrust at the base of the spine, had seemed at first unlikely to walk again. He had been discovered by his brothers in exactly the fevered, squalid conditions Blanche had feared, plagued by flies and heat and overcrowding from which they had deftly extracted him, bringing back a yellow, hollow-cheeked man who could have been their father.

But the clean air of Listonby, the determination of Aunt Caroline, the devotion of Blanche, who was herself embarrassed by the extent of it, soon restored him. He would not walk again without a limp or a stick, would no longer spend whole days in the saddle, but he would remain now on the land where Blanche could keep an eye on him, enabling Dominic to go about his Parliamentary duties in peace. He would be at Listonby when Blanche was at Listonby, which would be rather more often from now on. He would come down to London when she needed him, or would suddenly appear at South Erin during those duty visits she found every year more tedious. He would be here to supervise her growing sons, to teach them to ride and shoot and know their manners, as Dominic had no time to do. He would be here to
talk
to her, to understand that there were days when she felt less beautiful—less cheerful—than others.

‘You see, Grace,' she told me, ‘or at least you
should
see how it is. If one can arrange one's affairs sensibly—if one can get what one wants without hurting others—then why not bend a little? Why be strictly honest and lose, when by just making it
look
right—It did Venetia no good, being honest, you know, and sometimes, Grace, I am quite afraid for you.'

I stayed at Fieldhead for a while, accustoming myself slowly to insolence, treading warily like an invalid after a long and weakening disease, until the averted heads and pinched lips of Cullingford's carriage trade no longer troubled me. I entered the draper's shop in Millergate to find myself suddenly invisible as Mrs. Rawnsley's glance passed straight through me. The first time it was painful, then awkward, quite soon it meant as much to me as she did, which was very little. I saw the timid Miss Fielding risk a trampling to death by carriage horses as she scuttled across the street to avoid me, and I stood in embarrassed perplexity, since I too had reason to cross over. The first time I remained on the opposite side of the street until she was out of sight, greatly to my own inconvenience. The third or the fourth time I strolled nonchalantly over to the shop I wanted, bade her a good morning, made my purchase and went away. I accepted Miss Mandelbaum's invitation to tea with surprise and gratitude, yet found her so jittery with nerves, so overwhelmed by her own daring and so fearful for her reputation that I did not go a second time. I returned Mrs. Sheldon's bow, made when her carriage was at a safe distance, in the knowledge that the distance would be maintained until her husband had calculated the number of votes he might lose by permitting his wife to acknowledge me against the loss of favour at Fieldhead. I endured a short, sharp lecture from Miss Tighe who, caring for no one's opinion but her own, marched up to me in broad daylight and made me aware that, although I might now choose to consider myself a single woman, she did not, and hoped I would make no attempt to claim the voting rights which might one day be granted to the truly unwed.

But it hurt me immeasurably to be cut dead by Mrs. Winch, the housekeeper from Tarn Edge, when I happened to meet her in Market Square, although the butler, Chillingworth, was not ashamed to raise his hat to me and stood one Sunday morning for fifteen minutes beside my victoria, regretting both my departure and Mrs. Winch's now all too evident incompetence.

She did her best, of course, he didn't doubt it, but Mr. Chard was difficult and Mr. Barforth gloomy. Ah no, the child would make no difference, for yesterday morning they had sent the little mite to Listonby to be brought up with her cousins, Sir Dominic's boys, which seemed an excellent idea to Chillingworth. The nursemaid, it seemed, had got above herself, the wet nurse had twice had to be changed, Mrs. Winch had declared herself unequal to the responsibility and Listonby, where the nurseries were well-staffed, well-organized, well-supervised by Mr. Chard's mother, the Duchess, appeared a good and permanent solution to one and all. Unless, of course, Mrs. Nicholas Barforth should take it into her head to leave Galton Abbey after all these years and return to her rightful home, a suggestion much favoured in the servants' hall, since Mr. Barforth had been spending a fair amount of time at Galton lately, he and his wife having lost both their children in a manner of speaking, the daughter in the graveyard and the son gone to the devil, for ought they knew, in Australia, begging my pardon. A fair basis for reconciliation, thought the servants'hall, although, between ourselves, Mrs. Winch was already looking for another situation, and if Mr. Chard continued to make those scathing remarks about his dinner, no one expected Mrs. Kincaid to last long either. As for Chillingworth himself, yes, he would very likely stay on until they pensioned him off, and in any case, although I was sorely missed, his work was easier now. No mistress meant no visitors and he need hardly stir from his pantry in the afternoons. Mr. Barforth was rarely seen, while Mr. Chard could always get himself upstairs to bed whatever state he might be in, not at all like Mr. Gervase.

My hands were shaking as I drove away, my parasol unsteady against my shoulder, images inflicting themselves like small wounds upon my memory; the tiny, elf-face of Claire Chard who was not really a Chard at all, the child I had not wished to touch because I had known how easily love for her could have detained me at Tarn Edge; and then Gervase, who had been very much my child, wending his uncertain way upstairs in the small hours of the morning, humorous and somehow gentle in drink, the sharp edges blurred from his vision. I didn't know what had happened to his son. No one would be likely to tell me and I could not ask. My own miscarriage came back to me, not the fear or the pain but the sense of failure, for there had been no sign of pregnancy since then and could be none now. I felt defeated, sterile, and then—to complete the agony—I began to remember Gideon.

But I was not always so feeble. It was spring again, an excellent time to make changes, and having examined the state of my finances and found them healthy, I shocked Cullingford further by quitting my father's house, where it was felt I might have had the good taste to languish, and purchased a home of my own in Blenheim Crescent, a short, curved terrace of houses designed for those who aspired to gentility but could not quite afford the greater elegance of Blenheim Lane.

It was a narrow building with a long front garden, a flight of shallow steps to a door with a fluted, many coloured fanlight somewhat too grand for its surroundings. The hall was narrow too, accommodating a thin staircase which led to two large bedrooms on the first floor, three small ones above. I had a drawing-rooom with a dining-parlour behind it on the ground floor, a square, dark kitchen behind that, more steps, very steep this time, leading to a stone-flagged yard which offered me a view of houses very much like my own.

‘Something of an ugly duckling, is it not?' Mrs. Agbrigg said, and so I set to work—badly needing employment—to create a swan. The dark and decidedly ugly kitchen was stripped of its bottle-green paintwork and repainted in cream and pale blue. I threw rugs in cheerful, possibly vulgar colours on the stone floor, placed a rocking-chair by the hearth, purchased a new stove, a brass fender, acquired a stray but rather disdainful cat. I took out the paltry little fireplace in the drawing-room and replaced it with cool, amber-veined marble, stood a porcelain clock in the centre of my mantelshelf, a Sèvres vase on either side. I hired a cook and a parlourmaid, a man to do the outside work and look after my carriage. I bought a carriage too, a brand-new, smart-as-paint victoria, although I allowed my father to provide the horses and see to their stabling.

I opened my first completely private and personal account at the bank, spending an hour with a considerably embarrassed Mr. Rawnsley, who, although well-versed in the financial requirements of widows and spinsters, had never been alone before with a divorcee.

I moved into my house, alone with three servants and a cat, closed my door, went to bed, got up the next morning, sat in my drawing-room, waited—saw the afternoon and the evening come on, ate my dinner, went back to bed—waited, between some hours of light sleep, for morning. Aunt Faith called, bringing flowers and reassurance, the promise that her house was always open to me and should I wish to accompany her to Venice next month I would be more than welcome.

There was a weekly letter from my Agbrigg grandmother urging me to find something useful to do, and from my Grandmamma Elinor in France offering me asylum there where ‘nobody would know'and hinting that, whatever I might have heard to the contrary, I would soon find another man to marry me.

Gervase's parents surprised me by coming to see me together, Mr. Barforth looking older, although perhaps he was not ageing so much as mellowing, Mrs. Barforth covering the many things we could not speak of by her talk of good weather and good harvests, sunshine and fresh spring pastures. But, before coming to me, they had been to the churchyard to take flowers to Venetia, and her memory inhabited the air around them.

‘If there's anything you want, Grace—' he said gruffly as they were leaving. ‘Anything I can get you?'

And when he had gone to fetch his hat, Mrs. Barforth pressed her cheek against mine and gave me what they both knew I most longed for.

‘Gervase is in Mexico, darling. Don't ask me why, for I thought it was to be Australia, but no, Mexico. Good heavens! how very
far
that sounds. But he says he is well. Diana is still in Nice but Compton Flood—Lord Sternmore—is to call and see her on his way home from India, and Julian is very hopeful. Dearest, may I come and see you again?'

She came, sometimes alone, sometimes bringing that gentle, nervous sheepdog with her to the disgust of my imperious tabby cat. Mr. Barforth came too, usually at tea-time when he would eat large but absent-minded helpings of sugary foods and drink several cups of strong tea, a sure indication, I thought, that Tarn Edge no longer provided fruit cakes and gingerbread, no longer served scones hot from the oven and muffins freshly toasted and rich with syrup; an even surer indication that he was lonely.

My father came every day on some pretext or other, but these family visits occupied a mere fraction of my time and I could see no way of filling the rest. Cullingford society was closed to me and I did not care enough about it to attempt a breach in its ranks. Only one woman among my new neighbours would speak to me, for the very good reason that her husband was employed by my father at Fieldhead. I had expected all this and had prepared for it, yet now, when the decisions had been taken and the struggle was over, when each day opened out before me with nothing to distinguish it from the next, I was bound to ask myself, as Blanche had done: ‘What is it all
for
?'

What I required was work and there was none available. I had decorated and furnished my house and did not mean to spend my life obsessed with the need to be constantly changing my wallpaper for lack of better employment. Yet what else was there? Such few public appointments available to women specified, above all, that the women must be of good character, and I had lost my character altogether. I could not open a school, since no right-minded parent would entrust me with the instruction of the young. I could not sit on a school board nor on the administrative committee of the workhouse as Miss Tighe did. Indeed, I could not sit on any committee, charitable or otherwise, since no respectable woman would be willing to serve with me. I had no musical talent like Miss Mandelbaum, no interrupted artistic career like Mrs. Sheldon's which I could take up again, no particular religious faith like Miss Fielding's to which I could devote my time and ingenuity. What had it all been for?'

I began to lose energy, to wonder about joining Aunt Faith in Venice, travelling as widely as I could and coming home just often enough to keep the promise I had made through Mrs. Agbrigg to my father. Running away, in fact, and it was Liam Adair who rescued me from my gloom, taking my house by storm one bright, windy morning, a dozen copies of the
Cullingford Star
under one arm, a bottle of champagne under the other, an enormous bouquet of white and purple lilac which he flung down on the hall table with his hat.

‘Well, now—if you can bear a visit from a gentleman of the Press after what some of my colleagues did to you. But you must admit that both the
Star
and Eustace Roundwood's
Courier & Review
left you alone—me because I love you dearly and Roundwood because he can't afford the wrong side of your father.'

And seeing the sharp, interested eyes of my maid as she closed the door behind him—for a man with flowers and wine and pretty speeches at ten o'clock in the morning was the kind of thing she had been hoping to see when she entered my service—I laughed, let him kiss my cheek, and invited him inside.

‘Champagne, Liam—at this hour of the day?'

‘Why not? When one visits an unusual woman one hardly expects to be fobbed off with tea. Miss Mandelbaum and Miss Tighe give me plenty of that.'