The Sleeping Sword (68 page)

Face to face with Gideon I had felt no pain. I felt it now, accepted it, allowed it to run its course, took hold of it when it became manageable, parcelled and tied it and stored it away. I felt the cold again, a damp icy blast reminding me that women who live alone with only indifferent servants to care for them cannot afford to fall ill.

‘Home now, Richards.' And throughout the journey I thought carefully and deeply about the
Star
and Liam.

He came to see me quite late that evening, freshly shaved and presentable despite the odour of whisky and tobacco he brought with him.

‘Have you dined?'

‘I seem to remember that I have.'

‘Then it was probably a long time ago and more likely to have been liquid than solid.'

I ordered him a supper tray, cold beef and pickles, custard tarts, a great deal of sweet tea which he accepted with a grin.

‘What's this? A good meal for a condemned man?'

‘You'll survive.'

‘I'm honestly beginning to doubt it.'

‘I shouldn't if I were you. You're far too old to go back to sheep-shearing in Australia.'

He ate his supper, asked for more tea, finished his second pot and then smiled across at me, tired—bone-weary by the look of him—but determined, somehow or other, to live up to his reputation as a carefree, come-day-go-day Liam Adair.

‘Do you want to tell me where you went to this afternoon, Grace?'

‘No, since you obviously know. Did you get very drunk?'

‘It sufficed. Listen, Grace—it's not the money. I can lay hands on enough to settle the damages bill—my grand relatives won't want to see me in court for debt. But—well, as far as the rest of it goes, I reckon this has taken the heart out of me.'

‘Nonsense. You mean you've lost your nerve. Gideon Chard said you would.'

‘Now, Grace—'

‘Yes, Liam,
you
declared this war on Gideon and we both know why. You were wrong and we know that too. I think you'd have been glad to put a stop to it a long time ago, if you could. You couldn't. So now you'll just have to put up with the consequences. He's beaten you because he has more money than you. He didn't get Mulvaney to smash your machines. He'd have had much more fun starving you out. You know you can't fight money, Liam—nobody can—unless you've got money to do it with.'

‘So I'm a damned fool—I'll be the first to admit it.'

‘And I'll be the second. But I can forgive you that. What I don't want to do is lose the
Star
. It's worth more than your feud with Gideon Chard—to me and to plenty of others. So you'll just have to get back on your feet and build it up again.'

He sat for a while looking down and then slowly—heavily for him—shook his head.

‘I know what you're leading up to and it's no good. I'll not borrow money from you, Grace.'

‘I'm not about to lend. But I might invest.'

‘In me? I couldn't advise it.'

‘No, not in you. In myself and you together.'

He frowned, started to say something; but the time had come for me to be businesslike—brusque if necessary—and I quelled his objections with a gesture I copied exactly from Gideon.

‘I've given it a great deal of thought, Liam, and this is what I propose. I am not the wealthiest woman of your acquaintance, but I have some capital and a fairly decent allowance. Put another way, I have a great deal more than it would take to get the
Star
in production again—unless, of course, you object to an equal partnership with a woman?'

‘Not if I had anything to contribute.'

‘Oh, for heaven's sake! Liam, why must you be so feeble? You know quite well that it can't be done without you. The
Star
was nothing when you took it over. All money could have done then would have been to make it another
Courier & Review
. But you put your signature on it and made it something—not perfect, of course, but perfection is hardly human, after all, and whatever else the
Star
lacks it does have humanity. Do you want to lose it?'

‘No, Grace—by God, I don't!'

‘Very well. We have established what you want. What I want is to earn my living—really earn it. I can't do it without risk, and I can't do it if I remain an employee. My money and your expertise might serve us both. But I warn you, if you take me as your partner I will
be
a partner. I will do my share of the work and take my share of the responsibility—that goes without saying; but I will make my share of the decisions, too. If I take the risk, then I am entitled to the authority. What do you think?'

‘I think you are a fine and lovely lady, Grace Barforth.'

‘I daresay. But do we have a bargain?'

His hand reached out and took my arm just below the elbow in a hard, unsteady grip, his emotion very evident and very burdensome to him, weighing heavily on his tongue.

‘I believe we do.'

And it was a bargain I did not intend to regret, the final seal on my liberty and which had the additional merit of convincing anyone who wished—or needed—to think ill of me that I
was
, indeed and almost in broad daylight, the mistress of Liam Adair.

New premises became quickly available once it had been established that we could pay the rent, and having selected a square, solid three-storey building at the top end of Sheepgate, I saw no reason to disabuse the landlord of his notion that we had the power of Fieldhead Mills behind us. ‘Our partnership became a legal reality amidst the disapproval of my father's lawyers, who also believed him to be supporting yet another expensive and decidedly improper whim of his wayward daughter. Liam saw to the installation of the new presses. I equipped and furnished the offices with the meticulous attention I had once bestowed on the kitchens and larders of Tarn Edge. We interviewed staff, took decisions, not always with immediate agreement on our policies, and it became quickly apparent that Liam was the true journalist, the investigator, the innovator, the schemer, while I was the organizer of his creativity, the co-ordinator of his efforts and the efforts of our employees, the woman of business. I was harder than Liam and found it easier to refuse, to dismiss, to discard excuses. But it was his personality, his flair which moulded the
Star
, and each one of us recognizing the contribution of the other, we worked well together.

I set out at once to win back our advertisers and to pursue others, with a fair degree of success. I sought to increase our circulation by broadening the appeal of what we had to offer, delegating, each morning, our town's humdrum social and cultural events to young reporters who, however bored they may have been by Temperance Meetings and Philosophical Societies soon learned the folly of neglecting my requirements. I invited our readers' opinions on the issues of the day and printed them with the signatures prominently displayed, recognizing any controversy, from the annexation of the Transvaal to the correct preparation of a suet pudding, as the stuff of which our profits were made. And, with my mind on suet puddings one day and the amazing ignorance of even basic cookery I had often encountered in the streets around Low Cross, I organized a group of sensible, thrifty women to supply me with cheap and simple recipes which could be prepared at the open fire and the narrow coal-oven of a small kitchen range.

I went on to include as a regular feature the daily happenings of an imaginary Gower Street family, a vehicle for general sanitary precautions and the recognition of the symptoms of various children's ailments which I put together with the help of Patrick Stone. And for readers of a different order I supplied such details of the London and Paris fashions as were passed on to me by Blanche; discovered herbal ‘remedies'for beautifying the hair and the skin which need not be called by that disreputable word ‘cosmetics'; suggested dinner-party menus that were within the reach of any young married couple with five hundred pounds a year, a maid of all work and a cook, and, to whet the appetite and stimulate the ambitions of such couples, some other menus which would have required a fully staffed kitchen and the expertise of Gideon Chard's French chef.

We followed the progress of Gladstone's new Liberal Government very carefully, assuming that the Conservative influence on the Queen had been lessened by the death of Disraeli almost a year ago, that colourful gentlemen having refused a visit from his grieving monarch as he lay dying because he thought she would be all too likely to ask him to take a message to her departed husband, Prince Albert. We applauded Gladstone's bill to allow Dissenters to bury their dead in parish churchyards, and supported his move to abolish punishment by flogging in the Army, although, of course, no one suggested that this leniency should be extended to our public schools. There had been trouble in the Transvaal, where the Boers, whose territory had been added to the sum total of the British Empire by Disraeli in the face of strong Liberal opposition, rather thought that Gladstone might give it back again, his failure to do so resulting in the slaughter of British soldiers at Majuba Hill. There was trouble brewing in Egypt, where a certain Colonel Arabi seemed intent on spreading the notion that Egypt should belong only to Egyptians, thus threatening our prized passage to India. There was, as always, trouble and tragedy, murder and bitter misunderstanding in Ireland, culminating in the imprisonment of the Irish leader Parnell and in the stabbing to death of the Irish Secretary, Lord Frederick Cavendish and his Under-Secretary, Mr. Frederick Burke, in Dublin's Phoenix Park.

In March that year an attempt was made to assassinate Queen Victoria—the seventh, so far, since her coronation—when a Mr. Roderick McLean, known to be but half-witted, took a shot at her carriage as it stood outside Windsor Station, and was instantly set upon and overpowered by two schoolboys from Eton; Her Majesty faring much better than the Tsar of Russia, who had been virtually blown to pieces by a bomb the year before, leaving as his successor his son Alexander III, who was the brother-in-law of the Prince of Wales.

There was a royal wedding, the Queen's haemophiliac son Prince Leopold marrying Princess Helen of Waldeck and being created Duke of Albany for the occasion, although his mother continued to call him ‘Prince Leopold', since in her imperial opinion ‘
anyone
' could be a duke.

In Cullingford, trade remained stable; those who set themselves out to make profits usually made them, and those who did not were considered to be unenterprising rather than unfortunate. The wool merchant, Mr Jacob Mandelbaum, went into retirement, handing his business over to his son and setting off, in the company of his sister, Miss Rebecca Mandelbaum, on a series of extensive foreign travels. Miss Tighe became an active member of the Temperance Society and acquired a paid companion and a pedigree cat. The Cullingford Bicycle Club and the Cullingford Photographic Society were formed, the names of their founder members recorded for posterity in the
Star
. The new mill at Low Cross was completed that summer, a splendid six-storey building five hundred feet long and seventy-five feet high, covering fourteen acres of what had once been Simon Street and Saint Street, and in which four thousand people would produce an estimated thirty thousand yards of cloth each day. The main weaving-shed was over eight thousand square yards and would hold over a thousand looms. There was a reservoir with a capacity of five hundred thousand gallons of rain-water, every drop of which would be needed for the scouring of Low Cross wool. The opening celebrations would include a banquet at which, among other delicacies, a baron of beef weighing two hundred and fifty pounds and eighty hindquarters would be served to the upper two thousand or so Barforth employees, the Lord-Lieutenant of the West Riding, our Mayor and Corporation, members of Parliament and magistrates, the Duke and Duchess of South Erin, the board of directors of Nicholas Barforth and Company Limited and their wives and families, and such other guests as those directors chose to invite.

And if this was not enough—and for my part I thought it was more than enough—it was suggested by no less a person than Lady Verity Barforth herself that as a further tribute to the memory of her husband, Sir Joel, the banquet be followed by a general exodus of upper and middle Barforth management to Scarborough, where they and their wives might be offered a day at the sea and a night at the Grand Hotel.

‘The dear old lady is trying to patch things up between her sons,' Camille told me, having arrived somewhat unexpectedly at my door while Mr. Barforth went on to Low Cross to confer with Gideon. ‘The idea is for Blaize and Faith to come too, and certainly Nicholas has no objections to it. Indeed, I shall be glad of Faith, for she has been very sweet to me, and if I am to contend with the South Erins and the Chards
and
the Madeley-Browns, I shall need every friend I can get. Would you prefer to stay with us, Grace, or with your Grandmother Agbrigg?'

‘Camille, I shall not be there at all.'

‘Ah well,' she said, ‘that is what you think, and no doubt what you intend, but you will give in, my dear, there is no doubt about it, for Nicholas, who is chairman of the company, and Gervase, who is still a director, are both determined to have you.'

‘I daresay, but—'

‘But nothing, darling, for there is too much against you. Lady Verity has expressed a wish to have
all
her family about her, and since she is old and getting rather frail one can hardly refuse her that. She wants Nicholas and Blaize and Faith and, very kindly, she also wants me. She wants Caroline and her duke; Grandmamma Elinor is coming from France; your Grandmother Agbrigg is already here. I daresay she would also like to have Georgiana and I should not mind—except that it would probably kill Caroline. And of the younger generation there is to be Blanche, Gervase, Noel—and Grace.'

‘And Gideon.'

‘Ah yes, but one can hardly think of him as part of the younger generation, since he is organizing the whole proceedings with what Nicholas calls a typical fit of Chard grandeur. There is to be a special train, a dinner and a ball on the Saturday night, heaven alone knows what else, and you cannot abandon me to the tender mercies of Duchess Caroline, who would certainly like to murder me. Oh yes, she would, for Nicholas has issued warning that unless
everyone
is very kind to me he will very likely cancel the whole celebration and evict Gideon from Tarn Edge. Now Grace, you cannot leave me to face Duchess Caroline alone after that.'