Until the Colours Fade (11 page)

‘A man of principle,’ murmured Magnus, with what Tom thought was a sneer. He felt angry and humiliated.

‘I took
you
for that,’ he replied warmly; derision and
disappointment
in his voice.

From a nearby court came the yowling of fighting cats; Magnus said nothing but stared down at the damp paving stones. He was confused and worried; he believed he had been mistaken about the man, but something still disturbed him. He felt angry with him, and yet he was so mild and gentle. Strickland had stung his pride.

‘If people are being bribed and threatened, what am I
supposed
to be able to do? I have no mysterious power to prevent such abuses. I have no money beyond twice that which I was
foolish
enough to risk tonight, no friends here … nothing, do you understand?’

Strickland surprised him by smiling at this.

‘You won a great deal tonight. A fortune to me.’

‘I see, and a few hundreds give me power, do they?’ He laughed bitterly. ‘To do what?’

Tom said, almost without thinking, for George had talked about the paper earlier that day:

‘A few hundreds could buy the
Independent.’

‘Buy a newspaper? Me? You’re raving.’

‘George sued for….’

‘Yes, yes,’ cut in Magnus impatiently, ‘and the editor can’t pay the fine. I’ve heard all that.’

‘But
you
could,’ whispered Tom, his eyes suddenly glowing with excitement.

‘You mean pay the fine?’ Tom nodded. ‘And make George Braithwaite howl like a stuck pig. There are cheaper ways of
annoying
him, surely?’

‘But don’t you see?’ laughed Tom, ‘It’s absurd, ridiculous, almost the first thing that entered my head when you asked what you could do with your money … I thought it ridiculous too; just as you did; but if the rumours are true, you could print them. Would that be nothing?’

The breathless rapidity and feverish enthusiasm, with which Strickland had spoken, convinced Magnus that the idea had indeed just occurred to him; and seeing the young man’s earnest and expectant face, willing him to agree, Magnus could not help being infected by the same mood; but he showed none of this as he said with studied weariness:

‘Do you want me to be sued as well, and ruined?’

Strickland looked momentarily downcast, but then he
brightened
.

‘Old Braithwaite wouldn’t risk appearing in court to deny
allegations
of corruption just before the election. Well, would he?’

‘Why should he bother? The
Rigton
Independent
is not
The
Times,
I believe.’

‘Of course not, but only one man in six has the vote here; the paper could provide for most of them surely?’

Having never so much as given a thought to these matters until a moment previously, Tom was amazed to have managed
impromptu answers to Crawford’s objections, and his success added fuel to his conviction that the idea was workable. When, therefore, Crawford looked at him with quizzical amusement, Tom was puzzled and irritated.

‘You’re a strange man, Mr Strickland; a mouse one day, a lion the next. I wonder what the future will bring.’ He rattled the coins in his pockets and let out a low chuckle. ‘Of course your suggestion is laughable.’

‘I think the Braithwaites might find it less amusing,’ replied Tom angrily.

‘Ah, but I have a sense of humour and they don’t.’ Magnus laughed again and straightened his hat. Unable to understand his sudden high spirits, Tom lowered his eyes and feigned
indifference
. ‘No, please, forgive me,’ murmured Magnus, his eyes still sparkling with good humour. ‘I’m grateful for your warning, but you ought to go. I wouldn’t like to delay George tonight if I were you. Losers at hazard are rarely sweet-tempered … I ought to thank you for betting on my throws. When we meet again I’ll be more serious. Tonight I can’t think at all.’ He caught Tom’s look of incomprehension and smiled. ‘We will meet again, you can be sure of that. I find your company most congenial.’ He shook his head and laughed again. ‘A wicked idea … quite wicked. To buy the paper he sued with the money I’ve taken out of his pockets. Really you look so nice too, Mr Strickland.’ He thrust out his hand. ‘Well, good night.’

Moments later, Crawford’s footsteps were dying away as he headed for Cockpit Steps. With hunched shoulders and his hands thrust deep in his coat, Tom retraced his steps to Bentley’s;
finding
George gone, Tom set out for the inn where they had left the brougham.

*

In the yard of the Green Dragon, Braithwaite kicked over buckets and cursed the ostlers for their stupidity. When shutters were thrown open in the gallery above, and guests in nightshirts came out onto the balcony to complain about the noise, he roared back abuse. He prodded the head groom with his cane and shouted:

‘Where the hell else would he be if he ain’t at the
Bull
?’

‘Would this be the gen’lman?’ called out the boots as Tom walked in under the arch.

‘Looked for you up and down the place, Strickland. Where the devil have you been?’

‘Walking here.’

‘Thought I’d left you, I suppose?’

‘It crossed my mind.’

George flung open the door of the brougham and Tom climbed in.

‘Nobody walks anywhere in this town at night, unless they’re mad or drunk or both. You should have followed me. Damned artists are all fools.’

The carriage jerked forward and in a moment the noise of the horses’ hoofs rang out under the archway. George was breathing heavily and every now and then he cursed out loud. He took several gulps from a flask and then beat on the roof to exhort the coachman to drive faster. The brougham swayed and lurched as the iron-edged wheels ground into ruts and pot-holes and sliced through heavy mud on the road.

Tom sat silently in his corner holding onto the hand-strap beside the window. He was used to being insulted by George and took it philosophically. To Braithwaite it was quite
incomprehensible
that anybody should choose to earn his living in a field where talent and luck decreed whether he succeeded or failed. Money and influence were far more reliable bases on which to proceed. If George were to praise a picture as ‘clever’, he meant no more than appreciation of a detail or a choice of subject; rather as though a critic were to applaud a book for its binding. To be patronised by both George and Crawford on the same night was insufferable. His anger temporarily made him forget his winnings, but when he remembered Tom smiled to himself. After Joseph’s portrait was finished, he really would be free to go; and then the Goodchilds, Braithwaites and Crawfords could play whatever game they chose without him.

He glanced at George with secret satisfaction and then caught his breath. The man’s face was wet with tears.

Lord Goodchild, dressed in his favourite baggy green shooting jacket and stained moleskins, led the way through a narrow cattle-gap into a boggy gorse-brown pasture. Trudging behind him, strung out in line, came his son, Humphrey, his head
gamekeeper
and an under-keeper, both weighed down with guns, powder horns and shot pouches; his lordship’s valet brought up the rear, carrying a hamper containing chicken sandwiches, seltzer water, East India sherry and a large flask of brandy.

Just as two weeks before, thoughts of his wife had spoiled Goodchild’s anticipation of the hunt, today Helen’s shadow loomed darker still over his sporting enjoyment. He had recently returned from Manchester, where he had been stunned to be refused admission by Dr Carstairs, who had told him bluntly, with no reason given, that in future he would not be welcome. The following day at Hanley Park, Goodchild had not only heard from his head coachman that her ladyship had been to Manchester, but had also been informed by his steward that Lady Goodchild had asked for details about certain payments. After these revelations, Carstairs’ behaviour had no longer seemed inexplicable. Murderously angry though he had been, Goodchild had nevertheless controlled himself, and since that day had done his utmost to avoid being alone with Helen, using his regimental duties as an excuse for prolonged absence. If she was bent on forcing him to a separation or on compelling him to renounce his mistress, Goodchild knew that he would better be able to resist her if he could avoid a decisive confrontation before the election. Today he had only risked returning home for some shooting with Humphrey, because he was alarmed that, unless he spent some time with his son, he might lose the boy’s affection entirely after the inevitable rift with his mother.

The ground they were walking across was heavy and clinging, and Goodchild’s new boots felt stiff and not fully broken in, although they had been worn a week by his manservant. Out in front, his lordship’s two favourite pointers sniffed their way across the wet grass. Suddenly they froze and crouched like statues, their right feet raised, and muzzles pointing towards a rushy patch in the middle of the pasture.

The under-keeper handed his master a loaded gun and retired. Goodchild cocked it. As he moved forwards a hare bounded off towards the hedge. A sharp scream followed the second shot and the animal crumpled and twisted in mid-stride.

‘Seek dead,’ he murmured to the nearest pointer with a wave of the hand and the dog raced away and retrieved. Goodchild handed the gun back to the under-keeper and took another, which he held out to his son. The boy received it without a word.

Five minutes later as they were crossing a field of stubble, a covey of partridges rose with a loud whirr. Humphrey missed with both barrels and the head-keeper handed him a second gun but, before he could discharge it, his father had fired into the rapidly dispersing flight of birds. One checked, dipped and then plummeted downwards in a corkscrew dive, suddenly heavy after being so light. Humphrey heard the soft thud as it landed. Again at a word, a dog streaked away to collect.

‘Won’t get easier shots than that,’ muttered Goodchild,
unable
, for all his good intentions, to hide his displeasure.

‘I’m sorry, sir.’

‘No need for that. You’ll get more chances, I wager.’

In spite of his father’s conciliatory tone, the boy said nothing but stared down at his feet with compressed lips and colouring cheeks. Goodchild thought he detected as much defiance as
contrition
in the expression, and wondered whether Humphrey had missed on purpose to annoy him. On the two brief occasions on which he had spoken to him, after he had headed the fox at the hunt, he had found his son unusually sullen and withdrawn even for him. A short silence ended when Palmer, the head-keeper, started telling Goodchild about the barbarous new method
poachers
were using to take his pheasants: scattering raisins
transfixed
with a sharp pin or fish-hook, which choked the birds as they swallowed. Palmer detailed the measures he was taking to kill poachers’ dogs, including the nocturnal placing of poisoned rabbits’ livers near gates where poachers set snares and nets to catch hares.

‘You might poison a fox,’ objected Goodchild.

‘Kill a poacher’s dog, your lordship, and he won’t train another under a year.’

‘A dead fox here and there is worth a hundred pheasants saved, I suppose,’ conceded Goodchild.

They walked on in silence over a wide turnip field, the heavy soil adhering to their boots making walking a laborious business. Overhead the slate grey sky seemed to promise snow. They
stopped at a stile beside the Flixton road and the valet got out the sandwiches and brandy.

‘Come here, my boy.’ Humphrey sat down beside his father on the stile, while the servants withdrew into a separate group. ‘If you don’t care for it, you need not come shooting.’

‘I must persevere, sir.’

‘Perhaps I am too hard on you,’ said Goodchild gently. The boy looked at him suspiciously, as though sensing a trap if he spoke his mind.

‘I’m sure a gentleman should be a good sportsman,’ he replied tactfully.

The valet handed them both sandwiches and a glass of brandy each. Humphrey did not like the taste but took the proffered glass without objecting.

‘I think so,’ went on Goodchild, ‘but others might not agree. Your mother for one, I fancy.’

Humphrey bit into his sandwich and did not reply. He wished he had some water to get rid of the unpleasant burning sensation left in his mouth by the brandy. Goodchild looked at his son’s disgruntled face and cursed himself for having allowed him to become so dependent on his mother; but for this, he knew he only had himself to blame. His long absences had hardly served to win his son’s confidence. Now it might well be too late. If Helen lost him Joseph Braithwaite’s financial support, they would be ruined. He tried to imagine a life with Hanley Park sold up and the land over which he had shot and hunted since boyhood closed to him forever. He waved to his valet to re-fill his glass but the brandy did not help him.

‘Perhaps we’ve had enough sport for this morning,’ he said turning to Humphrey.

‘As you wish, sir.’

‘What do
you
wish?’ he snapped back, unable to bear his son’s chilling formal obedience.

‘I should like to return.’

‘Then why did you not say so?’

‘I did not want to spoil your sport.’

‘You do so by refusing to speak your mind.’

Humphrey, who had been gazing into his brandy, looked up with a flash of his mother’s directness and said vehemently:

‘Then I can no longer shoot with you.’

‘Why pray?’

‘I dislike doing what I am not good at. You asked me to speak my mind.’

‘I did, and I applaud your decision. There’s no pleasure
dragging
a reluctant boy after one.’

‘Nor being dragged, sir.’

Goodchild felt confused and saddened. He had
magnanimously
offered the boy exemption from shooting but at first this had been refused. Then when he had repeated his offer, Humphrey had accepted, not with gratitude but with curt
insolence
.

‘It would have been better if you had been truthful from the beginning and saved yourself the hypocrisy of deceiving me into believing that you enjoyed our sport.’

‘Had I done so, we would never have seen each other.’

‘And now that thought no longer distresses you?’

‘Not when my presence only angers you.’

‘Should I be pleased by bad shooting?’

‘Indeed not.’

‘You have mistaken criticism of your marksmanship for personal disapproval.’

‘Following game, little except shooting signifies.’

A long silence, broken only by the wind in the leafless hedgerow. Goodchild’s brief flicker of anger had spent itself and now only an empty helplessness remained. His voice was more appealing than peremptory as he said:

‘If we neither ride nor shoot together, what can we do?’

‘Nothing, I’m sure.’

‘We could walk.’

The same look of suspicion as though the remark had been ironic.

‘I would have little of interest to say.’ Humphrey was
surprised
by his father’s unexpected burst of laughter.

‘The struggle, I assure you, would not be one-sided.’ Goodchild tipped back his brandy and smiled. ‘Good God, nothing to talk of. What do you know of the foresters or the
ditchers
? Have you seen a warrener at work? We’ll find subjects enough.’

‘I shall enjoy it.’

Goodchild looked at his son’s diffident smile and had no idea whether he was being sincere. Another four years and the boy would be grown-up, and by then any chance of getting to know him would have been irretrievably lost. He tossed his glass to the valet and jumped down from the stile. Soon they were on their way back to the house. Passing through a field of recently sowed winter wheat Humphrey saw a boy, little younger than himself,
perched on top of a gate; he had been hired to scare rooks from the seed. The under-keeper waved and the boy rotated his wooden rattle: a small sound in the empty landscape. When they reached the road, Goodchild took Humphrey’s arm.

‘I could never talk to my father. Do you think it runs in the family?’

‘I hope not, sir.’

‘So do I, my boy.’ He sighed. ‘D’you know what I have to do in a week’s time?’

‘No, father.’

‘Stand up in the market square and propose Mr Braithwaite as Tory candidate.’

‘What will you say?’

‘The usual Nomination Day nonsense; there’ll be too much shouting and groaning for anybody to hear much.’

‘Will people throw things?’ asked Humphrey with a trace of anxiety.

‘I expect so,’ laughed Goodchild.

‘I’d be frightened.’

‘I’m not looking forward to it myself.’

They walked on in silence; they were sheltered from the first gusts of sleet by a fence of rotting wattles. At his age, thought Goodchild, I was betting on how many rats the best village
terrier
could kill in a minute, and laying money on whether any of the grooms could ride a hack round the edge of the paddock
without
using reins. A dirty black-nailed boy, smelling of the stables, with half a cigar in his pocket and some filthy chewed toffee wrapped in a handkerchief; a boy whose main aversions had been dress coats, piano playing and his tutor. Yet Humphrey might almost belong to a different species with his love of books and dislike of rural pastimes. Goodchild heard his son say:

‘Couldn’t somebody else propose Mr Braithwaite? Mother can’t abide him.’

Goodchild looked glumly at the rutted surface of the road.

‘I’ll explain a lot to you one day, Humphrey. I can’t now, but I will; I will though, I promise you that.’

As they tramped on, fresh flurries of sleet made their cheeks and ears smart. Coming into the park, the grey portico of the house was just visible through the bare black branches of some trees. Goodchild glanced at Humphrey and frowned. Would he ever be able to admit that his folly had endangered the boy’s
inheritance
? Perhaps not, but he knew that he would have to be more truthful in future, if his past omissions were to be forgiven.
At any rate a start had been made; a small one, but a start.

*

Goodchild had lunched with his wife, secure in the knowledge that Humphrey’s presence would prevent her raising any
objectionable
topic of conversation. Afterwards he retired at once to his smoking room, confident that he would not be disturbed in his private sanctum. Her ladyship had her dressing rooms and boudoir, where her husband never intruded, and she accorded him the same privilege in his smoking room and study.

Goodchild closed the door and sat down on the raised
fender-seat
in front of the fire. In an hour he planned to return to Manchester to try to talk some sense into Carstairs, but in the meantime, before his journey, he intended to rest in his favourite room with its shelf of bound copies of
Bell’s
Life
,
its gun cases and trophies. On the walls were sporting prints, so numerous that their frames touched, and by the hearth a fine tiger skin. A wide selection of crops and hunting whips sprouted from an elephant’s foot near the door and on the mantelpiece were ranged his
lordship
’s collection of enamel and amber Turkish pipes. Goodchild lit a cigar and poured some brandy. Soothed by the warmth of the fire and the pleasant aroma of cigar smoke, he sank down in his leather chair. Later he began to doze; his eyes were still closed when the door opened and Helen entered.

‘What the devil …’ he muttered, sitting up and rubbing his eyes.

‘Since you choose to avoid me at all times when we might otherwise talk privately, I have been obliged to seek you out.’

‘To what purpose?’ he asked, forewarned of trouble to come by the silky gentleness of her voice. She smiled at his question.

‘To speak privately of course. I believe it is not unusual for husbands and wives to wish to talk to one another occasionally out of their servants’ hearing.’

‘Say what you wish.’

‘Will you still sell Audley House?’ she asked with sudden sharpness.

‘A London establishment is impossible. You know that.’

‘I know that you have told me so.’ She moved closer to him and went on in the same unemotional voice: ‘I fear you will have a lean time of it with Dr Carstairs.’

‘Your meaning, madam?’ he snapped, jumping to his feet.

‘He will bring an action against you unless I dissuade him.’

‘Unless
you
dissuade him?’ he repeated incredulously.

‘Poor man, he seemed most anxious in case details of your
payments
to him should reach the ears of his professional superiors.’

Her self-possession and feigned sadness at being the cause of his indignation brought Goodchild to the verge of screaming, but he controlled himself and said in a level voice:

‘Spite and jealousy do not become you, Helen.’