‘I’m rich,’ she said. ‘Men want to marry me for my money. I own a fortune in porcelain, and I can’t raise a penny.’
And it was Blaize who suggested, ‘No, you can’t sell your porcelain, of course, but I wonder if there is anything in your father’s will which forbids you to give it away?’
‘Why should I do that?’
‘Oh—generosity, I imagine. There are a pair of Wedgwood urns I have often admired which would look very well on my study mantelpiece, and a porcelain nymph that rather reminds me of Faith. If you should choose to give them to me—or to Faith;—I’m not sure anyone could complain. And should it occur to anyone that I might have paid you for them—well, I cannot think Jonas Agbrigg would be willing to take a mere supposition to court.’
‘I will check the will again with Jonas.’ she said, and when she had gone I told him, ‘That was very clever of you, Blaize.’
‘Yes—but then we know I am a clever man.’
‘It was also very good-natured. Those urns can’t be cheap, you know.’
‘I do know. But bear in mind that I actually want them—which makes me just a shade less generous. And, if she is suffering from too many Irish cousins, you might care to suggest to her that an engagement is not a marriage, but carries a fair amount of protection. I have it on good authority that Aunt Hannah, in similar circumstances, once engaged herself to a parson with small intention of marrying him.’
‘That hardly seems fair.’
‘No, but it would give Freddy Hobhouse the boost he needs. I also have it on good authority that my brother is thinking of making an offer for Nethercoats, and if old Mr. Hobhouse sells out there will be nothing for Freddy. He is not a partner, and Nicky’s offer is unlikely to be generous. There might be enough to keep the old couple in a house on the coast, and to make some provision for the girls, but Freddy and the boys will have to fend for themselves. If he got engaged to Prudence, it might be no more than a stay of execution—but the promise of her money might make Mr. Hobhouse less ready to sell, and even if it didn’t he’d be bound to put up his asking price. You see, I’m being good-natured again.’
‘Yes, I do see. You want to make Nicholas pay more for Nethercoats.’
‘Ah—but if it would help Prudence and Freddy—and I’m sure Nicky could find the money. They think the world of him at Mr. Rawnsley’s bank.’
‘It’s not a game, Blaize—not to them. Prudence couldn’t jilt Freddy if he lost his business. She’d feel obliged to stand by him.’
‘I know,’ he said, his smoky eyes brimming with amusement and self-knowledge. ‘But Freddy is a gentleman, don’t you see. He’d release her.’
Yet, whether or not she was inclined to take advice of this nature, I noticed that quite soon a whole series of familiar objects began to appear, the Wedgwood urns, the white biscuit nymph, a pair of Grecian dancers in Meissen porcelain, a biscuit Venus by Sèvres, a bare-shouldered, female figure from Vincennes mounted on a jungle of ormolu foliage.
‘How generous you are, Blaize! I believe Prudence is saving hard.’
And, remembering that he had also been generous to Georgiana—that he had a penchant perhaps, for ladies in distress—I wondered if he had once included me among them.
I went to Listonby that autumn on a prolonged visit—Blaize having left for some exotic destination—my presence required there because Caroline, now that her sons were out of the nursery, no longer found the start of the hunting season altogether congenial, fretting a great deal in private that her seven-year-old twins could now take their fences like men—or so their father assured her—and by no means pleased to see them come home to her in so indescribable a state of filth and exhaustion.
But Georgiana, who had taken her own son up on her saddle from his babyhood, determined that like all the Clevedons he should ride before he could walk, had no such qualms, and scant patience with Caroline’s heart-searchings.
‘Good heavens! If either of them breaks a leg, it will mend. It’s the horses’legs we have to be careful of, darling—one has to shoot them, you know, after a bad fall. And, if there are times when one would quite like to shoot one’s children, I’m sure there’s no fear of it. I’ll keep an eye on your boys for you—and they’re both quite careful in any case, they just jog along with the grooms when they’re tired—not at all like my Gervase.’
But Caroline well knew that Georgiana, once her blood was up, would keep an eye on no one, would leave her own Gervase in a ditch if he happened to take a tumble; while Hetty Stone, who was no equestrienne, but who regularly drove herself out to the covert-side, would have no time either for little boys, being more inclined to keep her eyes on their fathers. And each hunting day contained its share of misery. No leisurely tea-tray in her bed these days, until the meet had departed, but a strained presence hovering in the hall, her whole nature torn between Lady Chard who must both by rank and inclination have a fine appreciation of such things, and Caroline Barforth, frankly revolted by such recklessness, such waste.
‘It’s quite ridiculous,’ she would tell me as we watched them set out, all dash and clatter in the stable yard as they tasted the air of the fresh morning, the occasional cursing and the laughter as some nervous animal went skittering out of control shredding her nerves to agony as, with outward calm, she ordered the serving of stirrup cups. ‘Quite ridiculous, taking children of that age—it can’t be good for them. And the language they are exposed to—and the manners. Did you hear Perry Clevedon just now, yelling like a madman? And Julian Flood is every bit as bad. They will go through a dozen horses between them, this season; ruin them—whatever Georgiana may have to say—and I would like to know who pays the bills? Well, in fact, I do know it, for Georgiana is keeping an entire stable over at Galton, for Perry’s convenience, and she could only have the money from Nicholas, It doesn’t occur to her, one supposes, that he might need his spare cash for something else—that it would suit him better to put it back into the business, or to get another business off the ground. And that animal she has bought for Gervase is enormous—my goodness, I told Matthew at once that, if he had any thought of getting such a monster for Dominic or Noel, then he and I would certainly quarrel. And now he has taken Gideon out as well—to ride with the grooms, he says, since that is what he did himself at that age.’
And, of course, that was the root of her dilemma. She did not really want her children to hunt—did not much care for hunting men apart from Matthew—but the Chards, the Floods, the Clevedons, certainly the South Erins, had always hunted from childhood, and she was determined to fit her sons for their inheritance. She did not really want to send them to Matthew’s old school, where they would be required to wash in cold water at a stand-pipe in an open yard, like the lads from Simon Street, and would be flogged when they misbehaved as soundly as factory-boys were strapped by their overlooker—as no schoolmaster had ever dared to flog her middle-class brothers—but young squires had always been treated so, and were sent to school, after all, not to be educated but to be toughened into men who could lead a Light Brigade, armed only with sabres, into the mouths of Russian cannon; who could acquire the passionless hauteur of privilege which had so attracted her to her husband. She did not really want her sons to sally forth, gun in hand, and slaughter with their own not always accurate shot the pheasant and grouse to replenish her larder, would have much preferred to purchase her game clandestinely but safely at her back door, as they did at Tarn Edge. But every young gentleman must know how to handle himself at a grande battue, must be worthy of his place in a walking line of guns, must know how to shoot flying and how to shoot well. And, if armed gamekeepers and mantraps were really necessary for the discouragement of poachers, then she, as the wife of a Justice of the Peace who also happened to own the game being poached, could hardly disagree.
‘I know they must enjoy country pursuits,’ she moaned. ‘I know, and they are all so brave. But it seems so wasteful sometimes. Wherever the fox goes, they go, regardless o
f whose crops they are riding down, and I feel sure the tenants don’t like it—except, of course, that since we own the land I suppose they can’t complain. Do you know, Faith, really, sometimes I think some feckless lad from Simon Street could understand Perry Clevedon and Julian Flood better than I do. They take every day as it comes, no thought for tomorrow, not the faintest notion of saving anything or planning anything. They don’t pay their debts in Simon Street either. And as for the other thing—my word, I have been hearing all my life about immorality in the weaving sheds, but if you had the faintest notion of what goes on in that Abbey cloister night after night—Hetty Stone may smile at Matthew when I complain about it, and imagine I don’t see her—and he might smile back, since I know he thinks I am a prude—but it is not right, Faith. It is not responsible. Hetty Stone may be a duke’s daughter and think it a great lark that her brothers were all sent down from Eton and Oxford, and that one of them is keeping a quite famous actress somewhere off Bedford Square—although I must confess he was a hero in the Crimea—’
‘Caroline, your own brothers have not been angels.’
‘I wouldn’t know about that,’ she said, instantly bristling. ‘And, whatever they may have done, the business has not suffered by it. They get out of bed every morning and go to the mills, and they pay their bills on time too—right on time or no one in Cullingford would trade with them. Yes—yes—I know old Mr. Clevedon wears himself out looking after his tenants, and that they are all ready to go out and fight for Queen and country at a moment’s notice, and will govern the country without getting paid a penny for doing it because they think it is their duty. But they don’t happen every day, do they—wars and Cabinet appointments? It’s not three hundred and sixty-five days a year, every year, like the mills. Oh dear, I do hope Matthew remembers about Dominic and Noel—and I am certain he will forget about Gideon.’
But it was young Gervase Barforth who went over his horse’s head that morning, landing on his own head on a stony patch of ground from which his uncle Perry eventually retrieved him and tossed him by the scruff of his neck to his mother, the kind of treatment both Peregrine and Georgiana had received often enough themselves at that age. Georgiana rode back to Listonby with him across her saddle, his face quite grey, his posture, when she allowed him to slide to the ground, decidedly unsteady.
‘Just put him to bed,’ she said. ‘He’ll be all right. No bones broken, and he’ll know better next time.’
And when, having ascertained, as she put it, that he would live, she rode off again, it was perhaps unfortunate that Caroline, alarmed by the child’s persistent stupor, took it upon herself to send for Nicholas, certainly unfortunate that he arrived late that afternoon in a black fury, half an hour in advance of his wife.
I had no wish to be present, but could not avoid it when she came striding into the hall, her habit looped up around heir arm, mud-spattered and glowing and beautiful as she’d been the first time I had seen her, her boots as careless now of Caroline’s carpets as they had been that day of Sir Joel’s, that rare bird of the wild wood who had, very briefly, submitted to her captor’s hand, but who was flying free again, a lovely lark-soaring of the spirit that halted in mid-air as she saw her husband.
‘Good heavens!’ she said. ‘What brings you here? Are the mills on fire? Has Cullingford burned to the ground?’
‘No,’ he told her curtly, ‘but there could be other reasons just as drastic. Your son, for instance. He had a riding accident earlier in the day, as you are well aware. He may have died—an hour ago—or be on his death-bed at the very least. Since his mother could not be found, it would seem fairly natural that they should send for me.’
I saw the colour drain away from her face, her eyes, against that sudden blanching, a startling, terrified green. I saw her body sway forward a little and then right itself, one hand pressed, hard against her stomach, and then, her eyes fluttering from me to Caroline, she said, ‘No—no, Nicky—he’s not dead and he’s not dying. Faith would be crying, and Caroline would be wanting to murder me. It couldn’t be true.’
‘I think it could.’
She advanced into the room, swishing her crop against her skirt, nervously flexing her free hand, her colour very high now, her temper rising with it, her courage the greater because I could see she was a little afraid of him.
‘He took a tumble—it happens, Nicky. It’s happened often enough to me. And I brought him home at once.’
‘Now that was good of you.’
She stood for a moment looking down at her hands, her crop still nervously slicing the air, and then, throwing back her head in an abrupt movement, her light lashes beaded with tears, she said, ‘Nicky, don’t be hard—please—don’t be sarcastic. I can’t talk to you when you’re like this. There’s no harm done. If you think I should have stayed with him, then perhaps you’re right—’
‘No—no—it couldn’t be right to deprive you of a day’s sport.’
‘Nicky,’ she moaned, the note of despair in her voice so piercing that I wanted to cover my ears. ‘It wasn’t like that. I only did what it seemed natural for me to do. He didn’t need me. Caroline was here. Nanny was here. If I’d stayed, they’d have shooed me away. I’ve been carried home myself like that—worse than that—time and time again and taken no harm. It builds character, don’t you see? That’s what grandfather always says.’
‘I daresay. But you’re a Clevedon. He’s not.’
‘He’s my son.’
‘So he is. And you have a daughter, I seem to remember, back in Cullingford, who’ll be lucky to see you again before Christmas—who won’t see much of you at all until she’s big enough to sit a horse, I reckon.’
‘Oh dear,’ she said. ‘Oh dear—oh dear—’ and she began to pace up and down the room, hands clasped around her elbows, hugging herself, rocking herself almost, in her agony. ‘You won’t understand me, Nicky—you just won’t. I do care for the children. Yes—more than you care—yes, I do—and you won’t see it. You won’t let me care in my own way. You want me to be somebody else all the time, and I can’t do it, Nicky—I’ve tried and I’ll never do it. You want to think I neglect them—yes, I know it. Nicky, you’ve hurt me now—it’s done—it’s enough—don’t be hard—’
‘Damnation!’ he said, swinging abruptly round to the fireplace, his back to us, his hand tight-clenched on the corner of the mantelpiece, and, seeing the opportunity of escape, I fled outside into the fresh air, as far away as I could, hoping Caroline would have the sense to leave them too. And, unaware of the direction I took, feeling his anger as if it had been directed against myself, feeling her misery just as acutely, I was startled by the sound of sobbing, astonished, as I turned the corner of the house, to see Julian Flood slumped against his horse’s neck, his shoulders heaving with an uncontrollable: anguish, and Matthew Chard standing beside him, white-faced and sick, his own balance unsteady.
‘Matthew—good heavens!’
And instantly, because they were gentlemen who did not exhibit their grief before a lady, who had endured their share of floggings in youth to enable them to withstand pain, Julian Flood stopped crying, almost straightened himself, and Matthew Chard came hurrying to meet me.
‘Faith, we’ve had a bit of bad luck, I’m afraid. Perry Clevedon has taken a bad fall—happened just after Georgiana left us—wanted to get back home, she said, to see to her boy—’
‘How bad?’
‘Oh—bad—his horse reared up, went clean over and fell on him. It’s the worst fall there is.’
‘And he’s—dead?’
‘Oh yes—dead when we picked him up. I can’t think he knew much about it. Well—I doubt if knowing that will help Georgiana, but I’d better tell her—’
‘No. Nicholas is here. Let him tell her.’
Thank God!’ he said. ‘Oh, thank God for that! I don’t know how she’ll go on without Perry—in fact I don’t think she’ll go on at all.’ And, squeezing my hand, his whole body brimming with
gratitude, he left me and hurried off to Caroline, and to Nicholas.
Blaize, by some miracle, came home for the Clevedon funeral and perhaps I surprised him—certainly myself—by the extent of my relief.
‘I couldn’t face it without you.’
‘Darling—you flatter me, but I’ve never seen myself as a rock to lean on. And what is there for you to face? It’s Georgiana, surely, who will need a rock. Let us hope she has one.’
But she was most amazingly composed, standing erect and quite still beside her grandfather, her eyes dry, her face chalk-white against her black veil, a fragile figure, supporting an even more fragile, almost visibly ageing man, for Perry had left no sons, at least none that could be acknowledged, and they were burying not only his recklessly broken, carelessly wasted body, but the end of their ancient line. And once more, as at all momentous occasions, there was that deep division of ranks: Aunt Verity and Caroline and even myself, representatives of the manufacturing classes, being ready to shed a tear; the gentry standing like soldiers around the graveside, even Julian Flood, who had been drunk ever since the accident, having sobered himself up that day, his wild, handsome face as expressionless as granite.
The Clevedon tenants, the pensioned-off retainers, the household servants, the village schoolmistress, were all there, knowing far better than I what this death signified, and there was complete silence as he was laid to rest in his own ground, silence as we walked back from the Abbey church to the house, only the October wind stirring the leaves, the crackling of logs in the stone-flagged hall, old Mr. Clevedon taking us each one by the hand with perfect courtesy, his whole body quite hollow, his hopes in ashes, but his mouth pronouncing the words he believed it right and proper for him to speak.
Flint and Roses Page 47
