And so with these natural elements in their favour the Fairleys’ wool business grew, and especially so in the eighteenth century. But this amazing growth was also due to the enterprise and progressiveness of three Fairleys, father, son, and grandson—Joshua, Percival, and David. All were pioneers in the wool business and, being astute, they recognized the importance of the new inventions coming into being, which would help increase production in the most efficient manner. Whilst some rival manufacturers in the West Riding at first resisted these technological innovations that were to change the social and economic structure of England, the Fairleys did not. They enthusiastically purchased these ‘newfangled machines’, as they were scathingly called by less progressive cloth merchants, and at once put them to advantageous use.
Gerald, heir presumptive to the immense fortune presently in the hands of Adam Fairley, had inherited one singular trait from his forebears, a trait totally lacking in Adam. And this was their love for the wool business. It elicited in Gerald the same intense passion evoked by money and food. When Gerald was on the mill floor, amidst the clattering machinery, he too was in his natural element. He felt completely alive, was filled with a pulsating strength. The strident noise of the rattling machines, which deafened Adam, were not at all discordant to Gerald, who thought they made the most beautiful music he had ever heard. And the malodorous stink of the oily wool, so noxious to his father, was for Gerald an intoxicating perfume. When Gerald saw the great stacks of hundreds upon hundreds of bolts of Fairley cloth, he thrilled with an excitement incomparable to anything he had ever felt in the seventeen years of his young life.
This morning, as Gerald drove down the lower road that cut across the valley from the Hall, he was thinking about the mill; or, more precisely, his father and Edwin in relation to the mill. He did not see the landscape or notice the weather or feel the biting cold. He was lost in the labyrinths of his own convoluted thoughts. Edwin had been neatly disposed of at breakfast. Very neatly indeed. And more precipitously than he had ever imagined possible in his wildest and most exigent dreams. Not that Edwin was a real threat. After all, he, Gerald, was the heir and by birthright everything was his under the law. Yet it had often occurred to him recently that Edwin might conceivably want to enter the woollen business and that he could not have prevented. It would have been an unnecessary nuisance. Now there was no longer any need for him to worry about Edwin. His brother was rendered powerless, and of his own volition. As for his father…well! There was something corrupt in Gerald and he was riven by an immense hatred for his father. Insensitive as he was, Gerald had only a vague glimmering that this feeling sprang from a terrible and consuming envy. He constantly tried to diminish his father in his own mind. He picked on a few of Adam’s traits, which in reality were insignificant and irrelevant, and blew them out of all proportion until they became damning and unforgivable faults. Parsimonious to a point of being miserly, narrow-minded, and parochial, Gerald fumed internally about the money his father spent on his clothes, his trips to London and abroad, and he became enraged and even violent when he contemplated the good hard cash his father was pouring into the newspaper.
Gerald was pondering on all of this as he drove down to the mill. Suddenly he laughed out loud as it struck him that his father’s lack of interest in the business and his attitude in general paved the way for him, and sooner than he had anticipated.
Now that he thought about it, he really had no alternative but to take matters into his own hands, considering the way his father was behaving. He determined to talk to the Australian wool man himself this morning. Wilson had told him yesterday that Bruce McGill wanted to sell them Australian wool. The way orders were pouring in for their cloth they might be in need of it and, in any event, it was surely worthwhile striking up a friendship with McGill, who was one of the most powerful and wealthiest sheep ranchers in Australia.
He also decided it would be a good idea to encourage his father’s penchant for protracted absences, instead of fighting it. Those disappearing acts would suit his own ends now. He could not wait for the day his father retired. It would not be soon enough for him.
THIRTEEN
Adele Fairley’s upstairs sitting room at Fairley Hall contained many individually beautiful objects, and yet, in spite of that, it was not a beautiful room. It was lifeless and oddly empty in feeling, a feeling that sprang from an all-pervading ambiance of bleakness, of utter desolation. Certainly this feeling did not emanate from a need for furnishings, for, on the contrary, it was teeming with possessions.
The sitting room was vast, large and square in its dimensions, with a vaulted ceiling that appeared to float up and beyond into infinity. This was lavishly embellished with plaster cornices and mouldings, and panels inset with oval plaques and cherubim, and entwining flowers and acanthus leaves, the whole expanse painted a stark and pristine white and from the centre of which dropped a gigantic and magnificent chandelier of shimmering crystal. Many windows, tall and majestic, intersected the walls, and an eighteenth-century Gothic fireplace of glacial white marble was an imposing counterpoint with its huge mantel and great carved columns and soaring proportions.
Almost everything in the room was blue: Pale blue damask sheathed the walls, rippled at the windows, slithered across the sofas and fragile gilt chairs, and even the antique carpet was a sweep of glistening blue on the dark oak floor. Mirrors, crystal ornaments, glass domes covering dried flowers and wax fruit, pieces of finely wrought silver, and priceless porcelain were all charged and glittered with cold reflected light that only served to underscore the icy sterility of the room. A fire blazed continually in the hearth, costly jade and porcelain lamps threw out rays of softening light, the antique furniture gleamed as pools of ripe dark colour, yet these did nothing to diminish the gelid atmosphere, and there was a sense of abandonment hanging in the air.
Weighted down as it was with possessions, it betrayed the pathetic efforts of a lonely and disturbed woman to find some solace in material wealth, an attempt to restore her damaged psyche by surrounding herself with things rather than people, as if they could give her the illusion of life. Few people who entered this room ever felt truly comfortable or at ease, and even Adele herself, the sole perpetrator of this monument of dubious taste, now seemed lost and adrift, a ghostly presence moving abstractedly through the multitudinous paraphernalia she had accumulated so acquisitively, so assiduously, and which she no longer seemed to notice.
This morning she came into the room tentatively, pausing cautiously on the threshold of her adjoining bedroom. Her eyes, large and beautiful but now filled with pinpoints of apprehension, flicked around the room hurriedly, and her aristocratic fingers clutched nervously at the silver-streaked white silk peignoir she was wearing. She pulled the filmy fabric closer to her body protectively, glancing around quickly, yet again, to reassure herself she was absolutely alone, that no servant was skulking in a dim corner, dusting or cleaning and intruding on her privacy.
Adele Fairley was tall and graceful, but so tempered of movement that at times she appeared to do everything in slow motion. This was the effect she gave now as she left the safety of the shadowy doorway and glided into the room. Her pale blonde hair was almost silver in tone, and it fell about her face in soft curls and delicate tendrils, and cascaded down her back in undulating waves to blend into the silvered snowy silk enveloping her body, so that the two seemed almost indistinguishable. She paused at one of the windows and turned to gaze out across the valley, a remote unseeing look in her eyes. The landscape had changed in the past few weeks. The dusty greys and sombre blacks had given way to the first signs of spring greenness. But Adele saw this only dimly, as if through a veil, lost as she was in her own thoughts and preoccupations. An inverted woman, isolated within herself, she lived quite separate and apart from the world around her, and she was curiously detached, curiously oblivious to externals. Her internal life had become her only reality.
As she stood, motionless, at the window,
the sunlight struck her face, illuminating the smooth contours. In spite of her thirty-seven years there was a girlishness and a purity about Adele Fairley, but it was the purity of a perfectly sculptured marble statue that had been immured for years behind glass; which had never been warmed by love or pained by sorrow or moved to compassion at another’s suffering.
Unexpectedly, and with an abruptness that was most unnatural for her, Adele swung away from the window, suddenly intent in her purpose. She glided swiftly to a display cabinet on the far wall, her eyes glittering. The cabinet, a French vitrine, contained many exquisite objects that Adele had collected on her travels with Adam over the years. These had once been Adele’s pride, and she had found constant pleasure in them, but now they no longer interested her.
She stood in front of the cabinet and looked about her anxiously before taking a small key from her pocket. As she unlocked the cabinet her lovely eyes narrowed and a sly and secretive expression slipped on to her face, distorting it into a mask that blurred her stunning beauty. She reached inside the cabinet and carefully lifted out a decanter. This was of dark red Venetian glass, intricately chased with silver, very old and priceless. It glinted in the sun and threw off a myriad of fiery prisms, but Adele did not stop to admire it as once she had. Instead, she removed the stopper hastily and, with trembling hands, lifted the decanter to her pale cold lips. She drank urgently, greedily, like one dying of thirst, tossing back several swift draughts with a seasoned hand, and then, hugging the decanter to her possessively, she closed her eyes thankfully, breathing deeply. As the liquid trickled slowly through her, warming her, the profound terror that perpetually worked inside her began to subside, and the fundamental anxiety that was ever present when she first awakened to a new day gradually began to ebb away. A sense of well-being, of euphoria, washed over her as the alcohol permeated her system. She looked around the room. It now appeared less hostile and frightening to her and she became aware of the soft sunlight pouring in, of the brightly burning fire, of the spring flowers in the vases.
She smiled to herself and lifted the decanter to her lips again. Only a trickle of liquid touched her tongue and she held the decanter away from her, shaking it impatiently, glaring at it with anger and disbelief. It was empty.
‘Damn! Damn! Damn!’ she cried out vehemently, her voice fuming with rage. She looked at the decanter again. Her hands began to shake and her body was suddenly besieged by cold tremors. Did I drink so much last night? she asked herself. She was aghast to discover she could not remember. Then the rising panic truly took hold of her, and it was with an awful sense of dread that she comprehended her predicament. There was no more alcohol in her suite of rooms. This scared her to a point of paralysis. Even if she did not succumb to the temptation of taking another drink during the day, she always needed to know it was available, for her own sense of security. But there was not a drop left now.
Half staggering, she groped her way blindly to a chair and fell into it, her mind blank. Still clutching the decanter to her body, she wrapped her arms around herself and rocked to and fro, whimpering and moaning, held in the clutches of an unbearable anguish. Oh God! Oh God! What will I do? What will I do? She shivered, and closed her eyes, as always fleeing reality.
Her face had paled to ashy white, and in repose, with her head thrown back limply against the chair and her hair hanging loosely over her shoulders, she looked wan and childlike.
Eventually she opened her eyes. ‘My sweet little baby,’ she said, gazing down at the object in her arms. ‘Sweet darling baby. Darling Gerald.’ She paused and stared down at her arms again, confusion registering on her face. ‘Or is it Edwin?’ She nodded her head slowly. ‘Of course it’s not Gerald. It is Edwin.’ She began to coo and murmur unintelligible words to herself as she rocked frantically in the chair.
About an hour later Adele Fairley underwent a transfiguration. The agitation that had held her in its grip fell away, and her demeanour became composed. She glanced out of the window and noticed it was raining. Not the typical light shower so common in Yorkshire at this time of year, but a heavy downpour. Torrents of water, driven against the windows by the high wind that had sprung up, slashed furiously at the glass, which quivered and rattled under the onslaught. The trees lashed the air and the gardens appeared to vibrate under the force of the gale. Only the moors were unaffected by the tumult, implacable and sombre, a line of black monoliths flung defiantly into the bleached-out sky. Adele shuddered as she gazed at them. They had always seemed grim to her southern eye, accustomed as it was to the bucolic green gentleness of her native Sussex, and she thought of them as an imprisoning wall that encompassed this house and the village, shutting her off from the world. She was an alien in this alien land.
She shivered. She was cold. Her hands and feet were like icicles. She pulled the thin robe closer to her, but it offered no warmth. She saw, with dismay, that the fire had dwindled down to a few burning embers. As she stood up and moved into the room her foot struck the decanter which had slipped unnoticed to the floor. Puzzled, she picked it up, wondering what it was doing there. Why was it on the floor? She examined it carefully for any cracks. Then it came to her. She had been looking for a drink earlier and had taken the decanter out of the vitrine. When was that? An hour, two hours ago? She could not remember. She did recall her behaviour. She laughed softly. How foolish she had been, to become so panic-stricken. She was mistress of this house, and all she had to do was to ring for Murgatroyd and instruct him to bring her a bottle of whisky, and one of brandy, surreptitiously, as he always did, so Adam would not know.
The clatter of china in the corridor outside the sitting room alerted her that the maid was approaching with her breakfast. Hastily, Adele returned the decanter to the vitrine, locked it, and swept out of the room with unusual swiftness, the silver-streaked white peignoir billowing out behind her like iridescent wings, her hair streaming down her back in rivulets of silver.
She closed the bedroom door quietly and leaned back against it, a satisfied smile on her face. She must select a morning dress, a becoming one, and after breakfast she would attend to her hair and her face. Then she would send for Murgatroyd. As she went to the wardrobe she told herself she must try to remember that she was the mistress of Fairley Hall, and no one else. She must assert herself. This very day. Her sister Olivia had been kind in taking over so many managerial duties, since her arrival in February, but now she would have to relinquish them.
‘I am well enough to assume them myself,’ Adele said aloud, and she truly believed her words. Yes, that will please Adam, she decided. And then her throat tightened at the thought of her husband. She frowned. But would it please him? He thought her a fool, and quite unlike her sister, whom he considered to be a paragon of every virtue under the sun. Lately she had come to think of Adam as a man surrounded by a wall of great reserve. She shivered. In recent weeks she had also been frighteningly aware of the menace in his eyes. Not only that, he was always watching her with his pale eyes. So was Olivia. They didn’t know it, but she watched them watching her avidly, and whispering together in corners. They were in league. They were plotting against her. As long as she was fully conscious of their plotting they could not harm her. She must be on guard against them at all times. Adam. Olivia. Her enemies.
She began to pull out dress after dress, frenetically and with a superhuman energy, flinging them carelessly on to the floor. She was searching for one dress in particular. It was a special dress with special powers. Once she put it on she would automatically become mistress of this house again, of that she was quite certain. She knew the dress was there. It must be there…unless…unless Olivia had stolen it…just as she had stolen her role as mistress of Fairley Hall. She continued to pull out dresses and other clothes frantically, tossing them on to the floor until the wardrobe was completely empty. She stared at it for a prolonged moment, and then distractedly looked down at the piles of silks and satins, georgettes and chiffons, and velvets and wools that
swirled in a mass of intense colour at her feet.
Why were her peignoirs and morning dresses and day suits and evening gowns lying on the floor? What had she been looking for? She could not remember. She stepped over them, and walked across the floor to the cheval mirror near the window. She stood in front of it, playing with her hair absently, lifting it above her head and then letting it fall down slowly to catch the light, repeating the gesture time after time. Her face was blank, utterly without emotion, but her eyes blazed with delirium.
FOURTEEN
Emma entered Adele Fairley’s sitting room so hurriedly she was almost running. Her feet, in their new black button boots that shone like glittering mirrors, barely seemed to touch the floor, and the starched white petticoat underneath her long blue woollen dress crackled and rustled in the silence. She gripped the heavy silver tray tightly in her work-roughened hands, holding it out in front of her, and high, to avoid contact with the furniture, and to prevent any accidents.
Her face, just visible above the outsized tray, was scrubbed to shining cleanliness and glowed with youthful health, as did her green eyes that were brilliant with intelligence beneath the thick lashes. Her russet hair, brushed and gleaming, was pulled back severely into a thick bun in the nape of her neck, and today the widow’s peak was more pronounced than ever, accentuated as it was by the maid’s cap that framed her face like a little halo. This was as glistening white and as stiffly starched as her large apron and the collar and cuffs on her dress, all recently purchased for her in Leeds by Olivia Wainright. The dress, too, was new, but this Emma had made herself from a length of cloth from the Fairley mill, which had also been given to her by Mrs Wainright. Emma’s delight in the dress was surpassed only by her pride in Olivia Wainright’s smiling aproval of her dexterity with the scissors and her skill with a needle and thread.
A Woman of Substance Page 21
