‘It is because of my condition they are so cross,’ Elinor whispered to me, and, seeing my blank expression as I emerged from my reverie, she hastened to make herself clear. ‘My husband hates me to be pregnant, you know that. The alteration to my shape offends his eye, and he finds it indelicate in other ways. He will not come near me for months before, and months after, for which I am not at all sorry, although it makes him very nervous and prickly as a porcupine. And then, people tease, you see, and congratulate him as if it was a miracle at his age – which only serves to remind him that I am young and he is not for which I am not at all to blame. And Crispin, of course is thinking of himself, for if I should have a boy his own position is threatened. My poor Prudence and Faith can cost him no more than a dowry apiece, but a little brother would put his long nose out of joint. And so you see, there I am between the two of them. And when my husband dies I have no idea what will become of me, for that odious Crispin will turn me out with nothing but my petticoats if he can find the way. Oh dear, how hard it is. I think I am going to cry.’
But, as her lower lip began to tremble, the double doors opened, bringing the gentlemen back to us again, and instead of weeping, she gave them all a brilliant, welcoming smile.
‘I expect you will have noticed,’ she murmured to me a while later, ‘that Bradley Hobhouse has not spoken a word to me all evening, which, in Emma-Jane’s place, I would find most suspicious, considering the way he has been looking – and looking – oh my. I can only hope my husband is still too furious with his son to notice, or I shall have to answer for it. And it is not my fault, after all.’
But, blessedly – for I was tired now of false smiles, false conversations-it was almost over, and quite soon Mr Aycliffe had Elinor in her cloak, allowing her just a moment to display the swansdown lining before he bade her, quite sourly, to stir herself since tomorrow would be a busy day.
‘Aye, busy enough,’ Bradley Hobhouse yawned, stretching his luxurious, weighty frame, with no intention, I thought, of making that grim five o’clock trek to the mill yard now that his father could be none the wiser. But Matthew Oldroyd, whose father was still hale and hearty enough to kick him out of bed if need be, made a sign to his Lucy that she understood, and all three carriages were brought round to the door.
‘Goodbye, and thank you, Mrs Barforth,’ Crispin Aycliffe said as I accompanied them into the hall, his hand very cool – a boy’s hand almost, narrow and lightly boned; a scholar’s hand, perhaps, although I knew nothing of scholars.
‘Goodbye, Mr Aycliffe. I think your father is already in his carriage – waiting.’
‘Oh, then he should wait no longer, for I believe I may walk.’
‘Oh – do you think so?’
‘Yes,’ he said, smiling, understanding my concern and not offended by it, enjoying it even. ‘I think so.’
And taking his hat, he went outside, still smiling, and walked, quite slowly, past the Aycliffe carriage.
‘Good night, sir,’ he called out, tipping his hat at a jaunty angle, making no reply when, from the dark interior his father hissed rather than spoke the one word ‘Crispin,’ making the name itself into a threat, a dire warning. ‘You try me too far, boy,’ that furious whisper said, and the insolent tilt of Crispin’s hat replied, ‘Not far enough, sir – not yet.’
Hannah went quietly to bed and, when we were alone together, Joel said, ‘Well – envy. I like it. They’d be content with what I have, here and now, Bradley and Matthew. They’ll call it success if they can hold on to what their fathers leave them. And so I make them uneasy when they see I’m not satisfied. They get to wondering where they’d be without Nethercoats and Fieldhead behind them, and the answer is right back on the muckheap. I feel good tonight, Verity—’
And, sensing his mood of jubilation, of revelry, I expected his arms around me and waited, half smiling, ready to match his excitement with a quiet one of my own; needing, I think, to be repossessed, to have my own troublesome identity burned away, blended once more with his. But, instead of touching me, he crossed to the window, looked out, and paced a few quick steps across the floor, his fiercely crackling energy a discomfort on the air, his need for revelry apparent, but not, it seemed, with me.
‘I’ll – er – go out for an hour,’ he said. ‘It strikes me I’d best drive over to Low Cross and see what the night shift are doing. There’s a piece I’m waiting to have a look at, and I reckon it should be off the loom by now.’
And because he had taken the trouble to explain himself instead of simply telling me, ‘I’m off,’ and going, I knew he was lying.
‘I’ll go up to bed, then,’ I said.
Nodding agreement, he reached out a casual, cousinly hand – yet again – and pinched my chin. ‘Yes, love, go to bed. It’s a long way to Low Cross in the dark – there and back again.’
‘So I may expect you when I see you?’
‘I reckon so.’
‘Yes – good night, then.’
‘Good night, Verity.’
And when they brought his phaeton to the door, I refused to lift a corner of the heavy velvet curtains or the shrouding, confining lace to see in which direction he drove away. I refused to listen to hoofbeat or heartbeat, or anything but the calm shell of myself which assured me that – like my mother and my grandmother before me – I understood, I accepted, I was not threatened. ‘If it happens,’ my mother had said, ‘it will mean very little to him.’ And I had no intention of asking myself – not tonight, not ever – what it meant to me.
Chapter Thirteen
That same year – my twenty-second – saw the death of the King, our fourth Hanoverian George, an event not much regretted except, perhaps, by his Prime Minister, the Duke of Wellington, who was left with the hushing up of a royal scandal or two and the certainty of a general election.
He had been a man of appetite, King George, accustomed to breakfasting on pigeon pie and champagne, with brandy, hock, and laudanum to follow; and a great lover of other men’s wives, although he had locked his own out of the Abbey on his coronation day. His only child, Princess Charlotte, having died in childbed, he was to be succeeded by his brother, the Duke of Clarence, a fussy, well-meaning old gentleman who, it was thought, in his eagerness to please might listen not only to the Duke of Wellington but to the clamorous voice of Reform.
And Reform, of course, was the only answer, for although some of us were very rich that year and some of us very poor, we all had our grievances. We were not content.
In the countryside, men turned into landless labourers by the enclosure of common pasture and driven to despair by a series of harsh winters had taken to burning hayricks and breaking the threshing machines that were rendering their muscles obsolete. In Ireland, there was unrest: a growing Catholic demand for freedom from Protestant England, trouble in the streets, and the Lord Lieutenant – the Duke of Wellington’s brother – attacked in his box at the theatre. Here in the newly industrial North, the hand weavers were tightening their belts, withdrawing into the bitter, resentful brooding of men who want to work and cannot, supported in many cases entirely by what their wives and children could earn in the mills. And since the millmasters, in their determination to keep their sheds full all day, every day, adhered to their policy of low wages, those earnings were rarely sufficient.
In France, there was revolution again, a bloodless, businesslike affair this time, exchanging one king for another, not to suit the convenience of a haughty aristocracy or the demands of a radical people but due entirely, We were led to believe, to the calculations of cool-eyed men of business. And whenever there was revolution in France its unsettling effects were felt here, too, not only among the London mob and the northern political unions – notoriously easy to unsettle in any case – but among businessmen of our own, who, now that the accumulation of money was less difficult, less of a challenge than it had been, were beginning to appreciate the attractions of a new challenge – political power.
In that troubl
ed year of 1830, there was no one, it seemed, who wished matters to continue just as they were no one, that is, except the Duke of Wellington and his following of country squires, our own Squire Dalby among them – for even the aristocratic Whigs, that party of impeccably born grandees, were ready for change, if it could help them to oust the Iron Duke from power.
Reform, then, of Parliament, was the only answer, for, in a country where a mere fraction of the population had the right to vote, no effective change could otherwise be brought about. Parliament existed, we had been told, to serve the interests of property, not of individual people, but the trouble was that since the original boroughs had been created, ‘property’ had shifted somewhat – had moved North, for the most part – so that towns which had once been flourishing were now almost deserted, while others had transformed themselves from hamlets at a river crossing to thriving centres of human endeavour. And although these, dwindling old boroughs had lost their importance and their population, they still retained the right to send a representative to Parliament – ready to support the agricultural interest – while the new industrial towns were not represented at all.
The county of Yorkshire as a whole, the largest in England, sent only two members to Westminster. The ancient city of York had a member of its own, and the city of Hull, along with a dozen other antique boroughs, many of them remote country places by now and in the pocket of some great landlord who would bestow them on promising young men of his own choosing who would be guaranteed to handle matters his way. But Leeds, Bradford, Sheffield, Wakefield, Halifax, Huddersfield, Cullingford were not enfranchised; they had no one in Westminster to speak for them, and now that trade was expanding, now that Yorkshire cloth was becoming a new wonder of the world and Yorkshiremen were anxious to secure that world very much as their oyster, the matter was growing urgent.
The issue of Reform became so sensitive, so vital, that in November of that year, the Duke of Wellington’s government was defeated, three months after an election victory, an event for which the great Duke was himself entirely to blame, having risen to his feet and informed the nation that the extension of the franchise was so abhorrent to him that he would not countenance it at any price.
Not only would he refuse to bring forward any such measures himself, he told a shocked House, but he would consider it his duty to oppose them when proposed by others. In the Duke’s opinion our electoral system was perfect, the distribution of votes just as it should be, since he and all his friends had one and, apart from the soldiers in his army, he had probably never met anyone who did not. But, as with many old men, however distinguished, the ducal eyes were focussed on the past, and his apparent conviction that votes should be reserved for gentlemen was his undoing. A fortnight later his resignation was in the hands of our new, uncertain King William, who was perhaps not too sure about Reform himself, while the manufacturers of the Law Valley – who were very sure – began meeting quietly to discuss what a Member of Parliament of their own would be worth to them, and how best to use him.
‘Sir Giles Flood will be sure to have his man ready,’ Morgan Aycliffe lectured us one evening when we had gone to dine with him and Elinor, who was looking unwell. ‘Yes, Sir Giles still thinks of Cullingford as an extension of his own stable yard, and – as soon as the Reform Bill goes through he’ll have his man ready – his son-in-law, or one of the Dalbys, or some bright spark from London who won’t even trouble to make a speech at the hustings. So we must prepare, Barforth; we must make absolutely certain that the first member for Cullingford will speak for us – will be one of us …’
And seeing the scornful tilt of Crispin Aycliffe’s smile and the not altogether kindly amusement in Joel, I understood that Mr Aycliffe was ready now – with a son who could be trusted with the mundane details of the building trade, if not its profits – to pass on to higher things. He was not only willing to stand for election himself, he most ardently desired it; he longed, in fact, for the pomp and circumstance of it and would be mortally offended should his candidature be set aside, and yet, unprepared to expose his emotions, he wanted not merely to be invited but to be coaxed, wooed even, and was relying on Joel to do him this service.
But Joel, in matters of emotion – as I could have told him – was not to be relied on, and, taking a lazy sip of wine, his nostrils quivering with what may have been appreciation of its bouquet but was more likely suppressed mirth, he answered, Aye, he’d best be one of us, but I don’t know who’d care to tackle it. I certainly wouldn’t, so anyone who is thinking of asking me would do well to think again. Not much in Bradley Hobhouse’s line either, although I daresay Emma-Jane may fancy a trip or two to London.
And here, Elinor, whose pregnancy was not going just, as it should and who had not really been listening, caught the words ‘trip to London’ and said eagerly, ‘I can’t think why you don’t go yourself, Mr Aycliffe, for it would suit you – and it would suit me. Yes, Morgan, you must be our first member. I’ve absolutely set my mind on it, and you’ve talked of it so much that I can tell you want to – don’t you?’
And as her voice thinned to astonishment and faded, away, perhaps only Morgan Aycliffe’s son was not surprised at the effect of her indiscretion. I had seen Mr Aycliffe’s disapproval before, had seen him pinch his face and set his entire body into rigid lines of outraged dignity but I had not seen his temper, which, suppressed like all his other feelings, was a twisted, fearsome thing when it broke free.
‘Mrs Aycliffe,’ he said in no more than a whisper, do not, if you please, address me by my first name in public.
That was all he said, but that whisper chilled me speaking as it somehow did of punishment – not by violence but by a long, cold, suffocating silence in the days to follow when he would not address a single word to her.
‘Oh dear,’ she muttered. ‘If I’ve said something amiss, then I really don’t know—’
‘You’ve said no more than we were all thinking,’ Crispin Aycliffe cut in swiftly, getting up from the chair where he had been lounging, apparently half asleep, and coming to stand face to face with his father. ‘Naturally you must sit for Cullingford, sir – if the Bill goes through. That’s my opinion, and I feel sure Mr Barforth will endorse it.’
And as he raised his glass, with his eyes, very cool, very steady, on his father, Joel got up, too, glass in hand, and said, ‘We’ll drink to it, then. You can have my vote, Aycliffe – if the Bill goes through.’
‘Oh, don’t worry about the Bill,’ Crispin told him, his eyes still holding his father’s. ‘There’ll be a Bill all right. The country wants reform, and so our leaders – because they want to stay our leaders – will give it to us. But what kind of reform it will be I couldn’t say. Just enough, I imagine, to satisfy those with the power to make a fuss-should they not be satisfied. You’ll get your member for Cullingford, you can be sure of it, but they’ll fix the property qualification so high that not more than a thousand of you, out of the 43,000 in this town, will have the right to elect him.’
‘And what,’ Morgan Aycliffe said, speaking again in that chill whisper, ‘is amiss with that?’
‘Nothing, sir, if you happen to be among the thousand.’
‘As I will be – as you will be.’
‘Quite so.’
And all the time their eyes were locked together, the ferocity of whatever was between them drinking up the air so that I could hardly breathe.
‘You must excuse my son,’ Morgan Aycliffe said, his thin lips sketching themselves in a completely mirthless smile. ‘It is well known that young men who travel abroad, at their father’s expense, often pick up disease, and my son has succumbed to the germ of revolution. He subscribes to the dangerous, the comic notion that every man should have the vote, without property qualification – without any qualification at all. Yes, you will be shocked, Barforth, for so was I when I first became aware of it, and I only mention it now since your wife – and certainly my wife can hardly comprehend the extent of his folly, t
he implications and the threat to their own persons. Yes, he sympathizes with the penniless, you see, since he is penniless himself, more often than not, by the fifteenth of every month. You should beware of him, Barforth. He would give the vote to the operatives in your factories, and I cannot think you would take kindly to that.’
But Joel, whose only creed was to buy in the cheapest market and sell in the dearest, had small interest in political speculations of so wild a nature and no interest at all in Aycliffe’s tantrums with his son. When he opened his mouth to reply, I think that he almost yawned.
‘Well, as to that, he may do so any time he has a mind; for, if they got the vote, they’d have sense to know they’d have to use it my way. So, since I can count my operatives just as surely as Squire Dalby and Sir Giles Flood can count their tenant farmers, you’d be putting upwards of a thousand votes in my pocket, thank you very kindly.’
‘And if they voted against you they’d lose their jobs, just as Dalby’s tenants would lose their smallholdings?’
‘Well, I reckon that’s what they’d expect, and I reckon they’d not be disappointed.’
‘And the fact that there would be a certain similarity of conduct between yourself and the squire, to whom you are politically opposed, does not concern you?’
‘Concern me?’ Joel smiled, automatically reaching out for the cigar he could not smoke here, in the Aycliffe drawing room, although it was permitted in mine. And he seemed so large, suddenly, so dark, and Crispin so light, so easily broken, that my mind urgently whispered, ‘Don’t hurt him.’
‘If you mean,’ Joel went on, ‘that we both know how to take care of our best interests, me and the squire, then I don’t see anything to concern me in that. I don’t blame Dalby or Flood or the Duke of Wellington himself, for keeping a hold on their privileges – because nobody will take mine away from me, you can rest easy on that score.’
The Clouded Hills Page 21
