When she said to the taxi driver, ‘Brampton Hill, Bower Place, please,’ she shivered. She was going home. For the first time in years she was going home. Deep down in her there was a suppressed longing to visit her old home, to see her mother and Susan, and…even her father. Knowing her father’s temperament, she was well aware that if it lay with him she would never see the inside of her old home again, and that already, under the circumstances, he would be preparing to leave the house he had built, the house he loved; and this also he would have chalked up against her. She was aware that she was about to do something extraordinary, and something that would likely drive Angus mad, for the time being anyway. But as things stood, no word of hers would convince him that she would find it impossible to live next door to her people, and, in particular, in Brett’s house. Angus wasn’t insensitive, on the contrary, but he was totally blind in some instances to what was right and proper.
She was still shivering when the taxi drew up outside the gates of Bower Place. She had asked the driver not to go into the drive, and she paid him off for she did not know how long she would be.
She timed her visit. They would just be sitting down to lunch; they wouldn’t be able to say he wasn’t in.
It was strange to ring the doorbell. She could never remember ringing the doorbell. She wondered what kind of a maid they had at the moment.
When the door opened, Susan confronted her, a plumper, older Susan, Susan with her mouth open and her eyes popping out of her head.
‘Hello, Susan.’
Susan was unable to speak. She turned her head and cast a glance quickly back across the hall, then said on a high whisper, ‘Vanessa.’ She looked her up and down for a moment. Her younger sister was now a woman, a tall, beautiful woman, very well dressed. She knew a moment’s keen envy of her. She didn’t ask her to come in but stood staring at her, until Vanessa said, ‘Are they in?’
‘Yes. At—at lunch.’
‘Will you tell them I’m here? I’d like to see them.’
‘Vanessa,’ Susan shook her head, ‘he’s in a dreadful state. You’ve…your…’
‘I know, I know; me and mine. It’s that I want to see him about. Things will be different from now on.’ She smiled reassuringly down on her sister. She felt older, oh so much older than Susan at this moment. Susan looked dowdy, harassed, surprisingly commonplace. This fact made her slightly more at ease, but it didn’t stop her body trembling.
‘I—I’ll put you…I mean, you’d better go into the morning room. I’ll—I’ll break it to them.’
‘All right, Susan.’ She looked about the hall for a moment before crossing to the morning-room door. It was as if the years had rolled away and all in them was but a dream and she was back home once more. The morning room was the same, except that there was not so much silver dotted about. She stood looking out of the window waiting. And she waited…and waited. And then her mother came in alone.
They looked at each other across the length of the room until Vanessa moved slowly forward, saying, ‘Hello, Mother.’
Jane Ratcliffe nipped at her lower lip and gulped gently in her throat before saying, ‘Hello, Vanessa.’ The words came out on a hoarse whisper as if she had a cold.
‘How are you, Mother?’
‘Quite—quite well, thank you.’ She did not ask her daughter to sit down; she just stared at her, because she was surprised at what she saw. She had caught a glimpse of her now and again in the town; once with her children; once a few years ago coming out of a store laden with shopping bags. But this woman: before her was no relation to the girl she had known. She had never seen her before. This woman who had been associating with the common people for years was poised and dignified and looked sure of herself. She said stiffly now, ‘Why have you come? Haven’t you wrought enough havoc on us?’
It was some seconds before Vanessa answered: ‘The reason for my visit is to try and rectify that in some small way. I would like to see Father.’
Jane Ratcliffe closed her eyes and said, ‘That’s impossible; he won’t see you.’
‘But I mean to see him. I must see him. I don’t suppose it’s news to you that Angus has bought The Larches.’ She looked back into her mother’s unblinking eyes, then went on, ‘He has given it to me. It’s in my name and I can do entirely what I like with it. I—I propose to sell it to Father for what it cost Angus. He’s always wanted the land, and I know he would have bought it only Angus went over his head. Well, that’s why I’m here.’
Jane Ratcliffe blinked now. Then, after a moment, she exclaimed on a relieved note, ‘That’s very kind of you, Vanessa, very kind. I’ll go and tell him.’
Again Vanessa waited, but not so long this time. And when the door opened again her father entered, and her mother was behind him.
She hadn’t seen her father since that morning in the station yard. He had looked no different then from how he had always looked, but now there was a difference. Although he was only in his middle fifties he looked an old man, a bitter, tight-faced old man. She forced herself to speak, to break the tension-filled silence in the room. ‘Hello, Father,’ she said.
He did not answer for a moment, and then his thin lips scarcely moving he said thickly, ‘Feeling triumphant, aren’t you? Having dragged yourself up from the gutter you come to show off, bearing a gift, I understand, from your husband. Well,’ his bony lower jaw jutted outwards, bringing his lower lip overlapping his upper one, and he went on in a spate of scarcely controlled fury, ‘you can take his gift back to him and tell him he’s dealing with the same man that used to be his master. You can tell him that. I’ve never accepted gifts from menials and scum and I’m not starting now.’
She choked as the words rushed from her, her anger almost matching his now. ‘He knows nothing about it. He didn’t send me to you; he wouldn’t because he loathes you. But I knew you couldn’t stand us living next door. And what is more, I don’t want to live next door to you. It was my own idea to offer you the house, because you’ve always coveted the land, but he knows nothing about it. As for being scum, don’t you dare call him scum. He’s worth more—’
His voice cracked at her like a whip, breaking off her words.
‘I didn’t ask you into this house. If I’d had my way you wouldn’t have been allowed through the door. Now get out! You made your choice years ago when you went to live in the gutter, and I repeat gutter, with your upstart.’ He moved two steps towards her, his head poked forward. ‘You think because he’s making money that he can buy himself into decent society. Well, wherever he goes he’ll be like a pig in a parlour and an object of derision.’
‘You would like to think so, wouldn’t you?’ She was glaring back at him. ‘You hate him; you’ve always hated him, and you wish that all the things you’re saying were true. But they’re not. He’s getting on, rising fast, and he is accepted. Because he’s himself, he’s accepted. You called him an upstart. I—I wonder if you know what people call you.’
‘Vanessa!’ It was her mother speaking. ‘Would you please go now.’
‘No. No, I won’t until I’ve had my say.’ She kept her eyes on her father as she answered, ‘If there’s anybody you should have hated it should have been Brett, but even knowing what he did you wouldn’t have hated him, because you had felt guilty about him for so long. You had done him out of his job, his rightful job.’
‘Vanessa! Do you hear me? Leave the house this minute.’
Vanessa now took three steps along the side of the breakfast table. It was a long way round to the door and she talked as she moved. ‘Brett never stood up to you. He hadn’t the spunk to stand up to you, not as my Angus’—she stressed the ‘my’—‘stood up to you when he was just Emily’s son…and scum, as you have so kindly called him. And there’s something I’ve learned over the years, and it’s being proved at this moment, for even if he were still scum he’d be twice the man that you are, and he’ll be a name in this town when you’re forgotten, like you forgot your own people, my g
randfather Ratcliffe.’
‘GET OUT!’ Jonathan Ratcliffe’s hand moved towards the sideboard and groped blindly for something to grip, to throw, to hurl, while his eyes remained fastened on his daughter; and Jane Ratcliffe, rushing in front of him, cried at Vanessa, ‘Go, will you! Go!’
It was Susan who, coming into the room, grabbed her sister’s arm and pulled her into the hall and to the front door, and almost pushed her through it as she cried, ‘You were mad to come here. You know he’ll never forgive you. You’ve only made things worse. And if you were actually aiming to get him to leave this house you’ve achieved it.’
It was because she knew every inch of the curved drive that she could walk down it with her hand covering her eyes. It was as she turned out of the drive into the main road that a car raced towards her and pulled up with a skidding of brakes, and Angus shot out and stood confronting her, his face livid with an anger that had bleached his rugged complexion white and which had the power to frighten her as her father’s anger had not done.
‘YOU! YOU!’ The spittle sprayed from his lips, and when she bent her head and fell against him, muttering his name, his body remained rigid, and he growled, ‘Don’t you bloody well “Oh Angus” me. I’m going in there and getting that deed, if it means I do life for it.’
She was gripping his coat as she sobbed, ‘He…he hasn’t got it. It’s here.’ She lifted her arm, from which hung the bag, and he snatched it from her and, tearing it open, looked at the long, thick envelope that was wedged inside. He brought the air into his body so quickly that it sent him coughing and spluttering, and he turned from her and leant against the car.
He hadn’t been able to take it in when his mother had told him where she had gone. She’d said she’d better tell him in order to break his fall. To break his fall! He had worked for years to get even with that bastard of a Ratcliffe and to see Vanessa installed in her rightful sphere, and what does she do? She takes all his efforts, his early strivings, his sixteen to eighteen hours a day, running, scurrying, planning, aye, and cheating, cheating other men out of contracts with the help of Andrew Fowler, and hands it to the one man he’d like to hang.
His mother had dared to tell him that Vanessa had asked to have the house in her name precisely in order to be able to go to her father and sell it to him, and at the same price. Not only had she tricked him but she had got his mother onto her side an’ all, because the old bitch had bawled at him that no man in his right senses would expect his wife to go and live next door to her people after the way they had treated her, and that his wife wasn’t out for revenge, only him. And he had bawled back at her that Vanessa would live in that house if he had to tie her in it, and let anybody get in his way to try and stop him getting that deed back from Ratcliffe, and they wouldn’t live to tell the tale. And that went for her an’ all!
And here he was within a few yards of his new home and his wife crying as if he had knocked her teeth in. And that’s what he’d like to do at this very minute. He gripped her by the arm and pushed her into the car. Then, taking his seat, he turned the car swiftly about, drove down to the next gate and into the drive of The Larches.
Vanessa had been sobbing so much that she didn’t realise where she was until the car stopped and she looked out of the window. Then she blinked upwards and turned to him and whimpered, ‘Oh, no! No, Angus.’
‘Get out!’ He reached down and pulled her onto the gravel. Then taking firm hold of her, he mounted the steps, put the key in the lock, turned it, and pushed her before him into the house.
They stood in the hall, Vanessa with her head down, he with his up looking about him. He was in Arthur Brett’s house. No, no; he was in Angus Cotton’s house; but what he saw didn’t please him. The hall was big and dark; the panelling browning to black; the twisted rails of the stairs gave them an old-fashioned appearance. This was an old house; it would take thousands to modernise it. He left her and moved towards a door and looked into a room with an ornate and very high ceiling and windows at the far end looking out on a tangle of undergrowth. He passed her once more and looked in another room. It was smaller and the walls looked as if they hadn’t been papered or the woodwork painted since the place had been built, and his knowing eye detected the bulge of dry rot in the two-foot high skirting board to the side of the fireplace.
Vanessa stood perfectly still all the while he looked round the ground floor, and when he stood before her again he said quietly, ‘It’ll be all right when it’s done up.’
Now, she looked straight into his face. ‘I’ll never live here, Angus,’ she said. ‘You can’t make me.’
‘Then why did you let me go on and buy the bloody place?’ He was bawling now in a restrained way.
‘Because I knew I couldn’t stop you. You had to buy it. You had to do something to get even with Father. Well, now you’ve got even with him. When I asked you to put it in my name I saw it was a way of getting the hatred out of your system and making up for what I had done to them, because I don’t hoodwink myself about that point, Angus. What I did shook the foundations of their life. It might be narrow; they might be mean-spirited, they are mean-spirited; so what I did had a greater effect on them than it would have had it happened to parents more generous-minded. Their whole aim in life was social prestige, and I tore the foundations of it from under their feet. I…I might as well tell you now, I’ve wanted to go back for years; I’ve wanted to see them, not because I loved them, but, well, I can’t really explain, ties, blood, kinship, what you will, but I’ve wanted to see them; I wanted to know if I was forgiven; and I’ve found out…They’ll never forgive me. My father will live and die hating me. I knew he’d rather be crucified than be under the slightest obligation to either of us, and—and it saddens me to the very soul. I can’t help it. That’s how it is.’
The mighty wind was being taken out of his sails. A deflating calm was settling on him. He fought it by saying, ‘We could pull it down and build.’
‘No, no, Angus; it wouldn’t make any difference. You see, I couldn’t bear to live near them. And anyway, they wouldn’t allow it, they’d move.’
‘That’s what I was hoping.’ There was iron in his voice again. ‘To put them on the move; to let them see that he isn’t the only one that can crack a whip and see men jump.’
‘And what would that achieve? He would move to a bigger and better place. He could raise the money; his name is good.’
‘Meaning mine isn’t?’
‘You know I don’t mean that.’
‘Look, I don’t mind telling you now that I’ve had to do some twisting and bribing to get this piece of land. The house doesn’t matter; it’s the land. Yet all the while I’ve seen you here in this house, where you belong.’
‘I don’t belong in this house, Angus. What is more, I’ve never liked this house. I belong,’ she paused, ‘I belong where you belong; but you don’t belong here. Face it; you don’t belong here.’
He turned from her, the colour rushing into his face, and she said softly now, ‘I realised a long time ago that I never belonged here either. I was the odd one out. I couldn’t help being born here no more than you could being born in Ryder’s Row.’
She watched him walk away from her and open the doors that led on to the overgrown terrace, and slowly she followed him. Her heart beating rapidly she followed him down the steps and along the narrow path that led into the wood, and all the while she knew what he was thinking. Somewhere in here they used to meet, him and her. She had known all along; at least since she had learned he had bought the place, that this moment would come, but she prayed now he wouldn’t make his way down to the river and the summer house.
He stopped under an oak tree, almost on the spot where Brett had kissed her goodbye on that last night before he died, and standing dumbly before him she returned his look, his questioning, probing look; then, her voice breaking, she said, ‘Come away from here, Angus, please. Please. I’m asking you, begging you. Please.’
He t
urned and walked silently up into the house, through it and to the car. His jaw was stiff and his eyes hard.
When they reached the bottom of Brampton Hill she broke the silence by saying, ‘Would…would you like to drive me out to the quarry, Angus?’
He cast a quick glance at her; then, his eyes on the road again, he growled, ‘Why the quarry?’
‘…I would like to show you something.’
‘At the quarry?’ His mouth was square.
‘Yes, YES, ANGUS.’ She shouted the last two words, and when again he glanced at her she was looking out through the windscreen and she said, quite loudly still, ‘You don’t seem to take anything in unless it’s bawled at you.’ Another time this would have made him smile, even laugh, but his expression didn’t change; yet when they came to the roundabout he didn’t go back into town but went straight ahead.
Fifteen minutes later he drew the car up in yellow mud beside a great hole; and when he alighted he didn’t open the door for her to get out but stood by the bonnet waiting, silent and tense. She came now and stood beside him, her hands resting on the bonnet as she asked, ‘How much would you have to pay for it, I mean the quarry itself and the bit of hill beyond?’ She nodded into the distance.
‘Pay for it? You mean buy it?’ He screwed up his face at her.
‘Yes.’
‘In the name of God, what for? Why should I buy a hole? There’s nothing more I can get out of it, it’s finished.’
She walked away from him onto flat ground, stepping on hard surfaces where she could find them, and made her way past stone outhouses that were the only remains of a country house that had once stood where the sandpit was now. She climbed a slope, not looking back to see if he was following, and at the top she stood and looked about her.
Angus stopped when he was a yard or so from her. He didn’t want to go near her at the moment. If she had been May or someone like May he would have skelped her lugs long afore this, and likely given her a black eye into the bargain. Making a blasted fool of him. But she wasn’t May, or someone like May. Funny, he should think of May now; she hadn’t crossed his mind for years. He supposed he had thought of her, because she was the kind who wouldn’t have thwarted him; his word would have been law to her. She wouldn’t have wanted to have brought him down to pocket size.
The Round Tower Page 34
