We arrived at the start of a wet July, a novelty in itself since we were none of us accustomed to grey skies and this particular kind of cold, stinging rain at high summer.
‘The West Riding of Yorkshire,’ my mother explained to Victorine and Madelon, in much the same manner as, three months ago, Aunt Sibylla had explained to me, ‘is famous for its rain. It has something to do with the hills. The clouds bump against them and, voilà, down it comes. They say it makes things grow, weeds and mill chimneys, for instance, and the wool on the sheep’s backs.’
And although I had deliberately exaggerated the ugliness of Bradeswick, it seemed even worse than I remembered it that day, its gutters overflowing with muddy water, its stone houses low of stature and thick with grime, its narrow, uphill streets either cobbled and dangerous to the ankles or criss-crossed with tramline, the surrounding hills looking bald and empty as if all this colliding with wet clouds had rinsed them of their vegetation.
‘The promised land,’ said Victorine, turning up her coat collar.
‘Where is everybody?’ said Luc, glancing about him in bewilderment at the half-empty, sullen little square which announced itself as Corporation Place, finding the few carts drawn by heavy horses and the occasional tram discharging its load of purposeful, hurrying people, no substitute at all for the high-stepping thoroughbreds and the fashionable strollers of the boulevards.
‘It is an acquired taste,’ my mother told him with a shrug, ‘and since Olivia has decided that we must acquire it …!’
Bradeswick. I had spent a morning here with Amyas Hird who had explained to me in his dry fashion how the town had grown up from a scattering of cottages at a shallow stretch of the River Brade used by the local keepers of sheep and weavers of wool to get their carts safely across the stream every market day when they took their finished cloth to the Piece Hall in Halifax.
A quiet town in an obscure setting of moorland and rainwater surrounded by other towns cut to the same quiet pattern until the invention of steam engines, spinning machines and mechanical looms had transformed the cottage craft of weaving into industry and supplied a new breed of men, ‘industrialists’, to control it. Some of these towns – Bradford for instance – had doubled their size annually in the ten or fifteen years it had taken to build those awesome, black-browed factories and to rush in a motley population of starving Irish, unemployed English fieldworkers. Anyone from anywhere who was desperate enough to take these small industrial wages in exchange for their labour.
But Bradeswick had somehow remained aloof from these grand explosions of progress, nothing of any magnitude having occurred here at all, it seemed, except the discovery of iron ore, a couple of generations ago, on nearby land belonging to the Herons of Clarrow Fell. The squire of his day, having no interest in mineral rights or, just possibly, no true conception of their worth, had sold them to a Mr Greenlaw and a Mr Clough, founders of the Bradeswick Ironworks Company, whose enterprises and the labour-force imported to man them had quickly spread out towards Bradeswick itself, the town and its new colony soon meeting and becoming one. And their fusion quite naturally had stimulated growth in other areas of commerce, a great multiplication of butchers and bakers and grocers to meet the ironworkers’ needs and the establishment, since foundries are notoriously hot and thirsty places, of Naseby’s Brewery, now famous throughout the North for the excellence of its light ales.
In Bradeswick, therefore, one worked for the ironmasters, Messrs Greenlaw and Clough, or for Mr Naseby, the Brewer; or else one’s trade depended upon the favour of one or all of those gentlemen and their descendants. One lived in houses of varying condition and value which belonged, for the most part, to the Ironworks or the Brewery who fixed their rents and, in some cases, made sweeping decrees as to their tenants’personal behaviour, forbidding them to hang washing lines across the street or to scour their doorsteps on Sundays. One attended schools which, although now becoming subject to the policies of government ministers, had originally been founded, staffed, maintained and had undoubtedly pandered to the educational whims and fancies of a member of one or the other of these ruling families. One followed the doctrines of the High Church of England as laid down by the vicar of Bradeswick parish church if one wished to rise in the service of the Nasebys, or, on the other hand, one presented oneself twice every Sunday at the Congregationalist Chapel which had secured the eagle-eyed patronage of the Cloughs.
Bradeswick Infirmary and Technical School had both been built on Greenlaw and Clough generosity. The public gardens and recreation grounds with the ornamental lake and somewhat regimented flower-beds were the inspiration of a Naseby. The Bradeswick Ironworks Brass Band was famous for its exuberance, a great favourite with the Sunday strollers in the park; its distinction matched, assuredly in their own opinion, by the tug-of-war team from the brewery which, throughout the summer, attended and occasionally won the contests that were held in every mill town and mining town during the week of its annual holiday.
And if one did not happen to be in the employ of Greenlaw or Clough or Naseby and did not do business with them or serve them in some official or professional capacity, one had really no reason for being in Bradeswick at all.
Amyas Hird met us at the station, betraying no hint of curiosity as to my intentions or motives, no sign of anything which could be called curiosity when my mother, surrounded by hat boxes and vanity bags and holding a large bouquet of roses and carnations she had insisted on buying in Leeds to give herself the air of a visiting primadonna, fixed him with her wide, blue stare and murmured ‘Good Heavens, is it really Amyas? You were just a child when I saw you last.’
‘Not really, Lavinia.’ Lavinia! I had not even expected him to know her name, much less use it so freely, having forgotten that her knowledge of this place and of these people must be very much greater than mine. But when I questioned her later, just as she was scattering her hats and her feathers and her flowers all over the best front bedroom at the Station Hotel, she shrugged and pouted a little, unwilling as yet to venture too deeply into her past.
‘Oh, Amyas. Good Lord, he has been here forever – at the Manor I mean.’
‘But he is not a relation. Or is he?’
‘Oh well, I daresay he is not, although there again who could ever be sure of it. These large families are always in such a tangle. You must know something already of the Squire’s feudal inclinations, his positive position, in fact, for taking in waifs and strays. Until he got his fingers burned, that is, which is quite another story. There were always two or three boys being brought up at Clarrow in my day. All of them in love with me, of course …’
‘Of course. Even Amyas?’ It sounded excessively unlikely.
‘Every one of them without exception and without fail. I was the bride of the young Squire, you see, and what waif or stray could possibly resist that. Poor Amyas. He was always so silent and intense, the kind who bleeds easily. Although now, I must say, he looks quite bloodless. Perhaps that was only to be expected.’
‘I would hardly be in a position to know. But he is waiting downstairs in the foyer to take us to see the house. Are you coming, mother?’ She shook her head.
‘But mother, are you not even curious?’
‘My dear, why should I be? It is the house of Jemima Copthorne Heron; a spinster from the hour of her birth. The nearest she came to marriage was with the manager of the Bradeswick Commercial Bank, until she caught him one Christmas Eve kissing me under the mistletoe, when I was fifteen and he must have been over forty. My word, what a fuss. And if she was fool enough to send him away, then it was hardly my fault that he did not come back. She forgave me, of course, because she was a Christian, although that never prevented her from bating me too. The house is tall and cold and narrow, just like her. And I do not imagine that Aireville Terrace can still be considered the best part of town.’
It was not far away, of course, since nothing in Bradeswick was far from anything else and by no stretch even of my hopeful imagination, could Miss Jemima’s house be called attractive. It was narrow in the extreme, as my mother had said, with a long garden both front and back choked with weeds and thorns and waist-high grasses, the ground waterlogged in places and covered in others by haphazard paving stones that were slimy and dangerous with moss. The front door was dark green and uninviting, opening into a dingy hall that had nothing in it but a threadbare carpet and the distinctive odour of cats.
Two sitting rooms were placed one behind the other, both stuffy and overfurnished in shades of dull red, sepia and unpolished mahogany. There was a dining room of minute dimensions entirely dominated by a carved wood fireplace, a gigantic banqueting table and chairs. While behind it, through a second passage, we discovered a whole complexity of kitchens, pantries, a still-room complete with an ancient still, keeping cellars and coal cellars where the recent presence of Miss Jemima’s cats stung my eyelids and caused Madelon, hastily, to withdraw.
The main staircase was a steep tunnel coated with dark brown varnish. The upper floor consisted of four small square bedrooms and a considerably superior one at the front, its large bay-window giving us a view of Aireville Terrace in all its prim splendour, houses like our own sheltering behind hedges and firmly shut iron gates, their own windows close-curtained against neighbourly curiosity, their gardens achingly neat.
The furniture throughout was of Gothic design and Herculean proportions, the cumbersome pieces of Queen Victoria’s young womanhood, now fifty years out of date. Towering sideboards complete with fancy shelving and elaborately carved cupboard doors sprouted a super-abundance of mahogany flowers and fruit, heavily upholstered chairs with wide seats designed to accommodate a crinoline seemed planted immovably on their carved hardwood frames and massive claw and ball feet. The downstairs windows were uniformly curtained in dark red plush and yellowing lace intended, one supposed, to keep out the soot, the air, and the sun. Bathing, very clearly, would consist of nothing more elaborate than a tub or a hip-bath drawn up to the kitchen fire. The water closet was at the far end of the backyard.
‘It’s a home,’ I said flatly to Victorine. ‘We own it. Nobody is waiting at the month-end for the rent.’
It was even more than that. It was a future.
‘Very well,’ she said, giving her heavy shrug. ‘Then there’s work to be done.’
Work indeed. I had come to Bradeswick to build a nest but first I must test the security of the tree, must ascertain what dangers, if any, might be threatening my roots or casting malevolent glances at my branch. I took the train to Clarrow Fell and presented myself before my grandfather, standing once again in the Justice’s Room in my best grey coat and skirt, my heart still foolishly brimming with hope until the very moment he said ‘Please do not trouble to explain why you have returned to Bradeswick. Whatever your reasons I cannot approve them.’
‘I’m sorry. I came because it was necessary.’
‘You came because you wanted to, Olivia. Otherwise no amount of necessity would have brought you back. I cannot force you to leave. I do not encourage you to stay. You will, of course, do exactly as you please. You must allow me to do the same. And now, if you will excuse me – Mrs Long will give you tea.’
No miracle had taken place. There was to be no reconciliation. No truce. But no retribution either. Being a man who believed in the strict performance of his duty he would allow me – strictly and to the letter – every one of my rights. The allowance he had promised me would not be withdrawn. But should I incur debts, or should my mother incur debts, I must not assume his assistance to be guaranteed. I might visit the Manor as I pleased and should he decide to hold a reception, which seemed unlikely now at his age, he would not arouse local gossip by excluding me from his list of guests. But I must come to Clarrow Fell alone. He would not receive my mother and could not feel her other children to be any concern of his. He would fulfil his obligations but, at the same time, must warn me never to overstep the mark. I was not to be punished, but, as far as possible, I was to be ignored.
I drank the tea Mrs Long gave me and then, walking down to the vicarage, took a second cup with my aunt who informed me at once that, with the best will in the world, she could do nothing, either for or against my mother, until my grandfather had made his wishes on the, matter crystal clear. After all, her husband’s living depended on the Squire. The vicarage – her home – belonged to him and she could not use it, without his express permission, to entertain the woman, albeit her own sister, who had so blighted the life of his only son. Nor could she visit us in Bradeswick since to do so would be to set upon us a seal of approval of which she was by no means certain. Where Sibylla Heron led, others would follow and she did not care to expose her acquaintances to influences which might well …! I would, no doubt, take her meaning. While as for Alys, she was away just now, spending the summer in Bridlington with her father and, on her return, her anxious mother would have to consider most carefully how best to proceed. Alys, she supposed, would want to see me, for we were cousins after all and it seemed natural and right. But Alys was at a vulnerable, impressionable age, when it was essential to maintain a flawless reputation, to associate – and to be seen to associate – only with those who were likewise beyond reproach. Her daughter, my aunt informed me, was a popular young lady greatly in demand who, this coming season, was expected to make her final choice among the suitors who would cluster around her at the hunt ball to be held by the Pottertons at Dawney Park, at the Christmas Eve dance offered by Mrs Naseby of Naseby’s Brewery, at Bradeswick’s civic banquet and the dozens of dinner-parties and theatre-parties which always enlivened the autumn and winter. Whether I attended all or any of these functions would depend on the Squire, since none of the local gentry would wish to offend him and would invite me or leave me out to suit his pleasure, not their own. But even if I did find myself invited to a dance or two I must realize that no such courtesy could be extended to my half-sisters. What was it she had heard me call them? Ah yes. Naturally the Squire could not be expected to vouch for them. Pretty girls, were they?
‘Beautiful.’
‘Indeed.’ She raised pained eyebrows, imagining them as youthful copies of my mother made even more enchanting by their Parisienne airs and graces, and hastened to inform me that in Bradeswick it was not prettiness that mattered. To find a husband in Bradeswick one required the far more solid attributes of a good name and a good family. One required, above all, a dowry. A narrow view of life, perhaps, but she could not complain since her daughter was amply provided with all these things.
‘A dowry!’ my mother declared later that day when I had described the interview to her. ‘If my niece Alys has a dowry then I wonder how Sibylla has obtained it. For Toby Heron had nothing to recommend him when they married but his classical education and what can a country vicar be expected to earn? Very likely she has sold my mother’s jewellery. It must all have gone to Sibylla, I suppose, since no one offered any of it to me. But what do we care, my darling? We may be poor and disreputable but she is still jealous of us. It is because you are so much better looking than Alys.’
‘You have not seen Alys, mother.’
‘No, and there is not the least need for it. I have seen you often enough and therefore I know. I have not seen this wonderful young man of yours either, by the way.’
I had learned, from Mrs Long, that he was in Cambridge visiting friends and would not return, she supposed, until the grouse-shooting began in mid-August. I went upstairs early that night to my impersonal hotel bedroom and lay on hard pillows, listening to the street noises and thinking, with exquisite leisure, of Robin Esmond. I knew almost nothing about him and although, with every other new acquaintance, I was invariably curious, very much inclined to examine and assess every facet of disposition and character, in Robin’s case none of these appeared to matter. I had seen him. Therefore I knew him. It seemed as simple as that. I had always tended to admire dark-complexioned men, a lean, slightly sinister cast of countenance, black Spanish eyes. But now, with Robin’s blue gaze acquiring the radiance of sapphires in my eager memory, his fine, feathery hair the pale sheen of silver, I could not for the life of me imagine why. I had always been considerably attracted by ambition, too, by success itself and the single-minded ruthlessness, the tough, predatory male instincts which achieved it. Yet now, Robin’s declaration that he was just ‘thinking about life’, which would have dismayed me in anyone else, seemed altogether charming, his nonchalance, which could so easily have irritated me, was an intriguing delight. What, after all, I asked myself, had he to strive for when he had been born in the very circumstances which suited him best? He was, by nature – I felt quite sure of it – as well as by education, a country gentleman and since he had all the sporting facilities of the countryside already at his disposal why should he think any further than that? Admittedly, I had heard of no ancestral estate waiting for him to inherit. But there was Clarrow Fell. It was, of course, very foolish and far too soon to think of that but, closing my eyes tight, I thought of it hard and long. Robin and Clarrow Fell. Could life or fate or destiny – or should I call it chance? – which had never seemed to be entirely on my side, suddenly offer me these riches? When my grandfather died could I possibly keep the Manor and live there with Robin? Lying motionless and breathless in the dark I knew with the absolute but not always reliable certainty of youth, that it was all I wanted. Was it too much? To me it was everything but, in other eyes, the Manor was in need of repair, the land of no great value, while Robin himself had no particular fortune that I knew of, no brilliant prospects to make him a matrimonial prize. Surely Chance could spare me this? And I would be more than ready to go out and give her a helping hand. I would not sit idly by waiting for life to happen to me and turning sour when it did not. I would not merely dream of myself in white, spangled tulle dancing with Robin at Lady Potterton’s hunt ball but would take whatever steps seemed necessary to get myself an invitation. Nor would I bow my head meekly to Aunt Sibylla’s gloomy predictions concerning Madelon and Victorine. I had had no need of her to remind me that, unlike myself, they had no property, no expectations, and even less claim to respectability than I.
But Madelon was sweet-natured, affectionate and beautiful, Victorine strong-minded, capable, shrewd, and my opinion of the opposite sex was high enough to feel sure of finding at least two – which was all one required – who would appreciate these things.
But, in the meantime, we had come here to build our nest, to provide ourselves with a secure base from which to direct our campaign. There was work to be done. And work, moreover, which ought not to be seen to be done by us, since work was for housemaids and women of the lower classes, not for young marriageable ladies who, if they indulged in it, might be thought odd or, even worse, to have committed the unforgivable sin of poverty. Unless, of course, they could call their labours by another name, presenting them to the world as a summer whim, a joke, one of the unlikely novelties which bored and pampered females are forever seizing upon to while away their time.
‘My girls have taken it into their heads to play house,’ my mother languidly announced in the deep crimson foyer of the Station Hotel where she sat in state every afternoon wearing her French hat and sipping China tea. ‘One feels bound to permit it, for it seems harmless enough.’
Harmless perhaps. Backbreaking, beyond all question, helped not at all by a sudden return to fine weather which made the shabbiness shabbier, the pungent memory of the cats even more offensive. And it became essential to make a start, for the Station Hotel was expensive, my money was running out and I had a long way to go before the month-end.
‘Would you care to borrow a half-dozen girls from Clarrow Fell?’ offered Amyas, his nostrils wrinkling fastidiously at the feline odour. I would have liked nothing better, especially since everyone would be bound to assume that such generous assistance had come directly from my grandfather. But who learns the secrets and uncertainties of a household more thoroughly and more rapidly than its maids? And knowing that these girls would be more than likely to report back to Mrs Long, I declined, hiring for the time being, a daily woman of sturdy appearance and dull understanding, whose main function was to show that we had a servant should anyone call. And for the rest of that exhausting summer I led a double life, officially residing at the Station Hotel until the house should be considered ready, maintaining, for all I was worth, the image of myself as a young socialite playing at dolls’houses in Aireville Terrace. Concealing the reality.
And what I remember of those hectic days is not the fatigue but the exhilaration, the joy and the fun of working altogether towards the same goal. There were grazed knees and chapped hands and frayed tempers, of course, in plenty, but nothing which could not be quickly absorbed by our shared excitement, our sometimes quite giddy laughter.
At Victorine’s direction, I sorted through acres of household linen, soaked it, boiled it, scrubbed it, wrung it out until my back ached and then, doing up my hair, putting on a lacy blouse, a satin sash, a dainty summer skirt, went tripping down Commercial Street and Corporation Place to Station Square, acknowledging with an appropriate smile every tall silk hat that was raised to me, every matron who condescended to nod in my direction from her carriage. I cut up old petticoats and stockings for dusters, dipped the household brooms in boiling suds – an awkward procedure – to toughen them and make them last and then, with the air of a girl who has nothing to think of but pleasure, I would spend an hour browsing in what passed in Bradeswick for fashionable shops, invariably purchasing some folly, some extravagance, usually as a gift for my mother who needed gifts every now and then, in order that I might be recognized by these milliners and haberdashers and grocers as Miss Heron of Paris and Rome and Clarrow Fell.
On Sunday mornings we took part in Bradeswick’s church parade, attending a service with which we were not familiar, accompanied by a display of social climbing and clawing, of jockeying for position which we recognized only too well. On Sunday afternoons we walked for an hour in the park and listened to the ironworks band, my mother causing as great a sensation as she intended in her glorious hat, sweeping back into the hotel rather as if it were an amusing little pied-à-terre she was thinking of buying, the waiters hurrying to bring her tea and sugary little cakes which, with an air of complete inattention and no conception of the size of our bill, she would eat by the basketful.
Bradeswick had never seen her like and to my immense relief, found no reason to hide its fascination.
‘Here’s Madame Junot,’ was the daily chorus of the Hotel’s commercial guests, competing like schoolboys for her attention.
‘Goodness me, it’s Lavinia Blackwood,’ said a dapper little man, coming to a halt before her with the air of an ageing fox-terrier.
‘Alas, no more, dear Septimus Cross,’ she replied, scrutinizing him through a languorously raised lorgnette.
It was the former manager of Bradeswick Commercial Bank, now also a director of the Bradeswick Tramways and Omnibus Company and a town councillor, he hastened to inform her, the very same gentleman who had once kissed her with such enthusiasm under the mistletoe that he had broken Miss Jemima Copthorne Heron’s heart.
‘Dear Septimus,’ she enthused later, ‘he was so desperately in love with me. Quite ancient, of course, even then, and one could hardly think of becoming a banker’s wife. Not at fifteen – since they are obliged to be so fearfully proper. But he has never married, you know. How sweet.’
The following afternoon, at her tea-time, the foyer quite suddenly was filled by the bulk of a single man, sixteen or seventeen stones of prosperous living encased in the very best quality gentleman’s suiting, a fancy brocade waistcoat, a ponderous watch-chain.
‘Good God,’ he declared, evidently thunderstruck, ‘it’s Lavinia Blackwood.’
‘No, dear Samuel Greenlaw, it most decidedly is not. Lavinia Blackwood was a hundred years ago.’
He was the Mr Greenlaw, or one of them, of Greenlaw and Clough, the Ironworks, semi-retired now, of course, and a widower with sons in the business and nothing to do all day but eat his four square meals, drink his hock and his claret and walk down to the Station Hotel for a game of whist.
‘Dear Sam,’ she said that night, her mouth amused but her eyes shining, admiration proving itself once again the only balm her soul required.
‘And he was in love with you too, I suppose.’
‘Do you know, I rather think he was, for he followed me around the whole of one summer like a great faithful sheepdog, except that he was not faithful, of course, because he was engaged to Evelina Clough. He had been engaged to her forever and could somehow never bring himself to name the day. Naturally he had to marry her, one knew that, because she was his father’s partner’s daughter and he could hardly let her shares in the company go to another man. But he was a most reluctant bridegroom just the same and even when I had married your father he was attentive to me, very much on hand when I needed someone to chat to as one so often does.’
‘You are not bored then, mother?’
‘No, dear. Not yet.’
But I was aware, nevertheless, of the need for haste. If suddenly she should tire of her card-parties and her tea-parties with Mr Cross and Mr Greenlaw who, to my relief, seemed quite happy to pay for the cakes, I could not be certain of preventing her from flitting off, not to Paris, perhaps, since she still believed her debts unpaid, but to London at the very least, where types like Jean-François must surely abound.
To work, then. Victorine and I together took up the carpets one by one, carried them outdoors, shook them, beat them, washed them in vinegar to refresh their colours and then in rosewater to kill the vinegary smell. We swept and washed the bare floors, sprinkled the clean boards with a concoction of black pepper and tobacco that was guaranteed, according to Victorine, to drive the moths away and laid each carpet carefully down again. We forced Luc – no easy task – to whitewash the cellars while Madelon, who needed no forcing at all, sat patiently mending curtains, sewing tiny muslin bags to hold lavender and sweet herbs for our linen cupboards and drawers, or leaves of pennyroyal to press between our sheets and mattresses, a sure remedy, we hoped, for keeping bed bugs away.
I peeled the dark brown paper from the walls or allowed it to fall off, exhausted by age, while Victorine mixed gallons of flour and water paste. And then, having argued mildly over colours, and designs; considering at length the nosegays of primroses and forget-me-nots on a white background which were Madelon’s choice, the bold, full-blown roses which appealed to Victorine, the gold damask which took my eye, we consulted a price-list and realized our alternatives had narrowed to an insipid paisley pattern or plain bottle green.
‘Hideous,’ exclaimed my mother when consulted. ‘But no matter. Mr Samuel Greenlaw has lately been doing up his boardroom, most elegantly he tells me, with a new kind of wallpaper which can hardly be distinguished from watered silk. I feel quite certain that he has simply rolls and rolls of it left and would be positively grateful to have it taken off his hands.’
It arrived a day or so later on an ironworks delivery van, expensive, elegant, equal quantities of apple-green and the pale gold I had so coveted.
‘And you shall have your roses and your forget-me-nots too, girls,’ my mother said with a wink, ‘just as soon as I have explained to Mr Septimus Cross how badly his parlour is in need of refurbishing.’
She brought Mr Samuel Greenlaw to Aireville Terrace the following afternoon to inspect his generosity and, having duly praised the excellence of his taste and his disposition she took him outside and, with an air of limpid innocence, spoke words I had never expected to hear on her tongue.
‘My goodness, those drainpipes have a most peculiar look about them! What can it be?’
‘Rust,’ declared Mr Greenlaw.
‘Heavens! How very unhealthy. Whatever can one do.’
One could leave it to Mr Greenlaw, as she had always intended, and quite soon the ironworks van stood once again outside our door, attending to our drainage and our guttering and installing a pair of wrought-iron gates for good measure.
We stood around Mr Greenlaw and thanked him in chorus.
‘If a job’s worth doing,’ he said, not in the least embarrassed by our praises, ‘then it’s worth doing well. And preferably by a Greenlaw of Greenlaw & Clough.’
‘I am going to Leeds tomorrow with Mr Septimus Cross,’ murmured my mother, ‘to help him choose a new carpet for his drawing room.’
His old one was delivered to us soon afterwards, in excellent condition; a design of pale rosebuds on a cream ground which seemed most surprisingly youthful when one considered the withered appearance of Mr Cross.
My mother brought Mr Greenlaw to have a look at it and having agreed, somewhat peevishly, that it was a generous gift, he cast a swift glance around him and announced abruptly, ‘That fire-grate could do with changing. And I’m bound to point out to you, Lavinia, that the gas in this house has never been reliable.’
‘Heavens! You mean dangerous? That settles it. We cannot stay here to be poisoned in our beds. Come girls, we must pack and return at once to France.’
‘I do believe,’ said Mr Greenlaw stoutly, ‘that I can find a simpler solution than that.’ And returning at once to the premises of Greenlaw & Clough he sent us a cheerful, talkative little man who replaced our fire-grates and our fenders, adjusted our gas brackets and, as a final flourish, brought us a quite hideous but doubtless well-intentioned hat and umbrella stand in massive black iron which entirely dominated our hall.
‘Thank you, Mr Greenlaw,’ we dutifully said.
We spent a long, tedious day removing the stains and ring marks from Miss Jemima Copthorne Heron’s mahogany sideboards by rubbing them with the corks of champagne bottles – my mother and Mr Greenlaw having drunk the champagne – and then polishing each piece thoroughly, if not lovingly, with linseed oil and turpentine. Victorine and I, our sleeves turned up beyond the elbow, our hair bundled into mop-caps, washed five years of Bradeswick grime from the windows and then polished them to a diamond sparkle with the juice of a lemon, while Madelon, whose body was not adapted to perching on ladders, busied herself with the more delicate cleaning of Miss Jemima’s silver, using the tops of cotton stockings which the ever-resourceful Victorine had boiled in milk and hartshorn, a witch’s brew which had converted them to polishing cloths.
We found unexpected treasures, lace tablecloths as fine as cobwebs stuffed at the back of a dresser which Madelon, with the aid of some skilful needlework and a few ribbons transformed into evening shawls: a box full of exquisite embroideries under a bed which she carefully framed and hung on the drawing-room walls: a hoard of china figurines, rustic but colourful, quite valuable we thought, which helped provide the personal touch, even if not personal to us, which made a home.
‘I do believe we have finished now, Victorine,’ I said, having arranged these ornaments several times over until they were almost to my satisfaction.
Surely, if not absolutely, we must be near the end? Surely now I could settle our account at the Station Hotel before it grew any larger, and move my mother in? Victorine, who had been born, it seemed, with an awareness of these things, would be the one to know.
‘Yes,’ she said, casting a critical eye about her, ‘I’d say the house is just about done. So now there’s the garden.’
I found myself perfectly happy to accept Amyas’s offer of help for that, pretending to anyone who cared to enquire and just a little to myself that the two taciturn countrymen soon uprooting our weeds and pruning a wilderness of shrubs and hoary, querulous old trees had been sent at the express wish of my grandfather, the Squire. And in the somewhat forlorn hope that he might experience a change of heart and come to call, I hired, in addition to my bovine scrub-woman, a little twelve-year-old housemaid straight from a charity school, chosen neither for her willingness to please nor her domestic skills, of which she had none, but because her fresh complexion and trim shape would give her the air of a luxury servant when she answered our door and served our tea.
The first stage of my campaign was nearly won.
There was a morning in mid-August when I truly believed that Chance had finally tired of the game of throwing obstacles in my path and made up her mind, instead, to smile. The day began with a present of grouse from the Manor, the first of the season, delivered by Amyas but, he hastened to assure me, the Squire’s gift just the same, shot by his own gun over his own moor at Clarrow Fell. I decided to believe him.
‘What a beautiful day, Amyas.’
‘Yes. Is there anything I can do for you?’
‘If you would please give my best wishes to my grandfather.’
The sun came out, parting the clouds, offering me a glorious preview of a future in which I would sweep away old prejudices, the shadows of old wrongs, as surely as these beams of sunlight. How could I fail? Failure, particularly on this lovely morning, was an attitude I simply did not possess. And an hour later, in confirmation of my optimism, a smart town landau stopped at my new iron gate, the coachman descended, my maid opened the door looking as pert and pretty as anyone could desire, and received from him, the visiting cards of Mr Samuel Greenlaw’s two daughters-in-law, Mrs Albert and Mrs Benjamin.
I walked out into the sunshine again, considering the significance of these cards and the best use I could make of them. I had seen the Greenlaw ladies in church several times, stout, serviceable matrons in their middle thirties, whose only motive in wishing to be acquainted with us must be alarm about my mother’s association with their father-in-law, who still firmly held the family purse-strings. Naturally they, and no doubt their husbands, would be concerned with matters of inheritance, shares in the Ironworks Company, seats on the board, and would know all too well what havoc a woman of my mother’s reputation could play with such things. And in these cases there were two recognized methods of attack. One could snub the woman and encourage one’s friends to snub her in the hope that, starved of society, she would give up and go away. Or one could get to know one’s enemy, assess the extent of the threat she represented and, hopefully, uncover her weaknesses, the better, at need, to dismay her. Clearly the Greenlaws had decided it would be safer to confront Madame Junot than to ignore her, but their motives did not greatly worry me. The important thing was that they had made the first move, which could only have come from them. As newcomers to the neighbourhood it would have been incorrect for us to leave cards or to visit anyone to whom we had less than a specific letter of introduction. But now, with those two squares of glossy, deckle-edged paper prominently displayed in a silver dish on our hall table, I was in a position to persuade my mother, who did not care whether the Greenlaw ladies snubbed her or not, to send cards of her own. The way would then be open for Mrs Albert and Mrs Benjamin to visit us, just a polite quarter of an hour, perhaps, between the conventional calling hours of eleven and four o’clock, nothing more than a cup of weak tea and a few stilted remarks about the weather which would, nonetheless, give us the right, at a discreet interval, to pay a similar call on them.
It was the entrée I needed, not just to the Greenlaws but to Mrs Esmeralda Naseby of the Brewery who was known to keep a sharp eye on any social innovations of the Ironworks ladies, and through Mrs Naseby to Lady Potterton, mistress of Dawney Park and the hunt ball. And if Mr Samuel Greenlaw should prove to be as susceptible as his relatives feared, then I saw no reason why my mother should not marry him. What better solution could possibly be devised for her than this safe anchor-age? Why, when it was so very right for her, had I not thought of it before? Mrs Samuel Greenlaw, my mother, her butterfly wings clipped by respectability but no longer in danger of the bruising and scorching so casually inflicted by men like Jean François. Mrs Greenlaw! Yes. For I might not always be on hand to protect her, and it had a reassuring sound.
Papa Greenlaw. Had she ever dissolved her union with Papa Junot? Had there been anything of a legal nature to dissolve? I must remember to ask her this evening while it was fresh in my mind. But then, my head suddenly empty of everything but equal measures of joy and fright, I heard a horseman at the gate, turned and saw Robin Esmond already on the path, his arms full of roses.
And having waited for him, longed for him, having uprooted my family and brought them to Bradeswick in order to see him again, I suddenly could not bear to look. Had I longed and dreamed too much? Had I imagined him, invented him even, to suit the needs of a particular moment which may now have passed? He was little more than a stranger, after all, and of a type, a background, a culture so unfamiliar to me that I had no real competence to judge. Why had I waited until now to remind myself of this cold reality?
‘Olivia,’ he said, and I was standing in blue air and sunshine, giddy with relief and excitement, holding out my hands to a lover.
He was exactly, not so much as I remembered but as I knew him, his hair falling in those fine, pale feathers across a tanned forehead, his long mouth whimsical, smiling at his own eagerness and haste, his unkempt burden of roses. He had returned from Cambridge late last night and had joined the Pottertons’shooting party this morning on their moor just beyond Bradeswick Green. A run-of-the-mill sort of day, he had thought, until somebody had casually mentioned my name. Luckily he had ridden out to the shoot and, abandoning everything, had come absolutely hell for leather to Aireville Terrace, acquiring the roses on the way.
He had no idea now what to do with them. Neither had I. They were transferred from his arms to mine, stray thorns catching in his shabby, comfortable tweed jacket, their perfume, so close to my nostrils, threatening, with no consideration whatsoever for romance, to make me sneeze. And we stood smiling at each other, just smiling, absorbed by gladness, dazzled by the sheer splendour of standing close together in an untidy garden on an ordinary August afternoon.
Chance was still proving herself not merely generous but bountiful, heaping upon me the richness of his reality. I was so immeasurably happy that had it been only a degree or so less I might also have been terrified.
‘Is that your horse?’ demanded Luc, materializing from the branches of the chestnut tree above us. ‘That one, I mean – the skinny brown one?’
But Robin had been a boy himself, not too long ago, in the monastic, mischievous world of the ‘good public school’and Luc’s appearance did not dismay him.
‘Yes, that’s my horse.’
‘Well, it’s loose.’
‘And you had nothing to do with it, I suppose?’
‘Never.’
‘All right. But I expect you’ll be able to catch him.’
‘How much?’
‘Luc!’ I said, my voice giving warning that unless he mended his manners retribution would certainly follow.
‘Sixpence,’ said Robin, man to man, taking no notice.
‘Eightpence.’
‘Sixpence. Or, of course, I could whistle and he might just come back on his own.’
The black Junot eyebrows flew upwards at a wide angle, the cherubic mouth starting to form the word ‘sevenpence’until the Junot mind, which was not too sure as yet of the purchasing power of the English penny, thought better of it and he ran off to catch the brown mare which had not, in fact, strayed very far.
‘You won’t pay him, of course, Robin.’
‘Oh yes I will. One should never underestimate the nuisance value of little brother. It’s well worth the odd sixpence or two to have him on my side.’
I smiled again, blissfully self-satisfied. Every one of my instincts about him had been right. He was not only handsome. He was humorous and amiable. He was kind.
Victorine was around the back hoeing a border, a red scarf tied gipsy-fashion around her head, her sleeves turned up and her collar down.
‘Hello,’ he said, recognizing a lady, ‘I’m so glad to meet you. I say what a marvellous idea. You’re making a herb-garden, aren’t you? What are you putting in?’
‘I’m not certain,’ she said, leaning on her hoe, ready to talk sense to him if he turned out to be sensible; not in the least shy, ‘Parsley and chives, which seem straightforward enough. Coriander and dill, lemon verbena. And something big to fill in that windy corner.’
‘Try lovage. It grows six feet tall and the flowers are pretty. Or marshmallow. It grows to about four feet if you can nurse it through the winter. You’d have to plant it very deep.’
How wonderful that he knew such things, that he could speak with such quiet assurance on these eternal issues of soil and seed, flowering and ripening, which would be so alien to the breed of Jean-François.
‘You must be Robin,’ murmured Madelon, hovering on the edge of the pathway, uncertain with young men since her encounter with Jean-François but making the effort for my sake.
‘Yes I am. And you’re Madelon.’ There was no need for him to say more, the innate pleasantness of his tone, of his nature, convincing her at once that this man was no threat but almost certainly a friend, a brother.
The miracle had occurred. The people I loved were showing every sign of being ready to love each other. Chance was not merely a great lady. She was a queen.
‘The thing is,’ he said, smiling down at me, leaning towards me with that easy lounging charm ‘from tomorrow morning, I’ve got the loan of a motor car.’
‘Robin! What kind of people have motor cars to lend?’
‘Oh – just a chap I was at school with who always seems to have two of everything. He’s asked me to feed it and water it while he’s in Biarritz.’
‘Like a horse?’
‘That’s right. And if I can manage to get it down here in one piece tomorrow morning I was wondering …?’
‘Yes Robin – I will.’
No sunshine, ever, anywhere in the world, had ever been so warm and bright. I could feel it still dancing on my skin as I returned to the Station Hotel that night, my eyes still dazzled, my exultation reflecting, perhaps, in the smile I gave to my mother’s commercial gentlemen, my mind according only a minimum of notice to the newcomer who – and I remembered this – appeared to be keeping his distance, not physically but, nevertheless, quite positively from the rest.
He bowed to me very slightly as I entered the foyer and went to fetch my key, watching me, I knew, as I walked away. A little later I passed him on the stairs and he bowed again and wished me a good evening, his shrewd eyes calculating whether or not I was here alone and what advantage he could best take of it, his accent, which was quite neutral like mine and Victorine’s, identifying him as yet another man who came from everywhere and nowhere, a rootless and, by the cut of his coat, expensive wanderer. He was there again when I went in to dine, his table close enough for me to hear him ordering his oysters and his wine, his presence strong enough to intrude, just a little, into my blissful haze. I had, in this short afternoon, arranged my life, my mother’s life, everybody’s lives, entirely to my satisfaction, and what I wanted now was the leisure in which to work out the details of my various schemes, not the casual, self-interested admiration of strangers.
I saw him again, much later, returning from whatever pleasures Bradeswick had to offer a gentleman of his type, a tall silk hat on his head, a black silk-lined cape swinging about his shoulders, the discreet glimmer of gold shirt studs, the sudden and decidedly indiscreet sparkle of a diamond on the hand that removed his hat.
‘We meet again,’ he said.
‘Again? I beg your pardon. I was not aware that we had met at all.’
‘Have we not? Then I think we should – don’t you?’
But my cool, sharp words of discouragement were never spoken for at that moment my mother swept out of the card-room, slightly tipsy and dishevelled, immeasurably entrancing, ponderous Mr Greenlaw and dapper little Mr Cross at her side. And my lovely, miraculous day was ended.
‘It’s Lavinia Blackwood,’ the stranger said, just as those other two gentlemen had done a month ago.
‘Yes?’ But this time there was no recognition in her face, no witty response about Lavinia Blackwood being a hundred years ago, just the question in her voice, the leap of curiosity and pleasure in her eyes at the sight – after this long abstinence – of a handsome, sophisticated man.
He looked at least thirty, I calculated, of no more than medium height but with an impression of great physical alertness, a kind of whipcord toughness that made him a shade less civilized, perhaps, than his white brocade waistcoat and jewelled cuff-links implied. He was extremely dark in a bronzed, sun-dried fashion that was not wholly European, with something about him, despite those truly immaculate evening clothes and beautifully manicured hands, of the caution that comes from hot and dangerous places where the climate itself is an enemy. A man whose practised drawing-room manner, I thought, did not quite conceal his air of calculating the distance to the next oasis or the next crock of gold; his air of not only keeping a sharp lookout for a knife in his back but of being ready, at any given moment, to retaliate.
‘Yes, I was Lavinia Blackwood.’ And it was clear that, although she still did not remember him, she would dearly like to.
‘Max de Haan,’ he said, giving her his slight bow, his long hard mouth looking amused and, most oddly familiar to me, although I could not place it.
‘Max!’
‘Yes, Lavinia. Max.’
For a moment she looked quite stunned and then, with the effervescence of champagne escaping its cork, delight came bubbling out of her.
‘Max! Is it possible? My dear boy, I thought you were dead, or simply expected that you would be – romantically, of course, with a jealous husband’s dagger in your back at the very least.’
‘I would find nothing romantic in that, Lavinia.’
‘Well no, dear, I daresay, although you cannot deny it would seem appropriate. But Max! And looking so very prosperous too, which should surprise no one. Now then – you will find it hard to credit, I know, but this beautiful woman standing beside me is my daughter. I hope you are going to be very astonished about that.’
‘Amazed.’
Amused, I thought, and abominably sure of himself, standing there looking us over, making up his mind which of us would suit him best, never doubting his ability to persuade or to purchase either or both.
And it was unfair. It was cruel. And, even worse than that, it was entirely predictable for I should have known it all along. I had relaxed my guard, disobeyed my own rules, permitted myself to believe that I could have what I wanted simply by wanting it. I should have known better. I would have known better, had not that raddled old hag called Chance blinded my eyes. Oh yes, she had had her sport with me today, there was no denying it, had led me on and lulled me, and then, just as I was feeling so ridiculously safe and certain, had tittered behind her faithless hand and beckoned Jean-François back into my life again.