Blood on the Wood (5 page)

I could have gone on arguing, pointed out that even the most shifty art dealer couldn't have got a good copy painted and dried in less than twenty-four hours, but I knew there would be no point. Oliver Venn was becoming more confident as the discussion went on, convinced that he'd won and we could do nothing about it. I stood up, told him I'd let myself out. That at least seemed to disconcert him for a moment.

‘You won't stay and have tea with us?'

His face fell again when I refused, like a child denied a small treat. I strode to the front door and opened it for myself, resisting, only just, the temptation to slam it behind me. Walking fast down the drive, hat in hand, I wondered where we went from here. The only prospect seemed to be bringing the lawyers in. We could prove the picture was a recent copy. Oliver Venn wouldn't have a snowball's chance in hell if it came to court so would obviously have to hand over the original. The trouble and expense involved would be bad enough, but even worse would be the near certainty of the story getting out. Suffragettes involved in a legal struggle with the family of one of their most venerable supporters, cause of war a nude painting, would be a gift to our opponents that it would take years to live down. Venn might be counting on that, sure we wouldn't risk it. Well, he was wrong. I felt I'd been made a fool of and had a personal stake in it. If I had anything to do with it we'd fight all the way for what was ours, ridicule or not.

*   *   *

There was just one other problem. Before we could discuss the next stage, I had to go back to London and report my failure to Emmeline. Not something to be done in a hurry. Even thinking about it slowed my pace from striding to walking, from walking to ambling. Out on the road between the cornfields, with stooks standing left and right, bullrushes in the ditch and irritating swarms of black harvest flies in the air, I stopped walking altogether. It was too feeble, unthinkable, to trail back tamely to London without another try. On the other hand, a second interview with Oliver Venn would be a waste of breath. So the only hope for diplomacy was to try to influence him through the two nephews. Both were left-leaning in their politics – Daniel very much so by the sound of it – and should be well disposed towards us. Adam had struck me as an intelligent man and Daniel probably wasn't stupid. The obvious thing was to talk privately to one or both of them, explain our dilemma and get them to persuade their uncle to see reason. I simply had to find somewhere to stay overnight and find an opportunity to talk to them.

At that point I noticed – or perhaps part of my mind had noticed already – that I'd come to a halt just above the turning the Scipians had taken on the way to their camp. Back in London I'd been unenthusiastic about joining them but now it seemed providential. I could do my duty by sounding out the Scipian position on women's suffrage, talk to the nephews and go back to London on Sunday night or Monday with a report of work well in hand on both tasks, rather than failure on one. On the downside, it meant at least one night in a communal dormitory, hours of political discussion and catering just one stage up from a soup kitchen, but we all have to make sacrifices. I opened the farm gate and followed the scuffed cart track across a field and round the edge of a copse to another field, this one dotted with faded tents, camp-fires and puzzled cows.

*   *   *

The men's dormitory was the old schoolhouse at the far end of the field by a road, the women's dormitory an old dairy about two hundred yards away along the road, both buildings Venn property. A young Lancashire woman, small and fierce, was in charge of accommodation and took an immediate dislike to my costume – second-best navy blue because of calling on Oliver Venn – and my accent. When I explained that I was a visiting delegate from the Women's Social and Political Union the welcome didn't get any warmer.

‘You can't separate the question of women's suffrage from universal suffrage.'

‘We don't. May I stay for the night?'

‘It's just middle-class divisionism to work for the women's vote until all working men have got the vote without property qualification.'

‘We want all men to have the vote too. What's divisive about that? So may I stay?'

‘Did you book?'

‘No.'

‘Are you a member?'

‘No.'

‘Did you bring your own blanket?'

‘No, I'm sorry.'

‘That'll be five shillings non-members' rate for meals and accommodation, plus sixpence for hire of blanket. They've just started the debate on wage differentials over in the big tent. The one next to it is Midlands miners. Working party on trade union legislation by the elm tree.'

I paid up. There was still a smell of cheese lurking about the dairy and the beds were a ramshackle assortment of garden benches, old doors propped up on bricks, even a couple of abandoned chapel pews with folded blankets. I reserved a bedspace in the far corner by leaving my hat on it then went dutifully out to spread the word, pausing on the way to beg a mug of tea from a cheerful group of anarchists who'd managed to bring a fire and a kettle into partnership.

*   *   *

By mid-afternoon I hadn't made many converts but there hadn't been much hostility either. Nobody was actually opposed to us, but all the different groups that made up the Scipians had their own agendas and urgencies. Variously, votes for women would have to wait until they'd achieved a national minimum wage, or a majority of working men's representatives in Parliament or total overthrow of the capitalist system and a workers' republic. I'd done enough to report back conscientiously that the Scipians were a likeable, even admirable, crowd but not much use to us at present. I saw Max Blume coming out of the Midlands miners' tent and went over to him.

‘I thought you weren't going to join us,' he said.

‘Changed my mind. It's a long way back to London.'

He gave me one of his looks. I asked him if he'd point out Daniel Venn when he arrived.

‘He's here already.'

‘Where?'

‘Over with the bells and bouncers.'

He nodded towards a big elm tree. A group of people had gathered under it and I recognised some as the London girls. Even from a distance they seemed a less earnest group than the rest of the Scipians. Laughter and a few notes squeezed out of a concertina drifted over to us.

‘Which one's Daniel Venn?'

‘Smallish, dark-haired, pleased with himself. Anyway, you'll tell him by the voice.'

Max was right. You could hear it from yards away, the voice of a university man, sounding as if it should go with long afternoons on cricket pitches rather than gambols in socialist camps. None of the group seemed to resent it, though. They were trying out a dance in a tentative, walking-through way, with Daniel in charge. He was thin and active-looking, early twenties, a little below average height with dark curling hair ending just above the collar of his cream flannel shirt. His eyes were bright and there was a crackling feel of energy about him. He wore a red and white spotted neckcloth instead of a tie, a moleskin waistcoat, and dark trousers that looked as if he might have slept under hedges in them. I waited for a break in the conversation and introduced myself to him.

‘I'm sorry to interrupt, but I wonder if I might have a word about your uncle, Oliver Venn.'

He looked alarmed. ‘Is something wrong with Uncle Olly?'

‘No. I saw him this morning and he seemed quite well. It's a business matter.'

He heaved a deep sigh and pushed his hands into his pockets. ‘I'm no good on the business side. It's Adam who handles that.'

Judging from the question about his uncle, he hadn't been up to the house yet. It seemed odd to me, with his fiancée waiting for him, but that wasn't my affair.

‘It's not complicated. Perhaps if you'd let me put the problem to you, you could discuss it with your brother.'

‘Problems.' Another deep sigh, as if he were unfairly loaded with them. And yet there was an air of openness and generosity about him. He wasn't good at turning people away.

‘Tell you what, Miss Bray, I was thinking of taking a walk to the workshop to talk over something with my sister-in-law. If you'd care to hang on for a minute, we can stroll together.'

I thanked him. He went to a place in the shade of the hedge where a long bundle was lying, wrapped in a grey blanket, and knelt down beside it. At first I took it for a pack until I saw a long trail of red hair coming out of the top of the blanket. He got up, said something to one of the girls, who nodded, then came back to me.

‘She'll sleep all right until we get back,' he said. ‘It's been a long journey for her.'

Which was all the explanation I got.

Chapter Four

H
E LED THE WAY PAST THE
old school towards the church and cluster of houses that made up the village, walking fast and easily. I fell into step behind him and explained the problem of the picture. His first reaction was open and hearty laughter.

‘Well, the old scoundrel. I do believe it's the best thing I've ever heard about Uncle Olly'

‘You can hardly expect us to see the joke.'

‘I suppose not, but you must admit it's ripe. Then putting the blame on Christie's. You have to hand it to the old chap.'

‘You can hand him anything you like as long as he hands over the picture to us. If he doesn't, this could end up in the law courts.'

That stopped him laughing at least. ‘If you do that the lawyers will only get it all, and the scandal rags will have a field day'

‘Precisely. So what can we do to avoid it? I thought you and your brother might have a serious talk with him and suggest that if he really can't bear to part with the picture, we'd accept a cash equivalent.'

He whistled. ‘Not sure about that. I think cash may be a bit tight with Uncle Olly at the moment.'

‘It's a bit tight with us all the time. It's not as if we want it for our own selfish purposes. You must know how expensive political campaigning is.'

‘Money, money, money' His voice was bitter, no laughter in it now. ‘What a hideous system this is, when you're not supposed to paint pictures or make music or be kind to people or fall in love or do anything human without thinking about money'

‘I'd like a better system as much as you would, but it doesn't come by just wishing.'

I thought I'd got his measure: spoilt young man mistaking his own itch of discontent for revolutionary fervour. But perhaps I'd misjudged him, for now he apologised.

‘Yes, I suppose we'll have to try to get Uncle Olly to see reason. Trouble is, Adam and I aren't on the best of terms at the moment. I might ask Carol's advice. She's usually the one who sorts things out. I'm relying on that in any case.'

He went quiet, as if there were other things on his mind. We passed a couple of farms and came to the main part of the village. It seemed mostly to consist of one wide main street with a public house called the Crown at one end and a horse trough and pump in the middle, opposite a general store and post office in a cottage so lopsided that the thatch almost touched the ground on one side. A church was set back on a little hillock with a graveyard round it, and a school and schoolyard stood on more level ground on the other side. We walked past them and almost out of the far side of the village. At a forge on the right a big shire horse was standing patiently while the smith heated a shoe. Opposite was a rectangular stone building that looked like a barn recently altered for other purposes with a big window let into one side on the ground floor, a smaller window above. A yard on the far side was piled with stacks of timber. On our side was a door with a porch and a neatly lettered sign: ‘Visitors Welcome'. A gentle humming noise came from inside.

Daniel opened the door and we stepped into a room of normal height at the front but the full height of the original barn at the back, stretching up to shadowy beams where sparrows twittered. The humming came from a pole lathe with a man standing at it, operating a treadle and holding a chisel to a revolving cylinder of wood. Behind him, fading into the shadows, were more pieces of furniture like those up at the Venns' house but in various stages of being made – bedheads propped against walls, chests without lids, chairs without seats. There were three people in the room.

The man who'd been working at the lathe stopped and straightened up as we came in. He was in his thirties, big and square-shouldered. His eyes were blue, face strong in the jaw and broad in the forehead, hands brown and workmanlike with some lines of old scars. A good-looking man who seemed mercifully unaware of the fact, shy even. ‘Hello, Mr Sutton,' Daniel said. The man took his hand and said it was good to see him again, in a deep voice with a West Country accent. A woman was kneeling by the big window with another woman standing beside her holding a baby. When we came in they'd both been staring at a big wooden cabinet and the kneeling woman had her back to us. She turned when she heard Daniel's voice and got up in one easy movement, smiling.

‘Daniel, we expected you yesterday.'

She was in her early thirties, stylish in an unconventional way: dark crinkly hair pinned up with a tortoiseshell comb, a few tendrils hanging down to frame an intelligent oval face with dark eyes that had a slight upward slant to them like a cat's, a straight nose and lips as finely shaped as on a classical statue, but with a satirical twist. Her dress was damson-coloured, softly draped from a high bodice with a few spirals of wood shavings clinging to it. She reminded me of the woman in the William Morris tapestry, only less yearning and more active. Her voice was deep-toned and attractive. When Daniel introduced us the hand she held out to me was slim but had a firm grip. I was surprised that she seemed to take my presence for granted until Daniel said, ‘I'm afraid she's not a customer, Carol. There's a little problem. Tell you in a minute.' A moment's disappointment showed in Carol's dark eyes, but she recovered well.