Flint and Roses (36 page)

There was a great deal of champagne, the party from the Hall going outside at midnight to toast the sleeping infants yet again, tenants' daughters and gentlemen's daughters, officers and ploughboys raising their glasses side by side, producing the exact degree of mingling, class with class, considered appropriate to the occasion, since the tenantry must be understandably eager to make the acquaintance of their new lady, understandably relieved that she had ensured the continuity of the estate and of their leases, by producing this over-abundance of heirs.

It was an immense success, lavish, yet so efficient that not even the most mercantile, Nonconformist of hearts could have pronounced it wasteful, everyone enjoying themselves hugely, but at the same time minding their manners, gaiety without impropriety—since impropriety would always find it hard to flourish beneath Caroline's eagle eye—a blueprint, one felt, of what she intended to make of her future.

‘Well done,' I told her.

‘Yes,' she said. ‘I believe it was. Not that I mean to rest on my laurels, I do assure you, for the moment one becomes satisfied one has set one's feet on the downward path. My father taught me that. He measures his success by his current trading figures—today's profit, not yesterday's—and I shall do the same. Just wait for my Christmas Eve Ball, Faith dear. I think even my father will be impressed with that.'

The foundation stone of Aunt Hannah's concert hall was finally laid that year, to the hearty accompaniment of Cullingford's own brass band, on the site she had herself chosen off Market Square. The ceremony was performed by a belted earl, an ancient gentleman who appeared uncertain as to the exact purpose of his visit. Yet he made himself pleasant enough afterwards at the reception organized in the Assembly Rooms by my aunt who, although mayoress no longer, appeared to have retained the authority of the office, making light work of comfortable Mrs. Hobhouse, who had officially succeeded her. Mayor Hobhouse, indeed, looking portly and complacent despite the persistent rumours that trade at Nethercoats was not good, made no secret of his dependance upon Mr. Ira Agbrigg, being himself a man who preferred the afternoon comforts of the Old Swan to a spike-edged tussle with the Cullingford Waterworks.

‘Here's my man Agbrigg,' he kept on saying, much to the annoyance of Aunt Hannah and Uncle Joel, whose ‘man'Mr. Agbrigg undoubtedly was. ‘He's got the Waterworks Company by the tail at last, I can tell you. Neatly done, Agbrigg my lad, since, if you're to be mayor again next time, the purchase will come into your term of office and you'll get all the credit.'

‘He did all the work,' Prudence said in a whisper that was meant to be heard, and indeed it was no secret that Mr. Agbrigg's efforts alone had persuaded the truculent directors of the waterworks company to part with their ailing giant for a sum of a hundred and sixty-five thousand pounds, and that he had not only calmed the fears of a startled Corporation, unaccustomed as yet to handling such large sums of public money, but had obliged them to seek parliamentary consent to the raising of a further four hundred thousand to be used for the construction of reservoirs.

‘Such energy!' Mrs. Hobhouse had once been heard to murmur, very spitefully for her. ‘Only think, Hannah, had it been put to commercial use you might have been a millionairess, not just a mayoress, by now.'

But Aunt Hannah, her own building projects fast becoming a reality, her husband's reputation as a popular hero providing her at last with ample compensation for his lack of social finesse, had replied merely with a smile and an inclination of her handsome Barforth head.

My mother was there too that day, allowing the outwardly respectable but—according to Blaize—inwardly lascivious worsted spinner, Mr. Oldroyd, to take her arm, flirtatious and ready as always to enjoy the conquest of any man, but bored, I knew, eager to be off on her travels again, yet not certain this time just where she wished to go.

‘You look nineteen, mamma,' I told her.

‘My dear—I know, and it is very kind of you to say so. But what is the good of that when everyone else of my generation, is looking so old? Darling, where have all the attractive men gone to? I was asking myself that just this morning, for the world used to be full of them and now they have vanished entirely. Well, I have found the answer. They are here, of course, as they have always been, except that they are older—for Matthew Oldroyd was once quite handsome before he became so dry and grey, and Bradley Hobhouse, my dear, when he weighed a mere sixteen stones instead of the ton of him you see today, was a man worth looking at. I confess
I
looked, once; and he at me—merely looked. But now, apart from my brother Joel, they are just a set of bloated or shrunken old gentlemen, and even Joel, you know, is taking on weight. Yes, I may look nineteen. Faith dear, but there are days when I, do not feel it. Perhaps I should take to wearing purple satin like Hannah and Emma-Jane Hobhouse, and compose myself, for decay. I wonder if it would have been better, after all, to have been born a matron, like Celia.'

Celia had not attended the ceremony in the Square, fearing to stand on her feet so long, fearing to be jostled in the crowd and that the noise of the brass instruments would give her a headache, but Jonas had assisted her up the shallow steps to the Assembly Rooms, provided her with a chair and footstool, opened a window so that she could see something of the proceedings and then closed it again when she declared she would take cold. And, although there was no warmth in the care he took of her, no one could have accused him of being other than unfailingly attentive to the whims of this frail little woman who had always felt the need of her frailty to make herself noticed.

‘Jonas, this lemonade you have brought me is much too warm.'

‘I will fetch some ice.'

‘You know that ice gives me a headache.'

‘I beg your pardon. What shall I bring you then?'

‘Oh—I don't know. Can't you think of something? There seems to be nothing but champagne, which is not good for me. I don't suppose they would trouble themselves to make me some tea?'

‘I will go and inquire.'

‘Thank you—and not too strong, Jonas—for the last time I had tea here it was quite black and bitter, and altogether horrid. Do hurry, Jonas.'

He went off to do her bidding, and, watching his cool, quite passionless retreat. Prudence murmured to me, ‘Our little sister seems to have the upper hand of her Jonas. Who would have thought it? I had expected to see things quite otherwise.'

But I was less convinced. Celia, indeed, had always whined and complained, had always been a nuisance, but Prudence knew as well as I that it had stemmed from a combined sense of inadequacy and isolation. If Celia had grown up believing herself neglected, by an all-powerful father who had shown her neither interest nor affection, by her sisters who had openly preferred each other's company to hers, then she had been quite right. Only Miss Mayfield, at the cry of ‘My head aches. My back aches', had rushed to attend her, only a hurried summons to Dr. Overdale, a darkened room—‘Be quiet, girls, your sister is ailing'—had made her important. And now, the triumph of her early marriage fading, she was using those same ailments, the drama of her two miscarriages, to attract the notice or to punish the man who seemed determined to be a good husband—since it was a requirement of his prickly nature that everything he did should be done to perfection—but who did not love her.

‘Well,' I said to Prudence, speaking my thought out loud, ‘at least he's not in love with anyone else.'

‘Jonas?' she said. ‘Of course not. Good heavens, Faith, is that all you can think of? I never thought to see you so besotted with Giles. Well, I am sure he is very glad of it, even if it does make your conversation so limited.'

We left the reception early, Giles having received a call of some urgency, and I drove with him to Simon Street, waiting in the gig while he went down a narrow court, a mere gap, man-wide, between two houses, and entered the house behind them, which my father had built.

Simon Street, which had given its name to the entire area of alleys and back passages cobwebbing between itself and Saint Street, was not the worst place I had ever seen: it was simply larger, its tragedies, its brutalities, its degradations appearing worse because they were more numerous. Built long ago to accommodate the labour force of Low Cross Mills, it offered ample proof to the most casual eye of my father's boasted ability to squeeze in more humanity per acre than any other builder in the West Riding, its damp, flimsy, two-roomed cottages sometimes housing thirty or more lacklustre persons, rarely fewer than eight or ten. The street itself was unpaved, an occasional heap of engine ashes thrown down to drink up the mud, the open sewage channels on either side of it seeping their liquid foulness into the uneven ground. But, in the alleys beyond, I knew there were no drains at all, no more facilities for the functioning of human bodies than was, normally provided for stabled cattle, just dung-heaps, rotting and poisonous, in any dark corner, a swill-tub placed here and there overflowing with the festering vegetable garbage for which the pig-men, when they troubled to collect it, would pay a penny or two.

I knew that the woman my husband had gone to visit was dirty, that all women who took up residence in these mean streets, no matter how careful their upbringing nor how precise their early ambitions, were dirty too, not necessarily from idleness or wickedness, but because the stand-pipe in Simon Street was turned on for scarcely more than half an hour a day, few of these women possessing the pans and buckets in which to collect and store the water, nor the strength to carry them even if they had. And I understood too, now that Giles had explained it to me, the impossibility, even for the fortunate owners of buckets and brushes, of scrubbing floorboards that were rotten or walls that sprouted a continual mushroom-mould of damp.

I knew that Giles's patient would most likely be drunk on his arrival, since gin, being cheap and easier to come by than water, was also much valued for its ability to dull the senses of smell, of hunger, of decency, to induce a state of contented apathy—much sought after in Simon Street—a shrug of thin shoulders which said, ‘What do I care?' I knew that her children fouled the streets as casually as the packs of mongrel dogs I could see swarming everywhere, because my father had provided no privies, or so few that they were choked with ancient excrement, and the streets were sweeter.

I knew that in the hot weather—down those fearful alleyways—there were fly-swarms, rat-swarms, whores and thieves, murder done for the sake of a shilling, or for its own sake alone, whilst on the strips of wasteland where my father had neglected to build, or his buildings had fallen down, I knew that women washed their infected bedclothes, during the summer fevers, in the stagnant pools where others came to drink.

I knew, too, that the woman my husband had called on could not pay him, would take none of his advice, would continue to drink and breed and moulder her life away, failing, since no one else had ever valued her, to place any value on herself. And, wondering what value the world would have accorded me had I been born in so irrevocable a trap, I was so fiercely thankful for my own life that the sight of Giles coming back to the gig, smiling a little ruefully as he picked his way across the litter, caused my stomach to lurch with gladness, a glow beginning, small but very determined, at the core of me.

We drove off to higher ground, cleaner air, and, sitting very close to him, I said, ‘You are a marvellous man. Giles.'

‘By no means. I am an ordinary man. There is nothing at all remarkable about me that I can see.'

‘I say you are marvellous and don't wish to be contradicted.'

He smiled, quiet and contained as he always was. ‘You may call me fortunate, if you like. I believe it would be a more accurate assessment. I have always had sufficient money for my needs and so I can afford to be compassionate. Please don't admire me too much, Faith, for I shall never do great things in the world. I am moved by the misery around me, but I am too content with my own life to be a true pioneer. I did not march to Westminster with the Chartists, as your brother Crispin did, although I believed strongly in every one of their aims. I do what I can in Simon Street, as much as I am asked to do, but I lead no crusades for reform Basically I am just an ordinary man, concerned with my own affairs, with my home and my wife, and that she should continue to think me marvellous.'

I got down from the gig in Millergate, opened my own front door, crossed my threshold, waiting as he saw the horse put away, my anxieties gone, my whole body dreaming and glowing—waiting for him.

‘Giles.'

‘Yes, darling?'

And, although I couldn't say. ‘Make love to me', since no woman educated by my father could ever bring herself to say that, it was there, unspoken and more than that: no longer simply ‘Make love to me', but ‘Giles, let me make love to you.'

We spent our second Christmas together in quiet content, Giles's professional commitments obliging me to refuse Caroline's invitation to spend the entire festive season at Listonby.

‘You can't miss my ball,' she said, quite horrified, refusing to be diverted even by my discovery of a particularly fine silk brocade which would suit her to perfection, and the detailed sketches I passed on to her dressmaker. ‘If your husband can't come then you must come without him. Goodness—he can't possibly want you to miss my, ball either. The staircase is an absolute marvel, and even my father has never assembled so many chandeliers together—one directly above my head when I receive at the top of the stairs, seven in the Long Gallery. The Hall is going to be full of candles and Christmas trees, and I'm not even prepared to tell you what I've done with the ballroom. I want to
unveil
it, Faith, like a monument. You
can't
miss it, and you could be a tremendous help to me, since I've never even met half the people who are coming. You don't have to dance with them if you'd rather not, but you could circulate and chat. Naturally your husband wouldn't mind. He'd be glad to see you enjoying yourself—like Matthew.'