Flint and Roses (60 page)

And he was a witty, easy, charming friend, an imaginative lover.

‘You might care to wear this for me, Faith,' and he would toss me a peignoir of scandalous transparency or an evening gown that appeared to commence at the waist. And when it transpired that Mr. Remburger of New York was also an admirer of bare, blonde shoulders, Blaize was immensely amused, by no means displeased to see that other men desired his wife.

It was, perhaps, not a marriage in the way the Law Valley understood it, since Law Valley men did not encourage sensuality in their wives, being more inclined to fall sound asleep after domestic lovemaking than to lie easily entwined together in the lamplight, drinking champagne and telling each other how very pleasant it had all been. And most Law Valley wives, far from encouraging such nonsense, would have been acutely embarrassed, if not downright horrified by it.

But within the privacy of our bedroom Blaize treated me neither as a sexual convenience nor as a matron who could be asked to do no more than her duty, but as a high-priced courtesan, showing no signs of burning passion and expecting none, quite simply enjoying me, an essential ingredient of his pleasure being that I should enjoy him. And, if the Law Valley would not have understood the black lace peignoir, the velvet ribbon I sometimes left around my neck when all else had been discarded, the leisurely arousal that could begin as he leaned through the candlelight towards me at dinner-time to touch my hand, or brush his mouth against my ear, and might not reach its conclusion until after midnight, then I understood it very well.

‘Now then, darling—are you longing for me now?'

‘I believe so.'

‘Then I think you may long a moment more, Faith, and appreciate me better—don't you?'

‘Yes—since you do so like to be appreciated.'

‘That's right, darling—drift over me, just melt. You know, I think we do this very well.'

‘You mean you think you do it very well.'

‘Mmmmm—but you're coming along nicely, Faith.'

He made no inquiries into the state of my emotions. He saw Nicholas daily when he was at the mills and talked of him quite easily when the occasion required it, displaying a lack of curiosity about the past—even as to what my feelings might have been for Giles Ashburn—which I at first mistook for consideration until I realized that he was, quite simply, not curious.

‘Blaize,' I asked him, just once. ‘Why is everything so easy for you?' And laughing, understanding my meaning exactly, he had replied, ‘Because I am shallow, darling, and superficial and immensely self-centred. And it is my firm intention to remain so.'

But it was, of course, less simple than that. He felt no anxiety with regard to me or to Nicholas because, never having been in love himself, he did not really believe in it. He enjoyed what he had, he had everything he enjoyed, and had not spoken in jest of his childhood belief that everyone, sooner or later, must prefer him to Nicholas. We had made an arrangement which was clearly congenial to us both, had sealed it with the birth of our daughter, Blanche. What more was there to be said?

The war with Russia ended, largely, it seemed to me, because everyone had grown tired of it, rather than because anybody had actually won, and we celebrated the peace with fireworks in the park at Listonby where Blaize and I were frequent guests, especially now that Caroline, in hot pursuit of the Duke of South Erin, needed to show his sister and his sister's friends that not all the Barforths were unsophisticated. I continued to sit on the committee, chaired by Aunt Hannah, for the relief of the mauled remnants still dragging their way back from the Crimea, remembering Giles acutely every time I visited one of them in Simon Street, a fine, charitable lady I wondered if he would recognize. I found employment for the wives of men who were now unemployable, gave money to those who had no women to support them, took arrowroot and soup and blankets to sick children, to soldiers' women—beggars' women—who, despite my aunt's instructions to the contrary, became pregnant again and again.

Yet, when a gentleman who reminded me strongly of Giles as he would have been had he lived to be a little older, gave a lecture in what had once been a church hall at the lower end of Sheepgate on the use of contraceptive sponges, which, if soaked in vinegar and washed occasionally, might be of help, there was a
frisson
of horror among the respectable middle classes, my sister Celia, who had miscarried now for the sixth time, finding it too disgusting to contemplate; others, for vocal if somewhat vague reasons, considering it contrary to the law of God; while Aunt Hannah condemned Prudence soundly for her support of this charlatan, and me for inviting him to dinner.

‘There is such a thing as self-restraint,' Aunt Hannah said.

‘I have never noticed it,' Prudence told her.

‘Not the most romantic suggestion I've ever heard,' Blaize murmured, wrinkling a fastidious nostril when I mentioned the matter to him. ‘But, of course, if it could be contrived by a clever woman so that there might be no distinctive odour—so that the gentleman concerned might be quite unaware of it—then I can't really think the gentleman would mind.'

Prudence spent as much time as she could in my house, escaping whenever possible from the restrictions of Blenheim Lane, the Irish cousins, the affectionate but eagle-eyed Mr. Adair. She was twenty-eight now, approaching twenty-nine, a desperate age for a single woman, and although her unmarried status did not disturb her—since Freddy Hobhouse was still willing to put an end to that—-she was frequently in despair at the slow frittering away of her time, the bonds with which my father, even from the grave, continued to bind her, and which Daniel Adair had no intention of letting go. She had longed to go out to the Crimea and offer her services to Miss Florence Nightingale, and had been prevented not by the general outcry but by a simple withdrawal of funds which had made her journey impossible. She longed to set up a school where girls of the new generation could be taught—as she put it—to raise themselves above the level of pet animals, but Mr. Adair, being fond of pet animals, would not hear of that. Young ladies belonged in their mothers'drawing-rooms. Young ladies did not go out unchaperoned—as Prudence had been accustomed to do. Young ladies did not read newspapers, nor hold political discussions, nor express their opinions on the subject of back-to-back houses, which Mayor Agbrigg's new building regulations were striving to prohibit. Young ladies, on all topics of importance, shared the views of their senior male relative, and the only alternative open to them was to take a husband, who would be selected by that senior male himself. And although Daniel Adair did not really believe a word of all this, and, far from disliking Prudence, was rather fond of her, he was a man who enjoyed a good fight, finding it a pleasant change from a surfeit of conjugal bliss, and could never resist his part in the running battle between them.

‘I'm rich,' she said. ‘Men want to marry me for my money. I own a fortune in porcelain, and I can't raise a penny.'

And it was Blaize who suggested, ‘No, you can't sell your porcelain, of course, but I wonder if there is anything in your father's will which forbids you to give it away?'

‘Why should I do that?'

‘Oh—generosity, I imagine. There are a pair of Wedgwood urns I have often admired which would look very well on my study mantelpiece, and a porcelain nymph that rather reminds me of Faith. If you should choose to give them to me—or to Faith;—I'm not sure anyone could complain. And should it occur to anyone that I might have paid you for them—well, I cannot think Jonas Agbrigg would be willing to take a mere supposition to court.'

‘I will check the will again with Jonas.' she said, and when she had gone I told him, ‘That was very clever of you, Blaize.'

‘Yes—but then we know I am a clever man.'

‘It was also very good-natured. Those urns can't be cheap, you know.'

‘I do know. But bear in mind that I actually want them—which makes me just a shade less generous. And, if she is suffering from too many Irish cousins, you might care to suggest to her that an engagement is not a marriage, but carries a fair amount of protection. I have it on good authority that Aunt Hannah, in similar circumstances, once engaged herself to a parson with small intention of marrying him.'

‘That hardly seems fair.'

‘No, but it would give Freddy Hobhouse the boost he needs. I also have it on good authority that my brother is thinking of making an offer for Nethercoats, and if old Mr. Hobhouse sells out there will be nothing for Freddy. He is not a partner, and Nicky's offer is unlikely to be generous. There might be enough to keep the old couple in a house on the coast, and to make some provision for the girls, but Freddy and the boys will have to fend for themselves. If he got engaged to Prudence, it might be no more than a stay of execution—but the promise of her money might make Mr. Hobhouse less ready to sell, and even if it didn't he'd be bound to put up his asking price. You see, I'm being good-natured again.'

‘Yes, I do see. You want to make Nicholas pay more for Nethercoats.'

‘Ah—but if it would help Prudence and Freddy—and I'm sure Nicky could find the money. They think the world of him at Mr. Rawnsley's bank.'

‘It's not a game, Blaize—not to them. Prudence couldn't jilt Freddy if he lost his business. She'd feel obliged to stand by him.'

‘I know,' he said, his smoky eyes brimming with amusement and self-knowledge. ‘But Freddy is a gentleman, don't you see. He'd release her.'

Yet, whether or not she was inclined to take advice of this nature, I noticed that quite soon a whole series of familiar objects began to appear, the Wedgwood urns, the white biscuit nymph, a pair of Grecian dancers in Meissen porcelain, a biscuit Venus by Sèvres, a bare-shouldered, female figure from Vincennes mounted on a jungle of ormolu foliage.

‘How generous you are, Blaize! I believe Prudence is saving hard.'

And, remembering that he had also been generous to Georgiana—that he had a penchant perhaps, for ladies in distress—I wondered if he had once included me among them.

I went to Listonby that autumn on a prolonged visit—Blaize having left for some exotic destination—my presence required there because Caroline, now that her sons were out of the nursery, no longer found the start of the hunting season altogether congenial, fretting a great deal in private that her seven-year-old twins could now take their fences like men—or so their father assured her—and by no means pleased to see them come home to her in so indescribable a state of filth and exhaustion.

But Georgiana, who had taken her own son up on her saddle from his babyhood, determined that like all the Clevedons he should ride before he could walk, had no such qualms, and scant patience with Caroline's heart-searchings.

‘Good heavens! If either of them breaks a leg, it will mend. It's the horses'legs we have to be careful of, darling—one has to shoot them, you know, after a bad fall. And, if there are times when one would quite like to shoot one's children, I'm sure there's no fear of it. I'll keep an eye on your boys for you—and they're both quite careful in any case, they just jog along with the grooms when they're tired—not at all like my Gervase.'

But Caroline well knew that Georgiana, once her blood was up, would keep an eye on no one, would leave her own Gervase in a ditch if he happened to take a tumble; while Hetty Stone, who was no equestrienne, but who regularly drove herself out to the covert-side, would have no time either for little boys, being more inclined to keep her eyes on their fathers. And each hunting day contained its share of misery. No leisurely tea-tray in her bed these days, until the meet had departed, but a strained presence hovering in the hall, her whole nature torn between Lady Chard who must both by rank and inclination have a fine appreciation of such things, and Caroline Barforth, frankly revolted by such recklessness, such waste.

‘It's quite ridiculous,' she would tell me as we watched them set out, all dash and clatter in the stable yard as they tasted the air of the fresh morning, the occasional cursing and the laughter as some nervous animal went skittering out of control shredding her nerves to agony as, with outward calm, she ordered the serving of stirrup cups. ‘Quite ridiculous, taking children of that age—it can't be good for them. And the language they are exposed to—and the manners. Did you hear Perry Clevedon just now, yelling like a madman? And Julian Flood is every bit as bad. They will go through a dozen horses between them, this season; ruin them—whatever Georgiana may have to say—and I would like to know who pays the bills? Well, in fact, I do know it, for Georgiana is keeping an entire stable over at Galton, for Perry's convenience, and she could only have the money from Nicholas, It doesn't occur to her, one supposes, that he might need his spare cash for something else—that it would suit him better to put it back into the business, or to get another business off the ground. And that animal she has bought for Gervase is enormous—my goodness, I told Matthew at once that, if he had any thought of getting such a monster for Dominic or Noel, then he and I would certainly quarrel. And now he has taken Gideon out as well—to ride with the grooms, he says, since that is what he did himself at that age.'

And, of course, that was the root of her dilemma. She did not really want her children to hunt—did not much care for hunting men apart from Matthew—but the Chards, the Floods, the Clevedons, certainly the South Erins, had always hunted from childhood, and she was determined to fit her sons for their inheritance. She did not really want to send them to Matthew's old school, where they would be required to wash in cold water at a stand-pipe in an open yard, like the lads from Simon Street, and would be flogged when they misbehaved as soundly as factory-boys were strapped by their overlooker—as no schoolmaster had ever dared to flog her middle-class brothers—but young squires had always been treated so, and were sent to school, after all, not to be educated but to be toughened into men who could lead a Light Brigade, armed only with sabres, into the mouths of Russian cannon; who could acquire the passionless hauteur of privilege which had so attracted her to her husband. She did not really want her sons to sally forth, gun in hand, and slaughter with their own not always accurate shot the pheasant and grouse to replenish her larder, would have much preferred to purchase her game clandestinely but safely at her back door, as they did at Tarn Edge. But every young gentleman must know how to handle himself at a
grande battue
, must be worthy of his place in a walking line of guns, must know how to shoot flying and how to shoot well. And, if armed gamekeepers and mantraps were really necessary for the discouragement of poachers, then she, as the wife of a Justice of the Peace who also happened to own the game being poached, could hardly disagree.