Netherwood (30 page)

But his encyclopedic knowledge of key moments in the lives of others was accompanied by a chilly lack of interest in humanity. His fascination lay not in the people, but in the buildings they inhabited. Tenants were just that; names in his books, significant only if they either failed to pay up on time, moved away or died. He wasn’t a bad-looking man, and if he’d learned how to laugh or to love he would have been downright attractive: slim, tidy, always dressed immaculately and with not inconsiderable style. His distinguishing physical feature was a fine head of glossy black hair which was as abundantly luxurious as his spirit was mean. He was unmarried – matrimony held no appeal – and entirely friendless, but in his own, emotionally barren way, he was content. And on the fine Monday morning in early July when Eve Williams presented herself, without appointment, at the estate offices, Absalom Blandford was in what passed for him as a good mood.

Not that Mr Blandford was the person Eve was hoping to see. She cursed inwardly when she realised that she would have to put her request to him instead of the somewhat surly but infinitely more approachable Jem Arkwright. He, however,
was out with Walker Spruce and his terriers, mending fencing and – if truth were told – enjoying the sunshine. So it was the basilisk gaze of Absalom Blandford that greeted her when she knocked on the office door and was bid to enter.

As it was, Eve’s heart was pounding with fear – had been since she left Netherwood and entered the gates of the park to walk the mile down Oak Avenue. She looked the part, but she didn’t feel it. Anna had made her a little red flannel jacket, the first such garment Eve had ever owned; it was beautifully dapper, with a cinched-in waist and narrow lapels, and it looked very well over her good white blouse and grey skirt. She had real boots, too, in tan leather, newly purchased from a shoe shop on Cheapside in Barnsley, and although she still preferred the feel on her feet of her old clogs, she hoped the boots lent her a professional air because she needed all the help she could get.

It was all Anna’s fault, she said to herself as she walked along under the towering trees. The liquid feeling in her gut and the dryness of her mouth were Anna’s doing. She had chivvied Eve out of the house this morning and was now safe at home, darting between the dolly tub and the front-door shop – Monday was Monday, after all, and Anna was juggling the demands of wash day with those of a busy trade in pies and puddings. Well, thought Eve, she’d swap places with her now. Aye, she would that; let Anna come to the big house with a hare-brained scheme to borrow money. No, to raise capital. She had to remember that, because apparently it was the correct term. Reverend Farrimond had told her, when he heard of the plan, that looking and sounding professional was the key to success in these matters. People in business raised capital, he said, they didn’t borrow money – although he and Eve both knew it amounted to the same thing. Amos, never backward in coming forward these days, had weighed in with his own advice, which was not to go cap in hand to the earl under any circumstances. But Eve judged, quite correctly, that Amos’s interest wasn’t entirely
objective, so here she was, smartly dressed, coached in what to say, hair brushed to a shine and pinned into a fetching twist – a vision, had she but known it, of loveliness – but still feeling like a small child on her first day at school.

What made it worse was that the gardens were swarming with staff, all of whom seemed fascinated by the novelty of her presence. Eve wondered, as she passed them, what on earth there was to do in a garden, however grand, to keep so many men and boys busy. Old Bartholomew Parkin, the Oak Lodge gatekeeper, had been the first person she encountered and he’d lifted his cap deferentially as she walked past before realising it was just Eve Williams and he needn’t have bothered. That, at least, had made Eve smile. But she soon began to feel foolish again, as she ran the gamut of gardeners who stood and watched her lonely progress towards the magnificent cupolas and columns of Netherwood Hall. She kept in her head the words of Lord Hoyland at Arthur’s funeral: ‘We cannot offer charity to every needy case, my dear, and you doubtless wouldn’t seek it, but we will always help if we can.’

What she sought this morning was an audience with the earl. And if Jem Arkwright had been sitting behind the desk instead of Absalom Blandford, her objective might have been far more easily achieved.

‘Good mornin’, sir,’ she said.

‘Yes it is. At least, it was,’ he said. An unpromising start, but not disastrous. At least he hadn’t demanded she leave at once.

‘I’m Eve Williams,’ she said.

Number five, Beaumont Lane, widow, three children, émigrée lodger, thought the bailiff automatically. He looked at her steadily with his lizard’s eyes.

‘I wondered if I could see you for five minutes?’ Eve said.

‘And can you? See me?’ said Mr Blandford, coldly facetious. ‘Or have I become invisible since arriving at work this morning?’

Eve blushed deep red and her train of thought crashed spectacularly into a brick wall of pure panic. She had expected discouragement but not mocking, naked hostility.

‘Yes, sir. I mean, no. That is, yes, I can,’ she said.

‘Oh for the love of God, what on earth are you doing here?’ he said. His nostrils twitched with displeasure; he was entirely unmoved by her confusion.

‘I wanted to see t’earl,’ she said, blurting it out helplessly. ‘To borrow some money.’ Oh bugger, she thought.

Absalom Blandford snorted derisively.

‘Quite extraordinary,’ he said, as if to himself. He indicated the door with one outstretched arm. ‘Do close it behind you on your way out,’ he said, then he balanced a pair of spectacles on his neat little nose and opened the ledger in front of him, not because there was anything there demanding his attention, but because it was the most effective way possible to ignore this preposterous young woman.

She stood for a moment looking at the crown of his head, until he looked up at her with an expression of such practised coldness that she turned and walked to the door. She had almost left the office when she was suddenly seized by the reckless urge to plead her case.

‘I expressed myself badly just then,’ she said. He didn’t look up. ‘I ’ave a small business, sir, a little shop – I’m sure you know that – and I need to raise some capital in order to expand.’

She sounded now as if she knew what she was about. He knew it, and so did she. But Absalom Blandford didn’t like to back down or retract and he was 100 per cent certain that the earl would have no interest in investing in a back-street pie shop.

‘The usual channels for such matters are financial institutions,’ he said. She seemed entirely uncomprehending, so he added: ‘Banks,’ spitting the word out contemptuously. ‘Now, off you go. You were quite mistaken to come.’

Now Eve did leave, closing the door behind her with a
defiant little bang and allowing herself an internal stream of colourful curses of which, to look at her, you wouldn’t have thought her capable. Amos was right, she thought. She should never have come. The silent invective sustained her as she crunched along the gravelled carriageway and set off back up Oak Avenue just as Lord Hoyland emerged from the entrance of Netherwood Hall. Serendipity, Samuel Farrimond said later, though Eve called it a simple stroke of good luck. The earl, surmising that Mrs Williams must have emerged from the estate offices, briefly postponed his own departure by car in order to enquire after her business there. Absalom Blandford, secure in the knowledge that he had protected the earl from an inconvenience, told him with the sycophantic
bonhomie
he always used in Teddy Hoyland’s company that the impertinent tenant had been sent packing after asking to see his lordship.

‘To borrow money, apparently,’ he added, and let slip a bitter little cough of amusement.

There was no reciprocation, however. The earl looked thoughtful, then said, ‘Get her back, Absalom. Atkins can fetch her in the Daimler. I’ll see her in the morning room. Bring her to me, would you?’

Stunned into silent submission, Absalom Blandford watched his master return to the house before following his orders to the letter. Atkins swung the car out of the courtyard and set off in pursuit of Eve Williams, and Absalom positioned himself at the steps of the house in order to receive her when she emerged from the Daimler. He was, after all, a faithful and obedient servant as well as an out-and-out swine.

M
itchell’s Stone Ground Flour Mill, just off – aptly enough – Mill Street, had ceased production five years before, finally driven out of business by the Barnsley British Co-operative Society, which was producing better flour and selling it for less. Those workers who were willing to travel were given jobs at the Co-op’s mill in Summer Lane, Barnsley, and the rest were out of work. But even those who grumbled at their lot knew that Mitchell’s flour was of a poor grade; take a fistful from the sack and it crumbled to dry dust, whereas Co-op flour was strong and pure. It held the shape of your clenched hand and showed the indentations of your fingers. Eve would use nothing else.

She liked the old Mitchell’s building, though, and the part of Netherwood it stood in. It was the highest part of town, where the air was fresher and the sky clearer. Mill Street itself was wide and well-paved with an almost affluent feel, partly because it was home to two of Netherwood’s most appealing shops: Walker’s Confectioners, its long bow window chock full of glass jars of boiled sweets and boxes of toffee, fudge and coconut ice, and Allott’s High Class Bakers, with a fancy delivery dray and horse parked permanently outside the shop.
The horse was a local landmark, but its teeth were rotten from two decades of being fed mint humbugs by Mrs Walker. Mitchell’s Mill sat off this main thoroughfare at the end of its own walled lane, officially unnamed but referred to by locals as Mitchell’s Snicket, and from the front it had the look of a fine old house, except for the gabled wooden gantry jutting out at the centre of the third storey and the peeling fascia declaring its original use. It was a sandstone building, heavily grimed but still attractive, with generously proportioned sash windows and an arched entrance in the middle, wide enough to allow a coach and horses to pass through to the rear courtyard. In a flat, smooth stone above the arch were inscribed the initials EHN, a reference to the father of the present Earl Hoyland of Netherwood, who commissioned the building and equipped it for business. It would have saddened him greatly to see it now, unused and down-at-heel. Absalom Blandford was all for demolishing it, but something – sentimentality, optimism, perhaps a little of both – had made Teddy resist.

And now, as he sat opposite Eve Williams in the sun-filled morning room, his instinct to preserve the old mill suddenly made sense to him. Her proposition was extremely interesting: that he invest in her fledgling business to allow it to flourish. She was such a plucky individual, he thought, as he watched her struggle to articulate her unformed ideas. She could teach his feckless son a thing or two about strength in adversity; sent for the summer to the family’s Scottish seat, Tobias had reacted with lamentable pique, all but stamping his feet like Isabella in a temper when he learned his fate. It was no hardship, really, to oversee the renovations to the exterior of the castle – Teddy himself at the same age would have considered it something of a treat – and they’d all be joining him up there in early August anyway for the shooting. But still Tobias had railed against his father’s decision: he called it exile, banishment. Poor show, thought Teddy, very poor show indeed. It
hadn’t helped in the least that Clarissa made such an almighty fuss too. She was as bad as the boy, almost hysterical at the prospect of him missing the rest of the season in London, as if all that mattered in the world was his attendance at one silly gathering after another. Well, it was done now and Tobias was gone. He hoped a couple of months in his own company might teach the boy something about self-reliance and responsibility.

Eve had stopped speaking and was looking directly at the earl. He hasn’t heard a word I’ve said, she was thinking. And she didn’t blame him for letting his mind wander. Why, Ellen would’ve made a better job of it than she had this morning, rambling on about pies and orders and ovens as if an earl would have the remotest interest in any of it. He’d brought her into this lovely room, flooded with light, smelling of lilac, and had sat her opposite him at a rosewood table you could have used as a mirror, such was its gleam. He’d ordered coffee – the first Eve had ever tasted – and it was served from a silver pot by a girl Eve knew from town but who gave not a flicker of recognition as she poured. The girl was still within earshot when the earl had said, ‘So Mrs Williams, how can I be of assistance?’ so she was probably out there still, ear pressed flat against the door, so that she could take a full story and not a fragment of one back to the kitchens with her. Eve wished she’d written out her piece and brought it with her; she might have looked foolish, reading it aloud, but at least her words would have come out in the right order.