Ravenscliffe (28 page)

So when the convoy of cars and carriages had disappeared in its own cloud of gravel dust, Mrs Powell-Hughes sighed feelingly and said, ‘Thank goodness they’re gone,’ and in front of the parlour maids too, which was so unlike her that Parkinson, shocked, dismissed them at once and caught the housekeeper gently by the arm as she made to leave herself.

‘Are you quite well, Mrs Powell-Hughes?’ he said.

For a moment she looked at him, puzzled by his concern and then the penny dropped and she laughed lightly. ‘Oh, don’t fret, Mr Parkinson. I haven’t turned revolutionary. It was simply a mild expression of relief that we have the house to ourselves for a couple of weeks.’

The demands had not yet been made on the butler that would compel him to utter – audibly at any rate – the words she had used. His own loyalty to the family seemed to know no limits, and of this he was proud. But he was a good man, and he did his utmost not to judge the housekeeper for her momentary lapse. She was tired. They all were. He smiled in a general, non-committal way that he hoped demonstrated sympathy with her fatigue rather than with her views. She left him and returned to the house and for a minute he stood alone on the steps, surveying the gardens with an attitude of grave appreciation and savouring the earthy, smoky smells of early autumn. A small shadow of concern crossed his benign features as he noticed that the recently departed wheels and hooves had left unsightly ruts and pockmarks in the pinkish gravel of the avenue. The driveway must be raked, all the long mile from the house
down to the gates. This was well outside his remit, of course, but still he found himself hoping that Mr MacLeod, immersed as he was in his Grand Canal scheme, would not overlook this small detail. For it was, thought Parkinson with pious, proprietorial satisfaction, the attendance upon such small details that made Netherwood Hall the glorious place it was.

O
n polling day in Ardington, the Liberals and the Tories ran their supporters to the polls in gigs and carriages, and Anna made Amos laugh by cursing herself for not borrowing Sol Windross’s rag-and-bone cart. As it was, they did their best, knocking on doors – again – to encourage their supporters to come out and place their cross by the name of Sykes for the Independent Labour Party. All the time, though none of the people he spoke to would have guessed it, Amos knew he would lose; this was valuable experience, but it wasn’t going to make him an MP. He had known this even before the campaign began, and the weeks of hard slog had only confirmed it as a certainty. Mind you, he thought, it beggared belief that so many of these good working people would turn out in high numbers to vote for the wrong party. The previous member for Ardington had been swept in to Parliament on a massive majority in the general election of 1900; he was a wealthy manufacturer, a Liberal and pleasant enough, but with no interest in the town beyond its usefulness to him in gaining entry to the elite gentlemen’s club that was the House of Commons. He had died of a heart attack – too much access to butter and cream, Enoch surmised – and the Liberal
candidate chosen to replace him was of the same breed: affable, arrogant, his belly asking too much of his waistcoat, his thoughts turning to luncheon the moment breakfast was finished. His name was Webster Thorne and he was just the sort of Liberal that Amos loved to hate: the sort of Liberal who, with a private fortune and a large house in London, had little interest in improving the lot of anyone else. They were a sorry lot, Amos said to Anna: trotting out reasonable, even thoughtful, political aims, but fulfilling none of them because of an innate and crippling smugness.

‘Well, be fair. They’re only in opposition,’ Anna said.

Amos snorted contemptuously. ‘All talk, no action,’ he said. ‘Every vote that might have some bearing on t’ lives of ordinary folk gets dodged.’

‘Such as?’

‘Such as a working wage for MPs. Now – that’s summat that’d change t’very core of our political system, but time an’ again, t’Liberals in Parliament duck that issue. And why? Because if they’re honest, they don’t think Westminster is any place for a working man.’

‘And yet, here they come, these working men, to vote for Liberal Party,’ Anna said. They were standing outside the church hall, made into a polling station for the day, and they were forced to step back to make way for yet another carriage, which rattled up to the door and disgorged six more men for Webster Thorne. Anna shouted ‘Vote Sykes for working man!’ and they looked a little startled. Three of them, all miners, greeted Amos as they passed. At least they had the decency to redden, he thought.

‘See? It’s nowt personal,’ he said to Anna. ‘Better t’devil they know. That’s ’ow they see it, anyroad.’

‘Speaking of devils you know, it must be very hard for you at moment.’

‘What must?’

‘Trying to keep hating Earl of Netherwood when he is busy with all his good works.’

He raised an eyebrow at her and she raised one back: she was a regular thorn in his side, always poking at his principles to see if he might give them up.

‘Long way to go before I’ll doff my cap at ’im,’ he said, though she was right, in a way. He had nurtured his savage resentment towards Lord Netherwood for so long now that, in truth, it was more habit than emotion. Amos’s dislike and mistrust of the earl went back years, but had been heightened and honed by a conviction that Lord Netherwood had somehow stood between himself and Eve – that his great wealth, his influence, his power to help her on her way had taken her out of Amos’s reach. This particular beef had diminished into irrelevance since she’d sprung Daniel MacLeod on them all, of course. Still, there were plenty of other reasons to keep a nice level of antipathy simmering away on the back burner: iron winding gear and electric coal-cutters were all very well, but where did the benevolent earl stand on the eight-hour day? Where did he stand on sick pay and widows’ pensions, on injury compensation and the right to paid holidays, on a minimum wage to guarantee every miner in the land a decent living? These questions were what stoked the fire at the heart of Amos’s political credo; these questions – and the lamentable lack of satisfactory answers – were why he would rather lose as a Labour candidate than win as a hamstrung Liberal.

He looked at Anna, his diminutive, feisty foot soldier on the Ardington battlefield. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘There’s nowt more we can do ’ere. ’ow d’you fancy a glass o’ milk stout an’ a pickled egg?’

‘How charming,’ she said with full Rabinovich hauteur. ‘I’ve walked until my feet bleed for pickled egg?’ But then she smiled at him, and she couldn’t have looked happier.

It was a mystery to Absalom Blandford that he had ever found Eve Williams desirable. Whenever he saw her these days – which was far more often than she realised – he was filled with an almost visceral revulsion; the same physical qualities that he had once convinced himself he wanted were now utterly repugnant to him. It was as if she emitted a repellent odour, the intimate origins of which were unknown to Absalom, but which radiated out from her towards his delicate nostrils whenever he was within range. He would watch her, unseen, and his face would contort with disgust. After these encounters he would have to bathe in the evening with extra care, scrubbing at his skin with a nailbrush so that the smell of Eve didn’t revisit and torment him in his sleep. This phenomenon wasn’t unique to Eve Williams, however; he could detect a different aroma around anyone who came into his orbit. This gift – or curse – was the latest manifestation of his personal fastidiousness, and like a bear or a bloodhound, he could sniff the air and know, without looking up, who had walked into his office. Jem Arkwright was filthy, unwashed; he carried the scent of horse manure and human waste. The earl, for whom Absalom had a cringing, obsequious respect, nevertheless bore permanent traces of the smells of engine oil, pipe tobacco and smoked fish. But these various personal aromas had obvious, traceable outside sources. What disturbed Absalom about Eve Williams was that the source of her musk was hidden, tucked away somewhere in her folds of female flesh. He wondered that anyone could bear to be near her. He wondered that the new gardener, believing they were unobserved, could press up against her in his desperate, pitiful need without recoiling at once in horror at the stink.

Absalom watched her now. She had come out of the kitchen
and into the courtyard of the mill, where she seemed to have nothing better to do than trail around the tables and chairs with a half-smile on her face as if she were party to a joke that no one else had heard. She stopped at the fountain, bending at the waist to pick fallen leaves from the grist mill, and the dark shadow between her breasts was suddenly on display to him where he stood, closer to her than she could possibly imagine, in one of the hiding places he used for this sort of surveillance. He considered stepping out into the open, simply to startle her out of her complacent happiness, but rejected impetuosity in favour of the sensible option: remaining hidden from view, remaining vigilant, watching and waiting until his mental dossier on Eve Williams amounted to something incriminating. If it were in his power, he would collapse the trappings of her life around her right now. He would throw her out of the mill, withdraw the tenancy agreement of Ravenscliffe, reveal her to the world as the whore he knew her to be. But it wasn’t in his power to do any of these things, because she was a cunning and dangerous prey: she had used her harlot’s tricks to win the trust and affection of Lord Netherwood, and this kept her safe. But it would not always be so: this, Absalom knew.

He was back in his office, scratching at the ledger like a man with an itch, when Daniel MacLeod knocked on the door. He made the gardener wait for longer than was comfortable, then raised his head from his work.

‘Come,’ he said with little encouragement, and the gardener entered, first kicking his feet against the step to dislodge the mud. Absalom pointedly studied his fob watch to indicate the relentless march of time and to make it clear, if it wasn’t already, that whatever Mr MacLeod’s business, it was bound
to be petty and tiresome compared to all the bailiff’s other duties.

‘Afternoon,’ Daniel said affably, his Montrose burr strange and startling to the ears of the bailiff, who didn’t return the greeting. The rank mingled smells of rotting vegetation and potash invaded Absalom’s extraordinary olfactory system and, resting an elbow on the desk, he casually covered his nostrils with the fingers of his right hand. Daniel was oblivious to this defensive manoeuvre. He had had no first-hand dealings yet with Absalom Blandford, though Eve didn’t like him, he knew that much. She had described to him the bizarre occasion when the bailiff had dropped to one knee at the railway station and asked for her hand in marriage, having shown no previous attachment to her whatsoever. A supremely awkward moment, Daniel imagined, yet the fellow could hardly have been heartbroken at her refusal. A rash, ill-considered impulse, no doubt, but quite understandable; it amazed Daniel that he had found Eve before anyone else had claimed her, and the fact that the bailiff had once thrown his cap into the ring made Daniel more, not less, inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt.

‘I’d speak to Lord Netherwood, but I gather he’s away up to Glendonoch, lucky man,’ Daniel said. ‘No better place to be than a Scottish moor at this time of year.’

There followed a stony silence relieved only by the monotonous tick-tock of the wall clock. Absalom had the unblinking gaze of a lizard, and he was never the first to look away.

‘So, I’ll get to the point,’ Daniel said, realising immediately that he was not in the company of a pleasant man and fighting an urge to edge closer to the door. ‘We – that is, Eve and I – would be honoured to accept the earl’s offer of the use of the chapel on October the twenty-second. She wants Samuel Farrimond to officiate, though. He’s the minister at Grangely. Would that be all right, do you think?’

Absalom stared. ‘I beg your pardon?’ he said. His voice
conveyed nothing of the outrage he was feeling on the earl’s behalf.

Daniel laughed. ‘Should I repeat it all? Or just the last bit?’