Ravenscliffe (7 page)

Plus, he liked Barnsley. Not quite three months with the YMA as against three decades down New Mill Colliery, but already he felt comfortable in his new environment. He had taken to walking through the town when he’d been too long at his desk and he needed to move his limbs and fill his lungs. He had favourite places: the noble bulk of the Methodist Church in Pitt Street, the cobbled expanse of Cheapside, the grand frontage and laudable purpose of the Harvey Institute, with its exhibitions of art and recitals of music for the working classes. And his office, his place of work, was in itself a joy to behold, built with towers and turrets, as if it was the Barnsley
residence of a Bavarian prince. There were plenty of rooms to let on Huddersfield Road: he could take one of those, and step across to the YMA without even bothering with a coat.

‘But there’s no seeds, so I can’t see ’ow we could grow ’em.’

Seth’s voice cut into Amos’s thoughts and reminded him that, be there ever so many reasons for leaving Netherwood, here was one very good reason to stay. Arthur’s lad.

‘What’s that, son?’ Amos returned to his digging. The ground was hard and dry, the soil baked solid into red-brown clumps. He chopped at them savagely with the edge of the spade, making a noise that jangled the nerves, as if he was digging on a shingle beach. He had winter cabbages to plant out, but he might as well scatter them on Victoria Street as in this bed. They’d fare no worse.

‘Bananas,’ said Seth, patiently. ‘There’s no seeds that I can find.’

‘Tropical fruit, them. They need warmth.’

‘Oh aye, an’ it’s freezin’ ’ere,’ said Seth.

Amos looked at him, at his young face attempting a mature, sardonic smile.

‘Yes, smart Alec, it’s ’ot now, we all know that. But come December, tha’ll ’ave forgotten what sunshine feels like. Bananas need to be warm all year round, see?’

In fact, Amos had no idea what bananas needed; he just knew he didn’t want to try and grow them. Seth’s mind was like a fertile vegetable plot itself, with new ideas shooting up on an almost daily basis. As it was, the produce in the allotment was so abundant there was barely room to squeeze in another beanpole. Bananas indeed. Why not try for sugar cane, and perhaps a tea plantation at the back of the potting shed?

‘I’m not sayin’ we should grow ’em,’ Seth said, still in a voice of exaggerated patience.

‘Good,’ Amos said, still digging.

‘I’m just sayin’ it’s odd. No seeds, like.’

‘Ask your Uncle Silas. ’e grows ’em, doesn’t ’e?’

Seth nodded, but fell silent. There was nothing he’d like to do more than quiz his fascinating, newly acquired uncle about the banana plantation, but he hadn’t yet recovered the lost ground from their first encounter. Eliza, on the other hand, had galloped on as she’d begun and was already and predictably firm friends with Silas. Last night she’d sat on his knee while he told a story about a sea voyage in an apple barrel. It sounded far-fetched to Seth, but Eliza had hung on to his every word, Ellen too, though she couldn’t really have understood much. Even Seth’s mother and Anna had listened, leaning either side of the fireplace with their arms folded, giving Silas their precious time. Seth had been there as well, but on the fringes, lurking between the front room and the kitchen, pretending to be busy with his penknife and a stick, wishing he could just sit down with the others instead. He hated this about himself: these helpless, headlong plunges into bad moods and ill manners from which he could never find a dignified exit. He knew what they all thought – that he was difficult and troublesome – just as he knew everyone loved Eliza for her willing smile and sunny nature. Sometimes he even thought they’d all made him the way he was, just by expecting nothing different from him. He wasn’t including Amos in this, not at all. Amos was the only person in the world who seemed to understand that he, Seth, was actually a very nice lad.

‘You’ve not spoken to ’im yet, ’ave you?’ Amos said now. He ceased the digging and stood to look the boy in the eye. ‘You want to put that right, for a start, else there’ll soon be more folk walking this earth that you’re not talking to than them you are. Get off ’ome and strike up a conversation. You’ll be sorry when they’re all sat round t’kitchen table talkin’ and laughin’ and you’re stuck there with a face like a wet weekend an’ everybody ignorin’ you.’

The picture was so vivid and familiar that Seth laughed. Amos resumed his digging.

‘We mun turn some compost through this before we plant owt,’ he said.

‘There’s still some in t’barrow. I’ll fetch it,’ said Seth, but he hung about for a while, watching Amos work. In the neighbouring plot, old Percy Medlicott arrived and raised an arm in greeting, and Seth saluted him in return.

‘Warm enough for you, lad?’ said Percy, who came to the allotment as much for the company as for the gardening. Amos thought him an old windbag and tried never to catch his eye, but Seth liked him.

‘Too warm, Mr Medlicott. A spot o’ rain wouldn’t go amiss.’

‘Not much chance today.’

‘Right enough.’

‘It’ll come soon mind, mark my words.’

‘We’ll see,’ Seth said, with the gloomy fatalism of the seasoned gardener. He loved these exchanges; loved to feel on a par with Percy Medlicott; loved to sound like a man who understood the seasons and the soil.

‘What about that compost then?’

This was Amos, still stabbing at the earth with a spade. Seth, pushing his luck, said: ‘If I talk to Uncle Silas, will you talk to Mr MacLeod?’

Amos looked up.

‘I’ll fetch that compost,’ said Seth.

Tobias Hoyland was playing croquet, not – as one might reasonably expect on a summer afternoon – on the designated lawn outside, but up in the Long Gallery of Netherwood Hall, where the heavy-handed or the uninitiated could too easily send the
balls skidding wildly across the floor to rebound from the skirting boards with a crack of wood upon wood. Indoor croquet: a game requiring great skill and finesse and invented by Tobias ten years ago using strategically positioned furniture for hoops, since even he could see that to ram metal spikes between the polished floorboards would be going too far in the pursuit of fun. The centre peg was always a Wedgwood vase, one of several dotted about the Long Gallery: not priceless, but valuable enough. It added a certain frisson to the contest that the vase – ideally – should remain intact, but at the same time must be struck by a ball in order to win the game.

The hoops – three occasional tables, two elegant chairs with slender, bowed legs and a Chinese rosewood plant stand – were already in position when Henrietta found her brother. His various haunts were familiar to her and the Long Gallery was a particular favourite, as its dimensions gave it great scope for entertainment. Why design a room like a gigantic skittle alley then expect people to behave in it with decorum? This was Tobias’s view at any rate.

‘Just in time,’ he said, when he saw Henrietta. He smiled and held out a mallet. ‘Dickie said he’d play but he jibbed. Any idea what he’s up to?’

Henrietta took the proffered mallet. ‘Indoor croquet is a strictly wet-weather activity,’ she said reprovingly, in the instantly recognisable, slightly joyless tones of Mrs Powell-Hughes. The housekeeper’s length of service had given her occasional scolding rights over the Hoyland offspring; they were young adults now – apart from Isabella, of course – but still they were not always beyond reproof.

Tobias placed his ball and sized up the distance to the first target. ‘Time was when you could read him like a book,’ he said. ‘But these days I just can’t say what he’s thinking. Have you stepped outside, Henry? Mad hot. Even Mrs P-H couldn’t tell me we’re not better off indoors.’

‘I think he might be in love,’ said Henrietta.

She spoke just as Tobias took his first shot, and she timed it to perfection, causing him to look up in astonishment at the critical moment. The ball veered off ineffectually to the right and Henrietta laughed.

‘Mimi Adamson. She’s staying with her uncle, a short canter away,’ she said. ‘Bodged it. Bad luck. My shot.’

‘Mimi Adamson? What would that gorgeous creature see in our Dickie? And that was sabotage, by the way. Your triumph – if triumph you do – will be hollow.’

The game petered out in the end, the contestants defeated by the heat which, indoors, had a different quality from outside – less intense, more cloying, but equally debilitating. They sat down and Henrietta rang for lemonade. She blew a jet of air from the corner of her mouth up into her face, and a tendril of hair lifted briefly from her damp forehead then settled again.

‘I’m dying,’ she said. ‘Literally.’

‘Don’t do that,’ said Tobias. ‘Who would I mock with you gone?’

‘We could swim,’ she said, ignoring him. ‘Down at the ponds.’

‘Two days, then Thea will be here,’ said Tobias. He sat forwards, all animation. Behind him, on the wall, an oil painting of their father as a young man showed the same lively expression, the same shock of sandy hair, the same suggestion of perpetual and carefree irrepressibility. Dickie, their younger brother, had it too: the male line were peas in a pod. No one knew whom Henrietta resembled. Not her mother, certainly: on this the countess often remarked, with a special, sorrowful smile. Not that she needed waste any sympathy on Henrietta, who liked her own height and strength and robust, outdoor constitution. Born for the saddle, not the chaise longue: this was her father’s fond assessment, and Henrietta took it as the compliment he intended. She smiled now at the thought, and
Tobias, mistaking it for Thea-related encouragement, smiled back and said: ‘Henry, I’m a goner. I can’t remember when I last felt this excited.’

‘Oh Toby, you’re always excited about something. You have the personality of a puppy.’

‘Topping idea, a swim,’ he said. ‘Shall we? Except all the town’ll be down there.’

Henrietta pulled a face. ‘Not the town ponds, idiot. The one down at Home Farm. I’m not taking a dip in public view. Unseemly enough in private.’

Agnes, the housemaid, tapped on the door and entered, bearing a silver tray with two glasses and a jug of iced lemonade. She walked with scrupulous care, as if on a tightrope.

‘Just the ticket,’ said Tobias. ‘Thank you, Agnes.’

The girl blushed, bobbed and left, and brother and sister were silent for a moment as they each took a deep draught of the cold drink. Henrietta, her thirst slaked, held the glass against first one cheek and then the other. She closed one eye and scrutinised Tobias critically.

‘So,’ she said. ‘Thea Stirling.’

‘O, be still my beating heart,’ said Tobias, theatrically.

‘Don’t fling yourself at her feet the minute she turns up. You’ll frighten her.’

‘I shall behave with perfect chivalry and decorum, all the while waiting for my moment.’

‘Your moment?’

‘To ask her to be my wife. Thea Hoyland, Countess of Netherwood. It sounds well, doesn’t it?’

Henrietta smiled. ‘Thea Stirling sounds well too. She’s a modern young woman. She may not be looking for a husband.’

‘Oh come off it,’ said Tobias. ‘Aren’t you all?’

‘Speaking only for myself, no.’

‘Odd girl. Well, there’ll always be a place for you here
when Thea and I are earl and countess. You can be Mad Aunt Henry in the West Wing.’

Henrietta nodded graciously. ‘Thank you,’ she said. She held up her glass and Tobias clinked his own against it to seal the deal.

‘Mama will be raging, of course,’ she said. ‘She can’t stick Americans, especially attractive ones who’re out to snare her sons. Not that Thea has the least notion of snaring anyone.’

‘Mama must overcome her prejudice. In any case, she’ll be entirely diverted by the presence of the king,’ said Tobias, then, changing tack: ‘Lovely Mimi Anderson and Dickie. What an unlikely match.’

Henrietta snorted with laughter. ‘Toby, mind what you say against your brother. He’s the image of you.’

‘Minus my charisma and irresistible charm,’ said Tobias.

‘Minus your staggering self-regard, you mean.’

‘That too,’ he said, and grinned. ‘Right. Last one in the pond’s a rotten egg.’

And he was up and off, leaving Henrietta to trail in his wake and wonder at her brother’s simple and limitless appetite for frivolity.

Y
ou’d think a man might take off his jacket and loosen his tie when the thermometer on the wall outside the estate office showed seventy-two degrees. Jem Arkwright, the earl’s land agent, had his sleeves rolled up past the elbows and no collar on his shirt, and he made no apology for it. But there was Absalom Blandford, sitting behind his desk, buttoned up tight to the Adam’s apple and still wearing the immaculate black worsted jacket he favoured for work. Jem stuck his head round Absalom’s door and the bailiff looked up as if affronted by the intrusion. His eyes were the interesting burnished brown of new conkers and on anyone else they might have been a winning feature; but now they alighted on Jem with their customary cold indifference. Miserable little sod, thought Jem, but he said: ‘Morning, bailiff. Those leases on t’Harley End fields expire next month, isn’t that so?’

‘Michaelmas Day,’ said Absalom immediately, without recourse to any paperwork.