The Sleeping Sword (54 page)

‘And you?'

‘Yes, that is something else I have to tell you, and you may not be pleased with me. Please remember, dear, that men—and women—who can afford what they want do not
wait
for it at our age—Nicky's age and mine. Do you understand that, Grace?'

‘I do.'

‘So—what my husband intends is to take his Camille off quite permanently, to Scarborough, I suppose, which is where Blaize and Nicholas Barforth used to take their lady-friends in the old days. He is comfortable there and it is time he got away from the mills. If she will give up her freedom—give up
everything
for him—and if they are happy, then I—yes—I shall be happy too, not alone, of course, and not, my dear, in wedlock, for I am a woman of my own generation and divorce is far too extreme for us. But I shall be happy, just the same, with my dear friend Julian Flood—he in his house and I in mine, of course, but happy. Do I disappoint you?'

And when I did not answer she leaned forward and patted my hand, very brisk again, a vital and energetic lady with her mind made up.

‘He is my friend, Grace. I realize he was rude to you but he was defending his own kin, which is what one would expect of him, and he was most distressed afterwards at the things he had said to you. He is loyal, you see, in the way I am loyal myself—and he is not so dangerous now as he used to be. Even the wildest of men settle with time and there is no denying that he has waited twenty years—not celibate, of course, but single—for my sake. He has denied himself the heir he should have had and which his ancestry demanded of him—all because of me. Nicky says he is the nearest I could ever come to my brother, Perry, and perhaps he is. But what is wrong with that? Perry was so close to me that it was difficult, sometimes, to tell ourselves apart, yet nothing took place between us that should not have taken place between a brother and sister. We simply belonged together, fitted together. Julian, of course, is not my brother. We can love each other differently, yet almost with the same belonging. It contents me, my dear. It is Nicky who needs the total devotion, the grand passion, not I. Be happy for me. And as for you, dear—well, to begin with, there is a place now vacant, is there not, at your so enterprising
Star
.

Liam's articles on St. Mark's Fold, Commercial Close and Silsbridge Street had appeared in consecutive weekly issues, liberally peppered with the facts I had supplied him, and had caused a great deal of angry murmuring, his judgement of callous landlords who expected men to live in worse conditions than pigs and callous millmasters whose wages were too low to permit them to live any better giving offence to some, satisfaction to others, fanning the resentment that had always smouldered very near the surface in Cullingford. Letters came pouring in thick and fast, indignant, self-righteous, abusive, offering threats or congratulations, provoking, when we printed the best of them, a controversy on social justice and responsibility that seemed to be raging fiercely enough to carry us through until Christmas. Letters began to arrive in direct reply to our readers'letters, arguments, we heard, began to flare up in common beer-houses and the saloon bars of our better hotels as to who was to blame, who ought to put it right. Who were the demon landlords of Silsbridge Street and St. Mark's Fold and Commercial Close in any case? Would the editor of the
Star
name them? The editor made no promises. One would have to buy next week's edition, and perhaps the week after, to find the answer to that.

‘This is all very inflammatory,' Mrs. Agbrigg said, ‘and very dangerous. Jonas, dear, do you own any property in that area?'

But Liam, I believed, was merely intent on selling his newspaper, for those guilty landlords could have been anyone, my Grandfather Aycliffe having built his workmen's houses in many areas of the town, throwing them up, in fact, and tacking them together in the interests of speed not durability; somewhere to put the mill-hands and fill the factories until something better came along. But that workforce, rushed in from anywhere when the new, power-driven machinery had sparked off the industrial boom, had doubled its size eight times since my grandfather's heyday, his terraced cottages—never substantial to begin with—sinking beneath the weight, their walls dripping damp, their floor-boards rotten, their sanitary facilities so haphazard as to be virtually not there at all. Who owned them? Dozens of people, hundreds, Grandmamma Elinor very likely among them, with not a few held in trust for Aunt Faith, Aunt Prudence and myself, since one had solicitors, after all, to arrange the collection of one's rents and a lady was not expected to know exactly what she owned nor to concern herself with damp walls and doorless, overflowing privies.

Cullingford owned them. We were all their landlords, guilty because of our indifference.

‘That's a very good line, Grace,' Liam said. ‘I might use it presently. Now then, what about these peaky little bairns in the workhouse? Our Miss Tighe has got herself elected as a Poor Law Guardian again, so if you could make it in your way to have a word with her? She'd talk easier to you than to Camille—even if Camille could take an hour or two off from Paradise.'

I saw Miss Tighe, who told me so firmly to mind my own business that the workhouse, the low, grey building which had scowled down at me all my life from a patch of wasteland above Sheepgate, began at last to cross the barrier between the things I saw without observing and the matters which had lately begun to prey on my mind. I visited Patrick and Anna Stone at least once or twice a week. I accustomed myself to the smell of unwashed humanity until it became bearable, then hardly noticeable, I passed from the burning, crusading fervour which Venetia had never lost, to an uneasy suspicion that I should give my money away, and from there to a calm realization that it would do no good. Charity, Anna Stone had said, was a crutch, a dependency like alcohol or opium which, when removed, like any other crutch would cause the addict to fall down. The answer, she said, was education, the widening of opportunity, some sure and just system in which men and women would be helped to help themselves. She did not believe her theory to be possible, simply right.

I was alone in the office one September day—Camille in Scarborough, Liam heaven knew where—when a man dressed with almost painful neatness came stepping into the room with the air of one who feels certain of encountering something nasty underfoot, his pinched expression and the curtness of his tone making no concession to the fact that he was addressing a lady.

‘Mr. Liam Adair?' he enquired.

‘As you see—I am afraid not.'

‘May one enquire his whereabouts?'

‘One may. But unfortunately I have not the faintest notion.'

‘Then would you be so good as to tell him—miss?—that Mr. Gideon Chard requires to see him at his office at Nethercoats Mill this afternoon at three o'clock?'

‘I will tell him if I see him. But Mr. Chard might do better to come here.'

‘Oh, no, Mr. Chard will not want to do that,' Mr. Chard's clerk told me, pained by my effrontery in suggesting that his employer should risk his beautifully polished boots on this most dubious of floors. ‘Three o'clock then. Good-day to you—miss?'

Liam's employees in those days, besides Camille and the men who operated his ancient presses, consisted of an elderly, extremely scholarly man, Mr. Martin, and a young lad, Joss Davey, learning the trade. And, as three o'clock came and went, then four and five, I left messages with them for Liam and went home, no longer inclined to make a fuss if the sauce on my fish was not thick enough or if there should be a coffee stain on my napkin, now that I had so much else to interest me.

I had no idea why Gideon should wish to see Liam. The arrogance of the summons had both amused and offended me, and I was sorry, I think, that Liam had not been there to inform that officious little clerk that if Mr. Gideon Chard—fine leather boots, silk waistcoat, curly brimmed beaver and all—wished to see him, then he knew where he could be found. But so little did it seem to concern me that I was taken completely unawares when, an hour or so after dinner, my doorbell sounded and Gideon walked into my drawing-room, three or four copies of the
Star
under his arm.

I had not seen him since the last summer when he had asked me to be his mistress, but, like me, he had clearly decided to put that folly behind him, for there was nothing amorous in his manner now, his well-shod feet treading firmly, his eyes taking in without the slightest embarrassment every feature of the room, automatically assessing not merely the value of my furnishings and fittings but whether or not they were tasteful and well-chosen, and perfectly ready to inform me of it if they were not.

‘Good-evening, Grace,' he said calmly, apparently feeling no need to mention why for the past year we had avoided one another.

‘Good-evening, Gideon.'

‘You are very comfortable here, by the look of it.'

‘Yes. I have been here now—oh, six months and more.'

‘Have you really? How time goes by! I believe you saw my clerk this afternoon?'

I nodded, not asking him to sit down since I preferred to remain standing myself, thus signifying that I expected his visit to be short. And understanding this, he too nodded and smiled.

‘I take it then that Adair did not return?'

‘As it happens he did not, but he may have been unable to see you in any case. He has a great many calls on his time.'

He raised those strongly marked eyebrows in a movement of false surprise, anger only just beneath the surface of him, cool sarcasm above it, prepared to be as cutting as the circumstances—whatever they turned out to be—required. But this was the Gideon I knew—the adversary rather than the lover—and I had no intention of being intimidated by him.

‘I am to make an appointment to see Liam Adair nowadays, am I?'

‘I can think of no reason why you should not.'

‘I can think of several. However, you can probably tell me what I wish to know, since you are so closely associated with him.'

And, his expression remaining perfectly calm, he let those rolled-up copies of the
Star
fall on to my table with a sharp, slapping sound of contempt.

‘These articles about which there has been so much hot air expended—these surveys of St. Mark's Fold and Commercial Close and Silsbridge Street—can you tell me how these particular streets were chosen?'

‘Yes. They were chosen at random, I believe.'

‘Indeed? And by whom? By Liam Adair?'

‘Yes, of course. Good heavens! Gideon, he had dozens and dozens of streets to choose from. One had merely to take a map and a pin.'

‘Exactly,' he said, his jaw set at a hard angle. ‘Exactly, Grace. And so it would seem somewhat contrary to the law of averages, would it not, that with such a multitude of streets available his pin descended on the three which belong to Nicholas Barforth and Company Limited, and consequently—in a manner of speaking—to me?'

I heard the intake of my own breath, for, in my intense preoccupation with the tenants of those houses I had given no thought to this, did not really wish to consider the implications of it now, not with Gideon standing there, at any rate, his inquisitor's eyes fixed on my face, his mouth grim and sarcastic. But he had no intention of letting it go.

‘We own a great deal of property, Grace,' he said, ‘most of it in very decent order. I presume you must be aware of that?'

‘Yes, I am.'

‘And is it not a fact that every mill in this town, in this valley—every mill and any mill—has a number of near-derelict cottages attached to it?
Every
mill, Grace, of which there are sixty or seventy in this town, including your father's business at Fieldhead. And not one millmaster implicated, among so many, but Gideon Chard. Could I be forgiven for suspecting that Liam Adair is not conducting this survey in the interests of humanity but as a personal vendetta against me?'

It was possible. I turned my head slightly away from his so that he should not see my growing realization that it was quite likely. The evil existed and needed to be remedied, Liam would not have lost sight of that, but if he could grind a very personal axe while he was about it, I rather thought that he would. It had been Gideon, after all, who had ousted Liam from the Barforth mills, Gideon who had married Venetia, Gideon who had gained, it seemed, from everyone else's loss. And Liam might easily have decided to exact a price. It was possible.

‘I—I am sorry, Gideon. I can make no comment.'

‘Can you not? Your loyalty to your employer does you credit—if that is what he is to you.'

‘I don't know what you mean by that, Gideon—or rather I don't choose to know. What I can tell you is that
I
was not aware of the connection between those streets. If it was done deliberately, then—yes—it was unfair and I shall tell Liam so. But those houses really are an abomination, Gideon, you know—we have been absolutely exact about that. And surely, if Liam is criticizing anyone, it could just as well be Mr. Nicholas Barforth as yourself?'

‘I think not. I am in charge of affairs at Lawcroft and Nethercoats and Low Cross. Mine is the name Adair will use, which is just as it should be—I am not complaining about that. If one accepts the privileges, then one accepts the responsibility that goes with it. I simply wish to make him aware that I know I am being singled out and that I know why. I am able to defend myself—should the need arise—without assistance from my chairman or from anyone. Our father-in-law, in any case, is too occupied at the moment with his new woman to care—'

I swung round to him, ready to be angry now that he had given me a safe outlet.

‘Camille Inman is a friend of mine, Gideon, and I am not prepared to hear her spoken of with disrespect.'

He smiled, the sophisticated, disdainful smile of Blanche's London drawing-room, of Listonby and South Erin.