The Sleeping Sword (56 page)

‘So you have allowed him to rape you at last, have you, Blanche?'

‘My dear,' she said, her serenity never for one moment wavering, ‘if I have—and I do not say so—then it is not a subject for conversation.'

But on other matters she was more forthcoming and in a single afternoon I learned that Lord Sternmore had taken back his wife, the penitent and now very devoted Diana Flood, who was already expecting his child. I had news of Claire Chard, now two years old, the darling of the Listonby nurseries where she was in the process of being moulded—as Venetia had desired—into a perfect little copy of Blanche. What would happen to her when Gideon married again Blanche could not say, for neither the younger Mademoiselle Fauconnier nor a certain Miss Hortense Madeley-Brown, both apparently in the running, seemed very motherly to Blanche and would probably not wish to burden themselves with a first wife's child.

Did Gideon spend any time with Venetia's daughter? She shrugged. It was hard to tell. He came over to Listonby often enough, rode to hounds with Noel and stabled some excellent horses there for the purpose, better mounts than Noel could afford. He walked about the estate a great deal with his brother, or took out a gun, and in the evenings they would play cards together. He was
there
and how could one tell how much attention a man paid to a child? Dominic had always appeared totally oblivious of young Matthew and Francis, but would fall on them like a ton of bricks at the slightest hint of bad manners or if he caught one of them slouching in his saddle. In any case, the boys would be going away to school ere long, would be polished strangers when they came back again, and she would rather like a little girl about the house, to dress up and titivate, if Gideon did not object.

Tarn Edge was no place for children now in any case, since Mrs. Winch and Mrs. Kincaid had left and Chillingworth had been pensioned off—had I not heard?—and Gideon had got himself a French chef and a very suave butler, definitely a gentleman's gentleman, in their place. Had I not heard? Goodness, had I no interest any more in what was going on around me—in the
news?

My work with the
Star
prospered and my respect for Liam Adair with it, his easy, amorous disposition, the fact that he was unreliable both with money and with women, no longer blinding me to the generosity—more often than not—of his intentions. He was vain and promiscuous and thoroughly enjoyed his notoriety, yet on the whole his opinions were fair and honest, fearlessly expressed, unless they concerned Gideon Chard, in which case they would be heavily weighted with his memory of Venetia. He had wrung from the derelict housing of St. Mark's Fold every drop of gall that he could, managing, without naming Gideon, to make it very clear who was to blame, and since then every time a shuttle came out of a loom at Low Cross, Nethercoats of Lawcroft Fold, and struck a weaver with its pointed end, every time a woman's arm was broken by a picking-stick, every time a man was turned off for no better cause than he had not ‘suited'his overlooker, mention of it was made, discreetly but plainly, in the
Star
. Such accidents were common in all our factories, and far fewer than they used to be, now that we no longer employed children under the age of ten, but when a woman was struck by a flying shuttle at Nethercoats and lost an eye, the
Star
was as shocked as if such a thing had never been heard of before, while Liam had quite forgotten to mention that Barforths had paid the doctor's bills.

‘Must you do this?' I asked, receiving in answer his jaunty, Irish smile.

‘Well, Grace, look at it another way and you'll see I'm doing him a favour. What else has he got to worry about? And unless I keep goading him on a little, he'll get fat and complacent sitting in that big house all by himself, drinking his Napoleon brandy. He ought to thank me for it.'

And I have not forgotten the glee in Liam's handsome, dark eyes when it was discovered that the whole area around St. Mark's Fold—or such of it as did not belong to Barforths already—was being purchased by them, and that the houses which came empty were not being let again.

‘I'm on to something,' he said, and so he was, a month of ferreting and foraging for news informing him that these mean streets, hemming in the thriving but cramped Low Cross Mill were to be demolished, the mill considerably enlarged and its work-force housed in new accommodation nearby.

‘Liam—we said ourselves those houses were unfit to live in.'

‘Not all of them, Grace. St. Mark's is a pigsty, but there's St. Jude's. There's nothing wrong with St. Jude's. Good houses, good neighbours, people still living in the houses where they were born and where their parents were born. They won't take kindly to this, you know.'

‘I know. I expect you'll make sure of that.'

And so he did, explaining to St. Jude's Street and others like it that their plight was no different to that of an agricultural labourer turned out of his tied cottage—which was, in fact, quite true—to suit the whim of the squire. New houses, indeed, were being provided, but where were these houses to be? Nearby, said the squire, but he had measured the distance from the saddle of his thoroughbred gelding, or at the reins of his spanking, speedy cabriolet. The
Star
, however, had walked those three miles from the squire's new houses at Black Abbey Meadow to his mill at Low Cross and had found them long, particularly on a raw winter morning with the five o'clock hooter to beat, even longer at the end of a day's hard labour, especially if one happened to be very young or rather old, or a woman with infant children to hurry home to. And if the residents of St. Jude's Street could afford the rents of these new houses, which were bound to be high, the
Star
heaved a sigh at the suspicion that the people of St. Mark's Fold could not. Was it beyond the bounds of possibility that the people of St. Mark's Fold were no longer required at Low Cross, being largely the unskilled, the weak, the ones who coughed most in the winter and caused the most trouble, having the most—let it be said aloud—of which to complain?

A larger mill meant more jobs, certainly, but not, it seemed, for the tenants of St. Mark's Fold, and once their insanitary hovels were gone, what remained for any of them but the workhouse?

‘Do you hope to stop him?' I enquired.

‘Of course not. The mayor and half the corporation either work for him or do business with him. Every magistrate in the county is either related to him, dines with him, or would like an invitation to Listonby. Our Member of Parliament will be careful not to offend him and the
Courier & Review
can do nothing but sing his praises. Of course I can't stop him. I am making mischief, that is all.'

‘Then be careful, Liam, for if you go too far he may sue you.'

‘I hope he may. But he is far more likely to knock me down, which would sell me a great many newspapers, you must admit. And I shall know how to pick myself up again.'

‘Just take care.'

But he would heed no warning and as the area around Low Cross began to simmer, its anxieties and the certainty of its doom made plainer with each new issue of the
Star
, I began myself to grow uneasy, waiting, I think, for that pompous little clerk to appear again, or a more official gentleman coming to tell Liam he had broken the law.

‘You can't afford litigation, Liam. It's expensive. I ought to know.'

‘Then you'll lend me the money, Grace, won't you, my darling—out of the splendid wages I pay you? Unless he simplifies matters and has me set upon and murdered one night in an alley.'

‘If you go on like this he'll do something.'

But I was not prepared for the afternoon that the office door was kicked open and Gideon himself strode into the room, every inch the squire whether he had intended it or not, from his immaculate leather boots to the crown of his shiny hat, driving whip in one hand, kid gloves in the other, nostrils wrinkling their distaste of these mean surroundings, and of the mean, sordid little people who inhabited them.

Liam, blessedly, was not there, just myself and the scholarly Mr. Martin, stooping over his desk, and glaring around him a moment Gideon allowed a pair of hard and angry eyes to rest on my face before he rapped out the parade ground command ‘Come with me.'

‘I beg your pardon?'

‘Just
do
it.'

I saw Mr. Martin, from the corner of my eye, raise a weary shoulder and glance at his watch reminding me that Liam was already overdue and could return at any time. I understood that Gideon would not go away until at least something of his demands had been satisfied—
could
not lose face by going away with nothing at all—and so I got my hat and my gloves, my mouth dry, terrified of meeting Liam on the stairs, and submitted—telling myself there was no alternative—when Gideon put a hand under my elbow and almost threw me into his carriage.

He drove very fast, the cabriolet swaying so alarmingly at each tight, narrow turning that I closed my eyes and pressed one hand against my stomach, fearing not only for life and limb but that I would lose the last remnants of my dignity by being sick. There was a final, terrible jolting, a rutted track, the smell of dust and earth, his body still snapping with anger as he drew in the reins not a moment too soon and shaved a heap of bricks with nothing to spare.

‘Get down,' and roughly he took my elbow again and set me down on the uneven ground of Black Abbey Meadow, where the foundations of his new dwellings were under way.

‘Over there,' he said, his hand in the small of my back pushing me towards a hut at the far end of the site, and kicking open the door with that expensive boot, thrusting me—there was no other word for it—inside towards a table littered with drawings and maps.

‘Here it is,' he said. ‘So just damn well look at it—every hovel I pull down I'll replace—every damnable, miserable one. And this is what I'll replace them with—five hundred cottages with dry cellars and good sculleries, gas and water, a stove and a boiler—will that do for you, eh? Some with two bedrooms and some with three, and not back to back either, but in separate rows with back passages wide enough to drive a cart through, so they can take out the night-soil and empty the privies. And you won't blush to hear me mention that, I know. One hundred and fifty pounds apiece they're costing me, and the overlookers'houses eighty pounds more because they've got a parlour sixteen feet by sixteen, four or five bedrooms and a nice little yard. How does that suit you? And I'm not asking more than ten shillings a week for any one of them—and as little as two shillings and ninepence. I'm building washhouses and bathhouses, and a school to keep the brats off the street while their mothers are at the mill. I'm building shops so they don't have to carry their potatoes and their bacon or whatever else they eat the three miles from town, except that it's not three miles and nowhere near. A mile and a quarter, or it will be when the new mill goes up, since I'm building out in this direction. Have you understood that?'

I nodded, but his temper was not yet done and, his hand descending like a clamp on my arm, he took me outside and marched me like a hostage up and down his building site, making no allowances for my thinly shod feet, nor the chill of the March day.

‘This,' he said, giving my arm a shake to be sure of my attention, ‘is where the school will stand. The baths over there. There are plenty of beer-houses already, not too far away, and I doubt anyone will object to walking a mile to them. And should religion be needed there is a chapel over there of some Nonconformist persuasion or other, and another just beyond it. I went over to Saltaire to see what Titus Salt had done—well, he's built himself a monument and a damned fine one—no beer or spirits of any kind to be sold in
his
village, no washing to be hung out across
his
streets. Well, I don't claim to be either a temperate or a religious man. I just want somewhere to put my workers, that's all.'

And for more than an hour, while the sky darkened and the wind grew colder, he fiercely propelled me over every inch of the ground, showing me and making sure I looked at his drains, the distance between his privies and his kitchen doors, the quality of his building materials, the substantial walled yard around his school so that the children would have somewhere to play without risking death every moment under somebody's horses.

‘Not my idea,' he said shortly. ‘My architect suggested it. I merely mention it because you'll be unlikely to read it in the
Star
.'

And when he considered I had seen enough—although it seemed to me I had seen everything twice over—he bundled me up into his carriage again, my feet so frozen it was hard to tell if they were scratched or bleeding, although I rather thought they ought to be, and drove me at the same killing speed to my door.

I did not ask him to come in. He simply came, slammed down his hat and gloves on my hall table, walked uninvited into my drawing-room and threw himself into a chair.

‘I'm hungry,' he said.

‘What?'

‘I'm hungry, which should surprise no one since it must be dinner-time. Have you forgotten how to treat your guests?'

Perhaps I found his effrontery amusing. That was the excuse I made. But, although I was in no mood to tell myself the truth just then, the truth was—as I was soon to discover that the whole tumultuous proceedings had exhilarated me. Of course I could have resisted him. Of course I could have got away from him. Instead I had allowed him to make off with me and had thoroughly enjoyed it. I had felt, and still felt, alert and eager, curious and adventurous, bold and rather better-looking than usual. What kind of a creature was I? What kind of a creature, indeed, could possibly set such store by independence and yet thrive on this bullying? Even now I had only to speak the word and he would leave. I knew it, and, somewhat more to the point, he knew that I knew.