Flint and Roses (61 page)

‘I know they must enjoy country pursuits,' she moaned. ‘I know, and they are all so brave. But it seems so wasteful sometimes. Wherever the fox goes, they go, regardless of whose crops they are riding down, and I feel sure the tenants don't like it—except, of course, that since we own the land I suppose they can't complain. Do you know, Faith, really, sometimes I think some feckless lad from Simon Street could understand Perry Clevedon and Julian Flood better than I do. They take every day as it comes, no thought for tomorrow, not the faintest notion of saving anything or planning anything. They don't pay their debts in Simon Street either. And as for the other thing—my word, I have been hearing all my life about immorality in the weaving sheds, but if you had the faintest notion of what goes on in that Abbey cloister night after night—Hetty Stone may smile at Matthew when I complain about it, and imagine I don't see her—and he might smile back, since I know he thinks I am a prude—but it is not
right
, Faith. It is not responsible. Hetty Stone may be a duke's daughter and think it a great lark that her brothers were all sent down from Eton and Oxford, and that one of them is keeping a quite famous actress somewhere off Bedford Square—although I must confess he was a hero in the Crimea—'

‘Caroline, your own brothers have not been angels.'

‘I wouldn't know about that,' she said, instantly bristling. ‘And, whatever they may have done, the business has not suffered by it. They get out of bed every morning and go to the mills, and they pay their bills on time too—right on time or no one in Cullingford would trade with them. Yes—yes—I know old Mr. Clevedon wears himself out looking after his tenants, and that they are all ready to go out and fight for Queen and country at a moment's notice, and will govern the country without getting paid a penny for doing it because they think it is their duty. But they don't happen every day, do they—wars and Cabinet appointments? It's not three hundred and sixty-five days a year, every year, like the mills. Oh dear, I do hope Matthew remembers about Dominic and Noel—and I am certain he will forget about Gideon.'

But it was young Gervase Barforth who went over his horse's head that morning, landing on his own head on a stony patch of ground from which his uncle Perry eventually retrieved him and tossed him by the scruff of his neck to his mother, the kind of treatment both Peregrine and Georgiana had received often enough themselves at that age. Georgiana rode back to Listonby with him across her saddle, his face quite grey, his posture, when she allowed him to slide to the ground, decidedly unsteady.

‘Just put him to bed,' she said. ‘He'll be all right. No bones broken, and he'll know better next time.'

And when, having ascertained, as she put it, that he would live, she rode off again, it was perhaps unfortunate that Caroline, alarmed by the child's persistent stupor, took it upon herself to send for Nicholas, certainly unfortunate that he arrived late that afternoon in a black fury, half an hour in advance of his wife.

I had no wish to be present, but could not avoid it when she came striding into the hall, her habit looped up around heir arm, mud-spattered and glowing and beautiful as she'd been the first time I had seen her, her boots as careless now of Caroline's carpets as they had been that day of Sir Joel's, that rare bird of the wild wood who had, very briefly, submitted to her captor's hand, but who was flying free again, a lovely lark-soaring of the spirit that halted in mid-air as she saw her husband.

‘Good heavens!' she said. ‘What brings you here? Are the mills on fire? Has Cullingford burned to the ground?'

‘No,' he told her curtly, ‘but there could be other reasons just as drastic. Your son, for instance. He had a riding accident earlier in the day, as you are well aware. He may have died—an hour ago—or be on his death-bed at the very least. Since his mother could not be found, it would seem fairly natural that they should send for me.'

I saw the colour drain away from her face, her eyes, against that sudden blanching, a startling, terrified green. I saw her body sway forward a little and then right itself, one hand pressed, hard against her stomach, and then, her eyes fluttering from me to Caroline, she said, ‘No—no, Nicky—he's not dead and he's not dying. Faith would be crying, and Caroline would be wanting to murder me. It couldn't be true.'

‘I think it could.'

She advanced into the room, swishing her crop against her skirt, nervously flexing her free hand, her colour very high now, her temper rising with it, her courage the greater because I could see she was a little afraid of him.

‘He took a tumble—it happens, Nicky. It's happened often enough to me. And I brought him home at once.'

‘Now that
was
good of you.'

She stood for a moment looking down at her hands, her crop still nervously slicing the air, and then, throwing back her head in an abrupt movement, her light lashes beaded with tears, she said, ‘Nicky, don't be hard—please—don't be sarcastic. I can't talk to you when you're like this. There's no harm done. If you think I should have stayed with him, then perhaps you're right—'

‘No—no—it couldn't be right to deprive you of a day's sport.'

‘Nicky,' she moaned, the note of despair in her voice so piercing that I wanted to cover my ears. ‘It wasn't like that. I only did what it seemed natural for me to do. He didn't need me. Caroline was here. Nanny was here. If I'd stayed, they'd have shooed me away. I've been carried home myself like that—worse than that—time and time again and taken no harm. It builds character, don't you see? That's what grandfather always says.'

‘I daresay. But you're a Clevedon. He's not.'

‘He's my son.'

‘So he is. And you have a daughter, I seem to remember, back in Cullingford, who'll be lucky to see you again before Christmas—who won't see much of you at all until she's big enough to sit a horse, I reckon.'

‘Oh dear,' she said. ‘Oh dear—oh dear—' and she began to pace up and down the room, hands clasped around her elbows, hugging herself, rocking herself almost, in her agony. ‘You won't understand me, Nicky—you just won't. I
do
care for the children. Yes—more than you care—yes, I do—and you won't see it. You won't let me care in my own way. You want me to be somebody else all the time, and I can't do it, Nicky—I've tried and I'll never do it. You want to think I neglect them—yes, I know it. Nicky, you've hurt me now—it's done—it's enough—don't be hard—'

‘Damnation!' he said, swinging abruptly round to the fireplace, his back to us, his hand tight-clenched on the corner of the mantelpiece, and, seeing the opportunity of escape, I fled outside into the fresh air, as far away as I could, hoping Caroline would have the sense to leave them too. And, unaware of the direction I took, feeling his anger as if it had been directed against myself, feeling her misery just as acutely, I was startled by the sound of sobbing, astonished, as I turned the corner of the house, to see Julian Flood slumped against his horse's neck, his shoulders heaving with an uncontrollable: anguish, and Matthew Chard standing beside him, white-faced and sick, his own balance unsteady.

‘Matthew—good heavens!'

And instantly, because they were gentlemen who did not exhibit their grief before a lady, who had endured their share of floggings in youth to enable them to withstand pain, Julian Flood stopped crying, almost straightened himself, and Matthew Chard came hurrying to meet me.

‘Faith, we've had a bit of bad luck, I'm afraid. Perry Clevedon has taken a bad fall—happened just after Georgiana left us—wanted to get back home, she said, to see to her boy—'

‘How bad?'

‘Oh—bad—his horse reared up, went clean over and fell on him. It's the worst fall there is.'

‘And he's—dead?'

‘Oh yes—dead when we picked him up. I can't think he knew much about it. Well—I doubt if knowing that will help Georgiana, but I'd better tell her—'

‘No. Nicholas is here. Let him tell her.'

Thank God!' he said. ‘Oh, thank God for that! I don't know how she'll go on without Perry—in fact I don't think she'll go on at all.' And, squeezing my hand, his whole body brimming with gratitude, he left me and hurried off to Caroline, and to Nicholas.

Blaize, by some miracle, came home for the Clevedon funeral and perhaps I surprised him—certainly myself—by the extent of my relief.

‘I couldn't face it without you.'

‘Darling—you flatter me, but I've never seen myself as a rock to lean on. And what is there for you to face? It's Georgiana, surely, who will need a rock. Let us hope she has one.'

But she was most amazingly composed, standing erect and quite still beside her grandfather, her eyes dry, her face chalk-white against her black veil, a fragile figure, supporting an even more fragile, almost visibly ageing man, for Perry had left no sons, at least none that could be acknowledged, and they were burying not only his recklessly broken, carelessly wasted body, but the end of their ancient line. And once more, as at all momentous occasions, there was that deep division of ranks: Aunt Verity and Caroline and even myself, representatives of the manufacturing classes, being ready to shed a tear; the gentry standing like soldiers around the graveside, even Julian Flood, who had been drunk ever since the accident, having sobered himself up that day, his wild, handsome face as expressionless as granite.

The Clevedon tenants, the pensioned-off retainers, the household servants, the village schoolmistress, were all there, knowing far better than I what this death signified, and there was complete silence as he was laid to rest in his own ground, silence as we walked back from the Abbey church to the house, only the October wind stirring the leaves, the crackling of logs in the stone-flagged hall, old Mr. Clevedon taking us each one by the hand with perfect courtesy, his whole body quite hollow, his hopes in ashes, but his mouth pronouncing the words he believed it right and proper for him to speak.

We took a glass of wine, arranged ourselves in awkward groupings, Nicholas with his mother and Caroline, Hetty Stone attaching herself to me because Blaize was there, Julian Flood going off suddenly to get drunk again, one supposed, Matthew amid those other country gentlemen engaging Mr. Clevedon in painstaking conversation. But Georgiana, who had stood so very still—who had surely never been so still in her whole life before—was nowhere to be seen, did not appear, and after an agonizing hour, when everybody wished to leave and no one liked to be the first to go, Blaize put his head close to mine and murmured, ‘Where is she?'

‘I don't know—upstairs perhaps?'

‘No. She didn't come back to the house. Try the cloister, Faith.'

And when I raised my eyebrows in surprise and didn't move he skid, ‘Yes, Faith—
do
it. Someone should look for her. I can't—not without causing comment—and clearly Nicky doesn't mean to.'

I went outside, unhappy with myself because I didn't want this mission, unhappy with him for asking—uneasy in my heart, in my bones; ready to weep myself for a man I hadn't really known and hadn't liked, because the tears were there, inside me, and needed to be shed; apprehensive and irritable because, if I found her, I had no idea what Blaize expected me to do for her, no idea of what I would have it in me to offer.

But my first sight of her was enough to cancel out any other feeling but compassion.

She was in the cloister as Blaize had foreseen, sitting on the ground, her back pressed against the wail, the arched, fan-vaulted ceiling reducing her to the proportions of a weeping doll. And I had never seen such tears, for they seemed to come not from her eyes alone but from the pores of her skin, a wild fountain of grief more terrible somehow because it was still quite silent, no shuddering, no crying out, just that drowning of her face and her spirit in water.

‘Oh, Georgiana,' I said, and sat down on the uneven, stony ground beside her, feeling that words would be of no avail, that I could merely offer her the comfort of another human presence, as one comforts the new-born or some stricken animal.

But she was a Clevedon too—above all she was that—and after a moment she nodded, shook herself slightly, and gave me a rueful, tremulous smile.

‘I loved him so much, you see.'

‘Yes, I know.'

‘Did my grandfather ask you to look for me? No? I'm so glad, I wouldn't let grandfather see me cry. I came over to Galton at once—after it happened—to be with him, and if I'd broken down and cried I'd have been no use to him. So I didn't cry. I couldn't let grandfather down. I'll go back in a minute.'

As she began to dry her face with her hands and her sleeves, I gave her my handkerchief and watched, with great respect, as she restored herself to composure.

‘There—am I decent now?'

‘Yes—quite decent. But give yourself a little longer.'

‘Yes—can you understand me, Faith? I loved him, but it was more than that. I've been sitting here thinking about it, and it seems to me that I've never been alone before. So long as there was Perry I couldn't be alone. He was here, you see—every day of my life. He was older than me and so he was here, waiting for me, when I was born. My father died and my mother went off somewhere and I never saw her again. I don't remember either of them. Just Perry, and grandfather, and the Abbey. I think I was the happiest child in the world. It's here, in these stones, all that fun, all that joy—I left it here for Perry's children, like it was all left here for me.'

She stood up and suddenly pressed her whole body hard against the wall, her hands caressing the uneven surface, making contact with her past, finding and holding the two hopeful, eager children who had played here, their minds so perfectly in harmony that, reaching out for it again, remembering, her face, lost its taut agony, and she was beautiful.