The Rich Are with You Always (13 page)

  "It's no self-respecting tongue for an Englishman," he would say. "I swear at their navvies:
'Vous avez workez damn slow—'pechez, 'pechez!'
And they work harder. That's all the French I need."

  She wondered how he would respond when she became fluent at it; for it was her firm resolve to come back able to speak and read well enough to continue on her own—or with the help of the real French masters in York.

  She was in York quite often that April, mainly to get her new costumes fitted perfectly. Her pregnancy was the problem. The baby was due at the end of July. She would be in France in May and June, the months when she would be swelling the most; so the costumes had to be made with plenty of ribbons and tucks for letting out.

  Winifred, who was to come over with John and Cox for the last fortnight in June, had a young version of one of Nora's dresses. She was not nearly as delighted as Nora had expected. And when she found some careless sewing at the fringe of the right sleeve of her coat, she passed it back with such cold asperity that Nora, though angry herself at the carelessness, was hard put not to laugh.

  "Don't you want to come to see me in France, popsie?" she asked in the carriage on their way home.

  "Yes," Winifred said without the slightest conviction.

  "What is it?" Nora persisted.

  "Can I take my robins?"

  "The ones you've been feeding? But they will be able to fend for themselves now the thaw's come."

  "I don't want them to," she said. And she spoke with such lack of emotion that Nora did not know how to reply.

  "They'll soon leave you of their own accord," was all she said.

  Winifred's dignified, almost adult sense of assurance was unnerving at times; Cox, Nora knew, could not abide it and had no way of coping with it. Was it real? Or was it a bodily trick inherited from John, who had exactly the same calm way of stating intentions and wishes as if they were already copperbottom certainties?

  Nora worried for Winifred. Precocious dignity might be amusing in a child, but if it translated into imperiousness in the adult, it would be a great drawback to her. Men might admire John Stevenson's sense of command, but they would flee a thousand miles from the same quality in Winifred Stevenson. She herself had learned very hard that, as a woman, she had to get her way by stealth and secrecy—even with John. It was extraordinary how both he and Chambers could agree, with no flattery whatever, that she had a mind for money which would "knock most men into a cocked hat"—yet the very next minute they'd ignore her counsel if it cut across their particular wishes. And it was no good raging or sulking. She simply had to wait and hope that when events proved her right, the manner of proof would not be too catastrophic, and that next time they would listen. A wise woman's horizons always reached as far as next time; "do as I say" was reserved for servants and subordinates. Somehow they would have to break that spirit in Winifred.

When her new costumes were ready, and her old ones had been modified and prettified and afternoonified, it took thirteen large trunks to contain all her things. Even to pack took almost four days. It was only when they saw the extent of the preparations, and the mountain of boxes which grew in the old manor barn, that the children began to appreciate how long their mother was to leave them. Then Winifred would encourage Young John to cry, so that his tears would make her cry in turn, and they could both go to Nora for a delicious and tender orgy of parting—a form of blackmail at which Nora willingly connived.

  And then, finally, the real moment of parting came. The children, perversely, were calmness itself—or, rather, Winifred was calm and Young John took his cue from her. In the very last minute, Sam had written from Newcastle to say that Mr. Nelson, his master, was ill, and the holiday in France, for his part anyway, would have to wait at least a week. Nora sent him a draft for twenty guineas, which she had been going to give him to support his role as gentleman, and left him to make his own way there.

  This setback meant that John had to accompany Nora over to France and take her to the Rodets' at Trouville. And so at seven o'clock in the morning, on Tuesday 29 April, while Tip and Puck flirted with death beneath the iron tyres, and Winifred and Young John, still warm from their final hugging, ran a losing race with the carriage, John and Nora set off for York and London and France.

  "Oh see," Nora said, looking back. "A daffodil."

  It would be the first year since they had taken the Old Manor that she would not see the daffodils.

"What I like about train journeys is that you know, for the next nine hours, no one can upset the arrangements. God willing," Nora said as soon as their coach was locked.

  "Not now Hudson's got his amalgamation."

  "And the director's coach goes right through?"

  "All the coaches are through now. We change engines at Normanton and Rugby, that's all. Let Hudson have his way and there's a sudden epidemic of civilization—from York to Euston Square."

  Now that they were in private, Nora slipped out of her shoes and pushed her stockinged feet into the maw of the footwarmer, snatching them out when the heat became unbearable.

  "You'll get chilblains," John warned.

  "Oh, worth it!" She luxuriated in the warmth.

  But before they reached Copmanthorpe, a few miles down the line, the heat was no longer enough to scald, and Nora, lost to the world, stood beside a proud young Gascon youth named d'Artagnan as he hastened through Paris with his father's letter to Monsieur de Tréville, captain of the king's musketeers—a company whose name was then beginning to thrill the English-speaking, or English-reading, world.

  John drafted letters to those deputies his visit to France would now prevent him from visiting. He looked at her book and raised his eyebrows.

  "It's about France," she said defensively. "French history."

  He nodded and grinned.

  "Anyway, it's like the start of a holiday. There's no harm in historical romances on a holiday."

  He turned solemn. "That's no ordinary historical romance," he warned. "It's a revolutionary document—a bugle call to the genius of Europe."

She was wary of him. "What do you know about it? You've never read it."

  "On the train back from Newcastle last Friday, there was a young lady told the entire story to her husband—from the duels to the moment they kill the cardinal, roast him, and serve him up at the king's banquet."

  "Don't give it all away!" Nora shouted over him.

  "But the real message," he went on, unshakeable, "is that men of vigour and enterprise can run circles around the state, however great the odds."

  "Ah, how very true," she intoned and began again to read.

  "So don't think that sort of romance can't be serious."

  "Yes, husband dear," she murmured, not looking up.

  "A cleverly disguised historical romance could do more than Mr. Cobden or a dozen petitions of redress."

  "Mmmm."

  When it was clear that nothing could shake her from reading, he smiled and returned to his letters.

  When his pen was scratching busily, she looked carefully up, not catching his attention, and smiled, half in fondness, half in triumph.

  By Normanton, where the Midland engine was coupled and new footwarmers handed in, d'Artagnan and the three musketeers had routed the cardinal's guard and were walking back arm in arm to their quarters.

  At Syston, John's nudge brought her back from the siege of La Rochelle. He pointed out of the window. "Here's where I'd be getting off if it weren't for going to France. Syston."

  She fished in her mental railway cyclopedia. "Syston? Ah yes. The line to Peterborough. Pitched battles with Lord Harcourt's men. Forty-six miles. That would be nice."

  "Easy country all the way."

  "Earl Ferrers, the Quorn, the Belvoir, the Cottesmore—the best country in the world," she said. La Rochelle was a distant memory as her mind's eyes filled the empty fallows and the pastures with hounds on a burning scent and a hunt in full chase. "Let's move down here all next year."

  He laughed. "We haven't even tendered yet. The first thing I'll do when I get back is walk the ground."

  The baby within her decided it had had enough of railway banging and thumping; it began to struggle like a landed fish. She pressed hard on her stomach. "If you don't lie still," she shouted, "I'll lace in another inch." The sound of her voice must have been soothing, for the baby ceased its struggles. Taking no chances, she rocked back and forth, humming an irresolute tune, and returned to her book.

  "Some pie?" he suggested.

  "I'll wait till Rugby."

  They reached Rugby at half past two, where ten minutes' wait was allowed while the London & Birmingham engine coupled up.

  "I must plant a sweet pea," Nora said.

  Being a seasoned traveller, John took a silver brandy canteen and a small funnel into the refreshment room. He made no attempt to drink the scalding hot coffee that was served but poured both cups through the funnel into the canteen. Other regulars were doing the same—carrying their coffee out in china flasks and glass bottles, to the envy of the novices, who desperately tried to fan and blow their cups cool enough to drink before the train pulled out. Few managed it, and three-fourths of the coffee served was tipped straight back into the urns as the train departed. One who succeeded was a stout woman who, having purloined an extra cup, stood on the platform pouring the steaming drink from one cup to the other, where the chill wind would cool it. Before she returned to her coach, John and Nora, back in their seats, watched her drink the unspilled remnant with triumph. The two empty cups she left upside down, capping the handles of an upturned porter's barrow.

  "We're an orderly people at heart," John said. "If the government owned the railways and behaved like that—serving scalding coffee to stop folk drinking it and then tipping it all back to swell the profit—we'd hold public protests and send petitions to Westminster. But because it's a private company, we say 'smart fellows!' and think of ways to outwit them."

  "Swindon is worse," Nora said. "You can't even ask for milk now, to cool the coffee, because they even serve that boiling. Hot milk in coffee! Yeurk!"

  "I don't even think it's coffee at Swindon. Brunel calls it badly roasted corn, and he's not far out. I won't touch it."

  A few miles south of Rugby, the engine whistled and Nora just had time to say "Kilsby," before they were plunged into the dark. Kilsby Tunnel had a special meaning for her. It was the last tunnel on which John had been a mere navvy. On his next tunnel, Summit on the Manchester & Leeds, he had started as ganger and ended as main contractor. "I always remember the first time we rode through here together," she said. "All those terrible stories you told me about the navvies."

  A dim light rose to a peak and then receded again as they passed under the first ventilation shaft. "God rest them," John said when they were directly under the opening and the smoke and steam coiled around and up. "That's where three of them died, playing follow-my-leader over the hole at the top."

  She could just see him faintly, in the satanic light from the engine firebox reflected off the tunnel walls and the billowing steam.

  "They were bad days," he said.

  "I'd not say Woodhead is any better," Nora argued. "Not for drunkenness, debauchery, cholera…"

  "Woodhead," John said, as if the word itself were unpalatable, "is what happens when know-it-all engineers think they can be contractors. Folk say 'poor old Vignoles, gone bankrupt'; I say poor navvies, who suffer his folly. Nay, we've come a long way since thirty-eight, the days of the tramp navvy. And we can take credit for it, along of Brassey and Peto and Tom Jackson. We're making a science of railroad building and we're making a mechanic out of the navvy. Future's with us, see thou. Not with the old petty barons and smart engineers." She did not reply. To fill the silence he added: "There's naught but bad behind and naught but good before us."

  They emerged into the sunlight and it was a short while before they could reopen their eyes.

  John laughed. "Just when your sight gets used to the dark, they relight the sun."

  Nora stared out of the window.
Pytchley country,
she thought. There'd be good chases here. Then Waddon Chase, then the Old Berkeley. Her geography of England was hazy about counties but needle-sharp on railway-company and hunting territories.