Flint and Roses (12 page)

Yet this was not the first dance I had attended and I knew by the unwritten laws governing such occasions that, even without my white rose and my vast, swan-like dress, without my audacious white velvet ribbon and the air of pity I was trying so hard to cultivate for such females who had failed to grow at least five inches taller than the fashion, I would not lack for partners. Girls who had neither beauty nor expectations might be condemned to spend the evening on that terrible row of chairs, counting the candles and the petals on the flowers, the lace flounces on the skirts of other girls as they danced by, hoping Aunt Verity would notice their plight and conjure up a man—any man—to relieve it. But a Miss Aycliffe, with twenty thousand cash down and the firm promise of more to come, need have no such fears.

Naturally every man present must first offer his attentions to his hostess and her daughter. Naturally Blaize and Nicholas would have been provided with a long list of females—which would not include cousins—to whom courtesy was due. Uncle Joel, his duty dances done, would have time for no one but his wife. But there would be partners to spare, a great many of them, and, as I sat between Celia, who was eager to dance with anyone, and Prudence who was eager to dance with anyone but Jonas, I was forced to admit that the deeper layers of my mind, the ones I could not really control, were entirely occupied with Nicholas.

My preoccupation was not a happy one. I had gorged myself, for a day or two after the incident of the train, on thoughts of him, indulged myself by building and rebuilding in my mind the dark, determined lines of his face, the slight cleft in his chin, the unexpected humour of his smile when it managed to chase his ill-temper away. And, indulging myself still further. I had relived the whole of our encounter, repeated our conversation over and over again, added to it, including the things I had wanted to say or had only thought of much later, as if they had actually been spoken. Yet in the end I had been forced, quite abruptly, to leave the comforting realm of fantasy and to consider, more precisely than ever before, my exact situation and what, if anything, I could reasonably, logically, hope to achieve.

Not even my father's scrupulously contrived efforts to raise his daughters in total innocence had concealed from me that there were various categories of womenkind, for which men had many and equally varied uses. There was the category ‘lady', to which I belonged, whose duty it was to be pure of heart and delicate of constitution, designed to arouse the protective, possessive instinct in man; to be kept in luxurious idleness in exchange for the devotion and self-sacrifice with which she would hazard herself—sometimes annually—in the perilous task of childbirth. There was the category ‘maidservant', so much stronger and more enduring than the lady that it was difficult to class them as members of the same species, a tireless variety of woman intended for the scrubbing of floors, the laying of grates, the carrying of water and the mangling of linen, her reproductive functions being so little encouraged that she would be dismissed the moment it was suspected they had been put to use. There was the category ‘mill-hand', even hardier, capable of fourteen hours a day hard labour in the agonizing heat and noise of a weaving shed, and then another five with wash-tub and scrubbing board at home. And just as gentlemen turned to these tough plants for the practical, daily needs their little orchid-house wives could not supply, so too there was the category ‘mistress', a wild jungle-weed, coarse-fibred enough to glory in the rough handling no orchid could be expected to endure.

And I knew, quite simply, that none of this concerned me. No one would ever be likely to ask me to lay a grate or tend a fire, or expose me to the heat and promiscuity of the sheds. I was, most definitely, a lady, created not to be loved but to be married, and even if by some miracle Nicholas could be induced into thoughts of matrimony, his family—which was partly my own family too—would not approve of me.

I may be considered a good match for a Hobhouse or a Mandelbaum, a brilliant one for Jonas Agbrigg, but the Barforths would require some stupendous alliance for all three of their children, and had I been a little older than seventeen, possessed of a greater share of Prudence's common sense, I would perhaps have smiled more convincingly at Jacob Mandelbaum, who liked me, at jovial Freddy Hobhouse, who seemed willing to like anyone, and shut my thoughts of Nicholas away.

‘Enjoy yourselves,' my mother commanded, smiling as Jonas Agbrigg bowed stiffly to Prudence, the Battershaw boy first to me and then to Celia, since Freddy Hobhouse had claimed me first. ‘Enjoy yourselves, while Aunt Hannah and I sit and tell each other how much better things were in our day.' And, although my appetite for enjoyment was less acute now that its fulfilment depended so largely on Nicholas. I made up my mind to obey.

I was not certain what I hoped for, since I could not hope for Nicholas, except that it was not Freddy Hobhouse, hot-handed, heavy-footed, hugging me in a cheerful polka, nor even Jacob Mandelbaum, serious and supple, who would rather have been playing the violins than dancing. Certainly it was not Francis Winterton, holding me a yard away, talking languidly about Caroline; nor Julian Flood who, having come here to marry one young lady, was reckless and arrogant enough to make himself gallant to another, escorting me to the refreshment-room where his mother, whose financial commitments my twenty thousand pounds could hardly satisfy, put herself instantly between us, walking back with us to the ballroom to make sure we went there, and that I was duly returned to my relations.

It was a dance, the most thrilling of all events permitted to young ladies, fraught with great hopes and great agonies, the making or missing of marriages and reputations, no different from the dozen or so others I had attended, except that it was more splendid. And for the first hour or so everything was just as it should have been. The three immense chandeliers suspended from the high, gold-painted ceiling shimmered and sparkled, the dozen long windows open to the terrace offered a breath of garden-spiced air as one danced by. The violins played their polkas and quadrilles and country-dances, their waltzes, every bit as tunefully as had been promised. The young ladies danced, or most of them did, at least once, provided with partners by Aunt Verity, who, gracefully, tirelessly, circled the room making her introductions. ‘Miss Smith, allow me to present Mr. Brown who is quite an expert at the polka. Why, Miss White, do not say you are too exhausted to dance, for here is Mr. Jones, who would be delighted—'

The older men, having seen their wives and daughters suitably catered for, retired to refreshment-room and smoking-room, the chaperones drew their chairs closer together, sharp-eyed and anxious, some of them, others heavy-lidded with fatigue and the boredom of so eternally discussing the splendid prospects of my cousin Caroline. Aunt Hannah had placed herself firmly beside Mr. Fielding, our new Member of Parliament, who was certainly unaware that she intended, eventually, to obtain his office for Jonas. And, while keeping up a steady flow of question and answer, demanding to know the progress of Cullingford's Charter of Incorporation, and when she could expect her husband to be elected mayor, her restless eyes never ceased to check the movements of her adored, adopted son, noting who danced with him and who did not, noting who dared to trespass on his preserves by dancing with Prudence. And her chaperonage, it seemed, extended also to my mother, so that when she returned, not for the first time, from the refreshment-room where the widower, Mr. Oldroyd of Fieldhead Mills, had been plying her with champagne, Aunt Hannah leaned forward and snapped, in the exact tone she had used often enough to me and Celia, ‘Elinor—
do
behave.'

Enjoyment was not lacking, but no greater than I had experienced before, nothing I would spend tomorrow in silence remembering. Neither Nicholas nor Blaize would have time to dance with me—although Blaize did smile at me once or twice behind his partner's head, letting me know, by a sweeping glance, that my dress and my hair had won his approval—and gradually the evening began to settle down, to acquire the same bland flavour of everyday, to be entirely predictable, until, having taken a second glass of lemonade with Jacob Mandlebaum and returning to the ballroom, Jacob a step or two behind me, I found myself entangled, just inside the doorway, with Nicholas and Caroline, drawing back as I heard her hiss at him, ‘Nicholas, for heaven's sake, you have not yet danced with Amy Battershaw, and she most particularly wishes for it.'

‘I daresay. But I have danced with all your other tedious friends, and I think you may allow me a moment—'

‘Nicholas,' she said, her voice rising in a way that proved her composure to be less than it seemed. ‘Please oblige me in this, for you know quite well Amy Battershaw and I are to travel to Paris together, and, if she should take the huff and decide not to go, then I shall be saddled with some dreary paid companion.'

‘Or father will forbid you to go at all.'

‘No, he will not. And it is quite odious of you to provoke me tonight when you know quite well how important—Oh, Nicky, for once please do as I ask, for she is sitting there, the silly goose, waiting, and I do believe she has turned someone else away.'

But Aunt Verity, as usual, was at hand; and, flowing between her warring children like cool water, drawing me with her for support, or distraction, she murmured. ‘Faith dear, how well you look tonight! That dress becomes you perfectly—don't you think so, Caroline? And Nicky darling, do go and dance with Miss Battershaw—a bore, I admit, but only five minutes of your time—not worth the fuss.'

And he would have gone at once, I think, the corners of his mouth already tilting with a wry, affectionate smile, had not Uncle Joel abruptly intervened.

‘What's all this?' he demanded and instantly Caroline—his favourite child, the apple of his powerful, vengeful eye—spun round to him, certain of his support.

‘It is Nicholas turning stubborn again, and saying he will not dance with Amy Battershaw.'

‘Oh, but he will,' my uncle said, the familiar snap of temper in his eyes. ‘He will—and before he's ten minutes older.'

‘Dearest—' Aunt Verity murmured, her endearment addressed, I think, to them both, and, not wishing to endure again the backlash of my uncle's anger, I had begun to move away when Nicholas, unable as always to back down, but willing perhaps to offer his mother a compromise, said crisply, ‘Of course I'll dance with Miss Battershaw—there was never any doubt about it—but you'll have to extend your ten minutes. I'm afraid, since I am promised to dance first with Faith.'

Instantly—or so it seemed to me—a row of Barforth eyes were riveted to my face, my uncle's hard and suspicious, he thought behind them: ‘Ah yes, so it's the Aycliffe girl again, turning out as flighty as her mother'; Caroline's warning me she did not expect her friends to turn traitor and would make short work of any who did; Aunt Verity's alone showing that she retained a sense of proportion and understood that I could only aggravate the matter by a refusal. ‘Ah well,' she said lightly. ‘I doubt if Miss Battershaw will die of the suspense'; and there was nothing for me to do but give him my hand and wait for the music to begin.

I had longed for this dance, and now—as often happens with the things one longs for in life—it was an embarrassment, an ordeal, a bitter disappointment. I had thought of him so often, not only with the excitement of budding, emotion, but with anxiety too, had defended him when Caroline, and Celia, accused him of moodiness and malice, had worried about his stormy relations with his father, remembering all the times I had seen him take his punishment with a stubborn pride that made my uncle's tongue harsher, his hand heavier. Yet now I hoped with unashamed ferocity that Uncle Joel would thrash him and batter him at the end of every disagreement, wished, in fact, that he had broken his back and his spirit long ago.

‘You are looking very well, Faith.'

‘Thank you.'

And then, as I continued to stare over his shoulder, making it clear that there was nothing more I wished to say, he added quickly, ‘Faith—I am sorry.'

‘Why? Have you done something amiss?'

‘Ah well—as to that—but I did not ask you to dance with me merely to escape Amy Battershaw.'

‘My goodness—whatever gave you the notion I could think you had?'

They were playing a waltz, and because I had waltzed with him in my day-dreams since the day Aunt Verity's invitation had been delivered to our door, because I should have been happy—because Celia, if she noticed me, would think me happy—I had never been so miserable in my life, this new, acute sensation of distress, the first real pain I had ever suffered, acting like a hot stone flung into the quiet pool which had so far been my life, sizzling and hurting in its contact with hitherto unruffled waters. And I would have been proud of my composure had I not required every ounce of concentration I possessed to maintain it.

‘You are quite right to be angry, Faith.'

‘Angry? Heavens, what an idea! I am enjoying myself immensely, Nicholas. It is a splendid party. Everyone says so.'

And sighing, he made no further attempt to talk to me, while I became so stiff and cold that he may have been as glad as I when the music stopped and he could return me to my mother, going off at once to present himself to a much-beribboned Amy Battershaw.

‘Well, we are having so much fun,' my mother told me, her eyes extremely bright with mischief and champagne. ‘Prudence has danced twice with Jonas and managed to avoid him twice more, largely with the aid of your so very accomplished cousin Blaize. Yes, he knows exactly what is going on around him, dear Blaize—I have always thought so—and I have passed a pleasant half-hour wondering just why he came so artfully to her rescue. I mean, what amused him most? Was it the look on Aunt Hannah's face? Or was it Jonas, who has no look on his face at all? Or did he merely wish to make Prudence admire him, since she refuses to admire anyone else? I am inclined to think that must be it, for he is a little heartless—Blaize. Clever men often are, I find, which makes them no less attractive. However, it makes no difference, since Aunt Hannah has got her safely back again—look, there she is, sitting between Hannah and Mr. Fielding, with Jonas standing guard behind her chair And Celia has been doing remarkably well—she has danced with Jonas and Freddy and Adolphus, and has abandoned all her notions of having a headache.'