Flint and Roses (79 page)

‘Ah yes. Then let us suppose no longer. He is to be married the very minute he is out of black arm-bands—and eager young bridegroom of something over forty, a blushing bride of forty-five, or fifty, or sixty beneath her paint, for all one knows. Yes—he is to marry the second Mrs. Oldroyd, the luscious Mrs. Delaney, the widow of a dozen husbands and not a single wedding ring to show for it, if the truth be known. And I warn you, Faith, if you ever allow her to cross your threshold, then I shall not have you across mine.'

She sat down again. Mayor Agbrigg returned to his silent scrutiny of the mill yard. I stood between them, uncertain as to what consolation I could offer, what they would be willing to receive, seeing, with Aunt Hannah's eyes, the tarnishing of that gold mayoral chain, that princely salver, feeling her bleak conviction that she would be remembered now, not as the woman who had built the Morgan Aycliffe Hall, but as the mother of a man who had made himself master of Fieldhead by marrying a whore.

‘Your sister Celia was not such a goose after all,' she said, her voice harsh, her face very cold. ‘The mill was not sold, the house was not sold. Celia knew why and none of us would believe her. She said the servants were whispering about Jonas and Mrs. Delaney—yes, so she did—and perhaps they had good cause.'

‘Aunt Hannah, I don't believe that.'

‘Why not? He called on her often enough, didn't he? And when Celia complained we said it was natural for a lawyer to call on his client. But now you may as well believe the worst of him, Faith, since everybody else will. He used to call on her before Matthew Oldroyd died—before Matthew Oldroyd married her—to advise on her investments, or so he said. But can you prove to me that they were not lovers even then? They could have worked together to persuade Matthew Oldroyd into that scandalous marriage, for which I was the first to condemn him, and still condemn him. Why not? Emma-Jane Hobhouse
said
there was a conspiracy, and we ignored her just as we ignored Celia. Well—I must write to Emma-Jane and give her the good news. If it crosses her mind that Jonas may have pushed your sister down those cellar steps, I wouldn't be the one to blame her.'

‘Aunt Hannah—no! I won't listen to that—'

‘Then you'll be the only one who won't listen to it, and gloat over it. It fits—it's a good story—and who asks, who cares, for the truth of it?'

‘Aunt Hannah, you can't believe such things of Jonas.'

But, getting up again, her fists clenched, those raw red spots once more mottling her cheeks, she took a quick stride to her work-table and back again, and staring straight at me, hissed through clenched teeth, ‘Yes, I can.'

‘No, Aunt Hannah.'

‘Oh yes, Faith Aycliffe. Yes. You don't know what he is capable of. He would sell you, or me, or his own daughter to the highest bidder, and now he has sold himself to a brothel-keeper. He is going to live on the earnings of a whore, for what else is Fieldhead now but that? He is going to marry a woman I cannot receive, that no decent female could ever be asked to receive; and when I pleaded with him, reminded him of all I have done for him—of all I still could do for him—he answered me—he said, “Such a fuss, mamma! For when all is said and done I am only following your teaching.” Yes, he said that to me.'

And after a moment of anguished silence, her breast heaving with her poisoned emotions, she said hoarsely, ‘I used to love him—just an hour ago,' and sat down again.

There was nothing I could say to her. There would have been no point at all in telling her she would eventually forgive him, since most probably she would not; no point in suggesting that the rumours and the gossip would soon die away, since even in commercially minded Cullingford there was a dividing line between good money and bad, and Jonas's reputation would never recover. Men would do business with him, of course, would even dine with him eventually, and privately, at the Swan. But that gold chain of office, that splendid Town Hall with its stained-glass windows and Doric columns would pass now to others; and what would happen to Grace?

An hour ago my aunt's life had been full, her intentions plain. There had been Jonas's wedding to arrange and then his election. There had been his term of office, during which the Town Hall would have been completed, the grand opening banquet with herself beside him, encouraging his taste for public life so that he might at last make that momentous journey to Westminster. There had been the possibility of more grandchildren, and, failing that, there had been Grace's début into West Riding society, another marriage contract, in due course, to negotiate. And now, at one stroke, he had taken away everything she cared for, had tarnished her respectability by tarnishing his own, had robbed her of her committees, her functions, her grandchild; had broken her heart.

‘What am I to do?' she said, not with Jonas, I thought, but with herself, for her days now would be long and empty, shrinking one after the other to the dimensions of a ‘woman at home'who was not much needed anywhere else.

‘I'm not well,' she said, pressing her hands to her head, the first time I had heard her speak those words, or seen her make that gesture—my mother's gesture—of feminine frailty. And, rushing for the door, the strongest woman knew and the stateliest collapsing before my eyes, she disappeared, going upstairs to hide, as my mother and Celia used to do.

‘Shall I go up to her, Uncle Agbrigg?'

‘Nay lass, it's not you she wants. And Jonas won't be going up those stairs again.'

‘Someone should.'

‘Aye. I'll go myself presently. There's nobody left but me now, I reckon—whether she likes it or not.'

‘Uncle Agbrigg—you don't mean to forgive him either, do you?'

‘Nay, lass,' he said, his craggy face relaxing into a brief smile, ‘And that surprises you, does it, since all he's doing is marrying for money, same as he did before, same as I did myself. No—no—I'll not hold that against him. I could even admire him for it, because even when a man recognizes himself as a callous, scheming devil it takes guts to say so. And as to the woman, yes, she's a whore all right, but I take a different view of that to your Aunt Hannah. I reckon poverty can make a whore out of any lass—when it comes down to whoring or starving there's not much choice at all—and we don't know what Mrs. Delaney was like at her beginnings. A lass from Simon Street, maybe—or somewhere like it—abused by her mother's husband one night when he was drunk and pushed out of the door the morning after. And when that happens to a lass she'll be sure to find the brothel-keeper waiting. Nay—it's not Mrs. Delaney who troubles me. Maybe I got to thinking just now of another lass from Simon Street and wondering what she'd make of her Jonas now. Maybe it crossed my mind she'd tell me it was all my fault.'

He crossed the room and sat down heavily, closing his eyes in pure weariness. ‘I reckon you don't know how I came to be acquainted with your Aunt Hannah, Faith. It might ease me now to talk about it, and you're a good lass. I clawed my way up from the very bottom of the muck-heap, Faith—a muck-heap neither you nor your aunt can even imagine. And by the time I met Hannah I'd got as far as Low Cross, from mill-hand to overlooker to shed-manager to manager of the whole lot, doing Joel Barforth's dirty work for him when he had any—and there were times when he had. Sickness came. I lost three bairns—nearly lost my wife—I
did
lose her, I reckon, because she couldn't bring herself together. And Miss Hannah Barforth helped—found me a woman to clean the house, saw to it that Ann, my wife, was fed, had a look at Jonas and made up her mind he was wasted on me, and on my Ann. And it was Hannah who put the shame into him—shame of his beginnings and his mother. I saw it happen and I let it happen because, even if I didn't like it, I thought it would spur him on, making him fight that much harder—and I knew how hard he'd have to fight. You don't mind if I smoke, lass?'

‘No. What happened to your wife, Uncle Agbrigg?'

‘She died. I once told you how, and what it did to me. But men don't grieve for long, they can't afford it. Well—this was the way of it. Hannah was turned thirty by then. She'd lost the man she'd wanted and she'd been let down by another. She was sick of living in other women's houses and the choice was between a fancy parson she reckoned would never make a bishop, and me. The parson had his hundred a year and his gentility, I had Jonas, and she picked me. Her brother didn't like it, but when Hannah wants something there's no stopping her. What she says she'll do, she'll do, and so we got married—Hannah and me and Jonas. And that was always the way of it. She could run the town through me, she reckoned, but she could run the world through Jonas. Well, I let her have her way and I saw him grow into a man I didn't like—which has nothing to do with loving. He's my lad, Ann's lad, and I don't have to like Ann's lad to love him. She wouldn't much like him herself, I reckon, although she'd fret herself into her grave all over again in case the woman should make him unhappy.'

‘And it doesn't worry you?'

‘No,' he said, quite decidedly. ‘That it doesn't. He knows what he's going into. He's made a mathematical calculation of it and he finds that the embarrassment is out weighed by the gain. In fact she's worth it to him, and there's no more to be said. It's Hannah who worries me now.'

‘What will you do, Uncle Agbrigg?'

‘With Hannah? Well, first of all, lass, I'd best get myself upstairs and convince her I'll not be mayor again, because that's what she'll be wanting now. No—I'm getting on in years, Faith, and so is she. She'll take the loss of Jonas hard—I can understand that—but he's gone, and maybe that could suit us now. Hannah and me. Maybe it's time—well, my Ann's dead, there's no denying it, and the man Hannah fancied has been long gone too. And if there hasn't been love between us, we've grown accustomed to each other—we respect each other, I reckon. Maybe we even like each other.'

‘
I
like you, Uncle Agbrigg.'

‘Well, that's a feather in my cap and no mistake. So you'll come and see us in Scarborough, will you, when I've convinced her that Scarborough's where she wants to go—a little house on the cliff, away from the smoke, on account of my bad chest, which I'd never noticed until she pointed out to me how bad my breathing was—'

‘Oh yes, Uncle Agbrigg, I'll come.'

‘Good,' he said, getting up and rather awkwardly patting my cheek. ‘Good. I was nobody when she met me, Faith. Just a man who wanted to better himself and didn't much care how. But now—well, I built those reservoirs, I reckon—I got the water in. She's got no reason to be ashamed of me now. And, do you know, Faith, I think we could even be happy.'

I drove for a while quite aimlessly about the streets, knowing that I should go home, yet absolutely unable to turn myself in the direction of Elderleigh. Already it was late afternoon, Blanche would have returned from school by now, and I had left no clear instructions about dinner. Yet, despite the urgings of common sense and duty, ‘home', whatever it might mean to me, whatever it consisted of, was the one place in the world I could not—at that moment—tolerate.

I drifted an hour longer, half thinking, dream-thinking, letting the familiar streets go by with nothing in any one of them to detain me, nothing to distress me or to please me—just space and time with myself caught up in the crowded void of it, making the best I could of every quiet water, every ebb-tide, every stony wasteland in which it stranded me. Space, and time, and a slow-dropping, soft-penetrating sadness.

And then I went to Albert Place and asked for Jonas.

He was dressed to go out, to Mrs. Delaney I was forced to imagine, but when I began to apologize for my intrusion, insisting I had looked in only for a moment, since I didn't really know why I had come at all, he told me, ‘Do sit down. I am, in no hurry, Faith—and not greatly surprised to see you. Have you come straight from Lawcroft Fold?'

‘Yes—in fact, no, since I have been driving around a little—going nowhere—'

‘Composing yourself to face up to my villainy?'

‘Is that what it is? I don't think I care about that.'

‘But you must be—shocked?'

‘Yes. Indeed I am. And sad—so terribly sad that I don't know how to explain it. Jonas—is this right for you?'

He sat down in the chair facing mine, his face, in shadow, looking tired, not creased and dusty like his father's, but somehow quite hollow.

‘Well,' he said, ‘thank you at least for that, Faith.'

‘For what? Because it worries me that you could be miserable? I suppose it worries Aunt Hannah too, although she wouldn't say it. She will miss you cruelly, Jonas. And she will never be reconciled.'

‘I know,' he said, giving me once again the impression of hollowness, as if the living impulses that had filled him had all been carefully reduced and put away. ‘Had she calmed herself by the time you left?'

‘Oh no. I don't think she knows how to calm herself, but I believe your father might do it for her. He wants to retire and take her to Scarborough, or allow her to take him there.'

He smiled, his long eyes still hooded by their heavy, shielding lids.

‘Well, there would have been no chance of that had I married suitably and taken office as Mayor. So I may have done him a service with my perfidy.'

‘I can't think you perfidious.'

‘Why ever not? Miss Mandelbaum will surely not agree with you. Celia would not agree with you either.'

‘I don't know that I want to talk about Celia.'

‘I don't see how it can be avoided. You tried to comfort me when she died. I realize you would like to defend me now, and in that case you should know the truth. Faith—whatever you may have glimpsed in me these past months—a little more humanity than you had supposed, perhaps—then don't deceive yourself. Yes, the capacity exists. I have even toyed with the idea of developing it. I would like to be happy. I would like to care for a woman who cares for me. It has never happened. It never will happen.'