The Sleeping Sword (6 page)

‘Thank you,' he said, his voice light yet rather hoarse, his eyes narrowing as if the quite muted daylight hurt him. ‘But perhaps—before we go on—surely one ought to say how very nice to see you, Grace, after all this time. May one hope you had a pleasant journey home?'

‘Yes I did, thank you. Very pleasant.'

‘And you are very well?'

‘Yes, I am. And you?'

‘Absolutely splendid!'

‘No he's not,' Venetia said, wishing to be cool and cutting, but biting back a chuckle. ‘He drove his cabriolet off the path last night and ploughed up about half an acre of father's roses. Yes, yes, I saw it all, Gervase, from my window, and how you stopped from overturning I shall never know. I felt quite proud of you, or would have done if you had not been drunk—since getting drunk is so shameful and silly—like that time you went steeplechasing after dinner at Listonby with a broken arm. I suppose that was silly too.'

‘I suppose it was—except that I won.'

‘Yes—I know,' and rippling with her sudden laughter she brushed her hand lightly against his, a swift reminder of shared affection, unconditional support, two of them against the world, an attitude I envied since in my case there had only ever been one.

Gervase Barforth closely resembled his sister, the pointed, auburn looks of his mother's family, which in him had an extra leanness, green eyes that were almost always narrowed as if against strong sunlight, a thin, hard mouth tilted by a not altogether compassionate humour. And although I had known him, at a distance, all my life, I understood no more of him than the plain facts which were available to anyone.

He was twenty-four years old and so far as I knew had never performed what anyone in Cullingford would consider a hard day's work in his life. He had an office at Nethercoats Mill, a desk, a portrait of his mother on the wall, but what he actually did there no one in Cullingford could rightly say. He was neither physically lazy nor mentally slow as rich men's sons sometimes seem to be, possessing on the contrary a restlessness which made him uneasy company. Yet even his queerness of temper, his ability to touch raw nerves in others, would have been tolerated had he bothered to conceal his contempt for the values which had made Cullingford—and his father—great.

‘Reckons himself too fine a gentleman for the textile trade, yon lad,' Cullingford had decided, secretly pleased that Mr. Nicholas Barforth, who had succeeded in everything else, should have failed so dismally with his wife and son.

‘Takes after his mother, young Master Gervase.' And so perhaps he did, not merely in those finespun, auburn looks but in his disgust for factory cities, his intolerance of the middle classes into which he, unlike his Clevedon mother, had been born.

‘The young squire' they called him at the Barforth mills, and indeed he rode to hounds, shot grouse and pheasant in season, drank brandy and claret, played cards in low company, associated, I suppose, with low women, pastimes by no means unusual among the squirearchy but which in Cullingford—where manufacturers required their sons to devote a fair amount of their time to the processes of manufacturing—were considered to be not so much sinful as unprofitable, definitely not to be encouraged. And since he had been christened Gervase
Clevedon
Barforth and was the last male survivor of that proud line it was generally believed that he might one day drop the name of Barforth altogether, that like his mother before him he was simply awaiting his share of the Barforth fortune in order to turn his back on Cullingford and the manufacturing side of his ancestry altogether.

If there was more than that to Gervase, then I had not discovered it; and would be unlikely to do so now, I thought, for as Venetia, having reassured him of her affection, began not so much to quarrel with him as to urge him to action, he gave a faint shudder and closed his eyes, conveying the impression that his constitution this morning was exceedingly fragile, his head painful and his stomach sour, his sympathy with his sister's troubles at a low ebb.

‘
Must
it be now, Venetia?'

‘Of course it must, for I am obliged to deal with you when I can catch you, and unless we have this out now you will be off again. Do pay attention—and there is no need for you to look so pained about it. You may put your head in the sand as often as you please, Gervase, but—I warn you—
I
will not go away.'

And in a rush of words and gestures and exclamations she presented him with her impression of the visit she had made the day before, the two or three rooms at Galton Abbey kept open by her mother, the stone-flagged hall with its array of family portraits and ancient weaponry, the small sitting-room with its rag rugs and tapestry chairs, a long, low-ceilinged kitchen, its door standing open to wind and weather, the air that came spiced and sharp from the moor, the movement of a clear, fast-running stream.

It had been an enchanting day of sun and wind and glorious liberty, nothing in her mother's manner to indicate discontent, except that Venetia
knew
she was discontented; no hint of frustration, except that Venetia could sense it as clearly as one can sometimes divine the presence of hidden water. And indeed the life of a woman living apart from her husband was both sad and strange, for although she was deprived—albeit at her own choosing—of his status and his protection, she was still as subject by law to his control as if she had never set foot outside the matrimonial front door. Mrs. Barforth may well have retired to her family estate but in fact that estate, which had come to her in her grandfather's will, did not really belong to her at all but to her husband. Separated or not separated, she remained his wife and as such could own no property apart from him. What she possessed he possessed. What he possessed was his absolutely. He could claim Galton as his own, could sell it or knock it down as he chose, without her consent, and there was no authority to which she could realistically complain. A married woman, we all knew, assumed her husband's name and was absorbed into his identity. A separated woman appeared to have no identity at all, and no protection, being obliged to depend financially, legally and every other way on the whim of the man who was still her legal guardian. If Mrs. Barforth had tried to run away, she had not gone very far, her bolt for freedom—if such it had been—ending in a fresh captivity which, however irksome it might or might not be to herself, was the cause of much honest indignation to her daughter.

‘They should be together or they should be separate—one thing or the other,' was Venetia's deeply held opinion. ‘And she should stand up to him and tell him so, for he is not so terrible and she is brave enough in other ways.
I
would tell him …'

Her mother, in fact, despite her outer layer of cheerfulness, had reminded Venetia of nothing so much as a woodland creature tethered in its natural habitat on a very long chain which, while permitting an illusion of freedom, could be drawn tight at any moment to suit the purposes of its master. And although she knew her father's hand was on that chain, she believed the cause of it—at least partly—to be Gervase. Left to her own devices, her mother—Venetia was sure of it—would have evaded all restraint long ago and flown away. But she remained; and since daughters, in the Clevedon tradition, had never counted for much, the reason for her enforced docility could only be her son.

‘Ah yes,' he said, outwardly very languid now. ‘Do blame me—do follow the fashion.'

‘So I will, because she is sitting on that land guarding it for you—you know she is.'

‘And rightly so, since I am the last of the Clevedons.'

‘And do you know that every time father tells her to do something she does it, however much she loathes it, because she's afraid he'd sell the estate if she disobeyed him?'

‘Yes, Venetia. I am a little older than you, if you remember, and none of this is news to me. But she cares about the land, Venetia—she
wants
to be there.'

‘Exactly. But do you?'

‘I beg your pardon?'

‘You know what I mean. She wants the land—yes, more than anything—but she doesn't see the estate as hers. It was her grandfather's and her father's; it was going to be her brother's. And when he was killed she started to think of it as yours. But I don't know, Gervase—really I don't. You used to run off to Galton when we were children, and she'd keep you there when you should have been at school, until father came to drag you back. And now sometimes you can't bear to keep away—you run off there now when you should be at the mills—but there are times when mother hardly sees you at all. And when she does you're not always sweet.'

He paused, smiled, moved one very weary hand towards the coffee-pot and smiled again, evidently deciding that, since neither of us showed signs of coming to his assistance, the effort of picking up the pot and pouring would be too much for him.

‘Oddly enough,' he said, still smiling, ‘there's really no need to be sweet with mother. That's the great thing about her, you know. She actually likes the kind of man I am. In fact, I'll go further than that, and say she rather thinks that's the way men
ought
to be.'

For a moment there was a heavy silence, Venetia leaning forward perplexed and frowning, while Gervase, his eyes half-closed again, seemed very far away.

‘Do you want that estate?' she suddenly flung at him. ‘Are you going to let her down? I'm not so sure.'

He got up and crossed to the sideboard, glancing with dislike at the overcooked sausages cowering in a corner of their dish, the congealed eggs and bacon, and then, helping himself rather gingerly, came back to the table.

‘I feel I should eat something,' he said. ‘In fact I absolutely must … So you don't think I'm cut out to be squire of Galton, Venetia?'

‘I didn't say that. I said I'm not always sure you want it.'

‘Mother's sure.'

‘I know.'

‘So we'll consider it settled, shall we—since if you imagine I'm cut out to run those mills, then you haven't been listening to father. And is it really all my fault, Venetia? We know why mother keeps up the illusion—to protect Galton for me. I'll grant you that. But why does father do it? What does
he
want out of it? He wants you safely married and off his hands, Venetia—that's what he wants—before the illusion cracks and the gossip starts. So if your heart is really bleeding for mother, then use that to bargain with. Tell him you'll get married and he can pick the groom.'

‘That's terrible—' she began, her mind on Charles Heron, her face as pale as if she were already a captive bride. But almost at once, with the lightning shifts of mood common to them both, her colour came flooding back, he smiled.

‘Idiot!' she said, her own mouth trembling into unwilling mirth. ‘They'd have to drag me down the aisle—'

‘No, no—no need for that. I'd shoot you if it came to it—much kinder.' And when their father came into the room a moment later they were still laughing, reconciled, joining themselves instinctively together in mutual defence against him.

He was a very large man, as dark and solid as they were light and fine, a man of substance and presence who had been very handsome once and would have been handsome still, perhaps, had he been less morose. A silent man, accustomed to issuing orders rather than holding conversations, who did nothing without a purpose or the expectation of a profit, and who in my father's informed opinion was the hardest and shrewdest of the very many shrewd and far from tender-hearted gentlemen in our Law Valley.

‘Sir?' Gervase murmured by way of greeting, a slight question in his voice.

‘Oh—' said Venetia, biting her lip, a child caught in a guilty act, although there was no reason why she, at least, should not be breakfasting at this late hour.

But Mr. Barforth ignored both his children and, turning to me, said quietly: ‘Good morning, Grace.'

‘Good morning, Mr. Barforth. May I apologize for calling so early?'

‘I wouldn't call it early,' he said, his eyes straying to Gervase, implying, I knew, that he and the greater part of Cullingford had been at their work for some hours already. ‘And you are always welcome. You could give me some coffee, miss.'

And although this last remark was certainly addressed to Venetia, she had become so strangely downcast—remembering, no doubt, that this awesome parent would never appreciate Charles Heron—that I took the pot myself, ascertained Mr. Barforth ‘s requirements as to cream and sugar, and handed him his cup quite steadily, feeling that if I had managed to contend with Mrs Agbrigg all these years I should not be intimidated by him.

He smiled, drank deep as men do after an hour or so in the weaving-sheds, and without really looking at Gervase, said, ‘You're back, I see. It occurred to me as I was shaving this morning that I hadn't seen you for a day or two—five or six, I reckon. But then on my way out I noticed a certain amount of destruction that told me you might have come home to roost again.'

‘Well yes, sir—bad penny and all that.'

‘Quite so. It's the end of the month, isn't it? And you'll be overspent.'

‘That's about it, sir.'

And what surprised me was not the hostility of their relationship but the lack of it, the absence, almost, of any relationship at all, which was not often seen in an area like ours, where mill masters thought nothing of chasing their sons to the factory yard with a horse-whip if necessary and of keeping them permanently short of money to make sure they stayed there. It had been the boast of Sir Joel Barforth that he could usually make his first thousand pounds of the morning while his competitors were still cooling their porridge. Mr. Nicholas Barforth, his son, whose business was even larger, could probably do better than that. Gervase Barforth had never by his own ingenuity made a single penny, and would not be asked to try, it seemed to me, because Mr. Barforth quite simply, quite coldly, did not think this difficult, almost alien son of his to be worth the trouble. He had written him off, I thought, as he would have done a bad debt, dealing with the consequences, resigning himself to the loss, and it did not escape me that Gervase—who from the moment of his father's arrival had become more languid, more dissipated and trivial than ever—was fully aware of it.