The Sleeping Sword (63 page)

I understood and so, following Aunt Faith's example, I drank tea, smiled, made sympathetic noises or indignant ones as required, said, ‘Really?' ‘How very provoking', while Blanche, sitting between us, fell gracefully but deeply asleep.

‘Wake up,' said Aunt Caroline, prodding her with the handle of her parasol. ‘Gideon is coming back and Hortense would be very surprised to find you in that condition. They are very well-connected, Faith. She has one uncle a bishop, another who is very high up at the Treasury, and one who has some kind of a place at Court. How very gratifying to find a girl with all that money who has breeding too, and who is young enough to be
adaptable
—who will allow herself to be moulded, for she has a most pliant disposition. Gideon will have not one moment of anxiety with her. Hortense, dear, did you enjoy your stroll?'

Hortense agreed that she had enjoyed her stroll, Aunt Caroline beaming at her fondly, her good spirits entirely restored as she contemplated this rare find, this biddable, beautiful girl who—unlike her other daughters-in-law—would run her home and raise her children as Aunt Caroline told her, who would even be glad of her advice.

‘We must be off now, Faith,' she said, drawing on her gloves. ‘For we are to make quite a little tour with Gideon—the estate at Black Abbey Meadow, the mill of Low Cross and the new property beyond—'

‘New property?' said Blanche, asking the question which burned the tip of my tongue. But for once Aunt Caroline was not being astute or malicious or inquisitive, simply talkative in the manner of ageing aunts, and looked vaguely for assistance to Gideon.

‘Why, yes—there has been some more property investment. Where did you say it was, dear?'

But he was not at first inclined to be very precise.

‘It seemed advisable,' he said, smiling beyond his mother at Miss Madeley-Brown, who seemed intent on examining the lace flounces on her sleeve, ‘in view of recent difficulties, one wished to be certain of one's hold in the neighbourhood, should one wish to expand again or to house an additional work-force. And so as certain properties became available, it seemed pointless to let them go elsewhere.'

I looked pointedly at Blanche and, knowing as well as I that he was up to something, she asked obediently: ‘Which properties, Gideon?'

‘Oh—whatever came to hand, here and there around Low Cross—and Gower Street. A buyer's market certainly, at the moment. In fact I have seen nothing like it. If one judged by the willingness of landlords to sell, one might think the hordes of Genghis Khan were encamped about a mile away—that or the Black Death. One can have just about any house one wants at the moment, for a very decent price, around Low Cross—and Gower Street.'

But I had endured long enough and taking up my gloves to give my hands an occupation, I said with a calm
I
at least thought creditable, ‘What is it you have bought in Gower Street, Gideon?'

And I did not need his voice, merely his faint, malicious smile and the glint of satisfaction in his eyes to tell me it was the offices of the
Star
.

‘So he is our new landlord, is he?' said Liam. ‘Well, well, I suppose we must look for a hefty increase in our rent.'

It came heftier than we had supposed, and we knew there would be worse to follow.

‘Well, I reckon there's just about one thing left for me to do,' said Liam. ‘I'll give him a run for his money. But while I'm about it you might look around, Grace, and find us another address before he puts me and my old presses into the street.‘

But rehousing the
Star
, as Liam—and Gideon—had foreseen, was no easy task, for the healthier buildings in Sheepgate and Kirkgate and the new business premises which were raising their handsome heads these days, from Market Square to the fringes of Blenheim Lane, were either beyond Liam's price range or their owners—quite often friends of Miss Tighe—did not view our tenancy with favour. While in the poorer quarters of the town everything I inspected was too small or too squalid, a verminous tenement in Leopold Street where the rotting floors could not have supported our presses, a slightly less flea-bitten address a street away but directly alongside a slaughter-house where the stench of death and panic, the squealing of sheep as their legs were broken to render them easier for butchery, was unacceptable; in fact, nothing at all.

‘You'd best have a word with our advertisers,' Liam told me, ‘in case they've heard rumours—which wouldn't surprise me.' And so, in my smart blue velvet hat, wearing enough jewellery to inspire confidence, I made the rounds of the small business men and tradesmen whose services were publicized, playing Miss Agbrigg of Fieldhead Mills to those who might respond to it, flirting discreetly with some others, calling a spade, in some quarters, a plain shovel; assuring one and all that, whatever they may have heard to the contrary, Cullingford's
Star
would continue to shine. Nevertheless, a certain amount of business was not renewed and it seemed certain we would soon be obliged to retrace our steps to a single edition a week.

‘I'd best be off to Cannes for a word with Grandmamma Elinor,' said Liam. ‘That is, Grace, if you can manage a week or two without me—and if you can lend me the fare?'

‘I could save you the journey altogether, Liam, and pay your rent.'

‘So you could. And when I'm desperate enough no doubt I'll ask you. But I reckon I can manage till then.'

‘As you like. But at least you can forget about my salary for the time being.'

‘Now that's very sporting of you, Grace,' he said, easy and debonair as always, although I couldn't miss the occasional wariness in his face. ‘But considering the pittance I pay you—well, you may as well have it as not, for I know what it means to you. In fact, while there's still something left, how about me taking you to the theatre in Leeds tonight, and then to supper?'

We saw a melodrama, as I recall, from the splendours of a stage-box, his arm resting on the back of my chair more from force of habit, I thought, than real interest, his eyes on my
décolletage
from time to time as we ate our discreet and very expensive supper largely because that was the correct way to behave in a private supper-room. He even enquired in a roundabout but extremely good-humoured fashion if I would care to spend the night and expressed a pleasing degree of equally good-humoured disappointment when I decided it would not be wise.

‘They say you are my mistress already, you know.'

‘So they do. But you have mistresses enough, Liam. I think you have more need, just now, of a friend.'

‘And I think you may be right. We'll drink to it.'

We drank deep, returning to Cullingford on the last train, at a scandalous hour when no decent woman should have been abroad.

‘Of course you'll not let me in?' he said as we reached my door.

‘Of course not.' But I had no objection to the kiss he lightly planted on the corner of my mouth, and went inside still smiling at his assurance that if Miss Tighe happened to be awake—and it could surprise no one to learn that she
never
slept—and if she happened to be standing on a footstool at her back landing window, she would, with a certain acrobatic skill, be able to see us in an embrace about which she would draw her own conclusions.

A pleasant evening, a happy time, but, as the summer progressed, each day hotter and more malodorous than the next, the game of baiting Low Cross Mill continued nightly, any tenement lad who could break a window or steal a few bricks, who could show off the tooth marks of a Barforth dog, a cut lip or a black eye received from a hard-handed navvy, being declared king of his own particular muck-heap the next morning.

‘They wear their scars like medals,' said Liam, who would have done the same at their age. But this constant raiding of the newly cleared site was a serious nuisance to the building contractors, who needed to take advantage of the good weather to complete their schedule. If the walls were not up and the roof not on by October, then Mr. Chard would be out of temper and everybody else out of pocket. The tenement lads decreed that the roof would
not
be on by October. The building workers, with their bonuses at stake, decided otherwise. Threats were made and ugly scenes ensued, one of them in the street directly below my office window when a gang of navvies, strapping Irishmen for the most part, encountered an equal number of our local breed, smaller and perhaps not quite so fierce but wiry and cooler, more reasoned, so that the battle was evenly matched and most unsightly.

‘Appalling,' thundered the
Courier & Review
. ‘Unfortunate,' said the
Star
, without adding for whom, and I suppose it was not to be wondered at when some days later our office was not so much entered as invaded by a man, well-dressed yet somehow not a ‘gentleman', huge not only in girth and muscle but in the anger that was mottling his heavy cheeks and his thick, bull-neck, who, even before a word was spoken, had curved his big-knuckled hands into fists.

‘Tom Mulvaney,' he said, considering this sufficient explanation, since we would be sure to know that the firm of Charlesworth and Mulvaney had won the much-coveted contract for the building of the new houses at Black Abbey Meadow and the new mill at Low Cross. And, after making his announcement, Mr. Mulvaney remaining at his vantage point in the doorway, glanced swiftly around the room, assessing the fighting strength against him and seeing just old Mr. Martin, sorting through the morning telegrams, the boy, Davey, the printers on the floor below, who were as elderly as their presses, myself, and Liam.

‘Good morning,' Liam said without getting up, very sensibly keeping his desk between himself and this very obviously superior adversary. ‘And what can I do for Mr. Mulvaney?'

‘Call off your rat-pack, Adair.'

‘Which particular rat-pack did you have in mind?'

The desk was reached in two long strides, an iron fist smashed down upon it, oversetting the inkstand and the water jug Liam always kept there, the pool of ink and water doing a small violence of its own among his papers.

‘
Mr
. Mulvaney,' he said, and leaning back in his chair clicked his tongue reproachfully, an act of provocation which brought me to my feet, my presence as a woman, which might appeal to Mr. Mulvaney's sense of decency, the only support I could offer.

I was not sure just how old Liam was. There was no grey in his hair, no apparent lessening of vitality, certainly no sign of the sobriety men are assumed to acquire with age. But he was older than Gervase and Gideon, had seemed a man to me when I had still been at school, and could not, I thought, be much short of forty, while this murderous, mountainous Tom Mulvaney might at a guess be twenty-nine. I doubted if Liam could withstand him. I saw that Liam doubted it too, and I did not wish to see him try.

‘Call off your bloody rat-pack, Adair.'

‘I have no rat-pack, Mulvaney.'

‘This is the last warning you'll get.'

‘You're threatening me, then? Would you care to be more explicit? And would you watch your language, old fellow, in front of a lady?'

‘I see no lady,' snarled Tom Mulvaney, darting me a glance as vicious as any he had bestowed on Liam, and, having been drawn to his attention, I came forward to the side of the desk, unable to stand between them but positioning myself so that he would have to push me aside to get at Liam.

‘Then I must bring one to your notice,' I said, my voice emerging very cool although in fact I was quite terrified. But Liam, for all his possible forty years, could not consent to shelter behind a woman, and as he got to his feet, exposing himself to attack for his pride's sake in a manner I found most exasperating, there was an ugly moment when I felt myself to be physically holding them apart as once—in another world it seemed—I had stood between Gideon and Gervase.

I had lost my head that night. I must not do so now. ‘Mr. Mulvaney,' I told him, ‘you may not see a lady but I am sure I see a gentleman. And certainly you have a grievance—'

‘A grievance? Is that what you call it? As fast as we put the windows in at Black Abbey those louts of his have them out again. And who pays? Not Chard, who can afford it.
I
pay. And if it goes on then I'm telling you—'

He was right, entirely right, and I told him so, repeating at such length and with such conviction how right he was that at last his killing rage turned sullen, smouldered a while and then hardened to a point where he would be more likely to sue for damages than extract blood for them.

‘You think you're a clever woman, don't you, Mrs. Barforth? I've heard about you.'

‘She
is
a clever woman,' said Liam.

‘Aye. Maybe so. But I'm not much taken by cleverness in women. And I warn you, Adair, if this goes on, then the next time we meet she'll not talk me out of a thing.'

‘There's no need to wait, Mulvaney. I'll meet you any time you like.'

But Tom Mulvaney, in his full green prime, could recognize an older man's bravado when he heard it, and making a gesture of contempt I had seen often enough by now in Gower Street, he turned and went down the stairs, a victor who condescends—until it suits him to do otherwise—to leave the field.

‘My goodness, gracious me!' said Mr. Martin returning to his telegrams.

‘You can't do anything about it now, can you, Liam?' I said, feeling suddenly very weak about the knees.

‘Of course I can't. But I reckon that bog-trotter in his Sunday suit could do something about me any time he had a mind. So it looks as though you'll have to guard me, Grace, day
and
night, my darling—I can see no help for it.'

Was he afraid?

‘Of course,' said Anna Stone later that evening, adding with her habitual gravity: ‘There can be no courage without fear.'