Flint and Roses (45 page)

He put down his glass, took both her hands in his and kissed them, not raising them to his lips but bending his head, a most gallant salutation. Nicholas and Blaize pushed back their chairs and, going to her side, kissed her in their turn, then, in a rare moment of brotherhood, hugged each other hard. Caroline, forgetting to be Lady Chard, threw two fierce arms around her father's neck, her hand clasping her mother's behind his back. The brothers kissed their sister, husband and wife embraced again. ‘Hannah,' my uncle said, reaching out for the sister who was, often enough, a nuisance to us all, but who had helped him through his early, leaner years. And both she and my mother kissed him and each other.

It was a moment of great emotion, of great beauty, this family united by pride of achievement, and, my eyes swimming with tears. I loved each and every one of them, my soaring, splendid uncle, his graceful wife, my annoying, resourceful aunt, my frivolous little mother, artful Blaize and ambitious Caroline—Nicholas. They were my people. But they were not, it seemed, and never could be, Georgiana's; for, lounging in her chair, tapping a fork against her glass with an irritable hand, she was not merely bored, like Matthew Chard, but thoroughly oppressed, the very colour of her hair faded, apparently, by the completeness of her misery. And on such a day, when the Barforth ladies themselves were there to be looked at, when every shed manager's wife would want to count their jewels and the flounces on their dresses, would feel entitled, quite rightly, to a word and a smile, her attitude—whatever its cause—could only give offence.

Yet her attitude itself puzzled me, for, although I had seen her capricious and reckless, I had never before seen her hard, the scornful curve of her lip as she muttered something to Matthew Chard being quite new to me.

‘One would have thought a title might have pleased her,' my mother murmured, seeing the direction of my eyes, but clearly my uncle's knighthood was no more to her than an extension of the exhibition she had so despised, a hollow sham as tainted by trade as everything else about him, an insult, perhaps, to the ‘real gentry', whose titles had been won on the field of battle or on the tortuous pathways of diplomacy, granted for services freely given, not bought and paid for.

But none of this surprised me. I had expected Georgiana to feel this way and was worried, rather, that she—basically so warm-hearted and who meant so well—should let it show, concluding that some affront must surely have been offered to her own family, that she had been forced once too often into the position of choosing sides: and had chosen.

‘Come, girls,' Aunt Verity said, moving towards us, ‘I think we should circulate a little and make ourselves known. Faith, dear, there will be a great many, I imagine, who have grateful memories of your husband, and would be glad of a word with you. And Georgiana—I believe Nicholas will be wanting to present his employees to you.'

But, as we began to disperse. Georgiana continued to sit at the empty table, not sulking but totally and quite alarmingly separate, her solitude made more conspicuous by the fact that she herself seemed unaware of it.

But others were not.

‘Mrs. Nicholas Barforth,' Aunt Hannah inquired, ‘are you not well today?'

‘Georgiana,' Caroline called out as she took her father's arm. ‘you had better come with me'.

‘Leave her,' Blaize said to me.

‘Georgiana,' Nicholas ordered. ‘Get up'; and, staring at him for a moment quite balefully, she suddenly leaped to her feet and raising her hand allowed the fork with which she had been toying to fall with a careless, destructive clatter on to the table.

‘Good heavens!' she said. ‘Such a commotion! One wonders how you would all behave at a Coronation.'

Pushing back her chair, she gathered her expensive, embroidered skirts together and set off down the garden at a spanking pace, bestowing an ardent, almost hysterical, greeting on everyone she passed, leaving a trail of astonishment—and embarrassment—behind her.

‘Dear God!' Nicholas said very low, no anger in him now, a strange, sorrowing note in his voice, the nearest approach to defeat I had ever seen in the sudden droop of his shoulders; and if there had been a decision to make I must surely have made it then.

I stayed late at Tarn Edge that day, later in Blenheim Lane, so late in fact that Prudence, who had planned to return home with me, elected to spend the remainder of the night in her own bed. And so, quite by chance, even my housemaid having gone upstairs, there was only my housekeeper, Mrs. Marworth, to exchange a startled glance with me when we heard the gate open and a knock on the door, even that good lady, having some experience, it seemed, of the ways of young widows, melting discreetly away when in answer to my inquiry we were told: ‘Nicholas Barforth.'

‘Nicholas. What is it? I didn't hear your horse.'

‘No. I left her in the Old Swan yard. I'd better warn you I've had a glass or two. You're not obliged to ask me to come in.'

But, without answering, I walked away from him into the parlour, spending a long moment in lighting a lamp, adjusting the candles on either end of the mantelpiece, so that when I had finished he was sitting on my sofa, allowing me to choose the safety of a separate chair.

‘Would you like a drink, Nicholas? I think I have some brandy.' He smiled, the unwilling, rueful grin breaking through the cloud of him in a way that had always seemed to me like a reward.

‘No—no thanks. How is it you always make everything seem so smooth for me, Faith? I'm here, in what amounts to the middle of the night—when I shouldn't be here at all—and you haven't even asked me why. And, if I got up now and went away without saying anything, you wouldn't make a fuss, would you? I could even come back tomorrow and be sure of my welcome.'

‘Yes, you could. But I'd be concerned, Nicholas. I might not ask what was wrong, because if you didn't tell me of your own free will I'd assume you didn't want me to know. But I'd wonder—and worry. There's no doubt about that.'

He swallowed hard, painfully, the slump of his shoulders heavy once again with defeat as he leaned forward, staring at the empty summer hearth, his hands clasped loosely together, his dark face, without its shielding anger, vulnerable to hurt.

‘I want to talk to you, Faith.'

‘Yes, of course.'

‘I mean really talk to you—not about combing machines and tea-parties. Can I do that? I'll leave the instant you tell me.'

‘I know.'

‘All right. So what do I say? God knows! I'm at the end of myself tonight, I reckon.'

‘Yes. I think I know that too.'

‘And I'm a selfish swine to come here and pester you with it—which hasn't stopped me from coming. I never really supposed it would. I went down to the Swan to get drunk, which may seem pointless to you—except that getting drunk
would
have kept me away from you. But it hasn't happened. I'm not drunk. Remember—I'll go at once, when you tell me.'

‘Talk to me then.'

‘About Georgiana?'

‘Yes. What happened between you today?'

‘Nothing that hasn't happened before. Nothing that should even matter all that much—nothing I didn't expect, right from the start.'

And, throwing himself backwards suddenly against the sofa, he stretched his whole body and gave a long, deep-draining sigh.

‘Money, Faith—that's all. And I've got plenty of that. Bills—dressmakers'bills, milliners'bills, that she'd had the money to pay and told me she had paid. Apologetic little women coming to see me and saying they know it must have slipped her mind and they don't like bothering me with trifles, but its been six months now, eight months now—It shouldn't even bother me that she gives every penny she can beg or borrow to her brother—since I must have known she would—or that she can't see what all the fuss is about, since tradesmen are just tradesmen and she's gentry, and nobody called Clevedon or Flood or Winterton,
or
Chard I reckon, has ever been in a hurry to pay his tailor. It shouldn't bother me that the money I work for—and scheme for—buys her brother his place at the Flood's whist table, since a gentleman is in honour bound to settle his gambling debts. I can afford it. I was ready to afford it when it was worth it to me. So I'm to blame. I know it. Shall I go now, Faith?'

‘Do you want to?'

‘Oh no. I know exactly what
I
want. I won't leave until I'm told.'

‘In fact you want me to make the decision. You're ready to accept the blame for your situation with Georgiana, but not for—whatever should come of this.'

‘That makes me sound very low, Faith.'

‘So it does.'

He got up, one hand on the mantelpiece, one foot tapping against the fender, not irritably, merely to release some particle of his tension, and, had I permitted myself. I could have gone to him then and there—guilty as he was, full of wine and self-pity, hurt and hunger—and put my arms around him, making everything smooth for him yet again, telling him that he had no need to coax, nor to plead in order to reach me; telling him, quite simply, that I was here.

‘Let me say just this,' he muttered, ‘and then I will go away. You may not believe me, but I mean it when I say I'm to blame. Georgiana is now exactly as she has always been. She didn't deceive me by pretending to be otherwise and she never promised to change. I'm the one who has changed. She fascinated me. Christ!—she burned me so badly I couldn't see beyond her. And the only difference between that and being in love must be that it doesn't last. And when it goes it leaves nothing but amazement that it could ever have existed at all. So I've ruined my life and hers too, because she knows I can't put up with her any more. And how can I expect her to understand why? She has a right to believe that I've cheated her, since I once told her that all these things I find so bloody impossible could make no difference between us. She has the right to feel ill-used when the rest of them criticize her and I don't defend her—as I promised—or when I criticize her myself—as I vowed I'd never do. I swear it—whatever she may do to me. I make her so miserable sometimes, so damned miserable I can see the colour go out of her, and because it upsets me it makes me worse. And I believe I understood today that there isn't any cure—that things will always be like this. My father doesn't often stir much emotion in me, but I was proud of him today. I recognized myself in him today, and I recognized what he feels for my mother. I could have had that too—couldn't I, Faith? And so I went down to the Swan because I couldn't stand thinking about it. I couldn't face up to the fact that I was in a trap of my own making and that I couldn't smash my way out of it, couldn't talk my way out of it, couldn't even buy my way out of it. Christ—!'

‘Nicholas, ' I said slowly, very carefully, ‘a moment ago you said you knew exactly what you wanted. You had better tell me what it is.'

He sat down again heavily, a man who had been brought up to believe he could get anything he wanted if he worked for it, fought for it, who had been very sure of himself and who now could not tolerate frustration, a man who could understand the reasons for his captivity but would not accept them. Yet, no matter what fears I entertained, nor how many feeble attempts I made to be resolute, to listen not only to the warnings of shock and shame but to the simple, straightforward urgings of common sense, my body knew, had known from the moment he arrived, that he had only to touch me—a hand, merely, on mine, or not even that much, a hand reaching out for me—and I would answer.

It was completely wrong. There was not even a whisper of right, not the slightest breath of justification, no good to anyone could possibly come of it. He was here in a moment of weakness, knowing—as I knew—that, however much he desired me, however much he might come to love me, he could, in the final instance, only do me harm. And because he was not cruel, and no more self-seeking in love than most men—than most women—by harming me he would most likely harm himself. He knew quite well he should not have come here at all. I knew I should not have let him in. Yet, if we were no more self-seeking than the average, we were no more self-sacrificing either. We were human, imperfect, and I, at least, had stood apart from life for too long. And more than that, perhaps I was still young enough to believe that, what I would have instantly recognized as madness in any other woman, could in my case be otherwise; that I was stronger, possessed the capacity to love more completely—for I was in no doubt that I did love him.

‘I want a great many things,' he said quietly, ‘and I know it's all impossible. I want to turn the clock back. I suppose—a long way back, years back. It can't be done. I'm sorry, Faith. I'll go now.'

But I had allowed him to leave me too many times in this manner, in those slow, peaceful days when it had seemed right to wait for him to fall in love with me, days when I had remained motionless, believing time to be my ally, and had lost him. Perhaps I had needed only to hold out my hand and push him with the very tips of my fingers in order to pass from one level of feeling to another, from the friendship we had always shared to desire. And perhaps, too, we would all be dust and ashes, mouldering in eternal decay, tomorrow.

‘I'll go now.' But he didn't move, and when I didn't answer he said sharply, ‘Yes. I'll go, for if I don't—I hurt you once, Faith, didn't I? I can't do it again.'

‘That's nonsense, Nicholas.'

‘What?'

‘It's nonsense, that's all. It just proves that we know the right answers, that we know what we ought to say and do. And it's nonsense. Why don't you say what you mean? You don't intend to leave and you don't think I'll make you.
Say
it, Nicholas. Let's be honest, at least with each other.'

‘Faith—' he said blankly, taken off guard for the first time in his life very nearly, and very briefly shy. And then, his hard brown fingers plunging for a moment into his hair as if he required to clear his head, shake it, perform some positive, simple action that was entire and straightforward in itself, he leaned forward and whispered, ‘Come and sit beside me.'