Sons of Fortune (24 page)

What the devil—he
could
smell the spent gunpowder! He overran the Russian artillery and gained the crest just as the ground before him, about a hundred yards away downhill, erupted in a sheet of fire. Moments later there was a deafening thud—a real thud, this, no figment of his imagination. But if his imagination had not already been at work in that direction, he would never have controlled his pony. She bolted even faster than when she had first shot from the farmyard into the ploughed field.

For a hundred yards or so he concentrated merely on staying with her. Then he began to talk to her and gently to slow her down, step by step, with a series of checks, keeping very calm and steady himself. Soon he was able to turn her, and the knowledge that she was going away from home and back toward that Big Fright, slowed her even more. He made her walk the last hundred yards back, talking to and patting her all the way. She was quite calm again by the time they reached the crest.

And there below him was a railway working! Immediately in front of him they were blasting a cutting through an outcrop on the shoulder of the hill. That was the fiery eruption that had startled his mare. The men who had taken shelter on the far side of the outcrop were now swarming back to start shovelling and loading the muck dislodged by the explosion. He looked around for a warning flag and saw none. His lip curled in a sneer. If this had been one of his father’s workings, the foreman would be dismissed for that. These were not navvies. This was a rabble.

He rode forward, down to the cutting.

Funny how you could tell the quality of a working from a distance. Closer inspection only confirmed his judgement. There were four drunken men lying under a tarpaulin, singing. The rock face in the working was much too deeply undercut—half the men were in danger of their lives if the face fell. The ropes were frayed and re-tied, spliced and worn. Two men were sitting on the gunpowder barrels—smoking!

With all the self-righteousness of a lad of twelve (or
almost
, as he would have said), Caspar relished every fault he found, and rode around, setting all to rights, just as his father would. It was much better fun than the Charge of the Light Brigade.

A navvy, shovelling stone that had spilled from a broken skip, winked at him. “Seekin’ a job, lad? Fancy a chance on this workin’?”

Caspar pulled a face. “That’s no working. It’s a
shambles
.”

The man’s eyes narrowed and he came closer to Caspar. “Shambles?” he said. He peered at Caspar. “I’ve seen thee afore. Shambles? That’s a right Stevenson word. Art thou Lord John’s lad?”

The man looked at him with a sidelong smile, making his question rhetorical.

Caspar nodded, swelling with pride. “Aye,” he said.

“I knew it!” the man crowed. “And I mind now where I’ve seen thee. ’Twere on the Crake Hall section last year. Thou come there with thy dad.”

Caspar grinned in delight. “Is this the same line?” he asked.

The navvy spat. “This! Nay, this is a private line—from the quarry down to Hawes. Bloody rubbish! I should never have left Stevenson’s, that’s a fact.”

“I’ll write to my father if you like,” Caspar promised.

The man laughed and turned back to his shovelling. “Nay, thanks, lad. I’ll make me own way back when I’ve earned enough here. Tell thy dad thou met us, though. William Millhurst’s the name. Tell ’im I s’ll come back soon enough.”

All the way home Caspar marvelled at this encounter. There, at the back of nowhere, he had met a man who knew his father and who spoke of “coming back” as if it were to enter the promised land. How glorious to be known and loved like that, and to leave enduring monuments, too, all around the world.

For the first time in his life he felt envious that Boy was going to take over Stevenson’s. For the first time, too, the army seemed to offer a less-than-perfect future to him.

Isn’t it strange, Rocks,” Nora said, “I can explain it all to you so easily and calmly; and it doesn’t matter a damn whether you understand or not. Yet I can’t explain it to Stevenson at all—and to me it matters more than all the world that he should understand my point of view.”

“Have an apple,” Roxby said, beginning to dismantle the still-life group now he had finished painting it.

“What? After it’s stood there for a fortnight!”

“Month,” Roxby corrected. He polished one of the apples with a cleanish rag and threw it to her. “It’s kept well.”

She sniffed it. “My favourite! Apple and turpentine—how did you know?” But she took a bite and ate with relish. “I dread to think what you do at the end of a figure painting from the life!”

He grinned back and dug his thumbs into an orange, squinting away to keep the juice out of his eyes.

“It’s all just a wallpaper of words to you, though, isn’t it? My telling you all this. A way of keeping an empty mind while your hands get on with the painting.”

His hands got on with swilling out his brushes while, speaking around the lump of orange in his mouth, he said, “In any sensible country, what Stevenson is suggesting to you would form part of the criminal code.”

Nora put the apple down, only a third eaten. “
That’s
why I love coming here,” she said. “I know I can rely on you for good, solid, down-to-earth advice. Nothing up in the air! Nothing flippant.”

“Criminal,” he repeated firmly, beginning to wipe the brushes one by one. “I was going to say, I’m glad artists don’t have a Society with rules to live by—but of course we do. Different rules, but, in their way, just as rigid. And compared with yours…”

“It’s not mine. Christ—don’t you listen to anything?”

“All right. Compared with the one Stevenson wants you to submit to, ours is a lot harder to enter. Yours—I’m sorry…
his—
needs nothing but training to enter; anyone can do it. Ours needs talent. Can you spare us a fiver?”

She came around his easel and looked at his painting.

“You wouldn’t miss it,” he said.

“Who’s this for?”

“Oh, the old firm.”

She looked puzzled.

“Fits and Starts, Limited,” he said. “You must have heard of them—they employ half the artists in the country. What about my fiver?”

Nora laughed, outraged. “
Your
fiver!” But she toyed with the string of her purse.

He saw the gesture and grinned. “Just a loan, of course.”

She had to laugh. “My God, Rocks, you’re a real out-and-outer, you really are. Most people on the cadge at least go through the motions of signing a promissory note or an IOU, even if everyone knows they intend to dishonour it. But you…”

“Why exchange one form of wallpaper—as you call it—for another?” His hand was already out. “Oh, come on.”

She made up her mind. “Mademoiselle Nanette and I will take you to dinner,” she said. “Then I will give you a fiver—which makes a round fifty you owe me—and I’ll take this picture to wipe out the debt.”

He came and looked at the picture in pretended astonishment. “Fifty! For
this
?”

Her face fell. “Don’t start that,” she warned. “Self-denigration does not become you.”

“Done!” he said, cheerful again.

“Yes, I hope I haven’t been.”

Still he looked at the painting. “Seriously,” he said, “what d’you see in it?”

“Oh…‘early intimations of the greatness that was soon to descend upon him.’ I think that’s what the books will say.”

Suddenly—and genuinely—moved, he put an arm around her and kissed her briefly on the cheek. “God bless your ladyship!” he said, devaluing the moment. He still held one arm about her, now dropped loosely to her waist.

She looked steadily at his arm, then at him. “I hope it isn’t all promise and no performance,” she said.

He could think of no funny rejoinder. He gulped. She smiled complacently and walked out of his mild embrace. “Dinner,” she said firmly.

***

Nanette sat and ate in silence at a separate table in one corner of the room. Nora and Roxby behaved and talked as if she were not there at all.

“Seriously,” he said when he was well into the second bottle of claret. “I think you should do as Stevenson suggests. Go into Society. Especially now you’re a baroness. You could do me a lot of good from inside the citadel.”

She looked at him as if it were a revelation. “Do you know, Rocks, in all the weeks of thought I have given this, that’s an aspect that never once occurred to me. I wish you would be serious, as you keep claiming.”

He looked at her speculatively, trying to decide whether his idea of seriousness would accord with hers. “Very well,” he said at last. “I wouldn’t want to say this too often—and I don’t think you’d welcome it much either.”

He pushed the bottle away from him and briefly rubbed his forehead. “I should have said this earlier.” He smiled then, a little-boyish smile, compelling her to smile, too. That seemed to compose him. “You know—you must know—that you are no ordinary woman. Indeed you are extraordinary. I’d go so far as to say you are one of the most outstanding women of this age. Perhaps of any age—I don’t know. And for you to incarcerate yourself inside the living hell of the standard social round—to go into Society, with its endless treadmill of card-leaving and morning-calling and who’s-in-who’s-out games—would be…a crime. That’s what I meant earlier. I wasn’t being flippant. I just didn’t think you’d be interested in my considered opinion at any length.”

His seriousness moved her deeply. He was extraordinary in his ability to pass, in a few words, from the lightest to the most serious sides of his nature.

She took his hand and squeezed it, rolling her lower lip into a smile, unable to voice her thanks.

“You’re wondering where it leads,” he said.

She held up a finger. “Before you say that, let me put to you a defence of Society. I don’t necessarily believe it, but it’s been put to me and I’d like to see how you answer it. This is how the argument goes. In the days of the Regency, English Society was public. It consisted of about a thousand families and they all met one another in public places and they all knew each other. Now it’s a long time since that was true of modern Society. We meet and entertain in private—even on public occasions. Who gives a fig for those once-coveted tickets to public balls! What we now covet are the invitations to Lady Whatsit’s dinner beforehand. And look at the numbers involved—it must be tens of thousands of families. So we can’t use the old Regency system, which could be informal because everybody knew who was anybody. Hence all our elaborate…well, you can see the rest for yourself. The argument finishes by saying that, far from having
nothing
to do, far from being useless butterflies, Society women perform the vital task of regulating entry to, and ensuring exit from, Society for the worthy and the unworthy. Well?”

Roxby nodded. “I don’t quarrel with a word of that. Mind you, as a description of what actually happens, it’s a bit idealistic—but aren’t we all?”

“Oh,” she said, disappointed.

“All I’d say is that there must be ten thousand ladies already at that sort of work, choking every entrance and exit as it is—not to mention two million others just aching to join them. But you! Ah, you could do something unique!”

She brightened. “What?”

“You don’t need me to tell you. I don’t let anyone tell me what or how to paint. You have a genius. It will express itself. You won’t be able to help it.”

She was silent a moment. “That frightens me,” she said at last.

“Good!” He patted her hand warmly and his eyes twinkled encouragement. His charade gained a new dimension then; he began to speak to her as a toddler. “Who’s a clever ickle, miss, then! Come on then—one more step. One more step on your own.”

Wearily smiling, she shook her head in fond resignation. “What are you saying?”

“Something frightens you!”

“And you say ‘good’?”

“I say good because I think it’s the first true statement I’ve had from you all evening.”

She drew herself away from him and sat bolt upright.

“I’ll amend that. The first
completely
true statement. Otherwise I’ve heard nothing out of you but cold logic and impartial-sounding reasoning.”

She looked at him guardedly.

“I mean, dear Nora, that people don’t make big, important decisions—or have big, important disagreements—on such cool and logical grounds.”

“They ought to.”

He shrugged. “We all ought to be terribly good. We ought to be charitable. We ought to love-honour-and-obey, some of us. The rest ought to have-and-hold…er…forsaking all others…whatever it is.” He giggled and caught up her hand. “Spoiled that! Sorry…should have learned my lines.” He hung his head, making her laugh indulgently.

He became serious again. “I drop a hint or two about a possible future for you, and you say it frightens you. I believe that. You talk about a disagreement with Stevenson and it comes out of you like an essay in
The Saturday Review
: ‘On Society’…‘The Woman Question.’ At the risk of offending you, I can’t quite believe that.”

“But the rest is no business of yours. The emotional side of it.”

He lifted his hands to the skies, begging strength. “Of course it isn’t, you goose! That’s why I’m so keen to hear it. And if it were my business, all you’d get out of me would be words and thoughts to serve my own interests.”

She looked at him, lost so deep in thought her face was a blank. His eyes held hers, uncertain she even saw him. Suddenly she laughed, a variant of her earlier, indulgent laugh, but harder and less forgiving. “Rocks,” she told him, “you’ve never done a single act, nor spoken a single word, nor thought a single thought that wasn’t absolutely in your own interest. So don’t invoice what you cannot deliver.”

He pouted and looked away, hurt.

She dug a thumbnail into the back of his hand until he winced and withdrew it. “It was not I who raised the bets on honesty,” she reminded him. “What’s it taste like? I’ll tell you something else: I love John Stevenson, underneath it all. And he loves me. It’s feelings I’m talking about—real feelings. I do a lot to vex him and worry him. And he certainly pays me back in the same coin! But I’d never deceive him and I’m sure he’d never deceive me.”

He grinned angrily. “But it’s nice to
pretend
, isn’t it!”

She was unmoved—supremely aloof. “With you, yes. You make it delicious.”

He shook his head in smiling disgust. “Oh, Nora, you are a monster of some kind!”

“Yes. The kind with an eye that looks at an apple and sees the colour of the pips.”

He laughed, seeing she would let him win nothing. Then, just as he seemed on the point of looking away, shrugging, drawing breath, changing the subject, he rounded sharply on her and jabbed a finger, almost touching her. “What you could do…” he began in some excitement. “What you could do is…” He hesitated, as if the words might prove explosive. “You could play a part in history. You could be talked of, as people now talk and write about…No! As
no one
has ever been written of, or talked about. You could be unique!”

“I thought I already was. Didn’t you say that? Anyway, what history? History? What are you talking about?”

“The only history that counts. Not Stevenson’s kind…bridges and pfah!”

“Be careful, Rocks!”

“Careful be damned! I’m talking about art. The history of art. What survives longest? Eh? What endures? What of Greece? What of Egypt? It’s all art.” The words tumbled over one another, scraping his mouth, thickening his tongue. “Damn this wine! You know what I mean. How many women now alive—how many women ever—could attract the choice of artists, the masters…”

“‘The choice and master spirits of the age’?” Nora smiled.

“I’m trying not to say that. But all right: Yes! ‘The choice and master spirits’ of this age. You could be the centre, the light, you know, moths and flames and that sort of thing. Oh, God—come back in an hour and I’ll tell you.”

She drew breath to speak but he leaped in again. “How many other ladies could…?”

She spoke then: “How many other ladies do you know, Rocks?”

“None! That’s what I’m saying. You could…”

“I mean ladies of any kind, in Society? You are comparing me, whom you know, with figments of gossip—people you don’t know.”

“Listen! A good painting’s a good painting. You judge it for itself. You don’t trundle in Titian and Michelangelo and Raphael and the rest. For itself, Nora. And you should judge people that way, too. I don’t want to know about all these other ladies in order to judge
you.
I know you. And I know this age. Art in this age has sunk as low as art could possibly sink.”

She was smiling at him. He reached forward and gently pinched her mouth into a more solemn shape. “Don’t mock me,” he begged. “Please listen. I swore I’d never say this. I swore I’d let you find it for yourself. But suddenly I feel it’s so urgent. You are jolted by this disagreement with Stevenson; you could make such disastrously wrong choices. I have to tell you. I think you are already earmarked by history to play a great role…”

She shook her head. “Be practical, Rocks. You know me well enough. ‘Earmarked by history’ is pure wind. Talk in practical terms.”

He grinned, sharp and brief, accepting her rebuke. “In practical terms, London is dead. It’s dead every winter. Where is everyone? Off hunting. Enjoying the country, my God.”

“Not quite everyone.”

“Exactly. And those who are left don’t know what on earth to do with themselves except give sad little dinners, meeting the same dull cliques…”

“But people have to go down to the country. Estates have to be managed. That’s why Parliament’s gone down.”

“Not everyone!
Not
everyone—that’s my point. More and more people don’t have estates. More and more people are sick to death of the country and the insufferable tedium of what passes for life out there in those damp dells. More and more people want to live all their lives in the city—this city. And they don’t want to go on and on and on meeting the same vapid, wearisome, spiritless, upper-class crowd. Can’t you feel it? Society is changing—or is on the very brink of change. There’s a new tide about to flow. A new Society, or a mixture of old and new, is about to form. All I’m saying is that you—you above all—could be on the very leading edge of that change. You could help to make it happen. You could shape it.” He gulped. “Lord, I think I’m sober again. D’you want me to talk about history now?”