A Song Twice Over (55 page)

‘Fourteen? Impossible.' There was no doubt that Lady Lark meant exactly what she said.

‘I will check my books again, madam.'

‘I must strongly advise you to do so. I will take that feathered bonnet with me now, Miss Adeane, if you will have it put in my carriage. And please send the cream straw not later than Tuesday. The girls will be along in a day or so for their fittings.'

Smiling, Cara placed the feathered bonnet into its box and carried it herself to the waiting carriage.

‘Good morning, Lady Lark.'

‘And to you, Miss Adeane. And please remember I must have the cream straw by Tuesday. Morning would suit me best.'

‘Certainly, madam.'

They smiled at one another.

‘Thieving bitch,' muttered Cara as the vehicle lumbered away and, marching back to her office, began to write out in great detail the Lark account once again.

‘And if she doesn't pay me this time then I shall send it to Sir Felix.'

‘My dear, he won't care.' Marie Moon, still sipping her gin and gazing at her lover, sounded very much amused. ‘He will use it to light his cigar. What else are bills good for? Only the poor Braithwaites and Dallams feel obliged to pay them, because they are uncertain of their place in society. Or men like my husband who have to earn theirs by paying for everything. But when one is a Lark of Moorby Hall there is no need for that. One pays one's gambling debts, of course. Are they not called debts of honour, after all? But there is no honour involved in paying a tradesman – or a woman. You should know that, my love. And face up to it. As I face the sorry fact that my husband is, at present, scurrying from his lawyer to his banker to his priest – even to his member of parliament – seeking a way in which – without costing him too much – he can be rid of me.'

‘And you'll just sit there, won't you Marie, and let him cast you off?'

‘My dear,' Marie gave her languorous always half-tipsy smile. ‘What else?'

‘Fight him. If not, he'll leave you nothing to live on. And there'll be no little Persian kitten to console you then.'

Sagely Marie Moon nodded her lovely blonde head. ‘Quite so. Then I must enjoy what there is to enjoy here and now – must I not?'

‘Do as you like.' Cara was seriously out of temper. ‘But I don't mean to lose fourteen dresses, I can tell you that.'

Suddenly the mere thought of it brought angry tears to her eyes. It was her substance, her profit, her
right
. It was Liam's school fees, his holiday by the sea, his – and Odette's – security for that stormy day which would burst upon them, eventually, she had no doubt about it, when least expected.

‘Thieving bitch,' she muttered again, murder stirring inside her. ‘Either she pays me or I'll stop her credit and let Mrs Braithwaite and Mrs Colclough know why … How they'd love that.'

‘No!' Christie Goldsborough told her later that evening when she repeated her threat to him. ‘Grizelda Lark is my cousin and
you
– my dear – will not humiliate her.'

‘I won't lose fourteen dresses. Will
you
pay me?'

‘Certainly not.' He looked as blank and disdainful as Lady Lark herself when the debt had first been mentioned. What could such trivial, trading matters possibly have to do with either of them?

‘Thank you, Christie. But you'll want your rent on time, won't you.'

‘Of course.'

‘And when she comes to order her summer wardrobe what am I to do about that?'

‘Feel honoured, my dear, at her condescension. And increase your prices accordingly, for Mrs Braithwaite and Mrs Colclough, to cover the cost.'

‘Make the “millocracy” foot the bill, in fact.'

He looked faintly surprised that she had found it necessary to ask.

‘But naturally, Adeane – naturally – since paying for things is what they
do
. And then, if one day, Lady Lark should find it convenient to settle her account, you will have been doubly reimbursed.'

But she needed her money for those fourteen dresses, now. Not for living expenses any longer, thank God, or to settle her outgoings but as a matter of pride. She wanted her money. One way or another she would have it.

‘It drives me mad,' she raged to Marie and Odette, ‘to think of that woman flaunting herself in
my
satin –
my
velvet – Where does she think I get it from? Does she think they give it away, those merchants in Leeds – as sharp as needles?
I
have to pay on delivery and no excuses – or there'd be no more. And she was here, this morning, as bold as brass, looking at the summer patterns, wanting everything doing sooner than yesterday. Thieving, condescending bitch. And her waist is an inch thicker since December, with all her Christmas puddings.
Greedy
bitch, too.'

Sometimes she could hardly bear the frustration, the injustice.

‘She
is
an earl's daughter,' Marie Moon suggested placidly by way of comfort.

‘What of it?'

‘Her name adds lustre, my love. Or so she imagines. So do they all. Even my little Persian kitten has a notion that he is doing me an honour by loving me – because his name is Lark. After all – what else of value does he have?'

‘What will
you
have, except the clothes you stand up in if you let your husband disown you?'

Marie smiled, her blue eyes out of focus. ‘Oh – as for me – perhaps I was born to be destroyed. Perhaps I invite destruction. I often think so. It may be that I have been searching all my life for the
coup de grâce
. I think it is a scene I shall play to perfection.'

‘You'd do better to buy all the jewellery you can, on his account, and hide it away somewhere. Or get a lawyer of your own to work out a settlement for you. Or stop driving around all day with that little tom-cat of a Lark in your carriage, so that your husband's lawyer will have less evidence against you.'

Marie opened her lovely eyes very wide and smiled. ‘Are you trying to save me, Cara? How sweet. But not very practical, my love. Not realistic. I fear I shall go the way of your fourteen dresses – And you will make the wedding gown, I dare say, for my husband's next bride, whether it is Miss Linnet Gage or some fresh little fourteen-year-old he has managed to buy from her mamma. You know that I shall not hold it against you.'

Very likely. But Cara still intended to have her fourteen dresses, or their value, back again. And it was in this atmosphere of triumphs and tediums, occasional anxieties and growing satisfactions, an ever-increasing sense of going forward, of being a part and taking her share of the boom-time, the harvest-time, the burgeoning and blossoming envisaged with the coming of the railway that she heard what had befallen the Thackrays.

It happened suddenly. In April. Not the best time for disaster with the air soft and green and even the harsh landscape of Frizingley touched by the blossom-tints of the season. Suddenly. One evening she was walking on the moor with Luke talking pleasantly of nothing in particular since there was an ocean of time before them. And then, only two mornings later, there came a tearful Anna Rattrie to tell her that Luke had been dismissed from Braithwaite's and Sairellen was to be evicted. It was true. Anna's heart was clearly breaking at the thought of it. The lodgers had already packed and gone. The lace curtains – Sairellen's pride and joy – had been taken down. The hens in the back yard had been sold to the landlord of the Dog and Gun. Would anything ever be the same again?

Leaving Odette in charge of the shop, Cara went at once to St Jude's Street finding Sairellen alone, impassive and hard as granite, already packing her cast iron pots and pans, her baking bowls and canisters, her rolling pins and meat skewers and flat irons into wooden boxes. A woman going about her business, unbowed, simply getting on with things as she had done all her life. A woman who kept her own counsel and did not greatly wish to be disturbed although she looked up as Cara came through the door, registering no surprise, no welcome, no particular condemnation other than a sardonic twist of the wide, strong mouth, a lifting of the heavy greying eyebrows which conveyed bluntly ‘This is your doing, Cara Adeane. I told you it would be.'

‘I've just heard – this minute,' said Cara.

‘Aye. It's no secret. And you've come running all the way up St Jude's in your fine black taffeta, have you? Very good of you, lass.'

‘When did it happen?'

Sairellen raised her shoulders in her heavy always faintly scornful shrug, her back a ramrod in its stiffness and its absolute refusal of sympathy. ‘They never give much notice. Why should they? Luke got his marching orders from Braithwaite's last night, at the end of his shift, as you might imagine.
After
his day's work was done. Paid him off and told him not to come back again. And the landlord's men were here to see me an hour or two later to let me know as how the landlord would be obliged if I'd vacate his premises by the end of the week. Luke has been at Braithwaite's twenty-two years. We've lived here twenty-five.'

‘Can he do it?'

Sairellen's face assumed the expression it always wore when she considered herself to be talking to a half-wit. Of which, in her view, there were a great many.

‘Goldsborough? Don't be daft, lass. My lease has expired. And even if it had another ten years to run, I'd have to leave if that was what he wanted. You're an Irishwoman, Cara. They turn your people off their potato patches, don't they, without a rag to their backs and nothing to do but dig themselves holes for shelter in the ditches. Isn't that what they do?'

Cara nodded.

‘Well then, you ought to understand about evictions.'

‘It's not my fault, Sairellen.' It was a cry from the heart which she did not expect to be heeded.

‘Happen not.' Again there came the heavy, disdainful shrug and then, abruptly, Sairellen's broad, scarred hand banging hard against the table, setting the iron utensils grotesquely dancing. ‘Happen not. But then – tell me this, Cara Adeane – who was it standing in the passage not long since, with my lad, letting him have his way, as any man will – since it's a man's place to try and a woman's to deny, did they never teach you that – and Oliver Rattrie looking on? That was you, my lass, and no mistake. And what I saw, Oliver saw – and more, I shouldn't wonder. Strikes me that he went running to Goldsborough …'

‘Sairellen, it would make no difference.' Her life, it seemed, depended on her ability to make Sairellen believe her. ‘Really it wouldn't. He'd laugh. He'd make fun of it …'

But he had not done so. He had not even mentioned it. Had found nothing to amuse him, it seemed, in the thought of her standing in an alleyway in the rain clasped in the arms of an ordinary working man. As he should have done.

Realizing that, she faltered.

‘He wouldn't care, Sairellen.' And now she felt a need to convince herself. ‘He wouldn't give a damn. He even likes it when other men look at me. It flatters him.'

Look, but not touch. Desire, as men as diverse as poor gin-soaked Ned O'Mara and Ben Braithwaite himself desired her. But were not desired by her in return. Abruptly her nerve snapped and, knowing that her voice betrayed it, she muttered again, ‘He wouldn't care.' And then repeated the words as if they had been a talisman.

She could not be, must not be, the cause of this.

‘Happen not.' Sairellen had drawn her own conclusions and had been given no reason as yet, it seemed, to change them. ‘Except that it's a mite too neat, the house and the job gone in the same night.'

‘What reason did they give at Braithwaite's?'

‘That he was an Oastlerite – which he is. And a Chartist – which he's never kept secret. Yes – he's been to hear Oastler speak, maybe a dozen times since February. Him and ten thousand others. But there's been no trouble, no agitation, no strikes. My lad hasn't taken so much as a day off his work. So why should Ben Braithwaite single him out now, unless it was to oblige a friend? And why should I lose my lease when I've kept this house clean and decent and respectable for twenty-five years, unless it's to make sure I can't offer him a home in this town? Have a bit of sense, lass.'

She had borne Sairellen's scrutiny many times before, had suffered the hard, sardonic eye, the abrasive tongue and had rushed, at once, to defend herself by
attack
as one had to do –
always
– with a granite-hard woman like this one. But now, instead of rising to her call, she felt her energy draining away as rapidly, and as dreadfully, as if it had been unplugged at its source, her heart thudding badly out of control, her eyes not focusing as they should, her body turning hot and then very cold.

‘Sit down,' Sairellen said sharply, ‘before you fall down. I've no mind to strain my back picking you up.' And then, bluntly, a woman who always preferred to know the worst, the better to come to grips with it. ‘It's not like you to turn faint, Cara Adeane. You're not in the family way, by any mischance? Out with it, lass. Let's be knowing.'

In which case – as Cara well knew – having suffered the rough side of Sairellen's tongue she would be offered all the help that was needed.

She sat down and shook her head.

‘No. And it wouldn't be Luke's in any case.'

She could be blunt too. And hard. She had had to be. And now, her weakness lasting only a moment – since when had she ever been able to afford more than that? – she lifted her head to meet the critical, suspicious eyes and began to fight back.

‘How do you know it's Luke they want out of Frizingley, Sairellen? Couldn't it be you?'

‘Could it?'

‘Why not? You've made this house into a Chartist centre – lodging every wandering radical who happened to be passing through. Dozens of them, Sairellen, with their pamphlets and their broadsheet ballads. If I've seen them, and heard them, then so has Oliver Rattrie. He'll have gone running to Goldsborough with that too. Won't he? Well – won't he, Sairellen?'