God Is an Englishman (19 page)

“No, there’s more to it than that.” He got up and went into the hall, anticipating GodIsAnEnglishman.indd 93

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that Henrietta had disobeyed him to the extent of remaining on the landing but surprised to find her crouched on the lowest stair, her basket-trunk on her knees.

She looked, he thought, nearer nine than eighteen, a child about to be chastised for stealing jam. Her eyes were red and her hair as disordered as when she had first arrived. It occurred to him that she might have been listening at the keyhole.

He said, “Come in and join us, Henrietta. Your father has put a proposition to me and I want to hear what you have to say about it. Leave your luggage for the time being.”

She got up and followed him across the hall, making a wide circuit round her father’s chair so that he thought of a spaniel skirting a mastiff. Inside the room she stood as far away from her father as possible and her timidity must have irritated Sam for he growled, “Come, lass, there’s no need to behave that way in front o’ company. Have I ever laid a hand on you? Not that you haven’t asked for it times enough.”

She said, surprisingly, “Stop treating me like a child. Both of you.
Stop
it!” and then turning to Adam, “He said if I didn’t go he’d get the police here and clap you and the Colonel and Aunt Charlotte in prison. You’ve been kind to me, all of you, and I couldn’t let him do a thing like that…” and she stopped, biting her lip.

“There’s no question of that, Henrietta. You can go or stay, which ever you prefer, but if you stay your father will have nothing more to do with you. It’s a matter for you to decide.”

“Aye, that’s the size of…” growled Sam, but Adam broke out, saying, “Oh, for God’s sake, man! Let
her
decide. It’s her life! She isn’t one of your damned millhands!” and when Sam clamped his jaw shut, “Well, Henrietta?”

“I’ll stay,” she said. “I couldn’t go back now, not after what’s happened. Aunt Charlotte said I could work for my keep, and that’s what I’ll do so long as he goes away and leaves you alone.” She turned to Sam. “Now tear up that paper you showed Aunt Charlotte and go back where you belong.” Sam scratched his nose. He did not enjoy being bullied, but the experience was novel and interested him. He was seeing her for the first time, a Rawlinson with her defences down, and in a curious way it shamed him. He had never thought to see a child of his so vulner able.

“Talk to him,” he said, gruffly, “he’ll tell you I’ve no choice.”

“Makepeace has backed down,” said Adam.

Her eyes showed no more than a flicker of interest, “Makepeace never mattered one way or the other,” she said. “He knows very well I’d never have married him.”

“Will you marry me, Henrietta?”

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They heard the breath go out of her and her right hand groped behind her, as though to reinforce the grip the other had upon the curtains. Sam said, jumping up, “God damn it, man, only a minute ago you said…”

“It doesn’t matter what I said, I’m asking Henrietta and in your presence. Let her decide. Will you marry me, Henrietta?”

Sam subsided again, now so far out of his depth that he felt he knew what it was like to drown. There was a long silence in the room. The pendulum of the French clock on the mantelpiece spun but its tick was inaudible under its glass dome. A trapped bluebottle buzzed in one of the recesses, and outside, far across the lake, they could hear the soft plash of oars and the creak of rowlocks. She said, finally, “You know that would be the most wonderful thing that could happen to me. But it doesn’t have to happen just because of him and that paper.”

“Oh, to hell wi’ bloody paper!” shouted Sam, unable, as a plain-speaking Northerner, to endure a spectacle of pathos a moment longer. “Say you’ll wed the man and be done with it, or climb in yon cab and let’s get off home!” but the outburst left her unmoved. She went on, in a voice just above a whisper, “Of course I’ll marry him, but only if he really wants me to. I can’t imagine wanting to marry anyone else.”

For some reason the admission restored to Sam enough confidence to resume his bluff. He said, heartily, “Well, damn good luck to you, and happen I’ll beat you to it.” Then to Adam, “This is a daft way to get a daughter off your hands. I’m not even sure of your name. Did I hear right? Was it Swann?”

“You heard right.”

He was regarding Henrietta so intently that he had almost forgot ten Rawlinson.

A small part of his mind kept insisting that, even a few moments ago, it would never have occurred to him to resolve the situation with such finality. But he was glad, somehow, that it had been so resolved. He could not have given adequate expression to any of the half-hidden reasons that had urged him to propose mar riage in that melodramatic way, but he did not regret the offer. In some way it had invested her with a dignity that reduced her uncouth father to the status of what he was, an oversized guttersnipe. He heard Rawlinson erupt again and turned to see him once more on his feet, very red about the face and neck. He heard him say, with emphasis but without rancour, “Nowt from me, lass…not a penny-piece, d’ye hear? I’ll be starting out all over again…” but she paid him no attention, remaining there motionless against the window, framed in the soft, afternoon light, and Adam crossed to her, address ing Sam over his shoulder. “Leave her to me, Rawlinson. Stand by your bargain and there’s no more to be said.” GodIsAnEnglishman.indd 95

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But there was, one more thing, if only to give expression to Sam Rawlinson’s bewilderment. He looked at his daughter, then at the tall, sunburned man towering over her, then back at Henrietta. “Damn it,” he said, shaking his head, “what kind of chap are you?” and lifted his hand, letting it fall in a gesture that underlined his in comprehension. He never had understood the irrational impulses that governed the behaviour of a class he dismissed, collectively, as “the gentry,” for those impulses did not seem to spring from anything within his own experience.

The few he had met, and set himself to bargain with, were as alien to him as Turks or Russians, and even more unpredictable, and as always when facing a situation that could not be resolved in terms of hard cash, his inclination was to turn his back on it. “Let it rest then,” he growled, “but go back on me, come my way making trouble about that lad Garvin, and you’ll wish you hadn’t. By God, you’ll wish you hadn’t, lad!” Then taking his hat, he stumped out of the house and a moment later they heard him clip-clopping away in his cab towards Keswick.

He said, at length, “Do you want me to call Aunt Charlotte?” and she made a swift, negative gesture, relinquished her grip on the cur tain and slowly subsided on to the window seat.

“Why?”
she said. “Why like that, Adam? Was it the one way to be rid of him?” He smiled at that. “If it was then it worked. I thought he was bluffing but it seems he wasn’t. Well, he’s gone, Henrietta. I hope you realise you’ve seen the last of Sam Rawlinson.”

“What did he mean—about that boy, Garvin?”

“I’ll tell you another time. It was the main reason I took you along with me, though I don’t think I realised as much at the time.”

“Tell me now, Adam. There’s so much I don’t understand and I’ve got to begin understanding.”

He told her. It wasn’t easy to explain why and how he regarded her father as a man who should be facing an Assize judge on a more serious charge than inciting a riot, but she didn’t seem particularly shocked, or even surprised. “He’s like that,” she said, “all of them down there are like that. Money and property is the only thing that makes any sense to them. That’s what’s so different about people like you and the Colonel.” She went on, thoughtfully, “If you go forward with that haulage and made a million pounds out of it, it wouldn’t alter you, not inside.” And then, looking at him with a kind of desper ate challenge, “What you said—about marrying me. I know it was said for him, to get rid of him, to stop him making trouble, but if…”

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She stopped and he saw tears welling. Here was a chance to with draw if he wanted withdrawal. He had only to say something soothing and walk out of here, free to go about his business and hand her over into his aunt’s keeping, but although he was tempted something checked him and it had to do with the maturity she had assumed dur ing the confrontation. She had reason to complain.

It was time some body began treating her like a human being and put an end to this cynical use of her as a counter in a whole range of issues, from the death of Tim Garvin to her father’s mendacity, and his own involve ment that he was still at a loss to understand. He lifted her up, tilted her chin, and kissed her softly on the mouth, saying, “Find Aunt Charlotte. Tell her what happened, what we’ve decided upon.”

“I daren’t, Adam. She’ll be even angrier than Sam. She’ll think I meant something like this to happen…”

“She won’t think anything of the kind. She’s been expecting it to happen ever since I brought you home.”

“We’ll tell her together then.”

“No. I’m going south right away. I’ve wasted enough time, and if I’m brought into it there’ll be endless talk of money and family mat ters. There’s something important I must do, before we get married.”

She looked up at him sharply. “Dispose of that necklace?”

“Yes. A man can’t get married and set up in business on three hundred, and that’s all I possess at the moment.”

She said, incuriously, “Where will we live, Adam?”

“London. I couldn’t operate a business of that kind from anywhere else.”

“I’ve never been to London.”

“I’ll show you the sights, once I’ve done what I have to do.”

“You haven’t told anyone else about those rubies?”

“No one.”

“Not even your father?”

“No, he wouldn’t approve.”

She was silent a moment, finger in her mouth, very childlike again. But when she spoke it was clear that she had his measure. “Very well, Adam. I’ll tell your aunt and the Colonel what happened. Go right away. Go this moment before they start asking questions.”

He said, gratefully, “That’s more than I deserve, but I’ll make it up to you, Henrietta,” and he kissed her, this time boisterously. “I’ll not be away long, a week or so maybe. You’l need to buy things. Tel Aunt Charlotte to take you up to Carlisle GodIsAnEnglishman.indd 97

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and charge whatever you get to me.” He paused, eager for solitude but sensing that it was al most indecent to abandon her so abruptly. “Is there anything else?”

“No,” she said, carefully, “except to say thank you, Adam.” She went out, closing the door softly, and he heard her climbing the stairs. He stood there alone for a moment feeling absurdly inade quate, as though, in some strange manner, their roles had been reversed and that the initiative had passed to her. Then he went out, across the hall and through the kitchen quarters to the stableyard.

2

She wore successive states of mind like layers of petticoats picked up and put on at random, so that it was a matter of chance which one was innermost and which would show when she hitched her skirt.

The choice was regulated, of course, by mood, but the factors that dictated the mood were beyond her control, so that she was never in the least sure how she would regard the future when she woke up or how it would appear when she blew out her candle and lay watching the moonbeams on the ceiling of the little room over the porch that she had been told to call her own.

That was how she regarded the Colonel’s house now, as a home quite unlike the turreted lodge on the plain that already seemed to belong to her childhood.

The house was home, Aunt Charlotte was her aunt Charlotte, and the old man was more of a father than Sam had ever been. Especially since the day before yesterday when, in response to an appeal by Aunt Charlotte (for once eager to concede her inadequacy) she had recoiled from Henrietta’s shy approach on the subject of what was expected of her as a bride.

“Good life, child,” she exclaimed, “how should I know? I was never a bride, and never sought to be one!” but then, meeting Hen rietta’s startled gaze, “You were raised by a man and I daresay you’re as ignorant as I am. I
hope
you are, at all events. I’ll…I’ll speak to the Colonel. It isn’t a subject I care to broach to a man but better him than that hulking son of his!” and she bustled away leaving Henrietta with a strong impression that her innocent question had outraged the old lady.

It set her thinking, however, of what little she knew of the vaunted secrets of marriage and of snippets of information that had come her way in the last few years via kitchen tittle-tattle and speculative con versations with her best friend, Sarah Hebditch.

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There was that curious affair of Agnes, the kitchen-maid, and Amos, the pigman, solved—she was not quite certain how—by Mrs. Worrell’s intervention, after Agnes had come to her blubbering and confessed that “Amos had put it across her when she was tiddly and now she was fair ruined.” As it turned out she wasn’t, for Mrs. Wor rell saw to it that Amos married her on pain of dismissal without a character. Months later, her girth having been stealthily observed during the interval, Agnes became the mother of a bouncing boy. In itself the incident had done little but confirm Sarah Hebditch’s assurance that unborn babies lived in their mother’s stomachs, and that it obviously took two to make one, but neither she nor Sarah were clear about what it was Amos the pigman had put across or what precise part potato wine, to which Agnes was known to be partial, had played in the scandal.