God Is an Englishman (6 page)

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conventional businessmen of a settled community? Had that snivelling priest who called on him to discuss the girl’s future dented his self-sufficiency? Had he grown impatient with the need to go out and find a woman whenever he wanted one? Had he married out of fear of catching a venereal dis ease, or was it a subconscious groping after some form of permanence in the pattern of his life?

He had never had time to find out. When, after a month or so she told him that she was pregnant, he was jubilant, and when they told him that she was dead he was furious, feeling himself to have been the victim of a complicated practical joke of the kind the wild Irish were always playing on their betters. To an extent the experience had sobered him and he had gone his own way, using people and discarding them but following a policy of keeping his private frolics to a minimum. There remained, however, Hen rietta, and suddenly, a little surprisingly, she was a capital asset.

He got up, stretched his clumsy limbs, slapped a midge or two, and stumped off towards the house, a tall, thickset, bull-necked man with thinning hair grey at the temples and the heavy florid features that go with sensuality and a refusal to suffer fools gladly.

3

Mrs. Worrell, as round as a bolster and crimson in the face after her exertions over the range in the airless kitchen, told him that Hen rietta was somewhere about and he was to get out of her way if she was expected to prepare dinner for four at short notice. Alone among his seven hundred employees she could bully him, aware that a woman who could control staff, run a large, rambling house, and cook three wholesome meals a day was all but indispensable to a widower. Apart from that she was the only one among them that had known him when he was another man’s servant, and over the years they had adjusted to one another. He went out, across the hall and up the broad staircase, calling his daughter by name.

She answered from her quarters at the end of the corridor, an octa gonal room representing one of the turrets in reverse and he went in without knocking.

She was standing in front of a full-length mirror trying on a new green dress, and the sight of her, as she stood with her back to him absorbed in her task, gave him a moment to study her reflection and come to terms with her as a young woman, rather than a dumpy, imperious child. She was wrestling petulantly with the tough wire cage of a crinoline designed for a smaller waist and narrower but tocks. Her dilemma amused him, but it also offered him a sliver GodIsAnEnglishman.indd 23

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of satisfaction, for he had no patience with this eternal preoccupation among both men and women for seventeen-inch waists that demanded the torture of whalebone corsets. When he put his arm around a woman he liked to feel flesh, not armour-plating, and he had always thought of the crinoline as a monstrous contrivance designed, he wouldn’t wonder, to keep men at a safe distance. He said, tolerantly, “Where’d tha’ buy that dam’ silly thing, lass?” and she said, over her shoulder, “At Arrowsmith’s, and it fitted when I tried it on. It’s the first dress I’ve ever bought from a shop. Mrs. Worrell’s niece sews for me and comes up time and again for fittings.”

“Keep it that way,” he said, “for tha’ll get diddled every time tha’ set foot in Ned Arrowsmith’s premises.”

She made no comment on this, and when he crossed to the window she continued to ignore him. She was not, he reflected, in the least like other men’s daughters, who fussed and fumed and fretted in a man’s presence, even that of their fathers and brothers. She always treated him as though he was a casual acquaintance, or even a servant, and now that he thought about it she had always had some approximation of this attitude towards him, as though he was a useful piece of furni ture, or a carriage horse awaiting her pleasure. It disconcerted him, but deep down he admired her for at least it argued that she had in herited his independence and was unlikely to become anyone’s fool. His mind returned again to Makepeace Goldthorpe, and he thought “By God, if anything does come of it there’s no doubt who’ll wear the britches!” and said, by way of a preamble, “Matt Goldthorpe and his son are supping here this evening.”

“Mrs. Worrell told me. She said I was to help out with them.”

“Aye, that’s so.” Her acceptance of the rarely demanded duty of hostess pleased him. She was, he decided, more like a man in her ability to grasp essentials without a lot of tiresome explanation and suddenly he wanned towards her, watching her movements in the mirror with an almost affectionate contempt.

“Eh, lass, let me lend a hand with that damned contraption. The neck of that birdcage needs stretching. It were made for a lass wi’ nowt to tak’ hold of.” He lifted the wire over her head as she let fall the voluminous green folds, revealing her frilled pantalettes that he thought of as women’s reach-me-downs and a corset that was laced so tightly that her chubby behind jutted beyond its rim like a ledge and pushed her rounded breasts half out of her camisole. He addressed himself to bending the master wire outward, giving the cage an over all extension of over an inch in circumference while she walked unconcernedly to the wardrobe and shrugged herself into a flannel gown.

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The room, he noticed, was in disarray. Garments, packing paper, and ribbons were strewn about, and all the rugs were scuffed. Beyond the open door of the wardrobe he could see an array of dresses, cloaks, and boots, and a compartment at the top full of hats. It occurred to him that he must have paid for all that clutter and also that Mrs. Worrell’s niece was probably making a damned good thing out of Henrietta’s patronage, but he didn’t resent it
.
She was his prop erty and there was no reason why he should object to reinvesting a little of his profits in one of his assets. He had not come here with the idea of sounding her out, but now it seemed advisable to know where they stood in relation to Matt Goldthorpe’s suggestion. Never having acquired the least finesse in the matter of striking bargains he went straight to the point.

“That son of Goldthorpe’s, Makepeace, the eldest one. He’s sweet on you, lass.” Her head came up sharply, trapping a ray of the afternoon sun in a cluster of copper ringlets. Before today, before he had begun to think about her as a mar-riageable woman, it would have taxed him to state the colour of her hair, but now he saw it as one of her selling points. The new dress, and the carefully arranged clusters of ring lets worn over each ear, suggested that she was as interested in her personal appearance as all young women growing up out of reach of the looms, and it struck him that she might find a certain amount of satisfaction in what she saw in that long mirror. There was a word almost everybody about here used for a woman like her, but moment arily it escaped him. Then it came to him, a word from over the Pennines.
Gradely.
Her sharp reaction to his mention of the Goldthorpes, however, had put him on guard so that he was not surprised when she said, “That Goldthorpe boy? The one with the droopy moustache who spits when he opens his mouth?”

He chuckled. “Nay, lass, his stammer’s nowt to worry about. He’ll get over that the minute he walks into Matt Goldthorpe’s pile, and he’ll get pretty near all of it.

The Goldthorpes think of themselves as gentry, and gentry don’t divide the brass the way our folk do. It all goes to t’eldest lad.” She looked thoughtful for a moment. Then she said, carefully, “Is that why Mr.

Goldthorpe is bringing Makepeace over here?”

“No,” Sam said, “Goldthorpe’s coming here to look you over himself, for I’ve never known Matt to buy a pig in a poke.”

The colour that came to her face made him regret his choice of phrase. He had, as he himself would have put it, “sounded out” far too many prospects not to sense undeclared opposition to a propo sition, and he now made a serious effort to improve his approach.

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“You can leave the old ’un to me,” he said. “All tha’ll need to do is give t’lad a little encouragement. He’s no oil-painting, I’ll grant you that, and he’s still fast under his father’s thumb, but the old man won’t make brittle bones from all I hear. When Makepeace walks into his father’s brass he’ll be t’best catch about here, tak’ my word for it!”

She was staring at him now, and the grimness of her expression puzzled him.

“Makepeace is coming here to
propose
to me?” He said, sharply, “Great God, it’s not got as far as that yet! All I know is you’ve caught the boy’s eye and he’s mentioned as much to his father. That must mean business, otherwise I can’t see young Makepeace screwing up that much nerve.”

“We met at the Victory Ball in the Assembly Rooms last autumn,” she said, slowly, “we danced together. Twice. Did his father tell you that?”

“No, he didn’t, he just asked if you were spoken for, or likely to be.”

“What did you say to that?”

“I said you weren’t, and if any young spark came calling he’d do it through me or I’d kick his backside from here to the Mersey!” He had an uncomfortable impression that he was being forced on to the defensive and made an effort to regain the initiative. “I say nowt to you capering round the Assembly Rooms,” he growled, “so long as Mrs. Worrell was within call, but when it comes to a serious business of this kind I’ll decide what’s best for you, and don’t get to thinking different.”

“No,” she said, in the same flat tone, “but don’t you or that old miser Goldthorpe get any daft ideas about marrying me off to Makepeace or anyone like Makepeace!

When I wed I’ll wed a man, not a toad with a stutter and a clammy touch that makes me want to jump into the bathtub when he’s had his paws on me. Now give me that cage and let me get dressed.”

He was so astounded that for a moment he could do no more than put the frame into her outstretched hand. It was years since anyone had dismissed him in that tone of voice and the few who had had lived to regret it. He said, heaving his bulk away from the casement, “You can tak’ your time with Goldthorpe, but who and when you wed is something
I’ll
decide, the same way as any man in my position would.” A sudden suspicion crossed his mind and came near to frightening him. “If there’s any other young buck who fancies his chance of walking into my money…” but she turned her back on him and stepped nimbly into the enlarged hoop so that he found him self not only hectoring a reflection but being interrupted by one.

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marry,” and somehow, because he entirely believed her, the sense of outrage left him and again he made shift to soften his approach.

“Listen here, lass,” he said, so reasonably that his tone of voice surprised him,

“I don’t pretend to be gentry, and I’m not a man to hound a lass into wedlock for brass and nowt but brass, but it’s time you realised you’re in t’market and put a price on yourself. I hadn’t decided on young Goldthorpe in particular. It was his father who made the approach. But if it’s not Goldthorpe it will be someone in Goldthorpe’s bracket, for in my book brass marries brass, make no mistake about that. It’s no secret round here how much I can call on if I’ve a mind to, or that having no lads I’m likely to settle something substantial on you when we’ve picked our man. Keep young Makepeace on a string if you have to. Maybe that’s the right game to play for a spell, but when he comes here tonight you’ll be civil to him, and mighty civil to the old man, if only because he’s my ground landlord.

Dammit, I’ve got troubles enough, and you’ve no call to add to them so long as you expect me to pay for what’s in that wardrobe!” He paused then, half-hoping for some conciliatory word or gesture on her part, but none came. She clipped the cage about her, hitched it once or twice, and slowly drew the flounces of sprigged muslin level with her waist.

Deciding that nothing would be gained by pressing her any further at this stage he clumped as far as the threshold, but here, feeling the honours remained with her, he turned and stood biting his underlip, finally adding, “After we’ve eaten, the old man will want to talk. When you get the nod from me tak’ t’lad outside, do you hear?”

“They can hear in the kitchen,” she said, and gave the bell of her skirt a pert little undulation that struck him as being the equivalent of a street urchin’s gesture of derision. It was only then, notwith standing her attitude throughout the interview, that he realised his daughter might prove as stubborn as the hard-core troublemakers who had absented themselves from the latest deputation.

4

The meal, a culinary success, did nothing to ease the tensions a mal evolent set of circumstances had combined to exert on Sam Rawlinson throughout the hours leading up to the climax of a discouraging day. There was the news that Joe Wilson, his overseer, brought him from the town about five, of operatives in a truculent mood and the certainty of the mass meeting hitherto dismissed as a bluff. There was Henrietta’s hostile attitude towards him and his half-formed GodIsAnEnglishman.indd 27

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decision to accept Goldthorpe’s offer of an alliance. There was the unexpected formality that the Goldthorpes, father and son, intro duced into the house from the moment their coachman (Goldthorpe, too mean to employ a trained man, hired beery ostlers from the livery stable when he did not drive himself) deposited them on the front steps. And as if this was not enough to put a man off his meat and claret, there was his confoundedly constricting three-inch collar that he felt obliged to wear as an acknowledgement of the solemnity of the occasion.