God Is an Englishman (7 page)

One of the disadvantages of growing rich and moving up in society, he decided, was the necessity to encumber yourself with frock coats, stovepipe hats, punishing boots, and, above all, that circlet of res pectability about the neck that any well-ordered society would have reserved for felons.

Notwithstanding these preoccupations he set himself throughout the meal to dissipate the old man’s gloom concerning the mood of the strikers, the Goldthorpes having passed knots of operatives mak ing their way to the meeting.

Makepeace, stuttering with glee that was the privilege, he supposed, of a man who did not have to deal with any opposition worse than defaulting tenants, had declared that the men had looked menacing and that one had shouted after the carriage, guessing its destination. Sam told them that Wilson had made his report and promised to ride out here again if there were further developments.

He added that the police had been alerted and could call, if necessary, upon reinforcements from Manchester, but old Goldthorpe, damn him, went on to imply that he, Rawlinson, was putting the work forces of other employers in jeopardy by refusing to capitulate to the last deputation, and that the militants among them would now have plenty of brickbats to use at the meeting.

“You should ha’ played for time, man, you should ha’ promised to think it over,” he muttered, scratching at his plate like a famished old cockerel. “If they were ready to go back on their demands it was a back-down, wasn’t it? This lockout of yours is going to cost me a pretty penny before it’s over. More than half of them live under my slates.”

Had it not been necessary to mollify the old skinflint and divert attention from Henrietta’s glacial detachment, he would have re minded Goldthorpe that he was fighting every employer’s battle, and also that anyone living under a Goldthorpe roof was liable to get a wet shift when the dry spell ended. As it was he was obliged to go into the details of his long-term strategy. He was only partially re lieved by Makepeace’s enthusiastic espousal of his cause, dictated, no doubt, by that young man’s determination to squirm into Henrietta’s GodIsAnEnglishman.indd 28

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good graces. Listening to him endorsing the policy of implac ability, he could understand the lad’s eagerness to demolish the bar rier Henrietta had raised the moment she came floating down the stairs in that new green dress of hers. He was learning more than he had bargained for about his daughter when he had lounged into the house to discuss the prospect of marriage, never having realised she was so akin to him in temperament. She had, not beauty exactly, but a rare, eye-catching poise and prettiness in that decanter of a dress, and under it a figure likely to make a lustier man than Makepeace lick his lips. The last time he had looked at her consciously she had seemed no more than a fresh-complexioned schoolgirl, with a flat chest, an awkward legginess, and a mop of coppery hair, and here she was ladling out sherry trifle like an artful and mature woman, trained to keep men guessing about what she looked like when she stepped out of that birdcage clamped to her waist. In the soft shine of the table-lamp her eyes looked as green as bottleglass, and her neck, short though it was, was perfectly proportioned to a pair of wide, down-sweeping shoulders. Sitting there, saying nothing, yet otherwise playing a hostess to perfection, she struck him as a study in pink and white and green that was the only cool and composed element in that airless room, and understandably that cold fish of a Makepeace did not know what the devil to make of her. As for the old man, he was senile enough to behave towards her with the circumspection he might have accorded a young duchess with money to invest in one of his shadier projects, and Sam decided that here, perhaps, was the sole rewarding aspect of the evening, the fact that his daughter had made a deep impression on the richest old badger in Seddon Moss. It was surely time to begin drawing up articles before Makepeace began to look elsewhere.

He said, pushing back his chair and clearing his throat, “Your father and I have some business to settle, lad. Take Henrietta a turn in the garden,” and deliberately avoiding his daughter’s eye he stood up and rang for the maid, at the same time offering his cigar case to Goldthorpe.

To his relief Henrietta also rose and grimaced in the old man’s direction before gliding round the end of the table and floating de corously towards the French window that opened on to the terrace. He caught Goldthorpe watching her movements, and the wintry smile on the old man’s face helped to absorb the choler he felt that a chit of a girl could come so near holding him up to ransom.

Impatient of the restraint he had had to exercise throughout the meal he discarded any attempt at a preamble and said, bluntly, “Well, Matt, now that you’ve met her…?”

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“She’s a bonnie lass,” the old man said, carefully, “and a very civil one. She’s not much to say for herself, but I’m not holding that against her. That’s rare in a young woman these days. Does she ken why I’m over here?”

“Leave your lad to do his own talking,” Sam said. “At his age I wouldn’t have wanted a spokesman for a lass like Henrietta.” It amused him that Goldthorpe had been so thoroughly deceived by his daughter’s unrelenting glumness. No doubt Henrietta had hoped it would discourage them and here was the old man applaud ing it. Unexpectedly Sam felt the tensions easing and poured Gold thorpe a generous glass of port as they faced one another over the ruins of the meal. When the maid had reached the door with a tray of dishes he called, “Leave the rest, I’ll ring when I’m ready,” and turned back to Goldthorpe with a flourish. “We’ll cut the cackle and get down to details,” he said, biting on his cigar. “I intend to settle five hundred a year on her, and I’ll add another hundred when the first child shows up. More if it’s a boy.” The old man’s head came up sharply, disconcerted by his direct ness. Sam went on, without giving his opponent time to hedge, “But you can do me a favour in exchange. That strip of waste between my offloading bays and the railway siding—it could save me two hours’ teamwork a day if I could run a brace of rails across it. I’m not ex pecting it for nowt. I’ll pay a fair price for it.” The old man’s head wobbled as though he had received a box on the ear. He shut his eyes, as if absorbing the smart, and his mouth, Sam thought, looked like a rockseam depressed at each extremity. He recognised the expression at once as Matt Goldthorpe’s “money-look,” as much a feature of the local scenery as Scab’s Castle.

It pleased him to be able to summon it so effortlessly. Matt said, with a kind of groan, “Nay, I had plans to build two rows of cottages on that strip, Rawlinson.”

“Aye,” said Sam, indulgently, “happen you did, but then I had plans to go looking for a son-in-law among the shipwrights in Liver pool. Some of them are on the way to becoming gentry and there’s not one who couldn’t call up as much as you.”

Goldthorpe blinked twice, and Sam settled himself to wait, as for the next move of a doughty chess opponent. “Makepeace is shaping well,” Goldthorpe said, noncommittally. “He thinks of little but work, or didn’t until he took a fancy to your lass.” Then, “Five hun dred, you said?”

“Aye,” said Sam, “subject to you selling that strip.” There was a longish pause. Through a blue haze of tobacco smoke they measured one another’s advantages, a matched pair, settling comfortably to the collar of avarice.

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Twilight lingered in the open patches of lawn between summerhouse and copse, and the air was heavy with the scent of roses and cloves. Makepeace and Henrietta walked decorously, two children given permission to absent themselves for a brief interval but without get ting into mischief or soiling their Sunday clothes. It was very still out here. The only sounds that reached Henrietta were the whisper of her dress (a dress she was already beginning to hate) and the plaintive squeak of Makepeace’s new boots. Back in the house, in the presence of the older men, she had been protected against the sense of outrage that this pallid young man’s suit represented, per haps by easy accessibility to her own room, or by the nearness of Mrs. Worrell, her sole confidante, but out here she was vulnerable. She could not run far in this balloon of a gown, and there was nowhere to run to in any case. Until this moment she had been conscious of any number of sensations concerning him, but now he produced in her nothing but loathing, held in check by contempt for his timidity. As they moved down the slope, however, she sensed that he was not as timid as she had supposed. In the presence of his repulsive old father he was a quaking schoolboy, cringing under the rod. Released from that presence he acquired a kind of swagger that began to show in a strutting walk and the smug, proprietary glances he directed at her. He said, presently, “This is far enough, Henrietta,” and caught her by the arm.

His touch, even through the elbow-length glove she wore, felt clammy, and the prospect of being embraced by him threatened her like the onrush of a dragon with moist paws and foetid breath. She fell back on the only defence at her disposal, a counterfeit and con ventional modesty, instilled into her by a succession of amateur gover nesses, withdrawing her hand and saying,
“Please,
Makepeace!
Behave!”
It sounded very silly, a formal protest directed at a professional thief caught ransacking the family silver, and, in a way, she felt her self beset by thieves, a trio of them, including among their number her own father. Their quarry, she realised, was not merely her freedom and future but the most private areas of her body. She was like someone trying to scramble to the summit of an icebound slope without much hope of avoiding a fatal tumble, arms and legs flailing, clothes ripped, and flesh bruised in a descent into—what? A lifetime in the company of this parody of a man, superintending his house hold, being pinched and patronised by that old miser back in the house, undressing and lying down in bed with Makepeace, and the sheer blankness rather than the unsavouriness of that prospect made her stomach contract within the confines of her tightly laced corset.

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He said, with a hint of bluster, “Behave? But I don’t have to ‘behave’ any more, Henrietta. You know very well what they’re dis cussing back there. You know why father and I are here tonight. You aren’t saying your father hasn’t mentioned it, are you?” He paused a moment and when she said nothing he drew a long, whist ling breath. “I’m expected to propose marriage to you before we go in. Then there’s to be a settlement and I’m to get The Clough, as a wedding present. We went and looked at it yesterday and found it very suitable. The tenant is getting his notice tomorrow.”

What was there to say to that? He mentioned The Clough, a small, manor-type house they owned two miles north of the town, as though the prospect of sharing it with him would make any girl of her age swoon with ecstasy, and his very certitude had the power to divert her thoughts and check the panic advancing on her like a wall of sludge.

“When was all this decided? When and how?” she demanded and had the small satisfaction of seeing him look as disconcerted as had her father when she had challenged him that same afternoon.

“Why, soon after the Victory Ball,” he said, with a hint of a stutter, “I made up my mind then, Henrietta.”

“You made up
your
mind? Didn’t it even occur to you to mention it to me?” He seemed genuinely astonished. “Mention it? But how could I mention it?

I had first to discuss it with father. How could I run con trary to him? I have no money. I get a weekly wage, like everyone else in his employ, but he’ll make me a generous allowance as soon as we’re married, and you’ll have money too. That’s what they’re talking about now.”

It was astonishing how people like the Goldthorpes and her father were able to canalise everything that happened to them, or was likely to happen to them, into streams leading to that single reservoir. Birth, death, marriage, all manner of personal relationships, all human endeavours and aspirations, led back to that one word. Money. Nothing else counted. Nothing else was of the smallest importance. She said, desperately now, “But I don’t love you, Makepeace. How could I? I hardly know you. We’ve met a few times, we’ve danced together twice. How could I make up my mind about anything as important as that at a moment’s notice? Marriage…you and me, moving into a big house like The Clough…

living together,
always
…? It’s some thing that any girl would have to…to…think about a long time, even a millhand!”

He laughed outright at this, but there was relief in his laughter. He said, taking her hand again, “It isn’t anything you have to decide, Henrietta. It’s important, GodIsAnEnglishman.indd 32

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of course, far too important for someone like you to decide. You wouldn’t know how, for that’s a man’s job and anyway, it hasn’t been decided in a moment. I’ve been consider ing it ever since the Victory Ball, and so has my father and your father. And now it’s arranged!” and his arm went round her waist with a firmness that surprised her.

The wave of panic touched her and broke over her so that she was too frightened and too breathless to find the strength to pull away from him a second time. She found herself groping for words as if they had been pieces of wreckage to keep her head above surface, but even in the tumult of the moment she had a horrid certainty that he assumed her to be overwhelmed by nothing more momentous than the majesty of the occasion, that and the vapourings that were reckoned obligatory on the part of an inexperienced girl receiving her first proposal of marriage. She said, despairingly,
“When
…?” but he seemed to take this as an invitation for both arms went round her and his face loomed over her, blotting out the light from the terrace. The scent of flowers in the half-moon beds were vanquished by the whiff of his breath, heavy with claret and a sourness that made her want to retch. She would have fought back with her knees if the arc of the crinoline had not made this impossible, and her right arm had not been pinioned by his left. There were only two avenues of resis tance available, a left-handed downsweep of her fingernails across his cheek, or a simulated faint. She chose the latter as the easier to accomplish, buckling her knees so that she slipped below the level of his waistcoat. Then, before he could reach out and support her, she heard the steady drumming of hooves and the spatter of loose gravel, and suddenly he was gone and she was on her knees on the grass, cocooned in yards of silk and muslin. Voices called distractedly from the drive and the terrace, and she smelled the sharp whiff of a sweat ing horse. Behind her, as she rose, was a glow in the sky, yellowish white and extraordinarily vivid, so that she thought for a moment she had indeed fainted. But then she saw that the horseman was Joe Wilson, her father’s overseer, and that people, including Makepeace and old Matthew, were jostling round him where he had reined in opposite the dining-room windows.