The Regency (61 page)

Fanny nodded. 'He's gone bankrupt.'

‘
Not gone, but going. He's all to pieces — deep in debt, and
no hope of getting free. Now this weaving-mill of his, he'd
only just finished building it, but never started it running. If I
step in now and offer him a price for it on the quiet, he'll sell
it to me to get the cash in his hand, for if he's declared bank
rupt, it's all up, and the creditors'll get everything.’

Fanny frowned. 'But why do you want a weaving-shed?'
she asked.

‘
Why, to weave
in,
of course. Use your sense, Fanny. In normal times, our spinning mills produce more spun thread
than all the weavers in Lancashire can handle. That's why
Monkton — that's his name — went in for these mechanical
looms, but the times caught up with him. We're on a three
day-week now, but that won't last for ever. Once the spinning
mills are back to normal, I'll have all the thread I need, and I
can have five hundred looms spinning my own thread into my
own cloth! Do both processes, and take both lots of profit —
that's progress!’

Fanny nodded, thinking it through. 'That's what this Mr
Monkton meant to do, but he ran out of money. And now you
can take advantage of his mistakes.'

‘
That's right. I've been canny, and I'm able to hold on, so I
can buy a weaving-shed at a tenth of what it would cost me to
build it, sit out the bad times, and be ready to start the
moment the cotton's there again.’

Her eyes shone with approval. 'Oh Grandpapa, you are
clever! If I were a mill-master, I should want to be like you!
You'll be richer than all of them!’

He looked at her with such a similar expression, that if
there had been a third party present, they might have noted a
marked family resemblance between them at that moment.
'That's what business is all about, Fanny!' he said. 'By God,
you're a Hobsbawn all right! I tell you what, I'll teach you
about the business before I'm through! And one day soon, you
shall put on your bonnet, and I'll take you down to Water Street with me, and shew the mills to you, and you to the
mills!'

‘
Oh, yes please, Grandpapa,' said Fanny, as though it were
the greatest treat in the world.

‘
It's finished,' James said, putting aside his brush. Héloïse
looked up from her work enquiringly. 'Don't you want to see
it?'

‘But of course,' she said.

‘
No, don't get up — I'll bring it to you. You make too
pretty a picture to be disturbed.’

It was a small piece of board on which he had been working,
about eight inches by twelve. Stephen had found it and was
proposing to use it for firewood, but James had first taken
a fancy to it for its smoothness and grain, and then decided it
would be perfect for the portrait he wanted to make of
Héloïse. He always worked best on a small area.

‘
There now — what do you think?' he said, holding the
painting so that the light was right for her. Héloïse could tell
by his voice, before she looked at the painting, that he was
pleased with it. 'I shall call it
Love in a Cottage.
Before now, I
would not have thought such a thing possible, but the School
of the Picturesque has won another disciple!’

The picture shewed her sitting in the window of the tiny parlour, in profile, facing right, her head slightly bent over
the muslin handkerchief in her lap on which she was
embroidering. At her feet James had painted Kithra, asleep,
head on paws, and Castor, sitting up and looking up at her.
Because of the darkness of the interior of the room, and the
brightness of the summer light shining in through the window,
she appeared to have a nimbus all around her, and particularly
around her head.

She glanced up at him, wonderingly, and then gazed
irresistibly at the painting again. She knew that her neck was not
so long and swan-like, nor her piled and curled hair so glossy,
nor her hands so long and slender; and besides all that, she
was almost thirty-four years old, and she had never been
handsome. Yet the woman in the painting was unmistakably her, and unquestionably beautiful.

‘
It is so good, James,' she said. 'I think it is the best thing
you have done.'

‘
Yes, I thought so, too,' he said cheerfully. 'I don't usually
do so well in oils as in water-colour — my style is too meticu
lous — but somehow everything came right this time. It all
flowed together, vision and medium and execution, all right
for each other.’

She smiled at him, the particular smile which, even now, made his heart turn over. 'You have made me too beautiful,
as always. How many times have you taken my likeness?
Fifty? A hundred? And always you make me too beautiful.'

‘
No, Marmoset. There you display your ignorance,' he said,
leaning over and nibbling the edge of her ear, so that his next
words were breathed warm and damp into it. 'God has made
you beautiful — I simply record the fact.’

She moved her head just enough to put her lips to his, and
a satisfactory moment later he straightened up and said, 'Now
I must put this somewhere safe to dry, and then we can go
out.'

‘
Yes, I must walk a little, for I am stiff with sitting still so
long.’

He laughed. 'How many times, foolish one, have I told you
you don't need to keep absolutely still? You have no faith in
my skills, have you?’

She put her work aside and stood up, and Castor gave a
single, glad bark which woke Kithra, who stood up too,
stretching and yawning and lashing his tail against the
panelling like a drumbeat.

‘
Shall we walk in the garden?' she suggested. 'The roses
need cutting.'

‘
Walk, not work,' he said firmly. 'I want your attention to
myself. Let Stephen or Marie cut the roses.’

She was glad enough to comply. Their time here at Plaisir
had been utterly peaceful, and almost perfectly happy.
Héloïse found it easy and delightful to slip back into the simple
life, sleeping long, eating simple meals, walking, driving or
riding with James in the day, reading, working or talking with
him in the evenings, retiring early to sleep the profound and
nourishing sleep of contentment.

The only hint she had had that James was not completely
happy was her instinctive feeling for him, and the fact that he
had taken to drawing her over and over again. She remem
bered the time they had lived here together, while he was
married to Mary Ann, and he had made sketch after sketch of
her, as though trying to catch hold of something that was fading
from him. It was not quite like that this time; he did not
draw with that frantic hunger, and this latest painting seemed
to have pleased him in the execution and satisfied him in the
completion. Yet it made her a little uneasy. He had painted the fleshly Héloïse with whom he lived, but the image that had emerged was unearthly, rimmed in light, like a saintly
memory of someone loved and lost.

But how had he lost her? He was a complex and difficult
man, whom she understood only instinctively. She knew that he fought against a kind of chronic discontent which seemed
to have entered him early in life, and which from time to time
threatened to destroy him. He was like a crippled child who
had learned as he grew up to compensate for his deformity, so
that he appeared to the casual eye to be perfectly normal; yet
study him closely for a while, live with him and care for him,
and you could see that he was somehow, minutely, not quite
straight.

It tore at her heart, this maiming of his inner self, for she
did not know what to do for him. At night sometimes, when
she held him in her arms, he would burrow and burrow
against her, as if trying to get closer, when he was already as
close as flesh could be to flesh. He had somehow lost touch,
not with her, but with himself. It had something to do with
Nicholas, she thought. It pained him to look at the child,
though he loved him dearly. Well, it hurt her too, but with a natural outpouring of love and pity; but with James, the hurt
went inwards, like blame, and healed nothing.

Since Nicholas was born, James had not made love to her
fully. She knew that with the front part of his mind he
believed he was following Lucy's advice, and protecting
Héloïse's well-being; but she also knew, probably better than
James did himself, that in the back of his mind, he was
punishing himself for what he believed he had done to her and
the child. There seemed to be nothing she could do about
that. They held and caressed and kissed each other lovingly,
but no matter what she did, or how aroused he became, he
never lost control, or let her entice him into the conjunction
they both wanted and needed so much.

Well, she must count her blessings, she thought as they
stepped out of the house into the sunshine. Today he seemed
almost completely happy: the painting had eased something in him. He took her hand and tucked it through his arm, and
matched his step to hers, and they strolled along the old, soft
brick paths between the banks of flowers, dazzling and almost
colourless in the strong sunlight. Kithra padded contentedly behind, enjoying the warmth. Castor frisked ahead of them,
burying his nose in a lavender bush and startling himself with
a bee, chasing butterflies with a happy lack of determination.

‘
Fool!' James apostrophised him kindly as he ran back and
laughed up at them. 'Perhaps he's meant as an example for
us, Marmoset — what do you think? Perhaps chasing butter
flies is all we can ever do.' She knew he didn't expect an
answer, which was as well. He seemed to realise he was being
unfair, and said instead, ‘Mathilde seems to be enjoying her
trip — more that I thought she would, certainly. Didn't it
strike you as odd, though, how little this Mr Wickfield was
mentioned in her letter?'

‘
I imagine him to be comprehended in some of the
we's'
Hélloise said unconcernedly. 'After all, it was not she but Lizzie
who married him. And he seems to have been very kind, buying
her a new bonnet.'

‘
I dare say we shall have a small mountain of sketching-
books to look through when she comes back,' James said with
a sigh. 'Lake Windermere looking south. Lake Windermere
looking east. Ambleside, from a fishing-boat. A fishing-boat,
from Ambleside. And a curious squiggle and three smudges
entitled
Blasted Thorn and Rocky Outcrop.'