Until the Colours Fade (20 page)

‘I had no choice, my lord.’

‘For your sake, I hope so.’ Goodchild turned to go. Another burst of firing came from the tower. ‘Order your men to stop shooting and you will find you have no further trouble.’

George watched blankly as Goodchild left the porch and
remounted. Again he ran the gauntlet of fire through the
churchyard
and reached his destination in safety. After the jump down from the wall into the cobbled street, Goodchild checked his horse and turned him. A moment later he was thrown forward by what seemed to be no more than a punch in the back; he felt no pain, but for some reason found himself lolling forward with his cheek brushing his horse’s mane. He tried to raise himself but merely slipped further forward, until he was dangling helplessly with a foot caught in a stirrup. Men were running and riding towards him and he was soon released and carried towards the shelter of the warehouse. Soldiers were shouting and gesturing but he could not make out what they were saying. Above him the wall of the warehouse swayed and tilted across the blue sky like a reflection in moving water; he did not dislike what he saw, but, feeling tired, shut his eyes. Then he thought he would get up to see what had happened in the Quadrant, but he realised that he had forgotten why he wanted to go there. Seconds later he thought he had walked there and could not understand why he could see so much sky and so little else. The place was quieter than he had thought it would be, very quiet except for voices a long way off. That’s good, he thought, opening his eyes again and discovering that he was on the ground. He saw a dark red stain spreading across the white cloth plastron covering his chest and edging towards the row of small gold buttons. He was more surprised than frightened; his strange giddiness making the sight seem quite unexceptional; he did try to tell somebody, but when he attempted to speak he started to choke and no words came out – only a few thick bubbles of blood at the corner of his mouth, and then, as though he were being sick, a great rush. The
warehouse
wall blotted out the sky.

Soon a ‘fly’ drew up and he was placed in it and conveyed to the Swan Hotel, to which a surgeon had hurriedly been called. During their brief journey the adjutant held his inert hand and wept openly like a child. There seemed little reason to send for his wife; he could not last long.

*

In a private room at the Bull, Magnus was resting after his
exertions
in the square. His head and shoulder hurt him considerably more than they had done that morning, and, now that he had time to reflect, he was convinced that his gesture had not been
worth the pain it had caused him. Some minutes before he had learned that Braithwaite had achieved an unassailable lead and was therefore sure of his election. The volume of booing and
jeering
had increased but, because of the absence of any strikers in the crowd, the violence, which Magnus had been so certain about, had not materialised. He knew that this ought to have pleased him, and yet he could not help feeling cheated and let down. He had predicted a disaster like Peterloo or the Bristol Riots, but instead a tense and ill-natured contest was drawing towards an uneventful close. Again and again he wondered how he had ever allowed himself to have become so obsessed with his hopeful schemes and plans. He was speculating about what Braithwaite’s precise majority might be, when Strickland flung open the door; he had gone down earlier to find out whether the votes had come in from the Quadrant; Tom was panting, as though he had run all the way and his eyes were wide and
staring.

‘Lord Goodchild’s been brought to the Swan. He’s dying – shot.’

‘How?’ whispered Magnus.

‘I don’t know. It happened near the Quadrant.’

‘He may not be so badly hurt.’

‘Everybody at the Swan seems sure of it.’

‘Have they sent for his family?’

‘I don’t think so. He’s not expected to live long enough.’

The man had proposed Braithwaite and Magnus had despised him for it. Yet now he felt shocked and grieved. The day before he had received a sympathetic letter from him and today he was dying, or so they said. Outside the crowd still groaned and
scuffled
, and the sun still formed a clear square on the dusty table beside Magnus’s sofa. Tom sat down on a rickety table, his
shoulders
hunched and his head bowed: a picture of dejection. Magnus remembered his friend’s calmness in the carriage as the town had come in view; only three hours ago. He sat up suddenly and said urgently:

‘They ought to send for her.’

‘Lady Goodchild?’

Magnus nodded and let himself slip back onto the sofa.

‘You must go for her, Tom.’

‘Me?’ Strickland exclaimed, aghast.

‘Would Charles be better? Or Braithwaite, or one of his
lordship
’s brash young officers? I’d do it myself if I could stand the ride.’

‘If he’s dead when we get back…?’

‘Men expected to be dead within an hour, sometimes live for several days.’ He sighed and let a hand fall to his side. ‘If he is dead, she’ll have done her best to have reached him. There will be some consolation in that. No man ought to die among
strangers
.’

‘What can I say to her?’

‘You must hurry,’ Magnus replied abruptly. Tom paused for a moment and then walked to the door. Magnus heard his
footsteps
grow fainter until they merged with the shouting of the crowd.

The sky was a translucent ivory overhead and growing steadily darker to the east when Tom rode over Flixton Ridge and saw the snow-covered roofs of Hanley Park on the far side of the woods below. Since he had left the Turnpike, the faint crescent moon had become more distinct and started to shimmer in the sharp cold air. His eyes were streaming and his ears hurt, but Tom did not slacken his pace until forced to do so by the glassy patches of ice which had formed where the snow had thawed
earlier
in the day. His constant struggle to avoid falling left him little time to worry about what he would say.

When he reached the stables, Tom instructed a groom to get ready the fastest carriage and not to waste time with
hammer-cloths
or polished leather. Then he ran up the steps under the portico into the lamp-lit hall and hustled a dozing footman out of the hooded leather porter’s chair by the door. The man, sensing the urgency in the visitor’s voice, led him out of the hall at once, without the usual formality of taking his card to her ladyship.

Helen and Humphrey were being served dinner by the butler and a footman as Tom was shown in. Apart from the lamp on the sideboard, the dining room was lit only by two candelabra on the oval table. Taking in Strickland’s mud-stained clothes and
distraught
face, Helen rose at once.

‘Something has happened in the town,’ he blurted out, unable to speak more plainly, and hoping to break the news a little at a time. She stared at him imploringly and held out her hands, as if asking: what has it to do with me? ‘Your husband,’ he whispered, not daring to look at her, but fixing his gaze on the gleaming silver and glass, glinting in the flickering candle-light. Without asking him anything, she told the footman to send her maid to fetch a mantle, and was on the point of ordering a carriage, when Tom told her that he had already set that in hand.

‘He must be badly hurt,’ she murmured; more a statement than a question. Tom nodded and a brief silence followed. She came closer to him and looked at him with unwavering eyes. ‘Will he live?’ As his eyes met hers, Tom knew that he could not lie to her.

‘He may be alive when you get there.’

Tom had expected tears or swooning, but although she was breathing fast and had become deathly pale, her composure did not desert her. When Humphrey began to sob, she embraced him and held him in her arms until her maid came with her mantle.

In the stable-yard the steps of the chariot were already down. Ever since his arrival Tom had been struggling with the
unreality
of his position; could he, not long since a lithographer’s
assistant
, have brought news of so great a calamity to such a house? He had a sudden vision of being in the coach with her and imagined himself comforting her and felt the weight of her head against his shoulder. Then he saw the boy clinging to her arm as she got into the carriage. An unexpected flicker of resentment caught him by surprise. It was wrong, he knew, but he wished that Humphrey was not there. She leant out.

‘Mr Strickland?’

Coming to himself, he shook his head and stepped away from the door.

‘I shall ride back, your ladyship.’

She said nothing, but he sensed from her face that she was
relieved
and grateful to be left to travel alone with her son. He
realised
that for the wrong reasons he had behaved impeccably. Tom shut the door and shouted to the postillions to start.

‘The Swan Hotel,’ he cried, as the carriage rumbled off; then he mounted his horse and rode after them into the darkness.

*

When she entered the Swan, Helen noticed the silence which her presence brought, and the flow of pity, deference and curiosity. Everywhere people dropped their eyes and yet stared after her the moment she had passed. As she was climbing the stairs, Joseph Braithwaite came towards her with outstretched hands, but she walked past him without a word. Her face conveyed nothing nor, when she did speak, did her quiet level voice betray her feelings. She imagined people saying to each other that she was calm because she had not yet realised the magnitude of her loss and was numbed by the suddenness of the catastrophe; she told herself that she did not care what they thought. Let them think me as hard and cold as marble if they choose.

By the light of three candles on a table beside his bed, she saw her husband’s white and drawn face and the slight smears of blood at the corners of his mouth, which had been hastily wiped clean before her arrival. The sheets were pulled up to his chin so she could not tell where he was wounded. The only sound in the
room was his rasping breathing. Outside she had noticed that the street had been covered with straw to deaden the noise of passing carriages. His eyes were closed and his lips slightly parted. Chairs were placed by the bed and she sat down with Humphrey close to her.

The boy was uncomprehending and frightened and yet, even in these dreadful circumstances, struggled to imitate his mother’s dignity. As he looked at his father, Humphrey could not believe that he was going to die. It was not possible that his
commanding
voice and overbearing presence should cease to be, on a single day. An event so extraordinary should surely take place over months or years. That he should never ride to hounds again, nor shoot, nor drive his four-in-hand team seemed inconceivable. When Humphrey remembered his father’s promise that they should talk together and walk round the estate, he felt himself shaken by powerful choking sobs, which seemed to rise from the pit of his stomach. Helen too found it hard to believe in his coming death. When scholars, priests or cautious tradesmen died, the process could not be so starkly inappropriate; they had practised self-denial and foregone present enjoyment for future gain either spiritual or material. Death had lived a little in the pattern of their lives, but Harry’s every thought and pleasure had been in the present; his women, his drinking and his sports were so entirely of the world that death in his case seemed far more final and destructive. Yet not even this thought made her feel grief and she gazed at him dry-eyed. Only when she saw a smudge of black dye from his hair on his damp forehead did she catch her breath and feel tears pricking. What could his careful attempts to appear youthful avail him now? She remembered hearing of women clinging to their dying husbands and having to be pulled away screaming and weeping when they were dead.

For a time, Helen longed to be able to weep to prove to herself that she could feel her impending loss. Later she reproached herself for the thought. Such self-regarding tears would have nothing to do with the dying man, whose laboured breathing filled the room. Her grief could not touch him. She had wished to be separated from him and now she struggled to fight off her guilt for having had that wish; she had never desired his death. At any rate she would never be among the band of women who saw little of their husbands when alive and felt no love for them but who, after their deaths, paraded their grief as a belated means of demonstrating the devotion they had never felt; their tears all aimed to convince the living that they had really cared
for the departed. Nor would she tell others that he had possessed virtues which she had never noticed.

She saw Captain Ferris, her husband’s adjutant, hovering near her chair, and noticed with shock his red-rimmed eyes and tear-stained cheeks. Helen felt a hot blush of shame as she
realised
how deeply affected he was. But then Harry had given so much more to his beloved regiment than he had ever given to her. But her bitterness disappeared when she thought of the months of their courtship; as she saw him as he had been at twenty-six and herself at twenty, her eyes overflowed. She looked down at the sunken eyes and the grey skin drawn tightly across his
cheekbones
and remembered the handsome hopeful face she had fallen in love with, recalled his laughing eyes and his smile which had transformed her feelings like sunshine on a winter day. How she had basked in his praise and pride after Humphrey’s birth, and how sure she had felt of his love. As her tears flowed silently, she was not thinking of his death, but of the loss of all the hope and happiness she had felt during the early years of her marriage. She wept for her own lost youth as much as for his ebbing life. Perhaps if he had suffered a long illness, they might have been brought closer and their love renewed, but the suddenness of the blow had prevented that miracle. The last time he had left Hanley Park, he had not found time to say goodbye to her.

Shortly after eleven o’clock Lord Goodchild started choking and his eyes opened briefly; Helen took his hand but he did not recognise her. Seconds later he was coughing blood and then began to haemorrhage. The surgeon rushed forward but could do nothing. In the silence that followed the sudden burst of
activity
, Helen remained sitting dumbly beside the blood-drenched bed. Nobody moved, nor mentioned what everybody in the room was aware of: the painful breathing, which they had listened to for so long, had stopped. Having sat for two hours, it seemed strange to Helen that now there was no reason to remain. Only the knowledge that unless she moved, the others in the room would feel obliged to stay, made her rise. At length she gazed down at his face, as though memorising it, and then covered him with the sheet.

In her abstracted state she looked around for Humphrey but did not see him. Outside on the landing she learnt from Captain Ferris that her son had fainted and had been carried to the
next-door
room. She went to him, followed by the adjutant, who remained awkwardly beside her. Later he said quietly:

‘If your husband had thought more of himself and less of
others, he might yet have been spared to us.’

Helen was watching anxiously as Humphrey was persuaded to drink by the surgeon. She knew that Ferris expected her to say something but could think of no reply. The man clearly wanted to tell her exactly how Harry had received his fatal wound; it was as if his need for consolation was greater than hers.

‘Tell me what happened?’

As Helen heard how Harry, oblivious to his own danger, had crossed the churchyard to stop a pointless gun-battle, she felt
admiration
but anger too. If he had thought of his wife and son, he would have hesitated before taking such a risk; he would not have ridden to the church, but would have gone on foot,
presenting
perhaps a less impressive spectacle, but also a less inviting target. She thought of his reckless riding as he led the field at every hunt, and of his scornful disregard for caution when riding in steeplechases. In the end he had been killed by his own élan and panache. Ferris was saying:

‘Your ladyship may rest assured that the arrangements will be seen to by the regiment.’

Helen imagined the bands, gun-carriages and firing parties and gripped the banisters. The regiment had had enough of him during his life and she would not have it dictate to her after his death. Had the regiment not killed him? And should she now meekly accept whatever role Harry’s brother officers might see fit to allow her in his funeral?

‘There will be no military funeral, Captain Ferris.’

‘I am sure that he would have wished….’

‘If he has left instructions, I shall abide by them.’ She turned without looking at his agonised face. As she reached the top of the stairs she paused: ‘After the inquest you may convey his body to Flixton Church, after that he will be buried in private by his family in the mausoleum at Hanley Park.’

‘He died commanding the regiment, my lady.’

‘Funerals,’ she murmured, ‘should console the living before they glorify the dead.’

Ferris watched her go in stunned silence, interpreting her
self-possession
as callous indifference and her decision as an affront to the dead.

Tom Strickland was sitting in the hall when she came down the stairs followed by her son, who was being helped by the
surgeon
. He rose and stepped forward so that she would see him if she needed him. She took his hand for a moment and then walked past to her carriage. A buzz of conversation broke out
after her departure, but Tom did not wait to hear what was said. Instead he walked out into the deserted square, and eagerly breathing in the cold air, gazed up at the brilliant and indifferent stars. He thought of the dead man lying in his curtained room, and touched his own warm cheeks and felt the moisture of his breath on his hands. Life, he whispered, and an exultant surge of feeling rose within him; he felt greedy for the dawn and for new days and years, and whatever might transpire; he would try to welcome them and to waste nothing.