Until the Colours Fade Page 16

  ‘Perhaps, but you wouldn’t care either way. Don’t tell me you give a tinker’s curse for triennial parliaments or the secret ballot, whatever you may have said to Catherine. You couldn’t gain enough notoriety in the army, so you sold out to play at the radical demagogue for a while. More honourable paths of advancement were too slow, I suppose.’ He stopped, furious that he had lost his temper and made himself appear callous. The only point in talking to Magnus would have been to persuade him to get Catherine to reconsider, but that had never been even a remote possibility. ‘I’d like to sympathise with you? Magnus.’

  ‘Do so then, Charles. You have my permission.’

  ‘How can I when you tell me nothing?’

  ‘Don’t worry, I’ll be going when father gets home.’

  Magnus lay back exhausted; his nightshirt was soaked with sweat and his head hurt him.

  ‘Will we ever stop behaving like children?’ sighed Charles, as he walked towards the door, remembering with sudden clarity his mother’s mocking voice: ‘If only you could laugh, Charles … really laugh like Magnus does. You’re always so serious, so taciturn.’ Leaving the room, Charles saw himself a pale and awkward boy of twelve being helped up onto the box of the post coach at the start of his first journey to Portsmouth. While he had been fighting his way from gunroom to wardroom, from volunteer to midshipman and mate, Magnus had been at home with his mother and sister: taking drives, going on picnics, singing, barely troubled by his succession of tutors. Going down the stairs, another memory: a misty March morning and Magnus weeping, weeping as though he would never stop, their father’s letter in his hand: Freetown, Sierra Leone … Mother died this morning just before six o’clock…. The quinine never took effect, but she felt no pain….’ Mother’s boy and father’s boy. Charles’s anger had spent itself. But still feeling unable to face Catherine, he went to the Billiard Room and rang for brandy and water.

  Helen, he thought, running a hand absently over the smooth green baize of the table, if only … but like so many other possibilities in his life, that one too now seemed irrevocably lost.

  11

  Lord Goodchild felt weary, depressed and a little drunk. For the past hour he had been drinking claret and arguing with Francis St Clare, in the chief magistrate’s offices in the court house. St Clare’s pink face was tinged with grey and his eyelids were puffy with tiredness. During the night there had been a desperate riot at the workhouse, where every window and stick of furniture had been smashed, and hundreds of loaves of bread distributed among the mob. The total number of injured was not yet accurately known, but three men had undoubtedly been shot dead: a soldier and two rioters. With the election only two days away, the situation could hardly have been worse.

  At two in the morning, having read the Riot Act without effect, St Clare had sent to Oldham for two squadrons of the 22nd Hussars to relieve the local yeomanry and, at the same time, had despatched a courier to the general officer for the district, asking that the 17th Lancers, Goodchild’s regiment, and the 14th Queen’s Light Dragoons should receive orders to leave Manchester for Rigton Bridge within the next twenty-four hours.

  Lord Goodchild, who three days before had persuaded his mistress to disregard her husband’s threats to use further meetings as evidence in divorce proceedings, had been lying naked in bed next to Mrs Carstairs’s opulent body, when his adjutant had arrived at dawn with news of St Clare’s request. Nothing short of such a catastrophe could have led Goodchild to turn his back on the prospect of a day of unhurried love-making, punctuated with restful intervals for food and wine. But he had soon been dressed and on his way to Rigton Bridge, hoping to find that panic, rather than necessity, had inspired St Clare’s decision. On arriving, the police commissioner’s report and the chief magistrate’s personal account of the night’s events had quickly brought him close to a reluctant acceptance of St Clare’s position. He had promised his unreserved support, if the commanding officer of the 22nd Hussars also considered it essential for more cavalry to be drafted in, and had assured St Clare that he would consult the colonel at the garrison barracks before returning to Manchester.

  Shortly before he left the court house, Goodchild was shown police reports on several other incidents. The first, he was surprised to see, involved assault and battery against Sir James Crawford’s younger son. Out of a dozen or so attackers, five had been detained, three with head injuries. ‘The prisoners who could testify, stated independently,’ he read, ‘that they are coal-backers from Oldham, and were approached by a stranger in the tap-room where they are accustomed to drink after their work, and that they were offered there the sum of five guineas each for a day’s unspecified employment in Rigton Bridge. The man who paid them, also led them in the affray, but made good his escape with six others. All those detained aver that his identity is unknown to them….’

  ‘Why the devil isn’t Crawford bringing charges?’ asked Goodchild, finishing the report.

  ‘I don’t know,’ replied St Clare, ‘and frankly I’ve no time to find out. Thought you’d be interested though, my lord … Sir James being related to Lady Goodchild.’

  A certain sly archness, in the way the magistrate had spoken, irritated Goodchild.

  ‘He’s only her godfather.’

  ‘Just as well he’s still at sea,’ murmured St Clare with a frown. ‘Or didn’t you know that his son bailed out the Independent?’

  ‘You think there’s a connection?’ asked Goodchild coldly.

  ‘It crossed my mind, my lord,’ replied St Clare with a sleek smile and a speculative glance, which Goodchild did not like. ‘I’m charging them with causing an affray and the gas company will proceed for trespass and damage to property, so the scum may still come to the top.’

  ‘Let’s hope so,’ returned Goodchild emphatically.

  On his way to the barracks, his lordship was grim-faced. St Clare thought Braithwaite had been behind the attack on Crawford and had supposed that he too would have been mixed up in it. Disgusted and bitterly angry to be associated, even by implication, with such proceedings, Goodchild realised for the first time the full extent of his helplessness. In case there should be a crowd waiting outside the barracks intent on stoning vehicles arriving or leaving, Goodchild told his coachman to stop in the next street, and finished his journey on foot.

  Turning the corner, he saw that the street was empty and the men guarding the gates were troubled only by the insults of a few ragged boys. The road was littered with slates, stones and broken bottles. Over against the parade ground wall, an overturned ‘fly’ and several splintered carts were evidence of a recently dismantled barricade. A few minutes later he was ushered into the Orderly Room and found the lieutenant-colonel of the 22nd slumped in a chair by the fire, the frogged tunic of his black undress uniform unbuttoned, and his eyes red-rimmed and heavy with fatigue. By the window, an equally weary-looking captain was dictating orders to two copying clerks. The colonel rose with an effort and frowned.

  ‘My lord, you are not in Manchester?’

  ‘I came to see for myself. I return tonight. I want an opinion … your opinion.’

  The colonel sank down into his chair again and rubbed his eyes.

  ‘On St Clare’s request for the reserve regiments?’ Goodchild nodded. ‘The Light Dragoons should be sent but not the 17th.’

  Goodchild stared at him angrily. No colonel of Hussars was going to impugn his regiment without giving good reason for it.

  ‘The 17th know how to do their duty, Colonel Summers.’

  ‘Of course, of course,’ muttered Summers, tilting back his chair and knocking over a burned-out candle stump on the small table beside him. ‘It’s my opinion – purely a personal one, you understand – that a regiment whose commanding officer happens to be the unpopular candidate’s proposer, won’t find much favour with the rabble of non-electors.’ He coughed and clared his throat. ‘But doubtless Lord Delamere will know better. Generals usually do.’

  ‘Those with resp
onsibilities and interests in a town should be there to keep the peace in time of trouble. I shall recommend Lord Delamere to meet the chief magistrate’s request in full.’

  Summers did not argue but Goodchild still felt angry, not least because he himself had dreaded his regiment being called upon for that very reason. But now, even without the 17th, there would be at least five squadrons of regular cavalry in the town on polling day and, after the night’s rioting, Goodchild did not suppose that any of them would be popular with the mob. Since Summers would probably be the senior officer present, and Goodchild feared he might turn out a fire-eater, he was determined to be there to try to prevent unnecessary provocation. Wanting to go, but feeling he should find out more about the riot, he asked:

  ‘The rioters had guns, I hear. Any idea how many?’

  ‘My officers found it hard to count them in the dark, my lord.’ Summers smiled wearily and shrugged his shoulders. ‘Perhaps ten, perhaps twenty.’

  Goodchild recognised the hint of contempt in the man’s voice. Summers had fought through the Sikh War of ’46, and was probably one of those embittered professional soldiers, who had not been rich enough to purchase from regiment to regiment to speed up promotion, and therefore looked upon those who had done so as pampered part-timers who would sell out rather than face dangerous foreign service, or exchange into another regiment so they could spend more time hunting and entertaining than with their brother officers. Goodchild resented this because he had only held commissions in one other regiment before buying the colonelcy of the 17th; and, far from having shirked fighting, he keenly regretted never having had any opportunity to lead his men in battle. Nor, as his wife and son could testify, had he spent most of his time at home. Yet the knowledge that his regiment might very well already be preparing to leave Manchester, made it easy for him to dismiss the colonel’s opinion of him and devote his thoughts to more pressing matters.

  Leaving the barracks, Lord Goodchild saw that the snow, which had seemed imminent for several days, had at last started to fall. Deciding against a journey by road, he told his coachman to drive to the station to meet the four o’clock for Manchester. In the First Class waiting room, he asked the station-master for pen and paper and then, while the snow fell silently on the gabled roof, capping each point and pinnacle of the ornamental ironwork, he wrote to Magnus Crawford expressing shock and indignation over his treatment and regretting that he had been unable to visit him.

  When he had finished, he walked over to the window, and, wiping away the steam from the cold panes, looked out across the empty track; already the dividing gravel was level with the sleepers. He was surprised that the near certainty of his regiment’s involvement had not depressed him, but instead he felt quite calm. He imagined the screaming crowds in the market square and the Quadrant and shook his head. Nothing could be more remote from the stillness of the little station under the soft and steady fall of snow.

  He walked out onto the platform and breathed in deeply; above him the sky itself seemed to be descending piece by piece. He felt the flakes brush his cheeks and melt on his face. When they landed on his lips, he licked them away as he had done as a child. Later he found himself thinking of the warm dark room he had left early that morning and the smooth softness of Dolly’s white thighs; recalling the unabashed way she drew his hands to her breasts when she wanted him to make love, he felt a slight stirring – the green pleasures of adolescence relived voluptuously in the riper landscape of early middle-age. He smiled to himself, but not without pain. Dolly, Helen, Braithwaite, Humphrey … a fine mull I’ve made of things, he thought. What Helen would do, when told that he could not settle more than fifteen hundred a year on her, if they separated, he hardly dared guess. Remembering her fury, he wondered whether she would still keep him to his word, even if the price were to be the sale of Hanley Park.

  A slight wind blew the snow flakes obliquely, making them whirl and spin. In the distance he heard the engine’s whistle, and felt somehow consoled by the long melancholy blast in an otherwise muffled world. The train would come and polling day just as surely, and afterwards, Helen would impose what penalty she chose for his neglect; how stupid, he thought, not to have realised before: everything had already been decided and needed only to happen. He could no more avoid it than he could the election, or the snow’s slow silent descent around him.

  12

  For two days following his escape from the gas-works, Tom Strickland had wanted to leave Rigton Bridge, but his badly bruised ribs and stomach had been too painful for him to consider travelling south. He had not felt himself in any danger, since he thought it most unlikely that Joseph Braithwaite would have discovered what he had done on Nomination Day, and with so many other matters to occupy the manufacturer’s mind, still more improbable that he would do anything about it, even were he to possess such knowledge.

  As Tom’s pains had diminished, his depression had also lifted; and, since the election was now only three days distant, he decided to stay on at the Green Dragon until it was over. In spite of his conviction that Joseph would win the seat, Tom had nevertheless come to see polling day as a fitting last act to his time in the town, involving, as it would, so many of the people he had come to know. The worsening situation did nothing to change his mind and, in retrospect, he felt mortified that he had come so close to acceding to Crawford’s request to run away from events which he might never again have an opportunity to witness. To leave now would be, he thought, as absurd as it would have been if Daumier and Meissonier had turned their backs on the Paris revolution in ’48, fleeing to the country to paint placid village scenes. To bear witness, to record, and maybe even penetrate the external surface of things, so they might be apprehended more fully: these were tasks from which he should never have allowed Crawford to lure him.

  When therefore, on Monday morning, the boots brought up a note to Tom’s room, written by Miss Crawford and delivered by her maid, informing him that her brother wished to see him before noon on polling day, he wrote back at once declining, only to learn that the maid had not waited to take back an answer. Later he felt disquieted. Although he had found out from the servants at the Bull Hotel, where Magnus had been first carried from the gas-works, that the doctor, who had attended him there, had not considered his condition grave enough to forbid his removal to Leaholme Hall, Tom had still felt guilty for wanting to avoid seeing him. But notwithstanding, in this respect his feelings had not changed since their calamitous failure on Nomination Day. He had allowed personal admiration to get the better of his judgment and still felt ashamed of himself; his aches and pains, and the knowledge that he might easily have suffered far worse, had done nothing to make him grateful to Crawford. But, being honest with himself, he had to admit that he had willingly accepted the risks involved. Nor, when he thought about it, did it escape him that Magnus would know how he felt, and would therefore have reasons quite as good as his own for wishing to avoid a meeting. Yet this was what he was asking for. If the man wanted to express his contrition for having miscalculated so badly, Tom foresaw an embarrassing and pointless interview; but he might need to tell him something of importance, possibly to do with court proceedings. After further deliberation, Tom reluctantly tore up his note and decided to call as requested. He would make sure he arrived early enough to be able to get back to Rigton Bridge by midday, to be in time to see the majority of the votes cast in the election.

  On the day itself, Tom had left the livery stables, where he had hired his hack, by eight o’clock and an hour later was nearing his destination. The sun shone from a clear steel-blue sky, casting back a dazzling light from the snow-covered hills. Across the fields were the clearly defined tracks of stoats and weasels, with sometimes the deeper imprints made by a fox or badger. From time to time heavy lumps of snow fell into the road from the laden branches with a soft plump, obscuring the deep furrows cut by the wheels of carriages. From the brow of the next low hill Tom saw, in the centre of a sparsely planted park
, a range of low rambling buildings squatting darkly against the surrounding whiteness. His horses’ hoofs thumped pleasantly on the compact snow and the animal’s breath came in steaming clouds. A little closer and he could make out the snow-capped battlements of the squat central tower of Leaholme Hall. In the stillness of the countryside, Tom found it hard to imagine the frenzied scenes that might already be taking place in Rigton Bridge.

  *

  Magnus was lying in a four-poster bed while a woman in a grey morning dress read to him. As Tom entered, her back was to the door, so he could not at first see her face, but knew from her voice that she was young. For several seconds he did not dare look at Magnus in case his expression betrayed shock or pity.

  ‘How are the mighty fallen, Mr Strickland?’ murmured Magnus with a rueful smile which changed at once to a grimace of pain. ‘In my case not in the high places of Gilboa but on the premises of the Rigton Chartered Gas-light and Coke Company.’ He looked down at his strapped and bandaged arm. ‘I’m grateful to you for coming.’

  Tom lowered his eyes, shaken by Magnus’s swollen mouth and the cuts and bruises visible on the unbandaged parts of his face. In the darkness of the retort-house, he had not thought him nearly so badly hurt.

  ‘I’m truly sorry.’

  ‘At any rate you were more fortunate; not that I can claim any credit for it.’ He turned to the young woman who had been reading. ‘Kate, you have not met Mr Strickland. Mr Strickland, my sister, Miss Crawford.’ As Magnus lay back, evidently tired by the effort of supporting himself on his uninjured arm, Tom looked at Catherine with her blond ringlets and clear blue eyes and was struck as much by her air of sadness as by her beauty.

  ‘My brother has told me what you did for him,’ she said quietly.

  Distressed to find Magnus so much worse than he had expected, and guilty that he had thought so little about him, Tom replied curtly: