Until the Colours Fade Read online

  Magnus had been sixteen when his father took command of the blockading squadron engaged in suppressing the West African Slave Trade. His mother, in spite of her younger son’s pleas, had gone out to join her husband. Six months later Magnus had opened his father’s letter telling him that she had died of fever. The dangers of the African coastal towns had been well-known, and Magnus had never forgiven his father for allowing her to go. At Oxford, the following year, Magnus had embarked on what an outsider might have thought a frenzied course of self-destruction, but which was in truth aimed at his father. Sir James had considered him a coddled and over-sensitive youth, and now Magnus set about showing him something different.

  More innocent, because of his sheltered upbringing, than most of his contemporaries, Magnus had at first been forced to assume a cynical air of sophistication to avoid being hurt and ridiculed; but, before long, the pose seemed to have become the reality. Working not at all, drinking to excess, and gambling with a recklessness unusual even among the richest aristocratic set, Magnus had gone down with no degree and debts of over two thousand pounds. His father had settled them on condition that his son took a post in the colonial service. The best Indian regiments being considered too expensive, he had been bought a commission in the Ceylon Rifles. He had served with distinction and had satisfied his conscience by testifying against the Governor of the colony at a Commons Select Committee Inquiry into the recent disturbances there. Now, seven years after he had sailed from Southampton, he was returning home with little more than the sum raised by the sale of his commission – returning to live at his father’s expense while Sir James’s term as Admiral on the North American Station lasted. His future seemed uncertain and ominously empty.

  On learning from the butler that Captain Crawford was not at home, and that Miss Catherine had been riding earlier in the afternoon, but might by now be back at the stables, Magnus immediately made his way there. She was not in the yard, so he walked on towards the thick hawthorn hedge enclosing the two paddocks. He opened the gate of the smaller one but did not at first see his sister. In the centre of the field, a groom was ringing a colt. A bolster had been strapped to the animal’s back to get him used to carrying weight, and he was lunging and dancing round at the end of a long halter, vainly striving to dislodge the unfamiliar object. As Magnus glanced to his right, he saw Catherine watching the proceedings from the gate leading into the adjacent paddock. He shouted to her and then started running across the rough grass.

  They embraced on meeting, and Magnus, finding himself close to tears, could not imagine how he had felt such gloom approaching the house. In a neat black riding habit and soft dove-grey hat with a feathered plume, Catherine stood before him, and suddenly his time away seemed a brief interval of weeks not years. She smiled at him, cheeks flushed with excitement, and took both his hands in hers. The same vivid blue eyes, the same silvery blond hair dressed in ringlets, the same Catherine after seven years. The same, he repeated to himself, as if seeking conviction. Yet, even at this moment of meeting, he could not forget that George Braithwaite had proposed to her. Twenty-five, thought Magnus, and she was eighteen when I left.

  As they walked in the direction of the house, Catherine turned to him and squeezed his arm.

  ‘You must stay ever so long, Magnus.’

  ‘I’m not going back,’ he murmured.

  ‘The hero of Kandy not going back?’ she laughed, evidently suspecting a joke until she saw the seriousness of his face. ‘But why?’ she asked in astonishment.

  ‘I sent you the extracts from my evidence printed in The Times.’

  ‘I read them.’

  ‘Then you know why I can’t return. The very men who praise me to my face for doing what I did, snarl at me behind my back.’

  ‘Poor Magnus.’

  ‘I’m not going to force any more natives to work on roads while their rice harvest rots. The coffee planters need the roads; they can get them built without me.’

  The sun was sinking, an indistinct red sphere, and the wind seemed colder. Dead leaves rustled across the gravel path, swirling in wide circles.

  ‘So what will you do?’ she asked with a nervous frown.

  Her concern touched him, but Magnus had no wish to agonise over his future so soon after his arrival. He shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘Become a briefless barrister or make my fortune in the Australian gold fields,’ he answered with a laugh, and then stared at her with a parody of sternness. ‘Since I have come so far to see you, I trust you have given thought to my entertainment.’

  Catherine opened her eyes very wide and simpered coyly:

  ‘Oh yes indeed, but I fear you will find us very dull with our muslin work and piano pieces from Donizetti and Bellini.’

  ‘On the contrary,’ he objected with great earnestness, ‘muslin and Donizetti are both absolute passions with me. In Ceylon I felt the absence of them sorely.’

  He gazed at her intensely until they both started to laugh. Then, arm in arm, they resumed their walk towards the house. Once they had laughed a great deal together. Magnus stopped as they reached the carriage sweep. From where they stood the sun’s reflections in the diamond-shaped window-panes made them glow like dull points of fire in the dark façade.

  *

  Most of the rooms in the house were narrow and low-ceilinged, but not so the Great Hall, which was still used for dining. With its high oak hammer-beam roof, carved screen and minstrels’ gallery, it dated from that remote period when the family had sat at a high table on a dais, while their servants ate below them in the main body of the hall. Now there was only a single mahogany table in the centre of the room, immediately beneath a massive brass chandelier holding two dozen candles. Yet, not even with added light from the candelabra on the table and from oil lamps on the sideboard, was more than a fraction of the cavernous room well-lit. In the sombre grandeur of this ancestral hall, Magnus dined with his brother and sister.

  As the meal drew to a close the atmosphere was tense and uneasy. Just as Magnus had supposed he would, Charles had argued that his decision to leave Ceylon was a virtual confession of failure. Principles, in his view, ought not to come into what was a matter of common sense. Whatever the shortcomings of officials and planters, Magnus would be a fool to throw away years of experience without having any alternative profession to take up. While Charles held forth, Catherine said nothing, and Magnus merely gazed at Beechey’s portrait of the first baronet above the wide Tudor fireplace, recalling how much he had infuriated his father by comparing their ancestor’s eighteenth century admiral’s full-dress uniform with the cocked hat and broad facings of a modern beadle’s outfit.

  He had vowed that, whatever his brother might say, he would not lose his temper. So when Charles had finished with Ceylon to his satisfaction, Magnus did not argue, but instead steered the conversation back to the troubles in Rigton Bridge, which had received an airing earlier, when he had told them about the riot. Wishing to find out Catherine’s opinion of the Braithwaites indirectly, he thought this could be achieved by speaking of the strike. As though quite unversed in such things, he asked Charles humbly whether he thought the strikers would give in before the election. The naval officer snorted derisively.

  ‘Not a chance. They’re stubborn as mules.’

  ‘Couldn’t the masters make concessions?’

  Charles filled his glass from a decanter and pushed the coaster towards Magnus.

  ‘Of course not. They can’t afford to lose face.’

  Magnus glanced at Catherine but learned nothing from her impassive expression. They had finished eating and she might choose at any moment to withdraw, so that the cloth could be removed and port set out for the brothers to drink alone.

  ‘Won’t the union also worry about loss of face?’ asked Magnus mildly.

  ‘They’re just out to intimidate sensible men who want to work.’ The slight flush on Charles’s cheeks might have been the claret, but Magnus thought it indicated strong feel
ings about the troubles. He placed his elbows on the table and leant forward.

  ‘But surely, Charles, not even sensible men can work when Irishmen fill their places?’

  ‘I told you, the union stopped local men selling their labour.’ Charles sipped his claret thoughtfully and smiled. ‘With respect, Magnus, I don’t think a colonial soldier is ideally equipped to make judgments about an English strike.’

  ‘Judgments? I didn’t know that I’d even expressed an opinion,’ he replied, struggling to suppress his mounting irritation. He had never forgotten the way Charles had used his superior years to deride his views in childhood. ‘But I’ll tell you my opinion, in case you misunderstand me. Unless Braithwaite discharges the Irishmen, last night’s violence will be a trivial hors d’oeuvre to the feast we can expect on polling day.’ He turned to Catherine and asked quietly: ‘Does your opinion differ?’ He could tell from the way she refused to meet his eye that she knew that he was asking a question that was partly a challenge and partly an appeal for her loyalty. She looked down at the table and hesitated a moment before saying rapidly:

  ‘My opinion can neither differ or agree. I know nothing of trade.’ She rose and smiled briefly before withdrawing.

  When she had gone and the butler had removed the cloth and set glasses in front of them, Magnus still felt stunned by her reply. Her genteel and prim assertion, that trade was too far beneath her to be considered, had been out of character. She had listened to their conversation patiently enough until he had mentioned Joseph Braithwaite specifically. Only then had she decided to leave. There could now be little doubt that she was seriously considering George’s proposal. Not wanting to have to talk, Magnus asked his brother when he thought he would next have a ship; and soon, as he had expected, Charles was embarked on a lengthy monologue about the inadequacies and vacillations of the Board of Admiralty. The subject would undoubtedly last them until they joined Catherine again and possibly longer. While Charles talked, it occurred to Magnus that his brother would almost certainly favour a marriage to George Braithwaite, since if Catherine were to remain a spinster the ultimate responsibility for her support would fall on him. With her mother dead and her father almost always away from home, Catherine was not well placed to have many London seasons. None of this would have escaped Charles if, as seemed probable, he had assessed the possible alternatives to George.

  Two hours later, when Charles eventually rang for the chamber-candlesticks to be brought to light them to bed, no word had been spoken by anybody about George Braithwaite. But Magnus remained certain that Strickland had told him the truth the previous evening. He had been prepared to let matters rest awhile because, in spite of some doubts, he believed that he knew a way to end Braithwaite’s chances.

  Earlier that day in Rigton Bridge, he had visited the offices of the Rigton Independent, the town’s only radical newspaper, with the intention of finding out more about the troubles. Instead he had discovered something of equal interest – something that involved George in a racing fraud.

  The fact that race-horse owners often found it more profitable to enter an animal to lose a race rather than to win it was well-known to him. To encourage heavy betting, the owner would make every public effort to persuade punters that the horse was a certain winner. Such bets would then be taken up by the owner’s friends, who would of course be very careful not to appear as such. In the race the jockey’s instructions would be to hold the horse back. According to one of Braithwaite’s grooms, who had tipped off the Independent, George had followed this unsporting procedure in the Yorkshire Stakes, and had won more money by laying against his own horse than he would have done if he had taken the prize. The paper had printed the groom’s story in the sure belief that Braithwaite would not sue. Few owners liked to gain still greater notoriety by suing their detractors for libel, but George had done just this; and since the jockey could not be found and none of those who had taken up bets could be linked directly with Braithwaite, the case had gone against the paper. The lack of evidence had disturbed Magnus; in such cases something unpleasant always came out, but if the groom had been told to tip off the paper everything fell into place. The editor could not pay the fine and would therefore have to liquidate at a very convenient time for George’s father, whose electoral prospects would be the better for the disappearance of the town’s only radical newspaper. If George and Joseph Braithwaite had really planned such a thing, Magnus did not consider it unlikely that they had also provoked the strike deliberately to frighten electors into voting for the manufacturer, as the reactionary candidate more likely to be firm with law-breakers and to restore order in the town.

  Although Magnus instinctively mistrusted George, he knew little about him. When Magnus had sailed for Ceylon, George had been a youth of seventeen. But for Joseph Braithwaite, Magnus entertained no such vague feelings. When Magnus had been an undergraduate, Joseph had suspected, incorrectly as it happened, that the young man had designs on his daughter Annette. Since the girl had been plain, and her father at that time considerably less affluent, she had often been ignored at balls and other social functions. Out of kindness, Magnus had made it his business to talk to her and to ask her to dance. The idea that marriage to her would solve many of his problems had crossed his mind, but he had taken no deliberate steps to achieve this end. When, therefore, Joseph had warned him off with remarks about avaricious fortune-seekers and penniless younger sons, ready to stoop to any mean act and deception to gain their objectives, he had been furiously angry and even after eight years had not forgiven the slight. Together with his present suspicions, the memory of that interview accounted for Magnus’s inflexible determination to stop Catherine marrying George.

  Once in his bedroom, Magnus lit more candles with a spill from the fire and then, intent on clarifying his thoughts, sat down at the small davenport writing desk by the window and began to note down the information about which he already felt certain. Ten minutes later, he heard a soft knock at the door and looked up to see Catherine enter. She moved across the room without speaking and, as the light from the fire patterned her dark velvet dress, he was surprised to notice that she had fastened a silver chatelaine around her waist, as though to remind him that this shining silver belt would be her badge of office if she were to remain unmarried: its hanging keys, to the safes, jewel boxes and linen chests, symbols of her future life as Charles’s housekeeper. Waiting for her to speak, he had idly started to melt sealing wax over a candle. Taking a seal from a compartment in the desk, he brought it down with a thump on a blob of wax which had fallen on some paper.

  ‘You’re angry with me,’ she said quietly, resting her hands on the back of a prie-dieu close to the tall canopied bed. Her high-necked dress with its small collar of lace and white cuffs, reminded him powerfully of dresses she had worn years ago; its colour too, blue, had always been a favourite of hers.

  ‘No, I’m not angry,’ he replied with a sigh. ‘When we choose to voice our opinions honestly is our own affair.’

  ‘One may have an opinion and not be free to voice it,’ she replied, encouraged by his gentle tone. ‘Mr Braithwaite recently told Charles that the duty on chicory was to be doubled and advised him to buy all he could at the old price so he could sell at the new. He will have nothing said against Joseph.’

  ‘I thought you knew nothing of trade,’ said Magnus in a flat voice, getting up as he did so, as if overcome with impatience, and pacing across the room. He turned in front of a large tapestry. ‘You gave no opinion because you intend to marry George Braithwaite.’

  He watched her draw herself up very straight.

  ‘And if I do?’ she asked in a defiant whisper.

  ‘You will become the wife of somebody whose father is as unscrupulous as he is ruthless.’

  ‘But the son is not the father, Magnus.’

  ‘The resemblance is closer than you may suppose.’

  She raised her hands to her face and laughed.

  ‘Really you’re
too absurd, Magnus. You’ve scarcely been in the neighbourhood a day and you begin making solemn pronouncements about this person and that as though, forgive me, you’re God himself.’

  ‘Several people, besides God, know that George sued the Independent and bribed the most important witness to hide himself.’

  ‘All I know is that he was libelled and had the courage to sue.’ The silence, which followed this vehement exchange, was heavy with embarrassment. Realising that Magnus was not going to speak, she came towards him with a placating smile. ‘Because there was so much dishonesty in Ceylon, you must not suppose that all the world is as bad. We should be happy, Magnus. Tonight of all nights we should not be arguing. How can we speak like this on the day of your return?’

  ‘Because if we do not‚’ he said, hiding his agitation, ‘we may as well say nothing in the weeks to come.’

  She did not reply but moved to the dressing table and sat down. Pulling the candle-bracket closer to the mirror, Catherine stared at her reflection and secured her falling ringlets behind her ears, in the severer manner of older women.

  ‘You have no right to reprove me for doing what the world so regularly applauds. Am I so angelic and rare a creature to escape the general rule of marrying for an establishment? At twenty-five should I still be swooning with the kind of love poets describe?’ She shot him an ironic questioning glance. ‘Love in a cottage may exist, but when the tiniest villa on the Thames cannot be had under two hundred a year, cottage love has become a luxury.’

  To give himself time to think, he put more coals on the fire.

  ‘If father becomes port admiral at Plymouth or Portsmouth, you will have your pick of naval officers. You will be his hostess.’

  She smiled at him and shook her head slowly.

  ‘Father take a dull dockyard when he may yet hoist his flag off Spithead or Valetta? When I am fifty he may accept Portsmouth and then I may still take my pick, I suppose?’