‘It ain’t.’
‘I know it is.’
‘We can’t both be right,’ Betonia said smugly. ‘Can we, Mrs Flowerdew?’
Every face in the class turned towards Mrs Flowerdew for judgement. Betonia’s certain of endorsement, Caroline’s suddenly anxious. Now she’d done it. Now she would be told she was wrong and made to look a fool. Oh, if only she’d kept quiet.
Mrs Flowerdew beamed at them all. ‘Yes, you can,’ she said easily. ‘Oh indeed you can. There are as many different ways of being right as there are different ways of being wrong. And what is right for one girl and her family could be wrong for another and hers. It is a matter of attitude and the kind of talents you possess and how you make use of them. I will explain.’ And she smoothed her skirt across her capacious knees and turned to look at Betonia.
‘Betonia, as we all know, has a talent for order and dependability, which are both excellent things. Look how we benefit from her arrangement of this room at the start of our lessons, for instance. Her family have lived their lives in the same dependable way for centuries, as we also know, so naturally Betonia will do the same thing, and that is proper and commendable and an example to us all. The Easter family, on the other hand, are men and women of fire and imagination, the sort of people who change things, and take us forward into new ventures and over new horizons. Mrs Nan Easter owns shops all over the country, my dears, and all of them are run most successfully. They are renowned for being first with the news. Is that not so, Caroline?’
‘Yes,’ Caroline said, amazed to be receiving such support, ‘we are. And we sell millions of papers every day.’
‘Very true,’ Mrs Flowerdew agreed. ‘I bought this very paper from Easter’s in the Buttermarket this morning. So you see, my dears, far from being unnatural, Caroline’s grandmother is another example to us all. A lady who uses her talents to the uttermost, my dear, as we should all strive to do. Different talents, you see, different strengths, different attitudes, and all of them valuable.’
‘But surely, Mrs Flowerdew,’ Betonia said, struggling to recover her lost superiority, ‘there is only one correct attitude.’
‘No, my dear,’ Mrs Flowerdew told her gently, ‘there are as many attitudes as there are people, and why should one be more correct than any other?’
This was heady stuff and it emboldened Caroline to ask a question of her own. ‘What does “inculcate” mean, Mrs Flowerdew?’
‘Why do you ask, my dear?’
‘My father said you were going to “inculcate” proper attitudes in me.’
‘Ah!’ Mrs Flowerdew said. ‘To inculcate the proper attitudes, my dear, is to enable each and every one of you to discover for herself what attitudes are proper to her and her family and then to live by them. Do you see?’
Oh, indeed she did. How amazing! How absolutely amazing!
That night over dinner Caroline gave her grandmother a full report of the day’s events. It was the first time she’d done such a thing since she joined the seminary, a fact not lost on the shrewd Nan Easter, who was highly amused to hear how her life had been the subject of conversation.
‘Mrs Flowerdew says you are an example to us all,’ Caroline said as she finished her account.
Nan Easter grinned at her granddaughter. ‘A woman of sense,’ she said. ‘I take it you like her.’ She could have added ‘now’ but forebore, being a woman of sense herself.
‘Yes, I do. She’s lovely.’
‘So school might be useful?’
‘Oh yes,’ Caroline said. ‘Very useful. I think I have a talent for working in Easter’s, you see.’
Chapter 4
‘Now,’ Nan Easter said to her regional managers, ‘let us turn our attention to enlarging our trade.’
It was March and their quarterly meeting in the Strand was nearly over. The last of their reports had been read and accepted. It was an ideal moment to test young Caroline’s suggestion. ‘Our trade is still in the doldrums, gentlemen. The price of newspapers is still too high, on account of that infernal stamp duty, and we can’t sell the popular papers, cheap though they are, because they en’t stamped and they en’t legal. Now it’s true we handle the bulk of the legal trade, and stationery sells handsome, but we en’t expanding, and that’s the truth of it. We got more than a dozen new railways to carry our merchandise to Swindon and Southampton and Rugby and such, but we en’t expanding. How if we were to sell other articles besides newspapers and stationery?’
They were most upset by the suggestion, ruffling like pigeons in a breeze. ‘What else could we sell?’ they asked. ‘Oh no, no. We are a newsagents after all, Mrs Easter.’ And they begged her to think of the work it would mean, the trade it would lose, the customers it would upset. Profits might not be high, that was true, but they were steady. In their opinion, it would be most unwise. ‘Oh no, no, no.’
How dull they all are, she thought, hard-working and thorough, certainly, but quite without imagination and with no sense of daring at all. If I could think of something sensible to sell, I’d sell it just to show ‘em. She missed the old faces, dear old Alexander Thistlethwaite who’d run the East Anglian side of the business until that awful winter when he’d died so suddenly and quietly, sitting in his chair by the fire with Bessie pottering about their parlour beside him. And Cosmo Teshmaker, who’d been such an ally in London, and had taken his wife off so happily for that awful tour of Italy, from which neither of them had returned. I’ll ask John and Billy, she decided. See what they can suggest. And she dismissed her fuddy-duddies, as courteously as she could, thanking them for their endeavours.
John and Billy had been her lieutenants for so many years now that they knew one another’s ways almost instinctively, which made the final part of their quarterly meeting relaxed and easy and enjoyable. They’d joined the firm when Billy was no more than fourteen, and his brother a year younger, young and slim and eager to do well. Now they were in their forties and looked what they were: men of business, knowledgeable and dependable, between them taking full responsibility for the day-to-day running of the firm, and yet still capable of enjoying a joke and teasing as they’d done when they were boys. If only the committee could be composed of such men.
But today her fat cheerful Billy was ill at ease.
‘What is it?’ she asked him when the managers had gone.
‘I’ve got young Edward in my office,’ he confessed. ‘Tilda thinks he ought to see you.’
‘What for?’
‘To discuss his future, so she says.’ His face was quite woebegone with embarrassment. ‘If you ask me she’s being premature, but you know Tilda.’
Yes, Nan thought, I do know Tilda. She’s been nagging again. She makes a deal too much fuss of that Edward. But she didn’t say so for that wouldn’t have done at all. Billy was upset enough already. ‘Then I’d best see him,’ she said, ‘if that’s the size of it.’ And she rang for her clerk to show him up.
Edward Easter was the most unprepossessing of her grandchildren, seventeen years old and all arrogance and pimples. Left to her own devices she wouldn’t have entertained him for a minute. He and his sister Matty were as different as two siblings could possibly be, although they shared the same pale colouring, the same shape of head and the same baby-fine light brown hair. But where she lowered her beautiful big grey eyes he raised his small bold blue ones; where she stooped to avoid notice, he, like the spoilt child he was, stood tall to attract it; and where she was quiet and unassuming, he grew louder and more demanding the more attention he was given. He was going up to Cambridge in the autumn, and he was very proud of his new status as an undergraduate and the fine new clothes his parents had provided to embellish it.
Now he came strutting into the boardroom as if he owned it and sat down at the table without being asked, which was a very bad start. ‘Ma says I’m to ask you what my position is to be,’ he announced. ‘When I come down from Cambridge, you know.’
‘You en’t gone up yet awhile,�
�� Nan said, rather taken aback by the effrontery of it.
‘Ah yes,’ he said, looking at her boldly, ‘but it won’t be long now, will it, and I need to know what the firm intends to do for me.’
‘Do you indeed?’ Nan said sternly. ‘I’d ha’ thought it more to the point to consider what you intend to do for the firm?’
‘Why, I shall inherit it, Grandmama. After all, I am the heir apparent.’
‘And how do you make that out, pray?’
‘I’m the only son of the elder son.’
‘We en’t royalty,’ she told him sharply, while his father winced. ‘I got six other grandchildren besides you.’
‘Ah, but they don’t amount,’ he said, and he proceeded to check them off on his fingers. ‘Jimmy means to go into the priesthood, Will is to be a reporter, and you can’t count the girls.’
‘Why not?’
‘Girls stay at home and get married. They don’t work in newsagents.’
‘I might remind you, young man, that I am female and I run the firm. Or en’t you noticed?’
He wasn’t a bit abashed by her sarcasm. ‘But you ain’t the same, Grandmama,’ he said easily. ‘You were born in the old days.’
‘My heart alive!’ Nan said to Billy. ‘He’s got an answer for everything, this boy of yours.’
‘He’s very like his mother,’ Billy apologized.
‘Very well then,’ Nan said, returning her attention to Edward, ‘if you join the firm, what will you do to increase trade?’
‘Why, sell papers, I daresay.’
‘Sales are static,’ she told him. ‘What would you do to increase them?’
‘Pray for a war,’ Edward said smoothly. ‘Another Waterloo somewhere. That ‘ud improve things no end.’
‘Providing we won it,’ John said, giving his brother a wry grin.
‘No fear of that,’ Edward said. ‘The British always win.’
‘No,’ Nan said, ‘that en’t the way forward. Oh, I know bad news sells papers, and good news too if it’s the right kind, but it en’t the way forward. There’s no virtue in waiting for events to increase trade for us. We ought to be a-taking action to do that for ourselves. What would you do?’
‘Well, good heavens,’ Edward said, ‘if you can’t think of something, Grandmama, I’m sure I can’t.’
She was suddenly sick of him. ‘You go to Cambridge, Edward,’ she said, ‘and see how you make out there. Then we’ll consider your future. You’ve got a long way to go yet. And I suggest the first steps you take are out of that door. Your father and your uncle John and I have work to do.’
He went swaggering out, straight-spined and arrogant to the last.
‘What a puppy he is!’ his grandmother said. ‘I hope he learns more sense at Cambridge, I tell ’ee straight, Billy.’
‘Was he right about Will?’ Billy asked his brother, helping them all to brandy and avoiding her criticism because it was too painful. ‘Does he mean to be a reporter?’
‘It’s the first I’ve heard of it if he does,’ John said. ‘A whim, I daresay. He’ll join the firm when he finally comes down of course, just like Edward. Perhaps he means to try something different in the meantime, which is no bad idea, when all’s said and done. It would give him experience of another side of the business.’ Then he too changed the subject, turning to his mother. ‘Is Caroline well?’
‘Settled at last, I do believe,’ Nan said, and told him all about the drawing afternoon, because that at least was easy and pleasant and would soothe poor Billy’s embarrassment.
John listened seriously, inclining his head towards her. ‘Perhaps she will be a little better behaved now,’ he hoped. Her lack of interest in the school had been rather a disappointment to him. This was more encouraging.
‘She’s a deal better behaved already,’ Nan said, defending her. ‘Give her another month and she’ll be a child transformed.’
‘Improvement I might believe,’ he said, smiling at her, ‘but transformation is another thing. If only she were more like her brother.’
‘A good lad, your Will,’ Billy said, Finishing his brandy. ‘I wish my Edward had half as much sense.’
‘Yes he is,’ John agreed. ‘I shall be glad when he joins the firm.’
He would have been very surprised if he could have seen his son at that moment. For the sensible Will Easter was cheerfully drunk and planning a career outside the company.
Will and his two closest friends, Tubby Maltravers, who was short, stout and witty, and Dodo Overthorne, who was tall, sharp and lazy, had dined just a little too well that evening, and had consequently found themselves obliged to drink large quantities of British Hollands to ease the discomfort of their over-distended stomachs. Now they were hanging out of the window of his room in Pembroke College, blear-eyed with drink and waiting for the whores to arrive.
‘Lissen!’ Tubby commanded, holding up a fat hand. ‘Ain’t that the basket, dammit?’
They peered through the darkness of the quod and the fog of Hollands. Something was rattling over on the far corner and they could see two dark figures man-handling a ladder.
‘Chains,’ Dodo said. ‘Tha’s what it is. Chains.’
‘They don’t bring ‘em up on chains, you duffer,’ Will said, pushing his friend’s head to one side so that he could see what was going on. ‘Might hurt ‘em.’
‘Yesh they do,’ Dodo insisted. ‘Weight of the bashket don’t ye know. Couldn’t use rope.’
‘Think of the noise,’ Will said. His head was so muddled he couldn’t even remember how the whores were lifted over the wall although he’d seen it done scores of times. They sat in abasket, he remembered that. And everybody had to be very quiet in case the proctors heard, because of course it was all strictly against the rules.
White skirts bloomed like a rose on top of the wall, and now they could hear the scrape of the ladder and a scuffle of whispers.
‘Tha’s Molly!’ Dodo said, flexing his long legs arid stepping carefully away from the window, like a heron wading through weed. ‘Bags I first.’
‘How can you possibly see who it is?’ Will said. ‘In this dark?’ But his friend was stalking out of the door, and now there were two white roses fluttering astride the wall, and somebody was giggling.
‘Come on, Will,’ Tubby said, pulling him by the arm. ‘Lor’ I’m squiffy. I hope old Shakespeare ain’t right.’
‘Shakespeare?’ Will asked, staggering after him.
‘Yes, you know. The porter in Macbeth. “Drink is a provoker.” You know. “Provokes desire and takes away performance.” ‘That ‘ud be a sell, eh?’ “Makes him and mars him. Makes him stand to, and not stand to.” Eh?’
Personally and privately Will didn’t really care what sort of sexual state he was in. But that was something he kept to himself. Being a gentleman of style, he always joined in with all the antics his friends proposed, but he was careful never to spend any time alone with any of the whores. This wasn’t because he had no desire for them. He was young and easily roused and full of appetite. And it wasn’t because he was afraid of catching one of their diseases. That was something that happened to other people. It was because he feared that if he ever made love to a woman he might become entangled, and this was something he was determined never to do. His father’s terrible grief when his mother died had affected him so profoundly that he had vowed then and there, and young as he was, that he would never allow himself to be crushed in the same way. And as the only way to avoid the grief of loss was to avoid love and entanglement in the first place, he had decided to remain single and heartwhole. It was the most sensible course.
So although he went down to the wall to welcome their visitors and help them down the ladder, he had no intention of making use of their services. But it was a pleasure to lift them from the ladder, just the same, to breathe in their heady combination of strong perfume and musk, to see the swell of their white arms and the cloudy tangle of their loosened hair and their bright, bright eyes
glinting at him in the lamplight. Drink or no drink, they roused him most painfully.
Fortunately for him the fourth head over the wall that evening was the tousled mop of their old friend Jeff Jefferson. Tubby and Dodo were none too pleased to see his horsy face grinning at them over the top of the basket.
‘Dammit Jefferson,’ Dodo hissed, ‘can’t you use the gate like any other Christian soul?’
‘Not when you fellers’ll haul me over the wall.’
‘That’s not cricket, old man.’
‘Cave!’ a voice warned. ‘Bulldogs!’
The basket was dropped with a thud on the other side of the wall, and the quod was suddenly full of flying figures, suppressed giggles, swishing skirts, long legs silhouetted against the lamplight, the puff, pant and skid of frantic escape. Will seized Jeff by the hand and dragged him off to the stairway. ‘Quick!’ he whispered. ‘If you’re found you’ll be for it.’
Within seconds the quod was cleared, doors shut, whores chosen and hidden, and Will and Jeff were safe in Will’s room, pouring themselves two full glasses of Hollands while they caught their breath.
‘Madness,’ Will said admiringly. ‘What possessed you to come in over the wall?’
‘The hell of it,’ Jeff said. ‘Damned good Hollands, Will.’
‘What if you’re caught?’
‘On an assignment.’
‘Prove it.’
‘Fight between town and gown in Petty Cury yesterday afternoon,’ Jeff offered.
‘True.’
‘Interviews with protagonists?’
‘Possible. Who?’
‘Unable to reveal sources. Honour of the press and so forth.’
‘Dammit Jeff, you could lie black was white.’
‘Well now,’ Jeff said, putting down his glass, ‘what was it you wanted to see me about?’
‘Matter of business,’ Will said, trying; to sound casual about it.
‘Oh yes.’
‘I want a job, Jeff. I’ve decided to be a reporter. How should I go about it?’
‘Here or in London?’
Sixpenny Stalls Page 6
