‘I’ve seen history being made,’ he said to Tom rapturously, as they waited for the London train to start. ‘I’ve been right in the thick of it. I’ve seen the best and the worst this job can offer and I know it’s what I want to do. I can’t work in Easter’s now. I should stifle. I must be a full-time reporter.’
‘Quite right, sir,’ Tom agreed.
‘I shall tell my father as soon as I get home.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘The first thing.’ It would have to be the first thing while his courage and determination were high.
But, as so often happens when we try to plan our lives, things didn’t work out that way.
When he arrived in Fitzroy Square that afternoon, the house was empty. Miss Caroline was with her grandmother in Bedford Square, the housekeeper said, and Mr John was visiting Mr Billy.
It wasn’t until he was back in the hansom cab and well on his way to Bedford Square that her form of words struck him as odd. Why should his father be ‘Visiting’ Uncle Billy? They saw one another nearly every day in the Strand.
Nan’s parlour maid was more communicative. ‘They’ve all gone over to Torrington Square, Mr Will,’ she said. ‘Miss Caroline and Miss Euphemia are still here, but Mrs Easter she went out like a rocket so she did. Something’s up, you ask me, sir. I never seen her go out like that afore, I tell yer straight.’
By now Will was beginning to feel alarmed. He ran up the stairs two at a time to find out what was the matter. The sun had gone behind a cloud since his arrival and the landing was dark and surprisingly chill. Caroline and Euphemia were in the parlour, sitting side by side in the window seat, their heads bent over their sewing, and their voices so subdued that they alarmed him even more than the parlour maid had done.
‘Oh, Will!’ Caroline said, putting down her sewing and walking across the room to him. ‘I am glad you’re home. It’s perfectly beastly here. Uncle Billy’s took an apoplexy.’
An apoplexy? How dreadful. ‘Is he …?’
‘No,’ Euphemia said, understanding at once. ‘He’s not dead. But he’s very ill. The surgeons have been called. We’re to stay here until Mrs Easter returns.’
‘What have you done to your head?’ Caroline said, looking at the scab on her brother’s temple.
‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Got in the way of a stone, that’s all. Tell me what happened to Uncle Billy.’
‘There was a frightful row,’ Caroline said, her grey eyes earnest. ‘Edward came down from Oxford with his creditors after him three days ago, and Papa said his debts were a scandal and Uncle Billy said he was to leave Oxford and start work in the firm that very day or he wouldn’t pay a penny to bail him out and Aunt Tilda cried and cried and Edward shouted and then Uncle Billy took an apoplexy and fell right down. Isn’t it dreadful!’
‘I’ll go straight over,’ Will said.
Billy was propped up in his high bed against a mound of pillows, his usually jolly face sagging and grey and his eyes tightly closed. But he stirred himself when Will came in and tried to mumble that he was glad to see him.
‘He’s been bled three times since,’ Nan whispered, as he seemed to sleep again, ‘so he ought to be seeing the benefit soon.’
‘My poor Billy!’ Tilda sniffed, from her seat beside the bed. Her eyes were red-rimmed from all the tears she’d shed in the past two days.
Nan led them both out of the room. ‘He’s on the mend, Tilda,’ she said. ‘Try to look on the bright side. It don’t do to pity the sick. Leastways not in their hearing.’
‘Where’s Papa?’ Will asked.
He was in Billy’s study, examining his brother’s warehouse book. ‘Thank heavens you’re back, Will,’ he said. ‘We’re in a proper pickle. The doctors say he won’t be well enough to work for months.’
‘I am sorry.’
‘Yes, well … Did you get to see how the Birmingham trade was handled?’
‘Yes, Papa. It works very smoothly.’
‘That’s one blessing, I suppose.’
‘It’s a simple system, Papa. Mr Warner has it all under control.’
‘You understood it?’ John asked, giving his son a quick, almost calculating glance.
‘Yes,’ Will said, giving a truthful answer even though the glance had made him feel anxious about where the question could be leading.
‘Could you handle the London warehouse, do you think, Will? It’s a lot to ask, I know that, but you can see how we’re placed.’
Oh, how much Will wanted to say no, I can’t. I’m a reporter. But his father’s face was peaked with worry, his forehead ridged and his eyes squinting, and the sight of such distress aroused a protective affection in his son that was so strong it overthrew ambition and hope in one taut second. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I think I could.’ Perhaps it would only have to be for a month or two, until Uncle Billy was well again.
‘Could you start this afternoon?’
‘Yes.’ So soon! He’d hardly got back!
‘We will train Edward up to it, in time,’ John said. ‘When your uncle recovers, which he will do eventually, according to the doctors. You should do more than simply handle the warehouse. I know that. And so you shall, I promise you, once this present – um – difficulty is over.’ Then he turned to Nan. ‘What a relief to have our Will home to help us,’ he said.
‘You’re a good lad, Will,’ Nan said, reaching up to kiss him. ‘I don’t know what we’d do without you.’
‘You’d better take the warehouse book for the time being,’ John said, handing it across. ‘I’m going back to the Strand myself in a minute or two. We will travel together, eh. You can tell me about Birmingham on the way.’
There is nothing I want to tell you now, Will thought, taking the heavy book into his hands. I have lost my chance. I am committed to this firm for ever now. I shall never escape. And resentment filled his brain despite the knowledge that he was doing the right thing by his family, the right and only thing.
And he resented every shop they passed on their way to the Strand, until the smart green and gold sign seemed to be mocking him.
Billy was kept to his bed for the next fortnight and when he was finally allowed up he was so weak that when Will went sick-visiting, he could see at once that his uncle wouldn’t be back at work for a very long time.
He called in at the offices of the Morning Advertiser the same afternoon on his way back to the Strand, and told the editor as politely and unemotionally as he could that he was not in a position to accept any further commissions, ‘for the foreseeable future’.
‘A pity,’ the editor said. ‘I like your work, Mr Easter. There’s a permanent job here for you should you want one, you know.’
It was bitter-sweet to hear it.
‘I’m beholden to you for the offer, sir,’ Will said, polite to the end, ‘but I must refuse I fear. I have accepted a position in the family firm.’
‘A pity,’ the editor said again.
However, the warehouse was simple enough to run, providing he planned ahead, and the men who worked there were friendly and cheerful, so it wasn’t long before he’d settled in to the new routine, despite his disappointment, which he never mentioned to anyone, not even Carrie. Fate had decided this for him and it was no good kicking against the pricks.
But he kicked against Edward whenever he got the chance, giving him the dirtiest and heaviest jobs to do and shouting orders as though he were the lowest and most objectionable of his workmen.
It was a surprise to him that his cousin never fought back. Edward accepted his new life dumbly, saying very little, simply doing as he was told, with an uncharacteristic meekness that was downright aggravating. Whatever else happened now he had no intention of entering into an argument. That would only make matters worse and he had enough to cope with as it was.
‘Deuce take it, Edward,’ Will shouted on one particularly busy morning. ‘Why ain’t you unloaded those boxes? We shall miss delivery.’
Edward unpacked the offend
ing boxes. He didn’t feel in the least bit apologetic but he apologized at once and meekly. ‘I’m sorry, Will.’
‘And so you should be,’ Will said, resentment towards him spilling over into accusation at last, ‘when it’s all your fault. If it hadn’t been for your damned extravagance we should neither of us be working here.’
‘It wasn’t intended,’ Edwards said, as mildly as he could. ‘I didn’t mean Pa to take it so hard. I didn’t mean to make him ill.’ This was the truth, and a painful one.
‘But you did.’
‘Yes,’ still unpacking with his face averted.
‘And you cost me a good job as a reporter. Do you realize that?’
‘Yes. I’m sorry.’
‘So you damned well should be,’ Will said, walking away. He wasn’t mollified by the apology, because too much damage had been done, but at least Edward had the grace to admit responsibility for it, and that was something.
But then Jeff Jefferson wrote to tell him the latest news about the Chartists who had been arrested in Birmingham, and he read accounts of their trials in the London newspapers and knew that he could have written about them far more sympathetically and knowledgeably, and he was cast down despite his determination to appear cheerful. And a week later there was worse to endure.
He had gone down to Printing House Square to negotiate new terms for the sale of The Times with Mr Walters, the proprietor, and when the business had been satisfactorily concluded, he had accepted Mr Walters’ invitation to ‘cut across to Periwinkles for a spot of lunch’.
It was a pleasant meal and they finished it with brandy and cigars and gossip, which Will recognized and accepted as something of an accolade. To be treated as a full working member of the newspaper fraternity was decidedly flattering, especially as Mr Walters had been a friend of Nan’s for many many years, and had known him since he was a small child trailing through the newspaper office at his father’s coat tails. But just as he was feeling most at ease and comfortable, Mr Walters suddenly said something that made his heart lurch as if he’d been punched.
‘That was a fine piece you wrote on the Bull Ring riot,’ he said. ‘I had half a mind to offer you a position on my staff on the strength of it. You write well, Mr Will Easter. But I daresay you know that.’
It was all Will could do to say thank you, and then the words emerged as a husky growl. A position on the staff of The Times. That was even more tantalizing than the offer of a job with the Morning Advertiser. Oh, if only he could take it! If only it wasn’t being talked of now!
‘Not that I would embarrass you by asking you to choose between The Times and Easter’s,’ Mr Walters went on. ‘Easter’s couldn’t function without you these days, I hear.’
‘That is the rumour,’ Will admitted wryly.
‘Aye,’ Mr Walters said, finishing his brandy. ‘Still, if you ever need a job, you know where to find me, eh?’
It was offered in a jocular tone, and although Will answered in the same style, he meant what he said, ‘I will bear that in mind, Mr Walters.’
That night as he drove home along the Strand on his way to Fitzroy Square his grandmother’s green and gold signs mocked him most cruelly. ‘A. Easter and Sons.’ Caught. Caught. Caught.
Chapter 8
In Caroline’s and Euphemia’s bedroom in Nan’s house in Bedford Square sunlight poured in through the window in a visible column. The motes bounced and gyrated in springtime abandon, gleaming with rainbow colour like little swirling diamonds. It was nearly seven o’clock on a bright May evening, and the room was sultry with accumulated warmth and dusted with golden light, the long cream curtains folded into tawny shadow, the starched sheets and pillow cases glistening, the looking glass above the mantelpiece a dazzle of little gold suns.
Caroline sat before the dressing table in her chemise and petticoats admiring her sun-misted face in the mirror. Now that she was eighteen she was really quite womanly, everybody said so, and very much like her mother, whose quiet portrait she admired every time she visited her father’s house. She and Euphemia never stayed there nowadays because Papa was always too busy to entertain them, and that was an arrangement that suited her very well, for the portrait was far more welcoming than the house. There was something peculiarly attractive about its air of gentle sanctity, something at once poised and tender and calming. Every time she saw it she wished she could emulate it.
‘Do I look saintly, Euphemia?’ she asked, speaking slowly and dreamily so as not to disturb the expression she was cultivating. She had propped her elbows on two fat lavender bags because the table was much too hard for comfort, and now she cupped her chin in her hands and gazed soulfully at her reflection, at grey eyes suitably wide apart and innocently round, at the warm flush of her skin, at her nose, which wasn’t really so very big, was it, especially when you looked at it from the front, at the salmon-pink rosebud of her mouth, held carefully so as to appear as small and well formed as she could make it, at the thick dark ringlets bobbing so artlessly beside her cheeks. The hairdresser had arranged them quite well, all things considered. ‘I do look saintly, don’t I?’
‘You look very beautiful,’ Euphemia said truthfully. ‘You will be the belle of the ball.’
‘So will you,’ Caroline said, returning the compliment and smiling at her cousin in the mirror.
And it was true. There was no sign now of the skinny sallow child who had come to Bedford Square so timorously seven years ago. At nineteen, Euphemia was langorously beautiful, with a creamy complexion beneath her splendid auburn hair, pale arms deliciously rounded, white neck most tender, the prettiest tip-tilted bosom and the face of a dreamy madonna. Now she lay on the chaise longue in her cream chemise and a froth of petticoats, with white satin slippers on her feet and one pale arm draped across the back of the chaise like a milky goddess in a painting. But where Caroline was striving for the effect she wanted, Euphemia was simply being herself, gentle and quiet and calm as always, resting before the very first ball of her very first season.
The season was all Aunt Matilda’s doing. Ever since Uncle Billy’s apoplexy, which was nearly six years ago now, she’d been the driving force behind her entire family, ensuring that Billy’s return to work was very, very gradual, organizing the household to suit the new slow pace of his life, advising Matty when her two little boys were born, and once her dear Edward had settled into the firm, joining the London season so as to find him a suitable wife. So far, it had to be admitted, without success.
But now that the two girls would be joining the festivities, she had hopes of a better outcome. Caroline could be difficult but she was a lively little thing and her presence at the opening ball would certainly add spice to the occasion.
John had been rather sticky about it to start with, protesting that he saw no reason why Caroline and Euphemia should be involved in a ‘man-hunt’. But she had talked him round.
‘No, no,’ she told him firmly. ‘The time has come for us to make a concerted effort on behalf of all our sons and daughters.’
‘I would have thought we had made excellent provision for them,’ John observed. ‘Will and Edward are both settled into the firm. Your Matty is happily married and has made you a grandmother twice over. Even Caroline is improved by her years at Mrs Flowerdew’s seminary. Why gild the lily?’
‘Why, in order to find them suitable partners to be sure,’ Tilda said, widening her fine grey eyes at his simplicity. ‘That is what all responsible parents do nowadays. They must be properly launched.’
‘You make them sound like ships!’ John protested.
She ignored such flippancy. ‘Edward will be twenty-five this year,’ she said, ‘and your Will twenty-seven and both of them still unwed. And Caroline will be nineteen, which is quite old enough for a girl. More than high time I should say.’
‘Let us hope she agrees with you,’ her father said wryly.
‘Of course she’ll agree with me,’ Matilda said with some exasperation. ‘I’m offering he
r balls and parties and young men to dance attendance on her. What more could she possibly want? It is any young girl’s dream.’
‘However,’ her father pointed out, ‘Caroline is not any young girl. She might take it kindly and join in with the best. On the other hand she might walk off into the snow.’
‘There is no snow in May,’ Matilda said. ‘What are you talking about?’
And so the season was planned and the clothes made and despite John’s misgivings the two girls were delighted to be part of it, although they both declared they had no intention of catching a husband, for such an idea was really too shameful, indeed it was. Which was one reason why Caroline was concerned about her appearance, for a saintly expression would show that she had no desire to enter the marriage stakes.
‘I do so want to look saintly,’ she said, returning to her reflection in the dressing table mirror. ‘There is something so beautiful about saintliness, don’t you think so, Pheemy?’
‘There are many kinds of beauty,’ Euphemia said seriously. ‘The beauty of youth and beginnings, the beauty of age and experience, beauty of action, beauty of sleep, oh so many.’
‘Who told you all that?’ Caroline asked, forgetting her expression because she was so impressed.
‘My ayah,’ Euphemia said, her face softening at the memory of her.
‘Ah!’ Caroline said. ‘Indian philosophy again.’ Mrs Flower-dew had once said that there was nothing so profound as Indian philosophy and she had stood in awe of it ever since. ‘What about the beauty of women? Brides are always beautiful, aren’t they?’
‘Yes,’ Euphemia agreed, and she remembered dreamily. ‘The beauty of women, the beauty of men, beautiful clothed, more beautiful naked.’
Caroline was rather shocked by this. She’d never seen a naked man, of course, and even the idea was scandalous. But scandalously appealing. She often wondered what people looked like without their clothes, and at even more daring moments, whether married people saw one another naked. In the ‘Eve of St Agnes’ Keats had described a young woman undressing, and he’d done it so beautifully it had made her breathless simply to read it, so he must have seen it at some time or another. But perhaps poets were different. Perhaps the rules didn’t apply to poets. ‘Men aren’t beautiful,’ she said. ‘Comical perhaps, pleasant enough sometimes in a well-cut coat, but not beautiful.’
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