Sixpenny Stalls

by Beryl Kingston

  By the time Miss Nightingale had inspected the kitchen, school was over for the day and the scholars dismissed. Matty and Euphemia walked slowly back across Clerkenwell Green hoping to see their visitor again before she left. To their delight, Jimmy had persuaded the whole party to take tea. And at last, over cucumber sandwiches and the best Chelsea tea service, Euphemia got a chance to talk to Miss Nightingale about nursing.

  ‘You have worked here more than a year, I believe,’ Miss Nightingale said, making polite conversation.

  ‘Yes,’ Euphemia said, and then greatly daring, ‘but if I had my dearest wish it is another job I would be doing.’

  ‘Indeed?’ Miss Nightingale said, assessing Euphemia with those shrewd grey eyes. ‘And what would that be?’

  ‘I should like to become a nurse.’

  Miss Nightingale smiled. ‘It is a poor profession,’ she said, ‘full of drunkards and women of low repute.’

  ‘Yes,’ Euphemia said. ‘I know. But if nurses were to follow Mr Chadwick’s advice, and keep their patients clean and well fed, and if there were to be proper drainage and a clean water supply, in the way he advocates, then the profession might change.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘And given the right person to lead them into healthier ways nurses might change too.’

  ‘That is my hope and belief, Miss Callbeck.’

  ‘If the time were to come,’ Euphemia dared, ‘when a different kind of woman were required to train for the nursing profession, I should like to be one of them.’

  ‘That might well be,’ Miss Nightingale said. ‘You are one of the Easters, are you not?’

  Euphemia admitted that she was, and was drawing breath to offer her services there and then, when Canon Fielding turned the conversation to a consideration of the cost of slates and slate pencils and the moment passed.

  But when Miss Nightingale was taking her leave of her host, and his ‘two able assistants’ she dropped a last encouragement towards Miss Euphemia Callbeck. ‘I do not forget the matter we spoke of,’ she said as they shook hands. ‘I will send you a pamphlet I have written upon the subject. I am very glad to have made your acquaintance.’

  And then she was gone, climbing into her carriage very straight of spine and graceful. Oh, a very great lady!

  That night as she lay in her lonely bedroom watching the stars, Euphemia couldn’t sleep for excitement. She had taken Mirabelle’s advice after all, and found an ambition and a cause. One day, somehow and somewhere, she would be a nurse, one of the new kind of nurses, putting Mr Chadwick’s ideas into practice. She missed Caroline more than ever now that she had such amazing news to tell her.

  Caroline and Henry were still enclosed in love and idleness. With servants to wait on them and cooks to feed them and no visitors or correspondence to concern them, they had evolved a new and luxurious pattern to their lives; nights spent making love, sleep in the cool of early morning, a ride after breakfast, lunch on the terrace where they could enjoy the occasional breeze that flickered up from the Thames, languid afternoons in the shade of the garden. Sometimes they strolled down from terrace to terrace until they reached the river, where they sat with their bare feet in the warm water and watched the coots and the swans and the bright skiffs drifting at ease, and talked of everything and nothing while they waited for evening and the welcome of their magical bed. ‘Our pleasure palace,’ Henry had said on that first night. And pleasure palace it was.

  The days passed without notice. They supposed they had spent a week together, but it could have been two, or three, or ten. On one particularly oppressive afternoon when the swans were asleep and the skiffs were nowhere to be seen, they took off the few clothes they felt obliged to wear for decency’s sake, and went for a swim, he in his shirt and she in her chemise. Or to be more accurate he went for a swim while she lay in the shallows, near the privacy of their garden wall and let the green water ripple the heat from her body.

  ‘You are like a water nymph,’ he said, admiring her white limbs and running his fingers down the delicious curve of her spine.

  ‘And you are my river god.’ Oh, so handsome with his wet shirt clinging to his body.

  He sat beside her in the shallows and bent to kiss her, tangling her damp hair in his fingers. ‘Let us go back to the house.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ she said, in a swoon of pleasure and cooling water. ‘Let’s.’

  And so the pattern continued and the honey month passed. And neither of them saw any reason for change. Until the night of the thunder storm.

  Chapter 20

  It had been a most unpleasant morning, sticky and oppressive and airless. Even on the river there was no breeze at all and the heat was so excessive there was no escape from it, indoors or out. By midday Caroline and Henry had decided that the only comfortable place to be was underwater, so that was where they spent the afternoon, with two parasols propped among the pebbles at the water’s edge to provide a little extra shade.

  Towards two o’clock, Caroline noticed that there were two cauliflower clouds heaping in the hard blue of the sky above the river. They grew with amazing speed, erupting higher and higher into huge billowing curves of grey and white and purple.

  ‘Aren’t they beautiful,’ she said, lying on her back in the shallows so that she could gaze straight up at them. ‘Like an Arabian palace.’

  But Henry took a more prosaic view. ‘We’d better go in,’ he said, and he began to dislodge the parasols. ‘We’re in for a storm.’

  It was an understatement. The first hot drops spattered their foreheads as they scampered indoors, and minutes later the sky was riven with lightning and the rain began in earnest. It fell with such violence that it looked more like a mountain torrent than rainfall, pouring onto the garden from the great height of the clouds and pitting the grey river with so many close packed holes that it looked like a nutmeg grater. Before Henry and Caroline were dried and dressed there was a lake on the lower terrace, the roadway was a running stream and hailstones were cracking against the window. It was marvellously exciting, and it went on for hours and hours.

  At six o’clock Farren the butler came into the drawing room where they were watching from the bow window, and stood before them with his spine curved into a crescent and his head drooping as though it were too heavy for his neck. Henry had known him long enough by now to recognize the stance, which was assumed whenever the man was about to carry out a complicated instruction or when he was anxious as to what his orders were going to be.

  ‘What is it, Farren?’ he said, keeping his voice perfectly still, like Joseph always did when he was dealing with a difficult servant.

  ‘If you please, sir,’ Farren said, ‘the basement is full of water.’ His hanging face was a picture of gloom. ‘We got the wine out of the way of it, sir, and the kindling is in the kitchen, you’ll be pleased to know, but we couldn’t do much about the coal.’ There were over four tons of coal in the cellars so that was hardly surprising. ‘We thought you’d want to be informed, sir.’

  ‘Quite right,’ Henry approved. ‘Do we have a pump?’

  ‘Oh yes, sir. Johnnie’s a-using of it now.’

  ‘We’ll come down and see,’ Caroline said.

  The butler’s head lifted and his eyebrows shot up with surprise. It was not usual for the lady of the house to inspect the basement when it flooded. All his previous employers had kept well away from such emergencies. ‘It is very wet, ma’am,’ he warned, ‘and none too clean.’

  ‘I’ll wear my boots,’ she said.

  It was eerie down in the cellars with clusters of yellow candles flickering light into the gloom and gangs of servants wading about in the black water like miners in a flooded cavern. The pump didn’t seem to be having any effect at all, although Farren assured them that everything was under control.

  ‘You’ll need a good hot meal inside you after all this,’ Caroline said. ‘I’ll go up and see to it directly.’ And she went stomping off.

  ‘A characte
r,’ Mr Farren said to the housekeeper, when the cellars were finally drained and the good meal had been served and eaten.

  The housekeeper, who was called Mrs Benotti, was stout and stolid. ‘An Easter, Mr Farren,’ she said. ‘All the same are the Easters. Renowned for it. Characters to a man are the Easters, Mr Farren, even if they’re women.’

  The next morning was quite cool, their impromptu lake had drained away and the garden was greener than they’d ever seen it.

  ‘We will take breakfast downstairs in the breakfast room,’ Henry said. The drop in temperature had renewed his energy.

  It was a novelty to be up and dressed and to have their meal waiting for them on the side-board and The Times laid neatly beside Henry’s plate. ‘We are like an old married couple,’ Caroline said, for the table arrangements reminded her of breakfast with Nan and Mr Brougham.

  ‘Ask Farren to come up,’ Henry said to the maid, as she set the coffee pot on its stand. ‘We ought: to see if there’s been any more damage anywhere. It wouldn’t surprise me if there’d been some windows cracked.’

  But Farren reassured them. The cellars were still tacky but the water had all been pumped away, and he’d inspected every room and all the windows were intact, they had his word for it.

  ‘Thank heavens for that, eh,’ Henry said, cheerfully admiring Caroline’s glossy curls as she sat in the sunshine.

  ‘It’s August now you see, sir,’ Farren said. ‘We always have storms in August in this part of the world.’

  ‘August already,’ Henry said. ‘Fancy that!’ And it occurred to him that he really ought to be getting back to work. He’d been away for nearly three weeks. Perhaps it was fitting that the heat and the honeymoon should come to an end together. ‘Would you have the carriage ready for me, Farren, at half past eight, if you please.’

  ‘Where are we going?’ Caroline asked, when Farren had curved his spine into its obedient crescent and removed himself from the room.

  ‘You may stay here in the garden, my love, and enjoy the better weather,’ he said, ‘but I must go back to work.’

  ‘Quite right,’ she said. ‘We’ve been idle long enough. We will go back together.’

  ‘There’s no need for that,’ he said. ‘I must work, of course, but now that we are married there is no need for you …’

  ‘Why not?’ she asked, and there was a steely quality to her voice that should have warned him.

  But he was still buffered by contentment and he missed it. ‘Wives don’t work, my darling,’ he said easily. ‘Not in our level of society. They have husbands to work for them. There is no necessity for you to work now. And besides, it wouldn’t be proper.’

  ‘I worked before we were married,’ she said. ‘We worked together and you were quite happy about that. So I can’t see any reason why I shouldn’t go on working now.’

  ‘That was different,’ he said, speaking rather stiffly because he was annoyed that she was arguing with him and especially over such a trivial matter when he was so plainly in the right. ‘You needed an occupation then, but you don’t need one now. You’ve occupation enough being a wife. No, no, I will work and you will stay at home.’

  ‘What squit!’ she said, using her grandmother’s trenchant word, because it made her so cross to hear him talk such nonsense.

  He looked up at her angry face and realized that he had made a mistake. Surely she didn’t really want to go to work? That would be downright unnatural. Married women never went to work. Not in these enlightened times. But she was folding her table napkin in a slow deliberate way that was rather unnerving. It was too late to retract what he’d said so he decided to be shocked by her language instead. ‘Caroline! What a word to use!’

  ‘If you think I mean to sit at home and twiddle my thumbs,’ she said, ignoring the distraction, ‘when there are deals to be made and publishers to persuade, then you are very much mistaken.’ She put the napkin beside her plate, stood up and walked away from the table.

  ‘Where are you going?’ he asked, following her.

  She paused at the door, her face hard. ‘To get ready, of course. I told you. I’m coming with you.’

  ‘It ain’t up to you to say what you’ll do,’ he said, his voice rising in anger that she should oppose him so strongly. ‘You are my wife and you’ll do as I say.’ And he held onto the door knob to prevent her leaving.

  ‘I will not!’ Struggling with his hands.

  ‘You will!’ Opposing her with all his strength.

  ‘You can’t tell me what I may and mayn’t do, Henry Easter. I shall do as I please the same as I always have.’ She was stamping her feet with anger. ‘I’m an Easter, dammit.’

  ‘And I am not?’

  ‘Don’t be foolish. Of course you are. What has that to do with it?’ She was still trying to pull his hands away from the door knob.

  He was too cross to answer her sensibly. Somehow or other battle had been joined and now he had to go through with it and defeat her. ‘Devil take it,’ he shouted at her. ‘If you go on like this, I shall lock you in.’

  She stopped pulling at his hands, turned and walked coolly away from him. ‘Very well then,’ she said. ‘I shall jump out of the window.’

  ‘From the first floor?’

  ‘From the first floor. You see if I don’t.’ And really with that dark face blazing and her eyes glaring she looked capable of anything.

  ‘You’re supposed to obey me, Caroline. I’m your husband.’

  ‘Squit!’

  ‘Love, honour and obey! You promised.’

  ‘Squit! Squit! Squit!’ Stamping her anger at him.

  ‘Hush!’ he said. ‘Do you want the servants to hear?’

  ‘I don’t care,’ she shouted. ‘I’ll shout if I want to. Let them hear.’

  There were wheels scraping the cobbles outside the window. ‘Here’s the carriage,’ he said. ‘Now look here, Caroline, I am going to ride to the station, where I mean to catch the nine o’clock to London, and I’m going on my own. I forbid you to come with me.’ His face was haughty with anger.

  ‘Hoity-toity,’ she said, turning her back on him. ‘Do as you please, but don’t imagine you will stop me. If I can’t come with you, I shall go on my own.’

  His fury was so intense he was afraid he might hit her. How could she oppose him so? After all that love? When they’d been so happy? Impossible woman! There was only one thing to do, if he were to continue to behave honourably, and he did it quickly, leaving her and the room without another word.

  He was trembling with fury all the way to the station. How dare she make such a scene! How dare she defy him! It was more than he could bear. But the gentle rocking journey to Nine Elms calmed him, and by the time he arrived in the Strand he was almost himself again, back in the world of men and work where people didn’t fly off into tantrums all the time.

  His colleagues were full of gossip about the gale. Windows had been broken all over the City, they said, and several were missing in the Easter headquarters. But that was nothing according to Mr Jolliffe, his clerk. Seven thousand panes of glass had been smashed in the new House of Commons, and St James’ Theatre had lost eight hundred, and Burlington Arcade was completely destroyed. ‘Never known a storm like it, Mr Henry sir.’

  It was rewarding to be able to put repairs in hand at once, and after that to deal with a daunting pile of correspondence. He worked all morning, answering one letter after another, passing those that simply needed acknowledgement across to Mr Jolliffe, and entering reported alterations to rail and coach timetables onto the chart that now covered the far wall of his office with instant and up-to-date information.

  ‘So many changes in such a short time,’ he said to Mr Jolliffe in mock complaint. ‘I turn my back for five minutes and they put on ten more trains. Everything happens so quickly now a days.’

  ‘That’s progress, so they say, Mr Henry. And all progress is to the good, now ain’t it?’

  ‘True,’ Henry said, picking up the next
letter.

  It was from Mr Chaplin of the London Birmingham Railway with ‘some news that may interest you’. A Bill was currently being passed through the Commons to enable the building of an extension to the South Eastern railway line which would run from Ashford to Canterbury. ‘I shall take shares as soon as they are offered and would strongly advise you to do the same.’

  Well now, that was news. ‘Have you heard anything of this?’ he asked, handing the letter across to Mr Jolliffe.

  ‘Rumours, Mr Henry. There has been talk. Shall I circulate it?’ All information about new lines was always circulated within the company.

  ‘Yes,’ Henry said vaguely, because they both knew it was always done and he had already begun to write his reply.

  So the letter was circulated, and the first pair of hands into which it was passed by an eager and congratulatory Mr Jolliffe belonged to the new Mrs Easter, who’d been working in her room, catching up on her correspondence ever since she had arrived that morning.

  She took action on it at once, sending a runner round to Mr Chaplin’s office with a note to suggest that the two of them should meet in Mr Cranshaw’s Tea House in the Strand some time that afternoon to discuss the matter. If a new line was to be built then Easter stalls could be incorporated into all the station designs from the very beginning, and in the most advantageous positions. It was splendid news.

  The runner returned within the hour with the message that Mr Chaplin was agreeable to four o’clock and would bring his colleagues from the South Eastern with him. By twenty past five the better part of the deal had been provisionally agreed upon. She returned to the Easter headquarters in high good humour. And walked straight into Henry in the foyer.