‘I’d rather take a train into London,’ Caroline said. And off she went, with Euphemia in anxious attendance.
Her behaviour infuriated Henry, particularly as he didn’t like to check it for fear of harming the baby. And it drove Mr Jernegan and Mr Maycock into apoplexy.
‘It’s downright disgusting,’ Mr Maycock said, spraying spittle all over the corner of Edward’s desk. He and Mr Jernegan had come up to the Strand together to see if the rumours were true and they were both horrified to find that they were. ‘Don’t she have any sense of propriety, appearing here day after day in that condition? Mrs Easter should stop her.’.
‘Mrs Easter approves, I fear,’ Edward told him, wiping the spit from his desk with the duster he kept ready for such emergencies. There were times when he found Mr Maycock rather trying.
‘Then her husband should.’
Edward put the duster back in its tray and shrugged his shoulders eloquently.
‘When our dear Queen is enceinte,’ Mr Jernegan said, ‘which it has to be said is often the case, although I’m sure it is a cause for congratulation to her devoted subjects, if a trifle expensive if you follow me, when our dear Queen is enceinte you don’t see even so much as a scrap of her in public places. No indeed. Not a scrap. Our dear Queen has the discretion to hide herself away.’
‘Courage, mon vieux!’ Edward said. ‘The child will soon be delivered and so will we.’
‘Amen to that, Mr Edward sir,’ Mr Maycock sprayed, ‘for I tell ‘ee, ‘tis a scandal sir. It ain’t proper.’
‘Ah, but what if we ain’t delivered?’ Mr Jernegan said. ‘What then? If you want my opinion, we’re being taken over, that’s what’s happening.’ His long saturnine face glowered with righteous indignation. ‘It’s Mr Henry this and Mr Henry that at every blessed meeting nowadays, and if it’s not Mr Henry it’s Mrs Henry and that’s a sight worse when you consider where she ought to be. We’re being taken over by a pair of interlopers, for when all’s said and done, who are they? He ain’t a true member of the family, and she’s a woman. We shall never be rid of him or her.’
‘If the child don’t do the trick,’ Edward said, giving his two colleagues a knowing smile, ‘then there are other ways to kill the cat. We shall get what we all desire in the end. Never fear. Meantime, we may be rid of the lady in less than a month. Think of that, Mr Jernegan. In less than a month.’
But until then they all had to wait,, each with his individual hopes. And misgivings.
The child was born in the early hours of 3 May after a labour in which his mother prowled and groaned and tried to make herself comfortable in all sorts of positions, lying and sitting. She even tried a pile of cushions set on the floor because she said the bed was impossible. And she kept her maid, young Totty Jones from the ragged school, perpetually on the run, fetching hot drinks and cold sponges and more and more cushions.
During a lull in the long first stage, and after she’d sent Totty off for raspberry tea so that she wouldn’t hear, she asked Euphemia how the baby was going to get out. She had wondered about it earlier but had been reluctant to broach the subject, even with her dear Pheemy. Now she was full of anxiety about it.
‘Why,’ Euphemia said, ‘by the same route as it got in.’
Caroline was quite shocked. ‘Pheemy!’ she said, her grey eyes enormous above pain-flushed cheeks. ‘Do you know about –that?’
‘Oh yes,’ Euphemia assured. ‘I was brought up in India, don’t forget, and in India everybody knows about it. In India, love between men and women is considered a holy thing, you see. There were statues in the temples showing it all, exactly, in every detail.’
That was so amazing it made the pain recede. ‘Statues!’ Caroline said. ‘I can’t believe it. Why, I’ve never even heard anyone speak about it. Did you see them, these statues?’
‘Oh yes,’ Euphemia said again, and her lovely madonna face didn’t seem the least bit troubled. She was dressed in the full-length white linen apron and the white starched cap advised by Miss Nightingale, and suitably accoutred, she was taking everything that happened with a most commendable calm, even though she wasn’t at all sure she would know what to do when the moment of birth actually arrived.
‘What were they like?’
‘They were beautiful,’ Euphemia said. ‘Full of joy and satisfaction.’
‘Good heavens!’ Caroline said. What an extraordinary thing. She would never have thought of it as holy. Full of pleasure certainly, but not holy. Holiness was for priests and saints, like Mama. And yet Mama must have done those things too, otherwise she and Will would never have been born.
But then another pain took hold and squeezed philosophy and speculation quite away. ‘Oh!’ she panted, clinging about Euphemia’s neck, ‘I shall never have another baby as long as I live. I swear it.’
Euphemia decided it was time to send the newly returned Totty to fetch the doctor.
By the time he arrived Caroline was in the throes of pains so extreme that Euphemia was quite worried beneath the calm of that professional apron. But he was comfortingly unruffled and having declared that there was no cause for alarm he sat himself by the window, opened a chink in the curtains and proceeded to watch the sky.
And in the event the child was born without any need of his help. It was a boy, as pink as poached salmon and with an amazingly wrinkled face and a cavern of a mouth and the oddest crest of dark damp hair like a coxcomb. Caroline was delighted with him and took him in her arms and kissed him over and over again and told him he was the dearest little duck, and when Euphemia suggested that it might still his cries if he were put to the breast, she fed him at once and with pleasure, smiling at Euphemia over the top of his busy black head, and ignoring the doctor completely.
By the time Henry was finally allowed into the room to inspect his offspring, she was completely recovered, and held the baby up between her hands for him to see, glowing with pleasure.
‘Madam is a natural mother,’ the doctor said, as he and Henry went back downstairs.
‘I’m glad to hear you say so,’ Henry said. It was past six o’clock and they could hear the servants clattering up and down the back stairs. A new day was beginning, and everything was as it should be.
‘It ain’t always the case, I’m grieved to say,’ the doctor confided.
‘But it is with Mrs Easter.’
‘Oh indeed.’
Thank heavens for that, Henry thought. Now we can live our lives as we should, with the man of the house earning the living and the woman at home with her baby. And for the next two weeks, it seemed that he was right.
Caroline spent her days in a milky trance, either feeding the baby or cuddling him or eating enormous meals herself or held fast in a glowing sleep. Her friends and relations came to visit, bearing gifts, the child was named, Henry after his father and William after his uncle, his great-uncle and his great-grandfather, and the date for his christening was set. And they were all peacefully happy together.
And even when she was allowed up and came downstairs for her first dinner with her husband, she talked of nothing except little Harry and what a dear good boy he was, and how strong. She was still decidedly plump after the birth, plump and easy, pink cheeked and bright eyed, and she looked so happy it was a joy to see her. Oh yes, Henry thought, a natural mother, and he loved her with the most pleasantly protective warmth because of it.
So it was all the more of a shock to him when the papers arrived for the next regional manager’s meeting in June and she told him she was going to attend.
‘You can’t!’ he said. ‘I forbid it.’
‘Oh come,’ she rebuked, sparkling at him from the other side of the breakfast table, ‘we ain’t starting all that again, surely? Of course I shall attend. I’ve had a simply splendid idea while I’ve been at home with Harry, and I’ve talked it over with Nan and done a lot of work on it, and now I can’t wait to tell everybody all about it.’
He tried to keep his temper and be reas
onable. ‘Tell me about it,’ he urged, ‘and I will present it to the committee on your behalf.’
‘No fear!’ she said. ‘I mean to be there to see their faces when I tell ‘em. That’ll be half the sport.’
‘And what is to become of poor Harry while you are so employed?’ he wanted to know. ‘You have a child now, Caroline, and you must stay at home and care for him.’ And it grieved him to hear how pompous he sounded, particularly when he knew that what he was saying was right and proper.
‘As if I wouldn’t,’ she said. ‘You mustn’t worry about Harry, my dearest. Harry will be looked after just the same as ever. He shan’t want for anything, I can promise you. As if I would ever neglect my baby!’
‘I don’t see how you can say that, if you mean to go traipsing up to London to attend this meeting.’
‘Why, I shall take him with me, of course,’ she said, helping herself to another slice of toast from the rack.
He could feel his heart sinking in his chest. ‘Oh, Caroline!’ he said. ‘Why must you act in this way? It ain’t seemly.’
‘You sound just like Papa,’ she said cheerfully. ‘He was always saying things weren’t seemly.’
‘He was probably right, poor man,’ his son-in-law said with miserable fellow-feeling. And as there didn’t seem to be any way of persuading her, and he couldn’t shout at her when she’d just had a baby, and in any case she’d taken away all his appetite, he left the table and went upstairs to prepare for work.
All through that day, whenever he had a moment for thought, he pondered the problem she’d set him. If she went to the meeting and put her plan into operation she would go on and on with it until it was completed, no matter how hard she had to work and how often it took her out of the house. It was no use appealing to Nan because her support had already been canvassed and won, and although Euphemia would be sympathetic she would hardly be able to persuade a determined character like Caroline. It needed a man to cope with her, and now that her father was dead there was nobody else who could do it. Uncle Billy was too feeble to stand up to anybody, through no fault of his own poor man, for he couldn’t help being ill, and Edward was no good either because there was something about him that you couldn’t trust, and although Will understood her, he spoiled her as much as everybody else, and in any case he was rarely at home.
No, there was nothing for it, he would either have to oppose her himself or allow her to go to the meeting. And he couldn’t oppose her when she was so recently confined. That would be neither fair nor proper. So the meeting it had to be, even though he knew her attendance was unwise. Perhaps the regional managers would solve the problem for him by rejecting her idea out of hand.
But of course they didn’t. She presented it too well.
The managers’ reports were read and accepted with some modifications, and when Nan handed the meeting over to her granddaughter, ‘who has a new plan to present to ’ee, which I’m sure you’ll welcome’.
They prepared to listen politely, turning their faces towards her, although Henry noticed that Mr Maycock and Mr Jernegan were frowning and Edward was wearing the blank expression that showed he was keeping his feelings under tight control. To everyone’s surprise and interest she began by circulating a report of her own. When had she had that printed? Henry wondered. And by whom? No wonder she said she’d done a lot of work on this. And he had to admire her despite his annoyance.
‘This is a very simple plan, gentlemen,’ she said as the clerk placed the last paper in front of the last manager, ‘however, in my estimation, it will increase the takings at most of our shops by something in the region of 20%. It will require extra workers of course, porters, counter hands, warehousemen. I have estimated the likely cost of such an increase. You will find the figures on the second page of my report. And as you are the lynch pins of the entire operation I have estimated a potential increase in your salaries too, as you will also see, which is likely to be somewhere in the region of 20% depending upon the sales in your area, as you would expect.’
It was masterly. Except for Mr Maycock and Mr Jernegan the regional managers were eating out of her hands even before they’d opened the report.
‘What I propose,’ she said, ‘is that we should sell books at all our shops as well as from our railway stalls. The way forward for this company is to extend the range of the goods we sell. If you are agreeable to my suggestion we shall cease to be merely newsagents and become newsagents, stationers and booksellers, with our signs altered accordingly.’
They were warm with excitement at the idea. Some of them were already writing surreptitious figures in the margins of the report, estimating what their salary increase would be. Even Mr Jernegan and Mr Maycock had stopped frowning and were looking interested. But it was Edward’s reaction that was the most surprising.
When the buzz died down a little, he looked across to Nan to show that he would like to speak, for he was always perfectly correct on these occasions.
‘May I say, cousin Caroline,’ he said, ‘how much I welcome and support your proposal, which seems to me quite excellent. In fact not just excellent but obvious, as are all good ideas, when once they’ve been thought and developed and explained, are they not? I hardly think we shall need to put this matter to the vote, for I cannot imagine anyone about this table who would see anything in it that they could possibly oppose. There might be one or two who might have, shall we say, doubts,’ glancing at Mr Jernegan, ‘but I think I may assure them that a plan like this should give us all the very thing we require, and probably in a shorter time than we now think possible. That being so I would like to second my cousin’s proposition.’
A throaty ‘Hear hear’ rumbled about the table, but Nan required a vote, just the same.
It was a unanimous triumph. And the pleasure and excitement of it spilled over into Nan’s customary dinner that night.
It would have been an exciting party in any case, because Will had come home that afternoon, and what was even better, intended to stay in London for ‘about a month’. So for the first time since the autumn, all ten ‘London Easters’ were gathered about Nan’s table; Billy and Matilda, Edward and Mirabelle, Jimmy and Matty, Caroline and Henry, Euphemia and Will.
He was in splendid humour and exceedingly handsome, for while he’d been travelling the country, covering Chartist meetings and following the progress of the third National Petition, he’d put on weight and grown a beard. Not a neat moustache and a carefully trimmed Spanish goatee like Henry’s but a full bristling set, covering the whole of his lower jaw in thick curls of hair only slightly darker than those that covered his head. It gave him an air at once dashing and formidable, like a military man or a sea-captain.
He was full of stories, about Mr Feargus O’Connor’s election as Member of Parliament for Nottingham, about the five million signatures already gathered on the National Petition, about the new potato famine in Ireland and the trade recessions in France. ‘We are still in the middle of railway expansion here in England,’ he said, ‘but in France the navvies are being laid off.’
‘So France will be your next destination,’ Mr Brougham said.
‘It seems likely.’
‘I hope I may persuade you to be a speaker at my next literary salon if that is to be the case,’ Mirabelle said. ‘Our neighbour’s politics are always intensely interesting to the London literati.’
‘If I am back in London at the time,’ he said.
‘Which ain’t likely, Mirry,’ Edward pointed out. ‘For I’m deuced if I ever knew a man with such itchy feet.’
‘That is a sign of a man with a mission,’ Billy said, helping himself to more wine, despite Matilda’s scowl of warning. ‘Always knew what he wanted, even as a lad at college.’ He too had aged noticeably during the winter, but in his case the change was deterioration. His eyes were bloodshot and the skin of his cheeks threaded with purple veins.
‘No,’ Will said, smiling at his uncle, ‘it’s a deal more simple than that.
I go where the work takes me. That’s the truth of it.’ It wasn’t the entire truth, but he could hardly confess to that. He actually took as many commissions as were offered, and the further he had to travel the better, for that kept him away from home and the difficulties of the continuing attraction he felt for Euphemia. ‘The men with the mission are my editors. A reporter is really little more than a camera obscura, like Mr Fox Talbot’s new machine. We see the scene and we describe it. No more.’
‘But when your view is printed in a newspaper and published to the world, it will surely have an effect upon its readers, will it not?’ Frederick Brougham inquired.
‘That is what we all hope,’ Will admitted, ‘but it can’t be guaranteed. Scores of us wrote about the starvation in Ireland, but the poor weren’t fed, even so.’
‘Carrie is the one with the mission,’ Nan said, smiling at her. ‘We’ve had revolution in the firm this afternoon and accepted it unanimously what’s more.’
I shall never stop her now, Henry thought, watching his wife as she glowed and smiled. She will go back into the firm and work as hard as she ever did, as though she were single, or a man. There is no stopping her. And the thought made him sigh.
Fortunately there was so much happy talk about the table that nobody noticed him. Except Euphemia. And she was sighing too.
To be dining with Will again after such a long time, and to know that she would see him frequently during the next month, was such an exquisitely tantalizing pleasure that she could hardly bear the pain of it. During the winter and spring while she’d been hard at work in Clerkenwell and looking after Caroline in Richmond she had persuaded herself that her love for him was a childish passion, over and forgotten, but the sight of him now, so handsome and self-assured, had renewed all her old feelings and magnified them a hundredfold. She loved him more than ever, only now she knew how hopeless it was. What a blessing she was still staying in Richmond with Caroline. To be living in the same house for a month would have been a torment, and plainly something she would have to avoid in the future. I will write to Miss Nightingale, she decided, for she must be returned by now, and perhaps she will be able to recommend a hospital where I could train, preferably somewhere abroad.
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