Tuppenny Times

by Beryl Kingston

  ‘A’ Thursday,’ her husband said, endeavouring to sound firm about it.

  Mrs Peabody sighed and tied her shawl more firmly about her waist to keep out the worst of the chill. Thursday was three days away. It seemed a long time to wait to hear what the young woman had in mind.

  But it was a very short time for all the preparatory work that Nan had set herself to do. She intended to make the Peabodys an offer they couldn’t refuse, so she needed to know a very great deal about their trade before they met.

  Later that afternoon, she walked their territory, notebook in hand, estimating the wealth and class of their clientele. It was, as she was quick to realize, a small walk and not an impressive one, hemmed in by the River Thames, the market gardens around Tothill Fields, the gridwork of the Chelsea waterworks, the wilderness of the Five Fields, and the private gardens of the King’s palace and St James’ Park. There were a few fine houses along Whitehall and around the Abbey churchyard, but for the most part the streets were small and ancient, crammed with offices and humble with clerks. Just the sort of place for the tuppenny Times, which the Peabodys didn’t appear to carry.

  The next afternoon she went to Lincoln’s Inn Fields. Mr Duncan, the solicitor in Portugal Street, was rather surprised to see her again so soon, and plainly thought she had come to report a failure, but she soon wiped the supercilious sneer from his face by her opening remark.

  ‘I intend to buy the Whitehall walk,’ she said.

  He rustled through the latest list on his desk. ‘Ah!’ he said, ‘I don’t believe we have the details of that one.’

  ‘No,’ she agreed cheerfully, ‘course you don’t. It en’t come on the market yet. I’m buying it tomorrow. What’s a fair price, would you say?’

  ‘Well now, as to that,’ Mr Duncan stalled, ‘I cannot be sure ’twould be in order to divulge such information. There being no transaction in hand, so to speak.’

  ‘It en’t a quarter the size of my Mayfair,’ she said, ignoring his hesitation, ‘and the clientele is middlin’ to down at heel. Low sales, I should say, and poor prospects. Not an easy one to sell, even if it was to come your way.’

  ‘I wonder you care to offer for it,’ he said, supercilious again.

  She strolled across the room to the map on the wall, and put her gloved finger on Westminster, looking at the size of it, in comparison with the great sprawl that was London. And her ambition erupted inside her brain, and flowed down her finger, warm as blood, pulsing onwards. She could almost see it, spreading in all directions right across the map like an unstoppable current. And she knew in that moment exactly what she wanted and intended to have, the sole and exclusive right to sell newspapers all over this great city. Two more newswalks would certainly cut her losses and increase her profits, but if she were to own them all, why then, there would be no more skimped meals and no more poor presents, and the rent would be a mere bagatelle.

  ‘’Tis a small corner, in all conscience,’ she agreed, ‘but I mean to buy every walk the length and breadth of London, so it en’t wise to leave a corner begging, if you take my meaning.’

  ‘Madam,’ he said, horrified at such effrontery, ‘have you any idea of the sort of sums such an enterprise would entail?’

  ‘Thousands,’ she said with splendid aplomb. ‘That’s nothin’!’ Now that it was thought, it was possible, it was what she would do.

  He was so taken aback, he not only gave her the estimate she wanted but also promised to draw up a deed of sale ready for Thursday and to keep her informed should any other walk come onto the market.

  ‘Immediately, mind!’ she instructed as she whisked her bright coat out of his office. ‘I en’t one to wait.’

  So suitably informed, she went to Galloways on Thursday afternoon to meet the couple who, although they didn’t know it yet, were to be the first employees in her projected empire.

  They arrived timidly and a little before time, which pleased her, their greatcoats damp from the morning’s drizzle. And when she had bought them coffee and settled them in a snug corner beside the fire, and allowed them to talk about the weather and clear the nervousness from their throats, she put down her cup and opened negotiations.

  ‘I got a pretty fair idea of the worth of most things in this trade,’ she said bluntly, ‘so I don’t intend beating about the bush. That’s a fool’s trick, and we en’t fools.’

  Mrs Peabody felt prevailed upon to agree.

  ‘Very well, then, that being so, I shall tell ’ee what I have in mind straight out, and when I’ve done, I hope you won’t feel no compunction answering me the same way. ’Tis to our mutual benefit. And profit I daresay.’

  This time it was Mr Peabody’s turn to nod his head, since she was looking him in the eye and seemed to expect an answer.

  ‘The market value of your newswalk is £37, so I am reliably told. You might ask more were you to consider selling, that I’ll allow, but you certainly wouldn’t get it. Weekly profits, if I’m any judge, somewhere between ten and sixteen shillings. A fair living, Mrs Peabody, but it en’t a good one. Leastways, not near so good as what I’m going to propose to ’ee.’

  ‘We ain’t sellin’, Mrs Easter,’ Mr Peabody warned, weakly and after an eruption of coughing.

  ‘I know that, Mr Peabody,’ she grinned at him. ‘Leastways you en’t selling enough, ’Tis a risky business. It en’t dependable.’

  Caught by the speed of her wit and her speech, he was forced to agree.

  ‘Well then,’ she said, grinning again, ‘what I have to suggest to ’ee is this. Under certain conditions, I would be prepared to take over all the responsibility of ordering and collecting news-sheets and such like, and pay you fifteen shillings a week into the bargain simply for deliveries and selling. How say you to that?’

  Mrs Peabody’s eyes were round with the wonder of it. ‘Could ’ee do it?’ she asked, smiling at the proposition.

  Mr Peabody’s instincts knew there was a snag, but his brain still hadn’t caught up with her first trick, so for the moment he had to say silent and perplexed, knitting his brows and coughing anxiously.

  ‘Oh, I could do it, right enough,’ Nan assured them. ‘That en’t the problem. The problem is whether you would want me to. That’s the problem.’

  ‘I don’t see how ’tis to be done,’ Mr Peabody ventured.

  ‘By working in partnership,’ she said smoothly. ‘That’s how ’twill be done. I takes the risks, and you does the walking, and I pays you for it. What could be fairer than that?’ Put that way it certainly sounded most attractive. ‘A dependable income, Mr Peabody,’ his wife said quite rapturously. ‘Think of that!’

  ‘Course I should have to buy the rights,’ Nan said coolly. ‘That’s only fair and square, you’ll agree, seeing as how I’m taking over all the risks.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said slowly. ‘I see that.’ But he was still so bemused he couldn’t see anything clearly at all.

  ‘When you’ve finished your coffee, we’ll take a threesome over to Portugal Street and get it all signed and sealed,’ Nan told them. ‘No time like the present, I always say.’

  And so, while Mr Peabody’s wits were still limping uselessly along behind him, they did. It wasn’t until he was walking quietly home again, with Mrs Peabody chattering happily beside him, that he realized that somehow or other he had done the very thing he’d sworn he wouldn’t do. He had sold their newswalk.

  ‘What luck!’ Mrs Peabody chortled, nodding her bonnet at him. ‘Fifteen shillin’ a week, reg’lar. What luck!’

  ‘She’ll soon be out of pocket,’ Mr Peabody said with lugubrious satisfaction.

  ‘So she may,’ his wife agreed, trotting along beside him through the jostle in the Strand, ‘but that’s her look-out.’

  ‘’Twill serve her right for bein’ so quick.’

  ‘She think she can change the walk, that’s what ’tis.’

  ‘She may try, but she won’t change nothin’, Mrs Peabody, you mark my words.’

 
; Changes began at eight o’clock the very next morning, when Nan arrived at the Horseferry with her cart full of news-sheets. ‘This is a new paper called The Times,’ she informed them. ‘It should sell well in this area, so I’ve bought you three dozen copies. Start by walking all the alleys between Petty France and Peter Street. Here’s a map with the route all marked upon it, d’you see. Tuppence a copy.’

  ‘But we never walk the alleys!’ Mr Peabody protested.

  ‘You do now,’ she said firmly. ‘Good luck to ’ee. I’m off to increase our trade in Whitehall and the Abbey Square. I shall be back here at ten to see how you’ve fared, so you’ll need to look pretty sharp.’

  And that was that.

  They were very put out to be given their marching orders so brusquely, but they did as they were told and found to their surprise that the new tuppenny paper was really quite easy to sell. In fact many of the clerks already seemed to know it and like it, and professed themselves ‘bucked no end’ that it was being offered to them in their offices and so soon in the day. By the time ten o’clock sounded they had sold every copy bar one and Mr Peabody was beginning to wonder whether their new employer wasn’t some kind of witch. A suspicion which grew even stronger when she came beaming down upon them at ten o’clock with the news that she had persuaded twenty of their established customers to take a newspaper every single day.

  ‘How did ’ee do it?’ Mrs Peabody asked in amazement.

  ‘Trade secret!’ Nan said, grinning. ‘Now all you got to do is deliver ’em before seven o’clock, and collect payment on Fridays and Saturdays. ’Tis all wrote down for ’ee. There’s the book.’

  There was no arguing with her.

  ‘It fair wears me out just to listen to her,’ Mr Peabody complained. ‘This’ll mean two rounds. We never done two rounds before.’

  Mrs Peabody had been considering the implications too. ‘She’ll have to pay us more for two rounds,’ she said. ‘That’s only fair. We’ll do it for a week an’ then we’ll mention it to her.’

  But as they soon discovered, mentioning things to Nan Easter was a waste of breath.

  ‘We agreed a fair wage,’ she told them, gathering up the four lone papers that remained from that day’s sales. ‘You signed your names to it, so you did.’

  ‘But this is different,’ Mr Peabody tried.

  ‘No it en’t,’ she said, more sharp-tongued than usual because she was ashamed of herself for tricking them so cruelly. But it had to be done. That rent had to be paid. ‘Our agreement was, what you may remember it being such a short while ago, that I was to do the ordering and take the risks, and you was to do the work and be paid fifteen shillings for doing it. Which you agreed was handsome. Where’s the difference?’ Her mittened hands were poised on the handles of the cart ready to push it away.

  Put like that he couldn’t think of any, however dissatisfied he might be feeling.

  ‘At least we got our fifteen shillin’s a week,’ Mrs Peabody reassured, as their new mistress marched off. ‘An’ reg’lar.’

  And so the work continued, and thanks to Nan’s tirelessness, the orders for deliveries increased. By the end of April she had put aside sufficient money to cover the rent, and in addition to that she almost had enough cash in hand to consider buying another walk. And just at that moment, most opportunely, St George’s Fields in Lambeth came onto the market.

  Even though it meant spending another thirty pounds of poor William Henry’s remaining capital, she didn’t hesitate for a second. She knew now that the further her little empire extended, the bigger her profits became. With this walk she could afford to employ an assistant and hire a pony and trap.

  When the papers were signed and St George’s Fields was legally hers, she took another business walk to the Bolt in Tun in Fleet Street and asked for Alexander Thistlewaite.

  She was momentarily surprised by the size of the young man who came lolloping into the foyer to find her. He was a good head taller than she was and had grown long in the arm and gangly limbed. His pock-marked forehead looked much the same, but the lower half of his face was now doubly scarred, nicked and blood-smeared by his first attempts at shaving. Why, he’s a young man, she thought. But his expression was exactly as she remembered it, a bright-eyed perky friendliness, like a cock sparrow.

  ‘Well ’ere’s a turn-up!’ he said, his pleasure obvious. ‘Mrs Easter or I’m a Dutchman, which I ain’t.’

  ‘D’you still want to work for me and my family?’ she asked him. ‘I need a groom-cum-newsman. Twenty shillings a week and all found.’

  ‘Live in?’

  ‘’Course.’

  The answer was immediate. ‘When do I start?’

  Two days later they hired the pony and trap from Mr Butterworth’s stables near the church in Chelsea, and Nan discovered that this fourteen year old Thiss had grown wise in the ways of horse-flesh during his stay at the Bolt in Tun. He took time over the choice of the pony, refusing one handsome bay on account of its ‘wicked eye’ and another passive creature because it was too badly spavined, and promising her that Pepperpot, the blue roan she finally chose, had ‘a good eye and a easy disposition’ despite his odd coloration, and would earn his keep, ‘given good handlin’.

  ‘That’s up to you, Thiss,’ she told him. ‘You’re the groom.’

  ‘We shall get on like a house afire. Shan’t we, Peps?’ he said.

  And so, for most of the time, they did. Although just occasionally when the wind was in the east or there was ice underfoot, the fire did get a little out of control.

  But his master settled into the household at Cheyne Row as though he’d been living there all his life. While Mrs Dibkins grumbled away to make him up a bed in one of the attic rooms, Mr Dibkins took him on a tour of the establishment and told him what a fine thing it would be to have another man on the premises. ‘I ain’t as young as I was, to tell the truth of it.’ And Thiss made cheerful conversation and agreed that you would need your strength ‘with all them fires an’ all,’ and supposed it true that you ‘have to keep a sharp look out for them tradesmen, artful beggars,’ but actually it was Bessie he was looking out for.

  He saw her at last as they were clomping down the attic stairs. She was just going into the nursery with two-year-old Johnnie grizzling in her arms.

  ‘You got yer own way then?’ she said, teasing him. ‘Never mind boo-hoo, Johnnie!’

  ‘Didn’t I tell yer?’

  ‘We shan’t get a minute’s peace now,’ she warned Mr Dibkins.

  For a moment the meaning of the words made Mr Dibkins feel he ought to defend their new workmate, but then he realized that the tone of her voice was giving her words the lie, and looked up to see that she was blushing, quite prettily, from behind the bushy screen of Johnnie’s thick dark hair.

  ‘Never seen that gel so uncommon animated,’ he confessed to his wife, as the two of them were settling for the night in their narrow cell of a room beside the kitchen.

  ‘Ho, but then you don’t notice like I does,’ Mrs Dibkins said cryptically.

  ‘What ain’t I noticed this time round?’ he said, easing his wash dolly from the tender edge of his stump.

  ‘Ho my dear,’ his wife said, ‘he been a-comin’ to the area door every week, reg’lar as clockwork, week in week out, ever since the missus come back from France without the master – God rest his soul. You ready for them ol’ bandages, my dear?’

  ‘You ain’t never tellin’ me they’re sweet on each other,’ Mr Dibkins said, wincing as she unwound the bandages, ‘because I won’t believe it. Why, they’re barely out their cradles the pair of ’em. No, no, ’tis a nonsense.’

  Mrs Dibkins shook her chins at him and did her best to twist her rubbery features into a knowledgeable leer. ‘Well, we shall see, shan’t we,’ she said. She was feeling rather aggrieved by the arrival of this unnecessary young man. There was no call to go hiring extra servants. Mr Easter would never have dreamed of doing such a thing. ‘You can’t depend on the yo
ung. Ho no! Always a-gallivantin’!’

  But rather to her disappointment Thiss’ gallivanting style was a positive advantage in his new career as a news-seller. There were scores of Bessies and Abigails slaving away in the basement kitchens of Lambeth, prepared to sigh for the quick wit and cocky walk of their new roundsman, ugly though he might be, and plenty of cooks prepared to bridle and giggle and pass the time of day with a young wag who always had something saucy to say for himself. Sales of the Daily Advertiser increased by the day, to Nan’s considerable satisfaction. Soon she and Thiss were cheerfully dividing all new streets between them, she to the front door to seduce the master, he to the back to charm the maid.

  It was a very busy summer, for there was plenty of news and most of it bad, so news-sheets were in great demand.

  The stories from France were particularly blood-curdling. In June a new law had been passed by the National Assembly. Called the law of the Prairial, it established that it was the duty of ordinary but patriotic citizens to denounce their neighbours to the Tribunal, if they had reason to believe that they were traitors to the revolution. The tumbrels now made a daily procession through the muted streets of Paris, carrying convicted prisoners to the guillotine a dozen at a time. ‘The citizens of Paris watch them go,’ the Morning Post reported, ‘but they say nothing, too sickened by the sight to cheer, too terrified by the power of the tribunal to protest. It is a blood-letting of a particularly vicious variety, and there appears to be no gainsaying it.’

  Nan’s regular customers were happily appalled. ‘Mad dogs, these Frenchies. Can’t think what the world is coming to,’ one of her butlers said, as he paid the family account at the end of a particularly dire week. ‘Always said we’d have trouble with them. Ever since that dark day when they killed poor King Louis.’

  ‘I was in Paris at that time,’ Nan told him, remembering. ‘I saw the whole thing, trial, execution and all, so I did.’

  He was most impressed and instantly sought her opinion concerning the barbarity of the French race. ‘Liberty and equality!’ he mocked. ‘Damm lot a’ nonsense. Don’t ’ee think so?’