The Penny Heart

by Martine Bailey

  My mother rebelled, cautiously and craftily, as thwarted women will. She gave me lessons in the stolen time while Father was away at business. I remember her standing before me in a bluebell-striped dress, her tired face suddenly shining as she opened A Ladies Instructor For Painting Diverse Delights, so we might copy its hand-coloured plates. ‘Grace, you have a fine eye,’ Mother said. I wanted to dissect the heart of my subjects, to catch the shadow of the wilting rose in cadmium red, and conjure the snow tumbling like thistledown outside the window in washes of cerulean blue. One day, when painting the gleaming sphere of an apple, a black wriggling creature punctured the skin from the inside. Mother was bemused that I carried on painting, recording the creature’s ugly pointed head and shiny segments. ‘That is the truth,’ I insisted, proud of my picture.

  In turn, my mother portrayed me in delicate shadowy pencil: a serious, thin-featured child; long limbed and shy. Even when alone with brushes in hand we spoke softly, alert to heavy footsteps on the drive. My mother’s high-strung nerves had trained my own. ‘He is here,’ I would whisper, my heart stirring as if an ogre crossed the threshold, and not my own father. Our work was rapidly hidden away in the seat of an oak settle. There must have been other lessons too, for I wrote with an elegant looped hand, and borrowed every new novel from the town’s paltry Circulating Library. Genteel crumbs of knowledge I think them now, remnants of a gentler age, like the biscuits Mother once twisted in Elizabethan knots.

  I have Mother’s paints still, in a chipped ebony box fitted out with palette, brushes, and jewel-like watercolour blocks. I still paint every day, just as fiercely, but now my spirit ranges further, and also – I have learned this lesson well – I look about myself with greater vigilance. A daydreamer, my father called me, but I wonder now if I have been a sleepwalker. I have not attended to my own affairs as I should. I have dozed with the bedstraw smoking, as Peg Blissett might have said.

  In those days, Father was a towering bear of a man, a master printer with a workshop of ten men. It was a high-ceilinged, racketing building, filled with trestles and mysterious machines, with printed papers strung across the ceiling. On a rare visit he showed me his work, lifting a new plate of copper that rippled like a blushing gold mirror.

  ‘It is metal with a memory,’ he said, stroking the surface with hands stained goblin-black. His method was to trace a figure onto onion paper, then scrape that outline onto waxed copper. Next came the master’s meticulous work; the etching into metal with the sharp steel called a burin, sending curls like ginger ringlets arcing up from the copper. Once acid had bitten out the pattern, the plate was inked and laid on the press. First a few, then a dozen, then a score of prints were squeezed into life between the rollers, like a single white butterfly multiplied into a swarm.

  My father kept his best work pasted in his sample book:

  Jonah Moore, Master Letter-Press & Copper-Plate Printer,

  No. 39 Blind Hart Alley

  Handbills, Cards, Invitations, Prices of Two Shillings 100 or Fifteen Shillings 1000

  Inside the book lay all Father’s outpourings, ever since he was the golden apprentice who later inherited his childless master’s business: illustrations of gods and men, warriors and angels, as good as any Italian master.

  ‘And now I scrape these tawdry penny-catchers,’ he growled. He was making a crude sketch of a half-undressed woman to crown a staymaker’s tradecard. ‘The metal mirror reflects my fall,’ he muttered.

  Thus I learned from him that the parable is true: that golden talents buried in the dark earth are a curse and not a blessing.

  We had few close acquaintances in Greaves, save the Brabantists, a society of dissenters who gathered about the preacher Caleb Brabant. Brabant himself was an eloquent old weaver with diamond bright eyes and white whiskers, who had once had a miraculous dream. ‘I saw Caesar hung upon the cross,’ he pronounced with his hands raised in celebration, ‘and all the land rejoiced to be free of the poison of the laurel crown. For when all crowns are dust, all will be equal.’

  Many hours were spent in meditation upon dreams. All agreed that the Devil appeared as a red beast, or a black dog, or leaping fire. Bread and blood, water and weeds were much discussed as omens. Amongst our congregation there was great hope of the Second Coming, bringing with it relief from poverty and pain. When bread was dear, or work was scarce, the society’s funds kept many members from the workhouse. And from Sabbath to Sabbath the belief in dreams and visitations kept everyone’s hopes alight.

  With no dame school in the town, there were at least hornbooks and scripture classes at our meeting house, where I could glean a little more learning. When I escaped from my parents I played with my only friends: Anne Dobson and John Francis Rawdon. As infants, our games were of ghosts that fluttered behind the woollen curtains, or messages scratched in the dust that set us giggling and shrieking. If the congregation stood up to share their dreams, we were banished to the back room, where we chattered of portents. If a person dreamed they died, could they ever wake? And when the Select rose at the Second Coming, would flesh grow back on their bones?

  Coaxed by Anne’s warmth and good humour, she and I grew to be dear friends. Though her homely face recalled a mournful spaniel, by the time she was fifteen, Anne was courted by Mr Greenbeck, curate of St Stephen’s, who had dealings with her father’s grocery shop. Once her betrothal was known, the Greenbecks were at once expelled from our gatherings, for Anglicans were reviled as peddlers of miracles and hocus-pocus. But Anne cared not a jot, so long as Mr Greenbeck would still take her.

  As for John Francis, he soon grew too big for us, his petticoat companions. For many years we were strangers, until one warm summer’s day he came upon me as I sketched out on the moors. Having just walked five miles across country, my old friend took a rest beside me on the grassy bank where my paints and paper were spread. The air was scented with wild flowers, the valley dropped green and lush below us to a glittering stream where cattle lazily drank. My former mischievous playfellow had grown into a well-made country lad, with red cheeks brightening his round face, and clear and intelligent blue-grey eyes. His accent was that of the country folk about Greaves: flat and coarse, but his confiding humour made me laugh. I shared my basket of Mother’s biscuits, lovers’ knots, aromatic with aniseed and sticky apricot. We talked all afternoon, of his family’s farm and his desire to leave the small minds of Greaves, of the modern world and its astonishing progress, and of how the young might make the world a better place.

  It grew late, and the first low stars glittered above us in the inky blue sky. We strolled home, falling comfortably into step. When we said our farewells by my gate, I welcomed his gentle touch on my arm and his suggestion that we meet again.

  I began to see John Francis almost every day, putting to use my long practice in subterfuge. When necessary, we communicated by exchanging letters in an empty bird’s nest in the branches of our garden’s lilac tree. Only Anne noticed the change in me. When I confided in her, she agreed to keep my secret only with the greatest reluctance.

  ‘John Francis is a good sort of fellow, but is he not rather humble for you, Grace?’ We were sauntering through the town, scrutinising him from under our bonnet brims. John Francis was larking about with his brothers, tossing his cap in the air for his new puppy to catch. The sight of him brought a smile to my face. He was certainly not as stiff and old-mannish as Jacob Greenbeck.

  ‘You are only fifteen, Grace, and rather young even for that age.’ Anne was cultivating a voice I fancied was how she thought the wife of a curate should speak. ‘And when the time comes, you can make a better match than him.’

  I paid no heed to Anne, just as I avoided Mother’s weary questions about where I disappeared all day. I craved freedom; to walk out of doors, to meet John and speak unguardedly, to hold hands, and finally to kiss sweetly, wrapped in each other’s arms. We both knew it was wrong to succumb to sin, and we withstood the worst of the Devil’s temptations. Yet what d
id Anne and Jacob know of the fever of such pleasure? If they longed for each other as we did, how could they forever delay their marriage?

  One black day Father ordered me into his study and stood over me, crimson-faced, a vein like a worm burrowing at his temple.

  ‘What is this?’ he roared. In his hand was a pencil portrait of John Francis, carelessly left beneath my bed. ‘Well?’

  ‘It is a picture, Father.’

  ‘That Rawdon lad. Think you have an admirer, do you?’ he mocked, in the voice of a stupid girl. ‘I’ll not have it! My daughter will not be thrown away on a Rawdon. He’s got a sniff of your prospects, that is all.’

  I stared mutely at the rug. It was the first time I had heard of my ‘prospects’, but knew better than to make a sound.

  ‘You drew it?’

  I nodded, brimming with tears.

  ‘Pitiful.’ He crumpled up the portrait in a ball and threw it in the corner. In anger, he pushed his huge flat hand against my shoulder. I stumbled backwards against the wall.

  At his growl of dismissal I ran up to my mother, who lay resting in her room with the curtains drawn, suffering from that mysterious affliction I fancied prevented her from bearing Father’s long-awaited son.

  ‘What does he mean – my prospects?’ I whispered.

  She passed a bony hand across her eyes. ‘No pray, not all that, Grace. It will only agitate him. For my sake not a word, my dear.’

  Yet one small matter did cheer me: for all his scorn, my father had recognised John Francis at once, so my portraiture was not so pitiful.

  I know now that my father was frustrated in his occupation. If he had been born in different circumstances, he may have been a remarkable artist. From observing him, I grew to love the Schools of Florence, the Flemish Masters, and our fine English painters. His idol was the Italian engraver, Piranesi, and one evening, having just returned from the tavern, he beckoned me to look inside a vast leather binder. At first I saw only black cross-hatchings, then gradually pieced together gigantic dungeons strung with hanging stairways, coiling chains, and grotesque lightless lamps.

  ‘The famed Carceri,’ he murmured. ‘The prisons of the mind that men try to impose upon us. A trap for our dreams. If we can only break out, child, the light is all about us.’

  I stared at the monstrous vision – more ghastly even than Beelzebub’s Castle in The Pilgrim’s Progress – of men dwarfed like ants on colossal stairs, of figures chained to walls beside spoke-wheeled apparatus. I backed away, but Father grasped my arm and said through beer-sour breath, ‘It is not a real prison. It is a fancy, a capriccio is the proper word.’ I took a step back to him and looked again. ‘A great artist has the courage to reveal the soul’s suffering. Not etch catch-penny advertisements, debasing everything he learned.’

  ‘The prisons of the mind,’ I repeated softly, and thought my father had spoken some great truth, but what it was I didn’t yet understand.

  Later I recalled his words, and those dungeons of forgotten captives. Sometimes, what we believe is trapped in the metal mirror can quicken and jump out from the frame; our dreams can bite back as savagely as any mythical Hydra. At times it is wise to feel fear.

  *

  By winter-time John Francis and I were sworn sweethearts, exchanging locks of hair, twisting together his fair strands with my darker brown. From John I learned our neighbours mistook my timid earnestness for pride, and envied my father’s wealth. Our talk turned to how men and women might live better lives, with dignity as man and wife. I suppose it was mostly youthful fervour, for we believed the world would soon be ours to inherit. Now I judge those innocent hours the happiest of my youth. But always there was the shadow circling above us, of discovery, and retribution at my father’s hand. These were the extent of my worries when I turned sixteen. All such innocence ended on the night of May the 5th, 1786.

  We were woken by a great hammering at the door long after midnight. Through the wall I heard the commands of strange men, and my father’s voice, at first angry, then high-pitched with alarm. He was arrested and taken to Lancaster jail, which made me at once recall the ink-black prints of the Carceri. There were no machines of torture at Lancaster, but it was wet and cold and crowded, and my father was thrown in a lock-up with scores of other wretches. By eavesdropping, I heard that Father had at last performed his act of courage. A riot had erupted in a nearby town, the poor whipped up by hunger to riot for bread. The signal for revolt had been the raising of a halfpenny loaf upon a stick, streaked with ochre and knotted with black crêpe, and the emblem: ‘Here Be Bleeding Famine Drest in Mourning Black’. Though the corn merchants were forced to lower their price, the leaders were arrested. Inflamed by their execution, Father printed a hundred penny pamphlets on the dangerous subject of Liberty. All Englishmen must rise at once, he proclaimed, to overthrow King and parliament.

  Poor Mother took to her bed and would not leave it, turning her face to the wall and refusing all food. Shame killed her faster than starvation. I was alone with her, holding her weightless hand as her spirit slipped gratefully from this world to the next. I kissed her dry lips, and, not knowing what else to do, cut a long tress of her thin grey hair. Later, I wove those strands into a crucifix, using bobbins and weights, as a lace-maker braids yarn. Set in silver like an amulet, that cross was most precious to me, keeping my mother’s presence close.

  Father was imprisoned for only ten weeks before a magistrate acquitted him. But in that short time, ruin struck us down like a tempest. When Father came home with a ragged beard and incurious eyes, he was a broken puppet of his former self. He had lost his printer’s licence, and so ceased his trade. Thanks only to a number of stealthy arrangements: to sell the business to another printer, and to come to an agreement with a local landlord, were we saved from being turned out of Palatine House.

  Yet more ill fortune was to come. Where we might have looked to neighbours, they shied away from us in whispering groups, and then a band of Brabantist Elders came to our door. I listened from the hallway to a voice I recognised as John Francis’s father

  ‘To riot is not our way, as you well know, Moore. Nor must the law be broken. Our duty is to wait for signs, and pray,’

  I knew from the stiffening of my father’s broad back that he was roused. ‘Aye, and rake over your dusty dreams like broody hens! Aye, and wait for your God to dole out bread to starving men. How long do you wait – until they drop in their graves? You may well look shamed. You would expel me, is that it? Have you not heard Tom Paine say, were we not corrupted by governments, then man might be friends with man? You would expel me for that, would you, brother?’

  I thought his defence well spoken, and admired him for one entire afternoon. Then, at supper time, he returned from the Bush tavern, staggering up the path, blinking and purplish from a surfeit of drink. Unfortunately, John Francis appeared from the back of the house at that self-same moment. My father was sharp-eyed when drunk, and caught him in his bloodshot gaze.

  ‘Still tryin’ to sponge off my daughter, Rawdon?’ Next, he glared at me. ‘It’s not you he wants, it’s your prospects,’ he shouted. I turned to go inside, but he hailed me. ‘Listen, you! Listen when I speak, you cloth-headed child.’

  ‘Please go,’ I muttered to John Francis. Affronted, he looked from me to my father and back.

  ‘No, Grace. Go into the house. I’ll deal with him.’

  Father began to roar then, swinging his inky knuckles. ‘If I can’t have it, no one will,’ he cried incomprehensibly. I cringed away, longing for the stone flags beneath my feet to open up and swallow me. Father landed a clumsy blow on John Francis’s arm, but the lad backed nimbly away. ‘Mr Moore, sir. I don’t know what you are rambling on about,’ he protested.

  I watched, too frightened to stop Father, for fear of him striking me in turn. He edged penitently towards John Francis, then suddenly lashed out with his fist at his face. His opponent was too agile to take the full force, but received a pink graze to his ch
eek.

  ‘I am sorry, Grace.’ John Francis raised himself to his full height and eyed my father with determination. He then strode up to Father and landed a powerful blow to his jaw that sent him toppling to the ground. My once proud father lay crumpled in the dirt. I buried my face in my hands, praying that this scene was a nightmare and that I might soon wake and find myself in bed.

  *

  I did not wake up from that lamentable dream, only lived on with my father at Palatine House. Soon afterwards, John Francis left me a letter, tucked inside our bird’s nest hiding place:

  My Dearest Grace,

  Your father will not allow me within sight of your home and has made violent threats to my person. Worse, my own family have learned of our connection and are fixed on removing me from you and from Greaves. I am to take up a position with my uncle in Bristol; but he is a man of sympathy and I hope to persuade him of the rightness of my actions.

  Grace, I cannot abandon you. Will you come with me? Naturally we must marry at once and then bide our time, but I am hopeful all will turn out well.

  If you can find it in your heart to come away with me, leave a candle burning in your window at ten o’clock tonight. I shall fetch the trap and meet you at the top of the lane.

  Your loving sweetheart,

  John Francis

  A heavenly sunset mocked me that night, the sky a tumult of lavender clouds tinged with gold. I sat on my narrow bed, my tinderbox in hand. Father had returned from the Bush Tavern some hours earlier, and was noisily sleeping away the effects in his chamber. Our hall clock chimed a half-hour after nine. I had to decide.