Return to Paradise

by Erica Brown

  She pinched the latter, stuffing them into her blouse. There was always a market for kiddies’ clothes. But her thirst for revenge was only half assuaged. Pausing, she eyed the landlord’s combinations and his fat wife’s voluminous drawers. Her eyes went from there to a smouldering dung heap made more obnoxious by the contents of last night’s chamber pot.

  Using a pair of dock leaves, she formed glutinous balls from the sticky mass. Each completed ball was placed on the ground in front of her. Once she had six, she found a metal bucket, put them inside then took them over to the washing line and smeared every item with a glutinous mess of brown excrement.

  With a swift ‘up yours’ sign, she closed the gate behind her, smiling to herself as she went on her way.

  A summer fog had descended, a yellowish soup of heat haze mixed with the smoke, steam and gases spewing from tall brick chimneys around the city docks.

  Her sojourn at the tavern had started mid-morning, so neither her legs nor her eyesight were up to the job of peering through the haze and negotiating the ancient cobbles, which were made of wood rather than stone. Many had been dug up during cold spells and used as firewood so the road was peppered with holes.

  Daisy, being a bit more than tipsy, caught her foot in one and fell flat on her face. Muttering a host of obscenities, she struggled to her feet, straightened her hat, and continued on her way.

  Despite her drunken state, the matter of money stayed uppermost in her mind. Although it may not have seemed so at the time, she had been a little intimidated by Horatia’s attitude, though not enough to put her off the idea of extorting a few guineas. In fact, Daisy blamed the likes of Horatia Strong for her fall from grace. In her younger days she’d enjoyed a good reputation for reliability and consideration of mothers-to-be. Her downfall had been Dr Owen, who had a lilting ring to his voice and a roving eye. A few years ago, she’d been quite good-looking and had fallen for his charms. A child was conceived, but Dr Owen had seen to it that it was born dead. After that, she’d taken to drink, financed mostly by the guilty doctor, who also arranged for her to attend a few lying-ins. Before each one he would ensure she was sober, usually having her sleep in a room above his surgery the night before. Not that he ever joined her there now. At thirty-nine, she was too old to attract his attention any longer, and the drink had taken its toll. He had another lover now, a young woman with a tiny waist and a pert bosom, fresh to the city from a Welsh town named Aberystwyth. She looked little more than sixteen years of age.

  People hurried past her in the darkening evening, heading for a hot supper and a warm fire. ‘Get off, all of you,’ she shouted.

  No one stopped to challenge her and soon the street was deserted. Ordinary shadows became grotesque and sounds seemed hollower. There were few lights at windows or at the brooding façades of warehouses, where wine, sherry and port were stored.

  The silence deepened. That was when she heard the footsteps.

  She stopped and tilted her head to one side in order to hear more clearly. There was nothing. Perhaps she had imagined it. Pulling her shawl more closely about her, she staggered on.

  But there were the footsteps again. Were they hers? Was she hearing her own boots tripping along over the cobbles?

  She stopped. The footsteps stopped, too.

  ‘Silly cow,’ she muttered, and shook her head.

  He sprang on her where a narrow alley erupted like a black hole between two buildings.

  ‘This is for not minding yer own business.’

  She heard the clink of a blouse button bouncing on the ground. Fresh air hit her chest as the two folds of her blouse fell apart, the stolen children’s clothes following the bouncing button. Something flashed like silver before her terror-filled eyes.

  He had a knife!

  With no other option, she began to fight and scream at the top of her voice.

  ‘Shut up!’

  He grappled with her, tried to stab her at the same time as clapping his hand across her mouth. She kicked out behind her and he yelled as the heels of her boots met his shins.

  Somehow, she managed to get out from under his arms, the last of the children’s clothes scattering behind her as she ran across the road and into the alley.

  In her heart, she knew she wouldn’t get far. She was drunk and hampered by her skirts.

  It turned out luck was on her side. The sound of hooves and the clatter of wheels suddenly rang down the street. A dray was returning to the brewery, the driver late and wanting to get home, his whip singing over the backs of the galloping shires, giant horses of over seventeen hands, their hooves the size of dinner plates, tons of muscle on the move.

  The driver, having supped a few ales at the end part of the day, would see no more through this smog than she did. Even if he’d seen her assailant, he could not have stopped the horses in time. She heard the man cry out. The thud of wheels against something solid, the neighing of horses as they thundered over him.

  Shivering with terror, and sweating with relief, Daisy hurried to her lodgings.

  When the church clock of nearby St Stephen’s chimed midnight, she was still awake, sitting in her room and wondering at what had happened. The man had not been out to rob her. He’d wanted to kill her. Thanks to the bundle of children’s clothes, the knife he’d slashed across her chest had not penetrated her flesh.

  The words he had uttered kept running round her head: This is for not minding yer own business. Horatia Strong.

  She concentrated on the pathetic flame she’d managed to entice from her meagre fire. She should have got more money from Horatia, then called it a day. But she wasn’t going to leave this. She’d damn well have her revenge.

  Creases like the hairline cracks in an old jug radiated around her mouth. ‘Then let’s see what yer husband thinks of it all,’ she muttered, gave the coals a hefty poke and spat a mouthful of phlegm into the flames.

  * * *

  The vast parkland around Marstone Court echoed to the sound of sticks beating against metal, shouts, whistles and the excited yapping of freckle-backed setters and spaniels with long tongues and short tails.

  Men with weather-beaten faces and work-worn hands – labourers, tenants and gamekeepers to the Strong family – strode through fern, broom and elder, their steps steady, their expression resolute.

  Ahead of them, apprehensive and confused, this year’s pheasants moved closer and closer to the shorn stubble of an open wheat field, the biggest on the estate. Driven by the beaters through the rough cover and with an open space in front of them, they would have no choice but to fly into the clear air to gain the copse on the other side.

  At the edge of the copse stood a row of men wearing velvet-trimmed tweeds, their guns raised at the flying birds. Among them stood Horatia Strong, hostess for a weekend of shooting, heavy lunches and long, drawn-out dinners.

  An event to be remembered, said those lucky enough to be invited, and were grateful that they were, though wondered whether there was any particular reason for it. Horatia Strong was not known for socializing, unless a financial gain was likely.

  Horatia cocked her weapon, closed one eye and took careful aim.

  ‘I hear them,’ said her companion, Martin Lodge, chairman of Webbers Bank. He laughed as the birds took to the air making their familiar clacking, chuckling noise. ‘It always sounds to me as though they’re laughing,’ he said as he shouldered his shotgun.

  Horatia controlled the urge to tell him to shut up, and squeezed the trigger of one of a pair of handsome Purdeys she’d had made to suit her. The sound cracked upwards into the sky and a soaring bird fell like a lump of lead.

  Lodge was aware, by her tight-lipped silence, that he’d upset Horatia’s concentration, but he brightened on seeing her jaw relax and hoped he had made a favourable impression on the wealthiest and most powerful woman in the city.

  ‘God knows they’ve got nothing to laugh about,’ she remarked with a cold humour as she let off another shot, checked as another bird
fell to the earth, then swiftly exchanged her empty gun for one that was loaded.

  ‘Your aim matches that of your husband,’ Lodge said as he also took a freshly loaded gun, took aim and fired.

  Horatia allowed herself the deplorable indiscipline of taking her eyes off her target long enough to glance at her husband. ‘You flatter me,’ she said with grim sincerity.

  Tom was shooting with swiftly accurate precision. Her husband, and cousin by adoption, did everything well, although shooting was something in which she had hoped to defeat him. Eyebrows had been raised a few years back when the news leaked out that she was joining the men in a sport where few women cared to tread. Tom had not protested. He enjoyed her competitiveness, mostly because in sport at least, he easily defeated her. Business, however, was an entirely different matter.

  Gun after gun was emptied and reloaded with frightening regularity. An avalanche of birds thudded onto the hard ground, retrieved by smiling dogs with lashing tails or trembling stumps. And still the guns blasted, the stink of spent cartridges hanging acrid in the morning air.

  ‘I’ve never known a woman attend a shoot before,’ Lodge remarked above the barrel of his gun. His shot rang in the air. The bird fell, only winged but put out of its agony by a beater.

  ‘I do not merely attend. I shoot,’ she countered. Her target plummeted to earth stone dead.

  ‘And very well,’ he repeated, a trifle disconsolately before expending his full concentration on the job in hand. This time his kill was clean.

  ‘So to what do I owe this invitation?’ He looked at her sidelong. ‘It is a well-known fact in the city that Horatia Strong never does anything without a reason. I take it you have some business venture in mind? Perhaps it concerns your husband’s plan regarding the redirection of sugar ships to London, and the refining, too? It might be you wish to persuade me not to back the proposed new dock at the Avon’s mouth. Am I right? But if you need money for your London venture, I’m sure the bank can assist.’

  He sounded amused. Horatia had never found anything remotely amusing about business. She took it very seriously. That’s how you succeed, she’d told herself in the days when her father was still alive. Webber was a fool. The Board of the Bank had no confidence in him, though he did not know it. Horatia did. She had made it her business to find out. Gritting her teeth, her fingers aching with tension, she let off a shot. Yet again she had a clean hit, but even when she lowered her weapon, her jaw was still clenched, her eyes narrowed.

  ‘I do not require any money for that particular enterprise, at least not in the short term. Isn’t it possible I may indeed have invited you here purely for the pleasure of your company?’

  The guns continued to rattle.

  Lodge smirked. ‘Come, come, Mrs Strong. I have been chairman of Webbers Bank for a considerable number of years. I know when someone requires my services, especially given that we are not averse to backing new ventures, though of course our funds would be limited. Backing a new dock is a very big venture indeed. By necessity, it has to be a joint venture. One backer alone could be ruined by unforeseen hold-ups.’

  Horatia smiled over the barrel of her gun. Lodge, though he couldn’t possibly know it, had hit the nail on the head. ‘Yes,’ she said after yet another bundle of plumage had fallen from the sky. ‘You are quite right. I do indeed require your assistance and am aware of the bank’s involvement in the new project at the mouth of the river.’ Breaking the shotgun, she passed the empty weapon to her loader. Lodge was her next target.

  He took aim.

  ‘I’ve bought your bank.’

  The gun barked, but Lodge missed. The bird he’d been aiming for flew merrily on its way to be bagged by the gun of Captain Tom Strong.

  His face a picture of total amazement, Lodge turned to her, the muzzle of his gun dangerously close to his body. ‘I’m sorry? Did I hear you right?’

  Horatia smiled, raised her gun, squeezed one eye shut and fired. A pheasant fell to earth. She took aim again, the crack of the second shot following immediately. She’d let Lodge stew until she was ready.

  ‘Yes. You did,’ she said without taking her eyes off the dogs as they picked their way like ballerinas across the stubble, niftily lifted their prey and trotted back to their handlers, their tails spinning like windmills.

  A cry went out for the guns to be silent as both dogs and handlers made their way across the field to retrieve those birds the dogs had missed, some of whom were dead, and some merely wounded. The men snapped the necks of the wounded and slid the heads between their fingers, leaving bodies hanging like bunches of limp cabbages.

  Horatia kept her gaze fixed on the field. It wasn’t that she had any fear of Lodge’s response; she wanted him to feel the shock deep in his bones; to wonder how she had done it without him finding out; to realize that she was clever and based her moves on excellent inside information.

  As she waited for him to speak she watched her husband exchange words with the beaters, who tipped their hats at him and smiled, not just with their mouths, but also with their eyes. The fact that they liked him was obvious by the way they continued to chew on straws, slap their thighs in response to a humorous quip and laugh out loud, or even to slap him on the back as if he were still one of them, one of the dirty, destitute and unwashed.

  In a way he is, she thought. Beneath the fine clothes he’s no different to any man. He could be rough, at times even vulgar, but always there was something about him that set him apart, that made her stomach clench and caused a tingling in her loins. And he’s mine, she thought, and glowed with satisfaction.

  ‘I’m astounded you had the bank in your sights, Mrs Strong,’ said Lodge, his voice hollow and every bit of colour drained from his face.

  She started and turned away from the sight in the field as he placed his hand on her gun and lowered it. She hadn’t realized that her gun, as well as her thoughts, had been directed at Tom. It was unforgivable and embarrassed her.

  ‘Do you have your husband in your sights, too?’

  His choice of words was flippant and Horatia did not warm to them or him. Her lips were thin and her voice hissed with disapproval as she said, ‘I bagged my husband many years ago.’ The disapproving frown faded and a smile crept across her lips. ‘But like all field sports, Mr Lodge, the fun is in the chase. Besides, even the best pheasant cooked in the best burgundy becomes poor fare indeed if eaten every day.’

  Now she was being flippant. She liked to shock people, especially those she sensed felt a woman’s place was firmly in the home.

  Lodge turned red. ‘It has been conveyed to me by the Board that other parties have already bought in—’

  ‘I am those other parties,’ Horatia interrupted.

  Lodge was an experienced banker, and that was all he was. His life had been ruled by figures, by ledgers, the counting of money, the idea that he had served the bank well and in return they would serve him with equal loyalty. To find out he was not privy to all their decisions had cut him to the quick. It took him a little time to digest her news.

  He knew someone had been buying shares in the bank and had not quibbled because the price had been generous, almost foolish. But the directors, the biggest shareholders in the bank, had taken the money.

  ‘I thought there was more than one purchaser,’ he said in a faltering voice. His shoulders slumped. He was not at all the big, bluff man he had been earlier.

  But now he knows better, thought Horatia, careful to hide a small triumphant smile.

  ‘I understand you are a gambler,’ she said. ‘Please don’t deny it. I have had enquiries made.’

  She turned swiftly and caught the look of disbelief on his face. Septimus Monk had been right. Her lawyer was one of the most useful people she had ever met. He knew those who inhabited the sinks and gutters of the city and how to use them; how to get information from servants, shopkeepers and those who controlled the vices to which a large city is prone.

  ‘Please,’ he began, his vo
ice wavering, ‘you won’t tell the Board.’

  Her expression hardened. Handsome as she was, when she looked at people the way she did now, her features seemed as if they’d been chiselled from marble. A more honourable man would have asked her not to inform his wife.

  ‘Does your wife know the extent of your debt? Does she know you have mortgaged the house in order to pay off the immense amount you’ve stolen from the bank?’

  She could almost smell his fear. Sweat beaded his forehead and ran into his eyes. That he should perspire was understandable, but she knew she’d shocked him and had meant to.

  Her intention was for him to worry that his position at the bank, which he had filled for many years, might be at an end. In fact, the opposite was true. Offering that he should keep his position, though with greatly diminished responsibility, was a clever ruse she’d used before. Status to non-status and back again: he had to accept. That was the way she’d planned it, though she wouldn’t tell him just yet. Martin Lodge deserved to be tortured a little longer for what he had done to the bank and to his wife.

  And then I will tell him that he can keep his job, so long as he answers to me and me alone.

  With ownership of the bank and the chairman in her pocket, the financing of the Avonmouth dock would be under her control.

  * * *

  Pies, cheeses, breads, cakes, jugged hare and thick custards, wines, sherries and spirits were set out beneath the trees for the benefit of the guests. Tom passed his gun to the gamekeeper. At the same time he wondered at his chances of slipping away. He wasn’t too keen on these gatherings and had fancied having a quiet smoke alone for a few minutes, but a small hand suddenly slipped into his.

  ‘Are we going to eat pie, Father?’

  Resigned to his fate, Tom looked down at his daughter. She was wearing a dark pink dress with a lace collar and purple bows at the throat and on the wrists.

  ‘Pie, cake, cheese and custard – though not altogether,’ he joked.