Fourpenny Flyer

by Beryl Kingston

  Half lying, half sitting against the warmth of his body, Harriet began to feel drowsy. She slid down into the bed again as he went on talking into the darkness. ‘There is so little strong news these days, that is one problem. What we require is something important to happen, something influential or unexpected or dramatic that everyone will want to read about. Then you will see our sales increase I can promise you….’

  They were the last words she heard as she fell asleep.

  When she woke it was early morning, the bed-curtains had been drawn and sunshine was knifing in through the opened shutters. John was already up and dressed. He was standing beside the washstand, in his shirt and trousers, stooping forward for a better view in the little shaving mirror, the lower half of his face bearded with white soap, wielding a formidable cut-throat razor. She watched his long hands working steadily and was lost in admiration for him. Then he caught sight of her face in the mirror and they smiled at one another through the glass, he rather sheepishly, she with open affection.

  ‘Good morning,’ he said, very polite and formal. ‘Shall I ring for tea?’

  ‘Is it late?’ she said, suddenly anxious at the thought that she might have overslept and annoyed him.

  ‘No,’ he reassured her, holding up his nose with his left forefinger and scraping underneath it very delicately, ‘but it would not matter if it were. We are here to rest and be waited upon.’

  So tea was ordered, and ‘hot water for the lady’, and when the maid had disappeared through the servants’ door to fetch them, John walked across to the opposite corner of the room and opened another low door, with the air of a conjuror producing a rabbit from a hat, for neither of them had noticed it on the previous evening. It gave out to a little low dressing room with its own washstand and towels and soap all neatly ready.

  ‘Uncommon convenient, eh?’ he said, well pleased with it and with himself for finding it.

  ‘Oh yes, dear John, it is,’ she agreed, very much relieved to see it. To be naked before him by firelight was one thing, when passion was running strong in both of them and they were contained in their own half-lit, private world, but to be washing and dressing before him in broad daylight would have been altogether too bold, and especially now with that painful lovemaking between them.

  So she waited quietly while he finished his shave, and when the tea had been delivered and enjoyed, she slipped from the bed, gathered her clothes and scurried into the dressing room, shutting the door behind her. When she emerged again, she was clean and clothed and perfectly contained, her long hair pinned into its modest topknot, her face calm, her daytime self resumed.

  ‘We could take a walk in the village before breakfast,’ he suggested.

  And very agreeable and proper and idle it was, to stroll along the single street between the low stone cottages they’d glimpsed the night before, their thatches steaming in the early morning sun, and their inhabitants already hard at work, scrubbing and sweeping or feeding pigs or hoeing cabbage patches. They passed a small child in a blue holland pinafore waddling a gaggle of geese down to the millpond, and a red-chapped milkmaid swaying towards the inn under the weight of her two full churns. And the pale sun shone on them all.

  At the top of the village the path grew steeper as it approached the church of St Kenelm, which was built of the same yellow-grey stone as the rest of the village. Its square tower was turreted and the grey tiles upon its roofs were old and gnarled and discoloured like discarded oyster shells, but what was even better about it was that it stood at the gateway to a mystery. To the left of the porch they could see the round roof of a very old dove cote, and towering behind the church were the broken walls of a huge ruined castle.

  ‘Did you know of this, dear John?’ Harriet asked, gazing at it in some awe.

  ‘Indeed I did,’ he said, ‘and thought it uncommon romantic.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘so it is. Uncommon romantic.’

  They explored the ruin, arm in arm, walking through the dank porch and standing in the remains of a stone hall, so tall and impressive that it could have been a cathedral, and presently they found themselves entirely alone in a green water meadow facing the stream.

  ‘I am so very sorry I hurt you,’ he said.

  She flung herself into his arms. ‘It was nothing,’ she said. ‘Nothing. Such a little pain. It is forgotten already.’

  She has suffered so much, he thought, remembering her swollen face on the night he rescued her. And he yearned to make amends to her. ‘You shall never be hurt again, my dearest,’ he said. ‘I give you my word.’

  She was remembering that beating too. ‘When we have children,’ she said, ‘we will not beat them, will we John?’

  The very idea was abhorrent. ‘Never!’ he said passionately. ‘Never ever. We shall love them most dearly, I promise you.’

  She knew it but it was wonderful to hear it said. All hurt and pain was behind her now.

  ‘Oh how happy we shall be,’ she said, and put up her face to be kissed.

  And so their honeymoon continued, with modest promenades by day and the most tender lovemaking by night. And Annie was proved right. The second time wasn’t painful, the third was faintly pleasurable, the fourth was delightful.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, as he lay panting and triumphant beside her afterwards, ‘how I do love you, my dear, dear John.’

  ‘You are my life,’ he said passionately. ‘I could not live without you.’

  Chapter Twenty

  The Sowerbys were furious when they read an account of their own daughter’s wedding in The Times.

  ‘And we not even invited,’ Mrs Sowerby snorted.

  ‘Impoliteness, that’s what ’tis,’ Mr Sowerby said, ‘which is a greater sin than either you or I would ever allow ourselves to be guilty of.’ And he assumed his superior expression.

  ‘’Tis not to be endured,’ Mrs Sowerby said, and she put on her bonnet and went straight round to the Easter’s fine house on Angel Hill to protest.

  ‘And I don’t even get over the doorstep!’ she reported furiously to Mr Sowerby when he returned from work that evening. ‘Oh I know that Mrs Thistlethwaite of theirs. I’ve got her mark, don’t you worry. All smiles and friendly-like and “Yes Mrs Sowerby” and “No Mrs Sowerby” and she en’t told me a thing. Not one single thing. The young masters are travelling abroad, so she says. She don’t have the least idea when either the one of ’em will be in Bury, so she says. Oh she don’t fool me! The effrontery of it. But one thing I did get out of her. They invited that Miss Pettie to the wedding if you please. Oh, they have no sense of propriety. No sense of propriety at all.’ It was very galling.

  ‘’Tis all that dreadful Mrs Easter’s doing,’ Mr Sowerby said darkly. ‘An immoral woman a-gallivanting about town with her lover. Oh I remember! We must visit our dear Harriet and remind her of her Christian duty. ’Twould be plain sinfulness to sit idly by and say nothing and allow her to be contaminated.’

  But as they didn’t know where she was there wasn’t a lot they could do except sit idly by.

  Miss Pettie didn’t know where the newly-weds were, either, although she was very forthcoming about the wedding, which she described in great detail to every member of the congregation who enquired about it. Such very great detail indeed that the Sowerbys wondered, privately and bitterly, whether her interest in it wasn’t so perverse as to be verging on the sinful.

  ‘’Twas our wedding, when all’s said and done,’ Mrs Sowerby complained, ‘and we are the ones who ought to have attended and reported upon it.’

  ‘That Mrs Easter will have a deal to answer for at the Day of Judgement,’ Mr Sowerby said grimly.

  But ‘that Mrs Easter’ didn’t give the Sowerbys a thought. And neither did the new Mrs John Easter. It was a very wet summer and the autumn that followed was chill and damp but she didn’t notice that either because she was so fully occupied completing the decoration of her new home in Fitzroy Square, filling each room in turn with the brighte
st colour she could find, duck-egg green and gold for the drawing room, rose madder and china blue for the parlour, pale pink and yellow for the nursery, ready for the children who would be loved so much and never beaten.

  She soon discovered that being the mistress of the house was considerably easier than being the maid-of-all-work to two intemperate parents. After a little initial nervousness, she and her housekeeper, Mrs Toxteth, grew to like and respect each other, Harriet because Mrs Toxteth was plump and motherly and kept the house in highly polished order, Mrs Toxteth because her mistress was young and inexperienced and quite touchingly in love with her husband. They had a butler, called Paulson, who had been a footman in Nan’s house and took his promotion most seriously. And Harriet’s personal maid, who was called Peg Mullins and was even younger than she was herself, rapidly became a friend.

  Despite the unseasonable weather the new Mr and Mrs John Henry Easter were sunnily happy together in their beautiful house. What did it matter to them that Billy and Matilda had married like two of the gentry, wearing costly clothes and dining upon expensive foods? What did they care now that Matilda was on her extravagant continental tour? Let the third Mrs Easter go where she will, Harriet thought, as she mended her husband’s shirt, it was all one to the second.

  On John’s first trip to ‘check upon the London shops’ she was allowed to ride with him and sit quietly beside him and watch while he negotiated rents or renewed leases, checked sales, and hired managers and shop assistants. She was full of admiration for him, impressed by the ease with which he handled so many different people, John Henry Easter, her husband, and undeniably his formidable mother’s son.

  He spent two or three days every other week travelling the country renting properties, and on the night he returned they would enter his newly acquired premises on that complicated map of his. Gradually as the months passed his plan began to take shape.

  ‘Do you see Harriet?’ he would say excitedly as the new shops clustered along their chosen route. ‘Do you see?’

  And she did see. It was like watching blossom unfold on a bare winter bough. Soon she understood his plan well enough to be able to predict the next town he would visit, and that pleased her, even though she missed him sorely when he was away.

  In November, when he was in Rugby negotiating for a reading-room, the London papers were full of news about bread riots ‘all over East Anglia’ and secret meetings in London ‘planning insurrection’, and on the very day he came back posters appeared announcing a reform meeting to be held in Spa Fields, just around the corner from their quiet square.

  ‘Is it like to prove violent, think ’ee?’ Harriet asked. ‘Mrs Toxteth says there will be a riot. All the shop windows are to be shuttered and the constables called out.’ There were so many beggars in London, that was the trouble, hundreds and hundreds of them, and all so poorly dressed and so dirty, with unkempt hair and sullen faces. She was used to the country poor who met in Mr Hopkins’s study to talk about reform, people like the two Mr Abbotts. They would never slit anybody’s throat, whereas the men and women who pushed and thronged in the streets of the city looked capable of anything.

  ‘Corn is a guinea a bushel in Yorkshire,’ John told her, ‘and after those bread riots in East Anglia anything could happen.’

  ‘There was no trouble in Rugby, was there, dear John?’

  ‘No, my dear. The riots were in Birmingham, this time.’

  ‘What a terrible world we live in,’ Harriet said, as they walked upstairs together. But she felt so happy now that he was home with her again.

  ‘It is all news,’ he said, patting her hand, ‘and good or bad, news makes profits for the Easter family, don’t forget.’

  This particular news increased sales quite dramatically, because the ten thousand citizens who gathered in Spa Fields on that dark November day, having been given a rousing address by the famous orator Mr Henry Hunt, decided to petition the Regent for reform, and delegated Mr Hunt and Nan’s friend Sir Francis Burdett to deliver the petition on their behalf. It was a daring move and the papers made much of it.

  ‘I will stay in London for a week or two,’ John decided, ‘and see what transpires.’

  Four days later Nan told them at dinner that her friend, Sir Francis, had withdrawn his support for the petition, saying he had no desire to be a catchpaw. ‘There’s dirty work afoot,’ she told her sons, ‘or my name en’t Nan Easter. We en’t seen the end of this affair, not by a long chalk.’

  ‘What dirty work do you suspect, Mama?’ John asked coolly.

  ‘Government spies, I shouldn’t wonder.’

  ‘Government spies?’ Harriet echoed, shocked at the very idea. ‘Oh surely not, Mrs Easter. Surely not.’

  ‘’Twont be the first time,’ Nan said. ‘Nor the last. Put a few spies into a meeting and you can guarantee ’twill get out of hand.’

  ‘But surely the government would not wish a meeting to get out of hand,’ Harriet said, bemused.

  ‘I am afraid they would, my dear,’ John explained, ‘for then the constables have a good reason to arrest the ringleaders. That is why it is done.’

  ‘But that is dishonest,’ Harriet protested. ‘They could not do such a thing, surely.’

  ‘Well,’ her mother-in-law said, touched by her innocence, ‘we shall see.’

  And sure enough two weeks later, on 2nd December, there was another meeting at the Spa Fields and this one did get out of hand and the ringleaders were arrested. But the Easters were all too happily busy to notice it.

  Billy and Matilda had come home from their long trip on the continent, looking very plump and well, and bearing gifts for every single member of the family, even Harriet, which Nan was pleased to see, and Billy was delighted about. He hadn’t been at all sure how Tilda would take it when he first suggested including their sister-in-law, but his dear girl had agreed at once.

  ‘We are all married now,’ she’d said easily, as if that settled it. So there was French brandy for James, and French perfume for Annie, a wooden hobby horse for Jimmy and a jointed doll for Beau. John was given a copy of Dante’s ‘Inferno’ and Harriet a fringed shawl from Sicily, and as the final and most valuable gift of all, there were two fine watercolours of the ruins of Pompeii for Nan. What riches!

  And Nan’s welcoming dinner was very lavish too, with jugged hare and roast pheasant and so many tarts and pastries there was barely room for them all on the table.

  ‘How well we live,’ Harriet said, as she and John were driving home afterwards. ‘I feel extravagant to be eating so much when there are so many poor people in London with nothing to eat at all.’

  ‘You couldn’t help them,’ he said reasonably, ‘even if you were to give away every single dish on Mama’s table tonight. They are too many and our resources are too small.’ But he was touched by her concern. ‘Now that you are an Easter you must grow accustomed to riches, you know.’

  ‘And Billy and Matilda bringing us all such presents! Wasn’t that kind?’

  ‘I have invited them to dinner on Friday,’ he said.

  ‘What should I serve them?’ she asked, thinking how hard it would be to follow Nan’s splendid meal.

  ‘Nothing fancy,’ he said, giving her the lopsided grin that she now recognized as the sign that he was going to tease. ‘A dish of larks’ tongues, perhaps, or dolphin stew, or roast swan.’

  She kissed him lovingly. ‘Roast beef,’ she said, ‘with horseradish sauce.’

  Thanks to Nan’s association with Frederick Brougham, the Easter family were moving up in society. They weren’t quite in the swan-eating ranks, but they were invited to routs and balls in various houses in Bloomsbury, and Nan and Frederick were frequent guests at Holly Hall.

  In the spring of the following year they had a most particular invitation.

  ‘There are two other guests to be included in the party,’ Frederick said, ‘both of whom I particularly wish to introduce to you.’ He was so deliberately calm about it, she knew it was i
mportant.

  ‘Ah,’ she said, teasing him, ‘but shall I wish to meet them?’

  ‘Oh I think so,’ he said easily. But he didn’t tell her who they were.

  Holly Hall was always an agreeable house to visit, but it was at its best in spring, when crocuses burgeoned into bright colour under the elms and the banks were a flutter of wild daffodils.

  But their host was in very ill-humour. Spotted fever had broken out in the low streets behind their London house, and Lady Barnesworthy had overridden all his instructions and instantly despatched all fourteen of their noisy, energetic children to the quiet and safety of his country seat.

  ‘Two hours till dinner, dammit,’ he said to Nan and Frederick when they arrived, ‘and children all over the place. ’Tis a cruel world. Leave the dog alone, Sebastian, or I shall tell him to bite you, dammit.’

  Sebastian, who was a determined six-year-old, went on tugging the spaniel’s ears. ‘We shall none of us survive,’ his father said lugubriously. ‘Mark my words. What’s to be done with ’em?’

  Nan stood by his semicircular window and looked out at the tumult on the lawn, remembering the games her own children had played when they were young. ‘How if we were to run races?’ she said.

  So races were run. A bruising three-legged, a marvellously messy egg-and-spoon, and an obstacle race that went on and on because the winner of each round was entitled to add a further and more devilish hurdle to the course.