Fourpenny Flyer

by Beryl Kingston

  ‘Quite so, sir. I understand,’ Paulson said. ‘Leave it to me, sir.’

  But he had underestimated the cunning of the Sowerbys who arrived five days later, dressed in their best black as John had predicted, and full of righteous indignation.

  Paulson opened the door to them and looked down on them in every sense of the word as they stood on the bottom step, with their black hats silhouetted against the wilting plane trees in the square.

  ‘Is your mistress at home?’ Mr Sowerby asked, as his wife walked confidently up the steps.

  Paulson moved to bar her way into the house.

  ‘I regret Mrs Easter is out of town,’ he said smoothly.

  That was disconcerting. ‘Indeed? You surprise me,’ Mr Sowerby said. ‘Being she invited us to call upon her.’

  ‘When will she be back?’ Mrs Sowerby asked.

  ‘I’m sure I couldn’t say,’ Paulson replied.

  ‘You must know, man!’ Mr Sowerby eyed the butler suspiciously. He was young to be holding such a position and was not as confident as he seemed. ‘Very well then,’ he said. ‘We have travelled a great distance to no purpose. My wife would like a rest and some sustenance before we return. I am sure you can arrange that, can you not?’

  This was becoming tricky, ‘I’m afraid that will not be possible, sir,’ Paulson said. ‘I’ve the most strict instructions to admit no one.’

  ‘Ridiculous!’ Mr Sowerby said, now sure the butler was lying. ‘We are Mrs Easter’s parents, you understand.’

  ‘That’s as may be, sir,’ Paulson said, visibly digging in his heels. ‘But orders are orders.’

  ‘Kindly stand aside!’ Mrs Sowerby said, taking her cue from her husband. ‘I wish to enter.’

  ‘I don’t doubt you do, ma’am,’ Paulson said doggedly. ‘Can’t be done.’

  Mrs Sowerby scowled at him for several seconds without speaking. She was now determined to gain entrance to the house for, like her husband, she was convinced the butler was lying. His dignified mask had dropped and he looked uncertain and confused. It was uncommon aggravating to be denied admission in this heartless way. What was Harriet thinking of to write to them after all this time and invite them here and then to leave instructions such as that? ’Twas quite singularly ill-mannered. She decided to try another tack.

  ‘Oh,’ she said loudly, ‘I see how ’tis. We are to be spurned! I see how ’tis, Father. She has forgotten all the rites due to loving parents. We are to be publicly spurned.’ And she turned up her eyes and began to groan.

  ‘Ingratitude!’ Mr Sowerby said. ‘Downright, filial ingratitude! Ooh, sharper than a serpent’s tooth!’

  ‘You love ’em,’ Mrs Sowerby said, ‘and what do ’ee get? Rejection! That’s what you get! Oh, oh, oh, the agony of it!’

  ‘My wife is ill!’ Mr Sowerby cried dramatically, throwing his arms into the air like an Old Testament prophet. And as if to prove him right, Mrs Sowerby gave a terrible combination of shriek and groan and threw herself backwards onto the pavement. ‘Aaah! Aaah! Have pity on a poor suffering women, you heartless wretch!’

  The heartless wretch was so nonplussd he didn’t know what to do, but by now Mrs Sowerby was making such a noise that Harriet heard her upstairs in the drawing room and, recognizing her voice, came down at once to see what was going on. But this time Mrs Sowerby was rolling about on the pavement, and windows on all three sides of the square were full of faces, pale aristocratic faces under lace bonnets, wide-eyed with curiosity, round red faces giggling and gossiping under servants’ caps.

  ‘Get up I beg you, Mama!’ Harriet said. ‘You make us a laughing stock.’

  But her mother was well into her fit, rolling from side to side, and beating the ground with her fists, and groaning and howling louder than ever.

  ‘You see what you have done,’ Mr Sowerby spat at his daughter. ‘I bring this to your door, my gel. To your door. I hope you have the grace to feel ashamed.’

  She was certainly feeling very embarrassd. Whatever had brought this on? Somebody must have annoyed her mother to make her throw a fit like this. I must get her inside, she thought. A public exhibition of this kind would do them no good at all.

  ‘Would you be so good as to fetch a chair, Paulson,’ she said. ‘The lady will have to be carried into the house.’

  It was surprising how quickly the lady recovered once the chair had been set down inside Harriet’s parlour, and even more surprising what a prodigious quantity of tea and cakes and white bread and butter she managed to consume. Her fit seemed to have given her an appetite.

  ‘Very well, Harriet,’ she said, pleasantly enough when all the food had been eaten. ‘Time for us to see our grandson, I believe.’

  So Will was sent for and escorted into the room by Rosie, who was very put out to see the Sowerbys again, and dropped her chin on her chest and tried to look fierce. Will, on the other hand, was his usual friendly self.

  ‘Yook!’ he said, pointing at them with cheerful interest.

  ‘How grossly ill-mannered!’ Mrs Sowerby said, bristling away from him. ‘I see you have not taught him how to behave.’

  ‘He is only one year old, Mama,’ Harriet said, springing to his defence. ‘At his age….’

  ‘At his age,’ Mrs Sowerby said sternly, ‘you had been taught to speak when you were spoken to. But I daresay that is a result of his being entered into the wrong church.’

  Harriet was taken off balance by this sudden attack. ‘He has not been entered into the wrong church, Mama,’ she said. ‘He was christened….’

  ‘The wrong church,’ Mrs Sowerby repeated. ‘Why of course ’tis the wrong church. Has childbirth addled your brains that you cannot understand what I am saying? It was bad enough to be informed that you had been so immeasurably foolish as to marry in the wrong church. And I might say, being informed instead of being invited, was a great hardship to us. How could you treat your own parents with such discourtesy? Well, well, we will not talk of it now. You may be thankful that your father and I are of a forgiving disposition and are resolved to forget your poor behaviour. Howsomever, our grandson must be baptized again and this time he must be baptized correctly. Make no mistake about that.’

  Harriet’s heart was beginning to throb just as it used to do when she was a girl living at home and with no escape from them. Why on earth did I invite them here? she thought. And why do they imagine they may still bully me now, in my own home? I have only to ring the bell and Paulson will show them to the door.

  ‘The child has been christened according to the rites of the Church of England, Mama,’ she said, trying to be reasonable. And she was horrified to hear that her voice was quavering.

  ‘Humph!’ her mother snorted. ‘We’ll soon see about that. That’s Mrs Easter’s doing, I don’t doubt. Is the child’s mother to have no say in the matter? You must exert yourself. Take a stand. You are a mother now and must fight for your child’s immortal soul. Bestir yourself. Satan is all about you. Oh, what a blessing I have found out where you live, you feckless girl. I shall come here every month, no matter what the cost. Every single month! You may depend upon it. It is my God-given duty, en’t it, Father?’

  ‘Indubitably,’ Mr Sowerby said.

  But Harriet had rung the bell to be rescued and there were footsteps scuffling up the stairs towards them. More than one pair by the sound of it. Two? Three? The door was opened without ceremony and the room was full of people. Mrs Easter, who had just arrived and been told all about the visit by Paulson, Paulson himself behind her and Peg Mullins, who’d been eavesdropping in the hall, stomping in behind him, and Tom Thistlethwaite, who had heard the commotion and didn’t want to be left out, bringing up the rear. Oh, what a relief to see them!

  ‘Why, Mrs Sowerby,’ Nan said briskly. ‘Just on your way out, I see. Pray allow me to escort you to the door.’

  ‘No,’ Mrs Sowerby began to argue, ‘I was not….’

  ‘Oh ’tis no trouble,’ Nan said; holding her adversary’s arm in
a surprisingly firm grip and propelling her towards the door. ‘No trouble at all.’ They were on the landing already. ‘I trust I find you well.’ Jogging her down the stairs, with Mr Sowerby trailing behind them.

  ‘I have no desire to …’ Mrs Sowerby said, trying in vain to pull her elbow out of Nan’s grip. ‘No desire….’

  ‘I’m sure on’t,’ Nan said affably. ‘And here’s Paulson with your umbrella. I trust you have a pleasant journey home. Good afternoon to you both.’

  The minute the door closed behind them poor Harriet burst into tears. Oh, how could she have been so foolish as to invite them into her home? John was right. She should have left things as they were. But she’d forgotten how terribly they upset her when they began to bully. Whatever should she do? They would visit whenever they felt like it, now that they’d established how easily it could be done.

  ‘Come now,’ Nan said, striding back into the room. ‘Get your bonnet. We’re off to have supper upon the river. You’ll look after our Will, won’t you Rosie?’

  How quickly she restores things to normal, Harriet thought, tying on her bonnet. And she was glad to have such a mother-in-law. But she was still worried about what John would say when he heard.

  Much to her relief, when he finally came home five days later, John was not cross with her or his butler, nor surprised at the behaviour of his in-laws.

  ‘I blame myself for leaving you without protection,’ he said seriously. ‘I had the gravest doubts about the wisdom of going to York, but I could not avoid it!’

  ‘Perhaps they will not come here agan,’ Harriet hoped, but they both knew she didn’t think it likely.

  ‘If they do, you must refuse to let them in.’

  ‘If she throws another fit,’ Harriet confessed, very near to tears, ‘I should be forced to let her in. I could not allow her to shame us before our neighbours. And besides, she makes me feel so feeble. I can’t think how she does it, but she does.’

  ‘Does she often throw such fits?’ John asked, beginning to feel very suspicious about the whole affair.

  ‘Well yes,’ Harriet had to admit. ‘I fear she does. From time to time, when things are particularly bad.’

  ‘Or when she can’t think of any other means to get her own way.’

  ‘Yes. That is so.’

  He looked at her lovingly, moved by the misery on her pale face. ‘I must go to Manchester next week,’ he said. ‘I cannot leave you and little Will behind to be tormented. There is only one answer. You must come to Manchester with me.’

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  ‘How if you were to travel with me?’ Frederick Brougham asked. ‘Three months in France and Italy, eh? Our own Grand Tour.’

  Nan was still in London even though it was the middle of August when she was usually in Bury. She and Frederick had been to the Theatre Royal that evening to see a new play called Teasing Made Easy. They had returned to Bedford Square, still laughing at the folly of it, to dine well and love at leisure. Now they were talking in that easy desultory way that follows love and precedes sleep, and he had broached the subject he’d been considering all through the evening. ‘My cousin and I have been given a rather unusual commission, d’ye see, which we’ve to start in a week’s time.’

  ‘Um?’

  ‘We are to travel to France and Italy, to find the Princess of Wales and there make discreet inquiries as to how she might envisage her position were the Regent to become King.’

  ‘As he will when the old King dies.’

  ‘Indeed. How if you were to travel with me and spend the summer upon the Continent instead of in Bury St Edmunds?’

  ‘And leave the firm for three months?’ Nan said, opening her eyes. ‘My heart alive! That en’t the way of things at all. ’Twould be mortal folly, so ’twould, and we expanding into Scotland.’

  He grimaced at her, lying beside him among the pillows in her curtained bed. ‘You might ha’ done me the courtesy of considering it,’ he said. ‘Or made some pretence of considering it, at the very least. Here you’ve been telling me how your son has taken his wife to Manchester with him and roundly approving such action I believe, and yet you deny me a similar privilege.’

  ‘Harriet travels with John, my dear, because they can’t abide to be parted and he thinks she needs protecting from those dratted Sowerbys. I got a job to do.’

  ‘So we must part,’ he said, sighing. ‘’Tis a disappointment to me that you take the news with such equanimity, my dear. A tear or two would not have gone amiss.’

  ‘Had you needed such tricks,’ she said sleepily, ‘you’d ha’ taken up with a milliner or some such. ‘Ten’t in my nature to dissemble.’

  More’s the pity, he thought wryly, for there were times when a little feminine flattery would have been balm to his spirit, dishonest or no. He would be celebrating his fiftieth birthday while he was on his travels, and the thought of how short his life was becoming was making him melancholy. ‘You will not miss me, I fear,’ he said, fishing for reassurance. ‘’Twill be out of sight, out of mind.’

  She had closed her eyes, drifting towards sleep again. ‘That’s all squit, so ’tis,’ she said kindly. ‘You know better than that, Mr Frederick Brougham. En’t there another saying concerning absence? Makes the heart grow fonder, I’m told.’

  ‘Amen to that,’ he said. But it would have been better to have had her company for he knew he would miss her sorely, headstrong creature that she was.

  But the headstrong creature was already asleep.

  In an unfamiliar bedroom in the Swan with Two Necks at Leicester, Harriet Easter was writing her diary. John had fallen asleep within minutes of getting into bed, but she was too wakeful to settle and after a while, when she was quite sure she could move without disturbing him, she had crept from the bed, unpacked her diary from its hiding place among Will’s small clothes and taking her candle to the table, had begun to write, licking her pencil from time to time in the earnestness of composition.

  ‘To see so much of this countryside is a great pleasure and the more so to see it in John’s company, which I must confess I have not done today, being as I travelled inside the coach with Will and Rosie and Peg and he travelled outside, which I daresay is the reason he is so quiet. He said very little at dinner, perhaps because he is fatigued, but I hope and believe that he enjoys our journey together. We stopped for refreshment at an inn called the Saracen’s Head at a place called Newport Pagnell. We have travelled ninety-eight miles today, in fine weather and without mishap. Tomorrow we ride on to Manchester. Little Will has been an abolute saint making no fuss and sleeping for a good deal of the journey. Such a good boy. What will tomorrow bring, I wonder?’

  It brought a lovely summer day and a late start and John quieter than ever. He said good morning to her when she woke, but then lapsed into complete silence, watching as she fed little Will, shaving himself ruminatively, and dressing without a word. It worried her that he was so withdrawn, for he could hardly be fatigued first thing in the morning, but she busied herself with the baby and tried to persuade herself that he had a great deal to think about with all the business he had to do, and that his silence was to be expected.

  But the brooding expression on his face was the sign of a conflict which he hadn’t expected and which was making him feel so ashamed that he couldn’t talk to her about it. To be at home with her and Will in their beautiful house was unalloyed pleasure. But now, after one day travelling en famille, he had to admit that he did not welcome her presence on this journey.

  She was too eager to talk, that was the trouble, and too busy with Will, and there were altogether too many people fussing around them. In the three years since their wedding, he had grown used to travelling quietly and alone, busy with his thoughts and his plans for business. So he had been short with her during the previous day, and too tired to make much conversation at dinner, and now he was irritable with himself, and sorry for her.

  Fortunately, the Swan with Two Necks was already crow
ded when they came downstairs, for the Saturday market was under way, and the coffee room was full of farmers drinking ale and enjoying one another’s raucous company, and farmers’ dogs gnawing chopbones and enjoying a little idleness. The coachyard was crowded, too, with two coaches ready to leave and their own awaiting a new team, which had still to be led out.

  ‘What’s amiss, Horace?’ John asked the coachman, glad to be back in the easily familiar world of men and horses.

  ‘Two gone lame, so they say, Mr Easter sir,’ Horace said, spitting a long stream of chewed tobacco onto the cobbles. ‘Deuce tek it. We’re five minutes late all-a-ready.’

  He knows every coachman on the road, Harriet thought admiringly, as the two men continued their complaint, and she was glad that her dear John seemed more himself again. It did not concern her at all that they were five minutes late. Will had made a good breakfast and was chirruping with contentment on Rosie’s broad shoulder, and it was pleasant out in the courtyard, with the morning sun warm on her shoulders and the place full of unusual people. There were several local women wrapped in shawls and wearing black bonnets over their caps selling stockings from huge wicker baskets carried on their hips. Perhaps there would be time for her to go and look at them. They seemed uncommon pretty.

  ‘Should we settle Will inside do ’ee think, John dear?’ she asked, when he finally came back to stand beside her. ‘Or do I have time to go and look at the stockings?’

  ‘Look by all means, my dear,’ he said. ‘We shall be a good many minutes yet. You might find a pair or two you would care to purchase.’ A present would make amends for his neglect. ‘Choose two pairs.’

  So while the new team was backed into position, and the travellers gathered about the coach ready to board, she picked two pairs of fine white hose, and an excellent bargain they were, being embroidered from mid-calf to ankle and only sixpence a pair. For a moment, as John handed over the shilling, she even wondered whether it might not be an economy to buy another pair, but then the ostler sang out ‘All set!’ and the passengers surged forward and the stocking seller was pushed aside.