Fourpenny Flyer

by Beryl Kingston

  So they went to market and bought the fish and afterwards they had coffee and honey cakes at an inn called the Tiger in a street called Fishergate, which Will thought very appropriate. It was a splendid outing, even if they did come home as grubby as chimney sweeps.

  It was a great disappointment to Harriet to have to leave her little school at the end of that season.

  ‘I will buy you reading books,’ she promised the two girls as she left, ‘and I will come back next June, I give ’ee my word.’

  It was a quiet winter and it seemed to go on for ever, for the next summer, being much anticipated, was a long time coming. But at last it was June again and Harriet and Will could return to their garden in Rattlesden, where the roses were blooming in profusion, and to the rectory garden next door. There were four slates waiting for pupils, for Edward was four now and according to his sister ‘quite old enough’.

  ‘Where shall we start?’ Harriet asked her class on their first morning.

  ‘L is for LION!’ they chorused.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  In London it was hot and sticky, and despite hot and sticky argument, the House of Commons had given the third and final reading to the repeal of the controversial Combination Act. Proposed by Sir Francis Burdett, supported by Mr Francis Place and his tireless petitions, and by the hundreds who had gathered signatures, the repeal had at last become law and the Combination Act was to be removed from the statute books. From 5th June 1824 it would once again be legal for working men and women to meet together to discuss the conditions under which they had to labour.

  Frederick Brougham went to the House at the end of that historic week to meet his noble cousin, partly to take him off for a celebratory drink or two, and partly to see whether he had news of any government position on offer. The two of them had been manoeuvring for preferment for him for more that a year now and just before the third reading Lord Brougham had hinted that something might be decided upon soon. It would be a fine time to join the House, Frederick thought, just as the tide was turning in favour of greater freedom.

  So he was rather put down by his cousin’s greeting, as they walked towards one another through the lobby.

  ‘What think ’ee of Tobago in the West Indies?’

  ‘’Tis a parlous distance to travel,’ Frederick said, diplomatic despite his disappointment.

  ‘But an uncommon good post,’ Lord Brougham urged. ‘Governor, no less. Think on it, Frederick.’ He was turning back ready to walk to the coffee room.

  It was an uncommon good post. There was no doubt of that. But not the one he wanted. ‘Thank ’ee kindly, Henry,’ he said. ‘When do ’ee require an answer?’

  ‘I should prefer one now,’ his cousin said. ‘Alacrity being the clearest indication of willing acceptance. Howsomever, should you need to think on it, we could take a week I daresay.’

  I should accept, Frederick thought. It was the best offer he was likely to get at this juncture and if he refused he might well be jeopardizing his chances of a parliamentary career some time in the future. Even so, the West Indies …

  And somebody suddenly came up behind them. Somebody breathing hard as though he’d been running, and smelling strongly of sweat.

  Frederick turned to see who it was, moving slowly and easily because he was more curious than alarmed, and found that he was staring straight into the eyes of a wild, unkempt man with a horsewhip in his hand. He was muttering thickly, ‘You have betrayed me, sir. I’ll make you attend your duty.’ And when Lord Brougham turned too, saying ‘Who are you, sir?’ he raised the whip and struck the noble lord about the head and shoulders, shouting, ‘You know me well! You know me well! You have betrayed me, sir!’

  ‘Walk on!’ Frederick said. The sooner they removed their bodies from the onslaught the better.

  And Lord Brougham walked on, as well as he could under the frantic blows, shielding his head with his arms. ‘Never seen the feller before in my life,’ he said to Frederick.

  Feet were running towards them from the direction of the chamber. Two other MPs had arrived, Mr Littleton and Sir George Robbinson weren’t they? And a constable. They were struggling with the man, pulling him away, and the constable had pinioned his arms and they were half leading, half dragging him away. Frederick realized that his heart was pounding most uncomfortably. It had all been rather alarming.

  ‘Brandy, I think,’ Lord Brougham said. He was still wonderfully cool, but Frederick noticed that his forehead was filmed with sweat.

  So they went off to drink a little brandy together and recover. And for a while at least the Governorship of Tobago was forgotten.

  ‘And you want to be a Member of Parliament?’ Nan teased when he told her about the attack. ‘I’d rather sell newspapers any day of the week. What was the matter with the man? Was he mad?’

  ‘As a hatter,’ Frederick said. ‘And as to wanting to be a Member of Parliament …’

  It was past two o’clock in the morning. They had dined well, loved long, and now they were lying side by side in his bed, talking in the easy fashion of long-established lovers. Perhaps this was the right moment to tell her about Tobago.

  ‘I have the offer of a government post,’ he said. He had intended to tell her casually, as though the matter were of little consequence, but despite all his efforts the words sounded forced and stilted.

  She turned in his arms to grin her delight at him. ‘At last!’ she said. ‘What did I tell ’ee? A man of such worth! Well? Well? What is it?’

  He paused before he told her and, slight though it was, his hesitation alerted her.

  ‘To be Governor of Tobago. In the West Indies.’

  ‘You’ll not take it, surely,’ she said. It was impossible to read his face in the half-light, but she could see enough to realize that he was keeping his expression under tight control, and that made her heart sink palpably.

  ‘’Tis the best offer I am like to obtain,’ he said, stroking her shoulder, half in affection, half to placate.

  She shook his hand away and sat up to look at him more closely. ‘I thought you asked to be made a Member of Parliament.’

  ‘I did,’ he admitted. ‘But this is a better offer, Nan. And would assure me of a seat when I returned.’

  ‘How long would you be there?’

  There would be no avoiding it now. He must tell her. ‘Six years.’

  ‘Six years?’ she yelled. ‘Have you took leave of your senses, Frderick Brougham? Six years? You lie there calmly telling me we’re to be six years apart?’

  ‘You could come with me,’ he tried. ‘We need not be apart.’

  She ignored that as being too preposterous for comment. ‘I thought you loved me.’

  ‘I do. I do.’ Oh this was worse than he’d feared. ‘’Tain’t a matter of love. ’Tis a matter of employment. I am fifty-five, Nan. I get no younger. I must progress. I cannot stay in the doldrums for ever.’ But every word he said was taking him further away from her.

  She scrambled out of her bed and put on her nightgown, pulling it violently over her head. ‘Go where you please, then,’ she said, snatching up her clothes. ‘’Tis all one to me, since you do not love me, nor never have so far as I can see.’

  ‘Nan! Nan!’ he said. ‘I thought you knew me better than to say such things.’

  ‘I thought I knew you better,’ she answered, putting on her slippers. ‘But it seems I don’t. If you really loved me you wouldn’t leave me for six whole years, no matter what. Oh no, you don’t love me.’

  ‘At the start of our affair,’ he said, trying to be reasonable, ‘we agreed that we should both continue with our work, neither interfering nor competing with the other. We were to be partners, if you remember. ’Twas my particular concern that my presence in your life should not harm you in any way. So how you can possibly accuse me of not loving you is quite beyond me. Everything that has happened between us during the last seven years should have given you proof otherwise.’

  ‘It en’t the
last seven years what concern me now,’ she said, ‘’tis the next six.’

  ‘Nan!’ he implored. ‘Don’t, I beg ’ee. What is six years? ’Twill soon pass and then I will return. We shall look upon it as nothing. No time at all.’ But he was wasting his breath. She was already at the door.

  ‘I shall sleep in the blue room,’ she said. ‘You’ll not miss me. The night will soon pass. You’ll look upon it as nothing. But don’t ’ee look for me in the morning.’ And she stamped her feet, glared and marched from the room, slamming the door behind her.

  It was a very long night and took for ever to pass. Several times he got up and paced to the door thinking he might go down to the blue room and ask her forgiveness, but pride deflected him. Several times he drifted into sleep, to wake seconds later with the hope that she’d returned, but he was alone. And at last, when the dawn chorus began and the first grey smudges of dawn lightened the sky, he got up and overcame his pride and tiptoed down the corridor to see her.

  The blue room was empty. She was up and gone.

  Never mind, he comforted himself. I will take some breakfast and then I will call in at Easter House on my way to Chancery Lane and make all right between us.

  But at Easter House Mr Teshmaker told him she had caught the early morning stage to Bury. ‘She’s gone for the summer, so she says,’ he reported. ‘Did you not know, Mr Brougham sir?’

  ‘A creature of sudden whim, our Mrs Easter,’ he said, trying to make light of it. But the news made his heart sink.

  It would have sunk even further had he been able to see the foul mood she was in when she arrived in Bury.

  When Bessie came to the door to greet her and see to her luggage and inquire after her journey, she was alerted by the brittle speed of her. ‘You work too hard, me dear,’ she said sympathetically, as Nan brisked up the stairs, skirts swishing.

  ‘No, Bessie,’ she said, as she went, ‘if you ask me I don’t work hard enough. There’d be a deal less heartache if I had a deal less time.’ And although she sounded her usual friendly self that was an odd thing to say.

  Bessie followed her, but more slowly, trying another tack as she climbed. ‘Is our Mr Brougham a-followin’ ’ee down?’

  ‘Don’t speak to me about Mr Brougham,’ Nan said, turning to face her old servant, her face dark with fury, ‘for I can’t abide it. Dratted man! Where’s Thiss? I need to see the books.’

  ‘Never know’d her in such a humour,’ Bessie said to her daughter when she came visiting the next afternoon. ‘Snap yer ’ead off soon as look at yer. And yer pa said she was that quick with the books he barely ’ad time to open the pages. Not that she ’ad nothink ter find fault with. You know yer pa, everythink shipshape an’ orderly. An’ now she’s off out, all on ’er own in the pony-cart, an’ drivin’ the poor animal that hard you’d never believe. That ain’t like our Nan Easter, drivin’ without company. An’ no sign a’ Mr Brougham.’

  ‘Then ’tis a lovers’ quarrel,’ Pollyanna said sagely. ‘You mark my words. An’ the sooner ’tis mended the better.’ And she went back to Rattlesden to report it all to Mrs Hopkins and Mrs Harriet.

  ‘Mr Brougham will write to her,’ Annie said when she heard. ‘Or visit. ’Twill pass. These things always do. Is she to visit us, do ’ee think Pollyanna? Did she tell ’ee?’

  ‘Tomorrow, ma’am,’ Pollyanna said. ‘I was to be sure to tell ’ee, and here’s me forgetting.’

  ‘He’ll write,’ Annie said. ‘And if she’s at all melancholy the children will cheer her.’

  But four fraught weeks went by and no letters from Mr Brougham arrived and Cosmo Teshmaker reported there was a rumour that he had accepted a position as Governor to some West Indian island. Nan was still in a most peculiar mood, which was hardly to be wondered at if the rumour were true, so her children decided they would have to take action. They met in Annie’s parlour one Saturday evening after their own children were in bed to decide what should be done.

  ‘’Tis my opinion Cosmo has the right of it,’ Billy said. ‘Never known him wrong when it comes to rumour, damne if I have.’

  ‘Poor Mama,’ Annie said. ‘How she’ll miss him. Is he to be gone long?’

  But nobody knew the answer to that. ‘It could be for ever,’ John said lugubriously, ‘and how we shall cope with her then I cannot think.’

  ‘She only seems happy when she’s with the children,’ Matilda said. ‘I don’t understand it, indeed I don’t. I’ve never seen her like this before.’

  ‘Neither have we,’ Annie said, ‘which is why something must be done.’

  ‘She don’t laugh,’ John said. Her lack of laughter worried him more than anything else.

  ‘She don’t come to town,’ Billy said. ‘She sends letters but she don’t come to town. That ain’t like her either.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Matilda offered, ‘one of us should try to talk to her about it.’

  ‘You can talk to her if you like,’ her loving husband said. ‘Just so long as you don’t ask me.’

  ‘No,’ Annie said. ‘I don’t think that would do at all. She don’t take kindly to us knowing her affairs at the best of times.’

  ‘And this ain’t the best of times,’ Billy pointed out needlessly.

  ‘Perhaps,’ Harriet tried, ‘we ought to write to Mr Brougham and tell him how she is.’

  But John and James thought not. ‘It is not for us to interfere between man and wife,’ James said. ‘Even those who are man and wife without benefit of clergy.’ But he couldn’t think of anything else that could be done instead. It was very difficult.

  ‘The children are our greatest hope,’ Annie said at last, when they’d all brooded in silence for several minutes. ‘At least she is happy when she’s with the children. How if we throw a party for her and the children? At least that might cheer her.’

  So although they knew a party wouldn’t solve the real problem, they set to and planned one. For, as Billy said, what else could they do?

  Bessie tried to help her mistress by cooking special meals and making sure that the house was always full of flowers, but although Nan thanked her, that didn’t solve the problem either.

  ‘Never mind, Goosie,’ Thiss said. ‘You keep on. Water on a stone, eh?’

  So she kept on. And three days later when she was arranging a bowl of roses in the drawing room window, she looked up and there was Mr Brougham striding across the square in his fine blue coat and that nice grey hat of his.

  ‘Mrs Easter!’ she called, running from the room to warn her mistress. ‘It’s Mr Brougham come at last.’

  Nan was writing letters in her study. ‘Humph!’ she snorted as she put down her pen. ‘He has, has he? Well then you’d better show him up.’

  It didn’t sound very encouraging.

  But when Mr Brougham had been shown into the study, her mistress grinned at him, and that was more hopeful.

  ‘Well?’ she said, when Bessie was gone. ‘All packed and ready for the Indies are you?’

  He had come to Bury intending to talk sense to her, to argue the case for this governorship sensibly and logically and reasonably, as befitted a barrister-at-law, but the sight of her bright face, there, looking up at him, rousing him, her bright, intelligent, loving face, drove all sense and logic and reason straight out of his mind. She was so quick and alert and full of vitality, brown eyes gleaming, wide mouth spread, dark curls springing from her forehad as if they had life of their own, and those two tender wings of white hair on either side of her temples to remind him that they were both ageing and that life was short, oh maddeningly short. And in the moment he knew without doubt what he had suspected all along: that no matter what post he was offered, he simply couldn’t leave her. She was more precious to him than any promotion and she made his ambition look the paltry thing it was.

  He sat down in the armchair beside the window. ‘No,’ he said mildly. ‘I am not.’

  ‘Indeed?’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘And why not, pray?
You’d best look slippy or you’ll not be ready in time.’

  ‘I’m afraid, my dear,’ he said drily, ‘this is one journey I shall have to forgo.’

  ‘You mean to turn it down?’ she said her voice rising with hope and relief.

  ‘I’ve turned it down.’ Smiling at her, loving her, holding out his arms to her. ‘You are an impossible creature, my dearest, but I love you dearly and I cannot leave you.’

  She ran to him at once and smothered his face with kisses. ‘That’s – the best – day’s work – you’ve – ever – done.’

  ‘I’ve to be in Exeter in two days’ time,’ he said, when he could get in a word between kisses. ‘I hoped that you might accompany me there.’

  ‘Bessie!’ she yelled. ‘Pack my bag. I’m off to Exeter with Mr Brougham. We will travel after the party,’ she told him. ‘We’ve a children’s party in Rattlesden tomorrow. What fun!’

  That night Harriet wrote at length to her diary, while John was over in the rectory with James.

  ‘I am so glad of this return,’ she confessed, when she’d described it in detail, ‘which is a great surprise to me, for I never thought I would rejoice at the resumption of a love affair, which I was always taught to consider a grievous sin. And yet I do. I do indeed. It is such happiness to see them together again. They love one another so dearly. They were arm in arm all afternoon I declare, and looking so happy with one another.

  ‘Perhaps it is love itself which is important and not the outer forms and ceremonies. The important thing to them is that they are together again, husband and wife without benefit of clergy as dear James said a few days ago. How I have changed to be saying such things! I hope it is for the good. I think it is for the good.

  ‘This is an extraordinary family. You never know what is going to happen in it next. We shall have some sport at the party.’

  And it was. Great sport. For Nan was quite herself again, running races, and organizing a blancmange-throwing competition, full of her old intoxicating, happy energy. And when they were all exhausted, the maids served tea and they all sat down among the cushions under the shade of the holm oak to enjoy it.