Fourpenny Flyer

by Beryl Kingston

  There was a rush of bodies behind him. He glanced over his shoulder to see what it was. Four constables were clambering up the back of the hustings. The awning was being torn down. More dark figures were climbing. He could see a pistol, two, three. Constables were swarming towards him from every direction.

  ‘What’s this?’ he said, turning to face them. There was a burly constable standing right in front of him.

  ‘Riotous assembly,’ the man said, leering. The light from the torches below them made his face look like a mask, with huge black nostrils flaring, and black pits for eyes and a down-turned menacing mouth. ‘Riotous assembly.’

  ‘Nay,’ Caleb said, with some pride. ‘’Tis a peaceful meeting. We’ve no riot here.’

  ‘Try this for riot then, bor,’ the man said, and punched Caleb in the stomach.

  The blow was so sudden and unexpected it winded him. For a few seconds he staggered backwards, gasping for breath, as bodies rushed and hurled all round him, shouting and swearing. Then he recovered a little and saw that his friends were punching back, attacking the constables, and he knew he had to do something to stop them. ‘Nay!’ he said again, putting out an arm to restrain his nearest ally. ‘Think on’t, Amos. Think how ’twill look in court.’

  ‘You think on it, bor,’ his tormentor said, seizing his arm and twisting it behind his back. ‘Since you’m all a-being’ arrested. Here’s a end to your fine ol’ tricks, bor.’

  Thoughts plummeted into Caleb’s brain too quickly to become words. He simply knew them. She was right. They were all in danger. He must warn the others. He struggled with all his might against the strength of his captor, pulling the man with him to the edge of the platform. ‘Disperse!’ he yelled at the crowd. ‘We are betrayed. Mr Richards is a spy. Disperse. They will call out t’ troops.’

  Then two more constables joined the struggle and he was pulled from the hustings and thrown to the ground and kicked. And then they were marching him away. But he’d heard his voice echoing across the square, he’d seen understanding in the faces below him, the warnings had been given.

  Harriet was still entirely calm. She watched the whole thing as though she were at a play. There you see, he’s being arrested. I knew he would be. I did try to warn him. She wasn’t even shocked by her lack of emotion. When the crowd obeyed him and began to run out of the square, she turned and went with them, walking sedately among their flying feet and outstretched hands.

  The night coach was standing outside the Bell Inn, its inside passengers peering from the windows at the rush. She produced her ticket from her reticule, showed it to the coachman without word or expression and climbed to an outside seat. Now she would go home. She would drive away from this nightmare and go home to her nice quiet house in sensible Rattlesden. To dear Will and dear Annie and dear James. Home.

  She was the only passenger on the cold outside seats and that pleased her, for conversation would have been impossible. She felt as though all words had been frozen inside her head. She watched the ostlers and post-boys at work as though they were in another world and when the coachmen told his team to ‘walk on’ she sat back in her seat and began to count the lighted windows as they flickered past. And in this odd detached state she travelled through the countryside.

  There was a full moon that night, clear and ice-white, whenever she could see it, but it gave the most fitful light, because it was obscured by a fast-moving torrent of blue-black clouds, some no more than a trail of blue gauze, others dense and black as ink. Sometimes she saw the road below her quite clearly and sometimes she was rocked forward in total darkness. It is like my life, she thought, as the hooves drummed on, sometimes so clear and easy, sometimes obscured by sin. But the thought was distant, too, as though she were thinking of someone else, and after a few more miles her mind emptied altogether and she wasn’t thinking at all. Nothing was real now. Nothing was happening. The hours and miles rolled past together.

  They passed the White Hart at Scole and made a brief stop at Stowmarket while she sat where she was and waited quietly, thinking of nothing. Then they were off again. ‘If you would be so kind as to put me off at Woolpit, sir,’ she said to the coachman as he gathered the reins.

  Which he did, and she climbed down, moving slowly and carefully, thinking of nothing, but remembering to thank him.

  She watched until the lights of the coach swayed towards the bend of the road, flickered and were gone, all at once as if they’d both been doused together. Then she set off to walk the rest of the way home, following the farm path south through the fields, walking automatically, thinking of nothing.

  And there was her house, its pale pink walls pure white in the light of the moon. The door was on the latch, and there were candle and tinder box set on the window ledge ready to light her way. But she climbed the stairs in darkness, following the curve of the walls with her hands, and at long, long last, she was home, in her own room, falling face downwards onto her own bed, the bed she shared with her own dear John, home and safe. And her grief broke into anguished weeping and she put her face into the pillows to stifle the sound, for it would never have done to wake Will. Thought returned hot and cruel like pincers in her brain, and she cried and cried and cried, weeping for her dear, dear John, because she’d been unfaithful to him, and he was so good and kind and he didn’t deserve it, and for Caleb because he’d been arrested and she’d tried to warn him and she didn’t know what they would do to him, and for her own terrible, unpardonable sin. Thou shalt not commit adultery. Adultery. Adultery. She had broken her marriage vows and there was no health in her. ‘Oh!’ she moaned into the pillow. ‘What shall I do? Whatever shall I do?’

  It was dawn before the crying stopped and by then she was totally exhausted and fell asleep where she was, face down on the pillows and still fully dressed in all her clothes. Which was how Peg Mullins found her, when she came in at seven o’clock with her mistress’s early morning tea.

  ‘Lawks a’ mussy, Mrs Easter,’ she said. ‘Why didn’tcher call me, when you come in instead a’ goin’ off like that? Your feet’ll be all swole up. Let’s have them boots off quick.’

  And they were swollen, so that the tops of her boots were cutting into her flesh. A bowl of cold water had to be fetched and cold compresses applied at once, and Will came into the bedroom wakened by all the fuss and was most concerned when he saw his mother’s ankles and insisted on rubbing them to make them better. And then Rosie arrived and held the tea for her to drink as if she were a baby, even though she protested weakly, ‘I can manage, Rosie.’

  ‘Manage, yes,’ Rosie said holding the cup firmly beneath her chin. ‘Manage.’ And the word was not an agreement but an instruction for the tea to be drunk at once without argument.

  They are all so kind to me, Harriet reflected as she sipped the tea. So kind and so dear. How can I possibly tell them how evil I have been? And as the taste of the tea soothed her mouth, and Will’s small busy hands soothed her feet, the words of old Cosmo Teshmaker came back into her mind: ‘Lie low, keep mum and wait for the matter to blow over.’ Would that be possible? Oh please, Lord, let it be possible! I did not mean to sin. Truly I didn’t. Let it be possible. And then she felt ashamed of herself for pleading with God. I must take the consequences of this sin, she thought, whatever they are. But not yet. Not just yet.

  ‘We’ve got ducks’ eggs for breakfast,’ Will said happily. ‘Aunt Annie brought them over yesterday. Are you better, now Mama?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, smiling at him because he was being so loving. ‘How silly of me to fall asleep in my clothes.’

  ‘That’s what comes a’ midnight coaches, mum,’ Peg said, removing the compresses.

  ‘Did you travel on the midnight coach, Mama?’ Will said. ‘Was it dark?’

  ‘Very dark.’

  ‘Were you stopped by highwaymen?’

  ‘Why, bless the boy,’ Peg laughed. ‘Would she be here if she had?’

  ‘If she had,’ Rosie echoed, laughing too
.

  I will take each moment as it comes, Harriet decided. That’s what I’ll do. There’s no sense in provoking trouble. I will wait. There is no need to say anything yet. ‘I think I’d better dress and start the day,’ she said.

  ‘You got a letter from Mr Easter, mum,’ Peg told her as they all left the room. ‘Come yesterday.’

  He was in Cambridge and would travel on to Rattlesden in four days time.

  ‘Mama has some wild scheme to take us all off to Stockton, to ride in a carriage drawn by puffing billy, if you ever heard of such a thing. It will please the children, I suppose, but I could do without such jaunts. These locomotives are mere toys, and like to remain so. I cannot see how they will ever carry passengers as coaches do. In my opinion we should not bother with them. Howsomever, she comes to Bury in a week’s time and proposes to tell us all about it then. You are much missed, my dear love,

  ‘Your own, John.’

  There is always something happening in this family, Harriet thought. And for once in her life she was very glad of it.

  Chaper Thirty-Six

  ‘Is that it, Nanna?’ Will asked.

  ‘That’s it,’ Nan said. ‘That’s a locomotive. The wonder of the age, so they say. What do ’ee think of it?’

  Will considered the wonder of the age for several seconds, concentrating as well as he could for the pressure and noise of the crowd all around them. ‘It looks like a water tank on wheels,’ he said. ‘A round one, with valves and things all over it and a box of coal up behind it.’

  His father laughed out loud. ‘A capital answer, Will,’ he said. ‘I’m blessed if I ever heard better. A water tank on wheels, eh Mama?’

  ‘With the power of thirty horses, don’t ee’ forget,’ Nan said, grinning at them both.

  The grand opening of the Stockton and Darlington Railway had attracted an even bigger crowd than the organizers had hoped. Hundreds of people had arrived from Middlesbrough and Darlington, of course. That was to be expected. But there were coachloads from York and Leeds and Harrogate too, and it was even rumoured among the locals that there were visitors who had travelled there from as far afield as London and Manchester. It was a great occasion, and the local street sellers did a roaring trade in hot pies and baked potatoes, shrimps and cockles, books and ballads and balloons. In fact there were so many people standing along the banks of the Tee that afternoon or ambling up and down on rather startled horses, and so many carts and carriages lined up on the rough track behind them that a casual observer could have been forgiven for supposing that he had stumbled upon a royal progress.

  The focus of all their attention perched on two narrow rails between the crowd and the river, occasionally blowing a small round cloud of steam from the long stovepipe that stuck into the air where the horse’s head would have been if it had truly been a carriage. It didn’t look capable of moving, leave alone pulling all the open carriages that were attached behind it.

  ‘Will it really roll along those little rails, Nanna?’ Meg wanted to know.

  ‘So they say.’

  ‘It smells horrid,’ Matty said wrinkling her nose.

  ‘How will the driver see where he’s going with that great pipe sticking up in front of him?’ Jimmy said. He’d been feeling concerned for the driver ever since they arrived. This locomotive looked a rackety old thing when you got up close to it, and he was sure it wasn’t safe to be balanced on rails like that.

  The three seven-year-olds stood in a group together right at the front of the crowd where Nan had pushed them, with Jimmy closely protective behind them. But Dotty and Edward hung back, clinging to their grandmother’s hands, nervous in such a vast crowd, and a little afraid of the great iron machine they were all supposed to be admiring.

  ‘It won’t come off the rails will it?’ Edward asked. It would squash them all if it did.

  But Nan didn’t have time to reassure him because one of the officials was beaming towards her. ‘This way, Mrs Easter ma’am, this way. If you and your party would be so good as to take your seats, ma’am. You are in the second carriage.’

  The second carriage was a crude open cart with wooden seats set all around the sides. It was extremely uncomfortable but it gave them a fine view of the crowds agog with excitement on their right-hand side, and the river peacefully minding its own business on the left, and the wonder of the age before them now busily puffing more steam through its tall stovepipe.

  They were a large party, so they had the carriage to themselves, Nan and John and Billy sitting on the left-hand side, Harriet and Matilda on the right, with the six children distributed between them. People were climbing up into the carriages all along the track. And the wind was freshening.

  ‘If it rains,’ Matilda said, ‘we shall all be absolutely soaked.’ She had joined this silly jaunt on sufferance and because Billy had begged her to, but really, all this way just to sit in a cart!

  ‘There’s a man on horseback in the middle of the track,’ Jimmy said. Now that was better. A horse was dependable. You knew where you were with a horse.

  ‘He’s come to lead us to Darlington,’ Nan said.

  ‘Why is he carrying a red flag?’ Will wanted to know.

  ‘To let people know we’re on the move.’

  ‘But we’re not,’ Meg said.

  The locomotive gave a sudden sharp shriek as if it was surprised and began to glide along the rails, slowly at first so that the movement was barely perceptible, but then gradually picking up speed. And the crowds cheered and a shower of black smut fell backwards out of the stovepipe all over the illustrious guests in the first carriage.

  ‘Well if that’s how it’s going to go on,’ Matilda said crossly, ‘I shall put up my umbrella.’ Which she did. ‘I see no reason why we should be covered in filth for our pains.’

  But Harriet endured and said nothing, just as she’d been doing ever since that shameful night. She lived in a daily nightmare, outwardly running the household and going to market and teaching the children and trying to answer Will’s endless questions, but inwardly anguished by shame and remorse, and terrified in case somebody had seen her in King Street, or Caleb wrote to the house, or her parents got to hear of it. Four days after her return she’d taken the pony-cart into Bury and blushingly asked for letters at the Post Office. To her great relief he’d remembered to be discreet, but the letter he sent crushed her chest with a new fear.

  ‘There are seven of us kept here and t’ cell is a right foul hole, wi’ rotten vittles and foul air. But no matter. They’ve set trial for the Quarter Sessions at the start of October, so we’ve to endure a month of it, wi’ good consciences for company. That is all they’ll keep us, be sure of that, being we’ve committed no crime.

  ‘Thine own, imprisoned or free,

  ‘Caleb.’

  ‘I will write to him the moment he is free,’ she told her diary when she’d burnt the letter. ‘However painful it might be to him, he must be told that I mean to stay faithful to my dear John from henceforth. But I cannot send such a letter to him now. That would be too cruel. Time enough when the trial is over and he is free again. It will be easier for him to accept such tidings then.’

  The decision eased her, making her feel that she was beginning to right the great wrong she’d done, and that all might yet be well despite of it. But then, as the days passed and the nightmares receded, she began to suspect that there was another and even more terrible price to pay for her transgression. For the last two weeks she’d been smothering a secret so dreadful that travelling in an open cart or being showered with soot was trivial by comparison. She had ‘seen’ nothing since a fortnight before that terrible evening in Norwich, and now with every new unstained day she grew more and more afraid that she was pregnant.

  She did her best to stay calm and keep cheerful, but the suspicion weighed upon her so heavily she was perpetually dragged by it, no matter what she did to occupy herself. She wrote to her diary every afternoon, before John came home from work, re
porting ‘No change’, or trying to persuade herself that she had miscalculated, or hoping that she might just have missed a month, but the writing didn’t help her at all, and afterwards as she hid the book underneath the mattress, she was miserably aware that if she was pregnant, it was a secret she wouldn’t be able to hide for ever. Sooner or later everybody would know, and John would be the first.

  It was a relief to her to be involved in this expedition. It gave her plenty to do and quite a lot to think about and it took her far away from Norwich at the time of the trial, which could have been distressing as it was bound to be reported in detail and that would recall all the events of that evening. It was much better for her to be away. Now she could simply hear the good news of their acquittal when she returned, and meantime she was in Nan’s cheerful company, with plenty to see and plenty to do and plenty of children to keep her busy.

  But now, as the locomotive picked up speed and the crowds were left behind, she suddenly found herself peculiarly alone. Everybody else was occupied: Jimmy and Matty talking to Matilda, huddled together under her umbrella, Will questioning Nan, Edward and Billy in deep conversation, John nursing Dotty and holding Meg’s hand. And her thoughts went sliding back to their incessant preoccuption. She couldn’t stop them.

  ‘We shall soon be there,’ Nan said.

  John smiled at her. ‘You may say what you like about this locomotive, Mama,’ he said, ‘but I tell ’ee ’twill never replace the stagecoach. Never in a million years.’

  And Matty was suddenly and violently sick all over her father’s new trousers.

  ‘Ugh!’ Meg said, and began to retch in sympathy.

  ‘Over the side of the carriage, if you please,’ John said, turning her body adroitly and not a moment too soon.

  ‘Oh dear!’ Harriet said, for the smell of vomit was turning her stomach. ‘Oh dear!’ And then she was hanging over the side of the carriage too.

  ‘My heart alive,’ Nan said. ‘What weak stomachs you’ve got the lot of you.’