Fourpenny Flyer (19 page)

He knocked again, this time with a double rap and considerably louder.

No answer.

He knocked a third time, rat-tat-tat.

And was still ignored.

‘Look through the window and see if there is anyone at home,' John said to his gentleman's gentleman.

‘The missus is in,' Tom reported. ‘Out the back, in the kitchen. I can see 'er plain as plain, sir.'

As she has seen me, John thought, hooking Tom away from the window. Thiss was right. This was going to be difficult. ‘Go back to your father,' he instructed, ‘and tell him I have tried and failed with Mrs Sowerby and now I mean to visit the laundry and see Mrs Kirby.'

‘Right you are sir,' Tom said happily, and sped off down the hill.

John waited until the next group of people was walking past Mrs Sowerby's window and then, suitable hidden among them, strolled to the laundry. Despite his outward calm he was beginning to feel as excited as young Tom, for he knew now that Mrs Sowerby meant to oppose him so this had all the makings of an adventure.

Mrs Kirby answered the door to him at once. ‘Pray do step in, Mr Easter sir,' she said, standing humbly aside so as to give him plenty of room to walk into her laundry. ‘How may we serve 'ee, sir?'

The door led into a narrow passageway where the dirty washing was received and the clean dispatched. There was a counter to the right of the entrance piled with clean bundles, all carefully docketed and neatly stacked, waiting collection.

‘I have come to make enquiries about Miss Harriet
Sowerby,' John said, breathing in the scent of starch and clean linen. ‘I have heard from Mrs Thistlethwaite of the manner in which she has been treated. Now I wish to know exactly where she is. I believe you said she was locked in a room. Is the whereabouts of the room known to you, Mrs Kirby?'

‘Come you through to the back yard, Mr Easter sir,' Mrs Kirby said, leading the way down the passageway at once. ‘Downright cruelty in a Christian country, so 'tis. That oughtn't to be allowed.'

‘Allowed,' Rosie echoed, stepping forward out of the laundry room to join them. ‘Come you through, Mr Easter. Poor Harriet!'

He followed the two women past the piles of washing and the door to the laundry room where four dishevelled laundry maids stopped their work to gaze at him with starch-eyed interest, and along the passage to the back door where they stopped.

‘Best to take a quick peek from here, sir,' Mrs Kirby said. ‘Wouldn't do to let Mrs Sowerby see us, now would it? Bein' she got a tongue in 'er 'ead sharp enough to cut coal. Harriet is up behind the windy, look. She been a-shut in there eleven days, poor soul.' And she stood aside so that he could hide his body behind the door frame and look out into the yard. It reminded him of the way Harriet had hidden herself from view when she'd peeped into her own house on the day they came back from Bath. He had thought it merely curious then, now he realized that it had been a sign of fear.

It was a very small yard and very muddy and the smell from the two privies that stood side by side in the middle of it was so concentrated and noxious it made him gag. He looked where Mrs Kirby was pointing.

The Sowerby's house formed the fourth wall to the yard and from where he lurked John could see through the kitchen window into the narrow kitchen where pots and pans hung above the fireplace and the hearth was heaped with grey ash. Mrs Sowerby was standing straight and black beside the kitchen table mixing something in an earthenware pot. Directly above the kitchen window was
another, a good deal smaller, with three panes of rough glass and behind the glass he fancied he could see a white-clad figure pacing to and fro.

There was a coal shed built against the wall to the left of the kitchen window and almost directly underneath Harriet's room, and although it was a rickety construction it gave John Easter an idea.

‘You would know when the Sowerbys are out I daresay, Mrs Kirby,' he said. ‘Gone to church or to market or suchlike.'

‘You could set clocks by 'em,' the laundry woman said, sniffing derisively. ‘Critters of powerful strong habits the Sowerbys.'

‘Then the next time you would expect them to leave the house would be …'

‘Seven o'clock tonight, sir. Saturday meetin'. Never miss.'

‘Would you happen to know how long the Saturday meeting continues?'

‘Hour an' a half, Mr Easter sir. Hour an' a half, reg'lar as clockwork.'

‘I'm much obliged to 'ee, Mrs Kirby,' John said, putting sixpence into her rough palm. Why, the plan was almost complete. ‘If I were to return to your house at five minutes past seven tonight, you would be able to let me into the yard I daresay.'

‘Well as to that, sir,' the laundry woman said, smiling at him, ‘I should be at my supper with Mr Kirby and my cousin, an' not like to see anyone comin' or goin'. Howsomever, if all the washing en't collected, I leaves the latch up on consideration of my clients, if you takes my meanin'.'

He took her meaning very well and with the expenditure of another sixpence.

‘I shall be there to 'elp 'er, sir,' Rosie said, nodding her great head. ‘My poor Harriet!'

‘Thank 'ee,' he said. He was so hot with sympathy for poor Harriet he didn't stop to think about the consequences.

Then he ran back to Angel Hill.

Billy was in the front parlour playing cards with Claude Honeywood and Ebenezer Millhouse. ‘We're off to Fornham,' he said, ‘to join the ladies. Tilda will be there for dinner with her cousins and Lizzie. They've quite a party planned. Why don't you join us, Johnnoh?' He seemed to have forgotten all about the rescue.

‘I shall need a ladder,' John said urgently, ‘and two people to hold it steady up against the coal shed, and a hammer to break a window with, and a blanket to cover up the jagged glass, and the pony-cart to carry everything and get us all clear away afterwards. Mrs Sowerby refuses to open her door to me, so I mean to steal Miss Harriet away.'

‘Oh I say! Bravo!' Ebenezer said. ‘Bags I to be one pair of hands on the ladder. What 'ee say, Claude?'

‘I'm game for anything,' Claude said, tossing his unplayed hand all over the table and jumping to his feet. ‘What a lark, Billy!'

‘My eye!' Billy said, looking up at his brother with admiration. ‘You do mean business and no mistake.'

‘Now I'm off to the stables,' John said, ‘to tell Thiss and see about the pony. Young Tom shall come with us tonight and keep cave.'

‘What a lark!' Claude said again, grabbing the jacket he'd flung across the back of a chair. ‘Wait for me, Johnnie!'

‘When is it to be?' Billy said, standing up at last and following his friends.

‘I will tell you on the way,' his brother said. ‘Come on!'

Before they went to the Saturday meeting Mr and Mrs Sowerby made one more effort to persuade their daughter to change her ways. It was beginning to worry Mrs Sowerby that the girl was so thin and looked so ill. Even though, of course, the unremitting diet of bread and water on which she had existed for the last eleven days had been entirely her own fault and could be altered the moment she saw sense and agreed to obedience. But she wouldn't agree. That was the trouble. Some terrible evil had entered into her soul. There was no question of it. Mrs Sowerby had suspected it from the first. Now she and her husband could both see it quite clearly.

They had come to Harriet's room on the morning after her punishment prepared to forgive her. They were both aware that she would have to be kept within doors until her bruises healed, since not all their neighbours saw the necessity of training up a child in the way it should go, and some had idle, vicious tongues, but they foresaw no difficulties that could not be overcome by a few days' prayer and solitude.

‘You will obey us now, I know,' Mrs Sowerby began, pleased because Harriet had risen as soon as they unlocked the door and now stood meekly beside her bed with her eyes lowered.

But the answer was an uncharacteristic question. ‘What have I to do, Mama?'

‘Why, promise me that you will not write to that dreadful man again, nor speak to him nor see him. That is all.'

Harriet lifted her bruised face and looked at her mother. One eye was closed by blackened, puffy flesh and her bottom lip was split by a scarlet fissure. But even before Mrs Sowerby could feel any pity for her she spoilt her chances.

‘No, Mama,' she said, ‘I will not promise.' Enough was enough. She would not allow them to bully her any further.

She quite took Mrs Sowerby's breath away. After such a thorough whipping she expected abject obedience, not effrontery.

‘You will promise,' Mr Sowerby said, angered by this foolish attempt at argument. ‘That is all there is to it. We have not brought you up to be disobedient.'

‘I will not promise,' Harriet said thickly. Her mouth was painfully dry and she was finding it difficult to talk but there was no going back. This had to be said. She had made up her mind to it. ‘Mr Easter is a good man. I did no wrong in answering his letters, nor in speaking to him. I will not promise.'

‘Men are
not
good,' Mrs Sowerby said. ‘Particularly men like him. Men like him ruin girls like you. Is that what you want, eh? Do you want to be ruined? Do you want to end
up with some wretched bastard child? Do you
want
to bring disgrace upon us, eh? Is that what you want?'

‘No, Mama. But Mr Easter wouldn't ruin anybody.'

‘He would! He would! Do as you are told.'

But the refusal was given again. ‘No, Mama, I will not.'

‘Have a care, child,' Mr Sowerby warned, ‘that we do not beat you again.'

‘If you do,' Harriet said flatly, ‘I shall die.' She spoke so oddly, without any emotion at all, as if she were talking about someone else.

Mrs Sowerby felt quite chilled. What had got into the child? This was most unlike her. ‘Then be a good girl and give us your promise,' she said, trying to cajole, and was annoyed that her own voice sounded false.

‘No, Mama,' Harriet said again. ‘I will obey you in all other matters but I will not be unkind to Mr Easter.'

‘We will beat you,' her mother warned.

But there was no response. No fear, no pleading, no emotion at all.

‘As you please, Mama,' Harriet said. ‘'Tis all one to me.'

‘What is to be done with her?' Mrs Sowerby said, turning to her husband in exasperation. ‘I begin to believe she is possessed.'

‘If that is how things stand,' Mr Sowerby said, ‘then we must try what the bread of adversity and the waters of affliction will do. She is to receive nothing else, Mrs Sowerby, until she comes to her senses, which we must pray will be soon. 'Tis a sad, sad thing to see one's child so stubborn, Harriet. You grieve me sorely. You grieve your mother sorely. Intransigence is a sign of the devil. Bread and water, Mrs Sowerby.'

‘A day or two should see her more amenable,' he promised his wife when they were back in the kitchen and eating Yarmouth bloaters for their breakfast. ‘Let the smell of good food waft upon her and we shall see a difference, you mark my words.'

But the smell of good food didn't appear to have any effect upon their daughter at all. Her answer was always the same. She would be obedient in all other particulars but she would not promise the very thing that was
required of her. She was quiet and withdrawn, speaking only when she was spoken to and making no fuss or complaint, but they could not change her mind.

‘I have made a broth of chicken bones,' her mother said on the seventh day. ‘Would you not care to taste some?'

But the answer was the same lethargic, 'No, Mama.'

‘I cannot understand it,' Mrs Sowerby said to her husband at dinner that evening. ‘She must be hungry by now. She certainly looks it.'

But the gnawing pains in her stomach that made Harriet sit bent double like a jackknife, and the cramps that locked her feet in a vice and pulled the muscles of her calves into tangible knots, and the scars and bruises on her face and arms that were taking so long to heal were silently endured and never spoken of. As the days passed she grew weaker, it was sometimes hard for her to remember why she was locked up and what she was doing, but the sight of her mother's insisting face renewed her opposition, morning after morning. Whatever she had to endure she could not give way. Not now.

‘No,' she said that Saturday evening. ‘No Mama, I will not promise.' Her wrists were so thin she could circle them easily between finger and thumb, and she was so cold it was all she could do to stop herself shivering. As soon as they are gone, she thought, I will wrap myself in the blanket and sit by the window. There was little enough to look at in the yard but it was better than staring at the wall.

It was growing dark when the rescue party escorted the pony-cart across Angel Square and into Churchgate Street, with a sizeable ladder clattering in the back of the cart among a collection of saws and hammers that Billy had considered indispensable to the adventure, Ebenezer had provided a lantern and a tinder box, and Claude had insisted upon bringing a jar of treacle and an old sheet, maintaining that the easiest way to break glass without fuss was to cover it with a sticky cloth before you hit it. Young Tom was swollen-chested with importance because he'd been assigned to drive the cart, and they were all in a high state of excitement.

At the corner of Churchgate Street they stopped the pony and sent Tom off to peer through the Sowerby's window and see if the house was empty, which, as he soon came scampering back to tell them, it was. The laundry door was on the latch, as promised, there was a bundle of rather crumpled, exculpatory washing on the counter, and the back yard was empty.

They left Tom sitting in the street and gave him strict instructions that he was to watch the road and whistle a warning if he saw anyone coming downhill from the direction of the chapel. Then Billy took the hammers and the blanket and the sheet and the lantern and the tinder box, complaining that he'd only got two hands, and Claude bore the treacle before him like a sacrificial offering, explaining that it took a deal of caution to carry treacle damnit, and Eb and John struggled the ladder through into the yard.