Fourpenny Flyer (32 page)

Harriet was so shocked she forgot all about her need for water. They are lovers, she thought. Here in this house, and before they are married. How dreadful! She crept back into her room and climbed into bed as more uncomfortable questions niggled into her mind. Did Mrs Easter know what was going on? And if she didn't should she be told? What would her dear John think about it? Ought she to mention it to him? Perhaps not, for it would be a difficult thing to talk about, even to him. Oh dear, oh dear. What a dreadful thing to have seen!

She slept fitfully, plagued by thirst and waking from time to time to ponder the questions all over again, but when morning came and a servant brought her a cup of
hot chocolate ‘to revive her' she was still no nearer any solutions. And Billy and Matilda were both as bold as brass at breakfast. There wasn't the slightest sign of shame in either of them. These Easters truly were extraordinary people.

She worried about it all through the morning, while Nan and her sons were out at their work and finally, she plucked up courage to tell Annie what she had seen. They were taking the two boys for an afternoon promenade around the gardens and were well away from any possibility of being overheard. To her amazement Annie wasn't even surprised.

‘Yes,' she said. ‘I rather imagined that was how things were. The signs are all there.'

This was intriguing. What signs? Harriet wondered, and wished she were brave enough to ask. Were there marks upon you afterwards when you behaved like that? She was quite glad John had arranged for that secret honeymoon, even if it wasn't a tour of the Continent. ‘Does Mrs Easter know?' she said.

‘I daresay she does,' Annie said. ‘There is little occurs in this house that she does not know about.'

‘Then she will stop it, will she not?' It was a relief to know that it wouldn't be necessary to tell her.

‘I don't think so, Harriet.'

‘But it is sinful, surely?'

‘In our eyes,' Annie said, ‘yes, it is. Howsomever Mama has a different view of such things.'

Now, and a little late in the conversation, Harriet remembered that Mrs Easter had had a lover, and the memory of them driving about Bury in their fine carriage suddenly filled her mind, complete in every detail, so that she blushed and dropped her head, feeling confused. But what Annie said next was even more disturbing.

‘I must say, 'tis easy to understand why she should, my dear, for of all the sins this is the least harmful, surely.'

The idea of a sin being praised was so extraordinary it made Harriet's mouth fall open. ‘But a sin …' she said.

‘'Twas the sin our dear Lord forgave most readily,' Annie said, ‘and I cannot help thinking that must have
been because He knew how often it is due to simple human weakness, and how often it springs from love, the self-same love that is blessed in marriage. “Let him who is without sin amongst you cast the first stone,” He said, and that shows, does it not, that He expected the same love and the same sin to be present in all His hearers that day.'

‘But that was the story of the woman taken in adultery,' Harriet faltered. ‘Surely you do not condone adultery, Annie.'

‘No,' Annie said seriously, ‘but I endeavour to understand it. Mama had a lover for many years, you know, and try as I might I could never see any wrong in it. He was a charming man and uncommon kind to me and the boys. And now she has Mr Brougham, and a better man you couldn't find anywhere, you must admit. Come now, my dear, Billy and Tilda will be married in a few months and no real harm done. That you'll allow, I'm sure.'

But Harriet wasn't sure. ‘She was so grand in her red coat,' she said, ‘with her talk of a Continental tour and how stupid the poor are, and yet she behaves like the woman taken in adultery. What am I supposed to think?'

‘Think kindly, my dear,' Annie advised. ‘'Tis always the best way. And if you can't think kindly, why, then don't think of it at all.'

It was sound advice and in the weeks that followed Harriet took it and acted upon it, although to start with she was being sensible as much by default as by anything else. The truth was she was too busy planning the decoration of her new home to have time to think about Matilda, buying new furniture, and matching curtains and carpets, and stocking her new kitchen with everything it could possibly need, from the first jar of salt to the last wooden spoon. She and John walked to Fitzroy Square every day, and every day brought a new pleasure, their bedroom a-glow, with red curtains at the window and a huge fire in the grate, their dining room completely furnished, very cool and elegant with its blue and white striped wallpaper and eight fine chairs set against the walls and the table polished until they could see their faces in it.

‘We shall be so happy here,' she said, as they stood beside the drawing room window looking down at the quiet square below them.

‘Soon,' he said, kissing her. ‘Oh very soon now.'

On John Easter's wedding day ominous notices appeared all over Bury St Edmunds. Nan saw one when she first looked out of her window that morning. It was pinned to the carved corner post of the chemist's shop on the corner of Abbeygate Street. When breakfast was over she and Frederick walked across the square to see what it was.

‘
April 29th Notice,
' it said,

‘Whereas disorderly assemblages of persons have taken place, and outrages have been committed in some parts of the division of Bury St Edmunds, the magistrates present at the above session do hereby signify their determination to take prompt and effectual measures and to bring to justice all persons who are found offending against the peace.

‘And the magistrates will in their respective districts take such measures for strengthening the hands of civil power as shall seem necessary to preserve the peace therein.

‘By order.'

‘And what's the meaning of that?' she said

‘They mean to call out the military to the next demonstration hereabouts,' Frederick told her. ‘That is what it means.'

‘In that case,' she said, ‘let us hope they have no cause, at any rate not today or until after Johnnie's wedding.'

‘Your sympathy for strikers is somewhat limited this morning, my dear,' Frederick teased. ‘Correct me if I misremember, but do I not recall that you once expressed
the sentiment that they had every right to protest?'

‘I don't care what they do,' she said, ‘nor where they do it, as you know right well, providing they don't go upsetting my family.' And she stamped her foot when he laughed at her. ‘Especially with the weather so fine.'

And so it was: a beautiful spring day, with white clouds billowing like sails in the blue sky above the abbey walls and the smell of warm earth and green corn rising into the town from the surrounding fields.

‘Happy the bride the sun shines on,' Annie said as she and Harriet walked out of the rectory on their way to church. The sunlight dappled down upon them between the branches of the yew so that Harriet's new blond gown and Annie's re-trimmed yellow one were spangled with shining discs of brightness. So slim and trim they were in their long straight gowns, and as pale and pretty as two spring flowers, with huge poke bonnets framing their faces like jonquils, and little green slippers already dew-stained on their feet and dark green stockings on ankles as slim as stems, holding their posies of spring flowers waist high so that the green ribbons they trailed lifted and winnowed in the morning breeze, like Annie's fringe of fair hair and the one straight silver tress that had flown free from the restraints of Harriet's modest topknot.

‘I shall not disgrace him, shall I, Annie?' Harriet asked, clutching her posy of flowers so nervously that the jonquils trembled above her fingers.

‘You will be the dearest wife to him,' Annie comforted, ‘and make him uncommon happy.'

But now that the moment had arrived, Harriet was anxious. What if her parents had found out about the wedding? They could be sitting in the church at this very minute, just waiting for her to appear. And what would happen then? Oh dear, oh dear, she thought, as they arrived at the south porch. Suddenly she couldn't be sure of anything. What if she was doing the wrong thing to marry him, after all?

But then they were inside the dear peaceful church and the world and the sunshine were left behind and Mr
Teshmaker was waiting to walk her down the aisle. The light from the great east window was diffused and gently coloured, and in the midst of it her compassionate Christ gazed down upon her and upon her dear, dear John, who was standing at the altar rail glancing back over his shoulder to see if she'd arrived.

And all her worries melted away like the foolish things they were, and she walked happily down the little aisle towards her new life, with Mr Teshmaker gliding beside her. She was vaguely aware of Mrs Easter's fine clothes and of the children gazing at her in round-eyed awe. And then there was only John's face relaxing into a smile at the sight of her, and Mr Hopkins reaching down to take their hands.

‘Dearly beloved, we are gathered together here in the sight of God, and in the face of this congregation, to join together this Man and this Woman in holy Matrimony; which is an honourable estate….'

Back in Bury two hundred men were congregating in Southgate Street. Some of them carried sharpened sticks, and their leaders bore a red and white flag on which the legend ‘Bread or Blood' had been painted in letters every bit as ominous as the wording on the posters. They had marched in protest to the house of Mr Wales the hosier, who had bought one of the new spinning jennys and laid off most of his workforce in consequence, and now, as more and more men arrived to pack the narrow street, they were listening to Mr Henry Abbott of Rattlesden, who had organized the march.

‘We got right on our side, don' 'ee forget, no matter how many men o' the militia them ol' mawthers do call out for to stop us,' he was saying. ‘We don' ask for nothin' but what's our nat'rul birthright, when all's said an' done. Our nat'rul birthright to work for a livin'. Tha's all 'tis.'

They were mild sentiments, and reasonably expressed, but the growl of agreement that rose from the packed masses around him was terrible to hear.

In Manchester Mr Caleb Rawson was saying much the same thing to a meeting of Salford weavers. ‘I say we should go to
London, friends, as many on us as can mek the journey. We've the right to do it. We should go to London and sign t' petition, and gi' our support to Mr Hunt at t' meeting in the Spa Fields and show t' bosses we mean business.'

‘What if t' bosses ignore us, Caleb?' another weaver asked. ‘What then, eh?'

‘Why, then we should march on Parliament, wi' pikestaffs if need be, and mek our meaning so plain to 'em they must tek it whether they will or no.'

‘Eh lad, tha'rt a rare ‘un,' the other weaver said.

Mr and Mrs John Henry Easter, having breakfasted with their friends and relations, drove to their honeymoon through the green cornfields, past woods hazy with bluebells and hedgerows blossoming with white cow parsley and purple vetch. Above their heads horse chestnuts carried their heavy blossom like carved candles, creamy-white against the luscious new green. It was nearly May Day.

‘Where are we going, dear John?' Harriet asked, as the horses trotted the Easter carriage easily along the road to Scole. ‘Shall you tell me now, or have I to wait until we arrive?'

‘'Tis a hidden place that no one has ever heard of,' he said, tucking her hand inside the crook of his arm.

‘Is it far?'

It was a very long way, five coach journeys, in fact, and uncommon long journeys at that, even with loving talk and fine weather to sustain them. The afternoon was still balmy as they drove through the Vale of St Albans but by the time they reached Oxford, where they stopped to dine, it was beginning to grow chill; the western sky was already more grey than blue and the ancient colleges looked stony and forbidding. But the meal refreshed them and the last lap of their journey, to a village called Witney, hardly took any time at all.

‘There will be a carriage waiting for us somewhere hereabouts,' John said, as he helped her down from the coach outside the Crossed Keys Inn. But there was no sign of it and once the stage had gone trundling away taking its
lanterns with it, the road was dark and empty. He was very annoyed, as she could see from the way he was squinting. But he remained calm and courteous, escorting her into the inn and ordering brandy and hot water for her, ‘to keep you warm while you wait, my love, which I promise you will not be for long,' and then he went striding off along the dark street to find their promised vehicle.

It took him half an hour and considerable suppressed temper, which was not improved when he discovered that the groom he'd hired had driven the carriage to the far end of the village green and was waiting in the shadows beside the church.

‘What possessed 'ee to wait in such an out-of-the-way place?' he asked in weary exasperation.

‘I allus waits 'ere,' the boy said, looking very puzzled by the gentleman's annoyance. ‘I thought you'd ha' know'd, sir. I allus waits 'ere. Right 'ere, right on this werry spot. I meant fer the best, sir.'

There is nothing to be served by getting angry with him, John told himself, for he is plainly a dolt who knows no better, and the longer we argue the longer my Harriet will have to wait. But it marred the journey for all that, and he'd planned it so meticulously, wanting it to be perfect for her. Sighing, he climbed into the little vehicle and ordered the dolt to drive him to the Crossed Keys, ‘If you know where that is.'

And so the honeymooners arrived at last in their hidden village, but by now it was so dark that they could hardly see anything of it: a vague huddle of low cottages, a blackness of trees soughing and sighing, three candlelit windows among the sloping timbers of an inn. The night air was redolent with wood-smoke and farm manure and two owls were whooping to each other in the darkness.