Fourpenny Flyer (59 page)

And truly, lying beside her sleeping warmth in the familar ferny mustiness of their high bed, he felt more and more certain that there would be some perfectly proper explanation of that awful letter. It would all be resolved by love. In the morning.

When he woke she was smiling at him, her eyes a mere three inches away from his own. He kissed her at once, before consciousness and memory returned, savouring the soft pressure of her lips, her white breast lifting, her belly rounding against his, desire growing slowly and pleasurably as it always did. He kissed her again and again and again.

‘Dear, dear John,' she said, stroking the dark hair at his temples. ‘How I do love you –' sinuous against him. ‘Yes, yes, yes,' rolling onto her back, welcoming him.

And at the very moment of their sharpest ecstasy, as they rocked together, nearly nearly there, he suddenly remembered the letter, spider-black and foreign and insulting. All his desire was lost in an instant. He was weak and wilted. He couldn't continue. The ignominy of it was overwhelming.

‘What is it?' she asked, holding him about the waist. ‘Oh John, my dear, what is it?'

‘Nothing,' he said, rolling away from her, turning his back on her, confused and embarrassed.

‘John, my dear?' she said, putting her arm round his
neck.

He shook her hand away almost angrily and got out of the bed.

‘It is nothing,' he said brusquely. And he found a clean handkerchief and blew his nose loudly. ‘Nothing I tell 'ee. Time I was dressed. I shall be late for the sorting.' And he rang the bell for young Tom.

She was very upset, but she decided not to say anything because he was squinting with misery. ‘I will go and see how the children are,' she said, and she smiled at him to show that she loved him and that it was of no consequence. But he was putting on his dressing gown and didn't look at her.

I ought to tell her about the letter, he thought, watching her walk out of the door. I ought to ask her. But his courage had failed him too. No, no. Better to wait until the next one arrived. He would make it his business to stay at home until the post had been delivered. Today and tomorrow and tomorrow until a letter
did
arrive. Then he would see.

But although that morning's post brought two letters, neither was from Caleb Rawson. His was from his mother, saying she was returning to London that afternoon, and instructing him to have the books ready for her inspection at four o'clock, and Harriet's was from Annie.

‘Jimmy is now quite recovered,' she wrote, ‘even from the stiffness in his poor hands, which has eased at last. Oh Harriet my dear, I cannot bear to be parted from my dear girls for another moment, and we are all out of quarantine now. Mama is bringing Jimmy and me back to London with her tomorrow, which will be today as you read this letter. She says we may stay at Bedford Square for a day or two, but I would so much rather be with you and John. Could we seek refuge with 'ee too, my dear? You must say no if it is too much. I would not wish to be a burden. James will stay in Rattlesden, of course, to be with his parishioners, since so many have lost children or relations in the outbreak. Three died in one cottage. It has been the most terrible time. I cannot
tell you how terrible. The worst of it is that nobody can tell when it will be over. Your Mr Rawson wrote us such a fine letter. His little boy died of the smallpox too. Did you know? Oh how much I want to see you again!'

‘Yes,' John said, when he had read the letter too. ‘Of course she shall stay here and for as long as she likes.' He wasn't sure whether he was pleased to hear of Mr Rawson's letter or not. It seemed to have comforted Annie, and it showed that the wretched man wrote to everybody, but even so ‘your Mr Rawson' was a deal too familiar.

And so Annie was welcomed and settled into the house and her poor scarred Jimmy was reunited with his sisters and cousins. Will examined the scars with intense interest and after they were both, sent to bed that evening, demanded to be told ‘all about the smallpox, and cousin Beau's death and the journey down and everything'. And was. Apart from the more lurid and personal details, which were too painful to contemplate.

He was most impressed. ‘What a thing to have seen an epidemic,' he said, gazing at his cousin with blue-eyed admiration. ‘We missed it all down here in London, you know.'

‘You were jolly lucky,' Jimmy said. ‘You just go on missing it, that's my advice.'

It was Harriet's most fervent hope, and the theme of every prayer she uttered for the next anxious fortnight. Although she was glad to see her dear Annie again, and although she did everything she could to comfort her and make her life easy, it still seemed the cruellest irony that in order to be kind and charitable to Annie she had to subject herself to the daily ordeal of another secret quarantine. For what if they'd brought the infection with them, after all? She drew another little calendar at the back of her diary, and crossed off the days, yet again, just as she'd done before and with exactly the same mixture of hope and foreboding.

On the third day Billy and Matilda came home, calling on their way to Torrington Square to collect Edward and thank Harriet with tears in their eyes for her ‘uncommon
kindness'. On the fifth, Nan arrived to take them all to the Vauxhall Gardens to see a firework display, which she said was just the thing to cheer them and which Harriet enjoyed although she hadn't expected to. And John went about his work as though nothing were the matter, except that he never made love to her once, so she knew he was secretly as worried as she was. Despite the fireworks, it was a difficult time.

But the fortnight passed eventually and John recovered from his cold and there was no sickness in anyone else. And James wrote to Annie to say that the epidemic was dying down. ‘We only had two new cases in the parish last week,' he wrote, ‘and that is a very good sign. Soon we shall all be together again, my darling, and what a joy that will be.' And a letter arrived from Caleb late one afternoon which was full of comfort and hope, and pleased both women very much. ‘All bad things pass,' he said. ‘I reckon 'tis like a great wheel a-turning. But we must give t' wheel a shove now and then, else it'ud crush us down instead a' carrying us on.'

‘How very true that is,' Harriet confided to her diary. ‘All bad things
do
pass. Even this dreadful epidemic cannot last for ever. Soon it must end, and then we shall stop feeling afraid and my dear John will love me again, just as he used to. It distresses him to be unable. That is why he makes no attempt. I am sure of it. For if that were not the cause, it would mean he did not love me, and I could not bear to think that. Oh, if only I could make all right for him. Pleasure would be so healing. I must hold on to Caleb's certain truth. All bad things pass.'

But this particular bad time was not quite over. There was another victim falling ill of the smallpox even as she wrote. And this time death came swiftly and most terribly.

Four days later, Nan received a letter from Evelina Callbeck.

‘This I am most sorrowful to say, my dear Nan, is to tell 'ee that my poor dear sister Thomasina is dead. Only three days ago she was out to market. I cannot believe it. She would not allow me to venture from the house
because of the smallpox, and now you see how it is. Well, well. She was always so kind and loving to me. How I shall manage now I cannot think, but you are not to worry yourself on my account. I shall think of something. Thomasina always said we would think of something.

‘Howsomever the funeral is arranged. It was so very quick, Nan dear. I cannot believe nor understand it. Mr Thistlethwaite came in every day. He said it was because the spots would not come out. They never did you see, my dear Nan, and she suffered so much. It is at three of the clock on Thursday. Pray on no account allow any of the family to attend. There is no end to the danger in this town. I am quite able to attend a funeral on my own, even the funeral of my own dear sister.'

Nan wrote back at once: ‘I shall be in Whiting Street at two of the clock. You will most certainly not attend a funeral on your own. I never heard of such a thing.'

And at two of the clock, there she was, with Bessie and Thiss beside her and Mr Cosmo Teshmaker behind them. So Evelina was well supported, after all, standing between Thiss and Cosmo and weeping quietly with her head on the lawyer's shoulder. Afterwards when the little gathering drove back to her house in the comfortable privacy of Nan's closed carriage, she wept again and told them all, between tears, how very grateful she was to them, and how much she valued their friendship.

‘Squit!' Nan said, fretting her cold hands with loving fierceness. ‘What are friends for? And you en't to worry about the future neither, for I'll take care of 'ee, so I shall.'

They stayed with her for over an hour, telling her what a fine woman Thomasina had been and drinking her tea, until she was over the worst of her tears and seemed more settled. It was growing dark when they climbed into the carriage for the return trot to Angel Hill.

And halfway across the square, Cosmo suddenly suprised them all by announcing that he seemed to have left his gloves behind at Whiting Street.

‘'Ten't like you to be forgetful,' Nan said.

‘No, indeed.'

‘Then you'd best make tracks and retrieve 'em, had you not?' Shall we turn the coach about?'

‘No, no' he said. ‘A stop would be sufficient. I can walk.'

‘Well, well, well,' Nan said, when they'd stopped and let him out. ‘He's in a mortal hurry for a pair of gloves.'

‘If it weren't fer that gammy leg,' Bessie said, watching him from the window, ‘I swear you'd say he was running.'

And so he was, traversing the square in a series of long gliding hops, his greatcoat flapping behind him in the wind. He was on his way back to Miss Evelina Callbeck. He was forty-eight years of age, he'd been a bachelor all his life, and he had a club foot which he'd always considered a barrier to any possibility of courtship, but now her great need had overcome his timidity. He was going to propose to her.

They were married six weeks later, very quietly of course, in the church of St Clements' Danes in the Strand, on the day that Bury St Edmunds was finally declared to be free of the smallpox. Nan Easter and Frederick Brougham were witnesses and the new Mr and Mrs Teshmaker gave a private dinner party afterwards in the groom's modest house in Tavistock Street.

The bride declared she was glad of a quiet wedding, and vowed she was the most fortunate woman alive, ‘to be rescued so and made so happy.'

But the groom said that the fortune was all his. ‘I account myself most blessed. Most blessed.'

‘All's well that ends well,' Nan said, when she and Frederick were back in her drawing room at Bedford Square. ‘And the smallpox over too, praise be. Now perhaps we may take up our lives again and enjoy ourselves a little. Bessie tells me she is to be a grandmother in the summer. Pollyanna is breeding.'

‘I have a piece of good news too,' Frederick said, and he spoke so casually she knew at once that it was important.

‘And what might that be?' Grinning at him as he lay sprawled in her easy chair.

‘I have the offer of a seat in the Commons. I'm to be elected on the fourth of May.'

‘At last!' she said, rushing to kiss him. ‘Where is it?'

‘Lostwithiel in Cornwall,' he said. ‘A rotten borough I fear, but I assure you I will work to change such practices once I am a Member.'

‘I'm sure on it,' she said. ‘How fine 'Twill be to see your speeches in the papers. Mr Frederick Brougham, MP speaking in the House today … Which reminds me, I en't set eyes upon a paper all day long, and that won't do.'

‘Have you not?' he said, knowing quite well that she hadn't, because he had hidden them away himself. There was an item in
The Times
that he thought it better she didn't see. It would have spoilt all her enjoyment in the wedding.

‘I shall read 'em all now, so I shall,' she said, ‘while we have one last brandy. Where've they been put?'

So he had to produce them for her, and drink brandy with apparent calm while she went through them, one after the other.
The Times
was the third in the pile, but the news didn't disturb her in the least. ‘Why sithee here,' she said, ‘Mr Fuseli is dead. Fancy that! Died in Putney, it says, suddenly while visiting friends. Aged eighty-three. Well, well, well! I shall go and see Sophie in the morning.'

‘Must you, my dear?' he protested mildly.

‘Indeed I must. Can you give me one reason why I shouldn't?'

‘You have comforted so many mourners in the last few months. One more might prove too much. Even for you.'

‘My heart alive!' she laughed. ‘You don't know Sophie, nor the life they've been leading, apart for all these years. She won't mourn. I can tell 'ee.'

In all the years she'd known her old friend Sophie Fuseli, Nan Easter had only visited her at home on three occasions, and the last had been more than twenty years ago when they were both in love with that old rogue Calverley Leigh. It was really rather odd to be driving towards the house now, with Mr Fuseli dead.

‘The missus is in the garden,' the maid said. ‘She said you might visit. You've to go through, if you please.'

In the garden? Nan thought. On such a blustery day? What's she doing in the garden?

She was standing in the middle of the vegetable patch beside a bonfire nearly as tall as she was, feeding it with large pieces of paper. She was wrapped in her blue and red velvet cloak, which flapped and swirled about her in the wind, curving and uncoiling in the sort of sinuous swelling shapes that her husband had painted so often and so well. There were neat red boots on her feet and her grey hair was covered by a bright red Parisian bonnet trimmed with ostrich feathers. She looked delectable and perfectly happy.