Fourpenny Flyer (8 page)

But in fact John was not as calm as he looked. He had accepted this invitation because he couldn't find any credible reason for refusing it, and he too had dressed with care, but soberly, of course, in his new blue cloth jacket and his new buff trousers, and a cravat of plain white linen heavily starched and tied with such precision it looked as though it had been ironed to his neck, but despite all his efforts and his quite admirable composure, he was feeling terribly shy.

But the rout was shriekingly under way and there was nothing for it but to follow Billy into the house where a footman resplendent in green livery and gold braid dazzled them into the ballroom. It was an overpowering place, being decorated in red and green and hung about with bunting, and it was already uncomfortably full of guests, all taking up more room than usual because they were in their best clothes, and making a great deal of noise since that was what was expected of them at a rout. Four great chandeliers blazed like burning bushes above the embroidered muslins and shimmering silks and extraordinary coiffures of the ladies. There was a band on a raised dais playing discordantly but very loudly, and everybody seemed to be rushing from place to place, glass in hand, spilling wine as they ran.

‘Mr Easter, you wretched creature,' Matilda Honeywood said, scampering towards them with both hands outstretched to catch Billy's hands and twirl him about. ‘I
declare we all thought you had reneged upon us. How late you are! Mr Ottenshaw has been here an age, you bad, bad creature, and moping for lack of you.' And she smiled at him with her eyes and tossed her curls at him and beat him with her fan, which spun him into a state of such happy confusion that he trod backwards onto the feet of an unobtrusive dowager who had the misfortune to be sitting behind him.

‘Oh!' he said, ‘I am so sorry. I didn't mean …'

‘Of no consequence,' the poor lady murmured, trying not to wince. ‘I do assure you.'

‘This is Mr William Easter, Aunt,' Matilda explained, waving one airy hand by way of introduction. ‘He treads on everybody.'

‘Oh steady on!' Billy protested. ‘Not everybody, Miss Honeywood.'

‘You've trod on me enough times,' she said dragging him off through the throng. ‘I declare I'm black and blue all over.'

‘Steady on!' he begged again. ‘I ain't said how d'ee do to your parents. And anyway how do I know you're black and blue all over, eh? Tell me that. I don't see any bruises, upon me soul I don't.'

She turned to give him the full benefit of her fine grey eyes, standing so close to him that he could see the little pulse beating at her throat and feel the warmth of her body almost as if he were holding her in his arms. ‘Shame upon you, Mr Easter,' she teased. ‘Have I to strip to my chemise to show you the harm you do?' It pleased her to wonder what it would be like to strip to her chemise in front of Billy Easter, for he really was extremely handsome.

The thought of it made him weak at the knees. ‘Miss Honeywood!' he said. ‘Matilda!' But then a gaggle of her friends came bearing down upon them, all talking at once, and the image and the opportunity were lost.

‘This is Miss Lizzie Moffat,' she said, seizing a tall, skinny girl by the hand and pulling her forward. ‘My dearest, dearest friend. Allow me to present Mr William Easter, Lizzie my darling, and his brother Mr John.'

‘How d'ee do,' the skinny girl said, profering two limp
fingers to each of the brothers in turn. ‘Womantic wout, ain't it? Weally womantic. They've got woses everywhere. Positively miles and miles of wed woses. It's incwedible.'

She was a peculiarly unattractive girl, John thought, and her lack of charm was accentuated by that deliberate drawling lisp. She was far too tall for a start, and bony and gawky, her fair hair tortured into lank ringlets, and her faced so blotched with freckles that at first sight he thought she was suffering from some sort of skin disease. A bean pole with a skin disease he thought, wryly. But he was not to be allowed to avoid her.

‘You are to dance with my dear Lizzie,' Matilda whispered, leaning towards Billy's chest until she was touching his waistcoat with the tips of her fingers. ‘Both of you. Because she is my very dearest friend. And you are to dance with her first, Mr William Easter, or I vow I shan't tread a single measure with you myself. No, not so much as one single measure. So you've been warned you bad, bad boy.'

So of course Lizzie's card had to be marked there and then, and two dances booked with each of them, which she pronounced, ‘Perfectly thwilling!' in tones of unalloyed boredom.

As he put his dance card back into his pocket John knew that it was going to be a perfectly dreadful evening. And for a fleeting second before Matilda rushed them off to pay their respects to her parents, he remembered the quiet girl he'd danced with in Bury St Edmunds and wished she could be here to rescue him.

But no rescue was at hand, and the impossible Lizzie was pushed before him at every turn, almost as if Miss Honeywood was going out of her way to fling them together, which heaven forefend. She was produced at supper time, to tempt him with a plateful of vol-au-vents as limp as her curls; she was propelled flat-footed into the centre of the Scottische to partner him; and even when he fled from her company to a quiet seat in the darkest corner of the long library, somehow or other she appeared on the very next seat before three minutes of precious privacy had passed. It was like being pursued by a broomstick. By the time midnight struck and he was endeavouring to waltz with her
while keeping her at arm's length he was heartily sick of her. It was quite a relief to hear his mother's bold laugh and to realize that she had joined the company. Now at last he had a perfectly proper reason to desert the dance floor and leave his unwanted companion.

‘My heart alive!' Nan Easter said, when the dance was done and he was able to join her. ‘
Who
was that apparition a-hanging onto your arm?'

He gave her a little grimace of agreement and explained. ‘Her name is Lizzie Something-or-other, and she is Miss Honeywood's best friend, according to Miss Honeywood.'

‘Ah!' his mother said, understanding at once. ‘'Tis the habit of pretty young girls nowadays to choose some great gawk to befriend. 'Tis uncharitable, in all conscience, but a neat ruse, for it renders their beauty inescapable.'

John grimaced again. ‘It has been my experience tonight, Mama,' he said, ‘that it is the great gawk who is inescapable.'

‘Fetch me a rum punch,' she said, grinning at him, ‘and we will go into the library and talk business.'

William Easter had been sent for rum punch too, and was equally glad to go, although for very different reasons. It was always a pleasure to wait on his dear Matilda and, besides, dancing had given him a thirst.

‘D'you see my Matilda?' he asked his brother as they stood side by side at the serving table. ‘Ain't she just a corker? Come and join us, why don't you?'

‘Because this rum punch is for Mama.'

‘Ah!' his brother said. ‘Duty before pleasure, eh?' And was surprised when John laughed at him, for he'd really imagined that his brother was enjoying the rout as much as he was.

‘If only you knew,' John said. ‘I will tell you about her later.' And he followed his mother into the library.

‘I've arranged to see Mr Chaplin at six o'clock tomorrow morning at the Cross Keys,' he said as soon as they had both sat down. And was pleased by the immediate approval on her face.

‘Good,' she said briskly. ‘He's an outspoken man, but you'll find him fair.'

‘I have given much thought to this meeting, Mama,' he
said. ‘I do not think you will find me wanting.'

‘No more do I,' she said cheerfully. ‘For much depends upon this deal, which you and I know well. I mean to travel to York within the week, to open a shop or two there, and a reading-room too, I daresay. I suggest you start work upon the Bath road when you've seen Mr Chaplin. 'Twould be as well to get negotiations underway before the winter puts paid to travel. What think 'ee?'

‘I believe you have read my notebooks, Mama,' he said, ‘since you suggest my own plans, entirely.'

‘You understand this business as well as I do,' she said grinning at him.

‘Not quite, Mama,' he said, gallantly but truthfully. ‘But I mean to one day, you may depend on it.'

Mr William Chaplin, the famous coach proprietor, and Mrs Nan Easter the famous newsagent, had a lot in common. Both were outstanding personalities, showily dressed, fond of their pleasures, quick witted, outspoken, ambitious and energetic. So naturally enough they got on well together, even when they were striking bargains, which they'd done with increasing frequency over the last five years. For A. Easter and Sons, Newsagents, put plenty of business Mr Chaplin's way, carrying newspapers to more and more provincial towns, and the two firms had grown at a similar rate.

Mr Chaplin was an excellent judge of horseflesh and a superlative judge of men. Now, standing among the bustle in the coachyard of the Cross Keys, with his boots squelching in the early morning mud and his face reddening in the early morning drizzle, as the six o'clock peal echoed from the steeple of nearby St Edmund's church, and the first coaches of the day prepared to depart, he was giving half his sharp attention to the punctuality of his fleet, and at the same time he was rapidly assessing the character of Nan's younger son.

He knew him by repute, of course, as a ‘pretty dull dog', and had seen him once or twice, boarding a coach or walking along the Strand, quiet as a shadow beside his mother's exuberance or his brother's high spirits. But now the young man stood before him, come to ‘do business', and Mr Chaplin had no intention of making it easy for him. The business world was tough and uncompromising and if this withdrawn young personage wanted to make his way in it, the sooner he knew its true character the better.

A diffident young man, Mr Chaplin thought, looking straight into John's dark eyes through the thin mist of that pervasive rain, and noticing how quickly they were lowered. Not a strapping fellow like his brother. His shoulders were too narrow and his neck too slight for physical strength. But he stood well, making the most of his height, with his spine straight and his hands at his sides like a guardsman, ignoring the drizzle even though the rain was dripping off the brim of his black beaver hat and beading along the shoulders of his blue jacket. He had plainly taken great care over his appearance for this interview, for his linen was spotless and, what was more, he'd shaved his chin, which was rare at such an hour in the morning. ‘Well sir?' Mr Chaplin said, flicking ash from the end of his cigar. ‘'Tis six o'clock, sir, and time for business.'

John had been taking stock, too, in his own quiet way, and knew that this business would have to be done quickly, because that was Mr Chaplin's way.

He came to the point at once. ‘You currently carry our freight, I believe Mr Chaplin, at the going rate of threepence a mile, is that not so?'

Mr Chaplin signalled with his eyebrows that the Ipswich coach should depart at once and agreed that it was.

‘That being so,' John said, ‘perhaps we could discuss terms for a proposition which I have in mind and which I have already taken the liberty of discussing with some of your coachmen …'

One of Mr Chaplin's coachmen was rattling one of his fine red and black coaches out of the yard with such a spraying of mud and such a braying of horns and such a cacophony of leaping mongrels that further conversation was impossible.

‘Not that this was done in any spirit of presumption, you understand …' John felt compelled to explain.

The Ipswich coach was now being followed in its turn by the ‘Phenomena', with Mr Joseph Wiggins magnificently in command and winking at him as he passed, and behind the ‘Phenomena' two more trundling giants were preparing to leave. The noise was thunderous.

‘I thought it best to sound their opinions, Mr Chaplin,
sir …' How impossible it was to conduct business in all this noise. The great man wasn't listening. How could he hear?

The last coach swayed and tumbled through the misty entrance with a pancake of damp straw and dirty paper squashed beneath its rear wheels and the accompanying dogs fell into paroxysms of mud-spattered excitement. The post boys adjusted their leg pads and wiped their damp foreheads with their wet caps and sighed with relief at a job well done. And Mr Chaplin turned his full attention to John Easter.

‘Well then, sir,' he said.

John pulled a neat file of papers from the inside pocket of his jacket and handed it across. ‘I have made certain calculations, sir,' he said, ‘which should explain the proposition.'

But Mr Chaplin had no intention of letting him off the hook. ‘In brief sir,' he said. ‘Tell me in brief, for I'm a busy man.'

‘In brief, sir,' John said, ‘what I am asking of you is that your coachmen should carry our papers in a different manner. Delivery would be a great deal quicker if they were to be transferred from coach to coach at every lengthy halting place. At Scole, for example, Mr Joseph Wiggins – who said I was to tell you he was agreeable – would transfer from the ‘Phenomena' to the Cambridge coach, which leaves the White Hart three minutes after his arrival. It is all explained in those papers.'

‘Is it so?' the great man said, puffing his cigar. ‘Is it indeed?' And he took the papers, thrust them roughly into the front of his jacket, and strode off towards the booking office.

Have we made a bargain or not? John wondered. It was impossible to tell. He made one last effort. ‘If there are any points which require elucidation,' he called, ‘a note sent to Easter house in the Strand will find me at any time. I should be most happy to …'

But Mr Chaplin was already halfway through the booking office door. He waved his cigar by way of acknowledgement and was gone.