Gates of Paradise (19 page)

‘What a lot of questions he asks,' Betsy observed as she read. ‘This is all questions, all the way through. Why do he ask so many?'

‘Why does anyone ask questions?' Catherine said. ‘Why do you?'

‘On account of I wants to know the answers,' Betsy said. That was simple.

‘Exactly so.'

‘But Mr Blake, he must
know
the answers, surely, bein' a poet.'

‘If you asked him he'd say he doesn't know enough of the answers,' Catherine told her. ‘The more questions you ask the more answers you find.'

It was an extraordinary thought to carry back to the stable but not one that Johnnie wished to entertain. ‘We 'aven't got time fer poetry,' he said, kissing her neck. ‘That can wait.'

But although he kissed her thoughts away, they were only gone temporarily and the next evening when she carried the usual pot of coffee up to the library, she found herself gazing at Mr Blake's animated face and wondering what other weird ideas were bubbling in his head.

The following evening there was a dinner party which went on until long past midnight and the night after that the household was kept busy running for Doctor Guy and cleaning Mr Hayley's clothes. He'd taken another fall from his horse and had come home from his afternoon ride covered in mud and bleeding from a gash on his chin.

‘'Tis all the fault of that dratted umbrella of his,' Mrs Beke complained. ‘Why he must take it with him everywhere he goes is beyond my comprehension.'

‘And mine,' Johnnie whispered to Betsy as they
left the kitchen together, he to run down to The Fox to buy a bottle of brandy for the invalid, she to carry his dirty linen to the laundry room. ‘We've lost another evenin' thanks to that umbrella.'

‘Never mind,' Betsy said. ‘There's always tomorrow. Least we got somethin' to look forward to.' And as she walked away with the muddy jacket hanging over her arm she was thinking of the other things she was looking forward to. Tomorrow she would see Mrs Blake and read another poem.

It was a disappointment to her that Johnnie showed so little interest in what she was reading, especially when he was the one who had taught her to read in the first place. She tried to tell him on several occasions but if she started when they arrived in the stable, he only grunted and kissed her with more passion and if she tried to talk about it afterwards, when they were dressing ready for their sprint to the house, he told her she looked good enough to eat and to hurry up or they'd have Eddie back. Eventually she decided he simply wasn't interested in poetry but by then it didn't matter because she'd found another audience.

After she'd been visiting Mrs Blake for about a fortnight, she returned to the kitchen one evening to find Susie complaining that the master had dropped ink all over the library table. ‘An' how he thinks we're to clean it all off, I do not know.'

‘You should see Mr Blake's table,' Betsy told her. ‘Tha's a mass a' stains. Inks an' paints an' I don't know what-all. It comes with bein' a poet.'

‘I never knew he was a poet,' Susie said. ‘D'you hear that Nan? Tha's two poets we got in our village. Who'd ha' thought it? Is he a celebrated an' all?'

Betsy said she didn't think so, but he ought to be. ‘He writes poems about all sorts a' things,' she told them. ‘I been a-readin' of 'em.'

‘What sort a' things?' Nan wanted to know.

So she told them. And from then on she reported to them every time she'd been to the cottage. ‘We been reading about the sweep boys, this evening. Terrible what they do to 'em. They shaves their poor heads, an' gives 'em hardly anythin' to eat so as to keep 'em small, an' lights fires under their poor feet when they get stuck in the chimernees, an' I don't know what-all.' ‘Tonight I found a poem about how if you're angry you ought to spit it out an' have done with it, on account of if you keeps it all hid an' don't say nothin', it grows an' makes you cruel.' ‘The one I found tonight was about a school boy an' there was somethin' he'd wrote in the middle of it I thought was really good. How did it go? “
How can the bird that is born for joy, sit in a cage and sing
?” That was it. He don't reckon you should put birds in cages, an' no more do I.'

‘He do write some odd things,' Nan observed.

‘You should see 'em,' Betsy said. ‘'Tent just the words an' the ideas he has, 'tis the drawin's. He draws 'em an' all an' they're so pretty you wouldn't believe. I read another one tonight about a newborn
baby and he'd drawed her a-sittin' on her mother's lap inside a great red flower with an angel a-lookin' at her.'

‘My stars!'

Christmas came and went in a flurry of snow. The subterfuge continued. Blake and Hayley continued their studies, Eddie played endless shove ha'penny while Johnnie and Betsy made love, and Betsy read more and more of Blake's poetry and grew steadily more fond of his wife. Mrs Beke made it her business to meet up with that lady – entirely by chance of course – and having established that Betsy really was making regular visits to the cottage, she relaxed her vigil, confiding to the butler that as Johnnie Boniface was spending so much of his time in The Fox, even if Betsy
was
just over the road from him, they weren't likely to be getting up to any mischief. ‘A word to the wise,' she said, ‘that's all it took. Mrs Haynes is a sensible woman.'

The Fox Inn, Felpham, April 22
^nd
midnight
.

My dearest Annie
,

Such a day I've had of it. I have gathered material without pause and I am sure that most of it will prove useful. Blake's pupil was a treasure. She lives in a comfortable house on the southern edge of the village, which she bought when she was newly widowed and it was newly built. She was ready and waiting for me when I arrived and had all her childhood sketches arranged on the parlour table so that I could see them at once. She said Mr Blake had been hired by her parents to teach her and her two sisters to draw: ‘they thought we should be accomplished, you see,' and maintained that he was an angel, being kind and patient and painstaking, with never a cross word. She remembered him vividly. He'd shown her some of his own drawings so that she could see how to use shading to shape her subject and when I asked her what she thought of them, she said, ‘Mr Gilchrist, he was a genius.' I told her that was my opinion too and she positively beamed at me. She was altogether the most agreeable and amiable person I have encountered since I arrived here. Unfortunately she knew nothing of the trial, having left the village with her family some months before it
happened, ‘when invasion was expected almost hourly' but she knew he stood accused of sedition and that the penalty could have been five years in prison or transportation had he been found guilty. ‘Which would have been a crying shame, for I truly believe that incarceration would have been the death of him.' I agreed with her that it would indeed, and asked if she knew who had given evidence on his behalf. She told me she was sure it had been the villagers who lived near his cottage or who were in The Fox at the time of his supposed transgression, but could not supply any names or details. However she volunteered to ask her neighbours to see what else she could discover. Best of all she remembered Johnnie Boniface and knew that he had moved away to London and was, so far as she was aware, still alive and prospering, adding ‘his brother Harry would tell you more about him.' After our talk we took tea like old friends
.

I walked on to my visit with Harry Boniface in high good humour and you will be pleased to know that all business there was conducted with courtesy and to good purpose. I found him in the milking shed examining one of his cows but I waited with commendable patience until he was finished and then questioned him delicately and said nothing untoward. As he seemed easier than he had been the last time we spoke I ventured to ask him whether his brother was well. He told me that he was but, when I pressed him for a possible introduction, he said he lived in London nowadays and wouldn't be willing to discuss the trial, even if he could remember it, which he thought unlikely.
‘'Tis all over an' done now Mr Gilchrist. sir, an' best left that way.' You see how they turn all questioning aside. I own I was disappointed by yet another rebuff, but I kept my counsel and said nothing. Perhaps the reporter will know more of the matter, or perhaps I shall find something in the archives. Newspapers are not always kept for posterity, I know, but some matters are considered of sufficient interest to merit storage and a trial for sedition should come into that category. I must live in hope
.

However, once I had stopped asking him about his brother, Mr Boniface was more forthcoming and told me several useful things about William Blake and his wife. He said they were an affectionate couple. People remarked on it. ‘I seen 'em many's the time, off for a stroll hand in hand like sweethearts.' he said. ‘Did your heart good to see 'em.' An' a' course they stayed here, when 'twas all talk of invasion an' most people wouldn't come near the place. You got to admire that.' I said it must have been a difficult time and he said it was and one they would never forget, ‘although I don't know which was worse, waiting for Boney to invade or having soldiers all over the place, swaggerin' about an' gettin' drunk an' all. It was a soldier made all that trouble for your Mr Blake. Name of Scolfield, as I recall. He's the one you should be talkin' to.' I asked where I might find him. But he couldn't say. ‘Could be anywhere,' he said. ‘Dead even. They was fighting at Waterloo not many years after, an' a-many fell there.' It seemed only too likely so I didn't pursue the topic. But he offered one final piece
of information without being prompted. ‘We had one good year while your Mr Blake was here,' he said. ‘1802 it was. They had a peace treaty, as I remember, beginning a' the year. I think it was atween Denmark an' Sweden, but whoever they were it stopped all the fuss about invasion. Not for long mind. It all started up again a year later, but 'twas good while it lasted. Your Mr Blake dug his garden over lovely. He was a very handy man, you see, an' very conscientious. Turn his hand to anything. A good neighbour
.'

If only I could discover which of his good neighbours gave evidence for him. There is a story behind this secrecy and I know it as surely as I know anything. It is all very aggravating but I am not aggravated, I do assure you. I am calm as a saint
.

It grows late and my candle is little more than a stub. It gives out so much smoke and so little light that I have to stoop over this paper if I am not to write amiss, which I would not wish to do, for it would be the second time this day, would it not. I fear that when I wrote to you this morning I may have written harshly and if that is so, I am sorry for it. I would not wish to distress you, not for all the world
.

This from your most loving husband
,

Alexander
.

P.S. You will find my notes enclosed as usual. I would be glad to know what you think of them, for you know I value your opinion above all other. A.G
.

Spring came in gently that year as if it were determined to be a blessing. The winds of March were little more than a breeze, the sea lapped into shore, milky blue and quiet as a cat, the April showers were as soft as kisses. In Dr Jackson's apple orchard, the blossom grew abundantly and set well, in the Blake's garden the first spring vegetables pushed through the earth as strong as green spears, and in Mr Sparke's piggery, Reuben's sows produced three large and healthy litters, to his ebullient delight.

‘Tha's set us all up for the winter an' no mistake,' he said from his usual seat in The Fox Inn. ‘Be no shortage a' good bacon this year.'

‘You'd think he give birth to 'em hisself, the way he go on,' his friends teased. The fading light of that April evening softened their faces, smoothed the earth-stained roughness of their clothes to shadowy gentleness and transformed the dull gleam of their pewter tankards into a gilded shimmer.

‘Oi darn near did with the last litter,' Reuben said. ‘If Oi hadn't ha' been there she'd've overlaid the lot of 'em.'

‘Stranger things've happened,' Mr Grinder told them from behind the bar. ‘There was a woman once give birth to a litter a' rabbits so they say. Evenin' Mr Haynes. How's that ol' sail a-goin'?'

‘Took us the whole blamed afternoon,' Mr Haynes told them, wiping his hands on his
breeches. ‘You never see such a to-do. 'Tis back in workin' order now though.'

They told him they were very glad to hear it and it was no more than the truth, for a broken sail on their main flourmill would have affected all their fortunes and now that the London swells were coming to the seaside again, their fortunes were looking up. Nelson's victory at Copenhagen hadn't simply broken the Northern Alliance, it had had a beneficial effect on trade and travel as well. The rich were taking excursions to the continent again and many were spending a few days at the seaside en route. There were carriage folk at the Dome and others lodging for a night or two in all the inns in the village. Mr Grinder already had a couple staying in one of his upper rooms and there were four more booked to arrive at the start of June.