Fourpenny Flyer (50 page)

The next morning they woke to find that they had a marvellous day for their jaunt. The sky was a cloudless blue and it was already pleasantly warm at eight o'clock when the Easter carriages began to gather in Bedford Square, and as Matilda's stylish briska came trotting round the corner, they could hear the murmur of the crowds gathering around the new Grand Basin somewhere to the east.

‘There'll be some sport today,' Nan said happily to Frederick. ‘I can feel it in my bones.'

Her grandchildren were as excited as she was, although the three toddlers looked angelic in their white petticoats and neatly starched cotton sun-bonnets. ‘How long that'll last I wouldn't care to gamble,' Pollyanna said as she settled Meg on her lap. Jimmy and Beau had new suits for the occasion, narrow trousers of blue nankeen with short-waisted jackets to match and ‘brass buttons like real sailors' as Beau told everybody who was listening. Annie had sewn red tassles to their caps and provided them with streamers to throw, and now they couldn't wait to get upon the water.

‘Are we really to go in a boat, Nanna?' Beau asked. ‘A really truly boat?'

‘A really truly boat,' she said, hugging him. ‘Look sharp all of you. There en't a minute to loose.'

And they all clambered into their carriages again in a flutter of fine cottons, sky blue and snow white, sugar pink
and apple green, creamy yellow and toffee brown, the women as light as butterflies and the men as jolly as cockchafers in their tight light trousers and their fine frock coats. Matilda was wearing a blue and grey gauze gown with a poke-bonnet to match from Paris, of course, and very stylish, and Annie and Harriet had decorated their leghorn hats with so many ribbons that it was a wonder they could keep them on their heads.

Only John was quiet and sober, wearing his old buff jacket and his gabardine trousers and his second best hat, and sitting beside his pretty Harriet in their sober carriage, stern-faced and stiff-necked. Soon he would be thrown into close proximity with crowds of yelling, sweating, overexcited people, and the thought was torture to him, especially as he knew there would be no escape until late in the afternoon.

‘Deuce take the boy. What ails him?' Nan said to Frederick as his coachman drove them out of the square. ‘He looks like a dying duck in a thunder storm.'

‘'Tain't to his taste, I fear,' Frederick said. ‘It pains him.'

‘Squit!' she said, laughing the idea away. ‘What could there possibly be in a day like this to cause pain to anybody?'

‘Well as to that, my dear,' Frederick said wryly, ‘I'm sure I couldn't say. But pain him it does. That much is very clear. So all the more honour to him for joining us.'

The barges were drawn up and ready at the Horsfall Basin in Pentonville when they arrived, most of them full of people and all of them decorated with flags and streamers and loud with competing bands. Sophie and Heinrich Fuseli were aboard the Easter barge, sitting like royalty in two of the gilt chairs, with his students buzzing attendance about them and their band playing frantically behind them. Sophie was very elegant in red and white striped silk and the artists all wore red and yellow turbans like Bad Lord Byron so they made a dashing picture against the blue and white suits of the boatmen.

‘Coo-ee!' Sophie called. ‘We've broke open the champagne!'

‘Are they cheering us, Nanna?' Jimmy asked as they balanced along the gangplank.

‘Us and the day and the pretty flags and the new canal and I don't know what else besides,' Nan told him, holding his hand tightly. ‘Wait till the procession starts. You'll hear some cheering then.'

And what a great roar there was as the State barge of the City was swung away from its moorings to lead the cavalcade out of the basin. The bands played the National Anthem, more or less together, and the crowds sang and cheered with such abandon that it didn't matter whether they were together or not, and Nan's barge followed all the others and went gliding slowly into the great Islington tunnel, where the music echoed and re-echoed round and round and round until there was such a cacophony all about them they felt as though they were swimming in sound.

And then out they came, pop! into the fresh air again, and the artists gave three cheers for daylight, and presently they came to the Grand basin in the City-road, where a salute of guns was fired, which made Sophie shriek and the children jump and even woke baby Edward. The crowds here were packed shoulder to shoulder and the cheers were deafening. By now Will was beginning to get hungry. He pulled at Harriet's sleeve, reminding her: ‘Eatin, Mama. Eatin.' And Nan said he was a fine boy and should eat a leg of chicken as soon as they got to Limehouse.

It was a sumptuous meal and a very drunken one. There were flat pies and raised pies, mustards and pickles, cold diced potatoes and every kind of salad, melons and apricots, gooseberries and quinces, comfits and pastries, honey cakes and crystallized violets. And, according to Bessie, enough champagne ‘ter float one of these 'ere barges'. Evelina Callbeck declared she'd downed more champagne in one afternoon than she had ‘in the whole of the rest of my life put together', and Mr Teshmaker, who had made it his business to keep her glass replenished throughout the proceedings, said he was sure ‘'twas the best thing that had ever happened to him'. And Nan confided to Frederick that she'd never thought she would live to see the day when old Cosmo got tipsy.

And when they were too full to eat another mouthful, the races began. Several of the Paddington barges were lined up ready to compete for the honour of being the first to land a barrel of beer on the new wharf at the new Grand Basin. They set off side against wooden side, with the procession following, and lo and behold, the prize was won by a barge called ‘The William', so Will was the hero of the hour and Rosie made him a little crown out of three streamers plaited together.

It was a splendid day.

It was eight o'clock in the evening and beginning to grow dark before the Easter carriages carried their dishevelled passengers back into Bedford Square. The children were sent off to bed at once with their various nursmaids to attend them, Jimmy and Beau and little Meg to the nursery in Bedford Square, the others to their own houses nearby, but the adults retired to the drawing room, which was cool and clean after the heat and clamour of the day, and tea was made and brandy served to those who needed it.

The person who needed it most, and received it last, was John. Harriet carried his brandy glass to him and put it tenderly into his hands. I know how very well you have earned it, her expression said.

‘Thank 'ee,' he said, smiling into her eyes, and his expression said, Yes, I
have
done well today.

‘Such colour everywhere,' Aunt Thomasina was saying. ‘The bunting they must have used!'

‘Did you see the advertisements?' Nan said, swirling her brandy.

‘Everywhere you looked,' Thiss said. ‘Colman's mustard. Pennyquick's Patent Thingumajig. Never seen so many.'

‘I'll tell 'ee what, Thiss,' Nan said. ‘They've given me an idea.'

Oh no, John thought. His mother's ideas invariably meant work and difficulties.

‘I've a mind to sell space for advertisements in the Easter shops and reading-rooms,' she said.

‘Capital idea,' Cosmo said. ‘A money-spinner.'

‘What do 'ee think of that, Billy?' Nan asked.

‘Makes no odds to me one way or t'other,' Billy said lazily. ‘Just so long as it don't make more work in the warehouse.'

Just what he would say, John thought, bone-idle creature. And what of my opinion? I wonder. Is that to be sounded too? A day of rigid self-control had left him feeling very touchy.

‘What do you say to it, John?'

I must choose my words with care, John thought, for the idea of offering space in the Easter shops for advertisements was making him shudder, but if he opposed her too violently she was quite capable of going her own way out of simple waywardness. ‘I feel we should consider what the feelings and opinions of our customers might be,' he said, walking across the room to sit beside her and speaking slowly and carefully. ‘There are those who would consider advertisements rather a vulgarity.'

‘As you would, eh?'

‘No, no' he said hurriedly, caught out by that quick shrewd wit of hers. ‘Not at all …'

‘Then you would approve?'

What could he say? She outwitted him at every turn. ‘If we wish to improve the profits of our firm,' he said, hoping she would notice that ‘our', ‘one possible and creditable method would be to open up the Irish trade.'

‘Which is what you would suggest, eh?'

‘Indeed.'

‘Well, why not?' she said expansively. ‘The time's ripe for it. Any more brandy anyone?'

He was delighted to think that he had won his victory so easily. ‘Then we need not consider advertisements?' he asked.

She was full of food and wine and well-being. And she'd recognized his anxious disapproval. ‘Well, not for the moment,' she allowed. ‘Let's see how you fare in the Emerald Isle.'

‘I shall go to Dublin as soon as I can book a ticket,' he said to Harriet as they were undressing much later that evening. ‘I can't allow Mama to take advertisements. That would be too degrading.'

She had feared it. That conversation with his mother had been much too fraught. But she made an effort to gainsay it. ‘Could it not be delayed until the autumn?' she asked. ‘Will and I have seen so little of you this summer, and with the Queen's trial coming you are like to be in London a good deal come the end of the month.'

‘It is my job,' he said patiently. ‘It is what I must do if I am ever to take over from my mother and run this firm as it ought to be run.'

‘Yes,' she said sadly, biting her bottom lip.

The little gesture roused his pity and his affection. ‘This will be the last area to be opened, I promise you,' he said putting his arms round her shoulders. ‘After that, Easter's will sell the news the length and breadth of the kingdom, Mama will be well pleased, and I shall be able to spend as much time at home with you and Will as you could possibly want. Why,' he teased, ‘you'll grow tired of my company, I shall be in the house so much.'

‘Oh no, no,' she said passionately, turning in his embrace to throw her arms about his neck. ‘That I never could, my dear, dear John. Never, never, never.'

And after that, words were superfluous, as action and sensation led them pleasurably away from the misery of argument.

But he had made his decision just the same, and the next morning she still knew it wasn't the one she'd wanted.

He went to Dublin ten days later, but he had to travel back again after a little more than a week so as to be in time for the start of Queen Caroline's trial, and as his visit hadn't achieved a single shop or reading-room he was in a very bad humour.

‘The Irish are so slow,' he said to Harriet. ‘You'd have thought they'd have leapt at such a chance. But no, they need a month to think about it, so they say. A month!' His mother could have colonized an entire nation in less time.

But at least she hadn't sold any advertising space whilst he'd been away, and that was some consolation. ‘I shall go back to Dublin in four weeks' time,' he told Harriet, ‘or when the Queen's trial is over, whichever is the first.'

It was his four weeks, for the trial of poor Queen Caroline was a very long-drawn-out affair. And a singularly mucky one.

There were so many Italian witnesses who were called one after the other to give evidence first in their own language and then, through various interpreters, in lengthy and much-disputed translation, and the gist of their evidence was extremely unsavoury, for they were questioned about sleeping arrangements, about stains on sheets, and even about the contents of chamber pots. And every word was reported and repeated and sold the length and breadth of the country.

Harriet went back to Rattlesden and refused to read it. Nan thought it disgusting and said so trenchantly. And Frederick commented upon it as infrequently as he could, and the longer the trial dragged on, the less he contrived to say. But thanks to the popular papers, there was widespread support for the Queen.

In October when Harriet and Matilda returned to London with their families for the Season they were both amazed to see how passionately and protectively the London crowds were escorting their Queen to and from Westminster Hall.

‘They turn out every single day,' Harriet said, when she and John played host to Billy and Matilda on the first Friday after their return.

‘And such an ugly little woman, for all her fine clothes,' Matilda said. ‘I know for a fact her hair was never born that colour. 'Tis altogether too black, and besides her eyebrows are made of moleskin. You can see.'

‘But she makes news for Easter's, my charmer,' Billy said happily. ‘Profits are up no end.'

‘I shall be glad for her sake when 'tis over and done with,' John said. ‘Yesterday she said that nobody cared for her at all in this business. Mr Brougham told Mama.'

‘She has her wits about her then, in all conscience,' Billy said. ‘For that's true enough. The King will divorce her no matter what the Lords decide and so far as I can see the politicians spend all their time nowadays scoring points off one another. Half of 'em have forgot why they were called.'

But at last, on the tenth day of November, while John Easter was on his way to Dublin again, the third reading of the Bill of Pains and Penalties was defeated, and despite the odds and the evidence, Queen Caroline appeared to have won. A fortnight later, she went to St Paul's to offer thanks for her deliverance, cheered by an immense flag-waving mob. And standing amongst them, cheering with the rest, was Mr Caleb Rawson.