Fourpenny Flyer (58 page)

‘It could break out in London too,' Harriet said. ‘
The Times
says it is raging in Paris.'

‘And in Sweden,' John said.

‘So many deaths,' Harriet mourned, ‘and no way of preventing any of them. It is a terrible thing.' And she said her constant, secret prayer, yet again: dear Lord, please don't let any of our children die.

Two afternoons later Annie wrote to say that Beau had reached the eighth day. ‘He is very ill,' she said, ‘but not as bad as his brother, who does seem to be improving a little, so we are a little more hopeful now.'

That night when she'd answered Annie's letter, Harriet crossed off the eleventh day of her long fortnight. ‘Only three more days to go,' she told her diary, ‘and then we shall be safe. Caleb wrote me such a kind letter today. His wife died of smallpox and so did his little boy, so he says he
knows what we are all suffering. It is a dreadful disease. But we are all so nearly clear of it. Thank the Good Lord.'

It was bitterly cold in Rattlesden. Annie had moved Beau's bed into Jimmy's room as soon as the girls were gone, and now she and James kept the fire going there by night and day. It was the first thing Annie attended to, after she'd given her two patients a drink of water, and sponged their swollen hands and faces.

On that thirteenth morning, she woke with a start, wondering why the fire was making such an odd wheezing noise. A piece of slate among the coal, she thought, straightening her spine and rubbing the sleep out of her eyes, for she'd fallen asleep in her chair, as she so often did on these long fraught nights. Then, with a shock that squeezed her heart most painfully, she realized that the noise was coming from Beau's little bed, and she jumped up and ran to his side. He was struggling for air, but lying so still, as if he were paralysed, his swollen face distorted and his eyes shut tight.

‘Mama!' she called. ‘James! Come quickly, do.' But they were on the other side of the house, and, although they both heard her, it took them several seconds to run to the room. By the time they reached her, the struggle was over and her dear, dear Beau was dead, lying quietly in her arms, still warm, but irrevocably without breath or life.

‘Oh my dear, my dear,' Nan said, torn with pity for her daughter. And she and James fell to their knees beside the bed and held poor Annie as well as they could and wept with her. And for the first time since he fell ill, Jimmy actually sat up in his bed, and caught their grief and wept too, with tears running over his terrible black scabs and into his mouth, until Nanna came and sat beside him and put her arms round him, scabs and all, and told him he was her own dear boy and she would love him for ever and ever.

‘On the very day my poor Jimmy is getting better!' Annie cried. ‘Oh James, I can't bear it.'

And poor James, who was haggard with fatigue and sorrow, tried to find words of comfort, and for the first
time in his life, couldn't think of any, and put his head in his hands and cried like a baby.

‘Is Beau dead, Nanna?' Jimmy whispered as his parents wept.

‘Yes, my love, I'm afraid he is.'

‘Shall I die too, Nanna?'

‘No,' she said fiercely. ‘No, you shan't. Your Nanna won't let you.'

It was a simple funeral and one of three that day, so violently was the smallpox raging. John and Harriet left the children in London with Rosie and young Tom and Mrs Toxteth, because it would never have done to bring them back into infection, and they travelled on the overnight stage so as to arrive in plenty of time to comfort poor Annie and James. But by then Annie had reached the first calm of grieving and James had mourned sufficiently to take the ceremony himself.

He spoke most movingly at the little graveside, reminding them of the great joy his dear Beau had brought to them all. ‘A child of peace,' he said ‘and always concerned for others. But it must be said with just enough mischief to bring us laughter. And daring, too, to provoke fear and admiration in us. We shall miss him most terribly.

‘In pleasant times it is easy to bow ourselves to the will of God. When a child is born to bring love into the world, how readily we say “Thy Will be done”. At times like these it is hard for us.' And the drawn expression on his face showed how very hard it was. ‘Nevertheless, death is Thy will too, like every opposite, beauty and ugliness, night and day, sickness and health, birth and death. When we say Thy prayer, Oh Lord, as we shall do presently, send us grace, we beseech Thee, that we may mean the words we say … Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy Will be done, in earth as it is in heaven …'

‘He is a very great man,' Harriet wrote to Caleb, when she was home in London again. It was so easy to write to Caleb these days, for he had become such a friend, and
understood so well what they were all suffering. ‘I could not accept the way he does, that I know. I would rail and rail against the injustice of such a death.'

He wrote back to her almost by return of post.

‘My dearest Harriet,

‘Tha's right. Tha shouldst never accept injustice. Never. Tha shouldst rail and rail and rail against it. And fight against it an' all. Acceptance is folly. Only by struggle will us common folk ever improve our lot. 'Tis a great cause and a great struggle. Tha's a fine woman to have joined us in it.

‘By now the fourteen days should be up and your worries over and done with, of which I'm uncommon glad.

‘We are well here, but work is scanty.

‘Your friend in love and admiration,

‘Caleb Rawson.'

It was a comforting letter and she tucked it into her diary so that she could read it and enjoy it again when she wasn't quite so busy. But her worries weren't done with. They were beginning all over again.

Bury St Edmunds was a forlorn town that winter. Horses stood idle in the stables and the streets grew dusty with lack of use. The two great inns were blank-windowed and empty, for there were very few visitors and the inhabitants kept within doors as much as they could, scurrying to market for such food as they needed and greeting their neighbours from a distance. The theatre closed and so did the Athenaeum, the courts sat twice and in great haste, and the churches were half empty. It was a town holding its breath, a town whispering, dressed in black, waiting for the next victim.

Like so many other landladies, the two Miss Callbecks lost their lodgers as soon as the infection started. The couple from Grimsby, who had occupied the two back bedrooms and sold tickets at the theatre, packed their bags on the day the theatre closed, and Mr Richards, who had been their mainstay for so long, wrote to cancel his tenancy saying he would be staying in London ‘for the foreseeable future'.

‘We must not despair, sister,' Thomasina said. ‘The scourge will pass in time. Other lodgers will arrive.'

‘Let us pray so,' Evelina said.

‘Depend upon't,' Thomasina assured her. ‘Meantime, you will stay indoors and I will go to market. There is no sense in both of us being exposed to infection and though you are younger you are weaker than I.'

‘Should we not take turns?' Evelina asked. They had always taken turns. Always. In all their chores.

‘No,' Thomasina said sternly. ‘Not in this. This is too serious. My mind is made up.'

‘Should we visit poor Billy and Matilda?' It seemed heartless to be skulking indoors when poor little Matty was fighting for her life. ‘And Annie and James and Jimmy?'

‘No,' her sister said again. ‘I will post a letter from time to time on my way to market. There is nothing we can do to help, even if we were to visit. We should only be a nuisance. No, we must protect ourselves, Evelina. In any case, if I am any judge of character, Nan will remain in Bury until both the children are well and she will be sure to keep us informed.'

And sure enough, two days after Beau's funeral, Nan wrote to John to say that she and Billy would be staying in Bury until they were quite certain that Jimmy and Matty had recovered, and that Annie and James had been nursed through the worst of their grief.

‘'Tis like to be the middle of January afore we are back, so you must run the company without us, which I have perfect confidence you will do uncommon well. Pray give my love to Harriet and all the dear children. We put great burdens upon you both I fear.'

So John ran the company single-handed. He was busier than he had ever been in his life, and even though he was torn with pity for his poor sister, and anxious in case the smallpox broke out in London, he was secretly well pleased with the way he was dealing with the firm's affairs. Billy came down to London once or twice to ‘keep an eye on the warehouse', and Nan wrote daily letters, but they weren't necessary. Everything ran like clockwork. It was most satisfactory, and proved that he could control the firm with ease for as long as his mother would allow and, what was more, that he could take it over entirely if she would only give him the chance.

In the freezing cold of early January many of the provincial coaches didn't run, and others were cancelled at the last minute because their drivers had fallen sick, but it was a matter of great pride to him that his carefully corrected timetables were equal to any demand that weather and epidemic could put upon them. As the
weather worsened he carried them about with him wherever he went, a bulky package in the lower pocket of his greatcoat, so if one coach failed he knew at once how it could be replaced. It meant a great deal of work, of course, for he updated every timetable every night, often continuing into the small hours, sitting in his panelled office on the top floor of the house with two candlesticks to light his way and a purring sense of satisfaction to keep him wakeful until the job was done. And although he would never have admitted it to anybody, not even Harriet, because it was really rather improper, if it hadn't been for the smallpox it would have been one of the happiest times of his life.

Until the night he took a chill.

It had been a most unpleasant day, dark and cold and with a constant pervasive drizzle, and as he'd been out in it most of the afternoon, visiting the newspaper proprietors and checking the departure of the evening stages, he wasn't surprised when after he'd been working on the timetables for an hour or two, his throat began to prickle and his nose to run. He left his office with his brain still comfortably occupied with calculations, took up his candle and tiptoed downstairs to his bedroom on the floor below to find a clean handkerchief.

Harriet was sleeping, white as a statue in their high bed, lying on her side with the scarlet coverlet tucked underneath her chin and her pale hair trailing across the pillow. In the pool of golden light from his candle, she looked like a saint in a stained-glass window, so still and untroubled and pure of profile, and for a few seconds he stood beside the bed, simply enjoying the sight of her. My dearest, he thought. She is such a good woman, so quietly, comfortingly good, taking all these children into her home and looking after them so well. My dearest Harriet.

But then his nose needed attention and he had to find a handkerchief quite quickly. They were in a pile in the top drawer of the dressing table, beautifully clean and ordered. Dear Harriet. But as he shut the drawer, easing it slowly so as not to wake her, a white paper fell from the dressing table and fluttered to the floor. Neatness and
order were disturbed. So naturally he bent down at once to retrieve it.

It was a letter, lying face upwards on the rug, its heavy handwriting spider-black, unfamiliar, foreign. He was reading it as he picked it up, his senses prickling because it had no place in their peaceful, gentle bedroom.

‘My dearest Harriet, Tha's right …' What presumption was this? Thee/ Tha? The familiarity of it was like a blow to his stomach, making him wince. But he read on, holding the little page close to the candle, for now that he had begun there was no turning back. He had to know it all, every single word, no matter how painful, and particularly the name of the man who had written them. For it had to be a man. It was too like a love-letter for any other possibility. ‘Your friend in love and admiration, Caleb Rawson.'

Of course, he thought, putting the letter back in exactly the same place from which it had fallen. Caleb Rawson. Of course. I might have known it. That ugly common man, with his low forehead and his coarse hands and his rough speech. Caleb Rawson. And he remembered the way the wretched man came visiting at Rattlesden, as if he belonged there and, worst of all, the way Harriet had walked through St Peter's Fields on the day of the massacre with her clothes torn and her hair tumbled about her face, looking so very unlike herself that he'd thought she was a whore. Dear God! He'd thought she was a whore.

She was still sleeping peacefully, as if nothing had happened, breathing softly into the pillow and looking more beautiful than ever. How could you? he thought, staring down at her. How could you do this to me when I love you so much?

But then reason returned.
Had
she done anything? There was a letter written certainly, and a most compromising letter, but it hadn't been written by her. She had merely received it. She might have answered it with the proper rebuke it deserved. But then if that were the case, she would surely have told him all about it, and she had said nothing. But then again, perhaps it had only just
arrived. Perhaps she hadn't had time to consider what to do about it. I must not misjudge her, he told himself. I must not be precipitate. I must wait. Perhaps she will speak of it in the morning.

And the thought made him yearn to speak to her, then, at that moment, and desire rose in him so strongly that if he hadn't known how tired she was and how much she needed her sleep, he would have been tempted to wake her and make love to her. He needed to feel loved, to know that she was his, and his alone, to be comforted with kisses, lifted by passion, eased by ecstasy. But that would be selfishness, he told himself. I must not be selfish. I must wait till the morning. All this could be resolved so easily in the morning. He would get undressed, quietly, and go to sleep. That was much the best way. There was no need to be precipitate.