The Sparks Fly Upward

by Diana Norman

  Then, even more shamefully, came relief. The difficulty had proved insurmountable; she had been absolved from a duty that had cost her anguish and sleepless nights; she had tried her best, it was not her fault she’d failed.

  The burden slipped from her shoulders. She thought, I’ll wait for Andrew to return home and he will see to it.

  Sophie’s face rose up at her but Philippa was firm with it. I know. The delay may be fatal and I’m sorry but there is nothing more I can do.

  Redeemed, she took Jamie’s arm and started back.

  At the corner of the alley they bumped into Mrs Scratcher. The intervening week had worked wonders on the woman; she was inadequately dressed for the weather but her face had shed its despair; she was almost jaunty. On her arm was a basket filled with groceries.

  She even smiled at them. ‘Got it, then?’

  ‘He ain’t done it,’ Jamie told her savagely. ‘Don’t intend to.’

  ‘He what?’

  ‘Gave us our money back.’

  ‘Can’t’ve. I been spendin’ it.’ She indicated her basket.

  ‘Got it from somewhere then,’ Jamie said. ‘Show her, miss.’

  There was no need for Mrs Scratcher to see the returned guineas. With a ‘Stay there,’ she was off towards her home using a stride that boded badly for Mr Scratcher.

  They stayed where they were commanded; even so they could hear the screeches and thumps emerging from under the Scratcher door—they could have been heard in Grub Street. Then it quietened.

  After a while, Mrs Scratcher emerged. She glanced up and down the alley, though Philippa and Jamie were the only people in it, before hurrying towards them and ushering them round the corner into a backyard, empty except for the corpse of a dog that was interesting some rooks.

  She put a hand on Philippa’s shoulder and another on Jamie’s to draw them close like a stage conspirator but her face was pale. ‘He’ll do it,’ she said. Her breath smelled of bad teeth and porter. ‘But it’ll cost you fifty.’

  At Jamie’s flinch, she glared. ‘Fifty and we can flit. Go abroad, maybe. He’s scared. What you been up to? Some’un’s give him the cash not to do it and put the frighteners on him an’ all. Some’un’s told him he’ll see him lagged if he does it ...’

  ‘Transported,’ Jamie translated for Philippa’s benefit.

  Mrs Scratcher nodded. ‘S’right. And they don’t serve no poppy on a transport. I tell you, he’s shittin’ on his shoes.’

  ‘Who?’ Philippa asked. ‘Who’s frightened him?’

  ‘Don’t know, do I? I’m us’lly otherwise engaged when they come.’ The woman became angry. ‘An’ if he thinks I’m spending another year on my back a-cause he ain’t got no spine, he’s got another think coming.’ She took a deep breath. ‘He’ll do it. But it’s fifty.’

  Philippa nodded and reached into her sleeve for her purse. ‘Here’s five on account and I’ll agree to forty-five more if you tell me who frightened him.’

  Mrs Scratcher lifted her skirts to slide the coins behind a grubby garter. ‘Give us a week. But don’t you come to the house; Vlad reckons you been followed. Meet you in Saint Mary Axe round noon next Tuesday an’ you make sure you looks behind you. He ain’t much I grant you, but he’s no bloody good to me in Botany Bay.’

  She waggled her petticoats into place and made to leave but Philippa held on to her arm. ‘You know, don’t you?’

  ‘No, I don’t.’ Then she sighed. ‘It might be the one talks Frenchie to him. I only hear the voices. This one . . . he’s a special. Lovely pipe he’s got yet he ain’t, if you know what I mean. I reckon Old Nick’d talk like him, crummy but nasty . . . sort of treacle with poison in it.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Philippa said.

  Mrs Scratcher cocked her head in inquiry. ‘Know him, do you?’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  The woman nodded. ‘You stay here till I gone. I ain’t bein’ seen with you.’ They watched her hurry away, ill-fitting shoes flapping on her feet, shoulders hunched; the picture of a woman nearing old age. Yet when she’d smiled at them, less than half an hour before, she’d revealed herself to be no more than twenty.

  THE arrangement this time was that Philippa should call for Georgiana—the Fitch-Botleys’ house was the nearer to London—and go in by road with Chadwell driving the trap as close to the City as the traffic would permit, at which point the ladies would descend, use some reputable inn in which to don their disreputable cloaks and shawls, and proceed on foot.

  ‘And our friend in the skiff can scull up and down the river until he sinks, God rot him,’ Philippa had said.

  Kitty Hays was to come with them. Whey they’d reported their doings to the Condorcet Society, she’d said: ‘If you think you’re leaving me behind, my dears, you’re mistaken. Pursued by villains in boats—with poisoned daggers under their cloaks, no doubt. Too, too Elizabethan.’

  Eliza Morris had been intimidated. ‘It seems to me the man’s prepared to do anything to stop that certificat reaching M Condorcet. Don’t you see? Once you have it, he could set ruffians on you before you can post it, and get killed even. It’s a lawless part of town.’

  ‘I can’t go to the magistrates, though, can I? I’m as lawless as Blanchard—more. I am accessory to a forgery and if I succeed with it, I could be arrested for treating with the enemy.’

  ‘Just think though, Philippa, how vulgar to be murdered in Moorfields.’

  ‘Then I shall contrive not to be murdered until I’m back in Chelsea.’

  But the vulgarity of being murdered at all bothered Eliza and would, she said, upset her father. She did not offer to come.

  There was no doubt, however, of Blanchard’s earnestness to thwart Condorcet’s rescue. The intervening week had proved that he was prepared to expend the time of more than one employee on it.

  Philippa and Jenny had been followed on their various visits to friends, three times on trips to the village as well as to church on Sunday.

  Mercifully, Jenny had remained unaware of what was behind her, but a gypsy woman who trailed them twice was not expert enough to escape the notice of the now very alert Marie Joséphine who tapped Philippa on the shoulder and muttered, ‘Regard l’indigente salle en arrière. Elle nous suit.’

  Philippa had turned round to see only a tree. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Bien sûr.’

  ‘Ignore her.’

  The weedy fellow who followed them to church was even less accomplished. He was not up to the pace Philippa set and was occasionally to be seen resting with one hand on a signpost while easing his boots with the other.

  The situation was farcical, the more farcical because it was happening in the demure bowers of Chelsea, which rendered it not so much sinister as undignified. Philippa felt ridiculous, like a hen that some particularly ugly ducklings had mistakenly attached themselves to.

  Nor could she divine the object of the exercise. Having put the fear of hell into Scratcher, Blanchard should have assumed that her attempt to rescue Condorcet had been nullified once and for all, yet obviously he did not. In which case he was crediting her with resources she did not have.

  In a curious way her fear of Blanchard, which had been building, was diminished by what she regarded as an inept exercise in offense. That the man should send these clowns to dog her footsteps displayed not just rascally intent but vulgarity.

  Incidents and matters of style that she had overlooked in him were now recalled; a too-slavish imitation of Ffoulkes’s and the others’ dress, overmuch use of French and Latin quotations, a jarring ferocity at the gaming tables, an unfastidiousness in referring to female acquaintances. Even to have penetrated the secret of her passion for Andrew Ffoulkes showed an unsuitable feminine trait in him.

  Her mother had spotted him from the first. Makepeace could sniff out sham like a hound scenting a fox. She wondered why she herself hadn’t been so acute and why his friends were still not. He spoke of inheriting a thousand Irish acres from his father but nobo
dy had ever seen them and he had arrived at Eton—where he had performed brilliantly—without the train of English ancestors that weighted the others.

  You don’t belong, she thought. Nothing wrong in that, of course, except your frantic imposture to prove that you do.

  Why he perceived her efforts as endangering him, she couldn’t understand, but he was obviously prepared to go to considerable lengths to thwart her.

  And if she succeeded in getting the certificat . . . what lengths would he go to then?

  She dismissed Eliza’s fears of violence; trickery seemed to be Blanchard’s style; to pile her path with obstacles. Perhaps the very ineptitude of the people he’d sent to dog her was a deliberate maneuver on his part; she was to be made aware she was being watched—and be frightened off.

  In that, he was failing. The possibility of getting hold of the forgery had once again landed on her shoulders like a yoke but with it had come determination. If it can be done, it will be done.

  Every day Philippa scanned the names of those guillotined, carried by the English newspapers. At the beginning of the Terror the registers had been bordered in black and appeared prominently under the banners in large type that Mr Lucey called ‘scareheads’ but, as the toll drearily continued and the victims increasingly included people without titles and those nobody had ever heard of, the lists, though still bordered in black, were moved to less prominent positions.

  So far Condorcet’s name had not appeared on them.

  Don’t give way, Sophie. We’ll save him yet.

  The weather cheered her on. As she and Kitty walked up the carriage way to the Fitch-Botleys’ house whence Chadwell was to drive them and Georgiana to London, it was one of those March days that always came as a surprise, a sudden release of a countryside and every creature in it from the imprisonment of winter.

  Although early, the day was bright enough to warrant the parasols both women carried in anticipation of the open carriage ride. Birdsong was back in the air. Water splashed untidily in the bowl of the fountain as starlings preened themselves, blue tits darted among the trees with wisps in their beaks. A green woodpecker, its plumage incredible in the sun, pecked for grubs in the lawn. Farther off in the park, fallow deer posed in speckled elegance beneath the beeches.

  There was a hint of green on the trees and against the stone of the stables a huge laburnum writhed in serpentine anticipation of the flowers to come.

  Philippa even found herself moved to song. ‘Jackie Boy,’ she sang.

  ‘Master,’ Kitty sang back.

  ‘Sing ye well?’

  ‘Very well.’

  ‘Hey down, Ho down, derry, derry down,’ they chorused together.

  With the sun warm on her back, Philippa climbed the steps to the portico, raised the heavy knocker and let it fall. The door opened. ‘Good morning, Partridge. Tell Lady Fitch-Botley we’re here, would you?’

  ‘No, he damn well won’t.’ The footman was pushed aside so that he almost fell and Sir Charles Fitch-Botley stood in his place. He was in his shirtsleeves, his face puce from some exertion. The top buttons of his breeches were undone to allow for the swell of his considerable belly and he had a rattan cane in his right fist. ‘Lady Fitch-Botley’s locked in her room and there she’ll damn well stay. And you, miss, can get off my step.’

  His eyes bulged and spittle trembled in one side of his mouth. His looks had always been porcine but anger had stripped away sophistication and left an enormous boar standing there, about to charge.

  He advanced on her, lowering his head to be nearer hers; he smelled of sweat and brandy. Philippa was too shocked to move.

  ‘Oh, yes, I know about it. Coming here with your mimsy ways, your yes-Sir-Charles, no-Sir-Charles and no better than you should be.’

  He caught sight of Kitty in the drive and shook his cane at her. ‘And you, you monster, get back to that poor bastard you married. Had my way, you’d both be ducked for the hags you are. Leading that addlepate upstairs to think she can go against her husband and her country. Oh, yes, I had the truth out of her.’

  His anger was feeding on itself and enjoying the feast. ‘Well, there’ll be no petticoat revolution in this house as the bitch has found out. Stay there.’

  He stepped back into the entrance hall and gave a grunt as he stooped to pick up something lying on its floor. He came back waving it; he was out of control now.

  ‘And this,’ he shouted. ‘This trash is handed to me in my own club. My own club.’ It was a crumpled copy of The Passenger. ‘I have to read the ravings of my wife in my club.’ He showed his large teeth. ‘Know what I did with it? What it deserved. I wiped my arse on it.’

  He stepped forward and rubbed the paper against Philippa’s front.

  ‘Now get off my land, the two of you, and don’t come back or I’ll set the dogs on you.’

  Somehow Philippa’s legs took her down the steps to where Kitty was standing immobilized, her face clownish from the bloodless area that had formed around her mouth. She would have liked to put her arms around her, as much for her own comfort as Kitty’s, but her coat was smeared and stinking. Instead, she took the woman’s hand and led her away.

  There was another yell from behind them. ‘And I sent that damn groom off with a whipping. Taught him who’s master in this house.’

  They heard the door slam shut.

  After a few yards, Kitty vomited. Helplessly, her own hand shaking, Philippa patted her on the back and waited until the retching was over.

  A movement in one of the upper windows of the house caught her eye. Georgiana. Her hair hung loose. A red weal across one cheek accentuated her pallor. When she saw Philippa look up, she covered her face with her hands and turned away.

  At the bottom of the drive, Kitty began moaning. ‘I’ve never . . . he, he was so . . . Pippy, he’ll tell my husband.’

  Philippa tried to steady her breath and speak normally. ‘Tell him what, dear? You’ve done nothing wrong.’

  ‘Of course I’ve done wrong. All that secret plotting, the club. He’ll tell Arthur, oh God.’

  ‘We’ll go to my house. I’ve got to change. We can take Mama’s trap instead.’

  Kitty stepped back. ‘You’re not still going?’

  ‘Kitty. I’m to collect that certificat at noon. We have to hurry.’

  ‘You’re not still going. After this?’

  ‘I have to. Nothing’s changed.’

  But it had and she knew it had.

  It had been more than a brute shouting at them, horrible as that was. They had witnessed a truth. Everything they depended on for decency, the charity of men, poetry, chivalry, the hand-kissing, the everyday courtesies that pretended women had value . . . these things had been blown aside. As he’d stood in his doorway, Sir Charles Fitch-Botley had revealed the reality behind the mist. It was as if they had been picking flowers in a meadow and looked up to see the giant who owned it breathing fire. He had loosed the thunderbolt of the God of Abraham on the unrighteous. His was the huge figure that stood behind society’s prettiness. He it was who came forth, weapon in hand, when his pygmies crossed the line drawn for them.

  They had known it in theory but to come under its fire had broken their line. Georgiana would never be the same again, her talent stamped into obliteration under her husband’s boot. Kitty’s attempts at defiance had been shredded; she was running from the field like a panicking soldier in a rout.

  And when it became known—as it would—not a soul would say it hadn’t served them right. ‘Good for Sir Charles, I’d have done the same in his place.’ ‘Well, my dears, you shouldn’t have provoked him.’

  As for the assault on herself, there wasn’t a magistrate who would sentence the man. The clubs would love it. ‘Spread her with shit, eh? Serve the baggage right.’

  Oh, yes, it had changed everything. She didn’t have time to analyze the alteration it had made in herself but she knew it was there.

  ‘At least let me take you home,’ she said, gently.r />
  Kitty almost hit her. ‘Get away from me. It’s you . . . you and your ideas. Leave me alone.’

  Philippa watched her blunder away in the direction of her house and then turned towards her own, walking quickly. There was a big oak beyond the gates with some dirty fingertips just showing on the nearside of its trunk. As she passed it, she thwacked them with her unopened parasol as hard as she could.

  ‘Aaah,’ somebody gasped faintly.

  ‘Give your master a message from me,’ Philippa told the tree over her shoulder. ‘Tell him to go fuck himself.’

  She’d never used the old Anglo-Saxon word as an imprecation before and if she hadn’t been suffering from shock already she might have startled herself. As it was, Fitch-Botley had demonstrated that the ground they stood on was the dry and bloody dust of an arena. The iron fist prevailed; all gloves were off—hers, too.

  A cowherd driving his beasts to the water meadow blinked as his ‘Morning, miss,’ was greeted with a snarl of bared teeth. Philippa thought she was smiling.

  At home, she raced upstairs to her bedroom and stripped naked. Pouring water from the stand ewer into its basin, she began washing herself.

  Toweled and in clean clothes, she was struggling with back buttons when Hildy came in and took over. ‘What’s oop, pet? Hopkins said tha came lowpin’ in like a hooligin.’

  Briefly, Philippa told her.

  ‘Jist t’let me at the beggor,’ Hildy begged of the Almighty. ‘Ah’d finish the sod. Ah wish t’missus had been thor.’

  ‘I wish she had, too.’ Philippa leaned back and angled her head so that her cheek lay against that of the woman who’d dragged coal trucks through the Northumbrian mine in harness with Makepeace. ‘She’d have told him, wouldn’t she?’

  ‘She’d’ve scalded his bawbels for pig-feed,’ said Hildy, grimly.

  ‘I miss her, Hildy.’

  So much, and never more than today. Things happened when Makepeace was around but they happened right. Yet she had always needed her mother more than her mother needed her.