Tuppenny Times

by Beryl Kingston

  This time Nan understood the meaning underneath the words. Washday was a laborious and unsettling event, even in a household like this, where it was done regularly every month. It would be a callous mistress who would ever do anything to disrupt it. ‘No, no,’ she said. ‘Of course the wash must continue. Tomorrow will be time enough to hire new servants. There is cold meat a-plenty to see us through today. I’m sure someone could be found to bake the bread and make pickles and such, and a little dish of potatoes.’

  This challenge was polite but strong. ‘If I could spare anyone, Mrs Easter, I would do it. You may depend upon it. But then I could not be answerable for the completion of the wash. I’m sure you see my difficulty.’

  Nan was quite cool now. She looked directly at her latest adversary, eye to eye. ‘Well, as to that, Mrs Mather,’ she said. ‘if the worst comes to the worst, I will cook the meal myself.’

  Which, since this particular worst seemed inescapable, she did.

  It was very hard work, for she was cooking for a much bigger household than the one at Plum Row, and with no one to help her. And to make matters worse, the kitchen was clogged with the smell of dirty linen and clouded with steam from the little adjoining laundry room, and there was a constant grinding from the great stones in the mangle, and an equally constant procession of weary servants in and out of the place, folding wet sheets, preparing bowls of blue, mixing starch, hauling yet another tangle of dirty clothes from the basket, slopping buckets of used soapy water out of the back door. By four o’clock, when the meal was prepared, they were all working by candlelight and she was limp with steam and exhaustion.

  ‘Make up the fire in the parlour, will ’ee,’ she said to Lizzie, who had just come trailing damply into the kitchen to sit down for a few minutes.

  ‘Now, mistress?’ Lizzie sighed, wiping her forehead with the back of her hand.

  ‘Now,’ Nan said briskly. ‘I made your meal, you make my fire. That’s only fair.’ She had no time left for sympathy.

  She barely had time to digest her meal either, which was a great disappointment, because she’d got herself so comfortable, with her chair drawn up close to the fire, and her feet on the fender, and her stomach full of the choicest cuts of meat and plenty of sharp pickle, and the little parlour so snug and peaceful away from the kitchen. I shall sit here till I’m good an’ rested, she was thinking, when the inner door was flung ajar and Lizzie rushed into the silence, mouth open and eyes bolting.

  ‘Do ’ee come quick, mistress,’ she said. ‘The master’s back an’ in a mortal bad way.’

  Nan put down her platter at once, wiped her hands on her napkin and ran down into the hall, with Lizzie twittering behind her. If he really was in a mortal bad way, the sooner she attended to him the better.

  He certainly looked ill enough, drooping with fatigue and depression, and very very dirty. He stood in the middle of the hall, using the banisters like a supporting crutch, his face as pale as cheese, his eyes closed, and his boots and breeches so caked with mud they looked like a single garment.

  ‘We come on horseback from Norwich,’ Matthew was explaining. ‘He been ill all the way. I never had such a time with him. Never in me life. He been ill all …’

  ‘Fill the bed-warmer,’ Nan said, cutting him short. This illness looked just a little too much like the real thing. ‘Let’s have you to bed, my dear,’ she said, ducking underneath her husband’s outstretched arm so that she could support him on her shoulders.

  He opened his eyes briefly as she began to edge him towards the stairs. ‘Ah Nan, my love,’ he said, ‘I am so unworthy.’

  ‘You’ll feel a deal better when you’re in warm clean clothes,’ she said.

  ‘I shall never be better again,’ he groaned. His depression was so intense it was pressing him into the ground. To have made so many terrible mistakes and unintentionally too. To have been cast off by his family. To have been rendered such a worthless husband, penniless, homeless, without prospects. How could he even begin to tell her? ‘I am unworthy.’

  ‘No you en’t,’ she told him firmly, hauling him to the top of the stairs. ‘You just worn out, that’s all ’tis.’

  ‘Send for Mr Murdoch,’ he begged. ‘I fear I have taken a fever.’

  Mr Murdoch, who arrived twenty minutes later, diagnosed a tertian fever and said he feared his patient’s brain might be affected if action were not taken immediately. He prescribed six expensive pills of such impossible dimensions that it made poor William gag merely to have one in his mouth. And no sooner had he struggled the thing down his throat than he was violently sick. ‘Excellent,’ the physician said, when his patient finally lay back exhausted among the pillows. ‘Soon have you in a better humour, Mr Easter. A good emetic is a sovereign remedy. Feed him a light diet, Mrs Easter and see that he takes one pill every four hours.’

  Nan waited until the good doctor was out of the room. Then she threw the rest of the pills in the fire. ‘You been sick enough for six pills already,’ she said, when she saw how anxious her poor husband was looking. ‘That’s no tertian fever. That ’on’t come back every third day, I promise you. That’ll go away this very minute.’

  Then she put a clean pillow under his panting head and set about nursing him back to health, sponging his forehead every hour on the hour, spoon-feeding him light broth and coddled egg, surrounding him with warmth and attention, and finally soothing him to sleep.

  ‘What they been doin’ to him down that Ippark place?’ she asked when Matthew came crunching into the room much later that evening with another scuttleful of coal.

  ‘Most peculiar, you ask me, Mrs Easter,’ Matthew said. ‘Only there five minutes we was, an’ then that ol’ coach was sent for an’ we was on our way back. Had to stop at that ol’ inn in Petersfield, first night, an’ was those ol’ beds damp! Fair runnin’ with water they was.’

  ‘No wonder he’s ill, poor man,’ she said, looking down at the pallor of his sleeping face. ‘They’ve been unkind to him because he married me, that’s what ’tis.’

  ‘You got all you need, mistress?’ It was very late and he was so tired his bones ached.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, recognizing his fatigue. ‘Get you to bed, Matthew. All need our rest, don’t us.’

  ‘You can say what you like about Mrs Easter,’ the housekeeper said next morning. ‘She may be young, she may have sharp tongue in her head, she may be too choleric in temper, that I will allow, but she work as hard as any on us, and you got to admit she know the proper way to treat the master.’

  ‘She been up half the night attendin’ to un,’ Lizzie said. ‘She look like a ghost this mornin’ so she do.’

  ‘Do ’ee reckon he’ll die?’ Matthew said, finishing the last of his ale.

  ‘Eat up your breakfast, do,’ Mrs Mather said, to discourage such thoughts. ‘We got a cook to hire.’

  ‘Last dead man I see, was drowned,’ Matthew said cheerfully. ‘All swole up like a black pudden.’

  ‘An’ Christmas a-comin’ too,’ Lizzie said, lugubriously. ‘Fancy a death at Christmas!’

  ‘I likes a good funeral,’ Matthew said, cutting himself another slice of bread.

  William Henry was equally pessimistic. The days passed and the fever gradually subsided and certainly didn’t recur on the third day, but his spirits remained obstinately low. Even on the fourth morning when he should have been feeling much relieved, he said he was still too weak to sit up.

  ‘I am sorry to be such a trial to you, my dear,’ he said, when she came back into the bedroom to tempt him to some breakfast. ‘What would become of you were the fever to prove mortal?’

  ‘Load a’ squit,’ she said trenchantly, helping him into a sitting position and tying a napkin round his neck. ‘You en’t nowhere near so hot today. You gettin’ better by the minute.’

  But he only smiled feebly. ‘We all have to face death some time or another,’ he sighed.

  ‘You may face death when you please,’ she told him sternly, �
��but you en’t a-facing it now. I never heard such squit. Sit you up and drink down this nice broth. Uncommon sustaining, broth is.’

  He did his best to swallow a mouthful but he looked more doleful than ever.

  She felt so sorry for him. ‘This is all on account of that visit,’ she said, holding the next spoonful under his chin. ‘What they been a-doing to you? You tell me that.’

  He closed his eyes and shuddered. But said nothing. How could he?

  ‘I s’pose they was cross on account of you marrying a servant. That’s about the size of it, en’t it? Try another spoonful, just to please your Nan.’

  ‘More than cross, my dear,’ he said, turning his head away from the spoon and her uncompromising gaze. ‘I had no idea they had such a very poor opinion of me. But they have seen to it that I cannot remain in ignorance. Oh yes indeed, they have seen to that. My father said I was a wrong un, the worst of the bunch.’ The words still rankled. ‘All of which is true, my dear. I cannot deny it. I am nothing more nor less than a wretch. Oh, dear me, yes. A poor wretch.’

  She put the spoon back in the bowl and took hold of both his hands. ‘You en’t to talk such squit,’ she said, ‘you hear me. You’re the best man ever trod shoe leather. A good, kind, patient ol’ dear, so you are. Them as says different is the wretches, you ask me. Don’t you bother your ol’ head with ’em. They en’t worth it.’

  What a comfort she was with her fierce little face. He managed a weak smile and sufficient courage to tell her how bad the situation really was. ‘I fear I must tell you, my love, my family have cast me out, cut off my allowance,’ he began.

  She went on holding his hands, listening without a word until the tale was done, and the last dramatic words, ‘we have no money, no home, no prospects,’ had been sighed to a halt. Then she began to question.

  ‘What about that house in Chelsea? That was yours, you said.’

  He admitted it was. But rented.

  ‘Can we afford the rent? You must have some money.’

  Some, yes. But very little. A mere five hundred pounds, and his allowance had come to more than that, every year. His foolishness had reduced them to penury.

  She ignored his self-pity. Five hundred pounds was plenty. ‘Where d’you keep it?’ she asked, severely business-like.

  ‘In Mr Tewson’s bank, in the City.’

  ‘Well then,’ she said, ‘we en’t destitute. We got a roof over our heads. We got money for rent and vittles. We shall do well enough. Can we afford servants, do you think?’

  ‘Two,’ he said. ‘No more.’

  ‘Then we will take Matthew and Lizzie.’

  ‘I already have two servants in Chelsea,’ he told her. ‘Good servants.’

  She accepted that at once. ‘I’m glad on it,’ she said. ‘That Matthew’s uncommon clumsy, and I don’t reckon much to Lizzie neither. We shall do very well in Chelsea with your good servants, you’ll see.’

  ‘My dearest Nan,’ he said, gazing at her with abject relief. ‘What would I do without you?’

  She had a pretty good idea, but she didn’t enlighten him. ‘We will stay here, till you’re quite well again and the weather has improved,’ she said, ‘and then we’ll go to Chelsea, and the rest of your precious family can all go hang. You’re well rid of ’em. From now on, we shall do as we please. Now eat up your broth.’

  He did his best to swallow another spoonful. ‘’Tis a mortal poor flavour, Nan,’ he said, making a face. ‘Not at all to Mrs Clackett’s usual standard.’

  ‘It en’t Mrs Clackett’s,’ she admitted. ‘I had a bit of an argument with Mrs Clackett. She was rude to me and I told her a few home truths. She walked out.’ Now I’m for it, she thought, tensing herself for his displeasure.

  But he laughed. For the first time since his miserable return, he laughed. ‘I don’t doubt it,’ he said. ‘Your home truths are uncommon strong, my dear. Tell me all about it.’

  So she did. And he didn’t seem to mind at all. ‘One thing is for certain,’ he said. ‘This present cook is no good at all. We will hire another on Tuesday.’

  ‘And go to Chelsea in the spring?’

  ‘That too, my helpmate.’

  But the Easter family had one more power to use, which brought all their plans abruptly forward. That very afternoon, a letter arrived with the curt instruction that William Henry was to be out of the house before noon on January 17, when Mr Ignatius Callbeck would be taking up residence and control of the fishing fleet.

  So the cook had a reprieve and Mrs Mather had a headache and Matthew didn’t get his funeral after all, only a new master.

  And Nan and William went to Chelsea on one of the coldest days in the year, with the snow thick on the ground.

  Chapter Six

  Nan enjoyed the journey to London. It was exciting to be crunching over the snow, between white fields and brown hedges, under such a clear, pale sky, with steam rising from the horses’ flanks and the coachman singing at the top of his voice. It brought her sense of adventure into the sharpest focus. We’ll show them Easters a thing or two, she thought. Calling her poor Mr Easter a wrong un! Spiteful creatures! Just you wait till we get to London. He’ll be the best of the bunch then. Even an uncomfortable bed at Ipswich and the most unappetizing food at Colchester didn’t dampen her enthusiasm.

  On the last leg of the journey she begged to be allowed to sit outside on the gammon board behind the coachman, and although William Henry argued that she would be sure to catch her death of cold, or that the vehicle would overturn and injure her, she got her own way. And was rewarded by a view of the distant city that she never ever forgot.

  Just before three o’clock they had reached the last uphill climb of their journey, just outside a little village called Chigwell. The passengers had got down, as usual, and trudged up the hill, slithering on the icy track, and at the summit they had paused to catch their breath, and drink a little brandy to sustain them, while the drag was being attached ready for the descent. William Henry had been too busy being miserable, and Nan too busy drinking and chatting to pay much attention to the scene around them, but once she was back on her high perch, she realized that she was looking down on a truly magnificent prospect.

  To her right, the land sloped down towards the valley of a narrow river, steel grey in the light of that January afternoon, and beyond the valley the hills were dark with trees: beeches, oaks and hornbeams in an immense brooding forest. The village with its church and a rambling street of old-fashioned timber and plaster houses lay immediately below her, looking ordinary and unremarkable. But beyond it was a vast landscape of undulating whiteness, like some great frozen sea, criss-crossed by the black lines of trodden pathways, and dotted with little villages and lone farmhouses trailing smoke. And beyond that, a mere twelve miles away from where she sat, was the great, sprawling City of London.

  She was astounded by the size of it, for it was ten times bigger than any city she could ever have imagined and it looked magnificent, with the spires of so many churches spiking out of the grey mass of all those houses, and an abundance of white parks and squares smudged with trees, and the sharp black masts of an ocean of ships foresting the river. Smoke rose visibly from all those countless chimneys to gather in a brown-grey haze in the air above the town, and the sight of it made her aware of how rich and warm the place would be. And right at the centre, swelling above the rooftops, was a magical dome, glinting snow white and ice blue in the light of the sun which hung suspended in the sky immediately above it, glowing as red as a brass penny in the smoke cloud.

  ‘That’s beautiful!’ she said, enraptured. ‘I never see such a place. Never in all my born days.’ It made her blood race just to look at it. ‘I tell you, Mr Easter, that’s just the place for us to make our fortune.’

  William Henry, standing below her on the trodden snow, was rather less sanguine, having seen it all before. ‘Perhaps that is easier said than done, my love,’ he said mildly. ‘A city is invariably full of fortune hun
ters.’

  ‘They en’t hunting like us, though,’ she said. ‘That’s the difference. You’ll see! Just you wait till we gets there!’

  By the time they entered the city, the sun was almost down. They had passed several splendid houses on the Cambridge road, but it was almost too dark to see them, and when they inched between the black stones of a narrow gate into the City itself, it was like driving into the night. Then they were in a narrow street enclosed by six-storied houses and so full of people and horses and carts and carriages all milling about in the torch-lit dusk that it was impossible for anything to move at more than a walking pace. It was most exciting, and so was the Swan with Two Necks, which turned out to be a bustling inn with an inner courtyard big enough to hold a dozen coaches.

  William Henry creaked out of the carriage, complaining that his feet were frozen beyond feeling and that he would be sure to get chilblains, and entreating the nearest groom to make haste and find him a flyer that would take him down to Chelsea before he fell ill of an ague. ‘The sooner we are home, my love,’ he said to Nan, ‘the better ’twill be.’

  She would have been quite happy to stand in the yard and watch the comings and goings, and listen to the sharp talk of the grooms and the coachmen. The cobbles were swept clear of snow, and despite the chill air it was really quite pleasant there in the crush of so many bodies and the exciting glimmer of the torchlight.

  But a flyer was found and they were tucked inside it under the waterproof apron, and rattled away along the narrow lanes towards their new home. She had a confused impression of rows of lamp-lit shops, of windows heaped with merchandise – shoes and stockings, hats and bonnets, and fat rolls of cloth piled one upon the other. Then they were in a wide road that curved around some big church or other and travelling west.

  ‘Is it far to Chelsea?’ she asked.

  ‘We will soon be there, little one,’ he promised. ‘What a wearisome business travel is, to be sure. I declare I ache in every single bone in my body.’