The little two-seater trotted on for another twenty minutes through wide streets and narrow alleys until they were finally out of the city and traversing a dark country lane, where the hedges were quite black for lack of light and the heaped snow made ghostly shadows on either side of them.
And then they were suddenly trotting along a cobbled street again. ‘We are here,’ Mr Easter said. ‘Number 10, driver, if you please.’
Number 10 Cheyne Row was a tall narrow house in a tall narrow terrace, a fine modern house with long windows and a dependable air about it.
There was a lantern hanging above the front door and its beams spread just far enough to show her that there were three steps leading up to the door and that peering out of the nearest tall window was a grotesque little face, a clown’s face with a mauve nose and an assortment of misshapen chins and two small dark eyes behind steel-rimmed glasses. It was wearing a large frilled cap so it was presumably female, and when it saw William Henry easing himself out of the flyer, it began to pull its mouth into rubbery shapes and wink its right eye. The movement caught his attention and he looked up and waved to it, at which it went off into a paroxysm of winks and contortions, and then disappeared.
‘Who,’ Nan said, staring with disbelief, ‘was that?’
‘Why Mrs Dibkins, to be sure,’ her husband answered. ‘My housekeeper, dear old Dolly Dibkins.’
He can’t mean it, Nan thought. A creature like that couldn’t possibly be a housekeeper. But there wasn’t time to say anything more, because the door had opened and a second figure had appeared on the steps. And this one was even more peculiar. She couldn’t even tell what sex it was.
It was exactly the same shape as a beer barrel, and much the same height, and it came lurching down the steps towards them as though it was being rolled from a dray. It was wearing a long dark apron which swathed it to the knees and a collection of shawls criss-crossed bulkily about its chest. Its hair stood up above its forehead in a matted crest like a well-worn scrubbing brush, and below the apron one leg sported a woollen stocking and a stout, black boot, while the other was encased in a cocoon of bandages and ended not in a foot but in a wooden wash-dolly. It rolled to a halt beside the flyer and beamed at Mr Easter.
‘We got all ready for ’ee, Mr William, sir,’ it said. ‘An’ this is your dear wife, I’m sure. I’ll take the luggage, sir. Did you have a good journey?’
‘Passable, Dibkins, passable.’
‘Soon be inside in the warm, sir. Bed’s all aired, sir, dinner’s ready, we got a glass a’ your London particular.’
Two servants, Nan thought, as she followed them into the house. Two good servants, he’d said, and they were little better than freaks. Well, I hope they can cook, that’s all.
They couldn’t. Dinner consisted of a roast fowl so tough it was virtually impossible to chew, roast potatoes burnt to cinders and a dish of greens that were liberally, and she hoped accidentally, embellished with boiled earwigs. The only palatable thing on the dinner table was the London particular, which turned out to be an excellent Madeira wine. It was going to be a very different sort of life in this house.
But at least the bed was warm, and after two day’s hard travelling it was blissful to lie down to sleep in peace. There’s a lot to be done, she thought, as she began to drift. ‘We must talk about servants in the morning, Mr Easter,’ she said.
‘Must we, my love?’ he murmured. ‘I would have thought there was very little to say on that subject. We can only afford two with our affairs at their present – um – low ebb, as I know you appreciate, but fortunately that is the number we employ.’
Sleep was washing her away. ‘In the morning,’ she promised.
The next morning Mrs Dibkins came hobbling into the dining-room with a dish of sausages which she dropped on to the carpet at their feet. Nan was cross and didn’t bother to hide it.
‘Oh, Mr William-dear,’ the old woman said, all her chins shaking with distress.
‘It is of no consequence,’ he comforted her. ‘I had little appetite this morning. Get a little bowl, eh, and we will clean it up before it stains the carpet.’
‘Why don’t you scold her?’ Nan said when Mrs Dibkins was out of earshot.
‘She does her best, poor soul,’ he said, kneeling on the carpet to gather up the sausages, which had rolled off across the carpet in every direction.
‘Oh how foolish!’ she said, jumping to her feet. ‘She does her best, so we’re to starve, is that it? She can’t see, so your’re to clean up.’
‘She is old, my love,’ he said gently, still busy with the sausages. ‘We must make allowances.’
‘I don’t see why,’ she said. ‘She can’t cook because she can’t see. She en’t no earthly use, an’ that’s the truth of it. An’ no more’s her husband, great clumsy thing, clomp clomp clomp all the time. You should send ’em both packing, so you should, and get two young uns with a bit of life in ’em.’
He stood up and took her by the arm and led her down the room away from the sausages, patting her hand as they went. ‘No, little wife,’ he said, ‘that would be a most unchristian action. They are old and enfeebled and need our care. You spoke hastily, my dear, and in anger. I know you would not truly wish me to send such faithful servants to beg in the streets.’
‘Why not?’ she said.
He turned his face towards her and the expression on it was suddenly cold. ‘You are young,’ he said shortly. ‘You have yet to learn how to treat servants correctly. I do not forget Mrs Clackett, who was a good cook, in all conscience.’
The rebuke stung her. ‘Then let us hire a housemaid to help them,’ she said. ‘Or a cook if we can afford one.’
‘No,’ he said again, smiling that infuriating bland smile of his. ‘You know our fortunes, Nan, my love. Two we can afford and two we have.’
‘But why that two?’
‘For the very best of reasons I do assure you.’
There was no arguing with him, especially as Mrs Dibkins came bustling back into the room with a bowl full of slopping water and a mouth full of tearful apologies.
Very well, Nan thought, I shall set to and cook the meals myself, for I really can’t abide any more of this sort of fare.
Which she did, and found to her great surprise that her presence was welcomed in the kitchen.
‘’Tis uncommon kind of ’ee, so ’tis, Mrs William-dear,’ Mrs Dibkins said, when her young mistress announced that she’d come down to cook the dinner. ‘I can’t see as well as I did you see, Mrs William-dear. ’Tis mortal worrittin’, so ’tis, for I do like to give good service to the master.’
‘I shall go to market,’ Nan told her, touched by the old lady’s humility, ‘and buy a brace of pigeons and we’ll make a fine pigeon pie, with orange flummery to follow, which is one of his favourite dishes. Do we have any basil?’
‘It died, poor thing,’ Mr Dibkins said in sepulchral tones, as though the plant had been an old friend. ‘We done all we could, Mrs William-dear, but it just give up the ghost.’
‘I will buy another,’ Nan said briskly. ‘It won’t die on me, that I’ll warrant.’
It was meant as a rebuke to them for their carelessness, but they took it as a promise and applauded it. ‘No indeed, Mrs William-dear,’ the old lady said. ‘What a blessing you’ve come for to share the master’s life, me dear.’
Despite her initial annoyance with them, Nan couldn’t help warming to the Dibkins, and she liked them more and more the longer they went on working together. They were both so fond of Mr Easter. Mrs Dibkins treated him like a child, clucking a napkin about his neck before he began to eat, patting hot bricks into the bed to warm his feet at night, urging him to take a nap in the afternoons, and calling him ‘Mr William-dear’ with the affectionate approval of a doting mother. And Mr Dibkins smiled and nodded, and didn’t seem to notice that he was leaving trails of coaldust up and down the stairs. And although they were slow and shortsighted they did their very best to keep the house clean and c
omfortable.
The ground floor consisted of one very large room with windows at both ends, two looking out into the street, and one with a view of the little back garden. There were two fireplaces and two tables in the room too, so that whatever time of the day they happened to be eating a meal they could sit in the warmth of fire or sunshine, which was very pleasant now that their meals were well cooked. Breakfast was served at ‘the garden table’ and dinner taken overlooking the street, with the afternoon sun shining palely onto the carpet beside them.
In fact despite the hard work, life in Chelsea was very enjoyable. It was such an eccentric place, set haphazardly among the fields at a discreet distance from the wide curve of the Thames, and not a bit like any village she’d ever seen, being part market garden, part landing stage, half rural, and half urban. The old village consisted of a muddle of topsyturvy buildings clustered around a square-towered church and a crumbling palace which the locals were proud to inform her had once belonged to Sir Thomas More, whoever he was. But to the north, seven new roads had been built, straight, proper roads, facing south into the sun or east towards the river, their terraced houses well proportioned, their paved streets lantern lit, like a slice of the city set down among the fields. And Cheyne Row was one of them. It pleased her to think that she lived at the better end of town.
And of course, London was a most exciting place. She soon discovered that winter here was called ‘the season’ and that King George and Queen Charlotte and all the ladies and gentlemen of their court, who were called ‘the ton’, were in town to enjoy it. She and William Henry went out with the rest of the London population to watch them; to Buckingham House to see the King pass plumply by in his gilded carriage; to St James’ Park where the ton rode horseback or took the air in phaetons as clean and well-polished as they were themselves; and every day there was something or somebody new to see.
Sometimes, she and William Henry donned their heavy travelling cloaks and were rowed down the icy Thames from Chelsea steps to the City in one of the London river boats, and Nan was intrigued by the watermen who wore white sailor suits and black tar hats and spat their chewed tobacco into the river. And sometimes they went to the theatre and saw plays which were occasionally amusing, and the ton who were amusing all the time and positively dazzling, sitting in their boxes, shimmering with diamonds, the gentlemen in coats of figured satin or velvet or cloth of gold, the ladies in watered silks and embroidered damasks with ostrich feathers in their elaborate coiffures.
‘With folk as rich as they,’ she observed, watching them, ‘there’s fortunes to be made!’
‘That, little one,’ he said, ‘is as may be. What think you of the play?’
He takes everything so placidly, she thought, watching him. He’ll never make a fortune if he don’t work at it. But he hardly seemed disposed to work at all. With breakfast at nine and dinner at three and an afternoon nap, and Sundays given over to church and the evenings to entertainment or to his club, business was curtailed to a mere three hours a day, spent dealing in sugar and treacle and such things, or checking the latest sugar prices. And that didn’t seem anywhere near enough to Nan, not if he was going to make a fortune. I shall speak to him about it, she promised herself. At the very first opportunity, so I will.
But opportunities were hard to come by. There was always so much cooking and marketing to do, or he was trying to rest, or they were dining and couldn’t talk too seriously for fear of causing him indigestion.
But eventually it was spring and their herb garden put out fresh leaves and bluebells grew beneath the quince tree like a patch of fallen sky. And when she walked down her little country street to the parade of shops that fronted the river, blackbirds were fighting one another on the green, clashing breast to breast and shrill with passion, their flexed wings like fierce black darts. The sight of them filled her with energy. Oh, there was so much to be done. They must improve their fortunes somehow and show those old Easters.
That afternoon he suggested that it might be a pleasant thing to take a short stroll beside the river. ‘Not too protracted a promenade, my love, of course. We must take care not to overtire ourselves. But a turn in the sunshine, eh? To the Physic garden and back, perhaps. How say you?’
It was the opportunity she’d been waiting for. They talked weather and health until they had rounded the curve of the river and were out of sight of the village. The river was as blue as the sky and on the opposite bank the Surrey fields were green in the new spring sun. ‘Everything coming back to life,’ she said.
‘Indeed yes.’
‘Time for new ventures,’ she said firmly. She had meant the words to be a suggestion but they sounded like a command.
‘For those with the wit and the energy.’
‘Both of which you got in abundance, Mr Easter.’
He smiled weakly. ‘I fear not, my love,’ he said. ‘I have been sorely tried by this inclement season.’
‘New ventures,’ she said, her chin square with determination. ‘You want to show your father he were mistook, that I do know.’
He took her hand and fitted it into the crook of his arm. ‘’Tis all long past,’ he said, ‘and quite forgotten. We do well enough little Nan. We have a good home and good food – Mrs Dibkins cooks a deal better these days, you will allow – and we have hardly touched our capital.’
‘If Mrs Dibkins cooks a deal better that’s because I go to the door to buy from the traders and spend half my day in that ol’ kitchen, besides,’ she said. ‘You don’t never imagine she could ’a made that hasty pudden last night, do you?’
He beamed at her. ‘Exactly so, my dear,’ he said. ‘Which all goes to show what a wise judgement I made in choosing you as my wife.’
It was a pretty compliment and she accepted it prettily, but then just as she was gathering her breath and her wits to steer the conversation back in the direction she wanted, a dark figure walked out from the entrance to the Physic garden, and turning towards them, lifted his face in recognition. It was that funny old publisher fellow, Mr Johnson. Drat the man, she thought. What he got to go and put in an appearance for?
‘Why, Mr Johnson, dear friend,’ William Henry said, lengthening his stride. ‘I trust I see you well.’
‘Such a winter we have had,’ the publisher said, shaking his old friend warmly by the hand. ‘’Tis little short of a wonder we are all survived to speak of it.’
‘Allow me to present my wife,’ William Henry said proudly.
Mr Johnson bowed courteously. ‘I congratulate you madam,’ he said. ‘My felicitations to you both. Well, well, well, there must be something in the air this year. Mr Fuseli is returned to London a married man this very week. If this continues I shall soon be the only bachelor above seven and forty in the capital.’
‘Fuseli, the painter?’ William Henry smiled. He seemed uncommon pleased by the news. ‘Who would have thought it? Do we know the lady?’
‘Sophie Rawlins,’ Mr Johnson said. ‘One of his models, according to Mr Blake. A pretty creature, by all accounts. We shall see a’ Thursday, for he comes to dine with me and Mr Paine.’
‘Henry Fuseli!’ William said again. ‘Who would have thought it? And Mr Paine in London again, you say.’
‘Perhaps,’ Mr Johnson said, giving Nan his distant smile, ‘I may prevail upon you to dine with us too.’
‘We should be delighted,’ William said. And Nan smiled, as that seemed to be expected of her.
There was no hope of coaxing the conversation back onto its original track now. Mr Easter could talk of nothing else but this Mr Paine and Mr Fuseli and Mr Blake and all his artistic friends, and what a pleasure it would be to see them all again. ‘Such fine men, my love,’ he said, as they walked together through the scented herb beds of the Physic garden. ‘To hear them talk is an edification. Oh, I have spent some of the happiest hours of my life in their excellent company, I do assure you. And now you will join me there. What happiness!’
Privately Nan
thought such talk would all be very boring. But at least they were going to dine out, which was exciting, and there was just a chance that she might find somebody at the dinner who would agree with her that he ought to do something to improve his fortunes.
Chapter Seven
It was an odd day, that day when they first went to dine with Mr Johnson. For a start the weather was most peculiar, with bright sunshine and sudden stinging showers and a strong south-west wind that blew them along the streets, their coats flapping before them like flags. Looking back on it afterwards Nan felt she should have known she was going to meet some extraordinary people, for she felt excited all the way there.
They took a river boat to the City, and walked up St Benet’s Hill to St Paul’s Churchyard. Thames Street was so crowded it took them the best part of five minutes to get across it. The pavements jostled with people, buyers and browsers, pimps and pickpockets, streetsellers, all sharp elbows and tin trays and grasping fingers, errand boys on the run regardless of other people’s feet, and a raggle-taggle army of stinking beggars thrusting their sores and deformities at every nose. And as if that wasn’t enough, the roadway was choked with carriages, for there was a banquet at the Mansion House and the ton were on their way to be wined and dined, their fine silks rippling like fire in the sunlight, their diamonds flashing, their pale painted faces gazing vacuously before them like masks. What excitement!
William Henry didn’t notice any of it. ‘Oh dear,’ he panted, as they struggled across the road. ‘We should have made allowances, Nan. We should have made allowances for so much traffic. Now we shall be late, I fear, and I do so abhor tardiness.’
‘Never you mind,’ she said, steering him past a butcher’s tacky apron. ‘We got time enough, you’ll see.’
But only just. St Paul’s was striking the hour when they knocked on Mr Johnson’s unobtrusive door, and by the time they’d been ushered in and had climbed the darkening stairs to his first-floor dining-room, the meal was about to begin and conversation was well under way. The table was laid for twelve and ten of the seats were already occupied, two of them, as Nan was quite glad to see, by women.
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