Tuppenny Times

by Beryl Kingston

  A skylark uncoiled its burbling song in a leisurely spiral rising higher and higher into the blue air above their heads. In the field beyond the garden the ripe corn swooshed and rustled. And from the far distance they could hear the tiny, tinny jingle of cow-bells in the water meadows. It was a beautiful day.

  ‘Then you would be a fool,’ Sophie said sagely, ‘and you would suffer for it.’

  ‘Not all men are selfish,’ Nan urged. ‘Mr Easter was the kindest man alive. A courteous gentleman. Oh, most courteous. I tell ’ee, Sophie, if I ever do take a lover ’twill be just such another. And I shall love him truly, forsaking all other, as he will love me.’

  ‘If I could make you such a man, my dear,’ Sophie said affectionately, ‘he would be yours this very day.’ But her expression showed how little she thought it likely. ‘In the meantime there is another ball at Vauxhall a’ Thursday, where I can at least promise you partners a-plenty. How say you?’

  ‘Why yes, of course, for there’s a pleasure quite without pain.’

  ‘Aye, true indeed,’ Sophie said, tossing her curls. ‘Always providing they are light on their feet!’

  And it was a pleasure to be out in society again, going to the play or the fireworks, to dine upon a river boat or dance at the Rotunda, with young men a-plenty to squire her and compliment her, and pretty clothes to wear. But pain trailed in unbidden even on that easy scene. Once she was home again, in her quiet room in Cheyne Row, with the household asleep all around her, she found it impossible to sleep after such excitement, and knew with some sadness that for all her success as a business woman, she was lonely. And when she did sleep, her dreams were confused, mixing memories of her patient Mr Easter with fantasies of handsome young men who swore they would love her to distraction and then disappeared in a tumble of images that made no sense to her at all, waking or sleeping. In the morning she would be full of restless prowling energy, and would set off for work earlier than usual, sharp-eyed for faults.

  On one such morning, as Thiss drove the pony cart briskly along the Strand towards the newspaper offices, the sight of a shop-keeper opening his doors reminded her of Sophie’s joke about selling newspapers by the yard. ‘I’ve a mind to open a newspaper shop,’ she said to Thiss. ‘We will call at Mr Duncan’s after first delivery and see what may be done about it.’

  ‘She’s a one,’ Thiss said to Bessie, when the two of them were having breakfast together with the children later that morning. ‘I never know’d a woman with so many ideas.’

  ‘Is it a good idea Thiss?’ Annie asked, for sometimes her mother’s sudden ideas were rather alarming.

  But Thiss seemed quite sure nothing but good would come of it. ‘A capital idea, Sunshine,’ he said. ‘You ever known yer ma ’ave an idea what didn’t come up trumps?’

  It took Nan nearly two months to find the shop she wanted, and much determined haggling before she could get it for the price she was prepared to pay, but it was well worth the effort and the wait. It stood on the corner of George Street and the Strand, not far away from the old Savoy Palace and the fine new frontage of Somerset House, so it was within strolling distance of all the newspaper printers, well placed for the carriage trade, and close enough to the vegetable market of Covent Garden to attract customers for the Daily Advertiser. A good position at a fair price.

  It was a very dirty shop, having once belong to a cobbler, and it wasn’t really as big as she would have liked it to be, although she was happy to persuade herself that it probably looked smaller than it was because of the thick coating of dust on the windows and the mounds of debris the cobbler had left behind him. There was a fine drawing-room on the first floor which would make an excellent reading room, once it had been cleaned and furnished, and the room above it would provide adequate living accomodation and some storage. But its present state was of little consequence. She could already see exactly what it would be like as her first newspaper shop full of papers and customers. She set Thiss to work on it as soon as she had the key. With a good scrub through, clean windows, a lick of paint, a new counter and such like, it would be a model establishment. All it needed was Thistlethwaite elbow-grease and a good bold sign, which she would order from Mr Johnson that very afternoon.

  Then different signs arrived at Mr Johnson’s at the end of the week, each one saying ‘A. Easter — Newsagent’ within a variety of scrolls and lozenges, leaves and circles, and in an equal variety of colours. Following her husband’s example, she took them home to Chelsea and involved her entire household in the choice. Even the two eldest children were allowed to stay up after dinner and give their opinion.

  Mr Dibkins said he liked the two green and gold ones. ‘Catches your eye sommink marvellous,’ and Thiss said he thought a good bold lettering was best, ‘seein’ you wants ter be seen from the other side a’ the street.’

  ‘An’ carriage winders,’ Bessie volunteered.

  Billy wanted to know why they didn’t say, ‘and sons’ and was assured that they would the minute he and Johnnie were old enough.

  And Mrs Dibkins screwed her mouth into contortions and winked and nodded as though her head were on a spring, and finally took herself off to the kitchen to boil a kettle for a pot of tea, because even after all that effort she couldn’t bring herself to express any opinion at all.

  But eventually and between them they chose the design Nan wanted, a plain oval shape outlined in gold on a dark green ground with the legend painted in large gold letters within it. Straightforward, clear and businesslike. Just like she was herself. And they had all been involved in the decision, just as Mr Easter would have wanted, which had pleased them and would please him, wherever he was. ‘We will go to the Tower tomorrow afternoon,’ she promised her children as she kissed them goodnight, ‘and see the animals.’ ’Twould be a fine way of celebrating her success. And on the way there she would put an advertisement in the Advertiser for a couple to run the shop.

  She worded her advertisement with care. ‘Reliable man or trustworthy married couple required to work in a new establishment between the City and Westminster. Pleasant accomodation over the shop is available for the right couple who should have energy, fortitude and honesty in abundance. Good references required. Apply in writing.’

  ‘That should make them comprehend what manner of work ’twill be,’ she said as she handed the paper to the clerk of the Daily Advertiser.

  ‘Aye, it should,’ he agreed. ‘How many days?’

  ‘Two.’

  By the third day she’d had more than a dozen replies, and only three of them even faintly possible. But then the thirteenth arrived and the thirteenth was intriguing.

  ‘Dear Mistress Easter,’ it said, ‘I have the honner for to supply to the advertissment what I seen in the Daily Advertiser me and my wife would care to supply being we worked for Mr Easter one time Great Yarmouth that were what you may remember I am yr obedient servant M Howlett.’

  She had no idea who M Howlett was, but she wrote back to him at once instructing him to come and see her in the shop, adding ‘bring your wife, I pray you.’

  He attended promptly on the appointed hour, crossing the Strand with the darting nervousness of the countryman, eyes bolting. He was an awkward, bony-looking fellow in an ancient livery, his jacket patched at the elbows and his breeches shiny with wear, and to Nan, watching his approach from behind her clean shop-window, there was something very familiar about his gait, but as he walked watching his feet she couldn’t see his face, so she couldn’t be sure who he was. His wife trotted beside him, hanging onto his arm like a plump umbrella. There was something vaguely familiar about her too, but it wasn’t until they entered the shop and said ‘Good afternoon’ that she recognized them both. The man was Matthew, Mr Easter’s servant from South Quay, and his wife was Abby from Plum Row.

  ‘My heart alive!’ she said, beaming on them. ‘What are you doin’ in London?’

  Matthew went ahead with his prepared speech, ‘I wrote soon as I see the name,�
� he said solemnly. ‘I say to Abby — diden’ I, Abby? — that’ll be our Mrs Easter sure as eggs is eggs. Per’aps we shall suit bein’ we’re from Yarmouth an’ all.’

  But Abby answered the question. ‘That ol’ Mr Callbeck he was a rare ol’ Tartar,’ she said. ‘We stuck him nigh on three year, then we ups an’ packs an’ comes to London. Never thinkin’ there’d be the chance of a job with you. We didden’ none of us know what had become of you, you see. Now after you an’ Mr Easter went to London. Mr Callbeck never said nothin’ about you, ever.’

  ‘That don’t surprise me,’ Nan said, speaking coolly, because she was annoyed at this reminder of the way the Easters had cut her out of their family and because Abby’s tone was just a little too familiar for her liking. ‘Masters don’t go discussing their affairs with servants as a general rule.’

  ‘Mrs Howkins did,’ Abby argued. ‘Don’t ’ee remember? She told us every last detail, so she did.’

  Nan looked her new servant in the eye. ‘If you mean to work for me, Abby,’ she warned, ‘there’s one thing we’d better get straight right here and now. I en’t a maid-servant no more. I own a business now. I run a shop. I’m the mistress.’

  Abby understood before she’d finished speaking. ‘Yes, mum,’ she said, dropping her eyes in the approved fashion. ‘No offence meant, I’m sure.’

  ‘We should be honoured,’ Matthew said, doggedly continuing with his speech, ‘for to be took on. Bein’ we held Mr Easter in such esteem so to speak. Bein’ you wouldn’t need no references, ma’am. Bein’ you knows how strong I am. Bein’ I’m willin’. I thinks I could say willin’, ma’am. Bein’ you knows the sort of service we could both — um—. Bein’ …’

  ‘When could you start?’ she said, interrupting him quickly before he could think of any more reasons, and was rewarded by a smile of such relief and such affection it almost brought tears to her eyes.

  So she hired them, because however glaring their faults, she knew she could trust them. And besides, it was such a pleasure to be eased by the gentle burr of their Norfolk dialect after years spent listening to the sharp, quick speech of the city.

  Matthew was delighted with their good fortune. ‘Tha’s a stroke a’ luck workin’ for Mrs Easter,’ he said to Abby. ‘She’s a rare one is Mrs Easter. Always was. I mind the time she first come to South Quay. She give orders to everyone. I never seen the like. Oh she’s a rare one, right enough.’

  ‘I know’d ’er longer’n you,’ Abby said with great satisfaction. ‘I know’d ’er when she was no more’n nine years old an’ a scullery maid. She had a mind of her own even then.’

  ‘An’ now she’s the missus,’ Matthew said. ‘Oh, she’s a rare one, right enough. A. Easter — Newsagent eh?’

  A. Easter — Newsagent opened her shop two days later and although she didn’t admit it to anybody, not even to Thiss, it was rather an anxious time.

  Her trade was nowhere near good enough. She haunted the shop at the end of every day, to check the figures and change the window display, and she was regularly disappointed to see that her sales were so small. It was true they picked up a little, after a week or two, but very, very slowly, and no matter how many or how few papers she put into the window, there didn’t seem to be anything she could do to improve them.

  But then, just as she was getting short-tempered with disappointment, the Advertiser was full of the exciting news that body snatchers had been seen at work in the City. ‘At dead of night,’ it reported, ‘when decent citizens have retired to their well earned slumbers, evil men are abroad in the deserted churchyards of the city. They prowl in the darkness, disturbing the graves of the newly dead, desecrating the last resting places of our dear departed. Last night hooded figures were seen rapidly leaving the churchyard of All Saints in Pennyquick Lane. Where will they dig tonight?’ It was splendidly lurid and it sold the paper like hot cakes on a cold day. And those who couldn’t find a copy for sale on the streets came into the shop to buy.

  Nan made a really healthy profit and ordered twice her usual number of Advertisers for the next three days, confident that if the story continued her sales would rise. It was a wise decision, for now there was such a demand for the paper that she couldn’t meet it. And neither could the printers, who were very much aggrieved because they were only able to print at the rate of five hundred copies an hour and they could have sold double that number if only they could have got them out.

  ‘Nothing sells so well as bad news,’ Nan told her reflection at the end of that first successful day. ‘Long may it continue and the worse the better!’

  In fact there was such a demand for ‘all the latest details’ that she decided to open the reading-room. It hadn’t been decorated and there weren’t enough chairs but there was sensation a-plenty and that was what mattered. Within a week she had thirty-two monthly subscribers and four who had paid up for a quarter.

  ‘Who’d ha’ thought it, Mrs Easter?’ Matthew said, scratching his head with both hands as eager readers tramped up and down the stairs. ‘I never could abide readin’ mesself. Who’d ha’ thought it?’

  ‘Take up these extra copies while you’re thinkin’,’ Nan instructed briskly, for Matthew’s contemplation invariably inhibited action and the sooner it was stopped the better.

  The body snatchers were speculated upon for more than a week, and sales remained high throughout. But then two cadavers were actually recovered from the hospital which had secretly purchased them and after a lengthy and public debate as to the rights and wrongs of the case, the body snatchers were brought to trial and the recovered corpses were re-buried. And the news was buried with them.

  Sales fell, of course, but only slightly. ‘There will be other events,’ Nan said. ‘Now they’re used to coming to a shop for news they’ll keep on coming, you’ll see.’

  But the next piece of news which was to occupy all the London papers was the weather, and that didn’t please her at all. For the winter had begun and it was plain to everybody, from astrologers to artisans, that it was going to be a very hard one.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The first heavy snowfall of that winter obscured the sky all through the last day of November, with flakes as thick as goose feathers and a knife-edged cold. The first blizzard howled it into drifts within a week and from then on the cold was unrelenting. Snow fell with monotonous regularity, by day and by night, smothering all sound and most landmarks, and even though the main thoroughfares were usually trudged to a brown slush by mid-day, the rest of the world was a study in black and white.

  Chelsea’s ancient cottages were weighed down by an additional white thatch which dripped blackened straw and grew even blacker icicles. Frozen water hung in white suspension from black pumps. The church rose darkly among the white hummocks of its untidy yard. Black crows spread tessellated wings against a white sky. Only the chimney stacks displayed any colour, their red brick oddly naked, breathing out bold brown smoke into the grey air, the one sign of life and warmth in a cold deadened world.

  Soon the streets were mounded with perpetual snow and the cobbles treacherous with impacted ice. Horses slithered and fell and were hauled to their feet by grooms made clumsy by cold and thoughtless cruelty. Beggars froze to death where they sat, their filthy rags as solid as rock, and were hauled ignominiously away in mud-ridged tumbrels to a pauper’s grave. Funerals soon became a daily occurrence as the old, the young and the frail gradually succumbed to the season. And street traders of all kinds watched their custom dwindle, and grew poorer and hungrier by the day.

  Supplies of food grew smaller too and more costly as the fields froze. By the end of the year root vegetables had disappeared from the market altogether and no matter how well they were cooked, potatoes remained obstinately hard and grey. Even the Season was affected, which didn’t please Sophie Fuseli at all. The theatres stayed open, but both the great pleasure gardens were closed and the only balls held that winter were private affairs in the great well-heated houses of the
ton.

  By the middle of December Nan’s profits had been virtually halved. Her regulars still paid to have their papers delivered, cold or no cold, but there were far too few of them, and there were days when street sales were so small as to be scarcely worth the bother. However temptingly she offered her wares, her customers scurried past, heads down against the biting wind, swathed to the nose in shawls and mufflers and with their hats pulled over their ears, ignoring everything except their urgent need to get beside a fire again as quickly as they could.

  In fact, if it hadn’t been for the presence of her two winsome children, there were some days when she would have sold no papers at all. But a small child bundled about with shawls and scarves, hatted and hooded, and wrapped in a red cloak with a small chapped nose and rough cheeks to match, was still an attraction. Fortunately.

  William was less help than his sister in cold weather, because he would keep running about or blowing on the unmittened ends of his fingers or stamping his feet in the slush and spattering them all with filth. But Annie was a good child, standing patiently and obediently in the trodden snow, and never complaining, no matter how cold she was. And she was often very cold indeed. There were days when her fingers were frozen into stiff little claws and when she got home it took Bessie quite a long time to chaff them into life again, unbending them one at a time, very gradually and painfully. But even then the child didn’t complain. She was far too fond of her mother to do that. And far too worried about the roof.

  Bessie had explained to her that Mama worked hard to ‘keep a roof over their heads’ and that she and Billy were to do everything they could to help her. Sometimes she would glance back fearfully at the roof as they left the house in the morning, just in case it had been taken away overnight. But the familiar grey slates were always there, so whatever it was that Mama was doing, she seemed to be doing it right. But it was a serious responsibility, even so.