However, the firework display was splendid. The centrepiece was a huge construction over ten feet tall which lit in a sudden blaze to reveal a white-hot Agememnon, gun decks glowing, as the trumpets brayed and squealed and the band played Mr Arne’s splendidly martial hymn ‘Rule Britannia’. The audience was entranced, and many a patriotic tear was shed before they all repaired to the supper tent for ale and porter and a cold collation.
The children enjoyed every minute of their unexpected outing, from the first fanfare of jubilation which began it, to the meat and cold pickles which brought it to a close. Annie liked the fireworks best and Billy preferred the food, but for Johnnie the highlight of the evening was the prize-fighting. It was something he had never seen before, nor ever imagined, and the sight of those two sweating men, naked to the waist, chests bruised, white breeches smeared with blood, torn fists thudding, was so exciting it constricted his throat and made his heart thunder in his ears. He stood before the canvas lost in admiration. Oh, if only he could be a man like that! Mama would be bound to love him then, if he were a man like that!
For although he had no words as yet in which to express his knowledge and certainly no desire as yet even to attempt such a thing, Johnnie Easter knew, in a vague, undeniable, instinctive way that nobody loved him. It was partly because of the bleakness that descended upon him every time he saw his mother, partly because of the way voices changed tone when they began to speak to him, and partly the combination of a variety of small unintentional slights that made him feel he was a creature apart, a child unwanted, a nuisance who should never have been born. He felt it most keenly when he yearned for Mama’s affection, to be picked up and cuddled the way she cuddled his brother and sister. But although she washed him and dressed him and cut up his meat for him, she never kissed him and rarely gave him even so much as a hug. She would sit on the settle beside the fire, with Annie and Billy on either side of her, dividing her attention equally between them, while he had to sit on a stool at their feet.
Sometimes the anguish would be too intolerable to be contained any longer and it would break out from him like pus spurting from a boil, and he would roar and rage and scream until the extremity was past or he was too exhausted to go on. But that only made matters worse, for it infuriated Mama, and usually ended in a beating. And that meant he had to make supreme efforts not to do it again, so as to earn her approval. And he did try. He really did. Harder than anyone knew. But the awful thing was that the harder he tried the more impossible it became. Even when he was biting his lips to control himself, he knew that sooner or later the pressure would build up to such a degree that he would explode again and be punished again. From the knee-high vantage point of his five unhappy years there didn’t appear to be any way out of it. Until he saw the prize-fighters. The admirable prize-fighters that everybody cheered and loved and admired.
As they all went trailing home to Cheyne Row in the lilac evening, he made up his mind that he would start practising to be a prize-fighter the very next day, as soon as he got up.
It was actually more difficult than he’d imagined. For as he realized as soon as he got out into the garden after breakfast, a prize-fighter needs a sparring partner, and although his brother seemed the obvious choice, his brother wasn’t keen.
‘Leave off,’ he said lazily, as Johnnie pranced around him, fists squared. ‘I got too much porridge in me belly for rough stuff.’
‘Give us a fight,’ Johnnie urged. ‘Go on, Billoh. Put up yer mitts!’ That was what they’d called out in the tent, and it sounded really war-like and brave. ‘Put up yer mitts!’
‘Mitts, my eye!’ Billy mocked. ‘Call those little things mitts?’ His hands were nearly twice the width of his brother’s, as he was happy to demonstrate. ‘I wouldn’t even call my hands mitts an’ look at the size a’ them.’
‘Don’t rag him Billy,’ Annie warned from her perch in the apple tree where she was playing cat’s cradle. ‘You don’t want his dander up.’
‘Me dander ain’t up,’ Johnnie said earnestly. ‘Honest! Just one, Billoh! I won’t hurt, I promise.’
‘No, you won’t,’ Billy said mildly, ‘’cause I ain’t playin’.’ And he went off to the other end of the garden with his toy soldiers, arranging them in neat rows on the grass, and humming to himself with satisfaction.
Johnnie tried whining. ‘Oh, come on, Billoh! Come on! Why won’t you! Come on! Just one. Come on!’ circling the military formations, with his feet dangerously close to the soldiery.
‘Don’t keep all on,’ Billy said, trying to ignore him. ‘And mind your feet, do.’
‘Just one,’ Johnnie begged, and he started to jab out a fist at his brother’s face as he circled, jab-jab, jab-jab, just like his heroes had done. It was a bad mistake, for one blow suddenly landed, jerking Billy’s head to one side and marking his face with a red glow like a one-sided blush. For a second they were both very surprised.
‘Right!’ Billy said rising to his feet enraged. ‘That’s done it, Johnnie. You’ve asked for it now.’ And he rushed at his brother, fists flailing in temper.
It wasn’t quite what Johnnie had intended, but he set to with a will, trying to land blows like the prize-fighters, turning his body sideways away from the force of Billy’s attack, moving his arms from the shoulder, elbows in the air. It made for a very unequal contest, for Billy was cross and attacking strongly and he was cool and dodging, even though he was afraid.
Annie dropped her cat’s cradle and put the string in her apron pocket and climbed down out of the tree to go and get help. Neither of her brothers paid any attention to her, for by now the skirmish had got out of hand, several blows had hurt and they were fighting in earnest. By the time Bessie came puffing up from the kitchen, both of them had torn knuckles and Billy was spitting blood from a formidable punch in the mouth.
‘What’ve you gone an’ done ter my poor Billy, you horrid little monster?’ she said, rounding on Johnnie.
The sight of the blood had sobered him at once. The sound of her voice terrified him.
‘Now you’re for it!’ Annie said. And as he was trying to get some words into order inside his head ready to defend himself, the garden door was flung open and Nan came striding into the garden with Thiss behind her.
‘Now what?’ she said furiously. ‘I declare I can’t leave you children alone for five minutes without trouble.’
‘’E’s knocked ‘is teeth out!’ Bessie wailed. ‘Oh, you’re a bad wicked varmint, so you are, Johnnie Easter. Look at ‘is poor teeth, mum. ’Angin’ be a shred.’
‘Onny milk teeth,’ Thiss said. ‘Soon grow some more, son.’ But his comfort fell on deaf ears because Billy was howling and Bessie was crooning commiserations and Nan was shouting in temper. ‘Five minutes left and they’re brawling like tinkers! Running wild. Growing up like savages. Well, this is the end of it. They must have a governess.’
That word stopped all other sound in the garden.
‘A governess, mum?’ Bessie said. And she looked so afraid that all three children were quite alarmed. They had no idea what a governess was, but they knew it would be painful.
‘Yes,’ their mother said firmly. ‘High time their education was taken in hand. Take ’em indoors and clean ’em up. I will see to it at once.’
Now that she’d made her mind up to it, it had to be done quickly. That was the way she made decisions these days, at speed and without looking back. She sent in her advertisements that very afternoon and made her choice four days later when she had a bundle of applications and one that was quite outstanding.
It came from a lady signing herself Agnes Pennington (Mrs) and was accompanied by three excellent references, the first two praising her control and discipline, the third speaking warmly of her skill at ‘dinning knowledge into dull heads.’
If that’s the sort she is, Nan thought, she’ll be a match for Johnnie no matter how he behaves.
The lady duly presented herself at Cheyne Row on the following a
fternoon and was interviewed in the drawing-room on the first floor, while Bessie and her three putative charges huddled together in Nan’s bedroom next door and strained their ears to hear what was being said. Now that they knew that a governess was a person, they wanted to know what sort of a person it was.
‘I don’t like the sound of her,’ Billy said. The lady’s voice was loud and harsh and she laughed as though she was barking. ‘Haw-haw-haw!’
‘Hush!’ Bessie implored. ‘They’ll hear yer.’
But they didn’t, for Nan was too busy assessing the value of this new addition to her household and the governess was pre-occupied with giving a good impression.
Agnes Pennington was the daughter of an impoverished curate and a professional invalid. She had been born ugly and she grew uglier, with a face and figure that even her friends could only describe as eccentric. She was very flat-chested and made less of what little she had by walking with a stoop, her spine curved into a crescent. But it was her face that was her real misfortune, equine of nose and square of jaw with small brown eyes and a short narrow mouth that looked as though they had been added as an afterthought. She did her best to appear attractive, wearing the most fashionable of poke bonnets and arranging her brown hair in a row of smooth fat curls across her forehead, like a string of conkers, but they only served to make her face look more grotesque.
She called herself Mrs Pennington and wore a cheap wedding-ring and an air of irreproachable sanctity, but actually she wasn’t entitled to either of them. But she had a quick wit, a sharp tongue and a thorough dislike of children, and with these three attributes she felt certain she could make her way in the world as a governess.
Now she was doing her best to persuade Mrs Easter than no child alive was beyond her control.
‘I will make no bones about it, Mrs Pennington,’ Nan was saying. ‘My two eldest are reasonable children, always have been. You will get no trouble from them, I am sure on it. But you had best be told straight away my youngest is a wretch, a thoroughly nasty, disobedient child.’
‘You may safely leave him to me, Mrs Easter, ma’am. I can assure you I have yet to meet the child who could better me.’
‘I am glad on it,’ Nan said, slightly relieved by the woman’s firm tone, but saying an inward prayer that her Johnnie wouldn’t prove to be the exception.
‘How old is the child, ma’am, if I may presume to ask?’
‘Just five.’
‘An admirable age at which to be taken in hand,’ Mrs Pennington said firmly. ‘Old enough to be capable of reason and young enough to be malleable.’
‘What’s mall-able, Ba?’ Annie whispered, staring at her brother. It sounded as though it could mean he was going to be whipped, and he was certainly looking very miserable and sucking his thumb. ‘Take your thumb out your mouth Johnnie, do!’
‘Hush!’ Bessie ordered, afraid that her rebuke would make him yell and have them all discovered. ‘You make so much as a peep an’ we shall all ’ave ter go back ter the nursery.’
‘Ten guineas a year, paid quarterly.’ their mother was saying. ‘Will that suit?’
‘You will not regret it, ma’am,’ the rough voice said.
And three small hearts sank to hear it.
Mrs Pennington’s arrival in the Easter household caused more of a stir than Mrs Jorris and Miss Trent the pastry cook and a whole procession of scullery maids had ever done. For a start she arrived with two large travelling trunks which Thiss and Mr Dibkins had to lug up six flights of stairs to the two rooms allotted to her on the third floor. There was some ribald speculation as to what they might contain, for Thiss swore they were heavier than lead coffins and it was a wonder he and old Dibkins hadn’t bust a gut with the weight of them.
Then there was the matter of meals which the lady insisted should be served to her in her rooms since she was most certainly a cut above eating with servants and she did not have the proper rank and status to dine with the mistress, even a mistress whose origins were obviously far more common than her own. Mrs Pennington knew all about social proprieties and adhered to them religiously, even if other people didn’t. It was a very great nuisance, and the scullery-maids who had to trail up and down stairs with her trays night and morning were much aggrieved.
‘Her an’ her airs and graces!’ Mrs Dibkins growled to her great friend, Mrs Jorris.
‘Neither flesh nor fowl, Mrs D, my dear,’ Mrs Jorris observed darkly. ‘That’s how it is. Between you an’ me, my dear, I never known a governess yet what didn’t spell trouble.’
But whatever trouble she might cause in the kitchen, in the new domain of her classroom, Mrs Pennington’s rule was absolute. On her first afternoon she had all her pupils chanting the alphabet, on her second they embarked on tables, and by the end of the first week a routine had been established which never varied. Once or twice the listening servants heard a childish voice, usually Billy’s, raised in protest, and the sound of a slap, followed by muffled whimpering, but there were no tantrums and no roaring, and by the end of the day all three children were so exhausted that they crawled willingly to bed without fuss. It was a transformation.
At the end of the month Mrs Pennington made her first report to Mrs Easter. Annie and Billy were good children, she said, and learning fairly well, although slowly. But Johnnie was a delight to teach. A veritable delight. ‘You have a clever son, Mrs Easter,’ she said. ‘So quick with figures. He has real talent.’
‘Johnnie?’ Nan asked, hardly able to believe her ears.
‘Indeed yes, madam. He has taken to arithmetic as if he were born to it. A very clever little boy.’
‘And does he behave himself?’
‘Like an angel.’
It was a transformation. That afternoon at dinner she found herself observing him closely, almost as though she were seeing him for the first time. He was still an ugly little thing, with that sharp little face and that dark hair and those withdrawn, brooding eyes, but she fancied she could see a resemblance in him now. Not to Mr Easter, for there was nothing of that poor man’s bland, fair countenance in this child. No, no, it was faint and fleeting but she fancied there was something of herself in this boy, after all.
But there was little time for fancies, for the very next afternoon the Holborn walk came onto the market. It was a most inopportune moment, just as she’d feared it would be, for she had so little spare capital available, that she had to arrange a loan with Mr Tewson in order to purchase it, and that took a great deal of time and effort and persuasion.
The deal wasn’t completed until the middle of April and by then the walk had been neglected for several weeks and she knew she would have a difficult time to coax it into profitability. She and Thiss walked the area every day as soon as the papers were stamped, visiting and calling, showing a presence. But their trade grew slowly and more often than not they returned home to Chelsea tired and unsuccessful. The weather didn’t help them either, being cold and wet and miserable.
So when Nan received an invitation from Mr Johnson with the news that he was giving a supper party ‘in honour of Mr William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, who is now returned to this country from Paris,’ she wrote back at once to accept. A party was just what she needed to lift her flagging spirits, and it would be pleasant to see Mary Wollstonecraft again, and besides, she was intrigued to find out why Mary’s name was being linked with Mr Godwin’s in this public way. They’re lovers, I’ll be bound, she thought. I wonder if Sophie knows anything about it.
Chapter Eighteen
It was a riotous party. She’d never known another quite like it. For a start there were so many people crammed together in Mr Johnson’s green parlour that they had to eat their meal standing up, which was something she’d never seen done before, and very comical it looked, for very few people had solved the problem of how to cope with a full plate of food and a fork to eat it with and conversation and a glass full of wine. Sophie decided that it couldn’t be done and left her plate upon a si
de-table, declaring, ‘You need four hands and two tongues at the very least for this exercise.’ But Nan thought it was fun, and did her best to eat and drink and talk all at once, as everybody else seemed to be doing.
And there were so many people there, writers and artists she hadn’t seen since the old days when she came to dine with Mr Easter, Mr Cowper, the poet, her old friend Mr Wotherspoon, the book-binder, Mr Fuseli, of course, very loud and Germanic, and even Mr William Blake as untidy and enthusiastic as ever, talking and talking with his comfortable wife beside him. There was such a crush it was impossible to move more than two paces in any direction, but she knew that Mary Wollstonecraft was in the room somewhere, for she could hear her rough voice, and presently, by dint of gradual, dancing manoeuvres she contrived to edge through the crowd, plate, glass, fork and all, and stand beside her.
‘My dear Nan,’ Mary said, leaning down across her slopping wine glass to kiss her friend first on one cheek and then on the other in the French style. ‘How well you look! And prosperous! The very picture of success.’
‘’Tis a change from the last time we met,’ Nan agreed. And her eyes were acknowledging the changes in her old ally. For Mary was plainly and buxomly pregnant, her flowing bosom swathed in white muslin and the folds of her long blue gown voluminous, that untidy brown hair curling most prettily about her cheeks and her hazel eyes glowing.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘’Twill be born in September. William hopes for a boy, but ’tis all one with me, providing ’tis strong and healthy. Now, do pray tell me how your business fares. Mr Johnson sent word of you from time to time, but I warrant he ain’t got it right, nor told me all there was to tell.’
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