Tuppenny Times

by Beryl Kingston

  ‘We took a turn in the air,’ Sophie said carelessly. ‘Did we not Mr Leigh? Such a crush, my dear, I could scarcely breathe.’

  ‘You must excuse me, ladies,’ Mr Leigh said, smiling at them both. ‘Dearly though I love your company, for this dance, and this dance alone, I am engaged elsewhere I fear.’

  ‘You are fickle sir, fickle as all your sex,’ Sophie admonished, waving her hand languidly at him as a sign that she would allow him to leave them. ‘Pray do not forget that you are invited to supper at Whiteman’s a’ Thursday.’

  He smiled at her lazily as he went off to collect his winnings.

  ‘Do you invite me too?’ Nan said as soon as he was out of earshot. And she made no attempt to mask her eagerness.

  ‘Why yes indeed,’ Sophie laughed, noticing the eagerness but deciding not to comment upon it. Yet. ‘I would not dine without my Nan.’

  It took Nan a long time and a lot of heart-searching to dress for that supper. Four dances with the attractive lieutenant had reduced her wardrobe to a heap of unfashionable rags. New material had to be bought at once and a new gown made in the very latest style, high, tight and uncomfortable under the bosom, with puffed sleeves and the lowest décolletage she had ever dared. She chose a red cotton print with flowers and sprays in ochre, black and green, partly because it suited her colouring but more because it was such an eyecatching design. This time he should notice her, whatever else he might do. For the truth was, the handsome lieutenant had taken possession of her every dream, waking or sleeping, and she thought about him so often during the day that it was hard for her to concentrate on her work.

  A fact that was not lost on old Mrs Dibkins.

  ‘Ho,’ that lady said darkly, as she sat in the nursery with Bessie tacking hems, ‘there’s a man in it, you mark my words. I never see her give her titties such an airing before. Never ever.’

  ‘D’you really think so?’ Bessie said, all eyes at the thought. ‘A new master! That’ud be a shock fer that ol’ Pennington woman.’ She and the governess were in perpetual conflict over the way the children should be treated. ‘She’d ’ave ter mind ’er Ps an’ Qs with a man about the house.’

  ‘She got to catch ’im first,’ Mrs Dibkins said, biting off her thread. ‘She’ll have to mind that sharp tongue of her’n if she want for to catch a man. Most men don’t take too kindly to bossy women, an’ that’s a fact. Ho no! My lor, my side do pain me today!’

  But they kept their opinion to the nursery. Not that Nan would have paid any attention to them, for she was in such a fever of excitement waiting for Thursday that she hardly heard anything except her dreams.

  The desired day came round at last, and with a new thick shawl to protect her against the night air, should he wish to take a promenade after supper, and her hair dressed in side curls and a top-knot, that looked exceedingly elegant but felt as if it was scalping her, she set off for Whiteman’s and the irresistible lieutenant. And was bitterly disappointed.

  For a start Sophie had placed her right at the foot of the table, next to Mr Wotherspoon and about as far away from Mr Leigh as it was possible for her to be. And then they all went on to the card-rooms after supper to play Faro for an hour or so and she was separated from him again and lost a deal of money she could ill afford, particularly after the amount she’d spent on that useless dress. And then Mr Wotherspoon suggested that they should all go on to the play at Dury Lane, which most of them did. But that wasn’t any good either for despite all her efforts she ended up sitting between Mr Fortescue and that awful Mr Pomeroy, while Sophie and Mr Leigh sat head-to-head, sharing a programme.

  It wasn’t until they were all squashed in the foyer afterwards waiting for carriages to take them home, that she managed to speak to him. But she made the most of her opportunity. ‘I am giving a little supper party myself next Thursday. At Whiteman’s, of course. At six of the clock.’ Was Thursday time enough to have all prepared? No matter. Thursday it would have to be. ‘I trust I may see you all there. I would be honoured by your company.’

  They were delighted at the thought of another supper party so soon and said so happily, accepting her offer. And the handsome lieutenant smiled down at her from his beautiful height and agreed that he too would make one at her party.

  It was a very little hope and a very small triumph. But it was enough, for this was her supper party and this time she could sit where she pleased. And where she pleased was next to Mr Leigh.

  He was gallantly attentive and didn’t look at Sophie once, although he spoke of her a deal too often, which was not a good sign. ‘Mrs Fuseli tells me …’ ‘Mrs Fuseli is of the opinion …’ ‘Mrs Fuseli … Mrs Fuseli …’ And it made her heart sink every time.

  ‘Mrs Fuseli tells me you are a woman of business,’ he said as the roast pork was borne in.

  ‘True,’ she said. ‘I sell newspapers.’

  ‘And deuced well, I hear.’

  ‘Throughout London,’ she said with some pride. ‘In fact if ’twere not for the stubbornness of a certain Joshua Vernon, I could say I had the monopoly.’

  ‘Then you are rich,’ he said.

  ‘In property and obligations,’ she admitted, ‘not in capital.’

  ‘How so?’

  He seemed genuinely interested, so she told him. It was better than talking about Sophie. ‘If a business is to succeed,’ she said, ‘the more capital you plough back into it, the better. I set all my money to work, d’ye see. Every last penny of it.’ And she went on to tell him how she planned to extend her empire.

  Now that he had established that she wasn’t an heiress, he found her business talk boring. ‘You keep a good table, ma’am,’ he said, scanning the rich food, and changing the subject.

  ‘When I have guests,’ she said honestly. ‘At home I live simply.’

  ‘If I were rich, ma’am,’ he said. ‘I should live well all the time. Oh, deuced well.’

  She didn’t doubt it. But then she noticed that there was no apple sauce on the table and she had to turn her attention to the waiters to make certain it was sent for. And by the time the food was provided to her satisfaction, he was entertaining again, giving a wicked account of the absent Mr Pomeroy trying to dance a schottische.

  After supper they all went on to the Ranelagh Gardens where there were fireworks, and the Rotunda was open for dancing. And as she was their hostess, the gentlemen made sure that her card was marked for every dance. Which was polite and proper of them, but meant that there were fewer dances available for the lieutenant. But they managed five altogether and the fifth was a polonaise which put them in one another’s arms for five dizzying minutes.

  But then he ruined everything when the dancing was done and they were all bidding one another goodnight, by announcing, oh far too casually, that the regiment had been ordered on and that he would be leaving London in two days’ time.

  She was so upset she couldn’t find anything to say. Of course, she’d known, in a vague, general sort of way, that the regiment would have to move on sooner or later, but she hadn’t thought about it. She’d been too busy living from moment to moment, not thinking about anything at all except her need to be near him, her desire to see him again. And now he was going away. She was overwhelmed by the most exquisite sense of loss.

  ‘You must write to us,’ Sophie said easily, filling the silence.

  ‘You may depend upon it,’ he said. ‘Good night, Mrs Easter. It has been a delightful evening.’

  They were all saying the right things to one another, ‘So kind.’ ‘Such a pleasure.’ ‘We shall meet again a’ Saturday, if you mean to attend the play.’ ‘Indeed yes, I would not miss it for the world.’ But he was walking away from her, those long legs gleaming white in the lamp-light. Walking away and she might never see him again. How could she endure it? Why hadn’t he promised to write to her? She couldn’t just let him walk away. It was too painful.

  ‘Mr Leigh!’ she called after him.

  He stopped in his long strid
e and looked back at her. ‘Mrs Easter, ma’am?’

  And then she didn’t know what to say, and was aware that her guests were looking at her with some astonishment. ‘Pray do not forget,’ she said, ‘when the regiment returns I want a commission to supply you with newspapers.’

  Laughter and interest and admiring comments, while he stood before her, smiling his languid smile.

  ‘I shall see to it personally,’ he said, bowed and was gone.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Although she knew it was a foolish thing to do, and she could ill afford the time, Nan went down to the Chelsea barracks on Friday to watch the Light Dragoons ride out of town. It was a miserable morning, chill and dank and trailing white mist, but she walked up from Cheyne Row glowing with an absurd hope, sustained by the fantasy that he would see her as he passed, that he would realize how much he was going to miss her, that he would lean down from his horse to promise to write to her and pledge that he would see her again as soon as the regiment returned. She’d even put a visiting card in her pocket, ready to give it to him, when he asked for her address, as he surely must. It had been an almost constant day-dream for the last forty-eight hours. And like all fantasies it was soon dissolved by reality.

  The moment the first troop clattered out through the barrack gates, it was plain, even to her, that the regiment was there to be looked at, and not to look. They rode in splendid order, heads held artificially high, gazing down their noses at the space between their horses’ ears, knowing themselves admired, their breeches dramatically white against brown horseflesh and sheepskin saddle, black boots gleaming, white-sashed and red-belted, their red and blue mirleton caps topped by high red and white plumes, their gold frogging bold as sunshine against those fine blue jackets.

  The handsome Mr Leigh’s was the third troop out of the gate. And there he was, on a great chestnut horse, riding magnificently, but looking straight ahead, deliberately impervious to stares and admiration. The sight of him lifted her into a state of such heightened sensation it was as if someone had switched on the sun a few inches away from her eyes. She was acutely and painfully aware of everything around her, the chill of the air and the warmth of the troop, the ammoniac smell of horse flesh, the meaty reek of warm leather, the rattle and clank of accoutrements and the scrape of hooves on cobbles, people in the crowd chewing and spitting and coughing, his breath streaming from those aristocratic nostrils like white smoke, his gloved hands holding the reins, lightly, oh so lightly, those long muscular legs gripping the chestnut flanks, his face so dear and near and far away. And she knew she was yearning for him, her innards lifting as though they were being pulled upwards by invisible strings.

  And then the troop had passed and she couldn’t see him anymore. And the strings dropped and sagged and the daylight was cold and the town deserted, and the cobbles were sharp and dank and piled with horse-dung, because he hadn’t seen her, and he didn’t care for her, and he’d promised to write to Sophie Fuseli.

  Come now, she scolded herself, that en’t the way to go on, mooning about like some love-sick girl, and you a businesswoman with a great firm to run and a daughter old enough to be at work. For Annie was ten now. You should be ashamed of yourself, so you should. The lieutenant is gone, so you’d best get on with your work and be sensible and forget un. Even if he was the most handsome man she’d ever seen and quite the most desirable.

  She drove all her employees extremely hard that day, but when the evening came she was still full of restless energy, so she decided to take her children to the theatre, choosing a farcical comedy called Pierre’s Retreat, because she thought it would do them all good to laugh. It was the first time they’d ever been allowed such a treat and all three were thrilled by it, although, as their mother observed, each in a different way.

  Billy laughed uproariously at every joke and every chase and every stage-fall, and when the villain got his long nose stuck in the knot-hole of the hero’s front door he jumped to his feet and clapped with pure delight along with half the others in the audience. But Johnnie sat quietly throughout.

  He smiled at the jokes and nodded agreement when evil got its come-uppance and clapped with enthusiasm at the end, but his enjoyment was private, as though he were imbibing this pleasure secretly and digesting it within himself. Watching him, Nan was surprised yet again by how different he was from his brother and sister.

  Annie was excited just to be in a theatre and spent the overture looking about her at all the other members of the audience and admiring the fine clothes of the ton who were eating their supper in the boxes, but when Pierre took his first tumble, backwards out of an apple tree, she jumped visibly and then clenched her fists before her mouth with concern.

  ‘’Tis make-believe,’ Nan whispered, patting her arm. ‘He en’t hurt.’

  ‘It looks uncommon real, Mama,’ Annie whispered back, but she was already recovering and relaxing.

  What a tenderheart she is, Nan thought affectionately. And how like her father. And she felt more fond of her than ever.

  It was an uncommon pleasant evening and she prolonged it for as long as she could after they’d driven home, sitting in the drawing-room with her three excited children, drinking hot possetts and re-living the play. But eventually Billy began to yawn and it was plainly high time they were all in bed.

  Now she thought, as she kissed them goodnight, we shall all sleep sound.

  But she was wrong. Once she was alone in her wide bed in her quiet bedroom, her mind sprang open to memory, no matter how hard she tried to prevent it. The handsome lieutenant held her about the waist, smiling that slow smile, and she danced and danced, longing to be kissed, breathing in the lovely clean smell of his skin, gazing into those beautiful honey-coloured eyes, knowing that she had fallen in love with him. Waking thought merged into erotic dream, and now she was kissed and kissed again, and held so close as she danced she could barely catch her breath, and turned to be tumbled on mattress and straw, and climbed Pierre’s cardboard apple tree to fall and fall into the lieutenant’s arms.

  She woke bewildered and yearning as the sky above the Chelsea fields grew green with dawn. And she remembered Mary Woolstonecraft saying, ‘If you love him he will haunt your thoughts by night and day,’ and in that quiet, chill daybreak she began to suspect that her old friend had been right. But what could be done about it? It was true that he’d treated her courteously and had seemed to be interested in what she had to say. But in the sober light of early morning she realized that this was more like to be a passing interest than love and in any case she couldn’t even hope that they would meet again. She didn’t even know where the regiment had gone.

  But Sophie Fuseli did.

  That autumn, when Mr Fuseli had left for one of his trips, ‘only a week or two, my dear, but ’tis enough’, she came to take tea with Nan, bubbling with the news that ‘our three friends from the Duke of Clarence’s’ had come to visit her.

  ‘Here to buy horses, I believe, or saddles or somesuch,’ she said carelessly. ‘We rode in Hyde Park, my dear. I must say, Mr Leigh has a fine way with horses.’

  ‘Which you would expect in a cavalry officer, surely,’ Nan said, endeavouring to speak calmly because she was shaken with jealousy.

  ‘’Tis a charming creature,’ Sophie mused pattingg her curls, ‘that cannot be denied.’ But sshe had no idea when the charming creature would be in London again. ‘They come and go,’ she said vaguely.

  ‘Did you not ask him? I’m suree I should have done.’

  ‘Indeed I did not,’ Sophie said, registering shock at the suggestion. ‘A man such as he would be aggrieved to be asked for such particulars. And rightly so. ’Twould be most improper.’

  ‘But you know where they are stationed, I daresay?’ Nan asked, hoping she didn’t sound too eager.

  ‘In Dorset, my dear, and a most uncivilized place by all accounts. But they are to have a better posting in April.’

  ‘How so?’ Oh do tell me! Where is he goi
ng? I must at least have a hope of seeing him again.

  ‘Well, as to that,’ Sophie said, ‘they are to mount guard upon the King when he visits Weymouth, as he does every summer, war or no war.’

  ‘Aye, I know it. ’Tis reporrted in The Times.’

  ‘’Tis a great honour, so they tell me,’ Sophie said. ‘Personally I should find it an exceeding bore, but there is no accounting for the taste of the soldiery. Could I beg another dish of your excellent tea?’

  Now that she knew where he would be in the spring, Nan was impatient for autumn and winter to pass. But this year the autumn days seemed longer than any she’d ever known even in the height of summer. It was a long time before the first of the winter gales brought an end to the threat of a French invasion for another year and it was nearly November before the King returned to the capital and the delights of the Season.

  Nan did her best to enjoy the Season, taking her children to the play and organizing supper parties and joining Sophie in excursions to Vauxhall and the Ranelagh gardens, for this was a special season and there was much to celebrate. In a few weeks time the eighteeentth century would be over, and such an historical event could hardly be allowed to pass without commemoration.

  In December grand preparations began for the Ball of the New Century which was to be held at the Vauxhall Gardens preceded by ‘fireworks and masques and all such deleectable entertainments’.

  ‘I shall buy tickets for us all,’ Nan told Annie and the boys. ‘We shall start the new century in style. How say ’ee to that?’

  ‘Fireworks!’ Billy said, thrilled at the idea. ‘I can’t think of a better way to start a century than fireworks.’

  And very spectacular they were. Dramatic enough to tease Nan’s mind away from thoughts of Mr Leigh for nearly thirty minutes. But when the last sparks fizzled away into the black sky, she missed him more than ever and remembered him more clearly. Oh, she thought, gazing at the white stars, I must see him again. I must.