‘It occurs to me,’ she said, ‘that I might well appoint a solicitor to the firm. It grows so quickly, I declare there would be work a-plenty for such a man.’ It was time for change and expansion. She had a new housekeeper now, and new servants, so why not hire a company solicitor?
He agreed that she had stated the case correctly.
‘How if I were to offer such a post to you, Mr Teshmaker?’
He gave a swaying bow of acceptance and delight. ‘I should consider myself honoured, ma’am.’
So honoured he duly was, and when he had worked out his notice with his old friend Mr Duncan, he moved into his own office above the shop in the Strand. It was, as he told his colleagues old and new, uncommon good fortune.
The mild weather continued even when the calendar declared that winter had begun. ‘Most unseasonable,’ people told one another, ‘and all the better for that.’ And in the middle of this ‘summer in autumn’ something else happened that could hardly have been expected either. Peace talks began in London.
Nobody thought they would lead to anything. After all, the war had been going on for more than eight years and despite any number of battles and campaigns nothing had been settled. Napoleon still ruled France and still seemed hell-bent on the conquest of Europe, and everybody knew that until he was defeated the war would have to go on.
‘’Tis talk, that’s all,’ old Mr Walter said to Nan. ‘They could hardly patch up a peace now, in all conscience. Not with so many good lives lost.’
‘I can’t see our Nelson agreeing to that,’ Nan said. But at least it was news and it sold papers, whether it was a serious attempt to bring the war to an end or no. And she’d seen so much talk come to nothing.
In the meantime, with the threat of invasion over for the winter, Calverley could at least get up to London to visit her. Which he did, three days later and uncommon pleasurable it was.
‘I had almost forgotten what you looked like,’ she teased as they were dressing to go to the theatre on their second night together.
‘Then I must remind you,’ he said, kissing her.
‘Later,’ she rebuked him, laughing, ‘or we shall miss the play.’
‘You lose your appetite for love, I see,’ he teased.
‘Indeed I do not,’ she said pulling him towards her.
So they missed the play.
It was such a short leave. ‘Four days!’ Nan mourned as they parted, ‘’Tis barely time to say how d’ye do.’
‘I shall be back within the month,’ he promised. ‘The regiment moves to Brighton in a week or two and Brighton is but a short ride from London.’
‘I’d sooner they moved to Chelsea,’ she said.
‘Brighton is a fine town,’ he said. ‘Full of life. Belongs to the Prince of Wales. He’s building a palace there, so they say. They have a race course and a theatre and assembly rooms. You must visit me there when the weather improves. You will love it.’
‘I should love any place if you were in it,’ she said, and then she sighed because she could see Thiss leading Jericho up the road, and their parting couldn’t be delayed any longer.
‘I will see you in ten days, if the weather holds,’ he promised, kissing her goodbye.
And the weather did hold. Long enough for three more visits. But none of them long enough to satisfy either of them.
It wasn’t until the end of January, when Bessie’s baby was born, that the cold really began. And even then there was no snow and little frost and the sky was unseasonably blue.
The baby was a girl and a remarkably pretty one, given the undeniable plainness of her mother and the ugliness of her father. She was christened Penelope Ann, but Annie and Billy, who were much taken with her, rapidly re-named her Pollyanna. And Pollyanna she remained, a round-faced, well fed, placid baby who lay in her cradle and chortled while Bessie got on with her work.
Bessie took her new duties as housekeeper very seriously indeed, and for the most part did them well. Although even she couldn’t persuade Dibkins out of his cupboard. He would stomp out in the early morning to light the fires and he would make occasional erratic sorties during the day to re-fill coal buckets and empty slops and ashes, but at night he retired to his bolt-hole with a bible and a two-headed candlestick and locked himself in.
‘An’ the Lord knows how he fares all night,’ Bessie said, ‘for he must sleep bolt upright all in among the brooms an’ all. ’Taint as if he’s got a chair ter sit in. I wish he’d let me fix him a bed.’
‘’Tis a man made obstinate by grief,’ Nan said. ‘We must let him get on with it, I fear. If he means to go without sleep ’tis his affair Bessie, that’s my advice to ’ee. He’ll come round sooner or later.’
But the spring came round before he did. And with the spring came the news that England and France had indeed signed a peace treaty, meeting at a place called Amiens to do it. After nine years and without victory or advantage, the war was ignominiously over. There was considerable outrage in all the newspapers, and a general opinion that had Pitt still been Prime Minister such a shameful thing would never have been allowed to happen.
But Nan was quick to see an advantage in it.
Chapter Twenty-six
Calverley Leigh was rather piqued when he received Nan’s letter. For a start it wasn’t the sort of loving missive he’d come to expect of her, being short and to the point and rather peremptory, ‘Such good tidings this war being over. I shall be in Brighton on the morning stage Thursday. I have plans for the future, howsomever they will keep until I see you, Yrs in haste, yr own Nan.’ Plans for the future sounded decidedly ominous. When an unattached female spoke of the future she invariably meant marriage. Surely she wasn’t going to ruin their affair by making such an elementary mistake? Not his Nan.
He sighed as he set the letter aside. Which Hanley-Brown, who was stroking the side of his chin most delicately with a cut-throat razor, was quick to notice. ‘A troublesome wench, I’ll wager,’ he said sympathetically, flicking a blob of soap and stubble into the dirty water in his washing bowl.
Calverley sighed again, easing on his trousers.
‘Say farewell, my friend,’ Hanley-Brown advised, tilting his head and lifting the razor for action. ‘Game ain’t worth the candle once sighin’ sets in, I tell ’ee. Off with the old and on with the new, eh?’
‘Right as ever, Tom,’ he said cheerfully to his friend. And he tossed Nan’s letter into the fire to give a public demonstration of how little he thought of it. If she tried to manoeuvre him into a proposal they would have to part company. It was high time for farewells. The affair had lasted far too long in all conscience. Nearly three years. It was a lifetime.
But when she came jumping down from the high step of the stagecoach, neat and trim in her green coat, with her feet so small in their laced boots and that wild face haloed by her bonnet and blazing affection at him, he forgot about farewells because he was so pleased to see her.
‘Did you have a good journey?’ he asked, returning her loving look because he just couldn’t help himself.
‘Vile,’ she said, slipping her hand into the crook of his arm. ‘I’m starving hungry and freezing cold and I’ve drunk all my brandy, every last drop.’
So he took her into the Ship Hotel at once to remedy all these deficiencies, and soon they were settled before the fire in the coffee room, side-by-side in two deep armchairs and an even deeper conversation, murmuring of that other appetite which they both shared so acutely now and which they knew they would satisfy as soon as their room was ready for them. And neither of them noticed that they were being watched with great interest by a gentleman in a dark blue coat who was sitting in the corner half-hidden by a copy of the local paper.
It was one of their happiest holidays, despite his suspicion, which now, bathed in the constant afterglow of satisfied desire, seemed petty and foolhardy. He would have been a fool to cast such a partner aside, and at night, lying within the charmed circle of her arms, he knew it.
> They went riding in the rough, damp winds that blew off the Channel, and when she saw how tatty his saddle had become she insisted on buying him a new one. They walked on the beach until their faces were numb with cold and she couldn’t feel her fingers, and then it was his turn to buy her a present, an embroidered muff lined with black fur. And they danced in the assembly rooms and went to the play and dined well and drank deep and loved whenever they would.
On Friday she bought a copy of the local paper and was highly entertained by the violent argument that was being conducted in its pages. The Prince of Wales had bought up three fine houses on land adjacent to his palace and had pulled them down to make room ‘for stables’ as the paper reported with furious indignation, ‘the future king’s horses being of greater importance to the gentleman than the future king’s men.’
‘And quite right too,’ Calverley said, when he’d read the paper. ‘Where would you find a nobler creature than a horse, dammit? Deserve the best, they do. I’d raze the whole town to make way for my stables, so I would, if I were Prince of Wales.’
But when they saw the gentleman himself, riding in his gilded coach with his current favourite, the corpulent Mrs Fitzherbert, squashed beside him, even Calverley had to admit that his future monarch was ‘pretty gross’ although adding sotto voce, ‘It don’t do to say it too loud, the laws bein’ what they are.’
‘A cat may look at a king,’ Nan pointed out, looking at her king cattily.
‘Aye, so she may, always providing she don’t say a word to criticize him.’
‘Why not?’
‘Words are treason nowadays, my charmer. Did you not know it?’
No, she didn’t, and she didn’t much care either. ‘Let’s to the coffee house,’ she suggested. ‘All this fresh air gives me appetite.’
She’s a passionate creature and no mistake, Calverley thought, watching her as she blew kisses at him across her steaming coffee-cup, and she hadn’t said a word about marriage.
On the afternoon of the fourth day when a pale sun struggled through the clouds to make the wet sand shine, they took a promenade, along with most of the other idle cavalrymen in the town and the lone and interested traveller in the dark blue coat, and strolled down to Prinny’s Royal Pavilion to see how work was progressing. And she still hadn’t said a word about her plans, which was a miracle of self-control seeing that her head was crammed with them and time was running out.
The Pavilion was a great deal bigger than she had expected it to be, and the new stables were almost finished. They were very grand, built in the Hindu style like an Indian palace, as they could see quite easily for the workmen were hard at it inside the building, and the entrance was wide open. There were stalls for forty-four horses set round a huge circular court, and an elaborate fountain watering a pond in the middle of the court, and rising above their heads, in a quite extraordinary way with no visible means of support, a roof as round as an onion, sixty-five feet high, so Calverley said, with windows spraying downwards from the centre like long shining petals. It was amazing.
‘That must have cost a pretty penny,’ Nan said admiringly. ‘How d’they get that roof to stay up?’
But that was an engineering feat he couldn’t explain. ‘Come round to the east front,’ he suggested, ‘and see what he’s done there. ’Tis a fairytale building, no less.’
The wind blew straight upon them as they stood admiring the pavilion and its two oval-shaped wings. All the windows were topped by metal canopies, like curved green shells, and very elegant they looked in the pale sunlight.
‘’Twill be a marvel when ’tis done,’ she said.
‘There’s a deal of building set in hand this year,’ he told her, ‘being it’s peacetime and less demand for soldiery.’
It was the chance she needed, the opening she’d been waiting for all through these four happy days. She took it at once. ‘There’s a deal to be done everywhere now that we have peace to do it in,’ she said. ‘My own trade grows by the hour. I took on five new roundsmen only last week, and could use more.’
He heard her but without much interest. ‘They say he has great plans for the garden,’ he said.
‘I have great plans too,’ she said, and the eager edge to her voice alerted him at once.
‘I ain’t the marrying kind, Nan, I should warn ’ee,’ he said, taking two steps back from her.
‘Nor me neither,’ she said easily, remembering Sophie’s warning. ‘No, no. ’Ten’t marriage I’m thinking of. We are well enough as we are.’ And she took his arm happily.
‘I’m glad to hear it,’ he said relaxing. ’Twas only business, after all, and business was entirely her affair.
‘My plans are for the newsagency,’ she said. ‘Oh, Calverley my dear, you could be part of those plans.’
‘Come now Nan,’ he said, ‘what earthly use would a cavalry man be to a newsagency?’
‘The war is over,’ she said urgently. ‘There en’t no need for cavalry now. Why not leave the army, and join me in the firm. You could have a partnership. I need a manager with so many new reading-rooms, and more to come, which I do not doubt. You’ve only to say the word.’
‘My dear Nan,’ he said stiffly, holding his body away from her in horror at what she was saying, ‘no man worth his salt would ever permit himself to be kept by a woman. I could not consider it.’
‘Squit!’ she said trenchantly, removing her hand from his arm and facing him squarely. ‘You wouldn’t be kept. You’d earn your way so you would.’ Why was he being so foolish?
‘Have done!’ he warned her, face frozen. ‘I could not consider it.’
‘The more fool you, then,’ she said furiously. ‘’Tis a good offer. Many a man would jump at it.’
‘Am I to be judged no better than the common run of mankind?’ he said, drawing himself up to the full magnificence of his height, and haughty with stung pride.
Oh, he was splendidly handsome. ‘We could be together whenever we wished,’ she urged. ‘No more partings, no more rushing back to camp, no more travelling. Think on it!’ It was a most enticing prospect and her face showed it.
‘You do not understand,’ he said, looking down on her. ‘My life is with the army. Always has been, always will be. I’m a cavalry man first, last and always. I thought you would have known that, after all this time. Why, in a month or so I shall buy myself a captaincy. And you ask me to throw all that away to be kept by a petticoat.’ He was still appalled that she should even have thought such a thing.
‘Ah, I see!’ she shouted at him, exploding into sudden anger. ‘That is how you view me, is it sir? As a petticoat! A petticoat! Well, pray allow me to tell ’ee, I run the biggest business in the biggest city in the world.’
‘Howsomever,’ he said, his anger freezing as hers flamed, ‘you do not run me! Nor will you! I am my own master and I intend to remain so.’
‘Oh!’ she cried, stamping her foot. ‘I never heard such squit. And the salary I’m offering better than anything you’d ever earn in your wretched army, captain or no. You’re a blame fool, Calverley Leigh. A blame fool! That’s what you are!’ Her face waas dark with fury.
‘I will walk you back to the Ship,’ he said, deliberately courteous because he was so angry. ‘Then I have duties to perform.’
‘Duties!’ she mocked. ‘What duties? The war is over so ’tis, or en’t they told you?’
‘’Twill start up again just so soon as Napoleon is ready to invade us,’ he said ominously as they walked away from the pavilion. ‘This peace is a breathing-space, no more, no less. And one we would be foolish not to use to full advantage. There is more need of the cavalry now, I can tell ’ee, than there ever has been.’
She walked beside him scowling because he was saying all the wrong things and she couldn’t think of an adequate answer.
‘’Tis a shameful peace,’ he said, as they turned the corner and headed towards the inn, ‘and I could not compound the shame by deserting the colours at this ho
ur, even if I were to wish it, which I do not.’
The night-coach was drawn up outside the Ship, its four horses being backed carefully into the shafts. Nan made up her mind at once, at the sight of it. ‘I shall go back to Chelsea,’ she said crossly, ‘there being nothing more to keep me here.’
‘You will travel by night? Is that wise?’
It wasn’t at all wise and they both knew it, for night travel was exceedingly hazardous, but she had made up her mind. ‘I’ve a deal of work to do and no manager to help me do it,’ she said tartly. ‘Hold the coach!’ she instructed the coachman. ‘I’ve luggage to collect. I’ll be with ’ee in two shakes.’
‘Nan,’ Calverley said. But she was already inside the inn and striding up the stairs and the sight of that determined spine made him equally determined not to plead. If she meant to run risks and make a fool of herself, so be it.
But he waited until she was settled inside the coach, angry though he was. ‘I do not change my mind,’ he said as the coachman gathered the reins and the hooorses snorted.
‘Nor I,’ she told him. And then her face was gone from the window and the coach was on its way.
He was so angry he had to go down onto the beach and hurl stones into the sea for nearly five whole miserable minutes, while the man in the dark blue coat watched him from one of the upper windows of the hotel. Deuce take it, whatever possessed her to make such a foolish suggestion? She might have known ’twould annoy. There’d been no need for it. And what if the coach were attacked or came to grief, as they so often did at night? Oh, there was no sense in her at all. And he knew that he missed her with a pain that was almost as acute as loss, and he was angry at himself for showing such weakness, and threw the next stone at a seagull who was bobbing on the water and had no business to look so self-satisfied.
‘Damn the war! Damn the peace! And damn you!’ he yelled. ‘If she thinks I will write or visit after this, then she may think again.’ And the seagull rose white-bellied from the water and flew calmly away from his wrath.
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