Tuppenny Times

by Beryl Kingston

  Thomasina handed Nan a little bowl of steaming tea. ‘You must not allow cousin Osmond to upset you,’ she said. ‘His bark is a deal worse than his bite, you know. It is just that he takes his position as head of the family so seriously.’

  ‘He was very good to us, when Papa died,’ Evelina confided. ‘He was killed at Cape St Vincent, you know. Mama was heart-broken. She only survived him for six months, may their souls rest in peace. And Osmond took us in.’

  He took me in too, Nan thought bitterly, with all that talk. ‘He has lawyers who refuse to allow me to rent the properties I need,’ she told them bluntly, ‘and when I charge him with it, he pretends to have no knowledge of it.’

  ‘He is devious by nature, my dear,’ Thomasina said. ‘But I do assure you that he will modify his activity now. ’Tis always the way, believe me.’

  ‘And nowadays,’ Evelina said innocently, ‘his influence does not extend beyond the city of London, whereas yours, I believe, does, does it not?’

  ‘Indeed it does,’ Nan said, sipping her tea. She was quite moved by their unexpected help and kindness. ‘And what is more, I can assure you that in the very near future it will extend even further.’

  ‘What a pleasure it gives us to hear that,’ Evelina said. ‘Does is not, sister?’

  ‘Indeed it does,’ Thomasina agreed. ‘It does not do to let men have their own way all the time.’

  ‘Especially,’ Evelina said slyly, ‘when it may be prevented.’

  What splendid cousins they are, Nan thought, drinking their tea. And their cunning mollified her.

  ‘I will write to you,’ she said, when they parted. ‘And you shall see how I prosper, Sir Osmond or no Sir Osmond.’

  ‘Pray do, my dear,’ Evelina said. ‘And we will write to you. ’Tis as well for women to help one another when they may, do you not agree?’

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Back in Cheyne Row Calverley Leigh was organizing a party for the return of the conquering heroine.

  ‘Something quite particular,’ he told Mrs Jorris, ‘for ’tis her birthday besides all else.’

  It was the first time in his life that anyone had taken up the cudgels on his behalf and he was warm with pride at the compliment it paid him and easy in the satisfaction of knowing at last that his lack of promotion had been caused by somebody else’s malevolence and not his own incompetence. Oh, she’s a peerless creature, he thought, and when she returns she shall be petted and praised and fed with the choicest dishes.

  ‘How of a pike?’ Mrs Jorris suggested. ‘Baked leisurely, stuffed with oysters and sweet marjoram and winter savory. She’s mighty fond of fish.’

  It sounded excellent.

  ‘A cockatrice to follow, on a bed of green parsley. Made of capon and sucking-pig, of course, for ’tis not a dish to cheapen with boiling fowl and such like.’

  ‘And new potatoes in butter sauce,’ Billy hoped.

  ‘And sorrel and spinach,’ Annie said, for both these vegetables were sovereign remedies for unwanted spots on the face, and now that she was sixteen she was mindful of the need to keep her complexion clear.

  So the menu was agreed upon, and the pastry-cook called in to provide a selection of sweet tarts, and the cooking began. It occupied the entire household with the exception of Billy and Johnnie who were still incarcerated in the schoolroom and Mr Dibkins who was having one of his turns and had incarcerated himself in the broom-cupboard with a box full of candles and a bible.

  ‘Drat the man,’ Mrs Jorris complained. ‘I’ve been on an’ on at him for the soft broom an’ he won’t so much as open the door. How we’re to clear I cannot imagine.’

  ‘Leave ’im be,’ Bessie advised. ‘I’ll persuade him after dinner.’

  But after dinner they were all so weary and well-fed, they decided to leave the clearing until next morning.

  It was a splendid meal. The pike was delicious and the cockatrice was a great success, with its red leather cock’s head and its gilded claws and its paper ruff tipped with saffron-yellow. During her journey home Nan had decided that her visit to Ippark had been a great success too. It was true that she hadn’t achieved the abject apology she wanted and Sir Osmond could hardly be said to have admitted his guilt, nasty, slippery crittur that he was, but on consideration she felt that Thomasina and Evelina were probably right when they said he would mend his ways. I shall certainly keep my promise and write to them, she thought, for they were allies and they were kindly. In the meantime she would tell her family of a triumph, for that was what it very nearly was.

  ‘I’ll wager you sent that old Sir Osmond packing,’ Johnnie said when they were all seated at table. He was most excited, his eyes blazing.

  ‘Sir Osmond,’ his mother told him, ‘will not be meddling with our affairs again in a long time, I can tell ’ee.’

  ‘Did you frighten him, Mama?’ Johnnie asked. There was a peculiar intensity about his interest in this affair which Nan found slightly alarming. He looked as though he hated Sir Osmond, but that couldn’t be the case, surely? Nevertheless her need to talk through the entire conversation with Sir Osmond and make sense of it so that it felt like the triumph she wanted it to be, was so intense she pressed on with her account despite misgivings.

  ‘Oh, he was told right enough,’ she said. ‘I made no bones about it. He was told. “If you don’t stop meddling in my affairs,” I said, “then one of my friends in the newspapers shall print the full story of it.” He didn’t like that at all, I can tell ’ee.’

  ‘I wish I could have been there to see it,’ the boy said earnestly. ‘Tell me all about it, Mama!’

  So she did, word for very nearly remembered word, and it cheered them both immensely.

  ‘Are we ready for the next course?’ Calverley wanted to know when she finally paused for breath. He was exuberantly happy that the meal was such a success and like Johnnie he wanted to question her closely, not just about the visit but about what had been said of his blocked captaincy. But that, being rather more private, would have to wait until they retired.

  It was a disappointment to him that she seemed to have lost interest in the subject when they finally got to bed. ‘I’ve talked enough for one evening,’ she said. ‘Kiss me, do. I starve for kisses.’

  ‘But did he admit …?’ he tried.

  She kissed him silent and for a few seconds he was most cruelly caught between rising desire and the need to hear her speak the words that would salve his self-esteem. Then desire overcame him and he resigned himself to love-making, vowing to renew the conversation when their senses were satisfied.

  But when they’d reached that luxurious state, she found something else to talk about. ‘I can smell that ol’ honeysuckle right up here,’ she said, sniffing the air appreciatively as she lay beside him against the pillows.

  ‘What did Sir Osmond say of my commission?’ he asked smiling lazily at her so as to encourage her.

  ‘Oh, ’tis a heady perfume,’ she said. ‘You can smell it too, I’ll wager.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Why, the honeysuckle.’

  ‘I can smell something burning,’ he said.

  She sniffed the air again, turning her head from side to side, nostrils dilated, like a rabbit. ‘I do believe …’ she said.

  And a tongue of fire spurted from the floorboards in the corner of the room and licked along the wainscot, scorching as it went, and filling the room with the smell of burning paint.

  Looking back on it afterwards, Nan was surprised at how calm they’d both been. Calverley got up and doused the flames with the contents of the water jug, moving quickly and easily as though he was throwing water across a stable yard. The flame hissed and disappeared leaving a sticky blackness bubbling on the floorboard. He tossed her nightgown towards her outstretched hand and put on his shirt and trousers.

  ‘I will wake the house,’ she said, and ran.

  On the landing she could hear the fire crackling below her. Everything was happening with night
mare speed, but even so she wasn’t afraid. Shielding the candle with the palm of her hand she ran up the stairs calling as she went, ‘Wake up, all of you! Wake up!’ so that the boys were already stirring by the time she arrived in their bedroom.

  ‘Put on your clothes,’ she said, ‘quick as you can. A coal has jumped out of the stove. We must look sharp and put it out.’

  Billy was obedient at once but Johnnie protested. ‘Let the servants do it,’ he said, turning on his side and pulling the covers over his shoulders. ‘That is what servants are for, Mrs Pennington says so.’

  ‘Lazy toad!’ his mother roared, seizing the covers and hurling them on the floor. ‘Get up! Get dressed! The house is a-fire!’

  ‘What is it?’ Annie said, appearing sleepily in the doorway in her nightcap and her long white nightgown.

  ‘Put on a day-gown and your slippers and I’ll tell ’ee as we go downstairs. You two get down to the kitchen so soon as you’re ready. Take the jug and pail. Throw water on the flames.’

  The noise she was making had alerted the servants. Thiss met her on the next flight of stairs, candle in hand, and was given his orders and went leaping off to the kitchen taking the stairs two at a time. Above him frightened faces peered down the stairwell, clowns’ faces lit from beneath by a row of flickering candles, triangular eye sockets black as pitch, long black nostrils, distorted brows like fat yellow sausages. Despite fear and fire she couldn’t help thinking how funny they all looked and was ashamed because she wanted to laugh.

  ‘What is it, mum?’ Bessie’s voice said out of the darkness.

  ‘Come down and bring Pollyanna,’ Nan called. ‘You must go next door out of harm’s way the both of you.’ For Bessie was pregnant again and needed protection. ‘There is a fire. In the dining-room, we think. Bring your water-jugs and pails. No one is to stay upstairs.’

  Mrs Pennington was standing at the top of the stairs, still fully dressed in her stern grey gown with a two-headed candlestick in her hand and those impossible curls still as tight as chestnuts under her cap. ‘Surely you do not wish me to assist,’ she said. ‘After all I am hardly a servant.’

  ‘You’re a blame fool,’ Nan said, already on her way to the kitchen, ‘but this time you’ll do as you’re told, ma’am! Or burn and be dammed!’ She was passing the dining-room door, herding the maids before her, and could see Calverley hacking at the floorboards with an axe. The carpets had been tossed aside and the floorboards were ablaze. ‘Pass me all the water you can through the ceiling!’ he was shouting. ‘Hurry!’

  Down in the kitchen Billy was already filling buckets and jugs at the pump and Thiss and Johnnie were throwing the water over the broom-cupboard, which was burning like a bonfire with red and yellow flames leaping from its walls and roaring and crackling straight into the ceiling, and grey smoke billowing back into the kitchen in every direction.

  ‘I’ll pump,’ she said to Billy. ‘You throw.’

  The pump creaked and groaned, jugs and buckets and basins passed from hand to hand, heavy and slopping, and back again light and dripping, the fire hissed as the water splashed upon it, and soon the smoke was so thick they could hardly see further than the smeared hands passing the next jug or receiving the next basin. And they worked frantically, pumping, passing, hurling, ‘Quick! Quick!’ Servants arrived from next-door to help them and the floor was awash with lukewarm water squelching under their feet, and the women’s skirts grew so wet with it and so heavy they had to stop to tuck them up out of the way. The smell of burning wood and charred paint was so strong it made their eyes water, and mingled with it was another pungent smell that Nan recognized, but couldn’t quite place, the smell of meat roasting. But what meat? Not beef, surely. Had they had beef for dinner? She couldn’t remember. And still they worked, pumping, passing, hurling, ‘Quick! Quick!’ And there was no time, only heat and the smell of burning and smeared hands in the darkness and that terrifying crackling and the water hissing, hissing, hissing.

  And at last the darkness changed and intensified, and Thiss was lighting candles, and glancing up from the pump Nan saw that the flames were gone and there was only a single column of smoke, black and oily, coiling upwards like some obscene, fat serpent from the wreckage that had once been the broom-cupboard and the welsh dresser. And she realized that she was cold and that her back ached horribly and that there were blisters on her hands.

  Another pail was being thrust into the sink and she filled it automatically.

  ‘Fire’s out!’ Calverley’s voice said. He was standing just inside the kitchen door, as black as a sweep, his trousers torn and his fine shirt streaked with filth, but he was right, the fire was out.

  Then there was such relief. Everybody talking at once, buckets clanging to the floor, Annie paddling to the kitchen table and sitting on it cross-legged and inelegant, her face drawn with fatigue, Thiss knocking the last steaming plank into the water round his feet, the smell of charred wood filling their nostrils, and still that odd unidentifiable whiff of roast meat.

  ‘We kep’ it restricted ter the cupboard,’ Thiss said with some pride. ‘Could ‘a been a deal worse, mum, a deal worse. My ol’ gel all right, is she?’

  ‘She’s in next door with Pollyanna,’ Nan said, rubbing her face clean with the edge of her nightgown.

  ‘More to the point,’ Johnnie said, ‘Where’s Mr Dibkins?’

  They’d all forgotten about Dibkins, Nan thought, and the fire had started in his broom-cupboard. His broom-cupboard where he hid away with his bible and his box of candles. ‘My dear heart alive!’ she said. ‘Dibkin’s candles!’

  And Em, the maid of all work began to scream. ‘Aagh! Aagh! Look there! Aagh! There he is! Look there!’

  She was pointing at the charred pile of planks and ash and tumbled crockery that now filled the space where the broom cupboard had been, and the terror of her screams focussed all eyes upon it.

  There was a figure lying in the debris, humped like some huge burnt cushion oozing black treacle. It had crimped black curls covering its skull, short and frizzy like a negro slave’s but where its face should have been there was a terrible featureless blank, an oozing mask of stretched black leather with two holes for eyes. And Nan remembered the smell of roasting meat. Roasting meat! Dear God!

  Then Mrs Pennington strode across the kitchen, boots swishing through the water and slapped poor Em across the face. The poor girl stopped screaming suddenly as though her breath had been cut off and for a few seconds there was a dreadful silence while they gazed at the blackened body and the water dripped mournfully from the walls and the timbers creaked and clicked.

  Then Mrs Pennington’s voice rose hysterically into the smoky darkness. ‘Don’t waste your sympathy!’ she screamed, ‘any of you. He was a crazy old man, and now he’s burnt the house down and killed himself and it serves him right. Oh yes it does, it serves him right. It serves you all right. Don’t think I don’t know about you, because I do. I’ve watched the way you go on. I know all about you, godless creatures that you are!’

  ‘Stop that!’ Nan said, standing up with great weariness and greater dignity. ‘You forget yourself.’

  ‘I forget nothing,’ Mrs Pennington shrieked. ‘Nothing! All the immorality I’ve seen in this house. I do not wonder the good Lord saw fit to use that crazy man to burn it down. No, indeed. You brought it all upon yourself with your wicked, wicked ways. Oh I know. Don’t you think I don’t.’

  ‘Leave my employ!’ Nan said, angry despite her weariness. ‘Do you hear me? Leave this house this instant! I will not have such as you teaching my children. My heart alive! To speak so at a time like this!’

  ‘I will speak as I please,’ Mrs Pennington raved, small eyes bolting, ‘for you cannot stop me.’

  ‘If we cannot stop you, we can leave you,’ Nan said. ‘There is nothing to be gained by staying down here in the dirt. We will go back to our rooms and clean ourselves up. I will take care of – all this in the morning.’

  The servant
s from next-door began to leave and the sight of them made her remember her manners. ‘I’m obliged to ’ee,’ she said as they passed her. ‘Tell Mr Cholmondley the house is safe. Say I’m uncommon grateful. You shall all have new clothes to make amends. I promise.’ For they looked like a line of chimney-sweeps.

  Mrs Pennington was snivelling, but nobody paid any attention to her. Not even Johnnie, who had been the first to creep from the kitchen, sickened by the sight of death and embarrassed by her terrible outburst. Now he sat in his bed shivering with emotion, willing himself not to cry.

  Billy was crying openly. ‘Poor old Dibkins! What a way to die!’

  ‘People are so cruel,’ Johnnie said. ‘Even the best of them. There will be no more schooling for us now, I hope you realize.’

  The thought dried Billy’s tears. ‘Good,’ he said.

  ‘What will Mama do with us, think ’ee?’

  ‘We shall go to work, I daresay.’

  ‘Shall you like that?’

  ‘I shall like it well enough. It couldn’t be worse than learnin’, in all conscience.’

  ‘I’ve brought you fresh water,’ their sister said, appearing in the doorway with a jug in one hand and a candle in the other.

  But what was the good of washing, Johnnie thought, when his one and only friend had been dismissed, and his schooling was over, and Mr Dibkins had died so horribly, and the house was wrecked?

  Rest was quite out of the question for any of them. Back in their fire-smeared bedroom, Nan and Calverley washed as well as they could in their basin of cold water, and changed into clean linen. Then Nan made bandages from an old strip of sheeting and covered the burns that were bubbling into blisters on Calverley’s hands and arms. And even though he thought it was namby-pamby, he let her do it, because he was too weary to protest. Then they sat beside the open window, looking down at the dark lawn and the pale petals of the magnolia and listening to the faint swish-swish of the green corn in the field beyond the garden, and they talked.