by Diana Norman
‘I’m a-goin’ with Susan,’ Betty said.
‘What?’
‘Boston. I’m goin’ home.’
It developed into the worst quarrel they’d ever had.
‘How can you be lonely? You’ve got Susan and Philippa. You see Josh nearly every week; Aaron’s not far away.’
Betty’s lower lip protruded dangerously. ‘Don’t like it here.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake.’ Makepeace looked around the room, then reined in her temper; this had to be dealt with. She tried syrup. ‘This is your home, Bet. I’m here as much as I can be. You know I’d be lost without you, you’re my mainstay, always were. And you’re Philippa’s.’
‘That chil’ need to come with us, she ain’t happy here neither. She don’t fit in; she ain’t got friends.’
‘Of course she does. Susan has the Mansfield children in to play with her. She’s got a pony, a governess. It’s everything Pip would have wanted for her. Dammit, you didn’t like it when we were hauling her around in a basket with Aaron’s troupe—you said it wasn’t suitable for Sir Pip’s daughter, remember?’
Betty shifted her ground, an infuriating habit of hers. ‘They all Tories round here. You want her growin’ up Tory? She need a place where they ain’t ashamed ’cos their money come from trade.’
‘I suppose you think she was better off at Raby?’ It had taken long enough to rid the child of her Northumbrian accent.
‘She surely was. An’ you too. Should’ve married Andra.’
‘Don’t you dare say that to me. Marry a . . . a fellow like that? Don’t you remember who I was married to?’
They were shrieking now.
‘You ’memberin’ he’s dead? Sir Pip’s dead?’
‘Not to me.’
‘Then he oughta be.’
‘You bitch, you bitch. Get out of my sight.’
There was a rustle of Betty’s silk petticoats as she lumbered from the room.
It took a long time for Makepeace’s hands to stop shaking. She felt ill; they’d never rowed like this, never. She strode up and down the length of the Aubusson carpet, her pace gradually slowing as the seriousness of the situation became more apparent.
She ain’t lonely, how can she be lonely? The matter with her is she’s had her nose put out of joint because she ain’t with me every second nowadays. She’s too bloody old to cross the Atlantic and she knows it. What she wants is me to give it up . . . stupid old baggage . . . now we’re almost there.
Wallowing, Makepeace thought of what it had cost her to reach this position; labouring in the mine, fighting the hostmen, every second given to clambering up the ladder. She’d bought houses, dressed her family in silk, provided for those who’d helped her, given money to the damn poor. And she hadn’t done all that by sitting at home to keep company with a fat old black woman.
Oh, Betty.
She left the saloon and went up the double staircase that curved the hall in white, balustraded, festooned wings.
Betty’s bedroom was red, her favourite shade, with a state bed once occupied by a Venetian ambassador. It was unlit. A bulky shape sat slumped in a gilded chair by the open window, it didn’t turn at Makepeace’s approach.
‘Don’t leave me, Bet.’ She knelt down and rested her forehead on the old woman’s knees.
‘Ain’t me as is leavin’.’
‘We’re so close, almost there. I’ve nearly got ’em, girl. Only a little while more and we’ll settle the score, then we’ll go any place you want.’
Betty said nothing. The moonlight reflected on wet runnels down her cheeks but her face was set.
Makepeace crossed the room to fetch another chair. ‘Look at this bed, will you? Remember the ones at the Roaring Meg? Pip said mine was what Procrustes tortured people on. He always called me Procrustes after that.’
Betty remained unmoved. ‘You ain’t doin’ this for him. You ain’t even doin’ it for you. You like one of them pit wagons, the rails is there an’ you jus’ runnin’ away on ’em. You likely crush your own child whilst you doin’ it. Not me, you ain’t crushin’ me too. Susan goes, I go.’
The argument went on for an hour, gently on Makepeace’s part, obdurately on Betty’s. Only once did her voice waver: ‘I miss that smelly ol’ Indian.’
‘So do I. Oh, so do I.’ All the time.
She evoked every memory she could bear to, every cause of gratitude for both of them; she piped but Betty would not dance.
‘Susan goes, I go.’ It was her final word.
In bed that night, it came to Makepeace that Betty was passing the judgement of Solomon on Philippa. You love this child enough to give up your revenge for her? Or do I cut her in half?
For, sure as taxes, Philippa would be cut in half by Betty’s departure. Without that big, black buoy, the one fixture to which she had always been attached, she would be lost and unhappy—like I’d have been at her age, Makepeace thought, if the blasted woman hadn’t been there.
Which could Philippa least afford to lose? Betty the constant? Or a mother who was travelling elsewhere for eight-tenths of her time?
It comes to this: Do I love my daughter enough to abandon everything I’ve strived for these last years and be a better companion and mother to her?
She heard her groan break the silence of the room. ‘Lord forgive me, I don’t.’ It was, literally, a physical impossibility; she knew her own physique, she would be eaten away by a disease called unfinished business.
Next morning, she called her daughter into the saloon. ‘Now, Philippa, I don’t know if your aunt Susan has told you, but she intends to go to America for a visit to her relatives. She wants to know if you would like to go with her.’
I sound like a schoolmarm, she thought. I can talk on equal terms with a Wullie Fergusson and a Marquis of Rockingham, but I’m stilted with my own flesh and blood.
Makepeace watched her daughter consider. The child had her father’s long face, his sallow skin and hair, without in any other way resembling him. Her habitual expression possessed none of the mock-gloom and humour that had made Philip Dapifer so attractive; it was merely grave. She looked like a small, studious camel.
‘Philippa?’ prompted Makepeace.
‘Would you be coming too, Mama?’
‘No. I have things to do in England. I must go up North again soon.’
Was the girl disappointed? It was difficult to tell. Oh God, she’s guarded—so young and guarded. My fault, I uprooted her; I haven’t considered her feelings enough and she’s learned to hide them.
Makepeace became irritated by her own accusation. Wasn’t I bloody uprooted? I’d been dragged over half America by the time I was her age—and lost my mother. And I was running errands to earn money so Aaron didn’t starve. Didn’t do me any harm; she’s got nothing to complain about.
The thing was, Philippa did not complain. She never has, not to me. Makepeace said gently: ‘Betty thinks she would like to go with Auntie Susan.’
Was it panic, that shift of the child’s eyes? Makepeace added: ‘But I don’t think she means it. If you’d like to stay here, I’m sure she’d stay too.’
‘Are you going to be busy again, Mama?’
‘Only for a little while longer.’
‘Could I go on with my mathematics?’
Makepeace blinked. ‘I’m sure you can.’ Susan had found a tutor for the child.
Philippa said, thoughtfully: ‘The Professor of Mathematics at the Royal Academy at Woolwich is the son of a pitman from Newcastle.’
‘Is he?’
‘Yes. Uncle Andra told me. Are there more Indians in America? Like Tantaquidgeon?’
Makepeace smiled. ‘There was never another soul like Tantaquidgeon but, yes, there are Indians.’
‘Could I see the Roaring Meg?’
What had Betty been telling her? ‘If Auntie Susan thinks it suitable.’
‘I think I should like to go. Just for a visit.’
Don’t go. Stay here. ‘Are you su
re?’
‘Yes.’
Is this how she feels every time I leave her? Awkwardly, Makepeace reached for her daughter. ‘I’ll come and fetch you back, you know. If you like America, we might even stay there together.’
The small body resisted. It was the worst moment of the interview; Philippa didn’t believe her.
The fact that Philippa was prepared to go wasn’t the end of the battle. Betty no more wanted to return to America than visit the moon; her strategy was to make Makepeace give up her career of revenging angel; Makepeace’s was for Betty to capitulate unconditionally and stay in England.
It was Josh who called the bluff of them both. He turned up one morning on the Highgate doorstep, having walked from Leicester Fields, with an air of defiance and a pack from which stuck out some paintbrushes. ‘I’ve run away.’
Makepeace hauled him into the saloon. Betty arrived in it at the gallop. ‘You git back there, boy.’ She still marvelled at the fact that it was Josh who’d painted the hands and drapery in the portrait Makepeace had commissioned from his master.
‘No.’ His face was set—he had become handsome. ‘I ain’t saying Sir Josh ain’t a great man in his way, but it’s his way. “Got to do it like this, not like that.” Mam, there’s a thousand ways of painting, and he won’t let us try any of ’em. He’s got apprentices higher up the ladder’n I am an’ they’re as frustrated as me. I ain’t a-goin’ back.’
‘What are you going to do?’ Makepeace asked.
‘Work my passage to Boston. Ain’t no Royal Academy in America to tell a man how an’ what to paint.’
Two combatants looked past him at each other in helplessness and despair. Now Betty would be forced to leave. She must go with Josh; separation from her son at her time of life could be permanent. Makepeace saw her concede defeat and conceded her own; the very thing neither wanted had been taken out of their hands to become a reality.
In a fury that she had to do it at all, she began making the arrangements. Since she was killing birds she’d use one stone; the ship that would take them was to be the Lord Percy, the same frigate that had carried them all to England seven years before. Makepeace had been corresponding with its captain.
In September, subject to wind and tide, the Percy would dock at Deptford after an Atlantic crossing. Along with the usual dispatches, Captain Strang was bringing the papers Mr Hackbutt needed to begin the case against Catty. Lord Percy was a sound craft, her captain trustworthy; Makepeace could take possession of the papers and wish her people Godspeed at the same time.
The drive to Deptford was awful. Josh chattered brightly, Susan and Makepeace tried to, Betty and Philippa didn’t say a word.
The Lord Percy was anchored in midstream, sails neatly furled, the scrollwork on her aft cabin, where Dapifer had proposed marriage, newly gilded.
Dinner was worse than the drive down. Makepeace had ordered fresh salmon and champagne but only Captain Strang and Josh enjoyed the meal. Makepeace needed constant reassurance that Boston was safe.
Captain Strang gave her assurance along with her documents. ‘No, no, ma’am,’ he said, ‘all’s quiet. Your compatriots are once again loyal subjects of King George, more loyal than those at home if what I hear about Mr Wilkes and his supporters be true. And, of course, we keep them on a looser rein than we did. We should have hanged the Rhode Island smugglers when they burned a revenue cutter last year but, no, the government merely demanded an investigatory committee to look into the matter.’
The goodbyes were stiff, partly because they had to be made as Captain Strang stood by, waiting for them to accompany him in his pinnace to the ship.
Betty was unyielding to the end. ‘Best get off, I spect’s you got work to do.’
‘I will then.’ The Lord Percy wasn’t sailing until the early hours—and she did have work to do. ‘Don’t stay away too long or I’ll come and fetch you.’ She said it to all of them. Only Josh smiled.
‘You come anyway,’ he said, ‘I don’t reckon I’ll be back.’
As she held Philippa, she felt the child’s hands tighten around her neck and then make the effort to let go. The little face was expressionless and Makepeace didn’t know if the gesture indicated grief or whether it was being interpreted as such by her own agony.
Susan said carefully, as if she’d been rehearsing over dinner: ‘I love her like my own but I know she’s yours. I’ll keep her safe for you.’
‘My dear, I know you will. I don’t deserve you, either of you.’ She had neglected them both.
The knowledge that she had failed all of them in different ways, even Josh—she should have enquired into his disillusion earlier—was too overwhelming to be borne and she took the coward’s way out, not even waiting to see the pinnace reach the ship.
‘London,’ she told Sanders, ‘at the bloody gallop.’
Usually, when she travelled by coach, she took Hildy with her, but there’d been no spare room on the journey down so she was able to give way to a fit of crying like no other she could remember. Whatever else Betty-Solomon’s judgement had done, it had cut her in two. One half persisted in screaming at her to turn round and bring them all back. The other, no less painful, knew a hideous relief at being free of emotional ropes.
As the coach entered the City, she put her face to the window so that air blowing on her eyes could reduce their swelling. A muffin man was whistling ‘Playing With Fire’ as he pushed his cart along Aldgate.
Oh well, it wouldn’t be for ever. In the meantime, she’d cleared the decks. Now she could run out her guns. Now, by the living God, she would deal with Major and Mrs Conyers.
She leaned up and opened the little trap with which enabled her to speak to her coachman. ‘Straight to Lincoln’s Inn Fields, Sanders.’
Mr Hackbutt sorted through the documents. ‘Marriage certificate from the ship, properly signed and sealed, excellent, excellent. Sir Pip’s decree—I have to say, Lady Dapifer, that with your fellow-countrymen behaving themselves and in view of our government’s present conciliation towards them, there has never been a better time to ask their lordships to recognize an American divorce and acknowledge your right to Sir Pip’s property. We shall hope for the Lord Chief Justice to hear the matter, a most enlightened man.’
‘Oh, I think he will,’ Makepeace said. ‘Lord Mansfield’s a neighbour of mine.’
Hackbutt cocked an eye at her. ‘Shooting high, Lady Dapifer?’
‘Using cannon now, Mr Hackbutt. In the meantime, what have you done about Barton Wood?’
‘I informed Lord Ffoulkes’s lawyers immediately, of course. They were as appalled as myself and have informed Major Conyers that any further attempt to defraud will result in prosecution.’
Hackbutt had been more shocked by Conyers’s attempt to bargain with some of Andrew Ffoulkes’s land than he had by her own eviction from Dapifer property. There had, she supposed, been rags of legality attached to her dispossession but none at all to a guardian stealing from his ward.
He went on: ‘I did not tell them whence my information came and we can only hope the Major does not guess. You are tweaking his nose, Lady Dapifer, and he is a dangerous man.’
‘I’m a dangerous woman, Mr Hackbutt.’
The lawyer nodded; she could see he didn’t like her as much as he once had. Nobody does, she thought. ‘Have you made out the other documents I asked you for?’
He counted them into her hand. ‘And here’s your opening salvo—a warrant ready for your signature. It can be executed at a moment’s notice, the bailiffs are standing by.’
The thought of returning to a house empty of everyone but servants was daunting. She needed a friend to talk to—where was the nearest of the few she had left?
‘Grub Street, Sanders.’
Out of a perverse superiority, Beasley had refused to leave Grub Street, though, once his debts were paid and he had some money coming in from the investments Makepeace made for him, he’d bought the house of his old landlord. It still lo
oked as if it had been drawn onto the rocks by wreckers. The only seats were two stools paddling in a tide of books round an ashy, empty grate.
He himself was nearly as comfortless. ‘You going armed?’
‘As a matter of fact, I am,’ Makepeace said and called out of the window: ‘Sanders, fetch the gun case.’
‘That’s very good,’ John Beasley said. ‘ “One moment, Major, before you shoot me. I’ve a gun of my own—I’ll just send Sanders to fetch it.” Very useful. The sooner that man’s committed the better. Why not execute the warrant now?’
‘He’s not going to shoot me. He doesn’t know I hold most of his debts.’
‘Doesn’t have to. The songsheets are selling like hot cakes, I’m happy to say.’ Beasley had written the lyrics for ‘Playing with Fire’, Frederick Tortini the tune. ‘And if he don’t, she certainly will after the Almack’s incident. Take a drink, Sanders?’
‘No thank you, sir. I’d as well return to the coach.’
‘Better. They take the wheels off round here.’
Makepeace balanced the case on her knee and opened it. The two weapons inside were smaller than the average duelling pistol, chased and inlaid with ivory. ‘Nice, aren’t they? Sir Benjamin Judd had them made for me—he’s started up an armaments factory.’
‘You’re mad, woman, I was joking. What are you going to do, shoot Conyers before he shoots you?’
‘No, these are for drilling highwaymen. I’ve been practising.’
Like most people forced to travel a great deal, Makepeace had fallen foul of highway robbers, once on the way to Newcastle and again on the way back—both times without physical harm, but she’d resented the loss of jewellery and time. ‘Watch out, they’re loaded.’
Beasley, a self-acknowledged coward, hastily put the guns back in the case. ‘You do realize you’ve become insane.’
‘I have not.’
‘Yes, you have. When it comes to the point of having to carry guns, the game’s no longer worth the bloody candle. Give it up. I’m serious.’
‘Not yet.’
‘When? You’re a hundred times richer than they are, you’re hounding them into Bedlam. Ain’t your revenge wreaked yet?’