by Diana Norman
‘There’ve only been little wreaks so far.’
‘What are you going to do after the final wreak?’
‘Smile.’
‘Smile at what?’ Beasley leaned forward and poked his finger into her sternum. ‘There won’t be anything there, woman. Madam Midnight’s gone, your kid’s gone, Susan’s gone, Josh. . . Aaron’s had to run for it to Ireland. Where’s young Ffoulkes?’
She said: ‘Conyers sent him on a Grand Tour.’
‘That’s it, isn’t it? That’s nearly all of us. You’re scorching your own earth, you madwoman.’
She’d let down her guard, exposed her triumph, thinking she could relax with a friend. She began gathering her wraps. Her head was aching. She said: ‘Your breath stinks.’
He sat back, nursing his knee. ‘Andra’s in Town, did you know?’
Makepeace closed her gun case carefully. ‘How is Mr Hedley?’
That was the trouble with John Beasley, he clawed like an animal and then, as you bled, came a reminder of what a true ally he was. Not once but three times in the last few years he’d arrived in Newcastle, cold and furious from his long perch on top of a stagecoach, to make sure she was prospering. She was still bewildered by the cross-fertilization of ideas that had taken place between him and Hedley at Raby to make them such good friends.
‘Another bugger intent on suicide, like you,’ Beasley told her. ‘Nearly blew himself up the other day experimenting with fire-damp. He’s come to London to try and find someone either to neutralize the bloody gas or invent a miner’s lantern that don’t set off a gas explosion. How you can have a flame that doesn’t burn, I don’t know, but he thinks you can. I’ve put him in touch with a couple of chemists I know. What’s the matter?’
Blast him. She wiped her hands hard down her skirt to get rid of their sudden perspiration. ‘It’s just that it’s . . . a terrible thing, fire-damp. A spark can set it off. But you can’t dig coal in perfect darkness.’ She tried smiling. ‘Sometimes our lads take rotten fish down with them so they can work by the glow of phosphorescence.’
‘Hell, I’d prefer fire-damp.’
‘You wouldn’t,’ she said. ‘I was in Newcastle when the pit at Gerrards blew up, ten miles away. The ground shook; I thought it was an earthquake. Thirty-five killed.’
She hadn’t known any of them but she knew people like them—Wullie Fergusson, Jamie—and had grieved for the loss of such men. Hedley had known them, most of them. Of course he’d be experimenting. Of course it was suicide. Blast him. And it probably would.
Beasley hated being caught out in lack of knowledge. ‘I introduced him to Johnson as well,’ he said, altering course.
‘And what did Dr Johnson think of Mr Hedley?’ asked Makepeace, idly.
Beasley crunched himself up like a bear and lowered his voice an octave: ‘ “Andra Hedley is an ingenious, hard-working descendant of homo sapiens.” He liked him.’
‘Well, I must be going, I’ve some wreaking to do.’
Beasley didn’t move from the stool; he let people see themselves out. ‘From the look of you, you could do with a bit of ingenious hard-working homo sapiens yourself. When’d you last have a fuck?’
‘Oh, shut up,’ Makepeace said, and went.
It was late. There was light in the windows of the still-grubbing grubbers of Grub Street and the night clacked with protest and scandal from their printing presses. Once beyond it, however, the alleys to its north were empty and dark and lit only by the coach’s own lanterns, enabling Sanders, an excellent coachman, to take short-cuts that would have been too obstructed to negotiate by day.
They’d reached the open, deserted, cobbled space of Clare Market when Makepeace heard an extra clatter of hooves approaching fast on the coach’s right-hand side. She saw a pistol-barrel appear at her window and then a flame as whoever held the gun pulled its trigger.
Chapter Twenty
WHAT saved Makepeace’s life was her headache.
She’d taken off her hat to ease the constriction on her forehead and hung it on the seat opposite hers by stuffing its ribbons behind the coach upholstery. Then she’d sunk into her corner, put her elbow on the arm-rest and cradled one temple against her gloved hand.
The hat, one of Susan’s Leghorns, hung flat and downwards. It was of undyed straw and its pallor, in the darkness, misled the attacker into thinking he fired into the flesh of a face: the bullet smashed through the middle of its crown.
She sat and stared at it. Somebody was shaking her arm. She turned her head. Sanders was leaning into the coach, his face as pale as the hat, his mouth making shapes but no sound.
‘What?’ she asked and couldn’t hear her own voice either. The report of the pistol in the confined space had been literally deafening.
He pointed behind him. She would have got out but he pressed her back in her seat, shaking his head. She peered past him. The market was empty apart from some stacked trestles and beaten cabbage leaves. In the direction Sanders pointed an alley led off to the west—the coachman’s thick gesticulating hands indicated her assailant had gone that way and should he go after him?
She forced a ‘No’. She wanted to say there was no point, the attacker was on horseback and a mile away by now and, if he wasn’t, pursuit by one man was too dangerous. She tried, but it was difficult to go into explanations one couldn’t hear oneself make.
She touched her ears so that Sanders could understand what had happened to her and was relieved that her fingers came away without blood on them.
She was too frightened to face the journey through darkness to the lonely house in Highgate. Probably Sanders was as well, poor man; he looked in a terrible taking.
Where then? She needed a brandy and a friend as she’d never needed either. Clare Market was equidistant between Baines’s house and Beasley’s. Baines’s was tempting, she’d like a doctor for her ears, but he was frequently out on call at nights and she couldn’t, she really could not, stand in a street knocking on a door that wouldn’t open.
‘Back,’ she told Sanders, exaggeratedly formulating her mouth. ‘G-rub S-t-reet.’
He nodded and disappeared. She felt the shake of the coach as he turned the horses around.
At which point logical thought left her.
Sanders was supporting her up Beasley’s staircase. The two men were engaged in animated conversation, she could just hear their voices though not what they were saying. Sanders had brought her hat with him and kept pointing to it. Me, she thought, pay attention to me. And began to cry.
She was seated on one of the stools by the unlit fire. Beasley was actually lighting it. Unheard of. A dirty glass containing brandy was in her hand, Sanders was sitting on the floor, a chipped beaker in his.
Now Beasley was shouting at her, his voice reaching her from a muffled distance. ‘Where’s the bloody warrant?’
‘What?’
‘The warrant for the Conyers’s arrest. For debt. You showed it to me.’
She pointed to her reticule and watched without interest as he scrabbled through it. He found the document, laid it on her knee, fetched a book to rest it on and presented her with a quill and inkpot.
He wants me to sign it.
Shock made her slow, she just stared at the pen Beasley forced into her hand.
‘Oh, for Christ’s sake,’ he shouted, ‘he tried to kill you.’
She nodded agreeably; that was a given. There’d been no demand for money, it had been attempted assassination. But to sign was to precipitate the end of a long, long stratagem; she’d wanted to linger over this final act, lick her lips, make a ceremony of it.
‘And he might try again. Sign the bloody thing. Get him put away.’
She signed, with difficulty, on the line left for the complainant, and he snatched it from her. ‘Sanders’ll take me to the magistrates, we’ll set on the bailiffs immediate.’ He was miming as he shouted, pointing to the door, pressing his wrists together to indicate handcuffs . . .
She n
odded.
‘Stay here. I’ll put a couple of men downstairs to guard you.’
She nodded again.
The unnatural silence, so heavy that it was almost noise, enfolded her as the men left. Makepeace huddled over the fire, unable to get warm or stop shaking.
He tried to kill me.
Sanders had left her hat on the other stool. The pretty brim was untouched but blackened strands of straw made a jagged surround to the hole in the crown. Mentally, she transposed her face to it. The bullet would have smashed her nose and ploughed on to the brain.
Had he, perhaps, merely tried to frighten her? Shot at the hat as a warning? No, there’d been no time for him to distinguish between hat and living head. He’d meant to kill her.
She shook so hard she had to hold her glass with two hands to stop it slopping.
She began to sob; what she needed was someone to cuddle her, tell her she’d been brave—which she hadn’t—listen to the story again and again; analyse, discuss, discuss, be appalled.
Betty. I want Betty.
But you let her go. And Susan. And Philippa. And Josh. Aaron’s gone, Andrew . . . She’d allowed all the people whom she loved, and who loved her, to slip away.
She clutched at anger. I was right to go for revenge no matter what. God damn their two souls to hell, look what they did to me, to us; they wouldn’t stop hurting, wouldn’t stop even at murder. Oh please, the scales had to be balanced.
And now they had been. She took in a deep breath, then another swig of brandy. If Beasley and the warrant did their job, Major and Mrs Conyers were even at this moment being hustled out of the house in Grosvenor Square and into the closed cart that would take them to the Fleet Prison.
And there they would stay. For the rest of their lives.
Thousands of pounds, nearly a hundred thousand, well spent in procuring this happy outcome, almost all her profit from the mine. Hedley had ploughed his into improvements, inventions, into creating things. Hers had gone to stopping every hole by which the foxes might escape her.
She had bought her own property back—virtually the entire Dapifer estate was mortgaged to her—in order to foreclose on it.
The law of debt, capital’s revenge on those who did not pay their bills. As their creditor, only her word could open the door of the prison which, by now, Catty and Conyers were entering.
She had spent pleasant hours of leisure envisaging their years of hopelessness and now, to regain a sense of control, she did it again. Conyers’s hair was greyed to the colour of the walls around him; wrinkles glazed Catty’s face. She watched them wither into dust like two forgotten apples in a store cupboard.
And they’d know how hopeless it was. From the first, they would know. She’d ordered the dress she would wear to the prison from Mme Angloss. She’d decided on primrose: her summer, their winter. Catty had worn primrose in Grosvenor Square at their first encounter; she would reflect it back at her for their last.
The times, thinking about it, her mouth had curved into the smile that would pronounce their life sentence. They would see the exaction she was making for Dapifer, for Philippa, for humiliation, poverty, pain. She curved it again. Payment in full.
Oh yes, she was in control now. She was the victor.
Shock was receding; she had comforted herself with a stroll along a path she had taken a hundred times before. In a sense she’d been sucking her thumb.
Now she became fully awake and found herself cold. The fire was going out. This was victory, was it? Alone, drinking inferior brandy in a dreary room?
Beasley and Sanders were away some hours. For Makepeace the time was spent in travelling the landscape of her life from the harsh spring of a Boston shoreline into the summer of Dapifer country and on to this chilly, urban winter in which she found herself. With newly appraising eyes she reread fingerposts, saw her wrong turnings and the shocking inclines down which, willy-nilly, she’d been precipitated.
You’re scorching your own earth, you madwoman.
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.
And truest signpost of all: You’d have done it anyway. I saw it. One sniff o’ that coal and you woke to what you are—as good a businessman as ever come over the Atlantic.
That, then, was where she should have settled. Newcastle. Would it have made a difference if she’d known that the mountain she’d clawed her way up in order to reach down her enemies had, in fact, been of itself her journey’s end? No need to go further.
Probably not. She’d have made no better mother nor friend, but in recognizing herself for what she was, for what Hedley had known she was, she’d have been less of an ache in everyone’s arse, her own included.
Hedley was right—he’d always been right. The years in Northumberland had been the time of her life. Not because she’d made money with which to destroy two souls, not at all. . . that had merely been the goad, almost the excuse to do what Makepeace Burke was good at doing.
As Lady Dapifer she’d been blessed with an exceptional husband but she hadn’t suited his life nor had his suited her. The year she’d spent in Society had been astonishing, but only because she’d spent it with him; after a while the endless round of giving and receiving entertainment would have palled and she would have itched for gainful employment, which her position as Lady Dapifer would not have allowed.
They had loved each other. In one way she had been good for him, but not, perhaps, good enough; he had suffered continual pinpricks from those who’d disliked her and always would. She had not advanced his career because she hadn’t known how; she’d held him back even, unable to manipulate behind the scenes as good political wives did. She’d been his health, he’d said, but in the end she hadn’t been able to invest him with enough to stay alive.
Oh Pip. My dear. You married a square peg that didn’t fit into anything so well as the shaft of a Northumberland coal mine.
There, at least, had been achievement. Whatever else she’d done or hadn’t done, enabling Raby to become a working colliery, creating employment for one hundred men, making a village where their families could live in dignity, that was a labour she could show to St Peter with pride when she arrived at the gates of Heaven.
When John Beasley came back, it was to a woman who’d drunk a lot of brandy and yet was more sober with self-knowledge than she’d ever been in her life.
‘Is it done?’
‘It’s done.’ He looked haggard. ‘They’re taking them to the Fleet. I didn’t wait. She was screaming.’
‘I’m going back to Newcastle tomorrow,’ she said.
‘You’re going back to Highgate tonight,’ he said, ushering her out of the door and down to the coach, ‘and I’m damn well coming too. I’m not staying here. You realize that bastard must have been watching this place, waiting for you to leave. Supposing it wasn’t him, supposing it was a fucking assassin he’d hired—Sanders says the sod was masked. He might try again. Jesus, he could shoot me by mistake.’
And Makepeace laughed.
She woke up the next morning to be surprised at how assuaged she felt. Well, she’d escaped death and trampled her enemies underfoot—good reasons as any for a sense of peace.
But it wasn’t that alone; the battle of the past years hadn’t just been with Catty and Conyers, it had been against herself. That, too, was over. At some point during the previous night she’d made terms with Makepeace Burke.
Mrs Burke, it turned out, was not a Society woman, nor even a family woman; she had failed in both capacities. Instead she was a trader, a doer, a money-maker, a woman of business.
Society, she thought, blinds itself to females like me, but we’re there: Susan’s auntie, Susan herself, flower-sellers, weavers, shopkeepers, landladies of inns and taverns; all earning our living by our own efforts.
She sat up as another idea attacked her. There’s Philippa, bless her; with her b
ent for mathematics: she’s not going to fit into Society’s idea of womanhood either. Well, Society will just have to make room for her because I’ll bloody well see that it does. I’m blazing the trail for her.
I’m a businesswoman, she thought. I’m the New Age.
Now that she was sitting up she could see the ormolu clock on the mantel at the far side of her bedroom. Seven o’clock.
It’s early. What’s it doing early? I should be sleeping in, I’ve had a nasty experience.
There was movement and rustling in her dressing room. She pulled back the side curtains of the bed. ‘What are you doing, Hildy?’
‘Packin’, missus. Sanders is gettin’ the horses ready. We’re off hoom.’
So we are.
She lay back. Hildy was never so happy as when they were going home. Me too, she thought.
She said: ‘Sanders’ll be tired. Tell him to bring Smith as assistant driver. And Hildy, try not to crumple too much.’ A horrible packer, Hildy.
She sat up. ‘Last night . . . did I tell you to pack?’
‘No, missus, tha was duzzy stannin’ up. Tha jus’ craaled to yer bed. It was Mr Beasley told me. He’s doonstair havin’ his breakfast. An’, missus’—Hildy’s pleased, narrow little face peered round the door—‘there’s a surprise wi’ him.’
Joy flooded through her. ‘It’s a nice day, Hildy.’
‘Drizzlin’, missus.’
‘It’s nice. Smallest hoop since we’re travelling. Oh, and the black cardinal.’
‘Reet y’are.’
They’d finished breakfast by the time she swept into the dining room, looking her best. It was the part of the house she liked most: a white, unfussy room picked out in blue, with long windows giving on to the gardens. This morning they were open, letting in moist air and a scent of new-cut grass to mingle with the smell of ham and toasted muffins.
‘Good morning, John. Good morning, Mr Hedley.’
They were both reading, Beasley a newspaper, leaning back in his chair, his boots on her delicate Irish tablecloth to show he was a true revolutionary, Andra pencilling notes in the margins of a learned-looking publication. He got up at her entrance, which Beasley did not, and then returned to his journal. ‘Morning, missus.’ He was as polite, even affable, as he always was nowadays when they met—nothing more.