Mackie straightened up from the wall.
‘Isabella,’ he said gently in the slow deep rumbling voice that she could hear. ‘I know the world we live in, just as you do.’ He faced her to be absolutely sure she heard. ‘It is over, in a way. But it’s not over in this house. I can’t do much. Although I hope I might have given that churchman something to ponder. But I know enough now that I think I might be able to go to see Mr Ouvry again and help get Elijah and Billy their jobs back.’
‘I don’t want my job back any more, Mackie,’ said Billy, surprising everybody in the kitchen. ‘I thought the Parliament was a good and powerful place and I liked being part of it but I can’t feel the same about it any more – of course I’m not going to walk behind black horses with funeral plumes for the rest of my life, but – no, I don’t want to go back there now, from where I was thrown out the door. I really like teaching people to read, ones who didn’t have the chance Mattie and I had.’ He looked at his mother. ‘I’m going to be a proper teacher, Ma.’
There was a stunned silence. Mrs Stacey and Mattie exchanged a tiny glance, remembered that the girl they’d heard of, Emily, was a teacher.
The silence was broken by Dodo.
‘Nevertheless. If there was any way, then I know Elijah would so very much like to go back to the Parliament’ – and she put up a bent, clawed hand almost imperiously when Elijah began to interrupt. ‘I am going to speak, dearest, I’ve said not one word all these months but now I’m going to speak. You were part of that building.’
Elijah Fortune was sitting near the long table. He stared at the floor. Dodo turned then to all the others.
‘It hurt me to be there this week and know Elijah wasn’t there along the hall past all the statues, as he was for so many years. He was part of the Parliament. Not that we aren’t glad that he is at least working. But he wasn’t meant, as Billy was never meant, to walk miles behind coffins and horses in bad weather, or sit in a cramped little office, recording deaths of people he doesn’t know, through no fault of his own but his kindness.’ And she put her bent hand very gently on Elijah’s face. Elijah, who had never once complained, could not, for a moment, speak.
Mackie said quietly to Billy: ‘Would you teach me?’
Everybody looked surprised.
‘Oh yes, you all think I can read, and I can read the newspapers, but I can’t read proper books; I never learned anything like that poem you told; we never had one book in our house when I was young, only the Bible. I can sign my name and read the papers and make lists and arrange money and keep my eyes and ears open. But I’d like to read real books, like you all do.’
‘I don’t read much, Mackie,’ said Isabella quickly. ‘There’s plenty of us who can’t read well.’
‘I’ll teach you, Mackie,’ said Billy.
Mackie nodded. He still stood there at the bottom of the stairs, still hadn’t taken off his cloak.
‘I’d be glad to try to help get your position back, Elijah. Because I tell you what, I can’t just let things be – because somehow it disgusts me, all the pomp and clever phrases and long speeches that I’ve heard this week – all to cover everything up and save the face of the nobility – and yet I saw that poor pathetic Lord Arthur dying by himself, nobody rushing to help him while he was alive. And you were trying to help him, Elijah, to get him money. I’ll go and see Mr Ouvry once more.’
‘Do you think he can really influence the Prime Minister?’ Elijah spoke at last, but his expression was rueful as he looked at Mackie. ‘I’m grateful, Mackie,’ he said. ‘Thank you. But Mr Gladstone himself is probably the only person who could get me back into the Parliament after all this.’
(And Mattie looked down at her hands, remembering the night she had met Mr Gladstone. Mr Gladstone knew what had happened to Billy. But it had not got Billy’s position back.)
After a brief moment Isabella said quietly, ‘Mackie, I’ll do it.’ And she nodded, acknowledging his words. ‘You’re right. It’s the last thing to be done in our world. You’re right – it’s not over in this house till that’s done. I’ll make certain Mr Gladstone knows about Elijah.’
Mattie and Billy exchanged glances. There was only one way their mother ever did things like this.
‘How will you do that, Ma?’ said Billy innocently.
She looked at her son with love. ‘I’m glad you want to be a teacher, son, and if you don’t want to go back to the Parliament after all that’s happened, well, who can blame you! And I will be so, so proud of you.’ Then she turned to the others. ‘And we all bleeding know this trial was arranged by people who have the power – who they know, what they can do. But – funny – we have our power too, we know people – you and me, Elijah, we’ve always known people in this city, haven’t we? Known who to talk to, we’ve got our own circles and influence. Elijah, remember Tussie Heap?’
He nodded at once. ‘At Drury Lane. Years ago. Working in the wardrobe when you were. Cutting, she was good at cutting.’
‘That’s her. All those years ago. Well, I think she can help us. Listen to this: Tussie Heap now works at 11 Carlton House Terrace, the Prime Minister’s house.’
‘Oh Ma!’ said Mattie and she laughed despite the tension in the kitchen, and Billy added: ‘We always said, Ma, that you knew everybody in London.’
‘I’ll go there.’
‘Are you sure, Isabella?’ said Mackie.
‘I’m sure, Mackie,’ said Ma.
‘Then – I need to go now.’
Everyone in the kitchen stared at Mackie, stunned.
‘I need to – I need to go and breathe the real sea and get some of the stench of everything I’ve seen and heard this week out of my head. And thanks, Billy. I still want teaching. I’ll find you. And the first thing I’m going to learn is that poem about the lights of France and the calm sea.’ He turned towards the stairs.
‘Mackie,’ said Isabella.
Something in her voice. He turned back to look at her, his foot on the stair.
‘You know them sailor lodgers down by the docks? You said they’d knife you soon as look at you.’
He nodded.
‘Come back into the kitchen, take your blooming fisherman’s cloak off and eat some blooming sausages and mash or I’ll keep my promise and knife you myself!’
But Mackie didn’t move. ‘I can’t, Isabella. I have to go back to the sea.’
She looked at him very carefully. ‘Because of what you saw and heard at the trial?’
‘It’s all right. I’m not going to change the world. I’m going to leave that poor sad Lord Arthur Clinton where he is. But—’
He shook his head as if to free himself from his thoughts. They saw he looked like some sort of caged beast as he stood in his fisherman’s cloak beside the stairs that led away from the basement kitchen of the house in Wakefield-street. He looked at Isabella.
‘Let me go now, love.’
They heard his footsteps going up the stairs.
They heard the front door close.
51
I WATCHED MY Ma so carefully.
I was frightened she might be sad, but you couldn’t talk to Ma about such things.
‘Would you like me to make you another hat, Ma?’
She smiled at me, and sort of ruffled my hair, which she didn’t usually. Being Ma, she understood what I was really saying. ‘He’ll come back, Mattie. He just had to – breathe fresh air. But he’ll come back.’
‘Are you sure, Ma?’
‘I’m sure, Mattie. I literally couldn’t live if I was away from London. That’s how he sometimes feels about the sea.’
‘He’s such a – good man, Ma.’
‘He is. I am glad you met him in Mudeford.’
That’s all. That’s all she said. That’s all we ever discussed. But for my Ma that was like a whole novel.
52
Mrs Catherine Gladstone had just returned to London.
Mrs Gladstone had many family commitments among her own fa
mily, the Glynne family, and in Hawarden Castle in Wales, the Glynne family home – which one day her son William would inherit. If it was not her large family taking up her time, it was the estate workers who needed her. Her husband loved Hawarden Castle also; if it had not been for his astute financial acumen and his sheer hard work, the estate could have been lost. He travelled there, especially in the long summer recess, if his wife was there and his workload allowed.
Mrs Gladstone was absent often, certainly. But if her heart suffered sometimes she never said; despite her husband’s rescuing interludes with other women, one in particular, she was nevertheless a loyal and fiercely protective wife to the Prime Minister. She perhaps understood him better than he understood himself, and loved him dearly.
It must be said that the success or otherwise of Mr Gladstone’s rescue activities could not be measured exactly. Sometimes there was ignominious failure; one rescued lady, sent away to an institution for Fallen Women actually wrote to say thanks all the same but she had run away; she would have committed suicide if she had stayed there longer.
Occasionally Mrs Gladstone was able to find a better class of girl a position among her large network of friends and acquaintances. Sometimes the women just needed to talk. Sometimes they were perfectly happy with their lives but, having been persuaded by Mr Gladstone that there was a more honourable road under a forgiving God, found themselves, before they knew it, being offered a cup of tea in a set of charitable rooms in a narrow lane off Wardour Street, set up for the purpose of good works by good women.
Mrs Gladstone attended when she was able. Mrs Tussie Heap (long ago a member of the wardrobe staff at the Drury Lane Theatre) always accompanied her mistress, Mrs Gladstone, to these encounters. Tussie would sit outside and perhaps speak to other women waiting; Mrs Gladstone had a bell on a table in the room, which just once or twice she had had to ring and Tussie would immediately enter and help deal with any crisis. On the whole the visiting women were well behaved and quiet; just once one tried to attack Mrs Gladstone with her own umbrella, and once a woman collapsed and later died.
Mrs Tussie Heap, this mid-June day, simply added Mrs Isabella Stacey’s name to the list she had been given by one of Mr Gladstone’s secretaries, which is how Mrs Stacey of 13 Wakefield-street met Mrs Gladstone of 11 Carlton House Terrace and Hawarden Castle, in a room on the ground floor of the charitable premises, which had enriching pictures on all the walls. The pictures had been chosen carefully by Mrs Gladstone herself and some were beautiful as well as evangelical. The lane outside the building was so narrow that only the smallest of carts could navigate it, but footsteps hurried along continuously, and passers-by called and chattered outside the windows.
‘Good morning, Mrs – Stacey, is it?’
‘Good morning, Mrs Gladstone.’
Although they were so many worlds away from one another, they were both, in their own way, strong and confident women. Both were dressed well and unfussily although Mrs Stacey was in brighter colours. Their voices, of course, denoted their very different lives.
‘Please sit here.’
There were comfortable chairs. But for a moment Isabella Stacey simply stared in amazement. Mrs Gladstone was wearing a plain but elegant gown but from a pocket at her breast an embroidered handkerchief could be clearly seen. And the woman from Wakefield-street recognised it at once – for she herself had sewn it; it was a material sample that one of the salesmen had given her, and in the corner she could see the tiny pink embroidered roses that Mattie had loved.
‘What can I do for you, Mrs Stacey? Tell me about yourself. What did my husband suggest for you?’
It was unlike Isabella to be lost for words. She sat down slowly, still looking at the handkerchief. The summer day made the small room warm; Isabella looked for inspiration to the pictures on the wall; even the less sentimental and more artistic ones were mostly of fallen women redeemed, presumably by the Lord, or the Gladstones.
Then she looked back at the woman sitting so confidently across from her; if there was such a thing as an aristocratic mien, Mrs Gladstone possessed it. She was not neat and tidy and removed; she seemed warm and sympathetic and somehow unpatronising. But she was from another world.
Isabella moved her chair slightly so that she was directly opposite the other woman in order to be sure to hear her. And then plunged in.
‘I’m sorry to start with a surprise for both of us, Mrs Gladstone, but I made the handkerchief that you wear – the cream silk was given me and you will know it has three pink roses in one corner and one in the middle, which I embroidered myself. My daughter gave it to Lord Arthur Clinton in Mudeford when he was – distressed.’
Composed and confident as she was, Catherine Gladstone could not have been more thrown. Her hand had automatically flown to the handkerchief; confronted with this introduction, and with her hand still at her breast, Mrs Gladstone was momentarily speechless. Finally her eyes turned to the little bell on the table.
‘I didn’t come here to cause you any trouble, Mrs Gladstone, be sure of that. I didn’t know you’d be wearing my handkerchief.’
‘What have you come here for? How did you get in?’
‘How did you get my handkerchief?’
They stared at one another until Isabella pulled herself together and said: ‘Do you know Elijah Fortune?’
‘Elijah? Of course I do.’ This subject was somehow reassuring to Mrs Gladstone, yet also even more bizarre.
‘Have you seen him lately?’
‘No, and I was so sorry when he left. He was Head Doorkeeper at the House for so long – I often go of course to hear my husband speak. Elijah had reached retirement age, they told me.’
‘He’s exactly the same age as your husband, Mrs Gladstone. He didn’t retire, he was evicted from his position and his home very early one morning about a year ago by some new doorkeepers who had suddenly been appointed. They almost literally threw Elijah and his wife into the street. It is for Elijah I have come to see you this morning. He’s never been allowed back in the building since.’
‘I cannot believe that!’
‘I think you’ll find that that is exactly what happened.’
‘But why?’
‘Because he was trying to collect money from Members of Parliament to help Lord Arthur Clinton get to France, that’s why. Elijah’s actions were – disapproved of by some.’
‘But – Mr Gladstone does not know this, of course. He would never have allowed such a thing!’
‘Elijah believed his dismissal was arranged by some of the bishops in the House of Lords. A year ago, during the first trial, it was dangerous, if you remember, Mrs Gladstone, to be connected with Lord Arthur under any circumstances. I am sure you and the Prime Minister were aware of that also because of your own relationship with him.’
Mrs Gladstone rose majestically. ‘Surely, Mrs Stacey, you understand it is deeply impertinent of you to speak of such things to me.’
The other woman did not rise. She bowed her head for a moment before she began speaking again. It may have looked like penitence for impertinence; it was actually Isabella trying to control her anger.
‘My clever, beloved – much better educated than me – son, William – like your son, I believe, Mrs Gladstone – was a clerk in the Parliament, and much admired. He loved his work, he had been there ten years, he even worked sometimes in your husband’s office when there were extra letters to be written, so highly was he thought of. He was dismissed at the same time as Elijah.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I am the landlady at 13 Wakefield-street, of which you have probably heard.’
‘I see.’ Icy now at once.
Still Isabella Stacey did not rise. ‘It is a lodging house, Mrs Gladstone. Just like a thousand lodging houses in London. We are by Kings Cross Station and we used to have a lot of cotton cloth salesmen from the North as lodgers – which is why I recognise the handkerchief – they used to bring their samples to show to big businesse
s in London. One of them gave me that beautiful cream silk square you are wearing.’
She too rose at last.
‘They had been coming for years. It’s changed now of course – we lost many of them after the first trial, my daughter, who had to give evidence, was called a whore and we had SODOMITE LOVERS writ on our walls, which I do not expect was your own experience. Mr Boulton and Mr Park – let’s not pretend you don’t know who I’m talking about – told me they were actors and needed somewhere to keep their costumes for private theatricals. I worked at the wardrobes in Drury Lane and the Haymarket for many years, so I know actors often have to provide their own costumes.’
Mrs Stacey moved towards the door, but turned back.
‘Now at least you know truthfully why Elijah Fortune and my son lost their positions in the noble Parliament of Great Britain: because of their connection – however indirect and Elijah’s through nothing but kindness – to Lord Arthur Clinton, someone you were connected with also.’
Quickly Mrs Gladstone put out a hand to stop her leaving. ‘Please, Mrs Stacey.’ Mrs Gladstone took a deep breath. ‘Let us both sit again.’ She gestured graciously. Almost reluctantly the other woman came back; they both sat.
There was something about Isabella Stacey: it was quite clear to Catherine Gladstone that she was speaking completely honestly. Mrs Gladstone, who had experience of listening to women from a different class than her own, got caught up in the story despite herself, and believed it. Besides, she realised now she knew part of this woman’s story already, but did not yet say so.
‘You – you may have – met Arthur, Lord Arthur, perhaps?’
‘We did, yes.’
Mrs Gladstone looked down at her own hands for a moment and then said: ‘Would you like it if I ordered tea?’
The Petticoat Men Page 36