Harriet tried to deflect her mother’s wrath by an apology. ‘I am very sorry, Mama,’ she murmured, looking down meekly at the flagstones.
It didn’t work. ‘After all the money we’ve spent on your education,’ Mrs Sowerby ranted, ‘all the trials and tribulations, all the scrimping and saving, I should have thought the very least we could expect was to be allowed to sleep sound in our beds at night. But no, you see how it is, Mr Sowerby, we give her an inch and this is how she repays us, forcing us to sit up all hours.’ She was well into her harangue by now and swollen with the pleasure of it, her small grey eyes glaring, her long face flushed with righteous indignation. ‘Well let me tell you this, my girl, you needn’t think we shall be so quick to allow you such a treat the next time you come a-begging for it. You’ll ask in vain if this is the way you intend to go on.’
‘Unnecessary luxuries,’ her father said sternly from his seat before the fire, ‘invariably provoke selfishness in the young.’ His chin was covered in grizzly stubble and his cheeks were lined by fatigue, but Harriet felt no sympathy for him.
It was horribly unfair, she thought, and quite untrue. She hadn’t begged to be allowed to go to the ball. She never begged her parents for anything. It was a point of honour with her. But she said nothing for fear of provoking a beating. She knew how easy it was to provoke punishment and her mother’s chastening rod was hanging beside the mantelpiece, ready for use and glistening blood-red in the firelight. Meekness and stillness were the only defence she knew, so she stood quite still before her mother’s renewed assault, listening to the click and rustle of the coals and watching the flickering pattern of the firelight on the flagstones, and taking great care not to let the slightest tremor of an expression appear on her face, as if she had been frozen to the spot. Only her thoughts moved, and although her mother couldn’t know it, her thoughts were boiling.
‘What have you got to say for yourself, eh, girl?’ her father growled when Mrs Sowerby finally paused for breath.
‘I am truly sorry, Papa,’ she said obediently, ‘to have been the cause of your distress. ’Twas not intended.’ But she didn’t look up at him.
‘Let us pray!’ her mother ordered, slapping the family Bible onto the table with a crash that made Harriet flinch visibly, despite her self-control.
The little involuntary shiver gave her mother an exquisite sense of satisfaction. ‘Our Father,’ she said happily.
So for the next twenty minutes Harriet was prayed over and prayed for. Her selfishness was deplored, and her tardiness, and the fact that she had forgotten the fifth Commandment, and finally Jesus himself was asked to forgive her sins through the power of His blessed blood, and she was allowed to take the candle and precede her parents up their narrow wooden staircase in the corner of the room and creep away to bed.
At the top of the staircase there was a dark space which the Sowerbys glorified with the title ‘the landing’, but which was actually little bigger than a doormat and served only to provide somewhere to stand while you opened the bedroom door. Here, Harriet set the candle in its niche and dutifully opened the door for her parents, standing aside while they entered, waiting while they lit their own candles, and then walking subserviently past them into the darkness of her own room.
It looked more like a cell than ever after the splendour and colour of the Athenaeum with its whitewashed walls and its sparse furniture and that formidable black crucifix suspended above her uncomfortable truckle bed, like an unforgiving eye of God. She snuffed out the candle, undressed quickly and got into bed, ready for sleep to blot out the unpleasant vision. Somewhere on the other side of the town she knew that a huge white moon was flooding the houses with clean light, but here the only hint of its presence was the silver edging that glowed along the ridge of rooftops immediately above her. The ball was over and Cinderella was back among the ashes, with her hired gown hanging on a hook on the door and her dancing pumps waiting to be cleaned in the morning.
But she had been to the ball and she’d danced with one of the princes of the town – Mr Easter, no less. Wouldn’t Mama be cross if she knew that!
She folded her hands neatly together above the coverlet and began to say her own silent prayers, inside her head where only God could hear them: Thank you for letting me go to the Ball, Lord, and letting me dance with Mr Easter. Could you possibly put it into his head to dance with me again? I would be very grateful. Of course, if you cannot do this, I shall accept my lot with cheerfulness … She knew that was the right sort of thing to tell her Maker, because He was an extreme power and as such, of course, He had to be propitiated … For Thine is the Kingdom, the Power and the Glory. Amen.
On Angel Hill the revellers were still thronging the cobbled square, away from the deserted stalls and the debris of the fair, and the object of Harriet’s prayers was climbing over the high flint wall into the shadowy darkness of the abbey gardens. He climbed under protest, because even in his pleasantly befuddled state he knew it was hardly a proper thing for an Easter to be doing, but Billy and his friends were already on the other side and hooting at him to join them and Billy was so drunk he would have to be looked after, so he really had little choice.
He had come drifting out of the Athenaeum with a head full of tender dreams, remembering the softness of that quiet girl, and the delicacy of her apricot blush and the way her long, light eyelashes shadowed her pale cheeks. Indeed, if it hadn’t been for the fact that he was an eminently sensible young man, he might almost have fancied he was falling in love. But then Billy had erupted from the hall and gone staggering off towards the abbey gardens, and there was nothing for it but to cease dreaming and follow him.
The lawns below him were velvety black in the moonlight and there was still a faint trace of the woodbine and musk roses that had perfumed the place at dusk, and further down the hill, where the river Lark was gurgling towards the fish ponds, a nightingale was singing its passionate throbbing song. For a few seconds, as he scrabbled precariously astride the rough flints, grabbing at the clumps of yellow stonecrop that grew along the top of the wall and gathering what little balance he had left before he jumped, John thought how very much more pleasant it would have been if he could have been walking in these quiet gardens with that nice quiet Miss Sowerby instead of chasing after his brother. Then the chirruping and hallooing began again. ‘Chuck! Chuck! Johnnie Easter, who’s afraid to jump?’ And the moment passed as he plunged into the darkness.
Billy was already charging through the rose garden, slashing at the new buds with his cane, his rowdy friends close behind him loud with admiration and drunkenly falling about, either into one another or into the bushes. ‘Ho, Billy Easter! Ain’t he just a card?’ They galloped and chortled downhill until they came to the swampy field where the ruins of the old abbey still stood haphazardly among the grasses like the broken teeth and jagged bones of some long-buried giant.
Billy took a running leap at the nearest remnant, which was a low broken wall from which two sides of an ancient tower still stood miraculously upright. He clung to the gnarled stones for a second, searching for a toehold among the lichens, then he began to climb, singing and chirruping as he went. ‘I’m in love! I’m in love! With a heigh nonny no and a heigh nonny – oops – ne!’
John was appalled.
‘Come down!’ he said, standing at the foot of the tower and looking up at his brother’s flailing legs. ‘Come down before you fall!’ He was aware that he sounded just like old Bessie Thistlethwaite scolding a child, and the knowledge irritated him and increased his anger. ‘Have done, for pity’s sake! You are making a spectacle of yourself.’
The rebuke made Billy worse. ‘Ho, ho!’ he chortled, clutching the tower with one hand and swinging his body carelessly out into the void. ‘’T ain’t the way for an Easter to behave, eh Johnnoh?’ His friends were cheering him on and throwing their kerchiefs into the air to twist and flutter and fall like huge ungainly moths, so he contrived a jackknife bow to them in midair an
d began to blow kisses to them and the moon. ‘Wheeee!’ he shouted. ‘I’m in love! In love! In love! With the prettiest girl in the world, what’s more. Rollicking head over rollicking heels! Wheeeeee!’
‘Who is she, Billy?’ his friends called. ‘Who’s the lucky lady?’
‘Miss Matilda Honeywood,’ he shouted down to them. ‘Miss Matilda Honeywood, the prettiest girl in the world, damn me if she ain’t. Wheee! I’m in love!’
‘You’re always in love,’ John said flatly, his own thoughts of love quite spoilt by all this silly talk. ‘Come down, do, or you’ll pretty soon be in the cemetery.’
But that only brought a barrage of mockery. ‘Who’s your friend, Billy? Who’s Mr Killjoy, eh? Oh go home, Johnnie Easter, you wet blanket.’
Billy took no notice of any of it, being drunkenly and cheerfully self-centred. ‘Look at me!’ he yelled, unnecessarily, and he flung both arms in the air and fell backwards out of the tower.
For a few seconds they all watched in stunned silence as his legs disappeared behind the arch, then there was a thud as he hit the ground and they all ran to find him.
He’ll have done himself an injury as sure as fate, John thought anxiously, as he scrambled over the wreckage of the wall, craning his neck to see where his brother had fallen. And sure enough there he was, lying on his back among the grasses like a dead thing, with one arm flung behind his head and his legs spreadeagled.
‘Oh,’ he said, as he ran towards the corpse, ‘why wouldn’t you listen to me?’
‘He ain’t dead!’ Ebenezer Millhouse said, lugging Billy’s body about like a floppy doll. ‘He can sit up like ninepence, can’t ye, Billy?’
‘In love, Eb,’ Billy said, with his eyes shut. ‘Tha’s what ’t is.’ Then he slid back onto the grass again.
‘We must carry him home,’ John said, taking command, ‘and put him to bed and call the surgeon. I can’t think what Mama will say.’
‘Sleep here,’ Billy suggested happily.
‘There’s no blood,’ Ebenezer reported. He’d been feeling the back of his friend’s head. ‘Not even damp. See?’ And he held up his fingers towards the moonlight so that John could see the absence of gore for himself.
Between them they hauled Billy home, and very difficult it was, for he was very heavy and manhandling him over the wall was like shifting a hundred weight sack of coal. But eventually they were all panting on the doorstep of his mother’s fine house and John could hear Bessie’s slippered feet slopping towards the door.
‘Lawks a mercy!’ she said, when she saw her young master slumped against the pillar. ‘What you been an’ gone an’ done to poor Mr Billy?’ She was in her nightgown and her frilled nightcap was tied under her little round chin in an elaborate starched bow. Above its smoothness her face was crinkled with concern. ‘Poor Mr Billy!’
‘He’s drunk, Bessie,’ John explained quickly before Ebenezer could tell her anything else. ‘That’s all. We’ll carry him to bed, if you will kindly light the way.’
So the groaning lover was brought to bed, and undressed and bundled under the covers, and while Bessie saw out his helpful friends, John took a good look at the back of his head in the light of one of his triple-headed candlesticks. He was relieved to discover that although his brother’s hair was matted with leaf mould and there was a lump on the back of his skull, there were no abrasions and no other signs of injury.
‘Easy on, Johnnoh!’ Billy complained. ‘Got a head fit to beat the band, dontcher know.’
‘You’re jolly lucky you didn’t kill yourself,’ John said, putting the tousled head back upon the pillow, none too gently.
‘You ain’t goin’ are you, Johnnoh?’
‘No,’ John said wearily. ‘I’ll stay here. Don’t worry. I’ll look after you.’
Which he did, and very exhausting it was, for despite his careful examination of Billy’s head, he was still worried that his brother might have hurt himself more seriously than he realized. So he slept lightly, waking at every sound and every movement, just in case it was the first sign of a seizure or a fever or some other medical emergency so dire he couldn’t even name it.
When the chambermaid brought up their tea at eight the next morning, Billy was sleeping like a baby and seemed perfectly recovered from his night’s adventure, but John crept down to breakfast dark-eyed with fatigue.
Their mother was already at table consuming a vast quantity of devilled kidneys, sliced bacon, eggs and potatoes, washed down by strong beer. ‘Ho!’ she said when she saw the fragile state her younger son was in. ‘You had a night on the tiles and no mistake.’
He bristled with annoyance that she should have misjudged him so. ‘Not at all, Mama,’ he said, stiffly. ‘Billy went climbing the ruins and fell from the tower. I’ve been sitting up all night with him.’
‘Was he hurt?’ she said carelessly, and as she spoke Billy ambled into the room, yawning and dishevelled but obviously healthy. ‘What have you been up to, you rogue?’ she said lovingly as he kissed her.
‘Took a bit too much to drink, Ma,’ he admitted ruefully, holding the top of his head firmly in a useless attempt to press his headache down and away. ‘That’s the size of it. Got a bit squiffy. Johnnie was a good scout –’ grinning his gratitude at his brother. ‘He brought me home in one piece. More or less.’
‘More fool you,’ she said, but affectionately and without the least hint of criticism. ‘Is Annie up?’
‘They are following me down.’ Billy looked at the table where the usual two places had been set for his sister and her husband. The movement of his head made his brother look too, so that both of them noticed the same thing at the same time. There was no place set for Calverley Leigh. The seat he usually occupied facing his mother was standing against the wall and the table had been smoothly set just for the five of them. Was he gone already? John wondered. Then the love affair must be over. How very surprising.
‘Left at first light this morning,’ his mother said, answering his thoughts. ‘Should be halfway to Wales by now.’ Then, spearing another kidney, she changed the subject with her customary abruptness. ‘Now. I’ve twenty minutes after breakfast to see your notebooks, Johnnie, and then I’ve booked a seat on the morning coach to take me back to London. There’s work to be done what won’t wait. And might I suggest to ’ee, Johnnie, that you do likewise.’
‘I had every intention,’ he said, stiff-necked, because she’d read his mind so accurately and because she’d wrong-footed him again, ordering him to do the very thing he was going to do anyway. ‘I mean to start at Scole and follow all the roads leading out from there – after checking the arrivals, of course, for that is crucial to the whole operation.’
‘Good!’ she approved, munching the kidney. ‘And what shall you do, Billy?’
Billy gave her his most mischievous grin. ‘Well as to that, Mama,’ he said, ‘I shall stay here and start a-courting.’
‘Shall you indeed?’ she laughed at him. ‘And what gives ’ee leave to presume I shall agree to it, eh?’
‘Because she’s a beauty, and she’s a wit, and she’s a darling, and she dances divinely, and I love her dearly.’ There was something else about her too, something that made him feel easy in her company, but that was too vague and too private to be confessed to his mother. ‘And besides all that, her father is Mr Horatio Honeywood.’
‘Is he now?’ Nan Easter said, grimacing her approval, dark eyes glinting. ‘Well she’ll not lack for dowry in all conscience.’ For Mr Honeywood was a considerable landowner, and reputed to be worth a fortune. ‘You’re a scamp, Billy Easter, but you’ve an eye for a pretty girl, I’ll say that for ’ee. Just don’t ’ee go a-rushing things, that’s all.’
‘Depend on it, Ma,’ Billy promised, and settled to his bacon.
Watching him as he ate, John felt aggrieved. I’ve done all the right things, he thought, bringing him home and staying awake half the night, and she doesn’t even thank me for it. What if I’d said I wanted to st
art courting? What would she have said to that? And he had a horrid suspicion that she would have laughed at him or mocked him for it. And he chewed a mouthful of eggs and bacon slowly, remembering the quiet girl.
‘We’ve a picnic planned for this afternoon,’ Billy was saying. ‘Will the weather hold, think ’ee?’
‘With your luck,’ John said, ‘it’s bound to.’
Chapter Three
The stagecoach to Scole and Norwich was late arriving in Bury St Edmunds that morning, and as a consequence the coachman was ill-tempered and inapproachable, which was a considerable disappointment to John Easter. It was a bad start, both to the day and to his new position as manager of the firm. And it was made worse by the memory of the words his mother had spoken as she left for London.
‘I shall watch to see how you get along, Johnnie,’ she’d promised briskly. ‘Plans on paper are all very well, my dear, howsomever ’tis how you put ’em into practice that counts.’
‘I will do my utmost,’ he’d promised, bowing to her formally and keeping his feelings completely hidden.
But now, as he scrambled aboard the dusty vehicle and took his seat outside, he was inwardly wincing at the enormity of the task he’d set himself. The organization of rapid and competent newspaper deliveries throughout the country depended almost entirely on the cooperation of the coachmen, and he wasn’t at all sure how any of them would react to his proposals. He had to be able to talk to this one on the road, but such an attempt would be most unwise now they were late.
He wrapped his travelling cloak neatly about his legs, comforting himself with the thought that there were several miles to travel yet, and that the coach was scheduled to stop for breakfast at the White Hart Inn in Scole where such talk might actually be more opportune. Meantime he would sit tight and say nothing and enjoy the journey; which was easy enough because sitting tight and saying nothing was almost second nature to him.
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