Fourpenny Flyer

by Beryl Kingston

  ‘And the magistrates will in their respective districts take such measures for strengthening the hands of civil power as shall seem necessary to preserve the peace therein.

  ‘By order.’

  ‘And what’s the meaning of that?’ she said

  ‘They mean to call out the military to the next demonstration hereabouts,’ Frederick told her. ‘That is what it means.’

  ‘In that case,’ she said, ‘let us hope they have no cause, at any rate not today or until after Johnnie’s wedding.’

  ‘Your sympathy for strikers is somewhat limited this morning, my dear,’ Frederick teased. ‘Correct me if I misremember, but do I not recall that you once expressed the sentiment that they had every right to protest?’

  ‘I don’t care what they do,’ she said, ‘nor where they do it, as you know right well, providing they don’t go upsetting my family.’ And she stamped her foot when he laughed at her. ‘Especially with the weather so fine.’

  And so it was: a beautiful spring day, with white clouds billowing like sails in the blue sky above the abbey walls and the smell of warm earth and green corn rising into the town from the surrounding fields.

  ‘Happy the bride the sun shines on,’ Annie said as she and Harriet walked out of the rectory on their way to church. The sunlight dappled down upon them between the branches of the yew so that Harriet’s new blond gown and Annie’s re-trimmed yellow one were spangled with shining discs of brightness. So slim and trim they were in their long straight gowns, and as pale and pretty as two spring flowers, with huge poke bonnets framing their faces like jonquils, and little green slippers already dew-stained on their feet and dark green stockings on ankles as slim as stems, holding their posies of spring flowers waist high so that the green ribbons they trailed lifted and winnowed in the morning breeze, like Annie’s fringe of fair hair and the one straight silver tress that had flown free from the restraints of Harriet’s modest topknot.

  ‘I shall not disgrace him, shall I, Annie?’ Harriet asked, clutching her posy of flowers so nervously that the jonquils trembled above her fingers.

  ‘You will be the dearest wife to him,’ Annie comforted, ‘and make him uncommon happy.’

  But now that the moment had arrived, Harriet was anxious. What if her parents had found out about the wedding? They could be sitting in the church at this very minute, just waiting for her to appear. And what would happen then? Oh dear, oh dear, she thought, as they arrived at the south porch. Suddenly she couldn’t be sure of anything. What if she was doing the wrong thing to marry him, after all?

  But then they were inside the dear peaceful church and the world and the sunshine were left behind and Mr Teshmaker was waiting to walk her down the aisle. The light from the great east window was diffused and gently coloured, and in the midst of it her compassionate Christ gazed down upon her and upon her dear, dear John, who was standing at the altar rail glancing back over his shoulder to see if she’d arrived.

  And all her worries melted away like the foolish things they were, and she walked happily down the little aisle towards her new life, with Mr Teshmaker gliding beside her. She was vaguely aware of Mrs Easter’s fine clothes and of the children gazing at her in round-eyed awe. And then there was only John’s face relaxing into a smile at the sight of her, and Mr Hopkins reaching down to take their hands.

  ‘Dearly beloved, we are gathered together here in the sight of God, and in the face of this congregation, to join together this Man and this Woman in holy Matrimony; which is an honourable estate….’

  Back in Bury two hundred men were congregating in Southgate Street. Some of them carried sharpened sticks, and their leaders bore a red and white flag on which the legend ‘Bread or Blood’ had been painted in letters every bit as ominous as the wording on the posters. They had marched in protest to the house of Mr Wales the hosier, who had bought one of the new spinning jennys and laid off most of his workforce in consequence, and now, as more and more men arrived to pack the narrow street, they were listening to Mr Henry Abbott of Rattlesden, who had organized the march.

  ‘We got right on our side, don’ ’ee forget, no matter how many men o’ the militia them ol’ mawthers do call out for to stop us,’ he was saying. ‘We don’ ask for nothin’ but what’s our nat’rul birthright, when all’s said an’ done. Our nat’rul birthright to work for a livin’. Tha’s all ’tis.’

  They were mild sentiments, and reasonably expressed, but the growl of agreement that rose from the packed masses around him was terrible to hear.

  In Manchester Mr Caleb Rawson was saying much the same thing to a meeting of Salford weavers. ‘I say we should go to London, friends, as many on us as can mek the journey. We’ve the right to do it. We should go to London and sign t’ petition, and gi’ our support to Mr Hunt at t’ meeting in the Spa Fields and show t’ bosses we mean business.’

  ‘What if t’ bosses ignore us, Caleb?’ another weaver asked. ‘What then, eh?’

  ‘Why, then we should march on Parliament, wi’ pikestaffs if need be, and mek our meaning so plain to ’em they must tek it whether they will or no.’

  ‘Eh lad, tha’rt a rare ‘un,’ the other weaver said.

  Mr and Mrs John Henry Easter, having breakfasted with their friends and relations, drove to their honeymoon through the green cornfields, past woods hazy with bluebells and hedgerows blossoming with white cow parsley and purple vetch. Above their heads horse chestnuts carried their heavy blossom like carved candles, creamy-white against the luscious new green. It was nearly May Day.

  ‘Where are we going, dear John?’ Harriet asked, as the horses trotted the Easter carriage easily along the road to Scole. ‘Shall you tell me now, or have I to wait until we arrive?’

  ‘’Tis a hidden place that no one has ever heard of,’ he said, tucking her hand inside the crook of his arm.

  ‘Is it far?’

  It was a very long way, five coach journeys, in fact, and uncommon long journeys at that, even with loving talk and fine weather to sustain them. The afternoon was still balmy as they drove through the Vale of St Albans but by the time they reached Oxford, where they stopped to dine, it was beginning to grow chill; the western sky was already more grey than blue and the ancient colleges looked stony and forbidding. But the meal refreshed them and the last lap of their journey, to a village called Witney, hardly took any time at all.

  ‘There will be a carriage waiting for us somewhere hereabouts,’ John said, as he helped her down from the coach outside the Crossed Keys Inn. But there was no sign of it and once the stage had gone trundling away taking its lanterns with it, the road was dark and empty. He was very annoyed, as she could see from the way he was squinting. But he remained calm and courteous, escorting her into the inn and ordering brandy and hot water for her, ‘to keep you warm while you wait, my love, which I promise you will not be for long,’ and then he went striding off along the dark street to find their promised vehicle.

  It took him half an hour and considerable suppressed temper, which was not improved when he discovered that the groom he’d hired had driven the carriage to the far end of the village green and was waiting in the shadows beside the church.

  ‘What possessed ’ee to wait in such an out-of-the-way place?’ he asked in weary exasperation.

  ‘I allus waits ’ere,’ the boy said, looking very puzzled by the gentleman’s annoyance. ‘I thought you’d ha’ know’d, sir. I allus waits ’ere. Right ’ere, right on this werry spot. I meant fer the best, sir.’

  There is nothing to be served by getting angry with him, John told himself, for he is plainly a dolt who knows no better, and the longer we argue the longer my Harriet will have to wait. But it marred the journey for all that, and he’d planned it so meticulously, wanting it to be perfect for her. Sighing, he climbed into the little vehicle and ordered the dolt to drive him to the Crossed Keys, ‘If you know where that is.’

  And so the honeymooners arrived at last in their hidden village, but by now it was
so dark that they could hardly see anything of it: a vague huddle of low cottages, a blackness of trees soughing and sighing, three candlelit windows among the sloping timbers of an inn. The night air was redolent with wood-smoke and farm manure and two owls were whooping to each other in the darkness.

  There is a mill stream hard by, Harriet thought, as the boy held up his lantern to light her down from the carriage. She could hear the creak of great wheels and the water murmuring and splashing in unmistakable rhythm. I wonder where we are.

  ‘Welcome to Minster Lovell, Mr Easter sir, Mrs Easter ma’am,’ the landlord said, rolling darkly out of the candlelight to greet them. ‘Thomas will take tha’ luggage sir. I hopes ’ee made a pleasant journey.’ And they were ushered into the inn.

  They were in a wide, warm room with oak beams above their heads and rushes under their feet. There was a settle drawn up beside the huge log fire all ready for them to sit upon, with cushions for their backs and stools for their heels, and two pewter mugs steaming on the hob.

  ‘Hot punch,’ their landlord explained, ‘for to send ’ee warm to tha’ slumber, sir and madam, after such a long journey. Now whatsomever else you may require, sir and madam, say the word, that’s all tha’s to do and ’twill be in tha’ hand soon as mentioned.’ He was a very short man and extremely stout with a round red face, sparse sandy hair and very pale eyes, but what he lacked in stature he more than made up for in hospitality.

  Although they would have preferred to go straight to their room, they drank their punch and toasted their toes and spent as long in the landlord’s company as John deemed polite, while Thomas clumped their luggage upstairs and two maids ran after him with brass bed-warmers. But at long long last etiquette was satisfied and they were allowed to open the oak door and climb the spiral staircase behind it to their bedroom, preceded by their landlord with a broad smile and a triple candlestick.

  It was an old-fashioned panelled room, which reminded them both of the hall in the rectory at Rattlesden, hung with tapestries and warmed by a log fire in the old stone hearth. There were two small shuttered windows set in the eaves, a carved oak linen-chest in one corner, a sheepskin on the boards before the hearth, and the bed was a huge four-poster, heavily curtained as they were both glad to see. The servants’ door was set directly in the corner of the room, but there was a key protruding from the lock and as soon as the maids had departed John closed the door after them and locked it firmly. They were on their own at last.

  ‘Now we are married, my own dear love,’ he said, ‘I shall undo the top three buttons of your gown and kiss your neck. Like this. And this. And this.’

  He was rather surprised that instead of standing still to receive his caress, as he’d hoped and expected, she ducked away from his hands and sped across the room to open their carpetbag, which had been left on a wooden stand beside the bed. He watched with growing amazement as she took a large towel out of the bag, turned back the covers of the bed, very neatly and deftly he noticed, and spread the towel across the undersheet.

  ‘What are you doing?’ he asked, walking towards her. She had made him feel rather aggrieved running away like that, and just at the very moment when he was feeling most loving.

  ‘Annie told me to,’ she said, pulling the towel smooth.

  ‘Do you always do as you are told?’ he asked, his sense of grievance melting as he began to tease.

  She answered him seriously. ‘Oh yes. Always.’

  ‘Then come here and let me kiss you.’

  Oh that was easy to obey! And so were all the other commands that followed. ‘Come back to the fire, my love, where it is warm’ … ‘Unpin your lovely hair and let it fall’ … ‘Put your arms about my neck, my dearest’ … ‘Hold me close, close, closer still!’ … ‘If I undo this lace, so, your chemise will fall, so, and you can step out of it, can you not?’ Oh she could, she could, shivering naked, her feet white against the yellow fleece, her mind shivering too, in case this was sinful, but reassured almost at once because his face was blazing love, his eyes lustrous as water and quite quite black in the leaping firelight.

  ‘Oh Harriet, my own dear darling,’ he said. ‘You are so beautiful.’ Standing before him, pearl-white and blue-eyed, like a goddess, with that straight pale hair framing her face and shimmering over her shoulders, and her limbs so slender and her belly so tenderly rounded and those pretty breasts casting pale blue shadows on her white skin. And he knelt at her feet, nuzzling her belly, kissing her breasts, and whispering, ‘I adore you. Adore you. Adore you,’ over and over again between kisses.

  She had not expected to be worshipped. Kissed and caressed and held close certainly, but not worshipped. Whatever we do when we are married, he had said, is right and proper and cannot be a sin. But to be worshipped? The confusion of it made her feel dizzy, so that she swayed and put out her hand to steady herself against his shoulder.

  The touch broke what little control he had left. In one movement he was on his feet and had lifted her in his arms. Two strides took them to the bed. Or was it even two? Neither of them could tell. Then time and movement blurred as kisses led them pleasurably on, swimming through emotion and sensation, warm and moist and vibrant, on and on until the moment of entry. ‘Yes, yes, yes,’ he said, thrusting in triumph, ‘you are mine, mine, mine.’

  And he hurt her. A sharp stinging pain as though he were pressing her with thorns. Neither the sensation nor the knowledge of it was any surprise to her. She had always suspected that she had been born for pain, so why should this supreme moment be any different? Even so, it was hard to bear in silence, and after a while she caught her breath, despite herself, and gave a little involuntary groan.

  He stopped moving at once. ‘What is it, Harriet my darling? Have I hurt you?’

  ‘It is nothing,’ she said, trying to reassure him.

  He was still panting and aching with desire, but he couldn’t go on. Not now. ‘I have hurt you,’ he said miserably. ‘Oh my beautiful, lovely Harriet, I am so sorry.’ Tears were already blocking his throat and stinging his eyes. How could he have done such a thing? ‘I am so sorry!’

  ‘It is nothing,’ she repeated softly. ‘It always happens. Annie said so. You have taken my maidenhead.’ And it was odd how proud it made her feel to say it. She had been sacrificed on the altar of love, like all wives since the beginning of time. ‘It always happens.’

  Then she realized that his eyes were full of tears and she was torn with pity for him. ‘Oh my dear, John, you mustn’t mind, for I’m sure I don’t.’

  ‘I love you and I have hurt you,’ he said, lifting his body away from her and sitting up. ‘You are all the world to me and I hurt you. I shall never forgive myself for it.’ ‘There is nothing to forgive,’ she said, putting her arms round his neck and kissing him. ‘It is God’s will, my dear, and quite natural. Consider that.’

  ‘Then I do not understand His purpose.’

  ‘Perhaps he means to teach us that there is always pain in love.’

  ‘I love you more than I have ever loved anyone in the whole of my life,’ he said. ‘Without you my life would be unbearable. You are everything to me. I would never, ever hurt you, not willingly. You must believe me.’

  Why, what a child he is to be so upset! she thought. And she felt wonderfully responsible for him. ‘You will not hurt me next time, I promise you,’ she said, ‘it is only the first. Annie said so.’

  ‘Devil take her,’ he said with sudden fury. ‘She had no cause to speak of it at all.’ He hadn’t discussed these things with Billy, even though he’d wanted to, so why had she been talking to Annie about them?

  ‘Hush, hush, my love,’ she said, smoothing his hair from those angry eyes. ‘Do not speak so.’

  He got out of the bed and found his nightshirt and put it on, controlling himself, wrapping calm and reason about him with the folds of linen. They must talk of other matters, to take their attention from this terrible failure. Other matters, he thought. And he remembered his noteb
ooks.

  He unpacked her nightgown and handed it to her, trying to smile, and while she was putting it on, sitting with her feet hidden among the tumbled sheets like a mermaid in white weed, he found the books, closed the bed-curtains and climbed back into the bed beside her.

  ‘Now that we are married,’ he said, and how matter-of-fact the old phrase sounded now, ‘I have great plans for the business. With you to help me, I shall expand our trade clear across the country.’

  The realization that he could turn from love to business so abruptly made her want to laugh, but she controlled the urge and sat up in the bed beside him ready to hear what he had to say.

  ‘Look ’ee here,’ he said, opening the largest book.

  It was a map of the British Isles, yellow in the candlelight, and threading through it, like veins through the body politic, were the red lines of Mr Chaplin’s coach routes. ‘I enter each new one as it is opened,’ he said with pride, ‘and here, do you see, are the shops that Easter’s own already, marked in black ink, and here are the ones I intend to open, marked in pencil. It is all planned.’

  ‘Is this your work, John?’ she asked, feeling she ought to show an interest. The candles were beginning to gutter and the shadows they cast flickered across the page.

  ‘Indeed it is,’ he said. ‘Billy may be a manager too, but he does nothing more than keep the warehouse in order and supervise the sorting. I am the one who builds up sales. And the key to building up sales lies here in Birmingham – He put his finger on a black circle in the middle of the map. ‘As soon as we are back in London, Harriet, I mean to travel to Birmingham and open as many shops as I can, and a sorting house, for once our papers are established there, they can be sent out to every point of the globe. It is a huge centre, and a growing one.’

  The first candle went out, with a gust of strong-smelling black smoke. Almost absent-mindedly he picked up the snuffers and put out the rest, talking all the time. ‘Mama is a magnificent business woman, but she has no method. She buys shops in fits and starts, you see my dear, and there is no profit in that. Howsomever, one day she will retire, or stand down, and then I tell you, Harriet, I mean to take over the business. This must be our secret, my love, for there ain’t another single living soul knows what I intend. But I shall do it, you may depend upon it. I understand the business so entirely, you see. Growth has to be deliberate and planned, moving from one town to the next, so that supplies are always moved easily, I might almost say inevitably….’