Like so many other landladies, the two Miss Callbecks lost their lodgers as soon as the infection started. The couple from Grimsby, who had occupied the two back bedrooms and sold tickets at the theatre, packed their bags on the day the theatre closed, and Mr Richards, who had been their mainstay for so long, wrote to cancel his tenancy saying he would be staying in London ‘for the foreseeable future’.
‘We must not despair, sister,’ Thomasina said. ‘The scourge will pass in time. Other lodgers will arrive.’
‘Let us pray so,’ Evelina said.
‘Depend upon’t,’ Thomasina assured her. ‘Meantime, you will stay indoors and I will go to market. There is no sense in both of us being exposed to infection and though you are younger you are weaker than I.’
‘Should we not take turns?’ Evelina asked. They had always taken turns. Always. In all their chores.
‘No,’ Thomasina said sternly. ‘Not in this. This is too serious. My mind is made up.’
‘Should we visit poor Billy and Matilda?’ It seemed heartless to be skulking indoors when poor little Matty was fighting for her life. ‘And Annie and James and Jimmy?’
‘No,’ her sister said again. ‘I will post a letter from time to time on my way to market. There is nothing we can do to help, even if we were to visit. We should only be a nuisance. No, we must protect ourselves, Evelina. In any case, if I am any judge of character, Nan will remain in Bury until both the children are well and she will be sure to keep us informed.’
And sure enough, two days after Beau’s funeral, Nan wrote to John to say that she and Billy would be staying in Bury until they were quite certain that Jimmy and Matty had recovered, and that Annie and James had been nursed through the worst of their grief.
‘’Tis like to be the middle of January afore we are back, so you must run the company without us, which I have perfect confidence you will do uncommon well. Pray give my love to Harriet and all the dear children. We put great burdens upon you both I fear.’
So John ran the company single-handed. He was busier than he had ever been in his life, and even though he was torn with pity for his poor sister, and anxious in case the smallpox broke out in London, he was secretly well pleased with the way he was dealing with the firm’s affairs. Billy came down to London once or twice to ‘keep an eye on the warehouse’, and Nan wrote daily letters, but they weren’t necessary. Everything ran like clockwork. It was most satisfactory, and proved that he could control the firm with ease for as long as his mother would allow and, what was more, that he could take it over entirely if she would only give him the chance.
In the freezing cold of early January many of the provincial coaches didn’t run, and others were cancelled at the last minute because their drivers had fallen sick, but it was a matter of great pride to him that his carefully corrected timetables were equal to any demand that weather and epidemic could put upon them. As the weather worsened he carried them about with him wherever he went, a bulky package in the lower pocket of his greatcoat, so if one coach failed he knew at once how it could be replaced. It meant a great deal of work, of course, for he updated every timetable every night, often continuing into the small hours, sitting in his panelled office on the top floor of the house with two candlesticks to light his way and a purring sense of satisfaction to keep him wakeful until the job was done. And although he would never have admitted it to anybody, not even Harriet, because it was really rather improper, if it hadn’t been for the smallpox it would have been one of the happiest times of his life.
Until the night he took a chill.
It had been a most unpleasant day, dark and cold and with a constant pervasive drizzle, and as he’d been out in it most of the afternoon, visiting the newspaper proprietors and checking the departure of the evening stages, he wasn’t surprised when after he’d been working on the timetables for an hour or two, his throat began to prickle and his nose to run. He left his office with his brain still comfortably occupied with calculations, took up his candle and tiptoed downstairs to his bedroom on the floor below to find a clean handkerchief.
Harriet was sleeping, white as a statue in their high bed, lying on her side with the scarlet coverlet tucked underneath her chin and her pale hair trailing across the pillow. In the pool of golden light from his candle, she looked like a saint in a stained-glass window, so still and untroubled and pure of profile, and for a few seconds he stood beside the bed, simply enjoying the sight of her. My dearest, he thought. She is such a good woman, so quietly, comfortingly good, taking all these children into her home and looking after them so well. My dearest Harriet.
But then his nose needed attention and he had to find a handkerchief quite quickly. They were in a pile in the top drawer of the dressing table, beautifully clean and ordered. Dear Harriet. But as he shut the drawer, easing it slowly so as not to wake her, a white paper fell from the dressing table and fluttered to the floor. Neatness and order were disturbed. So naturally he bent down at once to retrieve it.
It was a letter, lying face upwards on the rug, its heavy handwriting spider-black, unfamiliar, foreign. He was reading it as he picked it up, his senses prickling because it had no place in their peaceful, gentle bedroom.
‘My dearest Harriet, Tha’s right …’ What presumption was this? Thee/ Tha? The familiarity of it was like a blow to his stomach, making him wince. But he read on, holding the little page close to the candle, for now that he had begun there was no turning back. He had to know it all, every single word, no matter how painful, and particularly the name of the man who had written them. For it had to be a man. It was too like a love-letter for any other possibility. ‘Your friend in love and admiration, Caleb Rawson.’
Of course, he thought, putting the letter back in exactly the same place from which it had fallen. Caleb Rawson. Of course. I might have known it. That ugly common man, with his low forehead and his coarse hands and his rough speech. Caleb Rawson. And he remembered the way the wretched man came visiting at Rattlesden, as if he belonged there and, worst of all, the way Harriet had walked through St Peter’s Fields on the day of the massacre with her clothes torn and her hair tumbled about her face, looking so very unlike herself that he’d thought she was a whore. Dear God! He’d thought she was a whore.
She was still sleeping peacefully, as if nothing had happened, breathing softly into the pillow and looking more beautiful than ever. How could you? he thought, staring down at her. How could you do this to me when I love you so much?
But then reason returned. Had she done anything? There was a letter written certainly, and a most compromising letter, but it hadn’t been written by her. She had merely received it. She might have answered it with the proper rebuke it deserved. But then if that were the case, she would surely have told him all about it, and she had said nothing. But then again, perhaps it had only just arrived. Perhaps she hadn’t had time to consider what to do about it. I must not misjudge her, he told himself. I must not be precipitate. I must wait. Perhaps she will speak of it in the morning.
And the thought made him yearn to speak to her, then, at that moment, and desire rose in him so strongly that if he hadn’t known how tired she was and how much she needed her sleep, he would have been tempted to wake her and make love to her. He needed to feel loved, to know that she was his, and his alone, to be comforted with kisses, lifted by passion, eased by ecstasy. But that would be selfishness, he told himself. I must not be selfish. I must wait till the morning. All this could be resolved so easily in the morning. He would get undressed, quietly, and go to sleep. That was much the best way. There was no need to be precipitate.
And truly, lying beside her sleeping warmth in the familar ferny mustiness of their high bed, he felt more and more certain that there would be some perfectly proper explanation of that awful letter. It would all be resolved by love. In the morning.
When he woke she was smiling at him, her eyes a mere three inches away from his own. He kissed her at once, before consciousness and memory retu
rned, savouring the soft pressure of her lips, her white breast lifting, her belly rounding against his, desire growing slowly and pleasurably as it always did. He kissed her again and again and again.
‘Dear, dear John,’ she said, stroking the dark hair at his temples. ‘How I do love you –’ sinuous against him. ‘Yes, yes, yes,’ rolling onto her back, welcoming him.
And at the very moment of their sharpest ecstasy, as they rocked together, nearly nearly there, he suddenly remembered the letter, spider-black and foreign and insulting. All his desire was lost in an instant. He was weak and wilted. He couldn’t continue. The ignominy of it was overwhelming.
‘What is it?’ she asked, holding him about the waist. ‘Oh John, my dear, what is it?’
‘Nothing,’ he said, rolling away from her, turning his back on her, confused and embarrassed.
‘John, my dear?’ she said, putting her arm round his neck.
He shook her hand away almost angrily and got out of the bed.
‘It is nothing,’ he said brusquely. And he found a clean handkerchief and blew his nose loudly. ‘Nothing I tell ’ee. Time I was dressed. I shall be late for the sorting.’ And he rang the bell for young Tom.
She was very upset, but she decided not to say anything because he was squinting with misery. ‘I will go and see how the children are,’ she said, and she smiled at him to show that she loved him and that it was of no consequence. But he was putting on his dressing gown and didn’t look at her.
I ought to tell her about the letter, he thought, watching her walk out of the door. I ought to ask her. But his courage had failed him too. No, no. Better to wait until the next one arrived. He would make it his business to stay at home until the post had been delivered. Today and tomorrow and tomorrow until a letter did arrive. Then he would see.
But although that morning’s post brought two letters, neither was from Caleb Rawson. His was from his mother, saying she was returning to London that afternoon, and instructing him to have the books ready for her inspection at four o’clock, and Harriet’s was from Annie.
‘Jimmy is now quite recovered,’ she wrote, ‘even from the stiffness in his poor hands, which has eased at last. Oh Harriet my dear, I cannot bear to be parted from my dear girls for another moment, and we are all out of quarantine now. Mama is bringing Jimmy and me back to London with her tomorrow, which will be today as you read this letter. She says we may stay at Bedford Square for a day or two, but I would so much rather be with you and John. Could we seek refuge with ’ee too, my dear? You must say no if it is too much. I would not wish to be a burden. James will stay in Rattlesden, of course, to be with his parishioners, since so many have lost children or relations in the outbreak. Three died in one cottage. It has been the most terrible time. I cannot tell you how terrible. The worst of it is that nobody can tell when it will be over. Your Mr Rawson wrote us such a fine letter. His little boy died of the smallpox too. Did you know? Oh how much I want to see you again!’
‘Yes,’ John said, when he had read the letter too. ‘Of course she shall stay here and for as long as she likes.’ He wasn’t sure whether he was pleased to hear of Mr Rawson’s letter or not. It seemed to have comforted Annie, and it showed that the wretched man wrote to everybody, but even so ‘your Mr Rawson’ was a deal too familiar.
And so Annie was welcomed and settled into the house and her poor scarred Jimmy was reunited with his sisters and cousins. Will examined the scars with intense interest and after they were both, sent to bed that evening, demanded to be told ‘all about the smallpox, and cousin Beau’s death and the journey down and everything’. And was. Apart from the more lurid and personal details, which were too painful to contemplate.
He was most impressed. ‘What a thing to have seen an epidemic,’ he said, gazing at his cousin with blue-eyed admiration. ‘We missed it all down here in London, you know.’
‘You were jolly lucky,’ Jimmy said. ‘You just go on missing it, that’s my advice.’
It was Harriet’s most fervent hope, and the theme of every prayer she uttered for the next anxious fortnight. Although she was glad to see her dear Annie again, and although she did everything she could to comfort her and make her life easy, it still seemed the cruellest irony that in order to be kind and charitable to Annie she had to subject herself to the daily ordeal of another secret quarantine. For what if they’d brought the infection with them, after all? She drew another little calendar at the back of her diary, and crossed off the days, yet again, just as she’d done before and with exactly the same mixture of hope and foreboding.
On the third day Billy and Matilda came home, calling on their way to Torrington Square to collect Edward and thank Harriet with tears in their eyes for her ‘uncommon kindness’. On the fifth, Nan arrived to take them all to the Vauxhall Gardens to see a firework display, which she said was just the thing to cheer them and which Harriet enjoyed although she hadn’t expected to. And John went about his work as though nothing were the matter, except that he never made love to her once, so she knew he was secretly as worried as she was. Despite the fireworks, it was a difficult time.
But the fortnight passed eventually and John recovered from his cold and there was no sickness in anyone else. And James wrote to Annie to say that the epidemic was dying down. ‘We only had two new cases in the parish last week,’ he wrote, ‘and that is a very good sign. Soon we shall all be together again, my darling, and what a joy that will be.’ And a letter arrived from Caleb late one afternoon which was full of comfort and hope, and pleased both women very much. ‘All bad things pass,’ he said. ‘I reckon ’tis like a great wheel a-turning. But we must give t’ wheel a shove now and then, else it’ud crush us down instead a’ carrying us on.’
‘How very true that is,’ Harriet confided to her diary. ‘All bad things do pass. Even this dreadful epidemic cannot last for ever. Soon it must end, and then we shall stop feeling afraid and my dear John will love me again, just as he used to. It distresses him to be unable. That is why he makes no attempt. I am sure of it. For if that were not the cause, it would mean he did not love me, and I could not bear to think that. Oh, if only I could make all right for him. Pleasure would be so healing. I must hold on to Caleb’s certain truth. All bad things pass.’
But this particular bad time was not quite over. There was another victim falling ill of the smallpox even as she wrote. And this time death came swiftly and most terribly.
Four days later, Nan received a letter from Evelina Callbeck.
‘This I am most sorrowful to say, my dear Nan, is to tell ’ee that my poor dear sister Thomasina is dead. Only three days ago she was out to market. I cannot believe it. She would not allow me to venture from the house because of the smallpox, and now you see how it is. Well, well. She was always so kind and loving to me. How I shall manage now I cannot think, but you are not to worry yourself on my account. I shall think of something. Thomasina always said we would think of something.
‘Howsomever the funeral is arranged. It was so very quick, Nan dear. I cannot believe nor understand it. Mr Thistlethwaite came in every day. He said it was because the spots would not come out. They never did you see, my dear Nan, and she suffered so much. It is at three of the clock on Thursday. Pray on no account allow any of the family to attend. There is no end to the danger in this town. I am quite able to attend a funeral on my own, even the funeral of my own dear sister.’
Nan wrote back at once: ‘I shall be in Whiting Street at two of the clock. You will most certainly not attend a funeral on your own. I never heard of such a thing.’
And at two of the clock, there she was, with Bessie and Thiss beside her and Mr Cosmo Teshmaker behind them. So Evelina was well supported, after all, standing between Thiss and Cosmo and weeping quietly with her head on the lawyer’s shoulder. Afterwards when the little gathering drove back to her house in the comfortable privacy of Nan’s closed carriage, she wept again and told them all, between tears, how very grateful she was to them, and ho
w much she valued their friendship.
‘Squit!’ Nan said, fretting her cold hands with loving fierceness. ‘What are friends for? And you en’t to worry about the future neither, for I’ll take care of ’ee, so I shall.’
They stayed with her for over an hour, telling her what a fine woman Thomasina had been and drinking her tea, until she was over the worst of her tears and seemed more settled. It was growing dark when they climbed into the carriage for the return trot to Angel Hill.
And halfway across the square, Cosmo suddenly suprised them all by announcing that he seemed to have left his gloves behind at Whiting Street.
‘’Ten’t like you to be forgetful,’ Nan said.
‘No, indeed.’
‘Then you’d best make tracks and retrieve ’em, had you not?’ Shall we turn the coach about?’
‘No, no’ he said. ‘A stop would be sufficient. I can walk.’
‘Well, well, well,’ Nan said, when they’d stopped and let him out. ‘He’s in a mortal hurry for a pair of gloves.’
‘If it weren’t fer that gammy leg,’ Bessie said, watching him from the window, ‘I swear you’d say he was running.’
And so he was, traversing the square in a series of long gliding hops, his greatcoat flapping behind him in the wind. He was on his way back to Miss Evelina Callbeck. He was forty-eight years of age, he’d been a bachelor all his life, and he had a club foot which he’d always considered a barrier to any possibility of courtship, but now her great need had overcome his timidity. He was going to propose to her.
They were married six weeks later, very quietly of course, in the church of St Clements’ Danes in the Strand, on the day that Bury St Edmunds was finally declared to be free of the smallpox. Nan Easter and Frederick Brougham were witnesses and the new Mr and Mrs Teshmaker gave a private dinner party afterwards in the groom’s modest house in Tavistock Street.
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