London (148 page)

It was mid-morning when she pulled into the bank. The spot she selected was a little jetty just by the village church. It was an old church, people said, from the days when the Conqueror came.

Horatio was so limp when she tried to get him out of the boat that she had to carry him. “Look Horatio, we have arrived,” she told him, but he hardly seemed to hear. With some difficulty she got him out on to the bank and wondered what she should do. Looking about, she noticed that in the little churchyard there was an old family tomb with a broad ledge round it, so picking him up, she carried him there and, sitting with her back to the tomb, rested his head against her chest and rocked him gently.

The churchyard was quiet. It seemed that few people came by the place at that hour of the morning. Some sparrows were chirping in the trees; river birds scudded along the bank now and then with shrill cries. For a few minutes the sun even broke through the film of grey cloud and she turned his face towards it, hoping its rays might revive him. Eventually his eyes opened and he gazed up at her, blankly.

“We’re here,” she said. “Look!” And she pointed to the slopes not far away. “You can see Lavender Hill.”

It took him a little time, but he managed to smile.

“We’ll just go up there,” she promised, “and you’ll feel better.”

He nodded slowly. “I think,” he said softly after a pause, “we should stay here a little longer.”

“All right,” she said.

He was silent for a time, though she could see he was staring up at Lavender Hill. Then his eyes took in the churchyard. “God lives in churches, doesn’t He?”

“Of course He does.”

Then he said, “Lavender Hill”, and closed his eyes for a time before coughing. It was a deep, thick cough that she had never heard before as though his lungs were full of liquid. She held him gently and stroked his brow.

Very quietly, he said: “Lucy?”

“Yes?”

“Am I dying?”

“Of course not.”

He tried to shake his head, but the effort was too great. “I think I am.”

She felt his body shudder a little, before he gave a shallow sigh.

“If I could live,” he said faintly, “I should like to live with you, at Lavender Hill.” He was silent for a moment. “I am glad you brought me here,” he murmured.

“Don’t leave me,” she begged. “You must fight!”

He did not answer. Then coughed again. “Lucy,” he whispered finally.

“Yes, my love?”

“Sing me the lavender song.”

So she did, very softly, cradling him in her arms as she sang.

“Lavender Blue, dilly dilly
Lavender Green,
When you are king, dilly dilly
I shall be queen.”

He sighed, and smiled. “Again.”

So again she sang the little song as though, by some magic, it could make him well. And yet again, keeping her voice as steady as she could, although she thought her heart would break. Whether it was the fifth or sixth time she could not afterwards remember, but it was just as she reached the words “When you are king, dilly dilly”, that she felt his frail little body quiver, and then go limp, so that, though she went on singing to the end of the verse, she knew that he was gone.

“It is a most remarkable case,” said Silversleeves. “A complete transference of personality. Notice the change of voice. He even seems to suppose he has another family.”

“So is he mad?” Bocton asked.

“Oh, entirely.”

“You can lock him up?”

“Certainly.”

“When?”

“Now, if you like.”

“That,” Bocton replied, “would suit me admirably. It will even help the political process.”

So great was the general public fury at the action of the Lords the night before that by mid-morning Sir Robert Peel’s new police, and the mayor’s police in the City, were preparing for riots. Within an hour of the vote in Westminster, members were saying that the king would be obliged to create more Whig peers to get reform through.

“The absence of my father,” Bocton remarked drily, “will reduce that necessity by one.”

At eleven-thirty in the morning a closed carriage entered the gates of the great hospital of Bedlam in Lambeth and from it the Earl of St James, looking frail and confused, was led into its splendid entrance hall.

He was not destined, however, to remain there very long.

It was the practice of the Bedlam, as long as you were a respectable person and purchased a ticket, to allow members of the general public to visit. Thanks to this liberal-minded policy, the curious could enter and observe all the persons whom either the criminal courts or Silversleeves and his friends had declared to be mad. Some, harmless enough, could be talked to. Several gentlemen believed they were Napoleon and would strike splendid, brooding attitudes. Others would laugh or gibber. Yet others were chained to beds and would sit there sullenly staring or perhaps might take their clothes off and perform acts of strange lewdness. It was really, most people agreed, quite amusing. One old man, half an hour after admission, said he was the Earl of St James.

It was not long after noon that Meredith arrived. Young George, as soon as he discovered what had happened to his grandfather, had gone to him for advice.

The Meredith Bank had prospered considerably in the years since the near-crash of 1825, and Meredith was tolerably rich now. The greying of his temples had lent his tall figure a look of patrician distinction. His advice to George had been quite bleak. “I think your father will almost certainly succeed, with Silversleeves’s help, in getting your grandfather declared incapable. What we must do is get him out of Bedlam. You probably can’t because Bocton will have warned them to expect you. But I might.”

“And then?”

“I’ll have to find somewhere to keep him in tolerable conditions. I dare say something can be done.” He smiled. “I still owe him my bank, remember.”

“But they’ll come and demand him back.”

“They’ll have to find him first.”

“But that’s kidnap, Meredith!”

“That’s right.”

“You’ll have to hide him somewhere straight away though,” George pointed out.

“I can think of a place,” Meredith said.

His approach to Bedlam was cunning. Sending a boy ahead to ask for Silversleeves, the boy ascertained that he had departed with Bocton for an hour or two. No sooner had this information been brought back than Meredith’s carriage swept into the courtyard, and stalking into the building, he told the doormen to fetch Silversleeves and bring him to him immediately. Ignoring their assurances that he was not there, he strode down the hall demanding to see St James. The moment he found him, he took him firmly by the arm and led him back to the entrance.

“Where the devil is Silversleeves?” he repeated irritably. “I have orders to escort this patient to another place at once.”

“But Mr Silversleeves and Lord Bocton said –” the head doorman began, only to be cut off instantly.

“You do not understand. I am the personal physician of His Majesty the King.” Meredith gave the name of the distinguished doctor in question. “My instructions are from the king himself. You know, I suppose, that the earl is his personal friend?” He was not the grandson of dashing Captain Jack Meredith for nothing. The combination of his tall, commanding presence and this awesome list of names overcame them entirely.

“Tell Silversleeves,” he called, as he led the old earl out, “to report to my house immediately.”

Moments later, his carriage had rattled off, apparently towards Westminster. Once out of sight, it made a little detour and headed away in another direction entirely. And so it was that it was not little Horatio Dogget but the rich old Earl of St James who found himself, that day, in the sanctuary of kindly Mrs Penny’s house on Clapham Common, by Lavender Hill.

“Damn!” said Lord Bocton, when he heard his father had escaped. “We should have chained him up.”

The Great Reform Bill finally passed into law in the summer of 1832. Apart from giving members of Parliament to the new towns and abolishing the rotten boroughs, it gave the vote to a fair spread of the middle class. Women, regardless of their status, of course, still could not vote.

With her brother gone, and only her mother and herself to think about, Lucy had wondered for some months now whether she could afford to stop working for Silas. She had considered many prospects, including working in the little factory her mother had left. She had even wondered if she could get some assistance from the cousin she had learned about at Clapham. But after making three separate expeditions there in the spring, she had been unable to find any trace of her or her family.

The issue was resolved for her quite unexpectedly one summer day when, arriving as usual for work one morning, she was greatly surprised to find Silas standing by the mooring without his boat.

“Where’s the boat?” she asked.

“Sold it,” he replied. “In fact, I don’t think I’ll be needing you any more, young Lucy. I’m doing something else now.” He led her back to an alley where a dirty old cart was standing. It contained nothing. “I’ll be going round with that, collecting,” he explained.

“But collecting what?”

“Rubbish,” he said with satisfaction. “Dirt. People will pay you to take it away. Then you make a huge heap of dust in a yard somewhere – see? I got a yard near here. Then you sift through it and see what you can find.”

“So it’s like what you did on the river?”

“Yes. But there’s more money in dust than in water. I’ve looked into it.” He nodded. “You can come and help sift if you want, but I’ll only pay you pence.”

“I don’t think so,” she said.

“You and your mother’ll be hard up.”

“We’ll manage.”

“Maybe I’ll help you,” he said, then turned away.

For Eugene Penny the year brought one expense; but it was an expense which, fortunately, he could afford.

The stay of the old Earl of St James with the family had been, by far, the most trying three weeks of Penny’s life. On some days the old man was lucid and demanded to go home. Eugene himself had been forced, physically, to restrain him, which he found embarrassing. At other times the earl was docile, but once or twice, in a confused state, he threatened Mary Penny with violence. It was a relief when Meredith finally came and removed him to a quiet place in the West Country.

From then on, Eugene had been so busy at the bank that he had hardly had time to think of anything else, until, one day, walking down Fleet Street, he had seen a stooped and sad-looking figure in scuffed shoes shuffling along towards St Bride’s, and suddenly recognized with a pang of horror and of guilt that it was his godfather, Jeremy Fleming.

It was two years he realized since he had been to see him. Why had he not done so, when he had received such kindness at his hands? He had been busy. That was no excuse. And what in the world had happened to him?

Fleming’s story was soon told. “It was Wellington’s Beer Act, you see, in 1830,” he explained. “You remember, when everyone was complaining about prices, he made a law that anyone could make and sell beer? Well, I had nothing to do with my life, Penny, so I set up a little brewery myself, up there,” and he nodded northwards in the general direction of St Pancras. “And for a year, Penny, I made beer.”

“I thought you were too cautious a man for such an undertaking,” Eugene said.

“Very true. But I so admired the way that you had led your life, Penny, I said to myself: ‘There, see what you might have done, Jeremy Fleming, but for your want of courage.’ And I thought to myself: ‘Everyone wants beer.’ But they did not want mine. And then I lost caution and pressed on.” He shook his head and smiled sadly. “Lost all I had, you see.”

“I did not know! You never told me.” And, Penny thought, I never asked. “How do you live?” he went on.

“My children are kind. They are good children. Better than I deserve, Penny. They give me what they can. I do not starve.”

“Your house?”

“I live in a smaller place now. Nearby.”

“You shall come to supper with us this very day,” Penny cried. “You shall come to stay.”

And from that time Mr Jeremy Fleming’s rent was paid, and a new suit made for him at least once a year, and he came often to the house at Clapham where, at Mary’s special request, he became an extra godfather to her children.

“You are good to him,” she said sometimes with approval to her husband.

Eugene would only polish his spectacles, shake his head and say: “But very late, Mary. To my shame.”

Yet all the same, as he took his walks with her on warm summer evenings, it seemed to him that most things had worked out for the best, up there by Lavender Hill.

THE CRYSTAL PALACE

1851

Everything had been carefully planned. By three o’clock precisely the whole family would gather at the big house up on Blackheath – for, as any of his four daughters or their husbands could tell you, it didn’t do to be late for the Guv’nor. Besides, it was the dear old man’s birthday. Unthinkable to be late for that.

But the August day was still young. Her husband had calculated that they could afford two hours and forty minutes of pleasure; so it was with some excitement that Harriet Penny and he approached the huge structure that flashed and glittered before them like some magical palace from a fairy tale.

Nothing like it had ever been seen before. Almost seventy feet high (even a great elm tree had been left growing inside) and four times the length of St Paul’s, the monumental edifice stretched over six hundred yards along the southern edge of Hyde Park. And, most astonishing of all, it was almost entirely made of iron and of glass.

The gigantic hall of the Great Exhibition of 1851 – the Crystal Palace, as it was immediately called – was a triumph of British engineering. Designed exactly like a vast prefabricated greenhouse, its nine hundred square feet of glass, mass-produced in standard units, and thousands of cast-iron girders and pillars created nearly a million square feet of floor-space, yet had been built in only a few months. Light and airy, its hollow iron supports neatly doubling as drainpipes, the Crystal Palace represented everything that was modern and progressive. The only old-fashioned feature in the whole thing had been the importation – at the suggestion of the old Duke of Wellington – of a pair of sparrow-hawks to deal with the birds that had infested the galleries. The idea for this international exhibition and its great hall had come from the young Queen Victoria’s clever German husband, Albert, who had both masterminded and seen the whole project through to completion. The royal couple were hugely proud of it.