Fourpenny Flyer (51 page)

Trade was so slack he'd been without work for nearly ten days, so when some friends of his offered him a seat on an old farm buggy they were driving down to London for the occasion, he packed up his loom, counted out the remains of his money and went with them. Come and visit me, she had said. Well now was the time to put her invitation to the test. It could be an interesting conquest.

It was an unpleasant afternoon, dark and cold and wintry. Harriet was giving Rosie particular instructions that she was to dress little Will in his warmest clothes because the weather was so bad. They were going to Bedford Square to have tea with Nan and Sophie Fuseli, as they often did these days when John was away, because she missed him dreadfully and visiting helped to pass the time.

‘His thick grey worsted coat, Rosie,' she said.

‘Worsted coat,' Rosie agreed, nodding the information into her head.

‘I will wait here by the fire until he's ready.'

‘'Till he's ready, yes,' Rosie said. ‘Come along, lambkin.' And she took the child away to dress him.

But Harriet didn't wait by the fire. She walked to the window and stood beside the curtain with one hand on the soft damask, gazing idly down into the square. It was completely empty and completely grey, as though November had drained all colour from the world: grey cobbles, grey pavements, grey grass, grey boughs, blank grey skies. If only John would come home, she thought. For life without him was as grey as the square.

And a man came striding round the corner, a thickset brightly coloured man, in a wine-red greatcoat and a coachman's broad black hat, an energetic fast-walking
man, who wore black boots and no gloves and had arrived so suddenly it was as though he'd been blown into the quiet square by some great gale, an interesting, lively-looking man who was walking straight up the steps towards her own front door. Good gracious!

She was still in a flutter when Paulson announced him. ‘Mr Caleb Rawson to see you, ma'am.' Mr Rawson! Good gracious! And he took the room by storm too.

He seemed so much bigger than she remembered him, so broad-shouldered and stocky, and so brightly coloured, for his jacket was wine-red too and his shirt buff and his trousers a sturdy tweed, to say nothing of soot-black hair and cheeks as red as apples and those missing teeth most noticeable against the white gleam of the rest. Caleb Rawson.

‘I kept my word,' he said, beaming at her as they shook hands. ‘Visit, tha said, and here I am.'

It took her an effort of will to play hostess. ‘Pray do sit down, Mr Rawson.' The touch of his hand had sent her senses into alarm.

He sat in John's chair beside the fire, planting those black boots on the hearthrug, splaying those broad hands on his knees, for all the world as if he were the master of the house and belonged there.

‘What brings you to London, Mr Rawson?' she asked, and her calm pleased her because it had been difficult to achieve.

‘Why, t' Queen,' he said, as though she should have known it. ‘I've been to St Paul's this very morning to give t' poor lady a cheer as she passed. Me and twenty thousand others, at a rough estimate, and not a soul to prevent us.'

She'd paid little attention to the Queen's Thanksgiving Service. It was enough that the trial was over. But she listened to his cheerful account of it. ‘There must be something in your nature that attracts crowds, Mr Rawson,' she said lightly, ‘for I don't believe I have ever seen you when you were not surrounded by hundreds of people.'

‘Till now,' he said. And he smiled straight into her eyes.

It was such an intimate smile it made her heart jump,
alarming her and thrilling her and spinning her into confusion all over again. She really shouldn't be feeling like this. Not for Mr Rawson. It wasn't right.

‘I fear that I cannot invite you to take tea with me, Mr Rawson,' she said, trying to defend herself. ‘Will and I are expected in Bedford Square in half an hour, you see.'

‘Nay, Mrs Easter,' he said warmly. ‘I've not come to tek tea. I've come for t' sight of tha good kind face. I've come to see my angel of mercy again.'

‘Angel of mercy?' she said. Oh this was getting worse and worse. It was almost as if he were making some sort of declaration.

‘Angel of mercy,' he repeated firmly. ‘That's how we think of thee in Manchester. Dunna tha know it?'

‘Why no, no,' she said, biting her bottom lip. How embarrassing to be considered an angel. ‘I can see I'd best beware of you, Mr Rawson, or I shall be canonized before I get to heaven.'

He roared with laughter at her, showing those missing teeth. ‘Eh! That's rich!'

And then they were rescued by Rosie, which was just as well. She came straight into the room without knocking as she always did, leading Will by the hand and announcing, ‘All ready, mum. Shipshape an' orderly. Ain't he the swell?'

At that Mr Rawson stood up and said he'd have to be going and could he call again tomorrow? ‘We start back at dawn on Wednesday,' he said, and his expression pleaded, Say yes.

Afterwards she was annoyed at herself for giving way to the suggestion. But give way she did. ‘Then you must take tea with me tomorrow.'

‘Your servant, ma'am,' he said, grey eyes shining at her. ‘At what hour should I call?'

That night she lay wakeful, thinking and thinking. Oh if only John had been home. Everything would have been so easy if John had been home. Ireland was much worse than anywhere else he'd travelled. It took him away from her so often and for such a long time, weeks and weeks, what
with travelling there and travelling back. And when he
was
home, he spent most of his time at work, struggling to ‘catch up'. It would have been better to let his mother take those advertisements, it would indeed. Not that she would ever tell him so, for that would be disloyal. But no, he had to go chasing off to Ireland, thousands and thousands of miles away, leaving her at the mercy of her own treacherous emotions.

She had spent a miserable hour before she went to bed, sitting by the fire in the bedroom writing to her diary, trying to make sense of what she was feeling.

‘Caleb Rawson is a good man' she had written. ‘He is kind and ugly and honest and I do not love him. I love my own dear John who is my husband and my lover and my knight in shining armour and a good deal else besides which I have written of again and again, which being so, why did my heart leap when Mr Rawson looked at me? Why did I tremble? It was an act of disloyalty. My mother would call it a sin, I don't doubt. But it could not be a sin because I did not will it. It occurred despite my better intentions, despite me, as though I had no control upon my feelings at all. How
could
it have happened? I do not understand it.'

However, at least she'd had the good sense to arrange for a chaperone to be present tomorrow afternoon. Sophie Fuseli had accepted her invitation to tea at once. ‘There ain't a thing I enjoy more these days than a dish of good tea,' she'd said, twirling her curls.

And Nan laughed. ‘If it en't a glass of good brandy!'

Oh dear, oh dear. If only John was at home. But then if he
were
at home she would have to tell him what had happened. And how could she possibly tell him what had happened? Not that anything
had
happened. Oh dear, oh dear!

Over in his small back bedroom in the Bull and Mouth in Aldersgate Street, Caleb Rawson was reliving the afternoon too. She was his for the taking. He'd lay money on it. The way she'd blushed when he took her hand, the pretty confusion of her, the way she'd invited him
tomorrow. Her husband's a fool to leave her alone so much, he thought, for it was plain the man was away. If she were mine I'd not leave her for a minute. Well more fool he. And he fell asleep grinning with pleasure at the thought that he would see her again so soon.

He was disappointed when he arrived at Fitzroy Square the following afternoon to find that he was sharing her company with her little son Will and a fat woman who was wife to some artist or other, but on reflection he saw the wisdom of it and admired her discretion. To entertain a gentleman alone twice in two days might cause gossip, and even though their affair would be bound to cause a bit of gossip sooner or later, 'twas as well to start clean.

‘I'll write to thee,' he promised them both as he took leave. ‘I've nobbut told thee half of all I meant to.'

‘Had you done so,' she smiled at him, ‘we'd have been talking here till midnight.' For he'd entertained them both with stories of the Queen's procession all through their tea and well beyond.

‘I will write,' he said again, and on a sudden romantic impulse, lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it, pleased by the little start it gave her.

That night Harriet wrote at length in her diary:

‘I live in three different worlds, first as a wife to my dear John, when I must try to understand his business matters, because they
are
so important to him, and try to support him in every way I can because he does work so hard, second as a mother to Will, which is quite the easiest of the three because he is so loving and so pretty and I am so happy when I am with him, and third as a friend to Mr Rawson and supporter of the cause, which I consider an honour, indeed I do, but which I may have to forego if he continues to act as he does. He is a fine man, and orator and a leader, and yet I cannot help feeling that there is danger in this. Oh dear, oh dear. What should I do?'

But in the event she had no need to do anything, for the weeks passed and no letters arrived. Despite her misgivings she was disappointed to have been forgotten, but she persuaded herself that such a very great man would have other things to do than write to her, and in any case there
were plenty of matters to occupy her.

In January Jimmy was ten years old and ready to go to school. So at Easter she went with Annie to visit the grammar school in Bury to see if it was suitable, two opinions being better than one in such matters. And little Will would be three in July and by the time the summer began he was such a chatterbox that she seemed to spend all her days answering his questions.

‘Why do the moon shine, Mama?'

‘Why
does
the moon shine. I'm sure I couldn't say, lambkin.'

‘Why mus' I wash, Mama?'

‘Because you would be dirty otherwise and nice children aren't dirty.'

‘This ant has six legs, Mama. Why do an ant have six legs?'

‘Why
does
an ant, lambkin. To help it to run faster I suppose.'

‘Where is Papa?'

‘In Scotland, lambkin.' ‘In Birmingham.' ‘In Ireland.' And oh so rarely at home.

But he promised he would stay in London for the King's coronation, which was fixed for 19th July and was to be an spectacular affair. The King was to progress from Westminster Hall to Westminster Abbey along a covered walk specially built for the occasion, twenty-five feet wide and fully carpeted. It had a triumphal arch thirty feet high at its northern end and raked galleries on either side for his more wealthy spectators. Naturally enough, Nan bought seats on the gallery for all her family.

‘That's a sight we shouldn't miss, eh?' she said. ‘And we'll have a coronation party in the evening. What do 'ee say to that?'

Harriet said yes to it, of course, just like everybody else, and agreed to come back from Rattlesden for the occasion, for Nan's parties were always lively and well-fed and besides she could travel down with Annie and James and their children. But secretly she was anxious in case Caleb Rawson came to London to see the coronation too. If he did he would be bound to call on her. Even though he
hadn't written. And if he called on her, what would she say? What would she do? And even more worrying, what would he say? What would he do? Oh dear, oh dear. It had been eight months since she'd last seen him, but you never knew what might happen.

In the end she gave Paulson the most dishonest instructions that if Mr Rawson were to call while she was watching the procession or out at Mrs Easter's party, he was to say that she was ‘away'.

But it upset her that she was being dishonest. Even if she wasn't actually lying she was certainly hinting at an untruth and that was a sin every bit as bad as an outright lie. While the rest of the family enjoyed the King's procession, she bit her lip and worried.

And John watched her and wondered. She was often oddly distant these days, as if she'd retreated from him into some private world where he couldn't reach her. She always welcomed him most lovingly when he returned from his travels and she treated young Will with the utmost tenderness and kept the house in splendid order and seemed content when they were talking together, but there was a change in her just the same, and it didn't seem to be anything he could influence or alter. Where are you, my dearest? he yearned, watching her pale, pensive face as the procession passed by.

He would have been most upset to know that at that very moment she was wondering where Caleb Rawson was.

There was a good reason for Caleb's lack of correspondence.

When he and his friends had come trundling back to Manchester in their borrowed farm cart, they had found their mill closed for lack of work, and all through the winter they'd been hard put to it to find enough employment to keep them in food. Caleb accepted any job that offered, labouring, street-cleaning, even sweeping out the mill where he'd once been a skilled weaver. The springtime was no better, and although the early summer brought an increase in orders for cloth because of the Coronation, very little of the work came Mr Rawson's way.
It was demoralizing because it kept him at labouring jobs that took all his time and drained all his energy and rarely paid him enough to cover the cost of food and rent.

So he was grateful and relieved when he met a man in a Salford tavern who said he knew of a place where skilled weavers were in demand. It was a mild evening in May, and the gentleman was as mild-mannered as the weather, even though he was really rather extraordinary to look at, having fine fair hair and ginger whiskers. He said his name was Mr Richards and claimed to be a friend of the great Easter family, ‘I lodge with cousins of theirs in Bury St Edmunds, damne if I don't' and a supporter of universal suffrage, what's more ‘I was here at the time of Peterloo, so I was. A parlous business!'