London (129 page)

“But won’t he?”

“We don’t know who is chosen, Gideon.”

The boy seemed to think for a while.

“Martha.” The whisper came loud and clear. “If he’s sent to hell, I shall go down and rescue him.”

“You can’t.”

“I shall try.” A pause. “We can still love him, can’t we?”

“I think so.”

“Let’s go back to him now,” the boy said.

The outer gallery of St Paul’s is higher than the Whispering Gallery, so it was necessary for Carpenter to lead the children upstairs again before they came out on to the balcony that circles the base of the almighty leaden dome.

They emerged into brilliant daylight. The sky was crystalline, the lightest breeze teasing the surface of the Thames below the city so that it sparkled. And all around them, as they circled the gallery, the panorama of London. Even in his desolation, it was hard for Carpenter, feeling the sharp autumn air on his face and seeing this wonderful sight, not to experience a bracing of the spirit.

They looked northwards over the newly rebuilt Guildhall, over new London’s Roman streets, past old Shoreditch and the woods of Islington to the green hills of Hampstead and Highgate; eastwards they gazed, over the city’s other hill, over the pinnacles of the Tower, the suburbs of Spitalfields where the Huguenot weavers lived, past the forest of ships’ masts in the Pool of London and out towards the long, eastern estuary and the open sea beyond. Southwards they stared at the river, and the huge, curious old form of London Bridge with its tall, medieval gabled houses hanging over the river, and to the untidiness of Southwark on the opposite bank. But from the west came the most glorious vision.

The barges were returning. First, the great, majestic gold barge of the mayor; then the splendid vessels of the companies – pinnacles flying, awnings fluttering, reds and blues, greens, silvers, cheerful stripe and rich embroidery, their banks of oars pulled in perfect unison by the liveried watermen – and following them, score upon score of lesser vessels, all brightly adorned: the great, gilded procession filled the whole river. When the Lord Mayor of London came up the river in full state, there was nothing like it in all Europe except the sumptuous pageants of Venice. O Be Joyful watched, as the two children gazed in wonder.

And despite his sadness, he smiled. The children were right, of course. As he looked out from the dome over London, under that still greater dome of the clear blue sky, he knew it very well. He was not destined for eternal life.

Yet, as he looked at his little grandchildren, it seemed to him now that it no longer mattered very much. His own life, even the fate of his immortal soul, no longer seemed so important. Old Gideon and Martha had departed, but in a sense they had returned. Little Gideon, purer, more godly than he, the valiant little boy who was ready to brave hellfire to rescue his faltering grandfather, would succeed where he himself had so miserably failed. Perhaps these children might even, one day, build that shining city on a hill.

Far below, the barges were approaching Blackfriars. A few moments more, and the mayor would disembark.

Just then, the bells began to ring to welcome the mayor to his city. There were many fine peals of bells all over the city and the suburbs now, for more than ever had been installed in the churches that had risen again since the Great Fire. From one after another of Wren’s fine towers and steeples that rose over the rooftops all around, from churches everywhere they began to chime. From Cheapside and Aldgate, Eastcheap and Tower Hill, from Holborn, from Fleet Street and the Strand. Many had their own particular tunes and, standing side by side with the children, he began to identify them, giving each peal the little rhyme by which it was known.

Oranges and lemons
Say the bells of St Clements

You owe me five farthings,
Say the bells of St Martin’s

When will you pay me
Say the bells of Old Bailey

When I grow rich
Say the bells of Shoreditch

When will that be
Say the bells of Stepney

I do not know
Says the great bell of Bow

“That’s St Mary-le-Bow,” he explained. “Old Bow Bells, the very soul of London.”

But more and more bells were joining in – single bells, peals of bells, tolling and clanging with that manly clamour that only the bells of England make. For the glory of English bell-ringing is not as in other countries its tunefulness, but, on the contrary, the stern order of the permutations, as the bells are led through their changes, as strict as the mathematics of the heavens. Louder and louder now their mighty ringing grew, clanging and crashing down the major scale, drowning out every puny tune, until even the dome of St Paul’s itself seemed to be resonating in the din. And as he listened to this tremendous sound echoing all around him, so strident and so strong, it suddenly seemed to Carpenter that he could hear therein a thousand other voices: the Puritan voice of Bunyan and his pilgrim, the voice of his father Gideon and his saints, of Martha; why – even of the Protestant Almighty himself. And, lost in their massive chorus, for a moment forgetting everything, even his own poor soul, he hugged his grandchildren and cried out, in exultation:

“Hear! Oh, hear the voice of the Lord!”

Then all the bells of London rang, and then O Be Joyful was joyful indeed.

GIN LANE

1750

Number seventeen, Hanover Square. It is past noon on a late April day. Spring is in the air. And inside the handsome, four-storey house with its big sash windows, five across, Lady St James is about to take her bath.

Two footmen have appeared – crimson livery, white silk stockings – carrying the metal hip-bath and have set it down in the middle of my lady’s chamber. They return three times, bearing huge, steaming ewers of hot water; they fill the bath, then retire. Her ladyship’s maid tests the water with a small, plump finger; indicates that all is well.

And now, my lady comes from the great bed with its richly embroidered coat of arms. She walks across the floor, her nightgown a wonder of blue ribbons and white lace. She hovers by the bath. A dainty white foot appears, an elegant ankle peeps from under the hem of the nightdress. Her foot touches the surface of the water and there is a tiny ripple. Now a little of the lace parts and a slim, bare calf is revealed. Her ladyship’s maid stands close, reaches up to take the nightgown. There is a faint rustle, the whisper of satin flesh upon silk; the maid’s arms draw back.

And – at last – she has emerged: slim, flawless, delicately scented. Her leg has slipped beneath the still water which now surrounds her high, round breasts, and laps those alabaster shoulders.

Her maid is attentive. Soap first. Then oils, to keep the skin soft. My lady lingers in the bath a while, but not too long, lest that dry out the skin. When she is ready to rise, a huge towel is held out. She will not be rubbed however, but gently pressed and patted dry. Then puffs of powder, unguents for her pretty feet, sprinklings of scent around her neck.

My lady hates imperfection. It is the only thing she fears.

She rests in a chair, robed in a long silk gown, sipping a cup of hot chocolate thoughtfully. When she is done, the maid brings her a little silver basin of water and a brush; sprinkles a powder on the brush. Carefully but thoroughly, her ladyship brushes her pearl-like teeth. Then she is handed a small, curved, silver scraper. Elegantly, making a pout, she sticks out her pink tongue and, while the maid holds a looking glass, she scrapes it to ensure that not a trace of dark chocolate nor of whitish fur disgrace its surface.

Could it be that the Countess of St James is preparing for a sexual encounter? It could: this very evening. In this very house.

Seventeen, Hanover Square. It was halfway up one side of the great, paved and cobbled rectangle named after the present royal house and what name could be more appropriate to convey its aristocratic ease?

The German Hanoverians might have only a tenuous dynastic claim to the English Crown, but Parliament had chosen them. They might speak English poorly, but they are Protestant. They might be stupid, but their rule had brought peace and prosperity. The dynasty is secure. Five years before, in a romantic but hare-brained escapade, the last of the Stuart line, young Bonnie Prince Charlie, had landed in Scotland to lead a great rising. But the English redcoats had marched; the rising had soon broken up, and been easily crushed at Culloden. The Jacobite cause, espoused by Prince Charlie’s supporters, was dead.

True, there was always trouble brewing abroad, as the various powers of Europe ceaselessly watched for advantage but since the triumphs of Marlborough a generation before, England had suffered no cause for alarm. As for the spreading British colonies, their rich trade, from America and the Caribbean, to India and the fabulous Orient, brought an ever-increasing flow of wealth, while at home, improved agricultural methods were increasing the income of many landowners.

Only one event had taken place which might have shaken the confidence of the English themselves. In 1720, in the first massive stock market madness of the new, all-capitalist order, the entire London Stock Exchange first inflated and then collapsed in the disaster known as the South Sea Bubble. Great men and small, who had speculated in largely bogus companies, convinced that prices could only rise, lost all they had. So many were hit that the government had to intervene. Yet so vigorous was the nation’s growth that a decade later it was almost as if the Bubble had never happened. Business was booming again.

Small surprise, then, if London was growing to match. The expansion begun by the Stuarts outside the city walls had continued. In a broad and splendid sweep towards the west, aristocrats, gentlemen, speculators, were all busy building. And if the motley, house-by-house ownership of old London had stymied any grandiose town planning within the city walls, the big landholdings of this new West End were a very different case. Nobles with estates could lay out whole areas of splendid squares and streets with vistas, which bore their family names: Grosvenor Square, Cavendish Square, Berkeley Square, Bond Street. Nor was it only individuals: livery companies, Oxford colleges, the Church and the Crown all owned land in the West End. Westward into open country therefore – parkland, field and pasture recommencing wherever the building ended – the broad and handsome streets and squares spread out. The houses, for the first time in history, were numbered. Their terraced façades were simple, inspired by classical antiquity, and because the Hanoverian kings of that time were all called George, their style became known as Georgian.

It was a classical age. Aristocrats made the Grand Tour and returned with Italian paintings and Roman statues for their houses; ladies and gentlemen went to the old Roman spa of Bath to take the waters; and great writers like Swift, Pope and Doctor Johnson modelled their poems and satires on those of Augustan Rome. It was an age of reason, when men aimed, at least, to possess the same restrained dignity and sense of proportion as the Georgian squares where they lived. It was, above all, an age of elegance. And elegance was everything, at number seventeen, Hanover Square.

At one o’clock, Lady St James was reviewing her plans.

Balthazar the hairdresser had arrived. His work would take an hour, so she had let the lady’s maid go downstairs to join the other female servants for their dinner. Balthazar inserted a pad. The design he had concocted for today would raise her golden hair a foot above her head, to be surmounted by a tightly drawn bun and a little circlet of pearls, to match the pearl choker she would wear around her neck.

Nearby, on a French gilt chaise, her dress was laid out. It was made of stiff silk brocade, its gorgeous design like a rich, dark forest of flowers, from the Huguenot silk weavers of Spitalfields. God knew what it had cost per yard, nor how many hours her dressmaker had spent, double-stitching every seam – my lady would spot it at once if she hadn’t.

Before her rendezvous, Lady St James had to attend a dinner party, then an assembly. The fashionable world was a ceaseless round and those, like Lady St James, who were invited everywhere, had a duty to be seen.

“It is,” she would say with a bright smile, “why God placed us where we are.” The splendid squares and houses had to be populated; the elegant show must go on.

After that however, later tonight . . . She gazed at the window.

She thought she could trust the servants. She prided herself on her cleverness there. It was normally the master, not the mistress of the house who engaged the staff, but early in their marriage she had persuaded Lord St James that he was too busy, and as a result, both the butler and the housekeeper owed their allegiance to her. The two footmen obeyed the butler, but she took care to keep them sweet, and the maids received gifts of money and clothes. The cook, the pastry chef – whose fantastic creations regularly brought applause at dinner parties when dessert was announced – and the coachman were admittedly her husband’s; but both the grooms were in love with her because, when they held her stirrup, she would sometimes give their necks a little touch.

So if this evening, a certain person were discreetly to enter the house while his lordship was out, and if that person were to go into her ladyship’s chamber, into which, without her express permission, his lordship was forbidden to enter – “It is the only thing,” she once melodramatically told him, “the only courtesy I ask” – she could be sure there would be no tittle-tattle, no peeping at keyholes or listening in passages. Nothing would disturb the silence of the house unless, within the sanctity of her chamber, it was the little rustle of silk, the soft creak of the bed, a tiny moan.