Fourpenny Flyer (25 page)

So two days later, Nan Easter received two letters by the same post, one rapturously incoherent from her holidaying son, the other politely formal from Mr Honeywood. She wrote back at once, telling Billy it was no more nor less than she expected and sending her love to her ‘new daughter', and accepting Mr Honeywood's invitation to dinner the following Saturday.

‘That's like to be an uncommon fine occasion,' she said to Cosmo Teshmaker. ‘Don't 'ee think?' But first there were the Sowerbys to be attended to, and the Sowerbys were coming to London on Friday.

It was three o'clock in the morning and Annie Hopkins, Harriet Sowerby and Pollyanna Thistlethwaite were all hard at work in the front parlour of the rectory. They had kept up a good fire and were working by the extravagant light of ten candles, because the job they were doing had got to be done before morning and without a single error or omission. When they began it Annie had been in floods of tears, and now they were all red-eyed with fatigue, but they worked on doggedly, backs bent, neatly capped heads lowered, small-toothed combs flashing in the firelight. For Jimmy and Beau had been infested with head-lice.

The two little boys were asleep where they sat, Beau propped against Pollyanna's cushiony bosom, Jimmy slumped against Harriet's knees, and both of them smelling pungently of the turpentine with which their heads had been washed that afternoon. From time to time when the harsh comb scratched their scalps too fiercely, or a nit was pulled too roughly from its sticky attachment to their hair, they woke to whimper and were hushed back to sleep by their mother. It had been a long, uncomfortable night.

‘I reckon 'e's clear now, Mrs Hopkins ma'am,' Pollyanna said, running her fingers against the lie of Beau's soft, fair hair. ‘Can't see another one.'

‘No more can I, praise be,' Annie agreed, examining closely too. ‘You can take him up to bed now, Pollyanna, and get some rest yourself, my dear. I'm uncommon grateful to 'ee. Harriet and I will finish Jimmy.' There was still a lot of picking off to be done on his poor little head.

‘Perhaps we should have shaved them after all,' she said
to Harriet when Pollyanna had carried the sleeping baby upstairs.

‘And lose all their pretty hair?' Harriet said. ‘Oh no, Mrs Hopkins, we could never have done that. Think how upset they would have been, and all through no fault of their own.'

‘It's made a deal of work for you and Pollyanna, I fear,' Annie apologized, combing carefully.

‘I am only too glad to be able to help,' Harriet said, glancing up to smile at this dear new friend of hers, ‘after all that you and Mr Hopkins have done for me.'

‘That slut shall leave this house tomorrow morning,' Annie said fiercely, sliding two nits carefully along a hair.

Harriet wondered whether the Reverend Hopkins would agree and thought it unlikely, but she didn't comment. She had never seen Annie so fierce and determined, or so angry, so perhaps it was possible.

‘A fine thing,' Annie grumbled on, ‘if Johnnie comes down here to propose to 'ee Saturday and you have to send him away for fear of infection.'

The word made Harriet's heart leap in her chest. ‘Propose?' she said. ‘Is he like to propose?'

‘Well I should hope so,' Annie said, fingers busy. ‘Mama sees your parents a' Friday does she not? Well then … Turn his head a little to one side, my dear. That's it! Oh what a dreadful collection, poor little man.'

They worked in silence for a few minutes till the dreadful collection had been cleared and was burning in the fire and they began on another one.

Then Annie continued, ‘You will say yes, my dear, won't you.'

‘Well …,' Harriet murmured, embarrassed by the directness of the question. ‘If he asks me. He hasn't said … We have not talked of …'

‘He always was secretive,' Annie confided, ‘even as a little boy no bigger than Jimmy. No one ever knew what he was thinking. Mama used to call him a changeling, I remember. Billy was a harum-scarum, a-rushing into everything without stopping to think for so much as a second, but Johnnie was different. He thought about
everything, did our Johnnie, on and on and on until he was quite sure. If he ain't spoken yet, my dear, 'tis only because he is still a-thinking.'

‘Maybe we should not speak of – of these things either,' Harriet tried. It was very difficult to know what to say without seeming critical or ungrateful.

‘You love him, do you not?' Annie asked abruptly, tugging at another nit.

‘Yes,' Harriet admitted, answering truthfully because she was so taken aback. ‘I believe I do.' He was a good, kind-hearted man, and he'd rescued her from her parents, and was protecting her from their anger even now. How could she help loving him?

‘Then you will marry and we shall be sisters,' Annie said, as if the whole matter had been decided, ‘and I tell 'ee I couldn't want for a nicer one.'

It was a delightful compliment and given so easily that it moved the exhausted Harriet to tears.

‘You are so good,' she said, looking up tremulously. To have been accepted into this family so easily and lovingly was a greater good fortune than she could ever have imagined. But would Mr Easter really propose to her? She did hope so, for she loved him truly. What if the lawyers made her go back to her parents, as they very well might? The thought made her chest contract with distress. Oh, she thought, I couldn't bear it. Not after this happy time with Annie and Mr Hopkins and the boys. Mama will be so angry. If I have to go back she will beat me as sure as fate. ‘I think he's done,' she said, changing the subject to give herself something else to occupy her mind. ‘Those were the last.'

‘What a night this has been,' Annie said wearily, putting her comb back in the basin of water. ‘I shall speak to Mr Hopkins as soon as he wakes in the morning.'

‘About me and Mr John?' Harriet said alarmed. ‘Oh pray, Mrs Hopkins, I beg you …'

‘No, no,' Annie said yawning. ‘About that slut. We'll keep the boys in their room until the matter is settled.'

It was settled immediately after breakfast, and in such an
easy, amicable manner that Harriet was quite amazed by it.

The Abbotts were in the kitchen, and that was where James and Annie went to talk to them. They left the door open and so Harriet and Pollyanna, who were helping Molly clear the breakfast table, heard every word.

At first Harriet was ashamed to be eavesdropping. ‘Do 'ee think we ought?' she whispered to Pollyanna.

Pollyanna was quite phlegmatic about it. ‘Now whyever not?' she said. ‘I hears every mortal thing what's said in this house. They don't mind, for if they did they be a-whisperin'.'

‘It is only right to tell you,' Mr Hopkins was saying, in his light voice, ‘that we cannot keep you here for very much longer. There is a Hampden Club formed in the village, so I am told, and it is only right that I allow them the use of a room for their meetings, which they are most likely to request.'

Mr Abbott's answer was a subdued growl. ‘Aye sir, I knows. My brother he's a one on 'em. He's all fer reform is my brother, sir, though I tell 'ee, sir, I can't for the life of me see what good'll come of un.'

‘A man of much good sense, your brother,' Mr Hopkins said, adding delicately, ‘Have you managed to find…?'

‘No, sir, there en't a job a' work nowhere, an' that's a fact.'

‘You tell un, Jack,' Mrs Abbott said, in her usual belligerent tone.

‘It is a bad time,' Mr Hopkins said. ‘There is no work for anyone. Your brother is right, Mr Abbott, reform is a most urgent necessity.'

‘'Tis they machines, sir. Tha's what 'tis.'

‘I would it were otherwise, howsomever …'

‘You see how 'tis, do you not, Mr Abbot?' Annie said. ‘You cannot stay with us for ever.'

‘Yes, Ma'am,' Mr Abbott growled again. ‘I see how 'tis, ma'am. We mussen be a burden. 'Tis uncommon kind of 'ee to have borne with us so long. If 'twern't for the babes we could walk to Norwich, ma'am, for a labourin' job or some such. But 'tis mortal long way for babes, ma'am. My brother could take 'em in after November when his
youngest gel goes into service, ma'am, but 'tis a mortal long time to November.'

‘Well now,' Mr Hopkins said, ‘as to that, I am sure my wife would be agreeable to the children staying on here for a week or two, would you not, Mrs Hopkins?'

‘They could stay till the end of November,' Annie said unexpectedly, ‘if 'twould help 'ee. I'm sure I've no desire to turn your children out in the cold. We could manage to keep 'em till then, could we not, Mr Hopkins?'

‘Well!' Harriet whispered.

‘That's the way they always go on,' Pollyanna said. ‘'Tis called a compermise, so they say. That's what 'tis. A compermise. Meetin' halfway so Mrs Hopkins says.'

A compromise, Harriet thought, meeting halfway, giving something to each other, neither getting exactly what they wanted but both achieving something. It was admirable and what she ought to have expected from such a pair. And as the easy talk went on, she knew with a tightening of foreboding that her parents would never compromise about anything. They would either get their own way on Friday or they would be defeated. And she said a silent, treacherous prayer for their defeat.

Nevertheless anxiety kept her awake all Thursday night.

Mr and Mrs Sowerby had prepared themselves for their meeting with the infamous Mrs Easter by a week of prayer and righteous indignation. Unlike their daughter, they slept well on Thursday night and now, dressed in their Sunday-go-to-meeting black, they were in good time to catch the coach.

‘Whatever else,' Mr Sowerby told his wife as he locked up the house, ‘whatever else we will stand by our principles. Mr Easter has done us a grievous wrong, but I tell 'ee, Mother, he need not think he will prevail. When we open this door tomorrow, Harriet will be returned to us.'

‘Amen!' Mrs Sowerby said fiercely. They'd had a very difficult time of it during the past few weeks, with their neighbours so obviously inquisitive about where Harriet had gone and the congregation asking pointed questions,
and even though they'd answered with truth that she was working as companion to the wife of a clergyman, there was no doubt in anybody's mind that she ought to be at home, where she belonged.

In Nan's headquarters in the Strand, John Easter was making his last appeal to Mr Brougham and Cosmo Teshmaker. ‘It is understood that Miss Sowerby is not to be returned to her parents,' he urged. He too had passed a sleepless night worrying about the interview, and he was dreading the moment when his adversaries would arrive.

He and Nan and their two lawyers had been watching out for them, standing at the window of her luxurious office with her splendid fire crackling behind them, both lawyers professionally noncomittal, Nan warm with mischief, John apprehensive. Outside it was blowing a gale and the wind was rattling the windowpanes.

‘It is quite understood, Mr John,' Cosmo said. ‘You need not concern yourself I do assure you. Mr Brougham is here.'

‘I still maintain that I should be present, Mama,' John said, ‘if not to participate, then at least to hear what is said.'

‘Aye, so you say,' his mother said coolly. ‘Howsomever, Mr Brougham thinks otherwise. Do you not, Mr Brougham?'

‘Given the circmstances,' Mr Brougham said easily, ‘I do believe your absence would be advisable.'

‘He en't to be here,' Nan said. ‘Come now Johnnie, you know 'tis for the best. You may sit behind the partition in the inner office if you've a mind to. Then you could hear every word.'

He was horrified at such a suggestion. ‘I could not possibly stoop to such a thing, Mama,' he protested. How could an Easter play such a hole-in-the-corner trick? It would be terribly undignified.

‘Then you must stay in your office and wait 'til we call 'ee,' Nan said. ‘Don't 'ee fret. 'Twill all go well, take my word for it.'

‘They are bullies,' he warned.

‘We shall be a match for 'em,' she said, ‘whenever they come.'

The Sowerbys appeared, just as the church clock of St Clements' Danes was striking four. They were dressed in their uncompromising black and stalked along the crowded Strand as stiff as broomsticks, looking neither left nor right, and set apart from everybody else in the street by their lack of colour and their rigidity. There was an extravagance of movement and excitement all around them, horses trotting, whips flicking, carriages jolting and swaying, pedestrians scurrying against the wind, greatcoats swirling, or stopping to greet a friend with much arm waving and head nodding and clutching of hats. Outside the Exeter ‘Change the usual excited crowds were rushing to see the menagerie, pointing up at the brightly coloured pictures of monsters and wild beasts that decorated its walls and urged on by the doormen who were dressed up as Yeomen of the Guard and stood yelling at the entrance. Buskers turned wind-tossed somersaults, hawkers offered wind-dusted pies. But the Sowerbys were impervious to it all. Others might bend to the elements if they wished, they progressed.

‘Yes,' John said, his heart sinking at the sight of them. ‘That is Mrs Sowerby, I'm sure of it.'

‘So we may safely assume that the gentleman beside her is her husband,' Cosmo observed.

‘Unless she has taken a lover,' Mr Brougham laughed.

‘Which don't seem likely,' Nan said wickedly, ‘given the face she's got on her. My heart alive! Who'd be enamoured of that?'

And John laughed with the others, cheered by her irreverent humour, despite his apprehension.

‘Hasten you down, Mr Jones,' she said, turning to the clerk who was standing behind her waiting for his orders. ‘Honoured guests, remember. Don't 'ee forget to bow and scrape. And bring in the sherry after five minutes.'