Fourpenny Flyer (3 page)

‘And so you shall, Mr John,' the lawyer said as he began to glide away, ‘so you shall, there being plenty to talk about.' And he was gone into the vociferous crowd, heading towards Billy and the spinning top.

Not for the first time in his life, John wished that he had the power to shrink away to nothing. He felt so conspicuous left alone among so many people. He looked for his mother, but she was dancing with the mayor, for his sister, but she was dancing with her husband, James, for Billy, but he was leaping round the spinning top. He was just beginning to hope that he could creep out while nobody was looking when he saw his mother's next-door neighbour bearing down upon him, old eyes glinting. Miss Amelia Pettie who was so ancient she creaked when she moved and wore the most dreadful false curls made of yellow horsehair and, what was even worse, would insist on matchmaking all the time. He and Billy looked upon her as a joke, and now here she was, seizing him by the arm with her tatty old fan raised ready to whack him.

‘La, you bad boy, John Easter,' she said, ‘hiding yourself away I do declare. What would your dear mother say?'

‘No, no, Miss Pettie,' he stuttered. ‘I do assure you …'

‘You should be dancing, my dear, with all the other young things,' the old lady insisted, tugging at her curls. ‘Where's the point in a victory ball, eh, if the young don't enjoy it? That's what I should like to know. Where's the point?'

‘Oh I do enjoy it,' he said. ‘I've a score of dances booked already.'

‘Oh you bad wicked boy!' she chortled. ‘Let me see your card, do, for I long to know who they are.' And before he could stop her she had taken his card from his pocket and opened it wide.

It's emptiness fairly screamed up at them.

‘Why John, what is this?' the old lady said, and she gave both sets of curls another tug in her agitation. ‘You must not be shy, my dear. Oh indeed, you must not. We can't have our dear John a wallflower. 'Twon't do at all. Now come, look around you and tell me which of these delightful young ladies you would like to meet. I will arrange an introduction. You have only to say the word.'

Caught! Trapped! How could he escape? He looked around him frantically at the tumult in the hall, at gloved hands gesticulating and dancing pumps bounding, at
muslins flowing like gossip and gauzes drifting like dreams, at scores of fans fluttering and tapping, at hundreds of curls bobbing like coiled springs, at eyes unnaturally bright and cheeks flushed by wine and rouge, and his heart beat more painfully because he'd been caught out in a lie, and she was putting pressure on him that he couldn't resist, and he couldn't see a single lady he could bear to talk to, let alone dance with.

‘You are very kind, Miss Pettie,' he murmured, swallowing with difficulty because his mouth had suddenly grown dry. ‘Howsomever, I do not …'

‘Tush!' Miss Pettie said, thwacking him on the forearm with her fan. ‘Now look 'ee there. Ain't that a pretty creature?' And she actually used her awful fan to point at some poor young lady, as though she were buying a sheep at the market.

He was so embarrassed he didn't know where to put himself, but the old lady insisted, shaking his arm and bouncing those awful false curls. ‘Look my dear, look there.' And in the end he had to obey her, because people were beginning to look at
them.

There was a slender girl standing perfectly still beside the staircase, her hands clasped before her, her features composed, as pale and motionless as a candle. She was dressed entirely in white, in a simple gown made of some soft material which was probably lawn, he thought, for it swathed the gentle curves of her bosom so modestly, and its long skirt hung in soft folds in the best classical tradition. Her skin was as pale as alabaster, her eyes deep blue, and her hair was so very fair it looked silver in the candlelight, straight, neat, light hair, parted in the centre and drawn back into a modest topknot on the crown of her head. Her simplicity and stillness were quite dramatic in the hubbub around her, among the frills and furbelows and the ringlets and braids. ‘Yes,' he said. ‘She is uncommon pretty.'

‘Such good fortune,' Miss Pettie was saying. ‘She belongs to my church, you know. I brought her to the ball myself, along with little Miss Turnkey and the two Miss Browns. You must meet her, my dear.'

She was dragging him by the arm, trotting through the crowd towards the girl. ‘Miss Pettie,' he begged, ‘pray do walk a little more slowly. I cannot keep pace with you.' It was intolerable to be dragged about like a sack of washing and he really didn't want to meet any of these young ladies at all, not even a nice, quiet, pretty one.

But he was wasting his breath. Miss Pettie had caught the scent of a match and nothing and no one could deflect her now.

So that was how Mr John Henry Easter found himself dancing the minuet with Miss Harriet Sowerby and, although he would never have admitted it to Miss Pettie, it was really quite a pleasant experience. She was so light on her feet and so very slender that to dance with her was like dancing with a shadow. And she was extremely shy, even worse than he was, ducking her head whenever he spoke to her and blushing. But faintly, of course, for like everything else about her, even her blush was subdued, being the faintest trace of apricot pink that spread across her pale cheeks and rose from the warm folds of her gown into the translucent skin of her throat. He had never seen another young lady quite like her, and at the end of the minuet he asked if he might be allowed to dance with her again, adding, ‘If you have any to spare, that is,' in case he seemed too eager.

She took her card from the reticule dangling on her arm and fumbled with it nervously. Her gloves were too large and clumsy for her hands, so he bent forward as if to help her and saw with a pang of pity and fellow feeling underneath its fine gilt heading, ‘Grand Subscription Ball, Saturday May 18th, 1814', the card was almost unmarked.

‘I – it is – I mean –' she stuttered, folding both hands across the card as if to protect it. And there was that blush again and that soft lower lip was held down by two charmingly crooked white teeth.

He rushed to reassure her, opening his own card and holding it up for her to see. ‘I have always found these occasions impossible,' he confided. ‘I never know what to say, you see, and most of the young ladies here are such teases. They rag me all the time.' And then he realized that
he might have gone too far and that what he was saying could easily be misconstrued as criticism. ‘I do not find fault, you understand,' he said.

‘I do not like being teased either, Mr Easter,' she confessed. ‘It makes me blush.' And she blushed to confess it.

‘If you will allow me the honour of the next dance,' he said, feeling marvellously gallant, ‘I promise I will not tease you.'

So she allowed him the honour of the next dance, and the next and as many more as Miss Pettie and propriety permitted. And they told one another how splendid it was that the long war was over at last, and she confessed that she had always been afraid of the dark in case the French had invaded and were lurking just around the corner, and he told her that dark nights could be uncommon beautiful, ‘all by yourself with only the stars for company'. And for a brief moment he wondered whether he might ask her to take a turn about the square in the darkness of this particular night, and thought better of it because it would have seemed presumptuous, and in any case the square was full of stalls.

But it was time for the first interval and refreshments, so the offer wasn't made and they went in to supper together instead.

‘This is my very first ball,' Harriet confessed.

‘Then may it be the first of many.'

‘I never ever thought I would dance in the Athenaeum,' she said, as they walked up the grand staircase together. ‘I've dreamed of it often enough, but I never thought my dream would come true.'

‘This is a night for dreams to come true,' he said. ‘One of mine came true at dinner.'

‘Did it really,' she said, all eyes and interest.

So he told her about it, how he'd planned to extend the business, how the plans were written ‘down to the last little detail', how they'd all expected his mother to marry and hand over control of the firm to her new husband, and how she'd changed her mind and given it to him and Billy instead. ‘I still can't believe it,' he said. ‘It's too good to be
true. But I mean to make a great success of it, you may depend on that.'

‘I know exactly how you feel,' she said, smiling happily at him. ‘And I'm sure you will.'

‘Capital ball, eh?' Billy said as he breezed past them with four glasses of fruit punch balanced on a tray.

And for the first time in his life John wasn't prevaricating when he agreed.

When the final gallop of the Grand Subscription Ball shrieked to a boisterous finish, it was well after two o'clock in the morning and Harriet Sowerby was beginning to feel anxious. She had never sat up later than a quarter past ten in all her life, and at midnight she'd been drenched with fatigue. Now, glancing fearfully at the clock like a pale Cinderella, she was wondering what sort of reception she would receive when she finally got home to Churchgate Street.

Mr Easter returned her to her table, where Aggie Turnkey and the two Miss Browns were waiting with old Miss Pettie, and after a flurry of leave-taking and a confusion of movement and departure, she climbed into Miss Pettie's chaise for the second time that evening for the return trot about the town. But where she had been quivering with excitement on the way out, she was rigid with apprehension on the way back. And the nearer she got to her home, the more afraid she was. Churchgate Street was a mere hundred yards from the Athenaeum so she could have walked home if Miss Pettie had allowed it, and perhaps got back a little earlier, but the old lady had insisted on delivering each of her charges ‘to the door, my dears', and that meant taking a round trip all about the town, for Aggie lived in Pump Lane in the easternmost corner and the two Miss Browns had a modest house beside the Risby Gate, and of course Miss Pettie delivered them to their doors first, because they were considerably higher in society than Harriet Sowerby, and whatever else might be said about Miss Pettie, she was acutely aware of the niceties of social etiquette.

So it was nearly three o'clock before the chaise finally trundled to a halt in the narrow roadway outside the Sowerbys' cottage. Harriet climbed out and stood beside her uncompromising front door, shivering in the chill air. There was a single candle burning in the front room and she could see the huddled shape of her father sitting disagreeably before the fire and her mother's shadowy figure walking stiffly towards the door. The air of disapproval in the room was unmistakable, even at that distance, and yet when Mrs Sowerby opened the door she was unctuous with charm and polite gratitude.

‘How can I
ever
thank you, my
dear
Miss Pettie, for the honour you do my humble family? You are too, too kind.'

‘Not at all, Mrs Sowerby,' Miss Pettie said, happily. ‘The child was excellent company. Oh, quite excellent. Drive on, Mullins. Straight home, if you please.'

Mrs Sowerby's tone changed the moment the front door closed. ‘I cannot imagine what sort of hour you call this!' she said sternly to her shivering daughter. ‘Your father and I have sat up
four and a half hours
after we should have been in bed and asleep. I hope you realize what an
inconvenience
you have caused.'

Harriet tried to deflect her mother's wrath by an apology. ‘I am very sorry, Mama,' she murmured, looking down meekly at the flagstones.

It didn't work. ‘After all the money we've spent on your education,' Mrs Sowerby ranted, ‘all the trials and tribulations, all the scrimping and saving, I should have thought the very
least
we could expect was to be allowed to sleep sound in our beds at night. But no, you see how it is, Mr Sowerby, we give her an
inch
and this is how she repays us,
forcing
us to sit up all hours.' She was well into her harangue by now and swollen with the pleasure of it, her small grey eyes glaring, her long face flushed with righteous indignation. ‘Well let me tell you this, my girl, you needn't think we shall be so quick to allow you such a treat the next time you come a-begging for it. You'll ask in vain if this is the way you intend to go on.'

‘Unnecessary luxuries,' her father said sternly from his seat before the fire, ‘invariably provoke selfishness in the
young.' His chin was covered in grizzly stubble and his cheeks were lined by fatigue, but Harriet felt no sympathy for him.

It was horribly unfair, she thought, and quite untrue. She hadn't begged to be allowed to go to the ball. She never begged her parents for anything. It was a point of honour with her. But she said nothing for fear of provoking a beating. She knew how easy it was to provoke punishment and her mother's chastening rod was hanging beside the mantelpiece, ready for use and glistening blood-red in the firelight. Meekness and stillness were the only defence she knew, so she stood quite still before her mother's renewed assault, listening to the click and rustle of the coals and watching the flickering pattern of the firelight on the flagstones, and taking great care not to let the slightest tremor of an expression appear on her face, as if she had been frozen to the spot. Only her thoughts moved, and although her mother couldn't know it, her thoughts were boiling.

‘What have you got to say for yourself, eh, girl?' her father growled when Mrs Sowerby finally paused for breath.

‘I am truly sorry, Papa,' she said obediently, ‘to have been the cause of your distress. 'Twas not intended.' But she didn't look up at him.

‘Let us pray!' her mother ordered, slapping the family Bible onto the table with a crash that made Harriet flinch visibly, despite her self-control.