Fourpenny Flyer (41 page)

It sounded very important. ‘'Twill be a big meeting, I don't doubt,' John said.

‘Very big,' Mr Taylor agreed. ‘They do say there will be sixty thousand people there. 'Twill be a magnificent sight to see. There are to be bands and banners, and reporters from all the London papers.'

‘Are you to be there, Mr Taylor?' Harriet asked.

‘Indeed I am,' Mr Taylor said. ‘I would not miss it for the world.'

‘Ain't there like to be a riot with such a large gathering?' John asked, mindful of the safety of his wife and child.

‘No indeed, Mr Easter,' Mr Taylor reassured at once. ‘That is the entire point of issuing this notification. The marchers are all pledged to keep themselves in perfect control. Each and every one of them. They are all quite splendidly prepared and totally calm, despite the presence of government spies and suchlike who would like to provoke them. Indeed, that is one purpose of the meeting: to demonstrate their calm in the face of provocation.'

That sounded reasonable, Harriet thought, despite the excitable tone of the notice. Sometimes, as she knew from the preachers of her childhood, it was necessary to show your enemies how resolute and calm you could be. In fact, calm was one acknowledged way of defeating the devil. ‘An admirable purpose,' she said.

‘The other and more important purpose, however,' another guest pointed out, ‘is to ask for reform of our present parliamentary system, which is manifestly rotten and agreed to be so by all reasonable men.'

‘Sixty thousand people,' Mr Taylor said, ‘gathered together peaceably to ask for their rights as citizens. What could be more proper or well-controlled than that?'

‘Nothing will come of it,' Mr Clarke said, ‘for 'tis all folly.
Howsomever 'tis like to be a moment of history and my wife and I will be there to see it. I have a friend with lodgings in Windmill Street, d'ye see. His rooms overlook the very field itself, so we shall have the best of possible views. How if you were to accompany me there, Mr Easter? You and your charming wife, of course. I'm sure he would be agreeable to it.'

‘I have work to do tomorrow,' John said, ‘thank 'ee all the same. But Mrs Easter might care to accept your offer.' She was looking quite animated about this meeting, and if she were with Mr and Mrs Clarke and inside a house she would be quite safe, even if the crowds
did
get a little boisterous. It would keep her occupied and make up to her for his neglect.

She considered the offer thoughtfully for a moment or two, her neat head bowed. ‘Yes,' she said at last, ‘thank 'ee, Mr Clarke, I do believe I should like to see this meeting, for it sounds as though 'twill be a great occasion. There is only one thing….'

‘What is that, my dear?' Mr Clarke encouraged.

‘May I bring my baby and his nursemaid too, an't please you? I should not care to be parted from him for too long in a strange city.'

So it was agreed. And the next morning, when John set off for Salford and the office of the solicitors who were handling the rent of another Easter shop, Harriet put on her pretty new embroidered stockings, and promised John that she would stay inside the building until the meeting was over and disbanded, and then she and Rosie and baby Will took a threesome carriage to Windmill Street to see history being made.

Above the smoke haze it was a lovely summer's day, and even below it the air was warm and the motes that swirled within it gilded like tiny fireflies. As the threesome carriage joggled Harriet and Rosie and baby Will out of the narrow crush of Market Street, sunshine was visibly filtering through the cloud.

They were in a wide street lined on either side by fine town houses, which the coachman told Harriet was ‘Moseley Street, ma'am, where the nobs live hereabouts'. But it wasn't the nobs who were promenading that morning. The street was completely filled with working people, all going in the same direction and all of them on the march, men in felt caps and leather breeches and rough brown fustian jackets, women in summer cottons and Sunday-go-to-meeting bonnets, children in brown holland pinafores, toddlers riding pig-a-back, babes in arms. There was a fife band playing ‘St Patrick's Day in the Morning' some distance ahead of them, and two of the marchers were carrying an enormous silk banner, bracing their backs against the weight of it because it was billowing in the breeze like a great sail. It was made of green silk and bore the painted legend, ‘Taxation without representation is unjust and tyrannical.'

Harriet looked at the faces all around her and knew that there was no need for any anxiety about this meeting at all. These people were not rioters. They were decent, working people, quiet and orderly. They smiled up at her with cheerful friendliness, and one or two waved as the carriage trotted alongside them.

‘We'll see thee at Peter's Field,' one young woman called.
And Harriet called back. ‘Yes. Yes indeed.' And was glad to be included in her company.

It took a long time to negotiate the half-mile between Market Street and the chosen assembly place because all the approaches were full of marchers, but eventually the threesome inched past the classical portico of St Peter's church and was able to trot along the relative emptiness of Lower Moseley Street. It came to a halt before a dense mass of people who were streaming into a narrow pathway immediately to their left.

‘That opening there is Windmill Street, missus,' the coachman said, pointing at the pathway with his whip. ‘You'll need to walk t' last step I'm thinkin', for there'll be no teking this horse through such a scrimmage.' Which was true enough. ‘'Tis nobbut a step.'

And that was true, too, although their steps were very much jostled and they were both quite glad to see Mr Clarke looking out for them on a doorstep a little further along the path, for Windmill Street turned out to be a single terrace of very plain houses facing an open field.

‘Come in, come in,' he said. ‘We've been quite worried for you in this crush. Did you ever see such a turnout? Come upstairs, pray do. ‘Tis a fine room and a quite excellent view. Just wait until you see it. Mr Murgatroyd expects you.'

Mr Murgatroyd was a gangly young man with very thin limbs and very sparse hair and moist protruding eyes like a rabbit. He greeted them at the top of the first flight of stairs, shaking Harriet's hand most warmly and then ushering her into his ‘sitting room', which was very sparsely furnished but had two windows overlooking the field. There he offered a stool to Rosie and the baby and a rather battered armchair to Harriet, arranging it next to ‘Mrs Clarke's chair', right beside one of the windows.

‘What a day this is!' he said excitedly. ‘Do you not think so, Mrs Easter? What a day! We shall have tea and cakes presently. The landlady is to bring them up for us. I trust that will suit. What a day! Did you ever imagine we should see so many turn out, particularly when Mr Nadin and the magistrates expressly forbade it a week ago? Oh they must agree to reform now, surely, in the face of such numbers.'

‘You support the reformists, Mr Murgatroyd?' Harriet asked.

‘Indeed I do,' her host said ardently. ‘'Tis a truth I hold to be self-evident.'

‘Self-evident nonsense,' Mr Clarke said cheerfully, looking out of the window at the gathering crowd. ‘What would the likes of them know of voting and elections, eh? Tell me that.'

‘With education …' Mr Murgatroyd offered.

‘Education, sir?' Mr Clarke said. ‘Hotheads the lot of ‘em. And hotheads get their skulls cracked. That's all there is to be said about hotheads. Our Deputy Constable, Mr Nadin, has called out the Manchester Yeomanry.'

‘Manchester Yeomanry,' Rosie echoed admiringly.

‘Then he is a fool,' Mrs Clarke said, tickling Will under the chin. ‘'Tis a peaceable crowd and will stay so left to its own devices.'

‘Own devices, yes,' Rosie said.

‘The Yeomanry are a pretty poor set of hotheads, too,' Mr Murgatroyd said, smiling amiably at Rosie. ‘Local tradesmen, Mrs Easter, cheesemongers and ironmongers and suchlike, who fancy themselves as gentry. Ain't accustomed to horseback, though, not like the old squires. Hard put to it to keep their seats at the best of times.'

‘They'll be more hard put to it than usual this morning,' Mr Clarke said, ‘if the gossip is anything to go by.'

‘How so?' his wife asked. ‘What gossip?'

‘Gossip?' Rosie said hopefully.

‘Our Deputy Constable, Mr Nadin, has had 'em in the alehouse since eight o'clock this morning,' Mr Clarke informed them. ‘So they'll be rolling drunk by now, I shouldn't wonder.'

‘Shouldn't wonder,' Rosie agreed.

In the field outside the window another marching column had arrived with yet another band, and the squeal of pipes and the thudding of drums set Will bouncing on Rosie's ample lap.

‘Will you look at that child!' Mrs Clarke exclaimed. ‘Such strength on those legs, me dear. A fine boy!'

Harriet was looking down at the crowd. The field was
already thronged and yet still more people were marching into it, their arrival marked by bands and banners but soon becoming nothing more than a ribbon of white faces swirling forward into the mass. There were so many faces, thousands and thousands of them, and all so pale and pressed so close together, and all of them turned towards the house because the hustings had been erected directly in front of it: round white faces topped with dark caps and dotted with dark eyes; round gentle faces, Harriet thought, like a meadow full of daisies. And all those flags and banners fluttering above them were like flowers too, huge, brightly coloured flowers, hollyhocks, perhaps, or lilies, red and gold, green and scarlet, yellow and orange and black and white, their poles topped with bright red caps of liberty. She was pleased by the image she'd found because it was peaceful and homely, and well suited to this meeting in a green field that could have been a garden.

On the opposite side of the field there were several fine oak trees with a pile of loose timber and logs left beside them. A group of women and children had climbed up onto the logs to get a better view, and now they sat in the sunshine as though they were at a picnic. The large plain building behind them belonged to the Quakers. Harriet could see the words ‘Friends' Meeting House' painted on the front of it in tall, clear letters. And immediately to her right there was a beautiful walled garden, full of roses and honeysuckles and ivies. It looked very green and welcoming after the harshness of all that unrelieved red brick in the centre of the town, and it was another indication of how peaceful the place was.

By now Will had bounced himself red in the face and Mr Murgatroyd's landlady had arrived with a pot of tea and a plate full of honey cakes, which Mr Murgatroyd urged on his guests. It was well after one o'clock before the refreshments had been eaten and Will had been rocked to sleep on Rosie's lap, and by then the field was full and several men who seemed to be officials of some kind were gathering the banners onto the hustings.

Harriet and Mrs Clarke stood at the open window to read what was written upon them. ‘Universal Suffrage',
they said, ‘Hunt and Liberty', ‘Unite and be Free', ‘Vote by Ballot', and on one very splendid red and green banner, which proclaimed that it belonged to the ‘Female Union of Royden' were the ringing and inappropriate words, ‘Let us Die like Men and not be Sold as Slaves'.

‘Why look, Mrs Easter my dear,' Mrs Clarke said, ‘there's Mr Taylor, I do believe. Look! Look there! Beside the gentleman in the red hat.'

And sure enough, when Harriet looked, there
was
Mr Taylor, striding into the crowd in his smart blue jacket, talking in a most animated way to the gentleman beside him. And standing directly behind him, watching the crowd, was the man who had travelled with her from Leicester, Mr Richards of the fair hair and the ginger whiskers. Well, fancy that!

But there wasn't time to tell her companions about him because the crowd had begun to stir. Hands were foresting upwards to point and wave. She could hear a band playing somewhere close at hand, and a rolling cheer began on the left side of the crowd and spread like a wave all across the field. It was obvious that something was about to happen.

‘There they are!' Mr Murgatroyd shouted. And the crowd to the left of the hustings parted to make way for a barouche. It was full of passengers and bristling with blue and white flags and it was being drawn not by a team of horses but by the people themselves.

‘There's Mr Hunt,' Mr Murgatroyd said. ‘The man standing up, in the white top hat, d'ye see? He always wears a white top hat. And there's Mr Carlisle from London, who sells the penny press so cunningly when he ain't supposed to. And Mr Saxton of the Manchester
Observer
. Oh, how splendid!'

And splendid it certainly was, for Mr Henry Hunt was an imposing looking man and when the coach reached the hustings he sprang up onto the canvas in the most athletic and dramatic way, like a prizefighter, turning to the crowd to wave and bow. And the crowd gave him a long full-throated cheer and waved back. ‘Good old Hunt!' ‘Hunt and Liberty!' ‘Hooray! Hooray!'

Then a band began to play the National Anthem and Mr Hunt
took off his fine white top hat and held it before his chest respectfully and sang in a deep booming voice that Harriet could hear quite clearly from her window. And the men in the crowd doffed their caps, too, and the movement of their action was like the wind rippling a field of corn. How respectful they all are, Harriet thought, as they stood to attention and sang. And the sunshine gleamed on Mr Hunt's white hat as he returned it to his head and began to speak.

‘Friends and brothers' he said, and his voice rang out across the field, ‘we are gathered here this morning, in St Peter's Place, not to break the law, for that we would not do, nor to cause an affray, for that we would not do either, but to consider the propriety of adopting the most
legal
and
effectual
means of obtaining reform of the Commons House of Parliament. To this end we have come, unarmed and in good faith….'