Fourpenny Flyer (54 page)

Harriet didn't want to hear about fights. ‘What are you learning?' she said. ‘What do they teach you?' She was sitting in the rectory garden with Annie and Matilda, and soon it would be time for tea.

‘Oh history and geography and arithmetic and such,' Beau said airily. ‘Some boys have to be taught to read; imagine that! Such dunces. Me and Jimmy don't, of course. I should say not!'

‘Meg'll have to be taught to read when she goes to school though,' Jimmy said, watching his sister as she and Will and Matty climbed into their tree-house in the holm oak.

‘Can't she read?' Harriet asked Annie.

‘Well no,' Annie confessed. ‘I haven't had time to teach her, poor child. Not with a new baby in the house.'

‘I haven't taught Matty either,' Matilda confessed. ‘Do you think I ought?' It hadn't occured to her that her daughter might need educating.

Harriet had already begun to teach Will his letters, because he was nearly five years old and wanted to learn. Now she looked into the oak tree where he was pulling Matty up by one arm and her pigtails, and a splendid idea came to her. ‘Then I will teach them,' she said. ‘I will run a little school, out in the garden when it is fine, and at home in my blue parlour when it is wet or cold. I will teach all three of them if you and Matilda are agreeable to it. How would that be?'

‘It would be admirable,' Annie said at once.

Matilda thought it was an excellent idea too. ‘You could teach Edward as well if you'd a mind to,' she said. ‘But I suppose as he's only three he's a mite too young.'

So Edward was left in the nursery in Bury a little longer, Matty was driven over to Rattlesden each day and, although at first the trio was none too keen to be sitting still when they could have been running in fields, after a
day or two teacher and taught began to enjoy themselves. There were rewards to this new life, out in the sun with their slates and pencils. ‘Well done!' Harriet would call as a new letter was mastered and a new word learned. ‘Well done! We must find a sugar stick for such a clever child.'

‘You have a talent for it, my dear,' Cousin Thomasina said, when she and Evelina came to visit.

‘I enjoy it,' Harriet said, looking at the three fair heads bent over their slates. ‘'Tis a real pleasure to see them learning so well. Will and Matty are reading little sentences already, aren't you my lambkins? And Meg draws such lovely pictures and nearly knows sixteen letters. What a clever girl! I make up little rhymes to help them, you see, and we draw pictures to fit them. Oh, I enjoy it.' And she held up her latest, a card on which she had written: ‘O is for OAK on which we can climb, P is for PASTRY with jam every time.' ‘When they can read the letter and the word,' she explained, ‘they may climb the tree and eat the tart.'

‘I can see why they enjoy your lessons,' Thomasina said. ‘What shall you do when you reach Z?'

‘Why, I shall have to take them to the Strand, and they shall see a real live zebra in the Exeter 'Change.'

‘There is a menagerie comes to Norwich about this time of year,' Evelina said, ‘but I believe they only have lions.'

‘Lions would do,' Will said, looking at his mother hopefully.

‘Well, well,' she laughed. ‘We will see about lions when we get back to L again.'

Somehow or other they got back to L again a fortnight later, and the next day Harriet and her three excited pupils took the pony-cart to Stowmarket and there caught the morning coach to the Bell in Norwich.

It was a fine August day, slow and warm and rather autumnal, with just sufficient breeze to cleanse the narrow streets and carry away the worst of the summer smells, although down below the castle the air was still rank with the smell of that morning's beast market. Castle Meadow was thronged with people in holiday mood, a-nod with bonnets and fine cottons, light-hearted in pale toppers and
buff trousers and summer jackets and surrounded by street sellers, pie men and apple women, boot-blackers and ballad-mongers, cheap-jacks of every kind. There were three coaches in front of the Bell, two arrived and one ready for the off, and the ostlers in their smeared green aprons were hard at work attending the teams.

‘What's that?' Will asked, looking up at the old castle towering above them, square and solid and imposing on its grassy mound.

‘That,' Harriet told him, ‘is the dungeon, where they lock people up, poor things.'

‘What for?'

‘For being thieves and vagabonds and suchlike.'

‘What's a wag-a-bond?'

‘Where are the lions?' Matty said, her round cheeks red with excitement. ‘Aunt Harriet, you promised us to see the lions.'

‘So you shall,' Harriet said, taking the two girls by the hand and walking them off up the hill. ‘Come along.'

Mr Wombwell's menagerie was enclosed behind a hastily erected wattle fence on the open ground below the castle that usually served as the horse fair. There was a low gate in the middle of the fence, where Mr Wombwell stood to collect their entrance fees, and as they approached they could hear the strange cries of the beasts.

‘Come on! Come on!' Matty cried, penny in hand. ‘Run!'

So they ran.

Inside the fence the animals were enclosed in pens, one beside the other, and the smell of them was so strong it made Harriet's eyes water.

Will said the first animal they came to was a sell, because it was just a sheep and you could see a sheep any day of the week, and where were the lions?

But the next two were deer with slender legs and mournful eyes, which was better, and the pen after that contained an odd looking thing like a brown pig with a long snout caked in mud. Then there were three miserable heaps of black and white quills that the notice proclaimed to be ‘Porky pines', and after that, and at last, they came to the lions, two of them in a pen only slightly bigger than
that allotted to the porky pines, lying together, panting in the heat, their brown manes tangled and their tawny coats smeared with grime.

‘Aren't they
big!
' Will said, his eyes round with awe.

But Harriet thought how sad they looked and how awful it was that they should be so dirty. They lay in indolent heaps, with their great paws as soft and still as cushions and only their tawny tails flicking from time to time to remove the flies that buzzed and plagued all about them. Such beautiful eyes, she thought, as yellow as honey, and so sad. Almost as if they knew they were prisoners. And she thought of the men locked away in the dungeons underneath her feet and remembered her own imprisonment in that cramped cell in Churchgate Street. ‘I can't bear to think of anyone being locked up,' she said. ‘It seems to me the greatest unkindness.'

‘They're very smelly,' Meg observed, wrinkling her nose.

Then to Will's delight, one of the animals rose to his feet, shook his tangled mane and padded to the side of the pen, where he flopped down again just a few inches away from where they were standing.

‘Why he's close enough to touch,' he said, enraptured. ‘Could I touch him, Mama?'

Mr Wombwell was beside them in an instant. ‘No you could not,' he said firmly. ‘That there is Nero and the last little boy what touched our Nero got his head bit clean off.'

Will looked at Nero with increased respect. ‘Clean off?' he said.

‘Clean off.'

Nero yawned, exposing a vast expanse of pink tongue and formidable yellow teeth, at which Will gazed with admiration. ‘Did he eat it?' he asked.

‘I think we've seen enough for one afternoon,' Harriet said. ‘Time we were off to the fish market. I promised your Aunt Annie to buy fish for supper.'

So they went to market and bought the fish and afterwards they had coffee and honey cakes at an inn called the Tiger in a street called Fishergate, which Will thought very appropriate. It was a splendid outing, even if they did come home as grubby as chimney sweeps.

It was a great disappointment to Harriet to have to leave her little school at the end of that season.

‘I will buy you reading books,' she promised the two girls as she left, ‘and I will come back next June, I give 'ee my word.'

It was a quiet winter and it seemed to go on for ever, for the next summer, being much anticipated, was a long time coming. But at last it was June again and Harriet and Will could return to their garden in Rattlesden, where the roses were blooming in profusion, and to the rectory garden next door. There were four slates waiting for pupils, for Edward was four now and according to his sister ‘quite old enough'.

‘Where shall we start?' Harriet asked her class on their first morning.

‘L is for LION!' they chorused.

In London it was hot and sticky, and despite hot and sticky argument, the House of Commons had given the third and final reading to the repeal of the controversial Combination Act. Proposed by Sir Francis Burdett, supported by Mr Francis Place and his tireless petitions, and by the hundreds who had gathered signatures, the repeal had at last become law and the Combination Act was to be removed from the statute books. From 5th June 1824 it would once again be legal for working men and women to meet together to discuss the conditions under which they had to labour.

Frederick Brougham went to the House at the end of that historic week to meet his noble cousin, partly to take him off for a celebratory drink or two, and partly to see whether he had news of any government position on offer. The two of them had been manoeuvring for preferment for him for more that a year now and just before the third reading Lord Brougham had hinted that something might be decided upon soon. It would be a fine time to join the House, Frederick thought, just as the tide was turning in favour of greater freedom.

So he was rather put down by his cousin's greeting, as they walked towards one another through the lobby.

‘What think 'ee of Tobago in the West Indies?'

‘'Tis a parlous distance to travel,' Frederick said, diplomatic despite his disappointment.

‘But an uncommon good post,' Lord Brougham urged. ‘Governor, no less. Think on it, Frederick.' He was turning back ready to walk to the coffee room.

It
was
an uncommon good post. There was no doubt of
that. But not the one he wanted. ‘Thank 'ee kindly, Henry,' he said. ‘When do 'ee require an answer?'

‘I should prefer one now,' his cousin said. ‘Alacrity being the clearest indication of willing acceptance. Howsomever, should you need to think on it, we could take a week I daresay.'

I should accept, Frederick thought. It was the best offer he was likely to get at this juncture and if he refused he might well be jeopardizing his chances of a parliamentary career some time in the future. Even so, the West Indies …

And somebody suddenly came up behind them. Somebody breathing hard as though he'd been running, and smelling strongly of sweat.

Frederick turned to see who it was, moving slowly and easily because he was more curious than alarmed, and found that he was staring straight into the eyes of a wild, unkempt man with a horsewhip in his hand. He was muttering thickly, ‘You have betrayed me, sir. I'll make you attend your duty.' And when Lord Brougham turned too, saying ‘Who are you, sir?' he raised the whip and struck the noble lord about the head and shoulders, shouting, ‘You know me well! You know me well! You have betrayed me, sir!'

‘Walk on!' Frederick said. The sooner they removed their bodies from the onslaught the better.

And Lord Brougham walked on, as well as he could under the frantic blows, shielding his head with his arms. ‘Never seen the feller before in my life,' he said to Frederick.

Feet were running towards them from the direction of the chamber. Two other MPs had arrived, Mr Littleton and Sir George Robbinson weren't they? And a constable. They were struggling with the man, pulling him away, and the constable had pinioned his arms and they were half leading, half dragging him away. Frederick realized that his heart was pounding most uncomfortably. It had all been rather alarming.

‘Brandy, I think,' Lord Brougham said. He was still wonderfully cool, but Frederick noticed that his forehead was filmed with sweat.

So they went off to drink a little brandy together and recover. And for a while at least the Governorship of Tobago was forgotten.

‘And you want to be a Member of Parliament?' Nan teased when he told her about the attack. ‘I'd rather sell newspapers any day of the week. What was the matter with the man? Was he mad?'

‘As a hatter,' Frederick said. ‘And as to wanting to be a Member of Parliament …'

It was past two o'clock in the morning. They had dined well, loved long, and now they were lying side by side in his bed, talking in the easy fashion of long-established lovers. Perhaps this was the right moment to tell her about Tobago.

‘I have the offer of a government post,' he said. He had intended to tell her casually, as though the matter were of little consequence, but despite all his efforts the words sounded forced and stilted.

She turned in his arms to grin her delight at him. ‘At last!' she said. ‘What did I tell 'ee? A man of such worth! Well? Well? What is it?'

He paused before he told her and, slight though it was, his hesitation alerted her.

‘To be Governor of Tobago. In the West Indies.'

‘You'll not take it, surely,' she said. It was impossible to read his face in the half-light, but she could see enough to realize that he was keeping his expression under tight control, and that made her heart sink palpably.

‘'Tis the best offer I am like to obtain,' he said, stroking her shoulder, half in affection, half to placate.

She shook his hand away and sat up to look at him more closely. ‘I thought you asked to be made a Member of Parliament.'

‘I did,' he admitted. ‘But this is a better offer, Nan. And would assure me of a seat when I returned.'