Fourpenny Flyer Read online

  BERYL KINGSTON

  FOURPENNY

  FLYER

  To Mary

  Contents

  The Easter Family Tree

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chaper Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  A Note on the Author

  The Easter Family Tree

  Chapter One

  It is a shattering thing to have your dreams suddenly come true. Exciting certainly, but the excitement brings apprehension nudging along behind it, and to experience two such contrary emotions at one and the same time is uplifting but daunting, as Harriet Sowerby was beginning to understand.

  Ever since she’d first seen the gentry arriving for the hunt ball at the Athenaeum, stepping down so elegantly from their grand carriages and dressed so splendidly in all their finery, she’d longed to attend a ball. She’d always known it wasn’t possible, of course, because her father wasn’t even on the fringes of Bury St Edmund’s society. He worked as a junior clerk for Mr Alfred Cole, the bookseller in the Buttermarket, and although he and his wife were very proud of his position, he certainly wasn’t gentry and neither was she. But that didn’t stop her dreaming.

  And now, despite everything, here she was, Harriet Sowerby, in the summer of her sixteenth year, actually dressing for her very first ball. She could hardly believe her good fortune.

  She stood on her own in her little narrow bedroom, trembling with excitement, her fingers fumbling the tiny pearl buttons on her white ball gown, and her heart jumping like a wild thing caged. Her movements were so quick and her breathing so erratic that she made the candle gutter and spit wax. She withdrew from it at once, of course, pulling the long straight skirt of the gown away from harm, for it would never have done to get it burnt or spattered with candle grease, not after all the money Miss Pettie must have lavished on hiring it. Dear Miss Pettie. This was all her doing. She was like a fairy godmother, arriving one afternoon with the ticket, ‘as a little reward for my Thursday helpmate, who has been so kind to me, coming to my house week after week to assist with the sewing’. And then, when Mr Sowerby had pulled a sour face and protested that, much though he appreciated Miss Pettie’s undoubted kindness he could not afford the extravagance of a ball gown, she had hired a gown and long gloves and a dear little pair of embroidered dancing pumps, and even looked out a tortoiseshell comb of her own ‘to finish off your hair, my dear’.

  Harriet had long straight fair hair which her mother always insisted should be worn in a modest plait behind her back or tucked away underneath her white day-cap. So it was a pleasure to be able to display it for once, especially as she knew that neither of her parents really approved but couldn’t say so for fear of annoying Miss Pettie. They were rather in awe of Miss Pettie, for although they all attended the same Unitarian church, Miss Pettie was rich and lived in one of the grand houses on Angel Hill and had a fine carriage to drive her about the town, and the Sowerbys were really rather poor.

  Harriet brushed her long hair and combed it until there wasn’t a single tangle left, and then she set about the complicated process of coaxing it into a fashionable topknot, holding the pins between her teeth, and smoothing and patting until she was quite sure there wasn’t a hair out of place. It would have been a great deal easier if she’d had a looking glass so that she could see what she was doing, but she wasn’t even allowed a little hand mirror. Her mother, who was very religious and horribly strict, maintained that mirrors were an encouragement to vanity in young girls and wouldn’t permit one in her daughter’s room – although she had a cheval glass in her own bedroom, and checked her appearance in it every single morning. As Harriet knew, because she’d watched her doing it. But perhaps, she thought wryly, fixing the tortoiseshell comb in place, it was only young girls who grew vain if they looked at themselves in a glass.

  However, there were ways round most things if you used your wits. When her hair was dressed to her satisfaction she put the candle on the edge of her wooden chair and knelt down on the floor beside it so that her face was level with the low window. Her mother might have forbidden mirrors, and of course her mother had to be obeyed because that was one of the Commandments, but there was nothing anyone could do to prevent a reflection in a window.

  The Sowerbys lived in a cramped four-roomed cottage, next to a laundry at the unfashionable end of Churchgate Street in Bury St Edmunds. One of a terraced pair, it had been built at the time of the great Elizabeth for a local butter merchant who had money to spare, and in its day it had been quite a desirable residence. Now it was dark and damp and old-fashioned, and the fact that it was the best that Mr Sowerby could afford was a source of constant irritation to his wife, who did daily battle with mice and cockroaches and weekly battle with bugs and fleas, so that all four rooms always smelt of camphor and turpentine.

  There were two rooms upstairs, just as there were two rooms down, and in both cases the back room, which was small and narrow, led directly out of the front room, which occupied the meagre eight-foot width of the house. Harriet’s bedroom was above the kitchen and its one low window gave out to an inner courtyard where the laundry hurled its daily suds and the privies oozed filth onto the cobbles in winter and attracted a buzzing cloud of flies in the summer. What little light that managed to filter in through the window was smeared and grubby, as though it too had been dunked in the dirty suds with the washing. But at night and with a candle to encourage it, it would sometimes give you back your reflection. As it was doing now.

  There was her face, ghostly white in the smudgy glass, but looking very grown-up beneath those unfamiliar folds of twisted hair. Do I look right? she wondered, peering at the image. It was so important to look right when you went to a ball. Balls were where you met important people. Balls were where young ladies of quality met the young men who were going to marry them and make them happy ever after. She knew that because she’d just finished reading Miss Austen’s new book Pride and Prejudice.

  For Harriet Sowerby had a dream. Nourished by all the successful matchmaking in Miss Austen’s novels and encouraged by Miss Pettie’s highly romantic view of the world, she felt sure that one day a young man would fall in love with her and take her away from the home where she wasn’t wanted into a new life where she would be happy and cherished. She was good and quiet and obedient, except in her thoughts, and surely, surely there must be a reward somewhere, sometime, for all the effort that took her.

  It was going to be such a splendid occasion, a ‘Grand Subscription Ball’ to celebrate the defeat of that awful Napoleon and the end of the French war, which had been going on
for years and years. It had started in 1792, so Miss Pettie said. Imagine that! Seven years before she was even born. And now it was over at last. Everybody who was anybody in Bury society would be certain to be at the ball – Miss Pettie said so. The mayor and Mr Cole the bookseller, and the Honeywoods who were very, very rich and owned all the land from Bury to Rattlesden, and the great Easter family who were newsagents and owned newspaper shops all over England and were even richer than the Honeywoods and lived next door to Miss Pettie. And tonight she would be dancing among them. She, Harriet Sowerby. Was it any wonder she was trembling? Oh it was a very great honour. But the nicest thing about it was the fact that her mother hadn’t been invited.

  Harriet was always extremely careful to obey her mother in every particular, and when she sat in church of a Sunday, she accepted that it was a child’s duty to ‘honour’ her parents, which as far as she could see meant doing everything they said. That was what the Commandments required, so that was what she did. But secretly she knew that she didn’t really like either of her parents. They made her too unhappy and they frightened her too much.

  Her life might have been easier if she’d had brothers and sisters, but she was an only child, born in the first month of the last year of the old century, when her mother was past forty-four and her father nearly forty, and as an only child she had to carry the full weight of her mother’s rigid upbringing.

  ‘An imp of Satan,’ Mrs Sowerby had said, looking down at the peaceful face of her newborn infant. ‘An imp of Satan, like all newborn creatures. Full of original sin. We must tame her, Mr Sowerby. It is our plain Christian duty.’

  ‘Indeed we must,’ Mr Sowerby agreed.

  They set about their God-given task immediately.

  So Harriet was taught to control her appetites from the first bewildered day of her life. When she cried to be fed, her mother made her wait, listening to her screams and telling herself complacently that it was necessary to fight sin from the very outset. When she was a little toddling creature, no more than a twelvemonth old, her curiosity was curbed with a stick. When she was three and able to express a preference for pretty clothes and pretty toys, they were instantly removed from her and never returned so as to inculcate a proper sense of modesty and decorum. By the time she was seven, she was quiet and withdrawn and fearful, a perfect child according to Mrs Sowerby’s religious cronies, all of whom were convinced that children should be seen and not heard and that the best children obeyed without question whatever their parents saw fit to command.

  But although Harriet obeyed any order meekly and immediately, rebellion bubbled inside her sleek little head. As it was doing now.

  ‘I am going to the ball,’ she said to her reflection, ‘and Mama cannot stop me.’ What a lovely private pleasure it was to be able to say such things!

  In Angel Hill, a mere three hundred yards away from the Sowerby cottage, Miss Pettie was just beginning to dress for the ball, and next door to Miss Pettie, the Easter family were still at dinner.

  It was a very grand occasion, for the great Nan Easter had invited all her family, and her lover, Mr Calverley Leigh, and her closest business associates, in order to make an important announcement. The firm she had founded, when her children were little more than babies and the French war had just begun, had grown from a simple newspaper round to a huge empire with shops all over London, and in most of the important towns in the south of England too. Now it was time to expand even further, and to do that she would need to delegate some of her responsibilities.

  ‘I been a-giving the matter the most careful thought,’ she said to her guests, ‘and it do seem to me that changes will need to be made. There are some have urged me to marry and share the burden with a husband, and there was a time when I agreed to it, under duress mark you. But I have to tell ’ee I en’t the marrying kind and that’s the truth of it. I been a widow too long and I like my independence. So what I propose to do is this. I propose to take my two sons into the firm as managers, Billy to take charge of warehousing, Johnnie to be responsible for sales throughout the country, with salaries commensurate, as you would expect. That being so, the firm will henceforth be known as A. Easter and Sons. I have given orders for the London signs to be altered as from today.’

  Her elder son, Billy, was delighted by the news, but John Easter was shattered. So shattered he couldn’t speak. He knew that his eyes were staring and that his mouth had fallen open and that he probably looked as much of a fool as he felt, but there was nothing he could do about it. He couldn’t even assume a more acceptable expression. And that annoyed him because it was extremely important to him to appear calm and controlled, no matter what he might be feeling. In fact, the more powerful the emotions that racked him, the more necessary it was to keep them hidden. But really this was too extraordinary for words or control. For years and years he’d been planning what he would do if he were in charge of the firm and now, suddenly, when he was least expecting it, she’d given him the power to do it. It was a dream come true.

  The faces round the table were turning in his direction, smiling congratulations. His sister Annie was looking up at him to mouth, ‘Well done!’ But he hadn’t done anything. Except dream. And try to tell his mother the truth sometimes, without upsetting her, which was horribly difficult because she was the most determined and powerful woman.

  Billy was looking very pleased with himself, leaning back in his chair so that their old nurse Bessie could kiss him and stroke the fair hair back from his forehead the way she always did when she was comforting or approving. But Billy had always known he would have a place in the firm, being the elder son. Everyone had known. It had been talked about at his twenty-first birthday party two years ago. ‘When Billy goes into the firm …’ While his twenty-first, last summer, had passed without comment of any kind. And now this!

  ‘You won’t regret it, Mama,’ Billy said, smiling at his mother.

  She smiled back at him, so warmly that her look could have been an embrace.

  It was always the same, John thought, as his heart gave its familiar yearning tug at the sight. Whenever she looked at his brother or his sister, there was this easy warmth between them, this accepting, tolerant affection. It was something he had ached for all his life, and yet, whatever he’d done to earn it, it had never been given to him. But now, perhaps, it would all be different, for now she had given him a place in the firm. An important place, the sort of place he’d always dreamed of. I suppose I ought to say something to thank her, he thought, for the faces had turned his way again expectantly.

  ‘In two years, Mama,’ he said, ‘I will double your profits. I give you my word.’

  And at that she smiled at him too. ‘I don’t doubt it,’ she said.

  Then she was speaking again, detailing company arrangements, praising old Bessie’s husband, Thiss, for the way he’d been running the East Anglian branch of the business, appointing Cosmo Teshmaker as head of the London branch. Another surprise, because Mr Teshmaker was the company lawyer, but a surprise they should have been prepared for because his loyalty to the company was peerless.

  The talk about the table buzzed on, but John didn’t hear any of it. He was too busy with his thoughts. Now he could put all his carefully written plans into operation. Even when his mother signified that the meal was over and everybody else went rushing upstairs to get ready for the ball he was still absorbed.

  He walked across to the window, and stood there, looking down at the sloping square of Angel Hill below him. It was full of stalls and crowded with people, for a fair was being held to celebrate the peace. Now that Wellington had finally defeated the French army and Napoleon had been sent into exile in Elba there was reason to celebrate.

  Dusk had gathered while they had eaten their meal, and now rush lights were being lit beside the stalls and sideshows. Two huge lights were beginning to flare at the top of the swings, and he noticed that the moment they were lit the swings disappeared in a total and obliterating darkness. It
was a curious phenomenon, and one he’d often observed, that the sudden arrival of light actually restricted one’s vision, which was the very thing it was designed to assist.

  There were so many puzzles, so many hazards. Life was beset with them. And the human hazards were the most difficult of all.

  People were hard enough for him to contend with one at a time because he was terribly shy. In the mass they were impossible, constantly on the move, shifting and turning and avoiding, leaving sentences half finished, walking about or away, changing their direction, their appearance, their minds. Was it any wonder he preferred the company of his family and the splendid dependability of mathematics? Left to his own devices he would have avoided the fairground, which was very definitely not to his taste, and the victory ball, which he was going to attend because his mother expected it of him, and hidden himself away in his bedroom to continue work on his coach timetables.

  His mother was snuffing out the candles, moving briskly about the room, and working at speed as she always did so that she left cotton trails of smoke prickling in the air behind her. She was so quick. It was one of the many disconcerting things about her.

  Now her skirts swished behind him and he could see her hand pale in the half-light, reaching forward towards the curtain. So he stood aside politely, thinking she wanted to draw them. But no, as he realized with the slight contraction of his heart that such knowledge always brought, she was going to talk to him.

  ‘Could you truly double our profits in two years?’ she asked abruptly.

  ‘I believe so,’ he answered. This was better. This was business. This was the thing he was best at.

  ‘Tell me how,’ she said.

  ‘First,’ he said happily, ‘we could extend our trade along all Mr Chaplin’s coach routes. The Portsmouth route is well established now.’ What a satisfaction to be able to make such a claim, for he had established it, and single-handedly what was more. ‘That being so …’