The Flight of Sarah Battle Page 18

  But he’s seated early, grabs the first morning paper and reads from it while men begin to wonder what exactly they might fancy eating in a couple of hours.

  ‘Here is the text of the Lord Mayor’s handbill concerning the rioting,’ he says loudly. ‘Addressed to us all.’

  ‘We’d better hear it then, Wintrige.’

  ‘Whereas the peace of this city has been, within these few days, very much disturbed by numerous and tumultuous assemblies of riotous and disorderly people,’ he says heavily, ‘the magistrates, determined to preserve the King’s peace, and the persons and property of their fellow citizens, by every means which the law has intrusted to their hands, particularly request the peaceable and well-disposed inhabitants of this city,’ looking up with meaningful emphasis, ‘upon the appearance of the military, to keep themselves away from the windows, Mrs Wintrige.’ He stops, waits; they all watch as Sarah, poised in the middle of the room while he reads, rushes out in a fury.

  ‘Away from the windows, as I said; to keep all the individuals of their families and servants within doors; and, where such opportunities can be taken, to remain in the back rooms of their houses. Well now, gentlemen, we welcome the presence of the military, do we not?’ They assent to that. ‘And Combe wants us to back away from the glass. You fellows at the window, move your stations! Make yourselves comfortable by the fire. Perhaps some of you will not return home awhile. I am fortunate in being able to remain here.’

  ‘This is not new, Wintrige,’ Thynne bursts out, jutting his spicular chin. What a terrible bore the man is! It was better when he lurked behind the curtain, speechless. ‘We had it all much worse twenty years ago with that madman Lord George Gordon. Then they were rioting about papists not bread.’

  ‘And we were all perfectly safe here,’ says Bullock. ‘The mob were too busy dosing themselves with gin at Langdale’s to bother running down Change Alley.’

  ‘And turning the distillery into a heap of ashes, don’t forget.’

  ‘That’s when Miss Battle’s mother was killed, wasn’t it?’ someone asks.

  ‘For those who dare not leave,’ Wintrige declares, ‘Battle’s will provide breakfast without charge.’ They see him gleaming with magnanimity and roll their eyes.

  Sarah stands in her father’s old office, now hers, her knuckles pressed on the table, staring at the shuttered window.

  Addressing her publicly is bad enough, let alone calling her Wintrige, the name she hates. In particular she abhors the tone in which he reads aloud, scathing, triumphant, the tone of the government organ, his favourite newspaper. The voice of the man who deceived her utterly, who fooled those he convincingly claimed to support.

  In the darkened room fury distils into despite. But despising helps her understand what he did before, if not why he’s like he is now.

  He aped radicalism as spy’s cover. His revolutionary murmurings to her maintained consistency but also served to get himself a wife who would support him, while he kept his spy’s pay secret. Marrying the daughter of an anti-Jacobin, in other words, the enemy, improved his standing with the Corresponding Society who thought it an admirable disguise. And somehow he saw he would succeed with her, sensed her rebellion against Sam’s crass views purely from observation. That was perceptive of him.

  What he hadn’t calculated was the power of the ideas he now openly pronounced treasonous; ideas spouted with supposed conviction and borrowed rhetoric when he was a spy which nevertheless took root like trees. He misunderstood her entirely. Credited her with nothing except apple cheeks and the forgiving nature he’d imposed upon her. Her generous supply of food and drink.

  Of course she remembers the sound of the mob with horror, the roar of fire, the sight of capering figures on Newgate’s roof. But her mother and Newton were killed by soldiers, not rioters. She treasures still her conversion in St George’s Fields, bathed in the emotion of a crowd bent on reform and justice.

  And since then she’d learned from Tom. Learned everything from Tom.

  The rioters are right. She hardly needs refer to the pamphlets and books that stand upright on the chest in her room like a small altar. Wheat prices rise each year: everyone speaks of it. Farmers and meal men profit, bakers charge great sums for bread. Not everyone speaks of that, though the people think of it, dancing and singing when flour mills burn down.

  She sees for herself. The handbill pasted in haste:

  Those Cruall Villions the Millers Bakers etc Flower Sellers rases Flowe under a Comebination to what price they please on purpose to make an Artificall Famine in a Land of plenty.

  Bony beggar women slumped against doorposts, their children too famished to play with stones in the gutter.

  *

  James puts on weight. It crosses her mind that he might be mocking her, for surely her pregnancy has begun to show. But it’s not that. His cheeks fill out in rapid distortion, ever more frog-like, though his eyes sink into pouches. His long fingers fatten. The men become used to him. Their hostility reduces to banter, though his ‘wit’ generally fails to make them laugh.

  He finds another way to amuse.

  ‘Wintrige, have you eaten the steak yet? Mrs Trunkett has excelled herself today, I can vouch for it, man.’

  ‘So far I’ve only drunk the turtle, Bosanquet. Not a trace of mutton in it. Unlike some. Oh glorious broth! I’ll take your word about the steak. John!’

  The waiter brings fried steak and a plate heaped with potatoes. A second bottle of claret. When he’s finished he swears it’s so good he’ll take the whole lot again.

  ‘Lest I forget the savour of it.’

  ‘That’s it, Wintrige! And you’ll want more claret, surely. Dick, get the man another bottle. No, no, on me. The man needs fattening up. Look at him! Anyone’d think he’d been starving on the heath all his life.’

  They watch, grinning, a little queasy, but soon competitive in their offers. It becomes a daily occurrence in the timetable of drinking, eating, sparring, business and bonhomie, to encourage him gradually to raise the record. Wintrige’s capacity increases with his expanding gut, with his pleasure at the attention he gains.

  ‘Now, Wintrige, my turn to read to you,’ says Bosanquet, addressing them all. It says here that a young woman in North Curry, that’s Somerset, has eaten, listen to this: six pounds of pork and vegetables and so forth. Doesn’t specify how much vegetable. Then seven four-penny eastercakes, all eaten with great ease, it says and washed down with three four-penny glasses of brandy. What do you say to that?’

  Wintrige’s mouth is full. Lyons answers for him. ‘Reckon he’s easily surpassed the drinking and the meat. You should eat more cake, Wintrige.’

  Sarah can no longer ignore what takes place. Sam would have welcomed it, of course, for the cost of James’s consumption is paid for by those encouraging him and the number of men who stay longer to watch, buying more drink for themselves. As word gets round he’ll become an attraction.

  She accosts him one night as he lurches to bed.

  ‘James, you must stop this excessive eating and drinking.’

  ‘Why?’ the word slurs.

  ‘You’ll eat me out of house and home.’

  ‘Rubbish! You’re rich as a duchess. Which means I’m rich as a duke. Rich as a duchess you are and as fair!’ He lunges. Stumbles against a wall.

  ‘For God’s sake, James!’

  ‘In whom you don’t believe.’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘Tom Cranch was an atheist.’

  ‘Don’t!’ She covers her ears. ‘Don’t ever mention his name. You’re not worth a single hair on his head. You will stop your guzzling, your drinking. Control yourself!’

  ‘I shall take my pleasures as I can. Be glad I’m not whoring! Unlike some, snuggling and fumbling in other men’s beds. You could hardly deny me visits to the bagnio. An adulterous wife who denies me! What else do I have but the delights of the palate?’ He begins to sob.

  ‘You are become a spectacle. They egg you
on. Soon hoards will press to come and watch. The place will be overrun. You’re no better than the Wonderful Pig Father wished he’d had in the place.’

  ‘Let them come! They love me!’

  She moves away to lock the coffee house door and he shambles after her, arms vaguely flailing.

  ‘I’ll stop. I swear. Come fuck me and I swear I’ll stop.’

  *

  A man asks to see Sarah.

  ‘William Pyke, apothecary. Friend of Tom Cranch.’

  She takes him into the office, opens the shutters, shows him a seat but he will not take it.

  ‘The package you sent us was passed on to me. The evidence against James Wintrige.’

  ‘I’m glad it’s in the right hands. I knew the messenger would find a way. What can you do, Mr Pyke?’

  ‘It is too late to do much,’ he says. ‘You will know the Society has been dismembered, Mrs Wintrige.’

  ‘Yes. Please don’t use that name. Although there has been no divorce I don’t regard myself as married to him.’

  ‘I understand.’ He is melancholy; long downward lines incise his face. ‘If we had known earlier…’

  ‘I found the letter just before I went away with Tom. We opened it on board ship, when of course we could do nothing. At first in Philadelphia we knew no one to whom we could entrust it. And when we did, nobody was returning to England. People only fled from England.

  ‘Tom wanted to write to you but worried his letter of warning would be seen by the wrong people; besides, without the evidence it might itself have been thought false. The times were bad, the Society already in danger. We decided it was probably already too late. Was that not so?’

  ‘Yes, indeed it was. And when I received your package here a while ago, we were all in hiding because of Hadfield. Did Tom speak of us, Miss Battle?’

  ‘He did.’

  ‘Of Hadfield? Harley? ‘

  ‘Yes. And you, Mr Pyke.’

  ‘Harley has fled. Hadfield is in prison following his attempt on the King. He fired at him in the royal box in Drury Lane.’

  ‘I did hear of it.’

  ‘They’ve put him in an asylum from which only death will rescue him.’

  ‘Poor man.’

  ‘This is a delicate question, Miss Battle. You need not answer it. Did you not ever suspect James Wintrige when you were first married to him?’

  ‘No, Mr Pyke. No, I didn’t. You will find that hard to believe, but I was young, stupid. Knew nothing. Knew not what a marriage was. He spoke so little and I believed whatever he said. No, I never suspected. For a while I thought Tom was the spy! Oh, if only I had suspected it.’

  ‘It is better for you that you didn’t, perhaps. It’s a hard thing for a wife to tell on her husband.’

  ‘But if I had, what would you have done then?’

  ‘Alerted everyone in the Society. Expelled him from it. Nothing else. We could hardly have brought a government spy to justice.’

  She sits.

  ‘You must not blame yourself, Miss Battle. It is we who were at fault. We in the Society, the Society that was. We should have known, should have noticed. We were complacent, asleep! He seemed too foolish to be a spy.’

  She shakes her head.

  ‘He played at being a fool. With me he played the serious thinker. I think he wanted to be an actor, you know. He liked the theatre, certainly. And still he plays!’

  ‘The letter you found showed Wintrige for what he was. For that we are most grateful. What we don’t know is how much damage his spying did. No doubt he contributed to the destruction of the Corresponding Society. We’ll never discover how many his reports consigned to prison.’

  She covers her face with her hands.

  ‘Miss Battle, please. It was not my purpose to upset you. Quite the opposite. I came to thank you for sending us the evidence. And also the few of us who remain ask to be allowed to provide any help you might need. You are to call on us, please.’

  She looks up. ‘Thank you. That is very kind.’ Sees his glance shift inwards.

  ‘But I have also come for myself. May I sit?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I am near despair, Miss Battle. We have been crushed; there is no future. A few rash men and boys risk their lives in futile revolution. They will achieve nothing; will be caught and hanged.

  ‘I miss Tom Cranch. We all do. His purpose never wavered. In his absence we have disintegrated too easily. He had enthusiasm, wit. Of course, he was an idealist, for which some criticised him, and he was impetuous, certainly, but he had courage. I doubt I have such strength, but it would help me to hear about it. To hear about him.’

  Her mind floods with sadness. Can he know how much she longs to talk of her beloved Tom? Suspects he does.

  She smiles at the forlorn apothecary. Tells him all about America.

  3

  Sarah’s child is born in high summer when Change Alley is at its most fetid. She’s attended by a man-midwife recommended by Pyke. He encourages her through a long labour with plentiful brandy and a novice’s anxiety: it’s only his second birth.

  The baby is a girl whom she names Eve; who is fussed over by Mrs Trunkett, Dick, the waiters, the kitchen maids, so that now and then Sarah must send them away in order to gaze on the child herself. The child who is proof that she hasn’t dreamed her brief life with Tom; that he was real, not a fantasy of perfection. Was he perfect? Of course not, though in that short time he seemed so, their unsanctified marriage blessed by love, by passion.

  Pyke called Tom impetuous. Robert thought him an innocent, worse, culpable. True, he put himself in danger, and after he died she sometimes thought to blame him. That had not lasted. She loved him for the very idealism and energy that made it imperative he include the docks among all the work places in Philadelphia where he distributed his rousing pamphlets, so full of hope. The docks where yellow fever arrived on ships from the South.

  How much more good might he have done? How much more happiness would they have had? She despises her craven self-pity, at least will not expose the child to the sight of it. But misery in the heart of the night is an old way, well walked since childhood, not one she can banish.

  In moments of quiet she contends with her oscillating feelings.

  That Tom will never know his child is a great sorrow. That Eve will never know her father is another, but Sarah intends to tell his daughter everything about him until he almost lives again. Sometimes grief is countered by the child’s resemblance to Tom, his colouring, bright eyes, seemingly easy contentment. Suckling the baby, she laughs with remembered pleasure, weeps at her loss.

  Dick and Mrs Trunkett run Battle’s quite well for the month’s lying-in. They keep Wintrige away from her; she supposes he’s sulking. She employs a nurse, a motherly woman obscurely related to the man-midwife, and in due time is back downstairs supervising the running of the coffee house. Eve lives in the nursery, constantly visited by her mother who is determined her own childhood will not be repeated. Her daughter will not be raised among idle men, careless and ridiculous in their pravity; she will not be ignored by her mother, her earliest playmate a puppy on the filthy floor. Sarah sings and plays with her baby, whose laughter is catching. Reads rhymes by Blake, that poet Tom knew:

  Merry, merry sparrow!

  Under leaves so green;

  A happy blossom

  Sees you, swift as arrow,

  Seek your cradle narrow

  Near my bosom.

  Pretty, pretty robin!

  Under leaves so green;

  A happy blossom

  Hears you sobbing, sobbing,

  Pretty, pretty robin,

  Near my bosom.

  In a few years Sarah will find good education for her. Only through education can women become independent said Constantia in the Massachusetts Magazine. Only through education might they hope to do something more worthwhile than work in a coffee house. She thinks of the night she addressed the Democratic Republicans in the Indian
Queen, blushes at the memory. How little she knew. Yet Tom had faith in her. The notes for the pamphlet they were to have written lie locked in a drawer.

  It’s as well the child is not a boy for she would have searched perpetually for Tom’s replica. Her love for Eve, her joy holding the dark, sweet baby, echoes with lament.

  All about, London seethes. Hunger, resentment, loathing. Charcoal crawls over pavements, handbills and chalk scrawls cover walls:

  K— G— and the farmer are busy crambing the empty stomachs of the poor with Bayonets

  Crowds collect, swarm, face the Yeomanry united, no longer split between Jacobins and Monarchists. Women organise great protests outside Coldbath Fields prison, their husbands locked in damp cells without heat or light, legs ulcerated by frost.

  Wintrige catches her arm one night. He’s been waiting for her in the shadows.

  ‘It is time you saw sense,’ he blurts.

  He is fleshy and shambling, his legs uncoordinated through accumulation of weight. They have kept out of each other’s way for weeks, but Sarah is aware of his behaviour, has had reports from Dick and Mrs Trunkett.

  ‘Miss Battle, you be best buy ’im off,’ Dick advises.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Tell ‘im there’s more food and better at Slaughter’s and you do pay ‘im to go there.’

  ‘Dick, would that it were so easy! I’m married to him. There’s nothing I can do.’

  ‘Oh.’ He wrings his arthritic hands.

  In the dark corridor, Sarah tries to pull herself from Wintrige’s grasp.

  ‘It is time you saw sense, ‘ she cannot help retort. ‘Let me be!’ But his clutch is tight. ‘I shall call out for help. They’ve not all gone yet.’

  He lets go. ‘Sit and talk with me, Sarah.’

  ‘There is nothing to talk about. But I’ll repeat my wish that you cease making a spectacle of yourself.’

  ‘You benefit from it since they buy more coffee and liquor. And so I earn my keep. But why do I speak like this? It is all mine anyway!’