His Last Fire Read online

  It seems that she stands for minutes, speechless, pressing into the marvellous carpet with her toes, breathing intoxicating coffee fumes as the women question her in their language.

  ‘Don’t understand,’ she says.

  ‘Turkish,’ says one woman, pointing to herself and the others. ‘Am-bassa-dor,’ she enunciates slowly, pointing away in the general direction of the men.

  ‘Oh, oh. Miss Hoddy,’ Betsy says and curtsies.

  Some of the younger women pull at Betsy’s sleeves and sit her down, bring a bowl and jug. Wash her face, hands and feet in water smelling of roses. Children in silk clothes, like miniature adults, black-eyed, amused, come up and touch her fair hair, stroke it.

  For an hour she sits with them under the canopy’s tulip sky. They chatter unceasingly without Betsy understanding a word. They bring her a tiny cup in thin china, her rough fingers honoured by its touch; pour coffee into it from another beaked pot with a curving handle, its brass lid shining wheat-gold, like an elegant hat. She sips the sweetest blackness and it seeps into her veins, possesses her body. Her cheeks flush with heat and pleasure. Her eyes are dazzled by smiling plumpness on all sides, half concealed by gauzy kerchiefs, garments of pale pink silk, green, embroidered white, silver thread flowering on gold brocade, glittering bodkins, girdles embedded with lustrous jewels. Her mind fills to its very edges with coruscation to last a life.

  WHAT WAS LEFT TO KNOW

  From London he took stages to Colchester and Ipswich then walked. He knew the general direction and besides, he wanted to sniff his way to the sea. There was pay in his midshipman’s pocket for inns and beef and once they’d wheedled out of him where last he’d sailed and in whose fleet, he went to bed drunker than he’d intended.

  Long before he saw the coast he smelled brine in the wind. It was there in the woods, even as his boots scuffed dried puffball husks, rotten stumps of stinkhorns, sank into a thick mire of leaves: all that was left of a rich autumn. Salt stench drew him to the marsh edge, the trodden path, the reeds that once hid everything from him. Soon enough the church tower appeared above the trees.

  It was five years since he left, a boy. Now one-and-twenty, he’d seen war and death at sea, loyalty, hatred, victory, injustice. Had been lifted high by the spirit of radicalism, read Tom Paine; heard all about America, the promised land. What was there left to know? No parents would welcome him home, no siblings. Only one person would remember John Airey. He was returning for Margaret.

  Dusk and smoke of fires. Remembered shapes: yew tree, wall, shed leaning seawards. He went straight to the house. He knew his adoptive father was dead and had no doubt he’d left the house to Margaret, his housekeeper and erstwhile mistress.

  The bell was answered by a young girl who, seeming not to understand, showed him into the parlour. Here, toasting himself before the fire, the new surgeon-apothecary took him for a patient.

  No, John explained, he was a visitor hoping to find Margaret Hickling.

  ‘Ah! She it was who sold me the house,’ said the surgeon, a ruddy-skinned man of impregnable health. He understood that before her it had belonged to the previous surgeon and pleasant indeed he found it. A little dark perhaps, but situated close to the highway, well-placed for night calls.

  John asked if Margaret had moved nearby.

  No, he said, she was not in the neighbourhood. She hadn’t told him where she was going, though subsequently someone heard she’d gone north. It seems the house had been left her by her widowed employer but she no longer had reason to live in the district.

  ‘The young lad went to sea,’ she’d apparently remarked. He studied John’s face.

  ‘And did you know her well, Mr . . . ?’

  But John wouldn’t give his name, thanked the surgeon, glanced round and left. The house was entirely different. Its gloomy rooms, once saturated with the sorrow of his adoptive parents, smiled brightly like their new owner. He spent the night on an alehouse settle well wrapped against spring frost.

  He woke early – the settle was hard; he’d rather have slept in a hammock – and set off northwards.

  Those had been the first decisions he’d ever made. To leave the navy. Then not to go to America with his friend William Leopard to start a new life, but return instead to the woman with whom he’d enjoyed six carefree months in his youth. Six months of affection, of manhood. Before their discovery. Before his adoptive father’s dismay at this betrayal, at the hurtful triumph of youth over age, at John’s poor return for years of dull but worthy upbringing. He’d agreed to go away to sea.

  Neither Margaret nor he made any promises – she was, after all, his adoptive father’s servant and mistress, not his – and they didn’t correspond. It had never occurred to him that she wouldn’t be there in the house in which he’d spent most of his childhood, waiting for him, ready to resume their joy. Up in the roof of the house where she had her bedroom and he his. Where through the skylight you could hear the sea shift. Wake together to watch clouds scud. For that was what was left to know – the comfort of love.

  He couldn’t think of turning back now. To continue walking was to enter unknown land, an uncertain life. But to return was to re-enter known territory that his mind had left. He had to go on.

  For days he walked, spurning no offers of rides in carts and wagons. This was seamen’s country: the inhabitants had only to note his midshipman’s stripe, hear the name Ardent to know his worth. They thought he was off to join his ship in Yarmouth and once there he did indeed wander along the dockside, alert to its signs and moods, yet detached, distracted. Soon he turned into the town where he sauntered vaguely along the smarter streets, hung about the market, glanced down alleys, into doorways at night. Yarmouth was north. But there was a lot more north between there and the Wash.

  Back at the quays he watched the loading of ships for battle: hundreds of wooden boxes of ordnance, ammunition, stores. The town was full of marines. Here it was, laid out for him, recognisable, the world he knew. Arduous, companionable. They would welcome him back. Young, strong, promoted twice in three years, they needed him.

  He kept close to the curve of the coast wherever he could. Dipped down to the beach to stare at the waves, as if she might rise out of them. His money ran low but his story kept him fed. And on occasion woken in the night by women younger than Margaret had been back then; for she was older than he by a number of years and already saddened, even though he’d made her smile.

  The country changed, woods became rare, fields opened themselves to the sky. Where he could he walked along the beach, his boots cracking wrack and razorshells. On one side flint-grey ocean, on the other mud cliffs scraped by wind and flood, shaped like waves before they break, their crests a spume of grass. Here, in this land, sea ruled. You accepted it, lived off what it gave, grieved for what it took, fishing smacks, men o’war. Villages.

  On a blustery day he heard bells ring, tolling without cease. Faint, distant, some village on the way to Cromer; he wouldn’t reach the place till late. He hastened but it was quite dark when he arrived, flares had been extinguished, rescue was over for the day. A 74-gun, they said, The Tremendous, set sail from Yarmouth, the light good, mid-afternoon, known pilots in charge but a strong tide flowing. More than 500 men on board. Broke up in no time and only two smacks out fishing to haul in the living from the swell. Hit Hammond’s Knoll, the worst of the sandbanks. So many ships lost there. So many good men gone. Yes, tomorrow they’d be glad of any help with the sea’s harvest.

  He joined the line of carts to retrieve those cast up by the morning’s high tide, to lay them on boards hastily swept of dung, trundle them back to crowd the churchyard.

  The whole village was at the beach sifting through treasures arranged by the artless sea on beds of wrecked shells. Women and children loaded their handcarts with food, linen, casks, little spoiled, so freshly drowned. Men heaved wooden boxes onto wagons, furniture, spa
rs, planks, winters’ worth of fuel. It was as if a fair were taking place in the midst of war. People must step over bodies to reach their booty.

  John had seen men killed in battle, men with whom he’d eaten, laughed and argued hours before. These were not his companions, yet they were the same: the worn, the untried, hardened, soft-faced. Brave, terrified. Which of them had cried out and to whom had they called? Which had looked inward and found a sudden consolation? Or none. All day the sound of surf and wind pounded in his ears. All day he heard the voice of every man and boy whose body he gently carried to the cart.

  ‘Will you stay?’ they asked him in the village. ‘We need more seamen.’ Later in the week there would be a funeral at a great single grave dug in the glebe next to the church.

  No, he told them, when all this is done he’d attend the burial but then he must travel north. He had made up his mind.

  ‘Leave that one,’ someone said to him as he bent to lift another corpse the following day. ‘He’s a local man. Fisherman. Boat capsized when the big one went down. They’ll come for him.’

  He laid the body on the sand. The weathered face beaten, the huge hands like nets drying.

  Margaret came to collect her husband.

  SPY

  When should a wife spy on her husband?

  In Exchange Alley lecherous sparrows fought in the gutters at Battle’s. She’d lived there all her life, her father’s coffee house. A child playing with the puppy among men’s feet, petted by pipe-smokers, removed when the mood became rowdy. Was more familiar with the smell of coffee than porridge. Then for years the comely girl pouring port, claret, porter. Her face drew the men (there were no female customers), caused them to linger, chalk up another. His wife dead, Sam Battle depended on his daughter: she must keep an eye on the poaching, roasting, toasting as well as on him. Waiters in striped waistcoats ran about with coffee, dishes, debt books, but from mid-morning on she must stand behind the curved bar, a reluctant beacon.

  Heat and steam from boiling coffee drove her naturally high colour to a perpetual blush. Her strong bare arms prickled. She’d grown to hate compliments; took scant notice of customers. Enjoyed only the exercise of efficiency.

  She was no longer Sarah Battle. Had married James Wintrige, clerk in the customs office. He was to be her revolution. Through him she would touch a world of intellect, ideas. He read books, wrote plays, hobnobbed with thinkers. Was always scribbling: when not his own work then letters, minutes for meetings of the London Corresponding Society (those earnest artisans who longed for equality without bloodshed, debated into the night, moved from inn to inn when threatened.) Through him she could surely abandon the tedium of flattery, the stink of tobacco and charred meat that hung about her like a garment, the pain of swollen feet. Learn about, enter a higher sphere.

  He’d wooed her with names, knowledge, superiority. A head above the others, she’d seen him watch her, his long fingers resting contemplatively by his frog-thin lips. He dealt her a hand of luminous phrases: Age of Reason; Tree of Liberty; Enlighten the Nation. How could she resist?

  They rented rooms in Ossulston Street. He set out his books, his writing table. Gave her pamphlets to read while he wrote. She asked about his meetings, what they discussed, what resolved by democratic vote. He couldn’t tell her much. Had to be cautious even with his own wife. She was startled at his severity; stopped asking. Opened a window to catch the early robin song in February.

  He said she reminded him of his mother and grandmother who’d brought him up. Their rosy colouring. Forgiving nature. She wondered what he meant. Nightly she carried back food for supper wrapped in several cloths to keep it hot. Flasks of wine. They ate well. Never quarrelled.

  Yet five years had barely changed her life. Still she supervised the grinding of beans, measuring of river water in which to boil them; mixing of egg, sugar, milk with chocolate grounds; roasting of venison, stewing of turtle; supply of glasses, clean cloths, coffee dishes. Chased the dog out of the kitchen. And stood not smiling, ever redder, an accidental siren.

  Exhausted at night, she returned to find James writing or out at a meeting till two a.m. His income was erratic. Once he gave up the customs office to pursue the performance of a play he’d written. Went to Margate. A satire on gaming, it closed after one act to howls of derision. She found him head in hands, shaking.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘No matter,’ dry-eyed, resistant.

  No, she could not leave the coffee house. They couldn’t live without Battle money.

  *

  James stops going to Battle’s to drink. Life for radicals is becoming more difficult. As their numbers increase, government screws tighten. Last year someone was arrested in the coffee house for giving out handbills urging on rioters. This year immense crowds take their families to St George’s Fields. Listen to stirring speeches, behave with decorum. Sarah goes, her father’s permission drawn like a pulsing tooth.

  The June day shines. Sand martins swoop in and out of dirty pools. The great ground is walled between the Obelisk and King’s Head prison, surrounded by nervous military. James is there somewhere, making notes to transcribe late tonight. She shows her ticket, seeks a group, the space too huge else. Sits among dock and burdock with wives and children of bakers, shoemakers, cordwainers, a watch-face painter and is swept quite out of herself till she weeps and shouts with the rest, glorying in The Voice of Reason, like the Roaring of the Nemean Lion, issuing even from the Cavern’s Mouth! Universal Suffrage! Annual Parliaments! Truth shall be Eternal!

  Thousands of elated citizens. But peaceable. No violence. Horse and foot guards slink away unused.

  She is inspired. Carries home the day compact in mind and body, kept alive for ever in layers of memory. He’s writing up his notes when she arrives home. Puts a long finger to his lips pursed with determination.

  At other times bread riots; anti-crimping riots against press-gang cruelty; someone throws a stone at the King’s coach. Habeas Corpus is suspended; new acts against seditious activities and treasonable practices drawn up.

  A man asks after James one evening. She knows spies sit in every coffee house and inn. He’d warned her to be careful what she said, but she isn’t garrulous. Does she know where James Wintrige had been that afternoon?

  ‘I have been here since six o’clock this morning.’ She’d heard a thrush sing from a roof ridge on the way. ‘He was surely at the customs office today.’

  ‘He was expected at a meeting. Never came.’

  She pays no attention; is determined to close by nine. Staying open late causes suspicion nowadays.

  Two weeks later he comes again. She wouldn’t recognise him if he hadn’t spoken, for he’s undistinguished in the press of men.

  ‘Thomas Cranch, Mrs Wintrige. Enquiring about your husband again. I’m from the Society.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘He is ill, I hear. He sent us a letter today. He’s too ill to attend the meeting. Coughing blood.’

  Leaning towards him to hear, their foreheads touch. She draws back hastily, sees amusement, pleasure hop across his face. He drinks porter in rapid sips. He is a little man, stout, dark hair cropped, movements energetic. A bookseller and printer.

  ‘Strand. Number 444. Opposite Buckingham Street.’

  Or so he says. She warms to him despite herself.

  James gets into bed about midnight, undershirt smelling of anxiety.

  Half-asleep she asks: ‘Are you unwell?’

  ‘No. Been at a meeting.’

  ‘Have you coughed up blood?’

  ‘No. Why do you ask?’

  She turns over. Shifts away. He has another woman she realises with indignation. Falls asleep.

  She’s in Battle’s at six, her father grumbling, a waiter late. Fires are laid and lit under the coffee cauldron; in the fireplace where men toast their backsides, pat the dog,
read aloud from the newspaper. Floors swept, meat prepared, onions fried.

  Another woman. The phrase embeds. Before their marriage there’d been a common law wife. He’d left her. She finds relief in pattern.

  Later she remembers a conversation. She knew the men. Radicals, drank at the Red Lion, dropped into Battle’s once a month to test the mood.

  ‘Wintrige,’ she’d overheard.

  ‘Our old friend Wintrige,’ the man called Baldwyn said and laughed. They all laughed: Pyke, Hadfield with the scars over his eye, down his cheek, Harley, the young one. Slapped their thighs.

  ‘Is he honest?’ asked Coke.

  ‘Yes, if you can trust a man that foolish, that silly.’ They laughed again. Left when the spy Nodder appeared.

  It wasn’t the Wintrige she knew. The day takes over; she can puzzle no more about it.

  He’s out when she returns. Dripping wax on his papers she rummages. Books of minutes. Once he’d been president. Endless names, dates, sums, meeting places. Precise reports: harrassed by Blackheath Hundreds; justices terrified the landlord, moved to Angel, High Street; adjourned at three o’clock in the morning; appoint as delegates Jas. Wintrige, Joseph Young. Hydra of Despotism, Strong Arm of Aristocracy, yours with Civic Affection.

  Sealed letter addressed to R. Ford. Which has gone the next day.

  That night in Ossulston Street they coincide, unusually.

  ‘Who is R. Ford?’

  ‘Ho, ho! Been spying on me, have you?’

  ‘I saw a letter, yes. Is it a man or a woman?’

  ‘A woman? Why should you think that? You, with your apple cheeks!’ He pinches them with both hands. ‘It’s for the Society. Our new strategy. We shall demand a meeting with the Duke of Portland. Don’t trouble yourself with thinking. You couldn’t understand.’

  It’s not the sliding eyes that shock but the loud laughter, mirthless.