The Flight of Sarah Battle (25 page)

‘How can I know what you've seen for yourselves?' he counters. ‘I don't possess special powers.'

Nudges from some. Wasn't
he employed by the
government
? Special powers of a sort
there
. Or perhaps he wasn't. Nobody knows. The man's an oddity.

‘If you hadn't hidden away all this time you might have heard us talk about it. Incessantly.'

‘Come now.' The voice of Lyons who knows what it's like to be put down. ‘Mr Wintrige has decided to join us. Let us welcome him.'

An embarrassed shifting in seats. A muddy quiet. Wintrige scoops up the last pastry crust, soft in gravy, gobbles, pushes away his empty plate.

‘I'll read about the riot instead. You'd rather listen to news of
de
struction than
con
struction!' He laughs, his mirthless eyes sliding from one man to the next.

‘You'll set Thynne and Bullock at each other like cocks, if you do.'

‘Then we'll ask Cook to pluck ‘em and roast ‘em,' he retorts, looking for others to laugh with him. A snort, a snigger.

Someone has always read from the newspapers in Battle's. Not that people can't read for themselves as once was the case, but it's useful to be able to hear the latest story while warming one's hands round a dish of coffee. And now that there are evening papers and weeklies it's pleasant to listen to many different events and scandals. As long as the reader's voice is tolerable and he doesn't lard the article with too many tedious witticisms. James Wintrige tends towards monotony and his humour limps.

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.'