The Petticoat Men (51 page)

The front door banged; Mackie’s footsteps descended slowly. He stood in his fisherman’s cloak at the bottom of the stairs that turned into the kitchen. Everybody stopped talking and looked up, struck by the odd look on his face.

‘What, Mackie?’ said Isabella.

He answered abruptly: ‘I told you that after Johnny Hewlettson sent a telegram to that Mr Ouvry, several people appeared in Mudeford. Billy, you said that Mr Roberts was definitely a lawyer, right, but he came with a few others. The man we were told was Dr Wade – or later Mr Wade – has been in court all week. I’ve just had a word with him and Dodo’s bishop.’

‘
No, Mackie!
’ said Mrs Stacey.

She saw her son’s face.

‘
No, Billy, no, no no! I don’t want to know! I don’t care!
It’s all over at last. We’ve been through all this, what
good
can it do now? – making wild accusations about Lord Arthur’s death, next thing you know, you’ll all be doing hard labour at Newgate yourselves, ha! Now listen to me, all of you!’

Isabella stood by the stove, facing them all angrily.

‘This is the world we live in, this is how it is. We’ve had a bad time but the trial is now over and we’re all safe, in a way. I’ve been
unsafe
in my life and I don’t want it again, for any of us. You’ve all got jobs of a kind, hopefully you’ll get better ones when this is all over, and we’ve got our house, so no one can throw any of us into the street. Do you want
another
bleeding trial, Mackie? Why not say Queen Victoria and the Archbishop of Canterbury as well as the Prime Minister of England ordered the death of Lord Arthur to save England? Why not bring down the whole country? Let’s have ASYLUM FOR THE INSANE
writ on our wall this time, ha! This is the end of the trial and this is the end of our involvement,
now
!’

Mackie straightened up from the wall.

‘Isabella,’ he said gently in the slow deep rumbling voice that she could hear. ‘I know the world we live in, just as you do.’ He faced her to be absolutely sure she heard. ‘It
is
over, in a way. But it’s
not
over in this house. I can’t do much. Although I hope I might have given that churchman something to ponder. But I know enough now that I think I might be able to go to see Mr Ouvry again and help get Elijah and Billy their jobs back.’

‘I don’t want my job back any more, Mackie,’ said Billy, surprising everybody in the kitchen. ‘I thought the Parliament was a good and powerful place and I liked being part of it but I can’t feel the same about it any more – of course I’m not going to walk behind black horses with funeral plumes for the rest of my life, but – no, I don’t want to go back there now, from where I was thrown out the door. I really like teaching people to read, ones who didn’t have the chance Mattie and I had.’ He looked at his mother. ‘I’m going to be a proper teacher, Ma.’

There was a stunned silence. Mrs Stacey and Mattie exchanged a tiny glance, remembered that the girl they’d heard of, Emily, was a teacher.

The silence was broken by Dodo.

‘Nevertheless. If there
was
any way, then I know Elijah would so very much like to go back to the Parliament’ – and she put up a bent, clawed hand almost imperiously when Elijah began to interrupt. ‘I
am
going to speak, dearest, I’ve said not one word all these months but now I’m going to speak. You were part of that building.’

Elijah Fortune was sitting near the long table. He stared at the floor. Dodo turned then to all the others.

‘It hurt me to be there this week and know Elijah wasn’t there along the hall past all the statues, as he was for so many years.
He was part of the Parliament.
Not that we aren’t glad that he is at least working. But he wasn’t meant, as Billy was never meant, to walk miles behind coffins and horses in bad weather, or sit in a cramped little office, recording deaths of people he doesn’t know, through no fault of his own but his kindness.’ And she put her bent hand very gently on Elijah’s face. Elijah, who had never once complained, could not, for a moment, speak.

Mackie said quietly to Billy: ‘Would you teach me?’

Everybody looked surprised.

‘Oh yes, you all think I can read, and I
can
read the newspapers, but I can’t read proper books; I never learned anything like that poem you told; we never had one book in our house when I was young, only the Bible. I can sign my name and read the papers and make lists and arrange money and keep my eyes and ears open. But I’d like to read real books, like you all do.’

‘I don’t read much, Mackie,’ said Isabella quickly. ‘There’s plenty of us who can’t read well.’

‘I’ll teach you, Mackie,’ said Billy.

Mackie nodded. He still stood there at the bottom of the stairs, still hadn’t taken off his cloak.

‘I’d be glad to try to help get your position back, Elijah. Because I tell you what, I
can’t
just let things be – because somehow it disgusts me, all the pomp and clever phrases and long speeches that I’ve heard this week – all to cover everything up and save the face of the nobility – and yet I saw that poor pathetic Lord Arthur dying by himself, nobody rushing to help him while he was alive. And you were trying to help him, Elijah, to get him money. I’ll go and see Mr Ouvry once more.’

‘Do you think he can really influence the Prime Minister?’ Elijah spoke at last, but his expression was rueful as he looked at Mackie. ‘I’m grateful, Mackie,’ he said. ‘Thank you. But Mr Gladstone himself is probably the only person who could get me back into the Parliament after all this.’

(And Mattie looked down at her hands, remembering the night she had met Mr Gladstone. Mr Gladstone knew what had happened to Billy. But it had not got Billy’s position back.)

After a brief moment Isabella said quietly, ‘Mackie, I’ll
do it.’ And she nodded, acknowledging his words. ‘You’re right. It’s the last thing to be done in our world. You’re right – it’s not over in this house till that’s done. I’ll make certain Mr Gladstone knows about Elijah.’

Mattie and Billy exchanged glances. There was only one way their mother ever did things like this.

‘How will you do that, Ma?’ said Billy innocently.

She looked at her son with love. ‘I’m glad you want to be a teacher, son, and if you don’t want to go back to the Parliament after all that’s happened, well, who can blame you! And I will be so, so proud of you.’ Then she turned to the others. ‘And we all bleeding know this trial was arranged by people who have the power – who they know, what they can do. But – funny – we have our power too, we know people – you and me, Elijah, we’ve always known people in this city, haven’t we? Known who to talk to, we’ve got our own circles and influence. Elijah, remember Tussie Heap?’

He nodded at once. ‘At Drury Lane. Years ago. Working in the wardrobe when you were. Cutting, she was good at cutting.’

‘That’s her. All those years ago. Well, I think she can help us. Listen to this: Tussie Heap now works at 11 Carlton House Terrace, the Prime Minister’s house.’

‘Oh Ma!’ said Mattie and she laughed despite the tension in the kitchen, and Billy added: ‘We always said, Ma, that you knew everybody in London.’

‘I’ll go there.’

‘Are you sure, Isabella?’ said Mackie.

‘I’m sure, Mackie,’ said Ma.

‘Then – I need to go now.’

Everyone in the kitchen stared at Mackie, stunned.

‘I need to – I need to go and breathe the real sea and get some of the stench of everything I’ve seen and heard this week out of my head. And thanks, Billy. I still want teaching. I’ll find you. And the first thing I’m going to learn is that poem about the lights of France and the calm sea.’ He turned towards the stairs.

‘Mackie,’ said Isabella.

Something in her voice. He turned back to look at her, his foot on the stair.

‘You know them sailor lodgers down by the docks? You said they’d knife you soon as look at you.’

He nodded.

‘Come back into the kitchen, take your blooming fisherman’s cloak off and eat some blooming sausages and mash or I’ll keep my promise and knife you myself!’

But Mackie didn’t move. ‘I can’t, Isabella.
I have to go back to the sea
.’

She looked at him very carefully. ‘Because of what you saw and heard at the trial?’

‘It’s all right. I’m not going to change the world. I’m going to leave that poor sad Lord Arthur Clinton where he is. But—’

He shook his head as if to free himself from his thoughts. They saw he looked like some sort of caged beast as he stood in his fisherman’s cloak beside the stairs that led away from the basement kitchen of the house in Wakefield-street. He looked at Isabella.

‘Let me go now, love.’

They heard his footsteps going up the stairs.

They heard the front door close.

51

I
WATCHED
MY
Ma so carefully.

I was frightened she might be sad, but you couldn’t talk to Ma about such things.

‘Would you like me to make you another hat, Ma?’

She smiled at me, and sort of ruffled my hair, which she didn’t usually. Being Ma, she understood what I was really saying. ‘He’ll come back, Mattie. He just had to – breathe fresh air. But he’ll come back.’

‘Are you
sure
, Ma?’

‘I’m sure, Mattie. I literally couldn’t
live
if I was away from London. That’s how he sometimes feels about the sea.’

‘He’s such a – good man, Ma.’

‘He is. I am glad you met him in Mudeford.’

That’s all. That’s all she said. That’s all we ever discussed. But for my Ma that was like a whole novel.

52

Mrs Catherine Gladstone had just returned to London.

Mrs Gladstone had many family commitments among her own family, the Glynne family, and in Hawarden Castle in Wales, the Glynne family home – which one day her son William would inherit. If it was not her large family taking up her time, it was the estate workers who needed her. Her husband loved Hawarden Castle also; if it had not been for his astute financial acumen and his sheer hard work, the estate could have been lost. He travelled there, especially in the long summer recess, if his wife was there and his workload allowed.

Mrs Gladstone was absent often, certainly. But if her heart suffered sometimes she never said; despite her husband’s rescuing interludes with other women, one in particular, she was nevertheless a loyal and fiercely protective wife to the Prime Minister. She perhaps understood him better than he understood himself, and loved him dearly.

It must be said that the success or otherwise of Mr Gladstone’s rescue activities could not be measured exactly. Sometimes there was ignominious failure; one rescued lady, sent away to an institution for Fallen Women actually wrote to say thanks all the same but she had run away; she would have committed suicide if she had stayed there longer.

Occasionally Mrs Gladstone was able to find a better class of girl a position among her large network of friends and acquaintances. Sometimes the women just needed to talk. Sometimes they were perfectly happy with their lives but, having been persuaded by Mr Gladstone that there was a more honourable road under a forgiving God, found themselves, before they knew it, being offered a cup of tea in a set of charitable rooms in a narrow lane off Wardour Street, set up for the purpose of good works by good women.

Mrs Gladstone attended when she was able. Mrs Tussie Heap (long ago a member of the wardrobe staff at the Drury Lane Theatre) always accompanied her mistress, Mrs Gladstone, to these encounters. Tussie would sit outside and perhaps speak to other women waiting; Mrs Gladstone had a bell on a table in the room, which just once or twice she had had to ring and Tussie would immediately enter and help deal with any crisis. On the whole the visiting women were well behaved and quiet; just once one tried to attack Mrs Gladstone with her own umbrella, and once a woman collapsed and later died.

Mrs Tussie Heap, this mid-June day, simply added Mrs Isabella Stacey’s name to the list she had been given by one of Mr Gladstone’s secretaries, which is how Mrs Stacey of 13 Wakefield-street met Mrs Gladstone of 11 Carlton House Terrace and Hawarden Castle, in a room on the ground floor of the charitable premises, which had enriching pictures on all the walls. The pictures had been chosen carefully by Mrs Gladstone herself and some were beautiful as well as evangelical. The lane outside the building was so narrow that only the smallest of carts could navigate it, but footsteps hurried along continuously, and passers-by called and chattered outside the windows.