The Petticoat Men (30 page)
‘Follow behind me.’
Oh the relief of air! In the darkness we followed her and her lamp towards the quay and then down to the water and along the stony shore, I stumbled and Billy took my arm. Around us, odd houses were outlined in the night, there were lamps at windows and the strange smell and sound, of the sea.
‘Wait,’ said Marigold and she walked away; finally her lamp went inside one of the houses.
I couldn’t stop shaking as I stood near Billy in the warm night. He must have felt me, he put his arm round me. We looked at the dark water, a little breeze came while we stood there, my hair blew across my eyes, we could hear waves. Lights flickered back along the quay, moving and then disappearing.
‘Perhaps that’s the smugglers,’ said Billy. ‘Maybe that old fisherman Mackie is there, smuggling away.’
‘Do you think it’s true? What Lord Arthur said about Freddie?’
Billy didn’t answer for a few moments. Then he said, ‘Lord Arthur is frightened and he seems – hysterical.’ That didn’t help the words in my head. ‘It’s a different world from ours, Mattie.’
Just then we heard a door, then the light of a pipe came towards us, we could smell the tobacco on the air.
‘Give me a sovereign, Mattie.’
I gave it to him, quickly feeling for the money in my cloak pocket.
The outline of Johnny Hewlettson moved towards us in the dark.
‘Well,’ he said.
‘He’s very frightened,’ said Billy. ‘We dont – know him very well but he seems in such a state he could do anything. Maybe it would be a good idea to have a doctor, just in case.’
‘He’s a nuisance,’ said Johnny Hewlettson. ‘He owes money all over the county as well as all over London. He hasn’t got money for a doctor – and what can a doctor do for someone who’s scared?’
Billy handed the sovereign to Johnny Hewlettson with another half-sovereign.
‘For a doctor you trust maybe? And some food maybe?’
The sea shushed on the gravelly sand and my thoughts mixed with the sound:
most of Ma’s precious sovereigns left in Mudeford,
to help Lord Arthur Clinton.
I wondered what she’d think of that. How odd it all was.
Johnny Hewlettson looked down at the money in the darkness. ‘We’re not exactly savages down here, boy. My wife made him food last night and twice today. He wouldn’t eat it.’ He turned towards the houses, holding Ma’s money in his hand, and then he stopped and turned back to us. ‘I see you mean well, lad, and the only people who’ve come anywhere near him.’ Tobacco drifted across to us. ‘We dont have any doctors in Mudeford. I’ll get a good doctor in Bournemouth that’s known to us, not any of those elegant-refined Christchurch ones. I’ll get Robbie Thompson with your money. We dont want him cutting his own throat or dying of fright on us just because nobody else will take him in. But tell his family he needs proper help,’ and then he left us, there on the shore. He threw the last words back over his shoulder, ‘Not to leave him with strangers like a rat in a corner.’
We walked back to the road, along to the inn. Billy took my arm in his again and, unusual for him, put his hand over mine just for a moment.
‘You got the information you needed, Billy, didn’t you?’ I said.
‘I think I did.’
‘But – Lord Arthur’s too old to have a guardian.’
‘He is now,’ said Billy. ‘But he wasn’t once. I dont expect people like us are supposed to know that story. I think it would be – bad for Mr Gladstone if they said in the trial of the Men in Petticoats that he was Lord Arthur’s guardian and a trustee of his family’s estate. It makes him like a – much too close a connection to the trial.’
‘Are you going to – blackmail him, Billy?’
Billy laughed. ‘That’s in novels, Mattie! I dont think Mr Gladstone could be blackmailed by anyone, he’s the sort who would call a constable if he had to because he thinks he is in the right and to hell with what the world thinks. That’s different from just keeping his connection very quiet. But – I just feel he’s an honourable man and – that I could explain to him.’ And he sighed in the night. ‘We need my job, Mattie. And I love working there. I’m glad I know the truth now. I hope I can just see him and say to him that I was caught up just like he was, only I lost my position and he didn’t.’
He still held my arm and I sort of squeezed it, so he’d know I understood. We walked in silence for a while, you could hear our footsteps and the sea further away, that’s all, it was all so quiet and not like London.
‘Do you think Lord Arthur is sick, Billy? Or just frightened?’
‘I dont know,’ said Billy. ‘Frightened I think. Hysterical and wild and frightened.’
‘Will that man get a doctor?’
‘I believe he will. They wont want the risk of him ill in Mudeford and police snooping about.’ And I saw that Billy shook his head in the dark. ‘Looks like a smuggler has to take charge if nobody else will.’
‘But – Lord Arthur wouldn’t
really
kill himself, would he?’
‘I dont know,’ said Billy.
Again we walked in silence.
‘I know I’ve been very foolish,’ I said at last. ‘It was because Freddie was so kind. Other people must make up dreams besides me.’
And now Billy gave a small nudge to my arm hooked in his, just like I had, as if to say,
I understand.
After that we didn’t speak again. And we didn’t pass a single person, just me and my brother, walking along the dark Mudeford Road. We could see lights, warm and welcoming as we approached the inn. I didn’t want to talk to anybody, not even Billy who wanted an ale. I said goodnight to him and went to our room. Someone had left a lamp on, turned low, as if someone was waiting for me to give me a hug. But not really of course.
Before dawn next morning two figures walked along the Mudeford Road towards Christchurch. The young woman walked with a limp, the man kept her pace and carried their bag.
This day was a Thursday.
At first only the sound of their footsteps on the hard dirt road. Then the first notes of morning birds, singing as they sensed the first light before the walkers did. The grey light in the sky grew brighter. They heard horse’s hooves far behind them, pounding nearer and then slowing. It was Mackie the fisherman, travelling towards Christchurch in the growing light with a large number of mysterious bundles attached to his horse. They could smell fish.
‘Room for you, Miss Mattie,’ he said. ‘I’ll drop you at the Old George and you can wait for your brother there.’
The girl got up behind the rider with the help of her brother, and took the bag. The brother waved to them as they trotted off into the light. The girl looked back several times and saw the stoic figure getting smaller and smaller.
‘Did you find who you were looking for?’ asked Mackie. She felt his voice rumbling in his back as she held on to him once more.
‘Yes,’ she said shortly.
She supposed the whole of Mudeford knew their business by now. But he did not ask her anything else, and she did not ask him about the bundles tied to the horse. He talked occasionally, about the sea. Almost she fell asleep against his warm, rumbling back.
Billy, walking, was almost at Christchurch when a small horse and trap passed him, going in the opposite direction: the doctor got from Bournemouth. Paid for by Mrs Stacey’s sovereigns.
But Billy did not know this that morning, as he raised his hand in greeting, the way people always did on empty roads, still so early.
Nor did Billy Stacey know that, later that same Thursday, even before he and Mattie got back to London, a telegram regarding Lord Arthur Clinton arrived to Mr Frederick Ouvry, solicitor for the Newcastle Estate. It was marked EXTREMELY PRIVATE, was signed J. HEWLETTSON, ESQ. and it, also, was paid for by Mrs Isabella Stacey’s sovereigns.
The telegram advised Mr Ouvry that Lord Arthur Clinton was ill, under an assumed name at a certain address in a small fishing village called Mudeford, near Christchurch, where money should be sent to J. Hewlettson, Esq. at once. After a most urgent conversation with Lord Edward Clinton, the only sensible Clinton brother (this was Mr Ouvry’s opinion, and indeed most people’s), Mr Ouvry made some hasty arrangements.
He instructed the solicitor Mr W. H. Roberts, who had already appeared in the Magistrates’ Court on behalf of the absent Lord Arthur Clinton, to immediately depart for this place mentioned: Mudeford. He instructed him further to find J. Hewlettson, Esq., and therefore, presumably, Lord Arthur Clinton, urgently. He must travel overnight.
Mr W. H. Roberts departed London at once. Mr Frederick Ouvry provided funds out of his own pocket for this to be done, otherwise the matter would have had to be discussed at great length with the Trustees of the Newcastle Estate.
Very little is secret in certain circles. Several gentlemen, hearing rumours, met quickly with others in private rooms, sitting nervously on leather sofas. Muttered private conversations were held; finally before nightfall several gentlemen also departed hurriedly from London.
All had arrived in Christchurch by Friday morning.
On Saturday morning a second telegram arrived for Mr Frederick Ouvry, marked EXTREMELY PRIVATE
.
It was
signed W. H. ROBERTS.
Soon afterwards a hand-delivered letter, marked EXTREMELY PRIVATE
,
arrived for the Prime Minister of Great Britain at his home. Mr Gladstone, just leaving for a Saturday-afternoon cabinet meeting, recognised the handwriting of Mr Frederick Ouvry; he opened the letter slightly awkwardly, holding his hat in his hand also.
66 Lincolns Inn Fields
London, W. C.
18 June 1870
My Dear Sir
Lord Arthur Clinton is dead. At an obscure cottage in Hampshire under an assumed name.
He has succumbed to an attack of scarlet fever.
I have seen Lord Edward, and hope to see the Duke tonight on his arrival from Paris.
Believe me,
Your obliged and faithful servant,
Frederick Ouvry
Mr Gladstone read the contents again and then stood, very still, half in and half out of the doorway in Carlton House Terrace, staring at the paper. Mrs Gladstone was away. Mr Gladstone did not see the figure of the departing messenger at the corner of the square; he did not hear the hooves of a passing horse in the terrace. He folded the letter and bowed his bare head in the warm sunshine: perhaps in thought; perhaps in prayer.
The cabinet meeting that Saturday afternoon lasted two and three quarter hours. Greece was discussed, and the colonies, and the Irish Land Bill.
Of course news travels.
However, although on the following day, a Sunday, certain vague rumours swirled about the upper echelons of noble society, the rumours did not, in this case, reach the
Reynolds Newspaper
in time for publication,
nor 13 Wakefield-street, nor Isabella Stacey (provider of some of the finance involved), who usually knew everything. So Billy did not know the latest developments either, when very early on Monday morning he left home in his best suit and his silk top hat, picked up a copy of
The
Times
as usual, and then walked briskly to the Houses of Parliament as if he still worked there.