The Sparks Fly Upward (17 page)

Makepeace had refused to be done good to but she'd urged her daughter to go and, guiltily but faintly resisting, Philippa had gone.

Wonderful, wonderful. All the way to London, he'd talked of the excursion he and The League had made to France. She could remember
that
perfectly, every word. This time they'd snatched most of the de Précourt family almost from the gates of prison. ‘Couldn't get the poor old Count, though,' Andrew had said. ‘Only persuaded the Countess to come away for the sake of her children. Brave little devils, too. When I gave the eldest something to eat, she said: “Thank you, m'sieu,
now
I can admit I am hungry.” Wouldn't complain before, d'ye see.'

He'd glanced at her. ‘All right, all right, Pip, there were thousands of hungry little 'uns before the Revolution but I didn't know them, did I?'

All the way back, she remembered now, they'd argued about the character of Richard II. She thought him tragic; he thought the king ‘about as useful as marmalade. All that sittin' about tellin' sad stories.'

Unlike Stephen who became perturbed if she disagreed with him, Ffoulkes enjoyed their arguments though he pretended it was
lèse majesté
for the godchild to contradict the godfather.

He'd been interested by a young actress playing one of the queen's ladies. ‘Did you see her, Pip? Frail little thing, fair hair, sorrowful look.'

Like his mother. Like his first wife.

She'd said, ‘I knew you'd notice her, you are always attracted by that complexion.'

He'd protested, genuinely surprised, but she'd known that she was stealing that night from the ashy-haired, delicately boned female of piteous appearance, whoever she was, that he would eventually marry.

As he had.

It was a week of letters. There was one from Stephen Heilbron. He spared her from descriptions of the abominations he was uncovering, merely saying that God must weep to see them. He said he was facing more ferocious opposition from the slave traders of Liverpool than any he'd encountered before. ‘A hopeful sign, for it shows they feel the threat of the Society's activities.

‘One slave trader, a great man in this city, had the impudence to tell me that a negro on a slave ship has nearly twice as much cubic air to breathe as a British soldier in a tent, that he had never heard of a slave being treated cruelly and he wished the English laborer half as happy. He tried to throw me with the old fallacy that abolition will turn the country into a scene of bankruptcy and ruin. I told him: “This or that measure is always supposed to ruin commerce—it never has, nor will.” '

He didn't mention that he had again been physically attacked, though she'd read in the
Morning Post
that ‘Mr Heilbron was well pummelled by adherents of the merchants of Liverpool for his interference in their legal trade.'

His courage brought tears to her eyes; as ever, she felt how he deserved more of her than she could give. Writing a letter back, she wracked her brains for incidents with which to amuse him since, as she knew, her excursion to Grub Street would not.

Instead, she included news of Makepeace: ‘We have had an intriguing missive from Mama who has successfully met up with Uncle Aaron, and talks mysteriously of putting on a play after her return from the southwest.'

The reply was affectionate but carried a sting in its tail. ‘Though I have ceased to be surprised by your mother's adventuring spirit, I should be sorry if she should involve herself in the theater and sorrier yet were you to admit yourself to her enterprise. I confess that as a heedless youth nobody enjoyed a good play more than myself but I have been awakened to the theater's innate folly and its occasion for vice of all kinds, since then I have eschewed it like the plague. Philippa, my dear love, let our minds dwell constantly on Eternity and the future consequences of our conduct.'

The next day she heard from Andrew Ffoulkes. His letter had been posted in Birmingham and was written in the usual scrawl that suggested he was rushing off to do something else. The stewards on his various estates complained constantly that to read his instructions took especial training.

‘Milady wishes to be remembered to you through chattering teeth, wrapped her up in fur like Baby Bunting but the north proved too cold for her French blood, which was not even warmed by new engine sheds in Telford foundry, so on way home though must visit Norfolk first to see how turnips proceed. Hope B obliged with
certificat
for C.'

‘What does Andrew say?' asked Jenny, watching her sister's face.

‘He's coming home.' She tried to keep her voice matter-of-fact. ‘Félicie doesn't like the cold. I think he's hoping to divert her with his turnip experiment.'

Jenny said, ‘Lady Ffoulkes don't strike me as a turnip-lover.'

Philippa grinned at her. ‘Nor me.'

Jenny didn't smile back. She reached over and touched Philippa's hand. ‘Dear,
dear
sister,' she said.

Her compassion was shocking.
She knows
, Philippa thought.
And this is how she sees me, as someone who picks up crumbs from the rich man's table, waiting for a smile, a conversation left over from another woman's feast. A barren little planet so far outside the sun's warmth that its summer is but a snatched minute or two.

She crossed to the sofa to sit beside Jenny and kiss her. ‘Does Ma know?' she asked.

‘I think she does now. I . . . may have mentioned something.'

‘But you've always known?'

She realized with a jolt that Blanchard knew as well; during their first few minutes in Andrew's library on the night of the ball, he'd looked at her with the commiseration for the wounded that Jenny was showing now.

It was unsettling that two such disparate pairs of eyes, one gentle, one hard, had pierced the coconut shell like skewers.
Was it so obvious? Do I wear a placard
: HERE IS A LOVELORN MAIDEN?

‘Always,' Jenny said, ‘and I'm so sorry. So sorry, Pippy dear.'

Philippa kissed her again. ‘I shall be all right, you know.'

‘Will you?'

‘Oh, yes. I'm not the Maid of Astolat and sure as taxes Andrew Ffoulkes isn't Sir Lancelot. Once I am married to Stephen and have a thousand children, think how happy I shall be.' She smiled. ‘And I shall chase all your suitors away so that you may stay a perennial aunt and help me with them.'

But Jenny was dealing in truths this evening. ‘I shall marry,' she said, ‘but I shall not love anyone like you love Andrew. I couldn't love any man like that. It isn't helpful.'

Philippa smiled ruefully. ‘Obviously not, but one can't help one's nature.'

‘I can,' Jenny said.

 

 

KINDLY neighbors had awoken to the fact that the two sisters were without their mother and deluged them with invitations it would have been churlish to decline. The week passed in morning coffees, afternoon teas, soirées and suppers. They were generally feminine affairs, most of Chelsea's menfolk spending their days pursuing foxes, stags, otters and pheasants before the season ended, and their evenings in further masculine pursuits at their London clubs.

It was a surprise, therefore, to Philippa and Jenny, even to its hostess, when Sir Charles Fitch-Botley turned up at his own house in the middle of an evening card party given by his wife—with a friend in tow.

He kissed his wife noisily and announced to the company: ‘Blanchard here thinks I don't spend enough time by my own fire, so I came to give it a poke.' He giggled; he was drunk.

His companion was not.

‘Sir Charles needed no persuasion to pass the evening in civilized company for once,' Sir Boy said. ‘Lady Fitch-Botley, your servant, ma'am. We are fortunate to find you at home, but it is to be supposed you do not venture far these cold days.'

‘Oh, she don't go much beyond Chelsea, do ee, Ginny?' her husband said.

Philippa saw that Georgiana was immediately floored and fumbled the introductions.

So it
had
been Blanchard in Grub Street. She'd wondered all week if Scratcher was the same man he used for League business—after all, the number of forgers in London who could duplicate French papers was surely limited. That, therefore, was what he'd been doing in the vicinity and how he'd glimpsed Georgiana. Had he also seen her?

Not
, she thought,
that it mattered
. He would have inferred that she was there; it would have been too great a coincidence otherwise—Lady Fitch-Botley was unlikely to have ventured into such an area on her own initiative.

Yes, he had.
When it was Philippa's turn to be bowed to, the eyes raised to hers were knowing. ‘Ah, Miss Dapifer. Have you solved that little puzzle we talked about the other day?'

She took the offensive. ‘I believe so, thank you, sir. Have you solved your own? A matter of a dentist, I believe?'

‘Yes, indeed. We shall have to see which case has the quicker outcome.'

He gave the thin smile other women found attractive; she saw only the acid in it. She was disturbed that his hostility to the rescue of Condorcet was so personal. What difference did it make to him that another soul, even one whose politics he did not agree with, was snatched from the fire? Yet he was prepared to lie in order to ensure that it was not. He'd told her that his forger had been put
hors de combat
by an injured hand consequent from beating his wife.

But if Scratcher was the man referred to—and he must be—his hands had appeared uninjured. In fact, as she'd seen for herself, the only beatings likely to have taken place in Scratcher's household were those inflicted by Mrs Scratcher.

The man was unfathomable, but if there was battle between them, she had outflanked him. In two days' time she and Lady Fitch-Botley would return to Grub Street, Ginny to deliver her next article for
The Passenger
, she to pick up Condorcet's
certificat
.

She smiled at him with the generosity of a victor, especially one who had good teeth, and joined him at a table to partner Ginny in a game of whist against Blanchard and Eliza Morris.

By the end of the evening, she was left wondering whether she had been reading too many gothic novels and had
mis
read him. The glimpse of the wolf had gone. Sir Boy Blanchard was better than charming, he was
nice
; not patronizing, but with an assumption that they were as well read as he was, showing an intimacy with charity work that won Eliza's heart, an endearing impatience with himself when he forgot which cards were not yet out and an unflowery admiration of his partner's and opponents' play.

Had she been superstitious, though, it might have concerned Philippa that, notwithstanding, he and Eliza won every rubber.

 

‘IT was good of Sir Boy not to mention seeing me to Charles,' Georgiana said when they embarked for London Bridge two days later. ‘It is not as if I were committing a sin, but I fear Charles would not approve of my journalism.' Her eyelashes fluttered at the last word, amused at her own pride in it.

The article she was to deliver today was a progression on last week's, an attack on those who refused to countenance change, but this time concentrating on the cause of women. She had drawn heavily on Wollstonecraft's
Vindication
but, wisely, did not mention her source.

‘Women are urged to be modest and obedient,' she'd written, ‘yet these terms are used in order to ensure their thralldom, for what passes for virtue nowadays is only a want of courage to throw off prejudice.'

It was an admirable piece. Philippa thought that, however minutely, it would help to push society's thinking beyond the boundaries, even while inflaming it. But she, too, was sure Fitch-Botley would not approve.

She said: ‘In any case, Sir Boy has no reason to connect an anonymous editorial in
The Passenger
with your presence in Grub Street. He must merely think that you were there on my account.'

‘So he must.' Georgiana was relieved.

Philippa was less reassured for herself. There had been a curious incident the day before when, minutes after Marie Joséphine had set off for the village for her afternoon off, they'd heard her shrieking.

Running down to the carriage drive to the archway, Philippa and one of the footmen found the Frenchwoman still shouting imprecations and shaking her fist at the Thames's apparently empty embankment.

When they crossed the lane to look over the rail, they saw a man in a skiff hastily pulling away upriver.

Marie Joséphine's imprecations echoed across the water after him. ‘
Voleur! Va-t'en, cambrioleur
!'

‘What did he do?'

‘Il se cachait derrière le voûte
. He thinks to thieve the house. He will kill us while missus is away.
Va chercher les chiens de garde
.'

What passed for the Reach's
chiens de garde
were probably on Sanders's and Hildy's bed, their usual place when Sanders was away. The two friendly retriever spaniels had been bought as a present by Makepeace for the coachman, the only member of the household who liked to shoot game. Hildy and every other female member of the family spoiled them dreadfully, much to Sanders's chagrin.

Philippa managed to calm her maid down. ‘He is here two days,' Marie Joséphine explained. ‘Yesterday I think he makes pee-pee in the entrance and I shout him to go away but today again he is here.
Il reste caché
to murder us.'

‘Just takin' a breather out the wind, I reckon,' Hopkins said with a shrug at female French dramatics.