The Flight of Sarah Battle (15 page)

‘We'll find the money, we'll pay it. It will not break us. If it is only money he wants, he'll not ask too much: no blackmailer would ruin his source of revenue. Sarah, compared to everything we have in our life, it is small. Compared to what we have, thirty dollars is nothing. Nothing! Let's forget it. We shall not be intimidated. Our life will not change.

‘In time I may be able to speak to Robert about it. In time we may find a way to remove the wretch, though police here are useless. Meanwhile, let's continue as we began, with our life, our married life, the best thing in the world.'

3

The century has little time left to run and in London threat of French invasion is back once more. Sam Battle skims the first page of the pile of eight newly delivered newspapers for a report of yesterday's meeting.

9 February 1798

The merchants, bankers and traders of the city of London met in the square at the Royal Exchange, where a hustings was erected for their accommodation, for the purpose of promoting the voluntary subscription for the defence of the country.

The meeting was very numerous. Mr Bosanquet, alderman Curtis and some other gentlemen, addressed the meeting upon the subject of the present state of the country, urging the necessity of opposing vigorous exertions to the inveterate hostility of an implacable foe, and of patriotically coming forward, with our aid, in support of everything dear to us as Britons and as freemen.

The speeches were received with universal applause; and, on the meeting being dissolved, four books were opened, in which a great number of names were immediately subscribed. Mr Boyd annexed £3,000 to his name and the other contributions were proportionably liberal. Previous to meeting, the committee who were appointed to conduct the business of the day, met at the Mansion-house, where upwards of £20,000 were subscribed.

At the end of the meeting yesterday, as he'd expected, customers flooded down Change Alley to be greeted at Battle's by its morose proprietor. He approves of their views, of course, especially since his married daughter ran off with a
second
Jacobin. Secretly he thinks she's safer out of the country, but his resentment towards his wife for foolishly getting herself killed has also extended to his daughter. As if to underline his utter distrust of women he employs a surly replacement for Sarah behind the bar, competent and only slightly less bad-tempered than he.

Little is known about Sarah. It's believed she's not written to her father, though no one dares to ask him, for fear of an explosion. Out of Sam's hearing, a traveller returning from Hamburg assures his listeners that he saw an Englishwoman with blushing cheeks on the arm of a man in a revolutionary cap, presumably ‘citizen' Cranch. Another man with a correspondent in Philadelphia says that the streets are full of Red Indians and that Sarah has definitely married one of them.

Around the main fireplace, within Sam's hearing, the talk is loud.

‘They say Bonaparte's assembling his best troops at all the ports, ready to board.'

‘Thinks he can outwit Nelson!'

‘He declares he'll spread the flame of liberty to England as well as Greece and Egypt and the deserts of Arabia, eh, Thynne? Do you look forward to a good singeing?'

‘You may laugh, Bullock. When the money's all gone on sailors and ships and troops and cannon and shot and feeding prisoners, it'll be more than just the industrious poor crowding the soup shops, you'll see!'

‘I'll tell you how many meals are served in the soup shops every day.'

‘No, Lyons, don't! We'll go there ourselves and watch Bullock and Thynne banging at each other when they're both waiting for their broth.' Laughter from listeners.

Bullock squeezes his lumpy nose with lumpy fingers.

‘They'd save the expense of prisoners if they did what they ought to with the Irish.'

Someone chirps up: ‘At least there's good use for the Tower.'

‘We should learn from your libertarian French, Thynne,' Bullock continues slowly. ‘Heads off quick as a blade; much the cheapest way. Decorate the walls with ‘em, like we used to do on Temple Bar.'

‘You always were a pig. Don't deserve the name Bullock: insulting to our great English beef,' counters Thynne, his sharp features straining to puncture his rival.

‘Irish, French, let's clear our minds of foreigners,' a pink-gilled man steps in from the margins. ‘Have you seen the new prints at Digham's in Paternoster? Shakespeare, our great Shakespeare, now there you have a man to unite us. Prints of all the women in his plays.'

‘Oh yes?' The minds of the company wheel round.

‘Desdemona, Cordelia, Imogen, Portia, Ophelia. Enough to bring a tear to the eye.'

‘Whose are they?'

‘You won't have heard of him. Engraves his own paintings. He sells the originals for more guineas than I can afford. Setting up his own shop now, I hear.'

‘His name, Fellowes?'

‘Joseph Young.'

‘Oh I've heard of him. Not exactly for his Desdemonas I'd say!'

‘Aha! Then Sopwith, tell us about those. Have you got some? Will you bring them here?'

‘You don't buy them, you hire the portfolio by the night. Not sure if Sam'd have it.'

‘Upstairs, maybe, in the auction room.'

‘Get Sam over here, Fellowes. He'll not mind as long as we pay.'

*

Money flowing soon enables Joseph and Lucy to move to better premises. He rents a narrow house in Little Russell Street with a shop window big enough to display a print in every pane and installs a printing press on the first floor. Second and third floors house meagre domestic arrangements. There, too, Lucy has her painting table, in a room high above the printing press, though she must also listen out for the shop doorbell, run downstairs, smile, take money from buyers or their servants, note sums in the account book she's covered in offcuts of flowered wallpaper.

She worries constantly about Matthew. Three days after his sudden appearance in Albion Place a ‘friend' came for him and that was the last they'd seen of him. Joseph takes a note with their new address to the George in St John Street and returns in black mood.

‘Was he there?' She sees the answer on his face.

‘No. Of course not. He is safe somewhere no doubt.'

‘Did they say so?'

‘No, of course not! They wouldn't tell me that. They don't trust me.'

‘Oh.'

‘Matthew was right, there are spies all over the place. I might be one for all they know. The man in the George will have to move to another alehouse now I'm sure of it.'

‘Then I shan't know where to send letters.'

‘No, you won't! Lucy, you must cease thinking about him. He has chosen a desperate way. These are men of violence. They are at war with the government. They are right to attack corruption, lies, injustice; for that I am on their side. But their methods are mad and they will come to grief.'

There is no comfort for her.

But he is happy with her work. She colours all his prints, exactly as he prescribes. He is meticulous about the Shakespeare scenes for which there is great demand. Customers are particularly pleased when they find they can buy one or more from the same young woman figured in them.

William Digham's promise of sporting and topographical prints evaporates – indeed they rarely see the little printer now that Joseph has his own press, his success. Here's another disappointment for Lucy who felt gladdened purely by his presence. It consoles her to keep in mind the possibility of fleeing to him, a safe house of kindness and understanding. It would take longer to get there of course; she'd need a hackney or a sedan.

She colours Joseph's engraved satires though not his ‘Amorous Scenes', as they're entitled on the covers. Has no idea who limns the pink glut of limbs. As the portfolios, bound in brown morocco, are hired not bought, Joseph need not produce so many prints. In any case it's the follies of street life, tavern life, theatre life that pour from him in great variety. The sketches he makes are mere reminders, for at his bench he cuts straight into the copper as if the figures caper out of his head: pickpockets, labourers, sellers, harlots. Two half-naked women wrestling in Murphy's in Little Russell Street itself. In that engraving Joseph surrounds the women with a jovial, drinking crowd, cheering on the fighters. On the left a small, unexpected figure in black, turns an eager gaze at the flying breasts, plump, tangled arms and thighs. Disturbed though unprotesting, Lucy reddens the unmistakeable cheeks of lascivious, gawping Rev. Mr Dale.

*

Come August end Joseph takes her to Bartholomew Fair, exuberant with life in the face of loud demands to close it down. Before, they'd have walked from Albion Place. She feels an odd sense of return when the hackney drops them into what at all other times is Smithfield, now pulsing with people rather than heaving with penned animals.

Laughs, shrieks, drumbeats, bugles, blind fiddlers, perpetual hurdy-gurdies. Acrobats and traders call out their skills and wares, and there's a constant blast of Sausages! and Pies! Hot Mutton Trumpery! Stinkin' Shrimps! Teeth Ache!

Joseph is elated, a drunken man in full control of his wits. He pulls Lucy through the crowd; they buy cheesecakes and ices, drink saloop, laugh like the happiest lovers in the world. Tossed on the waves of anarchy, Lucy darts excitedly from booth to booth, plays like the child she never was.

They are both children with money to spend. They watch harlequins cavort on wooden boards, buy tickets for Synget's Grand Medley on a precarious stage, the audience booing and clapping according to each performer's dress: dancer showing her legs: applause! singer with too many ostrich feathers on her head: boo!

‘I went to a theatre when I was a boy,' Joseph says. ‘
The Destruction of the Bastille
, it was. It wasn't a play at all but a representation. I loved it. Someone took me, I don't remember who, to distract me from my mother's death.'

They gaze at an elephant and monkeys cooped in Miles's Menagerie, ride in a swing boat, watch a man eating fire, pierrots treading a taught rope, a parade of painted Indians, severe and sad. Give pennies to one-legged, no-legged, one-eyed sailors; a whole fist of pennies to the armless, legless man who fills a pipe, lights and smokes it; peep behind curtains at an albino lady; peer down a microscope at the smallest bible in the world.

Again and again Joseph stops to sketch on his pocket pad, picks up the comments about his pretty companion.

‘Hear what they say about you Lucy!' He puts his arm round her, plants a public kiss on her flushed cheek.

In hastily erected booths, whose starred and mooned sacking flaps on crude poles, sit fortune tellers and sly sellers of simples promising eternal youth and cures for every ill. A necromancer predicts for pennies in a dark alley.

Someone runs past, there's a hue and cry, dogs join in, a child is knocked to the ground. Joseph and Lucy become separated and when at last he finds her she is surrounded by beggars wheedling for money, pawing her clothes. A fascinated crowd watches as Lucy, shaking, unable to escape, hands over her purse.

‘Don't mind 'em, miss.'

‘Nah! Don't give it 'em!'

‘Go on, give 'em some'at.'

‘Give ‘em your shawl! That's worth a bit.'

‘No, don't, miss. I'll get a Runner.'

A set-to, punches, hair-pulling, bodies knock into Lucy – their forgotten cause.

Joseph strides through the onlookers and suddenly no one's there.

‘Lucy! What's this? Frightened by a few beggars? They would never do you any harm. They just want your money.'

‘They were pulling me, mauling me. They would have taken my clothes if you had not arrived.' She is white. Weeping.

Three musicians appear with a crowd of hangers-on. One plays an organ strapped to his shoulders, another a reed pipe, the third a tambourine he tosses into the air, catches on the tip of one finger and resumes playing without the music having missed a note or a beat.

Joseph sketches rapidly and shouts at Lucy.

‘That's nonsense. What a chaplain's daughter you are! Protected from the world. But you don't live in your tower any more. These are our poor.' He gestures all about him. ‘All these are poor, not just the beggars.' He throws a coin into a bag attached by a stick to the tambourinist's hat, forcing the musician to bow his head in thanks and mockery.

A girl, sweating with effort, pushes a barrow past them loaded with baskets of pears. ‘Look at her. These are the people Matthew is fighting for. For whom he's hatching vain Empires. These are the people for whom he'll start a revolution. For whom he'll kill.'

‘Kill?'

‘We'll go home, Lucy. Come on, my flower. I have sketches for a whole new series here. Worth every penny I've spent.'

He buys her a stick of cherries. She reminds him that he did this once before when they first met, but he cannot remember.