The Flight of Sarah Battle (8 page)

He's grasping her shoulders, turning her to him.

‘Where are you going?'

‘To William Digham. I am a hindrance to you. Perhaps he can find me somewhere to live.'

‘You mustn't leave like this. Come back. Please, Lucy. You must live with me! I need you to live with me. I need your innocence, your perfection. You mustn't leave me.'

She looks at him amazed. Miss Perfect. Miss Virginal Perfect. Lucy Lucifer.

But she cannot argue or protest. Allows herself to return with him, following as he strides ahead with her bag, till back in his room he holds her to him for the first time, kisses each part of her tear-smeared face, gazes at her, promises, apologises, assures. She is confused, relieved, saddened. Joyous.

6

Toil in Battle's is alleviated for Sarah by her new cause. Where once she had escaped to her imagined dialogue with Newton, now she dwells in a remembered, passionate world, populated by crowds of people more like her than any of Battle's customers.

Not that she spoke to many on that day in St George's Fields. When they learned her father had a coffee house so near the Exchange their faces fell. She watched them furtively, especially the women her age with their children and babies, the families cheerful on their day out. But as the speeches began, they listened as one, the fervency felt by all, simultaneously. Then she was no longer different; a fellow-feeling moved in some new-found depth of her being.

Newton would have drawn them, of course, sprawling all over the field, their children running after each other, soon dirty, crying, laughing, babies at the breast, the women released, shouting and waving their arms, or listening, intent.

But Newton would have been
for
them. She's sure of that. Why else had he lost all his mirth when the soldiers began shooting? Why else had he rushed out so readily into the mobs on the streets? Of course he would have thought as she does! It's a small revelation that fortifies her.

The oddest thing is James, whom she can no longer connect to the cause to which he'd introduced her.

‘I've never seen so many people,' she says the day after the great meeting. ‘It was a wonder to me. May I read your report?'

‘It cannot interest you.'

‘It does! It will remind me of everything that took place, who it was who spoke and so forth.'

‘No. It's not for you.' He covers it with his arms like a schoolboy.

‘I can do no harm by reading it.'

‘No! My, how red you are from sitting in the sun all afternoon, Sarah. What do we eat tonight?'

She longs to talk about who spoke, what they said. But not with him. Evidently it bores him. And yet he is secretary of his branch of the Corresponding Society, writes up notes assiduously. She knows that even if it didn't bore him, he'd kill the event with his lugubrious tones.

*

In Paternoster Row Digham advises Joseph.

‘Lucy is a girl of some quality, not merely pretty.'

‘I know. I love her.'

‘Oh?'

‘I do. I've told her.'

‘She loves you, I dare say.'

Joseph doesn't answer.

‘It's luctiferous, Joseph.'

‘Luctiferous?'

‘You'll only cause sorrow. You know how I love these old words on their death beds. It's like the old methods. Watch out for the wooden press gasping its last breath, young man! Iron is coming. Even stone. They say stone won't wear away like copper does.

‘You should return her to her parents. Perhaps they will give you a reward!'

Joseph snorts.

‘Then you must marry her. And give up your Sal or Moll, your drinking and smoking club. Wood's is it? Where is that?'

‘Wych Street.'

‘Cock and hen is it, or a free-and-easy club? Don't think I haven't known since you began. I was glad for you then, knew you'd learn about the world that way. Make a better artist. As a boy you were so bookish, Joseph, dawdling at bookstalls whenever I sent you out. Of course, I swallowed a few books in my youth. But you! You needed to see life. And you have. By God, you etch like an angel even if your subjects are the devil! But you must not damage Lucy.'

Still no reply. Joseph tramps round the room bending his big head beneath the lines of pegged prints, a turkey in a coup.

‘Not that I think much to marriage without love on both sides.' The old man sighs.

‘I told you, I love her.'

Digham's turn to snort. ‘You may today, but will you tomorrow?'

‘Her parents will hardly approve of me.'

‘Then let me intercede for you. You say her father's deputy chaplain at the Tower. I'll go, speak for you. I've always seen myself as a father to you, Joseph. I'll go first. Smooth the way. Burnish the copper.'

Joseph looks down and Digham clutches his upper arms, embraces his large ex-apprentice.

‘You are a father to me, William,' the young man says, stooping to the old face. ‘I promise I shall get all those tedious plates done that I owe you, the trade cards for Casaltine and Matthews, Scattergood, the lottery tickets and all the rest. I'll do them now in double quick time. And you can be a father to us both.'

‘I'll certainly accept your promise of the plates which are well overdue, but this I shall do from love. And I've had another thought. Let me teach Lucy to hand-colour and earn a little money at home colouring prints. She can do mine, she can do yours. Even some for our rivals. I suspect she has the talent to limn accurately.

‘So, young man Young, I shall look forward to my visit to the Tower. I've always wanted to see the lions in the menagerie there.'

*

The Rev. Mr Henry Dale and Mrs Dale agree to Digham's request that they meet Joseph Young. But the interview with Digham is awkward and they are disinclined to believe the whole of his story. An engraver, a printer of satires, why should they trust a man with such odd speech? Lucy ran away, bad enough, but this apprentice of his… The shame of it! And following so soon upon the disgrace of Matthew's incomprehensible crime! Mrs Dale had taken to her bed for a month but finds herself just well enough to join her husband after his preliminary discussion with the wretched apprentice.

The room is dark-panelled in the style of the previous century. There are brown portraits of earlier chaplains, a glass-doored bookcase, heavy chairs and tables. Mr Dale is a very small man made even smaller by his black clothes. His wife is helped into the room by a maidservant, tucked under a rug on the only comfortable piece of furniture. Joseph searches for Lucy beneath her mother's puffy, weary skin – finds the symmetry, a mouth that had once been firm. Fair hair aged to the colour of dust. Mr Dale shows tall Joseph to a low chair and remains standing.

‘My dear, as we were informed he would, Mr Young has asked for Lucy's hand in marriage,' he says in a sharp rasp. ‘I have explained to him that we shall not settle a penny upon her in view of the circumstances. And in any case my own fortune would not stand it, would it, my dear.' He looks at Mrs Dale with an old resentment.

‘He has assured me that he can earn enough to keep them in modest comfort as a married couple and that Mr Digham is correct in assessing his prospects highly.'

Against her will Mrs Dale finds Joseph Young intriguing. He looks older than his twenty-one years – she was expecting a brutish boy – and has an attractive confidence which has yet to spill over into contempt. Before he left, Lucy washed and brushed him, advised him to wear his other coat, which she patched discreetly, a clean shirt, a striped waistcoat whose stains could not be seen. All of this, she told him, would help placate her respectable parents.

‘My future is certain, Mrs Dale.' Joseph bows in her direction. ‘I can engrave and etch perfectly and I use stipple and aquatint, both of which are desired by those who buy prints nowadays.' He looks up at the walls of the room with their archaic, carved panels and wainscoting, so valued by rioters seeking flammable material. There are no prints: they won't know what he's talking about. ‘In five years I shall be the most well-known engraver in London.'

Mr Dale turns away from this distasteful boasting.

‘And, for a while at least, Lucy will learn the art of hand-colouring so that together we can create finished prints.' Now it is Mrs Dale who turns away at the thought of this man and her daughter together.

‘Of course, were I able to buy my own printing press then we should be dependent upon no one. We could be successful much sooner. At present I must use Mr Digham's press, you see. Even a small settlement could help me achieve the goal of purchasing my own.'

‘Mr Dale?' says his wife, feeling a bubble of generosity begin to rise through habitual self-pity. Mr Dale ignores her query.

‘Mrs Dale and I agree to your marrying our daughter Lucy as long as you do so as soon as possible. A pity Marylebone Old Church is no more. There you could have done it immediately. We shall not attend the ceremony of course.'

‘Though I shouldn't presume to speak for Lucy, yet I am sure she, too, would prefer that you didn't attend,' Joseph says with disgust at parental heartlessness. It is a mistake.

‘You will be good enough to inform us when it is done, Mr Young.' He pulls on a bell-cord. ‘Bessy will show you out. Good day.'

*

St George's Court

Albion Place

Britton Street

14
th
November 1795

My dearest Matthew,

I wish I could know that you are well. I wish I could know that you will even receive this letter, but since I shall take it myself and try to persuade the porter to give it to you I am hopeful.

You will see from the address that I am no longer at home. I ran away when they took you back to the school and shall certainly never return so long as you are not there.

In any case I have found a friend who rescued me when I was fainting in the street
–
I had collapsed in a doorway. We are to be married! He has asked permission of Papa and Mama, which they have granted, though they want nothing to do with us. His name is Joseph Young and he is an engraver, so skilful and clever that I know he will become famous. And I have begun to learn how to be a limner, to colour his prints with watercolour paint so that we can sell them.

I know you will like him. He thinks you are terribly brave. He belongs to the Corresponding Society but is not such a revolutionary as you.

Oh Matthew, I hope and pray that they are not beating you any longer! Please write to me and tell me how you are.

Your ever loving,

Lucy

*

Joseph accompanies her to the school as she finds it hard to remember his directions, so anxious is she about her letter.

It takes an hour, avoiding the main roads blocked with carriages and carts, cutting through filthy, unpaved backstreets.

‘Joe!' In Cross Street two men hail him through smog. ‘'Ow are you? Is it Joe, or is it a phantom?'

‘Where you bin?' says the other. ‘Wood's ain't the same wivout you. Not seen you in fourteen days.'

‘Fourteen nights!' the first man says and punches him on the arm in mock fight. They look Lucy up and down. She's standing aside, shy, preoccupied, unused to working men on friendly terms. She feels their gaze all over her.

‘Oo's the pretty wench, Joe? Friend o' yours? Sister, mebbe?'

‘This is Lucy, Lucy Dale. Yes, she's a friend.'

He says nothing about marriage.

‘Glad to meet you Miss Dale. 'Ow d'you like our clever friend Joseph Young? Good at drawin', ain't he?'

‘Yes, he is.'

‘Good at all sorts o' things is our Joseph,' they say and laugh raucously. ‘Sandman Joe!' they shout and slap him on the back. One of them begins to sing:

He star'd a while then turned his quid,

Why blast you, Sall, I loves you!

And for to prove what I have said,

This night I'll soundly f…

‘I've an urgent errand with Miss Dale,' interrupts Joseph. Miss Dale? ‘We must hurry on.'

‘Urgent.' They wink at each other. Oh well, off you goes. We'll give your greetins to ve lads and lasses, shall us, Joe?'

‘Yes, of course.'

‘Tell 'em you've urgent business vese days?'

‘Tell them I'm busy, Jack. It's the truth.'

‘Vey'll be sorry to 'ear it. George Quinton and Barnabas'll be sorry.'

‘And Charlotte. You know, ve one always talks about her sister shot and killed in ‘80.'

‘We miss you, don't we, Hugh? And Fanny, she'll be a lot sorry, eh?'

‘We must hurry on now.' Joseph gives Lucy a small shove and walks her away. The men bawl out:

His brawny hands, her bubbies prest,