Taking Liberties

A light like a glow-worm had sprung up and was heading for the quay, showing itself, as it came, to be a lantern on a pole in a rowing boat which led a small flotilla of others. It swayed, sometimes reflecting on water, sometimes on the mushrooms that were the hatted heads of women clustered above the thwarts.

‘Missus, you’re not to pounce on this female,’ Beasley said. ‘We got to keep her sweet.’

‘I don’t pounce.’

‘Yeah, you do. You’re too much for people sometimes, especial other women. You bully ’em. You’re an overwhelmer.’

What was he talking about? Granted, she had to be forceful or she’d have remained the poverty-pinched wreck left by Dapifer’s death. You try coping politely with Newcastle coalers. And other women managed their lives so badly …

‘You do the talking then,’ she snapped.

The leading boat held back, allowing its link-boy to light the quay steps for the others. The sailors who’d done the rowing leaned on their oars, letting their passengers transfer themselves from the rocking boats to the steps.

Beasley positioned himself at the top, holding out his hand to help the women up to the quay. Some took it, some didn’t. As they came the link lit their faces from below, distorting their features into those of weary gargoyles.

Makepeace moved back under the eaves of the inn – and not just to allow Beasley free rein but because the harlots repelled her. How can he touch them? Yet why wasn’t he questioning them? Which one was he waiting for? The old man had said they’d know which she was, but how?

She teetered in the shadows, wanting to interfere, not wanting to interfere, watching one or two of the women limp off into the alleys. Others waited for their sisters, dully, not speaking, presumably needing light to guide them to the deeper rat-holes.

The last boat was debouching its passengers and still Beasley was merely hauling them up. She could see the tip of the link-pole as it lit the last few up the steps.

That’s her. Oh God, that’s her.

The link-boy had joined the women on the quay and was guiding them away into the alleys but, as he left, his lantern had illumined one of the faces before it turned away as if light was anathema to it, or it was anathema to light.

Makepeace had seen the damage done by smallpox before but never with the ferocity it had wreaked here. The woman’s features might have been formed from cement spattered by fierce rain while still soft. In that brief glimpse, it appeared to be not so much a face as a sponge.

Pocky.

Having helped her onto the quay, Beasley was holding on to the woman’s hand. Makepeace heard her say, tiredly: ‘Not tonight, my manny. I ain’t got a fuck left,’ then pause as he shook his head and put his question, politely for him, giving his explanation in a mumble.

The woman’s reply carried. ‘I never knew she had a mother.’ Her voice was surprisingly tuneful, with a lilt to it Makepeace couldn’t place.

Mumble, mumble?

‘I might do. Or I might not.’

It’s going to be money, Makepeace thought. Let her have it, let her have anything, only get me my child back.

It wasn’t so simple; Beasley was obviously making offers, the woman temporizing.

The link-boy emerged from wherever he had taken the others, disturbed that he’d left this one behind. He coughed and called: ‘Are you coming, Dell?’

At that instant Makepeace’s legs urged her to kneel on the stones in gratitude for the moment when God opens his Hand and allows His grace to shower on poor petitioners. Instead they carried her forward, stumbling, so that she could snatch the link-boy to her and rock him back and forth.

After a moment, Philippa’s arms went round her mother’s neck and she wept. ‘I knew you’d come,’ she said. ‘Oh Ma, I knew you’d find me.’

Beasley looked round the door of Makepeace’s bedroom. ‘Is she all right?’

‘She’s asleep.’ She had Philippa’s grubby little hand in her own. Not once had she let go of it as they’d all hurried away from Dock to the privacy and shelter of the Prince George.

She answered Beasley’s unspoken enquiry. ‘And she is all right.’ She might not be able to understand her daughter as other women understood theirs but she was not mistaken on this; Philippa had suffered greatly but her eyes on meeting her mother’s, her whole demeanour, declared that her virginity was still intact. ‘I reckon we got a lot to thank that woman for.’ It occurred to her that she hadn’t done it. ‘Where is she?’

‘Ordering breakfast. Everything on the menu.’

‘Give her champagne.’

‘She’s already ordered it.’

‘Good.’ Makepeace balled her free hand into a fist. ‘John.’

‘Yes?’

‘Susan’s dead.’

It was the one question that had been asked and answered before Philippa’s eyes had glazed with exhaustion and remembered terror, at which point Makepeace had tucked her child into bed and soothed her to sleep.

There was a long silence before Beasley said: ‘How?’

‘Killed when the Riposte fired on the Pilgrim. It’s all I know – it cost her to say that much. We’ll find out when she wakes up.’

Beasley nodded and went out.

In the days when Makepeace had shared a house with Susan Brewer in London, she’d wondered if there was … well, a something between her two friends. But if there had been, it had come to nothing; Susan was the marrying kind, Beasley was not. Yet Susan had remained unmarried, instead pouring her affection onto her godchild, Philippa.

And Philippa had loved Susan, which was why she’d been allowed to go to America with her.

Everybody loved Susan. Since they’d met on the Lord Percy bringing them both to England nearly thirteen years before, she and Makepeace had been fast, if unlikely, friends – Susan so feminine, earning her living in the world of fashion and caring about clothes, everything Makepeace knew she herself was not.

The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. You can have Philippa back but I am taking Susan.

And Makepeace wept for the friend who would have been content with the choice.

She lifted the little hand she held in hers to put it against her cheek. Dirty, yes, but the nails were short and perfect. Philippa had always been a neat child and Susan had taught her well.

The male disguise had been effective because of the girl’s thinness; she’d grown a little, not much; the pale, plain face was still the image of her father’s with its almost clownish melancholy, but where Philip’s had been amusing, Philippa’s suggested obstinacy. And suffering.

It irked her that she could not read her child. She did not understand Philippa, never had; her teachers said the girl was gifted in mathematics and the businesswoman in Makepeace had been gratified – until Susan had explained that it wasn’t shopkeeper mathematics Philippa was gifted in but pure numbers, whatever they were. Nor could Makepeace, who believed in airing her problems, often noisily, be of one mind with someone who would not openly admit to a difficulty until she’d solved it, and sometimes not even then.

Gently, she laid her daughter’s hand back on the counterpane. ‘We got to do better, you and I.’

The movement disturbed her daughter’s sleep. She woke up and Makepeace busied herself fetching breakfast and popping morsels of bread charged with butter and honey into her daughter’s mouth, as if she were a baby bird. ‘I can feed myself, you know,’ Philippa said, but she allowed her mother to keep on doing it. They were preparing themselves.

At last … ‘Now then,’ Makepeace said.

There’d been two sea battles. In mid-Atlantic Lord Percy, with Philippa and Susan aboard, had encountered the American corvette, Pilgrim.

‘That wasn’t a very big battle,’ Philippa said, ‘but Captain Strang was killed by the first broadside and Percy was holed below the waterline, so she surrendered quickly.’