Betsy’s reading lessons continued all through the summer and, although decoding letters was harder than she expected, difficulties only made her more determined. If Johnnie could pick up The Times of an evening and understand everything that was written there, then so would she. She’d keep on and on until she could walk into Mr Blake’s cottage with a pie or a pudding and read whatever was lying about. Within a week she’d mastered over fifty words, within three she could read a short sentence and had discovered how to judge the moment when Mr Hayley would finish with the latest copy of the paper and put it into the canterbury. From then on, as soon as she heard his limping step, either on the stairs or retreating into the bedroom, she crept up the backstairs into the library to purloin her precious reader before anybody else could get their hands on it. Then she sneaked it away to the kitchen and hid it in the dresser until she had time to resume her battle with the print.
‘Tell me what it says, Johnnie,’ she would demand, pointing to any word that baffled her. And when she’d been told, she pondered it carefully, pronouncing it and considering it until it was fixed in her brain.
In the fourth week, she discovered that politicians speak in a language of their own. ‘Yesterday in the Commons, Mr Pitt said these neg…ot…’ she read. ‘Now what’s all this Johnnie?’
‘These negotiations are of the utmost delicacy and must be pursued with patience and perseverance if we are to achieve our objective,’ Johnnie obliged.
The words meant nothing to her. ‘I can’t make head or tail a’ that,’ she complained. ‘Why don’t he speak English?’
‘He does,’ Johnnie told her. ‘Tha’s just his English, tha’s all. Tha’s the way they goes on in Parliament.’
‘But what do it mean?’
He did his best to translate. ‘They’re trying to get a settlement with the Danes and the Swedes,’ he said, ‘and ’tis a tricky business seemingly. He says they got to be careful what they says and how they says it, otherwise they won’t get what they want. Leastways that’s my readin’ of it.’
‘What’s per-sev-er-ence?’ she said, returning to the paper.
‘You are,’ he laughed. ‘It means keeping on and on.’
Although he laughed at her, he was touched by her determination and proud of his unexpected skill as a teacher. He would look round at the other servants while she read aloud and feel smug when he saw how impressed they were, and after one amazing afternoon, when she stood in Mr Hayley’s empty library and read a whole page from the book left open on the table, he was so full of himself that he actually bragged about how clever he was being and was teased for days afterwards, every time he walked into the kitchen. But better by far was the effect all this learning had on their courtship.
She was so quick and so passionate, kissing him almost before they were out of sight of their neighbours, allowing him so many new liberties when they were on their own that he lived in a state of perpetual arousal. Strolling into the fields after church was now a regular occurrence, and one they both looked forward to with intensifying pleasure. Sometimes, when it wasn’t too wet – and it often was wet that summer – they took a stroll during the week too, eastward along the beach towards Middleton and the sand dunes, or south through the water meadows that lay alongside the two mills, or west towards the great houses that Mr Hotham had built for his wealthy friends. And every walk took them further away from the village and nearer to the moment that Betsy was both breathlessly awaiting and, it had to be admitted, secretly dreading.
Their passion was now so strong they kissed until their lips were sore and, as he lifted his head so that they could catch their breath, he groaned that he was driven wild for love of her and begged her to let him go further. Which she did, further and further, and with increasing pleasure until it was an agony to him not to go on to the final longed-for moment that he needed so much and urged so strongly.
As the summer bloomed towards harvest and the trees grew heavy-bosomed and the corn stood rustling and ready for reaping, it became more and more difficult to deny him anything, when his face was so pale with passion and his cock so hard she could feel it through both sets of clothes.
‘Let me,’ he begged, running his hands up her legs, his fingers moving closer and closer to the place where she ached so enticingly, and her heart shook and thundered, and her eyelids closed of their own accord, heavy with the weariness of long-deferred desire. Oh, how easy it would be to give in. ‘Let me, Betsy, my dearest darling. Please, please let me. I die for the love of you.’
But what he was asking was wrong. The Reverend Church was always saying so, calling it ‘fornication’ and ‘the sins of the flesh’ and warning of dire consequences. And hadn’t Sarah Perkins been forced to marry in a hurry only last year with the baby born a mere six months after the wedding? – although ’twas a pretty baby and christened in the usual way so no harm seemed to have come of it. But she’d been talking to her friend Molly about it, for Molly had been back home for a day or two while Miss Poole was away in London, and Molly said the thing was a risk, on account of ‘’twas painful the first time and like to be painful for a considerable time after’. She couldn’t say why that should be but she was sure ’twas true, having been told about it by no less a person than Sarah Perkins herself. It was all very worrying. And now Molly was back in Lavant again and there was no one to ask. Was it any wonder she spent so much time learning to read? But she was avoiding temptation and putting off the decision, that was all, and she knew it.
Eventually, one damp night in August, when their hair was spiked and their clothes spotted with the most aggravating rain, his frustration erupted into an outburst of bad temper. ‘You’re just hardhearted,’ he said. ‘Tha’s how it is. You don’t love me.’
‘I do,’ she protested. Hadn’t she told him so, over and over?
‘You don’t,’ he said, his handsome face sullen. ‘Oh, I knows you say so, but you don’t, or you wouldn’t keep on a-sayin’ no. You knows what it means to me.’
‘Have some sense, Johnnie do,’ she said. ‘We can’t. ’Twouldn’t be right. You know it wouldn’t.’
‘Why not?’ he demanded angrily. ‘’Twould be right if we was married.’
It was a weary argument. They’d been over it time and time again that summer. ‘But we’re not,’ she said doggedly, ‘are we?’
He scowled. ‘Then let’s get married.’ It was hardly the most gracious of proposals but he supposed he meant it.
But marriage held no charms for Betsy Haynes. Being married meant living in a tied cottage, which would probably be damp and dirty, with only cabbage and bacon to eat, and a baby every year. ‘An’ what would we live on?’ she said. ‘Tell me that. I’d have to leave the house. You knows that. He don’t have room for married servants. An’ what then? How would we manage?’
He was surly with anger. ‘Other people manage.’
‘We’re not other people.’
‘No, we’re not,’ he said, turning away from her. ‘I’m off to The Fox.’ And he strode away from her, walking quickly so as not to feel too guilty at leaving her. Well, what did she expect? He was only flesh and blood. ’Tweren’t fair to go on a-teasin’ him the way she did.
‘Oh, tha’s lovely!’ she said sarcastically, piqued at being left. ‘What am I supposed to do?’
‘Do what you like,’ he called back to her. ‘I’m off to see my mates, what’ve got a deal more sense than you!’
Unfortunately his drinking companions were in a mood for teasing that evening and his sudden dishevelled appearance presented them with an easy target. They started on him at once, as he stood on the threshold shaking the raindrops from his shirtsleeves.
‘An’ where’ve you been my sonny?’ Reuben asked. ‘We been lookin’ out for you all evenin’.’
‘You knows where I been,’ he said, still surly with frustration. ‘I been teachin’ Betsy to read. Same as I’ve been every night for weeks.’
He knew he’d made a mistake as soon as the words were out of his mouth. Sceptical eyebrows were raised dramatically on every side, the leers were scurrilous, and Reuben’s goblin face gleamed through the smoke of his pipe wicked with intended mischief. ‘You been a-doin’ what?’ he asked, as if he couldn’t believe his ears.
Johnnie blushed and stammered. ‘Teachin’ Betsy to read.’
There was a chorus of mocking disbelief. ‘Out in the rain?’ they cried. ‘Oh ho! Pull the other one, Johnnie!’
‘So tha’s what they calls it nowadays!’ Reuben teased. ‘Oi hopes she’s a good learner.’
‘You wanna watch out with some a’ that ol’ learnin’,’ the ostler warned, grinning at him, ‘or you’ll end up stood at the altar rail with a gun to your head. Tha’s the punishment for lechery, as I knows to my cost.’
Johnnie struggled to think of something he could say to deflect them. ‘That aren’t the way of it at all,’ he said. ‘I’m helpin’ her to learn, tha’s all. I don’t get no time for nothin’ else.’ And was greeted with hoots of disbelieving laughter.
He was very upset. It was unfair to tease him for lechery. He weren’t no Jack the Lad, never had been, never would be. ‘’Tis all very well you shoutin’ and laughin,’ he growled. That just showed how coarse and silly they were. ‘You don’t know nothin’ about it.’
That made things worse. ‘You gonna tell us then, boy?’ they yelled.
Reuben called for quiet. ‘Hush up, you lot. Johnnie’s gonna tell us what he been up to with that girl of his.’
‘No, I’m not,’ Johnnie yelled above the din. ‘I’m not. On account of there aren’t nothin’ to tell.’ But that just set them off into paroxysms of delighted hooting.
‘Oh ho!’ they yelled. ‘Are you tellin’ me you ent been doin’ nothin’? Oh my eye!’ ‘Tha’s rich, that is.’ ‘If that’s what you been a-doin’ Johnnie, Oi’d like to be a fly on the wall ter see you a-doin’ of it.’
Johnnie’s face flamed with embarrassment. Having spent the entire evening holding his passion in check he felt belittled by such unfairness. ’Twas wrong of ’em to mock him so. What he felt for Betsy wasn’t lechery, never had been. Even the thought of it made him shudder. Lechery was a low, coarse, farmyard sort of activity. What he felt for Betsy was different altogether. He wanted to tell them how crude they were being but he couldn’t find the words or the way. He wanted to yell at them to stop but they’d jeer even louder if he did that. He wanted to run away but his feet seemed stuck to the sawdust. He had never been in such a state of paralysed emotion. Fortunately, as he stood shaking and shamed and totally at their mercy, he was rescued by two new arrivals, Mr Cosens, the miller, and his friend and servant Mr Haynes who, being Betsy’s father, had to be treated with some caution. Not that caution was needed that evening for they roared into the bar with the force of a gale, thick-set, broad-shouldered and so full of the latest news that they brushed all teasing aside, like the irrelevance it was.
‘Evenin’ my sonny,’ the miller said, as Johnnie stood aside to make way for him. ‘Pint a’ porter, Mr Grinder, if you please.’ He looked round cheerfully at his neighbours, rubbing his broad hands together to warm them. ‘Heard the news then, have ’ee?’
They confessed ignorance, all heads turning his way.
‘They’re a-buzzing with it over Chichester way,’ the miller said with great satisfaction. ‘Seems ol’ Bonaparte’s got his invasion fleet all set an’ ready for us this time. Sixty thousand men, so they say. They reckon he means to sail this summer. They’re building look-out towers up Seaford way.’
Alarm flashed from eye to eye, beer was gulped for comfort, there was a sudden increase in the volume of tobacco smoke, but for a second nobody said anything. Then Reuben launched into bravado and rescued them.
‘’E won’t get near us,’ he said stoutly. ‘Not with Admiral Lord Nelson to pertect us. ’Tis all talk, same as we had last summer an’ the summer afore that. Anyway, they’re s’pposed to be makin’ some sort a’ treaty to keep ’em out, aren’t that right Johnnie.’
It was a great relief to Johnnie to be able to turn to the consideration of something else, even if it was invasion. ‘Tha’s what they says in The Times,’ he confirmed.
‘Times or not they’re a-building towers,’ the miller said, ‘an’ there’s an army barracks going up in Chichester and soldiers every which way you look. Which I never seen afore. You mark my words they’re a-comin’ this time. There wouldn’t be all this carry-on if there weren’t something afoot.’
‘Well let ’em come, sez Oi,’ Reuben declared, puffing out his chest. ‘We’re more’n a match for a pack of ol’ Frenchies. They won’t get off the beach, will they boys?’
With one exception, his neighbours took their cue and were instantly full of fighting talk. ‘Tha’s right. They won’t get past us, be they never so Frenchified. They needn’t think it.’ ‘We’ll see ’em off, right enough.’ ‘’Tis a well-known fact one Englishman can see off ten Frenchies. Well-known fact.’ ‘We won’t let ’em land, shall us boys, no we won’t, an’ there’s an end on it.’ ‘Oi tell ’ee, Oi’ll get my pitchfork out, tha’s what Oi’ll do, an’ you won’t see them yeller Frenchies fer dust.’
The exception was Johnnie Boniface. Being teased had sharpened his perceptions and now he stood in the shadows and listened with appalled understanding, annoyed by their stupidity yet aware that they were bragging to hide their fear. If the French landed it would take more than a dozen men with pitchforks to hold off an army of thousands and they must know it, no matter what nonsense they were talking.
After a few minutes, the boasting rose to such a beer-soaked crescendo of shouts and cheers that he couldn’t endure it any longer. When nobody was looking, he slipped out of the door, thrust his hands into the pockets of his breeches for warmth and walked away – not back to Turret House, for Betsy was there and he couldn’t face her just yet, but south along the narrow earth track to the sea.
There was a full moon that night and although it was intermittently hidden by rain clouds, there was enough light to find the way, and the occasional flurry of rain was cooling to his hot head. He passed Mr Blake’s cottage with its yellow candlelight glimmering in the little western window, strode through the cornfield, where the wet corn whispered, and finally crunched onto the beach and stood on the damp shingle in the damp air to gaze out at the impenetrable blackness of the sea. There was a strong tide running and huge waves were rolling powerfully in to shore, one close behind the other, round-bellied as barrels, their crests white-tipped in the moonlight. They roared onto the sand, pushing in so fast that the second wave crashed into the first before it could retreat and they broke together in a swirling complication of froth, flying spume and small sharp leaping waves, that dashed madly against each other like fighting cocks, tattered, fell to pieces, and leapt up to fight again. There could be enemy ships out there in the darkness at this very moment, Johnnie thought. We’d never hear them with all this racket. He could imagine the weight of them, their prows carving the black water, could see the soldiers leaping into the shallows, wading ashore, muskets primed, swords sharpened, roaring drunk and fierce and implacable. If they come they could kill us all, every last one of us – me, Betsy, all those poor fools in The Fox – and we couldn’t stop ’em. Oh, my darlin’ Betsy, he thought, I couldn’t abide for you to be caught by the Frenchies.
Someone was crunching across the pebbles to join him and, looking over his shoulder, he saw that the newcomer was his uncle Jem and knew that he’d be glad of his company. A sensible man Jem Boniface and one with a healthy respect for the sea, having been a fisherman for most of his adult life.
‘Oi thought ’twas you, when Oi seen ’ee from the pathway,’ Jem said as he arrived beside his nephew. ‘Tha’s a fair ol’ toide a-runnin’. Bring the bass in a treat that will. Lissen to it takin’ the shingle away. That’ll all be scoured out lovely by mornin’.’
Johnnie listened to the rattle of the shingle and gave a grunt of agreement. ‘They say ol’ Boney’s got his army on the other side, a-waitin’ to invade us,’ he said. ‘D’you reckon they’re right?’
‘Couldn’t say,’ Jem said, calmly watching the sea. ‘Tha’s possible Oi s’ppose. No use worrittin’ our ol’ heads about it. If he’s a-comin’ he’ll come, an’ that’s all there is to that. Might be hereabouts, might be further along the coast. Our worrittin’ won’t influence ‘im one way or t’other. Won’t be on a night like this though. Oi can tell ’ee that. He’ll have to wait for toime an’ toide same as the rest of us. Won’t be on a low toide neither on account of that’ud be too risky what with sinkin’ sands an’ all. That ol’ Channel’ll give him plenty to think about, that Oi do know. Howsomever, like Oi said, there aren’t a thing we can do about it. Whereas bass can be caught. ’Twill be a good day for the bass tomorrow. Oi shall come down with my kettle net midday an’ see what sort a’ catch Oi can get. Tell your Mrs Beke Oi shall ‘ave a treat for ‘er, by afternoon, an’ maybe she’ll let you come along a’ me, like she done last year.’
Johnnie thought about it. He enjoyed fishing with Jem. It was unpredictable and dangerous and made a pleasant change from endless toil in the garden. And as Mr Hayley was off visiting somewhere and Mrs Beke was always more agreeable when he was away, she might agree to it. ‘I’ll ask her,’ he said.
‘Be there one o’clock, prompt,’ his uncle advised. ‘Oi shan’t wait for ’ee.’
‘One o’clock prompt,’ Johnnie agreed and set out to walk back to Turret House, much cheered by his uncle’s good sense. The light was still burning in Mr Blake’s window. He do work hard, he thought, as he passed. I wonder what he’s a-doin’.
He was engraving a white horse – and a noble animal it was. Later he would add a woman, standing her ground before it and facing it down while her child cowered behind her, weeping in fear, since that was the subject of Mr Hayley’s latest ballad, but for the moment the horse dominated the page and his attention. It had taken the best part of the evening to draw it to his satisfaction and now he was weary and ink-stained and ached to sleep. If he could summon up the energy he would work on, for the engraving had to be completed by Friday, which was only three days away. Mr Hayley was due back from Bristol on Thursday evening, and intended to ride to Lavant the next morning to take breakfast with Miss Poole. And after that he planned to ride on into Chichester to see Mr Seagrave the printer, for this was the start of an ambitious undertaking and he was full of enthusiasm for it. He was going to write a new ballad and have it illustrated and printed every month for the next fifteen months, each one about a different animal. He would sell them in the first instance to friends like Mr Flaxman, Miss Poole and Lady Hesketh at half a crown a time, and eventually he would gather them all together, publish them as a quarto volume and offer them to the public at large. Two, ‘The Dog’ and ‘The Eagle’, were already finished and if everything went according to plan, so he said, he and Blake could make a handsome profit. But to Blake it was laborious work and, what was worse, it ate into the time he could spend on his own epic poem, which was roaring in his head.
He’d been in a state of simmering dissatisfaction for the last ten days and the weather was making things worse. The cottage was damp, chill winds blew knives under the door by day and roared like lions over the thatch at night, and his dear Catherine was ill again. She’d had three head colds one after the other and her knees seemed to have taken the cold too, just as they’d done in the winter, and were swollen and sore. She rarely complained but it hurt him to see how painfully she was hobbling about. And now, this morning, he’d had a letter from his sister Catherine to say that she was coming down to stay with them for a week or two ‘to help about the house’, and giving him orders to meet her on the afternoon coach at Lavant tomorrow, just when he could least afford the time. My poor Catherine, he thought, as he picked up his tools again, living here is hard for you. Perhaps we should return to London. There would be less work there and we would have to live on very little but at least I would have liberty to write my epic and you would not be so plagued with pain.
Catherine was in the kitchen, scouring the supper dishes and praying that the horse would be finished by Friday. She was keeping out of the way, providing food and drink at regular intervals but otherwise limping about her business in the rest of the house. When he set his own painting and writing aside and worked on a commission, he was very short-tempered and she knew better than to do anything to provoke him. Sometimes genius could be a prickly bedfellow and especially when it was put under pressure. There were so many commissions – twelve more ballads to illustrate, nine more poetic heads, a water colour of Jacob’s ladder for dear Mr Butts, to say nothing of the painting for Lord Egremont, which Miss Poole had arranged. That was a very important commission, which certainly couldn’t be refused, for Lord Egremont had a reputation as a connoisseur of painting and a country seat at Petworth, what’s more, which was quite close by and near enough to make other commissions a possibility. She knew it was kind of Mr Hayley and Miss Poole to find so much work for him and it was a relief that he was earning his living so well, but, even so, how would he ever find time for the real work he wanted to be doing when they made such endless demands on him? My poor William, she thought, no wonder you’re thinking of going back to London. It might be the best thing to do, especially if there’s to be an invasion, like they all keep on a-saying.
While Mr Blake laboured, her father grew raucous with drink and her lover contemplated the sea, Betsy sat opposite Mrs Beke in her quiet parlour darning her woollen stockings while the housekeeper totted up the accounts. She held her work close to the candle so that she could see what she was doing, for Mrs Beke was very particular about neat stitching, but for all her peaceful appearance, she was thoroughly unhappy and her brain was spinning.
Quarrelling with Johnnie had upset her terribly. It wasn’t like them to quarrel. They never quarrelled. But what could she do? It would be wrong to say yes. She knew that as well as she knew anything. She might fall for a baby or get a reputation. Anything might happen. And yet, she couldn’t go on sayin’ no forever. ’Twould be against human nature when he loves me so much. She’d have to say yes sooner or later. If only there was someone she could ask. Someone who’d know what she ought to do for the best. Because she did love him. In a perverse way, the quarrel had shown her that, if it had done nothing else.
There was a rush of feet in the corridor, a rap on the door, and as if she had conjured him up by thinking about him, there he was, standing on the threshold, his face flushed and eager, asking for ‘Mrs Beke, ma’am’.
‘My uncle sends compliments,’ he said. ‘And to tell you there’s a good strong tide a-bringin’ the bass in and he’ll have some fine ones ready for you tomorrow one o’clock.’
The housekeeper took one look at his glowing face and understood the situation at once. ‘And you want to work with him, as you did last time, is that the size of it?’ she said.
If she was agreeable.
Mrs Beke was in a benevolent mood. ‘’Twill make good eating for Mr Hayley when he comes home a’ Thursday,’ she said. ‘He’s partial to bass. Very well. Tell Mr Hosier I’m agreeable to you going and be sure you set aside six of the very best for me. Betsy can collect them, can’t you Betsy.’
Oh, she could indeed.
‘That’s settled then,’ Mrs Beke said and she smiled quite kindly at her young lovers. ’Twas good to indulge them when she could. They were only billing and cooing when all was said and done and there was no harm in that. Besides, fresh caught bass would make a tasty dish.