It seemed peculiar to Will Easter to begin his journey in a high, echoing barn chilled in the middle of a meadow instead of a crowded inn-yard snug and low in the middle of the City. Euston station was a bleak place, even at three o’clock on a summer’s afternoon. It had been built in the fields just north of Euston Square, with long bare platforms where the passengers waited to board their train, a disconcertingly high glass roof supported by narrow steel pillars, designed to accommodate the steam from the locomotives, and one end of the building left completely open to the wind and rain.
Will wasn’t sure whether he liked the place or not, but Caroline was thrilled with it, declaring that the locomotives were ‘splendid’, and so they were, chuffing along their impossibly narrow rails towards him, belching steam like dragons through their long stove-pipe chimneys.
When Will and the two girls arrived, with Bessie and Tom Thistlethwaite in attendance, the train to Birmingham was waiting by the platform. It consisted of a long line of open carts like empty farm wagons smartly painted in magenta with gold trim, and behind them, at a good distance from the smoke and smuts of the engine, two first class carriages, each one built exactly like three stage-coaches stuck together.
‘There y’are, Mr Will sir,’ Tom said, opening the door of the second one. ‘Seat number 4, by the winder. I shall be in the next coach back should yer want me for anything.’
‘May we get in too?’ Caroline asked, one foot already on the step.
‘I suppose so,’ Will said, helping her up, ‘or I shall never hear the last of it. What do you think of it?’
‘It’s much better than a stage-coach,’ Caroline said, bouncing up and down on the upholstery. ‘Sit there, Pheemy, and you can see out of the window. Do those curtains pull?’
Euphemia was just settling into the corner seat when there was a commotion at the far end of the platform, a tramp of marching feet and a harsh voice shouting commands. The two girls had their heads out of the window at once to see what it was, and Will looked back too, from his vantage point on the step.
There was a company of Bobbies marching down the platform, about sixty of them in all, and as formidable as an army in their dark blue uniforms.
‘Are they policemen?’ Caroline said, hanging out of the window to stare at them as they climbed into two of the open carts labelled ‘3rd Class’.
‘Yes,’ Will told her. ‘They are.’
‘What are policemen doing on a train?’ Euphemia wondered rather anxiously.
‘Never you mind about policemen,’ Bessie scolded. ‘And put your heads back in the carriage, do, or you’ll fall out.’
‘I don’t know,’ Will said, stepping back onto the platform again, ‘but I’ll soon find out.’ And he was off at once, notebook in hand to find their sergeant.
‘Yes, sir,’ that gentleman said stolidly. ‘Off ter Birmingham we are, sir. We been sent for on account a’ the Chartists. They’re a-meeting in the Bull Ring you see, sir, an’ the magistrate sez that ain’t allowed.’
‘Much obliged to you, sir,’ Will said, writing rapidly. He realized that he was excited by the information. It roused a sense of impending danger that was alarming, but invigorating too, so that he was suddenly full of energy, trembling with a recklessness he could neither control nor deny. It was as if he’d lost all sense of balance and self-preservation.
He ran back to his carriage, eyes shining.
Bessie was urging the two girls out of the train. ‘It’ll go with you on it, and then where will you be?’
‘Is there going to be a fight?’ Caroline asked, alerted by his excitement.
She threw her arms about his neck and kissed him. ‘How thrilling!’ she said. ‘I wish I could go with you.’
‘Well, you can’t,’ Bessie said. ‘And thank the Lord fer that. You just come on home and be a good girl.’
‘What a lot we shall have to tell Papa,’ Caroline said, unabashed. ‘Won’t we, Pheemy?’
The arrival of the police, Will’s heroic departure, and the forbidding appearance of Euston station were all discussed at length over dinner that night.
‘It’s a horrid place,’ Caroline told her father, annoyed with it now that it had taken her brother away from her, ‘so cold and bleak and empty. There isn’t even a coffee shop. Only a windy old platform for people to stand on. Ain’t that right, Pheemy?’
‘It was very draughty,’ Euphemia said.
‘I gather you weren’t impressed,’ John said, rather pleased by their lack of enthusiasm, for he’d always preferred the old stage-coaches to the new railways.
‘I’ll tell you what though,’ Caroline went on. ‘I think Easter’s ought to sell papers there. We would do a roaring trade.’
‘I doubt it,’ her father said. ‘Not in all that noise. Not in a place like that.’
‘But we could alter it,’ she urged. ‘Don’t you think so, Papa? If there were a newsagent’s there and a coffee shop and somewhere to shelter think how different it would be.’
The suggestion annoyed him. She had no sense of decorum at all. Couldn’t she see what presumption it was for a child of her age to be telling him how to run the firm? ‘We have more than enough to do these days selling papers in the shops,’ he said. And the expression on his face brooked no further discussion.
Caroline grimaced at Euphemia when her father wasn’t looking, but she changed the subject. ‘I wonder what Will is doing now,’ she said.
On Birmingham station the policemen were mustering two by two with a military swagger. In the half-light of the early evening, they looked more like an army than ever. An army come to do battle in a foreign city, Will thought, as he climbed stiffly out of his carriage, for Birmingham was certainly a very different town from any other he had visited.
The air smelt of smoke and sulphur, the brickwork was a harsh, coarse red like raw meat, and the station bristled with steam hissing and whistles screaming, nasal voices shouting and metallic echoes clanging up into the high ceiling. He noticed that his fellow passengers were rushing out of the building, as if they too were excited and fearful, just as he was. Something is going to happen, he thought, and he led Tom through the massive Doric columns at the entrance to the station and set off into the dark streets to find Deritend and the Golden Lion.
Deritend was no distance away and the Golden Lion was easy to find, being an old half-timbered building standing very noticeably at one end of the High Street, not far from the church. It was very dark inside despite a plentiful use of candles, and the bar was awash with spilt ale, but the landlord was friendly and told Will at once that the Chartists were meeting at the Bull Ring that very evening. ‘They been banned by the magistrates, sir, so ’tis said, but they don’t take no notice.’
Will decided to go to the Bull Ring at once. ‘My man will deal with the luggage,’ he instructed, feeling rather grand. ‘I shall need a cold supper when I return.’
‘Beggin’ yer pardon, Mr Will sir,’ Tom said, following as his master walked away from the counter, and speaking quietly so as not to embarrass him, ‘only Mr John gave me strict instructions I was ter stay by yer.’
‘Oh did he?’ Will said, annoyed that his father was treating him like a baby, but touched by Tom’s tact, and really quite glad of his company. ‘Well, in that case you’d better come too, I suppose. I will wait ten minutes while you see to the luggage. Only ten mind.’
‘An’ besides,’ Tom grinned, ‘it’ud be a bit of a lark ter see them Chartists mesself, seein’ I’ve read all about ’em in the Northern Star.’
So to the Bull Ring it was, charged with impatience and a churning, mounting excitement, following the landlord’s directions and Tom’s knowledge of the place, down Deritend High Street into the Digbeth, which was loud with smithies and garish with fires and sparks, and so on towards a dark bulk looming across the skyline that Tom said was St Martin’s church.
‘The Bull Ring’s a sort a’ square, slopes up in front a’ the church yard, sort ‘a triangular like,’ he explained. ‘They use it fer horse fairs an’ cattle markets an’ meetings an’ such, bein’ it’s the only square of any consequence hereabouts. There ain’t another the length and breadth a’ the city.’
Even if he’d had no directions at all Will could have found the meeting, for the roar of voices could be heard even above the clang of the smithies, urging him onwards most powerfully. They walked round the side of the church and found themselves facing such a close-packed crowd it was almost impossible to push their way into it. Men were herded into the triangular space like penned beasts, shoulder to shoulder and haunch to haunch. Many of them had brought rush-torches with them and the darkness was restless with moving lights, and hot with flame and sweat and excitement. An army, Will thought, looking at the angry faces all round him, seamed and dark-eyed and gilded by sweat and lamplight, an army waiting for battle.
‘Over ‘ere, sir,’ Tom was calling, elbowing his way through the mass, towards the low wall that surrounded the churchyard. ‘There’s a man a-speechifyin’ in the Shambles, look.’
Will glanced at the line of low buildings on the left-hand side of the ring, and saw that a man was standing above the crowd, his head on a level with the guttering. He was a stocky man with a thick set of whiskers, and he was dressed like a sea captain, in a sailor’s bluejacket and a dark hat with a badge of some kind on the rim.
‘Never you mind “man”,’ a dark face corrected Tom from the other side of the wall. ‘That there is Doctor Taylor.’
‘Stow your noise,’ another face said. ‘I wants to hear un.’
But Doctor Taylor had no intention of being unheard. His voice was stentorian, booming across the ring, the captain addressing his crew.
‘Comrades!’ he shouted. ‘Citizens! True-born Englishmen! We demonstrate our right as true-born Englishmen to meet here in the Bull Ring as our fathers and forefathers have done before us. The magistrates had the presumption to declare this meeting illegal, the gall to impose a ban upon our activities. Upon our activities as true-born Englishmen. So much for their ban! So much for their authority! We have gathered here, as we have every right to do. By our presence here tonight we prove their ban illegal, immoral and unworkable.’
The crowd gave him a deep-throated cheer. ‘We’ll show ‘em, lad!’ they called. ‘They’ll not ban us! Tha’s right! We’ve a right to our meetings!’
Dr Taylor waved his arms at them, as though he were conducting their cheers. ‘I urge you, comrades,’ he called. ‘Mr Peel’s new government may reject our demands, just though they most certainly are, they may reject them and they may reject us, in the same high-handed manner as the old government would have done. If that is to be the case, I say we should stand up to them. We should never take it tamely. Never, never! We must fight like true-born Englishmen, that’s what I say to you.’
‘Aye!’ the crowd growled. ‘Aye! We should. He’s right an’ all. That’s the way.’
‘If we cannot obtain justice by any other means,’ Dr Taylor went on, ‘we must take up arms to defend our rights. Yes, comrades, we must take up arms, as the people of Paris did before us, as the people of the American colonies did before us, as all good men and true have done throughout the ages. We must take up arms.’
And this time the roar of approval was a battle cry. Hats were tossed and torches brandished and there were gilded fists punching the air. ‘Huzzah! Huzzah!’ And the church clocks began to strike the hour, seven, eight, nine, as if they too were giving tongue to some universal determination.
They mean it, Will thought, thrilled by the orator and full of admiration for the crowd, as the sounds echoed and rolled in the enclosed space of the ring. Oh, I wouldn’t have missed this for worlds.
But the clocks were silent now and the cheering had changed, its note deepening alarmingly with muddled yelps of warning and instruction. ‘Give way! Look out! Stand firm there!’
‘It’s the Bobbies!’ Tom said, climbing onto the wall for a better view.
In the excitement of Dr Taylor’s speech Will had forgotten the policemen. ‘Where?’ he said, leaping up onto the wall, foreboding knotting in his chest like a hard clenched fist.
It was hard to see anything in the crush, but at the top of the incline the rushlights were parting to right and left and there was a solid, moving mass of darkness in between them. As he watched, a dark uniform climbed onto the hidden rostrum and standing above the crowds began to read from a white paper.
‘Our sovereign lady, the Queen Victoria, charges and commands all persons being assembled immediately to disperse themselves and peaceably depart to their habitation or to their lawful business …’
He was reading the Riot Act. If the crowd didn’t disperse at once, everyone in it could be arrested.
‘He can’t do this,’ Will called to Tom. ‘There’s no riot.’
‘There will be now,’ a man shouted back to him.
‘Aye!’ another man called. ‘Build a barricade, boys!’
There was a confusion of movement around the rostrum and in the massed light of the torches Will could see that someone was being arrested and that the Bobbies were striding into the crowd, truncheons thwacking. There was no sign of Doctor Taylor, but another man was clambering above the crowd, yelling at the top of his voice, ‘Treachery! Teachery! Stand firm! We have every right to meet here. This is an outrage!’ before gloved hands pulled him down. And as he disappeared, Will was knocked from his perch too, caught off-balance by a sudden rush of dark bodies, running pell-mell into the churchyard. Then there was a frantic scramble of bent backs and grabbing hands, pulling at the stones of the wall, loosening them, lifting them, piling the large ones into a barricade, hurling the small ones into heaps behind them.
Will was jammed among the boots and bodies, and drunk with recklessness. To be part of this, he thought, piling stones like everyone else. Part of it. In the middle of a battle, part of this great army, fighting for freedom, for the right to meet in the Bull Ring, the right to petition and protect, the right to vote. Men were hurtling across the broken walls, leaping the stones, shouting defiance, and in the Bull Ring itself they were punching like prize fighters.
Dr Taylor arrived behind the wall, panting with his exertions, his whiskers powdered with brick dust, and seconds later, a man they called MacDouall tumbled over the barricade head first, yelling that the police were close behind him. Their arrival was the signal for the fusillade to begin. It seemed to Will that the air was instantly full of flying stones and jagged bits of brick, and that within seconds the missiles were being thrown back at them and twice as hard.
He had no idea how long the battle raged. He stayed behind the barricade, gathering stones, too busy even to wonder where Tom had got to, too thrilled to be afraid, while the warm night air ricocheted with roars and thuds, and his nostrils filled with the stink and heat of conflict. The clocks struck the hour, but the hour had no meaning. There was no time, only passionate anger and an overwhelming excitement.
And then without any warning, a sharp blow caught him on the temple and he went down like a felled ox, as darkness yawned in upon him, swallowed him, held him, and spat him out in a confusion of feet and stinking trousers. There was a pale hand being trodden on close to his face, and somebody was hauling him up by the collar of his jacket. He croaked for breath as the cloth tightened, slithering to his feet, grabbing the air for balance.
Dr Taylor was striding about among the bricks and stones calling, ‘Don’t throw, comrades. I beg you. The penalty for riot …’ But his voice came and went like the sound of sea in a shell. Throw? Will thought, still bemused, and then his legs began to shake and he sat down on a pile of stones and put his head in his hands.
‘My stars!’ Tom’s voice said above him. ‘That was a close call an’ no mistake. You all right, Mr Will sir?’
‘Right as rain,’ Will said at once, but there was blood dripping through his fingers onto the stone.
‘We’ll cut back ter the Golden Lion,’ Tom said. ‘Needs a plaster does that.’
‘No,’ Will said, staunching the blood with his handkerchief. ‘Can’t desert the field, Tom.’
But the field was deserting him. There were truncheons rapidly approaching through the melee in the Bull Ring, and taut faces running before them shouting, ‘Run! Run! They’ve called out the military! Run! For God’s sake!’ Lights were flickering out all over the square with an acrid smell of snuffed wick and burnt straw; bodies were scattering to left and right in the noisy darkness. Most of the fighters in the churchyard were already scrabbling away over the stones, and somebody was shouting ‘You’re under arrest!’
‘Run!’ Tom hissed. ‘This way.’
So although running was out of the question, they limped away from the battle, along a street full of retiring warriors still hot with fury.
‘What a thing to have seen!’ Will said as he recovered. ‘What a thing!’ Now he knew what his mother must have felt on the field of Peterloo. ‘To call out the soldiers, Tom. It’s a disgrace!’
‘White of egg that wants,’ Tom said, ‘ter stop the bleedin’. We’ll get it bound up the minute we’re back.’
That was the opinion of the landlord’s wife, who came up to Will’s room with hot water and clean lint and a little white of egg in a flat dish and grumbled all the time she was cleaning the wound. ‘What a way for people to go on, Mr Easter. I’m sure I don’t know what the world’s a-coming to. If a nice young man like you, sir, can’t come to Birmingham without having his poor head broke for him, then I really don’t know.’
But Will was hardly aware of his injury. He was burning with eagerness to write his report. It took him until nearly four in the morning to get all his impressions onto paper, and as there didn’t seem to be much point in going to bed at such an hour, he wrote out a careful copy of the finished article and walked down to the Post Office to send it to London on the early morning mail.
Then he decided that he would have breakfast at the nearest inn and spend the morning in the Easter warehouse, just to show willing.
The nearest inn was a place called the Hen and Chicks and to his great delight it turned out to be full of Chartists and bristling with rumour.
There had been twenty-seven arrests and scores of injuries. Mr Feargus O’Connor was in town, staying with Mr Smith the pawnbroker, and the two of them had gone to Warwick Goal to stand surety for Dr Taylor. And a new pamphlet had been printed early that morning, entitled ‘Resolutions unamimously agreed to by the General Convention’. Several of the men gathered in the back parlour already had a copy and were happy to let Will read it. It was inflammatory stuff.
‘This convention,’ it said, ‘is of the opinion that a wanton, flagrant, and unjust outrage has been made upon the people of Birmingham, by a bloodthirsty and unconstitutional force from London, who seek to keep the people in social and political degradation. That the people of Birmingham are the best judges of their own right to meet in the Bull Ring or elsewhere, have their own feelings to consult respecting the outrage given, and are the best judges of their own power and resources to obtain justice. And that the summary and despotic arrest of Dr Taylor, our respected colleague, affords another convincing proof of the absence of all justice in England, and clearly shows that there is no security for life, liberty and property, till people have some control over the laws they are forced to obey.’
‘My hat!’ Will said. ‘This’ll put the cat among the pigeons.’
‘Aye,’ the nearest man growled. ‘It needs to.’
‘What will you do now?’ Will asked.
‘We shall be back in the Bull Ring at seven this evening,’ the man said grimly.
‘You intend to meet there again?’
‘Aye, we do.’
And they did. For the next four nights there were angry gatherings between the High Cross and the Shambles, although the Riot Act was read and the police called every time, and around midnight the military showed a presence too. Will soon learned to live on very little sleep, for he stayed with the demonstrators every night until they finally dispersed and he was in the warehouse at seven o’clock every morning. It was a peculiarly disjointed way to live and the oddest thing about it was that the Easter warehouse was the most peaceful place in the city.
It was built behind the railway station and although it covered several acres of land and was extremely busy, particularly first thing in the morning when all the London papers arrived, it was also extremely well organized.
Despite his present lack of interest in the affairs of the firm Will had to admire his uncle’s system for distributing the news by rail. Teams of porters delivered the papers to the backs of their allotted shelves while at the same time the newsboys gathered their carefully up-dated local orders from the front, pushing their trolleys along the lines until they reached the packing tables and a second team of porters who were to rush the completed bundles back to the railway. The operation was presided over by a small, briskly efficient gentleman called Mr Warner, who said he was more than happy to explain it all to Mr Will Easter, and volunteered the information that all the shops in the city were doing a brisk trade, particularly in sales of the Northern Star.
But Will’s heart was with the Chartists, and when the Morning Chronicle arrived on Saturday with his article fully and prominently printed, he was so proud he didn’t know what to say.
The Times’ reporter arrived that afternoon, followed by six or seven others, and soon they had set up a journalists’ club in the Hen and Chicks where they met every evening to drink brandy and talk over the day’s events.
It was a great disappointment to Will when the Chartist meetings were finally disbanded. He’d been in Birmingham for more than a week; he’d made new friends; he’d been accepted as a fully fledged member of his chosen profession; his wound was healed, his enthusiasm fired, his mind made up.
‘I’ve seen history being made,’ he said to Tom rapturously, as they waited for the London train to start. ‘I’ve been right in the thick of it. I’ve seen the best and the worst this job can offer and I know it’s what I want to do. I can’t work in Easter’s now. I should stifle. I must be a full-time reporter.’
‘Quite right, sir,’ Tom agreed.
‘I shall tell my father as soon as I get home.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘The first thing.’ It would have to be the first thing while his courage and determination were high.
But, as so often happens when we try to plan our lives, things didn’t work out that way.
When he arrived in Fitzroy Square that afternoon, the house was empty. Miss Caroline was with her grandmother in Bedford Square, the housekeeper said, and Mr John was visiting Mr Billy.
It wasn’t until he was back in the hansom cab and well on his way to Bedford Square that her form of words struck him as odd. Why should his father be ‘Visiting’ Uncle Billy? They saw one another nearly every day in the Strand.
Nan’s parlour maid was more communicative. ‘They’ve all gone over to Torrington Square, Mr Will,’ she said. ‘Miss Caroline and Miss Euphemia are still here, but Mrs Easter she went out like a rocket so she did. Something’s up, you ask me, sir. I never seen her go out like that afore, I tell yer straight.’
By now Will was beginning to feel alarmed. He ran up the stairs two at a time to find out what was the matter. The sun had gone behind a cloud since his arrival and the landing was dark and surprisingly chill. Caroline and Euphemia were in the parlour, sitting side by side in the window seat, their heads bent over their sewing, and their voices so subdued that they alarmed him even more than the parlour maid had done.
‘Oh, Will!’ Caroline said, putting down her sewing and walking across the room to him. ‘I am glad you’re home. It’s perfectly beastly here. Uncle Billy’s took an apoplexy.’
An apoplexy? How dreadful. ‘Is he …?’
‘No,’ Euphemia said, understanding at once. ‘He’s not dead. But he’s very ill. The surgeons have been called. We’re to stay here until Mrs Easter returns.’
‘What have you done to your head?’ Caroline said, looking at the scab on her brother’s temple.
‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Got in the way of a stone, that’s all. Tell me what happened to Uncle Billy.’
‘There was a frightful row,’ Caroline said, her grey eyes earnest. ‘Edward came down from Oxford with his creditors after him three days ago, and Papa said his debts were a scandal and Uncle Billy said he was to leave Oxford and start work in the firm that very day or he wouldn’t pay a penny to bail him out and Aunt Tilda cried and cried and Edward shouted and then Uncle Billy took an apoplexy and fell right down. Isn’t it dreadful!’
‘I’ll go straight over,’ Will said.
Billy was propped up in his high bed against a mound of pillows, his usually jolly face sagging and grey and his eyes tightly closed. But he stirred himself when Will came in and tried to mumble that he was glad to see him.
‘He’s been bled three times since,’ Nan whispered, as he seemed to sleep again, ‘so he ought to be seeing the benefit soon.’
‘My poor Billy!’ Tilda sniffed, from her seat beside the bed. Her eyes were red-rimmed from all the tears she’d shed in the past two days.
Nan led them both out of the room. ‘He’s on the mend, Tilda,’ she said. ‘Try to look on the bright side. It don’t do to pity the sick. Leastways not in their hearing.’
‘Where’s Papa?’ Will asked.
He was in Billy’s study, examining his brother’s warehouse book. ‘Thank heavens you’re back, Will,’ he said. ‘We’re in a proper pickle. The doctors say he won’t be well enough to work for months.’
‘I am sorry.’
‘Yes, well … Did you get to see how the Birmingham trade was handled?’
‘Yes, Papa. It works very smoothly.’
‘That’s one blessing, I suppose.’
‘It’s a simple system, Papa. Mr Warner has it all under control.’
‘You understood it?’ John asked, giving his son a quick, almost calculating glance.
‘Yes,’ Will said, giving a truthful answer even though the glance had made him feel anxious about where the question could be leading.
‘Could you handle the London warehouse, do you think, Will? It’s a lot to ask, I know that, but you can see how we’re placed.’
Oh, how much Will wanted to say no, I can’t. I’m a reporter. But his father’s face was peaked with worry, his forehead ridged and his eyes squinting, and the sight of such distress aroused a protective affection in his son that was so strong it overthrew ambition and hope in one taut second. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I think I could.’ Perhaps it would only have to be for a month or two, until Uncle Billy was well again.
‘Could you start this afternoon?’
‘Yes.’ So soon! He’d hardly got back!
‘We will train Edward up to it, in time,’ John said. ‘When your uncle recovers, which he will do eventually, according to the doctors. You should do more than simply handle the warehouse. I know that. And so you shall, I promise you, once this present – um – difficulty is over.’ Then he turned to Nan. ‘What a relief to have our Will home to help us,’ he said.
‘You’re a good lad, Will,’ Nan said, reaching up to kiss him. ‘I don’t know what we’d do without you.’
‘You’d better take the warehouse book for the time being,’ John said, handing it across. ‘I’m going back to the Strand myself in a minute or two. We will travel together, eh. You can tell me about Birmingham on the way.’
There is nothing I want to tell you now, Will thought, taking the heavy book into his hands. I have lost my chance. I am committed to this firm for ever now. I shall never escape. And resentment filled his brain despite the knowledge that he was doing the right thing by his family, the right and only thing.
And he resented every shop they passed on their way to the Strand, until the smart green and gold sign seemed to be mocking him.
Billy was kept to his bed for the next fortnight and when he was finally allowed up he was so weak that when Will went sick-visiting, he could see at once that his uncle wouldn’t be back at work for a very long time.
He called in at the offices of the Morning Advertiser the same afternoon on his way back to the Strand, and told the editor as politely and unemotionally as he could that he was not in a position to accept any further commissions, ‘for the foreseeable future’.
‘A pity,’ the editor said. ‘I like your work, Mr Easter. There’s a permanent job here for you should you want one, you know.’
It was bitter-sweet to hear it.
‘I’m beholden to you for the offer, sir,’ Will said, polite to the end, ‘but I must refuse I fear. I have accepted a position in the family firm.’
‘A pity,’ the editor said again.
However, the warehouse was simple enough to run, providing he planned ahead, and the men who worked there were friendly and cheerful, so it wasn’t long before he’d settled in to the new routine, despite his disappointment, which he never mentioned to anyone, not even Carrie. Fate had decided this for him and it was no good kicking against the pricks.
But he kicked against Edward whenever he got the chance, giving him the dirtiest and heaviest jobs to do and shouting orders as though he were the lowest and most objectionable of his workmen.
It was a surprise to him that his cousin never fought back. Edward accepted his new life dumbly, saying very little, simply doing as he was told, with an uncharacteristic meekness that was downright aggravating. Whatever else happened now he had no intention of entering into an argument. That would only make matters worse and he had enough to cope with as it was.
‘Deuce take it, Edward,’ Will shouted on one particularly busy morning. ‘Why ain’t you unloaded those boxes? We shall miss delivery.’
Edward unpacked the offending boxes. He didn’t feel in the least bit apologetic but he apologized at once and meekly. ‘I’m sorry, Will.’
‘And so you should be,’ Will said, resentment towards him spilling over into accusation at last, ‘when it’s all your fault. If it hadn’t been for your damned extravagance we should neither of us be working here.’
‘It wasn’t intended,’ Edwards said, as mildly as he could. ‘I didn’t mean Pa to take it so hard. I didn’t mean to make him ill.’ This was the truth, and a painful one.
‘But you did.’
‘Yes,’ still unpacking with his face averted.
‘And you cost me a good job as a reporter. Do you realize that?’
‘Yes. I’m sorry.’
‘So you damned well should be,’ Will said, walking away. He wasn’t mollified by the apology, because too much damage had been done, but at least Edward had the grace to admit responsibility for it, and that was something.
But then Jeff Jefferson wrote to tell him the latest news about the Chartists who had been arrested in Birmingham, and he read accounts of their trials in the London newspapers and knew that he could have written about them far more sympathetically and knowledgeably, and he was cast down despite his determination to appear cheerful. And a week later there was worse to endure.
He had gone down to Printing House Square to negotiate new terms for the sale of The Times with Mr Walters, the proprietor, and when the business had been satisfactorily concluded, he had accepted Mr Walters’ invitation to ‘cut across to Periwinkles for a spot of lunch’.
It was a pleasant meal and they finished it with brandy and cigars and gossip, which Will recognized and accepted as something of an accolade. To be treated as a full working member of the newspaper fraternity was decidedly flattering, especially as Mr Walters had been a friend of Nan’s for many many years, and had known him since he was a small child trailing through the newspaper office at his father’s coat tails. But just as he was feeling most at ease and comfortable, Mr Walters suddenly said something that made his heart lurch as if he’d been punched.
‘That was a fine piece you wrote on the Bull Ring riot,’ he said. ‘I had half a mind to offer you a position on my staff on the strength of it. You write well, Mr Will Easter. But I daresay you know that.’
It was all Will could do to say thank you, and then the words emerged as a husky growl. A position on the staff of The Times. That was even more tantalizing than the offer of a job with the Morning Advertiser. Oh, if only he could take it! If only it wasn’t being talked of now!
‘Not that I would embarrass you by asking you to choose between The Times and Easter’s,’ Mr Walters went on. ‘Easter’s couldn’t function without you these days, I hear.’
‘That is the rumour,’ Will admitted wryly.
‘Aye,’ Mr Walters said, finishing his brandy. ‘Still, if you ever need a job, you know where to find me, eh?’
It was offered in a jocular tone, and although Will answered in the same style, he meant what he said, ‘I will bear that in mind, Mr Walters.’
That night as he drove home along the Strand on his way to Fitzroy Square his grandmother’s green and gold signs mocked him most cruelly. ‘A. Easter and Sons.’ Caught. Caught. Caught.