Mrs Judd sat up and dried her eyes. ‘Thank you,’ she whispered. ‘I am very weak and silly … about nightmares, I mean.’
‘Not silly at all,’ said Hannah compassionately. ‘Do try to sleep, Mrs Judd. We have a long journey tomorrow and perhaps a dangerous one if that wretched coachman don’t sober up.’
‘If only some highwayman would rise up from a hedgerow and shoot me,’ said Mrs Judd drearily. She lay down and buried her face in the pillow. Hannah looked at her sadly and then went out and quietly closed the door.
2
I never had a piece of toast,
Particularly long and wide
But fell upon the sanded floor,
And always on the buttered side.
James Payn
When the passengers struggled back aboard The Quicksilver in a freezing black dawn, the snow was still falling steadily. But there was no wind. Wind was what caused accidents to stage-coaches, wind that hurled snow up into high drifts. Miss Wimple, rather red about the nose and eye after the libations of the day before, said the weather was all the fault of the government’s encouraging balloonists. If God had meant us to fly, she insisted, he would have given us wings. It stood to reason that all these balloons bouncing into the clouds had disturbed the atmosphere and caused the snow to fall. Hannah’s comment that she had never heard of a ballooning expedition in winter was treated with disdain.
Mr Judd sat groggily in his corner. His wife poured a little cologne in a handkerchief and bathed his brow; he smiled at her weakly and said he would never touch strong drink again.
‘And neither will I,’ declared Miss Wimple. ‘And as for you, miss,’ she went on, rounding on Belinda, ‘you should never have had any in the first place.’
‘At the latter stages yesterday,’ said Belinda, ‘Miss Pym and I were drinking lemonade, which is why we are the only two who look at all human this morning.’
‘Do not address your elders in such a pert manner,’ said Miss Wimple and then put a hand to her head and groaned as the guard tootled ferociously on the yard of tin and the coach moved off into the snow.
‘I wonder how our coachman is faring this morning,’ said Hannah.
‘Disgraceful young churl,’ commented Mr Judd wearily. ‘He looked as if he had slept in his clothes.’
After Reading, the Bath road ran through flat pastoral country with barely a rise, past Sipson Green, where they changed horses again at the Magpie, and into Buckinghamshire, where it became broad, flat, and comfortable until Newbury. The day remained grey and threatening. There was no cheerful dawn, only the remorseless snow, which had begun to thicken. The horses had slowed to a walking pace. The bricks that had been placed on the floor of the coach that morning lost their heat and the miserable passengers began to shiver. Mr Judd lit the travelling lamp, not because he needed the light, but in the hope that it might disperse some of the biting cold.
‘We should have more passengers inside to keep us warm,’ said Hannah, trying to lighten the gloomy atmosphere when they alighted at the next stage. Everyone seemed to have forgotten the vow to give up strong drink, for every one of them was downing Nantes brandy like a trooper.
‘Can be miserable, that can,’ said the guard, a small, tough, wizened Cockney who had been passing their table and heard Hannah’s remark. ‘I mind when Jack Stacey was driving the Bath mail out o’ London. Well, as you know, the mails can only take four inside and a tight squeeze it is. One night, when the mail was about to leave and was full, a gentleman who was a regular customer come up to Jack and insisted on getting in, for he had to get to Marlborough. Stacey held a council with the bookkeeper, observing that it wouldn’t do to offend a regular. At last, the problem was solved by the gentleman jumping in just as the mail was leaving. What a squeeze that was. At the Bear at Maidenhead, where they changed the horses, Jack, he opens the coach door and says, “There’s time for you to get a cup of coffee here, gentlemen, if you’d like to get out.” No one moved, for, don’t you see, they was fearful they wouldn’t fit back in again. And they wouldn’t budge at any of the other stages. Jack says they were all as silent as the grave and that’s how they went on for seventy-four miles.’
‘And how is our coachman today?’ asked Hannah sharply.
‘Tolrol’,’ said the guard with a grin. ‘Flash Jack can handle the ribbons as good as any man in England, drunk or sober.’
‘I would rather have him sober, if you don’t mind,’ said Hannah crossly. ‘And is it not folly to travel on in this storm? If there are any ruts or obstacles in the road, he will not be able to see them.’
‘Oh, all’s right and tight, lady. No wind. Can’t move when there’s wind.’
Hannah sniffed and pulled her nose. Outside the leaded panes of the window lay a winter’s scene. Snow sparkled on roads and roofs, lending beauty to the inn and to a jumble of Tudor houses. It would be pleasant, thought Hannah, to stay where they were and enjoy the view and wait until the snow stopped falling.
Dinner was served, a heavy inn dinner of roast beef, game pies, trifles and fruit. Hannah and Belinda drank lemonade, but Hannah noticed that Miss Wimple was drinking fortified wine, occasionally giving her lips genteel dabs with a lace handkerchief.
Reluctantly they all filed out again. Mr Judd was once more bullying his wife and she was doing everything she could to placate his temper, which, of course, only made it worse.
She should stand up to him, thought Hannah. It is that cringing, fluttering manner of hers. Such a manner brings out the beast in men. She remembered a chambermaid, Lucy, a shy, fair, pretty, fluffy girl. But she had had the same air as Mrs Judd and the butler was always shouting at her and the footmen seemed to delight in making her cry; even the lamp-boy put a dead rat in her bed. She was one of life’s natural-born victims. Hannah, tired of fighting Lucy’s battles, had found her work in the home of an elderly lady renowned for the sweetness of her temper.
But when she had called on Lucy on one of her rare days off, it was to find the girl red-eyed and broken in spirit. She said the other servants tormented her and her mistress shouted at her.
Hannah shook her head over the memory. It was amazing how fear encouraged bullying, as if the human race could smell it, like dogs.
‘Do you read romances?’ Belinda asked Hannah.
‘No, I do not,’ said Hannah roundly. ‘A great deal of pernicious rubbish.’
Miss Wimple gave her an approving smile.
‘Because,’ went on Hannah and lost Miss Wimple’s favour, ‘what goes on in real life is more weird and wonderful than any romance.’
‘How so?’ asked Belinda, sensing a story.
Hannah settled her head comfortably against the squabs. ‘Two miles out of Reading and on the right of the road’, she said, ‘is Calcott House. It was the home of Miss Kendrick, a rich and whimsical lady. There is a poem about this adventure, but I can only remember scraps of it. In any case, this Miss Kendrick had received many offers, all of which she refused, and it was reported she hated all men, when one day,
Being at a noble wedding
In the famous town of Reading,
A young gentleman she saw
Who belonged to the law.
‘The young gentleman was Benjamin Child, Esquire. To him Miss Kendrick sent a challenge to a duel in Calcott Park. She did not assign any cause why Child – if such should prove to be his lot – should be skewered like a chicken. The barrister took the challenge seriously and turned up on the duelling ground, sword in hand. He found Miss Kendrick masked and waiting for him, also with a sword in her hand.