Taking Liberties, page 22
Then she stood up to rest her knees and slake her curiosity. In Boston she had been in congregations that had held people coloured red, black and white but she had never expected in England to see such diversity as was present in Babbs Cove chapel this Sunday. There was Mr Spettigue to start with, a gleaming magpie among the duller black of the villagers, many of whom hadn’t had time to do more than switch a black cloak around their harvest clothes.
And there was the Countess of Stacpoole, still and elegant at the front of the church in a chair the sexton had rushed to provide for her, having arrived only at the last minute with the unflurried nod that said now the service might begin.
How did they do that? Makepeace was punctual to a fault and her sojourn among aristocrats had left her amazed at their lack of concern for other people’s time and their resultant magnificent, but late, entrances.
From the first, Makepeace had been suspicious that the woman was here at all. Having discovered this remote hidey-hole for Josh, it had been unnerving to find a member of the establishment just settled in it. It was like fleeing from a crime to far Cathay and encountering one’s local magistrate. Had the female followed her from London after their meeting in the Sick and Hurt Office and, if so, why?
‘What’s she doing here?’ she’d asked Mrs Hallewell.
‘Come back to live in her family’s old home, seemingly.’
‘Won’t it cramp free trade, having her here? She might be spying for the Revenue.’
‘Oh no. Jan says she’s a proper Pomeroy.’
Whatever a proper Pomeroy was, Makepeace felt they were taking it on trust. But then Mrs Hallewell had added cautiously: ‘ ’Sides, we can land free-trade goods in Other Bay, where her won’t see ’un.’
Then there was the Frenchman, his lovely boat—a smuggler if ever Makepeace had seen one—now floating like a black swan on the turquoise water of the cove, making no attempt to hide in the less public Other Bay next door.
He had burst into the inn with Jan Gurney just before the funeral and taken Mrs Hallewell in his arms. If anything had done the poor woman good, it had been his arrival. ‘ ’Tis a blessed, blessed day that you’re yere, Gil. He’d be that pleased, he were powerful fond of you, for all he changed.’
‘Maggie, Maggie, I do not know he was ill. I cross oceans for him if I know, but le bon Dieu bring me here today of all days, I think.’
‘Who’s that?’ Makepeace had whispered to Jan Gurney.
‘That’s Gil.’ As if everybody knew. ‘French. Brings in goods in summer. We fetch ’em from his place in Normandy come winter. Doin’ it for years.’ Jan shook his head, lovingly. ‘I know he’m an ugly bugger, but he’s a good friend to Babbs Cove.’
Which showed, thought Makepeace, how unreliable was one man’s judgement of another man’s attraction. The Frenchman’s nose was too large, his mouth too wide, his voice too loud, his clothing too careless for beauty; there was altogether too much of him. But, oh my . . .
She felt herself become prettier when he turned to her. ‘The American! Jan tells me of you.’ She was picked up so that her feet dangled and kissed on both cheeks. ‘We are allies, you and I.’
And she knew they were.
There he was, holding Mrs Hallewell’s hand. Lucky Mrs Hallewell. His crew had come with him, their red stocking caps scattered among the congregation’s astonishing variety of headgear, two black men among them, which pleased her. They were, used to negroes here then. La Stacpoole’s poor slave had caused no comment when he’d come in behind her and her maid, carrying her tiny ivory prayer book for her in case its weight dragged her down. Josh would not be regarded as singular.
The wide-shouldered trio obstructing her view of the table altar would be the Gurney cousins, Ralph, Jan and Eddie, the first two with hair like corn, the last’s as black as a Spaniard’s.
She looked back to the Frenchman. The amazing virility radiating from him had emphasized the chastity she’d endured since Andra went away. Suddenly she was lusting for her husband with a physical intensity that was indecent in these surroundings.
It was hot in here. The press of bodies, some still sweating from the harvest fields, the smell of wormwood in which Sunday best was laid away, Spettigue’s scent . . . if that priest didn’t stop quoting from Job and let them all out into the fresh air, there’d be no need to bury poor old Mr Hobbs, they could just pour him away.
She began worrying about her patties, even now burning to a crisp in the inn’s oven if the child they’d left in charge hadn’t remembered to take them out.
A long time since she’d made patties. Then it had been in a tavern on one side of the Atlantic and now, here, in a tavern on the other. There was a symmetry to it.
The chapel fell silent for the dismissal, the pall-bearers took up the coffin and marched it out to the waiting cart where Henry Hobbs’s eldest grandson and nephew would escort it on its journey to Newton Ferrers. Makepeace waited until Mrs Hallewell and her children had gone by, then dodged through the crowd like a ferret to get to the inn and its kitchen.
Even so, she was stopped for a moment by the view’s assault of colour; she would never get used to it.
From behind her came the aristocratic drawl of the lady of the manor bestowing attention on her people.
‘Please accept my condolences, my dear,’ she was saying to Mrs Hallewell.
‘Thank you, your ladyship. I do hope as your ladyship’ll come back to the Pomeroy Arms for a glass.’
‘Of course.’ And to another villager: ‘I suppose you have lived here all your life . . . ?’
Raising her eyes to heaven, Makepeace fled.
Despite all doors and windows being open, the inn was hot. The entire village crowded into it, munching and chattering with a gusto arising from the sense of a job well done. Children played on the stairs; babies crawled over people’s boots.
Makepeace, helping to hand things round, was greeted by name. Though nobody referred to it, her purpose in coming to Babbs Cove was obviously known and accepted. If Mr Spettigue and Jan Gurney vouched for her, her credentials were good and that she was helping Mrs Hallewell approved of.
In fact, she felt (with pleasure) that she was being treated with a bonhomie not accorded the Dowager Countess of Stacpoole who, by right of ancestry, more properly belonged to the village. But then, she fitted a tavern; her hoity-toity ladyship did not.
She noticed that among all the crowding, the Dowager was given space, as if her class imposed an encirclement of isolation. People talked to her across it in their broad Devon accents, listened respectfully as the answers came back and kept a steady three feet away.
Both women ignored each other.
Guillaume de Vaubon shouldered his way to the top of the room, kicked a crate into place and placed one large sea-booted foot on it. In a long wig and leather jacket, he looked like a pirate. ‘Mes amis. Will you permit that a mere Frog pay tribute to ’Enry ’Obbs?’
There was a roar of permission. ‘Go on, Gil.’ ‘You tell it, my son.’
It was a masterly valediction. The huge, authoritative voice drew a picture of the Pomeroy Arms’s warmth and conviviality under Mr Hobbs in his pre-Methodist days that drew sighs of nostalgia from its audience.
‘When he changed, for me, I was sad. A good inn is of God’s own grace. Our Saviour’s first miracle was to provide wine at the Cana wedding.’ He paused. ‘But it is wrong to blame. ’Enry, he thought of his own path to salvation as all must and which of us sinners will say he mistook the way?’
The taproom shook with cheers. Makepeace, admiring, watched the tension ease from Mrs Hallewell’s worn face. She glanced towards the Dowager, curious to see how a lady of standing reacted to this volcanic intrusion from enemy shores.
The woman was regarding the Frenchman with impassivity but for a moment Makepeace experienced a reluctant and horrified pity. There was something. Another one, she thought, who’s been without a man for a long, long time. Well, he’d liven her up. She’d be lucky to get him.
The Frenchman had not finished. He raised his hand and there was immediate silence.
‘And now, dear friends, we say good-bye. I go home to prepare La Petite Margot for war. Louis is a bad king but this war I must fight. It will not be long perhaps but now, until peace comes, I leave to you the last run of goods.’
Mrs Hallewell began crying again and more than one of the mourners joined her. ‘Bloody war,’ one of the men said, wiping his eyes.
The Dowager bestowed a last condolence on her hostess and left with her elderly maid and her manservant, who still carried her prayer book, walking behind her.
Makepeace sought out Jan Gurney. ‘If she’s only just arrived in the village, how do you know she condones all this free trade?’
‘She’m a Pomeroy, she won’t give us away. Stood up to Nicholls like a soldier.’
‘Nicholls?’
‘Revenue man.’
‘Oh, one of them.’ The Revenue had been the bane of Makepeace’s life in her tavern days, as it had of all right-thinking Bostonians. Well, that was one thing she and the high-nosed madam had in common.
The mourners went back to the harvest fields, leaving the inn to the crew of La Petite Margot and their hosts.
‘Better get the goods ashore, Gil,’ Jan Gurney said. ‘And I should take Margot round to Other Bay after. Revenue’s no respecter of Sundays nowadays.’
‘You keep a lookout?’
‘Course.’
‘Then I outrun the bastard.’ He looked round the devastated taproom. ‘Do they find all the cachettes, Maggie?’
‘Most of ’un. Second cellar. An’ they kept pokin’ the walls with their bagginets ’til they found the cupboard in the wall. Nothin’ in ’un, o’ course. Terrible it was, Gil. Didn’ look in the well, though.’
‘Then we put it there. It is sad you lose T’Gallants.’
‘A blow, that,’ Gurney agreed. ‘But I got hopes her’ll come round.’
‘You goin’ to work on her hiding places, Gil?’ Zack said gleefully.
De Vaubon tut-tutted. ‘I merely take the lady to dinner before I sail.’
Lucky lady, Makepeace thought. She said: ‘Monsieur, I want to get a letter to my husband. He’s been trapped in Paris by the war. Will you send it for me when you get back to France?’
‘Of course, madame.’
‘Makepeace.’
‘Gil.’
They shook hands on it. ‘It is important, this letter?’ he asked.
‘He’s important. I want him home.’
‘If you like,’ he said, ‘I send one of my men to Paris. We make sure the letter arrives, uh?’
She bit her lip in order not to cry with gratitude. ‘Damn the war,’ she said. ‘You keep yourself safe now.’
‘All war is damned,’ he said, ‘but America will win this one.’
While he and his men transferred contraband from La Petite Margot to the tunnel in the Pomeroy’s well that ran upwards to an underground room, Makepeace, Sanders and Mrs Hallewell cleared up, watched by Zack and Mr Spettigue.
‘What will you do now, Mrs Hallewell?’ Spettigue asked her.
‘I don’t rightly know, sir. I want to get back to my little cottage with the children, I never liked inn life, not even as a girl. I’d sell ’un, but who’d buy ut like ’tis? Nobody in the village do want the work yet ut’s got to stay in safe hands, as you well know.’
Spettigue glanced at Makepeace. ‘I was going to suggest you keep the licence, ma’am, and take in paying guests.’
‘Oh no, Mr Spettigue, I couldn’t cope with ’un—’
‘Working paying guests,’ Makepeace said. ‘Just for a while, to see how we all get on.’
‘You, Mrs Hedley?’
‘Me, Mrs Hallewell.’
Mrs Hallewell smiled for the first time that day. ‘Reckon I could manage that,’ she said.
The return journey from Babbs Cove to Plymouth was made through a countryside replete with golden evening sunshine and, on Makepeace’s part, a feeling of achievement and therefore happiness. She had approved of and been approved by Babbs Cove. Arrangements were in place and a letter was on its way to Andra.
At his house, Mr Spettigue left her and she was driven on, more contented than she had been in weeks.
It was dark by the time the coach pulled up outside the Prince George; men were playing bowls outside it by the light of flares, watched by customers sitting on the benches under the trees.
Beasley had been waiting for her and when she glimpsed his face, she said: ‘What is it?’
‘Don’t unhitch the horses, Peter,’ he told Sanders. ‘Let ’em drink and then come upstairs, we’ve got to go out again.’
‘What is it?’
‘Upstairs.’
Philippa was waiting for them in her bedroom, her face as pale as Beasley’s.
‘What is it?’
‘Josh. He’s going to escape tonight.’
‘Josh,’ she repeated. ‘Tonight.’
‘Yes. Jesus, I thought you’d never get back in time. We need the coach.’
Philippa thrust a piece of wood towards her mother. ‘He gave us this. Well, John bought it. There was hardly a chance to talk to him. That militiaman, the horrible one, he was there and—’
Makepeace held up a hand. ‘When is all this happening?’
‘Tonight, I tell you. Half after eleven.’
‘What’s the time now?’
‘Nearly ten.’
She took off her cloak and sat down on the bed, then made them sit down as well. ‘Tell me.’
The two of them had attended the Sunday market as arranged. Josh was in his usual place next door to the cider stall and so had been Makepeace’s bête noire, the militiaman. They had been extra careful because, they said, this time the militiaman had been more vigilant than usual.
‘He was watching Josh all the time, wasn’t he, John?’
Beasley nodded. ‘Didn’t take his eyes off him.’
‘He may have been waiting for you to turn up, Mama, but he definitely suspected something.’
So they had wandered through the market for an hour before approaching Josh and even then Beasley had done so alone, in case the militiaman remembered seeing Philippa with her mother. ‘And the moment I went up to him, Josh slipped that onto the stall.’
That was another wooden picture of an inn, this time only vaguely reminiscent of the Roaring Meg, the same background of sea but a different shape, a flatter roof with only one chimney, and the building outlined as if by a halo.
Beasley went on: ‘Josh said: “Buy this, sir, and you can sit and look at it tonight.” And he said “tonight” again and wanted to tell me something else but at that moment the militia bastard leaned over and took it out of my hand and insulted Josh, asking why he kept painting trash like that.’
‘Did he actually say he was making a break for it?’ Time, like Beasley, was running on and she’d still no idea from what part of Millbay’s extensive perimeter Josh would make his escape. So far she’d heard nothing to convince her that he would make it.
Beasley expired. ‘He couldn’t, could he? That fellow was listening to every word.’
‘So you bought the picture.’
‘The bastard let me buy it in the end—and kept the money.’
‘Did Josh say anything else?’
‘He said I was to pay particular attention to the seagulls, he thought he’d drawn the path of their flight particularly well.’
Makepeace looked at the picture again. Two seagulls were depicted flying away from the chimney. They were nice seagulls, but she couldn’t see anything special about them. She was having trouble throwing off her contentment at the day’s achievements and was unreceptive to an excitement for which she could see little cause. Beasley and Philippa had lathered themselves into nervousness, Beasley particularly, through their imaginations.
‘And that’s all?’ she asked.
‘We came away then and—’
‘But I was going to get Josh out.’ She wasn’t ready for it, preparations would have to be made, Spettigue alerted—Josh would have to wait for her.
Beasley was getting angry. ‘How? How were you going to? We haven’t access to the prison itself. That boy can’t pick and choose his time, he’s got to take an opportunity when it presents—and that’s tonight.’
‘How do you know?’
Philippa gave a push at the painting. ‘Look, Mama. It’s a map. Josh has drawn us a map. This outline is the road that runs round the prison, it’s exact, we walked it afterwards, didn’t we, John?’
‘Don’t ask me, ask your mother, she knows everything.’ He roused himself from a sulk. ‘Listen, Missus, that house he’s drawn is the same shape as Millbay Prison, it’s even in proportion. The only difference is the chimney. The perimeter wall is rectangular and smooth, it doesn’t have a protuberance anywhere. The chimney on the picture marks the point where Josh will make his exit over the wall or through it or under it or whatever he’s going to do.’
He fell back on the bed, exhausted by explanation, then sat up. ‘We’ve been studying the painting all afternoon and Philippa worked all this out; she’s a clever girl, our Pippy.’
‘We went to the place indicated by the chimney, Mama. It is ideally suited. There’s a copse on the other side of the road from the prison and beyond the copse is a cart track that connects with the road further down. We can wait there with the coach.’
Oh no, we can’t, Makepeace thought. Whatever happened tonight, Philippa was not going to be involved in it. Aloud, she asked: ‘How do you know the time?’
‘Look at the bloody picture, woman.’
