The Silver Touch (9 page)

For a while afterwards they were beyond speech. It was as though in their union all their promises had been made, every vow taken. He was drunk with love for her and held her gathered to him, her head resting in the hollow of his shoulder. Some rose petals had caught in her hair and he brushed them away with his fingertips. All the wonderment of lovers was upon them and they kissed, smiled with velvet looks and kissed again.

‘If only we could stay here, away from the world forever,’ she whispered yearningly.

He cupped her face tenderly in his hands. ‘I should like any place where I could be alone with you.’

‘There must be other havens,’ she breathed, feeling exultant and utterly shameless.

He was deeply moved, such vistas of love-making with her filling his mind that his voice became choked. ‘Say you’ll be mine forever. Just as you were tonight.’

‘Always, John.’ Her tone was fervent, her expression rapt. ‘Until the day I die!’

Before they left the glade he picked one of the deep pink roses and gave it to her. She held it as he escorted her home through the lamp-lit streets. Her fear that he might be sighted by Jack or Martha caused her to insist that he let her cover the last few yards to the Heathcock by herself. He waited until he saw her turn safely into the tavern before making his own way homewards. His thoughts ran over the evening at Cuper’s and all it had brought him; it seemed a lucky chance he had gone there out of restlessness with Tom and Robin, never suspecting what the outcome would be.

He had a twinge of misgiving when he recalled his lack of precaution in making love to Hester. The tumult of passion had driven all practical matters from his mind. Fortunately it was always said that conception rarely occurred the first time. However he would be more careful on future occasions. She should never come to any harm through carelessness on his part.

Hester pressed the rose between two pieces of drawing paper and set a weight on top before going to bed. To have put it in water would have been to keep it for only two or three days before the petals dropped away and she wanted to keep it forever.

Her new happiness, reflected in her face and in her laughter, soon brought its own unforeseen penalties. Martha had been seeking an excuse for some time to curtail the extra half-day off that Jack had decreed. Hearing Hester singing as she worked gave the necessary opening.

‘I can hear there’s nothing the matter with you any longer.’ Martha smirked with satisfaction, knowing that Jack was within earshot and he had remarked only a few days previously that he thought Hester had never looked bonnier. ‘It’s back to the same hours as everyone else for you now, my girl.’

Hester breathed deeply, fighting back an angry retort. She wished she could have retaliated by accusing Martha of tampering with John’s letter, for there was no one else likely to have interfered, but she had to hold her tongue. On no account must she let either Jack or Martha suspect that she was seeing John again. She cast a look in her brother’s direction, hoping he would rescind the change that Martha had made. He simply went on filling his clay pipe, tamping down the tobacco with care as if he had nothing else on his mind. He had heard and she knew it. Her extra liberty was at an end.

As a result, her meetings with John were all too brief and had in any case to be arranged as far as possible away from the Heathcock, which in turn cut their time together still further. They snatched hours on the river banks, in parks and in the garden of a little tavern where neither of them was known. Nowhere were they able to be entirely alone. Then, as if some kindly quirk of fate had turned in their favour, her long-awaited half-day coincided with a Sunday when he did not have to attend a Harwood dinner. Through a girl whom Robin knew, John was able to arrange a lift out into the countryside with her father, who was a market stall-holder, and on Sundays he went to collect eggs and other produce.

‘How shall we get back?’ Hester asked when they were settled in the back of the empty wagon, a picnic basket covered with a checked napkin beside them.

‘Our driver always takes supper with a sister in the village before he starts his return journey. It’s there we’ll meet him in the early evening.’

It was wonderful for Hester to be back in the countryside, which she had not seen since the day she had left her childhood home. The environs of the village of Hampstead were much like those she had once known and she was full of stories to tell John as they wandered through buttercup-carpeted meadows and shady woods. He helped her over stiles and led her across stepping stones when they met a stream. They settled for their picnic on a hillock under the side-spread of a great oak tree. She unpacked bread and cheese and slices of beef, pickle in a jar, seed cake and oranges and a flagon of ale, all of which the Heathcock cook had given her from the pantry.

After they had eaten and repacked the basket John, already in his shirt-sleeves, stretched out and slept with his head in her lap. She watched over him with love, flicking away with a blade of grass any insect that threatened to settle on his face, utterly content and protective.

Later they found a corner of a hayfield. The shimmering, sun-dried grasses were waist-high and hid them where they lay together, she naked to his nakedness in the summer heat. He made love to her slowly and tenderly, prolonging every delicious sensation until the same high passion swept through them like a great tide. Tears ran from the corner of her eyes out of love for him and he kissed them away.

The sun was setting when they made their way back to the village and the cottage where their driver was downing a final tankard with his brother-in-law. The wagon was full of produce piled high, including three crates of clucking hens. Hester declined a seat beside the driver and sat with John at the back of the vehicle, their legs dangling over the passing road all the way back to the city, his arm about her waist, their heads together. It had been a perfect day, unspoilt even by a tiny private worry that had been troubling her for the past two weeks and more.

There was a hitch to their next planned meeting. At the last minute she could not go due to the sickness of one of the waiting-maids. That proved to be only the beginning, for the next day several more members of the staff as well as Jack himself succumbed to the strange illness. It had been Hester’s suggestion to John that Robin or Tom, neither of whom were known to her brother and his wife, should be asked to act as messengers if ever she failed to keep an appointment or he was prevented from getting away. She had made the excuse that she did not want another letter lost on its way in or out of the tavern and thus saved herself once again from confessing to illiteracy. It was a relief to her when Robin, whom she had never met, made himself known to her in the taproom. She explained the situation.

‘I’ve no idea yet when I’ll be able to see John again.’

‘Never mind,’ he said obligingly. ‘I’ll look in at intervals until you’re able to let me know when it will be.’

When she was finally able to get away from the Heathcock, she met John outside a hosier’s in Lombard Street. He flung out his arms exuberantly when he sighted her and she ran the last few yards, her little red heels tapping. Laughing with pleasure, he embraced her and she buried her face in his shoulder as if she had come home to refuge before she lifted her face to receive his ardent kiss, his mouth warm on hers.

‘I’ve missed you,’ he said when they drew breath. ‘It was a worry to me that you might fall ill, too.’

She was encouraged by his concern for her. ‘Could we sit and talk somewhere? I can’t stay long and I’ve something to tell you.’

He patted his coat pocket jokingly. ‘My allowance from my grandfather came yesterday. We shall drink coffee grandly today while we talk.’

Taking her by the elbow, he escorted her into the coffee-house next to the hosier’s where they followed a passage to mount the stairs into the large coffee-room, which was quite busy. It was divided into boxes by high partitions, which was the usual furnishings, for each trade and profession had adopted certain coffee-houses as individual centres in which to discuss business and privacy was welcome. This establishment, known as Lloyds, was a place of financial exchange and insurance matters. She was glad of the seclusion that the partition gave John and herself as they sat down opposite each other at the table. He ordered a pot of coffee from the waiter and it came almost at once. While she poured, he told her the news of his grandfather and his village.

‘Now,’ he said, when she had handed him his cup, ‘what is it you have to tell me?’

She thought how unsuspectingly happy and carefree he looked, joyful at being with her again and proud to be treating her to coffee. Taking up her cup, she took a sip to sustain her before setting it down again. Then she drew a deep breath.

‘I’m going to have a baby.’

There were a few terrible seconds of silence in which his whole face changed as if a smiling mask had been whipped off. In despair she watched shock and anger contort his expression, hollowing his cheeks and giving a hard brilliance to his eyes. ‘You can’t be!’

His reaction was worse than she had feared. Somehow she found the strength to go on with what she had to say. ‘There’s no longer any doubt about it. At first I refused to believe it myself. I found all sorts of reasons as to why things were not as they should be.’ There was a kind of tragic innocence in the tremulous line of her mouth. ‘I hadn’t realized it was so easy to conceive the first time. It must have happened at Cuper’s Gardens.’

There was a greyish tinge to his pallor and he shook his head vigorously as if refusing to accept this unbearable turn of events. ‘Perhaps you have been affected by the sickness at the tavern! Surely that is possible?’

‘My nausea has been in the mornings with no doubt about its origins. There were enough among the sick suffering similar symptoms for it to be thought I was going through a minor attack of the same malady. Otherwise my condition would almost certainly have been discovered.’

He looked utterly bleak and drained, finally submitting himself to the situation. ‘Damnation! Of all the misfortunes that could have happened, this is the worst.’ He set his elbows on the table and dropped his head into his hands with a heartfelt groan.

She stared at him. Even in her own distress she could understand fully his state of mind. His whole apprenticeship, his long years of hard work learning his craft, would be forfeit if it became public knowledge that he had made her pregnant. That was why she had not come looking for a speedy marriage, because for an apprentice to wed bore the same penalty. But she had expected him to say they should marry as soon as he gained his Freedom and she herself had been prepared to shield him from discovery as her baby’s father until that time. Now she was remembering for the first time that in all his love-talk there had never been any definite mention of marriage. He had used the words ‘always’ and ‘forever’ and she had put her own interpretation on them. How wrong she had been! This was then the outcome. It was a situation as old as time.

‘Very well,’ she said shakily, the muscles of her face feeling stiff and awkward as if her throat were trying to reject what she was about to say, ‘there are ways and means of ending this kind of trouble. Nobody need know. I have heard talk in the kitchen of a woman —’

He did not seem to have heard her, his face still hidden as he uttered another groan. She pressed the back of her hand against her quivering lips to keep back the gulps of misery threatening to burst from her throat and slid from the seat as if propelled. In the general hubbub of the coffee-house he did not realize she had gone.

Someone opened the door from outside as she reached it and she darted through to run away down the street, her heels flying. She sobbed as she ran, the huge tears pouring from her eyes, her ribs racked by choked breaths. Far worse than anything to be faced on her own in the future was that in the end he had not loved her enough to offer her a minimum of comfort when she had never needed it more.

In her tear-blinded haste she bumped into people as she ran, some shouting after her and others tut-tutting in her wake. Turning to cross the street, she hardly looked for traffic and caused a few bystanders to call out in alarm when a coachman was forced to haul on his reins as she slipped and almost fell in his path. Escaping the flailing hooves, his bawled obscenities ringing in her ears, she reeled to safety on to the pavement and sagged in exhaustion against a brick wall, her hands pressed tightly over her tear-wet face, heedless of the stares of passers-by.

‘Why did you run off like that?’ John’s breathless voice was close at hand. ‘I had the devil’s own task to keep you in sight and then I saw you almost kill yourself under those horses’ hooves! Were you hit at all?’ When she failed to respond, he pulled her hands down sharply by the wrists and then took a handful of her hair to jerk her face upwards to his. ‘Merciful God! I thought there in the traffic I had lost you.’

She saw he was stricken, his pupils still dilated from the fright she had given him. Fiercely she snatched herself free of him. ‘It would have made no difference. You had lost me already in the coffee-house.’

When she would have pushed past him, he seized her by the shoulders and sent her thudding back against the wall, almost knocking what breath she had left from her body. He thrust his face within an inch of hers, his jaw jutting. ‘It is my baby as well as yours that you nearly destroyed! And understand this! I’ll have no talk of you risking your life at the hands of one of those dreadful women.’