A Place Called Freedom - Ken Follett [52]
Jay said: “I don’t know what the damn fools think they’ll achieve by smashing respectable people’s windows.”
Lizzie said: “Why are they on strike?”
The caretaker replied: “They want better wages, miss, and who can blame them, with the price of a four-penny loaf gone up to eightpence farthing? How is a man to feed his family?”
“Not by painting ‘45’ on every door in London,” Jay said gruffly. “Show us the house, man.”
Lizzie wondered about the significance of the number 45, but she was more interested in the house. She went through the building excitedly throwing back curtains and opening windows. The furniture was new and expensive, and the drawing room was a wide, light room with three big windows at each end. The place had the musty smell of an uninhabited building, but it needed only a thorough cleaning, a lick of paint and a supply of linen to make it delightfully habitable.
She and Jay ran ahead of the two mothers and the old caretaker, and when they reached the attic floor they were alone. They stepped into one of several small bedrooms designed for servants. Lizzie put her arms around Jay and kissed him hungrily. They had only a minute or so. She took his hands and placed them on her breasts. He stroked them gently. “Squeeze harder,” she whispered between kisses. She wanted the pressure of his hands to linger after their embrace. Her nipples stiffened and his fingertips found them through the fabric of her dress. “Pinch them,” she said, and as he did so the pang of mingled pain and pleasure made her gasp. Then she heard footsteps on the landing and they broke apart, panting.
Lizzie turned and looked out of a little dormer window, catching her breath. There was a long back garden. The caretaker was showing the two mothers all the little bedrooms. “What’s the significance of the number forty-five?” she asked.
“It’s all to do with that traitor John Wilkes,” Jay replied. “He used to edit a journal called the North Briton, and the government charged him with seditious libel over issue number forty-five, in which he as good as called the king a liar. He ran away to Paris, but now he’s come back to stir up more trouble among ignorant common people.”
“Is it true they can’t afford bread?”
“There’s a shortage of grain all over Europe, so it’s inevitable that the price of bread should go up. And the unemployment is caused by the American boycott of British goods.”
She turned back to Jay. “I don’t suppose that’s much consolation to the hatters and tailors.”
A frown crossed his face: he did not seem to like her sympathizing with the discontented. “I’m not sure you realize how dangerous all this talk of liberty is,” he said.
“I’m not sure I do.”
“For example, the rum distillers of Boston would like the freedom to buy their molasses anywhere. But the law says they must buy from British plantations, such as ours. Give them freedom and they’ll buy cheaper, from the French—and then we won’t be able to afford a house like this.”
“I see.” That did not make it right, she thought; but she decided not to say so.
“All sorts of riffraff might want freedom, from coal miners in Scotland to Negroes in Barbados. But God has set people like me in authority over common men.”
That was true, of course. “But do you ever wonder why?” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“Why God should have set you in authority over coal miners and Negroes.”
He shook his head irritably, and she realized she had overstepped the mark again. “I don’t think women can understand these things,” he said.
She took his arm. “I love this house, Jay,” she said, trying to mollify him. She could still feel her nipples where he had pinched them. She lowered her voice. “I can’t wait to move in here with you and sleep together every night.”
He smiled. “Nor can I.”
Lady Hallim and Lady Jamisson came into the room. Lizzie’s mother’s gaze dropped to Lizzie’s bosom, and Lizzie realized her nipples were showing through her dress. Mother obviously