London - Edward Rutherfurd [515]
“She didn’t stay then?” Lucy asked softly.
“Sarah? No. Married a coachman in Clapham,” he mused. “They set up a shop there.” And then, suddenly realizing that he had given away a piece of information he had never before divulged, he hastily added: “Dead now of course. Long since. Both of them. No children neither.”
And she knew, she positively knew, that he was lying. “Oh,” she said. “I’m sorry.” But her mind was beginning to race.
By October 1831 Zachary Carpenter could truly feel for the first time in his life that all was right with the world. The September fogs had lifted; the weather was fine. Two weeks ago, as expected, the Whig Reform Bill had passed easily through the House of Commons. Lord Bocton and his son George had passed through the lobby together. So the measure has even brought unity to that family, he thought. Today the bill was going through the House of Lords. After that the king would sign it and the thing would be law.
Yet, for all the huge importance of the Reform Bill, another much smaller measure recently passed through Parliament had given him even greater delight. For in 1831, Parliament had calmly made the closed vestry of the parish of St Pancras illegal.
It therefore came as a great shock to Carpenter, late that evening, to receive a message from Bocton, which caused him to pull on his coat, permit himself two or three full-blooded oaths, and storm off towards the house by Regent’s Park where the old Earl of St James now lived.
Never in all his life had Zachary Carpenter been more angry than he was now, as he faced the earl. St James was wearing, over his shirt and stockings, a gorgeous silken dressing gown which, Carpenter calculated irritably, could not possibly have cost less than fifty pounds. It was as if for the first time he had seen behind the sporting, reformist mask to the rich, capricious, selfish old soul who, all the time, had been lurking there behind it. He did not trouble to mince his words.
“What the devil were you doing, you old humbug?” he cried.
The House of Lords, by a narrow majority, had just thrown out the Reform Bill. And the Earl of St James had been one of the peers who voted against it.
Carpenter did not know what response he expected to this outburst, and he did not care. Knowing St James, he imagined it would be something sharp. He was surprised, therefore, when the old man seemed to hesitate. He frowned, looking a little confused. Then fumbling with the cuff of his silk dressing gown, as if he thought he had discovered a fly there, he mumbled. “They were going to take away George’s seat.”
“Of course they were! It’s a rotten borough,” Carpenter cried impatiently; but St James only frowned again, as if he had forgotten something.
“I couldn’t let them take away George’s seat,” he said. Carpenter was so blinded by the earl’s behaviour that he failed to observe what should have been plain enough. The Earl of St James was not in full possession of his faculties. He was eighty-eight years old; and he was confused.
“You old fool!” shouted Carpenter. “You evil old aristocrat! You’re the same as all the rest of them. Ordinary men are just a game to you. They’re just something to bet on. Nothing ever touches you, does it? Tell me this, my so-called noble lord, who do you think you are? Who –” he was bellowing right into the old man’s face now “– do you really think you are?” He turned on his heel and stormed out, slamming the door behind him. So that he never saw the Earl of St James staring after him in genuine puzzlement.
“Who am I?” he asked the empty room.
It was just after dawn at Southwark. Lucy knew she had no time to lose. The day after the fog, Horatio had started coughing. By the end of September the fever had returned and he seemed to be burning up before her eyes. She had fetched a doctor, using one of Horatio’s sovereigns; but after a careful look at him the doctor had only shaken his head sadly and advised them to wrap damp towels