London - Edward Rutherfurd [525]
The scene below at Vauxhall Gardens was unattractive. It was not just the mean streets which had spread all round the gardens with the evident intention of choking them; but the iron tracks of the railway line raised on a brick viaduct had now arrived, its rattle, clank and smoke shattering the former quiet of the place. Vauxhall Gardens was in its last, dingy decline. But it was still the place from which balloons took off, and they frequently did. People used them to sketch panoramas of the city, to make daring journeys, with many bets being laid, to places as far off as Germany. Recently one man had insisted on going up not in the usual basket but sitting on his horse. Quite a crowd had turned out to see that. And today, watched by only a few curious locals, Mary Anne and Bull were making a short ascent which would terminate, if all went well and the wind did not change, somewhere on Blackheath.
The idea had been a whim. When, months ago, her husband had asked her what she would like for her birthday, which fell just after the Guv’nor’s, and she had said, “a balloon ride”, it had been a joke. In fact, she had quite forgotten about it. So she had been completely taken aback three days ago when he had casually announced: “I’ve arranged your balloon ride, Mary Anne. Wind and weather permitting, we’ll go up on Saturday morning.” He had grinned. “If you still want to, that is.” She could hardly draw back after that.
Her sisters had been horrified. “How can you be so fool-hardy? What will people say?” they cried. And finally: “Why do you always have to be different, Mary Anne?” She had made them promise not to tell their husbands. Nobody had told the Guv’nor.
It was also very expensive. But then, as they all knew, that was not a problem, for Edward Bull was going to inherit the brewery. Mary Anne was the only one of the Guv’nor’s daughters who had married young. But Mary Anne was pretty. Slim, vivacious, with wonderful hazel eyes and a flash of white in her curly brown hair that made her look rather distinguished, she had an elegance and style that her sisters lacked. Edward Bull, just a year older than she, had no need of her money, though the Bulls certainly liked their wives to be women of fortune.
In seconds the balloon was at three hundred, then four, five hundred feet and climbing. But then the balloonist checked the pace, the balloon seemed to hover, and to her surprise Mary Anne felt her panic begin to leave her. She managed to stare outwards, across London, and was greeted with a magnificent view. The pace of building in the last twenty years had not slackened. On the south side of the river, the houses swept in an almost unbroken swathe from Southwark up to Clapham; to the north, the villages of Chelsea and Kensington were completely swallowed up in an endless succession of mock-Georgian terraces, and further off, above the City, the woods of Islington were going under even now. Yet these growths, seen from above, only seemed like so many stubby fingers from London’s grimy palm, stretching into the green country all around. Lavender Hill was still a scented field; most of Fulham was still orchard and market garden; above Regent’s Park, it was open country up to Hampstead.
Only as she glanced down again did she notice something a little alarming. Their journey was based on their belief that the breeze was coming from the west, and so should take them clean across south London towards Blackheath on whose huge open spaces they could easily land. But now she realized something else. “Edward! We’re drifting north!”
Indeed they were: their path, directly over the Thames at this point, had already carried them to Lambeth Palace. If nothing changed,