The Sparks Fly Upward Read online

  The boy bowed. ‘Jean-Marie, Comte de Latil-Dupeyroux, à votre service, madame.’

  A long name for a skimpy youth but Jenny, under cover of her fan, was pinching her beseechingly.

  ‘Oh, all right then.’ The poor child had sat out most of the previous dances while her official escort, the Reverend Deedes, had been elsewhere in the room talking business.

  Watching Jenny’s delight as she was swept off, Makepeace thought guiltily what a good little thing she was. This was Jenny’s first season in London and she could have expected more from it than the sedate weeks she’d spent uncomplainingly at the house in Chelsea where Makepeace had been unable to rouse herself to do much more than arrange a couple of whist parties and accept tonight’s invitation.

  She should have done; she knew that. Force of circumstance had meant that others had played a greater part in bringing her three daughters up than she had; she’d been too busy. In the case of Jenny and Sally, the two youngest, they’d been left in the care of their father’s Northumbrian sister-in-law while she herself worked on the coal-shipping end of her and her husband’s mine.

  The mine accident that had caused Andra Hedley’s death had imbued Newcastle and its surroundings with insupportable horror for Makepeace and she had moved away, refusing to return. Jenny and Sally still lived there. These last few weeks had been the longest time mother and daughter had spent together since Jenny reached puberty.

  And I’ve done nothing for her.

  Even less had been done for an irate Sally, who was too young to come out and had been left behind in the north.

  No, she had done nothing for her daughters, except to make them rich.

  She nodded her head towards the dancers. ‘And if young Frog-me-lad thinks he’s getting his hands on a penny of our Jenny’s money, he can think some more,’ she said out loud.

  ‘Oh, Ma,’ said Philippa sadly.

  ‘What? What?’

  ‘Listen to yourself.’

  I do, she thought. I can hear my own discontent and I can’t stop. Time had ameliorated shock and grief but not the way she had accustomed herself to them; misery had become a habit. So had its infliction on others.

  When she’d entered her dressing room tonight, she’d seen that Hildy had lain a gray silk gown out for her because ‘Ah’m not lettin’ ye flap round that theor ballroom like a craa.’

  She’d supposed she could not but she’d sworn at her maid for making her put off the deep mourning she’d worn for nearly two years. Not that it made a difference; Hildy was used to being sworn at.

  For a long while after Andra was killed she’d not cared what she wore, wandering like a madwoman in a shift and bare feet. Now the customary mourning period was long past, but she still wore black so that she could be a mobile memorial to him, a bitter remonstrance for those who persisted in getting on with their lives, even though, as time went on, her own pain treacherously lodged itself in an attic of her brain where she could begin to live with it.

  She would put on black again tomorrow because to wear anything else would mean exerting herself out of her irritable inertia and she had no idea how to do it. Her habit was black, like her temper.

  And you look well in it, said Makepeace’s conscience. This was a new and guilty realization that made her crosser; black suited her white skin and her red hair which was still only slightly frosted; she’d begun to suspect that vanity was superseding sorrow.

  Two tall men took their seat at her table. ‘I am surprised Miss Jenny has been permitted to take part in this exhibition,’ Reverend Deedes said. ‘Had I been here at the time I should have advised against it.’ He addressed the air as if it were a congregation.

  ‘Where were you then?’ she snapped. Deedes, cadaverous and forty, was not a young girl’s dream as an escort, certainly not Jenny’s, but he was Makepeace’s neighbor in Chelsea and, due to her reduced social circle, the only bachelor she’d been able to think of. It had been nice for him to be asked; the bugger could at least do his job.

  His companion leaned across the table. ‘William, we have been so neglectful of the ladies it little behooves us to complain if they desert us.’ He put his hand over Makepeace’s, smiling. ‘But forgive us, missus; William and I have been about the Lord’s work.’ He inclined his head towards the back of the ballroom. ‘I believe we have persuaded Lord Malthrop to vote for the abolition bill at its next appearance. ’

  As always, when she looked at Stephen Heilbron, Makepeace saw terrifying goodness staring back at her. An admirer had once likened his face to that of Christ at Gethsemane and, while shocked by the blasphemy, she’d never been able to rid herself of the comparison. He was about the same age as crucified Christ and, yes, the face on the cross might have looked like this one, ravaged by his own and others’ pain, luminous with love for sinners.

  He’d come into their lives through Deedes. At that neighbor’s insistence and because she supposed she ought to do something, Makepeace had joined the Chelsea branch of the Society for the Abolition of Slavery with her eldest daughter—and nearly been thrown out of it. The other members got on her nerves. It seemed to her they spent too much time prattling in justification of what they were doing as if they needed to cite reasons why negroes qualified as sensate beings.

  To Makepeace, born in multicolored Boston and raised by a rescued slave, this was so self-evident that comment on it was not only unnecessary but impudent. Betty had made a motherless childhood supportable and, now that Betty herself was dead, Makepeace’s love had been transferred to Betty’s American son.

  ‘It don’t need saying that black people are people, so why do they keep saying it?’ she’d grumbled to Philippa about her fellow members. ‘If Betty and Josh don’t qualify for the human race, it ain’t worth running. Slavery’s evil, everybody knows that. Let’s just get on and fight it.’

  Philippa, typically, had advised patience and diplomacy. But then the consignment of Wedgwood medallions had arrived, ammunition for the Society’s battle, depicting a kneeling black man with up-raised chained hands encircled by the inscription: ‘Am I not a man and a brother?’

  The Society had been proud of them. Makepeace, shown one, had looked at it and said, ‘Of course he damn well is,’ and been ushered out of the door.

  But then Stephen Heilbron, already one of the Society’s best-known campaigners with Wilberforce and Clarkson, had come out from London to encourage his Chelsea troops and paid her a visit. ‘’I beg you to come back, Mrs Hedley.’

  Philippa must have talked to him and he must have talked to Deedes. He played to what she realized had been her sense of superiority over the other anti-slavers.

  ‘You are advantaged, you see, experienced as we are not . . . So few of us have the privilege of intimacy with the race we are trying to serve. It is not enough for those of us like me who do the work for the love of God, we need those, like you, who will work for the love of the people themselves.’

  Seductive stuff from a man who’d risked beatings from the slavers of Bristol and Liverpool to gain evidence for Parliament of their trade’s innate barbarism, who toured the country to proclaim it—and looked as if he neither slept nor ate in the process. ‘You must forgive the mundane, Mrs Hedley. William Deedes and the others may not be pierced by the sword that pierces you, but they help us roll the stone uphill, and they want you back.’

  ‘They want my money,’ she’d said, nastily. She’d given near a thousand pounds to the cause since she’d joined.

  Beautifully, he’d smiled. ‘So do I. But I want you, too.’

  Oh, undoubtedly one of God’s anointed. With charm.

  ‘Surely you will not subscribe to this appalling display, Heilbron?’ Deedes was asking now.

  Stephen Heilbron looked tenderly towards the rippling dance floor. ‘I fear I should be no ornament to Vanity Fair. Instead, I shall beg Miss Philippa to accompany me in a turn around the garden.’

  Philippa laid her hand on his sleeve. ‘With your permission, M
ama.’

  ‘Time you had that young woman married, Makepeace,’ yelled Lady Gladmain as the couple walked away.

  ‘Ain’t found anybody worthy enough yet,’ Makepeace told her. One in the eye for you, you harpy. Gladmain’s son had offered for Philippa and been refused.

  ‘Preserve us from worthy old maids is what I say,’ Gladmain slung back.

  Makepeace disengaged from the skirmish. No use saying that she did not, thank God, belong to the circle that married its daughters off, willing or unwillling; Lady Gladmain knew she didn’t. The haut monde had come to accept Makepeace because she was rich and favored by Lord Ffoulkes and now old enough to be considered as an eccentric but she did not belong to it. No use saying, either, that one had as much chance of persuading Philippa into something she didn’t want to do as shifting the Rock of Gibraltar.

  None of this bothered Makepeace much, but it struck her now that Philippa, at twenty-six, was undoubtedly the oldest unmarried female at the ball. Immersed in her own grief, she had not, until this moment, considered the matter.

  She watched her daughter leave the room with Heilbron. As ever, Philippa was dressed to avoid attention rather than attract it but the new simplicity suited her; her gown’s low-cut white gauze over silk showed to advantage the fine, almost olive-tinged skin she’d inherited from her father. Nothing could persuade her mousy hair to curl but it had been piled neatly into a smooth and shining top-knot decorated with pearls.

  Whether she could be regarded as pretty depended on how well you knew her; first acquaintances tended to think her plain—and, indeed, as a child her face had resembled that of a small and studious camel—but, given time, they could be astonished by a smile, a turn of the head, that took the breath.

  When Jenny was returned to her chair, panting and exuberant, Makepeace kept her voice low and asked a question she should have asked before. ‘Philippa’s happy enough, ain’t she?’

  Jenny thought about it. ‘There’s no saying with Pippy, Ma, but I reckon she took a tumble over Lord Ffoulkes’s marriage. When we got his note telling us about it, she looked poorly all day.’

  ‘She loves Andrew?’

  Jenny was wriggling on her seat. ‘Don’t quiz me, Ma, I don’t know, I just wondered. If you remember, it was immediately after Andrew’s wedding to poor Miss Tate that Pippy went abroad.’

  ‘So she did.’ Makepeace began connecting events. Receiving the news of this most recent marriage, Philippa had shown her usual equanimity but had soon after gone to her room with a headache. And nearly four years ago, when Ffoulkes had married a wispy little twig of the nobility, Philippa had set out on the Grand Tour with friends less than a week after the wedding.

  Poor little Lady Ffoulkes had died in childbirth, with the baby, nine months later.

  She should’ve nabbed him then, Makepeace thought irritably, aghast at her own lack of perspicacity. But Philippa wasn’t a nabber. She’d stayed on with some people in France, only returning to comfort her mother when Andra was killed.

  Pippy, my poor girl. I didn’t know. What comfort have I been to you?

  IT was bitterly cold outside but Heilbron had fetched her wrap. Together they stood by one of the burning braziers with which Ffoulkes had lined the terraces that tiered his steep garden.

  ‘Did you receive my letter?’ Heilbron asked. His voice was usually melodious; she’d heard it move a meeting to tears but at the moment, bless him, it cracked with tension.

  ‘Yes.’ Philippa indicated the tiny pocket attached by velvet strings to her left wrist. In fact, it contained three letters, among them the one from Andrew Ffoulkes telling her of his marriage. The other two had arrived that morning.

  ‘And what is to be my answer?’

  She could hear the crunch of wheels breaking puddled ice as carriages took playgoers and revelers home along Piccadilly at the top of the hill. Time’s winged chariots hurrying near, she thought, and all before us lie deserts of vast eternity.

  Marvell might have been writing for her. You ain’t getting any younger, Philippa Dapifer.

  She had received several proposals in her time; some of the best families in England, even one or two in France, had found her an eligible choice for their sons, being prepared to overlook her mother’s lack of breeding in return for her money. Her suitors had proclaimed their love, had sworn to make her happy and compared her to various flowers.

  Stephen’s letter had told her he loved her but had dwelled more on his passion for God than his passion for her; he had nothing to give her, he said, but the satisfaction of being his comrade-in-arms against the world’s evils.

  She found it a better offer than any—and from a better man than any of her previous suitors.

  ‘Philippa?’

  She looked up at the cold stars and went over the equation again to make sure she had it right; she took comfort in stars and mathematics.

  Accept this good, good man and she’d be saved from the humiliating minus of waiting for someone who kept marrying other people. Saved from that most despised of human conditions, elderly spinster-hood. Plus she would have a worthy husband, a very worthy husband, and, most of all, she would have children. The thought of life without children had become intolerable.

  Plus, she would be of use. Stephen would gain her person and her fortune in his fight against slavery, the greatest cause any man had ever undertaken.

  This would equal a profitable life for them both.

  It worked out very well. The only missing factor was love, but there was no point in including that.

  ‘Yes, Stephen, thank you,’ she said, ‘I shall be happy to marry you.’

  He crowed for a moment, laughing, before he bent to kiss her. The smell of the herbs in which his valet kept his clothes enfolded her, some combination that reminded her of incense. She thought of their marriage bed. She had factored it into the equation—how else to have children?—and tried to give it a low quotient. After all, Stephen lusted after Heaven more than the flesh. And he would be away a lot.

  Bless him, he was telling her how happy he was; how fortunate in her tranquillity, the sense of peace she inspired in him, her modesty . . .

  You don’t know me at all, she thought. Pray God you never will. I am a stricken, turbulent, calculating bitch who would run off with Andrew Ffoulkes this minute if he asked. Which he won’t. But you shall have what fraction of my heart is left to you. You will not be shortchanged, dear man. I shall love you.

  She kissed him back with energy. ‘We’d better go in and tell Ma,’ she said.

  THE voice on Makepeace’s left cranked on in the rising and falling cadences parsons learned at preaching school. ‘. . . were my sister to be seized by a strange man and subjected to his embraces and canterings, indeed I should not. I confess surprise that Lord Ffoulkes should introduce this foreign contagion to our shores ...’

  Shut up, thought Makepeace, shut up.

  ‘Indeed, I would say obscene. Were I not a guest, I should be forced ...’

  ‘Voulez-vous m’accorder cette danse, madame?’

  The lifeline was elderly and missing a tooth or two but unhesitatingly Makepeace put out her hand to grasp it. ‘Certanmon, monsewer. ’ Anything, anything.

  As they approached the other dancers, she held back, shocked at herself: ‘Better not. I don’t know how to waltz.’

  ‘Leave it to me, madame.’

  A firm hand on her back pressured her into the sway, a cracked, once-elegant shoe gently nudged one of her feet back and to the side, then the other . . . they were off.

  Her mind still on her eldest daughter, Makepeace asked dully: ‘Have you got children?’

  ‘One son, madame.’ The little French face twisted. ‘No, two, two. For me, always two. But the elder went to the guillotine last year.’

  He had her attention now. He was a valiant little bugger; he wouldn’t let her grieve for him. He said, ‘Now we dance and think only of the dance.’

  She smiled and had a second to think
, This will ruin the dancing-master trade; it’s so easy, before the pleasure of movement swooped and carried her away. So long, so long, since she’d been held; her skin was grateful for the touch of even this elderly hand. She was young again; there was no guilt, just memories. Under the white blaze of candlelight, Makepeace Hedley danced to the sweetness of past chimes.

  She found herself crying. She smiled: ‘It’s been a long time.’

  There were tears on the lifeline’s cheeks. ‘I, too,’ he said, ‘At Versailles. ’

  They waltzed on in perfect understanding.

  When they paused, waiting for the next turn, she discovered that he was the Marquis de Barigoule and the least irritating émigré she’d encountered so far. His conversation was less about his wrongs at the hands of the revolutionaries than his gratitude to the English for taking him in. The brocade of the rubbed waistcoat he wore over a shirt of sacking had once been remarkably fine. He still wore his hair powdered; she wondered how he could afford the flour.

  ‘What do you do now?’ she asked. It was the most fascinating thing about the émigrés, how they coped with their fall.

  ‘I give dancing classes.’

  ‘Your pupils are fortunate.’

  She approved of him; there were too many who couldn’t or wouldn’t adapt. Makepeace had known poverty as bad as theirs and had no time for the young and fit who took the government’s shilling a day and shivered complainingly in their attics. Exiles like this one and the Comtesse de Guéry, who’d discovered an unsuspected talent for making ices and was doing a roaring trade in them, were people who were prepared to roll up their sleeves—these were a breed after her own heart.

  He had only one grumble.

  ‘Tiss?’ She had trouble with his accent and its occasional whistle.

  ‘Teess.’ He grimaced to show the gaps. ‘In the haste to get away, they were lost, quel désastre. Beautiful tiss en porcelaine. Do you know the work of M de Chemant? A dentist of genius.’