Andrew Pepper - The Revenge of Captain Paine

Jackman was a tall, slender, good-looking man with a trimmed beard, pouting lips and bright rosy cheeks. He asked Pyke whether he had found the meeting interesting.

‘Illuminating might be a better description,’ Pyke said.

‘Oh?’

‘See, I’m always intrigued by those who believe they can change the world with the might of their own rhetoric.’

‘Do I detect a subtle rebuke in your words?’

Emily interrupted. ‘Pyke thinks the current dispensation will carry on regardless of what we might or might not do.’

‘Is that so?’

Pyke looked first at Emily and then at Jackman. It had been a while since she had challenged him in front of others and it told him that things between them had slipped more than he had perhaps imagined.

Interrupting them, Godfrey made his excuses and hurried out of the door, saying he needed to find somewhere to relieve himself.

‘It’s not all rhetoric,’ Jackman said. ‘We’re currently attempting to unionise the coal-whippers and we have our sights set on other labouring men, too. In this context, our aims are less ambitious. Higher wages, shorter working hours. Straightforward issues that can make a difference to men’s lives.’

Pyke noticed that Emily was nodding her head in approval, and wondered whether the radical might be attracted to his wife. Men usually were, Pyke thought grimly, but the attraction was not usually mutual.

‘But if your wife is to be believed, you’re suggesting even to strive for change is a futile yearning. Would that be a fair assessment of your position?’

‘Man is a solitary animal.’ Pyke shrugged, not really wanting to discuss the matter. ‘It’s in his nature to look after his own and his family’s interests first.’

‘And woman?’ Jackman asked, almost mocking. He glanced across at Emily, who blushed, and Pyke had to rein in an urge to tear out his throat.

‘In spite of your rhetoric about working-class solidarity and the evils of money, I think we both know what role my wife is performing here.’

Emily’s face reddened. ‘I don’t think…’

But Jackman cut her off with a laugh. ‘You’re correct, of course. We can’t do all we need to do without some charitable assistance.’ He nodded approvingly at Emily. ‘But a few months ago, your wife stood up to a crew of mercenaries down at Cowgate wharf. They’d been sent there by the coal merchants to beat the coal-whippers into submission. A hundred and twenty-three men had just sworn their oaths and a strike had been called. Your wife was wearing a white dress, I recall. She pushed her way to the front of the mob and none of the hired ruffians knew what to do. No one dared attack. They left with their tails between their legs.’

Pyke nodded while Jackman told him the story, to suggest he’d already heard it, but inwardly felt aggrieved that Emily hadn’t mentioned it. ‘I don’t need a lecture about my wife’s courage.’

That seemed to chasten him slightly. ‘Of course.’ Crimson faced, Jackman stared down at his shoes.

A silence hung between them. Emily glanced from Pyke to Jackman, a quizzical look on her face. ‘Why were they chanting Captain Paine’s name?’ Pyke asked, in the end.

‘I don’t know. You’d have to ask them.’

Pyke clenched his teeth. ‘They’re not here. You are.’

‘You strike me as an educated man, Pyke. I’m sure you’ve read about the exploits of Odysseus and Jason. In troubled times, people look to heroes to do what they can’t.’

‘And that’s what Captain Paine is? A mythical creation intended to give working people false hope?’

‘Why would people’s hopes be false?’ Emily asked, stepping into the argument on Jackman’s side.

‘A lone individual bringing the capitalist order to its knees?’ Pyke shook his head. ‘That doesn’t sound like a fantasy to you?’

‘I think you’re missing the point,’ Emily said. Jackman was just looking at them, amused.

‘And what is the point?’

Emily shrugged. ‘That an individualist system where man looks out only for his interests has produced a world of such inequalities it cannot be sustained in perpetuity.’

Feeling uneasy about airing their differences in public, Pyke turned to the radical and said, ‘I’d like you better if I felt you thought politics was the clash of opposing forces rather than some war of ideals.’

‘But it’s exactly what I do believe, that capital and labour are implacable enemies, fighting to the death.’

‘Then the problem is that you infect others with your naive optimism so that they begin to see the world not as it really is but as you’d like it to be.’

Jackman seemed angry. ‘Thank you, sir, but I can see the world well enough as it is. Men, women and children, sweating in hovels and factories to earn less in a year than we might spend on dinner while the wealthy grow fat on the proceeds of their labour.’ He shrugged. ‘But I hope it won’t always be this way.’

‘That’s exactly my point.’ Pyke paused. ‘Because if the world’s as threatening as you admit it is, self-assertion is the only thing that will keep you alive.’

‘But self-assertion and self-interest are different things entirely, Pyke,’ Emily said, glancing nervously at Jackman.

Too late, Pyke realised that he’d become involved in an argument he couldn’t win. ‘Where I grew up, men and women had to fight tooth and nail for what they needed just to make it through the day.’

‘But does it always have to be so?’ Jackman’s expression softened a little.

For a moment Pyke was lost for an answer. Emily stared at him, either willing him to say something or to remain silent.

‘And what happens when men and women can’t compete fairly in this struggle for survival because the authorities have stacked the deck so heavily in favour of the rich?’ Jackman looked at him for an answer.

Pyke felt the skin tighten across his face. ‘But the fact remains that in the struggle to put food on your table and clothes on your children’s backs, it’s down to you, and you alone. No one’s going to offer you a helping hand.’

Jackman looked at him, almost pityingly, and said, ‘In your world, perhaps, Pyke. In your world.’

It wasn’t until later, as they prepared for bed on the top floor of the Islington town house Emily had also inherited from her father, that Emily and Pyke got around to talking about the events of the evening.

‘I have to go to Cambridge tomorrow for business. I’ll probably be away for a few nights.’ He looked around the bedroom, embarrassed by its untidiness, piles of old clothes strewn across the floor. It was cold as well, the fire smouldering in the grate doing little to warm up the room.

‘I’m planning to spend a couple of days at Hambledon,’ Emily replied. ‘It feels like weeks since I last spent any proper time with Felix.’

It had been Pyke’s choice not to employ any domestic servants, and while the lack of warmth and tidiness didn’t bother him when he stayed there on his own, he felt a little uncomfortable in Emily’s presence. Not that she appeared to mind about the cold. She sat in her nightdress at the dressing table, brushing her hair in front of the looking glass. ‘You know, there was a time when I might have been impressed by the sentiments you expressed tonight.’

‘But now you’re perfectly happy to take someone like Jackman’s side over mine?’ It was a more intemperate remark than Pyke had intended, but he was still rankled by his exchange with the radical.

‘It’s not a question of taking anyone’s side.’

‘What is it a question of, then?’

‘You think I’m disloyal?’ She laughed angrily. ‘I told you before we married that I wouldn’t be the kind of wife who’d slavishly attend to your every whim.’ She shook her head, her anger ebbing away into disappointment.