Anne Perry: Southampton Row

“What?” he said with total disbelief.

“The fact that I don’t want it doesn’t mean I shouldn’t be allowed it-if I did! Ask any man!”

He shook his head. “Ask him what?”

“Whether he would let me, or anybody else, decide whether he could or not,” she said in exasperation.

“Could or could not do what?”

“Anything!” she said impatiently, as if it had been obvious. “It’s one lot of people making rules for another lot of people to live by, when they wouldn’t accept them themselves. For heaven’s sake, Thomas! Haven’t you ever told children to do something, and they’ve said to you, ‘Well, you don’t!’ You may tell them they’re impertinent and send them upstairs to bed, but you know it’s unfair, and you know they know it too.”

He blushed hot at one or two memories. He forbore from drawing any similarities between the public’s attitude to women and parents’ towards children. He did not want to quarrel with her. He knew why she spoke as she did. He felt the same anger and disappointment choking inside himself, and there were better ways of showing it than temper.

“You’re right!” he said unequivocally.

Her eyes opened wide for a moment in surprise, then in spite of herself she started to laugh. She put her arms around his neck and he took hold of her, drawing her body to his, caressing her shoulder, the soft line of her neck, and then kissing her.

Pitt went to the station with Charlotte, Gracie and the children. It was a huge, echoing place crowded with people hurrying in all directions. It was the terminus for the London and South Western line, and the air was loud with the hiss of escaping steam, clanging doors, feet on the platform walking, running, shuffling, wheels of luggage trolleys, shouts of greeting and farewell, an excitement of adventure. It was full of beginnings and endings.

Daniel jiggled up and down with impatience. Edward, fair-haired like Emily, tried to remember the dignity of being Lord Ashworth, and succeeded for a full five minutes before racing along the platform to see the fires roaring as a stoker poked more coal into the bottom of a vast engine. The stoker looked up, smiling at the boy before wiping his hand across his brow and beginning again.

“Boys!” Jemima muttered under her breath with a glance at Charlotte.

Gracie, still not much larger than when she had entered their employ as a thirteen-year-old, was dressed up for traveling. It was the second time she had been away from London on holiday, and she was managing to look very experienced and calm, except for the brilliance of her eyes and the flush in her cheeks-and the fact that she clung on to her soft-sided bag as if it were a life preserver.

Pitt knew they must go. It was for their safety, and he wanted to be free of anxiety and certain he could face Voisey with the knowledge they were where he could never find them. But he still felt an ache of sadness inside himself as he called a porter over and instructed him to put their luggage into the van, giving him threepence for his trouble.

The porter tipped his cap and piled the cases onto his trolley. He whistled as he pushed it away, but the sound was lost in the roar of a belch of steam, the sliding of coal off the shovels into the furnaces, the guard’s shrill whistle blast as an engine jolted forward and began to pick up speed, pulling out.

Daniel and Edward raced each other along the platform, looking for the least occupied compartment, and came back waving their arms and whooping with triumph.

They put their hand baggage inside, then came to the door to say good-bye.

“Look after each other,” Pitt told them after he had hugged them all, including Gracie, to her surprise and pleasure. “And enjoy yourselves. Have every bit of fun you can.”

Another door clanged shut and there was a jolt. “Time to go,” Pitt said, and with a wave he stepped back as the carriage lurched and juddered, the couplings locked, and it moved forward.

He stood watching, seeing them leaning out of the window, Charlotte holding them back, her face suddenly bleak with loneliness as she was pulled away. Clouds of steam billowed upwards and drifted towards the vast, many-arched roof. There were smuts in the air and the smell of soot and iron and fire.

He waved until they were out of sight as the train curved around the track, then he walked as fast as he could back along the platform and out into the street. At the cab rank he climbed into the first hansom and told the driver to take him to the House of Commons.

He sat back and composed his mind to what he would say when he got there. He was south of the river now, but it would not take him long, even in the mid-morning traffic. The Houses of Parliament were on the north bank, perhaps thirty minutes away.

He had always cared intensely about social injustice, the pain of poverty and disease, ignorance and prejudice, but his opinion of politicians was not high and he doubted that they would address many of the issues that troubled him unless forced into it by individuals with a passion for reform. Now was a good time to reassess that rather hasty judgment and learn a great deal more about both the individuals and the process.

He would begin with his brother-in-law, Jack Radley, Emily’s second husband and the father of her daughter, Evangeline. When they had first met, Jack had been a charming man without either title or sufficient money to make any mark in society, but with the wit and the good looks to be invited to so many houses that he enjoyed an elegant life of considerable comfort.

After marrying Emily, Jack had felt an increasing emptiness in that way of existence, until on an impulse he had stood for Parliament and surprised everyone, especially himself, by winning. It might have been the tide of political fortune, or that his seat was in one of the many constituencies where corruption determined the outcome, but he had since become a politician of some thought and more principle than his earlier years might have led anyone to foresee. During the Irish affair in Ashworth Hall he had shown both courage and an ability to act with dignity and good judgment. At the least he would be able to give Pitt information of a more detailed nature, and perhaps more accurately, than Pitt could gain from a public source.

He reached the House of Commons, paid the cabdriver and went up the steps. He did not expect to be able to walk straight in, and was preparing to write a small note on one of his cards and have it taken to Jack, but the policeman at the door knew him from his days at Bow Street, and his face lit with pleasure.

“Morning, Mr. Pitt, sir. Nice to see you, sir. No trouble ’ere, I ’ope?”

“None at all, Rogers,” Pitt replied, grateful he could recall the man’s name. “I want to see Mr. Radley, if possible. It is a matter of some importance.”

“Right you are then, sir.” Rogers turned and called over his shoulder. “George! Take Mr. Pitt up ter see Mr. Radley, will yer? Know ’im? Honorable Member for Chiswick.” He looked back at Pitt. “You go with George ’ere, sir. ’E’ll take yer up, because yer can get lost in ten minutes in this rabbit warren of a place.”

“Thank you, Rogers,” Pitt said with sincerity. “That’s very good of you.”

It was indeed a tangle of passages and stairways with offices at every turn and people coming and going, all distracted with their own business. He found Jack alone in a room which was obviously shared with someone else a good deal of the time. He thanked his guide and waited until he had left before closing the door and turning to speak.

Jack Radley was approaching forty, but a man of very good looks and natural warmth which made him seem younger. Now he was surprised to see Pitt, but he set aside the newspapers he had been reading and faced him with curiosity.