Taking Liberties. Diana Norman

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      Oliver wasn’t so sure; viewed from the industrial ramparts of Newcastle the ill-equipped farmers who made up General Washington’s army appeared as men fighting for a medieval inheritance. This, however, was not the time to say so. He sought inspiration, and found it.

      ‘Ben Franklin,’ he said.

      Andra Hedley and Benjamin Franklin had become mutual admirers when they’d met in London before the war began and hostilities between their two countries had not lessened their regard, nor had their correspondence ceased when Franklin moved to Paris to become America’s agent in France. It was Franklin, indeed, who’d put Andra in touch with Lavoisier.

      ‘Oliver, you ain’t the cabbage-head you look.’ He’d won his stepmother’s approval. ‘Diplomatic channels, that’s the ticket. They won’t stop those. I’ll get young Ffoulkes to contact Ben and set up a lazy … what is it?’

      ‘Laissez-passer.’

      ‘One of them. Get him back under a flag of truce. We’ll have him home quicker’n Hell scorches feathers.’

      While she elaborated on the matter, he turned back to the mail and saw that in their haste they’d overlooked the letter from New York.

      Wordlessly, he held it out and she snatched it from him.

      Of the many surprising facets to Makepeace Hedley, the one Oliver found most incomprehensible, was her relationship with Philippa, her daughter by her first marriage. Early on, when the child was seven years old, Makepeace had allowed Philippa’s American godmother, Susan Brewer, to take the girl home with her to Boston. Philippa hadn’t come back; it seemed she didn’t want to.

      The opening of hostilities between America and Britain had caused a hiatus in news of both Susan and Philippa and this, alongside the fact that most of the fighting was in Massachusetts, had – somewhat late in the day – awakened Makepeace to her daughter’s danger.

      She’d had to be restrained from sailing off across the Atlantic in one of her coaling fleet’s vessels in order to see what was happening for herself. Undoubtedly she would have done, except that word came in time to say that Susan and Philippa had left Boston and were safely settled in British-held New York.

      Oliver watched his stepmother flop onto the oriel sill to read a letter that had, from the look of it, undergone a rough passage. She’d taken off the dreadful tricorn and her hair had escaped from the cap beneath so that the sun turned it into a hazy, auburn frame around her head. He felt a second’s jealousy on behalf of the mother who’d died giving birth to him. Could she have competed in such variety with this woman?

      ‘Oh, Oliver,’ she said, looking up, ‘they’re coming home. Susan don’t reckon New York to be safe any longer. They’ll be here. Susan sent this by the mail packet but they were going to sail for England right after she wrote, almost immediate.’

      Her pleasure demanded his, yet Oliver thought of the Atlantic, the thousands of miles of sea that had become the battleground of two navies, now to be joined by a third.

      ‘Um,’ he said.

      ‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘No, it’s all right. Listen … “You will remember Captain Strang and the Lord Percy … ” She looked up: ‘That’s the frigate brought Susan and me and my first husband to England, a sound craft she is, and Strang’s a fine captain.

      “He sails for London on Friday and Philippa and I with her. The Percy, you will remember, is a dispatch carrier and Captain Strang assures me he has no orders to give battle but will make for England as speedily as may be so that, with God’s mercy, I shall deliver your daughter safely to you in six weeks.”’

      Makepeace blew out her cheeks. ‘Phew. That’s a relief.’

      Her stepson saw that happy memories of the Lord Percy made the vessel invulnerable as far as she was concerned. ‘Good news, Missus,’ he said. ‘When’s she due?’

      ‘Most any day.’ Makepeace scanned the last page. ‘Strang’ll drop anchor in the Pool like he did before. Maybe I can go meet …’

      She whimpered. Her face bleached so that her freckles looked suddenly green. Oliver took the letter from her hand before it could drop. Beneath a bold, curly signature, ‘Your devoted friend, Susan Brewer’, was a date. ‘March 2, 1778.’

      He met his stepmother’s appalled eyes, went to his knees and held her against him. ‘It don’t mean … very well, the letter’s been delayed but in that case perhaps so’s the Percy. There’s maybe another letter floundering around the seas somewhere telling us she’d changed her mind, maybe Strang couldn’t take the two of them after all, maybe Susan decided to wait for better weather.’

      But … four months, he thought; Susan should have written again, there should’ve been news one way or another in four months.

      Makepeace didn’t hear him. She was being assailed by certainty. God had drowned her daughter. Philippa and Susan had set off from New York and not arrived. Somewhere on the voyage, the Lord Percy had gone down.

      It seemed inevitable now, as if she had known it in advance and allowed it to happen. Because of all the years she had let pass without seeing Philippa or summoning her home from America, God had chosen the ultimate punishment.

      I didn’t go to her. I didn’t fetch her back. Andra wanted me to, but I didn’t.

      It was as if her daughter had been calling to her across the Atlantic in a voice that she’d been too busy to hear, allowing it to be subsumed in work, her marriage, the birth of other daughters.

      Guilt snatched at a rag to cover itself. She didn’t want to come back; she wrote she’d rather stay with Susan in America.

      The small figure of her daughter at their last interview in London stood in front of her now, as clear as clear, listening to her explain that Aunt Susan wanted to return to America and that Betty, who had been Makepeace’s nurse as well as Philippa’s, would be going too. They wanted to take Philippa with them – the child was the apple of their eye, they had looked after her while Makepeace was busy – and Makepeace was giving the child the choice.

      A plain, grave little girl with Philip Dapifer’s long face, his sallow skin and hair, but without the humour that had made her late father so attractive. As she’d considered, she’d looked like a small, studious camel.

       ‘Would you be coming too, Mama?’

       ‘No. I have things to do in England. I must go up North again soon.’

      So much to do. Well, there had been. She’d still been struggling to adapt to the loss of Philip and gain wealth from the coalfield she’d won so that she could beggar the two people, one of them Philip’s divorced first wife, whose chicanery had robbed her and Philippa of his estates when he died.

      Andra had been merely her business partner in those days, someone in the background. She’d been alone, obsessed with taking revenge on the first Lady Dapifer, which eventually she had, oh, she had, and never regretted it.

      She remembered, agonizingly now, how she had defined the matter for herself then: did she love her daughter enough to abandon the struggle and go back СКАЧАТЬ