ruffles at his wrists in full display. Since the French Revolution, still called the Bourgeois Revolution, and the American War of Independence, still called the Colonial Wars, gentlemen were careful not to flaunt their rank before the common people. Strangely enough, what could drive a London mob roaming the streets looking for trouble into violence was the sight of a gentleman sporting ruffles or a band of white at the wrists, that little display of linen which drew the line between gentleman and commoner. This gentleman was wearing, instead of one of the cocked hats that were only just going out of fashion, a wide-brimmed hat with a low crown.
Hannah turned her attention to Mrs Seaton, sitting by the fire with her captain. Very odd, thought Hannah, her eyes darting with curiosity. Everything black. Of course her father or mother could just have died, rather than a former husband, and she might have married the captain before the period of mourning was up. What an odd sort of husband the captain was – too loud and beefy and gross for such a dainty woman.
Then the coachman was shrugging on his greatcoat and wrapping a massive woollen shawl about his shoulders and calling to the passengers to take their places. Mr Fletcher, the lawyer, unhitched his stockings from the fender and put them on, modestly turning his back on the company as he pulled them on over white sticklike legs criss-crossed with purple varicose veins. Hannah found herself getting quite excited at the sight, not because she found the poor lawyer’s legs attractive, but because the conventions were being shed, one by one, at an early part of the Great Adventure. They were all explorers, she thought, giving a genteel hiccup, heading out into the jungle of the unknown.
Fresh straw had been put in the carriage and, luxury of luxuries, hot bricks. ‘Probably that there gran’ gennelman, m’dears,’ said Mrs Bradley. ‘Coachman would never get landlord to busy hisself with our comfort.’
‘Grand gentleman, pooh!’ said Captain Seaton. ‘Something wrong with that fellow, if you ask me. Adventurer, mountebank or deserter. Yes, yes. Just mark my words.’
Off they went. The coach began to pick up speed as it moved through Kensington Village. And then they were racing along the long straight road that led past Thornton Hall. Deaf to cries of outrage from the other passengers. Hannah seized the leather strap and let down the glass and hung out of the window. There was the square box of Thornton Hall. No smoke was rising from the chimneys. With me gone, thought Hannah, the lazy dogs are probably all still abed. ‘Goodbye!’ she shouted, and then pulled up the glass and sat down, smiling into the glaring eyes of the other passengers.
‘How come you did that there?’ demanded Mrs Bradley. ‘You’re like to kill us all with cold.’
‘I am sorry,’ said Hannah. ‘I was saying goodbye.’
‘To what?’ asked Edward Smith suddenly.
‘To my past,’ said Hannah grandly, and then smiled in what she hoped was an enigmatic way.
The snow began to fall, not very heavily, but in large, pretty flakes. The coach moved slowly on through the winter landscape. Hannah’s head began to nod. Although she never slept very much, she had had no sleep at all the night before. She had a very odd dream. She was back at a servants’ dance in the servants’ hall and waiting for the arrival of Mr and Mrs Clarence to grace the festivities. When they came in, he looked, as usual, a brooding, handsome man, but Mrs Clarence was dressed as a Shakespearian page in doublet and hose and with a little cloak hanging from one shoulder. ‘Disgraceful,’ Mr Clarence began to shout. ‘How dare you dress as a boy!’
The coach jolted over a rut and Hannah awoke with a start. What a strange dream. It had been so vivid. And yet Mrs Clarence had never dressed as a boy. Hannah’s eyes fell on Edward Smith, now asleep opposite. Surely that was the reason for her dream, for Edward was pretty enough to be a girl masquerading as a boy.
Hannah’s head began to nod again.
The coach stopped at the Pigeons at Brentford, and the passengers alighted to take breakfast. A silly argument broke out between the coachman and the captain. The captain said Brentford was a fine town and the coachman said it was a filthy place. The captain said it was noted for the best post-horses. ‘Ho, is that so?’ sneered the coachman. ‘Well, let me tell you, sir, there war two posting-horses here what got so tired of the vile paving- stones what adorns this here town that they tried for to commit suicide by drowning themselves in the Grand Canal. And would ha’ done it, too, pore things, had not a clergyman come along and told them it was wicked and that the horses’ hell was paved wi’ broken glass.’ The captain, who should have known that very few could out-talk a coachman, fell into a brooding silence.
The snow was falling thicker now. The talk among the passengers, however, was not of the snow but of the perils of Hounslow Heath, which lay in front of them. The captain, full of Nantes brandy and bluster, said he would down any highwaymen who tried to stop them and cursed Hannah under his breath when she said sharply that he had not been too ready to down the last one. Hannah had taken a dislike to the captain.
At the town of Hounslow, they were advised by the landlord of the George not to go forward, as the Bath Flying Machine up to town had been snowed up beyond Colnbrook, and that he had beds aired and ready for them. The coachman, full of valour, called for more brandy and joined the captain in the bar.
Inspired by a large quantity of brandy, the coachman now thought himself to be Jehu, son of Nimshi, and the Fly left Hounslow behind it at a good round six miles an hour.
The first thing to be seen on the notorious Hounslow Heath was the Salisbury coach in a terrific snow-drift; or rather, the coachman’s hat, two horses’ heads, the roof of the coach, and two passengers standing on their luggage, bawling, ‘Help!’ The coachman of the Exeter Fly seemed to regard this disaster as a mere landmark and drove on.
The snow was falling thicker and faster. The horses went slower and slower. The coachman tried fanning them, towelling them and chopping them – which, translated, meant hitting them hard, harder, and hardest. The six horses slowed to a walk and could only be made to go ahead by oaths and curses. The coach took nearly three hours to cover the seven miles from Hounslow to the Bush at Staines. In the language of the day, the passengers all gave themselves up for gone. But as they drew up outside the Bush at Staines, the sun broke through the clouds and the snow ceased to fall.
The landlord counselled rest and dinner, and the passengers, who had never before in their lives come so near to the experience of travelling in a hollowed-out iceberg, were inclined to take his advice. But success, stimulant and a lull in the snowstorm had made the coachman daring. ‘I be an Englishman,’ he growled, ‘and I be inning at Bagshot this here night, and any yellow-bellies can stay behind.’ Hannah looked to the aristocrat for support, but he was standing over by the window, detached from the group.
The party left the inn for the courtyard and voted on whether to go or stay. They stood outside the coach, beating their arms and stamping their feet as they made their votes. Only Hannah slipped away to arrange rescue for the Salisbury coach, the landlord of the Bush saying he would set out with his men himself, delighted at the possibility of guests now that it seemed as if the Exeter Fly meant to go on.
Emboldened by yet more brandy, the captain took the opportunity to show off to his wife and the party by saying, b’Gad, he, too, was an Englishman and would face any peril that the journey could offer. The others were reluctant to be left behind, and so the passengers boarded the coach again, and, to faint hurrahs from the half- frozen post-boys, they set out on the road. At Egham, one mile and three furlongs on, it began to snow again.
The coachman pulled up at the Catherine Wheel for another glass of fortifier and then the coach set out once more.
Now the snow was falling as it should fall at Christmastime, when men are snug in parlours in front of blazing fires and not out braving the blasts in a Flying Machine. The coachman, foreseeing the worst, since at every moment the snowfall was becoming heavier, tried to churn his horses into a canter as the gloom of a winter’s afternoon settled on Bagshot Heath. The guard beside him fingered his carbine delicately and stared anxiously about for highwaymen, but the coachman said no highwayman would be stupid enough to be out of doors in such weather. The guard said that it was due to the coachman’s stupidity that they were all out of doors themselves, to which the coachman replied that the guard always had been a milksop, to which the guard, mad with passion, screamed at the coachman: ‘I
Captain Seaton, the effects of the brandy he had drunk beginning to fade, had been seeing a highwayman behind every bush.
At the sound of the shot from the roof, he wrenched open the door of the coach and jumped into a snow- drift. At the same time, the coachman drove into a rut a yard deep and the coach stuck fast.
The coachman doubled-thonged his wheelers, who dragged the coach out to the side of the road … and the whole coach slowly overturned into a gravel pit.
Chaos reigned inside the coach. Everyone was lying on top of everyone else in a jumble of arms and legs. The door above them opened, showing them the coachman’s ruddy face and the sky behind him. ‘Better come out o’
