The Sparks Fly Upward Read Free Page A

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.
    â€˜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.
    â€˜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.’
    â€˜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.
    â€˜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