ETERNAL REST

Jonathon Mickelthwaite was a carpenter, and a good one. He had learnt his trade working for Uriah Ponsonby, cabinet maker to the gentry in Westminster and Belgravia. So Jonathon knew about mahogany and rosewood, sandalwood and teak, and so, when his oldest sister Susannah got married, he made her a wedding present. An absolutely splendid bed, a great canopied four-poster, with sandalwood inlays and black cast iron ball and claw feet.

Susannah was so proud of this bed that when she and her husband moved into their house in Camberwell, with its large, white, south facing windows, Susannah insisted on being carried, on the bed, to the front door of the house. The bed had a beautiful, soft white coverlet on it and the breeze lifted the sides as the men carried her and it looked liked she was flying on translucent wings.

Susannah always called the bed her marriage bed and it seemed to be the centre of her life. She had five children on it, although the sixth, a boy died at birth. The arguments she and her husband Samuel had he always called jousting, but the tousled bedclothes next morning showed that they had worked things out.

But Samuel was persuaded by an old school friend to put a large part of their savings into a prospecting company he claimed was being formed in the new United States. The money disappeared faster than the snow in spring, and Susannah and Samuel soon had to sell their beloved four-poster and to move out of their house into rented lodgings in Southwark.

It was shared accommodation and the long, single room looked just like a tunnel, with a cold concrete floor, just three windows and a dozen beds down each side.

The winter that year froze three of their children to death.