Respectable Trade (56 page)

“I bid you good day,” Josiah muttered, and strode to the top table.

The man turned and rejoined his friends. Under cover of the table, he tipped the contents of Josiah’s purse out into his hand. There was £23.10s.8d. He counted it quickly, returned it to the purse, and tucked it in his pocket.

“It’s not the full amount,” he said quietly to his neighbor. “But I think it’s the most I’m going to get.”

“He owes me for some stores,” the man replied uneasily. “I had not thought to press my bill.” He glanced up at the top table. “And there’s nothing to be had from him now. You’ve picked the bones clean this morning, Tobias.”

The man nodded. “Catch him another morning. It’s the only way you will get your bills met, I believe. There will be no more credit for Cole and Sons from my business. Take my word for it: He’s going down.”

F
RANCES CHANGED INTO HER
driving gown and waited at her bedroom window for the hired carriage to come ’round to the door. When she heard the rattle of the wheels and the ring of the horses’ metal-shod hooves in the street, she ran downstairs. Sarah was in the hall. “You hired the carriage?” she demanded, outraged.

“I wanted to drive out,” Frances said.

“We cannot afford your extravagance,” Sarah said bitterly. “Do you know how much we owe the stable already?”

“I won’t do it again.” Frances pulled on her gloves and would not meet Sarah’s accusing stare. “Just this time, Sarah.”

“This time, and then another time, and then another. We cannot afford it,” Sarah maintained. “Do you not understand? We have no money to pay for such luxuries. We cannot afford it. You must send it back.”

Mehuru came into the hall and opened the front door for Frances.

“Wait!” Sarah snapped at him.

“I have to go!” Frances breathed, and slipped out the door and down the steps before Sarah could catch her.

Mehuru bowed to Sarah and swiftly followed Frances to the carriage and handed her into the driving seat.

“Sit beside me,” Frances said breathlessly. Mehuru nodded to the lad from the stables to let the horses go and swung himself up beside her. “You must fold your arms and sit very
straight,” she said. He gave a wry smile and did as he was bid. Frances flicked the reins to make the horses go forward.

When they were clear of the square, she relaxed a bit. “I thought she would stop me.” She gave a quavery little laugh. “I thought she would lock me in my room rather than see me spend money.”

“They are getting desperate,” Mehuru observed.

“I would have insisted, however angry she was.” Frances flicked out her whip and feathered it neatly back. “Shall we drive up to the Downs?” she asked.

“Anywhere,” he said. “Let’s drive to Africa.”

She caught her breath on a sound halfway between a laugh and a sob. “You know I wish I could,” she said.

He nodded. “This is our last time together, Frances. I will not ask, and you need not refuse. Let us just be together for this afternoon. At least we have these hours, and the sun is warm, and you are well, and I am going to be free.”

“Perhaps we can be happy just for this afternoon,” she said doubtfully.

“Yes, we can.”

She steadied the horses over the little bridge and then let them walk up the steep hill of Park Street. Even in the short time since they had last ridden out, more building work had started, and foundations were outlined where new houses would rise.

The workmen were stripped down to their breeches and torn ragged shirts in the cold November sunshine. Mehuru looked at their skinny, muscled backs and weary faces. “It is a cruel country,” he said. “I have yet to see a workingman or -woman who looks properly fed and rested.”

Frances did not turn her eyes from the road between the jogging ears of the offside horse.

“Do you not see?” he asked.

“There is much hardship,” she conceded, but still she did not look ’round.

“I am talking about these men,” Mehuru prompted her again. “These, working here, digging this trench.”

Still she did not look ’round.

“Will you not look at them?” he demanded.

She glanced at him, and he could see that her face was pink with embarrassment. “They are half naked, Mehuru!” she said with quiet indignation. “I cannot stare at them!”

He gave a shout of laughter. “Oh, Frances!” he exclaimed. “If I live here until I am an old man, I will never understand. You are a married woman—you see Josiah, don’t you? You saw me.”

Frances caught her breath. The memory of Mehuru in her bedroom with the moonlight cascading down the darkness of his body was too vivid.

“Why cannot you look at some poor workingman in his breeches?”

“Because I am a lady,” Frances snapped, goaded to reply. “There are things I should not see. There are things I should not discuss—even with you.”

“I wish I could hold you,” he said softly. “And kiss this nonsense from you.”

At once her face softened. “I wish it, too,” she whispered.

He smiled at her profile. “Sometimes I think you are two women, not one,” he said. “The stiff, cold lady with her strict manners and rules, and sometimes you are my love, my little love, and as natural and easy as an African woman.”

She nodded. “I have been brought up to be an English lady. I think it is too late to change now.”

“I don’t think so,” he muttered stubbornly under his breath. But she just shook her head and would not say any more.

At the top of Park Street, the buildings petered out into rough yards and the road became a mud track through the fields. Frances took the left-hand fork for Clifton, skirting the round mound of Brandon Hill. High up on the hillside, washerwomen were spreading out their linen to dry on the grass.

Frances clicked to the horses, and they went forward at a brisk trot.

“These are good horses,” she said approvingly. “Josiah promised to buy me a pair and a carriage of my own when the trade mends—if the trade mends.”

“Why did you ever marry him?” Mehuru demanded.

Frances was silent for a moment. “I don’t know if I can explain it to you,” she said. She slowed the horses and pulled them over to let a wagon pass by that was carrying glass bottles carefully packed in straw. Ahead of them they could see the pretty hills and valleys of the approach to Clifton. On their left was the boggy ground of Rownham Meads. Migrant birds crossed and recrossed the sky, searching for homes for the long, cold winter ahead. Higher above them the seagulls soared and circled, their white wings gleaming like silver in the bright sunshine. In the pools of standing water and the marshy mud, a tall gray heron was fishing.

“What you must realize is that there was nothing for me,” Frances began. “Absolutely nothing. I had no money, I did not even have a home. My home had been the rectory, and then the new rector and his family moved in. I did not want to be a poor relation living on charity in Scott House.”

She paused and glanced at Mehuru, who was listening carefully and trying to make sense of what she was saying. In his country a girl without money or a husband would still be an honored member of a family. They would naturally take her in, and she would help with the work of the family and eat with them and play with the children. The idea of a person being redundant was impossible to his way of thinking.

“Was there nowhere that you could go?” he asked.

Frances shook her head. “I took employment,” she said. “As a governess.”

“Like a servant?”

Frances made a little grimace. “In some ways worse. The pay is very poor, but you dare not complain. The children can
treat you as they wish, they can be cruel—” She broke off. “I had not known how cruel children could be,” she said. “I could not make them mind me, and their mother laughed at me. Every morning I used to wake up and dread the day ahead. I was unhappy every moment of the day.” She paused. “I am not exaggerating. Every single moment of the day.” Mehuru was silent. The horses walked briskly along the track away from the river up the hill toward Clifton, where the rumble of wagons and the sound of chisels on stone could be heard.

“Josiah advertised for a governess. I applied for the post and met him. He did not tell me what the work was, but said he would write to me. Then, when he wrote proposing marriage, it was as if my prayers had been answered. In return for being his wife, I am fed, I am clothed, and when I get old, I will
still
be fed and clothed and live in a fine house. I would do anything rather than go back to governessing again, Mehuru. It was worse than slavery—” She stopped. “I am sorry, that is a foolish thing to say to you, but it
was
a little like slavery in some ways. I was not free to do as I wished. I could not come and go as I wished. And they were free to get rid of me whenever they wanted.”

“You are not free now,” Mehuru pointed out.

“But neither is Josiah,” she replied. “We are both bound by our agreement. He has to keep me, whatever else happens.”

They drove in silence for a little while, the horses straining in their collars to climb the hill away from the river. They were driving along the edge of the rising gorge to the heights of Clifton. To their left, and far below, hidden by the overhang of the cliff, was the riverside and Josiah’s colonnade of shops and the Hot Well. A pretty track, too steep for anything but the most nimble of the Bristol saddle horses, zigzagged in sharp hairpin bends down the cliffside to the Hot Well at its foot. The few healthy clients of the Hot Well would sometimes climb up to Clifton to enjoy the view and walk in the woods.

Before them was a handsome street, built as a terrace, in pretty uniformity but stepped irregularly to match the mounting
ground. They started along a terrace marked “Granby Place,” which deteriorated at the far end to a pile of builders’ stones and an earthen track. Frances laughed and pulled up the horses. “We should have brought a guide,” she said. “I have got us hopelessly lost.”

They looked to their right. There were thick woodlands tumbling down the hills to the track, cleared here and there by the lime burners, whose stone kilns could sometimes be seen among the thinning foliage of the trees. Above them there was a large, attractive stone building and a high scaffolding of some kind of winding gear.

“That can’t be a mine,” Frances said. “There are surely no collieries here in Clifton?”

“Do you want to walk up and see?” Mehuru asked. “Someone can hold the horses.”

“Why not?” Frances replied. Mehuru whistled at an urchin who had been sitting on a wall observing them, and the lad came forward to hold the reins.

Mehuru got down from the box, helped Frances to the ground, and took her arm. They strolled together up the grassy track to the new building. In a sea of dust and dirt, workmen were drilling a hole with the winding gear screeching above their heads. To the right of them, other men were setting square-cut stones on the foundations of what would be a grand and imposing building.

“Ask them what building this will be,” Frances said. “It looks big enough for a town hall.”

Mehuru went over to speak to one of the men, who had a paper plan pinned to a board. The man looked back at Frances, pulled off his cap, and came over.

“Good day, madam,” he said. “The darkie said you were asking about the building.”

“Yes.”

He held the plan before her. It showed the outline of a large, square building subdivided into small rooms at one end with a
large assembly room or ballroom at the other. Over the top of the plan, in handsome script, was the legend: “The New Hot Well: Pump Room and Bathhouses.”

Frances read it, then read it again. “What is this?” she demanded.

“The new Hot Well,” the man replied.

“What d’you mean?”

“It is a new Hot Well, madam. A new spa. Here we are drilling down for the hot water, and here will be the spa building. You can see it here, on the plan. It will be a handsome assembly room, and here you see bath rooms for immersion in the hot water. There will be houses built on each side as well, and they will be supplied with hot water from the spa. Hot running water! Think of it!”

Frances put her hand to her throat, which felt as if it were closing tight. “I don’t understand. There must be some mistake!”

“I hope not!” The man’s broad face grinned. “For we have drilled down nearly two hundred feet, and we will hit the spring soon.”

“But what spring is it?” Frances demanded. “You must be near the Hot Well, at the foot of this cliff.”

“We are straight above it, madam,” the foreman said. “It is directly below us. That is why we know that we will hit a hot-water spring. The old Hot Well is sited on it. We will tap the Hot Well spring.”

Frances recoiled and staggered. At once Mehuru’s arm was around her waist, but she did not even feel his touch. “Who knows of this?” she asked, her voice sharp. “Who gave permission? Whose land is this? How can you just drill here without permission?”

The man was offended. “You’ll have to take all that up with the landlord. I am just ordered to supervise the men. I am sorry if I have given you offense, madam. You did ask.” He bowed and turned to walk away from her.