The Silver Touch (23 page)

‘It is an honour to be received so graciously into Joss’s home,’ she replied, her voice low and melodious. ‘I hope it is not too much of a surprise for you.’

Hester let John speak, her throat too choked for further speech at that moment. ‘By no means,’ he insisted. ‘Pray sit down and let us become acquainted.’

She took the chair indicated, arranging the billowing folds of her blue silk skirt, which was parted in the front as was the fashion to reveal an underskirt, hers being figured with clusters of forget-me-nots. Under a high forehead her nose was long, her brows and lashes sandy-light, echoing the mediocre colour of her hair, her complexion pitted by some past attack of smallpox and her chin small. Yet Joss, who had pulled up a chair to sit beside her and hold her hand, was gazing at her as if mesmerized, stunned with love.

‘My parents sent their compliments to you, Mr and Mrs Bateman,’ she said, her smile quick and kindly, redeeming to some extent the plainness of her face. ‘They hope you will be at liberty to dine with them next Sunday.’

‘We should be delighted,’ John accepted promptly. He glanced across at Hester almost warningly. ‘Is that not so, my dear?’

‘Yes, indeed.’ She was in full control of herself again. Even if she had not been, she would never have spoiled this day for her dear son, whose face was shining with happiness to see his betrothed in his own home. ‘How soon do you plan to marry?’

Joss answered: ‘Now that we have your blessing we shall arrange for the banns to be read for the first time in our respective churches next Sunday.’

‘So soon?’ Hester said faintly.

‘We have no need to wait any longer, having waited for three years.’ He exchanged a sweetheart’s look with Alice, whose whole face softened with a devotion to match his.

It told Hester a great deal. Yes, they had waited in every sense of the word. Those who have known each other intimately have more realism and less magic in their glances. At least this slip of a girl had not caused Joss to jeopardize his future and she was grateful to her for that. ‘Do you wish to live here?’

‘No, Mother.’ Joss showed that he was highly pleased with what he had to tell. ‘We are able to buy our own house with Alice’s dowry and set ourselves up comfortably.’

John raised an interested eyebrow. ‘You lead us to assume you have found a place to your liking already.’

‘We have done.’ Joss and Alice exchanged another of those enraptured glances that can shut out the world before he spoke again, his grin broad. ‘We are to be your near neighbours at Number 85, Bunhill Row. We heard it was for sale a little while ago and everything is settled.’

To Hester it was the final seal on Joss’s resolve never to move from the Bateman workshop, for the house was one of a pleasing four-storeyed terrace with grace and style, large enough to accommodate any good-sized family and half a dozen servants. Joss would never have to look for more spacious accommodation, however many children he might have. At the age of twenty-one he had settled his choice on his woman, his work and his place of abode for the rest of his life. Such would have been John’s future if she had not crossed his path and disrupted his intention to marry Caroline. Surely a father and a son had never been more alike in temperament and outlook.

At the celebratory dinner, which had been arranged with such thought for Joss’s first hours as a qualified goldsmith, toasts were drunk to the betrothed pair. Over the rim of her glass, Hester looked along the faces of her family on either side of the table and her eyes came to rest on Peter. With his reddish-brown hair and light grey eyes, he was the most like her in looks and in character, her love of birds having taken a gentle twist towards all small creatures in him. He was full of energy and ambition, already looking forward to when he would start his goldsmithing apprenticeship. He was her hope now; he was the one to vindicate the name of Bateman. For the first time since Joss had broken his news to her, she relaxed and felt the tension ebb from her. She would have to wait longer to see her dream fulfilled, but nothing was lost. Nothing.

At the head of the table John looked down the length of the board at her and saw she had come to life again. She was laughing as their eyes met. He gave her a look of love that only she could interpret and raised his glass to her. She responded with a smile just for him in the midst of their grown-up and growing children.

Joss and Alice were married at the Cases’ parish church. After a lavish wedding breakfast with family and friends, they rode in her father’s carriage to 85, Bunhill Row, ribbons dancing from it, and shut the door on the world for several days. Then Joss, who had started work the day after first presenting Alice to his parents, returned to the work-bench as if he had never been away from it, a quiet happiness in his serious eyes.

He soon showed himself to be the perfect complement to the work-team John and Hester had become, and when disagreements arose he and his father settled them amicably. Although as a newcomer he was allotted the mundane workpieces, he knew it was all part of settling in and would change later. Always deep-thinking about spiritual matters, he took a particular interest in ecclesiastical plate and felt well rewarded when given the chance to make an article destined for a church, whatever denomination.

*

Across from his new home, the alterations to the Esdaile mansion had been completed long since with still no signs of it being opened up for occupation. Hester took up again her quiet sojourns in its herb garden, interested in all news of the Esdailes that reached Bunhill Row. They had had three children in quick succession in the four years of their marriage and it was supposed locally that the avoidance of travel and the need to remain close to some London physician of high repute for her confinements had kept Mrs Esdaile from visiting the house that had been completely refurbished to her taste. Hester found the new layout of the grounds too formal to suit her liking; it was as though the flowers and trees and bushes had been regimented into place. She was always glad to reach the simplicity of the fragrant herb garden and draw its own special balm into herself before returning to another kind of contentment at the workshop bench.

There was a bunch of recently picked herbs giving a delicate perfume to the workshop one warm and sunny morning when Joss had ridden off to the city to make a delivery of flatware. John and Hester were busy with individual workpieces, bathed by a soft breeze through the open windows, when suddenly their peace was disrupted. Jonathan, wild-eyed with excitement, a gloating look on his narrow face, came bursting in on them.

‘William climbed the tree to get on to the stable roof for a dare. Now he’s stuck at the top and can’t get down!’

Simultaneously his parents downed their tools without wasting words or time and rushed out. A salver that had been propped at an angle on the bench went on rattling like a settling top. Jonathan glanced around the workshop as he left it. One day he would be a goldsmith and earn lots of money and buy everything he wanted in the way of toys and sweetmeats. Nobody should stop him having anything. One of the reasons why he had ceased to follow William in his escapades was that he had discovered that retribution was not pleasant; he did not like going without supper or losing the chance of an outing, or being kept in his room on his own for an hour or more. Sometimes, through being two years younger and by putting all the blame on William, he had managed to wriggle out of punishment, but his mother’s eyes had begun to bore into him at such times, making it hard to keep what he thought of as his ‘good’ look on his face. It was far better to be a spectator to William’s ventures and, when the opportunity presented itself as today, to be the first to report it.

When he reached the stable yard there was no pandemonium and all was remarkably calm. Gone were the neighbourhood boys who had dared William to make the perilous ascent, and Jonathan guessed they had scattered when he had run to raise the alarm. His mother stood quite still, her shaking hands clenched together the only sign of her stress, and his father was talking quietly up to William, who sat ashen-faced atop the high thatched roof. It was a sizeable building and he was as far from the cobbled yard below as a gargoyle on a church roof.

‘There’s nothing to worry about, William,’ John was saying reassuringly. ‘I’ll fetch a ladder and get you down in no time.’

William gulped. ‘The thatch is rotten just here. It may not hold a ladder.’ Even as he spoke, the straw gave way under his right foot and he saved himself from overbalancing by tipping full length from the waist along the rim, clutching hard. Hester clapped a hand over her mouth to suppresss a cry and her face, already pale, lost its last vestige of colour.

John, who had felt his heart stop, gave a sharp instruction. ‘Don’t move! I’m coming!’

Diving into the stable to fetch the longest ladder there, he was enraged with himself for not having had the stable repaired and rethatched months ago. It had been in need of new rafters to replace those no longer safe when they had first come to Bunhill Row, but he had postponed the expense, padlocking that part of the stables to keep the children out. When he had purchased his nag the repairs had been postponed again, for the thatch had been weatherproof in that section and the beams stout over the hayloft and the stalls below. Underneath William’s perch there was a sheer drop down to the unused and still-padlocked tackroom with its flagged floor.

Taking a coil of rope from a hook, he threw it over his shoulder and bent to seize the heavy ladder which he half carried, half dragged out into the yard. Hester ran forward to lend her aid by lifting the foot of it off the ground and together they hurried with it to the sunbaked west end of the stable.

‘I sent Jonathan to tell the girls to fetch Tom Cole,’ she gasped breathlessly.

‘Good. I may need his help.’ He set the ladder against the mellow brickwork and began to climb the rungs while Hester supported it. If he could have trusted the tackroom rafters he would have chosen that route, but it was doubtful whether they would take William’s weight much less his own.

He reached the top of the ladder. It brought his shoulders level with the main beam to which William clung and where the thatch was thin and partly disintegrated. A third of its length lay between them.

‘You’ll have to edge your way along to me,’ he told William, ‘so I’m going to make a noose in this rope for you to put over your shoulders and push down to your waist.’ The knot formed under his nimble fingers as he talked. ‘Then there isn’t the least chance of your falling even if you do slip.’

‘I came this far and couldn’t get back after I heard part of the roof fall somewhere.’ William’s mouth was set determinedly against giving way, but he could not control its tremulous corners.

‘Were you trying to do the whole length?’

‘Yes, Father.’

‘Well, you shall now with me to hold you tight. Now try to catch this rope at first go.’

At the foot of the ladder Hester felt it vibrate as John tossed the rope. She bit deep into her lip and closed her eyes in suspense until she heard his exuberant praise for a successful catch. There came light steps rushing across the yard and Ann was there, lending her weight to the ladder’s support, fright dilating her eyes.

‘Letticia has gone for Tom,’ she gasped. ‘One of the maids is keeping Jonathan indoors.’

Hester nodded, beyond speech. It was comforting to have Ann with her. Unable to see what was going on, the seconds passed with agonizing slowness for them as they heard John coaxing the boy along. Then, just when it seemed the situation might be resolved without further mishap, everything changed. William shrieked; John gave a mighty shout and the whole ladder shook as if it had come alive, trying to wrench itself from any support. As Hester and Ann struggled, Tom appeared at a run and hurled his full weight against the ladder to hold it.

‘The tackroom,’ he yelled to them. ‘Sacks! Hay! Anything to break the lad’s fall if Mr Bateman should lose him!’

Hester tore for the tackroom door. Snatching the key from the lintel where it was kept, she drove it into the padlock. With Ann close behind her she dashed inside and came to a halt looking upwards, her hand on her heart. A great gap in the roof, showing the blue spring sky above, illumined in brilliant sunshine the broken rafters and the torn thatch with William in his rope harness swinging wildly to and fro like a captive bird amid the dust motes, his sobs echoing against the walls.

‘Merciful God!’ She seized an old hay fork and began to pitch some dank and smelly straw on to the flagstones that were far beneath him. Rats scuttled out and she ignored them as they flashed past, working as if possessed. Ann had snatched a shovel and worked alongside until abruptly she stopped and grabbed Hester’s arm.

‘Look!’

Hester let the hayfork fall. William was being lowered slowly and jerkily by the rope through the gap. Both she and Ann ran forward with their arms ready to catch him. As he came within their reach, they both seized him and collapsed with him to their knees on the straw, for he was a sturdy seven-year-old and no light weight. He wrapped his arms around his mother’s neck as if he would never let go and she hugged him to her, upbraiding and kissing him at the same time.

Ann sprang to her feet and cupped her hands about her mouth to shout up the good news if the slackened rope had not already given it. ‘William is safe!’

Somewhere out of sight John let his end of the rope fall and it came rippling down through the sun’s rays to lie snakelike across the flagstones. Hester, catching sight of bloodstains on it, pulled William’s clasp from her, scrambled to her feet and ran out of the tackroom again as swiftly as she had entered it. She heard John’s paroxysm of coughing before she saw him. Letticia, who had returned in Tom’s wake and stayed to help with the bucking ladder, stepped out of her way as she approached. Hester almost cried out at the sight that met her. John was leaning against the wall, doubled over by his lung-tearing cough, and he held his hands away from him with elbows bent, each palm a mangled mess of bloody flesh where the rope had scorched it, the fingers torn.