The Silversmith's Wife _ Sophia Tobin (22 page)

7th September, 1792

I received a note from Mrs Chichester today. She has decided that she wishes for the designs to be changed once again. It did me good to receive her note, and to think of her pretty face. It is strange how, to think of such an agreeable thing seems like a change of season to me. I have always felt things deeply, and this small degree of warmth did well for me. I was in good temper with Dr Taylor this evening; he came and we spoke of the newspapers, and amused each other with our jokes. I am glad of his company, for I already feel the chill of autumn in the air, and when I think of the long evenings that are to come, I would not wish always to be either out of doors, or alone with my wife.

Joanna lay fully dressed on her bed. They had sent one of the maids to hammer on the door, but Joanna only stared at the ceiling, and did not make a sound.

Mr Chichester had returned.

A gift from him lay on the bed next to her: a garnet necklace wrapped in waxen paper. The stones did not sparkle, but they had a vividness she liked: the viscous red of the good wine she had drunk on that evening in his library. Her hand found the necklace without her turning, and she picked it up and suspended it from her hand, moving it this way and that. What did such a gift mean? She allowed herself to think that desolate word, that word she had rejected for so long. Perhaps.

She was glad she had not sent the letter to him. Her writing of it now seemed distant, like a dream, though it still troubled her. There was something terrible about a betrayal written down. Spoken, it was insubstantial, the words breaking and dissolving in the air like bubbles. She had decided that she would speak to him about Harriet’s infidelity.

She tried hard to picture him, but when she thought of his face it always disassembled, only leaving an impression: of warmth beneath a crust of coldness, a warmth that she was determined to draw out.

She waited for the maid to go back downstairs before she got up and unlocked the door.

In the kitchen, Mrs Holland was eating a crust of bread spread thick with golden butter. A smear of it glistened on her upper lip. ‘Where have you been?’ she said. ‘Madam was asking for you. I’ve sent Jane up with a tray, but she’ll be whining all day about it.’

‘I’ll go up to her in a moment,’ said Joanna. As she spoke Jane descended, her jerking steps sending the breakfast things clattering on the tray.

‘She’s calling for you,’ she said, sullen. ‘She said you were supposed to sleep in her room last night.’

‘It was not practicable,’ said Joanna. ‘Not that I have to justify myself to you: no, nor anyone else, either.’

She turned and walked away. She could almost hear the glance that passed between Mrs Holland and the maid.

As she crossed the staircase hall the door of the library opened and Mr Chichester came out. ‘Well met, Miss Dunning,’ he said. She smiled, hoping that the heat she felt in her face wasn’t conveying itself as a blush. She curtseyed.

‘Will you come in here for a moment?’ he said. Joanna saw the glances of Will and Oliver. As the library door closed behind her she longed to take her handkerchief and stuff it in the keyhole to prevent their spying eyes. Instead, she moved down to one end of the room, and vowed to keep her voice as low and soft as she could. Her movement seemed to intrigue Chichester and he followed her, smiling.‘How was your time away, sir?’ she said.

‘Interesting,’ he said. ‘I paid a brief visit to my father and family. Do not tell Mrs Chichester, if you please; she will only complain. How have things been here?’

He watched her with a steady, frank gaze. It was so open, so concentrated, that she felt the seduction of it. It was a strange thing that had not happened in years; even her body reacted.

‘They have been fairly quiet, sir,’ she said. ‘I am sure you had much more amusement and stimulation on your travels.’

‘I doubt that,’ he said. ‘My parents are so shaken about the events in France. All around it seems the old world is dissolving. Why, my father’s steward has a daughter who is as fine a miss as you could ever wish for. She speaks French and plays the spinet better than my wife does. Should you wish to go up in the world, Joanna? To transcend where God or whoever has placed you?’

He said it archly, evidently enjoying the words. She could hardly breathe, under his gaze. She would have to take a next step, but she had no idea what it should be. She could not trust herself to weigh and balance the words quick enough; she was afraid.

‘I know my place, sir,’ she said. ‘I have never questioned it.’

It was the best kind of lie: so essential that she said it with absolute conviction, a conviction that almost made it true.

‘Well,’ he said, nodding and smiling, holding her gaze. She was warm in a way that she could not remember feeling for years. In that moment she did not even think of betraying Harriet. She only wanted to stay beneath his gaze. To be seen.

‘I saw my wife just now,’ he said.

‘You did?’ she said, the words breaking from her before she had a moment to stop them.

‘For a moment only,’ he said. ‘She looks well. You have done a marvellous job of patching her up. I have to go now. But I wish to speak to you later, perhaps this evening? You may slip out to me when I come in; I will light my own way.’

‘Sir,’ she said, curtseying, thinking how fine he looked as he opened the door and strode across the staircase hall.

Her happiness made Joanna merciful that day. She lived within a kind of dream world, smiling sweetly at every reprimand, and carrying out every want of Harriet’s without even internal criticism.

She was still laced in, but her arms were bare, when she heard the master enter the house that night. When she checked her reflection in the fragment of looking glass the garnet necklace was vivid as blood against her white skin. She had brushed out her dark hair carefully by the light of the extra candles he had allowed her. The effect was pleasing; in the soft light, she could almost imagine that she was young again.

Without stopping to pull a wrap around her shoulders, she walked barefoot down the back stairs, carrying one of the new candles in a silver chamberstick she had taken from Harriet’s dressing table. The stone stairs were cold under her feet and she trembled against her will, feeling the rush of cold from the winter night, a door opened somewhere in the house. She came out on the landing just as he approached his room, one hand brushing against the wall as he walked, a little unsteady. He was alone, as he had promised. But as she came out of the shadows he flinched, as though some reverie had been interrupted.

‘Joanna,’ he said.

‘Sir,’ she said.

‘It is a cold night,’ he said. ‘You must be freezing.’

Her heart beat so hard she could hear it in her ears. She knew she must take this moment, while she had the courage. It did not feel right, as she thought it would; but she had only this moment, and as she had always chosen to live, she knew she must take it. She walked towards him, and put her hand on his face.

He started back. ‘What are you doing?’ he said.

‘It is your right, sir,’ she said, and drew his face towards her.

The next thing she knew she was stumbling away, her left cheek hot with pain. She fell into the banister, banging her back. The chamberstick fell to the floor, metal on stone, a dull ding. The light went out. Only after a moment or two did she realize he had slapped her, hard and quickly, with a flick of the wrist. A practised hand, she thought. She looked at him, unaware that her mask had fallen away, that pain shone in her eyes.

He was holding his candle up, between them. ‘Forgive me,’ he said. His voice was higher than usual, with an unpleasant note of justification. ‘But you are presumptuous, Joanna.’

She snatched up the silver chamberstick, and before she could turn away he had picked up the candle stump from the floor and relit it. Her hand shaking, she allowed him to put it back into the silver nozzle. ‘We will not speak of this again,’ he said. But she had already turned away and was hurrying towards the door to the back stairs. Below her she saw a faint glow of light. Oliver was still up, and her mind registered that he must have seen her. Humiliation tightened her throat.

‘Miss Dunning,’ his sing-song voice rang out. ‘Oh, Miss Dunning.’ It was a whisper, but it carried through the great space, resonances overlapping each other as he padded up the stairs towards her. She heard the bang of the master’s door behind her as Oliver reached her, blocking her way to the back stairs.

‘They took you on because you are plain. It was your main advantage over all the others; never mind your French or your proficiency.’ His voice changed slightly, its tone and phrasing a bass, but near-perfect imitation of Harriet’s mother. ‘Worry not, my dear, you will not suffer by comparison: the one I have chosen will make Chichester love you a hundredfold more.’ He brought the candelabrum closer. ‘You must learn your place, Miss Dunning.’

She pushed him hard, and he staggered back. She didn’t stay to see him right himself; she hoped that his livery would catch on fire and burn him into ashes. She ran as fast as she could back to her room, sheltering the candle flame with her hand.

Ten minutes later she went down to the basement and woke the housekeeper. ‘You must let me out,’ she said. ‘Doctor for the mistress.’ Mrs Holland opened her mouth to say she would send one of the boys, but thought better of it. There was something steely in Joanna’s glance tonight. She looked pale, her hair drawn back tightly against her face, wrapped in her cloak.

‘Is she properly sick?’ she said. ‘Is it the babe?’ Joanna shook her head. ‘It’s more a fancy than anything. I’ll be no time. No need to bother anyone; it would make things worse.’

She ran out on to Hays Mews, hitting the coldness of the night. The moon was bright and nearly full. The sight of a twine of straw on the cobbled street reminded her of Stephen. She bent double and sobbed, taking gasps of cold air, so cold it hurt her lungs. One stableman looked over his door, and decided to ignore her. One troubled woman wouldn’t disturb the horses.

The familiar surroundings revolted her. Behind her the house towered, like a mountain, its dark mass like the shadow of death on her back. She began to run, clutching her cloak to her in the cold.

She thought of the river. It was too warm to be frozen. If she went to it, if she set her foot upon it, would Stephen be waiting? Knowing her luck, if she tried to drown herself she would be dragged out by some well-meaning member of the Humane Society and revived to continue in misery. She gave a little choke of a laugh at the thought. Tears filled her eyes, tears long unshed, and as they trickled on to her face, more came, tears upon tears, blurring her vision. But she kept running. She didn’t care if she fell.

She ran into the man at full speed. It was like hitting a brick wall; if she shocked him he did not show it. He did not move an inch, and wiry arms closed around her, like a cage. She fought. But she knew as she lashed out she could not fight his superior strength. So she stopped almost as soon as she had begun, hopeless, thinking, her mind whirring and ticking.

The man, and the arms, stayed still. She let him take her weight, suddenly limp and exhausted. ‘Easy there,’ said the man’s voice. ‘Easy.’ She thought of a groom calming a horse, and supposed he was one.

Joanna summoned the courage and looked up in the moonlight. She saw a familiar face. ‘I know you,’ she said.

The man smiled. ‘Indeed you do, miss,’ he said. ‘I’m one of the night-watchmen.’

‘What are you doing, hanging around here?’ she said, her voice sharp.

He laughed. ‘Watching,’ he said. ‘There’s a murderer still walks these streets, you know. I let Watkin, my partner, do a turn of the square alone. He doesn’t like it, but I like to keep an eye on this house special these days, make sure you’re all safe. I was just walking back to join him when you came barrelling along there.’

His arms were still around her, the warmth becoming familiar. ‘You can let go of me,’ she said.

‘Seems to me you don’t want to be let go of,’ he said. ‘Not really.’

She didn’t argue. It was so long since she had felt the closeness and the physical touch of another human being, she had forgotten what it was like. Relief surged through her. She would not have chosen this companion, but the warmth was already seeping into her blood. Although her tears had stopped, she could have wept again, but with something like happiness. Her mouth contorted into a bud as she tried to stop the sobs.

‘Hush now,’ the man said, as you would to a child, not taking his arms away in case she ran. ‘Hush.’ And he leaned forwards, and brushed her face with his own, as if to soak up the tears on her face.

‘Digby!’ The shout came from the square, and came again, getting nearer.

‘My partner,’ said Digby.

‘Digby – have you got a wench in some alleyway?’ The voice was nearly upon them. Finally, the man let her go.

‘I’ll be out here tomorrow, at nine, miss, if you want some comfort,’ he said. Joanna said nothing. She stumbled over her own feet as she backed away. She shook her head. ‘And the next night,’ he said. Then he turned and shouted. ‘Here! I thought I saw something, I’ll be out directly.’

‘I bet you did, you old bastard,’ came the reply. ‘Hurry on, will you?’

‘I’ll see you, miss,’ he said.

‘How dare you take such liberties,’ said Joanna, but her voice sounded uncertain.

Digby shrugged. ‘I reckon you’ll come again, though,’ he said. He turned away and began to walk quickly, without looking back. At the end of the mews before he moved out of sight she saw him bent double, coughing, a melancholy silhouette in the winter night.

10th September, 1792

I came home from visiting a customer to find Grisa all aflutter, waving his handkerchief in the air like a gentle lady having a fainting fit, yet I was less amused when I saw that half the presses were unlocked, and he said a group of young gentlemen had come in, and asked to see this and that, and that Benjamin had been no use in assisting him. They told Grisa that they knew I lent money, and with what security, and how much was on the premises, and all in all he got them out. Nothing seems to have been taken – for I have a quick eye for the displays – but I suspect young Maynard is behind it, or some other scoundrel I have lent to.

At a quarter to eleven on a Monday morning Mary stood at the window and watched Alban Steele approach her home. He walked slowly, looking about him. The sight of him both galvanized and infuriated her. She turned sharply away.

‘I would like to go from here,’ she said to her cousin. ‘I swear it, Avery, if my aunt would take us I would leave London with you this very night.’

Avery took Mary’s place at the window. ‘Why is he coming?’ she said. ‘It surely does not serve him in any way.’

Mary glanced at her cousin, and could not discern whether there was knowledge in her eyes. She had not confided the story of Alban’s proposal to her, but she had the sense that Avery knew many things without being told.

‘I do not know,’ she said. ‘There are so many cracks appearing in the firm; perhaps they wish to pin us all together again with some new fixture.’

Taylor had told Mary the news; Grisa had sought Alban’s help and he had given it. A room had been put at his disposal for the days when he could not return to the City. It was business, she thought, all business: I must say that word to myself, until it becomes true.

Over the last few weeks she had learned to stare hard at Benjamin whenever she saw him: to meet his gaze without a flicker of weakness. But the effort of it exhausted her, as did Grisa’s questions. He had been speaking to a man in a tavern who had insisted that Pierre was murdered for financial gain, and probably by one of his intimates. She had to tell Grisa again and again: Benjamin was here the night Pierre died; he could hardly have slipped out to Berkeley Square and slit his throat. And Pierre had trained her in self-doubt all those years, so now, although she had said it many times, she began to question her own judgement.

‘It is best that you do not associate yourself with Mr Steele,’ Taylor had said. ‘For his assistance in the interim, we are of course in his debt. But he is merely a working silversmith; he is not the kind of man Pierre was, and he is not your social equal.’

She knew the doctor was discomfited by Grisa’s determination to bring Alban on board. The shop manager had spoken to the other trustees, and they too had put pressure on Taylor. She had not spoken of Alban’s proposal; she knew Taylor would disapprove, would begin piling objection upon objection until there was an insuperable barrier to him even entering the building. For now, it would remain her secret. The doctor’s concern was touching, and his protectiveness was due to kindness, but it had begun to grate.

She left her parlour door open, so Alban’s voice drifted up to her as Grisa answered the door. She heard its low, soft tone, and felt as though the sound was dredging her heart. Their last encounter at St James’s might have tarnished her memory of him. But when his name was spoken her heart jumped at it, just as it had jumped when she had seen him on Bond Street a few days after her husband’s death.

She left Avery sewing, and went to the top of the stairs to look down at Grisa and Alban, exchanging civilities in the doorway. At the sound of her footsteps they looked up at her, and Alban bowed. His expression was solemn, but she could see no disquiet in his eyes, no disturbance. He looked tired, she thought, and he had not shaved; his greatcoat was unbuttoned and it lay in haphazard folds.

‘Mr Steele,’ she said.

‘Mrs Renard,’ he said.

In the light from the shop window she noticed the colour of his eyes, and saw every contour of his face more clearly. When she heard Benjamin’s heavy step, she turned away and went back to her parlour, a tight knot of tension in her stomach.

Half an hour later Avery had gone to the kitchen to speak to Ellen, when Alban tapped on the parlour door. He stood, hesitant, on the threshold. Though his reticence was a sign of respect, she saw that his expression had hardened since they had last spoken.

‘Forgive me for interrupting you,’ he said.

‘You are not interrupting me,’ she said. ‘Please do come and sit down.’

He shook his head. ‘I only need a moment of your time,’ he said. The formality of his tone was so pronounced that she wondered whether Benjamin had already poisoned his mind against her. If he had, it was quick work.

‘I have not come here to harass you,’ he said. ‘From your face I saw that perhaps my presence here is disagreeable to you.’

‘Not at all,’ she said, wondering how she could have been so misinterpreted.

‘I came to say,’ he said, ‘if you do not wish me to be here, I will go. Please understand, what passed between us is over, and I wish to forget it. I was encouraged to speak and it was a lapse in my judgement. I misremembered the past and . . . well, it is over now. I offer you my respect, and fellowship.’

‘I do not wish for you to go,’ she said, and meant it. But the emotion she sought to put into her words seemed not to register with him. She continued, falteringly ‘We are indebted to you for coming here, when others turn away from us. I am grateful to you, believe that.’

His expression did not show any satisfaction at her words. He took his leave and went down the stairs, rather more quickly than he had come up them.

Her vanity whispered to her: perhaps her refusal had wounded him. She admitted the thought only for a moment. Kept to her parlour, restricted in every way, she knew her mind had a way of converting the trivial to the significant. It was safer to believe he did not see her as someone worthy of love, but as an adjunct to his business that he wished to be on pleasant terms with. When people looked at her they did not see her, but her late husband’s silver and gold plate. For all her memories, she knew she should remember that this man had spoken of money first. He had, at least, the honesty to do that. It had been a matter of chance that her memories of him had become intertwined with those of her brother.

Many times that day she heard him speaking with Benjamin: at least, she heard the apprentice’s toneless voice answering him. As she struggled to discern the words, it reminded her of the night that Pierre had come to speak to her father in the days before their wedding. She wondered if the events of her life would always depend upon listening for the voices of men in another room. She unpicked a piece of sewing, and began it again, thinking with exasperation and frustration that if power was a habit, she had not established it, and she had no clue how to do it now. She did not doubt that Alban would be able to gain and hold Benjamin’s respect in a way she had not. She wondered if they would become friends, and her heart ached at the thought. She had cause to believe that Benjamin went, at night, with the other apprentices to Covent Garden, to see the girls that walked there, dressed in vivid colours with counterfeit jewels pinned on them and their hair feathered and piled high. For a few coins such a woman would take them to a tavern room; Mallory had told her of it, unflinching as always. She wondered if Alban would go with Benjamin one night to find such a woman, and the thought wounded her. It was part of her education, she supposed; she must learn to deaden herself to such wounds. Dressed in her mourning black, she knew she could not compete with such women in their reds and purples, and she told herself she did not want to.

Alban took himself out for an hour or so. He and Grisa had spent most of the afternoon hunting for a pendant that had gone missing. A woman had come asking for it, saying Mr Renard had promised it would be ready for her. It was nowhere to be found, and Grisa wondered how they would tell her, for she had watched them with her steady, mournful eyes as they had gone here and there, checking this place and that.

A drink was welcome. Alban only knew one person in the Red Lion, and it was Digby, hunched over his pint pot with a meditative expression on his face. The man’s look when he saw Alban was not promising. ‘It’s you, then,’ he said.

‘Mr Digby,’ said Alban. He felt worn with the effort of making polite conversation with Mary, Avery and Grisa at dinner, and wondered if he could manage another.

‘How’s Bond Street, then?’

‘Quiet now. Has it always been your patch? My cousin tells me you were once a silversmith.’ He tried to be easy and conversational, tried to forget the image of Mary stamping up the stairs after dinner, cloaked in her hideous mourning dress; the repetitive mutterings of Benjamin when Mary’s name was mentioned.

‘I’m no use to you,’ said Digby. ‘I’ll make that clear to save you the trouble of speaking to me.’

‘You mistake me,’ said Alban. ‘I meant only to be civil.’

‘You’ve entered the Renard establishment,’ said Digby. ‘I know these things, you see. I keep my eye on things. How is she? The silversmith’s wife?’

‘She is well enough, I believe,’ said Alban.

‘So. You are tired of your cousin’s house and all his brats crawling about you?’

‘Not at all,’ said Alban. ‘I’ve lived alone for many years, and children bring life to a house. Now I’m in the quiet I think I’ll miss them. I will go back there as much as business allows.’

‘Playing your own game, are you, eh?’ said Digby. ‘Fancy yourself as the next husband of Mrs Renard? Where were you on the night of Mr Renard’s death, by the way?’

‘I take offence at that,’ said Alban, feeling his heart jump with anger. ‘And I was on the coach from Chester, if you must know. There are several hundred witnesses in the Charing Cross area.’

‘ Ach, don’t get wild,’ said Digby. ‘I’m only playing with you.’ He knocked back his drink, and called for another one. The landlord pointed at the board meaningfully, but brought him one anyway.

Alban stayed where he was, allowing his annoyance to die down. There was something interesting about Digby’s face, unremarkable but with an air of delicacy that drew the eye. ‘Do you not have children?’ he said, hoping that interest would unlock some of the man’s goodwill. But Digby only fixed him with a stare, and Alban noticed his blue eyes, piercing and vivid, the whites reddened. ‘No,’ he said.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Alban, remembering why he usually kept his mouth shut and why he disliked the prying words of others.

‘Don’t be sorry,’ said Digby. ‘I’d have sooner cut my children’s throats than let them live the life I’ve had. Are you going to bother me with your company for long? I am expecting someone.’

Alban left him alone, and went up to pay the landlord. ‘For his too,’ he said.

‘And welcome,’ said the landlord. ‘He owes more on tick than all my fine gentlemen put together.’