Theft of Life (12 page)

Then with Mr Hinckley’s mustard in his ears, Francis would stride back into London, call on Mrs Smith and ask her to marry him. Eliza would refuse, very sweetly, and Francis would be cautions, careful and polite again – until the following Sunday.

Dr Fischer’s sermon was rousing. He was one of that breed of men who become something other than their everyday selves when given a pulpit and a sea of faces looking up at them, asking for their souls to be saved. He seemed to flatter and rouse his audience at the same moment. He spoke of love, kindness and bravery, spoke of the balloon lifting towards the Heavens and the winds which carried it, which carried English civilisation, English freedom across the globe. Harriet realised the priest must have been one of Sir Charles’s party sitting on the balcony and admiring the balloon’s manoeuvres while Mrs Trimnell learned she had become a widow. Stephen’s eyes shone as he listened. Eustache, normally so withdrawn from his fellows, listened with a sort of glow on his pale skin, nodding from time to time. Even Harriet felt it, the pride pushing upwards and out of the white cube of the church. The final hymn was sung, a simple tune easy for even someone as unmusical as Harriet to hear and repeat. It fitted together very neatly, the poetry in which they all promised God to be better versions of themselves and the tune which marched along underneath it.

Sir Charles and the older woman on his arm led them all out of the church, but he paused on his way in order to reach over to Harriet, shake her hand and treat her to his fatherly smile. She smiled back at him and felt the exchange being noted by all the burgers and merchants of the city. It was as if a single ray of light had illuminated her through the church window and made her briefly beautiful to them.

He passed by, and took the light of the crowd’s attention with him. Mrs Service began the process of corralling the children, finding what they had lost, put down or tucked away, and giving them coins for the retiring collection while Harriet dawdled, watching Dr Fischer from the corner of her eye. He had taken the opportunity to speak again to Mrs Smith, who was shaking her head. Another parishioner was plucking at Dr Fischer’s sleeve and the woman moved away as soon as she had the opportunity to do so.

‘Mrs Westerman?’ Harriet found the family assembled and waiting for her.

M
RS SMITH ALWAYS RECEIVED
Francis in her private parlour upstairs. It was another sacred space for him. The prints of Bible stories and churches which hung around her walls had become familiar friends, as had the blue and yellow wallpaper which she had scolded herself for buying and stared at happily, her pleasure spiced with just a little guilt, ever since. She had placed her favourite armchair where the light was best, and there he found her every Sunday with the tea things ready beside her and a book in her hand. He felt the comfort of their rituals. Her first question was always about the health of Mr Hinckley, the second about his own, but today instead she stood up from her chair rather more quickly than usual, put the book she was reading carelessly aside and asked after the manuscript she had given him the day before. He had forgotten it entirely and the surprise on his face told her so at once. ‘Oh, Francis!’ she said. ‘I do so want you to read it.’

‘I shall.’ He would have read a thousand manuscripts to make her smile at him again.

She tutted. ‘You were plotting how to make Mr Hinckley even richer, I know it. Well, I cannot scold you when you are working so hard. Mr Hinckley is a good man, isn’t he?’

‘Of course he is, Eliza.’

‘He does not take advantage of you, Francis?’

He guessed that she meant something to do with the colour of his skin. Such things were seldom mentioned between them and it disturbed him. He answered seriously. ‘He reminds me of your father, and everything I know about bookselling I have learned from Mr Hinckley, but what is it, Eliza? Why do you ask if he is a good man? I promise you he pays me a fair wage.’

‘No, no.’ She put her hand out to him again as if he had just entered the room. ‘I have heard nothing against Mr Hinckley, only sometimes I think it is hard to tell who is good and who is not.’

A sudden selfish doubt. ‘You think I am a good man, don’t you?’

‘Only too good.’ Her smile was warm again, as if she had thrown off whatever pressed on her. ‘Even if you are
very
slow in reading manuscripts which I give to you.’

The sun was bright again, and the room home and safety once more. ‘Give me my tea, Eliza, and my answer, then I shall read the manuscript this afternoon and come back with my opinion this evening.’

She claimed it a fair bargain and they fell into their usual pattern of conversation until the sales and purchases of their rival booksellers had been discussed, and whatever they had read that week praised or damned. When the bread and butter was gone, Francis stood and picked up his hat and coat then asked her, as he did every week, if she would marry him. He then waited for her usual refusal and the smile that accompanied it, soft and regretful enough to give him hope, and kind enough to warm him for the next day or two at his duties.

Instead she looked up at him, her pale white skin with the lines just beginning to show around her eyes, and asked a question of her own. ‘Francis, why do you want to marry me?’

‘Because I wish you to be my wife. You know that, Eliza.’

She shook her head. ‘No, Francis. I am not sure that I do, I think sometimes it is because you loved my father, and he was good to you when the rest of the world was not. I’m afraid that you wish to marry me out of gratitude. And I do not wish you to marry me for that.’

It was deeply unfair, of course it was unfair – but worse than that, it was not the usual order of things. Words would not come to him, struggling and stuttering on his lips. ‘I do love what I see of him in you, Eliza. Naturally I do, but you yourself—’

She rushed on. ‘And sometimes I believe it is because I am English, and by marrying me you hope to make yourself English also.’ Why was that wrong? What was wrong with binding himself to his adopted country? ‘You never speak of Africa, or what family you had there. When I first met you, you could hardly speak English at all. You cannot simply forget what happened to you by marrying me! And it is not fair of you to ask me to marry you just to wipe it all out.’

Francis was too shocked to look at her, and dropped his eyes to his hands, the neat tricorn of his newish felt hat held between them. He remembered suddenly when he had first come to London, met Eliza and her father and brother, how he had tried to scrub his hands white. He had thought if he could only do so, his master would not take him back to the West Indies, away from the ordinary kindness of the house where they had lodged. He concentrated. ‘Does it not occur to you, Eliza, that I ask you to marry me every week, because I love you very much?’

‘It does. That is what I hope, of course.’ She came close to him and put her hand high on his chest. By chance she touched the place where under his clothes he was branded with the mark of the first man who had bought him. He put his hand around her fingers and lifted them to his lips, then let them lie again against his collarbone. Some part of him wondered, if she kept her hand there long enough, the brand would disappear. ‘But I need to be certain of it, Francis. And I do not think I can be while you deny …’

‘I do not deny!’ He moved away from her, running his palm against the close-cut hair on his head. He felt the scars on his back burn under his clean coat. ‘I do not forget! But I would have some peace from it, Eliza. Every man or woman in London sees my history in my face. I am alone with the fear or curiosity of every stranger. I have only hoped that our long friendship, my constant devotion to you and your family, might make you – you of all people – forget my colour and treat me as a man.’

She took his arm again.

‘Francis, my dear, I do not wish to forget your colour, nor do I need to do so in order to see you as a man. I do not. That doubt is in
your
mind, not mine.’

‘You want to hear my history? Does my tragedy appeal to you? Do you wish to make me a parable? We could end it in a church with me expressing my gratitude to God for my deliverance.’

She came closer to him again. She was speaking more slowly now, the heat in her first words gone. ‘My God and I want the same thing, Francis. Your honesty. My dear, I do not think you have to choose between being a bookseller in London and an African.’ He found his mind empty, an ocean in airless days. ‘You will tell me of your history and I shall grieve with you, but I will not pity you.’

He lowered his head until it rested on her shoulder and felt her hand around the nape of his neck. He was a man shipwrecked. ‘I had a brother,’ he said at last. ‘Three years younger than I am. We were taken at the same time and he died before we even reached the coast.’ He pulled himself away from her and wiped his face on his handkerchief. ‘There, now will you marry me?’

She laughed. ‘Probably, Francis,’ then, serious again: ‘What was his name?’

Francis saw him suddenly, his eyes too large for his face. He was laughing at something, a strange snorting laugh that shook his small body. ‘Tanimola.’

‘Tanimola,’ she repeated carefully. His heart hurt, ached in a way it had not done for years, hearing the name come hesitating from between her rose lips.

Her face was flushed, and her hair more disordered than usual. He put his hands around her waist and kissed her full on the mouth. A golden thread ran through him. ‘Probably?’

She pushed him away, but he could feel the shake in her hand. ‘Probably.’

‘May I come back to see you then this evening, Eliza?’ She nodded and he turned to go, but found he could not. He turned back, held her to him again, kissed her again then left, hardly knowing how he managed to put one foot in front of the other.

C
ROWTHER DID NOT MAKE
an appearance at Berkeley Square that afternoon, and after Harriet had walked in the Square with the children for a little while, she went off in search of Mr Paxton, the celebrated cellist who was an old friend of Graves and who had played at Sir Charles’s party on the Thursday evening. She took Susan with her to call at his house, but did not find him at home. His wife, however, was happy to shake Harriet’s hand, kiss Susan and ask after the family in Berkeley Square, then direct her to a house in Bond Street where her husband was rehearsing that afternoon.

By four o’clock then, Harriet found herself seated beside one of the panelled walls on the first floor of a very pleasant house rented by a violinist from the Low Countries called Pieltain. There were four musicians in the room working through the slow movement of a quartet of Mr Haydn’s. She was provided with the score to entertain her while they worked, and was guiltily aware that a great many people in London would have paid handsomely to trade places with her and listen to these gentlemen. She had not the ear to understand the subtleties of what they played or the skill of the performance, so she let her mind wander over the surface of the music and its elegant desires. The musicians stopped and started, questioning each other and the markings on the manuscripts in front of them. Their ability to be practical and precise at one moment, then play again with such feeling amazed Harriet, as did their apparent ability to read each other’s minds. Monsieur Pieltain played a rising, dramatic figure that was then captured and held by the other players, till the movement ended in a single plucked note that seemed to Harriet somehow shocking and seductive.

She watched Susan out of the corner of her eye. The girl sat with her head slightly on one side as she listened intently. Harriet felt guilty: she had no business being here, and she certainly had no business bringing Susan with her. Poor Mrs Service had mentioned that she had had a note from Mr Babington’s sister, who happened to be in town and planned to call that afternoon. Harriet immediately stated that she would be out visiting Mr Paxton, and had invited Susan to go with her out of nothing but bad temper.

‘A pause before the Allegro,’ Paxton suggested now. ‘It will work up an old man like myself into a sweat, and I would like to talk to Mrs Westerman without puffing and panting at her.’

The violinist nodded and set down his bow on the stand in front of him. Paxton gently laid his cello on its side and patted it before he stood and shrugged on his coat so he could greet Mrs Westerman and Susan properly.

He smiled at Susan and enquired after Mrs Service and Graves and Jonathan. His voice, though he had been in the capital many years, still had a trace of his roots in the north of the country, and he had an old-fashioned courtliness about him. He told Susan he thought she looked more like her mother every day. Harriet was reminded of her own father, a man of kindness and faith who always seemed about to smile.

Harriet made some attempt to compliment the music she had just heard, and he replied, ‘It does have a certain charm, doesn’t it? Though I think Mr Haydn borrowed rather heavily from Gluck for that little tune.’ He added conspiratorially, ‘And really it is just a chance for young Monsieur Pieltain to seduce the ladies who sit in the front rows with his talents.’

Harriet noticed the violinist shake his head over his score as he heard this, though he grinned as he did so. ‘Now, Mrs Westerman, what can I do for you?’

‘I came to ask you about a party you played at on Thursday night, in Portman Square.’ She hesitated. ‘It may seem a little strange, but I wondered what your impressions were.’

The other members of the quartet all looked up with renewed interest and Paxton invited them into the conversation with a sweep of his hand. ‘We were all there, my dear. And we all know better than to ask why you wish to hear what we thought.’

‘Money,’ said M. Pieltain, pushing back his shirt-sleeves. ‘My impression was of money. There must have been ninety people there, and as many servants to hand them their wine.’

‘Sir Charles has taste though,’ the viola player said. He was reclining lazily in his chair, a complete contrast to his rigid stance when he played. It was as if he had unravelled when the music stopped. ‘At least when it comes to music.’