“It is a question of time.” He corrected her like a schoolchild. “As the less civilized peoples of the world come into increasing contact with us, they will see that our ways are better. They will accept our religion, very simply, because it is right. From the Ten Commandments to the Gospels. The moral and religious law.” Here he gave Meredith a steely blue stare. “I hope Mr Meredith will agree with me, Mary Anne, even if you do not.” He turned to the Guv’nor. “Am I right, Guv’nor?” he asked.
“Absolutely,” the Guv’nor replied. “Morals, Mr Meredith. That’s the key.”
Now the butler appeared with decanters of Madeira and port, which he placed in front of the Guv’nor. This was a signal for the ladies to retire to the drawing room at once, while the men, in true eighteenth-century fashion, sat alone over port. Accordingly, Mary Anne rose as a signal to the other women, and some of the gentlemen politely escorted them to the door. It was there, pausing and smiling for a second, that Mary Anne gave Meredith her hand, as though to say goodbye – a gesture of no special significance, except for one tiny thing which made him blush. She was entering the drawing room, however, before her sister Charlotte caught her arm and whispered to her.
“You squeezed his hand!”
“What do you mean?”
“I saw. Oh, Mary Anne! How could you?”
“You could not possibly see.”
“I could tell.”
“Really, Charlotte? You must be an expert, then. Whose hand have you been squeezing?”
Charlotte knew better than to argue with Mary Anne. You never won. So she contented herself with murmuring, rather fiercely: “Well, you’ll never see him again, make no mistake.”
The Guv’nor’s house was very large. Set well back with a handsome circular driveway, its more than a dozen windows stared out towards Blackheath with a dull reserve that told you clearly that the square, brown brick mansion to which they belonged could only be the property of a very rich man.
Uncertainly Lucy made her way to the door, her feet crunching on the gravel. Nervously she pulled the handle of the doorbell chain, and heard a bell sound somewhere within – wondering, just as she did so whether she should have gone round instead to the tradesmen’s entrance. There was a long pause and then at last the door opened to reveal, to her terror, a butler. Stumbling with her words, she asked if this was the Guv’nor’s house, learned that it was and then gave her name and asked if he would see her. After giving her a somewhat baffled and then a quizzical look, the butler himself seemed a little uncertain what to do. Was she expected, he enquired. Oh no, she told him. Did the Guv’nor know her? She believed so, was all that she could say. Deciding finally that he could not, on this basis, let her in, the butler, not unkindly, asked her to wait outside while he went to make enquiries.
To Lucy’s surprise, he returned some minutes later and conducted her into the hall, past closed doors, behind which she could hear conversation, and down the stairs into a bare little parlour in the basement. There he politely left her alone, closing the door and, rather less politely, locking it after him. It was about twenty minutes she supposed before at last she heard the key turn in the door, saw the door open, and a moment later found herself face to face with the Guv’nor, who was staring at her, cautiously. She realised that he probably did not recognize her, but there was no mistaking him.
“Hello, Silas,” she said.
It was hard to believe that this rosy-cheeked old man, with his neatly trimmed beard, his beautifully tailored frock coat, and twinkling shoes – even the nails on his strong old hands, she noticed, were manicured – was really Silas. The transformation was astounding.
“I thought maybe you’d died,” he said slowly.
“I’m alive.”
He continued to gaze at her, thoughtfully. “I looked for you once. Couldn’t find you.”
She stared at him. It might be true. “I looked for you,” she said. “Couldn’t find you either.” But then, that had been a long time ago.
She had seen Silas only once more, after that day when he had given up the boat. It had been a year later when, one grey morning, he had come trudging into their lodgings and told her gruffly: “You come with me today, Lucy. Got something for you.” She had not wanted to go, but her mother had begged her, and so, reluctantly, she had accompanied him to the smelly little cart he drove, and they had gone off. Their route had taken them down into Southwark and across into Bermondsey until at last they had turned into a large yard, enclosed by a high, ramshackle old wooden fence, and she had found herself gazing at a most remarkable sight.
Silas Dogget’s dust heap was already almost thirty feet high, and it was evidently still growing. Fresh cartloads of material were constantly arriving – if fresh was the appropriate word. For there was nothing fresh about the contents of those carts. Dirt, rubbish, muck of every kind, the scrapings, leavings and refuse of the metropolis piled up in a single, putrid, stinking mountain. But most remarkable of all was the activity taking place on it. A swarm of ragged people was climbing it, burrowing into it, getting lost inside it for all Lucy could tell. Some dug with trowels, others used sieves, others scraped with their bare hands – all under the gimlet eye of a foreman who inspected every one of these human ants before they were allowed out through the gate at the end of the day, to make sure they took nothing with them. And what did they find? It was astonishing, she soon learned, as Silas took her round: bits of iron, knives, forks, copper kettles, pans, quantities of wood, old clothes, coins galore, even jewellery. Each of these items, and many others, was carefully placed in bins or subsidiary heaps where Dogget himself would assess their value and how to dispose of them. “This pile,” he said with satisfaction, “will make my fortune.”
And she – this was the generous offer he now made – could help pick it over with the others. Not only that: the pickers, being casual labour, were paid only pence a day, but Silas would pay her a weekly wage of thirty shillings. “Your being family,” he had explained. “Maybe one day I might find you something even better,” he suggested. “I told you,” he reminded her, “that I’d help you.”
But as she had gazed at the filthy heap, and at the grim slovenly form of the former dredger, Lucy’s heart had sunk. She had pulled bodies from the river with him; poor little Horatio had dug in the Thames mud for coins, just as these poor, ragged folk were climbing up his precious mountain of dirt and slime. She had done all this before: the memories were too painful. She had refused him.
He had not said much. He had driven her home. When they got there he turned to her. “You’ll never get a better offer. This is your last chance.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Obstinate like your father.”
“Maybe.”
“You can go to hell then,” he had said, and without so much as giving her a shilling, he had flicked the reins and driven his cart away.
That had been the last she saw of him. Five years later, when her mother died, she had half expected him, in his uncanny way, to appear. But he had not. A month later, wondering what had become of him and his heap, she had gone down to Southwark and found the yard. But the heap had vanished and so had Silas. Nor did anyone there seem to know where he was.
She had moved soon after that. She had found employment with a button-maker in Soho and took lodgings with a family in St Giles’s parish to be nearer her work. There she had stayed for the next ten years. It turned out that she had a talent for matching colours. Show her any piece of material and she could mix the dyes to reproduce that colour exactly. She could make buttons to go with anything. But the big vats of dye, which were in an upstairs room with little air, made a pungent smell; and at last their sharp fumes seemed to be affecting her breathing. Afraid that she would get asthma like her mother, she had given it up.
It was at about this time that she met her friend. He was a cousin of some Irish people she knew in St Giles, but he lived in Whitechapel. It was he who had found her work in a shop run by fr
iends of his, in his own neighbourhood; it was because of him that she had moved, it was he who, in those years, gave her friendship and even affection. There was no one else, really, to do that now. He could read and write, quite well, too, which had allowed him to get a job as a clerk in a big shipping yard nearby.
And gradually, that kindness and friendship had turned into something more, until at last, some months ago, finding themselves alone, the inevitable had happened. And then again, several times more.
“I’m sorry for coming when you’re busy,” Lucy now remarked. “Sounds as if you’ve got company.”
“Company?” He was still watching her cautiously. For just a second she thought he looked awkward, but then it passed. “Nothing much,” he shrugged. “Just a few friends.”
“Oh,” she said. “That’s nice.” Lucy did not know he had a family. Even twenty years ago, when he already had four daughters, Silas had never seen fit to mention the fact. If he had felt any interest in Lucy’s father or in her, that interest did not extend to allowing them even to imagine they had any claim on his own children. He had taken care never to let Lucy discover any of her other relations who might have given away his secret.
“And this house,” Lucy gestured around. “This is all yours?”
“Maybe.”
“You must be rich.”
“Some people think I am. I get by.”
It was, of course, a lie. By the time Lucy’s mother had died, Silas had already finished with the Bermondsey heap. But he had built three more in west London. Soon after that, he found he could do even better by building heaps and then selling them to others to exploit. The hugest heaps he had sold for tens of thousands of pounds. Waste, then as subsequently, was big business. By the time he retired, Silas had sold ten heaps, and was a very rich man indeed.
“So why are you here?” he said.
She explained very straightforwardly that she was going to have a baby. Why had she let it happen? There had been two men before now who had wanted to marry her. But though she had liked at least one of them, she had resisted. For they were both as poor as she: simple labourers like her father. A single accident and they could be crippled, or gone. And what then? Destitution: the same sort of life, for her children, that she and Horatio had known. She did not want that, and no better alternative had offered. So why had she allowed it to happen with her friend? Perhaps because she loved him. Perhaps because he was a clerk with a little education, the sort of man she might have hoped for. Perhaps because time was passing – she was over thirty now. And perhaps, too, because he had shown her affection.
“Your husband. What’s he do?”
She explained she had no husband.
“You mean you’ve a man who won’t marry you?”
“He’s married, Silas,” she said.
Then Silas, forgetting for a moment that he was the respectable old Guv’nor now, made a grimace of disgust and spat. “You were always a fool. So what do you want?”
“Help,” she said simply, and waited.
Silas Dogget considered. It was ten years since he moved to Blackheath, though he’d had quite a decent house down in Lambeth before that. To most people he was a rich and respectable old man. Some knew he had made his money in dust heaps, but not many. Once he had started building and selling them, he had managed to make his participation almost invisible. As for his dark years as a dredger – not a soul in Blackheath knew, nor did he intend that they should.
Of his daughters, only Charlotte could really remember the dingy lodgings in Southwark when he came home stinking from the boat. Sometimes, alone, she would shudder at the memory before pushing it from her mind. The middle girls, by the age of ten, were attending a little private school for young ladies; Mary Anne had been taught by a governess. They had still been in Lambeth when Charlotte reached a marriageable age and Silas had not really done much to bring her out into the local society because he wasn’t quite sure how to do it. But none of the girls could be said to have suffered from their lowly background. Few men trouble themselves unduly about the origins of a rich young woman’s fortune. Even with their plain looks, the eldest three Dogget girls had all found good husbands; and pretty Mary Anne had had her pick. During a twenty-year period, therefore, not only had Silas moved from rags to riches, but his entire family had evolved from the squalor of the backstreets to a middle-class respectability and a protected affluence that, in the case of the Pennys and the Bulls, might even lead to the higher reaches of society. Such transformations had always been known; but nowadays, in the vast, ever-expanding commercial world of the British Empire, they were becoming quite commonplace.
Having risen so far, the Guv’nor had no intention of being dragged down by the embarrassment of Lucy. He wished he had never troubled himself with her. At the time, she had seemed useful and he had been helping his kith and kin. But now he could see it had been a mistake. What should he do with her, though? He supposed if he gave her a small amount each month, on condition she stayed away from his family and kept her mouth shut, she would probably go quietly enough. But one thing he could not tolerate.
“Let’s hope the child dies,” he said. “But if not, you must give it up. We’ll find an orphanage or something.” To have a poor and unwanted relation was one thing; but to have a fallen woman polluting what was now the respectable Dogget family name was another. He would not have it, not even if she threatened to expose him.
“But I wanted help to bring the baby up,” she told him.
“It must go. Have you no shame?”
“No, Silas,” she said sadly. “I haven’t much now.” And then – she had not meant to but she could not help herself: “Oh, Silas, won’t you take pity on me? Let me have the child. Can’t you see? It’s all I’ll ever have.” She had lost Horatio when she was a child and never had anyone since. “It is hard for a woman to live all her life and have no one to love,” she cried softly.
Silas watched her impassively. She was an even bigger fool than he had thought. Walking over to a table in one corner where there was pen and ink, he wrote down a name and address on a piece of paper. “This is my lawyer,” he said, giving it to her. “Go to see him when you’re ready to get rid of the child. He’ll be told what to do. That’s the help you’ll get from me.”
Then he turned round, went out and locked the door behind him. Several minutes passed before the butler reappeared, took her out by the tradesmen’s entrance, gave her two shillings to get herself home, and sent her on her way.
The butler did not forget his orders that on no account was she ever to be admitted to the house again.
THE CUTTY SARK
1889
On the stage below, the colourful chorus of gondoliers was working its way, faster and faster, towards a brilliant crescendo. The audience – men in evening coats and white ties, women with frizzed hair and silk taffeta bustle dresses – were enjoying every moment. Nancy and her mother had taken a private box. While her mother sat behind, Nancy was leaning forward excitedly, her hand holding a fan, rested upon the parapet.
His hand was only an inch away from hers. She pretended not to notice. But she wondered: was it coming closer? Would they touch?
There were three levels of entertainment in late Victorian London. At the apex was the opera at Covent Garden. For the poor, there was the music hall, that wonderful mixture of song, dance and burlesque – the precursor to vaudeville – that was now spreading into theatres in even the meanest suburbs. But between these two in the last decade a new spectacle had appeared. The operettas of Gilbert and Sullivan were full of easy tunes, and charming comedy; yet Sullivan’s music was often worthy of opera and Gilbert’s lyrics, for verbal brilliance and satire, had no equal. The Pirates of Penzance, The Mikado – every year a new production had taken London, and soon would take New York, by storm. This was the year of The Gondoliers. Queen Victoria had loved it.
It could not be said that there was anything very remarkable about Miss Nancy Dogget
of Boston, Mass. Her complexion, certainly, was good. Her golden hair was parted in the middle and modestly drawn back in a way that was perhaps a little childish for her twenty-one years. But her china-blue eyes were truly remarkable. As for the man who was sharing the evening so attentively at her side, he seemed everything that a man could be. Warm, charming, educated; he had a fine house and a lovely old estate in Kent. At thirty he was old enough to be a man of the world, but young enough for the girls back home to envy her. And then of course, as her mother had announced when she had first discovered him: “My dear, he’s an earl!”
Not that family grandeur could be anything new to a girl from Boston. In the words of the rhyme:
This is good old Boston
Home of the bean and the cod:
Where Lowells talk only to Cabots
And Cabots talk only to God.
The old Boston families – Cabots, Hubbards, Gorhams, Lorings – not only knew exactly whom their ancestors had married but also, with a grim satisfaction, what the family had thought of them at the time. The Doggets were as old as most. They had come over with Harvard. It was rumoured they had even embarked on the Mayflower, “then jumped ship”, a few unkind friends would remember. Their trust funds went down into the bedrock. And if from time to time, one of the family was born with webbed fingers, it caused no great concern: not even their greatest admirers claimed that the old East Coast families were renowned for their beauty.
Mr Gorham Dogget was a true Bostonian. He had been to Harvard; he spoke out of the side of his mouth; he had married a girl from a rich old New York family. But he was also adventurous. Investing in the railroads that had opened up the great Midwestern plains, he had trebled his already solid fortune. In recent years he had also been spending time in London. Though the United States was expanding mightily, the City of London with its vast imperial trade was still the financial capital of the world. American bankers like Morgan and Peabody spent most of their careers there and raised the money for huge projects like the American railroads. His visits to London in this connection had given Gorham Dogget several ideas for further projects.
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