The Silver Touch

by Rosalind Laker

  If her visitor had been James or someone related to her and knowing the situation, she would have rolled up her eyes at the part a woman was playing in William’s life once again, but that would not have been suitable with Mr Glazebrook. ‘I think it was ungracious of him not to give you more information in view of what you did for him.’

  Mr Glazebrook inclined his bewigged head tactfully. ‘Forgive me, ma’am, but I believe his intention was to save me the embarrassment of having to withhold his whereabouts from your family if anyone should ask.’

  Practically Hester hoped the widow was comely enough to make William immune to Sarah’s bewitchment, in spite of what Joss had forewarned. ‘I appreciate your bringing me news of my son, Mr Glazebrook,’ she said, extending her hand to him as he prepared to leave.

  When she returned to her work, Anne-Olympe came for a design from one of the folders on the shelf. ‘I’m about to start on those newly commissioned toddy ladles, ma’am. Have the wooden handles for them with the rope twist been delivered yet from the cabinet-makers?’

  Hester looked up. With her thoughts still full of William and, inevitably, Peter and Sarah, there was coolness in her eyes. If only Peter were not drawn to this woman he could have been told firstly of his brother’s return and then of William’s continuing passion for Sarah. Peter would have been the last one to wish to stand between them and Sarah could have made her choice. As it was, Anne-Olympe was a constant threat and a barrier to the reunion of the family. For the first time ever Hester fired at her in sudden pent-up rage.

  ‘Why must you always address me as if you were a stranger in my household? Ma’am, indeed! Always ma’am! If “Mother” or “Mother-in-law” sticks in your gullet, then for mercy’s sake call me Hester. I’ll take no more of your insolent subservience.’

  Anne-Olympe’s face took on a strained and angry look. ‘I have never held you in disrespect. Quite the reverse. Maybe if you had made me feel less of an outsider almost from the first time I came here things would have been different between us.’

  It was rare for Hester to lose her temper, but this time it was a heady outlet that she welcomed and she could have had no better target in her present state than the young woman who stood before her. She swung herself up from her chair. ‘I have been more tolerant of you than you could ever know!’

  ‘I fail to see how that could be. You shut me out of your workshop and when I installed my own your relief was as obvious as if you had shouted it from the roof-tops. If you had wanted to show a real hand of friendship towards me, you would have suggested I take up my work at Joss’s empty bench instead of making me stay where I am.’

  ‘Never!’

  Colour surged into Anne-Olympe’s pale cheeks. ‘You don’t disappoint me, because I knew how it would be. The only kindness I have received in this family came from Joss, whom I miss as sorely as if he had been my own brother, and Alice before she moved back to London in her widowhood. Letticia I rarely see and Ann I have met only at Joss’s funeral. As for Peter, you have no need to hear me speak of his attitude towards me. His courteous indifference is hardest of all to bear.’

  ‘I notice you don’t list your husband with regard to kindness! He is most generous to you and is he not always extolling your work?’

  Anne-Olympe, although stricken by this new attack, stood her ground. ‘Are you determined to claw me to shreds this day? Your wits and your ears are too sharp for you not to have learned long ago that Jonathan prefers his rich whores to me. His ostentatious gifts to me are to salve his own conscience for destroying our marriage and my work keeps me from enquiring too closely into his affairs. He has never loved me as I had hoped always to love him.’

  ‘There are ever faults on both sides. Have you enquired into how you may have failed him?’ There had risen in Hester in her present heated state the common maternal defence of the youngest child in any family at whatever age he or she happened to be. ‘He married you with the best of intentions.’

  ‘How little you know your own son!’ The retort was bitter and full of pain. ‘He became betrothed to me in the first place because my father could give him the start he wanted with family influence to back him. I knew it, but it didn’t matter then because I believed he cared truly for me as well. Then when you rose high on the horizon of fame, far above anything my father could hope to achieve, he switched his allegiance but married me for my dowry, which amounted to a small fortune, far more than he could have expected to gain elsewhere. Jonathan loves himself and money in that order. I and my children are sops to his vanity and social position.’ She stepped towards the door. ‘Never speak to me of kindness again. I have forgotten how it can be.’

  As she left the room Hester, further enraged by having been bested in the quarrel, snapped in two the design pencil she had been holding all the time and hurled the pieces across the table. One half bounced off on to the lid of the box of polished wooden handles about which Anne-Olympe had enquired. Hester stalked into the workshop and summoned a new apprentice to carry it across to her daughter-in-law’s domain. She did not want to see her again for several days.

  Sarah was playing Oranges-and-Lemons with Jonathan’s children on the lawn of their home when she saw their mother returning from the main workshop, a design in one hand and the other across her eyes as if in some kind of distress. Around her the children tugged at her skirts as she paused in the game, but she watched warily, ready to go if Anne-Olympe should stop to speak to her. She did not know why, but over the years she had become afraid of Jonathan’s wife, a fear that deepened and grew for no reason that she could fathom. She did not fear the other Batemans, although she disliked them all except Peter. William was not to be counted because she loved him, which put him in a category of his own somewhere in the recesses of her heart.

  ‘Come on, Aunt Sarah! You know the words. “Here comes a candle to light you to bed and here comes a chopper to chop off your head! Chop! Chop! Chop!”’

  Bill was shaking her hands up and down in his as the other children filed underneath the archway of their arms, each of the six giggling and hoping to be caught, except the toddler bringing up the rear with little idea of what the game was all about. Sarah did not like that line about the chopper. It held shades of the old axe and block on Tower Hill, filling her mind with dreadful images if she allowed her thoughts to dwell on it. There! Anne-Olympe had gone into the house. She relaxed immediately and the game continued to its hectic conclusion of a tug-of-war with everyone falling about on the grass and losing woollen hats and gloves in the melée. Her laughter echoed with theirs. She loved little children and was at her happiest with them. Many times she had longed for a baby of her own, but she had always had a curious moon-cycle that could be absent for months or a year at a time and it seemed to be the reason why she did not conceive.

  Once she had stolen one of the children’s dolls and taken it home to cuddle it on her own. But it had been a favourite with its rightful owner and the resulting hue and cry had frightened her. She had not known what to do with the doll and had hidden it. Then Peter had found it. Before returning it, he had bought her another in its place and she had not been left bereft. There were long periods when she forgot about the doll. These were what she thought about as her good spells when she and Peter went out socially or had his friends to dine, for she had no friends of her own and did not want them.

  When the afternoon games were over and the children had run indoors, Sarah set off homewards. It seemed to her, now that she thought about it, that it was a long time since she and Peter had danced or listened to music in somebody’s house or in a hall. There had been Christmas, of course, when they had all gathered at Hester’s home for roast goose. She would have enjoyed it with the children if Anne-Olympe had not been there. It was as if some instinct told her that her sister-in-law spelled danger as far as Peter was concerned. Perhaps it came from having witnessed them when they clashed over some matter. To her their faces always registered disagreement while their
bodies spoke another language that had no animosity in it. Once she had run to Peter in front of everybody and clung to him to remind him of her presence, for Anne-Olympe seemed to block out everything else for him. Then mentally he had returned to her, cupping her head in his hand, and as he looked at her she had had the satisfaction of seeing his eyes clear themselves of Anne-Olympe in a smile directed only at her.

  Whatever happened she must never lose him. Without him the Thornes might return to beat her with a stick or shut her up again in a cupboard as in childhood. There were other nameless terrors from which he protected her that lurked glimmering like pond water or swirled about as if viewed from a great height. Many times he had given her the same reassurance.

  ‘You are my wife, Sarah. Nobody shall ever harm you again. I have promised you and nothing can change that.’

  Yet when her spirits were low she felt compelled to go along several times a day to the workshop, as she had done twice that afternoon in the middle of the games on the lawn, to look in on him at his bench. The others there had given up greeting her, for she never answered them and they knew she had not come for their conversation. However busy he was, Peter would always look up from his work and glance across at her with a nod of acknowledgement and then she would leave again. On one occasion the new apprentice had given her a sly look and sniggered. Peter had leaped forward and given him a clout that had knocked him to the ground. He had never sniggered since then.

  Perhaps she would have felt more secure if she could believe that Peter loved her as he had loved Elizabeth. She came to a halt on the impact of the thought, wondering why she had not grasped it before. Yet she knew why. It had been enough that he liked her and was kind to her at all times, often tender almost beyond belief. It had become rare now for William to intrude on their marital life and even if she could not return the love she aimed to arouse in Peter, her reward would be in having him enthralled and under her control.

  When Peter came home from work that evening he found his wife wearing one of her best gowns of lilac-sprigged muslin with green ribbons entwined in her soft pale hair. ‘You’re looking very pretty this evening.’ It had become automatic for him to constantly reassure, strengthen and comfort her. Then, as he made for the stairs to wash and change out of his working clothes, she blocked his way by swinging around to sway out her skirts.

  ‘Let’s make a picnic of our dinner on the floor in the firelight,’ she suggested, remembering how she and William had lolled on cushions and giggled as they fed each other with whatever food either of them had managed to bring along.

  Peter, inured to the unexpected, considered his answer quickly. He was tired and hungry and had smelled saddle of mutton upon entering the house. The idea of coping uncomfortably with dripping mint sauce and all the rest of it appalled him. He wanted a broad chair and his feet under the table.

  ‘I think not, my dear. Wait until the warmer evenings when we can take a basket of food out to the Bunhill fields.’

  When he came downstairs again the table was laid as usual. A twinge of foreboding remained with him. He had pleasured her many times before the fire and although her suggestion of the picnic might have been a preliminary, there was something subtly different in her attitude towards him.

  It did not take long before he understood her aim and what lay behind it. He was immensely saddened by her waif-like hopefulness and foresaw complications that he had never anticipated arising after fourteen years of marriage to her. It proved to be worse than he feared. Throughout the ensuing months she tried all the tricks on him that she had played on William, associating them with the happiness of love and trying to relive those adolescent days. When nothing that she did resulted in wild chases and tumbles and extraordinary things being done to her, she became increasingly bewildered and confused. Worst of all, as far as Peter was concerned, her resentment against him for not being William was reawakened and it was apparent that all the good ground he had gained with care and patience and even fondness to make their lives together worthwhile was slipping away again.

  In the workshop Hester had drawn Jonathan into the designing of a gift she was making. A great honour lay in store for James. In November he was to take office as Lord Mayor of London and she wanted to make him something that would be both ornamental and useful. She had learned from the innumerable inscribed snuff-boxes, tankards, salvers and goblets that passed out of her workshop how little imagination people showed when it came to presentation pieces and she knew James would receive more than enough of those items during his year’s service to the City. Knowing there was nothing he hated more than hot food gone cold, she had decided on a special dish-cross with a lamp to keep warm whatever dish was placed upon it. There were plenty in his silver-cupboards, but this was to be one of permanent sideboard splendour. With Jonathan’s engineering skills it should be able to adjust to whatever size dish was in use.

  ‘Now let me have a look at your drawing,’ Jonathan said, resting the flat of his hands on her design table as he studied her preliminary sketches. Good living had played havoc with his figure. He had put on an enormous amount of weight and his jowled face had a beetroot tinge that deepened unattractively whenever he lost his temper or was out of breath. His tailor cut his coats to emphasize his shoulders and disguise all faults as far as possible, but when he was in his shirt-sleeves and working-apron the bulges of his once-slim body could not be hidden. Always fastidious, he changed his shirt twice a day in the workshop hours if it was soiled by sweat or dirt, and there was a fresh linen aroma about him as she leaned close to point to one and another of the ideas she had set down.

  ‘I thought that where the dish-holders enclose the central cross-piece, you could fix spring pieces of some kind that would expand or contract to need.’

  ‘Yes, I can do that.’ He enjoyed a challenge in silver as much as in a woman. Conquest was always enjoyable and then on to whatever next came his way, whether on the work-bench or in a bed. He had no regrets about marrying Anne-Olympe. She was a good wife with regards to keeping his house in order and also an excellent mother. After some initial trouble in the first years of their marriage, she no longer questioned him about his leisure-time away from her. After the birth of their last child he had continued to sleep in another bedchamber, which did away with the need to explain absences, and without discussion she had accepted the arrangement. He knew her to be a passionate woman when roused and supposed she found fulfilment these days in her work and in raising their children.

  ‘How soon can you work out the details?’ his mother wanted to know.

  ‘I’ll have them ready by tomorrow.’ He tapped the drawing. ‘Sir James is going to be mightily pleased with this dish-cross when it’s finished.’

  Hester enjoyed every moment of working on her gift. She had made articles for James before, but those had been commissioned and paid for, which was different altogether. Much thought had gone into the decoration, which enhanced every part of the dish-cross while at the same time the clear simplicity that characterized all her pieces was retained. Both Peter and Jonathan had a flair for design themselves, but Joss, a superb craftsman, had been content to execute and had rarely if ever offered any ideas of his own. When the time came to retire — and she had no intention of thinking about that yet! — her business would be in good hands. Since joining her, Jonathan had never mentioned any thought of setting up alone, although he had long been in a position to do so, and she guessed it was because he thought he had only to wait a while longer before the full fame of the Bateman name fell across his and his brother’s shoulders. He was going to have a long wait if the matter lay in her hands!

  When November came and the retiring Lord Mayor was preparing to relinquish his honourable post, Hester made a special trip to see James. She wanted him to receive her gift when others were not present. In the salon adjacent to his office, he opened the rosewood box and saw the masterpiece within. He shook his head, marvelling at what was revealed.

  ‘Yo
u have surpassed yourself, my dear Hester.’ He lifted it out and his reverence turned to chuckling delight as the purpose of the spring-pieces became clear to him. ‘What a gift! What ingenuity! There’ll be no more excuses in my household about a dish being too large or too small to keep the food warm!’ After setting it down on a polished table, where the reflection doubled its shining splendour, he embraced and kissed her heartily. ‘I thank you from the bottom of my heart.’

  She saw him next when he was installed as London’s new Lord Mayor at what was known as the ‘silent ceremony’, which had already been in existence for five centuries. The following morning he would ride in state to the Law Courts to swear civic allegiance to the King while asserting the independence of the city to control its own affairs. Her allotted seat in the great chamber of the Guild Hall by his invitation gave her an excellent view of the whole procedure, the bowing of James to his predecessor and his acceptance of the civic insignia handed into his trust for the twelve months of faithful duty that lay ahead. Pervading the air was the scent of the posies of sweet herbs and flowers that the civic dignatories carried at all times in crowded gatherings to keep away infection and — in the past — the Plague. It was unlikely that she would ever be able to recall this great day for James without the fragrance in her nostrils of lavender and rosemary, dried clover, mint and honeysuckle as well as the faint perfume of winter-pale rosebuds plucked leafless from sheltered places. It was strange how herbs had patterned their friendship.

  She did not try to speak to him after his investiture or attempt to draw near in the crush of aldermen and well-wishers, for this was his wife’s day as well as his and Mary had taken her place at his side. She had come from the country to be present at the silent ceremony and to wave him off from the Mansion House next morning, when his visit to the Law Courts was combined with a processional tour of the city to let the people see for themselves the man they had chosen for the office. Mary had grown thin and leathery with the years, lacking completely the curve of bosom and hip that could always bring a twinkle to James’s eye in the past. There was a mannish cut to her clothes as if she wanted her outfit to look as much like a riding habit as possible and her only jewellery was a horseshoe of pearls.