There was an American ship lying off Bombay and due to sail within the week, one of their fast barquentines designed to carry high-value, low-bulk cargoes very quickly over great distances. Wolverstone paid well above the going rate for the best of cabins for the wounded soldier and his attendants and sent James aboard with his three men and four female companions - they would have to have something to do on the long voyage - arranging with the Master of the ship that he would carry the young ladies across the Atlantic with him when James disembarked in Madeira – they would be an embarrassment to him in London and could be replaced with the home-grown product very easily. The ship’s home port was Savannah and Wolverstone had small doubt that the Indian girls would end up on the block and then bought into the private keeping of rich Southern gentlemen, but they had been sold by their families already, were slaves in all but name, so it made little difference, he thought – it was more important that James should discover and remember that he was still a man.
“Will you be staying with the young gentleman, Sergeant Murphy? Or will you return to Ireland as soon as you have delivered him home?”
“I would hope to stay in his service, Major. I like the lad, he had the makings of an officer, and he was already a gentleman. Donnelly will go for his groom and Hewett will become all the valet that he needs, and I shall be his man, as simple as that. Should he marry, then I might quietly fade away, not needed any longer; if not, then there will be much I can do. He will pay me what he can, I doubt not, and I am of a saving nature, so if I am no longer needed in five years or so, then I will be comfortably enough off.”
“My lord will look after you, never fear for your future – he is open-handed to those who serve him and his. He is a great man, but you will find that he will know your name and face and will speak to you whenever you cross his path. The young master shows much of the gentleman his father in him, no question of that, but his lordship has a keen mind on him, too.”
“Do not be underrating the lad, sir – not quick in his perceptions, I grant you, but not stupid – he takes his time to reach an end, but it commonly is the right end that he gets to.”
“Keep him busy, sergeant, for he must not mope and pine away, and he is very young to cope with this, especially since it was more accident than wound in battle. He must always be wondering why it should have happened, and why to him.”
“Luck, sir – no more than that. He did not deserve his fate, that is for sure, but who does? With respect, sir, and meaning no insult at all, I saw you at Vitoria, and yet you are here now, not riding in front of your own regiment – where is the merit in that?”
“Perhaps, sergeant – and that should be Mr Murphy now, should it not? I will say, however, that I am richer by far than I was, and will be more so, and, you may not believe this, I think I may be happier where I am. When I was a soldier I never asked myself whether I was happy, I did my duty and needed no more, but now I find that there is a lot more to my existence than I had ever imagined and I quite like it. I am considering the married state, and that I would not have done until I had to as a colonel, if I had ever become one. Now I am thinking of it for the pleasure of having a family of my own, so perhaps there is merit, after all, and I have my reward!”
It sounded to Murphy like a good man determinedly making the best of a bad job, but his was not to argue, he thought, dropping the topic.
“The Poor Law rates are rising again, my lord – Eakins calculates that they add one half again to his rent already. Add tithes to that and there is a significant burden on the farmers – we are lucky here that tithes are set so low, and luckier still in the Reverend, my lord, he uses every penny of the tithe income on relief for the poor, and the people know that to be so and do not resent the payment quite so much. The rector at Raunds set up his carriage last year immediately after the tithes came in and created much ill-feeling, so much so that this year he has complained to the magistrates that none have been paid, and he is demanding that the defaulters should be brought to court.”
“He has the right in law to treat tithes as his income and to do whatever he wishes with them, I understand,” Tom responded, “but he will be a fool if he pushes men too much – if he has even one committed to prison then he will be treading on dangerous ground. Raunds is very low – chapel is strong there and they are close to the Fenland and still remember the Puritans – the name Oliver is not uncommon amongst their children I am told.”
“There were ricks burnt outside Harborough last week, Mudge tells me. His last letter reported much disquiet amongst the local people, due to farmers cutting their labourers’ wages. He has the pork business up and running well, he says, and the wages he is paying have made the estate very popular – he thinks he will be untouched by unrest.”
“Then he is very fortunate – we will be lucky as a country to come to the end of this winter without a civil war. Keep listening, Quillerson, and be ready to increase our giving. The slightest whiff of starvation, of famine, must bring a very positive response from the Hall – there must not be one hungry person in the village, and you can be loose in your definition of what constitutes a villager, sir! If children from outside the area appear in our cottages, relatives, cousins’ sons, that sort of thing, then you will turn a blind eye and feed them – it may cost us a few hundreds, but it will be cheaper than a guillotine erected in the village square.”
“Will the Volunteers be called for again, my lord? Should we not be arming ourselves in case the worst should occur?”
“No. If we do we will only encourage the Reds in their belief that we intend to butcher them. There are nearly four hundred thousands of sailors and soldiers turned out of their ships and barracks, Quillerson – some would join the Volunteers, more would probably stand in arms against them. We dare not start a fight, for we would stand little chance of winning it.”
They were lucky in an early spring that year, the weather kinder and the animals out in the fields and extra hands taken on a couple of weeks earlier for the ploughing and sowing. Quillerson did all he could to encourage his tenants to spend money, to repair barns and build more, to fence and ditch and mend gates, to buy in hurdles and clear the few patches of scrub land remaining – anything to put a few more pennies in the labourers’ pockets. There was a slight upturn in the business world as well, a sense that the depression caused by the ending of the wars was coming to a natural conclusion, that the world was returning to normal.
Tom very deliberately splashed out on Charlotte’s wedding. It was less than a year since her mother’s death and propriety demanded a low-key affair, but the estate and village needed a celebration, beeves to be roasted, much beer to be drunk, dancing to take place and careless virgins to regret their errors and let out the waists of their skirts.
“Nothing like a bloody good piss-up to put politics into its proper place, Quillerson,” Tom reflected. “If we need to build a cottage or two extra to allow for enthusiastic young couples to start their own married lives, well, so be it, there’s nothing new in that, even if the Reverend might tut-tut a little.”
The Masters and Star families descended upon the Hall and the surrounding houses, as was only to be expected, the bulk of them breaking their journeys to London for the Season – carefree gentry in holiday mood and open-handed, sixpences and shillings flowing for the least service, a gate opened or a horse held.
It was a shame, the villagers all agreed that my lord had only the one daughter. A pity as well that Mr Robert’s young wife was due to be brought to bed any day and so she could not be at his side, but young Mr Joseph – such a tall, handsome lad he had grown – was at the side of Lord Star’s daughter, a pretty girl but not a candle to Miss Andrews, and many could see a match there. It would have been a good thing if Mr James could have been home as well, but he had gone for a soldier, and a mighty fierce one according to all they had heard, a man to make his father proud. My lord looked lonely, they thought, missing his lady something cruel, it would be bes
t if he was to wed again, more comfortable for him now that his girl was to go away.
They looked at the Latimers, Sir Charles and that Miss Robinson as was, now become Lady Latimer – she had landed on her feet, and now they knew how Sir Charles had come to his title – one of my lord’s kin could not be expected to wed with a plain mister, that was for sure. They glanced at her belly, thinking she would be well-advised to get a move on; she was a bit long in the tooth for a first already.
All went well, as was only to be expected, even the weather smiling on the happy couple, an April day without a single shower, the wind on the sharp side perhaps but no more than was normal for early spring. The villagers, present and sober at the marriage service, noted all, including Alec Fraser and his wife all dressed up like a lady, just an Eakins but the gown she was wearing satin, and not from her own fingers – it was all right for some! The older villagers tended to deplore such unbecoming behaviour, forgetting her class and where she came from, aping the ways of her betters – she would come to a bad end, it wasn’t natural! The younger men and women, the ones who had been her friends before she went so far up in the world, looked enviously at her, the girls thinking she was lucky, some of the youths wondering if they had to stay stuck in the village mud, whether they could not get out and make something of themselves – there was an office in Kettering where a man could go and sign on to start a new life in America, or they could make their way to the north or even walk a couple of days to Birmingham and the paid jobs there.
The Frasers sat at the back of the church and did not attend the wedding breakfast, as was only right, but they occupied the high table at the works’ feast, in the sole company of Mr and Mrs Cairncross, their importance emphasised when Alec was begged to make the official toast to the married couple and to my lord. They were off to London as well following the festivities – Alec to spend a fortnight or so at the new shipyard, overseeing the start of construction of the slip and new buildings, ensuring that all was correctly placed for the efficient running of the business. Michael had arranged for the wife of his senior clerk to escort young Mrs Fraser to the appropriate shops and bazaars and to show her the sights, a treat she would remember all her days, he hoped.
The Frasers stayed two nights with the in-laws, not an entirely felicitous visit, a younger son, deeply agricultural, enquiring of his sister why she had started ‘to talk all posh-like’ and then commenting that she was rich now, so he supposed it all went together-like. The boy’s ear was clipped, her father having thoroughly approved of his daughter’s self-improvement, but her mother made it clear that she was worried and reminded her that there was always a home with them if it all went wrong.
“It won’t go noways wrong, Mum – my Alec be – is – a clever man and he’s going to spend his whole life making steam ships and engines, and bein’ paid good money for them. He says, Mum, that you and Dad did ought to come and visit us, so you could see our house – it’s twice the size of this one, Mum, and his in freehold, not rented! After harvest, when everything’s quiet again and before the roads get too wet to travel on, you could come up for a week or two.”
Her mother would not commit herself – she had never been further than Northampton in her life, was not at all sure about travelling two or even three days away from home, they might get lost among those foreigners up there. Eakins was further travelled; he had been as far as the market at Huntingdon, once, was more open-minded about the prospect, especially when Alec pointed out that they could travel by Accommodation boat on the canal, far cheaper than a post-chaise and much quicker than the stages.
The land for the new yard was completely cleared, with the exception of the sheds serving as home to the navvies. They had levelled every house and tenement and evicted the rat and human population and had burnt the rotten wood and frugally saved all of the usable roof-tiles and slates and the few unbroken panes of glass. The solid floorboards and joists and rafters were neatly stacked together with a small amount of lead flashing from the chimneys – very little lead had been found, most of it gone for scrap years since, the gaps rough-stuffed with rags. The bricks had all been used – the later, standard size commons laid herring-bone as roadways, the older small Elizabethan and Jacobean red and yellow clay, crushed and made into the base that covered the mud and provided a firm foundation for the slip and open yard.
Barrow, the Clerk of the Works as he had become now that building was about to start, greeted Fraser with some self-satisfaction – he had completed his first task precisely to time and for a little less than the budgeted cost. Rumpo Willy stood at his side, waiting to hear if some or all of the navvies would be required over the summer or whether he should lead them up to the Midlands in pursuit of canal work.
“Thou hast paid us well, Mr Barrow, and not stinted on the grub. Us did all think ‘twould be good beef for the first week, Neddy thereafter, but thou hast been straight, sir, and a true man, and I am told by all the lads that so I must say to thee!”
“Why, thank you, Rumpo Willy – I have never worked with navigators before and did not know what to expect – you are the best, hardest workers I have ever known. I know, as well, but would not say it, that there has been occasional trouble with gangs thrown out of the rookery – I was worried at first until I discovered that your men enjoyed it, thought it funny.”
“Soft little buggers – they did think they was ‘ard men, but us showed they that they wasn’t men at all. Us had no need for they old bangers you did get, but ‘twas kindly thought, even so.”
Alec Fraser also had never worked with navvies before, but he had heard the stories and knew to be polite.
“Rumpo Willy, my name is Fraser and I am Chief Engineer for Roberts – my job for the two weeks I shall be here is to draw up the ground plans for the yard and get you all started. There is to be a wharf and a separate coaling yard, a slip big enough for a ship of two hundred tons burthen, an iron plate shop, a riveting shop and a furnace where we will bend and forge iron parts as we need them – all of these close to each other, I would think. Also on the site will be an engine shop, mostly for the steel and brass and bronze and copper work as the engines will be built in the hulls themselves, the bulk of the parts cast in Liverpool and St Helens and shipped here, and a large woodworkers shop – there will still be a great deal of wood in our ships. We shall want a good roadway as well to lead out to the main highway. I know your men can build the roads and wharves and the slip, can they do the brickwork as well?”
“Footings and groundwork, Master, but they ain’t best suited for the long walls and for roofing. They can dredge the river as well, for the depth beside the wharves – there do be a fair bit of mud out there – us might like to run piles out thirty or forty yard to turn the current and push the old silt along a bit, Master. As well, Master, and not tryin’ to be tellin’ you your job, but, a slip for two ‘undred tons? That be what us be startin’ with, but what ‘appens ten year from now, Master? I do suspect they old steamers of ours be goin’ to grow, Master, and us don’ want to be knockin’ ‘alf the yard down and startin’ over again.”
Fraser stared for a few seconds, looking at nothing, it seemed, then picked up his folder and pencil and made a pair of slashing lines across his plan.
“I have no desire to cause you offence, either, Rumpo Willy, so please accept what I am about to ask as being said in honesty. Can you read and write, sir, and perform sums?”
“My old mum sent I to Dame school, Master, till I were twelve. There weren’t no money for more - truth to tell, I don’ reckon there were money enough for that much, I reckons she went ‘ungry more nor once, but I got my letters and ciphering. She died two year later, too bloody young, wore ‘erself out lookin’ out for I!”
“I am sorry, but it is a familiar enough tale – too many womenfolk die young for that cause, I fear. In part to make her sacrifice worth something, I would wish you to change your way of life, Rumpo Willy, and your name – you are intelligent, and you ha
ve a sufficiency of education for my needs. I want a manager for this yard, Rumpo Willy, a man who can think as well as do, and you have just thought further ahead than me!”
“Manager! Dressed up like Mr Barrow ‘ere?”
Fraser looked at Barrow, wearing a very ordinary frockcoat over a white shirt and dark tie-cravat, a beaver hat, shiny half boots and dark, loose woollen trousers, not the pantaloons of the gentry – virtually identical to himself, in fact. He then glanced at Rumpo Willy – brown boots, well dubbined but not polished, canvas trousers, a brown, coarse flannel, open-necked shirt with a bright red Belcher handkerchief knotted at his throat, a leather waistcoat, all topped by a shapeless, shaggy fur hat – quite possibly the sacrifice of a slow tabby.
“Well, yes – in fact, that would be necessary – how else would the men know what you were? If you look like one of them, you are one of them, out of work as much as in, Rumpo Willy. As I said, I am asking you to make a very big change in your life – a house of your own, a servant, perhaps two, more when you wed and start a family of course. Sitting in an office for some part of the day, walking your works for much of the rest, watching your men and giving orders when they are needed, in charge of everything, taking praise when all goes well, standing in front of my lord and explaining yourself when – never, I hope – it goes wrong. I think you can do it, sir. Mr Barrow has already told me that you were the most important man on this site, and that, he said, included him, and I can see you are. Your first job will be to sit down with me and redraw this plan of mine – you know this site, where the earth is soft, where it will be strong enough to take a big building. Where should I locate the wharf, for example, what will be best for the ships and for the yard?”
The Pain Of Privilege (A Poor Man at the Gate Series Book 4) Page 24