Bellman

by Diane Setterfield

  “And you are my key men now,” he told them. “I need your help to keep the hands steady and the work progressing smoothly through this period. It is only natural for the men to worry. Change always brings worry. But I know that there is no need for doubt or uncertainty. Your job is to convey that to the men in such a way that they feel the truth of it. Do you think you can do that?”

  They looked at him. He was steady, confident, reliable. It was impossible to imagine anything going wrong.

  “Yes, Mr. William.’ They nodded. “Yes, Mr. Bellman, sir.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  It was Wednesday. The day of the funeral. William was irritated. Since the death he had spent the best part of his time at the mill, planning and ordering and problem solving. He had slept for a few hours at most. There was so much still to do.

  What was a funeral? Only sitting and standing and singing and praying. Any fool could do it. His efficient working mind proposed delegating it a hundred times, and he regretted that he could not accept the idea. But it would not do. Someone must lead the mourning, someone must show himself in public, visibly, as the new Mr. Bellman of the mill. As likely as not, Charles had not even received the letter yet, and even if he could have made the distance in the time, his presence would not have the same effect. It could only be Mr. William, Bellman the nephew. It must be done.

  After five good morning hours at the mill William raced home to change. The tub of water in front of the fire was cooling for it had been waiting for him this last hour, and Rose, who had put out his best suit and a freshly laundered shirt, was vexed. But on the day of a funeral you do not grumble at the chief mourner.

  When he was almost ready, she stood in front of him to retie the cravat his hasty fingers had rumpled. He was taut with tension, his impatience was palpable.

  “You’re overdoing things.” She looked at him for a few long seconds. He was thinking of something else, appeared scarcely to see her.

  “Come home after the funeral. Are you listening to me?”

  “Of course.”

  “Good. Now, go. You’ll be late.”

  He was late—almost. Anxious faces were looking out for him. “Here he is!” said Mrs. Lane, relieved and cross. He took his place in the line of mourners and they proceeded to church.

  During the service William rose and sat and knelt with the congregation, murmured amen where he had to and sang. His voice did its job, gathered and organized the voices of the mill workers in the congregation. He knew the songs by heart and all the while he was singing, he was thinking.

  Stroud . . . Word had come. The ears he had planted in drinking places along the road to Stroud also had mouths, and the mouths had come whispering everything they knew to him. The Stroud millers had orders again. The hands they had laid off were welcome back, and they would match Bellman’s wages. “And they are tempted to go,” the mouth told him. “At least, those that have family still over Stroud way.” William was disappointed but not surprised. If they went, it would mean losing some good men.

  The simple answer was to offer more money. But what was to stop the Stroud millers from matching his higher wages? It was easy to escalate salaries, a lot harder to rein them in again. There had to be a better way. He would think of one.

  The strain of overwork and lack of sleep had put bags under William’s eyes and taken the color from his cheeks. His eyes were bloodshot. If he had a half-absent air about him all through the funeral, it passed quite naturally for grief.

  Coming out of the church a knot of mourners formed in front of William. He was deep in thought, blundered, and in the minor collision that followed, someone turned. The face was instantly familiar. Head on one side, curiously, the man gave William a stare: frank, ironic, questioning. William couldn’t quite place him. It was a bit unsettling.

  At the Mill House, William drank a glass or two with Paul’s friends and neighbors and the most senior men from the mill.

  “Who was the fellow at the funeral . . . ?” he asked Ned. “I recognized him but can’t put a name to him.”

  “What did he look like?”

  William opened his mouth to describe him but was too tired to call the man’s features to mind properly.

  “He’s not here?” Ned asked.

  “No.”

  “You are more familiar with Mr. Bellman’s friends than I am. If you don’t recognize him it’s hardly surprising that I don’t.”

  “I suppose not.”

  ***

  William was among the first to leave the gathering. He gave his feet no conscious direction, and left to their own devices, they turned of their own accord toward the mill. They had made no promise to Rose. The mill was closed all afternoon as a mark of respect for Paul. It was an opportunity to get on with some paperwork in peace and quiet.

  It was unusual for the mill to be still. William was used to the noise, the different machines, the shouting, the wheel, all with their own tone and rhythm, blending into a cacophony too familiar to be uncomfortable. It was strange on a weekday to hear the rooks cry overhead. He could hear the thumping of his own heart, the rush of blood in his veins. As he opened the door to his office, something black appeared to be perched on his desk. It seemed to rise, flapping, toward him.

  William cried out and raised his hands to protect himself, but the thing receded.

  It was only cloth. An open window, a draft he had made himself by opening the door, and a sample of fine black merino. Attached to it, in his uncle’s hand, was a note: “Will—for Portsmouth? J.”

  William reached to the ink and had already put pen to paper for an answer when he realized that his uncle was dead.

  I have seen that man before, he thought. He was at my mother’s funeral.

  He had to grip the back of a chair to steady himself.

  ***

  Many hours later William stood and left the office. The paperwork was untouched. He had sat all through the end of the afternoon and half the evening, not knowing what he did. His thoughts were as muddled as a barrow load of wool roving on its way to the spinning house. His chest meanwhile was overfull of beating heart and flighty breath and urgent jabbing sensations.

  As he walked home, the sky that was losing its light seemed full of ill-defined menace. He wanted walls around him, a roof over his head and Rose’s arms. He shrank from looking at the leafy canopies of the trees that rustled in the dark, and was relieved when he came to the door of the cottage.

  “William Bellman, what has become of you? You gave me your word you would come home, and you have been at the mill for hours.”

  Rose was too mindful of the sleeping children to shout, instead she hissed her anger. “Have you forgotten you have a home? Have you given one thought to your children these last days? Have you once thought of me? Because we think of nothing but you, and this is how you repay us!”

  Though she averted her face, hands plunged in a sink of water, he saw the gleam of tears on her cheeks.

  He glanced at the table. It was late to be clearing the meal away.

  “We waited for you. We waited though the children were hungry. We waited because you had been at the funeral and we wanted to comfort you!”

  William sank to his knees in the corner of the kitchen. His fists rose to his eyes, the way his sons’ did when they wept, but he did not weep. His shoulders shook, and the pain in his chest rose up and stabbed at the back of his throat, choking him, yet he could not weep.

  He heard the soft placing of the plates Rose was washing, and then she was crouching beside him, drying her hands on a cloth. Her still-damp arms enfolded him and he felt her cheek resting on the top of his head.

  “I’m sorry. The day of the funeral . . . He was a father to you, William. I’m so sorry.”

  ***

  She fed him morsels of bread and cheese. She sliced late plums for him. She t
ook him to bed where they made love with sudden intensity. Afterward they fell instantly asleep in each other’s arms.

  The next morning William slipped out of the warm bed before dawn and went to the mill.

  ***

  The mill lost not an hour in productivity. He did his uncle’s job at the same time as continuing to do half of his own. Ned took on a good deal for him in the office, and he had Rudge and Crace and the others to do the rest. There were a few younger men he had noted: reliable, intelligent, willing, and he let them know there were opportunities. The time it cost him to train them up to what he wanted was time he could ill afford. But it was an investment. In four to six months, he would reap the benefit as they grew into the roles he envisaged for them. And who else to teach them but him? A number of others he called and laid off. Shirkers, unreliable types, men you couldn’t quite trust. If Stroud wanted men, let them first have the ones he selected for them . . .

  Every day he made himself available to whoever wanted him. Essential that all should know this was not a captain-less ship. Confidence was the essence of the matter. So all day long he made himself visible. He went wherever he was wanted. He answered questions, trivial and serious, brief and involved. He spoke to foremen, clerks, weavers, shearers, fullers, dyers, porters, and spinsters. He never passed Mute Greg without a nod of the head, and if he was near enough, the donkey received a reassuring pat. All must know the mill was in safe hands.

  Only when the mill was quiet was there time to pore over the papers, to tally figures, check off orders, write letters. And when that was done, there were his uncle’s personal finances to manage. He settled small debts out of his own pocket, saw that Mrs. Lane had the housekeeping she needed, paid the gardener, spoke to the bank manager.

  “How long will this go on?” Rose asked at the end of a week when William had worked seventeen hours a day every day. “You’ll wear yourself out.”

  “Five more weeks,” he predicted.

  “Really? As precise as that?”

  He nodded. He’d worked it out.

  Mind you, once this five-week period of stabilization was over, he had other things in mind.

  ?

  Chapter Eighteen

  The man dismounting in the courtyard cut a curious figure in his foreign clothes and with his hesitant manner. From the office window William saw him hail one of the porters.

  He doesn’t even know his way, he thought.

  A few minutes later Charles was at the office door.

  “By the time the letter caught up with me . . . I came as soon as I could. Far too late, of course.”

  William offered the conventional sentiments and Charles accepted them. “I should offer you my condolences too,” Charles said. “These last years you have been closer to your uncle than I ever was to him, though he was my father.” It was said without rancor, merely stated as a fact.

  William offered his cousin a seat, but Charles seemed reluctant to take it. He was tall and straight and well fed as ever; his muscles were the leisurely kind, William thought: his legs would be good for walking up hills to get a better view of the landscape. When William opened the ledger to show the mill’s profits, Charles did not lay a finger on the pages but clasped his soft, white hands firmly behind his back. He leaned forward to show himself willing, not so much as to indicate any real interest. William pointed here and there—calloused hands, dirt under his fingernails—setting out in layman’s terms what had been done, was being done, to keep the mill productive.

  “Yes,” said Charles. “I see.” He failed to keep the tremor out of his voice. His eyes flickered, over the tables of figures and the order records, and though William tried to be brief and use simple language, he knew Charles was seeing nothing, hearing nothing.

  “The thing is,” he said, “I’ve a few commitments in Venice . . . “

  It had the sound of a rehearsed statement, something he’d been murmuring under his breath all the way from Italy. It must have sounded all right, in his head, in carriages and on horseback and on the sea. The magic words that would get him out of his difficulties. William supposed it was only now, pronouncing the words in this office, that Charles heard how weak they seemed.

  The cousins looked at each other.

  “There’s no need for you to stay if you don’t want to,” William said. “Everything’s under control. I can keep you informed in Italy or wherever. No need to turn your life upside down.”

  “No, no . . . So long as that’s all right with you.”

  William nodded. “I’ll take a salary.” He named a figure. “Here are the profit figures for the last five years. We’ll divide that fifty-fifty. I’d like to reinvest more in the future than we have done lately, but I’m happy to do that out of my share of the profit and take any increase in profit in future years over and above the present level. I can guarantee you an income of—” He jotted the figure down and passed it over. “What do you think?”

  The sum was much more than the allowance Charles had received from his father. It was more than he needed. He would be able to live exactly as he chose.

  “That sounds . . . “

  He tried to remember the kind of thing his father would have said, with his judicious and extensive language for talking about money and business, but he couldn’t. Charles could discuss poetry and history and Louis XV furniture, and he could do this in English, Italian, or French, but the plain English of business negotiation was quite alien to him. So he nodded.

  The cousins shook hands.

  Charles’s face started to return to its normal color. He was saved. William had saved him.

  For five minutes Charles waited while William wrote out the agreement they had just reached. Relieved of the fear that he might have to spend the rest of his life imprisoned in it, Charles looked at the office as an outsider looks at another man’s place of work, admiring the industrious impression it gave but understanding nothing. It was clear that William knew what he was doing. Twice someone knocked at the door with an impenetrable question, and each time William dealt with it in half a dozen words that meant nothing to Charles. Twice he made a note to himself in a smart calfskin notebook, then returned to drafting his contract without a hesitation.

  The pen Charles signed with was the only item he touched all the while he was at the mill. William signed in turn and the two men shook hands again.

  “Thank you,” Charles couldn’t help saying. “Now, what is this?”

  A pencil outline in a childish hand, on the free page of William’s notebook. A donkey. William smiled. “My daughter amuses herself making pictures in my notebook, if she can’t find anything else to draw on.”

  Charles showed more interest in the donkey picture than he had in anything else since he had arrived. He flicked back in the book and found other sketches: a flower, a gate, a cat. “How old is she?” he wanted to know. “Does she have lessons?”

  William realized that his cousin was a man of conversation. He was not used to work, to the clock, to the sense of measuring the hours ahead and dividing them according to the number of tasks to be completed within them.

  “Call in at the house,” he suggested. “Come today and eat with us. Dora will be pleased to tell you how old she is. If you are very good she will draw your portrait.”

  When his cousin was gone, William took up his pen and fresh paper with great satisfaction. There was a project that had been close to his heart for a long time. Paul, aware of the level of investment required, had been cautious of the risk. William had read up on hydraulics. He knew the principles inside out, and enough of the detail to have been able to make some preliminary sketches himself. He had assessed the terrain and researched the experts in the field. With the right man, the risk was negligible—and he knew which was the right man. All the while the situation with Charles had been unresolved he had been unable to act. But now!

/>   He wrote to the engineer, lost himself in the pleasure of making explanatory sketches. Several hours passed.

  He looked at the clock. Supper time. He ought to go home.

  On the other hand, it was the ideal moment to find Turner at his farmhouse and make him an offer for that bit of land that he couldn’t refuse.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Charles found his cousin’s wife to be a charming, capable person, just the wife a man such as his cousin needed. The children were lively, happy, curious souls. He sat in the small living room that he remembered from his childhood. His grandmother had not been pleased by his visits to his cousin’s home, but his father had not discouraged it. Memories of his aunt, William’s mother, came to mind, and he told some little stories about her.

  Rose saw that her husband’s cousin was surprised by the rapt attention these anecdotes aroused. “We are learning more from you in a few minutes than my husband has told us in years,” she explained. “Will you stay and eat with us? Dora will show you her drawings while I am cooking.”

  It was light and there was warmth in the air. Charles sat in the garden with the young artist at work. She showed him page after page of sketches, each one just a few broken lines, interrupted, aborted, incomplete, and yet to Charles’s eye at least, distinctly avian.

  Dora flicked through quickly, creasing the pages in her dissatisfaction.

  “Careful.” He put out a hand to halt her. “What’s this?”

  “A crow. He comes into the garden, over there. I see him from my window.”

  Charles drew the book nearer to him. There were faults. No one had taught the child the correct way to hold a pencil, and she applied too much pressure on the paper. Her efforts to draw feathers were naive. The bird had no eyes. Yet it was distinctly corvid. The claw grip on the branch, the angle of the legs, the balance and weight of the body were all there. There was enough clarity to convince, despite the inexperience.