Bellman showed him his purse, to jog his memory, but the man shook his head.
“What good is money to me now, eh? Old as I am, I’ll not have the time to spend it.”
So much for nothing! But a thought struck Bellman.
“A funeral then. Six horses, two mutes, and an angel over your grave.”
The man told him everything he wanted to know: “Haematoxylum campechianum, otherwise known as bloodwood. You can buy it anywhere, but in my experience the best comes from a man in Mexico . . . “
From there, Bellman rode to the south coast and met with the captain of a ship heading for South America.
“There is a man in Yucatan,” he explained. “I want to buy all the bloodwood he has. He is to supply no one else. I want you to bring it to me and on no account to let it be mixed with bloodwood from other sources.” He pointed to some figures on a paper. “This is what I will pay you. This is what I will pay him.”
The man looked at the paper. “He will be a rich man.”
“We will all be rich men.”
It was not all cloth and bloodwood. In Whitby Bellman watched young men being lowered on ropes down the perilous cliffs of shale to the stripe of black. Suspended over the waves, the men hammered and tapped to extract the jet. From the shore he went into the town, where he visited a number of carvers, selected the best of them, instructed them to take on assistants and apprentices and placed orders for rings, brooches, lockets, and necklets, earrings, hair decorations. He ordered beads by the thousand: plain and faceted, carved and polished, beads of every shape and size to be stitched to gowns and hats and cuffs and bags where they would catch the light and gleam and glitter darkly. Fathomless black for the first phase of mourning, certainly, but after that, why should black not be as brilliant as any color?
In the course of weeks and months, Bellman discovered a great diversity of workplaces. There was the milliner’s studio, the cordwainer’s atelier, the low-ceilinged premises of the umbrella makers. At bookbinders’ across London he negotiated prices for books and diaries bound in all grades of black and gray skin and linen, in which the bereaved might record for all posterity the last days, pious words, and divine visions of their lost ones. He climbed stairs to a damp-free room where paper of various weights and qualities and sizes was laid out for his inspection, all with black borders, ranging from half an inch to one-eighth of an inch thick. He placed the largest single order the company had ever received, so that countless widows and children, as yet unbereaved, would be able to inform their circle of the deaths that were yet to happen. In a reek of oil and ink he got his fingers dirty poking into the mechanisms of a printing press. “Productivity?” he wanted to know. “Maintenance?” What it boiled down to was this: would he be able to deliver headed notepaper within London within four hours of notification? When he got the answer he wanted, he ordered a press.
“Seven months’ wait? Too long.”
He bribed the manufacturer to jump the queue.
Coffins, of course. Bellman ran his finger along smooth finished pieces of work in a dozen different joinery workshops. How much oak do you have in stock? What about elm? Mahogany? Where do you season your timber? For how long? In warehouses he followed the grain in the wood, looked for knots and warping and other flaws. When he had found the best in the hundred miles around London, he drew up contracts. “I pay the best prices, but you sell to no one else. No one, mind.”
Bellman turned his attention to his catalogue. He advertised at the art school for artists to produce drawings for his catalogues, and a series of young men presented themselves at his office with portfolios. He looked through sketches of antique ruins, classical statues with naked breasts and missing arms, architectural fragments. He was looking for the ability to convey a lot of information in a small space, accurately and with clarity. After that it was a matter of judging who could work fast and reliably.
Bellman employed a trio of such artists. The students spent their evenings and Sunday afternoons drawing detailed pictures of over two hundred different styles of coffin and funerary ornament. Coffins would be lead lined or unlined or metallic lined; with handles and escutcheons in brass or silvered, plain or with many degrees of ornamentation; lined in silk or velvet or satin, embroidered or plain; the lid embellished with plaques engraved with lilies or ivy or the eternal serpent.
Two graying sisters with long fingers and mysterious smiles wrote lavish descriptions of these funerary items to accompany the drawings. In a separate section of the catalogue, certain of the designs were repeated with delicate adjustments and additions, making them suitable for children’s coffins. The gray sisters excelled themselves here; their smiles when they delivered the copy were even more enigmatic. All these drawings, all this text, Bellman had printed on the best quality paper and bound into catalogues that were a marvel of gravity and beauty in themselves.
The prices he put on a separate sheet, slipped into a quarter pocket inside the back cover, like an afterthought.
***
Bellman surprised himself sometimes.
But I can sleep anywhere! he thought as he turned over yet again and rearranged the sheets that had enshrouded him yet again.
It was true. On his long journeys he stayed at roadside inns where he could lay his bones down on a rough straw bed and slept as sweetly as a lapdog on a silk pillow. At the house he had bought in London the revels in the street never disturbed him. Even in a coach being driven along a pitted and stony country road, he could close his eyes and nod off, giving his overworked brain a rest.
Only in Whittingford, in his own bed, was he sleepless.
His habit was to lie on his left side. In the old days that had meant Rose was behind him. He would hear her breathing in the night. Sometimes, as she edged close to him for warmth, her hand would gently stir his sleep. Now that she was dead, the space at his back was alive with her absence.
He had tried sleeping on his right side and on his back. He tried sleeping on the other side of the bed altogether. He moved the bed into another room and brought in a new one. He changed rooms. Nothing worked. The bed stroked his back with its fingers, the sheet embraced him, every draught was her sigh.
It was no good. He got up and went to the window to look outside. The sky was almost dark, but a sliver of moon highlighted the church spire. On just such a night he had found himself in the churchyard, talking to Black with the dark shapes of the yews around them and freshly dug graves waiting. One of those graves should have been Dora’s, he reflected.
Crisscrossing the country by road and rail, in London one day and a hundred miles away the next, it was easy to keep his thoughts in careful order, but in Whittingford, with that spire piercing the moon, thoughts he preferred to keep separate had a tendency to find each other.
He had entered into a deal with Black and Dora had survived.
The possibility that these two events were connected troubled Bellman. At the time of Dora’s recovery he had been in a state of great distress, and the activity of his mind could not be accurately described as rational. He recognized that. Later the relief he felt left little room for thought. Then there had been Bellman & Black to think about.
On nights like this, things he should perhaps have thought about before came back to torment him. He had made a deal with Black, and his daughter, on the very brink of death, had been returned to him. What was the connection between the two events? Now that his association with death was professional, he liked to think he benefitted from certain related advantages, and in the middle of the night, his mind proposed to him that his child’s survival was one. Yet he had only to see her—her frailty, her halting progress from room to room, leaning on her stick, the lace mantle she wore to cover her white scalp—to suspect that death had not retreated but was only biding his time.
What was the deal? He had tried more than once to remember what had been agreed, bu
t it was possible, wasn’t it, that his failure to remember was because he had agreed to nothing? What if this opportunity had been given and the boon had been conferred and nothing had been agreed upon? Presumably the boon could be removed at any moment. The opportunity could be withdrawn with no notice. Without a contract, there was no knowing what he was to do to meet requirements . . .
Bellman turned his face from the window and drew the curtains closed. He did not like the moon peering into this house, pointing out what he held dear and showing where his treasure was. Rather hide his love for his child, rather cloak it in darkness than advertise it. Perhaps it was better for all concerned if he just kept away. Like the bird that lures predators away from the nest by making a display of itself far off, he would protect his daughter by keeping his distance. The greater the success of Bellman & Black, the safer she would be.
Chapter Eight
Bellman did not lose sight of the construction of his shop. Between visits north, south, east, and west, he came to London to check the progress of his emporium.
He kept an office in London, close enough to the building site so that from his window he could see the shop rise, stone by stone, from the ground. He held interviews here for the senior staff. He had found an excellent fellow to be his right-hand man, Verney by name. He had the same soft, white hands as the chief of works his architect had suggested and whom Bellman had refused. When he performed mental arithmetic, the fleshy fingers performed a kind of high-speed ballet, fingertips bouncing off each other in a spellbinding display of prestidigitation until, arriving at the solution, he rubbed both hands together and noted the answer fastidiously. No, there was nothing wrong with fastidiousness in a numbers man, and Bellman offered him the job and was paying him already though there was only half a job there at present.
Today it was Fox he was meeting with. He saw him frequently when he was in London to go over forthcoming work, timetables, problems. The main business at present was doors.
A minute before their meeting was due to start, Bellman saw Fox come away from the site. He strode toward the office with an energetic gait he had copied, without realizing it, from Bellman.
“Come in! How is it all coming along? Will you be ready by the fifteenth of May?”
Bellman always began like this.
“All will be ready on the fifteenth of May. Rest assured. The design for the oak entrance doors are with Mr. Deakin. He is giving the job to his very best man. The side and back doors are in hand with his team.”
Bellman nodded. “It’s the internal doors I want to instruct on today. I want you to think of the emporium as a theater. The customers must not be distracted by any sense of what is happening offstage. You have already noted the cork lining to the corridors?”
“It is in the warehouse now. The doors to be lined on the other side with cork too? We left that undecided.”
“It will be quieter than baize. Do it. There is more to be considered than noise though. Stock is to be replenished as invisibly as possible. Staff must be allowed to enter and exit the shop floor with the utmost discretion. The doors between the staff passageways and the shop floor are not to appear as doors at all, but must seem to the naked eye as part of the paneling. The way I see it, the edges of each door will be concealed in the shadowed part of the relief, so that the wall will appear unbroken.”
“Handles?”
Bellman shook his head. “A ball latch that will answer to pressure from either side. A member of the staff must come and go noiselessly and invisibly.”
Fox nodded as he noted these instructions in a calfskin book he had got from the same supplier as Bellman’s. The pencil he wrote with was one that Bellman had given him.
“Consider it done.”
“You will be sure to have the building complete for the fifteenth of May?”
Fox smiled. “I will have it done for the fourteenth if you wish it.”
Bellman stared. “Can you?”
Fox had spoken lightly. It was only a joke. He had forgotten that Bellman had no sense of humor. But being young and ambitious and liking a challenge, he couldn’t help answering, “Of course.”
After lunch they spent half an hour in a brougham before arriving at a courtyard, then a room fragrant with cedar and pine, and carpeted with curls cut from the heads of babies, that were crisp underfoot. On the wall, a rack of gouges and chisels, meticulously arranged. The carver, with bone white hair shorn to his skull, bent over his work with intent concentration.
“Best in London,” Fox murmured and then, louder, as the man looked up to greet them, “Mr. Geoffroys. This is Mr. Bellman. Come to see how things are progressing.”
Mr. Geoffroys returned the gouge to its place.
“Two of the large elements are complete.” He invited them with a gesture to walk to the back of the workshop, where two forms rested against the wall. Taller than a man, the elaborate B shapes were exact twins.
Bellman and Fox ran fingers along the curves of the B’s, admiring the smoothness of the carving, the grace of the flourishes, the closeness of the joints.
“Once it’s plated these joins will be quite invisible,” Mr. Geoffroys told Bellman. “And see here”—carved trains of ivy leaves and fine wooden lilies—“these will fit together like so, to make the garland.”
Bellman could not have been more satisfied. It was fine workmanship, the letters had grandeur, once silvered they would be even more impressive; the floral garland would be exquisite.
“It looks nearly finished . . . What is it that remains to be done?”
“The and.”
“The end?” Bellman was puzzled.
“And. Ampersand, I believe you call it. Come and see.”
They moved back to the work area. The block of wood that Mr. Geoffroys was working on was clamped. Roughly hewn at the edges and the base, marked out lightly in pencil, it was starting to take shape at the top. The carver selected a gouge and applied it to the wood. Standing on a platform to be at the right height, he shifted his weight to one foot, leaned into the tool with meticulous control. The movement came not from his arm but from his whole body it seemed, and a shaving of wood pared away like a curl of butter. He repeated the movement with tiny modifications, over and over, and the curve took shape.
Ampersand. The sign that denoted a commercial relationship. The figure that bound B to B. The connection. The tie.
A sudden and unexpected thread of doubt wormed into Bellman’s thoughts. He put his head on one side and looked again. Was that really right?
“You don’t think that’s going to be too . . . “
Fox looked alarmed. “Too . . . ?”
Mr. Geoffroys stopped his carving, and both he and Fox watched Bellman.
What was it? Bellman’s chest constricted and his mouth was dry. Was he too hot?
Because his employer didn’t speak, Fox broke in. “If it’s wrong it can be redone. Let’s see . . . “ He had the original design with him. He unfolded it and spread it flat. He compared it with the sketches and measurements given to the carver. “All is as planned—the ampersand equivalent in height to the initials—of course if, seeing it in reality, it seems out of proportion . . . At present it is incomplete, so it gives an impression of solidity that will be alleviated once it is finished. And the gilding will lighten the effect again. It will be less—er—wooden.”
“Yes. Less . . . Yes.”
There was a moment of uncertainty. Mr. Geoffroys looked at Fox, who looked at Bellman, who looked at the ampersand appearing out of a block of oak.
Complete, it would be less solid. Gilded, it would appear lighter.
Bellman pulled at his collar and swallowed uncomfortably.
“Of course, if it troubles you, it can be redone. It might even be possible to reuse some of the completed—”
“No. Go ahead. It’s all right.”
They turned to leave.
“Ready middle of next week, then?” Fox asked Mr. Geoffroys.
Mr. Geoffroys nodded as they took their leave and said something Bellman didn’t quite catch.
“An inn,” Bellman instructed their driver.
“It’s the wood dust,’ Fox agreed. “It does make the throat unbearably dry. You didn’t catch what Geoffroys said, I think?”
“What? No.”
“He said, “Good-bye Mr. Black.” Funny, eh? Suppose that happens all the time.”
Fox found Bellman unusually silent over their drink at the inn and on the way back to Regent Street. He appeared to be brooding over some intractable problem. It was quite unlike him to be abstracted or indecisive or at a loss. His characteristic resolve and energy had melted from his face, and the expression revealed was almost unrecognizable as Bellman’s. What was it? Fear? Anguish? Despair?
“All right?” he asked, uncertainly.
Bellman did not respond. Eyes fixed in the middle distance, he gave every impression of being miles away, so Fox was taken aback when all of a sudden Bellman started to speak.
“Fell into conversation with a fellow. Couple of years back, now. Barely knew the fellow, never been introduced. He’s the one that put me onto it. The mourning goods business. Spotted the opportunity as it were.”
He locked eyes with Fox, who said, “And?”
Bellman frowned and scratched his head. “It raises questions. Doesn’t it? If he should turn up, wanting . . . “
“A share of the business?”
“For instance.”
Fox thought about it. He was no lawyer, but he’d signed a few contracts in his time. “Just a conversation, you say? You hadn’t met with a view to talking business?”
“No! No! Pure chance we even met.”
“He didn’t set out his terms and conditions? Ask you to sign anything?”
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