As I sat in the little round wooden chair and felt the hot delicious brew flood through my veins, I was moved close to tears. This was the first kindness done to me in many a week. Thus coddled and mollified, I was unmanned and began to speak of my woes, but involuntarily, as though some advocate was speaking for me, but brokenly.
The Smyrna Fleet destroyed me, madam . . . I was prospering before that . . . if only they had not all sailed together . . . now I am bankrupt . . . nowhere to go.
But your home?
No home, madam. I was turned off . . . I was at my lady Albemarle’s, but she is mad.
I hear she is married.
She is both, I fear . . . so I am a wanderer now.
Oh cousin, don’t weep, I may call you cousin mayn’t I?
You’re kind to address me so . . . very kind . . . but I am not, or rather not only a cousin (why was I saying this? I can only blame the extremity of my state).
Not only my husband’s cousin? But, she said, turning to him, you told me most explicitly, he was a cousin and of your own name too.
Of your own name certainly, and your husband’s cousin, but more than a cousin.
As soon as I said this, I could have bitten my tongue out, but my frenzy drove me on. I could not go back, even though going forward was only to calamity.
How more than a cousin?
I looked at her more nearly. She was a pretty woman, but she had a modest look, as of someone who knew little of the world. I did not think she would like the truth when she heard it. But I could not hold myself back, my desperation was too strong.
It is a terrible secret, madam, I wish it may remain a secret.
Oh I love secrets, do tell it.
You won’t care for this one.
I shall, I’m sure of it.
Well then, I said turning to Richard who had gone pale, detecting some serious portent in my manner where she had not, you remember I said I knew your mother very well in the old days?
You said you knew her.
Very well I knew her. We were . . .
No, I don’t wish to hear this . . .
You were her lover, his wife said gaily. Well, a woman may have admirers before she is married, in these days at least.
No, my dear, Richard said, that is not what he means, or it is not all that he means.
Then she looked at me and saw, then looked at her husband for confirmation, but needed none, for she knew his lineaments by heart.
Oh, she said, oh, and then was silent, then rose and left the chamber.
So, he said, you’ve come here to extort something from me, what is it, money? What’s your price?
I didn’t mean to come here at all, I was passing by.
Do you think I’m an idiot?
I swear it, I said, my intention was to call upon the druggist next door.
To buy poison for your suicide, I suppose.
Well, yes, since you say so, I will confess that was my reason, though I had not meant to speak of it.
You expect me to believe that, sir? You’re a foul knave. You come here with this hideous tale to threaten me and my poor wife, then you speak of killing yourself.
I have told you no tale, you have made your own deduction.
The tea and the fire were beginning to warm my limbs, as was the sensation of power, which because I had not sought it was all the sweeter. How like me he looked, how unlike me in everything else.
Are you seeking a place?
A place?
Yes, a place. I couldn’t have you here, my customers would remark upon the likeness and there would be tattle.
You confess the likeness?
Don’t provoke me. You know there is a likeness, else you wouldn’t attempt this imposture.
You call me an imposter when I have claimed nothing.
He saw he had ventured too far and nothing would be gained this way.
Well then, he said, let us not quarrel.
I did not come here to tell you that I am your –
Hush.
I may not be, though if you remember Ralph, which of us would be the likelier?
Let us talk no more of the matter. I have a proposal. Ah my dear – his wife came back into the chamber, looking deathly white – I was just about to tell our, our friend that I have a place empty at the factory.
Factory? I inquired.
Down at Whitstable. We have a share in a modest but commodious factory for copperas. It is, I believe, the largest in Kent. You’re acquainted with copperas?
Very well acquainted, I said. This is a marvellous coincidence. Some years ago, I pursued chemistry in the Duke of Buckingham’s private laboratory. I had a great fondness for the manufacture of copperas.
Did you so? he said looking at me in disbelief. I could see him thinking: This is the worst day of my life, I have acquired a father who is homeless, penniless and the most deceitful liar in Christendom and who makes me, proprietor of a great stationer’s on Tower Hill, into a common bastard, and now he pretends to be a chemist and a friend to the Duke of Buckingham.
Yes, it is a most ingenious process.
So it is. Then you’ll feel quite at home there. I can’t appoint you manager, for Mr Knewstub is an excellent fellow, but he’ll be glad to have you as his assistant in the business.
Manager of a copperas workshop?
Assistant to the manager.
At Whitstable?
At Whitstable.
It’s not the place I had dreamed of.
I dare say not, but it is a good place.
I may have it upon what condition?
You can guess the condition.
My silence about the matter I have not spoken of.
Just so. I send a carrier on Tuesdays who will take you.
I sat by the fire and said nothing. Then I lifted my head and saw his wife’s eyes raised in pleading towards me.
What will you pay?
A hundred guineas a year.
I’ll take three hundred.
But I pay Mr Knewstub three hundred.
Three hundred, you may think of it as my pension.
Very well then.
The contract was made, or so I thought. But then I saw that his wife was still vexed and her demeanour fearful.
Oh but my chuck, she said to her husband, if you should send down this, this gentleman bearing your name and, well, I see no resemblance except you both being dark-complexioned, but you said you thought he was like, though I think he is more like the late King, I mean King Charles.
Yes, my love, as ever you are in the right. It would be discommodious for you too, sir, would it not, to be thus identified with your, your Master?
Could he not bear some alias, only for the time being? she mewed. I was beginning to think her the worse of the two. At least she was none of my blood.
That is a masterstroke, my love. What shall we call him? Black perhaps, because he is so dark?
Or Long, because he is so tall?
They stood there debating how I should be called, as though I were a lapdog he had just given her, but my body was too weary, my heart too full of misery to complain.
I know, said my loving son, I remember my father saying that in Kent where he was born there were so many of our name and all with the same Christian name that they were called by the village where they lived. And you, sir, did you have such a nickname?
Why, sir, yes I did, it was Jeremiah Churn.
Then would you consent, purely as a favour to a lady, well, to your . . .
Don’t say it, Richard, don’t say it.
Very well, a favour to a lady, would you –
If you wish it.
I do wish it because my love wishes it. That is settled then, Mr Churn. God grant you a pleasant journey. Whitstable is a handsome port and is like to become very busy when the war is done.
The next day being a Tuesday, I took the carrier down to Whitstable, along that same Kent Road that I had first travelled solitary to meet Nan, then with F
luffy Ralph and then down again with Nan and the Lord General to bring in the King and then with the Lord General to go and fight the Dutch and back the other way in a coach with my leg bandaged, and now in a filthy old carrier’s cart to go and grub for copperas. I shared the back of the cart with the empty bottles and jars that had held the inks and dyes and bleaches. The jars stank like the Devil’s groin and they chinked against one another as we went over the rough cobbles and the cracks in the road.
X
The Shore
HOME, SAID THE carter’s man, as we came down over the low hill to the sea’s edge, a grey troubled sea like an old woman’s hair.
No home to me.
That it soon will be, Whitstable is a kindly port, and he gave me a broken smile with what teeth he had yet in his mouth. To me the place seemed a poor huddle of seamen’s hovels that cowered behind the sea wall for fear of the easterlies. He stopped to let the horses drink and I got down.
No, it’s further on yet.
The road became a rough track of mud and shingle, much rutted by the passage of carts such as ours. We were beyond the town now. There was but a single cabin with a roof of rotting straw beside the strand. Then we passed under a low cliff. The rain came down in a fine drizzle or was it a sea-fret, I couldn’t tell, my eyes were misted over.
Here we are then, the cop’ras houses.
Out of the drizzle, they came at us like sea monsters rearing out of the deep: half a dozen great black houses, their walls, roofs and gables all pitch-black. Though we were yet a hundred yards from them, the stench of sulphur was so vile I could scarcely breathe. From their chimneys came a smoke blacker than I had ever seen, so that the air above was one thick stygian cloud.
That’s ours, the Mendfield House.
He pointed to the largest of the houses set back behind the others.
Brings up near twice as much cop’ras as the rest. Look at the size of the bed.
He showed me a low flint wall that enclosed a fair space, half an acre nearly. It might have been a parson’s garden but that it was filled with goldstones shelving down from the cliff so that when the stones were dissolved the liquid might run down into the lead piping and into the house. The smell was the smell of Hell and these were the Phlegraean Fields besides which my little copperas bed at New Hall had been a pretty playground.
Come along, come along, shift those jars.
An angry warty little man in a dirty leather apron burst out of the black house like a wasp out of a bottle.
Knewstub’s the name, cop’ras is my trade, busy is my motto, the little man said.
He seized my hand in a fierce grip.
Welcome aboard, Mr Churn. You’ll find us a tight ship but a comradely ship. We make no distinction of rank here. Example: we all take a hand with the jars, wash ’em, fill ’em and seal ’em, all together.
Ah do we so?
I’d counsel you to take off your Sunday best. You’ll find an apron and breeches in the store-house and mind you cover yourself from head to toe. This stuff burns like the Devil.
On a filthy table in the store-house I found shirt and breeches set out together with a foul leather apron. I could hardly see to put them on, the little window being as blackened as the rest of the place. My former garments I hung on a hook at the back of the store-house which seemed to serve as Knewstub’s office, for there were papers heaped on a rickety desk and a barrel of beer beside it. The old clothes on the peg looked like a scarecrow and had a livelier air than I sensed in myself. All life seemed drained from me and I came out into the foul drizzle stumbling over the shingle like a dead man clambering up the shores of the Styx.
Now then, Mr Churn, we take turn and turn about at the boilers, for they are devilish hot and a man can only stand so much at a time. Then you go to raking the beds that the rain may wash the stones equally, then the same with the troughs, though they takes less stirring. Mr Richard tells me you have some experience with cop’ras.
Yes, in my laboratory, I did once . . .
Well then you’ll know what a troublesome customer your cop’ras is. Water him too much and he turns to mud, water him not enough, and the stones just sits there winking at you saying we’re too artful for you. Same with the boiling, boil him too hard, and you lose half of him, boil him too little and the iron won’t take up the brimstone.
Yes, yes, I said with a knowing air.
Then this is a various house. Some just does the grapes – we call ’em the grapes here – and sends them up to London to be dissolved. But we do it all, the inking and the dye and the mordant – we have a fair trade in the mordant because of the cotton and wool-dyers hereabouts. They swear by Mendfield’s house for keeping their dye fast through a dozen boilings. Then we sell part of the brimstone to the King’s works, finest quality only, nothing but the best for our gunners. The best of the goldstones we keep back for the King too, for the pistol-flints, we are fair put to it there with the flints from Queenborough, but ours are the finer. We put the old women who rake them in to gleaning the best for the flints, there you see ’em at it now, though it’s picky work in the drizzle.
Through the rain I could barely espy half a dozen women bent low over the shingle raking to and fro with a painful slow motion.
At that moment I could imagine no more miserable task on God’s earth. Within half an hour I was to learn that the old women’s lot was blessed in comparison of the boiler men.
Sweep slow and full, Mr Churn, else you’ll plash yourself, slow and full.
We stood on a narrow perilous platform alongside the great lead boiler that was held upright by brick walls ten foot high. Knewstub put into my hand a long paddle made of lead, as tall as a man and twice as heavy. I could scarcely lift it off over the lip of the boiler and when I let it down into the boiler it nearly carried me with it.
You must walk with it, Mr Churn, keep pace, keep pace.
I began to walk round the boiler with the giant’s paddle ever about to escape my grasp or pull me into the cauldron after it. After five minutes, my arms were mortified with fatigue.
Ten minutes with the paddle, Mr Churn, then five minutes with the bellows. This is a capricious devil, the furnace, though I say it myself, and it wants regular bellowsing.
After two more circuits of the boiler, I was ready to exchange my mode of serfdom and was about to go down the narrow steps to the furnace when Mr Knewstub yelled at me.
Take it out! Take it out, damn you.
I purposed to leave the paddle in the boiler for my return.
Well, you’ll do no such purposing. I’ve lost two paddles already this month from idle men letting them slip into the broth, and they are costly articles.
Very well, I said, but I would be obliged if you did not speak to me so.
I shall speak as I please, this is a factory not a nunnery. Do you understand that, Churn?
Yes, Mr Knewstub, I said, putting a delicate accent upon the Mr.
Good, now then, to the bellows.
The bellows were great heavy boards bound with iron, and the leather between them as stiff as wood. Even if I had been fresh, it would have been a weary business to make them blow.
You seem short of puff, Churn. Let me show you.
He snatched the bellows from me and with a slow but steady compression made the fire blaze again. His forearms were thick as knotted ropes.
There, like that, you’ll get the knack in a fortnight, but by God you’re old for the work, I wonder what Mr Richard meant by sending you. We had plenty of likely Whitstable lads up for the work.
I mumbled some poor words about my good fortune in having the place, meaning not a word of it.
Think naught of it. We’re always glad of willing hands.
Hands? I thought, but I was to be his deputy, was I not, but of that not a word and I was too fatigued to argue the point.
You’ll lodge in town, at the World’s End. It’s a clean house and Mrs Splint is a civil landlady. And I shall see you at All Saints o
n the Lord’s Day, ten o’clock sharp.
But –
You’re not a Dissenter, I trust.
No, no. I was beyond any discourse on the matter.
Because we employ none but good churchmen, no atheistical fellows and I need scarce say none of them.
I bade him good-day and trudged back to the miserable hamlet – it were flattery to call it a town. As I came on to the wasteland beyond the cliff, the sky cleared, though it was still a grey and mournful firmament above a grey and mournful sea, that same sea I had seen the ships joggling on when I was a boy with Emm and then had seen the Dutch masts riding upon when I was the General’s man and still had hopes of glory. But here I was as I began – destitute in an attic (thank you, Mrs Splint, that will do very well, though I would prefer a bigger jug, if you please).
I had unpacked my few wretched goods and washed and put on clean garments. The shirt and breeches smelled horribly and I determined to hang them out of the window which gave on to the yard.
Put those clothes away, came a cry from the yard. I looked down and saw Mrs Splint feeding her chickens.
But, Mrs Splint, they stink and I don’t want to pollute your bedchamber.
And I don’t want the world to know that I have cop’ras men lodging. Nothing gets a house a worse name than to be associated with the cop’ras.
So I took the filthy garments in and put them in the cupboard and kept my other things upon the table that they might not be dirtied.
I went down into the tavern where there were already a few old fishermen gathered.
Ah you’ll be from the cop’ras trade then, said the first. You can tell a cop’ras man a mile off.
Smell him, you mean, said another.
Tom, don’t be coarse. We must speak delicate.
I’m obliged to you, sir, I said, it’s true I’ve come down here to survey the works and assist as best I can.
You’re a surveyor then, sir.
Oh a jack of all trades, I fear. I was once a stationer and then secretary to General Monck and manager of his estates, before I was injured in the Dutch war, the second one I mean. Then I was in Jamaica with his son, the second Duke. I remember once Captain Morgan the pirate you know who was the Lieutenant-Governor of the island saying to me –
Jem (and Sam) Page 40