Respectable Trade

by Gregory, Philippa

JOSIAH SAT IN HIS OLD chair, at his old desk, in the window of his office overlooking the quay. He had forgotten the house in Queens Square that he had struggled so hard to win and that had cost him so much to buy. He had forgotten his Hot Well and his ambitions and his plans. He sat at his desk as if the years had never been, as if at any moment Sarah, or even his father, might call him to eat his dinner in the parlor next door.

  At a casual glance, it looked as if he were working. He had the ledgers of all his ships spread before him, and he was carefully going down the profits column, adding them up and then adding one to another. On another piece of paper, he had a note of the debts he had to service, and every now and then he would transfer the total from his profits and subtract it from the money he owed. It was a nonsensical task: a piece of fairy-tale arithmetic. Every time he did it, the amount of the debt was hardly diminished at all. Josiah was looking at ruin, and he was too shocked to see it.

  Only the sale of his ships themselves, his warehouse, and his lease of the quay would settle his debts. Over and over again, Josiah added up the value of the tobacco in his bond, the value of the rum in his cellar and the sugar in his store. Again and again he subtracted it from the debt on the Rose, on the Hot Well lease, and on his house in Queens Square and saw that thousands and thousands of pounds were still owing.

  The room was cold; the rain pattered against the grimy windows, making tracks in the greasy dirt on the unwashed panes. The windows rattled when the wind blew up the gorge, and the drafts whistled around Josiah’s bowed head as he puzzled over the arithmetic of loss. He was not conscious of the cold on his bare head. He could see nothing but the dazzling whiteness of the page and feel the paper smooth under his hands. However he added it, however he subtracted it and then added it again, he could not make it come right. Whatever he did with the figures, they came out at a loss.

  Only Rose could save him if she came home soon, smelling sweetly of sugar, potent with rum, and filled with bullion. Only Rose could save him if she came home in time, before the next payment on the Hot Well spa fell due, if she came home before Hibbard and Sons closed his loan and demanded the over-priced house at Queens Square or the failed Hot Well spa and all his ships against his debt. If she did not come soon, then Josiah would have to hand over his house and come back to the little quay and the warehouse that Josiah’s father had been proud to call his home and which Josiah had left with such pride just ten short months ago.

  FRANCES WOKE FROM LIGHT sleep with a sensation akin to someone tugging at her sleeve. Or was it a noise that had woken her? She rested, halfway between waking and sleeping, wondering what it was—a noise in the street outside, perhaps, or someone calling her name.

  Then she felt it again. A small, distinct movement, a squirm, a touch, a caress. Inside her belly her baby had moved, and she, lying quietly in sleep, had felt it. It was the strangest feeling in the world and as distinctive as a child’s call for his mother. She put her hand on her swelling belly and felt the child kick out. He was alive, and strong. She had been sensing him move and felt that she had learned to love him, this little exuberant, swimming, kicking being.

  “Not long now,” she whispered.

  There was a gentle knock on her door. She turned her head and said, “Come in!” thinking it was Elizabeth.

  However, it was not Elizabeth who came quietly in the door but Mehuru, and his face was grave.

  Frances snatched the bedcovers higher, shielding the round shape of her belly.

  “May I come in?” he asked humbly. He paused at the threshold of the room, awaiting her permission.

  “Yes,” Frances said. She could not meet his eyes. She felt as if she had betrayed him on the very day that was to be their last together, that was to be a day of farewell, filled with love; and then all she had thought of was Josiah and the wreck of his fortune. “Of course you can come in,” she said quietly. “What is it?”

  “There is a difficulty,” he began.

  For a moment she thought that Stuart had broken her confidence and told him about the pregnancy. Stuart was sworn to secrecy, and besides, there was his professional oath, but still he was Mehuru’s friend, and he might think that a man had a right to know that a woman was carrying his child. Unconsciously, she put her hand to shield her belly; beneath her touch she could feel her baby kick again.

  “What difficulty?”

  Mehuru’s mind was on how to tell her that the slaves had gone without precipitating one of her breathless attacks. But some wisdom, some old awareness in the back of his mind, noted the gesture she made. In Africa he would have read her at once. But Mehuru was becoming more and more of an Englishman. He concentrated on the topic in hand and made himself blind to other impressions.

  “Do you have some medicine the doctor left you?”

  She gestured quickly to her bedside table, where her laudanum bottle stood. “But I don’t need it,” she said, though she could feel her heart pound warningly. “What difficulty? Is it Josiah? Is he ill?”

  “No, your husband is well, as far as I know. Please do not be distressed.”

  “Tell me quickly.”

  “It is your slaves,” he said softly. “All except Elizabeth. They have run away, Frances. They are all gone.”

  For a moment she did not understand. She looked at him as if his words were meaningless. “Gone?”

  “They went last night,” he explained. “After Cook locked up. Cook knows nothing about it. They must not blame her.”

  “But you knew,” she said.

  He nodded. “I knew.”

  There was a little silence. Frances raised herself up in bed. “And yet you did not go, too?”

  He came farther into the room. “I decided to stay.”

  “Do you know where they are?”

  “On a farm, in a place called Yorkshire. We hope that we can farm the land.” His sudden smile broke up the gravity of his face. “I am sure nothing will grow in this cold soil! But two are Fulani, and they can rear cattle. I think we can make a life for ourselves.”

  “You are going to join them?”

  “It is up to you.” He paused for a moment, carefully measuring what he might say to her. “I have not changed, Frances. I told you that day that I loved you, and I love you still. I know that you are ill, and I know that Josiah is ruined and that everything here is now different. But if you will come with me, we can go to Yorkshire together. Or I will stay with you. Or you can send me away. You have only to tell me what it is that you wish.”

  He stepped forward and took her hand. Something in the way that her other hand rested below her ribs tugged at a memory in his mind. He paused, looking at her, and then saw for the first time the lovely curve of her swelling belly under the concealing drapery of her robe and the coverings of the bed.

  “You are pregnant,” he said.

  She looked as if she might deny it, but then she nodded.

  “Josiah’s child.” His mouth had a bitter twist. “You are risking your life for Josiah’s child.”

  Frances nodded again, not trusting herself to lie to him in words.

  He turned from her pale, strained face and went to the window and looked out over the square. The trees were leafless now, their bright colors stripped away, and the gray color of the grass reminded Mehuru of home, at the end of the dry season. “I still wish that we could go to Africa,” he said, half to himself.

  “You go,” Frances whispered softly. She could not bring herself to send him away; she could only give him permission and tell him nothing that would bind him to her. He had been ready to run, and she had seen him humiliated too many times before her. She felt she owed him his freedom, even though he was the father of her child—especially since he was the father of her child.

  He shook his head. “It makes no difference,” he said finally. “It makes no difference to how I feel for you—whether you are carrying Josiah’s child or not. You are ill, and your husband is never at home. I love you, and I have promised myself that
I will stay with you until you tell me to leave.”

  “I never asked you for a promise,” she interrupted. “I will not keep you here.”

  “I promised myself,” he replied. “You are the first woman I have ever loved in my life, Frances, and I know now that it was a mistake for me. There is too much that separates us. Our color is less important than everything else.” His gesture took in their politics, their culture, their expectations, and their sense of what was important. “But it does not matter. None of it matters now with you so ill and your life ruined. I love you, and I will stay with you until you tell me to go.”

  “And if I say go?”

  “Then I will join my people.”

  “And if I say stay?”

  “Then I stay.”

  She looked across the room at him and into his open, tender face. She thought that she should let him go, let him run while he could and make a new life with his people. She did not doubt that they would make a success of their farm. They were all dogged survivors, and they were in touch with the reality of the earth and with their own tenderness in a way that she and Josiah and Sarah had never been. They would court and marry and bear children, and the children would grow up as Englishmen and -women, knowing Africa only as a deep memory, hidden in their souls.

  She put a hand out to him. “I will not ask you to stay,” she said stubbornly. “I think it would be safer for you to go. Josiah could still sell you, and I could not save you and—” She broke off. “I am ill,” she told him honestly. “I am fatally ill, Mehuru. I saw my mother die like this. There is nothing to stay for.”

  He crossed the room and took her hand. She was as small-boned as the skeleton of a little bird. The flesh had wasted from her hand in the short time of her illness; he could feel the light bones of her wrist. He turned her hand palm upward and gently pressed a kiss into it.

  “I will stay for as long as you need me,” he promised.

  They both knew that it would not be very long.

  FRANCES DID NOT SEE Sarah until she came to her room before dinner in the afternoon. The two women now lived almost separate lives. Sarah still dined downstairs in solitary state in the ornate dining room. Frances had her meal on a tray in her bedroom. Neither woman ate very much. Josiah never came home at all. Sarah did not disturb him. She had a faint hope, a trace of wishful optimism, that Josiah’s struggles with his debts would suddenly come right and he would swagger home again with his hat set jauntily on his head and another scheme in his hand to right them all. She knew it was not likely, but she could not keep herself from hoping.

  In the meantime she could not bear to see his demented concentration. The third night he had not come home for dinner, she had walked down to the quayside to fetch him. She had seen the light burning at his window and looked up. She had seen him hunched over his desk, had seen him move the papers from one pile to another and then shuffle them and move them back again. For half an hour, Sarah had waited on the quayside, trying to find the courage to go to Josiah and bid him come home. But the habits of coldness and distance were too strong for her to break. In the end she had left him to his pointless vigil over debts and gone back alone.

  Sarah blamed Frances completely and entirely for their ruin. She could not speak to her except with the coldest courtesy. She saw Frances grow weaker, and she could find no pity for her at all. Stuart Hadley advised her that Frances’s heart was fatally weak and vulnerable to shock, and Sarah merely nodded and said, “We are none of us as strong as we appear,” as if the news meant nothing to her.

  Stuart had said, “Perhaps I did not make myself clear. Another shock could kill her.”

  Sarah had merely looked at him and said, “She was always weakly.” She spoke as if Frances were a bale of shoddy cotton sold as good, and indeed she felt as if the Scotts had joined with the rest of the world in gulling her and Josiah, in selling them substandard goods and trapping them into ruin.

  The only time she could bring herself to see Frances was for a once-a-day ritual before dinner when she came to her sister-in-law’s room and inquired glacially if Frances felt any better.

  “No better,” Frances replied. “But I have had some very bad news today.”

  Sarah raised an eyebrow. She did not sit down. She paused at the foot of Frances’s bed, ready to leave as soon as the courtesies had been paid.

  “The slaves have gone,” Frances said baldly.

  “What?”

  “Run away,” Frances said.

  “But I saw Cicero just now!”

  “He and Elizabeth are the only ones left.”

  Sarah moved away from the bed and sank into the pretty blue chair at the fireside. “I don’t understand,” she said.

  “They went last night,” Frances reported. “Cicero told me this morning.”

  “Why did you not tell me then?” Sarah demanded. “We could have informed the magistrates—”

  “I daresay they had it well planned,” Frances said dryly.

  “Have they stolen our goods?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Why did you not tell me at once?”

  Frances looked at her wearily. “It did not seem to matter much,” she said coldly. “Not now.”

  The gulf of their loss opened up before them. Sarah’s protests were stilled. Soon, she thought, they would have neither home nor business. If they had made as much as fifteen hundred pounds on the slaves, it would only have gone to pay creditors.

  “They were your dowry,” she said sullenly. “And much good they have done us.”

  Frances nodded at the implied criticism. “It has not been a success,” she observed. “Not the slaves, not the business, and not the marriage. When did you last see Josiah?”

  “Last night. He is living down on the quay. He did not see me. I saw him through the window.”

  “Is he ill?”

  “He is trying to save his business,” Sarah said loyally. “He is working all day and all night.” She would not tell Frances that he was working as a madman works, little detailed actions that change nothing.

  Frances nodded. “Will you tell him about the slaves?”

  Sarah shook her head. “I will advertise for them. And if we cannot get them back, I will tell him then. There is no point in running toward bad news. Josiah has enough to worry him.”

  She rose from the chair as if she were achingly weary. “That Cicero and Elizabeth,” she said. “Do they know where the others are gone? Will they help us fetch them back?”

  “They do not know, but even if they did, they would not tell us.”

  “If they know, we could make them tell us. We could have them whipped.”

  Frances sighed with impatience. “All of them have run away except these two. Is this how we reward loyalty? With a beating?”

  “Why did they stay?”

  Frances looked away from Sarah. “I don’t know,” she said. “But I am glad that they did. We cannot afford to pay anyone to do the work, I suppose.”

  Sarah shook her head. “There is no cash for the housekeeping books. All the tradesmen are giving us credit, but soon they will know that there is no money to pay them. I do not know if anything is left from the profits of the Lily. I have avoided asking Josiah, but I will have to find out soon. I think it has all gone into this house and into the Hot Well. I think it has all gone, and there is nothing left at all.”

  CHAPTER

  37

  THERE WAS A LOUD hammering on the door knocker at seven o’clock on a cold December morning, hard with white frost. Mehuru, carrying hot water to the bedrooms on the first floor, put down the heavy jugs and went to the front door.

  A round-faced man in brown serge, followed by two others, stepped into the house and put his hand on Mehuru’s arm.

  “Bailiffs,” he said abruptly. “Is your master at home? Savee? Big boss? Savee?”

  Mehuru jerked his arm away. “Mr. Cole is at the warehouse.”

  The big man blinked in surprise at the perfec
tly spoken English. “Here, we’ll have you straightaway,” he said, tightening his grip.

  “What’s this?” Cook asked, surging up the passageway from the kitchen.

  “Bailiffs,” the man said shortly. “Come to distrain goods to the value of more than two thousand pounds.”

  Cook squared up to him. “And what d’you think you’re doing with him?” she demanded, plucking Mehuru’s sleeve away.

  “He’s goods,” the man said. “And worth a lot, I should think.”

  “He’s free,” Cook lied instantly. “He’s a freeman, a servant.”

  “We’ll see about that,” the bailiff replied. “I’ve got authority to seize household goods here.”

  “You wait there,” Cook ordered. She nodded Mehuru to go upstairs. “Wake Miss Cole and tell her,” she said.

  Mehuru nodded and went up to Sarah’s bedroom. He tapped lightly on the door. At Sarah’s sharp command, he opened the door and spoke from the threshold.

  “A man is here called Bailiffs.”

  He heard an abrupt exclamation from inside the room and the noise of Sarah getting hastily out of bed and throwing a shawl over her shoulders. She peered around the door at him. “Bailiffs?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he confirmed.

  Her face was more pinched and angry than ever. “Go out the back door,” she hissed. “Run to the warehouse. Find Mr. Cole. Tell him to come home at once. Tell him he must come at once and bring everything he has—all the money he has to hand, all the notes of credit, a note of what we still hold in bond.”

  Mehuru nodded.

  “Go without them seeing you,” Sarah cautioned. “And be quick.”

  Mehuru went quietly downstairs. In the hall Cook was blocking the way. Another man with a handcart had arrived, and a pony and cart behind him. Mehuru slipped like a shadow down the hall and out through the back door into the yard.

  He ran down to the dockside and whistled for the ferryboat to take him across.

  “Ha’penny,” the lad said.

  “Mr. Cole will pay on the way back,” Mehuru promised. He still had no money in his pockets.