Читать книгу A Respectable Trade - Philippa Gregory - Страница 9

Josiah came into his house for a pint of porter and a slice of pie at midday and Frances was waiting for him at the top of the stairs.

‘I should like to go out for a walk,’ she said. ‘But Brown cannot escort me in the mornings.’

Josiah was absorbed in business, a missing hogshead of tobacco – a great round barrel packed with whole sweet-smelling dried leaves – and he looked at her as if she were an interruption, a nuisance. ‘I meant to get you a carriage,’ he said absently. ‘You cannot walk along the dockside.’

‘So I understand,’ Frances said. ‘But I wish to go out.’

He sighed, his mind still on the Rose and the question of missing cargo. ‘Perhaps we can hire a carriage.’

‘Today?’

‘I am very busy,’ he replied. ‘And troubled over this ship. There is an entire hogshead of tobacco unaccounted for, and the captain can give me no satisfactory explanation. I shall have to pay Excise tax on it as if I had it safe in my bond, as well as carrying the loss.’

‘I am sorry to hear that,’ Frances said politely. ‘Where would I hire a carriage?’

Josiah broke off with a sudden short bark of laughter. ‘You are persistent, Mrs Cole!’

Frances flushed at his use of her new name. ‘I am sorry,’ she said. ‘At home I always walked in the gardens in the morning. My health is not very strong, as you know, and the day is fine and I wanted to go out.’

‘No, it is I who am at fault. I have not provided for you as I should have done,’ Josiah apologised. ‘I will hire a carriage for you myself and I will drive with you this afternoon and show you the sights you should see.’

‘If it is no trouble …’

‘It is an interruption to my work,’ he said frankly. ‘But I should have provided you with some amusement. Can you not do sewing or painting or something of that nature?’

‘Not all day.’

‘No, I suppose not.’ Josiah thought for a moment, and then nodded at her and headed towards his office.

‘At what time shall I be ready for the carriage?’ Frances called after him.

‘At two,’ he said. ‘Tell Brown to go around to the coachyard and hire a coach, a landau or something open.’ He nodded to her again and shut the door firmly in her face. Frances waited a moment and then went back to the parlour.

Miss Cole’s place was empty, her ledger open at the accounts of the Rose. Frances leaned over the chair and saw the meticulous march of figures down the page, showing the purchase of petty goods for small sums. Sixpence for gold lace, threepence each for small knives, fourpence each for brass pots. She shrugged. She could not imagine how Miss Cole could bear to spend the day on these trifling sums, nor what difference they made to an enterprise of any size. She did not know what a trading ship sailing to the Sugar Islands would want with gold lace or small knives. Frances returned to her seat in the window and waited for two o’clock.

The coach was prompt; it was standing at the door as Frances came down the stairs wearing a large picture hat crowned with two fat feathers. She had changed into a walking dress: a greatcoat dress with a wide collar and caped sleeves. Mindful of the plainness of Sarah’s attire, Frances was rather relieved to find only Josiah waiting for her at the door, and Sarah shut up in the parlour.

‘I was afraid you would have forgotten,’ she said. ‘Did you find your tobacco?’

‘The planter in Jamaica cheated us, or made a mistake,’ Josiah answered. ‘And the captain had it wrong on the cargo manifest. They were loading in a hurry. I had ordered him to make haste, it was the last of the new crop, and this is what comes of it.’

‘I am sorry to hear it,’ Frances said uncertainly. She felt she should condole with him, as one would to a man who has suffered a loss. But her training to avoid the vulgar topic of money was too powerful.

‘I shall write to the planter and send the letter by Rose when she sails,’ Josiah decided. ‘Within fourteen or fifteen months she will be back in port again and it should be set right.’

‘Gracious,’ Frances said.

‘And I will carry the loss for the whole of that time,’ he said irritably. ‘Just as I have to offer credit to the planters for two years at a time.’ He looked at her and his frown cleared. ‘This means nothing to you. Let me take you for a drive.’ He handed her up the little step into the carriage. Frances unfurled her parasol against the bright summer sunshine and tipped the shade over her face.

‘Go to Queens Square first,’ Josiah ordered the driver. ‘This is where I propose we should buy a house,’ he explained to Frances. ‘We have to go round through the old town, but pay no attention to the dirt and the noise. Queens Square is very smart indeed.’

The carriage moved forward, jolting on the cobbles, sailors and dockers begrudgingly giving it room. The street sellers eyed Frances’s fine clothes and one girl, hawking watercress from a tray, turned her head and spat on the ground.

They drove down the Back Lane, the overhang of the houses above their heads so close that the streets were in permanent twilight, in a fog of foul air. The sun shone in a brilliant stripe down the centre of the street but the houses and the foul-smelling middens were in dank shade. Great wooden beams over their heads braced apart the houses on opposite sides of the street, which looked as if they were ready to topple together. The broad gutter in the centre of the road was an open drain, thick with slops, mud and garbage, stinking in the heat, breeding swarms of fruit flies. People swore as the carriage lurched past, splashing them with slurry. The horses scrabbled to find their footing on the greasy stones and the carriage bumped and dipped; the road was almost impassable. Frances was afraid that the horses would founder. She gripped her parasol a little tighter and held one gloved hand to her face, trying to block out the evil stink of the lane.

Every doorway, every archway was an entrance to a workshop. There were woodcarvers and sempstresses, there were coopers and workers of metal. There was a wigmaker who also drew teeth, there was a small dingy apothecary shop doing a roaring trade in laudanum and neat opium. Every other house seemed to be a ginshop, every third house was a brothel. It was a mediaeval city of timbered overhanging houses suddenly crowded to bursting point with small dangerous industries.

Frances, who had spent all but two of her thirty-five years in the country vicarage, stared in horror from one ominously dark doorway to another. The white-faced occupants stared back at her, and someone shouted an insult at the carriage and threw a handful of mud.

‘It is rough,’ Josiah conceded. ‘Bristol is a city of labour, my dear, not leisure.’

‘How can people bear it?’

He gave a snort of laughter. ‘This is a prosperous street, my dear. If I showed you the colliers at Bedminster then you would see something to shock you. They live like animals in their own filth and no person of any wealth goes near them. They live in a world of their own, without parson or magistrates – totally outside society, totally without law.’

Towering on the hill above them, in abrupt contrast to the clutter of roofs below it, was the ornate highly decorated church of St Mary Redclift at the head of a soaring flight of stone steps. But they turned away from the spire and back towards the city, passing over the bridge.

‘It would have been quicker to go across the river by the ferryboat,’ Josiah explained. ‘Queens Square is directly opposite my dock. When we have our house I will take a boat over every day. The lad will row me over for a ha’penny each way.’

‘I am sure these streets cannot be healthy,’ Frances said. She tried to keep the dismay from her voice.

‘They are pestilential, madam!’ Josiah exclaimed. ‘If you are not killed by some fool setting fire to your house, or felled by someone dropping something on you, or poisoned by some manufactory, you will be destroyed by cholera or typhoid or both. The foul water and the summer sun are a fatal combination.’

‘I wonder that your family chose to live here,’ Frances said faintly.

Josiah laughed shortly. ‘We did not choose! We were not in a position to choose! We bought what we could, where we could. My father bought the warehouse and dockside from his profits as a privateer and that was where we lived. We were glad enough to have a business to run and premises to call our own.’

‘He was a privateer?’

Josiah nodded and then laughed abruptly at her shocked face. ‘Don’t look so aghast, Mrs Cole, he was a privateer, not a pirate! He had a letter from the Crown licensing him to attack French shipping. He took out his one leaky old boat and captured a French brig. That was our first chance. She was called the Marguerite. We paid our dues to the Crown and kept her and traded with her. It was the founding of our fortunes, the founding of our trading line. When she sank we called our next boat Daisy after her.’

Frances nodded. The carriage rolled on to a wooden bridge. Looking down, she saw the water rich with waste. Litter, garbage, excrement, and all the flotsam and jetsam of a busy port bobbed around the pillars of the bridge on the rising tide. The carriage bumped along the quay on the northern side of the river and then the road ahead opened out with sudden surprising grace. There was an avenue of young plane trees ahead, their broad leaves still fresh. There was a smooth green lawn in the centre of the square, there was a proud statue of a man on a galloping horse. The stink from the river was less strong, and the noise of the Backs was left behind them.

‘Queens Square,’ said Josiah with satisfaction. ‘As good as any Crescent in Bath, eh?’

He was exaggerating, it was not as good as Bath. It lacked the easy regularity of those fine terraces, it lacked their confident scale. Part of the square was built in the golden stone of Bath but part of it was red brick, and the profile of the roofs and the detail on the houses was idiosyncratic – each house an individual. But it was a well-proportioned square lined with young trees, divided into four by long avenues running north to south and east to west. At the centre of the square the paths crossed and the statue made a handsome centrepiece. The houses were new; some looked like London houses in smart red brick with pointings of white mortar and corners of white stone. At the east end was an elegant large building flanked by two wings in thick yellow stone: the Custom House.

The carriage drew up before the first house in the south-west corner, one of the biggest and most imposing in the square. ‘This is where we shall live,’ Josiah announced. ‘This is where I have been aiming for years.’

Frances looked at him in surprise. She had never before heard of a man desiring anything more than to stay in the position to which he had been called. She had heard men complain of the decline of manners; but never to seek change. Her father had preached that it was God’s will for a man to remain where he was born, a good Christian stayed where God had been pleased to put him. Josiah was the first man in her experience to express an ambition – to want something more than what he had been given. It was a revolutionary doctrine.

‘You have been aiming for it?’

‘My father was born on an earth floor in a hovel,’ Josiah said. ‘No more than a peasant. My sister in a collier’s cottage, a coalminer’s daughter. I was born on a stone floor in a warehouse. My son will be born in a proper bed, in a proper house. My family is on the rise, madam. Before the century is out we will be known as gentry. We will have a country house and a carriage. This is but a step on our way; not our final destination.’

Frances flushed at his mention of a son but Josiah had no idea that he was indelicate. He pointed to the grand house, the best house on the square, three red-brick storeys high with little attic windows let into the roof. Long white stone columns ran the length of the windows on each storey; above each window was a carved face. The double doorway was large and imposing, flanked by more pillars. Stone-carved gateposts and wrought-iron railings shielded the front of the house and emphasised its importance. ‘This is it, Mrs Cole. This is our house-to-be. I happen to know that it is coming up for sale and I shall bid for it, you may be sure. And I shall have it. No-one will outbid me, cost what it will. It is generally known that you and I are wed. It is generally known that I am looking for a town house to establish my family.’

Frances looked around the square, trying to imagine what it would be like to live there. A curtain in a front parlour beside them twitched and dimly she saw a woman step back from the window. It would be a little community, ingrowing and inbred. There would be small feuds and long memories. Frances did not mind. She had lived in a country village, dependent on the good will of the lord, her uncle. She knew how small communities worked.

‘We should drive on,’ she said gently to Josiah. ‘We will be noticed if we stay here any longer, looking.’

‘So?’

‘These people will be our neighbours,’ she explained. ‘We wish them to have an agreeable impression of us.’

He was about to argue but she saw him hesitate and then he nodded. ‘You know best, Mrs Cole,’ he agreed. ‘You are the one to teach me. It shall be as you wish. Now, is there anywhere else you would like to see?’

‘I don’t know the city at all,’ Frances said. ‘I have never visited here. I had some friends who drove out to a picnic and looked at the Avon gorge. They told me it was sublime.’

Josiah leaned forward and gave the order to the driver. ‘We can go and look at the gorge,’ he said. ‘You will not think it so sublime when you understand what it costs me in barge charges. We can drive to the Hot Well at the foot of the gorge. I have a particular interest in it.’

The carriage turned out of the square and bumped along yet another dockside beside another river.

‘This is the Avon again?’ Frances asked.

‘The River Frome,’ Josiah corrected her.

‘It is as if we live on an island,’ Frances said. ‘Surrounded by water.’ She nearly said, ‘foul water’.

‘The old city was a defensive site ringed by the two rivers, the Avon and the Frome – like a moat,’ Josiah told her. ‘Now it is all docks.’

They waited for the drawbridge ahead of them to be dropped and then the carriage bowled over the wooden planks and turned left, away from the docks.

Frances looked ahead as for the first time the city seemed something more than a dockside slum. The pretty triangle of College Green was before them, with two churches on their left. The College church was an imposing building with the Bishop’s Palace behind it. Frances heard birdsong – not the irritable squawk of seagulls, but the summery ripple of a blackbird’s call. Looking up, she saw swallows and housemartins swooping and wheeling around the cathedral.

The thick foliage of the elms threw dark green shadows over the road and as they drove up the steep hill the air grew fresher and cleaner and the sun shone brightly on the new buildings.

‘Oh, if we could only live up here!’ Frances exclaimed. Set back from the track were occasional terraces of houses in soft yellow stone, built in the style that Frances liked – plain regular and square.

Josiah shook his head. ‘It’s a whim. One or two people are building here but no true merchant will ever move away from the city. The river is our life blood. Clifton is too far to go. It is country living – not city dwelling at all. There are people buying land and putting up houses but it will never be the heart of the city. We will always live along the river banks, that is where the city always has been. That is where it always will be.’

At the top of the hill they forked to the left, skirting a high hill and dropping down towards the river again.

‘But if we had a carriage you could drive down to your work,’ Frances observed, her voice carefully neutral. ‘And these are handsome houses, and very clean air. I love to breathe clean air and my health needs it.’

Josiah shook his head. ‘It is a whim,’ he repeated. ‘It will pass and those men who have bought land and built will have bankrupted themselves. Take my word for it, my dear, Park Street is beyond the limit of the city and Clifton will never be more than a little out-of-the-way village.’ He craned his head to see a ship in the dry dock. ‘The Traveller,’ he said with quiet satisfaction. ‘I heard she was badly holed. That will put Thomas Williams’s nose out of joint.’

Ahead of them the river widened out and started to form sinuous curves between banks of thick mud. Dark woodland reared up from either side of the banks and then broke up around the lower reaches of white cliffs of limestone which towered above them. The little road clung to the side of the river, following the curve of the bank overhung by the cliffs. It was spectacular scenery. Overhead seagulls wheeled and cried and dropped down to dive for little fish. A small fishing smack slipped downriver, moving fast on the ebbing tide, her sails filled with wind. The air was salty and clean, damp with the smell of the sea. A flat-bottomed trow crossed from one side to another and passed a ferryboat rowed by a man bright as a pirate in a blue jacket with a red handkerchief tied on his head.

‘Sublime,’ Frances said. It was Lady Scott’s favourite word of praise. ‘This is wonderful scenery, Mr Cole. So romantic! So wild!’

Josiah tapped the driver on the back with his stick and the man stopped the carriage. ‘Will you walk, my dear?’

The driver let down the step and Frances got down from the carriage and took Josiah’s arm. ‘Above is the St Vincent’s rock,’ he said. ‘It’s quite an attraction for people who love scenery.’

Frances craned her neck to look upwards at the high white cliffs with wild woodland tumbling down. ‘I never saw anything more lovely. You would think yourself in Italy at least!’

Slowly they walked along the little promenade which clung to the side of the river, tucked in beneath the cliff. An avenue of young trees had been planted in a double row to shade the road and form an attractive riverside walk. Ahead of them to their right was a pretty colonnade of shops set back from the river in a curving half-circle, lined with small pillars so that the customers could stroll under cover, admiring the goods on sale, on their way to and from the Hot Well Pump Room. It was as pretty as a set of dolls’ houses, a dozen little red-brick shops in miniature under a colonnade of white pillars.

Frances and Josiah walked along the flagstones, looking in the shop windows at the fancy goods and the gloves and hats, and the crowded apothecary shop. There was a small circulating library which also sold stationery and haberdashery goods.

‘This is Miss Yearsley’s library!’ Frances exclaimed.

‘Who is she?’

‘Why, Anna Yearsley, the poetess, the milkmaid poet! Such a natural unforced talent!’

Josiah nodded at the information. ‘I have not had much to do with poetesses,’ he confessed. ‘Or milkmaids. But I know about her library. This is a new building, all brand new, and she will be paying a pretty sum in rent. The Merchant Venturers have spent a fortune to make this the most fashionable place in Bristol.’

‘I believe my uncle stayed at the Hot Well when he visited you,’ Frances said. ‘In Dowry Parade. He spoke very highly of the lodging house but he said it was dear.’

Josiah nodded. ‘Whoever takes it on will have to charge a fortune to recoup his investment. Not just these shops but the spa itself has recently been improved. These trees are new-planted. For years the place has been open to anyone – you can take a cart from the city for sixpence to come here, and drink the water for free. Any tenant who takes it on will have to charge more and exclude the common people. A successful spa must be for the fashionable people only, don’t you think? Will you take a glass of the water? I am sure you do not need it for your health but you might enjoy the experience.’

They walked towards the Pump Room which stood on the very edge of the river, its windows overlooking the water and the Rownham woods on the far side of the bank. Josiah paid an entrance fee and they went in. The place was busy. A string quartet positioned in a corner of the room played country dances. Invalids advertised their ill health with yards of shawls and rugs across their knees, but there were others, whose visit was purely social, flirting and laughing in the corners. A few people promenaded self-consciously up and down the length of the rooms, stopping to greet friends, and staring at the new arrivals.

Frances straightened her collar where it fell elegantly at the neck of her walking gown, and held Josiah’s arm. He seemed to know no-one. No-one stopped to speak to them, no-one hailed him.

‘Do you have no friends here?’ she asked after they had walked the length of the room. They paused before the fountain of the spa. Josiah paid for a glass of water and the woman pocketed the coin and poured a small glass for Frances. It was light-coloured and cloudy, sparkling with little bubbles.

‘My friends are working traders, not pleasure-seekers,’ Josiah said. ‘They will be at their warehouses at this time in the afternoon, not dancing and walking and drinking water. How does it taste?’

Frances took an experimental sip. ‘Quite nice,’ she said cautiously. ‘Bland, a little like milk. And quite hot!’

‘Very strengthening!’ the woman at the fountain asserted. ‘Especially for ladies. Very effective for skin complaints, stomach complaints and the lungs.’

Frances blushed at the frankness of the woman’s language, and forced the rest of the glass down. ‘I would not care to drink it every day.’

‘Many people do,’ Josiah replied. ‘Some of them are prescribed a glass every couple of hours. Think of the profit for the tenant in that! Many come and stay for weeks at a time to drink it. And it is cried all around the city and sold like milk at the back doors. And bottled and sent all around the country. A very good business if one could afford to buy in.’ He took her arm and walked her back down the length of the Pump Room. ‘How does it compare to the Pump Room at Bath, in your opinion?’ he asked. ‘I have a reason for my interest.’

Frances thought for a way to tell him that would not seem offensive. ‘Of course it is smaller,’ she began carefully. ‘And very much prettier. The scenery is wonderful, much better than Bath. But Bath has more … Bath is more … established.’

‘Only a little place but I think it will grow,’ Josiah said as they left the Room. ‘But I am glad you like it. I am glad you like the rocks of the Avon gorge even if you do not like the taste of the water.’

‘One could not help but admire it,’ Frances said. The carriage had followed them down to the Pump Room; she took the driver’s hand and stepped in. ‘I am a great admirer of fine landscape.’

‘Do you draw or paint?’ Josiah asked her.

‘A little,’ Frances said. ‘I should like to come to try my hand at drawing this scene.’

‘So you shall,’ Josiah said. ‘You shall hire the carriage whenever you wish and my sister will drive with you. You shall teach us how to enjoy leisure, Mrs Cole. And we will teach you about business!’

‘I shall be happy to learn,’ Frances said. The carriage turned back towards the city and to the dark little house by the noisy quay filled with the stink of the harbour. ‘I shall be happy,’ she repeated firmly.