Golden Hill (5 page)

‘I would have thought you were well out of reach of Jacobite troubles.’

‘Would you? Were you in London last year?’

‘Yes.’

‘Doing …?’

‘This and that.’

‘Of course. And what was it like?’

‘When the Pretender came marching down on us? A lazy sureness of being secure, till almost the last minute, and then panic so late it was virtually over as soon it was begun. The prince is coming, the prince is coming, the prince is retreating.’

‘Ah. Well, here it was long and slow, for the lag of the news kept us in suspense for weeks. Weeks of furious doubt if the next sail into the harbour wouldn’t be a frigate bearing tyranny on its quarterdeck, and orders for us all to turn Papist on the instant – those are words I heard spoken in this room – and nothing to do about it, Europe’s afterthought that we are, politically speaking, but to abide the issue of the quarrel, while snarling (or worse) at any soul within hand’s reach who might be suspected of serving King Louis, from the French cut of their coat. So you see how the appetite would arise for a wholesome parade of savages, lightly blood-dabbled. Besides, we have no theatre.’

‘Do you not?’

‘No,’ said Septimus. ‘Not since before my time, at any rate.’ His foot had begun to tap again, steadily.

‘But— Wait a minute,’ said Smith, rummaging under the coffee-pot for the news-sheets. ‘Oh yes – what about the celebrated Mrs Tomlinson, and her rendition of the classics?’

‘That will be an upstairs room over a tavern, and Terpie dressed up as Britannia. Terpie keeps the lamp of culture lit, but her helmet will be gilded cardboard, and every time she misremembers a line, she’ll give a flash of thigh.’

‘You don’t approve? Peg Woffington does that every time she takes a breeches role.’

‘Mrs Woffington gives us the thighs
as well as
the tragedy. I’m afraid with Terpie it’s the thighs
instead of
. It doesn’t take much to be celebrated here. – I saw her in
The Recruiting Officer
, you know – Peg Woffington. She was marvellous.’

‘Still is. Do you know she’s broken with Garrick?’

‘No! When?’

‘Two years ago.’

‘Oh, you brute,’ said Septimus. ‘You absolute brute. Really?’

‘Yes. How long have you been here?’

‘Four years,’ said Septimus. His brows steepled, and a fine upright wrinkle appeared between them: as eloquent a mark of passion, on a face so Toby-jug-like, so china-smooth, as if he were rolling on the floor tearing at his garments, and raving in wild anguish at his exile. The tapping foot accelerated. Smith took pity on him.

‘Let’s see,’ he said. ‘The news of the Town: —— has ceased to announce his retirement, and actually retired. The
bon ton
have flocked to ——, but —— has closed after six performances for want of backers. The fashion for —— has all gone out, but new in the firmament shine —— and ——. Mr —— is suspected of
taking guineas to allow the Marquess of ——’s tragedy onto the boards. The new man in comedy is one Mr ——. There: is that better?’

‘No. Now I only feel more sensibly the miles of water in between.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Smith. He smiled. ‘Well, maybe there’s my opportunity. I should use my famous riches to build you a theatre. Or an opera-house. Turn impresario. What do you think? Give me an orchestra pit and a red velvet curtain, and I shall make you feel you’re in the arms of Aunt England again.’

Septimus narrowed his eyes. The foot stopped tapping. Smith, feeling himself looked at closely, and of a sudden in no friendly spirit, found that he had fallen into a close mimickry of Septimus’ posture at table, from the folded fingers to the tilted head; which mirror-work, executed in flesh and blood, Septimus perhaps took to be mocking, judging by the pursed distaste of the Secretary’s lips.

‘Heavens,’ he said slowly. ‘What a lot of different cants you do know, Mr Smith. But that is too blatant to be pleasing, I think. Too gross a tease. And though I may have been out of the arms of Aunt England, as you say, for a dreadful long time, I think I can still tell when I am talking to a little bold face, and when I am not, thank you; to one who is really a dear little Moorfield toad, and one who only counterfeits being so. – And now I had better go and wait upon the Governor. You may keep the opera-house you offer, sir; but by all means pay for breakfast.’

‘Of course,’ said Smith, with as little of a detectable pause as he could contrive. ‘Quentin? Put Mr Oakeshott’s and Mr Van Loon’s victuals to my account, would you? I believe I shall be here most mornings.’

‘Yessir,’ said the boy. ‘Three shillings and fourpence New-York, then, on the slate, sir.’

Oakeshott had already left, jangling the bell on the door as he pulled it sharply to, behind him; and Smith, who had coloured, did not hurry as he followed; so he was surprised to find Septimus in fact still waiting, outside, beneath the overhang of the coffee-house’s old-fashioned upper storey; hesitantly rubbing or perhaps hesitantly tapping his pointed white chin with one well-cared-for fingertip, his gaze seemingly fixed in fascination on the mastheads of the ships opposite.

‘This may be needless advice,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what game you purpose to play here. I think I don’t care to know, unless you force me to take notice. But let me give you a warning. This is a place where things can get out of hand very quick: and often do. You would think, talking to the habitants, that all the vices and crimes of humanity had been left behind on the other shore. Take ’em as they take themselves, and they are the innocentest shopkeepers, placid and earnest, plucked by a lucky fortune out from corruption. But the truth is that they are wild, suspicious, combustible – and the devil to govern. They flare up at the least thing, especially at the least touch of restraint, real or imaginary, which they resent as the most bitter imposition, having known so little of it. In all their relations they are prompt to peer and gaze for the hidden motive, the worm in the apple, the serpent in the garden they insist their New World to be. And thus there are few quicker to get a scent of anything … odd … about a fellow. Anyone with a particular reason to prize their privacy must work at it assiduously; for London is really a very long way away, and if a person were to get into trouble, there would be very little help that could be expected. Only what is here matters, and
who
is here. The courts are, if anything, more savage than those at home, and even more ruthlessly commanded by party interest. You have walked into a mesh of favours owing, where everybody knows everybody – even if none of them, as yet, know
you
. Do you know that there is a graveyard here, quite as if it were a real town? I think it would be taking your visit altogether too seriously for you to end up in it, don’t you?’

A sailor had ascended the foremast of the country schooner nearest in to the dock and was painting it with something out of a pail.

‘Thank you,’ said Smith. ‘I think.’

‘Well, I am not sure I am saying it for your good, exactly. But my sisters would like me to have said it. My father the rector certainly would.’

In Smith’s mind these vicarage figures, who had seemed entirely substanceless, thickened slightly, and for an instant he imagined Septimus as a painfully well-behaved child, playing tidily on the floor while seven high-minded adults stared at him.

‘I perceive you are a man of virtue, Mr Oakeshott,’ he said, trying for the lightness of their conversation’s opening.

‘Go away, Mr Smith. – Achilles!’ he called, and a tall African of about Smith’s age, wearing livery, with long limbs and a tight knob of a head like the bole of a dark tree, wordlessly unfolded himself from where he had been crouching against the dockside wall, chewing a mouthful of tobacco. He spat into the gutter.

‘And shall I see you later, too?’ Smith asked Septimus.

‘Not tonight. But soon, assuredly, if you stay. Just wait for the dark and the cold to set in; for then, as I say, all the little planets circle closer, jostling for company. Treading on each other’s heels. Good day.’

At six o’clock that evening, in a clean shirt from his trunk, and with the green coat freshly brushed and pressed – Mrs Lee having consented to include the care of his wardrobe in a rent on the gable-end room of eleven shillings a week (New-York), at which rate his debts would exceed his resources in a fortnight – he presented himself at the town-door of Mr Lovell’s house on Golden Hill. He was wearing his hair clubbed at the nape and tied with a dark red ribbon. In his hand he held a copy of
The Adventures of David Simple
, by Mrs Fielding.

The door was opened to his knock by the maid Zephyra, who rather than letting him immediately in stood stock-still in the door-way, fixing on him the same mute gaze of assessment she had bestowed the night before. Chin lifted, black pupils surveying him with no indication of what they found, the light going in and no intelligence of her conclusions coming back out; this stillness lasting only a fraction of an instant, yet already contrasting strangely with the bustle of the hall beyond, where already-arrived guests, strangers to Smith, a family group by the look of them, were chattering and hanging up scarves and hats upon a pegboard. Then she stood back against the wall, and he stepped over the bar of silence she had laid across the threshold. He had seen the hall of the Lovells’ house last night in shadow. Now it was cheerfully lit with candles in wall-sconces, and the young wood of the panelling shone ruddy yellow.

‘Good evening,’ said Smith. There was a replying murmur, and heads inclined in nods, but the mother of the group, a short stout busty body with coiffed hair, instead of replying called out
through the open door on the opposite side to the counting-house,
‘Gregory, hij is hier!’
and Lovell appeared, in an embroidered waistcoat.

‘There you are,’ he said, frowning as he advanced, as if, despite inviting Smith to dinner, he had successfully reduced him to a problem in the time intervening, and were now surprised to find he had remained, also, a tangible man. ‘Well, come in. Come in!’ – this last with a sudden joviality that made the pouching lines beside his mouth jerk.

Smith was ushered into a biggish dining-room, where a fire was burning in the grate, the coals hissing slightly, and in a corner beside it a seated African dressed in livery was tuning up a violin. The guests who followed him pressed curiously behind and the faces of those already seated at table turned all Smith’s way as well.

‘Friends?’ said Lovell. ‘This is Mr Smith, my
unexpected
counterparty. Mr Smith, may I introduce the Van Loons, these many years our good partners in business, and good neighbours. Mijnheer Van Loon, Piet’ – indicating a red-faced patriarch with a square visage swagged north and south with white hair, like a king on a playing card; ‘Mistress Van Loon, Geertje’ – the rounded and coiffed woman, taking her place at the end of the table opposite to Lowell at its head; ‘Hendrick, George, Anne, Elizabeth’ – the younger Van Loons, ranking downward in age, all paler and slenderer than their parents, but taking from them respectively a squarish jaw and a short upper lip showing prominent top teeth; ‘Captain Prettyman of Mystic, who sails for us both on the Indies run, and who happens to be in port’ – a lean weather-beaten bald-head, rising far enough to duck into a half-bow; ‘Flora and Tabitha, who you know’ – the first smiling at him
from a nest of Van Loons at the far end, the latter watching him, chin on fist, from the seat next to the one into which Lovell waved him. Hendrick nodded a greeting, with an air, however, less of sympathy than of anticipation, like one who seats himself in the theatre and ruffles out the tails of his coat as he settles himself for the show. ‘Now, take your ease, Mr Smith,’ said Lovell. ‘This is Liberty Hall here, you know; no need for party manners in the family.’ Tabitha snorted.

The violinist launched into the figures of a minuet, and Zephyra came and went with a tray until the table was loaded with the soups and meats of the first course, in silver dishes stowed among the candelabras. Mr Lovell carved from a grand ham blackened with molasses. While he passed along plates, and exchanged pleasantries, Smith was able to consider upon the informative and (as it were) strategic design of the plan according to which the diners had been bestowed at table: his own placement amidst the knot of the adult men, where Captain Prettyman and Van Loon senior could rake him from opposite, and Mr Lovell could contribute enfilading fire from his left, while Hendrick remained just in range should reinforcements be required, and the careful removal meantime from out his conversational reach of all the women except Tabitha, who was presumably considered an armament in herself. Little Elizabeth Van Loon, a solemn eight-or nine-year-old sitting bolt upright in the lee of Piet, he could speak to, but Anne, a sulky fifteen- or sixteen-year-old miss with her mother’s curves, was in the fortified maternal zone at the far end, and so was Flora. ‘Anneke, if you eat that, it will give you schpots,’ Mrs Van Loon was saying. ‘Floortje, my dear, would you ask Joris for the chicken?’ Joris seemed to be George, one beyond Tabitha, planted squarely between Flora and any Smithian temptations.
He was a skinny, hollow-templed youth, more elegantly dressed than anyone else at dinner had bothered to be; and it was not difficult to guess the reason for his sense of occasion, for he had scraped his chair closer to Flora’s, proprietorially, and was loading her plate for her. Of all the faces along the table, his was the only one so unprotected as to show a naked hostility when he glanced Smith’s way. Aha, thought Mr Smith. Very well.

‘A glass of wine with you, sir,’ rumbled Piet Van Loon, filling Smith’s glass: his voice, like his wife’s, preserving the Dutch that had vanished from his children’s.
Ey glarsch off vein.

‘With all my heart, sir,’ Smith said, pouring for Van Loon in turn as protocol dictated. ‘To your very good health! And to the company,’ he added, turning to left and right with his claret glass held up between finger and thumb. ‘You are quite right, sir,’ he added to Mr Lovell. ‘The change from dining in the wardroom aboard is very welcome.’