The Silver Touch (12 page)

They found a room with a hearth in a slum street off the London Wall. It was on an upper floor in an old house nudged on either side by Tudor buildings that had escaped the Great Fire, one of them shored up by heavy beams. As with all such streets, a stinking drain ran down the length of it and was filthy with rotting rubbish and slops thrown out by the inhabitants of the dismal dwellings. If Hester quailed at the prospect of living there she did not show it. Instead she looked around the room, ignored the dirty straw left by the previous tenant and pushed aside a broken chair.

‘There’s nothing here that a broom and soap and water can’t put right. Just make sure there’s a good sound lock on the door. We don’t want your tool-box stolen when we go to fetch my things.’

The lock was broken. She left him to repair it and went alone to the Heathcock where the midday rush was on. It spared her from seeing Martha, who was busy supervising the dining-room. Jack, sighting her, left the bar to draw her into his office with the inevitable question.

‘Why didn’t you tell me you were legally wed?’ he blustered, seeking to ward off any recrimination for his blunder and showing himself hurt by her deception.

She could never let him know that, although she was as fond of him as a sister could be, his wits were too dull for him to keep anything from Martha, whom she could never trust. ‘We can talk over all that another time. You are busy and I have to get back to a room that John and I have rented.’ After telling him where it was and answering a few of his questions, she made a request. ‘Some surplus furniture from my mother’s home has been stored in the attic since I came here. May I have it?’

‘I’ll get it brought down for you today and delivered in the wagon.’

After packing her belongings together, she left them to be transported in the wagon together with some bed linen and other items Jack had told her she might have as a wedding present in addition to the five guineas which she put in her purse. She left the tavern carrying a bucket, soap and other cleaning utensils. As soon as she arrived back to what was now their home, John went out to look for work before Master Harwood’s blacklisting should take effect. He had not been idle in her absence. She found that as well as clearing out the straw and litter, he had set a cauldron of water to boil over a fire of sticks from the broken chair and put a stack of more fuel by the hearth. As she began washing down the walls, she thought that they had not yet even kissed each other.

It was late evening when he returned and he halted in surprise on the threshold of the room as he saw its transformation. Everything was clean and it was furnished with a table and chairs, two cupboards, a dresser with pewter plates and some china. A four-poster bed was made up under a red quilt in the corner and a rug was spread on the scrubbed floor. On the table a savoury meal awaited him.

‘I feel I must have come to the wrong address,’ he said in praise as she came forward to help him off with his greatcoat. She had bathed and changed afer her housework, which had caused her considerable tiredness. No ugly laundry cap now but the rich tones of her hair catching the candlelight, her figure under a soft white apron no longer as grotesque as it had appeared earlier.

‘Did you have any luck?’ she asked tentatively.

He nodded. ‘With a goldsmith named Feline in Rose Street, Covent Garden. He’s a registered large-worker, which means he produces tureens, punch-bowls, table centre-pieces and other articles of size, some on a really grand scale.’

‘That’s splendid.’

‘I was frank with him. He might have looked on me less favourably if he hadn’t had a rush of orders to be filled. He said that any man trained by Master Harwood to my length of service should be able to produce the work he wanted. Inevitably he won’t pay me a journeyman’s wages until I have proved myself, which is fair enough.’

‘That shouldn’t take long,’ she stated confidently. ‘Sit down now. Supper is ready.’

He was hungry and appreciated the quick and simple dish she had prepared. It helped ease the atmosphere between them as they talked, although an invisible barrier remained in the devastation of his career, particularly when they discussed their financial situation. In view of what he was to earn, every farthing would count and it would take all her conniving and inventiveness to keep them adequately fed on what could be spared for food.

‘I can make a good soup from a nail if needs be,’ she boasted humorously. Her joke fell flat. He found it too close to a possibility to be amusing. To her everything ahead of them was a challenge. He failed to see it in the same light.

‘The five guineas from your brother must be kept for emergencies,’ he said, looking up from the paper on which he had been jotting down figures. ‘I shall bank it to gain some small interest by whatever channel is available.’

She would have preferred to see the food cupboard full of stores and a new pair of shoes on his feet to keep out the wet, but she supposed his caution was to be commended. And she wished that whenever a silence fell between them it could have been one of harmony and not of awkwardness.

When it came to preparing for bed, a dreadful shyness about her swollen figure overcame her. She thought she would never forget the dismay in his eyes when he had turned after Caroline’s departure to see her leaning for support against the railings. The fact that he had not made the least affectionate gesture towards her bore out that in her pregnancy she had lost all her charm for him. More than that was her conviction that in the intervening months since their wedding day Caroline had re-established her hold over him. What she had witnessed had been evidence of deep feeling on both sides. No matter what developed in the future she would never be able to dismiss wholly the conviction that if it had not been for the conception of their baby he might never have married her.

He was first into bed when she was still in her petticoats and he lay watching her. She turned away from him but sensed his gaze. ‘Please snuff the candle,’ she requested in her embarrassment.

He did as she requested. The rosy glow of the fire engulfed her instead, more than she realized. He watched her last petticoat fall and glimpsed her white back and the lovely curve of her buttocks before her billowing night-gown enveloped her. Then came one of the most seductive actions any woman could make in the unpinning of her hair and shaking it free. Taking up her brush, she gave it a certain number of strokes before coming towards the bed. He shifted over to make room for her, his arm ready to enfold her. She closed the bed-curtains after her against draughts and lay down beside him.

‘You can’t —’ she whispered.

‘I know,’ he said softly. ‘I just want to hold you. For three months you’ve been on your own facing heaven knows what slights and insults. You’ll never be alone again. In future I’ll always be here to protect you and to provide to the best of my ability for you and our child.’ She was comforted to a degree but still yearning for words of love. ‘I’ll always be a good wife to you.’

‘I’m sure you will. Forgive me for any strangeness I may have shown towards you today. It was the worst day of my life. I think for a while I wasn’t quite sane. If I caused you any hurt I do regret it.’

She turned to him within the circle of his arm. ‘That is in the past already. We must look to the future.’

‘I love you, Hester.’ He meant it. He had never stopped loving her even though circumstances had convened against it. If Caroline still lingered with him it was in a separate capacity, not for Hester to know or for him to think about. In the warm darkness of the bed he sought her loving mouth with his own, drawing her to him in a close embrace. Suddenly he drew away from her in surprise. ‘I felt the baby kick against me!’

She laughed quietly. ‘He kicks me all the time.’

‘Is it a boy then?’ he questioned with a chuckle in his voice.

‘That’s what a first-born should be.’

There was a long pause. ‘Let me see.’

Another pause. Then almost inaudibly she whispered, ‘If that is what you wish.’

He knelt up and stretched across her to hitch a bed-curtain aside on its rings. The fire’s glow was sufficient as he folded back her night-gown. Gently he put his hands on the rise of her belly and felt the life within. ‘He’s strong,’ he said in awe.

‘You see,’ she mocked gently, ‘you think it’s a boy, too.’

‘No doubt of it.’ He leaned forward to kiss her as he drew her night-gown into place again. As they settled for the night, her last thought before sleeping was that somehow she would make up to him for his shattered career and his diminished financial outlook, for he could never hope now for the riches that might have become his as a master craftsman with his own business. She would also try to compensate for whatever else he might have had if she had not disrupted his life by coming between him and Caroline in the first instance.

John worked three weeks at the Feline workshop before Harwood’s blacklisting caught up with him. As he received his wages he was given notice.

‘I’m sorry to let you go, Bateman,’ his employer said, ‘but I owe your former master a favour and I can’t ignore his wishes. I’m willing to give you written commendation of the work you have already done for me, which should be of some help to you.’

In spite of this reference, given with the best of intentions, John met with a shake of a head at every workshop he visited. Whether there were genuinely no vacancies, or if the blacklisting was responsible, he had no way of knowing. Finally he managed to secure work at wire-drawing, the branch of goldsmithing that had no appeal for him.

Yet the work had a curious kind of beauty, for it was often easier to wind the fine gleaming wire around one’s body instead of directly on to spools, which gave him the illusion many times of being wrapped about the waist with lengths of gold and silver hair. Unlike Master Feline, who had been prepared to pay journeyman’s wages as soon as his skills had been recognized, his present employer was unscrupulous and had not hesitated to take advantage of his position as a former apprentice with broken indentures desperate for work. His wages were miserably low.

One evening Tom and Robin came to supper, bringing his books with them. Hester served a tasty broth and the evening was a pleasant one. Yet he was glad when they went, for what little he had had in common with them was gone. He was a married man with responsibilities and they were free men set to reach the summits of goldsmithing that were lost to him. After seeing them off the premises, he returned to find Hester contemplating the stacks of books for which they really had no space.

‘Why not sell them?’ she suggested practically. She was finding their room difficult enough to keep clean, dust forever flying from the cracks around the old beams and floorboards, without having this stack of musty-looking books to look after as well. ‘If you’ve read them you surely don’t need to keep them, do you?’

‘Indeed I do!’ He crouched down to pick out one and then another at random. It was like welcoming old friends back into his life, something it was impossible to explain to Hester who had no appreciation of books. He found it sad that her bright and lively mind had been deprived of the gift of reading. At some convenient later date, when her mind was less preoccupied with baby matters, he would teach her himself. He was convinced she would be a ready pupil.

She had drawn away from him, biting her lip at his unconsciously abrupt reply, and busied herself putting away the supper dishes she had washed. It was obvious that books were to him what her favourite sketches were to her. It was extraordinary how marriage highlighted differences that were less noticeable during the passion of courtship. The simple education she had received from her mother was no match for his intellectual grounding. Her love and obedience and caring were not enough and somehow she must find a way to meet his mind with her own. If not, the spectre of Caroline would continue to haunt their marriage for years to come.

One morning in early March, which happened to be Hester’s own natal day, she was setting bread and cheese on the table for their breakfast when she suddenly doubled over. It was as if a knife had been driven into her. She sank down into the nearest chair and managed a lopsided smile as John peered anxiously into her face.

‘You’d better call in at the midwife’s house on your way to work.’

‘I can’t leave you today!’

‘You must go to work. Don’t be foolish. It will be hours before anything happens. I shall be in good hands.’

It was the longest working day he had ever known. He came home in the evening to find the door barred against him by the midwife and Hester in the final throes of her ordeal. He paced the landing, listening helplessly to the agonized sounds within. Finally he heard the baby’s cry. Even then he had to wait to be admitted until the midwife finished all she had to do, although she did have the rough grace to shout through the door that it was a boy.

Three weeks later at the end of March, the baptism took place at the Church of All Hallows. Hester had wanted their son to be named after John while it was his wish that his grandfather’s name should be given. They compromised by letting the child receive both and after a while addressed him as John-Joseph in a term of affection, which was gradually reduced to the diminutive of Joss and the name stayed with him.

Five

Until the birth of her son Hester had had no real qualms about where they were living. It was the best they could afford and it was pointless to be depressed by the petty theft and other nefarious activities that went on in the neighbourhood. There were far worse slum areas where every kind of vicious crime took place and it was unsafe to walk abroad by either night or day. At least in her street the beadles, who kept the peace armed only with a stave, were not afraid to walk singly and even the night-watchman would pause by the end house to shout the hour and that all was well. She also had a good neighbour, a middle-aged woman who lived opposite, and they often passed the time of day.

Nevertheless, she was not content. She was fearful that Joss would pick up some infection, for sicknesses could float through the air in such places and however clean she kept her own room the surrounding squalid conditions were a constant threat. Where she had been used to the clean-swept length and breadth of the Strand, here the street was narrow enough for those in the overhang of the Tudor houses almost to shake hands from opposite sides if they had wished it and she often had to wear wooden pattens on her feet to keep her skirt-hems free of the rotting refuse. When summer came it was impossible to open a window unless a kindly wind was blowing. At times the stench in the house outside her room was as bad as anything in the street, for some of the other tenants chucked out on to their landings almost as much garbage as they threw with their slops from the windows.

From first moving in she had kept bowls of pot-pourri in the rooms to keep the air fragrant and she replenished them whenever she took Joss to one of the parks, because there were always daisies and buttercups and sweet clover that defied the gardeners in the grass and freshly fallen rose petals for the gathering. These she dried and mixed with fine wood shavings, which absorbed the aromatic oils, together with lavender, which could be bought for almost nothing from street vendors, as well as sprigs of rosemary, thyme, sage and lemon balm, cloves and juniper berries, all of which made up variations that her mother had taught her long ago. She trusted in them to keep disease at bay.

Another worry constantly with her was that of money. Between them, she and John accounted for every farthing. He took nothing for himself out of his meagre wages and she was often ashamed of herself for speaking sharply to him at times when she was at her wits’ end to know how to put enough food on the table to keep hunger at bay. If anything she was even sharper if Joss was at all sickly or had cried at length for some reason she had been unable to define.

Although John bore her outbursts tolerantly, she could see he was harassed by them. At times she almost wished he would shout back at her, giving her full rein to flare up and relieve her tensions, but he never did. She would never have believed it possible that at times it could be difficult living with a peace-loving man, but it was, particularly for one of her fiery temperament. The only time she had ever seen him in a temper was the day they had quarrelled over Caroline and almost lost each other in the process. She never wanted that to happen again.

Through the grapevine, John heard of a vacancy for a craftsman in a backstreet workshop in Whitechapel. When he applied there it was as he had hoped, too insignificant to have received Harwood’s blacklist. On the debit side he could see at once that the work was not of the style and standard to which he had been accustomed in his days at the good work-bench. The goldsmith, who was old and tetchy, was a small-worker, which had nothing to do with the size of his premises and meant his line was in salts, candle-snuffers, snuff-boxes and similar items. The wages he offered were lower by a shilling than those John was receiving as a wire-drawer and he discussed with Hester whether or not he should make the move.

‘Take the new job,’ she encouraged, thinking that it would not be long before Joss was weaned and she would be earning herself, a project she intended to voice when she had found the right kind of work. ‘It’s a good move for you. Far better to advance from your own sphere when Master Harwood’s ban begins to ebb elsewhere with time.’

‘I thought that was what you would say.’ He was proud of her. There were many times when he wished he could have taken her and Joss to Staffordshire to meet his grandfather, who would have been well pleased with them both, but employers did not give time off for anything except a death in the family and in any case the expense, at present, was out of the question. Fortunately he was able to write at regular intervals, as he had always done since leaving home. The heavy cost of postage would have been restrictive if his grandfather had not always paid it upon receipt of the letters.

Joss was finally weaned. Hester had made enquiries as to what employment was available in the district and was ready with her plans on the winter evening she broached the subject to John. He was smoking his long-stemmed clay pipe on one side of the hearth and she sat opposite him, her head bent over a grey woollen stocking of his that she was darning.

‘I know Jack would take me on any time at the Heathcock,’ she began conversationally, ‘but Martha wouldn’t and I’d never give her the satisfaction of refusing me. I hear there’s a vacancy for a waiting-maid at the Red Lion. It’s not far away and the wages and tips should be good there. Mrs Burleigh will mind Joss for me.’

John lowered his pipe and shook his head smilingly. ‘You can’t do that. It’s a brave idea but not to be considered.’

‘Why not?’ She gave him a quick glance before returning her gaze to her own task, hoping he was not going to be difficult. It was why she had chosen what she believed to be a good moment and now he had made her feel uncertain and ill at ease. ‘You know we can only scrape along on your wages.’ It was not the most tactful way to express her long-held concern about money, but it had been building up in her over a long period and now tension had caused her to blurt out the hard truth. ‘What I’d be able to earn would make all the difference. What is your objection?’

He sounded surprised that she should even ask. ‘You’re my wife, sweeting.’

She did not need an endearment to remind her of that. Their bed was a domain of joy and pleasure to them both. She would never have suspected from their first meeting that such an outwardly quiet man could have been capable of such tremendous passion. He had awakened her flesh to delights that just to think about sent a tingle running through her. ‘The Red Lion is a walk away and a well-run place. I’ll be perfectly safe working there if that is what’s worrying you.’

‘I’m not convinced about that, but it’s beside the point. Bateman wives,’ he explained patiently, ‘have always contented themselves with their children and domestic duties even after the family fortunes changed for the worst.’

Her needle, which had been keeping a regular rhythm across the wooden darning mushroom, suddenly jerked its thread tight. ‘Dignified poverty is easier to maintain in the country where a garden yields every kind of vegetable and it’s always possible to get cheap meat for salting down in the autumn slaughtering. I know that from experience. London is a different kettle of fish. What’s more, it’s full of wives allowed by their husbands to bring in extra money by honest toil. The fortunate ones have careers in their own right, such as the female apothecary in St Martins Lane and the women goldsmiths with their own establishments, quite apart from those who are shop-and tavern-keepers or run establishments of lace-making, dressmaking, mantus-making and so forth. How would decent widows left with families to support be able to survive if they did not exert their legal right to take over their late partners’ businesses and run them with equal efficiency? Don’t speak to me of Bateman women. They were ladies born and I’m not.’

‘You are to me.’

It was lovingly said. At any other time she would have melted and gone across to sit on his lap for the kissing and cuddling that invariably ended on the floor in the firelight. But this evening her ire was up and still rising like the temperature of a furnace that could not be banked down. Her needle dug in and out, cobbling what had begun as a perfect darn.

‘That doesn’t alter anything. If you don’t want me to do tavern work I’ll do something else. There are always openings for confectionery cooks, laundry hands, sewing-women and lots more that my training at the Heathcock equipped me for.’ She was daring him to deny her this compromise and was ready to explode if he did.

‘I’ve been selfish.’ He tapped out his pipe against the brickwork of the hearth. ‘No more money shall go on my tobacco.’

His self-sacrifice enraged her. Her head shot up and, spoiling for a fight, she hurled her darning down on the floor. ‘The few pence you use for a pipe two or three times a week isn’t going to put beef on our table or clothes on our backs.’

His whole face took on a stiff look. ‘Do you imagine that your earnings would?’

‘They would help provide.’

‘At what cost? Joss at the mercy of a stranger and you making a slave of yourself.’

‘Mrs Burleigh is a kindly neighbour who has known better days; I would trust Joss to her implicitly.’

‘That’s as may be. I just won’t have it.’ In spite of himself anger at Hester’s hostile persistence had begun its dreaded surgence in him.

She threw up her hands in exasperation. ‘For mercy’s sake stop thinking of yourself as a gentleman. That’s the root of your argument. I know it’s bred in the bone and hard for you to shake off, but try to be practical. We’re a working couple with a baby to rear, not landed gentry with servants in a country mansion.’

‘I don’t need to have that said to me.’ His voice shook with the violence of his temper as it broke forth, carrying with it the pent-up stress that had plagued him over the past months. ‘You’ve made a little haven here in the midst of ugliness, but do you imagine a day passes without my wishing I could give you and Joss a better home? I loathe our surroundings!’ He jerked himself to his feet and stepped forward into the middle of the room, shaking his fists in frustration at the ceiling and the walls. ‘I detest this creaking house that is full of noise and drunkenness and brawling. It offends my whole nature to be living in environs devoid of any artistic or aesthetic influence with prostitution taking place under our windows and foul-mouthed language the common tongue of all but a few in this rat-infested slum!’

‘A grand statement!’ She was on her feet, too. Their raised voices had awakened Joss, who gave a loud wail from his cradle. ‘Yet you’re not prepared to let me help to ease the burden until our fortunes change.’

He whirled about to face her. ‘You once said that you’d take a pride in bearing the name of Bateman. Has that gone since I lost all I had originally hoped to achieve?’

‘No! That’s a grossly unfair suggestion!’

‘Then accept that I cannot allow my wife to work in a public place. However much you may decry this, it would go against all the traditions by which I was raised if I did not carry the sole responsibility for you and our son.’

She was aghast at his stand, feeling as if she were hammering against a glass wall that made it impossible to get through to him. It made her voice a retort she might otherwise have left unsaid. ‘You seem to forget you held out no such objection to my working at the Heathcock when your future at the Harwood workshop was at stake. I was as much your wife then as I am now.’

He flushed crimson, his eyes sharp and glittering. ‘That was your misfortune. It remains your misfortune to be married to me. I failed you once as you have reminded me, but I’ll not fail you again. There’ll be more money coming into this house soon, I promise you!’

He flung himself out of the room and seconds later the street door slammed after him. Joss’s demanding cries took her to the cradle and she picked him up to hold him to her. She was still fuming as she made all the usual soothing sounds that settled a baby down and was somehow angered still further by John having forgotten to put on his greatcoat on such a cold night. Joss took a long time to go to sleep again, probably because of her tense mood, and when she laid him back on his pillow anxiety began to set in. Where had John gone? He seemed to be off on some mission when he left, leaving that wild promise behind him. She retrieved her darning from the floor, but was too agitated to do any more that evening. One hour and then another went by. It was a wild, windy night and the house seemed to be protesting at its buffeting in the groaning of its timbers. In such weather it almost swayed under the pressure of neighbouring buildings that were shored against it. She went constantly to the window. Once she heard the watchman cry the hour. It was ten o’clock and everything far from well as far as she was concerned. She undressed and made ready for bed yet did no more than turn back the covers, drawn again to the window.

It was almost midnight when he came home. There was no more anger in either of them, but he looked drawn and haggard and was a far distance from her.

‘Our financial worries are alleviated for the time being,’ he said without expression. ‘I went to see someone I know and he has agreed to take me on in his workshop.’

‘You haven’t left goldsmithing?’ There was something about this change of work, made abruptly and with apparent ease, that filled her with misgivings.

‘Far from it. Now let us to bed. The hour is late.’

That night, and for several nights afterwards, a space remained in the bed between them. Eventually, each as miserable as the other in their estrangement, they drew together again and he held her close to him.