The Silversmith's Wife _ Sophia Tobin (19 page)

20th June, 1792

Young Maynard came to me: sickly, hollow-eyed, without his chest puffed out. He told me that he wanted only the snuffbox back, and that his father would settle up all he owed me. That it was a family piece. When one has been treated as I have, you learn to savour moments such as these. Did the young dog think he would shake me off so easily? I told him no; that the box had been made by my wife’s father, and that I liked it. That it was mine, and I would keep it.

Of course, he lost his temper; swore, put his hand to his sword – an empty gesture, for he cares too much for his young face and too little for his honour to fight me.

After he had gone, I hid the box well, for I would not put it beyond his father to come to the shop when I am out, and tell Grisa to turn the place over for his sake.

‘All this flummery about your widowhood,’ said Avery sharply, as she cut a slice of fruit cake for Mary. ‘I forever hear Dr Taylor referring to it, as if you are a fine lady with independent means, when it is clear your income does not support such pretensions. There is decency to think of, of course, but they cannot expect you to be shut away in mourning for two years. Where I come from, if a tradesman dies, it is the duty of his wife to find a good replacement. Do not look so shocked! You are Mallory’s sister, after all.’

Mary yawned. ‘I think you speak to me of marriage because you are tempted yourself,’ she said. ‘I saw you downstairs in the shop, speaking with a very fine-looking gentleman.’

‘He was newly engaged,’ said Avery, with an attempt at primness. ‘And wanted advice on what silver plate his wife would wish for on the dining table.’ She smiled as Mary took a bite of cake. ‘Besides, I did not have long in the shop before Grisa saw me and chased me out. I alarmed him terribly, I believe.’

She leaned forwards, took another piece of cake and put it on Mary’s plate. ‘Eat it,’ she said. ‘I would have some colour in your cheeks.’

‘Am I improving well enough for you?’ said Mary.

‘No,’ said Avery.

‘Then you must make a plan of action,’ said Mary, with a smile. ‘Will you excuse me for a moment? I think I hear Mr Exham below.’

She had purposely left both doors open, to hear what was happening in the shop, and now she tiptoed out on to the landing. At the foot of the stairs, George Exham was talking to Benjamin. Mary had not seen him since the day of the funeral. Today, he was the man she remembered from times of old: neat and calm. He was wearing what looked like his Sunday clothes: a smart, moss-green coat, and a hat with a brilliant buckle that caught what light there was in the dark stairwell. She stood back, not wanting him to see her.

‘I thought Taylor would be open to offers. But if things are as you say,’ he said slowly.

‘They are.’ Benjamin’s voice was harsh. ‘There’s no need to mention marriage to her, dried-up witch as she is: I’ll save you the trouble. Why do you want her, anyway? I understood your affections were engaged elsewhere, as Mr Grisa would say.’

‘They were,’ said Exham. ‘That is, they are. But these are difficult times. The situation in France . . . the prices . . .’ He let his voice trail off.

‘Wanted some ready money, did you?’ said Benjamin. ‘Well, you’ll get none of it here.’

Mary’s heart was beating hard at their words, yet in her shock she had enough awareness to wonder why Exham, who was Benjamin’s superior in age and craft, did not reprimand him. But then she realized: of course, they know that he will inherit one day. He is to be cultivated. He is to be flattered. He could lock me in the cellar, she thought, and no one would help me, unless it was worth their while.

‘It seems I’ve wasted an afternoon,’ Exham said, putting his gloves on. ‘You’d best tell people. More will come.’

‘Let them,’ said Benjamin. He had assumed a rough edge to his boyish voice. It was artificial, and grating. ‘The answer will be the same. One day I will be master here, and she’ll get what’s coming to her.’

The coins Digby had given to the girl had been worth it, though as the immediate release of pleasure passed, he felt shame creep into him. Was she clean? he thought. It would be just his luck to be given the pox. She’d said she was just off the coach, fresh and clean from a hamlet near Oxford, ‘a few houses only, sir’. But now he remembered the precise way she’d said ‘fresh and clean’ and he began to doubt her. To his lust-clouded brain she could have said ‘French and dirty’ and he still would have done it.

Damn his lust, he thought, damn his sinfulness. She was haring off into the night now, a distant figure, carrying the coins with her, moving quick as a louse through dry hair. He wanted to call out to her retreating back. Come back here, just for a moment. Put your arms around me. I only wanted some comfort.

He picked up his lantern and began walking back to the watch stand on Hay Hill, where he knew he would find Watkin complaining. When he heard a cry it took him a moment to focus. He made out a struggling pair of figures, and began to run towards them.

‘Who’s there?’ he shouted. He was lurching a little; for he’d drunk so much porter at the Red Lion the landlord said he’d have to start a new slate for him. Then the cough came, drawing him up; and a small figure ran into the night, leaving a man, brushing himself off.

‘You alright there, sir?’ said Digby, catching his breath and coming towards him. And a fine gentleman he was too, with silver lace at his throat and wearing a waistcoat – which Digby just glimpsed – that looked as though it had taken seventeen hands to make it, all silver tissue and spangles.

‘Do not trouble yourself,’ said the young man. He was breathing noisily. His face was white, and pinched, and for a moment he put his hand up, as though he sought to shield his expression. I’m in your debt,’ he mumbled, opening his purse with trembling hands.

Digby knew the face well; he took the coins that were offered. ‘It’s a bad time of night to be wandering around here, sir,’ he said. ‘There are villains all about.’

‘It was the link-boy,’ said the man. ‘I didn’t know him. I paid him to see me home. The wretch.’

‘I didn’t see his light,’ said Digby.

‘He extinguished it when he tried to rob me,’ said the man. ‘I swear he could see in the dark, like the devil himself. It serves me right, I suppose. But all is well. I will wish you goodnight.’

‘Goodnight, and be careful,’ said Digby, his words slurring slightly. ‘This city’s a whole mess of darkness, you know, Mr Chichester.’

He turned back in the direction of the watch stand and walked away, glancing at the coins he had been given. Yes, the man had been generous: far too generous. He was sure the boy had been paid to do more than light him home. You could hardly blame the poor child for the scuffle. He shook his head as he pocketed the coins, and when he glanced behind him, wondering where the child had gone, he could see only darkness.

20th June, 1792

My new apprentice arrived today. His name is Benjamin. He is a very slight, timid kind of boy, but I think I will beat him into tolerable shape with strong words and the example of discipline. He will sleep in the shop, for I cannot favour him too much lest it draws attention from Grisa, who is a jealous employee, but he will be fed well with the remains from our table. I much prefer having a boy here such as him, with no youthful arrogance, for I am sure he will take well to instruction. I will be firm enough to teach him; but fair enough for him to give a good report to his aunt Sarah. It pleases me to have served Sarah in some way. There is something of her in him, I fancy.

The household had gone to church, but Joanna had cried off with a sick headache. She was not sick in body; but a glimpse of the front page of
The Times
from the day before had sent her mind spiralling and turning in on itself. It was why, she thought drily, a lady should never read the newspapers.

She had read it in the kitchen, the master’s abandoned newspaper brought downstairs for the servants to pore over, for he had sped away in his carriage that morning. Normally she controlled her imaginings, using them as a consolation even if they made reality a little more sour, but that small square in the newspaper had unlocked a jumble of sensations and images. It was then she thought that she had been exercising her mind too much with memories of Stephen, for the intensity of her thoughts threatened to overwhelm her. She locked herself in her room, and sat on the bed, her breath catching in her dry throat.

In her hand it was as though she could feel the small disc of metal, cold and hard, held so tight it left marks on her palm.

No, she thought, no. You are imagining things. You imagine too much. You are here, sitting in a small room in a house on Berkeley Square. The past is gone; it lives only in your mind. But there was no escaping it, whether she closed her eyes or kept them open.

The walk to the Foundling Hospital all those years ago had been the longest of her life, every step slowed by her exhaustion and her knowledge that these were the last moments she would spend with her child. Her daughter had slept against her chest, tied there with a piece of cloth, and Joanna kept her fingertips against the baby’s warm cheek as she walked. There had been no need for a token, no need at all. Everything is written down, the clerk had said. We have your name, from the petition. But she had pleaded for the small metal disc to be taken in anyway and, with a sigh, the man had eventually held out his hand. It was a token from the Frost Fair of 1776; an ineffectual souvenir of a distant girlhood. She had nothing of Stephen; nothing that signified their love, but the lock of hair. She would keep that, she had decided, for her sanity, else she began to think that she had imagined him. There was the money he had given her, but it was nearly all spent; and you could not leave money with a baby.

The worst thing was that she had believed she could be strong. As if her discipline and training as a servant could have prepared her for it. She maintained that illusion until she untied the child and put her in the arms of the clerk, and then everything fell away. Pray keep her safe, she said. She fought to get the words out, for she was sobbing. I will call for her again. I only need time. One last glimpse of the baby’s face, an image burnt into her memory, and her life had diverged from that of her child. Part of her had died that day.

Her breathing began to slow. She had ridden out the memory, and was becoming calmer. She thought of Mr Chichester’s face. His generous gaze, the way he spoke to her. She thought of Harriet’s little mutterings as she patted her stomach. As she settled, she felt again that cold hollow emptiness in the pit of her stomach, and thought: I have no responsibility for you, Mrs Chichester. Whatever slight affection she had begun to feel for her charge, she aborted by force of will.

She could hear the distant sound of church bells as she went to Harriet’s room. She adjusted the boxes on the dressing table as though her purpose there was normal. She had persuaded Harriet to keep the key to the secretaire in one of the boxes in the dressing set, hidden by pins. She opened it, took out the key on its lank ribbon, and opened the box, remembering Harriet’s words:
in there lies what was once the promise of happiness.

The interior of the secretaire was decorated delicately, the marquetry of different coloured woods forming images of flowers. The drawers were tiny, and the whole looked like something made for a doll to use, rather than a woman. Hastily pushed away were a few letters from Mama, for Joanna recognized the handwriting. The secret mechanism was simple enough; she supposed it had been made to suit Harriet’s simplicity, and it took her only a moment to work it out.

Joanna pulled out the letters; there were so many jammed into the compartment that they tumbled out, collapsing on to the leather-covered writing surface, bringing a faintly musky smell with them. They were jumbled, in no discernible order. Her heart beating hard with alarm, Joanna only glanced at them, her gaze sweeping over each page, absorbing some words and leaving others.

All of the letters were in handwriting that had its swirls and flourishes, yet the characters were strangely laboured and childlike. All of them were signed with the same initials.

P.R.

For a moment, Joanna froze. She had learned what she had come here for, yet she felt a cold sinking, then the realization that if she could put the letters back and unlearn it, she would. She had long suspected Pierre Renard, but the new reality of it, his initials before her eyes, was too sudden. She read more slowly, but that made it worse, for she began to pick up the full content of the letters, and some of it was explicit, sparking sickening images in her mind.

Somewhere in the depths of the house something fell; a silver knife on a marble floor. The distant sound – for everything echoed in this house, as though it was a cathedral – struck a resonance of fear in her and she pushed the letters back into the compartment, not caring whether she crumpled them, slamming the doors shut and fumbling with the key. She put it back in its box on the dressing table and slammed the lid shut with shaking hands.

Her whole body was trembling uncontrollably.

She stood there, in the silence. There was no one there.

She took a few steps back, and sat down on one of the silk-covered chairs. She looked around the room; at the sheen of the hangings, the tall windows, the toilet service. Beside Harriet’s bed, the small pile of books and the miniature of Mr Chichester.

I am justified, she thought. Why should a woman such as Harriet Chichester live unpunished when my child was left to die, crying for her mother and the father she would never see?

She sat there for a few minutes, speaking harsh words to herself, and cradling her now-imaginary daughter in her arms. Then she went to her room, got out the writing implements left her by her master, and, after straightening the pots containing the sand and the ink, began to write.

Alban approached the church of St James’s Piccadilly from York Street. The church was illuminated for evening service, and he paused in the winter darkness to appreciate its effect, and to quieten his breathing, which had quickened at the thought of seeing Mary. To him the interior of the church did seem blessed; within the space contained by the huge windows, glazed with chequers of uneven glass, all was warmth and light, while everything outside languished in darkness. If it was an illusion of sanctity, he thought, it was a fine one.

He was late and, thinking only of Mary, he had not prepared himself for the eyes of the congregation: Piccadilly’s finest in their silks and satins, looking askance at the stranger dressed in a black coat, his black hair unpowdered, his eyes searching. It reminded him of Jesse’s words as he had left the house: ‘They count the money in your purse before they even let you in there.’ Despite entering amidst a great crash of organ music he still attracted glances and nudges as he nodded to the church warden, then the cross, and stood at the back of the church.

The great brass candle branches had been lit. He did not pause to count, but it seemed as though the white walls of the church and its gilded details glinted in the light of hundreds of candles.

His eyes scudded over the congregation: tall wigs, natural powdered curls, feathers, hats and hoods. When he finally found Mary, it gave him a tremor of shock, for she was sitting exactly where she had sat all those years ago, her back to him, looking ahead. Renard must have bought a pew here, long ago, he thought. Part of him had assumed that she would not be here, that this trip was just a sop to throw to Jesse. He allowed his eyes to rest on her in her widow’s garb. A few powdered curls were visible at the edge of her cap, and his eyes lingered on her white neck.

So much has changed, he thought, though I try to set time under crystal. When she knew me first I was a much younger man. Do I differ, other than my back is stiffer, and my right elbow has begun to pain me, so that sometimes I have to put the hammer down? He thought that perhaps, day by day, he had changed by slight degrees, and the Alban Steele that stood here now was an entirely different man from the one that had stood here eleven years before. He wondered how she had changed, and doubt crept into his mind.

It was Jesse who had sent him here. Jesse, carving a piece of wood, looking up at him this afternoon and saying: ‘She came for you.’

‘What do you mean?’ he said.

‘The day after you met her at church. She was out with her brother on an errand for her father, and she came near the house. I was on the step seeing someone out. Eli was running along the street; he nearly got in front of a carriage and I caught him. Little imp, he was, always laughing.’

‘So you met her in the street,’ said Alban, sardonically.

‘She came for you,’ said Jesse. ‘Whether she knew it or not. I found a way to make it clear that you had gone.’

‘Why did you not tell me?’ said Alban.

‘There was nothing to be done. You were already in the coach, going back to Chester. She was married within the week and the boy sent away. I did not speak of it before because I thought you would reproach yourself, and I only tell you now because I think it might make you do something.’

Standing in the church where he had first met Eli and Mary, he remembered the child’s face so clearly, his blue eyes, the smile that lit up his face, and the weight of him as he threw him in the air. Then, the smile that Mary had given him.

‘Who is she?’ he had whispered to Jesse, after he had led the child back to the family pew and handed him to his mother. ‘Mary Just,’ said Jesse. ‘Mallory’s sister.’ That little girl, he had thought – when he had visited as a fourteen-year-old apprentice, a child himself -I remember her, the girl with the mischievous eyes.

Of course it had only taken a moment for him to piece it all together; he had just heard her banns read, and for the last time of asking.

Weeks afterwards when he was back in Chester, he woke one morning and thought: I glimpsed the divine in that church. All those years I sought it, then I had it for one moment. But then he woke properly, and splashed cold water on his face, and was himself again. He reasserted it as he walked to work that day: I do not believe in serendipity. And I do not believe in God.

Mary kept her head bowed until the service came to a close. People were winding their way out, the babble of several hundred voices rising in the great white space of the church, when she felt Avery’s hand on her arm. She turned, and saw Alban standing there, watching her as he had on the day of the funeral. The sight of him filled her with hope and a deep sense of relief. As she walked towards him, each step slow and measured so that she might look at him the longer, a hesitant smile filtered its way across his face.

He bowed and said her name, and took the hand she presented to him.

‘I am glad to see you,’ she said. ‘It is a lucky chance. I normally worship at St George’s, but friends allowed us a place in their pew this evening. I come here sometimes for my brother.’

She glanced over her shoulder, as though she might see Eli there, running towards them. But there was no one there but the stragglers in the congregation, and Avery, who was speaking with two of the other worshippers. When she turned back she saw that her sadness was reflected in his eyes.

‘Being here reminds me of him and my parents. It is the only place. My father’s house was let long ago.’

‘I am sorry,’ he said.

Mary smiled. ‘No,’ she said. ‘You have no need to be sorry. I remember the kindness you showed him.’ She took a breath, wondering how she could lengthen the precious conversation. ‘How do you find London?’

‘Constantly changing, yet unchanging,’ he said. ‘It seems a hard place to me sometimes. A man here may wear a true-seeming face before a false heart, and not be discovered. But then I am an outsider. Perhaps I do not understand what it takes to succeed here.’ He was looking around, as though agitated. When he spoke again, there was a note of decision in his voice.

‘I came to tell you,’ he said, and he swallowed. ‘My accounts are all in order. I have some resources. I am not a rich man, but I have enough to be comfortable.’

She could not decipher his meaning; he had spoken too quickly, and she panicked a little. ‘I am glad for you,’ she said, taking refuge in politeness.