‘How interesting,’ Harriet said, a light sparkle in her eye. ‘The charge would be manslaughter then. They may not have meant to kill him at all, merely humiliate or punish him. I wonder what they thought when they found they were binding a corpse?’ She frowned suddenly. ‘I still want no part of it, Crowther. Not even if you share your guinea fee with me.’
Crowther sighed and picked up the evening paper. ‘I give my evidence on Monday at the Black Swan at ten, Mrs Westerman. Perhaps you might come along and frown at me if I use too much Latin in my answers to the jury.’
PART II
II.1
Sunday 8 May 1785
EVERY FAMILY HAS ITS own rituals. In Sussex, it was expected that the entire family attend Sunday worship in the village church. In London, Mrs Service indulged her interest in theological fashions and the family never knew until breakfast was over and Mrs Service was giving her orders to the servants which church they would be attending. However, in the weeks that they had been in London she had developed a decided preference for St Mary Woolnoth in the city. It was at St Mary’s she had met Mrs Eliza Smith and she felt it was only proper to see her again and make Susan apologise for running out of her shop.
The Rector at St Mary’s was an attractive, energetic kind of man. Mrs Service was disappointed by most of the Church of England clergy, all decaying and, it seemed to her, careless of their duties, mouthing their way in obvious boredom through other people’s sermons read from a book. Mrs Service would never be a Methodist, but she took her religion seriously so it was a pleasure to see Dr Fischer so engaged, and engaging with God and with his parishioners. She also noticed that Stephen Westerman had paid more attention during Dr Fischer’s sermon than during any other. What Stephen did, the Earl of Sussex did also. Mrs Westerman did not always attend church when they were in town, but Mrs Service had asked her to, in the hopes that she might set an example for Susan.
St Mary’s was a fine church. Where other, older places of worship in the city had been crushed and harried by the new buildings surrounding them, St Mary’s high-columned frontage pushed everything else back from it. The interior was all light and elegance, the columns grouped like groves of silver birch – and best of all, the preaching was full of passion.
The Reverend Dr Fischer was an evangelical and a powerful rhetorician and he had gathered an impressive, wealthy congregation around him with his skills. He had enjoyed an adventurous and dissolute youth until he heard the call of God, he told them, and while caught in a week-long storm in the Pacific, he had answered Him. In the years that followed, he had studied his faith still seeking his fortune on the waves, until an illness had kept him on shore when he had wished to undertake another voyage. That illness had saved his life. A fever that started among the slaves in the hold had spread to the men who guarded them, and killed the man who had taken Fischer’s place on the journey. Seeing the hand of Providence in that, he took Holy Orders. It made excellent matter from which to build his sermons. Faith to him was a storm, God’s love a good sailing wind, doubt was a calm when the water supplies ran low, and salvation was a return to your own shores, your people and their love. It was no surprise then that Stephen, son of a sailor, listened to him with delight.
As Harriet and Mrs Service escorted the children into the church, Harriet was aware of being watched. It was a familiar sensation. She neither dropped her eyes to the marble floor nor lifted her chin to stare about her defiantly, but concentrated instead on appearing entirely natural. The verger showed them where they might sit, and she ushered the boys, Eustache holding Anne’s plump fist, ahead of her and was preparing to follow them when she saw Mrs Service and Susan exchanging greetings with a pleasant-looking woman with slightly untidy chestnut hair. Susan murmured something, upon which the woman with the chestnut hair smiled at her very warmly and put a hand on her shoulder – then, in a gesture that surprised Mrs Westerman – she leaned forward and kissed Susan on her cheek before moving away to find her own place in the growing congregation. Harriet had heard all about Susan and Eustache’s escapade the previous afternoon, so was ready to guess the identity of the pleasant-looking woman.
‘What did she say to you, Susan?’ Harriet asked as the girl slipped in beside her.
‘That the most important thing is to be kind,’ she said quietly. ‘I thought she would be cross, but she seemed to think it was funny. She’s much nicer than her books about virtuous little children.’
Mrs Service settled and smoothed down her black skirts. ‘She is wise beyond her years and had a great many sensible things to say on your education, Susan. I now have a new list of schools.’
Susan groaned loudly enough for a woman in front of them to turn and look at her over her shoulder. ‘Does she think I should spend an hour every day learning to get in and out of a carriage without showing my ankles?’
‘You shall hear nothing of what she thinks until we have that apology from you, my girl. I cannot understand where this stubbornness comes from,’ Mrs Service whispered.
‘I wish someone had taught me that trick,’ Harriet said gently. ‘I think I was twice your age before I managed it, Susan.’ Mrs Service gave her a grateful smile and Susan scowled at her hands.
Harriet looked around at the congregation and noticed with a slight start that Sir Charles Jennings was seated in the front with an elderly lady to his right.
‘I did not know Sir Charles worshipped here,’ she said.
‘Oh yes,’ Mrs Service said. ‘That is his cousin, Mrs Jennings, with him; she has acted as his hostess since he came to London. He is a widower, has been for many years. He and many of the Aldermen and bankers started coming here when Dr Fischer took over the living. Are you acquainted with him?’
‘A very little,’ Harriet said, and continued examining the rest of the crowd. The coroner, Mr Fletcher Bartholomew, was in the centre of the congregation with a wife and two young children alongside him. She had to turn slightly to see him and when they had exchanged civilised nods, Harriet wondered if he still felt the pressure of her hand on his back showing him the way Trimnell had been whipped. As she turned back towards the front of the church, Harriet thought of the many congregations she had prayed with over the years. St James’s in Piccadilly, with its scattering of titles, personages from the theatre and musicians – a living page from the gossip magazines; the country gentry of the village in Sussex, old England all itching to be at table or at sport; and here, here she tasted money in the air. In all of them there was this careful grading of the congregation; the richer you were, the closer to God. On impulse she turned again and looked behind her. There were no black faces in the crowd at all. ‘Is that Dr Fischer?’ she said.
A handsome man in dark robes with a full wig was standing talking to Mrs Eliza Smith. They were too far away to hear, but Harriet thought the conversation looked serious. After a few minutes, Mrs Smith turned her back rather decidedly on the priest and, a little while later, the service began.
There were places in England that were sacred to Francis Glass, and this, the library of Mr Hinckley in Hampstead, was one of them. He was an intimate of the family. The servants smiled at him and Miss Hinckley always shook his hand. Mr Hinckley and he sat by the French windows that opened out onto his lawn and talked. When Francis first began this Sunday ritual Mr Hinckley would study the account books closely; now it was a matter of form, and once Francis had asked whatever advice he particularly wished for, Mr Hinckley would sit back and tell stories from his youth, of his first victories and disasters in the book trade, of the personalities of the authors, of talents squandered or mediocrities made rich. He would apologise, ‘I have reached my anecdotage, Francis!’ Then laugh, but when Francis spoke of something new or different he had read, a hungry light would appear in his eyes. As the younger man, Francis felt it should be Mr Hinckley’s role to counsel caution, but often those roles were reversed. ‘Be bold, Francis! I have no time for fools who wander into our business with no idea of the pric
e of paper and ink, but you have earned the right to trust your instincts. You have enough politeness on the shelves, put a little mustard into it!’
Then with Mr Hinckley’s mustard in his ears, Francis would stride back into London, call on Mrs Smith and ask her to marry him. Eliza would refuse, very sweetly, and Francis would be cautions, careful and polite again – until the following Sunday.
Dr Fischer’s sermon was rousing. He was one of that breed of men who become something other than their everyday selves when given a pulpit and a sea of faces looking up at them, asking for their souls to be saved. He seemed to flatter and rouse his audience at the same moment. He spoke of love, kindness and bravery, spoke of the balloon lifting towards the Heavens and the winds which carried it, which carried English civilisation, English freedom across the globe. Harriet realised the priest must have been one of Sir Charles’s party sitting on the balcony and admiring the balloon’s manoeuvres while Mrs Trimnell learned she had become a widow. Stephen’s eyes shone as he listened. Eustache, normally so withdrawn from his fellows, listened with a sort of glow on his pale skin, nodding from time to time. Even Harriet felt it, the pride pushing upwards and out of the white cube of the church. The final hymn was sung, a simple tune easy for even someone as unmusical as Harriet to hear and repeat. It fitted together very neatly, the poetry in which they all promised God to be better versions of themselves and the tune which marched along underneath it.
Sir Charles and the older woman on his arm led them all out of the church, but he paused on his way in order to reach over to Harriet, shake her hand and treat her to his fatherly smile. She smiled back at him and felt the exchange being noted by all the burgers and merchants of the city. It was as if a single ray of light had illuminated her through the church window and made her briefly beautiful to them.
He passed by, and took the light of the crowd’s attention with him. Mrs Service began the process of corralling the children, finding what they had lost, put down or tucked away, and giving them coins for the retiring collection while Harriet dawdled, watching Dr Fischer from the corner of her eye. He had taken the opportunity to speak again to Mrs Smith, who was shaking her head. Another parishioner was plucking at Dr Fischer’s sleeve and the woman moved away as soon as she had the opportunity to do so.
‘Mrs Westerman?’ Harriet found the family assembled and waiting for her.
II.2
MRS SMITH ALWAYS RECEIVED Francis in her private parlour upstairs. It was another sacred space for him. The prints of Bible stories and churches which hung around her walls had become familiar friends, as had the blue and yellow wallpaper which she had scolded herself for buying and stared at happily, her pleasure spiced with just a little guilt, ever since. She had placed her favourite armchair where the light was best, and there he found her every Sunday with the tea things ready beside her and a book in her hand. He felt the comfort of their rituals. Her first question was always about the health of Mr Hinckley, the second about his own, but today instead she stood up from her chair rather more quickly than usual, put the book she was reading carelessly aside and asked after the manuscript she had given him the day before. He had forgotten it entirely and the surprise on his face told her so at once. ‘Oh, Francis!’ she said. ‘I do so want you to read it.’
‘I shall.’ He would have read a thousand manuscripts to make her smile at him again.
She tutted. ‘You were plotting how to make Mr Hinckley even richer, I know it. Well, I cannot scold you when you are working so hard. Mr Hinckley is a good man, isn’t he?’
‘Of course he is, Eliza.’
‘He does not take advantage of you, Francis?’
He guessed that she meant something to do with the colour of his skin. Such things were seldom mentioned between them and it disturbed him. He answered seriously. ‘He reminds me of your father, and everything I know about bookselling I have learned from Mr Hinckley, but what is it, Eliza? Why do you ask if he is a good man? I promise you he pays me a fair wage.’
‘No, no.’ She put her hand out to him again as if he had just entered the room. ‘I have heard nothing against Mr Hinckley, only sometimes I think it is hard to tell who is good and who is not.’
A sudden selfish doubt. ‘You think I am a good man, don’t you?’
‘Only too good.’ Her smile was warm again, as if she had thrown off whatever pressed on her. ‘Even if you are very slow in reading manuscripts which I give to you.’
The sun was bright again, and the room home and safety once more. ‘Give me my tea, Eliza, and my answer, then I shall read the manuscript this afternoon and come back with my opinion this evening.’
She claimed it a fair bargain and they fell into their usual pattern of conversation until the sales and purchases of their rival booksellers had been discussed, and whatever they had read that week praised or damned. When the bread and butter was gone, Francis stood and picked up his hat and coat then asked her, as he did every week, if she would marry him. He then waited for her usual refusal and the smile that accompanied it, soft and regretful enough to give him hope, and kind enough to warm him for the next day or two at his duties.
Instead she looked up at him, her pale white skin with the lines just beginning to show around her eyes, and asked a question of her own. ‘Francis, why do you want to marry me?’
‘Because I wish you to be my wife. You know that, Eliza.’
She shook her head. ‘No, Francis. I am not sure that I do, I think sometimes it is because you loved my father, and he was good to you when the rest of the world was not. I’m afraid that you wish to marry me out of gratitude. And I do not wish you to marry me for that.’
It was deeply unfair, of course it was unfair – but worse than that, it was not the usual order of things. Words would not come to him, struggling and stuttering on his lips. ‘I do love what I see of him in you, Eliza. Naturally I do, but you yourself—’
She rushed on. ‘And sometimes I believe it is because I am English, and by marrying me you hope to make yourself English also.’ Why was that wrong? What was wrong with binding himself to his adopted country? ‘You never speak of Africa, or what family you had there. When I first met you, you could hardly speak English at all. You cannot simply forget what happened to you by marrying me! And it is not fair of you to ask me to marry you just to wipe it all out.’
Francis was too shocked to look at her, and dropped his eyes to his hands, the neat tricorn of his newish felt hat held between them. He remembered suddenly when he had first come to London, met Eliza and her father and brother, how he had tried to scrub his hands white. He had thought if he could only do so, his master would not take him back to the West Indies, away from the ordinary kindness of the house where they had lodged. He concentrated. ‘Does it not occur to you, Eliza, that I ask you to marry me every week, because I love you very much?’
‘It does. That is what I hope, of course.’ She came close to him and put her hand high on his chest. By chance she touched the place where under his clothes he was branded with the mark of the first man who had bought him. He put his hand around her fingers and lifted them to his lips, then let them lie again against his collarbone. Some part of him wondered, if she kept her hand there long enough, the brand would disappear. ‘But I need to be certain of it, Francis. And I do not think I can be while you deny …’
‘I do not deny!’ He moved away from her, running his palm against the close-cut hair on his head. He felt the scars on his back burn under his clean coat. ‘I do not forget! But I would have some peace from it, Eliza. Every man or woman in London sees my history in my face. I am alone with the fear or curiosity of every stranger. I have only hoped that our long friendship, my constant devotion to you and your family, might make you – you of all people – forget my colour and treat me as a man.’
She took his arm again.
‘Francis, my dear, I do not wish to forget your colour, nor do I need to do so in order to see you as a man. I do not. That doubt is in your
mind, not mine.’
‘You want to hear my history? Does my tragedy appeal to you? Do you wish to make me a parable? We could end it in a church with me expressing my gratitude to God for my deliverance.’
She came closer to him again. She was speaking more slowly now, the heat in her first words gone. ‘My God and I want the same thing, Francis. Your honesty. My dear, I do not think you have to choose between being a bookseller in London and an African.’ He found his mind empty, an ocean in airless days. ‘You will tell me of your history and I shall grieve with you, but I will not pity you.’
He lowered his head until it rested on her shoulder and felt her hand around the nape of his neck. He was a man shipwrecked. ‘I had a brother,’ he said at last. ‘Three years younger than I am. We were taken at the same time and he died before we even reached the coast.’ He pulled himself away from her and wiped his face on his handkerchief. ‘There, now will you marry me?’
She laughed. ‘Probably, Francis,’ then, serious again: ‘What was his name?’
Francis saw him suddenly, his eyes too large for his face. He was laughing at something, a strange snorting laugh that shook his small body. ‘Tanimola.’
‘Tanimola,’ she repeated carefully. His heart hurt, ached in a way it had not done for years, hearing the name come hesitating from between her rose lips.
Her face was flushed, and her hair more disordered than usual. He put his hands around her waist and kissed her full on the mouth. A golden thread ran through him. ‘Probably?’
She pushed him away, but he could feel the shake in her hand. ‘Probably.’
‘May I come back to see you then this evening, Eliza?’ She nodded and he turned to go, but found he could not. He turned back, held her to him again, kissed her again then left, hardly knowing how he managed to put one foot in front of the other.
Theft of Life Page 9
