The Silver Touch

by Rosalind Laker

  ‘No one’s to blame, you least of all.’ He up-ended his tool-box on to the pavement. ‘Sit on this for a few minutes and rest. Did you hurry all the way from the Heathcock? That wasn’t good for you.’ He took her arm and helped her to the seat, which she accepted thankfully. ‘As soon as you feel rested I’ll see you back there.’

  Her head shot up, her eyes alarmed. ‘I’m never going back to live in the tavern again! My place is with you.’

  Fumbling in her pocket she brought out her wedding ring and pushed it on to the finger of her laundry-reddened hand.

  Her action made him feel trapped as never before. He tried persuasion. ‘It would be best for you to stay at the Heathcock until after the baby is born. I have no work, no roof and only a few shillings in my pocket. I may have to sleep rough for days, even weeks perhaps.’

  She was bewildered. ‘Why should that be? With your education there will be openings for you in banking, merchandise and insurance and much else that you will know of better than I.’

  His eyes were steely on her. He was appalled that she should have so little understanding of him. Although Caroline had questioned him, she had known without voicing it that he would continue in his craft along a lower path. ‘Firstly I should need letters of introduction and recommendation, and I have neither. Secondly, I would never desert my skills. They are part of me. I’ll live and die a worker in precious metals. Nobody could ever persuade me to do otherwise.’

  It was a warning to her not even to try and she accepted it, swallowing hard, aware that she was fighting for her very existence, for if she let him go now they might never come together again. ‘I’m your wife. I’m going to be at your side always. If we have to sleep in a park that won’t matter to me as long as I’m with you. But it should not come to that. I have a little money saved, which should be enough to keep us housed until you get work.’

  Immediately she saw she had made another mistake. That curious arrogance peculiar to the upper classes, which she had never previously glimpsed in him, came to the fore. ‘Do you imagine I should allow us to stay in accommodation for which I was personally unable to pay?’

  ‘But as your wife everything I have is yours. Think of my small savings as my dowry since I have nothing else.’ To her relief that appeared to be acceptable to him. The stitch in her side eased and she gave him a little smile. ‘I feel better now and so will you when we have organized ourselves. Let’s start looking for a place straight away and afterwards we’ll visit the Heathcock to collect my belongings.’

  He was too raw from his dismissal to be touched by her optimism, too ripped apart to be heartened by a few encouraging words. Her determined presence weighed him down and his lost bachelorhood seemed like a sweet dream. Without intending it, he spoke brusquely. ‘Let’s go then if you’re ready.’

  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 eye
s 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.