The Silver Touch

by Rosalind Laker

  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 pros
titution 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.

  ‘Forgive me, Hester. You were right to say all you did. It haunts me that I virtually abandoned you at the Heathcock for four months of our lives, which we should have spent together. It takes some men time to shake off bachelorhood and I was guilty of that. If I could have my time over again there would be no parting at the gates of the Fleet.’

  ‘I don’t hold that against you.’ Her hands smoothed his face and hair and throat and chest, starved of contact with him. ‘It was my decision too.’

  They made up with love-making the rift that had been between them. Afterwards, everything was outwardly as it had been before. The cause of their quarrel was not raised again; he never talked about his work and the address meant nothing to her. His wages proved to be double what they had been before and her relief at being able to buy a few of the things she needed urgently for Joss and for themselves was marred by her feeling that it was in some way contaminated money. She knew from all he had told her that the goldsmithing world had its share of rogues, who falsified gold and silver content, dealt in stolen plate that was quickly melted down, found innumerable ways to dodge the duty of sixpence an ounce on silver and were up to all manner of other tricks that reputable craftsmen scorned. If John had not been the man he was she would have suspected him of having become part of these nefarious dealings, but however desperate she had inadvertently made him about money, she knew he would never resort to such measures.

  She had her first inkling as to what his new work involved when she did the laundry. It was his habit to change his shirt every day and now as she plunged them into the suds it was not the odour of clean, honest sweat that rose from them before they were fully immersed, but a curious, almost acidy smell that she could not identify. When she asked him what new materials he was using, he brushed her question aside with some vague reply as he did every time she tried to discuss his work. She also noted there was a new kind of stain on his fingers that scrubbing would not remove.

  Her worry never left her, which was why enlightenment came at an unexpected moment when she was buying vegetables in the market. By chance a clatter on the next stall caught her attention and she saw that a stack of cheap metal bowls ornamented with imitation gilding had slipped forward. That was it! Gilding! He had become a gilder: all the evidence immediately added up. Gilding was the most dreaded branch of the goldsmith’s trade for health reasons. She felt almost faint and dropped back on to the stall from nerveless fingers the bunch of leeks that she had intended to purchase. Turning away, Joss a heavy weight balanced on her hip, she moved as if in a daze to cover the long walk to John’s place of work.

  She knew all about the gilding process, for until recently John had encouraged her interest in goldsmithing until there was little she had not learned about it. Thin plates of gold were melted and three or four times its weight of mercury was poured into the same crucible, producing an amalgam of butter-like substance. With the fingers it was smoothed over the workpiece to be gilded, which in turn was held over a charcoal fire until the mercury evaporated leaving the gold. Then it was cleaned and polished. It was in the fumes of the evaporating mercury that the terrible danger lay. It attacked the lungs with devastating results. Few gilders lived long and John had taken on this deadly work because she had driven him to it.

  If she needed confirmation as to her correct deduction it was on the sign suspended over the doorway of his place of work. Charles Hardcastle, Burnisher and Gilder. It was work almost every goldsmith contracted out, for the fumes spread wide. She sat on a wall to wait, keeping Joss satisfied with a baked crust she had carried wrapped in her pocket.

  At midday the workers came out into the air to eat their noon pieces. It was a poor street and nobody around to object to their lolling about or sprawling on the ground to rest. She was filled with horror and pity. Many coughed as they came out into the air and some had a skeletal look as if their days were already numbered. There were some haggard-faced women among them. Recent recruits looked well enough, their time yet to come, and in the midst of them was John. He saw her at once and came to her, resigned that she had discovered him.

  ‘Not this!’ she exclaimed imploringly.

  As if afraid the fumes might still be hanging about him, he made no attempt to touch her or their son. ‘Go home, Hester.’

  ‘Come with me! Don’t return to that hell-hole!’

  ‘We’ll talk in the evening.’ He turned away to rejoin his fellow workers and she had no choice but to do as he had bidden her.

  She was out of sight by the time he went back into the workshop, his noon piece eaten and some fresh air in his lungs. There was probably no other method of covering metal with a thin film of gold than fire-gilding and it gave a pretty look to the insi
des of silver-caskets, boxes, cruets, cups and bowls. Not many people outside the trade knew the high cost of the ornamentation that was greatly in demand.

  He picked up his leather helmet and put it over his face and head. It had a breathing tube that went over his shoulder to escape inhaling the worst of the fumes. He found it hot and uncomfortable to work in and it was his experience that the obnoxious vapour still leaked in. Yet he and his fellow gilders in this place were fortunate to be provided with this innovation; he had seen some pathetic home-made headgear in his time that gilders had struggled with, hoping to maintain their working lives. Therefore he could say he was better off in this workshop than he would have been in most other places in the gilding trade, although he did not think Hester would view it in that light.

  She did not. In spite of her heartfelt persuasion that evening, he would not budge in his determination to go on working there. ‘The pay is good,’ he replied doggedly, ‘and we need the extra money.’

  They were eating together and he noticed she appeared to have lost all her appetite, pushing the food around her plate with her fork. ‘The wages are only high because it is such dangerous work,’ she persisted.

  ‘I admit that.’ He helped himself to another slice of bread to eat with his meat. ‘It should do me no harm for a while.’

  ‘I’m sure every minute of every hour with those fumes is deadly!’

  At that moment a crumb caught in his throat, making him cough. Hester, thinking the gilders’ malady was already upon him, dropped her fork with a clatter, white to the lips. He took a quick gulp of ale to wash the crumb away and, his breath recovered, made a promise out of compassion to settle the worst of her fears.