The Silver Touch

by Rosalind Laker

  She made it sound like a concession; Hester guessed that Jack was pleased enough to shelter her and her child under his roof for a little while.

  It was six weeks before she and John set up home together again. As soon as she was fully recovered, except for her bound arm, she went house-hunting, sometimes with John at the week’s end and often on her own, for in return for a few pence any one of the waiting-maids was willing to look after Joss in off-duty hours. John was not unduly surprised when she found a house in the parish of St Botolph’s that she was eager for him to see. He was willing enough to consider it, for it was a good area for him with plenty of goldsmiths in the vicinity.

  It proved to be a plain, unpretentious house at the end of a row at the junction of two commercial streets. To his surprise she took him past the front door to enter by a side gate. Crossing a small cobbled yard with a well, they reached the rear door. To his increased astonishment it entered directly into what had once been a carpenter’s workshop with stout benches and shelves and tool-racks still in place, the floor flagged and a blackened hearth in the corner. Immediately he tested the benches for strength and stability and grinned widely at his findings.

  ‘These are splendid.’ He turned to the window that faced the yard and stood with arms akimbo and feet apart, nodding with satisfaction. ‘Plenty of light, too.’

  ‘You like it then?’ she ventured. ‘You feel you could work here?’

  He swung about to her, still grinning. ‘We need look no further for a house, if the rest of it is to your liking.’

  ‘Oh, it is. Come and see!’

  The rest of the ground floor was taken up by the kitchen regions and the parlour that looked out on the street. Upstairs were three bedchambers, one little more than a boxroom. When he learned the rent from her he found it was well within the range he had allowed. ‘Then we can move in as soon as everything is signed,’ he said, when they were downstairs again. She went to take another look around the parlour and he leaned a shoulder against the jamb, watching her. ‘This is certainly a good location for business. Apart from the work I’ve had promised me, I should be able to gather some in from the goldsmiths in this neighbourhood after a while.’

  She nodded, her thoughts full of furnishings. ‘I like it because it will be no distance to the nearest shops and markets.’

  ‘That’s true. We’re also far nearer St Botolph’s than we were to All Hallows.’ His words seemed to drop into the silence of the room. She was already in profile to him and he saw how her hand fluttered to her throat before she became motionless, held in an aura of light from the window behind her, not daring to guess at what he was about to say. Smilingly, he ended her suspense. ‘I suggest we have the banns read and you become my bride again.’

  She looked towards him, her whole face suffused with joy. Then with a little cry she darted forward into his arms.

  The furniture from his childhood home that had been in store was brought to the new address in two full wagonloads. Hester was overjoyed to find that in addition to some fine carved pieces, which included the four-poster in which several generations of Batemans had been born, there were some worn but still beautiful carpets and several boxes of fine porcelain as well as more humdrum articles, all of which would be put to good use. With everything from her own home lost in the rubble of the collapsed slum house, it meant much to her that there should be links with John’s origins.

  They moved into their new home on the eve of their second marriage. That day John finally finished fitting out his workshop, which she had washed and scrubbed clean for him as she had done the rest of the house. She had seen many of the tools before but was intrigued to see them set out: the tree stumps with the many indentations, the vices tightened into place on the benches, the oval anvil and the casting moulds. She liked the strange names, such as stakes and heads, horses and mandrels, which John told her were as old as the craft itself in England, and the terms that covered the various stages of the work. Having never forgotten the impression made on her by the gold and silver exhibition she had seen as a young girl, she was particularly fascinated to see at last the tools that brought about the creation of such marvellous pieces.

  ‘So many hammers and mallets!’ she exclaimed, looking at the racked rows of them in every size, some shaped as she had never seen before.

  ‘Each has its own purpose,’ he said, unpacking from a box a set of scales for measuring gold and silver.

  She came across to watch. The weights were set into wooden boxes. ‘Perhaps I could weigh for you. As you know, I can count even though I can’t read and it would be easy to memorize these weights.’

  He was intent on adjusting the scales to a perfect balance. ‘I could teach you to polish if you like. That would be a help to me.’

  ‘Yes! Anything! I’d like to become another right hand to you.’

  His frown of concentration dispersed as he completed his task and straightened his back. ‘I dare say there will be several small chores you’ll be able to do for me as Joss gets older and you have more free time on your hands.’

  She closed the lid of the weights box that she had opened, smiling to herself. So he was not adverse to her working with him. It did not go against his pride as the thought of her working for strangers in a public place had done. She could understand that. In his workshop she would be under his direction and protection, his dignity and hers unimpaired by what could be termed a partnership, albeit her skills would never match his. Without his knowing it, he had opened a door for her. Perhaps it was that very door that her premonition about the falling down of the house had made her fear she would never reach. A sweet fresh wind was blowing through it, not scented with flowers but with the strange aroma of goldsmithing that stung her nostrils as if she had already entered that new realm.

  ‘Take a look at this, Hester.’ He had unwrapped a package that had been delivered to him that day in readiness for his first outwork. It was a dull-looking sheet of metal.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘A disc of silver. Nothing much at this stage, is it? Gold is no better in a “blank”. That’s why goldsmiths never let a client see a piece in the making, because they would only be disappointed and have groundless fears about the end result.’

  ‘What do you look for in a good article of silver or gold?’ she wanted to know.

  ‘I don’t have to look because it will hit me here.’ He thumped his chest over his heart. ‘The honesty and liveliness of it combined with its sense of style in true beauty of form and decoration will reach out to me and declare itself.’

  She had a flash of insight. He had put into words the instinctive feelings she had had in her young girlhood at that exhibition at the Goldsmiths Hall. She almost caught her breath on the revelation. Somehow it made her feel as much one with him as in their most intimate moments.

  All three Batemans had new clothes for the wedding day. Joss wore a manly little coat of red velvet over his blue smock. John sporting a dark green coat and knee breeches, his waistcoat gold-coloured and his stockings white. Hester looked at her menfolk with pride, she herself in cornflower silk with a motif of roses, her hair dressed high under a wide-brimmed Leghorn hat tied under her chin with wide satin ribbons. In the church she would be receiving a gold ring from John. The metal one had been put away that morning as a keepsake. The long-case clock from Staffordshire chimed half past eleven in the hall.

  ‘It’s time to go.’ John drew her to him with a smile and kissed her before she linked her arm in his and took Joss by the hand.

  Robin, who was best man, met them at the door of St Botolph’s. He led the bridegroom into the church to await the bride at the altar. Tom, who was also there, took charge of Joss. Jack, waiting in the porch, was resplendent in a new coat of ginger-brown cloth with the fashionable cuffs reaching to his elbows.

  ‘This is a good day, Hester,’ he said to her. ‘I’m glad to see you truly church-wed.’

  He bowed to her in the well-practised manner
he used towards his most important patrons and offered his arm to take her up the aisle. Several of the pews were occupied by friends, some of long standing, and even Martha was there, although more out of curiosity than goodwill. Afterwards everyone would go back to the house for wine and plum cake.

  When the ceremony was over, Hester again signed her cross under John’s guidance. The bells rang as they came out of the church. There was nothing to mar the happiness of her day.

  Six

  Hester had heard it said that a love-child was always far more like the father than any conceived in wedlock and it was certainly true of Joss, not only in looks but in character. An amiable child, slow to anger, he had John’s dogged determination and, if early signs were right, he was going to be another goldsmith. Hester held herself responsible for that, for it was through her that he became accustomed to being in the workshop. It came about gradually.

  John, having been compelled by events to start up as an outworker sooner than he had intended, had not secured the amount of outwork he would have liked as a beginning. He had plenty of rivals, outworkers long established, and masters of repute did not risk orders with those unknown to them. All he could hope for was that word of mouth would eventually recommend him. Master Barton had been the first to give him work, a generous man who bore him no grudge for leaving to start as an independent outworker, and a steady order for cutlery, to the designs supplied, resulted while work from other sources remained a trickle. There were periods when if it had not been for the Barton spoons and forks there would have been no work for John to do, and there were times when even that ran out.

  He was often silent and depressed in the evenings. Worry hollowed his cheeks and drew out the bones in his face. When the cutlery orders came in again, Hester always wished that Master Barton, who knew John’s ability, would give him work more demanding of his skills, although it was natural that any master contracting out would keep the best for his own journeymen.

  ‘Things will get better,’ Hester encouraged optimistically, polishing away at a plain tea canister at the next work-bench to his. From the first week at their new home, she had allotted some part of her day to the workshop. She took her first lessons in polishing during Joss’s daytime naps, John showing her how to dress soft chamois leather with compounds and jewellers’ rouge to bring a shine to a finished piece. It was rewarding work. Under her hands emerged the gleam and sparkle that gave glory to the simplest piece and sent reflected light shooting over walls and ceilings. When Joss gave up sleeping in the daytime, she had established herself too securely in the workshop to be willing to surrender her sessions there. She overcame the problem by making Joss a plaited harness, which she attached by a lead to the leg of the work-bench to keep him from straying under John’s feet and, if given a few hammers, he would play happily without being a trouble to either of them.

  Daily Hester became more fascinated with silver. Its marvellous malleability after only a gentle heating to release the compressed crystals that made up the metal, no violent fire required, never failed to fill her with wonder as she watched the flat ‘blanks’ rise up and take shape under John’s hammer. During the spasmodic workless periods he had time to give her special instruction in his craft and was impressed by the rate of her progress. Intelligence on its own, even when combined with enthusiasm and a sense of artistry, was not enough in goldsmithing; there had to be that special empathy with precious metals before a good goldsmith was made and he recognized that Hester had it in her. What had started out as a means of making her more useful to him whenever work should happen to increase now took on a new significance. With time there was every likelihood that Hester’s talent would bloom to the full. His interest in teaching her helped him to weather the times when more than once he was tempted to close the workshop and take whatever other employment was available.

  He had been struggling along for more than a year when he received his first order of importance from a totally unexpected source. Master Feline, who had dismissed him after receiving notification of his blacklisting, came to the workshop. He was a thin-faced man in a grey periwig with an unprepossessing, dour expression. Yet to Hester, who had admitted him, it seemed as if the sun itself radiated from the gold buttons on his cinnamon velvet coat once the purpose of his visit was made known.

  ‘So this is where you are, Bateman,’ he said with some irritation as if he’d been put to trouble finding him. ‘You did good work for me during the short while you were on my premises and to my mind the ban that applied there doesn’t count here. I’m inundated with work. Will you ease the load for me at the same standard as before?’

  ‘I will indeed.’

  ‘Good! Four candlesticks and a pair of matching candelabra in silver. Come with me now to collect the designs and be as swift as you can with the work. We’ll settle the price on the way.’

  As soon as the order was filled, more work was forthcoming, all of it of the highest quality and of immense interest to John, calling on all his skills. At last Hester was able to see for herself how every kind of workpiece was made, whether it began, as he had instructed her in his teaching, from a ‘blank’ cut to form a cylinder dovetailed together or raised up and shaped from those same discs. There was some casting work, usually of buttons, spouts, finials and feet, which she was able to do for him.

  It was not long before work of similar quality came from elsewhere. John had a theory about it. ‘Whereas Master Barton had never mentioned me, I believe Master Feline probably dropped word of a good outworker at the coffee house where goldsmiths meet. It may have been deliberately passed on or only overheard — that doesn’t matter if I get the work. It seems that the Harwood ban doesn’t apply if I don’t venture off my own premises to do whatever I’m given.’

  As orders increased, some gold-work was required where previously everything had been in silver. If it was a matter of gilding he contracted that stage of the work out, grimly reminded of the effect it would have on some unfortunate’s lungs. He also contracted out engraving, for although he had received some basic training in the craft while serving his indentures, it was specialized work and had its own long apprenticeship to reach the high standard required.

  When workpieces were finished and before the final polishing, they were taken to the master goldsmith for whom they had been made and he would stamp each article with his own punchmark. Next they went to the Assay Office to be weighed and checked before receiving the punched assay marks, which denoted quality, the year of manufacture, and gave the city’s own lion passant, that showed it was London-made. When back in the workshop again, the articles would be given a final cleaning and polishing by Hester before she wrapped the most costly in chamois and the lesser pieces in yellow cloth for final delivery. If John harboured any bitterness over never being able to stamp his own ‘touch’ on his work he never showed it. As time went by, Hester came to the conclusion that he had shut out regrets about his broken apprenticeship long ago.

  It was no longer necessary to keep Joss on a harness in the workshop. He was an intelligent child and understood the reason why he must keep out of the way. Almost from the first his boyish instincts had led him to imitate his father at work, and by the age of three he had become adept at copying many of the stages of goldsmithing, learning from his mother the basics of the craft. When she was filing the edge of a disc he did the same with a piece of non-precious metal; if she was busy dishing a rim, he also tried to raise a saucer edge by beating, quite unperturbed when his little hammer had no effect. He liked to help her sift the dust for lemel, his fair curls close to her kerchief-covered head, and his eyes were as quick as hers in spotting the glint of minuscule fragments that would be put aside for melting down in a crucible for re-use. He was four years old and they had been nearly three years in the house when Hester, who had kept at work for as long as possible in her second pregnancy, gave birth to a daughter.

  The new baby, baptized Letticia after her paternal grandmother at St Botolph’
s, completely disrupted what had become for Hester a pleasant routine divided between goldsmithing and domestic chores with playtimes and outings set aside for family hours. Intensely maternal, she devoted herself to the baby’s needs. John, remembering how it had been after Joss’s birth, resigned himself to a period of never quite having her whole attention, her ear always tuned for the first note of the baby’s cry. Yet she did turn to him alertly, pausing in the folding of some baby garments, when he mentioned having heard that Master Harwood had suffered another stroke.

  ‘Who is in charge of the business then?’ she enquired swiftly.

  ‘Mrs Harwood.’

  ‘Will she do well, do you think?’

  ‘She did last time he was ill. In any case she has Caroline to assist her.’

  ‘Is Caroline not wed yet?’ There was a rasp to Hester’s voice.

  ‘I hear she is betrothed to a naval man.’

  ‘Indeed?’

  John was aware of how penetrating Hester’s gaze was on him. It was as if she were trying to read in his face what his reactions were to his first love transferring her affections at last. His feelings on that score were too private, too shut away for anything to be revealed on the surface. ‘I’m sure her father’s affliction is a great grief to her. She has always been devoted to him. Her betrothed is surely some comfort to her.’

  ‘If he is not at sea.’

  ‘Ah well.’ He shrugged to show he was not certain about that. ‘He was the last time I heard talk of the Harwoods before this new development. I hope for her sake he is home again now.’

  It had not pleased Hester to hear Caroline’s name again, and perversely neither did it to know that he had heard news of the Harwoods on another occasion that he had not passed on to her. If she had not been completely absorbed in the baby she might have brooded over their conversation, but somehow outside distractions had lost their impetus temporarily. When eventually the early demands of an infant began to wane, she returned to the workshop to find John at work on the most elaborate piece that had yet come to him in his capacity as an outworker.