The Silver Touch

by Rosalind Laker

  ‘You want the truth, so you shall have it! When Caroline took charge of her father’s business after the second stroke, the first thing she did was to see that the ban was lifted from me, which has helped me in gathering in more work. When some of her best journeymen left, not wanting to stay on under the direction of a woman, should I have refused the fine pieces she wanted me to make for her?’ He shook her in his impatience. ‘Answer me!’

  ‘Yes,’ she retorted furiously, thwarted by him in her efforts to pull free. ‘I should have expected you to have more pride than to accept work from that source!’

  ‘I never once connected it with my former master. In any case, I bear that sick old man no malice now.’

  ‘What need when you have Caroline in spite of him? Doing work for her gave you the excuse to see her any time you wished!’

  ‘And glad I was of it!’ he responded savagely.

  With a shriek of jealousy, she tried to hit him again, her range limited by the pressure of his body against hers. They struggled fiercely together until a whiff of smoke reached their nostrils at the same time. As he released her, they turned together to see that the candle had set fire to the cloth that had fallen to the floor with it. He sprang forward to start stamping out the flickering rise of the flames while she dashed into the bedchamber to fetch the ewer from the wash-stand. Rushing back, she tossed the water on to the fire, dousing it completely. She cradled the ewer to her as they stood looking at each other across the mess of water and blackened cloth on the floor between them. The air reeked of the ill-smelling smoke. Shock was in both their faces.

  He spoke first, his voice intensely weary. ‘You had better get to bed. I’ll clean this up.’

  She nodded, horrified that their quarrel should have endangered not only their house but the lives of their children. If the wall panelling had caught fire — it did not bear thinking about. In the bedchamber she put on a clean night-gown, the other having been splashed by the water from the ewer. She climbed into bed, hearing him still at work on the landing, and did not snuff the bedside candle, leaving it for him. Twice he went downstairs to empty the leather bucket into which he had wrung out a cloth. Waiting for him, she sat up in bed, her own anger gone and only hurt left. She could only guess at his feelings.

  Downstairs John shut the back door after swilling the last of the water into the drain. He turned into his workshop and put a light to a candle there before sliding his weight on to a stool and resting his arms on the bench as he stared unseeingly at his own reflection multiplied in the leaded panes of the window. Here in the workshop he was always at peace. The difficulties and challenges of a workpiece did not constitute the kind of stress that reared spasmodically in his domestic life. He should have told Hester about Caroline’s lifting of the ban and of the aid and advice he had given her whenever a problem with the business had arisen. At first he had waited for the right moment, but that had never seemed to come. Hester, loving, laughing and exuberant, fast filling her ambition to become another right hand to him in the workshop, changed whenever the Harwood name was mentioned. A rigidness came over her, the lovely spark in her dampened down by hostility towards a woman who was no challenge to her in her security as his wife. He had not wanted to face that change in her every time a Harwood workpiece was on his bench or a delivery was due, bringing disharmony into the one sanctum, other than their bed, where he and Hester were always in complete accord. To tell her about Caroline would have been to disrupt both.

  He had not expected he would have to face two feminine explosions of emotion when he had set out for the Harwood establishment that evening, but as soon as he arrived he saw that Caroline was nervous and upset. They went first into the office, as they always did, where he set down on her desk the silver casket he had made for her. After payment was made it was their custom to go upstairs to the drawing-room where she would serve him madeira and they would discuss business matters before closing the evening with some pleasant talk of books, or music or plays in which they were both interested. Sometimes she would play the harpsichord or the lute for his pleasure. Her mother never joined them. It was his guess that she disapproved of her daughter renewing a friendship that had once caused such an upheaval in the household, but Caroline was now the one to make decisions and no one could gainsay her.

  ‘What is wrong, Caroline?’ he enquired with concern. She had approved the casket and sat down to draw up a bankers’ draft for the amount due to him, the pen trembling in her hand. ‘Is your father failing?’

  ‘No more than the steady deterioration from which there is no hope of betterment.’ Her voice faltered and broke piteously. ‘It is my life that is at an end. Richard is home from the sea. He has come into his inheritance in Norfolk and his days aboard ship are over. We are to be married at the end of the month.’ She dropped the pen in a splutter of ink and covered her face with her hands.

  He swung up a chair and sat down to bring his face close to hers. ‘Don’t you care for him any more? You’ve been betrothed a long time.’

  Her elbows slid outwards and her head sank until her brow rested on the back of her hands in a position of abject despair. ‘He’s a good man. I do care for him.’

  ‘Then what has happened?’ He put a hand compassionately on her shoulder.

  ‘Nothing that hasn’t always been there.’ Abruptly she raised her head and looked at him in yearning, the swimming tears spilling from her eyes. ‘It’s you I love and always will.’

  ‘Caroline, my dear,’ he said huskily. Until now she had shown only that same calm, friendly attitude that she had maintained throughout the time when he had known only relief that she had put an end to promises between them in the hope of a new beginning. Now as then his fondness for her remained unchanged by everything that had happened throughout the past years, since that day she had set him free. If events had not gone the way they had, he would have married her and loved her with the same depth of feeling to the end of their days.

  But Hester had changed everything by getting into his blood and eliminating every other woman for him, stirring him to boundless passion as Caroline had never done or would have been able to do. Life with her would always been placid to the extent where it would have been dull. Like food without salt. A dry summer without the welcome break of a thunderstorm. He would have suffocated.

  She snatched up his hand and kissed it before pressing his palm against her breast, the nipple hard through the fine silk. ‘This is the last time we’ll ever be alone together.’ Her face had become flushed, a new brilliance in her eyes, and suddenly she flung herself passionately across his chest, breathing deeply. ‘Make love to me, John! Just once! Nobody will ever know and I’ll be able to live the rest of my life on the memory of having been in your arms!’

  In the workshop he passed his fingers across his forehead as if to erase what was lodged in his mind’s eye. Behind him the latch of the door lifted with a click and there was a creak as it opened. He twisted round on his stool and saw Hester standing there. The sight of her wrenched at his heart. Her expressive face gave away the relief she felt at finding him there. It was obvious that in hearing no sound after he had closed the back door she believed him to have gone out again. The time must have passed slowly for her.

  ‘Can’t you sleep?’ he asked, although her shadowed eyes told of wakefulness.

  She shook her head. ‘I could ask the same of you.’

  ‘It’s been a strange night,’ he said, as much to himself as to her, returning his gaze to the window. The first tint of the spring early dawn was streaking pink ribbons across the sky. Somewhere close by birds were chirping.

  She pushed the door shut behind her but stayed where she was. ‘I had thought to make myself a pot of elderberry tea. Will you share a cup with me?’

  He seemed not to have heard her, deep in his thoughts. Then he turned his head again and spoke as if there had been no previous conversation. ‘My life would be nothing without you, Hester.’ His heart was in his v
oice. ‘I should have told you about the work for the House of Harwood, but knowing it was only for a limited period I decided unwisely to keep it to myself. As it happens, there’ll be no more work from there in any case. The business is to be sold.’

  ‘And why is that?’ She spoke quite steadily.

  ‘Caroline is to be married this month. Then she’ll be leaving London to live in Norfolk.’

  For the sake of her own sanity she knew she must believe that there had been nothing between Caroline and him. If Caroline’s decision to marry at last had been the cause of the haunted look in his eyes upon his return home she would not dwell on it now or at any other time. In that direction madness lay waiting to tear heart and mind and soul to shreds.

  ‘I wish her well,’ she said with sincerity. Caroline’s going was like a bountiful gift that the woman herself had bestowed on their future life together.

  His face twisted wryly as if her words had touched a raw nerve and he looked away from her. She went forward and put a hand on his arm. He covered it with his own and held it hard for several minutes before turning his head to meet her eyes again. She touched his haggard face with the fingertips of her free hand.

  ‘I mentioned a cup of elderberry tea just now,’ she said almost in a whisper.

  He nodded heavily on a silent sigh and slid his weight from the stool. ‘I’ll heat the water for you.’

  Putting his arm about her shoulders, he kept her close to his side as they went from the workshop together. It was in the kitchen as they sat at the table opposite each other, sipping the fragrant elderberry tea, that she told him she had had the first sign suggesting she might be pregnant again.

  ‘I can’t be sure yet,’ she admitted uncertainly.

  He gave her a tired smile, reaching out for her hand across the table and clasping it, although there was no smile in his eyes, only a deepening of the misery already there. ‘If that should be the case, then it is time we moved house. We are crowded here already.’

  She wondered why she should have chosen this moment to tell him what she barely suspected. Was it to try to emphasize the marital bond between them to the exclusion of all else? On impulse, she sprang to her feet, knocking back her chair, and whirled around the table to where he sat. She drove her fingers into his hair and drew his head deep against her breasts. At once he clung to her with a groan, his arms encircling her hips. There was still a breach between them that only time could heal and she felt as lost as he.

  It was from a warning carrier, who visited all workshops regularly with descriptions of stolen gold- and silverware and gave the alert on gangs of thieves, that they learned of Master Harwood’s death. It occurred only days before Caroline’s marriage, which took place as arranged the day after the funeral, quietly and privately without any of the pomp that would normally have attended it. The property had already been sold to another goldsmith. Not long afterwards they heard that the widow had left for Norfolk to live with her daughter and son-in-law. The name of Harwood had gone from London as if it had never been, except for what Hester saw as a scar left across her own marriage.

  It was summer when they moved into a much larger, three-storeyed house in Nixon Square, Cripplegate, in the parish of St Giles. To Hester’s delight there was a garden to the rear where the children could play, still leaving ample space for a herbal patch where at last she could plant whatever she wished. The other residents of the sizeable square were mainly outworkers like John with workshops in their own homes, following a variety of trades from cabinet-maker to glass-grinder. As with nearly all the houses there, the entire ground floor was a workshop with ample living quarters above and a kitchen basement below. For the first time Hester was able to afford a maid in addition to retaining Abigail, who was looking forward to having a small baby to care for again. Joss was the one who suffered the biggest upheaval through the move. At nine years old he was still a serious child, conscientious and particular, his likeness to his father as marked as it had ever been.

  ‘There is a charity school in the countryside that I heard about,’ John said to him. ‘It has connections with St Giles’s Church. After I talked to the vicar and showed him some of the mathematical and other written work from your lessons with me, he agreed to speak to the governors on your behalf. Today I received their reply.’ He tapped the letter in his hand. ‘They are prepared to admit you. You are a fortunate lad.’

  Joss did not feel fortunate. It was unusual for him to show excitement, but he had been really excited about the new workshop. A treadle polishing-machine had been installed to relieve the tedium, as well as the time taken up by hand-polishing, and he and his mother were both looking forward to using it. To be cut away from the workshop was a heavy blow to bear.

  ‘How long shall I have to attend school?’

  ‘Until you are fourteen. Then I shall apprentice you to the best master goldsmith I can find.’

  It was the bright light at the end of a long dark tunnel and something he wanted above all else. Philosophically he faced his education in between. It was no hardship for him to learn and books were as much part of him as the goldsmithing he was determined to follow. ‘When do I start school?’

  ‘On the first day of September.’

  He brightened. There was still plenty of time left to get used to the new treadle machine and finish making the little bowl for Ann in time for her third natal day. Deliberately he shut the thought of school out of his mind and was then astonished by the speed with which the day came upon him.

  Hester packed her son’s travelling-box with all he would need in his school life. Knowing he would benefit from country air did not negate the fact that he was a home-loving boy and would feel the break tremendously. She dreaded his going and her misgivings were not aided by John’s teaching him fisticuffs and how to defend himself against bullies. When the time came for departure Joss showed the kind of straight-backed courage she would have expected of him.

  ‘We’ll say goodbye here, Mama,’ he said to her in the parlour when it was time for him to leave. He had not wanted Letticia or Ann to be present and they were waiting with Abigail on the steps outside to wave him on his way. She did not offend him by telling him to be good and work hard or offer any other unnecessary admonishments. Instead she stooped to give him a big hug and put a packet of toffee into his pocket for the journey.

  ‘It’s your favourite,’ she said, patting the flap of his pocket back into place. ‘I’ll make some more for Christmas when you’ll be home to see us again.’

  He hugged her once more, the desperate pressure of his young arm saying more than words, and then broke from her to dash from the room. She hurried to the window. John had shouldered the travelling-box and stood on the pavement, half-turned to the door and waiting for Joss to finish saying farewell to his sisters. Then the two of them set off across the square. Had it not been such a poignant moment for her she might have smiled at the similarity of their walk, the purposeful stride and their coat-tails swinging in unison. Two streets away they would board the coach for the thirty-mile journey and John would return later that same day.

  She turned away from the window when she could no longer see them and wiped her eyes with her fingertips. Letticia had not waited for Joss to be out of sight, but had scampered back into the house on some business of her own. It was Ann who came running into the parlour to be comforted now that he had gone. ‘I want Joss back, Mama!’

  Hester missed Joss in the workshop most of all. Although he had had lessons set for him every day, he had always finished them in time to do some work at his own section of the bench, his expression absorbed, his silky fair hair falling forward over his eyes. She had only to look across at John to see the familiar resemblance, but he never had time these days to glance up at her with a smile, for he gave himself no rest. When a rush of orders was on he would work late into the night and start again at dawn, something that was happening more frequently all the time. Had Sundays not been sacrosanct, his family time f
or her and the children, she believed he would have worked seven days a week, barely stopping for food. Yet that lack of a smile was in a way symbolic of the subtle change in their relationship, which had never been the same since the night the candle had caused the fire. She wondered how it was that a man and wife, intimate in every sphere, should find it impossible to communicate in words their own private thoughts and sorrows to each other. Sometimes it was as if she was living with a loving stranger.

  Joss did not come home for Christmas. Freak blizzards and heavy snowstorms halted travel and made the roads impassable. The weather was bitter and in the intense cold every lake and pond in London froze and there was ice floating on the Thames. By now Hester was near her time and the need to rest had made her give up her place at the work-bench. To pass the time she often drew designs for pieces she would like to make if ever John could afford to let her have some discs for her own use. As yet silver had no place in their home, their cutlery being of base metal and their dishes of crockery and pewter.

  She had allowed the maid to visit a sick parent and was alone in the house on a Saturday afternoon, the New Year of 1739 being only two weeks old, when there was a knock on the door. She was designing a set of spoons for her own amusement and put her drawing aside to heave herself out of the chair. John had taken Letticia to skate on a pond and Abigail and Ann had gone to watch. She took a little time to get downstairs, but the caller was patient and she opened the door to a handle-maker, who had a box under his arm.