The Devil's Mask

by Christopher Wakling

  Five

  The paper trail confirmed my suspicions: the Western Trading Company had underpaid import duties and shirked its share of the port fees. Having re-sequenced the file chronologically, I worked my way forwards from the first recorded voyages in which the Company had invested, through to the ships they owned outright, all the while setting declared cargo against duties and fees. The columns did not tally. Since the majority of the Company’s shareholders were also members of the Merchant Venturers, who owned the docks and levied the fees, the merchants had in effect been cheating themselves, which … I flicked through more receipts, stifling a yawn … more or less amounted to cheating nobody at all.

  Voices filtered into my office from the landing. Carthy and his daughter Anne, reciting the alphabet together, a prelude to her reading lesson. Though she is laughably young – and a girl – Carthy is fanatical about this daily ritual. He likes to joke that my scepticism is understandable; one day Anne will inherit the practice, making her my employer. With his customary contrariness, Carthy led by mis-example.

  ‘P.I.G. spells HORSE!’

  ‘No, no, no!’

  I stiffened in my seat, a new document before me.

  ‘What then? DRAGON? HALIBUT? I can’t make it out.’

  ‘Pig!’ Anne shrieked.

  I spread the paper flat upon my blotter. The name upon it did not change. Nor did the figures. Michael Bright, my father, a Western Trading Company member these last two years had, ten months ago, made a payment of two hundred and twelve pounds, nine shillings and four pence, to settle the Company’s unpaid balance of dock fees and import duties.

  ‘M.O.O.N.’

  ‘That’s not a word.’

  ‘Yes it is, Daddy!’

  ‘No it’s not. It’s the sound a cow makes.’

  I totted up the figures. The remittance, dated 13 December 1808, cleared the substantial deficit owed by the Company at that time. Which … was a relief, wasn’t it? A number of Western Trading Company ships had docked since then, including the Spirit, the Good Hand, and the Ranger this summer, and there were still sums outstanding in relation to them, but the Company would no doubt clear those further debts too, when approached. The receipt detailing the payment made by my father suggested as much, didn’t it? I was cross-checking the figures when Carthy, lesson complete, appeared in my doorway.

  ‘Early start. But it’ll take more than such grandstanding diligence to pull the wool over my eyes.’

  I reported my findings.

  ‘Right. So they still owe money.’

  ‘Yes, but it looks like they’ll pay, as I say –’

  ‘And I look like I might increase your wages one day, but I wouldn’t count on it.’

  ‘That said –’

  Carthy’s brows dipped, cutting me off. ‘I doubt the Dock Company consider it good enough for merchants to remunerate them as and when they feel like it.’

  Carthy was right, of course, but his objection still rankled. This aspect of the law, the pernickety bit, in seeming so wilfully to ignore the bigger picture, lowers my spirits. Time and again I’ve heard Carthy’s mantra: ‘detail is the Devil’s mask’. I know he’s right. On a good day I feel equipped to penetrate the veil. On a bad day it blinds me. My shoulders slumped.

  ‘Come now,’ Carthy’s tone softened. ‘You’ve done what was asked of us. If these are your findings, so be it. We’ll report them to Mr Orton and he can decide what to do. Who knows, he may even be of your persuasion.’

  Carthy had advanced to the window and was feigning interest in the limited view it gave of the street. The pretence, coupled with his ‘so be it’, further unsettled me. I ran my finger around the inside of my collar. I had not mentioned my father by name to Carthy. Why? Because his involvement was not strictly relevant. If anything, since my father had last cleared the Company’s debts, he appeared in the best light. Did he not? Regardless, it was one thing to have chosen not to work for the family business, quite another to strew obstacles in its path. I would hold fire until I’d spoken with Father himself about the matter.

  Anne wandered into the office now, a tube of rolled paper pressed to her eye. Carthy’s brows immediately unfolded at the sight of her.

  ‘What’s that you’ve got?’

  ‘A telescope.’

  ‘Do you mean to inspect Inigo with it?’ the lawyer asked, gathering his daughter up. ‘Or were you going to lend it to him, the more closely to examine his case with?’

  Again I stiffened in my chair.

  ‘Neither. It’s for you. To look at the moon with,’ Anne said.

  Carthy picked up his daughter under one arm and squeezed her like a set of bagpipes. She duly squealed. He said, ‘We need to go and practise your piano playing,’ to her. And to me: ‘It would be useful if your final reckoning of the sum outstanding could incorporate whatever the Company owes in respect of the last ship, the Belsize. Attend to that.’

  I nodded.

  ‘Then begin again with the rest of the dock records. The crate will no doubt furnish further … anomalies.’ He squeezed a further chirrup from Anne and turned away, muttering, ‘Hours of fun.’

  Six

  That evening I went home. I did not take Carthy’s rickety coach, preferring to walk despite the bank of grey cloud which had overrun the clear sky at lunchtime and now pulsed with fine drizzle. A veil of droplets too small to see swept across my face and clung to the wool of my greatcoat and beaded in my hair. I put my head down up the steep hill of Park Street, towards the great house in which I grew up, the home my father commissioned beside Brandon Hill on his return from the West Indies some twenty-one years ago.

  Nothing much about the house, inside or out, has altered in at least fourteen years, not since my stepmother, Clarissa, died. Shucking off my coat, I took stock. The worn tiles of the hall floor hadn’t moved. Nor had the mahogany chest which squatted upon them, or the silver candlesticks which stood sentry on its dull lid. The portrait of my grandfather astride his black horse still hung on the landing wall. I ran my hands through the damp tangle of my hair, thinking: the house is too big, that’s the problem. Carthy’s place in town may be taller, but Bright House is wider, squarer, deeper, never mind the stables and grounds. It’s too spread out. That’s why Carthy’s place feels full but home has always felt empty, even before Clarissa died.

  More sameness washed over me: the familiar sound of Sebastian playing the piano upstairs. As a child, my youngest brother played piano to soothe a nervous disposition. Father even credited the instrument with having cured his stutter. I wiped my feet on the faded hall rug and made my way up to the music room. The door stood ajar. I glimpsed the paleness of Sebastian’s neck, his fair head bent over the keys.

  ‘Where is everyone?’ I asked.

  He looked up, shrugged and said, ‘You’re staying for dinner though? They’ll no doubt be here then.’

  ‘Father keeping you busy?’

  ‘The work does that by itself. It’s not called business for nothing.’

  ‘What’s he got you doing?’

  ‘This and that,’ Sebastian sighed, then picked out a flurry of notes.

  I traced a line in the dust on top of the piano. Did Sebastian think I would not be interested in the detail? The line became a snake. There could be no deeper reason, could there?

  ‘When is Father going to employ a proper cleaner?’ I asked. ‘Either Mrs Watson’s eyes are failing or she’s working on the basis that you three are blind to her efforts.’

  ‘She’s loyal, and a bit of dust never hurt anyone.’ Sebastian played a loud chord. ‘Since when did you grow so fussy?’

  A dog barked downstairs. Hearing my father clunk down his stick and mutter the dog into silence, I felt a sudden surge of tenderness towards Sebastian, and ridiculous for questioning his reticence to discuss business. He simply doesn’t care much for work. Like me, he’d no doubt prefer to spend his time doing something else. Composing songs, perhaps. He, however, has never been grante
d the option to go his own way. Nobody stood between me and the door.

  Claws clicked and faded, moving from the rug and down the flagstone hall. Dog and master were on their way to the study. I left Sebastian and went downstairs. My father seldom uses the house’s formal reception rooms; when not in Bright & Co.’s counting house he is most often to be found here, cocooned in memorabilia. Framed contracts, deeds and bills, and a pair of etchings showing planters in Barbados adorn one wood-panelled wall. Opposite there’s a fox-head hung with its milky eye to the window. I stood in the doorway and watched as Father drew a pipe from his jacket pocket, thumbed it full of tobacco and struck a match. The flame painted his square, balding brow, the implacable nose, the boxer’s chin. I took a step into the room and, as the flame died, made out the broken capillaries which reddened his weather-worn cheeks. The walleyed fox-head had belonged to the quarry of his first hunt, killed some thirty-five years ago. He still shoots throughout the season and rides out with the Aust foxhounds most weeks.

  Seeing me now, Father sucked hard on his pipe, advanced, clapped me on both shoulders, turned in a circle, then threw himself into his favoured armchair. He settled himself. Only then did the smoke explode from his nostrils.

  ‘You need a haircut,’ he said.

  I resisted the temptation to flatten my curls. It is unnerving, this ability of his to home in on a person’s sensitivities, no matter how trifling, and jab at them with a pin.

  ‘They have good barbershops in town. So something else must have driven you up the hill. The wine. For the wedding. I’ve already said it’ll be my pleasure to furnish it.’

  Upstairs, Sebastian’s piano recital faltered, stopped, then took off again.

  ‘No reason or excuse. I just thought I’d call in.’

  Father raised his eyes to the yellow plaster ceiling above us and smiled. ‘Well, it can’t have been on account of the entertainment.’

  ‘How’s business?’

  The smile stayed in place – perhaps registering the out-of-character nature of the question – until he saw fit to draw deeply on his pipe again. Smoke rolled from his mouth. Finally he said, ‘Passable, since you ask. Profitable, even. The same can’t be said for Cartwright, Dudley and those other poor fools who stuck at the African trade to the bitter end. But for the more progressive traders, such as us, dealing in humdrum commodities, sugar, tea,’ he waggled his pipe, ‘and good old tobacco, all’s well. It’s a miracle, really. The predicted apocalypse for all merchants just hasn’t happened. So yes, we’re rubbing along. There’s certainly enough fat on the hog’s back to contribute to the grand celebration; if the Alexanders will allow our help, that is.’

  ‘They’re appreciative of the gesture, as I’ve said.’

  ‘I’ll wager they are!’

  ‘And your hip?’

  Reminded of the injury, Father’s eyes darkened. He rose from his seat and stumped to the worktable on which lay the disassembled components of his twelve-gauge pheasant gun. He lifted the barrel to the light and winked down it. He is a young forty-eight, vigorous still, and proud of his prowess both as a shot and in the saddle. Yet he fell from his horse late last winter, injured his leg, and to his dismay hadn’t been able to shake off the hurt. The sound of his stick on the hall floor had told me that the hip still hadn’t mended, and despite knowing how he would hate to be reminded of the injury, it seemed I had done exactly that. He replaced the barrel carefully amidst the felt cleaning rags, and slapped his hip with a feigned lack of concern.

  ‘Damnable. It’ll mend. But the going’s slow. That said –’

  ‘I wonder whether the riding is helping?’

  ‘The riding has nothing to do with it.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes. Lounging around never cured anything,’ he replied. ‘Now, the sun’s past the yardarm. What can I get you to drink?’

  One of Bright House’s cellar-rooms is stocked with a good range of wine, bought on the advice of Father’s old friend, George Heard. Father himself appreciates the value of the collection more than the subtleties of its taste, but is generous with it nevertheless. The offer signalling a truce, I sat back in one of the leather armchairs before the fire while he went to retrieve a bottle. Perhaps Sebastian guessed at the development; he stopped playing upstairs; silence flooded the study. Then the quieter noises – the lapping of flames, Father’s uneven footsteps on the wooden floor, the wind through treetops in the garden – or was it distant caterwauling – asserted themselves. The lurcher, curled asleep before the fire, stiffened as the cat-noise broke in upon its dream. Its forelegs twitched and its lip curled to reveal yellow incisors. Did it imagine itself sinking them into the cat, silencing it, as the screech faded?

  Seven

  Father’s mood lifted as the evening progressed. I hoped this had to do with the wine, and not the arrival of Sebastian and John, yet undoubtedly he relaxed in their presence. John, in particular, has a knack of putting him at ease. He has always had a slow-moving complicity around Father that both I and Sebastian lack; it hangs in the heavier set of his bones and fuller figure; you can hear it in the near-ponderous manner of his speech. Wherever a conversation begins with John, it always seems to move towards a joke, with him the willing butt.

  ‘The bear was on a long chain,’ he was saying now. ‘We stopped to watch it down by St Nicholas Market. Every time its owner jerked its collar the thing would stand up on its hind legs and clap. Two jerks and it would attempt to keep upright on just the one leg. Hilarious. The man had a tin whistle the bear would dance to. The funniest apparition you ever saw, the great thing lumbering in time to the music on the cobbles! I had to join in, of course, just for a turn, but I got a bit carried away.’

  ‘I’ll wager,’ nodded Father. ‘Two left feet.’

  ‘Not at all. Inigo himself must admit I’m the better dancer. It was just the damned chain.’

  ‘What happened?’ I asked.

  ‘I became entangled. Briefly. Just long enough to lose my footing. In short, I fell headlong into the bear. We ended up in the street.’

  ‘Fool!’ Father laughed silently.

  ‘Marvellously strong smell on the thing,’ John said slowly. ‘And long teeth. Not to worry, though. The owner pulled it back promptly, well out of reach.’

  ‘And you informed Jonas Adams of our proposal,’ said Father. ‘After this … interlude?’

  ‘Of course.’ John leaned back in his chair and crossed his fleshy calves. ‘He’ll accept.’

  Both Sebastian and Father nodded sagely at this. I had no idea what they were talking about. As if to underline the point, Father now asked whether I’d had as entertaining a morning as John. Had it involved dancing with a bear?

  ‘I’m afraid not,’ I admitted. Then I said, ‘No, my day was altogether more boring. Port fees and import duties. I’m working on a job for the Dock Company. It’s a clerk’s work, really. Mundane stuff.’

  John uncrossed his legs. Speaking yet more deliberately than normal, and looking to my father rather than me, he said, ‘Come, now. No need to play down your more intellectualised existence.’

  A smile passed between my father and brother and the familiar, competitive heat spread across my chest. John’s supremacy in the battle for Father’s affections has always maddened me, deep down.

  Sebastian rose and poured himself a refill from the decanter on the mantelpiece, then bent to stab at the fire with a poker. He abhors confrontation. I quelled my annoyance and stared at my glass. Blood-red wine swam briefly with flame. John repressed a fake yawn. Father twisted his signet ring round his little finger, then muttered, ‘Wasps’ nest, that Dock Company. Be careful not to prod it unduly hard.’

  Still irked, I replied evenly, ‘Oh, it’s all routine clerking, as I say. Dotting ‘i’s and crossing ‘t’s. That’s why Mr Carthy has delegated the legwork to me. He has only expressed an interest in the records of one particular ship himself.’ I looked at Father, found he was still scrutinising his signet ring
, and went on slowly. ‘A ship that docked just yesterday. The Belstaff I think she’s called. No. The Belsize.’

  Father nodded absently. At length he said, ‘Did you fear the bear would bite you, John? Was there any intent in its eye when it bared its teeth?’

  ‘Not really,’ said John. ‘I think it was more scared of me than I was of it.’

  I opened my mouth to repeat the word Belsize, but refrained. Bright & Co. has investments in concerns beyond the Western Trading Company, which itself takes stakes in many ventures, ships included. Perhaps Father really hadn’t heard of the Belsize. And even if he had, I knew nothing more of the ship than that its recent arrival in port had raised Carthy’s eyebrows. Lord knew it wasn’t alone in managing that.

  We crossed the hall to the dining room for a dinner of pork chops, cabbage, potatoes and gravy. All of it was overcooked, even the gravy, which swam with caramelised onions. Father, Sebastian and John have always shared a dislike of rare meat. In the Carthy household food has more flavour and meals take time; Mr Carthy himself regards eating as an excuse for conversation about subjects unrelated to work, and his wife’s ample figure is testament her commitment to the household’s meals. Here we four men sat squarely opposite one another across a table unadorned with cloth or silverware and wolfed our meal in silence. Fuel, untempered by a female touch. Still, there was nothing dishonest about the meal. I took a second helping of potatoes and asked Sebastian to pass the salt.

  Eight

  Two days later my understanding of the Western Trading Company’s records had deepened to a point which required me to talk to Carthy again. Yet he spent his morning taking a witness statement on behalf of a client, and the entire afternoon making an application in court. From there he headed directly to a dinner at the Hot Well. The delay worked upon me with the persistence of rust, blurring my conviction, dulling its edge. Father would be sure to find out I was at the root of the Western Trading Company’s misfortune sooner or later, and I knew that ‘misfortune’ really meant ‘fine’. The records showed irregularities above and beyond the sum that Bright & Co. had paid in respect of the Company’s debts; put bluntly, the books were impossible to reconcile. In particular, there was insufficient detail about the numbers of slaves the Company had bought and sold before the trade was declared illegal. The Company must have shipped more from the Guinea coast to the Indies than it had declared, or it must have lost fewer in transit, to account for the sums invested in goods subsequently shipped to Bristol. There was outstanding duty on swathes of those goods, too. My father’s payment was a sop at best; at worst, it now looked like an attempt to cover up some deeper problem.