Golden Hill

by Francis Spufford

  ‘A glass of wine with you, sir,’ rumbled Piet Van Loon, filling Smith’s glass: his voice, like his wife’s, preserving the Dutch that had vanished from his children’s. Ey glarsch off vein.

  ‘With all my heart, sir,’ Smith said, pouring for Van Loon in turn as protocol dictated. ‘To your very good health! And to the company,’ he added, turning to left and right with his claret glass held up between finger and thumb. ‘You are quite right, sir,’ he added to Mr Lovell. ‘The change from dining in the wardroom aboard is very welcome.’

  ‘A difficult voyage?’ said Van Loon.

  ‘No, sir; just a long one.’

  ‘Indeed. In these days the journey down to the Leewards is long enough for me. I made the greater crossing once, to study in Leiden when I was a jongeling, and that was sufficient for a lifetime. You would not undertake it without some serious purpose, nee?’ Van Loon’s periods growled along like barrels on a hard floor.

  ‘Indeed not, sir. There’s a deal of water out there to drown frivolity in. But tell me,’ Smith said quickly, for he feared an instant return of the question he must not answer with either truth or lie, ‘are you then, sir, a native of the city?’

  ‘Naturally. What else should I be?’

  ‘All the Dutch are,’ put in Lovell. ‘They all date back to the old times. Piet is the third Van Loon. He was a ledger clerk in his grandfather’s house when first I laid eyes on him, pricing beaver-skins for hats. How they stank; it was August. We had some times, didn’t we?’

  ‘You were prenticed together?’

  ‘No, no, I was bound to Walton’s at that time. Come over on the indenture, and worked a little of this, a little of that. Thought I’d never learn the lingo, and you needed it then, it was Hoogen and Haagen all along the water then. I wheeled in the barrow of skins, and I said to him, “Tell me your offer in the Queen’s English—”’

  ‘“—for I’ll not onderschtand it if you gargle it”,’ finished Van Loon. It did not seem a very hearty beginning to a friendship, but Hendrick wore the polite smile that attends an anecdote of family history told often.

  ‘And you still trade for furs, sir?’

  ‘No!’ said Van Loon, staring. ‘That was thirty, forty year ago. What,’ he went on, incredulously, ‘you don’t know on what sort of concern you are drawing your bill?’

  ‘Well yes, sir – Mr Lovell’s sugar—’

  ‘All the same now, practically,’ said Van Loon. ‘Separate in name, but we have grown together. The cane plantation, together – a leedle more me than him; the ships, together – a leedle more him than me. He distils, I distribute. Together.’ And an injury to him is an injury to us both, Van Loon did not have to say. Smith glanced at the far end of the table. Flora was glowing – with happiness, but also with importance; sitting next to Joris as if they had been voted King and Queen of the May. Of course, it made dynastic sense.

  ‘And do you prosper, sir?’ Smith had meant by this only the polite enquiry that might be answered with an ‘I thank God we do’, or a ‘Tolerably, tolerably, I thankee’. But to his surprise Van Loon took it as sceptical probing of the two firms’ credit, which must be answered with a show of convincing detail, and began at once, with an air bordering on belligerence, to paint a picture of loaded hulls bearing New-York flour to the West Indies, and returning freighted deep with sugar, this to be sold up the Hudson as it was or else transformed to rum first; every stage, every transaction, yielding sweet, secure profit, and those profits in turn buying a flood of Turkey-carpets, cabinets, tea-pots, Brummagem-ware toys and buttons, et cetera, et cetera, imported from London to retail, handsomely marked-up, for still greater gain; and those yet further profits spreading out to fund an ever-diversifying empire of schemes. Mr Lovell, not wishing to be wholly spoken for, began to add in remarks as the advertisement proceeded. Captain Prettyman merely nodded and drank. Smith, listening while helping himself to spoonfuls of a curious orange vegetable, found himself struggling against a sense of unreality, that he should be the object of all this testy boasting. The room swam in the candle-light.

  He had dined in a variety of places, in his time. At the tables of the Hanover Square in London, with a footman behind every seat, and the ladies chewing in tiny mouthfuls as if the height of their hair might be imbalanced by larger motions; eating catch-as-catch-can suppers in the chop-houses of Drury Lane or Gray’s Inn with actors hilarious off duty and students gesturing with their forks; in a cellar in Limehouse, gnawing stale bread. There had been middling, commercial invitations too, where as here family and trade mixed at the table. A printer – a prince among printers – had brought him home one night from the coffee-house to drink milk punch in a tall house in Soho filled with tall, laughing daughters, who all had read more books than he. A tiny silk-weaver of Spitalfields had seated him, a Gulliver marooned in Lilliput, amidst his even more diminutive family, velveteen legs a-dangling, to hear a lengthy grace in French and then receive slivers from the smallest fowl in the world, carved apparently with a pair of bodkins. Each had been a separate cell of the great hive. Each cell, be it ne’er so honeyed or so bare, had had its manners, which could be learned. It had been his study to fit whatever part of the honeycomb housed him. But here – though it would suit him now, far more than before the loss of the purse, to fall in with the merchants’ preferences, whatever they might be, or at least not to flout them too scornfully – he must study not to fit. He must remain the mercurial, the unreckonable stranger. That being, by long discussion affirm’d, his best safety.

  ‘Property, farm leases, perhaps soon a privateer,’ finished Van Loon, whose red spades of hands had been continually building, building in the air as he spoke. The little girl beside him paused mid-mouthful and gazed across through the candle-flames with round, steady eyes.

  ‘I wonder that you need worry about me at all,’ said Smith.

  ‘We don’t, jongeheer, we don’t,’ rumbled Van Loon. ‘We worry about the Governor, and his verdomned excise duties. We worry about the stupid game of soldiers he is playing at Albany. You are an inconvenience at most.’ Lovell pressed his lips together.

  ‘What my father means to say,’ put in Hendrick, turning away from the quite separate conversation that had been going on up at the other end, ‘is that your bill is no challenge to our resources. All the same—’

  ‘Nee!’ said his father, sharply. ‘We are not there yet, or anywhere close to there. Let us hear some assurances before there is any making of offers. Tell me, mijnheer,’ – the swags of beard jutted up at Smith like the prow of a barge – ‘do you plan to make your home here with us, or are you passing through?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Lovell, ‘a good question. Settler, or bird of passage?’

  Smith hesitated, apprehending the tumble of conclusions that would be drawn, depending on his answer. When he planned his entrance, he had not considered how much more easily an illusion is begun than maintained; especially in the face of a determined curiosity, which could dispense with the shadings of courtesy when it would.

  ‘That will be decided by the success of my business here,’ he said.

  ‘You do call it business, then,’ said Lovell quickly, ‘and not an errand of pleasure, or of some other sort?’

  ‘I know not whether you would call it so, sir, but I am bound—’

  ‘By instructions? By the instructions of another?’

  Tumbling conclusions.

  ‘I—’ Smith was beginning, when he felt a sharp pain in his ankle. Tabitha had kicked him under the table.

  ‘Talk to me,’ she said.

  ‘Hello,’ he said, turning with grateful joy toward the scowl whose pressure he had been feeling for some time on his right side. ‘How do you this evening, Miss Lovell?’

  ‘Bewitching well, I thank you,’ she said, ‘for I enjoy seeing fools struggle.’

  ‘Meaning me?’

  ‘You are stuck like a fly in syrup.’

  ‘And you are holding out your knife to give me a road ou
t.’

  ‘Or to crush you from pity, sir.’

  ‘Tell me,’ said Smith, ‘do you still hold to your low opinion of novels?’

  ‘It was only yesterday’s opinion, and today has not been so rich in incident I’d change it; so, yes. Slush for small minds, sir. Pabulum for the easily pleased.’

  ‘In that case,’ said Smith, fishing out the volume from the coat pocket where he’d thrust it, ‘will you take my apologies that I have no gift for you, and pass this along to your sister?’

  Tabitha took David Simple from his hand – momentary contact of cool fingers – and flipped it open to the title page.

  ‘Ugh,’ she said. Her look of contempt would have curdled milk; and yet she seemed to be acting it, too, to be offering it like a card he should recognise in a two-handed game they were playing together.

  ‘What do you want me to do with this?’ she said.

  ‘Pass it along,’ he said, puzzled.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Very well.’ If you absolutely insist. Then without a pause, and certainly without looking to see where it would fall, she threw the brown octavo over her shoulder, toward Flora’s end of the table. It struck Joris a glancing blow on the side of the head, and flew fluttering downward into Flora’s soup-bowl, which fortunately she had emptied.

  Flora cried out, Joris jumped to his feet clutching his temple, Mr Lovell shut his eyes and bowed his head, breathing out hard.

  ‘Tabitha!’ he said sternly; or imploringly.

  ‘Cannot you control this … this …’ stammered Joris, in reedy fury. A hard look from his father quelled him, and Hendrick, rising, reached an arm across the table, and took his brother by the shoulder, and pressed him back into his seat again.

  ‘No harm done,’ announced Mrs Van Loon comfortably, wiping the gravy and crumbs from the book and setting it before Flora, whose hand she patted firmly. ‘There, now.’

  ‘My dear, we mustn’t startle Mr Smith,’ said Lovell. ‘We have all the excitement we need, eh?’

  Tabitha sat grave and tranquil, hands folded, as innocent as a cat beside a broken milk-jug.

  ‘Remind me not to annoy you,’ Smith said to her.

  ‘I will be sure to let you know if you have,’ said she.

  ‘I don’t doubt it.’

  ‘So, mijnheer,’ said Mrs Van Loon, raising her voice a little to catch Smith’s ear, ‘how are you finding New-York?’

  ‘Delightful, ma’am,’ said Smith, ‘and very welcoming to the weary traveller.’ Casting about for more particular praise, he remarked that the streets were very clean, and the people amazing tall and healthy-looking, by London standards; altogether a well-favoured city. The greatest novelty for him in the prospect, he added, being the regular presence of slaves, English law only uncertainly permitting them, and the trade therefore seldom bringing Africans over.

  ‘Only the profits, eh?’ said Lovell.

  Zephyra came in and cleared the dishes; returned, in relays, with the second course, arranging vermicelli, fruits, cheeses and fish on the table, with a new decanter of wine, and placing a tankard of beer on the floor beside the violinist-slave; who contrived a cadence with some sound of closure to it, broke off, and drank. Without the music, the murmur of resuming conversation seemed louder, more exposed. It was harder for two independent conversations to be maintained, and soon all the heads at Mrs Van Loon’s end of the table were turned to follow the talk at Mr Lovell’s. The interrogation of Mr Smith continued; but now Tabitha was participating too, at Smith’s side if not on it.

  ‘You must see, sir, what a puzzle you have put us in,’ said Lovell. ‘And that it does you little service to have us thus … bemused.’

  ‘How so?’ asked Smith, obligingly.

  ‘Why because, if you will not affirm one of the virtuous possibilities for your being here,’ said Tabitha, ‘our minds will race to the vicious reasons.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Lovell. ‘You make yourself out too frivolous for business—’

  ‘I proclaim I am in earnest—’

  ‘Then, what merchant house do you represent? Or what venture are you engaged in?’

  Mr Smith only raised his eyebrows.

  ‘As I say, too frivolous for business; and if you are a man of wealth, set on some tour of pleasure, no need for hugger-mugger, all being glad to assist where a thousand pound is to be spent. So,’ continued Lovell, ‘our natural fear must be, that you are something in the political line, bent on some mischief, the doing of which may redound to our harm. You need but speak, to take the imputation off. An honest man need have no secrets.’

  ‘Do you say so, sir? Some honest purposes require delicacy.’

  ‘Delicacy!’ said Captain Prettyman on a sudden, his voice unexpectedly hoarse and high. ‘Ye’ve come to the wrong place for delicate people.’ He seemed to find the word offensive. ‘Plain men for the plain daylight, that’s our preference.’

  ‘And me for night’s black agent, if I hold my tongue? I assure you,’ said Smith, grinning, ‘you may discount me as a politico, for I don’t know your controversies here, to meddle in ’em.’

  ‘“Night’s black agent” is Macbeth,’ pointed out Tabitha, to the company at large.

  ‘I thought you didn’t read,’ said Smith.

  ‘Well,’ said Lovell, ignoring this, ‘I am sure you know that the Governor and the Assembly are at daggers drawn—’

  ‘No, sir—’

  ‘—and both sides looking to, let’s say, oil up the undecided—’

  ‘No, sir—’

  ‘—for which a thousand pound might be a handy sum. But you know this.’

  ‘Sir, I don’t. I am an ignorant blank, a tabula rasa, a page not smirched with the ink of knowledge.’

  ‘Nor’s that the worst that may be, when a man creeps into a city in time of danger with a bag of gold. Since King George’s War began—’

  ‘Sorry; what?’

  ‘The present war with the French, sir,’ said Lovell, irritably. ‘That, you have heard of, I think?’

  ‘Perhaps it goes by another name in England, Papa,’ said Tabitha. ‘We call all our wars, here, by the names of monarchs; as, King William’s War, Queen Anne’s War, King George’s.’

  ‘What royalists you are!’ said Smith, lightly.

  ‘Is that intended as a fling at our patriotism?’ said Lovell. ‘I may tell you,’ he went on, knocking on the table for emphasis with a forefinger, ‘that His Majesty has no more loyal subjects than us, and that if we object to the dangerous conduct of our idiot Governor, it is not for want of any zeal against the Frenchies, nor against their Papist savages, neither. We hate the Pretender, sir, and we hate the garlic-eaters, and we don’t abide their intrigues, not for one minute. No; we only stand by our rights as Englishmen, and ask why the upper Valley must be stirred up to no purpose, and troops garrisoned upon honest men who never consented to them, and never voted funds for their supply. When all know that a standing army is a maggot in the state, a caterpillar feeding on liberties. Sir.’

  Smith turned to Tabitha, his face a mask of polite puzzlement.

  ‘Governor Clinton has encamped two regiments of regulars at Albany, meaning to march them north on campaign, but the Assembly of New-York will not pass the bill to feed them,’ she said, concisely. ‘As we speak, chickens are going missing all over Albany County.’

  Smith smiled reflexively.

  ‘That is not really a joking matter, sister, is it?’ said Hendrick to Tabitha.

  ‘And I am not really your sister, am I?’ said Tabitha. ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Let us say all this is truly nothing to you,’ said Van Loon to Smith, talking across their exchange as if it were not happening. ‘You have not heard our gossip, you are not mixed up in it.’ Mikscht opp. ‘Everything you know about is far away, back in London.’

  ‘Alas, alas, Babylon, that great city!’ squeaked the Captain.

  ‘So, why so cautious? Why do you object so much
that we should know what you plan to do with the money of friend Gregory, here?’

  ‘Mine, sir, surely; my money, when the bill is honoured.’

  ‘True, true: you may say so at quarter-day. But that leaves you still sixty days—’

  ‘Fifty-nine now, sir—’

  ‘—to set our minds at peace. And perhaps to make friends of us, hey? You should consider how much we may be able to help you, with any righteous purchase in your mind.’

  ‘Is it the law here, sir, that money must explain itself?’

  ‘Not the law, Mr Smith, nor even the custom.’ Tabitha leaned forward into the candle-light, the dark silk of her dress gleaming. ‘Our grandees go unmolested, I assure you. Mijnheer Philipse can walk up Broad Street without a soul tugging his sleeve and asking what’s in his pockets; Mr De Lancey can rule in the court without the plaintiff saying, “Now, sir, what’s this about the block for lease by Rutgers’ Farm I hear you’re buying?” Mr Livingston can take his pinch of snuff in the Black Horse without the waiter asking, “Wheat or oats for you, sir, this sowing season?”’

  ‘I am not the damned waiter at the Black Horse, my dear,’ said Lovell wearily. ‘I am this gentleman’s creditor, seemingly. We all are, you included – and are due, if all’s square, to hand him a budget for who-knows-what. Which gives us a very natural interest, as I say, in learning what mischief he purposes.’

  ‘Yes, Papa. I know. You only look like a waiter,’ said Tabitha, wriggling her shoulders. ‘But what’s Mr Smith’s interest in telling? You must set subtler bait.’

  ‘My interest,’ said Mr Smith. ‘My interest?’ He shot his cuffs and stretched both hands out, palm down, fingers wide as if he were playing octaves, before him, so that all eyes were drawn to them expectantly, and all could see they were empty, and there was nothing between the fingers. ‘My interest’ – he clapped his hands hard together, making the company jump – ‘is all for your delight.’ And quickly he stretched a long green-clad arm between the candles, to cup the ear of silent little Elizabeth opposite. His hand twisted; her mouth opened in an O to match her eyes.