Return to Paradise

by Erica Brown

‘So you’re not moving in with her,’ said Tom.

  Aggie shook her head. ‘Not bloody likely. All them people coming and going at all hours, making a lot of noise, snoring and shouting in the next room to mine? Oh, no, no, no! I likes me independence, I do. Always have.’

  ‘Not your sort, then, Aggie?’

  ‘Well, what do you think?’ She nodded to where the towpath and the narrow lane met the dirt-packed road. Two adults and two children were walking towards the boarding house. Their hair was woolly, their skin dark brown and their clothes a mismatch of texture and colour. The man had a determined expression, but Tom could see there was fear in his eyes.

  He waved and Aggie waved back.

  ‘They was looking for a place to stay, and I sent them over to my sister. Nice family. Straight off a boat from Jamaica or some such place.’

  ‘Barbados,’ said Tom. He didn’t know why he said it, but there was something about the man that was vaguely familiar. Perhaps they’d met out there at one point.

  ‘Do you know the bloke?’ asked Aggie.

  Tom shrugged. ‘It’ll come to me later.’

  Aggie’s sister-in-law waved from across the road as she opened the door to let in her guests. Even from that distance, there was no mistaking the delicious smell of West Country faggots – oozing with juices and sizzling in a hot oven. He guessed it was one of the better boarding houses in this part of the city.

  The door slammed shut.

  ‘They’re looking for their relatives. Something to do with the sugar trade, of course,’ said Aggie.

  ‘Most people in the West Indies have something to do with the sugar trade,’ Tom said.

  Aggie was only half listening. ‘I think she’s too late bundling them in and slamming that door,’ she said, and nodded towards two cottages, which leaned against each other for mutual support. People had emerged from the tumbledown doors and gathered on the corner. ‘They noticed they was niggers,’ Aggie said as she relit her pipe. ‘There’ll be trouble tonight.’

  ‘Because they’re different?’

  Aggie nodded. ‘It’s all right for them to be a different colour in their own place, but not here. And they’ve travelled all this way on a fancy ship, which means they had the money to pay for it, and why should black folk have more money than white folk? That’s the way they’ll be thinking.’ She pointed with her pipe, her voice turning a mite angrier. ‘That lot over there ain’t got two ha’pennies to scratch their asses, never have and never will. But they’re down on anyone who’s different and likely does have a few bob. There’ll be trouble tonight, you mark my words!’

  He hoped Aggie was wrong, but he understood her reasoning. There was a great deal of inequality in this world and, even in the minds of those that had nothing, there was still a need to believe that there was always someone one rung below you on the ladder.

  He promised Aggie he’d see her again and said goodbye.

  His confrontation with Max, combined with his grief at the death of his newborn son, weighed him down. A great tiredness seemed to overtake him as he made his way back to the coffee house, his fine horses and his equally fine carriage. All courtesy of the Strongs, he thought, and caught his grimace reflected back at him from the carriage window.

  Where would he be if Jeb Strong, Horatia’s uncle, had not found him licking sugar from a barrel as an urchin and adopted him? Dead? At sea? Married? Unmarried?

  And what if he hadn’t married Horatia? What if his first wife had not died in Boston? What if he had married Blanche?

  Tom closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the rich comfort of the leather upholstery. There were too many questions and too many permutations of what his life might have been. The past was gone. Regrets were irrelevant, though he wished things could have been different. He wished many things had been different.

  Chapter Seven

  Septimus Monk cultivated an air of exquisite taste and used his hands stylishly, as if his cuffs were dripping with lacy frills. He sat at this moment behind his cherry wood desk, his head bowed over a share certificate, reminding Horatia of a portrait she’d seen of Charles II, though without the long hair, the garter or an insatiable lust for anything with a cleavage. In fact, the lawyer had a preference for young men.

  Horatia cared little that his passions deviated from what was regarded as normal. He was an invaluable asset to her ambition, the best legal mind she had ever known.

  His office near Stokes Croft reflected his learned profession, the walls gleaming with gilt lettering. Row upon row of law books rubbed alongside those of a more dubious – and collectable – nature. But although erudite, Monk sat like a spider at the centre of a web of information. Ten years ago he’d been useful to Horatia when Tom had been accused of murder. And he’d been useful many times since. No piece of gossip escaped him; no stone would be left unturned in the pursuit of information. Money talked in the twilight world where the wealthy dared not sully their name.

  He looked up at her now, his pale eyes momentarily catching her unawares. ‘You wish me to sign on your behalf?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Monk knew better than to ask her if she was sure. Horatia was always sure, more certain of her business than many men of greater years and experience. With a flourish of his unblemished hands, he signed the certificate, blew at the ink, then dipped his fingers into a bowl of lavender water and dried his hands.

  Horatia was unfazed by the proceedings. Monk had always been fastidious. ‘Good,’ she said, feeling as pleased with herself as the day she had delivered a son, though perhaps more so. That event had not turned out to be as successful as she’d hoped. This present business venture would endure for years to come.

  She paused by the door. ‘Are you not going to ask me why I wish to own a bank?’

  He looked at her as if surprised. A hint of a smile appeared. ‘No.’

  ‘Are you not curious?’

  His smile broadened. ‘Of course not. I am discreet in the extreme.’

  Their eyes locked in such a way that an observer might have thought they were lovers. They were far from that, but each realized they were two of a kind. Deviousness led to success, and they both knew it.

  ‘So you know why.’

  ‘Of course I do. Whoever controls the bulk of the city’s finance will end up controlling the new docks, and possibly the land around it. Thus, buy the bank that has locked its finance into the venture. I hear both the City Corporation and private individuals are indebted to the bank’s absurd generosity.’

  ‘That is exactly it,’ she said as she pulled on a pair of blue kid gloves, buttoning them at the wrist and flexing her fingers. ‘I want all of it.’

  He nodded. ‘Of course you do.’

  ‘Let me know when you find a buyer for Rivermead.’

  ‘There is some difficulty at the moment. I think things will improve somewhat once the insurrection there is under control. Free people are more difficult to control than those held in slavery. It never ceases to amaze me that those who were the masters actually went out of their way to educate these people.’ He shook his head at the absurdity of it.

  She made no comment. Like the child she had given away, Barbados was something she wished consigned to the past. Selling the plantation would help her forget.

  It was only a few steps to her carriage, but before she reached it, a figure drifted like a wraith in front of her.

  ‘Mrs Strong?’

  The woman was drab rather than dirty. Her face was red and there was a marked bleariness to her eyes.

  Presuming she was a former servant who had fallen on hard times, Horatia dipped into her reticule for a few shillings.

  ‘I want more than shillings,’ said the woman, but shoved the coins inside her blouse anyway.

  The way she smiled made Horatia frown. She found herself overwhelmed with a feeling of threat and looked to her coachman. He was standing by the carriage dutifully, waiting to open the door for her. Behind her, Septimus Monk watch
ed from his office door, a concerned look on his face.

  Normally, she would have signalled for them to come to her aid, but something about the woman made her hesitate.

  ‘Do I know you?’ she asked.

  The woman’s smile widened, exposing a total lack of teeth from the bottom row and just a few pegs hanging on at the top. Horatia winced as she leaned forward. Her breath stunk of gin.

  ‘Course you knows me. I’m Daisy Draper. I was there when your son was born.’

  Horatia tensed. There’d been a midwife, a nurse, a monthly nurse and a wet nurse. She didn’t recognize this woman and presumed she was the minor nurse, brought in to take away the soiled linens and dispose of the afterbirth. ‘I don’t remember you.’

  ‘There was just me and a half-blind nurse left. But my eyes was alright, missus… oh yes… my eyes saw things the way they was.’

  Again she rummaged in her reticule, apprehensive that the woman was there for a specific purpose, but keen to settle before anyone within earshot heard a word. ‘There you are. Five shillings then for your trouble… My son died, you know…’

  The woman’s grubby fingers folded over the coins and she kept smiling as she shook her head. ‘No, he didn’t. I know where he is, ‘cos I took him there.’

  Horatia’s features turned as hard and as pale as marble. A dozen possibilities of how best to deal with this situation wreathed like smoke in her mind.

  ‘You were well paid,’ she said, her voice low and her lips tight with intent.

  ‘But not enough. I wants more, otherwise your husband’s going to know that he mourns an empty grave. Wouldn’t want him to know that, would you now?’

  Horatia shuddered at the prospect. Tom must never know. Never.

  The remaining coins in her reticule proved elusive; she wanted to take her time, to think. ‘Here,’ she said eventually, and handed over five sovereigns.

  Daisy’s smile broadened, her shrewd eyes narrowing as she counted the coins with blackened fingernails. ‘That’ll do,’ she said menacingly, her mouth folding inwards as though she were sucking on a straw. ‘Fer now. But I’ll be back when this runs out. After all, you’ve sent the boy to a rotten place. Only fair that you does penance for what you’ve done.’

  Horatia pounced, her fingers tightening around the woman’s wrist and her eyes glittering with threat. ‘Have a care, Daisy Draper. Should you approach me again, it will be the worse for you.’

  Daisy sucked in her lips and hissed like a snake as she struggled to break away. ‘What can a lady like you do?’ she snarled, rubbing her wrist where Horatia’s grip had left an angry mark. ‘The likes of you run to law to sort the likes of me. But you can’t do that, can you? That would mean yer husband finding out, and you wouldn’t like that.’

  Horatia stood frozen to the spot, watching as the woman wove along the pavement towards St Augustine’s Reach, finally disappearing behind a coal dray pulling out from Denmark Street.

  She sensed Monk at her side. ‘I presume this was not a social encounter. The drab looked a nasty sort. I would guess from the emptiness of your reticule and the pallor of your face that the woman is causing you some concern. Am I right?’

  Horatia nodded dumbly.

  ‘Would I be correct is guessing that you would prefer her not to trouble you again?’

  She knew what Septimus was implying.

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  Hands clasped behind his back, Monk nodded curtly. ‘As you wish.’

  * * *

  Max Heinkel walked up and down between the Shakespeare Inn and the turning to Temple Church. The church cast a long awkward shadow, its lop-sided tower leaning over the roofs of the houses in Victoria Street.

  Luckily, there were quite a few people out shopping, taking the air, or going about their daily business, so his promenading outside Madame Mabel, Milliner to the Gentry, failed to arouse suspicion.

  He felt foolish, but couldn’t stop himself. Each time he passed the milliner’s window, he looked in, hoping for a glance of Miss Magdalene Cherry. He’d fallen in love with her when she’d delivered a hat to his mother just a few months before his father died. The hat had been cherry red and the slim, brown-eyed girl who’d delivered it had told her mother her name. They’d both laughed, and Max had stood tongue-tied in the doorway, holding his tennis racket and feeling stupid.

  Two years ago! He’d thought never to see her again, and there she was again delivering hats to his mother, including a tartan one that Edith had compared to a military drum.

  He knew little about making hats, except that it was hard work, the apprentices labouring all hours in dim workrooms, sewing and steaming and sticking on feathers beneath the wavering glow of a spluttering gas lamp.

  He remembered she’d looked at him disdainfully, as though he were little more than a boy. In fact, he was certain he was older than her. She couldn’t have been more than sixteen at the time, but like all women of her class, there was a worldly look in her eyes as if to say, ‘I know what you want, but are you old enough to give it?’

  Before his father’s death, he hadn’t dared admit his interest to anyone or even to her face. Now that he was more mature, he’d told himself that he could tell her what he was feeling, and that she would be inclined to listen.

  At his mother’s this morning, he’d merely nodded a greeting in her direction, had hung around outside in case she came out before he set off for Bristol. He’d waited fifteen minutes then checked his watch. He couldn’t wait. Damn Tom Strong. Damn his meeting at the coffee house. And what was the point of it? No one had gained anything. He’d stated his position and Tom, it seemed, had finally accepted his decision.

  Once that was out of the way, he made his mind up to seek Magdalene in her workplace. With that in mind, he walked up and down Victoria Street in the vain hope that she would pop out on another errand. He considered entering the shop, but found he didn’t have the courage. All those women – the sales assistants, the customers and the girls in the backroom – peering up from their work at the sight of him and tittering amongst themselves.

  He took deep breaths as he paced up and down, the air seemingly untainted by industrial fumes and the ripe pong of horse droppings. A weak sun was attempting to force its rays through flocks of fluffy clouds and the smell of hops rose in steamy warmth from the brewery.

  A bell jangled as the shop door opened, and there she was, the girl of his dreams standing before him and bringing him to an abrupt halt.

  Magdalene Cherry, demurely dressed in the blue and white uniform of Madame Mabel’s and wearing a pale blue hat with a purple feather, swung briskly out onto the pavement, a hatbox swinging from each arm.

  Smiling knowingly, she glanced his way, then tossed her dark curls, her small nose rising. Once she knew he was watching, her step became more bouncy, her hips wiggling beneath the prim uniform, her shoulders swaying and her bosom thrust forward against the tight buttons of her bodice.

  Max was lost. ‘Good afternoon,’ he said, blushing and remembering to raise his hat as he stepped in front of her.

  He’d presumed she’d act coyly, her cheeks turning rosy pink, and be too embarrassed to speak. Instead, her mouth dropped open and she looked bemused.

  ‘Has your mother sent you?’ she said in a cocky, forthright way.

  Max was mortified. ‘Of course my mother hasn’t sent me!’ He sounded and felt hurt. ‘I came here of my own accord.’

  ‘Why?’ The way she said it was like a shot from a gun.

  ‘That’s none of your business.’

  ‘Yes, it is. You’ve been following me. What are you after?’

  ‘Nothing!’

  ‘That’s what all you rich gents say to us poor girls. Well, I know what you want, and you aren’t going to get it here.’

  Her accusation was like a slap in the face. He didn’t see himself in the same mould as the wealthy gents who pursued the likes of her purely for sexual advantage. He felt genuinely offended and said so.
>
  ‘How dare you suggest such a thing!’

  She eyed him mockingly. ‘Well, how dare you! Who do you think you are?’

  ‘How can you talk to me like that?’

  ‘I have every right to. You’re the one accosting me, mister, and don’t think I ain’t seen you before – walking up and down the street, gawping in the window each time you pass. And don’t deny it. We’ve been watching you. What you hoping to buy? And don’t tell me you want a bonnet for your mother. She’s quite capable of picking out her own bonnets, so go on, tell me before I send for the beak – what do you want?’

  ‘Nothing! I mean—’

  ‘Oh, yeah! I’ve met your sort before. Dressed like a gent, but not much of one underneath. Well, take note, mister, this is a milliner’s not a knocking shop. We supply hats, not a bump and a grind against a warehouse wall. If you want that, you need to head down towards the docks. Ask any Bristol sailor and he’ll tell you where to find it.’

  Tossing her head, she spun on her heel and headed towards Bristol Bridge, the hatboxes banging against her hips.

  Jaw slack and ego dented, Max watched her go. He hated being put down by anyone. What was worse he’d been most firmly put down by a milliner and a woman.

  By the time he reached his club, he was slightly recovered and resolute in how he would deal with women like her in future. He made a huge effort to forget her heart-shaped face, her pert nose and her large brown eyes. And she is also very short, he reminded himself, hardly elegant.

  He called for a drink, slugged it back, then called for another. The brandy burned in his throat but the vision in his mind refused to go away. What the devil is wrong with you, man? he asked himself. He’d never felt like this before. He couldn’t concentrate, he couldn’t think straight half the time. The business of sugar refining mostly dominated his life, and rightly so. But this slip of a girl, this milliner’s assistant with her sassy walk and beguiling ways… He threw back the next drink, put the glass down and sighed. There was something about her. She was so alluring; a pocket Venus who held him spellbound.