Land of Hope

by Paul C R Monk

  ‘I regret he did not,’ said the clerk. ‘The money he had was used towards his burial.’

  ‘If you don’t mind me saying,’ said the forthright Irishwoman, ‘surely to God it would have been put to better use sending it to his family! No use to a dead man, is it now? If you’ll beg me pardon.’

  The clerk paused a moment for thought, looked towards the wide staircase that resonated with the mutterings of voices and footsteps tripping down the steps. Then, looking back at the woman, he said: ’Well, er, what can I say? I can only hope she finds a new husband, Madam.’

  ‘But she has a child,’ said the woman.

  ‘That is not an obstacle in these parts, you’ll find,’ said the clerk encouragingly. ‘We lack children for the future of our colony. She will find a husband soon enough, and all the more so as she has living proof that she is not barren. Provided, of course, that she is not past mothering age . . .’

  ‘No,’ said the woman, ‘she’s certainly got a few more baby-making years in her yet.’

  ‘There we are then,’ said the registry agent with a note of triumph, as if he had solved the widow’s problems.

  The rest of the little group also seemed to be won over by Mrs Blancfort’s hypothetical prospects, and let out interjections of relief. It became evident to Jacob that he was not the only one who had neither means nor time for another burden. Nevertheless, looking at the Irish lady, then at the clerk, he said: ‘But someone is going to have to break the news to her. And what about her present predicament?’

  ‘I suggest we deal with the matter once we have entered your names into the register,’ said the clerk with a winning smile, while moving into step. ‘Ladies and Gentlemen, now if you would care to come this way—it won’t take long.’

  Meanwhile, the approaching footsteps and male voices now resonated more loudly as a cluster of half a dozen men descended into the lobby.

  ‘As I said, Sir,’ continued Jacob, walking beside the clerk past the stairway, ‘personally, I am only in transit. My plan is to travel to—’

  But before Jacob could finish his sentence, a young man broke from the cluster of gentlemen dressed in long, sober cloaks and Brandenburgs. He stopped in front of Jacob and said cheerily: ‘Why, it is! Monsieur Delpech, Sir, how good to see you again! I was not expecting you until next week.’

  *

  ‘I would personally welcome William as king,’ said Daniel Darlington, who had been telling Jacob how he had been summoned that morning to City Hall to discuss the news just in of the possible takeover of England by the Dutch prince.

  The two men were walking westward along Pearl Street, and now they crossed Fish Bridge that straddled the narrow canalised river where fishermen brought in their catch. Despite the foul stench of low tide, Jacob felt enlivened by the smell of land air, and by being in the thick of people going about their daily business. Turning to Darlington, he said: ‘I only hope it does not end in war.’

  ‘For the moment, I gather this is yet to be confirmed. And God only knows what has been happening across the ocean. But what really gets my goat is when England sneezes, we catch the flu . . . three months later! And I will add, Monsieur Delpech, that I find it revolting and insulting to be tutored by men who know not an Iroquois from an Abenaki Indian.’

  The subject impassioned the young New Yorker, born and bred. But Jacob’s polite smile made him see that he was preaching to the choir, and that he was probably guilty of being pedantic to a man who had just walked off a ship from Nassau. ‘But here you are, dear Monsieur Delpech,’ he said. ‘Your presence brings a welcome change. Marianne has been so looking forward to seeing you,’ he said as they continued along a narrow street flanked on either side by neatly arranged dwellings of brick, stone, and timber. A fascinating blend of cultures, mused Jacob, though surprised he was to encounter free-roaming poultry and pigs along the way.

  However, in truth his thoughts were elsewhere, neither on the high spheres of European leadership nor on the gutter where the pigs foraged. His thoughts were with the woman and child on the ship. How easy it was to fall into debt and ruin, well did he know. But he did his best to tuck the thought away for the time being. ‘And I shall be glad to see her!’ he said.

  ‘I dare say you will find her somewhat changed, though,’ pursued Darlington with a secret smile. Jacob turned away as the young man coloured slightly, the very thought of publicising his intimacy in the street striking him. He touched his ear and let out a puff of vapour with a little cough. ‘This is Broadway,’ he then said as they turned into a wide thoroughfare. It led past the governor’s residence and continued straight past high houses and walled ornamental gardens that had already suffered from the frost. ‘Our house is not far from Wall Street,’ said Daniel, pointing towards the wall that gave the street its name, ‘precisely on the other side of the palisade outside the city gates. Too many rules and regulations to build a house of decent size within.’

  They followed the broad thoroughfare through the city gate into a vast countryside that opened with a row of well-kept gardened houses to their right, and a pretty burial ground to their left. The rutted earth road, growing busy with country carters returning from market, rolled on through green pastures to the edge of a distant forest which, according to Darlington, populated the length and breadth of Manhattan. Jacob halted his stride to admire the distant haze of reds, greens, and golds. Sunbeams now shone between purple-bellied clouds onto nearby furrowed fields of dark brown that sloped gently up to a windmill, stationed on higher ground.

  From the stillness of a solitary leafless elm tree came the caaw-caaw of a crow. A slight variation, thought Jacob, to the call of the ones that used to nest in the lime trees outside his country house in France. But still, the smell of the earth, of mushrooms, of the reinvigorating winter chill, all filled him with the same inner peace he used to experience in Verlhac. It was the smell of the northern hemisphere. It was the smell of home.

  ‘Pleasant, isn’t it?’ said Darlington, tipping his hat to a carter and his wife as they passed.

  ‘Indeed, Sir, indeed it is,’ said Jacob amid the sudden chatter of jays from a cluster of trees in the graveyard. After another beat, Jacob said: ‘Do you know how he died? Blancfort, I mean.’

  ‘I do. I believe he contracted an illness,’ said Darlington, moving back into step and inviting Jacob to do likewise. ‘He was found one day dead in his bed. It was quite the talk of the town. Folk were fearful to know what illness it was that took him away. But it seems to have been a solitary strain.’

  Solitary indeed, thought Jacob as they took a right onto a narrow hard-earth track. How cruel the accidents of life could be. ‘But his wife and daughter are aboard the ship.’

  ‘I expect the ladies will tell her. Better it be a lady, and I expect the town intendant will see to them. There is nothing you can do to bring the man back. He was buried two weeks ago. Anyway, here we are.’

  Before them stood a large stone house, a charming two-storey building with a ground-floor section that jutted out on the right side as the visitor went in. Darlington pushed a wooden gate into the grassy court, where a goat was attached to a piquet to keep the grass trim. Cupping his hand to his mouth, he called out in a sing-song voice. ‘Marianne! Madame de Fontenay! We have an important visitor! Marianne . . .’

  A face soon appeared at the glazed window that looked out onto the elevated porch. Seconds later, the porch door was pulled open, and Marianne stood on the threshold bearing the bump of pregnancy, her searching eyes showing concern. She was closely followed by her grandmother, who stood as dignified as when Jacob had left her at Cow Island.

  *

  Marianne sensed Jacob had undergone traumatic experiences in the short time that had separated them.

  Even before she had greeted him with open arms and set him down at the dining-room table, she had noted how gaunt he had become, and that the melancholy in his eyes had grown deeper. And she longed to reach out to him, to return the help he ha
d given her in her times of need. Had he not protected her honour when she had been disarmed? Saved her life from a drunken soldier and put himself at risk of execution? How could she draw him out of his affable carapace?

  ‘Before receiving your message, I expected you to be in Europe by now, my uncle,’ she said, placing a cup before him and filling it with hot coffee to go with the fresh bread, goat’s butter, and jam to restore him until dinnertime. They kept mostly to English for the benefit of Daniel.

  Jacob appreciated her keeping up the uncle-niece act that they had played during their forced exile from France. He knew it stemmed from a genuine affection, but he recognised too her gift for unlocking unsayable secrets from the confines of one’s memory.

  He had caught her concern at his current physical condition in the pleat of her brow, before her smile broadened in an effort to hide it. It was the same pleat of concern he had seen when, while in confinement in Marseille the previous year, she told him he had only suffered a scratch to his eye when he had collapsed on being told of his daughter’s tragic death. But the gash to his eye was deep, and she, with her grandmother, had helped it heal. And she had shined her gentle light when he dreamt of nothing but blackness.

  But he was not going to recount to a young mother-to-be, over twenty years his junior, how he had been shipwrecked, taken ill, robbed, and sold to a privateer, and had sided with pirates to capture and ransom a Cuban township.

  Turning his gaze from the glowing embers of the wide hearth, he smiled cheerily and said: ‘I have had a tumultuous journey to get this far, but do not fret on my account, my dear niece. I am a little fatigued, but well, and I am here in one piece, and very glad to see you looking so well!’

  But Marianne, obstinate as ever, said: ‘Tumultuous journey, my uncle?’

  He would have to concede some ground, so he said: ‘Well, in short, I became indentured as a ship’s surgeon-barber to a privateer captain, although the term buccaneer would be more appropriate.’ He let out a false laugh.

  ‘My goodness!’ exclaimed Marianne in an attempt to coax more out of him. But Jacob was not ready to say more.

  After a pause for another sip of coffee, Daniel Darlington said: ‘What was his name, Sir?’

  ‘Brook, Captain Brook, and I wish never to hear it again.’

  ‘I have heard the name before. I remember de Graaf mentioning it a few times. I have also heard since that he came to a bitter end . . .’

  Jacob said nothing of de Graaf, the Dutch-French privateer turned major, who had in fact led the Cuban campaign, but who nevertheless had delivered him from servitude and helped him secure a passage northward from Nassau. But there was one man Jacob did want to know more about. He said: ‘Do you know what became of his crew?’

  ‘I do not.’

  It was Ducamp who Delpech now wondered about, the faithless, battle-hardened lieutenant who he had left with the hope of redemption. But he feared yet another hope dashed, another fissure in his already weakened faith—not his faith in God, but in humanity. So he said nothing more on it.

  Glancing sidelong at her husband, Marianne pressed Jacob’s hand and said: ‘You must stay here as long as it takes for you to get stronger, my uncle.’

  Jacob was not aware that he needed to get stronger. Did he look so worn? He thought not. He just needed to be removed from his immediate past memories and to draw nearer to recovering his family. Was that so difficult to understand?

  ‘There is no need to put yourselves out on my behalf. I shall stay at the tavern we passed in town and be off by the turn of the tide tomorrow, God willing, if not by the end of the week.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Darlington, ‘the season here has been exceptionally clement so far, but I fear it is about to turn nasty for sea travel. You would do better to hole up until February, Sir. Moreover, I would be surprised if any ship sets out across the ocean before winter’s end, Monsieur Delpech. So, please accept our hospitality, not because I owe you the lives of my wife and future child, but because I offer you my friendship, Sir.’

  Seeing Jacob still on the fence, Marianne insisted winningly: ‘I will not sleep knowing that my only living uncle is alone at a stranger’s tavern!’

  But it was the old lady, knitting in her chair near the fireplace with a cat on her lap, who at last won him over. Having spent her married life with a French officer, she well knew the look of a man who had been to war. And once all the battle fanfare was over and he was home with his family, she knew of the need to divert thoughts by day and ease nightmares by night, and of the impression of the futility of life, and of disillusionment with God.

  ‘You will stay here, Monsieur Delpech, and nothing more will be said of your piratical adventures!’ she said, flitting her eyes at Marianne and Daniel.

  Marianne, who had absolute faith in her grandmother’s wisdom and was not slow on the uptake, followed up by saying: ‘Instead, I will tell you of our plans to build a new house further along the east coast with some French settlers from La Rochelle. Daniel agrees, don’t you, darling?’

  ‘The land is good there,’ said Darlington, taking up his pipe, ‘and if it allows my wife and her grandmother to feel more at home, then that is where we shall live. For I made a promise to a gentleman and a friend, that I would look after them, do you remember, Monsieur Delpech?’

  Jacob gave a nod and a smile of approbation. ‘I do, Monsieur Darlington, I do.’ Marianne, standing between them with a hand on her waist, looked affably cross while her grandmother looked up with a sardonic grin. But before they could say anything, Jacob continued: ‘And I believe my dear niece and her grandmother made a promise to look after a certain gifted but impetuous loose cannon in danger of losing his life at sea.’

  After a moment’s silence for the penny to drop, Daniel burst out into laughter. ‘Oh, and they do, and they do,’ he said in good fellowship. Then he slung his arm around his wife’s waist and brought her to gently perch on his knee. Marianne patted him playfully on the head and topped off his coffee while her grandmother, after an eyebrow raised to Jacob in complicity, continued with her knitting.

  ‘And by the way, I could do with some advice on land management, tobacco to be precise,’ continued Darlington as Marianne took away his pipe. ‘My guess is there’ll be a large market for it, now that His Royal Highness has deprived us of the Delaware country against our wishes.’

  He was referring to King James II’s order which joined the province of New York to the Dominion of New England. It did not sit well with New Yorkers because it meant depriving them of their constitutional and property rights.

  But Jacob was only half listening. His plan was still to leave for Europe at the first opportunity, and never mind the weather. Besides that, with all this talk of promises, a pang of guilt reminded him of one he had made recently. ‘I would be glad to be of assistance if I can,’ he said. ‘But speaking of promises, the lady on the ship . . .’ Jacob then explained about the poor woman’s predicament to the female company. ‘I do hope she has found accommodation,’ he concluded.

  ‘She will be cared for, I dare say,’ said Marianne.

  ‘You cannot lay down your cloak for every damsel in distress, Monsieur Delpech,’ said Darlington.

  ‘No, but I would not want my own wife and child to suffer such humiliation. Would you?’

  ‘Well said!’ exclaimed Madame de Fontenay in a confidential voice.

  The New Yorker gave a slow, penitent nod of the head. His grey eyes then locked on Jacob’s. ‘Then I shall enquire after her,’ he said with new conviction.

  *

  Jacob almost regretted watching Darlington—dressed in leathers, beaver hat firmly pulled over his head—mount his steed and canter off amid eddying leaves into the afternoon turned colder and blustery.

  ‘He has to go back to town anyway,’ said Marianne a few moments later, turning from the window, ‘to meet some French acquaintances whom he promised to introduce to a friend who can assist them with the purchase of land. The la
nd we told you about.’

  ‘Oh, he’s always hopping on his horse,’ said Madame de Fontenay. ‘It is one of the disadvantages of living outside the city walls.’ Marianne shook her head in feigned exasperation.

  Though far from what Marianne and her grandmother had been used to in her mother country, Jacob could see that the young woman had certainly settled into home life and had made a cosy abode. French dressers, silverware and glasses in a rack, quality furniture, and rugs on the waxed parquet gave the place a positively French appeal that allowed Jacob to feel quite at home.

  He sat in an armchair by the fireplace, cracking walnuts. Madame de Fontenay was still seated opposite and still wrestling with another dropped stitch. ‘Over the strand and off the needle,’ she muttered. It was something she had decided to take up in order to while away the winter evenings, especially now since she had a little someone to knit for. She told Jacob of their voyage from Cow Island, where Delpech had been obliged to leave them with Darlington. ‘The last sea voyage I shall endure in this world—knitwise and slide across—and the next, God willing,’ she said between stitches, with a mirthful glow in her eyes.

  Marianne, meanwhile, anxious to show her command of home management, proposed to Jacob to set her maid to heating water for the tub, there being no public baths in New York. Jacob, despite the risk of bathing in winter, accepted her offer, remembering the polite turn of her head when they had embraced on the porch, and recalling his wife’s heightened sense of smell during her pregnancies. Indeed, he admitted he must stink to high heaven, he said once the black servant girl had positioned the brass tub before the hearth.

  ‘Don’t worry, Martha is not a slave, Jacob,’ said Marianne, reading his thoughts. ‘She gets a wage, food, and a room next to Grandmother’s.’