Respectable Trade (25 page)

“Was she grieved for Died of Shame?” the youth called Accursed asked him.

“She had tears in her eyes,” Mehuru said. “I trusted her. I thought she must care.”

The woman called Grief shook her head. “She is a dreadful woman. She had tears in her eyes, and yet she sent that rapist to bury his victim?”

“Yes,” Mehuru said. “Exactly.” He sat on the stone bench, drew his knees up under his chin, and wrapped his arms around them, isolating himself from the world, from the others.

“Are you praying, Obalawa?” Accursed asked in his endearing, husky voice, which was just breaking into the male depths and yet could still go unreliably squeaky.

Mehuru shook his head. “I can summon no god,” he confessed. “He comes to me no longer. I am waiting for him, but he does not come. I am waiting for understanding, but it does not come either. Perhaps someday something will come to make sense of all this pain. Perhaps someday I will understand why we suffer this.”

T
HE DEATH OF
D
IED
of Shame was to make no difference to the routine of the day, Sarah Cole decreed. The corpse was taken up to the Redclift graveyard and buried in an unmarked grave.
It was not a pauper’s burial; Sarah paid threepence for the site and entered the sum in the company ledger as a loss. She looked accusingly at Frances as she dusted sand on the ink and closed the ledger. “A loss,” she said reproachfully. “You had better start teaching them to obey commands. We need to show a profit on this.”

They came into the parlor in silence and sat in their accustomed places. The two youngest children were not crying today; they were too shocked. Frances saw their little faces at tabletop height as blank and as empty as new black slates.

She had brought her sketch and watercolor books for today’s lesson, and she put up the easel at the head of the table. The first picture was the long view down the avenue of elms to the house at Whiteleaze.

“This is a house,” she said. She nodded at Mehuru. “House.”

They knew now what she wanted of them, and they repeated the word without emphasis, without interest. She might mean the paper, she might mean the easel. She might mean the artist or the gods who made it possible for men and women to dream and create art. They did not care. They repeated the word as she wished.

“This was my house,” Frances explained to Mehuru. “Well, it was my uncle’s house. I stayed here very often, and we dined here two or three times a week.”

Sarah Cole in the window seat leaned forward to look at the easel, her curiosity overcoming her irritation with her sister-in-law.

Frances gestured to herself and then pointed to the picture. She said to Mehuru, “This was my house. My house.”

So she was an exile, too, Mehuru thought. That accounted for the strange sense of loss that hung around her. It accounted for her powerlessness in this place. She was a new arrival; she had not yet made it her home. He thought of his country and the careful arrangements of introducing a bride to a new home. The senior wife would fetch the new bride and take her to her
husband’s house. They would wash her legs and send her to his room. She would live in the senior wife’s house as her apprentice, to learn what should be done and the right way to do things. For three months she would visit her parents only at night, when the work of the day was done. It was almost a game, the sneaking back home to mother, and any troubles in the early months could be whispered in the darkness. After three months the girl had served her apprenticeship and knew her rights. But in any case, there were few troubles. It was a world where men and women knew their duties to each other and where the gods were kind. Before the slavers had come, before the slaving nations had been armed and set upon their neighbors, it had been a world of particular good fortune: fertile, with fine weather, and long, long-established political stability.

Frances turned a page to show a competent watercolor of a still life. “These are fruits,” she said. “Fruits.”

She pointed to the painted fruits, and they named them after her. “Apple, pear, grapes, peach.”

She turned another page. It was a picture of a King Charles spaniel sitting at the edge of a cornfield. The pale green corn was bright with flowers, scarlet poppies and blue love-in-a-mist. The hedgerows around the field were spotted with dog roses and the nodding heads of foxgloves.

“This was my dog,” Frances said. “My little dog.” Her voice quavered slightly. “I had to give her away when I went to work. She was a spaniel.”

Mehuru heard the distress in her voice and looked from the picture to Frances’s face. She tried to smile at him. “My little dog,” she said. “My companion.” Her eyes were bright with tears. “I know it’s very silly.” She pulled a small handkerchief from her pocket. “But she was a wonderful little dog, she used to go everywhere with me. And I lost her, and lost my home, and lost my papa. . . .”

The women glared at Mehuru. “Her tears do not mean
much, then,” Grief remarked bitterly. “One tear for Died of Shame, raped three times and dead in a cave, and a dozen tears for a picture of a monkey.”

“No,” Mehuru said. “I was a fool to trust her. Her tears do not mean much at all.”

“They are chattering amongst themselves,” Miss Cole interrupted from the window seat. “How will they learn if they go on talking their own language and don’t even listen to you?”

Frances cleared her throat and dabbed at her eyes. “I beg your pardon,” she said to the sullen black faces. She turned a page of the easel and showed a picture of a church. “This is my father’s church,” she said. She looked at Mehuru and pointed to the building. “Church,” she said. “Jesus. Church.”

The slaves repeated the words in a sulky murmur. Frances smiled, pleased. “Later on I shall teach you stories from the Bible,” she promised.

She turned another page. “And these are flowers.” She pointed to sketches and named each one. They named them as she did.

Frances left the easel and sat down at the head of the table. “Now,” she said brightly. “My name is Frances. I come from England.” She pointed to Mehuru. “Your name is Mehuru. You come from Africa.”

He stared at her in dull resentment.

“Go on,” Grief taunted him. “You are her favorite. You tasted her tear. You trusted her. Speak as she bids you.”

“Say: ‘My name is Mehuru, I come from Africa.’” Frances repeated her command.

He stared at her, a long, burning stare filled with reproach. Frances stammered and lost the thread of the lesson. “What is it?” she asked him in an undertone, glancing quickly toward Miss Cole. “What is the matter?”

He turned his head away from her. There was no mistaking the snub.

“Mehuru!” she whispered urgently. “What is it?”

“My name is Mehuru,” he repeated in clear, perfect English, mimicking her precisely, his accent sharp with anger, his very obedience an insult. “My name is Mehuru. I come from Africa.”

J
OSIAH
C
OLE CAME HOME
in time for dinner, in a sunny mood. Frances, changing into yet another gown, heard him talking with his sister as he climbed the stairs.

“Two pieces of good work today. Sir Charles is considering placing money with us for us to act as his agents. You did well to suggest it, my dear, and Frances is a credit to us. If she can get him and Miss Honoria tickets for the Scott ball, I will be obliged to her. And even better—Waring has closed the sale of his house with me at last! I was beginning to wonder if he meant to let me down.”

“I was beginning to wonder if it were not better to pull out from the deal altogether,” Sarah said. “Brown told me that number 31 is to come on the market. Two for sale in such a short time must mean that both will be cheapened.”

“Queens Square will always be Queens Square,” Josiah declared firmly. “Prices may fluctuate from time to time, but it will always be the best area of Bristol.”

“It may be,” Sarah said urgently “But have a little patience, brother, and think! With two houses on the square, you could bargain with Waring, you could force his price down.”

“The deal is done,” Josiah said stubbornly. “And I have shaken on it. My word is my bond, everyone knows that. I have agreed a price. I don’t go running back to ask for a discount.”

“And when do we move? When do you have to pay the rest of the money?”

Frances opened her bedroom door, and the two broke off.

“Excuse me.” She felt suddenly shy, as if she had been eavesdropping on a private agreement. “But I heard you mention the house. Have we bought it at last?”

Josiah beamed at her, came up the last few steps, caught her hand and kissed it. “Yes indeed, it is ours!” he said. “You can move in tomorrow!”

“Tomorrow!”

“My brother exaggerates,” Sarah said. “It is his way.”

“I do not!” he contradicted her. “The house is being emptied now. When Mr. Waring acts, at least he acts swiftly. He and his wife have moved out to stay in a hotel, and their servants are ordered to move all their goods. He sent me a note to tell me that we can have the keys and call the place our own from tomorrow.”

“And the money?” Sarah demanded urgently over Frances’s cry of delight. “When is it due? We do not have it in hand, Josiah, you know.”

Josiah took her hand. “Have confidence, Sarah,” he urged her. “You do not buy a house like Queens Square outright with saved shillings. I have a long-term loan, against
Rose
’s profits. I do not have to repay until
Rose
comes in at the end of next year. This is my first great investment. And I have others in my mind. I have been waiting for this chance for a long time.”

“You have forestalled on a cargo?” Sarah was shocked. “We have never done such a thing before, Josiah! The risk—”

“But how wonderful!” Frances interrupted. “Will we not have to buy a great deal of furniture? Does the house need wall hangings, renewing and repainting? Is there not a lot to be done before we can move in?”

“You shall see for yourself,” Josiah said happily. “We will go first thing in the morning, and you shall judge for yourself. But I believe that there is very little that wants doing. Mrs. Waring had it done throughout in Chinese fashion only last year. If the style is agreeable to you, then we can simply move in our furniture and take up our residence.”

Frances inwardly swore that however dreadful Chinese fashion proved to be, she would not complain. “I am certain it will be delightful! I so long to live on the square.”

“We are taking a risk,” Sarah interrupted. “I
will
be heard.
We are taking a risk in doing business in this way. We are trading on credit, and we have never done such a thing before.”

Frances was quenched. She looked to Josiah.

“We have traded small,” he said firmly. “We had small beginnings, Sarah, and we had to keep to our limits. But there are great profits to be made for men who dare to take a risk. It is my judgment that it is worth it.”

Sarah clutched her hands together in an odd involuntary movement. “It is too great a risk,” she said. Frances looked at her curiously. The woman was near to tears. “If
Rose
founders, then we are ruined overnight. We cannot stake the survival of this trading house on such a gamble.”

Josiah hesitated, thinking for a moment that he would tell her of the further risks he had taken with
Rose
—uninsured for the middle passage, overloaded, and ordered to smuggle slaves to the Spanish colonies—but Sarah’s white, anxious countenance dissuaded him. He could not face her anger and distress. He stretched out and stilled her wringing hands. “Peace, sister,” he urged her gently. “There is no need for this worry.”

She looked at him as if he did not understand at all. “I was born on the floor of a miner’s hovel,” she said. “I have been poor, Josiah, as you were not. You were born when we were on the rise; you know nothing about hardship.” She looked at Frances. “You neither. You think that having to work and living here, over the warehouse, is poverty. I know you do; I have seen you looking down your nose at our ways and thinking them very mean. But I have known hardship that neither of you can understand. I have gone barefoot for lack of shoes and hungry for lack of food and I cannot
bear
to hear you talking, Josiah, about gambling with our livelihood. As if poverty were not waiting beneath our feet every day of our lives, waiting, longing to gobble us up.” She was flushed, and her eyes were bright with tears. “We are in a little trow on a great river of poverty!” she cried. “And your debts and your gambles, Josiah, will overturn us!”

He was taken aback by her vehemence. “Sarah . . . I . . .”

“Promise me you will not run us into debt,” she demanded. “Promise me that we will make an agreement with Mr. Waring and pay him what we owe from our profits, not from forestalling on our cargoes.”

Josiah looked uncomfortable. “Be still, sister,” he said awkwardly. “I am sorry to see you so distressed—”

“Promise me!”

“It is too late,” Josiah admitted. “I have agreed to pay Waring a lump sum, some borrowed, some from
Daisy
’s profits, and I have sold
Rose
’s cargo already. The gamble has been laid, Sarah. You will have to accept it.” The rest of the gamble—the missing insurance, the smuggling—he left to silence.

She lost her color at once and swayed as if she might faint with fear. Frances, a silent observer between the two of them, thought that the older woman looked as if she had lost the love of her life. Sarah was obsessed with financial security. Nothing frightened her more than debt.

She took a deep breath and rallied. “I am sorry to hear it.”

“It is signed and sealed and done,” Josiah said, impressing her with the finality of the deal.

“Then I can say nothing more,” she said with dignity. “Except that I wish you had talked it over with me first, Josiah.” She carefully avoided looking at Frances. “You would have discussed it with me in the old days. You should have discussed it with me even now.”

“I would have discussed it with you,” Josiah placated her. “But it all took place in the coffee shop; it was quickly and easily done. And there is no great risk, Sarah.
Rose
is a good ship. There is no reason to think she will not come home safe.”