Respectable Trade (42 page)

Frances nodded.

“I shall drive out to the Hot Well this afternoon,” Josiah said. “Will you come with me, Frances? I want to see how busy it is midweek. This is the prime season; it should be coining money.”

“Certainly,” Frances replied. She had a swift thought that now she would not be able to see Mehuru until the evening. But Josiah’s wishes must come first. “I would like to see it.”

“You can take a glass of the water,” Josiah said cheerfully. “Will you come, sister? You must come and see it. I am serious about buying the lease. I have had sight of the books, and they show that the major expenditure has all been made. Stephen Waring is sure that we can earn a return from it.”

“A return such as a voyage to Africa and the West Indies will make?” Sarah demanded. “I doubt it.”

“A different business with different costs and different benefits,” Josiah assured her. “We have to move with the times, Sarah. All the great Merchant Venturer companies have shipping, but they have land and collieries and building interests, too. We have to be like them—we have to have some of our money out at sea and some of it safe home here on shore. And it is steady, Sarah. There is not the long wait for your profit. Now that we have high and steady expenses, we need a business which pays us every month, not once every two years.”

Sarah cleared her throat. “You can go, Mary,” she said. Mary curtsied and left the room. Sarah waited until the door had closed behind her. “I did not want to speak before her, but, brother, I must speak to you and Frances frankly.”

Josiah looked deeply unhappy. “Speak, Sarah. You know I always value your advice. This is your company as much as it is mine, and your fortune as well as mine depends on it.”

Sarah glanced at Frances. “I am not against Frances, or you, brother,” she began. “But I must question what is happening to the company. In my father’s day and in the early days when you and I ran the company, we took a pride in trading with cash in hand. We bought trade goods with cash, we bought slaves with trade goods, we sold slaves for gold, we bought sugar with gold, and we sold sugar at a profit on the quayside for more gold, which then paid for the next voyage.”

Josiah nodded.

“When we realized that the trade was slipping away, that fewer and fewer large investors were taking a share on our voyages, we decided to sell slaves direct into England. You married Frances to obtain her dowry to finance their purchase and so that she should teach them for free and sell them to her friends.”

Frances, who had never before heard Josiah’s proposal explained in such bald terms, blinked but could not disagree.

“Why do we now think of changing everything?” Sarah demanded passionately. “The money we earn from the sale of these slaves should buy more slaves. The money we earn from each voyage should equip another voyage. But instead it is being wasted on this house and high living, and all I hear from you is one scheme after another. We do not need schemes. We already know how to make a profit. Trade is what we have always done, and trade is what we should do—trade with cash in hand.”

Josiah and Frances were silent.

“There is another thing,” Sarah continued more quietly. “I know that you have longed all your life to be a Merchant Venturer, and I congratulate you on your election to the company. I believe it was bound to come to you in time, as an honest, profitable Bristol trader. But I would remind you, brother, that these are new friends, they are not tried and tested. If Mr. Waring advises you of an opportunity or wants to borrow money, you should treat him with as much suspicion as an out-of-work captain in the coffeehouse. He cheated us over this house—”

“Now, Sarah! He never did!” Josiah exclaimed.

“He did! He did!” she cried passionately. “Three houses on the market the moment we paid him the deposit. All of them friends and neighbors of his! All of them cheaper than this! He told them to hold off until he had landed his fish, Josiah. And you are so besotted with becoming gentry you, will not see it.”

She had caught him on the raw. His voice rose to match hers. “How dare you say such a thing! In all my years trading,
I have never been bested, but I have always seen chances which you would have missed. You’ve never moved on, Sarah. You’ve always looked back. You were happiest living with Da over the warehouse and with one racked old boat. You think small, Sarah, and you want to cut me down to your size!”

Frances ducked her head down and sliced bread and butter into tiny slivers, longing to be out of the room and away from the loud voices.

“I think as you should think,” Sarah hissed. “I think that you are a small trader, and now you are swimming in a large pond with greedy men who will gobble you up, Josiah. I do not trust Stephen Waring. I do not trust his ideas. And I certainly do not trust the Hot Well if it comes with his recommendation! Why can you not see that! Why can you not keep to the trade you know?”

Josiah pushed his plate away and strode to the window, his face flushed, his feet stamping on the floor in anger. He glared out the window, and a street seller who had been about to set up his pitch and sing his ballads picked up his tray and hastily moved on.

Josiah gripped the windowsill until his knuckles showed white. He fought his anger until he had it under control. Then he cleared his throat and turned back to the table. “Now, Sarah,” he said kindly, “don’t rant at me. I am trying to do my best. Let me explain my thinking to you, and let us be friends.”

She was still quivering, but she nodded that she would listen. Brother and sister glanced down the table to Frances. Her head bent low, she was pleating and repleating the napkin in her lap. Brother and sister regarded her with mild irritation and then returned their attention to each other.

“When we buy goods—trade, slaves, whatever—we move them to make our profit. We take them to another market, where they command a better price.”

Sarah nodded.

“And it costs us to move them. We can never be sure what
damage a ship will suffer. It can lose a mast, it can lose its sails. If the worst occurs, we can lose the whole ship and the crew and cargo.”

Sarah nodded again. “So?”

“But when we buy land—such as the Hot Well spring—we can work it where it is. We know the risks. Nothing can go wrong with it. It’s not like a ship tossed about by the wind and the weather. The water comes out of the ground hot and bubbling, and we bottle it and sell it, or we sell it at the spa. It’s safe money, Sarah. Safer than your ships. And there’s another profit, a hidden profit.”

“How?” she asked reluctantly.

“Everything is costing more,” Josiah said. “It was his lordship, Lord Scott himself, who showed it to me. We were talking about his rent rolls when Frances’s dowry was to be paid, and he showed me. They are using new methods to farm, the land is yielding more, and so every farm, every farm in England, is more valuable than it was twenty years ago. The ground beneath our feet, even here in the city, is more valuable. When we come to sell this house, we will get more than we paid for it. When we come to sell the Hot Well, we will get more than we paid for it. Every day everything we own becomes more valuable.”

Sarah shook her head at the incredible concept.

“It is like a miracle,” Josiah breathed. “A miracle, Sarah. Everything we own is becoming more valuable. Even the warehouse, even the rock of the caves. Everything is growing in profit. All we have to do is to turn the warehouse, the rock, the land under our feet into cash.”

Sarah would have interrupted, but Josiah was entranced by the prospect of self-generating wealth. “Look at the prices for land on Park Street. If we had bought land on either side of the street ten, twenty years ago, we could have had it for ten pounds an acre. Do you know what it is worth now?”

Sarah shook her head.

“Hundreds,” Josiah said. “You could name your price.”

“But we did not buy it,” Sarah maintained stubbornly. “Because we did not know that it was going to become fashionable. We did not know it would be valuable. We could not have predicted it. You have never looked beyond a house here, in this square.”

“Yes, but now we can make predictions,” Josiah said. “We did not guess that people like the Warings would move up the hill to Park Street because we did not know them. I did not hear them speak of it; I was not invited to their table in the coffeehouse. But now I
am
there, Sarah, and I
do
hear the rumors. Now I
know
where the fashion is taking hold. And I tell you, it is the Hot Well, it is Park Street. We are too late for Park Street. But we can snatch at the Hot Well, and in ten years’ time we can sell it for ten times what we have paid for it, as well as running it at a profit now.”

Sarah was almost convinced. “But if this is so,” she asked slowly, “if it is such an excellent deal, then why are the Merchant Venturers selling it? Why is Mr. Waring not buying it himself?”

Josiah slammed his fist into his cupped palm. “Because I have hit it right! I have! Me! This is my moment! This is my time! Waring is buying land in Clifton—but there will be no development of Clifton for fifty years; he is in too early. James—the tenant of the Hot Well—was in too soon. The company has done all the improvements and want their money repaid. I have caught this fashion on the bough—Clifton may be the very place in twenty years’ time, Park Street was tempting ten years ago, but the time for the Hot Well is now! And here I am now! I am ready to buy in now!”

“What with?” Sarah demanded. As ever, she went to the very heart of the question.

“I shall borrow against
Daisy
’s cargo and two thousand pounds against
Rose.
”

She nearly moaned. “Borrow more against
Rose
? You have
forestalled her cargo already to buy this house. If she fails, we will be ruined!”

“I own half the cargo,” he confessed. “I could not get partners for her, and now I am glad of it. I shall borrow every penny I can against her profits, and
Daisy
’s, too.”

“Two ships carrying debt?” she demanded.

“Yes,” Josiah said defiantly. “Look around you, Sarah! No one trades with his own money anymore. All the big schemes are done with loaned money. All the coal mines, all the foundries, all the industries are launched on borrowed money. You know that is the truth.”

“It is not our way.”

“No, and our way has been slow and sure. But I want to go faster, Sarah. I want the Hot Well. I can show you the figures, and you will know I am right. We have to borrow to buy into the lease. I am determined that we should do it.”

Sarah turned from his stubborn face. “Frances!” she appealed. “This is your fortune, too. Do you want to see Josiah borrow against a ship which has not even docked?”

Frances had relaxed when Josiah had controlled his anger and they had stopped shouting. She was thinking of Mehuru and wondering when she could see him again and how she could divert him from his demand for wages. She gave a little start and used her usual excuse. “I am sorry. I know so little about business.”

Sarah turned back to her brother. “I see you are determined,” she said. The color had drained from her face.

“I am.”

“You will go ahead with this scheme, whatever I say?”

He nodded.

Sarah paused for a moment, measuring her will against his. “You promised my father that I should share in the running of his business,” she reminded him bitterly. “You made a deathbed promise, Josiah.”

“I did, and I have never broken it.”

She glared at him. “You are breaking it now, when you will not listen to my advice, when you run headlong into debt and into schemes that we know nothing about.”

“I promised you should share in the running of the business,” he said. “I never promised that you should rule the roost. I never promised that you should stand in my way and so ruin me.”

“I!” she exclaimed. “I! Ruin
you
!”

He was quick and biting. “Yes, you. You still keep the household books; you see how much money we spend every month. Where is it to come from, Sarah? We will be ruined if we do not find new ways to make money, new ventures. Not even you can wish us sold up and back at the dockside.”

She was silenced.

“We have to go forward,” Josiah insisted stubbornly. “To hesitate is to be wrecked.”

They were both silent. “I have not seen the ships’ books since we moved house,” Sarah said. “I have not brought them up to date. I shall need to enter these debts you are incurring. I shall need to show that you have sold their cargoes.”

“They are at the warehouse,” Josiah told her. He rose to his feet and went to the door. “I have opened my office down there. I have taken on a clerk. He will keep the books for me. It is more convenient so.”

He did not dare face her. He opened the door and slipped away from her before he could see her stricken face.

T
HE DRIVE TO THE
Hot Well was not a great success. The day had clouded over, and under the dark bellies of storm clouds the little colonnade of shops and the pump room did not look pretty and inviting but seemed overwhelmed by the lowering cliffs above. The tide was out, the river oozed between greasy banks of brown mud, and the sweet, sickly smell of sewage lingered. Every day that the sun grew hotter increased the stench. The wind ruffling the low-tide river was heavy with it.