Respectable Trade (46 page)

Mr. James, the previous tenant, who had resigned from the lease when the company made their improvements, raised his glass to Josiah in a gesture that could have been seen as a tribute to superior financial acumen. Josiah smiled and bowed his head at him.

“Very well,” Sir Henry said. He looked toward the clerk. “You have the papers, Browning?”

The clerk produced a lease and took it to Sir Henry. “Sign on, then,” Sir Henry said. He scrawled his signature at the foot of the papers and waved them away. The clerk took them down to Josiah with a pen and a standish of ink. Josiah, beaming with triumph, signed his name in his round, honest script at the foot of the document and knew that his career as an entrepreneur had truly begun.

“I wish you the best of luck with it, the very best of luck!” Mr. James drawled from the other side of the table.

Josiah tried not to look superior.

“You will make a handsome profit from it, I don’t doubt,” Mr. James went on. “I should have stayed in longer, I know. But I had to free my capital for other schemes. It should be a little gold mine for you.”

“I hope so,” Josiah said modestly.

“Is it your only investment?”

“My first, not my only. My first on land.”

“I am surprised you are not buying leases and building,” Mr. James said. “I thought everyone was buying building land.”

“I have connections which make the Hot Well particularly attractive,” Josiah said discreetly. “And I have no knowledge of the building trade.”

“Oh, that does not seem to stop anyone. Half of the men I know are building. It is like a plague, and we have all caught it!”

Josiah nodded. “Timing is everything. Clifton and the Downs is a long-term prospect. The Hot Well is more immediate. It suits my plans.”

“Well, the best of luck,” Mr. James said. “It is a high rent, that, a crippling rent, you know. How will you ever meet it?”

“I shall increase charges, of course,” Josiah said. “No more family rates, no discounts for local people, no free water given away. And I hope to attract more trade from London. The fashionable crowd, you know. My wife’s friends and family.”

The company settled down into their places again, and the chairman went on with other business. They set a new levy on the dock, they set a new rent for the use of the great crane. There was some joke that Josiah did not quite understand about the aldermen of the city, but he smiled and laughed with the others. He had an exhilarating sense of breaking unknown ground. He was mixing at last with the men who controlled everything in Bristol. The jokes, the cliquish references were not yet clear to him, but he felt that he was on the threshold of belonging. In a year, in two, he would be seated farther up the table, he would be party to the private discussions that were now ratified. Josiah had penetrated the company only to find a further cabal, hidden behind it. Next year, the year after, he would understand all the references, he would be one of the decision makers. For this year he was happy to be one of the new
boys who could roar out “Aye” to decisions he did not fully understand, who could trust his leaders to make the right judgments. Josiah felt he was among friends who would safeguard his interests.

A
T THE OTHER SIDE
of town, in a dingy coffeehouse, Mehuru was also attending a meeting, poorly financed but infinitely more ambitious. He was at a formal meeting of the Bristol Society for Constitutional Information, one of a network of societies committed to reforming the corrupt political structure and bringing in the right to vote for all men. It was Stuart’s response to the disappointment of the Wilberforce bill. He was determined to widen their campaign, to bring in the freedom for black men as part of the freedom for white workers. Seated at the head of the table with the door tightly shut and guarded against eavesdroppers, Stuart was chairing a discussion of a motion brought by one of the more radical members: “This society should ally itself with our brothers engaged in the struggle for their rights in France, in America, and in the colonies.”

Mehuru was listening carefully, trying to follow the passionate interruptions to the debate. The society had divided into two broad camps: those who feared that an association with the foreign reformers would invoke a patriotic backlash against them and those who saw the reform movement as naturally international.

“These are great days,” Dr. Hadley summed up. “These are times for great change. The people taking power in France, the people taking power in America, slaves rising against their masters in every colony—who can doubt that the people will take power in England, too? Is the English tyranny of king and church and landlords immune? Can anyone doubt that a hundred years from the last bloodless English revolution we are heading toward another?

“All over the country, men are coming together to demand
that they be truly represented in Parliament, that their leaders be men of their choice and not some pretty puppets set at their head. In the new industrial towns, even in the quiet market villages, all men of sense are demanding a change and a right to be heard. And in the ports of Britain and in her colonies, the black citizens are asking for their rights, too. They demand a living wage, they demand their freedom. And they demand the right to return to their homeland. This is a glorious crusade! I am proud to put this matter to the vote. All those in favor say ‘Aye.’”

“Aye,” said Mehuru, along with the other two dozen men in the crowded room. He felt that Stuart was right, that he was at the forefront of a powerful international movement that could not fail. The logic of it was too strong, and its moral power was irresistible. “Aye,” said Mehuru, from the heart.

Stuart carefully noted the vote in the society’s new ledger and closed the meeting. The men called for drinks, coffee or small ale. Mehuru noticed that all of them were following the self-imposed ban: refusing sugar in their coffee and rejecting rum. They were all signatories of the petitions to support the banning of the slave trade; they were all refusing to support the plantation trade until slavery was abolished.

“Have you had a chance to read those pamphlets I gave you?” Stuart asked. He took a drink from his pint pot. “What d’you think now of the Sierra Leone scheme?”

“I think it is a risk,” Mehuru answered. “The men who planned it seem to have no idea what it is like on that coast. Since the coming of the slavers, all order has been destroyed. You have to realize that you are not planting a settlement in a desert, in an empty space; there are people living there now, and they are not people at peace in an ordered nation. The whole coast of Africa and for miles into the interior is in a state of perpetual uproar and warfare. Each bandit is paid and licensed by white men to make war on each other and capture slaves. Every village is like a fort, except for those which are already destroyed and the survivors hiding in the forests and scavenging for food. It is a wild, lawless
country now. You cannot draw a line on a map and say that inside this line it will be different.”

“They have negotiated treaties. . . .”

Mehuru gave a short bitter laugh. “I was envoy for the kingdom of Yoruba. The mightiest kingdom in Africa. I spoke three of the neighboring languages and enough Portuguese to make myself understood. On a mission for my king, and with his protection, I was captured, my servant was stolen from me, and I was chucked into a canoe like a sack. I was left naked, I was force-fed, I was manacled in the bottom of a ship and left to roll in my own vomit and excrement. If slavers can do that to me, why should they respect a group of poor farmers who have nothing but a piece of paper signed in London, two months’ voyage away?”

Stuart Hadley nodded. “I am sorry to hear you talk like this,” he said. “I am friend to one of the directors, and we urgently need African leaders to live there. Someone like you who could speak many languages would have been ideal. And it worries me if you think it is so risky.”

“Only the ending of the trade in slaves could make it safe,” Mehuru declared.

“And that will come soon,” Stuart promised. “Next spring in Parliament, Wilberforce will speak for it again. Then they
must
agree. And then Sierra Leone would have a future. We could make it a Crown colony, give it the protection of the navy—” Stuart broke off as he saw Mehuru’s sarcastic smile.

“Oh! I had no idea! We are talking of a new colony for Britain! I thought we were freeing black men to return to their own lands, but we are planning new plantations!”

“I did not mean a colony like a plantation,” Stuart protested. “And you know that would never be my intention.”

“It is the danger, though,” Mehuru said thoughtfully. “If the European states stop slaving, will they also stop seeing Africa as their market? Will they leave us to get our country back into order, to reestablish our own laws?”

“Of course there is a strong feeling that Africa should be converted to Christianity and to civilization.”

There was a little silence. “They plan to convert Africa to Christianity and civilization?” Mehuru asked.

Stuart Hadley nodded.

“Then Africa is lost,” Mehuru said simply.

S
TEPHEN
W
ARING STOOD IN
the doorway of the Custom House, breathing the warm night air. Other members of the Merchant Venturers’ Company went past him into the dark gardens, some of them weaving unsteadily from the wines at dinner and the heavy drinking that had followed.

Sir Henry came up behind him and took his arm. “Walking home?” he inquired.

“Why not?” Stephen replied easily. He tossed his cigar away and whistled for a linkboy to light their way. As they drew away from the others, he said, “A pleasant evening, I thought.”

“Very.”

“I am sorry for that Josiah Cole,” Sir Henry said suddenly.

“Oh, why so?” Stephen asked. “He wants his Hot Well, and he has bought it.”

“He’s paid a high price for it,” Sir Henry said. “And we both know he will regret it.”

“It’s his choice,” Stephen said comfortably. They strolled slowly over the lowered drawbridge. The tide was on the ebb, and the riverbank was starting to stink. The dark mud and water reflected the boy’s moving light.

“Still, he might get his money back,” Sir Henry predicted cheerfully. “If he can hang on.”

“More important, the Venturers have got
their
money back,” Stephen said. “Anything he pays in rent hereafter represents a profit to us.”

“Where d’you want it invested?” Sir Henry asked. “Clifton? The Downs?”

“I think we should spend money on the port,” Stephen said. “We lose trade to Liverpool every day. We must straighten the river and make some deep-water anchorage. It is madness trying to run a commercial port out of a tidal harbor.”

“Oh, aye,” Sir Henry agreed lazily. “But you won’t see a profit inside fifty years.”

“Still, it should be done.”

“I’d have thought you would have wanted some investment in Clifton,” Sir Henry teased. “I heard that you had plans for terraces and assembly rooms and all sorts of grand projects.”

“Did you?”

“But I said that Clifton would never be anything more than a pretty little out-of-the-way place.”

“D’you think so?” Stephen asked interestedly.

“It won’t grow until it can be supplied with water,” Sir Henry assured him. “Limestone. You can’t have a town on limestone. It’s dry, bone dry. To reach the water, you’d have to drill, oh, three hundred feet.”

Stephen nodded. The bobbing light of the linkboy’s torch lit his face and then hid it again. “Would it be that deep?” he asked pensively.

“But
if
you hit water, then prices in Clifton would go through the roof,” Sir Henry pointed out.

“Lucky, then, that we all own land there,” Stephen said simply. “And that the company owns the whole manor, Clifton, and Durham Down, too.”

“Satisfactory,” Sir Henry said. He paused at his doorway on College Street. “I like talking to you, Waring. You are always so uninformative.”

Stephen laughed shortly. “I thought we had understood each other very well,” he said.

B
Y
J
ULY
, F
RANCES WAS
well enough to get out of bed but was still easily tired and short of breath. Dr. Hadley called once every
week and one day detained Josiah for a quiet word as he walked to his waiting phaeton. “The air does not suit her,” Stuart said. “It is low-lying here, and the river mists are very unhealthy. You can smell the diseases like a fog. Any day now I expect to hear that we have cholera in the old town. Already there is typhoid fever not half a mile from this house. And all the drains from the old town flow into the river that surrounds you. She has a weak heart; she could not survive a major illness.”

Mehuru was holding Stuart’s horse, straining to hear.

“I cannot move house!” Josiah exclaimed. “We have only just bought this one!”

“That is a pity,” Stuart said carefully. “Could Mrs. Cole perhaps go away to the country for a visit once a year, especially now in midsummer?”

“She could go to the Hot Well spa every day,” Josiah offered. “I have just bought the Hot Well spa, you know, Doctor. She could go there daily.”

“No, that is not what I mean. She needs a more airy situation in summer and a warmer climate in winter like France, or Italy. She needs warm, dry air, especially in wintertime.”

Josiah shook his head. “We have never traveled abroad. I would not know how to manage it.”

Mehuru’s face was like stone, his impatience burning inside him.

“It could be managed,” Stuart said earnestly. “And I do fear for her if she spends the next winter in Bristol. She is delicate, I am afraid, and another serious chill and inflammation like this one could even be fatal.”

Josiah looked shocked. “Frances might die?”

“She could live for years,” Stuart said quickly. “But these delicate lungs are very difficult to predict. If it is possible for her to go somewhere warm every winter, then she would grow stronger.”

Josiah was badly shaken. “I will consider it,” he assured Stuart. “It is just that we have never thought of such a thing.
My sister and I have never even taken more than a day’s holiday. We have never been away from Bristol. I would not know how to set about it.”