Respectable Trade (50 page)

Frances turned to look at him, shading her pale face from the sun with her little parasol. The August day was hot; she was wearing a muslin gown flecked with pink and a pink shawl over her shoulders. Mehuru had to curb his desire to straighten the shawl and wrap her tighter. Ever since Stuart had warned him of her health, he found he was desperate to keep her warm, as if she were some rare African plant that would wither and die under the cool, damp skies of England.

“We,” she repeated with a little smile. She did not say whether or not she recognized his right to speak of them as a couple.

“Has the doctor spoken to you about your health?”

“No,” she said. “I am well now.”

Mehuru made a little grimace. “He thinks that you have weak lungs.”

“Oh, I knew that,” Frances said. “It was my mother’s complaint, too.”

“He told Josiah that you should go abroad in wintertime.”

“Josiah never said.”

“Josiah cannot see how it can be done,” Mehuru replied grimly. “Three ships of his own, and he cannot see how you can be sent somewhere warm for the winter.”

Frances twirled her parasol and peeped up at Mehuru from under the fringe. “Don’t be unkind about Josiah,” she reproved him. “It is not fair to criticize him.”

“Mmm.” Mehuru suppressed his disagreement. “The point is, the doctor thinks you should be in a better climate than here for the winter months.”

“How do you know all this?” Frances suddenly demanded.

“I was holding the doctor’s horse and listening,” Mehuru said without embarrassment. “Servants always know everything, Frances, you know that.”

“But not about us? They don’t know about us?”

“Frances,” Mehuru said patiently. “I am trying to make plans.”

“My reputation . . .”

“They know nothing about us,” Mehuru lied quickly. “I want to plan . . .”

“To plan what?”

“The doctor says that you should go away in the winter for your health. This is not a light matter. He means it. He is afraid that your lungs are damaged and the wet and cold weather is bad for you. This house is low-lying, too near the river. And the air of this city is unbreathable!”

Frances nodded more seriously. “I have never felt well since I came to Bristol.”

“I want you to come away with me.” Mehuru finally took the plunge. “I want us to go to Italy or, better than that, to France. I think that the political situation in France is perfect for us. I want us to live in France together, as man and wife.”

Frances was stunned. She sat bolt upright and snapped the parasol shut. “France!” she exclaimed.

“They will have a parliament governed by the will of the people,” Mehuru predicted. “And Negroes from the French colonies
will sit side by side with white representatives. They will free the slaves in the colonies, and black men and white men will be equal under the new French law. It is the ideal place for us. I will work as a journalist; I will earn a living as a writer.”

She shook her head. The cluster of pink silk flowers on her bonnet quivered as if they were afraid.

“Why not?”

“They cannot free the slaves,” she said disbelievingly. “They will not.”

“I am assured they will, and France would be the very place for us to live together.”

“I could not live in France,” she said in a small voice.

“Italy, then.”

“I could not live abroad. The only family I have is in England. I could not go abroad.”

“But you never see your family.”

“My family name is important to me.” She looked at him as if she could never explain. “People know who I am in England. This is where I belong.”

He curbed his impatience. “Let’s walk,” he suggested. He could not bear to stand behind her seat and not be allowed to touch her while she threw away her chance of health and their only chance of happiness. She rose up obediently, and they went down the path to the center of the square; he walked a scant half pace behind her.

“Very well, then,” he said. “Let us find a house with good healthy air, perhaps near your old home. You liked it there, did you not? At Bath?”

Frances felt her heart speeding and her breath coming short.

“You don’t understand. We could not live together, Mehuru. I would be ruined.”

“I understand that Josiah’s friends and family would not recognize you,” he said carefully. “But your own family would surely still care for you?”

She put her hand at the base of her throat, trying to still her panting. “No,” she said. “I would be ruined, Mehuru. They would cut me off. I would never see any of them again.”

“What about your uncle, the one who writes to you, Lord Scott?”

Frances, thinking of his lordship’s unequivocal advice about the fatal results of infidelity, gave a shaky laugh. “Him least of all!” she said. “If I left Josiah at all, it would be the end for me, Mehuru! If I left him for you, I would be outlawed by my family. They would never speak of me again.”

He had a growing, painful sense that he was defeated before he had even started. “Frances,” he said, “I have lost everything. My house, my family, my country, my work, which was the greatest joy of all, and I am beginning again. Why cannot you and I begin again together?”

She shook her head. “It’s not possible, not possible. You do not understand.” She turned away and started to walk, a little quicker, down the westward path toward her house.

“Why not?” he demanded, catching her up.

“We would have no money,” she said. She was breathless from walking too quickly. “I have nothing except what Josiah gives me, and you have nothing at all. We could not take a house, we could not even rent a room. The only work I can do is governessing, and you cannot earn at all.”

“People would help us,” he argued. “We could go to London. I already have made friends with some Englishmen, members of a constitutional society. These people would be our friends; we could live near them. There is a place in London called Wapping where a friend of mine lives. We could leave Bristol and stay there.”

The look she turned on him was simply incredulous. “You have been to radical meetings?” She was stunned. “Mehuru, how could you? How could you even get to them?”

“I crept out. I have been to several.”

She gasped. “But these are dreadful people! They threaten
the whole nation. These are dangerous radical agitators!”

He tried to laugh at her alarm, but he felt a growing fear at the gulf that was opening between them. “You have not met these people, Frances, and I have. They are not dangerous agitators—they are quiet, sensible men who wish to see sensible changes made in this country and the ending of the slave trade. Two or three of them are my countrymen, and they understand my position.”

She was quite white with horror. “You have been plotting with runaway slaves?”

“They are not runaway slaves,” he snapped. “They are freemen.”

Frances put her gloved hand to her cheek as she tried to catch her breath. “Mehuru, this is awful. I had no idea that you were doing this. They are dangerous agitators, and they will be arrested and hanged or transported. If they catch you, they will send you to Australia or to the plantations. You must promise me never, never to go again.”

“Or what?”

She did not hear the warning note in his voice; she was too absorbed in her fears for his safety. “I shall tell Josiah that the doors have to be locked at night. You must not meet with these people.”

“Or you could chain me up,” he suggested bitingly. “Or have me whipped.”

She suddenly realized what she had said. “I don’t mean that,” she recanted swiftly. “I meant that you are a foreigner. You do not speak the language, you do not understand the people you are mixing with. I want to protect you.”

“I think I do not need the kind of protection that locks up a grown man and forbids him to choose his friends.” He was toweringly angry. “I think I do not want a woman who threatens me with imprisonment. And I do not want a woman who desires me but will not acknowledge that she desires me and still plans to spend the rest of her life with her husband.”

He spun on his heel and was walking away from her when Frances, reckless of who might see her, ran after him and caught at the sleeve of his coat. “Don’t!” she cried. She was panting for air. “Please! Mehuru!”

He stopped when he saw the whiteness of her face and heard her breath coming so short.

“Oh!” he sighed, and turned back to her. “Sit down, breathe slowly.” He pressed her into a seat. “Come, Frances, breathe properly. I will not be angry with you. Breathe!”

With his hand on her back, she took three shaky breaths, and he watched as the color came back into her face.

“I am very sorry,” she said as soon as she could speak. “Please don’t be angry, Mehuru.”

“It is I who am sorry,” he said. “I should have remembered your health.” He glanced around at all the windows facing the square, longing to take her into his arms but knowing he did not dare. He waited until her breathing steadied. “Now,” he said. “Frances, I must tell you that these are good men and friends of mine. Anything you have heard against the societies is not true.”

She nodded, anxious to avoid a quarrel. “Perhaps.”

“And they tell me that Englishwomen often marry men of my color,” he continued. “And they live happily with them.”

She nodded. “I have heard of that.” She did not tell him that she had heard of it because of an article in a newspaper deploring the tendency of white women to marry freed slaves and accusing them of the grossest immorality.

“These would be our friends,” he said. “Our neighbors. We would make a new life for the two of us.”

Frances drew a breath and tried to speak calmly. “Mehuru, I know that you mean well, but it could not happen,” she said quietly. “These are workingwomen, they are not ladies. Wapping is a poor part of London; it is not like Queens Square. It is even worse than the Redclift quay. It is dirty and unhealthy, and all the people there are poor people, laboring men and women. They would despise me. I would hardly understand
their speech. I could not possibly live there. I would be miserable living in poverty, and so would you.”

He gave her a swift, unhappy look and straightened up.

“Josiah might pursue us,” Frances said. “He could have you arrested as a runaway, and then I would be there on my own.” Her voice trembled. “There is a pit of poverty underneath me. You never saw me before my marriage. I had to work or tumble downward into charity, and I was never very good at my work. I dare not leave Josiah, I dare not leave my family. It is their name and their wealth that feed me and house me and clothe me. Without them I would be ruined.”

Mehuru said nothing. He stood behind her, as a slave should stand, alert for her command but detached from her. He looked over her head, over the bonnet with the small bobbing flowers, and he felt his heart ache for her, and for the unlikely romantic future he had dreamed for them. She turned her head and looked up at him. She looked very small and vulnerable, like a scolded child. Her eyes, as dark as his own, were huge, shadowed with blue bruises from her illness.

“What are we to do then?” he asked tenderly. “What do you want to do?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know.”

J
OSIAH WAS ON THE
quayside, watching his rival’s ship preparing to set sail, his own berth achingly empty. The sailmakers dragged heavily laden sledges across the cobbles, and the runners screamed in protest. When one of the sailmakers saw him, he hesitated and then came over.

“Your bill, Mr. Cole,” the sailmaker said. “From
Lily,
in March. I would appreciate it if you could settle it now.”

Josiah put his hand to his pocket and then checked. “I am sorry, George,” he said. “I have left my purse at my house.”

George looked uncomfortable. “Do you have nothing at your office, Mr. Cole?”

“No,” Josiah said. “I keep no gold here. It is not safe with no one living here anymore. I shall send one of my slaves to your loft this evening to pay what I owe.”

The man made a little bow and shouted to his lad to unload the sails. Josiah went down the steps to the ferry over to the Bristol side of the river. He sat in the bow and looked back at the ship. She was sailing direct to and from the West Indies. Josiah’s neighbor and rival had given up the trade of slaving. Josiah hawked and spit in the filthy water—he knew better. When
Rose
came home in November, when
Daisy
followed her into port, with
Lily
not far behind, they would all know that Josiah had been right to cleave to his own trade—the only trade he knew. The ferry nudged against the steps of the quay, and Josiah tossed a ha’penny to the lad and stepped ashore, heading for the traders’ coffee shop.

Stephen Waring was at the top table taking breakfast when Josiah came in. He raised his head and nodded an invitation. As Josiah came over Stephen regarded him rather grimly, without his usual smile.

Josiah ordered a plate of meat and bread and a pint of porter.

“I have heard some news which I hope you will not take amiss,” Stephen began. He finished the last of his meat and took a piece of bread to wipe around his plate, sopping up the juices of the rare beef and the remains of the mustard.

Josiah cocked an eyebrow at him.

“The company has been told that you have shut off the tap for free water at the Hot Well.”

Josiah nodded. “I have.”

“Why is that?”

Josiah smiled. “I should have thought it would be obvious. I have leased that Hot Well from the company, and it has cost me two thousand pounds’ deposit and nine hundred pounds a year. I have staff to pay, and I have this very day spent two hundred pounds on an architect’s drawing for a winter garden.
I am hardly likely to give water away. At your colliery, Waring, do you give away coal to anyone who calls?”

Stephen nodded at the jest but still did not smile. “I do not have a lease,” he said slowly. “I own my colliery outright.”

“So?”

“I do not have a lease which says that I am bound to give away my coal to anyone who calls for it.”

Josiah looked a little flustered. His breakfast came, but he pushed it to one side. “You are not telling me that my lease says I have to give away the water?”