Season of Light (21 page)

Susan Shackleford was the most self-effacing member of the party. Once, when Georgina and Asa walked up to view the ruined chapel, they disturbed her; she fled past them as if she had been a roosting pigeon, her eyes red with tears, lips white and bitten. Usually she was to be found at the piano in the music room, long fingers floating over the keys, her tripping tunes at odds with her reserve. She didn’t seem to mind if Asa slipped into the room to listen: once or twice her lips even twitched in what might have been a smile.

Madame de Rusigneux, meanwhile, had created for herself a niche at a desk in the drawing room, her little brushes spread before her as she made an exquisite copy, in miniature, of the deceased Tom Shackleford so that his mother might hang it on a chain and carry it on her breast. It was understood that some kind of private fee had been arranged, much to Georgina’s outrage.

And Shackleford? Asa was alert to his presence in the house because at least he brought variety. If he was home he would shift restlessly from room to room, stare at a painting then walk abruptly away, linger in a doorway listening to Susan’s music or sit down to hold a conversation with Madame de Rusigneux or his mother – rarely Asa – only to leap up as if he’d suddenly remembered urgent business. He spent hours in his book room, though he always kept the door half open as though not quite confident enough to close it. More often than not there was someone waiting to speak to him; a servant or tenant, his steward, petitioners, business associates. Asa could not fault his treatment of even the lowliest – each was grasped by the hand and given unswerving attention.

She was, however, critical of his vanity. His dress, though plainer than in Paris, as dictated by fashion and his state of mourning, was opulent. Once a fortnight, it was said, he visited a tailor in Bristol and packages arrived at the house almost daily, requiring Shackleford to be closeted for an hour at a time with his valet. ‘I wish he was more like Tom,’ cried his mother. ‘That boy was such a sportsman and cared nothing at all for the cut of his breeches.’

‘I admire a man who pays attention to his appearance,’ said Georgina. ‘After all, we have to look at each other from noon until night.’

‘My late husband had no time for finery. It was one of the reasons he and Harry could never stand to be under the same roof. Harry had no idea of how his father had slaved night and day in his own youth with not a thought for luxury.’

On Sunday the entire party – except Madame de Rusigneux, who was excused on account of the fact that she was not, as Mrs Shackleford put it,
of our faith
– drove to the church on the far side of the eight-foot wall that encircled the grounds, and for an hour contemplated the massive new plaque erected in memory of the late Shacklefords; their heads, side by side, peered out in marble relief, luxuriant wigs, greedy mouths, two pairs of hands clasping sacred books. ‘Of course, my husband and I had planned to share a tomb,’ whispered Mrs Shackleford tearfully, gripping Asa’s arm, ‘and so we shall. I have arranged to sleep between my two lost men.’

After their return to Compton Wyatt, Asa stood before a gilt-framed mirror and stared at herself dressed in muslin so lightly tinted green that the colour might have been imagined. Her hair was carelessly pinned, as usual. Reflected behind her was the duck-egg-blue gallery where the ball was to be held, with its white ceiling worked in scrolls and leaves, its row of satin-upholstered chairs with their gold-painted arms, and its long windows overlooking the lake. With a start of horror Asa saw that she fitted. In her misty dress, her head half turned, her features – startled, wide-apart eyes, half-open mouth – very soft in refracted afternoon light and with stray locks of hair fluttering on her cheeks, she belonged in that airy chamber. All that was required was a posy or a small dog on a leash and she might have stepped from a painting by Gainsborough or Thomas Lawrence.

On Monday the entire party drove to Bristol for a picnic on Brandon Hill. Shackleford offered to take Asa in the phaeton but she said she preferred a closed carriage, so Georgina went with him instead. When they arrived in the city they parted company – the Shacklefords and Warrens were to make a call in Queen Square while Asa, escorted by Madame de Rusigneux, had an appointment in Clifton. ‘I have friends in the city,’ she told Mrs Shackleford, ‘whom I met at an abolition meeting in Sussex.’ But it was no use being provocative; Mrs Shackleford regarded Asa’s radical leanings as the quirk of a youthful, rusticated nature, and she lacked the imagination to connect abolition meetings to her own wealth.

At Miss Hillhouse’s little house on Portland Street the ladies drank tea and discussed Wilberforce’s latest speech to Parliament, which, they agreed, attacked the very heart of the Bristol slave trade. As an example of barbarity, Wilberforce had cited the case of the captain of a Bristol ship, the
Recovery
, who had ordered a fifteen-year-old slave girl to be killed because she refused to dance for him naked on the deck.

‘The trouble is,’ said Miss Champion, ‘the Revolution in France has made slaving more profitable for our own merchants. The word on the street is that the very sniff of abolition in France or here at home will push prices up.’

‘Most of our merchants are completely unscrupulous,’ added Miss Hillhouse. ‘Take your host, Mr Shackleford. It’s well known that his late father encouraged Mr Pitt to offer British protection to French planters in Sainte-Domingue, rather than see a successful slave rebellion.’

‘The Shacklefords and their type, I fear, do more damage than anyone else,’ said Miss Champion, ‘by winning favour through charitable works – look at the model farm that is to be established at Compton Wyatt and the schools that have been endowed in the Shackleford name. They lend slave trading a benign face and the truth about where the money comes from is brushed under the carpet.’

‘Although, of course, the current Mr Shackleford had nothing to do with his father’s trade until now,’ said Asa. ‘It has all been imposed on him.’

‘Oh, I’ve heard that kind of argument so often it won’t wash with me,’ said Miss Hillhouse. ‘I’d say your Mr Shackleford was in an ideal position to take a stand against slavery, and would have done so long ago if he’d been truly principled.’

‘I do think he would like the situation to be different. It is simply that he’s trying to work out where to start,’ said Asa, somewhat surprised at her own defence of him.

‘As an old acquaintance of our dear Mr Clarkson, Mr Shackleford is aware of exactly what needs to done. What a sensation it would cause, were he to become a committed abolitionist.’

‘What do you think, Madame de Rusigneux? Are there any prospects of abolition happening in France?’ asked Miss Champion.

Madame smiled and shook her head mournfully. The conversation moved on to the rumour that some Machiavellian Bristol slave owners had been responsible for spreading word in the French colony of Sainet-Domingue that slaves, thanks to the Revolution, would be freed for three days a week. When this false promise wasn’t honoured, unrest increased. ‘Most of us care only for ourselves,’ said Miss Champion sadly. ‘If only people would look at the wider picture. In a civilised world …’

‘But what is a civilised world?’ asked Asa. ‘To a slave trader, it’s civilised to tame the “lawless” Negroes and make them do the necessary work of supplying sugar and coffee, which we in turn regard as essential to civilised life. To our government, it is civilised to pass the Dolben Act, which stipulates that only five slaves may be accommodated per three ton of ship.’

‘And you, Madame,’ persisted Miss Champion, ‘what is your definition of civilised?’

Madame interlaced her fingers and raised her chin. ‘You tell me,’ she said, ‘what it means to be human, even? Does anybody know? Believe me, I have seen things in France that would make you turn your faces to the wall. To be human, you might think, is to sit in this room and drink tea and have the grand ideas. But in France, for some, to be human is to lick the moss off a stone because the hunger is unendurable. To be human is to be herded from one prison to the next because you have said or even believed the wrong thing. To be human is to be forced to watch while someone you love is cut down, not because of accident or anger but in cold blood, because he is perceived to hold uncomfortable opinions.’

Silence. The ladies, though abolitionists, had perhaps never experienced such an outburst in their parlour. ‘Certainly we understand that change is painful,’ said Mrs Hillhouse, ‘but those bold men and women who overturned a bankrupt monarchy, who have given authority instead to …’

‘You mean, who have given authority to men who have no idea how to use it? To men who play at politics like schoolboys experimenting with ideas, to see which might work? Or to men who are so frightened and so cruel that the only answer they have if you oppose them is to brutalise, imprison or bludgeon you to death?’

‘Not every one of the new leaders is like that,’ said Asa. ‘When I was in Paris, in ’88, I met wonderful men who cared nothing for themselves …’

‘Who were playing with ideas, in the way that you, Miss Ardleigh, so often do.’ The prosaic little room, with its cross-stitch fire-screen,
I work, I serve
, was an unexpected backdrop to Madame’s rage. Her blazing eyes were fixed remorselessly on Asa, and she had become a snapping, brittle thing. ‘They did not know that they would soon end up hating each other because once they had disposed of their common enemies, the king and the aristocrats, they would find more enemies and even more still, those who would not fall into line. Would you talk freely like this with me, do you think, if you knew that afterwards one of us would contrive to have the other killed, simply because we had disagreed?’

‘But that is just one side of the story,’ protested Asa. ‘As an aristocrat you are bound to think differently to us.’

She had the impression that if they’d been sitting any closer, Madame might have struck her. ‘I am a woman, like you. I know what I have seen. I know what has been done in the name of liberty and it is not admirable.’

‘The best of those in France are surely like the best of us? Mr Lambert says …’

‘Ah, these scholars who treat ideas as if they were children’s toys when in fact they are vipers. I’m very happy of course to be in England. I am grateful for the kind hospitality of your family, but I wonder about that hospitality, sometimes, Mademoiselle Ardleigh. It is given at a price, just like everything else; because I am your companion and teacher I may either be ignored or taken up sometimes and shown off as the tragic lady from France. I have become a feature of you, but in reality I mean nothing. So much, I say to myself, for all this talk of equality.’

‘Madame, you mean a great deal to us,’ murmured Asa, ‘you must be aware of how grateful we all are …’

‘Oh, grateful. Yes. As I said. Payment for services rendered. No thought of what I truly am. But that is because in England everything is talk. I cannot help but reflect on how much talking is done here, and how different it is when people act rather than merely speak. When one acts in Paris at present, one risks one’s life.’

The shutters of Madame’s eyelids came down as if to blot out the little parlour, the startled women, the roses in the vase. After a few moments, she calmly picked up her cup and drank the dregs of her cold tea. Someone commented shakily on the likelihood or not of a dry summer.

A quarter of an hour later, Asa and her companion were driven to Great George Street at the side of Brandon Hill. Neither spoke. If anyone was playing games, thought Asa, surely it was Madame de Rusigneux with her little paintbrushes and unpredictable outbursts. But Asa was also grudgingly aware that she would not have been so angry with Madame had her words not hit a nerve. Here she was picnicking on Brandon Hill with slave traders. What sort of a stand was she making here?

The rest of the party, together with another carriage from Compton Wyatt bearing servants and the paraphernalia of a picnic luncheon, were waiting by the gate. After spending such a turbulent hour with Madame, Asa was glad to meet her sister and even Shackleford, who greeted her with all the warmth of one who had not seen her for a month, rather than an hour.

‘Such a lovely day for a picnic,’ cried Mrs Shackleford, leaning heavily on Asa’s arm as they followed a winding track upwards. ‘Of course, when we were children this whole area was quite unspoilt.’

‘Where did you live before, Mrs Shackleford? Can we see your childhood home from here?’ panted Georgina, staggering under the weight of her own petticoats.

Mrs Shackleford knew of a spot where they would have a view of the entire city, but it took several false starts before the servants were at last permitted to unload the picnic, the folding chairs, the wine coolers and napkins. Meanwhile she expected the other ladies to gather at her feet and follow her pointing finger while she mapped out the city below; it must have been apparent to all that she favoured Asa by urging her to sit closer and occasionally touching her hair or shoulder. ‘Don’t those masts look beautiful, clustered together like that? And there are the towers of our wonderful cathedral, which we passed, you may remember, on the way up the hill. A very shocking event took place there a couple of years back; they burned an effigy of Thomas Paine on the green. We don’t think much of him in Bristol, I’m afraid, inciting us all to heaven knows what. But then you are such a radical young lady, Miss Ardleigh, that I expect you agree with every word Paine utters. Beyond is the spire of St Mary Redcliffe, the foremost parish church in Great Britain, where my poor husband and I used to worship when we were first married. He was such a sentimental soul and like many seafarers very superstitious. He used to have models made of our ships – you’ll see one, the
Tranquillity
, in a glass case in the book room – and we’d take them to church to have them blessed, so that all who sailed in them might have a safe passage.’

‘How comforting for the slaves,’ said Asa, ‘to know that God was overseeing their journey.’

‘Did you own a ship outright?’ asked Georgina, jabbing Asa in the ribs with her elbow.