The Quality of Mercy (31 page)

“There was sommat a meant to ask,” he said. “What did they live on there, what did the people do to keep alive?”

“There was fish in the creeks,” Sullivan said. “There was turtles, which can be partly consumed if you know the trick of it. There was game most of the year, quail, wild turkey, pigeons. There was deer you could get a shot at when they came to drink.”

“No, what a mean, did they grow veg’tables an’ such-like, did they work the ground?”

“Not to begin with. We had nothin’ in the world to plant. There was sea cabbage an’ acorns an’ berries an’ a kind of wild oats you could contrive to make porridge with. Then with time and lucky chance we came to be friendly with the Indians that lived along the coast. We made them gifts from the trade goods that had been left aboard the ship—kettles, beads, scraps of cotton. We never could fathom what use they were, but it was like a treasure to them. They brought us gifts in their turn. There was a root they knew of that you could grind an’ make cakes from, an’ there was yams an’ pumpkin seeds an’ tubers of sweet potato.”

Bordon listened intently to this and nodded several times when Sullivan had finished speaking. “You lacked for nothin’,” he said, “you had all you needed,” and Sullivan saw on his face the light of a vision and knew in that moment that he and this miner were fellow spirits. “We did so,” he said.

Bordon remained silent for a space of time, head lowered. He did not look at Sullivan when he spoke again, but kept his eyes on the stone flags at his feet.

“Tha made me a gift, comin’ here.”

Only the strangeness of such a visitor with his way of looking and talking, his tale of wanderings in far places, his wildness, could have brought Bordon to words like these, words safe to utter, inviolate, sealed off by the difference between the two of them. “A rare gift,” he said. “An’ a’m nay talkin’ only about Billy Blair.”

And Sullivan, who was quick to sense feelings in others, felt the gratitude and unhappiness in the words and experienced an urge to protect Bordon by shifting the talk before regret could enter into it. “Speakin’ of gifts,” he said, “that was a fine kite you made for your son.”

“My father made a kite for me when a was gannin’ on for seven years old, in the time just before a went down the mine. When a had sons of my own, a carried on with it. Now it’s Percy’s turn,
he’ll be startin’ soon. Once they start down the mine they dinna play no more.”

He was looking squarely at Sullivan now, and something of a smile had come to his face, though there was no gladness in it. “They come to the end of playin’,” he said. “How did tha come to be a fiddler?”

“Me father was a fiddlin’ man an’ he passed it on to me. He traveled about, playin’ an’ singin’ at fairs an’ weddin’s. There were seven of us, brothers and sisters, we went beggin’ by the way, but I was the only one of them that had the power of music in me. He taught me how to find the notes. He always meant me to have the fiddle. He gave it to me when he was dyin’—he had not much more than that to leave, an’ it will be the same with me, ’cept that I have no sons to leave anythin’ to. Our children were all sold, along with the mothers.”

“What use did they have for a fiddler on board of a slave ship?”

“Well, I had been to sea before as an ordinary seaman, so I knew the work. But they like to get a fiddler on a slave ship because he can play an’ the slaves can dance to the music.”

“Dance to the music?” Bordon’s smile had disappeared. “Tha’s makin’ game of me,” he said. There was the beginning of anger in his voice, and Sullivan sensed in this quickness to take offense a battle more or less permanent against a world that showed him no mercy.

“No,” he said, “they needed to be danced because they were in chains, d’you see, they spent long hours cramped up below decks with scarce space enough to move a muscle. Without exercise they would get ill an’ melancholy an’ their value on the market would take a plunge. So they were brought up on deck an’ made to dance to the fiddle music.”

“Still in their chains?”

“Yes.”

“What if they didna have nay fancy for dancin’?”

“They would be flogged.”

Bordon was silent for a while, as if in reflection. Then he
nodded, and the same smile came back to his face. “Not much choice,” he said. “Better to dance than to bleed.”

With this he made for the door, leaving Sullivan feeling that he had made a friend, though one of uncertain temper. Sally was still in the kitchen, and he made his way there now in the expectation of her smile and the hope of something to eat.

Bordon slept badly that night, assailed by dreams of snapping jaws and clanking chains. He saw the white birds rising up and stalked the deer through close-growing trees. Waking from this, lying wide-eyed in the dark with Nan breathing deeply beside him, he thought of the freedom of that life in Florida, taking the hours as they came, living in the open and the light of day, doing things because they needed doing, so that life could go on, not because you were summoned to do them, not because someone you never saw owned the labor of your body. He felt a deep sense of envy for that band of men and women, even for their toil, even for the dangers they must have faced.

Following upon the envy, softening it with a sort of consolation that he knew to have no basis in reason, there came thoughts of the plot of land by the streamside, in the Dene, the sheltered ground, the falling water, the fertile soil, two acres, perhaps a bit more … The apple trees, the green rows of vegetables, the laden pony following the path to the coast where he would set up his stall and sell his produce. Somehow, in a manner that defied logic, this wandering Irishman’s story had brought the possibility nearer.

It took Kemp forty-eight hours to reach the city of Durham, the journey broken by an overnight stay at an inn in Nottingham. Spenton was expecting the visit and would have sent a coach to bring his guest the twelve miles or so from the city, but Kemp had decided well in advance that he would hire a mount from the stables of the inn where his coach set him down. He was not carrying a great deal in the way of luggage; what he had would go into saddlebags. The thing of overriding importance to his mind was having independence of movement during his stay, being able to range freely; he had much to see, and wanted to choose his own time for the seeing. Spenton would have stables, but borrowing a horse would mean making arrangements, stating intentions and so limiting the freedom he felt to be essential. As always, he was single-minded, formidably so; all of his being was concentrated now on learning what he could, assessing the levels of investment that would be needed, striving to apply what he had learned from his study of the industry to the actual workings of the mine, which would be entirely new to him.

It was midafternoon when, after some questioning of people along the way, he reached the gates to the house and grounds, though as yet no house was visible. Stone pillars on either side were surmounted by reclining lions, bemused and emaciated by
time and weather. A man emerged from a small lodge and opened the gate to him. The drive, broad enough for two coaches to pass, wound upward through rolling parkland, with copses of oak and ash cunningly laid out to give a sense of limitless vistas. The land fell away on his rig ht as he neared the house, and he caught a flat gleam of water in the distance from what he supposed was a lake.

The house was of gray stone, broad-fronted and imposing, with wings that looked more recent than the main body of the building. A footman in livery appeared instantly, descended the steps between the parterres and with much deference took charge of Kemp’s horse and led it away. As he began to mount the steps, a youngish man, plainly dressed in a dark twill suit, came down to meet him and held out his hand. “Welcome to Wingfield, sir,” he said. “My name is Bourne, Roland Bourne. I am a half cousin of Lord Spenton and I act here as his steward. His lordship asks me to apologize for his failure to be here in person to greet you on your arrival. There is a meet of the hunt today, and it is expected of him to be present at it.”

“I quite understand,” Kemp said, relieved at having time to gather himself before being required to encounter Spenton again and find the right face to put upon his host’s blend—remembered from their meeting at Vauxhall—of studied nonchalance and sudden fits of enthusiasm for what had seemed entirely marginal matters, tricks of water, clockwork toys, this handball match that was soon to take place. “Great possessions bring duties,” he said, summoning a smile. “That is a general rule.” This fellow seemed pleasant enough—probably a younger son and more or less penniless; otherwise he would hardly be at Spenton’s beck and call.

“Indeed it is, sir, indeed it is. Lady Spenton is still enjoying her afternoon repose, and so it falls to me to show you to your apartment. It was thought that you might like to take your ease for a while, after the journey.”

The room was on the first floor, reached from the main hall by a broad flight of steps that ascended directly, with no hint of the curve now thought fashionable, attesting to the age of the house,
at least in this main part of it—well over a century, Kemp thought, noting as he mounted the stairs the heavy Jacobean oak rails of the banister. The Spenton family was not newly arrived at wealth and large estates, so much was obvious.

It was clear to him, however, that money had been spent on the house, and perhaps fairly recently. His room was more spacious than it would once have been; walls had been demolished to make space for the canopied bed, the broad writing desk, the marble bust of an unknown worthy, the easy chairs, the smooth extent of Turkey carpet.

There was a lingering warmth of sunshine here, and he noted the two large windows that had replaced the narrow casements of a former age. He approached these now and looked out over extensive views of the grounds. The long approach to the house, with the tree-lined drive rising gradually, had brought him to an eminence he had not fully realized until now. He could see the whole shape of the lake from here, a perfect oval, its shores clustered with willows, a small boat with a Chinese-style pagoda moored to the landing stage. Beyond this was what looked like a ruined abbey, with Gothic towers and ivied columns.

By approaching the edge of one window and widening as much as possible his angle of vision, he was able to look eastward and see, at the furthest limit of sight, a pale suffusion in the sky that he thought must indicate the line of the coast. Before this, rising toward it, there was a thickening of the light, a low mist, pale sulfurous in color, and he guessed this to mark the distant presence of the mine. He noticed a narrow seam of green, two or three miles in length, running directly toward the sea. Some wooded cleft in the land …

He was left to his thoughts and plans for an hour or so, and he was beginning to grow sleepy, as he half reclined in the high-backed chair with its deep cushions and footstool, when an elderly retainer came tapping at his door to tell him that Lord and Lady Spenton were below and looking forward to the pleasure of his company for tea in the drawing room.

He was struck by the difference they showed in the style of their greetings. Lady Spenton bade him welcome with none of her husband’s languidness of manner. She was a tall woman, angular in figure and brisk of speech. She had made little effort to dress for the occasion; her hair was combed loose to her shoulders, without ornament, and she wore a day gown with a long apron of the sort she would wear when going about her usual duties. Spenton himself had come in straight from the hunt, still in riding habit and top boots.

There had been a fall during the chase. A neighboring farmer had been thrown and had suffered a twisted wrist and two cracked ribs. “It is all in the way you take the fence,” Spenton said. “The horse must be sure of its rider, or it will balk. Personally, I think the beast was taking revenge. Davis is a heavy-handed fellow, I have seen myself how he wrenches his mount. A horse has a memory, sir, and sooner or later it will square accounts.” He paused here to take some tea, then turned to his wife. “And how has your day been, my dear?”

This would be the first moment of the day they had set eyes on each other, Kemp thought, as Lady Spenton began speaking of some wrangle with a tenant over delayed rents. And it would probably be more or less the same every day while Spenton was up here, a situation which he suspected might well accord with the wishes of both. She would see to the running of the house, the management of the servants, the day-to-day dealings with the local tenant farmers. Helped in all this, and perhaps in more than this, by the pleasant-mannered steward …

Kemp delayed any talk about his own plans until that evening at supper, which he and Spenton took alone, the lady of the house having sent her excuses and retired early. He had no very definite intentions for next day; he wanted to see the way things were run, the way the mine was managed, before starting to make plans for cutting labor costs and increasing production, though sure there would be scope for this. He knew—though he did not speak
of it—that the mine was not making profits commensurate with capacity. With 130 men and boys at work in the colliery, and in spite of its favorable position near the sea and its extensive deposits, Spenton’s income from the mine was considerably short of two thousand pounds a year. He would make a good deal more from his land rents, so much was certain; but Kemp had studied the figures, and he knew that the balance was shifting from year to year in favor of the wealth that lay below, with the growing importance of coal for the steel industry and the decreasing costs of transport as the roads improved.

He asked one or two questions regarding matters not yet clear to him, depending as they did on local practice: the levels of advance payment at the time of hiring, the extent to which the miners absented themselves from the work when they felt they had money enough to last the week. But for information on these counts he was referred to the steward and the head overman, Spenton professing himself to be entirely ignorant of them. Only once in the course of the meal did his host show any degree of interest in the conversation, and that was when he spoke of the impending handball match. They had a new champion this year, a young man named Michael Bordon, who worked as a putter in the mine.