The Silver Touch (18 page)

Joss did not feel fortunate. It was unusual for him to show excitement, but he had been really excited about the new workshop. A treadle polishing-machine had been installed to relieve the tedium, as well as the time taken up by hand-polishing, and he and his mother were both looking forward to using it. To be cut away from the workshop was a heavy blow to bear.

‘How long shall I have to attend school?’

‘Until you are fourteen. Then I shall apprentice you to the best master goldsmith I can find.’

It was the bright light at the end of a long dark tunnel and something he wanted above all else. Philosophically he faced his education in between. It was no hardship for him to learn and books were as much part of him as the goldsmithing he was determined to follow. ‘When do I start school?’

‘On the first day of September.’

He brightened. There was still plenty of time left to get used to the new treadle machine and finish making the little bowl for Ann in time for her third natal day. Deliberately he shut the thought of school out of his mind and was then astonished by the speed with which the day came upon him.

Hester packed her son’s travelling-box with all he would need in his school life. Knowing he would benefit from country air did not negate the fact that he was a home-loving boy and would feel the break tremendously. She dreaded his going and her misgivings were not aided by John’s teaching him fisticuffs and how to defend himself against bullies. When the time came for departure Joss showed the kind of straight-backed courage she would have expected of him.

‘We’ll say goodbye here, Mama,’ he said to her in the parlour when it was time for him to leave. He had not wanted Letticia or Ann to be present and they were waiting with Abigail on the steps outside to wave him on his way. She did not offend him by telling him to be good and work hard or offer any other unnecessary admonishments. Instead she stooped to give him a big hug and put a packet of toffee into his pocket for the journey.

‘It’s your favourite,’ she said, patting the flap of his pocket back into place. ‘I’ll make some more for Christmas when you’ll be home to see us again.’

He hugged her once more, the desperate pressure of his young arm saying more than words, and then broke from her to dash from the room. She hurried to the window. John had shouldered the travelling-box and stood on the pavement, half-turned to the door and waiting for Joss to finish saying farewell to his sisters. Then the two of them set off across the square. Had it not been such a poignant moment for her she might have smiled at the similarity of their walk, the purposeful stride and their coat-tails swinging in unison. Two streets away they would board the coach for the thirty-mile journey and John would return later that same day.

She turned away from the window when she could no longer see them and wiped her eyes with her fingertips. Letticia had not waited for Joss to be out of sight, but had scampered back into the house on some business of her own. It was Ann who came running into the parlour to be comforted now that he had gone. ‘I want Joss back, Mama!’

Hester missed Joss in the workshop most of all. Although he had had lessons set for him every day, he had always finished them in time to do some work at his own section of the bench, his expression absorbed, his silky fair hair falling forward over his eyes. She had only to look across at John to see the familiar resemblance, but he never had time these days to glance up at her with a smile, for he gave himself no rest. When a rush of orders was on he would work late into the night and start again at dawn, something that was happening more frequently all the time. Had Sundays not been sacrosanct, his family time for her and the children, she believed he would have worked seven days a week, barely stopping for food. Yet that lack of a smile was in a way symbolic of the subtle change in their relationship, which had never been the same since the night the candle had caused the fire. She wondered how it was that a man and wife, intimate in every sphere, should find it impossible to communicate in words their own private thoughts and sorrows to each other. Sometimes it was as if she was living with a loving stranger.

Joss did not come home for Christmas. Freak blizzards and heavy snowstorms halted travel and made the roads impassable. The weather was bitter and in the intense cold every lake and pond in London froze and there was ice floating on the Thames. By now Hester was near her time and the need to rest had made her give up her place at the work-bench. To pass the time she often drew designs for pieces she would like to make if ever John could afford to let her have some discs for her own use. As yet silver had no place in their home, their cutlery being of base metal and their dishes of crockery and pewter.

She had allowed the maid to visit a sick parent and was alone in the house on a Saturday afternoon, the New Year of 1739 being only two weeks old, when there was a knock on the door. She was designing a set of spoons for her own amusement and put her drawing aside to heave herself out of the chair. John had taken Letticia to skate on a pond and Abigail and Ann had gone to watch. She took a little time to get downstairs, but the caller was patient and she opened the door to a handle-maker, who had a box under his arm.

‘Good day, Mrs Bateman,’ he greeted her. ‘I’ve brought those handles your husband ordered.’

‘Thank you. Come in.’ She led the way through to the section of the workshop where the handles were stored and he set the box down on a bench for her. After he had gone, she opened it to examine the contents. The handles were very fine, made of ivory or bone, a few of wood, destined for coffee-pots, chocolate-pots and other containers where a silver handle was not required. The intense chill of the workshop without the full warmth of the charcoal burner made her shiver. She turned for the stairs and the cosy parlour above with more haste than she should have done. Clumsily she almost slipped, saved herself from going down by grabbing at the bench and then released it involuntarily as she was gripped by birth pangs of extraordinary ferocity. She fell to the flagged floor, landing heavily on her right side, and lay floundering helplessly.

There was no one to hear her cries. Her attempt to crawl was defeated from the first, the sound of her torment echoing back from the whitewashed walls. Once she almost lost consciousness, caught in a whirlpool of pain, and returned to the realization that the birth was imminent. It was then that she heard John returning with the children. She screamed his name.

He flung open the workshop door, took one look and drew it almost closed again as he sent the girls upstairs and gave Abigail instructions: ‘Fetch the woman from next door! Bring her back at once!’

Alone, he rushed to where Hester lay. He just had time to throw off his coat and roll up his shirt-sleeves before delivering his second son with his own hands. As he held the bawling infant the tears coursed from his eyes at the miracle, and yet he could feel a grin on his face that surely stretched from ear to ear.

‘He’s perfect!’ he shouted jubilantly.

‘Give him to me,’ Hester gasped, holding out her arms.

He attended to her and in looking for something immediate in which to wrap the baby he took up a square of the yellow cloth in which finished silver was wrapped, only to throw it down again and take a length of the expensive soft chamois instead. Nothing but the best for this son!

When the neighbour arrived at a run, Abigail in her wake, she found John cradling his wife with the baby between them wrapped up like a piece of silver. She was not an imaginative woman, but she was struck by the way the couple were looking at each other. It was as if they had met again after a long time. Impatiently she tossed away the foolish thought and took charge.

When Hester had been carried up to bed and order restored, John found the design of the spoons she had been drawing before the handle-maker’s knock had taken her downstairs. He studied it, struck as always by her eye for line, and he smiled to himself. A fourth child was surely cause for a birth gift of some value and in this case he knew exactly what it should be.

Two days later he presented it to her. As she sat up in bed to unwrap it he went to look in the cradle. Peter was sleeping. He liked the name. It was a good choice. Hester’s exclamation of pleasure drew him back to her and he sat on the bed’s edge. ‘Do you like it?’

‘It’s the best gift I’ve ever had!’ It was a silver spoon for her use made up from her own design. What meant most to her was that it was stamped
J
.
B
.. It was probably the only time his ‘touch’ would ever grace a piece of silver and it was hers.

Seven

Joss finished school on his fourteenth natal day. He had hated every moment of being away from home in a bleak environment where harsh discipline and the frequent use of the birch had been the rule of the day. He was strongly built himself and had withstood in stoic silence whatever punishment had come his way while weaker boys had frequently fainted or collapsed. Remembering how his mother had failed to grasp the fundamentals of reading and writing, he had felt deep compassion for those pupils punished for failing to keep up an educational standard beyond their abilities or comprehension. Now all that misery was behind him. He leaned from the window of the coach to wave excitedly to his mother and sisters who had come to meet him. As the lumbering vehicle slowed to a halt he flung wide the door and leaped out to run towards them.

‘Welcome home, my son!’ Hester exclaimed warmly, thinking how he shot up in height during every absence and, once again, his coat-sleeves had failed to keep up with his wrists.

‘It’s splendid to be back in London for good!’ He gave Letticia’s curls an affectionate tug in greeting. She jerked back, not wanting her hair disarranged.

‘You’ve grown as tall as a maypole, Joss! I’ve grown too, don’t you think?’

‘You have indeed. Quite the young lady.’ He turned to Ann and chucked her under the chin. ‘What about you then? Are you pleased to see me?’

Her shy smile confirmed it. He faced his mother over her head and they exchanged a look of deep feeling, all the gladness at his homecoming radiating in his face and hers. The bond between them was strong. She alone had understood what it meant to him to be away from home and family. Without their ever discussing it, he had sensed that she knew he harboured a certain grudge against his father for what he had seen, and still saw, as his banishment from the workshop, albeit that it had been for his own good. She had tried to annul that illogical twist of resentment in him, unable to bear even unspoken criticism of his father and, to a certain extent, she had succeeded. He greeted her with his singularly sweet smile, kissing her hand and then her cheek. The charity school had instilled gentlemanly manners.

‘You look well, Mother. How is Father?’

‘In excellent health and looking forward to seeing you.’

‘Where’s Peter?’ He looked around, half expecting his younger brother to come popping out of hiding.

Hester laughed softly. ‘I couldn’t prise him out of the workshop.’

‘What?’ Joss raised his eyebrows in amusement. ‘At four years old!’

‘You were the same long before that age. I think we’ve another up and coming goldsmith in the family.’ She drew Ann fondly against her side. ‘This is the budding scholar among us. Ann has discovered books and loves them now as much as you and your father.’

It struck him that Ann only ever came to the fore when propelled there by their mother. He had never been plagued by shyness himself but he was sympathetic towards it. ‘You’ll be able to tell me which stories you like best,’ he said to her.

She nodded, her head hanging to hide her face. ‘I will,’ she whispered.

By then his boxes of belongings had been unloaded from the coach and he called forward a porter with a handcart to arrange their transport to Nixon Square.

As always when he returned home after an absence, he went straight to the workshop. He had almost reached it when Peter emerged, an old pewter plate clasped to his chest.

‘I’ve made a gold dish for Mama,’ he announced, lost in his own game of pretence, and went past Joss as if they had seen each other only minutes before instead of months ago. Joss grinned and glanced after the stocky little figure going in search of Hester. Then he pushed open the workshop door and smelled again the familiar odours of charcoal and pitch and compounds, appreciating once more the cavern colours of this well-equipped place. His father, busy at work on a tureen, turned at the sound of his step on the flagged floor and immediately put down tools with an exclamation of surprise.

Joss could never decide afterwards if it had been a trick of the light, a chance glancing of the tureen’s reflection, but for a matter of seconds it seemed to him that he saw the stamp of sickness on his father’s face, a momentary revelation of some ailment still lurking and dormant. Then the illusion was broken by the sun’s rays through which his father came to greet him, hand extended, the handsome smile wide.

‘Joss! The coach must have been prompt for once to bring you home on time.’ John shook his son’s hand heartily and at the same time clapped his shoulder. ‘Now it all begins, eh? You’ve done well at school — a good preparation for what lies ahead. Your mother and I expect great things of you, you know.’

Joss was experiencing a sense of relief. Now that his schooldays were at an end, whatever had been left of that inner resentment against his father appeared to have gone. Maybe it vanished in that curious, almost eerie moment that still hung in his mind or, more likely, it was because nobody, not his father or anyone else, could keep him from a work-bench any longer. ‘When do I start with Master Slater?’

‘I’ll take you along to his establishment tomorrow for you to sign your certificate of indenture. Then, after a week at home to get yourself organized, you’ll be moving there and beginning that apprenticeship you’ve been long awaiting.’

There was a rustle of petticoats as Hester appeared in the doorway. ‘Come and eat now, Joss. I’ve prepared a light repast for you and we’ll all dine together later.’

Hunger had been with him throughout his schooldays, never quite enough on his plate to fill his stomach except on his visits home, and he turned eagerly to obey the summons. As he did so, his glance alighted on an oval snuff-box not yet fully polished, lying on a work-bench. Almost reverently he picked it up and turned it about to examine it, observing closely the decoration of floral swags on the lid.

‘This is very fine!’ he praised. ‘One of your best, Father.’

‘Your mother made it.’ There had been the slightest pause before reply.

Joss turned to his mother, the snuff-box still in his hands. ‘I offer my felicitations. It’s a lovely piece.’

She blushed like a girl and spoke quite sharply. ‘It was done under your father’s supervision. Come now and eat as I bade you.’

He put down the snuff-box and followed her. However much she tried to shift the credit away from herself, it was due to her. During the space of time that covered his schooldays, she had developed her skills to a point where she could have been judged a good journeyman if her position and circumstances had been different. Yet he knew, and normally obeyed, the rules of the game she played. No praise in that field must ever go to her. She was always his father’s shadow, her craftsmanship only there to support and aid and relieve the pressure of work that fell upon John Bateman’s shoulders. How often Joss had heard her say: ‘Your father taught me how to do that,’ or: ‘I could never have grasped the method of raising-in the bottom of a vessel to strengthen it if your father hadn’t been patient with me.’ Today he was glad he had congratulated her openly. He looked forward to the time when he would be able to make unaided such a perfect little piece.

On the eve of his departure to Master Slater’s establishment, there was a family supper, even Peter being allowed to stay up for the occasion. It had been a hectic seven days since his arrival home. He had been kitted out with new clothes and his travelling-box repacked in readiness. Although he would be no more than three miles from home and within the city, Joss was prepared to be cut off from his family again as if there should be a far greater distance between him and Nixon Square. Apprentices in a local area were discouraged from keeping close family contacts. It set them apart from those who had come from farther afield and sometimes made it less easy to give a full commitment to work. But the situation was different from when he was at school. He would be training for the career he most wanted and would be allowed home some Sunday afternoons, or in any emergency if someone should fall ill. On this thought he looked towards his father at the head of the table and wondered why he had misread the healthy countenance of a man in his mid-thirties with a well-muscled physique and plenty of vigour.

John caught his elder son’s gaze on him and smiled. ‘This has been a merry supper, has it not? Now let’s go into the parlour. There is something awaiting you there.’

Joss could guess what it was as soon as he saw the rectangular shape hidden under a cloth. It was what he longed for. At his parents’ encouragement he approached the table on which it stood, savouring the moment, for it was in his nature never to rush at anything. In a way Letticia spoiled it for him. Impatient at the delay, she whipped the cloth away a fraction too soon for him, and revealed the tool-box that stood there.

‘Turn the key!’ she urged. ‘See! It has a brass lock.’

He turned it and slowly lifted the lid. Within lay all the tools he would need as an apprentice. A lump rose in his throat and he gulped it down, his chest tightening with pleasure. Almost wonderingly, he took out one tool and then another to handle and weigh in his hand, thinking of the work that would come to them under his guidance. He managed to express his thanks, more clumsily than he would have wished. ‘This is a day I’ll never forget.’

John set a firm hand on his shoulder. ‘Use them well, Joss.’

‘I will, you may be sure of that.’

Hester, watching the two of them, had long since resolved how it should be for Joss. He was the one who should absolve the last shadow of his father’s broken apprenticeship and put the name of Bateman on the map of London where it should have been from the start. All her hopes were pinned on this stalwart, serious son of hers with his deep warm heart.

The house returned to normal routine the next day after Joss left. Hester had never been more content. These days when orders came in, it was taken as a matter of course that she should make whatever small articles were required while John took on the larger workpieces. It was not a question of skills, but simply of preference, although she did take on work not truly to her choice whenever John required her help.

What mattered most to her was that as a result of her achievements at the work-bench, she and John had at last that special communication that comes from completely shared interests and the spectre of her illiteracy no longer plagued her. If she had to sign a receipt of delivery at any time, or some other such paper, she did it cheerfully with her cross; the lip-biting, sweat-producing agony of inscribing her name had been shut out with everything else on the day her lessons from John had finished forever. As well as John, she now had Letticia to read to her from the newspapers and she kept well abreast of political and world affairs.

The Jacobite uprising in Scotland and the north of England was a worrying matter. The London mobs, ever quick to flare, gave violent demonstrations of their anti-Stuart feelings, burning effigies of Bonnie Prince Charlie in the streets and setting buildings on fire in the process, sometimes accidentally but more often on purpose as an outlet of fury, and looting was an integral part of these events. When the Scots advanced into England on their way south towards London the demonstrations became riots of ungovernable proportions.

On the evening the rioters surged dangerously near Nixon Square, Hester was alone in the house with Abigail, two maids and the children. John, believing them to be in a safe area, had gone out earlier on a delivery and was long overdue in returning, which added to her anxiety. As the din of shouting and yelling drew nearer, she went up to the attic window and looked out. The wind blew chill in her face and she could see a snake of flares approaching, smoke from some burning buildings in its wake. Even as she watched she saw it head into the street that led from some distance away into Nixon Square. Fear gripped her. Her first thought was for the safety of the children and those in her charge; her second for the value of the silver in the workshop, which would bring the looters rampaging through her house with consequences she did not dare to think about.

She ran back down the flights of stairs to the kitchen where the three women had gathered nervously together. ‘Wake the children and get them dressed without alarming them,’ she instructed Abigail. ‘The rioters may reach here.’ As one of the maids gave an hysterical squeal, she slapped down the girl’s hands that had begun to flap in agitation. ‘There’s no time for that, Matilda! Fetch me a ladder at once! I have to get the sign down from outside. There’s no sense in advertising that a goldsmiths’ outworker lives here.’

‘What can I do, ma’am?’ the second maid asked her, more level-headed than her workmate.

‘Shut and fasten all the shutters in the house, Joan!’

While they ran to do as she had bidden them, she herself went to the workshop to collect the tools she would need. The ladder was outside when she opened the front door, Matilda having brought it round from the outhouse at the back, and the girl supported it as Hester mounted the rungs. The smell of smoke was in her nostrils and the rioters were smashing windows as they approached to judge by the tinkling of glass. Afraid that at any moment they would come into view, the nails securing the suspended sign defeating all her efforts with a chisel, she took the mallet she had tucked in her sash and with all her strength dealt a heavy blow to the wooden bracket that held the sign. It cracked but did not give. Two more blows and it broke, crashing to the ground below and taking the sign with it.