The Silver Touch (31 page)

‘I believe it was a revelation,’ Alice said thoughtfully, a point with which he agreed, for they were both of a strongly religious mind. ‘What I find strange is your mother’s curiously blinkered attitude towards your father’s condition. It’s as if she were fighting a private battle against it, shutting everyone else out, and the silencing of your father’s cough, for however brief a period, is a skirmish won. If anyone remarks on his looking tired, she is quick to say he has worked hard that day and only needs some rest. I have often wondered if consumption was diagnosed by the doctor when your father visited him some time ago after having had such a bad chill. True, John told us it was only a weak chest but I would not be surprised if your mother suspected that was not the full truth. I have never heard her refer to the cause of his poor health from that day to this.’

‘Maybe that is the only way she can bear what is happening to him,’ Joss said quietly, putting into words a long-held opinion. He saw surprise pass across his wife’s face to be followed by a rush of compassion. Slowly she turned her head to look long and deep into the dancing flames on the hearth. ‘Poor woman,’ she said reflectively, almost to herself. ‘How she must be suffering and how much worse it will be for her if things do not go well.’

The new year of 1760 came in on a snowstorm and the frosty weather lasted for several weeks. John dressed warmly and at Hester’s instigation always wrapped a muffler about his neck and chin when going between the house and the workshop or on expeditions out. The crisp, dry air suited him and he did not miss a day at the bench. It began to look as if somehow Hester had imbued her own strength into him and by sheer will had brought him to a better plane of health. In their own private world behind their bedchamber door there was a revival of intense passion on his part, neither of them realizing it sprang from the last flare of life and vigour before his lungs finally gave way to the disease that they had both struggled and fought to keep at bay.

The woods were losing the last azure tint of bluebells on the day when at noon John put down the tools he was using and signalled to Joss, who came to him, alarmed by his sudden pallor. Hester did not notice. She was doing some casing work, pouring molten silver from a crucible into the entry funnel of a wax pattern enclosed in clay. She was making candlesticks that day and when the casings hardened each had to be inverted and heated to allow the wax to run out, leaving a hollow replica within. It was hot and tiring work, for the investment could only be broken away by sudden immersion in cold water, which made the steam billow about her. Once John would have done it, but she and Joss shared all such tasks now, letting him do whatever workpieces suited his interest and his strength. It was as she turned, wiping the sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand, that she saw she was alone. It was not unusual for there to be comings and goings and, unperturbed, she reached for another crucible of molten silver just as Joss returned. He was in silhouette against the sun outside but she sensed immediately that something was wrong.

‘I saw Father into the house. He didn’t want me to tell you but I think he’s feeling extremely ill.’

It was as if a knell rang through her, but she kept herself under tight control as she whipped off her cap and apron. ‘Is he coughing?’

‘No.’ He guessed she lived with the dread of haemorrhages, although never by a word or a flicker of expression had she ever shown it. Even now, she was totally composed.

‘See to those casings for me,’ she said as she went out of the workshop.

She found John in the room where he did his accounts. He had dropped down into a large wing-chair and was hunched in it, his hands hanging limply over the ends of the chair arms. His eyes were closed in his blue-white face, but at the sound of her approach he opened them, the pupils tight with pain, and managed the smile he knew she wanted to see.

‘It’s nothing,’ he said reassuringly, keeping up the game of pretence between them. ‘Just a spasm.’

‘You’ll be all right as soon as it passes.’ She knelt down close by the chair and took one of his hands to cradle it against her breast as she gazed at him, anxiety glazed over by her carapace of calm.

‘Indeed I will.’

‘Don’t talk now, my darling. Rest yourself.’

Her advice came a fraction too late. His colour rose with the cough gathering in him and then a paroxysm of heaving and coughing seized him until she feared he would choke. Ann, hearing him, came at a run and was sent to fetch the syrup that was kept for bad attacks. It contained laudanum, a last resort when experience had shown that nothing else could ease him. When at last his racked body was granted some respite, Joss was called to help him up to bed where he fell into a deep sleep.

‘He’ll be back at the bench again in a few days,’ Hester said with an optimistic air as she went downstairs again with Joss, Ann having remained at her father’s bedside.

‘Don’t count on that, Mother. There’s a marked change in him. It’s been noticeable over the past two or three weeks.’

She tossed her head. ‘How can you say that?’ she challenged. ‘He’s worked a full day every day.’

‘Only because he’s driving himself. He’s a courageous man refusing to give in.’

Fiercely she rounded on him. ‘And he won’t give in. Neither will I! Your father and I will continue to fight his illness and we shall conquer it. What has happened today is only a minor setback. By tomorrow he will be on an upward grade again.’

Joss opened his mouth to say something and then closed it again. Maybe he had no right to try to undermine such faith in an ultimate recovery. Miracles happened. Who was he to offer doubt at such a time when everything might depend on his mother’s strength of will?

John was to remain bedridden for five weeks. Jonathan was always to pinpoint his father’s collapse as the starting point for his own real development as a goldsmith. By lucky chance for him the gap at the workbench coincided with a spell away from school for the teacher was ill and since there was no one else to take over, the pupils had been given an indefinite holiday. He was thirteen years old, strong and tall for his years with the promise of the Bateman good looks gathering across the bones of his face, but not yet disguising the self-satisfied set of the fleshy mouth or the evasiveness of his eyes if he was confronted with some question not to his liking. Joss, having found he could rely on Jonathan to do a task well, welcomed his freedom from school exactly when it was needed most and brought him into the workshop on the very morning after their father’s attack to work a full day as if he were an apprentice already. Jonathan seized the opportunity to learn whatever he could, knowing it would give him an advantage later on.

‘I’m going to be rich one day,’ he boasted to Ann as he waited while she mended a tear in a shirt he wanted to wear. ‘Then there’ll be no more patched shirts for me. I’ll have thoroughbreds in my stable and ride the fastest myself.’

‘Where’s all this money to come from?’ Ann enquired drily, snipping the thread as she finished her task.

‘I’m going to be goldsmith to the King!’ He seized the shirt from her without a word of thanks and pulled it over his blond head. Ann put the lid on her sewing-basket. She did not dispute his dream. If anyone could achieve his aim she believed Jonathan to be the one, for he would use any means to get his way.

Eleven

It had become apparent to everyone except Hester that John would never work again. After his long spell in bed he was thin and weak, able only to sit in a chair in his bedchamber for a few hours a day. Ann was his constant companion, reading to him from his favourite books and others from the Esdaile library. Letticia came home periodically to fuss and try to reorganize the routine that Hester had found most suited John in what she referred to as his convalescence. When John at last was able to dress with her help and get downstairs Hester was triumphant.

‘You’ll soon be fit again, my love,’ she said confidently to him as he leaned on her for support. ‘It won’t be long now before you and I will be working side by side at the bench again.’

The effort of getting downstairs had tired him. She propped cushions for him and lifted his feet up on to the couch when he had seated himself. Through the open window he had a view of the late summer roses.

‘In a day or two you’ll be able to sit in a shady spot under the trees,’ she promised, bending to kiss him, and the bouquet of her filled his nostrils deliciously. She was, he thought, still a girl at heart with the same enthusiasm, vitality and eagerness for life that had first enchanted him. At times he felt that what little strength he had recouped had been drawn from her energy alone, for it certainly would not have come from his wasted body.

To the family’s amazement, he was soon able to sit outside as she had promised him. Elizabeth, who came to the house almost daily, often sat with him, which gave Ann time to see to household matters. It was with the two girls on either side of him, ready with supporting arms if they should be needed, that he walked as far as the workshop where Hester and his sons were at work. Jonathan was quick to show him a spoon he was fashioning.

‘That’s good, my son,’ John praised, able to see that the right lines had been grasped even though the faults were manifold. Perching on a stool, he explained some finer points to the boy. He stayed quite a time, watching his wife raise a small sugar-vase and Joss in the final stages of a salver. When he left he looked back at Hester, who had paused in her work to watch him go, and she saw in the unchanged Thames-blue of his eyes a pride in her that warmed her through and through. Then he went out into the sun with the two girls and his shadow passed across her bench as he went by the window.

He never went to the workshop again. It was as if that visit had been the climax of a respite briefly gained before his illness began to wreak its worst on him. Once more the nights became a torment. After a bout of coughing he would lie exhausted against the pillows that kept him propped up while Hester would remove the blood-stained rags from a bowl on the bedside table and change his sweat-soaked night-shirt. Yet she still maintained her constant optimism and even in a state of exhaustion, when he could barely speak, John attempted to keep up the spirit she lovingly demanded of him.

Nobody knew at what expense Letticia sent her own London physician to see him. Dressed more like a dandy than a man of medicine in burgundy velvet with a satin waistcoat, he made his examination at some length in order to earn his guineas, for he had been able to see at once that the patient was a dying man. When he came out on the landing Hester was waiting to see him.

‘I regret to say I can offer you no hope, Mrs Bateman. Your husband is in an advanced stage of consumption and all you can do is make him as comfortable as possible. I will leave you a potion that will help relieve his suffering.’

She received his statement unblinkingly. He thought her either exceptionally staunch or else quite unfeeling. He was inclined to the latter, for she was brisk and businesslike as she saw him out and thanked him for calling. Joss, waiting in the parlour, went out into the hall as soon as he heard the front door close.

‘Well?’ He was concerned for her, ready to help her to a chair. ‘What did he say?’

‘Exactly what I expected.’ Her head was high, her back straight and her face immobile. She went past him into the parlour. There she swung around as he entered after her. ‘Doctors are the gloomiest of creatures. When they can’t effect a cure they think nobody else can. He gave your father no chance at all.’

Joss passed a hand across his forehead. Although the physician had only said what he in turn had anticipated, the shock was in its finality, the last destruction of a faint hope that had persisted in spite of all the evidence against it. ‘Did he say how long Father has left,’ he asked hollowly.

Her voice was unusually sharp. ‘I didn’t ask him such a foolish question when I know I can get John on his feet again.’

Joss lowered his hand and stared at her. There was a curiously blank look in her eyes as if she had shut out all the world from her and the sick man upstairs. ‘Mother,’ he began carefully, ‘I can’t wish my father years of the terrible torture that is tearing his lungs to shreds. There’s no cure that is known to man.’

Her arm came swinging up and she hit him hard on the side of his face. The sound of the slap seemed to hang in the quiet parlour like something tangible. Her eyes blazed with fury. ‘How dare you! I want no pessimistic talk from you or any other member of this family. You can tell them that! I’ll bar the sickroom, and even this house, to anyone who doesn’t approach your father’s bedside as if on the morrow he will be up and back at work again!’

She swept out of the room and went back upstairs, running the last few steps when she heard coughing commence. Shaking his head, Joss left the house and returned to work. That evening he told Alice all that had taken place.

‘She means what she says, I know her. I must warn Peter and Letticia. I had a word with Ann and Jonathan before coming home.’

‘What about William?’

‘His behaviour in Richard’s workshop, or rather his misdemeanours out of it, have barred him from coming home at least for the time being. If there is an emergency —’  He broke off and sprang up from his chair to move restlessly about the room. ‘If only there were someone who could make my mother accept what is going to happen and prepare her for it. I’m sure there is nothing that would give Father greater tranquillity. He can’t keep up with her eternal optimism any longer. I’ve seen him close his eyes sometimes almost in desperation.’

Alice came across and linked an arm through his. ‘I think there is someone. I believe Hester would listen to that person as she would to no one else.’

‘Who?’ When she told him he agreed with her, impressed as he had been often before by her wisdom and good sense. ‘I’ll see about it tomorrow.’

The following Saturday afternoon when the trees along Bunhill Row were gaining the full autumn hues of copper, gold and crimson, Hester was called from the sickroom by Jonathan who had seen a coach draw up outside. ‘Mr Esdaile has come, Mother!’

She received the announcement with surprise and some uncertainty, turning in the doorway to pass the news to John, who sat in his dressing-robe in a wing-chair by the fire. It was an achievement for him to be sitting out of bed again and she was greatly encouraged by this good sign. ‘Shall I bring him up?’ she asked.

‘By all means,’ John replied. ‘I should like to see him.’

Going downstairs, she found that James had been shown into the parlour. On the hall table was a basket of hot-house fruit for John that was typical of their visitor’s generosity. As she entered the parlour James came forward to greet her, seeming to make the room vibrate with his handsome height and powerful presence, an illusion aided by the shivering of the ancient oaken floorboards under his purposeful stride.

‘Good day to you, Hester. It’s been a long time.’ He kissed her hand and then stepped back and regarded her steadily. There was no laughter lurking at the back of his eyes today, neither was there any bitterness such as she had seen when they had quarrelled in the copse. Instead there was merely concern, which she interpreted as being solely for her husband. ‘How is John?’ he asked her.

‘He is making progress again,’ she replied confidently. ‘How are you? And Mary and the children?’

‘All in excellent health. You and I have much to talk about after all this time, but first of all am I permitted to see John?’

‘Indeed you are.’ She dropped a hint. ‘I like him to be cheered at all times, so your good company will be welcome. Please take your kind gift upstairs with you. John will appreciate it.’

She led the way. In the bedchamber James concealed his dismay at the change in John’s appearance, greeted him warmly and presented his gift, for which he was heartily thanked. He seated himself in a chair placed conveniently for conversation.

‘It was good of you to drive out of London to see me,’ John said to him.

‘I’d have come before if I’d known you were ill.’ James shook his head sympathetically. ‘This is a hard turn, John. I would wish to have things differently for you.’

Hester, who had remained by the door, intending to leave them on their own as soon as James had settled, bridled at his frank speaking. If he was going to harp on about John’s state of health in spite of what she had said, she would turn him out. Since her ultimatum, nobody had referred to John’s present physical weakness as anything but a mild disposition. She was about to intervene when the conversation took a turn towards business in the city and some news of the Goldsmiths Company that interested John immediately. Relaxing again, she stayed no longer and shut the door after her.

Twenty minutes later James left the sickroom. He met Ann on the stairs on her way up to her father and was pleased to hear that through her reading sessions John had also benefited by her use of the mansion’s library. In the parlour he found Hester waiting with tea.

‘The tea can wait.’ He made a restless gesture as if feeling enclosed by the confines of the room. ‘Get your cape and let’s take a stroll together outside.’

‘Very well.’ She extinguished the lamp-flame beneath the copper kettle, fetched her cape and they went out of the house together. He took her firmly by the elbow as they set off along the road and turned down a side lane away from any passing traffic. By his brooding, meditative expression she concluded something was troubling him and was prepared for some confidence such as could be exchanged between friends. Cushioned as she was by her conviction that John’s lungs could be healed to a certain degree, she did not immediately grasp the significance of what he said to her.

‘I said my farewell to John since I shall not be seeing him again.’ There was sadness in his voice. ‘I admire his courage. He’s a brave fellow.’

‘Are you leaving London then?’ she asked innocently.

‘No.’

‘Then what should keep you away.’ She hesitated only briefly. ‘I hope that nothing from the past —’

He broke in on her. ‘I could call again if I felt it was the right thing to do, but I happen to believe that the last weeks of a man’s life should belong to his wife and family.’

Her breath shuddered in her throat at the shock of what he had said. ‘I told you I don’t allow pessimism. It destroys!’

‘As it happens, I agree with you. But pessimism must not be confused with acceptance of reality. Hope should be sustained on all counts until there comes the point of no return recognized both by the sick and those who care for them. That day has come to your house and only you are standing out against it, Hester.’

‘What have you been saying to John? And he to you?’ She was paper-white and even her lips had lost colour as she faced him at a standstill.

‘We talked in friendship and parted in friendship, shaking hands in the knowledge that we shall not see each other again this side of the grave.’

Anger flashed through her. She would have jerked herself away if his hand had not been like a manacle on her arm. ‘I’ll never let you back into our house again! Heaven knows what gloomy thought you’ve put into John’s mind. He is going to recover, I tell you. He may never be fully fit again, but he has many years left to him yet.’

He seized her other arm and held her trapped before him. ‘Count those years as weeks or days and you’ll be nearer the truth.’

‘No!’ She shook her head wildly. ‘I won’t listen to you.’

He thrust his face towards her. ‘John is going to die soon, Hester; not all your love and care is going to keep him much longer on this earth.’

Her taut lips drew back over her teeth. She looked frightened and at bay, not far from panic. ‘Who are you to say so? You’re not as well qualified as I am to know the true situation and what can be achieved.’

‘I’m better qualified than you think. I saw my first wife die of the same disease. In the last weeks of her life she looked exactly as John looks now.’ His face was full of sympathy and pain. ‘Do you suppose I didn’t go through all that you have been enduring? In the end I had to accept that I was going to lose her.’

‘I’m not going to lose John!’ She heard the rising note of hysteria in her own voice and bit hard into her lower lip as if to retain self-control.

‘Face facts!’ he urged fiercely. ‘You’ll kill him before time if you don’t! Set him free from the pretence he is struggling to maintain for your benefit alone. He is tormented by anxiety for
you
!’

She was trembling violently, although no longer from rage. Her desperate whisper came strangled from her throat, her lips barely able to form the words. ‘I can’t go on without him. He is my life.’