Respectable Trade Read online

  “This was my dog,” Frances said. “My little dog.” Her voice quavered slightly. “I had to give her away when I went to work. She was a spaniel.”

  Mehuru heard the distress in her voice and looked from the picture to Frances’s face. She tried to smile at him. “My little dog,” she said. “My companion.” Her eyes were bright with tears. “I know it’s very silly.” She pulled a small handkerchief from her pocket. “But she was a wonderful little dog, she used to go everywhere with me. And I lost her, and lost my home, and lost my papa. . . .”

  The women glared at Mehuru. “Her tears do not mean much, then,” Grief remarked bitterly. “One tear for Died of Shame, raped three times and dead in a cave, and a dozen tears for a picture of a monkey.”

  “No,” Mehuru said. “I was a fool to trust her. Her tears do not mean much at all.”

  “They are chattering amongst themselves,” Miss Cole interrupted from the window seat. “How will they learn if they go on talking their own language and don’t even listen to you?”

  Frances cleared her throat and dabbed at her eyes. “I beg your pardon,” she said to the sullen black faces. She turned a page of the easel and showed a picture of a church. “This is my father’s church,” she said. She looked at Mehuru and pointed to the building. “Church,” she said. “Jesus. Church.”

  The slaves repeated the words in a sulky murmur. Frances smiled, pleased. “Later on I shall teach you stories from the Bible,” she promised.

  She turned another page. “And these are flowers.” She pointed to sketches and named each one. They named them as she did.

  Frances left the easel and sat down at the head of the table. “Now,” she said brightly. “My name is Frances. I come from England.” She pointed to Mehuru. “Your name is Mehuru. You come from Africa.”

  He stared at her in dull resentment.

  “Go on,” Grief taunted him. “You are her favorite. You tasted her tear. You trusted her. Speak as she bids you.”

  “Say: ‘My name is Mehuru, I come from Africa.’” Frances repeated her command.

  He stared at her, a long, burning stare filled with reproach. Frances stammered and lost the thread of the lesson. “What is it?” she asked him in an undertone, glancing quickly toward Miss Cole. “What is the matter?”

  He turned his head away from her. There was no mistaking the snub.

  “Mehuru!” she whispered urgently. “What is it?”

  “My name is Mehuru,” he repeated in clear, perfect English, mimicking her precisely, his accent sharp with anger, his very obedience an insult. “My name is Mehuru. I come from Africa.”

  JOSIAH COLE CAME HOME in time for dinner, in a sunny mood. Frances, changing into yet another gown, heard him talking with his sister as he climbed the stairs.

  “Two pieces of good work today. Sir Charles is considering placing money with us for us to act as his agents. You did well to suggest it, my dear, and Frances is a credit to us. If she can get him and Miss Honoria tickets for the Scott ball, I will be obliged to her. And even better—Waring has closed the sale of his house with me at last! I was beginning to wonder if he meant to let me down.”

  “I was beginning to wonder if it were not better to pull out from the deal altogether,” Sarah said. “Brown told me that number 31 is to come on the market. Two for sale in such a short time must mean that both will be cheapened.”

  “Queens Square will always be Queens Square,” Josiah declared firmly. “Prices may fluctuate from time to time, but it will always be the best area of Bristol.”

  “It may be,” Sarah said urgently “But have a little patience, brother, and think! With two houses on the square, you could bargain with Waring, you could force his price down.”

  “The deal is done,” Josiah said stubbornly. “And I have shaken on it. My word is my bond, everyone knows that. I have agreed a price. I don’t go running back to ask for a discount.”

  “And when do we move? When do you have to pay the rest of the money?”

  Frances opened her bedroom door, and the two broke off.

  “Excuse me.” She felt suddenly shy, as if she had been eavesdropping on a private agreement. “But I heard you mention the house. Have we bought it at last?”

  Josiah beamed at her, came up the last few steps, caught her hand and kissed it. “Yes indeed, it is ours!” he said. “You can move in tomorrow!”

  “Tomorrow!”

  “My brother exaggerates,” Sarah said. “It is his way.”

  “I do not!” he contradicted her. “The house is being emptied now. When Mr. Waring acts, at least he acts swiftly. He and his wife have moved out to stay in a hotel, and their servants are ordered to move all their goods. He sent me a note to tell me that we can have the keys and call the place our own from tomorrow.”

  “And the money?” Sarah demanded urgently over Frances’s cry of delight. “When is it due? We do not have it in hand, Josiah, you know.”

  Josiah took her hand. “Have confidence, Sarah,” he urged her. “You do not buy a house like Queens Square outright with saved shillings. I have a long-term loan, against Rose’s profits. I do not have to repay until Rose comes in at the end of next year. This is my first great investment. And I have others in my mind. I have been waiting for this chance for a long time.”

  “You have forestalled on a cargo?” Sarah was shocked. “We have never done such a thing before, Josiah! The risk—”

  “But how wonderful!” Frances interrupted. “Will we not have to buy a great deal of furniture? Does the house need wall hangings, renewing and repainting? Is there not a lot to be done before we can move in?”

  “You shall see for yourself,” Josiah said happily. “We will go first thing in the morning, and you shall judge for yourself. But I believe that there is very little that wants doing. Mrs. Waring had it done throughout in Chinese fashion only last year. If the style is agreeable to you, then we can simply move in our furniture and take up our residence.”

  Frances inwardly swore that however dreadful Chinese fashion proved to be, she would not complain. “I am certain it will be delightful! I so long to live on the square.”

  “We are taking a risk,” Sarah interrupted. “I will be heard. We are taking a risk in doing business in this way. We are trading on credit, and we have never done such a thing before.”

  Frances was quenched. She looked to Josiah.

  “We have traded small,” he said firmly. “We had small beginnings, Sarah, and we had to keep to our limits. But there are great profits to be made for men who dare to take a risk. It is my judgment that it is worth it.”

  Sarah clutched her hands together in an odd involuntary movement. “It is too great a risk,” she said. Frances looked at her curiously. The woman was near to tears. “If Rose founders, then we are ruined overnight. We cannot stake the survival of this trading house on such a gamble.”

  Josiah hesitated, thinking for a moment that he would tell her of the further risks he had taken with Rose—uninsured for the middle passage, overloaded, and ordered to smuggle slaves to the Spanish colonies—but Sarah’s white, anxious countenance dissuaded him. He could not face her anger and distress. He stretched out and stilled her wringing hands. “Peace, sister,” he urged her gently. “There is no need for this worry.”

  She looked at him as if he did not understand at all. “I was born on the floor of a miner’s hovel,” she said. “I have been poor, Josiah, as you were not. You were born when we were on the rise; you know nothing about hardship.” She looked at Frances. “You neither. You think that having to work and living here, over the warehouse, is poverty. I know you do; I have seen you looking down your nose at our ways and thinking them very mean. But I have known hardship that neither of you can understand. I have gone barefoot for lack of shoes and hungry for lack of food and I cannot bear to hear you talking, Josiah, about gambling with our livelihood. As if poverty were not waiting beneath our feet every day of our lives, waiting, longing to gobble us up.” She wa