Respectable Trade Read online

  “Why, Frances!”

  “Do you know of a new Hot Well?” she demanded, the words tumbling over each other. “Do you know of a new Hot Well in Clifton?”

  “What?” he asked. He took in her white face and her disheveled appearance. “Frances, what is the matter? Sit down, let me ring for Elizabeth. You look ill.”

  She nearly screamed at him. “Josiah! For God’s sake answer me! Do you know that there is a new Hot Well being built in Clifton?”

  Her meaning slowly sank in. “A new Hot Well?” he asked. “A new Hot Well? In Clifton? That is not possible. There is no spring in Clifton. It is on limestone. It is dry.”

  She dropped into a chair and wrenched at the ribbons on her bonnet, stripped off her gloves. “I drove up to Clifton,” she recounted, her voice low. It struck Josiah she was like a woman who has seen a fatal accident, who has to set the scene, who has to describe the surroundings.

  “I saw a new building and beside it some winding gear. I was curious so I walked toward it.”

  “Yes,” he said. He could feel himself growing cold, as if the sun were not streaming in through the window, as if there were not a good, cheerful fire in the grate. “Yes. Go on.”

  “Mehuru spoke to the foreman and he brought me the plans of the building,” she went on. “It is to be an assembly room, a big ballroom and promenading room, and bathhouses. They are drilling down through the cliff above our Hot Well. They are going to take the water from our spring. Do you hear me? They are taking the water from our Hot Well. They are even planning to pump the water to new houses to be built in Clifton. It will be a great spa resort, with a terrace of houses each with their own hot mineral baths.” She licked her dry lips and swallowed down the lump in her throat. “He showed me the plan,” she said helplessly. “And the foundations are dug and the walls going up.”

  “This is not possible,” Josiah said weakly. “There must be some dreadful mistake. I shall go up there at once. D’you still have the carriage out? Cicero shall drive me up there at once. It is not possible, Frances. You must have made a mistake.”

  She shook her head. “I saw the winding gear. I saw the winding gear where they are drilling. The foreman told me they have gone down two hundred feet, but they know they will find hot water, because they are drilling down to the Hot Well.”

  Josiah refused to believe it. “It cannot be. How could such a thing happen without the permission of the corporation? Without the consent of the Merchant Venturers? It must be a mistake.”

  “It has the consent of the Merchant Venturers!” Frances cried out with sudden passion. “Don’t you see! Don’t you see, Josiah? It is their land! They are the landlords. That is why they are buying land in Clifton! Why they own the freehold for Clifton and all the Downs up to the very cliff edge! They own everything! And they are developing Clifton as a new spa. They have cheated you, Josiah. They have cheated you of everything, and now you own a spa with no water, and you have signed a ten-year lease!”

  He stared at her openmouthed. “Who said this?” he cried angrily. “This is a calumny! They are my friends. It is a mistake!”

  “Who advised you to buy into the Hot Well and gave you sight of the account books and sponsored you at the Merchant Venturers’ dinner?” Frances hissed at him, her teeth bared. Her hair was falling down, her face ashen and bony.

  Josiah hated her at that moment. “Waring,” he answered. “My friend Stephen Waring.”

  She sank back in the chair as if he had knifed her in the heart. “He is the landlord of the new Hot Well.” She could hardly speak through her cold lips. She could hardly breathe. “He and Mr. James, the old tenant of the Hot Well. They have sold you a pup, Josiah. They have taken your money, and now they will take your springwater, too.”

  Josiah staggered and felt behind him for his chair. His knees buckled, and he dropped into it. “It is not possible,” he whispered, his face gray. “I have borrowed and borrowed against the profits I thought to make. I paid two thousand pounds for the purchase alone. And I have to find near a thousand pounds a year for ten years for the lease, and the interest on the borrowing, and the wages and the furnishings.”

  Frances moved her head restlessly, her eyes closed.

  Josiah looked at his desk, put his hand on the papers before him, stroked the page of his ship’s accounts. “I am ruined,” he said disbelievingly. “They took me in and ruined me.”

  Frances put her hand to her throat, pulling at her collar, gasping for breath. Her face was even whiter than before. “Josiah,” she gasped. She could hardly catch her breath to say his name.

  “I am ruined,” he said again. “They have ruined me.”

  “Josiah . . .” she began, and then she gave a sharp cry of pain.

  Mehuru, who had been loitering in the hall, could not stop himself. He burst into the room in time to see Frances pitch forward out of her chair. He caught her up, but her head had hit the fender, and she was bleeding from her temple. Her lips were blue; she was not breathing.

  “Fetch the doctor!” Mehuru shouted. “Fetch Stuart Hadley!” He gathered her to him, trying to warm her. Her neck lolled as limp as a broken doll. Not knowing what to do, Mehuru rocked her, holding her tight. “Frances!” he cried urgently. “Frances!”

  She was not breathing. Mehuru sprang to his feet.

  “I am ruined,” Josiah repeated quietly. He had not moved from his desk.

  Mehuru threw a quick, contemptuous look at him and then ran for the hall. “Kbara!” he yelled.

  Kbara came running up from the kitchen. “Take a horse from the carriage shafts and ride and find Stuart Hadley the doctor!” Mehuru commanded. “Tell him Frances is ill, she is like a dead woman. Go at once!”

  Kbara nodded and dashed out of the front door.

  Mehuru turned with Frances still in his arms and strode toward the stairs. Sarah Cole appeared in the parlor door. “What on earth is happening?” she demanded.

  “Fetch the women,” Mehuru threw over his shoulder. “Frances is ill.”

  Sarah looked incredulously at him, carrying Frances in his arms, and then ran up the stairs behind him. “Put her down!” she ordered. “At once.”

  Mehuru strode up the stairs without even hearing her. He kicked open the door to Frances’s bedroom and laid her gently down on the bed. He took the high, neat-buttoned neck of her driving gown and ripped it open, sending buttons spinning across the room.

  “How dare you!” Sarah exclaimed.

  He caught Frances up and shook her gently. “Breathe!” he urged her, passionately low-voiced in his own language. “Breathe! What is there to stop breathing for? Breathe, you little fool!”

  Sarah recoiled from his passion. Elizabeth dodged around her and came into the room with a tumbler of brandy in one hand and a bottle of water in the other. She dashed the water in Frances’s blue face, and then Mehuru held Frances’s limp shoulders while Elizabeth dribbled brandy into her mouth.

  Frances choked, then struggled against their hold and sat up whooping and gasping for air.

  Mehuru nodded and ripped her dress further, pulling the wet cloth away from her skin. Elizabeth snatched up a warm comforter from the foot of the bed, and Mehuru put it around Frances’s naked shoulders and held her tight.

  “Don’t try to speak,” he said urgently. “Stuart will be here in a moment. Just breathe, Frances. Breathe!”

  The dreadful blue was fading from her lips though her skin was still waxy white.

  “Get a warming pan,” Mehuru directed Elizabeth. “She is too cold.”

  Elizabeth pushed past Sarah in the doorway and shouted down the stairs in a string of incomprehensible Yoruban. There was an answering shout from the kitchen, and one of the boys came running upstairs with a tinderbox. He dodged under Sarah’s elbow and knelt to light the fire. Elizabeth came back into the room and started to remove Frances’s skirt.

  “Cicero, leave the room,” Sarah demanded, coming forward, trying to reclaim some order.