Respectable Trade Read online

  At a casual glance, it looked as if he were working. He had the ledgers of all his ships spread before him, and he was carefully going down the profits column, adding them up and then adding one to another. On another piece of paper, he had a note of the debts he had to service, and every now and then he would transfer the total from his profits and subtract it from the money he owed. It was a nonsensical task: a piece of fairy-tale arithmetic. Every time he did it, the amount of the debt was hardly diminished at all. Josiah was looking at ruin, and he was too shocked to see it.

  Only the sale of his ships themselves, his warehouse, and his lease of the quay would settle his debts. Over and over again, Josiah added up the value of the tobacco in his bond, the value of the rum in his cellar and the sugar in his store. Again and again he subtracted it from the debt on the Rose, on the Hot Well lease, and on his house in Queens Square and saw that thousands and thousands of pounds were still owing.

  The room was cold; the rain pattered against the grimy windows, making tracks in the greasy dirt on the unwashed panes. The windows rattled when the wind blew up the gorge, and the drafts whistled around Josiah’s bowed head as he puzzled over the arithmetic of loss. He was not conscious of the cold on his bare head. He could see nothing but the dazzling whiteness of the page and feel the paper smooth under his hands. However he added it, however he subtracted it and then added it again, he could not make it come right. Whatever he did with the figures, they came out at a loss.

  Only Rose could save him if she came home soon, smelling sweetly of sugar, potent with rum, and filled with bullion. Only Rose could save him if she came home in time, before the next payment on the Hot Well spa fell due, if she came home before Hibbard and Sons closed his loan and demanded the over-priced house at Queens Square or the failed Hot Well spa and all his ships against his debt. If she did not come soon, then Josiah would have to hand over his house and come back to the little quay and the warehouse that Josiah’s father had been proud to call his home and which Josiah had left with such pride just ten short months ago.

  FRANCES WOKE FROM LIGHT sleep with a sensation akin to someone tugging at her sleeve. Or was it a noise that had woken her? She rested, halfway between waking and sleeping, wondering what it was—a noise in the street outside, perhaps, or someone calling her name.

  Then she felt it again. A small, distinct movement, a squirm, a touch, a caress. Inside her belly her baby had moved, and she, lying quietly in sleep, had felt it. It was the strangest feeling in the world and as distinctive as a child’s call for his mother. She put her hand on her swelling belly and felt the child kick out. He was alive, and strong. She had been sensing him move and felt that she had learned to love him, this little exuberant, swimming, kicking being.

  “Not long now,” she whispered.

  There was a gentle knock on her door. She turned her head and said, “Come in!” thinking it was Elizabeth.

  However, it was not Elizabeth who came quietly in the door but Mehuru, and his face was grave.

  Frances snatched the bedcovers higher, shielding the round shape of her belly.

  “May I come in?” he asked humbly. He paused at the threshold of the room, awaiting her permission.

  “Yes,” Frances said. She could not meet his eyes. She felt as if she had betrayed him on the very day that was to be their last together, that was to be a day of farewell, filled with love; and then all she had thought of was Josiah and the wreck of his fortune. “Of course you can come in,” she said quietly. “What is it?”

  “There is a difficulty,” he began.

  For a moment she thought that Stuart had broken her confidence and told him about the pregnancy. Stuart was sworn to secrecy, and besides, there was his professional oath, but still he was Mehuru’s friend, and he might think that a man had a right to know that a woman was carrying his child. Unconsciously, she put her hand to shield her belly; beneath her touch she could feel her baby kick again.

  “What difficulty?”

  Mehuru’s mind was on how to tell her that the slaves had gone without precipitating one of her breathless attacks. But some wisdom, some old awareness in the back of his mind, noted the gesture she made. In Africa he would have read her at once. But Mehuru was becoming more and more of an Englishman. He concentrated on the topic in hand and made himself blind to other impressions.

  “Do you have some medicine the doctor left you?”

  She gestured quickly to her bedside table, where her laudanum bottle stood. “But I don’t need it,” she said, though she could feel her heart pound warningly. “What difficulty? Is it Josiah? Is he ill?”

  “No, your husband is well, as far as I know. Please do not be distressed.”

  “Tell me quickly.”

  “It is your slaves,” he said softly. “All except Elizabeth. They have run away, Frances. They are all gone.”

  For a moment she did not understand. She looked at him as if his words were meaningless. “Gone?”

  “They went last night,” he explained. “After Cook locked up. Cook knows nothing about it. They must not blame her.”

  “But you knew,” she said.

  He nodded. “I knew.”

  There was a little silence. Frances raised herself up in bed. “And yet you did not go, too?”

  He came farther into the room. “I decided to stay.”

  “Do you know where they are?”

  “On a farm, in a place called Yorkshire. We hope that we can farm the land.” His sudden smile broke up the gravity of his face. “I am sure nothing will grow in this cold soil! But two are Fulani, and they can rear cattle. I think we can make a life for ourselves.”

  “You are going to join them?”

  “It is up to you.” He paused for a moment, carefully measuring what he might say to her. “I have not changed, Frances. I told you that day that I loved you, and I love you still. I know that you are ill, and I know that Josiah is ruined and that everything here is now different. But if you will come with me, we can go to Yorkshire together. Or I will stay with you. Or you can send me away. You have only to tell me what it is that you wish.”

  He stepped forward and took her hand. Something in the way that her other hand rested below her ribs tugged at a memory in his mind. He paused, looking at her, and then saw for the first time the lovely curve of her swelling belly under the concealing drapery of her robe and the coverings of the bed.

  “You are pregnant,” he said.

  She looked as if she might deny it, but then she nodded.

  “Josiah’s child.” His mouth had a bitter twist. “You are risking your life for Josiah’s child.”

  Frances nodded again, not trusting herself to lie to him in words.

  He turned from her pale, strained face and went to the window and looked out over the square. The trees were leafless now, their bright colors stripped away, and the gray color of the grass reminded Mehuru of home, at the end of the dry season. “I still wish that we could go to Africa,” he said, half to himself.

  “You go,” Frances whispered softly. She could not bring herself to send him away; she could only give him permission and tell him nothing that would bind him to her. He had been ready to run, and she had seen him humiliated too many times before her. She felt she owed him his freedom, even though he was the father of her child—especially since he was the father of her child.

  He shook his head. “It makes no difference,” he said finally. “It makes no difference to how I feel for you—whether you are carrying Josiah’s child or not. You are ill, and your husband is never at home. I love you, and I have promised myself that I will stay with you until you tell me to leave.”

  “I never asked you for a promise,” she interrupted. “I will not keep you here.”

  “I promised myself,” he replied. “You are the first woman I have ever loved in my life, Frances, and I know now that it was a mistake for me. There is too much that separates us. Our color is less important than everything else.” His gesture took