Respectable Trade Read online

  Miss Cole raised an eyebrow. “You must have been badly cheated,” she said.

  “Oh, no! Cook had been with us since I was a baby. She was devoted to my father and to me. She would not have cheated us. She was like one of the family.”

  Miss Cole shrugged. “I do not know about grand houses,” she said. “I am a trader’s sister and a trader’s daughter. I do not have servants who are one of the family. I check their work, and if I see an error, then I sack them.”

  “It was hardly a grand house. It was a little country vicarage on Lord Scott’s estate.”

  “I was born in a collier’s cottage,” Miss Cole said sharply. “I think your country vicarage would seem very grand to me.”

  Frances paused. This woman would be her daily companion; when they moved house, she would move, too. They would live together; they would meet every day for the rest of their lives. She forced herself to smile. “There is much I do not know about your life and your business,” she said. “I hope you will teach me, Miss Cole, and help me to fulfill my side of the bargain and be a good wife to your brother.”

  The woman’s face was stern. “I do not know what bargain you have made. I do not know why he wanted a wife, and such a wife as you.”

  Frances blinked at the woman’s abrupt honesty. “Well, this is frank speaking indeed!”

  Sarah nodded. “I speak as I find. I am a simple trader’s daughter.”

  “You did not wish him to marry?” Frances ventured.

  “Why should I? We have lived together and worked side by side on the company for years. We have made it grow from one ship to a fleet of three. We have trebled our business and our profits. And now Josiah wants a town house and a smart lady for his wife. But who is to pay for this? Are we to spend our money on houses rather than ships? What return will they make? What return will you make?”

  Frances snatched a little breath. She could feel her heart pounding with embarrassment at the other’s plain speaking. “Really . . . Miss Cole . . .”

  “You asked, and I answered you,” the woman said stubbornly.

  Frances put her hand to her throat. “I hope you will not be my enemy,” she whispered.

  Sarah Cole looked at Frances’s white face and shrugged. “What would be the sense in that?” she said. “It is a business arrangement, after all. But you should not try to manage my account books if you do not understand them.”

  “Would you prefer to do them?” Frances asked. “Until I have learned how things are to be done? Would you prefer to go on as you have been, and I will watch you and study your ways?”

  “I think that would be best, if it is your wish.”

  “I have no desire to push you from your place,” Frances said hastily. “Nor cause any quarrel in this house.”

  “You don’t look the quarrelsome type,” Sarah said with grim humor.

  Frances suddenly flushed as she smiled. “Indeed I am not! I cannot bear quarrels and people shouting.”

  Sarah nodded. “I see. You suffer from sensibility.”

  Frances, who had never before heard it described as a disability, gave a shaky little laugh. “It is how I was brought up,” she said.

  “Well, I am not a lady, and I thank God for it,” Sarah said. “But I will try to make allowances for you. You have nothing to fear from me. Now I will show you around the house,” she continued, rising to her feet. “You have seen only this parlor and your bedroom so far.”

  There was not much to see. The parlor was on the first floor. It ran the length of the house, overlooking the quay at the front and overshadowed by the cliff at the back. There was a small dining table and six hard chairs, where Miss Cole worked during the day and where breakfast was served at midmorning, dinner at midafternoon, and supper in the evening. There was a fireplace with two straight-backed chairs on either side. There was Miss Cole’s workbox. The walls were washed with lime, empty of any pictures or ornament, and the floorboards were plain waxed wood, with a thin hearthrug before the fire.

  Josiah’s office, the next room, was even plainer. It also overlooked the quay, but it did not even have curtains at the windows, just forbidding black-painted shutters. His desk was set before the window to the left of the fireplace, a big wooden captain’s chair before it. There was a chair by the fire and a small table beside it. There were three maps hanging on the walls. One showed the south coast of England, one the west coast of Africa, little more than a wriggling coastline and a completely empty interior, and the third was a navigation chart of the shoals and currents around the islands of the West Indies. Nothing else. Frances, looking in through the door of the spartan room, wondered what the Coles did for amusement, where they entertained their friends. There was nothing in either room to indicate anything but a life dedicated to work.

  Miss Cole gave a longing glance out the window before she turned away. On the quayside immediately below, the Coles’ ship the Rose was unloading. Sarah Cole would rather have been entering profits into the ledger.

  On the floor above the parlor were the bedrooms. Josiah and Miss Cole had bedrooms facing the dock; Frances’s room was quieter, at the back, sheltered by the red sandstone cliff. If she opened her window and leaned out, she could look down to the cobbled backyard outside the kitchen door, hemmed in by high warehouse walls and beyond them the twisting little streets that ran from the dockside up to the church on the peak of the hill: St. Mary Redclift. On her left was the prodigious height of a lead-shot tower. To her right, overtopping the church spire, was the fat, kiln-shaped chimney of the glassworks. All day there was ceaseless noise: the crash of the metalworks and the roar and rattle of the furnaces. The sour, toxic smell of lead haunted the Backs.

  Above this floor was the attic bedroom for the servants and the linen and storeroom. Miss Cole showed Frances the bare poverty of the rooms with quiet pride and then led the way down the stairs to the front door and hall.

  The hall was hopelessly dark, the only light seeping through a grimy fanlight over the front door. At the end of the corridor at the back of the house was the door to the kitchen. They could hear someone pounding dough on a board and singing softly. In all the shaded, somber house, it was the first happy sound.

  At the sound of Miss Cole’s footstep, the singing stopped abruptly, and the pounding of the dough became louder and faster.

  Sarah Cole opened the door to the kitchen and ushered Frances in. “This is your new mistress, Mrs. Cole,” she said abruptly, surveying the kitchen. The cook—floured to the elbows—bobbed a curtsy, and the upstairs maid, Brown, rose from the table where she had been polishing silver and glasses. A little hunchbacked girl came in from the backyard wiping her hands on a hessian apron and dipped a curtsy, staring at Frances. Frances smiled impartially at them all.

  “The cook is Mrs. Allen. The maid is Brown. Mrs. Allen discusses the menus with me every week and shows me the housekeeping books.” Sarah shot a sideways glance at Frances. “You should be there when we meet. I take it that Monday afternoon will still be convenient?”

  “Perfectly,” Frances said politely.

  The little scullery maid had not even been named to Frances.

  “You can get on with your work,” Miss Cole ordered them brusquely, and led the way from the kitchen, through the poky little hall and up the stairs to the parlor.

  She seated herself at the table and drew one of the ledgers toward her. She took up a pen. Frances, rather at a loss, seated herself on the narrow window seat and looked down on the quay.

  The tide was in, and the foul smell of the mud had lessened. The sunshine sparkled on the water of the dock, and quicksilver water lights danced on the ceiling of the parlor. The quayside was crowded with people selling, loading and unloading ships, hawking goods, mending ropes, and caulking the decks of outbound ships with steaming barrels of stinking tar. The Coles’ own ship, the Rose, was still unloading her goods, the great round barrels of rum and sugar were piled on the quayside. The intense stink of a ship of the trade wafted