A Respectable Trade

‘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 fulfil 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 humour.

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 parlour and your bedroom so far.’

There was not much to see. The parlour 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 mid-morning, dinner at mid-afternoon, 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 of 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 parlour 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 which ran from the dockside up to the church on the peak of the hill: St Mary Redclift. On her left was the towering 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, sombre 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 curtsey, 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 curtsey, 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 parlour.

She seated herself at the table and drew one of the ledgers towards her. She took up a pen. Frances, rather at a loss, seated herself on the narrow windowseat 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 parlour. The quayside was crowded with people selling, loading and unloading ships, hawking goods, mending ropes, and caulking the decks of outbound ships with great 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 up to Frances and even penetrated the house: sugar, sewage, and pain. As she watched, she saw Josiah slap one of the barrels for emphasis and then spit on his palm and shake hands on a deal with another man.

Sarah’s pen scratched on the paper. The room was stuffy and hot, the windows closed tight against the smell and noise of the quayside.

‘I should like to go out,’ Frances said after a while. ‘I should like to walk around and see the city.’

Miss Cole lifted her head, her finger on the page to keep her place. ‘Brown will have to go with you. You cannot walk on the quayside alone.’

Frances nodded and rose to her feet. ‘Very well.’

Sarah shook her head, not taking her eyes from the book. ‘Brown is working in the house now. You will have to wait until afternoon. You can walk then.’

There was a short silence.

‘I see Mr Cole down there on the quayside,’ Frances said. ‘May I go down to him?’

Sarah dragged her attention from her work again. ‘He is engaged in business. He would have no time for you, and the men he is dealing with are not those he would wish you to meet. They are not gentlemen. You will have to be patient. You are no longer a lady of leisure,’ Miss Cole volunteered spitefully. ‘You cannot act on whim.’

‘No,’ said Frances, turning her attention back to the quayside, ‘I see that I cannot.’

Most of the sailors had been paid off and had left the ship but the captain and one other man, his hair tied back in a greasy little plait, were watching the sailmakers pulling the ragged canvas out of the lockers and spreading it on the dockside. Josiah inspected the worn sails and nodded his agreement as the sailmakers bundled it on a sledge, took up the ropes and started to tow it away. Frances watched him from her vantage point above him, a curiously foreshortened view as if he were not a powerful man in a man’s world, but a little man, struggling to cope.

‘It is strange to see your money being made,’ she remarked thoughtlessly and then flushed with embarrassment. ‘I beg your pardon! I spoke without thinking.’

‘It is not strange to me,’ Miss Cole said. She did not take offence as Frances had feared. ‘I have lived in this house most of my life. I have waited for our ships to come in and I have known what profit or loss they made on every voyage. Since I was a child of nine I have cared for nothing else. That one you see there, the Rose, has done well for us.’

‘What a pretty name,’ Frances said.

Miss Cole showed her thin smile. ‘All our ships have flower names since our first one, a captured French merchant ship called Marguerite,’ she said. ‘That means Daisy in French, you know. We have three ships: the Rose which you see here, the Daisy which should be at the West Indies, and the Lily which was in port a few months ago and should be loading off Africa, God willing.’

‘You say that they “should be” … do you not know where they are?’

‘How should I know? I know when they set sail and I know when they are due, but between their destination and their home port is the most vast and dangerous ocean. We have to wait. The largest part of being a merchant in the Atlantic Trade is waiting, and keeping your counsel while you wait.’

‘Have you ever sailed with them?’