“He may admire your pencles, but not take,” said Richard as he folded William Henry’s hand around a small parcel. “Here, this is a present for Johnny. A pity the Head insisted all boarders remain in school for Christmas Day, it would have been nice to have him here with us. Still, he shall have a present.”
“It is pencles,” said William Henry instantly.
“Aye, pencles.”
Peg seized the moment to enfold William Henry in a hug and press her lips to his wide, ivory brow. As if understanding that this was one gift he could give his mother, William Henry suffered her embrace, even kissed her back.
“Ain’t Dadda the best father?” he asked his mother.
“Yes,” said Peg, waiting in vain to be told that she was the best mother. A year ago her son’s indifference coupled with a remark like this would have generated a surge of hatred for Richard, but Peg had learned that hating Richard could not change a thing. Better then to get on with him, please him. Her son adored him so. What else could a woman expect? They were men together.
When the
new year of 1784 dawned, Richard walked up to Narrow Wine Street to visit Mr. Latimer at Wasborough’s foundry.
What one saw from Narrow Wine Street was a barnlike structure built of limestone blocks so grimed from the smoke of its chimneys that they were black; along its façade were a number of very large, battered wooden doors, always thrown open to reveal the activity within as well as let out some of the heat and noise.
How odd! All the doors were closed. A long holiday indeed for Latimer’s poor workmen, not paid since before Christmas. As he walked down the length of the building Richard tried each door in turn: locked. The back way, then. He took advantage of a tiny alley to attain the Froom side of the building, and there found one open door. Silence greeted him as he entered; the furnaces were unlit, the hearths empty, and the quenched fire engine sat brooding among its idle lathes.
Emerging, he walked to the Froom, running full, and as grey and gelid as the sky.
“Richard, oh, Richard!”
He turned to see Cousin James-the-druggist come out of the alley, wringing his hands.
“Dick said you were here—Oh, Richard, it is terrible!”
Something in him already knew, but he asked anyway. “What is terrible, Cousin James?”
“Latimer! He is gone! Absconded with all our money!”
An oak mooring post probably as old as the English Romans stood at the edge of the river; Richard leaned against it and closed his eyes. “Then the man is an idiot. He will be caught.”
For answer, Cousin James-the-druggist began to weep.
“Cousin James, Cousin James, it is not the end of the world,” said Richard, putting an arm about his shoulders and leading him to a slab of foundry junk upon which they could sit. “Come now, do not cry so!”
“I must! It is my fault! If I had not encouraged you, your money would still be safe. I can afford to pay for my own stupidity, but—oh, Richard, it is not fair that you should lose your all!”
Not conscious of any pain beyond concern for this beloved man, Richard stared at the Froom without seeing it. This was not like losing little Mary, nor was it a millionth as important. The money was an external thing.
“I have a mind of my own, Cousin James, and you should know me better than to believe I can be led where I do not want to go. It is no one’s fault, least of all yours and least of all mine. Come, dry your eyes and tell me,” said Richard, proffering his nose rag.
Cousin James-the-druggist produced a proper handkerchief and mopped away, gradually calming.
“We will not see our money, Richard,” he said. “Latimer has taken it and fled to Connecticut, where he and Pickard intend to manufacture fire engines. Since the American war, Watt’s patents are worthless there.”
“Clever Mr. Latimer!” said Richard appreciatively. “Can we not take a lien on Wasborough’s foundry and get our money back by making chains for the Admiralty?”
“I am afraid not. Latimer does not own Wasborough’s. His father-in-law is a wealthy Gloucester cheesemaker, and bought it as a dowry for Latimer’s wife. Her papa also owns the house in Dove Street.”
“Then let us go home,” said Richard, “to the Cooper’s Arms. Ye can do with a mug of Cave’s rum, Cousin James.”
To give him credit, Dick said not one word, let alone “I told you so.” His eyes had gone from Richard’s calm face to Cousin James-the-druggist’s devastated one, and whatever he thought he kept to himself.
“There is really only one significant consequence,” Richard said to him later, “and that is that I no longer have the money to educate William Henry.”
“Are ye not angry?” Dick asked, frowning.
“No, Father. If losing my money is my share of trouble, then I am glad.
What if it had been losing Peg?” His breath caught. “Or losing William Henry?”
“Yes, I see. I do see.” Dick reached across the table and gripped his son’s arm strongly. “As for William Henry’s education, we will just have to pray that something comes along. He will be able to finish Colston’s, I have enough put by for that. So we have three years before we need fret.”
“And in the meantime, I must find a job. The Cooper’s Arms is not prosperous enough to support my family as well as yours.” Richard took Dick’s hand from his arm and lifted it to his cheek. “I thank you, Father, so very much.”
“Oh!” The exclamation served to cover Dick’s embarrassment at this unmanly display of affection. “I have just remembered! Old Tom Cave is in need of a man at his distillery. Someone who can solder, braze and weld. Go and see him, Richard. It may not be the answer to your prayers, but it will pay a pound a week and serve until something better comes along.”
Ownership of
a rum distillery in Bristol was tantamount to having a license to coin money; no matter how hard the times were and how many souls were out of work, the consumption of rum never fell any more than did the price. Not only was rum Bristol’s favorite drink, it was also the drink loaded aboard every ship to make sure unhappy sailors did not mutiny. Provided they got their ration of rum, sailors would eat rotten sea biscuit and salt meat so old it shrank to nothing when boiled—and endure the rope’s end.
Mr. Cave’s premises were built like a fortress. They occupied most of one short block of Redcliff Street near the Redcliff Backs, from whence he collected his shipments of sugar from the West Indies and loaded his different sizes of casks into lighters the moment an order was paid for. His cellars were vast and impregnable, and like most Bristol cellars ran below the public land constituting a street. Bristol, in fact, was a hollow city mined so extensively that no heavy wheeled vehicle was allowed anywhere within it; all transport of goods was done by the sledges known as geehoes because their runners distributed the load more evenly over a much larger area than wheels did.
The stills were contained in a vast, virtually shapeless room on the ground floor, lit mostly from the reflected glare of the furnaces. The whole effect was of a copper forest of roundly buttressed tree trunks planted in a soil of fire bricks, the foliage strongly cooped oak casks shaped like apexamputated cones. It reeked of coal smoke, fermenting mash, molasses and head-spinning rum vapors, and Richard loathed it; inhaling the stench of rum day after day did not tempt him to change from a tankard of beer to a mug of Cave’s best.
Cave himself hardly ever appeared; the overseer, William Thorne, reigned supreme. As obsequious to Cave as he was cruel to his underlings, Thorne was of that kind who belonged, thought Richard, on a slaver like Alexander, back in the business. Thorne loved to flog an apprentice with a rope’s end, and took malicious delight in making life as miserable as possible for as many of Mr. Cave’s employees as he could. Though after a measuring look he left Richard severely alone, contenting himself with a series of curt instructions.
“And stay out of the back of the room,” Thorne ended. “There is naught there to concern ye, and I do not like prowlers. This is
my
ken, and I will thank ye to do as ye’re told.”
So Richard stayed out of the back part of the room, more for the sake of peace than because Thorne intimidated him. The stills themselves were copper, as were the pipes which twisted, kinked, looped and ran in many directions; the numerous valves, taps and braces were brass. It was therefore mandatory to have someone on hand who could detect weaknesses before they turned into leaks, and who could deal with those weaknesses while the stills continued to operate. They were paired and one pair was always shut down to permit major repairs to the metal; this was also Richard’s job. A job boring to the point of mindlessness, yet constant enough to require that he mind it and himself.
His first day acquainted him with the worst word in Thorne’s vocabulary: excise.
His Britannic Majesty’s Government had always taxed liquors imported from abroad; those were customs duties, and smuggling (very popular on the Cornish, Devon and Dorset coasts) was punishable by death and gibbetting. Then the Government had realized that there was even more money to be made by taxing spiritous liquors made inside England; those were excise duties. Gin and rum had to be made in licensed premises rigorously inspected by an Excise Man, for excise had to be paid on every drop of spirits a distillery squeezed out of its vats of fermented mash.
“All this,” said Richard at the end of his first week, “in order that ships can sail the seas free of mutiny, and folk on land forget their troubles. What a miracle is the mind of Man, that so much cleverness has been spent upon producing stupidity.”
“Richard,” said Dick, exasperated, “ye’re a Quaker at heart, I swear it. We make our
living
out of booze!”
“I know, Father, but I am free to think what I want, and I think that governments want us to drink so they can make money.”
“I wish Jem Thistlethwaite could hear ye!” Dick snapped.
“I know, I know, he would demolish my argument in a trice,” grinned Richard. “Calm yourself, Father! I am joking.”
“Peg, discipline this man of yours!” Dick said.
She turned with such a brilliant smile on her face that Richard drew a breath—oh, she was so much better! Was that all it took, permanent removal of the threat that she would be moved to Clifton? Now that continued residence at the Cooper’s Arms was assured because Richard had lost all his money, she was genuinely and happily secure.
She dropped the empty mug she was holding and, grunting, bent quickly to pick it up. A scream of such agony rent the air that the hair on every head in the tavern rose; Peg straightened, both hands to her head, then collapsed to the floor in a huddled heap. So many people crowded around that Dick had to shove most of them forcibly out of the way before he could kneel beside Richard, who had Peg’s head in his lap. Mag knelt on the other side with William Henry, who reached for his mother’s hand.
“It is no good, Richard. She is dead.”
“No! No, she cannot be!” Richard took her other hand and chafed it. “Peg! Peg, my love! Wake up! Peg, wake up!”
“Mama, Mama, wake up!” William Henry echoed, eyes too full of shock to produce tears. “Mama, wake up and I will hug and kiss you! Please, please wake up!”
But Peg lay so inanimate that no pinch or prick could rouse her.
“It was a stroke,” said Cousin James-the-druggist, summoned.
“Impossible!” cried Richard. “She ain’t old enough!”
“Young folk can have strokes, and they are always of this kind—a sudden scream of pain, then unconsciousness and death.”
“She cannot be dead,” said Richard stubbornly. How could Peg be dead? She was a part of him. “No, she cannot be dead.”
“Believe me, Richard, she is dead. All signs of life are gone. I have held a mirror to her mouth, and it has not clouded. I have put my wooden cone on her chest, and heard no heartbeat. She has lost her irises,” said Cousin James-the-druggist. “Accept God’s will, Richard. Let us take her upstairs and I will lay her out.”
That he did with Mag in attendance, washing her, dressing her in her Sunday gown of eyelet-embroidered pink cambric, rouging her lips and cheeks, curling her hair and piling it up in the latest fashion, fitting her Sunday-best high-heeled shoes on stockinged feet. Her hands were folded on her breast and her eyes had been closed from the very beginning; she looked peacefully asleep and barely twenty years old.
Richard sat beside her, William Henry alongside him so that he could not see his son’s face. Could he, it would break him, and that would not benefit either of them. The room was bright with lamps and candles which would not be allowed to go out until she was put into her coffin and carried in the funeral sledge to St. James’s for the burial service in two days’ time. This was, for want of a better description, a natural death. All the family from far and near would come to pay their respects, kiss the still kissable mouth, commiserate with the widower, then descend to the tavern and partake of refreshments. Nothing as eerie and outlandish as a wake would be held; in Protestant Bristol, death was coped with soberly and somberly.