The Grenadillo Box: A Novel (2 page)

I retrieved the fallen wig and held it in my hand. “Forgive me, my lord, I didn’t intend to muddle you. I’m journeyman to Thomas Chippendale, cabinetmaker, of St. Martin’s Lane, London.”

Here I should explain, as I knew I must that night for Lord Foley (despite chattering teeth and queasiness still lurking in my belly), the unusual events that had brought me to Horseheath Hall. But first let me also set down something of the awkwardness of my predicament.

Until I stumbled upon the grisly scene I’ve just described, I’d led a carefree existence. I was born lucky, never troubled by the burden of choice that blights the lives of so many in our complicated modern age. My father was a kindly joiner, as was his father before him. I was his only child. There was never a question that I would not in some way follow him.

According to my mother, I was a gangling fledgling who unfolded from her womb like a bolt of cloth and never quite fitted my lanky proportions, always more limb than loveliness, more appetite than angel. For her part, my mother was a woman of powerful maternal disposition who demonstrated her affection in fondly administered scrubbings and scoldings. (A torn blue coat and a kidney pudding and pigeon pie eaten without her say-so are still emblazoned in my memory and on my rump.) My father was no less mindful of my well-being. By his account, I took to a saw and chisel as easily as I did to breathing and walking, although strangely, he used to say, it wasn’t carpentry that was born in me but rather the reverse—the urge to demolish things. Ever since a small boy, I’d a compulsion to unscrew, dismantle, break open, detach. He attributed this to the fact that once, while bathing me in the washing copper, my mother dropped me on my head on the kitchen flags. The sudden gush of water that accompanied me had knocked over a three-legged stool, which had fallen apart. For weeks afterwards I’d tried the legs on every other piece in the house to see if they too could be dismantled. When they could not, I took up a turnscrew and a chisel to assist me. My mother made valiant attempts to starve or scold or beat the inclination out of me, but she never succeeded. My father joined my mother in warming my behind, and when that failed he sought to distract me by teaching me joinery.

In vain did I try to explain to them my preoccupation was not idle vandalism; what drew me was what had gone into the creation of the outward appearance of any given object. My childish eye viewed every lock plate, drawer front, or clockface as a question. How did it turn? What made it operate? Why did it appear thus? I was full of queries, restless for answers, which I believed I’d secure only by inspecting the guts behind each exterior.

I was thirteen when my parents conceded defeat. My hunger for undoing had continued for years, despite reddened ears, bowls of water gruel, and hours of practice in mortise and tenons, the simplest method of joining two pieces of wood. Thus was I dispatched to London to be an apprentice to Thomas Chippendale, master in the craft of cabinetmaking. This was, I well knew, no punishment—an honor rather. Thomas Chippendale was lately settled in St. Paul’s Yard, in the heart of London’s furniture trade, and ranked high among his fellow cabinetmakers.

Chippendale was a canny Yorkshireman whose reputation permitted him to pick and choose his apprentices as the rest of us select apples at market. He viewed his apprentices as inexpensive labor and a means to profit handsomely. Most masters required £35 for their apprentices’ indentures. Chippendale demanded my poor parents pay him £42, a high sum which he claimed was entirely justified by his elevated position. They should understand, he said, that when the time came for me to set up in business, my links with Chippendale’s august establishment would enhance my prestige and add to my earnings. Was it not just that this advantage should be reflected in his price? My parents could find no argument. Thus, in the belief they were doing their best for me, they scraped together the exorbitant sum and I embarked upon my new life.

I settled quickly to the city. Within a year or two I left off sweeping floors and carting wood and began to experiment with all manner of construction. I learned to fret and plane fragments of timber no larger than a butterfly’s wing. As well as these skills I encountered the distractions of the back stairs and bedchamber. Thus challenged in both quarters, I learned to relish fabricating rather than destruction, to enjoy making caddies and dovetails and amour. Within seven years I had much to crow about. I was journeyman to a master by then the most esteemed in the city, whose newly opened premises in St. Martin’s Lane drew gasps of amazement for their grandeur. In my professional capacity I called at the grandest mansions, which frequently led me to the company of the most alluring chambermaids, cooks, and lady’s maids imaginable. In short, I enjoyed an existence as busy and lusty as any man.

As a journeyman I am accustomed to visiting fine saloons to hobnob with gentlemen of Lord Foley’s caliber, though only on such subjects as the advantages of mahogany over oak, the appropriateness of a cabriole leg over a straight or a carved chair splat over a plain. Yet when it came to general conversation with the upper gentry, I was green as a toad. Herein lay my dilemma. How should I explain my involvement to Lord Foley? How much detail did he require? Should I be frank and open, or distant and brief? How in my present muddleheaded state was I to decide what was relevant and what unnecessary? Even while I wrestled with this concern, I knew I had little time to waste. Lord Foley had demonstrated he was a man of unpredictable temper. Thus, with little confidence in where my tongue would lead me, I hastened to begin.

The events that brought me to Horseheath Hall had started innocently enough, on Christmas Eve, in London.

I’d been out on important workshop business, returning in time to pass some moments in the arms of a fair, high-spirited upholsteress of my acquaintance, Molly Bullock. She was in the feather room filling mattresses in a blizzard of goosedown when I found her. No sooner had I kissed her lips and burrowed my hand in her petticoats than she giggled and spread her dimpled thighs to let me between them. A while later, Molly’s mushroom softness still fresh in my mind and feathers still whirling about, the scrawny figure of a young messenger appeared amid the snowstorm. I was summoned immediately to go to the master.

I paused to stoop (I am taller than the longcase clock in the hallway) and examine myself first from one side then the other in a gothic looking glass (price £1 15s 6d) conveniently positioned on the stair. I should say here I’ve learned the importance of a good suit only since I came to London. This isn’t out of vanity—I don’t have the means to be showy—but I’ve learned a well-cut coat and clean linens make amends for a grasshopper figure and a purse that’s empty as often as my belly. In short, I dress as well as I am able to disguise my imperfections. Upholstery over horsehair stuffing, you might call it.

That day I was clad with customary modishness: a brass-buttoned coat of blue broadcloth, a frilled shirt, knitted stockings (thanks to my mother’s attentions), and in the crook of my arm, my three-cornered hat. I didn’t much like what I saw. Like a room furnished with too many large pieces, everything about me looked overcrowded. I was born with arms longer, hands broader, a face more lopsided than anyone else I know. My nose is long and crooked; my lips so wide they skew when I smile; my eyes, neither blue nor gray, are set slanted in a sallowish complexion—at the moment so heightened by my exertions with the luscious Molly I could have passed for a gypsy.

I peered closer to examine my most recent adornment, a crescent scar decorating my left brow. I touched its red surface gingerly, but today neither this nor any other of my asymmetric imperfections dampened my humor. They’d proved no deterrent to Molly, and I’ll disclose here, it wasn’t only she who’d elated me. I’d had another, earlier encounter of great promise, one which warmed me with anticipation every time I dwelled on it.

But was I not foolish? To dillydally while an urgent interview with my master awaited was to invite his wrath. A couple of stray feathers lingered on my shoulder. I picked them off, retied my hair smoothly, arranged my features in an expression that I intended to signal eager diligence, and thus, with no evidence of my preoccupations remaining, I entered my master’s office.

C
hippendale was at his desk drawing. His room was dark and cold with a musty smell that made me long to light a blazing fire or throw open the window. “Ah, Hopson, it is you,” he observed, before returning to his page. The design—one that had occupied him for several days—was for a writing cabinet containing countless compartments and mechanisms to open, disclose, conceal, and reveal myriad surprises. I waited for some minutes, yet he said nothing.

I knew he was a man who used words sparingly, a dab hand at impressing his thoughts and wishes on those beneath him with no more than a silent gesture or a facial grimace. Somehow I had the feeling he expected me to speak, yet, unusually, I had no idea what I should say.

“The design progresses well, I trust, sir?”

He did not respond. Instead, placing his pen down, he turned his attention to the order book at his side and, with a vague twirl of his forefinger, signaled me to wait. Under the last week’s date, the list of entries was inscribed in copperplate script; I knew them all, for it was one of my duties to record them.

I watched him read. He sat bolt upright, from time to time sucking in his breath, swelling his chest in contentment whenever his eye flickered over a sizable commission. Drawings for dozens of such items were pinned in rows, like hunting trophies, on the walls around him. Yet his knuckles were clenched, his jaw taut. Something irked him. Had he discovered my liaison with Molly, or was there some error in the pages that had made him send for me?

A few minutes later, he snapped the book shut and addressed me as if we were in the midst of a discussion. “A design can contain all the novelties you choose, Hopson, but without the timber to fabricate it, it is no better than a piece of scenery at the playhouse.”

Unsure where this was leading, I responded as cleverly as I could. “Indeed, sir, but without an ingenious mind to shape it, wood is only wood.”

His brow fretted with annoyance. “I see you will waste my time with your foolishness and tell me nothing useful unless I interrogate you like a schoolmaster. Was the journey to the wood yards fruitful? What did you discover?”

The tightness in his voice made me curse myself for lingering with Molly. A recent survey of his sheds had confirmed a worrying dearth of exotic timber. To be sure, there were indigenous oaks and walnuts and fruitwoods and softwood, deals, balks, and boards in abundance, but these would no more satisfy his clientele than a duchess in need of a ball gown would be satisfied with a piece of cambric in place of damask or tiffany or brocade. Fashionable patrons clamored for mahogany, rosewood, ebony, or padauk. Therein lay his dilemma. Should his supplies dwindle, they might drift elsewhere with their custom, demolishing his reputation more speedily than a master cutter could slice a half-inch veneer. He had earlier dispatched me to the wood yards in search of new stock.

“Indeed I discovered much of interest. A new consignment has recently cleared customs. Mahogany from Cuba; ebony and rosewood as well.”

“Where?”

“Goodchild’s.”

Chippendale looked me up and down with granite eyes. Even at forty he was a well-made man, manicured and wigged as a gentleman. Only his contoured face, resembling a rock lashed for centuries by wind and rain, bespoke the struggles of his origins. “Alice Goodchild flourishes in her father’s absence, I understand. But we must be wary or she will attempt to cheat us as her father did. Was it she who kept you?”

Blood rushed to the newly healed scar, which began to throb uncomfortably. “Forgive me, sir. I would have come sooner but presumed you were occupied.” Before he could question the lameness of this excuse I hurried on. “As for Miss Goodchild, she struck me as an honest, plainspeaking tradeswoman. She assured me that no one else had yet received word of the consignment. She will grant us first choice should we agree terms within the next three days. But she’ll allow us no longer. Seddon is clamoring for mahogany at any cost for Northumberland’s library. No other ships are expected, and she says she’ll be unflinching as to price.”

Chippendale’s tone sharpened at this mention of his rival. “Alice Goodchild does canny business; she cannot know for sure what ships will dock. But I will not have Seddon’s scraps. He shall have mine. You may send word that I will call on her the day after Boxing Day.”

“Shall I accompany you?”

Silence again. He surveyed me darkly, up and down. “How could you? You will not be here.”

There was another interminable pause as he picked up his pen, dipped it in the inkpot, added a final curlicue to the cresting of his cabinet. From the downturn of his mouth, I judged the drawing brought him little satisfaction.

Rarely had I seen him as dismal as he seemed today. Was there some new unspoken sorrow in his life with which he had become burdened? Perhaps he was deserving of my solicitude. I knew him as well as any man, yet in truth I knew very little, for he kept himself hidden. Seven years’ apprenticeship and a year as his journeyman had taught me only that he was frequently melancholic, always secretive, open only in his desire to maintain the ascendancy of his enterprise.