A Respectable Trade. Philippa Gregory
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I show you to the parlour, ma’am?’
‘Yes,’ Frances said.
She followed the woman down the stairs. It was a dreadfully dark poky house, she thought, sandwiched between one large warehouse and another, with its front door giving directly on to the dock and its back door into a yard overhung by the glowering red sandstone cliff. The cliff was part of the building; the warehouse carved into its overhanging walls. The storerooms extended into caves deep inside it, running back for miles in a red sandstone labyrinth.
It was no house for a lady. It was crashingly noisy with the rolling of barrels on the cobbles of the quay. Costers and hawkers shrieked their wares, screaming to make themselves heard over the bawled orders on the unloading ships. Frances did not know if Josiah had a carriage and she did not know if she would be allowed to walk along the quayside outside her front door without endangering her reputation. She had a fine line to tread as the niece of a lord but the wife of a man whose house was no larger than a shop.
Bristol was not a genteel city; it was all port and no town, quaysides and no pavements. Every other street towards the town centre was a bridge with a river running beneath it. The town centre itself was crammed on the banks of the river with masts of sailing ships overtopping the chimneys, and the prows of the boats almost knocking on the doors. When the tide was full the boats rocked and bobbed and sailors in the rigging could see into bedroom windows and shout bawdy comments at the housemaids. When the tide was out the ships were dumped on the stinking mud of the harbour bottom and the garbage from the boats and the sewage from the town gurgled sluggishly around them.
The maid paused before the dark wooden parlour door, tapped lightly and stood aside. Frances turned the door handle and went in. Sarah Cole rose from her seat at the table, her face unsmiling under a plain morning cap.
‘No need to knock,’ she said coldly. ‘You are the mistress here now.’ She put her hand on a great ring of keys on the table. ‘These are the household keys. My brother has told me to offer them to you, if you wish to take the housekeeping into your own hands.’
Frances hesitated, and Sarah Cole gestured to an ominous pile of dark-backed ledgers. ‘Also the housekeeping books,’ she went on. ‘I think you will find them in order. I present them to my brother once a month for his signature. That will now be your task.’
‘Gracious,’ said Frances weakly.
The stern face of the older woman gleamed with pride. ‘It has been my life’s work to make this house run as smoothly as our trading company. The company books are no better than the household ones. I do them both.’
‘He must be very grateful to you,’ Frances said tentatively.
Miss Cole’s face was stern. ‘There is no reason why he should be,’ she replied. ‘I was doing my duty and protecting my fortune, as I trust you will do. It was my task to run the business and the housekeeping, for both my brother and for my Papa, for all these years ever since Mama died. Now it is my duty to hand the housekeeping accounts over to you.’
Frances went to the table and opened a ledger at random. It was written in perfect copperplate script:
‘To Mr Sykes, butcher … £3. 4s. 6d.’ Beneath it was another entry, and another and another for page after page.
Frances turned the pages. They fluttered with the petty cash of many years. ‘I have never done accounts,’ she confessed. ‘In my father’s house it was done by the cook. I merely checked the totals at the end of each month. I am afraid I don’t know how to do them.’
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 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