The Silver Touch Read online

  ‘I’m gratified to have been of help,’ she replied smilingly, her curiosity about the future Mrs Esdaile strongly aroused. He had spoken of her with fondness and respect, but the inference implied she was quite a firebrand. What effect would such a woman have upon this quiet house? It would be interesting to see. ‘How soon shall you be married?’

  ‘Not until the spring of next year.’

  ‘There’s no better time to tie the knot.’ She recalled her own wedding at St Botolph’s on a fine spring day.

  ‘Would you like to see the rest of the house now?’

  ‘I should be delighted.’

  He led her from room to room upstairs and down, entertaining her with tales of his father’s time and of his own boyhood. She asked him about his daughters, for she wondered why he had not brought one or the other with him to look the house over with him. She learned that both lived with their respective husbands far out of London. That brought his city residence to mind.

  ‘Shall you have to rid your London home of many things?’ she asked.

  ‘No. It was always very much a place of business. It was here at Bunhill Row and at Great Gains that my late wife turned everything to her liking.’ They had reached the entrance hall once more, and she had supposed the tour to be at an end when he added: ‘There’s one more place of interest I’d like you to see.’

  He led the way along a corridor towards the north end of the house until they came to a thick studded door. She was intrigued as to where it led and wondered if he was going to reveal an entrance to something mysterious, such as an underground passage linked to some long-ago ruins on the site before his house was built. He was smiling to himself as he took a key from his pocket and inserted it in the lock. It clicked and he threw the door wide for her.

  She was astonished. There was nothing mysterious here. All that was revealed was a mundane little parlour furnished with simple comfort. Suddenly she had a clue in the rumble of voices resounding quite clearly through an ordinary panelled door opposite to where they were standing. She rushed across to climb on to a chair by the wall and look out of the high and partly bottle-paned window.

  ‘We’re in the tavern!’ she exclaimed.

  He was buoyant with the success of his surprise. ‘That’s correct. I could have had this part of the building pulled down when it was no longer needed for offices and storage, but it appealed to my sense of humour to let it become a tavern and to keep a door into my own private parlour. You see I have a deep thirst and a great liking for good ale.’

  Looking down at him from where she still stood on the chair, she felt the joke of it rise in her. She threw back her head in a peal of laughter and he bellowed in mirth with her. With her eyes almost shut with merriment, she pressed a hand against her chest to try to check her helpless laughter and swayed with it.

  ‘Don’t fall!’ he guffawed, which seemed excruciatingly funny to them both at that moment, and he clasped her about the hips to let her slide down through his arms until her feet were on the ground. Still supporting her, he stared hard into her eyes for a matter of seconds and then plunged his mouth down on hers. It was a devouring kiss of extraordinary passion, driving mirth from them both, for he forced open her lips and crushed her to him until she thought her ribs would crack in his embrace.

  When he released her, to his relief she did not make the kind of stupid protest of outrage he might have expected from a respectable married woman caught off guard. Instead she filled her lungs and released a long breath. Straightening her cap, and tucking some wayward tendrils of russet-bright hair behind her ears, she regarded him quizzically.

  ‘I think a small tankard of that same ale you mentioned earlier would be extremely acceptable now.’

  Their gaze held opening. This new friendship of theirs remained unimpaired, but he understood her silent communication that what had happened must not occur again. He chuckled his appreciation of her unruffled state.

  ‘At once, ma’am. I’ve rarely heard a more timely suggestion.’

  He made for the parlour door. Alone she sank down into a Windsor chair and cupped her hands over the smooth arm-ends. She could hear his firm footsteps pacing away down a flagged passageway to reach the taproom and then the sounds of greeting at his reappearance after a long absence. She ran her tongue over her lips. No man but John had kissed her mouth since the first kiss they had shared together, which was wholly through her own choice, for over the years other men as well as James had let her see she was an extremely comely woman in their eyes.

  Yet nothing she could have done today would have stopped James Esdaile’s show of passion. She had seen desire in his gaze from the first speech they exchanged in the herb garden. No matter what he had been saying throughout the tour of the house, whether interesting or mundane, his hooded greenish eyes had been telling her that he would be her lover at any time she should so wish. Such was the dominance of his personality, the thought of husband and family had been absent since the first moment of their initial meeting until now, when she was on her own. She felt as if she had been at the centre of a firework display, but now it was over and the sparks had faded away.

  James returned ahead of the landlord who bore a tray with a small mug of frothing ale for her and a two-pint pot for him. ‘Good day to you, Mrs Bateman,’ the landlord greeted her. ‘It’s an honour for the Royal Oak to have Mr Esdaile back in his parlour again and to welcome you on your first visit.’

  Hester thanked him. It was obvious that the landlord assumed she and James were previously acquainted, both being from the city, and she was thankful for it because it would stem any gossip. When he had gone, leaving them together, James sat down in a chair turned sideways to the table and facing her. After handing the small mug to her, he pulled his own heavy pewter pot across by the handle and raised it to her in a gallant toast.

  ‘To you and your beauty, ma’am!’ As he drank deep he reflected that there were women and women. Hester was one he would covet for a long time to come.

  That evening, while John was mending one of Jonathan’s toys that William had broken, she sat sewing a new dress for Letticia and told her husband all that had happened that day. Only an account of the kiss was omitted.

  ‘Is Esdaile still at the mansion?’ he asked, having listened attentively as he always did whenever she related her activities and those of the children to him.

  ‘No. He left on horseback shortly after I came away, but he gave me a key to the side gate and I’m at liberty to help myself to the herbs at any time.’

  ‘That was most neighbourly of him.’

  She lowered her sewing to watch him making the toy as good as new again. In the candlelight he looked much as when she had first fallen in love with him, shadows softening the mature set of hardened bones in his face. Gone forever was that trembling awareness between them that comes from the meetings of young flesh; the possessing and the being possessed that is a kind of miracle as if nobody else had ever known such love before; the tender exploration of all that was new and magically different in a man and a woman. Now there was a richer element in their passionate comings together, the years having added their own quality as to good wine. Those who mocked the chances of enduring love in marriage would never comprehend what was between this man and her. There in the quiet candlelight, her ardent devotion to him seemed to well up and engulf her from head to toe. It was one of those moments when the very strength of her love for him alarmed her and she was at a loss to know why.

  It was not until Hester was going upstairs to bed that she remembered she had left her basket of herbs in the mansion. She smiled and shook her head at her forgetfulness. At least the drying herbs would give a lingering fragrance to the empty rooms. Like a reminder of her brief presence there.

  Some weeks later wagons arrived at the mansion, showing that James had taken her advice, and a great deal of furniture and boxes were taken away. She thought how individually James’s mother, his wife and she herself had all exerted infl
uence over the furnishings of that grand residence. Soon it would be another woman’s turn. She hoped it would be done with kindness.

  Eight

  In spite of John’s original misgivings, the manufacture of Sheffield Plate appeared to have created its own market and made little impact on his trade. Orders continued on a steady inflow and he was able to ask for a more realistic payment for his output now that he was beyond the city’s restrictions, which made a long-overdue difference to the Bateman income. Early on he had acquired a horse on which to make his deliveries and he kept it in a high-roofed stable beyond the kitchen garden where there was plenty of room for a carriage, if ever he should be able to afford one.

  Not long after their arrival in Bunhill Row, Abigail had met and married a farm labourer with a tied cottage, which she made cosy and comfortable. She was near enough for the children to visit her and came to help at the house when needed. There was no need to replace her for Ann took charge of the boys. Hester continued to work with John, supervise her household, organize their social activities and spend time with the children as adeptly as if she were moving chess pieces on a board. But there were times when she felt an urgent need to be on her own to draw breath and revitalize her energies.

  Ideally she would have liked to take long, solitary walks in the surrounding countryside, which would have been different from the family rambles with a picnic. She longed to follow some wooded slope but with the constant demands on her time she could make only short excursions into the glades and meadows. When even those little outings would have kept her away too long, she snatched some moments of solitude in the Esdaile herb garden where nobody came near. Now and again she sketched the birds there.

  Retreat to this peaceful place ended some months after James’s remarriage, which had taken place as he had predicted in the spring, when suddenly one morning an architect arrived to make a preliminary inspection. After that there were many comings and goings. The Esdaile carriage was there several times. Hester glimpsed it in the drive, but never once did she see either James or his new wife.

  Another lapse of time went by and then the architect was on the spot almost daily, having installed an army of artisans to work outside and in. It soon became apparent that the mansion was to lose its simple exterior lines and take on some Palladian splendour which was highly fashionable. Hester doubted whether James cared for such drastic alterations, but on one point he had had his way: the mansion remained solidly attached to the wall of the Royal Oak, his door into the domain of good ale undisturbed.

  In the grounds, which were being newly laid out by a landscape gardener, only the herb garden was being retained in its original secluded position. Hester, having a special understanding of the reason why, was glad about it. The second wife would never know why it had been special to the first Mrs Esdaile. It occurred to her that it was a secret that only she and James shared.

  By now her own herb garden was well established. Contrary to her hopes, the country air had not entirely banished John’s cough. He would be in full health for months on end and then it would return, usually at night to disturb his rest. It always passed and he promptly forgot about it, while Hester hoped that the new herbal syrup she had made for him that particular time had been the one to have cured it.

  No one else ailed, except for the usual childhood sicknessess. These bouts, although full of danger and alarming at the time, passed over in each case without after-effects. Jonathan had been the least robust of her children, but even that had been overcome. If he was a little spoilt through his frail beginnings, as well as being the youngest, it was to be expected. He followed William about everywhere and invariably ended in the same kind of trouble, covered with mud or with cut knees, and was once rescued in the nick of time from a wooden box that William thought would float the two of them down a stream.

  Peter, apart from being older, was too busy to be involved with his younger brothers. He was receiving lessons with other pupils from a retired tutor to whom he went daily in a nearby house in Bunhill Row. Joss’s tales of his experiences at the charity school had spared Peter from a similar fate and John, who watched results, was satisfied that his son was getting a classical education better than that which Joss had received.

  ‘I wouldn’t have minded going away to school,’ Peter confided to Joss, ‘in spite of the birchings, because it would have been fun travelling to and fro on the stage, but I’m glad not to leave my birds and animals.’

  That had been his particular dread. Presently he had a lame fox cub that he had rescued from a trap, an owl with a broken wing, a kitten he had found half-drowned in a sack and a baby thrush he had reared and was shortly to release into the wild. In the countryside he had come into his own in a different way from his mother. Having always had a heart for small creatures, he was able now to care for any he came across that were injured or distressed. It was why he had never liked visiting the zoo at the Tower. It had seemed terrible to him that those strange and wonderful beasts should be in that bleak place away from their natural habitat.

  As the months passed, Joss’s twenty-first natal day drew near when his apprenticeship would be at an end, seven years of it behind him. He wrote that he had made some important plans that he would tell them about when he came home. Hester released a satisfied sigh as John finished reading the letter to her.

  ‘How happy he sounds! He must have been promised employment by one of the leading goldsmiths to be in such spirits.’

  John nodded with a smile. ‘I should think it’s something like that. Well, we shall know at the end of the month.’

  ‘It will be hard to wait.’

  On the morning when Joss would be enrolled into the Goldsmiths Company, Hester’s thoughts were with him. If she and John could have witnessed the occasion, they would have been at the Goldsmiths Hall. It was a simple business without ceremony of signing documents and registering the ‘touch’, which in Joss’s case was J.B.; and spectators, whether family or friends, were not expected to be present except by official invitation. She drew comfort from his promise to come straight home that same afternoon.

  It was barely past midday when she began watching the clock. A good dinner with his favourite dishes was in the final stages of preparation, the table laid, the girls already in their best dresses. The three boys were keeping watch on the road between games. Then, as so often happens when an arrival is long awaited, the moment everyone’s attention was diverted elsewhere he arrived unheralded. Hester, halfway across the parlour to take yet another look out of the window, paused as the door opened and there he was.

  ‘Joss!’

  He was a fine-looking young man now, wide-shouldered with a tapering long-limbed body, and he was wearing the new coat that he had been told to order at his father’s expense for his great day. She rushed to him and he hugged her.

  ‘It’s good to be home,’ he said warmly, as he had said so often before. ‘And this time as a fully-fledged journeyman to stay. Nothing shall dislodge me from the Bateman workshop again!’

  She stepped away from him, not entirely sure she understood his meaning, and her smile became uncertain. ‘You’re joking, of course,’ she said, although it was entirely out of character for him to do so. ‘Don’t withhold your good news any longer. Who is to be your distinguished employer?’

  ‘Father. Who else?’

  The colour drained from her face with a swiftness that was painful. She said the first thing that came into her head. ‘But he’s not a master craftsman. We only do outwork here. You’d have no chance to put your own ‘touch’ on articles you had made.’

  ‘Neither would I whoever I worked for.’

  She laced her fingers in and out in her agitation. ‘But with time you would open your own workshop in the city and employ journeymen yourself.’ Her dreams for him were being put into words. ‘You’d be known as Master Bateman and every piece that left your benches would bear the punchmark J.B. for all the world to see.’

  ‘I’m no
t interested in personal fame. All that matters to me is that I do good work and I like the variety of the orders that come through Father’s workshop.’ While he had been speaking there had come the sound of the others approaching. He swung round to face his father, his brothers and sisters clustering behind.

  ‘My felicitations on becoming enrolled in the Goldsmiths Company, my son!’ Jubilantly John shook his son’s hand. ‘It’s been a long stretch, has it not? But all worthwhile.’

  ‘Indeed it has, sir.’

  Then William and Jonathan, who had been held back by Peter’s grip on their collars, bounded forward to greet their returned brother, who after a few words with each of them leaned across to kiss in turn both his sisters on the cheek. Hester’s voice broke across the family merriment with a harshness of stress that made it almost unrecognizable to herself as well as to them.

  ‘Joss wants to work at the bench with you, John! That is his grand plan!’

  ‘Will you take me on, Father?’ Joss said at once.

  In helpless frustration Hester saw John’s face become transfigured with joy. Instead of advising Joss to look further afield he shook his hand again as heartily as before. ‘Nothing could please me more. You shall have a place at the bench and I’ll be proud to have you there.’

  ‘I thank you. I’ve never wanted to be anywhere else when the time came. But there is still something more I want to tell you and Mother on your own.’

  Letticia took the hint and with Ann’s help shepherded the boys out of the room again. As soon as the door closed after them, Hester turned away to sink down on the sofa, struggling for self-control; she saw the agreement between the two men as a rejection of all the hopes she had cherished since Joss had shown the first clear signs of being destined to follow his father into goldsmithing. She felt broken inside.