Bellman & Black, Page 9

  Every day he made himself available to whoever wanted him. Essential that all should know this was not a captainless ship. Confidence was the essence of the matter. So all day long he made himself visible. He went wherever he was wanted. He answered questions, trivial and serious, brief and involved. He spoke to foremen, clerks, weavers, shearers, fullers, dyers, porters, and spinsters. He never passed Mute Greg without a nod of the head, and if he was near enough, the donkey received a reassuring pat. All must know the mill was in safe hands.

  Only when the mill was quiet was there time to pore over the papers, to tally figures, check off orders, write letters. And when that was done, there were his uncle’s personal finances to manage. He settled small debts out of his own pocket, saw that Mrs. Lane had the housekeeping she needed, paid the gardener, spoke to the bank manager.

  “How long will this go on?” Rose asked at the end of a week when William had worked seventeen hours a day every day. “You’ll wear yourself out.”

  “Five more weeks,” he predicted.

  “Really? As precise as that?”

  He nodded. He’d worked it out.

  Mind you, once this five-week period of stabilization was over, he had other things in mind.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The man dismounting in the courtyard cut a curious figure in his foreign clothes and with his hesitant manner. From the office window William saw him hail one of the porters.

  He doesn’t even know his way, he thought.

  A few minutes later Charles was at the office door.

  “By the time the letter caught up with me . . . I came as soon as I could. Far too late, of course.”

  William offered the conventional sentiments and Charles accepted them. “I should offer you my condolences too,” Charles said. “These last years you have been closer to your uncle than I ever was to him, though he was my father.” It was said without rancor, merely stated as a fact.

  William offered his cousin a seat, but Charles seemed reluctant to take it. He was tall and straight and well fed as ever; his muscles were the leisurely kind, William thought: his legs would be good for walking up hills to get a better view of the landscape. When William opened the ledger to show the mill’s profits, Charles did not lay a finger on the pages but clasped his soft, white hands firmly behind his back. He leaned forward to show himself willing, not so much as to indicate any real interest. William pointed here and there—calloused hands, dirt under his fingernails—setting out in layman’s terms what had been done, was being done, to keep the mill productive.

  “Yes,” said Charles. “I see.” He failed to keep the tremor out of his voice. His eyes flickered, over the tables of figures and the order records, and though William tried to be brief and use simple language, he knew Charles was seeing nothing, hearing nothing.

  “The thing is,” he said, “I’ve a few commitments in Venice . . .”

  It had the sound of a rehearsed statement, something he’d been murmuring under his breath all the way from Italy. It must have sounded all right, in his head, in carriages and on horseback and on the sea. The magic words that would get him out of his difficulties. William supposed it was only now, pronouncing the words in this office, that Charles heard how weak they seemed.

  The cousins looked at each other.

  “There’s no need for you to stay if you don’t want to,” William said. “Everything’s under control. I can keep you informed in Italy or wherever. No need to turn your life upside down.”

  “No, no . . . So long as that’s all right with you.”

  William nodded. “I’ll take a salary.” He named a figure. “Here are the profit figures for the last five years. We’ll divide that fifty-fifty. I’d like to reinvest more in the future than we have done lately, but I’m happy to do that out of my share of the profit and take any increase in profit in future years over and above the present level. I can guarantee you an income of—” He jotted the figure down and passed it over. “What do you think?”

  The sum was much more than the allowance Charles had received from his father. It was more than he needed. He would be able to live exactly as he chose.

  “That sounds . . .”

  He tried to remember the kind of thing his father would have said, with his judicious and extensive language for talking about money and business, but he couldn’t. Charles could discuss poetry and history and Louis Quinze furniture, and he could do this in English, Italian, or French, but the plain English of business negotiation was quite alien to him. So he nodded.

  The cousins shook hands.

  Charles’s face started to return to its normal color. He was saved. William had saved him.

  For five minutes Charles waited while William wrote out the agreement they had just reached. Relieved of the fear that he might have to spend the rest of his life imprisoned in it, Charles looked at the office as an outsider looks at another man’s place of work, admiring the industrious impression it gave but understanding nothing. It was clear that William knew what he was doing. Twice someone knocked at the door with an impenetrable question, and each time William dealt with it in half a dozen words that meant nothing to Charles. Twice he made a note to himself in a smart calfskin notebook, then returned to drafting his contract without a hesitation.

  The pen Charles signed with was the only item he touched all the while he was at the mill. William signed in turn and the two men shook hands again.

  “Thank you,” Charles couldn’t help saying. “Now, what is this?”

  A pencil outline in a childish hand, on the free page of William’s notebook. A donkey. William smiled. “My daughter amuses herself making pictures in my notebook, if she can’t find anything else to draw on.”

  Charles showed more interest in the donkey picture than he had in anything else since he had arrived. He flicked back in the book and found other sketches: a flower, a gate, a cat. “How old is she?” he wanted to know. “Does she have lessons?”

  William realized that his cousin was a man of conversation. He was not used to work, to the clock, to the sense of measuring the hours ahead and dividing them according to the number of tasks to be completed within them.

  “Call in at the house,” he suggested. “Come today and eat with us. Dora will be pleased to tell you how old she is. If you are very good she will draw your portrait.”

  When his cousin was gone, William took up his pen and fresh paper with great satisfaction. There was a project that had been close to his heart for a long time. Paul, aware of the level of investment required, had been cautious of the risk. William had read up on hydraulics. He knew the principles inside out, and enough of the detail to have been able to make some preliminary sketches himself. He had assessed the terrain and researched the experts in the field. With the right man, the risk was negligible—and he knew which was the right man. All the while the situation with Charles had been unresolved he had been unable to act. But now!

  He wrote to the engineer, lost himself in the pleasure of making explanatory sketches. Several hours passed.

  He looked at the clock. Supper time. He ought to go home.

  On the other hand, it was the ideal moment to find Turner at his farmhouse and make him an offer for that bit of land that he couldn’t refuse.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Charles found his cousin’s wife to be a charming, capable person, just the wife a man such as his cousin needed. The children were lively, happy, curious souls. He sat in the small living room that he remembered from his childhood. His grandmother had not been pleased by his visits to his cousin’s home, but his father had not discouraged it. Memories of his aunt, William’s mother, came to mind, and he told some little stories about her.

  Rose saw that her husband’s cousin was surprised by the rapt attention these anecdotes aroused. “We are learning more from you in a few minutes than my husband has told us in years,” she explained. “Will you stay and eat with us? Dora will show you her drawings while I am cooking.”

/>   It was light and there was warmth in the air. Charles sat in the garden with the young artist at work. She showed him page after page of sketches, each one just a few broken lines, interrupted, aborted, incomplete, and yet to Charles’s eye at least, distinctly avian.

  Dora flicked through quickly, creasing the pages in her dissatisfaction.

  “Careful.” He put out a hand to halt her. “What’s this?”

  “A rook. He comes into the garden, over there. I see him from my window.”

  Charles drew the book nearer to him. There were faults. No one had taught the child the correct way to hold a pencil, and she applied too much pressure on the paper. Her efforts to draw feathers were naive. The bird had no eyes. Yet it was distinctly corvid. The claw grip on the branch, the angle of the legs, the balance and weight of the body were all there. There was enough clarity to convince, despite the inexperience.

  “This bit is wrong,” she was saying, “and this, here,” indicating with her pencil the very weaknesses he had seen for himself. Well, it showed promise that she knew where her failings were. Though only ten, it was clear she had an eye.

  Charles knew where his failings were. There was the great one. The one that exiled him and brought him joy and which he could not bring himself to hate. And all the smaller ones, among which was his failure to be a great painter. Someone had told him once that the desire to do something well is a good indicator of talent. In his case he had found this not to be true. He was no artist. He loved it, he was a good judge of art, but his own efforts were feeble, no matter how strong the desire. He knew how to look at the world and he could conceive the work of art that would convey what he saw, but he had not the ability to execute it. At best he might have made a good teacher. A man of means does not teach girls to paint, though. It would be entirely ridiculous. What remained for him then was to be what he was: a collector. By buying art he enabled others, more talented than himself, to live and thus to paint. He lived at one remove from his passion, but he was largely reconciled to it.

  Perhaps Dora had what he lacked. She was unschooled and haphazard in her approach, but she was observant, her hand was accurate, she was unafraid of the paper.

  “Look.” He took up a pencil and showed her how he held it. “Then you can do this . . . and this . . .”

  She took the pencil from his fingers and made her own attempt.

  “I see. Like this.”

  “That’s it.”

  And now, called out of nowhere by his twin on paper, the rook himself appeared, losing altitude rather gracelessly, but landing with a certain aplomb nonetheless. Charles was amused and moved to see Dora’s face grow serious as she was absorbed in her observation. She watched closely as the bird pecked about inquisitively in the roots of the lawn, quite fearless of its human companions.

  She did not attempt to draw but only watched until, having exhausted its curiosity, the bird casually flapped and rose with muscular power into the air. Then she put pencil to paper.

  The rook appeared anew on a fresh white page. He noticed that she had already assimilated the new way of holding the pencil, and you could see the improvements in the greater freedom of her line. When she had done all she could, she put her head on one side to consider her effort. “It’s better, isn’t it? The way to draw a bird,” she explained as she passed the drawing to him, “is to begin by looking really hard. Then, after it has flown away, you still have it, in your mind’s eye.”

  “A very good method it is too.”

  “Are you going back to Italy tomorrow?”

  “I am.”

  She turned her face fully to him and gave him a long and serious stare.

  “Are you fixing me in your mind’s eye?”

  “Before you fly away.” She nodded. “There. I’ve got you now.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  On the morning of his departure, Charles met his father’s solicitor.

  “I’ll not be staying in England. I have commitments abroad,” Charles told him. “William Bellman and I have come to terms over the management of the mill.”

  He passed a copy of the contract he had made with William to the solicitor, who read it. Coming to the part about William’s salary, he put his hand to his chin and smoothed his beard. “Generous salary. Still”—glancing at Charles—“he’s a capable man. You wouldn’t want to lose him to a competitor.”

  Charles’s heart leaped. The thought hadn’t occurred to him.

  The solicitor read on. “Fifty-fifty profit share . . .” He frowned.

  “Yes?”

  “Unusual.”

  Charles was hardly in a position to judge.

  “And your cousin will be making future investment in the mill, but will take any additional profit resulting. Unorthodox . . .”

  Charles was considering what it would mean if William went to manage a competitor’s mill. “He is my cousin. We shouldn’t overlook the family connection.” He half smiled to himself. That is how his father would have put it.

  The solicitor reflected. “Your uncle had a lot of faith in William Bellman. That’s clear enough in the agreement that they signed when he made him secretary. Of course, if you were minded to reconsider the profit sharing it would be an easy enough matter to review the contract with Mr. Bellman. It sounds as if it were concluded in something of a hurry, and you had made that long journey and were doubtless still reeling from the news of your father’s demise. If in the light of day you thought better of that paragraph, one might exert pressure on Mr. Bellman to redraft . . .”

  Exert pressure? On William? Charles baulked. In any case, he wanted to be in Oxford by three, a driver was waiting to take him to the coast for tomorrow’s crossing.

  “The contract is entirely to my liking.”

  At the new note in Charles’s voice the solicitor looked up.

  “Well . . .” So that was it. Charles had got what he wanted by this contract. And whatever that something was, he wasn’t going to let go of it. So be it. The solicitor hadn’t been looking forward to wrangling with William Bellman in any case.

  Talking it over with himself later the solicitor found that he was reassuring himself he had acted in his client’s best interest. “It’s not as if it’s going to be much, is it? Profits over and above the current level . . .” He shook his head. The mill was already running at full tilt. How much more profit could there possibly be?

  · · ·

  Charles found himself ready to leave earlier than planned. The coach was there, why wait? He was not sorry to go. Italy was home now. The person he loved was there. He did not wish for anything here, neither the mill nor the house. He was glad to say good-bye to them both. All the same, it was curious to think that he need never come back now.

  As it traveled out of Whittingford, the coach took him along the road that led to his cousin’s house. He had scarcely seen William. But he could see the mill was safe in his hands. William was safe in Rose’s hands. There was much to admire in William’s life, though heaven knew, Charles couldn’t live it, not for a single day. He had spent one unexpectedly happy hour here though: drawing rooks with his cousin’s daughter. He wished—the thought was shockingly new to his mind, desire and its impossibility dawning on him in the same moment—that he could be father to a girl like Dora and sit in a garden on sunny afternoons, teaching her to draw.

  Remembering the rook they had drawn, he turned and looked the other way. Over the bank, across the field and to the group of oaks, thickly foliated now as they had been when he was ten. There had been a stone that had drawn a perfectly arched line in the sky, with William and his catapult at one end of it and a young rook on a branch at the other. It had seemed miraculous then. It presented itself to him as a miracle even now. Fred had been there. And Luke, who was now dead, he recollected; his father had written to tell him. Luke it was who had opened out a wing and released from the blackness those dazzling colors. They still dazzled now, so much so that he had to wipe away a tear.

  A
rriving early in Oxford, he had time to go to Turl Street and buy sketchbooks and pencils. He made arrangements for them to be delivered to Dora, then his onward coach was ready and he began the next stage of his journey.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  William thought about the Stroud men, who were trying to buy his hands, the weavers and fullers and packers he had trained and shaped so they fitted his mill like a dream. Everyone thought the answer was money, but it wasn’t. Why pay higher wages for the same output? He was reluctant to pay money to stand still. Money should work harder than that.

  He had a better idea.

  One fine morning, William was in the kitchen when the boy came to deliver the bread. “Tell your father I want to see him, will you? He can call on me here, this afternoon.”

  At three o’clock Fred Armstrong, the baker, arrived at William’s kitchen door.

  The two men shook hands.

  There was a time Fred Armstrong had been a familiar of this cottage. In the days of their boyhood, he and William had eaten apples here, on this step, before he went away to school with his Bellman cousin.

  Thinking of it now, with William here, shaking his hand like a stranger, the memory seemed improbable. Should he call the man William? Ten years ago they had drunk together sometimes at the Red Lion. And now his childhood friend was manager of the mill—and a stranger. Perhaps he should say Mr. Bellman?

  Fred looked around at the packing cases. “You’re moving, I hear.”