Bellman & Black Read online

  Paul closed his eyes to curb his impatience. When he opened them again he saw afresh how old his father was. Fragility, folly, and authority that had clung beyond its time. Compassion moved him to speak more kindly than he felt.

  “There is no need to call him that boy. He has a name, Father. He is a Bellman.”

  The face of the old man twisted beyond anger, into disgust, as he waved Paul’s words away in a violent gesture of rejection.

  It was a gesture and an expression that gave Paul reason to ponder. In his prime his father had been able to temper his anger, moderate his dislike of his younger son. Now that he was older, his feelings more frequently got the better of him. On and on his father went, listing the failings and weaknesses of William Bellman, and Paul let the voice go by like the Windrush while he fished in a single spot.

  He is a Bellman, he had said, and his father had swept the words away like so much rubbish . . .

  But no one could fail to see that William was Phillip’s son. It would be ludicrous to deny it.

  There was another possibility, and it slipped into Paul’s mind now and found a space that it fitted into perfectly. It was so obvious, he couldn’t even bring himself to feel surprised. In fact, he wondered why it had taken him so long to work it out.

  His mother had been a pretty, sentimental woman whose only real interest in life was the state of her own feelings. Her foolishness was that of the heart. His father’s foolishness consisted in believing that having married such a woman—for her land and the heir he soon got from her—he could thereafter expect her to sit at his side, neglected and irrelevant, in quiet contentment for the rest of her days. She was not a bad woman, but she was one who thrived on affection, who longed to be adored, and in the face of an irascible husband who made no secret of his lack of romantic feeling, was it any wonder her love turned to enmity? Boredom, vanity, the desire for revenge—any one of these would have sufficed to make her vulnerable to soft words from another. With the three together, the thing was almost inevitable. And so Phillip was born. A Bellman by name, indulged in everything by his whispering, spoiling mother, but rejected in a hundred private ways by her husband. Thereafter the family had lived under one roof but split in two, Phillip with his mother on the one side, Paul and his father on the other. Secretly, out of sight, the boys had found each other in brotherhood. In the house, in the presence of their parents, they had mutely fallen into line at opposite ends of the battleground.

  Paul wished his father had been a kinder man. He wished his mother had been a wiser woman. But there was nothing to be gained from wishing. People were what they were and his parents—Paul could not bear to hate, he needed to forgive them—had not set out to make each other unhappy.

  Now a look and a gesture from his father rejecting William’s entitlement to the Bellman name had been the key to deciphering the mystery of Paul’s childhood. It wasn’t William who was not his father’s son. It was Phillip.

  In this new light, Paul thought about his mother, whose unhappiness he had not understood as a child, and regretted he had not paid more attention to her while she lived. He thought about his brother—his half-brother—and discovered that he loved him and disapproved of him in just the same proportions as before. He thought about Dora and wished she could have had the luck to meet a better man than his brother. (He came close to wishing that she had met him instead of his brother, but it was hard to see how that would have helped matters.) Finally he thought about William. If he was not a Bellman, what was he?

  While Paul was still turning these thoughts over in his head, his father’s account of William’s faults and failings came to an end. He was waiting for Paul to respond.

  “I’ll look into it,” he heard himself say. “Tomorrow.”

  He went then to his own rooms.

  William is my nephew and is doing well at the mill and I love him, he thought. In some ways, it’s actually very simple.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “The samples?” William’s face lit up. “Yes, I did cut pieces from some of the samples. Let me show you!”

  He pulled some crumpled strips of cloth from his pocket and laid them on the desk. They were in different shades of crimson: maroon, garnet, madder, cherry, brick, claret . . .

  “This is the cloth that was left too long in the fulling. This one was from April. Remember the rain? It had had to be dried entirely indoors, with no sun on it at all. And this one—this is interesting, see—is one of Roper’s specials. She makes a yarn that has less twist to it . . .”

  So William could tell by the look and feel of a piece which cloth had come from which loom; he recognized the yarn from individual spinsters, he had the history of each piece clear in his mind. That didn’t matter today.

  “William,” Paul interrupted. “Tell me. What have you done to upset Mr. Lowe?”

  “I’ve done a dozen things to upset Mr. Lowe. Most of them he doesn’t know about, I hope. What’s he complaining of?”

  “You are distracting his apprentices. That’s one thing.”

  “How else can I find out about dyeing? Mr. Lowe won’t tell me a thing.”

  “Haven’t you been here long enough to know that dyeing is a world unto itself, William? You can’t go in expecting Mr. Lowe to open up his secrets to you. There’s an art to it. It’s—”

  “Alchemy, yes. That’s what he wants you to think!”

  “William!”

  His nephew looked pained.

  “I’ve explained this before, William, so this is the last time. Mr. Lowe’s father invented a recipe for blue dye which is so clean that it means that we sell more blue cloth than any mill within a hundred miles. We are lucky to have Mr. Lowe here at all. We got him when the outlook was bad over in Stroud and the mills were failing. They have made more than one attempt to get him back since things looked up. We cannot afford to upset him.”

  William did not fidget or close his eyes or look away. He was listening, but it was plain he was not persuaded.

  “If Mr. Lowe does not want you in his dye house, you must respect his reasons. He doesn’t want every Tom, Dick, and Harry knowing his professional secrets. That is his livelihood at stake.”

  “His crimsons aren’t up to much,” William grumbled. “In any case, it’s your land, your building, your mill.”

  “It’s traditional. Dyers have always been their own men. They have their own ways. And they are too important to lose. I won’t have Lowe going back to Stroud because you’ve upset him.”

  There was a pause in which William’s expression told him nothing was resolved. William opened his mouth to protest, but Paul raised a hand to stop him. “Give credit where it’s due, William. Mr. Lowe knows what he’s doing. If the crimsons are unstable, don’t go laying it at Mr. Lowe’s door. It’s the water makes them so.”

  William shook his head firmly. “So he told you that too. He’s lying. It’s nothing to do with the water.”

  “You have been here just short of a year, William. I am warning you, watch what you say.”

  “What he says about rain diluting the water is nonsense. He doesn’t use water from the river. He uses spring water. It’s consistent. Never changes.”

  Paul hesitated.

  “It’s not alchemy. He wants us to think it is, because it leaves him in the clear. He makes a good blue because he has the recipe; you’re going to keep him on till the end of his days for his blue, and he knows it. As for crimsons, what difference does it make to him how they come out? He can use old dye, chop and change the quantities at random, and when it comes out dull and brown, blame the water!”

  He embarked on a gesture of frustration, caught sight of his pile of cloth strips and stopped. “Look! Uncle Paul—”

  Paul pushed the fabric firmly away. “His blacks?”

  “He makes a good black because with the iron in the water round here you couldn’t fail.”

  Could that be true? Paul had to admit, it might be. The whole area was renowned for its blacks.


  William fidgeted with the cloth he had separated from the rest. He looked as if he was making up his mind to something.

  “His blue is good, Uncle. His black is good. The other colors are hit and miss because his dye cupboard is a shambles and he doesn’t keep proper records.”

  Paul put his head in his hands, and William started to look like a man who had said more than he should.

  “You have been into Mr. Lowe’s dye cupboard.”

  “Yes.”

  Paul felt weary to the core. He was more than willing to defend his nephew against his father, but he needed William to meet him halfway. The boy showed no remorse, though, and had no sense of the boundary he had transgressed.

  “You had help.” It wasn’t a question.

  William said nothing. A friend of a friend with a brother in the dye house, a few drinks in the Red Lion, money had changed hands. Subterfuge, distraction, the borrowing of a key.

  “I’d have done it another way, if there had been another way. Mr. Lowe gave me no choice.”

  “Mr. Lowe is very particular about the sanctity of his dye cupboard.”

  “And now I know why.”

  William said nothing, but he took a piece of cloth from the black leather inlay of the desk, and stroked it flat against his palm. It was bloodred, as fresh and clean as if a blade had just this second sliced his skin.

  “Go home, William.”

  “What? Now?”

  Paul nodded.

  “Am I to come back?”

  “Take a few days off. I need to think it over.”

  When he heard the door close behind him, Paul groaned.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Dora turned out her son’s pockets to launder his clothes. Once it had been stones and pencils that made the holes in his pocket, now it was a penknife and other small tools that came in handy for freeing a tangle of yarn in the machinery or loosening a bolt. Today with his handkerchief she drew out strips of scarlet cloth. Some thick, some thin, of different textures, weights, and shades. The color varied from the lightest red to the darkest; most were evenly dyed, a few were patchy. The pieces were a few inches long and had been chopped with no great care. Whatever they were, with William no longer at the mill, they would not be wanted.

  While William was out, Dora sat by her window to make the most of the last hour of light. She cut and folded the pieces of fabric into petal shapes, and put a couple of stitches in each to make them hold their shape. Then she started to join them, the smallest in the middle, increasing in size as she went.

  This was an activity that reminded her of her past. More than once in her girlish days she had made flowers out of scraps of cloth to adorn a coat or a hat. She had been wearing a golden rose corsage on the day she met Phillip. She had made it out of an old apron that she had dyed herself with half a teaspoon of turmeric, and he had commented on it.

  Dora did not breathe a word of criticism about her husband, nor any word of praise either. Indeed no word ever passed her lips about him, good or bad; it was a decision she had taken early on. Once you said a thing, it could never be taken back and would be taken up and repeated and altered and told again, no matter how misshapen and out of true. Better to say nothing. Others might conclude that she had simply forgotten all about Phillip Bellman, but the truth was that her feelings were as intense as ever, though they had changed. In the first days she had been beside herself with worry, believing her husband to be missing through some accident or injury. It was only when a month had passed with no word from him and no answer to any of Paul’s thorough inquiries that she accepted the fact of her abandonment.

  Then she had grieved. Every day she cared for her son, loved him, and taught him the world and kept him from harm, while he taught her a merriment she otherwise came close to forgetting, but once he slept, she wept. The memory of those long nights spent grieving for happiness lost could still make her shudder now. She had never known pain like it. When had it slipped into anger? She could not tell. It must have been gradual. The feelings must have existed alongside each other in her heart for some time before she became aware that the anger was the uppermost.

  First it was Phillip’s family she had blamed. In her heart she had raged against Phillip’s father, who had punished his son’s elopement with the imposition of what to Phillip had felt like hardship. He had hated the smallness of this cottage, the lack of servants, the humiliation of it. She had raged against his mother, who had withdrawn not money but love. Eventually her rage turned itself on Phillip himself. He it was who had abandoned them. What spite against parents can justify a man abandoning his child? And she thought the journey of feeling would end there, but latterly she had come to feel that it was neither loss nor anger that preoccupied her, but sadness. The sadness of knowing that the happiest and best days of her life had been false. His love had not been real—nor hers. She had been dazzled by him: by his handsome face, and his compliments and—she was ashamed—by his money. No man had called her beautiful before, and in the face of his adoration, in awe at her own power, she had agreed to run away with him. The intensity of feeling was so great it had never occurred to her it might not be love.

  The only thing that differentiated them was that she had been as good a mother to their child as she knew how to be, and if her efforts were worth anything at all, William Bellman would be a better man than his father. It was her redemption.

  Now, though, William was so miserable at being sent away from the mill that she could not even settle her thoughts with the prospect of her son’s future success. Her son was all her life now, and the old griefs of her own lost happiness were as nothing compared to seeing her child in pain. He did not complain at Paul’s treatment of him but had gone straight back to Davies, his former employer, the very next day, losing not a single day’s work. But he missed the mill. It was his element, and he belonged there, and without it he was suffering.

  Now, as she finished stitching her rose, William himself came in.

  “Can you see to sew in this light, Mother? What pretty thing is that?”

  “A rose. It is not for a woman my age. I will put it in a drawer until the day you bring your betrothed home.”

  Seeing the dyed scraps she had used for the rose, he grimaced, before quickly covering his pain with a smile for her sake. Looming over her as tall and handsome as his father, her boy took the rose from her hands and held it to her hair.

  “Wear it. Wear it in your hat when we go to the wedding, and I will be glad to have the prettiest mother in Whittingford on my arm.”

  She was touched by his efforts to hide the extent of his unhappiness from her. After so many years of looking after him, it was still novel to have him wishing to protect her.

  “Let me talk to Paul,” she told him. “I can tell him that you were overcome by enthusiasm, that you have learned your lesson . . .”

  A spasm gripped his face, and he turned abruptly away. “Yes. Please.” His voice was strained and muffled.

  I’ll be crying in a minute, she thought as she took her hat from the peg and then realized it was too late for sewing now.

  Behind her back she felt William turn, and he gripped her shoulders in a brief, ferocious embrace. Then he was gone.

  Had he learned his lesson though? The trouble with William was that his enthusiasm knew no bounds. When he once got it into his head to do a thing—and she was his mother, she should know—there was just no stopping him.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Paul turned away from the Windrush and into the high street. His thoughts had grown uncomfortable to him, and he wanted the diversion of activity and people.

  As he drew level with the church, Paul spotted William in his chorister’s gown on the church steps. A crowd was milling in the churchyard, and among them was Dora. She had a rose in her hat.

  It would not do to meet them now. He had not yet made up his mind.

  Nice day for a wedding. He had heard it was the baker’s son marrying today. He didn
’t know the girl, but she was a sweet-looking miss, all smiles and blushes as her new husband shook hands with William, then embraced him with unusual vigor. William bowed to the pair, smiling, and Paul felt a paternal pride. He knew how much William wanted to be at the mill, knew what his error was costing him in heartache. Yet today his friend was marrying, and he smiled and shook hands, and only he—Paul and Dora—knew what the effort was costing him.

  Paul missed William at the mill too. After one short year, he had come to rely on him. Wherever something went wrong—be it mechanical, human, administrative—there would be William, scratching his head, cudgeling his brains, putting his shoulder to it, begrudging neither time nor energy till the trouble was sorted. He smoothed out machines, misunderstandings, tangles of yarn, figures, paperwork. His deft hands, physical strength, ability to talk to the workers, made him useful in situations beyond his years. A hundred times a day Paul thought, That’s a job for William, or, William will sort that out. Now each time he thought it, he had to ask himself, How will I ever manage without him?

  But William had put him in an impossible position.

  Paul had no liking for Mr. Lowe. It was his father that had taken him on. Mr. Lowe’s authority in the dye house had come about during old Mr. Bellman’s time. There were a lot of fathers in the case, Paul reflected, unhappily. Mr. Lowe made a good, clean blue because his father made a good, clean blue, and he, Paul Bellman, had never been into Mr. Lowe’s dye house because his father had never been into Mr. Lowe’s dye house, and habits and ways get fixed like that, father to son, and ever on.

  And William? Fatherless son of a fatherless son, William was free of all that. He rose above habit, saw through tradition, understood things the way they were. The past had no hold on him. Perhaps that’s why his vision of the future was so strong. Without the past to cast its long shadow, might you see the future more clearly? You could almost envy him.

  Paul had been spotted. Dora was there, at his side.