Havisham: A Novel (17 page)

And yet I wondered just how much I had really known with any degree of certainty about him.

I opened a ledger at the final completed page. ‘
Purchases
’. I read down the figures on the list, entered in his tidy hand.

Tears welled up. Hot spicy tears that nipped my eyes. They sped down the runnels on my cheeks, dropped from my chin on to the page, and instantly blotted the ink. My own mark of proprietorship.

*   *   *

Rates assessment:

£50 – Brew house

£70 – 4 malthouses

£26 10s 0d – 8 storehouses

£15 – 2 warehouses

£2 – cellar

£3 – cinder ovens

£10 – stock valued at £200

Twenty-four public houses had an average rateable value of £6 16s 5d.

I had to acquaint myself with the alternative accounting methods in the Compting House – and the twain didn’t necessarily match, or were meant to.

Victuallers’ Book, to register sales in butts to public houses.

A book to record country trade.

A Petty Ledger, detailing private dealings with favoured (personal) clients.

A Yeast Book.

A Grain Book, both specifying sales.

Additionally there were:

Brewing Books, noting every aspect of production, including each successive brew.

Letters Book.

Loan Ledger.

Bond Ledger.

Interest Ledger.

Rent Ledger.

Inventory Ledger.

Stock Ledger.

*   *   *

My father’s office contained two other sets of records. First, the Rest Books: the yearly balance drawn up in early June, referring to debts and liabilities, and placing a value on the combined stock and trade. (Because my father was sole proprietor, answerable only to himself, he was under no obligation to keep these Rest Books. But since he had done, I deduced that he may have intended bringing in partners, or effecting an alliance with another sort of business than a brewer.) Secondly, the Private Ledgers: a register of every loan accepted and made that concerned the firm. These were kept in a separate locked drawer, intended for no one’s eyes but my father’s.

*   *   *

I had my clerks to assist me: the home clerks in the Compting House, and the abroad-clerks, who collected the monthly payments from publicans. Mr Tice was the brewery manager, whom I inherited. I promoted Mr Ambrose to be my chief clerk, which didn’t please some of the others, not least Mr Tice.

I privately and confidentially asked Mr Ambrose if he would be a separate conduit to me of the brewers’ and coopers’ affairs, since – he might have guessed, although I didn’t state it so to him – I wasn’t confident that I was receiving all the information I needed via the regular, formal channels.

*   *   *

Another letter arrived from Charles, from London, forwarded through a third party. He told me he was obliged to leave the country for a while – on a matter relating to business, he said, which had arisen quite unexpectedly. It wasn’t clear to him how long it would be until he returned: not before there was a satisfactory outcome, at any rate. But he assured me of his most sincere best wishes in the interim, and every success in dealing with the affairs of the brewery, as a little bird told him I was doing.

*   *   *

I re-read this letter, as I had done the previous one, dozens of times. I imagined where he might be. If not the British Isles – France, or Holland, or further afield than either? How thoughtful of him to dwell on my own struggles here to make sense of the brewery finances when he had his own equally pressing concerns.

I was to hear from him four more times over the next seven months. Every communication was one to be treasured. It surprised me a little to think of someone so fond of the excitement of chance games – cards, racing – currently having to subjugate himself to whatever those ‘business matters’ were.

But now we had this new and unanticipated bond between us.

*   *   *

I wrote to Lady Chadwyck, thanking her for her commiserations, and those of the children that had eventually followed. I explained that I was necessarily detained at Satis House, that it wasn’t at all clear to me when I might get away. I phrased my next remark with care: hoping that their own lives ‘continued as before’. (Meaning – continued without any financial disturbance or upset.)

Once Durley Chase had seemed to me a fine and even perfect place. The octagonal domed house on its airy knoll; the french doors standing open. Family portraits, Greek maidens and their suitors gambolling round the ceiling friezes. The lawns, the peripheries of long grass; the picturesquely convenient fallen boles, the designed vistas.

Now … I felt now that I had outgrown it. That gracious but stultifying existence, the proper – oh, always
so
proper – narrowness of its scope. I was bored with it, the decorous routines, the never too indiscreet gossip, even the theatricals where we pretended at nobility and legend we fell so far short of.

Everything, finally, had been play, which seemed to me not enough for a life.

*   *   *

I found a forgotten garter halfway up the second flight of stairs, kicked into the corner of one of the treads. I extracted it with the toe of my shoe. A frilled, flesh-pink garter.

The scene inside the hermitage on that last day flashed into my mind.

‘Arthur!
Arthur!
’

‘What in hell’s all this noise about?’

‘You recognise this?’

‘I know what a garter looks like.’

‘And its wearer?’

He shrugged.

‘D’you forget so easily?’ I asked him.

He raised his eyes. They were pink-rimmed, short-sighted, weak.

‘
Not
wearing it, of course,’ I said. ‘That is the point.’

‘Since when have I been accountable to you?’

I tried to field his question with a dismissive stare. A scowl. But it didn’t silence him.

‘Why should I listen to what a frustrated virgin tells me?’

That was too much for me.

‘I won’t have your harlots in this house. My father’s house.’

‘
Our
house.’

‘I’ll wear you down, I promise you. If
they
don’t first. I’ll prey on you, Arthur, until this is the last place you ever want to come again.’

I couldn’t bear to have his company under the same roof after that. So, without consulting him but issuing my directive (as a command), I ensured that by partitioning the building into my territory and his, technically under
two
roofs, we shouldn’t have to encounter one another more than once or twice in a week.

His friends were informed by him – with more accuracy than error – that I had planted spies among the household staff, and that he was treated as something of a criminal himself. Those same cronies of his were unsettled to be here, and came about much less often in this colder climate that prevailed.

*   *   *

I took solace in my work. It didn’t bother me that Arthur remained uninvolved. Not in the least. The office wouldn’t have been a refuge to me otherwise. An
active
refuge. I put in enough hours for the two of us.

*   *   *

Weeks passed. I hardly noticed. Just as I no longer noticed the smell of brewery hops in the air. Facts and figures, only those. A game of holding my nerve, when everyone else (except Mr Ambrose) thought I was bound to buckle at last.

*   *   *

The name HAVISHAM was repainted on the brewhouse wall. It had taken the weather; the paint blistered by the sun, the brickwork nibbled at by storms.

The letters remained green, and the same shape, but now they had a thin gilt strip on one side while, on the other, they dropped a small black shadow.

We were even more prominent now from the London road. We looked prosperous, singing our own praises.

T
WENTY
-
FIVE

The brewery had its own malthouses. We bought our hops from four farms in a long valley near Ashford, at Burwell. My father would pay an annual visit, a few weeks ahead of harvesting time, to inspect the crop on its bines and to agree a price for however many hundredweight. Now the journey fell to me. I gave responsibility for the hop-buying to myself, but acting on sage advice from two of the firm’s old hands.

It was arranged that they would ride there, and I would make my way in the curricle. We stopped to water the horses midway, at the inn where my father had always halted. The driver reminded me that my father had once brought Arthur, at the time when it seemed he would be working alongside him.

The owner of the inn presented himself. Would I do him the pleasure, the great pleasure, of resting in his best private room?

I thanked him, but told him we were late already, that I didn’t –

‘I venture to ask, ma’am, on behalf of another.’

‘On behalf of whom?’

I discovered when I was shown into the room.

‘Catherine –’

The blood rushed to my face.

‘Charles!’

‘Surprised?’

‘How on earth did you know –’

‘– you’d be here? Oh, I have ways and means.’

‘But…’

‘Never mind that now.’

He was dressed for a horse, but in dashing style. A waisted cutaway coat and tight breeches. What a handsome figure he –

I reached out for the support of the high mantelpiece.

‘I’m not here,’ he said. ‘I’m far away. Officially.’

‘“Officially”?’

‘If anyone should ask.’

‘Why should –?’

He put his index finger to his lips.

‘There’s been a bit of confusion, that’s all. Or there
might
be. It’ll get sorted out, though.’

‘Can I help?’

‘You’ve been help enough.’

‘That was nothing.’

‘This is
my
doing,’ he said, ‘
my
fault.’

‘Your “fault”? What is?’

‘No, Catherine. Remember what I said –?’

I nodded my head.

Coffee and chocolate were brought into the room. He drank quickly.

‘I’m so glad I was able to intercept you.’

‘You could’ve called at the house,’ I said.

‘I think not.’

‘No. No, I…’

My face heated again.

‘I was waiting for the first sound of your carriage’s wheels…’

He was gone before I was quite ready, taking a back staircase down. I had the touch of his hand on mine; I could still feel where he had brushed his lips against the skin on the back: speedily, but with great gentleness.

… and Joy shall overtake us as a flood
.

The final moments were left so sweetly in my memory. I stood swaying slightly with emotion at the top of the staircase. I listened as his footfalls grew fainter, as the jangle of his stirrups faded; I heard the clatter of shod hooves on the courtyard cobbles, and five seconds later I could hear nothing of him at all.

*   *   *

It had been a decent year for the hops, I was told, with less disease about and less mould than last.

At Burwell we inspected the bines still to be picked. We compared the Flemish variety with the Kent. I was told the very best pickers were on two shillings a day, which seemed to me excessive, and I said so, but I didn’t argue the point.

I was shown figures. Sixty-two hundredweight on ten acres last year, and a profit of £5 15s 0d.

‘You’re not complaining?’ I asked them.

‘Things could always be better.’

‘These are hard times, Mr Foxton.’

‘Indeed, Miss Havisham. But…’

‘I shall look at my own ledgers. I can’t make any promises, however.’

‘That’s most civil of you.’

Suddenly I was exhausted.

‘Are you feeling all right, Miss Hav—?’

I saw again that scene inside the hermitage, the two bodies writhing at their pleasure on the floor.

My head was spinning.

‘You’ve come over very pale, if I might –’

I was taken out of the sun, into the oast house. A chair was found for me. The hops were drying, and the air was hot and stifling from the wood fire. I could only manage a few minutes there, but that was sufficient.

Briefly I’d thought I was going to cry – I felt a sudden terrible sense of desolation – but just in time I pulled myself together, bundling my litter of wanton feelings back under cover.

*   *   *

An apprentice lawyer called Jaggers – in Mr Snee’s practice – wrote to me, requesting the favour of my time on an issue – as he judged – of no little importance. He begged that I did not inform his employer of his communication.

I was intrigued.

I received a swarthy, sturdily built, bullet-headed young man. His wrinkled shirt collar strained to hold his muscular neck. Samson, I thought of, with the hair on his head cropped close to stubble.

He was far from disempowered, though, despite his subordinate position.

For a few seconds I was alarmed by this sizeable presence. He was tongue-tied at first, but I sensed the confidence he had in his own mission.

‘We have something to discuss, Mr Jaggers?’

*   *   *

Indeed we did.

My visitor had discovered that Snee was an embezzler. He was defrauding me of this and that, but principally of the monies due to Lady Chadwyck. She had received nothing since before my father’s death, since the time of his collapse.

‘You’re quite sure of your facts, Mr Jaggers?’

‘I waited until there could be no possible doubt.’

‘I see. I see.’

He had retreated to the other side of the fireplace. He stood chewing one index finger, clearly forgetful of everything except the gravity of his news. I liked that air of abstraction which was testimony of his diligence surely. His breath filled his bullock’s chest, I could imagine the shirt buttons were ready to burst off.

‘And you mean to gain nothing for yourself?’

The question appeared to shock him. I had asked it chiefly in play, in order to lighten the dark mood.

‘Only to escape the infectious atmosphere of self-interest I’m forced to endure.’

‘It really won’t affect you too?’

‘I’m young.’

‘As Mr Snee was once.’