A Respectable Trade. Philippa Gregory

coast of England, one the west coast of Africa, little more than a wriggling coastline and a completely empty interior, and the third was a navigation chart of the shoals and currents around the islands of the West Indies. Nothing else. Frances, looking in through the door of the spartan room, wondered what the Coles did for amusement, where they entertained their friends. There was nothing in either room to indicate anything but a life dedicated to work.

      Miss Cole gave a longing glance out of the window before she turned away. On the quayside immediately below, the Coles’ ship the Rose was unloading. Sarah Cole would rather have been entering profits into the ledger.

      On the floor above the parlour were the bedrooms. Josiah and Miss Cole had bedrooms facing the dock; Frances’s room was quieter, at the back, sheltered by the red sandstone cliff. If she opened her window and leaned out she could look down to the cobbled backyard outside the kitchen door, hemmed in by high warehouse walls, and beyond them, the twisting little streets which ran from the dockside up to the church on the peak of the hill: St Mary Redclift. On her left was the towering height of a lead-shot tower. To her right, overtopping the church spire, was the fat kiln-shaped chimney of the glassworks. All day there was ceaseless noise: the crash of the metalworks, and the roar and rattle of the furnaces. The sour toxic smell of lead haunted the Backs.

      Above this floor was the attic bedroom for the servants and the linen and storeroom. Miss Cole showed Frances the bare poverty of the rooms with quiet pride and then led the way down the stairs to the front door and hall.

      The hall was hopelessly dark, the only light seeping through a grimy fanlight over the front door. At the end of the corridor at the back of the house was the door to the kitchen. They could hear someone pounding dough on a board and singing softly. In all the shaded, sombre house, it was the first happy sound.

      At the sound of Miss Cole’s footstep the singing stopped abruptly, and the pounding of the dough became louder and faster.

      Sarah Cole opened the door to the kitchen and ushered Frances in. ‘This is your new mistress, Mrs Cole,’ she said abruptly, surveying the kitchen. The cook – floured to the elbows – bobbed a curtsey, and the upstairs maid, Brown, rose from the table where she had been polishing silver and glasses. A little hunchbacked girl came in from the backyard wiping her hands on a hessian apron and dipped a curtsey, staring at Frances. Frances smiled impartially at them all.

      ‘The cook is Mrs Allen. The maid is Brown. Mrs Allen discusses the menus with me every week and shows me the housekeeping books.’ Sarah shot a sideways glance at Frances. ‘You should be there when we meet. I take it that Monday afternoon will still be convenient?’

      ‘Perfectly,’ Frances said politely.

      The little scullery maid had not even been named to Frances.

      ‘You can get on with your work,’ Miss Cole ordered them brusquely and led the way from the kitchen, through the poky little hall and up the stairs to the parlour.

      She seated herself at the table and drew one of the ledgers towards her. She took up a pen. Frances, rather at a loss, seated herself on the narrow windowseat and looked down on the quay.

      The tide was in and the foul smell of the mud had lessened. The sunshine sparkled on the water of the dock and quicksilver water lights danced on the ceiling of the parlour. The quayside was crowded with people selling, loading and unloading ships, hawking goods, mending ropes, and caulking the decks of outbound ships with great steaming barrels of stinking tar. The Coles’ own ship, the Rose, was still unloading her goods, the great round barrels of rum and sugar were piled on the quayside. The intense stink of a ship of the Trade wafted up to Frances and even penetrated the house: sugar, sewage, and pain. As she watched, she saw Josiah slap one of the barrels for emphasis and then spit on his palm and shake hands on a deal with another man.

      Sarah’s pen scratched on the paper. The room was stuffy and hot, the windows closed tight against the smell and noise of the quayside.

      ‘I should like to go out,’ Frances said after a while. ‘I should like to walk around and see the city.’

      Miss Cole lifted her head, her finger on the page to keep her place. ‘Brown will have to go with you. You cannot walk on the quayside alone.’

      Frances nodded and rose to her feet. ‘Very well.’

      Sarah shook her head, not taking her eyes from the book. ‘Brown is working in the house now. You will have to wait until afternoon. You can walk then.’

      There was a short silence.

      ‘I see Mr Cole down there on the quayside,’ Frances said. ‘May I go down to him?’

      Sarah dragged her attention from her work again. ‘He is engaged in business. He would have no time for you, and the men he is dealing with are not those he would wish you to meet. They are not gentlemen. You will have to be patient. You are no longer a lady of leisure,’ Miss Cole volunteered spitefully. ‘You cannot act on whim.’

      ‘No,’ said Frances, turning her attention back to the quayside, ‘I see that I cannot.’

      Most of the sailors had been paid off and had left the ship but the captain and one other man, his hair tied back in a greasy little plait, were watching the sailmakers pulling the ragged canvas out of the lockers and spreading it on the dockside. Josiah inspected the worn sails and nodded his agreement as the sailmakers bundled it on a sledge, took up the ropes and started to tow it away. Frances watched him from her vantage point above him, a curiously foreshortened view as if he were not a powerful man in a man’s world, but a little man, struggling to cope.

      ‘It is strange to see your money being made,’ she remarked thoughtlessly and then flushed with embarrassment. ‘I beg your pardon! I spoke without thinking.’

      ‘It is not strange to me,’ Miss Cole said. She did not take offence as Frances had feared. ‘I have lived in this house most of my life. I have waited for our ships to come in and I have known what profit or loss they made on every voyage. Since I was a child of nine I have cared for nothing else. That one you see there, the Rose, has done well for us.’

      ‘What a pretty name,’ Frances said.

      Miss Cole showed her thin smile. ‘All our ships have flower names since our first one, a captured French merchant ship called Marguerite,’ she said. ‘That means Daisy in French, you know. We have three ships: the Rose which you see here, the Daisy which should be at the West Indies, and the Lily which was in port a few months ago and should be loading off Africa, God willing.’

      ‘You say that they “should be” … do you not know where they are?’

      ‘How should I know? I know when they set sail and I know when they are due, but between their destination and their home port is the most vast and dangerous ocean. We have to wait. The largest part of being a merchant in the Atlantic Trade is waiting, and keeping your counsel while you wait.’

      ‘Have you ever sailed with them?’

      ‘No-one of any sense would sail to Africa,’ Miss Cole replied. ‘It is a death-trap.’

      ‘Do you sail nowhere else?’

      Miss Cole turned from the window and went back to her work. ‘There is nowhere else,’ she said irritably. ‘What other trade is to be had?’

      ‘I don’t know,’ Frances said foolishly. ‘I thought perhaps you might sail to India, or to China.’

      ‘This is Bristol,’ Miss Cole explained patiently, as one might speak to a child. ‘This is the heart of the sugar trade. We trade to the West Indies and to the Americas. It is on this Trade that my father made his fortune and on this Trade that we will make ours.’

      ‘Only sugar?’

      ‘There is no more profitable business,’ Miss Cole said firmly. ‘The Trade is supreme.’

      ‘But so uncertain …’

      ‘We trust in our