Sir William Templeton, His Majesty’s Principal Secretary to the West India Office, was at his dressing-table, still in turban and flowered banyan. His levee had scarcely begun. He had just dismissed with promises a half-pay naval officer, unemployed now that the wars with France were ended, who was seeking his influence with the Admiralty but lacked the guineas necessary to assure it.
His footman entered to announce the name of a gentleman on business waiting at present in the ante-room with the others, but not the sort to kick his heels long, the footman remarked – there was between servant and master a close understanding of mutual convenience.
‘He would not be fobbed off,’ the footman said. ‘He has a short way with him, sir.’
‘Aye, and a long purse, you rascal, I make no doubt,’ his master said. ‘He must have shown you the lining of it for you to bring his name with this dispatch.’
Briefly pleased with this piece of wit he twitched thin lips in the looking-glass. His face was narrow and long, very pale beneath the crimson silk of his turban, with a mouth that turned up at the corners in an accidental simper oddly at variance with the generally downward-sloping, lugubrious cast of his features. He knew who this visitor was, though he did not say so to the servant, whose eye was upon him keenly.
‘Where the devil is my hot chocolate?’ he said. ‘Why am I kept waiting in this fashion? Now is the time I need sustenance, sir, as I address myself to the business of the day. Get within and see to it and send Bindman hither to me so I may discuss with him what I shall be wearing.’
‘Yes, sir. And the gentleman?’
‘When you have seen to all that,’ Templeton said with assumed carelessness, ‘you may admit this person.’
He spent the interval before his mirror. Entering, Erasmus Kemp saw the Secretary’s long face, gaudy with rouge just applied but not smoothed in yet, looking fixedly at him in the glass, framed by the swimming or flying putti round the rim and beyond this by the pale blue and rose pink stucco cornucopias round the arches of the recessed bedchamber.
For some moments the two men regarded each other thus. Then Templeton rose and advanced with languid affability, taking short and mincing steps in his loose Turkish slippers. ‘My dear sir, curse me, this is a pleasure,’ he said, holding out his hand. ‘Will you take a seat, sir? I trust you are well?’
‘Tolerably well, I thank you.’ Kemp regarded the Secretary with a sombreness the warmth of his welcome had done nothing to relax. The years had taken colour from his cheeks and compressed his lips with a certain grimness of endurance or denial – though it was not evident whether of claims from within or without. But the eyes were unchanged: narrow and very dark, with a piercing insistence of regard that verged always on the antagonistic. He was dressed faultlessly in a suit of dark brown velvet set off by foams of lace at the neck and cuffs. His black hair was longer now, in accordance with the fashion; he wore it free of powder, caught in a dark red ribbon behind.
‘We need not make a long business of this,’ he said. ‘I shall not encroach on your time more than is needful. You have affairs of state to look to.’
‘Cares of state, sir, I prefer to name ’em. There is a neat epigram to be got out of that rhyme, but these days, alas, I have no time for composition. Do you scribble yourself, sir? No? One needs peace for it. You will not mind if I continue with my toilette? I am bidden to my Lady Everney’s in the forenoon.’
‘Indeed? By all means, continue. I would not have you disappoint Lady Everney.’
Templeton shot him a sharp glance in the mirror, but made no reply. He had begun touching in the paint with a small brush.
‘You know me and you know whom I represent,’ Kemp was beginning, ‘so there is no need for –’
A small negro page boy in a white turban and surcoat came in bearing a sugar bowl, a steaming cup of chocolate and a plate of wafers on a japanned tray.
‘About time, my pretty fellow,’ Templeton said. ‘Set it down here beside me. You must learn to be sharper.’
The little boy smiled and his eyes flashed eagerly. He had teeth of amazing perfection.
‘He doesn’t know much English as yet,’ Templeton said. ‘I haven’t had him above two weeks. I got him at auction at George’s Coffee House in the Strand. I gave the last one to my Lord Granville, who had taken a fancy for him. This one is even better-looking. One should buy them pockmarked of course, ’tis more secure, but I like a smooth skin. Will you take some chocolate?’
‘Thank you, no,’ Kemp said. ‘I have breakfasted but lately.’ This was not strictly true as it was now mid-morning, but a certain kind of disgusted impatience was growing in him and he had no wish to share more than was necessary with the man before him – the knowledge there was between them had to be shared, and the space of the room and the stale air in it.
‘So then,’ Templeton said to the negro boy, waving an irritable hand. ‘Why are you waiting there? Shoo, shoo, shoo. Go.’
‘I am come on the same grounds as last time,’ Kemp said in level tones. ‘Nothing of substance has been achieved on your part since then, in spite of the monies made over to you for your use as you thought fit.’
‘Ah, base metal, curse me, I knew we should soon come to money,’ Templeton said in a tone of disdain.
‘Yes, sir, money,’ Kemp said with a slight smile. ‘You find it a wearisome topic, I dare say, but those who dispense it incline to take an interest in how it is used.’
His disgust persisted. It was more for himself now. I should have sent someone else, he thought. But he trusted no one. He knew that Templeton was frightened and that his every gesture and inflection was assumed to disguise the fact. He knew more: he knew the man’s circumstances, his connections, those who were in his interest, those who were in his pocket, his gambling debts, his taste for boys, his wife of the days before his preferment alone and drunken in their country house, consoling herself with footmen. He was sick to the soul with his knowledge of Templeton.
‘No doubt it is perverse of them to press enquiry so far,’ he said drily, ‘but there it is.’
‘You are sarcastic, sir. It is not true to say that nothing has been achieved. I have risked displeasure at court by resisting demands for increased sugar duties to swell the revenues. There has been no increase since they were raised to help finance the war with the French, and that is close on four years now.’
He had spoken with indignation, real or assumed. But there was nothing assumed about the unsteadiness of his hands when he set down his cup. ‘Not to have agreed then would have cost me my place, it would have branded me as unpatriotic,’ he said.
‘If you will forgive me,’ Kemp said, in the same level tones, ‘the duties would have been kept down in any case, even without your support. As you are aware, we have fifty-three members of the House of Commons voting in our interest directly, as well as some others, whom we both know, whose pockets are affected one way or another. We are strong enough to turn the balance in parliament on any West India business. It is not for the conduct of bills in the House that we need your interest. You know that well, I think, Sir William. We need your voice behind the scenes, in the Council, your urgent –’
At this moment the valet entered with garments draped over one arm, holding a long stick with a half a dozen wigs on it before him like a lance.
‘Ah, Bindman,’ Templeton said, grateful for the diversion. ‘Let us see, now.’
‘I thought the claret-coloured suit, sir, with the silver stitching,’ the valet said, after a brief bow to Kemp, ‘and a silver wig to go with it; a dull-toned wig will not do well with silver threaded on wine-colour, especially seeing that the suit is satin and has a high shine to it.’
He had spoken as he was obviously accustomed to speak, in high-pitched, intimate tones, as if there were no one else present. He took some gliding steps into the bedchamber and laid the clothes on the bed. ‘This one?’ he said returning, lifting one of the wigs delicately from the stick. He had produced from his pocket a little powder-bellows.
‘Wait, you rogue,’ Templeton said. ‘Why do you always hurry me so?’
‘I would have this interview in private,’ Kemp said coldly. ‘I cannot speak to you while this fellow capers about with wigs.’
Dignity required some delay in response to this. Templeton had commenced already to unfasten the high turban. He continued to do so, glancing at Kemp through the glass. Typical of the low-born fellow to be rendered uneasy by the presence of servants. Son of a provincial bankrupt. The times were bad that could throw up such creatures into positions of power. Templeton had his own sources of information and there was a file on Kemp in his office at the Ministry.
He took in the careless, lounging posture of his visitor, a carelessness at odds with the tight lips, the insolent intensity of the eyes. A man who had come from nothing and nowhere. It was a career meteoric even in these times of opportunity for the clever and unscrupulous. He had begun as an employee of the firm of Thomas Fletcher, which carried on an extensive trade with Jamaica, dealing on the London Exchange in sugar grown on its own plantations and imported in its own ships. He had made himself useful to his employers in a number of ways, some of them on the edge of legality and some beyond. Templeton knew something of these last, though not enough to be useful. Kemp had been twice to Jamaica to increase the firm’s holdings by bribing or intimidating local officials to sign foreclosure orders on small tenants who had fallen into arrears. These services and others more nebulous had brought him to a full partnership in five years. He had married sugar too, in the person of the daughter of Sir Hugo Jarrold, whose merchant bank had been founded on his connections in the West India trade. Elizabeth Jarrold had neither looks nor elegance but had made up for both by the fortune she had brought, said to be eighty thousand pounds. Kemp’s present wealth could only be guessed at; but the most important fact about him from Templeton’s point of view was that he had lately become Vice-President of the West India Association and could thus speak for the entire faction …
The turban was removed now and Templeton’s long, nearly naked head stood revealed. ‘Bindman is discretion itself,’ he said at last. ‘He has been with me these five years.’
‘He has been with me no more than five minutes but I find it enough,’ Kemp said. ‘I should esteem it a favour.’
‘Very well.’ Templeton assumed an air of fatigue. ‘Bindman, you can go. I will dress myself this morning.’
‘Dress yourself, sir?’ The valet’s attentive bearing was ruffled by solicitude and surprise.
‘Yes, yes, yes. Dress myself. ’Sblood, man, do you think me a puppet with no independent powers of locomotion? Go, sir. And tell Biggs to send away all those who are waiting. I will have no time for anyone this morning.’
Kemp waited till the servant had withdrawn before resuming. He was telling Templeton what for the most part the latter knew already. The local assembly in Kingston, elected by popular vote in the colony and controlling the purse-strings, was bringing pressure to bear on the Governor, whose salary they also controlled, to authorize policies hostile to the interests of the absentee landlords whom Kemp represented. They were seeking to confiscate tracts of land and to redistribute them among small farmers on the island. These measures, of course, were opposed by His Majesty’s Government …
‘Or they should be, sir,’ Kemp said. ‘If they are not, we are abandoning one of the most sacred duties of government, which is the preservation of property. The great end of men’s entering into society in the first place is the enjoyment of their properties in peace and safety.’
‘That is most certainly true, sir. And this present administration of my Lord Rockingham, in which I have the honour to serve, has ever been dedicated to ensuring it.’
Kemp’s air of nonchalance fell away and he sat forward abruptly. ‘Then why is this policy allowed to continue unchecked?’ he demanded. ‘The legislation is there. Why is it not enforced? Why, above all, are you not more active on our behalf, in view of the sums, the very considerable sums, that you have received? Why am I thus obliged to come in person here and wait on your pleasure and consume my time away? Do you think I find it agreeable, sir? Do you think I find it congenial? Do you?’
‘Good God!’ Templeton was shocked at the blaze of antagonism that had come to the other’s eyes. ‘How can I answer you?’ he said. He had an impulse to get up and put the dressing-table between them. It was almost as if the fellow were gathering for a spring, as he said later that day to a crony at White’s: ‘I tell you, I feared for my person,’ he said, ‘and there was nothing there but the stick with my wigs on, which that wretch Bindman had left behind.’
It had seemed inexplicable, this spasm of fury, quite out of keeping with their conversation, which had been progressing on accustomed lines. Templeton was astute enough, but we never fully succeed in understanding what we cannot feel and so he did not suspect the sense of outrage that had come to Kemp to find himself using the same language, exchanging similar phrases with a man he so despised, as if they were both of the same kidney, as if he had waded through the years only to make an embrace of minds with this depraved fop. If he had suspected anything of this, Templeton would have found it grotesque, in a man who was so strenuously engaged in protecting his own interest. That he did not suspect it was a mark of virtue in a nature not otherwise richly endowed with this commodity. He was venal and corrupt but he did not dignify his motives to himself – only to others.
‘It is not so simple,’ he said now, in a tone he strove to make conciliatory. ‘Let me play the adversary for a while and point out to you the arguments on the other side. The plantations you speak of are owned by landlords who do not set foot on the island once in ten years. Their estates are mismanaged by overseers regrettably subject to the corruption of the climate, in other words liquor and whores, sir, and milked by dishonest attorneys, with consequent loss of duty to the Crown at a time when the demand for sugar is rising. Then there is the disproportion in population, with dangers of a slave revolt. There must be found some way of encouraging more Englishmen to settle in the colony – there were barely twenty-five thousand in the last count, against more than a hundred thousand blacks. The Deficiency Laws have failed to restrain the practice of absenteeism, hence the clamour for redistribution of land in the local assembly. There are those in parliament sympathetic to these demands, especially among the followers of Chatham. Need I name ’em to you?’
Kemp looked down for a while in silence. His anger had gone, leaving a certain familiar sense of desolation. ‘No, you need not,’ he said. ‘I know well enough who they are. For us, you see, the issue is simple, in spite of what you say. We are ready to guarantee an income for the Governor, whomever he be, that will make him independent of the assembly. But the real change must come in the workings by which the decisions of the Council are put into effect. The Council has the power, the statutory power, to disallow local legislation even when backed by the Governor. If there is delay, it must be because some person or persons are obstructing the procedure. This is not a question of legislation, it is a question of influence. That is why you were approached in the first place, so that you could use your voice behind the scenes.’
But how strong was this voice? he wondered, looking at the rouged and sorrowful face before him, with its thick eyebrows and slight, incongruous simper. And how often, and how earnestly, was it being raised? It had been his private belief for some time now that Templeton was taking bribes from the opposite party too. Men like this, grown old in the practice of chicanery, were difficult to frighten for long; they could not easily believe that the streams which had nourished them so long could dry up. In the purlieus of Westminster bribes were paid like pensions, long after it had been forgotten whose interest was secured by them …
‘We want results,’ he said quietly. ‘We are tired of waiting. It is possible that you imagine we would rather pay you for nothing than risk your disfavour by ceasing. If so, you had better disabuse yourself. That may have been the case in the time of my predecessor, but I assure you it is not the case now. I take the view that when a man’s friendship has not helped us we have nothing to fear from his enmity.’
He got up, looking squarely at the man before him. ‘You, on the other hand, have much to fear from ours,’ he said. ‘Put on wisdom with your wig today, Sir William, and ponder my words well. I trust I make my meaning clear to you?’
‘Abundantly crystalline, sir, curse me, translucent,’ Templeton said, meeting the other’s gaze with tolerable firmness.
On this less than cordial note the two men parted. Kemp found his chairmen waiting in the courtyard with the sedan, as instructed; but he paid them and sent them away, feeling the need for air and movement.
He left the Albert Gate on his left and began to walk towards Hyde Park Corner, crossing the Westbourne by the little wooden footbridge. After a while he became aware of a stinging sensation in his right hand and saw that the palm bore shallow lacerations which were bleeding slightly. He could not at first understand this, then he realized that it must have happened during his interview with Templeton: he had clenched his fist so tightly that he had cut himself with his nails. Only the right one, he thought vaguely – he had been holding his cane with the other. Increasingly these days he found himself becoming aware of overwrought feeling through some discomfort felt later, rather as one is woken by some pain in the night.
He had the wall of the park now on his left. Across from him, on the opposite side, there was a row of small houses, then the White Horse Inn with St George’s Hospital beyond it, fronting on to Knightsbridge. He crossed the road and turned off alongside the hospital garden, which ran into Grosvenor Place. This had no buildings at its lower end, giving directly on to the open heathland known as Five Fields. Kemp stood for a while here looking out over the ponds and brick kilns.
It was a quiet corner. The rumble of carts and coaches on the cobbles of Piccadilly and the cries of hawkers came to him, but distantly. A ragged, crippled man was playing a barrel-organ at the Knightsbridge end of the square, dragging one leg and glancing up at the windows for pennies. The music carried to Kemp, softened and distorted, unrecognizable. He could see the gleam of the ponds and gulls wheeling above them and the figures of fishermen. It was early October and the weather had been wet and windy, though today there was some faint sunshine. He could smell the damp leaf mould from the garden behind him.
He recalled with distaste the conversation just past, the posturing and evasions of Templeton. He had nailed the fellow, though, in the end. What steps could have led him to such a man? He could almost believe he had come upon him by some unrepeatable chance, as one might come upon a creature in a labyrinth. But of course it was not by chance … He experienced a slight feeling of nausea at the openness of the sky, the flashes of the gulls’ wings over the pale water, the spaces beyond. London ended here, his London at least. It lay all to the back of him, the precincts of government, the banks and counting-houses; and with it lay all he had achieved in these twelve years: his partnership in Fletcher & Company, his holdings in his father-in-law’s bank, his house in St James’s, the power and position that had come with his money. He had laboured and denied himself and stopped at nothing, however unworthy. His promise, his father’s memory, had purged everything of wrong. In restoring his father’s name and credit, he had established and consolidated his own. Kemp was a name to be reckoned with again. And he was still some months away from his thirty-fifth birthday.
It was a triumph … He looked again at the solitary fishermen, dark in the distance. There would be pike in those deep ponds. Beyond them, he knew, there was the toll-gate and beyond that the road through the market gardens of Marylebone and the fields where the cowkeepers had their shacks … Something, some nostalgia or desire for completeness, came to him with the strength of a physical impulse, though without aim or direction. The music of the barrel-organ was nearer now. Kemp moved away across the square but after a moment returned to give the man a florin. For a moment he met the dark eyes, saw marks of hardship on the face, had a fleeting sense of the streets the man would drag through, grinding out the same tunes.
He went down the steps and cut across the park past the keeper’s lodge and came out on Piccadilly, turning off again when he drew opposite the reservoir. His house was on one corner of St James’s Square, overlooking the railed gardens.
He found his wife at home as he had expected, still in her bedroom. It was past midday now but she had just risen. He knew her movements well: she would spend two hours at least on her toilette, take her tea and leave the house in late afternoon on a round of visits. They would not meet again that day – perhaps not until this time tomorrow. He wanted to speak to her about her father, Sir Hugo, with whom he was now on rather bad terms because of recent business disagreements and because it was to her father that Margaret complained of him.
The elderly French maid was in the room, clearing away the remains of breakfast. He noted that as soon as he appeared she began to delay. Fritz, his wife’s poodle, yapped when he entered – there was an old enmity between them, unyielding on both sides. Margaret Kemp chided her dog and greeted her husband in more or less the same tones. Across the top of her head there lay a large round cushion covered with black crêpe, over which the hair was combed back and fastened with curlers. She was a martyr to fashion and the fashion now was for a high, piled-up style. Her face was completely covered with white cream.
‘Will you ask her to take away the things and leave us alone for a while?’ Kemp said, receiving in response a snap of black eyes from the maid – Marie shared the poodle’s feelings precisely.
‘Why? You know she does not gossip.’
Kemp sighed. It was the second time that morning. ‘I know nothing of the sort,’ he said. ‘Can you not exist for ten minutes without her presence in the room?’
‘I am glad I have not a suspicious nature,’ his wife said. ‘Go, Marie, I will ring when I need you.’
Kemp waited until the maid had gone, then began to speak to her about her father’s latest passion, which was for speculating in negroes. The old man had somehow become convinced – and how and by whom were among the things Kemp most wanted to know – that the trade in slaves was shortly to be made illegal by Act of Parliament. He had instructed his agents in Barbados and Virginia to buy up as many blacks as possible in order to get compensation from the government when the bill was passed into law.
‘He is going mad,’ Kemp said. ‘That is the only possible conclusion. There is no such a bill in prospect. There are not above three members of parliament who take the abolitionist line. I am told reliably that your father is buying up negroes of no quality whatever, with no value on the market. Old, diseased, crippled, it makes no difference. He has got fixed in his mind this absurd notion of compensation. The blacks will all have to be fed and kept alive somehow, at great expense. Half of them will die on his hands in spite of everything.’
The mask of cream which covered his wife’s face allowed no expression, except what showed in her eyes. These were brown and glistening and full of ill-humour. They were not looking at him.
‘Could you not find an occasion to speak to him and dissuade him from this folly?’ he said.
‘Lord, sir,’ she said, ‘you speak with rare feeling. ’Twas in those very tones you wooed me. I would not have credited you with such tender solicitude for my father’s welfare.’
Kemp said nothing for a while. Pride made him wish to seem indifferent to the sarcasm, with the same indifference he showed towards the irregularities of her conduct, her absences from home, her suspected infidelities. At heart he felt it to be no more than justice. He saw it as he might have seen a balance sheet. The money she had brought had provided substantial investment funds much earlier than he had hoped, at a time of expanding opportunity in the London property market. She had saved him the many years of scheming it would still have taken to pay off his father’s debts. He had protested love in order to get her and since he had not repaid her in that currency, she was free to choose other means of repayment. He kept to his side of things by not reproaching her. And it was this that gave her the greatest offence of all.
He looked at her obscured face, the grotesquely high setting of her hair. Seven years of marriage and he could not remember a time when there had been trust between them. ‘Well,’ he said at last, ‘if you have any regard for him you will disabuse his mind.’ A thought struck him suddenly. ‘Try to discover who is communicating these ideas to him,’ he said.
She had begun to remove the cream from her face with moist pieces of cotton, dropping the used swabs into a little silver dish on the bed beside her. The clear complexion she had possessed when he married her, and which had been her best feature, was gone now; unhappiness had made her sallow and frequent use of cosmetics was clouding the skin.
‘You are asking me, in other words, to spy on my own father,’ she said after a moment.
‘It is for his good and ours, the good of the bank. I am asking from you no more than the duty of a wife.’ Kemp had no sense of irony in saying this and was surprised to see a smile come to his wife’s face. The interests of the bank were paramount in his mind. He took a few steps across the room. ‘I would be interested to know who is spreading these rumours of abolition,’ he said. His movements had brought him too close to the cushion on which the poodle was reclining and it set up a furious yapping, baring its teeth, and shaking the beribboned tufts of its mane at him.
‘Be quiet, you little brute,’ he said.
‘Pray do not disturb poor Fritz.’
‘Poor Fritz, is it?’ Kemp eyed the beast. ‘I have never been able to see what a dog like that is good for.’
A silence fell between them. Now that he had said what he had come to say, he did not know what else to talk about. His wife’s activities and interests were remote to him, her circle of acquaintance quite different.
‘I shall not be home this evening,’ he said at last. ‘I am dining out. I shall not need the coach, however.’
‘Well, that is a blessing. You are at your club?’
‘No, it is a celebration banquet of the Association. I have spoke to you of it, I think?’
But he saw that she remembered nothing of the matter, and he himself could not be sure whether he had mentioned it to her or not. He certainly would have said nothing about the plans of the younger element to go on afterwards to a Covent Garden tavern for a meeting of the Trionfi Club, of which he had now, as Vice-President of the West India Association, become the leading figure. The activities of the Trionfi were under oath of secrecy. But he thought it possible he had mentioned the banquet, as it was such a great occasion. The Assembly in Jamaica, in order to raise revenue, had sought to impose a duty on every negro imported into the colony. The Sugar Interest, supported by the Company of Merchants Trading to Africa, had naturally resisted this iniquitous tax on their profits. There had been a protracted legal battle, but the Association’s lawyers had pleaded the matter successfully and the Board of Trade had finally condemned the law as unjustifiable, improper and prejudicial to British commerce.
Something of this he tried to tell her now, but quite soon she interrupted him to ask if Marie could be recalled. ‘I must have her back,’ she said. ‘I did not think you would stay so long. She must positively come and unpin this cushion, she is the only creature in the world that knows how to do it.’
On this he took his leave. He spent the afternoon closeted in his study with his secretary, dealing with correspondence of various sorts. His position in the Association, which he took very seriously, had involved him in much extra work. The President, Sir James Wigmore, over eighty now and increasingly infirm, did little these days but put in an appearance on ceremonial occasions – he was due to make a speech at the banquet that evening. This was to be held at the premises of the African Merchants off Chancery Lane. The members of the Association were guests of the Company for the evening.
The streets were miry after the recent rain and he wore a long riding-cloak to protect his royal-blue satin suit. He stabled his horse in the courtyard, consigned cloak and boots to the stable-boy, changed into the elegant wedge-heeled shoes he had brought with him and mounted to the ante-rooms, where he was announced in stentorian tones. There were a number of people already assembled here, several of them known to him. Sir James arrived and passed directly into the dining-hall. Distributing smiles, his head in its full-bottomed wig trembling incessantly, he was deftly supported to his place at the head of the table by a liveried footman of Herculean proportions. His installation was the signal for the call to dinner. The orchestra in the gallery struck up with ‘Conquering Heroes’ and some seventy persons trooped to their places at the long table amidst the splendour of coffered ceilings, double rows of Doric pillars and gleaming stucco mouldings in blue and gold recently completed by the Italian plasterer, Pietro Francini, at very considerable expense.
The first toast came, as usual, after the soup. It was delivered by the Chairman of the Company, who welcomed the guests and drank perdition to any who would lay import duties on British goods. Sir James was then helped to his feet by the footman who stood behind his chair. He gave thanks to their hosts on behalf of the West India Association and raised his glass to the principles so triumphantly vindicated by the recent decision of the Tribunal. He added his congratulations to those who had pleaded the case and particularly the advocate who had led them, Mr Joshua Moore, who was a guest of honour that evening. Through their victory the value to the nation of the Triangular Trade had been clearly recognized. The East India trade was pernicious, in his opinion, draining England of bullion and committing her to buy unnecessary wares. The Africa trade, by contrast, was a sane and healthy trade, carried on by means of English manufactured goods and rendering the nation independent of foreigners for her supply of tropical products … Sir James drew himself up and looked with palsied benignity round the table. ‘And to what tropical product do I refer in particular, gentlemen? May I hear your answer?’
The reply came in jovial shouts: ‘Sugar, sir! Sugar!’
‘So here is to sugar,’ the old man said, and drank a second glass amid cheers.
Kemp, sitting a little lower down the table, glanced at the lawyer, who had been placed opposite him. Moore had a sharp-boned, watchful face, flushed a little now with what he had drunk. He had listened with good-humoured impassivity to Sir James’s congratulations. Meeting Kemp’s eye, he nodded and raised his glass. ‘Your health, sir,’ he said.
‘And yours.’ Kemp rarely drank enough to disturb his judgement, but he was drinking more than usual tonight. He felt some tension about the meeting of the Trionfi planned for later; it was his inauguration as the new president of the club and his conduct would come under scrutiny … ‘Some of us may differ from Sir James as regards the East India trade,’ he said to Moore, ‘but we are unanimous in our admiration for the way you conducted our case.’ The fellow would have been just as eloquent on the other side, if his fee had come from that quarter, he thought with some disgust. Lawyers were mercenary creatures. This one was Irish, too – a nation of talkers.
‘I am glad of your good opinion,’ Moore said with a slight smile. ‘I take it you approve of the East India trade?’
Kemp hesitated a moment from habitual caution. But this was public knowledge. ‘My firm supports the Company of Elliot and Son,’ he said. ‘They are one of the main importers of China tea. Did you know that duty was paid on more than six million pounds of tea coming into this country last year? And the volume will increase. All reports indicate that our new Colony of India is capable of large-scale production. The East India Company is doing us a service. The more tea, the more sugar – it takes no prodigious wit to see that.’
‘I see you are far-sighted, sir,’ the other said. There was something slightly ironical in the tone of this. Kemp found himself being regarded by a pair of humorous blue eyes. ‘Tell me now,’ the lawyer said softly, ‘with all this tea coming in, do you not think the price will fall so that the common people can afford it?’
‘Why, yes, in time.’
‘In quite a short time, do you not think? And if they take to drinking tea, will they not require sugar in vast quantities?’
‘Of course.’ Kemp refilled his glass. He was nettled by the other’s manner – it was as if he were being rather teasingly cross-examined. He was aware that others nearby were listening. ‘And that will help our business,’ he said curtly. ‘Any fool can see that.’
‘Here is one who can’t,’ the lawyer said with unruffled good humour. ‘You are digging your own pit, sir, if you will pardon me. We are talking about a time when tea will be cheaper than beer. Once the true magnitude of the sugar market is grasped, do you think that control of the prices will be left in the hands of a few West Indian planters? People will look elsewhere for their sugar, sir – wherever it is cheapest. There is no divine right in commerce.’
Kemp was indignant. He could not imagine any government, of whatever complexion, exposing the nation to foreign competition. One country could only grow rich at the expense of another – it was an axiom and an article of faith with him. But he had no time to retort upon the lawyer. The remains of the beef were being cleared, they would be bringing in the sorbet, it was time for him, as Vice-President, to propose the health of their hosts, the Africa Merchants. He got to his feet and rapped with his spoon for silence. This took some time to obtain, as the guests were loud and heated now with food and drink. He spoke easily and well, timing his pauses, inserting the humorous remarks prepared beforehand. Though still as scornful as ever of actors, he had learned much about the art of pleasing over the years.
When he came to the heart of his speech he grew serious, pointing out the value and importance of the slave trade, on which every man in the room in some way depended. It was a sign of this value and importance that through all variation in the administration of public affairs, through all variation of government and party, this trade had always been approved, its encouragement voted, its benefit to the nation recognized on all sides …
These were the things above all that this company of men enjoyed hearing and he resumed his seat to general applause. He did not speak again to the lawyer or look at him but devoted his attention to the man on his right, who was already well known to him, as to most people in the room, and always to be found at these gatherings. Dr Ebeneezer Slingsby, familiarly known among his associates as Dr Sugar, was a man who had done more for the trade, in his own way, than almost anyone, having been for more than thirty years a tireless publicist for the medicinal virtues of sugar in every form, and having published not much previously a learned treatise entitled ‘A Vindication of Sugar’, in which he proved beyond doubt that sugar was beneficial to everyone, of whatever degree or age or sex. Throughout all this time his researches had been helped forward by generous subsidies from the West India Association.
Slingsby was corpulent and somewhat short of breath and his teeth were ruinous; but his full, round face had a good high shine on it and his eyes glistened as he described to Kemp his new remedy for all ailments of the eye: two drams of fine sugarcandy, one grain of leaf gold, one quarter-dram pearl. ‘Made into a very fine and impalpable powder, sir,’ the doctor said. ‘When dry, blow a convenient quantity into the eye. Relief will be felt within two minutes.’
‘The pearl and gold leaf will make it an expensive remedy, I fancy,’ Kemp said. ‘Beyond the means of most.’
‘That is true, sir, it is designed for people of fashion. But I am presently seeking patents for a hand-lotion made from sugar paste which will be a sovereign cure for all manner of external lesions and well within the means of the common general. And I am working also on a dentifrice made with powdered sugar, which should come out cheap enough. Alas, too late to save my own teeth.’ The smile he gave at this point attested in a graphic fashion to the terminal condition of these. ‘But we do not work for ourselves alone,’ he said. ‘It is the younger generation who will thank us. There is a Slingsby Sugar Snuff now on the market which I believe will replace tobacco entirely, to the better health of the whole population.’
The doctor paused to drink some of his wine. His nails, Kemp noticed, were a strangely uniform whitish colour without any evident presence of blood behind them. ‘Well, that is good news,’ he said. ‘I had not thought sugar could be put to so many uses.’
Dr Sugar set down his glass. ‘Sir,’ he said, ‘sugar has a thousand uses, it is the most versatile of all commodities in the world. It is first of all a food, of course, and an excellent one. A man can live on the products of sugar alone for many weeks together without the smallest detriment, as I have proved upon my own person. But sugar is also a preservative, a solvent, a stabilizer. It is equally valuable as excipient or diluent. It gives consistency of body, it masks bitter-tasting drugs. It can be used in syrups and elixirs, as a demulcent or as a binding agent for tablets. It is a base for confections, oil sugars, aromatic sugars, candy cough lozenges. It improves the eyesight, preserves the hair and sweetens the blood. Sir, there is no end to the virtues of sugar.’
By the time Kemp had followed the doctor through this catalogue he was beginning to feel the onset of drunkenness. However, when the guests rose he was still steady enough in his movements and clear in speech.
The place used by the Trionfi for their meetings was the Bell in Covent Garden, which boasted a good-sized dining-room. In the cloakroom, where he had gone to divest himself of cloak and boots, Kemp found four men, all members of the club, sitting at cards with brandy on the table before them.
‘Here is our worthy President,’ one of them said. ‘Stab me, why do you look so glum, man? Here, have some brandy, get your flipper to the bottle.’
Kemp saw that the man, whose name was Fowler, was drunk already. His waistcoat hung open and the lace front of his shirt had a wet stain on it. Kemp drank from the bottle and sighed loudly and smiled round at the men, widening his eyes in a way that was peculiar to him, slightly devilish. ‘This will wash out the taste of all those confounded speeches,’ he said, and drank again. The men at the table had been looking at him expectantly. They all laughed now, as if in some kind of relief. Kemp had found something of his father’s friendly manners in the course of paying off his debts. To the advantages of good looks and a well-knit figure he had added the useful gift of bonhomie. But there was nothing of the father’s simple and unaffected good-fellowship in the way the son noted now, for future reference, that these men had not thought fit to attend the banquet, preferring to sit here over their cards. He knew them all for profligate and idle. They were the sons of plantation owners, men who had never known the want of money …
‘They have got the ladies in already,’ one said.
Kemp could hear a considerable noise of voices from the dining-room adjoining, and the sound of the fiddlers playing a reel. ‘I must go in,’ he said. ‘I hope that fool of a landlord has not let the women into the dining-room yet – they are to come in later.’
‘No,’ Fowler said, with a loose smile. ‘They are upstairs getting dressed for it, powdering their fannies.’ He tilted back his chair and patted his crotch with an imaginary powder-puff.
‘You will need something more than powder on it, Fowler, to stiffen you tonight,’ Kemp said. ‘Are you gentlemen not going in?’
They began to get up, but he did not wait, passing alone into the long, low-raftered room, where a fire of logs burned at one end. He greeted the dozen men there and took his place at the head of the table. Immediately on his right, as tradition required, was their guest for the evening, a man named Armstrong, the only one there not connected with sugar – he was a lieutenant in the Guards, a relative of one of the members.
While all remained standing the retiring President, lisping in speech but impressively serious in manner, welcomed Kemp to his new office, and handed him the ceremonial white baton, known as the ‘Cane’. No member could command the attention of the others, nor speak to them collectively, without having this in his possession. Kemp tapped three times on the table with it and formally declared the proceedings open. The serving man came forward with the port.
Voices were raised, now that the gravity of protocol had been laid aside. The drinking was reckless. Most of the men there had been tipsy when they sat down, but they drank off bumpers of wine as if it were water. There were toasts to King George and the Royal Princes and Squinting Kate, the Queen of Camden. Kemp got up while he still had his senses about him and expressed the hope that he would give satisfaction as the new President, a sentiment which was greeted by loud and sustained hammering on the table. Some wine was spilled in the course of this and one or two glasses broken.
An undercurrent of excitement ran below the high spirits. It was hot in the room. Kemp felt perspiration break out on him. Several of the men had discarded coats and waistcoats. The air was heavy with tobacco smoke and vinous breath. A low chant began from lower down the table: ‘Trionfi – trionfi – trionfi.’ Kemp made a signal to the two fiddlers, who broke into a rendering of ‘Lads and Lassies’.
This was the cue for the club’s Italian sugar chef, Signor Gasperini, to advance into the room in his tall hat and spotless white apron. Behind him, greeted by a rousing chorus of yells and whoops, came three attendants bearing a litter on which stood a three-foot high model of a negress fashioned in chocolate. Except for bracelets, anklets and pearl collar, which were all made of sugar-crystal droplets, and the red sugar-paste rose in her hair, she was naked. To the continuing strains of the fiddle, they made the round of the table with her. At her base was a plaque of chocolate with letters picked out in spun sugar: THE SABLE VENUS.
Kemp rapped with his baton for silence. ‘In accordance with custom, Signor Gasperini will now explain to the company the mysteries of this delectable lady’s composition.’
The chef had a lively eye and a smile so extensive that the corners of his lips and eyes seemed almost to join in a circle. The negretta was made of pasta di cioccolato e cacao, sweetened with fanid, flavoured with vanilla, moulded by his own hands – he threw them up with the gesture of a conjuror. ‘The hairs is made from caramella,’ he said jubilantly, ‘her leeps is pink pasta of sugar, the eyes zucchero fino, she have sugar cherries for neeples, dolcissimi, no? Ecco Signori, a voi!!!’ He swept off his tall hat and gestured proudly towards his creation, who regarded the company with gleaming, affrighted eyes. ‘Only the best sugar go to make this fanciulla,’ Signor Gasperini said.
‘What the devil is fanid?’ muttered the young lieutenant in Kemp’s ear. It seemed he had experienced a moment of intellectual enquiry. His eyes were round with drink and wonderment.
‘It is the juice of the sugar cane after it has been boiled down and skimmed,’ Kemp said. ‘It makes a sweet black dough, like thick syrup.’ He stood up rather unsteadily and inclined his head to the chef. ‘Gasperini,’ he said, ‘you have excelled yourself. My congratulations. The guest may now be served.’
Armstrong, after some fuddled hesitation, and to the accompaniment of much profane advice, chose the left breast with its cherry nipple. He was served with dexterity by the attendants, who could not, however, avoid some of the shoulder coming away with it. Thereafter the others were served, beginning with Kemp, who took her nose and eyes, proceeding down the table, the least senior members having to pick among the fragments. Sauternes was served and a sweet, heavy Malaga wine.
Kemp saw one of the junior members get up suddenly and make for the door, his face overspread with a chalky pallor. Fowler had slumped forward in his chair; his head rested on the table among the remains of his chocolate. So much for the powder-puff, Erasmus thought. He was distinctly drunk himself now, but his stomach felt firm enough. The chanting began again, this time accompanied by a flat-handed striking at the table: ‘Trionfi – trionfi – trionfi.’ The volume rose, drowning out the fiddles. On the crest of it, laughing among themselves, the women came in, sent by the prudent landlord before things started to get broken.
There were eight of them, scantily dressed and painted and high-stepping – they had been given drink while waiting. They sat in the laps of the men who were quickest to catch them, except for one, who came unbidden to Erasmus, a wild-haired, gypsy-looking young woman with a bold mouth. She wore nothing above the waist but a muslin bodice. Her breasts moved unconfined below it, the nipples showing through with a dark glow. She drank from his glass and smiled at him, her eyes shining below the thick fringe of hair.
Erasmus, whose senses were swimming now and whose only care was to see that no one took away his precious baton of office, fumbled with the buttons of her bodice, at the same time trying to explain to Armstrong, with a vestigial sense of his duty as host, that the trionfi were due to appear now: it was these that gave the club its name, little figures made from cast sugar. ‘Cast on marble,’ he said, enunciating with immense care. His tongue felt too thick for his mouth. ‘The marble first lubricated with oil of almonds …’ Armstrong did not appear to be listening closely. The girl on his lap had slid a hand inside his breeches.
Gasperini’s men brought them, in boxes tied with red ribbon, one for each person in the room. They were unwrapped and held up and turned this way and that in the lamplight, glistening white replicas of horse-shoes, pigs, rosettes, shells, keys … A long-drawn aaah went round the table: Erasmus’s girl had extracted from her box – as all had known she would, since it was marked for her – a sugar penis, gleaming with crystals, heroically tumid, with a red tassel attached. Smiling, she held it up for all to see. And as she did so, the chanting began again, a single barking syllable now: ‘Up-up-up.’
She laid the dildo before Erasmus and leapt up in a single movement on to the table. Dishes, glasses, remnants of food were swept aside. She tossed her head and snapped her fingers at the hollow-eyed fiddlers, who went into the rhythm of a gavotte. She commenced a swaying dance in the centre of the table, removing her garments piece by piece and throwing them down among the spectators, petticoats, bustle, bodice, stockings. Naked, she was beautiful in the lamplight, her skin like warm pearl. She swooped for her gift, danced into a half-squatting position. Still to the stately rhythm of the music, she inserted it between her legs, pressing it slowly into herself with both hands, raising her face with an expression of simulated ecstasy, while the voices round her rose again, overlapping, indistinguishable, like the baying of dogs.
The woman rose and raised her arms to show the hands were empty and danced a few gyrating steps, keeping her knees close, working her thighs, rounding her mouth to make oohs of bliss. The crimson tassel hung down between her legs like some trailing tissue of blood. She kept to the centre of the table, stepping short, turning to avoid the hands that snatched, though more in jest than earnest, at the swinging cord.
She came to rest where she had begun, before Erasmus, and smiled down at him and swayed her hips, while the whole table loudly exhorted their new President to take it out-out-out, and he reached up and took the strip of velvet and drew on it and a roar went up at the expected sight of how wilted and eroded that proud prick was now, how it dangled grotesquely misshapen on its thread – in accordance with hallowed custom it had been made of powder sugar, designed for quick melting in the hot spice of the vagina.
Erasmus knew what was expected of him. He rose and swung the naked woman off the table and set a staggering course with her towards the door. Then he remembered the Cane, symbol of his office, and came back for it. On inspired impulse, he turned his lapse into triumph, raising the baton and making a sign of the cross with it in a gesture of blessing and farewell, adding that night – though without design – to the proud traditions of the Trionfi Club.
The girl led him down the candle-lit passage into a small room with a narrow bed. On this, with some laughter but no words, she lay down and waited for him. The melted sugar had leaked from her, he saw the shine of it on her thighs. Without words or touch of the mouth, they copulated briefly and violently. She clutched at him and made an angry cry and he felt the slight knifing of her nails. He was released in a series of groaning shudders and fell down beside her like a stone and slept at once.
He woke to a throbbing head and a feeling of utter desolation. There was a grey light in the room. The woman was gone. The tavern and the streets outside were silent and he judged it to be not long after dawn. There was a jug of water and a basin on the small table against the window. He washed his face and hands, drying himself with his handkerchief. The room looked out over the courtyard and the stables, half obscured in mist. Erasmus shivered a little in the chill air. A certain impulse of escape came to him. He would rouse the lad in the loft over the stables, have his horse saddled, his cloak and boots fetched. The streets would be quiet. At this hour even crime was sleeping … But he made no move yet to leave. His white baton was still there by the bed where he had let it fall. He went to pick it up. The movement sent shoots of pain through his head. Holding the baton he stood for some minutes longer in the dim room, going over things in his mind, recapitulating his assets. He had passed his initiation triumphantly – he knew it. Everything lay in his hands. He was acknowledged leader of the younger set, and his position in the Association would enable him to influence events and steer business the way of Fletcher and Kemp. Fletcher was old and he had no sons; day by day he was relinquishing control. Now that the debts were paid, more money would be free for investment. He would go into banking on his own account. The future lay with those who dealt in money, not commodities … It lay with people like himself, people who could see. Why then did he feel this desolation, which was not sickness of body, which would not be dismissed as the aftermath of debauch, coming as it did at other times and often quite unexpectedly, a feeling of being thrust without shelter under remorseless skies? The successful cannot be unhappy – it was a contradiction in terms. But as he stood there, in this time of licensed introspection, with night over and duties of day not yet resumed, he fell again to rehearsing in his mind the actions he was about to take, as if seeking to give them, and with them his life as a whole, some fuller reality. Crossing the greasy cobbles, shouting for the stable-lad … Perhaps he would climb to the loft to shake him awake. His horse would be led out, snorting in the cold air. And he would turn her head south towards the river and ride through the empty streets … Suddenly he felt like a man who has played by the rules and been cheated by an opponent more cunning – so cunning that it was not possible to see how the trick had been done.