IN THE MORNING, WASHED, SHAVED, DRESSED AND SOBER, he managed a small breakfast and considered the previous night. It had been a good night on the whole, he decided, out with the boys. He put it out of his mind, drank two cups of the tepid coffee (nothing like Spain, he reflected ruefully) and gathered his few belongings. He had learned to travel light, in the course of his employ with the House of Feebes.
It was a short walk to Euston, and he boarded the Liverpool train with enthusiasm. This steam locomotive, a sleek thing of polished metal, thrummed with power as Edward found his carriage. It wasn’t long before they departed the station, and shortly thereafter London’s fetid atmosphere was replaced with the fresh air of the countryside. Soon it was hard to imagine a city had ever been, as England’s green and pleasant land, as the poet, Blake, had so aptly put it, appeared in all its rainswept glory. Though he was not much for poetry himself, Edward was nevertheless an educated man. He could recite appropriately from Shakespeare, had a smattering of Byron, a line or two of Milton’s, and possessed some additional notion of Virgil and Ovid.
There were six of them in the compartment, three each way. The hot air was foggy with tobacco smoke. A tea trolley went by, followed by a cart of newspapers and books. Rain patterned the window. Edward had a tea and crumpet and purchased that morning’s edition of the Illustrated London News. Not much there: the ongoing war in the Crimea, the ongoing rebellion in China, a daring gold robbery on a train from London Bridge (this he pursued with interest), and a report on the devil’s footprints appearing all across Devon (this he also read with interest). His companions in the carriage made conversation but Edward covered his face with his hat and dozed. When he woke he felt better, and outside he could see the gentle landscape had changed into a nightmarish vista of dark satanic mills, and he realised they were passing Birmingham.
He dozed again, and some hours later woke up refreshed to find the train approaching Liverpool at last. The city was engulfed in the smoke and fog of industry, with constant fires burning and ships congregating on the Mersey and along the docks. He left the train and ambled into town, looking with some regret at the Adelphi, which did not fit the purse of a clerk, and so made his way to the Feebes counting-house on the north side. It being closed he admitted defeat, and after asking for directions found the Admiral’s Inn, not far from the docks, and with a cold wind blowing in from the river hurried inside. He was glad then for the fire, and for a small drink of port and a dinner of pie and mash.
The next morning he went to the docks and boarded the boat that took him to the steamer.
*
The Wanderer, laden with mail bags and industrial products for sale in the Americas, and laden also with passengers, servants, crew and assorted luggage, steamed out of the Mersey and into open sea. Edward, not a first-class passenger, found his accommodation agreeable enough, though he had to ascend two staircases in order to reach the uppermost deck each time he craved fresh air. There were only two berths in the cabin, the second being unoccupied. When he opened the porthole there was plenty of fresh air and light. He resigned himself to another long voyage. He passed an hour reviewing the most recent financial figures from Lima. He could see why his uncle had sent him. Moens had written from Lima. He said production on the guano islands was reducing, and the government tardy in paying the loans extended to them by the House of Feebes. Edward supposed he would have to find out the truth of it for himself.
He climbed on deck and watched as Ireland appeared slowly in the distance: green hills and mist, he thought. Green hills and mist. It was dark by the time they reached Queenstown. He went to the saloon, where dinner was served promptly: cold mutton, gooseberry pie and cheese, with a serviceable Madeira. Introductions were made around the table. Edward found himself seated with two planters from Trinidad, who complained bitterly of the economic situation: the home government having outlawed slavery, they were forced to pay free labourers.
‘It’s bad enough they freed the slaves,’ the first one, a Mr Falconer, said, ‘but then they go and pass the Foreign Sugar Bill!’
A Miss Grimshaw, who drew Edward’s eye almost immediately, petted the terrier in her lap and confessed ignorance of the topic. Mr Pettigrew, the second planter, said, ‘The government has allowed the importation into Great Britain—’
‘And Ireland,’ Mr Falconer said.
‘Of slave-grown sugar,’ Mr Pettigrew said. ‘Which means we cannot compete, dear lady! For how can we compete when we must pay a wage while others don’t? It’s all in the margins. You understand—’ he appealed to Edward. ‘You are a finance man.’
‘It’s true,’ Edward allowed. ‘It is a bind.’
‘A bind, man? It is a travesty!’ Mr Falconer said.
Miss Grimshaw – really quite fetching, Edward thought – bit her bottom lip and said, ‘But surely slavery is a moral wrong, gentlemen?’
She was tall and well made, her waist slender and bust well rounded, Edward thought. He evaluated her favours much as he would on a counting sheet. Complexion very fair and clear; cheeks rosy, nose aquiline. Her lips were red, her teeth white. Her chin did not please him.
‘Then is it moral to allow this unfair competition?’ Mr Falconer said, trying to appeal to the lady’s better nature. ‘All we ask for is a fair shot.’
Miss Grimshaw nodded. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I see.’
The conversation turned to other subjects. The food was cleared away. The planters lit cigars; Colonel Haassum a pipe. He was a distinguished-looking Dutchman, travelling with his young daughters to the West Indies, to assume governorship of the islands of Saint Martin and Saint Barthélemy. The daughters themselves were well behaved. The colonel had spoken little up to that point. Now he suggested a game of chess.
Edward, not being much of a chess player, sat back and watched as the colonel played first Mr Falconer and then Mr Pettigrew, defeating them both. Edward’s attention was half on the game, half on the enchanting Miss Grimshaw in her black silk dress.
‘Do you, too, travel to the West Indies?’ Edward asked.
She shook her head. ‘Only as far as Madeira,’ she said, ‘on account of my father.’
‘Your father?’
‘He is in our cabin, resting,’ she explained. ‘He suffers from consumption. The climate in Madeira is beneficial to his health.’
‘I see.’ Edward tried to mask his disappointment. Miss Grimshaw smiled, then said, ‘And yourself, Mr Fibs?’
‘Feebes,’ he said. ‘It’s Feebes.’
She blushed – prettily, he thought.
‘I do beg your pardon,’ she said.
‘Think nothing of it.’
‘Where do you travel to?’ she said.
‘To Panama first,’ Edward said. ‘Then I must go overland and board another ship to Peru.’
‘Peru!’ she said.
‘Indeed.’
‘But what is in Peru, Mr Feebes?’
Bird shit, he thought but didn’t say.
A fortune, he almost did say.
Both of these one and the same.
‘Some financial matters of my firm,’ he said.
‘Such a long way!’ Miss Grimshaw said. She looked wistful. ‘I wish I could travel.’
He felt sad for her then, shackled to her sickly father, bound for Madeira. For himself more, because he would be deprived of such pleasant company. They played a few hands of cards and then each went to their separate cabins – Edward somewhat regretfully.
*
By mid-morning the next day all the Irish had got on board, most of them in steerage, and bound for a new life in Argentina. He did not see much of them. Once in open waters Edward’s seasickness returned. He spent a couple of days in his cabin, and when he emerged the weather had turned warmer, the sky no longer grey, and one afternoon he saw a whale in the distance. He dined, conversed and played games of whist and backgammon. A week later they reached Madeira, and said goodbye to Miss Grimshaw, her ailing father, and the dog. After that they turned towards the Americas and began the ocean crossing.
*
Two weeks later, and having changed to his light clothes during the voyage, the Wanderer made anchor in Barbados. Edward thought it pretty, and very hot. Many of the women were so scantily clad as to expose a great deal of skin. The porters carried everything on their heads. He bought a pair of light trousers for a dollar in a white man’s shop. Then Grenada, also English, and a fight on board, where Mr Falconer, in great temper, complained to the captain of the poor attitude of the servants, who did not attend him, and the two men near came to blows. More islands, then, and more and more black faces, and a litany of complaints from the white men, of the sugar plantations going to waste, and of the coffee plantations sure to follow in ruin. In Jamaica he saw black soldiers and several churches. He changed there for a faster steamer, the Santa Rosa, which carried him at last to Panama.
This was uncharted land for Edward. He only knew his Uncle Henry’s stories: traversing the isthmus in a native canoe, through the murky waters of the Chagres river and underlying swamps, a slow, miserable journey of some days.
But that had been the old days. The Santa Rosa arrived, not in the dilapidated Fort San Lorenzo of Uncle Henry’s tales, but at the new port town of Colón. Edward was hardly an inexperienced traveller. His Spanish was more than passable and he had spent time on the continent on behalf of the House of Feebes.
This did not prepare him for Colón. The port town rose out of the island on which it sat and extended to the land on which the brand-new railway terminal sat. Yankee voices filled the busy streets, the civil buildings were lavish and the shops crammed with goods. An air of busy enthusiasm and enterprise hung in the saloons and the new hotels. It whispered gold.
Here were prospectors heading to California. The Americans funded and built the railway, someone in the Custom House told Edward as he inspected his bags. Expending workers on the construction of the track the way one would use up livestock. Migrants, coolies, slaves and anyone who could be utilised was used, and where they died there they remained, and the land claimed them. The teller shrugged in the telling. There were no cemeteries here to remember people who didn’t even have names. The ticket was twenty-five dollars. Edward was relieved to find it waiting for him in the hotel. The cost of his travel was covered by the firm.
He was glad to be on dry land again. The heat was very strong. He went down to the hotel lobby and found himself in the company of Irish immigrants, burly Yankees sporting guns, and Spanish-speakers with features new to him, a mix of indigenous, European and African. This was the New World, and something loosened in Edward when he smelled this new air, for it was nothing like what he’d experienced before.
The next day he caught the train to Panama City. There the port was busy with ships and the streets again filled with Yankee twang, and ships bringing gold, and men spending their money. It was a rough sort of town. He spent but two days in the Hotel del Istmo, kept by a German, and then boarded the Bolivar.
It was a former whaler, in poor condition. He was much seasick on the voyage, which for the most part hugged the coast. He saw but little of Colombia and Ecuador.
At last, some three weeks later, he arrived in Lima.