Rose (9 page)

“That’s a very jaundiced view of the world, isn’t it?” Earnshaw looked over his beard. If on the train from London he had regarded Blair with suspicion, he now had the certain air of a man who had identified a snake by species and size.

“It may be a different point of view, but it’s rather exciting,” Lydia Rowland said.

“It’s not exciting to support slavery. Isn’t that what you were doing in the Gold Coast?” Earnshaw asked.

“I think the stories we’ve heard about Mr. Blair are just that—stories,” Leveret said.

“But there are so many stories,” Earnshaw said. “How did you ever pick up that interesting sobriquet Nigger Blair? From your close association with Africans?”

Blair said, “Funny you should ask. In the Gold Coast if you called a free African a nigger, he could sue you. There ‘nigger’ means slave, nothing else. He’d sue you for libel in a Gold Coast civil court and he’d win. The word was fixed on me by the newspapers in London, that’s all. I can’t sue here.”

“They have lawyers there?” Lydia Rowland asked.

“African lawyers, the first crop of civilization,” Blair said.

“So you’re not offended when someone says, ‘Nigger Blair.’?” Earnshaw asked.

“No, no more than I would be if another man called a springbok a spaniel because he doesn’t know the difference. I can’t be offended if someone is uninformed.” Blair was so pleased with himself for producing such a moderate response that he accepted another glass of wine. “Whether he’s a member of Parliament or not.”

Teeth showed in Earnshaw’s beard. It was a smile. He said, “The interior of the Gold Coast is not civilized; it is the kingdom of the Ashanti. Just where did you stand in the Ashanti War?”

Blair said, “There was no war.”

“Pardon?”

“There was no war,” Blair repeated.

“We read about it in
The Times
,” Earnshaw said.

“They marched out to have a war. They had dysentery instead. No war.”

“The disease?” Lydia Rowland asked, to be certain.

“An epidemic. Wiped out whole villages, and also hit the armies, British and Ashanti. They were both too sick to fight. And many people died.”

Earnshaw said, “I read that you helped the Ashanti escape.”

“Members of the king’s family were sick, some dying. Women and children. I led them out.”

“So you were practically a member of the Ashanti retinue. Why else would they trust you with their women?”

“Don’t worry, Earnshaw, there’ll be another Ashanti war and this time you’ll get to kill the king and his family, too. Or maybe we can introduce syphilis.”

“He really is fully as awful as my son promised,” Lady Rowland told the Bishop.

“Then you’re not disappointed,” Hannay said.

Turtle soup was followed by poached trout. Aspic made Blair queasy. He had more wine and wondered whether anyone was ever going to take the empty chair at the end of the table.

“I read something fascinating,” Lydia Rowland said. “That the African explorer Samuel Baker bought his wife at a Turkish slave auction. She’s Hungarian—I mean, she’s white. Can you imagine?”

Bishop Hannay had more wine himself. “Is this what all the young ladies of your set are imagining, Lydia?”

“I meant that it’s terrible. She speaks four or five languages, goes to Africa with him and shoots lions.”

“Well, as you said, she’s Hungarian.”

“And he’s famous and successful. He was received at court by the Queen.”

“But his wife was not, dear, and that’s the point,” Lady Rowland said.

“Whom we receive at court and whom we send to Africa can be two different sorts,” Hannay said. “We could send a thoroughbred horse, for example, but it would be a total waste. Most of Central Africa is fly country. The insects carry some sort of malady that kills horses, even the best, within weeks. What you want is any four-legged animal that has been ‘salted’—bitten by the flies and survived. The same with men. The Royal Society selects its explorers from gallant officers. Then they get into the jungle and rot with fever or blow their brains out. But you could cut Blair’s leg off and he would walk on the other. Cut off both and he would walk on the stumps. That’s his gift: he absorbs punishment.”

Lady Rowland said, “May I change the subject from Africa? Mr. Earnshaw, what is it that brings you to Wigan?”

Earnshaw laid his soupspoon down. “It’s kind of you to ask. I am a member of a parliamentary committee looking into the employment of women called pit girls in the coal mines. They’re women who work on the surface, sorting and moving coal as it comes up. We are, in fact, the third parliamentary committee that has tried to remove these women from the mines, but they are obstinate. That’s why I’ve been talking to Reverend Chubb and Mr. Fellowes.”

Fellowes had spent the evening trying to choose between different knives and forks. He spoke for the first time; his voice was geared to union halls. “It’s an economic issue, Your Ladyship. It should be men doing that work and getting decent wages, with the women staying at home. Or if they do want to work, work in the cotton mills like decent girls.”

“It’s a moral issue,” Reverend Chubb said. “The sad truth is that Wigan is the most degraded city in England. The cause is not the men, who are the coarser sex. The
reason is the women of Wigan, who are so unlike their softer gender anywhere, except perhaps for Africa or along the Amazon. Earnshaw tells me he has seen picture cards sold in London, sordid cards for low tastes, of French ‘models’ and Wigan pit girls. Their notoriety only makes them more brazen.”

“Why Wigan?” Lady Rowland asked. “Surely women work at pits in Wales and other parts of the country?”

“Not in trousers,” Chubb said.

Revulsion was shared by Lady Rowland and her daughter; for a moment they were mirrors of each other.

“Not dresses?” the girl asked.

“A mockery of a dress rolled up and pinned above the pants,” Fellowes said.

Earnshaw said, “They claim for reasons of safety, but the fact is that factory girls in full skirts work surrounded by intense heat and spinning gears. So we have to ask ourselves, why do pit girls
choose
to unsex themselves? It seems a deliberate provocation.”

“An insult to every decent woman,” Fellowes said.

“And damage to marriage itself,” Earnshaw said. “The commission has gathered information from medical experts, including Dr. Acton, the author of
The Functions and Disorders of the Reproductive Organs
. With your permission?” Earnshaw waited for a nod from Lady Rowland. “Dr. Acton, who is
the
authority, says that young men unfortunately often form their ideas of the feminine sensibility from the lowest and most vulgar women, hence have the mistaken impression that the sexual feelings of the female are as strong as his, an error that only leads to heartbreak when he forms a union with a decent woman.”

Lydia Rowland lowered her eyes, held her breath and blushed delicately; the effect was like a faint stain on fine porcelain. Blair marveled at her; a person didn’t need language if she could manage the color of her cheeks so well.

“I want to be fair,” Earnshaw added, “but there does seem to be a scientific correlation between dress and behavior, because, statistically, pit girls have the highest rate of illegitimate births in the country.”

“We see them carousing naked in and out of the beerhouses every night,” Chubb said.

“Pit girls?” Blair asked.

“Yes,” Chubb said.

“Totally undressed?”

“Their arms bare,” Chubb said.

“Ah,” said Blair.

The main course was saddle of mutton, beetroot, mustard. The empty chair was still unclaimed.

“Actually, what I saw, besides bare arms, was a fight between miners. A kicking fight,” Blair said.

“It’s called ‘purring,’ ” Hannay said. “Lord knows why. A traditional local sport. The miners love it. Barbaric, isn’t it?”

“It vents the tension,” Fellowes said.

Hannay said, “They vent their tension on their wives, too. Taking clogs off a drunken miner is like unloading a cocked gun.”

“How horrible,” Lydia Rowland said.

“There’s a pit girl or two knows how to use her clogs, too,” Fellowes said.

“That’s a domestic scene to contemplate, isn’t it?” Hannay said.

Blair asked, “What did John Maypole think of pit girls?”

There was quiet the length of the table.

“Maypole?” Earnshaw asked.

Reverend Chubb explained that the curate of the Parish Church was missing. “We continue to trust that John’s fate will become known to us. In the meantime, the Bishop has imported Mr. Blair to make unofficial inquiries.”

“Looking for John?” Lydia Rowland asked her mother.

“Like setting a black sheep after a white,” Earnshaw said.

“Does Charlotte know about this?” Lady Rowland asked her brother.

Chubb set his spoon down. It rattled with the fury transmitted by his body. “The truth is that John Maypole was naive about the character of pit girls. The fact that more illegitimate children are born here than even in Ireland marks Wigan as a moral cesspool. They are women totally beyond the bounds of decency or social control. It is my duty, for example, to disburse church funds to unwed mothers who apply, making sure not to give money so lavishly as to encourage animal conduct. It would be a lesson to pit girls for me to withhold money from them, but since they refuse to request assistance the lesson is utterly lost.”

There was a silence after Chubb’s explosion.

“Do you think they’ll find a lake in Africa for Princess Beatrice?” Lydia Rowland asked Blair finally.

“For Princess Beatrice?”

“Yes. They’ve found lakes and falls to name for the rest of the royal family. The Queen and Albert, of course. Alexandra, the Prince of Wales, Alice, Alfred, Helena, Louise, Arthur, even poor Leopold, I think they all have something discovered and named after them. All but Beatrice, the baby. She must be feeling left out. Do you think there’s anything left worth finding and naming for her? It just makes it more personal if you can find your own lake on the map.”

Lady Rowland gave her daughter’s hand a touch of maternal concern. “Dear, it doesn’t matter what Mr. Blair thinks.”

Meat was followed by fowl. Fellowes chased a round plover egg around his plate with a knife and spoon. In the shifting lights of the candles Blair detected a Paisley pattern on the opposite wall like a watermark in black stone. Not Paisley, he realized, but ferns fossilized within the cannel. He moved the candelabra, and other small,
graceful, intricately delicate fronds came into focus. They were seen best in the corner of the eye. On a second wall what he had first taken to be irregular striation was in fact ghostly fossil fish. Moving diagonally across another wall were the imprints of a great amphibian.

He said, “If it’s all right, I’d like to visit the mine where you had the explosion.”

“If you want,” Hannay said. “It seems a waste of time, since Maypole was never below. The last thing we’d allow is preachers down the shaft; the men’s work is difficult and dangerous enough. But when you want to, Leveret will arrange it.”

“Tomorrow?”

Hannay took a moment. “Why not? You can tour the surface too, and see the notorious pit girls in action.”

Earnshaw rose to the bait. “I’m surprised, my lord, that you tolerate those women for a moment, considering the reputation they give Wigan. It seems to me that the question is not whether a handful of brazen women wear skirts or not, it’s whether Wigan joins the modern world.”

Hannay asked, “What do you know about the modern world?”

“As a member of Parliament, I know the spirit of the age.”

“Such as?”

“The upwelling political reform, the social conscience of modern theater and books, the call for elevated subjects in the arts.”

“Ruskin?”

“John Ruskin is a perfect example, yes,” Earnshaw agreed. “Ruskin is the greatest art critic of our time, and also a friend of the workingman.”

“Tell him, Leveret,” Hannay said.

Earnshaw was wary. “What?”

“We invited Ruskin.” Leveret told the tale as deferentially as he could. “We invited him to give a lecture on
the arts to the workers. But when he arrived he looked out the window at Wigan and he wouldn’t leave the train. He refused. No entreaty made him budge. He stayed on the train until it left.”

Hannay said, “It’s public knowledge that Ruskin couldn’t consummate his marriage, either. He does seem to be easily shocked.”

Lady Rowland’s blush burned through her pallor. “We will leave the table if you speak like that.”

Hannay ignored her. “Earnshaw, I appreciate that, unlike other visitors from London, you had the courage to leave the train. Before you lecture us about Wigan’s place in the modern world, though, let me suggest that the question is not one of politics or arts, but one of industrial power. The best measure of that is steam engines per capita. Between mines and mills and factories, there are more steam engines per person in Wigan than in London, Pittsburgh, Essen or anywhere else. It happens to fit nicely that the palm oil we import from Africa lubricates those engines. The world runs on coal, and Wigan leads it. As long as we have coal we will continue to do so.”

“What about religion?” Chubb asked.

“That’s the next world,” Hannay said. “Perhaps there’ll be coal there, too.”

“Does this mean you insist on employing pit girls?” Earnshaw asked.

Hannay shrugged. “Not at all, as long as someone sorts the coal.”

“How long will the coal in Wigan last?” Lydia Rowland asked. The thought had never occurred to her before.

“A thousand years,” Leveret assured her.

“Really? The price of coal shot up last year because of a supposed shortage. We heard in London that English coalfields were running out,” Earnshaw said.

Hannay said blandly, “Well, the good news is that we aren’t.”

Dessert was pineapple cream and a meringue that rose to a snowy peak in the middle of the table.

“The importance of family,” Lady Rowland said.

Fellowes said, “Social reform.”

“Moral life,” said Chubb.

“Blair, what do you think has been the Queen’s greatest gift to England?” Hannay asked.