Season of Light (9 page)

His sudden smile was enough to make Georgina flick open her fan and cover her eyes for a moment.

He said obligingly: ‘I’ve never met such a striking trio of sisters.’

Georgina gave a trill of laughter and shook her curls. So Shackleford, believe it or not, really did have a tenderness for Asa. Well, Asa must be worked on – with such a fortune at stake, even she would have to see sense. ‘Are you staying long in London, Mr Shackleford?’

‘Possibly. I have a mountain of business, as you can imagine. My father’s lawyers and I are ploughing through a mass of deeds and contracts. But Compton Wyatt, our estate near Bristol, has also been much neglected since Father’s death so I should go home.’

Georgina rested her hand on his. ‘Please remember that we are here, ready to help in any way you like. We are your family. My husband, I’m sure, would be delighted to offer his services.’

Shackleford’s smile was touchingly diffident. ‘Next time you write to your sisters, mention that I was asking after them. And wish them well.’

Georgina might have felt less optimistic about the chances of a match between her younger sister and Harry Shackleford had she been present at a meeting, that September of 1792, of the Littlehampton Abolition Society. The double doors of the assembly rooms had been flung back to accommodate fifteen people, including two lady friends of the rector’s daughter – the Misses Champion and Hillhouse. They were visiting from Bristol and had been invited to speak about their acquaintance with Mr Thomas Clarkson, the tireless reformer who had visited slaving ports up down the country compiling evidence on the abuses of the trade, particularly in relation to the high mortality rate of British sailors.

At the end of the meeting Miss Thomasina Ardleigh gave her usual report on the Revolution in France. Since her visit to Paris in the summer of 1788, she had become the established expert on how Littlehampton abolitionists might best support their brothers and sisters across the Channel. Fortunately she was a compelling speaker because her words had to compete with the clink of cups and a faint scent of fruit cake as tea was prepared in the lobby. Furthermore, her sisters would have winced had they seen the outfit in which she’d chosen to make this public appearance. From some closet at home she had extracted an outmoded jacket and matching skirt in faded green that had once belonged to Philippa. However, her hair, which had been bundled into combs under her best straw hat, curled disarmingly, and her eyes shone as she gripped the back of a chair and spoke without notes.

‘We must write again and again to our friends in France – Monsieur Brissot and other members of Les Amis des Noirs – so they never doubt for a moment that they have influential friends here. We must support them in their battle to have the cause of abolition heard above all the other urgent demands which are being made on the Revolutionary Assembly. We must ensure that the cry of Equality, Liberty and Fraternity applies as much to slaves toiling under the burning skies of the West Indies as to the French people struggling to emerge from beneath the heel of tyranny.

‘I read this morning that the issue of abolition has been fudged yet again by the new Assembly and that there are factions who insist that the cause must wait until France is on a more secure economic footing. The slaves who have staged a successful uprising in the French colony of Sainte-Domingue need our support as never before. The French government is preoccupied with its own affairs. The country’s enemies are assembling on its borders, there has been unrest in Paris, including more violent deaths, and it is being said that peace must be achieved at home before such an ambitious reform as the end of the slave trade can be attempted abroad. But we know that for one human being to own another is absolutely wrong, and that abolition must take priority over everything else. We must not let the fate of hundreds of thousands of slaves be obscured by this moment of history.’

Over tea Asa was besieged by ladies seeking the address of Les Amis des Noirs. ‘I am fifty years old,’ said one of the visitors from Bristol, ‘and it has taken me years to realise the extent to which the fortunes of my own family, as well as my city, are bound up in this iniquitous trade.’

‘Few of us are unaffected, Miss Champion. I’m ashamed to say that I have distant relatives of my own living near Bristol who have made a fortune from slaving. Their name is Shackleford. Perhaps you’ve heard of them.’

‘Well, of course. The Shacklefords of Compton Wyatt are one of the foremost families in the county. What a tragedy – father and son travelling on the same ship, neither returned. Mr Clarkson will be interested to hear of the circumstances of the accident, if such it was, when they become clear. He is determined to prove, once and for all, that slave ships are in fact a graveyard rather than an excellent training ground for our British sailors, never mind the slaves.’

‘I had heard of the accident,’ said Asa. ‘It is the older Shackleford boy, I believe, who died.’

‘That’s it. Thomas. Nobody knows much about the younger son except that he’s been abroad for years and has something of a reputation for extravagant living. I’m afraid we aren’t pinning our hopes on the new heir being either a reformer or an example to his fellow traders.’

‘As I have met the younger Mr Shackleford – years ago, in Paris – I fear you are right.’

‘But Miss Ardleigh, despite your unfortunate connection with the Shacklefords, your words this afternoon were an inspiration. If ever you’re in Bristol – perhaps visiting your grand relations,’ said Miss Hillhouse mischievously, ‘do please come and address our society.’

After tea Mr Lambert, who was completing an article on the comparative conditions of slave ships and prison hulks, walked home by the most direct route. Asa and Caroline watched him head off along the lane, trim and short in his brown coat, a little stiff legged, hands clasped behind his back as he composed his thoughts but ever on the alert for an unusual bird or flower. They chose to take a long detour along the West Beach. Because it was late September, the sun was already sinking and the sky full of rushing clouds. Caroline never wore enough clothes – there was always a bit of neck, wrist or ankle exposed – yet she halted, arms gripped against her chest to protect her from the wind, as Asa took out Georgina’s latest letter and thrust it into her hand.

‘The Shacklefords I was talking about to Miss Champion – the cousin who is to inherit Ardleigh – you may remember I met him in Paris? Well, now he’s turned up in a London gaming house.’

Caroline’s narrow face was full of amusement as she read the letter. ‘He’s certainly won Georgina’s heart. What a shame she’s not free to marry him herself.’

‘Their meeting is a thorough nuisance. I shall never hear the last of it.’

‘Georgina seems to think that you’re a few short steps from being wed to him. You must admit it would be convenient. He’s rich, not much above thirty, and one day he will oust you from your family home if nothing is done about it.’

Asa chased her along the beach, batting her with the letter. ‘Don’t suggest it even in jest. Every penny of Shackleford money comes from slaving. And I loathed him in Paris. He was shallow and clingy, a dandy with no ideas of his own. I hardly think it possible that he could have retained an interest in me all this time, given my harsh words to him then. In any case, marriage, as you well know, does not appeal. You and I are going to set up a school together and be a couple of old maids.’

They linked arms and stood so close to the breaking waves that their toes were threatened and they had to dash backwards. Caroline picked up a grey pebble and tossed it far out; then another and another. ‘You’ve surely not ceased to hope?’

‘That I’ll marry my Frenchman? Caroline, it has been more than six months since I last heard from him.’

‘But you’ve kept faith for so long. How could you give up now?’

‘You, I know, would never give up. But I don’t even know for sure whether he’s alive or dead. You’ve read the newspapers. There are rumours of a massacre in Paris prisons. What if he was there? What if he’d offended someone? After all, in his last letter he told me he was about to be appointed to high office. Nobody is safe in Paris at the moment.’

‘As you say, in France everything is at odds, which is precisely why you haven’t heard from him. I thought he told you it was too dangerous for him to be sending or receiving mail from England.’

‘That’s what I tell myself, but he could have found a way. He must know of people travelling to London who could carry letters for us. Oh, Caroline, sometimes these days I worry I might even forget what he looked like. I have read his letters so often they are disintegrating.’

‘It’s not like you to despair.’

‘Four years, and each year the letters come a little farther apart. Is it reasonable to expect any man to wait so long?’

‘This one, you said, would wait for ever.’

‘That’s what he told me. But we thought the Revolution would be swift and clean and that it would be only a matter of months before argument and opposition were over. We never imagined all this pain. Can you blame me for thinking I’ll never hear from him again?’

Even as Asa spoke these words and watched the curl of a breaking wave, she felt the sharp pang of loss, not just of Didier, but of the love affair which had defined her for so long. Without Didier there would be a howling sense of purposelessness; the death of expectation. Her idea of her own significance, of who she was, was founded in him, and the oblique discussions with Caroline about the undying nature of true love.

‘Well, if I can’t marry him,’ she said briskly, ‘I shan’t marry anyone, because I’d rather a million times live with you than with anyone else.’

‘Except your French rebel.’

‘If he’s alive. If he’s still as he was then. If he still wants me.’

They walked on, holding their hats in the wind, a couple of scarecrow women in old-fashioned skirts. Caroline squeezed Asa’s arm. ‘It’s good to know I only come second best to a nameless revolutionary. I shall take heart from that.’

Georgina was filled with a missionary zeal. First she asked for a loan of twenty pounds from Philippa.
I rarely ask for much
, she wrote untruthfully,
and this is for a
vital
cause
. When the money arrived she ordered a gown of shell-pink muslin with a double frill at the neck and purple silk ribbons wound round the sleeves and forming a sash at the waist. Her husband she kitted out in a navy blue frock coat, the most sober item of clothing he’d worn in years, then told him to have his hair cut.

The Warrens subsequently went out and about in London society, especially to any event that was free, in order to play the Shackleford hand. They attended church services and sales of work for fashionable causes such as the poor French émigrés who’d fled the Revolution; they walked in Regent’s Park and occasionally splashed out on a concert; they emphatically did not swear, or even gamble much. Gradually they clawed themselves up a rung or two on the social ladder.

‘As we share a great-great-grandfather, do you think I should be in deeper mourning?’ Georgina would ask when enquiries were made about her relationship with Shackleford. ‘We shall, of course, be visiting dear Mrs Shackleford at Compton Wyatt as soon as she is well enough, to pay our respects.’

In return Georgina learnt from her new female acquaintances that Harry Shackleford had been abroad for more than three years, that Compton Wyatt was a boundless estate consisting of numerous farms and villages, that the family owned glassworks, a bottling factory and shipbuilding concerns in Bristol as well as plantations in Jamaica. By dint of determined investigation and shameless name-dropping, the Warrens soon managed to crop up wherever Shackleford happened to be, though Georgina never thrust herself upon him, nor did she allow Warren to raise the question of business investment except
en passant
.

Obviously, however, he was allowed to share his disquiet about the detrimental effect of the Dolben Act on slave-related profits: ‘For goodness’ sake, the law insists on allowing every slave sixteen inches rather than twelve down in the hold, as well as endless hours of refreshing exercise on deck. How can we compete with the French if we have to sail our ships half empty?’ But it might be as well if Warren didn’t mention to Shackleford the reason why he’d lost a considerable sum of money following the Revolution in France; at least until they were better acquainted.

If Shackleford entered a room there was always a discreet shuffle of people edging towards him, wanting to issue invitations, tell him about their latest charitable cause or bring a daughter to his attention. It was said that his father had died so suddenly that the family affairs were in some disarray and that, at his house in Eaton Square, Shackleford was besieged by a stream of lawyers, petitioners and business associates hoping to influence him. For recreation, whispered the rumour-mongers, he gambled heavily and drank to excess. Georgina thoroughly approved of his taste; he tended to wear black or dark grey, of course, but his coats were of silk, his linen immaculate and his hair gleamed golden in candlelight. At such assemblies, he never stayed in one place but moved from group to group as he sought out Georgina. ‘Delighted to see you, Mrs Warren.’

‘And I you, Mr Shackleford.’

‘You are looking very well.’

‘As indeed I am.’

He half turned away and then asked, as if in afterthought: ‘And your family …?’

‘Quite well, thank you. My older sister Philippa is expecting another child, next year. She hopes for a girl. Asa … Thomasina …’

‘Thomasina?’

‘Just the usual. Busy with village affairs. Father has bought a new hunter, she tells me.’

‘I suppose your sister has no time to visit London?’

‘Or inclination,’ said Georgina. ‘That’s the thing. She’s devoted to my father and her life in the country.’

Shackleford smiled and raised an eyebrow. Apparently this bucolic image of Asa didn’t quite match his memory of her in Paris. ‘Send her my kindest regards,’ he said, and there was no doubting the sincerity in his somewhat bloodshot eyes.