Race Before the Wind

Copyright © Jill Salkeld 1988

Part Two: 1816-1822

The Venturer's Agent

Chapter One

Christmas passed quietly at the house in Nelson Place. Out of respect for their friend's memory, the Vaillants refused all invitations to local balls and routs. Gaspard's wife Sophie, ever mindful of appearances, frowned on the servants if they showed a spark of festive spirit.

Tom had no leisure to find the sombre atmosphere oppressive, nor to let his mind dwell on the past. He was encouraged to spend each morning closeted with Gaspard in the 'retreat'. Here they pored over maps and charts, the Frenchman marking lightly the route out of Lymington River and across ninety miles of sea, to where the Channel Islands lay amid their deadly scatter of rocks.

"This is our usual port of call." Gaspard rapped the island of Guernsey with a pencil. "As you know, my employer is Captain Hicks, owner of the Pennington Creek Saltern. He operates a fleet of four smallish vessels, ostensibly for the sole purpose of exporting salt, which remains a profitable sideline. This town of Guernsey's east coast is St. Peter Port. Note the proximity of the little isles of Herm and Jethou. This mark indicates a cave....."

In that lamplit, firelit room, secluded from the womenfolk and all domestic trivia, Tom felt like a magician's apprentice, bewitched by the ancient lore of the sea. He told Gaspard this, mocking his own foolishness; but the Frenchman answered seriously.

"I am obliged to bewitch you, Thomas. If you are to succeed, the sea and the Free Trade must rule your heart. At Sophie's insistence I have agreed to resign from the Captain's employ within two years - "

"What! I thought you loved the life."

"Ah, but Thomas, I always intended giving it up when I took a wife. Sea-smugglers are the worst husbands in the world, never at home when they are wanted, and liable to be arrested or shot at a moment's notice. I do pine, you know, for the years before the Peace - the Golden Age, we called it. Preventive officers were few and ineffective then, the Government having better things to do with its men than send them chasing after the likes of us. I rather fancy myself as a timber merchant. What think you?"

"But you're implying.... Am I being trained as your successor? As Captain Hicks' new agent?"

"I am certain that both you and the lovely Jessica will be equal to the challenge. I have approached the Captain, he is prepared to consider you for the post.

"Without ever meeting me?"

"All in good time. You used to keep chickens, did you not? One must allow the egg to hatch, before deciding that the chick might grow into a fine cockerel."

With this cryptic reply Tom had to be content; but he needed paid employment, and soon. Staying with the Vaillants for a month or two was acceptable but to remain any longer might be awkward, since Gaspard would be outraged by an offer of money. Besides, though Tom saw Jessica every day, the entire family was usually present, whether the occasion was an afternoon drive into the Forest or en evening around the piano. The young couple could seldom snatch more that five minutes alone, and this irked them both; the difference was that whereas Tom could lose himself in study, being given the freedom of the 'retreat' even during Gaspard's absences, Jessica was offered pastimes such as sketching the view from a window, or embroidering a rosebud on a handkerchief.

"I'd sooner run through those streets than draw them," she confided to Tom with a sigh, in a rare moment of privacy. "We used to go skating, do you remember? Every time our feet grew too big, your Pa would hammer us out another pair of skates to strap on to our new boots. Oh, don't fashionable people have any fun? Must I be dull and ladylike forever?"

The next day Tom ordered two pairs of ice-skates from the local blacksmith, and after this they would often creep from the house after luncheon, to find a frozen stream or creek, and later a barn with a warm hayloft. Before their return to Nelson Place. Tom would pick every tell-tale wisp from Jessica's hair, though she fussed and wriggled, claiming not to care one jot what Sophie Vaillant might think.

Having thus solved the main problem, Tom wondered if perhaps, just perhaps, they could go on like this; postpone the wedding until next year, reach some financial agreement with Gaspard.

One afternoon, snug in their favourite loft, he murmured into Jessica's hair, "How would you like to be a smuggler's mistress, and sail with me on every trip across the Channel?"

He heard her draw breath sharply, but her face was turned from him. "You don't have to feel trapped," she said, "just because we left home together. I know Gaspard is showing you a new world, and you've never been truly free before, with no one to provide for and worry about. We can wait another year or two, if you like."

He was shamed by her perception, and overwhelmed by the knowledge of how he had wronged her. His imagination had made her into a burden; something that Jess, of all women, would never willingly become.

He kissed her shoulder. "Marry me, Jess. Would you like a summer wedding? We could be wed on Midsummer's Day." And then, as she kept her head silently averted, "Being free wouldn't count for much, darling, if I didn't have you."

"Damn you, Tom Elderfield," she said, her voice breaking. "Damn your wretched conscience. It'll be the ruin of us both."

Thinking the words fanciful he stroked her arm, not knowing how best to comfort her, distressed only for her sake. But when he announced their news over dinner, Jessica accepted the Vaillant's congratulations with glowing happiness. Tom was relieved, and yet uneasy; it seemed that ever since the flight from Hatchley they were less close in spirit, less honest perhaps, and that he was the one who had changed.

Gaspard sailed next day with Hicks' fleet, and was away for three days. Immediately upon his return, he declared that all was arranged; Captain Hicks had summoned Tom to an interview at Pennington Creek.

"An engaged couple should not be penniless,"the Frenchman said, "We must presume the chick ready to hatch."

He drove Tom along lanes blackened by the coal ash of generations, leaving the river behind. This was a landscape which awoke in Tom only the faintest memory; the lattice-work work of square, shallow ponds, drained now for the winter; the little windmills; the sheds and cisterns and boiling-houses. A few of the latter still spewed out smoke, the refining of Epsom salts giving work to a handful of men, but the place had a desolate aspect. It was only in summer that the wind and sun could evaporate water from the brine ponds.

Gaspard left the carriage in Hick's coach-house, the habit of secrecy being natural to him, and Tom gazed off the view of the sea.

"Look sharp, Thomas," the Frenchman said, "No time now for ogling the scenery."

Hicks' office was a cottage nestling in the lee of the windmills. Gaspard knocked once, opened the door without receiving an answer, and gave his protégé an encouraging push across the threshold. "The Captain is expecting you. I shall be in the boiling-house, when you are ready to leave."

Inside, the room literally shone. On every possible surface, wan sunlight through the window struck gleams from a hoard of brass and bronze, dominated by an astonishing collection of ships' bells.

The man seated behind the desk fixed him with a narrow stare, and began abstractedly to rub one corner of a bronze cigar box with a handkerchief. The top of his bald head shone as if he had polished that too. His eyes were the bleak grey-green of the winter sea.

"Asseyez-vous," he said. "M'sieur Vaillant dire a moi vous parlez tres bon francais. Bien, donc? Est-il-droit?"

One could not call it French. Tom blinked, and obeyed the instruction to sit down. He answered the rest politely and in his mother's language.

"Gaspard was generous, sir, if he told you that. My vocabulary must be poor compared to his - and he says that Guernsey folk have a dialect very unlike the French spoken around Paris."

For measurable seconds, the handkerchief remained poised over the cigar box. Then it was crumpled, enveloped in one brown, scarred fist, and tucked into a greatcoat pocket. Its owner said in English, his voice smooth as oil on water, "Vaillant also informs me that you're barely seventeen years old."

"Old enough, sir, for any task you'd set a man to do. I'm used to being out in all weathers and taking what comes."

The Captain stroked his chin, with an air of missing a once familiar beard. "You're recently betrothed. A pity. I don't doubt the girl will adopt Mrs. Sophie Vaillant's view."

"No, sir, she won't."

"Knows you too well, eh? You'll go your own road, and to hell with the woman you claim to love."

The shaft was well aimed. Tom caught his breath; but too much depended on this interview. Leaning back on the hard chair he crossed his knees and said evenly, "With respect, sir, I've told you what I'm willing to do."

"Ah yes. You take what comes." The Captain's brows twitched' the set of his mouth hinted at cruelty. "Everything in your stride, eh? Does that include getting your sweetheart's brother shot through the head? Seeing your mother die of consumption three days later? Well, does it?"

"No, sir." Tom spoke with white intensity. "No, it didn't include that."

"Past tense. So these were episodes to be endured and then dismissed from the mind -"

"No, fir!"

" - with some lingering regret, of course, but finally with a shrug and a smile. Your sort, Elderfield, are two a penny."

Tom uncrossed his legs and leaned forward, elbows on his knees. Not daring to look at Hicks he stared down at his own clenched hands; what bloody right had this smug, self-important crook to put him through such a wringer? He was after a job, not a seat among the angels!

He said softly, "Amos was my best mate. If I hadn't gone out poaching that night, he'd still be alive - and yes, I can live with that, because I must. But not with shrugs or smiles, as you reckon. Every day I'm alive is Amos' gift. I don't take that lightly....sir. Would you?"

"If I was your age," said Hicks, in quite a different voice, "and sitting where you are now, I'd have leapt straight up and knocked my prospective employer's teeth out."

Tom raised his eyes slowly. "No, Captain," he said. "because then he wouldn't employ you, and you'd lose your best chance of a decent living. And then how would you justify having fled from home like a coward, bringing your girl with you?"

Hicks' impassive gaze did not waver, but his mouth twitched, and a muscle moved in his cheek.

"Vaillant is right, he said. "You show great promise. Would you be willing to inherit his position, a year or two from now?"

Tom stared back at him. speechless; and Captain Benjamin Hicks threw up his head and guffawed, tilting his chair so that it creaked precariously on to legs. Finally, recovering a little, he brought the suspended chair-legs to the floor with a crash.

"Now, Elderfield," he said. "Let's finish with play-acting. You'll be bound to me for five years, and since I'm giving you an apprenticeship on full pay, I call that bloody reasonable. But this first year I'll be forever at your back, by Christ I will, and in a month I guarantee you'll wish me dead." He paused, and chuckled. "If you don't already. Here, shake hands on the deal, Elderfield, and forgive me the rest, if you can. If you can't - well, I'm bound to say in that case you won't last long, working for a crafty old seaman who'll bring you naught but toil and danger, and heartache for your girl."

For long moments Tom regarded his new employer. The Captain must be nearing sixty; the administration of his personal empire was being entrusted gradually, inevitably into youthful and perhaps irresponsible hands. He needed to be very sure of the new generation - and in this case, on the strength of a few minutes' acquaintance, he was taking quite a risk. Only a fool or a born gambler would offer a contract on such terms, and Tom did not believe that Benjamin Hicks was a fool.

Acknowledging a kindred soul, Tom smiled, and rose to grasp the Captain's hand.

"To be your agent, sir, I'd forgive anything," he said, not quite joking; and he would remember that easy promise, years later when its implications would at last be recognised and understood.

Part 2, The Venturer's Agent, Chapter 2

Click here to
download SEO Elite!
the Search Engine
Optimiser
we would recommend

Discover this Incredible Secret System To Making Money Online Within 10 Days!