Gin and Gingerbread

Book 0: Colchester Sagas

by Elizabeth Jeffrey

Genres: Sagas

Synopsis

For Abigail Chiswell, the Colne river front in Colchester, Essex, is a second home.

With its own sights and sounds - of crowded quaysides, fishing smacks and packed oyster barrels - it means more to her than all the lofty rooms and comforts of her father's home.

When she falls for local fisherman Matthew Bateman, Abigail's family loyalty is stretched to breaking point. While Hiltop House represents the pinnacle of her father's wealth and success, for Abigail its very luxury keeps her from the life - and the man - she loves.

She followed her heart and gave up a life of luxury. Will she find a way to thrive in the new and unfamiliar world she's facing?

Release date: October 4, 2018

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 336

Sample

Abigail reached the door of her father’s study and stopped to dab her swollen eyes yet again with her handkerchief, edged in black lace. Then she took a deep breath and knocked.

‘Come,’ the deep voice from within commanded.

She pushed open the door. The study was a room she rarely entered. It was her father’s domain, a man’s room, but comfortably furnished in walnut with a Turkey-red carpet and long crimson curtains tied back from the window. A leather armchair and small smoking cabinet stood near the fireplace, where the embers of a coal fire smouldered. Over the mantelpiece a portrait of a woman hung, draped now with black crepe, and on the opposite wall a large nautical chart in a maplewood frame showed the estuary and creeks of the River Colne. Bookshelves lined the rest of the walls and under the window a terrestrial globe rested on its stand. In the middle of the room, behind a large leather-topped desk on which an inkstand and blotter were placed with mathematical precision, sat her father, Henry Chiswell, of Chiswell and Son, Oyster Merchants of Colchester in the County of Essex.

He was a small, spare man for all his booming voice, but he had an air about him, a presence, which commanded if not respect then certainly attention. He was dressed no differently today, the thirtieth day of March in the year 1839, the day after his wife’s funeral, than any other day. Henry Chiswell always wore black.

‘Yes, Papa?’ Abigail waited obediently. She knew perfectly well why he had sent for her.

Henry cleared his throat. ‘I suppose you realize that now your mother is d … no longer with us I shall expect you, as my eldest child, to run the house, Abigail?’ he said brusquely.

She gave a barely perceptible sigh. ‘Yes, Papa.’

‘Good. Then it comes as no surprise to you.’ Henry sighed in obvious relief that she had taken the responsibility so readily. He stared for a moment at the portrait over the mantelpiece. Then he shook his head a little theatrically. ‘We shall miss her. I shall miss her. Twenty-five years we would have been married this year.’ He turned his attention back to Abigail and said in a more businesslike voice, ‘You will have charge of the household keys, of course.’ He looked down at the blotter in front of him and straightened it fractionally. ‘Er – where are they, by the way? Have you any idea where your mother kept them?’

‘In the drawer of the cabinet beside her bed, Papa.’

He nodded several times. ‘Ah, yes, of course.’ He got up briskly from his chair and left the room.

Abigail wiped away another tear and took the opportunity to blow her nose while he was out of the room. Poor Papa, the business took up much of his time but had he really no idea that she had already been running the household for the past two years? Ever since her mother took to her bed, in fact? She went over to the window and watched a coal cart rumbling up the hill pulled by an enormous shire horse. That reminded her, she must remember to order more coal from Mr Brigg’s coal yard at the Hythe.

Her father returned, chinking the keys as he walked. He handed them to her as if he thought it should have been an act of some ceremony but he wasn’t quite sure how to do it. So he contented himself with clearing his throat again and saying, ‘Look after them. You know which lock each one fits?’

Abigail allowed herself a little mirthless smile. Probably better than you do, dear Papa, she thought, but aloud she said, ‘I think so, Papa,’ and fastened them back on to her belt. It said something that her father had never noticed them there in all the two years she had worn them, collecting them from her mother each morning and returning them last thing at night.

‘I’m sure you’ll manage very well, Abigail,’ he said briskly. ‘I think it will be a perfectly satisfactory arrangement.’ He resumed his seat and leaning back steepled his fingers. ‘Of course, I shall still need your help in the business, sometimes. You have a useful aptitude for figures’ – he permitted himself a brief self-satisfied smile – ‘no doubt inherited from me. It would be a pity to waste such a talent simply on household accounts, important though they are.’

Abigail raised her eyebrows. This was the nearest thing to a compliment she had ever heard pass her father’s lips. ‘But what about Edwin?’ she asked. ‘And Pearl?’

Henry sat forward and leaned his elbows on the desk, frowning. ‘Pearl is a fine-looking girl,’ he said after a moment. ‘She’s – what? – eighteen, now?’ Abigail nodded so he went on, ‘I’ve no doubt she’ll soon find herself a husband.’

Whilst I am twenty-three and so plain that no man is ever going to look twice at me, Abigail thought with some irritation. She sighed. But you’re probably right. Not even Matthew … She pulled her thoughts back to what her father was saying.

‘Edwin, as you well know, is being groomed to take over the business, just as I was groomed to take over from my father,’
Henry was saying, with more than a hint of pride in his voice. ‘His course is set. Nevertheless, there is much to do, and even with Ezra Carver there as clerk there is still a place for you.’

Abigail’s spirits lifted. She had been afraid that her father would dismiss her from Chiswell and Son now that the burden of running the house was completely on her shoulders. She hadn’t wanted that. She was far more interested in the oyster business than in running the house. A film of dust on the mantelpiece gave her far less concern than a badly packed barrel of oysters. Not that there was ever a film of dust anywhere; Ellen, the housemaid, was far too diligent to allow such a thing.

‘That’s all I have to say.’ Henry got up from his chair and went over to the window, dismissing her. ‘Except,’ he added, with his back to her, ‘I shan’t be in to supper tonight.’

Abigail stared for a moment at his silhouette, framed in the window. ‘Oh, Papa, you’re not going to begin working again? Not so soon … ’ An irritable shift of his shoulders warned her not to say more. ‘You work much too hard,’ she couldn’t resist adding before she turned and left the room.

She shivered a little as she crossed the hall on her way to the morning room. It was a large draughty hall and the broad mirror hanging over a gilt consul table only served to emphasize the cold spaciousness by making the hall look twice as wide as it actually was. Even the thick runners placed on the black and white tiled floor did nothing to reduce the chill.

She paused at the mirror and looked at herself critically. Black didn’t suit her. She was too pale, sallow even, and her features were plain; her mouth too wide, her nose too big and her face too long. She adjusted the new black lace cap and smoothed her hair. Of that at least she could be proud; it was long and thick and of a rich chestnut colour. She brushed it with a hundred strokes every night and wore it parted in the middle and smoothed into two thick loops over her ears. She peered closer into the mirror. Her brown eyes were still bloodshot from all the tears she had shed over her mother. Her lip quivered again and she bit it and straightened her shoulders. The time for crying was over now. Life had to go on. She turned and headed for the morning room, then changing her mind, took her cloak from the hall stand just inside the door and hurried out. She couldn’t help it if people were surprised to see her so soon after her mother’s funeral. She needed air.

Henry, still standing at the window, watched her go. He stroked his mutton-chop whiskers thoughtfully. It was a pity she was so plain. Whey-faced, too. He sighed. Her only redeeming feature was the hair she had inherited from her mother. His glance went to the portrait of his wife. My, Edith had had a head of hair! It had been so long she could sit on it. And that glorious chestnut colour … Mind, she’d had a temper to match it. Abigail had inherited that, too.

He knew where she was going now. She would be making for the quay. Abigail loved the river and always went there if she was troubled or upset, whereas his only interest in it was in what profit could be made from harvesting its fruits. He gave a self-satisfied nod. Things would work out very well. Abigail would run the house efficiently, he had no doubt of that, and she would continue to be useful in the business. It was no bad thing that no man would ever look twice at her. He stood for a moment longer and then turned and walked over to the tapestry bell pull hanging by the door and gave it an impatient tug. A bell jangled somewhere in the depths of the house and a minute later a slightly breathless maid appeared.

‘Tell Wilfred to have Busker and the trap ready in half an hour. And tell Daisy I shall not be in to supper,’ he said curtly.

Hetty gave a quick bob and hurried back along the hall and down the back stairs to the warmth of the kitchen where Daisy, the cook, was pouring the coachman another mug of porter.

‘You’ve to ’ave the trap ready in half an hour, Wilfred,’ Hetty said, resuming her seat at the kitchen table where she had been cleaning the knives. ‘An’ master says to tell you ’e won’t be ’ome to supper, Daisy.’

Daisy and Wilfred exchanged knowing glances. ‘An’ we both know what that means, don’t we!’ Wilfred said, wiping the froth off his whiskers.

Ellen, drinking tea at the other end of the table, pursed her lips. ‘Indeed we do. Thass shameful. An’ ’im with ’is wife not cold in ’er grave.’

Wilfred leaned forward. ‘I reckon Busker could find ’is way to that woman’s ’ouse blindfolded.’ He began to chuckle. ‘Did I ever tell you ’bout the time I took ’im to the blacksmith’s at Wivenhoe to be shod an’ ’e carried on right past the blacksmith’s and never stopped till ’e was outside Effie Markham’s ’ouse?’

‘Yes, you did. Often times,’ Daisy said sharply, suddenly remembering Hetty’s presence. ‘An’ thass enough o’ that talk, Wilfred Jackson. You better be quick an’ finish your drink an’ go an’ get the trap ready. You know what ’is lordship’s like if ’e’s kep’ waiting.’

It had been a hard winter. For weeks the snow had lain thick, compacted into ice on the ground. The pump at the Hythe, from which the poor took their water, had frozen, forcing them to gather the snow from the rooftops to melt for drinking and when this was gone to gather it in buckets from the fields. Even the river had frozen.

But now only a vestige of the snow remained, in a corner of St Leonard’s churchyard that received no sun. Elsewhere, daffodils were beginning to bud with the promise of spring and primroses peeped bravely through the grass among the gravestones, enjoying the first real sunshine of the year.

If people were surprised to see the little black-clad figure making her way down the hill so soon after her mother’s funeral they gave no sign. Those that knew her, and that was most, bobbed a brief curtsey or doffed a ragged cap as she went by, silently acknowledging a sympathy they could share and understand, for death was no stranger to the crowded, poverty-stricken yards and courts that clustered round Colchester Hythe. When she reached St Leonard’s Church Abigail paused and looked through the church railings, past the grey stone building bathed in the late afternoon sun, past the primroses and daffodils, to the new grave, covered in wreaths of spring flowers. She bowed her head, and as she stood there, over the clop of the horses on the cobbles, the grind of the cartwheels, the cries of optimistic street sellers, and the shouts and squabbles of passers-by, came the strains of music from inside the church. That would be Edwin pouring out his grief at the organ. She was tempted to go in and listen, she loved to hear her brother play, but she understood that today he wouldn’t welcome an audience. He needed to be alone with his music just as she needed the solace of the river. Pulling her cloak round her more closely she hurried on to the bottom of the hill where the river slugged its way between muddy banks past the quay and on towards East Mill.

The tide was out. A line of boats, fishing smacks bearing the letters CK to signify that they were registered in Colchester, were tied up at the quayside, whilst across the river lighters and colliers crowded against the wharves of Hayfield’s timber yard and Brigg’s coal yard. Along either side of the quay were the makings, the bonding yards and vaults, warehouses for things like tea, coffee, sugar, butter, cheese, a shipyard, a dry dock, a lime kiln, granaries, seed and corn merchants, all in states of decay or repair that accurately reflected the state of business. Among it all, a smart, freshly painted two-storey building bore the legend HENRY CHISWELL AND SON, OYSTER MERCHANTS. It had been started by her grandfather, Old Mr Henry as he had become known, and under his son, her father, it was going from strength to strength.

Abigail didn’t stop but made her way slowly along to the end of the quay, savouring the late afternoon sunshine. It was all noise and bustle. Horses stamped patiently as carts were loaded; men shouted to each other as they worked or idled their time away; ragged children, looking to earn a farthing where they could, squabbled in the filth of the gutter, and two flashily dressed women hanging round the door of the Anchor waiting to be taken in laughed raucously as three sailors, who hadn’t seen a woman for weeks, fought over who should receive their favours first.

But at the far end of the quay, where there was nothing but an old derelict warehouse, unused for years, it was quiet, and pleasant just to stand and look out towards the bend in the river beyond which were hidden the little fishing villages of Wivenhoe and Rowhedge and further down river the cinque port of Brightlingsea and the estuary rich with the oyster layings from which her father and a good many others made their living. She sat down on the last bollard of the quay. She always thought of it as ‘her’ bollard because the boats rarely tied to it, it was too far from the busy end of the quay. Here she would come and sit when she wanted to be alone, when she was very happy or very sad, or when she simply wanted to think.

The riverside had its own smell. It was difficult to define. It was a smell of tarred rope, of sawn timber, of coffee, overlaid with the distinctive stink of the makings, of fish left to rot, and of the black mud, popping quietly as pockets of gas escaped. But all the smells, good and bad, were part of the atmosphere of the river and part of Abigail. She never stopped to think whether they were good or bad; they were simply there, as part of her life, a part that she loved and valued.

She folded her arms under her cloak and her fingers touched the keys at her waist. She wasn’t particularly sad any longer. Now that the funeral was behind them life would return to normal and wouldn’t be so very different. Nevertheless Abigail would miss her mother. She would miss going to her room to settle her for the night and talking over the day with her. There would be nobody to talk the day over with now; Edwin was rarely at home, and Pearl … she sighed again. She didn’t have a lot in common with her flighty younger sister but maybe she and Pearl would draw a little closer together now.

As for her father … His business was his life. Started as an oyster stall on the quayside by his father it had grown and flourished until now Henry was the biggest oyster merchant on the Colne. And as he had told her, Edwin was being groomed to take over when Henry could no longer work. She shook her head. Sometimes – as with the household keys – her father could be very unobservant. Couldn’t he see that Edwin hated the business and wanted nothing to do with it? That his heart was in his music and – something she herself had only recently discovered – journalism? When Edwin could make enough to live on by his pen he would be off, of that she was in no doubt, and she was torn between wanting her brother to be happy and successful and dreading her father’s anguish in discovering that his only son didn’t care about Chiswell and Son. If only she could inherit the business herself! She would like nothing better. But she was only a woman so it was quite out of the question.

She walked back slowly along the quay, scanning the boats for a glimpse of Conquest, the oyster boat Matthew Bateman sailed for his grandfather at Brightlingsea. Her heart gave a little skip when she saw it, moored next to the Edith, her father’s boat, which Josh Miller, Matthew’s uncle, sailed. Matthew was on the foredeck of Conquest and when he saw her he raised his hand.

‘Afternoon, Miss Abbie,’ he called.

‘Good afternoon, Matthew.’ Abigail felt her colour rise. Matthew was a tall, broad man, about three years her senior, with a face weatherbeaten to the colour of mahogany and unruly dark curls and whiskers. He lived with his widowed mother in a small cottage in Dolphin Yard off Hythe Street. Abigail had known him almost ever since she could remember and she would have stopped and spoken longer, but with a friendly smile and a lift of his cheese-cutter cap he turned away and continued with his work.

With a stab of disappointment she went on her way. Nobody knew how she felt about Matthew, there was no one she could confide in, not even her sister. Her mouth twisted wryly. She could just imagine Pearl’s reaction.

‘But Abbie, he’s only a common fisherman! You can’t be in love with a common fisherman!’ But her look of amazement would not have been because Matthew was a common fisherman but because it would never have occurred to her that poor, plain old Abbie could ever begin to harbour feelings of love for anybody in her breast.

Abigail sighed. How little Pearl knew. How little anyone knew.

She continued on her way along the quay and reached the door of her father’s warehouse just as it opened. About half a dozen women and two men came out. She noticed that one of the women was heavily pregnant and all of them had hands that resembled nothing so much as lumps of raw meat. The women bobbed shyly towards her and then went on their way together with one of the men. The other came across, his cap deferentially tucked under his arm. It was Isaac Honeyball, one of her father’s dredgermen.

‘May I offer my condolences over the mistress, Miss Abbie?’ he said quietly.

‘Thank you, Isaac’ She smiled at him and made to continue on her way.

‘Bad winter it’s bin, this year, Miss Abbie, and no mistake,’ he went on, shaking his grey, balding head.

‘It has indeed, Isaac. I’m sure it has caused great hardship to many.’

‘I doubt there’ll be more as’ll suffer, too, Miss Abbie, as a result of it. There’ll be precious few oysters next season after a winter sech as this one’s bin. There’s always a bad spat after a bad winter.’ Spat was the name given to the spawn of oysters.

Abigail smiled at him. Isaac Honeyball could never be accused of optimism. He would never see any good in anything if there was a chance things might go wrong. ‘I expect we shall survive, Isaac,’ she said cheerfully. ‘The beds are well stocked.’

‘That’s as may be, Miss Abbie,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘That’s as may be.’ He retrieved his cap from under his arm, doffed it and replaced it on his head as he walked away.

Abigail watched him go. He was probably right. A bad spat always followed a bad winter. But her father didn’t depend entirely on oysters for a living. Henry Chiswell was prepared to buy and sell almost anything as long as it had a profit in it. Chiswell and Son would survive.

The year of mourning was past. It had been a difficult year for everyone, particularly Abigail, who had borne the brunt of the family’s discontent.

‘I’ve hated wearing black, it simply doesn’t suit me,’ Pearl complained for the hundredth time. She peered at her reflection in the overmantel in the morning room, a pleasantly over-furnished room, bathed in late spring sunshine. ‘It makes me look – wan.’ She pinched her cheeks in an effort to bring more colour into them.

‘Nonsense. Of course you don’t look wan, as you call it.’ Abigail was sitting at the table checking the silver. She looked up at Pearl with her head on one side. ‘A little pale, perhaps, but that’s because you spend so much time sitting indoors with your head in a book.’ She smiled at her sister. ‘Anyway, it makes you look interesting.’

‘Interesting! Pah! I don’t want to look interesting. I want to look pretty!’ Pearl snapped, sitting down with a flounce. She leaned back in her chair. ‘Not that we’ve been allowed to go anywhere for the past year to look pretty, or interesting, or wan. And I’m bored silly staying at home.’ She yawned and stretched her arms above her head. ‘Bored quite silly.’

‘You could always check the linen cupboard,’ Abigail suggested. ‘I believe some of the table linen needs renewing. It’s a task I never seem to find time for.’

Pearl stopped in mid-yawn, her arms still outstretched. ‘Me? Check the linen cupboard? Don’t be ridiculous, Abbie. I wouldn’t know a sheet from a table napkin.’

‘Then it’s high time you learned, my girl,’ Abigail said sternly. ‘If you can do nothing else you can count everything.’

‘Oh, why can’t you ask Hetty to do it?’ Pearl pouted.

‘How can Hetty do it? She can neither read nor write, as you very well know. And I doubt she can even count beyond the fingers of one hand. But we need to know for Papa’s dinner party at the end of next week. The mayor will be coming and Mr Hayfield and, oh, I don’t know who else.’

‘Oh, yes.’ Pearl sat up, immediately interested. ‘My new dress is nearly finished. It’s pearl grey, to match my name, and it’s to have a pink rose at the bosom. It will be all right to have a pink rose, won’t it, Abbie? We are out of mourning now.’

Abigail looked doubtful. ‘We should still be in half-mourning, strictly speaking, Pearl. But, no, I shouldn’t think a pink rose would be out of place.’ She finished checking the silver and put it back into its baize-lined drawer. ‘I must go to the warehouse now,’ she said, going over to the mirror and patting her thick chestnut hair. ‘I told Papa I would be there at ten and I promised Edwin I would help him make up the end of the month accounts today.’

Pearl regarded her sister with her head on one side. ‘You’ve got such beautiful hair, Abbie. It’s really not fair, when mine is so, well, ordinary.’

‘Don’t be a little goose, your hair is a very pretty golden colour,’ Abbie laughed. She turned and looked at her sister. Pearl was nineteen now, a sweetly pretty girl with wide blue eyes, regular features and slightly pouting lips. Her hair, though not as thick and richly coloured as Abigail’s, clouded round her face in an attractive froth of golden ringlets. Her complexion was flawless. ‘I really don’t know what you’re complaining about, Pearl.’ Abbie fetched her bonnet and put it on. ‘You’re an extremely pretty girl.’

‘I still wish I had hair like yours.’ Without another glance at her sister Pearl picked up a magazine and began reading the latest instalment of The Old Curiosity Shop by Mr Charles Dickens. ‘What time will you be back?’ she asked without looking up as Abigail turned to go. ‘And does Daisy know what’s for luncheon?’

‘Yes, she does. And I shall be back in plenty of time to eat my share.’ Abigail reached the door. ‘Don’t forget to check the linen while I’m gone’ were her parting words.

But Pearl didn’t answer. She was too engrossed in Little Nell’s troubles.

Henry pulled out his gold hunter watch, looked at it and then replaced it impatiently in his pocket. He drummed his fingers on the top of his desk indecisively for a few seconds and then picked up a sheaf of papers and left his office – it was marked PRIVATE in gold letters on the etched glass panel – and went across the landing to an identical door opposite – marked OFFICE – and threw it open.

‘Is she here yet?’ he asked, frowning at the young man bending low over the desk. Henry wasn’t sure that he liked the present fashion of wearing the hair oiled so close to the head and then curling at the neck although he had to admit it suited the boy. In fact, he was a handsome young devil. Dressed well, too.

Edwin looked up. ‘No, Father,’ he replied, ‘not yet.’

‘Bah!’ Henry made a sound of irritation. ‘I want these letters done today. She’ll never get through them all if she doesn’t look sharp. She said she’d be here by ten.’

‘It’s only five past, now, Guv’nor,’ Edwin protested. ‘I’m sure she’ll be here in a minute.’

‘In a minute!’ Henry jabbed a finger at his son. ‘Time is money, my boy, and don’t you forget it.’ He looked at his watch again. ‘I must go. I’ve a Commissioners’ meeting shortly. Hayfield, across the river, agrees with me that it’s time something was done about the river silting up. It’s expensive to unload cargo at Wivenhoe and then have to bring it the rest of the way by lighter because the river’s become so shallow. And our boats could use more of the tide if the channel was deepened. There’s even talk about a canal between Wivenhoe and Hythe … ’

‘But something ought to be done about the town’s drinking water supply, Guv’nor,’ Edwin said. ‘Surely the money would be better spent on that. The river can wait.’

The river can’t wait. First things first. Now, where are those papers about the proposed canal, Carver? I gave them to you yesterday, didn’t I?’

Ezra Carver looked up from his desk at the far end of the office, away from the light of the window. He was a thin, rather weedy-looking man of about thirty, with receding sandy-coloured hair, and pale eyes, which he now blinked myopically.

‘Yes, Mr Chiswell, but I haven’t got them now,’ he said anxiously. ‘You said to let Miss Abigail see them, so I gave them to her.’ Ezra gave the dry, consumptive cough that punctuated practically everything he said.

‘Bah!’ Henry said again and strode over to the third desk in the room, where piles of papers were laid out in a neat orderly fashion. He riffled through them impatiently, littering them over the desk and on to the floor. ‘They’re not here,’ he muttered. He turned to Edwin. ‘Did you take them, boy?’

Edwin frowned at the mess his father had made. ‘I looked at them, yes. But I’m sure Abbie brought them back to your office when she’d seen them, Guv’nor.’

‘Did she? Oh, I’d better go and look there, then.’ Henry put the letters he had brought conspicuously on top of the heap without making any attempt to repair the mess he had made, and left the room. A few minutes later his office door slammed and there was the sound of his feet clattering down the stairs.

Without a word, both Edwin and Ezra hurried over to Abigail’s desk and began to tidy up.

‘Better not let my sister see her desk in this state, Carver,’ Edwin said, shuffling the papers together into some sort of order. ‘She’ll go through the roof. She’s got a temper like a mud-engine. Although perhaps you didn’t know that, Carver? Perhaps you’ve never come up against it.’

Ezra Carver straightened the blotter and inkstand. ‘No, Mr Edwin,’ he said with a cough, ‘I can’t say I have.’

Abigail adjusted her bonnet in the hall mirror, put on her pelisse and left the house. As she walked down Hythe Hill, she stopped at St Leonard’s churchyard for a quiet moment to put fresh flowers on her mother’s grave. They wouldn’t be there for long, she knew that. If the little ragged urchins who swarmed the streets didn’t steal them, their elders would. Pearl was probably right in saying it was a waste of time to put them there. But Abigail persisted. It was the only thing left that she could do for her mother.

The hill was busy, with horses and carts rumbling up with merchandise unloaded from the boats, and with people who suddenly appeared from the numerous yards and alleys, hoping to pick up anything that might by accident or with a littl. . .