“Life is not a battle, for battles are there to be won or lost. Life is to be experienced,” Matthew Hague was heard to dictate to his skinny draughtsman.
Well, of course, for Matthew Hague there was precious little battling going on, firstly because he was the son of the Sir Aubrey Hague, and secondly he had a dirty great minder following him everywhere.
• • •
So anyway, I made it my business to find out where Caroline would be one sunny afternoon. How? Well, that was a case of calling in a favour, you could say. You remember Rose, the maidservant I helped save from a fate worse than death? I reminded her of that fact one day when I followed her from Hawkins Lane to the market and as she made her way through the stalls, deftly avoiding the shouts of the stall-holders with a basket in the crook of her arm, made my introductions.
She didn’t recognize me, of course.
“I’m sure I have no idea who you are, sir,” she said with little, startled eyes darting in all directions, as though her employers might come a-leaping from the aisles between the stalls.
“Well, I know exactly who you are, Rose,” I said. “It was me who took a beating on your behalf outside the Auld Shilellagh last week. Drunk as you were, you remember the presence of a Good Samaritan, I hope?”
She nodded reluctantly. And yes, perhaps it’s not the most gentlemanly thing to do, to use a young lady’s unfortunate circumstances in such a mercenary fashion, to . . . well, I wouldn’t go as far as to say blackmail, but to leverage information from her, but there we have it. I was smitten and, given that my penmanship skills were nonexistent, had decided that a face-to-face encounter with Caroline was the best way to begin the process of winning her heart.
Charm the birds out the trees, see? Well, it worked on traders, and on the occasional young lady I encountered in the taverns. Why not on someone of high-born stock?
From Rose I learnt that Caroline enjoyed taking the air at the Bristol docks on a Tuesday afternoon. But, she said, with a quick look left to right, I should be wary of Mr. Hague. Him and his manservant Wilson. Mr. Hague was most keen on Caroline, so Rose said, and was very protective of her.
So it was that the following morning I made sure I took a trip into town, moved my goods as quickly as possible, then made my way down to the harbour. There the air was thick with the scent of sea-salt, manure and boiling pitch, and rang to the cries of sea-gulls and the endless shouts of those who made the docks their place of work: crews calling to one another as they loaded and unloaded ships whose masts rocked slightly in a gentle breeze.
I could see why Caroline might like it here. All life was on the harbour. From the men with baskets of freshly picked apples or pheasants hanging on twine around their necks, to the tradesmen who merely deposited baskets on the quayside and hollered at visiting deck-hands, to the women with fabric, persuading jack-tars they were getting a bargain. There were children who had flowers or tinder to sell, or who ran through the legs of sailors and dodged the traders, almost as anonymous as the dogs that slunk around the harbour walls and snuffled at the piles of rubbish and rotting food swept there from the day before.
Among them all was Caroline, who, with a bow in her bonnet, a parasol over one shoulder, and Rose a respectful few feet behind her, looked every inch the lady. And yet, I noticed—I kept my own distance for the time being, needing to choose my moment—she didn’t look down her nose at the activity around her, as she so easily could have done. Her attraction to the place was not one of prurient interest. From her demeanour I could tell that she, like me, enjoyed seeing life in all its forms. I wondered, did she also, like me, ever look out to a sea that glittered with treasure, masts of ships tilting gently, gulls flying towards where the world began, and wonder what stories the horizons had to tell?
I am a romantic man, it’s true, but not a romantic fool, and there had been moments since that day outside the tavern when I’d wondered if my growing affections for Caroline were not partly an invention of my mind. She had been my saviour, after all. But then, as I walked along the harbour, I fell for her anew.
Did I expect to speak to Caroline in my sheep-farmer’s clothes? Of course not. I’d taken the precaution of changing and traded my dirty boots for a pair of silver-buckled shoes, neat white stockings and dark breeches, a freshly laundered waistcoat over my shirt, and a matching three-cornered hat instead of my trusty brown hat. I looked quite the gentleman, if I do say so myself: I was young, good-looking and full of confidence, the son of a well-respected tradesman in the area. A Kenway. The name had something, at least (despite my attempts otherwise), and I also had with me a young rogue by the name of Albert, who I had bribed to do a job for me. It doesn’t take much grey matter to guess the nature of the job: he was to help me impress the fair Caroline. One transaction with a flower girl later and I had the means to do it too.
“Right, you remember the plan,” I told Albert, who looked up at me from beneath the brim of his hat with eyes that were so much older than his years and a bored heard-it-all-before look on his face.
“Right, mate, you’re to give this spray of flowers to that fine-looking lady over there. She will stop. She will say to you, ‘Ah, young fellow, for what reason are you presenting me with these flowers?’ And you will point over here.” I indicated where I would be standing, proud as a peacock. Caroline would either recognize me from the other day, or at the very least wish to thank her mysterious benefactor, and instruct Albert to invite me over, at which point the charm offensive would begin.
“What’s in it for me?” asked Albert.
“What’s in it for you? How about counting yourself lucky I don’t give you a thick ear?”
He curled a lip. “How about you taking a running jump off the side of the harbour?”
“All right,” I said, knowing when I was beaten, “there’s half a penny in it for you.”
“Half a penny? Is that the best you can do?”
“As a matter of fact, Sonny Jim, it is the best I can bloody do, and for walking across the harbour and presenting a flower to a beautiful woman, it’s also the easiest halfpenny’s work there ever was.”
“Ain’t she got a suitor with her?” Albert craned his neck to look.
Of course, it would soon become apparent exactly why Albert wanted to know whether Caroline had an escort. But at that particular moment in time I took his interest for nothing more than curiosity. Some idle conversation. So I told him that, no, she had no suitor, and I gave him the spray of flowers and his halfpenny and sent him on his way.