The East Indiaman Read online

  ‘Well, we have Hooker’s backing…’ he began patiently, intending to reiterate the intentions agreed between the two men, the one backing and the other carrying our their joint, proposed enterprise.

  ‘I’m not certain that we have, William,’ she said looking directly at him so that even in the gloom the intensity of her expression communicated itself to him.

  ‘What do you mean?’ He was suddenly intent, dismissing his mood of mild happiness as an indulgent foolishness. It was for the common seamen to build castles in Spain, men of business should concentrate their superior gifts upon more serious matters. He bent his attention to Sarah as she began to voice what he had called her perturbations.

  ‘As you know I have become close to Rose ever since that curious event in the rain storm.’ Kite recalled that some days after the dunking which he had given Hooker, Sarah had told him that Rose had confided in her that she and Josiah had been intimate. The woman’s glowing happiness was clear evidence that they had not enjoyed intercourse for a long time and, Sarah thought, Rose intended some oblique expression of her personal gratitude transmitted thus, woman-to-woman. Since this private exchange the enforced isolation of the two women among so many men had drawn them even closer. Kite’s duty had inevitably contributed to throwing Sarah and Rose together in the isolation of the cabin, but Sarah had taken the opportunity of gaining information about India and of preparing herself for what she knew would be a bigger challenge to her adaptability than the simpler shift from New to old England.

  Rose, she discovered, was a woman of considerable intelligence whose devotion to her husband derived in part from a past obligation and, it was hinted, some act of Josiah Hooker’s that had in some undisclosed way, saved Rose from an unspecified but dread and fateful event. Rose had admitted that this act, whatever it was, had turned her from her origins, leading her to abandon her given name and, while she still wore Indian clothes, had filled her with a desire to assume the dress and manners of an English gentlewoman. Had she remained in England, as had been intended, she would have completed the transformation which, up until that time, had progressed little beyond her adoption of Josiah’s name for her.

  She had not, Sarah continued in her explanation, thought that the time in Liverpool offered Rose any opportunity to continue, let alone complete, this process. Sarah was given to understand that Rose’s disappointment in being forced to return to India was far greater than her husband’s. However, and here Sarah laughed as Rose had done in the candid admission, she had however succeeded in acquiring at least a share in an English ladies’ maid.

  ‘A share, she said,’ Sarah chuckled, ‘as men own shares in ships. I hadn’t the heart to explain that was not quite how we regarded Maggie’s services.’

  ‘I see,’ Kite responded, pleased that Sarah’s tale was not all gloom and perceiving perhaps that it arose from nothing more than the natural fears of the night. But then Sarah, as if recollecting herself, gave a deep sigh and stared again out over the sea.

  ‘And what else has Rose confided in you?’ Kite prompted.

  ‘I’m not certain. There is a fear of returning to India, though I think this applied to Madras or Calcutta, rather than Bombay. No, fear may be too strong a word, but this apprehension is not what I find disturbs me, it is Josiah’s changed mood. Surely you had noticed that?’

  Kite considered Sarah’s proposition with a faint air of exasperation. The concerns of running the Spitfire, of worrying about their stock of water and an outbreak of what looked like scurvy in two of the dacoits and one of the seamen, of the demands of navigation in these remote and unfamiliar seas and the constant, nagging fear of interception by an enemy cruiser to which now they were exposed, did not predispose him to the petty mood changes of Hooker. Unlike Sarah and her growing friendship with Rose, Kite did not like Hooker very much. His acquaintance had become a tiresome necessity and Kite maintained his distance with a barrier of courteous formality, broken only by the extraordinary events of that rain-sodden dunking, aware that he needed Hooker’s backing and oriental expertise if he was ever to restore his wife and himself to any position of standing in society.

  But yes, since they had reached the bluer and warmer seas of the mid-Indian Ocean he had noticed Hooker’s change. The emergence of Spitfire from the damp and chilly latitudes was clear evidence that India was no more than a month away, perhaps less. No longer prostrated by sea-sickness, Hooker’s thoughts turned to their destination and he expounded fulsomely on Indian affairs. In a bewildering series of monologues intended for the better understanding of Kite and his wife, Hooker had expounded his views and interpretations of the position of the Honourable East India Company and its factories which, he explained, extended from Surat in the north east of the Indian peninsula, to Benkulen on the coast of Sumatra. He had talked of opportunities lost in the past, of the Spice islands of the Moluccas surrendered to the Dutch; he spoke too of the wider mercantile outposts at Bussorah in the Persian Gulf and of the difficulties of trading with the Mandarin-obstructed Hongs of Canton. He hinted at the possibilities of Japan and the secret and unsuccessful expeditions made by bold ‘Country’ traders to reach the port of Nagasaki and break the monopolies of the Portuguese and Dutch. He regaled them with anecdotes of the presidencies at Madras, Calcutta and Bombay, told of the dangers of the French at Pondicherry; of the Portuguese at Goa and the turmoil of the entire country under the imperial domination of the Moghul Emperor Shah Alam upon the Peacock throne at fabulous Delhi. There were European names too, familiar English names like Warren Hastings and William Clive, but cautionary names like that of the Frenchman Dupleix, and those of troublesome princes like Hyder Ali and Tipu Sultan of Mysore. He spoke of other high-ranking Indians: of Nawabs, Nizams and Begums, of their tribes like the Rohillas, Holkars and the Marathas, of the Gaikwars of Baroda and the Scindias of Gwalior; of territories called Oudh, Bengal, Hyderabad; of coasts called Malabar, Coromandel and the Carnatic, and of millions of rupees that passed by way of some mysterious agent (or was it agency, for Kite was never quite sure), known as the Diwani. Hooker’s facts poured through their overwhelmed imaginations on a torrent of silver currency that suggested wealth beyond their grasping. From time to time Hooker’s lectures homed in on more mundane facts, suggesting that difficulties exceeding even the labyrinthine complexities of Indian politics might lie in the paths of humble British merchants. He spoke of the difficulties of shipping saltpetre, essential for the manufacture of gun-powder, down the shoal littered River Hughli from Patna to Calcutta, and of the utility of teak which was best extracted from the forests of the Mon Kingdom of Pegu, south east of Bengal on the coast of the Burmese peninsula. Here, he cautioned, lay a vast swamp-land of mangroves, infested with pirates and known as the Arakan so that, all-in-all, it appeared to Kite that between the Scylla of corrupt Moghul officials and their rebellious subjects, and the Charybdis of lawless and unpredictable natives beyond the Moghul Pale, lay a narrow channel of opportunity for British merchant adventurers. But even this was studded with the rocks of Dutch hegemony and the ever-present and still potent challenge of the ambitious French.

  ‘Now we are east of the Cape,’ Hooker had declaimed, ‘you can forget the monopoly of the Honourable East India Company.’ Hooker had grinned and added, ‘In fact, my dear friends, John Company’s remit runs less-and-less to profit from trade, though her servants all indulge in private transactions. It is a fact that causes the Directors in London to grind their teeth, for their balances diminish as they acquire greater political and military responsibilities. They are, d’you see, driven to defend factories and forts with Sepoy levies and their ships with their own Marine while the chief beneficiaries are their servants and others, all of whom are directly or vicariously indulging in a private commerce.’

  ‘But,’ Hooker had paused, his gleeful face assuming a sly, knowing look. ‘But,’ he had repeated for great emphasis, ‘as London and the whole of England grows ever more infatuated with tea, the greater oppor
tunities for trade grow in proportion with China, not India. By an irony, however, that which we chiefly export, our guns and watches and woollen cloth, are not wanted in China and so we are driven of necessity to pay for our tea, not with goods but with silver. We must, perforce buy the stuff…’

  It was clear to Hooker that this necessity was utterly unacceptable. It constituted a serious drain upon the balance of trade and he expressed to Kite the gravity of this inequity. Or so Kite deduced at the time, though long afterwards he perceived in retrospect a greater and more significant meaning.

  ‘The Chinese are obdurate,’ Hooker had added with an air of exasperation, pouring himself a third glass of wine and draining it at a single draught. ‘They refuse almost all of our manufactures, indeed it would not be too strong to say they are contemptuous of them, and to this stupidity they add the burden of their damned cumshaw.’

  Hooker had tossed yet another unfamiliar word at them, but Kite had been too inured to Hooker’s inexplicable additions to his vocabulary to remonstrate. He remained silent and left the more inquisitive Sarah to raise the query.

  ‘And what is that, Josiah?’

  ‘Cumshaw? Cumshaw is baksheesh, a pour boire, a douceur…’

  ‘Bribes then…’

  ‘Exactly dear lady,’ Hooker had been unrepentant at this deliberate obfuscation and had merely smiled. ‘And this only adds to our burden…’

  ‘Then how are we to turn a profit…?’ Kite had realised the implications of Hooker’s cautionary statement.

  ‘Ah, you are awake, William,’ Hooker had remarked with an indulgent sarcasm.

  ‘Well?’ Kite had prompted, ignoring Hooker’s waspish retort and pulling himself upright in his chair as Spitfire’s had stern lifted to a low swell and her hull had groaned in attenuated protest.

  Hooker’s mood had been one of resurgent triumph and he had grinned broadly. ‘That my dear William I would prefer not to divulge at this juncture, but rest assured that I have the greatest expectations of this enterprise.’ And with this ambivalence Hooker had refilled his glass and raised it in a toast to their mutual futures, thereafter skilfully diverting their debate to the primary task of a acquiring a ship.

  Since this dinner with its tones of optimism had taken place only five days earlier, Kite had indeed remarked a shift in Hooker’s mood. It was, he presumed, to this that Sarah referred. Absorbed in his own business, he had given the matter little thought, but now that Sarah drew his attention to the fact he sought a reasonable explanation.

  ‘Yes, he has changed, I agree. But is this not reasonable given our approach to Bombay? He has much of a practical nature to occupy his mind. From the froth of his golden, or should I say silver, dreams he has to distil some means of advancing our cause.’

  ‘You have not noticed, have you.’ It was no question; Sarah uttered a statement. Kite felt irritation rise in him and bit it off short.

  ‘What have I not noticed in particular?’ he asked in a tone of thinly suppressed irritation.

  ‘He has begun to smell again.’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Sarah! Must I needs bathe the man once more?’ Exasperation burst from Kite.

  ‘I do not believe Hooker smells from neglect of cleanliness…’ Sarah persisted lowering her voice.

  ‘Well I most assuredly do,’ Kite said with a mixture of vehement conviction and amusement. ‘Mercifully you did not witness the sloughing off of the man’s past. Good heavens it was a damned revelation!’

  ‘My dear,’ Sarah affirmed with unshakeable conviction, ‘he sweats from fear. He is in a constant state of agitation, of apprehension…’

  ‘But what does he apprehend, for God’s sake?’

  ‘Some nemesis…’

  ‘Nemesis? God Lord, Sarah, you talk like a damned witch!’ Kite barked a short, unamused laugh.

  ‘Oh, yes, and this obsession is now growing upon him, out-weighing the optimistic anticipation with which he reasoned a few evenings since.’

  Kite’s brow furrowed. Sarah’s persistence won her his attention at last. ‘You have some privy knowledge of this from Rose?’ he asked, turning to face his wife.

  ‘No,’ Sarah shook her lovely head. ‘At least, not directly, though she has hinted that while she is looking forward to our arrival at Bombay, should the weather or any other circumstance…’

  ‘Any other circumstance?’

  ‘Well, an enemy, or something…’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Should anything disturb our passage and divert us elsewhere, neither Josiah nor Rose will regard our situation as fortunate as hitherto.’

  ‘You mean that they are content with our arrival at Bombay, but that anywhere else, on the Coromandel coast, for instance, would not please them?’

  ‘Yes. And I think that the purchase of your promised ship will be a hurried matter if Josiah can arrange it. He has said that he wishes you not to miss the favourable monsoon for the Bay of Bengal…’

  Kite digested this information. He did not quite know what to make of it. He knew that the monsoon favourable to the Bay of Bengal made of the Malabar coast a long, lee shore, but there was clearly some undercurrent evident to his wife. Sarah was no fool and would never have raised the matter should it not be troubling her. Intuition or insight, the fact that Sarah was raising an alarm ought to be warning enough. For Kite the future was clouded by his own private fears: he was no-longer young and the Indian climate had buried white men with almost as much brutality as that of the West Indies. If he ventured into Chinese seas or the vague yet threatening waters such as Hooker intimated existed along the coasts of the Arakan and elsewhere, what would he find? Chief among his own worries was what he was to do with Sarah. He could not leave her among strangers in Bombay, yet the risks of her accompanying him in the vaguely named ‘Country’ trade, filled him with a greater fear. Suppose he should fall sick and die, leaving her aboard ship, isolated among a crew whose appetites he knew only too well? The enervating climate of the tropics worked not only upon men, he recalled with an unavoidably disquieting fear, but loosened the morals and reticence of women. Had he not himself fought off the predatory advances of the infamous Kitty whose lust had not been slaked by his partner and friend Wentworth had embroiled other men? He did not care to consider Sarah consumed with such unbridled appetites, but the thoughts came to him unbidden, common to men of his age, aware of both their own failing powers and of the strong passions yet remaining in their women.

  Kite shook his head to clear it. This was a train of thought engendered by the night; so too perhaps was Sarah’s, but it would not do to put that theory to her now. Better he accepted her warning at face value.

  ‘You are clearly worried, m’dear,’ he said, placing a hand over hers as it clasped the rail. He was suddenly disturbed by the tension in her grip, evidence of inner turmoil and conviction. It suddenly occurred to him that Sarah was as frightened of the future as he was himself, for she suddenly turned her wrist and clung onto his hand in a fierce grip.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I am.’

  ‘Well, do you try and speak further to Rose. Watch for an opening, perhaps an allusion to congress applied discreetly. Hint that you are concerned that Josiah is worried and that you attribute his returning stink to his preoccupations. Pretend that you like her.’

  ‘But I do like her,’ Sarah protested. ‘There is much more to her than you imagine. You see her only behind Josiah’s intervening bulk, as an appendage to him, not as a person in her own right with a life and existence of her own…’

  ‘Well, will you do what I suggest?’ Kite said, not paying his wife any attention. Not since she had so charmingly thanked him g for his help in that disgusting stew in London had he been immune from Rose’s ample charms.

  ‘I shall try.’

  ‘And you should go back to bed. It will be an hour before I come below.’

  ‘Very well. She gave his hand another squeeze and then relinquished it and walked forward, her body perfectly balanc
ed against the scend of the schooner. A second later she had disappeared down the companionway.

  But Kite was not thinking of his wife, nor of Rose Hooker, he was remembering the strange circumstances of Hooker’s incongruous London lodgings, of the allusions to ‘an enemy’, and to the rejections of investment by the Directors of the Honourable East India Company behind their great horseshoe table. What in the devil’s name was the man truly up to?

  Part Two

  The Sowing

  Chapter Eight

  Bombay

  The monsoon favourable to eastward voyaging prevailed north of the equator and the Spitfire soon picked up its strong south-westerly wind. All thoughts of Hooker were dismissed, for Kite was anxious about their position. Before their departure from Liverpool, Kite had sent out McClusky to obtain adequate charts of the Indian Seas. But there was a paucity of these, it being argued that all hydrographic secrets were the property of the Honourable Company and that only those meditating the illegal, monopoly-breaking trade of the so-called ‘Interlopers’ had need of such things. The arguments that the Spitfire was fitting out as either a yacht or a privateer carried little weight in such a seller’s market. Charts of the Indian and China Seas, McClusky had reported, were few and far between and commanded high prices. Despising himself for doing so, Kite had approached Hooker for money and the nabob had obliged but now, faced with the testing of their accuracy, Kite was confronted with their inadequacy.

  What McClusky gleaned at an exhorbitant price proved almost useless. The folio was old and, although attributing its authority to the hydrographic efforts of several humble servants of The Honourable East India Company, Kite doubted the accuracy of the positions of any of the plotted atolls, relying only upon the observed positions of such well established places such as Bombay castle, Fort George at Madras, or the Company’s factory at Surat on the River Tupti.