“Father, what am I going to do?” he asked then.
“Not take William Henry to Habitas’s with ye, at any rate.”
“She is something worse than merely unwell, ain’t she?”
“I fear so, Richard. The worst of it is that it is not good for him to be so cosseted.”
“Who is ‘him’?” asked William Henry.
Both men looked at him, then at each other.
“ ‘Him,’ ” said Richard with decision, “is you, William Henry. Ye’re old enough to be told that your mama worries and fusses about you too much.”
“I know that, Dadda,” said William Henry. He climbed off Richard’s knee and went to stand beside his mother, pat her heaving shoulders. “Mama, you must not worry so. I am a big boy now.”
“But he is a little boy!” Peg wailed after Richard had taken her upstairs and put her on their bed. “Richard, how could you be so stupid? A babe in a gunsmithy!”
“Peg, we make guns, we do not use them,” said Richard patiently. “William Henry is old enough to be”-he searched frantically for a telling word-
She rolled away from him. “That is ridiculous! How can anyone who calls a tavern ‘home’ be in need of broadening?”
“A tavern exposes a child to naught save folly,” said Richard, keeping the exasperation out of his voice. “Since his eyes could see, he has witnessed inebriation, self-pity, incautious comments, fisticuffs, profanity, lewd behavior and disgusting messes. You think that your presence makes it acceptable, that he cannot be harmed, but I too was a tavern-keeper’s child, and well do I remember what tavern life did to me. Frankly, I was glad to go to board at Colston’s, and gladder still not to serve my apprenticeship as a victualler. It would do William Henry the world of good to meet and have congress with sober men.”
“You will
“I can see that for myself, Peg, ye’ve no need to tell me. But this episode has shown me,” he said, sinking onto the bed and putting a hand on her shoulder, “that it is time to speak. You cannot keep William Henry wrapped in swaddling clothes for the rest of his childhood for no better reason than that he is our only child. Today has made me understand that it is high time our son was allowed a little more freedom. You must learn to let William Henry go now, for next year he will be at Colston’s School, and that I insist upon no matter what.”
“I cannot let him go!” she cried.
“You must. If you do not, Peg, then it is not your child who occupies your thoughts. It is you yourself.”
“I know, I know, I know!” she wept through her fingers, rocking. “But how can I stop? He is all I have-all I will ever have!”
“You have me.”
For a moment she did not answer. “Yes,” she said eventually, “I have you. But it is not the same, Richard, it is not the same. If anything were to happen to William Henry, I would die.”
Most of the light had gone; a grey little ray seeped through one of the cracks in the partition and rested like a cobweb on Richard Morgan’s face as he sat looking down on his wife. No, it is not the same, he thought. It is not the same.
Colston’s School for Boys had enabled many of the sons of the better class of Bristol’s poor to become lettered. It was by no means the only such; every religious denomination except the Roman Catholics had charity schools, particularly the Church of England. Only two of them had distinctive uniforms for their charity pupils, however. Colston’s boys wore blue coats, the Red Maids wore red dresses. Both Church of England, though the Red Maids were not so lucky; they were taught to read but not to write, and most of their time was taken up with embroidering silk waistcoats and coats for the gentry, work for which their mistresses were paid but they were not. Literacy and numeracy were better spread among Bristol’s males than in any other English city, including London. Elsewhere they tended to be the mark of the wealthy.
Colston’s 100 charity boys were boarders, of course, a fate which had befallen Richard; due to school and apprenticeship, he had seen his parents only on Sundays and during vacations between the ages of seven and nineteen. Imagine Peg coping with
To William Henry, trotting along beside his grandfather (Mag had thrown a temper tantrum which had effectively prevented Peg’s coming too) on that first morning, more than a gate to school and learning was being thrown open; this was the first day of a whole new life, and he was dying of curiosity. Perhaps had he been let go with Richard to see what gun-smithing was like it might not have gripped him so urgently, but the prison walls his mother had erected around him remained unbreached, and he was very tired of them. A more passionate and impulsive child would have railed at them with evident frustration, but William Henry was as patient and as self- controlled as his father. His watchword was “wait.” And now, at last, the waiting was over.
Colston’s School for Boys looked no different from two dozen other piles which rejoiced in titles like school or poorhouse or hospital or workhouse; grimy and not very well kept up, the glass in its windows never cleaned, its plaster shabby and its timbers crooked. Damp pervaded it from foundations to Tudor chimneys, the interior had never been designed for instruction, and the smell of the Froom mere yards away was nauseating for any save a native Bristolian nose.
It had a gate and a yard and what seemed like a thousand boys, perhaps half of them wearing the famous blue coat. Like the other paying day pupils, William Henry was not required to wear it; some of the day pupils were the sons of aldermen or Merchant Venturers who had no wish to besmirch their offspring with the taint of charity.
A tall, spindling man in the black suit and starched white stock of a clergyman approached Dick and William Henry, smiling to reveal discolored, rotting teeth: a rum drinker.
“Reverend Prichard,” said Dick, bowing.
“Mister Morgan.” The dark eyes turned to William Henry and widened. “This is Richard’s son?”
“Yes, this is William Henry.”
“Then come, William Henry.” And the Reverend Prichard set off across the yard without a backward glance.
William Henry followed, also without a backward glance; he was too busy digesting the chaos a boys’ schoolyard was before discipline cracked down.
“It is fortunate for you,” said the day pupil master, “that your birthday should coincide with the commencement of your schooling, Master William Henry Morgan. You will start learning with A for apple and the two-times table. I see ye have your slate, good.”
“Yes, sir,” said William Henry, whose manners were excellent.
That was the last collected thing he was to say unbidden until dinner time in the refectory, nor were his thought processes in much better order. It was so confusing! There were so many rules, none of which seemed to make any sense. Standing. Sitting. Kneeling. Praying. Parroting words. How to answer a query, how not to answer a query. Who did what to whom. Whereabouts this was, versus that.
His lessons took place in a vast room inhabited by the junior 100 of Colston’s pupils; several masters drifted from one group to another, or hectored one group without regard for the welfare of other groups. It was therefore of great advantage to William Henry Morgan that his grandfather, not busy enough in these hard times, had taught him to count, to know his ABC, and even to do a few simple sums. Otherwise he might have been overwhelmed.
Though the Reverend Prichard hovered, he did not take lessons. That duty for William Henry’s group rested with a Mr. Simpson, and it soon became apparent that Mr. Simpson had pronounced likes and dislikes when it came to his charges. Since he was willowy, sallow-skinned and looked to be in constant danger of vomiting, it was not surprising that he disliked the boys who snuffled with sickening gusto, or picked their noses, or displayed the sticky brown fingers which betrayed that they used them to wipe their dirty bottoms.
It was no torment for William Henry to do as he was told and-sit still!-don’t fidget!-don’t kick the bench!-don’t pick your nose!-don’t snuffle!-and
