Chapter
36
Boston,
Massachusetts
August
“ARE YOU INSANE?” Gareth Andrews
stopped in front of the Boston Public Library. A second before, he’d been
walking next to her, holding her hand. Now he hovered over her. He was taller
by eight inches.
Three
people walked by. Each stared for a moment, maybe wondering if they were about
to witness domestic abuse. Then they looked away as if Gareth’s glare
discouraged them from interfering.
At
seven in the evening, the temperature was in the mid-nineties with ninety
percent humidity. Daphne carried a sweater folded in front of her, a woolen
shield. The couple were planning to eat at Legal Seafood in Copley Place.
Daphne knew the restaurant would be air conditioned to meat-preservation levels
… thus the sweater.
Gareth
had not been there before, but she and Florence DuBois had eaten lunch there
the previous week to discuss their project, which was progressing faster and
better than she could have imagined.
Until
a few minutes ago, she hadn’t told him about the depth of the project. The mere
hint she alluded to, had caused him to throw a wobbly. The time had never been
right for her to discuss what he had forbidden her to pursue. Gareth was too
tired after his workday. During the weekends he might be more receptive, but he
still allowed work worries to creep into what could have been positive time.
Okay,
so workload at the consulate was overburdening him. Part of his problem was
replacing staff. Too many had quit under his predecessor. Those that remained
had little motivation and changing the atmosphere of a workplace took time. New
staff sometimes lasted less than three weeks.
Daphne
was happy that he hadn’t take her up on an offer to help. He was demanding to
the point that he wanted his underwear folded a certain way in his dresser. His
shirts needed to be lined up by color. He didn’t like the way the cleaning
woman polished his shoes. Her sympathies had shifted from him losing staff to
the women, and they were always women, who found the paycheck wasn’t worth it.
Daphne
had carefully planned tonight as the time she would tell him.
On
Saturdays there was no alarm. Check.
She’d
made love to him first thing. Check.
She’d
made a full English fry up for breakfast. Check.
When
he disappeared into his office, she’d brought him tea. Check.
It
had been too hot to suggest sightseeing. Gareth, who happily went to museums
with her in the beginning of their relationship, hadn’t shown any desire to do
so now, air conditioned or not.
As
for movies, their tastes were far too different, but last night she willingly
sat through an old James Bond film, hoping it would put him in a good mood for
her lengthy explanation of why she was spending so much time with Florence when
he expressed disapproval of the that woman. She even made popcorn and
brought him a beer. Although he poo-pooed many American things, he did like Sam
Adams beer. He didn’t get her remark that the beer was the name of an early
patriot who helped rout the British. He was well read on history of the last fifty
years or so, things that might affect the U.K.’s current policy. Anything
before that he called “ancient history and a waste of time” unless there was a
direct correlation to now.
Gareth
and she had made love a second time, before taking a nap. Naps were the
ultimate luxury in her husband’s opinion. After he woke, he suggested Legal
Seafood. Although she had eaten a fruit salad while he was asleep, she quickly
agreed.
Maybe
she should have waited until they had ordered their meals rather than springing
it on him as they walked past the BPL. “I’m not at all insane.”
“She’s
the French Consul General’s wife.”
“I
know that.”
“Well,
you can’t. I already told you.”
“There’s
no money involved, just my time, although if it works …”
“What’s
the expression … cockamamie?”
“There’s
nothing cockamamie about a series of historical comic books. We are going to
concentrate on before and during the first battle at Lexington.”
“And
you think anyone would listen to a Brit and a Frog? You’ve no credentials.”
“I
read history at Edinburgh University. She is a graphic artist.”
“One
doesn’t read a subject in the United States. They study it.”
“Same
thing. She went to art school. Those are good credentials, but it isn’t the
credentials, it’s the product.”
Florence
had told her how she wanted to go to art school, but her father refused to pay
for what he claimed was a useless degree. She worked days and took classes at
night concentrating on computer graphics.
Then
she married. Ongoing art classes were scattered between their relocations and
caring for her stepchildren, Fanny and Yannick.
“We want to show how ordinary people — not
just well-known historical figures —really lived,” Daphne said. the wording, and
Florence would create the artwork.
A
lot was still undecided. W
“Let kids know what it was like to
live in Colonial times.” She’d begun spending time at either the BPL or out at
Minute Man National Park, where it seemed as if the park rangers knew the
people who had lived in Colonial times personally. The women had agreed that once
they had the base concept, Daphne would do the core story and would be a
boy and a girl. One book or two? They weren’t sure. What if there were two
books with the girl in the boy’s story and vice versa. They could overlap.
Daphne
could not remember being so excited over a work project since the day she’d
discovered a treasure trove of 1801 letters from the second head of Scottish Tweed
to his son, who was about to take over the business. They were like reading a
novel. She’d rushed to the CEO. He was as excited as she was and gave her free
rein with the material. It had been a good balance compared to looking over old
accounting books. When she finished, the book had sold well in the gift shop.
Excerpts from the letters had been used in an advertising campaign.
“I
told you earlier, I forbid it.”
The
word forbid had never been a good one
to use with Daphne. As a child once forbidden to do anything, she would do it,
even if she hadn’t wanted to. Over the years, she’d mellowed a bit, but the
word still activated every bit of her rebel DNA.
Why
had she married Gareth? Was it triggered by her friend Phillipa who asked,
“What’s wrong with you? You’re the only one in our group not divorced yet.”
It
was true. Almost all the women she’d studied with at university had married
immediately after graduation, but most of those marriages had floundered. If
they hadn’t divorced, they wanted to.
Had
she met someone she wanted to marry before meeting Gareth, she too might be
divorced. Most of the men who asked her out were money and/or sports obsessed.
They didn’t share any of her interests or her theirs.
Gareth
had been different. Because he worked in the diplomatic corps, he was
interested in politics, not just current politics, but the interconnecting
lines. He loved reading. They would often read parts of books to each other. He
could be funny. He was good in bed.
His
good qualities seemed to override his bad, although his desire to control
everything around him seemed to be getting worse. When preparing for their move
to Boston, Daphne had left him in charge since he didn’t like the arrangements
she’d made.
He
hadn’t reached the OCD stage and insisted all the cans in the cupboard be lined
up exactly like in that movie Sleeping with the Enemy with Julia
Roberts. He wanted to know what she was doing with her day. Mostly she would
give her destination which was often the BPL. He hadn’t thought anything of it,
nor had he asked her why so often.
He
would plan everything in advance and was uncomfortable when plans changed,
which surprised her when he suggested they go out to eat after his nap after
saying it didn’t interest him earlier.
“Do
we go eat or not?” Daphne hated that people who walked by them tried not to
stare unsuccessfully. “There’s two lobsters with our names waiting for us.”
Gareth
sighed. “All right. I could use a good gin and tonic, but we aren’t through
discussing this.”
Yes
we are, because I’m not going to stop, Daphne thought. She would try to play
the card that she needed something to keep her mind occupied: her duties as his
wife were too few to do that. A couple of times, he’d mentioned starting a
family. She wasn’t sure she was ready or if it were right to bring a child into
their relationship as it was.
Chapter 37
Boston
December 1774
“WHAT ARE YOU doing
in civilian clothes?” Sally Brewster asked. She put down her brushes and stood
in front of the table where she had been painting a leather bucket. Her
expression was neither hostile nor friendly.
James
Holloway had just entered her father’s bucket shop. Brushes from what looked
like a pen point to one as large as his thumb were in front of her. Dishes were
filled with ground something or other. Metals maybe?
The
leather bucket she was painting was maybe two feet high and a foot across. It
was larger than some of the buckets on display outside the shop.
“Soldiers
can have a day off,” James said. He didn’t say that the General wanted him in civilian
clothes. His orders were to walk around the city to integrate with those who
might have connections to the rebels.
“I
can’t expect you to find the people who stole the cannons or the missing powder,”
the General had said. “But maybe you can eliminate where not to look.”
James
had thought that he had no idea how he would be able to do that: at the same
time, he knew he would try his best.
His
first stop at the bucket shop wasn’t just because of Sally. Her father who was
the owner was rumored to be a Sons of Liberty. John Brewster was suspected of
having participated in the second Boston Tea Party in February, when rebels
threw thirty-five boxes or so off the decks of the Fortune into the harbor.
That was less than the first Tea Party almost a year ago today, but it had added
to the anger in London against the Bostonians.
It
wasn’t the father but the daughter that interested James, but there was the
saying of killing two birds with one stone, not that he wanted to kill either
father or daughter.
The
General had received orders from London to do whatever was necessary to bring
the rebellion under control. Whatever was necessary included increasing
the drills. Bullets were still too precious to have regular target practice,
but the speed of loading the Brown Bess weapons had increased through extra
drills. Searches for stolen ammunition increased. Surveillance on potential
troublemakers had increased.
Between
his work for the General and normal duties, James felt stretched. He was slower
than many in loading his weapon because he practiced when he could instead of
several hours daily. He marched less than the others, although he still did
guard duty nights after the General released him for the day.
Today
was his first day on civilian surveillance. He had wanted to go with Thomas and
several of his company into the woods while they searched for a defector. Private
Isaac Thompson had been missing for two days. He was tagged a runaway, heading west.
James
wondered what the western part of the colony was like. He had been north, south
and east, at least to the sea. Because he was accompanying the General, he was
most often on horseback, which had improved his riding.
He’d
been up the coast to Salem so many times with the General that he knew when to
expect the next farmhouse to come into view. He’d visited Woburn, Winchester,
Arlington. Mostly he had seen farms with stretches of woods and a few village
buildings.
He’d
heard the further west one went, the more unsettled it became. Villages gave
way to farms then to forests with a few scattered farms with primitive cabins.
And
if you went far enough there were Indians. Someone said they were Nipuc. The
Pennacok were to the north. How could you tell one Indian from another, he
wondered. He knew how to tell a Frenchman from an Irishman from a German by accents.
It was possible to recognize a Scot from someone in Ely by their accents and
their red hair and beards on some. But an Indian?
He
was sure he had passed Indians on the street based on coloring and long black
hair. Negroes were easier. Their skins were light brown to so black they were
like staring into a forest on a moonless night. Their hair was tightly wound. Some,
he knew, were slaves. Some were free men.
A
Negro had been killed during what the propagandists called the Boston Massacre,
five years ago this next March. James only knew about it because rebels kept talking
about it at the Green Dragon.
Today
James wasn’t worried about Negros or Indians. He wanted to make a good
impression on Sally, but if she was a patriot sympathizer, which she probably was,
he might be considered a traitor if he courted her.
A
private had no business looking for a wife. William always accused him of
living in an unreal world. Damn it. Why was William still bothering him?
“That
looks fascinating, he said to her. Can you tell me more of what you’re doing?”
“Mixing
paint, putting it on the buckets.”
“I
can see that.”
John
Brewster came through the door backwards. He carried large pieces of leather in
his hands and had to use his ass to prop the door as he entered. The leather
was deposited in a corner of the shop next to the fireplace.
He
glared at James. “I’ve seen you with the soldiers at the Green Dragon. Unless
you want to buy a bucket, you aren’t welcome here.”
James
debated buying a bucket, but they were too expensive for his meager salary. “I
was interested in the painting. Your daughter is talented.” He picked up one
that had a village house burning and a line of men with buckets trying to put
it out.
“Aye,
she is. Which is why I’m the most successful bucket maker in Boston.”
Before
James could say anything, Brewster continued, “She is a respectable young woman,
and shouldn’t talk to a British soldier in or out of uniform.”
“I
meant nothing by …”
“I
suggest you leave.”
“Papa
…”
“Quiet,
Sally.”
Out
on the street, James realized the only thing he had learned was the degree of
antipathy for the soldiers on the part of one patriot.
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