New York_ The Novel - Edward Rutherfurd [87]
Charlie had made a small mistake once. He’d been in the market place, and happened to see John standing near the entrance to the fort, talking to a merchant. He’d gone over and greeted his friend, as he usually would, and John had given him a cold look, because he was interrupting him. The merchant hadn’t been too pleased either that a fellow like him would interrupt them. So Charlie had gone away quickly, feeling a bit of a fool.
The next day John had come round to his house first thing in the morning.
“Sorry about yesterday, Charlie,” he’d said. “You took me by surprise. I’d never done business with that fellow before. I was trying to understand what he wanted.”
“That’s all right, John. It’s nothing.”
“Are you free this evening? We could have a drink.”
“Not this evening, John. I’ll come by soon.”
But of course, he hadn’t. There was no point. They were moving in different worlds now.
John hadn’t forgotten him though. About a year later, he’d come by again. Charlie was a laboring man, but he also had a cart, and was engaged part-time in the carrying business. John had asked him if he could engage with the Master family to transport goods up to some local farms. It was a regular contract, a full day every week, and the terms were good. Charlie had been glad of it, and the arrangement had continued for quite a while. John had put other business his way when he could, down the years.
But by the nature of things, it was a case of a rich man giving work to a poor one. The last time the Masters had given Charlie work, it hadn’t been John, but a clerk who’d come to make the arrangements.
They’d both married, John to the Quaker from Philadelphia, Charlie to the daughter of a carter. They both had families. John wouldn’t have known the names of Charlie’s children. But Charlie knew all about John’s.
For the fact was, Charlie often thought of John. He’d often pass by Master’s handsome house. He knew what Mercy Master looked like, and her children. He picked up gossip about them in the taverns. A curiosity, which may have been a little morbid, made him do it. But John Master would have been surprised to know what a close watch Charlie White kept on his affairs.
They sat down at a wooden table in the corner and nursed their drinks.
“How’s your family, Charlie? You doing all right?”
Charlie needed a shave, and his face was getting furrowed. Under the mess of his black hair, his eyes narrowed.
“They’re well,” he admitted. “They say you’ve been doing well.”
“I have, Charlie.” There was no point in denying it. “The war’s been good for a lot of people.”
It was three years since John’s mother had died and his father Dirk had retired from business and gone to live on a little farm he’d bought north of Manhattan, up in Westchester County. He lived there very contentedly, looked after by a housekeeper. “You’re like an old Dutchman,” his son would tell him affectionately, “who’s retired to his bouwerie.” And though Dirk liked to be told about what was going on, it was John Master who was entirely in control of the family business now. And thanks to the war, business had been booming as never before.
For the old rivalry between France and Britain had taken a new turn. If the two powers had been struggling since the previous century for control of the subcontinent of India, the rich sugar trade in the West Indies, and the fur trade of the north, their conflicts in America had mostly been skirmishes, conducted with the aid of the Iroquois, on the upper Hudson or St. Lawrence rivers, far to the north of New York. Recently, however, both powers had tried to grab control of the Ohio Valley to the west, which joined France’s vast, Mississippi River territory of Louisiana to her holdings in the north. In 1754, a rather inexperienced young Virginian officer in the British Army, named George Washington, had made an incursion into the Ohio Valley, set up a small fort and promptly been kicked out of it by the French. In itself, the incident was minor. But back in London,