Sacred Hunger - Barry Unsworth [107]
Erasmus had felt antagonism merely at the way Charles sprawled there, the space he took up. And then these tedious and pointless squabbles over pack-trains … ‘Wrangling in the courts is a waste of time,’ he said. ‘You will take six months over it and get an inch or two added to the width of the wheels. For the life of me I cannot see what good that will do. Your costs are not thereby much reduced, the amounts you can transport not much increased and the roads remain in the same state, all ruts in the dry weather and streaming with mud when it rains. It is the roads that need attention, not the wagon wheels.’
These remarks and the manner of their delivery were irritating to Charles, who had been embroiled in the business for some time now and so felt entitled to be listened to, especially on his home ground. ‘It is no use trying to run before you can walk,’ he said. ‘That is a besetting fault of yours, Erasmus, if I may say so. The coal is lying there, in the coalfields. It is needed now, today. We have to bring it on the roads we have got. What do you think will be the consequence to our salt works if we let the coal pile up thirty miles away while we wait for this Utopia of yours?’
‘I am not talking about Utopias.’ Erasmus’s eyes had kindled. ‘I am talking about known facts. The road between Liverpool and Prescot was metalled and tolls charged for the upkeep and that led to vastly improved supplies of coal from the south-west. Now they have extended it to St Helens and in time they –’
‘It is time my son is talking about.’
For some moments the heated Erasmus could not quite determine where this gentle female voice had come from. It seemed to fall on his ears from some unlocalized source somewhere up towards the ceiling. Then, with intense surprise, he realized that it was Sarah’s mother who had spoken: in her mob cap and lace shawl Mrs Wolpert had leaned forward and actually interrupted him.
‘That road was turnpiked more than twenty-five years ago,’ she continued placidly. ‘That is before you were born, Erasmus. I remember it well, it happened in the year I was married. It has taken all these years just to carry the road on to St Helens, in spite of all the great advantages you speak of. I hope you don’t mean to say that my husband has to sit twenty years and wait for better roads while they make their laws against him in London?’
Erasmus could find no immediate response to this. He had felt his jaw slacken with astonishment. Never in his whole life had he heard a woman intrude her opinion into a conversation on business matters between men. It was inconceivable that his own mother should ever do so. Wolpert must permit it, he thought, divided between wonder and contempt. Perhaps he even consulted her – her tone had betokened intimacy with her husband’s affairs. No wonder Sarah was so ready with opinion, with this model before her eyes. ‘No, madam,’ he said at last, staring straight before him, ‘I did not mean to suggest that. How your husband fetches his coal to Liverpool is entirely his own affair.’
The reproof rankled long afterwards as a setback, a blow to his self-esteem, made worse by the vindicated complacency that he had seen come to Charles’s face. But when he was alone and safe from such pettifogging objections, when he was at home or riding to and from the Wolpert house or occupied with family business, his mind expanded with a sense of the glorious opportunities the future afforded and the certainty of his place in it – his and Sarah’s.
Coal was the key, so far Wolpert was right. The population of the town was more than twenty thousand now and rising rapidly, and the domestic demand for coal was rising with it. In Cheshire the boiling of brine and refining of rock salt called for coal in ever larger quantities, as did the other new industries springing up on every hand, metal-working, glass-making,