Chapter 8
CHAPTER EIGHT
“When Lord Lorne went north,” Bernard said, “his lordship being ‘the other Mr. Huxley’ to you lot, he took with him all of our most experienced junior clerks.”
“Himself is a baron now.” Heevers rocked back and forth on his heels, clearly eager to impress Bernard with his knowledge. “He shook my hand when he left for Yorkshire and told me to guard the garrison.”
“Because you had just been hired,” Bernard pointed out, “and have family in London. A remove to Yorkshire would have been difficult for you.”
Ipswich, hands behind his back, looked mutinous but held his peace.
He was junior to Heevers in seniority and years both.
Of the two, Bernard would attribute more strategy to the younger boy and more sheer bloody-mindedness to the elder.
Heevers’s pride had been offended, probably when Lorne hadn’t included him in the batch of urchins and orphans taken north “to receive a clerk’s proper education” and had then replenished the ranks with only the likes of Ipswich to help carry the load.
Nothing about an education at the vast and stately Lorne Hall, surrounded by tutors and governesses and nannies and ponies, would be considered proper for aspiring “clerks” from the gutter.
Lord and Lady Lorne intended to give their dubious charges every possible advantage, including a large and genuinely loving, if highly unconventional, family.
“I can’t spare either of you,” Bernard said, “so you can forget about quitting Town for Yorkshire any time soon.”
Two little sets of eyes eased about the corners. Two pairs of skinny shoulders relaxed. Interesting.
“I am also reluctant to part with coin the livelong day to hire porters and messengers to see to our business. The weather has relented. Both of you are London born and bred. You are to add to your duties the tasks of handling our local deliveries and collections.”
Heevers scowled up at him. “We’re messenger boys now?”
Give the lad credit, he was trying to look critical of the notion of spending the day more or less at liberty, scampering about London’s safer districts on the company’s business.
“I’m articled,” Ipswich said. “You gotta train me up to clerk, not to be no messenger.”
“Valid point.” Bernard propped a hip against his desk and folded his arms. “What city on the whole, entire planet sees more commerce than any other three cities combined?”
“London!” Both boys answered at once.
“Which clerk is more useful to his employer—the one who knows only his own street and neighborhood, or the one who knows how far the docks are from the shops, how large a competitor’s warehouse is, or how much Twinings just raised its prices for tea?
Would you rather employ the fellow who knows where the stevedores, porters, joiners, or bricklayers enjoy their pints, or the man who, after five years at his desk, knows only a few pals at his local pub and plays bowls with a few more on Saturday afternoons? ”
Ipswich took the bait. “Joiners favor the Brown Dog. Porters like the Hare and Harp.”
“Bricklayers,” Heevers added, “like the Rose and Thorns.”
Bernard had exhausted his list of trade haunts in the immediate surrounds. “You take my point. A competent general knows the whole terrain, in addition to his enemies, allies, and quartermaster’s stores. Lord Lorne gutted our regiment of its scouts, and you two are left to fill the whole job.”
Both boys stood a little taller.
“I know London,” Heevers said, chin coming up. “Town born and bred, like you said, guv’nor.”
“He’s Mister Huxley.” Ipswich punctuated the correction with an elbow to Heevers’s ribs. “And I know London and Southwark.”
“You board in Southwark ’cause it’s cheaper,” Heevers retorted, elbow a fraction too late to connect with its target. “The best clerks bide on this side of the river so we don’t have to hike the bridges like a lot of shopgirls and dailies.”
“I have always admired the quality of thrift,” Bernard observed. “I have an assignment for the pair of you.”
“I write faster than he does,” Ipswich said.
“I write neater than him,” Heevers countered.
“Then you both still have room for improvement when it comes to your penmanship, don’t you? This is not a writing assignment. This is reconnaissance.”
“Scouting?” Ipswich asked.
“It’s French,” Heevers said. “For reconnoitering.”
How did Heevers know that? “This job has to do with French chocolates,” Bernard said, “and lest you scoff at the subject, French chocolates are much coveted by polite society. I had some at Her Grace of Chanderton’s at home earlier today, the most ambrosial little sweets you can imagine.
They were the talk of the gathering, the only item on the buffet for which demand exceeded supply. ”
Some fine day, the terms supply and demand might loom as powerful incantations to these two. That day was apparently far in the future. Mr. Smith’s The Wealth of Nations had yet to pique their interest, alas.
“Huxley’s is planning to sell chocolates?” Heevers, who had likely never seen, much less tasted, a chocolate drop, sounded as if the notion was ridiculous past all bearing.
Bernard adopted his most episcopal scowl. “For pity’s sake, young man, keep your voice down. If the idea is profitable, and I suspect it will be, then every shop owner on the Strand will soon be selling French chocolate drops, and we’ll lose any advantage our initiative might gain us.”
“So what’s the job?” Ipswich asked.
Bernard produced two pieces of paper on which he’d written the names of the four sweetshops most commonly patronized by Mayfair families.
“You swagger into these shops like truant schoolboys who have yet to spend your allowances. Ask for two of their most popular sweet. If the first and second shop both suggest the raspberry tart, you ask for their next most popular treat. You will sample four different sweets, do you understand?”
“We’re to eat sweets?” Ipswich asked, sending Heevers a perplexed glance.
Yes, the guv’nor was dicked in the nob. As long as Bernard achieved a point of agreement between the warring parties, the discussion was a success.
“You are to evaluate the competition,” Bernard replied. “Of course, the appearance of the product will carry some weight, but to render a truly informed opinion, you will have to consume the goods.”
“Eat sweets,” Heevers murmured. “On a Thursday.”
“Only the top four sweets in all of London, forming a careful impression of each one. I will ask for your detailed assessments, gentlemen. Your final stop will be the home of the Duchess of Chanderton, and you are to deliver to Her Grace this note. You might have to wait for an answer.”
They’d be shown to the servants’ hall and plied with ale and sandwiches. The pair of them were too skinny by half, and tramping about Town would give them an appetite.
“We go to the sweetshops, then deliver a note,” Heevers said. “That’s it?”
“We eat the sweets,” Ipswich added. “We wait for a reply.”
If the duchess read the note, she’d see that each boy was given a single chocolate drop as well.
“You keep an accounting of expenditures,” Bernard added, producing a few shillings. “Fancy sweets are dear. You’ll have to work out the shortest route if you’re to complete the whole task before the streets are thronged and the shops are sold out. We’ll discuss results first thing tomorrow.”
“We’re to eat the sweets?” Heevers asked. “Like Ipswich said?”
“You are to evaluate the sweets, which includes consuming them when you have thoroughly inspected them for visual appeal, scent, freshness, and so forth. Any other questions?”
Not an elbow twitched.
“Then I have one final point. Any dishonor to an employee of Huxley’s will be taken very seriously.
I am sending you out as a pair because your safety matters to this firm.
I will not be put to the inconvenience of hiring and training more junior clerks because some gang of little thugs took a notion to steal your clothes.
You sally forth as a twosome for safety and because two heads are better than one.
Should either one of you come to harm, get lost, or run afoul of the miscreants lurking all over this metropolis, the other is to notify me immediately. ”
“Get help?”
“Set up the hue and cry, summon the watch. Champion your fallen comrade as if he’s the last of the regiment and you his only hope.”
Both boys turned baffled expressions on Bernard. Perhaps the military metaphors had limits.
“You look out for your mate,” Bernard thundered, in his Wrath of Yorkshire voice, which generally only impressed children between the ages of four and six. “London is dangerous. Keep your eyes and ears open, get the job done without frolics or detours, and no matter what, stick together.”
Heevers nodded. “And eat the sweets. Got it, guv. C’mon, Switch. We’ll start off on Park Lane.” He grabbed Ipswich by the elbow and headed for the door.
Ipswich snatched his arm back. “We’ll start on Oxford Street. That’s closer, and we can do Park Lane second.”
They argued their way off the premises, though no blows were exchanged, while Bernard watched them bustling out onto the busy street.
“Will we see them again?” Kessler asked, bringing a stack of correspondence to Bernard’s desk.
“Most assuredly, and they might even settle down to some productive work,” Bernard said. “They were afraid.”
“Afraid of being sacked?”
“That, too, but mostly afraid of being sent north, far from everything they know and anybody who loves them, like all the other junior clerks. They are under articles. We could have sent them anywhere we pleased, and they’d have had to go.
I suppose, in their boyish minds, being sacked was better than being banished two hundred miles into the countryside.
Or maybe they figured that poor performance would spare them the honor of a trip to Lorne Hall. ”