He had the occasional odd choice of word or phrase, as if selecting what he thought a gentleman would like to hear.
‘A whole laboratory,’ I murmured, on edge at the thought of Ellie upstairs, but unable to overcome my curiosity.
We went into the shop. The stone kiln was where the printing machine had once stood, its flue going into the back wall. It used to be hot when we were printing. This was like stepping into an oven, although he apologised for the kiln being ‘down’, as he put it. The maid had put in the wrong coal and he had to let it cool and start it up again before he blew any more glass. Light from the still glowing coals fitfully lit up the room which seemed much larger. I could not work out why until I suddenly realised.
‘This is where the office used to be!’ I exclaimed, without thinking.
He stared at me. ‘You have been here before?’
I cursed myself. I pointed to the ceiling in a shadowy corner. ‘I can see the line of alteration.’
‘You have sharp eyes, sir.’ A compliment, or was there a trace of suspicion? ‘This used to be a printing shop.’ His nose wrinkled in distaste. ‘A hotbed of radicalism.’
‘Was it indeed!’ I pretended to look shocked, intrigued and amused that, brought up in such modest surroundings, this youth should have such pretensions. ‘You are a Royalist, sir?’
‘A Royalist?’ He laughed. For a moment I could see myself in him at his age, full of arrogant certainty, that the world was wrong, must be changed and he had the solution. ‘A p-pox on both their houses! B-both the King and Cromwell destroyed this country!’
‘They did?’
He crumpled suddenly, running his hand feverishly through his red hair. A flake of coal fell from the tangled mop. He might not have been on either side, but his change in manner, his body dipping in deference, told me he had abruptly remembered one should always be on the side of the patron. He gave a stumbled apology for what he called going beyond his station. Before he could continue, the stick thumped violently on the ceiling. He gave me an agitated, apologetic wring of the hands before running to the door at the bottom of the stairs and opening it.
Ellie might be ill, but her voice was as sharp and inquisitive as ever. ‘How can I get to sleep when you make such a noise? Who are you talking to?’
‘I’m s-sorry, Mother.’
‘Who is it?’
‘It’s business, Mother.’
‘Come here.’ Her voice weakened and trembled into a wheedling tone which I did not remember, and which she must have fashioned during her trade as a whore.
Sam stood at the door for a moment, twisting and turning, before telling her he would be up in a minute, and hurrying back to me. I told him he should see to his mother and I would return later.
‘She is –’ His lips tightened in frustration. He never finished the sentence, rushing over to a long trestle table behind the kiln, on which were a number of drug bottles and cheap-looking tumblers, the glass thick and foggy. He drew back a cloth, almost tenderly, showing an array of tubing and flasks such as you might see at an alchemist’s. The glass was thinner and clearer, albeit with a greenish tint.
‘I can make you pipettes, sir, b-beakers and bottles of course. Chemicals do not rot glass as they do metal and l-leather –’
I saw that, in his eagerness, he was going to stumble. I knew the raised stone in that treacherous, uneven floor, having caught my foot in it many times, ruining work by dropping wet proofs or a forme. I moved almost before he tripped and, as the bottle slipped from his grasp, caught it, then caught him. He apologised profusely, floundering for support against me and the side of the kiln. Coals settled as he knocked against it, sending a bright flicker of light from the open kiln door which fell full on my face. I suppose it was the first time he had had a good look at me.
‘You have red hair like – like me, sir.’
‘Brown,’ I snapped, taken off-guard. ‘It looks red in certain lights.’
He stared at me, clearly puzzled by my vehemence at what had been an innocent remark. Sweat was coursing down my face from the heat of the kiln.
‘Shall I take your cloak, sir?’
I began to unclip it, but then realised I would have to remove my gloves, exposing the ring which bulged through them. ‘No, no. I am not staying.’
The cold air at the door revived me. He looked so wretched in his disappointment at losing me as a possible patron I tried to soften the blow by changing my tone. I was also intrigued. ‘You declared a pox on both the radicals and the Royalists – what do you believe in?’
In a whirl of movement he grabbed upwards as if he was catching a fly. He brought his closed fist down before me, opening it slowly. His palm was empty.
‘This, sir. This is what I believe in.’
I recoiled, thinking him mad.
‘Air, sir.’
‘Air?’
‘People think it is one of the four prime elements, earth, fire, air and water.’
‘So it is.’
‘What you see in front of you is a fluid of massy particles resting on invisible springs.’
I stared at him, then at his cupped, blackened palm, convinced now he was ripe for Bedlam. ‘I see nothing but your hand.’
‘Exactly, sir. But Mr B-Boyle has proved that air is a substance, pressing down on my hand.’
I began to understand. Boyle was the son of an Irish peer, seeking to set up a society to promote natural philosophy. Sam must have mistaken me for one of his friends. ‘This is the same Robert Boyle who has constructed – what is it? An air pump?’
His eyes lit up. ‘The same! The apparatus was made by his assistant Robert Hooke and I had the honour of blowing the glass.’
‘But … but – what has this to do with radicals and Royalists?’
He looked at me triumphantly, subservience gone. ‘They are the same.’
‘The same? How can that be?’
‘In that they both believe in argument. Arg-argument that goes nowhere. Then they fight. But what does that prove? Only that one is the better fighter.’
I began to warm to this strange youth again. ‘Mr Boyle knows a better way, does he?’
‘Indeed he does, sir, indeed he does,’ he cried with fervour. ‘Reason and experiment. Construct a theory, then prove it by an experiment others can repeat. People argued fr-fruitlessly whether air was essential to life. Mr Boyle put a bird in an air pump and drew out the air. The bird died. So did the argument.’
He put it beautifully, transformed by his belief, face flushed, eyes shining. Again, I saw myself standing there, pamphlets singing in my head. No, it was poetry at that age. I had forgotten every line of it, scarcely believed I could have wasted my time over it.
‘Sadly,’ I said, ‘the world is not a laboratory.’
‘It will be, sir,’ he assured me, ‘it will be.’
For a moment it was almost as if he was comforting me. He was talking nonsense, but it was infectious nonsense. We returned through the kitchen with its mildewed walls and scrap of rye bread. Out of the blue, in that tawdry room, with the acrid smell of burning coal drifting in from the shop, he became my son. Perhaps it was because the man he thought was his father had just died and I acutely felt his grief and need. Perhaps because I identified with his hopeless longings and dreams. Whatever the reason, what I had done for him before, I realised, had