I remember well that evening when I went look again at the old house in Garden Square. I wanted to see how the renovations were proceeding, get some idea of when our firm could move in. I knew we were right in the choice of premises for our new office. I liked the building and wanted to see our plans take shape under the craftsmen’s hands. I hoped it would emerge from their efforts like a much loved old ship after restoration.
“Hey there Paul, how’s it all going?’
A tall young woman sashayed nimbly down the steps and stopped right in front of me, two pool deep eyes awaiting my answer. It was Celine, one of the partners in the law firm with which mine was about to merge. A litigator like me, dealing with crime, tenants’ problems, the underprivileged.
“Could be worse,” I said, remembering the bail application I should have won today, but for the sabotage by a hostile Justices’ Clerk.
The days were lengthening and there was a feeling of renewal in the air as the hours of light stretched longer each evening. Garden Square was a good location, off the main thoroughfares, the rush-hour traffic just audible like surf rumbling on a distant shore.
“I’m impressed by the size of everything,” said Celine looking at the dignified portico before the front door and sash windows heavy with ancient glass. “Makes my present office look like an attic junk room.”
“You should see mine,” I replied, studying elegant railings above the basement. “I guess this house must have been built around 1750.”
“Come on, let’s go round,” said Celine and we went inside.
Workmen crawled all over the interior – an army of heaving, struggling ants. Carpenters were working on the paneling which flanked the imposing staircase. Electricians were unwinding cables from spools the size of car wheels. There was a sensory cocktail of exciting aromas: pungent gloss paint, oily putty and dusty wood shavings, to name but a few.
I remembered my earlier thoughts of the building resembling a vessel under renovation. Apt, for back in those heady Thatcher inspired days of impending mega-mergers and de-regulation I hoped to embark soon on a promising voyage with Celine’s partners and my own.
We walked up the first flight of stairs, pausing to look out of a huge window on the way. We could see row upon row of little Victorian workers’ houses, packed tight as hundreds of eggs in their boxes, over on the river’s far shore. How different was our property.
“Maybe this house was built for a merchant, perhaps even a sea captain who stayed here while his ship was in port,” I said. “It would be handy for keeping a watch on his craft, recruiting the next crew from those rowdy taverns on the quay.”
“Look,” said Celine suddenly. “There’s an old safe set in the wall.”
There was. It made me think about where the wealth in this house might have come from. Much of the city’s prosperity had arisen from tobacco, rum and other trades. I hoped that was all and there had not been involvement in one infamous other particular.
We made a detailed inspection of the rest of the first floor but gave up on going any higher today.
“Too much happening here,” said Celine as she stepped nimbly over a large tool chest. “Let’s go downstairs again, looks safer than here.”
Was she an athlete, I wondered, noting how her well cut black trousers almost concealed the shape of long and slim but strong thighs inside. With her lean frame she looked like a distance runner to me.
When safely downstairs again we went to admire our future board room. The ceiling was high, graced with intricately moulded plaster. In the middle we’d probably have a chandelier, reflecting light through deep cut lusters. I admired the antique pine fireplace. The carved wood had been stripped of its dull skin of old white paint and meticulously cleaned, smoothed and sealed with its natural finish. Celine put her hand on its carvings, feeling oak leaves and deep patterned thistles. The wood was now pale, the carvings as crisp and well defined as if in sand just tipped from a child’s seaside mould.
“Any garden planners in your team?” asked Celine, eyebrows raised, standing at the French doors, looking out on the large but straggly garden. What had once been a lawn was hidden under a pile of rubble topped by a rusty upturned bath.
“Don’t think so,” I said. “We’ll have to get someone in to sort out all this area.”
“Our staff will be out there with their lunchtime sandwiches in a month or two,” said Celine a little imperiously. “You’ll see to it, won’t you, Paul?”
I sometimes had worries about Celine; she was about ten years younger than me, clever, radical, forceful. And everywhere. She lived in Rushwood Hill, an often troubled area of our city. Almost every month one of her cases seemed to be in the local paper, sometimes even on regional TV.
At present she was my counterpart on the premises refurbishment team. But we were going to have to get on in the long term as well as she would be a colleague in the litigation line-up. Although I had a good reputation and a sound and extensive client base I sometimes couldn’t help feeling a little ordinary and in the shadows next to her exuberance. Uncomfortably, I sometimes wondered if was just I a trusty Suffolk shire horse stabled next to a prancing Arab filly?
Yes, I was probably just a little jealous sometimes. Hard not to be – she was a star. Enough said. Her firm was a mere sapling compared to our ancient oak. We were deeply rooted in the world of commerce although we also had a social conscience – crime, employment tribunals and civil rights issues were my bag too. Celine’s practice had a very different history, founded by lawyers formerly at a Law Centre who had been joined by a number of young and talented ones from other disciplines. Their firm was growing fast and bothered less than us about traditions and etiquette. But we needed each other in these rapidly changing times. Hence the merger.
“What d’you think of the works?” I asked after a while.
“Brilliant,” she said. “Just hope they keep to the timescale. And the costings.”
“What are we going to call the place?” I asked. “Number 14 Garden Square doesn’t sound very inspiring.”
“Why not just ‘Jo-Jo’s house?’”
“That’s different. But why Jo-Jo?”
“You probably know him as ‘Boy Joseph,’” explained Celine. “Remember the legendary dandy, a young Black man with a silver topped cane, a different coloured coat for every day of the week. Come down to the cellars with me. The builders found a deeper level, all sealed up for years until a few days ago. I’ll tell you more about Jo-Jo if you do.”
We went through a door in the kitchen, borrowing a torch from someone on the way. I admired the massive former wine cellar, brushing fishnet cobwebs from my hair. We came to steps which led down to an even lower floor.
“Careful here,” said Celine. “Hold onto the iron rail in the wall. We don’t want an accident before we’ve even got the keys.”
I was grateful for her guidance as we went deeper and into total darkness. But there was one speck of light far in the distance, as if we were looking out through the lens of a pinhole camera. The walls in the floor above had been made from dressed stone: now they were mostly bare rock.
“See this. Feel it. Know what it is?”
I did. We had come down a long way and must be close to river level. This chamber was just a cave leading to it. The light through the pinhole might well be reflected off the water.
“I hope it wasn’t used for what I think,” I said, feeling chains secured to the rock, with fetters no doubt for ankles and wrists at the ends. Easy to imagine how they would tear the skin of any prisoners as if it was just discarded scrap paper.
“I think it must have been. Look, the passage from here leads down to the old quay. This is where they brought them up from the ships, the few ‘privilege slaves’ as they were called which a captain might bring back after a round trip from here via West Africa and the southern USA or Caribbean. He would sell or perhaps keep them if thought suitable to become servants in his house. Chained them here if they needed to be subdued and made tame enough to be eventually allowed upstairs. No, don’t go any further –there’s a bit of a rock fall lower down. It looks very unsafe.”
“Let’s get out of here,” I said. “The misery is palpable. I’ve heard of this kind of thing being unearthed a hundred years ago and more, but never since then.”
“We’ve had the archivist in from the County Museum,” said Celine. “She’s fairly certain about it all. We’ll have to seal it off from the house, while her office carries out a full investigation, takes pictures and makes a proper record.”
“But not put a blue plaque about it all on the front of the house, I hope.”
“I hope they will,” said Celine. “Surely that’s the whole point, isn’t it?” I sensed annoyance in her voice.
“It’s indescribable,” I said, “what may have been done here. But, ‘Jo-Jo’s House?’ You mean…” I remembered the old stories but they were surely fables. “You don’t believe in all that and that he actually lived here, in this house, do you?”
“I do,” said Celine, “and I’ll prove it to you one day soon.”
© Copyright John Cragg