New York - The Novel

waves.
    Such was the enlightened, happy empire of Britain’s well-meaning young king.
    But not everyone was happy.

    The way Charlie White saw it, things were going from bad to worse, and no mistake. As he walked up Broadway, a sharp north wind was coming down the Hudson River, slicing through the January dusk like a knife. There was a thin, frozen crust of snow on the streets. And Charlie’s mood was black.
    It was Twelfth Night. He’d been planning to give his wife a present, but he had nothing.
    Well, almost nothing. A pair of mittens he’d found going cheap in the market. He’d been lucky there. But that was all.
    “I wanted to buy you a new dress,” he’d told her sadly, “but it’s all I can do to put food on the table.”
    “It’s all right, Charlie,” she said. “It’s the thought that counts.”
    It was the same for most of their neighbors. It had been like this ever since the damned British Army had gone.
    The war was over. That was the trouble. Gone were the redcoats who needed provisions; gone were the officers who wanted houses, and furniture, and servants. Naval ships came in but only briefly, and were gone. The whole place was in recession. Money was tight. Merchants in London were shipping their excess stocks across the ocean, selling them off at bargain prices in New York, so that honest craftsmen couldn’t make a living. Yet farmers in the market, having fewer customers to sell to, were marking their prices up, to compensate.
    “England uses this place to fight the French,” he told his family, “but once that’s done, they leave us in the lurch.”
    The only people who weren’t suffering were the rich. They lived inanother world. The theater was full. Pleasure gardens with London names like Ranelagh were being opened. “London in New York,” people called it. Everything was fine for men like John Master.
    Charlie had steered clear of Master since the merchant’s return from London. He knew all about young James being sent to Oxford, for he still, bitterly, followed the family’s every move. But if his contemptuous former friend had come to his house now, Charlie would have spat in his face.
    Things had got so bad in the White household that Charlie’s wife had started going to church. Not the Anglican church, of course. You could leave that, Charlie thought, to the Trinity crowd. She preferred the Dissenters. Sometimes, to keep her happy, he’d even go with her to a service or a preaching. But he hadn’t any faith himself.
    “Your mother’s took to religion, son,” he had told Sam. “I reckon it’s poverty that’s drove her to it.”
    But where the devil was young Sam? That was why he was walking up Broadway in the freezing dusk. Looking for his favorite son. He’d been out since noon. What the devil was he up to?
    Charlie had a pretty good idea, of course. Sam was seventeen, and Charlie had noticed, not without a touch of pride, that his son was starting to make headway with the girls. There was a pretty young serving girl he’d spotted him with last week. The young scamp was probably off somewhere with her.
    But it was Twelfth Night, and the family was celebrating together. Sam should have more consideration. Charlie was going to give his son a piece of his mind when he found him.
    An hour passed. Charlie visited all the taverns on the West Side, but no one had seen his son. Irritated, he went back to the house. The rest of the family was there, waiting to eat. So they ate without Sam. And his wife said she didn’t mind, so long as Sam was all right, which was a damn lie.
    So after it was all over, Charlie went out again. His wife said there was no point and he knew it. But he couldn’t just sit there. It was a dark night now, and the wind had a vicious bite to it. The clouds in the sky were ragged, and through their tatters, you could see the faint, cold glimmer of a star or two. The streets were almost empty.
    He walked down Broadway, called in at a few taverns, but had no luck. He passed Trinity Church and continued southward. He was entering the area he hated now.
    The Court area, they called it these days. The old fort had become Fort George. In front of it, the small park of Bowling Green had been neatly railed off into a fashionable enclave, with street lamps at each corner to deter any vagrants from loitering. The governor’s house was here. Even the taverns had royal names.
    Rich mansions loomed in the darkness all around. It mattered not to their