Description

Twenty-four. Junior Company writer in the shipping office. Scottish, freckled, and trying desperately to grow sideburns. Third son with no prospects at home. Works hard, saves carefully, drinks moderately.

Slightly dull and completely reliable.

Background

Came out as a writer and has been in the shipping office since. Will be rich in ten years and tedious for all of them.

Motivations

Security, and eventually a competence large enough to go home with. He is not corrupt because corruption is a risk and he does not take risks.

What Meg Says

Alastair Glennie will be rich in ten years and tedious for all of them. Every fishing fleet girl’s mother has noticed him. He hasn’t noticed any of them because he’s too busy calculating compound interest.

Hook

The shipping office. Arrival and departure records, cargo manifests, warehouse assignments. He handles the paperwork that the Custom House archives.

He would answer an innocent question from someone he liked without ever thinking about it, and he is entirely capable of providing documentary evidence of the opium discrepancies or the provenance of a certain consignment out of the northern trade (see Lot Fourteen) if asked in the right register.

He would very much like to be introduced to the Wentworth sisters and cannot manage it.

Connections

• Custom House Calcutta — his professional world
• Emma Wentworth, Georgiana Wentworth — whom he cannot approach
• Scene 05 St Johns

In Play

Chapter 4, Session 9 (9 October 1814) — introduced, and immediately smitten. He was presented to the Wentworth sisters during the churchyard hour at St John’s and hovered around Emma for most of it without managing to say anything useful.

He is eighteen, freckled, ambitiously side-whiskered, and a writer in the Company’s shipping office. Nobody has yet costed what a smitten clerk with access to manifests and lading is worth.

Appearances

Relationships

• Located at Custom House Calcutta — Shipping office clerk