A Dark and Distant Shore (31 page)

‘Plans!’ he said expansively. ‘You don’t know about Duncan Lauriston’s dispositions yet, do you? Aye, well. He’s left everything he possessed to the boys, except for the house, which is yours.’

An expression of the most complete astonishment came to her face. ‘Never! It must be a mistake. Are you sure?’

‘Quite sure. He was maybe a wee bit soft in the head the day he made his Will...’

She giggled, and his heart soared with relief. He grinned. ‘I mean it! It wasn’t only the house. He left the ironworks to “my three grandsons”. We’d have been in a fine legal fankle if wee Andrew had turned out to be a lassie! Now, the thing is that since he didn’t expect to die for a long time yet, he didn’t make any provision for how the ironworks was to be run until the boys come of age.’ Mungo shook his head gloomily. ‘No wonder he never made a success of his business. No foresight. But I’m not sure yet where it leaves you. The lawyers might insist that you put a manager in, but if I were you I’d try and persuade them to sell and be done with it. They might listen. I’ve no doubt they’ve got clients or friends or family who’d be pleased to buy a nice wee foundry at a competitive price.’

‘Mungo!’ she exclaimed on a note of mock reproval. ‘You’re an old cynic!’

He gazed at her speechlessly for a moment. It was the first time she had ever called him ‘Mungo’. He wouldn’t have expected it to give him quite such a sharp delight.

She was too preoccupied to notice. ‘But why sell?’ There was an intent frown on her brow. ‘I know I hated Duncan Lauriston – and hate isn’t too strong a word – but I can’t think it would be right to throw away all his years of struggle, just like that. It wouldn’t be fair to him. Or to the boys. Just think, Mungo dear! Ironmastering might run in their veins!’

He eyed her suspiciously. ‘Aye, you
are
getting better, aren’t you! But just you be quiet and listen to me, miss, because I’ve been thinking. I want you to come to Kinveil with the children for as long as you like, and get better in your own time. And while you’re there, you can make up your mind about the future. I’ll tell you now – what
I’d
like is for you to come and stay with me permanently.’ He said it brusquely, because he had no idea what her reaction would be.

She was tired now and lying perfectly still, her hands loose on the coverlet. But her eyes had become luminous, and her light, silvery voice was unsteady when she said, after a few moments, ‘I think you are the kindest man I have ever known. I’ll come to Kinveil with – with gratitude, the deepest gratitude, when I’m well enough to travel. But I don’t think I have the right to remain more than a few weeks.’ He didn’t know what it cost her to say that, although he thought he did. ‘Some day, you know, it will belong to Magnus, and I wouldn’t wish to be his...’ She hesitated. ‘...his pensioner.’ There was a faint smile in her eyes now. ‘Indeed, I don’t dare to think what he and Lucy would say if they found they were inheriting me as well as Kinveil! If I stayed with you, you know, it would only postpone the day of decision. And the decision more or less makes itself, anyway. We’ll keep the foundry, and have a manager, but I’ll run things myself. That being so, the sooner I start the better, don’t you think?’ His mouth was slightly ajar, but before he could give vent to his feelings she added, ‘But thank you.
Really
thank you.’

He scarcely even heard. ‘A woman run a foundry!’ he gasped. ‘You must be demented, lassie! Never in my life... I’ve never heard the like of it!’

Vilia had slipped down so that she was almost flat on the pillows. She turned her head towards him, looking so fragile that it nearly broke his heart. ‘Never heard the like? Then you haven’t been listening, Mungo dear. Someone must have told you about the ladies of Coalbrookdale, the Darbies. Deborah, Sarah and Rebecca, they were called. They carried on the family foundry for years and years, between them, until young Edmund Darby grew up. Not so very long ago, either. And they were English, and Quakers. Surely a Scotswoman, and a Presbyterian, can do at least as well?’

She smiled sleepily. ‘And it will give me an interest, won’t it? Say it will, Mungo dear!’

‘Ambition,’ Mungo said, ‘is a fine thing if you know what you’re doing. But if you don’t, it’s lethal.’

Vilia’s own intelligence would have told her as much, though whether she would have taken it so seriously without Mungo’s dire warnings was another matter. She thought probably not. There were some things it was quite easy to forget. Some things...

She had wanted to pay just one visit to the foundry before Mungo whisked her off to Kinveil to recuperate, but he wouldn’t hear of it. ‘Have some sense, my dear!’ he had exclaimed, exasperated. ‘Setting aside the fact your legs are so dwaibly you’d be hard put to it even to walk across the coking yard, what effect do you think it would have on the men? New owners need to look impressive! It’s bad enough that you’re a female – and I grant you, there’s not much we can do about that! – but there’s no call for you to emphasize it by turning up looking as if the first puff of hot air from the furnace would blow you away! You want to be in full possession of all your faculties, right from the start.’

He was right, she supposed. ‘But...’

‘But, nothing! I’ll talk to Moultrie, and tell him to keep things ticking over for the next few weeks. He and Richards – that’s the accounting clerk – are perfectly capable, even if they don’t look it. I’ve a suspicion that they were both so feart of Duncan Lauriston that they didn’t dare waggle their little fingers without he told them to. Now he’s stopped breathing down their necks, they’ll have a chance to prove their worth. I’ll tell them that, when you’re recovered, you’ll look forward to sitting round a table with them and hearing their views. How’s that?’

Vilia surveyed him quizzically. ‘You seem to have been busy while I’ve been lying here idle.’

‘You’d have been in a right pickle if they’d let all the furnaces go out just because Lauriston was dead and you were in no state to issue orders!’

‘Let the furnaces go out? Really, Mungo! You don’t let furnaces
go out
!’

‘Oh? What do you do, then?’

‘Blow them out, of course, or put them out of blast. Everyone knows that!’

He grinned. ‘Aye, well. I’m glad to hear
you
do. Because the first thing you’ll need to learn is how to talk their language. Seriously! If you’re set on going ahead, you have to start on the right foot.’

He said no more then, or during her first weeks at Kinveil. But one afternoon in May he took up the refrain again.

It was a perfect day. Under the clear blue arch of the sky, landscape and seascape shimmered with the bright, deceptive innocence of the Highland spring. Sun today was no guarantee of sun tomorrow. Rain was more likely, and snow still possible. One learned to take the weather as it came, but the beauty of spring days was balm to the soul, even when one knew it was as transient as breath.

Today, the rowan tree, bare less than a week before, had turned to sage lace, and the birches into clouds of airy green. The wild cherries had begun to unfurl their thin, bronze leaves, translucent against the sky, and the acid fronds of new bracken to stain the brown-purple hills. Primroses jostled like crowds in a city street. New lambs, curly and engaging, butted their mothers for milk, tails twirling like clock hands in a frenzy. The faint, sweet, resinous smell of bog myrtle drifted down from the hills in counterpoint to the salt tang of seaweed from the shore. The peace was almost tangible.

They were sitting on the wide stone terrace abutting the sea wall, and Vilia had thought Mungo was asleep. It was the kind of day when it would have been perfectly reasonable for a man who was well beyond the Biblical span of years to drop off into a doze, lulled by a good lunch, a cushioned chair, and the smiling sun.

‘Start as you mean to go on,’ he said suddenly.

She had been gazing dreamily out over the sea to the islands, slate and violet and indigo, floating on an invisible horizon where blue merged softly into blue. Sapphire air into hyacinth sea? Or robin’s egg blue into aquamarine? She couldn’t decide. She didn’t want to think about the foundry.

Reluctantly, she said, ‘Yes’, and wondered what had prompted the remark. It wasn’t like Mungo to be insensitive. During these last weeks, her feeling of release had been so acute that she had given herself up to unthinking contentment. Once or twice she had tried to force herself to consider the future, but her mind had slipped wilfully away, sideways, towards pleasanter things. It was as if she had lost her power of concentration, or perhaps just the will to concentrate. She didn’t want to face up to tomorrow. She smiled faintly, remembering the Englishman who had once said to Willie Meikle, ‘You Highlanders are like the Spanish for putting things off.
Mañana,
always
mañana
!’
And Willie, who had fought in the Peninsula, had considered for a moment and then said,
‘Mañana
?
Och, no. There iss no word in the Gaelic, I am thinking, that conveys quite the same sense of urgency.’ It was true. There was a certain lotus-eating quality in the glens. But how could one think about ironfounding on such a day as this? Was Mungo, she suddenly wondered, slyly reminding her that she didn’t belong to the foundry but here, where he wanted her to stay. Where
she
wanted to stay – dear God, so much!

‘You’ll have to make it clear, straight off, that you’ve strength and determination and a brain. I know you’ve got them. You know you’ve got them.’ He stopped, his eyes still closed, but she felt that he was waiting, testing her. When she didn’t answer, he went on, ‘The question is, how to prove it to folk who don’t know you? If you were a man, you’d find the situation sticky enough. As a woman – and a chit of a girl, at that – it’ll be near impossible unless you’ve a good, sound plan of campaign. And more besides.’

‘They’ll resent me, you mean?’ There was a seal drifting around, looking for somewhere to bask.

‘More than that. They’ll do everything they can to make your life impossible. I probably would myself, if you weren’t you.’

She turned her head slowly. ‘But it’s so silly. It must be in their interest as much as mine to see the foundry flourishing.’

‘You might think so. But they’ll argue that it never
will
flourish under you, and that if they get the better of you, you’ll be forced to stand aside in favour of a man. You can see their reasoning. A man’s more likely to understand the physical difficulties they have to contend with, for one thing. And for another, they don’t have to mind their language in front of a man. Believe me, they’ll have all sorts of reasons, some of them quite good ones. I’ll tell you what will happen. The knowledgeable ones will talk down to you. Folk like Moultrie and Richards will try to blind you with science, so that you’ll have no choice but to let them run the place as they see fit. If you produce any ideas of your own, they’ll smile politely and pityingly, and explain that whatever you have in mind is technically not possible. There’ll be questions of melting points and steam stresses and phosphorus content that you can’t be expected to understand. And that will be that. As far as the labourers are concerned, I imagine you can look forward to a good deal of veiled insolence, because they’ll be sure you won’t have the courage to sack them for it. A young woman who hasn’t a man to protect her isn’t in a happy position. If she’s treated with what you might call undue familiarity, most folk are liable to think that she’s asked for it.’

‘We’ll soon see about
that
!’
Her tone was brisk, and Mungo smiled to himself.

The seal was flippering purposefully towards a low, flat rock. It heaved itself up in a flurry of drips, swayed a little, and then subsided.

Vilia’s gaze returned to Mungo. ‘I see. I have to show them I know what I’m talking about. But I don’t! And how do I find out except by experience? Without, of course, letting Moultrie and Richards find
me
out in the meantime!’

Mungo opened his eyes. ‘There are things called books.’

‘About iron founding? I suppose there must be, but surely not for the complete ignoramus? They’d be for advanced apprentices.’

‘They are. But it just happens I can help you. I’ve a wee present I’ve been saving for you until you were well enough.’

She looked at him speculatively. ‘I remember the model soldiers you had five years ago, so that you could work out what the local volunteers ought to do in the way of manoeuvres if there was a French invasion...’

‘Aye, they were grand, weren’t they?’ He grinned reminiscently. ‘I’ve often regretted the Frogs didn’t come after all. Those wee models fairly gave me a taste for soldiering!’

‘Mmmm. And if the volunteers had been half as smart, and a quarter as well armed as the models, they’d have frightened Boney’s cohorts right back into the sea, and not a shot fired! Mungo, you haven’t – you
haven’t
–
had a model foundry made for me to play with?’

‘I wish I’d thought of it,’ he said with a trace of regret. ‘No. But I’ve every book James Thin’s could supply. You’re right, they’re all a bit advanced for you, so I wrote to a man who owes me a favour or two. He’s got a wee foundry of his own at Glenbuck in Ayrshire, and he’s written down everything you need to know to make a start. All nice and simple, so that after you’ve mastered it you’ll understand what the books are talking about. And while I was at it...’ He looked a little uncomfortable. ‘I didn’t tell him why I wanted it all, mind! I suppose it would rank as unfair competition. While I was at it I got him to write down all about the state of the market, why prices are dropping and foundries going out of business. We can’t have that happening to you. I thought it might all come in handy, like.’

She had slipped out of her chair and was kneeling on the warm flagstones beside him. She took his hands in her own thin clasp, and said with a catch in her voice, ‘You are such a
dear.’