A Dark and Distant Shore (33 page)

Mungo had always been proud of taking things as they came, of not being a worrier. But now he was subject to the most complex feeling of unease. It bothered him that, when the carriages left, Vilia was in one and the children in the other. It bothered him that the laddies were going to be brought up with no father, and a mother whose mind was on something else, for he knew Vilia well enough by now to recognize that the challenge of the foundry would absorb all her energies for as long as was necessary. He was bothered about Vilia herself, ignorant of the realities of industrial life, unfamiliar with the disciplines of earning a living, desperately ill-equipped to deal with the coarse, rough type of men who would surround her every day. She would manage, he knew. She wasn’t the kind of lassie to give up. But it would be hard for her, and he didn’t know quite what kind of effect it would have. The foundry would be bad for her health, too. Even in London, she had always been able to spend part of the day outdoors. He’d have to make quite sure that she came to Kinveil as often as humanly possible, for the sake of both body and spirit. Sighing, Mungo recognized that he’d just have to wait and see, but in the meantime Iain Mor the Post had never been more assured of his welcome.

‘I have sacked the butler,’ Vilia wrote,

and am much relieved to see the last of his shifty countenance. I am sure he was constantly at the port, although the port deserved no better. My late father-in-law’s wine cellar, while surprisingly extensive, was as acidulated as its owner. So I called Sorley in, and told him that, since his palate is perfectly capable of distinguishing the whisky from every illicit still on Kinveil and Glenbraddan – Mungo dear, do you
know
how many there are? – it was time he put this talent to use in learning about claret and burgundy. I am
not
being extravagant! I said he was first to sell what was already in the cellar, and use
that
money to buy a smaller quantity of something better, which I think was commendably businesslike of me. Anyway, Sorley’s smile quite lit up the room, whether because he fancies himself as a connoisseur of wine, or simply because he was pleased to hear me sounding decisive again, I don’t know. Fortunately, he has no ambitions to be a butler – he wouldn’t be a very good one – so I have employed the housekeeper’s husband, Angus McKirdy. I suspect that when you come to visit me you will take to him as instantly as I did. A very shy but handsome man, with bright blue Highland eyes, and the loveliest smile – almost as dazzling as Sorley’s. I have also rearranged the entire house. Thrown things out, moved the furniture, put up my own family portraits, brought my books out of the packing chests in which they have reposed for the last year. You won’t believe it, but there wasn’t a bookcase in the house. The gardener, however, turns out to be a genius with wood and chisel, and is now engaged on remedying the deficiency. The babies send their love – or would, if they were old enough to think in such terms. Theo is turning into a real chatterbox, I may say. You remember that he was formulating whole sentences – even using the first person – at the ripe old age of one year and ten months. Well, he has now discovered that that was really rather clever of him, and refuses to let us forget it. He only found out because Nurse let it out when she was talking about Gideon, who at fifteen months is now expressing himself in phrases rather than just single words. Theo doesn’t like the competition, I’m afraid! As for the baby, he’s still just a baby, though a handsome one, you must agree. But Nurse says he actually chuckled the other day, though I don’t remember either of the others doing so at under four months. Oh, well! Perhaps he has a forthcoming disposition!

No mention of the foundry. Mungo fretted for almost ten days before the next letter arrived.

Well, I have done it! You would have laughed to see me prepare myself. After what you said about the men at Lauriston’s expecting a frail female, wilting under the load of her bereavements, I decided to take the wind out of their sails. I have had two riding habits dyed black, which, with white shirts, look very severe, especially since I have drawn my hair tight back and wear no jewellery other than my wedding band and a rather intimidating mourning ring I found among Duncan Lauriston’s belongings. Every morning I stand before the glass and glare at myself, fixing an austere expression firmly enough on my face to be sure that it stays all day. I may say that I leave home at eight in the morning and return at seven at night, so I am not shirking. I drive to the foundry in an antiquated maroon carriage with a pair of ill-matched bays and a coachman whose entire vocabulary seems to consist of, ‘Aye, Mistress,’ ‘No, Mistress,’ ‘Giddyup!’ and ‘Whoa!’

But you will have to possess your soul in patience, Mungo dear, because I am not going to tell you about the foundry until I have had a few more days to take in all the overtones and undercurrents. The overtones, unfortunately, include a strong whiff of attar of roses from Walter Richards, the accountant, and something much less sweet from James Moultrie. Would it be too pointed, do you think, to instal baths at the foundry?

She wrote again, a week or two later, but still told him almost nothing of what he wanted to know. This time, she filled her letter with a frivolous account of how she had decided to stop using Duncan Lauriston’s old office, which was no more than a cubby-hole where she felt suffocated, and move into an unused loft over the storeroom.

You would be astonished to see what a difference two coats of lime-wash, some pictures, a carpet, curtains, and the pantry shelves from Marchfield have made to it. So now I can breathe again, as long as I stay to leeward of Messieurs Moultrie and Richards. I will have to find some kind of stove for the winter, as there is no chimney, but sufficient unto the day. Besides, I can always go and warm myself at one of the furnaces, can’t I!

The children are well, thank you. Theo still hates being hugged, Gideon is as placid as ever, and baby Drew almost effervesces with self-assurance. Strange are the ways of Nature!

She knew the letters sounded brittle, but not even to herself would she admit that all she wanted to say was, ‘I hate it! I hate it! I want to come back to Kinveil!’

She hated the dirt and the noise and the seediness. Her nerves were tensed into knots, day after day, as with incredible fluency she trotted out all the jargon of the trade as if she had learned it with her ABC. She waited for someone to catch her out, but no one did. This was partly, she thought, because Duncan Lauriston had trained his employees never to speak out of turn, never to say a word that didn’t accord with his own opinions. Sometimes, she wished he hadn’t been so successful. It was disconcerting to have Moultrie twitch every time she spoke to him, as if he expected her to bite him. And Richards’s smile was as fixed as if it had been incorporated into the fabric of his face. It was only when the smile was accompanied by an almost curtsy-like bob that it meant anything positive.

The two men were chalk and cheese, and she couldn’t decide which was more difficult to deal with. Neither of them would express an opinion unless his back was practically nailed to the wall, and extracting information was like drawing teeth – a succession of tugs, jerks, and stoic silences.

After the initial conferences, when she succeeded in convincing them that she was serious, business-like, and knew, roughly, what she was talking about – and during which she modelled herself on an elderly and thoroughly starched-up dowager of her acquaintance – she began, with care, to tread the path she had mapped out with Mungo.

From behind the wide table, laden now with piles of papers and dog-eared specifications that helped to hide the dents and scratches on its surface, she watched Walter Richards bowl into the office. Although he had crossed the yard in a drizzle and mounted the outside staircase that was the only means of access to her loft, there was not a flake of ash on him, nor even a raindrop. He was pink, and plump, and looked as if he had been polished from top to toe with a soft cloth and a great deal of elbow grease. Vilia found it difficult to understand how her father-in-law had managed to put up with him for almost five years, for he was certainly not Duncan Lauriston’s kind of man. She hoped it had been because he was a good accountant.

Simple things first, Mungo had said. She waved Richards to the chair on the other side of the desk.

‘Would you enlighten me,’ she said calmly, ‘about basic costs? I know that over-production is a serious problem in the iron – in
our
industry, and that every iron foundry is trying to undercut every other iron foundry. But I would like you to be more specific, please. There are some figures that don’t appear in the material you gave me, possibly because they are such common knowledge that you felt no need to write them down.’ Her hands were folded on the table before her, as if the thought of having to make notes hadn’t even crossed her mind. Only the ignorant needed to make notes – she hoped. ‘The standard price for pig is how much?’

Mr Richards’s curly lips pouted, and he nodded his head in a considering way, as if that was answer enough.

After a moment, Vilia repeated, ‘The standard price for pig iron, please?’

His brows arched in surprise. ‘Oh! We-e-ell, it depends on the grade.’

‘No doubt. Perhaps you would give me an example.’

‘Ummm. If you were talking about Number One Super... Would that do?’

‘I am sure it would.’

‘If you were talking about Number One Super, let’s say £9.5s. a ton. Give or take a few coppers.’

‘Give or take how many coppers?’

‘Oh. Well, for the purposes of calculation, you could ignore the coppers. Just say...’ He puffed his lips out and gave a little pop of exhaled breath. ‘Just say a round £9.5s.’

‘Thank you, I will. Now, what does it take us to produce?’

Silence. ‘How much does it cost to make, do you mean?’

‘Yes.’

‘Oh. Say £9?’ He smiled cooperatively, as if she didn’t need to say
£9
if she’d rather not.

Vilia reminded herself that she could make it sound quite funny when she wrote to Mungo. She knew from Mrs McKirdy that Walter Richards was a bachelor and lived at home with his doting mother, who was presumably very saintly or very stupid, as it seemed that Wally could do no wrong in the old lady’s eyes. He was probably a model of cooperation at home, too. Would he like sausages or kippers for his tea? ‘Either would be splendid, Mama. Sausages, perhaps? Or kippers if they would be less trouble? Whichever suits you. I really don’t have any preference.’

With a muted sigh, she said, ‘That means five shillings profit on a ton of – er – Number One Super Pig. Could we balance the books on less?’

‘And cut prices below everyone else’s £9.5s?’ Mr Richards sucked in his lips vigorously, but it was some time before Vilia was able to establish that the foundry would be left with no latitude to speak of if she tried it. ‘Very little latitude. Ooooh,
very
little latitude!’ She had the impression that only the spectre of Duncan Lauriston prevented him from coming out with an unequivocal, ‘I couldn’t recommend it!’

Thoughtfully, she watched him depart, the smile still on his face.

Moultrie was a different problem. She had the feeling that just one radical suggestion would frighten him into treating all subsequent suggestions, however innocuous, with the deepest suspicion. And she didn’t dare frighten or alienate him, because if he were irritable, slovenly, or uninterested, the whole foundry would suffer. Delicately, she worked round to the question of castings.

‘Aye,’ he said. ‘Mr Lauriston wasn’t very enamoured of casting. Och, he made a few locks and cooking pots and wee things like that, just for the local folk, you know. But he was a foundry man at heart. He had a real appreciation of a nice iron bar.’

Vilia permitted herself a twitch of the lips. ‘And are you a foundry man at heart, too, Mr Moultrie? I hope so, for the “nice iron bars” will be all your responsibility.’

She had said the right thing.

‘I’ll not deny I’m pleased to hear it.’ He had an unusually wide mouth, and spoke out of the side of it so that one cheek bulged as if there were a toffee lump sticking to his back teeth. His voice, too, sounded as if he were talking through an obstruction. ‘Furnace work’s what I’m best at. I had a good training under Mr Lauriston, that I did.’

He had been apprenticed to Duncan Lauriston when he was a boy, over twenty-five years ago, and Vilia could imagine the two getting on rather well. Moultrie’s stolidity must have acted as a baffle against her father-in-law, cutting off any flying sparks. The contrast between Moultrie and Richards was so extreme as to be ridiculous. If Richards was Humpty Dumpty, Moultrie was Mr Punch, long and lean and bony, with liquid brown eyes, and a nose and chin that seemed to have been hewn from the same half-circle and were utterly dedicated to reunification, curving sharply towards each other and only just failing to meet. She wished he was as fond of soap and water as he was of nice iron bars.

It eased his mind when she made it clear to him, tactfully, that she wasn’t asking him what he thought Lauriston’s should do, but what it could do. On that basis, he was prepared to admit that the foundry had already made cast-iron pipes for the blast furnaces, and plates and beams for the furnace-stoking bridge. He was even prepared to concede that they could make the same kind of thing for outside customers. People like the Caledonian Canal Commissioners.

Vilia said, ‘Jonathan Wells, at the Inverness New Foundry, is clearing at least £100 a month on rails and castings for the lock gates, you know. And I’m told that Outram’s Butterley Works in Derbyshire must have made a good £15,000 out of cast-iron rails and framing for the locks since building began.’

Moultrie ran his hand through the long pepper-and-salt hair that sprang back from his forehead like a field of grain in a high wind. ‘Aye, well. Money, now. That’s Mr Richards’s department, you know. I wouldn’t like to express an opinion about that.’

‘I quite understand.’ Moultrie earned a princely £450 a year as works manager compared with Richards’s £150, so it had to be canniness rather than protocol that made him guard his tongue. She said, ‘There is, however, not much canal work remaining to be tendered for, so if we want to supply we must enter into negotiations soon. I am prepared to try and sell our products. It was simply that I wanted to be sure we could, in fact, produce what I will be offering.’