A Dark and Distant Shore (45 page)

‘And my parents don’t.’ She didn’t contradict him. ‘My father’s never going to live up to the old man. Only two things interest him, his comfort and his self-esteem.’

‘No, you’re being unfair. If Mungo had been less shrewd, less powerful, your father might well have developed differently. But he couldn’t compete. Even so, he has managed to stay a personality in his own right. He may have his quirks, as we all have, but he’s civil, well-mannered, and really quite kindly. Don’t underestimate him.’

‘No. You’re right, I suppose. It’s just that there has never been any spark of human contact between us. He defeats me. I can’t tell how his mind works.’

‘Or even
if
it works?’ Her smile was quizzical.

He laughed. ‘Sometimes I wonder! Frankly, if I hadn’t been due to leave the other day, they’d have had to summon up the Bedlam wagon for me. Father has suddenly decided that, although Bannister does all the work, he ought to take an intelligent interest. Even in things he doesn’t understand. It was almost too much for me when he began to explain to me – very kindly! – how kelp is made!’

‘Whereas even I can remember you, black as a tinker, wielding the kelping clatt with your own hand when you were only eight. Poor Luke! It must have been very frustrating.’ She frowned a little. ‘I’m surprised you’re still making kelp. I thought the government was going to abolish the protective tariffs, and if that happens the market will certainly collapse.’

Luke shrugged. ‘Bannister doesn’t seem to be worried.’ Bannister, in fact, had raised the matter, but Magnus had said, ‘Everyone’s used to kelping and we don’t want to change things too much, you know!’ So the grieve, the brightness of his brown eyes scarcely dimmed by two friendless years, had said, ‘Dear me, no, sir. We could still compete with the imported alkalis if we improved the quality. Tangle from below the low-tide mark, and more care with the burning...’ He was a cooperative little man. Magnus had said, ‘Splendid! Splendid!’ and gone back to the cloth samples that had just arrived from his tailor.

Showing off, Luke said, ‘The price has dropped a pound a ton in the last year, though, and if the tariffs come off, you’re right and it will be a disaster. Kelp isn’t much of a substitute for the best alkalis. Canada’s had fifteen hundred ships transporting pearl ash across the Atlantic lately, and when Mediterranean barilla can come in freely,
and
when the new artificial chemical manufactories really get into their stride with making alkalis from salt, the bottom’s bound to fall out of the market.’

‘Very impressive,’ she said drily, and he coloured. ‘Does your father know all this?’

‘I’ve no idea, and it would be a waste of breath telling him. But, you know,’ he went on earnestly, ‘I had rather he didn’t know. Because if Bannister gives up kelp, he’s sure to start covering the estate with sheep or trees or both. And we don’t want that, do we?’

Impossibly, he became more and more obsessed by Vilia, although her attitude to him changed scarcely at all. As the time for each visit drew near, he promised himself that this time he would do something about it. And then, at sight of her – cool, assured, detached – his courage would fail him and he would think, ‘Not this time. Next time.’

Meanwhile, it gave him a dismal pleasure to distress her, as if he were exacting recompense for his own unhappiness. Just talking about Kinveil hadn’t been enough. Now, he deliberately began to foster her uneasiness about the place, persuading himself that concern for it was something they truly shared. If he could worry her enough, she would be compelled to go and see for herself. It was not until the end of 1825, when he was on his way home from Oxford for the last time, that he discovered what a dangerous game he had been playing, for he had observed none of the subtle signs that might have warned a more sensitive, or less self-centred lover, to tread with care.

It was a Saturday evening and Vilia had come back late from the foundry. She didn’t show any sign of being tired, and was even drily entertaining about her afternoon discussing the accounts with Wally Richards, pink and plump and well-polished as ever, although he had abandoned his attar of roses for a more sophisticated blend of cloves and orris root. ‘I had always thought,’ Vilia said, ‘that he used some kind of liquid soap to keep his hair in place, because there seemed no other explanation for the scent being so tenacious. He’s as fragrant at seven in the evening as at seven in the morning. But I discovered the other day that he keeps a silver washball slung over the hanger where he puts his coat when he is working alone in his office. So the scent comes not only from his morning baptism but from the coat as well, which is quite
permeated
with it. I should so like to keep him standing out in the rain some day, to see if his coat works up an independent lather!’

Unfortunately, the subject of soap led straight to the subject of alkalis, and Luke, even more unfortunately, took no trouble to disguise his satisfaction when he said, ‘Kelp dropped another pound a ton this year, but Bannister’s still trying to improve the product.’ He laughed.

It startled him out of his skin when Vilia came as near to snapping his nose off as she had done since she was fifteen. ‘Luke!’ she exclaimed. ‘Don’t you even
begin
to realize that it isn’t just a matter of you feeling superior to your father? I assume he’s continued Mungo’s system of dividing the profits with the kelpers, which was an excellent system when the stuff was in demand. But the people who make kelp haven’t time to cultivate their own food crops, and they rely on their profits for that. If there aren’t any profits, how are they going to eat? I don’t suppose either you or your father has even thought of that!’

They hadn’t. Luke said sulkily, ‘Well, it’s not easy. At least kelp gives them the
chance
of making money. It’s a gamble, but so is growing oats and barley! Look at last year – “the year of the short corn”, they’re calling it. Even in quite good agricultural country – and Kinveil isn’t
that
!
–
the harvest was a disaster. If we give up kelp, then it has to be black cattle, and their price is only half what it was ten years ago. Or fishing, and the herring are moving away from inshore. Or something else. What do you want us to do? Go in for sheep after all? Well, we might. Father says we’ll wait and see how Edward gets on at Glenbraddan, but if he gets on well, sheep it could easily be. So don’t say I didn’t warn you.’

He wasn’t being quite as ingenuous as he sounded. Oxford was over. Three years gone, and he had scarcely noticed because his mind had all been on Vilia. This was the last time he could turn up at Marchfield as if it were some posting inn. From now on, he would have to stay at Kinveil, doing all the things his father couldn’t be bothered doing. Journeys wouldn’t be casual any more, and if he wanted to visit Vilia he would have to write first and ask if it was convenient. And it might not be. It was his last chance to worry Vilia into inviting herself to Kinveil.

‘And how
is
Edward getting on?’

He shrugged, still sulky at being criticized. Edward had come of age in 1824 and, solemnly and ceremoniously, had taken the management of Glenbraddan into his own hands, keeping the grieve on to do the dirty work – like telling the tenants Edward wanted their holdings for his sheep. Not that Edward liked doing it, but he didn’t let it stop him.

Luke had pointed out that there were thousands of acres of empty land, and it didn’t seem necessary to shift the people, but Edward, his round eyes fixed and earnest, had said it wasn’t economic to keep a flock of less than two thousand, and that meant he needed the high pastures that were the best and richest of the spring and summer grazing. And there was something else. ‘You know the tenants have a few so-called sheep of their own?’

‘Yes, of course. The “little old sheep” they keep for their milk.’

‘Just so. Useless beasts. One gets practically no mutton from them, the fleeces are too thin to sell, and they’re impossible to herd. Cheviots bunch together into flocks, but the “little old sheep” scatter to the winds at the first sight of a sheepdog. No. If one is going into sheep farming, one doesn’t want those hairy little brutes grazing the same land as one’s expensive Cheviots. Just think of the risk of cross-breeding! A decent flock has to be pure, you know!’

The conversation had been brought to a summary conclusion by thirteen-year-old Grace, who had views on almost everything. ‘Well,’ she had said severely, ‘I believe it to be quite improper to put poor people out of their homes just so that you can make a profit!’

Her brother’s prim mouth had tightened. ‘Don’t be impertinent!’ he said, and added in his most damping tone, ‘Unless I make a profit somehow, you and mother and Georgiana and Shona will regret it as much as I. It should not be necessary for me to remind you that you all rely for your comfort on
my
generosity.’

And Edward couldn’t understand why nobody loved him!

Vilia said again, sharply, ‘How
is
Edward getting on?’

Luke shrugged again and said, ‘Well enough, I suppose. He’s only just started.’

‘Has he moved the people out yet?’

‘That was the first thing he did, or tried to. He’s split some of the old joint farms into separate crofts for them, and fenced them off. Doesn’t want their plebeian “little old sheep” fraternizing – if that’s the word – with his genteel Cheviots.’

Vilia didn’t even smile. ‘How are the people taking it?’

‘Not very well. Some of them are refusing to move, which only makes Edward more determined, of course. Unless somebody backs down, there’s going to be trouble one of these days, and it won’t be Edward who backs down. Did I tell you? No, I don’t believe I did. Just after the flocks arrived there was a good deal of sheep stealing, and none of Edward’s well-publicized threats had the least effect. So when the mutton-fancier was caught, nothing would do for Edward but to hand him over to the law. He was tried at the August circuit in Inverness, and hanged.’

Vilia could remember being taken as a child to watch a hanging at the Longman, because it was thought to be a salutary experience for children. Even today, she could still see the procession from the jail to the gallows two miles away on the shore. Soldiers first, and then the town officials in their red coats, and then the magistrates and council. Then the culprit with the noose already round his neck, and the hangman holding the free end of the rope. And all the way, the sound of someone praying – one of the clergymen, or the condemned man himself. And the man’s family crouched weeping at the foot of the scaffold.

‘Who was it?’ she asked.

‘Someone called Wat Gillespie. I didn’t know him.’

She drew in a violent breath. ‘I did.’ Rising abruptly to her feet, she took a few hasty paces round the room, hands gripping her folded elbows. It was a pleasant room with a comfortable elegance about it, but no particular character, as if Vilia had never taken the time to set her seal on it. She turned. ‘Couldn’t you have stopped it?’ Her voice was peremptory. ‘Couldn’t you have shown Edward what a fool he was? Wattie Gillespie probably didn’t even know he was doing anything wrong. He never had as much sense as you could put in a thimble. And to hang him!’ She turned away again sharply. ‘God! It’s incredible! How could you let Edward
do
it!’

‘Damn it all, Vilia! Don’t blame me! What could I have done? Tell me!’

She whirled round. ‘Tell you? Tell you? If you don’t know, what
can
I tell you? You didn’t care enough. If you had cared, you could have stopped it!’

‘I did care. I did! But Edward wouldn’t listen.’

It didn’t occur to Luke that Vilia was venting her own feelings rather than apportioning blame, and he took her criticism far harder and more personally than it was intended. He was hurt, angry, and defensive, and all his careful nonchalance dissolved into a juvenile sarcasm. ‘He would have listened to
you,
no doubt! We all know that Mistress Cameron only has to speak to be obeyed! But I’m only a cousin, and younger than he is, and I don’t have a mother and three sisters depending on me. In fact, as Edward so obligingly pointed out, I have no experience of responsibility and might think differently if I had. He might be right, too. Perhaps I
would
take a different moral stance if the sheep that had been stolen were mine. If one criminal escapes unhung, other criminals multiply!’

‘Don’t be childish. Did Edward import shepherds as well as sheep?’

‘Of course.’

‘What do you mean, “of course”? I can understand that the solution mightn’t have occurred to Edward, whose intellect is scarcely profound, but you have no excuse. If Edward had simply employed local people their pride would have been involved, and they would have taken good care that there was no poaching.’

Luke’s colour was high. ‘Don’t patronize me, Vilia,’ he said hardily. ‘I’m not one of your unfortunate employees. For which I thank God!’

She stared at him. She could see that it had taken every ounce of his will-power to stand up to her, and wondered why. His jaw, partly hidden by the shallow white shirtpoints projecting above his fashionable black cravat, was lax, and his lips when he spoke had not been altogether under control.

‘So do I!’ she snapped.

His resistance collapsed. ‘Damn it all, Vilia,’ he almost whined. ‘It wasn’t my fault.’

Would he never grow up, she wondered. He had all his mother’s anxious desire for universal harmony, but with him selfishness was at its root. What he wanted was the flattery of general approval, and he was still immature enough to believe that such a thing existed. To Vilia, he seemed younger even than eleven-year-old Theo.

Whatever her failings as a mother, Vilia had at least succeeded in inculcating into her sons a spirit of self-reliance – a truer self-reliance by far than the kind she had thought she herself possessed until that dreadful year of 1822, the year when Mungo had died just when she needed him most. She hadn’t known how heavily she had leaned on him. The pain of his death had been worse than the pain of Perry Randall’s second desertion, and worse even than the banishment from Kinveil that had followed, although that was a pain that grew now with every passing month, perhaps because she knew it must end soon. Deep inside, she was possessed by a sense of expectancy, as if all her instincts were holding their breath.