A Dark and Distant Shore (59 page)

He said again, ‘I’m sorry. I
was
listening, although I may not have looked it. I know I’ll never learn anything about the administration of the foundry unless I follow you around everywhere, so, obviously, I must come to London with you. How long will we be away?’

Vilia shrugged. ‘It’s July now. If we go next month, we should be finished by the end of November. I have a great many people to see, and so has Theo. If he is to be our railways expert, he must first find out all he needs to know, and then let everyone see that he knows it. We have to know which companies are going to be granted authority to acquire land. We have to know which are likely to be best funded, because with such a speculative enterprise it could be ruinous to become involved with someone under-capitalized. The dangers may not be very great at the moment, but when the real boom comes in about ten years from now there are bound to be any number of fly-by-nights.’

‘Ten years?’ Theo exclaimed. ‘Less than that, surely. Why, I would expect us to be selling as much as seven or eight per cent of our total pig production to the railways in not more than three years!’

‘Very possibly. But in ten years it could be nearer twenty per cent.’

Drew, who had been unusually silent, said, ‘Theo’s supposed to be the foundry wizard. I don’t see why he wants to trample all over my territory. If I’m going to be responsible for selling, I ought to be the one who talks to all these people.’

Gideon had seen it coming, but Vilia hadn’t. Drew had a knack of disconcerting her. He was seventeen now, just finishing university and due, at the end of the year, to join what would then be Lauriston Brothers as the partner responsible for selling the firm’s products. He was admirably cut out to be a salesman – charming, gregarious, single-minded. But, in a subtle family, he remained a stranger to subtlety. He liked things to be simple and clear-cut, and one result was that he often came out with remarks that, to the others, sounded nothing short of idiotic. Theo and Gideon had grown used to it, but Vilia always looked at him as if she were having to make some difficult mental adjustment – as if, somehow, Drew had no right to be such a muttonhead. This was a case in point. It was obvious to everyone except Drew that, where a new, specialized, and potentially very important market was concerned, it made sense for the manufacturing specialist to be the one who had direct contact with the customers. There were going to be a great many technical problems to be ironed out, and Theo would be able to iron them out much more swiftly and effectively than Drew.

For a moment, no one said anything. Theo saw no need to defend himself, and Vilia looked as if the last straw had just been added to her burdens. Gideon said soothingly, ‘Look, Drew. You should be grateful to have one time-consuming task taken off your hands. Once we start expanding our cast-iron exports to Europe, you’ll have your hands full enough, and if we go into the American market as well...’

With a visible effort, Vilia interrupted. ‘Thank you, Gideon. Drew, you don’t know about the American project yet, but earlier this year Congress passed something called the Compromise Act, which allows for import tariffs to be progressively reduced over the next ten years. I hope that you or Gideon can make a visit to America next year or the year after, to find out whether it will be feasible for us to compete there.’

Gideon’s heart soared. It was the first he had heard of
that
idea, and he was struck by a blinding revelation. For as long as he could remember, it had always been assumed that Theo would take over sole responsibility for the works when James Moultrie retired, as he would do soon, and that Gideon would take over from Vilia some of the administration, which had become increasingly complex as the foundry had expanded. But privately Gideon had reached the conclusion that the world of industry, however well it suited the rest of the family, was not for him. He hadn’t said anything about it, because no very appealing alternative had suggested itself to him. And now, suddenly, he realized that what he really wanted to do was travel, and see new lands and new people. Hot on the heels of this discovery came another. Perhaps, afterwards, he could write about it all. His imagination flying free and disoriented, like a bird released from a darkened cage, he cleared his throat and tried to look as if he were indifferent.

‘Hum,’ Drew said, his handsome lips pursed. ‘Why me
or
Gideon? I should have thought...’

Vilia couldn’t face any more. There had been a lump in her throat all day. Every sentence had required a new, separate exercise of will, and every sensible, business-like word had had to be forced out past the tears that lay ready in ambush. She said, ‘It won’t be a selling trip, just an investigatory one. Anyway, there is time enough to decide who should go. For the moment, unless any of you has anything particular he wants to raise, I would suggest we regard this meeting as at an end.’

Firmly and deliberately, she began to gather together the papers on the desk before her. It was a much finer desk, now, than it had been in those early days seventeen years ago, and her office was no longer in a loft but in a separate block, simple and elegant, that had been put up two years ago, in 1831, when there had been unexpectedly good profits from trade with the Netherlands, and the newly installed hot blast process had begun to release furnace space for other purposes. There were quite a number of buildings now that hadn’t been there in Duncan Lauriston’s day – offices for the clerks, housing for the foremen, a shed for the fire engine, warehouses, moulding sheds, an engine shop and a pattern shop, a new watch house, and a brewhouse to make decent ale for the furnace men instead of the vile stuff they had always swilled in the past. Vilia had done a great deal in her years here, but at the moment she felt no pride at all. Nothing mattered to her today. There was no space in her heart or mind for anything but misery, for mourning over that small, unimportant death.

The little black cat, like Sorley, had so often comforted her simply by being there. Between them, they had offered her an unquestioning, uncomplicated, inarticulate solace that had been her only refuge since Mungo died. She knew it was weak-minded of her to care, but she did, passionately.

She looked up to find that Drew was still lingering, although the other two had gone. He said, ‘I thought that, while you three are in London, I might have a holiday. It’ll be the last for a while. You don’t mind, do you?’

‘Of course not. Where will you go?’

‘Kinveil, I thought.’ His eyes were bright and challenging.

‘But it’s all closed up. Magnus hasn’t been near the place since Luke died.’

‘I know, but I’m sure Ewen Campbell would have me. All I want to do is have some sport, and perhaps do some walking or hill scrambling. The place appeals to me so much, but I feel I hardly know it. You can’t object, I imagine.’

She could, but not in terms that could be put into words. Her dulled mind told her that no one would see in him what she saw of Perry Randall. It was very little; no more than something about the set of the eyes and the shape of the mouth. It had been the purest mischance that Luke had seen the resemblance, and he had seen it only because he had seen Perry himself a few days earlier. Perry, she knew, had gone straight from Kinveil to Marchfield, but he had refused to leave a message and she had been glad. If she hadn’t interrogated McKirdy carefully, she would never have discovered the identity of the urgent, dusty gentleman who had called. She had wondered, drearily, what had happened to the love he had declared when she last saw him; clearly, it hadn’t survived. One or two brief, uncommitted letters in the years after 1822, and then nothing until he went to Kinveil and betrayed to Luke what had happened between them during those magical days in London in 1815. She would never forgive him for that. God knew what havoc it would have wrought if Luke hadn’t died when he did.

She supposed that, as long as Drew didn’t go to Glenbraddan – where, just possibly, Edward or some of the older servants might have better memories than she credited them with – it couldn’t do any harm. ‘Very well,’ she said with a sigh. ‘But you would be advised to give Glenbraddan a wide berth. Charlotte Randall had a silly prejudice against me, and her son has inherited it. Also, I think he half blames us for Luke’s death; if it hadn’t been for Gideon, he believes Luke wouldn’t have intervened.’

‘I wouldn’t dream of going to Glenbraddan! The whole episode was entirely Blair’s fault, and I don’t think I could be civil to him.’

Still vaguely uneasy, but too tired to pursue it, she said merely, ‘Are you sure you want to go to the Highlands? My dear, you’ll be bored to tears in a week. You know what an urban mortal you are at heart.’

He wouldn’t admit it, still ruffled from having been made to feel the unconsidered junior partner in the business. ‘I’ve never had the chance to find out! Besides, I’ve always had a splendid time when I’ve stayed with the Mattiesons on the Borders!’

‘That’s a civilized country house. A farm cottage isn’t quite the same.’

Stubbornly, he said, ‘I’ll find out, won’t I?’

It was three weeks before Drew admitted to himself that his mother had been right. He was bored. The salmon season was almost over and it was too early for stalking on these hills. Ewen wasn’t going to have time to teach him until late September, anyway. There were game birds enough – grouse and ptarmigan and blackcock – and pests that needed shooting, fine, fat brown hares round the crofts, and hoodie crows, and fork-tailed kites. But Drew had no gun of his own, and the one Ewen lent him was a brute, an antiquated flintlock that didn’t spark until what felt like half an hour after one pulled the trigger, and then let out a blinding flash and a cloud of smoke that rivalled the total output of Auld Reekie’s chimneys. And by that time, as he pointed out to Ewen, the birds he’d been aiming at were well on their way to the next glen.

Truthfully, he didn’t care much for the farm, either, although it was substantial enough in a small way. Once the initial interest had worn off, he began to feel suffocated. Ewen and his wife were both in their forties, but they were still producing sturdy young regularly every couple of years, and the baby had remarkable lungs for its age. Drew wasn’t used to communal living, to tripping over a graduated scale of children wherever he turned, to moving at a crouch in case he blundered into the ceiling-hung baskets and creels and nets and smoked herrings and lengths of coiled rope, or barked his shins against coggs and churns and meal kists and spinning wheels. He found the fare rather plain, cooked in the big covered pot that always rested on the hearth, or the iron griddle – one of Lauriston’s, a gift from Vilia – that hung over it on an intricate pot chain. There wasn’t much to read, either. Stewart of Garth’s
Sketches of the Character, Manners, and Present State of the Highlanders of Scotland,
eleven years out of date, a few volumes of sermons, and a well-thumbed Bible. Drew was aware that he should be grateful for not having to share his bedchamber, but he felt uncomfortable that his privacy had only been contrived by moving four of the children in with their parents. Indeed, if it weren’t that Vilia had told him so, he’d have gone back to Marchfield at the beginning of September.

Ewen, who was finding the lad something of a trial, would have been relieved. But Drew was, after all, Mistress Vilia’s boy and very like her except for something about the eyes that Ewen couldn’t quite place. In the middle of the month, pleased to have something to offer by way of a change, he said, ‘Why do you not come with me to the tryst? There iss plenty to see, if you haff neffer been to one. Though you will maybe haff been to Falkirk?’

‘No! It’s so near us that we’re more inclined to stay away. Swearing impartially at cattle and sheep and drovers when they hold up the carriage!’

‘Aye, they would. Well, you know they are haffing trysts on Skye every year, and that the drovers come from the south to buy, and then drive the beasts back to Falkirk or Crieff? It iss taking them about six weeks and by the time the beasts get there they are worn to a bone. Well, a year or two back some of us here wass thinking it would be a good idea to start a new market inland. We catch the drovers before they effer get to Skye, do you see, and it suits them fine, because they haff not so far to travel, either coming or going.’

Drew laughed. ‘I don’t imagine you’re very popular with the people on Skye, if you’re stealing their business!’

‘No, indeed. They would massacre us like a shot, if they had the chance,’ Ewen agreed philosophically. ‘But why not come with me? It will be a new experience for you.’

It was. Drew had never seen such an assortment of people – breeders, farmers, drovers, cottars, factors, shopkeepers, shepherds, crofters, ghillies, lairds, lawyers, children of all shapes and sizes, and an astonishing number of women. The road was lined with temporary blanket shelters – cookshops whose owners reeked as powerfully of broth and mutton as the drovers did of dogs and sheep. Everyone and everything was damp, for it had been a wet night and Aonach was a bare and barren place. Most of the folk, it seemed, had either slept on the heather or sat up all night drinking and gossiping, and they were indescribably dirty and untidy. The cattle and sheep, which covered a vast area of ground, stood quietly and gazed around them, while the drovers, blowsy and unshaven, leaned on their sticks and stared at the beasts as if, with poor stock like this, it was the breeders who ought to be paying to have them taken away.

For a while, Drew wandered around eavesdropping on the bargaining.

‘Ah’ll guv ye three pun’,’ a thick, low-country voice would say, ‘and no’ anither bawbee.’ Then the accents of someone local. ‘No, neffer! Three pounds fifteen I must haff. What iss the use of you higgling? I know you are for the cows as well as the stots, so you must not be wasting my time this way.’ And the first man again, in scandalized tones. ‘Three pun’ fifteen? Och, awa’wi’ye, man! Ah canny gie ye that kin’ o’ siller. Guidsakes, huv ye nae notion whit prices is like in the south the noo? Jist tak’ whit Ah’m offering, and settle it yince and for a’.’