A Dark and Distant Shore (64 page)

‘I can’t imagine anyone going there on pleasure! Is it true what someone told me, that they put chains across the streets on Sundays, so that people can’t profane the Sabbath by using their carriages?’

‘It is. And on weekday evenings it’s just like a graveyard, except when they’re having a riot, of course, which is one of their newer and less attractive habits. Mind you, most American towns are pretty lifeless after dark. That’s because we all work so hard and rise so early. You’ll discover that as you learn more about us. You’re here on business for the ironworks, of course?’

‘Yes. Theo’s the practical one of the family, and Drew’s in charge of sales. He should have been the one to come, but he couldn’t leave Shona and the baby. Administration’s my field.’ Belatedly, the sense of Perry Randall’s remark about them both being interested in metals got through to him. This was the very man he needed. ‘If you’re in guns,’ he said, ‘you must know all about iron. I’m here to sound out the market, and I scarcely know how to begin, the field’s so vast. Would it be an imposition for me to ask your advice?’

An imposition? Perry looked at the boy – pleasant, well bred, naïve. He had none of Vilia’s strength; indeed, he wasn’t even very like her except in his fairness and the size and beauty of his eyes, though his were nearer hazel than green. But it didn’t matter. Gideon Lauriston was Vilia’s son, and there was only one person in the world Perry would rather have been with. ‘I’ll give you any advice I can. Why don’t you come with me to Harper’s Ferry tomorrow? We can talk on the way.’

‘That would be splendid!’ Gideon’s face lit up.

‘Fine. Where are you staying? I’ll pick you up at seven.’

The road ran along the Patapsco, with thick undergrowth and tall trees framing the craggy banks. Gideon, prejudiced, thought he had seen more beautiful scenery in the Highlands, but even so he drew breath for a moment where the Potomac and the Shenandoah met and burst their way through the rocks, under a shading of steep cliffs and green-black pines. In some ways, it was like the Pass of Brander in Argyll, but the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Alleghenies lent a dimension to the scene that Brander lacked. From the heights above Harper’s Ferry the view was glorious.

Gideon was so used to the smell of coal smoke and the clank of hammers that he scarcely even noticed the Firearms Manufactory below until Perry Randall, amused, pointed out to him that as a tourist he ought to be complaining about it. Gideon laughed and flopped down on the turf, beginning to feel more comfortable with the other man. ‘I wish
our
foundry was in a spot like this!’ Chewing a stalk of young grass, he asked, ‘Is it silly? My being here, I mean. We thought the Compromise Act would open new markets, and it all looked fairly simple from the other side of the Atlantic. But I’ve been here only a little over three weeks and, as far as I can see, the whole of America is a market! I don’t know where to start. How can I talk to potential customers when every man I meet is a potential customer?’

Perry stretched himself out and breathed contentedly, as if the open air were his natural element, but there was nothing bucolic in what he had to say. ‘You’re right. All America
is
your market. You’re ahead of us in some ways, because Britain’s very compactness helps the process and dissemination of invention. And even on the most fundamental level, America’s population is too small to do all the things that need to be done. We’ll catch up with you some day, but in the meantime you could sell us as many cooking cauldrons as you like to produce. Now, and for years to come.’

He paused, and then exhaled lightly. ‘I remember my early days here, when people who’d never heard any accent but their own took me for a swindling Yankee pedlar. No one would even give me a hearing except in the log cabins in the backwoods, where they wanted my gossip as much as my guns. No money, of course, so I became an expert at barter. After a while, I invested in an ancient Conestoga wagon and loaded it to the gills with every kind of firearm – lock, stock and barrel – I could lay my hands on. Sky blue, the wagon was,’ he said reminiscently, ‘with four old nags to pull it. Took me a year before I could get them to acknowledge I even existed, far less obey me. Anyway, the log cabins were still there, and so were the backwoods, and they’re still there now. They’ll probably still be there fifty years on. There’s a lot of continent to cover.’

Gideon was interested. He’d always thought Scotland was empty, but even three weeks had begun to open his eyes to what real emptiness was. ‘It must be a very strange, lonely life. In the cabins, I mean. What’s it like?’

‘Well, when you come in view of one, you let out a loud, “Hello-o-o-o! The house!” and you wind your way somehow in amongst the stumps and half-burned log piles until they can see you properly. And there’s a good, stout log hut, and a corn crib, and a smoke house, and half a dozen hogs snoring in the shade. And the smells run out to meet you. Woodsmoke from the fire, and the rancid fat-and-lye mixture of soap boiling, and the stink of coon or muskrat or mink skins drying, and bare-arsed infants and unwashed hound dogs. And you know “the old woman” isn’t a day over thirty, though she looks fifty. And every single thing in and around the house is home made, except the gun, if there is one, and the iron cauldron. They call it a “kettle” here. It’s the most valued thing they possess, and the most difficult to replace. They cook in it, and use it as a wash boiler, and reduce maple sugar in it, and scald the hogs in it at killing time, and boil soap in it. I tell you, Gideon, there’ll be backwoodsmen for another half century and they’ll all need kettles. Hell, I wish I could buy a million from you and give them away free to those stubborn damned fools. They’re building something from nothing in a way even I never had to do.’

Gideon was silent for a moment, taken aback by the depth of feeling in this surprising man’s voice. Then Perry Randall sat up and laughed. ‘Philanthropy – the curse of the money-grubbing classes. Forget it! Let out a yell for Briggs, will you? He’s got some food and drink in the hamper there.’

With a slice of hickory-smoked ham in one hand and a wedge of squash pie in the other, Gideon said, ‘The thing that’s struck me in the time I’ve been here is the tremendous building activity. Canals, steamboats, railroads, and houses as well, of course. I’ve no way of judging whether or not we’re more advanced at home. Is there anything we can supply that’s better than what America’s producing for itself? Or is it simply a matter of quantity?’

Perry shrugged. ‘Quantity’s important, of course. In your small islands you don’t have the sheer difficulties of scale we have here. But scale introduces other problems you mightn’t expect. Your steamboat engineers know that squeezing out an extra knot an hour won’t get his passengers where they’re going all that much sooner. Here it’s different. Fast trips mean more profit and more prestige. It’s not unheard-of for riverboat engineers to tie down the safety valve if they’re in a hurry, or feed the fireboxes with bacon from the cargo, or timbers from the superstructure, if the fuel’s running low. And then the boiler blows up, of course, or the whole damned boat goes up in flames. Invent an unblockable safety valve, or an unburstable boiler, and you’d make a fortune. The same applies to the railroads. On the new line out of Charleston, South Carolina, a year or two back, the fireman held down the safety valve just because the hissing was getting on his nerves, and there was an almighty bang as a result. But no one’s about to stop using the Iron Horse when it’s averaging fifteen miles an hour compared with the six we’re used to. We don’t have many ten-mile-an-hour highways here. The main problem on the railroads, I’m told, is how to design rails, ties and ballast that will hold the tracks parallel and level.’

‘That’s Theo’s speciality. I’ll talk to him about it!’

‘We’ve got canal fever, too, especially since Ohio finished a couple of stretches that let you go all the way from New York to New Orleans by water. Oh, yes, Gideon my lad! You’ve plenty of scope. Cauldrons for the backwoodsmen, boilers for the steamboats, rails for the railroads, lock gates for the canals.’ Perry turned his head, ‘And most American bridges are wood-built, and they have to be roofed to protect the roadbed and piling from the weather. Iron would be an improvement. And hell, Gideon! Someone even put up a cast-iron bank front in Pottsville five years ago. Just think! Iron-fronted stores, iron-framed buildings, maybe even iron-built steamships one day. That’s a project they’re working on already.’

Amused, he watched the boy’s face as he considered the staggering possibilities. Gideon said, ‘Iron ships could be bigger, couldn’t they? And they’d take more and heavier cargoes. And that’d bring the cost of shipping our iron down a good deal. And...’

‘Hold on, hold on! Don’t get too far ahead of yourself. Think how much coal they’d use if they were really big. If they carried enough for an Atlantic crossing they might have no space left for cargo. Coaling stations would have to be set up at – where? – the Azores? Newfoundland? Unless someone invents a way of producing more steam from less coal.’

Gideon stared at him. ‘It’s fantastic, isn’t it? All those opportunities. All those
incredible
opportunities!’

‘You’re up in the air, boy. Come on down. Your brothers will have your head on a platter if you go home with nothing but dreams and visions.’

‘I know. But that’s how my mind works. Theo’s the practical one, I’m the imaginative one, and Drew’s the hard-headed romantic!’

‘That sounds contradictory.’ Never before had it occurred to Perry what a joy it would be, to have a son like this.

‘What? Hard-headed romanticism? Not really. Commerce being vulgar and modern, Drew treats it as such. He reserves his romance for long-established things, like love and chivalry and mouldering ruins. Quite logical, really.’

Perry grinned at him. ‘One foot in the future and one foot in the past. The perfect man for our times.’

‘Yes, well. But what do I do, Mr Randall?’

‘Perry.’

‘Er – thank you.’ He meant it. ‘If all America’s in the market for iron, how do I find out who’s
most
in the market for it?’

He was a nice boy, and quite shrewd, but he didn’t know anything about business at all. Perry said, ‘You use your eyes and your intelligence. You also head straight for your competitors, and find out what they’re up to. There’s no better way of learning where the most important business is coming from. Besides,
they
know more about America than you do. Pick their brains. If you’re clever, they’ll never even cotton on to the fact you’re doing it.’

Doubtfully, Gideon said, ‘It’s not awfully ethical, is it?’ and Perry threw back his head and laughed.

‘I’ll give you some introductions. There’s a belt of coal and iron that appears to run from Chicago to St Louis and over into Kentucky. Chicago’s only a village right now, but it won’t be long before it’s a city. Go and see it. Another belt runs from the Smoky City – that’s Pittsburgh – all the way down to Alabama. I reckon it might be worth going to South Carolina, too. They import more than any other state in the Union, and it was their resistance to import tariffs that led to the Compromise Act you were talking about. But to start with – go west, young man!’

His mind filled with visions, Gideon couldn’t concentrate on the Firearms Manufactory. Lauriston’s had never made rifles or cannons, and it was clear that the Manufactory didn’t need any more suppliers of raw materials. No market here, he thought, listening with only half his attention to the technicalities that ricocheted round his head. He did wonder vaguely why the name of a gentleman called Sam Colt kept cropping up, but couldn’t raise any enthusiasm for a new type of revolver, just about to be patented, when the whole world was determinedly at peace and seemed likely to remain so.

All the way back to Baltimore next day they talked about where Gideon should go and whom he should see. Then, just before they reached their destination, Perry stopped the carriage so that he could show Gideon his favourite view of the town.

From the hillside, they could see not only the neat, pretty houses but the harbour and shipping beyond. ‘Beautiful, isn’t it?’ Perry said. ‘That schooner there, the long, low one – that’s the
Ann McKim,
Baltimore-built three years ago. She’s what we call a clipper, because of her speed. Not much space for cargo, of course.’

Gideon sighed. ‘She’s lovely.’ With a little difficulty, he went on, ‘I know I can get excited about iron, and making it, and selling it, but that’s my upbringing speaking, not my instincts. What I want to do is travel. Where do ships like the
Ann McKim
go?’

‘Everywhere. I don’t know what the
Ann
’s
run is these days, but there’s a friend of mine, a captain from Salem, who knows the India and China seas as well as he knows the coast of New England. He’s been to Riga, too, and Arabia Felix, and Zanzibar, and Patagonia – everywhere! – trading one kind of goods for another at every port he visits. It’s a strange, rootless, exacting kind of existence, but quite enthralling. Sometimes I think it’s the kind of life I should have had myself, but I didn’t see the attractions until too late. My first experience of the sea – from Fort William to Nova Scotia on an emigrant ship – put me off voyaging for a long time. I guess that’s why I’ve only been back to Europe twice since I left.’

‘Twice? I didn’t know you’d been back at all.’

‘Why should you? You were scarcely out of short petticoats. It was back in 1822 and again in ’29.’

Without thinking, Gideon said, ‘Poof! I remember those two years very well. The royal visit to Edinburgh, and the year Luke Telfer died.’

The air was still, for day was giving way to evening and the sea breeze had faded and the land breeze not yet begun to blow. Gideon sat and enjoyed it, and didn’t notice how long it was before Perry said, ‘Luke Telfer?’

‘Yes, did you know him? But you must have done, of course. He’d be your – your nephew by marriage?’

The other man drew his long, flexible fingers absently over his forehead, smoothing out the two little creases between his brows. Abruptly, he said, ‘Yeah!’ It was the first time Gideon had consciously noticed him sounding like an American. ‘I saw him in ’29 at Kinveil – not long before he died, I guess. What happened?’