A Dark and Distant Shore (74 page)

Magnus wasn’t accustomed to being snapped at. In his world, he was the one who did the snapping. His eyes glazed for a moment, and his chin dropped. Then, looking very much like an offended fish, he replied, ‘Don’t take that tone with me, young man!’

‘I’ll take whatever tone I choose, when you’re unpleasant about my wife. Your own niece, too. It really won’t do, Magnus!’

‘Niece? Humph! She’s more her father’s daughter than she is my sister’s.’

‘And what do you mean by that?’ Drew inquired bodingly.

‘I mean her father was a damned irresponsible ne’er-do-well, that’s what I mean. And your wife’s inherited it.’ When Magnus was angry, he cared for no one’s feelings but his own. It was one of his least likeable characteristics. ‘Never been any doubt in my mind about that,’ he went on, clinching his point, ‘since she agreed to elope with you. Disgraceful!’ As if to signify that the subject was now closed, he leaned his head back and snapped his eyes and lips firmly shut.

Drew, on his feet, breathed in heavily. ‘And that goes too far! I am going to fetch my wife, Magnus,
and you will apologize to her
!’
He stalked off.

Magnus’s nostrils flared, but his eyes remained stubbornly closed.

‘Dear me. How very fortunate that duelling has gone out of fashion,’ said Theo, his voice at its blandest, adding, in response to an exasperated glance from Gideon, ‘Only trying to help, dear boy. Think how useful the income would be to you.’

Gideon had forgotten the income from Mungo Telfer’s trust. Useful, indeed. For years now, he had racked his brains to think of some way of achieving financial independence, but because of Elinor and Lizzie had seen no way of cutting loose from the foundry, which paid him a salary and a share of the profits. They couldn’t live on the profit-share alone. Even so, Gideon had nourished his hopes by making every preparation he could think of. He had taken on and trained a high-level deputy, Felix von Sandemann, who had been sent over from his family’s ironworks in Bohemia to study British methods and was showing a disposition to stay. He was an arrogant bastard, but very efficient. At the same time, Gideon had begun to teach himself shorthand and had written some speculative articles about industrial prospects in America. Two of them had been published. But he couldn’t give up the foundry and move to London on the strength of two newspaper articles. More than once, Elinor had suggested that they could live on her dowry until his writing began to pay, but Gideon wouldn’t hear of it. The money was hers, he had said, and should be kept for a rainy day. ‘Rainy day?’ Elinor had wailed. ‘Gideon honey, I don’t recall a day since I came here that
hasn’t
been rainy!’ She still hadn’t settled to life in Scotland, and Gideon was beginning to think she never would. April was the worst month. He always knew, when he found her gazing out at the grey landscape, shivering in the biting east winds of spring, that she was homesick for warm breezes and the heavy scent of flowers and the plaintive cry of the mocking birds. This April, he had sensed that she was very near to packing her bags and going home to Charleston, and had been dismayed to realize that, if it hadn’t been for the fear of losing Lizzie, he wouldn’t have minded very much. Although they hadn’t yet fallen quite out of love, most of the time they bored each other.

The income from the trust might make all the difference. Gideon didn’t know how much it was, but he supposed that Theo did. How badly did Drew and Shona need it? Not too badly, Gideon suspected, for Drew had his sales commission as well as his salary and share of the profits. Even so... Gideon decided to remain silent on the matter, or as silent as he was allowed to. He glanced at Vilia and caught her faint, amused smile as she watched Drew returning with a worried Shona in tow. A little distance behind – far enough behind to be tactful, but not so far as to miss anything that might be said – followed Grace and Elinor, their faces expressive of polite concern rather than the very human curiosity that Gideon knew must be consuming them. He held out a hand to his wife, and she sank gracefully down on the sand beside him.

Drew came to a stiff-necked halt before the seemingly oblivious form of his stepfather. ‘You were going to apologize, Magnus.’

Magnus drew a long-suffering breath. ‘Oh, no, I wasn’t! And don’t loom over me like that. You’re blocking the sun.’

‘You were going to thank Shona for keeping the family chronicle, and tell her you didn’t mean what you said about her father.’

Magnus opened his eyes. ‘In-cred-ible!’ he exclaimed on an explosive huff. It was one of his favourite words. ‘Anyway, Shona wouldn’t
know
what I said about her father if you hadn’t told her. It’s all of a piece. No sense. Not that I’ve ever concealed what I think about that fellow Randall. A wastrel. Ruined my sister’s life. Bad blood. No sense of responsibility, and Shona takes after him or she wouldn’t have agreed to run away with you. Blood will tell, and maybe she can’t help it – but what does that have to do with anything? All I say is, you’re well suited, the pair of you.’

‘You’ve never liked me, have you, Magnus?’

If there was one thing Magnus loathed more than being contradicted or criticized, it was having a straight question put to him – an odd quirk, Gideon had often thought, because he wasn’t usually backward about stating his opinions, whether he knew anything about the subject under discussion or not. Left to himself, he would have been perfectly capable of volunteering the information that no, he did
not
like Drew. But, under pressure, what he did was roll his eyes heavenward and say again, ‘In-cred-ible!’

Vilia’s quiet voice broke in. All she said was, ‘Drew!’ but there was no mistaking her meaning.

Drew grimaced. ‘Oh, very well, mama. Perhaps I shouldn’t have said that, but I don’t see why Magnus should keep harping on irresponsibility. I sincerely hope he’s not daring to criticize
my
father, too!’

Studiously, Gideon avoided catching Theo’s eye.

Ignoring the latter part of Drew’s speech, Magnus said with heavy sarcasm, ‘Indeed! You think eloping with an innocent girl is
responsible,
do you?’

‘Thanks to Edward, yes. We had no alternative.’

They glowered at each other.

Shona, her eyes enormous in the sweet, anxious face, threw herself into the breach. ‘You’re not being fair, Uncle Magnus. But we don’t mind. At least, not very much,’ she amended conscientiously. ‘
We know
we weren’t wrong or irresponsible. But I think it’s very unkind of you to blame my father for what we did. After all, Grace is his daughter, too, and she has never done anything that even the severest critic could complain of.’

Anyone other than Magnus would have conceded the point, but that would have been as good as admitting that he was wrong. ‘Maybe,’ he grunted. ‘But she’s had Peter Barber to guide her, and I expect he’s the one to thank for it.
He
doesn’t go round flying up in the boughs and contradicting people all the time. He’s a good influence, you can see it in the children.’

Grace’s face was a study. Gideon, glancing towards her husband to discover whether he had overheard this encomium, was met with a small, controlled smile. It was true that Barber didn’t, in fact, make a practice of contradicting Magnus but that was because he was an economical soul who didn’t like waste, even waste of breath. Gideon grinned at him.

Drew, just about to take offence at the suggestion that he himself was an unsatisfactory father, closed his mouth resentfully as Vilia forestalled him. ‘I think,’ she remarked placidly, ‘that we have rather lost sight of the point at issue. Shona, my dear, would you be distressed at giving up the family chronicle?’

‘No, truly! If Gideon would do it, I should be delighted. He would be so much better at it, too.’ She smiled at him. She really was a darling.

Miraculously, Drew held his tongue, and Vilia said, ‘If you were to sit down, Drew, we should all feel more comfortable. Thank you. Now, Gideon, what do you think about it?’

‘Well, I... Yes, I’d be happy and’ – he glanced at Magnus – ‘and honoured. And if I were to give up my work at the foundry, as I’ve been intending, I would have sufficient time to devote to it.’

This edited version of his plans had the happy effect of taking Magnus’s mind off Drew’s delinquencies. ‘Give up the foundry?’ he echoed, thunderstruck. ‘To do what? You’ll have to do
some
thing.’

Gideon wasn’t misled into thinking that Magnus regarded him as one of Nature’s activists. Biting back a slightly tart rejoinder in which his stepfather’s idleness, inherited capital, and income from rents would all have figured, he said merely, ‘I hope to write.’

‘Good God!’ Magnus looked as if he didn’t fancy having a writing johnny in the family. ‘Can you make a living at it?’

‘I hope so.’

‘What’ll you write? Stories? Not long-winded things like that new fellow – what’s his name? Dickens? – keeps turning out. How do people think that kind of thing up? I don’t understand it.’

‘No, I want to try my hand at reporting, writing about politics, religion, the people of other countries. That’s more my line.’

‘Well, I hope you know what you’re doing.’ Clearly, he doubted it.

‘So do I.’

‘Will you really be able to make a living at it?’

‘With application, and perhaps a little luck.’

‘You mean fellows like Dickens make a living out of it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Incredible. A decent living?’

‘I imagine so.’

Silence. Then, ‘How
do
they think that kind of thing up? Stories, I mean. I don’t understand where they get it all from.’

Gideon, only too aware that the inquisition could go on for ever, flicked a glance at his mother, and she came amusedly to his rescue. ‘One thing occurs to me about the chronicle, Magnus, if I may just interrupt for a moment? Since Edward still refuses to allow Drew or Shona to set foot in Glenbraddan, it’s been difficult for Shona to write as much as she should have done about the Blair side of the family. But Gideon, at least, is on reasonable terms with Edward, so things would be easier for him. And Mungo
did
mean the chronicle to take in Charlotte’s descendants as well as yours. What do you think?’

Magnus hesitated only for a moment. Truth to tell, he hadn’t until today given so much as a thought to the family chronicle since he had shuffled it off on to Edward, and subsequently Shona, after Luke had died a dozen years before. What did he think about it? He didn’t know, and didn’t care very much. Restored to humour by the ill-founded belief that he had put young Drew firmly in his place, he said benignly enough, ‘There’s something in that, certainly.’

As the salmon said when it swallowed the fly! Gideon thought. It looked as if Magnus might be hooked.
Please, Magnus!

After a century or two, Magnus said again, ‘Yes, there’s something in that. If the thing is to be done at all, it ought to be done properly.’ He looked round to be sure that everyone was properly appreciative of this highly original thought. Only Drew seemed less than impressed, and it was enough to make Magnus’s mind up. He said, ‘Remind me when we get home, Vilia, and I’ll arrange to have everything legally transferred to Gideon.’

‘Yes, my dear. Of course,’ she replied with a smile.

Vilia, at some cost to herself, had become very good at managing Magnus. She had known, before they were married, that she would have to make concessions, and not just the ordinary concessions necessary between two reasonable people who had chosen to live together. They were by no means twin souls, and ‘reasonable’ wasn’t the first adjective that sprang to mind where Magnus was concerned. She had been acquainted with him for long enough to know that he needed specially delicate handling, but she remembered Lucy’s technique with him and foresaw no real problems. Admittedly, he was self-centred. Admittedly, he had delusions of infallibility. Admittedly, his temper was uncertain and sudden. But if Lucy Clive had been able to keep him in a reasonably equable frame of mind, then surely she, Vilia Cameron, should be able to do as well. It seemed a small price to pay for the gift of Kinveil.

That had been before she began to live with him twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, fifty-two weeks a year.

The early days of their marriage had been marked by an almost excessive goodwill on the part of both of them. Right from the start, Magnus had handed over to her most of the responsibility for running Kinveil, remarking sentimentally, ‘You, after all, are far better equipped than I am.’ That, Vilia had thought drily, was one way of putting it. The truth was that Magnus had a rooted dislike for responsibility of any kind, and was not only prepared but eager to shuffle it off.

Not that she could complain at having her dearest wish granted so readily. In the first few weeks, it had been all she wanted of delight just to be at Kinveil again, to lay her forehead against one of the turret windows and look out over the loch and the village and the mountains, to run her fingers over the smooth-rough walls, to slip out when the dew was still on the heather and walk over the hills for an hour before returning to the castle to oversee the dusting, polishing and repairing that were needed to restore it to what it ought to be. It was a long time before she recognized that, in her walks, she consistently avoided the little hollow in the hillside where Luke Telfer had found her on that autumn day in 1828.

Then she had set about rectifying, with a vigour to which in recent years she had been a stranger, all that had gone wrong on the estate during a decade of carelessness and neglect. Within two or three seasons, she had effected a transformation. The tenants’ and crofters’ houses no longer leaked. The arable land was properly seeded and weeded. The cattle were fatter and gave more milk. The trees grew more sturdily once the undergrowth had been cleared away. More lobsters were caught, more salmon smoked, more venison sent to the markets of Glasgow and Edinburgh. She had closed down the little alkali factory Bannister had built on the coast in an attempt to exploit the kelp that no one wanted nowadays; far more productive to use the seaweed as fertilizer. Giving in to economic realities, she had even imported a small flock of Cheviots, sending them over to Aberdeenshire to be wintered, so that they didn’t ruin the grazing for everyone else. With the wool, she planned to bring cash spinning and weaving to Kinveil, for she was convinced that naturally dyed yarns and handwoven cloth could still compete with the manufactory product.