A Dark and Distant Shore (80 page)

‘I think you are being extremely short-sighted,’ she said, abandoning her pretence of detachment. ‘Yes, Theo, I know the future lies with the railroads, but is there really going to be such a construction mania as you expect? And if there is, will it last? There is, after all, a limit to the number of lines that can be profitable, and if too many contractors are chasing too few concessions, nothing but trouble can result. Something of the sort happened in the Highlands when I was no more than a child. The Parliamentary Roads commissioners were inundated with applicants for the road contracts, and granted some of them to builders who weren’t equipped for the work, although they had sounded very good. Half a dozen of them, at least, either went bankrupt or else had to abandon the work before it was complete. You must be sure to deal only with the most reputable companies, and don’t, please, set your hopes too high! You seem to me to be over-committed. Once the railroads are built that will surely be an end to it – unless, of course, the quality of rail you are supplying is so poor that there will be a constant demand for replacement sections!’

‘Cold feet, mama? And yet I remember you forecasting, almost ten years ago, that twenty per cent of our total pig-iron production would go in railway orders. You were right, and more right than you could have foreseen now that we’ve cut the wastage in refining to a third of what it was. We’re at twenty per cent now, and nowhere near the height of the boom yet.’

‘Yes, my dear!’ Her voice was exasperated. ‘But I’ll forecast again, if you like. Booms are usually followed by slumps, and in another ten years you may well find yourself back where you were in 1833, with only six or seven per cent taken up. And what do you do then with your excess capacity, if you have been over committed?’

‘Felix will tell you.’

She had been incensed to discover that von Sandemann’s verbs slid neatly into their proper places when Theo was present. When the man had left them for a few moments to sign some urgent correspondence, she had remarked to Theo that she hoped the clerk was sufficiently literate to polish up his superior’s syntax – ‘because,
really,
Theo, it makes me cold all over to think of Lauristons’ being faulted on English grammar!’

‘Tiresome, isn’t it?’ he replied with malicious sympathy. ‘I had to take him very severely to task when he first came. The men were becoming quite exhausted chasing his verbs around. We have very little trouble now, except when he isn’t paying attention.’

‘And what am I to deduce from that?’

Theo had smiled his slanting smile. ‘That since you were merely a woman, he felt no need to pay attention.’

‘Does he not like women?’

‘Oh, don’t mistake me! In some ways he likes them very well. But not for their minds. Not in the way I do.’

She couldn’t read the curve of his lips or the expression in his eyes. Worse, he clearly knew that she couldn’t. A deliberately forgotten voice whispered in her head, ‘Do you know that his sexual inclinations are unorthodox?’

Impatiently, she said, ‘Don’t be foolish. It’s high time you were married.’

‘Is it? I don’t agree, even if early marriage does seem to run in the family. After all, I’m not yet thirty and I have no great desire to settle down into domestic bliss.’

She looked at von Sandemann and waited. Despite what had been said, she suspected that he still underrated her. It would be almost like old times having to prove herself to the superior male. As she had learned to do a quarter of a century ago, she pushed her chin up a little and her shoulders down, clasped her hands loosely on the desk before her, and looked coolly into the dark brown, golden-flecked eyes.

He said, ‘When the British market for railway lines weakens, there will of course be other markets in France and the Zollverein – the Prussian Customs Union, you understand? – and America, where our associate, Mr Randall, tells us that interest again quickens after the depression. But all that is the – what is the expression? – the province of Theo. Drew and I are agreed that we should expand our fine art castings in line with modern taste.’

Vilia’s heart sank.

‘Lauriston Brothers have a reputation for architectural ironmongery of the old-fashioned kind...’

A faint chuckle came from Theo, but Vilia had no trouble preserving her gravity. ‘Yes?’ she said encouragingly.

‘...by which I mean,’ von Sandemann went on with surprising smoothness, ‘the traditional kind. Producing admirable examples in cast iron of products that have a history of having been made in wrought iron or bronze – but always in metal. But it is now possible to copy, even to improve, objects that have formerly been made of wood, perhaps, or pottery.’

‘Such as?’

‘Such as gates, and garden ornaments, weather vanes, ornamental fountains, garden vases, jardinières, chairs, tables, mirror frames, hat stands, chimney-pieces, statuettes. There are many ideas that we have yet to study.’

Chairs, statues, mirror frames? ‘I cannot believe,’ Vilia said flatly, ‘that you will find many customers. A funereal border to one’s mirror scarcely flatters the complexion, and a vast black expanse round the hearth – no, really, it would be too oppressive.’

It was a mistake to be dogmatic. Von Sandemann smiled coldly, ‘Oppressive? Once, perhaps. But modern taste favours ornamentation, and Gothic and rococo give lightness and –
Lebhaftigkeit
–
yes, liveliness to such things. And it is necessary no longer that they should be black. Three years since, the company of Elkington, Mason in Birmingham developed a process that makes it possible to lay a deposit of gilt or bronze over the iron. You see? Golden gates, and bronze statuettes at a small fraction of what they would otherwise cost. We cannot fail to find customers, and Drew believes there will be many.’

Theo, with his usual almost uncanny accuracy, diagnosed his mother’s frown. ‘The Germans have been ahead of us in the art of design, and in metalworking skills, for some years now. You need have no fears about quality, with Felix in charge.’

With the frankness that could, she knew, be disarming, she said, ‘Personal prejudice on my part! I am not in sympathy with what Mr von Sandemann calls “modern taste”, and I am sure he knows more about it than I do. But taste aside, think of the number of moulds for all these things! So much investment, so much space needed, for such frivolous things, things that people don’t need! Don’t think I have anything against luxuries, but they are very dangerous to base a business on – the first items to suffer when times are hard. And fashion in luxuries is so fluid. I’m sorry, but I don’t care for the idea at all.’

She met her son’s eyes squarely, after a moment he remarked, ‘We’re a family business. What would you suggest?’

It didn’t occur to her that he was being generous. He could have said, ‘I, on the other hand, do care for the idea. And the foundry isn’t yours any more.’ She said unhesitatingly, ‘Structural work. The usual railings, gates, balconies, of course, and staircases and gas lamps. Bridges, as always. But especially the skeletons for shop fronts and other kinds of building. There’s bound to be a tremendous demand when people realize the advantages over traditional methods of construction. Just consider! The population of England and Wales has almost doubled in the last fifty years, and in Scotland far more than doubled. And unless marriage and children go out of fashion, it
must
go on. There simply has to be an urgent, and increasing demand for houses, and shops, and manufactories, and business premises. The potential markets are at least as great as with railroads, and certainly far greater than with art castings!’

Reflectively, Theo said, ‘How delightful to hear you sounding like your old self again. Yes, I take your point. Standardized units and interchangeable parts. The Americans are doing quite a lot along those lines, I’m told, though mainly with guns, clocks, and pumps. No reason why it shouldn’t work on a much larger scale. Vilia, dear, you are a constant refreshment. I didn’t realize how much I had missed you.’ Blandly, he turned to von Sandemann. ‘No criticism of you, Felix, dear boy. Of course.’

Von Sandemann’s face was like a thundercloud. ‘Will you then support for my ideas withdraw?’

‘Verbs, dear boy. Verbs.’ Vilia could almost have sympathized with the man. Theo had a genius for being offensive. ‘Withdraw my support?’ he went on. ‘I really don’t know. Probably not, but I think we might reduce our commitment. We must talk about it when Drew gets back from London.’

There was a knock on the door, and Theo’s clerk entered with a note in his hand. Theo glanced at it, and raised his brows, ‘From Gideon, and addressed to me urgently. By messenger, too.’ Opening it, he scanned the message rapidly, and then went back to the beginning again. ‘Dear me,’ he said at last. ‘How very distressing. It seems that Elinor has broken her neck.’

Dully, Gideon wondered whether funerals had been invented for the purpose of keeping the bereaved occupied until the first edge of grief had been blunted, for no sooner had Elinor been carried back from the hunting field to the Lawries’ calm and gracious house than he was faced with the question of where she was to be buried. The decision was his alone. Momentarily, he grieved for her parents and sisters in Charleston, who would know nothing until it was over, and long over.

In the end, it seemed best to him that she should be buried here among the quiet rolling hills where Scotland merged almost insensibly into England – the Scotland she had married into and hated, and the England where, briefly happier, she had still been a stranger. At this moment, his sense of loss was largely overshadowed by feelings of guilt and self-reproach for having torn her, ridiculously immature, from the warm, loving, cushioned world she knew and brought her to a land and life that were its diametric and Calvinistic opposite. With his help and understanding she might, in time, have grown into it, but he had expected too much of her, and his love had degenerated into an automatic affection overlaid with resentment at her dependence on him. He wondered, with a flash of insight, how much his own upbringing had to do with this failure of his. His mother’s love for himself, and Theo, and Drew, had waxed and waned, he thought, according to how successful they were in standing on their own feet. Drew had always been the emotionally dependent one, and there had been times when Vilia had seemed to withdraw her love altogether, as if in that way she could force him into maturity. Looking back, Gideon could see that Drew’s headlong marriage to Shona had been an inevitable result; he had simply transferred his emotional dependence from mother to wife. Even now, despite his air of assurance, his looks, his charm, without Shona he was lost. And perhaps he had the best of it.

A cold thing, independence, however much one treasured it – and Gideon treasured it most of the time. But now, standing under the pale, washed-out blue of the Border sky, with the Cheviots to south and east flattening into the featureless grey silhouette that meant snow to come, he found it wanting.

He wished he had been able to respond with more than a mechanical smile last night when, gazing out of their bedroom window at the moon sailing free and clear, silvering the fallen leaves in the orchard, Elinor had exclaimed, ‘Frost, Gideon honey! The going should be just perfect tomorrow!’ But he took no pleasure in riding to hounds, even though, after eight years of marriage, he had learned to welcome anything that smoothed out the petulant creases from around his wife’s mouth.

He wished he had stayed by her side, too, at the meet, but his own mount, a herring-gutted piebald, hadn’t been in the same class as Elinor’s mare, which took off like a train in the wake of the Huntsman when the hounds caught the scent. Gideon, a long way behind, had been relieved to see that the mare knew how to jump, and enjoyed it, and had turned his attention back to his own animal, which showed no disposition to lark over hedges but made a pusillanimous bee-line for any gap that could be shouldered through or scrambled over. He didn’t even see the mare, when she came to an inoffensive-looking brook, dig her heels in abruptly, pecking as she slithered to a halt. Elinor had been told that the animal hated water, but must have forgotten, expecting her to go flying over as she had flown over the hedges. Instead, it was Elinor who had gone flying over the mare’s head, straight into the rock-strewn bed of the inoffensive-looking brook. By the time Gideon reached her, someone had lifted her on to the bank, where she lay soaked and broken, like some chestnut-haired Desdemona dripping fallen leaves and hairpins. Her hat still bobbed upside-down in the stream, trapped in an eddy of the current. He had bent down and salvaged it, laying it beside her on the makeshift stretcher. She had never taken a step outdoors without something to protect her complexion.

He had failed her, always; marrying her before he recognized that it was part of his nature to keep his distance from the human race. He wouldn’t make that mistake again.

He supposed that Vilia and Theo would come to the funeral, and wondered distantly whether they would be embarrassed by his knowing that they had never taken to Elinor. Probably not. Shona, for whom it was inconceivable not to love anyone close to her, would be upset; it was as well that she and Drew couldn’t arrive from London in time to be present. What emotional and organizational complications there would be in another few years, when the railway made it possible to travel from London to Scotland in a day. There would be no more legitimate excuses for not being where one didn’t want to be, or for not inviting someone to an occasion one didn’t want them to attend.

Christ! Gideon thought. What if Vilia brings the child?

But Vilia, unsentimental though she was about children and despite her feeling that seven-year-old Lizzie’s spine badly needed stiffening, was not heartless.

‘I left her with Lavinia and Juliana, my dear,’ she said, kissing her son’s lean cheek and taking his chilled hand in hers. ‘Why are you standing out here in the cold?’

‘Escaping from sympathy, I would imagine,’ Theo remarked. He didn’t grip Gideon’s shoulders sustainingly, as another man might have done, but went on, ‘And suffering from remorse? Don’t, dear boy. You can’t guard people from their destiny, not even your wife. Or yourself.’ He smiled slightly. ‘Anyway, here we are – for what it’s worth. I’ll deal with anything you feel is beyond you.’