Distant Choices (57 page)

‘They all keep telling me about this wonderful Mrs Keith,' said Garron, home not even for a day but just long enough to collect some cash and eat a hastily prepared luncheon before setting off again to settle the temper of a difficult site in Lancashire. Then back to London and the negotiations which Mr Morrissey's suicide had done nothing to bring forward, merely providing excuses – in Garron's opinion – for delay under the guise of shock, or sorrow, or respect.

He had no respect for Milne, Morrissey whatsoever, or no more than they would have had for him had he made rash investments – which he had not – or failed to meet his obligations which, although he could not meet them now, of course, was Milne, Morrissey's fault entirely, not his.

‘Did you go to the funeral?' she asked him.

‘I did.' And helping himself to another slice of apple-tart and half a jug of cream, he grinned at her. ‘Mainly to make sure he was dead. And I wouldn't have been the only one ready to nail him back in his coffin if he'd tried to get out of it.'

But Mr Morrissey's death had not been the only one, the irrevocable collapse of several businesses, the atrocious position of many private individuals who had not only lost their savings but could no longer draw money to pay their outstanding bills, having resulted in at least three cases of heart-failure Garron knew of, one sad end by drowning, the disappearance – presumably abroad – of several men who evidently could not face their families, and a great deal of hysteria, from both sexes, requiring both legal and medical attention.

‘Which goes to prove what they say about an ill wind,' said Garron. ‘Providing, of course, all those doctors and lawyers everybody is calling in can manage to get their fees.'

He was looking tired and strained but, having expected that, she saw no reason to make it worse by telling him so, concluding that the tiredness could be put down to his journey while the strain might be noticeable to no one but herself.

‘There's hot water,' she said, ‘
very
hot, ready upstairs, and a clean shirt … And I've had that greatcoat of yours cleaned and brushed – the one with all the extravagant shoulder capes and the fur lining. I thought the navvies might appreciate seeing you look expensive and – well – quite handsome.'

He laid down his spoon and fork, got to his feet, held out a hand to her, the fierce pressure of which she accepted almost without flinching.

‘There isn't time,' he said. ‘Not to make love, anyway. And I won't use you like a … You know what I mean.'

Smiling – not wishing to remind him that he had used her in that way rather more than several times before – she slid her arms around his neck and, crushing her against him, he muttered into her ear, ‘When this is over I'll buy you a diamond twice the size of your mother's. Twice the size at least – I swear it.'

She smiled once again, ‘Thank you, Garron,' thinking it a pity she could not quite bring herself to tease him as to why her price had gone up.

She brought him his many-caped greatcoat instead, the early March day turning chilly, adjusted the pearl pin in his cravat, added a cream silk muffler, walked with him to the garden gate, her hair hanging down as she had done on her wedding morning, waving him goodbye and then, turning to find Morag behind her as she had also done on that distant day, throwing her arm – at last – around the girl's shoulders and walking companionably back to the house with her, their heads together.

She knew his first objective must be to recover his railway shares, lying worthless in a bank vault, there being no point in risking everything he still owned in bringing a railway line to completion and profitability unless those shares were in his possession. And since they could only be released to him on repayment of the loan for which they had acted as collateral, money already eaten up by both the raw and human materials of his trade, he must now seek to borrow elsewhere, and mainly on trust, enough to buy his collateral back again. At which point a hazardous race against time must be embarked upon to get his most profitable line finished, his completion money – in cash' – in his hand, his shares floated on the stock exchange and, if they should double or triple their value, enabling him to finish the next good line, and the next, and the one after until – if he managed to stave off death by exhaustion or frustration or sheer bad temper, not always his own – he would be back on his feet in a few months again.

His first task – completed within the bleak week of the bank failure – had been to convince the railway companies that they would find it cheaper, in the long run, to give him their support, if only verbal, instead of turning him off his sites and making them over to another contractor. And it pleased Oriel that the famous engineer, Mr Morgan de Hay, who had been her dinner partner on the night she met Garron, had consented to accompany him on his rounds of such banks with money still to lend, Mr de Hay, who had become even more famous and more accustomed to being listened to, freely expressing his opinion that as contractors went, which at times could never be far enough, Mr Keith was as good as any bank would be likely to get. Efficient above the average. Reliable, even. A hungry fighter who, now that his appetite had been whetted again, would be as likely to get his lines finished as anybody else Mr de Hay could bring to mind just then. And far more likely than some.

‘He's another one,' said Garron, ‘who wished to be remembered to the lovely Mrs Keith.'

‘I remember him,' she said and wrote him a note to say so when she heard of the visit he had made with Garron to a line he had engineered and Garron was constructing, a hundred and twenty miles across the Midlands, to explain the likelihood of Garron completing it in the time he said he could, and the certain profitability if he did so, to representatives of Garron's new bank.

‘Midland line agreed six months,' he telegraphed to Oriel, sounding a note of triumph which he instantly dispersed by arriving three days later to inform her that although six months might seem reasonable to the bank and certainly to de Hay who was only interested in getting his own line done, it would be too long for Garron to hold his overall interests together. Six months would mean the collapse of other lines he valued every bit as much as the Midland crossing, since how long did she think the cash would last with all those men to pay?

‘Evidently not six months,' she said.

‘No. If it takes me six months we might keep our heads above water. If I do it in three then I believe we just might be home and dry.'

‘Can you do it in three?'

‘de Hay wouldn't think so – which is why I didn't tell him. So he couldn't tell the bank and panic them into thinking me rash …'

‘And are you?'

‘Yes; Of course I am. Always have been.'

Sitting by the parlour fire at an advanced hour of the night she saw, as he lit his cigar, the taut muscles in his cheeks, the hard mouth smiling with a humour that had always been faintly bitter.

‘Oriel – you don't know the risks I took in the old days.'

‘I can imagine.'

‘I doubt it. Risks with myself and risks with other people too, I have to admit. The difference being that I didn't much care about risk then – or didn't see it. I see it now.'

‘But you'll take it just the same.'

‘I will. Otherwise I'll be a small man again, Oriel. Just making a living. A man the navvies don't trust because he's let them down, and a man the railway companies don't trust either because, in a year or two, they won't remember why I couldn't complete – whether it was the bank's fault or mine. And just “making a living” wouldn't be enough for me, Oriel. It's not my style.'

‘So you'll do the Midland line in three months.' Very carefully she had not asked him if he really believed he could.

‘Yes. Three hard months –' she saw he was talking to himself ‘– bloody hard. I'll have to live on the site …'

Leaning towards him, sliding her hand into his, she said, ‘Would you like me to come with you?'

‘Like it?' Instantly his brooding, his mulling over of those back-breaking, possibly heart-breaking months was gone. ‘Of course I'd like it …'

‘I'll come then.'

‘And live in a navvy hut with a dozen randy lodgers?'

‘I suppose you could protect me – couldn't you? Although to tell the truth, I was thinking of a room in the nearest town.'

Laughing, shaking his head, his hands closed around hers, drawing her towards him. ‘Or a suite in the nearest grand hotel, which would be nowhere near at all, I do assure you. No. Wait for me here, Oriel. I've saved this house for you and the kids whatever happens. Look after them – and the cash, I reckon. And when it's over we'll go up to Ullswater for a week or so, just the two of us. You with your big new diamond and me more than ready for that herb-pillow – waiting to get moonstruck again like I seemed to be that night … You remember?'

‘Yes. Three months, then.'

Once again she walked with him to the garden gate and waved him off.

‘Are you falling in love with that giant of yours?' asked Kate, expecting no answer and receiving none.

‘Are you going to talk to your husband?' enquired Oriel blandly.

‘Yes, Oriel. I'm going to talk to him.'

‘And when might that be?'

Kate smiled. ‘When I can.'

‘Ah – of course.'

‘It has only been a few weeks, Oriel. Six at the most …'

‘Eight.'

‘Ah yes.' Sipping tea lightly flavoured with lemon from Oriel's pure white china with its delicate pattern of gold fleur-de-lys, Kate smiled. ‘Must we be so precise? I will talk to Francis when I can, Oriel. Not because I am a monster of selfishness and depravity, as people say – although, of course, they are fully entitled to their opinion – but because when I do talk to him I must be sure of saying the right things.'

‘He is a rather wonderful man, Kate.'

‘Do you think so? I'm sure you are right. Although the truth is I hardly know him. Can you believe that?'

‘Easily.'

Kate nodded, very pleasantly. ‘Quite so. I fell in love with a figment of my own imagination. I know that much for certain. And then, when the “figment” evaporated – which didn't take long – I felt so guilty. Lord – how guilty. Because how could I blame him for not being the man I'd thought he was when he'd never even pretended in the first place? What he really wanted was to go to Mecca. The trouble was, so did I.'

‘And what do you want now?'

‘I'll tell you when I can.' And then, jumping to her feet, crossing to the window for the sheer pleasure, it seemed, of exercising her slender, still brittle limbs, she called out, ‘Oh look, Oriel – there's Quentin coming up your garden path. How lovely. Except – oh damnation, damnation – he has Susannah with him. I'd better run upstairs, I suppose, and hide in your bedroom to deny her the pleasure of not speaking to me. Which is a great nuisance, since I find Quentin has turned out so entertaining. Don't you? Or are you going to tell me that he always was?'

Yet, when the drawing-room door was opened by Oriel's butler only ‘Mr Saint-Charles, madam,' was announced, Susannah having gone up to Morag's room with a parcel of books she had apparently promised.

‘Really,' said Oriel, by no means pleased about it.

‘Thank heaven for Morag,' said Kate, very pleased indeed, her eyes a bright challenge. ‘Oriel and I have just been saying how entertaining you are, Quentin.'

He bowed. ‘Thank you, Kate. What a pity you failed, so abysmally, in your youth, to form that opinion.'

Kate burst into a peal of laughter so uncomplicated, so wholly natural as to leave Oriel in no doubt as to the easy terms on which she and Quentin now stood.

‘Well, yes, Quentin, I did think you dreadful once. But that was when you were trying to marry me for my money. As you were, you know.'

He smiled. So did Oriel.

‘I know,' he said. ‘And why not? It seemed an entirely logical undertaking then – and even now …'

‘You mean you would still do it?' She looked greatly elated, as if she found the theory of marriage, if not its practice, a most amusing topic of discussion.

So too, it seemed, did Quentin. ‘Let's not be too hasty,' he said. ‘One must first consider the cost of getting your freedom. But – well – let's say that if you managed it with enough of the Kessler inheritance still sticking to you, then yes – we might very likely reach an agreement.'

‘Quentin Saint-Charles,' she sounded delighted. ‘What a cold-hearted monster you are.'

He bowed again. ‘My dear, it is called realism. What else could induce a man in my position to marry?'

‘You might fall in love, I suppose?'

‘I might. What has that to do with marriage?'

‘So you are a matrimonial predator,' said Kate, as if awarding him a medal.

‘I dare say I am,' he agreed, bowing again to allow the Order of whatever she was bestowing upon him to pass smoothly around his neck.

‘And are there no limits to your callous opportunism?'

‘I shouldn't think so.'

‘You hear that, Oriel?' Kate gurgled happily. ‘It strikes me he would even marry Dora Merton …'

‘Even?' said Quentin levelly and coolly. ‘Dear Kate – there is no
even
about it.'

‘
Quentin.
Surely not?' Now he had really entertained her. ‘Not Dora. Not “Madcap” any more, I fear, just a poor lunatic, all alone in her mansion …'

‘Kate,' he said crisply. ‘She is richer than you. Not only in money but in property extensive enough to get her husband elected as a Member of Parliament, if that happened to be his fancy. And contacts enough to give him a more than even chance of a seat on some Prime Minister's cabinet …'