Mathew's Tale (22 page)

Chapter Thirty-Five

B
Y MID-SEPTEMBER, LIZZIE
McGill’s shop had become the focal point of Carluke. The premises were large and so she was able to divide them into sections, with half devoted to grocery and the rest divided between haberdashery and hardware. There was a new sign over the door: ‘Carluke General Store’.

The harvest had been good and the Cleland tenant farmers had all profited from the new pricing system that the grain merchant had introduced, and so there was a feeling of well-being about the village. As Lizzie’s customers grew in number, so did her circle of friends. No one looked at her askance any longer, and if anyone talked about her behind her back, her shop had become too important for them to run the risk of word getting back to her.

Her hours were long and the work was hard, but Matt was there to help her, and to look after his sister when she was not at school. His summer of hard work at Waterloo House, alongside the solid and sensible Beattie and Jackson, had been good for him, emotionally and physically too, for there seemed to be no boxes or barrels that he could not lift with ease, not even the salted fish that came from Glasgow.

He was helpful in other ways; he had suggested a home delivery service for those who wished to buy more than they could carry, and it had proved popular and profitable. He had begun by using a hand barrow, but was pressing for a pony and cart, and his mother could see the sense in that it would increase his range. As far as she could judge, the fire of his anger was less intense, although there were still moments when he fell silent and seemed to be looking at a place very far away.

As for Mathew, he had never set foot in the shop since he had bought it. Mother Fleming was a regular visitor, brought by Beattie in her own small carriage, but Mathew had made a point of staying away, to give no fuel to the gossips. His purchase of the shop remained a secret, and Peter Wright was happy to go along with the popular view that he was a most generous and compassionate uncle.

John Barclay was a customer also; he and Mathew had made their peace, although the latter had made it clear that he would not be returning to Carluke Kirk, in case he and Gavin Cleland should cross paths. The old minister was beginning to look frail; he had lost much weight and Lizzie wondered whether he was eating properly. She asked his housekeeper as much, and the woman confessed that he had no appetite for anything other than Madeira wine.

‘Then tell him from me,’ she said, ‘that until I see a bit of a belly on him again I will sell him no more than one bottle a month. He need not think of going to the tavern for it either. I’ll warn Rab Inglis off serving him.’

As for the Laird, he had not set foot in the shop in years, not since Peter Wright had caught the twins stealing liquorice when they were nine years old, but his estate workers did. They were the ones with least money in their pockets, Lizzie noticed.

Her hours were long and her door was open to all, apart, initially, from two women. She recognised them as wives of two of the men who had thrown her and her children out of their home and broken their precious things. When she refused to serve them, each one asked her why, and each received the same answer: ‘Go and ask your husband. When he tells you, you may come back again and we will talk some more.’

Each woman did, and came back next day, to apologise for her man’s part in what had happened. Again she told each the same: ‘I will only accept an apology from him . . . but I will serve you, on condition that you spit in his porridge every so often, as a present from me.’

Philip Armitage’s wife, against whom Lizzie bore no grudge, was a regular customer, but she was surprised when the factor himself came through the door one morning in October. He bought snuff, soap and a bottle of brandy; they were regular items on his wife’s shopping list, and so she asked if Mrs Armitage was unwell.

‘Thank you for asking,’ he replied, ‘but no, she is perfectly fine. I happened to be passing, that was all, and we are a little low on soap.’ He frowned slightly. ‘I, eh, I am pleased to see you here, Mistress McGill. I have always held you in high regard. Your uncle must be a fine man to have done this for you.’

‘I am glad you think so. I will pass on your compliment next time I see him, which will probably be later today, when he collects his copy of the
Glasgow Herald
. My son has a plan to start what he calls a newspaper round. Perhaps he might go as far as your house.’

‘I am not a great reader of the press, I am afraid. I notice, though, that you do not stock the
Register
.’

‘I do not,’ Lizzie said stiffly, ‘and I never will.’ Then she softened a little. ‘But how are things with you, Mr Armitage? I have always thought you to be a fair man, and could never imagine you having a hand in what happened to my husband, or to my children and myself.’

The factor had a reputation for being devoid of emotion, but he seemed to smile . . . or perhaps a corner his mouth merely twitched. ‘Thank you for that,’ he said. ‘I assure you that I did not. Your removal from the cottage was the Laird’s doing, and I knew nothing of it until it had happened. I am still trying to recruit a new gamekeeper, by the way. I can only guess at what prompted Grose’s sudden departure, and surmise that it has one eye.’

‘I do not bother to guess, Mr Armitage. I am glad the man is gone, that is all. As for my earlier enquiry, how are you faring yourself?’

And I know a pretext when I see one
, she thought.
It is not snuff that brought you here
.

‘Myself, I am as always,’ he responded. ‘As for the estate, it is becoming more difficult to manage by the day. If I see my new master for a week out of every month, I am doing well. With Grose gone, and there being no shooting on the estate, the geese are eating our crops, the pheasants are happy and the deer are running uncontrolled.’

‘Then shoot some birds and butcher some deer.’

‘Would you buy then from me if I did?’

‘No,’ she admitted, ‘I would not.’

‘And no one else would either. Yet that is not my greatest worry. I see our tenants with smiles on their faces, yet when I sent the estate’s own wheat and barley to the merchant in Hamilton, who has always bought our produce before any other, I was told they were sitting on a mountain of those crops and the price I was offered was half what we were paid last year, well below the cost of production. Would you credit that, Mistress McGill?’

‘I know nothing of wholesale markets, Mr Armitage. I have no idea how they work.’

‘I suppose not,’ he sighed. ‘There is worse than that. Only last Thursday, when my livestock manager drove our beef cattle and our hoggets to the slaughterhouse in Lanark, they were told there was no demand and were turned away. He made enquiries of the place in Wishaw and was told the same story. We cannot take the beasts further than that, or they would arrive in no condition to be sold. So we have them back, and not sufficient hay in our barns to feed them all over the winter. That means I will have to buy enough, yet there is little to be had, and what there is commands a premium price. So, no income from their sale, plus the added cost of keeping them until next year.’

‘But what of your poor tenants?’ Lizzie asked. ‘I see no sign here in the shop of them suffering.’

‘They sold early and received the top price; all of them, as if they had been advised to.’

‘I see.’ She looked him in the eye. ‘Mr Armitage, why are you telling me all this?’

He returned her gaze. ‘I suppose I am telling you, Mistress McGill, because it is almost as if there is a conspiracy against the Cleland Estate. Can you imagine? Yet who would do such a thing? Indeed, who could do such a thing?’

‘How would I have any idea of that?’ she countered. ‘I am only a simple village woman. But if you ask me how I would feel about such a conspiracy, if it existed, then with no animosity towards you, Mr Armitage, I say that I would welcome it with all my heart and would wish it the very best of luck.’

‘I see.’

‘I hope you do. Sir, I do not mean to be unkind, but factor or not, you are still only a servant. You served the old Laird, and very well, by every account. Now you have served both his sons, as best you could, I am sure also.’ She paused, to be sure of her words.

‘With your servant’s mind,’ she continued, ‘you are accustomed to accept, and not to question. So when Gavin Cleland and his two fine ladies said that black was white and that my David was a deranged murderer, who used my son as an excuse to excise an old grudge, you could not even consider that your master might be a liar, even though you knew my husband well.’

Armitage frowned, and was silent for a while, as if considering his response. When it came, it took her by surprise.

‘I believe you are right in what you say of me, Mistress McGill, almost all of it, but for one thing. In my mind I do not serve the baronet. I serve the Cleland Estate, and so should he, whoever he is, for his time as its custodian. The old Laird was undeniably a fine man. My experience of his sons in his place has been too short to judge, although I did think them unsavoury tykes as youngsters. However, if Sir Gavin was proved to be what you say he is, then I would be the first to wish him removed, for the sake of the estate itself.’

‘Then what do you know of the two women, whose corroboration condemned my David?’

‘I know nothing,’ he admitted. ‘However,’ he added, ‘there are some who might know a little. The Laird is absent in Edinburgh this week, as usual. I will ask the chambermaids, and see what they have to say. If it is of interest, I will tell you. Or would it be better if I told Mr Fleming?’

Chapter Thirty-Six

‘Y
OU SAY SO?’ MATHEW
smiled, easing his chair away from the dinner table.

‘Indeed,’ Lizzie confirmed. ‘Two months ago now, he said he would question the staff who attended to the pair. It has taken him that long to get back. Indeed I had begun to think he might have made good on his jest and told you rather than me.’

‘Thon Armitage said something in jest?’ Hannah exclaimed. ‘Afore ye know it water will be flowing uphill.’

‘It surprised me also, Mother Fleming. It was a barb, but I did not rise to it. I had not seen him since but yesterday he came back into the shop, when there were no other customers, and told me the tale. It seems that Miss Smith and Miss Stout were given two fine rooms upstairs with a view out over the lawn.’

‘Miss Stout was well-housed for a lady’s maid, surely,’ Mathew observed.

‘So it seems, but even better housed than that, in fact. In the time they were in the house, four nights in all, the maids confessed that the ladies’ bedding was never disturbed.’

‘Perhaps they were considerate,’ he suggested. ‘Perhaps they made up their own beds in the morning, as I do, always.’

‘Perhaps they did,’ Lizzie agreed. ‘Perhaps they also brushed the hair off their pillows. And perhaps that hair, some fair and some auburn, was carried by the wind under two closed doors and on to the pillows of Sir Gregor and Sir Gavin, for the maids to find when they changed the bedlinen.’ She sniffed. ‘Fair and auburn hair on the pillows of both brothers, I might add.’

‘The brazen hussies,’ Hannah gasped. ‘And them no’ married!’

Mathew exploded with laughter; his mother frowned at him, mystified until the penny dropped. If the lamps had not been turned down a little, she might have seen Lizzie blush, at a memory over twenty years old.

‘Are ye sayin’ they were hoors, lassie?’ Hannah exclaimed.

She nodded. ‘Beyond a doubt. Mr Armitage also spoke to the laundress. She told him that the bedsheets had shown clear evidence of what I will only describe as “double occupancy” . . . although that might have been an understatement.’

‘They were prostitutes, Mother,’ Mathew said, his expression serious once more. ‘Frankly, I do not look down on them for that; wherever our regiment went, women like them followed us.’

‘Ye’re no sayin’ that you . . .’

‘No, Mother, I am not,’ he retorted quickly . . . and truthfully. ‘But they served a purpose. The Iron Duke tolerated them, though not in any written order; he even had the surgeons check them for obvious infection.’

‘Hmphh!’ Hannah grunted. ‘It’s as well we’re finished wir denner.’

He nodded. ‘Point taken; all I will add is that there are more ways to put a soldier out of action than blades and musket balls. Those who were found to be unclean were deemed to be agents of Napoleon, then put up against a wall and shot.’

Lizzie gasped. ‘Mathew, is that true?’

He grinned; that awkward sideways grin that signified he had been caught at something, that grin that had always melted her in their youth, and did so again even though she had not seen it since they were both in their teens.

‘No, of course not,’ he chuckled. ‘But my mother always did like a tall story, and if it has a wee bit of sauce, so much the better. Anyway,’ he continued, soberly, ‘as I was saying, I have nothing against honest prostitutes, but these women are something different. They are the lowest of the low, worse than cutpurses and pure . . .’ He had been about to say ‘gallows meat’, but stopped himself just in time.

‘Next time you see friend Armitage, tell him to keep those maids, and the laundress, in his service, and to keep them happy into the bargain. If things go as I hope, we may not need them, but if I have to, I will put them before the procurator fiscal, or even before the Lord Advocate.’

‘Oh I will,’ she murmured. ‘Worry not. He did not tell me their names, or I might look after them in the shop as well.’

‘No, it’s as well you don’t. If you show them favour, it could work against us.’ He rose to his feet. ‘Come and have a digestive in the parlour, and then I will drive you back to Carluke.’

‘Listen tae ye,’ Hannah laughed, ‘and yer fine words. “A digestive in the parlour” indeed,’ she mimicked. ‘Yer faither had a deep sense of humour, but if he could hae heard that, he’d hae laughed his boots aff. You go on, tho’, A’m for my bed. Good nicht, lassie. Ah’m pleased tae see ye well and oot the black claes.’

Lizzie had been a frequent visitor to Waterloo House, but only to visit David’s grave, and often Mathew had not been there. His dinner invitation had been a gesture, an exploration of whether she was beginning to move on. When Ewan Beattie had brought her, leaving Matt in charge of his young sister, mother and son had been pleased to see that beneath her heavy cloak she wore a long blue dress and a white blouse with a high white collar.

‘Mother Fleming is in good humour herself,’ Lizzie said, as she left them.

‘She is my rock,’ Mathew confessed. ‘She is not far short of seventy, but still looks for things to do. She was on at me yesterday about baking more than we need for here and giving you some for the shop. She said the oven here is far too big just to be serving us.’

‘Then let her. I’ll give her three-quarters of the takings.’

‘Spoken like a true shopkeeper.’

‘As now I am. Which reminds me of something I was going to tell you. Old Macgregor, the butcher from Lanark, approached me this week, with a proposition. He wants to supply me with meat, sausage, black pudding and the like, the kind of produce folk have to go to Lanark to buy for a treat. He had been thinking of opening a shop in Carluke, but since there are none available, he came to me.’

‘Could you accommodate it?’

‘With a little adjustment and perhaps a partition to separate butchery from the rest of the shop.’

‘How would you keep it fresh, though?’

‘Believe it or not, there is an old ice house behind the building, a deep cellar below the back boundary wall. The loch’s on the other side, remember. Matt cleaned it out and I’ve been using it. That would serve.’

‘Are Macgregor’s prices acceptable?’

‘They are to me.’

‘Then why not try it. I’ll pay for any alteration you need.’

‘I can do that myself,’ she replied proudly. ‘And I can start paying you rent now.’

‘Ten pounds a year,’ he said, ‘payable annually in arrears.’

‘Mathew,’ she protested, ‘that’s nowhere near enough!’

‘It is for me. Pay me that or pay me nothing.’

‘In that case, thank you. You are far too good to me.’

‘Nowhere near good enough. I’ll start being that when Gavin Cleland has been paid in full.’

‘Mmm.’ Lizzie pursed her lips. ‘What is Armitage’s game, do you think?’

‘Survival. He told you, the estate is his life; he knows that change is coming and he is worried that it will sweep him away.’

‘And will it, do you think?’

‘Well,’ he replied, after a while, ‘when a man is as loyal, and as capable, as he is, I would think twice about throwing those virtues away. The estate’s present misfortunes are beyond his control. However,’ he added, ‘Philip Armitage’s future will not be decided by me.’