A Dark and Distant Shore (32 page)

‘Aye, well. If you’re really, truly set on it...’ It was a question, and the last time the question would be asked.

She said, ‘Yes.’

After that, there was no going back. They both had their pride.

For a month, she read and absorbed, and every day Mungo questioned her – ‘like an old dominie’, he remarked wryly. What had she learned? About coal and coke and iron ore; about pig iron, and forge iron; about ordinary furnaces and blast engines and puddling furnaces. About raw material costs; and production costs; and selling prices.

‘Over-production,’ he would say. ‘Too much iron chasing too few customers. What do you do?’

‘Sell cheaper than anyone else.’

‘Which depends on...?’

‘Cutting production costs, or accepting a lower profit margin.’

‘And if the profit margin’s too low?’

‘We’re as much out of business as if we hadn’t cut the margin in the first place.’

‘Right. What could you do instead?’

She hesitated. ‘Produce better quality than anyone else?’

He made what was unquestionably a rude noise. ‘There’s not many folk care about quality these days. Try again.’

‘Make something no one else is making?’

‘Such as what? There isn’t anything but pig iron and wrought iron – sorry, forge iron – is there? Except steel, and that would mean an impossible capital investment.’

She said, ‘I didn’t mean that. You know Lauriston’s makes simple cast-iron things like pipes, and plates, and beams. We could expand that side of the business and make more kinds of manufactured product.’

‘You’d need capital for the moulds, then.’

She sighed. ‘Oh, Mungo! You’re really not being very encouraging.’

‘Try again,’ he said inexorably.

Her chin resting childishly on her hands, and her elbows on his zebra wood desk, she exclaimed, ‘Pooh! All right, then. Improve our sales of the things we make already and wouldn’t need new moulds for.’

‘And how would you do that?’

She wrinkled her nose thoughtfully. ‘Lots of people are still using wood for things cast iron could do better, and others are using forge or wrought iron for what cast iron could do just as well, and much more cheaply. I know we make forge iron, but it’s an expensive process and it uses up a great deal of pig iron that we might be able to use more profitably in castings. We could try and sell castings to people who haven’t thought of using them before.’

He smiled in satisfaction. ‘That’s better. What kind of people?’

She had no idea.

Mungo said, ‘I can think of someone not a hundred miles from here.’

A hundred miles from Kinveil? There wasn’t a potential customer as near as that, surely? There wasn’t a proper town or city within twice that distance. She looked at him, frowning.

‘Come on, lassie!’ he said impatiently.

And then she had it. ‘The Caledonian Canal?’

‘Of course. They’re working on the middle stretch now, round Fort Augustus. Lock gates, lassie! Lock gates!’

He could see her mind begin working, and it cheered him though he was still worried about her. Her health was almost completely restored, and after the weeks of fresh air and freedom her complexion had begun to take on the clear warmth he always associated with young folk in the Highlands – the lovely smooth, faintly golden skin with the rose-amber glow on the cheek-bones. It looked, even to down-to-earth Mungo, startlingly exotic against the blonde hair, streaked by the weather into every shade from cream through citrine to buttermilk. He could still, in his mind’s eye, see her five years ago, a pale wisp of a thing in the heavy, melodramatic mourning she had worn for her father. Then, she had been making a youthful parade of something that hadn’t been a hundred per cent sorrow. Now, she knew how to draw the line between theatricality and stylishness. Her ribbed poplin gown, new in the spring of last year and hurriedly dyed after Waterloo, was worn over a pure white, lace-ruffed habit shirt, and became her extraordinarily well. Though her figure was still too slender for Mungo’s taste, there was no doubt that she was well on the road to physical recovery.

But although she had recovered her spirits enough to look at him, now and then, with the glint of mischief that had always bewitched him, there was a withdrawn quality that hadn’t been there before, a reserve that seemed to him different in essence from the reserve she had affected during her early dealings with the Telfers. That had been defensive, an adolescent armour deliberately donned. This might be defensive, too, but it sprang from within. She had always been self-sufficient – though less so, Mungo thought, than she had appeared – not really needing other people. Now, it was as if she didn’t want them. Except, perhaps, for him. He hoped.

He had tried to persuade her to renew her bonds with the folk on the estate, and she had done so; he had noticed, with interest, that those who didn’t know her well enough to call her ‘Mistress Vilia’ all called her ‘Mistress Cameron’, following the old Scots custom by which a married woman retained her maiden name. But he hadn’t been able to coax her into venturing beyond the boundaries of Kinveil. It was as if her strength depended on the place itself. She wouldn’t go with him to Inverness, or to pay a call on that kilted pea-goose, Glengarry, or even consent to drive along Loch Ness to see how the Canal was getting on. Nor would she consider going with him to Glenbraddan to see Charlotte. That had disappointed him. The silly prejudice Charlotte had developed against her at the Northern Meeting ball had grown stronger over the last year, and nothing Mungo could say had any effect. He had thought that if the two women could meet under everyday circumstances Charlotte might see Vilia for what she was, not a
femme fatale,
but a tired, charming, not very strong young widow. It had seemed to him that now was as good a time as any, with Vilia just having given birth to a new baby, and Charlotte expecting hers any day now. In his experience, there was something about babies that always seemed to bring women together, and he wanted the two women he loved most in the world to get on with each other. But Vilia wouldn’t hear of it, although she had phrased her refusal more tactfully than that. Maybe, Mungo thought, she sensed that she wouldn’t be welcome at Glenbraddan; maybe she felt that meeting someone she didn’t know very well would still be too much for her; or maybe it was her new resistance to people in general. There were no other reasons that Mungo could think of, or none that he was prepared to contemplate.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Lock gates.’

He wriggled down more comfortably in his chair. ‘Let’s get back to something else for a minute. Cutting production costs. You should go into that when you get back.’

‘Oh, I will. But I imagine my father-in-law must have pared those to the bone already. He had that kind of mind.’

‘Maybe aye, maybe no. Ore prices and wages, no doubt, but experts often have their blind spots. There was one thing that certainly struck me when I saw round the foundry.’ He waited expectantly.

‘I know what struck
me,’
she replied simply. ‘The noise and the heat. The heat? Is that what you mean? Oh-h-h-h. All that heat blasting out of the furnace doors into the empty air? But...’

‘But, nothing. Think of Count Rumford.’

She giggled. ‘Honestly, Mungo – the way your mind works! No wonder you made all that money when you were in business. You’re like a grasshopper. I shouldn’t suppose any of your competitors ever came within shouting distance of you. Count Rumford – the cooking stove man? I don’t see your point.’

‘Drat it, you know how the Rumford range works, surely!’

After a moment, she said resignedly. ‘Yes. The heat from a single fire is led off in all directions to heat goodness knows how many different ovens and hotplates and things. Yes, indeed. You win! You think we could do the same with the heat from the furnaces? It’s an idea. If we could work out
how,
it would make an enormous saving on fuel.’ She looked at him. ‘Mungo dear, are you an inventor
manqu
é
,
or has someone else done it already?’

‘I’ve no idea, but I shouldn’t think so. It’s the kind of notion that strikes economical folk like me more than geniuses. Anyway, you could take it up with Moultrie.’

‘I will. Have you any other brilliant ideas up your sleeve?’

‘Not a one. Have you?’

She said nothing at first. They were sitting in the comfortable, wood-panelled Gallery waiting for Jessie Graham to come in with the supper. Although it was early June, it had been the kind of day that might have strayed from November or March. Dirty, sullen clouds still swept across the sky, and the rain was lashing against the rooflights and the sea roaring on the rocks below. But indoors it was warm and companionable, with the fire blazing, and enough candles burning to remind Vilia that there wasn’t a hive within twenty miles that couldn’t be tapped for wax. At her feet, the Duchess stretched comprehensively and produced an enormous yawn. She was no longer a kitten, but she still hated to be separated from Vilia; fortunately, she had taken to coach travel as to the manner born.

Vilia said tentatively, ‘I have an idea, yes. But it brings us back to the problem of capital for moulds. I’m sure you’re right about lock gates, but I’m sure
I’m
right, too, in thinking there’s a market for making large quantities of things in cast iron that are usually made, in small quantities, in wrought iron. Stop me if I’m wrong, but as I understand it the price war comes from too many foundries producing raw materials – pig and forge – and fighting to sell them to the people who make the finished product. Now if we made the finished product ourselves, we’d be out of that war, wouldn’t we?’

‘And into another one with the manufacturers.’

‘Yes, but we would have the advantage over them because our finished products wouldn’t have to take two lots of profit into account, and some of the overheads, like transport, would be halved.’ She looked at him doubtfully. ‘Wouldn’t they?’

Mungo let out a long puff of breath, and shook his head. ‘Don’t think for a moment it’s going to be as easy as that! Quite apart from anything else, you’re probably making far more pig than you can use yourselves, and to reduce your capacity might well make the whole thing uneconomic. Never mind. Go on, tell me what this market is you’re so keen on. I can see you’re not just talking in general terms. You’ve one special market in mind, haven’t you?’

‘Yes, I have. Don’t laugh at me, but in the south of England – and to some extent in Edinburgh and Glasgow, too, I should think – the amount of new building that’s going on is almost unbelievable, and I’m sure the pace must have accelerated now that the wars are over. And all the houses that are going up at the moment – and I mean
all,
Mungo, or very nearly – have railings and balconies and canopies. Very pretty, really
very
pretty. And what I’d like to do is specialize in architectural ironmongery.’

‘Do you know if anyone else is doing it?’

‘I’d have to find out. My impression is that it’s mostly wrought iron, because that kind of thing used always to go on quite expensive houses where only the finest finish would do. But all these books tell me that, although cast iron is more brittle, and doesn’t look quite as smooth, it’s possible to produce a perfectly satisfactory finish merely by remelting the pig in the foundry furnace before one moulds it.’ She giggled irresistibly. ‘There! Didn’t that sound impressive? I wish I knew whether I was talking sense or nonsense!’

He grinned back at her. ‘And?’

‘And
we could do it more cheaply
and,
as I said, there’s a huge market. Besides which, you must admit that I have an eye for design and a tendency to be a perfectionist, and I’m sure I could sell much more convincingly to house builders than any rough old run-of-the-mill ironmaster could!’ A little wistfully, she added, ‘And it would be pleasant to produce a few attractive things, as well as cooking pots and lock gates and building beams and plates, wouldn’t it?’

He was as delighted as a hen with a new brood of chicks at seeing her enthusiasm, but too old in the wiles of commerce to let his feelings run away with him. ‘It’s an idea,’ he said cautiously, ‘but you’d have to sound the market out very carefully indeed, and you’ll still need the capital for the moulds.’

She sighed. ‘I know. I’ll have to run the foundry on the old lines until I can afford to embark on something I
know
will be profitable – if it still is, by that time! Isn’t it frustrating? And I don’t suppose any builder will be persuaded to pay in advance!’

He permitted himself a half smile. ‘Why not start off by seeing what new applications you can think of for the pipes and beams and things you make already. You can investigate the prospects for your balconies and canopies at the same time. You’d certainly be better employed on that than peering into pigs and furnaces and whatnot. And when you’ve got it all worked out...’ He paused significantly. He’d been trying for years to think of a way of using his own money to smooth her path for her, and had failed. To offer it openly would have been insulting, and even if she had chosen not to be insulted by it, it would have been bound to spoil their relationship. But now the opportunity had come, and there need be no taint of charity attached. ‘The day you come to me and tell me you’ve got a real, live buyer for your architectural ironmongery, I’ll put up the capital for the mould-making. But mind you! I’ll want four per cent. My merchanting instincts aren’t dead yet, not by a long chalk.’

When Jessie Graham entered the room a moment later, balancing two steaming trays and a nice saucer of liver for the Duchess, she was taken aback to find Mistress Vilia with her arms flung excitedly round the neck of a blushing Mr Telfer.

Mungo waved Vilia good-bye on a sunny, gusty day in the middle of the month, when the wind was whipping the loch into white caps, and small clouds streaked across the sky with tails spun out behind them like woolly fireworks.

She had made up her mind suddenly, and within forty-eight hours she was gone. He would have liked to go with her, but she thought there was no need and, besides, he was feeling his age a little. It would have been silly for an old man like him to go poking his nose into foundries and such, about which he knew less, now, than she did. It was her future, not his. She was still only twenty years old and had all her life ahead of her, whereas his was nearing its end. Listening to her make plans, watching the intent gleam in the rekindled green eyes, he had developed a sudden awareness of mortality. He was deeply depressed as he watched the two carriages bowl away into the blue distance at the far end of the loch.