Distant Choices (11 page)

‘Mr Keith …' she murmured faintly, mentally tugging at his sleeve. He took no notice of that, either.

‘What things?' he demanded of Oriel, leaning his bulk towards her so that Susannah disappeared behind him and she had little choice but to abandon Mr de Hay to his lobster and
deal
with this intrusive, annoying man as quickly as possible.

‘I play the piano, Mr Keith. I paint in water colours. I am very fond of flowers and gardens – of growing things. I help mamma …' The portrait, in a few calm words, with just a hint of frost behind them, of a ‘young lady at home', ending in a manner which ought to have told him that she had no more, just now, to say. Bidding him, in fact, to mend his manners for his own sake as well as hers if – as his expensive coat implied – he wished to climb even a rung or two of that precarious ladder of ‘Good Society'.

He smiled at her, very widely, his size blocking her view of the many things on which her mother had asked her to keep an eye, his head too close to hers, invading the little space of air around her which she liked to call her own, a man who, no doubt having clawed his way to fortune in a manner these other
gentlemen
could not even imagine, did not feel able to afford the luxury of standing back and asking for what he wanted – her attention, just now, it seemed – but demanded it, took it,
snatched
it away from all competitors, all rivals, and would – she suspected – fight hard and probably dirty should he decide to keep it. A suspicion which – since no angry words must ever be spoken at her mother's table, no one allowed to leave it in a huff or, in Susannah's case, in tears – caused her considerable alarm.

‘Do you ride, Miss Blake?' He was smiling at her again, still leaning too near, his chestnut brown eyes far too openly admiring and far too precise as to what it was in her they admired the most.

‘Yes, I ride, Mr Keith – whenever I can.'

‘And do you drive in your carriage?'

‘Yes – of course.'

‘In a high-crowned hat with a feather? And a lace parasol?'

Was he mocking her? It was quite possible.

‘I have a lace parasol.'

‘A white one?'

‘Yes. And pale blue …'

‘I thought you might.'

What
was
he saying?
Really
saying, behind the wide smile, the speculative glances? His eyes on her pale skin told her the answer so clearly and so suddenly that she blushed, thus deepening his smile.

‘There is something – intriguing –' he said, ‘about a young lady riding by in her carriage, holding up her parasol so the sun can't get at her complexion, and taking sidelong glances at the world outside it, every now and then …'

Intriguing, perhaps, to men who stood by the roadside with picks and shovels in their hands, doffing their caps as the carriages went by and staring sometimes at the girls who did not stare back but might glance occasionally, if ‘mamma'should not be looking. Girls from another universe? Was that it? Girls of ‘good family and sheltered upbringing' – silly little ninnies, most of them, if he only knew it – who formed part of all the things it took more than money to conquer. On a quick wave of sympathy, a confused impulse to ‘put things right'although she could not imagine him admitting to anything being wrong, she experienced a rare loss of words.

She was, for the first time in her life, in the presence of a ‘self-made' man and could readily admit that she was finding him too much for her. Too large and hard and heavy, taking up too much space and light and air, working her so hard that she could almost feel guilty about returning him to plain, timid Susannah.

Although it
had
– absolutely – to be done, of course.

‘Don't let him fluster you, Miss Blake,' advised Mr de Hay very languidly. ‘These contractors, you know … One learns to deal with them. A necessary evil.'

‘Evil doesn't bother me,' Mr Keith said,
very
pleasantly. ‘And as for the “necessary” – yes, de Hay, we both know I'm that.'

‘Dear fellow …' Mr de Hay sounded most agreeable. ‘So is the north wind. It comes and goes. Which – my dear Miss Blake – is just what these contractor chappies tend to do. Here today, with a dozen brass bands playing, and nowhere to be found tomorrow when one goes to enquire about little things – like the completion date they were so quick to promise.'

‘As you can never find a famous engineer,' said Mr Keith almost cordially, ‘when the good firm land he tells you he's routed the line across turns out to be swamp, and he can't understand what you mean about extra time and money for drainage.'

‘They blow hot and cold too,' murmured Mr de Hay, his eyes closed. ‘Just like the wind.'

‘Aye.' Mr Keith sounded somewhat less cordial. ‘And if all those drawings and blueprints and calculations of yours got blown clean away I reckon I could still blast and line a tunnel and lay the tracks in the right direction. I stand to make more money at it too.'

‘And lose it quicker,' murmured Mr de Hay as if he were talking to himself.

The arrival of the next course came, it seemed to Oriel, in the very nick of time.

‘The lamb,' chose Mr Keith, his tone implying, ‘And plenty of it.'

Mr de Hay took a dainty amount of capon with a pink curl of ham, Susannah Saint-Charles missing out this course entirely, her face forlorn, her drooping, defected pose that of the eternal wallflower as she gazed at her empty plate, tears – one felt – not far away.

‘Mr Keith,' said Oriel, seeing she had no choice but to abandon Mr de Hay and Susannah who could both be trusted to behave, and give her mind to this man who all too evidently could not. ‘Do tell me …'

‘Yes, Miss Blake?'

What on earth did she wish to know? What
safe
topic could she introduce? ‘Where is it you come from? Newcastle?'

‘Yes. Or near enough.' He did not seem inclined to specify.

‘And have you always been involved with railways?'

‘
Always
, Miss Blake?' His smile reminded her – although it did not seem to worry him – that while she was just approaching twenty-one he was already four years or so, she estimated, into his thirties. ‘The first one came in not more than twenty years ago, Miss Blake, and that was only the Stockton to Darlington – about nine miles of it. You'll be interested in railways then, will you?'

‘Oh yes. I find them fascinating.'

She had given him a licence to talk about himself and therefore, with luck, should have no more trouble.

‘Fascinating?' He smiled and, exploiting his licence to the full, moved his chair – to the mutual consternation of the butler and poor, abandoned Susannah – an inch or two closer to hers. ‘That's not the word I'd use. Commonsense, more like. Or a keen eye to a solid profit – like those few canny Quakers in Darlington who had the sense to trust George Stephenson's wild tales about replacing horses with locomotives, and wooden rails with iron.'

‘Really?' she breathed, scarcely listening.

He nodded. ‘Really. Just a lad from a pit village in Tyneside – George Stephenson – who taught himself to read after he'd done his shift underground.'

He did not say ‘Like me', although, her attention caught now, she heard it in his voice, saw it in the wry quality of his smile.

‘I admire that, Mr Keith.'

‘I'm sure you do. So he built the Stockton to Darlington with Quaker money. Eight miles an hour it used to run, rising to fifteen downhill. Slow enough to jump on and off again without paying, if you happened to be a lad the age I was. And not too much chance of getting caught either – although they
did
arm the guards at one time, with shotguns. I don't forget it.'

‘Did they take a shot at you, Mr Keith?' For all her good intentions, she rather hoped so.

‘I don't recall them hitting me.'

‘I'm so glad.'

‘Aye. So that's how it began. A few Quaker merchants in Darlington who wanted a quick way of getting their heavy goods nine miles or so to the sea. And now, twenty years later, there's not much short of 3,000 miles of track up and down the country. A revolution, they call it.'

And one, moreover, requiring a gang of vagabonds – he freely admitted it – who, belonging nowhere would be ready to travel anywhere the job demanded. Hard labouring men who commanded – and deserved – high wages and, not being much inclined by nature to anything Miss Blake would recognize as family life, found little else to do with their time and money but drink. Particularly at sites like Merton Ridge, miles from anywhere, with nothing but rocks and grass and the never-ending Yorkshire mist and drizzle for company. He supposed Hepplefield, with its gin shops and dog-fights and appropriate female company would suit them better, next year or the year after, when the line extended so far.

‘I am sure you are right,' murmured Oriel with all her voice, only half her mind now, the other half strictly on the alert to pick up any signs of distress from Mr de Hay, so that a sudden interruption from Susannah Saint-Charles almost alarmed her.

‘I do hope, Mr Keith,' said Susannah, her voice coming in a breathless flurry, forced out of her not by choice but by conscience, ‘that you will provide decent living accommodation for those poor men at Merton Ridge. One hears such terrible stories of – of overcrowding and squalor – and – and of depravity too …'

For a moment he looked as surprised as if a sparrow had suddenly alighted on the table and pecked his hand. But then, glancing at her earnest little face, he sighed.

‘Ah yes – I see …' He had, it seemed, encountered women of this social-reforming, soul-saving type before. And
plain
women – his raised eyebrow implied – invariably flat-chested and thin-lipped and mousy, at that. ‘Yes, Miss Saint-Charles. Quite so. But right now I'm afraid there's no question of accommodation of any sort at Merton Ridge. And won't be, either, until I can get some cart-roads put in. Four miles of them, to be exact, from his lordship's village to the site of what I expect his lordship will be thinking of as
his
tunnel …'

‘Why is that, Mr Keith?' asked Oriel and Susannah in unison, Oriel seeking to remind Susannah that the last thing one ought to do at a dinner-party was begin any kind of serious conversation, Susannah too overwhelmed by her own crusading conscience, her own great daring, to care.

‘Because –' and perhaps he sounded a little too patient, ‘until I have cart-roads I have no way of getting carts across Merton Moor. Therefore no way of transporting the tools of my trade, which are picks and shovels and wheelbarrows, iron bars, barrels of gunpowder, bricks and mortar. Cumbersome things – which could also be said of the materials to build my navvy huts. But when I do … Well, Miss Saint-Charles, what would
you
consider to be decent accommodation?'

‘Why – indeed …' The subject, at best, was indelicate and it was clearly costing the vicarage-bred Susannah a great effort to speak of it. Yet since a duty was something which had to be
done
she squared her narrow shoulders and swallowed hard. ‘I would think a military-style arrangement for the single men. A kind of – barracks, I think. And entirely separate accommodation for …' she gulped quite painfully once again, ‘… for
families
.'

He had no pity on her. ‘For married couples, you mean? There'll not be many of them. If any at all.'

Blushing a deep, damp red she bit her lip, yet compelled – as perhaps those seeking martyrdom are compelled – to go on.

‘But there will be – women?'

‘There surely will. My men will be hereabouts for a year or two, maybe longer. The ones who have women will bring them. Which seems – well,
reasonable
enough to me. You wouldn't want to see all those poor girls abandoned, would you, Miss Saint-Charles? And as for those who are presently “single” as you call it, they'll make their own arrangements just like they always do – locally.'

They would create havoc, in fact, in the villages of Merton and Dessborough and High Grange, not even the market town of Lydwick nor the great city of Hepplefield itself being safe from them; humiliating the men and seducing the women as one had heard only too clearly they had done elsewhere, drinking, brawling, carrying off foolish young virgins who, in some cases – as even Susannah knew – would be more than willing.

‘Children,' she said weakly. ‘I expect there will be a great many?'

‘I expect so.'

‘But that is terrible, Mr Keith, don't you see …'

‘Hardly my business, Miss Saint-Charles.' And hardly
her
business either, his tone implied, to question the domestic arrangements, no matter how irregular, of
his
men.

‘I follow the standard practice, Miss Saint-Charles. I build huts as near the site as I can, big enough to house a dozen. I take one man, who has a regular woman, as my main tenant and whether that woman – the hut landlady – chooses to sub-let to single men or men who aren't exactly single … Well – if you'd ever met a navvywoman on pay-night, Miss Saint-Charles, with a pint of gin inside her, you might not care to ask too many questions about her marriage lines.'

‘I hope,' said Susannah, gritting her teeth so that her chin trembled, ‘that I should do my duty.'

A serious conversation indeed. It would not do. And, catching an enquiring glance from her mother who would certainly expect her to put a stop to it, Oriel said, very brightly, ‘And will you be staying in the neighbourhood yourself, Mr Keith – to supervise?'

‘Yes – on and off – I will.' His attention was hers again, instantly. ‘I have contracts to complete as far North as Carlisle and big ones to begin elsewhere in Yorkshire. Five or six years'hard labour in this region if things go well. Eight or nine if they don't. And since I follow the work, like the navvies, this valley might be a good place to settle until the work's done. It may be time – even high time – to make a proper home for my children.'