Distant Choices (55 page)

He drew very deeply on his cigar, refilled his glass and then, intercepting her glance which enquired, ‘Is it necessary, or even wise, to drink so much?', took a long, hard swallow and raised the now half-empty glass to her.

‘What I have to do is raise money – if I can. Talk to other banks. Talk to the liquidators who've moved in now to Milne, Morrissey's and persuade them to raise a loan elsewhere – if they can – so that I can get a line or two finished and those shares quoted on the open market.'

‘Will they do that?

He shrugged, the heavy movement of his shoulders telling her how tired he was, weary to the bone already with talk and travel, pursuing dead ends, treading broken promises underfoot, with how many tons of bricks waiting to be paid for on the site of every tunnel, how many thousand navvies waiting, with their women and children, for their wages.

‘I don't know,' he said. ‘Officialdom moves slow. And there'll be a dozen other men besides me out to convince whoever needs convincing that
their
business commitments are the only ones worth supporting. Because there won't be enough support to go round. And even if I get my share of it, it could take months. I haven't got months. Oriel. And my navvies only know how to live from one Friday pay night to the next. It's Thursday now. Tomorrow I'll be paying them out of the cash I keep in the safe at Lydwick Green and one or two other cash-boxes elsewhere – for as long as I can.'

Some men, she suspected, would not have paid their navvies at all, hanging on to those cash-boxes, even disappearing with them, safe and not too unsound, across the channel.

‘Of course,' she said. And then, ‘Garron – when did you last eat?'

He looked slightly puzzled. ‘Christ, I don't know – somewhere in London yesterday. The kind of boiled beef you wouldn't give to the cats.'

‘I'll make you something then, quickly.'

‘Later.' Once again he stared into the fire, picking up the poker and expertly prising apart a pair of smouldering logs.
Later.
Let me say what I came for. It might improve your appetite. Or not. I don't know.'

Patiently, her chin still on her hand, she waited.

‘You're a cool customer, aren't you, Oriel? Most women would have been sobbing or swooning by now,' I reckon, or damning me to hell for ruining their lives for them.'

‘It doesn't sound to me, Garron, that you're to blame.'

He took another quick, hard swallow of the gardener's spirit. ‘Thank you kindly, ma'am. But you might change your mind about that if I don't pull it off. And I have to say I'm not sure I can. I'm talking about three and a half million pounds to complete the work I have in hand. It made me a very comfortable man, on paper, until Monday morning. And by this time next year, it would have been …'

His voice stopped. She saw his eyes close tight shut and then open again, looking as if the pain behind them had not moved an inch.

‘Christ,' he said. ‘Just listen to me now and let me get this over. I don't know how much I can get together. These bankers feel easier lending to the men they went to Eton or Harrow with than to men like me. But I'll raise something. Then I'll divert my men and my resources to the lines nearest completion and get them finished so I can raise more. If I can hold it together long enough then – yes – maybe – But all it's going to take is one accident, one stretch of swamp that takes longer to fill than I'd bargained for, one tunnel that needs a second lining – trouble with the men – anything – all the things that happen every day of the week somewhere or other – and I'm finished.'

‘Through no fault of your own.'

‘That doesn't console me. It makes me feel worse. I won't take ruin well, Oriel. That's for certain. And I don't expect you to take it with me.'

A long silence fell between them, broken by her calm, so steady voice. ‘I haven't always been rich, Garron.'

He gave a snort of what she knew to be heartfelt derision. ‘You haven't been poor either. Your mother may have had to be careful at times but she could always pay her parlourmaid and hire her carriage. That's not poverty. And you just play at it here, my lass, brewing your witch's lotions and potions and pottering about in your garden with somebody else to do the heavy work and a grand house full of servants to go back to whenever the mood takes you. Poverty is when you have to do the digging yourself, and the scrubbing, and the patching up and making do, not just when the fancy takes you but year in year out –
forever
. I didn't marry you to bring you down to that.'

Quietly she straightened her back and folded her hands smoothly, neatly, in her lap. ‘But we are married, Garron, nevertheless.'

‘Yes.' And she knew that this was what he had really come to say to her. ‘But that doesn't mean we have to live together. No – don't interrupt – just listen to me, woman, until I've done. I've thought it all out. I've had plenty of time, sitting on those damned trains, here and everywhere, this last day or two. When I asked you to marry me I offered you a rich life. If I hadn't been sure I could provide it I wouldn't have asked. Would I?'

She shook her head.

‘And even if I had you wouldn't have taken me – would you?'

She shook her head again.

‘All right. So let's admit the truth, Oriel. In a case like this I reckon it's always best.'

She thought so too. ‘Yes, Garron. The money was important. I don't suppose we would have met without it.'

‘That's right. So if the money runs out … Well – fair's fair, after all. We get what we pay for in this world, and if it looks as if I won't be able to go on paying …'

His voice stopped again abruptly and then, just as abruptly, went on. ‘You're a rich man's wife, Oriel. And if it turns out I can't afford you then I won't break you either. You don't even understand hardship, so how can I ask you to endure it? I don't mean to ask you, anyway – and that's that. I'll keep Jamie with me. Wherever I end up I'll be able to forage for the two of us. I'll send the girls back to Scotland to their mother's kin. And I'll get you an income signed over to you – enough to live on. The money the Stangways left you never went to Milne, Morrissey. Your cousin Quentin couldn't see the point in moving it from one bank to another so I left it where it was. You could just about live on the interest. So I'll get your clever cousin to place it, somehow, beyond the reach of any creditors of mine. The same with that little house of your mother's. That's what we'll do.'

Standing up she walked over to the window, her point of refuge it seemed at times of emotion, although, as the day darkened and clouded over, she could see little beyond the wall of her own garden, only guessing at the sombre, relentless aspect of the winter fells, the immense silence of the water. And, as she looked out, it seemed that the whole essence of herself was flowing inwards, to the man behind her who thought himself to be worthless without his grand house, his wardrobe of London tailored clothes, his three and a half million.

She did not.

‘No, Garron.
This
is what we'll do.'

He stood up too, just a shade unsteadily she thought, looking very big and strong in the small room with its low ceiling yet – for the first time in her experience of him – vulnerable, ready to bluster and shout perhaps that he would have his way but tired out and hungry, with a pain in his head and as much in need as a man could be of somebody – some woman – to hold his hand and murmur to him that she trusted him, believed in him, and that everything would be all right.

A strong woman, of course, and Oriel, smiling at him across the warm fragrant room, had never felt stronger.

‘You can't send the girls back to Scotland, Garron. It's been too long. They wouldn't fit in there now. Morag would be terribly unhappy. And I daren't think what Elspeth would do.'

‘Do you think I don't know that,' he groaned, ‘but what else …?'

‘I'll tell you. Sell my mother's house in Lydwick Park. It must be worth a lot. And use the Stangway money as well. It might only be a drop in the ocean but surely every drop must count. And since this cottage isn't worth much at all – or so you keep on telling me – then I'll make a home here for the girls, and for you and Jamie. Oh yes – just listen to me, Garron, until I'm done.' I listened to you. Jamie likes it here. Morag doesn't but she'd prefer it to gutting herring in Scotland, and if she understands it's to help you then I'm sure she'll do her best. It could be the making of her. And Elspeth has the Landons – Tom Landon in particular. And since you haven't lost money through incompetence – quite the reverse – nobody will have anything but sympathy for the girls, and enormous admiration for you if you put things right. As I have, Garron. Enormous admiration – whether you put things right or not.'

‘You admire, me?' His voice came to her, rough-edged and sharp, through the gathering twilight.

‘Well – yes. Even though you
have
just been trying to cast me off.'

Once more he shook his head with the restive movement of pain. ‘Oriel – the trouble between us is that, half the time, I can't tell – you having been brought up so sheltered – if you even
know
what's what – or what you could be letting yourself in for.'

Tossing her own head, fine and steady and entirely free from pain, she laughed at him. ‘Of course I know. You need a base, Garron. Somewhere to come home to. And you need that whatever happens – or fails to happen. Not just hotel rooms and all that goes with them. Beef I wouldn't give to my cats, and the company of certain women whose profession I ought not to know about, when you're feeling miserable – who won't make you feel much better. And won't set a good example to Jamie either. You'd really do much better to keep me on and get your money's-worth out of me, darling – as I've had mine so often out of you.' Had she made him smile? She thought so. ‘You're not nineteen any more, Garron, you know – with nobody to fight for but yourself. You have a family who ought to stay together Elspeth and Morag would make very odd wives for Scottish fishermen after all you've had me teach them. And if you went on the wander somewhere in South America or Australia – which is what I expect you're thinking – you could lose Jamie out there and never see him again. You wouldn't like that.
I
wouldn't like it. And the girls need you. I think you need them. And money sent up to Scotland whenever you happen to have it, isn't the same as a father. So let's try and get through this together, shall we? That's what we ought to do.'

She felt rather than saw him cross the room to her, pressing her up against the window as someone else had pressed her not too long ago, his arms sliding around her, his aching forehead hot and heavy against hers. ‘Oh God, Oriel. I feel terrible,‘ he said.

‘
And
you look it. Let me get you some dinner now.'

‘I think I'd be sick.'

‘Good Heavens, is my cooking so bad? Then come upstairs. I have a herb pillow and all sorts of dried flowers in my mattress that smell like paradise – or as one hopes it does.'

He had never spent the night here before and now, her mouth to his ear, deliberately coquettish, her body already offering a direct comfort of its own, she whispered, ‘It's getting dark. Too late for the George at Penrith or the Queen's Head at Askham. And the Buck Inn at Howtown is full. I think you'll just have to sleep with me.'

As he had been big and forceful and vulnerable in the small parlour so did he seem to fill her bedroom with its pale walls, its scents of violet and lemon, its window always slightly open to the moonlight and the sounds of the high fells, as he lay on her bed for a while, exhausted, bemused even, while she placed her cool hands on his throbbing temples and then kissed them, kneeling beside him with only her long pale hair to cover her, each part of her body yielding to him as he reached out and touched it and then the whole, moon-silvered length of her falling over him, lightly, languorously taking him into herself and holding him there, exciting him almost to worship rather than possession and then fulfilling him, emptying him at the same time of his pain and his pleasure, so that he could rest.

Half-asleep, exhausted now beyond reason yet no longer aching, he muttered, ‘What happens to you in this place, Oriel?' And then, waking suddenly after what seemed to him ten minutes but, in reality, had been an hour, he called out, still from his dream, ‘I've never imagined such a woman.'

She was sitting on the window seat, still naked, her hair around her shoulders, looking out at the moon on the water; and reaching her in one stride he picked her up, as if he thought she might fly out through the tiny mullions away across the fells, and held her tight.

‘What are you doing?'

Smiling, she leaned her head into his shoulder. ‘I was thinking, Garron …'

‘What?'

‘That this might be our wedding-night. Shall we say it is?' She knew he was going to carry her back to her herb-sweet mattress and make love to her again. Her body was already waiting. He did so, urgently, taking possession, reasserting his claim, his woman, truly now and irrevocably his own.

‘I would have let you go,' he said, considerably out of breath. ‘I meant what I said. You could have had the money and left me to do the best I could on my own. And I'd have wished you luck.'

‘I know.'

‘Not now, Oriel. Do you know that too?'

She could feel the whole length of his hard body trembling.

‘Yes, Garron. I know.'

‘Then remember it. Because God help you if you try to leave

me now. And God help anybody else – man, woman or child –

who tries to take you an inch away.'