by Alis Hawkins
I’d just turned the trap towards Adpar hill and the three of us had got out to save the poor horse when Harry asked about Amos Bowen.
‘What was your impression of him, John? Harborne described him as a genius with machines.’
I shrugged, stomach still churning. ‘I’m not qualified to know a genius with machines from a molehill. But he knows how to talk about machines, that’s for sure.’
Amos Bowen was a local boy, but he’d been surprisingly tight-lipped about his family circumstances to begin with. Eventually I’d managed to find out that he’d followed his cousin Jeremiah to the mills of Newtown to get away from the family farm. Or to be more accurate, to get away from his father. Reading between the lines, Mr Bowen senior’d been free enough with his fists and his boots to half-kill Amos on any given day of the week.
Mind, I could see why somebody like Amos Bowen would enrage a certain kind of man. He barely looked you in the eye, and when he wasn’t talking about machines, he had a stutter that put you properly on edge. In the end, I’d found out why he didn’t look at you properly – he only had reliable control of one eye. The left one looked off to one side.
When I told Harry that, his head whipped round. ‘Amos Bowen has a squint?’
‘Yes. Why?’
‘The man who took the news of Lizzie Rees’s death to her mother had a stutter, and what Dai Dolbannon referred to as a wandering eye. He was introduced as Barti, but that was obviously a nickname because he’d arrived at the farm wearing an eyepatch.’
‘There can’t be that many men with a squint and a stutter in the Teifi Valley,’ I said. And on top of that, Jem had said his engineer’d been working away till that week. With Amos being from a farming family, he could easily have been working at Dolbannon rather than at another mill like I’d thought.
‘David Jones said that Barti was always drawing,’ Harry said. ‘I assumed he was talking about pictures, but perhaps he meant machines.’
‘Well, if it was Amos that was working over there,’ I said, ‘I don’t like to think what kind of a time he had of it. He’s not your usual farm servant.’
‘Jones did tell me the other servants’d been a bit rough with him,’ Harry admitted. ‘Said his eyepatch hadn’t lasted long.’
Something like that would’ve ended up in the midden or the privy after being thrown about like a football between the other lads. I could hear them laughing like fools while they did it. It doesn’t pay to be different.
‘Did Jem Harborne try and persuade you to put money into the factory?’ I asked. ‘Amos said he would.’
‘Not directly. In fact he was a lot more discreet than Anthony Saunders-James. He as good as offered me cash on the spot for Moelfryn Uchaf and Isaf.’
In the corner of my eye I saw Lydia smiling. ‘Not quite as comfortable in the drawing room as he is in the office, our Mr Saunders-James,’ she said. ‘Eleanor told me that before they got married, he employed somebody to coach him in the ways of the gentry.’
‘Then his coach did a poor job,’ Harry said. ‘Even Gus Gelyot’s father – who isn’t exactly renowned for his drawing room manner – wouldn’t have been so crass.’
‘Are you going to sell the land to him?’ I asked.
‘Given our circumstances, it seems like too good an opportunity to pass up. Besides, those two farms have never felt like part of Glanteifi.’
‘And what about investing in the factory?’ A week ago I’d’ve been wary of asking, but if I was going to be Glanteifi’s agent, then this was my business. ‘I got the impression from Amos that the place is a bit of a risky venture,’ I said. ‘I don’t know how much Mr Gelyot’s invested, but Harborne still needs more, from what Amos said. Quite a lot more.’
‘So why is Amos involved in the project – isn’t it risky for him too?’
‘They’re cousins. And he feels beholden because Jem looked after him when they were in Newtown together.’
Harry said no more and the three of us used our breath for panting up the hill to the tollgate and the turn along the side of the hill to Glanteifi.
‘Harborne was very persuasive,’ Harry said when we’d all climbed thankfully back into the trap and I’d clucked the horse into a slow plod. ‘He’s obviously got a well-thought-out plan – getting his manufacturing capacity in place so that as soon as the railway and the port facilities are there he can take full advantage of them. And he’s not a fool. He’s starting with a simple weaving mill, and then as and when that’s profitable, he’ll move on to the other processes.’
He sounded impressed. ‘You are thinking of putting money into it then?’ I said.
‘I’m not sure yet. But, if he genuinely could give us the kind of return on investment he’s talking about, we’d have money to buy shares in the railway and the deep-water port scheme when they go on sale. And the income from those might well put Glanteifi on a very different financial footing.’ He stopped, and I could see him looking at me in his side vision. ‘It’s going to take some thinking about.’
Not What do you think, John? Not We’ll need to discuss it, obviously. No, Harry was going to think about it and Harry was going to make a decision. Well, if that was the way he wanted things, I was the wrong man to be his agent.
My heart started to race. ‘I disagree. It’s obvious what the right thing to do is. If we sell the land, we should pay off some of the mortgage. Invest in our own business, not speculate.’
‘Oh, we should, should we?’ He sounded half-amused, half-irritated.
‘Yes.’
‘We should be like all the other local landowners – scared of investing in something new?’
‘Never mind what anybody else is doing! We should be doing what’s right for Glanteifi. The mortgage is crippling us.’
‘But if Harborne’s returns are what he says they’ll be—’
‘Yes,’ my voice rose to meet his, ‘if! From what you’ve told us – and from what I heard first-hand when we were sitting in Soyer’s restaurant – there’s an awful lot of ifs involved in Harborne’s new venture. If he can get enough investors. If the railway line comes to Cardigan. If this deep-water port scheme happens.’ Harry stared straight ahead, chewing the inside of his lip. ‘Your father wouldn’t have invested in Harborne’s factory,’ I said. ‘He’d have paid the mortgage off.’
He spun round to face me. ‘How dare you tell me what my father would’ve done! You barely met the man!’
‘I’ve been studying what he did with the estate for the last six months! Actions speak louder than words, and his actions were all for the benefit of Glanteifi!’ I was almost sick with the beating of my heart in my throat, but I was damned if I was going to back down. Harry knew next to nothing about the running of the estate. He thought Mr Ormiston’d known what he was doing, for God’s sake! He knew nothing about how his father had managed the place. Nothing!
‘You think you know my father’s mind better than me, do you?’
‘About the estate? Yes.’
I felt something on my arm. I looked down and saw Lydia’s hand. She was warning me not to go too far, not to say something there was no coming back from.
I took a deep breath. ‘Perhaps now’s not really the time…’
‘Pull up,’ Harry said.
‘What?’
‘Pull the horse up. I’m going to walk the rest of the way home. Because you’re right. Now is very definitely not the time.’
Harry
Instead of walking straight home, I turned up the little Ceri valley and let my feet find the familiar way along the old parish road.
Lydia had offered to come with me, but I had sent her home with John. I was not in the mood for company, especially company that was likely to find fault.
Dammit, Lydia and John both wanted me to take more interest in the estate, but as soon as I tried to involve myself, to devise a plan that might extract us from the mire into which my father’s policies had plunged us, I was challenged! I would not have expected
Lydia to defend my position – not given what she had told me about John’s lack of self-confidence – but the fact that she had not even attempted to mediate must mean that she thought I was in the wrong.
I marched recklessly along the little road, heedless of potholes and loose stones that might trip me up. My mind closed to intrusive thoughts, I refused to think about John’s resistance and tried to let the warm air and the sound of bees in the last hedgerow flowers calm my mind. Bees were not plagued by doubt and criticism; they knew only a fixed, unalterable purpose and the instinct that drove them to it. Their tiny insect minds might never know joy, but neither would they know grief or despair, and just at that moment, I found such obliviousness profoundly to be envied.
* * *
An hour or so later, having returned home and slipped quietly upstairs to wash and change, I made my way down to the dining room. I had heard the clock in the hall chime the quarter-hour not long since, and I knew it would be easier to face John and Lydia if I was already at the table when they came in.
When I found Elsie lighting the candles on the chandelier, I berated myself for not having realised that somebody would be there making the room habitable for me.
‘Beg pardon, sir,’ she said. ‘I thought I’d be finished before anybody came in.’
‘It’s my fault, Elsie. I’m early to dinner. Just carry on.’
After a minute or so that proved longer, I suspect, than either of us found ideal, Elsie fled, leaving me in the company of my own embarrassment. I could not have betrayed my failure to understand the workings of my own house more obviously if I had tried.
When the door eventually opened once more, John and Lydia came in together, as if one of them had waited for the other in the hall so that they could present a united front. How ironic. I had long wished for them to become better friends, but had not anticipated them allying themselves against me.
I rose as they came to the table. ‘I apologise for my childish behaviour earlier. I can only plead the current trying circumstances in mitigation.’
‘You’re forgiven,’ Lydia said, her pardon masking an ambivalent mumble from John.
We took our seats in an unwonted, and soon uncomfortably protracted, silence. Mercifully, before any of us resorted to platitudes, the soup arrived and we addressed our meal. What Ianto made of the oppressive atmosphere, I could not guess, and when he left the room to bear the soup plates away and bring the meat, I knew I must force myself to speak.
John, however, got there before me.
‘Harry, if I’m going to be Glanteifi’s agent, there’s something I have to say.’
I held out a hand, giving him the floor.
‘As assistant coroner I defer to you. You may not think I do,’ he added, forestalling the objection I had been about to make, ‘but putting a different point of view isn’t the same as insisting on it. We’ve never given a jury advice based on what I think has happened. In the end, it’s always your view that holds sway.’
‘It’s my responsibility. I’m coroner.’
‘Yes, you are. And you’re also the squire of Glanteifi.’ I heard a click in his dry throat as he swallowed. ‘But if I’m going to be your agent, I’m not prepared to have my views discounted. I want to have a say in how you spend the money you get from the sale of the Moelfryn farms.’
If he had leaned over and punched me I could not feasibly have been more shocked. ‘What’s this? “Do what I say or I won’t be your agent”?’
‘No.’ His voice wavered, but he continued. ‘I just want a proper discussion. Not only on this, but on everything. Otherwise I’m no more use to you than Mr Ormiston was.’
His words trapped my breath in my chest and turned my stomach into a cold fist, threatening to expel the soup I had just consumed. I stared into the whirlpool, John’s face hovering just above the grey indistinctness, and failed utterly to identify an appropriate response.
‘Harry…’ Lydia put a hand on the tablecloth between us, as if she was laying claim to the space to speak.
‘No.’ I kept my gaze averted from her. ‘This is between me and John.’ I stared at the pale blur of his face. ‘The job of an agent is to advise—’
‘Yes! And the job of a squire is to listen! To listen and take notice of what’s said. Not just to say, “That’s very interesting but I’m still going to do what I was going to do before you opened your mouth”! That was Mr Ormiston’s attitude when I tried to argue with him. And his attitude left Matthew Thomas dead.’ In the silence created by his words, I could hear his agitated breathing. ‘I know Jem Harborne’s got a silver tongue on him – I heard enough of his plans in London. But he’s only interested in how much money he can make and he doesn’t care whose livelihood he destroys in the process. Do you want Glanteifi to be part of that?’
‘At least Harborne knows how to make money, which is something most of the landowners in the Teifi Valley would give their eye teeth to learn!’
The simple fact was that land ownership was becoming more and more uneconomic as a way of making one’s living. If John thought we could simply farm our way out of our financial difficulties, then our working relationship seemed doomed before it started.
‘Is that what we’re here for,’ he demanded, ‘to make money? When we first met, you told me that a landowner’s first duty was to care for his tenants. When did that change, Harry?’
‘When I saw that my father had mortgaged the estate almost to bankruptcy caring for his tenants!’
‘Your father understood th—’
‘My father treated the tenants like children who couldn’t think for themselves.’
‘If we can pay off some of the mortgage, we’ll have a chance to start working with our tenants, instead of just seeing them as debtors whose payments service the interest on our loan.’
‘And you think we’ll be able to service the loan from rent income alone, do you? Because the figures say otherwise.’
‘Obviously we need to start doing things differently. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell Mr Ormiston. I’ve been looking at your father’s diaries—’
‘What?’ I had had no idea that my father had kept a diary.
John hesitated. Did he look to Lydia for guidance? Did she give it? Not being able to see the movement of eyes had never been so infuriating. ‘Your father’s diaries.’ His voice was not entirely steady. ‘He kept notes on each of the tenancies each quarter, what he suggested to the tenant and what the tenant actually did. If you compare the ones who took his advice and the ones who didn’t—’
‘Where did you find these diaries?’
‘In the pedestal of his desk when he—’
‘What were you doing looking into his desk?’
‘I wasn’t looking into his desk. One day, while your father was still alive, Mrs Griffiths called me into the office – I mean his study – and he was sitting there. He opened the drawer and showed me the books. He wanted me to read them.’
My father had shown John diaries whose existence I had been totally unaware of. Despite the fact that they would have been useless to me, that I would have been obliged to ask him to read them to me anyway, I felt somehow that in giving him those diaries, my father had passed the care of Glanteifi on to John rather than to me.
Suddenly the twilit gloom of the dining room seemed to close in around me until, the chandelier notwithstanding, I could hardly see.
In the silence, I was aware of the door opening and Ianto and Fred bringing in our dinner. They had obviously been waiting outside the door for a break in the argument into which they might insert themselves. I cringed inwardly at the thought of the two of them listening, the food going cold in its serving dishes. I put out a hand to my wine glass and felt it trembling.
‘Leave it,’ I said as Fred began to serve me. ‘We’ll serve ourselves. Come back in ten minutes.’
Did Fred look at Lydia for confirmation of my order? Whether he did or not, there was a perceptible delay before he murmured
an acquiescence and retreated, Ianto with him.
‘So, to summarise,’ I said, ignoring the food, ‘you believe that, having read my father’s diaries, you know his plans for the estate and you consider them to be superior to any I might devise – is that broadly correct?’
‘Harry.’ Lydia could obviously contain herself no longer. ‘Your father had been running the estate for fifty years. Can you not see how arrogant it is for you to imagine that you can come in and do it better in less than four months?’
‘My father belonged to a different age! And Harborne’s right – if local landowners don’t seize the day and support new projects that’ll bring modern industry to the west, we’ll always be seen as the poor relations, country bumpkins who haven’t realised that it’s the nineteenth century. He’s offering me – us, Glanteifi – the chance to be part of something that’s going to revolutionise Cardiganshire. We can be part of something bigger instead of sitting out here being ignored by Parliament and ridiculed by the national newspapers.’
‘But what does that mean for the estate?’ John asked.
‘Money. Finances. Investment.’
‘Machinery?’
‘Yes. Why not?’
John stood up. ‘You want Cardiganshire to be like England. Like London. Well I don’t. Excuse me, Lydia.’
He left, and the next thing I heard was the front door being opened and thudding closed behind him.
John
The front door banged shut behind me, and I marched off down the lane, away from the mansion.
I needed to be out of the house, with other people. People I wasn’t in the middle of an argument with.
The Drovers Inn; that was where I’d go. It was months since I’d been there – I hadn’t been into town for a drink since I’d moved to Glanteifi. But I needed a drink now.
I left Seren in the stables. Didn’t want to be a gentleman tonight. Trouble was, walking gave me time to fume, and instead of cooling down, I got more and more angry with Harry.
All that talk I’d had from him when we first met – about wanting me to be his equal and not wanting to be squire and how a few rich people shouldn’t own all the land and expect everybody else to keep them in luxury – all that’d gone since his father had died. Just gone. And truth be told, I’d felt less equal to him since he’d made me under-steward than I had when I’d been just a solicitor’s clerk he borrowed from time to time. I’d had nothing to lose if I argued with him then. Now, I had a whole life to lose.