by Alis Hawkins
‘By taking nobody at his word,’ I chorused with him. We had both heard Mr Gelyot’s guiding principal often enough.
‘Exactly so. And though he found your man Harborne’s plans for a wool factory commendable – not to say refreshingly ambitious for Cardiganshire – he wasn’t inclined to take them at face value. Not when there was a proposed twenty-five per cent stake in the business to consider.’
‘Harborne led me to believe that he’d already invested,’ I said.
Gus raised his teacup to his lips. ‘He has not.’
As he put his cup back in its saucer with an audible clink, it struck me how very infrequently I had seen him drinking tea. But then the nature of our friendship had hardly been domestic; we had spent our time in taverns and dining houses and London’s new nightclubs, chiefly Laurent’s Casino, where one might dance all night if one had both the leisure and the stamina. Pushing aside such painfully exquisite memories, I waited for Gus to continue.
‘Before making any significant investment, my father makes it his business to seek advice from those best suited to providing it. Having done so in this case, he made some interesting discoveries. That for instance the Carmarthen to Cardigan railway is likely to proceed in short order. Apparently there’s no shortage of pledges from eager investors.’
‘That’s what I’d understood too.’ I might not match George Gelyot’s mistrustful diligence, but I had heard nothing but enthusiasm for the railway.
‘The deep-water port, on the other hand, is currently no more than a castle in the air. And if it doesn’t become a good deal more substantial, the impetus to get the railway built all the way to Cardigan will decline considerably.’
Gus finished his tea and twisted around to put the cup and saucer on the table behind him. His movements possessed a feline fluidity that I had always envied, and the difference between us would be all the more marked now that my own movements were so carefully deliberate.
‘But the information that ultimately led to his decision not to invest in Harborne’s factory was learned in Newtown.’
‘Your father went there?’ John asked.
‘No, Mr Davies. He sent people there. And their discreet enquiries revealed that Harborne had left his employment in Newtown under something of a cloud. There was talk of orders for which he had been responsible mysteriously going astray. The suspicion was that he was diverting them into his own business and blaming the inefficiency of suppliers.’
‘Suspicion? It wasn’t proved, then?’ Though Gus’s news must be music to John’s ears, as it meant that I would have to think again about investing in Harborne’s mill, it did him credit that he wanted the facts absolutely clear.
‘The mill owner concerned decided to cut his losses and simply dismiss Harborne. My father didn’t say as much, but I imagine the man didn’t want his own affairs looked into too closely either.’
The sun had set by now, and the east-facing windows of the library had dimmed, leaving the room in half-light and shadows. With dinner imminent, the servants would not disturb us to light the lamps, but I suddenly felt the gloom acutely.
‘So Harborne’s a potential crook and your father’s not investing. Couldn’t you have put that in a letter?’
‘Of course I could.’ Gus’s easy tone ignored my own sharpness. ‘But I had a yearning to see you, P-L.’ He was teasing me, but behind the levity, I detected something else. Had John or Lydia written to him to tell him that I was failing to manage the estate properly, that I was in danger of bankrupting us? ‘Besides,’ he added. ‘I wanted to see that shower bath I sent you for your birthday in action.’
Unwilling to discuss the as yet unused shower bath, I stood up. ‘Speaking of ablutions, perhaps we should all go and change for dinner.’
I needed time to think.
John
When I came downstairs the following morning, Lleu was eating breakfast with Lydia.
Harry’d had him in the dining room at dinner with us the night before, so I wasn’t surprised to see him. He’d come up in the world, Lleu. Just like me.
‘What time are we going over to see Mr Harborne this morning?’ he asked once I’d sat down. It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him that we weren’t going at all, that I didn’t want him anywhere near Jem Harborne’s mill. But when my brain caught up with my mouth, I realised that I’d be safe taking him over there – the likelihood of Amos wanting an apprentice was approaching none at all, and even if he did agree to take the boy on, Harry’d persuade Miss Gwatkyn that it wasn’t a good idea. And anyway, I wanted to know about the injured man, Jaco. If he died, I’d have an inquest to organise.
I cracked the shell of a boiled egg and started peeling it. ‘We’ll go over first thing after breakfast.’ The sooner we could pack Lleu back off to Alltybela, the better.
The boy had finished his breakfast, so while I got on with eating, he started gibbering on about something he’d been very taken with at the Great Exhibition – the velocipede. It was an odd-looking, four-wheeled contraption where the rider sat in amongst the wheels and worked treadles to make them go round. It’d looked uncomfortable and impractical to me, but Lleu’d been thrilled with it. ‘You could adapt this to make a hansom cab drawn by a man instead of a horse!’ he’d said to me. ‘Think about the money that’d save! No stabling or food for the horse. And look at all the shit horses scatter about the city – it’s everywhere! If you had velocipede carriages instead, the streets’d be clean.’
Now I took a mouthful of bread and butter and boiled egg and listened to him telling Lydia how man-powered carriages would clear London’s streets of what he politely called horse manure and make the city stink less. Was that what it was like to be an engineer – always looking at things around you as problems to be solved? I was beginning to suspect that the likes of Amos Bowen wouldn’t rest until they’d made the whole country into one gigantic Crystal Palace, full of inventions and improvements. Machines everywhere, doing our work for us. And the work of horses, too, if these velocipedes were going to catch on. I couldn’t imagine it – didn’t want to, truth be told.
‘Lleu,’ Lydia sad when the boy paused for breath, ‘before you go out to Llandyfriog with Mr Davies, you might like to go and ask Mrs Griffiths if she can lay her hands on some of Mr Probert-Lloyd’s old britches and boots, so you can ride. Melchior will need a rest today after pulling the trap all the way to Cilgerran and back yesterday.’
The boy was canny enough to know he’d been given an instruction, and off he went like a lamb. I waited. Lydia obviously had something she wanted to say to me.
‘I thought we should clear the air about my offer of help,’ she said.
I looked up in surprise. ‘Clear the air? What d’you mean?’
She looked me in the eye. ‘Yesterday, when you told Harry what I’d suggested, you didn’t sound too pleased. I was afraid you felt I was forcing you into something.’
I took a swig of tea. ‘No. Not at all. I just wasn’t sure how to tell him. Or even if I had to. I mean, if I was going to be a normal agent – if I didn’t live in the house as part of the furniture, so to speak – I could take on whatever assistant I wanted, couldn’t I? I wouldn’t need to ask Harry’s permission. But I live here, and… well, I didn’t exactly want to ask him, but I had to tell him what we’d been talking about. He’d be offended if you just started working for me without so much as a by-your-leave.’ Always assuming he still wanted me to be his agent, of course. We hadn’t shaken hands on anything yet, still less signed a contract.
She breathed in and out again quickly, as if she was clearing something from her windpipe. ‘Good. If that’s all it is.’ She put her hands palm down in her lap, ready to get up and get on. ‘Right then, is there anything you’d like me to do this morning while you’re over in Llandyfriog? I think Mr Gelyot’s going to keep Harry occupied.’
* * *
By the time we rode away from the mansion – with Lleu in britches that were a bit big for him and ol
d riding boots that somebody’d polished in a hurry – the rain that’d come lashing in overnight had lost its spiteful edge and was just falling quietly in a sort of drenching drizzle. It wasn’t often I wished for a rubberised Mackintosh coat like Harry’s, but by the time we got to Llandyfriog, the water running off the brim of my hat had come right through the shoulders of my coat, and my knees were wet and cold above my boots. Lleu didn’t have gloves, and his hands must’ve been freezing, but in his excitement, I don’t think he noticed.
We clattered over the wooden bridge to the factory site and Lleu stood in the stirrups to look about – first at the men who were replacing the sluice gate in the repaired dam, then down the muddy slope to the buildings. I saw things through his eyes and thought how modern and exciting the mill seemed in comparison to all the other buildings in the little valley. They were all made from the turf and stone that came out of the ground beneath them, and looked as if they’d grown there instead of being built by men’s hands.
But to me, the mill looked foreign, as if it didn’t belong. Would the Teifi Valley really be full of buildings like this before the decade was out? Jem Harborne certainly thought so. And if it was full of spinning and weaving machines, would other machines come in as well – farm machines? Amos Bowen had adapted the engines he’d seen in Newtown to run on water power in the little valley above Llandyfriog. If he could do that, what was to stop other engineers adapting the mechanical implements we’d seen at the Great Exhibition so they could be used in our hilly little fields?
I thought of the mowing teams that went from farm to farm in strict rotation, cutting hay according to the orders of the farmer in charge, and tried to imagine machines doing it instead. No scythes rhythmically swinging as the men sang mowing songs, no indoor servants coming out to the fields with drinks and something to eat, no games going on amongst the young people of the farm. Would girls wear the harvest green any more and lie down in the mown hay with young men? No, not if machines were going up and down everywhere, doing everything three times as quickly as it was done by hand.
But even if other estates went in for machines, Glanteifi couldn’t afford them. Not now and not for the foreseeable future, unless things changed. And that’d be up to me, wouldn’t it? Everything on the estate’d be up to me.
‘John Davies!’ Amos walked over from where he’d been helping with the replacement sluice gate. He was in his element here, and he looked straight at me with his uncovered eye. ‘J-Jem’s not here. I don’t kn-know when he’ll be back.’
I grinned at him. ‘Don’t worry, it’s you we’ve come to see.’
But he was worrying – I could see that in his face. He must’ve thought I was here to carry on badgering him about whatever it was Mic Rees didn’t want us to know. ‘It’s nothing to do with the inquest,’ I reassured him. ‘Remember me telling you about a young man who wanted to be an engineer?’ I jerked my thumb in Lleu’s direction. ‘Well, this is him.’
There didn’t seem any point me doing any more talking when Lleu could speak perfectly well for himself, so I left them to it and went down the slope to talk to the carpenters. I had to be careful not to slip on the wet grass and mud – my riding boots were so slick on the bottom, it was like walking on ice.
Jem Harborne’s team had done a huge amount of work since I’d been there last – so much that I wondered whether he’d taken the advice I’d given Amos and paid local boys to work with the carpenters he’d brought in. All the damage’d been repaired, there were new upper floors in place and the roof was already being fitted with wooden tiles. That surprised me, because everybody seemed to be using slate these days, but then the wooden frame was going to have enough weight to support with the power looms and the machines to run them without adding a heavy roof.
I found the foreman I’d talked to before and he grinned his gap-toothed grin when he recognised me. ‘By yourself? No newspapermen this time, then?’
‘Can’t live an exciting life all the time, can I?’ I grinned back. ‘No, I had to bring the lad to talk to Mr Bowen,’ I tilted my head back up the hill towards the two of them, ‘and I thought I’d come and ask after the man who was injured in the attack.’
‘Jaco? Back in the land of the living,’ the foreman said. ‘But come and talk to Mattie-Siôn. He’s Jaco’s brother. He can tell you properly.’
He whistled to get the men’s attention, then called out for Mattie-Siôn, who came down a ladder with the nimbleness of a monkey.
I explained who I was and why I was there.
‘Oh, don’t you worry about Jaco. Head as thick as a ram, that one,’ he said, following me out of the building and down onto the churned-up mud and grass.
‘Glad to hear it. We heard he was still out cold when they took him home,’ I said, once we were outside, away from the din of saws and mallets.
‘True enough. But he’s right as rain now. Coming back in a day or two, when he can get a ride with somebody. Too idle to walk, Jaco.’
Mattie-Siôn glanced over his shoulder, and when he saw that the foreman wasn’t watching him, he nodded towards a pile of timbers a little way off and took out his pipe and a tobacco pouch. ‘Sit down for a minute?’
I nodded. Mattie-Siôn didn’t seem to mind getting the seat of his trousers wet, but I stayed standing while he filled his pipe and took out a box of matches. I was surprised. Matches were expensive, and you didn’t see them much locally. Harborne must be paying well.
‘They were lucky, the boys who came here to wreck the place,’ he said in between sucking and puffing his pipe into life. ‘If Jaco hadn’t got a clout round the head to knock him out like that, they’d’ve burned the place down, I reckon. And Mr Harborne wouldn’t’ve let ’em off then.’ He blew out a mouthful of smoke.
‘They’d’ve been up in front of the beak and breaking rock in Cardigan gaol, not getting taken on to help us here.’
So I’d been right.
Mattie-Siôn looked at me through the smoke from his pipe. ‘Mind, they were lucky in another way, too.’
‘Oh yes?’ I wasn’t really listening, too busy watching Amos and Lleu and hoping Amos was managing to persuade the boy that he needed to go back to school.
‘Yes,’ Mattie-Siôn said. ‘If they’d hit our cousin Benji instead of Jaco, it might’ve been a different story.’
He was obviously waiting for me to ask, so I turned to him, thinking he was going to make some kind of joke. ‘Why’s that then?’
He raised his eyebrows. ‘There’s a family curse on that side.’
All right then, not a joke. ‘Family curse?’
‘Yes. Affects the side of the family up in Llanybydder, it does. Me and Jaco are all right because we’re only cousins by marriage, not by blood, but it’s a terrible thing. Jaco’d have been a goner, sure to be, if he’d been one of my uncle’s wife’s lot.’
I eventually got the whole story out of him. Names, places, history. And at last I knew how Lizzie Rees had died.
Harry
Though I had succeeded in persuading Gus that it would not be appropriate for him to accompany John and me to Rhosdywarch, he was with me nevertheless as we rode over to speak to Mic Rees; I simply could not put the conversation we’d had the previous evening out of my mind.
After first Lydia and then John had retired, Gus and I sat by the fire in the library until both brandy decanter and coal scuttle were empty, and I explained my predicament in a way I had never managed in my letters to him.
‘You know my views on birth and position and merit,’ I told him, ‘but ever since I came back here, the idea that I might treat anybody except other men of means as my equal has been greeted like some kind of certifiable medical delusion. And now, despite my best efforts to create a household in which I might feel that I am among friends, I find myself sitting on a squirely throne! In making John my agent, I find I’ve placed him beneath me, and now, damn him, he has decided to accept Lydia’s offer of assistance, putting her beneath him! We’ve bec
ome a hierarchy. It’s intolerable!’
‘Then do something about it. Disrupt the status quo.’
‘How?’
‘You’re a lawyer. Resort to the law.’
* * *
On the other side of the river, the weather seemed to turn, and as we climbed upwards out of the wooded little Cych valley and on to a higher, more windswept stretch of road, the Frenni hills were completely invisible beneath a low bank of cloud that extended mistily into the air around us. The greyness dampened our spirits and beaded the mares’ coats and our own with moisture.
By the time we arrived at the Reeses’ smallholding, we were both thoroughly damp. I hoped that a cup of tea might be offered to warm us, but the nature of our visit meant that such hospitality could not be guaranteed.
At the sound of our horses’ hooves, the cottage’s front door swung open to reveal Esther Rees.
‘Good day, gentlemen.’
I dismounted. ‘Good day, Mrs Rees. Is your husband at home?’
‘He’s weaving. You’d better come in.’ She made to turn and go back inside, but I forestalled her. ‘Is there room to put our horses in the byre?’ I had no wish to ride home on a sodden saddle.
The horses seen to, we trooped into the kitchen.
Both Rees daughters were sitting on the bench, one knitting, the other doing something to a shirt or petticoat.
‘Gwen, go and fetch your father,’ Esther instructed, swinging the kettle over the fire on its chain.
John and I stood in the middle of the room until Esther indicated the chairs that had been pushed back to one side of the fire. ‘Please, sit.’ As we did so, Gwen reappeared with Mic, and suddenly the kitchen seemed crowded.
‘Mrs Rees, if you wouldn’t mind, we’d like to speak to your husband alone.’