The Rival Potters

by Rona Randall

  Everything, always, came back to Amelia and Oliva. Even though they were no longer part of the place, their influence lingered. And now they were robbing him of competent workers. Meg Tinsley could be only the first. It had to stop.

  Without warning, his mother’s voice echoed again. Through a mouthful of Ratafia Cream she had mumbled, ‘Can you imagine such an idea, dear boy? Can you imagine pottery workers here at Tremain? Without wishing to be the least unfair to Miguel, the fact that he should even suggest such a thing indicates that he doesn’t truly comprehend what it means to be an English land-owner. Needless to say, I refused to countenance it and Max had the good sense to agree — well — to declare that he knew I would be a stumbling block. He even turned to Miguel and said, “Didn’t I tell you so, my son?”…’

  And on she had gone, and on, her words floating over his head but leaving an unexpected imprint which now came to life. Obviously, she had been talking about some ridiculous enterprise for which those two women had enlisted the help of his uncle’s bastard in finding premises. And that only showed how absurd the whole idea was. No pottery hidden in the wilds of a vast country estate could hope to thrive. How many customers would take the trouble to search for it, how many would travel so far? For once, he applauded his mother’s wisdom. She had been right in opposing the idea.

  But in that case, where had the women set it up?

  He wasted no time in finding out.

  *

  Fortune favoured him. Amelia was at the Martin Drayton Museum.

  Grudgingly, he conceded that they had made a splendid place out of what was, to him, a very ordinary outhouse of ancient stone and timbered ceiling. He had never realized that rafters could be architecturally effective. The natural oak had bleached throughout the years to a mellow tone which harmonized, and yet contrasted, with the weathered stone walls and floor. Against this ancient background the displays of multi-hued pottery stood out dramatically.

  Despite the early hour, visitors were already there. A stage coach stood outside, London-bound, and not a single passenger remained seated. The vehicle carried six within and eight back-to-back on the ham-boards outside, a top-heavy arrangement which travellers were beginning to protest against, but to which drivers turned a deaf ear. The important thing was to pack the coach to capacity, with sometimes four squashed each side within and five-a-side on top. He had heard that nowadays drivers were supplementing their takings by halting to show passengers a few interesting sights en route, in exchange for a good tip or for financial encouragement from the owners — or both. Doubting whether his aunt would be astute enough for that, he was forced to attribute the attraction of the Martin Drayton Museum to the splendid sign created by Fletcher’s Forge. No passer-by could possibly overlook it.

  When he entered, Amelia was talking to a small knot of well-dressed people. He heard her expressing regret that she was unable to sell replicas of the exhibits, but that perhaps in the future it would be possible. Naturally, she would be only too happy to please them. Perhaps if they ever passed this way again?

  Irritated, he turned aside. Why had Drayton’s never thought of doing that? The only function of the original museum had been to preserve the pottery’s history. Dealers had chosen new lines from the showroom, and even that had seemed unnecessary since a tour of the establishment displayed the latest products — and, of course, still did. The thought mollified him slightly, but left him resolved to do something about re-establishing a room where Drayton’s latest products could be shown to advantage. The right place would have to be found for it, because of course he could not sacrifice his splendid office again. Perhaps one of the larger store-rooms might suffice. But that would mean finding further accommodation for stock…which reminded him that Martin Drayton had had some notion about building a storage cellar. He had even had plans drawn up, details worked out.

  That was it! He would go ahead with the scheme. No one would be able to consider him inept once he took that first step in extending the premises.

  By the time the visitors had left, Lionel’s equanimity was restored. He turned then to Amelia and kissed her hand.

  ‘My dear aunt, you look remarkably well.’

  ‘Thank you, Lionel. I feel so.’

  ‘Much less tired and far less haggard. No longer jaded, no longer worn out. You see, I was right, was I not? Rest was what you needed. No more work, at your age.’

  She smiled.

  ‘And yet I have been working very hard, as you can see. Setting all this up was quite demanding. Of course, I did have help — Damian and Olivia have been wonderful. But so has everyone…the Kendalls…and dear Miguel. But you know that. Deborah told me that you called when she was deputizing for me one day, so I’m sure you heard all about everything.’

  ‘Not everything. Not about the other scheme which you and Olivia have been keeping so secret. The pair of you have been hatching plans and putting them into operation. That is why I am here. To wish you all possible success. You will obviously need it.’

  She answered calmly, ‘You refer to the new pottery, of course. Success will be ours if we work for it — as we intend to.’

  ‘By pilfering my best workers?’

  ‘You mean Meg Tinsley? We are delighted to have her. As yet, we have approached no one else, though of course we will be looking for good and experienced workers. None will be persuaded to leave their present employment, but if they approach us we will naturally give them fair consideration. But I am sure you have nothing to worry about. Workers who are content will not be looking elsewhere.’

  ‘And how do you propose to combine this place with a pottery? I assume it is to be established here. A clever idea of Fletcher’s, to expand his own trade? Or a whim of Olivia’s which he, besotted as ever, cannot refuse her?’

  ‘All your assumptions are wrong,’ she said coolly. ‘The Ashburton Pottery, as its name implies, has been established —’

  ‘— at Ashburton? So the Kendalls are behind it!’

  ‘We are all behind it. And now, if you will excuse me, I have work to do.’

  He wanted to say, ‘Do you call it work, dusting your precious exhibits and mooning over the past in a place designed to immortalize the name of your dear departed and to dramatize your widowhood?’, but she forestalled him.

  ‘Sometimes your thoughts are very obvious, nephew. In your view a museum doesn’t represent work but, believe me, a place the size of this requires supervision and attention. Already it has attracted more interest than I expected. We have had to draw up a timetable, attending here in shifts. Until the outside help I am engaging — Maude Barlett, the lawyer’s widow living close by — starts working full time, I come daily, with Miguel and Deborah giving as much time as they can spare. Olivia is already hard at work at Ashburton, building up stock, and Deborah will soon be fully employed there. She has talent. You should have paid attention when she brought her design to show you. Luckily for us, the Ashburton Pottery is producing it instead. And we have other plans, other ideas.’

  ‘Such as making replicas of these ancient relics?’

  ‘I hadn’t thought of that until those people wanted to buy some, but I shall certainly suggest it.’ The sound of approaching footsteps and the lifting of the ancient latch cut into the moment. More visitors. He wasn’t sorry. He was ready to leave, even impatient to, for he knew exactly where he was going next.

  Impeccably mannered, he again touched his aunt’s fingers with his lips. Above his head, she murmured, ‘Thank you for wishing us success, Lionel, but it would be more acceptable if you meant it.’

  *

  He drove furiously to Ashburton, uncaring when the pair of greys arrived in a lather. Nor did he spare time to present himself formally because he had no wish to be hindered by Jessica Kendall, who would no doubt try to prevent him from visiting what he had already dubbed ‘Olivia’s hideaway’. No one was going to stop him now.

  He guessed that the pottery would be situated far from the house, dow
n in the valley along with Si Kendall’s workshops. He had only to leave his curricle at the stables and proceed on foot, so he drove straight round to the coachyard, shouted for a stable lad, tossed the reins to him and dismounted. Then he headed briskly for a bridle path which, he remembered from his boyhood days, descended to the valley.

  He had scarcely reached the complex of workshops when Kendall himself emerged through a pair of oaken doors leading from the interior of a windmill, built on to an ancient barn. Within, Lionel glimpsed an immense circular vat from which came the noise of water-driven power and the thunder of tumbling stones.

  Kendall greeted the visitor with characteristic courtesy, asking if he had come to see how the flint-grinding mill was progressing.

  ‘If so, you have timed your visit well. It is undergoing its final test at this very moment. Come — I will show you.’

  For a moment Lionel was nonplussed. He had forgotten all about Kendall’s latest whim, but now he recalled Olivia’s enthusiasm for it and how she had declared that it would result in the whitest stoneware ever seen. Alerted, he followed the older man and stood with a line of silent and appreciative workers, all watching giant paddles pushing blocks of Derbyshire chert stone round the circular drum. The bed of the cylinder was covered with the same stone.

  ‘Why so much water?’ he asked, wondering how anything of value in the making of pottery could come out of a pile of wet boulders.

  One of the workers suppressed a laugh, but the rest were too absorbed in the operation to heed the question. Satisfaction was on each one’s face. They had done it. It was working. The master’s hand and the master’s mind had guided them and the result was good.

  ‘Why so much water?’ a voice echoed — not the voice of a worker, not a voice with a dialect, but the voice of a young man who plainly did not belong to a gang of labourers. Annoyed, Lionel turned and faced his uncle’s half-Mexican son. Lionel wanted to ask what he was doing here, but ignored him instead. Unperturbed, Miguel continued, ‘An exact amount is needed to smooth the passage of the stones so that they are ground evenly and finely. The result is a liquid containing ground flint that can be reduced by heat to the form of a fine powder.’

  ‘Obviously. I can see that.’

  ‘Not yet,’ said Si Kendall with a smile. ‘The grinding process will continue for a long time before the liquid and the residue form the first grit, which must then be ground again into an even finer quality…and so on until the power is produced.’

  ‘But the stones are black.’

  ‘Chert stone is naturally black, and becomes even blacker when burned. After quarrying, we burned it for many days while the final engineering work was being completed. Black flint-stone, when burned, produces a powder whiter than any other. Ostlers mix it with water to poultice their horses’ eyes.’

  ‘And we will mix it with clay to produce the first truly white stoneware.’ This time, to Lionel’s surprise and pleasure, it was Deborah’s voice. ‘Miguel,’ she continued, ‘I came in search of you. I want you to see my sundial — it’s finished. Olivia says we must allow some weeks for it to dry out before bisque-firing.’ To Lionel, she added graciously, ‘You may come too, if you wish. I imagine that is really why you are here — to see the new pottery, not my father’s grinding mill. The news had to reach you some time and I’ll be happy to show you everything — including my wall sundial. My very first. I used a basic Mexican design combined with wild game. I brought it to the Drayton Pottery to show you. I think you may be sorry you didn’t see it.’

  You pretty bitch, he thought. You taunting, teasing, tantalizing bitch.

  He smiled. He said, ‘What a pity you won’t be able to make it in the fine white stoneware you’re all so excited about.’

  That startled her. It startled the others too, but Simon Kendall regarded him inscrutably.

  Deborah declared, ‘I certainly shall, sir! In fact, I have already done so since a wall sundial is made for outside use. And we will use it for other outdoor items.’

  ‘Only with my permission. It was agreed that the new grinding powder was to be produced exclusively for Drayton’s.’

  His triumph was curtailed when Simon Kendall said quietly, ‘There you are wrong. I agreed to supply it to Martin Drayton personally. The agreement was signed in his name, not in that of the Drayton Pottery.’

  *

  Shortly after he heard the news, Dave Jefferson knocked on the door of Meg’s cottage. She steered the conversation to the subject of Abby.

  ‘Talk to her, Dave. Make her see sense. She’ll listen t’thee.’

  ‘I doubt it. Abby ain’t got eyes nor ears for nobody but the Master Potter these days.’

  Meg didn’t want to believe it, but she had a sickening feeling that Dave was right. The girl was besotted by the man, flattered by his passing glances and the smile he seemed to have for her even when everyone else was out of favour. The poor dear dolt — couldn’t she wake up, couldn’t she see what he was after? And didn’t she know what would happen to her if she were so foolish as to give in?

  ‘Look at your ma,’ Meg had wanted to say when the girl refused point blank to listen to her. ‘D’you want to finish up like her, cheap as they come?’

  But things like that couldn’t be said; not to a girl who had been brought up not to recognize the difference between a way of life that could be full of promise and one so precarious that it could land her in the gutter, old before her time? (But for Frank, dear God, that might’ve been me…)

  Meg had even told herself that Abby’s admiration for the new Master of Drayton’s would peter out quickly enough, that it was no more than a young girl’s romantic dream from which she would soon awaken, but Dave’s words were alarming. Plainly, he viewed Abby’s infatuation as serious.

  ‘Ye don’t think she’s given in to him already, do ye?’ she asked anxiously.

  ‘How else does she come by all them fripperies and gew-gaws? Not out’ve wages, that be sure. I saw ’er swaggering by Cobbler’s Green t’other Sabbath, wearing a gown that must have cost more than she earns in a year. Y’know what it be like down by the green of a Sabbath — everyone taking the air. There she were, showing off ’er new finery. All eyes were on ’er and well she knew it. Nor could she have missed the things they shouted. “Goin’ the way o’yer ma?” some woman yelled, so up I went to Abby and said, “’Tis a fine day for a walk, Abby lass—” “Aye,” she sez, “it is that,” an’ keeps right on, so I falls into step an’ asks where she be going, quiet-like so folks can’t hear, an’ all of a sudden she rounds on me and tells me t’mind me own business.’

  Meg frowned. ‘That ain’t like our Abby.’

  ‘It be like ’er now. Prickly as a hedgehog an’ hoity-toity with it. So what makes ye think she’ll listen to me? An’ what d’ye want me t’say?’

  ‘That she’ll be far better off along o’ me, working at the Ashburton Pottery. ’Specially the way things are going at Drayton’s nowadays.’

  ‘She won’t believe that because she don’t want to believe it.’

  ‘Then make her! ’Sides, it be true. Master Kendall be doing all sorts o’ fine things, like putting labourers’ cottages in fine shape so folk can live decent in ’em. One is t’be mine soon as ready, cos I’m t’be M’s ’Livia’s chief assistant.’ Meg grinned. ‘Sounds grand, don’t it, but that’s wot they’re calling me, she an’ M’s Amelia. You’ll’ve heard by now that they’re in partnership, with Mistress Drayton running the management side —’

  ‘As well as the museum?’

  ‘She did both at Drayton’s, didn’t she, after Master Martin went? But this one’s bigger so she’s taking on a full-time worker — that well-spoken widder from yon by the green. Things be really getting going, Dave, an’ Abby could come with me and share the cottage when it be ready an’ I’d take good care of her, like I’ve allus wanted.’

  ‘What o’ this place, Meg? Ain’t ye going t’miss it?’

  ‘‘T’ain’t mine. ’T
is one of Tremain’s tied cottages, but Master Maxwell’s let me live in it since Frank’s pore old auntie died. I’ve bin grateful for that, but somehow I’ve never bin able to shake off Ma Tinsley’s shadder. I’ve often wondered when the time would come for me t’leave, an’ where I’d go. Well, now I know and it’s mighty pleased I be. ’Til then, the distance ain’t important. I useter walk it when Master Martin started in that shed the Kendalls set ’im up in at Cooperfield; went there as often as I could, turning pots for him. But this time I’ll be hiring Joss Barlow’s old nag an’ if she could be persuaded t’come too, Abby could perch up behind me. Ninepence for a whole day’s hire won’t make a hole in t’good wages I’ll be earning at the Ashburton Pottery. M’s ’Livia offered to pay, but no thanks, sez I. I have me pride, same as thee, Dave. Fair wages means a fair return, an’ that’s wot I’ll be giving. Works t’other way round, too, so keep your eye on that Lionel Drayton and make sure of it.’

  ‘I’ll be watching more’n that. But I’m right glad you be fixed up so well, Meg, an’ though I’d miss Abby at the pot bank, I’d be glad t’see her safe away from it.’

  Meg urged, ‘Come too, Dave! I don’t doubt the two ladies would gladly take ye on. The pottery’s small right now, but it’ll grow quick-like. Ye should see it! Lacks for now’t and lots o’ room for growing.’

  ‘As long as Abby stays at Drayton’s, I’m staying too. I take it ye’ve asked her t’go along wi’ ye?’

  ‘That were the last thing I did afore I quit. She said no, point blank. She likes it at Drayton’s, she sez. She can’t see nothink wrong wi’ t’place. Said she were reel sorry about the two ladies, but not so much now everything seems t’be going fine for ’em — “An now I’d like t’get on wi’ me work, if ye don’t mind, our Meg?” Just like that she sez it, an’ I snaps back, “Well, I ’opes it turns out better’n of late, Abby Walker, ’cos your work’s gone right off, that it has!” I shouldn’t’ve said that, true though it be. And that be another worriting thing, Dave. She ain’t giving ’er mind t’the job no more.’