Distant Choices (24 page)

To keep them out of trouble after all, as she'd suggested?

‘Did you find them?'

‘Some of them. More or less the ones I'd expected. There's a breed of men you won't have come across, Miss Blake, who don't think they've had a good night out unless they can crawl home covered in blood. Their own or the other fellow's – it makes no difference.
They
were all there, of course. Wouldn't have missed it for the world. And now as many as I could round up, English and Irish alike, are back in camp at Plumpton or Yanwath – or what's left of it.'

‘That was – brave? – of you, Mr Keith.' She heard the question in her own voice, to which, without hesitation, he replied, ‘I reckon not. Commonsense, more like. Those men – whatever else they are – are good workers when they're not on the randy. And with this railway mania spreading all over the country, good labour is getting hard to find. Very hard. I've had look-outs posted, these six months past, on every main road between Lancaster and Carlisle, picking up likely lads on the tramp and getting them into the nearest beer-shop. The best place in the world to make sure they sign on with Keith, instead of Stephenson or Brassey. I've accepted a fixed completion date on this contract and it's going to cost me money if I don't meet it. So I can't afford to have too many of my lads in jail, you see.'

‘I see.' And she might have smiled at his effrontery had she not feared to give him too much encouragement, being already aware that for every ounce of anything, or everything, one gave him he would help himself to a gallon.

‘Do you know how the trouble started today?' she enquired instead.

He shrugged, his prizefighter's shoulders filling the high, widebacked chair, his brown eyes and skin and hair looking vigorous, tough-fibred, enduring, his legs stretched out at ease on the hearthrug, one large, highly-polished calf boot uncomfortably close, she abruptly realized, to her own narrow, pointed shoe. A proximity she did not relish, particularly when it occurred to her that it might be unwise to offend him by drawing her foot too obviously away. And, having decided she had better not move it, it suddenly dominated her awareness, the size of his foot and the heat she imagined to be coming from it menacing her own, so that it began to ache and tingle.

‘How did it start?' he said. ‘Out of nothing – as always. An English ganger – that's a foreman, in your language – and an Irish navvy came to blows, it seems. The ganger told the man to put down his pick and pick up his shovel – or some fool thing. The man refused – I reckon he'll have forgotten why himself by now, so don't ask me. The ganger turned rough, the Paddy called on his mates, and the ganger got himself knocked about a bit. So
his
mates went down to Yanwath and set fire to the Irish huts. You saw them still smoking.'

And there would have been women in those huts, and a great many children.

‘Was anyone killed?'

‘Hard to tell as yet.' But by the tone of his voice she understood not only that he thought it likely but would not lose much sleep over it either way. ‘But there's a big Irish camp at Plumpton, and the lads there didn't take kindly to the fires at Yanwath. Which is why the call went out for English reinforcements from Shap Fell. Two thousand of them, they're saying, slipped past the Yeomanry into Penrith. Enough to smash up every lodging-house that ever housed an Irishman, at any rate. They were smoking the Paddies out into the street and beating them senseless – an hour or two back – until the soldiers, and a few others, got matters in hand.'

A vicious conflagration indeed, she thought, to have arisen from a single spark between two men. ‘Is there always hostility of this kind?'

‘There is.' And, quite evidently, it was a normal part of the daily round to him. ‘Because the Irish work well and they work for less. Digging is what they've been brought up to. There's nothing else to do in Kilkenny or Donegal. And whenever their potatoes won't grow so well and they get hungry – which seems to happen every year or two – they come over to the construction sites and think they're millionaires the first time they draw a navvy's wages. Some of them even save their money and go home like kings. But most of them drink, like most of the English and most of the Welsh and the Geordies. And when a Paddy goes fighting-mad with booze, it's not easy to stop him. A man can get hurt making the attempt. And if he happens to be an Englishman it might sour his liking for the Irish. Although that's not really the root of it. I reckon men who live rough and hard with nothing much at the end to show for it, need somebody to blame who isn't one of themselves. A scapegoat. And the Irish look different enough and sound different enough to fit the bill. They never give me any trouble when they're on their own.'

‘And is it over now?' Was she asking him ‘Can I go now? Will you release me?' Glancing at his large, brown boot, gleaming arrogantly at her in the firelight, surely a fraction closer now than before, she rather thought so.

‘To all intents and purposes. They've got the Irish penned in at Plumpton and the English at Yanwath with the soldiers in between.'

‘And Penrith?'

‘A lot of broken glass and thick heads, and a few men in jail who won't remember what they did to get there, or why, when the beer runs out of them in the morning. Although I expect the magistrates will pack somebody off on a convict ship to Australia, just to set the rest a good example.'

Remembering that Matthew Stangway and Lord Merton were both magistrates she thought it very likely.

‘And is it safe for me to go on to Ullswater now?'

‘Miss Blake.'
He acted out an expression of shock and alarm. ‘At twenty minutes past midnight. How could you think of such a thing?'

Her shock was entirely genuine. Was it possible she had slept so long? Yet the journey to Penrith had been very tedious, the coach cramped and airless beyond any possibility of rest. She had been sleeping badly, too, since September. And this room had been so warm, so snug. And there had been the brandy.

‘Heavens – I had no idea. What can I do about it …?'

‘Nothing.' He sounded absolutely certain. ‘Miss Woodley knows you are here and understands the situation. She was glad to see the boy I sent her, having thrown something of a fit, it seems, when the soldiers turned her back half-way to Yanwath. She knows there's still trouble here and there, in patches, and won't be expecting you before – shall we say noon, tomorrow?'

Was this reasonable, or likely, or even true? For she knew he would lie to her very cheerfully if it suited him and show no remorse, either, should his perfidy be discovered. Dangerous man. Devious man. Had he really saved her from the perils of riot and arson or simply tricked her into exchanging one hazardous situation for another? She was here alone with him, after all, by his contriving, with no other word but his to tell her it was unsafe to leave. A man from a world so different from her own that she had no real way of judging his disposition or – rather more to the point – just what he might be likely to do next to her. A man who had once lived rough and hard – he made no secret of it – like a gipsy, a bandit. A
navvyman
beneath his pleated cambric shirt and showy blue and silver brocade waistcoat, who, in this isolated place, could be as tough and hard with her as he pleased.

‘Your boxes are upstairs,' he told her, ‘in the best front bedroom. You must be hungry. I know I am. I've ordered supper in here, by the fire.'

Supper? Inn-servants coming with plates and dishes and their own, unlikely-to-be-favourable opinion of a girl who could be served cold meat and pickles and strong claret with her hair hanging down. But when, instinctively, she began to pin it up again, he said, ‘Leave it down. I like it.'

‘That would not be suitable, Mr Keith.'

‘It is what I want, Miss Blake.'

Indeed? She
was
in danger, then. A pang of alarm and the awareness that she had really known it from the start struck her both at once. Yet, nevertheless, she gave him a long, cool stare copied exactly from Evangeline and, hoping he could not see that her hands were trembling, began to dress her hair into a low and very severe chignon, ramming each pin in place very precisely and in a silence
she
did not intend to break.

‘That does not suit you, Miss Blake.'

‘On the contrary, Mr Keith. And, in any case, that is for me to say – surely?'

‘I don't like it. Miss Blake.'

‘Really? But one cannot always have just what one would like. Have you never learned that?'

Through the glinting firelight he leaned forward and, with an air she felt to be impudent, raised his glass to her. ‘No, Miss Blake, I never have learned that lesson. And don't intend to. Not that you're the first to try and teach me, either. Maybe I'm a slow learner, but I've never managed to get it through my head. That and one or two other little matters. Like “knowing my place”, for instance. And “paying attention to my betters”. Well – so I would, if I could work out just who those “betters” were. Or why. It may be glaringly obvious to you, Miss Blake. Not to me.'

Draining his glass he set it down sharply on the table beside the whisky bottle and then, as if something had just occurred to him, picked it up again and refilled it.

‘Shall I tell you about myself?' He did not wait for her permission. ‘Aye – I reckon it might be best. I come from a pit village on Tyneside. Not a place you'd much care for. I've not been back there myself, lately, though I reckon I'd not find it much changed. They'll still be sending the lads underground to cut coal as soon as they're big enough. At ten or eleven they can usually manage a full shift, although my father set me off a bit earlier. Took me down with him when I'd just turned three, to sit and keep the rats off his dinner while he was working. That's quite usual. Even at Low Grange, where the Stangways get their money.'

‘I don't know anything about that, Mr Keith.'

‘Of course not. They wouldn't see any reason to tell you. But that's the way of it. Families work as a team in the villages. So did mine. We all went underground together. My father cut the coal. Then he harnessed my mother to a coal-cart and she dragged what he'd cut from the seam to the shaft. Well yes, Miss Blake – because a woman on all fours is smaller than a pony and therefore better – it stands to reason – when it comes to crawling down narrow tunnels in the dark. And then we'd hoist it to the surface if the brat who was operating the winding gear could be bothered to turn his handle. My father coughed to death one night – it often happened. And then, about a year later, I grew an inch or two taller than the man in my mother's house – which made it harder for him to belt me every pay night. I belted him instead. Just once. But then, of course, I had to go. I was fourteen. It was the year they built the Stockton to Darlington, which makes me thirty-four now, as I expect you'll be wondering. And I found out that George Stephenson, who put in that line and built the first locomotive in the world to go with it, had started down a pit on Tyneside, like me. Except that instead of using his spare time learning how to smoke and keep down a bellyful of ale, and chase women, like the rest of us, he'd taught himself to read. I did the same – in Sunday schools, where there's always a good woman like Miss Susannah Saint-Charles ready to give a likely lad his chance. For reasons some of these “good ladies” never acknowledge – and some of them do. I took my chances, Miss Blake – every one of them. Whatever they turned out to be.'

‘Yes. I do believe you, Mr Keith.'

He smiled at her.

‘I'm very pleased to hear it. I worked hard for a long time, physically hard, lived rough and kept my eyes open. Because all it takes, Miss Blake, is to see a need. Any need. And, once you've seen it, to get in there fast and fill it, before anybody else can beat you to it. When the railway mania started, the need I saw was for labour. Not the kind that could ever be recruited in one locality. Men – in their hundreds of thousands – who'd be ready to follow the track as they laid it down. Rootless men who wouldn't go sloping off back to the farm to get the harvest in and leave my job half done. That was the need. I fill it better than some others because there's not a job the navvies do I haven't done myself and couldn't do again. So, when I go on site and tell them to move six cubic yards of earth apiece per shift they know
I
know it can be done. Which means when the great engineers like Mr Locke and Mr Isambard Kingdom Brunel and Mr Morgan de Hay have their mighty projects on hand I'm certain to get my share. Because my men are more reliable than most. I pay them on time, you see, and they trust me.'

‘Really, Mr Keith?'

Once again, through the firelight, he raised his glass to her.

‘I said the
men
trust me, Miss Blake. Maybe I wouldn't make the same claim for women. I was married once, as you know. Men of the class I come from marry young because there's always a chance they may not live to be older. And, often as not, by the time they get to the altar there might well be a bairn on the way. My wife died eight years ago, just as the good times were starting. I have a girl of eleven and one of ten. The boy's eight now. You'll see the significance of that.'

‘Yes.' She nodded. Three children in four years born perhaps not in easy circumstances to a woman whose strength he may well have overestimated, taken for granted, until the last child – the boy – had drained it away completely. One did not have to live in a pit village or a navvy encampment to understand such things. One had only to think of Constantia Saint-Charles and a dozen like her. Had Mr Keith loved his wife, she wondered? But eight years, she rather imagined, was a long time for such a man to mourn. Even to remember. Perhaps a long time for any man.

‘I am so sorry, Mr Keith.' It was the thing one said – the correct formula – to a gentleman who happened to be a widower, although, in truth, she could not feel that Pity and Mr Garron Keith had ever spent much time together.