Mathew's Tale (7 page)

Chapter Eleven

D
AVID MCGILL HAD NEVER
been to a wedding breakfast before. As many did, he wondered aloud about the oddity of the name, given that the meal was in fact a dinner, until John Barclay explained, ‘Likely it has nothing to do with the time of day; rather it goes back to Catholic days when it was the custom to fast before the nuptial Mass.’

The ceremony had been brief, and to the point; the minister had dispensed with hymns, and restricted himself to brief prayers and to the formal exchange of promises, before declaring that the couple were man and wife. Mathew had expected no one other than invited guests to be present, and so he was surprised to see up to two dozen in the church. Most were his village contemporaries, but the most surprising was Sir George Cleland, who was seated, smiling, in his family pew. The old Laird was well past seventy and rarely left his estate, other than for occasional journeys to Edinburgh, and so his presence was seen as a tribute.

‘How did he know?’ Mathew whispered to his groomsman as he waited for Margaret to join them before the altar.

‘How do you think?’ McGill murmured. ‘I told him. When I did he insisted on attending. He still has a down on Armitage for taking the estate business away from you. It was done without his knowledge or consent; by the time he learned of it, you were gone.’

The reception took place at Mathew’s mansion. A cook had been hired for the occasion, with the encouragement that if she impressed, her employment might become permanent.

The guests were few: the minister and the ancient Jessie, said to be aged well over ninety, and dressed in her inevitable black, regardless of the occasion, Hannah, her brother Hector, from Cambusnethan, with his wife, and David McGill, with his eight-year-old son. Lizzie was absent, as she had been from the marriage ceremony. Her husband had explained that she was expecting another child and with a history of miscarriage had been warned by her midwife against exercise or excitement. Sir George had been invited at the kirk, but had pleaded tiredness.

Mathew arranged the seating so that he faced his young near namesake across the table. He had never met young Matt McGill and found that he wanted to get to know him.

‘I hear you’re doing well at the parish school, young man,’ he said as the Cullen Skink was served. ‘Mr Porteous is a very fine teacher; he did well by your mother and me.’

The boy nodded, vigorously. ‘We all like him, Mr Fleming,’ he replied. ‘He makes us laugh sometimes, at the things he writes on the blackboard.’

‘Mr Fleming, is it? Well, I am all for children showing proper respect for their elders. But now that has been established, with your father’s approval I give you permission to call me Mathew.’ He winked at the minister. ‘After all, you and I bear almost the same name; indeed they tell me we would absolutely, but for Mr Barclay’s occasional fondness for Madeira wine.’

‘Not true, not true,’ the clergyman insisted. ‘It was a moment’s aberration, no more, a slip of the quill; Jessie does not allow me Madeira wine until after six o’clock, and I do the registrations in the morning.’

‘It’s what you had the night before that bleared your eyes, I’ll wager,’ Mathew laughed. ‘Whatever, for all the misspelling, you and I are bound by name, young Matt McGill, and if ever you have need of my service, it’s yours.’

As the dinner progressed, Hannah Fleming was bound to admit to herself that her son fitted into his new house as if it had been built for him. She was struck, too, by his natural empathy with the McGill boy, and by the subtle way he offered him respect as his father’s son.

Most of all she was pleased by her son’s choice. Fond as she had been of Lizzie, she had reconciled herself to their misfortune years before, and had seen Margaret, with her common sense, her skills and her resolve, as an ideal partner for him. Now that it had come to pass, to see her new daughter-in-law blooming in her new status . . . even if she was a little thick in the waist . . . warmed her heart.

The evening ran its pleasant course, until there was a ringing from the hall, where the bell at the front door hung. The champagne toast to bride and groom, proposed by David McGill, was barely over. Mathew checked his pocket watch. ‘The carriages are early,’ he murmured, with a rare show of annoyance that Margaret’s day should be less than perfect. ‘They can damn well wait.’

He rose from the table and strode from the room, ready to issue a reproof, only to find, as he threw open the door, a young man standing, cap in hand, in a state of some agitation. A small coach was standing a few yards away, its horse tethered.

‘Mr Fleming,’ he began, ‘I’m sent by Mr Armitage for Mr David McGill. He’s tae come at once. I was gi’en a note for him.’ He handed over an envelope, unsealed.

‘What’s up?’ Mathew demanded. ‘Is it Mrs McGill? Is she poorly?’

‘Ah canna say, sir. It’ll be in the note.’

‘Very well,’ he snapped. ‘Step into the hall and wait. I’ll speak with him.’

He returned to the dining room, and from the doorway beckoned McGill to join him in the reception parlour.

‘This is for you,’ he said, handing over the note. ‘That lad that brought it is in a fair old lather.’

He watched his friend as he opened it and read it, watched his frown grow deeper.

‘Is it . . .’ he began.

McGill read his mind. ‘No, it’s not about Lizzie. It’s Sir George. The old man died in his armchair not three hours ago. Armitage wants me to go to the estate, “to help with arrangements”, he says, as if I was the funeral undertaker. Still, I must go, out of respect for the old Laird, if nothing else. Mathew, can you send the boy home in the carriage with Mr Barclay?’

‘Of course I will.’ He sighed. ‘The poor old man. I was touched that he came to the wedding, even more now it turns out it was more or less the last thing he ever did. He was a good patron to my father, and a good friend of this parish.’

‘Aye, he’ll be mourned,’ McGill agreed. ‘We’ll grieve no’ just for his passing but for what will come after. Now we’ll have Gregor Cleland as the master of the estate. He’s the older of the twins, if only by two hours.’

‘I have not seen nor heard of him for a while,’ Mathew said, ‘not since our paths crossed, literally, eight years ago. He must have been fifteen then. How has he grown?’

‘Into a first-class wastrel,’ his friend replied. ‘Armitage will have his hands full now, and he never was the surest helmsman. Still, it could have been worse.’

‘How’s that?’

‘But for those two precious hours, we might have had Gavin!’

Chapter Twelve

M
ATHEW CLAPPED HIS ONE
eye on the Cleland twins once more, at their father’s funeral. They were side by side in the family pew, where the old Laird had sat at his marriage a few days earlier. The pair were identically dressed and looked like bookends in search of a library.

Mathew’s place was five rows from the front, nearest the aisle, so that they could not fail so see him as they followed the coffin outside after the service, to the grave that was waiting for it within the Cleland plot. They were clad in black with velvet trim, both of them, but their expressions were those of mere participants rather than mourners.

These boys have not grown up
, Mathew thought.

He had no sure notion of which twin was which, although the order in which they had been greeted by John Barclay led him to assume that Sir Gregor, the new baronet, was on the right. Neither gave any show of recognition as they passed him, although he fancied that the presumed Gavin’s blink and quick frown was a sign that a spark had been lit.

At the graveside, Mathew stood a few yards away, in an exclusively male crowd, alongside the Sheriff of Lanark, Robin Stirling. The two had met a year before at a reception given by the Lord Lieutenant of the county. They watched as the old man’s oaken box was lowered into the grave by his sons and four other, older men, family members, Mathew assumed.

As the crowd dispersed, and after he had bid the amiable Sheriff good day, the thin-faced factor Armitage approached him. ‘Mr Fleming, is it?’ he ventured.

‘It is, as I think you knew.’

‘McGill said you would come.’

Mathew felt his hackles rise. ‘Mr McGill knows me well. He’s the closest friend I have. I hope that his situation will be unaffected by the change at Cleland Hall.’

‘There’s no reason to suppose it will be, I assure you. I hear you have become very successful, Fleming. You are a credit to your late father, they say.’

‘And to my very much alive mother,’ he retorted, ‘whose livelihood you threatened less than ten years gone. I have not forgotten that, Mr Armitage, nor will I ever.’

‘Mr Fleming, upon my word, I regret that; it was a bad choice on my part. Your father did say that if anything went amiss with him you were ready to take over. I should have trusted him. If you wish the estate business returned to you, then of course I can arrange that.’

‘And throw another man out of work? I thank you, but that’s not my way of doing, sir. In any event, my life has followed a different course.’

As the conversation progressed, Mathew began to realise a truth that had escaped him until that morning. He saw that with his business success and his wealth had come something else. Within his own county, he was a man of influence; people deferred to him, and when their number included the factor of the shire’s biggest estate, it was significant.

The man persisted. ‘But if Hinshelwood was to be dismissed simply because his work was below the standard the new baronet requires . . .’

‘How many ways of saying “No” do you possess, Mr Armitage? I have only one at my command, but it is definitive.’

The factor showed him a thin smile, which only made Mathew even more wary of the man. ‘The saddles that you made for my new master and his brother are very satisfactory,’ he ventured. ‘There may be commissions for more.’

‘Thank you,’ Mathew replied; he had assumed that Sir George’s order was for his sons, and wondered how they would react if they ever recalled that their manufacturer had once threatened to kick their privileged arses.

‘In that case,’ he continued, ‘I trust you will see that the account is settled promptly. It was held back because of my wedding, and further because of the funeral, but my wife will be sending it to the estate within the week.’

‘Of course, sir; I will instruct McGill.’

Who is many times the man you are and should be in your job
, Mathew thought but did not say.

Chapter Thirteen

A
S ARMITAGE HAD PROMISED
, the bill for the saddles was settled promptly. However the further orders at which he had hinted never materialised.

The loss of that custom was of not the slightest concern to Mathew. Indeed there might have been a marginal benefit, since he had given Sir George a generous discount, and would have felt obliged to continue it.

The emotional peaks and troughs of the two contrasting services within Carluke Kirk soon became only memories as Mr and Mistress Fleming of Waterloo House established their domesticity. In the weeks that followed, Margaret bloomed. She continued to support him in his business, travelling to Netherton with him on most days of the week to help with the accounts and with his ever-growing correspondence. When he told her that after the child was born he would need to find three people to replace her, there was little jest in his words.

For as long as Margaret was comfortable with it, they entertained. The cook had passed her test, and a housekeeper had also joined the staff. Mathew had taken to heart his lesson from his meeting with Armitage, learning from it that influence was beginning to shift from the exclusive grasp of landowners into the hands of manufacturers. Although he still regarded himself as a craftsman he realised that he was one of the new industrial breed, and he had become determined to be a significant presence among them.

Sheriff Stirling was a regular dinner guest at Waterloo House, as was Baron Dalzell, one of the senior noblemen of the county, and a few others, men of position and respect within the economic community that was growing bigger in and around Glasgow year by year. Mathew had no specific agenda, but his common sense told him that he must have a voice that might be heard in considerations that might affect his company.

While the guests were all male, that being the nature of the community that Mathew sought to address and influence, Margaret always took her place at the dinner table, as hostess, but also as a participant in discussions that ensued. This was a private and personal test that Mathew had set for his guests. Any who appeared irritated by the fact that a woman should express a view on public and business affairs, or who were patronising towards her, were crossed off any future guest list.

In the months following their marriage, he and his wife began to look at what might lie ahead for the company. He was aware that its strength lay only in a single product, and so they began to discuss also an expanded range of goods.

‘People are travelling more,’ she remarked, one evening. ‘Did you hear what your newest acquaintance, Sir Graham Stockley, said last week over dinner, or were you taken up with your crony, the Sheriff?’

‘Probably the latter,’ he admitted. ‘What was it?’

‘It was a vision of the future, he said, and not too far ahead either. He sees a time when stagecoaches will be replaced by carriages, with iron wheels, set on rails, and drawn by great steam engines called locomotives, that move much faster than horses, and never tire.’

He smiled. ‘I hope they are safer than the one that killed the builder of this house.’

‘They are. There is a man called Stephenson, apparently . . .’

He nodded. ‘Yes, I know. The first proper railways are in existence already, I believe, in north England. Stockley was merely repeating what many expect: today railways are mostly for hauling coal, but soon they will carry people, many of them, and at a low cost. They say that by the end of this century all the British cities will be linked by them, but I believe that it will happen even sooner.’

‘In that case we should plan for it,’ she said. ‘As these railways develop, travel will come within the means of folk who have never been able to afford it before. People who travel need baggage if they are going any distance. We should make it for them: cases, valises, hand baggage.’

Mathew took no convincing; he accepted her proposition at once. ‘Then let us do it,’ he said. ‘Let us try the market, in a small way. If these products are to be successful they must be like the saddle: light, portable and easy to use. I will get to work on some designs, and have some samples created. You are right, Margaret; the railways will mean cheaper travel and that will change the world.’

He smiled, as broadly as she had ever seen him.

‘What’s amusing you?’ she asked.

‘The way your red hair twinkles in the firelight,’ he replied.

‘Don’t tease me. What is it?’

‘Simply this. It happens that Stockley’s interest in the railways is more than casual. You know his main business is mining coal in a place called Coatbridge, on the other side of the county?’

‘Yes, my late husband called it “hell on earth”. Coal mining is a filthy business, he said.’

‘And so it is, but families are fed because of it, and Stockley, to his credit, tries to make it as tolerable for his miners as can be.’

‘So he’s not just a man rich from the sweat of others,’ she chuckled.

‘No, he is a kind man, with an eye to the future, as you said. Coal is not his only interest: he mines ironstone also. Now he has a grand plan, to use them both. There is a new process, he tells me, called hot blast, which means that iron can be made using much less coal, at a fraction of the cost. Sir Graham will use that to set up a foundry in Coatbridge, to manufacture parts for the new railways.

‘And,’ he added, ‘he has offered me the chance to share it. He wants me to be his partner in the new venture.’

Her smile vanished, and what he called her ‘business face’ was set in place. ‘In what amount?’

‘Equal. Fifty per cent. We will provide fifty per cent of the initial capital between us and his bank will advance the rest. He has a full order book already from Stephenson in England, and from others.’

‘Why you?’ Margaret asked. ‘He must have other wealthy friends. The man barely knows you.’

‘True, but he knows that I have acquaintances in London. He perceives an advantage there.’

‘I see. But what is the cost?’

‘Five thousand pounds, from each of us.’

‘Mathew,’ she exclaimed, ‘that’s a fortune. It’s nearly all the money that the business has available.’

‘I can borrow half of it from the British Linen Bank; that has been agreed already. What do you say?’

‘Are you certain this is a good venture?’

‘As certain as I’ve ever been. These blast furnaces and their moulded iron will be the stimulus for all sorts of things, not just locomotives.’

‘Then do it. You’ve never been wrong yet.’

Two weeks after Mathew signed the agreement with Sir Graham Stockley, in late November, Margaret went into labour. Her pregnancy had been uneventful. He had wanted to engage a specialist doctor from Glasgow, but she had insisted that Henry Lindsay, the local physician, and Mistress Blyth, the midwife, had seen enough children into the world to know what they were doing.

The child was a boy, but he chose an unfortunate place to arrive. Margaret felt the first contractions ten days after she had been told she would, in the back of Mathew’s carriage as he was driving them both to the factory in Netherton. He took another road and headed straight for Dr Lindsay’s rooms, but even as they arrived at his door, their son made his first appearance in the world.

After the midwife had done her work, Mathew carried his wife inside, while the doctor took the baby. ‘That was a close-run thing,’ he murmured, as he laid her on the bed in the surgery. As he spoke he noticed the blood.

He drew Lindsay across. ‘Doctor. What’s this?’

The physician shooed him away to admire his son then bent to examine his patient. ‘She has a small tear,’ he said when he was done. ‘Just the one, though, and it will heal fast, wi’ a stitch. He’s a big bairn, your laddie.’

Mathew was bewildered. His life had been one of method, skill and organisation; everything worked to a plan. Spontaneity did not come naturally to him.

‘What do we do?’ he asked. ‘I cannot take her home in the carriage.’

‘No,’ Lindsay agreed, ‘that you cannot. They must stay here, until Mistress Fleming heals, then you can take them both home.’

Work forgotten, Mathew stayed with his wife and child for the rest of the day. Margaret was drowsy, and still in pain from her speedy delivery of such a large baby. The doctor explained that it would be unwise to give her laudanum, as the drug might find its way into her milk. She accepted that without complaint, and her husband watched as she put their son to the breast for the first time.

The baby had his mother’s red hair, he thought, as he looked at them in the lamplight. The rest of his features were crumpled and unfathomable, but his body was long, an early sign, Mathew hoped, that he might grow to his father’s height.

He stayed until after the second feed, then left them both to sleep and drove his carriage home. The business was not a worry to him. He had a good foreman, and he had sent a message to him advising him of what had happened, and that he should take temporary charge as they had planned.

Hannah was waiting for him in Waterloo House. ‘Where is Margaret?’ she asked as soon as she saw that he was alone.

‘Taken to her bed in the doctor’s hospital, her and our child. Happy day, Granny.’ He hugged her to him.

Over dinner, he explained what had happened, and the unusual site of the baby’s arrival. He grinned as he told the story, with relief rather than humour, but his mother did not.

‘Bairns are best born in the mither’s ain bed,’ she declared.

‘Another piece of homespun wisdom, Mother?’ he suggested.

‘No. A truth that every midwife knows, and maist women who’ve had a child will confirm. Better, too, wi’ a doctor nowhere near.’

‘Lindsay would be offended to hear you say that, but he did arrive very late in the day. All the work was done by then.’

Hannah drew him a severe look. ‘His perhaps. Yours and Margaret’s is only jist beginning, and it’ll gang on as long as ye live.’

‘And we’ll be proud to do it, proud parents both.’

‘What will ye cry’ him?’ she asked.

‘That we have still to discuss. Margaret was too tired for any subject to be raised.’

‘After you then?’

‘No. After my father, perhaps, but there are many Roberts in the world, and maybe another would only add to the confusion. But I won’t choose alone; it’ll be Margaret’s decision as much as mine. Now, let’s toast them both in that fine ginger wine of yours, and then I’m for bed. I have never been so tired since I left the army.’

It may have been the ginger wine he had drunk, it may have been the blood he had seen, but that night, Mathew’s dream of his newborn son was infiltrated by the return of an old enemy. For the first time in his recent memory, for the first time since Margaret, he was visited by the Voltigeur.

Forcing himself awake, he sat up in bed, bolt upright, sweat-covered, in damp bedlinen, yet cold and shuddering, with a feeling of dread and an ache in the spot where the Frenchie’s sword had pierced him.

The clock on the mantelpiece showed only ten minutes past five, but he knew he would find no more sleep that night. He bathed and shaved, forcing his mind to dwell only on his new son, and running over names that he might suggest to Margaret. He was certain of one, but there was another possibility that might require a little tact when he put it forward.

The cook was still asleep when he went downstairs, so he went into the kitchen, lit the lamps, and cut a slice from a load baked the afternoon before. He spread it with his mother’s damson jam . . . not only the best seamstress in Carluke, Hannah had been, by common consent, its best jam-maker.

Still hungry he spread another slice, filled a pewter pot with milk, and set both on a tray that he carried one-handed, leaving the other free for a lamp to light the way through to his own parlour, the room he had taken to calling his study.

He lit all of the lamps and candles, so that he had enough light to read. A low fire was burning in the grate and he chose to sit beside it, putting down his tray on a small table. Before settling down he crossed to his desk and picked up a folder of papers.

They included copies, sent to him by Stockley, of firm orders from the Robert Stephenson company in Newcastle, for components and wheels for new locomotives. He had never seen a locomotive, but as he had explained to Margaret, he knew of their potential. As he looked at the orders he realised their profitability also, and trusted that the Stephensons had the funds to pay them. If they did, and the cast-iron business grew, then he and Stockley were on the verge of a new level of wealth.

He had been reading for an hour, making a note here and there, when he was startled by the sound of the doorbell. Mathew had never worried before about the relative isolation of his house, but the arrival of an infant had awakened all sorts of new considerations within him, even making him reconsider his refusal to have firearms in the place.

He picked up a heavy metal poker from the fireplace and went to answer the call, hoping that it had not awakened his mother.

Mathew did not recognise the young man who stood there as he opened the door, but he did know the look on the face of a messenger who was fearful of the reception his news might be given.

‘Yes?’ he said, more roughly than he might have.

‘Ah’m frae Cam’nethan, sir, frae Dr Lindsay. He says ye need tae come richt away. Yer wife’s been taken badly.’

Two things had made Mathew Fleming a very good soldier. He was a deadly shot with a musket or a pistol, and even more important, he never panicked. And so the feeling that swept over him was completely new to him. He felt his legs go weak, and he grabbed at the doorpost for a moment to steady himself.

‘Whit is it, son?’

His mother’s voice came from behind him, from the tip of the stairs. He turned and saw her standing, in her long nightgown, candlestick in hand.

‘It’s Margaret,’ he answered. ‘She’s not well, the doctor says.’

‘Then we maun go. Ah’ll be dressed in a minute.’

‘You have no need to come, Mother.’

‘Oh, but Ah do. That man Lindsay’s no fool, and no’ one tae panic either. God forbid, but ye micht need me, and the bairn too.’