Portrait of a Scotsman by Evie Dunmore
Chapter 18
He set out to inspect the mining hamlets right after drinking a bucket of strong breakfast tea. The night had been short; at some point Harriet had left her side of the mattress, possibly in search of warmth, and he had woken to the soft weight of her breasts pressed against his back. He had lain staring at the wall, the world reduced to the sensation of her breath brushing over his neck in gentle puffs. The memory of her shape was still hot like a lingering burn on his skin as he joined his party in the Drover’s Inn coach: his new mine manager, Mr. Stewart—a tall, clean-shaven Scotsman from Dundee whom he’d met before in London—and taciturn Mr. Wright, a civil engineer who was originally from Surrey but now resided in St. Andrews. The mining engineer’s expertise was not yet needed, hence the man had stayed back to leave room for one of the lads from the inn, who was to carry Wright’s camera equipment.
Spraying rain shrouded the valley, and when they descended from the coach at the village entrance, they were greeted by chilly blasts of wind cutting through their robust tweed coats. The settlement stretching before them would have been miserable even under a cloudless sky.
“As you can see, the road is raised above the house entrances,” Stewart said, wrestling with his papers while also trying to hold the umbrella over his long body. “This is not the case in Heather Row—out of the two hamlets, this one here will require more significant improvements.”
Heather Row was located within walking distance from the inn, but Lucian had decided to start their inspection on the far side of the mine at the smaller colliery and the older settlement, Drummuir Grove. It matched the mental image he had developed based on the maps Stewart had left for him back at the inn: a crooked chapel to their left, and thirty old stone cottages each on either side of the straight dirt road. The road was in bad condition and riddled with black puddles; and yes, its higher elevation meant rainwater flowed straight into the lodgings to the left and right.
“What about the refuse ditches?” he asked.
Mr. Wright took a pencil and notebook from the inside of his coat. “They’re too close,” he said. “Will be a nuisance whenever temperatures are warmer,” he added, and smoothed his ruddy mustache. “I suggest a greater distance by at least six feet.”
“So we are redrawing the ditches.”
“Correct.”
He had suspected as much from the map.
They were being watched; while the rest of the community was at work over at the mine, the elderly would be home, minding the toddlers and keeping an eye on any suspicious activities from behind the curtains. Memories encroached, of the day when he arrived back in Argyll to fetch his grandmother. The once familiar cottages had seemed smaller, the few stray sheep sicklier, the winding path muddier. No one had recognized him, aged nineteen and wearing a fine coat, and the lads he had approached had been wary of his clean skin and the London vowels that had crept into his speech. Nanny MacKenzie? She had died in February. Blinding agony, to realize he had been too late by a month. A month. After seven years of waiting. They had buried her in the graveyard of their old hamlet, her spot marked by an already rotting wooden cross. Had she been waiting for him by the window in her patched shawl, her tired gaze on the village road, holding on to hope until the very end?
He blinked against the rain in his eyes. “How bad is the damp?”
“Much worse here than over in Heather Row,” said Stewart. “Half the older miners appear afflicted with rheumatism. The road is the main culprit, but the roofing contributes its share.”
The bloody roofing looked as though it hadn’t been touched in half a century. Curse Rutland. Curse the consortium that had taken the mine off Rutland’s hands and continued to charge rent for these hovels. He’d call in the earl’s debts, then use the money for renovations.
Doors were opening; people were emerging to inspect them more closely. Young children soon stopped hovering behind their minders and came running to circle Mr. Wright as he readied his camera to photograph the ailing water tank. Lucian approached the nearest cottage, where an elderly woman stood leaning against the doorjamb. She had tied a red handkerchief around her hair, but the few tendrils that had escaped were still sooty.
“I’m Blackstone,” he told her.
Her watery gaze took stock of him; he felt her assessment go through his bones. “They told us you would come,” she said in Scots. She revealed all her remaining teeth in a smile. “They say you visit the hamlets.”
“May I look inside your home?”
She nodded and stepped aside. He knew from the blueprints that the cottages here had two rooms, a kitchen and a bedroom. When Wright joined him, Lucian toed the flagstones with the tip of his boot. “Stone floors,” he said. “Make a note, I want wooden floors with the proper insulation underneath.”
Mr. Wright was scribbling diligently.
“I want a larder added to the back of each house—after the ditches have been redrawn, that is.”
The woman followed him around in the small space, careful to balance her obvious pride in her meagerly supplied but tidily organized kitchen with harried sighs acknowledging the damp and missing larder and badly done ditches. No need; he saw how dire it was.
“What happened?” he growled when he was back outside in fresh air. “Accommodation was more humane in the sixties.”
Wright and Stewart looked away, embarrassed, as though they could sense the emotion beating through him. Are you a violent man, then? Harriet’s face was tied to the question; he could see her, wide-eyed in her parents’ parlor. He was, at least, an angry man.
The smell of poverty hung in his clothes and hair after visiting the cottage, this distinct blend of damp walls and stale cigarette smoke, of the watery stew that always simmered on the stove, of sweat and clammy woolen clothes that were never given the time to fully dry after washing because they were needed for wearing again. It smelled like all the evenings when he’d come home as a boy after the shift. Hours later, while they were shuttled to Heather Row, he was still contemplating razing Drummuir Grove to the ground.
They ate their packed luncheon in the empty classroom of the village school before the next assessment. The situation here was indeed better: dry brick houses, most of them boasting a parlor and decently sized windows. They finally ended the inventory in the kitchen of Mr. Boyd, the community spokesman. Boyd’s lined face gave no clue about his age, but he had a head full of thick chestnut curls and all his teeth in a row. A recent accident with a runaway wagon had put his arm in a sling, so he couldn’t go underground, but his wife and daughters were out on the field sorting coal.
“Here in Heather Row, it’s the water for the households that’s the main problem,” he explained while his mother was serving them oversweetened tea. See here, said that tea, we have the means for sugar, and lots of it. “The water comes from the newly opened pit, but there’s something wrong with the filtering process. If you’d look at the pump well here, you’ll find lots of matter in the water and there’s bouts of dysentery in the community.” Boyd’s uninjured hand was broad, callused, and forever dusty, and it rested perfectly motionless on the table surface as he spoke. A calm man. He was also deeply wary of Lucian; the look in his habitually squinting blue eyes made no secret of it.
“Mr. Wright here will look at the water,” Lucian said.
Boyd’s practiced gaze measured the engineer, who was presently eyeing the contents of his tea mug with great suspicion.
“I’ll be blunt,” Lucian said, “we’ve work to do. The first thing I must ask of you is to talk to the men about joining the region’s trade union.”
Boyd’s lips twitched, as if suppressing his impulse to spit. “No worries, sir. We’ve no intention to unionize.”
“You mistake me,” Lucian said. “I want you to put it to the men to join the union.”
Boyd regarded him with a poker face and said nothing; Stewart and Wright were puzzled; the lad carrying the equipment was watching him with blatant astonishment.
“You didn’t consider it before because Drummuir is on its last legs?” Lucian prodded.
Boyd gave a huff. “Oh, we considered it, but it was made very clear that if we joined, we’d be shut down,” he said. “Drummuir, she’s become a tough and stingy old mistress, isn’t she.”
That was one way to sum up a bad investment. “She is.”
Resignation warred with stubborn pride in Boyd’s expression. “Durham, Northumberland, the south of Wales—that’s where the pliant fields are these days, I understand.”
“I intend to revive Drummuir’s profitability by investing in transport infrastructure and new cutting technologies, and not by working miners into an early grave for a pittance,” Lucian said. “So put it to the men—unionize.”
“All right,” Boyd said after a long pause. “I’ll do that.”
“And I want the accommodation communally owned. Discuss that, too.”
Boyd was left bewildered by these developments, but his wide shoulders relaxed and he became talkative, first about the weather, then about the idiosyncrasies of the different coal seams that couldn’t be found in the ledgers and official reports. He was eventually interrupted when the kitchen door behind him opened and a black-haired child entered, a boy. He was five or seven years of age, impossible to tell, stunted in growth as he was. At the sight of the visitors, he dropped the bucket and the contents spilled across the floor. Turnips, thin and pale like bones.
“Och, Ruri,” said Boyd, and shook his head.
The lad didn’t move; his eyes locked on Lucian and Lucian instantly knew what he saw: a man in a fine suit and a tall hat, with a thick silver pocket watch chain on display, flanked by other men who looked to be from the city; a picture that spelled trouble—a mum walking on eggshells for days, perhaps, or an angry da, or less food in the larder. Lucian’s chest tightened with resentment, and it worsened while he watched Boyd’s gray-haired mother pick turnips off the flagstones. Absolution came from the clanging of a distant bell—five o’clock. The shift was over for the day, and they took their leave.
Outside, the weather had turned, and beneath the coal odor the refined air smelled like soil warming after the rain. Boyd walked with them, demonstrating his approval. “My eldest daughter’s wedding is in five days’ time,” he said, nodding and raising his healthy hand in greeting at some of the miners returning from the field.
“My congratulations,” Lucian said. It was a request for him to pay for the festivities, which boded well. Boyd wouldn’t take his money if he still distrusted him.
The next moment, he did a double take. A vivid flash of red had drawn his attention to the bench in front of the last house in the row. His wife. Sitting at the center of a pack of small children like a happy hen in a nest. Briefly, it was so silent in his head he thought he could hear the clang of the chisels from under the rocks.