Siddon Rock (21 page)

Young George took a sample of the salt to Doctor Allen and asked if he could have a look at it under his microscope, saying,
If I can't work out what's going on, Doc, there won't be a salt-works business left
. The men took turns in looking, but the oblongated crystals told them nothing of their strangeness.

Sybil Barber heard of the problem from Brigid Connor as she collected the bread and meat for the Two Mile.
Tell Young George to bring some in
, Sybil said.
I'll try it in the bread and corned beef.
To Sybil's dismay, when she took the bread from the oven it had formed a flat, lumpen stodge with a strange yellow pattern through the dough.

The corned beef fared even worse, but luckily Sybil was warned by the bread disaster and tried only one piece. When she took it from the brine she telephoned Young George to come to the shop.

Now Sybil was renowned for her corned beef, and she guarded its method carefully. She had found the handwritten recipe during her renovations of Barber's Butchery & Bakery, under the ancient linoleum and layers of newspaper that acted as lining.
Irish Spiced Beef.
When she read the recipe Sybil realised this certainly wasn't something that Alf Barber had done. Later, she set about the time-consuming spicing and cooking, and turned local beef into something similar to the ancient Irish delicacy. Now, with a tweak of difference here and there, Irish Spiced Beef had become known for miles around as well worth the trip to Siddon Rock.

It was, then, understandable that Sybil was considerably upset by the appearance of a particularly nasty and nauseating yellow-green film on the beef. It was this she telephoned Young George to come and see. Together they considered what combination of minerals could have caused this, until Sybil lost patience and sent a perturbed Young George off with, as she told Granna,
a flea in his ear.

Granna wrinkled her nose at the foul-looking meat lying in the tray.
Good grief, I wouldn't feed that to the dogs
, she said.
But you've got to feel sorry for the man; that salt's been lying fallow for generations. The concentration of George Henry must be enormous.

What do you mean?
Sybil had no knowledge of George Henry's story.

It was George Henry who started the salt lakes, on his journey into the desert.
Granna always liked telling this story.
Just look at the map of salt lakes from here towards the inland and you'll see where he peed – and other things.
Some details were too personal for even Granna to elaborate on.
Salt drawn up from the earth mingling with the salt of his body fluids, that's what started them all. And our own lake is even worse, because that's where he drowned himself too, so it's concentrated George Henry in the dry salt.

That's disgusting
. Sybil took the water she had used for the experimental corned beef and poured it down the sink.
So why did he drown himself anyway?

Something to do with business, I think.
Granna was purposely vague.
I don't rightly remember. But things done way back do have a way of showing up later.
And with that, she left the shop.

At the State and Farmers' Bank, Young George and David gave the manager the report on the salt-mining business. As he read it he pursed his lips and drummed his fingers on the desk next to the single page of handwritten notes. Then
he smoothed a hand over his already slick hair and said,
The debt must be cleared. Immediately. There is no indication in here that this business will ever be anything but bad. Where, may I ask, has the money gone?

I don't know
, Young George said.
I don't understand it at all.

Obviously not into the business.
The manager was less than sympathetic.

But where else?
Young George was perplexed and more than a little distressed.
It's not as if there's been a lot of payments. All we've had are wages, and they're not much, and some payments for formwork for the ponds, and the rakes. Then bags, of course, for the finished salt. That's all there, stored in the shed on the farm. And some costs for when I travel around trying to get someone to buy it. Not much at all really, certainly not a whole farm's worth.

I told you last time that it had to be showing a profit
, the manager said.

No
. Young George was adamant, and his practical self took over.
Something's wrong. At least let me have a real look at the accounts before you sell everything out from under me.

The manager steepled his fingers and leaned over the wide desk towards Young George.
Two days
, he said.
Two days and not a minute more.

And so Young George and David sat down with the box of paper that made up their accounting records and sorted the bills into one pile and the payments into another. And indeed there were not many papers in either pile.

David added up the bills pile, and Young George added up the payments. They did not equal each other, with the payments considerably more than the bills.

Forgot the wages
, David said, and added them to the bills list, but this made little difference. There was still a huge gap, even when they swapped piles and recalculated.

Give me the chequebook
, Young George said, and on every payment that had been made he wrote a cheque number.

This is too messy
, David said.
Let's do it right.
And he ruled up a piece of paper with three columns: Bills, Payments, Cheque number/Cash payment. An hour later all columns were filled with matching figures: Bill: £25, Payment: £25, Cheque number: 1. Every bill, payment and cheque that had been paid was recorded in three columns, from the day they started building the first channel to the last wages cheque. Just a few lines were needed for expenditures, and a couple of pages for wages, for Young George had been correct when he had told the bank manager that there had been few expenses.

Now
, David said,
every row across is correct. So when we add up the columns down, there's no reason that they won't all be equal.
But when he finished, equal they most certainly were not.

Then Young George tried, adding each column three times and getting three lots of different answers.
This is ridiculous
, he said, and thought of Brigid Connor doing his sums at school for him.
I'm going to get Brigid, she's the smart one.

Brigid Connor arrived the next morning with a box of old farm papers that she'd found when clearing out her own office at the Two Mile.
Brought these for you to look through while I'm sorting out your mess
, she said cheerfully.
They're really old records. If you're interested, right at the bottom of the box is George Henry's stuff from the first stock and station agency.

Brigid checked every entry in every column in the ledger of Geo. Aberline & Son Minerals. She added them across and down, and still they would not correlate. She went to the verandah where Young George sat staring out at his land and David was reading old records from the box she had brought.

Well, I'm damned if I know what's going on.
Brigid was puzzled.
No matter what I do, these bloody figures have a life of their own. They just don't want to be the same as each other. I think you have to take them to the bank and see what they can make of them. I'm sure they can sort it out.

David held up an old ledger he had been looking through.
Well, whatever the problem is, our book-keeping can't be any worse than George Henry's. He'd have to have been the worst businessman ever. Look, there's absolutely nothing in this ledger, except for one entry. See here
, he held up the dusty book,
all it says is ‘Debt repaid'. And look at the signature. It's not G. H. Aberline, like all the other old papers. It looks like Beally, or Beatty, or …

I don't give a rat's arse for that old stuff
, Young George snapped. Through the night, the
thunk
of an auctioneer's hammer closing the sale of his farm had kept him awake,
and this morning it was a regular beat in his head.
Bloody well concentrate on sorting this lot out because if we don't the farm goes and we end up with bloody nothing.

But sorting it out was not possible and they went again to the bank. There the manager looked at the figures that did not correlate, looked at the debt to be paid, looked at the lack of assets in Geo. Aberline & Son Minerals. His face became shut and stony.

Look here
, David said, and put the report about the unusual crystals in front of the manager, turning it to face him so that he could read it without exertion.

Yes
, Young George said eagerly.
Look. This could be the making of the town. Something different is happening in the salt at the lake. We'll find out what it is, and make it work for us.

But the Aberlines had to admit that they had not yet sent off more samples, and that there was no income from the business, yet a lot of money had been spent on it.

All I know
, the manager said,
is that your accounts are in chaos and can't be understood by anyone. The business is obviously unviable. The debt has to be paid back, and paid back now. Can you do that?

Young George recognised the churning in his gut as despair. He shook his head. David looked out the window towards the wild seas of the English Channel.

In that case the auction will be next month, to give us time to advertise both the farm and the business. If things change in the meantime, please come in immediately.

The town rallied around for the Aberline mortgagee sale, but the debt was too large to be redeemed by friends and neighbours buying this and that and returning them to Young George. The farm itself was sold to Fatman Aberline, who was finding that his acreage wasn't producing as much as it used to, and needed more land.

Sorry, Young George
, he said to his uncle.
But better me than some stranger who doesn't know the place.

As for the business of Geo. Aberline & Son Minerals, no-one thought it worth bidding on, and within twelve months the channels and crystallising pans disappeared back into the smooth glitter of the lake.

Young George, that man who thought he had escaped the sadness of the Aberlines, saw his son onto the train to the capital. There David found work on a passenger ship as a steward, and returned to the coast of Brittany where his experience as a salt-worker gave him residency.
I feel right at home here
, he wrote in his letters to Young George.
It's so flat and salty, if you remember the landscape. And I don't have to squint very much to see the lighthouse offshore as our silo.

As for Young George himself, the man who was de facto mayor of Siddon Rock disappeared from the town's view, going to neither church nor the pub but staying put in Brigid Connor's married couple's cottage at the Two Mile, where he moved with his self-effacing wife, Hettie. He helped Brigid on the farm, and at night he sat on the front step of the cottage and pondered the strange convolutions of life. He found himself thinking about his grandfather, George Henry Aberline, and wondered if this was how he had felt
before he drowned himself in the salt lake. Sometimes Macha sat with him for a few minutes, for even though she said nothing, she knew well enough how the language of a place can suddenly change and not be understood.

 

THE SPRING BALL
was the annual peak of social activity in the district, and the year Young George Aberline's farm was sold by the bank was no exception.

For Alistair Meakins, the only source of gowns in the district, there were moments during the weeks before the first Saturday of September when he wished he was in any other trade, in any other town except Siddon Rock. But the women of the town and outlying farms relied on his immaculate judgement, and knew him as friend and confidant. They were at ease discussing different styles of gowns. They took notice when Alistair quoted the
Berlei Review
, emphasising how important well-fitting undergarments were to the hang of a skirt or the smoothness of a bodice. At this time of the year Alistair's expertise was stretched to its limit as he advised and assisted each woman, always aware that duplication of any sort would not be tolerated.

Each year Alistair prepared for the onslaught of customers demanding original gowns by bringing in con
signments on approval from several suppliers, so that the unwanted ones could be returned. For weeks he advised on gown style and colours, suggesting a soft flowing fabric to some and steering others towards more concealing brocades and satins. Brigid Connor, for instance, who was thin and wiry from years of physical work, looked wonderfully feminine in an ornate bodice and flowing skirt; whereas a firmly woven fabric helped Marge Redall hold her more generous qualities in check.

This year Marge chose a gown of lustre satin, and Alistair quipped that her cloud of blue notes would look quite stunning against the deep amethyst colour. As he pinned and marked where to ease the fit a little across the hips, Alistair glanced up at the Dior poster on the wall of the fitting room and was not surprised to catch a look of puzzled bemusement in the model's eyes.
Don't you look like that
, he thought wryly,
not all of us are tall and skinny. We just have to do the best with what we have.

Marge was also looking at the poster of the elegant Dior model posed against a backdrop of the Eiffel Tower.
Penny for your thoughts, Marge
, Alistair said.

I went to Paris once
, Marge replied.
Before I met Bluey it was. Years before the war. There's a bridge there that was built in 1578. We can't imagine that here, can we. To walk on something built nearly four hundred years ago.

Alistair sat back and looked closely at Marge. There was something in her voice that was an ill-fit with her tough appearance, a musicality when she spoke of Paris.
Well,
aren't you the dark horse
, he said.
You've not said anything before about being in Europe.

There are things we don't spout around, aren't there?
Marge said.
Years ago. A different place, a different life.
Marge was quiet then until Alistair finished marking alterations and she left the shop.

Some nights during these weeks before the ball, after he had expended what he thought was his last iota of energy, Alistair went home and collapsed on the chair on his verandah. He was quite unable to think of food, let alone cook for himself.
But at least
, he thought,
it's nothing like the time during the war.

As the war in Europe had spread and sucked the world into its vortex, Alistair mourned the loss of style. The goods displayed to him by travelling salesmen became skimpier and shoddier, and he told the anxious salesmen that
to look at them almost breaks my heart.

Skirts lost their swirl, sewing thread broke and materials thinned until they disappeared. But it was the lack of underwear that particularly concerned Alistair. He wrote letters to new suppliers and spent a fortune on telephone calls, all to no effect. No matter where he tried, a decent brassiere or an elegant pair of knickers was not to be found.

This last indignity put him on the train to the capital in search of a solution, but after two long days of visiting manufacturers he had found nothing but empty warehouses and silent machinery.

At the U-form Lingerie Factory a sign nailed to the open front door proclaimed an Auction Sale of Goods and Equipment to be held the following week. Alistair walked around the factory floor through the rows of silent sewing machines, considering the degree of difficulty in their use. He sat at one, thinking through the workings of the mechanism. When he was convinced he could use it he went straight to the auctioneer's office. Within a few minutes he owned a commercial machine, several bolts of fine linen and assorted lengths of underwear silk and celanese in peach, pink and ecru. In the boxes were also matching sewing thread, various widths of elasticised cotton, hook-and-eye fasteners, bundles of laces and trims, and a package containing paper patterns for slips, knickers and brassieres. He thought he was finished then, but the auctioneer drew him aside.
You might want to look at these
, he said.

Alistair opened a square of blue tissue paper, and shook out a length of black silk. It was so light and fine that it floated in the air like a dark pool.
I'll have this
, he said.
There's about enough for a set, and I know just the person to make it for.

Then the auctioneer unrolled a length of watermark silk taffeta. Even in the dusty storeroom light the blue and green shimmered like the wings of a dragonfly.

That too
, Alistair said.
All of it. It's too beautiful to leave behind.

Alistair arranged to have his purchases delivered to his home by one of the travelling salesmen who visited him
regularly. He had no desire to have the town know that he had them.

When the goods arrived Alistair rearranged the lounge-room by placing one of the large chairs on the back verandah and throwing over it a brightly coloured cover that had been on the shelf of the shop for some time. The reds and yellows in the material gave the usually neat and prim verandah a rakish air.
Quite Spanish-looking,
Alistair thought. In the storage shed behind the shop there was a small table and, by balancing this on the trolley he used for moving boxes of goods, he dragged it down the lane to his house where it fitted perfectly into the space left by the chair.

Alistair spent two Sundays dismantling and reassembling the sewing machine, with the assistance of an old instruction book the auctioneer had given him. When he had the machine running smoothly, he unfolded the paper patterns and set out to discover the workings of women's underwear.

Alistair started with a petticoat. He studied the shape of each pattern piece, comparing it with a garment taken from the shop.
Brilliantly done
, he murmured, when he saw how folding and sewing material into darts moulded the garment to the shape of the body.

After several evenings of study he decided that the patterns were only a guide to proportion and the best angle to cut the material for maximum effect; and, with the assistance of a set of
Women's Mirror Sewing Guides
to tell him about finishing and detailing, he tested his skill with a
piece of the cheapest material. To his delight the petticoat formed easily under his hands.
Can't tell the difference
, he said as he compared the made garment with the one from the shop.

With confidence now he cut and sewed the first garments of a line of brassieres, panties and petticoats that he labelled
La'Mour Ladies Wear.
These he folded ready to take to the shop. The fine black silk he sewed into panties, camisole and a half-slip. He put this special and delicate lingerie in a tissue-lined box and placed it under the counter at the shop with a card attached –
for Allison.

Now, with the war a recent memory and quality clothing, both under and upper, more easily available, Alistair considered ending the
La'Mour
range. It had become an albatross around his neck, as the garments were so popular that he spent all his free time cutting and sewing. He had, after Allison's walk down Wickton Street when she had seen Paris, thought about employing someone to sew for him.
After all
, he thought,
the great couturiers don't actually do the sewing themselves, do they.
But on consideration it did not seem to be a good idea, letting the town know that he made the range.
Things need to be from somewhere else to sell well
, he told himself.
It's not the same if things are local, not the same cachet.

And so Alistair reluctantly continued to make the popular range of underwear in his lounge-room. But his heart was not in it, and he gradually stopped renewing out-of-stock pieces until the range ended by attrition.
If a customer complained about the disappearance of a favourite item he just said,
Everything changes, my dear. Maybe the firm's going out of business, but I'm sure I can find something equally as good, next time a travelling salesman comes through.

The Monday before the Spring Ball Catalin stopped to chat with Alistair outside the shop, and he asked if she was going to the ball.

No
, Catalin said.

Alistair was not put off by the brusque reply.
But if you did go, what would you wear?
he pressed.

Catalin shrugged.
It does not matter, because I do not go.

Alistair knew that Catalin's wardrobe did not hold a gown suitable for a Spring Ball. But he, Alistair Meakins, would rise to the challenge. Did he not make a successful line of lingerie for the town? Had he not designed a hat made by the French hat-makers, Etablissements Werlé, Créateur de chapeaux féminins? And had not Allison walked the Avenue Montaigne in that selfsame hat, and gazed into the window of the House of Dior?

Alistair wanted to make Catalin a gown. Alistair was determined to make Catalin a gown.
This place needs a good dose of glamour
, Alistair said to himself as he walked home that evening.
And some of those would-be-if-they-could-be women who look down their noses at Catalin need a good shaking up. So let's do it right.

That night Alistair took the length of silk taffeta that he had bought during the war and measured it by holding it lengthways from left shoulder to right fingertip.
About twelve yards. That should do nicely.

Alistair caught sight of himself in the mirror with the fabric heaped at his feet and laughed.
I look like Venus being born
, he said to the image. He held the rustling taffeta tight at his waist, and the idea of the gown formed as he draped the material this way and that.
Yes
, he said,
yes. The new ballerina style – mid-calf length and as much fabric in the skirt as possible, with a tight bodice. Elegant and seductive. What more could a girl ask for? Now to work out her size.

Alistair walked down the back lane to the shop. There in the fitting room he stood next to an unclothed plaster model, comparing his body with hers. A memory hovered, of Macha's tall, thin body marching into town, but Alistair ignored it and imagined the shape of Catalin. He knew that she was the same height as himself, and estimated that in size she was somewhere between himself and the thin model.
I can deal with that
, he said, and took the model home with him. His eye, so trained to the vagaries of the female form, guided him as he glued and moulded padding around the bust and hips, until the size and shape was, he thought, close to Catalin's.

The waist measurement seemed just about right,
but I'll worry about the length when it's made. I'm pretty sure that the shoulder to waist length is close, though. I think she's only a bit short from hip to knee, and that doesn't matter with a full skirt.

Alistair started work that night, swiftly measuring, cutting and tacking pieces together with a loose stitch, so that by the early morning he had the beginnings of a ballerina-style gown. He stood back and looked at it critically, envisioning Catalin in the wide-cut neckline and tight-fitting bodice above a full, gathered skirt. The picture made him smile. Then he thought about how to entice Catalin to try on the garment and finally, reluctantly, decided that the only way was to ask her to his home, his sanctuary into which no-one in the town had set foot.