Dandy Gilver and a Deadly Measure of Brimstone

by Catriona McPherson

  There were Turkish baths in there too, I thought, and steam rooms, unless they were the same things, and the famous sitz baths of which the brochure barely shut up for a single page and, all in all, I did not see how so much steam and hot water could be contained in a Scottish house without the whole of it being beset by seeping damp.

  As we entered, I was half looking to see if the wallpapers were curling away from the plaster beneath and if the grain on the wood was rising.

  As is so often the case, I was quite wrong and all was well inside the Moffat Hydro. The vestibule, entrance and hall were warm, dry, sweet-smelling – I saw a towering container of lilies on each of the side tables as we passed – and hushed. Hugh looked around himself with interest, evidently finding the place gratifyingly un-hotel-like. I saw Donald’s expression clear as he relinquished his quiet foreboding that it would be some sort of hospital in all but name. He loathes hospitals even more than the generality and no one, let us face it, ever wants to go on a picnic there. Teddy’s attention was caught by one feature only and that was the two-storey-high, coiling, gleaming, unbroken banister rail which, to judge by the way he was gazing, clearly sang to him.

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘No what?’ said Donald. Teddy did not turn from the siren song.

  ‘No?’ said Hugh. ‘I like the look of it so far. Beats me why you took that so-called house if this is what’s on offer.’ I shook my head and said nothing, although I dearly wanted to know how Hugh slept at night with tenants living in cottages of three rooms in total, if Auchenlea with its seven bedrooms and three bathrooms was a ‘so-called house’, for Grant had regaled me that morning with news of the servants’ facilities: hot and cold taps and a snake with a rose on the end for rinsing one’s hair with jets of clean water.

  ‘Think what your hair could look like,’ she said, ‘rinsed in pure clean cold water.’

  ‘Cold?’ I said.

  ‘Good for the scalp,’ said Grant.

  ‘In fact …’ Hugh was walking about the hall with a very proprietorial air, a few steps this way and then a few steps that, looking up the stairwell and all but testing the floor under his feet with little stamps as though to see if it was sprung for dancing. ‘Well, we shall see.’

  I could not pursue the hints because we were being borne down upon by a magnificent figure. She was quite six feet tall in her flat shoes and tremendously ill served as to ligne by her plain white dress, poor thing. On her head was a confection of starched linen, twisted and folded into a fantastical shape. (I only knew it had started as a linen square because I had seen the nurses in the convalescent home during the war constructing these sculpted enormities with my own eyes. They made them up seven at a time, deft and distracted, while smoking and laughing with their friends, and I had always thought they should do it out on the street corners for sixpences.)

  ‘Matron?’ I said, guessing.

  ‘Well,’ said the impressive individual, ‘I suppose so, but I don’t insist on it. Mrs Cronin will do nicely. And you must be the Gilvers.’

  We admitted as much and before Mrs Cronin could do more than gather breath to begin her welcome, we were hallooed from above by a voice as loud as it was fruity.

  ‘Welcome one, welcome all. Welcome to Laidlaw’s House of Potions,’ it said, and then a trousered bottom appeared hanging over the banister rail and shot downwards towards us. The owner of voice and bottom jumped clear of the finial, garnering Teddy’s instant admiration (the dismount of a finialled banister is what separates the real daredevils from the pretenders), and bent himself double in a bow.

  When he rose, it was with an extravagant gesture, flicking back his butter-coloured hair into perfect place. He smoothed it once with a hand, shot his cuff deftly and stepped forward to shake hands.

  ‘Thomas Laidlaw,’ he said. ‘How d’you do.’

  ‘How d’you do,’ said Hugh, baffled.

  As was I. The banister trick and low bow were at one with the man’s costume: black tie before luncheon, like a conjuror. But the easy smile upon his sleek, pink face, his confident manner, almost over-confident for one who surely could not yet be thirty-five, and that fruity voice said otherwise. His greeting of me was impeccable too, a nod and a handshake in place of the kiss and smirk for which I had steeled myself. The boys shook hands and murmured their ‘sir’s and Laidlaw turned and presented his sister to me. I had not noticed her joining us; who would have while the brother whizzed down and vaulted clear?

  ‘Dorothea Laidlaw, Mrs Gilver,’ he said to me. The female half of the operation was not decked out in matching form, no evening gown nor spangles here. Instead she was dressed in rather plain tweeds and one of those very soft felt hats which look as though a limp lettuce leaf has been laid on one’s head and left to wilt there. She resembled her brother in the usual way – the same nose (a family nose is hard to escape; when bemoaning my inheritance of straight hair and sallow skin I try to be thankful that the Lestons do not have one), the same lean figure, although hers looked set to remain lean whereas his was softening, the same hazel eyes except that hers were wide and clear and gazed at one with an engaging frankness while his were crinkled up at the edges in merriment or mischief.

  ‘Shall we divide and conquer, Dot?’ he went on. I saw her wince and did not blame her. ‘Oops!’ he said, without any attempt to make it convincing. ‘We were Dot and Tot as children and these things do tend to stick, don’t they?’

  ‘Yes, Mrs Gilver,’ said Miss Laidlaw. ‘Let me show you around the hotel and—’

  ‘Tut, tut, Dorothea,’ her brother said. ‘Hotel? Laidlaw’s Hydropathic Establishment is not a hotel.’

  ‘—my brother can take care of the rest of the party,’ she went on, ignoring his interjection absolutely. ‘Is it too late for coffee? Let’s say coffee in the drawing room in twenty minutes then, Mrs Cronin, shall we?’ She had a pleasant voice and an easy way with herself and, as I followed her out of the grand entrance hall into a passageway, I was forced to smile at the thought which had popped unbidden into my mind: to wit, that she was a lady. I suppose it was possible, for some doctors are gentlemen and her father had been a proper doctor and not a mere salesman of patent cures and odd contraptions, but somehow one put hydropathists, or hydropathologists, or whatever they were called, into the same drawer as lay-preachers and prison visitors, nonconformists all and not likely to come from the highest tier, whose members are usually, for obvious reasons, quite content with the status quo. Perhaps her father had used his money to buy his children into society, but then what of the dinner jacket and black tie at half past eleven on a Monday morning? What of Tot altogether?

  Miss Laidlaw was pointing out ‘treatment rooms’ on either side of the passageway and I peered into one or two to be polite. In each there was a bier or couch arrangement covered in snowy bath towels and a smaller handcart, two-tiered like an hotel pudding trolley, upon which bottles and jars were laid as though to hand for operations at whose nature I could not guess. In one room there were contraptions, equally unguessable, drawn up on either side of the couch and in another, sturdy lamps mounted on tripods were trained on the empty bed. It all looked rather gruesome.

  ‘You seem very well fitted-up,’ I said, withdrawing my head again. ‘It really is rather more than an hotel.’ Rotten of me to return to the unpleasant moment, but I was interested in any sort of trouble here at the Hydro, sibling quarrels and all.

  Miss Laidlaw, in reply, trailed a hand along the dado rail of the corridor, a fancy in ceramic, which formed rolling green waves, one after another, like pin curls, stretching all the way to double glass doors at the end.

  ‘And rather less too,’ she said. ‘My father was a great deal more interested in the therapeutic side than in the question of bed and board. Tot was aghast when he saw the spartan state of the bedrooms. He was ready to give up before we even started. And I suppose, you do have to offer some comforts and entertainments as well as the actual … that’s very true.’ Then she gath
ered herself with a slight sniff and a rise of the chin. ‘Father would be entranced to see the modern improvements in electric heat particularly, but through here, it’s all as he envisioned it. Exactly as he laid it out.’ She opened one of the double doors and ushered me into Equatorial Africa.

  It was the changing room for the Turkish and Russian baths, I discovered, a short corridor lined on both sides with cubicles, wooden shelves and lockers at the near end. At the far end was another doorway covered over by a curtain and there were no words for the heat which rolled out as we passed through.

  ‘Phew,’ I said, letting my fur slip down to my elbows.

  ‘This is the cool room,’ said Miss Laidlaw. ‘One hundred and twenty degrees.’

  I sank down onto one of the beds arranged about the walls of the ‘cool’ room and looked around while I waited to become accustomed to it. The place was beautifully appointed: mosaic underfoot and colourful china tiles depicting Roman scenes on all the walls. At the far end, more of the heavy velvet curtains were drawn across a second doorway.

  ‘The warm room,’ said Miss Laidlaw. ‘One hundred and thirty-five. Let’s walk through quite quickly, since you’re dressed in outdoor things.’ She held one of the curtains aside and I followed her into the warm room, across it into the hot room – an unspeakable hundred and seventy – and across that, at a trot, but still sure my hair was dropping out of set and my face-powder caking, through the last set of velvet curtains and into the delicious coolth of a marble chamber like a little temple, with niches all around and beyond it, steps leading down into a long bathing pond surrounded by silk ferns and soft lamplight.

  ‘The plunging pool,’ said Miss Laidlaw. ‘Dip your wrists, Mrs Gilver, and you will be refreshed.’

  I shrugged off my gloves, pushed back my sleeves and sitting on the lip of the pool reached my hands down into the water.

  ‘Oh!’ I could not help exclaiming. It was icy cold, as cold as the burn water in Perthshire. ‘Gosh, how do you keep it like this?’

  ‘It’s from the upper spring,’ said Miss Laidlaw. ‘It comes straight to us, beautifully cool.’

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘I suppose it’s healthier freezing cold than warm, anyway. Dirt and all that, I mean.’

  ‘Dirt?’ said Miss Laidlaw, looking rather startled.

  ‘Not to say dirt, exactly. But don’t germs at least do rather better in warm water?’ I gabbled on, making it worse than ever. ‘And I’m sure you’re never done draining it and cleaning.’

  Her face now was quite frozen, as well it might be at this blatant and clumsy meddling in her business. She said no more on the subject but only offered me a small towel to dry my hands and went on. ‘Through there is the Turkish bath or steam room.’ She indicated an etched glass door with a chromium handle. ‘And just here you see the beds for salt rubs and oil rubs.’ She had waved a hand back at the little temple and I thought to myself that she might call them beds but in fact they were marble slabs with water sprays looming above them. I felt quite sure too that it would be ‘cool’ spring water which would come spouting out of these sprays to finish one off after the pummelling.

  ‘Wonderful,’ I said, thanking God in His Heaven that I was well and needed none of it. ‘And do you advise the patients on how long to stay in and what have you?’

  ‘No, no,’ said Miss Laidlaw, ‘the Turkish and Russian baths are open to all our guests at their discretion.’

  ‘Ah,’ I said. ‘They’re … closed just now?’ I looked around the empty beds and still water.

  ‘Um, no,’ said Miss Laidlaw. ‘I expect everyone is having treatments.’ There was a pause while she and I both remembered the long passageway with empty treatment rooms on either side. ‘Or getting ready for luncheon.’

  I gave her a bright smile and then, to help the moment pass away, I strolled over to a second door leading out of the spray-bath temple and put my hand on its chromium handle.

  ‘And what—?’ I began, but stopped as I met resistance.

  ‘We don’t use all the facilities any more,’ she said. She glanced at the door and her face clouded briefly. ‘There’s a great deal of research being done all the time on hydropathy and physiology. Some of the earlier treatments have been superseded by others. And to be honest, fresh air and exercise are a lot more use than some of the more …’

  ‘I see,’ I said. I noticed that as I let go of the handle and moved away, the little bit of tension which had hitched her shoulders up left her and she smiled again. ‘Do you have trouble persuading your regular guests to move with the times?’ I asked. I was inching my way towards Mrs Addie. She frowned politely, not understanding me. Perhaps I needed to inch a little more boldly. ‘I would imagine that any of your father’s patients who had always enjoyed “the old ways” would be hard to dissuade of their benefits.’

  She threw another look at the locked door, her eyes showing a lot of white like those of a nervous horse.

  ‘People can grow very attached to ideas,’ she said quietly. Then with a valiant lift of her chin, she went on in quite a different tone. ‘So, these are the medical facilities. I’ll just take you up the ladies’ stair and show you the private rooms.’ She was off. ‘You’ll see the ladies’ drawing room when we rejoin the rest of your party. As well as that we have a gentlemen’s billiards room, a gentlemen’s smoking room, the winter gardens and the dining room. But we encourage all our guests to be outdoors all day if the weather is even slightly cooperative.’

  She had galloped up a staircase as she spoke, with me puffing along behind her, still feeling the effects of the stultifying heat, and now we found ourselves on a bedroom corridor, with carpeted floor and satiny papered walls covered with pictures of roses and fat children in aprons.

  ‘I did a little redecorating,’ said Miss Laidlaw. ‘Not that that’s my particular … but as I said, my father … And I did so want to be able to keep it going after he died.’ She threw open a door.

  I stepped forward to see what she meant and found myself in yet another world, far from carpets and watercolours. The walls, curtains and linens were blinding white, the floor stained almost black and the furniture – the high narrow bed, the bare dressing table, the small hanging cupboard and the inevitable towel-draped couch – were made of plain oak without the slightest adornment. It was a wonder Miss Laidlaw’s father had managed to find such stuff: the Victorians were not known for their love of clean lines and the kind of beds one could sweep under with a broad broom.

  ‘How delightful,’ I said. ‘And how amusing that what must have seemed very peculiar when your father chose it is now slap bang in the fashion.’ I told the truth about being amused; I was not, however, delighted for I am a Victorian – I have given up pretending otherwise – and to sleep in such a room would make me feel either as though I had taken the veil or had been found guilty and was serving it out in solitary confinement.

  One thing which did strike me as we made our way down the main – shared, one assumes – staircase was that Hugh would love it. He prefers his quarters barrack-like and added to the fact that the billiards room was for gentlemen alone at the Hydro (and the smoking room too), and that the ladies could be hounded out into their own drawing room with glares and snubs, he would have been as happy as a sandboy here.

  When we arrived in the drawing room, which was an unremarkable enough apartment, only a good deal larger than normal and with more pillows strewn in the chairs and chaises (one assumed for the comfort of rheumatic guests), Hugh, the boys and the other Laidlaw were already there. As well as, I was happy finally to see, a few other residents, perhaps as many as five – and this in a room which could hold fifty without it showing.

  ‘Dandy,’ said Hugh, rising. ‘I’ve made a decision.’ I managed to contain my amazement as he laid out the many sound reasons for it. ‘Right on the spot,’ he said. ‘And you’ll be much more comfortable too. And Laidlaw here tells me that he’s a great believer in port wine and stout as tools of convalescence.’ Laid
law, looking more like a waiter than ever, gave a short bow and clicked his heels. I wondered if he had a medical excuse to serve whisky too, for Hugh could not survive an evening without at least one glass of the filthy stuff. ‘In fact, perhaps the boys could join me.’

  I did not answer at once because, looking around following Hugh’s gesturing wave, my attention had been caught by one of the other few guests present in the drawing room. I could see nothing more than a pair of crossed ankles and a pair of brown brogues, the rest being hidden behind a Scotsman (held in a grip rather tighter than its customary editorial style could explain). But I knew those ankles well and recognised the easy way one was slung across the other.

  ‘Not the boys,’ I said. The Laidlaws took my pronouncement without any show of emotion beyond a faint smile on her part and a sentimental dip of the head on his. ‘Mother love’, his face seemed to say. And ‘typical female’ was what I took from hers. The boys themselves, with the perfect self-absorption of the young, accepted their parents’ clamouring for the honour of their company without turning a hair. It was Hugh who skewered me with one of his best looks. No chance of getting ‘mother love’ past him unexamined.

  ‘Let’s not discuss it now,’ he said, loath to pitch into a domestic dispute in public, although I foresaw that there would be no avoiding one in private later. ‘Now we three fellows all have medical examinations this afternoon, I believe? In the meantime, I think I’ll take a stroll down the path you mentioned, Laidlaw, and have a look at the river. Ash path, Dandy, perfectly dry underfoot, in case you’re worried. Donald? Teddy?’ They rose; a river, even one which could only offer a lowly trout, and that to three gentlemen without a rod amongst them, was still a draw. Hugh would inspect the banks and plantings, scrutinise the water for gravel clarity or peaty opacity, scramble down and tug out scraps of the very water weeds to determine whether and how well this river was managed and discover exactly how short its management fell of his own of the rivers at home. Donald would listen and offer thoughts about the rivers of Benachally. Teddy would throw pebbles and, if there was an overhanging tree-limb, might climb out along it and dangle there.