Lady of Fortune

by Graham Masterton

  Fiona Watson rang the bell for Mrs McNab. She was trembling, as if she had influenza, and her face was as grey as gruel. Effie reached across the tablecloth and comfortingly touched her arm.

  ‘Mother,’ she said. ‘Don’t you fret. Everything will be all right.’

  ‘You think so?’ asked her mother, hopelessly.

  Robert said, ‘I think it’s up to me to go to Father and convey our apologies, don’t you? You can come along, too, Dougal, if you care to.’

  ‘I think I’ll bide here for now,’ said Dougal. ‘I don’t know what Mrs McNab’s cooked for pudding, but I don’t fancy being struck about the head with a treacle roll.’

  Robert was about to say something angry in reply, but he took a deep breath to steady himself, tugged down his over-tight waistcoat, and turned to his mother. ‘You’ll excuse me from the table, please, ma’am.’

  Fiona Watson nodded.

  As Robert left the room, with piercingly squeaky boots, Mrs McNab came in, fearful and alert. She had heard the doors banging, and she knew what it meant. The master was in one of his rairing rages again; and for the rest of the day the whole house would be in a state of nervous suspense, from the sculleries to the attic, with the servants speaking in whispers, and Mrs Watson flittering in agitation from the parlour to the conservatory, and back again.

  ‘Will you clear the dishes, Mrs McNab?’ asked Fiona Watson. ‘The master has decided that he has had sufficient for now.’

  Mrs McNab frowned, and looked around the table.

  ‘Is anything wrong?’ asked Fiona Watson.

  ‘I was just wondering where the gigot was,’ said Mrs McNab.

  Effie looked up at her, and it took the greatest effort of will of her whole life not to burst out laughing. ‘The gigot,’ she said, ‘is under the curtains.’

  Mrs McNab, her face squeezed up into an extraordinary expression, as if she had taken a mouthful of bitter tangle, walked around the window, and raised the drapes. When she saw the mutton lying there, she uttered a single choked noise. But she managed to control herself long enough to pick it up, and return it respectfully to the carving-dish, and carry it out of the room. It was only when the door closed behind her that Effie heard her let out a whoop of hysterical glee.

  Fiona Watson couldn’t help giving a faint and faded smile herself. But she said to Effie. ‘You’ll forgive me, my darling, but I don’t think I can continue with luncheon. Perhaps you’ll come for a walk with me.’

  ‘A walk?’ asked Effie, surprised. She knew that her mother loved to walk, even in winter, and that she would often go with Jeanie, her maid, to Inverleith Park, or Calton Hill, and stroll for an hour or so before returning home in the family carriage. But Fiona Watson had never taken any of the family with her on these walks, which she called her ‘refreshment.’ They were her own private times to reflect, and to restore her strength, and even Thomas grudgingly respected the need she felt for solitary meditation. ‘Every woman, like every man, should spend a certain time each week mulling over his sins and her weaknesses,’ he had said, vigorously shaking out The Scotsman before turning to the editorial page. ‘It is the woman who thinks she has no faults at all who is the most baneful influence in a man’s life.’

  Actually, Thomas Watson approved of his wife’s constitutionals more because they got her out of the house for a while, she and that nervous, irritating manner of hers; and because she always seemed to return from them in a state of mind that was always serene and sometimes almost beatific. He liked to think that, as she walked, she dwelt on her magnificent good fortune, being married as she was to a man who had done so well for himself, and that each walk was a minor revelation, like Saul’s conversion on the road to Damascus, with his own wealth and position in the rôle of the blinding light.

  ‘Not even a Nugent-Dunbar,’ he had said to himself, with satisfaction, ‘can kick against the pricks.’

  Fiona Watson said to Effie, ‘I shall be ready in a quarter of an hour, my dearie. Don’t forget to wrap yourself up warmly. Now, excuse me, if you would.’

  She left Dougal and Effie together at the abandoned luncheon table. Effie looked around at the plates, with their congealing mutton-fat and limp overboiled bow-kail, and then back at Dougal.

  ‘You don’t ever think of mother, do you?’ she asked him.

  ‘I do,’ he said. ‘But I cannot sit quiet while Robert criticizes everything I try to achieve.’

  ‘Have you thought that he might be right?’

  ‘Of course I have. I’m not stupid. More often than not, he is right. He’s cleverer than me, when it comes to banking. You know what he’s done? He’s brought in a short-term loan scheme that’s set Scottish banking upside-down, on its head. You make sure he explains it to you sometime. It’s brilliant.’

  ‘But?’asked Effie.

  ‘But,’ explained Dougal, ‘he’s unsure of himself. He has the same character as father. Aggressive, and windy, all noise and trumpets, but only because he’s never truly sure that he deserves what he’s got. And part of the way in which he bolsters up his own lack of confidence is to do me down. He’s an ink-and-paper banker, and good at it. He doesn’t even know, himself, how good he is. But neither does he see that I’m as good as him, in a different way. I like to get out and meet the folk who made the money in person. There’s room in the bank for both of us, but he will not see that. Or rather, he does not want to see that. He thinks I’m a joker.’

  Effie said, ‘All the same, you’ve been selfish, haven’t you? You didn’t think of mother today. Father’s going to be furious with her, later.’

  ‘Well, I’m sorry,’ said Dougal. ‘But I don’t think I had any choice.’

  ‘Do you truly think that you’re ever going to change Robert’s mind?’ asked Effie. ‘Or father’s?’

  Dougal got up from his chair, and walked around the table to the window. He was two or three inches taller than Robert, and broader across the back, but his build was wirier, and leaner. On Saturday mornings he practised weight-lifting in the stables at the back of the house with weights that had been made for him by McLeod, the local burnwind; and during the summer he swam and rode and went scrambling up and down Castle Hill or Salisbury crags. It was one of his favourite tests of his own stamina to run up the 287 steps to the top of the Scott Monument at the head of Princes Street, and down again. He was very fit, and the tension in his whole demeanour showed it. To him, banking was a social business, a question of winning people’s confidence. His looks helped him. He had irrepressibly curly hair, like a bunch of brassy clocksprings, and a wide, well-boned face with a deeply-dimpled chin. His eyes were as pale as his father’s, but without his father’s coldness. He enjoyed drinking, and dancing, and he especially enjoyed girls; but he was perceptive, and sensitive, and whatever Robert thought about him, he was far from reckless.

  The trouble was that many of the inventions that Dougal had wanted Watson’s Bank to support were both advanced and eccentric. They would have made Robert chuckle, if only a rival bank had been backing them instead. First, there had been a revolutionary steel alloy which could be smelted at high speed; and then a telephone device which was supposed to work without wires. The definitive Dougal loan, which Robert had recounted several times in the dour Balmoral Room of the Caledonian Society, to the general amusement of his friends, was the ‘Boer War Shield’, a heavy contraption of curved steel which was supposed to protect its bearer from sniper fire out on the veld; but which – if it failed as a shield – could promptly be unfolded and used as a stretcher to carry its owner away.

  ‘Dougal,’ Robert had concluded, ‘is nothing but a pygmy-scraper, who’s going to fiddle us all into the poor-house.’

  Dougal, at the window, said to Effie, ‘It’s snowing again. You’ll have a chilly walk.’

  ‘Well, I expect so,’ said Effie. ‘But you haven’t answered my question.

  ‘What do you want me to say?’ asked Dougal, a little irritably. ‘I know I’ll never change things
. Father and Robert are both too set in their ways. But I have to try, Effie. Otherwise I’ll be nothing but a downtrodden snool.’

  Effie said, ‘Did father not tell you once that you could work in the London office if you had a mind to?’

  ‘I suppose so. He hinted as much.’

  Effie looked at him bravely. ‘Then why don’t you go?’ she challenged him. ‘You’ll be away from Robert there, and from father; and perhaps mother will get some peace.’

  Dougal frowned at her. ‘You’re asking me to skyte off? To give in, and let Robert have his way?’

  ‘You’ll not beat him on his own ground,’ said Effie.

  Dougal thrust his hands into his pockets, and stared out at the snow. ‘If only I’d been born first,’ he said.

  ‘You think that would have made any difference?’ Effie asked him. She stood up, and walked across to him, her black Sunday dress sweeping the carpet. She placed a gentle hand on his shoulder as if it were an award of sympathy. ‘Why don’t you go to see father now, and suggest that you should move to London? Tell him you’re sorry. He deserves that much, however hard he’s been on you. You did lose your temper over luncheon, didn’t you?’

  ‘Well, I suppose so. But, Effie, I don’t want to go to London. The whole heart of Watson’s Bank is here, in Edinburgh. If I go to London, I could be there for the rest of my days, with no promotion. I can see what I want to do with the bank. I can feel it in my bones. I want it to build up a reputation for backing those odd fellows with bright ideas. The inventors, you know; and the bright commercial boys. But I just feel powerless to do anything about it, the way Robert vetoes everything I suggest. How can I fight him, unless I’m here?’

  Effie looked at him for a long time. Her pale, oval face was framed by her neat white lace collar, and by the curved patterns of dim light which penetrated the dining-room from the snowy square outside.

  ‘Robert’s my brother, too, you know,’ she reminded him. ‘I love him in my own way; as he does me. And that’s why I can see that neither of you will ever come to terms, not as long as you’re working in the same bank in the same city. You’ve got to get out, Dougal, for your own sake and for Robert’s sake; but, most of all, for mother’s sake. I do believe that father frightens her more than any of us know.’

  ‘Frightens her?’ said Dougal. It was plain that he didn’t really understand what she meant; and that it had never occurred to him, as sensitive as he was, that his mother could be frightened of anything. Hadn’t it been his mother who, with warm breath and soothing fingers, had dissipated his childhood fears of the hag-like glaistigs, who were supposed to ride on broomsticks and bathe their own demonic children in the blood of good Edinburgh boys like Dougal? Hadn’t his mother always been calm and loving, as mothers always are in the presence of their younger sons?

  And yet, he must have had some suspicions, because he said to Effie, ‘Aye, well, I suppose father frightens all of us. Even Robert.’

  ‘Especially Robert.’

  ‘Well, maybe.’ Dougal took hold of Effie’s arms and squeezed them affectionately. ‘I know you’re making good sense, Effie. You’ve always been a feat young lass, even for a sister. But it’s a difficult thing for a fellow to do. Run out on himself, and his family.’

  ‘You can’t stay, Dougal. You know that.’

  Dougal didn’t let go of her arms; but he looked away, and for the very first time Effie saw in his face some of the effort it had cost him to be as vigorous and light-hearted as he always was. To be a younger brother was difficult enough. To be Robert’s younger brother, and Thomas Watson’s younger son, was like being the dog-minder at a circus, or the horse-piss-bucketer in a disreputable trio of travelling saltimbancos.

  ‘Aye, well, I’ll probably go,’ said Dougal softly, as if he were talking to himself.

  ‘Would it make it easier if I were to come with you?’ Effie asked him.

  ‘How could you? Father would never let you go.’

  ‘I could say that I wanted to spend a week with Auntie Maisie, in Putney.’

  ‘Och, he wouldn’t allow it.’

  ‘Mother could persuade him, I’m sure. I know she could. She could tell him that you would see me safely down; and that Uncle Henry would put me safely on to the train back.’

  ‘But would you stay with them, really?’

  Effie shook her head.

  ‘Then where? You wouldn’t run away from home for good.’

  ‘Wouldn’t I?’ Effie asked him. Her cheeks flushed pink; and in spite of her determination to stay calm, and orderly, she felt her scalp prickling with excitement, as if someone had tied a tight band around it.

  Dougal said, ‘Well, if you mean what you say, I think you’ve something to teach me about being bold.’

  ‘I’m as frightened as you are,’ Effie said. ‘But think of it! If only I could! I’ve had a grien to see London ever since I was tiny! We could visit King Edward!’

  Dougal gave an uncomfortable laugh. ‘I hope you’re not being too hasty, yourself,’ he told her.

  ‘Hasty?’ she said, mouthing the word in a whisper. ‘No. I’ve been thinking about this since I was old enough to think. Edinburgh’s my home; and always will be. My heart will always be here. But I want to travel, Dougal, so much. I need to. I want to see the world; and, most of all, I want to mix with famous folk. Dukes and princes. Actors. Great generals. Millionaires. Kings.’

  ‘Kings!’ said Dougal. And somehow the naive glory of her imagination brought him closer to her, because he held her tight for a moment, and squeezed her. On the lapels of his black Sunday-best coat, she could smell the sneeshin he took. Father didn’t allow smoking in the house; he said it ‘reeked of red-peats’, and that was why Dougal usually had to resort to Smith’s snuff, or occasionally to Gallaher’s Hammerhead sixpenny plug, with the juice spat discreetly into the geranium pots.

  ‘We’ve trusted each other always, haven’t we, you and I?’ Dougal said. ‘I love you, Effie, for the finest sister a fellow ever had.’

  ‘And I you,’ Effie told him. ‘But it can’t go on, the way things are in this house. Every time you and Robert argue, it’s mother who has to take the blame. One day, it’s going to break her spirit. She’s not so strong.’

  Dougal nodded, silently. ‘I’ll have a word with father later, when he’s cooled down.’

  ‘He’ll probably be pleased to see you go.’

  ‘Do you think so?’ asked Dougal, ironically. ‘Well, I don’t know. What will he have to grumble about when there’s nobody here but Robert and mother? He might have said that he wants me out of the house beforetimes. But I wonder what he’s going to say when I tell him that I really want to pack my bags and leave him. He’s the perversest of men, you know.’

  Effie kissed his cheek. ‘For mother’s sake, Dougal – please.’

  Dougal looked around the dining-room, as if he half-expected the answer to his problems to be perched, like a canary, on the picture-rail. Then he said, ‘Aye, I will. It’s probably time I struck out anyway, and made my own fortune.’

  Effie remained in the dining-room long after he had gone. Through the dense lace curtains, the snow was beginning to whirl down more thickly, and it imparted to the room a curious insulated silence, as if it were a room in which a dear friend had been laid out after death. If I stay quiet enough will I hear one last forbidden sigh?

  Effie realised, with a sensation of light-headedness, that she could now control the course of her own life: that her dreams, if she wanted them to, could actually come alive. All it took to make the future happen was to decide that it would. All it took to start on her great adventure was to pack her travelling-bag, and persuade her father to buy her a train ticket for London.

  She saw herself in the sombre measled mirror over the sideboard: a white-faced young girl in a severe black Sunday dress with a tight black lace bodice, and a white lace collar. In the stillness of that snowbound room, she could have been nothing more than a portrait of herself, a lost p
rincess, or a future queen.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Effie’s mother called, This will do far enough, thank you, Russell,’ and the coachman reigned in the horses and drew the brougham over to the curb. He climbed down from his box, with snow heaped like epaulets on the shoulders of his green waterproof cape, and sparkling on his green coachman’s bonnet, and he opened the door for them, and lowered the step.

  ‘You’ll be a while, Mrs Watson?’ he asked. He was a bitter-faced man with shaggy eyebrows and a close black beard, and he had been driving the Watson family and grooming their horses for over eight years. A good man, from Falkirk, where men kept silent unless they were directly asked, and even then they gave only the barest essential in reply.

  It was freezing cold outside, and Effie was sorry that she had to discard the warm brougham blanket, and step down on to the wind-snaked snow of Lawnmarket, the steep cobbled approach to the castle gates. But her mother, without waiting for her, began to walk briskly up the hill, her long black fur-lined cape swirling around her, her hands clasped tight in front of her in a fox-fur muffler, and Effie had to pick up her skirts and hurry after her, her tiny black lace-up boots slipping on the ice.

  ‘Mother, wait!’ she panted, but her mother kept on walking as quickly and as certainly as before. Effie glanced back, over her shoulder, to see what Russell thought of her mother’s extraordinary hurrying-off, but Russell was standing quite at ease beside the brougham’s team of four, one hand grasping the bridle of the lan’-afore, the first horse, and Effie realised then that her mother was making haste with a purpose, and that Russell, and presumably Jeanie, too, must be quite aware of what this purpose was. Her mother must have paid them both well for their seamless silence at home; but then her mother was always as generous with her affection as she was with her purse, and that must have counted for more than twal penny worth.