She had been working with Robert for nearly two months now, coming into the bank on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and sometimes on Friday afternoons, helping him arrange his business appointments and entertaining some of his customers when he was late for meetings. She had learned how clever he was, when it came to the abstracts of banking, and she had begun to recognise his extraordinary talent for arranging events so that, in weeks or even months, bit by bit, segment by segment, they would turn out in the bank’s favour, and to the bank’s eventual profit. He was pleasant to everyone, often jolly, and although he was only thirty, he liked to play the part of a benevolent uncle. Some of his less contented staff called him ‘Uncle Bob.’ Others called him ‘Bobbie Bummler.’ A bummler was someone who was all drone and no work.
She didn’t trust Robert, not entirely, but then she didn’t believe that he would ever do anything really malevolent. It hadn’t once occurred to her, for instance, that he might have been closely in touch with Malcolm Cockburn during the whole affair of the East African railway loan, and that Mr Snetterton and Mr Plant might have been old friends of his from the Banking & Colonial Club. It had never crossed her mind that Robert could have arranged the entire ‘confidence-trick’ as a way of quickly and permanently disposing of his younger brother, either to prison or to Australia, and that only her own chance meeting with Lord Rethesdale, and her persistent interference in Dougal’s affairs, had saved Dougal from certain arrest, unavoidable disgrace, and possible exile. Dougal wrote, ‘I am prospering here in New York, although I am still lonely, and missing you, and Prudence. Henry asks after you constantly. When are you coming? he asks, and I have to keep fending him off by saying Soon.’
Effie had never thought that Jack Cutting, already on the verge of dismissal from Watson’s Bank for idleness and insolence, might have been paid to involve Dougal in the East African railway scheme, and that Prudence herself might have been paid as much as twenty pounds to win Dougal’s affections. A young man in love loses his critical faculties, in the pleasantest possible way. He doesn’t realise that his own brother might be quietly arranging for his disposal.
But then, it was Christmas. The house was warm and bright. Robert was cheerful and magnanimous, and had bought all of his family the most wonderful presents. For his mother, a diamond and ruby brooch by Cartier; for his father, a copy of Darwin’s Origin of Species bound in whale-skin (although he didn’t say that the only skin on a whale which is thin and supple enough for binding books comes from its penis); for Effie, a tiny gold watch to be pinned to her blouse, with a movement which included two miniature enamelled figures who struck the hour with hammers.
No, Robert was full of cheer, and even Effie’s mother had to say that his good spirits had made this Christmas Eve one of the jolliest that she could remember (last year’s had been argumentative, and dire).
Effie kissed Robert under the mistletoe, and said, Thank you, Robert.’
‘What for?’ he asked her, holding her tight, and grinning.
‘For being tosie, and a good brother.’
Robert didn’t answer, but kissed her again, on the forehead, while Fiona Watson started to sing The Holly and the Ivy.
‘Bethanked,’ said Robert, and that was all.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Prudence stayed that night, and came with them to St Giles’s for the Christmas service, leaving young William Albert with Mrs McNab. The snow tumbled through the fifteenth-century crown-shaped steeple which topped St Giles, and whirled across the High Street. Below the rock, Edinburgh lay like a whitened memory of itself, a city of silence and spires.
It was on their way back to the family carriage that Gavin McFee appeared, shouldering his way through the elegantly-dressed crowds in a patched grey blanket and a snow-covered bonnet. He wore a kilt in the cath-dath, the war colour, of the MacDonalds, and three or four pairs of holey socks, one on top of the other.
Effie recognised him at once, and turned quickly to her mother, who looked shaken, and began to bustle towards the carriage more quickly. But Thomas Watson said, ‘We’re not in a race, are we, my dear?’ and reached out for her arm, slowing her down.
Gavin McFee stood smiling broadly as the Watson family party came closer. He said nothing until they were almost past him; and then, in a quiet voice, he said, ‘Mrs Watson!’
Fiona Watson pretended that she hadn’t heard; but Thomas had, and he pulled his wife to a standstill. ‘Wait, my dear. Who’s this randie? He called you by name.’
Gavin McFee took one or two steps forward. He stood only a few inches from Effie, and she could smell the home-distilled whisky on his breath, and see the pattern of blackheads on his cheekbones. She felt frightened and nauseous, and she reached out for Robert’s hand. Robert squeezed her hand momentarily, but then stepped forward so that he might stand protectively beside his mother.
‘Jamie McFarlane sends you the best of the season,’ said Gavin McFee, his eyes bleary, and small, and sly. ‘Jamie McFarlane says that he’s sorry he cannot be with you today, but he wishes you and your drawers the very finest Christmas wishes.’
Thomas Watson stared at his wife in shock, as if she had cursed out loud, his moustache bristling, his back rigid, his tall hat spangled with snowflakes.
‘What’s this?’ he demanded. ‘What’s this?’
Gavin McFee said, ‘Ask your missis, Mr Watson. Ask your missis about Jamie McFarlane and all those days by the Water of Leith. That’s what I’d do, if I were you.’
Effie thought, Oh God, they haven’t paid him. They’ve tried to call his bluff, and now he’s called theirs. Oh God, mother!
Robert said, ‘On your way, fellow; or I’ll break your jawbone.’
‘Try me,’ challenged Gavin McFee. ‘You great bainie idiot. But it’s Jamie McFarlane’s jawbone you ought to be testing, don’t you think, for all that houghmagandie with your mother?’
Robert seized Gavin McFee’s blanket in his right hand, and punched the boy square in the face with his left. There was a loud popping noise as the cartilage broke in Gavin McFee’s nose, and he dropped down on to his bare knees on the snow-covered cobblestones, with blood splattered everywhere.
‘Now you’ll get yourself off and not go bothering decent people again,’ said Robert. ‘If I catch sight of you once more, so help me God I’ll break every single bone in your whole body.
Gavin McFee stayed where he was, silent, blinking, the red blood coursing down his upper lip. Robert ushered his mother and father, Effie and Prudence into the carriage, and told Russell to make as much haste as he could on the way back to Charlotte Square.
On the way back, Thomas Watson sat in complete silence. When Fiona laid her lilac-gloved hand on his, he did not acknowledge it, either by holding it or by pushing it off. When they reached home, he went straight upstairs and into his upstairs study. Fiona fussed around in the hallway, asking Mrs McNab how the Christmas goose was cooking, and how William Albert had played with the toys they had found for him in the attic, the ivory-handle rattle and the odd green golliwog that Stuart McKay had sent home from the mosquito coast; but it was plain that she was in a panic, that her carefully-balanced life was tilting and dipping, like a spinning-top that has struck a chair-leg, and is looping around the floor in the last spasms of its failing momentum, no hum left, just crisis, and Christmas Day of all days.
Effie tried to comfort her, tried to take her arm, but Fiona Watson was trying to show everybody that she was quite all right, that she wasn’t distressed at all. What could possibly be wrong? What on earth could she be distressed about? Just because some ruffian boy had come up to her after church and accused her of misconduct with somebody called Jamie McFarlane, The whole idea of it was preposterous! The trouble was, it was all over. It had to be. She could never see Jamie McFarlane again, after this. Just then she was trying to be happy and merry with her family, the most important part of her life had collapsed, and left her with nothing to look forward to in the New Year but argument and pain
and the very bitterest of heartaches.
She tried to pretend; she bravely tied on an apron to help Mrs McNab with the chestnut stuffing. But when she came into the living-room to drink the loyal toast to Scotland and to Edward around the fire, Effie could see, with helpless desperation, that her eyes were red and swollen from crying. Thomas Watson still hadn’t come down. The tension of his absence was almost unbearable. And Fiona thought, as everybody raised their glasses, that there couldn’t be a single person in the house who wasn’t thinking of that coarse word ‘houghmagandie’ and what it meant. Fornication, especially adulterous fornication. Sweaty wrestles in the bed of a man who wasn’t her husband. And she, always acting so proper and so prim!
After the toast, Fiona Watson went back into the kitchen, and Robert went upstairs to change. Effie and Prudence were left by themselves, sitting in the cushioned window-seat, looking out over Charlotte Square.
‘There’s such an atmosphere,’ said Prudence. ‘I feel that it’s my fault.’
Effie quickly shook her head. ‘It’s nothing to do with you. I’m afraid that we have never been a very happy family. We’re all too stubborn, and awkward.’
‘But what that boy said … that wasn’t true, was it?’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Effie. ‘I couldn’t possibly tell you. It wouldn’t be fair. Besides, I don’t know everything that’s been going on between my parents myself. I’m sure that it will all be sorted out.’
‘Your mother didn’t really –’
Effie sipped her Madeira wine. ‘Didn’t you, with Dougal?’
‘Well, I suppose so. But – well, yes, I suppose I did.’
Effie said, ‘Don’t judge her, please. She’s had such a difficult time with my father, just as he’s had a difficult time with her.’
‘And you’re always left to patch things up?’
Effie looked at Prudence, a little sadly. In her dark brown velvet dress, with the stitched lace collar, she looked grownup and graceful, almost too grown-up for eighteen. She said, ‘It’s my vocation, I think, to patch things up. I’ve always been like that, ever since I was wee. A patcher!’
‘You’ve changed, since I met you in London.’
‘I think I’ve, grown.’
‘You’re eighteen now, aren’t you?’
Effie nodded. ‘A Sagittarius.’
‘Sagittarians are either rich, or poor. No in-betweens.’
‘And you?’
Prudence lowered her eyes. ‘Pisces. Doomed, of course!’
Effie bent over and kissed Prudence’s cheek. ‘How can you say that, when you have William Albert?’
Prudence looked up, tried to smile, but then shrugged. ‘I don’t know. It’s something about this house. There’s so much unhappiness here. So much money, but so much discontent. I never believed that rich people could be so unhappy.’
‘I’m not unhappy.’
‘Not now,’ said Prudence. ‘Well, I hope not ever.’
Christmas lunch was eaten in silence, except for a heroic effort by Robert to tell the story of a friend of his who had spent Christmas last year in Equatoria, the Upper Nile region, and how he had woken in the morning to discover that a hippopotamus had eaten half his canoe, his picnic table, his charts, his boots, and most of his supplies; but had choked on a tinned cake which his wife had sent him from Towcester. Fiona Watson, cutting up her goose into tinier and tinier pieces, and nibbling at her potatoes without any appetite at all, gave Robert a nod and a pat on the hand when he had finished his tale, but Thomas Watson didn’t even signify that he had been listening. He ate speedily and steadily, as if he were hungry, but as if he had no desire to stay at the table for longer than absolutely necessary.
At the end of the meal, Effie rose and said a grace. ‘Dear Lord, for your bounty, and for the gift of your son Jesus, whose birth we celebrate with this meal, we thank you. And may our hearts be full of understanding. Amen.’
Thomas Watson looked up at her. He wiped his mouth with his napkin, although there was no need. He was always a scrupulous eater. He said, ‘Next time, Effie, I’d be obliged if you would adhere to the accustomed wording. There is quite enough understanding in this family; in fact, we have a super-abundance of it. I don’t think that now is the time to pray for more.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Prudence was in her small primrose-flowery room at the top of the house that evening, breastfeeding William Albert, when the brass door-handle turned. She said, ‘Come in, Mrs McNab. He’s just having his supper.’
The door opened, and then closed again, but when Prudence looked around from her chair she saw that it wasn’t Mrs McNab at all; but Robert, in his severe black evening-suit, and white pleated shirt-front. He was staring at William Albert, and the way the boy was sucking with such concentration at Prudence’s swollen, blue-veined breast; but his face was expressionless. Prudence immediately plucked William Albert away from her nipple and covered herself with a bunched-up baby-shawl.
‘Please,’ she said, flustered and embarrassed. ‘I’m trying to feed the baby.’
Robert pulled a face. ‘It looks as if he feeds better than anyone else in the house. More attractively, anyway.’
Prudence said nothing, but held her baby close to her, and rubbed his back to bring up his wind. Robert took a pace or two forward, and then stood stiffly with his hands behind his back, as if he were about to address an outing of convent girls on the virtues of self-denial. He said, ‘You mustn’t misunderstand me, Miss Cutting.’
‘I don’t think I do, Mr Watson.’
‘You could call me Robert, if you wished,’ he said. ‘I’m not a terrible stickler for formalities.’
‘Would you please let me finish feeding William Albert? If you want to talk to me, I’m quite willing to talk to you, but not when I’m undressed like this. And, besides, he’s hungry.’
Robert didn’t take any notice. Instead, he said, ‘Did you really think if Dougal had been here, that he would have taken care of you?’
‘It was what I was hoping.’
Robert shook his head. ‘Dougal, I’m sorry to say, is the black sheep of the Watson family. The sower of wild oats. He would have denied that this poor wean was his just as easily as he gave him to you.’
‘Your sister said he asked after me in his letters.’
‘My sister is always trying to make life into a rosy daydream; which means that she often misinterprets what she sees, and hears, and reads. Dougal did ask after you, yes, but only to make sure that you would not pursue him, and that you would press no claims of paternity against him.’
Prudence frowned. ‘He didn’t even know that I was with child. I saw him for one night, and that was all. I never heard from him again.’
Robert lifted up his coat-tails, and sat down on the end of the bed, resting his elbow on the polished brass rail. ‘I’m afraid that, as bankers, our intelligence always has to be excellent. We have to know everything. All the social goings-on, as well as the fiscal. Dougal was aware of your condition from very early on, as far as I know, and he was just as anxious to avoid bearing the responsibility for it as he was all the others.’
‘Others?’ said Prudence.
‘My dear girl,’ Robert told her, ‘you don’t surely believe that you’re the first, or that William Albert is anything but the latest in a succession of poor wee bastards? You’ll excuse my language.’
Prudence stroked the baby’s head. ‘What am I going to do?’ she asked. Her eyes were wide, and her face was white as a Giotto madonna.
‘You haven’t any family who might take care of you?’
‘There’s only my father. My mother died of tuberculosis when I was eleven. There are my aunts, of course, but they’d never let me bring a baby to live with them. They live in Waltham-on-the-Wolds, and I’m afraid they’re both very prim.’
Robert raised both his eyebrows. ‘Ah, well, that’s unfortunate. You can’t, of course, stay here. I mean, as much as we’d like to help you, we do hav
e our reputation to think of and I can assure you that the folks in Edinburgh are a great deal more mim-mouthed when it comes to matters of legitimacy than almost anywhere else, including Waltham-on-the-Wolds.’
‘I’ve very little money,’ said Prudence. ‘Jack had to take most of it when he went to Holland.’
‘Well, that’s most unfortunate,’ said Robert. ‘I will, of course, advance you a pound or two to keep you off the street, but I’m afraid that if I were to give you any more than that I would be accepting that young William Albert here was actually Dougal’s child; which I can’t. You’ll recall that I denied all knowledge of him when you came into the door, and I’ll do the same again, in front of anybody else. You’ll not catch a Watson with a claim for maintenance.’
Prudence slowly lowered her head. William Albert, in her arms, began kicking and gurgling and cooing.
‘He’s a handsome wee lad,’ said Robert. ‘It’s a pity.’ He stood up, and tugged his waistcoat over his pot-belly. Then he cleared his throat, and made for the door.
‘Wait,’ said Prudence.
Robert paused, with his back to her.
‘You came up to see me for a reason, didn’t you?’ asked Prudence.
‘My dear girl, what possible reason, except to make sure that you were well?’
‘You’ve got something on your mind. Have you? Or haven’t you? You seem as if you’re trying to make me feel even more destitute than I am, so that you can ask me to do something for you.’
‘Ah,’ said Robert. ‘Do I?’
‘Very much so. You do want me to do something for you, don’t you?’
‘You’re a very perceptive girl. Well educated. Sharp.’
Prudence said nothing, but watched the back of Robert’s head, the way the prickly-cropped skin folded over his collar, the shine of his cheek, still well shaved at seven o’clock in the evening. There was a bulkiness about him which both frightened her and, in a strange way, attracted her. It was like watching a two-year-old bull, unsure if it would stay docile, or if it would suddenly bunch up its shoulder-muscles and charge.
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