Mr Long sniffed, and cleared phlegm from his throat. He looked extremely miserable. At length, he said, ‘You’ll really send your mother off to Dunkeld?’
Robert nodded.
‘Well, then, I suppose we can say that we’re satisfied that your father’s demise was natural. After all, paper down his windpipe, that’s rather far-fetched, wouldn’t you say? I must speak to David about it.’
‘I already have,’ said Robert.
There was a cold moment of silence. Mr Long paused with his whisky glass raised to his lips, his eyes as watery as the fresh-opened oysters which the waiters whisked past him on pewter trays.
‘What did you say to him?’ asked the Procurator-Fiscal.
‘Och, not much,’ said Robert, artlessly. ‘But Dr Campbell agreed with me that he was near to retirement age, and that he might be better off with his sister in St Cyrus, breeding those Cairn terriers of his, rather than carrying on his medical practice in Edinburgh.’
Mr Long sipped his whisky carefully, and then set down the glass.
‘I see that you’ve inherited all of your father’s capabilities,’ he said, throatily.
Robert leaned back in his chair, beaming, and fished out his gold pocket-watch on the end of its chain. ‘I’m going to have to leave you now, Charles,’ he said. ‘Business calls! You don’t mind if I ask you to pay for the lunch?’
The Procurator-Fiscal shook his head. ‘I don’t mind. The lunch is the smallest price I have to pay; and you know it.’
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
Robert and Prudence were married in the first week of April at St Giles’, the High Kirk of Edinburgh, in a ceremony that became famous as The Black Wedding. In respect for the memory of Thomas Watson, Prudence cancelled her white silk gown, and wore instead a gown of jet-black, with an overlay of black Nottingham lace, sewn with jets, and for a headdress and veil, she wore a black mantilla. Even the bridesmaids were dressed in black, and Robert himself wore a black coat and the sombre hunting tartan of the Malcolms. Outside the kirk, on the cobbled forecourt, an honour guard of the Argyle and Sutherland Highlanders beat a long, fast drum-roll, which led the correspondent from The Scotsman to remark that ‘I felt as if I were witness to some event far more momentous than a wedding; that furious rub-a-dub rub-a-dub rub-a-dub of drums made me think of frightening and dramatic times in history, like Flodden, and Culloden, and the ‘45. It was only when the bride and groom had been driven away in a majestic black Albion motor-car that I came to my senses again, and realised that I was back in modern times, at a nuptial ceremony that had been characterised principally by the humanity and the understandable grief of its participants.’
The newly weds were to spend a short three-week honeymoon in the Highlands, mostly at the extraordinary turreted castle of Graigievar, not far from Balmoral. Prudence wore a going-away dress of eggshell blue, with blue hat to match, and a finely-tailored blue wool coat by Madame Cheruit, of Paris. Effie, who had dressed for the wedding breakfast in a white Doucet gown with a pale yellow over-dress, went up to the Cerulean Room just before they were about to leave to wish Prudence well. She found Prudence sitting on her bed, staring at the blue pattern on the carpet, white-faced and tired in the sharp April sunlight which filled the room.
She said, gently, ‘Prudence?’
Prudence gave her a brief smile, and then looked away again.
‘Prudence?’ Effie asked her. ‘Are you all right?’
Prudence said, with an unintentional catch in her voice, ‘Of course. Why shouldn’t I be?’
Effie sat down beside her. ‘Oh, Prudence, you know that I’ll always do my best to look after you.’
‘I know that,’ nodded Prudence. ‘It’s just that your best may not be good enough.’
‘I don’t understand,’ said Effie.
A single tear slid down Prudence’s right cheek, a sticky diamond. ‘I don’t expect you to. I just want you to be there. Will you always be there? You must. I don’t have anybody else.’
Effie held Prudence close, and kissed her cheek. ‘Prudence, you know that I’ll always be here. You know I shall. I promise.’
‘Oh, you can’t promise that,’ said Prudence. ‘You have your own life to lead. I’m sorry. No, really, I’m sorry. Don’t listen to me when I’m like this. I’m just upset. The wedding, and everything; I think it’s all been too much for me.’
She wiped her eyes, and attempted to look happy. But there was Effie, so young and so pretty and so bright, without any of the bitterness of knowing that her son was being cared for by strangers, fed by bottles, and wheeled in a strange perambulator along the seafront at St Andrews, under the shadow of St Rules, cooed over by old ladies and doodled by whiskery old men, waking up every morning in his crib with the sunshine blurred by those eastern sea-mists the people of the north call ‘hoars’, without his mother, without any of those tiny warm whispered confidences that only a mother can tell her child, hush, now, or the fairies will come and steal you away for ever.
And another bitterness that Effie couldn’t share with her was what had happened after the wedding ceremony, after Robert had brought her home to 14 Charlotte Square, and carried her laughing over the threshold. Once upstairs in the bedroom, the laughter had suddenly died, and when Prudence had twirled around, singing, she had suddenly realised how quiet the room was, because Robert had turned the key in the door, and now stood facing her, his hands on his hips, his eyes bulging a little, uglier and more walrus-like than he had ever looked before, and certainly not the calm affectionate Robert who had taken her hand only half an hour ago in the Kirk, and slid the gold wedding-band on her finger, and kissed her, and promised her all of his worldly wealth. She had said, ‘Robert?’ while downstairs a fiddler had started to play Bonnie Peggy Alison.
I’ll kiss thee yet, yet,
An’ I’ll kiss thee o’er again;
An’ I’ll kiss thee yet, yet,
My bonnie Peggy Alison!’
Robert had stripped off his black coat in three forceful tugs, and thrown it across the bed. Prudence, in black, had taken off her black mantilla, obediently, but also defensively. ‘Robert?’ she had repeated, more quietly, because she had realised by then that he wouldn’t answer her.
He had taken two steps forward, and clutched her left wrist, still gloved as it was in black silk, clutched it so tightly that she was shocked, and unable to move, and too frightened and puzzled to struggle. ‘You’re my wife now,’ he had said, staring at her. ‘You’re my property. You know that, don’t you? You belong to me, whatever.’
In a clumsy rush, he had pushed her towards the bed. She had tried violently but vainly, to twist away from him, and so he had swung her around, still gripping her wrist, and thrust her up against the bedroom wall. A small etching of the birks at Aberfeldy had been knocked awry, and a small blue vase had been tumbled off the bedside table and rolled across the carpet.
Neither of them spoke now. The struggle had become too intense for words. Robert had snatched Prudence’s other arm, and pinned her up against the cornflower-patterned wallpaper with both her hands raised above her head. He had kissed her, and bitten at her neck, and breathed whisky and biscuits into her mouth. She had bitten back at him, making his lips bleed, but in response he had beaten her upraised wrists against the wall, again and again, with relentless steadiness, and bruised them.
Then, Robert had altered his grip so that he had imprisoned both of her wrists with one hand. With his free right hand, and his knees, he had gathered up the voluminous skirts of her black wedding-gown, and her five embroidered petticoats, until he had bared her garters and her stockings and her cream-coloured silk drawers. Prudence had gasped, and struggled, but Robert was both heavy and strong, as well as being invested with the same implacable certainty as his father that he would always get what he wanted. He pulled her drawers aside, harshly cutting into her flesh and tearing the lace, and even though her eyes were closed she felt how close he was, felt him breathing against her
cheek. He lifted his own skirts, his Malcolm tartan, and exposed his rearing crimson penis, and his dark furry balls; and in the reflecting glass of one of the pictures on the opposite wall, when she at last opened her eyes, Prudence could see his big white rounded buttocks, with their black shaggy cleft.
Grunting, he had forced himself up against her dry, closed vulva. ‘You’re mine now, you understand me?’ he had told her.
She had said nothing, her neck backwards, panted in fear and hopelessness.
‘Do you understand me, you belong to me?’
‘No,’ she had whispered; and when she had said no, he had burst up between her lips, and thrust the whole length of himself deep inside her.
He had released her wrists, then, but taken her with such force and greed that she had been frightened that he was going to kill her. With his philabegs raised up, he had forced himself between her bare white thighs, smoothered himself in her petticoats and her mourning gown, like a man wading recklessly and madly into the darkest and foamiest of lochs. He had pushed and pushed and pushed until Prudence had no longer known whether she was ashamed or aroused; until she had twisted her fingertips into the black curls of hair in the cleft of his bottom, and tugged at them wildly, to hurt him, to stop him, to urge him on. He had shouted at her, ‘Another, you bitch, another!’, blared it out like one of the clan war-cries at Culloden.
They had screamed together at the end, and then stumbled away from the wall. Prudence had collapsed on to the bed, her black wedding-gown still raised over her hips, quivering and aching for breath. Robert had lain flat on his face on the carpet, breathing rapidly but steadily.
Downstairs, the fiddler was playing Lassie Wi’ the Lint-White Locks.
‘Is this what it will always be like?’ Prudence asked Robert at last.
‘What?’ Robert had grunted, from the floor.
Prudence hadn’t asked him again. Instead, she had climbed unsteadily off the bed, and walked erratically to the dressing-table. She had been surprised to see in the looking-glass that she hadn’t altered in any way at all, except perhaps that she was a little flushed, and that her hair was untidy. Beneath her black wedding-gown, however, she had felt Robert’s semen crawl down the inside of her thigh like a snail.
She had begun to brush her hair, mechanically, the way women do when they are in shock. Robert had hefted himself up off the floor, still puffing, and had gone over to the bureau and poured out a basinful of cold water, and splashed his face.
‘You’re lusty,’ he had said. ‘I’ll give you that. You’re lusty.’
Blinded by soap and water, he had groped around for something to dry his face. Prudence had stood back and watched him, and made no move to hand him the towel which lay neatly folded on the kist at the end of the bed.
Now, here she was, saying goodbye to Effie, with nothing to look forward to but three weeks of Robert’s obstinate violence, and day after day of unrelenting separation from William Albert. She touched Effie’s cheek and gave her what she hoped was a brave and confident smile.
Russell appeared at the door. ‘Mrs Watson?’ he asked.
Prudence didn’t realise at first that he meant her. Then Effie said, ‘That’s you. Mrs Robert Watson.’
‘Oh, yes!’ said Prudence. And then, ‘Yes,’ as bitterly as anyone could.
‘The motor-car is quite ready now, Mrs Watson. The trunks are all aboard. Mr Watson inquired when you might come down.’
‘You can tell him, directly,’ Prudence replied. Then, when he had gone, she leaned forward to Effie, and quickly whispered, ‘This is the unhappiest day of my whole life.’
She stood up, and stared at Effie, defying her to answer. Effie, shocked, could think of nothing to say.
‘Remember that,’ said Prudence, and was gone.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
There began now for Effie a time in her life when she worked more busily than she had ever done before; a time on which she would later look back with amazement (that she had achieved so much in so few years) but also with a slightly baffled sense of regret. With her mother in a nursing-home in Dunkeld, and her father dead, and nobody to care for her social life but Robert and Prudence, she became, understandably, one of those girls about whom the smart young men about town would remark, ‘She’s pretty, you ken, but no family. An orphan, almost. And you won’t get a kiss out of her, neither.’
She wasn’t particularly lonely, although she was often wistful, especially when she retired to her rooms at night, and brushed out her hair, on then went to her window and looked out over the trees of Charlotte Square, and beyond, to the distant black buttresses of Edinburgh Castle. She often thought of her father, trying to understand why he had lived and why it had been necessary for him to die. She had loved him in spite of his anger, and in spite of his apparent indifference to his family. She had known that there had been something burning away inside him, some dark and secret warmth, some reason for him being the way he always was. She thought of a time when she was seven, and he had taken her, on her own, to the shores of the Firth of Forth. They had stood in the wind with the transparent wavelets rippling at their shoes, looking out over the blue glittering water towards the new Forth railway bridge, which had only just been opened. Every now and then a train passed over the bridge, and the distant rattling noise it made sounded like the echoes of a long-forgotten Highland battle.
Her father had said, To be a private banker, Effie, is to live a life of charmed value. It is a watchful trade, but not a labourious one and so it gives one time for improving pursuits, and intellectual company. It is a hereditary calling, too. The credit of the bank passes down from father to son, and, in time, this inherited wealth brings inherited refinement. You, my children, will be in the rarest and happiest of positions for the rest of your lives, and your children will be even happier.’
She hadn’t been able to recall his exact words, but she had discovered when she was older that, like all of his remarks, this one had been plagiarised. He had borrowed them from Lombard Street, by Walter Bagehot, the nineteenth-century banker who had started The Economist. She had read it over and over, trying to recall that chill and salty day by the Firth, until Bagehot’s words and her father’s words had become inextricably intermingled.
Why had he taken her there? A young white-faced girl in a pink coat with brown braid buttons, and a pink peek-a-boo bonnet? They had spent a whole day away from home; and they had lunched at Abercorn, in a busy little restaurant which served fresh trout fried in oatmeal, and bubbly-jock, and small glasses of very dark beer. For most of the meal, Thomas Watson had stared out of the window, a silent man in a black banker’s trailcoats and a rigid collar. But on the way home, in the family calèche, he had slapped his thighs and sung Coulter’s Candy for her, in a hoarse high voice.
‘Babbie, babbie, babbie-babbie bee,
Sitting on your mummy’s knee,
Greetin’ for a wee bawbee,
To buy some Coulter’s Candy.’
He had been a Victorian father of the strictest sort. He had insisted on the nicest punctuality, the devoutest religious observance, and the deepest domestic decorum. Especially in the early years of her adolescence, when she had been pale and bird-like and shrilly argumentative, Effie had often felt as if she could shriek at him for being so pedantic and so boorish, and for criticising her mother so relentlessly. Yet, it was not because she hated him. It was because she felt unable to make him understand that she saw what he was, she saw, and that she didn’t blame him for it. He had been a man who had needed heirs for the accomplishment of his life’s greatest ambition (the creation of a banking dynasty), but contrarily he had also been the kind of man who was totally unsuited to marriage – especially to a girl as gentle and complicated as Fiona Nugent-Dunbar. There had been love there, within him. Effie had been sure of it. There must have been, for him to raise Robert with such attention, and to allow Dougal so much licence at the bank. She often thought about that day at the Firth of Forth, sadl
y, a picture-book sadness, and wondered what it had actually meant to her father. Had he taken her there out of duty, or out of affection, or simply because he had nobody else to talk to?
It was too late now. The only mouth that could have spoken her answers was crowded with soil, under a stone cross by the Chapel of St Maelrhuba.
During the years that followed her father’s death and her mother’s enforced ‘convalescence’ in Dunkeld, Effie also thought constantly about Henry Baeklander. He became, mysteriously, the man of her dreams, and she thought about him sometimes with such intensely sweet regret that she felt she was going to suffocate. When she was in such moods, Robert would accuse her of reading too much poetry, and being soft. Prudence would say nothing, for Prudence knew what Effie was thinking, and Prudence would never gainsay the preciousness of a dream lover, no matter how remote and fantastic he might be.
Effie wrote regularly on blue paper to Dougal in New York, and on several occasions inquired about Henry Baeklander. But Dougal’s answers grew more sporadic and less informative, and he scarcely ever mentioned Henry except perhaps to say that Henry was travelling on business to Argentina, or that Henry had complimented him on his work, or (once) that he had bought a half-share in a racehorse called Valley Forge which had won races all over Kentucky and Tennessee. Dougal wrote less and less about himself, and more and more about business, and how eager he was to set up on his own. He did say that he had found a new apartment, however, in the less fashionable stretch of Third Avenue, and he did enclose a small photograph of himself, his hands in his pockets, a straw skimmer tilted jauntily on his head, his eyes screwed up against the New York sunlight. He didn’t say if he had found himself a new girlfriend or not, and Effie hadn’t yet had the heart to write to him about Prudence. Perhaps he was too busy for girls. His letters always ended up by saying, ‘You will have heard no doubt how warly everybody is in America, and how a fellow has to sprattle pretty quickly if he isn’t to be done down for a dollar or a cent! So I must get back to work, and leave you with the promise that I shall write in greater detail later.’
Lady of Fortune Page 28