He leaned lightly against Lindsay once more.
‘I would rather sleep with you,’ he said, so quietly that Lindsay could not be sure that he had spoken at all.
‘What?’ Lindsay said. ‘What did you say?’
‘In your house. I would rather stay in your house,’ Forbes said.
‘No, that’s not what you—’
‘Hush now. Hush,’ he told her. ‘I think our dear old grandpappy is about to make a speech.’
* * *
The manservant, Giles, was last to leave the dining-room. He took with him the empty sherbet dishes, decanters and those glasses that did not contain wine. Before lifting the laden tray he carefully swept crumbs from the tablecloth and collected them in a little brass-handled pan. He balanced the pan beneath the tray and used his elbow to open the dining-room door.
Outside, the April sky was tinted brown, not pretty or pastel but flat and sombre and, just before the servant left and Grandfather Owen rose to speak, a few speckles of rain laid themselves against the window panes. At a signal from the old man Donald and Arthur lit the candles and sat down again. Silence in that uproarious room seemed oppressive, almost uncanny, so much so that Pansy, the youngest, turned her face away and clung to brother Johnny as if she feared that she might need protection.
Lindsay too was tense. She might have sought her Irish cousin’s arm except that she was no longer sure of him, no longer sure at all.
‘First,’ Owen began, ‘may I bid a special welcome to Kay, who we haven’t seen for far too long, and to my grandson Forbes.’ He paused, cleared his throat and went on: ‘I must say it’s grand to have all my children and so many of their children gathered together at last. I wish’ – another hesitation – ‘I just wish that Helen had been spared to bear children too. That, however, was not the Lord’s intention, and we can’t go questioning the ways of the Lord.’
With an unusual twinge of resentment Lindsay wondered why her grandfather hadn’t mentioned her mother, hadn’t mourned for the children that she had never borne.
‘I’m no longer as young as I was,’ Owen continued. ‘It has been in my mind for some time to clear the decks for the next generation; not a bad generation either, in my biased opinion. Be that as it may, I have decided to retire from—’
‘What’s this you’re saying, Pappy?’ Donald blurted out. ‘You can’t retire. What’ll we do without you?’
‘Are you ill?’ said Kay in that piercing voice of hers. ‘Are you a-dying, Daddy, is that why you’ve brought us from Dublin?’
‘No, damn it,’ Owen said. ‘Don’t go getting your hopes up. I am not a-dying. You don’t get rid of me as easily as all that. I am, however, just a bit too rusty for many more repairs. I’ve got to face the fact that my next voyage or the one after might take me to the breaker’s yard.’
‘Are you giving up the chairmanship?’ Lindsay’s father asked.
‘Yes.’
Out of the corner of her eye Lindsay noticed Aunt Lilias cover Uncle Donald’s hand with her own, a gesture not of commiseration but of excitement. Apparently no hint of her grandfather’s intentions had reached the Franklins. She suspected that the McCullochs might have guessed what was in the wind, though; that Kay, her husband and possibly Forbes had discussed its implications and made plans in advance.
Grandfather Owen held up his hand. ‘Be easy now, be easy. I’m not selling the yard. I’m not leaving you stranded. I’ve gathered you all together to hear what I’ve got in mind for the future. First,’ he said, ‘let me tell you that Forbes will be joining the firm to train as a manager. He will follow the same route of learning as both of you did. Do you remember what that was like, Donald, Arthur?’
‘Only too well,’ said Lindsay’s father.
‘Hard, very hard,’ said Donald.
‘Forbes will start out with a year in Beardmore’s, at the Parkhead Forge. I’ve already arranged it with Mr Peterson. He’ll be waged by Franklin’s during that period. After he’s learned something of forging and casting we’ll bring him into the engine shop at Aydon Road while he undertakes a course of night classes at the Maritime Institute.’
‘Do you approve of this programme, Kay?’ Lindsay’s father enquired.
‘Indeed, and I do,’ Kay replied.
‘Was it your idea or the boy’s?’
‘It was my idea, Uncle Arthur,’ Forbes McCulloch said. ‘I may be Irish born but I think I’ve always been a Scot at heart. It wasn’t my mother but my father who opposed the notion of my coming across the sea for a career.’
‘It may not be so easy as you imagine,’ Lindsay’s father said. ‘We carry no passengers at Franklin’s’
‘Forbes will be no passenger, rest assured,’ Kay put in. ‘He’s been taught the value of hard work. Aye, he’ll put in more than he takes out.’
‘Stop it.’ Owen shook his head. ‘I won’t have this bickering. Forbes is as much your flesh and blood as Martin, say, or Ross. You’ve nothing against them, Arthur, have you?’
Lindsay watched her father’s chest swell. She knew what that lungful of oxygen indicated, how he would hold his breath as if to prepare for singing a long phrase of music or striking out, pure and clear, at a top note in the register. Perhaps, she thought, he’s just envious of Kay because he doesn’t have a son to put into the business.
‘Nothing against any of them,’ her father said. ‘I’m just a trifle concerned about how many more – ah – apprentices from Dublin we can accommodate?’
‘My brothers,’ Forbes answered before his mother could open her mouth, ‘my brothers, Uncle Arthur, have no interest in shipbuilding. They’re all lined up to enter the brewing trade.’
‘I see,’ said Arthur. ‘But you prefer salt water to black stout?’
‘I do.’
‘Lilias has already agreed to let the lad lodge here,’ said Owen.
‘Oh, has she?’ said Arthur.
‘Where are you going, Pappy?’ said Martin.
‘Strathmore, in Perthshire,’ Owen answered. ‘I’ve leased a house in that neck of the woods, near Kelkemmit.’
‘Perthshire!’ Johnny said. ‘What the heck will you do in Perthshire?’
‘Fish,’ said Owen, curtly.
‘What about Franklin’s?’ said Lindsay’s father.
‘Don’t fret, Arthur,’ Owen Franklin said. ‘You won’t starve. When it comes to ship design you know more than I ever did, and Donald is better at securing contracts than I ever was.’ He pointed at one son and then the other. ‘What’s wrong with the pair of you? Don’t tell me you’re too timid to take over. Good God, you’re twice the age I was when I struck out on my own.’
‘Yes, but things were different in those days,’ Donald said.
‘Don’t blather, son,’ Owen Franklin told him. ‘You’re delighted to have your chance at last. And if you aren’t, you should be. I’m stepping down, fading out of the picture. I’m going away into the Perthshire hills to threaten the salmon and that’s an end of that part of it.’
‘What’s the other part, Pappy?’ Aunt Lilias asked.
Reaching down by his chair Owen Franklin brought out five manila envelopes, each sealed with the firm’s stamp, each with a name handwritten upon it. He held them in a little fan against his waistcoat while he looked around the table, his eyes travelling from face to face quite deliberately and without a trace of sentiment.
‘This,’ said Pappy Owen, and with a decisive little flick of the wrist began tossing envelopes down the length of the table to Donald, to Arthur, to Martin and to Forbes.
And finally, astonishingly, to Lindsay, who caught it in both hands.
CHAPTER TWO
An Eye to the Future
The house had been lit by gas for as long as Lindsay could recall. Cook and Maddy, the parlour-maid, had swan-necked jets to illuminate their rooms in the basement and Miss Runciman, the Franklins’ housekeeper, had two of the same in her forbidding second-floor sitting-room. Only Nanny Cheadle eschewed th
e use of such new-fangled gadgetry and continued to go about the house with an oil lamp in her hand, trailing smoke behind her like a tugboat. Nanny’s little idiosyncrasy drove Miss Runciman crazy, for she refused to accept that Nanny was a law unto herself and had earned the right to pretend that the nineteenth century was not drawing to a close and all was just as it had been before the Stephensons invented the Rocket.
The pungent odours of wick and paraffin had been all through the house when Eleanor Runciman had returned from evening service. She had hunted down her mortal enemy who, lamp still glowing, had taken refuge behind the locked door of the library and refused to come out. The spectacle of housekeeper and Nanny playing hide-and-seek amused Lindsay as a rule but neither she nor her father were in any frame of mind to put up with it that particular evening. Within minutes of entering the house Lindsay was placating Miss Runciman with a snifter of brandy in the downstairs parlour while Arthur beat a fist on the library door and ordered Nanny to give herself up.
‘Five minutes, I can’t leave you alone for five minutes,’ Arthur shouted. ‘Five minutes and you are at each other’s throats. Behaving like children. Worse than children. At least children would be in bed by now. Nanny, Nanny Cheadle, come out of there this minute.’
‘She wants to steal my lamp.’
‘She doesn’t want your blessed lamp. She just wants you to put it out.’
‘Shan’t.’
‘Nanny, do as I say or I’ll – I’ll throw you out on the street.’
The library door opened.
‘You wouldn’t do that to me, Mr Arthur, would you?’ Nanny Cheadle asked in a voice that managed to be both pathetic and shameless at one and the same time.
‘No, I wouldn’t,’ Arthur said. ‘I only want my library back, Nanny.’
‘You don’t want to steal my lamp?’
‘For God’s sake, what kind of a household … Take the lamp with you, just take the damned lamp and go to bed, Nanny, please.’
In the downstairs parlour Miss Runciman knocked back brandy, drew herself up inside her stiff black woollen dress and long-waisted corset and, with colour returning to her lips, said, ‘I am perfectly all right, thank you, Lindsay. I should not have lost my temper.’
‘No, you shouldn’t, Miss Runciman,’ Lindsay agreed.
‘That woman so muddles my head I tend to forget myself.’ She sniffed, elongated herself even more inside the corset. ‘Did you have an enjoyable dinner?’
‘Interesting,’ Lindsay said. ‘Interesting rather than enjoyable.’
‘If I may ask, what was the nature of the surprise?’
‘My Aunt Kay has arrived from Dublin,’ Lindsay said, ‘with her son.’
‘A family reunion,’ Miss Runciman said. ‘How nice!’
It was on the tip of Lindsay’s tongue to inform the housekeeper that her grandfather had announced his retirement and that he, the most gregarious man you could imagine, proposed to take himself off to a remote country house in the wilds of Perthshire. She could hardly believe it herself and, along with her cousins, suspected some hidden motive on Pappy’s part. She said nothing about her own good fortune. Time enough for celebrations when everything had been signed, sealed and delivered and she better understood what was going on.
Lindsay didn’t pretend to know what stocks were and how they differed from shares. Discussion in school of such erudite financial matters had bored her, though she had always been impressed by girls who knew who owned what and what dividends their fathers’ companies paid out. Since leaving the Park School she had done what most other girls did with their time. Filled her days with piano lessons and lectures on art and literature. Went shopping in town with Cissie and Aunt Lilias. Played tennis, or skated upon the boating lake when it was frozen or upon the indoor roller-skating rink at the Causeway where there were potted palms, a melodic little orchestra and a tea-room that served hot chocolate and gingerbread.
Last summer she had gone on several excursions with her cousins, windswept trips downriver in a paddle-steamer to Rothesay or Millport. On one long sun-drenched day, they had cruised all the way around Arran and back again. And in August Uncle Donald had taken them all to London and on to Southampton for a special Naval Review at Spithead, a tiring but rewarding experience. Then there were launches, concerts, dances and rather grand dinners which, now that she had turned eighteen, Papa expected her to attend, sometimes with Cissie for company and sometimes not. What dramas and anxieties the future held in store did not concern her; she assumed that she would be taken care of until the time came to marry and settle down.
The cream-laid sheet of paper in the manila envelope that her grandfather had given her had changed all that, of course.
‘Will your aunt be staying long in Glasgow?’ Miss Runciman asked.
‘I don’t know,’ Lindsay answered. ‘Probably not. My cousin – his name is Forbes, by the way – has come to train as a manager. He will be lodging with Lilias and Donald.’
‘A brand-new cousin?’ Miss Runciman said, with a little tilt of the eyebrow. ‘Is he handsome?’
‘I really couldn’t say,’ Lindsay lied. Miss Runciman’s interest in potential suitors for Lindsay had become all too apparent this last year or so. ‘He’s much, much younger than I am. Hardly more than a boy, in fact.’
‘Ah,’ said Miss Runciman. ‘So he is handsome. Irishmen usually are. I was almost engaged to a gentleman from Cork once.’
‘Really!’ said Lindsay, dryly. She had too many things on her mind to be bothered with Miss Runciman’s romantic anecdotes. ‘I believe Nanny has gone upstairs now, Miss Runciman. I suspect my father would like tea brought up to the library, if that can be arranged. Some tea and toast, I think. For two.’
She had no notion what her father had made of the evening’s events or how her grandfather’s startling announcement had affected him. She had tried to introduce the subject on the way home in the cab but her father had been curiously withdrawn. She’d had sense enough not to press him. She had sat with the envelope in her hand, looking out at the city, wondering if the sheet of cream-laid paper and the arrival of the Irish cousin were somehow connected.
‘For two?’ Miss Runciman enquired.
‘Yes. I’ve something to discuss with Papa and we may be some time about it. You may retire to bed whenever you wish.’
‘Thank you, Lindsay,’ the housekeeper said. ‘I’ll fetch your tea first.’
‘And toast,’ said Lindsay.
* * *
Outside the first-floor study there was little to indicate what Arthur Franklin did for a living. The house was comfortably appointed but had an uncluttered feel to it that her father had been careful to preserve. Lindsay suspected that the public rooms had changed little since her mother had arranged them and still reflected how the house had been when her parents had first taken occupancy twenty years ago.
Twenty years ago! She could not imagine it. In fact, she had been completely oblivious to the passage of time until she had arrived at her first bleeding and had altered mentally and emotionally. It was as if the tide of nature had affected not just her reproductive organs – Aunt Lilias had explained the mystery very scientifically – but her brain too, her ability to perceive all sorts of things that had been hidden from her before.
As a child she had believed that she loved Nanny Cheadle more than she loved Papa. Believed that she was Nanny Cheadle’s child and that when she was old enough the truth would be revealed. Had even imagined that she might belong to Aunt Lilias and that the woman whose oval portrait hung above the fireplace in the big, seldom-used ground-floor drawing-room was not Margaret, her mother, but some ethereal substitute who had never really existed.
When the house had been quiet she would borrow the shell-backed mirror from Nanny Cheadle’s dressing-table and bring it down to the empty drawing-room; the room in which a fire was lighted only on the coldest of winter days; the room with the little piano in it, the peaceful, faintly dusty room that seemed to h
ave been preserved for no other purpose than to shelter the oval portrait over the fireplace. She would stand on toe-tip on the fender and angle the mirror so that she could see her face and the face in the portrait framed side by side. She had striven to recognise herself, to be able to say, ‘Yes, this is who I am,’ but could not, and had been both mystified and frustrated when Pappy or Uncle Donald in a soft, muddled moment had brushed her fair curls and told her that she looked so like her mama that she might be her double.
Lindsay had never been a ‘kitchen jenny’ like her smallest cousin, Pansy, who enjoyed spending time below stairs with the cook and the maids. Parlour, bedroom and library were the heart of the house as far as Lindsay was concerned and she left all domestic dealings to Miss Runciman.
When, as a child, she had toddled into the library, her father would patiently put away his pencils and squares and lift her on to the table, plonk her down on the sheet of crisp draft paper like ballast in the ship he was designing, and would listen patiently to her little tales of woe. Later she learned to respect his need for peace and quiet and would curl up in the battered old leather chesterfield and read quietly or watch him draw, his tongue between his teeth, his cuffs pushed back from his wrists.
He worked not at a desk or drawing-board but on the top of a huge pedestal sideboard in the window bay. The sideboard was flanked by a wall of books, elongated folios of diagrams, volumes of sheet music, bound sets of Scott and Smollett, Thackeray and Carlyle. Tucked modestly away on top of the open shelves were six or eight little postcard albums containing faded photographs of the weird and wonderful steam craft in whose construction her father had had a hand. On the mantel above the fireplace was a cased model of the Charlotte Dundas, complete with a miniature of Symington’s engine. The model, the only one in the house, was not so much an ornament as an inspiration, for her father claimed that he had never designed anything that wasn’t based on ‘Old Willum’s’ perfect little boat which had been built over ninety years ago.
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