Some so-called Christians were more difficult to deal with and on several occasions, when poetry and compassion had failed to take a trick, Dada Hartnell had had to pick her and the basket up and make a run for it.
To keep her from worrying, Dada did not always tell Mama where they were going or where they had been. He asked Sylvie to keep her mouth shut too and she was happy to oblige. She could keep a secret when it suited her. She already had a great deal of experience in keeping secrets. None of her classmates knew precisely where she lived or that Dada Hartnell wasn’t her real father and did not work in an office in the city. She knew it was wrong to tell lies but there were occasions when not telling the whole truth could be an act of kindness and she believed that one thing balanced out another in the eyes of the Lord.
Sylvie was happy as she skipped down the road in the pretty frilled dress and shaped bodice that Dada Hartnell had insisted Mama buy for her, her bonnet bobbing as she tried to keep up with him; although he had short, stout legs Dada Hartnell’s stride was much longer than hers. He wore a sober black wool-worsted suit, a soft-collared shirt and a tie with a trace of red in the pattern. His square-crowned hat was perched raffishly on his head. Except for the shallow wicker basket and the tarnished tin badge that identified him as a collector for the Coral Strand Foreign Mission Fund, he seemed no different from any of the other gentlemen who were heading, singly and in pairs, for the polished glass doors of Kirby’s Tavern or, more circumspectly, for the unglazed door in the lane that led to the gentlemen’s club upstairs.
Dada Hartnell pushed open the tavern door. It was Friday night. The bar was packed. He guided Sylvie before him into the throng. She couldn’t see much except the backs and buttocks of the men in front of her. She looked round, tilting her head. Dada Hartnell gave her a reassuring wink. Parting the chaps before her as Moses had parted the Red Sea, he steered her towards the mahogany bar at the far end of the room.
There were mirrors everywhere, mirrors etched with advertisements for beers and spirits, mirrors engraved with ladies in floral shifts, mirrors even on the ceiling. When Sylvie looked up she could see herself floating in the midst of all the men. She was not in the least intimidated at being the only female person in the room, except for the barmaids who were so large-busted and brassy that they seemed to belong to another species altogether. She inhaled the reek of sweat, spirits and tobacco smoke as if it were incense and offered up a little prayer of gratitude that she was here at last, inside the very tabernacle of wickedness where somehow she felt so much at home.
‘I say, Hartnell, what’s this you’ve dragged in?’
‘Ah, Moscrop, I don’t believe you’ve met my daughter Sylvie.’
‘I’ll say I haven’t. Daughter, is she? Not a bit like you, thank God!’ Mr Moscrop, all veined cheeks and bristling whiskers, leered over his pint glass. ‘Does she drink? Let me buy her a little something, what? Little snifter of something to get her going, what?’
‘Enough of that, old man,’ Dada Hartnell said. ‘It’s the Lord’s business that brings me here tonight. Sylvie’s helping me with my collections.’
‘Damned tasty little mascot too, if I may say so.’
‘You may not,’ Dada told the man, rather curtly.
‘So you’re not takin’ her hup-stairs to shake for you?’
‘No, I’m not,’ Dada Hartnell said. ‘How about it, Daniel, how about starting my little lady off with a bob or two for her basket?’
‘I know what I’d like to do to her basket,’ put in a younger man who had come up behind Mr Moscrop. ‘I’d give it more than a bob or two.’
‘Do then,’ said Dada. ‘It’s all in a good cause.’
‘For the poor heathens on the Coral Strand,’ Sylvie said.
‘It speaks. Lo! it utters.’
‘Charley, that’s enough,’ said another young man, one of several who had gathered round her. She liked the sound of this one’s voice; liked being the focus of attention. She glanced from one to the other, smiling at each. Mr Moscrop, who had been pushed to the rear, was bobbing up and down, glass in hand, struggling to keep her in view.
‘Ain’t there enough heathens for you in Glasgow, Albert?’
‘Far too bloody many of them,’ Dada retorted. ‘Far too many penniless engineers for a start.’
Sylvie wasn’t offended by the swear word. She had known for some time that two men were contained within Dada Hartnell’s skin: one who appeared at home, the other in places like Kirby’s.
She slipped the basket from under his arm and offered it out, not too boldly. She gave the dark-haired, handsome young man a timid smile. She had already deduced that he was a student from the Maritime Institute on Sutter Street, that big sooty-black building where the lights burned all afternoon and blackboards and drawing-boards peeped above the window ledges. Perhaps he was hoping to become an engineer or a draughtsman, like her real father. She did not hold that against him. Dada Hartnell had told her that not all students were poor, that some were quite well-to-do and others, though not many, came from very wealthy families.
‘What can I buy you?’ the dark-haired young man said.
He addressed her directly, not through Dada. She did not answer him directly, though. She glanced up at Dada, waiting to be told what to do. He gave a light shrug, one of many secret signals that they had developed over the years. She smiled at the young man and said that she would be glad to partake of a glass of soda water.
‘Soda water it is, then.’ Half-a-crown appeared in his fingers like a conjuring trick and he instructed one of the others, Charley, to hop off to the bar and do the honours.
Sylvie said, ‘It’s all very well for us to be drinking soda water, sir, and I do appreciate your generosity, but what about the poor souls who languish in the heat of the Coral Strand, who is to buy them soda water?’
‘Have you ever been to the Coral Strand?’ the young man said.
Somehow he had gained prime position, had isolated her from the others – if isolation was the right word in such a crowded place. She noticed that the barmaids had spotted Dada and were none too pleased to see him. A burly man in a canvas apron and broad-striped shirt had appeared under the mirrors. She kept one eye on the man in the apron and the other on Dada while she spoke with the student who was paying for her soda water. She was relieved to see the man in the canvas apron shake his head and go off down a back staircase.
‘What about me?’ Dada was saying. ‘Don’t I get offered a dram?’
‘You can buy your own, Bert. God knows you’re rollin’ in moolah after your win last week.’
‘Shush,’ Dada said. ‘Shush.’
‘Oh, I see. It’s a domestic secret, is it?’
Sylvie did not quite know what was going on. But she had enough sense to pipe up and to try to rescue Dada from any embarrassment that her presence might cause. It had not occurred to her that he had tapped Kirby’s before. They had visited several places where Dada was known and she had to remind herself that Mama and he had been collecting for the Coral Strand Mission Fund long before she appeared on the scene.
The young man sipped from the pint glass in his hand.
He said, ‘You didn’t answer my question, sweetheart.’
‘I have not been to the Coral Strand, not yet.’
‘Not yet?’
‘I may enter mission work when I am old enough.’
‘What age are you?’
‘Fif—’
‘Seventeen,’ said Dada.
‘Almost seventeen,’ said Sylvie.
The young man ignored the guffaws of the jostling chaps at his shoulder. He looked down at her from no great height – he was only a little bit taller than she was – and she felt her throat tighten, the soft band of flesh below her stomach become tight too, as if he had pulled an invisible string that drew all the parts of her together, narrowing and elongating them in the process.
She gave a little gasp.
‘Sure when I was seventeen,’
he said, ‘I didn’t even know where the Coral Strand was. Now here’s a chance for me to learn something.’
‘Pa’din?’ Sylvie heard herself say.
‘He’s teasing you, dearest,’ Dada said.
‘No, I’m seeking information, really I am,’ the young man said, so gently that Sylvie believed him even if Dada did not. ‘Where is the Coral Strand and what do the folk there do all day long?’
‘They do not believe in Christ our Lord.’
‘Ah, so that’s it!’
‘They must be told that Jesus is their Saviour.’
‘So that He can feed them with loaves and fishes?’
‘Are you a Socialist?’ Sylvie said.
‘What makes you think I’m a Socialist?’
‘All Socialists are Godless.’
‘Well, I’m no Socialist. I’m only asking you to tell me where this place is. I’ll make you a deal, sweetheart. Give me the latitude and longitude of the Coral Strand and I’ll put a guinea straight into your basket.’
‘For God’s sake, Forbes, stop teasing her. She’s only a wee kiddie.’
‘I’m not teasing her,’ the young man said. ‘I’m deadly serious.’
Sylvie felt giddy with responsibility or something so akin to responsibility that she could not separate it from the other emotions that fizzed within her. She felt as if her bodice laces had had been tugged so tight that she could breathe only from the top of her lungs.
She said, ‘A guinea?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you promise?’
‘Yes.’
‘I cannot give you the navigational lines,’ Sylvie said, ‘but I can tell you that the Coral Strand is generally taken to refer to the white sand beaches of the remote islands of the Pacific, which include the New Hebrides, New Guinea and the Solomons. Exports trading is fair in some quarters but there is much disease because of the horrid climate and heavy rainfall. And there are pagan tribes all over the place, tribes who kill and eat each other and know nothing of Christ’s salvation. The population of the Solomon Islands is forty-seven thousand souls, eighty of whom are white, twenty of whom are Christians financed by the Foreign Mission Fund. In New Guinea, that part for which Britain is answerable, there are—’
‘Enough,’ the young man said, laughing. ‘Enough, enough, enough.’
‘Do I get my guinea?’
‘G’an, Irish, give the lass her moolah.’
‘Put it in her basket, McCulloch, there’s a good boy.’
‘Ay-hay, but ain’t she a clever little thing,’ said Mr Moscrop. ‘Near as clever as she is pretty, what!’ Leaning, he dropped a florin into the basket. ‘What else does she know, I wonder?’
‘Does she know what the natives of Dublin do, Forbes? Ask her that.’
‘They,’ said Sylvie, ‘are Papes and beyond redemption.’
‘Oh-hoh! Oh-hoh!’
‘They aren’t all Papes in Dublin,’ Forbes said.
‘Are you?’
‘No.’
‘What are you then?’ said Sylvie.
‘I’m an engineer.’
‘That isn’t a religion,’ Sylvie said.
‘Wrong on that score, sweetheart. Wrong on that score.’
‘Heathens we are, but we don’t eat people,’ Charley said.
‘Unless we’re very hungry,’ said Forbes McCulloch.
‘I hope you are not hungry now,’ said Sylvie and, rather to her chagrin, heard everyone within earshot, even Dada, burst out laughing. ‘I want my guinea. I’ve earned my guinea. You promised.’
‘Promise you the moon if you’re not careful,’ Charley said.
‘And get it for you, too,’ said Forbes.
‘I just want my guinea.’
‘And you shall have it, my love,’ the dark-haired young man said. ‘I promise you shall have it. Bertie, why don’t we all go upstairs?’
* * *
Lindsay’s birthday celebrations had been strangely subdued. Reaching one’s majority did not have the same significance for a young woman as it did for a chap; eighteen had meant something but twenty-one was just another milestone on the road to marriage.
Forbes had taken her to dinner at the Barbary. Papa had organised a lavish party at Brunswick Crescent. All the relatives had been present, together with some of her father’s friends from the choir, four or five former school chums – from whom she now felt totally detached – and, at her request, Mr Tom Calder. Grandpappy had been there too. He had abandoned the notion of wintering in Strathmore and spent more than half the year at home with Donald and Lilias, returning to the dismal old house in Perthshire mainly in summer months when, like a Highland laird, he would entertain bits and pieces of the family and certain favoured friends who had a taste for fishing.
Aunt Kay had journeyed over from Dublin. She came alone to Glasgow once every year, usually in the February, and stayed no more than a week. She came, so she claimed, to keep an eye on Forbes and make sure he was behaving himself. Of Forbes’s father, Daniel McCulloch, the Franklins saw and heard nothing. The brewer evinced no apparent interest in his son and Forbes showed no inclination to return to Dublin, not even for a visit.
To Lindsay, even in their most confidential moments, he did not speak of his father or the sisters and brothers he had left behind. He was waiting, he told her, just waiting until he was old enough to marry and set up house with her. That was all he wanted out of life, a good steady job, a home of his own and Lindsay to share it with him; after that was accomplished the whole damned lot of them could go hang themselves.
For the best part of thirty months Forbes had behaved like a perfect gentleman, a suitor rather than a lover. He would kiss her, hold her in his arms, tell her he loved her and longed to be her husband. But he did not attempt to caress her intimately or hold her so close that she could feel his heart beat.
On those few occasions when Lindsay had got carried away he had disentangled himself and, with a bit of huffing and puffing, had apologised and explained that he respected her far too much to risk letting her jump the gun. He had it all drafted and documented, you see: a model future together, designed to scale. It was, he said, just a question of being patient, of waiting for the day when he would turn twenty-one, come in for his share of Franklin’s profits, complete his courses at the Maritime Institute, and graduate to being a deputy manager. Then they would marry, settle down, have children. Then he would be able to call her his own, his very own. Then nobody would be able to point the finger and accuse him of being an opportunist.
Lindsay both admired and detested his conservatism. She did not know what had changed him from a brash and bragging boy into a man so stolid and constrained that at times he seemed almost dull. When it occurred to her that perhaps love had robbed him of his spark she cast the thought far to one side. He had lost something, something that she could not put her finger on. It wasn’t his looks: he was more handsome than ever. He had not grown taller nor had he filled out and become coarse, like Martin and Johnny. He was just as slim and sinewy as he had ever been; heart-achingly handsome but, without conceit, somehow synthetic, like an artefact that one can do nothing with, except admire. She was still in love with him, still desired him – but in little fits and starts, in a spluttering, uncertain way that often left her headachy and depressed.
Forbes was busy, of course, occupied with making his way in the world, in proving himself worthy. Aunt Lilias – Papa too – had to admit that they had misjudged his determination. Once he was out of Beardmore’s and into Franklin’s he applied himself with a vengeance. He worked long hours in the drawing office, talked a great deal with George Crush about relations between labour and management, absorbed all that Tom Calder deigned to impart about design, everything that Peter Holt could tell him about engines. Dinner-time conversations at Harper’s Hill were dominated by technical matters too important to encourage much gaiety.
Martin had become engaged to Aurora Swann, elder sister of the romantically inclined Go
rdon. They planned to marry in September. Mercy had been married for over a year, swept to the altar by a grandson of the McDades of Greenock who specialised in fitting out cargo boats and had branches all down the east coast. Mercy and Campbell McDade lived in a trim sandstone villa on the seafront at Langbank and were anticipating ‘a happy event’ in December. Pansy, no longer a schoolgirl, remained at home, dancing and skating and playing tennis, doing all the things that Lindsay had once done, before Owen Forbes McCulloch came along.
Cissie had become the Franklins’ problem child. She was rebellious and recalcitrant, loud and silent by turns, moody and desperately unhappy as one squalid, short-lived courtship followed another. In the autumn of 1900 she had even entertained the notion of becoming the wife of Professor Duval, an ageing widower who held the Chair of Forensic Medicine at Glasgow University and whose obsession with music was so much in excess of Cissie’s own that their brief, un-torrid affair had swiftly foundered and the old boy’s engagement ring had been returned along with the ninety-six letters of love and musical analysis with which he had bombarded her.
There were times when Lilias feared that her daughter was turning into a hysteric. She would have taken her for examination by a medical specialist if Cissie had been willing. Cissie was not willing. Cissie saw nothing odd in her behaviour. Cissie would not discuss her behaviour or the course her life was taking, not with her mother, father, sisters or brothers; certainly not with Lindsay with whom she could hardly bring herself to exchange a civil word. She spoke to no one, confided in no one, kept her misery bottled up. She grew fatter. Her complexion suffered. Her dressing-table was littered with creams, astringent lotions, cosmetic preparations and enough pills to sink a small corvette.
Only Forbes knew what was wrong with his plump cousin, what would cure her but he, with uncharacteristic tact, chose to say nothing. Now and then, though, just for devilment, he would let her catch sight of him in the corridor on his way to the bath and, with a little wriggle of his backside, would let the towel flirt and once, albeit unintentionally, fall away completely so that she had at least one fleeting glimpse of his private parts to remind her just what she was missing.
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