‘Forbes, actually.’
‘It’s not my place to offer you advice, Martin, and you’ve no reason to heed what I say, but…’
‘Go on, Tom. I’m listening.’
‘Forbes is only trying to bring you down.’
‘Bring me down? Why would he want to do that?’
‘Perhaps he’s jealous.’
‘Why should he be jealous? I mean, he doesn’t even know Aurora. He’s only met her once, I think. He’s engaged – well, practically engaged – to my cousin Lindsay.’
‘Not of Aurora,’ Tom said. ‘Of you.’
‘Me?’
There was an innocence in the well-to-do that Tom had noticed before, a vague kind of unworldliness that rendered them vulnerable to manipulation. The Franklins weren’t sufficiently rich or well-bred to have lost touch with reality but Owen Franklin’s influence was waning, watered down by the passage of years and the pace of the twentieth century. Others less moral, less honest and upright would in time corrupt not only the shipbuilding industry but all industry, through their malice and greed. In the cousins’ relationships Tom could already detect a blurring of the line between deed and achievement, between responsibility and exploitation. And it galled him to think that Martin had been taken in by McCulloch’s insinuations; galled him even more that Lindsay seemed destined to marry the Dubliner and that it was only a matter of time before McCulloch’s generation gained the upper hand.
‘Because you’ll always be top man,’ Tom said.
‘Oh!’ The idea was obviously new to Martin. ‘Oh, you mean because I’m a major shareholder in the partnership?’
‘Hmmm,’ Tom said.
‘I don’t think Forbes is like that. He’s – well, I consider him a friend.’
‘I know,’ Tom said. ‘But sometimes, Martin, you have to treat your friends just as cautiously as you treat your enemies.’
‘I don’t think I have any enemies. Do I?’
‘No,’ Tom said. ‘I don’t suppose you have.’
Martin was silent for a moment or two, then said, ‘Forbes is one of us, Tom. He wouldn’t do anything to harm the family, would he? I mean, I might act the fool at times but Lindsay – well, Lindsay’s going to marry the chap and, whatever you may think of me, you have to admit that Lindsay has her head properly screwed on.’
‘How soon will they marry?’
‘I don’t know,’ Martin said. ‘Sooner rather than later, I think.’
‘Is Mr Arthur reconciled to it?’
‘He thinks Forbes is far too young even to contemplate marriage.’
‘What do you think?’
‘Well, I say good luck to them.’ Martin paused again. ‘It might be no bad thing for Forbes to move out of Harper’s Hill, actually.’
‘Why is that?’ said Tom.
‘He upsets my sister Cissie no end,’ Martin said, then added, hastily, ‘Not that it’s Forbes’s fault, mark you. I mean, if it were Forbes’s fault my father would soon put a stop to it. No, it’s Cissie. She’s gone all queer. We think – my brothers and I – that she fancies Forbes for herself.’
‘I see,’ Tom said.
‘Forbes, of course, has been in love with Lindsay from the moment he first set eyes on her.’
‘Did he tell you so?’
‘Not in as many words,’ Martin said. ‘But you’d have to be blind not to see how much he adores her. That’s why I can’t imagine Forbes wishing any of us ill.’
Tom did not contradict him, did not point out that several of love’s manifestations were ill-wrought things indeed.
He said, ‘Do you want me to have a word with Melrose then?’
‘About what?’
‘Where to find the Portsmouth brothels.’
Martin, it seemed, had almost forgotten his marital anxieties.
He shook his head. ‘I think not. I’m feeling better now, thanks to you. Probably just needed a bite to eat and a bit of sensible chat to set me right. I think, in fact, I’ll toddle off to bed soon, pour myself a glass of whisky and write a nice long letter to Aurora.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘Oh, absolutely.’
Tom put down his knife and fork and signalled to a bored young waiter in a stained apron to come and remove the plates.
‘What’s for pudding?’ Martin asked.
‘Spotted Dick,’ the waiter answered.
And both of the Scottish gentlemen burst out laughing.
* * *
The display of postcards in the hotel lobby was limited to a faded view of Langstone Harbour, another of the old Bermuda Dock and a doctored print of Nelson’s flagship Victory which, in reality, wasn’t much more than a floating heap of firewood these days. None the less Tom picked the picture of the flagship, put tuppence in the box on the reception desk and, postcard in hand, climbed the stairs to his room on the second floor.
Still chuckling over the joke the waiter had unwittingly foisted on them, Martin had retired some ten minutes earlier. When Tom reached the brown-painted corridor, which reeked of gas and something that smelled suspiciously like bad fish, he found that a half glass of whisky had been placed on the carpet by the door of his room. He glanced along the corridor but Martin’s door was closed. Smiling, Tom carried the glass into his own room and shut his door too.
Unlike the corridor, the bedroom boasted ‘electrically installed fitments’, which meant a small table lamp with a parchment shade and a naked ceiling light-bulb that did nothing but flicker no matter how impatiently Tom fiddled with the switch on the wall. The window curtain had been closed, though, the bed turned down, the ewer on the dressing-stand refilled with fresh water.
Tom left the whisky glass and postcard on the stand and went to the window. He lifted a corner of the curtain and looked out at a vista of tiled roofs and brick walls. He could not see the sea but he could hear it sifting and sucking on the uncultivated piece of coast around Gilkicker Point.
It would be rough tomorrow, certainly too rough for Martin. Perhaps it would be too rough for an accurate horse-power test and the trial would have to be postponed until the wind eased. He hoped not. He wanted it done with, wanted to put the tedious ninety-hour coal endurance trial behind him too, wanted to be on a train heading back to Glasgow as soon as possible. If the weather stayed gurly he would try to persuade Martin to return home early and let MacDougal and him finish up here. He would write to Mr Donald explaining why Martin had not been needed in Portsmouth, a plausible lie to spare the young man’s blushes. He liked Martin Franklin. He liked all the Franklins come to think of it, and, peculiar though it seemed for a man in his lowly position, felt quite protective towards them.
Tom took off his jacket, loosened his collar and seated himself at the dressing-stand. He poured half the whisky into a tooth-glass, added water from the ewer then pulled the postcard towards him and uncapped his fountain pen.
He had promised Lindsay a letter but a postcard would have to do. He sipped whisky, pondered for a moment, then, in the amazingly neat hand that years of meticulous draughtsmanship had taught him, printed a few lines of casual chit-chat about the weather, the Banshee and the appalling food. He would stamp and post the card at the Post Office by the harbour and not risk depositing it in the box in the hotel foyer.
He finished off with ‘Hope to see you soon’, and signed it simply, ‘Tom’.
He directed the pen-nib to the panel to print Lindsay’s address and then, frowning a little, hesitated. He sat back, elbow braced on a pillow. Then he put down the pen. He sipped whisky once more and reflected on all that Martin had said about Forbes’s relationship with Lindsay and Cissie Franklin.
So far Tom had managed to keep Lindsay separate from Donald’s rambunctious sons and pretty, plump-cheeked daughters. He knew, of course, that Lindsay and Forbes were regarded as ‘a couple’ and that marriage between them was almost inevitable. But he seldom saw them together and had blinded himself to the fact that Lindsay was not so intelligent as he believed her to be, that she,
like far too many girls of her generation, was willing to be ruled by the heart and not the head.
Seated there in the drab hotel room in Portsmouth, Tom felt a sudden sense of grievance, as if Lindsay too had betrayed him. It was, of course, nonsensical to suppose that she spared him even a passing thought outwith the boardroom and the shipyard. He was not, he reminded himself sternly, one of the Franklins’ inner circle. Even the promise of a letter from Portsmouth had been casually made, casually accepted. He owed Lindsay nothing. In fact, the more he thought of it, the more foolish it seemed. She would be so caught up in her own affairs that his letter – his postcard – would be tossed aside or, if Forbes happened to be in her company, slyly mocked.
He reached for the card to tear it up, then, again, stopped.
He listened to the wind buffeting the window pane, the rattle of the glass behind the curtain. Tomorrow would indeed be rough. The Banshee would not put to sea. He felt suddenly cut off from the meagre companionship of half-formed wishes and vague desires that had sustained him for several years. He wondered fleetingly what his daughter would be doing tonight, what Mission Fund meeting she had attended or what church soirée she had graced with her presence. At one time, he had tried to compare Sylvie with Lindsay when, in reality, there had never been anything to compare. He should send a postcard to Sylvie, but he knew that she would just sneer at his simple communication and tear the card in two.
He reached for the postcard again, hesitated again. Then, for no very good reason save a vague feeling of empathy with the plump, freckle-faced young woman who had once clung so gaily to his arm, he lifted his pen and carefully addressed the panel not to Sylvie, not to Lindsay, but to Miss Cecilia Franklin at her home on Harper’s Hill.
* * *
One of the functions of Mrs Dunn, the Franklins’ housekeeper, was to collect the morning’s mail directly from the postman and deliver it to the breakfast table. When Grandpappy was in residence, of course, Giles would take charge of any letters addressed to Mr Owen, whisk them off to the library where, as soon as breakfast was over, the old man would sift through them and separate business from personal correspondence.
Since Owen’s ‘retirement’ the volume of personal correspondence had increased threefold. Many of his old acquaintances were partial to long weekends out of the city and, unlike Owen, had a fondness for Perthshire’s rivers and hills. In fact, an invitation to a weekend or week-long house party at Strathmore had acquired a certain kudos in shipping circles and folk that Owen barely knew or could hardly remember were for ever calling upon him cap-in-hand in the hope of striking up a friendship. Whatever intention the old man had had about closing the door on society had, in the words of the minstrel song, gone floating down the Swanee. He was more in demand than ever and in the course of a year spent as much time being entertained in Glasgow as he did entertaining at Strathmore, so that he was glad to sneak off to the country on his own now and then just to restoke his boilers.
Pappy Owen was at home in Harper’s Hill that calm March morning, lording it over the breakfast table as if nothing whatsoever had changed since the old century gave way to the new.
Melancholy moods and bouts of guilt seemed to have left him at last, or perhaps he had left them with the oil-cloth coats, deerstalkers and leggings in the rummage-room up north. While in Glasgow he was, or appeared to be, quite his old self again, except that he did not rush off to Aydon Road of a morning or express much interest in the state of business. Energy thus conserved manifested itself in a tendency to interfere in domestic matters and Lilias and he were constantly at loggerheads over who had the right to order whom to do what or, to put it another way, who ruled the roost in Harper’s Hill. Mercy’s betrothal had almost brought them to blows. It had been all Donald could do to prevent his dear wife walking out in exasperation and abandoning the lot of them. Eventually Forbes and Lindsay had taken the old chap out to dinner at the Barbary and had had a quiet word in his ear – something Donald and Arthur seemed incapable of doing – after which Grandpappy left such esoteric matters as the choice of material for Mercy’s wedding dress and the selection of a guest-list to his daughter-in-law and her team.
He had been back from snowy Strathmore for the best part of a fortnight. He had spent this time haring from concert hall to art exhibition, from luncheons with the Association to dinners with the Federation, with hardly a minute to call his own. He seemed to thrive on it, though, and was totally oblivious to the fact that his grandchildren were no longer children and found his playfulness, particularly at breakfast, just a tiny bit wearing.
Mrs Dunn brought in the post.
She was a small, stooped elderly woman, very sour and solemn, a holy terror to Cook and the maids. She bobbed a curtsey and, crabbing around the table in predetermined sequence, distributed letters to Donald, Lilias, Ross, Johnny, Forbes and, skipping Pansy, last but not least to Cissie; one rare, almost shocking picture postcard that, by its gaudiness, seemed desperately to be trying to compensate for days and days without a communication of any kind, with nothing to open, nothing to read.
‘Good God!’ Johnny exclaimed. ‘Our Cissie’s got a postcard.’
‘Someone loves her after all,’ said Pansy.
‘That’s enough,’ said Lilias.
‘The Victory.’ Pappy lifted himself a little in his chair and peered through his half-moon spectacles. ‘I thought it had sunk years ago. Portsmouth. Must be from our Martin.’
‘Oh, yes, of course,’ said Pansy, disappointed. ‘Martin.’
Although she had not touched the postcard yet – it lay by her plate picture side up – Cissie said, ‘It isn’t from Martin.’
‘How can you tell?’ said Johnny. ‘Psychic emanations, or what?’
‘You could read it,’ Ross suggested. ‘There’s writing on the other side.’
Cissie said, ‘It can’t be from Martin.’
Forbes was seated opposite her. He was leaning back in the indolent half-sprawl that they had all had to learn to put up with and that, much to Mama’s annoyance, Johnny had decided to emulate. Ross, Johnny and Forbes were dressed for the office, all three clad in near-identical pinstripe suits, the accepted rig for deputy managers who hadn’t come up the hard way. On a weekday morning they would have been gone long since but on Saturday, out of deference to their exalted positions, they were not obliged to appear at Aydon Road until nine o’clock and would knock off shortly before one.
Cissie glanced up and caught her cousin’s eye. He had a smile on his face, a familiar little smile that tugged at the corner of his cheek and created something appallingly like a dimple. He was eating grilled kidneys and, without taking his eyes from her, speared one with his fork and put it in his mouth. He said nothing, not a word, but that smile, that insinuating smile remained upon his face even while he chewed and swallowed.
Cissie loathed him, loathed and feared and loved him. She could not shake off the sensation of his hands upon her. She knew what his body looked like, was privy to that information. Information was all it was, a fierce, cunning sort of mischief that he and she shared but that she could share with no one else. For who would believe her? These days she was regarded as a nuisance, a hysterical trouble-maker, Forbes as sane and sensible. Only she seemed to have realised that he was two people, three people, a whole anthology of different and differing characters, one of whom – only one – she loved without regard for the hurt it brought her or the satisfaction it afforded him.
Forbes said, ‘Perhaps it’s from her lover.’
‘Yes,’ said Pansy, ‘or a secret admirer.’
‘Do not be ridiculous, Pansy,’ Donald told her.
‘Professor Duval?’ Johnny suggested.
‘Resurfaced in Portsmouth,’ Ross added.
‘Run off to sea to mend his broken heart,’ said Pansy.
‘Go on, Cissie, turn it over,’ Forbes said.
‘Put us out of our misery,’ said Ross.
Forbes watched her unflinchingly,
still chewing. He was confident that the postcard would be harmless, meaningless, a damp squib. That she would be made a fool of once more, driven back towards him, fluttering and squawking like a chicken in a coop. That he – all of them – would have the last laugh on poor, fat, frightful Cissie.
She lifted a corner of the postcard and, like a gambler who must keep his hand hidden, peeped at it. Everyone at table watched, some anxiously, some eagerly. She flattened the card again and rubbed it with her forefinger.
‘It is,’ she said. ‘I knew it would be.’
‘What?’ said Johnny. ‘From Duval?’
‘No.’ Cissie looked straight at Forbes. His jaw had stopped working and the smile was gone. ‘It is actually from my lover.’
‘Your lover!’ Pansy exclaimed. ‘You with a lover!’
‘And who might that be?’ Forbes asked.
‘None of your damned business,’ Cissie answered and, taking up the card and pressing it to her breast, quietly left the dining-room.
‘Her lover?’ Lilias said as soon as the door closed. ‘Cissie doesn’t have a lover? Does she? Pansy, does she?’
‘How would I know? She never talks to me any more.’
Donald laughed, rather uneasily. ‘Tom Calder’s down in Portsmouth along with Martin testing the Babcock boilers for the navy, so bored, I imagine, that he’s sending postcards to anyone whose address he can recall.’
‘Tom Calder,’ Forbes said, with a smug little nod. ‘Of course.’
‘Nothing wrong with Tom Calder,’ Pappy Owen said.
‘For Cissie, our Cissie?’ said Johnny.
‘At least Tom’s one up on old Duval,’ said Forbes.
‘Really?’ said Pansy. ‘In what way?’
‘He’s still breathing, isn’t he?’ said Forbes.
And everybody laughed.
* * *
Cissie went straight upstairs to the third floor of the mansion, an ill-lit region of attics and storerooms where, some years ago now, an apartment had been fitted out to accommodate the nurses who had attended her grandmother in her last illness. She went into the water-closet that had never been plumbed properly and that still groaned and dribbled when pressure was low, a narrow, shadowy refuge with a single tinted glass window high on the wall.
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