The Piper's Tune

by Jessica Stirling

  Lindsay looked down at the small face nestled against her breast. She was swollen still but not massively so and the tender ache than had troubled her at the beginning had all but vanished. Her nipple remained taut, though, with a single droplet of milk caught on the crown. Philip, eyes closed, was not satisfied, merely resting; instinct told her so. She gathered the shawl and drew the folds about her and the baby.

  ‘He will need to be winded,’ Winn said.

  ‘I know he will need to be winded,’ Lindsay said.

  Philip was almost eight months now. Recently he had put on enough weight to be cumbersome and had strength in his grip when he chose to use it, which was not often. His passivity still worried her a little. Harry had been active even at that young age, hated being walked and winded and had kicked and struggled and, once or twice, had even cried. Harry, now, was seated at table, playing with the spoons and butter knives. In some recess of her mind Lindsay recalled that she had heard Miss Runciman invite the boy downstairs for breakfast but Harry had obviously forgotten about it.

  The dining-room was the only communal room in the house, the one place where McCullochs and Franklins met face to face. Even here, though, it was her husband and not her father who set the rules. The evening meal had become something of an ordeal, with three or four McCullochs lined up against Arthur and Miss Runciman in an atmosphere so tense and icy that Lindsay could hardly bear it. Because she was afraid of favouring one side over another, even in trivial matters, she tended to say little and eat even less.

  It was all so different in the apartment in Sandyford Avenue where Tom and Cissie and their little boy, Ewan, resided. Less well off than the McCullochs, the Calders had only one day-maid to attend them, yet somehow their life seemed much fuller and happier than her own.

  Now, in the gloom of mid-winter after over four years of marriage, she could hardly bring to mind the memory of her passion for Forbes, their romantic meetings at Strathmore or those first few nights after their wedding when Forbes had taught her what it meant to be a wife and had all but exhausted her with strenuous love-making. She still caught her breath at the sight of him as he stood, unaware, by the window in his hand-tailored suit or in the privacy of the bedroom, where he stripped off his clothes and padded towards the bed. Summer and winter he slept naked, shoulder and arm visible in the half light, dark hair like a stain upon the pillow. Then she would long for his attentions, to be loved as a wife should be loved, but would do nothing, make no move, for, all evidence to the contrary, she believed that she was still ailing.

  Winn said, ‘Give me the baby. I will do the rest.’

  Lindsay felt trapped between what she wished to do and what she had been trained to do. Before dawn on a cold mid-winter morning the only comfort she could find came from the child in her arms, the passive form of her son resting against her under the big woollen shawl.

  ‘I want to stay here,’ Lindsay said.

  ‘You must go downstairs. Forbes will be wanting you downstairs.’

  ‘No, I want to stay here.’

  ‘The nursery is no place for you,’ Winn told her ‘in your condition.’

  ‘The nursery was the place for her, the one and only place where she felt whole. She closed her eyes and, rocking a little, hugged Philip to her.

  ‘Are you for smothering him?’ Winn said.

  ‘Mammm-eee?’

  ‘What is it, Harry?’ Winn said.

  ‘He’s frightened,’ Lindsay said.

  ‘He has nothing to be frightened of,’ Winn said. ‘Unless it’s you that’s frightening him, you not doing what you’re told.’

  Lindsay opened her eyes. She glanced down. Philip had gone to sleep. She could feel the rhythm of his breathing slight against her heart, the warm sussuration of his breath against her skin. She needed nobody, least of all her husband’s sister, to tell her that her child was asleep.

  ‘Mammm-eee?’

  ‘Philip is perfectly all right, dearest,’ Lindsay said.

  ‘Doesn’t Phil-lup want a egg?’ Harry asked, a little incredulously.

  ‘Later, perhaps later,’ Lindsay said.

  Winn stood directly before her.

  The nursery seemed filled by the girl’s indignation, though there was no visible sign of it in her posture or expression. She was only nineteen years old, but resentful enough to be ninety. She had jet black hair and eyes like Forbes but the shape of her face was longer, less regular, the flesh around her mouth and nose oddly pouched like that of a burrowing mammal. Plainness had not undermined her self-assurance. She gave the impression that she considered herself to be the salt of the earth and everyone else pitiably inferior.

  ‘There now, are you not going to give him to me?’ Winn said softly. ‘He will be better with me to take care of him, you being as you are.’

  Lindsay knew the tone of voice only too well: the lilting, cajoling brogue that disguised demand as request. She recognised the wilfulness behind it, the charm and easiness that were not charming and easy at all. She had been listening to that voice for years but she could still be taken in by it and, for the sake of peace, concede and yield up everything.

  As if from a distance a long way back, Lindsay heard herself say, ‘And how am I, Winn? Tell me, how I am.’

  A smile, just a shade too stiff to be winsome: ‘You are not yourself this morning at all.’

  ‘How am I then?’ Lindsay said again. ‘Tell me, Winn, how am I?’

  Philip sighed against her breast. A butter knife, balanced until then on the table’s edge, clattered to the floor. Winn paid it no heed. Lindsay, looking up, waited, but no answer was forthcoming from the girl, no intelligence.

  ‘Well?’ Lindsay said.

  ‘I’ll get Forbes.’

  ‘For what?’ Lindsay said. ‘To answer a simple question?’

  The voice within her which had started out from some vague hollow source became clear in her mouth. She was startlingly conscious of her disappointments, her inadequacies. She felt no kinship with Winn, her sister-in-law. Intimidation and compliance were the bases of their relationship and at that moment she saw why Winn had to appeal to her brother, her husband, concerning such a petty matter. Forbes would not arbitrate or negotiate. He would back his sister without question, would support Winifred just as he supported Blossom. The sisters were his barriers, buffers to keep her at a distance. In that early morning hour in the nursery at the top of the house, Lindsay suddenly realised how she had been duped.

  ‘Harry,’ Lindsay said, ‘did Miss Runciman say that you could take your breakfast downstairs?’

  ‘Miss Runkelman, she said…’ The little boy appeared puzzled then, with a laugh, he scampered around the table, around the nursemaid and hid behind the nursing chair. ‘She said … yeee-sss.’

  ‘Would you like to go downstairs, Harry?’ Lindsay asked.

  ‘He is not to go downstairs until the men are gone,’ Winn said.

  ‘You can tell me, Harry? Would you like to go downstairs and have breakfast with Papa and Grandee?’

  He put his head around the side of the chair. ‘I’ll eat Phillup’s egg.’

  ‘You may have an egg of your own.’ Lindsay cradled the baby carefully in the crook of her arm and got to her feet. She buttoned her robe then offered her hand to Harry who took it eagerly.

  ‘I must talk to Forbes about this,’ Winn said. ‘You must not be going anywhere until I’ve talked to Forbes.’

  ‘About what, Winifred? About me?’

  ‘Forbes doesn’t like to have the children downstairs in the morning,’ Winn protested. ‘You know the rules.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Lindsay said, clearly, ‘I know the rules, but they are Forbes’s rules, not mine.’

  ‘You’ll upset him,’ Winn told her tersely.

  ‘Not before time,’ said Lindsay.

  Then, with the baby in her arms and her first-born by the hand, she went to the head of the staircase, showed Harry how to unlock the gate, and led her tiny army boldly downsta
irs to the dining-room.

  * * *

  ‘I don’t know what came over you this morning,’ Forbes said. ‘Winn’s exceedingly upset by the whole incident.’

  ‘Bringing our children into the dining-room to join us for breakfast is hardly my idea of an incident, Forbes,’ Lindsay said. ‘Why is Winn upset?’

  ‘She feels it was her fault.’ He paused. ‘They weren’t even decently dressed. Besides, the dining-room’s no place for a baby.’

  ‘My father doesn’t seem to agree with you; nor does Miss Runciman.’

  ‘Miss Runciman? Yes, we’ll have to have a talk about your Miss Runciman. It seems that she’s been interfering again.’

  ‘Disobeying the rules, do you mean?’

  ‘Lindsay, a household must be properly governed. Since your illness…’

  ‘What illness?’

  ‘Come along, you know how ill you’ve been.’

  ‘Tell me, Forbes, how ill have I been?’

  ‘You’ve not been yourself. Everyone says so.’

  ‘Everyone? Who, for instance?’

  ‘Lilias, Donald, Martin, even Tom…’

  ‘Tom?’

  ‘… have all remarked how exhausted you seem. They’re concerned for you, dearest. We’re all concerned for you.’

  ‘Because I won’t do just what you want me to?’ said Lindsay.

  She was seated at the inlaid dressing-table – one of several antique pieces that Forbes had picked up at auction – brushing her hair; brushing her hair as she had not brushed it in years, brushing with long, smooth, rhythmic strokes that she counted under her breath as if she were a girl again and still had a motive for making herself pretty. She wore a peach silk peignoir and a flannelette nightgown in pink and blue that had been left untouched in the bottom drawer of her wardrobe since her honeymoon. She had unearthed it that afternoon, not because it was alluring, but because it was warm.

  ‘Forbes, all I did,’ she went on, ‘was bring the children downstairs. It’s not a hostile act, for heaven’s sake. I mean, they’re not lepers.’

  ‘Unfair!’ he said. ‘That’s unfair!’

  The mirror on the dressing-table was not authentic. The original triple mirror had been damaged. Forbes had had it replaced by an identical copy. Lindsay had no more than a hazy recollection of the conversation about the mirror; she had been three or four days out of labour with Philip when Forbes had pranced into her bedroom to tell her of his purchase.

  He said, ‘I love my children as much as any man alive.’

  ‘Provided you don’t have to see them too often?’

  ‘Linnet, what has got into you?’

  She glanced at his reflection in the side mirror. He had been out for the best part of the evening, dining with a couple of shipping agents and, she suspected, with Gowry. It did not seem to strike her husband as anomalous that he insisted on propriety at home yet patently flouted the rules of society by trailing his uncouth brother about with him.

  He had removed his evening jacket and starched shirt front. He sat upon the bed, suspenders dangling, shirt open to the waist. He looked, Lindsay thought, as if he had been playing scrimmage, not eating out with gentlemen. Unaware of her scrutiny, he rested his forearms on his knees and stared down at the Japanese carpet, a gift from Mr Kimura to commemorate Admiral Togo’s destruction of the Russian fleet at Port Arthur and the small – the very small – part that Franklin’s had played in the victory. Why the carpet had wound up on the floor of their bedroom and not in store at Harper’s Hill Lindsay couldn’t imagine.

  Forbes said, ‘Have you been hearing things?’

  ‘What sort of things?’

  He glanced up. ‘I don’t know. Things?’

  ‘I’ve no idea what you’re talking about, Forbes.’

  ‘Oh!’ he said. ‘Well, that’s all right then.’

  She put down the brush and turned on the chair. ‘What things?’

  Once more he paused, frowning. ‘About the Admiralty contract.’

  ‘That isn’t what you meant.’

  ‘It’s the work, the work is very demanding right now.’

  It was the first time in months that he had spoken of his work. Her father and he would discuss aspects of business now and then or engage, often heatedly, in arguments over technical detail, all far above her head. What few crumbs of information she had picked up concerning Franklin’s projects had come to her through Tom. She saw little of Martin and Rora who seemed to move in different circles from the rest of the family and had not even attended the traditional New Year’s Day celebration at Harper’s Hill. Ross and Johnny were practically strangers. Only Aunt Lilias visited her regularly, and Aunt Lilias had no interest in anything these days except babies and weddings and gossip.

  Lindsay said, ‘I thought the order books were full?’

  ‘They are – or will be,’ Forbes said.

  ‘Well then, what is it that concerns you?’

  ‘I can’t tell you.’

  ‘Can’t tell me? I’m a partner, Forbes, in case you’ve forgotten.’

  ‘It’s a state secret,’ he said. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Suit yourself,’ Lindsay said.

  He got up and flexed his arms in the chicken-wing manner that she had always considered both ugly and comical. He stepped out of his trousers and folded them across his arm. Lindsay went back to brushing her hair.

  He said, ‘What you need is a lady’s-maid.’

  ‘Oh, I see. You’ve another sister waiting with bags packed on the quay at Rosslare, have you?’

  ‘You shouldn’t have to brush your own hair.’

  She laughed: yesterday she would not have laughed. Yesterday she would have been incapable of raising a smile. She wondered what had changed. Something small, obviously, some small shift in balance. She did not know what had come over her or why on that cold January morning she had recognised ridicule for what it was and had allowed disappointment to alter in character, to become resentment. She laughed again and swung round, catching him unaware. He had lowered his striped drawers and, with his back to her, seemed to be admiring his parts or, perhaps, examining them critically. She could see his rather flat buttocks, very white, tapering down into hairy thighs. He looked, she thought, remarkably skinny, something that she hadn’t noticed during her ‘illness’.

  ‘What have you been doing to yourself, Forbes?’

  He shot round. ‘What?’

  ‘I do believe you’re losing weight.’

  ‘Me? I’m fine. Nothing wrong with me. It’s you yourself. Look at you. Skin and bone, just skin and bone.’

  She glanced at herself in the side mirror. Her breasts were heavy but even through the nightgown she could discern the prominent ‘salt-cellars’ that framed her collar bones and, no doubt about it, her arms were thin. She was willing to concede that perhaps she had lost the watery fat that had coated her body in the wake of her pregnancy but she did not take his criticism to heart, did not take it, or him, very seriously.

  ‘What if I am?’ she said.

  ‘Sure and I’m not losing weight, am I?’ he said, lifting his shirt.

  ‘You don’t have to look at me. You don’t even have to touch me.’

  ‘I’m just the same as I always was,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t think I need a lady’s-maid, thank you, Forbes.’

  ‘It’s muscle. I’m just lean by nature.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, you are.’

  He plucked at the winter drawers, drew them away from his thighs, peered down. ‘You may be right, though. Perhaps I am. Jesus!’

  ‘It’ll be worry about the contract that’s doing it.’

  ‘What contract?’

  ‘The secret contract for the Admiralty.’

  The frown changed to a scowl, dark and severe. He stripped off his shirt, under-vest and drawers and threw them over a chair. He crabbed to the bed and got into it, punching at the bolster and then the pillow. He lay down, arms folded across his chest, nose poin
ting at the ceiling.

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it, Lindsay.’

  She put the silver-backed brush into its case and the case into the right-hand drawer of the dressing-table. She shook her hair, making it swing prettily. She was drawn, yes, but not ugly, not old. Good Lord, she wasn’t even in the prime of her life, yet the man in the bed did not want her, her husband was no longer aroused by her. At least she had managed to cut through his indifference. For a moment or two they had even come close to bickering. Bickering, she supposed, was better than nothing.

  She switched off the overhead light, shed the peignoir and felt her way through the darkness of the big bedroom, a darkness that had never seemed so complete and intense before marriage. She encountered the bed-end, the seam of the quilt and, groping, tugged back the blankets and sheets and slid in beside her husband.

  Forbes stirred, moved away, made room for her. She could sense his truculence, his apprehension. He was still on his back, arms folded across his chest. She wriggled down beside him, deliberately letting her nightgown tighten and drag against her flanks. The inclination of the mattress threw her weight gently against him. He flinched and shifted another inch or two on to the upward slope. Even on this, the coldest night of the winter, he slept unclothed. He generated a little layer of heat but when she touched his shoulder she found that his flesh was icy cold as if the engine of his body had some original part to it that defied the laws of thermodynamics.

  She laid an arm over his stomach. He breathed in stiff, short, bellows-like breaths. She hoisted herself a little higher until her cheek shared his pillow and her mouth was close to his ear.

  ‘Forbes,’ she whispered urgently. ‘Forbes.’

  ‘What is it now?’ he said.

  ‘Tell me about the Admiralty contract.’

  ‘For God’s sake, Lindsay,’ he growled, ‘go to bloody sleep.’

  ‘Thank you, dearest,’ she said. ‘I will,’ and with a chuckle that made his blood run cold, turned on her hip and rolled away.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Weapons of War

  Soon after nine o’clock, she dressed Harry and, leading him by the hand, left the house. She walked to the rank at the corner of Sheddon Street where two motorised taxi-cabs stood aloof from a line of hansoms. She chose one of the old-fashioned ‘clip-clops’ and lifted her son into it. He perched on the slippery seat, humming to himself as he gazed at the tall tenements, the tram-cars, all the bustle of the January morning streets. He looked, Lindsay thought proudly, quite a little gentleman in his new navy blue topcoat and pantaloons and a cap with velvet earflaps.