‘Do you feel that way about me?’ Geoffrey said.
If she said Yes then Geoffrey would fight for her. If she said Yes, he would take it as a signal that all was up with her marriage: Geoffrey was sure enough of himself to assume responsibility for another man’s children but another man’s wife, however, might never be his. If she said No, however, he might slip away from her to avoid a commitment that could never be fulfilled and she would lose his love and friendship for ever.
The risks, the dangers were considerable.
It took courage for Lindsay to accept them.
‘No, Geoffrey,’ she heard herself say. ‘No, I do not.’
‘At least you’re honest, Lindsay.
‘How could I be anything else after what you’ve done for me?’
‘I’ve done nothing,’ he said.
‘You’ve asked for nothing, if that’s what you mean.’
‘I’m in love with you, Lindsay, but that doesn’t give me the right to ask anything of you, not even that you love me in turn.’
‘If I do go back to Forbes…’
‘You will,’ Geoffrey said. ‘You should.’
‘Will you still love me then?’
‘No,’ he said, ‘that’s not the real issue, darling. The real issue is will you still love me? I can’t answer that question for you.’
‘And I can’t answer it either.’
‘Then we’ll just have to wait and see,’ Geoffrey said.
‘Do you mean it?’
‘Of course I do.’ He put down the cigarette and glanced at his wristlet watch. ‘Listen, I’m not abandoning you, Lindsay, but I will have to show my face at the Gareloch some time this morning. I’d take you with me but that really wouldn’t be advisable under the circumstances.’
‘No. It wouldn’t fit in with my plan.’
‘Plan?’
‘Oh, yes,’ Lindsay said. ‘I’m not entirely lacking in female wiles, Geoffrey. I spent a good deal of time last night thinking it out.’
‘What do you intend to do?’
She smiled at him and touched his hand.
‘Go straight to Harper’s Hill,’ Lindsay said, ‘and talk to my Aunt Lilias.’
‘Will she help you?’
‘Oh, yes,’ Lindsay said. ‘I’m absolutely sure she will.’
* * *
Martin was delegated to come after him, to calm him down and find out what had started the row. At that moment Tom did not care who knew about his private affairs or even what the outcome would be for the partnership and his future in it. He had assaulted a Franklin. He had bloodied the nose of a managerial colleague in front of witnesses, and if George Crush hadn’t spoken out he might have gone on to commit murder. He should be ashamed of his behaviour but he was not. His blood was still on fire and he had no particular patience with Martin, although he did acknowledge that his brother-in-law had every right to ask for and every reason to be told the truth.
He allowed Martin to steer him into the office and give him a hand towel from the bottom drawer to wrap round his broken knuckles.
‘What the devil was that all about?’ Martin said.
‘Why don’t you ask your precious cousin?’
‘Be easy, Tom. Be easy. I’m asking you,’ Martin said. ‘Besides, Forbes has already gone. As soon as you let him go, he picked himself up and charged off down the main staircase with George Crush scuttling in his wake.’
Tom wiped bloody spittle from his face with the hand towel.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘All right.’
‘Does it have to do with Lindsay?’ Martin asked.
‘Lindsay? What makes you think it has to do with Lindsay?’
‘You were were keen on her once. I thought perhaps…’
Tom gave a little grunt, not quite laughter. ‘I didn’t realise it had been so obvious. No, it doesn’t have to do with Lindsay, although she is involved.’ He looked straight at his brother-in-law, at the broad Franklin features, the honest blue eyes. ‘I’ve a grown daughter, did you know that?’
‘Yes. We all know that.’
‘Apparently she’s been Forbes McCulloch’s mistress for the past five or six years, and now he’s got her pregnant. That’s it.’
Martin was silent for half a second. He absorbed the information slowly, frowning, his jaw set. He was too mature to feign embarrassment.
At length, he said, ‘Does Lindsay know?’
‘Yes, Lindsay knows.’
‘Will she – I mean, will she leave him because of it?’
‘She’s already gone. She left Brunswick Park late last night.’
Martin nodded, frowning. ‘Divorce, I suppose, is inevitable.’
‘Is that all that concerns you, Martin? A possible scandal?’
‘No, no, no, of course not. Sorry, Tom, your daughter must be your first concern. Have you seen her yet?’
‘Not yet. I didn’t know where he had put her until five minutes ago.’
‘Is that what the fight was about?’
‘I lost my temper. I shouldn’t have lost my temper.’
‘God!’ Martin said. ‘If it had been me – I mean, if he had done that to my daughter I think I’d have killed him. He was never right for Lindsay, you know. He should never have been brought into our family. He should have been left in Ireland where he belongs. Pappy has a great deal to answer for. Pappy and Aunt Kay too. It’s not as if we needed new blood. Hah! New blood, listen to me! Bad blood, that’s what it is. Bad blood all along. Did he tell you where to find her?’
‘George did.’
‘Crush? My God! Crush knew, and you didn’t?’ Martin placed an arm about Tom’s shoulder. ‘That’s rotten, just rotten.’
Tom did not shake him off. He was relieved that the secret was out. He could leave the Franklins to sort out their own affairs now, arrange the family pow-wow by which Lindsay’s ‘fate’, and Forbes McCulloch’s too, would be decided, as if nothing were more important than family honour and family pride. It was Arthur who had told him what had happened at Brunswick Park, who had telephoned him early that morning just before he’d left home. For a second Tom was tempted to inform Martin that Lindsay had not just walked out on her husband but had walked out on the arm of Lieutenant Commander Geoffrey Paget, the Admiralty’s purchasing officer.
No, he would leave Arthur to impart that tasty bit of news.
Sylvie was his only concern right now.
‘Where is your daughter?’ Martin said. ‘Where’s he been keeping her?’
‘St Mungo’s Mansions, at the very end of Maryhill Road.’
‘You must go there, Tom. Find her. Make sure she’s – I say, do you think that’s where Forbes has gone shooting off to?’
‘I doubt it,’ Tom answered. ‘Somehow I very much doubt it.’
* * *
He ran across the yard with George trailing behind him. He was drenched in sweat and the front of his shirt and jacket were soiled. His head pounded, his heart too, a gigantic throbbing that seemed to pulse all through him right down to his feet. He felt as if he had been wired to an electrical outlet and pounded with a high voltage charge. But he was not out of control yet, not quite out of control. He ran diagonally across the square behind the office block, swung into the lane behind the paint store and headed for the stables where the big Clydesdale dray horses were kept and, in a separate building, the firm’s vans and motor-cars.
The stink of horse manure and petrol hung over the cobbled forecourt where Donald Franklin’s Lanchester was being washed by two young apprentices clad in a new style of dark blue overalls. They looked up, startled, when Forbes suddenly appeared in the yard.
‘Where is he?’ Forbes snapped. ‘Where’s my brother?’
‘B-b-brother, sir?’
‘Are you a bloody idiot? My brother, Gowry McCulloch. I’m looking for my brother. I want my brother out here. Now.’
‘Gowry isnae here, Mr McCulloch.’
‘Where is he then, damn it?’
‘Dunno, Mr McCulloch. He hasnae been seen here all mornin’. We just thought he was wi’ you, like he usually is.’
Suddenly all the energy left him. Crushed by Gowry’s absence, he felt as if he had charged into a blank brick wall. He had directed himself at Gowry, at telling Gowry what to do to solve the problem, how to execute the master plan that would fix everything for all of them. Now Gowry was missing and he had lost his ally, his tool.
He slithered on the ribbons of soapy water that trickled from the motor-car and snaked away through the ruts made by the hoofs of countless horses in the years before his arrival in Glasgow, in the good old days of Pappy Franklin’s reign. The Lanchester glinted in the coppery light. Two young apprentice boys gawked at him as if he were a spectre. Then George, sawing like a war-horse, stumped into the yard and began to yell apologies into his ear.
‘I’m sorry, son. I’m sorry, Forbes. I should never have opened my trap. I mean, I thought – I thought he was going to do for you. I thought he was…’
‘George. Shut. Up.’
‘Honest to God, Forbes, I thought he was for murdering you.’
‘Perhaps,’ Forbes said, ‘perhaps you should have let him.’
He gave a little shiver as shock crept into his bones. He felt in danger of passing out or, worse, of doing something so rash that it would finish him for ever. The apprentices watched, the water hose splashed on the cobbles, and George, still gasping for breath, ran out of apologies.
Lindsay had left him, he had been without sleep for thirty hours, and he was sore and bleeding: almost overcome by the stench of the stable yard and the din of industry around him, he felt himself waver.
‘Can you start that machine?’ Forbes snapped.
‘What’s that, Mr McCulloch?’
‘That machine, the motor-car. Can you start it?’
‘Aye, sir, but…’
‘Start it then.’
‘But Mr McCulloch, it’s Mr Franklin’s motor-car.’
‘Start it, just start it.’
He pushed through a wave of exhaustion, telling himself that to act without Gowry would be dangerous, that he must not be there when it happened. The boys cranked the handle at the front of the machine. Forbes heaved himself into the driving seat and waited for the engine to fire. He felt the shudder, the jerk and jounce of the big combustion engine and waited, quite patiently now, for the drive chain to engage.
George, by the running board, said, ‘Where are you going, Forbes? At least tell me where you’re going.’
‘To look for Gowry,’ Forbes answered, then, fumbling for a low gear, steered his uncle’s motor-car away from the stables and out into Aydon Road.
* * *
‘I thought it would be you,’ Sylvie said. ‘I didn’t really expect him to come himself. I did what you told me to do, but it did not do one bit of good, did it?’
‘That depends,’ Gowry said.
‘It doesn’t depend on Forbes, though.’
Already the conversation was becoming horribly slewed, but then, Gowry thought, everything about the situation was already horribly slewed.
Sylvie said, ‘If we had been depending on Forbes he would have called round last night, wouldn’t he not now? I must say, Gowry, you do take me for a fool sometimes. I enjoyed it, though, I enjoyed telling them. It was fun, in its way, even if it did me no good in the long run.’
She tied the ribbons of her sun-bonnet with tiny, butterfly movements. Her hands looked tinier than ever and her skin was almost translucent. She seemed to be all stomach, swollen up in front, reduced everywhere else. When she moved, however, she wasn’t clumsy. Even her flat-heeled gait had about it, Gowry thought, a certain daintiness that housed and protected her appeal.
She said, ‘Did Forbes send you to punish me?’
‘Nope. He doesn’t want to punish you, Sylvie.’
‘What will he do, Gowry-Wowry, now he has lost me?’
‘Sylvie, I’ve no idea,’ Gowry lied. ‘Why don’t you forget about Forbes?’
She patted her stomach. ‘How can I?’
‘It might not be his, you know,’ Gowry said.
‘It’s not your baby.’ She pouted. ‘It’s Forbes’s baby.’
‘What makes you so certain?’ Gowry asked.
‘I know it is. I feel it is.’
‘Well,’ Gowry said, ‘I suppose that’s as good an answer as any.’
‘It’s the only answer you will ever get, dearest,’ Sylvie said. ‘Are you taking me out for the day? You promised you would and, as you can see’ – she pirouetted slowly before him – ‘I’m all ready.’
‘Sure and I’m taking you out,’ Gowry said. ‘Where’s Albert?’
‘Still sleeping, sleeping it off.’
‘You didn’t tell him what happened yesterday, did you?’
‘He would not have understood.’ She pirouetted again, lazily, her arms stuck out like rudimentary wings. ‘The wife was not so very upset. I had tea with them, with both wives. Perhaps they knew all along, about me, I mean, and that’s why they weren’t surprised to see me.’
‘They didn’t know about you.’
‘She didn’t know about the baby? You didn’t tell her about the baby?’
‘No,’ Gowry said. ‘I thought it would be more conclusive if you told her.’
‘Oh, it was,’ said Sylvie. ‘Absolutely positively conclusive. Did she give him what-for when he got home last night?’
‘She walked out on him.’
‘Did she now?’
Realising his error at once, Gowry reached lightly for her arm. ‘Now, Sylvie, don’t go getting your hopes up. She’ll be back in a day or two.’
‘And he won’t leave her?’
‘Never,’ Gowry said. ‘I think you know that already.’
She nodded, large movements of her little, bonneted head.
‘Is that why you sent me to my papa’s wife’s house? To see for myself?’
‘Yes, and to let them see you,’ Gowry said.
‘To let them know I exist,’ she said.
‘That’s it,’ said Gowry. ‘Now, if you’re ready, we had better be pushing along before Albert wakes up and blames us for his sore head.’
She giggled. ‘Very well, dearest. If we are leaving at once perhaps you would be good enough to carry King Edward down to the motor-car for me.’
‘King Edward?’ Gowry said.
Indicating a bulky, brown-paper-wrapped package on the table, Sylvie said, ‘My royal scrapbooks. I want to take them with me.’
‘But why?’ he asked.
‘In case I don’t come back,’ she said.
* * *
The sound was like a drum inside his head. He opened his eyes. Shoals of pure black tadpoles swam through pond light until they were consumed by two or three large red flashes that may or may not have been carp.
Albert burped, swallowed and sat up in bed.
The sour taste of Irish rye whiskey in his mouth reminded him of the night before and he wondered how he had got from Kirby’s to the nether end of Maryhill Road. His last recollection was of tumbling downstairs at the club and falling full length into the lane.
Sliding his stained shirt sleeves up, he peered at his elbows and confirmed that they were heavily bruised. He put his head in his hands, groaned and listened to the remorseless thud, thump, thud, thump of the big steam hammer that reverberated inside his skull.
‘Sylvie?’ he shouted: no shout at all, a dry crackle. ‘Syl-veee?’
There was no answer. There seldom was. She did not run to do his bidding like a dutiful daughter. As she kept reminding him, she was not his real daughter at all and if he wanted a servant to dance attendance upon him then he had better scratch up the money to employ one now that Morag and the cook had been dismissed. He missed the ministrations of a good obedient woman in the mornings more than he missed hugs and cuddles at night.
Now, in the sick, sour, stenchy state of the monumentally hung-over he needed his wife, hi
s good, true, loyal and devoted wife, his Florence, to cradle and cosset him. But Florence was gone, never to return, and soon he would have no one to turn to, for Sylvie would be occupied with baby, baby, baby as soon as the poor wee bastard popped into the cruel, cruel world.
‘Sylvie, sweetheart, please stop that noise.’
The thudding continued unabated.
Albert rolled out of bed.
He was trouserless, drawerless and practically shirtless too, for the garment was ripped from collar to midriff and stained with – something; not blood, thank God, not blood. Still examining his fragile frame, he crabbed to the bedroom door and went out into the hall, heading for the water closet.
It was only when he reached the hallway that he realised that the unremitting racket was definitely emanating from somewhere outside his head. He glanced towards the drawing-room and mumbled, ‘Sylvie?’ while, more by instinct than neural command, his feet swung him towards the apartment’s big main door.
‘All right, all right, I’m coming, I’m coming.’
He opened the door and squinted into the dismal light of the landing.
‘You?’ he said. ‘You?’
‘Where is she, Albert?’
‘Through the – in the – what are you doing here, Tom Calder?’ He swung round, his head floating before him like a punctured balloon. He blinked, and peered at the drawing-room door, then, rolling his eyes, at the door of Sylvie’s bedroom. ‘Is she – I mean, did she send for you? She isn’t having – hasn’t had…’
‘The baby?’ Tom stepped past him, looking round too. ‘For God’s sake, Albert, don’t tell me you’re drunk at a time like this? Where is she?’
‘In the … on the … I don’t know,’ said Albert, helplessly. ‘I haven’t been too well myself lately.’
‘Out of my damned way.’
Tom strode across the hall and flung open the drawing-room door. He studied the room from the threshold for a moment or two, then, cutting a series of diagonals across the hall, flung open the doors to the kitchen, the bedrooms and, finally, the lavatory.
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