by Webster, Jan
Chapter Seven
Alisdair Kilgour looked out from the windows of the house in Ashley Terrace on a cold day in 1894. Heavily looped and curtained, shutting out the world, these windows oppressed his spirit, like everything else in the house at the moment.
Mother was dying. It was strange to be a medical student yet know there was no part of your own experience you could use to save the person who had given you birth. How could he tell his father? The family doctor obviously thought it best to keep the truth to himself. He couldn’t fool Alisdair. The signs were all there.
He turned his morose attention to the windows. Alexander ‘Greek’ Thomson, responsible for so much of the best of Glasgow’s architecture, couldn’t really have wanted these bow windows. They must have been forced on the classicist by people like Ruskin who, while in Edinburgh, had gone on about the ‘delightfulness’ of bows or bays or oriels. It was Alisdair’s considered opinion that Glasgow and bow windows did not go together at all. Glasgow and trams; Glasgow and football; Glasgow and tea-rooms; Glasgow and slums, fights and drink, yes. Glasgow and the Greco-Egyptian churches built by the aforementioned ‘Greek’ Thomson, even. But bow windows were a southern conceit and had no place in a hard city like Glasgow.
Having arrived at this somewhat irrelevant decision, Alisdair felt marginally better. But only just. The problem of putting his father in the picture returned. The old man had already had one recent blow, in the death of his friend, the Irish-American, Joe O’Rourke. It had raised complications over the Dounhead-Boston Trust which he and Joe had started up together, with Uncle Paterson. To compound matters, there had been a run on gold reserves in America which had closed the nation’s banks and brought the economy close to collapse. His father was deeply worried but refused to talk about financial matters at any length. Alisdair felt he was probably out of his depth.
There was Kitty, weepy and short-tempered ever since her best friend, Jean Wilson, had emigrated with her family to Canada to farm free acres. Jean’s brother, Fred, had been starting to court Kitty in a clumsy, uninspired way, but perhaps she was missing his dog-eyed devotion and his strong arm for carrying her shopping parcels.
As for himself … Part of his present dark mood was tied up with the knowledge that he had not yet grown up and away from his mother. He had enjoyed being the youngest, the family pet, ‘the clever one’, for too long. Yet it was bred in him to please her. Why else did he go twice to church on Sunday?
Self-awareness came slowly, painfully. His fellow-students talked freely about women and drink, for example. In order not to upset his mother, he had not allowed himself to indulge in either.
He was going to have to grow up on his own and he had the wit to know it was going to be desperately difficult. Not his medical studies. His mother had pushed him into those but she had been right: he had found the vocation to involve him heart and soul. Now she would be gone before he qualified. And he would pass out top of the list. It wasn’t conceit. His tutors already accepted it as hard fact.
It was going to be his own uneven nature that was going to be the problem. Still so desperate for commendation. Still so unsure of how far a good man — and he wanted to be good — should live in the world. How realistic was it to think you could live an aesthetic life? If she went … he found he was on the verge of blubbering like a child and stared hard out of the window again, at anything. Anything to focus the mind …
Someone was coming along the terrace, walking steadily and purposefully, swinging a gold-topped cane. His plaid Ulster was just that bit louder than a Glasgow man would venture. American, possibly. Or an emigrant Scot, back from New York with some swagger in his step.
The man was crossing, making for the front door. The bell jangled importunately as Alisdair crossed to the first-floor landing, to listen to the visitor announce himself. His unequivocal tones brought Alisdair bounding downstairs, pushing the maid out of the way, extending his hand.
‘It’s never Cousin Finn! From Boston!’ They all came crowding out then, his father, Sandia, Kitty, to see what the noise was about. They hustled the young caller into the front parlour, taking his coat, his cane, his hat, sitting him down, handing him a glass of Madeira, overwhelming him with questions.
The head was narrow, fine, long, topped with blond hair with a slight wave in it. The lips thin, firm, not readily smiling. The eyes were large, blue, calm, intelligent.
‘You’re the image of your father,’ said Captain Jack. ‘And you’re welcome here, my boy. Are you on holiday, on business? How long —’
‘I’ve come to see you,’ said Finn Fleming composedly. ‘It’s a family visit, Uncle, but I also have business to discuss with you, on my father’s behalf.’
Something serious in his tone made them look at him curiously. But Sandia said, ‘We are never going to talk business tonight! I shall get your room ready, then we will eat and if Mama is well enough, you must come and see her, Finn. She’ll want to hear about your parents, about Bertram and little Marie-Louise, who wasn’t even born when you last visited us all those years ago!’
Finn’s level, blue-eyed gaze met hers.
‘I’m afraid, Cousin Sandia, I must talk to your father after we’ve eaten. It’s really rather important.’ There it was again, that serious note. Sandia’s face fell and Kitty turned away, scarcely able to hide her disappointment. She had been hoping for talk, parlour games, music round the piano. The house was so moribund these days, revolving round Mama and the crises in her health. A handsome cousin with a Yankee accent had seemed, for a moment, like a gift from heaven.
Captain Jack led Finn into his study after the evening meal, settling him into one of the two big leather armchairs with a small whisky and water.
‘I want you to come straight to the point, laddie,’ he urged. ‘It’s about the trust, isn’t it? How bad a way are we in?’
‘Bad as possible.’ Now that it was out, Finn’s face showed something like relief. He pinched his trouser-knees, cleared his throat nervously. ‘This isn’t easy for me to tell you, Uncle. But I must. My father wants to wind up the trust. He has to concentrate all his reserves on keeping up the railway. That is, and always has been, his first concern.’
‘Can’t we weather the storm? I’ve known things look black for us before, but the market always bounces back.’
Finn shook his head. ‘I wish I didn’t have to bring such news. But I said I wouldn’t hold out false hopes. I promised my father.’
‘It puts the kibosh on me.’ Jack poured himself another whisky and drank it down, neat ‘The trust has been the backbone of all my financial operations. I’m not going to survive this one, Finn. Does your father realize that?’
‘I hope you can salvage something,’ said Finn in a low, careful voice which had all emotion ironed out of it. ‘You must let me explain why my father has had to make these decisions.
‘Joe O’Rourke’s dying changed everything, Uncle. His affairs were incredibly complicated. I’m sine Joe was straight but Tammany Hall — you know that’s what we call the kind of political graft that goes on in New York? — had a hold on some of the others we roped in.
‘We went to New York together, my father and myself, after Joe died, to try and straighten things out. We took the best financial advice there we could. We thought we might be able to lift out the New York section like a bad apple but our advisers said the rot had spread through the whole box.’
‘Can’t you raise the wind over there, then?’ Jack’s body and neck were rigid, yet his hand holding the glass shook. Finn’s voice changed, taking on a note of desperation.
‘Can’t be done. Lord knows, we’ve tried. But I’ve never known a situation like the one in the States at the moment. Workers are pouring in from Europe, upsetting the labour market, and it’s one violent strike after another. They’re marching on Washington, fighting at the pithead and railway yard. Men get killed. My father says there could be battles soon as bad as any in the Civil War.’
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�Your Aunt Clemmie mustn’t be told any of this.’ Jack looked like a man fighting his way out of a bad dream. ‘The house at Helensburgh’ll have to go. The yacht. I’ll fight to keep this place and to see Alisdair finishes his studies. I don’t know if it can be done. But I’ll try.’
‘I can tell you more,’ said Finn. ‘We’ve had a slump in farm prices and the suggestion is we give American farmers credit by coining free silver, in the ratio of sixteen to one. We’ve got this “Prairie Populism” to cope with, in addition to everything else.’
‘We’ll go into all that another day.’ Jack raised his head tiredly. ‘At the moment, all I can take in is the sound of my own business crashing about my ears.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Finn. ‘This hasn’t been easy for me, Uncle. We could have sent somebody else —’
Jack patted his arm. ‘It’s none of your doing, boy. All I ask is that you keep quiet and let me break this to the family in my own way.’
Everyone’s reaction on hearing the news was the same as Jack’s: Clemmie mustn’t be told. Alisdair faced his father and said categorically, ‘You know her heart is giving out? I’ve been trying to tell you —’
‘Your mother has pulled through bad times before, and she’ll do it again.’ It occurred to Alisdair that his father could not accept the finality of any verdict. But they all put on cheerful faces on entering the invalid’s room and gave her no hint of the conferences that went on downstairs, nor of the procession of lawyers and accountants streaming through Jack’s city offices and out again with pursed lips and angry expressions.
Then one afternoon Sandia answered the summons of her mother’s bell to find Clemmie sitting up against her lace pillows looking bright-eyed and determined. She had always retained a certain girlishness in her appearance and this was enhanced now by the flounced nightdress and the fading though still pretty hair falling about her shoulders.
Sandia put a cobwebby Shetland shawl about her shoulders and perched on the edge of the bed with a questioning air.
‘What can I get you, Mama? Some barley water?’
Clemmie waved a dismissive hand.
‘Sandia, I have been thinking. Your father looks preoccupied these days. You, too. There’s something going on I haven’t been told about —’
Sandia issued an immediate denial, but Clemmie smiled. ‘I want to see your father when he comes in. I’ve made up my mind to it. Tell him, will you?’
‘There’s nothing, Mama,’ Sandia assured her, but Clemmie looked past her, determined not to waste strength in argument. When Jack came in and got Clemmie’s message, he left his high tea uneaten and climbed the stairs to the bedroom, feeling his own heart pounding unevenly.
‘Shall I light the gas mantle?’ he offered.
‘No,’ Clemmie protested. ‘I like the gloaming. Just come and sit by me.’
He took her hand. It was very light and dry.
‘Now what is all this?’ he protested gently.
‘Something’s up, Jack.’ Her breath was coming very light and fast.
‘There’s nothing. I’ve just been very busy.’
He was conscious of her face turned towards him and knew what the expression would be, though it was too dark to see. Love and trust, that openness that was for him alone. She had been too frail for him to he beside for a long time now, but he had a sudden overwhelming desire to be close to her. This highly-strung, volatile, demanding woman had been his Clemmie on Kenner Brae, wild as he. Wild as the heather. In an excess of grief he put his head on her bosom. He felt the right, dry hand stroke his hair.
‘Finn brought bad news from America. About the trust. That’s it, isn’t it?’ He marvelled at her sharpness, even now. ‘It’s since he came that you’ve all been — different.’
‘There’s no cause for alarm.’ He rose and lit the gas now, then clumsily straightened her sheets and shook out her top pillow. Looking down at her, he told the most convincing lie of his life. ‘There’s nothing that won’t sort itself out. You’ll see. Now rest. I’m going down to have my tea.’ He made it sound as though he were annoyed and hungry, like any normal man home after a normal day’s harassment at the office. On the way to the door he had to step carefully, for everything was blurred, the flowers on the carpet, the anti-macassars she had embroidered, the silver-framed photographs of George and Andrew in their uniforms, all the careful, useless bric-à-brac of their life together.
Ten days later, the doctor who had become almost like a member of the family, but who had been called in hastily as consciousness slipped at last from Clemmie’s grasp, came down the stairs towards Jack’s waiting presence and parted his hands to show her life had gone.
Jack sat in the darkened bedroom for two hours, sometimes weeping, sometimes looking at the calm face he felt sure must awaken from such a serenity of dreams. At last he felt able to go down to his family. The girls were pale but composed, but then they had the saving grace of small household tasks to perform. Alisdair wept noisily, his eyes puffed and red. Finn took over practical tasks, such as sending cables to George, due to dock in Australia, and Andrew, now an officer and stationed with his regiment in Cawnpore.
But when the funeral service was over and the black-plumed horses had borne Clemmie away to lie by the ornate but comfortless white marble headstone, the calamitous state of the family finances was brought home to them.
The house at Helensburgh was quickly sold, then the boat, and the house in Ashley Terrace took on a skeletal air as anything likely to fetch a fair sum of money was sent for auction.
Sandia dismissed the maids and tried to get Mrs Jessup, the cook, to go, too. Unsuccessfully, as Mrs Jessup firmly said she would remain till the last, having no place else to go, and didn’t care whether they paid her or not. It still did not look like being enough and Jack was being pushed nearer and ever more inexorably towards the decision to sell the house. He did not want to go. Clemmie’s presence still haunted the denuded rooms. What would be left of her if they moved elsewhere?
In these conditions of flux and misery, Finn was an everpresent and practical help. Sandia found she was growing very fond of him. It was like having one of the absent brothers to mother. With Kitty, it went further. She appeared to admire everything about Finn — his clothes, his speech, his attitudes. She grew uncharacteristically clumsy when he was near her. And despite her grief for Mama, he could make her smile and perk up and discuss the lighter items in the newspapers, and forget about the earth moving so frighteningly beneath her feet.
As the time wore on towards the day of his return trip to America, Finn changed from helpful relative into taciturn, moody visitor. It was Kitty who probed, delicately but insistently.
‘Is there something the matter, Finn?’ They were sitting in the morning-room, so much cosier and friendlier than the parlours.
He looked at first as though he might turn her question aside, but then he changed his mind and came and sat beside her at the table, taking the piece of tatting she was doing from her hands, so that he could command her full attention.
‘I feel badly about what has happened.’
‘But we know it wasn’t your fault. It was nobody’s fault.’
‘But you’ve all been through such a harrowing time. Aunt Clemmie’s death and now the house threatened.’ He scraped his chair back and stood up. ‘Kitty, I’m staying. I want to, anyhow. I like Glasgow. I’ll get a job and contribute to household expenses. I’ll help your father sort out his affairs.’
‘I would like you to stay.’
‘Would you?’ Down he went on the chair again, peering closely at her expression. She had long, sweeping lashes over dark-blue eyes and a distracting little chin with the hint of a cleft in it. He was staring at the chin as Sandia came in.
‘Finn wants to stay in Scotland,’ Kitty announced.
Before the questions reached Sandia’s lips, Finn had launched into explanations. They had the sound of issues well fought over in the battleground of his mind.
/> ‘Look — first and foremost I’m an engineer. I’ve been caught up in all these negotiations over the trust, but I don’t like juggling with figures. What I really want to do is make automobiles.’
They stared at him.
‘Automobiles?’ repeated Sandia.
‘Horseless carriages. Motor-cars. There’s a man named Ford making them in the States —’
‘But wait a moment,’ said Sandia. ‘Surely your father depends upon you. He must expect you to go back home.’
Finn turned an unhappy face towards her.
‘Ah, well, there’s the rub.’ He lapsed into broody silence, biting his nails, while the heavy lock of fair hair fell down over his eyes. Kitty put out a hand and pushed it back.
‘Your father and you don’t see eye to eye about the horseless carriage?’ she probed, with a sudden flash of insight.
‘More than that.’ Finn’s voice was bitter. ‘He won’t even listen to anything I say. In less than six years, we’ll be entering the twentieth century. It’s got to be the century of the motorcar, just as this one has been the century of the steam train. But, of course, steam locomotives have been his life. He can’t, or won’t, see the freedom the motor-car will confer on people. His mind runs along a straight set of rails.’
‘Father always told us that he was a first-class locomotive man,’ Sandia put in. ‘Even as a little boy, he was obsessed by steam engines, Father says.’
‘Obsessed is the word,’ said Finn glumly.
‘I think you’re two of a kind,’ Sandia observed percipiently. ‘Maybe it is good that you should break away on your own.’
Finn’s face brightened at these words of encouragement.
‘Glasgow’s the home of engineering, isn’t it? I could learn so much here. It isn’t just ideas we fight about, you see. It’s a question of dominance. Father wants me in his shadow —’