LADY SYBILL HAD STAYED AWAKE on the train all the way to London. She was still wide awake when the porter helped her into a cab that took her to the beautiful house on Lowndes Street which her parents had bought for her as a wedding gift almost forty years before. She ordered coffee, a hot bath, her lawyer and her lover in that order, and in that order she dealt with them. The evening’s dalliance with darling Arthur was the most satisfying part of the day’s negotiations. Really, neither of them was cut out for a life of sin and deception. She did love him so and he was – face it, Sybill – becoming tired of trying to pretend at house parties that they were no more than close friends.
‘At last, at last,’ he had breathed as they reached the most satisfying climax in years. ‘To be able to call you mine, Sybill.’
Really, he was beginning to sound the teeniest, weeniest bit like dull, honourable old Hugo.
‘One is supposed to enjoy it more when one’s not really allowed, Arthur,’ she had said pettishly.
‘You can’t mean that, Sybill. You know I’ve loathed these years of sneaking in at back doors. It will be wonderful for you to be divorced honourably, the injured party, with all the sympathy of Society. When shall we plan to marry?’
Sybill eased herself up against the pillows, so much more feminine since Hugo had stopped sleeping there. He had said that yards of lace on his pillows terrified him.
‘We still have to be a little circumspect, my darling, but by Christmas, I think, we should be able to announce our engagement, at least to family and close friends. Hugo won’t fight. Perhaps he wants to marry his little friend.’
Arthur lit cigarettes and handed one to Lady Sybill. ‘You know,’ he said reflectively as he blew smoke against the pink ceiling, ‘I just can’t see Hugo and a girl half his age.’
‘If you’d seen the boy . . .’ Lady Sybill gritted her teeth as she remembered the shock, the pain, the unbelievable anger. ‘I was livid. The image of my dearest child.’ The tears, genuine enough, swelled in her faded blue eyes and spilled over. ‘Hugo must have gone to his hussy for comfort as soon as we heard the news. He certainly didn’t come to me.’ Comfortably she forgot that the news of Captain Granville-Baker’s death in action had followed her around the country as she and a few other wealthy socialites had sought release from the horrors of war in a never-ending social round. ‘And to install her as head teacher in the very school set up as a memorial to Hugh and the other poor, dead boys. I’ll drag him and his harlot through every sordid paper in England!’
*
‘The proverbial storm in the proverbial teacup, my dear,’ the Colonel said, accepting a second cup of coffee from Kirsty. ‘I deeply regret that you had to suffer such verbal abuse.’
‘But how can we prove . . .?’
‘Sybill will realize herself upon reflection, Kirsty. I may call you Kirsty after all this?’
Kirsty nodded, her eyes full of tears.
‘We have to sit down one day soon and talk about Hugh and little Jamie-John and Jamie Cameron, Kirsty. I only need to know a few details. It was obvious to me when I saw the letter that my son loved you. Had he lived you would have been my daughter-in-law, and that is how I think of you. This case won’t come to court, simply because I was in France for most of 1915. It’s quite clearly documented. I’ll go back to London and see Sybill. End of story.’
‘People must be talking. Lady Sybill was told something.’
‘She won’t want Hugh’s name muddied any more than I do, m’dear. Our marriage finished a long time ago, but our love for our boy . . . In a way, I’m almost glad that she has forced the issue. Jamie-John is my grandson and I’m delighted to be able to admit it.’
‘But Colonel, for his sake . . . and mine?’
‘I know, Kirsty. People will think and people will talk, but only we two will really know. Let me take care of the boy financially, school, and so on. I want him to go to Hugh’s old school. My friends who see him will realize he’s Hugh’s child, and by the time he’s old enough to go to school it will be accepted without very much thought. The war has ensured that too many children won’t bear their father’s name: if there are any decent men left alive to marry all those poor little widows, that is. Now, tell me about this fellow you hired.’
Kirsty did not realize how her face lit up as she described her reunion with her former colleague.
‘He was always so funny, Colonel. The Dominie at our first school had no sense of humour’ – that was all she would ever say about Mr Buchanan – ‘and he was furious as laughter rang down those dark old corridors. Bob has lost an arm, but little else, though he was badly injured and lost his memory for a time. He was in a hospital in France and was thought to be French: when a nurse spoke to him in the language he automatically replied in French. He had studied French for a year at a college in Edinburgh, but the war put an end to his formal studies.’
‘As it did for so many young men,’ interrupted the Colonel. ‘He had no thought of returning to university?’
‘No, when his memory returned and they realized that he was British, they sent him back to a hospital in England and then up here to Edinburgh. He’s been living in Auchmithie for a year. His family were fishermen. He read in the Courier about the school starting but waited a year to see if there was an opening, in the hope that he would be really well and able to handle the work.’
‘He’ll live in, I suppose? It would be excellent security to have an old soldier actually in the building at night. We could do something for him in the block above the old stables.’
The fear engendered by Lady Sybill’s harsh words receded. How wonderful it was to sit there with Hugh’s father and feel that, at last, everything was out in the open unashamedly. He knew about Jamie-John. The child’s future was secure – his grandfather would make sure that Jamie-John Cameron received a good education after he left this preparatory school. Her son would fulfil the promise of both his father and his foster-father and, incidentally, of his mother who had been unable to attend a university. Quite a burden for one little boy, and she would have to see that there was never too much pressure. He must be allowed to be himself.
The evening and the visit came to a close.
‘I’ll return to town tomorrow, Kirsty, and you should hear no more from Lady Sybill. There are probably communications already in the post from her solicitors, but send them to me directly and I’ll deal with them. As for Jamie-John, I’ll come as often as I can to watch him grow, but we’ll keep our secret until he’s old enough to handle it.’
She smiled at him in relief. ‘You’re welcome here at any time, Colonel. All the boys like to see you.’
‘Yes, it’s the extra pudding the cooks make when there is a visitor!’
She laughed. They both knew there was more to it than pudding. ‘Goodbye, Colonel, and thank you.’
When the car lights had disappeared down the driveway Kirsty turned and went back upstairs, where Jessie was waiting with her never-failing remedy for grief and worry – hot cocoa.
‘Everything is going to be fine, Mother,’ said Kirsty, ‘and we’re to go ahead with the plans for expansion. I’ll be happier when Lady Sybill drops her action, if she has started it, but for the moment I’m going to arrange for a flat to be prepared for Bob above the old stables. You’ll like him, Mother, and so will the boys. A real hero in the house. And dear Miss Purdy will be absolutely delighted.’
*
Colonel Granville-Baker had himself announced at his old home upon his return to London. He had spent over thirty years as joint owner of the house, yet he no longer felt a part of it. Lady Sybill was seated at her desk when he entered the library and she turned to look at him.
‘Come to beg, Hugo darling?’ she asked mockingly.
‘It won’t wash, Sybill, and if you think, you will realize it.’
‘You look exhausted: all this running up and down to Scotland. I’ll ring for coffee.’ She rose gracefully.
He reflected as he watched her cross the room that she always had been the most extraordinarily graceful woman. Hugh had inherited it, and the little chap, though she might not like to be told that. A blot on the family escutcheon, little Jamie-John.
‘So much better to have it all out in the open like this,’ she said.
‘The boy is Hugh’s child, Sybill, and I think you’ve already realized that.’
She turned swiftly to face him and he saw disbelief, shock and pain in her eyes. The thought had never occurred to her.
‘I don’t believe it,’ she said, her hand at her throat as if to hold back the worlds. ‘I won’t believe it. My son and some working-class little schoolteacher? Never!’
He saw the tears swimming in the once-lovely eyes. Was she crying for her shattered hopes of a socially acceptable divorce, or for her dreams of her son?
‘You’d like Kirsty if you tried, Sybill, and the boy is . . .’
‘A bastard.’ She spat out the word with venom. ‘Whoever his father is.’
‘Yes,’ he said simply, ‘there are too many like him around now: all casualties of the war. I’m seeing my solicitors this morning and changing my will. You won’t need anything, will you, my dear? You have this house and your father’s money, and I’ll arrange to give you cause for divorce if you want old Arthur so badly, but not at the expense of Mrs Cameron or the child.’
‘Hugh was in love with one of the Ponsonby girls. Clara is still in mourning for him.’
‘I’m sorry for her then. But I know he loved Kirsty . . . Mrs Cameron. There was the most heartbreaking note in his paybook. He was writing to Kirsty a few minutes before he was killed.’
She stood up again. ‘Don’t,’ she said and put out her hands as if to push away the thought of her child, dead.
‘He’s gone, Sybill, but knowing his son has brought me incredible peace. I wish . . .’
‘Just go, Hugo, please.’
He rose at once. ‘Very well, my dear. I’ll see about arranging everything nicely for you and Arthur.’
She did not watch him leave but sat with head bowed while tears for her son and her dead marriage rained down her face. What a mess it was, what a bloody mess. Where had all the promise gone, all the early happiness? To come to this . . .
*
Hugo ran lightly down the steps to the road and decided not to hail a cab but to walk across town to his solicitors’ offices. Poor old Sybill. If marrying Arthur would compensate a little for the loss of her child . . .? Could anything? Not for him it couldn’t, although knowing the boy was such a joy. He wondered what he would have to do to give Sybill cause to divorce him. Have a photograph taken in some seedy hotel with some poor woman? To my grandson, Jamie-John Cameron, I leave everything of which I die possessed. What a pleasure that would be, to have that done. Should have done it years ago.
He did not see the omnibus that hit him. His eyes were full of pictures of little boys with bright blue eyes.