CHAPTER 4

‘Ha!’ snapped the goblin in a far from feeble voice. ‘Who’re you, hey? A Gillespie? A Smythe-Pike? A Briton, or whatever the fellow calls himself?’

‘I’m a Fletcher,’ Belinda squeaked.

‘Not family?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Good. Come in, then, Miss Fletcher, and close the door before I catch my death. There’s a terrible draught. Come in, come in, I don’t bite. At least, not pretty little girls.’

He didn’t look strong enough to kidnap her, Belinda thought. Besides, he couldn’t very well on a moving train. ‘I’ll come in,’ she temporized, ‘if I can put one of the blinds up, so if Miss Dalrymple comes looking she can see me.’

‘Very well, very well,’ he grumbled. ‘Anything for company that doesn’t come to sponge. This Dalrymple woman, she’s your governess?’

‘No, just a friend. I don’t have a governess, I go to school.’ Stepping in, Belinda wrestled the door shut and let up a blind. ‘Are you Mr. Albert McGowan, sir?’ she asked.

‘That’s right. Talking about me, are they, hey?’ He laughed, a peculiar, creaky sound. ‘And not a good word among ’em, I’ll be bound.’

Uncertain how to answer, she proffered her bag of sweeties. ‘Would you like some aniseed balls?’

‘No, thank you, Miss Fletcher. I am obliged to watch what I eat or suffer appalling consequences. Do you play chess?’

‘Sort of. Daddy’s taught me the moves. But I’m not very good.’

Pale, washed-out eyes peered at her from under the shaggy brows. He nodded. ‘I like an honest woman. Perhaps we’d better stick to draughts, then, Miss Fletcher. Can you climb up and get down my campstool to put the board on?’

Standing on the seat, Belinda took down the green canvas stool from the rack. She opened it and set it on the floor in front of him, and he laid on it the traveling chequer-board he had had on his knees. The pieces were round and flat like draughts counters, with inlaid pictures of chessmen so you could play either game. They had little holes in their tops, and pegs underneath to fit into each other or the holes in the board.

‘Gosh, what a spiffing set,’ said Belinda, helping him lay out the men.

‘Spiffing?’ His hands were like claws, bony, with long yellow nails, the backs blotchy. They trembled slightly as he handled the pieces.

‘I used to say topping, but Miss Dalrymple says spiffing. It means wonderful.’

‘You like it, hey? Ivory and ebony it is, and other woods I forget the names of. I had it specially made for me in India.’

‘I’ve got an Indian friend at school. Would you, could you please, tell me about India? Deva’s just a girl like me, and she doesn’t remember much.’

So as they played, he told her about playing chess – with this very set – with a maharajah in a howdah on an elephant, on the way to a tiger hunt in the jungle. He described hot blue skies, and cool marble fountains, and temples, and festivals where gleaming, glittering gods, garlanded with marigolds, paraded through streets smelling of aromatic spices. Belinda forgot to take her turn. Soon she gave up even trying to play.

At the end of a story about a temple monkey which stole his watch right out of his waistcoat pocket, Mr. McGowan said firmly, ‘That’s enough now. I don’t want you suffering from intellectual indigestion. The pains of the real thing are bad enough.’

Belinda wasn’t sure what he meant, but there was one more thing she really wanted to know. ‘Couldn’t you just please tell me about the Indian you’ve left your money to in your will?’

‘Little busybody,’ he growled, but his eyes twinkled at her. ‘So they’ve found out, have they? That must have set the cat among the pigeons.’

‘Rather! They’re awfully angry, ’cause of him being Indian and ’cause of it being the family’s money.’

‘Bah! It belongs to that old miser, my brother Alistair, now, and it’ll be mine when he pops off the hooks. I’ll do with it as I please. Let them earn their own. Now who’s this, hey?’ he went on, glancing towards the corridor. ‘One of ’em come to try to change my mind?’

‘No, it’s my Miss Dalrymple. Oh dear, I’ve been gone an awfully long time,’ Belinda said guiltily.

Peering through the window, Daisy wondered what on earth the child was doing in there with the misanthrope. Good gracious, it looked as if they had been playing a game together! She opened the door.

‘Come in,’ he said at once, glaring at her beneath peetling brows. ‘Come in, don’t stand there letting the draught in. So you’re Miss Fletcher’s friend, hey?’

‘Miss Dalrymple, this is Mr. McGowan. Mr. Albert McGowan, not Alistair He’s nice.’

Daisy pulled the door to behind her. ‘How do you do, Mr. McGowan. I must apologize for this young imp’s intrusion.’

‘Not at all, not at all. It’s been a pleasure making Miss Fletcher’s acquaintance. Won’t you sit down, young lady? I don’t dislike company, only that tribe of would-be spongers I’m forced to acknowledge as relatives.’

With a smile, Daisy returned frankness for frankness. ‘They believe you don’t acknowledge them, sir.’

He cackled. ‘As little as possible,’ he admitted. ‘The way they treated me when I was in India. No “Dear Uncle Albert, How’s life and is there anything we can send out to make it easier?” They didn’t even bother to notify me of weddings and births and such.’

‘The mean beasts!’ Belinda said indignantly.

‘Their loss, my dear. I didn’t have to send wedding and christening presents. Of course, when I came home they found out I wasn’t the indigent younger brother any longer.’

‘I suppose they camped on your doorstep,’ said Daisy.

‘Descended like a flock of vultures. All of a sudden I was “dearest Uncle,”’ he spat out, his lined face twisted. ‘That was when I decided I wasn’t going to leave much, and what I did leave was not going to my beloved family.’

‘Mr. McGowan was just going to tell me about the Indian who’s going to get it all,’ said Belinda.

‘I was, was I?’ The old man sounded amused. ‘I don’t remember agreeing.’

‘Please, Sir.’

‘Oh, as you please. It all started a long, long time ago. I fell in love with an Indian girl, which wasn’t as easy as you might think, for they keep their women shut up out of sight. But she was the daughter of a man who had adopted many English ways and among his friends she went unveiled.’

‘Was she very beautiful?’ Belinda asked, all agog.

‘Very beautiful, and charming, and intelligent, too. Just as my little friend Miss fletcher will be when she grows up.’

‘Did you marry her?’

Daisy frowned at this impertinence, but McGowan was unoffended. He sighed.

‘No, my dear, I did not. For a start, I was more than twice her age. Still more important, life is very difficult for Asian women married to white men. Belonging to neither side they are despised by both, and I could not allow her to suffer so, though she and her father were willing. So she was married to one of her own, a good enough fellow. They had one child, a boy. I was invited to be his godfather, or as near as their religion comes to that office. Though they prayed for more children, perhaps it is as well their prayers were not answered. He was five when his parents and many of his relatives died in a typhoid epidemic.’

‘Poor little boy,’ Belinda cried, wide eyes filling with tears. She held on tight to Daisy’s hand, and Daisy knew she was thinking of her own mother.

‘Not so poor,’ said Albert McGowan dryly. ‘I took him into my house, and when he was seven I sent him to school in Scotland. He did well, went on to university, and he has just finished his medical training. He’s a houseman now at St. Thomas’s Hospital in London. He is my heir.’

‘Naturally,’ Daisy approved.

‘I set aside funds enough to see him through his education and to purchase a partnership in a medical practice when he’s ready. I see no reason to change my Last Will and Testament merely because my penny-pinching brother Alistair seems to be about to pop off before me after all! Chandra Jagai is . . . Where is the boy?’ he interrupted himself fretfully. ‘I told Weekes I want to see him.’

Daisy was afraid Belinda’s visit, however welcome, had tired him. He was very old, eighty at least she thought, since Peter Gillespie, his younger sister’s son, was in his fifties. She was about to take leave of him when the door slid open a few inches and a round, dark, serious face appeared.

‘Sir? Weekes told me . . . Oh, I beg your pardon, you have company.’

Chandra Jagai spoke English with a slight Lowland Scots accent. Only the faintest hint of a foreign lilt suggested it was not his native tongue. A stocky man in his mid-twenties, he was neatly dressed in a dark suit, buff waistcoat, dazzlingly white shirt, and maroon tie. Catching Belinda’s disappointed look, Daisy smiled. She recalled her own disillusionment when Alec took her to the Cathay for dinner and the Chinese proprietor wore tails and spoke with a Cockney accent.

‘Come in, my boy, come in and shut the door.’ McGowan raised his bushy eyebrows at Daisy and she nodded. ‘Miss Dalrymple, Miss fletcher, allow me to introduce Dr. Jagai.’

After an exchange of courtesies, Daisy said, ‘We’ll leave you to your business, gentlemen. Come, Belinda?’

‘Thank you very much for the stories, sir,’ said Belinda, ‘and the game, and everything.’

‘Not at all, young lady. Come back and have tea with me this afternoon at half past four and we’ll see if I can come up with some more stories. Make sure you’re on time, now, I have to eat at regular intervals. And take this, my dear.’ He folded the chequer-board with the men inside, fumblingly fastened the little brass catch, and handed it to her. ‘It’s yours. I shan’t be taking many more journeys.’

‘Golly, thanks! And I’d love to come to tea. May I, Miss Dalrymple?’

Seeing no harm in the unlikely friendship, Daisy assented – then wondered what Mrs. Fletcher would say if she found out.

Belinda impulsively kissed the old man’s wrinkled cheek. ‘Off with you, baggage!’ he said, beaming. ‘And off with your jacket, Chandra,’ he was saying as Daisy closed the door after Belinda. ‘I know your blood has grown accustomed to Scottish temperatures.’

‘He’s not an ogre,’ said Belinda. ‘I like him, don’t you?’

‘Yes, but I can imagine him being quite ogreish to people he dislikes!’

‘P’raps. What’s indigent mean?’

‘Poor.’

‘Mr. McGowan was poor when he went to India, even though his twin brother’s rich? That’s not fair! He had more fun, though. He told me some ripping stories about India. What’s intexual indigestion?’

‘Intexual?’

‘Something like that. He said he didn’t want me to get it from too many stories.’

‘Intellectual indigestion? It’s what your mind gets from too many new ideas at once.’ Particularly if they were hard to swallow, Daisy thought.

Their compartment was now empty. Daisy proposed a game of draughts, but Belinda was tired of sitting.

‘May I stand in the corridor for a while?’ she begged.

‘To watch the cows and trees on that side for a change? Yes, but don’t wander off again, please! Oh, wait a minute, you have a smut on your cheek. Here, let me get it off.’ Daisy delved in her handbag for a handkerchief, spat on the corner the way her nanny used to, and wiped away the fleck of soot, feeling very motherly. ‘That’s better.’

Belinda hugged her, blushed, and went out to the corridor.

Anne had lent Daisy two or three magazines. Now and then she glanced up from the glossy pages of the Tatler to check the whereabouts of her impetuous charge. A quarter of an hour or so later, she heard Belinda say, ‘Hallo, Dr. Jagai.’

The young doctor joined her, shrugging into his jacket. ‘Hallo, Miss . . . Fletcher, is it?’

‘Yes, but you can call me Belinda. I’m not really quite old enough to be Miss Fletcher yet.’

‘I’ll tell you a secret, Belinda: I’m such a new doctor that whenever someone addresses me as doctor, I still look round to see to whom they are talking.’

Belinda laughed. So the earnest Dr. Jagai had a sense of humour, Daisy thought. With a quirk of the lips for her own impetuosity, not to mention curiosity, she invited him in.

Now that she saw him properly, he looked tired. From her hospital days during the War, she remembered witnessing the exhausting life of a lowly houseman, always on call.

‘I shouldn’t really be in first class,’ he said.

‘Oh, never mind. The ticket inspector won’t come again till after York Do come and sit down. Are you going to Edinburgh?’

‘Yes, ma’am. I have friends there, and since I must go as far as York, I might as well go on to see them. Mr. McGowan told me to catch this train. I’ve been on duty since he learnt of his brother’s illness, and he wanted to speak to me.’

‘A dictatorial gentleman!’

Jagai smiled. ‘Undeniably, but who am I to complain after all his kindness and generosity? Especially in this instance.’ His solemn face lit up and he leaned forward in his enthusiasm. ‘Mr. McGowan summoned me to tell me he’s going to rewrite his will to leave his brother’s wealth to found a medical clinic in India!’

‘Not to you?’

‘I shall be named as director of the charitable trust, and of the clinic. It’s my dearest dream, but I thought I should have to work and save for years before I could afford it. He’ll set it up that way, rather than as a personal bequest, to make it more difficult for his family to contest the will.’

‘Clever!’ Daisy applauded. ‘It must be much harder to find grounds to object to a charity inheriting than a non-relative.’

‘So he hopes. He’s going to consult brother Alistair’s solicitor this afternoon about the best way to do it. I gather Mr. Braeburn is on his way to Dunston Castle with the rest.’

‘So I’ve heard. You have considered, haven’t you, that Alistair McGowan may change his will first?’

‘Yes.’ Jagai’s face lost its brightness and settled back into lines of tiredness. He shrugged his shoulders. ‘If so, if old Alistair disinherits his brother, I shan’t be any worse off than I was before.’

‘I hope you get it all,’ said Belinda, who had been listening in silence.

‘So do I,’ said Chandra Jagai, giving her a weary smile, ‘but after all, Alistair has as much right as Albert to do what he wants with what’s his.’