CHAPTER TEN

The Great Exhibition

If they had been acquainted, which naturally they were not, shy Princess Louise, wife of the Duke of Fife and King Edward’s eldest daughter, might have taken time off from her royal duties to offer young Sylvie Calder a quiet word of advice. She, the Princess, had seen it all before, every act of deception and betrayal you could possibly imagine, for, although she was a woman of impeccable moral character, she knew only too well what went on in the Court of St James and the hurt that acts of adultery could cause to all parties involved. In the spring of 1901, Sylvie Calder was in no frame of mind to listen to advice from anyone, however, not even a daughter of the new King of England, and any lesson that the Princess might generously have passed along to the young commoner would almost certainly have been ignored.

As it was, Sylvie, like a hundred and forty thousand others, got no nearer to the beautiful Princess Louise than the crowd that flanked the avenue to the Industrial Hall. She saw nothing of the golden key with which the Princess opened the exhibition’s gates, very little of the lady herself, nothing, in fact, except the feather in her hat and, Sylvie later claimed, a long-fingered, white-gloved hand waving in her direction; an omission that Sylvie speedily rectified by the invention of a little white lie: ‘She looked at me, I tell you. She looked straight at me and smiled.’

‘I’m sure and she did.’ Forbes already regarded Sylvie’s war with reality as one of her most endearing traits. ‘She probably thought you were a princess too.’

‘Do you think so? Do you really think so?’ The excitement of a royal occasion had added a frenetic element to Sylvie’s effervescence. ‘Perhaps I should have gone to the opening of the new art gallery where she could have seen me better.’

‘Well, it’s too late now,’ said Forbes. ‘Maybe she’ll come back with old Teddie when he visits later in the year.’

‘Is he coming? Oh, is the King coming? I didn’t know that.’

‘Once he’s out of half-mourning, or whatever it is that kept him away,’ said Forbes, ‘he’s promised to come up and see us. I mean, if the Princess tells him what pretty girls there are in Glasgow he’ll be on the train like a shot.’

‘I would like to meet the King,’ said Sylvie. ‘Do you think the King would like to meet me?’

‘I’m sure he would,’ said Forbes sincerely. ‘Oh, yes, I’m sure he would.’

She preened. He liked it when she preened. He knew precisely where he stood with Sylvie when she put on airs and graces. All he had to do to amuse her when she was off on one of her self-adoring little trips was flatter her.

Sylvie giggled. ‘I know what the King would like to do to me.’

‘Uh-huh! And what’s that?’ Forbes said.

‘He would like me to sit on his big fat tummy and – and…’

‘And?’

‘Light his cigar.’

‘Would you like to sit on his big fat tummy?’

‘He’s the King. He could order me to do it.’

‘Ah, but would you like to?’

‘I don’t know.’ She pouted, giving him the eye. ‘It might be rather jolly.’

Forbes had become an expert in innuendo. He’d had plenty of practice at the yard, for George Crush had a dirty mind and had told Forbes tales of the royal family’s goings-on that, if broadcast, would have had him arrested for treason. ‘He’s far too old for you,’ Forbes said. ‘The King, I mean.’

‘Do you think age matters?’ Sylvie said. ‘I suppose it does to a man.’

‘What about girls? Do you fancy a big fat old fellow lying on you?’

‘What a thing to say!’ said Sylvie.

‘It’s a genuine question, a serious line of enquiry.’

‘I don’t know if I fancy anyone lying on me. I’m not very big, you know.’

‘Perhaps you’ll get bigger.’

‘I think I’m as big as I’m going to get.’

‘I doubt it,’ Forbes said. ‘There’s probably some stretching to be done yet. Girls often get bigger after they’re married.’

‘Babies swell them out.’

‘Babies – or the making of babies.’

‘I’m not sure I want to have babies.’

‘Well, I’m not wildly keen on the idea myself.’

‘I thought all men wanted sons to follow in their footsteps?’

‘Not all men,’ said Forbes. ‘Trying to make babies might be more fun than having them, Sylvie. What do you think?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Maybe,’ and giggled.

They were drinking coffee in an alcove of the Imperial, tucked away from the visitors who streamed through the hotel’s lounges. Glasgow had already filled up with foreigners, French and Italian, Dutch and English, and the string quartet among the palms had refreshed its repertoire with gentle, unmilitary pieces by Offenbach and Waldteufel as well as the inevitable ‘Green-sleeves’. Across West George Street, Kirby’s had laid in extra supplies of lager beer, cognac and schnapps and, for those industrial and commercial gentlemen who had arrived in Glasgow without their loved ones, Mr Bolitho was offering short-term membership of the club upstairs at a very reasonable fee. Russians, though, were frowned upon; the members of the seventy-strong team imported to raise and man the exhibition’s ‘Russian Village’ weren’t interested in gambling, only in drinking everyone under the table and hauling off through the curtain anything that vaguely resembled a female, language, it seemed, being no barrier to international relations.

For this reason – the terrifying carnality of the Russians – Albert had more or less handed Sylvie over to his young friend Forbes, though Sylvie’s perpetual wheedling and whining may have had something to do with it, plus the fact that Forbes was willing to pay for the privilege of her company, a guinea here, a fiver there, cash that Albert badly needed to support his current losing streak.

Forbes snipped at a wafer biscuit.

He said, ‘Would you not like to try to make babies, Sylvie?’

‘I do not know how it is done.’

‘Liar!’ Forbes said, grinning.

‘I don’t. I don’t,’ Sylvie protested, rising beautifully to the bait. ‘It’s not the same as it is with fishes and frogs, is it?’

‘I don’t know how it is with fishes and frogs,’ Forbes told her. ‘I’ve a better idea how it is with human beings.’

‘Have you…’ She was suddenly attentive, more adult. ‘Have you – tried?’

‘Now what do you think?’

‘I don’t … I think – you have, haven’t you?’

Forbes popped the rest of the wafer into his mouth and wiped his lips with a napkin. Mimicking her seriousness, he leaned forward. ‘It isn’t making babies that’s difficult, sweetheart, it’s knowing how not to make babies that’s important for people like you and me.’

‘Like you and me?’ She pounced on it at once. ‘What do you mean?’

‘People,’ Forbes said, ‘who are falling in love.’

Sylvie was surprised. She had not expected this manoeuvre, he realised, and congratulated himself on his impeccable sense of timing. She had laid herself open to seduction, at least on the verbal front, but he had introduced the word, the crucial, magical word ‘love’ into the conversation and had, it seemed, found the golden key. He softened his smile, warming and moulding it like wax.

‘I’m sorry if I’ve offended you,’ he said.

‘Offended … Oh, my heavenly Lord, no.’

‘I’m sorry if I’ve misjudged the situation then. I speak only as I feel, dearest; but that doesn’t give me the right to put words into your mouth.’

‘Forbes, I don’t – I don’t know what to say to you.’

He leaned across the brass-topped table, across coffee cups and china pot, spoons, jugs and sugar basin. He touched her lips with the tip of his forefinger as gently as if he were wiping away an infant’s tears.

‘Say nothing,’ he whispered. ‘Just let me look at you, remember you as you are now, so pretty that I feel as if my heart will stop.’ He did not even have to compose the lines in his head; they seemed to flow from him as naturally as breath. ‘I’ve known many – several – girls in my time, I admit, but, dearest Sylvie, I’ve never known any more attractive, more – dare I say it? – more desirable than you. You’re such a good, trusting, innocent child that I flinch from expressing what I really feel for you.’

‘What? What? What do you feel for me?’

‘Love,’ he said. ‘Love like I’ve never felt for any other woman.’

‘Not even your mama?’

He shook his head, irritated at her stupid interruption. He caught himself, said softly, ‘It’s a different kind of love, Sylvie, dearest. Real love, true love. I want to be with you.’

‘You are with me.’

She was either a fool, he decided, or a subtle tease. He touched her mouth with his forefinger again, temporarily sealing in her inanities. ‘With you, I mean. With you, my dearest darling sweetheart. With you.’

‘On top of me?’

He sighed. ‘Yes.’

‘Like Mama and Dada do?’

‘Yes.’

‘But not to make babies?’

‘No, not to make babies.’

‘All right.’

‘All right?’

‘Hmm. Now all we have to agree on,’ she said, ‘is where and when.’

‘Are you sure you know what we’re – ah – agreeing to, dearest?’

‘Of course,’ little Sylvie Hartnell said. ‘Don’t you?’

*   *   *

Tom had shelled out two guineas for a pair of season tickets to the exhibition’s Grand Concert Hall shortly before the season’s programme was announced and a mad scramble for seats began. He suspected that by summer’s end a feast of entertainment would be offered to lovers of bands and choirs and that the huge Venetian-style dome would ring to the sound of some very famous voices indeed. Meanwhile there were evening recitals on the electrically powered organ and a regular supply of parochial choirs seeking sufficient resonance to drown out squawking infants and the clump of feet from the exhibit gangways next door.

The Brunswick had already been engaged to perform on a Thursday night in late September and the Glasgow Massed Choir to repeat ‘The Cameronian’s Dream’ on the first Saturday in October.

Autumn, however, seemed a long way off and Tom had purchased the season tickets for a purpose somewhat more devious than an urge to see what was going on under the gilded dome. It was, in effect, his first deliberate step in the courtship of Donald Franklin’s daughter. He propped the tickets behind the clock on the shelf above the fireplace in his little parlour and admired them from time to time, rather smugly. Eventually he acquired a printed programme of events which, with a draughtsman’s hand, he marked with tiny stars and circles and squares to separate possibilities from probabilities and the latter from racing certainties. The Sousa Ensemble was a racing certainty, a performance of the finest marching band in America, an event not to be missed.

Tom’s letter of invitation to Miss Cissie Franklin took the liberty of emphasising that very point.

Cissie’s reply to Mr Tom Calder made the point that if all she had heard of Sousa’s band were true then she would probably be able to listen to it perfectly well just by opening the window of her bedroom but since it wasn’t every day she received an invitation from a respected naval architect she would none the less be delighted to accept.

Mr Calder wrote back to Miss Franklin suggesting that they might partake of a light repast in the Royal Bungalow restaurant in the exhibition grounds before John Philip took the stage.

Miss Franklin wrote back to say: wonderful.

Consequently, at precisely six o’clock on a moist Friday evening, Mr Tom Calder, looking suitably American in a new hand-sewn seersucker suit, arrived in the hallway of the Franklins’ mansion to be inspected by Lilias, teased by Pansy, warned to ‘watch out’ by Martin and, with Cissie hanging on his arm, was sent off into lightly falling rain under one of Mr Owen’s gigantic Strathmore umbrellas.

Hot weather had left the air still and the smell of rain rose from dusty pavements and dusty trees. A rainbow haze stretched behind the minarets of the new Renaissance Art Gallery and above the disapproving presence of the university’s Gothic tower were little slips and smears of azure that promised a return to fine, warm weather before the night was through. Cissie did not care about the weather. Cissie would have walked through fire, let alone flood, with Tom Calder. Although she hadn’t seen him since they had parted at the railing above the Kelvingrove on the night of the musical evening, he had been constantly, comfortingly in her thoughts.

‘Tom sends his regards,’ Martin would now and then inform her on returning from Aydon Road; Tom had done nothing of the kind. ‘He asked me to tell you that he misses you.’

‘He did not.’

‘He did, too,’ Martin would assure her. ‘Honest, cross my heart.’

‘What else did he say?’

‘That’s all,’ Martin would tell her. ‘He’s quite bashful, you know.’

‘Tell him…’

‘That you miss him too?’

‘Just – just that I hope he’s well.’

‘He is well. He’s thriving.’

‘Tell him, Martin. Please.’

‘I will, dear. I will.’

Tom held the umbrella over their heads and Cissie folded up the fancy little parasol that Pappy had purchased for her at the Japanese stall on the Main Avenue on the occasion of the family’s initial tour of the ’Groveries earlier in the month. It had been hot that day, very hot. Pappy had bought all the ladies parasols and all the boys floppy cotton sun hats which, though they looked ridiculous, had kept them cool throughout the long afternoon. They had all been there, even her soon-to-be sister-in-law, Aurora, a great straggling trail of Franklins wending their way from exhibit to exhibit in blistering heat; all except Forbes who, to Cissie’s relief, had gone into the Institute to work on a set of scale drawings for his diploma examination.

‘Did you really miss me, Tom?’ she asked.

‘Who told you that I missed you?’

‘Martin.’

‘Ah, well, yes, it’s true. I did.’

‘Why did you not call upon me at the house?’

‘It didn’t seem – I mean, Cissie, my position is such…’

‘Your position? Oh, Tom, don’t be so stuffy.’

‘Cissie, we can’t just ignore the fact that I’m employed by your father,’ Tom said. ‘At least I can’t.’

‘Papa’s not going to sack you just because you like me. For one thing, Pappy wouldn’t let him.’

‘No, it isn’t just that,’ Tom said.

‘You mean you don’t like me?’

‘Of course I like you,’ Tom said. ‘I wouldn’t be here with you now if I didn’t like you.’

‘Then,’ said Cissie, hugging his arm, ‘that’s all that really matters.’

‘I just feel that you don’t know me very well.’

‘Well, that’s easily rectified,’ said Cissie airily.

‘Look,’ Tom said, ‘I don’t want you to become too – too fond of me.’

‘I see,’ Cissie said. ‘You’re worried in case I paint you into a corner.’

‘I wasn’t thinking of you, of us,’ Tom said. ‘I was thinking of what your family will say if our friendship continues to flower.’

‘What will my family say, O fount of all knowledge?’

‘That I – that I’m…’

‘After my money?’ Cissie was undismayed by the line that the conversation had taken. ‘Tom, Tom, my dear Mr Calder, don’t you see that my family will be only too relieved to be rid of me? I’m the black sheep, the poor spinster daughter. They are terrified that they’ll have me hanging around their necks for the rest of their lives.’

‘Now, now, Cissie, surely you’re exaggerating?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I am.’

He glanced down at her. In spite of the umbrella the rain had wetted her freckled cheeks. Her face looked glossy, not tearful but cheerful, and there was no mistaking the mischief in her eyes.

‘Are you teasing me, young woman?’ Tom asked.

‘After a fashion, yes.’

‘I’m not used to being teased.’

She pursed her lips and frowned slightly. ‘Very well, sir: I will not tease. I will simply point out a fact that seems to have escaped your attention and that should allay any fears you have about my family’s attitude towards you.’

‘What fact is that?’

‘Our meeting was engineered.’

‘Ah!’

‘We weren’t flung together. We were brought together.’

‘Ah-hah!’

‘Ponder for a moment,’ Cissie said, ‘and you’ll see that I’m right.’

‘Yes,’ Tom said. ‘I believe you are.’

‘Pappy thinks you’re the man for me, and what my pappy says goes.’

‘What do you think, Cissie?’ Tom asked.

‘I think,’ Cissie answered, ‘that my dear old pappy has the soundest judgement of any person I know.’

‘Does that mean…’

‘That you are the man for me? Of course it does,’ said Cissie. ‘There now, my dear Mr Calder, does that put your mind at rest?’

‘No,’ Tom said.

‘No?’

‘It means I’ve got to start taking you seriously.’

‘Not too seriously, I hope.’

‘No,’ Tom said, ‘not too seriously. Not just yet,’ and, holding the brolly high, swept her through the gate of the ’Groveries into the ground of the Great Exhibition.

*   *   *

Thin grey cloud brought a prematurely early dusk. By nine o’clock the house on Brunswick Crescent was in shadow and, to Lindsay, seemed empty and sad.

Papa had somehow managed to obtain tickets for the Sousa concert and had taken Miss Runciman with him as a treat. Cook and Maddy had also gone to the exhibition but their tastes ran more to riding the water chute and the switchback. Lindsay had volunteered to stay at home to look after Nanny Cheadle who was too frail now to be left alone.

Nanny had been fed early. Lindsay had read to her until she had fallen asleep. She slept a great deal. Papa said that she would simply sleep her life away without pain or concern, for she knew that her time on earth was almost over and that she would soon have her reward in heaven. It was, Lindsay knew, no mawkish sentiment but a reflection of the crusty belief in God’s mercy that sustained all die-hard Presbyterians. She didn’t know what she believed in these days or what would sustain her when the end became the beginning, the beginning the end for, unlike Nanny Cheadle, she did not dwell secure in a knowledge of God.

She ate a cold supper in the dining-room, cleared the table and carried the dishes down to the kitchen. She looked in on Nanny once more, offered her tea, but the old woman was too drowsy to respond and, after lighting a wax night-light and placing it in a water-dish, Lindsay came downstairs again.

She was restless, loose-endish, agitated. She tried to study an article in The Shipbuilder but couldn’t summon up concentration. She tried to lose herself in a novel but found that she had no interest in the fate of the fabricated characters. She closed the parlour door, tinkled listlessly on the piano, listened for Nanny, picked out another few bars of musical-hall melody, then, to her vast relief, heard the front doorbell ring. She went at once to open it.

‘Forbes! What are you doing here?’

‘I want a quiet word with you,’ he said. ‘You don’t seem awfully pleased to see me. Aren’t you going to let me in?’

‘Of course.’

She stood back and allowed him to enter. She watched him take off his oilskin slicker and hang it and his cap upon the hallstand. His hair was damp and he had a slightly dishevelled look that suggested he had walked from Aydon Road or, though she could not imagine why, all the way from the Institute.

She said, ‘Is it still raining?’

‘No, it’s stopped.’ He glanced at the darkened staircase; Lindsay had not yet thought to put on the lights. ‘Where is everyone?’

‘They’ve gone to the exhibition.’

‘What, all of them? Nanny too?’

‘No, Nanny’s too sick to go anywhere.’

He pointed at the ceiling. ‘Is she upstairs?’

‘Yes.’

‘Breathing her last?’

‘She’s asleep, Forbes, that’s all.’

He sauntered past Lindsay into the parlour.

‘Can’t last much longer, though, can she?’ he said.

‘Probably not.’

Lindsay reached for the electrical light switch but Forbes said, ‘Leave it. Gloaming’s more romantic, don’t you think?’

‘I’m not feeling terribly romantic to tell the truth,’ Lindsay said. ‘Do you want something to eat?’

‘I thought you said the cook was out.’

‘She is. I’ll make you an omelette if you like. I’m not entirely useless.’

‘I know you’re not,’ he said. ‘So they’re all out, are they? Well, well!’

Lindsay moved away. Circling the upright music-stand, avoiding the sofa, she perched on one of the hard chairs that flanked the fireplace.

The fire had been set but not lighted. The day had been stiflingly hot and the air in the parlour had a sour, bakehouse smell that the rain had not eliminated. The recesses of the room were in almost total darkness but the light in the window was strengthened by contrast and Forbes moved against it like a shadow-shape.

‘I haven’t seen you in days,’ she said. ‘Where have you been?’

‘Busy,’ he said. ‘Very busy.’

‘When are the diploma exams?’

‘Too damned soon.’

‘Are you not prepared?’

‘As prepared as I’ll ever be.’

She put her hands on her knees and rocked a little. She was embarrassed to be alone with him. She struggled to find something to say, anything to say: ‘You won’t fail, will you?’

‘Of course I won’t fail,’ he said. ‘And once I’ve got it, Linnet, I’m not going to hang around. I expect she’ll be gone by then, your old Nanny, and those rooms upstairs will be vacant.’

‘Forbes…’

‘Talk to him. No, sod it, don’t talk to him. Tell him. Tell him you want to marry me and can’t wait any longer.’

‘You’re too young, Forbes. You’re—’

‘Christ!’ he said.

She lost sight of him as he merged with the shapes in the room.

Then she felt his hands upon her. He caught her under the armpits, pulling taut the fabric of her tea-gown.

She gave a little cry as he lifted her, then yielded, sliding from the chair into his arms. He thrust his mouth down, licked her neck with a tongue that was as rough and as sleek as a cat’s. He kissed her mouth. She felt the sudden thickness of his tongue, the fierce weird thickness of penetration. When he pulled away she pursued him, seeking that wet, writhing contact once more. She did not even enjoy it: she needed it. He swung her around him, both her feet off the floor. He kicked the piano bench. It toppled and fell. He pushed her against the piano. She felt the hard satinwood mouldings press on her buttocks and spine, crushing her summer garments. He pinned his forearm across her breasts and pushed his hand between her legs.

She groaned when the heel of his hand found her, cupping her so fiercely that even through three layers of clothing she felt as if he might tear that part from her. She tilted her hips. When he took his hand away and pressed his body against her skirts she wrapped her arms about his waist and pulled him closer, so smotheringly close that there seemed to be nothing between them. She was aware that his breathing had become shorter and sharper until it seemed to have within it an element almost of panic; then, as she sagged against him, spending, he released three or four sharp little cries, high-pitched and more feminine than her own. She clung to him, trembling, appalled at the alacrity with which it had come about, at its clumsiness.

It was not as she had imagined it would be. She felt weakened by her inability to refuse him his will. She tried to stand upright but her knees were like jelly and Forbes, gasping, held on to her, not tenderly or demandingly but simply for support.

After a moment or two he pushed himself away. Saying nothing, offering no apology, no explanation, no word of gratitude or affection, he turned his back on her and attended to himself.

‘Forbes…’

He glanced over his shoulder, his face chalk white in the half darkness.

‘You’d better do something about that mess,’ he said.

Lindsay touched a hand to her dress.

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I’d better,’ and hurried upstairs to change.

*   *   *

Her father looked up from his bacon and eggs. He had already demolished a full plate of porridge and several slices of hot buttered toast and, with the sun at his back, had a purring, contented air that Lindsay could only put down to the influence of John Philip Sousa bouncing through ‘The Washington Post’.

She seated herself cautiously at the breakfast table. She had no pain, no actual discomfort, for nothing had been taken from her, but she felt leaden and listless and more than a little guilty at what had occurred last night.

‘How was the concert?’ she made herself enquire.

Miss Runciman, also purring a little, doled out porridge.

‘A wonderful experience,’ the woman said. ‘Do you not agree?’

‘I do. I do,’ Arthur Franklin said. ‘Quite stunning, in fact.’

‘Scintillating, I believe, was the word you used last evening.’

‘Was it? Yes, that’s the word for it – scintillating.’

‘Such precision,’ said Miss Runciman, passing a plate to Lindsay. ‘Such meticulous phrasing. I have never heard trombones like it.’

‘And the timpani…’

‘Certainly made my heart beat faster,’ Miss Runciman said.

Arthur scooped up a forkful of crisply fried egg and put it into his mouth. He made a round eye, then said, ‘How are you, Linnet? How was your evening? Did anyone call?’

‘Call?’

‘On the telephone?’

‘No, no one called,’ said Lindsay.

‘You were in bed early, were you not?’ said Miss Runciman.

‘Well, Eleanor, we were rather late coming home,’ Arthur put in. ‘After eleven it must have been.’

‘I heard you,’ Lindsay said. ‘I wasn’t asleep.’

‘Nanny no trouble?’ said Arthur.

‘None. She slept through – all evening, I mean.’

‘She is not a well woman,’ Miss Runciman said. ‘I fear she—’

‘Hush now,’ Arthur said. ‘Let’s not hurry the poor soul away. She’ll leave us in her own good time.’

‘In God’s good time,’ said Miss Runciman.

‘Quite!’ said Arthur. ‘Oh, by the way, Lindsay, guess who we saw in the concert hall last evening?’

‘I can’t.’

‘Go on, have a pop at it.’

‘Papa, I can’t. Really.’

‘Your cousin Cissie.’

‘Oh?’

‘In the company of Tom Calder, no less.’

‘Together?’ Lindsay said.

‘Absolutely,’ her father said. ‘No question about it, is there, Eleanor?’

‘None whatsoever,’ Miss Runciman said. ‘Behaving like lovebirds they were. That, if you ask me, is a match in the making.’

‘Nonsense!’ Lindsay heard herself say. ‘Tom isn’t interested in Cissie.’

‘Oh, yes, he is,’ Arthur said. ‘And if he isn’t then he ought to be horse-whipped for leading the poor lass on.’

‘Love-birds, what do you mean by “love-birds”?’ Lindsay said, almost indignantly. ‘Tom isn’t the “love-bird” type.’

‘How do you know?’ said Eleanor Runciman.

‘I – I just do.’

‘Men change,’ Miss Runciman said. ‘Do they not, Mr Arthur?’

‘Indeed, they do. “Take a Pair of Sparkling Eyes”, and all that.’

‘Cissie’s eyes don’t sparkle,’ Lindsay said.

‘Ah, but they do,’ her father said. ‘At least Tom Calder thinks they do.’

‘What were they doing?’ Lindsay said.

‘Listening to the music,’ her father said.

‘And holding hands,’ Miss Runciman added.

‘In public?’

‘Good Lord, Lindsay, what’s got into you today?’ said her father. ‘Got out of the wrong side of the bed, did you?’

‘She isn’t for him,’ Lindsay said. ‘Cissie isn’t right for Tom Calder.’

‘That’s not for you to say,’ Miss Runciman reprimanded. ‘After all there are those who might think that Forbes McCulloch isn’t right for you.’

‘Who?’ Lindsay said. ‘Come along, out with it – who?’

‘Oh, please,’ Arthur said. ‘Don’t squabble. It’s a beautiful morning and we should all be glad to be alive and fit enough to enjoy it.’

‘Do you think Forbes is wrong for me, Miss Runciman?’

‘Not I,’ Miss Runciman answered, emphatically.

‘Papa?’

Arthur Franklin shrugged. ‘Not for me to say, dearest, though I admit that Forbes isn’t the sort of chap I’d have picked for you, given choice.’

‘You don’t have a choice.’ Lindsay realised that she was behaving badly. She had ruined her father’s breakfast and his bountiful mood, but guilt made her headstrong and she pushed on, angrily. ‘Forbes is my choice. My choice, do you hear? What’s more I do intend to marry him.’

‘Well,’ her father said placatingly, ‘we’ll see, we’ll see.’

Lindsay threw down her napkin and got to her feet. ‘We will not see. I will marry Forbes if I want to and there’s nothing you can do to stop me.’

‘That’s true,’ said Arthur, sighing.

‘I’m tired of waiting. I intend to marry Forbes as soon as possible.’

‘Where will you stay?’ Miss Runciman said innocently.

‘Here.’

‘Perhaps Forbes – your young man,’ Miss Runciman said, ‘will not be so keen to share you and a house with us.’

‘Yes, he will. It was his idea in the first place.’

‘I might have known it,’ Arthur said. ‘I might have damned well known that he would find a way of getting his feet under my table.’ He leaned an elbow on the tablecloth and crashed his cheek into his fist. ‘There’s no stopping them, is there. Like mother, like son.’

‘What do you mean by that?’ Lindsay demanded.

‘He doesn’t mean anything by it,’ Miss Runciman said.

‘Keep out of it, Eleanor, please,’ Arthur Franklin said. ‘This is a family affair now and doesn’t concern you.’

‘Pardon me, sir, but I think it does,’ Miss Runciman said. ‘I think you’re going to need a cool head and an objective opinion in the very near future.’

‘Do you?’ said Arthur, suddenly more puzzled than annoyed. ‘And what might that “objective opinion” be?’

‘That you consider Lindsay’s suggestion very, very carefully.’

‘And then what do I do?’

‘Accept it graciously,’ Eleanor Runciman said.

*   *   *

Monday was incredibly hot. The torpedo-boat destroyer, the first of six ordered by Baron Yamamoto, Japan’s Minister of Marine, was taking shape in the stocks. She was partly plated and her lines well defined but blistering temperatures inside the hull meant that work upon her had slowed to an unacceptable degree.

Mr Arthur had ordered butts brought down to the slip and had appointed several lads to relay canisters of fresh water up the ladders to help the platers and riveters survive, for the Clydesiders – hard men, as tough as they come – were more used to coping with drenching rain and biting cold than a Mediterranean-style heat-wave. By midday several apprentices and one elderly ganger had collapsed with heat-prostration and the moulding loft had been transformed into a hospital where Hector Garrard, an ex-ship’s doctor, applied cold packs, hot tea and Belladonna powders before deciding if the patient was fit to return to work or had better be sent home.

George Crush disapproved of Mr Arthur’s mollycoddling approach. He regarded the heat-stroke victims as mere malingerers and had spent the morning tramping up and down the planks, berating the foremen for condoning laziness. He would have invaded the loft too, to prod and poke at the prostrate forms on the stretchers there but he was afraid of Hector Garrard who had told him more than once that he would be fortunate to see fifty if he continued to let his temper play havoc with his blood pressure.

The drawing office wasn’t much cooler than the yard in spite of wide-open windows and a couple of motor-driven fans that seemed to do nothing but stir the heat like broth in a pot. Pencils became slippery, pens recalcitrant. T-squares, compasses and scales accumulated sweat no matter how often they were wiped and two complex drawings of emergency steering equipment were so badly stained that they had to be scrapped. Nobody was comfortable, nobody happy; nobody, that is, except Tom Calder who seemed to thrive on shimmer and glare and who, on that particular Monday morning, would have crawled inside a Scotch boiler with a smile on his face.

Tom would have preferred to be sipping iced tea under a striped awning on the veranda of the Mackintosh Tea House, of course, or sampling a dish of lemon sorbet under the trees, or if push came to shove strolling the shady side of the piazza with his arm about Cissie Franklin’s waist. Life was never quite perfect, however, and mere contemplation of such pleasures kept Tom from boiling up and boiling over like several of his managerial colleagues.

It was early afternoon before he abandoned his board and left the drawing office for a breath of air. He went downstairs into the lane that split the yard, turned right and headed for the snout of land at the corner of the slip around which, in nine weeks’ time, the first of the Jap destroyers would slide smoothly into the river. He had rolled down his sleeves, put the stud back into his collar and tightened his tie. He did not, however, deem it necessary to wear his jacket, for, manager or not, he had no intention of melting just for the sake of dignity. He lit a cigarette and, between inhalations, hummed the opening bars of ‘Under the Double Eagle’ which, though not the most romantic of tunes, had connotations that Tom could not ignore.

He glanced up at the half-built torpedo-boat destroyer and waved cheerily to two half-naked platers who were hanging, gasping, over the stern.

They, rather startled, waved back.

Still singing to himself, still puffing on his cigarette, Tom moved towards the water’s edge to catch a faint whiff of breeze and enjoy the luxury of a few minutes of privacy while he tried to fathom why he had been invited to spend a week of the July holiday at Mr Owen Franklin’s country house in Perthshire. He had nothing to keep him in Glasgow but he knew that if he did accept and if Cissie were there too – which undoubtedly she would be – then he would be committing himself irrevocably, and that among the ranks of middle-class traditionalists she would become ‘his Cissie’ and he would be stamped as ‘her man’. He was not dismayed at the prospect.

The river smelled of tidal mud and sewage, tarry, metallic and strong. He tossed away the cigarette, stretched his arms like a man holding up a barbell, and took in a contented breath. He had already decided that he would go to Strathmore and risk committing himself to Cissie. If Lindsay or Forbes McCulloch didn’t like it – too damned bad.

‘Calder. I say, Calder. Stop there, will you?’

George Crush came hopping down the ladder-way. He sported full managerial fig, brown wool three-piece suit, hard collar, even the tight brown bowler that left an angry red mark on his forehead on the rare occasions when he removed it. His moustache was glossy with perspiration, his complexion slightly more mottled than that of a cooked crab.

‘What do you think you’re doing, man?’ George shouted.

In the clotted air of the afternoon his voice was as penetrating as a needle or a knife. Tom stopped, turned: ‘Pardon?’

‘Where do you think you’re going – like that?’

‘I’m out for a breather, George, that’s all.’

‘In that state?’

‘What state?’

‘Half naked.’

‘Half what?’

‘Where’s your jacket? Where’s your hat?’

‘George, for heaven’s sake, it’s touching ninety degrees in the drawing office. God knows what it’s like—’

‘No excuses, no excuses.’

‘Are you feeling all right, George?’

‘This is how it starts,’ the manager shouted. ‘This is how it begins. First it’s water for the men, then it’s managers throwing off their clothes. Next thing you know we’ll have ’Tallies selling ice-cream and bare-naked women waving palm fronds. I’m surprised at you, though, Tom. Fact, I’m disgusted.’

‘George, are you sure you’re all right?’

‘I’ve seen it,’ the manager went on. ‘Oooow, I’ve seen it. I’ve seen governments overturned and blood flow in the streets for less.’

‘What the devil are you going on about?’ Tom asked.

The manic flicker of the eyes steadied. He stepped closer. Tom could feel heat radiating from him, smell the pungent odour of unhealthy sweat. He had often heard the little tyrant raving on before but never like this, never without a rationale. George snorted and poked a forefinger into Tom’s breastbone.

‘Hoy!’ Tom stepped back.

George Crush followed him, pace for pace.

‘Got your leg over, haven’t you, Tom Calder? I’ve heard. I’ve been told. Aye, got your leg over, you cunning bastard. Butter won’t melt in your mouth, aw naw, but it’ll melt on her fanny, won’t it? That’s your plan, that’s your strata— strata – stratagem. Get her on the bed and yourself on the board.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Tom said, though he had an inkling that it had something to do with Cissie and his equanimity had already been shaken by the manager’s vehemence. ‘Look, George, I think you should get out of the sun for a while. Come on, I’ll take you up to the office and we’ll ask Hector to take a look at you.’

‘I’m not sick. You’re the one who’s sick, Calder.’ For a split second his accusations seemed almost justified. ‘Swanning about the ’Groveries arm-in-arm. Holding – Christ! – holding hands.’

‘If you mean…’

‘Could you not have taken her some place private?’

‘George, whatever you may have heard, Miss Franklin and I are not—’

‘Fat cow. Fat—’

‘That’s enough!’

‘Forbes, my pal Forbes, keeps me a – abreast of the situation.’

‘What situation?’

‘It’s the same old story, old as the hills. You’ll step into the partnership and I never will.’

‘I thought you said you wouldn’t take a partnership in a gift. You told me it would be against your principles to desert the workers.’

‘Just because I’m not in a position to stick her.’

‘What did you say?’

‘Because I can’t stick it in her.’ Crush manufactured a raspberry, a sound whose crassness shattered Tom’s control completely. ‘Because I can’t give her the old pole. That’s all they ever want from us, all they think we’re good for, these people – the old pole, the old pig-sticker. Well, I wouldn’t waste mine on that fat wee Franklin cow, not if you—’

It was hardly a fight, not even a scrap. The gallery that had gathered on the upper level of the hull were none the less impressed that a dour, long leek of a man like Mr Calder had enough savvy to throw a feint before bringing in the right hand; a neat clip, a short jab and finally an uppercut so perfectly timed that it caught Mr Crush right on the button and by God, wouldn’t you know it, he went down like a half ton of bricks.

Surprised, impressed and delighted, the gallery cheered.

Tom was less surprised, less impressed and by no means delighted.

He caught George by the lapels as the manager swayed and, dipping his knees, dragged him forward and draped him over his shoulder.

George was no light weight and it took Tom a moment to settle the body with boots foremost and bowler to the rear and set off towards the moulding loft where that old sawbones, Hector Garrard, had set up shop. He felt nothing at first then, dimly, he heard cheering. They were cheering him from the rail. An odd little glow stole over him, a unfamiliar sensation that caused him to straighten his spine and, almost jauntily, step out in time to the Sousa march tune that still pumped away in his head. He hoisted George higher, grasped the broad buttocks with one arm, and raised the other hand not in triumph but in acknowledgement of a satisfaction shared.

Five minutes later he unloaded Crush on to a stretcher in the moulding loft and stood back to let Hector Garrard do his work.

The doctor knelt. ‘What happened? Did he fall? Did he strike his head?’

‘No,’ Tom answered. ‘We were just chatting when he suddenly became agitated and began shouting, then – then he fainted. I managed to catch him before he struck the ground.’

‘That’s all?’

‘That’s it,’ Tom said. ‘Is he dead?’

The doctor lifted a lifeless eyelid, felt for the carotid artery, examined poor George’s tongue then, raising a bushy eyebrow, glanced up at Tom.

‘Unfortunately,’ he said, ‘not.’

It was seven weeks before Manager Crush was considered fit to return to work. By that time summer had begun to fade, Baron Yamamoto’s torpedo-boat destroyer was almost ready to be launched, the Great Exhibition had been declared a rousing success.

And Tom Calder and Cissie Franklin, after a brief courtship at Strathmore, had officially announced their engagement.