CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Marching with the Times

It did not take Lindsay long to recover an interest in what was going on at Aydon Road and to discover why Lieutenant Commander Paget had been so touchy about her unexpected appearance in the loft.

The answer lay in the echoing corridors of the Admiralty building in Whitehall, where Admiral Sir John Fisher was manoeuvring to impose his will upon the salty old die-hards who resisted his proposals for modernising the navy. They, the salty old die-hards, believed that the legacy of Frobisher and Drake, Raleigh and Nelson, was sufficient to sustain them and that as the British fleet had always been the finest in the world it was bound to remain so by deed of history. Fisher, however, had a weather eye on Germany’s growing fleet at Kiel and let it be known that he would seize any excuse to destroy it without formal declaration of war, a threat that naturally caused panic in the arrogant and suspicious Germans as well as the arrogant and suspicious gentlemen of Westminster.

The fact that Jackie Fisher had the ear of the sovereign and, whatever his faults as a diplomat, could not be accused of lacking patriotism, gave him an edge over his detractors. To shake off the complacent torpor that had paralysed the naval authorities for so long, he was granted funds to undertake a rebuilding programme the like of which had never been seen: an immense combination of shipbuilding skills and talents designed to ensure Britain’s domination of the seas for a century or more. Armour-plate, guns, warships: the list of orders that went out into the land was astonishing, and Franklin’s, that modest little Clydeside firm, was not forgotten.

Under special licence from Vickers, to Franklin’s fell the honour of building the prototype of a new class of ocean-going submarine based on designs by the Royal Navy’s most experienced architects. That Vickers had apparently been overlooked and the navy’s own construction yards similarly bypassed spoke volumes for the First Sea Lord’s deviousness. He knew how critical the old curmudgeons would be if the vessel failed to meet standards or, worse, went down with all hands, for there were already far too many senior officers in command positions who regarded submarines as flash-in-the-pan. It was just as well to have the thing built up in Scotland by a firm so small and inconsequential that it would make an ideal scapegoat if the design proved faulty or something went horribly wrong on the trials.

Donald and Martin were in the process of finalising the contract. Tom had been heavily involved in preliminary discussions and had spent rather too much time in consultation with Royal Navy architects, engineering officers and gunnery experts, all of whom seemed eager to add a wrinkle or frill to the elaborate drawings from which the prototype would be constructed. She would be propelled on the surface by two massive diesel engines, far larger and more powerful than any ever fitted into a submersible before. She would be ocean-going and fast, carry three guns and a crew of twenty-two and, according to Fisher, would make mincemeat of anything afloat, particularly if it happened to be German.

Even during her first confinement Lindsay had heard something of the war in the Far East, of great sea battles fought between the Russian and Japanese fleets when tactical use of torpedoes had changed the nature of sea warfare during the routs at Vladivostock, Chemulpho and Port Arthur.

If she had been livelier and not burdened by the duties of marriage and motherhood she might have taken a keener interest in what was going on halfway around the world. But by then she was nursing a child, a son, and all her perspectives had altered. Soon after Philip was born a strange new component crept into her thinking: not fear – not exactly fear – but an inescapable nagging feeling that every bullet, every shell, every torpedo fired anywhere would create a resonance that might somehow damage her children. There was nothing supernatural about it, no element of prescience. It stemmed only from physical weakness coupled to Forbes’s insistence that she remain buried at home.

Then on a cold January morning, just after she had taken her first step against domestic tyranny, she met Lieutenant Commander Geoffrey Paget and was drawn into the wide world again, a world where fear had a shape, a face, and a uniform, and turned out to be more frightening than anything she could possibly have imagined.

*   *   *

Geoffrey was the only son of an only son. His father had been a small-town banker who had entered the accounts section of the Royal Navy and had attained the exalted position of Cashier at the Chatham dockyard before he was struck down by kidney failure at the age of forty-six.

Geoffrey had been fourteen at the time. Born and raised in civil quarters in the village of Ashercombe and educated at a modest public school near Gillingham, there had never been any question of what would become of him; his destiny was written not in the stars but in the tides. Within months of his father’s death he had been enrolled as a cadet at Dartmouth College and his career in the Royal Navy launched.

Geoffrey had known no other life but the navy. His mother – God bless her – continued to live in Ashercombe with her sister and her sister’s husband, worthy, well-to-do provision merchants with established naval contracts and a wholesale outlet in Maidstone. Geoffrey regarded Ashercombe as home, though he spent no more than two or three weeks a year there. He had sailed in many ships to many ports, had served on coastal patrol boats, and, in his mid-twenties, had improved his chances of promotion by undertaking a two-year course in ship construction. It was a circuitous route on to Fisher’s staff at the Admiralty but one that in hindsight appeared to have been engineered. After four years in submarines he had become the voice in Jackie Fisher’s ear on all matters related to that specialised aspect of warfare.

Geoffrey was no spy, nor was it his brief to act as a technical supervisor; there were other officers better equipped than he for that role. Primarily he was Jackie Fisher’s man. The Vickers’ licence stipulated that what was being built on Clydeside remain secret and it was to ensure the fulfilment of that clause that Lieutenant Commander Paget was assigned to liaise with the Franklins.

Falling for the wife of a partner was emphatically not part of the detail, particularly as Geoffrey had just broken off a five-year engagement with a certain Miss Elizabeth Altham for the plain and simple reason that he did not love her enough to wish to marry her.

Recently he had come to believe that he did not know what love was; not, that is, until he looked across the mould loft in Aydon Road in the bleak light of a January morning and saw a white-faced little woman in neat but dowdy tailor-made tweeds with a hat that seemed just a shade over-large for her small, pinched, pretty features. Nothing in her manner suggested dowdiness or, for that matter, humility and Geoffrey was too inexperienced with women to realise that resistance was possible let alone necessary.

Lindsay in turn refused to be impressed by the naval officer and apparently had no interest in an Englishman whom she had only just met and who, if she were lucky, she would never have to meet again.

She did meet him again, however.

She met him at Cissie’s apartments in Sandyford Avenue less than one week later, not by accident but by design.

By then she had found out a little about Lieutenant Commander Paget, not from her father but from her husband who, it seemed, had dined with the chap at the Barbary, and regarded the English naval officer as a bit of a joke. Lieutenant Commander Paget did not regard Forbes McCulloch as a bit of a joke. He found nothing comical in the slippery Dubliner or in his brother who, for some unimaginable reason, had been brought along to make up the party. He, Geoffrey, had been silenced by the presence of the brother and an evening that should have been devoted to business deteriorated into a bout of hard drinking and soft-voiced boasting.

Geoffrey, therefore, remained less impressed by Mrs McCulloch’s husband than by Mrs McCulloch herself.

He rose from the armchair where Cissie had placed him.

‘Why, Mrs McCulloch,’ he said, ‘I did not expect to find you here.’

‘Oh! Nor I you, Lieutenant.’

‘Lieutenant Commander.’

‘My apologies.’

‘No, ma’am. My apologies. I should not have corrected you.’

‘If I am open to correction then you were right to do so.’

‘You are not open to correction.’

‘Then you’re not a Lieutenant Commander.’

‘Ma’am – yes, I am.’

‘Then I stand corrected.’

‘Why stand at all, for heaven’s sake,’ Cissie intervened. ‘Sit, the pair of you, and I’ll ring for tea.’

After tea and scones had been served by the Calders’ maid, Geoffrey relaxed. He had been drilled in social niceties and could balance a teacup and saucer on his knee with the best of them.

‘You did not bring your little boy with you today, Mrs McCulloch?’

‘No. He is at home with his nurse.’

‘I thought perhaps you were one of those mothers who cannot bear to be separated from their children even for an afternoon.’

‘Are there such mothers?’ Cissie said. ‘I’m certainly not one of them. I’m only too relieved to have a breather now and then. Besides, it’s only right that a boy should spend time with his grandmother.’

‘Is that where Ewan is?’ Lindsay said.

‘She’s taken him shopping, Pansy and she.’

Geoffrey did not seem put out by domestic small talk.

Conversation drifted this way and that, without target or objective.

She watched him. He watched her. They were, even then, wary.

‘Are you billeted in Glasgow?’

‘I have a room in the Conservative Club.’

‘Very grand,’ said Cissie.

‘Officially I’m on temporary attachment to the staff of Rear Admiral Collings at Rosyth,’ Geoffrey said.

Lindsay asked another question, then another. He answered with apparent candour, his replies too skilfully worded to give much away.

Cissie was not insensitive to what was going on, though she was hard put to explain it to her husband later that evening.

‘No, no,’ Tom said. ‘I find it hard to believe that Lindsay would be daft enough to make eyes at a sailor.’

‘Some sailor!’ Cissie said. ‘He’s a Lieutenant Commander, as he constantly keeps reminding us.’

‘You don’t like him?’ Tom asked.

‘I didn’t say that.’ Cissie arched a provocative eyebrow. ‘I think he’s very attractive, if you must know – in a stuffy kind of way.’

‘Isn’t that what you used to say about me?’

‘No, I never thought you attractive – just stuffy. And I was right, Mr Calder,’ Cissie informed her husband. ‘I was absolutely right.’

‘Did she leave with him?’ Tom asked.

‘Yes.’

‘On foot?’

‘Well, I didn’t see the royal yacht moored outside. Yes, dear, on foot.’

‘It doesn’t seem quite right,’ Tom said.

‘What doesn’t?’

‘I mean, Lindsay’s a married woman.’

‘But look who she’s married to,’ Cissie said.

‘Even so,’ Tom said, ‘it isn’t proper.’

‘Stuffy. I told you so. Stuffy.’

‘I wonder what they found to talk about,’ Tom said.

‘Boats, I expect,’ said Cissie.

They had not talked of boats or the building of boats or of the ships that Geoffrey had sailed in or the ports he had visited. They did not discuss the possibility of finding a cab or remark on the fact that he was walking with her and that she seemed quite content to allow him to accompany her through the forlorn dusk of the winter afternoon.

Sandyford Avenue ran into Scotstoun Avenue, Scotstoun Avenue into Kennilworth. Kennilworth in turn rose up past the little mansions of the well-heeled and well-to-do. It did not seem like half past four o’clock but like some unrecorded hour that was neither day nor night, for winter on Clydeside distorted sights, smells and sounds. Leaves shoaled the pavement’s edge, dry as tinder in the frost. Frost was already beginning to fall again, sifting down out of a brown foggy air that tasted of horses and coal smoke. Tram-cars clashed on Dumbarton Road, trains rattled along the suburban lines that linked commerce to home comforts; the hoofs of the horses of draymen and merchants, explosions of exhaust from motorised vans and motor-cars and, when they finally reached the tenements at the back of Brunswick Park, the chatter of schoolchildren trailing home for tea.

What did they talk about that first time? Lindsay could not remember. They might have walked in silence for all it mattered.

It was not at all as it had been when she had fallen in love with Forbes. There was no desire for the experience itself, no urgent need to possess. She had learned the lessons of marriage and knew now what love was not. She had no longing to be loved by a naval officer, a stranger from the south. Their affinity had no basis in reality. She did not love Geoffrey Paget, not yet, but in the course of a companionable stroll through suburban streets she realised that she did not love Forbes, that her marriage was, and had been from the first, a sham.

‘Is this where you live, Mrs McCulloch?’

‘Close by.’

They stopped by the gates of St Anne’s Church, the hump of the hill that led over Brunswick Park Road and down to the crescent behind them. Five minutes would see her to her door but tactfully he did not offer to walk her so far. She smiled and offered him her hand. He took it, shook it briefly, tipped his cap. He waited, though, and did not immediately turn away.

A horse-van trundled past, trailing floury white dust; a motor-cab nipped briskly over the cobbles and into Bradley Street.

‘I must go,’ Lindsay said.

‘Of course.’

‘Do you know where you are, sir?’

‘Yes, I know where I am.’

‘If you go down…’

‘I know where I am,’ he said again.

‘Thank you for walking me home, Lieutenant Commander.’

‘It was my pleasure, Mrs McCulloch.’

‘Perhaps we will meet again before you go back to London.’

‘I hope that may be the case.’

She sensed that Geoffrey Paget could not make the running no matter how inclined he might be to do so. The friendship could not be rushed. There were decisions to be made, intricate decisions so tiny and imprecise that they were hardly more than gestures. She needed to be confident, to lift herself up, find some of the old Franklin fire, to march with the times. But she was afraid, afraid of what she had discovered about her marriage, what it might mean in the long term and how many times would she have to be together with Geoffrey Paget before she could be sure exactly where she stood in his estimation, if she stood anywhere at all, that is?

She took a few quick steps uphill.

Then stopped. Then turned.

He stood as he had stood in Cissie’s drawing-room, feet apart, watching her, waiting perhaps for her decision.

‘Geoffrey,’ Lindsay heard herself say. ‘Do you sing?’

‘Sing?’ When he laughed he looked quite different. ‘No, I don’t sing. I’ve a voice like a crow, I’m afraid.’ Then he said, ‘I do play the piano, however.’

‘Really? The piano?’

‘Why do you ask?’

‘No reason,’ Lindsay said and, swinging away, set off up Brunswick Hill.

*   *   *

‘A musical evening?’ Arthur said. ‘Good God, we haven’t had one of those in ages. A musical evening? There’s a jolly thought. Might be just what we need to cheer us all up.’

‘It won’t cheer us up,’ said Forbes. ‘It’ll only unsettle the children.’

‘Unsettle them? Why?’ said Arthur.

‘The noise.’

‘Singing isn’t a noise.’

‘It is to some,’ said Gowry, who had invited himself to supper again.

Winn was upstairs putting the children to bed but Blossom was present. She nodded in agreement with her brother.

‘I thought,’ said Arthur, ‘that all you Irish folk were musical.’

‘You’re obviously confusing us with the Welsh,’ said Blossom.

She was a large young woman, broad-shouldered, broad-hipped, her features disconcertingly like those of her mother. She had also inherited Kay’s argumentative streak and could turn a chance remark into an argument at the drop of a hat. The informality that Arthur had introduced into the household in respect of Miss Runciman had backfired upon him now. He could not reasonably insist that ‘servants’ be kept in their place, not when Eleanor was seated at his right hand and not, especially, when Forbes’s servants were also relatives. He could not quite accept that Blossom and Winn were actually his nieces and Gowry his nephew.

Cautiously, Arthur said, ‘I don’t believe I am.’

‘It’s dancers we are,’ said Gowry.

‘Not singers,’ said Blossom.

‘I see,’ said Arthur, ‘then perhaps you could dance for us.’

Brothers and sister exchanged glances filled with contempt for the poor benighted Scotsman who imagined that he could wheedle them into co-operating.

Lindsay said, ‘It need not be a large gathering.’

‘It need not be a gathering at all,’ said Forbes.

‘A few friends, Cissie and Tom,’ Arthur said. ‘Pappy if he’s at home. Donald and Aunt Lilias, of course…’

‘It sounds to me like a large gathering,’ said Blossom.

Lindsay said, ‘You are under no obligation to attend.’

‘Am I not now?’ said Blossom. ‘Will we not be invited?’

‘Of course you’ll be invited,’ Arthur said.

‘However, you don’t have to accept,’ said Lindsay.

‘I suppose we’ll just have to sit upstairs listening to your caterwauling…’

‘Bloss,’ Forbes warned.

Scowling, the woman shovelled beef stew into her mouth.

‘I’m thinking I’ll go out that evening,’ Gowry said.

It was on the tip of Lindsay’s tongue to remind him that he was only a guest in the house and had, in theory at least, a place of his own to go to.

‘Winn won’t like it,’ Blossom said.

‘It has nothing to do with us,’ Eleanor Runciman said. ‘We are servants here and it’s up to the master to do as he sees fit.’

‘Is it now?’ Blossom said. ‘Forbes, is it?’

Eleanor said, ‘I will cater to the guests downstairs. If you feel you will be inconvenienced by the noise then perhaps you should ask for an evening off.’

‘An evening off?’ said Blossom. ‘What would I do with an evening off?’

‘I simply cannot imagine,’ said Eleanor.

‘If you…’

‘Bloss,’ Forbes said again, and shook his head. He turned to Lindsay. ‘I doubt if you’re strong enough to put up with a houseful of choristers.’

‘Oh, but I am,’ Lindsay told him, smiling. ‘There’s nothing I would like better than to have the whole choir round for a jamboree.’

‘What’s a jamboree?’ said Gowry.

‘A sort of musical evening,’ Forbes said. ‘Dearest, are you sure you know what you’re doing?’

‘Indeed,’ said Lindsay, ‘I do.’

‘That’s settled then,’ said Arthur, rubbing his hands.

‘When will it be, Mr Arthur?’ Eleanor asked.

‘Two weeks on Saturday. Time enough?’

‘Ample time, Papa.’

‘Will you write the invitations, or shall I?’ Arthur asked.

‘I will,’ Lindsay answered and, lifting her knife and fork again, went on eating as if nothing at all had happened.

*   *   *

‘He plays the piano?’ Cissie said. ‘Heavens! I can’t imagine him playing the piano. I’d have thought that a banjo would have been more his style.’

‘Prejudice,’ Lindsay said. ‘Rank prejudice.’

‘Well, I mean,’ said Cissie, ‘I can hardly imagine him lugging a Steinway around in his dunnage. Don’t all sailors play the banjo, or is it the mandolin?’

‘He isn’t a rating, Cissie. He’s an officer. He has been a serving officer for twenty years.’

‘How do you know? Did he tell you? Have you met him again?’

‘Papa told me.’

‘Did your father tell you what our dear Lieutenant Commander is doing, hanging about Franklin’s?’

‘It’s a state secret, apparently.’

Cissie shrugged her son higher into her arms. They were in Cissie’s drawing-room and Ewan, a rather petted little boy, had grown weary of his cousin Harry’s antics and had crept up on to his mother’s knee. Wrapped in a fine lace shawl, Philip slept on the sofa, well padded and protected with cushions. Winn and the Calders’ nursemaid, Jenny, had been allowed a half-hour to take tea in the kitchen and, no doubt, exchange gossip.

‘It’s the submarine, isn’t it?’ Cissie said.

‘How do you know about the submarine? Did Tom tell you?’

‘No, Tom’s said not a word. I peeped at his papers.’

‘Cissie Franklin!’

‘If four hundred common shipwrights know what’s going on at Aydon Road why shouldn’t the wife of a manager?’

‘That isn’t the point.’

‘I notice that you know what’s going on, about the submarine.’

‘It’s a matter of being trusted with a secret and keeping it.’

‘It is a submarine, though, aren’t I right?’

Lindsay hesitated. ‘Yes.’

‘I’m not so simple as I look, you know.’

Cissie detached her son’s thumb from his mouth and, as he cuddled into her, tousled his fair hair with her fingertips. On the floor behind the sofa Harry was seated cross-legged, happily imitating the sound of a circular saw and waving his arms in an attempt to induce his ‘cousin’ to come and play with him again. Philip, very lightly, snored.

‘How long,’ Cissie said, ‘does it take to build a submarine?’

‘I’m not sure.’

‘Is that also a state secret?’

‘Completion date is the twenty-fifth of May.’

‘So Lieutenant Paget will be in Glasgow until May, will he?’

‘Lieutenant Commander,’ Lindsay said.

Cissie laughed. ‘Of course, of course. Lieutenant Commander. Will he?’

‘I hope he will,’ said Lindsay. ‘I rather like him.’

‘Is he definitely coming to your musical evening?’

‘If he’s not on duty.’

‘If he’s not on duty,’ said Cissie, wryly. ‘He won’t be on duty.’

‘What makes you say that?’

‘Because’ – Cissie grinned wickedly – ‘I think he rather likes you too.’

*   *   *

Owen had been reluctant to leave the city at that cruel time of year. He’d had a heavy cold before Christmas and a chesty cough that had persisted into the New Year in spite of Dr Hough’s best efforts to shift it. It was not Glasgow’s gay social whirl that inclined Owen to linger in Harper’s Hill but, rather, a stultifying weakness of the spirit and something akin to depression.

‘Go abroad. Go to the south of France,’ Donald had ranted. ‘God Almighty, Pappy, it isn’t as if you can’t afford it.’

‘The King pops off for weeks on end. If it’s good enough for Teddy,’ Martin had put in, ‘it should be good enough for you.’

He did not go abroad. He had never willingly gone abroad, even when Kath was alive. Such trips as there had been were undertaken purely in pursuit of business. He took no pleasure in being far away from home. That said, he had to confess that Strathmore had grown upon him. He felt almost as much at home there as he did in Glasgow. His longing to be in the city, at the centre of things, had waned with the years. He was happy enough to take off for the country with a few old cronies for company or even to be on his own, with Giles to see to his needs. When the lease of the old house came up for renewal he hadn’t thought twice about signing for another five years.

He was slightly less than eager to entertain Sir Robert Montgomery Raeburn and his wife, Edith, however. He could not imagine what had got into him back in the late summer when he had promised them a week’s board and lodging in the snowy season. It was a promise that could not be broken, though, for Bob Raeburn was president of the Institute of Marine Engineers and Shipbuilders and had been a friend of sorts for many years. Bob Raeburn was also an alpinist of some distinction, addicted to chopping his way up icy gullies and fluted snow-fields with his dear lady wife tagging along on a rope behind him. His name was scrawled all over the registers of the Monte Rosa Hotel in Zermatt and the Nesthorn in the Lotschental, accompanied by comments about bad coffee and bad weather and, now and then, a record of an ascent of a difficult ridge or mention of a ‘dawdle’ along a mule path eight or nine thousand feet above the valley.

In January, three days before the Raeburns were due, Owen and Giles left for Strathmore. The trip was less arduous than it had once been, for the horse-drawn carriage from Perth to the village had been replaced by a motorised omnibus that took less than an hour, even on the unpaved roads. Although it was bitterly cold in the hills there was no trace of fog and the crystal-clear air and brilliant sunshine seemed to benefit Owen’s lungs. Within a day of arrival, he felt better than he had done in weeks.

The Raeburns rolled up in due course, complete with two female servants and a mound of luggage that included hanks of brown rope, several pairs of nailed boots, and two long-handled objects like pick-axes. The couple were amiable and only too delighted to have been invited into the heart of the hills in the off season for hospitality. They dined well, chatted to Owen for an hour and then retired early. They were up and gone next morning before Owen had even opened his eyes and he saw them not until a half-hour after dark when, bone weary, they trailed back into Strathmore in search of tea, hot baths and a bed to lie down on for an hour before dinner.

By the middle of the week Owen felt more like a boarding-house keeper than a country-house host and was bored by the couple’s tales of perpendicular ascents and hair-rising descents. He was also irked by Sir Robert’s prying into Franklin’s private affairs. Owen had been informed what was happening at the yard but he hadn’t asked to see the drawings and had no intention of divulging any information whatsoever about the prototype. If Sir Robert was so desperate for information then Owen reckoned that he would do better to milk one of his sources in Whitehall.

For Owen it was not an enjoyable week in spite of the fine weather and the beauty of the Perthshire landscapes under snow.

Each day about noon, he went out with Giles for a walk through the birch trees or up the long slope to the ridge above the moor. He felt old now, even in invigorating weather. His legs seemed quite leaden and he pressed on for the full hour simply because he was reluctant to let Giles see just how debilitated he had become and how badly the chest cold had affected his stamina. His breathing was easier; he could feel sharp, unsaturated air going down into him like a healing draught and he would stride out for ten or fifteen minutes as if he were still in his prime. But his prime was long past and he knew that his disinterest in the work in the yard, in what his sons and grandsons were up to, indicated that he had retreated into that phase when only a woolly tangle of old habits kept one going at all. He had done his bit, done his best. Soon he would rest in silence, that white, unforgiving silence which to an active man seemed more terrible than all the pains of hell.

In the afternoons, after lunch, he warmed his feet at the log fire, smelled the scent of pine resin and other woody odours that reminded him of his boyhood in Pemberton’s backyard – and slept. He did not dream of Pemberton’s yard or Aydon Road, of the vigorous days of his youth, of steam engines, of boilers so perfectly constructed that they might have been works of art. He did not even dream of Kath, for here in Strathmore, where he had made a promise that he had failed to keep, she seemed pleasantly at hand, demanding nothing of him, not grief or longing or responsibility, not even the effort of memory.

The cough wakened him from a deep, death-like sleep. He was stretched out in the wooden-armed lounging chair, feet resting on a stool. He wore a huge, knitted cardigan and heavy corduroy trousers and Giles had draped a shawl about his shoulders to cut off the draughts from the half-open door. It was not the chill that wakened him but the cough, the resurrected cough, the violence of which he had almost forgotten in the week among the hills.

‘God!’ he exclaimed, wrenching himself forward and pressing his hands to his chest. ‘God! What is this?’

A fresh spasm wrenched his throat and ribs. He felt as if the fibres along the top of his diaphragm were being torn like old sailcloth. He drove the air down into his lungs and reared back, coughing, coughing, coughing until he felt his lungs release whatever gummy substance had collected in their sacs and vents. He coughed again and, groping for his handkerchief and holding it to his face, coughed once more, more easily this time. Exhausted, he leaned on the chair’s wooden arm and rested, then, unfolding the crumpled handkerchief, he peered into it with vague distaste and saw blood.

One solitary gout of bright red blood.

He blinked, closed the handkerchief in his fist and, even as the door opened, flung the cloth on to the back of the logs in the fireplace. He watched it char and begin to smoulder and then, when Giles touched him on the shoulder, started as if from a reverie.

‘Are you all right, sir?’ Giles enquired.

The servant was concerned. Giles was old too now; no, not old but older, his crisp black hair flecked with silver, his sober features wrinkled.

‘What? Yes, Giles, I’m fine,’ Owen answered. ‘Bit of a tickle in the throat, that’s all.’ He forced himself to sit back, to appear relaxed. He yawned and rubbed a hand across his mouth. ‘Might have a dram, though, even if it’s on the early side. What do you think?’

‘Whisky and soda, sir?’

‘Whisky and soda would do very nicely. Pour one for yourself while you’re at it.’

Giles nodded and went away.

Owen studied the logs in the fireplace, the blistered remains of the handkerchief. He felt no sense of panic or despair. He looked up at the French doors, at the shadows of the evergreens cleaving the white lawn, the cold, blue-enamelled sky above the trees. No pain, no soreness in his throat or chest, only a slight tenderness just under his gullet. None the less he had been given a sign and burning the evidence would not make it go away. He had hoped that when it came it would come quickly. Apparently, that was not to be. The end promised to be just as hard and lonely as the beginning had been. A long haul to the breakers’ yard, Owen, a long haul in prospect.

He sighed and hoisted himself to his feet.

When Giles returned a minute or two later, Owen was standing by the fireplace with one foot on the fender and one elbow on the mantelshelf.

He lifted the tumbler from the silver tray and sniffed it.

‘Feeling better now, Mr Owen, are we?’ Giles said.

‘Much better, thanks,’ said Owen and, raising his glass to no one in particular, downed his whisky-soda like a man.

*   *   *

‘Didn’t expect to see you here,’ Albert said. ‘Kirby’s isn’t one of your usual haunts, is it?’

‘I’ve been here a few times,’ Gowry said.

‘Forbes brought you, I suppose.’

‘That he did.’

‘Where is he then? Where is his majesty?’ Bertie said.

‘At home in the bosom of his family,’ Gowry said.

‘On a Saturday night?’

‘Musical evening.’

‘Pardon?’ said Bertie.

‘They’re all singing bloody songs around the piano.’

‘Sounds delightful. Why aren’t you there?’

Gowry created a small, strangulated sound in his throat, leaned an elbow on the bar and picked up his glass. He was drinking whisky, Albert noticed, with a beer chaser. Unfortunately he, Albert, had just purchased a tot of rum and paid for it himself.

‘I’m here,’ Gowry said, ‘because I want a word with you.’

Albert was struck by doubt. ‘Concerning Sylvie?’

‘Concerning Forbes,’ said Gowry. ‘I’ve a message to deliver.’

‘Why didn’t you come to the house with it?’

‘He told me I might find you here.’

‘Did he, now?’ said Albert. ‘What is this mysterious message that you don’t want Sylvie to hear? Is he tiring of her already?’

‘He’s got to go away.’

‘Away? Where? For how long?’

‘Month, maybe more.’ Gowry paused to sip beer. ‘Business. You should know how it is with Forbes by now, Bertie. No matter how fond he may be of your daughter, business will always come first.’

‘A month?’ said Albert. ‘Sylvie isn’t going to like it. What about our financial arrangements?’

‘I’ll take care of those.’

‘You?’

‘Well, who else is Forbes going to trust? His missus?’

‘He’s cutting us adrift, isn’t he?’

‘No, he’s not cutting you adrift, Bertie. If he was cutting you adrift he wouldn’t have sent me here, would he? Money ain’t the problem,’ Gowry said. ‘Sylvie’s the problem. Forbes doubts if you can cope with her.’

‘Oh, I can cope. I can cope. I’m her father after all.’

‘No, you’re not,’ said Gowry ‘You’re no more her father than I am.’

‘Forbes told you, did he?’

‘Does her real papa know where she is?’

‘He thinks she’s still in London.’

‘Hasn’t he tried to find her?’

‘He wrote to the Coral Strand once, so I heard.’

‘The Coral Strand?’ said Gowry.

‘It’s a missionary society with offices in Holborn.’ Albert shrugged. ‘It’s amazing that he and she have never bumped into each other. Or him and me, for that matter. I mean, you think Glasgow’s a small town but you can go about for years without meeting people you know, or would prefer to avoid.’

‘Well, you certainly won’t be finding her papa in a place like this.’

‘Kirby’s isn’t his style. Since he married into the family I’m sure he’d just rather forget that Sylvie ever existed.’

‘A new leaf,’ Gowry said, ‘that sort of thing?’

‘Exactly,’ Albert said. ‘Marrying into the family was the best thing he ever did. Sooner or later he’ll come in for his share, or she will.’

‘She?’

‘Owen’s granddaughter. Cissie.’

‘Cissie!’ Gowry grinned. ‘Of course: Cissie.’

‘You did know that Tom Calder was Sylvie’s father, didn’t you?’

‘I told you, no secrets between brothers,’ Gowry said, and winked. He made a signal to the barmaid and, a moment later, a fresh tot of rum appeared on the counter in front of Albert Hartnell. ‘Now who’s going to tell Sylvie that Forbes won’t be visiting her for some time to come?’

‘I suppose I’ll have to,’ Albert said. ‘Unless…’

‘You want me to do it, don’t you?’

‘Would you?’

‘Of course I will,’ said Gowry.

*   *   *

It seemed that Geoffrey had mastered all forty-eight of Bach’s preludes, together with several Beethoven sonatas and dozens of music-hall songs. He played with relaxation that Lindsay could only envy. All passages, from tranquillo to vivace, lay equally easily under his hands.

He invited Lindsay to play with him but this she could not bring herself to do. She stood idly by, fuming at her timidity, while Matilda Perrino – still unmarried – rubbed hip and elbow with the naval officer and scampered her way through a furious Liszt duet until, laughing and red-cheeked, she was forced to surrender. Matilda’s reward was a consoling hug from Geoffrey and much applause from the twenty or so fellow musicians who had gathered in the parlour to listen. Thereafter, the piano was Geoffrey Paget’s for the rest of the evening.

Arthur sang, Tom Calder too; it was almost like the old days, except that Martin and Donald were absent, Mercy, pregnant once more, had turned down an invitation, and the room was full of a younger element from the choir; younger, some of them, than Lindsay herself which made her feel that she had grown up rather too quickly.

Blossom had vanished upstairs with a supper tray for Winn who had elected to sulk in the nursery for the whole of the evening. Forbes was out of his depth among choristers and instrumentalists whom he could not dominate or impress. He had gone off too, the Lord knew where. When supper was announced the choir members made a beeline for the tables in the hall. Geoffrey remained at the piano, playing jolly little tunes with a shanty flavour, playing so lightly that the keys seemed to offer no resistance at all.

Lindsay stood by the piano, watching him. He looked up and smiled, raised an eyebrow as if to indicate that he was not embarrassed by his talent. There was no secret to it, no dark discipline. He had, he said, always been keen on music, had taken lessons from an early age and, even now, practised whenever he could.

‘I’m rusty, though,’ he said.

‘Oh, no,’ said Lindsay. ‘No, you’re not.’

‘I think the piano flatters me. It’s a very fine instrument.’

‘Come whenever you’re free,’ Lindsay heard herself say. ‘Come any afternoon and use it, practise upon it. I’ll make sure that you are not disturbed.’

‘Is that a genuine offer?’

‘Absolutely genuine.’

‘What will your father say?’

‘Papa won’t mind in the slightest.’

Geoffrey paused. ‘And your husband?’

‘Forbes has no say over what goes on in the piano parlour.’ She flushed. ‘I mean, please come whenever you wish, whenever you have time to spare.’

He continued to play, glancing down at the keyboard for a moment. The tune was sprightly, almost rollicking. She watched the fluid movement of his hands, the left in particular, and felt within her that little niggle of fear again accompanied by a strange sweet narrowing of focus. Then two Brunswick Park sopranos, juggling plates and glasses, appeared giggling in the doorway and silks and velvets filled the corner of Lindsay’s eye. She heard Matilda call out, ‘I have it. I have something for the lieutenant. No need for you to bother,’ and the choirmaster’s spinster daughter came scurrying across the parlour carrying a plate heaped with cooked meats with which to entice the bachelor officer.

Geoffrey said, quietly, ‘I’m tempted to take you up on it, you know.’

‘Please,’ Lindsay said, ‘please do.’

Then, like the perfect hostess, the perfect wife, she stepped aside to make way for her guest.

*   *   *

Gowry parked the Vauxhall in the lane adjacent to the Mission Hall. Motorised vehicles were still uncommon hereabouts and he feared that he might soon be surrounded by inquisitive urchins keen not merely to gawk but to thieve.

All, however, was quiet.

In spite of his padded leather topcoat, quilted motoring cap and elbow-length gauntlets, he was cold. Freezing air did not affect his patience or his sense of purpose. He had spied on Sylvie before. Had spent several dismal hours on Sunday forenoons loitering by the church to see who talked to her or who accompanied her back to the door of the Mansions. No one ever did. Sylvie did not linger on the pavement outside the church but hopped away like a solitary little bunnikins. Same thing at the Mission Hall: no would-be beau pursued her to press his suit. As far as Gowry could make out, Forbes’s fears were groundless.

She emerged on an exuberant wave of song, hesitated only long enough to tie a scarf over her bonnet and punch her little fists into her muff; then she was off, heading north-west along Stevenson Street.

Gowry promptly tugged the ignition rod and cranked the handle. He heard the familiar groan of gases in the valve regulator and prayed that the beast would start first time. Sylvie had already passed out of sight. He cranked again, heard the engine connect and leaped into the driver’s seat. He released the brake, guided the Vauxhall slowly out of the lane into Stevenson Street and soon caught up with Sylvie who was skipping along blithe as a lark.

She glanced round only when the Vauxhall came abreast of her.

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘I thought it was Forbes.’

‘It isn’t Forbes. It’s me instead. Get in.’

She clambered on to the running board and alighted beside him. He had kept the engine ticking over and, as soon as Sylvie was secure, eased the motor-car over the broken cobbles.

‘Is Forbes not coming then?’ Sylvie said.

‘Nope,’ Gowry said. ‘Forbes won’t be coming for some time.’

‘Has he deserted me?’

‘He has to go off to work elsewhere.’

‘Where?’

Gowry thought quickly. ‘Portsmouth.’

‘Is she going with him?’

‘Nope.’

‘I could go with him. I could go to Portsmouth. Wouldn’t he like that?’

Gowry opened his mouth, changed his mind: said, ‘He’s appointed me to look after you while he’s away.’

‘Will I ever see Forbes again?’ Sylvie said.

‘Certainly you will. He’ll be back before you know it.’

‘My dada isn’t at home.’

‘I know. He’s down town, at Kirby’s.’

‘That’s where I first met Forbes,’ Sylvie said. ‘I might surprise him. I might make a trip down to Portsmouth and surprise him.’

‘It costs a lot of money for a railway fare to Portsmouth.’

‘You would give me the money.’

‘Would I now?’ Gowry said. ‘Don’t be too sure.’

‘I like this motor-car. I’ve been out into the country in it.’

‘Sylvie…’

‘Drive faster.’

‘I can’t.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because we’re there.’

She made no protest when he accompanied her through the tiny garden and into the close. They went upstairs together. Snowball, Mrs O’Connor’s cat, was seated on the stairs. It paid them not the slightest attention. Sylvie unlocked the front door of the apartment. Gowry followed her into the darkened hallway. He expected her to switch on the electric light, but she did not.

She said, ‘I do hope he hasn’t gone away for good.’

‘Don’t be so daft, Sylvie,’ Gowry said.

‘Then I would only have you to look after me.’

‘Would that be so bad?’

‘Bad enough,’ she said.

He did not move. He could hear the rustle of clothes, the topple of her bonnet on to the rug. She was very close to him. She seemed to be moving around him, as if he were a totem pole.

She said, ‘Did you go to Kirby’s especially to see Albert?’

‘Yes, I did.’

‘About the money?’

‘You’re all paid up. Forbes took care of it.’

‘Forbes takes care of everything.’

‘Nearly everything,’ Gowry said.

He started when she caught his hand; he couldn’t help himself. He was confident, but not that confident. He would have preferred to see what she was up to, what sort of a dance she supposed she was leading him. He was not in love with her, would never be in love with her. She would never be able to torment him the way she had done his brother. He couldn’t blame Forbes for wanting breathing space.

She took his hand in both of hers and stripped off the leather gauntlet.

‘What’s this you’re doing, Sylvie?’ Gowry said.

‘Making you feel at home.’

He gave her the other hand. She tugged off that glove too.

She took his hand and led it to her neck, slid it down to her chest. She had removed her coat and unbuttoned her blouse and the top of her bodice, not as far as her breasts but enough to let him touch the angular arrangement of bones above them. She pushed herself against him and, on tiptoe, kissed him on the cheek and then on the lips. He reached for her, but she danced away. ‘Are you going to stay and tuck me in?’ she asked, in a tiny, unprotected voice. ‘Are you going to do that for me too, Gowry-Wowry?’

‘Sure and I am,’ he said.