CHAPTER NINETEEN

Night Without End

It was half past eight o’clock before Tom got home. Cissie was in the dining-room and looked as if she had been sitting there for hours, rehearsing not anger or even patience but a deliberate meditative calm. He assumed that she had been concerned for him and that the lucid little occupations of motherhood had not kept her from fretting after all.

‘Did it go well, dear?’ she asked as soon as he appeared.

‘It went very well,’ Tom informed her. ‘Very well indeed.’

He moved across the room, cupped her face in his hands and kissed her, as if it were she, not he, who had been in peril that day.

‘Tom, have you been drinking?’

‘I had a brandy at the Coventry.’

‘The Coventry?’

‘The hotel in Helensburgh.’

‘With Forbes?’ Cissie said.

‘Forbes was there too, yes. He went down with us on the first run.’

‘Geoffrey arranged it, I suppose?’

‘He did.’

‘And you?’ Cissie remained motionless at the dining-table. ‘Was it as bad as you imagined it would be, Tom?’

He grinned and made light of it. ‘Worse.’

‘At least you survived,’ Cissie said solemnly.

‘Fortunately, yes.’

He removed his jacket and unfastened his collar. He was still clammy with the aftermath of the morning’s ordeal. In fact, he had consumed two light ales as well as a brandy. Six naval officers had been present at the drinks party and unless he had misinterpreted Commander Coles’s compliments, it seemed probable that the Snark would be accepted and commissioned and that more Admiralty contracts would come Franklin’s way. Reason enough for celebration: if he’d been slightly less eager to tell his tale to Cissie he might have lingered at the party instead of catching the early evening train home.

He seated himself at the table and took Cissie’s hand. ‘I’ve been a pig for the past week or two, dearest. Please forgive me?’

‘You had every right to be nervous. There’s nothing to forgive.’

Tom placed his hands behind his head and rocked placidly on the dining chair. It was late in the evening now. Sunlight had cooled to pale blue shadow and ridges of pink and gold cloud lofted high above the rooftops. He would not be required to attend the speed tests at the Gareloch tomorrow, thank the Lord. Peter Holt would cover them.

‘I really was terrified,’ he said. ‘But in a queer way I enjoyed it. She really is a superb machine. She slid down smoothly and surfaced without a hiccup. Sixty feet below the surface and you’d hardly have known you were underwater at all. Captain Bridges really knows his onions, of course. Talking of onions, darling, what’s for supper?’

Cissie said, ‘Your daughter called this afternoon.’

The legs of the chair came down with a thump. ‘My daughter?’

Cissie watched him closely. ‘Your daughter Sylvie.’

‘Good God! I didn’t even know she was back in Glasgow.’

‘When did you last see her?’ Cissie asked.

‘Oh, not for years. Five years at least. I wrote to her care of the Coral Strand offices but my letters were returned unopened. I thought – I don’t know what I thought – that she had found a niche for herself in London.’

‘You didn’t try very hard to find her, did you, Tom?’

‘I suppose I didn’t, really.’

‘Apparently she didn’t go to London at all. She never left Glasgow.’

‘What?’ said Tom again. ‘But why didn’t she—’

‘She’s expecting a child.’

‘Sylvie married? That’s excellent. What does her husband—’

‘She isn’t married,’ Cissie said.

‘I see,’ Tom said. ‘I see. But where’s Albert? Where’s her stepfather?’

‘She claims he abandoned her,’ Cissie said.

‘Is it – is it Albert’s child? Could it be his child?’

‘It isn’t his child,’ Cissie said, white-faced.

‘Who then? Who is he? If he thinks—’

‘It’s Forbes McCulloch.’

‘Surely you’re mistaken.’ Tom was bewildered. ‘Forbes? Our Forbes?’

‘Lindsay’s husband, yes.’

‘Absolute nonsense!’ Tom protested. ‘Sylvie doesn’t know McCulloch. She’s never even met the man.’

‘I’m afraid she has, Tom. She claims to have known him since he was a student. She met him at some drinking club in Glasgow which he used to frequent quite regularly. She claims that Forbes promised to marry her.’

‘She’s making it up.’ He got unsteadily to his feet. He knew that Cissie was telling the truth but he continued to protest, to deny the cold, hard fact that Sylvie had come back into his life. ‘My daughter’s always been a bit fanciful. It’s my fault, I suppose. My fault, yes. I shouldn’t have let her go off without a word. My only excuse is that her mother cheated and deceived me and I took it out on Sylvie. I wanted rid of her.’ He heaved in a breath. ‘But this story she told you – no, that’s a lie. It must be a lie. I’ll bet that Albert’s behind it. He’ll be after money again. Forbes! How could Forbes possibly be the father of her child? Sylvie’s lying, she must be lying.’

‘Lindsay believed her. Lindsay thinks she’s telling the truth.’

He opened his mouth, sucked air. ‘Lindsay?’

Cissie nodded mournfully. She was close to tears now, afraid of a past that Tom never talked about, of what might be revealed now that his daughter had returned and how it would affect her husband and her marriage.

‘Do you mean to say that Lindsay was here when Sylvie called?’

Cissie nodded again and softly began to cry. He sat down and reached for her hand.

‘Poor Lindsay,’ he said. ‘Poor, poor Lindsay.’

Cissie sniffed. ‘What are you going to do?’

‘What can I do, dearest? Lindsay isn’t my wife.’

‘About your daughter, I mean. She’s convinced, utterly convinced that Forbes intends to divorce Lindsay and marry her instead.’

‘How can she possibly believe that?’

‘Because he told her so. Because he promised.’

‘Bastard!’ Tom spat the word out. ‘I’d like to go over to Brunswick Park right now and kill that little bastard.’

‘Oh, Tom, no.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘No, of course I won’t.’

‘You’ll have to help her. Sylvie, I mean.’

‘How far is she gone?’ Tom asked.

‘She’s due soon to judge by the size of her.’

‘How has she supported herself all these years?’

‘Forbes has been keeping her as his – his mistress.’

‘Where?’

‘She refused to tell us,’ Cissie answered.

‘Forbes will know where to find her.’ Tom released his wife’s hand, got to his feet and reached for his jacket. ‘I’m going over to Brunswick Park.’

‘Please, Tom, don’t. Not tonight.’

‘Cissie, I have to. You said yourself…’

‘Tomorrow, yes, but not tonight, Tom. Please.’

‘Why not do it now? Why not?’

‘Because I want you to stay here with me.’

He was flooded with guilt and anger. He had laboured hard for security and, to achieve it, he had let Sylvie slip from him. He had seized his chance for happiness and had never regretted it. Cissie was everything that Dorothy had never been. What they said about blood and water was untrue: he cared less about Sylvie than he did about Cissie, or Lindsay for that matter. Cissie was right. He was too angry to confront Forbes McCulloch tonight. Tomorrow he would try to track down Albert Hartnell and wring the whole, sorry story from him. He seated himself once more. He did not understand the circles that fate had drawn around him, could not read the pattern, the grand design. Perhaps, like the Snark, the whole of life was nothing but an accumulation of separate bits and pieces that teetered on the edge of breakdown and disaster but that somehow mysteriously continued to function.

He beckoned Cissie to him and took her on to his knee.

He held her loosely, head against his chest, and stroked her hair.

‘I don’t want you to leave me, dearest,’ she said.

‘I won’t.’

‘Not ever?’

‘Not ever,’ Tom Calder said.

*   *   *

Keeping the secret to herself proved the easiest thing in the world. Cissie had promised to tell no one except Tom what had occurred and Lindsay had urged her cousin to dissuade Tom from rushing over to Brunswick Park that night. For the girl, for Sylvie, Lindsay felt only a thin, irritating pity. She too had obviously been taken in by Forbes’s callous charm, the charm that made no distinctions between them, that dictated that one became lover and one wife by a process not of adaptation or by choice but solely to satisfy his whim. Sylvie’s illusions were pathetic. She had swallowed all Forbes’s lies without question and had become enchanted by them.

From the moment the drawing-room door had opened and the girl had entered, belly thrust out before her, a jaunty summer hat perched on her golden curls, Lindsay had recognised not a rival but a nemesis. She had glimpsed the girl in the Kelvingrove seven or eight years ago when Tom, Cissie and she had first come together to experiment with flirtation. She had seen her again at the launch of the Hashitaka when Forbes had become agitated and had dragged her away from the rail. She had had no inkling then that the silly child was Tom Calder’s daughter or Forbes’s mistress or that the same silly, shadowy child would one day become her saviour.

She had felt no animosity, hardly even surprise when Miss Sylvie Calder had introduced herself and, with a gaiety that was anything but infectious, had accepted a chair at Cissie’s tea-table and helped herself to a scone. She had drunk tea, had eaten buttered tea-bread, had explained herself and her situation, had issued her ultimatum and within a half-hour had gone off again, waddling out of the apartment shortly before Miss Runciman had brought the children back from the park. It had all been very genteel, very civilised. At first Lindsay had experienced no jealousy, no sense of outrage at having been systematically deceived by her husband for so many years. Instead, she had felt strangely liberated from the constraints that marriage to Forbes had placed upon her, as if she, like Pappy, had finally found a purpose in adversity.

Geoffrey: she thought at once of Geoffrey. The time-honoured tradition of tit-for-tat meant that she was free now to become Geoffrey’s lover or, if she wished, his wife. Given the circumstances, the court would surely support a petition for divorce without quibble. Suddenly she was in a position to be shot of Forbes, not just Forbes but the whole McCulloch clan – Winn, Blossom, Gowry, even Aunt Kay – in one fell swoop, to shake them out of her life and her father’s life and send them packing back to where they belonged.

It would be a wonderful revenge, a triumph as thoroughly demeaning as any that Forbes could possibly devise – except that she would never be able to bring herself to go through with it. She had to pull back, not to protect Forbes or save face for the Franklins but for Tom’s sake; Sylvie was Tom’s daughter and Cissie was Tom’s wife and all three would be terribly damaged by the scandal of a prolonged and public divorce.

White-faced and shocked, Cissie had stammered, ‘Do you believe her?’

‘Of course I believe her,’ Lindsay had answered.

‘Oh, God! Oh, dear God! I wish Pappy were still with us,’ Cissie had said, wringing her plump hands. ‘Pappy would know what to do.’

‘Are you implying that I don’t know what to do?’

‘You?’ Cissie had said. ‘But you’re – you’re the wife.’

‘That isn’t a fatal condition, Cissie, or one that precludes me from making my own decisions. As it so happens, I do know what to do.’

‘What?’

‘You’ll see,’ Lindsay had answered. ‘Wait a little while, dearest, then, believe me, you’ll see.’

*   *   *

Forbes had come home late, long after his mother and sisters had gone to bed. Lindsay had taken herself upstairs to the nursery after supper to give Philip his nightly feed then she had gone directly into the master bedroom to make ready.

Below, in the piano parlour, Eleanor waited for Mr Arthur.

He had been tempted by naval hospitality and had dined with the officers at the Coventry. It had been a jovial party and, as it happened, not at all awkward. Lieutenant Commander Paget had been present at the start of the proceedings but he had been called away to answer the telephone and, after making apologies to Commander Coles, had left the company soon after.

Much as he liked the English officer Arthur had not been sorry to see him go. He was aware of the delicate relationship that existed between his daughter and Geoffrey Paget – how could he not be? – but he was prepared to take Eleanor’s word for it that there was nothing sinister in the friendship and that when Geoffrey left Glasgow in a week’s time that would be an end of it. Even so, the tension between Forbes and Geoffrey Paget had been palpable throughout the day and Arthur could not entirely relax until Paget had gone.

Forbes and he had travelled home together on the last train. He had to put up with the young man’s infernal, slightly tipsy, bragging about the superiority of the Snark over anything that the Germans had built, as if he, Forbes, had contributed more to the building of the underwater craft than the settling of contracts for basic materials and a few specialised castings. They changed trains at Dalmuir, disembarked on the deserted platform at Partick West and walked home from there.

The air had cooled but a long afterglow lingered in the western sky, mingling with the smoke from Clydeside furnaces and the faint, feeble glare from those yards that were fortunate enough to be operating a night shift. Tram-cars heading along Dumbarton Road to the depot threw out quick, clicking echoes that pealed away down sober side streets and rose tentatively into the heights of Brunswick Park. The trees in the little piece of park were motionless in the papery light of the gas lamps by the time Arthur and his son-in-law reached home and it seemed that the whole of the crescent was already fast asleep.

Any rapport that had existed between Arthur and his son-in-law dwindled as they climbed the steps to the front door. Neither man dared ring the doorbell for fear of waking the children and Forbes was first to find his key. He let himself in first, turned, muttered, ‘Goodnight,’ and headed off up the staircase to his portion of the house. Relieved that the long, arduous day was finally over, Arthur opened the door of the parlour and peeped in.

‘Ah, Eleanor,’ he said, ‘you’re still up, I see.’

‘I am, Mr Arthur,’ Eleanor answered him. ‘Unfortunately, I am.’

*   *   *

Forbes went first to the lavatory and relieved himself. The walk from the station had cleared his head, leaving pleasant memories of the long day on the sea loch, the stimulation of travelling underwater and the triumph of browbeating Paget and forcing him to retreat. He was sure he had got his message over and that Paget had left the party early because he was too cowardly to stay for dinner.

He paused on the landing, glanced up into the gloomy well of the nursery floor where, all snug and secure, his children slept. Then he opened the door of the master bedroom and stepped, unsuspectingly, inside.

*   *   *

Lindsay had been drowsing over the Blackwood edition of Conrad’s Typhoon, but as soon as she heard the scrape of Forbes’s key in the front door she snapped awake. Suddenly beset by nerves, she dropped the book to the carpet and for a moment became so agitated that she could hardly breathe. She rocked forward in the chair, clenched her fists into her lap and willed herself not to dissolve in tears. She thought of Geoffrey, of Geoffrey’s voice on the telephone, so placid and soothing and unsurprised. Geoffrey would take over. Geoffrey would take command just as she had asked him to.

The lavatory flushed. She listened to the deluge of water pouring from the cistern above the pedestal. Door opening. Door closing. She forced herself upright in the chair and willed herself to appear unruffled. Cold and calculating, that’s how she must be, like Forbes, just like Forbes.

She groped for the book, found and opened it.

Forbes entered the bedroom.

‘Lindsay! he exclaimed. ‘I thought you’d be in bed by now.’

Sun and sea air had revitalised his tan. His hair was tousled, his dark eyes somnolent. He looked young, almost boyish with his jacket slung across his shoulder and his shirt sleeves unfastened. For a split second Lindsay questioned if this handsome young man, image of the boy she had once loved, could ever betray her. She wanted to cry out, to hold out her arms, have him comfort her as if she were still an innocent and unlettered in the ways of the world.

‘What the hell are you doing dressed up?’ Forbes said.

‘Waiting for you.’

‘Waiting for…’ He grinned, uncertainly. ‘Are we going somewhere, then?’

‘I am,’ Lindsay said.

Her voice was remarkably firm. She had rehearsed it, planned it with the meticulousness of an engineer setting out a project. All she had to do now was square up to him and carry it through. She closed the novel and balanced it on the crocodile-hide portmanteau that Eleanor had packed for her. The portmanteau contained her vanity case, shoes, a summer hat, underclothing, nightgowns, ribbons and stockings, a blouse, a travelling skirt, two summer dresses and a useful coat in peau-de-soie: everything she needed, in fact, tucked neatly into an oblong of crocodile hide no larger than a footstool.

‘You are? You are what?’ Forbes said.

‘I’m leaving you.’

‘You’re what?’ He threw up a hand. ‘What’s this you’re telling me? Don’t you know what a day I’ve had? For God’s sake, Linnet, I haven’t the patience for any of your idiotic nonsense, not tonight.’ He thumped down on the side of the bed, hands cupping thighs, elbows cocked. He glowered at her, guilt and uncertainty undercutting anger.

He said, ‘Take that bloody coat off and put that bag away.’

She turned her wrist and consulted the gold bracelet watch that her papa had given her. She said, ‘At midnight, in approximately fifteen minutes, Forbes, you will be rid of me for good and all.’

‘Rid of you? What the – what does that mean?’

‘Free to go to Sylvie or, if you wish, to bring Sylvie here to live.’

‘Ssssss … Sylvie?’

‘Once you explain the situation I’m sure your family will have no objection. I expect you’ll require the services of a midwife very soon, unless your mother feels she can cope with the birth herself. Winn – well, having another infant to care for won’t make much difference to Winn, will it?’

‘What the holy hell are you talking about?’ He got to his feet, not suddenly but sluggishly, as if a giant hand were pushing against him. ‘What the holy hell does Tom Calder’s – does this woman have to do with me?’

‘Please don’t raise your voice, Forbes, you’ll waken the children.’ He was vertical at last, hands clasping thighs, elbows cocked. Like a thin veneer of transparent varnish laid over pine, his tan had lost its shine. ‘I don’t think you want to waken the children, do you, Forbes?’ Lindsay continued. ‘I don’t think you want to waken anyone. I mean, surely it would be better if you had a good night’s sleep before you decide what you’re going to tell them. By the by, was it a difficult day on the Gareloch? You look rather tired.’

‘You’re going away with Paget, aren’t you?’

‘That,’ Lindsay said, ‘is irrelevant.’

‘Irrelevant! My wife running off with a bloody sailor isn’t irrelevant!’

‘I’m not running off with anyone, Forbes. I’m leaving you. That’s all there is to it. I’m simply clearing the decks before your new wife arrives.’

‘New wife? What are you raving about?’

‘Tom Calder’s daughter. Tom, I expect, will have something to say about it, of course. He may be none too keen on you taking her in; though as you’ve already taken her in, in a manner of speaking, I personally see no harm in it.’

‘Oh, Jesus! Jesus!’ He sat down again, head in hands. ‘Don’t go, Lindsay. Please, don’t go. I’ll…’ He peered from the tops of his eyes, a wary gesture that cast doubt upon his sincerity. ‘I’ll take care of it. I promise I’ll take care of it.’

‘I see,’ Lindsay said. ‘How will you do that, Forbes? Do you intend to keep the poor girl in the background, to preserve her for your amusement a little while longer? As a matter of interest, how long have you been keeping her?’

He shook his head, rotating it between his hands. ‘Not long.’

‘How long is “not long”? A year, two years? Three, perhaps? Since our marriage, or before our marriage? I hope that taking time off to teach me my wifely duties didn’t inconvenience you.’ Lindsay paused. ‘I take it you don’t deny that Sylvie Calder is your mistress?’

‘No, but I didn’t know she was Tom Calder’s daughter when I…’

‘Would it have made any difference?’

‘Probably not.’

‘Is it your child she’s carrying?’

‘Of course.’

Denial had switched to contrition, contrition to defiance: at least, Lindsay thought, he’s still man enough to try to brazen it out.

He said, ‘Who told you she was expecting? Gowry?’

‘She told me herself.’

‘You mean she came here?’

‘She turned up at Cissie’s where I just happened to be taking tea.’

‘Bitch!’ Forbes said, shaking his head. ‘Stupid little bitch! What did she hope to gain by bothering Cissie? Money, I suppose.’

‘No,’ Lindsay said. ‘I don’t think she’s interested in money.’

‘Shows how well you know her.’

‘I think,’ Lindsay said, ‘she’s interested in having you for a husband.’

‘I told her’ – he shook his head again – ‘months ago, I told her she couldn’t ever have me. I never made promises I couldn’t keep. I looked after her, gave her everything, her and her bloody dada, both.’

‘Albert Hartnell?’

‘Yes, bloody Albert Hartnell. I wouldn’t be surprised if this was another of his tricks to squeeze money—’

‘I told you, Forbes, it isn’t about money,’ Lindsay said.

‘Then it’s nasty,’ Forbes said. ‘Then it’s revenge.’

‘She wants you to marry her, to have a proper father for her child.’

‘She’s not right in the head, you know,’ Forbes said. ‘Don’t tell me you’re going to allow a lunatic to wreck our marriage?’

Impatiently, not ostentatiously, Lindsay glanced at her watch again.

‘I’m leaving in five minutes, Forbes. If you’ve anything else to tell me please be quick about it.’

‘Christ, you’re serious, aren’t you?’

‘Of course I am.’

‘What’s your father going to say to it?’

‘He’ll understand.’

‘What about the children?’

‘Philip will thrive well enough on milk formula and Papa will see to it that Harry is entertained.’ She got to her feet. ‘I’m not going far, Forbes, and I will be back, you know.’

‘Yes,’ he said, almost smugly. ‘Sure and you will.’

‘By which time I expect you to have moved out or, if you prefer it, to have reached an agreement with my father.’

‘An agreement? What sort of agreement?’

‘To purchase his share of the house.’

‘What?’ Forbes shouted loudly enough to make the light fittings ring. ‘What the hell’s this you’ve cooked up now?’

‘I can’t be sure, of course,’ Lindsay said, ‘but I imagine my father will be looking for full cash payment from you before he signs anything.’

‘I don’t have that kind of ready money,’ Forbes shouted.

‘Think what you’ll save when Sylvie’s living here. No more rent to pay on your second home in St Mungo’s Mansions, for a start. Admittedly you will have to raise a substantial amount of capital rather quickly but perhaps your mother will help with a loan.’

‘You leave my mam out of this.’

Lindsay reached for the handle of the portmanteau. ‘I don’t think we can leave anyone out of it, really, Forbes, do you?’

He darted forward, caught her arm, drew her upright. His grip was brutal but when she stared at his fist he slackened it. He did not, however, let go.

‘You don’t mean any of it, Lindsay,’ he said. ‘You’re just trying to scare me, aren’t you? You won’t leave. I know you, you won’t leave the kiddies, or your papa, or your precious Miss Runciman. You don’t want a scandal any more than I do. Give me a day, a couple of days to straighten everything out and I guarantee that you won’t be bothered by Sylvie Calder ever again.’

‘I’m not bothered by Sylvie Calder now,’ Lindsay said. ‘To tell you the truth, Forbes, I’m not even particularly “bothered” by you. As for Harry and Philip, I’m not abandoning them. Odd as it may seem, I love them very much and I certainly won’t be leaving them for long. As soon as I’ve consulted a lawyer…’

‘Lawyer? Divorce, do you mean?’

‘Until we’re legally divorced, how can you possibly marry Sylvie?’

‘Oh, no, no, Lindsay, that’s the last thing I want.’

‘What do you want, Forbes?’

‘I want you, darling. I want you. Here. With me.’

‘As it was before?’

‘Yes, exactly as it was before.’

Lindsay allowed his answer to hang in silence for a moment then she separated herself from him with a shrug of the shoulder.

‘That’s what I thought,’ she said.

She lifted the portmanteau and tugged open the bedroom door. She swung the bag into her arms and hurried downstairs.

He pursued her.

She heard his breathless shout of ‘Lindsay, Lindsay,’ change to an urgent whisper. ‘Lindsay, for God’s sake, Lindsay, listen to me, talk to me,’ then she was in the hallway, heading for the front door. A strip of light at the bottom of the parlour door indicated that Papa and Eleanor were probably listening. She resisted the temptation to call out goodbye. She felt jubilant and determined and, at one and the same time, bleak and melancholy. She made it to the door and pulled it open before Forbes snared her with an arm about her waist.

It was, she realised, in danger of degenerating into farce, his conniving nature and appealing charm reduced to bullying. He raised his fist. It hovered turnip-shaped and pale above her face. Forbes’s face, white too, was twisted less by rage than frustration. He still could not believe that she would defy him, would leave against his will.

She clutched the portmanteau firmly, prepared to drive the edge up into his stomach, to sacrifice her dignity too just to be free of him.

Abruptly, he released her.

She followed her husband’s gaze, looked down the steep steps to the pavement’s edge where a motorised taxi-cab waited, engine puttering, big boggle-eyed headlamps flickering.

Geoffrey was in uniform, looking very neat and self-contained, one foot on the bottom step and a hand on the railing. As she came down the steps towards him he held out his hand, and she took it. He relieved her of the portmanteau and, without so much as a glance at Forbes, ushered her across the pavement and into the taxi-cab.

He climbed in beside her and closed the door.

‘Are you all right?’ he asked.

‘I’m fine,’ said Lindsay. ‘Really, I’m fine.’

‘Where to now, sir?’ the cabby enquired.

‘The Central Hotel,’ said Geoffrey.

*   *   *

From the top step Forbes watched the taxi-cab gather speed. He was still convinced it would only swing once around the park before it returned and Lindsay would come back into the house and tell it him that it had all been a dreadful mistake and beg his forgiveness. The cab, however, did not loop around the park. It went on across the top of Fingleton Street, swept away along the long curve of Brunswick Crescent and swiftly passed out of sight.

Forbes did not move. He remained stock-still on the top step.

He was still sure that the boggle-eyed headlamps would reappear at any moment and the vehicle return.

Then he heard his father-in-law say, ‘She’s gone, Forbes. Can’t you see that she’s gone?’

He swung round. Arthur Franklin and the Runciman woman were observing him from within the hallway. There was no breath of wind in the streets yet Forbes felt as if he were being sucked into the hallway on a great wild rush of air. Arthur reached out to him. He thrust his father-in-law aside and, staggering from wall to wall, blundered towards the staircase.

He fell to his knees.

Lifting his head, he peered into the gloom of the upper floors.

He opened his mouth and howled: ‘Mam. Mammy, help me.’

And a moment later, still struggling into their dressing-gowns, his mother and sisters came tumbling down the stairs.

*   *   *

Bludgeoned by sea air and exhaustion, Tom fell asleep as soon as his head touched the pillow. He slept for the best part of two hours and did not stir when Cissie crept in beside him, drew back the top blanket and adjusted the sheets.

For once, she did not put her arms about him and hold him close. She lay on her back, listening to his snores. She had left the curtains parted and the blind raised to let in whatever air there was and she could make out a shaft of moonlight lying like cool water across the foot of the bed.

Tom’s snoring ceased.

He turned on an elbow and then on to his back. He eased his hands out from under the sheet and placed them cautiously behind his head.

Looking up, Cissie could make out his profile in the half-darkness, etched by a glimmer of moonlight. She heard him sigh a shuddering sigh and knew that he was wide awake and that sleep would not easily return to his busy, bothered brain.

‘Can’t you sleep, Tom?’

‘No.’ He paused. ‘I will have to do something about it, you know. I can’t just pretend that nothing’s happened. I’ll have to take care of her now.’

Cissie eased herself against him, gently laid an arm across his stomach and drew herself supportively against his flank.

‘I know, dear,’ she said. ‘I know.’

*   *   *

The Central Hotel by the railway station in the heart of the city was busy even at that late hour. Last trains from the south had recently arrived and porters and receptionists were attending to weary travellers, checking them in and escorting them to their rooms. There was still activity in the kitchens and in the huge ground-floor dining-room waiters were briskly setting up for breakfast.

Geoffrey had been fortunate to obtain a room on short notice. August was a prime month for tourist traffic and Glasgow a popular staging post for the Highlands where, in a few days’ time, the grouse-shooting season would begin. He guided Lindsay to the oak-fronted desk in the foyer and waited politely while a colonel type, with waxed moustaches and a tweed suit so new that it creaked, fussed over security for his guns. Behind him, sheltering among potted palms, his lady loitered; no Rosie O’Grady this but a woman of such elegant and affected ennui that she could be nothing but his wife. She studied Geoffrey with a cold predatory gaze for a moment, then, meeting Lindsay’s eye, smirked knowingly.

Lindsay felt her cheeks grow hot. She was used to hotels, to mixing with wealthy and sophisticated people but there was something in the woman’s vulpine smile that brought home the magnitude of what she had done. She had cut herself off from respectability, from the tangible securities of marriage. She had run off with a man who was not her husband and was here, at midnight, in a hotel with him. She had no idea how the lady knew that Geoffrey and she were not husband and wife, but know she did, as surely as if she, Lindsay, had been branded on the forehead with a scarlet letter or sported the tattered red shawl of a woman of the streets.

She took Geoffrey’s arm and hung on to him while he confirmed the telephone booking with a balding, middle-aged clerk.

‘How long will madam being staying, sir?’ the clerk asked.

The question caught Geoffrey off guard. He turned to Lindsay and raised an enquiring eyebrow.

Lindsay heard herself say, ‘Three nights, possibly longer.’

‘Is that suitable?’ Geoffrey said.

‘That is suitable, sir,’ said the clerk.

He presented the register, swivelled it round towards Lindsay, pointed out the pen and ink-stand.

Geoffrey took a half pace backward and allowed Lindsay to sign her name and, in the space allotted for address, simply ‘Brunswick Park’. The clerk did not bat an eyelid. He blotted the entry assiduously and simultaneously raised a hand and snapped his fingers. A bell-boy came running out of nowhere and wrested Lindsay’s portmanteau from Geoffrey’s grasp.

‘One-o-seven,’ the clerk said. ‘Will madam be requiring breakfast to be served in her room?’

‘I’ll – no, I’ll come down, thank you.’

‘Very good, madam,’ said the clerk. ‘Very good,’ and with a jerk of the head indicated to the bell-boy that he should make himself scarce until the lady was ready to be escorted upstairs.

Many men of her acquaintance had mistresses. Aunt Lilias could probably rhyme them off. Some, indeed, were famous for flouting convention; others so discreet that no one, not even Aunt Lilias, could be sure if gossip about them was true or false. Whispers would soon accumulate around her name. It was unrealistic to suppose that her desertion would remain secret for long. There would be no core to it, no substance, of course, no validity to the rumours that Geoffrey Paget and she had become shameless lovers and that Forbes, poor Forbes, was the partner who had been wronged.

Had it been like this for Forbes and Sylvie Calder, she wondered; like this, without the awkwardness? Had they spent many nights together in hotel beds before Forbes had set the girl up in a place of her own? Forbes had often been ‘out of town’ on shipyard business. She tried to recall episodes and incidents that might give her husband’s duplicity shape and form, something to bolster her flagging confidence and ease her guilt; but Forbes seemed far, far away and Sylvie, in Lindsay’s thoughts, hardly existed at all.

She was suddenly very, very tired.

She longed for Geoffrey to go now, to leave her to sleep alone and unafraid in a big, not quite dark room as she had done when she was a child.

It was not that she did not love Geoffrey or that she wasn’t grateful for what he had done for her. She was wary of the situation that she had created, however, of the burden of temptation and weight of responsibility that she had placed on Geoffrey’s shoulders.

For a moment, a hideous moment, she even began to question Geoffrey’s integrity and wonder if perhaps he was just another seducer, more sinister and subtle and devious than other men, but just like them, just like Forbes.

‘I – I must go up, Geoffrey,’ she said.

‘Of course.’

He kissed her cheek briefly, touched her arm, stepped back.

The colonel and his predatory wife had gone but Lindsay could still recall the penetration of that vulpine glance, so cynical and sophisticated.

‘At what time will you breakfast?’ Geoffrey said.

‘Eight thirty,’ Lindsay answered.

‘And then what will you do?’

She hadn’t thought of that, hadn’t faced up to the long formless days that would follow her desertion, days in which others would make the running and she, the instigator, the renegade, would be robbed of volition and, by her own actions, would spin off into a kind of limbo.

‘I’ll join you for breakfast, if I may,’ Geoffrey said.

‘Don’t you have to report to someone? I mean – the trials?’

‘One of the advantages of my position is that I am answerable to no one this side of Trafalgar Square.’ Though she did not quite believe him, Lindsay was comforted. He said, ‘Rest if you can. I’ll see you in the morning.’

‘Geoffrey,’ she said. ‘Thank you. Thank you with all my heart.’

‘No need for thanks,’ he said gruffly. ‘No need at all.’

Then, after giving the desk clerk an ostentatious salute that the fellow would surely remember, he stepped out through the polished swing doors and left Lindsay to follow the bell-boy up the carpeted staircase to her room.

*   *   *

After an hour of argument, recrimination and what passed for debate, it seemed that Forbes could not have cared less what became of Sylvie Calder or of his wife. He had been beaten down by the clamour around him, defeated by sheer exhaustion and rendered numb by the several nips of whisky that his sisters had pressed upon him for therapeutic purposes. Perhaps his sisters’ treatment had been the right one, for the red roaring rage that had possessed him after Lindsay had left with Geoffrey Paget had burned itself out completely and he sprawled in the room’s only armchair, all undone, listening with brooding indifference to the pointless conversations that ebbed and flowed about him.

‘It was your plan, was it not?’ his mother was saying. ‘All part of your plan to be rid of us. Well, Arthur, I’ll tell you this, you’ll not be getting rid of us so easily as all that.’

‘How,’ Eleanor Runciman said, ‘could it be Mr Arthur’s “plan” when none of us knew until this afternoon what your precious son had been up to behind everyone’s back?’

‘I really can’t understand what she’s doing here, Mam,’ said Blossom. ‘She ain’t no kin to any of us.’

‘Shouldn’t be allowed to open her mouth,’ said Winn.

‘I’ve more right to be here than you have, miss,’ Eleanor said. ‘If Mr Arthur asks me to make myself scarce then I will, but I am not dancing to your tune, oh no. I have raised Lindsay since she was—’

‘Yes, yes, yes, we’ve heard all that before,’ Winn interrupted. ‘But nothing you have to say is going to help my brother get his wife back.’

‘Might I be pointing out, Arthur,’ Kay said, ‘that it wasn’t you who brought Forbes here. It was Pappy, rest his soul, and he wouldn’t have let any of this happen if he’d still been alive.’

‘I don’t see how Pappy could have prevented it,’ Arthur said, ‘any more than I could have prevented it. I mean to say, Pappy couldn’t stop you, you and your sister, running off with your lovers thirty-odd years ago.’

‘I knew, I knew it would come down to that,’ Kay screeched. ‘You still blame me for what happened to your wife, don’t you?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous, Kay,’ Arthur said. ‘I am merely drawing an analogy. If you pause to consider…’

‘Pause to consider what?’ Kay said. ‘Whatever I did was done for poor Helen. She was dying, and we all knew it. Everyone, it seems, except you. Besides, I didn’t abandon husband and children to sneak off with some sailor.’

‘She did not sneak off with anyone,’ Eleanor said.

‘Oh, no?’ Blossom said. ‘Then who was that in the taxi-cab, I ask you? Lord bleedin’ Nelson?’

‘I think,’ Arthur said, ‘we are drifting from the point.’

‘Point? What point is that?’ Kay said. ‘The point that you’re going to make money out of us by using this tragedy to your own advantage.’

Eleanor leaped in. ‘How dare you say that.’

‘Shut that woman up, Arthur.’

‘Eleanor has every right to speak her mind,’ Arthur said.

‘She’s a housekeeper, that’s all she is, a servant.’

‘And what, tell me, are you, Winifred?’ Arthur said.

‘I’m – I’m your niece. I’m Forbes’s sister.’

‘How dare you even suggest that Mr Arthur is at all interested in money at a time like this,’ Eleanor waded in. ‘The matter to be decided has nothing whatsoever to do with money.’

‘Hasn’t it?’ said Blossom. ‘What does it have to do with, then?’

‘A baby. A child.’ Eleanor glanced at her master who nodded agreement. ‘All this jawing about what’s going to happen to the house, what’s going to become of you, and not a thought about the poor girl who’s carrying his baby.’

‘Hasn’t been proved. Hasn’t been proved,’ Winn shrilled. ‘Only got her word for it and none of us has seen her yet. She’ll have to be put on the spot before we decide anything, won’t she, Mam?’

‘She will, she will,’ Kay agreed, but mutedly.

‘Do you think it’s not his baby?’ Arthur said.

‘Look at him,’ said Eleanor. ‘Not a word of denial out of him.’

‘Forbes,’ Blossom instructed her brother, ‘say something.’

He peered at them from under half-closed lids, surveyed them as if they were strangers or, at best, merchants in the metal market with whom he was forced to negotiate against his will. He stirred leadenly, hoisted himself up and reached for the whisky glass that was balanced on the piano stool. He swirled the liquid in the glass, drank it in a swallow and pushed himself out of the chair.

‘I’m going to bed,’ he said.

‘You can’t,’ Winn told him.

‘I damned well can,’ said Forbes.

‘You can’t, not with nothing settled yet,’ said Blossom.

‘It isn’t up to us right now,’ Forbes said. ‘It’s up to Lindsay. Whatever you might think of her, she isn’t daft. She’ll make up her own mind what she wants to do. Once we find that out, we can start again.’

‘Surely you’re not going to allow her to call the tune,’ said Blossom.

‘He does not have much choice,’ said Eleanor.

‘Mam, are you going to let her talk about our Forbes like that?’

Kay shook her head. ‘Unfortunately, girls, she’s right. It isn’t up to us to make the next move. It’s up to her, to Lindsay.’

‘What if she wants a’ – Winn’s voice dropped – ‘a divorce?’

‘Who could blame her?’ Eleanor Runciman said.

‘If she wants a divorce,’ Arthur said, ‘then you will have to leave my house. It wouldn’t be proper for you to stay here during court proceedings. I mean, I couldn’t possibly condone that course of action.’

‘Or,’ Kay said, ‘you could sell Forbes the house.’

‘I could,’ Arthur said. ‘I may.’

‘Forbes, what do you have to say for yourself?’ Blossom asked.

‘I told you, I’m going to my bed.’

‘Wait,’ Eleanor said. ‘There is one thing we have to decide tonight.’

‘And what might that be, dear?’ said Arthur.

‘Who’s going to take care of Sylvie Calder in the meantime?’

‘Her father, surely,’ Blossom said. ‘She’s his responsibility.’

‘No,’ Forbes said. ‘She’s my responsibility.’ He opened the parlour door and leaned against it, resting brow and shoulder against the woodwork. ‘Sylvie will not be a problem. I’ll take care of Sylvie.’

‘You will?’ said Winn.

‘But how?’ said Blossom.

‘In the best way I know how,’ Forbes said and with a final nod, weary but unrepentant, took himself off to bed.