CHAPTER TWENTY

For Ever and a Day

The search for orders and the laying down of several new keels had continued while the Snark had been under construction and during the long delay before her trials. On that Friday morning in August the yard was buzzing. Big saws carving up timber for new cradles, hammermen rapping on the hull of a torpedo-boat destroyer, caulkers pitching the deck of a high-powered diesel launch slated to go into service with the coastguard in mid-September; the air dry, dry and faintly sulphurous with the threat of thunder.

George Crush was seated in the upstairs lavatory in the general office block when, not long after half past eight, he heard shouting in the corridor and, lowering his newspaper, identified Tom Calder’s unmistakable baritone raised not just in enquiry but in anger.

‘Where is he? Where is the little bastard?’

For a moment George wondered what he might have done that would rouse the wrath of such a patient man and, leaning forward, hastily checked the bolt on the inside of the lavatory door.

‘Forbes, Forbes. I know you’re here. It’s no use hiding.’

‘Oooooow!’ George whistled softly. ‘That’s the way of it, is it?’ and immediately began fumbling with his trousers and braces.

Behind the pebble-glass door of his office at the corridor’s end, Forbes also heard Tom’s shout but, unlike George, he wasn’t mystified. He had known that Calder would come for him sooner or later and as he had no wish to have his mother and sisters around when the confrontation occurred, had left Brunswick Park early that morning, without a word to anyone. There had been no sign of Gowry and the Vauxhall was locked in the garage behind the house so Forbes had walked downhill through the oppressive and unnatural heat.

He had purchased a mug of tea and a sausage sandwich from a stall at the corner of Scott Street and, like a beggar or a waif, had breakfasted standing up. He had had no sleep at all but, all things considered, felt well enough, apart from a slight headache. He was calm, that was the main thing. He might have lost control of the situation temporarily but he was confident that Lindsay would come crawling back to him once Sylvie was out of the way. He had drunk a second cup of tea and then, with the headache waning, had walked on to Aydon Road and had gone directly upstairs to his office to await the inevitable.

The pebble-glass door crashed open.

‘I’m not hiding, Tom,’ Forbes said.

*   *   *

It had not been Tom’s intention to lose his temper. He could not recall the last time it had happened. Even when Dorothy had brazenly confessed her sins he had experienced only helpless inferiority and had tried to be understanding and reasonable. Rationality had always been his downfall. It was not until he had kissed Ewan and Cissie goodbye that blind red rage overwhelmed him.

The coppery sky, dry heat, the metallic taste of smoke compressed by thunderheads had, it seemed, contrived to release him from self-lacerating passivity.

‘Where is she, Forbes? I want to know where she is.’

‘Ask Arthur.’

‘I’ve asked Arthur. I spoke to Arthur on the telephone not ten minutes ago. He doesn’t know where she is.’

‘She went off with her sailor, with Paget.’

‘I don’t mean your wife, damn it. I mean my daughter.’

‘Why should I tell you where Sylvie is? You abandoned her.’

‘That,’ Tom said, ‘is it.’

‘What are you going to do?’ Forbes said. ‘Have her back? Take her over? Incorporate her into your wonderful new family, her and the baby? Don’t be bloody ridiculous. She hates you. She would die before she’d let you take charge.’

‘Then why did she come to my house, not yours?’

‘Vengeance,’ Forbes said, shrugging. ‘Malice. How the hell do I know what goes on in Sylvie’s head? She’s muddled. No, she’s cracked. Deranged. Sure and she even believed I’d marry her if she just managed to get herself knocked up. Which she did, of course, which she did.’

‘She came to me for help.’

‘She came to your house only to make trouble,’ Forbes said, ‘otherwise she’d still be there. Am I not right?’

‘Are you going to marry her?’

Forbes laughed. ‘Don’t tell me she got it from you? I always thought she got it from her mother – her crazy streak, I mean. Marry her, marry Sylvie? Jesus, Tom, you’re as daft as she is if you think I’m going to sacrifice my career and my family just to marry your daughter.’

‘What happened to Albert?’

‘Nothing. He got paid. He still gets paid.’

‘Where is she, damn it? Where have you put her?’

Forbes shook his head. ‘It’s too late to saddle the white charger, Tom. Too late to gallop to the rescue. Anyhow, I’ll fix it.’

‘Fix it? Fix what?’

‘Everything,’ Forbes said. ‘Lindsay, too.’

‘How,’ Tom said, thickly, ‘are you going to fix it?’

‘Sylvie?’ Forbes said. ‘Buy her off. Money’s all she’s after, all she’s ever been after. I think that’s why we hit it off so well. Right now, with a kiddie on the way, other daft ideas may be rattling around in her head, but she’ll see reason quickly enough when there’s an offer on the table. And if she won’t see reason then Albert certainly will.’

‘And Lindsay, how will you fix it with Lindsay?’

‘I don’t have to,’ Forbes said. ‘Lindsay will come back of her own accord once she thinks she’s taught me a lesson.’

Tom nodded too. He hitched a trouser-leg, seated himself on the edge of the desk and folded his arms. He regarded Forbes benignly – rational, reasonable and apparently relieved that his young partner had everything under control.

‘I see,’ Tom said. ‘I see.’

*   *   *

Pressed to the wall by the pebble-glass door, ear cocked, George Crush was puzzled by the sudden silence. He knew that Forbes had a mistress, of course – Forbes had been unable to resist bragging about her – but he itched for more information about Calder’s daughter, and prissy Lindsay Franklin and her sailorman lover. He hugged himself with anticipation, delighted that the Franklins’ close-knit family was unravelling at last.

A moment later he was diving for cover as the pebble-glass door of the office exploded in a shower of glass and young Forbes McCulloch, like some dumb drag-weight, was left hanging in the broken frame.

Before George could right himself, Forbes was yanked back through the splintered space. He reappeared almost at once as Tom Calder hurled him against the door for a second time.

‘Where is she, Forbes?’ Tom was shouting. ‘What the hell have you done with her, you bastard?’

George had no inclination to rush to Forbes’s aid or pit himself against Calder. He scrambled to get to his feet but then the door whanged open and more chips of broken glass showered over him and he elected instead to crawl into the nearest corner, hug his knees to his chest and make himself too small to be noticed. He winced as Forbes landed on the boards in front of him, winced again when Tom Calder followed, pouncing out of the light like some great cat or gigantic stick insect.

Blood trickled from Forbes’s nose and he was too winded to retaliate or even defend himself properly. Down the corridor doors were swinging open, heads appearing: Martin Franklin, Ross, Johnny too. Tom ignored them and continued to beat Forbes about the face with an unclenched fist.

‘Where – is – she – Forbes? Tell – me – where – she – is.’

He knelt and pinned Forbes to the floor.

‘Where’s my daughter? What have you done to her?’

To George’s horror Forbes spat into Tom Calder’s face.

‘Sod off!’ Forbes said, squinting through pain. ‘I’m telling you nothing. You’ll get nothing out of me.’ Then almost with an air of detachment Tom grabbed Forbes by the shoulders and began to beat his head rhythmically upon the floorboards, intent, it seemed, on killing him.

‘Where – is – she? Where – is – she? Where…’

‘I know where she is,’ George croaked.

*   *   *

Starched white linen tablecloths, heavy silver services and waiters who seemed to glide about on oiled castors lent the breakfast-room in the Central Hotel a certain tranquillity in spite of bustling activity in the wings.

Breakfast for two at a corner table was a novelty that restored Lindsay’s spirits and, for a time at least, reduced her guilt about leaving her children. Gradually she yielded to Geoffrey’s reassuring voice and gentlemanly good manners. He was effortlessly pleasant and appeared to have all the time in the world to devote to her. Different, so different from Forbes. He asked how well she had slept, how she felt. He even offered to take her back to Brunswick Park if she had changed her mind.

Lindsay shook her head. ‘It wasn’t just a gesture, Geoffrey.’

‘No, I didn’t think it was,’ he said. ‘You will go back at some point, though, will you not?’

‘To see the children, yes.’

‘And your husband?’

‘I don’t much care if I never see Forbes again.’

‘Did you have no clue that he was seeing another woman?’

‘None.’

‘It must have been a frightful shock.’

‘Oddly,’ Lindsay said, ‘I think I rather expected it, though not that he had taken up with Tom Calder’s daughter.’

‘I gather it began some time ago.’

‘Years ago apparently, before Forbes and I were even married.’

‘Perhaps it wasn’t entirely a coincidence,’ Geoffrey suggested.

Lindsay had eaten porridge, kippers, a little scrambled egg and several slices of crisp toast spread with fresh butter and marmalade, washed down with black coffee. She was pleasantly full and her guilt had diminished and she felt more clear-eyed and clear-headed than she had done in months. The illicit pleasure of being with Geoffrey was stimulating. She watched him light a cigarette, watched smoke curl from the matchstick, saw him inhale, shake out the match and place it gently in an ashtray. He exhaled and smiled at her through the dispersing smoke.

She had dressed with care, had arranged her hair, touched her face with powder, her lips with rouge: enough, just enough, to let him know that she did not take him for granted.

‘Not a coincidence: what do you mean?’ Lindsay said.

‘If your husband had a choice – which apparently he had – he chose you over this other girl. Doesn’t that indicate something other than coincidence?’

‘Geoffrey, don’t tell me you’re arguing Forbes’s case for him?’

‘I wouldn’t dare,’ said Geoffrey. ‘It’s a fair question, though.’

‘It’s not a comedy of manners, Geoffrey, not a matter of misplaced affections or mistaken identities. The girl’s pregnant.’ Lindsay paused. ‘Are you asking if Forbes loved me more than he loved her? The answer’s remarkably simple: I had money and poor Sylvie Calder did not. I had sound family connections and Sylvie Calder had none. Even so, she obviously offered him something that I could not and that’s why he took up with her without a thought for me or how it would affect our marriage.’

‘He didn’t choose to marry the girl, however.’

‘Of course he didn’t.’

‘And he will not marry her now?’

‘No.’

‘Are you sure, Lindsay?’

‘Absolutely sure.’

Geoffrey blew smoke, wafted it away from her with the flat of his hand. His cuffs, Lindsay noticed, were fastened with silver links rubbed to a fine patina that all but obliterated the monogram. She wondered if the links had once belonged to his father and provided a connection with home, if they were symbols of the sailor’s life, the traveller’s life where everything had to be compact and functional, nothing superfluous. Would she ever attain that degree of intimacy with him, she wondered, become so necessary that he would not leave her behind no matter how far he travelled?

‘Did the fact that Forbes was your cousin make any difference?’

‘None.’ Lindsay did not resent his inquisitiveness. ‘Forbes had lived all his life in Ireland. We were strangers when we first met, old enough by then to…’ She experienced a twinge of suspicion, then of surprise. ‘Geoffrey, are you asking why I chose to marry him?’

‘Probably.’

‘My grandfather threw us together.’

‘I don’t think that’s good enough,’ Geoffrey said mildly.

Now she understood: he was probing, gently probing to discover if she still loved Forbes, if all those fine confused feelings had really been swept away or if some spark of attraction still remained between them. How could she answer him? How could she tell him that she had been driven by a physical desire that had transcended common sense and that had even survived the tedium of courtship. How could she possibly admit that she still took pleasure in Forbes’s love-making? How could she separate sex from love in a way that Geoffrey would understand, would not misconstrue? She wanted Geoffrey’s arms about her but she did not feel for him the clamouring ache, the infuriating and insistent demand of the blood that Forbes had once roused in her and perhaps still did.

‘Do you feel that way about me?’ Geoffrey said.

If she said Yes then Geoffrey would fight for her. If she said Yes, he would take it as a signal that all was up with her marriage: Geoffrey was sure enough of himself to assume responsibility for another man’s children but another man’s wife, however, might never be his. If she said No, however, he might slip away from her to avoid a commitment that could never be fulfilled and she would lose his love and friendship for ever.

The risks, the dangers were considerable.

It took courage for Lindsay to accept them.

‘No, Geoffrey,’ she heard herself say. ‘No, I do not.’

‘At least you’re honest, Lindsay.

‘How could I be anything else after what you’ve done for me?’

‘I’ve done nothing,’ he said.

‘You’ve asked for nothing, if that’s what you mean.’

‘I’m in love with you, Lindsay, but that doesn’t give me the right to ask anything of you, not even that you love me in turn.’

‘If I do go back to Forbes…’

‘You will,’ Geoffrey said. ‘You should.’

‘Will you still love me then?’

‘No,’ he said, ‘that’s not the real issue, darling. The real issue is will you still love me? I can’t answer that question for you.’

‘And I can’t answer it either.’

‘Then we’ll just have to wait and see,’ Geoffrey said.

‘Do you mean it?’

‘Of course I do.’ He put down the cigarette and glanced at his wristlet watch. ‘Listen, I’m not abandoning you, Lindsay, but I will have to show my face at the Gareloch some time this morning. I’d take you with me but that really wouldn’t be advisable under the circumstances.’

‘No. It wouldn’t fit in with my plan.’

‘Plan?’

‘Oh, yes,’ Lindsay said. ‘I’m not entirely lacking in female wiles, Geoffrey. I spent a good deal of time last night thinking it out.’

‘What do you intend to do?’

She smiled at him and touched his hand.

‘Go straight to Harper’s Hill,’ Lindsay said, ‘and talk to my Aunt Lilias.’

‘Will she help you?’

‘Oh, yes,’ Lindsay said. ‘I’m absolutely sure she will.’

*   *   *

Martin was delegated to come after him, to calm him down and find out what had started the row. At that moment Tom did not care who knew about his private affairs or even what the outcome would be for the partnership and his future in it. He had assaulted a Franklin. He had bloodied the nose of a managerial colleague in front of witnesses, and if George Crush hadn’t spoken out he might have gone on to commit murder. He should be ashamed of his behaviour but he was not. His blood was still on fire and he had no particular patience with Martin, although he did acknowledge that his brother-in-law had every right to ask for and every reason to be told the truth.

He allowed Martin to steer him into the office and give him a hand towel from the bottom drawer to wrap round his broken knuckles.

‘What the devil was that all about?’ Martin said.

‘Why don’t you ask your precious cousin?’

‘Be easy, Tom. Be easy. I’m asking you,’ Martin said. ‘Besides, Forbes has already gone. As soon as you let him go, he picked himself up and charged off down the main staircase with George Crush scuttling in his wake.’

Tom wiped bloody spittle from his face with the hand towel.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘All right.’

‘Does it have to do with Lindsay?’ Martin asked.

‘Lindsay? What makes you think it has to do with Lindsay?’

‘You were were keen on her once. I thought perhaps…’

Tom gave a little grunt, not quite laughter. ‘I didn’t realise it had been so obvious. No, it doesn’t have to do with Lindsay, although she is involved.’ He looked straight at his brother-in-law, at the broad Franklin features, the honest blue eyes. ‘I’ve a grown daughter, did you know that?’

‘Yes. We all know that.’

‘Apparently she’s been Forbes McCulloch’s mistress for the past five or six years, and now he’s got her pregnant. That’s it.’

Martin was silent for half a second. He absorbed the information slowly, frowning, his jaw set. He was too mature to feign embarrassment.

At length, he said, ‘Does Lindsay know?’

‘Yes, Lindsay knows.’

‘Will she – I mean, will she leave him because of it?’

‘She’s already gone. She left Brunswick Park late last night.’

Martin nodded, frowning. ‘Divorce, I suppose, is inevitable.’

‘Is that all that concerns you, Martin? A possible scandal?’

‘No, no, no, of course not. Sorry, Tom, your daughter must be your first concern. Have you seen her yet?’

‘Not yet. I didn’t know where he had put her until five minutes ago.’

‘Is that what the fight was about?’

‘I lost my temper. I shouldn’t have lost my temper.’

‘God!’ Martin said. ‘If it had been me – I mean, if he had done that to my daughter I think I’d have killed him. He was never right for Lindsay, you know. He should never have been brought into our family. He should have been left in Ireland where he belongs. Pappy has a great deal to answer for. Pappy and Aunt Kay too. It’s not as if we needed new blood. Hah! New blood, listen to me! Bad blood, that’s what it is. Bad blood all along. Did he tell you where to find her?’

‘George did.’

‘Crush? My God! Crush knew, and you didn’t?’ Martin placed an arm about Tom’s shoulder. ‘That’s rotten, just rotten.’

Tom did not shake him off. He was relieved that the secret was out. He could leave the Franklins to sort out their own affairs now, arrange the family pow-wow by which Lindsay’s ‘fate’, and Forbes McCulloch’s too, would be decided, as if nothing were more important than family honour and family pride. It was Arthur who had told him what had happened at Brunswick Park, who had telephoned him early that morning just before he’d left home. For a second Tom was tempted to inform Martin that Lindsay had not just walked out on her husband but had walked out on the arm of Lieutenant Commander Geoffrey Paget, the Admiralty’s purchasing officer.

No, he would leave Arthur to impart that tasty bit of news.

Sylvie was his only concern right now.

‘Where is your daughter?’ Martin said. ‘Where’s he been keeping her?’

‘St Mungo’s Mansions, at the very end of Maryhill Road.’

‘You must go there, Tom. Find her. Make sure she’s – I say, do you think that’s where Forbes has gone shooting off to?’

‘I doubt it,’ Tom answered. ‘Somehow I very much doubt it.’

*   *   *

He ran across the yard with George trailing behind him. He was drenched in sweat and the front of his shirt and jacket were soiled. His head pounded, his heart too, a gigantic throbbing that seemed to pulse all through him right down to his feet. He felt as if he had been wired to an electrical outlet and pounded with a high voltage charge. But he was not out of control yet, not quite out of control. He ran diagonally across the square behind the office block, swung into the lane behind the paint store and headed for the stables where the big Clydesdale dray horses were kept and, in a separate building, the firm’s vans and motor-cars.

The stink of horse manure and petrol hung over the cobbled forecourt where Donald Franklin’s Lanchester was being washed by two young apprentices clad in a new style of dark blue overalls. They looked up, startled, when Forbes suddenly appeared in the yard.

‘Where is he?’ Forbes snapped. ‘Where’s my brother?’

‘B-b-brother, sir?’

‘Are you a bloody idiot? My brother, Gowry McCulloch. I’m looking for my brother. I want my brother out here. Now.’

‘Gowry isnae here, Mr McCulloch.’

‘Where is he then, damn it?’

‘Dunno, Mr McCulloch. He hasnae been seen here all mornin’. We just thought he was wi’ you, like he usually is.’

Suddenly all the energy left him. Crushed by Gowry’s absence, he felt as if he had charged into a blank brick wall. He had directed himself at Gowry, at telling Gowry what to do to solve the problem, how to execute the master plan that would fix everything for all of them. Now Gowry was missing and he had lost his ally, his tool.

He slithered on the ribbons of soapy water that trickled from the motor-car and snaked away through the ruts made by the hoofs of countless horses in the years before his arrival in Glasgow, in the good old days of Pappy Franklin’s reign. The Lanchester glinted in the coppery light. Two young apprentice boys gawked at him as if he were a spectre. Then George, sawing like a war-horse, stumped into the yard and began to yell apologies into his ear.

‘I’m sorry, son. I’m sorry, Forbes. I should never have opened my trap. I mean, I thought – I thought he was going to do for you. I thought he was…’

‘George. Shut. Up.’

‘Honest to God, Forbes, I thought he was for murdering you.’

‘Perhaps,’ Forbes said, ‘perhaps you should have let him.’

He gave a little shiver as shock crept into his bones. He felt in danger of passing out or, worse, of doing something so rash that it would finish him for ever. The apprentices watched, the water hose splashed on the cobbles, and George, still gasping for breath, ran out of apologies.

Lindsay had left him, he had been without sleep for thirty hours, and he was sore and bleeding: almost overcome by the stench of the stable yard and the din of industry around him, he felt himself waver.

‘Can you start that machine?’ Forbes snapped.

‘What’s that, Mr McCulloch?’

‘That machine, the motor-car. Can you start it?’

‘Aye, sir, but…’

‘Start it then.’

‘But Mr McCulloch, it’s Mr Franklin’s motor-car.’

‘Start it, just start it.’

He pushed through a wave of exhaustion, telling himself that to act without Gowry would be dangerous, that he must not be there when it happened. The boys cranked the handle at the front of the machine. Forbes heaved himself into the driving seat and waited for the engine to fire. He felt the shudder, the jerk and jounce of the big combustion engine and waited, quite patiently now, for the drive chain to engage.

George, by the running board, said, ‘Where are you going, Forbes? At least tell me where you’re going.’

‘To look for Gowry,’ Forbes answered, then, fumbling for a low gear, steered his uncle’s motor-car away from the stables and out into Aydon Road.

*   *   *

‘I thought it would be you,’ Sylvie said. ‘I didn’t really expect him to come himself. I did what you told me to do, but it did not do one bit of good, did it?’

‘That depends,’ Gowry said.

‘It doesn’t depend on Forbes, though.’

Already the conversation was becoming horribly slewed, but then, Gowry thought, everything about the situation was already horribly slewed.

Sylvie said, ‘If we had been depending on Forbes he would have called round last night, wouldn’t he not now? I must say, Gowry, you do take me for a fool sometimes. I enjoyed it, though, I enjoyed telling them. It was fun, in its way, even if it did me no good in the long run.’

She tied the ribbons of her sun-bonnet with tiny, butterfly movements. Her hands looked tinier than ever and her skin was almost translucent. She seemed to be all stomach, swollen up in front, reduced everywhere else. When she moved, however, she wasn’t clumsy. Even her flat-heeled gait had about it, Gowry thought, a certain daintiness that housed and protected her appeal.

She said, ‘Did Forbes send you to punish me?’

‘Nope. He doesn’t want to punish you, Sylvie.’

‘What will he do, Gowry-Wowry, now he has lost me?’

‘Sylvie, I’ve no idea,’ Gowry lied. ‘Why don’t you forget about Forbes?’

She patted her stomach. ‘How can I?’

‘It might not be his, you know,’ Gowry said.

‘It’s not your baby.’ She pouted. ‘It’s Forbes’s baby.’

‘What makes you so certain?’ Gowry asked.

‘I know it is. I feel it is.’

‘Well,’ Gowry said, ‘I suppose that’s as good an answer as any.’

‘It’s the only answer you will ever get, dearest,’ Sylvie said. ‘Are you taking me out for the day? You promised you would and, as you can see’ – she pirouetted slowly before him – ‘I’m all ready.’

‘Sure and I’m taking you out,’ Gowry said. ‘Where’s Albert?’

‘Still sleeping, sleeping it off.’

‘You didn’t tell him what happened yesterday, did you?’

‘He would not have understood.’ She pirouetted again, lazily, her arms stuck out like rudimentary wings. ‘The wife was not so very upset. I had tea with them, with both wives. Perhaps they knew all along, about me, I mean, and that’s why they weren’t surprised to see me.’

‘They didn’t know about you.’

‘She didn’t know about the baby? You didn’t tell her about the baby?’

‘No,’ Gowry said. ‘I thought it would be more conclusive if you told her.’

‘Oh, it was,’ said Sylvie. ‘Absolutely positively conclusive. Did she give him what-for when he got home last night?’

‘She walked out on him.’

‘Did she now?’

Realising his error at once, Gowry reached lightly for her arm. ‘Now, Sylvie, don’t go getting your hopes up. She’ll be back in a day or two.’

‘And he won’t leave her?’

‘Never,’ Gowry said. ‘I think you know that already.’

She nodded, large movements of her little, bonneted head.

‘Is that why you sent me to my papa’s wife’s house? To see for myself?’

‘Yes, and to let them see you,’ Gowry said.

‘To let them know I exist,’ she said.

‘That’s it,’ said Gowry. ‘Now, if you’re ready, we had better be pushing along before Albert wakes up and blames us for his sore head.’

She giggled. ‘Very well, dearest. If we are leaving at once perhaps you would be good enough to carry King Edward down to the motor-car for me.’

‘King Edward?’ Gowry said.

Indicating a bulky, brown-paper-wrapped package on the table, Sylvie said, ‘My royal scrapbooks. I want to take them with me.’

‘But why?’ he asked.

‘In case I don’t come back,’ she said.

*   *   *

The sound was like a drum inside his head. He opened his eyes. Shoals of pure black tadpoles swam through pond light until they were consumed by two or three large red flashes that may or may not have been carp.

Albert burped, swallowed and sat up in bed.

The sour taste of Irish rye whiskey in his mouth reminded him of the night before and he wondered how he had got from Kirby’s to the nether end of Maryhill Road. His last recollection was of tumbling downstairs at the club and falling full length into the lane.

Sliding his stained shirt sleeves up, he peered at his elbows and confirmed that they were heavily bruised. He put his head in his hands, groaned and listened to the remorseless thud, thump, thud, thump of the big steam hammer that reverberated inside his skull.

‘Sylvie?’ he shouted: no shout at all, a dry crackle. ‘Syl-veee?’

There was no answer. There seldom was. She did not run to do his bidding like a dutiful daughter. As she kept reminding him, she was not his real daughter at all and if he wanted a servant to dance attendance upon him then he had better scratch up the money to employ one now that Morag and the cook had been dismissed. He missed the ministrations of a good obedient woman in the mornings more than he missed hugs and cuddles at night.

Now, in the sick, sour, stenchy state of the monumentally hung-over he needed his wife, his good, true, loyal and devoted wife, his Florence, to cradle and cosset him. But Florence was gone, never to return, and soon he would have no one to turn to, for Sylvie would be occupied with baby, baby, baby as soon as the poor wee bastard popped into the cruel, cruel world.

‘Sylvie, sweetheart, please stop that noise.’

The thudding continued unabated.

Albert rolled out of bed.

He was trouserless, drawerless and practically shirtless too, for the garment was ripped from collar to midriff and stained with – something; not blood, thank God, not blood. Still examining his fragile frame, he crabbed to the bedroom door and went out into the hall, heading for the water closet.

It was only when he reached the hallway that he realised that the unremitting racket was definitely emanating from somewhere outside his head. He glanced towards the drawing-room and mumbled, ‘Sylvie?’ while, more by instinct than neural command, his feet swung him towards the apartment’s big main door.

‘All right, all right, I’m coming, I’m coming.’

He opened the door and squinted into the dismal light of the landing.

‘You?’ he said. ‘You?’

‘Where is she, Albert?’

‘Through the – in the – what are you doing here, Tom Calder?’ He swung round, his head floating before him like a punctured balloon. He blinked, and peered at the drawing-room door, then, rolling his eyes, at the door of Sylvie’s bedroom. ‘Is she – I mean, did she send for you? She isn’t having – hasn’t had…’

‘The baby?’ Tom stepped past him, looking round too. ‘For God’s sake, Albert, don’t tell me you’re drunk at a time like this? Where is she?’

‘In the … on the … I don’t know,’ said Albert, helplessly. ‘I haven’t been too well myself lately.’

‘Out of my damned way.’

Tom strode across the hall and flung open the drawing-room door. He studied the room from the threshold for a moment or two, then, cutting a series of diagonals across the hall, flung open the doors to the kitchen, the bedrooms and, finally, the lavatory.

One hand laid against his cheek like a man with toothache, Albert watched Tom complete the inspection.

‘She isn’t in the apartment. Where is she, Albert? Did McCulloch come for her? Did Forbes take her away?’

‘McCulloch?’

‘Forbes McCulloch, the person who’s been paying your rent.’

‘Oh, yes. Forbes. No, he wouldn’t come for her. He abandoned her.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Wants no more to do with her since she got – you know.’

‘Is it not his child?’

Albert raised his other hand, pressed it hard against his other cheek, causing his moustache to flick out at the ends like torpedo fins. He groaned once more, low and crooning. ‘Yes, yes, it’s his child. There’s no doubt of that. I had nothing to do with it. Had to happen sooner or later, nature being what it is, had to happen. How did you…’

‘Find out? Sylvie called on my wife yesterday afternoon.’

‘Your wife?’ For a moment it seemed that Albert had forgotten about Tom Calder’s marriage, then he said, ‘To the Franklin girl, yes, right, of course. You married the Franklin girl.’

‘Sylvie told my wife everything.’

‘And your wife told you?’

‘Of course she told me. What’s more, Sylvie showed herself to Lindsay McCulloch and told both of them the whole sad, sordid story. Don’t tell me that you didn’t know? I thought you’d sent her to ask for money?’

‘Money? Me? No, not me. No.’ Alarm at the unjust accusation awakened Albert’s wits. ‘Wait,’ he said. ‘I have to go to the lavatory. Back in a mo’.’

In the clean, cool, tiled room Albert relieved himself. He bathed his face with tap water and washed out his mouth. He drank half a tumbler of water slowly and then, a little revived if not exactly refreshed, returned to the hall.

Tom was in the drawing-room, looking down into the street.

The sky had a funny tinge to it, whisky-coloured, sour. Even from the heights of the Mansions you could see no distance at all.

Albert stared bleakly at the window, waiting for Tom Calder to make the next move which, with any luck, might even be an offer of financial assistance.

Tom turned.

‘Are you lying to me, Albert? Do you really not know where Sylvie is?’

‘Would I lie to—no, I don’t. I really do not.’

Still clad only in the torn shirt, he seated himself on the arm of the sofa and modestly tucked the shirt-tails into his lap. He told himself that he had negotiated with Tom Calder too many times in the past to be intimidated and he was confident that paternal sentiment would leave Sylvie’s father vulnerable to the right kind of persuasion.

It did not occur to him that Tom Calder too had changed.

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

‘Yesterday, in the forenoon.’

‘Here?’

‘Yes, here. I left about noon to go into the city on business.’

‘Drinking business, I suppose,’ Tom said. ‘Was Sylvie here when you got back last night?’

‘I think – yes, I’m sure she was. Tucked up in bed.’

‘You don’t know, do you, Albert?’ Tom did not await an answer. ‘How long has she known Forbes McCulloch?’

‘If you mean how long has she been his – his sweetheart, five years going on six. I didn’t approve of the arrangement and all I can say is, thank God her mother, that Florence isn’t alive to see what’s befallen her daughter. Yes, I say daughter, Tom; although she wasn’t, she seemed like it, and Florence and I both thought of her as our flesh, our own dear child.’ He placed a finger to the corner of his eye and brushed at an invisible tear. ‘Since McCulloch abandoned her things have been very bad for us. She, the dear girl, knows how worried I’ve been about making ends meet what with the baby coming and all, and how I’ve not been well. I mean, she wouldn’t stoop, would not humiliate herself by begging Forbes to give her money. She wanted to go to you, to take you into her confidence. She knew you’d understand, that you’d see us right until we got straightened out and back on our feet. But I said no. No, I said. Tom’s got a life of his own and a wife of his own and a house of his own and he doesn’t want to be bothered with you. But’ – Albert paused for breath, sighed, gestured with an open palm – ‘obviously she didn’t heed my advice. Swallowed her pride, not for her sake, for my sake, my sake and the baby’s.’

Tom listened patiently and apparently without scepticism to the harangue. He listened without moving from his stance by the window, his arms folded, long chin tucked down almost to his breastbone.

Albert watched for a sign, any sign – a quiver of the lip, a clenching of the fingers, a quick moist flutter of the eyelids – that he was making headway, getting through, but Tom’s expression was remarkably unrevealing.

‘So,’ Albert said, ‘will you help her, Tom? She’s been a foolish girl, a wicked girl, she’s aware of that, she’s ready to admit it, but she has no one else to turn to now, no one else who will stand by her in her time of need, and you, after all, are her papa.’

‘Where is she, Albert? She’s more than eight months pregnant. Where is she?’

It was the one question that Tom had no right to ask, the one question to which he, Albert Hartnell, could not fudge an answer, a question that nullified all that had gone before and wasted the long heart-rending, hypocritical speech that had been the one and only card in his hand.

He covered his eyes to hide his tears.

‘Oh, Tom,’ he said, sincerely. ‘Oh, Tom, I wish to God I knew.’

*   *   *

Gowry drove for a little over an hour. Even at speed the motion of the Vauxhall generated no cooling breeze. The air seemed almost abrasive, stinging his cheekbones and brow. He followed the route that Forbes and he had driven one afternoon not long after his brother’s break-up with Sylvie. They had talked about it then in a general sort of way and before he’d had any reason to take Forbes’s suggestion seriously.

She bounced beside him, knees spread under the summer dress, one fist on the padded rim of the panel, the other hand held not to her bonnet but to her stomach as if to keep in place whatever nestled within her.

Fifteen miles out the road narrowed and dipped into the valley under the ridge of the Ottershaw Hills and the twin rivers that watered the plain became visible. The sky to the west was marked by a long, flat plain of matt black cloud that lay motionless behind the mountains.

Inside his flapping leather overcoat Gowry sweated.

He wished that she would ask him where he was taking her. Her trust in him made him feel bad.

They passed farm wagons laden with late hay or, for all he knew, straw from the first-cut crops of the autumn season. They passed a miller’s van grinding down the hill into the village, then two carts and, scattered along the grassy verge, a skitter of eight or ten bullocks in the care of a man and a boy.

Gowry braked, slowed to a point where he could hear the engine spluttering and smell the brassy stench of the radiator coming up to the boil.

As the motor crawled past, Sylvie waved and called out, ‘Don’t be frighted. Don’t be frighted,’ not to the boy or the man but to the dung-smeared and panicky cattle. ‘It’s only a motoring car, our motoring car.’

Gowry steered to the bottom of the hill and turned left towards the loch.

*   *   *

‘I take it you’ve heard the news?’ Kay said as soon as her sister-in-law was shown into the drawing-room.

‘Of course I have heard the news,’ Lilias retorted. ‘Do you think I would be visiting at this hour of the morning if I hadn’t heard the news?’ She paused and composed herself for the half lie. ‘Martin called me on the telephone and I cancelled my appointments and came round straight away.’

‘Do you want tea?’

‘No, Kay, I do not want tea. I want an explanation as to what’s going on.’

‘Desertion,’ Kay McCulloch said. ‘Plain and simple. There’s your explanation. She’s run off with her sailor boy.’

‘That isn’t the story I heard,’ Lilias said.

She seated herself on the sofa and glanced at the portrait of her long-dead sister-in-law that hung over the empty fireplace. It had been years, in fact, since she had been in this room in her brother’s house, for she had never been a frequent visitor to Brunswick Park. In spite of her agitation the portrait caught and held her attention; she had forgotten just how pretty Lindsay’s mother had been in her youth.

Kay said, ‘I’m not sure he’ll want to take her back.’

Lilias gave herself a little shake. ‘Pardon?’

‘Forbes: I’m not sure he’ll have her back.’

Lilias had heard rumours about Lieutenant Commander Paget’s interest in her niece but, having met the fellow, found it difficult to cast him in the role of seducer. It was fortunate, however, that Martin had had the foresight to call her on the telephone and tell her what had occurred at the yard and to confirm Lindsay’s version of events, otherwise she might have been tempted to give some credence to Kay’s threat.

Kay said, ‘He might: just to avoid a public scandal, he might.’

‘A public scandal?’ Lilias said.

‘A divorce would be all over the newspapers.’

Lilias gave a ragged little laugh. ‘Ah, I see. Forbes is willing to forgive and forget out of a sense of family duty. How noble of him. What, may I enquire, would Forbes’s case stand upon?’

‘Desertion. She walked off with another man.’

Even Lilias was flabbergasted at the woman’s effrontery, the conviction that her son was the wronged party and her ability not merely to twist the facts to suit that view but to accept her version as absolute and incontestable.

‘Lieutenant Commander Paget?’

‘That’s the man,’ said Kay, nodding. ‘Her lover.’

‘Kay.’ Lilias chose her words with care. ‘I feel that I should warn you to be careful in what you say. There is such as a thing as slander, you know.’

‘Walked out of this house on his arm and hasn’t been seen since.’

‘What – twelve hours ago?’

Flat denial, Kay’s defence, would not stand up for long. Apparently it hadn’t dawned on her sister-in-law that she, Lilias, had already heard the whole story and that Forbes McCulloch’s scandalous affair with poor Tom Calder’s daughter was swiftly becoming common knowledge.

‘Is…’ Lilias paused. ‘Is Forbes at work?’

‘Of course he is,’ Kay said indignantly. ‘He’s not going to squander valuable time trailing after her, is he? It’s up to her to come back to him.’

‘I see,’ said Lilias. ‘And to ask his forgiveness?’

‘He’s a generous boy. He might do it.’

‘Is that what you would advise him to do, Kay?’

‘It isn’t up to me. He’s a grown man now.’

‘Not too old to heed his mother’s advice, surely?’ Lilias said.

She had lost her awe of the McCullochs long ago. She had nothing but scorn for them and knew that if she set her mind to it she could shred her sister-in-law’s arguments and grind them down as finely as a pound of Scotch beef. It was, Lilias saw, not ignorance or deviousness but a mad kind of egotism that protected Kay and her kin against reality. She wondered at the nature of the man – a man she had never met – who stood in the shadow of this woman, who had fathered sons and daughters upon her and who, by the immutable laws of nature, must have had some sort of influence upon their lives.

‘I will be telling Forbes,’ Kay said, ‘to do what’s right.’

‘Right for whom?’ said Lilias.

‘For the family.’

‘To follow his conscience?’ Lilias said. ‘Is that what you mean?’

Instinct made Kay wary but not wary enough to avoid the trap. She stiffened her shoulders, straightened her spine and endeavoured to appear both hurt and haughty. ‘Aye, that is what I mean.’

‘And the child?’

‘He would not be wanting the children to be without a mother.’

‘Or a father?’ Lilias said.

The foxy eye was suddenly as sharp and glittering as a shard of glass. Her head twitched and her lips were sucked in against her teeth. She squinted up malevolently at her tall and elegant sister-in-law as Lilias got to her feet.

‘Or a father?’ Lilias said again.

‘Forbes isn’t the father. That creature is lying.’

‘That creature?’ Lilias said. ‘Well, eventually it will be for a court to decide whether she’s lying or not.’

‘Court, what court?’ Kay said.

‘Oh, come now, Kay, surely you don’t think my niece is going to remain married to an adulterer?’

‘She’s the adulterer.’

‘Is she?’ Lilias said. ‘On what evidence?’

‘On the evidence of that sailorman.’

‘Well,’ Lilias said, almost too airily, ‘I doubt if a counterclaim will carry much weight when it comes to arranging the financial settlement; but you never can tell with the law, can you? Meanwhile, our Mr Harrington or one of his colleagues will draft a petition for judicial separation so that proceedings may get under way. Lindsay will probably be anxious to have charge of the children – her children, I mean – and be free of her obligations to Forbes. She will, of course, expect to be maintained here in the family house on terms not dissimilar to those under which your son has been keeping Miss Sylvie Calder: rent paid and livings provided, that is. If those terms do not prove satisfactory, or if Forbes wishes to marry again in the near future, then we will progress immediately to a full petition for divorce, in which case the newspapermen will have a great deal of fun and the Franklins’ business may very well suffer some setback.’

Kay listened with her mouth open.

‘As to his position in the firm, the partnership,’ Lilias concluded, ‘that is not a matter than can be settled at once. Besides, it’s something for the men to discuss and decide upon.’

‘How?’ Kay began: she swallowed. ‘How did we fall to talking about the end of my son’s marriage? Lindsay hasn’t been gone but twelve hours; you said so yourself. Nobody knows where she is, what she feels about any of this. She’s with her sailor…’ Abruptly Kay jerked upright, scowling. ‘Oh! So that’s it!’ she exclaimed. ‘You want Lindsay to marry this sailor, don’t you, so that Franklin’s will have more pull with the navy contractors?’

‘Don’t,’ Lilias said, ‘be ridiculous.’

‘Forbes will have something to say about that.’

‘No doubt he will,’ said Lilias. ‘However, I have said my piece, Kay, and I’m going home now.’

‘Hah!’ Kay said. ‘It’ll be a different story when she turns up, you’ll see.’

Lilias could not resist. ‘Sylvie Calder, do you mean?’

‘I mean Lindsay. She won’t agree to any of this divorce nonsense.’

‘Will she not?’ Lilias said. ‘Oh, I think she might, my dear, given that it was her idea in the first place. By the way, she has “turned up” as you put it, not that she was ever really lost.’

‘What? Where is she?’

‘At Harper’s Hill, of course,’ Lilias said, ‘waiting to join me for lunch.’

*   *   *

They sat idly for a while on the shore of the loch under a jumble of elephant-grey boulders. Behind and around them conifers released a resinous smell in the sultry noon heat. The loch was not large enough to attract boatmen and there were no fishermen casting from the shore at that hour on a weekday.

The couple by the loch side did not speak. There seemed to be nothing left for them to say.

Sylvie sat back, the crown of the sun-bonnet crushed against the rocks, her legs stuck out before her. Even she was perspiring now, a light film of sweat on her upper lip and forehead. Folded passively on her stomach, her hands moved with the rhythm of her breathing. Propped on an elbow at her side, Gowry studied her cautiously. From across the tops of the trees, where the ridge broke to the north, came a faint mutter of thunder. Gowry raised his head and listened for a moment, then he said, ‘You can still be rid of it, Sylvie.’

‘It’s too late,’ she said.

‘No, it isn’t,’ Gowry said.

He had taken off the leather overcoat and had left it in the Vauxhall. The motor-car was parked at the end of a rough track fifty or sixty yards away behind the rock step. He leaned closer, and lowered his voice.

‘You can still be rid of it if you want to,’ he said. ‘I know a way.’

‘What way would that be?’

‘The way the girls do it in the part of Ireland where I come from.’

‘Drowning. It’s drowning,’ Sylvie said. ‘Isn’t it?’

‘Hmm,’ Gowry murmured. ‘It never fails.’

‘She hasn’t arrived yet. How can we drown her if she hasn’t arrived?’

‘You walk out into the water and stand there,’ Gowry said. ‘Stand there for – oh, five or ten minutes.’

Sylvie turned her head just an inch. ‘That won’t do it.’

‘It will, you know. I’ve seen it happen.’

‘Where?’

‘In Malahide, in Ireland.’

‘They must be very strange people in Malahide.’

‘Oh, I see,’ Gowry said. ‘No, no, it isn’t the drowning that does it, it’s the cold. The cold does it. The cold causes them not to breathe any more.’

Her cool grey eyes were upon him. ‘And then what happens to them?’

‘They pop out.’

‘Under the water?’ Sylvie said.

‘Under the water,’ Gowry said. ‘It’s painless. You won’t even notice it. You don’t even have to look. It just happens.’

‘Does not.’

‘Does too,’ said Gowry.

She turned her head again and looked at her feet, then, lifting herself away from the rock, stared at the glassy water.

‘Do you think,’ she said, ‘I should try?’

‘I dunno,’ said Gowry. ‘It’s up to you.’

‘Does it always work?’

‘Always.’

‘Gowry, do you want me to try?’

Sweat ran down the sides of his face. He did not dare wipe it away. She wasn’t looking at him, though, she was looking at the water.

‘I think,’ Gowry said, ‘that Forbes might want you to try.’

‘Did he tell you that?’

‘Yes. Yes, he did.’

‘It would be all right without the baby, wouldn’t it?’ Sylvie said. ‘I mean, it would be all as right as rain again without the baby. He would come back and it would just be the same as it was before.’

‘Hmm.’

She glanced at him quickly. ‘What about his wife? She’d know about the baby. She would think badly of me. I wouldn’t want her to think badly of me.’

He wanted to ask why Lindsay’s opinion mattered but Sylvie had a blank expression on her face now, neither anxious nor eager.

Along the edge of the loch a dipper hopped, leaving no ripple.

Gowry said, ‘She wouldn’t care what had happened to the baby.’

Sylvie removed one hand from the mound of her stomach, bent the elbow, braced the wrist. She still didn’t look at him.

‘I’ll do it if you tell me to, Gowry,’ she said.

‘Forbes…’

‘No, Gowry. If you tell me to, I’ll do it.’

‘All right,’ he whispered. ‘Do it.’

She pushed herself up on her arm, rolled on to one knee and hoisted herself to her feet. The dipper flew off, skimming low along the edge of the loch. The loch reminded Gowry of oil, a great slick of black diesel, brown only in the sunless shallows where the stones were. He watched her stoop and take off her shoes and waddle down to the water’s edge.

Out beyond the brown rim the water swiftly became black.

He longed for her to give him a second chance, to glance back, swing round, say in that bright, bewildered voice of hers, ‘Gowry, are you sure?’

She did not turn round. She knew what he wanted her to do, what Forbes required of her. Barefoot and bare-legged, she walked straight into the loch. She did not lift her skirts. He watched them fill with air then water, saw them settle around her first like petals then like weed. He was hardly breathing now. Any slight sound might break into the spell that Sylvie laboured under. Oh, yes, laboured under! How much of a joke is that right now, Gowry? he thought, as he watched her wade ankle-deep, knee-deep, out through the brown shallows.

She waded on, her arms raised, struggling against the weight of her skirts, the weight of the water. She stopped. She stared straight ahead of her at the wall of conifers on the further shore. The sun bonnet had slipped back on its ribbon and hung on her curls. She placed her hands on the surface of the water, palms down, fingers spread. She seemed to be thinking, to be contemplating something, Gowry could not imagine what. The waterline was slick and black around her distended stomach. One step and she would be gone. One step, he thought, one tiny step. He felt sweat all over his body, chill as ice.

She seemed to be waiting, not afraid, but lost without his instruction.

Gowry got quietly to his feet, never taking his eyes from her.

She paddled her palms gently on the surface of water.

He saw ripples spread out across the loch in thin steely lines and heard them lap on the brown stones in the shallows; then he closed his eyes and said, ‘Sylvie, come back here,’ just as she disappeared.