CHAPTER SEVEN

Postcard from Portsmouth

Combating nausea had never been a problem for Tom Calder. Even on a torpedo-boat bobbing like a cork miles from shore a couple of deep breaths would dispel any tendency to queasiness. The same could not be said for Martin. Of the six-man team that Franklin’s sent to the Solent to test a brace of coal-fired boilers for the Navy Commission, Martin suffered most.

Personally Tom was not convinced that the navy really knew what it was doing by commissioning coal boilers at all. The Dutch and the Americans had recently obtained good results from the use of liquid fuel and Franklin’s had designs on the drawing board for oil-fired steam-raising apparatus. Martin and Tom had argued the toss with Jason Melrose, R.N., but after the boilers had been installed and the Banshee put out for sea trials Martin rapidly lost interest in arguing the toss about anything.

The programme included trials at one thousand horse-power, trials at full power, and a coal endurance test. With Martin retching into a bucket below, it was left to Tom, aided by MacDougal, Franklin’s foreman fitter, to record the calorimetric observations for the management. Engineer Lieutenant Jason Melrose was the main representative of the navy’s Water-Tube Boiler Committee. Tom had respect for Melrose who had served his time with Thornycroft’s but not for the petty officers and warrant-rank ship’s engineers who seemed to think that wearing a uniform or navy-issue overalls endowed them with authority over everything that moved upon the face of the deep.

Tom was also put out by the fact that the navy insisted on the boilers being installed in the Banshee, a miserable old scow launched back in 1889 with a set of locomotive boilers that had never functioned properly. The new boilers were modifications of a Babcock prototype and by reducing the diameter of the tubes and redesigning the steam-collecting drum Mr Arthur, Peter Holt and he had adapted them for use in torpedo gunboats. Tom was familiar with every seam and joint in the boiler tubes and took pride in his work. He was as anxious as the naval commissioners to assess the trial data and had worked conscientiously through the twelve-hour stint at sea, measuring and recording everything from the carbon value of coal to the temperature of chimney gases.

He did not like being away from home, however. He had no taste for gossiping in the officers’ club or the so-called ‘wardroom’ on the Parade and, on balance, preferred the Niger to southern England. Martin and he were billeted in a small hotel in Gosport across the harbour, MacDougal and the rest of the Franklin’s team in a boarding-house nearby. The fitters had been sent home as soon as the job of installation had been completed and MacDougal, a stereotypical Glaswegian, spent his evenings touring the local pubs in search of a drinkable whisky and the chance of a brawl – all of which left Martin and Tom rather high and dry.

It was after eight o’clock before they sat down at a table in the hotel dining-room. Martin was still whey-faced and shaky after his ordeal but seemed determined to go out again tomorrow for the horse-power trial. Service was slow and grudging and in the long interval between the Windsor soup and the boiled mutton, conversation turned from technical matters to wistful speculation on what might be happening in that distant city on the banks of the Clyde.

Thursday night choir practice would be warming up in St Silas’s school, Perry Perrino working himself into a lather, the as-yet-unmarried Matilda pounding on the piano, sundry voices swooping and diving like swallows as each part of the ‘The Cameronian’s Dream’ was rehearsed, adjusted and reassembled. Tom hoped that he wouldn’t have fallen too far out of tune by the time he got home, for he was eager to appear in the Glasgow Choirs’ concert in St Andrew’s Halls, an event that would bring the season to an early conclusion.

Martin was dreaming not of his beloved homeland, apparently, but of the lovely Aurora Swann. He picked a piece of gristle from his teeth, put it on the side of his plate, and said, ‘You’ve been married, Tom, haven’t you?’

‘I have.’

‘What’s it like?’

‘Marriage in general?’

‘The physical side of it. Is it – difficult?’

‘No, not difficult; a bit awkward at first. Patience is essential, patience on your part, and the utmost consideration for the lady’s modesty.’

‘Hmmm. I’m not very good at being patient,’ Martin confessed. ‘I just hope Rora knows what she’s doing.’

‘I doubt if she will,’ Tom said, with a little shake of the head. ‘It isn’t considered necessary – or proper – for a young woman to be informed about such things. I mean, you haven’t…’

‘Good God, no!’

Tom chewed mutton, drank water from a glass. ‘It’s somehow just taken for granted that the bridegroom will have all the necessary experience.’

‘But I haven’t. I mean, I’ve never…’

‘Nor had I,’ said Tom.

‘But, I mean, it was all right, wasn’t it?’

Colour had returned to Martin’s cheeks. In spite of all the bombast, all the music-hall double-entendres that marked the chatter of young men these days the majority were just as ignorant of the basic facts of life as he, Tom Calder, had been. Some, a few, would learn what to do from tarts or prostitutes but that had never been his style and, unless he missed his guess, it wasn’t Martin Franklin’s either.

‘Yes,’ Tom said, tactfully. ‘It took us a little time to adjust to the intimacy of sharing – well, a bed. But believe me, Martin, nature will take care of things, provided you don’t feel too strong an obligation to prove yourself.’

‘I’m not sure I understand.’

Tom had no wish to discuss his marriage which, in the long run, had been a good deal less than ideal. He had gone to the altar filled with more apprehension than anticipation. Had fretted about his ability to support a wife, to pay household bills, far too many worries to let ‘that one’ dominate. Even so, he had been nervous when Dorothy and he had found themselves alone after the wedding supper and rather shocked to discover that she was more eager for conjugal relations than he was. The fumbling phase had not lasted long. Dorothy had been a sensual creature. Once she had found the key, her flighty nature had drawn her in directions that he would have preferred not to follow and had eventually lured her into adultery.

Martin would have no such concerns. By all accounts Aurora Swann was a well-brought-up young woman and there would be no worries about money to blight their bliss.

Tom said, ‘I take it Aurora loves you?’

‘Oh, yes, I’m sure she does.’

‘And you love her?’

‘Most positively.’

‘Then the physical aspect will take care of itself.’ Tom too was becoming embarrassed, not so much by the topic as by the suspicion that he was beginning to pontificate. ‘Has someone been saying things that worry you, Martin?’

Martin pushed away his plate.

He hesitated, then admitted, ‘My cousin.’

‘Lindsay?’ said Tom. ‘Surely not!’

‘God, no,’ said Martin. ‘My cousin Forbes.’

Tom had not forgotten that odd afternoon in the park when Cissie Franklin had used him as a defence against the young Dubliner. He had not liked Forbes McCulloch then and he did not like him now. To give the lad credit, he was a keen worker, very quick and intelligent. Nevertheless, Tom had often overheard Forbes and George Crush discuss women in a callous and disparaging manner that he found offensive.

‘What’s Forbes been telling you, Martin?’

‘How to – how to do it.’

‘Is that all?’

‘No.’ Martin’s face was aflame. ‘He told me to take advantage of being away from home to – to…’

‘Find a woman?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you want to?’

‘No.’

‘Then pay him no heed.’

‘Forbes says everyone does it.’

‘Everyone does not do it,’ Tom said emphatically.

‘Forbes says that he’s done it.’

The reason for Martin’s anxiety was now clear. He had fallen foul of the influence of his Irish cousin. Martin was no sniggering schoolboy. He was about twenty-five years old, halfway to inheriting responsibility for running a shipyard that employed more than four hundred men, yet he was scared of losing face, of having to ‘prove’ himself by paying a street women to stimulate and satisfy not so much his lust as his curiosity.

‘Do you want me to have a word with Lieutenant Melrose?’ Tom said.

‘What? What for?’

‘He’s bound to know where the brothels are in Portsmouth.’

‘Oh, no. No, no,’ said Martin. ‘I just – I just wanted to…’

‘It’s the perfect opportunity,’ Tom said, ‘if you’re that way inclined.’

‘Have you ever – I mean, ever been to one of those places?’

Tom shook his head. ‘Never.’

‘Not even in Africa?’

‘Africa?’

‘I’ve heard that you can have native girls just for the asking.’

‘Whoever spun you that idiotic tale doesn’t know what they’re talking about,’ Tom said. ‘Forbes, I expect, or was it George Crush?’

‘Forbes, actually.’

‘It’s not my place to offer you advice, Martin, and you’ve no reason to heed what I say, but…’

‘Go on, Tom. I’m listening.’

‘Forbes is only trying to bring you down.’

‘Bring me down? Why would he want to do that?’

‘Perhaps he’s jealous.’

‘Why should he be jealous? I mean, he doesn’t even know Aurora. He’s only met her once, I think. He’s engaged – well, practically engaged – to my cousin Lindsay.’

‘Not of Aurora,’ Tom said. ‘Of you.’

‘Me?’

There was an innocence in the well-to-do that Tom had noticed before, a vague kind of unworldliness that rendered them vulnerable to manipulation. The Franklins weren’t sufficiently rich or well-bred to have lost touch with reality but Owen Franklin’s influence was waning, watered down by the passage of years and the pace of the twentieth century. Others less moral, less honest and upright would in time corrupt not only the shipbuilding industry but all industry, through their malice and greed. In the cousins’ relationships Tom could already detect a blurring of the line between deed and achievement, between responsibility and exploitation. And it galled him to think that Martin had been taken in by McCulloch’s insinuations; galled him even more that Lindsay seemed destined to marry the Dubliner and that it was only a matter of time before McCulloch’s generation gained the upper hand.

‘Because you’ll always be top man,’ Tom said.

‘Oh!’ The idea was obviously new to Martin. ‘Oh, you mean because I’m a major shareholder in the partnership?’

‘Hmmm,’ Tom said.

‘I don’t think Forbes is like that. He’s – well, I consider him a friend.’

‘I know,’ Tom said. ‘But sometimes, Martin, you have to treat your friends just as cautiously as you treat your enemies.’

‘I don’t think I have any enemies. Do I?’

‘No,’ Tom said. ‘I don’t suppose you have.’

Martin was silent for a moment or two, then said, ‘Forbes is one of us, Tom. He wouldn’t do anything to harm the family, would he? I mean, I might act the fool at times but Lindsay – well, Lindsay’s going to marry the chap and, whatever you may think of me, you have to admit that Lindsay has her head properly screwed on.’

‘How soon will they marry?’

‘I don’t know,’ Martin said. ‘Sooner rather than later, I think.’

‘Is Mr Arthur reconciled to it?’

‘He thinks Forbes is far too young even to contemplate marriage.’

‘What do you think?’

‘Well, I say good luck to them.’ Martin paused again. ‘It might be no bad thing for Forbes to move out of Harper’s Hill, actually.’

‘Why is that?’ said Tom.

‘He upsets my sister Cissie no end,’ Martin said, then added, hastily, ‘Not that it’s Forbes’s fault, mark you. I mean, if it were Forbes’s fault my father would soon put a stop to it. No, it’s Cissie. She’s gone all queer. We think – my brothers and I – that she fancies Forbes for herself.’

‘I see,’ Tom said.

‘Forbes, of course, has been in love with Lindsay from the moment he first set eyes on her.’

‘Did he tell you so?’

‘Not in as many words,’ Martin said. ‘But you’d have to be blind not to see how much he adores her. That’s why I can’t imagine Forbes wishing any of us ill.’

Tom did not contradict him, did not point out that several of love’s manifestations were ill-wrought things indeed.

He said, ‘Do you want me to have a word with Melrose then?’

‘About what?’

‘Where to find the Portsmouth brothels.’

Martin, it seemed, had almost forgotten his marital anxieties.

He shook his head. ‘I think not. I’m feeling better now, thanks to you. Probably just needed a bite to eat and a bit of sensible chat to set me right. I think, in fact, I’ll toddle off to bed soon, pour myself a glass of whisky and write a nice long letter to Aurora.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘Oh, absolutely.’

Tom put down his knife and fork and signalled to a bored young waiter in a stained apron to come and remove the plates.

‘What’s for pudding?’ Martin asked.

‘Spotted Dick,’ the waiter answered.

And both of the Scottish gentlemen burst out laughing.

*   *   *

The display of postcards in the hotel lobby was limited to a faded view of Langstone Harbour, another of the old Bermuda Dock and a doctored print of Nelson’s flagship Victory which, in reality, wasn’t much more than a floating heap of firewood these days. None the less Tom picked the picture of the flagship, put tuppence in the box on the reception desk and, postcard in hand, climbed the stairs to his room on the second floor.

Still chuckling over the joke the waiter had unwittingly foisted on them, Martin had retired some ten minutes earlier. When Tom reached the brown-painted corridor, which reeked of gas and something that smelled suspiciously like bad fish, he found that a half glass of whisky had been placed on the carpet by the door of his room. He glanced along the corridor but Martin’s door was closed. Smiling, Tom carried the glass into his own room and shut his door too.

Unlike the corridor, the bedroom boasted ‘electrically installed fitments’, which meant a small table lamp with a parchment shade and a naked ceiling light-bulb that did nothing but flicker no matter how impatiently Tom fiddled with the switch on the wall. The window curtain had been closed, though, the bed turned down, the ewer on the dressing-stand refilled with fresh water.

Tom left the whisky glass and postcard on the stand and went to the window. He lifted a corner of the curtain and looked out at a vista of tiled roofs and brick walls. He could not see the sea but he could hear it sifting and sucking on the uncultivated piece of coast around Gilkicker Point.

It would be rough tomorrow, certainly too rough for Martin. Perhaps it would be too rough for an accurate horse-power test and the trial would have to be postponed until the wind eased. He hoped not. He wanted it done with, wanted to put the tedious ninety-hour coal endurance trial behind him too, wanted to be on a train heading back to Glasgow as soon as possible. If the weather stayed gurly he would try to persuade Martin to return home early and let MacDougal and him finish up here. He would write to Mr Donald explaining why Martin had not been needed in Portsmouth, a plausible lie to spare the young man’s blushes. He liked Martin Franklin. He liked all the Franklins come to think of it, and, peculiar though it seemed for a man in his lowly position, felt quite protective towards them.

Tom took off his jacket, loosened his collar and seated himself at the dressing-stand. He poured half the whisky into a tooth-glass, added water from the ewer then pulled the postcard towards him and uncapped his fountain pen.

He had promised Lindsay a letter but a postcard would have to do. He sipped whisky, pondered for a moment, then, in the amazingly neat hand that years of meticulous draughtsmanship had taught him, printed a few lines of casual chit-chat about the weather, the Banshee and the appalling food. He would stamp and post the card at the Post Office by the harbour and not risk depositing it in the box in the hotel foyer.

He finished off with ‘Hope to see you soon’, and signed it simply, ‘Tom’.

He directed the pen-nib to the panel to print Lindsay’s address and then, frowning a little, hesitated. He sat back, elbow braced on a pillow. Then he put down the pen. He sipped whisky once more and reflected on all that Martin had said about Forbes’s relationship with Lindsay and Cissie Franklin.

So far Tom had managed to keep Lindsay separate from Donald’s rambunctious sons and pretty, plump-cheeked daughters. He knew, of course, that Lindsay and Forbes were regarded as ‘a couple’ and that marriage between them was almost inevitable. But he seldom saw them together and had blinded himself to the fact that Lindsay was not so intelligent as he believed her to be, that she, like far too many girls of her generation, was willing to be ruled by the heart and not the head.

Seated there in the drab hotel room in Portsmouth, Tom felt a sudden sense of grievance, as if Lindsay too had betrayed him. It was, of course, nonsensical to suppose that she spared him even a passing thought outwith the boardroom and the shipyard. He was not, he reminded himself sternly, one of the Franklins’ inner circle. Even the promise of a letter from Portsmouth had been casually made, casually accepted. He owed Lindsay nothing. In fact, the more he thought of it, the more foolish it seemed. She would be so caught up in her own affairs that his letter – his postcard – would be tossed aside or, if Forbes happened to be in her company, slyly mocked.

He reached for the card to tear it up, then, again, stopped.

He listened to the wind buffeting the window pane, the rattle of the glass behind the curtain. Tomorrow would indeed be rough. The Banshee would not put to sea. He felt suddenly cut off from the meagre companionship of half-formed wishes and vague desires that had sustained him for several years. He wondered fleetingly what his daughter would be doing tonight, what Mission Fund meeting she had attended or what church soirée she had graced with her presence. At one time, he had tried to compare Sylvie with Lindsay when, in reality, there had never been anything to compare. He should send a postcard to Sylvie, but he knew that she would just sneer at his simple communication and tear the card in two.

He reached for the postcard again, hesitated again. Then, for no very good reason save a vague feeling of empathy with the plump, freckle-faced young woman who had once clung so gaily to his arm, he lifted his pen and carefully addressed the panel not to Sylvie, not to Lindsay, but to Miss Cecilia Franklin at her home on Harper’s Hill.

*   *   *

One of the functions of Mrs Dunn, the Franklins’ housekeeper, was to collect the morning’s mail directly from the postman and deliver it to the breakfast table. When Grandpappy was in residence, of course, Giles would take charge of any letters addressed to Mr Owen, whisk them off to the library where, as soon as breakfast was over, the old man would sift through them and separate business from personal correspondence.

Since Owen’s ‘retirement’ the volume of personal correspondence had increased threefold. Many of his old acquaintances were partial to long weekends out of the city and, unlike Owen, had a fondness for Perthshire’s rivers and hills. In fact, an invitation to a weekend or week-long house party at Strathmore had acquired a certain kudos in shipping circles and folk that Owen barely knew or could hardly remember were for ever calling upon him cap-in-hand in the hope of striking up a friendship. Whatever intention the old man had had about closing the door on society had, in the words of the minstrel song, gone floating down the Swanee. He was more in demand than ever and in the course of a year spent as much time being entertained in Glasgow as he did entertaining at Strathmore, so that he was glad to sneak off to the country on his own now and then just to restoke his boilers.

Pappy Owen was at home in Harper’s Hill that calm March morning, lording it over the breakfast table as if nothing whatsoever had changed since the old century gave way to the new.

Melancholy moods and bouts of guilt seemed to have left him at last, or perhaps he had left them with the oil-cloth coats, deerstalkers and leggings in the rummage-room up north. While in Glasgow he was, or appeared to be, quite his old self again, except that he did not rush off to Aydon Road of a morning or express much interest in the state of business. Energy thus conserved manifested itself in a tendency to interfere in domestic matters and Lilias and he were constantly at loggerheads over who had the right to order whom to do what or, to put it another way, who ruled the roost in Harper’s Hill. Mercy’s betrothal had almost brought them to blows. It had been all Donald could do to prevent his dear wife walking out in exasperation and abandoning the lot of them. Eventually Forbes and Lindsay had taken the old chap out to dinner at the Barbary and had had a quiet word in his ear – something Donald and Arthur seemed incapable of doing – after which Grandpappy left such esoteric matters as the choice of material for Mercy’s wedding dress and the selection of a guest-list to his daughter-in-law and her team.

He had been back from snowy Strathmore for the best part of a fortnight. He had spent this time haring from concert hall to art exhibition, from luncheons with the Association to dinners with the Federation, with hardly a minute to call his own. He seemed to thrive on it, though, and was totally oblivious to the fact that his grandchildren were no longer children and found his playfulness, particularly at breakfast, just a tiny bit wearing.

Mrs Dunn brought in the post.

She was a small, stooped elderly woman, very sour and solemn, a holy terror to Cook and the maids. She bobbed a curtsey and, crabbing around the table in predetermined sequence, distributed letters to Donald, Lilias, Ross, Johnny, Forbes and, skipping Pansy, last but not least to Cissie; one rare, almost shocking picture postcard that, by its gaudiness, seemed desperately to be trying to compensate for days and days without a communication of any kind, with nothing to open, nothing to read.

‘Good God!’ Johnny exclaimed. ‘Our Cissie’s got a postcard.’

‘Someone loves her after all,’ said Pansy.

‘That’s enough,’ said Lilias.

‘The Victory.’ Pappy lifted himself a little in his chair and peered through his half-moon spectacles. ‘I thought it had sunk years ago. Portsmouth. Must be from our Martin.’

‘Oh, yes, of course,’ said Pansy, disappointed. ‘Martin.’

Although she had not touched the postcard yet – it lay by her plate picture side up – Cissie said, ‘It isn’t from Martin.’

‘How can you tell?’ said Johnny. ‘Psychic emanations, or what?’

‘You could read it,’ Ross suggested. ‘There’s writing on the other side.’

Cissie said, ‘It can’t be from Martin.’

Forbes was seated opposite her. He was leaning back in the indolent half-sprawl that they had all had to learn to put up with and that, much to Mama’s annoyance, Johnny had decided to emulate. Ross, Johnny and Forbes were dressed for the office, all three clad in near-identical pinstripe suits, the accepted rig for deputy managers who hadn’t come up the hard way. On a weekday morning they would have been gone long since but on Saturday, out of deference to their exalted positions, they were not obliged to appear at Aydon Road until nine o’clock and would knock off shortly before one.

Cissie glanced up and caught her cousin’s eye. He had a smile on his face, a familiar little smile that tugged at the corner of his cheek and created something appallingly like a dimple. He was eating grilled kidneys and, without taking his eyes from her, speared one with his fork and put it in his mouth. He said nothing, not a word, but that smile, that insinuating smile remained upon his face even while he chewed and swallowed.

Cissie loathed him, loathed and feared and loved him. She could not shake off the sensation of his hands upon her. She knew what his body looked like, was privy to that information. Information was all it was, a fierce, cunning sort of mischief that he and she shared but that she could share with no one else. For who would believe her? These days she was regarded as a nuisance, a hysterical trouble-maker, Forbes as sane and sensible. Only she seemed to have realised that he was two people, three people, a whole anthology of different and differing characters, one of whom – only one – she loved without regard for the hurt it brought her or the satisfaction it afforded him.

Forbes said, ‘Perhaps it’s from her lover.’

‘Yes,’ said Pansy, ‘or a secret admirer.’

‘Do not be ridiculous, Pansy,’ Donald told her.

‘Professor Duval?’ Johnny suggested.

‘Resurfaced in Portsmouth,’ Ross added.

‘Run off to sea to mend his broken heart,’ said Pansy.

‘Go on, Cissie, turn it over,’ Forbes said.

‘Put us out of our misery,’ said Ross.

Forbes watched her unflinchingly, still chewing. He was confident that the postcard would be harmless, meaningless, a damp squib. That she would be made a fool of once more, driven back towards him, fluttering and squawking like a chicken in a coop. That he – all of them – would have the last laugh on poor, fat, frightful Cissie.

She lifted a corner of the postcard and, like a gambler who must keep his hand hidden, peeped at it. Everyone at table watched, some anxiously, some eagerly. She flattened the card again and rubbed it with her forefinger.

‘It is,’ she said. ‘I knew it would be.’

‘What?’ said Johnny. ‘From Duval?’

‘No.’ Cissie looked straight at Forbes. His jaw had stopped working and the smile was gone. ‘It is actually from my lover.’

‘Your lover!’ Pansy exclaimed. ‘You with a lover!’

‘And who might that be?’ Forbes asked.

‘None of your damned business,’ Cissie answered and, taking up the card and pressing it to her breast, quietly left the dining-room.

‘Her lover?’ Lilias said as soon as the door closed. ‘Cissie doesn’t have a lover? Does she? Pansy, does she?’

‘How would I know? She never talks to me any more.’

Donald laughed, rather uneasily. ‘Tom Calder’s down in Portsmouth along with Martin testing the Babcock boilers for the navy, so bored, I imagine, that he’s sending postcards to anyone whose address he can recall.’

‘Tom Calder,’ Forbes said, with a smug little nod. ‘Of course.’

‘Nothing wrong with Tom Calder,’ Pappy Owen said.

‘For Cissie, our Cissie?’ said Johnny.

‘At least Tom’s one up on old Duval,’ said Forbes.

‘Really?’ said Pansy. ‘In what way?’

‘He’s still breathing, isn’t he?’ said Forbes.

And everybody laughed.

*   *   *

Cissie went straight upstairs to the third floor of the mansion, an ill-lit region of attics and storerooms where, some years ago now, an apartment had been fitted out to accommodate the nurses who had attended her grandmother in her last illness. She went into the water-closet that had never been plumbed properly and that still groaned and dribbled when pressure was low, a narrow, shadowy refuge with a single tinted glass window high on the wall.

She often came here to weep in private, to wash away her despair. She was not in a weepy mood this morning, though. She felt quite gay in fact, buoyed up less by the manager’s postcard than by the capital she had managed to make out of it. She intended to read what Tom Calder had written – clichéd greetings, no doubt – then tear up the card and sluice the pieces away so that no one would ever know who had taken the trouble to drop her a line. It would probably come out sooner or later: Mr Calder would mention it to Papa, Papa would tell Mama and Mama would chide her for being so secretive over something so simple and ordinary.

She closed the door, bolted it and slid the heavy mahogany lid across the pedestal. After making sure that all the surfaces were clean and dry, she carefully seated herself.

She was far up in the house, high above the bedrooms, the library, the music-room, the dining-room, the sundry parlours. Outside pigeons crooned and scrabbled in the roof ridge. She felt not isolated but airy. Holding the postcard between her palms she studied the depiction of Lord Nelson’s flagship from several angles. It didn’t look at all like a famous piece of history, more like something that Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner might have encountered in one of his nightmares. She turned the card over and read what Mr Calder had printed in an amazingly neat hand.

She ran into him quite frequently at choral events and concerts and, most recently, at the launch of an A-class torpedo-boat destroyer that everyone, including Lindsay, seemed very excited about. He always made a point of speaking to her but, like the other men, seemed to have far more to say to her pretty cousin Lindsay. With the edges of the postcard pressing the flesh of her thumbs, Cissie recalled that daft Sunday in the park when Mr Calder, sporting a striped blazer and straw boater, had played his part so well. It seemed like an eternity since she had been that carefree, when her life had been uncomplicated and unstained by emotions over which she had no control.

She read the postcard again.

Simple greetings, ordinary news, not in the least clichéd.

The Banshee, she gathered, was the naval craft in which Franklin’s boilers had been installed. The weather had not been kind. She wondered how Martin had coped with rough seas; Martin had a habit of turning green while crossing the Clyde on a ferry. She wished that Mr Calder had dropped a hint that he too remembered that day in the park when she had flirted with him and hung on to his arm.

On the ridge above the window pigeons crooned. She could see their plump shadows strutting behind the glass. For a moment she felt like crying – then suddenly she did not. She unbuttoned her dress, slipped the postcard inside and buttoned up again. It would be unjust to Tom Calder to tear it up. She would hide it somewhere in her bedroom, and when she was feeling blue, she would re-read it, a gloss to happier times.

Cissie, rising, unbolted the closet door.

*   *   *

‘Where are we going tonight, Dada?’ Sylvie asked as soon as they came out of the close mouth.

‘Where would you like to go, sweetheart?’

‘Kirby’s.’

‘Kirby’s? My goodness, you are becoming adventurous. Is it that young man you’re hoping to see? He’s not going to let you win again, you know.’

‘He didn’t let me win. I beat him fair and square.’

‘Of course you did, honey,’ Albert Hartnell said. ‘McCulloch’s a clever devil but even he can’t rig a dice cup.’

‘I asked God to let me win.’

‘Obviously He heard you,’ Albert said, without irony.

‘Take me to Kirby’s then.’

‘I can’t.’

‘You mean you won’t.’

‘No, honestly, sweetheart, it’d be more than my reputation’s worth to sneak you into Kirby’s again.’

‘Why?’

‘The boss wouldn’t stand for it.’

‘You mean Mama?’

‘No,’ Albert said. ‘I mean Mr Bolitho, the owner.’

‘Mr Bolitho? Is he the chap in the apron who came to look us over?’

‘The same,’ said Albert.

They were walking towards the thoroughfare. Although the sky was clear, the gaslamp-lighters were out and about with their long poles, and midden men were popping in and out of closes, hunched under their baskets. Children paddled in the gutters or gathered about wide-open windows where their mothers leaned and chatted and distributed bits of bread and jam and other little titbits, none fancy. From the slums south of Portland Row came violent shriekings and shoutings, almost indistinguishable from the noise of the shunters that delivered ore to Maclintock’s iron works, as if little men and little machines became one now that night had fallen on Clydeside.

To all of which, pretty, frilly Sylvie remained heedless. She clung to Albert’s hand, skipping as if she were ten again and not a month short of sixteen.

‘Now,’ she said, ‘if you were to take me to Kirby’s and I were to talk to Mr Bolitho, tell him how important the work of the Coral—’

‘No,’ Albert said patiently. ‘No, honey, no, no.’

She stopped abruptly, dragging the man to a halt.

‘I want to,’ Sylvie said.

‘Mr Bolitho isn’t interested in our Mission work.’

‘I want to.’

‘Look,’ Albert said, ‘it isn’t just Mr Bolitho. It’s the – er – the ladies. The ladies won’t like you showing up too often.’ He raised his eyebrows, spread one hand, trying to appeal to reason. ‘I mean, honey, Dada’s a member. I admit that I like the odd night out and Kirby’s – what I’m trying to say is…’

‘I want to.’

Her cheeks glowed. Her features were so knotted with temper that for an instant her grey eyes all but disappeared. Her skin was so fine that it creased as easily as silk or chiffon or, as now, drew tight across the delicate bones of her skull so that she appeared not very young but very, very old.

‘Sylvie, sweetheart, Dada can’t take—’

She stamped her foot. ‘You can. You can. You can.’

‘Ssshhh, ssshhh now, honey. Please don’t make a scene.’

‘Take me to Kirby’s.’

‘No.’

‘I’ll tell Mama.’

‘Tell Mama what?’

‘Where we go, what we do.’

‘Mama knows what we do.’

‘Not everything.’

‘No,’ Albert admitted. ‘Not everything. But I still can’t take you to—’

‘I want to see him, I want to, I want to, I want to.’

Her voice rang from the lean, neat tenements of Portland Row and echoed into the ramshackle courts behind the iron works like a pitiful cry for help. Albert crouched as low as his girth allowed. If he hadn’t been wearing his suit, he might have knelt at her feet. He let the basket fall from under his arm, reached out both hands to her hands and, when she stamped and wriggled away, caught her about the waist.

‘Sylvie, Sylvie, stop it. Stop it, please.’

As soon as he touched her she became calm, so pale and pretty and composed, so sweet and guileless that Albert felt like an ogre.

‘Listen,’ he said, ‘the Irish lad won’t be there. He only shows up on Fridays along with the other students. Take my word on it, sweetheart, he won’t be at Kirby’s tonight.’

‘Take me, Dada, please.’

She pressed against his palms, tilting her hips. Albert capitulated.

‘All right.’ He got to his feet, picked up the basket, gave her his hand. ‘But don’t blame me if you’re disappointed. He won’t be there, you know.’

‘He will,’ said Sylvie. ‘I just know he will.’

*   *   *

In the City Hall in Candleriggs, Dickens had once given readings from his works, Thackeray had delivered a lecture on ‘The Four Georges’ and, courtesy of a grateful public, David Livingstone had received a banker’s draft for two thousand pounds. These fragments of Glasgow’s history were embedded not only in the fabric of the building but also in Lindsay’s imagination. Seated by her father’s side, awaiting the appearance of the Edinburgh Choral Union’s orchestra and choir, she tried to picture what Dickens would have looked like at his reading desk, dwarfed by the organ, and wondered how Livingstone had made himself heard in a crowd of three thousand adulatory admirers; on balance she would have preferred to be attending a reading by Dickens than a performance of Elgar’s Judas Maccabeus, a work she always found depressing.

The hall was three-quarters full before ‘the gang’ from Harper’s Hill made an appearance. Aunt Lilias led them along the aisle and, with fussy little gestures, ushered her remaining sons and daughters into the row. Donald and Grandpappy brought up the rear and Lindsay, to her surprise, soon found herself seated shoulder to shoulder with Cissie.

The organist, Mr Bradley, coaxed notes from the vast golden pipes and the orchestra tuned up in the amphitheatre. From far off behind the scenes floated the sound of a contralto voice – Madame Dumas, perhaps – running through scales. Lindsay’s father, alert and excited, rubbed his hands together, leaned over and said to Cissie, ‘So you couldn’t resist turning out to hear one of Europe’s finest choirs?’

‘No, Uncle Arthur. It should be a wonderful evening.’

‘Well, I’m certainly looking forward to it,’ Arthur said, and sat back.

After a moment Lindsay whispered, ‘What are you doing here, Cissie? I thought you hated Elgar.’

‘Spare ticket,’ Cissie said. ‘Martin’s. Couldn’t let it go to waste. It’s not every week one gets the opportunity to hear the ECU in Glasgow.’

‘No, I don’t suppose it is,’ Lindsay answered.

She was relieved that Cissie wasn’t sunk in introspective gloom. That she had deigned to exchange even a polite word seemed to augur a truce in their undeclared war. Lindsay, however, remained guarded.

‘I do like your coat,’ she said.

‘Thank you. It’s new. Daly’s.’

‘Tailored?’

‘Of course.’

The organ uttered a declamatory warning, programmes throughout the hall rustled, the orchestra began to file on to the platform. Arthur rubbed his hands again and exchanged a thumbs-up signal with Donald. From the end of the row Pappy waved his programme, like a racing tout.

‘He isn’t here then?’ Cissie whispered. ‘He didn’t come?’

‘Who?’

‘Forbes.’

‘No,’ said Lindsay. ‘Didn’t he tell you he wasn’t coming?’

‘He was vague about it. You of all people know what Forbes is like. Actually, we don’t have much to say to each other these days. I mean, we don’t see that much of him at home.’ Cissie’s question had a hint of point: ‘I suppose you do know where he is this evening?’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Lindsay. ‘A prior engagement.’

‘Hah!’ said Cissie.

‘One of his college friends has been signed on by Cunard and has taken his classmates out to celebrate.’

‘They’ll have gone drinking, I expect.’

‘Dinner, I believe, at Miss Cranston’s.’

‘I just hope I don’t have to put Forbes to bed afterwards.’

‘Come now,’ Lindsay said. ‘Forbes isn’t a boozer.’

‘That’s true,’ Cissie conceded, then added, ‘Well, at least you know where he is and who he’s with.’

‘I’m not Forbes’s keeper, you know,’ Lindsay said.

‘Which is probably just as well,’ said Cissie as Mr Dambmann, leader of the orchestra, appeared from the wings, and the audience broke into applause.

*   *   *

‘Greetings to you, Bertie,’ Forbes McCulloch said affably. ‘Sure and I didn’t expect to see you here on a Saturday night.’

‘Well, I…’

‘Riding your luck, are you?’

‘Well…’

‘Where is she?’

‘Downstairs.’

‘In the public?’

‘No, in the street.’

‘In the street! That’s takin’ a bit of a risk, old man,’ Forbes said. ‘I mean, there’s no saying what she might not get up to in the street.’

‘Please, it’s my daughter you’re talking about.’

‘All the more reason to bring her up.’

‘How can I? Bolitho will have my guts if I do.’

‘Not if she refrains from shaking her little basket, he won’t.’

‘She wants to see you,’ Albert said.

‘Thought that might be the case.’

‘She insisted on coming. I told her you wouldn’t be here, but…’

‘But I am here, aren’t I, old chap? Ready and waiting.’

‘Look, Sylvie’s my responsibility, a – an innocent child.’

‘No, Bertie, whatever else she may be,’ Forbes said, ‘she isn’t a child.’

‘I don’t want her to come to any harm.’

‘Then bring her up.’

Albert shook his head.

‘Can’t,’ he said. ‘Daren’t.’

‘Who are you really afraid of? Me, or Billy Bolitho?’

It was on the tip of Albert’s tongue to confess that he was more afraid of Sylvie than anyone else, but somehow that did not seem like the sort of thing you should be admitting to a stranger. Billy Bolitho’s ladies were strong in number, for the upper room was crowded with gentlemen intent on pleasure. Albert had never been through the curtain at the rear of the room, had never been seriously tempted by the painted whores, even though some of them were hardly much older than Sylvie. He looked across the tables to the bar where Billy Bolitho, minus apron, was bossing the barmaids about and, at the same time, joshing the customers. Even when he laughed Mr Bolitho managed to look hostile. He was manager, and co-owner along with Mr Joseph Kirby whom nobody could recall having seen about the place in many a long year.

Forbes said, ‘I’ll go down and fetch her, shall I?’

‘No,’ Albert said. ‘Please don’t.’

‘God, what a timid chap you are, old son,’ Forbes told him. ‘Aren’t you going to have a flutter since you’re here?’

‘Not with Sylvie waiting in the—’

‘She could be my guest. I’m not afraid of Billy Bolitho, even if you are.’

‘She just wants to see you.’

Forbes grinned, showing what Albert interpreted as a dimple. It didn’t do to study the Irishman too closely; with his long, dark lashes and charming smile it would be all too easy to fall under his spell, even if you were a man. He wore a fawn-coloured sporting coat and a high-necked pullover, no collar, no cravat. He had the appearance of a wealthy farmer or landowner, older, much older, than his years. Albert knew who Forbes McCulloch really was, though, and what his connections were and that there was more brass than copper behind him.

‘Well then,’ Forbes said, ‘why don’t you have a shake of the dice if that’s your fancy, and I’ll go down and keep your little pet lamb company for a quarter or half an hour?’

‘Did you come here just to see her?’

‘Don’t flatter yourself – or her, Bertie. I came here because I’m off the leash for once and fancied a bit of a drink and a bit of a spin.’

Albert glanced wistfully around the mirrored room. He loved Kirby’s, had loved it from the moment he had been in a position to fork out the stiffish annual fee and elevate himself from the public bar to the company of the gentlemen upstairs. No riffraff here: it was, in its way, more respectable than the Western Club – or so Albert liked to believe. Some came to drink, some to gamble, others to seek consolation with the ladies, so free and uninhibited in their behaviour that only a prude could object to them.

All God’s children, Albert thought, each and every one of them.

He heard the toothy rattle of the dice-cup, the snicker of billiard balls on the long green tables, breathed in the rich effluvia of perfume and cologne, cigar smoke and whisky and the blond beer that the barmaids drew so expertly into tall fluted-glass steins, frothy with head, beaded and beautifully chilled.

‘Oh, sod it!’ Albert said. ‘Half an hour then. No, twenty minutes. But don’t bring her up here, please. I need your word that you won’t do that?’

‘You have it, Bertie,’ Forbes said.

‘And don’t…’

‘Pardon me?’

‘Don’t, you know, do anything to scare her.’

‘Heaven,’ Forbes McCulloch said, ‘forfend!’

*   *   *

He came down the steep staircase towards her. Three men had gone in and up just before him and, seeing his approach, had left the door open. She watched him from her stance in the lane, from under the hissing gas lamp on the wall. Two of the men had addressed her, had made suggestions that she was too mature to find offensive and, if truth be known, had actually found rather flattering. She had told them she was waiting for her father and could not go with them because her father would be very annoyed if she did.

‘Aye, and who’s your pa then?’ they had asked her.

‘Mr Bolitho,’ she had answered.

They had gone scurrying away like frightened rabbits and had opened the door with a key and then she had seen him, Irish, coming down the stairs.

He had his hands in his pockets and he was dancing. Dancing down the steep wooden stairs with all the agility of the brown-skinned man, an acrobat, that the London branch of the Coral Strand had sent to Glasgow to put on a show last summer, to drum up contributions for the fund. He looked dark too, dark and acrobatic. He looked quick and rhythmic and poised. His hat was tipped back from his forehead. His lips were pursed as if he were whistling a tune that only he could hear, a tune to which his feet kept time.

She felt the breath go out of her at the sight of him.

God had answered her prayer. What she was doing could not be wrong if God had answered her prayer.

He was here, he was coming for her.

Her dandy, her destiny.

‘Hello, sweetheart.’ He stepped across the lane, tugging his hands from his pockets: Sylvie felt as if he were reaching for her, reaching out to claim her. ‘Dada’s got business to attend to. He sent me down to look after you.’

‘Yes.’

He offered his arm, not his hand.

She took it naturally, fell easily into step with him, not skipping.

‘Where are you taking me?’ she asked, at length.

‘You’ll see,’ Forbes answered, grinning, and led her briskly round the corner into St George’s Road.

*   *   *

It had been the devil of a week, the devil of a journey home.

Tom had persuaded Martin to leave Portsmouth before the horse-power trial which had taken place in seas that Melrose deemed ‘moderate’ but that seemed a little more steep than that to Tom. Fortunately the wind had flattened before the Banshee had steamed out into the Channel for her coal-endurance test and the run to Bilbao and back – a distance of over a thousand nautical miles, a fair haul for an old torpedo-boat in the spring season – had been completed almost without incident. He had nursed the boilers as best he could and had had MacDougal stand guard over the navy stokers who were inclined to be lazy and erratic. And there had been a spot of bother during the brief coaling dock at Bilbao when one of the stokers had somehow lost a tooth and MacDougal had somehow acquired a shiner – neither mishap being related to the other, of course.

On returning to Portsmouth, it had taken him half a day to check his figures against those on Jason Melrose’s records and sign for the accuracy of the reports, then MacDougal and he had hot-footed it to London just in time to catch a Friday-night sleeper to Glasgow. He had arrived, bleary and stiff, in Central Station in the grey light of morning, had bid the foreman farewell and, indulging himself for once, had hired a hackney to take him out to Queensview which he reached just as breakfast was being cleared away.

Mrs Grogan, the landlady, had been kind enough to find him a spare plate of porridge and a couple of fried eggs, however, and he had eaten alone in the dining-room, relieved to be back where he belonged.

His mail, such as it was, had been put in his room and, as soon as he had washed, shaved and changed his clothing, he carried the letters into the parlour, seated himself in the dusty moquette armchair in the window alcove, lit a cigarette and opened the first of the three envelopes.

It was, as he’d expected, the monthly bill from his sister-in-law, Florence. He cast his eye down the list of items: camisole, stockings, a moirette silk petticoat – whatever that was – at twelve shillings and ninepence, Nainsook knickers at five shillings and sixpence. Tom didn’t doubt the accuracy of Florence’s accounting – purchase receipts were enclosed – but he did sometimes wonder where the great heap of clothing that Sylvie had acquired at his expense was stored, for the Hartnells’ apartment was small and spartan. He checked Florence’s addition, found it correct, sighed and put the bill to one side to deal with shortly.

He opened the second envelope: a personal memo from Perry Perrino scripted in bright green ink informing him that there would be a massed choirs practice in St Andrew’s Halls at two o’clock on Sunday afternoon and that he, Perry, hoped that he, Tom, would be able to attend.

Pleased that he had not been left out, Tom put that letter aside, too.

He opened the third envelope and gave a little grunt of surprise: a printed invitation to a musical evening with Mr Owen Franklin at Harper’s Hill. Across the bottom of the card Owen Franklin had scribbled: ‘Do hope you can come, Tom,’ as if he were already one of the inner circle and deserved the old boy’s personal attention.

He lifted his cigarette from the ashtray and inhaled deeply.

This Sunday, ‘The Cameronian’s Dream’.

Next Saturday, an ‘At Home’ at Harper’s Hill.

By gum! Tom thought. Things are looking up in the world.