The Piper's Tune (19 page)

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.