The Piper's Tune (38 page)

He was such a worrier, was Albert. He worried when things were going badly and he worried when, as now, things were going well. He worried about the past and he worried about the future. He worried most of all that Sylvie would do something to offend Forbes McCulloch and bring the entire rocky edifice tumbling down about his ears. He was always very careful to bow to Forbes's wishes and exit the apartment speedily whenever the young Lothario put in an appearance.

As for Sylvie, he was never less than sugar-sweet to Sylvie who, as she'd grown older, had become sharper in some respects, more fey in others. What really stirred Albert's anxiety was her belief that it was only a matter of time before Forbes McCulloch would desert his wife and children and come to live with her on a permanent basis. Gently, tenderly, he had tried to explain ‘reality' to Sylvie, to make her appreciate that what she had was all she was ever going to get and that she was fortunate that Forbes chose to share even a small a part of his life with her. Sylvie would have none of it, simply closed her ears to anything that ran counter to the fantasy that she was more than just a mistress who might at any time become a liability.

At least Albert had Gowry for company; honest, amiable, garrulous, down-to-earth Gowry, who was all that Irishmen were reputed to be and who, in the dreary hours of late evening or in the morning, stood him a pint or two while Forbes was upstairs with Sylvie taking, or delivering, lessons in love. Many a peaceful hour Albert spent with the chauffeur in the Old Barge Inn before Gowry hooked out his pocket watch and murmured, ‘Time, Albert, time to be rousting out his majesty and be on our way,' for Gowry, it seemed, was not so much his brother's conscience as his clock.

It was from Gowry that Albert learned what may or may not have been the truth about the McCulloch family; not a family united or, as he'd been led to believe, a family swimming in beer money like the Guinnesses or the Goodisons. They did not even live in Dublin but in a sprawling cottage attached to a tiny brewery in the sea-coast village of Malahide, about nine miles north of the famous city. Here McCulloch's Black Irish Stout was produced in limited quantities and the annual turnover was just enough to keep things ticking over. Apparently Donald Franklin had been the only one from this side of the water ever to visit the place, and Donald had somehow been persuaded to accept the lie that old Daniel McCulloch was a magnate in the industry and not an indolent old reprobate whose only interest in life was buying, breaking and backing horses and dabbling in Home Rule politics.

Such half-truths and exaggerations Albert swallowed whole. Gowry was so full of brogue and blarney, so utterly
un
-insistent about anything that everything he said seemed plausible. If he had informed you that the moon was blue or the Pope an Orangeman then you would have been more than inclined to believe him and would certainly not have been boorish enough to question the source of his information.

‘But, Forbes' – Albert sought reassurance – ‘I mean, your brother has done well for himself. He's financially secure, is he not?'

‘Done well and will be doing better,' Gowry had answered. ‘Wait until he has the lot of us over here, then you'll be seeing the sparks fly.'

‘All of you?' said Albert.

‘He'll be leaving him with nothing before he's done.'

‘Leaving who with nothing?'

‘Him. Dada. The Owd Devil himself.'

‘Is that Forbes's intention, to ruin your father?'

‘Nah, nah,' Gowry said. ‘More it is to give the rest of us a leg up by fetching us all to Scotland, by giving us the opportunity to clear out of Malahide, to better ourselves. I tell you fair and square, Albert, there will not be enough in the brewing of stout to support even one of us before long.'

‘And will' – Albert cleared his throat – ‘I mean, will Forbes be able to support you all over here?'

‘He will be supporting us and we will be supporting him.'

‘Was this always his plan?'

‘Always,' Gowry lied. ‘Since we were kiddies shivering under corn sacks by the light o' the peat fire.'

‘Corn sacks?'

‘For blankets.'

‘Oh!'

‘The nuns would come and throw scraps over the wall for us,' Gowry went on, plying his vocation as a tall tale-teller. ‘Think of that, Bertie, having to be fed by nuns, though we were Protestants and there were thousands of starving Papes queuing up for the Church's charity.'

‘I hadn't realised,' Albert said, ‘that things were so bad.'

‘Bad!' Gowry exclaimed, not raising his voice. ‘They were worse.'

‘So being a – what is it?'

‘Chauffeur.' Gowry completed the question with its answer, ‘Sure and being a chauffeur ain't so bad after all, not when you never saw a motoring vehicle until you were twelve years old.'

It didn't dawn on Albert until later that
he
hadn't seen a petrol-driven motor vehicle until he was almost thirty, mainly because Daimler – or was it Benz? – hadn't invented one prior to that time. He did not disagree with Gowry McCulloch, though, for the talk flowed on like the very stuff of history and one small inaccuracy made no difference and since what he was being told was only what he wanted to hear and to believe.

‘And your sisters?' Albert said.

‘Will do anything Forbes tells them to.'

‘Loyalty, yes,' said Albert. ‘I must say I do admire loyalty.'

‘She's loyal to him, ain't she?' Gowry asked. ‘Your daughter?'

‘Sylvie?' Albert did not offer a correction. ‘Yes, she loves him.'

‘Aye, don't we all love a chap who succeeds against the odds?'

Deceived by the platitude, Bertie nodded agreement and asked, very humbly, if he might order another beer.

*   *   *

Forbes was more vigorous in the morning than in the evening when the rigours of employment had taken their toll and a slackening of mental agility rendered him less able to cope with Sylvie's little tricks and tirades. There was another reason too: he called before noon whenever his schedule allowed because he had begun to wonder if her sexual inventiveness indicated that she was entertaining other men besides himself.

Suspicion kept him from becoming bored with the same old fare, however. Jealousy over imagined infidelities fuelled both his love and his lust and he would question her closely about the handsome minister at St Columba's or the preacher at the Maryhill Home Mission for, at his insistence, Sylvie had relinquished all connection with the Coral Strand in favour of the Church and the clique of holy-rollers who met in the tin hall in Stevenson Street.

Brilliant though he was at mathematical calculations, Forbes knew nothing about psychology and even less about the theological hair-splitting that pitted free will against determinism. Comparisons between his lover and his wife seldom fell in the latter's favour. He regarded Sylvie as far more interesting than Lindsay not in spite but because of her craziness. He even encouraged her to preach bizarre little sermons about God's guiding hand while he lay damp and sated against her, to repeat sentimental poems in his ear while he dressed; to twist and pervert his judgement to the point where he thought her unique and curiously impenetrable in way that his pretty, plain-spoken little wife could never be now that he had succeeded in domesticating her.

He did not understand Sylvie and therefore could not control her. He provided her with every material thing, even loved her after his fashion; yet he remained blind to the fact that she was not like other women and marched to a different drummer.

‘What are you doing, sweetheart?'

‘Did Dada let you in?'

‘I have my own key, remember.'

‘Has Dada gone?'

‘Yes, he's popped out for a little while.'

‘Is Gowry not with you?'

‘Gowry has gone with your dada for a glass of refreshment.'

She nodded. ‘Is it cold this morning?'

‘Very cold.'

‘I wish it were summer. Do you remember summer, Forbes?'

‘Of course I remember summer.'

He crossed the parlour and, slipping round the back of her chair, kissed the top of her head. Morag, the day-maid, had lighted the fire and dusted the room and everything looked perfectly ship-shape. Morag would be in the kitchen now along with Mrs Maddigan, the non-resident cook cum housekeeper, who was the very soul of discretion and wouldn't show her face when he, Forbes, was visiting. Sylvie was clad in a close-fitting camisole under a silk dressing-gown that he had bought her last New Year. In spite of the bitter weather, her little feet were bare. Her hair had been brushed and ribboned, though, and there was nothing slatternly about her appearance.

She said, ‘Do you remember what you said last summer?'

June past; a glorious summer afternoon. He had dismissed Gowry and had taken the wheel of the motor and with Sylvie at his side had driven out into the countryside west of the city. She had been in chiffon, he recalled, pale lemon chiffon, cool and fragrant as a marsh flower in the baking heat of the afternoon. They had eaten lunch in the garden of a loch-side hotel, then had puttered along a rutted back road between somnolent trees and fields heavy with ripening barley. In one of those fields he had made love to her. He had wooed her first, murmuring, touching, sleek with perspiration, lying on a plaid rug in the motionless barley field a million miles from anywhere.

The unreality of the setting had obviously fixed the day in her mind, for she referred to it often and seemed to be chiding him because there had been no other like it.

‘I remember what we did,' Forbes replied.

‘What you said?'

‘What did I say?'

‘You said you loved me.'

‘And I do. I do love you, Sylvie.'

She shook her head. ‘It isn't the same. Why isn't it the same?'

He had no answer, no explanation beyond the obvious: it was summer no longer, the streets of Glasgow were locked in freezing fog. It could not be the same now as it had been then, for transcendent moments of happiness could not be recalled, could not be precisely duplicated like the spacing of ordinates.

‘No,' Forbes said. ‘Perhaps next summer we'll—'

‘Will you come to live with me next summer?'

‘Oh, Sylvie…' He sighed, then said, ‘What's
this
you're doing?'

He leaned over her shoulder and studied the photograph she had clipped from the
Glasgow Herald:
the King, the Queen and Princess Louise in court attire. He could not imagine what occasion had brought the three together until, peering at the small print, he saw that it was not a recent photograph but one drawn from files to illustrate an article on naval reform, though what Princess Louise had to do with the Royal Navy, Forbes had no idea.

Together with three large scrapbooks and a pot of paste, other illustrations snipped from newspapers and journals littered the table: the Grevilles' Whitsun party at Reigate; the King and Admiral Fisher riding in a carriage; an oval portrait of Mrs George Keppel who everyone knew was the King's special friend. Court and courtiers, lords and ladies, aristocrats and diplomats, the odd foreign prince or dignitary, Sylvie was obsessed with them. The closet in the hallway was crammed with mutilated copies of the
Sketch,
the
Tatler
and the
London Illustrated News
but Sylvie had no interest in the world at large, only in the artificial glamour of garden parties, court balls, race meetings, yachting regattas, banquets, state openings, fashions and frothy gossip. She spent hours browsing through her collection of scraps or, as now, bringing them up to date. It was, Albert said, a harmless pastime. Forbes agreed, even although he still had enough of the Irishman in him to resent the English monarchy's glittering appeal.

‘That's a pretty one,' he said.

He slid his hands from her shoulders and cupped her breasts through gown and camisole.

Sylvie cocked her head and studied the portrait of Alice Keppel for a moment, sighed. ‘They say she sleeps with him.'

‘I expect she does,' said Forbes.

For a moment or two he had almost forgotten why he had called this morning. Touching her reminded him. He did not have much time. Gowry would be hammering at the door in twenty-five or thirty minutes to remind him that he was expected at Beardmore's. Hastily, he rubbed his palms over Sylvie's nipples and nuzzled his chin against her curls.

‘I don't think she sleeps with him. I don't think the King would do that.'

‘I wouldn't be so sure, dearest,' Forbes said.

‘He is in love with his queen, with Alexandra.'

‘Hmm.' Forbes slipped the tips of his fingers under the top of the camisole, stretching the ribbons and lace. ‘You're probably right.'

‘Why do people make up such nasty stories?'

‘I've no idea.'

‘It's mischief, that's all. It's wickedness.'

‘Yes, of course it is.'

He could feel her ribs rise and fall against his fingertips. Distracted and indecisive, she was at her most vulnerable. All he had to do was tell her what he wanted and she would comply.

Morning meetings lacked the sort of stealth that novelty required, though, a drowned light, a sheet to hide under, silence in the streets. He wanted her, though, and quickly, quickly. He hurried to the door and turned the key. Unbuttoning himself, he returned to the table, lifted her up by the hands and drew her to him. He opened her robe. Her expression was blank. He had seen that expression too often of late, as if she were thinking of someone else. He slipped his hand beneath the camisole, between her legs. Saw her eyelids droop. Felt her surge against him, warm flesh against his cold fingers.

Braced against the table's edge, he pulled her against him and carefully inserted himself into her. He held her poised for a split second then drew her down on to him. She gave her customary little gasp, then, remembering who she was and what he meant to her, lifted her knees and rocked backwards, throwing her weight against his forearms. He entered her, not suddenly: he might be selfish but he was never cruel. She began to move against him, rhythmically at first then frantically. He tightened his buttocks and the long muscles of his thighs. Kneading her belly against him, she held him within her. Holding, holding, until quickly and carelessly he spent. When he struggled to extract himself, he lost balance, fell against her and, still spending, turned her around and around in a brusque little dance.