The Piper's Tune (41 page)

‘Winn won't like it,' Blossom said.

‘It has nothing to do with us,' Eleanor Runciman said. ‘We are servants here and it's up to the master to do as he sees fit.'

‘Is it now?' Blossom said. ‘Forbes, is it?'

Eleanor said, ‘I will cater to the guests downstairs. If you feel you will be inconvenienced by the noise then perhaps you should ask for an evening off.'

‘An evening off?' said Blossom. ‘What would I do with an evening off?'

‘I simply cannot imagine,' said Eleanor.

‘If you…'

‘Bloss,' Forbes said again, and shook his head. He turned to Lindsay. ‘I doubt if you're strong enough to put up with a houseful of choristers.'

‘Oh, but I am,' Lindsay told him, smiling. ‘There's nothing I would like better than to have the whole choir round for a jamboree.'

‘What's a jamboree?' said Gowry.

‘A sort of musical evening,' Forbes said. ‘Dearest, are you sure you know what you're doing?'

‘Indeed,' said Lindsay, ‘I do.'

‘That's settled then,' said Arthur, rubbing his hands.

‘When will it be, Mr Arthur?' Eleanor asked.

‘Two weeks on Saturday. Time enough?'

‘Ample time, Papa.'

‘Will you write the invitations, or shall I?' Arthur asked.

‘I will,' Lindsay answered and, lifting her knife and fork again, went on eating as if nothing at all had happened.

*   *   *

‘He plays the piano?' Cissie said. ‘Heavens! I can't imagine him playing the piano. I'd have thought that a banjo would have been more his style.'

‘Prejudice,' Lindsay said. ‘Rank prejudice.'

‘Well, I mean,' said Cissie, ‘I can hardly imagine him lugging a Steinway around in his dunnage. Don't all sailors play the banjo, or is it the mandolin?'

‘He isn't a rating, Cissie. He's an officer. He has been a serving officer for twenty years.'

‘How do you know? Did he tell you? Have you met him again?'

‘Papa told me.'

‘Did your father tell you what our dear Lieutenant Commander is doing, hanging about Franklin's?'

‘It's a state secret, apparently.'

Cissie shrugged her son higher into her arms. They were in Cissie's drawing-room and Ewan, a rather petted little boy, had grown weary of his cousin Harry's antics and had crept up on to his mother's knee. Wrapped in a fine lace shawl, Philip slept on the sofa, well padded and protected with cushions. Winn and the Calders' nursemaid, Jenny, had been allowed a half-hour to take tea in the kitchen and, no doubt, exchange gossip.

‘It's the submarine, isn't it?' Cissie said.

‘How do you know about the submarine? Did Tom tell you?'

‘No, Tom's said not a word. I peeped at his papers.'

‘Cissie Franklin!'

‘If four hundred common shipwrights know what's going on at Aydon Road why shouldn't the wife of a manager?'

‘That isn't the point.'

‘I notice that you know what's going on, about the submarine.'

‘It's a matter of being trusted with a secret and keeping it.'

‘It is a submarine, though, aren't I right?'

Lindsay hesitated. ‘Yes.'

‘I'm not so simple as I look, you know.'

Cissie detached her son's thumb from his mouth and, as he cuddled into her, tousled his fair hair with her fingertips. On the floor behind the sofa Harry was seated cross-legged, happily imitating the sound of a circular saw and waving his arms in an attempt to induce his ‘cousin' to come and play with him again. Philip, very lightly, snored.

‘How long,' Cissie said, ‘does it take to build a submarine?'

‘I'm not sure.'

‘Is that also a state secret?'

‘Completion date is the twenty-fifth of May.'

‘So Lieutenant Paget will be in Glasgow until May, will he?'

‘Lieutenant Commander,' Lindsay said.

Cissie laughed. ‘Of course, of course. Lieutenant Commander. Will he?'

‘I hope he will,' said Lindsay. ‘I rather like him.'

‘Is he definitely coming to your musical evening?'

‘If he's not on duty.'

‘If he's not on duty,' said Cissie, wryly. ‘He won't be on duty.'

‘What makes you say that?'

‘Because' – Cissie grinned wickedly – ‘I think he rather likes you too.'

*   *   *

Owen had been reluctant to leave the city at that cruel time of year. He'd had a heavy cold before Christmas and a chesty cough that had persisted into the New Year in spite of Dr Hough's best efforts to shift it. It was not Glasgow's gay social whirl that inclined Owen to linger in Harper's Hill but, rather, a stultifying weakness of the spirit and something akin to depression.

‘Go abroad. Go to the south of France,' Donald had ranted. ‘God Almighty, Pappy, it isn't as if you can't afford it.'

‘The King pops off for weeks on end. If it's good enough for Teddy,' Martin had put in, ‘it should be good enough for you.'

He did not go abroad. He had never willingly gone abroad, even when Kath was alive. Such trips as there had been were undertaken purely in pursuit of business. He took no pleasure in being far away from home. That said, he had to confess that Strathmore had grown upon him. He felt almost as much at home there as he did in Glasgow. His longing to be in the city, at the centre of things, had waned with the years. He was happy enough to take off for the country with a few old cronies for company or even to be on his own, with Giles to see to his needs. When the lease of the old house came up for renewal he hadn't thought twice about signing for another five years.

He was slightly less than eager to entertain Sir Robert Montgomery Raeburn and his wife, Edith, however. He could not imagine what had got into him back in the late summer when he had promised them a week's board and lodging in the snowy season. It was a promise that could not be broken, though, for Bob Raeburn was president of the Institute of Marine Engineers and Shipbuilders and had been a friend of sorts for many years. Bob Raeburn was also an alpinist of some distinction, addicted to chopping his way up icy gullies and fluted snow-fields with his dear lady wife tagging along on a rope behind him. His name was scrawled all over the registers of the Monte Rosa Hotel in Zermatt and the Nesthorn in the Lotschental, accompanied by comments about bad coffee and bad weather and, now and then, a record of an ascent of a difficult ridge or mention of a ‘dawdle' along a mule path eight or nine thousand feet above the valley.

In January, three days before the Raeburns were due, Owen and Giles left for Strathmore. The trip was less arduous than it had once been, for the horse-drawn carriage from Perth to the village had been replaced by a motorised omnibus that took less than an hour, even on the unpaved roads. Although it was bitterly cold in the hills there was no trace of fog and the crystal-clear air and brilliant sunshine seemed to benefit Owen's lungs. Within a day of arrival, he felt better than he had done in weeks.

The Raeburns rolled up in due course, complete with two female servants and a mound of luggage that included hanks of brown rope, several pairs of nailed boots, and two long-handled objects like pick-axes. The couple were amiable and only too delighted to have been invited into the heart of the hills in the off season for hospitality. They dined well, chatted to Owen for an hour and then retired early. They were up and gone next morning before Owen had even opened his eyes and he saw them not until a half-hour after dark when, bone weary, they trailed back into Strathmore in search of tea, hot baths and a bed to lie down on for an hour before dinner.

By the middle of the week Owen felt more like a boarding-house keeper than a country-house host and was bored by the couple's tales of perpendicular ascents and hair-rising descents. He was also irked by Sir Robert's prying into Franklin's private affairs. Owen had been informed what was happening at the yard but he hadn't asked to see the drawings and had no intention of divulging any information whatsoever about the prototype. If Sir Robert was so desperate for information then Owen reckoned that he would do better to milk one of his sources in Whitehall.

For Owen it was not an enjoyable week in spite of the fine weather and the beauty of the Perthshire landscapes under snow.

Each day about noon, he went out with Giles for a walk through the birch trees or up the long slope to the ridge above the moor. He felt old now, even in invigorating weather. His legs seemed quite leaden and he pressed on for the full hour simply because he was reluctant to let Giles see just how debilitated he had become and how badly the chest cold had affected his stamina. His breathing was easier; he could feel sharp, unsaturated air going down into him like a healing draught and he would stride out for ten or fifteen minutes as if he were still in his prime. But his prime was long past and he knew that his disinterest in the work in the yard, in what his sons and grandsons were up to, indicated that he had retreated into that phase when only a woolly tangle of old habits kept one going at all. He had done his bit, done his best. Soon he would rest in silence, that white, unforgiving silence which to an active man seemed more terrible than all the pains of hell.

In the afternoons, after lunch, he warmed his feet at the log fire, smelled the scent of pine resin and other woody odours that reminded him of his boyhood in Pemberton's backyard – and slept. He did not dream of Pemberton's yard or Aydon Road, of the vigorous days of his youth, of steam engines, of boilers so perfectly constructed that they might have been works of art. He did not even dream of Kath, for here in Strathmore, where he had made a promise that he had failed to keep, she seemed pleasantly at hand, demanding nothing of him, not grief or longing or responsibility, not even the effort of memory.

The cough wakened him from a deep, death-like sleep. He was stretched out in the wooden-armed lounging chair, feet resting on a stool. He wore a huge, knitted cardigan and heavy corduroy trousers and Giles had draped a shawl about his shoulders to cut off the draughts from the half-open door. It was not the chill that wakened him but the cough, the resurrected cough, the violence of which he had almost forgotten in the week among the hills.

‘God!' he exclaimed, wrenching himself forward and pressing his hands to his chest. ‘God! What is this?'

A fresh spasm wrenched his throat and ribs. He felt as if the fibres along the top of his diaphragm were being torn like old sailcloth. He drove the air down into his lungs and reared back, coughing, coughing, coughing until he felt his lungs release whatever gummy substance had collected in their sacs and vents. He coughed again and, groping for his handkerchief and holding it to his face, coughed once more, more easily this time. Exhausted, he leaned on the chair's wooden arm and rested, then, unfolding the crumpled handkerchief, he peered into it with vague distaste and saw blood.

One solitary gout of bright red blood.

He blinked, closed the handkerchief in his fist and, even as the door opened, flung the cloth on to the back of the logs in the fireplace. He watched it char and begin to smoulder and then, when Giles touched him on the shoulder, started as if from a reverie.

‘Are you all right, sir?' Giles enquired.

The servant was concerned. Giles was old too now; no, not old but older, his crisp black hair flecked with silver, his sober features wrinkled.

‘What? Yes, Giles, I'm fine,' Owen answered. ‘Bit of a tickle in the throat, that's all.' He forced himself to sit back, to appear relaxed. He yawned and rubbed a hand across his mouth. ‘Might have a dram, though, even if it's on the early side. What do you think?'

‘Whisky and soda, sir?'

‘Whisky and soda would do very nicely. Pour one for yourself while you're at it.'

Giles nodded and went away.

Owen studied the logs in the fireplace, the blistered remains of the handkerchief. He felt no sense of panic or despair. He looked up at the French doors, at the shadows of the evergreens cleaving the white lawn, the cold, blue-enamelled sky above the trees. No pain, no soreness in his throat or chest, only a slight tenderness just under his gullet. None the less he had been given a sign and burning the evidence would not make it go away. He had hoped that when it came it would come quickly. Apparently, that was not to be. The end promised to be just as hard and lonely as the beginning had been. A long haul to the breakers' yard, Owen, a long haul in prospect.

He sighed and hoisted himself to his feet.

When Giles returned a minute or two later, Owen was standing by the fireplace with one foot on the fender and one elbow on the mantelshelf.

He lifted the tumbler from the silver tray and sniffed it.

‘Feeling better now, Mr Owen, are we?' Giles said.

‘Much better, thanks,' said Owen and, raising his glass to no one in particular, downed his whisky-soda like a man.

*   *   *

‘Didn't expect to see you here,' Albert said. ‘Kirby's isn't one of your usual haunts, is it?'

‘I've been here a few times,' Gowry said.

‘Forbes brought you, I suppose.'

‘That he did.'

‘Where is he then? Where is his majesty?' Bertie said.

‘At home in the bosom of his family,' Gowry said.

‘On a Saturday night?'

‘Musical evening.'

‘Pardon?' said Bertie.

‘They're all singing bloody songs around the piano.'

‘Sounds delightful. Why aren't you there?'

Gowry created a small, strangulated sound in his throat, leaned an elbow on the bar and picked up his glass. He was drinking whisky, Albert noticed, with a beer chaser. Unfortunately he, Albert, had just purchased a tot of rum and paid for it himself.

‘I'm here,' Gowry said, ‘because I want a word with you.'

Albert was struck by doubt. ‘Concerning Sylvie?'