Lady of Fortune (14 page)

Dougal had seen that Malcolm Cockburn was trying to usher Effie across the banking room to the stairs, impatient for his tea and biscuits. This wasn't the moment for introducing her to Jack Cutting: when they did meet, Dougal wanted to be sure that Effie understood that he might be a confidant, and a friend.

He had taken Jack Cutting's hand again, and said, ‘In a day or two, perhaps, when we've settled in a bit. We could have a wee bite of lunch.'

‘Ah, being protective of her, are we?'

‘Quite the opposite. I'm protecting you from her. You'll see what I mean when I introduce you. She's a sharp lassie, is Effie.'

Jack Cutting said, ‘I like a girl sharp. I like a fellow to be sharp, too. You're taking over the trust department, aren't you? That should make a difference. Poor old Halethorpe was ready to retire years ago. He dropped off to sleep just before Christmas, and fell in his fireplace.'

Dougal had glanced quickly from right to left, and then said, in a low voice, ‘Trusts and bonds are not my sole interest.'

‘You mean, you're looking for something a little more exciting? Something with prospects?'

‘You've got the wind of it.'

Jack had sucked in his breath. ‘Cockburn and Millings won't give you much elbow-room there. Nor will Snell. Snell's in charge of Foreign and Dominion. They don't like the galley-slaves to poke their noses up on deck, those three. Why, if a poor fellow like me came up with a decent account, and took all the credit for it, they might be shown up for what they are.
The three dullest brains in Cornhill. I might as well warn you, now – they'll fight you, those three. They don't like young men with ideas and they
particularly
don't like young Scotsmen with ideas.'

‘But I'm the son of the founder.'

‘It doesn't matter if you're the Son of God. They'll sit on you, with those three big wide rumps of theirs, until you can't breathe another breath.'

‘I'm surprised my father appointed them, if they're as dull as you say they are.'

Jack Cutting laid a hand on Dougal's shoulder. ‘They're
safe
, that's why. I don't want to make impertinent remarks about your father, but the impression we get of him down here is that he's rather like Caesar – imperious and imperial, but always keeping an eye open for lean and hungry conspirators.'

Dougal looked Jack Cutting straight in the eye. ‘You're taking a risk, aren't you, Mr Cutting, telling me this? You don't even know me.'

Jack Cutting shrugged. ‘If you were getting along well with your father, you never would have been sent down here to manage the trust department. You would have stayed in Edinburgh, like your brother Robert, and managed the bank's affairs in true Watson style, to the strains of
We All Stand Together, or O Bonny Was Yon Rosy Brier
, or whatever it is you chaps sing up in Edinburgh to keep your hearts beating quick.'

Dougal had thought at first that he ought to be seriously offended by this remark. He was certainly surprised by it. But Jack Cutting had stood there so calm and collected that all Dougal had done was plant his fists on his hips, like a man whose gundog has just made off with a fresh-baked meat pie from the kitchen windowsill, and give Jack Cutting a pursed-up kind of a grin.

‘You're a man with a taste for a risk,' he said. ‘I like that.'

‘Don't forget about inviting me for lunch,' Jack Cutting had reminded him, as he went off to join a smiling Effie and an increasingly irritable Malcolm Cockburn.

Malcolm Cockburn had said testily, ‘I hope this little excursion has been of some profit for you, Mr Watson. Mind you, I shouldn't take too much notice of what Mr Cutting has to say. He's something of a Non-Conformist.'

‘I was simply inquiring about coffee,' Dougal had explained, and followed Malcolm Cockburn upstairs.

At the head of the stairs, with his face as mealy and stern as one of McSween's best hand-made haggises, hung a large portrait of Thomas Watson, in the philabegs. Behind him, in an Elysian field of purple heather, stood a stately but architecturally-unsound depiction of Watson's Bank.

‘It's almost like being at home again,' Effie had remarked; and had pretended to be shocked when Dougal snorted.

The Cockburns were not rich by the standards of the Very Rich. They were not Astors, or Wideners, or Roxburghes. But Vera Cockburn was the middle and prettiest daughter of the Earl of Telscombe, and Malcolm Cockburn had unparalleled connections in banking and the Foreign Office; and so if there was nothing better for the Very Rich to do, an evening at Eaton Square was usually quite acceptable. Although neither Malcolm nor Vera Cockburn would ever have admitted it, they were always careful that none of their little soirées clashed with any of the more attractive social events of the year, like an evening at Alfred de Rothschild's listening to his own private orchestra, or a spring banquet at the Duchess of Sutherland's. And whereas the Very Rich went to Waddesdon Manor or to the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire's house at Chatsworth if they wanted to relax and shoot and drink 1874 champagne and misbehave themselves, they knew that if they came to the Cockburns they could talk hard money, sterling and dollars, and find out who was making the millions these days, and who was not.

The first few years of the twentieth century were seeing scores of old inherited fortunes dwindle away; and scores of aggressive and hideously wealthy parvenus begin to dominate the upper echelons of London society. Most painful of all, the size of a chap's fortune began to circumscribe his social freedom. If he were only a millionaire, instead of a multi-millionaire, or a billionaire, then it was considered bad
form for him to leave a party or a banquet before anyone sufficiently rich had decided that
they
had had enough.

The London of the Gay Nineties had gone and although Edward was now King, the oncoming dotage of the Empire and the heightening tensions between Germany and Britain and France were already colouring the Edwardian era with the autumnal light of a dying day.

The party that the Cockburns held the night after Effie and Dougal arrived from Edinburgh was ostensibly to celebrate the recent elopement of the Cincinnati oil and iron heiress Helena Zimmerman with the Duke of Manchester. Helena and the Duke had gone off together in November last year; and both of them wanted to get married desperately. Helena, because she was desperately in love; and the Duke of Manchester, because he was equally desperately in debt. Helena's father, the millionaire Eugene Zimmerman, had tried to make the best of a sharp disappointment, and had praised the Duke for his ‘manly bearing.' There was not much else about him that he could find to praise: the scandal sheets had called him ‘dissolute.'

Effie, in the chintzy pink-and-blue bedroom which Mrs Cockburn had given her on the second floor, was being dressed for the evening by Mrs Cockburn's chambermaid, Logan. She had chosen from her trunk her prettiest evening gown, in primrose-yellow faille, with white satin cuffs and a high white satin collar, and black satin revers. The maid curled up her hair with hot irons into the latest wavy style although Effie made her brush it out a little at the back because she was afraid of looking too fast.

Logan, a perky and gingery little girl who never seemed to be able to pin her maid's bonnet on straight, hummed
Hallo, Central, Give Me Heaven
, over and over. ‘You're ever so pretty, you know,' she told Effie, peering at her cheekily in the mirror on the dressing-table. ‘You should take advantage of it, do you know what I mean?'

Effie cocked her head to one side and looked at herself in the glass. She had never believed before that she was pretty, or that she ever would be. Charity Mclntyre, who had lived on the other side of Charlotte Square, had always outshone her, with shinning blonde ringlets and a pert little nose that even Jamie Arbuthnott had described as ‘just like a rosebud'. But with her hair coiffed in the London style, Effie's face had
changed, and she suddenly looked far more alluring and mature. The excitement of coming down to the capital had given her something, too: the hint of a new sparkle, like the first wink of light in an incandescent lamp. It was a slightly naughty sparkle, perhaps, by Edinburgh standards – a mixture of feminine verve and provocative self-confidence. An American would have favourably compared her, as she sat at her dressing-table, to any of the girls drawn by Charles Dana Gibson.

She was still scaringly innocent, but she was beginning to grow graceful, and poised. She was not yet fashionable, but she was not poor, and London was a treasure-house of gorgeous clothes, including princess gowns and Eton suits and beautifully-cut health skirts. For women, 1901 in London was one of the most chic and decorative eras there had ever been, and the greatest glory of all was their hats. There were morning hats, afternoon hats, and evening hats. There were picnic hats and opera hats. There were picture hats and toques. Every hat was huge, and heaped with lace, and ribbons, and flowers, and fruit, and whole nests of birds. Last year, in London, naturalists had complained bitterly when the feathers of 25,000 egrets had been auctioned in one month, all for decorating hats.

‘You're not shy, are you?' asked Logan, putting down her combs and brushes. ‘You ain't got nothing to be shy about.' In her Bethnal Green accent, she pronounced it ‘shoy'.

Effie looked up at her, and then gave a little shrug of her shoulders. ‘I suppose I am a bit nervous.' She patted her hair, and a wisp came down, which Logan tucked back into place with the handle of her comb. ‘I've been trying so hard to be bold and raucle, but I do get afeared at times.'

‘Well, don't,' said Logan. ‘They're only a lot of people, these millionaires, just like the rest of us. I had to help the Duchess of Devonshire to change her dress once, and you should have seen her corsets! Made them in the naval dockyards at Chatham, I shouldn't wonder. So every time I see one of these grand straight-backed ladies, I think of what they're wearing underneath, and then I don't feel so inferior.'

Effie felt her own foundation garment pinching around her waist. She had seen some pretty new pink corsets advertised in The
Lady's Oracle
, and she had promised herself that she would replace her underwear as soon as she had time to go
shopping. There were a few other things that she wanted to try: things that she wouldn't have dared to buy in Edinburgh. New perfumes, Princess hair tonic, and (most guiltily but most exciting of all) La Doré's World-Famous Bust Food, ‘unsurpassed for making a plump, full, rounded bosom.' Her own breasts were nicely shaped, but she longed for the large haughty frontages that so many of the London women seemed to possess.

At last, Effie was ready. Logan had opened the door once or twice, and tiptoed across the landing to see who was arriving downstairs. She came scurrying back the second time to whisper, ‘Viscount Hardinge's just come in, and I saw Mr and Mrs Stanley's carriage outside. That's Mr
Edward
Stanley. He married Lady Alice Montagu, who was the daughter of the Duke of Manchester's father. Well, I know it's complicated, but you don't have to look so surprised. Everybody's related to everybody else in the aristocracy. My mother calls it keeping themselves to themselves.'

From downstairs came the vibrant sound of a cello and a viola, playing Mozart. There was a polite knocking at her door, and it was Dougal, looking equally nervous, but marvellously formal in his white wing collar, starched shirt-front, and tailcoats. Effie gave her primrose satin evening gloves one last tug, to straighten them, and took a deep breath.

‘Are you ready?' Dougal asked her.

‘Aye, I think so,' she swallowed. ‘My you're the swankie tonight, aren't you?'

‘You should see yourself. You look really dink.' Dink meant elegant and ladylike. Dougal could have used the English words, but somehow it was more reassuring to speak in Scottish argot. They had both been taken by their father to Highland Society Dinners, and Effie had once been invited to the annual presentation banquet of the Scottish Bankers' Association, but even the precise pinsticking of upper-class Edinburgh manners seemed comfortably provincial when they thought about the etiquette of lords and earls and millionaires.

Dougal took Effie's arm, and led her down the staircase to the wide hallway, where Jerome, the Cockburns' butler, was welcoming the guests, and Michael, their footman, was busily collecting coats and wraps and scarves. The ugly green and ochre umbrella pot was already thick with silver-and
gold-topped evening sticks, and although the hallway was chilly from the wintry air outside, there was an aroma of expensive perfume, and fur, and something which Effie could only think was the smell of wealth. ‘Get away with you,' Dougal would say to her later, ‘money no
smells
.' ‘Oh, it does too,' she would retort. ‘Money has a special smell, all of its own.'

Through the open mahogany doors which led into the sparkling reception room, Effie could see a gathering of tall, statuesque women, almost all of them strikingly beautiful, and of short, ugly little men, almost all of them bald. The extraordinary contrast between the men and the women struck her so forcibly that she could hardly resist nudging Dougal in the ribs, and pointing it out to him. It was like a Punch parody, of Lord Philthyrich and his beautiful bride. It seemed as if Consuelo Vanderbilt, the lovely railroad heiress who had recently been forced by her mother to marry the short and unbecoming Duke of Marlborough, had been only one of scores of girls who had married for wealth or for titles, or both.

The conversation was loud, and drawling, and the laughter was almost high-pitched enough to make the chandeliers jingle. As Dougal and Effie came to the door to be announced, Effie picked up snatches of gossip like ‘ – costing the Goulds an absolute fortune – ' ‘ – don't know
why
she had to fall for a Horse Guard – ' and ‘ – thinks it isn't worth anything
like
half a million –'