Lady of Fortune (19 page)

Dougal glanced at Prudence, to see if she was blushing at all this talk of libbet horses and purple passages in the Bible. He suddenly thought of the words,
thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins, that feed among the lilies
, and as he thought of them, Prudence Cutting looked across at him with those dreamy eyes of hers and smiled in such a slow delightful way that he felt the hair prickle around his neck, and his penis uncurl inside his evening trousers, awakened.

Dougal was handsome and ingenuous, and he had never lacked for girlfriends in Edinburgh. But the young ladies of Thistle Street and Henderson Row had been all giggle and tease and ‘Och, no, Dougal, you mustn't,' and he had spent long and agonising hours at tea with the girls and their mothers, despondently nibbling petticoat tails and making small talk about holidays in Nairn, and he had usually achieved nothing at all (except once, with Harriet McQueen, when he had managed to thrust his hand up between thighs that were soft and white and hot, and kiss her wildly all over her nose and her chin; and emerge from her house in Royal Terrace at four o'clock of a winter's afternoon, when it was just beginning to sleet, cupping his hand to his nose so that he could smell again the wonderful pungency with which she had anointed his fingertips).

He had lost his virginity at the age of eighteen, to his piano instructress, Miss Maidment, on the tasselled rug of her dark, stale living-room in Moray Place. It had happened with extraordinary violence, in between
Youthful Days
and
The Blue Bells of Scotland
(Key of G Major), and Dougal's flourishing skill with the piano had never been the same since. Miss Maidment had panted. Dougal, even with his attention fixed on the stuffed osprey which had watched him with such disapproval from the glass dome over the fireplace, had ejaculated too soon. Afterwards, he had walked home the long way round, along Heriot Row to Dundas Street, and then south on Hanover Street to George Street, and he had wondered why the day was so balmy and calm, and why the pink blossom had budded, and how the smoke could have risen from the chimneys of Frederick Street with such equanimity.

That Sunday, in church, he had felt himself reddening when the minister had referred to ‘sins of the flesh', and he had prayed fervently into his pillow that night that the Lord should not take him and dash him into the eternal fires for what he had done with Miss Maidment. The Lord, fortunately, had not; and he had done the same thing with Miss Maidment six times more. The last time, however, Miss Maidment had cried. She had just heard that her fiancé Gerald had died in Mandalay. She had begged Dougal to take his piano lessons elsewhere. He had; but he only had to hear the first few notes of Merry
Christmas Mazurka
, and he would think of her. Red-haired, bonny in her way, with pink lips and hair between her legs as bright as marmalade.

‘Do you box, Mr Watson?' asked Prudence, as they ate crystallised chestnuts.

‘Box?'

‘You have an athletic look about you, if you don't mind my saying so.'

Dougal rubbed his right first. ‘Well, yes, I did box for a while. I was school champion.'

Prudence smiled. ‘I love violent men. The more violent, the better.'

‘I don't know that I'm violent,' said Dougal. But what she had said disturbed him, and also intrigued him. He looked at Jack but Jack only smiled. Behind him, at the next table, Sir Herbert Tree was banging the table with his hand and singing the music-hall song, ‘Have you heard how centuries
ago, boys; Young John Bull all at once began to grow, boys!' He had already drunk two bottles of Gamay de l'Ardeche, and the wine-waiter, patiently and ostentatiously, was opening up a third.

‘On Monday,' said Jack, ‘we will meet the two principals involved in the East Africa Company, Mr Snetterton and Mr Plant. They will give us all the particulars we will need for raising the loan; and the necessary papers. There is no reason why we shouldn't be able to arrange the advance within the week.'

‘When will you tell Mr Cockburn?' asked Daugal.

‘When the papers are all signed, and sealed and witnessed. Not before.'

‘You don't think that's too much of a risk?' Dougal asked him.

‘There's no other way. We have to commit the bank in writing, or Cockburn will refuse to pay up.'

‘He could still refuse to pay up, couldn't he? Or find a way to defer the loan so long that the whole project runs out of steam.'

‘I've taken care of that,' said Jack. ‘One of my old school chums works for
The Times
. On the day we sign the deal, he will carry a story about it in the financial columns, and praise Watson's for their foresight and their good investment sense. Cockburn will hardly be able to say that the deal's off after
that
.'

‘I'm still not sure,' said Dougal.

‘None of us can be sure until the loan is actually advanced, in hard cash. But I don't think that you should forget who you are. You are, after all, Thomas Watson's younger son, and that counts for something. Cockburn won't dare to make too much of a stink, in case he offends your pater.'

Dougal looked from Jack to Prudence, and then back again. ‘I suppose the risk is worth taking,' he said.

Jack drummed the handle of his knife on the table. ‘That's the spirit! Let the East African railway spur proceed! Success for all! Your share will be fifty elephant tusks a month, delivered by special messenger!'

‘I hope you're joking,' grinned Dougal.

‘Oh, I'm joking all right,' said Jack. ‘I promise you, I'm joking.'

They left the restaurant a little after midnight, and walked
arm-in-arm down to the Strand, where Jack hailed a hansom cab to take himself and Prudence home to Hampstead. Jack shook Dougal's hand firmly, and said, ‘Have no fear, old man. We'll pull this one off a treat.'

Prudence came close to him, holding up her skirts slightly to stop them from trailing across the wet pavements. Her ostrich-plume hat danced in the light from the nearby gas-standard, on the glass of which was stencilled, ‘This Way To the District Rly'. The cab-driver's horse shuffled and coughed, its brown blanket soaked by the steady London rain. Prudence took Dougal's arm, and he could smell her sweet, distinctive perfume. It reminded him of lily-of-the-valley.

‘This evening has been so much more than the usual pleasure,' said Dougal. ‘You have transformed a business conference into a sheer delight.'

Prudence gave him a coquettish little curtsey. ‘And so, Mr Watson, have you.'

‘May I call on you?' asked Dougal.

She smiled at him from beneath the shadow of her hat. ‘If you wish. I'm sure that Jack wouldn't object. And I'm quite sure that I wouldn't.'

‘You are the sweetest, most engaging girl,' said Dougal. ‘Perhaps I could meet you on Saturday, with my sister Effie, and we could take a boat down the river to Greenwich.'

‘I would adore it.'

Dougal stood on the pavement watching their cab trot away towards St Mary-le-Strand and Fleet Street. A boy wearing boots with no laces in them came up to him and said, ‘Spare sixpence, guv'nor?'

He remembered what his father had said. ‘Better tippence in the bank than saxpence in the aumos-dish.' He reached into the pocket of his vest and produced a shilling, which he tossed up for the boy to catch. It tumbled sparkling in the wet night air.

After an hour of testy indecision, Effie decided not to be at home that evening when Henry Baeklander called. She heard his rich-timbred voice at the door, reverberating like the bass notes of a harmonium, but she remained in the living-room, tense, steadily embroidering her butterflies, hoping that he would accept Jerome's explanation that she was suffering from a slight head-cold and ‘fatigue,' and that he should perhaps return tomorrow, after eleven. Her heart was dancing far faster than usual, and she tied an impossible knot in her yellow silk. But after a minute or two, she heard the front door close again, and then the grinding and clattering of a carriage outside, and she put down her embroidery frame and sighed in relief.

Henry Baeklander had called on her almost every day since they had gone riding together. Twice, he had invited her to the opera. Once, he had invited her to the play. He had even asked her if she would care to go skating with him in St James's Park, since so much of the lake had been still thickly frozen over. He had sent her hothouse flowers, and a pineapple.

He had twice postponed his sailing-date for the Mediterranean, in order to repeat his proposal of marriage.

Effie felt confused, and even frightened. She found Henry attractive, and mesmerically charming, and if he had planned to stay in London for longer than just a few days, she would have enjoyed getting to know him, and learning from him whatever she could. He was a very rich man, and all very rich men have important advice to pass on, even if that advice is nothing more than ‘never try to become rich'. But about one thing Effie was quite certain, and that was that she would never marry Henry. She wanted to fulfil her own ambitions first, before she married; and when she did marry, she wanted to walk down the aisle proudly, on the arm of a man who could be her partner as well as her husband. She had seen her mother alternately bullied and ignored by her father. Henry, just as perilously, treated Effie as if she were some delicate pink wild flower that he wanted to pluck, a muskmallow or a wild geranium. That frightened her, although she wasn't entirely certain why. Perhaps it was
because she wanted to love her husband as a woman and speak to him as a woman, as Effie – not as a slave, or as a fragile bloom, or anything at all apart from what she really was. Romantic similes unsettled her. She did not want to be compared with a rose, or a swan, or a dove, or even (as she had read in a copy of
The Ladies' Home Journal
, ‘a far and alluring country, whose graceful contours entrance the eye!').

Jerome came in with a letter on his silver tray. He said, in tones that could have dissected a tortoise, ‘Mr Baeklander presented his
compliments
, Miss Watson, and regretted that you were feeling so unwell. He wishes you a speedy return to health. He will call again
tomorrow
after eleven o'clock, and meanwhile he has left you this letter.'

Effie took the letter without a word. There was something inside the envelope apart from writing paper, something small and hard and wrapped in tissue-paper. She said, ‘Thank you, Jerome, that will be all for now.'

Is there anything I can bring you, Miss Watson? A little tea, perhaps, or hot chocolate?'

She shook her head. ‘No. No, thank you.'

Jerome waited for a moment, said ‘Very well, Miss Watson,' and then retreated across the living-room on pumps so silent that Effie sometimes wondered if his feet actually touched the floor at all. She stood up, and tore open the envelope with hands that didn't seem to want to be controllable.

The tissue paper contained an engagement ring, a single diamond of two carats, surrounded by sapphires. It must have been worth £3000 at least, perhaps much more. If she had sold it, she could have bought herself twelve semidetached houses in Surbiton, just outside London, with the proceeds. Or, one hundred and fifty hand-tailored suits, of the richest and finest fabrics, and the best-quality lace. She held it up to the light and it winked and dazzled and sparkled with rainbows.

She sat down, trembling, still holding up the ring in her left hand, and read the letter in which it was enclosed. Henry's writing was a firm, masculine italic, although his down-strokes displayed a flourish which betrayed his vanity, and his pride. Effie had read all about calligraphy in
Hobson's Guide To What Your Handwriting Reveals
(McBride Press,
Is. 3d.) and she was conscious as she read Henry's letter that his undotted i's and his curling g-tails were giving away his secret obsession with himself, and with his own magnetic ugliness, and with money.

He had written: ‘My darling Effie,

This must be my last bid to win your affection, for if I continue in vain to thrash the white charger of my love up the slippery faces of your glass mountain, he will surely die of a broken spirit! You neglect me so! You refuse me so! What is a man to do? So, here it is. My last bold stroke. Marry me, Effie, and accept this ring. I swear to you if you say you will marry me that I will treat you like a queen; and that your brother with be rewardingly ensconced as chief of my investment department in New York. Say yes! You must!
Lo giuro, lo giuro, lo giuro, agli occhi tuoi lo giuro al nostro amor
– I swear it, I swear it, I swear it by your eyes, I swear it by our love.

Your pining,
Henry.'

Effie sat for a very long time, almost half an hour, turning the diamond ring over and over between her fingers. It was the key to a life of ease and riches. All she had to do was to say yes to Henry, and she would be lavished with clothes and jewellery and presents for as long as he lived; and when he died, she would be the natural heiress to estates that included nearly one-third of Colorado, eight colonial streets in Boston, including Ruggles Street, Washington Street, and Quincy Street, 650 acres of New Hampshire, three square miles of northern Connecticut, as well as houses and estates in France, Switzerland, Morocco, and England. Not to mention his yacht, the
Excelsior
.

She didn't know what to do. The temptation was very great. She lowered the hand which held the ring into her lap, and sat looking for a long time at the dying coal fire, at the reflections in the fire dogs, and the white hot caverns in which white sparks twinkled, as if they were tiny fairies who could withstand any kind of heat.

The long-case clock in the hallway chimed ten. She thought, oddly: My lie is already passing. But what shall I do about Henry?

It was not so much a coincidence as one of those unusual alignments of different destinies; one of those moments when the huge masticating cogs of human existence for one brief instant come into perceptible synchronicity, so that anyone who is attentive enough can glimpse through the spokes of the mechanism the relevance of somebody else's life to their own.