Lady of Fortune (32 page)

The door opened, and then closed again, but when Prudence looked around from her chair she saw that it wasn't Mrs McNab at all; but Robert, in his severe black evening-suit, and white pleated shirt-front. He was staring at William Albert, and the way the boy was sucking with such concentration at Prudence's swollen, blue-veined breast; but his face was expressionless. Prudence immediately plucked William Albert away from her nipple and covered herself with a bunched-up baby-shawl.

‘Please,' she said, flustered and embarrassed. ‘I'm trying to feed the baby.'

Robert pulled a face. ‘It looks as if he feeds better than anyone else in the house. More attractively, anyway.'

Prudence said nothing, but held her baby close to her, and rubbed his back to bring up his wind. Robert took a pace or two forward, and then stood stiffly with his hands behind his back, as if he were about to address an outing of convent girls on the virtues of self-denial. He said, ‘You mustn't misunderstand me, Miss Cutting.'

‘I don't think I do, Mr Watson.'

‘You could call me Robert, if you wished,' he said. ‘I'm not a terrible stickler for formalities.'

‘Would you please let me finish feeding William Albert? If you want to talk to me, I'm quite willing to talk to you, but not when I'm undressed like this. And, besides, he's hungry.'

Robert didn't take any notice. Instead, he said, ‘Did you really think if Dougal had been here, that he would have taken care of you?'

‘It was what I was hoping.'

Robert shook his head. ‘Dougal, I'm sorry to say, is the black sheep of the Watson family. The sower of wild oats. He would have denied that this poor wean was his just as easily as he gave him to you.'

‘Your sister said he asked after me in his letters.'

‘My sister is always trying to make life into a rosy daydream;
which means that she often misinterprets what she sees, and hears, and reads. Dougal did ask after you, yes, but only to make sure that you would not pursue him, and that you would press no claims of paternity against him.'

Prudence frowned. ‘He didn't even know that I was with child. I saw him for one night, and that was all. I never heard from him again.'

Robert lifted up his coat-tails, and sat down on the end of the bed, resting his elbow on the polished brass rail. ‘I'm afraid that, as bankers, our intelligence always has to be excellent. We have to know everything. All the social goings-on, as well as the fiscal. Dougal was aware of your condition from very early on, as far as I know, and he was just as anxious to avoid bearing the responsibility for it as he was all the others.'

‘Others?' said Prudence.

‘My dear girl,' Robert told her, ‘you don't surely believe that you're the first, or that William Albert is anything but the latest in a succession of poor wee bastards? You'll excuse my language.'

Prudence stroked the baby's head. ‘What am I going to do?' she asked. Her eyes were wide, and her face was white as a Giotto madonna.

‘You haven't any family who might take care of you?'

‘There's only my father. My mother died of tuberculosis when I was eleven. There are my aunts, of course, but they'd never let me bring a baby to live with them. They live in Waltham-on-the-Wolds, and I'm afraid they're both very prim.'

Robert raised both his eyebrows. ‘Ah, well, that's unfortunate. You can't, of course, stay here. I mean, as much as we'd like to help you, we do have our reputation to think of and I can assure you that the folks in Edinburgh are a great deal more mim-mouthed when it comes to matters of legitimacy than almost anywhere else, including Waltham-on-the-Wolds.'

‘I've very little money,' said Prudence. ‘Jack had to take most of it when he went to Holland.'

‘Well, that's most unfortunate,' said Robert. ‘I will, of course, advance you a pound or two to keep you off the street, but I'm afraid that if I were to give you any more than that I would be accepting that young William Albert here was
actually Dougal's child; which I can't. You'll recall that I denied all knowledge of him when you came into the door, and I'll do the same again, in front of anybody else. You'll not catch a Watson with a claim for maintenance.'

Prudence slowly lowered her head. William Albert, in her arms, began kicking and gurgling and cooing.

‘He's a handsome wee lad,' said Robert. ‘It's a pity.' He stood up, and tugged his waistcoat over his pot-belly. Then he cleared his throat, and made for the door.

‘Wait,' said Prudence.

Robert paused, with his back to her.

‘You came up to see me for a reason, didn't you?' asked Prudence.

‘My dear girl, what possible reason, except to make sure that you were well?'

‘You've got something on your mind. Have you? Or haven't you? You seem as if you're trying to make me feel even more destitute than I am, so that you can ask me to do something for you.'

‘Ah,' said Robert. ‘Do I?'

‘Very much so. You do want me to do something for you, don't you?'

‘You're a very perceptive girl. Well educated. Sharp.'

Prudence said nothing, but watched the back of Robert's head, the way the prickly-cropped skin folded over his collar, the shine of his cheek, still well shaved at seven o'clock in the evening. There was a bulkiness about him which both frightened her and, in a strange way, attracted her. It was like watching a two-year-old bull, unsure if it would stay docile, or if it would suddenly bunch up its shoulder-muscles and charge.

Robert said, in a different kind of voice, a peculiarly recitative voice as if he were repeating a text which he had learned by rote, ‘You probably understand that I'm a very busy man.'

‘Yes, of course, but –'

‘I have little time for any of the more frivolous pleasures of life, like dancing or theatre or music. My father took me into the bank when I was young, and because I had an especial talent for banking work, he came to rely upon me more and more. Today, although my father doesn't realise it, the running of the bank is almost entirely dependent upon me. My
father is not much more these days than a figurhead, whose overblown sense of dignity and superlative ill-temper I can occasionally draw upon to help me in my work, but who achieves very little during his day in the office but bother his staff with bluster and old-fashioned ideas.'

Prudence said, ‘Your father hasn't made any of his family very happy, has he? Effie was saying that –'

Robert turned around, and the expression on his face was concentrated enough to silence her. He said. I'm not particular about happiness just now. Happiness is a commodity that only fools, women, and dyvors are interested in. A dyvor is what we call a bankrupt, or a near-bankrupt. What I'm trying to say to you is that I'm thirty years old now, and it's time I was married – both for the sake of having a hostess who can entertain my business acquaintances, and for continuing the Watson line.'

Now, Prudence was completely silent. She could do nothing but look at him, her brown hair astray, her shawl pressed to her breast, her mouth slightly parted, with William Albert kicking on her lap. On the wall behind the bed was a dark engraving of John Knox, the Protestant reformer, from the frontispiece of his book
The First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women
.

Robert drew the small yellow-painted bentwood chair from under the dressing-table, and sat down on it. He said, seriously, ‘I will never have the time to woo a lady. I doubt, to be quite truthful, if I will ever have the necessary flair for it. But here you are, without means, and with a boy who is by chance a full-blooded Watson, of my own family; so what more sensible combination could there be? Than you, with this wean; and me. Husband and wife, and ready-made heir.'

Prudence said, in a voice that was not much more than a whisper. ‘What will your brother say? Dougal? Won't he try to claim then that the child is his?'

‘Dougal couldn't give a preen. Besides, he's in America, and likely to stay there.'

‘You really want to marry me?'

‘That's what I'm asking. I'm not obliging you.'

‘But you don't know me. You don't know me at all.'

‘I know that you're well-looking, and that you've borne a healthy handsome boy, and that you speak like a lady, even if you have no wealth. What more should I know?'

‘But you don't love me,' insisted Prudence. ‘And I don't love you.'

Robert raised his chin. His face was smooth and plump and somehow reminded Prudence of a large rice pudding, browned in the oven. He said, ‘Is there any need to speak of love?'

Prudence sat in her chair for a very long time, not speaking, silent and tired. She knew that Robert was rich, and that if she said yes to his proposal, she would never have to want for anything again, never have to sit in a 3rd-class railway carriage all the way to Scotland in a dark snowstorm, with a wet-diapered baby on her knee, its urine soaking into the side of her skirts. Never have to work, or worry, or pray. The rich, she knew, find God unnecessary. Never have to shop, or clean shoes, or iron a blouse. Never have to
think
, even.

Her self-consciousness was such that she might have refused Robert altogether. Just because she was a woman, and just because she had been victimised by that ancient and familiar set of discriminatory circumstances (lover makes woman pregnant, then flees, leaving baby in woman's eternal care), that didn't mean that she had to allow herself to be trapped by the first ugly and deficient saviour who came along. And, God, she thought, aren't all saviours ugly and deficient! Only the bastards are handsome and desirable and strong.

But there was William Albert to think of. Without money, William Albert could only be raised as an illegitimate waif. He would be lucky if he ever owned a pair of shoes. If he ever managed to learn to read and write, he might become a clerk. He would never know the taste of champagne; he would never know what it was like to dress in silk. He would probably never travel further in the whole of his life than the nearest seaside.

Prudence looked down at William Albert, and the baby clutched her finger in his own tiny dimpled hand. Prudence thought: I've been trapped. I might as well admit it, and do the best I can, for myself, and for William Albert.

Robert said, ‘You can think about it. I'll give you time. I never force anybody to make a crucial decision in a hurry.'

Prudence lowered her head. She felt as if the whole room were turning under her feet. She was suddenly conscious of being in Scotland, in the snowy north, on a world that was
rotating on its axis, through an empty and infinite night. She had been prepared for all kinds of shattering eventualities when she came to Scotland; for a fierce argument with Dougal, for a melodramatic reunion of tears and laughter. But she hadn't thought for one moment that she might be faced with the decision she was faced with now.

William Albert started to whoop, and cry. She said, ‘Shush, William Albert,' but he didn't stop. He was hungry for the rest of his supper.

Prudence swallowed. Then, slowly, boldly, she lowered the baby shawl from her bare breast, and lifted up William Albert in her arms so that he could suckle from it. Robert watched her plumply and impassively, breathing steadily through his mouth; and took in, with eyes almost as cold as his father's, the sight of the wide brown nipple from which a glistening drop of milk had already sprung.

At last, though, he stood up, and pushed the yellow chair back under the dressing-table. ‘I'll make the necessary arrangements,' he said. ‘Meanwhile, I'll ask Mrs McNab to move you down to the Cerulean Room.'

Prudence didn't look up. But she said, quietly, ‘You'll be kind to me, won't you?'

There was no reply. She said, ‘Robert?', speaking his name for the first time. But he was gone. The door was a half-inch ajar, and from downstairs she could hear Effie singing I
Hae Been At Crookieden
. The church bells were ringing again through the night. William Albert noisily sucked. It was Christmas, in Charlotte Square.

The morning after Twelfth Night, Effie was sitting in the morning-room, reading a slim marble-bound copy of
My Life
by Thomas Bewick, which Celia Calder-Haig had given her for Christmas, when her mother came in, bustling and distressed, and said, ‘Effie? Oh, Effie, would you ring for Mrs McNab, please?'

‘Mother, what's wrong?' asked Effie. She laid down her
book on the small table beside her, and half-rose in her chair. ‘Mother, you look awful!'

Fiona Watson went to the window, her hand pressed to her forehead. In the cold bright winter sunlight, she looked even paler than ever, and her hair was untidy and frayed. She said, ‘I just need a cup of tea to settle me, that's all. Will you ring, please?'

Effie went to the small morning-room fireplace and pushed the button beside it. Then she came over to her mother, and lightly laid a hand on her shoulder. ‘Mother, you're shaking.'

Fiona Watson took a shallow, quivering breath. ‘I've heard from Jamie McFarlane,' she said. ‘Here, you'd better read it for yourself. Then perhaps you'll know what calumny your father is capable of.' She produced a folded letter from the pocket of her brown skirt. ‘Here, read it.'

Effie opened the letter slowly, keeping her eyes on her mother. A bright tear was already sliding down her mother's cheek, although she didn't utter a sound. She was too well brought up to let the servants hear her sobbing.

The letter read, ‘My darling F., I have risked writing to you because it is possible that I may never be able to see you again. I cannot tell you how grieved I am; but it is most important that you believe me, for in the following weeks and months you may hear terrible things about me, terrible accusations,
none of which are true
.