Lady of Fortune (33 page)

‘I have been accused by the police on evidence supplied by a nameless informer of molesting three young girls and a boy at a tenement house in Upper Bow. They allege that I performed unnatural acts with these children and they say that the children themselves will be brought against me as witnesses. I have already been dismissed from my charity work, and I have lost my lodgings. I have been released on £100 bail, which was raised by friends, but I am afraid that I will be convicted when they bring me to trial, and imprisoned.

‘Believe me, my dearest, these charges are completely without substance. I fear that they may have been tricked up by T. Is this possible? I hate to suspect him of something which he may not have done, but after Gavin McFee let the cat out of the bag on Christmas Day, may this not have been his way of exercising his wrath against me?

‘I will write again as soon as I have news. I am safe with my
sister at the moment. Please do not worry too desperately on my account. I love you enduringly. You are my moon and my stars, and the sun from which shines the only light which has ever illuminated my life. J.'

Effie herself had tears in her eyes as she lowered the letter. She said, sadly, ‘Oh, mother. I'm so sorry for you.'

‘You have no need to be sorry for me, Effie. It's Jamie McFarlane for whom you should save your sorrow. Oh God, poor Jamie! If I hadn't have loved him, if I hadn't been so selfish as to break my marriage vows, and snare him in, he would have been safe now, and happy with someone else. Do you know how guilty I feel? He's going to go to prison, on the worst of all possible charges, and all because of me.'

‘Mother, it wasn't your fault.'

‘Of course it was my fault! I am old enough and wise enough to take the responsibility for my own life, and for those I love. Your father is nothing more than a witless blundering brute, who crushes and lashes and beats blindly out at anything and everything that irritates him. He's inherited the cruelty of his own father before him, but unlike his own father, he's wealthy and powerful enough to inflict that cruelty on anybody he chooses. I knew what he was like; and I knew what he would do to Jamie if he ever found out about our liaison. I destroyed Jamie just as surely by what
I
did as he was destroyed by anything that your father has done.'

‘You've no proof that it was father,' said Effie, a little desperately.

‘Who else could it be?' replied Fiona Watson, and her voice was as bitter as horse-nettle. ‘You know that Jamie's no child-molester. He has one or two enemies on the Corporation, but there's nobody else who would seek to tear his whole life to pieces, like this.'

Effie felt as if everything around her, the morning-room, the fireplace, the view out of the window of the backs of the houses in Queen Street, had been suddenly revealed as nothing more than a theatrical stage-set; and that she and her mother were reciting the words from some peculiar play. She said, ‘What can you do?'

‘Do? There's nothing I can do.'

‘Can't you talk to father?'

‘Your father is beyond being talked to.'

‘But surely –'

Fiona Watson pulled open the buttons of her shirtwaist blouse, tugged up the slip which she wore underneath, and bared her ribs and her stomach. They were smothered in bruises, some of them purple and fresh, others red and yellow, and fading. They looked like a collection of plums, in different stages of ripening.

Effie reached out with a shaking hand and touched her mother's ribs with her fingertips, infinitely gently. ‘Father did this?' she whispered, in disbelief.

‘It's time you knew,' said Fiona Watson, starkly.

‘You mean, this isn't the first time?'

‘No. And probably not the last. Do you remember that time I had to go the clinic in Fife, because of an ingrowing toenail? Well, it was nothing to do with a toenail at all. Your father had cracked four of my ribs, and chipped my collar-bone. He has a way about him, you see. He knows how to hurt a lady without anybody finding out about it.'

‘But why?'

Fiona Watson tucked away her slip, and buttoned up her blouse. Effie helped her with the cameo clasp at her neck. When she had fastened it, she held her mother very close, so close that she could feel her heart beating through her poor bruised ribs.

Mrs McNab came in. ‘You rang for me, ma'am?'

Fiona Watson said, ‘Yes, Mrs McNab. I would love some tea with lemon, please. The Keemun.'

Mrs NcNab could see that something was wrong, by the way that Fiona and Effie were standing so close together, and by the whiteness of Fiona's face. She said, ‘You're not sickening for something, ma'am?'

‘No, Mrs McNab, I'm quite all right. Just a little tired, after the Christmas season.'

Mrs McNab hesitated, then said, ‘Very well, ma'am. I'll bring the tea. But if you don't mind my saying so, you look as if bed is the best place for you.'

Effie went up to her room that evening and spent a whole hour in frantic and contradictory thought. It was horrifying to her that her father beat her mother: it almost made her sick to think about it. She was also confused and frightened about what he had done to Jamie McFarlane. But, at the same time, he
was
her father, and her mother
had
betrayed him, and however sympathetic she felt towards her mother, she could still understand how violently jealous and enraged her father must feel. Effie, being the only girl, had a girlish love for her father which neither Robert nor Dougal could understand; just as she bore a girlish love for both of them, her brothers, no matter how crass they were, or how badly they behaved, or what mistakes they made. She took care with people, always; although not always out of selfless and charitable devotion. Often, she took care with people simply because she knew that they might be helpful to her later – a family quality which Robert had developed into a highly elaborate art form. She could listen, she was attentive, but she was always very positive in everything she did. She was loving and giving, too, which was extraordinary in many ways, considering the hostility and lovelessness of her family background; but which was understandable, too, because her father and mother in their different manners had both brought her up to feel that the wealthy are responsible, as well as privileged, and that they must serve the community in which they live, rather than feed off it.

Yet, Effie was beginning to wonder what was the
point
of her moral education, what was the
point
of all her grooming, when all she seemed to get in return was loneliness, and isolation, and even the feeling of being an outsider in her own family. Her father and her brother were involved in the bank; her mother ran the household; each of them struggled and argued and played out their parts. Whereas she herself felt as if Robert had only invited her to work with him at the bank to keep her occupied until she found a suitable man to marry, and as if her mother only confided in her about Jamie McFarlane because she couldn't possibly confide in anybody else.

Thomas Watson stared at her these days as if he were
amazed that she was still at home, and not wedded; or as if he were already sure that she would always remain a spinster, and that she would be taking care of him in his old age, soothing his forehead right up until the very last day of his life.

Still, uncertain of her father as she was, she still loved both her parents enough to go up to his study later that evening and knock at his door. She had not settled in her mind what she wanted to say, but she didn't want to wait any longer. The atmosphere in the house was as poisonous and as volatile as if somebody had left a gas-mantle turned on for a week, without lighting it.

Thomas Watson was sitting at his desk, his reading-spectacles on his forehead, running through columns and columns of interest figures. When Effie came into the room and quietly closed the door behind her, he said, ‘Effie? And what do you want?'

Effie crossed the room and stood behind him, resting her hands on his shoulders. He put down his pencil, and sat up straighter, and then lifted one of his own hands and laid it on top of hers.

‘Is it Prudence you've come to talk about?' he asked her. ‘Is it Robert's notion of marrying her?'

‘No, father.'

‘Well, my girlie, that's just as well. I don't know what more I can say about that, except what I've said already. It's a tentless idea. He doesn't even know if that child is a Watson or a What-do-you-call-him. I've singled that brother of yours out for better than that. Look at me, married to a Nugent-Dunbar! No ill against your mother, but the Nugent-Dunbars were never known for their strong blood; nor, it may seem, for their strong intelligence. No,' he said, turning around in his seat, ‘for your brother Robert I've got Miss Elizabeth Culross-Houper in mind, daughter of Sir Duncan Culross-Houper, of Kirkcaldy. And appropriate, too. Do you know that Adam Smith was born in Kirkcaldy? He who said that we were a nation of shopkeepers.'

‘He actually said that we were a nation
governed
by shopkeepers,' said Effie.

Thomas Watson frowned. ‘Well, never mind. I never did pay too much attention to education in a girl. I'd rather you spent more time with your mother.'

‘That's what ‘I've come to talk about.'

‘Yes?'

Effie was nervous now, and breathless. She said, ‘I've heard about Jamie McFarlane, about the charges brought against him.'

Thomas Watson's agate-coloured eyes fixed Effie for a moment, and then looked away. ‘What do you know? And how?'

‘It doesn't matter how.'

‘Through your mother, I suppose.'

‘I said, it doesn't matter how. I have – met him. Mother did some charity work with him, in the Lands. That was all that happened. They were seen together, and I suppose that some of the coofs who wished them no good spread the story about that they were more than friends.'

Thomas Watson said dully, ‘They were more than friends. They were sinners. Adulterers. I have it on the authority of the gentlewoman who cleaned Mr McFarlane's lodgings that on dozens of occasions your mother visited his rooms, and stayed there for an hour or more. That would be evidence enough in a court of law for proof of adultery, and divorce.'

‘But you've taken the law into your own hands.'

Thomas Watson glanced up again. ‘Do you not think that I'm entitled?'

‘You've ruined the man.'

‘I hope so.'

‘But you've ruined mother, too! Father – I love you as my father – but I cannot sit by any longer and watch this happen.'

Thomas stood up, and walked around Effie until he was right behind her, with his back against the study door. ‘Oh, you can't sit by and watch this happen, Miss High-and-Mighty? You don't think that a man is entitled to protect the sanctity of his own marriage against the intrusion of riefrandies like James McFarlane? Well, I'll tell you something my girlie, and I'll tell you clear. I've made your mother a rich woman. She has all the clothes and all the jewellery a woman could ever dream of. She can travel abroad when she desires it; she can eat the finest food and drink the finest champagne. She has nothing to complain about, not from me. I've given her more money than any husband in Scotland has
ever
given his wife, ever, in the whole history of the whole country. And what reward do I get? Sneaking off, that's the reward I get. Sneaking off to tryst with some beggarly
charity-worker. I can assure you of something, my girlie, and that is that James McFarlane will be punished for what he has done to me, and I can also assure you that your mother will repent.'

Effie said, ‘Money! That's all you talk about! That's all you can think about! Money! Do you not consider for one moment that mother may have wanted you, you, and not your money? Do you not think that she has probably been feeling for years like a kept woman, because you have done nothing else for her but keep her in finery and jewels, and never once shown her the slightest expression of affection? Have you any notion of how this family feels at Sunday lunchtimes, sitting in that gloomy room in fearful silence, while you
apportion
the meat and browbeat us all into guilt and fear and embarrassment? We are
frightened
of you, father! Frightened of your temper, and your demands on us, and your aggression! Why do you have to frighten us so?'

Thomas Watson walked back around to his desk, and stood facing Effie with his hands clenched tightly behind him. His nostrils were wide with the deep, angry breaths that he was taking. She hadn't seen him as close as this for months and she was suddenly aware of the creases around his eyes, and the hairs on his cheeks, and that small splash of mauvish-red birthmark on the side of his temple, as if he had just been shot through the head.

‘You're …
afraid
of me, are you?' he demanded, in a voice that was coming noticeably unstuck at the edges.

‘Father, you're a bully. You've no need to be. You're strong enough, without doing such terrible things as you did to Jamie McFarlane. You could have got your way without ruining him. But you're such a bully, such a coward, that you had to crush him forever!'

Thomas Watson smacked his daughter's face so quickly that she didn't even realise what had happened at first. But then the hot pain flooded her cheek, and he swivelled around on his heel; and turned his back on her, and she suddenly understood that for the first time since she had been caught stealing apples when she was nine, her father had actually hit her.

She couldn't speak. Her mouth opened, but no words came out. The tears ran down her face although she didn't want them to. She managed to articulate, ‘Father –' but he
snapped, ‘Get out, before I slap your other cheek!' and then she tugged open the door and ran along the corridor to her bedroom where she was about to fling herself down on her bed, and sob; but changed her mind instead, and stood in the twilight watching herself in the darkened mirror on the other side of the room, with one white cheek and one crimson cheek, shaking, ourie as they call it in the Highlands, but not crying, quite determined not to cry.