Lady of Fortune (34 page)

After about ten minutes her bedroom door opened and her mother came in. ‘Effie?' she asked.

Effie stared at her. The room was so dark that they could scarcely see each other.

‘Are you not in bed, Effie?'

Effie said, ‘What time is it?'

‘Ten o'clock. Did you not hear the clinkum-bell?'

Effie opened her mouth wide in an agonised but silent sob, and reached out her arms for her mother. ‘Oh, mother, I can't bear what's happening. I can't bear it!'

Her mother held her close. Lulled and lallied her like she had when she was a small girl of three. Hushed her, brushed her, kissed her, quietened her down.

‘He said you should have been more grateful,' whispered Effie. ‘He said he'd given you more money than any woman in Scotland had ever been given, and you should have thanked him for it.'

Fiona Watson carried on stroking her daughter's forehead. ‘Did he now? Did he? Well, we'll see about that.'

Effie was walking through Princes Street gardens a week later, on a bright hazy morning on which Edinburgh seemed to have been sanctified by the February sun into a holy city of gauze and gold. She was dressed in a fine blue coat she had bought in London, a fur muffler, and a feathery hat of peacock-blue. She had been visiting, on Robert's behalf, the offices of the Lauriston Carriage Company, near Greyfriars, and for a change she had felt like walking back to the bank.

She had already descended the steep winding paths down the hill, criss-crossing her way between the wet green grass and the last stubborn patches of grimy unmelted snow, when she saw Prudence, pushing the large black perambulator that Robert had bought for William Albert. She caught up with her, and said, ‘Prudence! What a surprise!'

Prudence gave her a wan smile. ‘I should have let Mrs Taggart take him out,' she explained. ‘After all, Robert didn't engage a nanny for me for nothing. But I needed some air.'

‘I'm afraid things are difficult at home at the moment,' said Effie. She touched Prudence's hand, on the perambulator handle. ‘I'm sorry it's been so unpleasant for you!'

‘Oh, it's not too bad,' said Prudence. ‘It was my own choice, wasn't it? I could have stayed in London and tried to bring William Albert up on his own. But I think the poor little chap deserved better, don't you?'

‘Do you actually love Robert?' asked Effie. ‘You don't mind my asking, do you? We are going to be sisters-in-law, after all. And, I would really like to be more than that. More like sisters.'

Prudence slowed the perambulator as she came to a slippery corner in the path. Then she smiled at Effie, and said, ‘I would like that, too. I was always close to my brother Jack, but never to anyone else. I did have a smaller sister once, but she died of scarletina when she was six. Her name was Jemima. I only remember that she was very pretty.'

They walked a little further, along Princes Street itself. A gangly fellow in a huge floppy Highland bonnet and ragged phillabegs was clanking a handbell and announcing, ‘Hot bridies! Hot collops!' The little barrow beside him was steaming with the savoury fragrances of pastry and minced meats and oatmeal.

‘Somebody once said that there were fifty different ways of spoiling your dinner in Edinburgh,' said Effie, as they passed the barrow. ‘He makes those collops with minced shanks, and pickled oysters, and oatmeal. I used to buy them when I was younger, and eat them in the gardens, so that my father wouldn't find out.'

They crossed Princes Street, waiting in the middle while a motor-lorry laden with Greer's Whisky rattled past. Prudence said, ‘I can learn to love him, you know. He's very considerate to me.'

Effie said, ‘Couldn't you wait until you met somebody you really fell for?'

‘What respectable young man would take me, with William Albert? As it is, Robert's going to send him away next week, to stay with some relations of yours in St Andrews.'

‘The Craigs? But why?'

‘For appearances' sake. We're to be married in April, as you know; but William Albert will stay with the Craigs until the Christmas after next. I'll go to see him, of course. Robert promised I could go up to St Andrews once a week. The idea is that after nearly two years of marriage, Robert will announce that I am unfortunately unable to bear him an heir, and that we intend instead to adopt one. The adopted child will, of course, be William Albert. But by pretending to adopt him, we'll avoid any scandal about his birth. Robert thinks we ought perhaps to tell people that he's the orphaned son of a London banker and his wife, who were drowned while taking a holiday in Venice.'

Effie snatched the handle of the perambulator and stopped Prudence in mid-step. ‘Prudence – that's the most awful scheme I've ever heard of! You can't let Robert send your baby away to live with somebody else! And how can you possibly pretend that he isn't yours? And why should you say that you can't bear children?'

‘Oh, later on, if we want more children, children of our own, we can always say that my medical trouble has cleared up.'

Effie was open-mouthed, unbelieving. ‘But
Prudence
– you can't let him do this to you! William Albert is
your
baby, yours and Dougal's!'

‘Of course he is,' said Prudence quietly. ‘But what am I supposed to do? Tell everybody that he was conceived on the wrong side of the blanket? Give him a bad name before he's even old enough to walk? He's my son, Effie, you're quite right, but that's exactly why I'm not going to let him be ridiculed and ostracised by society. I've made up my mind that I want the very best for him, and this is the only way that I can. I don't love Robert, no, I admit it. To me, Robert is ordinary and fat and loud. Perhaps one day I'll grow fond of him. Perhaps I won't. I don't think it honestly matters too much. William Albert will grow up wealthy, and well positioned,
and respected. My son, regardless of what anybody knows or thinks.'

Effie said, ‘I thought you were like me. I thought you were the kind of girl who would never let men treat you like their private property, like their own gear, to do with you whatever they want.'

‘Effie, my dearest,' said Prudence, ‘you're eighteen years old. Have you ever been in love?'

Effie thought of Henry Baeklander; thought of that solemn, ugly-handsome face; thought of him saying to her, ‘
Effie, I could respect you, with all of my heart
.' Then she said, ‘No, I've never been in love. Not properly.'

‘When you have,' Prudence told her, not patronizingly, but very gently, ‘then come back and tell me that you have the strength not to allow men to treat you as they will; and that you have the strength to resist the morals and rules of society.'

Effie released the handle of the perambulator, and they continued walking together. Outside Hobart's, kilt-makers, a young tousle-haired boy in buckled shoes was dancing for pennies, while a blind man beside him played a fife. Effie opened her purse and dropped a shilling in the boy's hat.

‘I'm never going to allow William Albert to live off charity,' said Prudence. ‘He's never going to have to beg. Never, ever.'

Effie said nothing. William Albert himself, beneath his white shawl and his knitted bonnet, began to hiccup and grizzle. ‘There, there,' Prudence soothed him, ‘you'll be king of the mountain one day, my boy.'

They turned the corner into Charlotte Square. Effie said, ‘I'll have to leave you now. I promised Robert that I'd be back at the bank by two-thirty.'

‘Don't tell him you saw me out with William Albert,' said Prudence. ‘He wants to keep him a secret. Actually, he even wants to change his name.'

‘Can he do that?'

‘I don't really mind.'

Effie looked down at the tiny red-faced baby boy in the huge black Marmot perambulator. ‘You poor wee fellow,' she said. ‘All your life worked out for you before you've even lived it.'

‘Don't blame me, Effie,' begged Prudence. ‘I'm only doing my best for him.'

Effie said, ‘I know. I'm sorry if I was sharp with you. Do you know what Robert's going to call him?'

‘He thought Alisdair.'

Effie said, ‘Alisdair? Do you know what that means?'

Prudence shook her head.

‘It means defender,' said Effie. ‘A man who has to defend himself against his past, and against all comers.'

During a sharp and windy March, the preparations for Robert's wedding to Prudence began to crowd the house with more bustle and more laughter and more excitement than Effie could remember. Even Fiona Watson joined in the merriment of it, although Jamie McFarlane was still awaiting a hearing for his alleged assaults on children from the Lands, and she had received only scraps of news from him – once, a short letter written on the back of a bill from Leith's Bookshop; and on another occasion, a message from the banker's boy from Grant's. She managed to busy herself with the four-tier wedding cake, and the kirk, and the designs for Prudence's wedding-gown, which was being made up by Fay Boroughdale, the most fashionable and expensive dressmaker in Edinburgh, with lace from London and silk from France.

Robert was unusually bland during this period; both at home and at work. He proposed no major loans or investments, was courteous to his staff, and argued with no one. At the Sunday luncheon table, the traditional Sherra-muir of the Watson family, he said little that was remarkable, and nothing that wasn't polite. Thomas Watson commented one morning, as they sat together over their breakfast of kidneys and ham and cullen skink, which is poached Finnan haddock in mashed potato and butter, a soup-stew served with dry toast and pepper, ‘I think marriage is going to suit you, Robert. You're a better man since you met Prudence, although I'm pressed to say it.'

‘What presses you, father?' asked Robert, mildly.

‘Well … that wean. That babbie. It doesn't say much for the girl's morality.'

‘It doesn't say much for Dougal's, either.'

‘I had my heart set on you marrying Elizabeth Culross-Houper. You know that. A moral girl, if ever there was one. A girl of good family, and good repute.'

‘And a face like a landed salmon.'

Thomas Watson grumphed in his throat, but said no more on the subject. As much as he had hoped for a liaison between Robert and Elizabeth Culross-Houper, for the sake of bringing some strong and aristocratic blood into the Watson family, he was not altogether displeased with Prudence. She spoke well, carried herself with pride, and was remarkably pretty. All that he could possibly object to was her lack of parentage, her illegitimate baby, and the fact that he would have to pay for her entire wedding himself. And, when all was considered, she could hardly be blamed for having no parents, and only half-blamed for William Albert.

He had passed the morning-room two or three days ago, and seen Prudence sewing, with the bright grey light of the morning behind her. He had found himself admiring her long, graceful neck, the sweep of her eyelashes, and the fullness of her breasts. She had looked up, and smiled at him, and he had nodded his head to her in return, St Thomas the Affable. She was definitely the kind of girl that a strong-blooded father-in-law liked to have in the house, if only for those occasional daughterly kisses, and those glimpses of ankle, and those fleeting fortuitous moments when the sun might shine through the fine cotton of a Belgian blouse.

Mrs McNab had been lifted by the coming wedding into something very close to a Lowlands heaven. She sang, and warbled, and bustled around the house with recipes for grouse, and ham-and-haddie, and cabbie-claw, and went over the arrangements for the wedding-breakfast so often that she could recite the menu by heart, and just where everybody would sit, ‘The Sheriff of Cupar here, Lady Bride-Gordon here,' and which flowers and decorations would grace the table. Even Russell was heard whistling as he tinkered with Robert's Albion motor-car, and sturdily forked out the horses. And Effie – although Effie was sad for little William Albert, who had now been sent away to their friends the Craigs in St Andrews – and although she knew that Prudence
was marrying Robert for the refuge and the money he had offered her, rather than for love – even Effie was caught up by the happiness of the occasion, and the excitement of a white wedding. She went with Prudence to the dressmakers when she first tried on her wedding-gown, and she could feel nothing but envy as she watched Prudence standing in front of the mirror in yards and yards and yards of exquisite French silk, which dazzled and flowed as if it were almost alive, and a veil that rose from her head in a coronet of lace and pearls, and then fell over her face in the ghostliest and prettiest of clouds. Prudence wept, silly sobs of pleasure and sadness, because she missed William Albert so much, and because she knew that she would probably do no better than marry a man like Robert. Effie had to turn to the window, and stare hard at the cobbled gradient of Hanover Street outside, because her Own eyes were brimming with tears.

But in the last week of March, two weeks before the wedding-day, a gawky man in a bowler-hat and a long grey coat came to the door of 14 Charlotte Square and asked to speak to Mrs Watson, urgent. It was misting with early-evening rain, but the man declined Russell's invitation to step into the hallway, and stood where he was on the step, with his hat in his hand, hawk-nosed, bent-shouldered, the bearer of other people's bad news. He sniffed twice, unabashed, a man who never carried a handkerchief.

Fiona Watson came quickly, her skirts swishing on the floor. She said, ‘What's happened? It's Mr McFarlane, isn't it? Tell me what's happened!'

The man beckoned her down the front steps of the house on to the pavement. In spite of the drizzle, she followed him. Effie, who had been crossing the hall on her way upstairs, hesitated when she saw the open front door, and then when she saw her mother standing outside, talking intently to someone so wild and so odd – hurried to the porch. The evening outside was almost lilac with rain, and a motor-taxi passed by with a swish of tyres and a rattle of mudguards.