Lady of Fortune (44 page)

Effie stared at Robert rigidly, so chilled with disgust and chagrin and terror that she could hardly make her lips move.

Robert said, There's something else, too. The Deutsche Kreditbank were competing with us very aggressively to lend money to the Chapada das Mangabeira emerald-mining company in Recife, in Brazil. It could be one of the most profitable loans that a British bank has ever made. Comparable with Rothschild lending money to Rhodes, for his diamond diggings. Well, we couldn't let a tyro like the Count von Ahlbeck beat us to it, could we? We had to do something to improve the odds.'

Effie said, in a voice like chilled porridge, To improve the odds, as you so sportingly describe it, you gave away your own sister's virginity, and broke her heart.'

‘Och,' said Robert, as if she had paid him an overwhelming compliment, ‘you don't have to put it like that.'

‘How should I put it? What do you want me to say, except that you are some species of reptile, who devours with emotion and without remorse? You have inherited the very worst from our father, and something of hell besides. You haven't thought of me, you haven't considered what I might feel, not for one second. You haven't thought that I might have fallen in love with Karl von Ahlbeck, and that now I shall never be able to see him again. How can I, when I gave him my solemn promise that Watson's Bank would help him? How can I,
when I shall have to admit that I was a stupid ridiculous victim of an abominable scheme, just as he was, and that I have betrayed not only his trust but his love as well?'

Robert wad doodling patterns in a small patch of discarded tobacco-ash on the top of his desk. ‘Well,' he said, at last. ‘I suppose you can put it down to experience. It's a difficult world. Nobody ever said otherwise.'

‘
Difficult?
' cried Effie. The tears ran from her eyes now, and there was nothing she could do to stop them. ‘How can you call it
difficult
, when you have just destroyed the only real love I have ever had? For Christ's sake, Robert, how can you call it anything but grotesque? I love him, Robert! I love him! He and I are the same flesh, the same passion, the same person! Don't you understand that? Don't you understand what it is to make love to somebody, and not to know where their body ends and yours begins?'

Robert looked up at her stiffly. His mouth was pursed in disapproval. He said, ‘No.'

Effie, slowly, sat down again. Out of her purse she took a lace handkerchief, one of the handkerchiefs that Karl had given her, and wiped her eyes. If only she didn't know now what she hadn't known then: that this handkerchief Karl had given her to celebrate her arrival would only be used to wipe away the tears of their parting.

She said, ‘What about Baeklanders?'

‘What about them?'

‘They're going to suffer too.' Her voice was congested with grief and tears.

Robert couldn't help smiling. ‘Well, that was a little embellishment of my own. The Count von Ahlbeck asked me if I could recommend an American bank to assist him in setting up this triumvirate of his, and of course I
rushed
to recommend Baeklanders. It amused me to think that Dougal would wake up one morning to discover that, even in New York, he couldn't get away from me.'

Effie nodded, and picked up her purse. Robert said, in surprise, ‘You're not going? I want you to arrange a conference with Manchester Steel.'

‘I'm going,' said Effie.

‘Effie, you can't go! There's nobody else who can do it. Well, not like you.'

‘I'm going.'

‘Effie–'

Effie stood up, brushed her skirt straight, and opened the door of the office. Outside, there was the hurrying of feet and the jingling of telephone bells. A large bank in the middle of a day's chaos. She turned to Robert, and said, ‘I cannot insult you, Robert. I cannot speak the words. But I promise you now, just as solemnly as I made my promise to Karl von Ahlbeck, that one day I will see you dead, and when you are dead I will laugh, and I will defile your grave in the filthiest way I can think of. I promise –' and now her voice dropped to an unsteady whisper, ‘–I swear it.'

Effie wrote,

‘My dearest Karl,

You will have heard by now that Watson's Bank is unable to support you in the matter of the Turkish loan. Although I have no right to expect you to believe me, I wish to tell you that I was quite innocent of any deceit, and that I had no reason to doubt that I could honour the promises I made to you.

A time may come one day when I can tell you in person, face-to-face, how I feel about what has happened. I am so overwhelmed now with shame and sadness that I can hardly write you this letter. If you think that there may be a possibility of us meeting again, in time, then I want you to know that I shall come to you wherever you are.

My dearest Karl, I love you. You have made me a woman. You have helped me to understand myself and my destiny and how I can achieve my fulfilment. I pray to God that you are not angry with me. I love you. Karl, please listen to me, I love you.

Your,

Effie.'

The letter was posted from Edinburgh's main post office, by North Bridge, on 12 November 1911. There was never any reply.

Effie read in
The Scotsman
on Tuesday, 13 February 1912, that Baeklanders Trust, the New York bank, had collapsed. According to the paper's New York correspondent the crash was directly attributable to the bank's rash speculation in Latin America and ‘huge, undisclosed losses in the European lending market.' Robert, who was kept in touch day and night with the latest American business news directly from London, and had probably known about Baeklanders the evening before, came down to breakfast that morning in a rare good humour, and ate three boiled eggs, a large helping of steamed haddock, and a mound of skirlie.

After Robert had gone off to the bank, Effie went into the morning-room, where Prudence was sitting by the fire, drinking tea and reading. Prudence hardly ever came to the breakfast table these days, and rarely appeared at dinner. She had lost over half a stone in weight, and was looking more pale and bony than Effie could ever remember. She always shrugged off any remarks about her health, though, saying that she was perfectly well, and that nobody should worry. Alisdair was upstairs, in the schoolroom, with his mathematics tutor.

Effie said, ‘Dougal's bank has collapsed. I read it in the paper this morning.'

Prudence looked up. Full-face, she appeared even thinner and sicker than she did in profile. There were puffy purple stains under her eyes, and her mouth was pursed like the mouth of someone who has recently lost their teeth.

‘Dougal?' she asked.

‘Yes. I don't know what's going to happen to him.'

Prudence laid down her book. She was trying to read The
Heart of Mid-Lothian
, because Robert had complained that she didn't have sufficient understanding of Scottish history and culture. ‘Why do you think we erected a monument two hundred feet high to a writer?' he had harangued her. ‘Name me one other nation which celebrates its literary heroes so greatly.'

The coal-fire popped, and shifted, and there was something about the noise it made that reminded Effie of the
Schloss
von Ahlbeck. Prudence said, ‘I can't remember what Dougal looks like.'

‘Of course you can. He looks like Alisdair.'

‘Alisdair?' frowned Prudence. ‘No, Alidair looks like his father.'

Effie almost laughed in disbelief. ‘Prudence, Dougal is Alisdair's father.'

‘What?' said Prudence. She stared at Effie as if Effie had uttered the most appalling heresy.

‘I said –'

‘What?' repeated Prudence. ‘How can he look like Dougal? What are you talking about?
Robert
is Alisdair's father. Robert – is – Alisdair's –'

Effie knelt down beside Prudence and took hold of her upraised wrists. ‘Prudence,' she said. ‘Prudence, please.'

Prudence stared at her. ‘I feel very ill,' she said, in a montonous voice. ‘I have terrible pain, Effie. I think I'm going to die. I have such pain that I can't describe it to you. I'm dying, Effie. I know that I'm dying. Effie, promise that you'll look after William Albert for me. Please, Effie, promise me that you'll look after William Albert.'

Effie held Prudence very close, as warmly as she could, but felt at the same time with horror, the skeletal coat-hangers of Prudence's shoulders and ribs. ‘Oh, Prudence,' she whispered in her ear. ‘Oh, Prudence, what have we done to you?'

That afternoon, at two, Dr Henderson came. Alisdair, in his tweed knickerbockers and his Highland jacket, stood silent as a mouse by the door while Dr Henderson took his mother's pulse, and peered into her eyes, and then meticulously put away his wooden tongue-depressors and his stethoscope, and closed his bag, and cleared his throat.

‘Well,' said Dr Henderson, to Robert, and then, ‘well,' to Effie. ‘I'd best have a word with you in another room, if you don't mind.'

‘Of course,' said Robert, with a smile which betrayed, quite plainly, who was in charge. Dr Henderson was quite aware of the circumstances under which his predecessor, Dr Campbell, had suddenly retired to St Cyrus, and was now fishing and reading and trying to learn to play the pibroch, to the considerable distress of his older sister, who had an ear-trumpet, and was not fond of droning noises. ‘They revairberate,' she complained. ‘I canna bear revairberation.'

Effie said, in a clear voice, ‘Don't you think, Dr Henderson,
that whatever has to be said about Mrs Watson's health ought to be said in front of Mrs Watson herself? She has more right to know than anybody else who's present.'

Dr Henderson, who was desperately conscious of his premature baldness, said, ‘Well, Miss Watson, there are times …'

‘Times? What times? Is there something seriously wrong?'

Dr Henderson looked uneasily at Prudence. ‘I'd rather …'

‘I don't care what you'd rather,' snapped Effie. ‘Mrs Watson is your patient, and whatever is wrong, she has a right to hear about it.'

‘Effie,' said Robert. ‘Don't interfere. If Dr Henderson wants to –'

‘What Dr Henderson wants and what Dr Henderson is paid to do are two entirely separate things,' said Effie. ‘Haven't you said that often enough yourself, Robert? “What the Bank of Scotland wants and what the Bank of Scotland is paid to do are two entirely separate things.”'

There was a complex silence, a cat's-cradle of embarrassment and indecision. Then Robert said, ‘Very well. Let my wife hear what you have to say as well as everybody else.'

Dr Henderson put down his bag with an awkward knees' bend to the floor. He cleared his throat, and glanced again at Prudence, as if he would much rather that she were halfway to Crewe on the afternoon train, or witless, or dead already.

He said, in a voice which was obviously pitched much higher than he'd meant to, ‘She's –' Then, lower, ‘She's suffering from what appears to be a tumour. It's a very considerable tumour, of the stomach. I'm afraid –' and this was lower still, I'm afraid she's going to – well, I regret –'

Robert, in a wooden tone, said, ‘My wife is going to die?'

Prudence stared at Effie, her eyes glistening in silent appeal.
Effie, you're all I have,
Effie, make him tell me the truth. Make him say that he's made a mistake. Effie, what am I going to do with Alisdair? If I die, who's going to look after my boy?

Effie felt as if her insides had been wrenched out. God, she thought I always do this. I'm always so frank and forthright. I always speak my mind. And I always end up hurting the people I love the most. Why can't I keep my pompous opinions to myself? Why can't I behave the way other women behave,
gentle and submissive, sweeping in my long skirts around the house with a fixed smile of obedience and wifely trust? Now I've skewered Prudence on the sharp point of her own sickness, and nothing I say can relieve her from the knowledge that she is going to die.

Dr Henderson said, in an almost unintelligible rush, ‘Your wife will probably start to sink within three months.'

‘Sink?' demanded Robert, not understanding what the doctor meant.

‘There are treatments. We cannot totally abandon hope. There is Wax's Sulfuretted Salt treatment, and of course we can control the lady's diet in such a way that the tumour turns in upon itself and devours itself, as it were. This, I'm afraid, will call for some pain. But, we do have laudanum and morphine. And, well, there is always prayer.'

There was silence again. White-faced in her bed, Prudence began to weep. The sound she made was no louder than a kitten trapped in a linen-chest. Alisdair stayed by the doorway, staring at his mother in bewilderment and anguish. Effie said to Robert, ‘Leave me alone with Prudence. Please. And send Alisdair down to Mrs McNab.'

Robert gave her a grimace of acceptance, and said to Alisdair, ‘Run along now, boy. Your mother's not well.' Then he laid a hand on Dr Henderson's shoulder, and said, ‘I expect you'd care for a dram, Dr Henderson. Gome away downstairs.'

Not once did Robert even look at Prudence; and Effie was reminded of the kind of boy that he had once been. If your hoop falls into the pond, leave it, let it float away, buy another one. If your clockwork soldier breaks, let it lie in the toy-cupboard gathering dust. Prudence had broken and now she, too, was to be discarded. She would remain in this room, unloved, ignored, until she died.

Effie drew a chair up to the side of the bed and took Prudence's hand. She said, softly, ‘You'll be all right. You'll see. Dr Henderson was at Barts, in London. He'll cure you quick enough.'

Prudence looked back at her with tear-blotted eyes. ‘You heard what he said, Effie. Three months to live.'