Lady of Fortune (48 page)

The world's financial balance had tipped to America; and Effie knew by Armistice Day that if she wanted to fulfil her deepest ambitions, she would have to go with it.

She arrived at St Vigeans on a humid, overcast day in July 1914, to bury her mother. She wore a black veil, and a long black dress of moiré silk. She rustled and whispered as she walked, chiffon conversing with silk, silk rubbing sleekly
against skin. Around her neck she wore a marquise-cut diamond of more than seven carats, in a setting of rubies and gold.

Robert was there, too, perspiring, with a girl called Joan Duff, whom Effie recognised as one of his typewriters from the bank. Her mother's casket was of figured elm, with gold-washed handles, and it was laden with mountainous heaps of pink and white carnations. The flowers nodded and bounced as the casket-bearers carried it around the building to the cemetery. Fiona Watson had expressed to the minister of St Vigeans (a deaf, wiry-haired man with wildly crossed eyes) that she would rather be buried here, at St Vigeans, than in the Watson family graveyard at Kilmory. There was no pipe band; no drums; only the chirruping of the sparrows, and the doleful St Vigeans bell.

After the ceremony, Effie walked straight back to her car, but Robert cut across the lawns to intercept her.

‘Effie!'

She kept on walking, and Robert had to give a little skip to catch up with her. ‘You're not going straight back to London?' he asked her.

‘Is there any reason why I should stay here in Scotland?'

‘I'm having a dinner tomorrow night for some Brazilians. I need you for a hostess. I was counting on you.'

‘What about Vesta Tilley there?' asked Effie, meaning Joan Duff. ‘Can't
she
be trained to serve out the carrots?'

‘Effie – Effie! Will you please wait? This is important! It's
more
than important! It's essential. It could mean that we make an extra eleven or twelve million pounds this year, and carry on being profitable next year, whatever happens with Germany.'

‘What do you mean?' asked Effie, stiffly. She had reached her car now, and McVitie was holding open the door for her.

‘Well, war looks very probable now, doesn't it?' said Robert. ‘We should simply make sure that, whatever the outcome, we don't suffer any losses. Wars are for making profits, for encouraging industry, for taking over new and wealthy territories. Wars are good for business. We don't want to miss our opportunity, do we?'

‘You really want war?'

‘It doesn't matter two snoots whether I want it or not! It'll
happen, or not happen, regardless of what
my
preference is. All I want to do is make sure that Watson's Bank capitalises on the inevitable tide of history. You can't blame me for that.'

Effie looked away. ‘Mr Niblets told me when I was in London that Watson's lent large sums of money to
both
Austria and Serbia. He also told me that the greater part of those loans was expected to be used for military equipment and ordnance. Is
that
what you call capitalising on the inevitable tide of history? It seems to me that your preference might have had quite a considerable effect in Europe, one way or another.'

Robert tugged out his handkerchief and mopped sweat from the side of his bulging neck. ‘You do flatter me, Effie. I only wish I was
half
as influential. But you will come tomorrow night, won't you? It's in your interest, after all. A third share of the bank is yours, and that means that you're worth approximately nine and a half million, and I do think it's time you did something to prove that you're worthy of such a fortune, if only to yourself.'

‘I'm quite sure of my own worth, thank you.'

‘Are you? Mother wasn't. And you're so like mother used to be.'

Effie stared at Robert in shock. He was smiling. Everything around them, the elm trees, the neatly-trimmed lawns, the grey buildings of St Vigeans, seemed to take on such stilted detail that Effie felt as if the entire surroundings had been deliberately created, like the set of a moving-picture, for no other purpose than to heighten the drama of this one crucial confrontation.

‘Very well. You can expect me there tomorrow night,' Effie heard herself saying. ‘I'll be staying at the Calder-Haigs tonight if you need to get in touch with me. But I'm going back to London on Thursday, I promise you.'

Joan Duff was approaching now, with that awkward stilted walk of a working-class girl in a dress that was far too expensive for her, and shoes on which she found it difficult to balance.

‘Robbie?' she said.

‘Hold your whisht,' snapped Robert. Then, with a last hard look at Effie, he turned around and stamped back along the gravel path, his fat buttocks shaking in his mourning trousers, his feet splayed, and beckoned peremptorily to Joan Duff to follow him as he passed her.

Joan Duff, through her black veil, gave Effie a quick frown of mystification.

In the car, gliding back to Edinburgh, Effie thought, Robert is quite wrong. I am not like my mother at all. My mother was a victim. Instead of standing up for the love she wanted, she allowed herself to be bullied and harangued and beaten down. When Jamie committed suicide, she behaved exactly as lovelorn women are supposed to behave. She acted out the role of a
Ladies' Home Journal
heroine. She moped, and mourned, and went slightly mad. Mad enough to kill my father in histrionic revenge, and mad enough to let herself waste away the rest of her life in that nursing-home. But not mad enough to fly against social convention.

All right, she admitted to herself, I mourned too long over Karl. I still miss him. But I am going to be stronger now. I am going to make my own way, on my own terms, no matter what. I am not going to be overwhelmed by Robert, or any other man. I am going to do what I need to do, not what is expected of me. All those friends of mine who feel so sorry for me, the poor Rich Spinster, I'll make them whistle a different tune. I don't want to be like Celia Calder-Haig; I don't want to be like Vera Cockburn; I don't want to waste away the rest of my years on shopping and coffee mornings and silly soirées. I don't want to be married for the sake of sex.

The following day, as she came down the front steps of the Calder-Haigs' house in Charlotte Square, prettily dressed in a pale blue summer suit, she found John McDonald standing on the pavement, in a white blazer and a straw hat.

‘John!' she exclaimed. ‘John McDonald!'

He took off his hat, and embraced her. ‘I heard you were staying here, and I thought I'd surprise you.' He looked thinner, and taller than ever, and suntanned as dark as a leather purse. He had grown his moustache again, and it was slightly streaked with grey.

‘You look so dignified,' smiled Effie, linking arms with him. ‘Are you still in the Black Watch?'

‘Aye. We got back from India two months ago, and since then we've been based at the castle. I'm on leave at the moment, but with things happening the way they are in Europe, I expect we'll be mobilised soon.'

‘It's so
good
to see you. What a happy surprise!'

‘It's good to see you, too, Effie.'

‘Are you married?' she asked him. ‘Every time I think of you, I always imagine that you've found yourself a wonderful sensible wife, and you've got scores of little McDonalds rushing about your ankles.'

‘You still think of me?'

‘Of course!' said Effie. ‘Don't you still think of me?'

He was silent for a moment, and then he squeezed her and gave her a wry little smile. ‘Supposing you let me take you out for luncheon?' he asked.

‘I'd love it. Where shall we go?'

‘I don't know. Do you have a car?'

‘My dear Mr McDonald, you're talking to a lady who owns most of the Scottish motor-car industry, and a few English makers as well. Do you drive?'

‘They taught me in India. Rather badly, but I know the difference between forwards and backwards, and the Urdu for “get out of the road, you idle dogboy.”'

Effie laughed. ‘We've just had a new Star delivered. Would you like to try it?'

‘I'll try anything once. We could drive to Newhaven. There's a good little place to eat there. Best fish in Scotland.'

McVitie reluctantly manoeuvred Robert's new 15.9 hp Star out of the stable. It was a long, open-topped tourer, in bright red, with a brass horn that curved around behind the spare-wheel on the running-board, and then rose up over the bonnet like an alpenhorn. John gave it a toot and a small terrier in the road barked back at him frantically.

It was a clear, hot day. They drove northwards towards Leith at a slow but not always dignified pace, since John had difficulty with the gearbox. But by the time they reached the shores of the Firth of Forth, they were trundling along quite happily, and John began to recite, at the top his voice,
The Land of Regrets
. Effie sat up close to him, and intoned, in the deepest voice she could manage, ‘O, Land of Regrets!' at the end of every verse.

Then came the afternoon, when they were alone by the roadside overlooking the sea. The bright red Star was parked on the grass, and cabbage-white butterflies blew in and out of the spoked wheels. John had spread out a plaid blanket, and they lay back on it and stared up at the sky, and the clouds which lazily moved across the sun, and talked.

‘It's very strange out in India,' said John, smoking a
cigarette. ‘I was invited to a reunion of the old boys of Edinburgh High School at Peliti's Restaurant in Calcutta. If it hadn't have been for the heat, and the Indian waiters, I could have been right back here in Scotland. We even had haggis.
Haggis
!'

Effie said, ‘Pass me your cigarette.'

John propped himself on his elbow and watched her as she smoked. He said, ‘I haven't married, you know. I've had the chance, I'll admit. But in the end I said no. You see, I'm in love with you, Effie, even after all these years, and I've always hoped that you'll change your mind.'

Effie blew out smoke. The wind all around her made a whistling sound in the grass. Out at sea, the herring-boats were returning through a wash of foam and diamonds to Newhaven, where they would land their catch.

‘
Wha'll buy my caller-herrin'?

Oh, ye may call them vulgar farin
'

Wives and mithers, sair despairin
'

Ca' them lives o' men
.'

John McDonald leaned over her, eclipsing the sun from her eyes, and kissed her. She kissed him back without hesitation, enjoying the feeling of his moustache against her upper lip, enjoying the taste of saliva and tobacco, enjoying most of all the freedom to kiss anyone she wanted to. I am not going to be overwhelmed by Robert, or any other man. I'm going to make my own way now.

He whispered, ‘Effie, I love you.'

Without a word, she raised the skirt of her suit, and her petticoats of silk and appliqué lace, and pulled down her white silk step-ins. He knelt beside her, his face a juggling act of questions and surprises; but he began to tug off his tie, and unbutton his shirt, and soon he was naked in the grass.

She looked at him, and knew that she didn't love him, and never would. But the excitement of the moment was enough. The wind was blowing between her bare thighs, and chilling the moistness of her vulva. And John McDonald was naked, his face and knees and forearms as brown as if they had been dipped in chocolate, the rest of his body as white as a leg of lamb. He was soft, and so she reached out and took his penis in her hand, and squeezed and massaged it until it began to stiffen.

It was too awkward. It all took too long. John entered her
clumsily, and panted and thrust and apologised, his face growing redder and redder, and in the end, after nearly a quarter of an hour of discomfort, he withdrew, his penis glistening but scarcely roused, and stumbled back into his trousers.

‘I'm sorry,' he said. That was obviously a ridiculous thing for me to do.'

‘No, it wasn't,' said Effie. ‘It just proved that some people are meant to be lovers and others are meant to be nothing more than friends.'

‘I'm ashamed.'

‘Don't be. Please, John, don't be. You can't change human nature. It's too much of a mystery for any of us.'

John let out a breath of despair, and made a very complicated business of tying up his tie. He said, ‘I wish you'd cover yourself up.'

Effie lay back on the grass, listening to it whisper, feeling the world turning beneath her. Her skirts and petticoats were still raised around her waist. She looked at John and said, ‘I wish you'd kiss me.'

He straightened his tie, and leaned forward. ‘Not here,' she said, covering her mouth with her hand.

John looked stunned. But she took her hand away from her mouth again, and said, ‘Don't be afraid of me. We're friends.'

‘Friends?' he asked, as if he had never heard the word before in his life; as if it were some peculiar Chinese expression which meant something so exotic and subtle that foreigners could never hope to grasp it.

He hesitated. He looked at her appealingly. But she still didn't change her expression. The sun went behind a cloud and then came out again. He cleared his throat. Then, slowly, cautiously, he dipped his head between her bare white thighs.

She barely felt his kiss at all. There was none of the urgent probing to which Karl had awakened her. But it was a kiss, nonetheless, of lips against lips, a man's moustache against a woman's pubic hair; and it was an acknowledgement of many things, of their intimacy as friends, of Effie's new-crowned queenliness, of the simple fact that true adoration and respect need to shy at nothing. They were not lovers. He would never see her naked again. And, in some respects, to kiss her vagina was a gesture of his failure and his
subservience. But he would achieve glory in other ways. He was not lost. And when he saw her next, in 1920, briefly, too far away even to speak to; he a colonel and she so rich that people crowded close to her just to breathe in the aroma of money, he would be able to smile, and remember how daringly erotic they had been, and confidently hold the hand of his new wife-to-be.