Lady of Fortune (67 page)

Robert finished the last of his sandwiches. ‘Would you tell that maid of yours to go to the front door and beckon to my chauffeur?'

‘Robert, what is this? What's going on?'

‘Effie – you're sounding just like an American. Do what I tell you, and then you'll see for yourself.'

Kitty was just passing the door outside on her way to the parlour. Effie said, ‘Kitty – would you go outside on to the stoop and wave to Mr Robert's driver, please?'

‘Yes, Miss Effie, whatever you say.'

They waited in silence; Effie tensely holding her knees, Robert sipping noisily at his tankard of champagne and watching her in huge satisfaction. At last, they heard footsteps on the front porch, and Kitty saying something indistinct; and then the living-room door opened.

Effie had already guessed who it was, from the malicious glee in Robert's eyes. But there was one thing she didn't know, and couldn't guess: whether Robert had discovered what had happened between them all those years ago, on that strange night in Edinburgh, when grief had overwhelmed
time, and morality, and everything, except the need for love.

He said, ‘Hallo, Aunt Effie,' in a deep, precise, Edinburgh accent; a voice which made the past ten years collapse like an accordion; a voice which brought back not only the shock of remembering that Karl von Ahlbeck was mutilated and dead, but so many mingled days and months and people and conversations, so many dances and dinners and automobile rides and moments of laughter and thoughtfulness and nonchalance and fun. She stood up. Tried to stand up. But then sank back again in her seat, and looked at him across the living-room through tears which she found it impossible to stop.

Robert loved it, and smartly rubbed his hands together in pleasure.

Alisdair was twenty-seven now: and so much like his father had been in his twenties that Effie had to keep reminding herself that this wasn't Dougal, that Dougal was middle-aged and collapsed and fat – that this carefully-dressed young man in his grey three-piece suit and grey tie was Dougal's only son. More than that, her one-time lover, and the father of her only daughter Kay.

‘Hallo, Alisdair,' she whispered. She couldn't think why she was crying, or why she was shaking so much, but she was.

He took her hands between his: and his hands were warm. He had been waiting in the car for Robert to summon him. She could smell cigarette-smoke on his clothes, and thought of the time when they had sat in the library together at Charlotte Square and smoked. There was a single gold band on his left-hand little finger.

She said, ‘It's such a surprise to see you. Robert – well, your father didn't give me any idea.'

‘You've probably heard it already through the grapevine,' said Robert, his face flushed with champagne and beef sandwiches and sheer delight, ‘but Alisdair is now the manager of our foreign investment section. That's why it was quite obligatory that I brought him along.'

‘I see,' see Effie. ‘Well, Alisdair, congratulations.'

‘It's wonderful to see you,' said Alisdair, in a different tone altogether, softer. ‘You're just – well, you're just the same way I remember you.'

‘Perhaps we ought to have another tankard of champagne,' suggested Robert.

‘Yes, of course,' said Effie. ‘Kitty – would you bring another bottle, please, and another tankard.'

Kitty could sense that something was up; she said, ‘Yes, Miss Effie, I certainly will,' and left without closing the door behind her.

Alisdair sat down. He said, shyly, ‘I've often thought of writing to you, Aunt Effie. I'm sorry I didn't.'

‘It doesn't matter,' said Effie. ‘You once thought of writing to – you once thought of writing to, um, who was it?' She wished the tears would stop flowing out of her eyes; she didn't feel like crying, and yet she couldn't stop herself.

‘Rockefeller?' Alisdair suggested. He knew that she meant Dougal, that she had spilled it all out accidentally.

‘Well, yes, that's right,' said Effie. ‘That's who it was. Rockefeller! You thought of writing to Rockefeller. Well, I don't suppose he was any more aggrieved than I was that you didn't write to him. Now you're here, what does it matter that you didn't write?

‘Effie,' said Robert, ‘you're talking nonsense.'

‘I'm pleased to see Alisdair, that's all,' said Effie, in a quavery voice. I'm entitled to talk nonsense.'

‘You weren't pleased to see me.'

‘Oh, don't be so goddamned petulant! I don't mind you being boorish, but you don't have to be petulant as well.'

‘Well!' said Robert, in amusement, pulling an exaggeratedly offended face. ‘It seems as if you've thoroughly acquainted yourself with the American way of being utterly direct. Do you think your person might get a move on with the champagne?'

Effie wiped away her tears with her fingers, and looked at Robert with such anger and composure that he tugged at his nose, and looked away across the room, and said, ‘hmff,' in embarrassment.

‘Kitty,' said Effie, with great clarity, ‘is not a
person
Kitty is my maid and my friend. If you wish to continue to work with people in America, you had better understand right from the very beginning that the divisions of race and class are not at all as marked as they are in Britain.'

Robert sat back in his chair and drummed his fingers on his empty tankard. He said to Alisdair, almost as if Effie had
already left the room, That's the trouble with your aunt. She always believes that she can dictate to everyone else how they should conduct themselves. It doesn't matter about her own conduct, of course. She is merely experimenting on behalf of our greater good. If she should have an illegitimate child, that is quite all right: she is simply making sure that it isn't all right for the rest of us to do such things. If she should withdraw all of her personal funds from her brother's banks, twice within a single decade, at a time of maximum need and urgency; well, that's quite acceptable. She is simply demonstrating to the rest of us that while gentleman bankers have to behave with decorum and prudence, and responsibility to their stockholders,
lady
bankers, being a very rare breed of one, can do whatever they wish, without concerning themselves what skaith they do to their associates and their kin. Your aunt –' and here Robert began to grow very angry, so that his double-chins went bluish-white, and shook like jellies ‘- your aunt always believes that in banking there is only one law, and that is the sacred preservation of one's own personal funds, regardless of the greater responsibilities that every banker has to the economy of the world at large, and to the well-being of every bank, and to every man who has faith enough and philanthropy enough to invest his money in the enterprise and skill of his fellow human-beings.'

Alisdair looked across at Robert and gave him a teasing, chiding, pout of his lips. ‘Hold your whisht, father,' he said. ‘You know that Aunt Effie's not like that at all.'

Effie, in spite of herself, laughed out loud. ‘Robert,' she said. ‘I do believe you've been squelched by your own son.'

Robert's eyes darted quickly from Effie to Alisdair, and back again. Effie could see how his black vest was rising and falling, as he breathed deeply in and out to restrain his temper. At last, he said, ‘You'd better understand, Effie, that Alisdair and I discussed some years ago the matter of his natural parentage.'

Effie said nothing, but glanced towards Alisdair.

‘He is quite aware that Dougal is his actual biological father, if I can put it that way. Well, you know that already. He says that he told you very early on, after his mother passed away. But, what you may not know is that Alisdair has elected, whatever the circumstances, to stay with me and Marion. A biological father may be one kettle of herring;
but a father who takes the trouble to bring you up, to educate you, to feed you, and to introduce you at last into the bank where he works as a powerful and leading young executive officer … well, that's what a real father is.'

Alisdair didn't take his eyes away from Effie once. There was an intent look on his face which said: believe me, Aunt Effie, there wasn't any other way. I was only a boy. And, besides,
he
brought me up,
he
stayed by me when everybody else had rejected me, my own father, even you.

Robert smiled at Alisdair with undisguised pride. ‘He's a young gilpey at times. An impertinent young fellow. A blether. But that's only because he's asserting his youthful independence, his sense of good fun, and not because he's eager to betray me, as you once were. You're looking at a very keen and wealthy young man here, Effie – worth fifty times what you were at his age, and that's in spite of Winston Churchill and his gold standard.'

Effie said, ‘I'm pleased for him. Are you going to tell Dougal that he's a father? An actual biological father, I mean. Not the kind of father who brings you up, feeds you, and makes you into a bank executive?'

‘Aunt Effie –' Alisdair protested, but Robert raised his hand to quieten him.

‘Dougal doesn't need to know, does he?' said Robert, speaking soothingly now. ‘Do you actually think it's wise?
I
wouldn't have thought so, for Alisdair's sake. Alisdair's curious to meet him, of course; and I think he should. But there isn't any useful purpose to be served by telling him. It will only create unnecessary frustrations.'

Effie said quietly, ‘Supposing I tell him?'

‘You never have in these twenty-seven years. Why should you tell him now? What good would it do?'

‘Perhaps Dougal would be interested to meet the son he gave to the woman he once loved.'

‘You wouldn't do such a thing,' said Robert.

Effie tilted her head inquisitively on one side, and looked at Alisdair. ‘What about you, Alisdair?' she asked. ‘Do you think he ought to know?'

Alisdair shrugged, all curly hair and wrists and big boyish hands. ‘I wouldn't want to hurt him.'

‘To tell you the truth,' said Effie, ‘I don't think anything much can hurt Dougal any more. You destroyed him a long
time ago, Robert, when you exiled him from his own family. I don't think he's ever really recovered.'

‘He told me he was happily married,' said Robert.

‘He's married, yes, but not happily. And why do you think he got married so quickly and so unwisely? Because he needed security; a family of his own; and desperately.'

Alisdair looked from Effie to Robert and back again. ‘I still want to meet him,' he said. ‘And if anybody tells him that I'm his actual son, it's going to be me. I think I have that right.'

‘Well, well, how wonderfully innocent you are,' said Effie, turning towards the boy who had once been her lover, the boy who had given her the only child she had ever had. ‘If you were older, and a little more experienced, you'd have realised by now that nobody has any rights to anything. Just because your father made love to your mother, years and years ago, with no thought of you or of any baby when he did so – in a world where there were still horse-drawn omnibuses, and nobody had ever flown in an airplane – do you seriously believe that you now have the right to surprise your father with the news that he made your mother pregnant, and that he has, unknowingly, abdicated twenty-seven years of fatherhood?'

Alisdair opened his mouth, and then closed it. He sat back. He looked at Robert for help. But Robert was doing nothing more than watching both of them, delighted at their discomfiture, humming under his breath, and waggling his empty tankard at the end of his finger.

Effie said, ‘I don't get along with Dougal these days. We don't meet often; and when we do, we usually argue. But you know that I'm not going to tell him about Alisdair. There are some heartbreaks which are better forgotten, particularly when time has already mended them.'

‘Still the same Effie,' smiled Robert. ‘Hearts and flowers.
Ladies' Home Journal and Secrets
.'

Just then, Kitty came in, with an extra tankard and a freshly opened bottle of Krug. A little way behind her, with the sunlight from the hallway shining in her curls, came Kay, curious about her mommy's visitors. She wore an apple-green velvet dress with a white lace bodice and ribbons, and there was a green Alice-band in her hair.

Effie reached out her hand, and Kay came across and took it. ‘Kay,' she said, softly, ‘did you finish your English lesson?'

‘Mr Unsworth said I could go, on account of my good grammar.'

‘I don't think “on account of” is particularly good grammar.'

Robert eased himself forward in his chair, holding up his tankard so that Kitty could fill it for him. ‘Well,' he said, ‘is this my niece?'

Effie turned Kay around. ‘Here she is, Robert. Kay – go say hello to your Uncle Robert – and this –' she hesitated for a moment, suddenly waist-deep in freezing-cold fear, praying to herself that she could finish introducing him without her voice breaking – ‘this is your cousin Alisdair.'

Kay curtseyed to Robert, who smiled and winked at Effie in appreciation; and then to Alisdair. Alisdair said selfconsciously, ‘How do you do? That's a fine green dress you're wearing.'

‘Uncle Robert and Cousin Alisdair arrived from Scotland today on the
Île de
France,' said Effie. ‘It
was
the
Île de France
, wasn't it?'

‘Yes,' said Alisdair. ‘She's a marvellous ship. Very modern. The only trouble is, all the cabins are decorated with woodveneer, and she creaks like anything whenever there's a strong sea.'

‘Were you seasick?' Kay asked him, ingenuously.

‘Once,' grinned Alisdair. ‘But I think that was only because I ate some shrimps that didn't agree with me.'

‘Are you staying in America for long?' Kay wanted to know.