The Piper's Tune (2 page)

‘Pappy?'

Lindsay did not have to reach up to kiss her grandfather's cheek; he was hardly much taller than she was now. In the past decade it seemed that age had squeezed him down sinew on sinew so that his grandchildren could look him square in the eye and his sons, Donald and Arthur, appeared at long last like full grown men in his presence.

‘Pappy, what is it? What's this surprise you have for us?'

‘Patience, child, patience,' Owen Franklin said as Lizzie, the front-hall maid, removed Lindsay's coat and carried it and her father's hat off into the cloakroom beneath the massive staircase. ‘What did you tell her, Arthur?'

‘How could I tell her anything when you've kept me in the dark too?'

‘You don't have to be so peevish,' Owen said. ‘It's no more than a bit of indulgence towards an old man that I'm asking for.'

‘What old man? You're not an old man.'

‘Perhaps not by your lights, Arthur, but I'm rapidly steering that way.'

They were in the great hallway of the mansion, on the huge Indian rug that had been the gift of some foreign shipping agent or other. The rug added cohesion to the oak-floored entrance's job-lots of armour and broadswords and the array of military muskets that Owen had purchased umpteen years ago when he still thought that the best way to please Kath was to turn himself into a duplicate of a Highland laird. In other rooms the decor was more acceptably maritime, with several fine Dutch sea-paintings on the walls, old chronometers, quadrants and sextants laid out in glass cases, and scale models of craft designed and built at the Franklins' yard in Aydon Road.

There was no daylight, save a dusty shaft from the stained-glass window at the bend of the staircase. Lindsay had often wondered if this was what it had felt like to be incarcerated in the hold of an old wooden-walled slaving ship or the engine-room of one of the ironclads that had plied the Atlantic routes thirty years ago, for her grandfather's house reminded her of some sort of vessel beached on the summit of Harper's Hill.

The door to the drawing-room on the right of the hall was closed. She wondered where her aunt, uncle and cousins were, and the manservant, Giles, who as a rule was never very far away.

She studied her grandfather with a degree of apprehension. His wrinkled features and watery blue eyes were not threatening and, indeed, his wispy little smile seemed to hint that the surprise would not be unpleasant or turn out to be some trade matter that didn't concern her.

‘Are you ready?' he said.

‘Oh, get on with it, Pappy, for heaven's sake,' his son said. ‘Open the blessed door, let's see what you're hiding in there.'

Grandfather Franklin allowed himself one more chuckle, then, like a mischievous child, pushed the door open inch by inch.

‘What the devil!' Lindsay's father exclaimed. ‘It's Kay. Our Kay.'

‘Didn't expect that, now did you, Arthur?'

‘Why didn't you tell me she was coming home?' Arthur hissed. ‘If this is your idea of a joke, Pappy, I must say it's in damned bad taste.'

It had not occurred to Lindsay that there had ever been animosity between her emigrant aunt and her father. She could not recall having heard him say anything detrimental about his sister. Now that she thought of it, though, he had made no effort to visit the McCullochs when business took him to Ireland. Donald had visited Dublin once or twice over the years and kept in touch with Kay by regular exchange of letters, but her father received the Irish news only at second hand. At that moment Lindsay realised that perhaps she didn't know all there was to know about the Franklins' chequered past and that there might be more to this family reunion than first met the eye.

Her father adopted the haughty air that he usually reserved for naval inspectors or agents from foreign governments, a chilly sort of arrogance that Lindsay did not care for. ‘Katherine.' He weaved towards his sister. He obviously had no intention of falling into her arms and certainly felt no obligation to kiss her. ‘How nice to see you again.'

Allotted pride of place in this pride of Franklins, the woman was seated in a walnut armchair in the centre of the room. The massive gilt-framed mirror above the mantelpiece falsely enlarged the size of the gathering so that the room seemed crowded. In the mirror Lindsay could see the back of her aunt's head and the dark hair of the young man at her aunt's side. His hand was pressed to her shoulder as if to dissuade her from rising too hurriedly or, for that matter, from rising at all.

Aunt Kay remained steadfastly seated. She crossed an arm over her bony bosom, extended her right hand and permitted her brother to take it across his palm like an offering of fish. He dipped his head as if to sniff rather than kiss her ungloved fingers.

‘Still no manners, I see,' Kay said.

Lindsay's father stepped back.

‘What do you mean?'

‘Late as usual,' Aunt Kay answered.

‘Minutes,' Arthur Franklin said. ‘Mere minutes.
If
a certain party had thought fit to inform me that we were being honoured with your presence I'd have made a point of being on time.'

‘Well, you're here now, I suppose,' Kay said.

‘I suppose I am,' said Arthur.

He moved away to seek protection from his brother or comfort from Aunt Lilias who, to judge from her expression, was amused by the display of sibling rivalry. Left in the firing line, Lindsay took a deep breath and with all the warmth she could muster presented herself to the lean, untidy woman who, just eighteen years ago, had been – albeit briefly – a mother to her.

‘Aunt Kay,' she said. ‘I'm so pleased to meet you at last.'

The woman looked up. In her eyes, the pale blue unspeckled eyes common to all Owen Franklin's offspring, Lindsay thought she detected an ember of affection. ‘Anna?' her aunt said.

‘I prefer to be called Lindsay.'

‘So I've been told,' her aunt said. ‘By jingo, you've changed. You were such an ugly baby. I thought you were one of Mr Darwin's monkeys when the midwife first brought you out.'

‘I'm afraid I don't remember it,' Lindsay said, not seriously.

‘I remember it as if it were yesterday,' Kay said. ‘You squawking in my arms while she was upstairs breathing her last.'

Lindsay felt her cheeks redden. An embarrassed silence came over her cousins. Uncle Donald cleared his throat. Then the young man said, ‘Time enough for reminiscences, Mam. Meanwhile, why don't you introduce me?'

He had a smooth Irish accent, soft but distinct.

The haggard lines vanished from Kay's face when she addressed her son.

‘Tell her yourself who you are, Forbes. Give her a hug if that's what you fancy.' She fashioned a scooping gesture to shoo her son out from behind the chair and drive him into the open. ‘She's Anna's daughter, her that died along about the same time as my sister Helen. Her father's my second brother.'

Lindsay assumed that he would have heard of her. She had certainly heard of him: Owen Forbes McCulloch: Welsh, Scottish and Irish rolled into one. He had dark hair, brown eyes and the sort of long lashes that a girl might envy. There was nothing remotely feminine about him, however. He was the handsomest man Lindsay had ever met, and he certainly wasn't bashful. In fact, he was possessed of an easy self-assurance that made it difficult to believe that he was younger than she was. When he spoke in that soft lilting accent she could almost smell the lush green meadows of County Meath.

Behind her, cousins Cissie and Mercy giggled, but their mirth seemed faded, almost remote. He did not hug her. He was not so bold, so modern as all that. He leaned across his mother and took Lindsay's hand.

She felt a little shiver go through her, a ripple of awe and something so novel that she did not recognise it as desire, a longing to have him touch her again or, more like the thing, never to let her go.

‘Cousin Lindsay,' he said quietly.

And equally quietly, she answered, ‘Cousin Forbes.'

*   *   *

For twenty minutes after his employer had passed, Tom Calder remained seated on a bench near the Memorial Fountain. The sun had not broken through and soon after three o'clock the air took on a chilly edge. Courting couples abandoned the daffodil slopes and families began to drift away towards the tenements that flanked Finnieston and Dumbarton Road or to catch the halfpenny omnibus that would carry them two or three miles to Whiteinch and Scotstoun. Forearms on knees, Tom observed the gradual exodus.

He was not sly or threatening. He had no designs upon the girls, which was probably just as well, for there was something about the tall man with the weathered complexion that made the lassies who toured the park in search of romance a wee bit wary. At thirty-four, he was probably too old for most of them. His hair was thinning and he had the sort of lean, underfed features that only a desperate spinster would find attractive. His eyes were disconcertingly alert and at the same time unseeing, as if the best you had to offer might not be good enough for him. The impression he gave was not one of moodiness or melancholy but of indifference, and indifference was the one thing with which no girl, young or otherwise, could cope.

Tom Calder, like his employer, was a widower. He had a daughter, Sylvie, who out of necessity he had relinquished into the care of his wife's sister and her husband some years ago. He saw her by arrangement only once or twice a month unless he contrived to encounter her ‘by accident' when Florence or Albert brought her to the park between Sabbath school and evening service. He knew that he had lost her and that it would be better to let her go. But some deep paternal instinct prevented it. At eight Sylvie had been ‘his little sweetheart'. At ten, after he had returned from Africa, she had still shown him some affection. Now twelve, she was his sweetheart no longer. She wasn't even polite to him and would cling truculently to Florence or Albert whenever their paths crossed.

Motionless as marble, Tom surveyed the Radnor Street gate and the circular path around the fountain basin. If Albert was Sylvie's escort then the chance of a meeting was remote. Albert was too crafty to follow the same route week after week. If Florence was the guardian of the hour, however, the opportunity was much improved, for Florence, out of habit or lack of imagination, followed an identical path every Sunday.

He heard the university bell call the half-hour. Several clocks in the old burgh steeples lightly answered it.

They were late, or possibly did not intend to come at all. Perhaps his brother-in-law Albert Hartnell had spotted him and had whisked little Sylvie, not unwilling, up the hill to lead her home by the high back ways. He glanced bleakly along the gravel path – and there they were: Florence tall and spare in a costume of smooth-faced Venetian serge with hardly a frill to relieve its severity; Sylvie in the daft countrified style that Florence had foisted on her, in a kilted skirt, a jacket of fawn cloth with a sailor collar, a bonnet with velveteen tassels. Sylvie bore no resemblance to her mother except perhaps in the fine complexion, so pale and silken that it seemed less like flesh than an expensive Eastern fabric.

Tom rose. He could not feign casualness. He was useless at pretence. He stalked towards them, arms swinging. Sylvie deliberately turned her back and surveyed the crenellated rooftops that overlooked the Clyde.

‘What are you
doing
here?' Florence asked.

‘Taking the air, just taking the air.'

‘Have you nothing better to do with yourself?'

‘No, nothing. How are you, Sylvie? Are you over your cold?'

In spite of her apparent fragility Sylvie had so far shown no disposition towards the asthmatic condition to which her mother had eventually succumbed. Even so, Tom fretted over every little sniffle and cough and, in years past, had gone almost mad with worry when some epidemic or other swept through the city, scything down children like weeds. These days he was more sanguine about his daughter's ability to survive.

‘Sylvie, answer your father.'

‘I am very well, thank you.'

‘Your cold?'

‘That's gone,' said Florence.

‘Has it really?' said Tom. ‘I mean, really and truly?'

‘Yes.'

‘No after-effects?'

‘Do you think I'd have brought her out if she was ailing?'

‘No, Florence, of course you wouldn't.' Tom eyed his daughter in the vain hope that she had found it in her heart to forgive him whatever transgressions had turned her against him. ‘Is all well at school, dearest?'

‘Yes, thank you.'

No ‘Papa', no ‘Father', no intimacies graced her reply. He wondered at what point along the way he had lost her.

He had handed her over to Florence and Albert not long after Dorothy had passed on. His sister-in-law had understood the necessity not just of earning a living but of grinding on with a career. He in turn had convinced himself that Sylvie needed a woman's care and a stable home and that all he would be able to provide would be servants and nannies. Florence and Albert had been only too willing to take Sylvie off his hands, for they were childless and Sylvie had seemed like a gift from God. He had no right to feel slighted that she was more attached to Florence and Albert than she was to him.

Florence said, ‘I don't know why you do this, Tom.'

‘Do what?' he said, still trying vainly to attract Sylvie's attention.

‘You are welcome to call at the house at any time, you know.'

‘I do not feel welcome,' Tom said. ‘Besides, you are out so much these days that I can never be sure…' He let the complaint trail off.

‘We're never far away,' Florence said. ‘Are we, dear?'

Sylvie shook her head.

‘Out and about on the Lord's business,' Florence said. ‘I take it you haven't sunk so far, Tom, that you would regard that as neglect?' With a certain firmness, his sister-in-law manoeuvred Sylvie round to face him. ‘Now you're here, however, there's a certain matter I feel I must mention.'