The Piper's Tune (40 page)

Then on a cold January morning, just after she had taken her first step against domestic tyranny, she met Lieutenant Commander Geoffrey Paget and was drawn into the wide world again, a world where fear had a shape, a face, and a uniform, and turned out to be more frightening than anything she could possibly have imagined.

*   *   *

Geoffrey was the only son of an only son. His father had been a small-town banker who had entered the accounts section of the Royal Navy and had attained the exalted position of Cashier at the Chatham dockyard before he was struck down by kidney failure at the age of forty-six.

Geoffrey had been fourteen at the time. Born and raised in civil quarters in the village of Ashercombe and educated at a modest public school near Gillingham, there had never been any question of what would become of him; his destiny was written not in the stars but in the tides. Within months of his father's death he had been enrolled as a cadet at Dartmouth College and his career in the Royal Navy launched.

Geoffrey had known no other life but the navy. His mother – God bless her – continued to live in Ashercombe with her sister and her sister's husband, worthy, well-to-do provision merchants with established naval contracts and a wholesale outlet in Maidstone. Geoffrey regarded Ashercombe as home, though he spent no more than two or three weeks a year there. He had sailed in many ships to many ports, had served on coastal patrol boats, and, in his mid-twenties, had improved his chances of promotion by undertaking a two-year course in ship construction. It was a circuitous route on to Fisher's staff at the Admiralty but one that in hindsight appeared to have been engineered. After four years in submarines he had become the voice in Jackie Fisher's ear on all matters related to that specialised aspect of warfare.

Geoffrey was no spy, nor was it his brief to act as a technical supervisor; there were other officers better equipped than he for that role. Primarily he was Jackie Fisher's man. The Vickers' licence stipulated that what was being built on Clydeside remain secret and it was to ensure the fulfilment of that clause that Lieutenant Commander Paget was assigned to liaise with the Franklins.

Falling for the wife of a partner was emphatically not part of the detail, particularly as Geoffrey had just broken off a five-year engagement with a certain Miss Elizabeth Altham for the plain and simple reason that he did not love her enough to wish to marry her.

Recently he had come to believe that he did not know what love was; not, that is, until he looked across the mould loft in Aydon Road in the bleak light of a January morning and saw a white-faced little woman in neat but dowdy tailor-made tweeds with a hat that seemed just a shade over-large for her small, pinched, pretty features. Nothing in her manner suggested dowdiness or, for that matter, humility and Geoffrey was too inexperienced with women to realise that resistance was possible let alone necessary.

Lindsay in turn refused to be impressed by the naval officer and apparently had no interest in an Englishman whom she had only just met and who, if she were lucky, she would never have to meet again.

She did meet him again, however.

She met him at Cissie's apartments in Sandyford Avenue less than one week later, not by accident but by design.

By then she had found out a little about Lieutenant Commander Paget, not from her father but from her husband who, it seemed, had dined with the chap at the Barbary, and regarded the English naval officer as a bit of a joke. Lieutenant Commander Paget did not regard Forbes McCulloch as a bit of a joke. He found nothing comical in the slippery Dubliner or in his brother who, for some unimaginable reason, had been brought along to make up the party. He, Geoffrey, had been silenced by the presence of the brother and an evening that should have been devoted to business deteriorated into a bout of hard drinking and soft-voiced boasting.

Geoffrey, therefore, remained less impressed by Mrs McCulloch's husband than by Mrs McCulloch herself.

He rose from the armchair where Cissie had placed him.

‘Why, Mrs McCulloch,' he said, ‘I did not expect to find you here.'

‘Oh! Nor I you, Lieutenant.'

‘Lieutenant Commander.'

‘My apologies.'

‘No, ma'am.
My
apologies. I should not have corrected you.'

‘If I am open to correction then you were right to do so.'

‘You are not open to correction.'

‘Then you're
not
a Lieutenant Commander.'

‘Ma'am – yes, I am.'

‘Then I stand corrected.'

‘Why stand at all, for heaven's sake,' Cissie intervened. ‘Sit, the pair of you, and I'll ring for tea.'

After tea and scones had been served by the Calders' maid, Geoffrey relaxed. He had been drilled in social niceties and could balance a teacup and saucer on his knee with the best of them.

‘You did not bring your little boy with you today, Mrs McCulloch?'

‘No. He is at home with his nurse.'

‘I thought perhaps you were one of those mothers who cannot bear to be separated from their children even for an afternoon.'

‘Are there such mothers?' Cissie said. ‘I'm certainly not one of them. I'm only too relieved to have a breather now and then. Besides, it's only right that a boy should spend time with his grandmother.'

‘Is that where Ewan is?' Lindsay said.

‘She's taken him shopping, Pansy and she.'

Geoffrey did not seem put out by domestic small talk.

Conversation drifted this way and that, without target or objective.

She watched him. He watched her. They were, even then, wary.

‘Are you billeted in Glasgow?'

‘I have a room in the Conservative Club.'

‘Very grand,' said Cissie.

‘Officially I'm on temporary attachment to the staff of Rear Admiral Collings at Rosyth,' Geoffrey said.

Lindsay asked another question, then another. He answered with apparent candour, his replies too skilfully worded to give much away.

Cissie was not insensitive to what was going on, though she was hard put to explain it to her husband later that evening.

‘No, no,' Tom said. ‘I find it hard to believe that Lindsay would be daft enough to make eyes at a sailor.'

‘Some sailor!' Cissie said. ‘He's a Lieutenant Commander, as he constantly keeps reminding us.'

‘You don't like him?' Tom asked.

‘I didn't say that.' Cissie arched a provocative eyebrow. ‘I think he's very attractive, if you must know – in a stuffy kind of way.'

‘Isn't that what you used to say about me?'

‘No, I never thought you attractive – just stuffy. And I was right, Mr Calder,' Cissie informed her husband. ‘I was absolutely right.'

‘Did she leave with him?' Tom asked.

‘Yes.'

‘On foot?'

‘Well, I didn't see the royal yacht moored outside. Yes, dear, on foot.'

‘It doesn't seem quite right,' Tom said.

‘What doesn't?'

‘I mean, Lindsay's a married woman.'

‘But look who she's married to,' Cissie said.

‘Even so,' Tom said, ‘it isn't proper.'

‘Stuffy. I told you so. Stuffy.'

‘I wonder what they found to talk about,' Tom said.

‘Boats, I expect,' said Cissie.

They had not talked of boats or the building of boats or of the ships that Geoffrey had sailed in or the ports he had visited. They did not discuss the possibility of finding a cab or remark on the fact that he was walking with her and that she seemed quite content to allow him to accompany her through the forlorn dusk of the winter afternoon.

Sandyford Avenue ran into Scotstoun Avenue, Scotstoun Avenue into Kennilworth. Kennilworth in turn rose up past the little mansions of the well-heeled and well-to-do. It did not seem like half past four o'clock but like some unrecorded hour that was neither day nor night, for winter on Clydeside distorted sights, smells and sounds. Leaves shoaled the pavement's edge, dry as tinder in the frost. Frost was already beginning to fall again, sifting down out of a brown foggy air that tasted of horses and coal smoke. Tram-cars clashed on Dumbarton Road, trains rattled along the suburban lines that linked commerce to home comforts; the hoofs of the horses of draymen and merchants, explosions of exhaust from motorised vans and motor-cars and, when they finally reached the tenements at the back of Brunswick Park, the chatter of schoolchildren trailing home for tea.

What did they talk about that first time? Lindsay could not remember. They might have walked in silence for all it mattered.

It was not at all as it had been when she had fallen in love with Forbes. There was no desire for the experience itself, no urgent need to possess. She had learned the lessons of marriage and knew now what love was not. She had no longing to be loved by a naval officer, a stranger from the south. Their affinity had no basis in reality. She did not love Geoffrey Paget, not yet, but in the course of a companionable stroll through suburban streets she realised that she did not love Forbes, that her marriage was, and had been from the first, a sham.

‘Is this where you live, Mrs McCulloch?'

‘Close by.'

They stopped by the gates of St Anne's Church, the hump of the hill that led over Brunswick Park Road and down to the crescent behind them. Five minutes would see her to her door but tactfully he did not offer to walk her so far. She smiled and offered him her hand. He took it, shook it briefly, tipped his cap. He waited, though, and did not immediately turn away.

A horse-van trundled past, trailing floury white dust; a motor-cab nipped briskly over the cobbles and into Bradley Street.

‘I must go,' Lindsay said.

‘Of course.'

‘Do you know where you are, sir?'

‘Yes, I know where I am.'

‘If you go down…'

‘I know where I am,' he said again.

‘Thank you for walking me home, Lieutenant Commander.'

‘It was my pleasure, Mrs McCulloch.'

‘Perhaps we will meet again before you go back to London.'

‘I hope that may be the case.'

She sensed that Geoffrey Paget could not make the running no matter how inclined he might be to do so. The friendship could not be rushed. There were decisions to be made, intricate decisions so tiny and imprecise that they were hardly more than gestures. She needed to be confident, to lift herself up, find some of the old Franklin fire, to march with the times. But she was afraid, afraid of what she had discovered about her marriage, what it might mean in the long term and how many times would she have to be together with Geoffrey Paget before she could be sure exactly where she stood in his estimation, if she stood anywhere at all, that is?

She took a few quick steps uphill.

Then stopped. Then turned.

He stood as he had stood in Cissie's drawing-room, feet apart, watching her, waiting perhaps for her decision.

‘Geoffrey,' Lindsay heard herself say. ‘Do you sing?'

‘Sing?' When he laughed he looked quite different. ‘No, I don't sing. I've a voice like a crow, I'm afraid.' Then he said, ‘I do play the piano, however.'

‘Really? The piano?'

‘Why do you ask?'

‘No reason,' Lindsay said and, swinging away, set off up Brunswick Hill.

*   *   *

‘A musical evening?' Arthur said. ‘Good God, we haven't had one of those in ages. A musical evening? There's a jolly thought. Might be just what we need to cheer us all up.'

‘It won't cheer us up,' said Forbes. ‘It'll only unsettle the children.'

‘Unsettle them? Why?' said Arthur.

‘The noise.'

‘Singing isn't a noise.'

‘It is to some,' said Gowry, who had invited himself to supper again.

Winn was upstairs putting the children to bed but Blossom was present. She nodded in agreement with her brother.

‘I thought,' said Arthur, ‘that all you Irish folk were musical.'

‘You're obviously confusing us with the Welsh,' said Blossom.

She was a large young woman, broad-shouldered, broad-hipped, her features disconcertingly like those of her mother. She had also inherited Kay's argumentative streak and could turn a chance remark into an argument at the drop of a hat. The informality that Arthur had introduced into the household in respect of Miss Runciman had backfired upon him now. He could not reasonably insist that ‘servants' be kept in their place, not when Eleanor was seated at his right hand and not, especially, when Forbes's servants were also relatives. He could not quite accept that Blossom and Winn were actually his nieces and Gowry his nephew.

Cautiously, Arthur said, ‘I don't believe I am.'

‘It's dancers we are,' said Gowry.

‘Not singers,' said Blossom.

‘I see,' said Arthur, ‘then perhaps you could dance for us.'

Brothers and sister exchanged glances filled with contempt for the poor benighted Scotsman who imagined that he could wheedle them into co-operating.

Lindsay said, ‘It need not be a large gathering.'

‘It need not be a gathering at all,' said Forbes.

‘A few friends, Cissie and Tom,' Arthur said. ‘Pappy if he's at home. Donald and Aunt Lilias, of course…'

‘It sounds to me like a large gathering,' said Blossom.

Lindsay said, ‘You are under no obligation to attend.'

‘Am I not now?' said Blossom. ‘Will we not be invited?'

‘Of course you'll be invited,' Arthur said.

‘However, you don't have to accept,' said Lindsay.

‘I suppose we'll just have to sit upstairs listening to your caterwauling…'

‘Bloss,' Forbes warned.

Scowling, the woman shovelled beef stew into her mouth.

‘I'm thinking I'll go out that evening,' Gowry said.

It was on the tip of Lindsay's tongue to remind him that he was only a guest in the house and had, in theory at least, a place of his own to go to.