The Piper's Tune (56 page)

Inside his flapping leather overcoat Gowry sweated.

He wished that she would ask him where he was taking her. Her trust in him made him feel bad.

They passed farm wagons laden with late hay or, for all he knew, straw from the first-cut crops of the autumn season. They passed a miller's van grinding down the hill into the village, then two carts and, scattered along the grassy verge, a skitter of eight or ten bullocks in the care of a man and a boy.

Gowry braked, slowed to a point where he could hear the engine spluttering and smell the brassy stench of the radiator coming up to the boil.

As the motor crawled past, Sylvie waved and called out, ‘Don't be frighted. Don't be frighted,' not to the boy or the man but to the dung-smeared and panicky cattle. ‘It's only a motoring car, our motoring car.'

Gowry steered to the bottom of the hill and turned left towards the loch.

*   *   *

‘I take it you've heard the news?' Kay said as soon as her sister-in-law was shown into the drawing-room.

‘Of course I have heard the news,' Lilias retorted. ‘Do you think I would be visiting at this hour of the morning if I hadn't heard the news?' She paused and composed herself for the half lie. ‘Martin called me on the telephone and I cancelled my appointments and came round straight away.'

‘Do you want tea?'

‘No, Kay, I do not want tea. I want an explanation as to what's going on.'

‘Desertion,' Kay McCulloch said. ‘Plain and simple. There's your explanation. She's run off with her sailor boy.'

‘That isn't the story I heard,' Lilias said.

She seated herself on the sofa and glanced at the portrait of her long-dead sister-in-law that hung over the empty fireplace. It had been years, in fact, since she had been in this room in her brother's house, for she had never been a frequent visitor to Brunswick Park. In spite of her agitation the portrait caught and held her attention; she had forgotten just how pretty Lindsay's mother had been in her youth.

Kay said, ‘I'm not sure he'll want to take her back.'

Lilias gave herself a little shake. ‘Pardon?'

‘Forbes: I'm not sure he'll have her back.'

Lilias had heard rumours about Lieutenant Commander Paget's interest in her niece but, having met the fellow, found it difficult to cast him in the role of seducer. It was fortunate, however, that Martin had had the foresight to call her on the telephone and tell her what had occurred at the yard and to confirm Lindsay's version of events, otherwise she might have been tempted to give some credence to Kay's threat.

Kay said, ‘He might: just to avoid a public scandal, he might.'

‘A public scandal?' Lilias said.

‘A divorce would be all over the newspapers.'

Lilias gave a ragged little laugh. ‘Ah, I see. Forbes is willing to forgive and forget out of a sense of family duty. How noble of him. What, may I enquire, would Forbes's case stand upon?'

‘Desertion. She walked off with another man.'

Even Lilias was flabbergasted at the woman's effrontery, the conviction that her son was the wronged party and her ability not merely to twist the facts to suit that view but to accept her version as absolute and incontestable.

‘Lieutenant Commander Paget?'

‘That's the man,' said Kay, nodding. ‘Her lover.'

‘Kay.' Lilias chose her words with care. ‘I feel that I should warn you to be careful in what you say. There is such as a thing as slander, you know.'

‘Walked out of this house on his arm and hasn't been seen since.'

‘What – twelve hours ago?'

Flat denial, Kay's defence, would not stand up for long. Apparently it hadn't dawned on her sister-in-law that she, Lilias, had already heard the whole story and that Forbes McCulloch's scandalous affair with poor Tom Calder's daughter was swiftly becoming common knowledge.

‘Is…' Lilias paused. ‘Is Forbes at work?'

‘Of course he is,' Kay said indignantly. ‘He's not going to squander valuable time trailing after her, is he? It's up to her to come back to him.'

‘I see,' said Lilias. ‘And to ask his forgiveness?'

‘He's a generous boy. He might do it.'

‘Is that what you would advise him to do, Kay?'

‘It isn't up to me. He's a grown man now.'

‘Not too old to heed his mother's advice, surely?' Lilias said.

She had lost her awe of the McCullochs long ago. She had nothing but scorn for them and knew that if she set her mind to it she could shred her sister-in-law's arguments and grind them down as finely as a pound of Scotch beef. It was, Lilias saw, not ignorance or deviousness but a mad kind of egotism that protected Kay and her kin against reality. She wondered at the nature of the man – a man she had never met – who stood in the shadow of this woman, who had fathered sons and daughters upon her and who, by the immutable laws of nature, must have had some sort of influence upon their lives.

‘I will be telling Forbes,' Kay said, ‘to do what's right.'

‘Right for whom?' said Lilias.

‘For the family.'

‘To follow his conscience?' Lilias said. ‘Is that what you mean?'

Instinct made Kay wary but not wary enough to avoid the trap. She stiffened her shoulders, straightened her spine and endeavoured to appear both hurt and haughty. ‘Aye, that is what I mean.'

‘And the child?'

‘He would not be wanting the children to be without a mother.'

‘Or a father?' Lilias said.

The foxy eye was suddenly as sharp and glittering as a shard of glass. Her head twitched and her lips were sucked in against her teeth. She squinted up malevolently at her tall and elegant sister-in-law as Lilias got to her feet.

‘Or a father?' Lilias said again.

‘Forbes isn't the father. That creature is lying.'

‘That creature?' Lilias said. ‘Well, eventually it will be for a court to decide whether she's lying or not.'

‘Court, what court?' Kay said.

‘Oh, come now, Kay, surely you don't think my niece is going to remain married to an adulterer?'

‘She's the adulterer.'

‘Is she?' Lilias said. ‘On what evidence?'

‘On the evidence of that sailorman.'

‘Well,' Lilias said, almost too airily, ‘I doubt if a counterclaim will carry much weight when it comes to arranging the financial settlement; but you never can tell with the law, can you? Meanwhile, our Mr Harrington or one of his colleagues will draft a petition for judicial separation so that proceedings may get under way. Lindsay will probably be anxious to have charge of the children – her children, I mean – and be free of her obligations to Forbes. She will, of course, expect to be maintained here in the family house on terms not dissimilar to those under which your son has been keeping Miss Sylvie Calder: rent paid and livings provided, that is. If those terms do not prove satisfactory, or if Forbes wishes to marry again in the near future, then we will progress immediately to a full petition for divorce, in which case the newspapermen will have a great deal of fun and the Franklins' business may very well suffer some setback.'

Kay listened with her mouth open.

‘As to his position in the firm, the partnership,' Lilias concluded, ‘that is not a matter than can be settled at once. Besides, it's something for the men to discuss and decide upon.'

‘How?' Kay began: she swallowed. ‘How did we fall to talking about the end of my son's marriage? Lindsay hasn't been gone but twelve hours; you said so yourself. Nobody knows where she is, what she feels about any of this. She's with her sailor…' Abruptly Kay jerked upright, scowling. ‘Oh! So that's it!' she exclaimed. ‘You
want
Lindsay to marry this sailor, don't you, so that Franklin's will have more pull with the navy contractors?'

‘Don't,' Lilias said, ‘be ridiculous.'

‘Forbes will have something to say about that.'

‘No doubt he will,' said Lilias. ‘However, I have said
my
piece, Kay, and I'm going home now.'

‘Hah!' Kay said. ‘It'll be a different story when she turns up, you'll see.'

Lilias could not resist. ‘Sylvie Calder, do you mean?'

‘I mean Lindsay. She won't agree to any of this divorce nonsense.'

‘Will she not?' Lilias said. ‘Oh, I think she might, my dear, given that it was her idea in the first place. By the way, she has “turned up” as you put it, not that she was ever really lost.'

‘What? Where is she?'

‘At Harper's Hill, of course,' Lilias said, ‘waiting to join me for lunch.'

*   *   *

They sat idly for a while on the shore of the loch under a jumble of elephant-grey boulders. Behind and around them conifers released a resinous smell in the sultry noon heat. The loch was not large enough to attract boatmen and there were no fishermen casting from the shore at that hour on a weekday.

The couple by the loch side did not speak. There seemed to be nothing left for them to say.

Sylvie sat back, the crown of the sun-bonnet crushed against the rocks, her legs stuck out before her. Even she was perspiring now, a light film of sweat on her upper lip and forehead. Folded passively on her stomach, her hands moved with the rhythm of her breathing. Propped on an elbow at her side, Gowry studied her cautiously. From across the tops of the trees, where the ridge broke to the north, came a faint mutter of thunder. Gowry raised his head and listened for a moment, then he said, ‘You can still be rid of it, Sylvie.'

‘It's too late,' she said.

‘No, it isn't,' Gowry said.

He had taken off the leather overcoat and had left it in the Vauxhall. The motor-car was parked at the end of a rough track fifty or sixty yards away behind the rock step. He leaned closer, and lowered his voice.

‘You can still be rid of it if you want to,' he said. ‘I know a way.'

‘What way would that be?'

‘The way the girls do it in the part of Ireland where I come from.'

‘Drowning. It's drowning,' Sylvie said. ‘Isn't it?'

‘Hmm,' Gowry murmured. ‘It never fails.'

‘She hasn't arrived yet. How can we drown her if she hasn't arrived?'

‘You walk out into the water and stand there,' Gowry said. ‘Stand there for – oh, five or ten minutes.'

Sylvie turned her head just an inch. ‘That won't do it.'

‘It will, you know. I've seen it happen.'

‘Where?'

‘In Malahide, in Ireland.'

‘They must be very strange people in Malahide.'

‘Oh, I see,' Gowry said. ‘No, no, it isn't the drowning that does it, it's the cold. The cold does it. The cold causes them not to breathe any more.'

Her cool grey eyes were upon him. ‘And then what happens to them?'

‘They pop out.'

‘Under the water?' Sylvie said.

‘Under the water,' Gowry said. ‘It's painless. You won't even notice it. You don't even have to look. It just happens.'

‘Does not.'

‘Does too,' said Gowry.

She turned her head again and looked at her feet, then, lifting herself away from the rock, stared at the glassy water.

‘Do you think,' she said, ‘I should try?'

‘I dunno,' said Gowry. ‘It's up to you.'

‘Does it always work?'

‘Always.'

‘Gowry, do you want me to try?'

Sweat ran down the sides of his face. He did not dare wipe it away. She wasn't looking at him, though, she was looking at the water.

‘I think,' Gowry said, ‘that Forbes might want you to try.'

‘Did he tell you that?'

‘Yes. Yes, he did.'

‘It would be all right without the baby, wouldn't it?' Sylvie said. ‘I mean, it would be all as right as rain again without the baby. He would come back and it would just be the same as it was before.'

‘Hmm.'

She glanced at him quickly. ‘What about his wife? She'd know about the baby. She would think badly of me. I wouldn't want her to think badly of me.'

He wanted to ask why Lindsay's opinion mattered but Sylvie had a blank expression on her face now, neither anxious nor eager.

Along the edge of the loch a dipper hopped, leaving no ripple.

Gowry said, ‘She wouldn't care what had happened to the baby.'

Sylvie removed one hand from the mound of her stomach, bent the elbow, braced the wrist. She still didn't look at him.

‘I'll do it if you tell me to, Gowry,' she said.

‘Forbes…'

‘No, Gowry. If you tell me to, I'll do it.'

‘All right,' he whispered. ‘Do it.'

She pushed herself up on her arm, rolled on to one knee and hoisted herself to her feet. The dipper flew off, skimming low along the edge of the loch. The loch reminded Gowry of oil, a great slick of black diesel, brown only in the sunless shallows where the stones were. He watched her stoop and take off her shoes and waddle down to the water's edge.

Out beyond the brown rim the water swiftly became black.

He longed for her to give him a second chance, to glance back, swing round, say in that bright, bewildered voice of hers, ‘Gowry, are you sure?'

She did not turn round. She knew what he wanted her to do, what Forbes required of her. Barefoot and bare-legged, she walked straight into the loch. She did not lift her skirts. He watched them fill with air then water, saw them settle around her first like petals then like weed. He was hardly breathing now. Any slight sound might break into the spell that Sylvie laboured under. Oh, yes, laboured under! How much of a joke is that right now, Gowry? he thought, as he watched her wade ankle-deep, knee-deep, out through the brown shallows.

She waded on, her arms raised, struggling against the weight of her skirts, the weight of the water. She stopped. She stared straight ahead of her at the wall of conifers on the further shore. The sun bonnet had slipped back on its ribbon and hung on her curls. She placed her hands on the surface of the water, palms down, fingers spread. She seemed to be thinking, to be contemplating something, Gowry could not imagine what. The waterline was slick and black around her distended stomach. One step and she would be gone. One step, he thought, one tiny step. He felt sweat all over his body, chill as ice.