Lady of Fortune (9 page)

‘Aye. You're McFarlane the charity-worker, and that's Mrs Watson.'

Jamie reached into the pocket of his tweed coat and took out a leather spleughan, a tobacco-pouch. ‘Would you like a fill?' he said, offering the pouch to Gavin.

‘Keep your baccy, I know what you're here to say. I heard you talking to the mother.'

‘You heard?' said Fiona, gently. ‘Then you know what your mother's so worried about.'

‘It's no true,' said Gavin, clearing his throat. ‘Whatever she says, it's all lies. Or jealousy, more like. Father's always too ree to do his manly duty these days; and that's why the old woman's mind is always on the other business.'

‘Gavin,' said Fiona, ‘if you're touching Eliza at all … well, you know what your punishment will be. The law will punish you, of course; but, worse than that, you will meet your Maker on Judgement Day and have to confess to Him that you went against His holy commandment. If you're not telling us the truth, then you face both imprisonment, and everlasting hell.'

Gavin took his pipe out of his mouth and looked Fiona up and
down. ‘I know you, missis,' he said. ‘I've seen you around the Lands, and I've seen you in Princes Street in that carriage of yours, with your husband. A fine lady you are, and no mistake.'

‘Gavin, is it true about you and Eliza?' insisted Jamie.

‘It's none of your business, that's what it is,' Gavin retorted. ‘I can make my own peace with God, thank you, without any of your assistance. And I can take care of my own sister.'

‘What about the law?' asked Fiona, in that same gentle voice.

‘The law? The only trouble I could have with the law is if somebody went snooving to the police; and, unless you do, missis, I've no need to fear that anybody from the building will.'

‘But your
sister
,' interrupted Effie, surprising herself with her own voice. ‘What about your
sister?
'

Gavin McFee stared at Effie with contempt. ‘Eliza's a grown girl,' he said, at last. ‘She can make her own choice about where she sleeps, and with whom.'

Jamie stood up. ‘I think we're wasting our time here, Fiona. This fellow's nothing more than a chuffie hog, with no thought for a soul but his own.'

Gavin spat out of the side of his mouth. ‘You can fuff as much as you like, McFarlane. You can fuff yourself out the fucking window, for a' I care. Now, get along with you, and leave a man in peace.'

‘A
man
?' mocked Jamie. ‘You're a poor fylt excuse for a boy, let alone a man.'

‘Piss off with you,' said Gavin.

Jamie, unexpectedly, seized Gavin by the front of his grubby shirt, half-lifted him off the bed, and smacked him hard across the face. The boy's clay-pipe broke, and burning tobacco sprayed over the blankets.

‘Let go of me!' Gavin hollered. ‘You're red-wud! Let go!'

The young girl in the other bed woke up and started greeting. Jamie shook Gavin by his shoulders until his teeth clattered together.

‘Jamie! Stop!' Fiona cried, tugging at his coat. ‘Jamie, darling, you mustn't!'

Jamie, breathless, let Gavin drop back on the bed. The girl stopped crying. There was an odd, cold, smelly silence.

‘Well,' said Gavin, in his roupet, sly voice. ‘It's “darling”, is it? It's “Jamie, darling,” is it? I wonder what Mr Watson of Watson's Bank would have to say about that?'

‘You're a fool,' snapped Jamie.

‘Oh, no,' Gavin told him, propping himself up on one elbow. ‘Not so much of a fool that I don't know whose ears to speak into, and what to say. So you just listen to me, Jamie McFarlane darling. You leave me be, and I'll leave you be. But if there's any trouble with the police, then by God you'll get the whistle of your groat. I mean it.'

Fiona took Effie's arm. ‘Jamie,' she said, tightly, ‘I think it would be better if we left.'

Jamie looked down at Gavin McFee and licked his lips uncertainly, as if he couldn't make up his mind whether to crush the boy like a bug, or let him go. But at last he nodded, and followed Fiona through the filthy living-room to the front door, where already the neighbours had gathered to see what the commotion was all about.

Doris clutched at Jamie's sleeve. ‘You'll no forget the tea.'

‘No, Doris.'

‘I'm awfu' sorry,' said Doris. ‘He's a good boy, but he's sae thowless.'

‘He needs a good labouring, if you ask me,' said Jamie. ‘Will Jimmy talk to him, when he's back from Grey Michael's?'

‘Jimmy no cares,' Doris told him. ‘Jimmy only cares for the swats.' Swats was new-brewed ale.

They clambered over the rubbish in the tenement passageway, and made their way down to the street again. It was snowing much more thickly now, and Edinburgh was as white and quiet as any Northern city in the dead of winter.

‘Effie, put up your hood,' said her mother. ‘You wouldn't want to catch cold.'

Effie said, ‘Mother –'

But Fiona Watson took her hand in the snowy too-fa', the false twilight that falls with a blizzard, and said, ‘Whisht, Effie. We can talk later.'

Jamie McFarlane lived in one of the small stone cottages overlooking the Water of Leith, in Dean Village. From the balconied window of his sitting-room, there was a wintry view of the Dean Bridge, and the brown-grey church spires beyond. The sitting-room itself was dark, this afternoon, but a small coal-fire which Jamie had set before he came out to meet them made it warm and cosy; and there was a friendly clutter of books and paper and oddities, like a turtle-shell from the Galapagos Islands, and a plaster bust of Heracles.

Jamie made tea; and then the three of them sat around the fire, eating diet-loaf and shortbread.

Jamie said to Effie, This must have been an awfu' surprise for you, today.'

Effie delicately and nervously put down her tea-cup. ‘It was.'

Fiona Watson reached out and touched her daughter's wrist. ‘It was a risk, Effie, letting you into my confidence. But it was so important to me, to tell you how I felt. I admire your father, and I respect him; and I can never be sorry that I married him, for you and Robert and Dougal were the result of that marriage, and I love you all. But I think you ought to know that a woman can often marry for reasons which seem sensible at twenty, and absurd at forty. People change. Your father has changed drastically since he first wooed me. He's become set in his interests, and perhaps more interested in his bank than he is in me. I don't blame him, altogether. You can't blame anybody for what they are. But he is no longer the man for me, if it's a friend and a companion I'm looking for. I find those needs satisfied only by Jamie.'

Effie looked across at Jamie, at his clear-cut, half-shadowed face, and at the way the fire sparkled in his eyes. She could understand why her mother loved him. He was gentle in his manner, and caring; and yet he had a firmness about him which every woman needs in a man. Not the blustering inflexibility of her father, but a belief in important values, and a determination to stand up for them, no matter what.

‘What will you do?' Effie asked her mother.

‘Do?' asked her mother, glancing up at Jamie.

‘I mean, will you carry on like this, meeting Mr McFarlane when you go out walking, or what?'

Fiona Watson stirred her tea, unnecessarily. ‘Your father will not allow a divorce, if that's what you mean.'

Effie, her voice trembling, said, ‘Would you do it, though, if you could? Divorce him, I mean?'

Fiona Watson turned towards her daughter, and the flickering flames from the hearth revealed that there were tears in her eyes. ‘I don't know, my dearie. It's awful hard to admit that your whole life has been a mistake. In fact, I think that's the hardest part of all.'

The afternoon darkened at last into night. The fire in the grate died down, until it was nothing but a heap of glowing ashes. At six o'clock, Fiona and Effie put on their capes, and Jamie McFarlane led them down the narrow stairs of the house to the street; and they walked up as far as the Dean Bridge. Beneath them, and off to their left, the Water of Leith gurgled and chuckled over its stones. Above them, for the first time in two weeks, the stars twinkled.

Along the broad snow-covered length of Queensferry Street came Russell, with the Watson family brougham. He reined in the horses, and waited patiently while Fiona and Effie said goodbye to Jamie, under the gaslight. Then he opened the door for them, and helped them to make themselves comfortable, and spread their knees with the thick plaid blanket.

‘Thank you, Russell,' said Fiona Watson, as he closed the brougham's door.

‘Thank you, ma'am,' replied Russell, courteously, and climbed back up to his seat.

Thomas Watson had spent the afternoon reading
Pilgrim's Progress
. He hated the book. He had no idea why he read it. But it seemed a suitably martyred thing to do after his family had been so quarrelsome. They would each of them knock timorously at his library door. Robert, and then Dougal, and
then Fiona, and ask his forgiveness in a nervous and roundabout manner; and, in the end, although he wouldn't really forgive them, for who could forgive anybody for being irritating? he would attempt to be good-humoured, and join them for high tea. They would eat stoved potatoes and cock-a-leekie with prunes, and put up a good show of being a close and respectable family.

He knew the family was split, the same way a pibble was split, one of those heavy rounded Highland sea-stones which was cleaved in half by the heat of a fire.

He knew he could rely on Robert; but never on Dougal. He was also quite aware of the part that Effie played in reconciling the family's differences. She was a girl as clever as he was; and she had inherited his unerring judgement of character. If anyone had helped to keep his family outwardly intact, it was she. But the split between himself and Fiona, his wife, was deep and complete. Somehow, at some moment in their lives, they had lost touch with each other. She had disappeared within herself into some burrow which he could never penetrate; and so he, for his part, had devoted himself increasingly to the habitual making of money, and to a widow who lived on the corner of Dundas Street and Eyre Place, called Mrs Wallace.

Mrs Wallace was plump and quiet; and often he would visit her for two or three hours, and exchange scarcely more than five words with her. He relished the silence, and Mrs Wallace's wobbling white thighs. Sometimes she would call him her ‘urchin', which meant hedge-hog, and then serve him blaeberry jelly, and baps.

The making of money, to Thomas Watson, was always urgent. No matter how healthy the Bank's assets appeared to be, he always felt it necessary to build up more. Watson's Bank had stockpiled more gold and more foreign currency than any other bank in Scotland.

His banking policies, although he never would have admitted it to anyone were principally founded on fear. His father, John Watson, had been one of the last debtors to be chased down Canongate by bailiffs, seeking the sanctuary of Holyrood Abbey. The sanctuary line was still there today – marked by a series of ‘S's' let into the pavement – although the right of pauper's sanctuary had been abolished in 1880. Every time Thomas Watson walked
over that line however, he felt as if history and poortith were breathing coldly down his collar.

He could remember his father bringing home a brace of heathcock for supper one evening; and before his mother had even had time to pluck them the butcher's two burly boys were banging at the door of their rooms and demanding to be paid for them. His father had been obliged to return them; and then face his hungry family ashamed and empty-handed. Thomas Watson had sworn to himself that he would never have to bow his head to
his
family that way.

He read, in
Pilgrim's Progress
, Mr By-End's words: They are for religion when in rags and contempt, but I am for him when he walks in his golden slippers in the sunshine, and with applause.'

There was a knock. He thought: Robert, and, sure enough, it was Robert. Robert said, ‘May I come in?'

‘If you wish.'

Robert came across the library, and stood beside the oak table where the astrological globe rested. ‘Capricorn,' he said, with an awkward smile, touching the design of the goat.

‘Did you want something?' asked Thomas Watson, turning the unread page of his book.

Robert glanced uneasily sideways. ‘As a matter of fact, I came to say that we're sorry.'

‘We're
sorry?
Have you taken to using the royal “we”?'

‘I mean, Dougal and I.'

‘Has Dougal no legs, that he cannot come in here and tender his apologies in person?'

‘Father –'

‘Don't “father” me, Robert. You came on your own to say you were sorry, and I'll take it as such. But you can no make excuses for your brother.'

Robert said, ‘I'm not trying to make excuses for him. In fact, I think it's time we had a serious talk about what he's doing at the bank.'

Thomas Watson closed his book, looked down at its gold inlaid cover, and then put it down on the reading-table next to him. ‘What do you suggest I do? Cut him off without a plack?'

‘I didn't mean that, father,' said Robert. ‘But he has too much influence in the bank, without the experience. He can authorise loans to all kinds of odd rief-randies without even to have consult me. Granted, the loans are small; and,
granted, one or two of them have already brought us good dividends in return. But if he's to make his way upwards in the bank, he's going to have to learn to conduct himself with a greater sense of responsibility. Otherwise, one day, we'll find that we've lent out two or three millions to some fellow who wants to do something truly daftit, like building a flying-machine.'