“I appreciated your letters,” he said as they walked through the station. “Your regular updates. Always cheered up my breakfast. Thank you for taking the time.”
“It was the least I could do,” she said. “And how is Mrs. Arrol?”
Only the tiniest twitch in his eye suggested how difficult he found the question to answer. It was rumored, rather unkindly, that Arrol’s wife was “soft in the brain.” She rarely went out and was always said to be suffering from some ailment or other. He was building a house in Ayr for her with a vast conservatory and a view of the Firth of Clyde.
“Better,” he replied. “Thank you for asking.”
As she climbed into his carriage, he stood on the curb holding the umbrella high above her head to shelter her from the rain.
“What about you?” she called out. “How will you get home?”
“I’ll walk,” he said. “I like a stroll in the evening.”
“But the rain?” she began.
“I’m made of stronger stuff than rain,” he replied. “I promise you I won’t rust. And Mrs. Wallace, I’m sure we’ll see each other again soon, but in the meantime if I can do anything for you, just ask.”
And with a bang of his hand on the roof, he signaled for the driver to move off.
Apart from the pile of unopened mail that lay on the floor, her apartment was exactly as it had been when she had left it. The main door still creaked and needed oil, her old straw hat still hung on the hat stand in the hallway, the bed was made up without a crease in the counterpane. And yet, everything felt cold to the touch, every surface was covered in a layer of dust. The window in the kitchen had been left open a crack and it had let in six months of damp and dirty Glasgow air. Outside, a train let off a low exclamation as it hurtled south toward Crossmyloof. She could hear the murmur of conversation in the flat below, the short judder of a man’s laugh and the higher pitch of a woman’s voice.
She lit the lamp and walked through the rooms, seeing them now as a stranger might. The ceilings were high but the rooms meanly proportioned. The furniture, all chosen for a different house on a larger scale, seemed crammed into the space, leaving little room to move around. In the pantry, the cupboards were filled with stacks of bone-china plates and soup tureens, the drawers with boxes of cutlery and fish slices, and in her bedroom, the linen press was stacked with Indian cotton sheets and embroidered tablecloths for dinner parties and family parties and christenings that never happened. She saw now it was a repository for expectations that had been scaled down, a museum to a life not lived.
The morning they had left Paris the sky had been a fathomless blue, the air so clear and clement that everything they were about to leave behind—the streets, the people, the smell of roasted coffee and chestnuts—seemed sharper, the colors deeper and more saturated, the verticals and perpendiculars of the city engraved rather than drawn. And in the distance, so faint that it might have been imagined rather than heard, the regular rhythm of hammer on iron.
Cait had been adamant that they arrive at Gare du Nord at least an hour before departure. As she hurried Alice and Jamie into the station and organized their luggage, she had rushed and fussed and scolded and tipped. Reservations, connecting trains, newspapers and refreshments, porters, ticket officers, conductors, and fellow passengers were all she would let herself think about. On their trip around Europe, she had been the one who had smoothed the way, persuading museum attendants to let them in at closing time, reserving the best seats in theaters or trains; organizing what Jamie labeled her “little miracles.”
That morning, however, if she had paused for just one moment, if she had let herself dwell on the fact that they were leaving Paris, France, the Continent, that they were going back to Scotland, she knew that her eyes would begin to fill and the pea-sized lump in her throat would swell. Cait wasn’t friendless; she wasn’t alone. Although her parents had passed away, there was her sister and her young family to visit. Anne was married to Saul’s younger sibling, George Wallace. He was like Saul and yet he was very different; he had none of his elder brother’s restless energy. But more significant, he didn’t have Saul’s temper. For that Cait was glad.
She had bought the family small gifts, tiny glass animals from Rome and wooden string puppets from Germany. And yet she couldn’t face them right now, she couldn’t face their sympathy and concern, no matter how well-meaning; she couldn’t face that moment when she would find herself standing outside their house, just before she was about to ring the bell, when she knew she would soon be bathed in the warmth of the light and the sound of the children’s laughter from inside. It was a lacking, a wanting; she would rather be alone than feel bereft.
Here, in her cold drawing room with its view over the railway line, she sat in her traveling cloak and watched the flickers from the spluttering lamp dance across the floorboards. How could she stay here? How could she possibly leave? She closed her eyes and let her head sink to her knees.
Cait dreamed of the spike of Eiffel’s tower, blackened iron that would puncture the clouds above. She dreamed of a man behind a camera watching her through a tiny lens. She dreamed that Émile Nouguier was asking her a question but she had no idea what he was saying. She woke with a start with a crick in her neck and pins and needles in her arm. The damask of the divan had left its pattern on her skin. The clock on the mantel read half past six. It was still dark. Outside, however, the road was already busy with coal merchants and milk carts and bakers’ vans trundling over the railway line to Strathbungo.
She stood up and stretched, then went through to the bathroom and washed her face. She would make a list; she would organize her day. There were clothes to be sent to the laundry and groceries to order, letters to answer and financial affairs to attend to. And then, once she had recovered from the journey, she would go and see the church minister and offer her services as before. She had enough money now to keep her going, if she was frugal, for a couple of years at least. And then what? Well, she would just have to cross that bridge when she came to it, as her grandmother used to say. There would be plenty to occupy her for the time being; visiting the sick, decorating the church for holy days, and raising money for orphans in Africa. It was what widows of a certain class did. They gave a helping hand; their time was consumed with projects of a charitable nature often in distant lands. She saw now it was not entirely selfless—it kept their minds from dwelling on the aching emptiness of their daily lives.
Cait took off her traveling clothes, laid them on the bed, and opened the wardrobe. Here were the clothes she had left behind, the gray walking dresses and mourning gowns in black and lilac. They had hung untouched for months, the ghost of her arm inside the sleeves and the faint scent of her perfume along the neckline. She touched the crepe, the bombazine, the Melrose, and the Henrietta, the fabric stiff beneath her fingertips. A moth fluttered out from between the drapes and folds and she watched it flap around blindly in the pale morning light.
A week later, she stood in the dressmaker’s with a couple of swatches of cloth in her hand.
“In this red?” the dressmaker said.
“And one in the blue paisley,” Cait confirmed.
“With the smaller bustle?”
“That’s right. In Paris everyone is wearing them smaller now.”
“I’ll get to them right away,” the dressmaker said.
There was a note of doubt in her voice, however, that Cait felt obliged to address.
“I’m not romantically involved with a Frenchman, if that’s what you’re thinking. But it does you a world of good—travel, I mean. Even a day out to Troon is a tonic. Do you know Troon?”
“No,” the dressmaker said.
Cait ran her fingers along the bales of fabric, the satins and velvets, the voiles and cottons in every color from the palest mustard to the darkest purple. The dressmaker, a thin woman in her fifties who wore lavender-colored crepe, had been recommended by Alice.
“Should be ready in a fortnig
ht,” she said with a closed smile once she had tallied up the price. “Good day, Mrs. Wallace.”
As Cait walked along Buchanan Street toward the train station, she looked up. The sun was setting and the sky had turned a deep rose. The sandstone of the tenement blocks on the street across the road glowed crimson. It was the first day it hadn’t rained since she had returned.
As she turned onto Gordon Street, she was suddenly filled with doubt. Earlier that week she had deposited William Arrol’s check in the bank. In one day, however, she had spent far more than she intended. New dresses made out of decent cloth were expensive, especially if they were made by Alice Arrol’s dressmaker. What had she done? How could she have been so extravagant? Why on earth had she spent so much money? What was the point when no one was looking, when there was no one to notice what she wore? It was only the prospect of the dressmaker’s scorn that prevented her from turning around, going back, and canceling her order.
A continuous stream of traffic, horses and carts, trams and hansom cabs, headed down Jamaica Street in the direction of the river. The station entrance was on the other side of the road. As she waited for a gap, she could smell the smoke and steam of the locomotives inside the station; she could hear the loudspeaker calling out the names of the stations: Whifflet, Ardrossan Harbour, and Cathcart Circle. The traffic was relentless; she would miss her train at this rate. Eventually the traffic thinned a little and she started to cross. And then a voice called out from behind.
“Mrs. Wallace! Hold on a minute!”
It was Jamie Arrol. Beside him was an elderly man she didn’t recognize.
“I knew it was you,” Jamie said. “Only a lady with real class would step with such confidence out into the middle of a busy Glasgow thoroughfare.”
“I’m not sure if that is a compliment or not,” she said with a smile. “How have you been keeping?”
“Well, thank you. Missed me?”
“I’ve missed you and Miss Arrol, yes.”
“I thought you’d be glad to be shot of us both.” He laughed.
“Not at all.”
“The French call ladies of Mrs. Wallace’s caliber formidable,” Jamie explained to his companion.
“I see,” he replied. “It does indeed sound like a compliment, although I am not familiar with the French language.”
In response, Jamie thumped the old man on the back as if he had cracked a joke.
“Anyways. My sister mentioned that you had an appointment with her dressmaker this afternoon,” Jamie resumed. “I thought I might bump into you. And here you are! It is my great pleasure to introduce a dear friend. This is Mr. Sinclair.”
“Delighted to make your acquaintance,” said Mr. Sinclair, holding out his hand. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”
“Really,” she said as she shook his hand and looked with some alarm at Jamie.
“Our adventures in the Continent are the talk of the town,” he bluffed. “And you, my dear Mrs. Wallace, have a starring role.”
A crowded omnibus was approaching, the clatter of its wheels on the cobbles so loud that for a moment they couldn’t talk.
“Don’t worry,” Jamie clarified once it had passed. “You always come out well.”
Mr. Sinclair smiled and the two points of his ample white mustache wiggled ever so slightly. Apart from the mustache, he was completely bald, with just a wisp of hair flying loose behind his left ear.
“I’d say rather more than well,” he added.
He shifted his weight from one leg to the other and smiled down at her. But he was so tall, and his eyes so magnified behind the glass of his wire-rimmed spectacles, that she could not meet his gaze.
“How is life at the ironworks?” she asked Jamie.
“Can’t complain,” he replied. “But I won’t be there for long, I hope. I have plans, as you know.”
He gave her the hint of a smile. She had learned to be wary of Jamie’s plans. After being discussed at length, after books had been bought and expert opinions sought, they were always, without exception, unceremoniously dropped. Most of Jamie’s passions didn’t last long, a couple of weeks at the most. It was the same with women. Jamie could turn from smitten to totally uninterested in the course of a couple of hours. The women whom he had courted and then cast aside so rapidly were sometimes heartbroken but often angry. The lucky ones retained some form of compensation, jewelry or scent that he had bought them in a fit of amorous generosity. The rest would wonder what they had done or said or worn to make him cool so quickly. It was not Cait’s place to reassure them that it was unlikely to have been their fault. It was not her place to say anything. But she felt for them, for those poor young women who would learn to harden themselves against men, against hurt, against risk, and whose lives would be poorer because of it.
“What kind of plans?” she asked tentatively.
“Right now I’m not at liberty to say,” he replied. “But I’m sure you can guess.”
The conversation lulled. Neither man, however, seemed in any rush to go. She heard a whistle and visualized her train letting off a blast of steam on the platform. She would endeavor to bring the exchange to a close as quickly as possible.
“Are you in the city on business, Mr. Sinclair?” she asked. “Or pleasure?”
His right hand gravitated immediately to his left wrist. With a glance, she noticed that he was wearing a mourning bracelet—no, not one but two, each one woven out of human hair, one dark and one fair.
“I had an appointment with a solicitor,” he said. “My dear wife passed on a few months ago and there were affairs to sort out.”
“I’m so sorry. May I offer my condolences?”
“Many thanks,” he said. “It was expected.”
This was a conversation that clearly could not be rushed. Mr. Sinclair took off his spectacles and polished them with his pocket handkerchief. And then he gave a brief summation of his life and losses so far.
“They’re together at last,” he said with a small smile. “In God’s arms.”
“Mr. Sinclair is an old family friend,” Jamie explained after a respectful pause. “I was at school with his nephew. What line are you in again?”
“Ironmongery,” he replied as he replaced his spectacles.
“Gourock, isn’t it?” Jamie asked.
“Greenock,” he corrected. “The shop is on Market Street. We live on the Esplanade. You know the Esplanade, Mrs. Wallace?”
“I’m afraid not, Mr. Sinclair,” she replied.
“By we, I mean my sister, Miss Amelia Sinclair, and I,” he felt compelled to explain. “The house is now rather too big for the two of us, but it’s hard to give up such wonderful vistas across the River Clyde.”
Once again, they stood in silence and Cait contemplated the grim scenario of a dead wife and child, a spinster sister, and a beautiful view.
“Well, this has been an unexpected pleasure,” she said once the interlude had stretched to an acceptable length. “I’m afraid I have a train to catch.”
Jamie’s elbow gave his friend a sharp, short jab in the side. Mr. Sinclair’s face suddenly reddened.
“Church,” he bellowed.
Cait stared at him. His mustache had started to quiver.
“I was wondering,” he went on, “if you’d do me the pleasure, Mrs. Wallace, the pleasure of allowing me to accompany you to church?”
He rubbed his nose. His hands, she noticed, were shaking too. Jamie was watching her expectantly.
“Well, I . . .” she began. “I’m flattered, but . . .”
“Go on,” said Jamie. “I’ve been singing your praises to my dear friend here all afternoon. I’ve been telling him about your charm, your beauty, your sophistication. And then, what serendipity, here you are!”
A young man, just passing, overheard and looked over at her appraisingly. This time it was Cait’s face that flushed.
“Would you?” Mr. Sinclair asked hesitantly.
Maybe it was this softness, the
crack in his voice and the glaze in his eye, that made her change her mind. But in truth, how could she refuse and not appear rude?
“Very well.” She nodded.
Mr. Sinclair sighed, but then he looked slightly puzzled.
“When I’m in Glasgow I usually attend St. Andrews in the Square,” he said. “Would that be acceptable? And then we could go for a stroll through the Green. If the rain holds off.”
She momentarily stiffened. She had married Saul in that church. But how could he have known?
“That would be fine.”
“Shall I send a carriage?”
“No. I’ll meet you outside. At quarter to eleven.”
“Splendid,” he replied.
Jamaica Street was suddenly empty, no buses or hansom cabs, apart from a solitary rag-and-bone man and his cart. After she had said goodbye, she ducked behind it, ran up the steps, and caught the train with only seconds to spare. All the way back to Pollokshields West, however, she stared out at the factories and tenements, their windows bright rectangles of light, and wondered what on earth she had agreed to.
_________
“I think about him,” she told her sister.
Anne blinked. Her mind was on the baby who lay in her lap and who had finally fallen asleep after an hour of grizzling, the baby who was almost impossible to lift and place in the crib without waking up.
“The thing is,” Cait went on, “I don’t even know him. I only met him twice. And there is no possibility . . .”
Cait stopped. For a moment they were both silent. What else was there to say on the matter? After raising her finger to her lips, Anne rose as smoothly as she could and placed the baby, her fourth, in the cot. He woke, cried a little, then settled again.
To Capture What We Cannot Keep Page 7
