Effie nodded, and picked up her purse. Robert said, in surprise, ‘You’re not going? I want you to arrange a conference with Manchester Steel.’
‘I’m going,’ said Effie.
‘Effie, you can’t go! There’s nobody else who can do it. Well, not like you.’
‘I’m going.’
‘Effie–’
Effie stood up, brushed her skirt straight, and opened the door of the office. Outside, there was the hurrying of feet and the jingling of telephone bells. A large bank in the middle of a day’s chaos. She turned to Robert, and said, ‘I cannot insult you, Robert. I cannot speak the words. But I promise you now, just as solemnly as I made my promise to Karl von Ahlbeck, that one day I will see you dead, and when you are dead I will laugh, and I will defile your grave in the filthiest way I can think of. I promise –’ and now her voice dropped to an unsteady whisper, ‘–I swear it.’
CHAPTER TWO
Effie wrote,
‘My dearest Karl,
You will have heard by now that Watson’s Bank is unable to support you in the matter of the Turkish loan. Although I have no right to expect you to believe me, I wish to tell you that I was quite innocent of any deceit, and that I had no reason to doubt that I could honour the promises I made to you.
A time may come one day when I can tell you in person, face-to-face, how I feel about what has happened. I am so overwhelmed now with shame and sadness that I can hardly write you this letter. If you think that there may be a possibility of us meeting again, in time, then I want you to know that I shall come to you wherever you are.
My dearest Karl, I love you. You have made me a woman. You have helped me to understand myself and my destiny and how I can achieve my fulfilment. I pray to God that you are not angry with me. I love you. Karl, please listen to me, I love you.
Your,
Effie.’
The letter was posted from Edinburgh’s main post office, by North Bridge, on 12 November 1911. There was never any reply.
CHAPTER THREE
Effie read in The Scotsman on Tuesday, 13 February 1912, that Baeklanders Trust, the New York bank, had collapsed. According to the paper’s New York correspondent the crash was directly attributable to the bank’s rash speculation in Latin America and ‘huge, undisclosed losses in the European lending market.’ Robert, who was kept in touch day and night with the latest American business news directly from London, and had probably known about Baeklanders the evening before, came down to breakfast that morning in a rare good humour, and ate three boiled eggs, a large helping of steamed haddock, and a mound of skirlie.
After Robert had gone off to the bank, Effie went into the morning-room, where Prudence was sitting by the fire, drinking tea and reading. Prudence hardly ever came to the breakfast table these days, and rarely appeared at dinner. She had lost over half a stone in weight, and was looking more pale and bony than Effie could ever remember. She always shrugged off any remarks about her health, though, saying that she was perfectly well, and that nobody should worry. Alisdair was upstairs, in the schoolroom, with his mathematics tutor.
Effie said, ‘Dougal’s bank has collapsed. I read it in the paper this morning.’
Prudence looked up. Full-face, she appeared even thinner and sicker than she did in profile. There were puffy purple stains under her eyes, and her mouth was pursed like the mouth of someone who has recently lost their teeth.
‘Dougal?’ she asked.
‘Yes. I don’t know what’s going to happen to him.’
Prudence laid down her book. She was trying to read The Heart of Mid-Lothian, because Robert had complained that she didn’t have sufficient understanding of Scottish history and culture. ‘Why do you think we erected a monument two hundred feet high to a writer?’ he had harangued her. ‘Name me one other nation which celebrates its literary heroes so greatly.’
The coal-fire popped, and shifted, and there was something about the noise it made that reminded Effie of the Schloss von Ahlbeck. Prudence said, ‘I can’t remember what Dougal looks like.’
‘Of course you can. He looks like Alisdair.’
‘Alisdair?’ frowned Prudence. ‘No, Alidair looks like his father.’
Effie almost laughed in disbelief. ‘Prudence, Dougal is Alisdair’s father.’
‘What?’ said Prudence. She stared at Effie as if Effie had uttered the most appalling heresy.
‘I said –’
‘What?’ repeated Prudence. ‘How can he look like Dougal? What are you talking about? Robert is Alisdair’s father. Robert – is – Alisdair’s –’
Effie knelt down beside Prudence and took hold of her upraised wrists. ‘Prudence,’ she said. ‘Prudence, please.’
Prudence stared at her. ‘I feel very ill,’ she said, in a montonous voice. ‘I have terrible pain, Effie. I think I’m going to die. I have such pain that I can’t describe it to you. I’m dying, Effie. I know that I’m dying. Effie, promise that you’ll look after William Albert for me. Please, Effie, promise me that you’ll look after William Albert.’
Effie held Prudence very close, as warmly as she could, but felt at the same time with horror, the skeletal coat-hangers of Prudence’s shoulders and ribs. ‘Oh, Prudence,’ she whispered in her ear. ‘Oh, Prudence, what have we done to you?’
That afternoon, at two, Dr Henderson came. Alisdair, in his tweed knickerbockers and his Highland jacket, stood silent as a mouse by the door while Dr Henderson took his mother’s pulse, and peered into her eyes, and then meticulously put away his wooden tongue-depressors and his stethoscope, and closed his bag, and cleared his throat.
‘Well,’ said Dr Henderson, to Robert, and then, ‘well,’ to Effie. ‘I’d best have a word with you in another room, if you don’t mind.’
‘Of course,’ said Robert, with a smile which betrayed, quite plainly, who was in charge. Dr Henderson was quite aware of the circumstances under which his predecessor, Dr Campbell, had suddenly retired to St Cyrus, and was now fishing and reading and trying to learn to play the pibroch, to the considerable distress of his older sister, who had an ear-trumpet, and was not fond of droning noises. ‘They revairberate,’ she complained. ‘I canna bear revairberation.’
Effie said, in a clear voice, ‘Don’t you think, Dr Henderson, that whatever has to be said about Mrs Watson’s health ought to be said in front of Mrs Watson herself? She has more right to know than anybody else who’s present.’
Dr Henderson, who was desperately conscious of his premature baldness, said, ‘Well, Miss Watson, there are times …’
‘Times? What times? Is there something seriously wrong?’
Dr Henderson looked uneasily at Prudence. ‘I’d rather …’
‘I don’t care what you’d rather,’ snapped Effie. ‘Mrs Watson is your patient, and whatever is wrong, she has a right to hear about it.’
‘Effie,’ said Robert. ‘Don’t interfere. If Dr Henderson wants to –’
‘What Dr Henderson wants and what Dr Henderson is paid to do are two entirely separate things,’ said Effie. ‘Haven’t you said that often enough yourself, Robert? “What the Bank of Scotland wants and what the Bank of Scotland is paid to do are two entirely separate things.”’
There was a complex silence, a cat’s-cradle of embarrassment and indecision. Then Robert said, ‘Very well. Let my wife hear what you have to say as well as everybody else.’
Dr Henderson put down his bag with an awkward knees’ bend to the floor. He cleared his throat, and glanced again at Prudence, as if he would much rather that she were halfway to Crewe on the afternoon train, or witless, or dead already.
He said, in a voice which was obviously pitched much higher than he’d meant to, ‘She’s –’ Then, lower, ‘She’s suffering from what appears to be a tumour. It’s a very considerable tumour, of the stomach. I’m afraid –’ and this was lower still, I’m afraid she’s going to – well, I regret –’
Robert, in a wooden tone, said, ‘My wife is going to die?’
>
Prudence stared at Effie, her eyes glistening in silent appeal. Effie, you’re all I have, Effie, make him tell me the truth. Make him say that he’s made a mistake. Effie, what am I going to do with Alisdair? If I die, who’s going to look after my boy?
Effie felt as if her insides had been wrenched out. God, she thought I always do this. I’m always so frank and forthright. I always speak my mind. And I always end up hurting the people I love the most. Why can’t I keep my pompous opinions to myself? Why can’t I behave the way other women behave, gentle and submissive, sweeping in my long skirts around the house with a fixed smile of obedience and wifely trust? Now I’ve skewered Prudence on the sharp point of her own sickness, and nothing I say can relieve her from the knowledge that she is going to die.
Dr Henderson said, in an almost unintelligible rush, ‘Your wife will probably start to sink within three months.’
‘Sink?’ demanded Robert, not understanding what the doctor meant.
‘There are treatments. We cannot totally abandon hope. There is Wax’s Sulfuretted Salt treatment, and of course we can control the lady’s diet in such a way that the tumour turns in upon itself and devours itself, as it were. This, I’m afraid, will call for some pain. But, we do have laudanum and morphine. And, well, there is always prayer.’
There was silence again. White-faced in her bed, Prudence began to weep. The sound she made was no louder than a kitten trapped in a linen-chest. Alisdair stayed by the doorway, staring at his mother in bewilderment and anguish. Effie said to Robert, ‘Leave me alone with Prudence. Please. And send Alisdair down to Mrs McNab.’
Robert gave her a grimace of acceptance, and said to Alisdair, ‘Run along now, boy. Your mother’s not well.’ Then he laid a hand on Dr Henderson’s shoulder, and said, ‘I expect you’d care for a dram, Dr Henderson. Gome away downstairs.’
Not once did Robert even look at Prudence; and Effie was reminded of the kind of boy that he had once been. If your hoop falls into the pond, leave it, let it float away, buy another one. If your clockwork soldier breaks, let it lie in the toy-cupboard gathering dust. Prudence had broken and now she, too, was to be discarded. She would remain in this room, unloved, ignored, until she died.
Effie drew a chair up to the side of the bed and took Prudence’s hand. She said, softly, ‘You’ll be all right. You’ll see. Dr Henderson was at Barts, in London. He’ll cure you quick enough.’
Prudence looked back at her with tear-blotted eyes. ‘You heard what he said, Effie. Three months to live.’
‘But the treatments!’
‘The treatments!’ said Prudence, scornfully. ‘Do you really believe they work? Well, do you? Wax’s Sulfuretted Salts! It’s all nonsense. And all this talk of the tumour devouring itself. Either he’s lying to make me feel better, or he’s a witchdoctor.’
‘There’s morphine.’
‘Yes,’ said Prudence, more soberly. There’s certainly morphine. A little something to ease the pain while I slowly waste away to nothing. I have three months, Effie, that’s all. Twelve weeks of increasing agony. All I can hope for is that you’ll decide to stay here and look after me.’
Effie touched Prudence’s cheek. ‘Prudence, you know that I will.’
‘And Alisdair, you’ll look after him?’
‘I promise.’
Prudence coughed two or three times, and then rested back on her pillow. ‘I had a terrible feeling that this would happen. Don’t ask me why. I suppose you could call it an omen. But, somehow, I always knew that I would never see Alisdair grow up. I always believed that he would be an orphan.’
‘Prudence,’ said Effie, ‘you’re not going to die. We’re going to do everything we can to make you well again.’
Prudence shook her head. ‘I suppose you’re feeling guilty about insisting that Dr Henderson told me what was wrong with me in front of my face. Well, don’t feel guilty, my love, because at least I know now why I’m suffering, and at least I know now how many months I’ve got left. I can’t tell you how terrible it was to wake up in the middle of the night with that pain in my stomach, and feel that the whole world was coming to an end.’
Effie squeezed Prudence’s hand tight, and kissed her. ‘How can you ever forgive us?’ she asked.
‘You don’t really want forgiveness, do you?’
Effie said, ‘I want you to know that I love you like a sister. I want you to know that I did my best to protect you.’
Prudence sipped some water from the King Edward VII Coronation mug beside her bed. Then she took Effie’s hand again, and said, ‘If you’re going to survive, Effie, you’re going to have to find much more strength. Robert is far more powerful than you realise. You always think of him as your older brother, a little bit irascible, a little bit hard, but friendly and brotherly and good. Well, I can tell you from experience that he isn’t good and he isn’t brotherly, and he doesn’t have any friends at all. He’s the most selfish, weak, bitter, brutal man I’ve ever come across. If I don’t do exactly what he tells me, he hits me. He hit me two nights ago, when I was so sick that I could hardly get out of bed. He hit me when we went to the Highland Games at Braemar. He actually took me into the marquee that was reserved for special guests, and punched me in the ribs, because he caught me talking to Lord Lochalsh. I don’t know what drives him, Effie. All he seems to care about is money, and influence; although he cares for Alisdair deeply. I know that. He spends all his spare time with Alisdair, teaching him about history, and ships, and all the Scottish battles. He bought Alisdair a sled when you were away in Germany, and spent a whole afternoon on the slopes of Princes Street Gardens, teaching him how to use it.’
Effie said, ‘I was going to leave Edinburgh, in a week or two.’
‘I guessed that,’ said Prudence. ‘I didn’t want to interfere. But now it seems that I have interfered, because of my weakness. Well, because of what’s wrong with me. I’m sorry.’
‘It’s not your fault,’ said Effie. ‘I’ll stay with you, Prudence, for as long as you need me. You know that.’
Prudence raised Effie’s hand to her lips, and kissed it. ‘I love you, Effie. I don’t know what I would have done without you.’
‘Just rest yourself,’ said Effie. ‘I’ll go and talk to the doctor now, and see what we can do to comfort your pain. And remember, too, that you mustn’t give up hope. A tumour in your stomach isn’t the end of the world. If medicine doesn’t heal it up, we’ll talk to Mr McLeish, and he’s one of the best consultants in Edinburgh. He took all the veins out of father’s legs, and eased his suffering no end.’
Prudence lay back on her pillow. Somewhere in the house, very distantly, someone had opened a musical-box, and it was playing Eine Kleine Nachtmusik. Prudence, in a quiet quavery voice, began to sing, ‘La-la-la, la-la-la, la-la la-la la la-la …’
Effie sat and watched her, her mind tumbling over with thoughts of Germany, with fragments of memory so sweet and so impossible that they brought her close to crying. Werd ich zum Augenblicke sagen, verweile doch; du bist so schön.
If I could only say to that moment, wait! Wait! You are so beautiful.
CHAPTER FOUR
Throughout the spring of 1912, Prudence grew thinner and yellower, almost amber, as if she were suntanned, until in April, when the skies above Edinburgh were clear and bright, she lost her sight through malnutrition, and the bone of her left elbow broke through her papery, undernourished skin. The tumour that filled her stomach made it impossible for her to eat, and it was as much as she could do to drink water without being sick. Effie sat by her bedside night after night, watching her; but now she scarcely stirred, blind and mostly comatose, and it was plain that she was close to death.
On 16 April 1912, a Tuesday, Russell the chauffeur came into Prudence’s bedroom and whispered into Effie’s ear that the Titanic had been sunk by an ice-berg on her maiden voyage. The London papers were confident that all her passengers had been safely transferred to other vessels, but the ship herself was almost c
ertainly lost.
Prudence, a skull named Prudence, turned blindly on her pillow and whispered, ‘What is it? Effie, What is it?’
Effie said, ‘It’s nothing, my dearie. You mustn’t fash yourself.’
‘Tell me. It’s something important. Tell me.’
Effie hesitated for a moment, and then she said, ‘The Titanic has sunk.’
‘Sunk?’ asked Prudence.
Effie held her dry, withered hand. But it seemed as if the news of the Titanic was the omen for which Prudence had been waiting. In front of Effie’s eyes, as gently and as gracefully as a ship sliding beneath the waters of a still and silent ocean, she slid into death, and by five past one o’clock that day she breathed a last irregular breath, and then sighed with a peculiarly regretful sound, and died.
Effie stood up, and stared at Prudence for a long time, almost five minutes. Then she drew up the sheet, and covered her face, and said a small prayer for her. ‘Save me, O God; for the waters are come in unto my soul. I sink in deep mire, where there is no standing: I am come into deep waters, where the floods overflow me. I am weary of my crying: my throat is dried: mine eyes fail while I wait for my God.’
Downstairs, she telephoned Robert at the bank. She told the telephonist that it was urgent, and that it concerned his wife, but the telephonist said that Mr Robert was in a meeting with officers of the Admiralty, and was not to be disturbed under any circumstances whatsoever.
‘His wife is dead,’ said Effie, desperately.
‘I’m sorry, he said that he wasn’t to be disturbed, not for anything at all. Not even for news about his wife.’
‘She’s dead. Can you at least write that down on a piece of paper, and push it in front of his nose?’
‘I don’t know. I’ll try.’
Effie closed her eyes. ‘Yes, please. Try.’
She hung up the phone. She looked across the hallway, the same hallway in which Mrs McNab had dropped the Sunday gigot. The same hallway in which she had laughed and played hide-and-go-seek as a young girl. The light filtered in from the fanlight over the front door, and brightened the vase of daffodils by the ha’ Bible; but Effie felt that it was more than just the sun of another spring. It was time to move, time to go on. It was time to leave old beginnings behind, and make a new start. She had to leave Edinburgh, and seek her own way in life, the way that she had lost when Henry Baeklander had sailed off to the Mediterranean; the way that she had lost when Karl von Ahlbeck had been betrayed by Robert over the Turkish arrangement. Prudence was dead now. There was no other reason for her to stay in Edinburgh.
Lady of Fortune Page 34
