Robert tugged out his handkerchief and mopped sweat from the side of his bulging neck. ‘You do flatter me, Effie. I only wish I was half as influential. But you will come tomorrow night, won’t you? It’s in your interest, after all. A third share of the bank is yours, and that means that you’re worth approximately nine and a half million, and I do think it’s time you did something to prove that you’re worthy of such a fortune, if only to yourself.’
‘I’m quite sure of my own worth, thank you.’
‘Are you? Mother wasn’t. And you’re so like mother used to be.’
Effie stared at Robert in shock. He was smiling. Everything around them, the elm trees, the neatly-trimmed lawns, the grey buildings of St Vigeans, seemed to take on such stilted detail that Effie felt as if the entire surroundings had been deliberately created, like the set of a moving-picture, for no other purpose than to heighten the drama of this one crucial confrontation.
‘Very well. You can expect me there tomorrow night,’ Effie heard herself saying. ‘I’ll be staying at the Calder-Haigs tonight if you need to get in touch with me. But I’m going back to London on Thursday, I promise you.’
Joan Duff was approaching now, with that awkward stilted walk of a working-class girl in a dress that was far too expensive for her, and shoes on which she found it difficult to balance.
‘Robbie?’ she said.
‘Hold your whisht,’ snapped Robert. Then, with a last hard look at Effie, he turned around and stamped back along the gravel path, his fat buttocks shaking in his mourning trousers, his feet splayed, and beckoned peremptorily to Joan Duff to follow him as he passed her.
Joan Duff, through her black veil, gave Effie a quick frown of mystification.
In the car, gliding back to Edinburgh, Effie thought, Robert is quite wrong. I am not like my mother at all. My mother was a victim. Instead of standing up for the love she wanted, she allowed herself to be bullied and harangued and beaten down. When Jamie committed suicide, she behaved exactly as lovelorn women are supposed to behave. She acted out the role of a Ladies’ Home Journal heroine. She moped, and mourned, and went slightly mad. Mad enough to kill my father in histrionic revenge, and mad enough to let herself waste away the rest of her life in that nursing-home. But not mad enough to fly against social convention.
All right, she admitted to herself, I mourned too long over Karl. I still miss him. But I am going to be stronger now. I am going to make my own way, on my own terms, no matter what. I am not going to be overwhelmed by Robert, or any other man. I am going to do what I need to do, not what is expected of me. All those friends of mine who feel so sorry for me, the poor Rich Spinster, I’ll make them whistle a different tune. I don’t want to be like Celia Calder-Haig; I don’t want to be like Vera Cockburn; I don’t want to waste away the rest of my years on shopping and coffee mornings and silly soirées. I don’t want to be married for the sake of sex.
The following day, as she came down the front steps of the Calder-Haigs’ house in Charlotte Square, prettily dressed in a pale blue summer suit, she found John McDonald standing on the pavement, in a white blazer and a straw hat.
‘John!’ she exclaimed. ‘John McDonald!’
He took off his hat, and embraced her. ‘I heard you were staying here, and I thought I’d surprise you.’ He looked thinner, and taller than ever, and suntanned as dark as a leather purse. He had grown his moustache again, and it was slightly streaked with grey.
‘You look so dignified,’ smiled Effie, linking arms with him. ‘Are you still in the Black Watch?’
‘Aye. We got back from India two months ago, and since then we’ve been based at the castle. I’m on leave at the moment, but with things happening the way they are in Europe, I expect we’ll be mobilised soon.’
‘It’s so good to see you. What a happy surprise!’
‘It’s good to see you, too, Effie.’
‘Are you married?’ she asked him. ‘Every time I think of you, I always imagine that you’ve found yourself a wonderful sensible wife, and you’ve got scores of little McDonalds rushing about your ankles.’
‘You still think of me?’
‘Of course!’ said Effie. ‘Don’t you still think of me?’
He was silent for a moment, and then he squeezed her and gave her a wry little smile. ‘Supposing you let me take you out for luncheon?’ he asked.
‘I’d love it. Where shall we go?’
‘I don’t know. Do you have a car?’
‘My dear Mr McDonald, you’re talking to a lady who owns most of the Scottish motor-car industry, and a few English makers as well. Do you drive?’
‘They taught me in India. Rather badly, but I know the difference between forwards and backwards, and the Urdu for “get out of the road, you idle dogboy.”’
Effie laughed. ‘We’ve just had a new Star delivered. Would you like to try it?’
‘I’ll try anything once. We could drive to Newhaven. There’s a good little place to eat there. Best fish in Scotland.’
McVitie reluctantly manoeuvred Robert’s new 15.9 hp Star out of the stable. It was a long, open-topped tourer, in bright red, with a brass horn that curved around behind the spare-wheel on the running-board, and then rose up over the bonnet like an alpenhorn. John gave it a toot and a small terrier in the road barked back at him frantically.
It was a clear, hot day. They drove northwards towards Leith at a slow but not always dignified pace, since John had difficulty with the gearbox. But by the time they reached the shores of the Firth of Forth, they were trundling along quite happily, and John began to recite, at the top his voice, The Land of Regrets. Effie sat up close to him, and intoned, in the deepest voice she could manage, ‘O, Land of Regrets!’ at the end of every verse.
Then came the afternoon, when they were alone by the roadside overlooking the sea. The bright red Star was parked on the grass, and cabbage-white butterflies blew in and out of the spoked wheels. John had spread out a plaid blanket, and they lay back on it and stared up at the sky, and the clouds which lazily moved across the sun, and talked.
‘It’s very strange out in India,’ said John, smoking a cigarette. ‘I was invited to a reunion of the old boys of Edinburgh High School at Peliti’s Restaurant in Calcutta. If it hadn’t have been for the heat, and the Indian waiters, I could have been right back here in Scotland. We even had haggis. Haggis!’
Effie said, ‘Pass me your cigarette.’
John propped himself on his elbow and watched her as she smoked. He said, ‘I haven’t married, you know. I’ve had the chance, I’ll admit. But in the end I said no. You see, I’m in love with you, Effie, even after all these years, and I’ve always hoped that you’ll change your mind.’
Effie blew out smoke. The wind all around her made a whistling sound in the grass. Out at sea, the herring-boats were returning through a wash of foam and diamonds to Newhaven, where they would land their catch.
‘Wha’ll buy my caller-herrin’?
Oh, ye may call them vulgar farin’
Wives and mithers, sair despairin’
Ca’ them lives o’ men.’
John McDonald leaned over her, eclipsing the sun from her eyes, and kissed her. She kissed him back without hesitation, enjoying the feeling of his moustache against her upper lip, enjoying the taste of saliva and tobacco, enjoying most of all the freedom to kiss anyone she wanted to. I am not going to be overwhelmed by Robert, or any other man. I’m going to make my own way now.
He whispered, ‘Effie, I love you.’
Without a word, she raised the skirt of her suit, and her petticoats of silk and appliqué lace, and pulled down her white silk step-ins. He knelt beside her, his face a juggling act of questions and surprises; but he began to tug off his tie, and unbutton his shirt, and soon he was naked in the grass.
She looked at him, and knew that she didn’t love him, and never would. But the excitement of the moment was enough. The wind was blowing between her bare thighs, and chilling the moistness o
f her vulva. And John McDonald was naked, his face and knees and forearms as brown as if they had been dipped in chocolate, the rest of his body as white as a leg of lamb. He was soft, and so she reached out and took his penis in her hand, and squeezed and massaged it until it began to stiffen.
It was too awkward. It all took too long. John entered her clumsily, and panted and thrust and apologised, his face growing redder and redder, and in the end, after nearly a quarter of an hour of discomfort, he withdrew, his penis glistening but scarcely roused, and stumbled back into his trousers.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. That was obviously a ridiculous thing for me to do.’
‘No, it wasn’t,’ said Effie. ‘It just proved that some people are meant to be lovers and others are meant to be nothing more than friends.’
‘I’m ashamed.’
‘Don’t be. Please, John, don’t be. You can’t change human nature. It’s too much of a mystery for any of us.’
John let out a breath of despair, and made a very complicated business of tying up his tie. He said, ‘I wish you’d cover yourself up.’
Effie lay back on the grass, listening to it whisper, feeling the world turning beneath her. Her skirts and petticoats were still raised around her waist. She looked at John and said, ‘I wish you’d kiss me.’
He straightened his tie, and leaned forward. ‘Not here,’ she said, covering her mouth with her hand.
John looked stunned. But she took her hand away from her mouth again, and said, ‘Don’t be afraid of me. We’re friends.’
‘Friends?’ he asked, as if he had never heard the word before in his life; as if it were some peculiar Chinese expression which meant something so exotic and subtle that foreigners could never hope to grasp it.
He hesitated. He looked at her appealingly. But she still didn’t change her expression. The sun went behind a cloud and then came out again. He cleared his throat. Then, slowly, cautiously, he dipped his head between her bare white thighs.
She barely felt his kiss at all. There was none of the urgent probing to which Karl had awakened her. But it was a kiss, nonetheless, of lips against lips, a man’s moustache against a woman’s pubic hair; and it was an acknowledgement of many things, of their intimacy as friends, of Effie’s new-crowned queenliness, of the simple fact that true adoration and respect need to shy at nothing. They were not lovers. He would never see her naked again. And, in some respects, to kiss her vagina was a gesture of his failure and his subservience. But he would achieve glory in other ways. He was not lost. And when he saw her next, in 1920, briefly, too far away even to speak to; he a colonel and she so rich that people crowded close to her just to breathe in the aroma of money, he would be able to smile, and remember how daringly erotic they had been, and confidently hold the hand of his new wife-to-be.
With that one gesture, Effie had broken the spell of his hopeless love, and yet allowed him to keep not only his admiration for her; but his own dignity. She knew, as she reached out her hand to him so that he could help her up, that she was not at all like the mother she had just buried, and never would be, and the relief and satisfaction of that gave her even more strength for the evening.
Señor Marilia and Señor Lacaze, however, did not expect such strength in a woman, nor enjoy it in the least. For a woman to be strong was either an aberration of nature or a deliberate and slighting suggestion that they, as men, were weak. They arrived for dinner at Charlotte Square twenty minutes late (they had heard about British protocol), carrying armfuls of tasteless gifts (a gaudy bracelet for Effie of gold and rubies and emeralds, an oil-painting for Robert of the Serra do Roncador, in Central Brazil, by an artist who had a fatal weakness for bright purple). Señor Marilia, the President of the Banco de Recife, wore a black evening coat, a heavy black moustache, and a dress-kilt of the McDonalds, usually worn by women. His plump legs were bulging out of thick Shetland socks. Señor Lacaze, of the Brazilian Emerald Bureau, looked as if he had been already dressed for an afternoon’s hog-sticking when the call came to go to dinner. He was an unusually smooth man, with black brushed-back hair, perfect black eyelashes, and an almond-shaped head. He had a monocle which continually dropped from his eye, and swung on a green silk cord. He spoke hardly any English at all.
Over a dinner of crimped Scotch salmon and caper sauce, curried lobster, roast beef, turkey poult, and raspberry cream (Mrs McNab always believing that a dinner was only magnificent if it was weighty), Señor Marilia talked about the threat of war, and Brazil, and the movement of money. He had a way of adjusting his cutlery with each point he made. ‘If war should break out, Misdair Watson, and in banking circies we are all aware how closs that possibility is …’ (fish-fork moved upwards a quarter of an inch) ‘… there are bound to be difficulties and restrictions on the movement of money, and also some countries may sick the opportunity to welsh on their bonds …’ (butter-knife moved slightly to the right, and downwards) ‘… I am thinking in particular of Russia, and Turkey, and Griss.’
At the beginning of the meal, Effie had little idea what kind of business Robert was doing with these Brazilians. Sitting next to Señor Lacaze, who kept smiling at her with a kind of lunatic leer, and dropping his monocle, it was difficult for her to follow the undertones of Señor Marilia’s conversation. But halfway through the roast beef, she suddenly understood what it was that Robert was trying to arrange.
She said, sharply, ‘Robert?’
Robert had his mouth full of kale. ‘Effie?’ he asked her. Then, turning bulgy-cheeked to Señor Marilia, ‘You’ll have to excuse my sister. She’s the black ewe of the family.’
Señor Marilia laughed, and repeated the remark in Portuguese to Señor Lacaze, who dropped his monocle again, and banged the table to show his approval.
Effie said, in a gentle voice, ‘If you make one more remark like that, Robert, my dearie, I shall pick up that dish of potatoes and empty it over your big fat head.’
It took Señor Marilia a moment or two mentally to translate what Effie had said. When he realised what it was, he stared at Effie in utter surprise and then at Robert, and then said ‘Que ela disse?’
Robert pulled a face. ‘She is making a joke. You know what a joke is?’
Effie said, ‘I can’t make jokes about lending money to Germany. That’s what you’re doing with Señor Marilia, isn’t it? Sending money to Brazil, on the pretext of financing their emerald mining, and then sending it on the Germany, to finance the Kaiser’s military expansion.’
‘I thought you approved of Germany,’ Robert said caustically. He sipped his wine, and gave Señor Marilia a look over the rim of his glass which obviously meant, don’t worry about her, she’s only an hysterical female. Señor Marilia picked up his glass, raised it to Effie in a silent toast, and chuckled.
‘Effie, my love,’ said Robert, leaning towards her, ‘the tangled state of international politics is nothing to do with me and nothing to do with you. We are responsible only to the bank. If we can turn a modest profit by lending money to Germany, then we shall lend money to Germany. I might also remind you that we are lending considerably more money to the British government, for the development of turbine engines for the Navy.’
‘But what if we have to go to war with Germany?’ Effie demanded.
‘Couldn’t be better,’ said Robert. ‘Britain will want more money, and so will Germany. We‘ll make a killing on both sides.’
‘A killing? This afternoon I went out with John McDonald. If it comes to war, John will have to go and fight for his country. Do you think I could even half-heartedly condone a loan to Germany which might pay for the very bullet which stops his heart?’
Robert sighed, and rolled his eyes up. ‘You’re being melodramatic again, Effie. Most of the money we lend to Germany will go into chemical factories and animal foodstuffs.’
Effie stood up. She was wearing a beautiful lemon-yellow evening gown, with dropping frills around the sleeves and waistline, and a deeply-cut V-shaped front, which showed off
the curves of her small breasts. Her hair was swept up, and pinned with two curved combs of gold and yellow diamonds. Señor Lacaze put his monocle back into his eye, and looked up at her appreciatively.
‘Gentlemen,’ said Effie, ‘I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I, too, own a large share of Watson’s Bank. It’s not a majority share, but it’s enough – even before I receive the extra assets which my mother has passed on to me in her will – to veto this arrangement. Watson’s Bank will lend no money to the Second Reich, however it is done. That is my final word. I hope you enjoy your dinner.’
She was about to turn to leave the table, when Señor Marilia shouted angrily at Robert, ‘What does this mean? Is this one more of your sister’s jokes?’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Robert.
‘Then you must tell her what nonsense this is! I did not come four thousand miles to be dismissed by a girl! Misdair Watson!’
Robert ignored Señor Marilia, and said quietly, ‘Effie? This isn’t being very practical, you know.’
‘No,’ said Effie, ‘I realise that. But I’m sure you have the skill to explain to Señor Marilia that banking is not always practical. Sometimes, it’s honourable, and very occasionally, it’s moral.’
Señor Lacaze frowned at Señor Marilia in complete bewilderment. He said something in rapid Portuguese which meant, ‘Does this mean I won’t be able to take this woman to bed tonight?’ Señor Marilia raised his hand, and said, irritably, ‘Sh.’
Robert threw down his napkin. ‘This little gesture of honour and morality, Effie, could cost us anything between £20-£30 million worth of loans.’
‘I know that,’ said Effie. ‘I know exactly how keen the Kaiser is to borrow money, from whatever source; and I also know how keen you are to lend it to him. But, you’re not going to. The honour and morality of Watson’s Bank is priceless. It cannot be bought.’
Robert knew when it was time to withdraw without an argument. He had misjudged Effie badly. He had been so preoccupied with the loans that Watson’s Bank had been making all over Europe, taking advantage of the hysterical fears that each country felt for its neighbour, that he had forgotten the prickliness of Effie’s personality. Everything had been worked out: money would go from Watson’s at Cornhill to Brazil, to finance emerald digging; emeralds from Brazil would be sold on the world market at a profit; and while the profit went back into the emerald mines, the capital would be transferred, as gold bullion, to Germany. Only £20 or £30 million: but enough for trucks and horses and machine-guns and bombs, and more bullets than one man could fire, even if he fired one every second, in his entire lifetime. To have forgotten Effie was an understandable but crucial oversight: but unlike Señor Marilia, who was now making a ridiculous scene about it, Robert preferred to hold back, and to bide his time. A family dinner party was an appropriate setting for agreements, but not for disagreements. He said to Señor Marilia, ‘Calm down, señor. My sister is quite right. We have to think of our honour.’
Lady of Fortune Page 37
