Lady of Fortune

by Graham Masterton

  Alisdair opened his mouth, and then closed it. He sat back. He looked at Robert for help. But Robert was doing nothing more than watching both of them, delighted at their discomfiture, humming under his breath, and waggling his empty tankard at the end of his finger.

  Effie said, ‘I don’t get along with Dougal these days. We don’t meet often; and when we do, we usually argue. But you know that I’m not going to tell him about Alisdair. There are some heartbreaks which are better forgotten, particularly when time has already mended them.’

  ‘Still the same Effie,’ smiled Robert. ‘Hearts and flowers. Ladies’ Home Journal and Secrets.’

  Just then, Kitty came in, with an extra tankard and a freshly opened bottle of Krug. A little way behind her, with the sunlight from the hallway shining in her curls, came Kay, curious about her mommy’s visitors. She wore an apple-green velvet dress with a white lace bodice and ribbons, and there was a green Alice-band in her hair.

  Effie reached out her hand, and Kay came across and took it. ‘Kay,’ she said, softly, ‘did you finish your English lesson?’

  ‘Mr Unsworth said I could go, on account of my good grammar.’

  ‘I don’t think “on account of” is particularly good grammar.’

  Robert eased himself forward in his chair, holding up his tankard so that Kitty could fill it for him. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘is this my niece?’

  Effie turned Kay around. ‘Here she is, Robert. Kay – go say hello to your Uncle Robert – and this –’ she hesitated for a moment, suddenly waist-deep in freezing-cold fear, praying to herself that she could finish introducing him without her voice breaking – ‘this is your cousin Alisdair.’

  Kay curtseyed to Robert, who smiled and winked at Effie in appreciation; and then to Alisdair. Alisdair said selfconsciously, ‘How do you do? That’s a fine green dress you’re wearing.’

  ‘Uncle Robert and Cousin Alisdair arrived from Scotland today on the Île de France,’ said Effie. ‘It was the Île de France, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Alisdair. ‘She’s a marvellous ship. Very modern. The only trouble is, all the cabins are decorated with woodveneer, and she creaks like anything whenever there’s a strong sea.’

  ‘Were you seasick?’ Kay asked him, ingenuously.

  ‘Once,’ grinned Alisdair. ‘But I think that was only because I ate some shrimps that didn’t agree with me.’

  ‘Are you staying in America for long?’ Kay wanted to know.

  ‘A month or two. I’m not sure. It depends on father … I mean, your Uncle Robert.’

  ‘Uncle Robert,’ chuckled Robert, tickled at the sound of the name.

  Effie said to Alisdair, ‘Listen, Alisdair, do you think that your father and I might have a few minutes alone? Perhaps Kay would be kind enough to show you around the house. Do you play billiards?’

  Alisdair tried to convey more with his eyes than he was able to say, but all Effie did was to smile briefly and uncommunicatively and turn back to Kay. ‘Would you show your cousin around, please, Kay? Show him the billiards room. Do take your drink with you, Alisdair.’

  Kay, in the well-mannered way that Effie had taught her, took Alisdair’s arm and led him out of the room. ‘We ought to see the very top of the house first,’ Effie heard her saying. ‘You can see all the way down Fifth Avenue, as far as the Waldorf.’

  Alisdair turned once to look back at Effie, but Effie said encouragingly, ‘Go on, Alisdair, I’m sure you’ll find that Kay’s a most entertaining guide.’

  When they had gone upstairs, Robert sat back with his fresh tankard of champagne, watching Effie thoughtfully.

  ‘You’re a clever woman, you know,’ he said, after a while. ‘More clever that I’ve ever given you credit for. I wish you’d been working for me for all these years.’

  ‘It was your fault that I left you.’

  ‘Do you think I could persuade you to work with me again?’

  Effie shook her head. ‘No, Robert.’

  Robert made a face, and looked down into his tankard, swilling the champagne around and around so that it foamed. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘we shall have to see about that.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Later that evening, Dougal telephoned from the bank. He spoke for a long time to Robert, and then asked to talk to Effie. ‘Effie?’ he said. His voiced sounded slurred and peculiarly distant. ‘I’ve asked Robert and Alisdair to come down to Long Island for the rest of the weekend. I know you’re leaving for the Coast on Monday, but I’d appreciate it if you could come along, too. Bring Kay. It’ll make more of a party.’

  Effie pressed her fingers against her eyes like a woman with a migraine. Spending Sunday with Robert and Dougal wouldn’t have been her first choice for a relaxing weekend; but she supposed she ought to make some kind of an effort to be welcoming, and, after all, she was going to be well away from them all by Monday afternoon, and by Monday evening she would be having dinner on The Twentieth Century Limited with. Caldwell: relaxation, freedom, and absolution.

  ‘All right,’ she said. ‘I’ll drive Robert and Alisdair down in my own car. Have you told Mariella?’

  ‘Erm, no. No, I haven’t.’ There was a muffled sound, as if he had champed his hand over the receiver. ‘Well, get the damned reports,’ Effie heard him saying, to someone else. Then: ‘Effie? Listen, Effie, do me a favour, will you, and call Mariella for me? I don’t think I’m going to have the time.’

  ‘Dougal,’ said Effie, ‘you really ought to call her yourself.’

  ‘Damn it, Effie, just for once!’ snapped Dougal.

  Effie closed her eyes, and said nothing.

  ‘Please?’ asked Dougal.

  They drove eastwards into the darkness of Long Island, into a foggy Atlantic night, with nothing to guide them but their own dim headlamps and the fragmentary sparkling of distant houses. Robert fell quickly asleep after they had crossed the East River into Queens, and sat in the corner of Effie’s Pierce-Arrow, his black-gloved hand concealing his face, the brim of his black banker’s hat pressed against the camel upholstery, snoring softly but persistently. Kay, sitting facing Effie in one of the jump seats, was looking white and tired. Only Alisdair remained alert, watching the unfamiliar road-signs and the billboards. ‘Does Your Husband Misbehave?’ asked one, closely followed by another which suggested ‘Shoot The Brute Some Burma-Shave.’

  Alisdair said, ‘Do you have to leave on Monday, Aunt Effie?’

  Effie nodded. ‘I have a meeting in Chicago on Wednesday, and I’m due to be in Los Angeles by the end of the week. I’ve told you about the new bank I’m starting up there. It’s very important to me.’

  Alisdair was quiet for a little while. Then he said, ‘I’ve thought about you quite a lot, over the years.’

  ‘Good,’ she smiled. ‘I’ve thought about you quite a lot, too.’

  ‘I did hope that perhaps … well, I don’t know. I suppose I did hope that I’d see you one day. That maybe you’d come to visit Scotland, and – well …’

  Effie clasped his hand, a pale lilac glove in segments of Italian kid over a heavy Shetland glove in creamy Scottish wool. They had kept the Pierce-Arrow’s heater low because Kay still tended to be car-sick.

  Effie said, ‘I didn’t forget you. But I always believed it would be better if you grew up without the arguments and wrangles that I always had around me when I was a child. You know very well that your father and I never get on; not for more than two minutes at a time. If I’d stayed in Scotland, it would have been nothing but slanging at each other and throwing things around the house the doors slamming upstairs and down. Do you know that your grandfather once smacked your father – your actual biological father – right around the side of the head with a leg of lamb? That was the kind of quiet happy household that I grew up in.’

  ‘A leg of lamb?’ asked Alisdair, incredulous.

  ‘Wham!’ said Effie, with a demonstrative sweep of her arm. ‘A whole Sunday joint, right in the cheek!’

  �
��Well,’ said Alisdair, with one for those funny half-formed chuckles of which only young men seemed to be capable. Effie thought to herself: it’s extraordinary, when Dougal was twenty-five on the day that my father smacked him with the gigot, Dougal seemed to me to be so old, and so mature. Yet look at Alisdair, two years older that Dougal was then, but so callow and so awkward. Are boys maturing later, or is it simply that twenty-seven years have passed by, and I am very much older?

  Kozscinszki, Effie’s driver, peeped the whistle of the intercommunicating tube; and when Effie removed the whistle, he said, There in ten minutes, Miss Watson, if you please.’

  ‘Thank you, Kozscinszki,’ said Effie. On the advice of Mrs Herman T. Weidermeyer III she had engaged a Polish driver rather than a Frenchman or an Italian. ‘I don’t mind the reckless driving so much,’ Henrietta had said. ‘It’s the blast of garlic you get right in your face when they blow the whistle to tell you anything.’ Effie could afford to be choosy: these days she kept a slightly more-than-adequate stable of six motor-cars, with a head coachman to take care of them, a mechanic who made weekly visits, and a driver. The upkeep of the atomobiles alone cost her more than $11,000 a month.

  Alisdair said, ‘You won’t let father come between us, will you?’

  ‘Who, Robert? Why should I?’

  ‘I do have to support him, you know. I work for him, and he is my father.’

  ‘Of course I won’t let Robert come between us,’ Effie reassured him. ‘But I do want to say one thing to you, Alisdair, and that is that Dougal, your real father, is not at all well. He’s had a difficult marriage, and a difficult time with his business. He can, at times, be rather odd. I just want you to understand that even when he seems irascible, and almost impossible to get on with, he’s still my brother, and your uncle, and your father, too.’

  ‘What’s wrong with him?’ asked Alisdair.

  ‘I don’t know what you’d call it,’ said Effie, keeping her attention on Kay rather than Alisdair. Her daughter was almost asleep now, her eyes closed, her head swaying with the motion of the car. It was incredible to Effie to think that the young boy next to her was the father of the young girl sitting opposite her: in the dim glow of the travelling-lamps, their faces both seemed so youthful. They could have been brother and sister.

  ‘It’s an illness?’ asked Alisdair.

  Effie shook her head. ‘Not the usual kind of illness. Just collapse; running-down; like a balloon that’s lost all of its air.’

  Alisdair laid his left hand over Effie’s, so that her glove was sandwiched between his. Delicately, carefully, she withdrew her hand, and held it in her lap. Alisdair repeated, ‘I have thought about you an awful lot.’

  ‘You’ve got girlfriends, though? I’m surprised you’re not married by now.’

  ‘I was courting for a wee while. The trouble was, I was too busy with the bank, and I had to call it off. Well, she called it off, really. She liked to be taken out to the tea-dances at the Caledonian, and most of the time I couldn’t get away from my desk.’

  ‘What was her name?’

  ‘Flora. She was very pretty. Well, not bad. I didn’t like her sticking-out ears!’

  Effie gave him an auntie-type of smile. Friendly, warm, but unquestionably distanced by age. ‘You’ll find someone else, I’m sure. What about the ring on your finger?’

  Alisdair tugged off his glove, and held up his hand. ‘This? This is my mother’s wedding-band. My father gave it to me last year. They didn’t bury her with it on; he kept it. Listen, Effie –’

  Effie, instantly, raised a finger to her lips, and Alisdair, instantly was silent. She could sense in him all the surging questions and fantasies of ten frustrated years: the dreams and daydreams he must have had about that one night in bed with her, making love to her, making her gasp and cry. Not only that, she had a sudden insight into the most overwhelming reason of all why older lovers should keep away from younger lovers; because older lovers reveal too soon and deep, highly-charged sensuality of adulthood, and forever tantalize their younger partners with a memory that can never be recaptured. Effie remembered that night as passionate, ingenuous, and clumsy. Alisdair probably remembered it as the very darkest of heavens.

  Alisdair said hoarsely, ‘Will there be time, just five minutes, for us to talk?’

  Effie, with great softness, said, ‘Yes. Tomorrow morning, perhaps. But you had better know that I am in love.’

  ‘Well,’ said Alisdair, trying to be nonchalant, ‘I couldn’t really expect any different. I thought you’d have married. You should have married. You would have made somebody an excellent –’ He paused, lifted a hand in acknowledgement of the cliché he was coming out with. ‘Well, I can think of lots of men who would have given their eye teeth to marry you.’

  Kay was asleep now, her head back against the braided pillow of the jump-seat, her mouth a little open, breathing evenly.

  ‘It seems that we’re alone,’ said Effie. Up in front she could see the lights of Dougal’s mansion. Robert snored, and his hat flapped up as if it was operated by a mysterious Heath-Robinson device whereby a sleeping gentlemen could give his regards to a passing lady-friend.

  Alisdair looked at Kay for a moment, and then smiled at Effie. ‘She’s a lovely girl,’ he said. ‘I didn’t even know that you had a daughter until last year. Then I met somebody from Citibank at a dinner in London, and he told me. You’ve certainly kept her out of the limelight, haven’t you?’

  ‘I want her to grow up normal. Not like me.’

  ‘She won’t be lacking for boyfriends. For tippence I’d take her out myself.’

  ‘You couldn’t do that.’

  ‘Och, well, of course not. I didn’t mean that I’d –’

  Alisdair frowned at Effie in sudden uncertainty. They were turning into the gates of Dougal’s house, and Robert was just beginning to stir, smacking his lips as if he were eating a particularly greasy chop.

  ‘Aunt Effie?’ said Alisdair.

  ‘I said nothing,’ Effie told him, her face set; one hand clutching his coat. ‘I simply said that you couldn’t take her out yourself. Do you understand me?’

  Robert yawned, and abruptly let out an extremely loud fart. ‘Och,’ he said, sitting up straight in embarrassment. ‘I’m sorry about that. Slipped out when I wasn’t paying attention.’

  ‘Fegs, father,’ said Alisdair, fanning his hand. But his other hand kept hold of Effie, kept hold of her tight, because he knew that she had been trying to tell him, he understood now: and in one giddying second his whole world had been tilted off its axis.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Mariella was delighted to see them: a little fidgety, because Dougal had still not come downstairs yet, but surprisingly pretty, far prettier than Effie had ever seen her, in a slender off-the-shoulder gown in midnight blue, with a scintillating diamond choker. She said, ‘Effie, I’m so pleased you could come. I have so much to tell you! Did you know that Stephanie Moss Hartley is going to be married to Leland Woodall? Won’t that be the marriage of the year? But do excuse me: you must introduce me to your brother. It’s Robert, isn’t it? I’ve heard so much about you, Robert.’

  Robert took off his Homburg hat, took Mariella’s hand, and bowed. ‘I’m charmed to meet you, Mrs Watson,’ he said. ‘If I’d known that there were prizes like you to be had in America, I would have emigrated years ago. Young Dougal’s a very lucky man.’

  Mariella smiled, flattered by Robert’s compliment. But she also glanced quickly at Effie, with an expression that meant: thank you for not telling him what a dreary disaster our marriage really is.

  ‘This is Alisdair – my son,’ said Robert. ‘Alisdair is one of what I like to call the new breed of bankers. He gives credit first, and asks questions afterwards!’

  ‘Come inside,’ said Mariella, and led them up the lighted steps of the house. ‘I’m sorry Dougal isn’t ready yet. He’s had a difficult day in the city.’

  ‘This is a fine place you have here,’
remarked Robert, admiring the glittering chandelier in the hallway. ‘Did you decorate it yourself, Mrs Watson? Excellent taste.’

  Coming from Robert, whose own ideas of décor had rarely stretched further than two clashing sets of tartan, Effie thought a judgement on Mariella‘s taste was on the strong side of arrogant. Mariella had enticingly decorated all the rooms in the house in a succession of deeper and deeper shades of pastel, with a lavish use of watered silk, braiding, and swags of the palest velvets. But Mariella was plainly pleased, because she took Robert’s arm, and walked with him into the drawing-room, where their black footman Rousseau was waiting with champagne.

  Alisdair was very quiet. He was still shocked by what Effie had revealed to him in the car, and he kept his eyes on Kay as if he expected her at any moment to do something miraculous, like vanish into thin air, or turn into a piece of colonial furniture. After all, how was it possible that she was actually his daughter – this winsome, sophisticated young American girl in the cornflower-coloured dress, with the braided-up hair and the wispy curls at the back of her neck. She spoke to him so smartly and confidently, and looked him so directly in the eye. Already, with great affection, she was calling him ‘Alisdair’, yet really she should have called him ‘Daddy’.

  ‘How do you care for America?’ Mariella asked Alisdair, as they all sat down. ‘I remember how tall the buildings seemed to me when I first came here, but of course they’re even taller now. I hear that the Bank of Manhattan are planning on a building seventy stories high.’

  Alisdair said, ‘Yes. Are they? Oh. Well, they’re very tall, aren’t they? The buildings, I mean. But, Manhattan Island is mostly solid rock, isn’t it? The buildings must all have firm footings.’

  Robert lifted a glass of champagne from the tray which Rousseau was offering around, and smiled around at everyone, particularly at Mariella. ‘If I take only one really happy memory back to Scotland with me from America, it will be simply this,’ he said. ‘Being welcomed into a wonderful house by a most attractive hostess. You can keep your tall buildings. I think I’ll settle for Mrs Watson.’