‘What is it?’ Pansy asked. ‘I mean, what was it? I thought it was a castle. It doesn’t look like a castle to me.’
‘Nah, nah, it was never a castle, miss,’ the driver informed her. ‘It was Miss Pringle’s home for many a year. Before that it was the old colonel’s house and before that even, the priests’ house.’
‘Priests?’ said Johnny. ‘Good Lord!’
‘It was a long time ago,’ said the driver. ‘There is no trace o’ the fathers left now, sir, never fear.’
‘Just the odd priestly ghost stalking the corridors perhaps?’
‘Johnny, don’t say that,’ Pansy begged.
‘Whooo-ooo! Whooo-ooo-hooo!’ Johnny called out in a wavering voice and winced when all three of his sisters simultaneously punched his arm.
* * *
He waited for them on the strip of gravel that fronted the house. He had been waiting for half the day. Below him four or five sheep grazed the ragged shelves of grass that dipped down to the loch. All around were strips of pine forest and steep, smooth-shouldered hills. In the seven weeks that he had been in residence Owen had come to realise that he did not like Strathmore or the empty impartiality of the hills that surrounded it.
Fortunately Giles, a city-born servant, had quite taken to country living. He had quickly established contact with tradesmen and farmers; had hired a cook and two girls to attend to cleaning and laundry; had bought a pony and trap at Perth sales and arranged for the animal to be stabled with Mr Tasker whose farm lay a quarter of a mile away, deeper into the hills. It was Giles who took out the rod of an evening, went down to the loch and came back, grinning, with a basket of trout to serve for supper or breakfast. Owen, however, could not shake off his melancholy. He even refused to climb to the summit of the ridge behind the house to admire a view that Giles assured was ‘magnificent, sir, just magnificent’. He, Owen Franklin, had seen all the views he ever wanted to see and would have exchanged every mountain and shining loch in Perthshire for just one crowded brown acre of Clydeside.
He heard them singing long before the charabanc came in sight. He had ample time to assume a cheery air and pretend that he had done the right thing by retiring to the country. He even managed a smile when the conveyance finally lurched out of the trees and the horses, sensing journey’s end, put a bit of effort into a trot. ‘Lilias!’ he shouted. ‘Donald! Is that you hiding there, Pansy? By gum! I’ll swear you’ve grown taller since I saw you last,’ and rocked back and forth with affected delight, arms spread to welcome the children to his humble abode in the hills.
* * *
Cissie removed her bonnet and rubbed the elastic red mark on her plump chin. She placed the bonnet on a marble-topped washstand and seated herself on one of the two iron bedsteads that were tucked under the slope of the roof. She bounced up and down experimentally, and said, ‘Solid granite.’
‘A hard mattress is good for the spine, so they say,’ said Lindsay.
‘Not my spine,’ said Cissie. ‘Look at this place. I wouldn’t expect a scullery maid to sleep here.’
‘It’s the country,’ said Lindsay. ‘We’re supposed to rough it.’
‘Where are the boys?’
‘On the floor below, I think.’
‘It’s all very well for them. They’re used to mucking in.’
Lindsay removed her bonnet and travelling cape. She seated herself on the bed directly beneath the grimy skylight. She unlaced her boots.
‘What’s Pappy doing here?’ Cissie went on. ‘I mean, if he’s tired of living with us in Harper’s Hill he could sail to New York, or cruise the Mediterranean, or rent a villa in the south of France. Why Perthshire?’
‘Perhaps he’s in search of a quiet life.’
‘He’s not turning into a hermit, is he?’
‘Ask him.’
‘You ask him,’ Cissie said. ‘Oh no, don’t bother. He obviously thinks this place is paradise. Did you see the grin on his face?’
‘He was just pleased to see us, that’s all,’ Lindsay said.
Cissie tugged two long pins from her hair and shook her head.
‘What are we going to do here for two whole weeks?’
‘Enjoy ourselves, I suppose,’ said Lindsay.
‘How? There isn’t even a tennis court.’
‘Croquet?’ Lindsay suggested.
‘On that lawn, with those – those creatures?’
‘Sheep,’ said Lindsay. ‘Chin up, Cissie. The boys will think of something exciting for us to do. Climb a mountain, perhaps. I’ve never climbed a mountain before, have you?’
Cissie did not deign to answer.
‘Do you know what?’ she said, at length. ‘I’m almost beginning to wish that Forbes had travelled with us.’
‘Oh, Cissie! I thought you hated him.’
‘I do, but at least he’d cheer the place up.’
‘No,’ Lindsay said. ‘Forbes isn’t the cheering type.’
‘When is he due to arrive?’
‘Monday afternoon some time, I believe.’
‘Is he travelling up with your father?’
‘Somehow I doubt it,’ Lindsay said.
The skylight darkened as clouds scudded across the blue and the attic bedroom turned even more gloomy. The cousins glanced upward.
‘Rain?’ Cissie said.
‘Inevitably,’ said Lindsay.
* * *
It had never been the Franklins’ habit to travel with servants. There had been no need for servants when holidays were taken at the Bruce Hotel. Besides, Lilias was the daughter of a school-mastering couple, respectable but not well to do, and she was too thrifty to hand over to hirelings tasks that she was quite capable of doing for herself. She loved her husband not just for what he had given her materially, though, but also for the sort of man he was, frank, generous and devoted, lacking the sharp little edge of acerbity that had showed itself now and then in his father and brother and especially in his sisters, Helen and Kay.
Lilias had shed few tears when Helen Franklin had passed away and Kay had run off with Daniel McCulloch. She had no particular fondness for Kay and was not disposed to like Kay’s son. She had accepted Forbes into her home only to please her father-in-law, because, in principle if not practice, Harper’s Hill was not her house at all. Forbes was a good-looking boy, that she would concede, but the flaws in his character soon became too obvious to ignore. Unlike Donald, she was not prepared to forgive Forbes his transgressions merely because of his youth. She did not trust him an inch.
She tried to warn Cissie not to become too fond of her Irish cousin but Cissie was prickly and would not listen. Even Lindsay, normally so sensible, was unwilling to discuss the newcomer and Lilias was forced to accept that nothing she could say or do would slacken the hold that the young Dubliner had over her children. She regretted that Forbes would join them on Monday, that even on holiday she would have to suffer his egregious smiles and sly, slithering glances and catch the whispered innuendoes that her daughters, and Lindsay, seemed to find so fascinating.
It was, alas, a very wet weekend. Rain swept in on Friday evening and brought with it a certain grey lethargy. By half past nine o’clock everyone had trailed off to bed.
Saturday was no better. Only the boys ventured out to explore the countryside and even they, wet through, were back within the hour. The march to church on Sunday was an ordeal; a long meandering sermon only added to the general disgruntlement.
No piano was to be found in Strathmore, an omission that Owen promised to rectify before the family’s Christmas visit – ‘Christmas visit? What’s this about a Christmas visit?’ – and the weekend deteriorated into bickering over endless games of draughts and cribbage and vain attempts by Martin to rouse interest in a round of charades. The atmosphere did not encourage fellowship let alone frivolity. The house reeked of dampness and a creeping decay that not even log fires in the parlours and coal fires in the bedrooms could dissipate. Small wonder that badinage between the boys to
ok a macabre turn, turning to ghosts and corpses and the invention of a cod ‘history’ for the house that became so grisly that Pansy and Mercy were frightened and Donald had to put a stop to it.
By nine, armed with stone hot-water bottles, candles, books, bed-socks and, in Martin’s case, a flask of whisky, the Franklins, male and female, trooped off upstairs with all the enthusiasm of prisoners ascending the gallows.
In the attic Cissie and Lindsay undressed by candlelight.
They brushed their clothes, folded their stockings, rolled up their ribbons and modestly slipped into their nightgowns. The day-maids from Kelkemmit had refused to attend on the Sabbath and Ross and Johnny between them had failed to ignite a fire in the gnarled iron grate, though in trying they had created more smoke than a kipper factory.
Cissie coughed and hugged the stoneware bottle to her breast.
‘You’re not going to read, are you?’
‘I’m going to try,’ said Lindsay.
‘In this light you’ll ruin your eyesight. What are you reading, anyway?’
‘Oh, just a trashy romance.’
‘About luh-urve?’ said Cissie. ‘What’s it called?’
‘The Sorrows of Satan.’
‘I’ve read that,’ said Cissie. ‘I didn’t think it was trashy. I thought it was rather spiritual and uplifting.’
Seated by the washstand on the room’s only chair, Lindsay brushed her hair. The candle flame formed little pearls of light around the mirror’s blown border, the only signs of warmth in the room.
‘Lindsay,’ Cissie said, ‘do you think I’m clever?’
‘Of course you are. At school, you were—’
‘School doesn’t count,’ Cissie said. ‘You’re clever. Everyone knows you’re clever. I mean, that’s why Pappy made you a partner.’
‘No,’ Lindsay said. ‘He was just being fair.’
Cissie put the stoneware bottle on the quilt, then, not quite as seductively as Salome, raised her arms above her head. ‘Do you think I have a good figure?’
‘Better than mine,’ said Lindsay.
‘Fatter than yours, that’s what you mean, isn’t it?’
‘Fuller,’ said Lindsay, who knew better than to tell an outright lie.
Sighing, Cissie slumped on to the bed. ‘I’m a frump, a fat frump,’ she said. ‘Heaven knows what I’ll be like in five years’ time. Too fat and horrible to contemplate.’
‘Nonsense!’
Lindsay recommenced her grooming, counting strokes beneath her breath. Cissie and she had been as close as sisters and had shared many secrets. But there was a new note in Cissie’s questions that made Lindsay uncomfortable. She waited, rather tensely, for the next question.
‘Do you think that’s all Forbes sees in me?’ Cissie said. ‘My figure, I mean. Do men really only care about how we look?’
Lindsay said, ‘Has Forbes tried to kiss you again?’
‘Not since that day in the park. He’s wary of Mr Calder, I think.’
‘Does that not answer your question?’
‘Of course it doesn’t,’ said Cissie. ‘I mean, it’s not that I want him to…’ Perplexed, she stripped back the covers and swung herself into bed. ‘I don’t know what I want, Lindsay. It’s this place, this boring house. I was all right until we arrived in this hovel.’
‘Perhaps Strathmore is haunted.’
‘What do you mean?’ said Cissie, more bewildered than alarmed.
Lindsay left the dressing-table and set the candle-holder on the shelf above the beds. Nanny Cheadle would love it here: a house without gas, a house as old and creaky as Nanny herself, a house filled with phantoms of unfulfilled desires. She eased herself into bed.
Cissie, not at all sleepy, said, ‘Haunted? Tell me what you mean.’
‘Haunted by star-crossed lovers doomed to linger here for all eternity.’
‘Really?’ Cissie lay back, arms above her head.
Lindsay reached for her book but did not open it.
Cissie said, ‘I wonder what it’s like to be a star-crossed lover.’
‘Not much fun, I imagine,’ Lindsay said.
‘Better than being married to a man you don’t love, though.’
‘Or,’ said Lindsay, ‘to a man who doesn’t love you.’
‘Have you ever been in love, Lindsay?’
‘If I had, I’d have told you about it.’
‘Oh, yes.’ Cissie chuckled. ‘What about Gordon Swann then?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
‘What about our Martin?’
‘I love Martin dearly,’ Lindsay said, ‘but not in that way.’
‘What about Forbes?’ Cissie persisted. ‘Do you think you could love him – in that way?’
Lindsay pushed her feet down into the corners of the bed. The sheets were smooth and slippery and now that the bottle had warmed them felt faintly, not unpleasantly damp.
‘Well?’ Cissie said.
‘If we’re talking about husbands,’ Lindsay said, ‘I think I’d prefer Mr Calder to our cousin from Dublin.’
‘Do you know something,’ Cissie said, ‘I think I would too.’
* * *
A week before the holiday Mr Sampson, the foreman, moved him out of castings and along to the engine shop. Forbes wasn’t sorry to quit the foundry. When he enquired if his grandfather was behind the move, though, he was met with a blank stare and gathered the impression that he was being moved along not for the benefit of his education but because he had failed to make the grade.
He was used to being rejected. His father, Daniel, had had it in for him from the day he was born. His father wasn’t a drunkard, a gambler, or a bully. He was fair with the farmers from whom he bought his grains and generous to his employees. He was known as a good, round, solid sort of family man, loved by his children – all except Forbes – and respected in the community. He had no obvious flaws to which Forbes could point and say, ‘See, that’s him, the real Daniel McCulloch, the ogre, the tyrant who reared and rejected me.’
Only his mother loved him, but his mother was weak. She seemed to expect more of him that he was ever able to deliver, but whenever he failed to live up to her expectations she was always willing to forgive him. When he grew he’d plucked up courage to ask her why his father hated him. Mam had denied that this was the case, had kept on denying it no matter how hard or how often he pressed her. So, by the age of eleven, he had begun to live up to the reputation his father had wished upon him. Had developed into a wild young rip, thoughtless, harum-scarum, always on the lookout for mischief – secure in the knowledge that his pa would punish and his mam forgive.
Thus was the order of Owen Forbes McCulloch’s universe established.
He said nothing to his uncles about what had happened at Beardmore’s. He knew when to keep his gob shut. Sooner or later they were bound to find out. Then, just like his pa, they would reprimand him for laziness or lack of interest or for scrapping with those apprentices who couldn’t tolerate his accent and had ganged up on him at the dinner-hour, three and four and five of them to give him his licks, until finally he’d floored one of them with the back of a coking shovel, which had ended that daily dose of unpleasantness once and for all.
On the following Monday morning he was moved along.
He was surprised to discover that the engine shop was as cold and noisy as the forge had been. The foreman, Mr Gall, seemed to know who he was and why he had been sent there. Mr Gall took him straight to a small, oily upright machine and in a matter of ten minutes showed him how to face nuts. It was simple work, a fool could do it, but the monotony was crippling. That first week seemed like an eternity. His hands performed efficiently but his brain remained disjointed. He daydreamed of Cissie’s freckles and full soft breasts, Mercy’s rosebud lips and round hips, of Lindsay, with her fine blonde hair and a smile that suggested that if he played his cards right she might let him share her bed.
Amid the clink and clatter of metal he reinvented his pa
st, excursions of the imagination in which he satisfied his desire with girls he’d hardly known, girls who had rebuffed him. He dreamed about holding a woman, touching a woman, having a woman hug him and tell him that he was so handsome and charming that she couldn’t resist him. But as the week wore on all the girls became one girl, Lindsay, and his desire eased into a vague, wistful longing to be with her again.
When he strolled up the platform on holiday Monday toting his scuffed leather valise the first person he saw was his Uncle Arthur nipping nimbly into a first-class compartment and slamming the door.
Forbes walked on, unperturbed. There would be time enough to chat to dear old Uncle Arthur after they reached Perth and were obliged to share a jaunting car for the second leg of the journey. In any case he was searching for a girl, some bonnie wee servant lass, say, whom he could sit next to and engage in conversation, or if she chose to be standoffish whom he could ogle for the duration of the ride. If he couldn’t find a suitable specimen to talk to or admire – which, alas, he couldn’t – then he would stare out of the window at the passing scene and anticipate the warm welcome that Lindsay would give him when eventually he reached Strathmore. Dreaming of Lindsay, Forbes rolled into Perth station and got out of the train.
‘Ah, Forbes!’ his uncle said. ‘Were you on board? I kept an eye peeled at Glasgow but I must have missed you. Better day, is it not?’
‘It is, sir, thanks be to heaven.’
The railway company had laid on a wagonette with a pair of horses between the shafts and a young driver on the high seat. The sky above Perth station was bright, the torrential rain that had raised the rivers and brought burns dashing down from the hills had eased away. Forbes sniffed the clean country air gladly and, without resentment, climbed up beside his uncle. They sat facing each other, knee to knee, as the wagonette rocked over the cobbles and the station dropped out of sight behind stout little houses that ringed the town.
Arthur cleared his throat. ‘Ah, how are things at Beardmore’s?’
‘Just grand.’
‘Have you seen Goliath in action yet?’
The Piper's Tune Page 9
