The Piper's Tune

by Jessica Stirling

  ‘I think,’ Gowry said, ‘that Forbes might want you to try.’

  ‘Did he tell you that?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, he did.’

  ‘It would be all right without the baby, wouldn’t it?’ Sylvie said. ‘I mean, it would be all as right as rain again without the baby. He would come back and it would just be the same as it was before.’

  ‘Hmm.’

  She glanced at him quickly. ‘What about his wife? She’d know about the baby. She would think badly of me. I wouldn’t want her to think badly of me.’

  He wanted to ask why Lindsay’s opinion mattered but Sylvie had a blank expression on her face now, neither anxious nor eager.

  Along the edge of the loch a dipper hopped, leaving no ripple.

  Gowry said, ‘She wouldn’t care what had happened to the baby.’

  Sylvie removed one hand from the mound of her stomach, bent the elbow, braced the wrist. She still didn’t look at him.

  ‘I’ll do it if you tell me to, Gowry,’ she said.

  ‘Forbes…’

  ‘No, Gowry. If you tell me to, I’ll do it.’

  ‘All right,’ he whispered. ‘Do it.’

  She pushed herself up on her arm, rolled on to one knee and hoisted herself to her feet. The dipper flew off, skimming low along the edge of the loch. The loch reminded Gowry of oil, a great slick of black diesel, brown only in the sunless shallows where the stones were. He watched her stoop and take off her shoes and waddle down to the water’s edge.

  Out beyond the brown rim the water swiftly became black.

  He longed for her to give him a second chance, to glance back, swing round, say in that bright, bewildered voice of hers, ‘Gowry, are you sure?’

  She did not turn round. She knew what he wanted her to do, what Forbes required of her. Barefoot and bare-legged, she walked straight into the loch. She did not lift her skirts. He watched them fill with air then water, saw them settle around her first like petals then like weed. He was hardly breathing now. Any slight sound might break into the spell that Sylvie laboured under. Oh, yes, laboured under! How much of a joke is that right now, Gowry? he thought, as he watched her wade ankle-deep, knee-deep, out through the brown shallows.

  She waded on, her arms raised, struggling against the weight of her skirts, the weight of the water. She stopped. She stared straight ahead of her at the wall of conifers on the further shore. The sun bonnet had slipped back on its ribbon and hung on her curls. She placed her hands on the surface of the water, palms down, fingers spread. She seemed to be thinking, to be contemplating something, Gowry could not imagine what. The waterline was slick and black around her distended stomach. One step and she would be gone. One step, he thought, one tiny step. He felt sweat all over his body, chill as ice.

  She seemed to be waiting, not afraid, but lost without his instruction.

  Gowry got quietly to his feet, never taking his eyes from her.

  She paddled her palms gently on the surface of water.

  He saw ripples spread out across the loch in thin steely lines and heard them lap on the brown stones in the shallows; then he closed his eyes and said, ‘Sylvie, come back here,’ just as she disappeared.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  The Piper’s Tune

  By mid-afternoon the streets of Glasgow were awash and most of its citizens sheltering indoors or splashing along the pavements under the ineffectual protection of umbrellas and oilskin capes. The storm, it seemed, did not have the good manners to move on but rumbled and spluttered unseen behind the rain that poured unrelentingly out of formless clouds.

  In Aydon Road Franklin’s crews had been pulled off the hulls, for the ladders had become dangerously slippery and there was still in the black sky traces of the lightning that had raked the west of Scotland for an hour or more. In Sandyford, in Cissie’s apartment, mistress and day-maid cowered in the small back bedroom while Ewan, normally so timid, leaped up and down on the bed and yelled with delight at every ear-splitting thunderclap and nerve-tingling lightning flash. In Harper’s Hill, over the remains of a late lunch, Lindsay and her aunt were far too busy plotting strategy to be distracted by mere weather. When rain came sweeping over Kelvingrove and struck the big front windows, though, they did pause for a moment before continuing their discussion in raised voices. At the first peal of thunder, Pansy, not even trying to be brave, vanished downstairs to join the younger servants skulking in the pantry.

  In Brunswick Crescent the inhabitants had scattered themselves throughout the house for reasons other than fear of a natural phenomenon. When Forbes had returned home he had stepped straight into a blazing row with his mother and sisters and had borne the brunt of their fury and frustration. He had been in no mood to back down, however, and in the heat of the moment had screamed at them to go to hell, or back to Malahide, or do what the hell they wanted, and had blamed them for the predicament in which he, the favoured son, now found himself.

  The Lanchester, Uncle Donald Franklin’s pride and joy, remained parked in the lane behind the crescent where Forbes had dumped it after a fruitless search for his brother. First he had driven to Gowry’s lodgings, then, close to opening time, to Kirby’s. Finally, in desperation, he had steered the awkward machine the length of Maryhill Road to tour side streets and back streets in the vicinity of St Mungo’s Mansions in search of the yellow Vauxhall. At one point he had even been tempted to jettison the Lanchester and race upstairs to the tenement flat, but something – caution perhaps, not conscience – had checked him and he had driven away again, fast and furious, before frustration overwhelmed common sense.

  With thunder pealing overhead and lightning sizzling among spires and chimney-pots, Forbes had headed back to Brunswick Park. He knew that he was beaten, that Gowry had eluded him; Gowry might be anywhere, trolling about in the Vauxhall or back by now in the stable yard at Aydon Road listening to the apprentice boys’ tales of mystery and woe. There lurked in Forbes, however, a faint flicker of hope that his brother had taken things into his own hands and that, out of loyalty, had gone to do what he, Forbes, dared not.

  Then he had stepped into the shouting match in the drawing-room and had learned of Lindsay’s intentions and been told just what his mother really thought of him and how by his shenanigans he had ruined his sisters’ prospects.

  There was no moral disapproval in the family’s revisionist view of his worth, only fury at how he had let them down, how his wayward behaviour had affected them and damaged their future; not a word about Sylvie, not a thought for what had propelled him into Sylvie Calder’s arms, what he needed, what he wanted that neither Franklins nor McCullochs could provide. Then, when thunder broke over the house and Philip started shrieking upstairs in the nursery, he lost patience completely and stalked off into the piano parlour from whose narrow rear window he could look down into the lane.

  * * *

  After a time Philip stopped shrieking and rested his head against Eleanor’s bony shoulder. She had prudently removed her cameo brooch and hair-pins and had brought down from the nursery – snatched from under Winn’s nose – a knitted blanket which, though not required for warmth, offered the child softness and security. She had wrapped him in it before she had lifted him from his cot and, steering Harry before her, had taken both children down from the nursery to her small bedroom two floors below.

  Miss Runciman was not disturbed by freak weather but she was concerned by its effect on the children, particularly on Harry who was old enough to be aware that something unusual had happened downstairs. With disarming lack of guile he had asked where his mother was and why Winn was crying and why Grandma McCulloch shouted so loudly at Blossom after Great-aunt Lilias had gone away, questions that Eleanor had done her best to answer in a manner that would not alarm him.

  She had brought a jug of hot chocolate up from the kitchen and a small bowl filled with cream, and to entertain Harry and soothe Philip, she fed each of them turn and turn about with spoonfuls while the thunder crept close
r and the arguments downstairs grew louder and more intrusive. At some point Forbes must have returned home; Eleanor could make out his voice, not sinuous now, but sharp and violent. Soon thunder drowned out the voices and Philip snuggled, whimpering, against her while Harry, fascinated by the force of the rainstorm, stood on tiptoe at the little window and peered down into the lane where Donald Franklin’s motor-car, hood down and panelled windows wide open, appeared to be filling up with water, like a bathtub.

  ‘Oh!’ Harry said. ‘Oh-oooh!’

  Eleanor said, ‘Someone’s been very careless, Harry, haven’t they?’

  ‘Papa,’ Harry said, with a little sigh. ‘It was Papa.’

  Cradling Philip in her arms, Eleanor made a few more tours of the bedroom before she laid him on her bed to sleep. She sat by him, stroking his silky hair while lightning petered out and the thunder prowled off into the distance. There were no sounds from below, the voices had ceased. She heard a door slam and another open. She heard feet upon the stairs and another door, on the floor above this time, open and close.

  Elbows propped on the windowsill, Harry was oblivious to everything except the silver rods of rain that shot out of the sky, the torrents of white water discharged by overloaded eaves and the rivers of mud that covered the cobbles of the lane. Eleanor watched him fondly from the corner of her eye; Lindsay’s child, Arthur’s grandson, as bright and lively and curious as any Franklin.

  Then Harry turned to her and said, ‘It’s Uncle Gowry. Uncle Gowry’s come home early too.’

  Going to the window, Eleanor saw that the little boy had told her the truth and together they watched Gowry brake the Vauxhall, climb down from the driver’s seat and unlock the padlock on the garage doors. He was drenched, drenched to the very skin, but he did not seem to care.

  He hauled open the doors, then, glancing round, stopped what he was doing as Forbes emerged from the gate at the rear of the house and crossed the lane towards him.

  ‘Papa,’ Harry said, almost beneath his breath.

  ‘Yes, dear – Papa,’ said Eleanor Runciman and, frowning, watched the brothers’ curious meeting in the rain.

  * * *

  ‘Look at you,’ Forbes said. ‘A drowned rat’s got nothing on you, boy. Where have you been with my motoring car then? Sylvie’s?’

  ‘Aye, Sylvie’s.’

  ‘Don’t go telling me she’s dropped the kiddie?’

  ‘No, she hasn’t dropped the kiddie,’ Gowry said. ‘Do you like standing here in your shirt sleeves getting soaked or will you be going inside?’

  ‘I wouldn’t be going inside, not if I were you,’ Forbes said. ‘Mam’s on the rampage and I’m sick of the sound of her whining. Tell you what, why don’t we step into the garage here and have a wee bit of a chat?’

  ‘Why don’t we do just that,’ said Gowry.

  They moved through the doorway into the gloom. The brick-built mews still reeked of horses, though it had been twenty years at least since a horse had been stabled there. Rain hissed on the sloping slate roof and Gowry shivered a little and pulled the leather overcoat more tightly around him.

  Forbes said, ‘So, you went to see Sylvie, did you?’

  ‘I did,’ Gowry said.

  ‘And?’

  ‘There is no “and”, Forbes. We went for a drive, that’s all.’

  ‘A drive in the country?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Forbes’s face was white in the trick of the half light, almost skull-like, Gowry thought. He was clad only in a waistcoat and collarless shirt and the smart serge trousers that he wore to the office. He did not seem to feel the chill that had come into the air now that the rain had begun to take effect. Gowry folded his arms tightly across his chest. He wanted only to be somewhere warm, somewhere dry, out of all this.

  ‘Did you take her to the loch?’ Forbes said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did she go willingly?’

  Gowry shrugged. ‘A day in the country; yes.’

  ‘Did she tell you that she’d seen my wife yesterday? I mean,’ Forbes said edgily, ‘that she’d called on my sister-in-law, on Cissie Calder, that it was two birds with the one stone. Lindsay was there too, taking’ – he paused – ‘taking tea. And then there was Sylvie with her belly sticking out and a story to tell them.’ Again, he paused. ‘She’s ruined it for me, the bitch. Ruined everything. Lindsay’s left me and she’s even talking about divorce.’

  There was a whining note in his brother’s voice that Gowry had never detected before. He wondered if what Forbes had said about Mam were true, if any of this was exactly true; if, perhaps, it was not the Irish version, Forbes’s version. He kept his mouth shut, though, said nothing about his affair with Sylvie. It was something that Forbes did not need to know and, with luck, would never know; how he, Gowry, had colluded in the end game, how he had rounded it off by a simple act of betrayal.

  All he wanted now was to be finished with it, to climb out of the servant’s uniform once and for all and to be slave to no man, least of all his brother.

  He knew the question Forbes wanted to ask, though, how all the rest of it, the cat-footed, soft-footed, self-justifying approach was only fear of what the answer would be and the consequence of it.

  He lacked Forbes’s ruthlessness, his viciousness.

  He had discovered that much about himself that very forenoon.

  ‘You see where I am?’ Forbes said.

  ‘You’ll get her back,’ Gowry said. ‘Lindsay I mean – which is more than can be said for Sylvie.’

  ‘Is she – did you…’

  ‘She did it herself,’ Gowry said.

  ‘What? She…’

  ‘She walked into the loch,’ Gowry said. ‘I didn’t have to push her. I just had to tell her that was what you wanted her to do, that was your wish, your will for her, and she walked out into the water of her own accord.’

  ‘And – what did you do?’

  ‘I watched,’ Gowry said.

  ‘God! She always was a stupid little cow but I didn’t think…’

  ‘And then I told her what I wanted her to do,’ Gowry said.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I told her to come back. I told her I wanted her to come back.’ He shook his head, ruefully. ‘I left it too late, though, almost too late. She’d have gone through with it if I’d just left her alone. That’s what got to me. I never thought she would actually go through with it.’

  ‘You mean Sylvie’s dead?’

  ‘Of course Sylvie isn’t dead,’ said Gowry. ‘Do you think I’d be standing here now if I’d let her go through with it? All I had to do to put a stop to it was tell her that I really wanted her to come back.’

  ‘She isn’t dead then?’

  ‘Then I had to prove it,’ Gowry said. ‘I had to go out for her. I had to go out into the deep water and bring her back in. Christ, Forbes, she would have done it, if I hadn’t stopped her.’

  ‘Done it for me.’

  ‘Done it because nobody ever, ever told her to come back to them.’

  ‘So,’ Forbes said, ‘you’ve turned on me too, have you?’

  ‘Turned on you?’ Gowry said.

  ‘How am I going to get Lindsay back now when Sylvie’s still…’

  ‘That’s your pigeon, Forbes, not mine,’ Gowry said. ‘I’m going home.’

  ‘Home?’

  ‘To Ireland, to bloody Ireland, to Dublin or maybe to Belfast,’ Gowry said, ‘and I’m taking Sylvie with me.’

  ‘She won’t go, she won’t leave me.’

  ‘She will, Forbes. She left you this forenoon.’

  ‘Ireland!’ Forbes said. ‘What the hell will you do in Ireland?’

  ‘Work,’ Forbes said. ‘Work in a brewery, in a motor garage, something, anything to keep body and soul together. My body, my soul – and my wife’s.’

  ‘You’ll marry her?’ Forbes said. ‘You’ll marry her with my baby inside her? God, you must be desperate to have her. Listen, why don’t we—�
�

  ‘Talk about it?’ Gowry said. ‘I’ve talked enough, Forbes. I’ve listened to you long enough. I’m sick, sick of your talk. Know what, you almost talked me into murder and I would have had to live with that for the rest of my life. I’d rather live with Sylvie, thank you very much.’

  He moved suddenly, pushing Forbes aside.

  He hauled open the garage door and stepped out into the lane.

  The rain had eased, though only a little, and water ran in torrents still from rhones and eaves and rooftops, and the lane behind the house was like a river, carrying away the summer dust.

  ‘Gowry,’ Forbes shouted. ‘Goddamn you, Gowry, you can’t go like this. Listen to me, listen to me.’

  Already halfway down the lane, Gowry raised a fist.

  ‘Don’t worry, Forbes, I’ll post you back the uniform,’ he shouted, then, digging his hands into his pockets, trudged on around the corner and out of his brother’s sight.

  * * *

  ‘Hold on, Kay,’ Arthur said. ‘It isn’t a sinking ship, you know. You don’t all have to leave just because of Forbes.’

  ‘Because of Forbes?’ his sister said. ‘Because of you, more like.’

  ‘Me?’ Arthur said. ‘What have I done?’

  ‘You never made us welcome.’

  ‘That,’ said Eleanor Runciman, ‘is very unfair.’

  ‘I was always led to believe that blood was thicker than water, Arthur,’ Kay said, ‘but not in this household, it seems.’

  ‘If you’re implying that Eleanor…’

  ‘Gentlemen do not address a housekeeper by her Christian name.’

  ‘I do,’ Arthur said. ‘In this house, I do.’

  ‘Well, it isn’t right,’ Kay said. ‘And this isn’t the sort of lax atmosphere in which I want my girls to grow up – so we’re leaving, all three of us.’

  ‘When?’ Eleanor said. ‘If, that is, I may be permitted to enquire.’

  ‘It’s none of your concern,’ Kay said.

  ‘I will have to engage new staff as soon as possible.’

  ‘That’s up to Forbes,’ Kay said. ‘My girls work for him, not you.’