The Piper's Tune (15 page)

‘I've every right to my opinion, Forbes.' She was aware that he had lured her on to thin ice. ‘What about you? Have you ever been inside a tenement?'

‘I've seen what they're like.'

‘When?'

‘None of your business.' He kissed her lightly on the brow. ‘Just take my word for it, Linnet, poverty isn't something you should pontificate about unless you've experienced it for yourself.'

‘And you have, I suppose?'

‘No.' After an almost undetectable pause, he added, ‘Never have and, thank God, never will,' which was something else that Lindsay would hold against him when the brand-new twentieth century picked up a head of steam.

*   *   *

It was the first time that he had taken her to Kirby's at the corner of Portland Row and St George's Road. The neighbourhood was bordering respectable but the big, brash tavern and the private club above it were not. Sylvie was not entirely surprised that Dada Hartnell knew where the doors were situated.

She had passed Kirby's now and then on the horse-tram coming home from Coral Strand meetings in town with Mama. She had peeked at the gaudy frontage and, with a shiver, at the dark green windows on the first floor, windows that hid the sort of goings-on that young ladies were not supposed to know about, though some of the girls at school did, of course; her classmates exchanged information – much of it inaccurate – on all manner of worldly things.

If they had only known where she, Sylvie Calder, had been and what she had seen perhaps they wouldn't have been so stuck-up. She did not confide in them, though. She did not correct their silly notions about what went on in public houses. She wasn't one of them. Had never made a friend at school, not even Amelia Rogers whose maid was a regular at Wednesday night Bible Study and whose brother, a divinity student, had once addressed the Coral Strand on the subject of ‘Charity'. In eight years Sylvie had never been invited to tea at anyone's house, not even Amelia Rogers', though Mama Hartnell had had a lot to do with that because Mama did not encourage her to form friendships with girls who were unacquainted with God.

She, Sylvie, was acquainted with God. She knew God intimately. She knew the God who had created Eve out of dirt, the God who had expelled Adam, the God who had brought plagues down upon Egypt and who, a bit like Herod, had slain the children of the Egyptians in their beds; the God who had spoken to Moses, who, through His Son, had raised Lazarus from the dead; the God who looked a little, just a little, like Dada Albert, with his woolly moustache and watch-chain and the broad lap that she sat upon whenever she wanted petting or, less often now, whenever he felt the need to pet her.

When she imagined Satan, though, the serpent, the tempter, the defiant angel thrown out of heaven, it was Papa Calder who came to mind. She couldn't see herself sitting on his lap, kissing his thin lips, going out with him with the wickerwork collection basket and sheaves of leaflets that recounted the horrid life that poor benighted heathens had to endure in India or Africa or on the far-off Coral Strand; couldn't imagine Papa Calder bestowing charity on anyone, although he did pay for her schooling and her dresses which, so Mama told her, was just his way of striving to save his soul from damnation.

As far as Sylvie was concerned her father was damned anyway. She hadn't missed him when he'd stopped popping up in the 'Groveries on Sunday afternoons. Had felt nothing but relief when he'd stopped visiting her at home every other week. She belonged to God, to Dada Hartnell, and her desire to make her other Papa notice her had been a weakness, particularly as he continued to pay for her schooling and her dresses and anything else Mama asked for on her behalf whether she was nice to him or whether she was not.

Generally speaking she liked being nice to people. The nicer she was the more generous they seemed to be. When Dada Hartnell introduced her to his acquaintances he would refer to her as ‘my little lady', which was, she supposed, true and accurate. At one time he used to stand her on the bar counter and persuade her to recite a short poem about the Coral Strand and then the men would put money into her basket, heaps of money. Dada Hartnell had stopped doing that now. She was growing up, he said, and it was undignified to treat her as if she were a music-hall turn and that it would be better for them – that is, for the Coral Strand Foreign Mission Fund – if she just acted naturally, which was something Sylvie had no difficulty in doing, for she was a great deal less naïve than she appeared to be.

Albert had told Florence that they were going to tap the public houses on a stretch of Dumbarton Road between Patrick Cross and the bridges, a favoured beat for the seekers of charity who rattled tambourines or sold heather, flags or cheap paper florets. But, according to Dada Hartnell, there was no money to be made at that game. Instead he conducted Sylvie to the smoky dens of the docklands that lascars frequented, physical embodiments of the self-same heathens for whom the basket was being passed round and who, Sylvie thought, seemed grim and miserable so far removed from the Coral Strand. But they paid up. They were remarkably generous for poor people. They did not have to understand the message that Dada preached, they just had to look at her to know that God, in the shape of a blue-eyed little angel, cared about them.

Some so-called Christians were more difficult to deal with and on several occasions, when poetry and compassion had failed to take a trick, Dada Hartnell had had to pick her and the basket up and make a run for it.

To keep her from worrying, Dada did not always tell Mama where they were going or where they had been. He asked Sylvie to keep her mouth shut too and she was happy to oblige. She could keep a secret when it suited her. She already had a great deal of experience in keeping secrets. None of her classmates knew precisely where she lived or that Dada Hartnell wasn't her real father and did not work in an office in the city. She knew it was wrong to tell lies but there were occasions when not telling the whole truth could be an act of kindness and she believed that one thing balanced out another in the eyes of the Lord.

Sylvie was happy as she skipped down the road in the pretty frilled dress and shaped bodice that Dada Hartnell had insisted Mama buy for her, her bonnet bobbing as she tried to keep up with him; although he had short, stout legs Dada Hartnell's stride was much longer than hers. He wore a sober black wool-worsted suit, a soft-collared shirt and a tie with a trace of red in the pattern. His square-crowned hat was perched raffishly on his head. Except for the shallow wicker basket and the tarnished tin badge that identified him as a collector for the Coral Strand Foreign Mission Fund, he seemed no different from any of the other gentlemen who were heading, singly and in pairs, for the polished glass doors of Kirby's Tavern or, more circumspectly, for the unglazed door in the lane that led to the gentlemen's club upstairs.

Dada Hartnell pushed open the tavern door. It was Friday night. The bar was packed. He guided Sylvie before him into the throng. She couldn't see much except the backs and buttocks of the men in front of her. She looked round, tilting her head. Dada Hartnell gave her a reassuring wink. Parting the chaps before her as Moses had parted the Red Sea, he steered her towards the mahogany bar at the far end of the room.

There were mirrors everywhere, mirrors etched with advertisements for beers and spirits, mirrors engraved with ladies in floral shifts, mirrors even on the ceiling. When Sylvie looked up she could see herself floating in the midst of all the men. She was not in the least intimidated at being the only female person in the room, except for the barmaids who were so large-busted and brassy that they seemed to belong to another species altogether. She inhaled the reek of sweat, spirits and tobacco smoke as if it were incense and offered up a little prayer of gratitude that she was here at last, inside the very tabernacle of wickedness where somehow she felt so much at home.

‘I say, Hartnell, what's this you've dragged in?'

‘Ah, Moscrop, I don't believe you've met my daughter Sylvie.'

‘I'll say I haven't. Daughter, is she? Not a bit like you, thank God!' Mr Moscrop, all veined cheeks and bristling whiskers, leered over his pint glass. ‘Does she drink? Let me buy her a little something, what? Little snifter of something to get her going, what?'

‘Enough of that, old man,' Dada Hartnell said. ‘It's the Lord's business that brings me here tonight. Sylvie's helping me with my collections.'

‘Damned tasty little mascot too, if I may say so.'

‘You may not,' Dada told the man, rather curtly.

‘So you're not takin' her hup-stairs to shake for you?'

‘No, I'm not,' Dada Hartnell said. ‘How about it, Daniel, how about starting my little lady off with a bob or two for her basket?'

‘I know what I'd like to do to her basket,' put in a younger man who had come up behind Mr Moscrop. ‘I'd give it more than a bob or two.'

‘Do then,' said Dada. ‘It's all in a good cause.'

‘For the poor heathens on the Coral Strand,' Sylvie said.

‘It speaks. Lo! it utters.'

‘Charley, that's enough,' said another young man, one of several who had gathered round her. She liked the sound of this one's voice; liked being the focus of attention. She glanced from one to the other, smiling at each. Mr Moscrop, who had been pushed to the rear, was bobbing up and down, glass in hand, struggling to keep her in view.

‘Ain't there enough heathens for you in Glasgow, Albert?'

‘Far too bloody many of them,' Dada retorted. ‘Far too many penniless engineers for a start.'

Sylvie wasn't offended by the swear word. She had known for some time that two men were contained within Dada Hartnell's skin: one who appeared at home, the other in places like Kirby's.

She slipped the basket from under his arm and offered it out, not too boldly. She gave the dark-haired, handsome young man a timid smile. She had already deduced that he was a student from the Maritime Institute on Sutter Street, that big sooty-black building where the lights burned all afternoon and blackboards and drawing-boards peeped above the window ledges. Perhaps he was hoping to become an engineer or a draughtsman, like her real father. She did not hold that against him. Dada Hartnell had told her that not all students were poor, that some were quite well-to-do and others, though not many, came from very wealthy families.

‘What can I buy you?' the dark-haired young man said.

He addressed her directly, not through Dada. She did not answer him directly, though. She glanced up at Dada, waiting to be told what to do. He gave a light shrug, one of many secret signals that they had developed over the years. She smiled at the young man and said that she would be glad to partake of a glass of soda water.

‘Soda water it is, then.' Half-a-crown appeared in his fingers like a conjuring trick and he instructed one of the others, Charley, to hop off to the bar and do the honours.

Sylvie said, ‘It's all very well for us to be drinking soda water, sir, and I do appreciate your generosity, but what about the poor souls who languish in the heat of the Coral Strand, who is to buy them soda water?'

‘Have you ever been to the Coral Strand?' the young man said.

Somehow he had gained prime position, had isolated her from the others – if isolation was the right word in such a crowded place. She noticed that the barmaids had spotted Dada and were none too pleased to see him. A burly man in a canvas apron and broad-striped shirt had appeared under the mirrors. She kept one eye on the man in the apron and the other on Dada while she spoke with the student who was paying for her soda water. She was relieved to see the man in the canvas apron shake his head and go off down a back staircase.

‘What about me?' Dada was saying. ‘Don't I get offered a dram?'

‘You can buy your own, Bert. God knows you're rollin' in moolah after your win last week.'

‘Shush,' Dada said. ‘Shush.'

‘Oh, I see. It's a domestic secret, is it?'

Sylvie did not quite know what was going on. But she had enough sense to pipe up and to try to rescue Dada from any embarrassment that her presence might cause. It had not occurred to her that he had tapped Kirby's before. They had visited several places where Dada was known and she had to remind herself that Mama and he had been collecting for the Coral Strand Mission Fund long before she appeared on the scene.

The young man sipped from the pint glass in his hand.

He said, ‘You didn't answer my question, sweetheart.'

‘I have not been to the Coral Strand, not yet.'

‘Not yet?'

‘I may enter mission work when I am old enough.'

‘What age are you?'

‘Fif—'

‘Seventeen,' said Dada.

‘Almost seventeen,' said Sylvie.

The young man ignored the guffaws of the jostling chaps at his shoulder. He looked down at her from no great height – he was only a little bit taller than she was – and she felt her throat tighten, the soft band of flesh below her stomach become tight too, as if he had pulled an invisible string that drew all the parts of her together, narrowing and elongating them in the process.

She gave a little gasp.

‘Sure when I was seventeen,' he said, ‘I didn't even know where the Coral Strand was. Now here's a chance for me to learn something.'

‘Pa'din?' Sylvie heard herself say.

‘He's teasing you, dearest,' Dada said.

‘No, I'm seeking information, really I am,' the young man said, so gently that Sylvie believed him even if Dada did not. ‘Where
is
the Coral Strand and what do the folk there do all day long?'

‘They do not believe in Christ our Lord.'

‘Ah, so that's it!'

‘They must be told that Jesus is their Saviour.'

‘So that He can feed them with loaves and fishes?'