The Piper's Tune (26 page)

‘I would like to meet the King,' said Sylvie. ‘Do you think the King would like to meet me?'

‘I'm sure he would,' said Forbes sincerely. ‘Oh, yes, I'm sure he would.'

She preened. He liked it when she preened. He knew precisely where he stood with Sylvie when she put on airs and graces. All he had to do to amuse her when she was off on one of her self-adoring little trips was flatter her.

Sylvie giggled. ‘I know what the King would like to do to me.'

‘Uh-huh! And what's that?' Forbes said.

‘He would like me to sit on his big fat tummy and – and…'

‘And?'

‘Light his cigar.'

‘Would you like to sit on his big fat tummy?'

‘He's the King. He could order me to do it.'

‘Ah, but would you like to?'

‘I don't know.' She pouted, giving him the eye. ‘It might be rather jolly.'

Forbes had become an expert in innuendo. He'd had plenty of practice at the yard, for George Crush had a dirty mind and had told Forbes tales of the royal family's goings-on that, if broadcast, would have had him arrested for treason. ‘He's far too old for you,' Forbes said. ‘The King, I mean.'

‘Do you think age matters?' Sylvie said. ‘I suppose it does to a man.'

‘What about girls? Do you fancy a big fat old fellow lying on you?'

‘What a thing to say!' said Sylvie.

‘It's a genuine question, a serious line of enquiry.'

‘I don't know if I fancy
anyone
lying on me. I'm not very big, you know.'

‘Perhaps you'll get bigger.'

‘I think I'm as big as I'm going to get.'

‘I doubt it,' Forbes said. ‘There's probably some stretching to be done yet. Girls often get bigger after they're married.'

‘Babies swell them out.'

‘Babies – or the making of babies.'

‘I'm not sure I want to have babies.'

‘Well, I'm not wildly keen on the idea myself.'

‘I thought all men wanted sons to follow in their footsteps?'

‘Not all men,' said Forbes. ‘Trying to make babies might be more fun than having them, Sylvie. What do you think?'

‘I don't know,' she said. ‘Maybe,' and giggled.

They were drinking coffee in an alcove of the Imperial, tucked away from the visitors who streamed through the hotel's lounges. Glasgow had already filled up with foreigners, French and Italian, Dutch and English, and the string quartet among the palms had refreshed its repertoire with gentle, unmilitary pieces by Offenbach and Waldteufel as well as the inevitable ‘Green-sleeves'. Across West George Street, Kirby's had laid in extra supplies of lager beer, cognac and schnapps and, for those industrial and commercial gentlemen who had arrived in Glasgow without their loved ones, Mr Bolitho was offering short-term membership of the club upstairs at a very reasonable fee. Russians, though, were frowned upon; the members of the seventy-strong team imported to raise and man the exhibition's ‘Russian Village' weren't interested in gambling, only in drinking everyone under the table and hauling off through the curtain anything that vaguely resembled a female, language, it seemed, being no barrier to international relations.

For this reason – the terrifying carnality of the Russians – Albert had more or less handed Sylvie over to his young friend Forbes, though Sylvie's perpetual wheedling and whining may have had something to do with it, plus the fact that Forbes was willing to pay for the privilege of her company, a guinea here, a fiver there, cash that Albert badly needed to support his current losing streak.

Forbes snipped at a wafer biscuit.

He said, ‘Would you not like to try to make babies, Sylvie?'

‘I do not know how it is done.'

‘Liar!' Forbes said, grinning.

‘I don't. I don't,' Sylvie protested, rising beautifully to the bait. ‘It's not the same as it is with fishes and frogs, is it?'

‘I don't know how it is with fishes and frogs,' Forbes told her. ‘I've a better idea how it is with human beings.'

‘Have you…' She was suddenly attentive, more adult. ‘Have you – tried?'

‘Now what do you think?'

‘I don't … I think – you have, haven't you?'

Forbes popped the rest of the wafer into his mouth and wiped his lips with a napkin. Mimicking her seriousness, he leaned forward. ‘It isn't making babies that's difficult, sweetheart, it's knowing how
not
to make babies that's important for people like you and me.'

‘Like you and me?' She pounced on it at once. ‘What do you mean?'

‘People,' Forbes said, ‘who are falling in love.'

Sylvie was surprised. She had not expected this manoeuvre, he realised, and congratulated himself on his impeccable sense of timing. She had laid herself open to seduction, at least on the verbal front, but he had introduced the word, the crucial, magical word ‘love' into the conversation and had, it seemed, found the golden key. He softened his smile, warming and moulding it like wax.

‘I'm sorry if I've offended you,' he said.

‘Offended … Oh, my heavenly Lord, no.'

‘I'm sorry if I've misjudged the situation then. I speak only as I feel, dearest; but that doesn't give me the right to put words into your mouth.'

‘Forbes, I don't – I don't know what to say to you.'

He leaned across the brass-topped table, across coffee cups and china pot, spoons, jugs and sugar basin. He touched her lips with the tip of his forefinger as gently as if he were wiping away an infant's tears.

‘Say nothing,' he whispered. ‘Just let me look at you, remember you as you are now, so pretty that I feel as if my heart will stop.' He did not even have to compose the lines in his head; they seemed to flow from him as naturally as breath. ‘I've known many – several – girls in my time, I admit, but, dearest Sylvie, I've never known any more attractive, more – dare I say it? – more desirable than you. You're such a good, trusting, innocent child that I flinch from expressing what I really feel for you.'

‘What? What? What do you feel for me?'

‘Love,' he said. ‘Love like I've never felt for any other woman.'

‘Not even your mama?'

He shook his head, irritated at her stupid interruption. He caught himself, said softly, ‘It's a different kind of love, Sylvie, dearest. Real love, true love. I want to
be
with you.'

‘You are with me.'

She was either a fool, he decided, or a subtle tease. He touched her mouth with his forefinger again, temporarily sealing in her inanities. ‘With you, I mean. With you, my dearest darling sweetheart.
With
you.'

‘On top of me?'

He sighed. ‘Yes.'

‘Like Mama and Dada do?'

‘Yes.'

‘But not to make babies?'

‘No, not to make babies.'

‘All right.'

‘All right?'

‘Hmm. Now all we have to agree on,' she said, ‘is where and when.'

‘Are you sure you know what we're – ah – agreeing
to,
dearest?'

‘Of course,' little Sylvie Hartnell said. ‘Don't you?'

*   *   *

Tom had shelled out two guineas for a pair of season tickets to the exhibition's Grand Concert Hall shortly before the season's programme was announced and a mad scramble for seats began. He suspected that by summer's end a feast of entertainment would be offered to lovers of bands and choirs and that the huge Venetian-style dome would ring to the sound of some very famous voices indeed. Meanwhile there were evening recitals on the electrically powered organ and a regular supply of parochial choirs seeking sufficient resonance to drown out squawking infants and the clump of feet from the exhibit gangways next door.

The Brunswick had already been engaged to perform on a Thursday night in late September and the Glasgow Massed Choir to repeat ‘The Cameronian's Dream' on the first Saturday in October.

Autumn, however, seemed a long way off and Tom had purchased the season tickets for a purpose somewhat more devious than an urge to see what was going on under the gilded dome. It was, in effect, his first deliberate step in the courtship of Donald Franklin's daughter. He propped the tickets behind the clock on the shelf above the fireplace in his little parlour and admired them from time to time, rather smugly. Eventually he acquired a printed programme of events which, with a draughtsman's hand, he marked with tiny stars and circles and squares to separate possibilities from probabilities and the latter from racing certainties. The Sousa Ensemble was a racing certainty, a performance of the finest marching band in America, an event not to be missed.

Tom's letter of invitation to Miss Cissie Franklin took the liberty of emphasising that very point.

Cissie's reply to Mr Tom Calder made the point that if all she had heard of Sousa's band were true then she would probably be able to listen to it perfectly well just by opening the window of her bedroom but since it wasn't every day she received an invitation from a respected naval architect she would none the less be delighted to accept.

Mr Calder wrote back to Miss Franklin suggesting that they might partake of a light repast in the Royal Bungalow restaurant in the exhibition grounds before John Philip took the stage.

Miss Franklin wrote back to say: wonderful.

Consequently, at precisely six o'clock on a moist Friday evening, Mr Tom Calder, looking suitably American in a new hand-sewn seersucker suit, arrived in the hallway of the Franklins' mansion to be inspected by Lilias, teased by Pansy, warned to ‘watch out' by Martin and, with Cissie hanging on his arm, was sent off into lightly falling rain under one of Mr Owen's gigantic Strathmore umbrellas.

Hot weather had left the air still and the smell of rain rose from dusty pavements and dusty trees. A rainbow haze stretched behind the minarets of the new Renaissance Art Gallery and above the disapproving presence of the university's Gothic tower were little slips and smears of azure that promised a return to fine, warm weather before the night was through. Cissie did not care about the weather. Cissie would have walked through fire, let alone flood, with Tom Calder. Although she hadn't seen him since they had parted at the railing above the Kelvingrove on the night of the musical evening, he had been constantly, comfortingly in her thoughts.

‘Tom sends his regards,' Martin would now and then inform her on returning from Aydon Road; Tom had done nothing of the kind. ‘He asked me to tell you that he misses you.'

‘He did not.'

‘He did, too,' Martin would assure her. ‘Honest, cross my heart.'

‘What else did he say?'

‘That's all,' Martin would tell her. ‘He's quite bashful, you know.'

‘Tell him…'

‘That you miss him too?'

‘Just – just that I hope he's well.'

‘He is well. He's thriving.'

‘Tell him, Martin. Please.'

‘I will, dear. I will.'

Tom held the umbrella over their heads and Cissie folded up the fancy little parasol that Pappy had purchased for her at the Japanese stall on the Main Avenue on the occasion of the family's initial tour of the 'Groveries earlier in the month. It had been hot that day, very hot. Pappy had bought all the ladies parasols and all the boys floppy cotton sun hats which, though they looked ridiculous, had kept them cool throughout the long afternoon. They had all been there, even her soon-to-be sister-in-law, Aurora, a great straggling trail of Franklins wending their way from exhibit to exhibit in blistering heat; all except Forbes who, to Cissie's relief, had gone into the Institute to work on a set of scale drawings for his diploma examination.

‘Did you really miss me, Tom?' she asked.

‘Who told you that I missed you?'

‘Martin.'

‘Ah, well, yes, it's true. I did.'

‘Why did you not call upon me at the house?'

‘It didn't seem – I mean, Cissie, my position is such…'

‘Your position? Oh, Tom, don't be so stuffy.'

‘Cissie, we can't just ignore the fact that I'm employed by your father,' Tom said. ‘At least I can't.'

‘Papa's not going to sack you just because you like me. For one thing, Pappy wouldn't let him.'

‘No, it isn't just that,' Tom said.

‘You mean you don't like me?'

‘Of course I like you,' Tom said. ‘I wouldn't be here with you now if I didn't like you.'

‘Then,' said Cissie, hugging his arm, ‘that's all that really matters.'

‘I just feel that you don't know me very well.'

‘Well, that's easily rectified,' said Cissie airily.

‘Look,' Tom said, ‘I don't want you to become too – too fond of me.'

‘I see,' Cissie said. ‘You're worried in case I paint you into a corner.'

‘I wasn't thinking of you, of us,' Tom said. ‘I was thinking of what your family will say if our friendship continues to flower.'

‘What will my family say, O fount of all knowledge?'

‘That I – that I'm…'

‘After my money?' Cissie was undismayed by the line that the conversation had taken. ‘Tom, Tom, my dear Mr Calder, don't you see that my family will be only too relieved to be rid of me? I'm the black sheep, the poor spinster daughter. They are terrified that they'll have me hanging around their necks for the rest of their lives.'

‘Now, now, Cissie, surely you're exaggerating?'

‘Yes,' she said. ‘I am.'

He glanced down at her. In spite of the umbrella the rain had wetted her freckled cheeks. Her face looked glossy, not tearful but cheerful, and there was no mistaking the mischief in her eyes.

‘Are you teasing me, young woman?' Tom asked.