The Piper's Tune (30 page)

‘Miss Runciman.'

‘… weeping like a fountain. Think she means it?'

‘I think she does,' said Lindsay.

‘Haven't noticed you blubbing much,' Forbes said. ‘I suppose you were reconciled to it. Bit of a relief in a way, is it?'

‘No, not a bit of relief, Forbes, no.'

‘When will she be buried?'

‘Tomorrow afternoon.'

‘Where?'

‘Brunswick Park New Cemetery, next to my mother.'

‘Your mother?'

‘My father purchased plots some years ago.'

‘Sure and that's good management for you. Always looking ahead.' Forbes moved closer on the sofa. ‘Will there be room down there for me?'

‘I don't know,' Lindsay said. ‘I haven't given it much thought.'

‘Didn't she have any family that would take her?'

‘Take her?'

‘Dispose of – somewhere else she should be.'

‘There's no one,' Lindsay said. ‘No one I've ever heard of.'

‘Is she worth anything?' Forbes said. ‘If she's worth something then you can bet your bottom dollar relatives will come crawling out of the woodwork sooner or later.'

‘There are no relatives. She had us, that seemed to be enough.'

‘Where's the bo— where is she now? Upstairs?'

‘Yes.'

‘Have you been to see her?'

‘Of course.'

‘How did she look: peaceful?'

‘If you want to go up…'

‘No, no. I mean, Linnet, I hardly knew her.' He paused, then said, ‘But I wouldn't mind taking a look at the rooms some time.'

‘The rooms?'

‘What we talked about, to see if they're suitable.'

‘Suitable?' Lindsay said stupidly. ‘Suitable for what?'

‘For us, for moving in.'

‘Oh God, Forbes!'

‘It's not going to affect poor old Nanny now, is it? I mean, she's had her fling and we're still here with all of our lives ahead of us.' Forbes shifted against her, placed his hand upon her thigh and rubbed it up and down, gently, sensually. ‘She wouldn't want to stand in your way. She'd be happy to see you living in her old rooms. See you happily married. Not having second thoughts, Linnet, are you?'

Lindsay hesitated. ‘No.'

He moved his hand inward, not forcefully, tucking it into the folds of her mourning dress. ‘The quicker we're spliced the better.'

‘Forbes, don't,' Lindsay said.

‘I'm only offering comfort.'

‘No, you're not,' Lindsay said.

‘What's wrong? Is it because of what's upstairs?' Forbes said. ‘Well, you know the old saying: “In the midst of life we are in death”? Works the other way too, I reckon.'

‘Forbes, please, don't,' Lindsay whispered.

*   *   *

‘Mama,' Sylvie said, quite out of the blue, ‘have you ever been in love?'

‘I am constantly possessed by love.'

‘I don't mean God's love. I mean with a chap, a fellow.'

Florence stiffened but did not release her grip on Sylvie's hand nor break stride. Her heart, which had been light a moment before, turned leaden in her chest, however. She felt the mysterious muscles that attached her breasts to her ribs become as hard and inflexible as the whalebone that encased them. She tried to breathe naturally but the snort, the sniff that came up from below would not be checked.

‘Hah!'
she said; then again,
‘Hah!'

‘You must have been in love with Dada?' Sylvie said. ‘If you hadn't been in love with him then he would not have married you.'

‘Ha-ah!'

It was a fine clear night with a half moon hanging above the glow from the 'Groveries. Dumbarton Road and the delta of streets that spread out from the bottom of Byres Road were busy, for it was the witching hour when pubs released their clientele to mill and mingle with the honest, abstemious folk who had better things to do with their money than squander it on drink. Walking home from prayer meetings or, as now, from an uplifting lecture in the Baptist Hall in Purdon Street, Florence Hartnell was usually at her best.

‘Did Dada court you for a long time?' Sylvie rattled on.

Florence gave no answer at first. She increased the length of her stride in direct ratio to the shallowness of her breathing. It wasn't the act of lying that bothered her so much as the quality of lie that would be necessary to appease her foster child.

‘Why are you asking me these questions, Sylvie?' Florence tried not to allow the engine of admonition to overheat. ‘Is a young man interested in you?'

‘There might be.'

‘Is it Mr Currie?'

‘Mr Cu … Oh, Mr Currie?' Tinkling laughter, a palpation of silly Mama's hand. ‘Mr Currie is not the sort of man who would be interested in someone like me. Mr Currie is only interested in getting back to his mission in…'

‘Kituta,' said Florence, automatically.

‘Kituta, yes, as soon as the war is over.'

‘I thought,' said Florence, ‘that he seemed interested in you.'

‘I think,' said Sylvie, ‘that Mr Currie might be more interested in little boys than little girls.'

‘Who told you that?'

‘Did you not see his lantern slides?'

‘Yes, but those – that – that is just the nature of his mission.'

Florence was shocked that her daughter had voiced a doubt that had flitted across her mind too in the course of Mr Currie's illustrated lecture. She had cast the doubt from her, feigning an ignorance that was not true to her character.

‘No, it isn't Mr Currie,' Sylvie said, laughing again.

‘Who is it then?'

‘It isn't anyone. I just wondered if you had ever been in love.'

Florence remembered some of the things Albert had done to her in the name of love and how reluctantly she – in the name of love – had surrendered to him before she had learned to turn the same robust and pleasurable acts against him so that he had no option but to take her as he found her and let her call the tune in that department of their relationship and, by slant and inference, in all others too. Bull by the horns now, Florence told herself, bull by the horns.

‘Who is he, this young man of yours?'

The changed tone of Sylvie's laughter gave the game away: her little Sylvie had fallen in love. A strange, terrible pang clasped Florence in the unyielding region under her stays, a jab, a flutter, a breathless catch beneath the breastbone. She slowed her pace and let Sylvie's hand slip.

‘There is no young man,' Sylvie said, dying to be pressed for the truth.

‘Aye, miss, but there is,' Florence said. ‘What's there about him that makes you so reluctant to tell me who he is? Is he of the Roman faith?'

‘No, he isn't of the Roman faith.'

‘Is he married?'

‘No, he isn't married.'

‘Hebrew?'

‘Not a Jew either.'

‘Who is he, Sylvie?'

‘How do you know,' Sylvie said, ‘that I haven't fallen for a black fellow?'

Florence's lungs collapsed as if she had received a body blow. She felt her heart thud and cramp. Gasping, she put her hand to her throat, and staggered.

‘Wha' – what this you're telling me?'

Sylvie laughed and skipped. ‘Oh, Mama,' she said. ‘It's only my joke. There
is
no chap in my life. If there was he certainly would not be a black fellow.'

‘Sylvie – Oh my dear Lord! Sylvie!'

She could feel muscles working against organs, a weird churning sensation that stretched from her brain to the pit of her stomach. She was relieved. And in her relief she doubted. And in her doubt she denied herself the pleasure of relief. Round and around and around and around.

‘Mama, are you unwell?'

‘I'm – I'm just a wee bit – a wee bit faint.'

‘I gave you a fright. I'm sorry, Mama. I shouldn't give you frights.'

Florence righted herself. She made a pretence of arranging her frock, straightening her bonnet. She breathed from the middle of her chest to shake off dizziness, as if the dusty odours of Dumbarton Road might revive her like a whiff of sal volatile or a snifter of brandy.

‘I-am-perfectly all right, Sylvie. Give-me-your hand.'

‘Lean on me, Mama.'

‘I do not have to lean on you,' Florence said. ‘Walk properly, please.'

Men were slithering out of the public house ahead of them like rats from a butter barrel. Florence straightened her shoulders, let righteousness adjust the balance within her. She gripped Sylvie's hand firmly as they detoured from the pavement's edge out on to the cobbles of the back way that, via the alleyways where Sylvie and her dada had preyed, connected Dumbarton Road to Argyll Street and Portland Row.

The men watched, growled, lurched, traded obscenities as the scent of piety and sex, Florence and Sylvie, excited them, then they shouted, roared, whistled for attention. But Florence, feeling stronger by the minute, ignored the voices which, like evil deeds or bad memories, faded away behind her. She was herself again, quite herself, unshaken, unswerving and able to cope with any iniquity, in others if not in herself.

‘Mama,' Sylvie said, once they were heading safely for Portland Row, ‘Mama, please tell me, what is it like to be in love?'

And Florence, having no answer to give, stumbled and fell down dead.

CHAPTER TWELVE

A Lesson Ignored

Cissie volunteered to accompany him to Florence's funeral. Tom politely refused. He had already told her all the lies he intended to tell her about his marriage and his daughter. He felt rather mean about it, for he had supported Cissie at the funeral of the old woman, Miss Cheadle, whom he had hardly known at all. It was only a week to the day after Nanny's funeral when a note from Albert Hartnell informed him that Florence had died suddenly.

Tom had just returned to Queensview from choir practice when the courier turned up. He had read Albert's scribbled note in disbelief, had even asked the messenger, ‘Are you sure?' before running out to find a hackney to take him to Portland Row to comfort his daughter and, if necessary, bring her back with him.

Florence's body, he discovered, had been transported to the Kelvinhaugh morgue where a police surgeon would perform an autopsy, standard procedure in cases of sudden death. Sylvie had been taken off to the police station and questioned before being escorted home to break the news to her foster father. By the time Tom reached Portland Row, therefore, Albert and Sylvie had had the best part of an hour to compose themselves and decide how they were going to face up to a future without Florence.

Albert was seated at the bare table in the kitchen, vest removed, shirt unbuttoned, fists clenched around a whisky glass. Sylvie, too, seemed abnormally calm. She sat in the high chair munching a hot buttered tea-cake and dabbing her lips – not her eyes, Tom noted – with an embroidered handkerchief. She said not a word while Albert explained what had happened.

‘Heart,' he concluded. ‘Must have been her heart.'

‘Had Florence complained of pains or breathlessness?' Tom asked.

‘Not a peep out of her. If she was suffering,' Albert said, ‘she never told us nothing about it. That was her way, of course. That was Florence for you. Now she's gone and left us.' He brought the whisky glass to his mouth, paused then said, ‘Gone and left us to our own devices. Aye, Tom, I tell you, she'll be hard to replace.'

‘Replace?'

‘In my heart,' Albert said.

‘How long will it be before the body is released?'

‘Three or four days, so I'm told.'

Unlike her sister, Florence had always seemed robust. What age had she been? Only three or four years older than he was. He glanced at Sylvie. ‘It must have been a terrible shock for you, dearest.'

‘Hmm.' She nodded. ‘Terrible.'

‘Did you try to revive her?'

‘She was dead,' Sylvie stated.

‘What did you do?'

‘Went back to find the men.'

‘What men?'

‘The men from the pub. They thought Mama was tipsy but when I told them we had been to a missionary lecture they changed their tune. One of them touched her and said she was a goner, then the policeman came and he took me to the station and gave me tea while Mama was removed.'

Her cool, precise manner appalled him. There was no numbness, no suggestion that she was not in complete control of herself.

‘I think,' Sylvie said, ‘that they had seen dead persons before.'

‘She means the men,' Albert explained. ‘The men from the pub.'

‘She was happy, you know,' Sylvie said, matter-of-factly. ‘We were chatting about Mr Currie when she fell down. She did not suffer.'

‘Sylvie,' Tom said. ‘Sylvie, you don't seem very…'

‘Upset? Why should I be upset? Mama's with God now.'

‘You see,' Albert said, ‘Florence believed in redemption.'

‘
He
doesn't believe,' Sylvie said, ‘that's why he doesn't understand.'

She had alighted on his weakness, his lack of faith in a divine power, in a life hereafter. He was too practical a man by half. He needed proof, a pattern, a system that would explain everything that went on on the road to heaven and no book, no preacher been able to provide it.

Tom cleared his throat. ‘What will you do now?'

‘Do?' said Sylvie. ‘I will say a prayer for Mama, of course, and—'

‘I mean where will you go, where will you live?' Tom said. ‘If you don't want to stay here you can come home with me. I'm sure we can find you a bed in the Queensview.'

Sylvie snorted. ‘I'm not going with
you.
'

‘She's going to stay here, aren't you, sweetheart?' Albert said. ‘She's going to look after me and see that I'm all right.'