The Piper's Tune (39 page)

‘Stop, Sylvie,' he gasped. ‘Stop, let me…'

She refused to release him. She sagged against him, clutching whatever was within her and beseeching it to stay.

He dragged himself from her, angrily hauled up his trousers, tucked in his shirt and, with his back to her, began buttoning, as if modesty would undo what had already been done. When he swung round again, still furious, he saw that she was crouched on all fours, rocking her hips back and forth, back and forth as if she had been suddenly struck by pain.

Astonished, he knelt by her. ‘Sylvie? What's wrong? Did I hurt you? Oh, sweetheart, I didn't mean to hurt you.'

The dressing-gown hung about her, hiding her body like a tent. She rocked for a moment more then abruptly sat back on her heels and drew the gown about her.

‘There!' she said, smiling. ‘That's done.'

‘What? What's done?' Forbes frowned, then scowled. He got to his feet. ‘Go and wash,' he told her. ‘Sylvie, go and wash immediately.'

She looked up at him, smiling dreamily.

‘Are you not staying for lunch?' she asked.

‘No, damn it. I'm not staying for lunch. Sylvie. Wash.'

‘Wash it away. Wash it away. Wash it all away.'

The chant reminded him of Harry's childish crooning. Anger welled up in him once more. Helpless anger. He had no knowledge of how she cleansed herself and the mechanisms that he supposed he knew so well became secret and arcane. He reached down, took her by the arm and lifted her, not roughly.

‘Please, sweetheart,' he said. ‘We do have to be careful, you know.'

She laughed silently. She looked wicked, then innocent, innocent and wicked by turns. He was helpless now, anger transformed into panic. He caught her hand, led her swiftly across the drawing-room and unlocked the door. He glanced across the hall, glimpsed the servant, Morag, in the kitchen doorway a second before she vanished.

Sylvie skipped beside him, swinging herself on his hand while he steered her to the door of the bathroom and opened it. The light from the marbled window was grey and cold. Brass taps, clinical white enamel, the pedestal, the steely mirror, the copper geyser, the odour of Regina Violet; he felt sickly and unclean pushing her into that chilly, antiseptic room.

‘Wash it away. Wash it away. Wash it away,' she chanted gleefully; then, just before he closed the door, wiggled her fingers and showed her teeth once more. ‘Bye-bye, dearest. Bye-bye.'

‘Sylvie…'

The lock clicked loudly.

There was nothing for him to do but wait.

He was still waiting when, twenty minutes later, Gowry arrived to collect him and, ten minutes after that, he left.

*   *   *

The mould loft was enormous. Lindsay never failed to be impressed by it. She loitered on the matting at the top of the stairs and wondered how it would appear from her son's perspective, a vast sea of planks upon which loftmen, draughtsmen and carpenters floated like mirages. The air smelled of freshly cut timber, sawdust and chalk, though the floor itself was kept scrupulously clean and there were no loud sounds save the rap of a mallet now and then or the brief, shrill whine of a band saw or planing machine.

It had been almost three years since she had last been here but she remembered most of what Tom had told her about how the floor was prepared for laying-off, how measurements from sheer drawings were chalked or scrived on to the flat black surface. Batten lines for a body plan were already in place and even at this early stage, Lindsay realised that there was something unusual about the shape of the vessel.

Carefully wiping her shoes, Lindsay stepped from the matting and eased her way down the side of the loft. Chalked figures indicated that the length of the vessel was one hundred and forty feet but the beam seemed unusually narrow. Puzzled, she studied the layout intently.

It was not until she glanced up that she noticed that two men were watching her across the breadth of the loft. Tom Calder wore a half-length brown cotton jacket and looked less like a marine engineer than a storekeeper. His companion was dressed in naval uniform. Stepping carefully over the chalk lines, Lindsay made her way towards them.

‘Ah, Lindsay,' Tom said. ‘I'd like you to meet Lieutenant Commander Geoffrey Paget. Mrs Forbes McCulloch.'

The officer removed his cap, held it down by his trouser-leg, and shook her hand. Although it was cold he wore no topcoat. The two and a half stripes visible on his cuff suggested that he was probably a career officer caught in the limbo where promotions ceased to be automatic. She waited for Tom to explain just what Lieutenant Commander Paget was doing here and where he was based. A naval dockyard had been opened recently at Rosyth on the Forth but she had a feeling, just a feeling, that the officer was not a salt horse, as she had heard them called, but a staffer. Neither Tom nor Geoffrey Paget chose to enlighten her, however, and there was an awkward, almost embarrassed, pause.

At length Tom cleared his throat and said, ‘Mrs McCulloch is, in fact, a partner in our company. Quite trustworthy.'

‘A partner,' Geoffrey Paget said. ‘Really?'

English, well-spoken, with a high, clear voice that hinted at arrogance. Clean-shaven, sharp-featured, hair as fair as her own. Face and hands lightly tanned as if he had recently returned from a Mediterranean tour. She could not decide whether she found him handsome or not – probably not – but she certainly did not find his manner attractive.

‘I am not an active partner,' she said. ‘I take only a passing interest in what goes on at the yard. My husband—'

‘I believe you've met Forbes,' Tom put in.

‘Yes, I have.'

Lindsay said, ‘Are you here to monitor our Admiralty contract, sir?'

Tom, she noticed, looked pained.

The officer, however, showed no displeasure, simply tilted his head back a little as if to distance himself from her.

‘What contract would that be, ma'am?' he enquired.

‘The one that my father is engaged upon.'

‘Your father, ma'am?'

‘Arthur Franklin.'

‘Oh, you're one of the family,' Geoffrey Paget said. ‘I see.'

‘I would hardly be strolling about the mould loft if I wasn't one of the family, sir, now would I?' Lindsay said. ‘My grandfather is Owen Franklin and I am a stockholder in the firm. Even by the Admiralty's strict criteria, and having regard to the fact that I'm female, I suppose I
might
be considered – what was it, Tom? – trustworthy?'

‘I shouldn't have said that,' Tom admitted. ‘My apologies. It's just that, well, I didn't expect to see you here, Lindsay. Got caught off guard a bit.'

‘I brought Harry to visit.'

‘Harry?' Tom said. ‘Where is the wee chap?'

‘Grandee took him to look at the boats.'

‘Well wrapped up, I hope,' Tom said.

‘Well wrapped up,' said Lindsay.

Mention of her family steadied her. Her grandfather had built the floor upon which they stood now and her grandfather had found her ‘trustworthy' enough to incorporate into the partnership, her sex notwithstanding. She was just as entitled to be here as anyone, including naval officers.

‘Do you have children, Lieutenant?' she asked suddenly.

‘No, I'm afraid that I do not.'

‘I have two children, two sons,' Lindsay said, as if that were justification enough for her intrusion, a basic sort of accounting that even a naval officer might understand. She assumed that he had a mother and that, even if he did not have a wife – perhaps he did for all she knew – he would be sensible enough to appreciate that the next generation of cadets would have to come from somewhere. She was tempted to press the point but, to her chagrin, Geoffrey Paget had taken Tom by the arm and, excluding her from the conversation, had deliberately turned away.

‘Sir?' she said, testily.

He put out his hand, wrist bent. ‘One moment, please.'

He spoke to Tom in a low voice. She saw Tom – her ally – glance at her as if he had never seen her before. The word ‘trustworthy' rang in her head like a telephone bell, irritating and insistent. She told herself to be calm, not to allow herself to be riled by this display of masculine superiority.

She said, ‘If you wish, sir, I will leave.'

‘No,' Geoffrey Paget said. ‘Wait.'

He turned again, not in the least contrite, and placed himself before her. It was only then that she realised how tall he was, almost as tall as Tom, in fact. He separated his feet as if he were standing on the deck of a flagship, squaring up to an admiral. He still held his hat down by his trouser-leg and Lindsay noticed how he tapped the shiny brim against his knee two, three, four times before he spoke. Behind the officer, Tom raised his eyebrows and shrugged as if to disassociate himself from the official line.

The officer said, ‘What has your father told you of what's going on?'

‘Not a thing,' Lindsay said. ‘All I know, sir, is that he and my husband have both been much occupied in meeting the demands of a naval commission.'

‘Did either of them tell you what this commission involves?'

‘No, they did not.'

There was no pause, no hesitation. It was, Lindsay imagined, like being interrogated by an advocate in a court of law.

Officer Paget said, ‘Do you know what's being laid off on the floor behind you, ma'am?'

‘I'm not sufficiently versed in naval architecture to be able to tell from the moulds what sort of vessel we're building.'

‘Do you know what it's not?'

‘It's not a torpedo-boat or a destroyer,' Lindsay said. ‘Or, if it is, it's not like any I've ever seen before.'

‘If I tell you…' Geoffrey Paget hesitated. ‘Will you promise, will you swear, not to discuss the matter with anyone?'

‘Who would I discuss…? Yes,' Lindsay said, ‘you have my word.'

‘Total secrecy, Linnet,' Tom put in.

She inclined away from them and surveyed the battens and scrive lines that were already in place. Towards the top of the loft a team of carpenters were mocking up a portion of the hull in rough frames and sections, a procedure that even she knew was unusual.

She had no doubt at all that the boat was a weapon of war.

‘Total secrecy,' Lindsay agreed.

‘It's a submarine,' Geoffrey Paget said, ‘a brand-new type of submarine.'

And Lindsay, for no reason that she could explain, experienced within her a first faint stirring of fear.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Marching with the Times

It did not take Lindsay long to recover an interest in what was going on at Aydon Road and to discover why Lieutenant Commander Paget had been so touchy about her unexpected appearance in the loft.

The answer lay in the echoing corridors of the Admiralty building in Whitehall, where Admiral Sir John Fisher was manoeuvring to impose his will upon the salty old die-hards who resisted his proposals for modernising the navy. They, the salty old die-hards, believed that the legacy of Frobisher and Drake, Raleigh and Nelson, was sufficient to sustain them and that as the British fleet had always been the finest in the world it was bound to remain so by deed of history. Fisher, however, had a weather eye on Germany's growing fleet at Kiel and let it be known that he would seize any excuse to destroy it without formal declaration of war, a threat that naturally caused panic in the arrogant and suspicious Germans as well as the arrogant and suspicious gentlemen of Westminster.

The fact that Jackie Fisher had the ear of the sovereign and, whatever his faults as a diplomat, could not be accused of lacking patriotism, gave him an edge over his detractors. To shake off the complacent torpor that had paralysed the naval authorities for so long, he was granted funds to undertake a rebuilding programme the like of which had never been seen: an immense combination of shipbuilding skills and talents designed to ensure Britain's domination of the seas for a century or more. Armour-plate, guns, warships: the list of orders that went out into the land was astonishing, and Franklin's, that modest little Clydeside firm, was not forgotten.

Under special licence from Vickers, to Franklin's fell the honour of building the prototype of a new class of ocean-going submarine based on designs by the Royal Navy's most experienced architects. That Vickers had apparently been overlooked and the navy's own construction yards similarly bypassed spoke volumes for the First Sea Lord's deviousness. He knew how critical the old curmudgeons would be if the vessel failed to meet standards or, worse, went down with all hands, for there were already far too many senior officers in command positions who regarded submarines as flash-in-the-pan. It was just as well to have the thing built up in Scotland by a firm so small and inconsequential that it would make an ideal scapegoat if the design proved faulty or something went horribly wrong on the trials.

Donald and Martin were in the process of finalising the contract. Tom had been heavily involved in preliminary discussions and had spent rather too much time in consultation with Royal Navy architects, engineering officers and gunnery experts, all of whom seemed eager to add a wrinkle or frill to the elaborate drawings from which the prototype would be constructed. She would be propelled on the surface by two massive diesel engines, far larger and more powerful than any ever fitted into a submersible before. She would be ocean-going and fast, carry three guns and a crew of twenty-two and, according to Fisher, would make mincemeat of anything afloat, particularly if it happened to be German.

Even during her first confinement Lindsay had heard something of the war in the Far East, of great sea battles fought between the Russian and Japanese fleets when tactical use of torpedoes had changed the nature of sea warfare during the routs at Vladivostock, Chemulpho and Port Arthur.

If she had been livelier and not burdened by the duties of marriage and motherhood she might have taken a keener interest in what was going on halfway around the world. But by then she was nursing a child, a son, and all her perspectives had altered. Soon after Philip was born a strange new component crept into her thinking: not fear – not exactly fear – but an inescapable nagging feeling that every bullet, every shell, every torpedo fired anywhere would create a resonance that might somehow damage her children. There was nothing supernatural about it, no element of prescience. It stemmed only from physical weakness coupled to Forbes's insistence that she remain buried at home.