The Piper's Tune (55 page)

‘To look for Gowry,' Forbes answered, then, fumbling for a low gear, steered his uncle's motor-car away from the stables and out into Aydon Road.

*   *   *

‘I thought it would be you,' Sylvie said. ‘I didn't really expect him to come himself. I did what you told me to do, but it did not do one bit of good, did it?'

‘That depends,' Gowry said.

‘It doesn't depend on Forbes, though.'

Already the conversation was becoming horribly slewed, but then, Gowry thought, everything about the situation was already horribly slewed.

Sylvie said, ‘If we had been depending on Forbes he would have called round last night, wouldn't he not now? I must say, Gowry, you do take me for a fool sometimes. I enjoyed it, though, I enjoyed telling them. It was fun, in its way, even if it did me no good in the long run.'

She tied the ribbons of her sun-bonnet with tiny, butterfly movements. Her hands looked tinier than ever and her skin was almost translucent. She seemed to be all stomach, swollen up in front, reduced everywhere else. When she moved, however, she wasn't clumsy. Even her flat-heeled gait had about it, Gowry thought, a certain daintiness that housed and protected her appeal.

She said, ‘Did Forbes send you to punish me?'

‘Nope. He doesn't want to punish you, Sylvie.'

‘What
will
he do, Gowry-Wowry, now he has lost me?'

‘Sylvie, I've no idea,' Gowry lied. ‘Why don't you forget about Forbes?'

She patted her stomach. ‘How can I?'

‘It might not be his, you know,' Gowry said.

‘It's not your baby.' She pouted. ‘It's Forbes's baby.'

‘What makes you so certain?' Gowry asked.

‘I
know
it is. I
feel
it is.'

‘Well,' Gowry said, ‘I suppose that's as good an answer as any.'

‘It's the only answer you will ever get, dearest,' Sylvie said. ‘Are you taking me out for the day? You promised you would and, as you can see' – she pirouetted slowly before him – ‘I'm all ready.'

‘Sure and I'm taking you out,' Gowry said. ‘Where's Albert?'

‘Still sleeping, sleeping it off.'

‘You didn't tell him what happened yesterday, did you?'

‘He would not have understood.' She pirouetted again, lazily, her arms stuck out like rudimentary wings. ‘The wife was not so very upset. I had tea with them, with
both
wives. Perhaps they knew all along, about me, I mean, and that's why they weren't surprised to see me.'

‘They didn't know about you.'

‘She didn't know about the baby? You didn't tell her about the baby?'

‘No,' Gowry said. ‘I thought it would be more conclusive if you told her.'

‘Oh, it was,' said Sylvie. ‘Absolutely positively conclusive. Did she give him what-for when he got home last night?'

‘She walked out on him.'

‘Did she now?'

Realising his error at once, Gowry reached lightly for her arm. ‘Now, Sylvie, don't go getting your hopes up. She'll be back in a day or two.'

‘And he won't leave her?'

‘Never,' Gowry said. ‘I think you know that already.'

She nodded, large movements of her little, bonneted head.

‘Is that why you sent me to my papa's wife's house? To see for myself?'

‘Yes, and to let them see you,' Gowry said.

‘To let them know I exist,' she said.

‘That's it,' said Gowry. ‘Now, if you're ready, we had better be pushing along before Albert wakes up and blames us for his sore head.'

She giggled. ‘Very well, dearest. If we are leaving at once perhaps you would be good enough to carry King Edward down to the motor-car for me.'

‘King Edward?' Gowry said.

Indicating a bulky, brown-paper-wrapped package on the table, Sylvie said, ‘My royal scrapbooks. I want to take them with me.'

‘But why?' he asked.

‘In case I don't come back,' she said.

*   *   *

The sound was like a drum inside his head. He opened his eyes. Shoals of pure black tadpoles swam through pond light until they were consumed by two or three large red flashes that may or may not have been carp.

Albert burped, swallowed and sat up in bed.

The sour taste of Irish rye whiskey in his mouth reminded him of the night before and he wondered how he had got from Kirby's to the nether end of Maryhill Road. His last recollection was of tumbling downstairs at the club and falling full length into the lane.

Sliding his stained shirt sleeves up, he peered at his elbows and confirmed that they were heavily bruised. He put his head in his hands, groaned and listened to the remorseless thud, thump, thud, thump of the big steam hammer that reverberated inside his skull.

‘Sylvie?' he shouted: no shout at all, a dry crackle. ‘Syl-veee?'

There was no answer. There seldom was. She did not run to do his bidding like a dutiful daughter. As she kept reminding him, she was not his real daughter at all and if he wanted a servant to dance attendance upon him then he had better scratch up the money to employ one now that Morag and the cook had been dismissed. He missed the ministrations of a good obedient woman in the mornings more than he missed hugs and cuddles at night.

Now, in the sick, sour, stenchy state of the monumentally hung-over he needed his wife, his good, true, loyal and devoted wife, his Florence, to cradle and cosset him. But Florence was gone, never to return, and soon he would have no one to turn to, for Sylvie would be occupied with baby, baby, baby as soon as the poor wee bastard popped into the cruel, cruel world.

‘Sylvie, sweetheart, please stop that noise.'

The thudding continued unabated.

Albert rolled out of bed.

He was trouserless, drawerless and practically shirtless too, for the garment was ripped from collar to midriff and stained with – something; not blood, thank God, not blood. Still examining his fragile frame, he crabbed to the bedroom door and went out into the hall, heading for the water closet.

It was only when he reached the hallway that he realised that the unremitting racket was definitely emanating from somewhere outside his head. He glanced towards the drawing-room and mumbled, ‘Sylvie?' while, more by instinct than neural command, his feet swung him towards the apartment's big main door.

‘All right, all right, I'm coming, I'm coming.'

He opened the door and squinted into the dismal light of the landing.

‘You?' he said. ‘You?'

‘Where is she, Albert?'

‘Through the – in the – what are
you
doing here, Tom Calder?' He swung round, his head floating before him like a punctured balloon. He blinked, and peered at the drawing-room door, then, rolling his eyes, at the door of Sylvie's bedroom. ‘Is she – I mean, did she send for you? She isn't having – hasn't had…'

‘The baby?' Tom stepped past him, looking round too. ‘For God's sake, Albert, don't tell me you're drunk at a time like this? Where is she?'

‘In the … on the … I don't know,' said Albert, helplessly. ‘I haven't been too well myself lately.'

‘Out of my damned way.'

Tom strode across the hall and flung open the drawing-room door. He studied the room from the threshold for a moment or two, then, cutting a series of diagonals across the hall, flung open the doors to the kitchen, the bedrooms and, finally, the lavatory.

One hand laid against his cheek like a man with toothache, Albert watched Tom complete the inspection.

‘She isn't in the apartment. Where is she, Albert? Did McCulloch come for her? Did Forbes take her away?'

‘McCulloch?'

‘Forbes McCulloch, the person who's been paying your rent.'

‘Oh, yes. Forbes. No, he wouldn't come for her. He abandoned her.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘Wants no more to do with her since she got – you know.'

‘Is it not his child?'

Albert raised his other hand, pressed it hard against his other cheek, causing his moustache to flick out at the ends like torpedo fins. He groaned once more, low and crooning. ‘Yes, yes, it's his child. There's no doubt of that. I had nothing to do with it. Had to happen sooner or later, nature being what it is, had to happen. How did you…'

‘Find out? Sylvie called on my wife yesterday afternoon.'

‘Your wife?' For a moment it seemed that Albert had forgotten about Tom Calder's marriage, then he said, ‘To the Franklin girl, yes, right, of course. You married the Franklin girl.'

‘Sylvie told my wife everything.'

‘And your wife told you?'

‘Of course she told me. What's more, Sylvie showed herself to Lindsay McCulloch and told both of them the whole sad, sordid story. Don't tell me that you didn't know? I thought you'd sent her to ask for money?'

‘Money? Me? No, not me. No.' Alarm at the unjust accusation awakened Albert's wits. ‘Wait,' he said. ‘I have to go to the lavatory. Back in a mo'.'

In the clean, cool, tiled room Albert relieved himself. He bathed his face with tap water and washed out his mouth. He drank half a tumbler of water slowly and then, a little revived if not exactly refreshed, returned to the hall.

Tom was in the drawing-room, looking down into the street.

The sky had a funny tinge to it, whisky-coloured, sour. Even from the heights of the Mansions you could see no distance at all.

Albert stared bleakly at the window, waiting for Tom Calder to make the next move which, with any luck, might even be an offer of financial assistance.

Tom turned.

‘Are you lying to me, Albert? Do you really not know where Sylvie is?'

‘Would I lie to—no, I don't. I really do not.'

Still clad only in the torn shirt, he seated himself on the arm of the sofa and modestly tucked the shirt-tails into his lap. He told himself that he had negotiated with Tom Calder too many times in the past to be intimidated and he was confident that paternal sentiment would leave Sylvie's father vulnerable to the right kind of persuasion.

It did not occur to him that Tom Calder too had changed.

‘When did you see her last?' Tom asked.

‘Yesterday, in the forenoon.'

‘Here?'

‘Yes, here. I left about noon to go into the city on business.'

‘Drinking business, I suppose,' Tom said. ‘Was Sylvie here when you got back last night?'

‘I think – yes, I'm sure she was. Tucked up in bed.'

‘You don't know, do you, Albert?' Tom did not await an answer. ‘How long has she known Forbes McCulloch?'

‘If you mean how long has she been his – his sweetheart, five years going on six. I didn't approve of the arrangement and all I can say is, thank God her mother, that Florence isn't alive to see what's befallen her daughter. Yes, I say daughter, Tom; although she wasn't, she seemed like it, and Florence and I both thought of her as our flesh, our own dear child.' He placed a finger to the corner of his eye and brushed at an invisible tear. ‘Since McCulloch abandoned her things have been very bad for us. She, the dear girl, knows how worried I've been about making ends meet what with the baby coming and all, and how I've not been well. I mean, she wouldn't stoop, would not humiliate herself by begging Forbes to give her money. She wanted to go to you, to take you into her confidence. She knew you'd understand, that you'd see us right until we got straightened out and back on our feet. But I said no. No, I said. Tom's got a life of his own and a wife of his own and a house of his own and he doesn't want to be bothered with you. But' – Albert paused for breath, sighed, gestured with an open palm – ‘obviously she didn't heed my advice. Swallowed her pride, not for her sake, for my sake, my sake and the baby's.'

Tom listened patiently and apparently without scepticism to the harangue. He listened without moving from his stance by the window, his arms folded, long chin tucked down almost to his breastbone.

Albert watched for a sign, any sign – a quiver of the lip, a clenching of the fingers, a quick moist flutter of the eyelids – that he was making headway, getting through, but Tom's expression was remarkably unrevealing.

‘So,' Albert said, ‘will you help her, Tom? She's been a foolish girl, a wicked girl, she's aware of that, she's ready to admit it, but she has no one else to turn to now, no one else who will stand by her in her time of need, and you, after all, are her papa.'

‘Where is she, Albert? She's more than eight months pregnant. Where is she?'

It was the one question that Tom had no right to ask, the one question to which he, Albert Hartnell, could not fudge an answer, a question that nullified all that had gone before and wasted the long heart-rending, hypocritical speech that had been the one and only card in his hand.

He covered his eyes to hide his tears.

‘Oh, Tom,' he said, sincerely. ‘Oh, Tom, I wish to God I knew.'

*   *   *

Gowry drove for a little over an hour. Even at speed the motion of the Vauxhall generated no cooling breeze. The air seemed almost abrasive, stinging his cheekbones and brow. He followed the route that Forbes and he had driven one afternoon not long after his brother's break-up with Sylvie. They had talked about it then in a general sort of way and before he'd had any reason to take Forbes's suggestion seriously.

She bounced beside him, knees spread under the summer dress, one fist on the padded rim of the panel, the other hand held not to her bonnet but to her stomach as if to keep in place whatever nestled within her.

Fifteen miles out the road narrowed and dipped into the valley under the ridge of the Ottershaw Hills and the twin rivers that watered the plain became visible. The sky to the west was marked by a long, flat plain of matt black cloud that lay motionless behind the mountains.