The Piper's Tune (60 page)

‘No.'

‘Stay then. See the children. We'll all have supper together.'

‘Geoffrey's waiting for me at my hotel.'

‘My God! First you tell me you want terms, you
demand
bloody terms for what I did, then you waltz out of here and into bed with your sailor boy.'

‘I'm beginning to think you don't want me back. Is the price too high, Forbes, is that it?' Lindsay made towards the door. ‘I must go. I've no wish to keep Geoffrey waiting.'

Forbes got to his feet. ‘He's leaving for London on Monday, or did he neglect to mention that interesting little fact?'

‘I know perfectly well he's leaving on Monday,' Lindsay said.

‘What will you do then, sweetheart?' Forbes said.

‘Go with him, perhaps,' said Lindsay.

‘Never! You'll never leave the boys, or the firm, or your father.' He straightened and fashioned the swaggering little gesture that she both loved and hated. ‘Or me,' he said. ‘Or me.'

‘Well, Forbes,' Lindsay said, ‘I hope you're willing to take the chance.'

And then she left.

*   *   *

Sunday would be their last day together. She did not know when she would see him again or if she would ever see him again but, oddly, she took on trust Geoffrey's assurances that they would meet as often as his duties allowed and that, with luck, he would be back in Scotland before the year was out.

In the morning, after breakfast, they attended church together, sat together, sang together in the strange echoing surroundings of the old Tron Kirk, unrecognised in the packed congregation. After lunch, they went walking, not in Kelvingrove but on Glasgow Green where Lindsay had never been before. She tried to imagine how difficult it must be for Sylvie Calder, a stranger in a new country, but she could not hold her concern for the girl in mind for long. Although she was content to be with Geoffrey, there was in her an odd impatience, as if she had merely stolen time out from the front line and that reality lay not here but elsewhere.

Geoffrey was very understanding. He did not press her, did not attempt to push his way into her other life.

She had told him of her meeting with Forbes, of the ‘terms' she had offered her husband and his reluctance to accept them. She did not have to explain to Geoffrey why she needed terms at all, for he had always understood that what she felt for him was infinitely more complicated than what he felt for her and that her marriage was not over until her husband chose to end it. There were, he knew, no measured miles, no marker buoys, no gauges to record what proportion of their relationship was love and what necessity, or just where selfishness planed into friendship. He had, however, become part of her life, an important part, and that, for the time being, was enough for both of them.

*   *   *

It came as no great surprise when Forbes capitulated.

Perhaps there should have been a meeting, a confrontation between the two men in Lindsay's life, but there was not.

When she returned to the hotel to dress for dinner she found a printed message on a silver tray on the dressing-table in her room, a simple, two-word message relayed through her father.

It said:
‘Forbes accepts.'

And that was when the pain began.

Rationally she had always known that she could not have all that she wanted, a past with Forbes and a future with Geoffrey. Choice not compromise was the reality that she had tried to avoid. She had leaned on Forbes finally, as she had leaned on Geoffrey, and now she must pay for it.

She lay on the bed in her hotel room and wept quietly for a quarter of an hour, weakened by the tensions of the past few days and by the knowledge that she would have to begin rebuilding her life to the pattern that had been handed her. And she wanted Geoffrey, wanted Geoffrey desperately, to justify her love by having him hold her naked in his arms. With an intensity that shook her to the core of her being, she wanted the future that Geoffrey offered, its mystery, its novelty. She wanted Geoffrey to be her love, her lover and her saviour. And yet she also wanted Forbes, her children, the ruined marriage that must be rebuilt, the opportunity that her grandfather had offered her to fulfil a role in the closed little world of the Franklin family.

Now the decision had been made.

She supposed that she might still back out, throw everything to the winds, but even as the thought crossed her mind she discarded it.

Tomorrow morning, early, Geoffrey and she must say goodbye.

There was, however, always tonight.

*   *   *

When the old-fashioned horse-drawn hansom rolled up to the kerb, Sergeant Corbett immediately leaped out of the office doorway with more alacrity than seemed right in a man of his years.

He had obviously been watching out for her and was quick to take the portmanteau from the hold and offer her a hand down the step.

‘Am I expected, Sergeant?' Lindsay asked.

‘Aye, Mr Forbes told me to look out for you.'

‘And I'm late,' said Lindsay.

‘Been away, Mrs McCulloch, have you?' Sergeant Corbett asked as he lugged the portmanteau towards the door. ‘Bit of a holiday, was it?'

‘Bit of a holiday, yes,' Lindsay answered. ‘A day or two, that's all. I came directly from the railway station.'

‘Like me to keep the case in my cubby while you're upstairs?'

‘If you would, Sergeant, thank you.'

Even the commissionaire seemed unsure. She wondered what tales had been circulating around the yard, what sort of gossip George Crush had managed to generate. It hardly mattered. In a week or two it would all blow over and some other sensation, small or large, would take its place.

She stood in the foyer looking up at the staircase.

She had a thin little ache within her, not entirely unpleasant, and an empty feeling in the region of her heart that would not be filled until the first letter arrived from the south.

She had told the sergeant the truth, or part of it; she had come from the railway station. She had seen Geoffrey off on the London train at half past eight o'clock. He had been at his smartest, in uniform, cap squared, his baggage, worn and rather salt-stained, on the porter's barrow at his side. He did not, Lindsay noted, travel as lightly as she had imagined he would.

They had kissed in the corridor of the hotel.

They'd kissed again, almost without touching, on the railway platform. He had boarded the train at the last possible moment, just as great white plumes of steam had rolled back from the locomotive and the guard's whistle had shrilled. Lindsay shed no tears: she had nothing left to weep for. Geoffrey hadn't moved inside but leaned casually in the compartment window, glancing this way and that – then at her. Then at her. Smiling at her. Trim and reassuring, and satisfied.

‘Write to me, darling,' Geoffrey said.

‘I will,' she'd told him, as couplings clanked and the carriages began to draw tightly away. ‘I will.'

She hadn't walked after the train. She'd stayed where she was, motionless, until the curve of the track carried him out of sight. She'd felt very alone, however, when she returned to the hotel to settle her bill and collect the portmanteau; very alone in the hansom too, clipping through the Glasgow streets in soft August sunlight, alone yet not alone, sad yet not sad, somehow oddly eager to arrive at where she belonged.

She hesitated. She knew what awaited her upstairs, the curious faces of men who were her partners, not just in shipbuilding but in life, her father and uncle, cousin Martin, Tom Calder too, and Forbes, her husband.

She went quickly upstairs and along the corridor, opened the door of the boardroom and stepped inside. It looked almost as it had done that day eight years ago when she had nervously attended her first management meeting, the panorama of the Clyde, lean and brown and sinewy, spread in the window, berths and sheds and jib cranes scattered untidily on the shores. She could smell tobacco and mingled with it the distinctive odour of the river and its industries that still brought a lift of pride to her heart.

Donald was seated at the head of the table, Mr Harrington by his side. Her father and Tom had their heads together discussing a diagram that Tom had drawn on his pad. Martin, arms folded, was watching the door, ready to greet her with a cheerful nod and a wink. And Forbes, grim and anxious, was over by the window, his shoulders resting against the glass. When he saw her, his expression changed and he could not quite disguise the relief in his eyes.

‘There you are,' he said gruffly. ‘It's about time too.'

‘Ah, Lindsay,' Uncle Donald said. ‘I'm so glad you could come.'

She lingered, at a loss, at the table's end.

How would they regard her now? Would they admire or condemn her for wresting power from her husband, for forgiving him his transgressions only at a price? Did they, perhaps, wonder what she had been up to all day yesterday, and all night too perhaps, with the First Lord's right-hand man?

Well, Lindsay thought, as she pulled out a chair at the table, they'll just have to wonder, won't they, for I'm not going to tell them.

‘Gentlemen,' she said, smiling, ‘don't you think it's time we began?'

Also by Jessica Stirling

The Spoiled Earth

The Hiring Fair

The Dark Pasture

The Deep Well at Noon

The Blue Evening Gone

The Gates of Midnight

Treasures on Earth

Creature Comforts

Hearts of Gold

The Good Provider

The Asking Price

The Wise Child

The Welcome Light

A Lantern for the Dark

Shadows on the Shore

The Penny Wedding

The Marrying Kind

The Workhouse Girl

The Island Wife

The Wind from the Hills

The Strawberry Season

Prized Possessions

PIPER'S TUNE.
Copyright © 1999 by Jessica Stirling. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

www.stmartins.com

First published in Great Britain by Hodder and Stoughton

A division of Hodder Headline PLC

First U.S. Edition: April 2002

eISBN 9781466869721

First eBook edition: March 2014