Lady of Fortune Read online

  Dougal came into the sitting-room and jubilantly tossed his hat on to the sofa. His face was aglow, as if he had been running. ‘Effie,’ he said, ‘I do believe we’ve cracked it!’

  ‘What have you cracked? Dougal, look at you, you’re so canty! Take off your overcoat!’

  ‘Jack Cutting came in this morning and said that an East African company needs a loan to build a private railway link from Port Florence to Kampala. A million, they need; but the returns should be quick.’

  Effie frowned ‘Surely the government’s already building a railway there.’

  ‘Aye, they are,’ said Dougal, unbuttoning his tweed coat, and shrugging it off. ‘But they haven’t even reached Port Florence yet. They’re more than a year behind time, and they’ve spent nearly five million already. They’ve lost two thousand workers, from tsetse fly and dysentery and charging rhinoceros; and if anybody can come up with a way of finishing the line off quicker, they’ll be in the money.’

  Jerome, the butler, came in, and silently took Dougal’s coat, and retrieved his hat. ‘Jerome,’ said Dougal, ‘will you kindly bring me a drink? In fact, a bottle of champagne! I think we should celebrate.’

  Jerome looked uneasily at Effie, but Effie smiled, and said, ‘Don’t worry. I’ll tell Mrs Cockburn all about it.’

  When Jerome had gone, Dougal dragged his chair closer to Effie, and said, ‘It’s just the chance I need. Jack Cutting will introduce me to the company representatives on Monday. Then we can set up the loan and do all the paperwork through Jack’s department; so that by the time Cockburn gets to hear of it, it will all be a fait accompli. The bank will be committed.’

  ‘Dougal,’ said Effie, ‘supposing the railway company fails? Do you really know enough about it to pledge them a million pounds of the bank’s money? What’s their security?’

  ‘Faith, Effie,’ said Dougal, ‘I’m not an innocent. The chairman of the company is Lord Rethesdale, and he’s personally guaranteed their debts up to three million pounds. Jack says that Rethesdale’s art collection alone is probably worth ten million, and then there’s Rethesdale Hall, and 600 acres of land to go with it. And would a man like Lord Rethesdale commit himself if he wasn’t satisfied with the company’s integrity?’

  ‘But what will Mr Cockburn say, when he finds out what you’ve done?’

  Dougal crossed one leg over the other and grinned. ‘He won’t have any choice but to approve it. For one thing, it’s a sensible loan. For another thing, he won’t want it to go to another bank. And for a third thing, Lord Rethesdale is one of these people who isn’t very forgiving when they’re crossed. Jack and I will take all the credit; and then let’s see if father or Malcolm Cockburn can keep me cooped up in the trust department.’

  Effie finished embroidering the wing of a butterfly with turquoise silk, knotted the thread, and snipped it off with scissors. ‘I just hope that Mr Cockburn doesn’t decide one day to get his own back.’

  ‘He’s too afeared. He still thinks I’m a spy for father. Every time he passes the trust department, he keeks in and gives me a little smile, and a wave, and asks if everything’s all right.’

  ‘But still,’ said Effie, ‘a million pounds …’

  ‘Cockburn will have to approve it,’ Dougal insisted. ‘The profits could be enormous, apart from the interest on the loan itself. Uganda’s full of unexploited treasures! There’s bees-wax, and skins, and rubber, and of course there’s ivory. More important than that, though, his railway will open up the country to white settlement and white trade. Watson’s may have missed the boat when it came to investing in Rhodesia, but they certainly won’t lose Uganda.’

  Effie stood up. She was wearing a new grey dress of London smoke cloth, double-breasted, over an intricate white-lace blouse. Her cheeks had been delicately rouged, and her eyes made up, and she looked very different from the scrubbed and heathery Edinburgh girl who had alighted from the train at King’s Cross only a fortnight ago.

  ‘Dougal,’ she said, ‘I’m frightened for you. I only wish I could come to the office with you and see what you’re doing.’

  ‘Effie,’ said Dougal, a little testily now, ‘I’m seven years your senior, and I’m quite capable of looking after myself.’

  ‘You can trust Jack Cutting?’

  ‘Trust him? We’re like long-lost brothers! In fact, Jack is the kind of brother I should have had, instead of Robert, Och, I can trust him all right. He’s not a Millings, or a Cockburn, or a Niblets.’

  Effie stood behind Dougal, and ran her fingers through his curly hair. He had changed so much since he had come to London, just as she had. They were both happier, both more confident; but since each of them had begun to explore this startling new city of riches and sophistication and endless possibilities, they had begun unknowingly to grow apart. She kissed him on the top of the head, almost regretfully. She missed him, and she didn’t yet know why.

  ‘I’m meeting Jack tomorrow for dinner,’ said Dougal, looking up at her. ‘I’d like it if you could come.’

  Effie looked towards the mantelpiece. Next to all the invitations to the Cockburns for dinners and dances and soirées and receptions, stood a single pale-blue letter from Henry Baeklander, imploring Effie to answer his proposal before he sailed to Tangier. ‘You have given me no indication yet, my love, and even if I am unworthy of your attention, I am at least worthy of a reply.’

  She said to Dougal, ‘I’m sorry. I can’t. Henry Baeklander is calling for me.’

  ‘You’re not stepping out with him?’

  ‘Of course not. I haven’t arranged for a chaperone.’

  ‘I don’t like him, you know,’ said Dougal. ‘He’s too vain, for one thing.’

  Effie touched his hand. ‘You mustn’t be jealous. He’s not nearly as terrible as you think he is.’

  ‘You’re not serious about him? I mean, you’d not think of marrying him?’

  ‘No,’ said Effie, in a very soft voice. ‘He flattered me. He made me feel elegant, and London, and all grown-up. But, no. I don’t want to be a wife yet. I want to be someone wealthy, and famous, in her own right. I don’t want ever to have to ask anyone for money; not father, not mother, not Vera Cockburn, not you. There’s an individual inside this gown, Dougal; an individual who wants to be recognised as Effie Watson, not as Thomas Watson’s daughter, or Henry Baeklander’s wife, or Dougal Watson’s sister.’

  ‘Aye, well,’ sighed Dougal squeezing her hand. ‘I always said you were heels-ower-gowdie.’

  Effie walked across to the mirror, and primped her freshly-brushed Gibson-girl hairstyle. ‘Is Jack taking you back to his house?’

  ‘He’s taking us to Rule’s.’

  ‘Us?’

  Dougal took out his pocket handkerchief, and wiped his nose. ‘Me and his sister, Prudence,’ he said, airily.

  Effie turned around from the mirror and looked at Dougal keenly. ‘I do believe you’re blushing. Dougal, you’re blushing!’

  ‘Don’t be so absurd,’ Dougal protested. ‘I met her once, that’s all. She’s a nice enough girl. Jack’s just bringing her along for the company.’

  ‘You’re stricken for love!’ Effie wracked him. ‘You can’t fool me, Dougal Watson! You’ve fallen for Jack’s sister like a sheep down a well!’

  ‘Och, you don’t know what you’re talking about,’ said Dougal. ‘She’s a nice girl, that’s all.’

  Effie knelt down beside her brother and took hold of his hands. Her eyes were bright with pleasure and fun. ‘Oh, Dougal, I’ve been so busy thinking about Henry, and what to do about his proposal; and so busy being irritated by Mrs Cockburn, I didn’t see that you were love-struck, too! Is she pretty?’

  ‘Well, she is,’ said Dougal, gruffly. ‘But that’s nothing to do with it. She’s Jack’s sister, and I wouldn’t take advantage.’

  ‘Och, no,’ mocked Effie.

  ‘No!’ said Dougal. And then, more quietly, ‘no’.

  Just then, Jerome came in with their champagne, in a hug
e silver champagne cooler which had been presented to the Cockburns by the American silver millionaire John Mackay.

  ‘I think we ought to drink to your leesome love,’ smiled Effie.

  ‘Let’s just drink to East Africa,’ said Dougal.

  Jerome eased off the champagne cork, and kept his eyes superciliously raised to the ceiling while Dougal tasted the wine, as if he were not interested in the slightest in Dougal’s opinion of it.

  Effie, for no reason that she could really think of, watched Dougal sip the champagne with affection, but also with a peculiar feeling of uncertainty.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  They dined upstairs at Rule’s, in the window seat overlooking Maiden Lane. They ate oysters, and roasted quail, and venison with red cabbage. The room was noisy with knives and forks and conversation, and the walls were clustered with theatrical and legal cartoons. Jack Cutting, in a very high stiff collar, looked even smarter and more dandified than ever; but it was Prudence Cutting who held all of Dougal’s attention.

  She was a girl of just twenty, tall, and big-breasted, with a shy and natural grace in every movement she made. Under her plumed hat, she had a wealth of chestnut-brown curls, and her eyes were wide and blue and so dreamy that Dougal felt he could stare into them for ever, without any need to have any conversation with her at all. She wore a blue Eton suit, braided with blue silk, and panelled with folds of matching velvet.

  ‘Jack’s been so enthusiastic about the bank since you’ve been there,’ she told Dougal, in a voice which seemed to him to have the texture of ermine and the softness of snow. ‘I do believe you’ve made a new man of him.’

  ‘I believe you’ve had the same effect on me, Miss Cutting,’ said Dougal.

  Prudence lowered her eyes, although she was obviously used to compliments. ‘One good turn deserves another, Mr Watson.’

  ‘Have you met Lord Rethesdale?’ Dougal asked her.

  ‘Lord Rethesdale? Oh, yes! He’s charming! And handsome! And much more adventurous than his father used to be. He was seriously thinking last year of leading an expedition to the jungles of South America, to see if he could discover rubber in the Matto Grosso.’

  Jack laid his hand over Prudence’s hand, and gave it a squeeze. ‘Young Rethesdale’s always been quite a patron of colonial exploration,’ he added. ‘And I can assure you that he’s very keen on the East African railway spur. He doesn’t think we can lose, and nor do I. You certainly can’t, even if the railway does nothing more than cover its construction costs. The bank will have its thirteen per cent interest, and the invaluable prestige of having been involved in widening the Empire still further, and you will be seen as the architect of one of the finest investments that the bank, and the British nation, have made for years.’

  Dougal put down his knife and fork, and reached for his wine. ‘I can’t wait to hear what father says, when he finds out what I’ve done.’

  Jack smiled. ‘Getting one’s revenge on a stuffy parent is one of the greatest natural joys of human existence.’

  ‘I’ll drink to that,’ said Dougal.

  ‘And so will I,’ said Prudence.

  ‘I can’t imagine your father being so stuffy,’ said Dougal.

  ‘Our father, who incidentally art in heaven, was one of the stuffiest men known to human civilisation,’ smiled Jack. ‘Surely you’ve heard of the Dorset Cuttings? No? Well, our father was Horatio Cutting, gentleman farmer, stockbreeder, and upholder of the church. All I ever learned about life from him was how to castrate a yearling, how to address a bishop, and … that the Song of Solomon was not supposed to be taken literally.’

  Dougal glanced at Prudence, to see if she was blushing at all this talk of libbet horses and purple passages in the Bible. He suddenly thought of the words, thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins, that feed among the lilies, and as he thought of them, Prudence Cutting looked across at him with those dreamy eyes of hers and smiled in such a slow delightful way that he felt the hair prickle around his neck, and his penis uncurl inside his evening trousers, awakened.

  Dougal was handsome and ingenuous, and he had never lacked for girlfriends in Edinburgh. But the young ladies of Thistle Street and Henderson Row had been all giggle and tease and ‘Och, no, Dougal, you mustn’t,’ and he had spent long and agonising hours at tea with the girls and their mothers, despondently nibbling petticoat tails and making small talk about holidays in Nairn, and he had usually achieved nothing at all (except once, with Harriet McQueen, when he had managed to thrust his hand up between thighs that were soft and white and hot, and kiss her wildly all over her nose and her chin; and emerge from her house in Royal Terrace at four o’clock of a winter’s afternoon, when it was just beginning to sleet, cupping his hand to his nose so that he could smell again the wonderful pungency with which she had anointed his fingertips).

  He had lost his virginity at the age of eighteen, to his piano instructress, Miss Maidment, on the tasselled rug of her dark, stale living-room in Moray Place. It had happened with extraordinary violence, in between Youthful Days and The Blue Bells of Scotland (Key of G Major), and Dougal’s flourishing skill with the piano had never been the same since. Miss Maidment had panted. Dougal, even with his attention fixed on the stuffed osprey which had watched him with such disapproval from the glass dome over the fireplace, had ejaculated too soon. Afterwards, he had walked home the long way round, along Heriot Row to Dundas Street, and then south on Hanover Street to George Street, and he had wondered why the day was so balmy and calm, and why the pink blossom had budded, and how the smoke could have risen from the chimneys of Frederick Street with such equanimity.

  That Sunday, in church, he had felt himself reddening when the minister had referred to ‘sins of the flesh’, and he had prayed fervently into his pillow that night that the Lord should not take him and dash him into the eternal fires for what he had done with Miss Maidment. The Lord, fortunately, had not; and he had done the same thing with Miss Maidment six times more. The last time, however, Miss Maidment had cried. She had just heard that her fiancé Gerald had died in Mandalay. She had begged Dougal to take his piano lessons elsewhere. He had; but he only had to hear the first few notes of Merry Christmas Mazurka, and he would think of her. Red-haired, bonny in her way, with pink lips and hair between her legs as bright as marmalade.

  ‘Do you box, Mr Watson?’ asked Prudence, as they ate crystallised chestnuts.

  ‘Box?’

  ‘You have an athletic look about you, if you don’t mind my saying so.’

  Dougal rubbed his right first. ‘Well, yes, I did box for a while. I was school champion.’

  Prudence smiled. ‘I love violent men. The more violent, the better.’

  ‘I don’t know that I’m violent,’ said Dougal. But what she had said disturbed him, and also intrigued him. He looked at Jack but Jack only smiled. Behind him, at the next table, Sir Herbert Tree was banging the table with his hand and singing the music-hall song, ‘Have you heard how centuries ago, boys; Young John Bull all at once began to grow, boys!’ He had already drunk two bottles of Gamay de l’Ardeche, and the wine-waiter, patiently and ostentatiously, was opening up a third.

  ‘On Monday,’ said Jack, ‘we will meet the two principals involved in the East Africa Company, Mr Snetterton and Mr Plant. They will give us all the particulars we will need for raising the loan; and the necessary papers. There is no reason why we shouldn’t be able to arrange the advance within the week.’

  ‘When will you tell Mr Cockburn?’ asked Daugal.

  ‘When the papers are all signed, and sealed and witnessed. Not before.’

  ‘You don’t think that’s too much of a risk?’ Dougal asked him.

  ‘There’s no other way. We have to commit the bank in writing, or Cockburn will refuse to pay up.’

  ‘He could still refuse to pay up, couldn’t he? Or find a way to defer the loan so long that the whole project runs out of steam.’

  ‘I’ve taken care of that,’ sa
id Jack. ‘One of my old school chums works for The Times. On the day we sign the deal, he will carry a story about it in the financial columns, and praise Watson’s for their foresight and their good investment sense. Cockburn will hardly be able to say that the deal’s off after that.’

  ‘I’m still not sure,’ said Dougal.

  ‘None of us can be sure until the loan is actually advanced, in hard cash. But I don’t think that you should forget who you are. You are, after all, Thomas Watson’s younger son, and that counts for something. Cockburn won’t dare to make too much of a stink, in case he offends your pater.’

  Dougal looked from Jack to Prudence, and then back again. ‘I suppose the risk is worth taking,’ he said.

  Jack drummed the handle of his knife on the table. ‘That’s the spirit! Let the East African railway spur proceed! Success for all! Your share will be fifty elephant tusks a month, delivered by special messenger!’

  ‘I hope you’re joking,’ grinned Dougal.

  ‘Oh, I’m joking all right,’ said Jack. ‘I promise you, I’m joking.’

  They left the restaurant a little after midnight, and walked arm-in-arm down to the Strand, where Jack hailed a hansom cab to take himself and Prudence home to Hampstead. Jack shook Dougal’s hand firmly, and said, ‘Have no fear, old man. We’ll pull this one off a treat.’

  Prudence came close to him, holding up her skirts slightly to stop them from trailing across the wet pavements. Her ostrich-plume hat danced in the light from the nearby gas-standard, on the glass of which was stencilled, ‘This Way To the District Rly’. The cab-driver’s horse shuffled and coughed, its brown blanket soaked by the steady London rain. Prudence took Dougal’s arm, and he could smell her sweet, distinctive perfume. It reminded him of lily-of-the-valley.

  ‘This evening has been so much more than the usual pleasure,’ said Dougal. ‘You have transformed a business conference into a sheer delight.’

  Prudence gave him a coquettish little curtsey. ‘And so, Mr Watson, have you.’