‘Hm,’ I answered, thinking that if we did have cards made up or put ourselves in the Post Office Directory as Mrs Gilver and Mr Osborne, the world being what it was, Mr Osborne would have cases coming out of his pipe and Mrs Gilver would be reduced to making up invoices and filing. (Not that any of our cases had ever produced much to be filed. What is it that people who file file, I wonder?) ‘You’ll be ten steps ahead before today’s out if you’ll shut up and listen.’
‘I’m all ears,’ Alec said.
And so I told him about Mirren Aitken of Aitkens’ Emporium and how she had fallen in love with Dugald Hepburn of House of Hepburn and how the Aitkens had refused to countenance such miscegenation, such soiling of the good name of Aitken with such upstarts, and such poor stock, with such shameful secrets they could not be spoken of, and how the Aitken obduracy had driven Mirren away from her home into the cold, cruel world.
Alec was silent when I finished.
‘So she’s run off with him,’ he said. ‘What are we supposed to do about it? It’s her father’s job to stand over the boy with a shotgun.’
‘Yes, but listen,’ I said. ‘Of the four Aitkens I’ve met this morning only her paternal grandmother agrees with you. Her mother – Abigail – seems convinced that the girl is in some kind of peril – no, not that kind; stop snorting – and her father is, I am sure, just as rattled but he’s trying to hide it and bungling the attempt so that nothing about his demeanour makes any sense at all.’
‘How d’you mean?’
‘The other grandmother,’ I went on, ignoring him, ‘the one who sent me the card, is furious. White with suppressed rage. And – here’s the thing, Alec – she wanted me to come tomorrow. Not today. She was livid that I’d come today. Even livider that I spoke to her daughter and the other granny, as if some wonderful plan has got away from her and she can’t get it back again.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘So I think it’s pretty clear what we need to do. I’ll go along to the jubilee and keep an eye on them all, and you come and do what I’d have done tomorrow, today. See if you can work out why Grandmama didn’t want me to.’
‘And what would you have done tomorrow?’ said Alec. ‘Or today if she hadn’t stopped you.’
I noted that all thoughts of the equal partnership had withered and he was asking for instructions like an errand boy.
‘Find these Hepburns, find out if Dugald has taken off too. See if anyone has an idea where they might have gone to. You might even find her, if they’ve taken her in. If they’re all for it on his side.’
‘Hepburn,’ said Alec slowly, writing down the name. ‘Did the girl’s family say the boy’s lot were keen then?’
‘Well, Granny Mary hinted that they might be climbers,’ I said. ‘But apart from Granny Bella no one said much about them at all. They can hardly pronounce the name of Hepburn without choking.’ I would have said more but I could hear footsteps approaching and so we rang off, with a plan in place to meet for tea and share our afternoon’s gleanings.
‘Ready, Mrs Gilver?’ said Mary, stalking into the room and looking just a little disappointed not to overhear the end of my conversation. She glared at the instrument as though she hoped to discern some fading echo of what had been spoken into it. ‘You can come along in the first motor with Mrs John and myself.’
But Bella – Mrs John – coming in at her heels would have none of it.
‘Nonsense, Mary,’ she said. ‘You and I are going together and Jack and Abby were to follow on with Mirren. So it makes sense for Mrs Gilver to go in Mirren’s place.’
‘Oh, yes, please do, Mrs Gilver,’ said Abigail’s voice from the doorway where she was hovering. ‘Everyone will be expecting three of us, you see.’
I smiled uncertainly, not sure if she really meant to suggest that onlookers would mistake me for a twenty-year-old girl and let the awkward absence go unremarked.
‘And if anyone else is going to be in the first car it should be Jack,’ said Bella Aitken, sotto voce to her sister-in-law. She was not quite above all scrabbling for precedence then; she had an eye on her son’s deserts as the Aitken heir.
‘I’ll be very happy to,’ I said to Abigail, judging that more might be learned in a journey with her than with her mother. ‘Good to see you’ve decided to go after all.’ For she had substituted a short linen coat for the shawl and had most of the misrule which reigned in place of her crowning glory hidden with a straw hat, but it had to be admitted that these efforts seemed to have sapped her and she was paler than ever and wavering a little as she stood there.
‘Good,’ said Bella Aitken. ‘Right then, Mary.’ She too had tidied herself a little; the pins were gone, although the curls they had been holding were still in place in a row across her head under the brim of a hat which looked to be an old friend. The carpet slippers were gone too and she stumped away across the hall in a stout pair of gunmetal-grey shoes which managed to make her feet look bigger than ever.
A pair of liveried chauffeurs had brought around to the front door two large motorcars of some American provenance. They had their tops thrown back in that way that made me think of perambulators on a sunny day in the park and there were quantities of mauve and gold ribbon festooned around them in the manner of royal carriages. Mary Aitken gave another of her lizard smiles as she saw them and then she frowned.
‘Those rosettes,’ she said. ‘They’re covering the coats of arms. Couldn’t we tuck them up somehow?’ She began to shove some trailing ends of ribbon up away from the plaques on the motorcar doors – peacock feathers and shoals of little fishes, I saw.
‘For the Lord’s sake,’ said her sister-in-law. ‘You’ll have the whole lot undone if you’re not wary.’
‘I don’t think anyone will be wondering who we are, Aunt M,’ said Jack, who was standing on the steps with his hat on the back of his head staring rather aghast at the motorcars. His eyebrows rose even further as one of the chauffeurs climbed down and began fixing little purple flags to the wing mirrors. I cleared my throat and pulled my mouth down hard at the corners, trying not to smile.
‘And you’ll go the right way,’ said Mary Aitken to one of the chauffeurs. ‘The way I told you.’
‘Round and up the wynd, madam,’ said the man.
‘Nice and slow,’ said Mary and turned to let Trusslove hand her in. Bella opened the other door and climbed in herself. Jack handed Abigail in, then me and then let himself in beside me. I shuffled over to the middle of the seat, nudging up against Abigail, an old chagrin smouldering in my bosom. At home, going visiting or to church in our landau, my mother and father always faced forward and the three of us sat with our backs to the driver, my younger brother and sister each with a side seat and a good view of what was passing – for my mother was as sentimental about early childhood as she was practical about travel-sickness – and me stuck in the middle with not enough room for my feet and nothing to look at except my mother looking back at me. It cannot have been for long, despite the fierce impression of injustice it had left upon me, because I was eight by the time my brother was old enough to sit up on his own and he went off to school when I was thirteen. After that, even in the holidays, there was no jostling, because my parents gave up the tradition of taking a footman with them and Edward instantly promoted himself to the seat beside the driver and a chance of holding the reins.
I blinked. It had been years since I had thought about that old feud over the carriage seats; these Aitkens, these fifty-year-old Aitkens still under their mothers’ rule, were a bad influence on me.
‘Clearly,’ I began, as soon as we were under way, pulling out of the drive onto the shady quiet of Abbey Park Place, ‘you have reservations about the alliance with the Hepburn family, but might I just ask, is the boy – this Dugald – is he himself unsatisfactory? Some kind of a wrong ’un?’