Along the street again my steps faltered. Aitkens’ Emporium was no more. The plate glass and revolving door were the same but the mauve and gold livery was gone, the paintwork now picked out in smart black, white and scarlet, with lettering between the ground- and first-floor windows that read: Fair Ladies. The doorman was my friend of old, and he tipped his hat to me: a new, pale grey top hat, to match his morning coat, all very natty with the red and black striped waistcoat and the bright red spats over his black patent shoes.
Inside, the oak floor had been rubbed down to a golden gleam, the wood-panelling had been painted a rich cream colour like buttermilk and everything else of good solid oak which had stood in Aitkens’ Haberdashery for fifty years was gone. The counters were floating tablets of glass with chromium legs and there were no glove drawers, no scarf racks, no bulging shelves of trim anywhere.
‘Mrs Gilver!’ It was Miss Armstrong, in a dress she had clearly not run up herself in her free evenings, but I smiled to see that she still wore a corsage of paper chits in her belt.
‘Where is everything?’ I asked.
‘In the basement,’ she replied. ‘We’re all worn out with running up and down to fetch and carry, but Madam said nothing could be done with the basement to make it fit for our ladies so there you have it. No more Kitchenwares and all the assistants with legs like racehorses from the stairs.’ Miss Armstrong’s legs – I could not help glancing at them – rose from her sturdy brogues to the fashionably asymmetric hem of her frock like two oatmeal puddings.
‘Madam being Mrs Haddo, I presume.’
Miss Armstrong clicked her teeth and shook her head. ‘I still can’t believe what happened to us all since you were here before,’ she said. ‘Well, I know it started when you were here, but you know what I mean.’
‘I do. Is Mr Muir still here? Miss Hutton?’
‘Mr Muir couldn’t get his notice in quick enough but Miss Hutton’s here, still in charge upstairs. When Madam lets her be. You should go up and have a wee look, Mrs Gilver. It’s all change up there, I can tell you.’
‘But how can they afford to do it all?’ I said.
‘I cannot tell you for I do not know,’ said Miss Armstrong. ‘There was no life insurance for Miss Mirren what with it being suicide. And although her shares came back to her father,’ Miss Armstrong’s voice faltered, and I could not help raising my eyebrows, ‘that is Mr Jack, I mean, and Mrs John signed hers away to him too, shares of nothing are nothing. And then it can’t be cheap to keep Mrs Ninian in that fancy place – Miss Hutton’s been to see her and says it’s very comfy.’
‘And how do you like the new regime?’ I said.
Miss Armstrong screwed up her nose. ‘Madam and Miss Hilda – that’s what we call her; it doesn’t seem right to say Mrs Hepburn now – are more fun to work for than Mrs Ninian ever was. And even Mr Jack’s more…’ She stopped and dropped her voice. ‘But can you believe it? How she can even look at him, knowing his mother, his own flesh and blood, did what she did to her own flesh and blood…’
So Miss Armstrong did not know everything. She did not know that the same blood ran in Bella Aitken’s and Hilda Hepburn’s son’s veins and she did not know what the Hepburn men had done to the Aitken women, that there was a great deal of forgetting required on both sides.
I did go upstairs and was unsurprised to see more pale paint, little tables, elegant gowns and pink light bulbs all over the first floor where Gents’ Tailoring, Layette and Junior used to be. I did not need to stop off on the second floor to know that there would be no more eiderdowns on the aisle shelves and flannel sheets behind. I could hear the hiss of a tea urn – a new tea urn, a very clean hiss and no clanking at all – and could smell frangipani as I passed on the stairs.
The attics were worse than ever, jammed to the door with discarded Aitkens’ stock so that one could no longer wander through the maze of little rooms and up and down the dark back corridors. I only really wanted to see the landing, but I could not find my way. I could have sworn that I was standing in the attic which had been the ante-room with the stock sheets and lanterns before – I recognised the shelves around the walls and the old ledgers mouldering there, but there was no sign of the door leading out to the top of the stairs and the lift. I played my electric torch all around (I had come prepared for this little pilgrimage) and that is when I saw that the door had been boarded up and the boards papered over. A shiver passed through me. I retraced my steps, descended to the first floor, skirted around the back of the Gowns Department and tried the other stair. It should have opened right onto the landing but at the top, above the tearoom, again it ended in a blank plastered wall. It was bricked up; the landing where Mirren had died and from where Dugald had fallen was simply gone.
From the first-floor balcony below looking up, there was no more to be seen. No ledge, no opening with black curtains, just blank wall painted in the same cream colour and dappled by the sun through the stained-glass window. An assistant, one I did not recognise, saw me standing there staring, and frowned at me. I flushed, dropped my head and left Aitkens’ – Fair Ladies, as it was now – knowing I would never return.
It took quite some time on the rattling little motorbus out from Waverley station into the rolling hills of East Lothian. I had never been here before, except for whisking past on a London-bound train, but at first glance it appealed to me. The sky was larger than in Perthshire, making me think of Suffolk and those roiling clouds which take up half Constable’s canvas sometimes. This spring day the sky was a gentle blue, almost white at the horizon but pale even high above my head, and the drive, long and straight, passed between two rows of birches, just putting on their fresh green coats for the year.
The main house stood foursquare at the top of the drive but behind and around it I could see numerous little white bungalows with red roofs and blue paint. There were white fences around tiny gardens and only the slopes instead of steps at every door hinted that this village was unusual in any way.
The big front door stood open and I stepped in, quite diffidently but not wanting to take someone from a more important task to come and welcome me. A corridor led away towards sunlight at the back of the house and I ventured along it, coming out eventually into a kind of solarium or orangery. It was very warm, but still most of the ladies were tucked up under knee-blankets and with shawls around their shoulders. I looked around them, nodding in answer to their smiles and waves, for they were all pleased to see a visitor, even a strange one, and then at last I heard a cry of greeting.
Mary Aitken, sitting upright and smiling in her bath-chair, beckoned to me.
‘Mrs Gilver,’ she said, and my heart leapt with pleasure. It was not distinct. ‘Mezzz Gilluh’ would be the best approximation, but she was speaking and my greeting to her was not diplomacy.
‘Mrs Aitken. My, you look well!’ I bent and kissed her cheek. ‘I didn’t expect to see you looking so well. How are you?’
‘Peace,’ she said and she breathed out, long and slow, smiling even wider. She had cut her hair, I saw, a remarkable development for any woman her age and especially so for the Mrs Aitken I remembered. It fell around her face in soft white waves and, as though it had been that scraped bun keeping all the tension there, her face seemed to have softened too. Of course on one side the muscles were almost dead, but that is not what one noticed about her. Rather one saw the clear eyes, and pink glow to her skin, and then noted too the way she sat with her hands folded calmly. I gathered that Mrs Ninian of Aitkens’ was pretty much gone.
‘Peace,’ I repeated, thinking that she had been due some, always worrying and scrabbling and fearful that the price she had paid was too high for whatever she had won.