I found the end of Pilmuir Street after a little effort and toiled up it, realising too late – once I had deserted the busy part of town where there might be taxis – that number one hundred and twenty could be a stiff hike away. Sure enough I was puffing like a tugboat by the time I arrived.
So perhaps it was shortness of breath that was making me dizzy and perhaps that contributed to the nasty prickling I could feel, but at least some of it was owing to the nightmarish sense that I was reliving a dark reflection of that cheerful day a week before. Once again the house for which I was bound surprised me; Roseville was Georgian grey just like Abbey Park, but was very wide and low, and set back from the pavement behind white railings with two patches of tumbling cottage garden on either side of a flagged path. It had a coach house at one flank and a high orchard wall at the other and was as charming as it was unexpected: a village house, my mother would have called it (never suspecting that when she did so in those ringing tones of hers she always offended the owners, who heard the echo of ‘a village child’ for which read apple thief, ‘a village family’ where laundrymaids and jobbing gardeners might be found, and ‘a village affair’ by which she meant any feud or scandal she deemed beneath her notice which was nonetheless too significant to be ignored).
A maid who had clearly been told to expect me – ‘advised of my arrival’ as she put it – let me in and showed me into a morning room at the back of the house with a french window open onto the garden. I just had time to note the pale carpet and silk-covered walls, the elegant gilded furniture and delicate watercolours, but I had no chance for my customary snooping before the door opened again and someone strode into the room. A young woman, a woman, an elderly woman, I thought in quick succession as she came towards me and held out her hand, for the initial impression of vigour was seen off by the matronly cut of her coat and skirt and the confident rake of her hat (an angle like that only comes, if it comes at all, with maturity), and the coat and skirt and hat (and brooch and pearls) in their turn could not disguise the iron grey hair, lined skin and thickened wrists of quite advanced age. She wore startlingly red lipstick and had painted very thick black eyebrows onto her head; her nails too were red and black – red from paint and black from gardening. I knew the type. She was not, after all, an elderly woman: she was a game old girl.
‘Mrs Gilver,’ she said, giving me a wide grin and showing strong yellow teeth which were not flattered by the lipstick, neither the shade of it nor the fact that a great deal of it was on them. ‘Fiona Haddo. Bella Aitken told me about you. Thank you for coming and do sit down.’
She rang for coffee and then eased herself into an armchair and regarded me.
‘It’s about Mirren.’
I nodded. The nightmare was going strong.
‘I’m Googie’s grandmother, you see.’ I said nothing and my face must have been blank because she hurried to explain. ‘Dugald. Googie was his little sister’s best attempt and it stuck. Hilda – my daughter – hates it.’
I could not help my eyebrow rising at her daughter’s name. Hilda Haddo was a dreadful curse to visit upon a child.
‘Oh, I know,’ said her mother, getting the point of the raised brow. She was clearly an old girl of great perception and I would need to disport myself more cautiously. ‘But she was a Hilda. If you’d only seen her the day she was born – glaring up at me with that look on her face telling me the whole thing was an outrage. A Teutonic battle-maid if ever I’d seen one. Anyway, she’s Hilda Hepburn now which isn’t so bad. Unless one counts it as bad that I married off my daughter to a draper’s boy. Sounds like a music-hall song, doesn’t it?’ She laughed again. ‘But Robert Junior – Robin, as the family have always called him – is a dear man, with pots of money, and Hilda has been very happy. Until now, of course. Until now.’
‘The boy must be distraught,’ I said. ‘I can quite imagine his mother suffering along with him.’
‘Hm,’ said Fiona Haddo, but did not elaborate.
‘Was he terribly fond of her?’
‘Googie adored her,’ said Mrs Haddo. ‘To see them together was almost enough to make one believe in love’s young dream again. Even a cynical old trout like me could grow quite misty. So it’s almost beyond belief that…’ She gave me a shrewd look. ‘How much do you know?’
‘Well,’ I said, carefully, ‘I’ve heard a great deal but all from one source. Another perspective would perhaps be illuminating.’ Fiona Haddo gave a twisted smile in acknowledgement of my carefully chosen words.
‘I’ll start at the beginning,’ she said. ‘Mirren and Googie had many friends in common as you can imagine – Dunfermline is a small town – but they were never particular friends of one another. So it was a surprise to us all when Googie told us he was engaged. Just after St Valentine’s Day. He must have proposed then – such a sweet boy. Twenty years old and he informed his father and mother about it as though he were the headmaster giving out extra prep.’
‘Mirren wasn’t quite so forceful with her parents,’ I said.
‘And the Aitkens were adamant in their refusal. Beyond adamant.’
‘Not all of the Aitkens, surely. I can’t imagine Abigail…’
She grinned at me. ‘No, not all. Perhaps just one. But that one is very forceful indeed. You know, of course, that she was a shopgirl when Ninian married her?’ I nodded. ‘And of course, Aitkens’ is the older of the two firms and they view the Hepburns as fearful usurpers. But it was her mother and father that Mirren spoke of when she came to me. Abigail and Jack had forbidden it too. Well, who can guess at that – they’re an odd pair from all I hear. But what did seem odd was that Googie’s parents thought the same. And actually, I suppose if one’s being fair they were pretty adamant too. Especially Robin. “No son of mine” and all that.’
‘Did he say why?’
‘He talked about “poor stock” and “weak blood” which was ridiculous.’
‘Well, Mirren’s mother and father are cousins,’ I said. Fiona Haddo shuddered.
‘I know,’ she said. ‘Isn’t it ghastly? When I think of my boy cousins, I could almost retch! But people in glass houses…’
I looked inquiringly at her.
‘The Hepburns themselves are not exactly sturdy stock,’ she said. ‘Thank God Hilda seems to have brought a bit of vigour back to the line.’ Then she moved on very crisply and in a manner which prevented any wheeling back again. ‘So. Robin put his foot down about the marriage. Hilda put hers down like Rumpelstiltskin, which isn’t like her. Robert Senior – he who established House of Hepburn – was no keener and he’s a shrewd businessman that I’d have expected to be all for a merger. Dulcie, Robin’s mother, was vehemently against the thing too. Most odd, because Dulcie – perfectly pleasant little woman as I’m always the first to say -’ poor Dulcie, I thought – ‘is very… Home Chat, don’t you know. Knitting and recipes and what have you, and one would have thought that Mirren Aitken would be her dream of a daughter-in-law. Only I was in favour. And on the other side, as I say, Jack and Abby said no, ghastly Mary did the same and only good old Bella couldn’t see the difficulty. We talked about it on the telephone, she and I. You’ve met Bella, of course?’ I acknowledged that I had. ‘She’s splendid. Another old trout and one of the highest order. We’re a force to be reckoned with, you know.’ I smiled and waited.
‘Anyway,’ she said, resuming after stopping to give me a cigarette and light one for herself. I noticed that her hand shook slightly as she held it to her lips and I surmised that we were coming to the crux of the matter. ‘The thing is, I wasn’t prepared to sit idly by and let young love be snuffed out for no reason. I live here – have done for years – but I still have a dower house of my own. My husband left it to me and I kept it to annoy my daughter-in-law. I also kept a tiara and a couple more pieces I should really have sold if I wasn’t going to pass them on. But it’s always irked me the way that we old girls are expected to relinquish our jewels – we need them more than pretty young faces, don’t we? Also – here’s the nub of it – I have shares in House Of. Robin gave them to me in a fit of… something or other, when he and Hilda were married. Sort of welcoming me to the clan kind of thing, I suppose. So all in all, I was just about able to toddle on and do my fairy godmother routine. They were going to elope and stay in the dower house – poor things: it’s pretty crumbly – living off the proceeds of the tiara until I had used my shares like a mallet to din some sense into everyone.’