Lady of Fortune by Graham Masterton Read Free Book Online

can only be afforded by a small and tentie minority, and that it is far cheaper for a man to keep a horse and cart. Why, a man can travel at twenty miles an hour from Edinburgh to Aberdeen on the railway for less than it costs him to buy a pound of beef sausages, and he can read the paper as he travels! What on earth will possess him to buy a motor-car?’
    â€˜The natural desire for freedom,’ Dougal retorted. ‘That’s what Albion are appealing to. The natural desire to travel when you like, and where you like, heedless of the timetables, and the taxi-cabs. Losh, Robert, you cannot see further than your own hooter! It’s a new age we’re talking about, a whole new age, right here in Scotland, and all you can bring yourself to do is talk it down! Not out of good judgement, but simply because you cannot bear to approve any scheme that I have put up, and that’s the truth of it!’
    â€˜I’ll hear no more,’ Thomas Watson ordered, in a soft voice like boiling milk which is just about to rise up the side of the pan. ‘Robert, sit yourself down. Dougal, keep your peace. Mother – we can talk about this later.’
    â€˜It was him that brought up Albion,’ protested Dougal.
    â€˜That’s enough!’ Thomas Watson shouted.
    â€˜Thomas, my dear –’ put in Fiona, but Thomas Watson silenced her with a stare. He said to Effie, coldly, ‘Pass your mother the neeps.’ Then he watched as Fiona helped herself to more neeps that she didn’t want, her hand trembling so much that the spoon rattled against the side of the silver dish. She knew what to expect tonight, once their bedroom door was closed, railing and shouting and flinging-around; perhaps even a beating. ‘There’s the weakness in my sons!’ he would bellow at her, as she miserably prepared for bed. ‘It’s you! You and your spoiling of them, doodling the pair of them as if they were still babbies! No wonder they bicker and argue so much! No wonder they’re so menseless!’
    He didn’t often strike her; and when he did, it was usually a knuckle-blow on the ribs, where it wouldn’t show when she was dressed. Once, after they had given dinner to Fiona’s father and mother, and a gaggle of her cousins, he had been in such a fury of wine and jealousy that he had forced her down over his knees, lifted her nightdress, and spanked her bare bottom. She, in return, had been both angry and aroused, and she had reached out for him. But he had quickly tugged down the tails of his nightshirt, and vehemently shaken his head, and said, ‘I’ll have none of it.’
    Fiona had long ago given up trying to understand what went on in her husband’s mind. She was unable to tell if he was happy or miserable, if he loved his family nor not. He worked steadily at the bank, building up its influence and its assets, and he plainly regarded himself as one of the pillars of Edinburgh’s wealthy merchant establishment. But she couldn’t tell if this satisfied him or not, because he never talked to her about his work, except to grumble about his managers and his staff; and the only times he ever expressed any opinions about anything, he spoke in such lofty generalisations that he gave no clues about his feelings at all. ‘I am a man of my time,’ he often said; and perhaps this was the most revealing admission of all, although Fiona wouldn’t be able to see what it meant in her lifetime. To her, the Victorian ideals of ostentatious wealth, pompous morality, and patronising charity were all too familiar to be remarkable.
    Effie watched her mother with helpless sympathy. She didn’t know that her father beat her mother, but she sensed how frightened she was of him. As Robert was his father’s son, a real Watson, so Effie was her mother’s girl. In fact,Thomas Watson, when he was younger, had often taken Effie’s chin in his hand, and said,