The Proper Treatment of Bloodstains

13

‘Mistress says you’re off out again today, Miss Rossiter,’ said Phyllis at breakfast the next morning. It was eight o’clock and, tea trays delivered to Lollie and her aunt, bedroom fires lit, morning room and breakfast room swept and ready, we were gathered around the long table in the servants’ hall for bacon, eggs and ebony tea. Mrs Hepburn was grumbling and apologising in equal measures for the state of the food, which had come from ‘thon useless contraption’ now that the range was cold, but it all tasted the same as ever to me.

‘I am indeed, Phyllis,’ I replied. ‘Mistress has Mrs Lambert-Leslie to attend to her and she’s sending me on an errand.’

‘Aye, but in the wee car though,’ said Phyllis. ‘All right for some.’

‘You’d better not be blacklegging,’ said Harry.

‘And what would Miss Rossiter and mistress be blacklegging?’ said Mr Faulds. ‘You’re tilting at windmills, Harry boy, with this strike. You’re getting a… thingumijig… over it.’

‘Monomania,’ I supplied.

‘That’s the one,’ said Mr Faulds. ‘You’ve a proper head for knowing, Fanny.’

‘But here’s another thing,’ said John. ‘How come you’re getting to drive Goitre’s wee car instead of me taking the Phantom? First I’ve heard of a maid doing that, I can tell you.’

‘Great Aunt Goitre to you, John,’ said Mr Faulds, causing much laughter.

‘I’ll be next,’ said Phyllis. ‘Nothing I’d like more than to tootle away down to Portobello on my free day. Good on you, Miss R.’

‘I’m not driving it myself,’ I said. ‘Mrs Lambert-Leslie’s chauffeur is accompanying me.’

‘Ohhhh,’ said Clara. ‘Great Aunt Goitre’s “chauffeur”. I see.’

‘I don’t know,’ said Mrs Hepburn. ‘It’s always been a free and easy house and no one happier for it than me’ – here she flushed a little – ‘but these things can go too far.’ She gave me a stern look and although she said no more I took her meaning.

The evening before, after all, I had committed a below-stairs solecism far greater than tucking up with the butler when no one was looking. I had slipped out to a tryst with – as we used to call them in my mother’s day when they were absolutely forbidden in the servants’ hall at home – a follower.

We had been ensconced as usual, Mr Faulds, Mrs Hepburn and I in the armchairs, Mattie at the piano, the girls clustered about the lamp sewing, the boys spread around the table reading and laying out Patience, when the sound of the area gate opening drew our ears. John, who was nearest the window, leaned back in his chair and craned upwards.

‘Who’s this then?’ he said. ‘Some toff with two dogs. What’s he after?’

I rose and hurried out to the passageway.

‘I’ll see to him,’ I said over my shoulder. ‘I was needing to stretch my legs anyway.’

Mr Faulds, in his shirtsleeves, was happy to let me and, although Stanley huffed and puffed a little about whose job it was to greet visitors, he did not go so far as to stand up and race me for it.

‘What on earth are you thinking, Alec?’ I hissed when I had opened the door to him. ‘Shush, Bunty! There’s a good girl. You can’t just tool up here and knock. Miss Rossiter will be put out with no character.’

‘Needs must,’ said Alec. ‘I had to talk to you. I’ve been to North Berwick.’

‘And?’ I said. ‘Settle down, Bunty.’

‘Can’t you come out for a minute?’ said Alec. ‘She’ll never shut up unless we walk up and down. Really, Dandy, I have to agree with Hugh sometimes – you have spoiled her.’

I drew the door over behind me and, hatless and in my cardigan, followed him up the steps and out onto the street.

‘Well?’ I said when we were a few steps away from the house and the servants’ hall window, at which I was sure all were gathered by now. ‘You’ve been to North Berwick and…?’

‘Maggie,’ said Alec, ‘never arrived.’

I halted and was pulled off my feet by Bunty. Alec caught my arm.

‘She was expected on Sunday,’ he said, ‘but didn’t show up. No sign of her on Monday either and when Sir George’s housekeeper – Sir George Finlayson; he was, as you suggested, easy enough to find – telephoned to the Balfours on Tuesday it was to be told of Pip Balfour’s murder. After which, understandably, the housekeeper didn’t think she could press the matter any more.’

‘I don’t like the sound of this,’ I said. ‘She needs to be found. And we must check on Miss Abbott too. Lollie told me she went to a Mrs Ruthven in Braid Hills.’

‘Where?’

‘South Edinburgh, beyond Morningside – geographically and socially. Terribly genteel.’

‘And has she been heard of? Did she write to anyone to say how she was settling in or anything?’

‘I don’t think she was particular chums with any of them,’ I said. ‘No one has said much about her since I arrived.’ We had got to the kiosk on the corner of Darnaway Street now. ‘Do you have any change? No time like the present and I’ve got the most horrid feeling about this.’

I asked the girl on the exchange for Ruthven of Braid Hills and was put through quite promptly. The bell rang out five or six times and then was answered by a servant of exquisite reserve and even more exquisite South Edinburgh vowels.

‘The Ruthven residence,’ she intoned. ‘To whom am I speaking to?’

‘Hello,’ I said. ‘My name is Gilver and I’m calling in connection with a Miss Jessie Abbott, who I believe began employment with you a few-’

‘Well, you believe more than you’ve leave to then,’ said the servant, abandoning the reserve and the vowels both. ‘And if you’re a friend of the besom you can give her a message from me and tell her she’d no business leaving my mistress in the lurch that way with no more than a scrap of a note to excuse her.’ Alec was watching me and I shook my head at him as I listened.

‘I don’t suppose you kept the note?’ I said into the mouthpiece.

‘What? Who is this?’ said the voice. ‘What’s it got to do with you what anyone in this house did with anything?’

‘If you can lay your hand on it,’ I said, ‘I think the police’ – I kept speaking through the inevitable squeak this produced – ‘might want to see it. Superintendent Hardy will no doubt be ringing you up or coming to see you. Perhaps you might warn Mr and Mrs Ruthven.’ I put down the receiver and Alec and I stared at one another until someone waiting for the telephone knocked on the kiosk window and made us both jump.

‘Right,’ said Alec. ‘I’ll go straight to the police station and tell Hardy – if he’s still there at this hour. Or try to get whoever is there to ring him up and tell him. You go back – and for goodness’ sake keep your head down.’

‘Certainly not,’ I said. ‘There’s plenty I can ask about Abbott and Maggie leaving: if anyone remembers anyone hanging around or if either of them voiced any worries.’

‘I absolutely forbid it,’ Alec said. ‘Unless you promise me that you’ll say nothing, I shall go back into that kiosk, tell all to Hugh and get you hauled off the case and back to Gilverton before you can blink.’

I could not help smiling at this, but he was not to be swayed.

‘Two women have left that house and never been heard of again,’ he said. ‘Superintendent Hardy can ask all the questions in the morning.’

I gave Bunty her second passionate farewell of the day and stood with my hand on the area railings watching them carry on along the street. Before they disappeared from view, though, a thought struck me and I raced after them calling out Alec’s name.

‘Get Hardy to ask who the housekeeper at Berwick spoke to,’ I said. A third farewell and they were gone. I descended, let myself in and returned to the servants’ hall and the inevitable teasing. My pink cheeks and breathlessness were, of course, the result of the last-minute sprint but there was no use telling that to Phyllis and John, who joshed me mildly for the rest of the evening and were rewarded with smirks from the others. As to the equally inevitable questions about the identity of the toff with two dogs, my brainwave had been to pass him off as Great Aunt Gertrude’s chauffeur, mystifyingly not staying in the carriage house while his mistress was chez nous. This only set off more questions and caused more ribaldry in the end, as they wondered aloud what he wanted with me and hazarded opinions as to whether he were really a chauffeur at all.

‘He’s too posh,’ said Clara. ‘Did you see his shoes?’

‘And too good-looking,’ said Harry, causing John to kick him under the table.

‘Maybe he’s her “companion”,’ said Phyllis.

‘Or a relation down on his luck,’ said Eldry.

‘Oh, you mean like a “nephew”,’ said Phyllis, which puzzled Eldry and made John and Harry hoot with laughter. Mrs Hepburn, with a frown towards Millie, shushed her.

‘Great Aunt Goitre?’ said John. ‘Never!’

So, in the morning, when I revealed that my errand was a shared one with this mysterious stranger the giggles and wondering looks were no surprise and I showed great stoicism as I endured them.

Still, I was glad that there was no one about in the mews when I emerged from the carriage house to find Alec, Millie and Bunty waiting there in Great Aunt Gertrude’s Sunbeam: he did not look much like a chauffeur.

‘Back or front?’ said Alec as he got into the driver’s seat. ‘Where would Miss Rossiter sit?

‘She’d sit in the front with her bag clutched on her knees,’ I said. ‘But I’m going in the back, of course. The dogs can go in beside you. Now, Mattie turned left at the top of the steps, so I imagine that he’ll be heading straight up the Bridges and out of town on the Peebles Road towards Penicuik.’

‘Yikes,’ said Alec. ‘The east end and the Tron? Fifty-six arrests there last night, Dandy.’ I gulped and he took pity on me. ‘It’ll be quiet enough this morning again, though. And the police won’t bother the likes of you and me.’

The police did not, it was true, but the combination of a man in front in no kind of chauffeur’s uniform and a woman in the back in no kind of hat for a grand lady rang false in the eyes of the strike stewards who were waiting halfway over the North Bridge. This did not occur to me until afterwards; at the time what happened was as inexplicable as it was terrifying. Two men, grim-jawed and cold-eyed, flagged Alec down and a string of them stepped out and joined arms across the road in front of us. Feeling my pulse begin to thump, I looked around for a policeman or even a special constable but saw none.

Alec wound down his window.

‘Taxi service is it, sir?’ said one of the men who had pulled us over. He wore an armband with initials on it and had some kind of badge on his coat lapel but I did not recognise either of them.

‘Private journey,’ said Alec, effortlessly slipping into the same laconic style.

‘Oh aye?’ said the man. ‘Of what nature?’ He was looking me up and down with a disdain I had not encountered since the death of Nanny Palmer and even she saved it for when I had been very bad in ways which left damage not soon mended. I could feel my initial panic begin to recede and be replaced by anger.

‘Visiting friends,’ said Alec. ‘This lady’ – he jerked his head back at me – ‘doesn’t care for dogs.’

‘Aye, I thought the dogs were a nice touch,’ the man said.

‘Now look here,’ I began, but Alec talked over me.

‘I’m not a working man,’ he said, ‘but I wouldn’t break your strike. You’ll just have to take my word for it, I’m afraid.’

‘You’ll not mind us jotting down your number and taking your name then?’ said the man.

‘We most certainly wou-’ I said, unable to believe my ears, but again Alec spoke over me.

‘Alexander Osborne of Perthshire,’ he said. ‘But Dorset originally. I was once in a clay pit when I was a boy – just for an hour, you understand, just to see it.’ The man had jerked his chin up at this and he gave Alec an even more searching look. ‘But an hour was enough. I wouldn’t break your strike.’

After another long pause, the chap jerked his head at the rest of the men and they broke apart and returned to the pavement.

‘Not a minute on the day!’ they chanted, as we started up again. ‘Not a penny off the pay!’ Alec, pulling away, touched his hat and gave a toot on the horn.

‘Well!’ I said. ‘I would not have believed that possible.’ Alec said nothing. ‘Where are all these celebrated specials when one needs them? I thought you were going to have to hand over hard cash for a moment there.’

‘If I had offered him money, Dandy, we’d never have got through,’ Alec said. ‘And I’d be on every TUC blacklist in the land.’

‘Really?’ I said. ‘Do you think so? You seem to have got a very romantic view of miners from that hour in the clay pit years ago. Or was that just a story? Splendidly quick-thinking if it was, I must say.’

Again he said nothing, his silence going strong until we were well onto the South Bridge, where we saw another collection of men at the side of the road outside the university. ‘We might just slip straight through here if we’re lucky, Dandy,’ Alec said, ‘since they’re concentrating on the student volunteers, but you’d better get in the front seat beside me anyway, just in case. I’m sure that’s what made the last lot think I was a taxi.’

‘No need,’ I said. ‘There he is now – look.’

Up ahead of us I had glimpsed the white-blond hair and the determined set of the thin shoulders and indeed it was Mattie, weighed down by two huge baskets from Mrs Hepburn, half a mile into his nine-mile trudge home to his mother for the day. Alec touched the horn as we drew up beside him and Mattie smiled at the two dogs who were standing on the front seat, with their heads nosily out of the side window. Then he frowned in puzzlement as he glimpsed me. I opened the back door.

‘Hop in,’ I said. ‘I’m coming with you, Mattie. Mistress’s idea – mistress’s orders, in fact. We’ll take you there and back and have a nice chance to talk without those girls listening.’ I gave him a bright smile and although his face fell he knew that argument would be fruitless. Pushing his baskets in in front of him, he joined me.

After that, although we were stopped by another three checkpoints before we made it out of town, Mattie was the golden key which unlocked all doors. He only had to mention his surname – MacGibney – and say where we were bound and the linked arms unlinked themselves and rose in the air to wave us on our way.

‘Very good of you too, sir, madam,’ said another of the badged leaders, not half so grim-jawed or cold-eyed as the first, now that we had Mattie to our credit. ‘And you tell your grandad that Wullie Armstrong was asking for him, son, eh?’

Between all these stops, there was less time than I had imagined to pin Mattie back against the upholstery and begin to extract from him the secrets I was sure he was keeping, but leaving him to stew with nothing more than my confident assertions and vague threats for his mind to work on would, I told myself, lead to a greater unburdening in the end.

‘It’s the doors, you see, Mattie,’ I said. ‘Mistress and I and Superintendent Hardy have been talking over and over this terrible business and we know that there’s something fishy going on about the doors.’

Mattie gave a fearful look at the back of Alec’s head.

‘Don’t worry about Mr Osborne,’ I said. ‘He’s helping Hardy get to the bottom of all this for mistress. Anything you want to tell me you can safely say in front of him. And if you don’t tell me today, it’ll be Superintendent Hardy tomorrow, maybe in the house but maybe in the police station. So be a good sensible boy. I know you know more than you’re telling.’

‘You’re wrong, miss,’ said Mattie. ‘I d’ae ken nothing about what happened to master that night. Not a thing. Swear on my life.’

‘You know something you think is nothing to do with what happened to master,’ I said. ‘But you must tell me – or Mr Hardy tomorrow; that’s your choice – and we will decide whether what you know is important.’

‘I d’ae ken nothing,’ he said again.

‘We’re here,’ said Alec from the front seat. ‘Best leave it for now.’

We had to pass right by the colliery to get to Mattie’s village and, although Alec cruised along quite unconcerned and Mattie even waved out of the window at his acquaintances, I could not help drawing back into shadow at the sight near the gates to the mine. There were perhaps a hundred strikers there: wiry, hard-bitten, dirty-looking men in caps which hid their eyes. Some were singing in rough and raucous voices and some were silently smoking thin, home-made cigarettes but all had their fists clenched and were beating time against their legs and stamping their feet too. Once again, there were no police to be seen, only three men in the grey suits and round collars of clerks, whistles around their necks and sticks in their hands, watching the strikers with impassive faces from inside the chained gates.

We passed this dreadful tableau and followed a bend in the road to find ourselves at one end of three long rows of brick terraces with washing strung between them, filling their little yards. It was unlike any village I had ever seen: no shops, no real streets, and no church spires nor inns nor schoolhouses – nothing except those three long straight rows set down at the edge of some rough fields. Women began to appear at the doors and come out into the yards at the sound of the motorcar, and when Alec pulled up and Mattie stepped down one of them rushed forward and gripped his arm.

‘Whae’s this?’ she said. ‘What have you done now?’ She looked too old to be the mother of the boy but was surely too young to be his grandmother and no one else would grip his arm and shake him in that way.

‘They’re chums, Mammy,’ said Mattie, standing up well to the grabbing and shaking I thought; clearly it was no more than he was used to. ‘Miss Rossiter is one of the maids at ma work and Mr Osborne is mistress’s auntie’s chauffeur that’s gave me a lift.’

Mattie’s mother let go of his arm and brushed his hair back, just once and rather briskly, by way of an affectionate greeting. I felt a flush of guilt at my first reckoning because, on closer inspection, she was probably younger than me, only rather tired and ill served by her coiffure and her toilette in general. She had Mattie’s fairness, and such looks take careful managing in the middle years.

‘And look, Mammy,’ Mattie said, dragging one of the baskets out of the motorcar. ‘From Mrs Hepburn. Cakes and pies and cheese and all sorts.’

At this a few of the neighbour women who had drawn close to watch, shifted from foot to foot and looked sharply at Mrs MacGibney.

‘Well, that was good of her,’ she said. ‘That’s the wifie that’s the cook, eh no? That’s very kind. Well, you take one and maybe Mr Osborne would take the other one and get them over to the institute for sorting.’

The women who had been watching her stepped back a little then and seemed to let go of a collective breath. Mrs MacGibney did not miss it and she turned on them.

‘What?’ she said. ‘Did you think I would jist… Tchah!’

‘I have a few bits and pieces in the boot too,’ Alec chipped in. ‘Where is the institute, Mrs MacGibney? Perhaps I could just drive right to its door.’

Unseen by us all, a man had joined us, a fair-haired, stringy man, resting on a crutch and with one trouser leg swinging empty below his knee.

‘Bits and pieces o’ whit?’ he said. ‘We’ll have none of your blacklegged muck in our village. Who are you, anyway?’

Alec went around and threw open the boot. The women clustered in and the man with the crutch, surely Mattie’s brother, hobbled over to peer at a perfect cornucopia of loaves, waxed butcher’s parcels and bottles of beer.

‘It’s all from the Co-operative Society,’ said Alec. ‘And I’ve got the chit if you want to see it. I told them it was for you out here and they let me take as much as I could carry.’

The wiry man pushed his lips out and in for a minute or two and then, tucking his crutch further under his arm, he held out his hand to shake Alec’s.

‘John MacGibney,’ he said. ‘Much obliged, brother.’ Then his face finally cracked into a grin. ‘It was the beer that swung it, mark you.’

‘Now, get you away in and say hello to your grandad, Mattie,’ said Mrs MacGibney, ‘and I’ll get over to the gates and get the sorting committee off the picket to see to this lot. We cannae leave meat to spoil, the warm day it’s getting.’

Mattie ran ahead into one of the cottages, taking the dogs (they had been a great hit with him), but I dawdled, keeping step with John MacGibney on his crutch.

‘Is it as bad as all that then?’ I said. ‘Already? Are there no shops nearby?’

Mr MacGibney gave me the kind of look one would bestow on an idiot child.

‘Mr Mair that manages this place shut the shop when he locked us out on Monday,’ he said. ‘And between the two wee shops in the toon there’ – he gestured over the hills with his crutch although no sign of a town could be seen – ‘one willnae serve any of us – it’s one of the Scott chain and Mr Scott plays golf with Mr Mair – and the other one’s full of blackleg stuff they’ve got they bloody students bringing in from Leith so it would choke us. Pardon me, miss, eh?’

‘So you’ve no food?’ I said.

‘Not so bad as all that,’ he said. The way he spoke told me that his pride was pricking him and I kicked myself. ‘The Congress have been good to us – sent a Co-op van out on Wednesday and the weans get their piece and milk at the school but it’s no’ long running out again.’

‘I knew the stories of striking teachers weren’t true,’ I said. ‘Yesterday’s bulletin said the teachers were more likely to be spreading propaganda for Churchill than coming out in sympathy.’

Young Mr MacGibney gave me a sideways look and for the first time I saw a trace of Mattie’s fine looks about him.

‘You’ve been reading the bulletin?’ he said. ‘And you a lady’s maid.’ We were halfway along the row of cottages now – the front row facing out onto the fields and hills – and John turned in to an opening between low walls and pegged across the few feet of tiled yard which made the front garden of the MacGibney residence. The door was open onto a small porch and in it, hung on nails, were two sets of clothes, black as soot and smelling like it too, three cracked and blackened boots resting below them. There were sheets of newspaper pinned to the wall behind to keep the distemper clean.

I edged past the bundles and stepped into a small kitchen-cum-living-room where Mattie was standing in front of a fireplace range, still holding the dogs’ leads while Millie and Bunty submitted to a thorough patting – what, in parts of Scotland, with some accuracy, they call a ‘good clap’ – from an old man sitting there.

If I had seen him in the street I should have guessed at a sailor, from the white beard and the two layers of knitted jerseys, one buttoned tightly over the other and a woollen scarf tucked down inside both. Something about the curve of his pipe had a nautical air too, unlike the usual straight cob pipe of the Perthshire villager I was used to seeing at home. But whenever he coughed, as he soon did and continued to do throughout our visit, it was the cough of a miner; deep, reaching, painful to hear (let alone to produce) and not a souvenir one could possibly have brought home from a life in the salt breezes.

As soon as the paroxysm had passed, he put his pipe back in his mouth and looked up at me out of two very small, very round black eyes (I found it hard to resist the fancy that they were little nuggets of coal pushed in amongst the wrinkles and shining there).

‘And who’s this fine lady you’ve brought home to us, Mattie?’ he said.

‘Fanny Rossiter, Mr MacGibney,’ I said, bobbing a curtsey. ‘One of the maids.’

‘I’m Mr Morrison,’ said the old man. ‘Trudie’s faither, but call me Grandad, hen, like everyone and you’ll no’ go far wrong.’

My smile was not merely a performance of Miss Rossiter’s, judged to be required and delivered accordingly. For one thing, my own grandfathers were a distant memory and I had not used the word for many years. For another, I could not help warming to the easy mucking in and shaking down of the lower orders as I had found them. There were proprieties to be observed, it was true, but it was far from the minefield I had foreseen. Grandad Morrison’s next words confirmed my view.

‘Aye well, you’ve picked a bad time to come looking for a bun,’ he said to me, ‘but there’s tea to spare, so you get it made like a good girlie and I’ll take mine black with three sugars, please.’

‘Grandad!’ said Mattie. ‘Miss Rossiter is mistress’s lady’s maid. She disnae even make her own tea in the house, never mind here.’ But I had taken off my gloves and, grunting a little, had heaved the enormous black kettle off the range and over to the sink to fill it. I was determined to make a good job of this, for the MacGibneys might have tea, but I was sure they did not have anything ‘to spare’ and I would not be the one to waste what there was. I had just balanced the kettle on the edge of the sink to rest my arms when Mrs MacGibney’s voice came from behind me.

‘What?’ she said. ‘You’ve nae need to be tipping that water oot, it’s this morning’s and it’s fine yet.’

‘Of course, of course,’ I said, flustered. ‘I wouldn’t dream of such a thing. I was going to fill right up and make a good potful.’ Of course it was at that moment that I noticed the lack of any tap spouting out into the little china sink under the window, noticed the two tall cans standing on the wooden draining board at its side, realised that there was no piped water in the MacGibney kitchen and saw that I had just, with my assumption that there would be, played the grand lady far worse than if I had sat down, crossed my ankles and snapped my fingers for my tea. Mattie’s mother had two patches of red across her tight cheeks as she took the kettle out of my hands, set it back on the range and topped it up from one of the cans, all without speaking.

‘So, what can we dae for you?’ said John, ending the silence at last. ‘What brings you out here the day?’

‘Was it not you driving the car then?’ said Grandad. ‘I thought you’d given wee Mattie a hurl.’

‘I came with Mattie,’ I said, ‘because mistress didn’t want him to be alone. He’s been very upset.’ It was the only thing I could think of in time.

Mrs MacGibney stopped with a half-full bottle of milk in mid-air (she had been sniffing it to see if it were fresh enough to put in our tea).

‘What’s wrong?’ she said. ‘What’s happened noo?’

The old man made a noise almost like spitting and John shook his head at Mattie.

‘You need to toughen up, wee brother,’ he said. ‘If you cannae frame tae work at this, what’s left for you?’

‘It’s no’ that,’ Mattie said, speaking softly and aiming his words towards the floor.

‘It’s the murder,’ I said.

‘Murder?’ said Mattie’s mother. Grandad removed his pipe and sat with his mouth hanging open.

‘I assumed you would all know,’ I said. ‘Mr Balfour – the master – was murdered on Sunday night. I’m sorry. I naturally assumed that you would have heard by now.’

‘Heard how?’ said John. ‘We’ve had no paper since the News shut down.’

‘But surely it was on the wireless?’ I said. ‘It was so brutal. I can’t believe it wasn’t reported on the news.’ Of course, this was the water tap all over again. After I spoke, I looked around the kitchen for a wireless set at which to gesture, and took in the rough table and chairs, the makeshift curtains shutting off the box-bed in the corner, the tin bath hanging from a nail on the back door. Mrs MacGibney, with a transparency which tied a knot inside me, went to stand with one hand stretched up to rest on the chimneypiece above the range, where a walnut-wood clock, highly polished, sat between two china dogs facing one another from each end, the three precious objects together forming the only sign of luxury in the entire room.

Thankfully, Alec interrupted the silence before I was forced to think of what to say. He entered with three bottles of beer clutched in one arm and gave John MacGibney a broad wink.

‘Your father and the others insisted,’ he said. ‘These haven’t gone on the book at all and nobody’s complaining.’

‘Mattie’s too young for beer,’ said Mrs MacGibney.

‘Of course he is,’ said Alec. ‘The third one’s for me.’