The Explosionist (8 page)

Next they stopped at the Buttercup Dairy.

“Half a pound of butter, please.”

“Sweet or salted?”

“Salted.”

The girl behind the marble counter placed a square of greaseproof paper on the brass scales and cut a wedge off the
slab. Dipping her two wooden paddles into a pretty blue-and-white porcelain bowl of cold water, she worked the butter into a perfectly round pat, pressing into it the stamp with its picture of the dairymaid with the cow holding a buttercup to the girl’s chin.

Both girls averted their eyes when they passed the butcher’s shop, where several carcasses hung on hooks in the window next to a tray of jellied meats with the label “Potted Head.”

“Will you come with me to my mam’s?” Jean asked, sounding nervous for the first time that afternoon. Then her voice brightened. “You could meet our new bull mastiff!”

Sophie politely declined, secretly relieved she needed to be back for tea at Heriot Row.

“Walk with me another few minutes, then,” Jean said.

They lingered on North Bridge, leaning over the edge and looking out onto the central railway station and the chaotic spread of the city’s older sections. The bridge spanned the divide between Edinburgh’s two halves: the New Town, swept clear of all dirt and inconvenience and irrationality, its grid of elegant three-story houses characterized by their orderly insistence on life conducted without mess, and the Old, a warren of closes and wynds, ancient tenements of six or seven or eight stories, all bursting at the seams with people.

It was probably a moral failing, but Sophie much preferred the New Town to the Old, because of the way it let one insulate oneself from the loud and smelly and generally off-putting lives of other people.

“Do you like living in the Old Town?” she asked Jean, choosing the words carefully so as not to sound critical.

“Oh, yes,” Jean said. “When my dad’s out at work, my mam’s got all the other tenants in the building to be friendly with. The only reason she had to ask me to get the messages today was that the neighbor’s children are down with the chicken pox and she didn’t want to leave the baby. It’s like having a huge extra family. You can make a new friend whenever you like, and there’s always someone to talk to.”

Sophie tried not to shudder. It sounded like her idea of hell.

The road along the bridge was fairly empty. A few cars went by, and then a brewer’s dray drawn by four Clydesdales, an attractive sight against the hoardings plastered with bright advertisements for proprietary brands of dynamite like Atlas, Hercules, and Goliath.

Meanwhile, walking toward them on the pavement was a girl they both recognized at once.

“Sheena Henshawe!” Jean exclaimed.

Sheena Henshawe had left the Institution for Young Ladies two years earlier, trailing clouds of glory. She had been
captain of the hockey and lacrosse teams as well as the girls’ rifle eight. Sophie still cherished the memory of the evening at supper when Sheena had casually introduced Sophie as her shooting protégée.

“Do you think she’ll remember us?” Jean whispered to Sophie as Sheena came up level with the streetlight.

Sheena had gone on to IRYLNS, like many of her classmates, and Miss Henchman had even mentioned Sheena by name in a recent assembly meant to spur the girls on to new heights of patriotic endeavor.

“Of course she will!” Sophie said, outraged at the idea that Sheena might have forgotten her old friends. “She knows you and me both; she was head girl in our house that time when we all had to do detention for booby-trapping the Faraday house entryway, don’t you remember? And she often used to give me and Nan tips on marksmanship.”

They watched the young woman walk toward them against the backdrop. Several inches taller than either Jean or Sophie, Sheena wore a mint-green linen suit that by some miracle looked neither dirty nor crumpled, despite the warmth of the day and the grime of the nearby trains. The heels of her shoes were so high that Sophie wondered how she could walk in them.

When Sheena came closer, though, Sophie suddenly doubted her own conviction that the older girl would remember
them. Girls who’d left school seemed to become foreign creatures, inhabitants of a strange new world.

As Sheena came up level with them, her eyes swept over the two schoolgirls with no sign of recognition.

“Well!” said Jean when Sheena had vanished out of sight at the other end of the bridge. “She looked as though she thought we weren’t fit to wipe the bottom of her shoes with! Sophie, she wasn’t always such a snob, was she?”

“No,” Sophie said, rather more shaken than she wanted Jean to know. “She was much the nicest of the girls in her year. She gave me that set of colored bamboo-fiber pens for my birthday, and she showed me how to work square roots without a slide rule. She can’t have forgotten us, she simply can’t!”

“Could she be terribly shortsighted,” Jean suggested, “and not able to recognize us without her spectacles?”

But Sheena had had the best eyesight of anyone on the shooting team.

“Sophie?” Jean said.

“What?” said Sophie.

“Didn’t Sheena look lovely just now?”

Sophie grunted skeptically.

“That’s exactly what I’ve always imagined a first-class secretary looking like,” Jean continued. “Those shoes! Oh, Sophie, I’d do anything to become like Sheena….”

Sophie was offended as well as surprised.

“You can’t mean to say that you look at that—that creature that used to be Sheena and want to be like that yourself?” she said, almost in tears at the thought of how Sheena’s glossy new carapace made her indistinguishable from any other young woman. “It’s horrible! I’d rather
die
than grow up and leave school if it means I’ll turn into a complete blank.”

“If I go to IRYLNS and get a real job,” Jean said, her eyes dreamy and placid, “I’ll be able to live in a flat with an electric kitchen. My dad would be proud of me then. He often says how much he wishes he had an IRYLNS-trained secretary to help him in his office, rather than the useless one he’s got now.”

There was no point arguing. Sophie felt the gulf between herself and Jean open up wider than the span of the bridge.

“I must go,” she said abruptly.

“All right,” said Jean, still mesmerized by the vision of beautiful clothes and a weekly pay packet. “See you in school on Monday, then.”

It was a nasty end to a nice afternoon, Sophie thought, walking up Dublin Street to Abercromby Place and from there along the north edge of Queen Street Gardens toward Heriot Row. She sped up as she came near to the house, and the only strange thing was that the Veteran was lurking on his cart just down the road. He didn’t ask Sophie for money, but she had an uneasy feeling he was watching her.

If only Sheena had seen them and stopped, or even just smiled to say hello! Was that what growing up meant, abandoning one’s memory and friends and reinventing oneself without the least shred of connection to one’s former life?

T
HE CLOCK STRUCK FIVE
as Sophie let herself in at the front door and went to the kitchen to find Peggy amid steam and general flouriness.

“Thank goodness you’re home; your great-aunt’s been running about the place like a chicken with the head cut off. You’re not to have tea in the kitchen after all—herself wants you upstairs for supper with the visitors.”

Sophie sliced herself a thick doorstop of bread and took a bite, wondering who the visitors might be.

“There you go again, eating your bread without any butter or jam!” Peggy exclaimed, slamming a pot of raspberry jam down in front of Sophie along with the butter dish and a knife and plate. “And brought up in the most civilized city in
the world! Do put something on that; it gives me the horrors to watch you swallowing a dry crust.”

Sophie cut her piece of bread into two and spread butter on one piece, jam on the other. She liked jam and she liked butter but she didn’t like jam and butter together.

“Who’s coming to supper, then?” she asked.

Peggy made a clucking noise of disapproval.

“There’s three of them,” she said. “A government minister and her gentleman assistant, and a spiritualist lady, and me with no time to get any fish into the house!”

Though Sophie’s great-aunt believed it was a very good idea for women to be vegetarians, whenever a man came to dinner Peggy was expected to serve fish, which Great-aunt Tabitha referred to as “brain food.”

“Best go and wash and change into something decent before they get here,” Peggy added. “Your great-aunt won’t like to see you in that awful old jumper.”

It was really Peggy who cared about what Sophie wore rather than Great-aunt Tabitha, but Sophie obliged her by changing into a newish marigold-colored frock.

After washing her face, Sophie waited in her room until the doorbell announced the first arrival. She took the stairs slowly, then smoothed down her hair, which she had forgotten to brush, and let herself into the sitting room.

There she found two people engaged in a tête-à-tête. The
taller was an imposing woman of heavy, almost masculine build, her ash-colored hair styled into a rigid armature. Her conversation partner was a young man with thick, wiry, close-cropped bronze hair, a prominent nose, and an athletic figure. Curiously, the minister and her assistant had exactly the same color eyes, a distinctive pale green, though the man’s were hooded and deep-set while the minister’s bulged out of the sockets almost like peeled grapes.

They broke off talking to look at Sophie but turned back to their conversation without introducing themselves. She was relieved when Great-aunt Tabitha burst into the room and swept Sophie over to meet the visitors. The older woman was Joanna Murchison, the minister of public safety (Great-aunt Tabitha quite often had members of the cabinet to supper); the young man was Nicholas Mood, the minister’s devoted assistant. Great-aunt Tabitha and Joanna Murchison had been at school together, though Sophie thought the two women regarded each other with more wariness than affection.

Amid all the introductions the doorbell rang again, and a moment later Peggy ushered into the room a very attractive woman, thirty-five years old at the most, her sleek black hair cropped close to her head to show off the diamond studs in her ears; she wore a midnight blue silk blouse and a long, narrow black velvet skirt with high heels.

“Miss Grant, how delightful to see you!” said Great-aunt
Tabitha. “Let me introduce you—Joanna Murchison, Ruth Grant, Nicko Mood. Sophie, this is Miss Grant, one of the most talented spiritualists in the Society.”

The Society was the Scottish Society for Psychical Research—but Miss Grant couldn’t be a spiritualist, she was much too nice-looking….

“I’m the kind of spiritualist,” said Miss Grant, smiling at Sophie’s expression, “who
doesn’t
have drifty tresses and lots of scarves and rings with locks of hair in them.”

It was as if she could read Sophie’s mind! Sophie resolved to keep her face completely expressionless for the rest of the evening.

The party fell naturally into two groups: a main one composed of Great-aunt Tabitha, the minister, and her assistant, and an onlooker one made up of Sophie and Miss Grant.

After they had watched the others for a few minutes, Miss Grant turned to Sophie and began speaking in a quiet voice.

“It’s an interesting dynamic, isn’t it? That young man is in the
agonizing
position of being caught between two powerful women, not quite sure which one it’s more politic for him to concentrate on pleasing this evening….”

It was true that Nicko Mood’s body language was showing an alarming twisty-turny aspect as he reoriented himself to whichever woman was speaking. Sophie felt too shy to say anything in response, but she liked the way Miss Grant
spoke to her almost as an equal.

“Your great-aunt invited me here this evening to assess the minister’s real state of thought on various political affairs,” Miss Grant confided. “Pay attention to the conversation at supper, and see what you think—it never hurts to get another perspective on these things.”

“I don’t think Great-aunt Tabitha would put much weight on my judgment,” Sophie confessed. “She doesn’t think I’m old enough to have an opinion.”

“Well, then it’s about time she started paying a bit more attention, isn’t it?” said Miss Grant. Sophie wished she could have even one-tenth the woman’s poise and confidence. “Personally, I’ll be interested to hear what you make of young Nicko. I find there to be something vaguely sinister about him, but he likes to pass himself off as something of a lightweight.”

Her voice had returned to full volume by now, and the word
lightweight
fell into a moment of silence. The other three turned toward Miss Grant, who promptly burst out laughing.

“My mother says my brother’s had the most terrible effect on my language,” she said with disarming breeziness. “He likes to box, and she’s constantly reproaching me for the awful slang I’ve absorbed.”

Sophie was horrified and impressed at the cover-up. Did Miss Grant even
have
a brother?

Over dinner, Sophie learned only that the minister was overbearingly talkative. The conversation was so boring that even Nicko looked hard put to maintain his expression of avid interest. Miss Grant fiddled a lot with her napkin and drank several tumblers of water, while the thin pinched line of Great-aunt Tabitha’s lips told Sophie how trying she was finding it to stay quiet as the minister’s words rolled over them in great waves of bureaucratic bossiness.

After Peggy had brought in the cheese and fruit and served the coffee, Sophie’s great-aunt rapped her saucer with a silver teaspoon.

Everyone turned to look at her, the minister stopping in midsentence and affecting an air more astonished than displeased at the interruption.

“Joanna, you’ve been waffling on all evening like a talking press release,” said Great-aunt Tabitha. “What I want to know is what on
earth
you mean to do about these wretched assassins?”

Trust Great-aunt Tabitha to go directly to the point!

“How would you respond,” said the minister, leaning back in her chair and taking a sip of coffee, “were you to learn that the European Federation has been funneling money and explosives to the Brothers of the Northern Liberties?”

The minister’s question made the other two women in the room flinch. Nicholas Mood had chosen a pear from the shal
low bowl at the center of the table; his peeling technique was admirable, and the yellow-gold skin descended to his plate in a single mesmerizing spiral. Now his knife faltered.

“Surely that’s simply a conspiracy theory,” Miss Grant interjected, her eyes bright, “a farfetched story meant to damage ordinary people’s confidence in the integrity of the government? The Brothers of the Northern Liberties are run-of-the-mill separatists. They despise government meddling and the centralized power that Europe exemplifies. It beggars belief that the Brothers should choose the Europeans for their allies.”

“My dear Miss Grant,” Mood broke in, “such charming naïveté! Did the minister say the Brothers supported the European government? She merely asserted that they have accepted material aid, in the form of money and ordnance, from them. Did you never hear the expression, ‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend’?”

Showing no offense at the young man’s rudeness, Miss Grant poured herself another cup of coffee. Sophie admired her calm. The nastiness of Mood’s tone had something to do with Miss Grant’s being quite young and pretty and not yet very important. Why couldn’t men talk to women exactly as they spoke to other men?

“What are you getting at, Nicko?” asked Great-aunt Tabitha, giving him a hard look. “Rumors about Europe’s supporting
the Brothers have been circulating for months. There’s no reason to think there’s any substance to the stories.”

Mood looked to the minister for permission; receiving a small nod, he puffed up his chest with consequence.

“We stand poised on the verge,” he said (it was uncanny how closely his speech patterns followed the minister’s), “of acquiring hard evidence of their involvement. Irrefutable evidence, and we’ll soon make it public.”

An indrawn breath from Miss Grant, some flinching on Great-aunt Tabitha’s part: Sophie felt frightened. Great-aunt Tabitha was impervious to intimidation; if
she
was afraid…

“The next step, of course,” Mood continued with suppressed excitement, “would be to mobilize our own troops in preparation for declaring war on Europe. If we are able to offer the Diet at Stockholm decisive proof that the Europeans have contributed to cause civilian deaths on Scottish soil, the other nations of the Hanse will be obliged to support us.”

“War between Europe and the Hanseatic states?” said Great-aunt Tabitha, her voice fainter than usual. “You can’t mean it. Surely we’ve not forgotten the destruction the last war wrought….” She trailed off.

“The European Federation threatens our sovereignty by its very existence,” Joanna Murchison said, then heaved a sigh that to Sophie’s surprise sounded quite heartfelt. “The last ten years have seen the slow erosion of civil liberties—”

“Yes, and at your own hands, too!” said Great-aunt Tabitha, giving the rim of her coffee cup a quick rap for emphasis. “For shame!”

“I don’t deny it,” Joanna Murchison said, looking almost bowed down with the weight on her shoulders, “but it has been vital to national security. You know perfectly well that in times of war, small personal liberties must be suspended for the greater good. Afterward—ah, then we will be able to remake the Republic of Scotland as its founders conceived it.”

Sophie was confused. She hated the feeling of not knowing enough to understand, and made a resolution on the spot to begin reading the newspapers religiously.

“You genuinely believe what you’re saying, don’t you?” Miss Grant said suddenly, throwing aside her napkin and pushing her chair back from the table.

“Why do you suspect me of dishonesty?” said the minister. “I only have the country’s best interests at heart.”

The silence that followed felt almost suffocating. Nicko was eating bites of his pear, licking the juice off his fingers with disgusting voluptuary greediness.

“Nicko!” said the minister.

“Minister?” he said, setting the last slice of fruit down on his plate uneaten and turning to her with unctuous readiness.

The minister stood up, her napkin falling to the floor, and Nicko followed suit.

“We must make our farewells. No, Tabitha, we are fully capable of seeing ourselves out. Good night, Tabitha. Good night, Miss Grant.”

The minister shook each woman’s hand, ignoring Sophie. Nicko Mood bowed to them both and nodded at Sophie.

“You meant exactly what you said, didn’t you?” said Sophie’s great-aunt to Miss Grant as soon as the others had left.

“I’m sure Murchison wasn’t lying,” said Miss Grant. “She sincerely believes that only war with Europe will make Scotland safe. That is not to say, of course, that she doesn’t have other motives beyond that oh-so-noble desire to protect the country. She holds half a dozen directorships in munitions companies, for one thing, and she’ll not turn down the chance of amassing a small fortune in the event of war. But money’s far from the primary goal here. No, Tabitha, though I despise her, I fear there’s no way around it. The Society for Psychical Research will have to support her, if indeed it comes to that.”

What? Sophie thought she must have misheard.

But Great-aunt Tabitha was nodding her agreement. “It’s a great tragedy,” she said. “I’m almost certain that any evidence linking the Europeans to the Brothers of the Northern Liberties will have been cooked up for the occasion. But whether or not that’s so, the story will be virtually impossible to refute once it’s made public.”

Now Great-aunt Tabitha sat back in her chair and put a hand over her eyes. Sophie thought she had never looked so old and tired, as if the surge of energy just now had burned out her circuits.

“Isn’t there something you can do about Nicko Mood?” Sophie ventured. “He seemed so—so
cunning
….”

The two women looked at each other. Then Great-aunt Tabitha gave a grim laugh. “Don’t worry about
him
,” she told Sophie. “Nicko knows I’ve got his number. Unlike Joanna, who’s dangerously idealistic, Nicko’s in this for the sake of one thing only, the personal advancement and professional ascendancy of Nicholas Mood. If the minister’s star were no longer on the rise, Nicko could be easily enough persuaded to make
quite
different choices about where to devote his energies.”

Sophie thought there had been something vaguely fanatical about Mood that Great-aunt Tabitha didn’t seem to be taking into account, but there was no point persisting.

“Sophie, I count on you to keep this completely secret,” Great-aunt Tabitha added. “Not a word to anyone. Understood?”

“Oh, yes,” said Sophie, rather thrilled to be trusted for once.

“Off to bed, now. Peggy will give you a cup of warm milk in the kitchen if you can’t sleep. Try not to think about what you’ve heard this evening. And remember, things may
turn out perfectly all right in the end.”