Free The Piper's Tune by Jessica Stirling Page A

stood close to Lindsay, balancing the miniature cup and saucer on his palm. His presence made her feel curiously mature, as if she had already inherited her father’s house or become a wife in her own right.
    â€˜Is it a big house you have here?’ Forbes asked.
    â€˜Big enough for two of us.’
    â€˜It’ll not be as roomy as Pappy’s place?’
    â€˜No,’ said Lindsay. ‘Few houses in Glasgow are.’
    â€˜I’d be as well digging in there then.’
    â€˜Pardon?’
    â€˜I thought I might be better off here.’
    â€˜You…’
    â€˜Nearer to you,’ he said. ‘Wouldn’t you like that?’
    Lindsay had been flirted with before, usually by men four or five years older than she was. In fact, she had almost been proposed to just before Christmas when Gordon Swann, Ethan Swann’s youngest, had got carried away by the lights and the music at the Federated Ironmasters’ annual ball in Finnieston Hall and had been on the point of popping the question. Lindsay had done nothing to encourage him, though she had let him kiss her out in the cold stone corridor under the bas-relief memorial to those who had died in the Minerva tragedy. That brief, breathless one-Christmas-night fling with Gordon Swann had not been serious, however. Somehow this was – desperately serious, even if Forbes lacked gravity and was far too young for her. Hot, calculating eyes and brash, impolitic hints of adult experience did not make him a man.
    â€˜I think you had better go,’ Lindsay told him.
    â€˜I’ve offended you, haven’t I?’
    â€˜You have,’ said Lindsay.
    â€˜You’re easily offended then.’
    â€˜Perhaps Dublin girls have thicker skins than I do.’
    â€˜They know a compliment when they hear one.’ He drank coffee, put the cup back on the saucer and handed both to Lindsay. ‘Anyway, I’m here to stay, Linnet, and Harper’s Hill isn’t so very far away.’
    â€˜Why do you call me “Linnet”?’
    â€˜That’s what my mam calls you.’
    â€˜My name is Lindsay, plain Lindsay.’
    â€˜I’ll remember that next time,’ Forbes said. ‘Do you really want me to go? I thought we were rubbing along pretty well.’
    â€˜No, I want you to go.’
    â€˜Walk me to the door then.’
    â€˜Why should I?’
    â€˜Because I’m your cousin and you are a lady.’
    â€˜Where’s your overcoat?’
    â€˜Got none.’
    â€˜Your hat?’
    â€˜Got none. Lindsay, walk me to the door.’
    Without knowing quite why she did so, she obeyed him.
    Standing on the top step she watched him stroll off along the crescent, disappointed that he did not look back. In years to come, though, during and after her marriage, that was how she would remember Forbes, walking off into the gathering dusk – and deliberately not looking back.

CHAPTER FOUR
    Sunday in the Park
    Brunswick Park Choral Society had none of the pretensions of the big city choral unions. If there was such a thing as a written constitution no one knew where it was to be found, which is not to say that the society’s members did not take singing seriously. On the contrary: they were just as dedicated to musical excellence as any of the great orchestral choirs, and what they lacked in timbre they more than made up for in gusto.
    Mr Perrino, the choir’s conductor, claimed his musical inheritance from an Italian knife-grinder who had docked at Greenock in the mistaken impression that he had reached the golden shores of the Hudson and who, being short on wit as well as cash, had decided to settle in Glasgow instead of re-embarking for New York. What had trickled down through three generations was an exploitable Italian surname, a perfect ear for pitch and a good set of vocal chords, attributes that had earned ‘Perry’ Perrino a decent living throughout the years and which