Mistress of Green Tree Mill

by Mistress of Green Tree Mill (retail) (epub)

  ‘I never thought she’d do this to me,’ David sighed to his daughter while they stood together in the Castle Bar polishing tumblers after the funeral tea.

  Lizzie picked up a glass and rubbed at it with her cloth before replying, ‘Perhaps she didn’t trust you.’

  There was a sarcastic edge to her voice and he looked carefully at her to discern her mood. ‘Oh, Lizzie, you know what I mean – I never thought she’d show me up like this. And why shouldn’t she trust me? I was her husband. What grounds did I ever give her not to trust me?’

  His daughter shrugged. ‘Who can tell? Anyway you’ve got to make the best of it. Jessie’s lawyer and that sister of hers are watching out for you. You’ll have to keep your nose to the grindstone.’

  Davie looked outraged. ‘As if I’d cheat my own laddies out of what’s due to them! That lawyer needn’t worry, I’ll make the bar over to the boys and do something on my own.’

  ‘And what’ll that be? What’ll you live on?’ asked Lizzie. Then she laughed. ‘You’ll just have to get married again, Father. This time make sure you marry plenty of money.’

  David was still a dashing man with only a few strands of grey in his hair and neatly trimmed beard. Always dressed in the finest tailoring, he gave an impression of affluence as he strolled along the High Street of a morning, twirling his gilt-topped cane, to foregather with his cronies in the businessmen’s club. He was still a fund of information and gossip, he read all the newspapers and was sought after for conversation because he was both knowledgeable and witty. His trouble was that he’d been born in the wrong bed. Instead of having a cloth packer for a father, he should have been the son and heir of some scion of the landed gentry. When Lizzie made her sally about marrying again, he looked at her from under his eyebrows with a slight twinkle in his eye, a twinkle that he tried to suppress because after all he was in deep mourning.

  * * *

  A couple of weeks later Maggy and Lizzie were polishing the brass in the saloon bar when the door swung open and Johnny pushed his head inside to speak urgently to his sister.

  ‘Go up home, it’s urgent. I’ve got to go to work.’ Then he went running off.

  Maggy stood still with her duster in her hand and concern on her face.

  ‘It must be Rosie,’ said Lizzie. ‘I’ll come with you, or do you want me to run for a doctor?’

  The girl shook her head. ‘No doctors.’

  To call a doctor meant spending money that the Davidsons could ill afford. Bertha was not working any longer because of her cough and soon Rosie too would be out of work. Johnny’s small wage and what Maggy contributed would be all they had.

  As the girls rushed up the steep stairs of the ancient tower they could hear a racking cough. There was an urgent note to it that made Maggy run even faster. When they reached the little room there was no sign of Rosie. Bertha was alone, half sitting, half lying on the fireside chair, her face as white as paper but with a terrible shade of blue around the lips.

  She held out a hand which Maggy grasped, squatting down on the floor at her mother’s side and asking ‘Where’s Rosie?’

  Bertha managed to gasp, ‘Gone to work. I asked Johnny to fetch you. My cough’s got bad, awful bad.’

  Lizzie had brought a small bottle of brandy from the bar and she decanted a little into a cup, then tried to pour the liquid between Bertha’s parted lips but she was unable to swallow, and most of it spilled down her dress.

  Alarmed, the girls lifted her between them and laid her in bed but she coughed even more when she was flat so they propped her up on pillows and Lizzie rushed downstairs to the apothecary for Friar’s Balsam.

  On her return, Bertha’s coughing had become a series of small barks like a choking dog. She ran into the room and saw that the cloth Maggy was holding to her mother’s mouth was stained with blood. At the sight of the blood, Maggy panicked and looked round for something else to wipe her mother’s face. When she turned back, Bertha slumped forward. Her feeble heart had given up the struggle.

  Lizzie did not know what to do. Maggy fell on her knees, sobbing like a hurt child, and laid her face in the dead woman’s lap.

  Lizzie headed for the door, saying, ‘I’ll get Johnny and I’ll run to the mill and tell Rosie.’

  * * *

  The spinners poured out of the iron mill gates like a marauding army on the loose. They jostled, shouted and swore, clattering over the pavement in wooden pattens or shuffling in bare feet, for boots were saved for winter. Rosie was among the first to appear, surrounded by her friends, enormous and unashamed in her pregnancy. She was laughing but her face changed when she saw Lizzie waiting. Her first instinct was to go the other way. She thought the Mudie lassie was a snob, aye looking down her nose. She’d not forgiven Lizzie’s horrified reaction when she realized Rosie was having a baby and wasn’t married like the fancy Mrs Kinge herself.

  But Lizzie had her eye on Rosie and crossed the roadway, elbowing among the spinners who made way for her with ill grace and rude remarks. She put a hand on the pregnant girl’s arm and said, ‘I’ve come to tell you something – so it’s not such a shock when you get home.’

  Rosie’s face went stiff with fear and hostility, and her round blue eyes were cold.

  ‘It’s about your mother…’

  There were no tears. ‘She’s no’ ill, is she?’

  Lizzie nodded. ‘Yes, I’m sorry.’

  Rosie knew there was something more. ‘She’s no’ deed. My ma’s no’ deed?’

  Lizzie nodded again because the lump in her throat made it difficult to talk. She swallowed convulsively and managed to say, ‘It happened this morning. Maggy was there and so was I.’

  Rosie controlled herself magnificently. ‘Where’s Johnny?’

  ‘I’ve just been to his office but they’ve sent him out to Newtyle. They’ll tell him when he gets back.’

  ‘Oh, my God,’ gulped Rosie and took to her heels, running as fast as her heavy body would allow down the street to her home.

  * * *

  Rosie’s labour started before the neighbouring women finished laying out her mother and so the same helpful friends assisted the sweating, straining girl who impressed everyone by her bravery. She did not scream out even when the labour pains were at their most agonizing. It was a swift business, for after only two hours, she was delivered of a fine, fair-haired child.

  ‘What is it?’ she gasped, lying back in the bed.

  ‘It’s a girl.’

  ‘Good. Then I’ll call her Bertha.’

  Lizzie went back and forth to the Davidsons’ home all day, helping Maggy, fetching and carrying, trying to block her ears to Rosie’s animal grunts in labour.

  In spite of their frenzied lovemaking during their three-day honeymoon, it had not really struck her that she might have conceived, and as she watched Rosie sweating and struggling, she prayed that she was not pregnant. She wanted more time alone with her husband, more time to go out with him for walks and to the theatre. She did not want to be confined at home by a baby. She did not want to writhe and struggle like an animal while she gave birth. Infants did not make her feel all soft and sentimental and she wondered if there was perhaps something wrong with her as she watched the other women exclaiming in delight over Rosie’s child. To her it looked unattractive, red and wizened – not an object worthy of admiration at all.

  Practical as always, she asked Maggy what little Bertha was going to be dressed in for there did not seem to be any baby clothes in the roon.

  ‘Rosie didnae hae time. She wasn’t due till next month. The bairn’ll have to be wrapped up in Mother’s old shawl,’ was the reply.

  The idea of a newborn baby being covered by a shawl worn by a woman dead only hours before from consumption horrified Lizzie. She hurried out to the nearest draper’s shop where she bought three baby gowns, a bonnet and a white shawl. When she returned with her bounty, Rosie was sitting up in bed looking remarkably fresh, though there were tears in her eyes for her moth
er. She was cuddling the baby to her breast as if she held the greatest treasure in the world.

  Lizzie laid the clothes on the bed. ‘Here’s something for the bairn to wear, Rosie.’

  Maggy and the other women fingered her presents and exclaimed at her generosity. They held the scraps of clothes up towards Rosie who turned her head away.

  Seeing Lizzie’s disappointment, Maggy tried to thank her. ‘It’s kind of you. The bairn’ll look grand in them.’

  At this Rosie turned back, and her face was tear-stained. ‘Our bairns dinna hae fancy clothes. You like acting the grand lady, that’s aye your way,’ she accused Lizzie, who turned and left the room.

  Next day Johnny Davidson came to the Castle Bar and stood awkwardly in the doorway, twisting his cap in his hands, waiting for Lizzie to come out and speak to him. She took her time because she was smarting with anger from Rosie’s ingratitude and the implication that she was trying to patronize the Davidsons.

  ‘I’ve come to say I’m sorry about Rosie…’ he stammered. ‘She was upset about our mother dying. She didn’t mean…’

  ‘Oh yes she did,’ snapped Lizzie. ‘Rosie’s never liked me and well you know it, but I wasn’t giving the clothes to her, I was giving them to that poor fatherless bairn.’

  Johnny nodded silently, looking down at his feet, reluctant to say anything that could be construed as criticism of his sister. Then he lifted his head and looked Lizzie in the face.

  ‘I’m grateful for what you did. I know you’re a married woman but I’ve meant to say this to you for years and it won’t matter if I tell you now. I love you.’

  The hostility left her. She looked around as if for someone to rescue her from Johnny. These Davidsons were too much. One accused her of acting Lady Bountiful and the other embarrassed her by declaring his love! Yet she was acutely aware of what it must have cost Johnny to say the words and she did not want to hurt him. She had too much respect for him.

  ‘You shouldn’t talk to me like that,’ she said gently.

  ‘It doesn’t matter now. I don’t expect anything from you and I’m not trying to cause trouble. I just want you to know that I love you and that I always will,’ said Johnny Davidson in a strong and resolute voice. It was out, he’d said it at last and he was not going to take it back.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Lizzie softly.

  There was a pause and then Johnny asked, ‘Will you do something for me, Lizzie?’

  She was slightly suspicious. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Oh, don’t worry. I just want you to promise to look after Maggy. She’s not one that can be left on her own.’

  ‘I know that. Of course I’ll look after her. But where are you going?’

  Johnny’s eyes were steely and determined. She sensed a power in him that was more intense than anything she’d ever seen in anyone else. ‘I’m going to America to make my fortune,’ he said and turned on his heel.

  * * *

  The summer passed quickly. David needed Lizzie’s help in the bar because he had not given up his own engrossing social life. Without Jessie to interfere, she felt important and was able to run the Castle Bar more or less single-handed. Being a barmaid was not so bad, she thought, if you were the head barmaid and knew that bar-minding was not to be your lot for ever. After all, she was wife to Sam Kinge, mate of the Pegasus, who one day would have a ship of his own. Her future looked much more promising now and she was able to preside over her bar without the old feeling of being wasted and trapped.

  She had time to gossip with Maggy again and to sit in the evenings with George, asking him about his work in Green Tree Mill.

  ‘I like it. It’s fine. The other fellows are good company,’ he said laconically.

  ‘But what do you do exactly?’ she wanted to know.

  ‘I fill up the ledgers, write in details of orders, that sort of thing.’

  ‘You don’t sound too enthusiastic,’ she said.

  He laughed, swinging back on the legs of his chair. ‘I’m not aiming to be managing director, Lizzie. If you really want to know I read the newspapers every morning, especially the Pink ’Un and do as little as possible.’

  She was shocked. ‘Oh, George. Poor Mr Adams is paying you for that!’

  He clicked his tongue. ‘You sound like an old schoolteacher. Mr Adams wouldn’t mind me reading the Pink ’Un, I’m sure. I’m not like you, Lizzie. I’m not looking for fame and fortune. I just want a quiet life.’

  ‘But I’m not looking for fame and fortune,’ she protested.

  ‘You’d like it if you had it, though, wouldn’t you?’ said her brother. ‘You and Johnny Davidson have that in common.’

  ‘How’s Johnny?’ she asked, remembering the day he’d told her of his intention to emigrate. Maggy had said that he’d been saving his passage money and would soon be on his way.

  ‘I’ll miss Johnny,’ said George sadly. ‘He’s off to America next week. I hope that gypsy’s prophecy comes true for him.’

  ‘So do I,’ said Lizzie.

  * * *

  Maggy had charge of the lads, as David called his sons by Jessie, and the house ran smoothly for the first time since the Mudies had moved from the Exchange Coffee House.

  But Lizzie was determined that when Sam came home, they were not going to live in the Castle Bar household. She must find somewhere for them to rent.

  When she was not busy in the bar, she went from vacant property to vacant property seeking out the right place. The agents who showed her houses stood back as she examined the rooms with purposeful intent, jumping in the corners and poking at the plaster with her parasol to see if it was sound.

  ‘Does the chimney draw well?’ she asked in every kitchen. ‘Is there a water boiler?’ If the answers did not please her, she swept out.

  She knew exactly what she wanted, a pretty little house with a big sitting room that she could furnish in imitation of Tay Lodge. She wanted a garden too where she could grow flowers and a front bedroom with a bow window. Agents’ blandishments about servants’ quarters, nursery wings or carriage sheds did not impress her. She was not going to run before she walked. Her dream was of a little house where she and Sam could live together, absolutely alone.

  In the end she found it, a grey stone four-roomed villa with a basement kitchen in the Lochee Road. The rent was modest; the garden not too big; the sitting room large and well shaped, with a marble fireplace, a window seat and stained-glass panels in the upper part of the windows. It perched ten steep stairs up above pavement level and she tripped up the steps in delight, imagining herself inside playing at housekeeping. Her father and uncle helped her to buy some basic furniture, insisting that she go for quality in every piece. David gave her a beautiful French clock as a wedding present and when the rooms were furnished they looked beautiful, but she would not move in until Sam came home. He was the only thing missing from her dream house.

  Fortunately his ship was the first of the whaling fleet to come sailing back up the Tay on a sunny day at the beginning of October, and Lizzie was saved the agonizing wait that was the lot of many whalers’ wives. After the cargo was unloaded, he ran all the way from the dock to the Castle Bar, where he burst in hoping to surprise her. She was busy writing up her father’s accounts and leaped from her chair with delight when she saw the figure of her tall husband filling the door frame. Overcome with disbelief that this wonderful man belonged to her, she kissed him over and over again, stroked his cheeks, tracing with her fingers the lines beneath his eyes. She tasted him, smelt him, felt his hard body bending towards her. She wanted to leap and shout out with delight for all the world to see. Sam was home, her world was complete.

  He pulled sheafs of banknotes out of his pockets. ‘Look, Lizzie, we’ve had a great season. My share comes to over eight hundred pounds. I hope you’ve found us a house.’

  The Pegasus had sailed back into Dundee with a full ship of eleven huge whales that yielded one hundred and twenty hundredweight of whalebone and thirty-fiv
e tons of oil, altogether worth more than sixteen thousand pounds.

  ‘I have, I have,’ she cried. ‘It’s a wee house in Lochee and it’s got a garden, Sam. We can move in as soon as we like.’

  Before she left the Castle Bar, they decided to have a party, for their wedding reception had been a muted affair because of Jessie’s illness. Invitations were sent to the relatives in and around Dundee and to Arthur in Glasgow. When he came he was even more solemn than before. Because he rarely smiled it was difficult to guess whether he was enjoying himself or not but, this time, with him he brought a sparkling-eyed, red-haired girl who was introduced as his intended.

  Her name was Lil and she told Lizzie, ‘Arthur’s having a lovely time. I’ve never seen him so happy.’

  Looking at her impassive brother-in-law, Lizzie found that difficult to believe but decided to accept Lil’s assurances.

  The brightest and most sparkling guest was David, who went from group to group, spreading good cheer and flirting with all the ladies.

  His daughter watched his progress round the room with something like despair. My father’s never grown up, she thought. He still acts like a young buck. She saw that all the women were simpering and smiling. Many of the unmarried ones had calculating eyes on him. She thought: I can’t understand how he can be such a success with women and Georgie’s so slow. He hasn’t a lady friend – I don’t think he’s ever walked out with a girl.

  Maggy was at the party as a guest, though she could not break the habit of a lifetime and went around carrying plates of sandwiches which she thrust under the nose of anyone who was not already eating. When the party was ending and the young couple preparing to leave for their new home, she sought out David Mudie and said in a voice that brooked no argument, ‘I think you’ll no’ be needing me any longer.’