by Millie Gray
“No. Sure, nine folk in two rooms is enough, is it no? Mind you, good soul that she is, she would make space for them and I know she would be the soul of discretion.” Anna paused before quietly admitting, “But what I urgently need is some time to get things sorted out – so Bella, off you go and ask Mona Stoddard.”
“Mona Stoddard?”
“Aye, there’s only her and her rat-catcher man living in that house so they’ve got room to spare.”
13
EUGENIE FRASER
Three weeks later the physical scars of Rachel’s ordeal had vanished. In that time Anna had reached the reluctant decision that she must put Rachel somewhere safe. Gus did continually assure her that he’d put Gabby’s gas well and truly at a peep but she was never completely sure that when he had a good drink in him he might not get gallus and pitch up at her door. No doubt accompanied by at least two misguided law officers.
She further argued with herself that the boys were of an age to decide whether to remain with her and there was nothing their father could do about that – but in Rachel’s case he could demand that she be returned to his custody. Sighing, she knew there was nothing else for it but to put Rachel beyond his reach. Parting with her, she knew, would be unbearable but she must endure it. Tearfully she acknowledged that what was best for Rachel was paramount. Inhaling deeply she wondered who could help her? Within a minute she smiled. “Eugenie!” she called out loudly. “Now who else could be more suitable to help with my dilemma than her?”
Having decided to enlist the help of Eugenie she wiped both hands over her wet eyes, sighed and looked towards the front door as Bella, Nat and Gus came in.
“Auntie,” crooned Bella, who was so besotted with Gus that Rachel’s plight hardly registered with her. “Wait till I tell you. We’ve …” and she now slipped her arm through Gus’s, “… we’ve got a house.”
“You have? Oh, that’s just wonderful. And here was me thinking that Michie didn’t have any empty houses.”
“We didn’t go to your factor to rent a condemned one,” Bella smirked. “You see, we’re buying a main-door flat in Lochend Road. And not only does it have an indoor lavvy but also a bath with running water and a wee front garden.”
“Are you saying you’re going to buy one of these posh new red sandstone houses that are still under construction in Lochend Road?” Anna stuttered with a voice ringing with incredulity.
“Aye,” Bella chortled. “And our one will be ready in a year. And by that time Gus will have done another long trip and we’ll have all the money they want for it. You see, Auntie, my dear husband doesnae like debt.”
Looking at Gus, Anna wondered where he could have found the money for the deposit, which she knew was more than fifty per cent. Suddenly she recalled what he’d said to her in Gabby’s house on the day Bella had dragged him out of the Black Swan pub and begged him to help herself and Rachel. The words about him being capable of doing what was required without thinking of the consequences caused a fear to grow in her. She knew she should question him and try to find out exactly what he meant that day but she found she could only mumble, “A house in Lochend Road. That’s just great.”
Sighing cockily Bella enthused, “It’s just so grand. A world away from what I’m used to but Gus says it’s what he wants for Nat and … well, he hasn’t said it in so many words, but I know he means me too.” Bella stopped babbling and took time to look at Anna whose face was solemnly set. “And yet, Auntie,” she continued, “it’s not Couper Street where I was brought up and where, no matter what, there was always someone to hold out a helping hand to you.”
Gus had been gone a fortnight and Anna had rearranged the house, giving Freddie and Robert the bedroom while Bella, Nat, Rachel and herself squeezed up in the more commodious sleeping accommodation in the kitchen. Nonetheless, Bella, who was counting the days until she moved into her main-door flat in Lochend Road, continually complained about not having enough room to turn in the bed. “Funny that,” remarked Anna, “you didn’t seem to be crushed when Gus, who’s three times the size of Rachel, was hemming you in.”
Bella snorted. “Talking of which, Auntie – I think I’m away again.”
“Don’t think it. Know it,” retorted Anna.
“How do you know? I’m not showing yet.”
“No. But when you throw up at the mention of a plate of buckies there has to be a reason. Anyway, this time you’re married – so there’s no shame attached to it.”
Lifting up her coat Anna brushed it well again. It was the coat she kept for all-important occasions and as she donned it she said, “Bella, I’m going out on business. Important business. Now Rachel’s away for a wee paddle in the water down on Annfield beach with Jenny and Rosa – do her the world of good, that will – so when she gets back mask her a cup of tea.”
Travelling on the tramcar from Leith to Pilrig and changing for another to take her to Edinburgh’s West End was a real treat for Anna.
As she enjoyed the luxury of being driven along Great Junction Street she was able to see the new Leith Provident Building from a new perspective. Glancing firstly to the new Taylor Gardens part of the store she shivered at the thought that it had been built on the site of the now demolished old South Leith Poorhouse.
Looking upwards as she passed King Street, she had to admit that the new housing above the shops was a welcome improvement. She had smiled proudly when she’d been faced with the main shop itself. It had been opened in 1911 and the people in Leith, occasionally including herself for threads and cloth, flocked to shop in the magnificent emporium. She sniffed, thinking how she’d have loved to have been a share-holder in the successful co-operative that had built it all. Biting her lip she vowed that someday she was going to have a spare pound to do just that.
So engrossed in her thoughts she was that she nearly missed her connection at Pilrig. As the tramcar trundled along prestigious Princes Street she admired the elegant shops. There on her right was Mackie’s Tea Rooms. She smiled thinking the first, and only, time she’d visited the shop was at the invitation of her friend, Eugenie.
Turning her head to admire the beautiful gardens her thoughts returned to Gus’s intended purchase of the main-door house in Lochend Road. Naturally she again pondered the mystery of how he had gathered enough cash to be able to purchase the house for Bella, or to be truthful Nat, in such a modern and stylish street.
The more she thought of it the more she agreed with Rye Pratt, who would have loved to have been a detective, that he hadn’t been to India on his last trip but that he’d sailed out of Leith on a Christian Salvesen whaling vessel … but was too proud to say so. This would explain his long absence – because the whalers, before sailing, had to sign up to do a minimum of two years down in Antarctica’s South Georgia whaling station. Most who had decided to go thought life would be hard but they had not reckoned they would have to endure the back-breaking work in such an unrelenting, bitterly cold, hostile climate. Anna had been told, naturally by Rye, that life was so difficult there most returning whalers claimed that even God had forsaken the Antarctic and was forced to admit He’d got it wrong and it was, and never would be, fit for humans to live and work in.
Alighting from the tram at the West End she wistfully looked over to Robert Maule’s corner where his upper-class department store dominated. One day, she thought, she would be able to go into that shop and buy instead of just looking as she had done once before.
Thinking about the future her thoughts returned to Gus and his obsession to get the money, and enough of it, for the house. She also wondered if there was another pressing reason. Did he think that by going to South Georgia he’d be doing self-punishment and that this would cut his imaginary weighty albatross from his neck? Anna was so engrossed in her perceived notion that Gus had a great yearning for forgiveness – and why the answer to exactly what he was guilty of kept evading her – that she had to sternly tell herself these were problems for another day – today was the
day she had to sort out Rachel.
Now walking purposely down Queensferry Street to her destination – the ever-elegant Edinburgh Georgian New Town’s Moray Place – Rachel and what she had to do for her was all that concerned her.
After pulling the newly cleaned brass bell she gave herself a quick dust over. Waiting for the door to open she wondered if she should flee. What if her friend of years ago, when they were both active suffragettes, didn’t wish to know her now? More importantly, what if she couldn’t or wouldn’t help?
So engrossed again in her thoughts was Anna that she wasn’t aware that a middle-aged, suitably uniformed female servant was now standing with the door ajar waiting to admit her.
“You are Miss Campbell,” the woman stated as they proceeded up the elegant stairway. Anna nodded. “Miss Fraser has asked me to take you straight to her. She’s in the drawing room.”
The room was so spacious that the four large portraits of past ancestors hanging on the walls seemed necessary to emphasise the upper middle-class position of the family who had and still did reside here. However, Anna felt dwarfed by them and the unease she, now a lowly working-class woman, had experienced on the doorstep rose within her again.
The maid had just closed the door when Eugenie arose and advanced over the room, extending both hands to Anna, “I’m so pleased to see you again – it’s been too long.”
Anna smiled but not sure of the exact etiquette she only offered her gloved right hand in greeting to Eugenie.
Sensing her unease, Eugenie indicated with her right hand that they should sit on the two plush chairs that faced each other and were separated on the side by an occasional mahogany table.
Once seated, Anna removed her gloves but she clasped her hands so Eugenie would not see how work-worn and rough her palms were.
“And how has life treated you since we marched together?” Eugenie asked lightly, lifting a small brass bell and ringing it.
“You see it all,” Anna answered. “I’ve brought up four children.”
“I didn’t know you married?” replied Eugenie, turning to the maid who had just come in with a tea tray. “Thank you, Mary. We will manage to serve ourselves.”
Nothing more was said until the curtseying maid left. “Where were we?” continued Eugenie. “Ah yes, you were saying you married.”
Anna shook her head. “No. My brother’s wife died and I took in his three children – two boys and a girl.” Anna’s lips trembled. “The laddies, I mean boys, were lost on the Titanic but, Bella, their sister, although married, is still with me – for a while anyway.”
“And the fourth child?”
A long pause hung between the two women before Anna said, “Rachel. Her name’s Rachel. She’s the only daughter of my dead friend Norma. And …”
“And what?” Eugenie asked, pouring up the tea and passing a cup to Anna.
“Her father, a drunken brute that has fallen so far that nothing – and I mean nothing – gets in the way of him satisfying his addictions.”
Eugenie’s eyes widened. Anna, unaware of the venomous tone she had adopted, seemed surprised.
“So what is it you think I can do about this degenerate?”
“No. I don’t want anything done about him. You see the sheriff had recently given him power over Rachel’s future but – Oh! Eugenie, can you understand how much Norma meant to me?”
Eugenie nodded. “As Clara meant to me.”
Anna stopped and looked about the room. “Oh no, did Clara die?”
“In a manner of speaking – yes. Three years ago she married a widower with six children and has played the good step-mother ever since, which leaves her no time for anyone else.”
“Oh, but I thought …”
“Best not to think, Anna. After the Drumsheugh Gardens School Scandal …”
“But that was back in 1810.”
“Yes. But try and understand, the working class women you associate with can have very special relationships with each other and there is never a whiff of it being unseemly – they are judged just to be helping one another to survive the poverty.” Eugenie chuckled, “But since 1810 in my walk of life – it is a must for men to have long-standing close relationships with other men.” She paused. “However, women dare not appear to be too close to any other unmarried female. Or people end up adding two and two and making let’s say – anything but four.”
“As happened to poor Marianne Woods and Jane Pirie at Drumsheugh Gardens?”
“Precisely. Now we have digressed enough, pray proceed,” said Eugenie, raising her hand in permission.
“Well, when Norma was dying I promised her I’d look out for Rachel and I did but as I said, recently the court,” Anna stopped and leant over and took Eugenie’s hand in hers, “agreed he should have custody of her.” Anna was beginning to get emotional. “So you see I need to hide her. Have her safe and I was thinking – you wouldn’t need to pay her – could you not take her as a scullery maid or something? She’s a clever girl, with her mother’s grace and charm, but I don’t care if she has to scrub,” Anna was now sobbing, “just as long as she’s protected!”
“What makes you think she would be in any danger?”
“He’s already beat her senseless and I know he wants her back to keep house for him – Eugenie, have you ever known me to beg – but the court favours men.”
Eugenie nodded before rising to pace about the room. Eventually she laid a hand on Anna’s shoulder. “Calm yourself,” she began. “For your sake I’ll take her but she will have to start as a teenie in the kitchen. Unlike my father, who doesn’t seem to realise that with war raging we all have to make sacrifices, I only have four servants to look after me now. Therefore no one will consider it unreasonable for me to take Rachel on. And I will pay her what she’s worth.”
Anna had thought approaching Eugenie and begging her for help would be the hardest part of her plan, however, sitting down with Rachel and explaining to her that arrangements had been made for her to be given employment in Eugenie’s home was quite traumatic.
“But I have done nothing wrong,” screamed Rachel, thumping the table. “So why am I being sent away?”
Anna tried to get hold of Rachel who was now shying away from her. “No. No. Look, I promised your mother I’d look after you. She’d want you safe and you will be at Moray Place.”
“Look,” Rachel retorted vehemently. “If my stupid mother wanted me safe then why did she die?”
Running her hands through her now white hair Anna conceded that somehow she was going to have a difficult time convincing Rachel of the benefits of her going to Eugenie’s. “Rachel,” she began with a gulp, “don’t worry – you will still be able to see Bella, Nat, your brothers and of course myself …”
“And when will that be?”
“Every week – because you’ll be given a few hours off and Miss Fraser is going to arrange with Mackie’s Tea Shop on Princes Street that we will all meet there …”
Rachel’s hysterical laughter echoed through the house. “Oh, I see I’m not being sent away from where I thought I belonged, with my family and my pals, Jenny and Rosa. Oh no, once in a blue moon we’ll all sit down and sip tea together. Tea in china cups that no doubt has been paid for by a woman who wishes to please you by getting me out of your sight!”
Standing at the back door of Moray Place Anna wished that Rachel would speak to her. Not a word to anyone had Rachel said since Anna told her about going into service. She knew Rachel was extremely disappointed, as she’d hoped she would have started in a better job other than one of skivvy. Nonetheless, no matter the atmosphere Anna never once considered changing the plan. She firmly believed that, hard as it was to part with Rachel, it was in her best interest.
When the door opened Rachel hauled her small bag from Anna’s hand, and without a backward glance or a word of goodbye, she entered the house. Head held high she knew that her new life, without the support of the only family she’d ever known, had begun.
14
SPANISH FLU
The church bells were ringing out to proclaim the end of the war. The Great War, as it was now being called, was thankfully over. When the peals rang out the weary people were told that the sacrifice of the nation’s youth had been worthwhile because it had resulted in it being the war that had ended all wars.
With the peals of the bells echoing around them Anna and Rye sat pensively. They knew that everybody who had survived, as they had, would remember the eleventh hour of the eleventh month of 1918. How could they ever forget with ten million lives lost and twenty million either maimed or injured?
Slowly Anna allowed her gaze to wander over to Rye who was staring silently into space. Anna accepted that today would be difficult for Rye. This was a day for her to remember her beloved husband, James, who’d never made it to the front line because he’d been killed in the Gretna rail disaster. That tragic happening was for Rye every bit as shattering as it would have been if he had been killed at Gallipoli. Both women had been told it would have been kinder if the one thousand plus officers and men who survived that crash and went on to reinforce Gallipoli had died quickly at Gretna. Regrettably by July mothers, wives and bairns had been notified that fierce fighting in appalling conditions meant that only one hundred and seventy four of those gallant men would ever return to tell the tale.
“Would you like to go to Rosebank Cemetery the day, Rye?” Anna asked, before covering Rye’s hand with her own.
Rye shook her head. “Naw. No feeling myself. Aw shivery and sore, I am.”
“Hope you’re no coming down with that blasted Spanish flu. And it wouldn’t be surprising if you did. After all, you’ve been helping me nurse them that have gone down with it, not just in our stair, but the whole of Couper Street.” Rye nodded and Anna went on, “Not to mention doing a few shifts helping Sandy and Bella who cannae cope with all them that have died.”