Rich Girl, Poor Girl

by Eileen Ramsay

  And then she felt Kier stiffen beside her. She looked up at him, saw his eyes shining with joy and turned to see what he was seeing. A small dog-cart was being expertly wheeled in through the gates, and driving the horse was a woman in an incredibly smart bottle-green riding coat. She handed the reins to a groom who had hurried to her and stepped down from the cart. She chatted, laughing, to the groom for a moment and then she picked up her skirt over her arm and hurried towards them. Kier left Rosie and went to meet her and when he reached her he kissed her on the cheek, the gesture of one who had done the same thing a hundred times before. ‘Oh, for such serenity,’ thought Rose, ‘for such ease.’

  ‘Lucy, darling.’ Kier’s parents had gone forward too to greet the latecomer.

  ‘Miss Nesbitt, Miss Black,’ said Kier grandly as one does who is presenting a trophy, ‘may I introduce Doctor Graham? Lucy, darling, you will never guess. The first two of our guests I met are medical students.’

  There it was again, that odd response. ‘How do you do?’ This time Rosie was ready. ‘How do you do, Doctor Graham,’ she said and for the second time in her life was aware of the difference between the hardworking hands of the poor and the hardworked hands of the rich. Dr Graham’s hands were beautifully shaped, long and slim and capable, but they were white and soft and the nails, cut short and blunt, were polished. Rosie almost snatched back her rough red hands with the bitten nails. ‘Whatever else I have to do without I shall have that glycerine ointment for my hands, and this time I promise that I shall never bite my nails again,’ she vowed as the conversation went on around her, Mary gamely holding up Rosie’s side as well as her own.

  Eventually Kier remembered his duties as a host and, with a look at Rosie that was almost regretful, he took Dr Graham’s arm and steered her towards the tea tent.

  ‘You are staying for dinner, Lucy?’ Rosie heard him say.

  ‘I’m spoiling myself and staying until Monday,’ Dr Graham answered and then, before they drifted too far away for even Rosie’s keen hearing she continued, ‘Which one of us terrified your young friend, Kier? I do hope it was you and not me.’

  Rosie felt herself blushing but no one else seemed to have heard. The Anderson-Howards excused themselves and went off to greet others and Rosie and Mary were left alone.

  ‘I should have known the Doctor Graham was the Doctor Graham,’ said Mary.

  ‘Why the emphasis?’

  ‘Rosie, where do you hide yourself? Doctor Graham is not only one of the first female doctors in the entire country but she is the only one in Dundee. She has a society practice at the West End. Could be very useful to an up-and-coming Dundonian doctor.’

  Rose had heard once before of Doctor Graham but she had forgotten until today. Ma had said she was the one who got poor Heather into the women’s hospital. Imagine Heather having the nerve to go to see a woman like that! Still, it proved what she had thought all along. Women needed women doctors. Heather would never have gone to a man to ask for a tonic. Now it suited Rose to ignore the poorer part of Doctor Graham’s practice.

  ‘I have no intention of working with the rich, Mary. I want to have a practice in my own street, right up the Hilltown among the tenements.’

  Mary looked at her in amazement. ‘You are incredibly naïve, Rose Nesbitt. Be so kind as to tell me how you are going to afford it.’

  ‘Something will turn up. It always does if you work hard enough, and besides things will change. Perhaps the government will help with the medical care of the poor.’

  ‘You shouldn’t be out without your keeper. Thank God I am here to look after you. The son of the house is obviously smitten . . .’

  ‘He’s in love with Doctor Graham,’ interrupted Rose.

  ‘Maybe, but I don’t think he knows how much; he’s got used to loving her, and she treats him the way I treat my wee brother, hardly lover-like. The “daaalings” all over the place from the toffs don’t mean a damn thing. What you should be thinking about, Rosie, is making sure that neither he nor Doctor Graham forget you’re around.’

  ‘I can’t make friends with someone just so they’ll be useful to me.’

  ‘Rosie, you are a marvel; you’ve worked so hard against all the odds. You should be in a jute-mill, girl, not a world-famous university. Now you’re a guest in the home of someone who obviously likes you and who has a friend who just happens to be the only female doctor in the entire area. You’d be mad not to encourage him and her to help you.’

  ‘I’ve got this far on my own,’ began Rosie and then realized that that was not true. There were the sacrifices of Frazer, Frazer who might have been able to marry, to become a father even, had he not given everything he earned to her; Wishy, who had spent hours coaching her; Elsie, who had somehow earned this dress. No, it was not tailored to fit like the green silk Dr Lucille Graham had been wearing, but it was beautiful, beautiful.

  ‘Mr Anderson-hyphen-Howard won’t give the likes of me another thought, Mary. Come on. It’s almost time for the charabancs and I want to get a better seat this time.’

  *

  To give him his due, Kier did not forget Rose. Her pale face swam before his mind’s eye quite often and he found more and more reasons for going into St Andrews, business that seemed quite often to take him near the university. He even went more often to Dundee for, when he had been able to prise a word out of the girl, she had told him she was a Dundonian. Kier, however, had not taken into consideration that a girl like Rosie would have to work during the long summer holiday, and he did not look for her in the Angus berry fields which is where she could easily have been found.

  Lucy Graham did not immediately forget the frightened young girl in the ghastly dress either. She had ambivalent feelings about her. The child had been terrified and Lucy always felt sorry for things smaller and less able than herself, but Kier had been unable to hide his interest in the girl. He had talked of nothing but her courage and ability and ambition, until not only Lucy but Kier’s parents were heartily sick of the sound of her.

  ‘I have such a stupid prejudice against flower names for girls,’ confessed Mrs Anderson-Howard when she and Lucy were having a quiet chat together in Kier’s mother’s own little sitting room, ‘and besides, she looked to be a really aggressive young woman.’

  ‘No, Auntie, she was terrified, totally out of her depth. Try to look at the afternoon from her point of view.’

  ‘How like you and Kier to look out for the wounded of this world. Those girls will never make doctors, never. The blonde one couldn’t even speak. And there’s my silly son gazing at her as if he had found the holy grail.’

  So Kier’s mother had noticed it too. Well, the afternoon was over and the girl was gone and no doubt they would never see her again.

  ‘If I had not had all my advantages, perhaps I would be rather like Rosie Nesbitt, or, more likely, I would have given up long ago.’

  ‘Given up and married my son! You still can. We really do want grandchildren while we’re still young enough, Lucy. Hasn’t Kier asked you lately? Has he got out of the habit?’

  ‘Am I a habit with him? Sometimes I think so, and when I see him looking at someone so young and so lovely . . .’

  ‘Lovely? Lucy, you must be blind, my dear. That dress . . . and the smell . . .’

  ‘That’s poverty, Auntie. And Kier saw past it and saw the beauty of her face. He’s never really been aware of clothes anyway.’

  ‘Just like his father, my dear. They notice when their horses need new saddles, but I think their womenfolk could walk around in rags and they’d mutter charming, charming, which is all Archie ever seems to say about anything . . . But tell me, Lucy, how would a girl like Miss Nesbitt get into medical school?’

  ‘Brains and hard work and determination and vocation, and endless sacrifices from many people. Exactly the way I did it myself, and every other female doctor, except that I had money to oil the wheels.’

  ‘Oh, Lucy dear, your family was not weal
thy.’

  ‘To people like the Nesbitts of the world, Auntie, I must appear to be fabulously wealthy. Rose Nesbitt is a remarkable young woman and I wish her well.’

  Mrs Anderson-Howard rose from her chaise longue as the dressing bell went. ‘Go and make yourself beautiful, my dear. If you want him to, Kier will forget all about Miss Nesbitt.’

  *

  In her room Lucy slowly undressed and, for the first time in years, critically examined herself in the mirror. Too tall; Rosie Nesbitt was small and dainty. Too thin; Miss Nesbitt was thin too, but her body curved seductively in all the right places. Lucy did not admire her clear, guileless eyes or her firm, straight nose; she saw a cloud of yellow curls framing a pretty little face and eyes that glared at everyone but Kier.

  I should have married him when he came back from Africa but no, no, I couldn’t. There was poor Mrs Dryden so ill, and Donald’s relapse.

  Lucy had received two proposals of marriage within a month of the wounded Kier’s return: one from Kier himself. A habit, a habit, her brain told her. The second was from Colin Dryden. Gratitude for the way I looked after his aunt. She had almost said ‘Yes’ to both proposals, and as she looked at herself in the mirror Lucy wondered why.

  Is it because I am only too aware of the toll that time takes on the female body? Did I merely want a husband? Did I want children? Am I right to wait until one day I find I do not have to ask myself questions about my feelings? Is Auntie right? Can I make Kier forget the lovely little Nesbitt?

  Thirty minutes later a sophisticated, elegant woman walked into the drawing room and instinctively responded to the admiration in the eyes of the men there. Not one of them could guess at the turmoil in her heart.

  9

  St Andrews, 1899

  MRS ANDERSON-HOWARD WAS quite right: Mary Black never became a doctor. She never returned to St Andrews University, and Rosie had almost forgotten her by the time she learned much later that Mary had died of consumption. It wasn’t that Rosie, by now trying hard to drop the diminutive and to be known as Rose, easily dismissed from her heart all those who had been her friends, but that the goal she had set herself was always to the forefront of her mind.

  In 1898, at the age of nineteen, she had graduated with honours in Arts. She had looked down from the podium with her parchment in her hand and seen Elsie crying so hard with love and pride that the tears running down her old face were bringing with them the ghastly make-up that she had worn ‘tae look ma best for ye, hen’.

  ‘I’ve done it, Ma.’ She sent the message silently down to the clown face. ‘No, we’ve done it together, you and me and Frazer and old Wishy. A shame they didn’t live to see this day.’

  And now nothing and no one would be allowed to interfere with her ambitions. She was going to be a doctor, and none of these super-sarcastic male students who thronged the lecture rooms at St Andrews University and who enjoyed baiting the female students would be allowed to bother her hard-won serenity. Because Rosie was a street fighter, and when she walked into a room and found herself the butt of jokes and the object of cat-calls, her first impulse was to scream and kick, just as she had done on the streets of Dundee in her early childhood. From the age of ten when she had first walked all the way to the centre of Dundee to attend the Harris Academy, she had schooled herself and she had learned to appear to ignore the disparaging remarks of wealthier girls, and now she was able to appear unaware of the frightened malice of her fellow students.

  ‘That’s all it is,’ she assured more delicate women students. ‘They’re afraid of us and so they say we are unfeminine. We will show them, ladies, that not only are we very feminine, but that we are also very, very clever, and we will win all the prizes.’

  The first prize Rose won, she was not allowed to have, and its winning and subsequent non-award brought her to the attention of several of the professors including Sir James Donaldson, the principal of the University, and earned her admiration and respect.

  There was a bursary of one hundred pounds per annum for two years. Rosie took the examination and won. She was elated: one hundred pounds each year for two years! Properly invested with a little interest added, and she could sail through medical school with nothing to worry about but passing exams, and she had never had to worry about that.

  One hundred pounds! Rose and Elsie walked up from the station and made shopping lists as they passed the shops. What could you not buy for one hundred pounds?

  ‘I cannae see that much siller in my mind, Rosie,’ said Elsie. ‘You could eat meat every day o’the week, twice on a Sunday if ye want to. You could have silk underwear. Look at those knickers. You could hae a clean pair every day fer a month. And look at that suite. Whit do ye think the neighbours would say if we took that posh furniture up the Hilltown? Goodness, you could get on a train and go . . .’ Elsie was at a loss. Where could one hundred pounds take her? She herself had only ever been to St Andrews and that had been an adventure. ‘. . . farther than London,’ she finished off, not even sure that there was anywhere farther than London.

  ‘It’s going in a bank, Ma,’ said Rose, ending the insubstantial dreams of silk underwear or upholstered furniture.

  ‘A bank?’ Elsie looked at her daughter in awe.

  ‘If I open a bank account, Ma, the money will be safe and it will earn interest. I’ll have all I need for textbooks, instruments, even some new knickers when I need them, but not silk,’ said the practical Rose.

  The grand plans went for nothing though because it seemed that it would take practically an Act of Parliament to award the bursary to a woman. When it had been set up, universities were not open to women, and the wording of the long legal document that talked about the awarding of such a magnificent sum showed that the money had been intended to benefit a poor man.

  ‘You do understand, Miss Nesbitt; the grant was set up in a time when there was no thought that women would breach these portals.’ (Was there a hint there that he too, sitting so comfortably in his silk gown, would prefer not to think of mere women within his sacred walls? He would not fight for her.) ‘We must needs see to the rewording of the documents but, unfortunately, and I mean this sincerely, it will not be in time to aid you. The grant this year must be awarded to a man.’

  Rose could taste the disappointment in her mouth. It stayed with her for days and she never forgave the university authorities for the injustice. No matter that the wording was changed so that subsequent female winners could be awarded the prize. In good faith she had been encouraged to enter the bursary competition, and she had won. She should have had the prize.

  But now she sat stoically and listened to explanation after explanation, and not one of the council knew of the turmoil inside.

  They stood up and so did she. The interview was at an end.

  ‘Thank you, gentlemen,’ she said quietly and they watched her leave the room, her small head held high.

  Out in the street she wanted to run; she wanted to cry. But she would do neither of these things. She walked and walked and found herself miles along the beach. Then she turned around to see St Andrews.

  ‘How could they do that to me?’ she asked the great towers. She could almost hear Elsie. ‘What ye’ve niver had, ye’ll niver miss.’

  ‘Oh, I’ll miss it, Ma, but you’re the only person who’ll hear me moan.’

  She went back into the town, for it wouldn’t do to miss the train home.

  ‘God does not make life easy fir the working classes, does he, lassie,’ was all Elsie said, visions of silk knickers disappearing for ever.

  ‘They’re giving me thirty pounds a year for two years instead, Ma. That’s an extra ten pounds.’

  ‘Jist don’t let it be a moneyed laddie that gets your bursary,’ moaned Elsie.

  ‘Come on, Ma. What you’ve . . .’

  ‘. . .  niver had, you’ll niver miss,’ finished Elsie obligingly but without her usual smile. ‘God, lassie, do you no care? I’d be wantin’ tae tear their
hair oot.’

  ‘I’ll not give anyone the satisfaction of knowing what I feel, Ma. That’s my revenge.’

  She almost added, ‘It always worked at the Harris,’ but managed to stop the words. It would only hurt Elsie to be told that her daughter’s poverty had been the object of ridicule. She remembered the dominie at her primary school: a nice, kind man who had been delighted that she was to attend the Harris Academy.

  ‘My Niece Edith is a pupil there, Rosie. She’s in the third year. Introduce yourself and she’ll take care of you.’

  Rose had promised to do so and had plucked up courage one day. She could still hear her quavering voice as she managed to force herself to approach the well-groomed young ladies with their beautiful ribbons in their shining hair.

  ‘Are you Edith Morrison?’ she had asked one tall, blonde, haughty beauty.

  ‘No, I’m Queen Alexandra,’ the girl had laughed and she and her friends had gone into paroxysms of mirth as Rose walked away, scarlet with embarrassment.

  ‘No, keep your feelings to yourself, Rose,’ she had told herself then and she told herself now. She took out her notebook and set herself to reading and memorizing the notes she had made on intermittent claudication. There was no point in worrying over injustice, she could do nothing about that, but she could help to eradicate disease.

  She stayed later and later every night and often did not eat before going to the library from the lecture rooms. Elsie met her every night in whatever weather and walked with her from the station. Rosie found soup being kept warm on the fire, and for several years her diet consisted almost entirely of a bread roll in the morning and a bowl of soup at night, and tea, tea, and more tea.