Rich Girl, Poor Girl

by Eileen Ramsay

  Kier Anderson-Howard saw her one afternoon just before Christmas in her second year of medical school. Had it not been for the red gown that told the world her status, he would have thought that the slight little creature fighting against the wind on the way up Market Street was a child.

  ‘Good heavens,’ he thought delightedly, ‘it’s that young student. What was her name? Some flower, I seem to recall.’ He began to hurry after her – he would not shout in the street to gain her attention – and when he caught up with her and her startled eyes looked up into his, he remembered. It could not be anything else.

  ‘Rose,’ he said and lifted his hat. ‘I do beg your pardon, Miss . . . ah, Nesbitt, wasn’t it?’ and because she still looked puzzled or startled he added, ‘Kier Anderson-Howard. We met at a garden-party.’

  He saw recognition come into her eyes and then, well, he was not really a conceited man, but was it pleasure he saw there too?

  The look, had it been there at all, was gone. ‘Hello,’ she said simply and moved as if to hurry on.

  ‘Wait, Miss Nesbitt. Am I keeping you from some class?’

  ‘No. I’m hurrying to get out of this wind.’

  He laughed. Most of the girls of his acquaintance, except Lucy of course, would have been simpering up at him by this time.

  ‘It is a cold one,’ he agreed. ‘Bringing snow, our shepherds say.’

  She said nothing and he wished he hadn’t said that. Obviously she wanted to go where she had been going when he stopped her.

  ‘I’ll walk with you if I may, Miss Nesbitt, steady you against this wind.’

  She stopped then and laughed. ‘But you don’t know where I’m going.’

  He laughed too. ‘Oh, heavens, could be a lecture on the most unmentionable of subjects. I was hoping you were going to find a nice hot cup of tea.’

  She blushed. Why on earth did she blush? Gosh, he’d done it again. Possibly she couldn’t afford to eat in a restaurant. Could anyone be so poor that they could not afford a few shillings for a meal?

  ‘I was,’ he lied. He had been on his way to where his carriage waited. ‘I was going to have tea; I’m starved. And it would be so pleasant to have some company. Would you join me, Miss Nesbitt, if you’re not on your way to a lecture?’

  Again he saw some battle in the beautiful eyes. ‘I was going to the library, to read.’ She blushed again.

  How delightful. A woman who can still blush.

  ‘I very rarely read in the library,’ he said solemnly. ‘Used to get into the most fearful trouble instead. There’s a delightful hotel right here on the links, very respectable. Can you spare the time? My mother would love to hear how the first lady graduates are coming along.’

  Mrs Anderson-Howard went to regular meetings to hear how the female students were surviving, but cheerfully Kier threw her into the fray. For some reason, he did not want to sever the tenuous connection with this young woman. Why? Why should he care what happened to Rose Nesbitt, who was so obviously from quite another world?

  ‘I can spare the time,’ Rose was saying.

  ‘Wonderful,’ he said. He tucked his hand under her elbow and fairly bowled her along to the majestic front of the hotel and up the broad stairs into a carpeted and lavishly furnished hall.

  A hovering waiter gestured towards Rose’s red gown.

  ‘Madam’s still a little chilly,’ said Kier. ‘Perhaps later. We’ll have everything,’ he added, ‘and we’ll have it here by the fire.’

  The waiter bobbed his head and withdrew and Kier steered Rose, still in her red gown, to two plush seats beside the huge roaring fire. How quiet she was. Was she always quiet, or did he frighten her? Lucy had said that he had frightened her that long-ago summer day. What was it today here in the hotel? The waiter? The fire? Surely not the fire? Kier tried to imagine what it must be like to be cold and poor and to come into this luxury. ‘But this is a bit shabby. It can’t be the furniture. Is it the fire blazing merrily away in an empty room? Well, it’s not empty now. We’re here to enjoy it.’ So his thoughts ran.

  ‘Have you been shopping?’ Rose asked, and he saw that she made an effort, that conversation was difficult for her. ‘Christmas shopping, I mean.’

  ‘Quite the reverse. I’ve been selling. Geese, you know, and hens. We supply one of the local poulterer’s.’ He tried to look as if he knew all there was to know about breeding poultry, that he had done more than merely agree to terms and sign his name on a piece of paper.

  ‘I always believed . . .’ She blushed again and he finished for her.

  ‘That I was a soldier. I was.’ His face darkened with sorrow. ‘My father died. Fifty-two years old. Can you imagine? Never sick a day in his life, or so we thought, and then suddenly . . .’

  ‘His heart?’

  ‘No, they said it was a cancer. He was fine till the doctors started poking about. Seems it had been growing for some time . . . Ah, good, here’s our tea.’

  His face lightened. The waiter had put the heavy silver pots before Rose, who blushed again. Surely she knew she was supposed to pour? ‘Shall I pour the first cups, Miss Nesbitt? That pot looks frightfully heavy.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said quietly. ‘It does look a big pot for two people.’

  The hot tea and the warm scones dripping with butter made conversation easier. He was happy to see that she had a good appetite and he ate much more than he needed or wanted because he felt sure that if he stopped she would stop, and he had no idea when she would have her next meal.

  ‘Are you in a residence, Miss Nesbitt?’

  ‘No, I still live with my family in Dundee.’

  ‘Gosh, that must make life a little difficult,’ but she disagreed and made him laugh with her stories of running for the train and of the guard who had helped her until he found out that she was one of these dreadfully modern, unfeminine women who had more interest in the human body than a decent woman should have.

  ‘You are a tonic, Miss Nesbitt,’ he said finally when she had told him that now she really had to go because she would miss her train.

  ‘Wait here. My horses are just round the corner and I’ll drive you to the station.’

  He hurried out of the hotel but he did not go straight to the waiting carriages. He sent the doorman for his phaeton and then ran back along Market Street to the poulterer where he bought back, at three times the price, a huge goose he had just arranged to sell that afternoon. Rose was waiting at the door, her red gown wrapped tightly around her. Again he felt that surge of protectiveness. He had never, ever experienced the feeling before and he liked it. Lucy had always protected and managed him; all the other girls, even Sally for whom he had really cared and who had married one of his classmates while he was in Africa, had mainly roused desire.

  He kept to the other side of the street away from the lamps so that Rose would not see him and then he crossed the road and deposited the goose in the phaeton.

  ‘Here we are,’ he called to her. ‘Your carriage awaits, madam.’

  ‘I’ve never been in one of these,’ said Rose, almost at ease with him.

  ‘They’re not really comfortable but they’re fast. I shall certainly get you to the station in time.’

  ‘I could walk to the station in time,’ she said and he laughed.

  He handed her into the phaeton. ‘You are the most refreshing young woman, Miss Nesbitt.’

  They waited four minutes for the train. He felt he could not let her go, could not let her just disappear again.

  ‘Where do you live, Miss Nesbitt? Perhaps I could call some time, maybe during the holidays.’ He thought swiftly. He dare not invite her to dinner. Whatever his mother thought about his ability to recognize anything other than the needs of his horses, he knew perfectly well that Rose’s wardrobe was limited and he would not cause her embarrassment or distress. ‘The theatre, perhaps; there are some fine productions in Dundee.’

  ‘I . . . I have a job for the holidays. Here is my train.�
�� He heard the relief in her voice. ‘Thank you for the tea. It was lovely.’

  ‘Another time, perhaps. I am often in St Andrews.’

  She smiled at him then. She really had a lovely smile. He helped her climb into the train and then he ran back to the phaeton and lifted the goose.

  ‘Here,’ he said to the guard, handing the man the goose and a guinea.

  ‘Well, thank you, sir,’ said the man.

  ‘Give the goose to the young lady who just got into the carriage. Say, “Merry Christmas from Kier”. Go on, man. The train is about to leave.’

  ‘Not without I tell it, yer honour,’ laughed the guard, who had bitten the guinea to find that it really was the biggest tip he had ever had in his life.

  Kier stepped back from the train and watched it pull out. He had a quick glimpse of Rose’s startled face as the huge goose was put into her arms, and then she was swept away from him. He put out his hand as if to stop the train, for it had suddenly occurred to him that the goose was heavy and perhaps her home was miles from the station.

  ‘What must she think of you, you idiot?’ he scolded himself, but his heart was light as he bowled along the roads to Laverock Rising. It was only later that he realized that never once had she called him by his name.

  *

  Rose said his name over and over to herself in the train as she and her huge silent companion clattered over the new bridge across the Tay.

  ‘Anderson-Howard, Anderson-Howard. Clickety-clack, Clickety-clack.’

  Her second meal in a restaurant! She remembered how the long-dead Frazer had carefully counted out the pennies for the fish suppers in the rather dirty café. Kier Anderson-Howard had not even asked for the bill but had nonchalantly tossed a coin down on the table as he hurried for his phaeton – or really, as he hurried for the goose. She almost hugged the goose to stop it sliding off her small knees. What would Elsie say? How would they get it home and what would they do with it once they got it there?

  She pictured her home and saw again in her mind Laverock Rising, the magnificent Georgian mansion in which Kier Anderson-Howard lived. She tried to picture the elegance of her afternoon’s escort in the tiny rooms up the Hilltown. The image in her mind, the perfectly cut tweeds, the hand-made shoes, the open, friendly face would not transfer itself to the dingy tenement. Here Rose did Kier a disservice. Perhaps he did not expect her living conditions to be quite so poor as they were, but he did know a great deal about public housing, at least academically. Was he not on several committees that did practical work towards the alleviation of poverty?

  Was she to say goodbye for ever to the chance of a friendship with Kier? Rose had enjoyed her afternoon. After her first cup of tea, as the blaze from the huge fire had warmed her chilled bones, she had relaxed. He was so friendly, so warm, had made her believe that he really was interested in her. She had talked and laughed with him as she had never talked with anyone in her life before, except perhaps Elsie, and with Elsie she had been unable to talk too seriously about her studies because, try as she might, Elsie did not understand. If she had enough courage to admit him further into her life . . . but she did not want him, anyone, in her life, did she? There was no room for anything but study.

  ‘A friend would be nice,’ a little voice in her head teased.

  ‘If I ever see him again, I’ll . . . well, I could agree to meet him at the theatre, say it was easier for me to go straight there from university. Why didn’t I say that?’ She saw herself arriving at the front of the theatre; she saw that look of . . . what? pleasure, joy, light up Kier’s face. How pleasant it was to see such a look.

  The train pulled in and she forgot her lost chance when she saw the astonishment on Elsie’s face.

  ‘Whar the hell did ye get that?’

  Rosie dropped the goose that she had clutched almost to her bosom all the way across the broad sweep of the Tay, and began to laugh, and Elsie lifted it up and began to laugh too as Rose tried to tell the story. She left out the effect that Kier had had on her and she left out the tentative invitation.

  ‘We’ll never get that up the Hilltown in one piece, lassie. It’s bigger nor you and, onyway, I wouldnae ken where tae begin cooking it.’

  They carried the goose between them to the nearest butcher where Elsie sold it for half what Kier had paid for it, plus a pound of best pork sausages – Rose’s favourite food.

  Despite the large tea she had consumed earlier, Rose was hungry by the time Elsie had the sausages spluttering and squeaking on the iron griddle over the fire. Rose raised her eyes from the book before her on the table and looked around the room. Last night, just last night, this room had looked cosy and friendly. Now she was seeing it with Kier Anderson-Howard’s eyes and she did not like what she saw. The table was propped up with old papers to keep it steady, more as a convenience for Rose than for either of the other members of the by now small family. Donaldina, the only other one of the children who still lived at home, lay in exhausted sleep in a chair by the fire. She worked eight hours a day in a jute-mill and spent the time between coming home from work and going to bed dozing in that same chair.

  Rose felt pity for her sister, too tired even to go out to dances with the other mill-girls.

  ‘Look at her, night after night, Ma, lying there snoring.’

  ‘Pair wean hasnae the strength for the mill, Rosie. The mills are like that fer some, juist working or sleeping.’

  ‘That’s no life.’

  ‘Are they sausages ready, Ma? Ma belly thinks ma throat’s been cut. You’ll no mind me haein’ a sausage, Your Majesty? It’s my wages that bocht them.’

  Rose almost recoiled from the venom in her sister’s voice. Of course, it must look like that to Donaldina; it must look as if Rose contributed nothing to the family purse. She said nothing, but watched as the girl took a sausage from the griddle and blew on it before stuffing it into her mouth. Then she wiped the back of her hand across her face.

  How often have I seen her do that? thought Rose. And it’s never really bothered me but if . . . if . . . he saw her. If he came here, what would he think of them and me?

  ‘I know you’re hungry, but could you just wait a minute and I’ll clear the table . . .’

  ‘No, I cannae wait a bluidy minute, Lady Muck. Ma and me has our tea sittin’ by the fire every night afore yer majesty gets hame.’

  Rose said nothing. Every night that she could remember, Elsie had put a cloth on the table, and such dishes and cutlery as they had. She looked now and compared the cups with the one she had used that afternoon.

  ‘Come on, lassies, we’ll hae wir tea nice at the table. Come on, Donaldina, Rosie bought these sausages and we’ve ordered a chicken for Hogmanay. Think on it, the end of the century’s coming.’

  ‘So’s my patience, Ma, if I dinnae get ma tea.’

  Rose said nothing. She had lost her appetite. Oh, to be able to afford to live in Miss Lumsden’s beautiful residence.

  I like things to be nice, she thought, and is that so wrong? I want us to live like civilized people, not like dogs.

  Again she contemplated the bottomless ravine that stretched between her and the young man she had had tea with that afternoon.

  But he seems to like me. We have met twice and each time he has seemed to like me.

  She forced such thoughts from her mind. There was only one thing in the whole world that was of any importance at all, and that was that she should continue with her studies. Men were a distraction she did not need and, besides, look where men had got Elsie.

  There are men in the world like Frazer and old Wishy, her conscience told her, but she would not listen.

  ‘I’m not hungry, Ma.’ She smiled at Elsie. ‘I’ll go on with this.’

  ‘What is it, hen?’

  ‘Anatomy, Ma. Sort of, how we’re put together.’

  ‘You’re that clever, lassie.’ Satisfied, Elsie went off and sat beside Donaldina at the fire. Rose began to read but she was sti
ll conscious of them both sitting there and of the smell of the sausages. When in her life had she ever turned down the offer of a sausage? The words on the page danced in front of her eyes but she could not understand them for, unbidden, unwanted, he came into her mind. She did not realize how closely she had marked him. She saw again the way his hair just curled at the nape of his neck, the long fingers with the manicured fingernails. Oh, yes, they were manicured but they were not effeminate. His hands were strong. She pictured them holding the goose. She felt them holding her, caressing her. Her mind fled from the thought, from the feelings aroused.

  Where on earth did the goose come from? she asked herself and she smiled and, somehow, the symbols on the pages became meaningful and she began to study and did not even notice when Elsie put a mug of hot tea on the table beside her hand.

  10

  Dundee, 1900–1905

  THE EARLY YEARS of the century saw great changes in Rose Nesbitt’s world and in the wider world around her. She moved to Dundee to finish her first degree and, instead of staying at home, she moved into lodgings nearer the university. She told herself, and Elsie, that it was to make running at all hours to the Dundee Royal Infirmary less of a burden on the family, especially Donaldina who certainly did not need to have her sleep disturbed. Had she not already once fallen asleep at her loom and almost lost her hand and her job?

  Elsie seemed to accept her leaving with no apparent regrets, but still Rose found herself trying to justify the decision she had made. She told Elsie of the long hours spent visiting the sick.

  ‘I’m studying midwifery and the diseases of women, Ma. There’s this professor, a real smasher.’ She decided to have a joke at her mother’s expense. ‘He had to get married.’

  Elsie loved a bit of gossip and she heard constantly of people ‘having’ to get married. Rose laughed at her mother’s expression.

  ‘No, Ma. The university thought it unseemly that he, a bachelor, should be a specialist in women’s troubles. We may be in the twentieth century, Ma, but in some ways our minds are still in the Middle Ages.’