The Jewel

by Catherine Czerkawska

  ‘Wait, wait,’ he said, touching her down there, touching himself inside her, and the sensation of pleasure, growing in intensity, surprised her.

  No, not what she had expected at all.

  Once, when she had first begun to bleed, her mother had told her that she was a woman now, and that she must be cautious in the company of men. She knew where the weans came from. Hadn’t she seen childbirth often enough in the house where she was the eldest girl? Blushing but resolute, Mary Armour had gone on to talk about certain distasteful things, how the wean got into you in the first place. She had talked about what happened between the bull and his herd of cows. Jean knew what was what, but had never made the connection with mankind, could hardly believe it, and had spent weeks gazing at her father as he came and went about his business, all oblivious, in something approaching horror. It was impossible to live as a big family in such close proximity to one another without being aware of something going on, but James Armour was a restrained, religious man, not given to any great displays of passion. Moreover her mother had intimated that the whole process was deeply unpleasant, painful at worst, horrible at best, and that all a woman could do was lie back and bear it. It was the way things were. The way weans were made, and it was God’s will.

  Even that first time with Rab was neither revolting nor painful. Perhaps it was because she wanted him so much and because she was comfortable with him. Perhaps it was because she was a wicked lass, deep in her heart. She worried about getting a wean, right enough, but he told her he was being careful and it should be all right. She didn’t know how it would be all right, but with one sweet wee daughter already, he clearly had no intention of getting another just yet. She had heard enough from the other lassies of the town to know that there was more to making weans than her mother supposed: this warmth, this closeness, this tenderness, for tenderness it seemed to be, and finally the things he did to her to make her cry out loud, at first with the shame but then with the raw, uncontrollable pleasure of it.

  Afterwards, he put more peat on the fire and they sat together in the feather bed, pulling up the blankets for warmth, leaning against the pillows in the dim light, drinking wine, eating bannocks and cheese. She wished with all her heart that she could stay here with him the whole night long and wake up with him beside her in the morning.

  She found herself saying to him, ‘You ken, Rab, my father must be doing it wrong!’

  He spluttered, spraying crumbs over the bed linen, choked, took a mouthful of wine, but couldn’t stop laughing.

  ‘In the name of the wee man, what maks ye say sic a thing, Jeany?’

  ‘My mother told me it was horrible. Painful at worst, horrible at best. Those were her very words. And her with all these weans! So my father must be doing it wrong!’

  ‘Aye, well, looking at James Armour, I think maybe he is doing it wrong. And him with so much practice.’ He started laughing again. It was infectious and she found herself laughing too.

  ‘Maybe there should be a school of fornication in the town. Lessons, like with the singing and the dancing. Maybe you could teach them all a thing or two, Rab.’

  He pulled her close, kissed her with a sudden access of affection. ‘Oh, my darling Jeany. I’d rather teach you a thing or two, so I would.’

  Chapter Eleven

  A Valentine’s Gift

  When heart-corroding care and grief

  Deprive my soul of rest,

  Her dear idea brings relief,

  And solace to my breast.

  After that, they contrived to meet in the inn every week, sometimes more than once a week. Heaven knew what Rab was paying Johnnie Dow to secure the use of the room, but he seemed willing to carry on paying it, even if it meant going without some of his precious books to see his Jeany alone, to make love to her and then run down the back stairs to check that all was clear, that no late night marauders were in the alleyway. Then she would slip on her shoes and wrap her shawl around her. He would kiss her, and sometimes that started things all over again. They couldn’t help themselves. He seemed to want to know every inch of her. But at last, she would go back to her house, quietly closing and barring the upper door behind her and sliding into bed without disturbing her sisters too much. Hoping that nobody would notice the marks of his lovemaking on her body.

  For a while, this was enough, but she could see that he still worried about her, about his lack of acceptability in her parents’ eyes. Once or twice, very tentatively, she had broached the subject of Rab Mossgiel with her father, only to see a stony look come over his face.

  ‘That skellum!’ he would say. ‘His name isn’t fit to be mentioned in this house. Scandalous behaviour. And he’s friends with Gavin Hamilton who is not a good, God-fearing man in any way!’

  Her mother would be frantically signalling to her behind his back, mouthing, ‘Don’t upset your father.’

  She confessed herself at a loss as to what she might be able to do, or indeed what Rab himself might be able to do, to make her parents look more favourably on him.

  ‘It’s aye Rab Wilson this and Rab Wilson that with them,’ she said, sadly. ‘Rab’s a kind man and a generous man and I’m sure he has fine prospects, but I don’t want him. Not for a husband, anyway.’

  ‘Maybe I should become a weaver instead of a farmer.’

  ‘Maybe you should, but I don’t think even that would change their minds. They have their heart set on the match.’

  ‘And what about you, Jeany?’

  ‘I’ll be a disappointment to them, for sure. But I don’t know what way we can change things.’

  ‘I have a few ideas.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘I could go to Jamaica. Seek my fortune there.’

  She gazed at him in dismay. ‘Jamaica? Oh Rab, it’s so far away and so dangerous.’

  ‘And no place for a lass. Well, not immediately. But I’ve been making some enquiries and there would be work for me out there. Maybe I could make, well, if not my fortune, then a fair amount of money. Enough to make your father change his mind about me.’

  ‘Maybe. But I wish you wouldn’t.’

  ‘Would you join me there, Jeany? If I went there and made a place for us?’

  She realised that she had no image in her mind of Jamaica at all. She had heard about the ships that sailed for there from Scottish ports, picking up slaves along the way. She knew that many of the gentry who owned the big houses round about had made their fortunes from the slave trade. Her father, who knew about such things, had once remarked that slavery was built in with the very stones of the grand houses, and as far as she thought about it at all, she judged that it was a wicked business. Her father himself thought it was a wicked business, but he couldn’t afford to turn down the building work whenever it came his way. He had a family to support, mouths to feed.

  ‘The whole lot of them,’ he would say, when he had taken too much to drink, ‘built on tobacco and sugar and slaves.’ Luckily, this wasn’t very often, because it made him vastly incautious.

  The way it worked was that goods would be sent from Port Glasgow to Nigeria where they would be exchanged for slaves who would then be sent on to the plantations of Jamaica: providing sugar for the punch that the gentry were so fond of.

  ‘What about slavery?’ she asked Rab. ‘My father says it’s a sinful trade, and I fancy he’s right.’

  ‘I fancy he is. There’s no slavery in Scotland and a good thing too. Well, no proper slavery, although it feels that way when you’re a tenant farmer.’

  ‘Could you bear it, Rab? To work there? In Jamaica. In that trade?’

  He frowned. ‘I don’t ken what to think about it, and that’s the truth. But I must do something. I cannot carry on breaking my back for small reward here. This farm is no better than the last. I’m very fond of Gavin Hamilton and he of me, but the fact of the matter is that the gentry make u
se of us and our labour to improve their land. And when I’m out ploughing from dawn till dusk in that woeful sharp sleet that cuts into your face like a hundred knives, I find myself thinking that nothing could be worse, that it is a kind of slavery in itself. For where’s the freedom in being tied to another man? I think that the Indies must be better. At least they say the place is warm, and flowers bloom there all year round.’

  He didn’t tell her that sickness bloomed there all year round as well, sickness and untold cruelty. And she was too young, too innocent at that time to know much about it.

  ‘There must be something else,’ she said. ‘There must be some other way for you.’

  She wanted to say ‘for us’, but she restrained herself. He had not offered her marriage yet, although it seemed to her that when he spoke of his future, he was always including her in the plans. But she was willing to wait for him. What else could she do?

  ‘Well. There are my poems. I’m still thinking about that, still talking to folk who might be able to help me to get them published. And I’m still writing. The more I write, the better the book will be, if I ever succeed in publishing a whole volume.’

  In January, he drew a sheaf of pages out of the pocket of his coat, and by the light of the fire, supplemented by the thin light of the lamp, he read her an ‘Epistle’ he had written to Davie Sillar. It was an old poem, written the previous year, but he had added more verses, he said, in honour of her, his ‘darling Jean’.

  ‘Am I really your darling?’ she asked.

  ‘I see no other Jean, do you?’ he said, sliding his arm around her.

  She was moved by it. Loved him all the more for it. But there was a nagging doubt at the back of her mind. Something was wrong, for sure. She didn’t want to think about it, but something was very wrong.

  He had told her that he would look after her, that he would be careful, that he was not wanting another wean just yet. So she had trusted herself to him, thinking that he must know what he was about. And at first, all had been well. But there had been no show of blood for her this month, no cramps, nothing. Days had gone by, and now a few weeks, and her body was beginning to feel very strange, a sense of dissolution that felt like an illness but wasn’t, coupled with faint aches and pains and a tenderness in her breasts. She denied it even to herself, but soon she was forced to dissemble, pretending to her mother that she had already washed the bloody marks off her shift and her clouts, when really there had been no such thing. And now she was feeling sick and dizzy in the mornings, having to go to the outhouse where the sour smells made her feel even worse. What to do, she thought, wondering whether to tell him and how to tell him and what might be his response.

  She thought of ways to soften the news, ways to tie him ever more closely to her. As Valentine’s Day approached, she sought a gift for him, some token of her love that she might be able to give him before she was forced to give him another, less welcome piece of news.

  * * *

  Pocket watches were fashionable. Every ploughman, every farm servant even, wanted a watch at that time. The fashion had come in a few years earlier, and now any young man worth his salt would be able to draw a watch out of his waistcoat pocket, the more flamboyant the better. It mattered not how well the watch kept the time. They went by the sun for most practical purposes rather than the precise hours of the day, but still a watch was a fine thing to have. There was a clock and watchmaker in Mauchline called John Broun, Clockie Broun he was always called. He was a friend of Rab’s and, as Rab’s mother, Agnes Broun, was fond of saying, ‘likely a cousin on my father’s side’, although she had never been able to be more exact than that. Had Agnes known about Clockie Broun’s morals, which were something less than exemplary, she would never have claimed him for part of her family.

  As well as making and mending clocks and watches, a skill that ran in his family, John Broun was also carrying on a lucrative trade in second-hand pocket watches. The gentry, as was only to be expected, liked to have things that were new whenever they could afford them. Some of them would go not just to Glasgow and Edinburgh, but to London, and while they were there they would purchase the newest and most fashionable timepieces, with highly decorative gold chains for those that could afford them. Then it was commonplace for them either to pass on their old pocket watches to favoured servants, or more likely, especially when they might have run up gambling debts, to sell them to Clockie for a modest sum. Sometimes, when the gambling debts were particularly pressing, they might be forced to sell almost new watches. Clockie struck a hard bargain, but there were few alternatives. Clockie Broun knew when to hold his tongue and refrain from embarrassing a young gentleman by reporting back to his father; there had been a few occasions when father and son had paid discreet visits to Clockie at different times, neither knowing about the other. Then Clockie would sell the watches to the tenant farmers, the young tradesmen and even the ploughmen who worked on the farms nearby. You were of no consequence if you could not ostentatiously consult your watch from time to time, and if it was a large silver watch, with an obvious London provenance, so much the better for your standing in the town.

  As a New Year gift to himself, Rab, who deemed himself a man of fashion, had asked Clockie, whom he knew from the Bachelors’ Club of his Lochlea days, to find him a handsome pocket watch. Clockie, who secretly rather admired Rab, his daring and his evident self-love, agreed and soon came up with a watch worthy of a poet.

  ‘I have just the thing,’ said Clockie. ‘And at a very good price indeed.’

  It was rather more expensive than Rab would have wished, but it was a fine watch, and all the better in that it kept good time. It came from London, of course. A very bonnie watch, beautifully made, from a weel kent company of watchmakers down there, that had been bought when new by one of the young gentlemen. He had found himself in serious financial straits owing to an unfortunate fondness for good wine, fashionable ladies and gambling, and had been reluctantly forced to sell it. His father had not been at all disposed to settle his debts for him but was rather more inclined to teach him a lesson. Clockie kept his own counsel and never told the source of his stock.

  Rab had carried it off triumphantly, and it had been much admired by his cronies. Jean admired it too. She would have dearly loved to have been able to buy a watch for him herself, but her stock of ready money was woefully small: a few pennies that her father gave her to buy necessities and the odd silver sixpence when he was feeling generous, when the business was doing well, and he would tell her to go and buy a new bonnet or ribbons for her hair. With the changing seasons, her mother would be given money to buy stuff for new clothes, as well as shawls and shoes, but Mary kept careful accounting of all that was spent. Whatever they could make at home, they did. James Armour was torn between a natural reserve where money was concerned (‘miserliness’ Jean’s more indulged friends called it) and a desire to see his wife and his daughters well dressed, so that nobody could question his prosperity. It would be very bad for business if they looked as though they lived in penury. This was also why he was prepared to pay so much for the family pew in the kirk.

  Whatever the reason, it was useful for Jean, who loved nice clothes and enjoyed showing them off on the Sabbath, but it did little to help her where access to ready money was concerned. Then, a peddler came to the town, his horse laden with necessities and desirables. Since it was early in February, he was carrying a stock of paper valentines, mostly pocket watch papers with designs already printed on them so that you could cut them out yourself and make them into a Valentine’s gift for your loved one. All the lassies were buying them, and Jean was no exception. She chose a design with hearts and love birds and carried it home in triumph, folding the paper and cutting out the filigree pattern carefully with the sharp kitchen shears when there was nobody else in the house. It was difficult because the paper was small and the shears were clumsy, but she managed it and – finding pen and ink in her
father’s office next door – she wrote the initials R and J carefully in two of the hearts set on either side of a third, two hearts with love birds perched atop of them. Rab always called her his ‘lintie’ and told her that she had a fine ‘wood-note wild’, so it seemed singularly appropriate.

  February was as changeable as always in this part of the world, and there would be the occasional soft day that was a harbinger of the spring to come. Through the continued good offices of Catherine Govan, they had arranged a Valentine’s Day meeting, outdoors for once, in a secluded nook at the back of Netherplace, and were sitting together on his plaid that he had spread out against the seeping damp. There were already catkins on the hazels and silky buds on the willows while a watery sunlight was shining down on them. Jean felt in the pocket of her skirt and brought out the watch paper that she had carefully wrapped in a bit of silk, teasing it out from the folds of cloth. She made him put out his hand and laid it carefully on his palm.

  ‘This is for your pocket watch. So that whenever you open it, you’ll think of me.’

  ‘I’m aye thinkin of you.’ But his eyes were shining. ‘This is fine!’

  He took out his new watch. She saw that he had pricked out his name and the date, 1786, on it with some sharp instrument. He opened the case and slipped the watch paper inside. ‘I’ll wear it close to my heart, Jeany.’

  She almost told him about the child that day. Almost told him about her fears, nay, her certainties, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. The day was too perfect, the sunlight of early spring warming them as they made love on the plaid with the lingering chill soaking through. She thought he might notice something different about her, but her belly had barely changed, and besides, her bunched up skirts meant that he saw little, even if they both felt plenty when his fingers slipped inside her, making her cry out with pleasure. Her predicament loomed at the back of her mind, huge and intractable, and she didn’t know how he would respond, still didn’t quite trust him. And so she waited another few weeks, and February passed by and Robert talked about his book.