‘Och, Jeany,’ he whispered. ‘Was that no sweet?’
She couldn’t look at him, but fixed her gaze firmly on the preacher, breathless with desire.
There’s some are fou o love divine, and some are fou o brandy; an monie jobs that day begin, may end in houghmagandie some ither day.
Fornication. How true those words seemed now. It had all ended in houghmagandie and ill-begotten weans and tears and seemed like to continue to plague her. And yet he had been right. It had been sweet at the time. So very sweet that she couldn’t possibly regret it.
When she heard her mother coming back in, she put the book in the dresser drawer, and later on managed to smuggle it upstairs to hide under the mattress. Although they seemed a little more well disposed towards her lover, she still didn’t trust either of her parents not to put the book on the back of the fire were they to come across it by chance.
Later, she took a candle end upstairs and thumbed through the rest of the pages by its guttering flame, supplemented by the failing light at her window, when her sisters were asleep.
There was a poem about his muse, Coila, the embodiment of Kyle, where he was born: a wildly-witty rustic grace shone full upon her. Had she, Jean, such a wildly-witty rustic grace? Was that what he meant? Halloween: who would ever write a poem about Halloween and courting in the fause-house? Mr Auld would not be pleased. Nor would the kirk elders, James Lamie and Willie Fisher. Charms to summon a vision of a future lover. Charms to allow you to catch a glimpse of the man you would marry. She had worked these charms herself on Halloween, not in this house, for her father would not approve either, but with her friends elsewhere, heart in mouth, never seeing anything but imagining plenty in the dark.
Never once seeing Rab Mossgiel.
To a Mouse. That, she understood very well, because he had spoken to her about it. He was so soft hearted a man that he could sympathise with the creature whose winter home his plough had destroyed. So why could he not sympathise with her, with all her hopes destroyed? But och, I backward cast my e’e, on prospects drear! An forward tho’ I canna see, I guess an fear. That had been last year, last November, when they had been seeing each other regularly. But perhaps he had already been worrying about his prospects as a husband, worrying that Jean’s father would not look kindly on a poor tenant body as a son-in-law. And hadn’t he been right all along?
It was when she came to a poem called The Lament that she was shocked rigid.
It was subtitled, pompously, occasioned by the unfortunate issue of a friend’s amour, and for a little while she found herself trying to decide who among his many friends it might be, so many lads and so many affairs of the heart in and around the town that you could hardly keep track of them. But as she read, she saw that the title was misleading. The ‘I’ of the poem was surely Rab himself, and to her alarm, she saw that it was a poem aimed wholly at herself. Encircled in her clasping arms, how have the raptur’s moments flown! How have I wish’d for fortune’s charms, for her dear sake, and hers alone!
She read on, heart in mouth. How could he write like this, but more, how could he possibly publish it for all to read? It was so very private. Should have remained private. Would anybody, reading this, genuinely think that it was about some ‘friend’? Or would they draw the same conclusions as she? How could she ever show her face in company again? Or in any company where she knew this book might have been read, the words shared? From ev’ry joy and pleasure torn, Life’s weary vale I’ll wander thro, and hopeless, comfortless, I’ll mourn a faithless woman’s broken vow.
A faithless woman’s broken vow. That last verse made her cry out loud. Wee Mary slept on, but Nelly woke up and whispered, ‘Are ye all right, Jean? Are the babies coming?’
‘No, not yet. Just – my back’s that sair.’
‘You’re greeting!’
‘I am not!’ She drew out a handkerchief and dabbed at her eyes. ‘It’s just I’ve been reading and there’s no much light and it’s hurting my eyes.’
‘What are ye reading? Are ye reading your bible, Jeany?’
Jean smiled through her tears. It might have been better if she was reading her bible. ‘Just a book. Just Rab’s poems if you want to know.’
‘Is that Rab’s poetry?’ The girl squirmed out of bed and came over to her, hanging over the back of her chair. ‘Are they good? Folk are sayin they’re very good and everyone’s reading them. Did he give you that copy, Jeany? Did he?’
‘Aye, he did. And don’t you go telling our mammy, Nelly.’
‘No. I willnae. But can I see it?’
‘Later. Go back to sleep now.’
‘Does he write about you, Jeany? I’d like it fine, so I would, if somebody would write a poem or a song about me.’
‘Well maybe they will someday,’ she said, thinking that it was not always a good thing for a man to write a poem about you.
‘Are you coming back to bed?’ persisted Nelly.
‘Soon. Let me just sit up here for a wee while longer. My back’s too bad to lie down properly. Go back to sleep, Nelly, there’s a good lass. Go to sleep and leave me in peace.’
Nelly lay down, sighed, closed her eyes. ‘A poem or a song,’ she murmured. ‘Maybe you could ask him for me, Jeany. Maybe you could ask him to write one for me. I wouldnae mind which.’
Jean sat on, the book open on her lap, open at the poem he had called The Lament. Even allowing for his tendency to make a tragedy out of the least little upset, the sadness in the poem made her feel sick with longing for him. That at least seemed true.
‘A faithless woman’s broken vow.’ And if he became very famous, a weel kent writer throughout the land, would that be how she would always be known and remembered? A faithless woman who had broken her vow to him.
Oh, it was hard.
* * *
The twins were born on 3rd September: a boy and a girl. The pains started slowly, but when her waters broke, they intensified with appalling swiftness, to the point where she wanted to get down on all fours and howl like a dog. Jean hadn’t imagined it could ever be so painful. She had seen her mother giving birth and had known about the pain, but knowing about it and experiencing it were two different things. Mary sent her husband off to work and all the children except Nelly out of the house to stay with a neighbour. Nelly, she sent for Agnes Sloan, who came scuttling importantly along the street carrying her leather bag, calling for hot water to wash away the blood, and threadbare linen sheets to cover the mattress. You wouldn’t want to ruin the good linen. Nelly would have gone to join the other children, but her mother detained her.
‘Time young Helen sees what’s what,’ said Agnes approvingly. ‘It might make her think twice when the lads come calling! No that it made much difference wi Jean, eh?’
Jean’s travail went on all day. They made sure she ate and drank to keep up her strength, and the babies were born in the evening, a big rosy boy and a smaller but still healthy girl. It seemed that she had carried Rab’s twins for the full nine months, which was something of a rarity, said Agnes. In her experience, twins often came early. But not this time.
‘All the same, best get them baptised quickly, just in case. You never know.’
When the babies were safely delivered, Jean’s mother sent Adam Armour of all people out to Mossgiel with the news. Perhaps it was deliberate, another wee slight. But it seemed that Adam too was faintly impressed with Rab’s growing celebrity. If he was not exactly a model of politeness, nor was he as rude as had been his wont a few short months ago. His demeanour was roguish rather than downright uncouth.
‘It’s a lad and a lass!’ he called out excitedly, before he had even got in the door. ‘My mammy says to tell you it’s a fine boy and a girl too, and they’re both weel and she wants to know what you’re wanting to cry them. Have ye ony names in mind?’
Rab’s mother invited him in, sat him down, gave
him a drink. Never let it be said that she couldn’t be hospitable, even to a wee gowk like Addie Armour.
‘To wet the weans’ heads,’ she said.
‘What about your sister?’ asked Rab, suddenly anxious. So many women did not survive childbirth, and with twins it was doubly dangerous.
‘Oh she’s fine tae. The weans were crying fit to burst when I left, but she’s feeding them. She’s milk enough for the twa.’
‘Tell her I’ll come and see her first thing tomorrow. The baptism will be soon, likely?’
‘Aye, father says no tomorrow, but maybe the day after. Mr Auld likes to have it done as soon as possible, ken.’ He spoke knowingly, as though familiar with the ways of bairns and baptism.
‘God bless the weans and God bless their mother. Be sure and tell her I said that, Addie, will you? There’s a good lad!’
‘For sure!’ Adam finished his drink like a man of the world and got to his feet. ‘How’s the rhyming, Rab?’
‘The rhyming goes very well, Addie. Very well indeed.’
‘So we heard tell. My mammy says you’re welcome to the house at ony time.’
‘Does she now?’
‘Aye she does. Be sure and tell him, she said. Between you and me…’ he leaned in close and confidentially, ‘I think she’s a bit sorry she denied you the house that time. A wee bit sorry now that they ever forbade the marriage and cut the names out of the paper.’
‘Did she say that?’
‘Not to me. But I hear things, so I do. They had no idea books could bring in siller. That’s what I heard them saying the other night. No idea at all.’
‘Well, just between you and me, Addie, I wasn’t so very sure of it myself.’
That night Rab wet the babies’ heads with a few drams in the company of Gilbert and the other men about the farm. And in the morning, he brushed his coat well and took himself off to see Jean, with some silver in his pocket as a gift for the new baby boy and girl Burns.
She was very glad to see him. The weans were swaddled up, two neat bundles, the boy a good deal bigger than the girl, two wee faces with a look of their father about them. No denying their parenthood, had he been so inclined. As so often happened, in these early hours after the birth, the family resemblance was very strong, but seemed to flit and change about their faces, ghostly likenesses, now Jean, now Rab. He bent down and kissed them, the girl first, then the boy. He seemed very moved.
‘What will we call them?’ Jean asked. ‘The firstborn boy should be named for your father. He should be William, and the girl for my mother, Mary.’
‘We cannae do that, Jeany,’ he said in a low voice. ‘The truth is that I won’t have this wee one called Mary, not after all I’ve suffered at your mother’s hands. And my mammy might think shame to call the lad William.’
‘It isn’t his fault!’
‘No, it isn’t. But all the same…’
She had been thinking about this half the night, watching the two heads at her breast, one on each side. ‘Then, let’s name them for us twa that made them.’
‘Robert and Jean?’
‘Aye. Why not? They’re good names.’
‘Aye,’ he said. ‘Let’s do that. Nobody can object to that, surely. Certainly not me. And I would like fine to have another wee Jeany in the family.’
So, the following day, the twins were baptised Robert and Jean for their father and mother, and their names were entered into the parish register.
For a while, Rab seemed so taken with the weans, so thoroughly enchanted with fatherhood all over again, that Jean had some hopes of redeeming the situation. People told her that he was proud of the twins, was never done with talking about them, except to her. He seemed to be avoiding her except when it was strictly necessary to make arrangements for the children. She had more than enough milk for the two of them, thank God, but they had settled matters between them that when both were weaned, the boy would go to Mossgiel and the girl would stay in Mauchline. Jean was far from happy about this. She thought it would break her heart to part with her son. But her father was only just beginning to accept the situation, and it might be easier for all concerned if there was only a single extra mouth to feed in the family. She would be able to look after her daughter, and she knew that Robert would be well cared for at Mossgiel. Agnes Broun was an indulgent mother, especially now that there was no stern husband to curb her, and Jean thought she would be a loving grandmother to the lad. Rab was tender to any who found themselves under his roof or in need of protection. But more than that, Mossgiel was not so very far away. It would be spring before the twins were well weaned. She pushed aside all thoughts of Rab going away to the Indies. She pictured herself taking the wee girl wrapped up in her shawl and walking out to the farm to see her son. Rab would be there too. They would be a family, after a fashion. She had a vague idea that if the lad was at Mossgiel, there was more of a chance that they might be together again as man and wife.
Chapter Nineteen
Events in Greenock
O plight me your faith, my Mary,
And plight me your lily-white hand;
O plight me your faith, my Mary,
Before I leave Scotia’s strand.
He postponed his voyage yet again. He was not aboard the Bell when it left at the end of September. He still spoke about the Indies as though he would soon be going. But he did not go. His poems were becoming wildly successful. Everyone from dairymaids and stable lads to noblemen and their ladies sought a copy. The original subscribers were enthusiastic. Word of the ploughman poet had spread like a summer fire on a dry heath. They called him ‘heaven taught’ although he remarked drily that heaven had very little to do with it. Any learning he had acquired was mostly down to his father, followed by his first teacher, John Murdoch, who had always had a higher opinion of Gilbert’s lively imagination, finding Rab too grave, too tender-hearted for true scholarship, or poetry for that matter. But once he had been able to read, a whole world of learning had opened up to him, when he could get the books.
Jean kept her precious volume of his poems openly on display now in the house in the Cowgate, although she suspected that her still-disapproving parents had not yet ventured to read it and would not notice the poem called The Lament, even if they did. They were not great readers. Not great scholars either. James was a practical man, skilled with his hands. Her mother knew songs and stories, but they were all in her head, not on paper. Jean had never thought herself a reader either, but this was different.
In October, with the twins still with Jean in Mauchline, Rab told her that he had spoken to his printer about a second edition of his poems, but nothing had yet come of it. His friends were telling him that he ought to go to Edinburgh, where his fame had gone before him and where he would be well received by men of letters, the nobility, wealthy men and women. But he had an inkling, he said, that they were dazzled by his poetic prowess only as one might be amazed by a dog that could stand upright and walk on its hind legs: not that the skill was such a great thing in itself, but that a dog was doing it. A lowly tenant farmer who ploughed his own furrow could also make verses. He would be a species of curiosity. Like a prodigiously ugly fish. Or an armadillo.
‘I expect they’ll put me in a cabinet and gaze at me only to make mock of me.’
He made her laugh – she could never help herself. When he was not making her weep, he could always make her laugh. Not just her, either, but most women, young and old. It was one of the reasons why they were so charmed by him.
He must, so Jean thought, be writing to poor May Campbell all this time, keeping her informed of what was going on, although perhaps not all of it. Perhaps he had not seen fit to mention Jean and the twins, although others would almost certainly have told her. But if he had written to her, he hadn’t said anything to Jean about it. She didn’t even know whether her rival was still in Campbeltown with her fa
mily or at Greenock. May Campbell’s father, Archibald, was a sea captain and it would be an easy matter for her to take passage with him on his sloop as far as the herring quay in Greenock, there to wait for her lover. Or one of them. It had struck Jean that Jamie Montgomerie might also be in Glasgow from time to time. With or without Eleanora. But Rab scarcely mentioned the girl, certainly not to Jean. Perhaps the tug of his children, here in Mauchline, meant that he could no longer contemplate leaving Scotland’s shores with any ease.
She knew that he was a man for whom the life of his mind, what he sometimes referred to as his ‘bardship’, was more vivid than the everyday world of this small town with all its preoccupations, its rules and prohibitions, or the world of his stony, sour, difficult farm. He was a dreamer who could persuade himself that his dreams were real. He would easily imagine himself in love with two or more women at the same time. He may well have made promises to May Campbell, and now he would believe that he had to keep them. Perhaps he had offered to console her for whatever she had lost with Jamie Montgomerie. Perhaps he thought she would be a fitting substitute for the wife he had lost in Jean. More biddable, at least. And perhaps he really had loved her, loved her still, in his way. Jean was generous enough to acknowledge that. He was a man who would dream of love, write about it, make it real.
The Jewel Page 18