Apparently he believed her, or perhaps the kitchen knife persuaded him, for she never saw the ring about his person again, although she assumed that he carried it close to his heart for a little while at least. Nothing, she thought wretchedly, was ever close to his heart for very long at any one time, although she found Nancy more of a threat than May Campbell or Ann Park had ever been. Or was it simply that forbidden fruits were the sweetest? The fact that the affair had never been properly consummated – if Rab was to be believed – left him free to imagine what might have been, what might yet be. As long as it remained so, he would still fancy himself in love with Nancy, after a fashion.
She took the children and went to Mauchline, where her mother and her sisters pointed out that she, Jean, was the only one he had loved enough to marry, which was true. But was it enough? She was not quite so blinded by her love for him as to think his lack of faith, his broken promises, excusable. In fact, she loathed his behaviour, could not excuse it. But having made her bed, she knew that she must lie on it. There were no alternatives. She was forced to admit that Ae Fond Kiss, so unashamedly written for Nancy, was a very beautiful song, one that, had it been written for anyone else, she might have been happy to sing for him. But if she had not been sure that he had several copies and knew it by heart, that might have gone on the back of the fire as well.
She returned to Dumfries where he seemed very pleased to see her.
‘I thought you might be gone for good, Jeany,’ he said to her.
In January came news that Nancy had embarked for the Indies in pursuit of her errant husband, James McLehose, leaving her children with his married cousin Elizabeth at Kittochside, near Glasgow. Jean was elated. Rab was faintly despondent, but not quite as low as might have been expected. His wife had removed the bolster but was still giving him the cold shoulder, turning her back on him at night. If there had been space and another room, she might have stayed out of the marital bed altogether. He delayed looking for anywhere else to live, partly out of his natural tendency to postpone things, partly from hopes of a reconciliation that seemed more likely when they were forced into such proximity. It is hard to maintain a quarrel with your spouse when you are lying spooned together, night after night, especially in winter. Especially when your desire for one another has not quite faded and perhaps never will.
He could have forced himself on her. It would have been a very easy matter. Many men would have done it, and she could hardly have objected. Wives did not object. But he still remembered that time in the stable: the horse litter, the early arrival of the twins, and the shame and sorrow that had overwhelmed him afterwards, the uncertainty, even while he was bragging about it to his friends, refashioning her pain into enjoyment. He would not do it again. If she had fallen out of liking with him, he must wait until she forgave him. He couldn’t promise never to fall in love with another woman. Or if he did, it would be a lie, and he seldom lied to her, although he often omitted to tell her the truth and pretended that it was a kind of honesty. He could not write a love song without being well and truly in love. Often he would manufacture that love expressly for the purposes of the song or the poem, but the feeling was real enough. It was just that for him, at any rate, there was a distinction between loving and being in love. Whenever he fancied himself in love with yet another woman, it was nothing like the abiding affection he felt for Jean, that much was certain.
Sometimes it struck her that she ran, like any and all of the rivers or the burns that had inspired him, sure and true beneath everything he did or said or made: poems, songs, especially the songs. He swam in her cool waters, and if he rose occasionally when some mayfly enticed him out of his natural surroundings, what of it? She could understand it well enough, but it didn’t mean she had to like it. She didn’t like it at all. She had once thought she would always surrender to him, to his desires, thought that she could not resist him, but with the passage of time, she sensed a certain obstinacy deep inside her. It could so easily change into dislike, or – worse – indifference. But not yet. Not quite.
And certainly not where Betty Burns was concerned.
Betty, Ann Park’s daughter, was impossible to dislike, and Jean was never one to blame a child for the accident of its parentage. Roly poly Betty was almost toddling now, pulling herself up on pieces of furniture, reminding her inexorably of her lost Jean. She even fancied a resemblance, although Jeany had been the image of her mother and Betty was very fair, like Ann. It was both a pleasure and an agony to her. She watched the fire, the pots and pans, minutely and anxiously, got Rab to cobble together a wooden pen so that the two smallest children could play together and amuse each other, well out of harm’s way. And at last she succumbed to the love that was bubbling up inside her. Who could resist chubby cheeks, a smiling face? When the little girl first called her ‘mammy’, she was lost. It was one of Jean’s chief virtues, one that Rab had certainly recognised in her and perhaps even exploited, that she could not bear a grudge for more than five minutes together. It was not in her nature to do it. Soon, Betty Burns was part of the family, and would remain so, Jean’s darling, for the rest of her life.
Chapter Twenty-eight
The Deil and the Exciseman
We’ll mak our maut, and we’ll brew our drink,
We’ll laugh, sing, and rejoice, man,
And mony braw thanks to the meikle black deil,
That danc’d awa wi the Exciseman.
They stayed in the tenement in the Wee Vennel for some eighteen months. To Jean’s profound relief, Rab had become friends with Maria Riddell. Maria was Robert Riddell’s sister-in-law: young, pretty, talented with words, but well and truly married. He could fall in love with her with impunity. Jean saw that Maria would write to him, entertain him, even flirt with him and generally keep his mind off Nancy. But there would be no love affair, no matter how much he might yearn for one. Maria and her husband, Walter Riddell, were living at Woodley Park, some three miles out of town, but visited the other Riddells at Friar’s Carse regularly. She even carried Rab off on a visit to the lead mines at Wanlockhead, a long and rather perilous expedition that fascinated her but thoroughly alarmed Rab. He told Jean later that Maria had been careless of damp and darkness, ruining a pair of gloves on the rough rock surfaces, and surprising even the miners by her bravery. On the other hand, he, Rab, had been almost overcome with the hideous gloom of the place that reminded him of nothing so much as a tomb.
‘I was imagining rock falls, and being trapped there, unable to claw my way out, Jeany,’ he said. He had had to head for the surface with all speed, and Maria had mocked him about it all the way home.
Maria was clearly fascinated by Rab, as captivated by him as women so often were. Jean admired her wit, her vivid conversation, but could not like her very much. She found the younger woman almost too concerned for her wellbeing, too condescendingly friendly whenever they met, which was seldom. Jean suspected that privately, Maria rather despised her, thought her too simple and poorly educated to be the life’s partner of a poet like Rab. Fully aware of her own worth, Maria would never let herself be led into an unwise love affair with Robert Burns, and that was a blessing. She would invariably keep him at arm’s length, although she would be very happy to be the focus of his attentions for as long as he was pleased to fancy himself in love with her.
In February of 1792, not long after the Wanlockhead adventure, Rab was involved in a real adventure, when the excise officers had to apprehend a schooner on the Solway. The Rosamond of Plymouth, suspected of being employed in smuggling ventures, was lying on the River Esk at the foot of the Sark Burn. The suspicions about smuggling proved to be all too true when the sailors fired on the approaching excisemen and accompanying dragoons, and all while gangs of local people did everything they could to assist the smugglers and hinder the troops. Eventually, the smugglers tried to scuttle the ship themselves by firing one of their own guns down through her side. Then t
hey abandoned their vessel along with most of its contents, and fled as best they could, wading through shallow waters, running over dry sand, struggling through wet sand and quicksands, escaping to the English side of the Firth, leaving the schooner in the hands of the excise: a rich prize indeed.
Rab came home and told Jean all about it, equally full of excitement and illicit French brandy.
‘But you could have been killed!’ she said, appalled at the idea. ‘I never thought the excise would be such a dangerous profession! What would we do without you?’
‘There was little likelihood of anything happening to me. In fact we were more in danger from the villagers and tenant farmers who thought we were spoiling their smuggling operations than from the seamen!’
‘Aye, well, so much of their livelihood on the Solway depends upon smuggled goods, doesn’t it?’
‘It does indeed so you can’t really blame them. Or the smuggler lads for trying. They were firing almost blind, poor souls. The closer the troops got, the harder they found it to fire down at them and that left the soldiers and us free to board them.’
He had enjoyed the whole experience, that much was clear. It had been more of an adventure for him than the trip to Wanlockhead, and he felt he had acquitted himself well.
‘Ach, Jeany, it made me feel like a lad again!’ he said suddenly. ‘You know that time when you think that nothing can touch you, when you’re invincible. You don’t think of the future, you just do what has to be done!’
‘Aye, I do,’ she said. ‘I do know what you mean. And I remember.’
That night, she did not turn away from him in bed but moved into his arms, roused by some combination of thankfulness that he was safe, admiration for his bravery and his daring, but mostly in acknowledgement of the affection she felt for him, always would feel for him, no matter what. It was married love, kindly, comforting, immensely pleasurable. And not long after that, another child, a daughter this time, was conceived.
When the Rosamond was mended, refloated and brought to Dumfries, its cargo was sold for a profit of more than £100, some of which went to the excisemen involved. Incautiously, Rab bid for and bought four of the ship’s guns and sent them to France, to assist the revolutionaries there: a very foolish move for an exciseman in the employment of the crown. But he was a great one for acting first and thinking about the consequences later. He always had been, and she supposed he always would be.
Elizabeth Burns was born in November of that year. If it seemed odd to have two Elizabeths in the house, Rab didn’t seem to think so and Jean didn’t mind. As far as she was concerned, Betty was the name Ann Park had chosen, while Eliza was Rab’s choice, and if there was a certain mad defiance about it, she didn’t choose to quarrel with him over it. Betty and Eliza they would be. Nevertheless, he remarked that he did not feel at all equal to the task of raising girls. A girl must and should have a fortune of some sort, and they would always be too poor.
‘You took me without a fortune,’ Jean said.
‘Aye, but you were special, Jeany,’ he said, meaning it. ‘You were my fortune, all and entire in yourself. My precious jewel.’
Who could not love such a man? she thought.
She never ceased loving him, even when she didn’t like him much at all.
Rab was writing songs. He wrote ‘The Deil cam fiddlin thro’ the town and danced awa wi’ th’Exciseman, and ilka wife cries “Auld Mahoun, I wish ye luck o’ the prize man.”’
And what other exciseman to trade could write a song like this? Jean wondered, singing it for him, laughing at it while Rab played the fiddle.
‘I expect,’ he said, ‘that there have been times this past year or twa when you could have seen a muckle black deil dancing away with your exciseman, Jeany. Is that not right?’
‘Aye, maybe so.’
‘I’m sorry. I’m very sorry. I don’t ken what gets into me.’
‘Oh I think you dae, Rab,’ she said. ‘I think you ken all too well.’
For a while, at least, Rab behaved himself.
But just when it seemed that they might be settling into a more peaceful family life, his impulsive nature would get the better of him and he would suddenly feel the need to do something extreme and all too often public. Writing songs about devils and excisemen and singing them at official excise dinners was the very least of it. He would be sending carronades to the French government, singing seditious songs in the new Dumfries theatre, being a ‘man o independent mind’ as he would have termed it. Sometimes he got himself into trouble, all unnecessarily. Perhaps if there had been more schooners full of smuggled goods to tackle, he would have been less inclined to manufacture excitement. Jean alternated between worrying about him and the effects his indiscretions might have on the family, and losing all patience with him. But the wild side of his nature was, when all was said and done, one of the things she had most loved about him, and he was never going to change.
Acquiring French gloves for Maria Riddell on the sly from his excise work was a minor transgression, and Jean turned a blind eye to it, even though gloves were a notoriously intimate gift, one generally given and received by lovers or, as she knew all too well, as wedding favours. He assuaged her indignation by acquiring French gloves for his wife, too, very fine and soft in white kid this time, with insertions of knotted silk in blue. He brought home the occasional piece of lace, a Valenciennes lappet, a length of Alençon trim. His taste in such things was immaculate. It surprised her sometimes that a man like Rab could unerringly put himself into the mind of what a woman such as his wife might appreciate. He still liked her to look pretty and fashionable, to have nice things, even when she had a house and a string of children to tend to, not to mention a demanding husband. He bought her a length of the new gingham fabric for a gown, a rarity in the town and much too expensive, but she couldn’t find it in her to protest. How could she censure his generosity towards her? She was uncomfortably aware that he was drinking more than he should these days, because alongside the French lace and the gloves, he had access to the occasional barrel of French brandy. Or was it that he could no longer carry his drink as he once did? Any over-indulgence made him suffer from headaches and unexpected chills interspersed with night sweats so severe that he often had to get up and change into a fresh shirt.
Winter came round again, bringing his usual low spirits. He would be stricken with bouts of something that seemed a kind of panic. He often shook her awake in the night, beads of sweat covering his brow, asking her if he was dying. She could see no physical cause for it, nothing constitutional, and would try to calm him down, chafing his cold hands, trying to soothe him, pouring brandy for him. When she asked him what he felt like, he could only tell her that he felt very unwell.
‘When I look in a mirror, Jeany, it’s as though I don’t even recognise the person I see there. It’s as though I’m a stranger to myself, and then I fall into a panic.’
He had experienced this from time to time throughout his life, but it had come upon him with renewed intensity, and much more frequently, over the past year. Only a measure of the brandy soothed him. Sent him to sleep for a while at least.
In December, he took it into his head to write to Nancy’s friend, Mary Peacock, for news of Nancy, wondering how she had fared in the Indies, wondering if she had had the proposed reconciliation with her husband. Mary replied with the news that Nancy had come back to Edinburgh, but the letter arrived when Rab was away from home. Jean broke the seal, read it, resealed it carefully with wax and a taper and then let it slide behind the heavy wooden press where they kept their linen, conveniently forgetting to tell Rab anything about it. It was only discovered in May of the following year, when they moved to a much bigger and better house in the Mill Hole Brae. The men who had come in to help with the removal shifted the big press, and there it was, all dusty, covered in cobwebs and the mysterious balls of grey fluff that collect behin
d cupboards and beneath beds, no matter how often you take a broom to them.
Mary Armour had been in the habit of quoting the Bible. ‘Are you making a man under there, Jeany?’ she had said. ‘Remember man that thou art dust…’
When the letter came to light at last, Jean feigned surprise and contrition. ‘I wondered what had become of that, Rab, but I thought you had seen it and taken it.’
‘No. I wasn’t aware of it.’ He seemed very put out, but what could he say?
‘I left it for you. It came while you were away on excise business and I was taking the weans to Mauchline for a week or two. I balanced it on a pile of books, so that you would see it. I thought it might be something to do with your songs or your poems. Perhaps from one of your friends in Edinburgh.’
She looked directly at him, a little smile on her lips. ‘I do hope it isn’t anything important. I should be sorry if that were the case, Rab. But perhaps it’s something that you can mend now?’
He pocketed the letter. ‘It’s of no great importance, Jeany. You’re right. Just a missive from a friend.’
‘That’s good then,’ she said, steadily, surprised at how easy it was to dissemble. Perhaps she should do it more often.
He wrote to Nancy, Jean could hardly imagine with what passion, although she had an inkling, but he visited Maria Riddell too, to discuss life and liberty.
Which was reassuring.
After the three-roomed tenement, the house in the Mill Hole Brae was a model of comfort, a two storey dwelling with room for the growing family and with a modicum of privacy for husband and wife too. There was a good sized room downstairs, two bedrooms upstairs and even a small study for Rab, which was just as well, because when he was not working for the excise, he was collecting and reworking songs for publication by Mr George Thomson in Edinburgh, and to Jean’s irritation, refusing all payment for the work. She understood his reluctance, but couldn’t approve of it. They badly needed the money.
The Jewel Page 27