Waters of the Heart

by Doris Davidson

  Waters of the Heart

  Also available by Doris Davidson

  Brow of the Gallowgate

  Cousins at War

  Gift from the Gallowgate

  The House of Lyall

  Jam and Jeopardy

  The Nickum

  Time Shall Reap

  This eBook edition published in 2012 by

  Birlinn Limited

  West Newington House

  Newington Road

  Edinburgh

  EH9 1QS

  www.birlinn.co.uk

  This edition first published in 2008 by Birlinn Ltd

  First published in 1994 by HarperCollins Publishers, London

  Copyright © Doris Davidson 1994

  The moral right of Doris Davidson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form without the express written permission of the publisher.

  eBook ISBN: 978-0-85790-555-0

  ISBN 13: 978-1-84158-726-4

  British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  For the men in my life,

  Jimmy, Alan, John and Bill

  – not forgetting wee Matthew

  Contents

  Part One

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Part Two

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Part Three

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Part One

  Aberdeen

  Chapter One

  1906

  The screaming had stopped now, and seven-year-old Cissie McGregor was thankful that her sisters had slept through it. Not that they were old enough to know what was going on, but it would have terrified them, as she had been terrified last year, when Pat was born, until she had fitted all the pieces together in her mind.

  The first thing she had noticed was the lump growing in Mam’s belly, and it grew and grew for months before the new baby appeared in the kitchen bed, but it had taken her a long time to connect the baby with the lump. She still didn’t know how a baby got inside her Mam, nor where it came out, but it must be terrible sore to make her scream the way she did.

  ‘Why was Mam making noises like that?’

  Marie’s whisper recalled Cissie to her duty as eldest of the three girls. ‘She’s all right now, so go back to sleep.’

  Reassured, Marie snuggled down again with her eyes closed, and Cissie wished that she could forget so easily, but it broke her heart to hear her mother in such pain. It suddenly occurred to her that when Pat was born he had started to cry not long after Mam stopped screaming, but there was no noise of any kind now. Maybe this one had been born sleeping.

  A sudden clamour arising in the kitchen made her lift her head in an effort to discover what was happening now.

  ‘No, Tam!’ her mother was saying, sharply. ‘I’ll not let you do it.’

  ‘How are you going to stop me?’ Her father’s voice changed to coax his wife. ‘It’s the best way, Isa. I felt ashamed having to register the two dead bairns you had before, so I’ll just . . .’

  ‘It’s a pity your shame didn’t stop you from making any more,’ Isa interrupted.

  ‘The last two were all right,’ he reminded her. ‘Are you telling me you wouldn’t have wanted them?’

  ‘You’ve always got a way out, haven’t you? Go on, then, take it away and do what you want with it.’

  No more was said, but as Cissie listened to her father moving about, she tried to figure out what he meant to do. She had gathered that, during the three years between her sisters, there had been two babies born dead, so this one must be dead, too, and Da was going to get rid of it.

  Hearing the landing door open and close quietly, she sat up on her knees to look out of the window and, after a few minutes, she saw him going down the hill with a bundle under his arm. Maybe they still took dead babies at hospitals, like they used to take bodies of men and women in the olden days to find out how they had died. She’d been interested when her teacher was telling them that, and when she’d said it was a cruel thing to do, Miss Deans had replied, ‘Yes, it was quite barbaric, but it was the only way the doctors could learn.’

  Her father safely out of the way, Cissie crept through to the kitchen and found her mother weeping bitterly in the bed in the recess. Her light brown hair was so damp that even the silvery threads through it, which always fascinated the little girl, were not shining like they usually did. ‘Oh, Mam, don’t cry,’ she whispered.

  ‘I can’t help it, Cissie.’

  ‘Are you sad because the baby died?’

  ‘Yes, that’s – oh, how did you know I’d had a baby?’

  ‘I saw your belly getting fatter, so I knew weeks ago you were having another one, and I heard you screaming.’

  ‘You shouldn’t know about things like that at your age.’ Isa started another fit of sobbing then stopped to lift her head again, her blue-green eyes red-rimmed and swimming with tears. ‘Don’t worry your head about it, Cissie.’

  ‘Has Da taken it away to the Children’s Hospital at the Castlegate?’

  ‘What makes you think that?’

  ‘I thought he was taking the baby for the doctors to learn on. I know they used to cut up dead bodies to see why . . .’

  ‘Oh, Cissie,’ Isa shook her head. ‘They’re not allowed to do that nowadays. He’s taking it to . . .’ She stopped, shaking her head again. ‘You’ll have to promise me never to breathe a word of this, for a baby’s birth has to be registered whether it’s born alive or dead, but your father doesn’t want people to know about this one. He’s going to throw it in the docks.’

  In Cissie’s childish mind, this was no more barbaric than letting it be cut up by doctors, but she felt that she had to point out something her father must have overlooked. ‘But what if somebody finds it?’

  Isa’s sigh ended in a sobbing hiccup. ‘He was going to tie in a bit of the lead piping the plumbers left when they repaired the lavatories, so it would sink to the bottom and never come up.’

  Satisfied that all was taken care of, Cissie was silent for a moment, then burst out, ‘Mam, why do you keep having so many babies? Is us six not enough for you?’

  ‘It’s your father. He can’t . . .’ Isa broke off abruptly, having already said more than she should in her weakened state. ‘Get back to your bed before he comes in, like a good lass, for he’ll take it out on me if he sees you here.’

  Cold and bewildered, the little girl had to shove her two sisters over before she could lie down again. She couldn’t understand why Da would want more children. He was always on about the amount o
f food they ate and the clothes they all needed, though the younger girls wore what she grew out of, and the two younger boys got Tommy’s hand-me-downs. There would have been nine of them, if the other three had lived, so it was a good thing they hadn’t, for there was hardly room for them all in the house as it was. Three in a bed was bad enough – it would be torture if there were more.

  She had drifted into a troubled sleep when the click of the landing door brought her instantly alert, knowing that her father had come back. The sounds that filtered through made her strain her ears, but she couldn’t hear what was being said until her parents raised their voices in anger.

  ‘You’ll have to stop it, Tam,’ Isa said loudly. ‘Even Cissie’s noticed there’s been a dead baby.’

  ‘She’s only a bairn herself, what does she know?’

  ‘She knows they grow inside me, and it’ll not be long till she understands how they get there. You’re like an animal rutting every time you’re at me.’

  Tam gave a proud snigger. ‘I’m a bull when I get going.’

  ‘But the bairns are getting older. Do you want them to know the kind of man their father is, not able to leave a woman alone?’

  ‘Ach, stop your whining! I’ll not be able to touch you for a while.’

  ‘Not for long enough. Before I know it, you’ll have me in the family way again, and I’m not fit for it, Tam. If you’d stop drinking, that’s all I ask. You’d be a good man but for that, for it’s just when the drink’s on you . . .’

  ‘The drink kittles me up. Can you not understand how my body works, Isa? I can’t help myself when I’m like that, and you’re my wife. It’s your duty.’

  ‘I’ve done more than my duty to you, Tam, and my body’ll not stand much more.’

  ‘You’re overtired just now.’

  The voices died down to a murmur, and Cissie burrowed her head into the pillow. She loved her father as much as her mother, but Mam had made out the babies were his fault, so how could he put Mam through so much pain? Surely he wasn’t the fine man she thought he was?

  Too sleepy to think any more, she cuddled up behind Marie and closed her eyes.

  Chapter Two

  Marie gave her sister a sharp poke in the ribs. ‘The kirk clock’s struck seven, and Da’s away ages ago.’

  Struggling to make her body obey her, Cissie said, ‘I’m just getting up.’

  Two years younger, Marie was already broader than Cissie and almost as tall. Stretching her arms, she sat up to take out the rags she had put in the night before. Her straight fair hair was the bane of her life, and the rags, though they did help to put some body in it, didn’t produce curls like Rosie’s or deep waves like Cissie’s. ‘What was the noise in the middle of the night?’ she enquired, running her fingers through her tousled mane.

  ‘How should I know?’ Cissie lowered her legs to the floor, wondering if they would take her weight when she stood up, for they felt as if they didn’t belong to her. Waiting until two-year-old Rosie’s eyes were open, she ordered, ‘Out to the lavvy, you two.’

  The normal weekday routine in the second-floor flat in Aberdeen’s Schoolhill had begun. To avoid confusion, the girls went first to the lavatory at the far end of the backyard, and it wasn’t until they had washed themselves at the kitchen sink and gone back to their own room to dress that the boys got up.

  As she ran the flannel over her face and neck, Cissie stole a quick glance at her mother and was shocked to see how ill she looked. Isa caught her eye and said, ‘Will you manage to see to the breakfast, Cissie?’

  ‘I’ll manage. Hey, Rosie, you haven’t washed your lugs – ears,’ she corrected, for Mam didn’t like them speaking the broad words they picked up from other children at school.

  Isabel, always known as Isa, and Thomas McGregor, Big Tam to everyone, had been born in Inverness, where an almost perfect English was spoken, but had come to Aberdeen after they married so that Big Tam could get a better job. A tall, handsome man with an outgoing personality, he soon found employment in the railway goods yard at Waterloo. His wage, although not as high as he would have liked, was enough to rent the three-roomed tenement flat in time for his first child to be born, and even when five more arrived they lived quite comfortably, solely due to his wife’s good management of the housekeeping money he gave her.

  Big Tam was friendly with all their neighbours and could have a good laugh with the men in the bars he frequented, but Isa was more reserved, giving the impression that she felt she was a cut above the other wives. The only person who didn’t seem to resent her lilting, genteel accent was Mrs Robertson on the first floor. Aggie was sixty-six, a tiny, white-haired woman with button-bright eyes twinkling out of a round pink face, and she had grown very fond of the frail little creature whose husband kept her in an almost-permanent state of pregnancy.

  When Cissie and her two sisters returned to the kitchen, Tommy had already washed and was drying Pat, and Joe was complaining that he was always last to get the towel. ‘You should rise a bit earlier,’ Tommy laughed.

  ‘You’ll have to stay at home today, Cissie,’ Isa said from the bed. ‘I’m not fit to watch the wee ones yet.’

  ‘Yes, Mam.’ Cissie was sorry that she wouldn’t be going to school. She was the best reader in her class, and top at sums, so it wouldn’t matter if she was just missing that, but Miss Deans gave them drawing lessons every Thursday, and that was what she liked most of all. Still, it couldn’t be helped, for she could see that her mother was very weak.

  At twenty minutes to nine, eight-year-old Tommy, Joe, six, and Marie, not long started school, left with their satchels over their shoulders, and Cissie began on the housework. It wasn’t easy to do the cleaning and still keep an eye on Pat – at twelve months he was into everything and made the place a mess again as soon as she had tidied it – but she did her best and was thankful that Rosie was quiet.

  At noon, Cissie heated the leek soup her mother had made the day before, and was ladling it out when Tommy, Joe and Marie came in from school. As usual, the bread vanished off the plate like magic, and she had to cut some more, her mother watching anxiously in case she cut herself, but her hand was as steady as a rock.

  Their hunger satisfied, the scholars ran out, eager to have some time with their friends in the school playground, and Cissie made her mother a cup of tea. In the afternoon, she went to the butcher in George Street to buy mince for the supper. Their main meal was at seven, for Big Tam always had a few drinks before he came home from work, but his worst vice lay elsewhere, although Cissie was not old enough to recognise this.

  When she came back, annoyed at Pat for being a nuisance in the shop, she found Aggie Robertson in the house and had to make another pot of tea. She didn’t listen to the women’s conversation intentionally, she couldn’t help overhearing as she pared the potatoes.

  ‘You can’t go on like this every year, Isa,’ Aggie said, in a stage whisper.

  ‘Tam hits me if I refuse him.’ Isa kept her voice low, but not quite low enough.

  ‘He should see you’re not fit to give him more bairns.’

  ‘He says he can’t help himself.’ Isa’s pale face flushed with embarrassment. ‘He’s very – you know.’

  Aggie nodded in sympathy, some white hairs slipping free of her hairpins. ‘Aye, there’s some men like that, but my Jimmer wasn’t, God rest his soul. It was every night when we were first wed, then it was once a month, like he felt he’d to put on a show, but he’d gi’en me Jim, that was enough.’

  Aggie’s son was forty-one and had been a tailor with the Northern Co-operative Society in the Gallowgate since he was sixteen, his back now hunched and his legs bowed as a result of sitting cross-legged on the floor six days a week for twenty-five years, but in spite of this, he was the apple of his mother’s eye.

  ‘Your Jim’s a good son,’ Isa murmured. ‘It’s a shame he never took a wife, but maybe he’s made like your man was.’

  ‘Jimmer was a good man to me,’ Aggie observ
ed with some pride. ‘He left me a wee bit money when he died, and like I said, he never bothered me much when he was younger, and once he reached forty . . .’ She stopped with a loud cackle. ‘I think he forgot what it was for.’

  A deep sigh escaped Isa. ‘You were lucky! The minute Tam lies down beside me, he’s at . . .’

  ‘Ssh, little pitchers have big lugs.’

  The intriguing subject was dropped, and Cissie was left wondering how Aggie’s Jimmer had been different from Da. Whatever it was, it was something they did in bed, maybe that’s why she’d heard the springs groaning every night, and Da grunting like a pig. She nearly turned round to ask what men did in bed, but had the sense to hold her tongue.

  She was kept busy after Aggie left, with mince to cook, potatoes to boil, bread and jam to spread for her brothers and sister coming in at four. Then she had to listen to Joe and Marie doing their reading – Tommy was past that stage. When Big Tam came swaggering in at seven, ruddy face filthy, clothes greasy, reddish hair standing almost straight up, he was full of the bonhomie a couple of tots of whisky usually engendered in him, and made straight for his wife. ‘Are you feeling better now, Isa lass?’

  ‘I’m a good bit better. I kept Cissie off school, but I should manage to be up tomorrow.’

  ‘Aye.’ Crossing to the sink at the window, he pulled his flannel shirt over his head to wash himself, then sat down at the table where five of his children were already seated, eyeing the large dish of potatoes and waiting impatiently for Cissie to dish up the mince. Tam applied himself to the important business of feeding the inner man. ‘You’re nearly eight, aren’t you?’ he asked Cissie.

  ‘In two months, Da.’

  ‘You’ll soon be a big help to your mother.’

  ‘She’s been a big help to me today,’ Isa told him. ‘She’s done all the housework and looked after the wee ones.’

  ‘I took up the coal when I came home from school,’ Tommy protested, indignantly.