Waters of the Heart

by Doris Davidson

  Pat was off before she got to her feet, and she ran up to the floor above, but neither Mr Gibb nor Mr Morrice would agree to accompany her to the Robertsons’ house. They knew how aggressive Big Tam McGregor could be when he was drunk, they pointed out, and it was none of their business, anyway. In panic, Marie went back to her own landing.

  Their next-door neighbour – a retired plumber, and always referred to behind his back as ‘Cleekie’ Coull, because the fingers of one of his hands were curled with arthritis into the shape of a hook – looked at her apologetically when she explained what she wanted of him. ‘I’m sorry, Marie, but I try to keep out of family fights, and it’s gone quiet now.’

  Mrs Coull, having come out to see what was going on, said, ‘It sounded like somebody was getting murdered down there.’

  ‘Ach, you and your imagination,’ her husband snapped. ‘Big Tam and Cissie have just been having a row about something.’

  She wasn’t to be put off. ‘I heard Cissie coming up to your house last night, Marie, and after she went back down, your father had a helluva row wi’ his wife, so maybe it was something Cissie said about her. Then she slammed the door that hard and ran down the stair, I’m sure she’s left him. Maybe he blames Cissie, and he’s been taking it out on her the night, and Humphy Jim’s likely tried to stick up for her and they’ve come to blows.’

  Cleekie tutted in exasperation. ‘Never heed her, Marie. Whatever it was, they’ve settled it now, and you’d better not go down, or you might start it up again. Leave well alone, that’s what I always say.’

  ‘Pat’s away to get a bobby,’ she whispered.

  ‘Och well, he’ll sort things out.’

  Phoebe left the café much easier in her mind. All she needed to do was to say she was sorry, and Tam would welcome her back with open arms. She’d have to apologise to Cissie, too, but that could wait until tomorrow. She hurried up Market Street, across Union Street into St Nicholas Street and almost ran up Schoolhill in her desire to put things right. She was breathless by the time she reached the tenement, and when she passed the Robertsons’ door, she noticed that it was half-open. This caused her some disquiet, for they never left their door unlocked at this time of night. She wondered whether to go in and see if anything was wrong.

  Giving a light tap, she called, ‘Cissie, it’s only me.’ There was no reply, no sound of any movement, just a deathly hush. Her heart in her mouth, she was hardly aware of taking the three steps which brought her round the corner of the tiny lobby to the wide-open kitchen door, but what she saw then made her clutch at the jamb.

  They were all lying dead on the floor in a huge pool of blood, Jim in his shirtsleeves and Cissie with not a stitch on, the baby against her breast. The Moses basket was lying on its side and the poker was lying on the mat, stained red. ‘Oh, sweet Jesus!’ Phoebe whispered, her free hand going to her own breast. Surely Tam hadn’t done this?

  She stood, shaking, for some time, her ears pounding, her heart thumping, her brain numb with shock. At last, with a great effort, she turned to go for help, but a faint noise made her look round again at the gruesome tableau. One of the three must still be alive.

  Cautiously, she moved forward and stretched out her hand to touch the infant, but the mother’s arms tightened round him protectively. ‘It’s all right, Cissie,’ Phoebe murmured, and the sound of the familiar voice made the girl loosen her grip enough to let Phoebe take the child. His gown was caked with blood and she had to smother a cry of anguish when she saw that his poor little malformed head was caved in at one side. There was no doubt that wee James was dead. Swivelling round, she righted the basket to lay him down, and only then saw the man on the bed. His eyes were blank and didn’t see her, but his open spaver told her all she needed to know. The filthy devil had been trying to rape Cissie again.

  Ignoring him, she laid James gently into the basket then ran through to the bedroom to get a blanket to cover Cissie, whose eyes were also blank in her white, blood-stained face, and who would obviously not be capable of telling her what had happened. All she could do was to find out if Jim was still alive, and then get someone to fetch a policeman and a doctor.

  Moving across, she bent over to feel for a pulse in Jim’s wrist, shuddering when she saw that the blood he was lying in had come from a gaping hole in his skull. He must have been trying to protect his wife, and Tam had hit him with the poker – and the baby, too? It was clearly too late to do anything for either of them, but before she could run for help, Pat came in with a policeman.

  It was four o’clock in the morning before all the comings and goings stopped. The constable had sent Pat to Lodge Walk to fetch someone in authority, and he had returned with a sergeant and an inspector, who were followed fairly soon by the police surgeon and a photographer. Phoebe having told the inspector that she knew nothing, he had waited until the surgeon had examined Cissie and found no sign of rape before he started questioning her. He soon saw that it was useless, and agreed with Phoebe that she should be taken upstairs out of the way. He got nowhere with Tam either, and sent him off eventually in the Black Maria.

  By this time, dozens of photographs had been taken and the surgeon had ended his scrutiny of the two bodies, so they, too, were removed. The inspector turned again to Phoebe, castigating her for moving James, then trying to find out if she had any ideas on what had taken place, and out of sheer exhaustion, she had told him what she thought.

  ‘We’ll be charging your husband with murdering his son-in-law and his grandson,’ he had said, when she finished. ‘I’ll interview the young woman at Lodge Walk later, and I’ll have to have a word with the neighbours.’

  Sick with fatigue though she was, Phoebe could not sleep when she joined Cissie in bed. Marie had been told to sleep in the kitchen, because their stepmother hadn’t wanted to put Cissie in her father’s bed, and, to be quite honest, she didn’t feel like going into it herself. For the next three hours, she lay with her eyes closed, picturing herself at the Robertsons’ kitchen door again, seeing the three bodies on the floor, believing they were all dead. Then she would turn round slowly in her imagination, to see Big Tam sitting on top of the rumpled bedcovers, his shirt poking through his open spaver.

  The whisky he must have drunk had made him desperate for a woman, and she had walked out on him. Did the two deaths lie at her door? He had blamed Cissie for making her leave, and that’s likely why he’d gone to the Robertsons’ house in the first place. With Cissie in her nightshift – it had been found in the bed ripped to ribbons – his lust had got the better of him, and when Jim tried to stop him, he had brought the poker down on his head without realising his own strength. What she couldn’t understand was him doing it to the baby – unless he wanted to destroy the evidence of his previous rape. But he had been in a drunken stupor and his brain wouldn’t have been clear enough to think like that.

  It was seven o’clock when Phoebe heard the sharp intake of breath beside her and said, ‘Don’t be scared, Cissie. You’re with me in your old bed at home. Are you all right?’

  There was no answer for several seconds, then a hopefully whispered, ‘Was it a nightmare, Phoebe?’

  Wishing with all her heart that she could say yes, Phoebe replied, ‘No, my dearie, it wasn’t.’

  ‘They’re both dead, aren’t they? Jim and the baby?’

  ‘Yes, and your father’s been arrested for murdering them.’

  After another long pause, Cissie said, ‘He was mad drunk, Phoebe. He didn’t mean to kill them.’

  ‘Do you want to tell me about it? You’ll have to tell the police at Lodge Walk, anyway.’

  The story came out slowly, between many emotional breaks, and the sequence of events was just as Phoebe had suspected, except that the baby’s head had been hurt when the basket fell over – at least Tam hadn’t used the poker on James – but the brutality of the attack appalled her. The drink did terrible things to a man’s brain, made him act worse than any animal, but, even though he was a leche
r when he was intoxicated, he wasn’t a deliberate murderer.

  Having described the overturning of the basket and the infant’s fall, Cissie came to a shuddering halt. What had happened after that was gone from her memory.

  ‘I came in and found you,’ Phoebe told her, ‘and then the bobbies came.’ If the girl ever did remember lying naked on the floor with her baby in her arms, she would tell her that she had covered her up and that no one else had seen.

  Hearing movements in the kitchen, Phoebe swung her feet to the floor. ‘I’m getting up now, Cissie. Do you feel like coming through with me?’

  ‘Does Marie know what happened?’

  ‘I’m afraid so, and Pat, for the police asked them what they’d heard – but they don’t know the baby wasn’t Jim’s.’

  ‘Thank God!’

  Phoebe stretched across to stroke her cheek. ‘Nobody ever needs to know that, Cissie. We’ll keep it our secret, eh? You shouldn’t even tell the inspector, for it’s got nothing to do with what’s happened.’

  ‘Maybe he’s been told already.’

  ‘Your Da wouldn’t have told him. He was awful ashamed of it, you know, and it was the drink that time, and all, but it was as much my fault last night as his. If I hadn’t left him, he wouldn’t have gone boozing, and . . .’

  ‘You wouldn’t have left him if I hadn’t said things that made you realise . . .’

  Heaving a long sigh, Phoebe fastened on her stays. ‘Stop speaking about it, Cissie, and get dressed. You still have to go and speak to the inspector.’

  Pat was washing at the sink when Phoebe went through to the kitchen. ‘Don’t ask Cissie anything,’ she warned. ‘She’s still in a terrible state.’

  ‘But I want to know why . . .’

  ‘Never mind why. You’re too young to understand, anyway.’

  That night, both Cissie and Phoebe were reluctant to speak when they went to bed. The ordeal of telling the inspector what had taken place had been so traumatic for Cissie that she wished she, too, had been killed, and Phoebe was upset because she had overheard the constable saying that Big Tam deserved to be hanged. That had made her realise the penalty he would have to pay if he was found guilty of murder. She was glad, however, that she had remembered about the telegram her husband had received on the day before the ‘incident’, as the police called it. Learning that Tam’s son had been lost at sea had seemed to make the Inspector take a more charitable view of what he had done – they believed it was why he had got drunk – and maybe it would affect the jury in the same way. It didn’t excuse him, and she would never be able to live with him again, yet she didn’t want him to hang for what was really an accident – two accidents. Was it too much to hope that he would only be charged with manslaughter, and be sent to prison?

  ‘Phoebe.’

  The quiet voice startled her. ‘Yes?’

  ‘I can’t stay in Aberdeen after this. It’s bound to be in the papers and everybody’ll read about it.’

  ‘Then they’ll know your father wasn’t the nice man they all thought he was.’ Phoebe gave an angry snort. ‘He was a monster through and through, though he fooled me, as well. Anyway, you can’t go anywhere till after the trial. You’ll have to give evidence.’

  ‘Oh.’ After a long pause, Cissie said, ‘After that, then. I can’t stay here with them all pointing at me and saying it was my fault.’

  ‘They’ll point at me, as well, and I wish I could go with you, but I’ll have to stay here for Marie and Pat.’

  ‘Marie’s old enough to look after Pat.’

  ‘It’s my duty to look after them, I took it on when I married your father, and it’s not fair to expect Marie to do it. She’ll likely want to marry Wilfie in a year or two.’

  It crossed both women’s minds that Wilfie Lewis might not want to marry the daughter of a murderer, but neither of them mentioned it.

  Part Two

  Dundee

  Chapter Fourteen

  1918

  Oblivious now to the eternal clatter of the machines that had driven her near to screaming pitch for the first week or two, Cissie could dwell on her own thoughts as the yarns sped through her nimble fingers. Most of the spinners, the weavers and the shifters had learned to lip-read so that they could mouth silently to each other as they worked, but she didn’t want to become friendly with them. She would be expected to listen to their confidences in the short break in the middle of the day, and they would wonder why she didn’t tell them anything about her own life. If she were to tell them, they wouldn’t want to know her.

  Her father was in Peterhead Prison serving a fifteen-year sentence for manslaughter, and, while she was glad that he had not been hanged for murder, she did worry sometimes about what would happen when he got out. It had been her evidence that had made the police reduce the charge against him – self-defence in Jim’s case, and accidental death in the baby’s – yet the venomous glare he had turned on her as he was led from the dock had let her know that he blamed her for his sorry predicament, and she was sure that he would come looking for her when he was freed.

  That had strengthened her resolve to leave Aberdeen, but it was Phoebe who had suggested coming to Dundee. ‘I read somewhere that the jute mills always need workers,’ she had said. ‘They’re having to turn out thousands of sacks to make sandbags for the trenches, so we’ll easily get a job.’

  Cissie’s heart filled once again with affection for her; Phoebe had been a true friend, standing by her through all the troubles. Brushing a strand of hair out of her eyes, she lifted her head to look across at her stepmother, but Phoebe was too busy to notice. Surveying the factory floor, Cissie couldn’t help feeling sorry for all the other women, they looked so tired. There were dozens of them, their ages ranging from eleven to over seventy; parents would arrange half-time exemption from school so that their children could work either mornings or afternoons in the mills. Some of the older women looked fit to drop, their haggard faces set, their hands flying, for they could not risk being seen to slack. Even the young shifters – girls who put new bobbins on the spindles when the old ones were full – were concentrating desperately, and the constant shuffling of their feet told how badly their legs were aching.

  ‘Hey, you!’ The gruff voice startled Cissie, making her jump nervously and snap the yarn as the overseer’s hand brushed her hip. ‘What’s up with you?’ he demanded.

  It wasn’t the first time he had touched her like that, and she jerked away. ‘Nothing’s up with me, Mr Laidlaw.’

  ‘You weren’t paying attention to your job, and you’ve let the threads break.’ Pretending to look over her shoulder, he rubbed his body against hers. ‘I’d forget about it if you was nice to me,’ he whispered, his stale breath making her stomach heave. ‘If you meet me tonight, we could have a few drinks and then – well, you never know, do you?’

  ‘I don’t drink, Mr Laidlaw,’ she said, primly, praying that he would go away, for she knew what he’d be after if he got her on her own.

  ‘A wee drink would get you in the mood,’ he persisted.

  She felt like slapping his face, yelling at him to leave her alone, but he could make life difficult for her. He could even have her sacked. ‘I’m sorry, I’m busy tonight.’

  Not being a direct rebuff, this satisfied him, and to her great relief, he moved off. She could see Phoebe eyeing her with concern, so she smiled and bent her head to join the yarn, and to resume her thoughts.

  It had seemed like another calamity when Marie had told them she was expecting Wilfie’s baby, for she had barely turned sixteen, but she had gone on to say, ‘He’s going to marry me, though, so it’s all right.’

  Phoebe had looked relieved at that. ‘Where are you going to live? With his mother?’

  ‘She hasn’t room, not with the baby coming.’

  ‘We’ll manage here. You and Wilfie can have the kitchen bed, and Cissie and me can have your room.’

  ‘I’m going away as soon as the trial’s over,’ Cis
sie had reminded her.

  Marie had looked a trifle uncomfortable then. ‘Wilfie says he doesn’t want to be in the same house as you, Phoebe, for you’ve made enough trouble for this family already, and he’s willing for me to look after Pat. We don’t want you here.’

  Cissie still felt angry about that, after what Phoebe had done for them. Of course, Marie resented the love her young brother gave to their stepmother, and she had been pleased when Phoebe, too, had left the day after the trial ended.

  They had found employment quite easily in Dundee, where the jute mills preferred women workers because they could pay them less than the men who, for one reason or another, were not in Europe fighting. Finding somewhere to live had proved much more difficult, however. One woman would have been welcome in several of the places they were told about, but no one was willing to take two, and they wanted to keep together. For two nights, they had slept in any corner that provided some shelter from the January gales that whistled through the wynds and closes, moving on whenever a policeman came across them.

  For a few coppers, they could have had a bed in a lodging house, but they would have had to lie cheek by jowl with the dregs of the drink-sodden prostitutes who no longer had the ability to attract men. It had been so cold outside that they would likely have had to resort to that, Cissie thought now, if the woman who worked next to her had not solved the problem for them. ‘Where do you bide?’ she had asked, when they were tidying up after their shift one night, more as something to say than out of any actual interest.

  Cissie had grimaced. ‘We haven’t found a place yet.’

  ‘Where’ve you been sleeping, then?’

  Shrugging, Cissie had said, ‘On the streets.’

  Jen Millar had looked appalled. ‘Oh, my God. Look, I’ve only got one room, and it’s no palace, but you can come and share wi’ me, if you like.’