Gillespie and I

by Jane Harris

  I was still standing there, wondering about the lights, when a Hackney drew up in front of the portico. Imagine my astonishment when I saw Ramsay descending from the cab. He paid the driver and then walked briskly up the steps, and entered the house. A few minutes later, he appeared in the window of the front sitting room, closing the shutters.

  I believe that I may have stood there for several minutes. The next thing I knew was that the driver of the Victoria was at my side, speaking to me.

  ‘Is something wrong, madam? You look ever so strange.’

  ‘What? No—no.’

  ‘Only I thought you was going to faint, you gone so pale.’

  ‘No, I’m fine… Do you work here, in one of these residences?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’ He indicated the house beside my stepfather’s. ‘There.’

  ‘Does—does anybody live in that house, next door?’ I asked him. ‘Who was the man who went in there, just now?’

  ‘Oh, that’s Mr Dalrymple. Usually, he’s up in Scotland, but he’s been here now, several weeks.’

  ‘… How many weeks?’

  The man rubbed his chin. ‘At least a month, I’d say. It was a while before St David’s, he arrived, I reckon. But we’ve hardly seen him—he hasn’t been out in daylight since he got here.’

  I could well imagine. Doubtless, he had no wish to advertise his presence in the country, since both the Scottish authorities, and myself, had been under the impression that he was on his deathbed, in Switzerland. He could have spoken in my defence, and yet he had chosen to dissociate himself from me, to feign illness. Of all the slights and hurts and rejections that I had suffered at his hands, this was surely the worst. And yet, the strange thing was, I felt very little—very little at all.

  A few days later, I sailed for New York. There is not much to say about my time there. Apart from one minor misunderstanding—so minor that it never even came to court—I was able to exist in relative obscurity in America.

  More importantly than myself, of course, I must decide and plan out what I am to write about all the Gillespies and what became of them.

  I gather that Mabel and Peden had intended to return to Tangier soon after the trial, but were obliged to remain in Glasgow when it became clear that the Wool and Hosiery was about to fold. Ned, who was nominally in charge, was not in any state to run things, and he had been unable to keep the shop in profit. As the proceeds now constituted the family’s major source of income, Mabel and Peden took over, and attempted to save the business. Peden evicted his tenants, and he and Mabel moved back into his old house, in Victoria Crescent Road. In an effort to create more income, Elspeth was obliged to take in lodgers at number 14, which gave her a few extra pounds. However, the role of landlady did not sit well with her, and she was never entirely content with these new arrangements.

  As for Sibyl, her dramatic appearance as a witness seemed to have been her undoing: it had tipped her over the edge. There is no clear account of what happened immediately after the trial but what I do know is that she was readmitted to the Glasgow Asylum later that week. Apparently, Ned made several attempts to bring her home over the months that followed, but his efforts were to no avail, because, this time, Sibyl really was beyond help, and the decision to release her now lay outwith her father’s control. Ultimately, she became catatonic, and refused to acknowledge anyone she knew, including both of her parents.

  Shut out by Sibyl, Annie resumed the peripatetic way of life that she had adopted whilst searching for Rose and began, once more, to tramp the roads around the city of Glasgow, becoming a common sight to those who recognised her. As time went by, she began to travel further afield, until eventually she stopped returning home altogether, and became a sort of vagabond. She did not go mad, exactly, but she developed an aversion to being indoors. At some point—alas—the relationship between her and Ned came to an end. I was not there to see it; by that time, I was settled in America, but I did hear rumours that they were no longer husband and wife. Eventually, Annie disappeared from notice, and I have been unable to find any record of what happened to her, nothing in the papers, no obituary, no gravestone. Perhaps she is still out there, tramping the highways and byways of Scotland: for some reason, I picture her as an old crone, in ragged, blackened garments, with dirty grey locks, and down-at-heel shoes.

  As for Ned’s mother, she died of apparently natural causes, in the winter of 1891. In fact, by a strange coincidence, at around about that time, I had a dream in which Elspeth choked to death on a bacon rind, but later, I learned that the post-mortem ruling was that she had suffered a massive heart attack.

  Following his mother’s death, Ned went further into decline. Before the trial, he had resumed painting, but it is my understanding that he stopped again, after Sibyl returned to the asylum. The door of his studio was locked; he never entered there again. In order to live, he was obliged to resume work as an assistant in the Wool and Hosiery, although I gather that Mabel and Peden kept him on more as an act of charity, since he was not much use as a salesman. As far as I know, he never painted again. Having been on the verge of making a name for himself, at the time of the Exhibition, he drifted into obscurity. Nowadays, one hears talk of ‘the Glasgow Boys’, Lavery et al., but Gillespie’s name is never associated with that loose alliance of painters. I believe that Walter Peden did encourage Ned to go back to painting, and even persuaded Mr Whistler to write him a letter, full of compliments, urging Ned to resume his work, but all was to no avail. Meanwhile, Peden’s own sentimental animal portraits became infernally popular.

  Instead of painting, Ned became obsessed with reclaiming all of his work, even pictures that had no meaning for him, such as the portraits that he had done, on commission. I believe that he invented non-existent exhibitions, and ‘borrowed back’ canvases, which he then never returned. His aim, in recouping these pictures, was unclear, at the time. He never exhibited them, but kept them stored in an old mews workshop at the back of Peden’s house.

  In the spring of 1892, Ned moved into the workshop, while continuing to try and reclaim his paintings from their owners. I personally never heard from him, although he must surely have remembered that I was in possession of his picture of Stanley Street, which hangs in my bedroom. As already mentioned, when Euphemia Urquart refused to lend him her portrait, he attempted to burgle her home, only to be thwarted by her butler. It is my understanding, from someone who was acquainted with one of the Urquarts’ maids, that Detective Sub-Inspector Stirling was called to Woodside Terrace and asked to investigate the attempted burglary. The contents of the pockets of Ned’s jacket, left behind in his escape, revealed his identity. However, Stirling was sympathetic to the artist; perhaps he felt guilty at having failed, for so long, to solve the mystery of what had happened to Rose. At any rate, he persuaded the Urquarts not to press charges, and the matter was forgotten.

  After the rumours about the Urquart painting had subsided, I heard very little more about Ned, until late in 1892. In October, on the third anniversary of the date that Sibyl had first entered the asylum, it is my understanding that Ned made a huge pile of all—or, should I say, almost all—of his canvases, inside the workshop in Victoria Crescent Lane, and then set them alight. The building soon became an inferno. It was thought, at first, that Ned had become trapped, by accident. There was only one exit from the workshop, on the ground floor, but any person imprisoned inside could have escaped, either through there, or by climbing out of an upstairs window, for it was only a mews, and the first storey was not very high. However, investigators found that the door had been bolted from the inside, and Ned had not made any attempt to escape from the building, by either route.

  By the time that I heard of Ned’s death, his funeral was long over. My grieving had to be done in private, as was the case with my stepfather, who also died in my absence, in 1895, when his latest gadget, an imported shower-bath, exploded with him inside. Ramsay’s funeral was carried out so swiftly that there was no time for me to
return to England. I never saw him buried, and the next time that I set foot on these shores was in 1913. By then, the trial of Hans and Belle Schlutterhose and my part in it were forgotten. My father had bequeathed his land and properties to Glasgow City Council, but, with my small income, and the sale of my aunt’s house, I was able to settle here, in Bloomsbury, in some approximation of tranquillity. That is, until the publication of a certain provocative little pamphlet.

  For ever and a day, this murky, ambiguous ‘not proven’ has hung above my head. Alas, ‘the Scottish verdict’ is unclear, saying neither one thing, nor the other. In fact, I believe that when a Scottish jury return a verdict of ‘not proven’ what they mean is not so much: ‘We don’t think you did it’, but more: ‘We think you probably did do it—but, luckily for you, the prosecution didnae prove it well enough.’

  They might as well have found me guilty.

  Kemp’s theory is that I escaped conviction only by foul means and one of the main contentions of his pamphlet is that I managed to bribe Christina Smith and prevent her from appearing at the trial. His supposition is that I contacted her, from prison, and persuaded her to disappear from court on the day that she was due to give evidence. Of course, I barely knew Christina Smith. I doubt that I even knew where she resided, at the time. Even had I known her, and wanted to communicate with her, it would have been almost impossible, for all my mail was inspected and read before it was posted. Kemp fails to realise how very difficult it is to smuggle letters in and out of gaol, a feat possible only if one has friends in high places within the prison hierarchy, and if one is willing to bribe and cheat and lie. One would have to be very clever indeed to dream up a way of secretly carrying on illicit correspondence with someone in the outside world.

  Tuesday, 19th September. Yet more evidence to uphold my theory that I am purging myself of all the badness and anxiety engendered by that girl. This involves a somewhat indelicate revelation. Lately, I am called to stool in the middle of the night. This happens, several times a week, and wakes me from sleep, at about four o’clock in the morning. Today, it was half past three o’clock when I awoke, and stumbled down the hallway to the WC. I had turned on the light and, as I pulled the chain after using the lavatory, I happened to glance back, and was alarmed to notice that my elimination, instead of the usual colour, was as black as tar. Upon reflection, I expect that this is a sign that I am expelling the last of all the horridness and vexation that I have been feeling over the past few weeks. However, momentarily, I was quite disturbed.

  I have been awake ever since, hard at work on planning the last part of this memoir. It is now almost nine o’clock in the morning. I do wish Lockwood’s would open, as I want them to send over a few necessities, but I have rung their number several times, and nobody answers the telephone. I am nearly out of Muratti’s and a few other things. Perishing for a cigarette.

  Friday, 22nd September. Now, this is interesting, and a little confusing. A letter has arrived, in the middle-day post, from a Mr William Cuthbertson, who claims to be the newly appointed Secretary of the Glasgow Asylum. Apparently, the previous secretary, Mr Pettigrew, passed away at the end of last month, leaving a large amount of unopened correspondence. Mr Cuthbertson apologises for the long delay. He has now consulted the appropriate files, and is able to inform me that, according to the records, a Sibyl Gillespie who was first admitted to the asylum in the autumn of 1889, and released in the December of the same year, was readmitted in March 1890, and continued to be a patient there until the July of 1918, when she died of influenza.

  1890 to 1918. It hardly seems credible. I wonder how accurate this information can be? People were dropping like flies that summer of 1918. Is it possible that adequate records were maintained during the epidemic? Could this person whose file has been found even be the same girl? The dates of admission are similar, but there must have been some administrative error. It surely cannot be the same person, for it would mean that Sibyl spent almost thirty years in that abominable place, and then died there.

  It does not bear contemplation.

  Besides, I saw her scars. I am almost certain that I saw them.

  Saturday, 23rd September. Yesterday afternoon, when I walked past the dining room, I noticed that the birdcage was on the table, rather than on the sideboard, where it should be. Presumably, that is where the girl left it. Or perhaps I moved it when I was seeing to the birds, which I must have done, earlier this week. I cannot seem to remember. Things move around in here, apparently of their own accord. There are black splashes down the wall next to the piano; I have no idea what they are or where they came from; and there appear to be mushrooms growing in the bathroom. At any rate, one of the finches—possibly Maj—was making rather a lot of noise: a short, sharp cry that I have never heard before. A few hours later, I happened to pass the room once again and, as soon as he saw me, Maj started to make the same insistent sound. I thought it over, whilst rinsing out my glass, and decided that this would be the sort of noise that a bird would make were he suffering. The cry was too urgent, too piercing, to be anything else. Maj wanted me to notice him; he wanted me to pay attention. I suppose that I have been rather busy, these past few days, with my planning.

  When I returned to the dining room, and approached the table, I saw, at once, why he was upset. Layla was lying on her side in the bottom of the cage, completely still. She looked very small, and very dead. Her feathers were ruffled and grubby. Her one visible eye was half shut, and her little legs were curled along the length of her body. She was partially covered by something rubbery and reddish-green in colour. At first, I thought it might be her little insides all exploded outwards. Then I realised that it was an old—very old—dried-up piece of apple skin, from one of the half-apples that we pop into the cage, from time to time. The skin seemed to have been draped across the lower part of her body. Maj was still making his ‘alarm’ sound, frantically flitting from perch to perch. Every so often, he would alight on the floor of the cage, beside Layla, and then cry out sharply, and look at me: as though he wanted to ensure that I had seen her.

  Not knowing what else to do, I tried to talk to him in a soothing voice. I moved closer to the cage and peered inside to get a good look. It was impossible to say how long Layla had been dead, but in this muggy weather it would not take long for her to begin to rot. The cage floor was filthy, covered in seed and droppings. The water dish looked as though it contained some sort of foul, thick broth. I tried to think of a way of extracting Layla without touching her. In the end, I simply removed the base from the cage, along with the droppings, the water tray and the dead bird, and set it in the corner.

  Then—with Maj still clinging inside, to one of his perches—I took the upper part of the cage next door, to the sitting room, where I placed it on some sheets of newspaper. Maj seemed unperturbed by this change of location. I gave him clean water and fresh seed. Finally, in the kitchen, I poured myself a stiffener. A huge bluebottle was buzzing around some of the rubbish in there, and so I closed the door on it and took my drink through to the sitting room.

  Here I sat, contemplating Maj, and wondering how the apple skin had come to be draped over poor dead Layla. Had he dragged it there to cover her body? And if so, then why? Was he acting on instinct, as best he could, to bury his mate, and protect her from potential predators? Had he draped the skin over her as some sort of tribute, or mark of respect? Or was the sight of her corpse simply so painful to him that he wanted to hide it? These last two explanations seemed unlikely—and yet, given his frantic behaviour, perhaps not impossible.

  There is also the question of what might have caused Layla to die. She was quite old, for a finch. But could that horrid girl have done something to harm the bird, before she left? She could have done it while she had me trapped in the kitchen.

  Poor Maj. The love of his life, his only sweetheart, exists no more. Now, he will have to live alone, in his boxwood cage. No more can he sing to his lady love, or groom her feathers; no more
will he feed her while she begs, open-mouthed, like a chick. Having said that, he seems to have adapted well to his new environment, here in the sitting room. He has drunk the clean water that I gave him and, every so often, he throws some seed out at me from between the bars of the cage. He seems less traumatised, and no longer makes that sharp, warning cry.

  Next door, Layla must be decomposing. I shall have to get up soon, and dispose of her body, for it has begun to smell. Her death has had a surprisingly profound effect on me. I feel quite overcome this evening, and am incapable of working on my manuscript. I shall have to make a start on the final section tomorrow, or in a few days. Perhaps something about the bird’s death, or the loneliness that Maj must inevitably feel, has struck a chord in me.

  From time to time, as I write these notes, I lift my head, and glance around the room, at Maj, or out of the window, across the road to where the shadows are thickening against the gable wall of the hotel. Every so often, I let my gaze rest upon the picture that hangs above the mantelpiece, a canvas that is always a comfort to me, for it is Ned’s painting, of course, the first of his that ever I saw, and my dear favourite, The Studio.