Light & Dark

by Margaret Thomson-Davis

  He rose without apparent haste and firmly caught her arm, detaining her only long enough to say, ‘I’m sorry. But it’s better this way.’ Then he allowed her to continue her flight.

  Her heart wept as she hastened through the autumn countryside, wept and wept until her chest was tight and her throat painfully constricted. At last the mellow autumn evening slowed her down and soothed her. The sun was still shining and the fields were full of butterflies. Goldfinches were feeding in fluttering parties on the downy thistle-heads, while on the stubble fields a solitary cock pheasant was stalking along with two hens nearby. Soon the red deer stags would join the hinds in the lowland woods and the battle for mates would begin.

  Nature and the cycle of the seasons continued no matter what happened. Somehow its constancy steadied her and reduced her shame to more manageable proportions.

  ‘Lorianna!’ Malcolm met her in the hall. ‘We wondered where you had gone.’

  ‘It was such a lovely evening.’

  ‘I wish you had told me you were going for a walk. I would have joined you.’

  She smiled. ‘I promise I shall not go out for any more evening strolls without you, Malcolm dear.’

  In the bedroom she sat staring listlessly in the mirror as Gemmell unpinned her hat.

  ‘Will that be all, madam?’

  Lorianna’s gaze strayed to the maid’s reflection. Gemmell’s eyes were slightly protuberant, she had a longish nose and strands of hair wisped down in front of her ears; her best feature was her beautiful strong white teeth. Lorianna did not like her much and more than once had been tempted to dismiss her, but a sense of fairness had dissuaded her from doing so. After all, the woman was efficient enough at her job; it was merely that there seemed to be a hidden resentment about her nature which grated on the sensibilities. Lorianna suspected that the maid nursed dreams above her station which allowed a certain element of jealousy to take root. She had seen the look in those eyes when Gemmell had handled her jewellery.

  Once when she had come into the bedroom, Gemmell had been standing with one of her best hats in her hands, twisting it round and admiring it. She looked as if she was about to try it on and had Lorianna caught her doing so, then she would have dismissed her.

  But the maid had quickly said; ‘I thought the ribbon needed a few stitches, madam, but no, I see it’s all right.’

  And the hat had been hastily replaced in its box.

  ‘Yes, you may go,’ she told Gemmell now.

  Alone in the room, she remained seated at the dressing-table, depression wearying her. Why couldn’t she be the kind of wife that Gavin wanted? What was wrong with her? Why did she seem intent on shaming him as well as herself by this irresponsible and disgraceful behaviour? And with a servant!

  She thought she heard Gavin moving about in the dressing-room and in a surge of contrition she decided to take the opportunity to speak with him in private. She never entered his dressing-room after he came home, but they were rarely alone now that Malcolm was on holiday from university and so she decided to risk going in. She urgently needed to talk to him and be strengthened by his strong moral sense and unshakeable uprightness. Perhaps he could set her longer passages of the bible to study every day as a help towards self-discipline. She knew that at least it would please Gavin if she made such a request.

  As well as the connecting door between the bedroom and dressing-room, there was a door from each into the hall and when she went into the dressing-room its door to the hall lay open. Gavin had obviously been called away unexpectedly and his diary still lay open on the small writing table over near the fireplace. She sat down on the chair beside it, the only chair by the fire, to wait for his return. She had not meant to look at the diary and her eyes strayed to it only in boredom as they wandered over all the other items in the room. But something leapt to her eye, riveting her attention and making her lean forward to look closer. Then incredulously she devoured page after page until suddenly she threw the book aside as if it was contaminating her. She felt so sick she could not stand up, but leaning forward with her head on her knees she tried to control the waves of nausea that jerked through her. At last, breathing slowly and deeply, she leaned her head back on the chair.

  The instant Gavin came into the room and saw what had happened, he became agitated and furtively hastened to shut both doors. Then, wringing his hands he began to weep, his pince-nez becoming wet and blurred until he had to remove it from his nose and rub at it with his handkerchief.

  ‘Every day I plead with God to give me the strength to resist the temptation of evil women,’ he sobbed. ‘I ask him to strike them down, to remove the filth of them from the face of the earth so that I can keep to the paths of righteousness …’

  ‘And to think …’ Lorianna interrupted in gathering mindless rage, ‘that you made me feel ashamed and guilty! You hypocrite! Talk about filth! You’re the filth! To think how you have been lecturing and tormenting me for years and years, all in the cause of chastity and purity; yet all the time on every day you’ve gone to Edinburgh … all those other women …’

  She could not bear to remain in the same room as Gavin and, sick at heart, she stumbled through to her bedroom. All those wasted years, she kept thinking. The nausea welled up again and this time she had to run to the washbowl and noisily vomit into it. Afterwards she dipped a corner of the towel into the jug of water and dabbed at her mouth and brow.

  ‘No one matters to me but you, Lorianna. Look, I’ll burn the diary if it will make you feel any better.’ Gavin had followed her into the room and was stabbing the book into the fire. ‘You’re my wife. I was only trying to help you and protect you from yourself …’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ Lorianna interrupted in disgust. ‘Just go away and leave me alone.’

  ‘I didn’t want you to be like them. A wicked temptress—’

  ‘Go away …’

  ‘A modest woman should not desire sexual gratification or crave excitement. Only low and vulgar women—’

  ‘If you don’t leave me immediately, I shall scream for Gilbert and Malcolm and tell them exactly what a filthy, perverted, hypocritical madman you are.’

  Later, lying alone in bed, she tried to come to terms with her horror, to somehow salvage a reason to go on living and seek some kind of rules or understanding by which her life could be lived. Everything was confusion. Malcolm had said that there were over a thousand fallen women in Edinburgh alone. How many men were needed to keep so many women in such business? Solid, respectable, churchgoing family men like Gavin, no doubt. Thousands and thousands of them. The whole structure of society as she thought she knew it crumbled under her feet, allowing her to sink into a black pit of bitterness.

  Did all men gloat and drool in secret over every sordid, sickening detail of their liaisons as Gavin did?

  She could feel nothing but pity for the women when she thought of the physical pain she had suffered during coupling. But most of all she thought and thought of the wasted years she had already endured and the empty years still to come.

  16

  ‘I feel it is my duty to tell you, madam, that I do not consider Alice Tait is a suitable person to have sole charge of Miss Clementina.’

  ‘Oh?’ Lorianna looked up at Mrs Musgrove’s sallow face. ‘Why not?’

  ‘I caught them coming in from their walk the other day. Miss Clementina looked an absolute disgrace, madam, if you will forgive me for saying so. She was wearing neither hat nor gloves and she had obviously been eating berries. The lower half of her face was covered in a purple sticky mess and her pinafore was also stained. I thought you ought to know.’

  ‘Yes, you are quite right, Mrs Musgrove. I … I don’t see any point in mentioning it to the master, though. I believe he has already engaged a governess, who is to start in a couple of weeks. So she will take over the responsibility for Miss Clementina—during the day at least. Tait will go back to her usual nursery-maid duties and will be answerable to the governess—Miss Vi
ners, I believe she is called. Meantime, I will have a word with Tait myself.’

  ‘Very well, madam. Do you wish to inspect Mr Blackwood’s dressing-room now?’

  ‘No.’ Lorianna could not hide the hint of bitterness that touched her mouth and voice. ‘From now on I shall leave the master’s dressing-room in your capable hands, Mrs Musgrove.’

  The housekeeper’s quick sharp eyes missed nothing. ‘Is everything all right, madam?’

  ‘Oh yes!’ Lorianna’s bitterness still clung. ‘What could be wrong. Mrs Musgrove? A slight touch of the vapours, perhaps?’

  The housekeeper remained standing before her like a rock. It was as if she were determined not to budge until she knew the truth. There was suddenly something comforting about her.

  For a long moment silence stretched between them, then Lorianna said, ‘Do sit down for a few minutes, Mrs Musgrove. I must admit that I do feel somewhat low in spirits today. Perhaps if you stay and talk to me it will divert my mind a little.’

  Mrs Musgrove sat down, straight-backed and with chatelaine jangling. Then silence hung over the room again.

  ‘You never married?’ Lorianna opened cautiously.

  ‘No, madam.’

  ‘You never wanted to?’

  Mrs Musgrove’s mouth assumed a slight tilt of mockery, which was the nearest she ever got to a smile.

  ‘Once when I was young and foolish, I was engaged to be married. The man jilted me.’

  ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘I’m not. He’s probably dead now—I hope so.’

  Lorianna felt a chill go through her blood. It was the odd tilted travesty of a smile more than the words.

  Another silence. Then the housekeeper said, ‘They’re like animals.’

  ‘It does seem that,’ Lorianna picked her words carefully, ‘some do not possess the same degree of refinement and sensitivity as women.’

  ‘Worse than animals.’

  ‘I suppose one could say that some have a certain coarseness that could be the cause of much female suffering.’

  ‘Wicked suffering!’

  ‘I take it from the strength of your sentiments, Mrs Musgrove, that your personal experience … I mean you obviously know what we are talking about.’

  The older woman’s dark eyes held Lorianna’s. ‘Yes, I know what we’re talking about.’

  After a moment the housekeeper rose. ‘You don’t look well, madam.’

  ‘Oh, I’m all right.’

  ‘No, you need to be better looked after.’

  At any other time Lorianna would have regarded a contradiction, especially such an emphatic one, as an impertinence that could not be tolerated. But now she accepted it almost with relief.

  ‘I shall get Cook to make you up a tonic drink of switched egg and brandy. I’ll bring it up to you myself.’

  She paused at the door before saying, ‘An interesting thing about an indisposition, madam, is how it can be turned to a lady’s advantage.’

  Left alone, Lorianna mulled over the conversation, not quite sure what the housekeeper meant but aware that it did have significance. The brandy and switched egg seemed to strengthen her, although Mrs Musgrove later insisted that she rested for half an hour after she returned from her afternoon walk.

  ‘I shall be waiting to attend to you, madam, and see that you are comfortably settled.’

  ‘Oh, I can ring for Gemmell if I—’

  ‘Gemmell is tolerably efficient, madam,’ Mrs Musgrove interrupted smoothly and firmly. ‘But she has not the understanding and caring attitude which I believe is necessary when madam is in such a highly-strung and nervous state.’

  It was true that she was feeling taut and overstrained. She was trying to carry on with some semblance of normality, but every time she looked at Gavin a flame of hatred burned inside her and her nerves tensed to breaking point. She was grateful to Mrs Musgrove for stubbornly insisting on remaining in the bedroom during her afternoon rest; every day the housekeeper stationed herself on the sofa at the foot of the bed, to all appearances intent on her knitting but obviously alert to any sound of Gavin. The moment she detected his footsteps approaching either door she was on her feet, striding across the room and barring his entry.

  ‘I’m sorry, sir. Madam is sleeping and cannot be disturbed.’

  Gavin, it seemed, was carrying on exactly as usual. He was politely solicitous; he enjoyed his silent breakfast and perusal of the newspaper; he left for work with the same courteous, ‘Good morning, my dear’. In the afternoon he returned, sometimes earlier, sometimes later.

  Lorianna never knew whether his later arrivals meant that he had been visiting Edinburgh or that he had been putting in extra hours at the factory, because sometimes he and Gilbert returned home together. She never asked him because she no longer cared what he did. Nevertheless thoughts of the ruin he had made of her life tormented her and her hatred never failed to be fanned by his unchanging piously reproachful attitude towards her.

  ‘How dare he,’ she thought, ‘look on me with a reproving eye? Gavin of all people!’

  When he behaved in this way or tried to lecture her, she simply stared sardonically back at him or else excused herself from the room on the pretext of a headache. She was beginning to understand now what Mrs Musgrove had meant. A lady had so few weapons and no protection at all, especially if she had no mother or father to run to in order to seek help and advice.

  It had become a habit now that Mrs Musgrove sat while every morning they discussed the daily menus or the week’s ordering of provisions. Afterwards she remained seated for a few minutes—sometimes saying nothing; sometimes making a suggestion for the improvement of the general running of the house; sometimes discussing the merits or demerits of one of the servants. Yet there was an almost visible will about her which invested even the smoothest-voiced suggestion with the authority of a command.

  It was during one of their silences that Lorianna burst out, ‘Life has to go on somehow, I suppose.’

  ‘It will go on as smoothly as possible so long as I am here, madam.’

  Lorianna looked at the big-boned, straight-backed woman seated opposite her. ‘Yes, I know I can depend on you, Mrs Musgrove.’

  ‘Indeed you can, madam.’

  ‘The knowledge is a comfort.’

  Sometimes, however, perhaps because of the tightrope of nervous tension she was on, she took issue with the housekeeper. The woman was a servant, after all, and must not be allowed to forget her place. For instance, Lorianna had resisted the suggestion that Alice Tait should be summarily dismissed without a character.

  Mrs Musgrove had been keeping an eye on the comings and goings of Alice and also had made a few enquiries about her and decided that she was not of good character—there was some talk of an association with a ploughman. But Lorianna had said sharply that what the servants did during their time off and what friends they had was their own affair, so long as it did not affect the efficient and conscientious carrying out of their duties. And she would hear no more about it.

  Irritably she told herself that Mrs Musgrove would have her left without a servant if she was allowed to have too much of her own way. No doubt the woman would get rid of her excellent cook, for instance, and for much the same reasons. Strangely enough, at the same time she could not help feeling a deep resentment against Cook’s unknown paramour, and now Alice’s secret ploughman. Men caused nothing but worry and trouble, not to mention pain both physical and spiritual.

  On her walks now Lorianna avoided going near the farm, keeping to the hills and woods and the green shade of the trees. But her solitary walks only served to depress her and one day, seeing leaves flutter from one of the trees, she began to weep to herself. They represented the measure of her wasted years. She stopped against the tree, leaning her folded arms against it and weeping helplessly into them until she was startled by a firm hand on her shoulder which was pulling her round. The next thing she knew she was being held against a man’s chest, a hand was at
the back of her neck pressing her face to its hardness. She could feel the coarse texture of the waistcoat against her cheek and the smell of wool cloth was strong in her nostrils.

  At first she was too astonished to move or make a sound. Then she began to tremble with outrage at the audacity of the grieve—she knew it could be no one else but Robert Kelso, since no one else would dare. Pushing her hands against his chest now, her eyes flashed up at him, but before she could sear him with indignant words his face came slowly down until his lips touched hers softly at first, softly at each corner, with his breath warm against her cheeks. Softly, softly over her mouth but still moving a little from side to side and up and down. A soft, hypnotic exploration.

  All her anger, all her will melted under his mouth, which seemed to be feeding her with a magic potion that gently stimulated the nerve endings in her mouth and throat and gradually began reaching down to swell her breasts with sweet pain.

  When he let her go and she looked dazedly up at him, he said, ‘I can’t bear to see you cry.’

  Then he was walking away, his boots stepping on a twig and echoing in the silence of the woods like the crack of a pistol. She watched his tall figure recede into the green-black shadows, a painfully familiar stranger in his striped shirt with sleeves rolled up and his knee-breeches. His hair, unlike the short crop of the other workmen or indeed of any gentlemen she knew, was rather long and was one of the things that she had heard Gavin criticise about Robert Kelso. Any tendency to long hair was always looked on askance, marking a man as ‘poetic’ or ‘artistic’ and therefore not quite reputable.

  She remembered how Gilbert had laughed at Gavin’s disapproval. ‘What? The Iron Man? I’m sure he wouldn’t recognise a poem if he saw one, father. He just goes his own way, that’s all. The more you complain about his hair, the more he will quietly defy you.’

  ‘The trouble is,’ Gavin had said, ‘that he’s such a good man at his job. Had he not been, I would have dismissed him long ago.’