A cold east wind was blowing, but brilliant gleams of sunshine every now and again highlighted the classical buildings as Clementina and her governess made their way towards the main thoroughfare of Princes Street. The street was on a ridge and Princes Street gardens fell away into a pleasant hollow which accentuated the colossal height of the Castle Rock. The sound of pipers in the gardens swirled up with the wind, adding to Clementina’s enchantment. Soon the Highlanders came marching into view to the beat of the drums and the skirl of the pipes. Then round the corner, magnificently wheeling, they took the hill by storm, tartans swaying and white gaiters flashing.
‘The Castle Rock,’ Miss Viners rapped out, ‘is an extinct volcano and an excellent place of defence for our ancestors. This rock would have run with blood more than once, I dare say.’
From the ramparts of the Castle the views were breathtaking. Clementina could see across to the Highland hills. When she peered down over the parapet, down cliff and precipice, the tops of the trees in the gardens below were like tiny pompoms. The tall proud buildings of Princes Street were reduced to a clutter of match-stick chimneys and doll’s house roof-tops. At street level the air had been noisy with the clip-clopping of horses’ hooves and the banging and bells of the tramway cars. Here they were nothing more than gently jingling toys.
Clementina refused to allow Miss Viners’ ghoulish tales about murders and the Castle ghosts to spoil her enjoyment and eventually the governess, as if angry at her lack of success in frightening her charge, jerked her away.
‘We are now in the Royal Mile,’ she informed Clementina shortly afterwards, ‘which stretches from the Castle to Holyrood Palace. The whole of Edinburgh life was concentrated on this thoroughfare before the building of the New Town.’
‘The buildings all look so ancient,’ Clementina said in wonderment.
‘They are ancient,’ Miss Viners snapped impatiently. ‘The Royal Mile is composed of the Esplanade, Castle Hill, Lawnmarket, Parliament Square, High Street and Canongate. Are you listening, miss?’
Clementina nodded enthusiastically.
‘At one time,’ the governess continued, ‘the whole area was in the grip of a hunchback cobbler nicknamed General Joe. He had unkempt hair and vicious eyes and the magistrates were terrified of him. He imagined he was some kind of Robin Hood and used to go about robbing and killing the rich—often by beating and burning—and giving to the poor. It is said that this so-called General Joe could summon thousands of people by just walking down the High Street beating a drum. People would flood out of all these closes and vennels like rats following the Pied Piper of Hamelin. When he died thousands attended his funeral. Sometimes one wonders if evil spirits like that of General Joe still cling around this place. The feeling of death and evil spirits is very strong in this part of town. You can almost see them flitting about these dark closes. Think of Burke and Hare, for instance …’
But Clementina was thinking of roistering gallants in velvet and lace clashing swords in every dark close entry. And she could see, between the long grey cobbled Mile of tall ancient houses, the figure of Bonnie Prince Charlie riding on his charger among the shouting crowds that crushed in on either side. She saw him looking up at hands waving to him from the high windows like the white wings of thousands of birds.
Miss Viners’ voice had acquired an anxious tinge. ‘I doubt if we should venture any further.’
‘Why not?’ Clementina cried out in disappointment. ‘Ghosts don’t come out during the day. And we’re not near the Palace yet and you promised, Miss Viners. You said we would go all the way from the Castle to the Palace.’
‘That is correct. But there are too many ruffians and low-class people here for my liking.’
Indeed there was a growing crush of poor people milling about or standing at close-mouths or at corners. Barefooted, ragged children with gaunt, filthy faces and spindly legs jostled and scuttled about the cobbles like cockroaches. Shabbily dressed men lounged under an air of brooding hopelessness against grey walls. Women in shawls, some with babies wrapped in them, stood gossiping and blocking narrow pavements.
Then suddenly, astonishingly, Clementina heard someone yell out her name. She turned in bewilderment to see a fat, debauched looking woman in grubby white stockings and a short woollen petticoat flying in great delight towards her.
‘Miss Clementina! Miss Clementina! It’s me, Alice Tait!’
For a moment Clementina just stared in speechless disbelief. Alice had always been fat, but it had been a firm neat roundness like a tight little barrel. Even her cheeks had been round and firm and her hair, although a mass of unruly curls, had always been glossy and clean. Could this loose-fleshed, frowsy-haired, filthy-looking creature really be Alice?
‘Alice!’ she managed at last. ‘Oh, Alice …”
‘That settles it!’ Miss Viners gasped. ‘We’re going back down to Princes Street.’ Rage and horror raised her voice. ‘Remove yourself from our path this instant, or I shall call for an officer of the law.’
‘Where are you living, Alice? Where can I find you?’
Clementina called desperately over her shoulder as Miss Viners tugged her away.
Alice’s eyes looked feverishly bright with eagerness. ‘Covenant Close.’
‘What do you mean,’ Miss Viners asked breathlessly as she hurried Clementina along, ‘where can you find her? You must never have anything—anything, do you hear, miss—to do with that dreadful creature. I always knew she was evil. She was sent by the devil and now she has returned to him.’
‘Poor Alice!’ Clementina was torn between gladness at seeing her friend again and horror at the state she was in. ‘She looks as if she has suffered terrible deprivation.’
‘In your reading,’ Miss Viners said, ‘have you never come across the word “prostitute”?’
Clementina hesitated. ‘Someone who sells her body to men?’
‘Exactly.’
‘You mean Alice is a prostitute?’
‘Precisely.’
‘But how can you know?’
‘It is quite obvious by looking at her.’
Clementina could think of nothing more to say. She felt more upset and confused than ever and was glad when Miss Viners decided that they should return immediately to Heriot Row.
‘I think after lunch a quiet afternoon indoors is called for. You can take notes and make sketches from memory in your notebook. I will rest so that I may be able to go to my meeting tonight.’ The governess plucked her handkerchief from her sleeve and dabbed it around her mouth. ‘This unpleasant interlude has quite shaken me up.’
They had been given accommodation in the top attic flat of Malcolm’s house and this is where they were served with lunch. Malcolm had explained that, much as Clementina was welcome in his home and indeed more than welcome to share their table downstairs, the latter would not be wise on this occasion because Mary Ann was in a somewhat delicate condition. Great care had to be taken that she did not become overexcited.
Miss Viners, who at the time had smiled and nodded and almost curtseyed in agreement, had later told Clementina bluntly that what the stupid man meant was that his wife was going to have a baby.
Left alone after lunch in the small dormer-windowed room that served as a temporary sitting-room, Clementina tried to sort out her thoughts.
‘Poor Alice!’ The words kept returning to her mind with the picture of the ex-nursery-maid. But it was the eyes she remembered most—they were Alice’s eyes all right—bright and eager and excited and so obviously glad to see her.
Surely there must be something she could do to help her friend. Surely things could not be as bad as Miss Viners had said. The governess always looked on the black side of everything.
Alice looked ill and neglected. Maybe she simply lacked sufficient strength to keep herself clean or enough money to buy proper clothes to decently cover her.
Something must be done.
All the old feelings of affection and camarader
ie with Alice came rushing back to warm Clementina and fill her with longing. Alice Tait had given her more time and shown her more affection than Lorianna ever had or ever would. Alice had been like a sister. Indeed, Clementina doubted if a sister could ever have been so close.
Now Alice was ill and in need and she, Clementina, was well and strong and had money in her purse. Surely it was her duty to do what she could to help her?
Once she had tried to run away to Edinburgh to be with Alice, knowing that somehow, together, they would struggle through life and survive. They had struggled successfully through many vicissitudes before and they could do so again.
Suddenly it occurred to Clementina that this truth could still apply. And what could be better? Here she was, already in Edinburgh and even in possession of Alice’s address. Covenant Close. She had read about that. It was in the Covenant Close that a copy of the National Covenant was placed, in order that anyone could add their signatures after the Covenant had been approved in Greyfriars Church in 1638. So at least Alice was fortunate enough to have found a respectable house for herself that was steeped in Scottish history. Clementina’s mind was made up. Happiness surged through her veins. Tonight after Miss Viners left for her meeting, she would slip quietly from the house and away to the Old Town.
She was going to be with Alice again.
31
Alice was so feverish with excitement and so sure that Clementina would come that she didn’t go looking for any customers. In fact she actually refused a couple and was roundly cursed as a result. For hours she hung about the High Street and the close-mouth, her thoughts dancing a jig of happiness and her feet itching to join in the dance of delight.
Lord’s sake, what a pair they had been together, she and Clementina, and they would be again. Clementina would be glad of the chance to escape from that Miss Viners. Her and her spirits of the dead! Miss Viners didn’t care a twopenny-toss for Clementina. And Clementina’s mother cared even less. Nobody had ever cared about Clementina or looked after her like Alice.
Oh, Clementina would come all right and they would be like two peas in a pod. Just like they used to be. It was as much as Alice could do to prevent herself from jumping up and down and clapping her hands like a child.
Nothing would stop Clementina once she had made up her mind. Stubborn as a mule, that girl was, and as tough as old boots. If she could, she would have run out of the tower house after Alice when she left—young as she was at the time, Clementina would have come to Edinburgh to be with her then if that bloody Miss Viners hadn’t stopped her by locking her in. That woman had a face as sharp as a penknife and a voice to match. She would cut the heart out of anybody. But not Clementina—that girl had spunk! Most folk would be afraid to come to the High Street by themselves in the dark. But not her. Not a bit of it! Alice could bet her life on it. It wouldn’t matter if Clementina did feel afraid—sheer stubborn determination would make her come.
Honest to God, she was a character that one. Always had been. Emotion juddered so violently over Alice that she could have sobbed with it. Yet she had never felt so happy.
Everything was going to be all right now. She would have plenty to eat … new clothes … a nice place to live. Together they would work miracles. They always had before. They would get a cottage, just as soon as they had gathered together enough money. With that blonde hair and those eyes, Clementina would have customers queueing up for her; she could make a fortune in no time.
The lonely abyss of Alice’s existence, in which there had been nothing but hopelessness, miraculously disappeared. In her imagination she saw Clementina and herself in their country cottage. It had flowers at the front and a vegetable patch at the back, and a couple of fruit trees. There were henhouses a bit apart, and a pigsty, and a cow in the meadow.
‘Oh my God!’ she kept chanting, sometimes to herself, sometimes out loud, ‘what a bit of luck!’
Darkness had crept over the High Street, making ancient buildings look secretive. Nervousness began to shiver up and down Alice’s spine despite her happy elation. The tower at Blackwood House had been nothing compared with the Royal Mile. There were so many ghosts in the Royal Mile, all crowding in from so many past generations—kings, queens, dukes, churchmen, soldiers, martyrs, thieves and murderers—that it was a place more nightmarish than a thousand nightmares. Giant black tenements, or lands as they were called in Edinburgh, made high walls on either side of the narrow High Street and blocked out the occasional glimmer of light from the moon as it floated faintly in and out of the clouds. Often Alice thought she could see Deacon Brodie in a black mask, peering out one of the windows. Or she would imagine the swirl of his cloak and the turn of his lantern as he sneaked away to go about his evil business.
She was sweating now and trembling—she wasn’t sure with what. Sometimes she felt quite dizzy and faint, but she guessed it was the excitement. She wasn’t used to being happy. Eventually she decided it would be just as well to wait for Clementina indoors. Clementina knew the address and she would come all right. She’d find her.
Even during a bright sunny day outside, inside the close was always total blackness and she had to feel her way up the stairs and into Nelly’s place.
‘Where’s the customers the night?’ Nelly wanted to know. ‘If you’re no’ bringing anybody in, that’s you!—out on your arse for good.’
‘Don’t worry, you’ll get your money.’
‘Oh aye, how? You gonna’ rob a bank?’
‘I’ve got friends, that’s how.’
Nelly’s big bloated face contorted into a laugh. ‘Friends? You? There’s no one here that wouldna’ spit on your grave. That right, Dot?’ She addressed a red-haired girl who had come to get more drink for herself and her lover in the next room.
‘You don’t know the meaning of the word,’ Dot sneered at Alice. She had never forgiven Alice for failing to visit her in the Calton Jail.
‘I’m fussy about who I pick for friends,’ Alice said, with newly acquired pride in her voice. ‘My friend’s a real lady. She’s not dirt like you.’
‘Why, you …’ Dot flew at Alice with nails at the ready to claw into Alice’s hair. It wouldn’t have been the first time that Alice had been set upon and tugged about by her hair, but on this occasion she was saved by Nelly Rudd grabbing Dot and with the strength of a gorilla tossing her aside.
‘Don’t waste time on her! Take the drink through before he gives up on ye.’
A group of men and women had begun to sing drunkenly in a corner of the kitchen and Nelly had to raise her voice to be heard above them.
‘A lady, you say?’
Nelly had tiny piggy eyes and they had acquired a flinty, calculating gleam.
‘But strong as a wee horse,’ Alice boasted. ‘And with hair and eyes the likes of which you’ve never seen.’
‘And never likely to see, I dare say.’
‘Are you calling me a liar?’
Nelly Rudd’s smile was something most horrible to witness and not only because of her broken teeth, beer-brown with decay. It was the way her coarse, dirt-ingrained skin creased up, making her whole face assemble in an obscene leer.
‘I just thought it might be one of your wee stories. You have told a few before, if you stop to think on it, Alice. You’ve always been a great one for getting carried away.’
‘You’ll see,’ said Alice. ‘She’ll be here any minute.’
‘Oh aye?’
‘I’ll just go and have another look down the stairs.’
‘She’ll enjoy a wee glass with us, no doubt?’
But Alice had hurried agitatedly away without hearing.
There were always rows on the stairs, always a violent jangle of sound. Sobbing appeals, threats, taunts, cursing, the scraping and stumbling of heavy boots in the blackness, the thump of blows and the panting of men in drunken fights. Alice had to descend by dead-reckoning and by sound. She could not imagine hell as being any blacker. Outside on the cobbled High Street again,
a gas-lamp made a puny circle of light that only intensified the darkness in the narrow thoroughfare.
Had Clementina got lost? She would not know Edinburgh very well and probably had never been out alone in the city’s streets without Miss Viners to guide her. Worry increased Alice’s agitation. She tried to soothe herself by thinking of the cottage in the country and walking in the hills and tending the animals; and such was the fervour of her imagination that in the midst of the stench of beer and vomit in the High Street she could smell hayfields.
She was almost there, so strong was her longing.
‘Bloody hell, Clementina!’ she burst out loud eventually. ‘Why don’t you come, damn you? Come! Come!’
32
Heriot Row was deserted. Moonlight glimmered for a moment in the deep, dark sockets of windows and then retreated. The trees in Queen Street Gardens gently sighed. The gas-lamp Clementina paused under seemed to have a voice. She almost made sense of its hoarse, confidential whisper, but was too busy concentrating on which way to turn. Not that she was particularly worried about getting lost. For there, across the other side of the city, silhouetted against the night sky, were the craggy heights of the Old Town. A few square glimmers of light showed that there was someone in the Castle. Lights winked here and there lower down, then multiplied as they rose higher. Buildings in serried rows with crow-stepped gables like ladders climbed to the heavens. Towards the top the lights grew dimmer and rarer. The moon sliding out from behind some clouds pinpointed windows and closes like caves far up on a mountainside.
Somewhere, in one of those caves, was Alice. Covenant Close, she had said. With firm determined steps Clementina aimed for Princes Street and the valley of the Gardens. Then up the steep Mound on to the Lawnmarket. The Old Town fascinated her. In these ancient houses all the great people of Scotland had once lived. She had read that at one time 150 Lords, 160 Members of Parliament and their families and followers had crowded into the closes and courts when Parliament was sitting. Even in the last century there had been two Dukes, sixteen Earls, seven Lords and seven Lords of Session, thirteen Baronets and three Commanders-in-Chief living in the Canongate.
Light & Dark Page 24