by Mary Easson
When lassies go ahint their mither and faithers’ backs thon’s when ye’ve tae worry.
At Netherside, Mrs Davidson asked if I was feeling alright. I didn’t seem to be quite myself and she was wondering if anything ailed me. I said I was fine but I fooled nobody. Even Dochie and the bothy lads said I didn’t seem my usual happy self. That was why, when the decision was made about who was to help at Parkgate House, I was told to go rather than Annie. Mrs Davidson thought that a change of scene would do me good. In my absence, Annie would be grilled for what she knew about me. Was all well back at home with the Graham family? Did Minn have a sweetheart? What did Annie think could have put even-tempered, hard-working Minn so out of sorts?
My mood did lift a little at the thought of a few days at the Big House with Nell. I hoped to snatch a blether or two with her at the dinner table in the servants’ quarters or on the washing green. If the opportunity came along, I might even confide in her. But I would have to think about that. It might be too soon to speak about what was going through my head, about what was in my heart. Nell might offer advice that I didn’t want to hear and I could end up feeling worse than ever. I was trying my best to be cheerful and activity of any kind helped but new activities in a new place might help even more so I set off. A change was as good as a rest, as my late mother used to say, and the tears rolled down my face at the memory of her.
The days at Parkgate were hectic. On the day of the grand affair, I had duties in the kitchen and was dispatched out the back door into the stable yard with a mountain of potatoes and other vegetables to scrub and peel. As ever, it was Rob that I saw in my mind’s eye and I wished he could have been there with me, laughing and blethering in the fresh air. I knew that he couldn’t, not right at that moment, but one day he might. It was a possibility, something to wish for the future. I tried to forget Uncle Peter’s assertion that Rob had been seen in bad company, gate-crashing the dance without a ticket whilst everybody else had paid. That wasn’t the Rob I knew – or thought I knew – and I convinced myself that it wasn’t true, just idle gossip from wagging tongues with nothing better to do than spread malicious tales. My father might change his mind in time, when he got used to the idea that I was growing up and once he realised that Rob was a fine upstanding young man and not a rogue after all. It was something to dream about and hope for, and I scrubbed those tatties with such determination, they were the cleanest that had ever been served up at a Parkgate dinner.
The kitchens and pantries went like a fair through Saturday. I washed an endless stream of dishes, at the same time watching the production-line turn out trays of comestibles, as if food was about to go out of fashion. The maids came back and forth from their forays upstairs with tales of the beautiful dresses worn by the female guests and accounts of the handsome, and other not so handsome, men who were in attendance. Opinion came down heavily in favour of sandy-haired Captain Hyslop with his neat moustache and infectious laugh, tall and gallant, just right for Miss Phee whom he doted on. In the midst of a panic about the burnt meringues, the cook let slip that the good captain might have a brother hidden away who could take Miss Isabelle off their hands, then life at Parkgate would be more amenable for all concerned, especially poor Mrs Melville who didn’t have the life of a dog thanks to her sharp-tongued sister-in-law. The sudden silence caused by Cook’s disloyal words brought panic to her flushed face, until she was sure no one of note had been present – just Jameson, the butler, looking on from behind his half-moon glasses. Then everyone fell about and Maggie Lennox had to fetch the cook a glass of water and a seat to recover. As I joined in the sport, I wondered if working at Parkgate was always this rare. The hours flew by at a pace.
Late on, Maggie joined Nell and me on the steps at the back door for a rest. After the heat of the kitchen, the evening was cool and still, barely disturbed by the sounds of the party on the front lawn. The cawing of the crows, settling in their rookeries in the darkness of the wood, seemed far away from where we drank tea and ate bread and cheese, watching the stars appear in the sky above the ridge. We admired the motor cars arranged across the stable yard, gleaming and glinting in the light of the moon. The muffled voices of a courting couple looking for privacy at the back of the house made us hush, eagerly searching the shadows for the lovers. We had to be quiet and not be seen. Miss Isabelle would have frowned upon three serving girls brazenly drinking tea on the back step, being spotted by the guests. Our place was inside, out of sight, as if all the cooking and cleaning and washing up was done by itself and not by real folk at all.
Maggie was first to decide it was time to get back to work. It sounded as if Cook and the housekeeper were having a heck of a to-do in the kitchen. I brushed the crumbs from my apron before taking a last long breath of fresh air under the starry sky. The lovers were nowhere in evidence but somebody was about. My heart pounded and I swallowed hard. In the shadows by the stable block, a man lurked, staring at the house. I could only see his outline: lean, young, quite tall. I couldn’t make out the colour of his hair or the details of his clothing beyond the lightness of his shirt and the dark hue of his trousers. He was standing out of the circle of light coming from the garage. Rob came to mind but I banished the thought immediately. There was no reason for him to be there in the grounds of the big house. Maybe the mystery man was a stable lad or one of Mr Imrie’s security detachment.
But there was something familiar about him.
I only realised what it was when I went back inside. The set of his shoulders and the angle of his head as he stared across in my direction, the way his arms were folded across his chest. I nearly dropped the plates I was carrying. Rob! He definitely looked like Rob! I ran back into the yard and peered into the darkness beyond the stable block. But he was away, nowhere to be seen. I plunged into a pit of sadness. My imagination had been playing up, I guessed. He hadn’t been there after all. Why should he be? I had only wished it to be so.
Yet barely ten minutes later, I was back in the yard and the place was on fire. Sweating and red-faced, Billy Dodds pressed the handle of the water pump with all his might. As I took each pail from him, I urged him on with frantic words, telling him to keep going for everybody’s sake. Soon he was joined by another who took his turn, a young man with strong arms in a light-coloured shirt, a bruised face and knuckles and a nasty cut across his cheek. I looked into his dark eyes as I took the pail from him. Rob stared back at me, his eyes glinting in the firelight under a fop of dark hair. He was the same young man I had seen leading the horses to safety with Captain Hyslop, and the same one who’d been standing in the shadows beside the stable earlier. He was there at Parkgate in the middle of the chaos, pumping the handle of the water pump for all his worth, putting his back into it, handing me pail after pail to pass on to Maggie and down the line. His presence confused me beyond belief, there in the panic and danger of the moment, when the future of Parkgate House lay in the balance, ready to go up in flames if our efforts weren’t enough to save it.
But we did save the house and soon Nell and Maggie were pulling me back inside. There was work to be done. Of course, I tried to resist, unable to take my eyes off Rob. I watched him go over to the dead man and my heart froze. He glanced across at me and I wondered if, somehow, Rob had a connection with the awful calamity that had happened that night.
John
Me and Jim looked forward to the summer holiday that year like no other. There’d been a rare day out to the toun one-year past – a fish tea in a fine establishment after a walk in the gardens and down the Royal Mile from the castle to Holyrood. And a trip on a steamer the year afore – doon the watter to Rothesay on a day when the smirr barely gave sight of land two minutes after leaving the Broomielaw though we didn’t care. The salt air filled our lungs and the breeze blew away the cobwebs of daily life in the Rows. But the thrill of a week under canvas in the Highlands with the pals? That had us talking and planning for hours on end! These trips had come ab
out courtesy of my mother’s determination to save on our behalf. She insisted that things were looking up, were getting better with all of us working, but I knew the sacrifices she made to put away the odd shilling here and there to give her boys a holiday.
When it came to the bit, only me and Jim, Bert, Dan, and Sandy got on the train for the camp. Rob was noticeable by his absence – the seat next to his brother stayed empty all the way to our destination in the hills. There hadn’t been enough time to find out the detail of what had happened along at the Big House on the Saturday night in question, even the Blackrigg rumour mill didn’t work that fast. There’d been an explosion and a man had been killed, that much we knew for sure. We also knew that Rob and two others were being held in police cells and Constable Mackay wasn’t about to let them out in a hurry. Had we not left the village when we did, tales of a planned insurrection or even revolution, and a train load of Glasgow polis on its way to quell the riots, would have come to us on the grape vine, for sure.
As we crowded onto the station platform, we wondered whether Sandy would be joining us but, true to form, he appeared on the horizon just in time, shadowed by his mother. I guessed she was making sure her younger son was packed off and wasn’t going to reappear at her door. With Rob locked up, the waste of one holiday would be more than enough in her eyes. Besides, why should one son suffer because of the actions of another? As the train departed, I imagined her setting off for the police station to enquire about Rob’s situation. His two hands pressed against the window, Sandy looked for a glimpse of her for as long as he could then he slumped in his seat, his head against the glass, and he didn’t speak for the first hour. We knew to leave him be and hoped that, in time, he would reveal something about his brother’s predicament.
Our week at the camp was everything I thought it would be and more. It was every football match we had ever played at Mansefield or down on the Meadie like we did when we were bairns; every daunder up the road looking for bird’s nests; every foray onto Melville land to poach rabbits and hares, taking a fish or a turnip home in our breeks for the pot. It was all of that rolled into one – times a hundred – and I hoped it would never end. We met lads from all over who worked for a living just like us, all liberated from mines, manufactories and shops for a week and, though I liked them all well enough, the kinship I felt for Dan, Bert, Sandy, and Jim grew stronger than ever as the days passed. On the football field, in the queue for meals in the catering tent, and even in quiet times before bed, we stuck together and stuck up for each other. On the morning of the Sabbath, when we were walked to the local kirk for the service, a group of lads from the west decided to take exception to Dan, not for any particular reason as so often happens with bullies and bangsters. The Staney lads got into formation around Dan and the ne’er-do-weels got the message.
We had no option about going to the kirk on the Sabbath. I felt that I should protest but after a sideways glance from Jim, I kept my mouth shut. We joined in with the rest as we had done years before in the school but we wouldn’t mention it to Alex when we went home.
Knowing how much he would disapprove, it felt strangely rebellious to be walking up the gravel footpath to the doors of that country church. I had spent my lifetime listening to my father’s invective towards the established church which – according to him – toadied to the lairds and turned a blind eye to inequality and poverty. So, I sat there in that cold place with its whitewashed walls, my mind full of scepticism. I marvelled at the minister’s honeyed words, at their power to subdue the hardest of hearts and the illest of thoughts, the clype and spin of the sharpest tongue silenced for the duration of his sermon. Though the full meaning of those words was surely beyond my ken, known only to the learned and the wise, I sensed enough of the sentiment to be drawn into the maze of language and felt that I was being offered a key to the door of understanding.
I remembered back to a time as a young lad when I’d sat at the table by the window at home, my mother busy with her darning whilst I studied the blood vessels in my wrist, fascinated by their blueness and the way they snaked down into my hand.
‘What’s life, Mither?’ I asked her.
She took my hand and said, ‘That’s what it is, John.’
‘Blood?’ I said staring even harder at my wrist.
‘Aye,’ she sighed, ‘Its whit’s in there wi’ yer blood.’
‘Blood?’ I said.
‘Aye, blood. And this.’ She held out her open palms to the small warm room where the fire crackled and the light through the window was grey as the snow fell softly outside, covering the Rows in silence.
‘This is life,’ she said. ‘You and me, here, the now. This is what life is.’
‘Oh, blood,’ I said again, following the blue lines up my arm as far as I could, hoping they would reappear somewhere. ‘Blood and bein’ here.’
But I wasn’t satisfied.
‘And whit’s it for then, this life, Mither?’ I asked in the way that only a small child can ask an impossible question and expect an answer.
‘Thon’s something ye have tae find oot for yersel, John. Yin day ye’ll find oot. Ye’ll jist have tae wait an’ see.’
She could see I was disappointed and wasn’t inclined to wait and see.
‘Yin thing I can tell ye,’ she said putting her hand on my shoulder. ‘Life is precious, John. Whitever it’s for, an’ hooever it turns oot, life is precious.’
Sometimes I feel her hand on my shoulder just like it felt that day when I was small, and I did feel it that morning in the church as we stood to sing Psalm 23. I stared up at the bearded man in his robes, walking on water so impossibly blue in the stained-glass window. I saw the nodding branches of the yew tree in the sunny churchyard outside and the rows of young men like me, crowded into the pews at the back of that church, and I remembered her words.
Life is precious, John.
For all the stories, and allegories and strange words, and the lesson spoken by the minister and all of the ministers that there ever were, those words of my mother were the key to my understanding of that great mystery that was my life back then.
Towards the end of our week at the camp, Sandy received a letter from his mother. He went off into the woods below the crags to read it. The rest of us were on nettles about what it said but we didn’t dare ask. After a hike that afternoon, when it was our team’s turn to go down to the shop in the village, Sandy revealed the contents of the letter. Rob had been released without charge. Apparently, the other two had been adamant that he hadn’t been with them. They’d been charged with robbery but not with arson. The authorities seemed satisfied that Jimmy Grubb had died as the result of an unfortunate accident. I thought of the stash of materials I’d seen in the mill and remembered Rob’s torment about meeting the gang that Saturday night. I knew in my bones that they’d been planning something big and it wasn’t theft. My elder brother was the instigator but his name hadn’t been brought into it, as far as I knew. Maybe that was why Moran and Bone were keen not to implicate Rob who might crack easily under pressure from Mackay. What had Rob been doing at the Big House if not meeting them? I’d left him on the hill behind the steading at Netherside. He said he was on his way to see Minn. Had she turned him away or had he changed his mind and met up with the gang after all? Either way, although I called him my friend, I was glad that he hadn’t gone to Minn. But I couldn’t be sure if I was more glad for her sake or for mine.
Bert, Dan, and Jim were soon clapping Sandy’s back, congratulating him on the good news about Rob. They said they had known all along that he couldn’t have been mixed up with a bad lot, not Rob Duncan, son of Peggy and top of the class. Sandy noticed me watching from the sidelines. I quickly grinned but not quick enough. We both knew there was more to Rob than met the eye but we would keep it to ourselves for now.
‘Dae ye ken whit this place is lackin’?’ said Sandy, suddenly breezy and cheerful.
We were all ready to be cheerful.
‘Lassies!’ he said, quickening his pace in the direction of the wee grocer at the far end of the village. ‘I hear tell the hotel’s fu’ o’ them, scullery maids and chamber maids galore. Get a move oan an’ we’ll have a look.’
Seeing Dan, Bert and even my dear brother, Jim, almost trip over each other to get along the road made me realise that I was not alone in my fascination with girls – or in my case, a particular girl. The opposite sex, it seemed, was another key to our understanding of the great mystery of life back then and we were definitely ready to find out more.
Chapter 14
Elizabeth
One sunny afternoon, and there were many in that summer of 1914, I was pedalling along the road to Whinbank on a bicycle that belonged to one of the lady schoolteachers. Miss Foulkes had offered me the use of it during the school summer holiday whilst she was off on her travels. Much to Richard’s annoyance, I had jumped at the chance of learning to cycle but he had been unable to prevent it, since out of the blue, Miss Foulkes appeared at the door of the manse ready to give me a lesson there and then. He’d had no option but to allow me to depart in her company though he got his own back later by sulking in his study until supper time.
I hadn’t taken easily to cycling. It required a great deal of nerve and bravado but my determination to get back onto the contraption after my first, rather shaky attempt was soon rewarded. My confidence grew with each and every outing. I revelled in the freedom cycling was bringing, a new independence that let me escape from the close confines of village life, to enjoy the countryside further afield than walking and my limited free time allowed. I could easily visit Rose and the Macleans whenever I had time to spare without having to rely on Phee.