Mistress of Green Tree Mill

by Mistress of Green Tree Mill (retail) (epub)

  She gazed at him for a little while before she shook her head firmly and said, ‘Oh, no, I can’t go to St Andrews. Who’d look after you and wee Georgie if I went away?’

  Chapter 4

  For years after Martha’s death, Maggy and Lizzie waged a war for mastery over the Mudie household. One bright Sunday afternoon in the spring of 1883, Maggy was determined to have the upper hand for once.

  ‘After all, Mister Mudie’s put me in charge,’ she muttered while she screwed up her courage to establish her authority over Lizzie.

  ‘Get your coats on, we’re going over to see my mither,’ said the maidservant, folding her arms over her chest in a determined manner.

  Lizzie turned on Maggy and said in a hoity-toity way, ‘I don’t want to go to the Vaults. It smells.’

  Maggy’s apple cheeks flushed a deeper shade of red than usual. ‘Your daddy said I was to take you out,’ she protested weakly. The gap in years between them was not large enough for her to intimidate the precocious Lizzie. Maggy consistently came off the loser.

  ‘I don’t like the Vaults. It’s dirty and there’s too many people living there. I’m scared in case I see one of those big rats,’ said her insubordinate charge.

  ‘There’s nae rats,’ said Maggy – halfheartedly, for she knew it was a lie.

  Georgie looked up from buttoning his boots and asked with disappointment in his voice, ‘Aren’t there really any rats, Maggy? Johnny told me there are real big ones that dip their tails in whisky casks and get drunk sucking them.’

  ‘Ugh!’ said Lizzie in open disgust, making Maggy feel even more awkward. She didn’t want to disappoint Georgic or to call her brother John a liar, but she was conscious of the scorn that Lizzie felt for people who lived in the slums among tippling rats.

  ‘There’s maybe a few wee rats…’ she conceded.

  ‘With long tails?’ beseeched Georgie hopefully.

  ‘Aye, maybe.’

  ‘And they suck their tails?’

  ‘Aye, maybe.’

  ‘Drunk rats – like the drunk people over there,’ said Lizzie dismissively, but she put on her coat because she didn’t want to disappoint Georgie. He liked visiting Mrs Davidson.

  The Davidsons lived in a low-beamed room halfway up an ancient tower made of stone slabs that crumbled away in Lizzie’s hand when she touched them. She hated the smell of stale food, unwashed human bodies and smoke from the fires that had guttered for centuries in the Castle’s blackened hearths. She hated the rustling sounds in the dark corners of the stairs and she tried not to touch anything as she followed Maggy up, up, up to the Davidsons’ home. Every time she went to the Castle she came away feeling grimy, and each visit made her more determined that when she was a woman she would live in a clean, bright, airy house with a garden. She wouldn’t live in the slums. She was meant for better things than that.

  Though Lizzie hated the squalor and dirt of the Vaults, there was another reason why she disliked going there. To watch the Davidson children clustering round their mother stabbed her to the heart. She was jealous of the strong bond of family feeling and love that kept them together through hunger, sickness and poverty. She missed her mother even more when she saw them.

  Maggy pushed open the door to reveal Bertha Davidson sitting at the fireside cuddling Vickie, the youngest of the four surviving children from the thirteen that had been born to her. Lizzie tried not to look as Bertha turned her head in a tired way, then her face lit up with a smile when she realized it was Maggy on the threshold.

  Bertha rose, straightening her bent back, and shoved a kettle into the middle of the fire. ‘You’ll have a cup of tea,’ she said, smiling at her visitors in such a welcoming way that her lined face became almost pretty and girlish.

  ‘My word, Lizzie,’ she added, ‘you’re growing fast and getting a real look of your mother. She was such a grand woman, a sensible body with a big heart.’ Bertha never forgot the help Martha had given the Davidson family. When Maggy’s father took ill with the cough, she sent food over to them; when he died, she’d climbed the stairs to offer to take Maggy in as a maid.

  Bertha herself spent twelve hours a day, six days a week, working as a spinner in Brunton’s mill but she did not want her daughter to join her there if anything better could be found. The rough regime of the mills where harsh overseers scolded the children and mercilessly bullied them to move quicker, would not suit her. Bertha had started her own working life at ten years old as a shifter, heaving huge bobbins back and forward in the vast sheds that housed the whirling, terrifying spinning machines. She’d seen unwary children like Maggy sucked into the machinery by their clothes or their hair; she’d seen the weak ones coughing and spluttering to death with the fibres in their lungs; simple ones weeping at the bullying of angry forewomen, cuffed by overseers, teased by their workmates, and broken by the system. The back-breaking work, the continual tiredness, the terrible feeling when you were struck down with mill fever, that strange bone-aching malaise that affected every child going into the jute mills for the first time, was not for her Maggy.

  She looked with love at her eldest daughter, whose curly black hair sprang up like a bush from her head, and was glad that Maggy did not have to submit to the indignity of having her head shaved, for girls starting in the mill had their hair cut off to prevent it getting tangled in the machinery. By the time it had grown again, it was reckoned that the child would have learned how to look after herself and keep out of harm’s way. Maggy was not stupid exactly, but she was slow and timid if shouted at and the regime of the mills, the need for alertness and speed, would never have suited her. It was kind of Martha Mudie to give her a chance to learn another trade.

  While the tea was brewing, John, the second in the family after Maggy, came clumping up the stairs and threw his cap into a corner. He was a sharp, alert lad – with the brains of a professor, according to his mother.

  ‘Johnny’s got a job,’ she told her visitors with pride.

  ‘What’s he doing?’ asked George, who hero-worshipped John.

  ‘He’s a messenger boy at Mr Leng’s paper, the Courier. He’ll be an editor one day, I bet!’ said Bertha.

  They all looked impressed. Johnny, his face shining and fresh coloured, came to the fireplace, rubbing his hands together and sniffing the smell of tea steaming in the old pot on the hob. Then he looked around for some decent cups because he was anxious to impress Lizzie Mudie, who he admired for her ladylike ways and pretty clothes. Something of his anxiety to do the right thing communicated itself to the visitors and when he carefully handed Lizzie a chipped stoneware cup, she accepted it with grace.

  In her mind however she could not help comparing the Davidsons’ tea party with others she enjoyed with Mr and Mrs Adams in Tay Lodge, their lovely house on the Perth Road. That was a place far more to her taste than the Vaults.

  * * *

  A week later, Lizzie was taking tea with Mr and Mrs Adams. Tay Lodge was the most beautiful house she could imagine and she felt privileged to be there.

  After the terrible bereavement that afflicted both their families, Mr Adams had become a frequent visitor to the coffee house where he talked to David about his loss and grief, things he dared not discuss with his wife, who broke down at any mention of Dorothy. The Mudie children too were a consolation to the old man. He started taking them back to his comfortable villa for tea. Little Georgie was shy and awkward but Lizzie looked forward to those outings, for she shared her father’s love of beautiful things and had a deep yearning for luxury.

  The Adams’ comfortable home was like a schoolroom to her and she used it as a focus for her future ambitions, walking through the rooms drinking in everything, brushing an appreciative hand along the figured silk of the curtains and cushions, admiring the glittering gilt of the picture frames, sinking with a sigh into the soft velvet of the deep ottoman. When a prim little maid in a neat uniform carried in a silver tray loaded with fine china and polished cutlery, Lizzie’s eyes grew r
ound. It was not the food that attracted her, though it was always delicious. Rather it was the feeling of sipping from an eggshell-thin tea cup, stirring her tea with a silver spoon and having it poured out from a silver pot. She could not help comparing the clean, deferential and silent maid at Tay Lodge with tousle-haired Maggy who opened the door to visitors in a sacking apron and dirty bare feet.

  She remembered how the Vaults rang with noise throughout the day and night but the only sounds in Tay Lodge’s drawing room were the crackling of logs in the marble fireplace and the slow ticking of the big grandfather clock out in the hall. When it chimed the hours, Lizzie paused and listened to it, her eyes dreamy with delight.

  She remembered the reek of old food and smoke in the Davidson house as she breathed in the scent of Mrs Adams’ flowers. Pots of tulips and sweet hyacinths bloomed in Tay Lodge’s drawing room in the spring; begonias and geraniums all summer long.

  The Adams flattered Lizzie because they talked to her as if she were an adult. Responding to that, she behaved in a grown-up way whenever she was with them and talked about the concerns that filled her mind. As they took their tea, she suddenly put down her cup.

  ‘I’m worried about Georgie. His cough’s worse. It bothers him awfully at night and when I feel his forehead like Mammy used to do, it’s all hot and clammy.’

  Mrs Adams’ face revealed her concern as she asked, ‘I hope he’s getting the right things to eat? Who does the cooking at home?’

  ‘Maggy cooks. She’s good at mince and potatoes. I’ve told Daddy about Georgie’s cough but he doesn’t seem very worried.’

  The two old people exchanged a significant glance at this for they had heard gossip about David Mudie. They were concerned that he was neglecting his business and dashing around town with cronies who had far more money to spend than he did. Martha’s death had removed the mainstay of his life.

  ‘Lizzie’s almost running the household with only Maggy to help her and, goodness knows, she’s little more than a halfwit,’ Mrs Adams had told her husband that very morning.

  ‘Maggy means well, she won’t do them any harm,’ replied Mr Adams, who was more tolerant than his wife.

  ‘But she takes them into those terrible slums. They could catch anything there. The only playmates they have are Maggy’s brother and sisters, little ragamuffins! Lizzie should be mixing with girls from better families…’ Mrs Adams could see nothing good about the Davidsons.

  When Lizzie burst out with her worries about George, Mrs Adams’ face clouded. The boy always looked hectic and fevered, and being dragged into the Vaults where sickness was rife would do him no good.

  ‘Perhaps a doctor should take a look at George. I’ll ask your father to let my specialist examine him,’ she told Lizzie.

  * * *

  The little boy looked pitifully thin and white as he stood stripped to the waist, obediently breathing in and out while the doctor listened to his chest through a big steel stethoscope. His ribs and back were tapped, his throat examined, his transparent skin remarked upon before the doctor straightened up with a solemn look.

  ‘His heart’s all right but his lungs are weak. He’d be fine if he could live somewhere dry and sunny but Dundee’s not the place for this laddie. I doubt he’ll make old bones,’ he said.

  Mrs Adams told David the full diagnosis but to Lizzie she only said that the doctor recommended her brother should always be kept warm and dry and stay away from people with coughs. Above all he must eat strengthening foods.

  Lizzie grasped every point, and nodded gravely. ‘I’ll see to it,’ she said firmly.

  On a fine Sunday morning in 1885, David Mudie stood at his bedroom window staring over the wide river and told himself that he was living in the loveliest and most prosperous town in Scotland. His beloved Dundee spread along the northern shore of the Tay, basking today in warm southern light. The climate was mild because the cold winds were deflected by the distant line of the Sidlaw hills, pale green in spring and purple with heather in autumn. From the middle of the town rose the steep Law Hill at the base of which clustered fine new streets and buildings that the prosperity of the jute trade had brought to the city.

  As he stared across the broad Tay to the shores of Fife, he slowly knotted his tie and assured himself that one day his old cheerfulness would return. Surely his thoughts would not always dwell on Martha. One day he would be able to appreciate the beauty of his town without it being blighted by the sight of the broken bridge that made him remember the blackness in the centre of his soul. Though five years had passed since her death, he missed her with an aching pain that he would do almost anything to assuage.

  The coffee house was as busy as ever but he left the running of it to employees and contented himself with going in each night and transferring the contents of the till to his pocket. His days were spent seeking diversion, visiting and gossiping with friends who had been at the High School with him – Jimmy Paton, the mill owner’s son; the Keillers in their sweet smelling jam factory; his own brother Andrew who was a general dealer in the Hawkhill, that steep street of close-packed tenement houses and busy shops that rose from the High Street to the crowded back streets and the mills.

  David loved to rummage through Andrew’s stock. His brother had a used-furniture shop but he also held roups in big houses. On auction days David helped hang the red flag out of an upstairs window of the house they were selling up and heaved furniture about for the benefit of bidders. The brothers shared a discriminating eye for beautiful things and when they saw a particularly fine china figurine, a painted bowl or a vase of iridescent glass, they often held it back and argued between themselves about who was to have the honour of buying it. David’s acquisitions, glittering and shining on the shelves of his flat, caused Maggy considerable anxiety as she wiped at them with a fearful duster.

  David felt at home in Dundee and completely overlooked its negative side. The squalid homes of the poor in streets like the Hawkhill were hardly noticed and he did not wonder what it would be like to live in such warrens. The tall tenements of the Vaults or the Hilltown with their twisting outside staircases had always been there and he saw nothing unusual in them. He exchanged witticisms and greetings with cheeky gangs of women coming out of the jute mills and never really noticed that many of them were white faced and looked hungry, or that most wore no shoes. Confident and comfortable, he held his head high and breathed in the smells of his native city – the pungency of printing ink wafting out of the offices of The Telegraph and The Courier newspapers; sweet jams and confectionery from Keillers’ factory and always and everywhere jute, jute, jute. Its smell was borne on the breeze, seeping down every street and alley from the mills that clattered and clanged from dawn till dark.

  Each year there were more mills; each year more people came flooding in from the surrounding countryside or from as far away as Ireland to supply the work force; each year the throat-catching scent of jute in the streets grew stronger. It smelt of India, an exotic, musty oily smell that was not unpleasant, and David Mudie was not the only citizen who sniffed it with pleasure, for jute meant profit and prosperity.

  The most unpleasant smell of the city fortunately filled the streets for just a few days every year. Only the starving alley cats enjoyed it when the whalers came back into port from their months of hunting in the Arctic, but people walked about with their noses sunk in cloths or handkerchiefs while the stinking whale blubber was barrelled and carted to the boilers of Baffin Lane or Whale Alley where it was rendered down into the oil used to dress the jute fibres. When the whalers arrived, Dundee stank and people kept their windows closed but the evil stink was tolerated because it was the smell of money. Whale oil was liquid gold to Dundee’s traders.

  When David finished dressing he took his children to the service at the Steeple Church. They sat side by side in a gallery pew, and as always when they went to church, David felt the resentment emanating from the little figure of his daughter.

  She sat with
her bent head supported on cupped hands and throughout the service never lifted her eyes. She stood for the hymns but did not sing and when the congregation recited the Lord’s Prayer, Lizzie was still silent.

  Her father felt concern for the child. In her, grief and anger about the death of Martha burned fiercely and sometimes he was wakened in the night by the sound of her crying out in sleep. When he tried to comfort her, she clung to him, still half asleep, but with terrified eyes staring open as she babbled about Mammy being down beneath the water.

  After the service he ushered his children out on to the street and said, ‘Let’s walk along the Esplanade.’

  He felt Lizzie drawing back as he spoke. Looking up at him, she shook her head.

  ‘Why not? It’s a lovely day,’ he urged.

  Her face went red but she said nothing.

  David persisted, ‘Everyone’s walking there today. The river looks very bonny.’

  She still hung back and he bent down to her and asked softly, ‘Is it the bridge, Lizzie? We won’t go as far as the bridge if that’s what worries you.’

  There were tears in the green eyes that looked up at him but he could see that she was trying hard to be brave. ‘I’ll go if you keep hold of my hand,’ she whispered.

  There was a fashionable crowd walking in the sunshine along the Esplanade and Lizzie, confident now that her father was holding her hand, enjoyed being among them in her new black boots and pale beige coat with fur round its collar. She loved fine clothes and her father was generous to his children, enlisting the help of his friends’ wives to take Lizzie out and buy her whatever she required.