Mistress of Green Tree Mill

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

  ‘She’s having her baby,’ said Lizzie shortly, turning round to rearrange the line of brightly labelled whisky bottles on the mirror-backed shelf behind her.

  ‘You’re taking it very cool,’ said the customer with a laugh.

  ‘Oh, she’ll get through it, I suppose. Most people do,’ said Lizzie and bustled off to harangue an under barman who was leaning his elbows on the counter instead of standing erect with a cloth over his arm waiting for custom. Although she disliked serving in the bar, she hated anything to be done badly and saw herself in the position of overseer of the hired workers. They feared her sharp tongue.

  Jessie gave birth to a son that day, the fifth anniversary of her second wedding. He was named after his father, and when David brought him downstairs wrapped in a white shawl, Lizzie looked on him with a cold eye. She did not put out her arms to hold the baby as Maggy immediately did when David carried his son into the back kitchen for her inspection.

  ‘I wish you’d leave that child alone. You’ve plenty of other things to do,’ Lizzie told Maggy who was, however, unrepentant.

  ‘I love wee bairns,’ she protested.

  Jessie’s health did not recover after the birth and her temper certainly did not improve. She continued to spend a great deal of time upstairs, fretting, and every time she saw David she berated him for one thing or another. When he was not around to bear the brunt of her ill humour, she turned it on Lizzie till the situation between girl and stepmother reached the point where they were hardly able to speak to each other.

  Nothing Lizzie did was right. She was criticized for being too hard on the bar staff and then taken to task if they committed some misdemeanour. Jessie’s biggest complaint against Lizzie was that the girl was too standoffish with the customers.

  ‘You act as if you’re some lady. The folk think you’re conceited. You ought to smile a bit and laugh at their jokes,’ said Jessie, who was indeed a popular landlady when she was able to preside over her shining bar.

  Lizzie glared at the pallid woman. The idea of swapping funny stories with the bar customers appalled her. It was true. She did feel superior to most of them. She was only marking time standing behind the bar counter. Something must happen soon, cried an anguished voice inside her head, I can’t go on doing this for ever.

  Her only happy times were Sundays when she escaped to Tay Lodge, to the dear Adamses, to the refinement and luxury that she craved. When evening drew in and she walked home along the Perth Road she swore to herself: I’ll be rich one day. I will, I will. I’ll live in a lovely house like Tay Lodge and I’ll be so happy… Those dreams carried her on through the barren weekdays and then Sunday came around again to whet her appetite for the future, though how she was to achieve her ambition, she had no idea.

  One Monday morning, as she was dressing her long thick hair before the sitting room mirror, her unhappy thoughts of the week that lay ahead were interrupted by Jessie’s voice calling, ‘Lizzeee! Lizzeeeee!’ She went on combing her hair, deliberately ignoring the shrill call, and when she heard Jessie’s footsteps approaching across the hall, she quickly slipped behind the heavy curtain so that she was concealed from view. The inexorable voice came nearer, ‘Lizzie! Lizzie!’ as Jessie bustled through the door. The footsteps stopped and Lizzie could hear her stepmother muttering to herself, ‘Where is that little bitch?’

  That was too much. Lizzie saw red and stepped out of her place of concealment, saying angrily, ‘Which little bitch are you looking for, Jessie? When did you get yourself a dog?’

  The older woman, grey faced and thinner than ever, glared back discomfited. She was unable to compete with the cool composure of the hostile girl.

  ‘I want you to take wee Davie out in his baby carriage,’ she said.

  ‘I’m busy. I’m going down to the bar,’ snapped Lizzie.

  ‘I’ll go down this morning. You take the bairn out when I tell you, you impudent wee scart you,’ screeched Jessie, her face and scrawny neck mottling with anger.

  Lizzie stepped slowly into the centre of the room, and it seemed as if she were laughing. ‘You want me ti tak’ the bairn oot, de ye?’ she asked in a broad Dundee accent, imitating with deadly accuracy the way her stepmother’s pseudo-refinement slipped when she was angry.

  Jessie balled her fists to hit the girl but thought better of it. Lizzie had grown tall and there was no guarantee that she would not exchange slap for slap. Jessie was not up to a battle for she was far from well, suffering from almost continuous palpitations of the heart and with her ankles so swollen up that they looked like balloons. She withdrew from the contest, playing her only trump card as she did so. ‘You take the bairn out like I tell you or there’s none of my money for you or your milksop brother till you do. You’re no good in the bar anyway, you stuck-up little besom, so do what I say or you’ll suffer for it.’ She was still berating and threatening Lizzie when the girl fled from the room.

  I’ve got to find Georgie. I need someone to help me against Jessie, was her only thought.

  A barman polishing glasses behind the saloon bar counter looked surprised when she gasped out, ‘Have you seen Georgie?’

  ‘He’ll be over at the Vaults. He goes there most days,’ said the man.

  It was a public holiday and Lizzie had given little thought to what George did with his time. Like her, his main aim in life was to keep out of Jessie’s way. She had no idea that he still visited the Davidson family.

  The dark stairs of the Castle were as loathsome as ever but she did not wait to lift her skirts as she ran up them. The door of the Davidsons’ room was ajar and she rushed in without knocking. There was a hump in the box bed where Vickie was asleep and Bertha was sitting at the table with her head in her hands. She looked up at the interruption to her thoughts as Lizzie said without preamble, ‘Where’s George? I want to speak to him. If I didn’t get away from that woman I’d have killed her.’

  Bertha pushed out a chair for the shaking girl and asked, ‘Kill who? Not meh Maggy?’

  Lizzie shook her head, ‘Of course not! That woman my father’s married to… I’ve got to speak to George.’

  ‘He’s out with Johnny but he’ll be back in a minute. They only went to the market for me.’

  Lizzie sat down and in the comforting presence of Maggy’s mother, she shed a few tears and was about to recite her list of grievances against Jessie when her brother and Johnny arrived.

  As soon as he saw the weeping Lizzie, George put out a hand to ward her off and said, ‘I don’t want to hear it. Don’t go on about Jessie. I’m tired of the way you two go at each other like tigresses.’

  Lizzie screwed up her fists till the knuckles shone white. ‘It’s all right for you. I threatened to hit her just now. I’d have knocked her down if she spoke another word to me.’

  Bertha said soothingly, ‘You shouldn’t let her see she makes you mad. What’d she say that got you so worked up?’

  ‘She said I’m a lazy besom, stuck-up and fancy. She said it’s her money that’s keeping me and Georgie. She said he’s a weakling and I’m a sponger. She’s always on about how we live on her money.’

  ‘Maybe she’s got a point,’ said George bitterly.

  ‘But she won’t let me get away and you’re still at school,’ protested Lizzie.

  ‘I won’t be for much longer,’ said George.

  His sister looked stricken. ‘Oh no, you mustn’t leave. You’re clever. You could do something with yourself.’

  ‘Jessie pays my school fees and I hate that,’ said George shortly.

  Lizzie ran to him and took his hand. ‘Stay at school. Stay for my sake. If you do I promise I’ll not make trouble with Jessie any more.’

  It took a lot of pleading before he agreed, and in the end calm was restored by Bertha Davidson brewing tea and advising Lizzie, ‘Keep a still tongue in your head and don’t go hitting her. You’ll only end up in jile that wey. Come on, have a cup of tea and calm down.’

  The tea did calm Lizzie dow
n and soon she was almost happy, enjoying without envy the family love that filled the squalid little room.

  As evening drew on, Rosie Davidson appeared, her head wrapped up in a scarf because she had started working in the mills alongside her mother and her lovely blonde hair had been cropped. Bending to kiss her mother she made a face at her brother and said, ‘What’re you doing here? I thought you’d have been out legging the streets for your boss.’

  The children laughed and Bertha said, ‘Don’t be cheeky, Rosie. Don’t make fun of Johnny – he’ll be a grand man one of these days, just you wait and see. Our Johnny’ll be famous. A fortune teller told me that when he was just a wee bairn.’

  They had heard this story many times but never tired of it. Encouraged by the expectant faces, Bertha leaned back in her chair to tell it again. ‘I was in the Duthie Park one Sunday carrying Johnny in my shawl and one of those gypsy wifies cam’ up to me. She asked to tell my fortune but I hadn’t any money. She had a grand face on her that woman and she looked at me gey strange. Then she said, “Gie me your hand. I’ll look at it for nothing.” I held out my hand to her like this… and she said, “That bairn you’ve got in your shawl’ll be a great man one day, a very great man!” That was you, Johnny.’

  They all looked at Johnny, knobbly kneed in threadbare clothes that were too small for him. He flushed and straightened up in his chair. Lizzie was impressed by the resolution that seemed to radiate from him. It was as if he was determined not to disappoint his mother.

  ‘You’ll not be famous working here as a messenger boy. You’ll have to go to America like Uncle Tommy,’ said Rosie. Bertha’s oldest brother Tom had emigrated to America many years before. From time to time letters and postcards arrived saying that he was well and thriving in a place called Chicago where he had a job in the meat market. Tom was the Davidsons’ family hero, America their mythical land of milk and honey.

  ‘I’d like to be famous,’ said Johnny, and a strange fixed look on his young face made him look much older than his years.

  ‘Oh, aye, you’d like it weel enough but you’re only dreaming. There’s no chance for folk like us. It’s only the bosses that do well.’ Rosie seemed to be trying to save her family from disappointment.

  ‘Oh, Rosie,’ said Johnny, ‘don’t stop us dreaming.’

  * * *

  The visit to the Davidsons soothed Lizzie and she was determined to behave more circumspectly at home. Jessie could hardly believe the transformation in her rebellious stepdaughter. Lizzie no longer protested when told to wheel young Davie out in his wicker baby carriage with the wheels that squealed so horribly.

  She usually pushed her burden to the corner of the Esplanade and carelessly parked the pram where a wind whistled through the wicker sides of the carriage. One evening she was staring over the river and leaning her elbows on the stone parapet of the sea wall when she heard a voice behind her: ‘I hope you’re not brooding.’

  She turned to find Johnny Davidson beside her. His brown eyes were gleaming and a cow’s lick of hair sprang up from the back of his head. There was something very reassuring about Johnny, and Lizzie always warmed to him.

  ‘I like brooding,’ she said. ‘When I come here I remember my mother.’

  Johnny shook his head. ‘It’s not good to keep going back over it.’

  Lizzie frowned. ‘Why not? Sometimes I think I’m the only person in Dundee who does remember. My father’s married that awful woman; even Mr and Mrs Adams seem to have forgotten Dorothy, and the other day I saw the engine that fell into the water with the train. It’s back working.’

  Johnny grinned, ‘Oh, you mean the Diver. They pulled it out of the river.’

  She gasped, ‘The Diver? Is that meant to be a joke?’

  ‘I suppose it is,’ said Johnny awkwardly.

  ‘It’s not a very funny one,’ said Lizzie, turning away to stare out over the water again. The boy tried to divert her thoughts and offered, ‘It’s getting cold. I’ll push the pram for you.’ As he wheeled the baby carriage around he looked down at rosy-cheeked Davie sound asleep in his cocoon of blankets. ‘It must be grand to lie in a pram. When we were bairns we were wrapped up in our mither’s shawl.’

  ‘I think babies feel safer that way,’ said Lizzie.

  Johnny looked at her and his eyes were angry. ‘Even if their bellies are empty?’ he asked.

  Chapter 6

  In the summer when Lizzie became eighteen, she looked around with grown-up eyes. There were good and bad things in her world.

  The good things included the way she felt about Dundee, the place of her birth.

  When she walked around the city she delighted in its vast green parks and the views of the silver river which was gradually losing its terror for her. She was glad to be living in such a beautiful place. She was a true city-girl, however, because even more than the open spaces she loved the crowded, bustling streets where the sounds of clanging tramcars and shouting carters never seemed to die down even late at night. She admired the fine new buildings that were being built along the main streets and felt a strong civic pride when she overheard the customers of the Castle Bar saying that their city was the jute capital of the world. These men talked of money, of business ventures, of risktaking and fortune-making, and their words made her head swim. How she wished that she had been born a man so that she could venture out into the world to carve a place. There has to be more for me than serving behind a bar, she told herself over and over again.

  Chief among the bad things was the hostility between Lizzie and Jessie. It was as strong as ever but the girl was discovering how to hide her enmity. Secretly it pleased her that her father appeared to be unhappy with his wife too. Their marriage had foundered on the rocks of mutual disillusion.

  Jessie was still sickly and peevish. The birth of another son who she called ‘Roh-bert’ had sapped her fragile strength. She carped and criticized all day; Davie neglected her and the Castle Bar, preferring to go off on hunting trips, outings to the races, sailing in a friend’s yacht at the summer regatta – in short behaving as if he was a rich man and a toff. He certainly looked the part, dressed in the most expensive tailoring, courtesy of Jessie who paid the bills. He drove a shining dark green dog cart pulled by a fat cob with its coat glistening like a horse chestnut. The townspeople all respected him as a man of substance. Jessie knew this and resented it very much.

  They were shouting at each other in the morning when Lizzie met George on the stairs.

  ‘Hello, stranger. I never see you these days. You’ve certainly found out how to make yourself invisible,’ she said.

  George nodded upstairs and asked, ‘Is it any wonder?’ From above their heads came the shrieks of Jessie’s recriminations.

  ‘She’s worse since she had Robert,’ agreed Lizzie, pulling a face.

  ‘You mean Tweedledee,’ said George with a laugh.

  She looked at him uncomprehendingly.

  ‘I call the little lads Tweedledum and Tweedledee… after the boys in Alice through the Looking-Glass,’ he said.

  She giggled. ‘Yes, they are like that – fat little blobs!’

  She took her brother’s arm and they walked downstairs together. She was pleased to see that he was looking well and had gained weight.

  ‘How’s school?’ she asked.

  ‘I wanted to tell you. I’m leaving. I’m sixteen and I want to start working. I’m tired of living off Jessie. I’ve been offered a job as a clerk in the counting house at Green Tree Mill,’ he told her.

  ‘Green Tree! That’s Mr Adams’ mill. Did he offer you the job?’

  George shook his head. ‘No, I didn’t want to presume on Mr Adams. It was the father of a fellow I know who fixed it.’

  ‘What sort of a job?’

  ‘Just clerking. Nothing fancy.’

  ‘But you’re clever. You could be something – a minister or a lawyer,’ she protested.

  ‘Don’t go on. I’ve made up my mind. I want to start working. I’
m not ambitious like you are, Lizzie. I don’t want to be rich.’

  She had not realized how much George knew of her secret longings, the dreams that burned inside her and made her understand the look in the eyes of Johnny Davidson.

  Seeing her disconcerted face, George reassured her, ‘Jessie’s right. I’m not a scholar, really. My High School fees are a waste of money.’

  Lizzie wailed, ‘But you’re not strong. You’ve a weak chest, the air in the mills could kill you. I’ll ask Father to make Jessie let you stay at school if it’s the fees that are worrying you.’

  George took her arm in a firm grip. ‘Don’t cause trouble. Let things alone. I’ve been offered a job and I’m going to take it.’

  She worried about him all day as she poured out drinks for thirsty customers. It was bad enough to have her own ambitions thwarted, though somewhere inside her she was quite sure that she would achieve them one day. George was throwing his opportunities away and that hurt her more. All their lives she had protected him and was reluctant to give him up.

  By evening it had become a pressing matter to make sure that at least he would be working in good conditions. She worried about it all night and next afternoon, when she was sure that she would not be missed from the bar, she put on her jacket and walked to Green Tree Mill.

  She reached the gates just as the army of women workers came hurrying back from their lunch break. Lizzie was almost swept off the pavement by a tide of humanity surging up the hill towards the millsheds. Women swarmed past her, shouting to each other, exchanging gossip, much of it laced with obscenities, indifferent to the shocked faces of respectable citizens. Many of the mill workers were barefoot and ragged, wearing threadbare shawls tightly wrapped around their thin, shoulders and men’s caps pinned to the tops of their heads by vicious hatpins.

  The spinners were the most noisy and disreputable. They swept along one side of the street while on the opposite pavement walked the weavers, a more discreet and ladylike bunch who wore flowered or feathered hats and buttoned boots. Weavers were the aristocrats of the mill girls. Spinners and weavers did not mix, not even on the pavement.