Rich Girl, Poor Girl

by Eileen Ramsay

  ‘You have a large party this year, Kier?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh, you’ll meet them all at sherry,’ he said. ‘Family, people I knew at Oxford, one or two from the regiment, their sisters, that sort of thing.’

  That sort of thing. Not the remark of a lover. Make a diagnosis, Doctor Graham. Your pulse has been racing all the way from Edinburgh to Leuchars; it races just as fiercely before an examination. Your heart leaped when he kissed you; it did exactly the same when you met your father off the boat train. Diagnosis: you are delighted to see a childhood friend again. Oh, Lucy, be truthful. You are even more delighted that he has not told you about a special Cynthia.

  He waited until they were all gathered in the drawing room for sherry before dinner. The room was as Lucy always pictured it: lit by soft lamplight, warmed by blazing logs, the furniture and carpets faded and worn.

  ‘Lucy, I would like you to meet Sally.’ He proffered Sally as if she was some rare species of butterfly for Lucy to admire.

  ‘How do you do, doctor?’ The voice was as timid and gentle as the girl herself.

  Good God, she lisps, thought Lucy. Whatever attracted him to a girl who lisps?

  ‘Hello, Sally,’ she said. ‘Just call me Lucy, please. I’m not a doctor yet.’

  ‘Ooh, we have all been quite, quite terrified to meet you.’

  Lucy looked at Kier, expecting him to catch her eye at the absurdity, but he was gazing down into the tiny face as if he was hearing the words of an oracle.

  So that is love, thought Lucy. I prefer to be rational and sensible.

  Brave words, but over the holiday period she did admit to a little pang of what . . . regret, jealousy? All the other young people seemed to be paired off, and the charms of the rather elderly clergyman who was the only unattached male did not appeal to Miss Graham. Several times, had she been vain, she could have made herself believe that Kier sought her out. He partnered her at dinner; he danced as often with her as with the fair Sally; he rode neck and neck with her in the hunt. Sally did not hunt. ‘Too, too terrifying, and horses smell so.’

  In a game of hide-and-seek she found herself alone with him on the nursery landing, as they crouched behind a dresser and waited for their pursuers to pass by. When it seemed that they were safe, Lucy went to rise from her cramped position but Kier held her down.

  ‘Let’s wait awhile, Lucy. I am determined to win the prize. Let’s just sit here on the floor for a time. I must stretch my legs or I’ll cramp.’

  They sat in the half dark side by side on the floor, leaning against the dresser. They had hidden up here so many many times during their childhood, but this time it was different. She was intensely aware of him, the warmth of his arm, the length of his leg, through the thin stuff of her gown

  ‘This is fun,’ said Kier quietly.

  Lucy nodded. She could not speak.

  ‘Sally would never sit on the floor.’

  ‘Her gowns are finer than mine.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know.’

  They sat still, listening to the laughter and the cries from downstairs.

  ‘Not fair, not fair. Kier and Lucy know the house.’

  ‘Lucy?’

  There was something in his voice that told her what he was about to say was vitally important. She did not want to hear it; she must not hear it. She moved to get to her feet, but his hand on her wrist held her down.

  ‘Lucy. How many more years?’

  She could say, ‘I will be a registered physician this year. I will have achieved that much,’ but she could not. To throw it all away to marry Kier and follow the drum . . . Part of her longed for it, for the security of a warm, loving relationship, but there would be no Dr Graham in the regiment. No Doctor Graham. That was the thing, the only thing. I am so unfair to Kier. Let him go, Lucy, let him go, she told herself.

  ‘Three . . . at least. I must do practical work, and there are other courses. I want to take a course at the Rotunda Hospital in Dublin, in midwifery, you know. It is not my favourite subject, but Dr Jex-Blake’s lectures were an inspiration, and if I am to set up general practice I must be as well qualified as any man, more qualified.’

  ‘The regiment’s going to India in the summer. Delhi. Isn’t that a strange coincidence?’

  ‘Very strange.’

  ‘I’ll be gone two years. You would like Delhi; you’re used to a life on the move.’

  Her mouth was very dry. ‘I plan to visit—’

  She got no further, for with a stifled moan he had pulled her into his arms. His mouth was on hers, not the brotherly kiss as at the station. This was searching, demanding. Was it the memories of childhood, the warmth of the holiday season, the mulled wine they had drunk in the drawing room a while ago . . . but Lucy answered his kiss. She too was searching, demanding. Her arms were around his neck and somehow they were full length on the floor and her body was on fire and she was desperate for the fire to be extinguished. She came to her senses when his hand found its way inside the low neckline of her dress, and she pulled herself away and stumbled to her feet.

  ‘This is madness.’

  ‘I am the one who is mad, Lucy.’ She could see the effort he made to pull himself together. ‘Forgive me,’ he said and she was back in the sick-room of the fourteen-year-old Kier who had behaved abominably and thrown his medicine and his crutch at her and then begged so sweetly for her forgiveness. ‘We must go downstairs,’ said the man, Kier. ‘I’ll go first, give you a chance to . . . There is no excuse for my behaviour.’ He half saluted and ran quickly down the stairs and she heard him calling lightly.

  ‘Lucy? No, I have not seen her. Has she not been found ?’

  Has she lost?, thought Lucy. Had happiness been within her grasp? Should she have pulled it to her and kept it safe against all-comers? She straightened her dress and smoothed her hair and went back to the party.

  *

  Her father came to her room on New Year’s Eve as she dressed for the ball in a made-over gown that Lady Graham would not need in Delhi.

  ‘You look charming, my dear,’ said Sir John as he fastened her twenty-first birthday gift of pearls around her neck. ‘The announcement is for midnight, Lucy. Are you able to wish him joy?’

  ‘I wish him luck, Father.’ She tried to sound light-hearted, even flippant. ‘She will bore him to tears in a twelve-month.’

  ‘Not if she gives him a child, Lucy. Kier is ready for fatherhood and will make a doting papa.’

  Lucy laughed. ‘What an absurd idea! Kier is a child himself.’

  ‘He is twenty-three, two years older than you. And I have often found that it is more the desire for stability, for a wife and children to return to, that shepherds a soldier into holy matrimony, than deep, passionate love.’ He handed her her shawl, another relic of Washington. ‘I am glad your heart is not broken. I always hoped you might marry Kier, but if you do not love him . . .’

  ‘Of course I love him. I always have but . . . oh, Father, I don’t know. If I marry anyone that will be an end to my dream. I’m so very selfish. I want it all. Isn’t that greedy of me? I want Kier . . . or someone . . . to wait until I am ready, and I do not want to marry for another three years. Even after that, I would like to go on to the university for an advanced degree. There is so much to learn and every day there are more and more discoveries. Perhaps I am not meant for a domestic life. I would find it . . . difficult to give up medicine for any man.’

  ‘Then obviously you have not yet met the right man. For when you do, Lucy, when you know that this is the man with whom you want to spend your life, nothing, including the practice of medicine, will stand in your way.’

  At midnight Mr Anderson-Howard wished the company a very happy New Year, but he looked discomfited, puzzled. Kier was nowhere to be seen and neither was Sally, whose parents looked even more discomfited than Kier’s. There was a buzz of speculative talk among the young people and Lucy heard some of it.

  ‘Of cour
se they were going to announce.’

  ‘He never actually asked her, you know.’

  ‘She assumed, we all did . . .’

  ‘He’s going to India, for God’s sake. No girl in her right mind would want to get engaged and then see her beloved go off to years in India.’

  ‘But where is she?’

  ‘You don’t think they’ve run off, do you?’

  Lucy’s heart skipped a beat. Run off? She forced herself to kiss her parents, to chat normally to Kier’s mother and father.

  ‘You don’t know what’s happened, Lucy dear?’ said Mrs Anderson-Howard. ‘We were so sure, you see. He said he was going to ask her; I’m sure he did.’

  ‘Perhaps they decided to wait until after India.’

  ‘That’ll be it. She’s not like you, Lucy, used to trailing half-way across the world every few years. Oh, do make the musicians play, Archie. This is turning into a funeral tea.’

  The musicians played, the waiters poured champagne, the young danced, their elders sipped the wine and talked and tried desperately to avoid the only subject they wanted to discuss.

  It was nearly one in the morning before the door opened to reveal a flushed and windblown Kier and Sally.

  ‘So sorry we’re late,’ said Kier cheerfully. ‘We went for a walk and then found ourselves, blondes both, about to become your first foot of the New Year, Mother, so we went around the house tapping on windows till we could find a dark-haired footman to come out and lead us in.’

  ‘The butler was frightfully fierce, Mrs Anderson-Howard,’ said Sally. ‘He attacked us with a cricket bat.’

  ‘Not really, Mother.’ Kier reassured his mother, who had half risen in alarm. ‘Bless his fierce old heart, though, he did have it in his hand, ready to beat off the invaders.’

  ‘Rather a strange time to go for a walk, Kier.’

  Kier looked at his father. ‘We had such a lot to talk about.’

  ‘Snakes and things,’ said Sally with another little shudder. ‘Oh, Kier darling. Champagne!’

  Lucy watched them for a few moments before excusing herself and going off to bed. Sally had recovered from her disappointment at not becoming an engaged woman. ‘Snakes and things.’ Kier had obviously filled the poor girl’s head with a lot of nonsense about living conditions in the outposts of the empire. But why? Had it anything to do with that wine-induced moment of madness on the nursery stair? And it was wine-induced, wasn’t it? He would not have kissed her so had he been completely sober. Lucy looked sternly into her mirror as she brushed her hair. ‘If he asked you today, would you leave everything and go off with him to India?’

  But Lucy Graham refused to answer the question.

  6

  Edinburgh, 1893

  IN THE FORMAL setting of a house-party it was impossible for Lucy to avoid Kier altogether, although she tried. Her mind was in a turmoil. Part of her said that if Kier truly loved Sally he would not have kissed her, Lucy, on the nursery stair. On the other hand she worried that she might just have spoiled poor Sally’s romance.

  But she looked happy. She doesn’t love him enough. He does not love her enough. I do not . . . Oh, the permutations were endless. Her racing blood told her that she had wanted more, much more, from Kier on the nursery landing. But was that love, or Christmas spirit, or wine, or frustrated spinsterhood?

  If he loved her, truly loved her, he would not have frightened her with tales of life in India. If she loved him, truly loved . . . if I . . . oh, dear God, why is life so complicated?

  ‘Hello, Lucy. I felt sure I should find you here.’

  It was Kier.

  Lucy turned from the nursery fire she had kindled herself – had she not done the same so often in the long ago – and looked up at him. He looked tired and pale. The ravages of a New Year holiday, no doubt.

  ‘Sir John says you leave tonight.’

  ‘My classes start soon, and there is so much for my parents to do. They are considering selling The Larches, you know. Did your father tell you so?’

  ‘No.’

  She did not stand up. He did not kneel down beside her

  ‘Finance. India will be expensive. The Alexanders love the house and so it would seem sensible to sell.’

  ‘Lucy, I love you.’

  She continued to look into the flames. ‘I know. I love you too,’ she said softly.

  He laughed but it was not a laugh, almost a cry of pain. ‘This is where we should fall into each other’s arms.’

  What could she say?

  ‘Lucy. I want a home and healthy little children playing in the orchard and creeping out at night to feed their ponies extra sugar-lumps. I want a wife . . . you – I have never ever really wanted anyone else – at my table, on my arm . . . in my bed.’

  She stood up, the firelight throwing her shadow on the wall.

  ‘In three years’ time you will have had a chance to get all this out of your mind. You should have fulfilled whatever it is in you that longs for . . . for . . . what I can’t, no man can, give you. I should make major about the same time. A perfect time for us to marry. I won’t ask you to become engaged. For one thing, if you accepted me, it would be a dreadful humiliation to poor Sally; I’m extremely fond of her, you see.’ He turned away from her and his voice was very quiet. ‘Sometimes it’s nice to be admired by someone who doesn’t really know one, bumps and all as they say. And you know me so well. I have no secrets from you. But you, Lucy, you have always kept your counsel. We’ll write, shall we? And then in three years’ time, I shall come and all you will have to say is, “Yes, Kier. The time is right.”’

  She said nothing. The tears were flowing freely and oh so quietly.

  ‘Oh, my love, don’t cry. My soul tells me that you are worth waiting for, Lucy Graham.’ He bent down and gently kissed her. ‘Make it better, doctor,’ he said softly and when she looked up he was gone.

  *

  Had the adults, the parents, made a pact? No more was said about Kier’s engagement. Nothing was said about the fact that, for the first time ever, he did not see them off at the station. Lucy had her story ready but was not called upon to tell it.

  She returned to her medical lectures and her parents eventually sailed to India. Her father sent her a straw hat from Firpo’s at Aden which she hung on the wall.

  ‘I shall wear the hat as I sail through the canal,’ she told him in a letter.

  But she never went to India. Lady Graham died from dysentery within a few months of arriving in Delhi. Sir John brought his wife’s body back to be buried in the graveyard of the wee kirk in Fife where they had been married and, after a few weeks’ compassionate leave, returned to India. Lucy worked harder than ever, if that was at all possible. Why had medicine been unable to save her mother? There was so much to learn, so much to do.

  The frontiers of medicine were being pushed farther and farther. Doctors all over the world, male doctors, were adding – daily, it seemed – to the understanding of the human body. Halstead explained his operation for mastectomy. Oliver and Schafer discovered the nature of adrenalin and, a year later, Röntgen discovered X-rays. Lucy read of every new discovery and she studied, in Edinburgh, in Dublin, in Rouen. She moved to Dundee and attended lectures given by Professor Geddes, and Professor D’Arcy Thomson. In 1896, when a little Dundee girl called Rosie Nesbitt was entering the hallowed portals of St Andrews University for the first time, and an anti-toxin against diphtheria was being introduced, Lucy Graham at last became a fully qualified doctor. She graduated MB, CM and was among the first woman doctors ever to graduate from a Scottish college. She put Kier Anderson-Howard, who had not been able to attend her graduation, firmly to the back of her mind. He was now in Africa, likely to remain for a while, and while he was there she did not have to think about marriage. And who would want to marry in this wonderful year when the whole world was spread out before her.

  She could stay in Edinburgh and run a practice from her home or she could m
ove. She had liked Dundee when she studied there. It was almost home, since Fife and the now sold Larches lay just across the Tay. It was immaterial, she told herself, that Laverock Rising was also just across the river. Quite bluntly she faced the fact that there would still be prejudice against her because she was a woman. The Anderson-Howard patronage would be useful to her, and there was the goodwill her own parents had built up in the area.

  Sir John smoothed the rocky path which lay ahead of his daughter. ‘I think you’re right to go to Dundee,’ he said. ‘If you sell your Edinburgh flat, you should be able to buy the right address. Somewhere in the West End would be best.’

  He could not stay long enough to see her settled, but instructed his lawyers to help her in every way possible. A house was to be found in a quiet residential street, preferably quite near the centre of town and the university. The lawyers went to work.

  ‘This house offers excellent accommodation, Miss Graham,’ said Mr Dryden, the senior partner in Dryden, MacDonald and Dryden. ‘There are four floors, the first of which would be ideal for offices for the practice of medicine.’ The distaste in his voice was so palpable that Lucy almost recoiled. ‘The second floor makes ideal living accommodation; in fact, so it is with several of the neighbouring houses. Then the attics for servants, and the basement for the usual offices, kitchens, pantries.’

  ‘Why is the house for sale, Mr Dryden?’

  ‘I advised it. The owner lives abroad and has rented out the property for some years. He needs an income and wanted to ask forty pounds per annum, that is a five-pound rise in one year. I could not see the last tenant paying such an ambitious sum. On the other hand, should we sell the property, which needs little in the way of work, £420 invested sensibly brings in a handsome income and with no worries.’

  ‘I should like to see the house.’

  He rang a little bell and almost immediately an aged clerk entered in reply to the summons.

  ‘Ask Mr Colin to come in, Herbert.’

  Mr Dryden turned to Lucy as the old man shuffled out again. ‘My nephew will show you the property, Miss Graham. Ah, Colin. This is Miss Graham and she would like to see No.4.’