Rich Girl, Poor Girl

by Eileen Ramsay

  There were the odd niggles. Kier’s mother had never really wanted her as a daughter-in-law. She was unfailingly polite, but she had wanted Lucy, poor Lucy who obviously still loved Kier. Clever Lucy, she managed to treat him like a favourite brother but, poor thing, she had made no attempt to find anyone else. The servants, too, made Rose uneasy. They were never insolent, for then Kier would have dismissed them, but there was a certain something, too many . . . ‘Mister Kier said . . .’ She was ‘madam’, very rarely even ‘Mrs Anderson-Howard’. Kier’s mother, in her lovely town house in St Andrews, was Mrs Anderson-Howard. No, this was where she belonged, in this lovely renovated flat, and alone. She was happier alone. She was so tired after a day and sometimes an evening of medicine.

  ‘You’re not strong enough for the life of a doctor, Rose.’ That was Kier. ‘No woman is . . . well, there are exceptions, like Lucy. She’s physically strong. But you’re such a delicate little woman.’

  Remarks like that brought back memories too, memories of running from the Hilltown to the Harris, a fresh bap in her hand, another in her bag for dinner.

  ‘Of course I’m strong, much stronger than I look. I’ve never been sick a day in my life.’

  *

  Andy Thomson enlisted: silly young fool. There was no need for him to enlist; as a doctor he would have been quite safe.

  ‘We’ll have a place for you when you get back, Andy,’ said Lucy. ‘We’ll even be thinking of a partnership, won’t we, Rose?’

  Rose smiled at the joy in the boy’s eyes. Yes, he had good reasons for coming back: a partnership, and a young teacher at the high school who was no doubt promising to write.

  *

  ‘You didn’t tell me Andy had enlisted. I met Lucy for lunch this morning when I was in town and she told me.’

  Rose had not expected to find her husband in her flat when she returned home from the hospital. She liked to keep the flat as a sanctuary, just for herself. ‘I didn’t think it very important,’ she said lightly.

  ‘Rose? Your junior decides to go to war and you don’t think that important?’

  ‘Of course it’s important, but we don’t see one another every day and it wasn’t . . . vital. I mean he hasn’t gone yet. For heaven’s sake, Kier, did you come here to fight? I would have told you when I remembered.’

  He came over and put his arms around her. ‘I’m sorry, darling.’ He kissed her gently, tenderly, softly, until she relaxed against him. ‘Do you mind if I stay? I miss you.’

  ‘You own this flat.’ Her voice was calm but there was no excited welcome.

  He moved away from her. ‘Rose, I bought the flat for you. The deeds are in your name.’

  She went after him, put her hand on his arm. ‘Did you have a decent lunch with Lucy? I have eggs and perhaps some cheese . . .’

  His face lit up. He was so sweet, so like a child. ‘You can’t cook, can you? I thought we might go out.’

  ‘I can’t cook, darling, but I can scramble eggs. We could have a light supper here, just the two of us.’

  He followed her into the tiny kitchen. ‘I have never seen anyone cook anything in my entire life, you clever little thing. Nanny used to make cocoa. My mother doesn’t know where the kitchen is.’

  Rose tied a sensible apron around her trim waist. ‘I’m quite sure she does. Mrs Potter is forever telling me how much better the real Mrs Anderson-Howard does things.’

  He looked ill at ease. ‘Old family retainers are . . .  difficult, but one word from you and they go, my darling, every one, lock, stock and barrel.’

  Rose laughed and handed him a bowl. ‘Here, take your vehemence out on these eggs.’ She took another apron from the drawer and tied it around his waist. ‘Now, aren’t we the domesticated old married couple? I understand Mrs Potter. Don’t worry. It’s difficult for them, I know.’

  ‘Perhaps Mother should have taken the old ones with her to St Andrews. It’s just that Laverock Rising is their home.’

  ‘I understand.’

  He put down the bowl. ‘Lucy, let’s go to bed. If you had a baby, if you stayed at home all day, things would be different.’

  She turned off the gas burner and went with him. What could she say? ‘Even if I did have a baby I would still want to work. I couldn’t give up medicine, I couldn’t.’

  Later, as Kier slept, she poured the beaten eggs into the sink and washed up the dishes. She did everything else she had to do too; there would be no baby. In the bedroom she looked down at her husband. Curious how young and vulnerable he looked while he slept. She felt a rush of almost maternal warmth as she bent down and kissed him lightly, and he smiled and stirred in his sleep.

  *

  Andy Thomson went off to the Front, but to his dismay – and much to Lucy’s joy – his Front was a hospital near London. Lucy bought him a copy of a book that had just been privately printed and which was setting the literary world afire, James Joyce’s Dubliners, and sent it off in a box with shortbread – Rose never used her sugar ration and had willingly handed over a supply for Christmas baking – and some of Isa’s best oatcakes.

  The year 1915 started badly with Clydeside armament workers striking for more pay, and got steadily worse. In May a train crash at Gretna Green in the south of Scotland killed 158 people, many of them soldiers. In July, 200,000 miners in Wales went on strike, and on December 30th a U-boat sank the liner Persia with a loss of 400 lives.

  In October, the Germans had executed the nurse Edith Cavell, and not only Kier but Rose herself began to mutter about ‘helping put an end to all this madness’.

  Lucy remained calm and sensible.

  ‘How could they shoot a nurse, Lucy, someone who was there to help?’ Kier Anderson-Howard was a decent man who could not understand or accept unreasoning, ferocious brutality.

  ‘To them she was not a nurse; she was merely someone who broke martial law. It was a particularly stupid thing to do because they have created a lovely young martyr for the Allies.’

  ‘Will her death help to end this abominable war?’

  ‘Would yours, Kier? Miss Cavell did what she did because she knew that, for her, it was the only way to behave. You have a huge estate to run, an estate that feeds hundreds. That is viable war work.’

  ‘My grieve can run the farms, Lucy. I am a crack shot and a trained soldier; perhaps I would be better employed in the Army in some capacity.’

  In the end Kier and Rose decided to turn Laverock Rising over to the Ministry of Defence for use as a convalescent home, and Kier moved permanently into the small flat in Dundee. Their marriage had been shaky for some time, but while they had maintained the custom of Rose working in town all week and going over to Fife at the weekend, the cracks had not grown or even, to the unobservant, been particularly visible.

  ‘Sometimes I wish he would join the Army,’ Rose confessed in exasperation to Lucy one day as they found a few moments to sit and enjoy the soup that Isa had made for them.

  ‘Good gracious, Rose! You can’t mean that; he’s too old to start all over again.’

  Rose sighed. ‘Of course I don’t really mean it but, Lucy, I can’t breathe in the flat with Kier there. He’s so big and when I come home at night, he wants me to sit with him, talk to him, listen to music. I want to be alone, to unwind, to rewind. I usually eat a boiled egg, have a bath and go to bed. Kier wants Mrs Kier Anderson-Howard at his beck and call. And that dratted woman is driving me mad.’

  Lucy hesitated. She had worried about the marriage for a long time. She had watched Kier change from being the sunniest of men to one who was withdrawn and even moody. He was her oldest friend, but her partner was his wife and she could not take sides.

  ‘It must be difficult with Mrs Potter in such a tiny flat.’

  ‘I seem to be the only one making adjustments. They invade my home . . .’ She stopped as if she was aware how odd that must sound. ‘I mean, it’s the huge meals, every night, dressing for dinner . . .  Mrs Potter di
dn’t even pass on a message last week. “Madam is at dinner”, says she. I was so angry I could hardly speak.’

  ‘Yes, that was unforgivable, but understandable. Why don’t you buy a bigger house?’

  ‘I suggested that but Kier says that it would be wrong. Surely you must have noticed how diffident he is about having so much money, and to spend hundreds of pounds on a new house when people are starving all over Europe . . .’

  Lucy could see his point, but she could see Rose’s position too. A pity that they had got into the habit of being part-time man and wife.

  ‘Be patient, Rose. Kier will change his mind if he sees how difficult such cramped living is for you.’

  But by their eighth wedding anniversary Mr and Mrs Kier Anderson-Howard were barely speaking to one another, and Rose was finding more and more work to do and more and more reasons to stay overnight in the quarters made available to her in the hospital.

  19

  Dundee, 1915–1916

  AN OUTRAGED ISA was at the door to meet her. Lucy registered the fact that she was still wearing the old dressing gown that she had first worn all those years ago, that she had even taken to Venice, that had gone to Tuscany. Tuscany . . .

  My God, Isa is old, old and tired.

  ‘It’s Mr Kier; he insists on seeing you. I told him you were out at a confinement and would need your sleep as soon as you got home, but will he listen? And’ – and Isa was outraged – ‘he’s been . . . drinking and he—’

  ‘Go to bed, Isa, dear. I’ll speak to Mr Kier.’

  ‘I’ll go when I’ve given you your supper and watched you eat it, and not a minute before.’

  ‘Where’s your new dressing gown?’ asked Lucy, knowing the answer but vainly trying to deflect the old woman’s ire.

  ‘Oh, that’s far too good for the house. It’s for the hospital when my time comes. I’ll not have you ashamed of me.’ She turned towards the door. ‘He’s in the morning room and I redded up the fire. If he’s not too drunk, he’ll have put a log on.’

  The firelight danced around the little room as years ago the sunlight had danced through the window, turning Rose into a fairy-tale creature. Now it showed Rose’s husband lying in her father’s chair by the fire, his long legs stretched out before him. He looked young and vulnerable, fourteen again.

  Oh, dear God, what happened to us? her heart cried.

  She shook him. ‘Kier, wake up.’

  He groaned and stirred and then opened his eyes and he no longer looked a child. He was a man, a sad, unhappy man who, for once in his adult life, had had too much to drink. He stumbled to his feet.

  ‘Lucy, forgive me, what a time to be calling, but I had to tell you. You had to know first.’

  Lucy turned up the gas-light and he turned away from her. She went to him. ‘What is it, Kier?’ She grasped his arm. ‘Turn around and face me, man. I’ve seen and heard worse than you can ever tell me.’ She felt a sudden fear. ‘Is Rose all right?’

  He laughed, a singularly unpleasant sound. ‘All right? Rose is always all right.’ He was quiet for a moment as he leaned on the black marble mantelpiece and then had to push himself up from it. He obeyed the urging of her arm and turned to face her. ‘I raped her, Lucy, raped my own wife, but that’s not what I’ve come to tell you.’

  ‘Your tea, doctor, and there’s coffee for him.’

  How much had Isa heard? Her face registered nothing.

  ‘Put it on the table, Isa, and go to bed.’ Lucy spoke sharply, more sharply than she had intended, and the old woman walked stiffly from the room.

  ‘I’ll worry about her hurt feelings tomorrow,’ thought Lucy as she handed Kier a cup of scalding coffee.

  ‘I’m not drunk, Lucy.’

  ‘I know. Sit down and tell me what it is.’

  He stopped, the cup poised near his face. The steam hid his eyes. ‘I’ve enlisted in the Black Watch,’ he said simply. ‘I’m off tomorrow, today. It wasn’t over by Christmas, was it?’

  Whatever she had expected, it was not this. ‘But you’re a married man, and you’re far too old.’

  How like a man: his vanity was offended. ‘Good heavens, Lucy. I’m fitter than half these boys they’re taking.’ He sipped his coffee and smiled at her, the old charming smile that made her heart turn over. ‘It’s who you know in this insane world.’

  Still she said nothing.

  ‘Rose doesn’t need me; she’s never needed me. You would have given her a job so that she would never have had to emigrate.’ So he knew he had been used then, but he was not angry, unless he had worked off his anger. What had he done to Rose? He put the cup down and stood up, his tall, slim frame filling the small room. ‘Poor little Rose. We can’t really understand what it was like for her, growing up in poverty. She did, you know. She thought she had hidden it but there was a sister, a half-sister; she got in touch with me and I made her an allowance until she died. I don’t blame Rose for being hard. She only wanted to better the conditions of her class, and you can’t blame her for that. You’ll be kind to her, Lucy, won’t you, if anything happens to me? She’ll inherit, of course, probably turn it into a children’s home after the war. Not a bad idea. I wanted children. So did Rose. If she’d had an easier life, maybe . . . That’s all by the by.’ He turned away from her. ‘I said some hard things and I . . . well, I’m not too pleased with myself. Always felt deep down that Rose didn’t really love me. Maybe, when this mess is over, maybe if tonight has cleared the air a bit, we can start again. You will look after her for me? She’s not like us, Lucy, not . . . secure . . . yes, that’s the word, secure. Every child should be given security. If I’d had a child, I’d have made her feel secure.’

  What could she say? To her dismay she found that tears were rolling down her cheeks. A knight in shining armour should not go to war with his heart broken. It unarmed him.

  ‘Oh, what have you done, Kier? Whatever has happened between you and Rose, surely you don’t have to run away like this? Go back home and talk to her.’

  ‘I’ve talked, Lucy. Perhaps too much. I don’t want to see Rose again; I can’t see her again, not for a while. If there’s anything for me to forgive, I forgive her and I hope she’ll forgive me for tonight.’ He stretched out his hand and imprisoned a tear on the end of a finger. ‘She said I’d always loved you, you see,’ he said gently, ‘and that I’d been unfair to her too. I suppose she’s right.’ He moved to the door, leaving her standing there with tears streaming unchecked down her face. ‘Make it better, doctor,’ he said, and then he was gone and the door had closed behind him, and a moment later she heard the sound of the front door being shut.

  Lucy stood there for some time looking at the door. The fire had died down and the room was growing colder, and she began to tremble, but whether from cold or from shock the doctor could not tell. Like an old woman she turned to the fire and put up the guard, not that the few embers in the grate could cause any damage. She turned off the lamps and went softly out, closing the door behind her. Methodically she locked and bolted the front door and then she went upstairs, leaving the hall lights hissing gently on. Isa found them still lit in the morning, sighed for the sinful waste, and said nothing.

  Lucy had not slept; she had not even undressed. She had no energy. It all seemed to have gone with Kier. All night she sat by the window watching countless ghostly phantoms passing in the snowy lamplight below her. Kier at fourteen, ill and fretful; at fifteen, scoffing at her lack of education; at nineteen, telling her for the first time that he loved her. Later, telling her that he was going to marry Rose. She saw Rose too. Rose, at the garden party in the ridiculous dress which had made her look so helpless and vulnerable; Rose, the secret smile of triumph when they had announced their engagement, the look – was it of chagrin? – when she had offered her a post. She saw her, a vision in her wedding dress, and then the older, sophisticated, harder Rose.

  Kier said he had raped his wife. He could not have hurt her, not Kier
, could he? Rose did not need medical attention, surely? If she did the last doctor she would want to see would be Dr Lucille Graham. Because she was so tired, Lucy allowed Max to walk out there in the snow, and at the thought of him she cried out in pleasant pain.

  Oh, Max, my love, my love. Everything has gone wrong, for me, for Kier, for Rose . . . for you? But we were right, Rose and I, we were right to fight for our place in the world. We have made a difference to countless others, haven’t we, Max? Butterflies in December. Did I ever tell you that my father called me that? No. I told you so little and oh, dear God, what am I supposed to say to Rose in the morning?

  *

  Rose herself forestalled everything. She arrived at the office on time and looking just as lovely and untouched as ever. It must all have been a dream; this ethereal creature had never been raped in the early hours of the morning, by her own husband. She had not lain awake seeing the ghosts of the past, the frightening visions of a desolate future.

  ‘I’d better tell you, Lucy, because you’ll have to know sooner or later,’ she said, her beautiful soft leather bag held almost defensively in her gloved hands. ‘Kier is being absolutely silly; he met some old chum from Sandhurst at a party and the bloody fool has enlisted . . . gone . . . “having a go”, he says.’ She half turned from Lucy as if she did not really wish to look directly into her eyes and laughed, a bitter, unnatural little laugh. ‘I’m sure the War Office will send him home with a telling-off about food supplies and being there for our women and children, but . . .’ and for a moment her schooled face was bleak ‘. . .  in the meantime he’s playing soldier. Black Watch. If he hasn’t scuttled home by the weekend . . .’ She stopped. ‘I’m off. I have a million calls to make.’

  She was gone. Lucy sat looking at the door for some time.

  ‘Are you having a surgery or are you not this morning, doctor? There are children with snotty noses and dirty shoes in my front room.’ Isa could always be depended upon.