For more information, visit www.eileenramsay.co.uk
Also in the Flowers of Scotland series by Eileen Ramsay
The Farm Girl’s Dream (previously published as Walnut Shell Days)
A Pinch of Salt (previously published as The Broken Gate)
The Crofter’s Daughter (previously published as Harvest of Courage)
A Lesson for a Lassie (previously published as The Dominie’s Lassie)
The Convent Girl (previously published as The Quality of Mercy)
Dear Friends,
I hope you enjoyed my story, which was first published as Butterflies in December. I thought you might like to know how I came to write it. We lived in the U.S. for almost twenty years and both our sons were born there. Both loved animals and wanted a dog. Because we were considering returning to Scotland and none of us could consider putting a pet into quarantine, they settled for a cat.
Once back in Scotland we began to look for a house, one with a garden big enough for a dog. Every weekend we were house-hunting and, yes, dog-hunting. How did it happen that we bought the dog, a deerhound puppy, before we finalised our house purchase? Isla, the deerhound, remained in the kennels until we moved into the house but, of course, we visited her every weekend. The boys attended a school in the nearby town and a few months later our younger son invited his school friends to his birthday party. It was a perfect autumn day and so rugby was played on the lawn by children, the puppy and some of the parents who had driven their children to the house.
As it happened several of them were doctors and as I passed with the umpteenth laden tray I heard one say, ‘I think this was Dr Thomson’s house.’
My antennae zoomed out. Who was Dr Thomson and why was he – or she – so important that all the parents knew the name?
Writer does research. I started by questioning farming neighbours and discovered that Dr Emily Thomson, one of the first female doctors in Scotland and the very first in our area, had lived in the house early in the twentieth century. The garden still tells of her. There’s a paddock with a small stable for the horse she owned to pull her dog cart. In the paddock too is the gate through which doctor and pony would trot on their way to work in Dundee, useless now since a tall wall denies exit onto the road. At the back of the lawn is a summer house which we renovated but which still contains the antique fire which kept the summerhouse warm when her niece and nephew were visiting on school holidays.
Another neighbour told us that Dr Thomson had put up the wall when she started being driven into Dundee and had realised that the pathway though the paddock was too small for her ‘automobile’. A thoroughly modern woman, another told us that she was actually seen smoking a cigarette as she flew past.
The old logs of the small local school told me that she gave a party for the children every Christmas. More and more fascinated by this incredible pioneering woman, I went to Edinburgh University where she studied originally and, for £15, the wonderful archivists in the Medical Library discovered that she was born in India in 1863 and graduated from The Edinburgh School of Medicine for Women in 1899. They also sent me a copy of her course of study – fascinating, especially when I found that Emily had studied midwifery and practical pharmacy under the famous Dr Jex Blake.
My first impulse was to attempt to write a biography but I decided instead to write a novel inspired by the career of this remarkable woman. I hope you’ve enjoyed her story.
Fondest,
Eileen
Eileen’s Recipe for Cranachan
Cranachan is a very old Scottish pudding, it’s easy to make and is absolutely delicious. I like to think of it being made for the first time on a wee croft in the Highlands by a crofter’s wife who had some extra milk from her cow, wild raspberries growing against her stone dykes, honey her own bees had made and maybe a wee dram – for medicinal purposes – in the kitchen cupboard. The first ingredients were probably some whipped cream cheese, a large handful of oatmeal, a spoonful or two of heather honey, as many raspberries as she had picked, and a tablespoon of whisky.
Today there are possibly as many recipes for cranachan as there are cooks. I’d like to share with you mine:
You will need:
85g porridge oats
570ml double cream
3 tbs honey
7 tbs whisky/white wine/fruit juice
450g raspberries
Dessert glasses for serving
How to make my cranachan:
•As always the oats are toasted on a metal skillet over heat and the cream is lightly whipped.
•The host’s best dessert glasses are put on the table and assembly begins.
•When the toasted oats are cool the honey is poured over them and they are lightly mixed. Then the whisky is poured over them and again they are mixed. (When we have non-whisky fans visiting we use white wine and when our grandchildren are at table with us, we simply have two large bowls, one with whisky and another with a few tablespoons of someone’s favourite fruit juice.)
•At the bottom of each glass we spoon some oats, then some cream, then raspberries, more cream and – if there any – more raspberries, a last spoon of cream and a sprinkling of oats.
•Enjoy.
If you enjoyed Rich Girl, Poor Girl you’ll love this sneak peek at Eileen Ramsay’s next book The Farm Girl’s Dream
Prologue
Paris, 24th May 1900
HE HAD LEFT THE WINDOW open and the sound of the fruit sellers’ carts, as they rattled along the cobblestones, woke him. The early-morning scents of Paris – baking bread and cold, damp, sickly sweet river water – drifted through the windows and mixed with Genevieve’s perfume, the bouquet of the remainder of that second bottle of very good claret and the pleasing, masculine smell of an excellent cigar.
He smiled and stretched, remembering the assorted pleasures of the night. France was a most civilized country. Great food, fine wine, wonderfully seductive and enchanting women; too much to expect the cigars to be French. He should buy a box or two before he caught the boat train: couldn’t get tobacco like that at home.
Genevieve woke, her glorious eyes focusing slowly.
‘Jean,’ she breathed, in that so French way she had of caressing his very ordinary Scottish name, the way that turned his legs to water. ‘Jean,’ she said again, and she stretched out her white hand with the scarlet fingernails towards him and he almost yielded.
‘Must go, my darling,’ he said, kissing her lightly but keeping out of the way of those nails, nails that could caress so softly but could scratch so deeply. ‘I have to catch the steamer train.’
‘Oh no,’ she said, her hands gripping him. ‘You said two whole days in Paris.’
He laughed. ‘It has been two days, ma belle, the most beautiful two days . . .’
‘Of our lives, my Jean.’
She was so desirable; he had never met a woman like her. He groaned and forced himself to move away from the rumpled bed. How easy it would be, and how very, very pleasurable, to slip back into the warm bed, into Genevieve’s arms. ‘I have something to attend to in Scotland, Genevieve. I’ll come back just as soon as I can.’
Genevieve was not a woman to beg. She shrugged a shoulder in a very French way. Très bien, her shoulders said. Who cares? I am just as content if you go. What does it matter?
For a moment he looked down at her creamy back and toyed with the idea of making her change her mind. He could do it. They were all the same, n’est-ce pas? And then he remembered Scotland and his responsibilities. He echoed her shrug and began to dress.
Less than half an hour later, he was whistling merrily as he sauntered down the plushly carpeted staircase to the foyer, where two maids were already angrily scrubbing and polishing unseen dirt. He strolled past them and reached the door.
‘Monsieur, Monsieur, the bill?’
John Cameron tipped his hat lightly back on his handsome head. He stared boldly at the hotel manager out of his grey-blue eyes and laughed.
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bsp; ‘Don’t fret, my man. Madame will take care of it.’ And, once more whistling gaily, he was gone.
Priory Farm, Angus, 24th May 1900
Pain gripped Catriona. It tore at her angrily, as if punishing her for some unknown crime. Sweat broke out on her forehead and she tried desperately not to scream. She had never believed it would be like this, never. Was she not the daughter of farmers? Had she not seen birth a dozen times a year – a thing done privately, causing as little trouble as possible.
‘Ach, lassie, let it oot. There’s no one tae hear but me and auld Jock out there and he’d bear it for ye, if he could.’ The voice was that of Maggie, employed by Jock Cameron as dairy maid and now midwife.
Catriona’s scream tore through the air and died to a gasping whimper. Maggie held her hand and, outside, Jock stopped his pacing and listened.
‘Dear God, help the lassie, as I’ve never been able to help.’
She was quiet. Was that it? Was it over? Was he a grandfather?
There was another scream, cut short by the simple expedient of biting as hard as Catriona could on the rolled-up towel that old Maggie had put into her open mouth. Catriona’s eyes rolled in agony; there was a name she wanted to call out, but she would not. She would not beg and she would not hurt the old man any more by having him hear it.
The pain receded and she took the towel away. ‘It’s cold for May, Maggie, so cold.’
The midwife looked at the girl for a moment. Cold? It was a perfect May day. This morning the sweat had been rolling down between her ample breasts as she had sat milking in the parlour, and now her newly washed cotton frock was damp with perspiration. But the lassie was cold. ‘Dear Lord, shock.’ She ran to the airing cupboard for clean, warm blankets. Everything was to hand, meticulously prepared by Catriona herself.
‘Let me wrap you up a bit more, lassie: you’ve lost a wheen too much blood but it’ll soon be over. In a moment, the next push will bring us the head and your bonnie wee bairn will slip out like a boat bein’ launched intae the Tay.’
Catriona could hear Maggie’s voice but she could not make out the words. She seemed to be floating. It was such a lovely feeling. She had been so cold, and now she was wrapped up the way her own mother had bundled her up against the cold of an Angus winter. So safe, so secure. Nothing hurt, nothing mattered – nothing, nothing. She would drift away, oh so slowly, like a leaf tossed into a quiet stream.
But Maggie would not let her slip away into that peace and contentment. She shook the girl, she cajoled, she wheedled. ‘Catriona, Catriona, fight, lassie, fight. The bairn’s crowning. He’s coming, lass. I can see his head. What a crown of dark hair, jist like his daddy.’
His daddy. John. John with his grey-blue eyes, his devastating smile, his hands that could . . . For a moment she struggled but no, it was so warm here, so peaceful – no pain, no tears, no wondering why. She would stay here where it was warm, where nothing hurt, where sound was blurred and hazy and soft. ‘Oh, John, why?’ Had she said the words or just thought them? She had no time to wonder, for the pain struck again and instinct took over her exhausted body.
‘Work with the pains, lassie, dinnae fight them. That’s it, that’s it. Jist a wee breath there, a wee rest tae get ready for the next one.’
In the passageway outside, Jock Cameron paced as he waited. It was his fault, all of it. That lassie had been in there for fourteen hours trying to birth her baby, and the man who should have been here, either by himself or marching side by side with Jock, was God alone knew where.
‘I spoilt him, Mattie,’ he told his long-dead wife. ‘He was that bonnie and winning though, and aye minded me of you. I couldnae hit you, Mattie, that’s whit it would have felt like and he knew it, the wee rascal, but he’s a grown man now, Mattie. I’ll never forgive him for this and if the good Lord spares me my daughter-in-law and my grandchild, I’ll make it up to them.’
He walked on, backwards and forwards, sometimes praying to the Almighty, at other times justifying himself to his Mattie. Then he would work out how best to reward Catriona for her patience, her friendliness, her charm. He would bypass John, hurt him in his pocket – that would teach him. He would see the lawyer fellow and write the babe in and John out.
The door of the best bedroom opened and Maggie stood there, drying her hands on one of Catriona’s best towels. She was smiling – well, as near as auld Maggie could get to a smile for a man. ‘You can stop your tramping, Jock Cameron. You’ve near worn a hole in that good rug and it’s the mistress will have to be on her knees darning it, and her with more than enough to do.’
‘Catriona? The bairn?’ He could barely speak, so anxious was he.
‘Mistress Cameron’s fine. A bit tired, and who’s to wonder at that after what she’s been through. The bairn’s a bonnie fechter. She’ll lead you a dance, you auld fool.’
‘A lassie?’ The relief was so great that he felt his knees buckle and he forced them to stay straight. A wee girl. What a comfort to an auld man a wee lassie would be. He felt humble and grateful.
‘Can I see them?’ he asked.
She stood back to let him enter the dark, low-roofed room. Catriona, her face pale in the cloud of her red hair, was lying back against the pillows, but she opened her eyes as if she sensed his presence and smiled tiredly at him. In her arms rested a tiny shawl-wrapped bundle, no bigger, he thought, than one of her own clootie dumplings.
‘I’m sorry it’s no a laddie, Faither.’
‘A laddie?’ His heart swelled within him with love and he put out a hard, calloused, work-worn finger and gently touched the bundle. ‘Ach, Catriona Cameron, was it not a lassie like you and my Mattie that this house needed?’
The baby lay snug in her mother’s arms, and as her grandfather leaned over she yawned heartily in his face. Then she opened her eyes and stared at him measuringly, as if she found him wanting. He was captivated.
‘You’ll have thought of a name, lass.’
Catriona was quiet, as if summoning up her strength. She had been through so much, one way and another, in the past nine months. At last she said, ‘I prayed for a boy, another John.’
Mattie, he thought, it should be Mattie. Then he turned from his study of the baby’s face and looked at the serene expression of his daughter-in-law, after all she had been through. Women were amazing creatures. He would never understand them.
‘Do you know what day it is today, lass? It’s the auld Queen’s birthday. Can you believe she’s eighty-one years old and most of that spent on the throne? Victoria. Is that no a name for a bonnie bairn?’
‘Victoria. It’s perfect. Welcome, Victoria Cameron.’
Miss Cameron yawned again and thus dismissed her court.
‘I’ll leave you to sleep, lass. I’m sorry my son’s no at your side where he belongs, Catriona. If I could change him I would, but I promise you this, lass. Everything I have is yours and the bairn’s and I’ll no allow John to gie you ony more pain.’
She tried to argue, to talk, to tell him that a halfpennyworth of love from John Cameron was worth more to her than anything.
‘It has to be my fault,’ she tried to say. But how can you tell your father-in-law that in some essential way you must have failed his son? Otherwise John would be here, wouldn’t he? She knew well that they did no real business in France. John’s business trips to see stock, to see crops – she forced herself to admit that he had to be seeing other women. ‘But, dear God, dear God, I have no pride. I want him. I need him.’
She closed her eyes and the old man tiptoed out and left her to sleep.
*
John Cameron arrived home from his latest business trip in France to be met by the barrel of his father’s shotgun.
‘You shouldnae hae dismissed your cabbie, lad. It’s a long walk tae the toon in your fancy shoes.’
‘Father, are you crazy, man? It’s me, John.’ He made to move closer to the house, but the rock-steady hands of the old man gestured backwards with the gun –
the gun that John knew could be used to deadly effect against foxes and other predators. Jock Cameron never wasted a shot. He would not waste any now.
‘I ken fine who you are. Isn’t it me that’s ashamed of fathering you.’
‘Come on, Father, it was business. Wasn’t I looking at French cattle? I want tae see my wife and my bairn. You cannae deny me my ain child. A boy it’ll be – a grand, healthy John Cameron tae carry on the farm.’
‘And whit do you care aboot the child or the farm? What were you doing the night your wife lay in there near bleeding tae death tae bring your daughter intae the world? You’re nae good, John. Ye never were, and for your mother’s sake I wouldnae let myself admit whit I saw, but that’s over. I should hae belted ye years ago, and as God’s my witness, ye come one step nearer this house and I’ll blow yer head aff and swing fer you.’
John started to shout then. ‘Ye crazy auld fool. I’ll get the bobbies in. Catriona, Catriona, come out here and tell that auld devil tae let me in my ain house.’
‘It’s my house, John Cameron,’ Old Jock said, ‘and one day it’ll be the lassie’s. Take yersell back tae yer French whoor, and see if she’ll keep ye warm when she finds out the landed gentleman has lost his land. Not a penny more do ye get from me. I’ll be at Boatman’s office first thing in the morning tae change my will.’
He wouldn’t shoot him, he wouldn’t. John moved closer and the gun spoke. John jumped as the dust flew from the ground exactly in front of his right foot.
‘You’re crazy, you old fool.’ He was crying with fear and anger, and with fatigue. ‘Catriona,’ he called out desperately, ‘Catriona.’ But he did not see the weeping figure at the window, and he turned from the gun and stumbled blindly into the night.
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Rich Girl, Poor Girl Page 31
