The Farm Girl's Dream

by Eileen Ramsay

  Catriona looked at what had, a few hours before, been an impenetrable jungle. ‘Oh, Davie, it’s like a different place. Thank you.’ She said nothing about the gooseberries that might or might not be growing at the bottom of the wilderness.

  Davie blushed with the embarrassment of the countryman who sees no need for thanks for giving a little help to a neighbour. Had not Catriona Cameron spent near sixteen years at Priory Farm helping its workers in a hundred different ways?

  ‘I’ll leave my brothers to finish off here, mistress, and I’ll fix those windows afore we go. Sam has gone to cut glass for them. You should be watertight afore night.’

  The tears once again threatened to overwhelm Catriona and she turned from him and stumbled back to the kitchen. At least she could help Bessie dish up hearty plates of the good broth she had brought with her and had heated up on the iron range.

  ‘I don’t know how to thank you all, Bessie,’ she began.

  ‘Ach, mistress, is friendship no like the land? You only get out of it what ye’ve put in. Now, if you take that meat out of the soup pot we can serve it with tatties and neeps, and then I’ve a tart we can enjoy with a good cup of tea afore we get back to work. Where’s wee Victoria? She was supposed to be setting the table.’

  Victoria had finished the table. The last time she had helped to set a table for so many had been the night of the harvest dance and she was determined not to cry at the memory, but to rejoice in once more being with her people. But it was too hard, and she could not keep back the choking tears. She heard a footstep outside and, so as not to be caught crying, whisked herself under the table. Davie Menmuir caught a glimpse of woollen tartan skirt as he entered. He knelt down beside the table and fished a little bundle out from inside his shirt.

  ‘Ma was thinking that you’d take this wee fellow, Miss Victoria,’ he said to the skirts of the tablecloth. ‘He’s his mother’s son and already jumping on anything that moves. Father’ll take care of the holes and he’s put some stuff down for . . . well, anything that shouldnae be here. But when this fellow grows he’ll make sure there’s nothing living in this house that you and your mam don’t invite. Father’s leaving you Flash as well.’ Davie stopped and smiled as he heard the excited rush of indrawn breath. ‘He’s an auld dog, too old to take to a new master, and deserving a bit of retirement. A grand house-dog for the people he knows well. There’s nobody will cross this threshold without an invitation.’

  The tablecloth moved, a tear-stained face smiled up at Davie and a hand reached for the kitten.

  Victoria looked into the kitten’s soft little face. ‘I should call him Ginger, Davie, but maybe there’s too many ginger toms around. I’ll call him Priory.’ She held the mewing bundle against her cheek. ‘He’s a bit of it, after all.’

  She crawled out from under the table. ‘Don’t tell Mother I was crying. It just all reminded me of Grampa.’

  ‘But that’s good, lass. Enjoy your memories of him.’

  ‘He always told me to remember good days, Davie, and to put the memories in walnut shells for the bad days.’ She laughed and removed the kitten, who had shown his adventurous spirit by digging his little claws into the fabric of her dress as he climbed up on to her shoulder. ‘I think this is a good day.’

  Davie thought with some trepidation of what the morrow would bring for him. ‘It’s the season for walnuts, lassie. Maybe I’ll take one with me.’

  She looked up at him, suddenly remembering that Davie Menmuir had been a soldier for almost as long as she had known him.

  ‘I have . . . a friend . . . at the Front, Davie. He’s in the Black Watch too. He’s only sixteen. His name is Robert.’

  Davie looked at her. Had his wife lived, had the bairn had a chance to grow and develop in her womb, he too might have had a daughter exactly this child’s age. Already she was walking out, was she? A lad in the Black Watch, somewhere on the Front. Thank God she obviously had no idea of what the word ‘Front’ meant. ‘If I come across him, lassie, I’ll try to mind him for you. Now, let’s tell your mam we can have our dinner.’

  *

  Much, much later Catriona and Victoria sat before a roaring fire, with Flash curled up on the rag rug, one that Catriona had made and brought from the farm, and Priory asleep in Victoria’s lap. For once there were no scuffling, scuttling sounds and the curtains no longer moved with the winds that battled furiously outside, unable to gain entrance.

  ‘Our friends are coming back next Sunday to help repaint the house,’ said Catriona. ‘What a fine, good man Davie Menmuir is. Your grandfather aye liked him the best of all the Menmuir laddies, and they’re all grand men. He’d have made a good farmer if he hadn’t joined the army to get away from all his memories. I was that surprised to see him today, working away.’

  Good, thought Victoria. This was perfect, a natural lead in to what had been on her mind for some time.

  ‘Mother, talking about helping . . . We can’t depend on the Menmuirs and the others too much. We are going to have to earn some money.’

  ‘I know, lassie, and I have it all thought out. Listen, Victoria, it’s not what either of us was brought up to, but once the inside is painted I’ll make some nice new curtains and I’ll find some decent bits of furniture from a roup-sale, then . . .’ Catriona stopped. How on earth would her daughter accept what she was going to say? She finished off in a rush, ‘I’m going to take in some boarders.’

  Victoria’s answer surprised her and showed her that the girl had been doing her own heart-searching and thinking over the past few weeks.

  ‘Good, Mother, you’ll be wonderful at that. But in the meantime I think I should look for a job.’

  ‘Oh, no, lassie. You have such a good brain, Victoria. Grampa was so proud when you won the scholarship to the Harris. Do you know he even said to me once at a prize-giving, “I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if our Victoria was the first Cameron ever to go to the university.” Think of that, lass.’

  Victoria had thought. She had dreamed of a university education; she had seen it within her grasp. She had discussed it with Elsie, who was to go to a training college for teachers. She had even written about it to Robert, who talked grandly of going up to Oxford when this little show is over. But in the cold light of day Victoria was clever enough to see that there was no way she could remain a financial burden to her mother for the next seven to ten years. With the optimism of youth, she rewrote the scenario. She would work for a while at any job she could find, then, when the house was as habitable as its neighbours’, Catriona would take in lodgers and, relieved of her burden, Victoria could pick up her education where she had left off. This wasn’t the Middle Ages, after all. Heavens, it was the twentieth century. There were night schools where one could learn secretarial skills. Nothing should spoil this walnut shell day. From now on, life was going to get better.

  *

  The next morning, full of enthusiasm, Victoria took the tram into town. She had taken the tram to the Harris when they had lived at the farm, and she had had to hold her nose against the overwhelming smell of jute. The jute workers rode the trams, loud and raucous in the mornings as they saw old friends not seen since the night before, quiet and white with fatigue in the evenings as they headed home for their bacon busters, their chips and their good hot soup. Deliberately, Victoria now took her handkerchief with its delicate edging of white lace away from her face. She would get used to the smell of jute: she was going to be a part of it, and there was no time like the present to start.

  There was a crowd outside the factory gates. Baxter’s were hiring. Jute had always been a job for women. Men demanded too much money: better by far that they should stay at home and mind the bairns, while their wives worked for half the money that the owners would have had to pay the men. Now both women and men were finding well-paid jobs due to the insatiable appetite of the war machine.

  Victoria had scoured the employment columns in the Courier and Advertiser. Good, plain cooks
were wanted. Strong, willing boys were wanted. Message boys . . . girl to work in dairy . . . Nothing for which Victoria Cameron was suited. Grampa had never let her soil her hands with farmwork and Catriona had taught Victoria few domestic skills, preferring her to devote her time to academic study. But the hungry maw of the jute mills would not care that Victoria could write a tolerable essay or could tot up a column of figures faster than any boy in her class.

  A voice hailed her from the open door of the factory.

  ‘Victoria? It’s never you, Victoria Cameron.’

  Victoria looked at the grey figure in front of her. She could tell it was a woman because of the skirts, but as for her age, she had no idea. The woman could have been anything between fourteen and fifty, so pale and drawn was her face, so thin her body, so grey with dust her indiscriminate hair. Only the eyes shone out as merrily and cheeky as ever.

  ‘Nellie, Nellie Bains?’

  ‘Aye, it’s me. What are you doing here? I haven’t seen you since I left the school at Liff.’

  ‘I need a job, Nellie.’

  Nellie looked at her in disbelief. ‘Victoria Cameron at a jute mill. You’ll be going into the office as a secretary.’

  ‘No. I have no skills, Nellie. It’s the mill for me too.’

  Nellie looked at her compassionately. She saw well-tended skin and hair, good well-cut clothes carefully cleaned and pressed. She could bet the nails hidden by those gloves were well manicured, and certainly not bitten to the quick like her own.

  ‘Ye’ll never manage it, lassie. It’s back-breaking work. The jute gets in yer eyes and yer mouth, and up yer nose. And you cannae dress like that and be a mill lassie; it’s only the weavers that wear a hat and gloves to work, to show that they’re better than anybody. Ye’ll get the claes pulled from your back and the hat and the hair from your head. I wouldn’t wish the mills on my worst enemy and you were never that. A wee bit stuck up, with yer bonnie frocks and ribbons, but you and yer ma always gave good parcels to the Bains.’

  Victoria thought with shame of the many times she had refused to sit beside Nellie because she smelled. It was easy to give away outgrown clothes and extra food from a well-stocked larder. Real kindness was harder. Nellie obviously had it. Victoria resolved to try for more of that virtue.

  ‘That was nothing, Nellie,’ she said seriously. ‘And now I need a job and I’d be grateful if you would tell me what to do. And if I do look a bit odd to the rest of the workers, they’ll get used to me.’ She tried to laugh and managed a half-smile. ‘I dare say, if I don’t tell my mother, I can stop wearing a hat and gloves.’

  ‘My lad’s a tenter, Victoria. Most of them are right bastards – they’re fell important, you see – but Tam’s a decent laddie and will maybe give you a job. I cannot see anybody else takin you on.’

  Victoria had no idea what Nellie was talking about, and Nellie saw the incomprehension and she sighed. ‘Tenters recruit workers. They look after about twenty machines each and every machine needs its workers. You’ll maybe get a job as a shifter, and God in heaven I hope you’re strong enough for it. All you have to do is take the filled bobbin off the frame and put an empty one there. You’ll get so many machines to look after and, since they’ll all run out at different times, you’ll aye be chasing your tail. You have to watch out for the shifting mistress; the auld bitch has a strap, but I think she’ll no use it on you, just on the weans – the half-timers, ye ken.’

  ‘That’s children who work part-time and go to school part-time?’

  ‘Right. Now come on, I’ve just missed my breakfast with talking to you, but I’ll take you to Tam afore you get thrown out. I’m a weaver’s apprentice – informal like, but it beats shifting, and I’ll get my own machine one day, especially since my lad’s the gaffer.’

  *

  Two hours later, Victoria stood with Nellie before a frighteningly huge machine that deafened her with its noise and blinded her with the bits of flying ooze from the jute. Wordlessly she did as she was told, over and over again. The noise beat her head and body, the incessant rattle of the enormous machines made the very teeth in her head shake. She would never get used to it, never. Where now the scholarship-winner to the Harris Academy? Here she was the lowest of the low – a shifter, not even a spinner, and certainly not a lordly weaver. At last, when she thought she would fall down from exhaustion, a hooter sounded and they all poured out into the yard to eat their lunch. Victoria was incapable of thought. She stood wordlessly while the others walked and talked around her. Inside the mills a sign-language had developed, for no word at all could be heard above the machines, and now the women (for it was mostly women) talked as if they would never stop, would never tire of hearing the sound of a human voice. Not so Victoria. She just wanted to lie down and sleep.

  ‘I thought it was time to go home,’ she almost sobbed to Nellie.

  ‘We’re barely started, Victoria. We was late starting this morning, with having to learn you everything.’

  Humbled, Victoria tried to swallow the bread she had brought with her, but it stuck in her dry throat and refused to go down.

  ‘It’ll get better, hen,’ said Nellie, putting a callused hand on Victoria’s soft white hands.

  The hooter deafened them yet again.

  ‘I hate that sound,’ said Victoria.

  ‘Ach, it’s only in the morning when I’m warm in my wee bed that I cannae cope with it, Victoria. Just think, the next time ye hear it, ye’ll be on yer way home to yer ma.’ She stopped awkwardly, as if unsure about whether or not to proceed. ‘We heard . . . about you and yer ma gettin thrown out. We’re a sorry. Ye’ll tell yer ma.’

  Victoria looked at her. This was much, much worse than she had imagined. To be the subject of talk among the likes of the Bains . . . ‘Thank you, Nellie. It was kind of your family to worry. We’re fine.’

  Five hours later she stumbled back to the tram stop with an undaunted Nellie.

  ‘Ach, don’t let it bother you, Victoria. You’ll get the hang of it in no time. I’m away tae the pictures with Tam when I’ve had my to. The one and only Charlie Chaplin in Charlie at the Bank. Want to come?’

  Victoria did not have the strength to tell her that all she wanted to do for the rest of her life was sleep. She fell fast asleep on the tram and overshot her stop and had to walk back through the dark, unknown streets. Catriona had been out with an old lamp from the farm several times to look for her and was so relieved to see her exhausted daughter stumbling along that she managed not to scold her until she was safe in the big chair by the fire, a mug of soup in her hands, with Priory in her lap and Flash on the floor at her feet.

  ‘You’re not to go back, Victoria. I always wanted better for you even than I had. Your grampa wanted to see you a teacher, maybe a doctor even.’ She shook that ridiculous thought away. ‘Well, at least a teacher. Never, never the mills, Victoria. That’s for, for—’

  ‘People who are desperate to feed their families, Mother,’ answered Victoria more fiercely than she had meant to.

  ‘But you have a good brain,’ Catriona almost wept.

  ‘And so do too many of the women in that mill, Mother, and in other mills all over Dundee.’ She sat up, revived by the soup. ‘And I’m learning there. We’ve always taken the mills for granted, but it’s quite exciting being there.’ She crossed her fingers in her lap, hoping that God would forgive her for that dreadful lie. There was nothing exciting; it was soul-destroying. She went on, ‘It’s hard work and the noise is almost unbearable, but the jute itself comes all the way from India, halfway across the world. Women in India break their backs to pick it and we break our backs spinning and weaving it. We’re connected, Mother, a girl near Calcutta and me. Maybe one day . . .’ She stopped for a minute and her pale face was suddenly aflame with enthusiasm and the glow from the fire. ‘Wouldn’t it be wonderful to go to India, Mother, to see the Rajahs on their golden thrones, with emeralds as big as eggs for buttons, to walk along the banks o
f the Hooghli and see those graceful Indian girls.’

  She laughed at the expression on her mother’s face. ‘Life is what you make it, Mother, and if I have to work in a mill, I’m going to learn as much as I can while I’m there.’

  ‘Come to the table and eat your tea. I’m not having you sit at the fire, like . . . some I could mention. We’ll keep up our standards, Victoria, and you’ll get out of that mill just as soon as it can be managed.’

  But it was the evidence of Victoria’s growing wanderlust that was terrifying Catriona. Was that why John had not stayed beside her? Had he too felt the call of exotic places? Was there more of him in his daughter than she, Catriona, wanted there to be? She had to get the girl out of that mill, and the first step was to finish the house so that her way to becoming a landlady was clear.

  *

  It took a whole year, a year that saw Victoria change from a fresh-faced country girl to a thin, grey-faced town woman. There was little enthusiasm left for learning of the wonders of the mysterious East after a day in a jute mill. All Victoria wanted to do was lie on her bed in her clean, quiet room and look at the trees from her window and pretend that she was at the Priory. She had no energy even to write to Robert and had forgotten who had written the last letter. Sometimes those few hours with him in the woods seemed like a dream, a fairytale to tell to children. The Prince had come, had awakened the Princess with a kiss, but her waking eyes now saw only dirt and oil, and noisy machines that invaded her mind as the jute invaded her body. When she did manage to think of Robert, she could not keep him in the beauty of the woods: he refused to stay there but stood, with her scarf around his rifle in a mud-filled hole, which was even noisier and more horrifying than the one into which she had so willingly flung herself.

  Catriona watched her daughter grow old and redoubled her efforts to restore the house. Priory grew from playful kitten chasing his own or Flash’s tail into the terror of four-footed vermin. Elsie, preparing for her own safe studies in Edinburgh, had taken one look at the house on Blackness Road, at Victoria’s once-immaculate fingernails, and had decided that ‘pressure of academic work’ meant that she could not visit – ‘just until my exams are over, Victoria.’