The House of Lyall

by Doris Davidson

  Racking her brains, she tried to think what it had been and where she had hidden it, but it was some minutes before she remembered. She gave a satisfied smirk as she removed the lid from the white china hen on the dresser, then lifted out the nest section which could hold one dozen eggs, and nestling underneath, exactly as she had placed it years ago, was the item about his Marion’s wedding. It had completely slipped her mind, which showed what a poor housewife she was, for she’d only ever wiped the outside of the white hen, never given it a proper wash.

  And then she heard the rattle of Mary’s old bicycle and ran out to catch her. ‘Will you write a letter for me, Mary?’ she asked. ‘Once you’ve done wi’ Teenie Burnett?’

  ‘Aye, surely, Moll.’ Mary had written many letters for other people in her time as visiting nurse – many of her patients were illiterate, but she knew that Moll Cheyne wasn’t. ‘Something gey important, is it?’

  ‘Awful important, that’s why I asked you, an’ it’ll need to be posted the day.’

  Mary did more than post the letter. After hearing what had happened, she decided to do her best to help the Cheynes. Alfie had slaved all his life at the mill, and it was the sawdust he’d breathed in over the years that had ruined his lungs, but she knew she’d be as well speaking to the wind as trying to get compensation for him from Alec Murchie, for he was a tight-fisted old devil.

  She could recommend that Alfie be given a place in the Institute, but he’d likely refuse to go; his mind was still alert enough to shrink from the idea of ‘charity’. There was only one alternative left, and she set off on her bicycle to see Jem Park, local businessman and committee member of the Institute’s board. He had bought some near-derelict houses a few years back, and let them to people who couldn’t afford to rent better places.

  Mr Park was a big, rather awe-inspiring man, but very little, people or events, intimidated Mary McKay. ‘I’m here to see about a place for Alfie Cheyne and his wife,’ she began, bold as brass. ‘He’s not fit to work now, and they’re being put out of the sawmill house, and I know you’ve got one empty, for I helped to clear it the day before yesterday, after old Jigger Lonie’s funeral.’

  Jem Park frowned. ‘I’ve got nothing to do with the letting,’ he barked. ‘You’ll have to see my factor, and I would think he’s let it by this time. There’s a waiting list, you know.’

  Mary shook her head in irritation, but went in search of the factor. She had been at school with Greig Lawrie and knew a few little titbits about him that he wouldn’t care to reach his wife’s ears, so if she had to, she could try a bit of blackmail.

  As she had known he would, Greig blustered for a few minutes, swearing that he had already let Jigger’s house, then changing, when she said she didn’t believe him, to say that she couldn’t expect him to let anybody jump their turn. ‘There’s three after it, and I half promised it to –’

  ‘Then you’ll have to take your half-promise back,’ Mary said firmly, ‘or I’ll tell folk about you and Mrs Gill, the doctor’s wife.’ She had decided to start with his earliest indiscretion and work up to the more recent if the need arose.

  His face drained of colour. ‘There was nothing atween Mrs Gill an’ me! She asked me dae some jobs for her … I was only sixteen at the time, for God’s sake!’

  Mary grinned cockily. ‘So you were, but a man for a’ that, eh?’

  The flattery was all that was necessary.

  Moll had still heard nothing from Marianne when the day of eviction came and they were forced to move into the cramped place Mary McKay had managed to get for them. Not only that, she had scrounged a few bits and pieces of furniture – a rickety bed, a couple of chairs and a table. It was anything but comfortable, but at least it was a roof over their heads, Moll told herself, and it would only be till Marion – Marianne – came to their rescue. No doubt it would take her a while to get something organized.

  * * *

  Marianne soon discovered that she loved the bustle of the capital, watching, when she ventured out with her maid, the elegant carriages conveying well-dressed matrons and their daughters, even trying to guess who sat in the black hansom cabs.

  What pleased her even more when she returned from a window-shopping walk with Thomson, was the sight of several calling cards which had been left while they were out. This was the life she had pictured for herself, on the same footing as the barons and earls, although Hamish told her that barons were a lower rank.

  In anticipation of returning the calls, she asked the caretaker’s wife where the late Lady Glendarril had shopped for clothes, and on being given directions to a very exclusive salon tucked away in a side street practically just around the corner, she set off on her own.

  It was the first time Marianne had bought such expensive clothes for herself, but she kept in mind how Lady Glendarril had dealt with the people who served her in Edinburgh, and when she finished her shopping spree, she was highly satisfied with her selection of day dresses and evening gowns, gossamer shawls and substantial capes. She had sensed a condescension in the salesladies’ manners at times, even in the models who paraded for her, but she didn’t care … the owners of all the establishments she patronized had shown enough deference to satisfy her, practically bowing and scraping as each sale was made.

  Her husband refusing to go with her on any of the calls she meant to make, Marianne resolved to go alone. ‘But it’s not done, Mrs Hamish,’ wailed Thomson, who had gone with Lady Glendarril on her rounds and knew the tacit rules under which the gentry operated – not more than an hour in any house being one.

  ‘All right then, you can come in the carriage with me,’ Marianne sighed. ‘I suppose they’ll let you wait in the servants’ quarters till I’m ready to leave.’

  At the first three calls she made, she sensed that the hostesses felt as awkward with her as she felt with them, although none of them said or did anything to prove that. Wondering if she wasn’t dressed properly, she chose carefully from amongst her new outfits for her next venture into the revered company, and plumped for a wine-coloured costume with a narrow skirt which just tipped her black kid shoes, and a hip-length jacket with black frogging. This would have been suitably conservative if she hadn’t topped it with a bright blue hat trimmed with ostrich feathers dyed in gaudy reds, greens and yellows, which swept over one eye in a provocative style. ‘It’ll give me a bit of confidence,’ she defended herself to Thomson, whose shocked face told her she had gone too far.

  The expressions of the ladies in each of the first two houses she visited that day gave further proof of her faux pas, and she wished that she had not worn such a frivolous hat. She had the distinct impression that her hostesses and their friends were inwardly laughing at her, but at least their breeding did not let them ridicule her openly like the girls in Aberdeen who had hurt her all those years before.

  She was waiting for Thomson in the hallway of her last call in Guildford Street when she realized that her gloves were still on a small table in the drawing room, and with no warning to the young maid who was seeing her out, she turned and walked back. The door was slightly ajar, enough for the muffled hilarity from inside to reach her ears.

  ‘Oh my, wasn’t she awful?’ someone was laughing. ‘And some of the things she said, I didn’t know where to look. Verity Chambers says she was only a shop-girl before she married Hamish Bruce-Lyall.’

  ‘That explains it!’ giggled another. ‘That hat! Did you ever see anything like it? Her taste must be all in her awful mouth.’

  ‘And her accent!’ gushed a third. ‘I could hardly understand a word she said.’

  Cut to the quick and desperate to retaliate, Marianne threw back the door and marched straight to the occasional table to retrieve her gloves, and not until she reached the door again did she deign to look at any of the young women regarding her silently with their mouths agape. Holding the knob, she said, enunciating each word slowly and with staccato precision, ‘I hope you can understand what I am saying now. Yes,
I was a shop-girl when Hamish met me, and I was just a skivvy before that, but I was taught manners, something you three obviously weren’t.’

  Speeding up, she went on scathingly, ‘I would never, ever, speak about anybody behind her back the way you were speaking about me.’ She opened the door wider, but could not resist a parting shot before going into the hall. ‘Let me tell you, I hardly understood a word any of you spoke, either, with your marbles in your mouths and your noses in the air. If you’re a sample of London society, I’m glad I live in a wee glen in Scotland.’

  Slamming the door, she sailed past the goggle-eyed servant and went down the front steps just as Thomson came up from the basement area. The young groom jumped down hastily to help her into the carriage, and Marianne’s dark face warned her maid to ask no questions.

  When Hamish and his father returned from the business meeting they had been attending, Marianne told them what had happened, keeping a grip on herself to avoid bursting into tears. Hector had a good laugh at how she had dealt with the situation, but her husband tried to soothe her ruffled feelings.

  ‘Never mind them. They have nothing else to do all day but find fault with others. Is that the hat?’ He looked at the offending object which had been thrown in rejection on the seat of a chair. ‘Maybe the feathers are a teeny bit garish, but that was no reason for them …’

  Catching the gleam of moisture in Marianne’s eyes, her father-in-law said, ‘Take her upstairs, Hamish, and see she goes to bed. All the excitement of coming to London has been too much for her.’

  Overcome with self-pity, anger at herself for ignoring Thomson’s silent criticism, and especially with sharp resentment against her tormentors, Marianne allowed Hamish to guide her to her room.

  ‘Shall I get Thomson to come and help …?’ He got no further. The burning tears refused to be contained any longer and burst from her in a torrent which alarmed him. ‘They are not worth upsetting yourself over, my dear,’ he murmured. ‘They are not worthy of licking your shoes.’

  He drew away when her sobbing eased, and looked sadly into her face. ‘I shall have to leave you again, I’m afraid. I promised to go with Father to see a potential new customer in Brighton. Will you be all right, or should I fetch Thomson?’

  ‘No,’ she sniffed, ‘I don’t want her to see I’ve been crying.’

  ‘We may not be back until tomorrow, and you need someone. She is very discreet. You can trust her not to tell the other servants.’

  When she came in, Thomson clicked her tongue solicitously. ‘Would you rather I went away for a wee while, Mrs Hamish … till you come to yourself?’

  Marianne shook her head. ‘It’s all right. It’s just … there was a bit of … unpleasantness in that last house I called at. Oh, I might as well tell you.’

  The older woman listened to the sorry tale with increasing anger and, when it ended, she said, ‘The cook told me her mistress and her two sisters spend most of their time criticising other women, and I think they’d been jealous that none of them has such a distinctive hat. Even if they had, I doubt they could carry it off like you.’

  Marianne had to smile at Thomson’s staunch loyalty. ‘No, I could tell when I put it on you thought it was awful and you were right. I’ll ask your advice before I buy any more hats … not that I’ll need any. I’ll never come back to London to be made a fool of. Now, you’d better get me out of this costume, and the corset, for it’s killing me.’

  She stood patiently while her maid undid buttons and unfastened hooks and eyes, turning obediently when instructed to do so, and at last her nightdress was pulled on over her head and she was helped onto the high bed. ‘Thank you, Thomson,’ she murmured, lying back gratefully.

  Left alone again, Marianne’s thoughts returned to the glen, and she wondered if her two little darlings were missing her as much as she was missing them. It was the first time she had ever been away from them for any length of time, and the last, if she had any say. Her grasshopper mind jumped now to something else she would be missing in Glendarril, and she smiled as she recalled the way in which she had learned of the two impending happy events.

  It had been Flora’s turn for the weekly ‘afternoon tea’, and immediately she had filled the cups and handed round the plate of home-made scones, she burst out, ‘I was afraid to tell anybody till after the dangerous third month, but Robert says it’s safe now.’

  ‘Oh, Flora, you’re pregnant? I’m so pleased for you!’ Marianne had exclaimed.

  But she had been in for a second surprise, because Grace gave a little cough and got to her feet, tapping on the table in the manner she used as president of the WRI to get the attention of the members before she made an announcement. ‘It falls to me,’ she declaimed solemnly, ‘to express delight at the statement given by our secretary, and to add some news of my own.’ She looked at the other two for a moment and then burst out laughing.

  Flora’s face had screwed up with perplexity, Marianne remembered, and it had been left to her to say, ‘Don’t tell me you’re expecting, as well, Grace? Wonders will never cease, and when are you due, both of you?’

  She had been pleased that both confinements would be in early August, because she should have been home by then, but, as Robert Burns so wisely said, ‘The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men gang aft a-gley.’ Because of King Edward’s appendicitis, she was stuck in London. Still, finding out which sex her friends’ babies were was a treat for her to go home to, though she would pray every night now that both would be safely delivered.

  Robert was cock-a-hoop about becoming a father, but it was difficult to tell with Duncan. He wasn’t as forthcoming as Robert, but he was bound to be pleased. Maybe he hadn’t cared for the idea of children before – though that might have been another of Grace’s jokes – but surely when the infant arrived, he would look on it as a blessing from God.

  That was one thing about Hamish. He was a good father, and Marianne did not, and never would, regret marrying him. He loved her as much as she loved him, and as far as the glen folk were concerned, she was a goddess, someone they looked up to and admired for not putting on airs with them. On her first trip to Edinburgh to supplement her wardrobe, as soon as she mentioned that she was the daughter-in-law of the late Lady Glendarril, she had been given honoured treatment, and on the next two occasions she had been recognized immediately she walked in, which had given her a tremendous glow of gratification.

  Before she surrendered into the arms of Morpheus, it occurred to her that the only people who had openly not accepted her were the three females (she wouldn’t grant them the dignity of thinking of them as ladies) in the house in Guildford Street. She couldn’t recall any of their names, except that they were all Honourable Somebodies and probably none of them lived permanently in London. Just the same, they must have known it was her first visit, so what they did was inexcusable.

  Let London and all its glories go to the devil, Marianne thought. Hector had been right: she didn’t like it, and she would never come back.

  Her husband and father-in-law did not return from Brighton until the following day, and she tackled them as soon as they came in. ‘I’m going home. I’m not giving anybody else the chance to insult me, and besides, I’m missing my boys.’

  Both men were utterly thunderstruck, and it was Hector who rallied enough to say, ‘I can understand how you feel, but what about the Coronation? You may never have another chance to see a spectacle like this, and it was the reason you came to London in the first place.’

  ‘Well, I’ve had enough of it! I just don’t want to –’

  Hamish interrupted here. ‘I know you’ve been hurt, my dearest, but once you get over it, you’ll be all right.’

  ‘No, I won’t! I’m sick to the teeth of London and all the stuck-up pigs in it. Look, I’m not expecting you to come with me – I’ll manage fine by myself as long as I’ve got Thomson with me.’

  ‘Well, well!’ Hector grinned. ‘You’ve lost none of your pluck, I’ll g
rant you that, and if that’s what you’re determined to do, I’ll book seats for you on the last train tonight. You won’t need to worry about your baggage, because Hamish will see to it at this end, and I’ll send a wire to Carnie so that he will be at Montrose to take it out of the carriage when he picks you up tomorrow.’

  The rest of the day was, therefore, taken up with packing, or rather, Thomson did the work while Marianne paced the floor as if she were champing at the bit to be gone. Every piece of luggage ready at last, the exhausted maid sat down heavily and, her conscience smiting her, Marianne said, ‘I’m sorry, Thomson. I know I’m not being fair, trailing you away when I’m sure you’re dying to see all the people in the streets on the big day, but –’

  ‘No, ma’am, I’ve had enough commotion to last me the rest of my life, and all, and I’ll be glad to be back home again.’

  And so Marianne’s dreams of making a good impression and being welcomed into the ranks of the nobility came to nothing. The only impression she made had been much less than favourable – had even been, it could be said, downright ridiculous.

  After a hot and exhausting overnight journey, Marianne could not help bursting into tears when her two young sons launched themselves at her in exuberant greeting. ‘Oh, do be careful,’ Nursie warned them, stepping forward to restrain them. ‘Mother is far too tired to be bothered with you just now.’

  ‘Let them stay with me for a little while,’ Marianne pleaded.

  Thomson, knowing exactly how her mistress must feel, said, ‘I know you missed them, Mrs Hamish, but you really should have a rest.’

  ‘Ten minutes … please?’

  Left alone with her boys, she sat down and lifted them on to her lap. Ranald, always more demonstrative, flung his chubby arms round her neck and covered her face with slobbery kisses, while Ruairidh held on to her fingers as if he were afraid she might go away again. Her seven-week absence had seemed a lifetime to them.

  By the time the nurse came for them, some twenty minutes later, Marianne was glad to relinquish them, and went up to her room. ‘I was just going to lie down on top,’ Marianne protested to Thomson when she saw the bed turned down.