‘Ah,’ Rab cried, as if he had caught her out, ‘religion - the opium of the people. It’s just a bourgeois trick to keep the people passive.’
‘One-all,’ Sam chimed in.
‘Don’t talk daft,’ Emmie said hotly. ‘You can be socialist and Christian at the same time.’
‘Course you can, pet,’ Helen agreed. ‘Don’t rise to the bait.’
But Emmie was stirred. ‘And there’s the printing press. We print all sorts for the ILP and suffrage societies.’
‘Aye,’ Jonas joined in, ‘our Emmie’s a suffragette these days.’
‘Middle-class ladies chaining themselves to railings in between tea parties,’ Rab goaded. ‘But what do they do for working-class lasses, eh? It’s universal suffrage we need, not just for bourgeois women.’
‘Ding-ding! Two-one to Rab, Emmie,’ Sam chortled.
‘Oh, shut up, the pair of you,’ Emmie cried. ‘There’s nowt bourgeois about the Runcies’ printing press - come and see for yourself if you don’t believe me. And you’re wrong about the vote. Plenty men already have it, but not one lass does. We’ll fight the lot of you to have our say in how the country’s run no matter what class we’re from. We don’t care about that - we lasses stick together!’
‘Knock-out punch from Miss Emmie Kelso,’ Sam shouted. ‘I declare her the winner.’
Laughter rang around the crowded kitchen. Rab uncrossed his arms and gave Emmie’s hair a playful rub. She pushed him off and straightened it down.
‘Oh, lass, how I’ve missed all this. It’s grand to be back,’ he grinned fondly.
‘Aye,’ she relented with a laugh, ‘I’ve missed you an’ all.’
Chapter 9
Emmie was so overjoyed at having Rab back that it was a couple of days before she thought about Nell’s promise to come up to Crawdene. She was hardly surprised when her sister did not appear on the Tuesday or Wednesday; she was probably happy ordering Mrs Raine about in the doctor’s absence, and inviting friends round to the house.
So it was a shock when Flora came rushing into the printing works, the day they returned from honeymoon.
‘Have you seen your sister?’ she demanded, quite flustered. ‘Is she at the MacRaes’?’
‘No, Doctor. She never came.’
‘But Mrs Raine says she left on Monday, telling her she was going to stay with you. She was expected back two days ago.’
Emmie grew alarmed. ‘She talked about it, but didn’t. I haven’t seen her all week. Oh, miss, what do you think’s happened? Shall we call the police?’
Flora looked aghast. ‘No, not the police.’
‘Maybe’s she’s gone to Dolly’s.’
‘No, they had a falling-out - Nell thought Dolly too common.’
‘Her acting friends then?’ Emmie suggested. ‘She was singing with those lads from the debating society the last time I saw her - the afternoon of the weddin’. Maybe she’s gone to stay with a friend till you got back - you know she doesn’t like to be on her own.’
‘Did she say anything to you?’ Flora asked urgently. ‘Can you remember if she spoke of going away somewhere?’
‘No, nothing,’ Emmie said, feeling guilty. ‘I meant to go round and see her. But you see, Rab came back — and the house has been full of visitors since.’
‘Rab!’ Flora softened. ‘Oh, Emmie, that’s good news. I’m so glad. I didn’t mean to snap at you - it’s just I’m worried about Nell.’ She sank on to a chair.
‘Doctor,’ Emmie said tentatively, ‘there is one thing.’
Flora looked at her in hope.
‘Nell wasn’t happy about having to move - to come and live here. Maybe she’s taken off somewhere.’
Flora covered her face with her hands and groaned. Emmie went to her and put an arm around her shoulders in comfort. Flora looked up at her with eyes welling with tears.
‘She’s run away, hasn’t she? She’s planned this and it’s all my fault.’
‘We don’t know—’ Emmie began.
‘Yes, I’m sure of it.’ Flora cut her short. ‘I insisted that we would move into the Settlement to be with Charles and his work. Nell made a fuss, but I thought she’d come round to the idea.’
‘Aye, so did I,’ Emmie admitted.
‘So that’s why she’s gone. I’ve driven her away.’ Her look was harrowed. ‘I know your sister can be difficult, but she livens up my home - my life. I love her like a daughter.’
‘She’ll be back,’ Emmie said kindly. ‘She’s never been as happy as with you, Dr Flora. I think she was a bit jealous of Mr Charles taking you away. This is her way of gettin’ a bit attention. Anyways, she’ll not last long on her own without money and that.’
Tears spilled down Flora’s cheeks. ‘She’s taken money from the surgery - and jewellery from my dressing table.’
‘Never!’ Emmie was shocked. ‘Nell’s not a thief.’
‘The money’s not important. What hurts is that she has so little regard for me - that she couldn’t talk to me first.’ Flora’s look was full of pain. ‘Why, Emmie? Why would she do that after all I’ve done for her?’
Emmie was speechless, too stunned that Nell could have stolen from the kind doctor and then disappeared without even a word to her own sister!
Flora shook her head. ‘I thought I knew Nell; now I’m not sure I know her at all.’
Word soon went round the Settlement and the community beyond that Dr Jameson’s foster daughter had run away. No one had seen her since the wedding weekend or taken her in. But she had been spotted leaving Saltwell Park on the Sunday with a man who helped out at the drama club. Jackman was a drifter, a one-time music-hall artist, a good talker. He had left Gateshead too. Flora grew angry that Nell could have been so reckless, but as Charles pointed out, she was a grown woman who had just turned twenty-one and they could not stop her making her own mistakes.
The rumour about the stolen money and jewels spread too, probably by a disaffected Mrs Raine, who did not want to housekeep at the Settlement. Too often, Flora had to intervene in arguments between her housekeeper and the Mousys.
Weeks went by and no news came of Nell. Emmie experienced again the feeling of vulnerability and loss of someone close to her disappearing. She worried for her sister, yet felt bursts of anger that she had gone without thinking of the consequences. Rab seemed to sense her mixed feelings the most.
‘She probably felt guilty the minute she was gone,’ he told her, ‘after the relief of getting away.’
‘Then why doesn’t she write?’ Emmie pointed out. ‘Even you sent a postcard so we knew you were alive.’
‘Maybe she thinks no one will be bothered that she’s gone.’
‘She’s just selfish, that’s what.’
Rab said gently, ‘Nell may want to come home but thinks she won’t be welcome after what she’s done. It was different for me - I knew I’d be welcome.’
‘How?’
‘Because of those canny long letters you sent - made me feel like I was right there in Crawdene.’ Rab smiled at her. ‘You’ve no idea how much they meant to me, Emmie.’
***
Rab’s return compensated greatly for the worry and guilt over Nell’s disappearance. Emmie thought life at China Street would return to how it was before Rab went away. But it could not. Nearly three years had passed and Rab had changed. He was still fun and full of conversation, able to infuriate and make his family laugh in equal measure. But at times he would fall silent, introspective, as if he was far away in a place where none of them could reach him.
‘Tell me what Glasgow was like,’ Emmie would urge. He would describe tall tenements and noisy shipyards, large families packed into one or two rooms.
‘What about the shops, the theatres?’
Rab would shrug. ‘Where the rich folk gan, you mean? We took our entertainment where we could find it - in the bars or the cheap concert halls.’
He often talked affectionately about the characters in his boarding house, or t
hose at his night classes.
‘And the lasses - what were Scottish lasses like?’
He would give her a strange look. ‘No different from anywhere else.’ But after such questions he would go quiet, brooding almost. Someone had taught him to play the piano and he would disappear to the tin-roofed hall to play slow airs and melancholy tunes.
Emmie and Helen speculated on what had happened.
‘He doesn’t like being asked about lasses,’ Emmie said. ‘Even Sam can’t get out of him whether he’s been courtin’.’
‘I think he’s had his heart broken,’ Helen sighed, ‘and that’s why he’s come home. Not that he’ll ever tell us.’
After a month of sleeping on the truckle bed in the kitchen, Rab moved out of the cottage. Now that Emmie had half the attic curtained off as her bedroom, there was no room upstairs, and they all knew he would have to go sooner or later. He rented a downstairs room in India Street from Mannie, a retired saddler and friend from the Clarion Club, and went back to work at the Liddon pit.
That autumn, he began teaching classes in politics and literature at the Miners’ Institute in Blackton, so that Emmie saw even less of him.
One day, early in 1910, he sought her out.
‘Will you take me to see this printing press at the Settlement?’ he asked, almost shyly.
‘You mean, that bourgeois printing press?’ she smirked.
‘Aye, that one,’ he smiled.
‘Why the sudden interest?’
‘I’m thinking of starting a news-sheet - a political one - let people air their opinions.’ He eyed her, as if seeking approval. ‘I want to see how much it would cost.’
Emmie nodded. ‘Come down next Saturday while I’m at work and talk to the Runcies.’
By the time Saturday afternoon came, she was full of excitement and kept rushing to the door of the printworks whenever she heard footsteps cross the icy quad. Miss Sophie breezed in to discuss a fund-raising leaflet and found Emmie telling her employers all about Rab, right from the time he had fetched her as a frightened, sickly child from the station in Swalwell.
‘He doesn’t sound like the two-headed radical monster my father thinks he is,’ Sophie joked. ‘But maybe he should publish his news-sheet under a different name from MacRae.’
Just at that moment, Rab came stamping in out of the cold.
‘And why would I want to do that?’ Rab asked with a quizzical smile, pulling off his cap.
Emmie rushed over and drew him into the warmth, proudly introducing him all round. He seemed unusually tongue-tied, but the kind Runcies soon put him at his ease, pressing a mug of hot tea into his frozen hands and asking him about the news-sheet.
‘I’ll have to charge for it - maybe a penny or tuppence,’ Rab suggested.
‘Weekly or fortnightly?’ Mr Runcie asked.
‘Haven’t thought…’
‘You could try and get advertisers,’ Emmie suggested.
Rab laughed. ‘Get the capitalists to pay towards their extinction, eh?’
‘Donations,’ Sophie suddenly announced. ‘That’s how we pay for newsletters. You need a fund-raiser for your cause.’
Rab stared at her. ‘My readers are not going to be the type with money to throw around like you suffragettes.’
‘Suffragists, if you don’t mind,’ Sophie corrected him with a cool smile. ‘And you don’t know yet who your readers will be. Presumably you want to attract as wide an audience as possible - not just preach to the converted?’
‘Miss Sophie’s right,’ Emmie agreed.
Rab seemed lost for words.
‘Do you have any examples of articles or editorial?’ Philip Runcie prompted.
Rab dug into an inner pocket and pulled out some crumpled pieces of exercise paper. Philip skimmed over them and passed them around. Rab sat tensely while they read. Emmie gave him a reassuring smile.
‘Perhaps a monthly issue to start with?’ Mabel suggested. ‘Test the water?’
‘You say you are going for a variety of opinions, Mr MacRae?’ Sophie’s look was challenging.
‘Aye,’ he answered stiffly. ‘There’s little enough free opinion allowed around Crawdene and Blackton.’
‘Do you mean by my father - or the union officials who intimidate women suffrage campaigners?’ she answered sharply. Rab’s protest was cut short. ‘I suggest you offer your pages to guest writers, covering the themes of the day. They might not be the editor’s opinion, but will provoke debate on the issues.’
‘Such as women’s suffrage?’ Rab grunted.
‘Precisely,’ Sophie nodded.
‘And you, no doubt, would like to write the first article, Miss Oliphant?’ he asked, his tone sardonic.
Sophie gave a broad smile. ‘If that’s a commission, I’d be happy to accept. Though I think I should write under a nom de plume, to avoid giving my father a seizure.’
After that, the afternoon passed in lively talk and planning of the first issue. They argued over content, layout and what to call it, agreeing finally on the Blackton Messenger, to be sold fortnightly for a penny-ha’penny.
Sophie gave Emmie and Rab a lift in her brougham as far as Blackton crossroads. As Rab pulled up his collar against the frost, she quipped, ‘Don’t worry, it’s too dark to have been spotted riding with an Oliphant.’
He glanced up at her. ‘Or for one of your father’s spies to have seen you giving succour to a MacRae.’
They heard her laugh as she drove off into the gloom. Emmie slipped an arm through Rab’s as they walked up the hill to Crawdene.
‘It went well this afternoon, didn’t it?’ she asked. ‘I told you they were canny people.’
‘Aye, you were right,’ Rab agreed. ‘Maybe I’ll get the Runcies to write a piece about the Quakers - how they opposed the Boer War.’
‘Ooh, a religious article,’ Emmie teased. ‘This news-sheet is sounding dangerously bourgeois.’
Rab squeezed her arm. ‘You’re right again. See what happens when I spend half a day in the company of the middle class!’
They walked on in companionable silence.
‘You liked her, didn’t you?’ Emmie suddenly asked.
‘Who?’
‘You know who - Miss Sophie,’ Emmie laughed. ‘Don’t think I didn’t notice the sly looks you were giving each other.’
‘Don’t be daft,’ he blustered.
‘Well, she took a liking to you.’
‘Emmie,’ he said impatiently, ‘you’ve been reading too many penny romances while I’ve been away.’
Emmie laughed. ‘So you haven’t taken a fancy to her?’
‘No.’
‘Not even a tiny bit?’
‘Give over, Emmie!’
As they reached the village outskirts, Emmie stopped to draw breath.
‘Rab, have you ever been in love?’
‘Why the sudden interest in love, Emmie?’ he asked, amusement in his voice. ‘Is it because you’ve fallen for a lad? It is, isn’t it? I can see you blushing even in the dark.’
‘Stop it.’ She pulled away, embarrassed.
‘It’s not that Tom Curran?’ He chuckled.
‘What’s wrong with Tom?’ Emmie was stung.
‘Nowt - for a good chapel boy,’ Rab crowed. ‘Bet the most exciting thing he’s ever done is beat Ongarfield in the amateur league.’
‘Just ‘cos you’ve seen a bit of the world, doesn’t mean you’re any better than the likes of Tom,’ Emmie reproved.
‘No, course not. I’m sorry.’ Rab threw an arm around her shoulders. ‘I’m just being protective of me favourite lass. Tom’s a canny enough lad.’
Mollified, she said, ‘You never answered my question about being in love.’ They began to walk on.
‘Maybes I have been,’ Rab admitted.
‘How do you know?’ Emmie questioned. ‘How can you tell?’
‘You want to be with that person all the time, I suppose. And it hurts when you’re not.’
Emmie’s
heart twisted at his words. She suddenly envied whoever it was who had made Rab feel so strongly.
‘Did you - love her enough to want to marry her?’ Emmie whispered.
‘Marry?’ Rab’s tone hardened. ‘Don’t confuse marriage with love.’
‘But—’
‘Marriage is a capitalist trick - it’s all about money and property and amassing more of it. There’s no freedom in marriage, Emmie - specially for lasses. Steer clear of it as long as possible, lass.’
Emmie was dashed by his words. They walked the rest of the way in silence. As they approached China Street, they saw a figure smoking under the gaslamp and stamping his feet to keep warm.
‘It’s Tom,’ Emmie said, feeling awkward.
Tom ground out his cigarette, hurried forward and gave Emmie a bold kiss. He exchanged nods with Rab.
‘Where’ve you been? I’ve been waiting ages.’
She began to tell him about the afternoon at the print shop, but he was not listening.
‘If we hurry, there’s a lantern slide show at the chapel the night. You can have your tea at ours.’
Emmie stood, feeling torn. She was annoyed with Rab for his dismissive remarks about Tom and marriage, yet she wanted to have an evening in his company, sitting around the MacRae kitchen table in lively conversation.
‘Louise and Sam are ganin’ too,’ Tom said eagerly.
‘I’ll tell Mam you’ve gone to the Currans’,’ Rab offered swiftly.
‘Right you are then,’ Tom said, taking Emmie by the arm. ‘Ta, Rab.’
Emmie glanced back at Rab and saw the amusement in his look. Her annoyance quickened. He could scoff all he wanted, but she was happy with Tom’s attention and an evening of entertainment at the chapel. What did he know of love? He was too wedded to his pamphlets and politics to care. She would take love where she could find it, and right now she could feel it in the warmth of Tom’s possessive arm round her waist and the admiring look in his hazel eyes.
She turned from Rab and slipped her arm through Tom’s.
‘Haway, tell me about the lantern show, then.’
THE GREAT WAR SAGAS: Box set of 2 passionate and inspiring stories: A Crimson Dawn and No Greater Love Page 9
