THE GREAT WAR SAGAS: Box set of 2 passionate and inspiring stories: A Crimson Dawn and No Greater Love

by Janet MacLeod Trotter

  Briskly, Nell walked away with a tap of high heels, turning once to wave, and then was gone.

  Trembling, Emmie sat down on a bench and tried to calm herself. For a long time, she thought back to their childhood days and her tempestuous relationship with Nell. With regret she had to admit it had never recovered from their abrupt separation and their mother’s momentous decision to send her to the MacRaes. Dear beloved Helen and Jonas.

  All at once she was filled with a sudden strong presence of Jonas. Emmie’s heart stopped. She could almost hear the old man talking of Rab. His loud laughter rang in her ears. No one makes me as angry as that lad - and no one makes me more proud!

  Emmie had an overwhelming feeling that something had happened. Jonas had appeared to her. He was calling Rab home. In panic, she fled back to the hospital. It was not yet visiting time, but she barged past the matron on to the ward.

  ‘Rab!’ she gasped in horror. His bed was empty, stripped back. Tears of despair stung her eyes. Her beloved Rab was gone.

  ‘Look here!’ the matron called, bustling after her. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’

  ‘Where have you taken his body?’ Emmie cried.

  ‘Body?’ Matron repeated. ‘Mr MacRae’s taking a bath. Now will you please—’

  ‘Emmie?’

  Emmie spun round at the familiar voice. Rab was being wheeled into the room in a bath chair.

  ‘Rab!’ she sobbed, and flew to greet him. She crumpled at his feet, crying and laughing in relief. ‘I thought you were . . .’

  The matron followed, tutting in disapproval. ‘What a fuss!’

  Rab laid a tender hand on Emmie’s head and ruffled her hair. She clung to him, choked with emotion.

  ‘She causes a stir wherever she goes, Matron,’ Rab joked weakly.

  ‘That I can believe,’ Matron snorted, and left them alone.

  Emmie looked up into Rab’s loving eyes, full of their old vitality.

  ‘I had a premonition,’ she whispered. ‘Jonas came to me - it was like he was calling you back - said he was proud of you. I thought it must mean the end.’

  Rab smiled. ‘I never did do what the old man told me.’ He stroked her face. ‘Maybes he’s giving us his blessing. Not the end, Emmie, but a new beginning - for us and the bairns, eh?’

  She seized his hand in exultation and kissed it.

  ‘Aye, Rab,’ she smiled, her heart brimming with love, ‘nothing can stop it now - our crimson dawn.’

  ***

  No Greater Love

  A heartrending story of one woman’s fight for justice and love

  (A special edition of THE SUFFRAGETTE novel with a new ending – to mark the centenary of Emily Wilding Davison’s death)

  Janet MacLeod Trotter

  Janet: “Very often the suffragette movement in the UK is associated only with London but there were many brave women in the North who got involved in the fight for the vote and this novel is a tribute to them. My own family has links with the women’s emancipation movement. Three of my Scottish great aunts were suffragette members of the WSPU and my great grandmother (also called Janet) once brandished her umbrella at Winston Churchill in Edinburgh and shouted ‘Votes for Women Mr Churchill!’ My Great-aunt, Isobel Gorrie, was praised by the leadership as being the best seller of their radical newspaper in all of Scotland. My other inspiration was Emily Wilding Davison, who became a martyr to the cause when she was trampled to death by King George V’s horse at the Epsom Derby while protesting. Emily is buried in a Northumberland churchyard close to where we live.”

  No Greater Love is a new version of The Suffragette – with a different ending – to mark the centenary of Emily Wilding Davison’s death.

  ***

  To Charlie – for making us laugh – and in memory of my suffragette Great Grandmother Janet Gorrie and Great Aunts Bel, Mary and Beth

  Contents

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 1

  1903

  Mabel Beaton stared numbly from behind the starched net curtains of the downstairs parlour, waiting. From the open door she could hear the murmur of the women’s voices drifting in from the kitchen across the corridor, concerned and doleful, yet edged with the excitement of gossip. She was aware of the clink of china as her sister-in-law Violet prepared tea and the clang of a poker on the grate as someone stabbed the fire.

  Never before had she felt so cut off from her neighbours and friends, cocooned in shock. Mabel could not go to them now or find any comfort in their chatter, so she continued her vigil by the window among the peppery-smelling houseplants and the slow tick of the marble clock.

  ‘Here’s a cuppa, hinny.’ Mrs Liddle bustled into the unlit room, washed in sepia light from the late September sun. ‘You must keep your strength up.’

  ‘Ta, Mrs Liddle,’ Mabel answered dully, ‘just put it on the table—’ She broke off, suddenly aware of what she had said. They both looked at the table in silent awe, then with a wary glance, the stout neighbour plonked the cup down on the mantelpiece with a nervous rattle.

  ‘You get that down you before the bairns get home,’ Mrs Liddle coaxed. ‘It won’t do for them to see you pale as a ghost.’

  Mabel turned her back swiftly to hide the tears that filled her dark blue eyes. ‘I will be the first to break the news to them,’ she said with a firmness she did not feel. ‘I don’t want Violet blurting it out, do you hear?’

  ‘Aye, hinny,’ Mrs Liddle agreed and retreated to the warmth of the kitchen.

  From her lonely post by the window, Mabel could see down the wide terraced street with its neat bay windows and tiny borders of flowers bowing in the wind behind sturdy railings. A prosperous street of gleaming brass door knockers and blackened boot grates, it had been their home for ten happy years. Their house was built on the lip of the steep hill, with open fields and a tree-lined park at the back. She could see all the way down to the River Tyne and beyond to the hills of County Durham without interruption. From here the noise of the riverside yards and factories was muted and the smell of industry bearable. Here, her family were safe and well nurtured, their future assured - or had been until earlier in the day.

  Mabel’s thick small hands flew to her pale face to stifle a sob of panic. ‘Oh, me poor bairns!’ she gasped to herself and as she did so caught sight of her eldest daughter Susan, toiling up the hill.

  Either side of the plump twelve-year-old walked Mabel’s youngest two, Helen and Jimmy, held in a protective grasp to frustrate escape among the other returning school children. Susan panted, pink-cheeked, her straight fair hair lifting in the breeze and covering her face, yet she would not let go of her siblings to brush the annoying strands away.

  As they passed a game of skipping, Helen pulled mutinously at her elder sister’s hold, her sandy-coloured curls tossing around her petulant face. Mabel could see Helen shouting and Susan placating and knew at any moment her pretty six-year-old daughter would resort to tears to get her way. For a moment she forgot her own torment and watched to see who would win. In less than a minute, Helen had wormed her way to the edge of the skipping game, her face a smile of triumph while Susan stood by
resignedly, lifting the weakling Jimmy into her arms.

  Mabel let the heavy velvet curtain drop back into place, roughly brushed away the tears from her face and took a deep breath.

  ‘Susan’s nearly home,’ she told the assembled women as she entered the kitchen, her small body stiff and dark head erect as she steeled herself for the ordeal.

  ‘Let me come with you.’ Violet rose from her chair at the head of the table where she had been holding court. Alec’s chair, Mabel thought to herself with a swell of resentment.

  ‘No,’ Mabel answered sharply, ‘they’ll hear the news from me.’ Ignoring the offended look that her sister-in-law conveyed to the others, she forced herself to walk briskly across the well-swept floor and out of the door.

  The street seemed comforting in its normality, filling up with children and the sound of their games. The clatter of horses’ hooves on the cobbles and the sparks from a rolley’s wheels announced the arrival of the rag and bone man at the top of the street. ‘Candy rock for stocking legs!’ he cried in a sing-song voice, drawing the children to his approaching cart like a magnet. Soon the buzzers from the shipyards would sound the end of the daily shift and the men would be swarming up the hill.

  ‘Helen, stay here!’ Susan called after her wilful sister. ‘Don’t get too near that horse.’

  At that moment, Helen caught sight of her mother and dashed towards her. ‘Mam, give me something for the ragman - he’s got candy and windmills. Give us something, Mam!’

  Mabel grabbed her youngest daughter to her velvet blue skirt and gave her a hug, her resolve to appear strong almost evaporating.

  ‘Not today, pet. Come inside,’ her mother answered hoarsely.

  Helen drew away. ‘No! I’m staying out to play.’

  By now Susan was at her side, with the dark-eyed Jimmy flopped in exhaustion against her round shoulders after his walk up the hill from school where he had started only three weeks ago.

  ‘Our Tich is all done in,’ Susan smiled at her mother, kissing her brother on his sallow cheek.

  The runt of the litter, Mabel could not help thinking as she reached over to take her small son from the panting Susan; he was so unlike her robust daughters. Alec had always defended Jimmy. ‘The wain’ll grow up to be bigger than me one day,’ her husband had joked. ‘Carry his dad to his grave single-handed!’ Mabel shuddered at the memory of those chill words.

  ‘Where’s Maggie?’ she asked, squinting into the low sun.

  ‘Fighting with the lads,’ Susan said crossly. ‘She doesn’t know when to leave well alone, Mam.’

  Mabel gave a fleeting smile at her daughter’s grown-up disapproval.

  Just then, Maggie came running over the brow of the hill, pursued by two older hefty boys. One of them pulled at her dark ringlets while the other tried to grab the books she was clutching. Mabel could see that they were hurting her, her ten-year-old daughter’s grey eyes were smarting with tears and she was kicking as hard as she could with her black scuffed boots.

  ‘Get off us!’ Maggie shouted.

  ‘Teacher’s pet!’ the twin boys taunted, managing to wrench the books from her hold. They dropped them on the cobbles and pages of jotter scattered in the wind.

  As Maggie took a swing at Billy who still held her hair, Mabel felt a protective anger ignite within her. Dumping Jimmy on the pavement, she went to her daughter’s rescue. She waded in with surprising strength for such a small woman, slapping Maggie’s tormentors about the ears and sending them sprawling into the gutter.

  ‘Keep your grubby hands off me lass, you little wasters!’ she yelled. ‘She’s got more brains in her little toe than all you Gordons put together. Now clear off!’

  Billy and Joshua Gordon gawped at the angry woman with the tight bun of dark hair. They knew the wife of the riveter, Alec Beaton, had a temper, but they had never been on the receiving end before. Scrambling to their feet they sped off up the street in humiliation.

  Mabel saw Susan had flushed with embarrassment at the outburst and Jimmy was clutching his sister in fright. But Maggie shook her black ringlets out of her slim face and fixed her with an unblinking look, the precious books forgotten for a moment.

  ‘What’s wrong, Mam?’ she asked directly. ‘Why are the curtains drawn and it’s not even dark?’

  Mabel flinched at the child’s capacity to see what the others had failed to notice. Of all her children, Maggie had the ability to sense what her mother felt without having to be told. Alec often said that Maggie had the gift of second sight like his Highland mother, but Mabel scoffed at such notions. ‘She’s just sharp, is our Maggie,’ she would reply. ‘Nothing gets past that one.’

  Mabel licked dry lips, suddenly unable to tell her children what they had to know, hating the vulnerable, perplexed looks on their faces. She bent down to salvage Maggie’s schoolbooks, gulping back the misery that choked her. Helen had come sidling up to listen and Mabel was aware of neighbours hovering in their doorways watching the drama unfold, relieved that the ordeal was not theirs.

  ‘Come into the house, hinnies.’ Mabel gathered them to her side nervously, the fight having left her drained and light-headed.

  They followed obediently; even Helen was subdued by their mother’s strange behaviour. But Maggie grabbed her arm as she shut the door on the prying outside world.

  ‘It’s Da, isn’t it?’ she said simply. ‘He’s had an accident at the yard.’

  ‘Who told you?’ Mabel asked sharply, but from the look on her daughter’s face she could tell it was just intuition.

  ‘What’s happened?’ Susan blurted out, tears already in her eyes.

  Mabel threw her arms about her girls. ‘Your dad fell from some scaffolding this morning. He - he’s got away.’

  ‘Got away where?’ Helen demanded, confused.

  ‘He’s dead,’ Maggie explained in a tight voice. Susan let out a loud howl. Helen and Jimmy began to sob too, infected by their eldest sister’s shock. ‘Where is he?’ Maggie asked, dry-eyed.

  Mabel felt herself begin to shake, she wanted to cry like Susan and the younger children, but Maggie’s stoical acceptance helped her keep a grip on her emotions.

  ‘Mrs Liddle has laid him out in the parlour,’ she whispered. ‘You don’t have to see him yet. Aunt Violet has your tea ready, there’s plenty of time—’

  ‘No!’ Susan cried. ‘I can’t go in. Oh, poor Da! I want me da!’ She clung to her mother in distress and Helen started screaming, which brought Aunt Violet and Mrs Liddle rushing out of the kitchen to take charge.

  But Maggie strode to the closed parlour door and threw it open. She stared into the gloom, her eyes adjusting to the murky ochre half-light. There, resting on the table in his best suit, was her father. She crept towards him, half expecting him suddenly to sit up and tell her it was just a game. But no smile came to his colourless lips under the sandy moustache and she shuddered to see a patch of matted hair around a gash to his head that Mrs Liddle’s administrations could not hide.

  Maggie opened her mouth to scream, but nothing came out. She felt her chest heave in the tomb-like room with its smell of polish and death and geraniums and thought she would suffocate. This waxen figure was not her cheerful father, he would be coming home any minute now with the wave of workers flooding out of Pearson’s shipyard.

  At that moment the harsh sound of the factory claxons and the riverside buzzers drowned the mournful sobbing from the hallway. Maggie turned and ran, pushing past her mother and sisters and evading Aunt Violet’s grasp until she was out in the fresh air of the chilly September afternoon. Then she tore down the hill and did not stop until she reached the slick steel ribbon of the River Tyne.

  Sitting on the landing steps of a local rowing club, Maggie stared out on the glinting oily expanse of river, trying to rid her mind of the image of her father slipping from the wooden scaffolding and falling to his death. What terrified her most was that she had seen it in her mind’s eye earlier that day as they played with hoops in th
e school yard - a man falling from a great height like a rag doll. She rubbed her eyes savagely and told herself she must have made it up. Never again would she allow her mind to wander in its fanciful way and play tricks in her head. Then someone shouted at her to clear off and at last Maggie was able to cry - the huge sobbing tears of a ten-year-old - which sent her running for home and the safety of her mother’s arms.

  ***

  The day before her father’s funeral, Maggie came home from school to find Granny Beaton had arrived from Glasgow. She sat in the parlour beside the open coffin, bound in black taffeta and a severe look, like a picture of the late Queen Victoria. Helen and Jimmy cowered away from her and Susan busied herself helping her mother in the kitchen, but Maggie stared in fascination at the craggy-faced woman who looked as old as the hills and spoke in a strange soft voice, beckoning her to come closer.

  Scared as she was, Maggie stepped into the sombre room, keeping her look from straying to the corpse ready to be nailed up for its final journey to the cemetery.

  ‘And you must be Margaret,’ the old woman said in a slow lisping voice.

  ‘Maggie,’ she answered stubbornly, her heart hammering.

  ‘Come, let me look at you,’ Granny Beaton commanded and held out a bony hand. Maggie did not take it, but she stepped nearer, amazed to see faded red hair where there should have been white poking out from underneath the ancient woman’s black cap and ribbons.

  ‘You’re like your mother right enough,’ Granny Beaton nodded, with a catch of her breath.

  ‘How long are you staying?’ Maggie asked bluntly.

  Her grandmother’s watery brown eyes widened in surprise and then her lined face broke into a delightful smile.

  ‘As long as your mother needs me, Margaret,’ she replied.

  ‘Maggie,’ Maggie insisted. They regarded one another for a moment ‘Why have you never been to see us before?’

  Granny Beaton let out a soft sigh. ‘I’m not a great one for the travelling - Maggie,’ she explained. ‘I’ve had to move about more than God intended. But I came for your christening - I came for all your christenings, so I did.’