The Tobacco Lords Trilogy

by Margaret Thomson-Davis

  ‘Didn’t you know about Nancy? She married a Virginia farmer,’ Annabella laughed. ‘Losh sakes, there’s so much to tell you, I’ll be talking for days. Betsy’s here, though. At least, she will be. Her folks were meeting her at Port Glasgow. She’ll be starting work again tomorrow. Not that she’s much use. I dare swear I’d be better without her. Although I’ll need somebody by the look of this place. It has been monstrously neglected.’

  Letitia’s drawstring mouth pulled tighter.

  ‘Your father’s a stubborn man. I’ve been telling him for years to take a wife. There’s many a decent widow woman would have been glad to have him. But no. Not even a housekeeper would he look at.’

  Annabella glanced around. Earlier in the day sunshine had pointed with amber fingers at greasy stains on plaster walls and wooden floors that in the past Nancy had so often washed. Now shadows pulled the ceiling lower and weighed down the dark oak, making the room in which they were all crowded look cramped. It was Annabella’s bedroom and the main room of the house in which all entertaining was done. She fluttered around it like a butterfly, brightening the place with gaiety and colour, yet accentuating its darkness and gloom.

  ‘Papa, Papa,’ she cried out. ‘I am ashamed of you, letting the house go to rack and ruin. Now I’ll need at least one other servant as well as Betsy to get everything put to rights.’

  Ramsay glowered.

  ‘Big John managed fine.’

  Annabella rolled her eyes at the mere idea of her father’s clumsy giant of a manservant managing anything. Still, she couldn’t help feeling cheered and refreshed since she had washed her face and changed into an open gown of violet satin with a quilted yellow petticoat. The sleeves were tight to the elbow and then opened into treble flounces of lace-edged gauze. The stomacher-front bodice was wide and low, making her father roar out:

  ‘In the name of decency, Annabella, cover yourself. You’re practically naked.’

  ‘Oh, fiddlesticks, Papa. A wide décolletage is the fashion.’

  ‘I like your hat, Annabella,’ Phemy piped up. ‘We’re still wearing the plaid here.’ She twirled the hat round on the tip of her fingers making its ribbons flap out. ‘Are you putting it on again?’

  ‘No, not tonight.’

  ‘How does it stay on with such a shallow crown? And such a big brim surely catches the wind. Is that why the brim is cocked up front and back?’ Phemy was a sparrow of a woman with frizzy hair secured back in a straggle of ringlets. Her mother towered above her, rigid-backed, with hands clasped at the front of her waist as if supporting her long bosom.

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with the plaid, mistress.’

  ‘No, mother.’

  Annabella said, ‘It’s most fashionable to have the ribbons dangling down at one side but if it’s a very breezy day, I often tie them at the back under my hair or at the front under my chin.’

  Griselle raised her brows and Annabella was reminded of how like her mother she looked; the same straight back, the same long thick hair. Even her cheeks, once a pretty pink, were darkening into purple like Letitia’s.

  ‘I would have thought, Annabella, that away in the back of beyond among savages and wild animals, fashion would have been the least of your concerns.’

  ‘Gracious heavens, I wasn’t living in the forest, Grizzie. I was in Williamsburg which is prodigiously civilised, I can assure you.’

  ‘Tuts, you always were a terrible one for exaggerating,’ Letitia said. ‘Cover your nakedness with a cloak and we’ll be away.’

  Annabella couldn’t help giggling. Obviously to them anything outside of Glasgow was not worth considering. Though Griselle was very proud of the fact that once, long ago, she had visited London. But even London had apparently palled in comparison with the great things Glasgow had to offer.

  ‘We’ve so much to tell you too, Annabella,’ Phemy chattered breathlessly as they picked their way down the stairs. ‘The town’s so much bigger now, didn’t you notice? But no, you would be too shaken up and tired.’

  ‘She’ll have plenty of time to view the town,’ Letitia said. ‘First things first.’

  Annabella supposed the older woman meant seeing the rest of the family. Or perhaps enjoying the meal she had prepared. Certainly it was a relief not to have to tackle cooking so soon after she had arrived and especially in her father’s cramped kitchen.

  The four sedan chairs and the eight chairmen were waiting in a line in the back court. Annabella manoeuvred her hoops in, then plumped herself down, her silver powdered hair like the heart of a flower with violet petals puffing up all around her.

  The chairmen heaved the chair up and loped through the close and out into Saltmarket Street. In a matter of minutes they were at the Cross. Cramped though their tenement was inside, it occurred to Annabella that from the outside the place where they lived was quite a respectable-looking grey stone building. The Ramsay house occupied the second storey at the corner, having windows on Trongate Street but also three little windows, one facing each way, in a lantern-shaped projection overhanging the corner. On part of the ground floor, behind the pillars of the arched piazza, was the Old Coffee House Tavern. Already candles flickered in the Tavern windows and shadows of men in cloaks and cocked hats wibble-wabbled inside and sounds of merriment kept punching the mild autumn air.

  Four streets met at the Cross. Saltmarket Street from the south and the River Clyde, Gallowgate Street from the east, High Street from the north and Trongate Street from the west.

  The chairmen turned left into Trongate Street and trotted resolutely, heads down, through knots of gossiping populace. Stalls were being dismantled and a profusion of goods, such as wooden churns, tubs, pails, bowls, plates, as well as meat and fowl and vegetables and shoes, wheeled away on hand-carts or packed in sacks and then slung over the backs of stall-holders or pack-horses.

  Across the rough dirt road stood the Tolbooth, a magnificent edifice, five storeys high. It had a tower on the corner of Trongate and High Street with a clock and a crown-shaped steeple. In front of the Tolbooth building in Trongate Street was a large outside stairway made up of two sets of stairs, one on the west side and one on the east, joined by a platform or gallery which was used as the place of execution. It also served to exhibit all those condemned to stand in the pillory.

  Annabella wondered if there were still as many Sabbath breakers being pilloried. The Glasgow Sabbath had always seemed to her an odious imposition. It began in the Ramsay household by a reading of exercises from the Bible. Then at ten o’clock the family set forth to church, returning at half past twelve to lengthy prayers, followed by a little cold meat or an egg. No cooking was allowed. Back to church at two o’clock where they were preached at until four or five. Then home again to be questioned on their catechism and to meditate and say private prayers until supper time. After supper her father gave another reading, then more prayers or singing of hymns until bedtime.

  Nothing else was allowed and searchers or inquisitors could enter houses and arrest anyone who danced, hummed a tune, combed their hair, washed, carried water or swept their house. People were arrested and pilloried for ‘profanely walking’ outside. Children were punished for playing.

  How Mungo would react to such restrictions Annabella dreaded to think. In Williamsburg she had insisted that he behaved with some decorum on the Sabbath but there had been very little preaching and catechising since Mr Blackadder died.

  She peered out of the sedan chair window to make sure that Mungo was following with his grandfather and his cousin, George. At first she could see no sign of them. There was only a gaggle of gossips in red and white striped petticoats and white cotton caps tied with red ribbons, and men wearing flat, blue, Kilmarnock bonnets like giant scones on their heads. Two dogs fought noisily in a cloud of dust. Then she saw her father striding along, his cane thumping the ground, his scarlet cloak billowing like a ship in full sail, his thick shoulder-length wig topped by a three-cornered hat. On either side of him hurried
his grandsons, Mungo determined to keep pace with as big, rapid strides as he could manage, George trotting lightly, breathlessly, all the time out of step.

  George kept reminding Annabella of her brother, Douglas, the boy’s father. He had the same lean features and long neck and the vivid blue eyes common to all the Ramsays. Though Adam Ramsay’s had hardened into grey.

  She waved her fan out the window chuckling to herself. Already Mungo had something of the same dour look of his grandfather, although the child was only eight. The worst of it was, he looked even more like Robert Harding. Relaxing back as best she could in the bouncing, swinging chair, she allowed herself a few thoughts about Harding. The night he’d raped her seemed like a dream now. She had been partnered with him at a dancing assembly and afterwards, instead of calling for a sedan chair to take her safely home, he had swept her off her feet and, despite her protests and struggles, had carried her to the Green. No finesse, no courting, no pretty turn of speech, no delicate persuasion could be expected from a man like him. If Harding wanted something, he took it. Years afterwards when they had met again in Virginia, he had tried to excuse his monstrous behaviour by blaming a mixture of drink, his passion for her and the wretched state of his marriage to Kitty Harding. She had forgiven him eventually, especially after meeting his wife. Kitty was a feeble affectation of a woman and no use as a wife to a man like Harding, especially since her illness.

  She supposed that by now Kitty would be dead and Harding more suitably married to his fiery-headed housekeeper, Regina. More suitable as far as being alike in their characters, that is. They were both strong-willed and determined but of the two, Annabella thought that Regina was the worst. How could anyone be more cruel and vengeful than Regina who, long before either of them had met Harding, had betrayed poor Jean-Paul after the battle of Culloden.

  Annabella sighed. It had to be admitted, of course, that her struggle on the Green with Harding was nothing compared with what had caused Regina to hate men so much. Regina had been a mere child when she had been sexually attacked by not just one man but a crowd of French soldiers.

  The jar of the chair stopping and being laid down jolted Annabella back to the present.

  ‘Hell and damnation!’ she cried, struggling out with hoops swaying to reveal flashes of white silk stockings. ‘Watch what you’re about, you ruffians, or I’ll have you thrown in the Tolbooth.’

  She smoothed her hair and plucked her gown into shape while Letitia emerged from one of the other chairs and promptly cracked both her chairmen on the head with her fan. Phemy and Griselle giggled discreetly behind mittened palms.

  ‘Come away, come away.’ Letitia shepherded them all into Locheid’s Land, as the tenement building in which she lived was called. The building was on the same side of Trongate Street as the Tolbooth and the Exchange but further west. Like most of the other buildings it was fronted with arches and pillars on the ground floor and on the first floor above this archway was the Halyburton flat. It was bigger than the Ramsay’s, having four rooms and kitchen, compared with the Ramsay’s two rooms and kitchen. Entry to the building was through one of the archways to the back and into Locheid’s Close. From there the ladies crowded up the dark turnpike stair to the first landing. Letitia tirled the door-pin, filling the darkness with a noise like a harsh-throated crow. Muffled voices and shufflings issued from inside, then the door creaked open. Letitia pushed it wide.

  ‘Where’s the candle, Kate?’ she demanded of the old hunchback in the lobby. ‘The nights are drawing in. It’s high time it was lit.’

  ‘Yer aye getting on to me for being wasteful. Can ye no’ make up yer mind? Oh, there ye are, Annabella. Look at her!’ she suddenly shrieked. ‘What a disgrace! Everything’s bare but her bum.’

  Letitia brushed the servant aside.

  ‘Away and tell Nell to come and help at table and less of your snash.’

  ‘Snash is it?’ The old woman shuffled away, muttering to herself. ‘A wicked disgrace. She should be nailed by her lug to the pillory. And what’s wrong with me helping at the table, eh?’

  All the doors off the lobby were open and there was just enough light from the main bedrooms to guide them through the gloom.

  The first person to greet them in the bedroom was Annabella’s brother, Douglas. As foppish as ever in a high-fronted wig with roll curls at either side and lots of lace frills in his shirt and ribbons streaming from his wrists, he came mincing towards her, arms outstretched.

  ‘Dear saucy brat,’ he said and kissed her hand. ‘I do declare I feel quite pleased to see you.’

  ‘And so you should after all this time,’ Annabella said pertly but she gave him an affectionate kiss on the cheek before smiling around. ‘I’m prodigiously pleased to see all of you. Andrew!’ She offered him her hand. ‘Tell me, why haven’t you persuaded Suky to marry you yet?’

  Andrew’s scurfy face had inflamed beetroot-coloured patches and at Annabella’s words they rapidly spread across his cheeks. He was a small, round man with small, round eyeglasses which he snatched off and busily rubbed.

  ‘Not my good fortune.’ He replaced his glasses to scratch himself vigorously behind one ear. ‘Lord Dinwoodie. Suky favoured him.’

  ‘Gracious heavens, you mean she married someone else?’

  Annabella wasn’t as surprised as she affected to be. Suky was the sonsy daughter of the Earl of Locheid who owned Locheid’s Land and lived upstairs and, although Andrew had courted her desperately for years, it had never seemed very likely that he would capture Suky’s heart. Or anybody’s heart for that matter. Andrew was anything but a romantic figure with his bloodshot eyes and wheezy breath.

  His mother sniffed. ‘Aye, she’ll be ruing it by now.’

  ‘What makes you say that?’ Annabella asked.

  ‘He’s a right wastrel.’

  ‘Lord Dinwoodie?’

  ‘The very one.’ She hitched her shoulders back and tightened her mouth. ‘Never away from gaming tables and cockfights and the like. She hardly ever sees him. And it’s no more than she deserves. She could have had our Andra.’

  Head lowered, Andrew fumbled with his snuffbox.

  ‘Not my good fortune.’

  ‘And him that well placed,’ Letitia went on, ‘since his father crossed to the other side. You knew the gudeman had gone to meet his Maker?’

  Annabella accepted a pinch of snuff from Andrew’s box.

  ‘Yes, Papa sent me the news in one of his letters. I was mightily distressed to hear of his passing.’

  ‘Nothing to be distressed about,’ Letitia said.

  The Earl of Glendinny, Phemy’s husband, had been hovering in the background. Now he shuffled forward, head bent as if his wig was too heavy. Then, after waiting until Annabella had enjoyed a good sneeze and dabbed at her nose and mouth with a lace handkerchief, he greeted her with a quaver of pleasure. He was more than thirty years older than Phemy and his looks rivalled those of his wife in lack of beauty. In his prime he had been a big, muscly man with a nose like a pear and ears like turnips. But at nearly seventy, he had shrunk, leaving his ears and nose the same size but his skin loosely hanging from eyes and chin.

  ‘Weel, weel, Annabella. My, you haven’t changed a bit.’

  Letitia clasped her hands primly in front of her waist.

  ‘Aye, still as perjink as ever. Come away now, the supper’s ready and waiting.’

  A table was laid at the other end of the room from the russet-draped four-poster bed and near enough the fire to benefit from its light and comfort. On the table sparkled a white cover, silver candelabra and Letitia’s best china dishes with their gold edges glittering. Annabella clapped her hands in appreciation.

  ‘Mistress Halyburton, you have surpassed yourself. That table is magnificent. Look, Mungo!’ she called to the little boy who had just arrived with his cousin and grandfather. ‘Did you ever see such delightful food?’

  There was a boiled leg of mutton, a roast loin of pork with peas, pudding and parsni
ps; a roast goose, salmon, lobsters and crab, and a cushie doo pie. A mountainous confection of syllabub graced the far end of the table along with a silver dish of slate biscuits and golden brandy snaps.

  ‘Aye,’ said Letitia looking and sounding as if the whole thing was more of a disgrace than a delight. ‘Eat it then. That’s what it was made for. Nellie?’ she rapped out in a louder voice. ‘Where are you, woman? You’re supposed to be slicing the meat.’

  Annabella fluttered her fan.

  ‘Losh and lovenendie, after that journey I feel quite faint with hunger.’

  Virginia seemed far away in another world now, almost as if it had never existed. And Nancy and Regina and Robert Harding and Carter Cunningham were like ghosts with no substance in reality.

  Yet, memories of Cunningham and the way he had deserted her when she needed him still had the power to hurt.

  ‘Pox on the scoundrel,’ she thought as she whisked towards the table. Carter Cunningham wasn’t the only man in the world.

  2

  REGINA CHISHOLM and Robert Harding sat at opposite ends of the long dining-table. Two candelabra quivered tongues of light around the room, picked out yellow pine walls, reflected in the glassy mahogany table and high-back chairs, gave a golden heart to the silver plates and cutlery. Three Negro slaves waited in the background, one at either end of the table and one at the sideboard. Only the tinkle of cutlery broke the silence.

  Regina took satisfaction from remembering how she had managed to organise the house. Everything had been so different when she had first come to Forest Hall and when Harding’s wife was alive. Kitty Harding had never been any use. Even before her illness she had allowed the slaves to do what they liked. She had been incapable of meting out the slightest discipline. On the contrary, laxity and domestic chaos had been encouraged by her chattering and laughing with the servants and visiting them in their quarters to minister to their ills. The house had been neglected. Meals had been ill-cooked, never on time, and served in a ridiculously slapdash manner.