Gavin neatly folded his newspaper and laid it aside. ‘Not when I have to go to Edinburgh first.’
‘Edinburgh?’ Gilbert echoed, his face puzzled.
Gavin sprang up lightly from his chair. ‘Kelso was telling me there’s trouble with the potatoes in the North end field. Some blight or other, he thinks. Don’t just stand there, come on with me and have a look.’
After the two men had gone, Lorianna felt a vague unease … something she could not put her finger on. Alone in the high-ceilinged room she hovered absent-eyed as if she had forgotten what it was she had come in for.
5
‘A,’ her father monotoned from his green chair and Clementina, standing sturdily in front of him in her brown dress and white pinafore with lacy cap sleeves, piped up, ‘A soft answer turneth away wrath but grievous words stir up anger.’
Henny had brushed her honey-coloured hair so that it hung softly from a middle parting, framing her pert little face, loosely curling over her shoulders and tumbling down her back. Her eyes were wide with a mixture of desperation and defiance. She had an awesome admiration for her father and was in a fever to please him, but if she did get things wrong and incurred his wrath she was determined not to shame herself further by flinching or weeping.
‘B.’
‘Be … be …’
‘Come on! Come on!’
‘Be ye kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another.’
‘C.’ Her father leaned forward to fire his words at the fragile target of her face.
‘ C … C … C … ‘ Her heart pattered up to her throat, but she must not stutter. To stutter could be fatal, Henny said. Clementina had terrible visions of one day dying of a stutter, choking to death over words that just wouldn’t come out.
‘Come ye little children,’ she managed in an excited rush, ‘hearken unto me. I will teach you the fear of the Lord.’
She was acutely tuned in to Henny’s tension and could see the nervous twitch in the nurse’s eye without looking round at her. The library was a shadowy nightmare place, long and windowless except for the far corner. Its ceiling-high shelves of maroon, brown and black books were intimidating, as were the bulky high-backed chairs and big gold-fringed, blood-coloured light shades that always seemed to darken rather than lighten the room. Even so, the library did not have such frightening associations as the oak room which was her father’s study. There she would be punished and there Henny would be made to wait outside the door.
‘D.’ Her father’s voice continued and Clementina noticed his eyes had begun to twitch behind his pince-nez.
Hands tightly clasped behind her back, she tossed her head as if she was not a bit frightened.
‘Depart from evil and do good, seek peace and pursue it.’
‘E.’
‘Em … em …’
‘E.’
‘Enter not into the paths of the wicked and go not in the way of evil men.’
If she was very good and answered every question promptly and correctly, she was rewarded with a pat on the head which made her quiver with pride and pleasure. It was not only the alphabet that had to be faced of course. There was adding and subtracting, spelling and singing.
If she did not do well in her testing, or if she had been particularly naughty in any other way, she could be punished in a variety of ways from being locked alone in a dark windowless cellar where rats scraped and rustled, and beetles scurried to and fro, to the humiliation of having to unbutton and pull down her knickers and be thrashed on her bare bottom until she felt faint but never cried. Only later, safely back in the nursery at the top of the tower with Henny, would she broken-heartedly sob into the nurse’s apron. More than anything else it was incurring her father’s displeasure that distressed her.
Henny would cradle her close, hush her and kiss her and sing:
‘Hush-a-ba, birdie, croon, croon,
Hush-a-ba birdie, croon;
The sheep are gone to the silver wood,
And the goats are gone to the broon, broon.’
Then of course there was the other ordeal of the visit to the sitting-room or the drawing-room every night. The drawing-room was always the worst, because that meant there would be other people there as well as her mother and father.
Special dolls were kept there for the occasion, hard-faced dolls with cold, uncuddly china limbs. Mother or one of the visitors would pretend they were having a marvellous time playing with her. They would dress and undress the dolls and keep repeating, ‘Oh look, how sweet! Oh, just look at those little shoes. Oh, isn’t it a darling dolly in that sweet little hat?’
Or her mother’s rose-petal fingers would lightly stroke Clementina’s cheek and she would smile and say to the others, ‘Isn’t she beautiful?’ And Clementina would blush and toss her hair.
If father was there her mother didn’t say such things—or if she did, she quickly lapsed into guilty silence; Henny said this was because father didn’t believe it right to praise children to their faces. He didn’t think it was good for them.
Picture books would be brought out, pages turned and questions asked. ‘And what is that, darling? and that … and that?’
And Clementina would stand with chin pressed stubbornly down into her pinafore, only raising her eyes to steal yet another look at the clock on the mantelshelf. When the big hand and the little hand were straight up and down, Henny would come and fetch her and take her up to the nursery.
Today there was no one there but her mother and Gilbert. But she didn’t like Gilbert very much.
‘How’s the little tomboy?’ he asked.
‘Gilbert!’ her mother scolded. ‘She’s not; she’s mother’s little angel, aren’t you, pet?’
‘Angel, my foot!’ Gilbert chortled. ‘I’ve seen her shinning up trees like a squirrel and fighting with the gardener’s son.’ Then, bending over Clementina and lowering his voice, ‘Will I tell father? By George, you’d get some licking for that, eh?’
‘Gilbert! Don’t torment her!’
She didn’t simply dislike Gilbert, she hated him.
‘You mustn’t get upset, darling,’ mother said, offering her a sweet from a little silver dish half-hidden between framed photographs on the pedestal table. ‘Gilbert’s only teasing.’
To get a sweet was such a novelty that Clementina forgot her hatred in the intense enjoyment of the treat. ‘Thank you, Mother.’
Gilbert grinned under his moustache. ‘Old-fashioned as well. She’s never once called you “Mamma,” has she?’
‘She’s a very clever girl, aren’t you, my pet?’
Clementina felt irritated and impatient to be away. Mother was very beautiful, but she did ask silly questions at times. If she were to answer ‘Yes’ she would be regarded as vain. If she answered ‘No’ she would be chastised for being cheeky.
Ignoring the question, Clementina chewed earnestly at her sweet and wondered what story Henny would tell her tonight. Sometimes it was a story about history like the glories of Queen Elizabeth, Francis Drake and Walter Raleigh or the escapes of Charles II and Bonnie Prince Charlie. At other times it was a story about animals. She liked all Henny’s stories and had no special preferences.
At last she was removed from the spotlight of mother’s and Gilbert’s attention and escaped with Henny outside to the hall. Henny was getting slower at climbing the stairs and Clementina, racing on in front, had to call to her to hurry. The oil lamps had not yet been lit in the tower and the small voice echoed down through the darkness.
‘Henny! Henny!’
‘Watch now, dear. Watch you don’t fall. Be careful. Please do!’ The nurse called breathlessly back but couldn’t hurry. Hand leaning on the rough stone wall, she took the steps as a very small child would—one foot first, then the other hoisted up to stand beside it before repeating the process. At the top of the stairs at last, she had to lean against the wall for a few minutes to recover. Alice Tait, the nursery-maid, came out of the day nursery and pee
red along through the shadows of the wooden-floored corridor.
‘Are you all right, Mrs Henning?’ Alice, barely sixteen years old, had a wobbly barrel of a figure and a broad moon face framed with the big frill of a mob cap always worn well pulled down to hide her hair because she was self-conscious about her outrageously thick curls. Some days she didn’t bother to comb it, for it was such a struggle to get the comb through her curly mop.
‘Put on the kettle, Alice,’ Henny’s words escaped in little puffs.
‘Right you are.’ Alice bustled away to balance the kettle behind the big iron fireguard on the nursery fire. There was no means of cooking in the nursery and Mrs Musgrove insisted that all food had to be carried up from the kitchen. But a kettle was allowed and Henny kept a tea-caddy and a tin of biscuits on one of the shelves of the toy cupboard. Sugar and milk tended to be a problem, but they usually managed to save some from the meal trays that Alice brought up from the kitchen at breakfast, lunch and tea times.
It was not that Cook grudged extra milk or sugar, but Mrs Musgrove kept such an eagle eye on the stores and every grain, drop, crumb or ounce of everything had to be accounted for. It was a terrible harassment to Cook and a state of war continually simmered under the surface between her and the housekeeper which was liable to erupt violently and unexpectedly at any time and send everyone scurrying nervously from the kitchen. Mrs Musgrove never lost her temper; she became icy calm which, as Cook said, wasn’t natural and enough to put the wind up anybody. Cook always lost her temper and tended to take it out on lesser mortals like Mima, the kitchen-maid, or Janet the scullery-maid, or any other maid—or even Clementina if she happened to be handy.
Her temper, however, flashed across the blue sky of her sunny nature and just as quickly fizzled out. She was sorely tried she said, by that monstrous woman. But then she’d say, ‘Oh, to hell, let old beady eyes have her own way. Why should I care? I’ve better things to think about!’ Meaning her secret tryst in the long grass by the river with poacher Wattie McLeod.
Now Henny collapsed into the rocking chair by the fire and it creaked helplessly back and forth for a minute or two. Alice didn’t like the look of her. Mrs Henning was wiry and as energetic as a grasshopper, but she seldom had much colour except patches of freckles on her cheeks and now her skin looked proper sickly.
‘Are you sure you’re all right, Mrs Henning?’ she asked again, in a lower more dramatic voice.
The nurse put out both hands for her cup of tea and after a few sips managed to nod and say, ‘Yes, of course, of course. Stop asking me that. You’re worrying Miss Clementina.’ And then to the child, ‘It’s all right, dear. Henny’s just a little tired. I think after we’ve had our tea we’ll both go to bed.’
Clementina slept in the same room as Henny and loved to watch her dress and undress. The nurse was a perpetual wonder to her and no less when she was performing these feats. She always dressed and undressed under the bell-tent of her long-sleeved flannelette nightdress. In the morning she would first of all extricate herself from the sleeves, after which a hand would grope out from under the hem and snatch her combinations from the bedside chair. Then her stays, bust-bodice, black stockings, knickers—everything disappeared under the nightdress! Then suddenly it was whipped off and there would be Henny almost fully clothed.
Later, when putting on her hat to go out, she would perform another feat of magic. She wore two huge hatpins and Clementina always thought she stuck them right through her head.
The procedures occurred in reverse at night and on this occasion Clementina, cosily tucked up in bed, watched wide-eyed with interest as usual.
‘Tell me a story,’ she asked as soon as Henny’s feat of undressing had been accomplished. Henny sat down on the bed breathless and smiling.
‘Just a small one, Miss Clementina, while I brush out my hair.’
Clementina thought Henny had the most beautiful hair in the world. Maybe it wasn’t a pretty colour like her mother’s, or even as glossy, but it was comfortable hair—hair that didn’t mind being touched or twined round small fingers or messed about. Fuzzy and warm to the cheek, when you buried your nose in it, it tickled and made you laugh. It seemed an enormous amount of hair for such a delicate little face and no matter how it was screwed back and pinned, it still remained bushy enough to make hats rise and wobble precariously on top of it.
Entranced, Clementina watched the way an overall fuzz refused to be brushed down and the shaft of light from the narrow window at Henny’s back shone through it, giving her a kind of halo in the child’s eyes.
Sometimes, as a special treat, she was allowed to clamber into Henny’s bed and cuddle in beside her. Clementina loved to mould into Henny’s back and feel the bony ridges of her spine and the soft flesh about it and the long hair tickly against her face. Sometimes she would tickle Henny and then Henny would grab the child’s foot and drag it over her hip until they struggled and laughed together. Clementina became entangled and enveloped in Henny’s hair and voluminous nightgown and it was as if she and the nurse had become one person. Eventually, an exhausted Clementina would fall blissfully asleep in the nurse’s arms.
Sometimes, if her mother and father were going out to dinner or to some important function, she and Henny would creep down the tower stairs and open the door just a crack so that they could peer through into the hall and, unseen, watch her mother and father come out of the bedroom in all their finery, cross the hall and disappear through the stained-glass doors. Then she and Henny would rush upstairs and watch from the nursery window. It was especially exciting on a winter’s evening when the gardens and all the estate were in darkness and only a slice of light from the entrance hall and the lamp on the brougham illuminated the scene of father helping mother into the carriage. Father would be in his black evening suit and silk top hat. Mother with her hair dressed with long combs studded with pearls and a large rose set low on the nape of her neck. Her delicate lace gown with its trimming of frills and beads would spread over the ground in her wake and her bare shoulders would be covered by her sable evening cloak with a broad insert of guipure lace. Or perhaps she would have feathers in her hair and wear her shiny satin gown and diamond collar and velvet cloak.
Whatever mother wore would send Henny into gasps and excited whispers of admiration and she would say to Clementina, ‘Aren’t you a lucky girl, to have such a beautiful mother?’
Clementina would feel quite excited too, but her excitement stemmed more from the secret game she and Henny were playing of running up and down the stairs and spying on the event. She took some pride and pleasure at the dazzling sight of her mother, but both her parents were soon forgotten in a storytelling session with Henny as she sat on Henny’s knee and they sipped their bedtime tea or hot milk, isolated close together in the shadowy candlelit nursery at the top of the tower. Her parents were strangers belonging to a different world.
In truth, Clementina preferred Henny’s clothes even if her dresses were always light blue cotton and didn’t have a train. And even if her jackets were not fur, but short black cloth with leg-of-mutton sleeves. And Henny wouldn’t be Henny without boots that always seemed slightly too clumpy and heavy for her.
Alice the nursery-maid was not altogether of their world. She was always grumbling because she had so much work to do, like clearing out the day nursery fire (father didn’t allow fires in the night nursery) and polishing the grates and washing the floors, and running up and down the stairs with bath water and meals, not to mention the coal. She just lived for the afternoons and evenings off when she could be away from the nursery. It was strange to see her then without her big frilled cap but instead a frill of untidy curls dangling around her plump face.
Sometimes when Alice became too harassed and Clementina was in her way she would give her a vicious push or punch, then hiss at her, ‘If you tell Henny, the gipsies’ll get you and burn you alive in their camp fire!’
Alice had made so many threats about what the gipsies
would do to her that Clementina always clung close to Henny if they passed gipsies on one of their walks to Littlegate or Bathgate.
Small though Henny was, Clementina was sure that the nurse would never let anyone hurt her.
As long as Henny was there to protect her, she was safe.
6
‘Sometimes I hate father,’ Gilbert said. His lower, fleshy lip protruded childishly and the corners of his mouth dragged down.
‘You mustn’t say such a thing,’ Lorianna protested.
‘Damn it, it’s true! All his church friends in Bathgate and thereabouts think he’s such a saintly and generous gent, but to me he’s just a beastly old skinflint.’
‘Your father provides you with a good home and everything you need.’
‘He may provide you with everything you need, step-mamma, but not yours truly.’
They were on their bumpy way down to Bathgate, where she was to pay a call on Mrs Forbes-Struthers and Gilbert had to visit his tailor.
‘It’s a frightful humiliation for a chap having to beg and plead for every suit or shirt he needs,’ Gilbert continued. ‘And having to justify the need. I work hard in that factory, damn it—not to mention the estate—and I don’t get a penny.’
‘Surely that can’t be true?’
‘Not a penny to call my own. I’m twenty years of age and not a penny to call my own!’
‘Your father does give you some money,’ persisted Lorianna.
‘I’m telling you, only when I beg and plead and justify to his approval why I need it, and he always impresses on me that it’s his money and he’s doing me a great favour by giving me anything—which is always much less than I ask, incidentally.’
Lorianna sighed. Gavin was the same with her, but she accepted it as the normal way of a careful and conscientious husband. She realised, however, that it could be a humiliating situation for a young man to be in.
‘Have you spoken to him about a salary?’ she ventured tentatively.
‘Oh, I’ve tried,’ Gilbert said bitterly, ‘and got nothing but one of his dreary sermons for my trouble. And more work and less money into the bargain! He puts on his preacher’s voice and quotes Thessalonians at me—“For even when we were with you, this we commanded, that if any would not work, neither should he eat.” And who was talking about not working, for Christ’s sake!’
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