Not that the prostitutes of the New Town and the Old Town ever met. The gardens of Princes Street marked the line. The earthen Mound and the north bridge separated the two classes of prostitutes as completely as if they were the outward lines of two opposing armies.
Alice now had lodgings at Nelly Rudd’s place in Covenant Close in the High Street. She didn’t much care for Nelly Rudd either, but regarded her as an old harridan who, like the potato, seemed to thrive and grow fat buried in rottenness. There was nothing Nelly would not do for money. She would have murdered any of her girls and sold them to the body-snatchers if there had been any still going around, and Alice wasn’t all that sure that there were not. The ghosts of Burke and Hare still haunted the place, that was for sure. Often, in dark closes and corners of the High Street, bareheaded and short-skirted, Alice shivered with more than the cold as she waited for customers. She needed quite a few customers to enable her to pay for her lodgings at Nelly’s, over and above which she needed money to buy her own food which she cooked (if she was ever lucky enough to have a bit meat or tripe) in Nelly’s kitchen. More often than not, she just had bread and dripping or a lump of cheese. Sometimes though she managed a hot pie or a fish supper. Her mouth always watered at the thought of that. Especially a fish supper, which was lovely and filling as well as delicious.
It was terrible to be hungry, as she often was now even though she spent all she earned—apart from what she had to pay to Nelly—on food and wine. She needed the wine to give her courage to face the dark closes and wynds of the High Street. It was a constant source of anguish and terror to loiter in them alone at night, something that never diminished no matter how tough an exterior she tried to assume in order to protect herself. There in some damp, stinking, echoing tunnel she would stand, never knowing if the shadowy apparition approaching was a ghost or another Jack the Ripper. And when the menacing shadow materialised close up as a fat-bellied, bushy-moustached man, she would cling to him in relief, welcoming him in a crazy futile way as some sort of a protector. And then she would take him back to Nelly’s and become bawdy and jolly with relief over innumerable glasses of wine or spirits. There were a few shillings to be made out of buying wine and spirits wholesale by the bottle and doling it out in small, dearer, amounts to customers. Nelly bought the bottles and so she made most of the money but the girls got their share, albeit a small one. Nelly’s favourites were those who could persuade customers to buy the most drink. This meant that the girls as well as the customers had to be heavy drinkers because naturally the customer paid for his girl’s drinks as well as his own.
Alice always drank as much as she could because, apart from the money this earned, it made her temporarily feel cheerful. Sometimes it even made her feel warm and safe. But she could never manage to drink as much as the rest, especially Sadie McPhee who downed gallons of the stuff and then, after spewing up, was ready to start all over again. Afterwards, however, Alice just felt colder and more afraid than ever. Not that she ever showed it of course—that would have been only to invite the derisive laughter and tormenting tricks and taunts of Nelly Rudd and the girls.
To survive in the High Street you had to be tough and, outwardly at least, Alice was as tough as the rest and tougher than some. Like Cissie Urquhart, for instance. Cissie had tried to earn a respectable living as a shirt-maker to keep her and her bedridden mother. But she was paid so little for working such long hours that she had been forced to turn to prostitution so that she and her mother could survive. At the shirt-making she had worked from early dawn until the clock struck midnight, toiling until she had become gaunt-faced, half-starved and utterly exhausted with each racking week’s ceaseless stitching. Cissie still looked nothing but skin and bone after she had taken to the streets and still she could not earn more than a pittance. She was so wretched and ashamed about what she was doing that often she burst into tears, putting the men off. And even worse, Cissie couldn’t drink at all.
It was after her mother died that she had ended up at Nelly Rudd’s and Alice had got to know her and immediately taken her under her wing.
‘You’ll be the death of me yet, so you will!’ Alice was always telling her. And often she would shout at the weeping Cissie, ‘Bloody hell! Can you not learn just to open your legs and shut your eyes? Be like me. Think of what it means. A fish supper, for instance. Or a lovely hot juicy pie!’
Sometimes Alice had a right barney with Nelly Rudd in her efforts to protect Cissie and stop her from being flung out. Sometimes she had to fork up for Cissie’s lodgings when she hadn’t made enough to pay for them herself. That made Cissie even worse, since she was even more ashamed and upset about having to take money from Alice than having to earn it from customers.
‘One of these days,’ Alice kept warning her, ‘I shall pulverise you, so help me God! If you would just relax and let the customers get on with it, you’d soon get used to it.’
But instead of soon ‘getting used to it’, Cissie soon just withered away and died. When that happened Alice managed to keep drunk all that day and all that night. The day after, she had felt as if she was about to die herself. Wandering agitatedly about the narrow grey streets, she had looked up at the Calton and remembered Robert Kelso and the green hills of Bathgate. Then, reaching the safety of the dark tunnel of a close, she had sobbed broken-heartedly into her petticoat.
29
‘There’s mother out walking,’ Clementina said, peering out of the narrow schoolroom window. ‘She must be feeling better.’
She could not bring herself to say that Mrs Musgrove was walking by her side and that Lorianna had her arm linked in that of the older woman and seemed to be leaning heavily against her. As a child Clementina had been afraid of the housekeeper. Now, at fourteen years and on the brink of womanhood, she detested her. As the daughter of the house why wasn’t she down there at her mother’s side? She burned with indignation at the unfairness of the situation and blamed it, for the most part, on the housekeeper.
Mrs Musgrove guarded Lorianna like a jailer. It was almost as if she had some power over her. It was understandable certainly that her mother would need someone to lean on and to look after her following the terrible trauma of father’s death. It must have been a dreadful time for her to live through. For Clementina, life had gone on much the same. She remembered Mrs Musgrove telling her that father had been found murdered and mother had collapsed with shock. Later she’d learned from one of the other servants that the grieve had been hanged. But none of it had ever seemed real. It was yet another nightmare. Previously she had not given her mother much thought—there never seemed any point. Her mother had shown little interest in her and indeed often appeared to actively dislike her and avoid her. There never had been any question of love. Now, although still certain that her mother did not care about her or even give her a thought, Clementina could not help feeling concerned for her. There was something so heart-rendingly vulnerable about her appearance, even from this distance.
Lorianna was as elegant as ever, but had lost weight. There was in fact such a fragile look about her that it seemed as if one puff of wind might flutter her away beyond anyone’s protective grasp. More and more Clementina worried about her mother and felt for her, until a need which she thought she had crushed long ago was reawakened: she longed to touch her mother and be close to her. She knew of course that such feelings were hopeless, since every ounce of love and affection her mother possessed was concentrated on baby Jamie. She had less time and inclination than ever to have anything to do with her daughter, even if Mrs Musgrove had been likely to allow it.
‘You just upset her,’ the housekeeper said, and secretly and in regretful bewilderment, she had to admit to herself that Mrs Musgrove was right. The mere sight of her seemed to plunge her mother into acute distress. So for her mother’s sake, because she loved her truly, she tried to hide away and keep out of her sight as much as possible.
Miss Viners’ sharp voice interrupted Clementina’s thoughts.
‘Return your attention to your history book at once.’
Clementina sighed and reluctantly went back to sit down at her desk.
‘Ladies do not slouch.’ Miss Viners was wearing her reading glasses and she stared accusingly over them. ‘Especially small ladies.’
Miss Viners certainly didn’t slouch. She was erect at all times, stiff and hard and flat as a tall plank of wood. Even her side-braids looked as hard as cartwheels, they made her face look narrow and seemed clamped so tightly against her ears that it was a wonder she was able to hear a sound.
Clementina propped her elbows on the desk and thumped her chin rebelliously into her palms.
‘History’s so dull!’
‘Dull? Dull?’ Miss Viners echoed. ‘How can history be dull?’
‘All those boring old dates to learn.’
‘These are important stepping stones in the background of us all.’
‘They don’t mean anything to me.’
‘Perhaps it is you who are dull. Have you ever thought of that, young lady?’
Clementina’s brows came down. ‘I’m not dull. Quite the contrary. That’s why I’m complaining about having to sit here learning lists of dates and then having to repeat them to you over and over again like a parrot.’
Miss Viners removed her spectacles and tapped them against the thin line of her mouth before observing, ‘Yes, I have sometimes wondered about the value of teaching by rote myself.’
She often surprised Clementina like this and as a result Clementina had acquired some measure of respect for her.
‘I know history shouldn’t be dull,’ she said now.
‘No, indeed,’ Miss Viners agreed. ‘Especially that of our own country. Scotland has had a turbulent and fascinating history. One only needs to walk through the streets and wynds of Edinburgh to see proof of that.’
‘The ancient buildings, you mean?’
‘Yes.’
Clementina brightened, ‘Can’t we go through and see them, Miss Viners? Can I not learn the history that way? Go to the Castle, for instance? Just reading about these places isn’t the same.’
Miss Viners fished up her sleeve for her handkerchief and dabbed daintily at her mouth.
‘I don’t know if such a project could be arranged.’
Clementina was beginning to feel quite excited. She had always wanted to explore Edinburgh.
‘There are trains. So we wouldn’t need mother’s carriage. And we could stay at Malcolm’s house overnight and then you could go to one of the Edinburgh meetings.’
‘There is a spiritualist convention on next week.’ Miss Viners’ dark eyes lit up, although she managed to retain her stiff composure.
‘Well, then!’ Clementina cried out triumphantly.
‘Get on with your dates,’ Miss Viners commanded.
Clementina dutifully lowered her head but she wasn’t even seeing the history book. She knew Miss Viners’ Achilles heel was anything to do with the occult or the spirit world and that an excuse to attend the spiritualist convention would prove too much to resist.
They would have their trip to Edinburgh all right. Miss Viners in her usual capable way would arrange it, even if this meant doing so through Mrs Musgrove. Miss Viners could be sickeningly obsequious and fawning when it came to getting her own way from superiors. She knew the way the land lay and, grossly unfair though she might think it, in Blackwood House Mrs Musgrove was everybody’s superior. Clementina could have wept with the keenness of her pleasurable anticipation. She felt so much alone and cut off from the world in Blackwood House that she would have welcomed a trip anywhere with anyone. But to Edinburgh! To the capital city! The fascinating place that she had read so much about. What joy! And to think of all the interesting people there!
It was a great deprivation to Clementina to be alone. She didn’t count Miss Viners as company. The governess existed in Blackwood House only because she had to, escaping down to Bathgate or elsewhere as often as she could. She did her job as conscientiously as she was able and earned her pittance of a salary and that was all. She had never shown the slightest affection towards Clementina and, apart from her education, never gave her a thought.
Sometimes during the past two years Clementina had been so lonely she had held long conversations with her doll. Or she had read to the doll some poem which had particularly moved her and she had wanted to share with someone.
Miss Viners seemed to have no interest in poetry. Or even in prose fiction. All she taught were facts. Clementina had often wondered how this apparently cold factual approach to learning coincided with Miss Viners’ belief in the supernatural. Indeed she had once asked her and the governess had bristled with annoyance.
‘But the spirit world is factual. There is no contradiction between my intellectual approach to teaching and to the study of the occult.’
Nevertheless, Miss Viners did not prevent Clementina from reading fiction or poetry. In fact she never stopped Clementina from reading anything. It was just that Clementina could see that the governess was incapable of warming to it; it was simply a waste of time hoping to share any pleasure in it with Miss Viners and so she had shared it with her doll.
This was the rag doll called Black Mammy that Alice Tait had made for her years ago from one of her black woollen stockings and scraps of coloured darning wool. The doll was still very precious to Clementina and even now, at fourteen years of age, she slept with it cuddled close to her under the blankets. Of course she was careful never to let it be seen or alluded to during the day when Miss Viners was around. Perhaps quite rightly, Miss Viners would regard her love of the doll as unhealthy at her age and do something terrible to it such as tossing it into the schoolroom fire. There was no sentiment about Miss Viners.
‘This is a hard world for most women,’ she had said more than once. ‘The quicker you learn that the better.’
In preparation for her visit to the capital city, Clementina busied herself re-reading every book about Edinburgh she could lay her hands on. Never for one moment did she doubt Miss Viners’ capability in making possible the miracle of the visit. Sure enough, within a few days the governess had announced that they were going to Edinburgh and even that they would stay at Mr Malcolm’s house in Heriot Row.
Malcolm was now assistant to an Edinburgh minister and had recently married a lawyer’s daughter called Mary Ann. The lawyer, a widower, had died and left them the house in Heriot Row.
Miss Viners said, ‘As the colossal figure of Portsmouth is the seaman, so the lawyer bestrides Edinburgh and brings his legal atmosphere and habit of mind into all departments and aspects of the city’s life and people.’
‘The Edinburgh people,’ Mary Ann said, ‘are the most responsible of all God’s creatures!’
‘In every department of the city’s life,’ Malcolm agreed, ‘you find the same system of deferred judgement and striving for exactitude in statement. Even a humble Edinburgh grocer advertises in his window “Eggs as fresh as possible for sale”.’
Malcolm seemed very happy in Edinburgh and Clementina was glad. She had always liked him better than Gilbert and at least he always made a point of speaking to her when he visited Blackwood House. She wondered what his house was like. This would be her first visit to Malcolm’s new home and Miss Viners said that no doubt it would be very grand. But what thrilled Clementina most was the fact that Robert Louis Stevenson had once lived in Heriot Row and was supposed to have got his inspiration for Treasure Island from a miniature island in the middle of a pond in Queen Street Gardens, which faced the houses in the Row.
To walk the exact same ground as the author of Treasure Island: what a thrill! And as well as the Castle and Holyrood Palace, Miss Viners was to take her to see Greyfriars Church and the grave of Greyfriars Bobby. Not to mention the beautiful paintings in the National Gallery. It was all so exciting. Edinburgh, the beautiful Athens of the North. At last, at last she was going to see it!
30
Miss Viners said, ‘It i
s situated between the Pentland Hills and the Firth of Forth.’ They were making their first excursion from Malcolm’s house and it was one of the happiest days of Clementina’s life. Everything was beautiful and intensely interesting. Even Miss Viners looked more attractive. Instead of her usual schoolroom black, she was wearing a brown skirt and jacket and a brown lacquered hat. The brown was certainly the darkest shade possible and the cut of the clothes unfashionable, but the high-necked, stiffly-boned blouse was a soft shade of beige. For the first time Clementina noticed that Miss Viners’ eyes were not dull black but glossy brown.
Clementina was unaware of her own expensively-cut shorter skirt flouncing with petticoats, her neat jacket and white fur hat and muff. Her attention was caught by too many new and riveting sights around her. At times in her excitement she skipped alongside Miss Viners, her long hair swinging and bouncing over her shoulders. Until Miss Viners quelled her with a sharp reminder that she was a lady and ought to behave like one.
Miss Viners had been impressed with Heriot Row, its quiet genteel houses at the bottom of wide gardens and its exceptionally wide pavement. Clementina admired the New Town—the rare beauty of Charlotte Square, the handsome St Andrews Square and Queen Street, but it was the unexpected vistas which fascinated her most: how other streets fell away towards the Firth, for instance, and the illusion this gave that Edinburgh was hanging on the edge of the world. Some of these streets had statues showing sharp against the clouds like gods descending; it was equally intriguing to see Edinburgh citizens appearing—first hat, then head, then bended body, as if advancing out of a hidden sea. Clementina could imagine that away down on the Firth people in boats were looking up at her and Miss Viners apparently walking in mid-air. It was a most exhilarating sensation.
‘The New Town is made up of elegant parallelograms …’ Miss Viners prodded Clementina along. ‘Pay attention, Miss! You are here to learn, not to dream.’
Light & Dark Page 23
