Light & Dark

by Margaret Thomson-Davis

  ‘I hate you,’ she announced.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘I mean it. You are so typical of all I detest in the male sex—self-assured and arrogant and safe. You know that the whole of society, the economy, the law and the government, everything is geared to your convenience, weighted in your favour. You think you’re entitled to have everything your own way. You’re the favoured race, made in God’s image. Instead, of course, the other way around.’

  The amusement had disappeared now. ‘That sounds like blasphemy.’

  ‘What? That man made God in his image? It’s just a statement of fact.’

  ‘It’s nothing of the kind.’

  ‘If there is a God,’ she said, ‘why shouldn’t it be a woman?’

  He was losing his self-control now. Temper whipped across his face, tightening his muscles and coming to boiling point in his eyes.

  ‘Don’t be bloody ridiculous!’

  ‘I shall be bloody ridiculous if I like!’

  He grabbed hold of her shoulder and jerked her round at such speed she thought he had broken her neck.

  ‘Never let me hear you curse again. You will remember that you’re a lady!’

  ‘Isn’t that just typical,’ she managed to say after she had recovered her breath. ‘You can swear because you’re a man, but I cannot swear because I’m a woman?’

  ‘That’s correct.’

  Her neck hurt abominably and, to prevent herself from weeping with the pain more than anything else, she stamped on his foot as hard as she could, then flew away to disappear in hiding places that were familiar to her from her childhood and of which he knew nothing.

  ‘Just wait until I get my hands on you, you little devil,’ he shouted in fury to the empty countryside. ‘Just wait!’

  44

  ‘That’s the mill bell,’ Rhona Lindsay said. ‘I shall have to run.’

  ‘Can’t you take the afternoon off?’ Clementina asked. ‘There’s so much more I want to talk to you about.’

  Rhona’s dark eyes surveyed her pityingly. ‘I would get my books, nothing surer. Then what would I do—starve?’

  ‘Oh, surely not …’

  ‘Miss Blackwood, I’d not only be without money for food, I’d be without a roof over my head. This house, like all the other houses around here, belongs to the mill. It’s been hard enough trying to keep it up until now.’

  ‘I’m sorry. When is the most suitable time, then?’

  Rhona shrugged, already at the door and tossing her shawl around her shoulders. ‘Sunday, I suppose. Look, I’ll have to run.’

  ‘Why don’t you come and have afternoon tea with me on Sunday?’

  Rhona flashed her a sarcastic look as Clementina followed her from the dark interior of the hovel. ‘At Blackwood House? You can’t be serious.’

  ‘I told you before that I always mean what I say. I will meet you at the gates at the foot of the drive at three o’clock. Don’t be late.’

  But Rhona was already flying away towards the mill, her shabby boots showing beneath her skirts, and Clementina could not be certain that she had heard.

  The dismal tolling of the bell had stopped now and the rabbit warren of pitted, muddy streets around the towering prison-like factory were silent and empty, except for an ancient woman sitting on the step of an open doorway smoking a clay pipe and a little girl of no more than nine or ten, burdened with a sleeping baby tied to her back with a shawl.

  Clementina felt weighed down by the whole place. It had taken all her courage to return to Blackwood village after her first visit to the mill, but she had felt she must speak to Rhona Lindsay again. There were so many questions she wanted to ask, so much she needed to learn. She had been used to the cottages of poor people like Alice Tait’s Granny in Littlegate. Now, in comparison with Rhona’s one-roomed hovel, Granny’s cottage seemed quite a desirable place. The window in Rhona’s house was tiny and set in a stone wall about three feet thick. Above it hung a paraffin lamp and beneath it was propped a cloudy, rusty-looking mirror. No fire burned in the narrow, black-barred grate, and it seemed colder inside the house than outside. A frousty, earthy smell invaded the nostrils and dampness crept over the skin and could be seen in dank patches and fungi on walls. On the stone mantelshelf, instead of ornaments, there were two flat-irons and an iron stand. A pair of brass-studded leather bellows hung on a worm-eaten door that looked as if it had been knocked together by a child with planks of wood of different lengths and widths. Two wooden spar-backed chairs and a table were the only furniture, except for the set-in-the-wall bed which looked like a dark oak coffin. Clementina had never seen any place so comfortless and the idea of living so close—literally in the shadow of the mill—and being summoned to toil in it by the mournful bell first thing in the morning and again in the middle of the day, depressed her beyond words.

  Yet Rhona apparently was one of the lucky ones because she had the house to herself and no other mouths to feed but her own. She had found out after she had come to know the girl better that her father had been killed in an accident in the mill and her mother had not long since died of cardiac asthma. The poor woman was already worn down by several miscarriages of course. This was quite commonplace, according to Rhona. All around, all the time, women were being exhausted and ground down by continuous pregnancies. In that case, how could they ever develop as individuals or have any freedom from man’s domination, Clementina said, as long as this state of affairs continued? They would have to learn about birth control. Rhona had given a humourless laugh and told how she’d heard tell of a nurse who had lost her job for explaining to a woman about that.

  ‘The powers that be want us to multiply as much as possible so that they’ll have plenty of cheap labour,’ Rhona said. ‘It pays them to keep us in ignorance. That’s why nobody knows anything about how to stop babies coming; they just keep breeding more mouths to feed and worry about.’

  ‘Do you,’ Clementina asked, ‘know anything about it?’

  Rhona shrugged. ‘I’m better educated than most. I get books out of the Co-op library.’

  ‘But do you know about birth control?’

  Rhona looked sullen. ‘How’m I supposed to know about such things?’

  ‘There are books about that too,’ Clementina persisted.

  ‘I’ve never seen any.’

  ‘There are only a few. Dr Charles Knowlton wrote The Fruits of Philosophy or The Private Companion of Young Married People. I’ve got his book at home; I’ll let you read it. My governess got it for me.’

  Rhona raised a surprised brow. ‘You were allowed to read that sort of thing?’

  ‘Well, I was by my governess. My mother would have fainted with horror if she had known.’

  It was to occur to Clementina eventually that here was an area where she might be of practical help to women. And not only working-class women. She was aware too that none of her friends knew anything about ‘such things’. Yet surely all women should have control of their own bodies and be able to decide when they were going to be pregnant and how many children they wanted?

  It seemed incredible that information on contraception had met with such active opposition from almost every religious body and government in Europe and America. Until only a few years ago, birth control advocates were still being prosecuted and at least one had been imprisoned with hard labour. People might still be imprisoned for telling people about this, for all she knew. Anything was possible. She believed it was yet another example of the terrible subjection of women by men. It was men who were making the rules about child-bearing—men who did no child-bearing themselves. She had read in the newspapers that men were making great efforts to stop scandalous practices in the mines and were trying to make them safer. Why then did they oppose so vehemently anything to make life safer and better for women? According to statistics mining was man’s most dangerous trade, yet it was four times as dangerous to bear a child as to work in a mine.

  The entire situation was completely illog
ical and could only be explained in terms of men not regarding women as human beings like themselves, with feelings and equal rights to freedom and justice. What Rhona had said was true enough—men politicians were no use. So far as the male politicians were concerned it was ‘Freedom for everyone—except women’. ‘Justice for all—except women.’ It made her so angry.

  In the month that followed her first visit to Rhona Lindsay, the more she thought of the idea of giving women information about contraception the more convinced she became that this would be a more telling and practicable blow for freedom than anything else. She determined to increase her own knowledge on the subject first of all and to track down every source of information. This was not easy and it was especially difficult to actually get her hands on any contraceptives. There were none on display in any chemist’s shop and the few chemists that supplied them only circulated their price lists and catalogues privately. To get these you had to write especially for them and this she did to an Edinburgh chemist, signing herself Mr C. Blackwood to ensure that she would not be discriminated against.

  Kitty and the rest of the girls were absolutely shattered when she told them and even Betsy was rocked on her heels. But they had seen the sense and rightness of it while still struggling to gather the kind of courage to take action themselves, courage that seemed to come naturally to Clementina and which never ceased to amaze them.

  Before Clementina had even mentioned her plans to her friends, however, she had discussed the subject with Rhona Lindsay on the Sunday of the mill-girl’s first visit to Blackwood House. Clementina had gone to the big iron gates promptly at three o’clock and found her already there, standing shivering in a collarless shirt blouse with rolled-up sleeves and a thin black skirt. She was neat and clean and her thick hair had been well brushed and pinned up. Although it was a summer’s day, there was a keen blustery wind and she looked blue with the cold.

  ‘Good grief!’ Clementina said. ‘This wind is enough to give you pneumonia. It must be cutting right through you. Why didn’t you wear something warmer?’

  The girl tipped up her chin, eyes flashing. ‘I wasn’t coming up here wearing an old shawl for folks to look down their noses at me!’

  ‘There’s only me in the tower. Everyone’s out for tea—even Jamie and his nanny. Come on, you’re needing a hot drink right away. Then afterwards we will look out one of my coats for you to wear going back home.’

  She’d also given Rhona a long black jacket, a frilly blouse, a skirt and a pair of shoes. ‘You look marvellous in that blouse,’ Clementina enthused. ‘I’ve never liked it on myself; I never felt comfortable in it.’

  The girl’s curly hair had tumbled loose from the pins that secured it and despite the fact that she tried to appear nonchalant, her face was flushed with pleasure and excitement as she tried on the garments.

  Rhona was a little taller than Clementina and so the skirt hem needed taking down and while they sat talking after tea Rhona unpicked the hem, pulling and biting at the threads with her strong white teeth as if, in her excitement, she could not wait until she returned home.

  She seemed to alternate between extremes of mood.

  Sometimes her eyes lowered and she spoke dully with a sullen droop to her mouth. At other times there seemed a wildness about her and she was like one of the animals that darted about bright-eyed in the grounds outside.

  Clementina marvelled at the wild free spirit she detected. She couldn’t fathom how it had blossomed and become so vibrant and strong in the repressive squalid conditions she had witnessed. She had expected Rhona to feel uncomfortable on that first visit to Blackwood House and made the mistake of saying so, because she was surprised how Rhona seemed to be enjoying herself. The first half-hour was rather tense, until after they reached the tower house and she had ordered McGregor to bring up afternoon tea. Once they were alone again and settled down to drink their tea and eat the bread and butter, Sunday jam and cake Flora had brought, Rhona seemed to be in her element.

  When Clementina remarked on this the eyes had sparked with anger. ‘Why should I feel uncomfortable? I would be perfectly happy staying the rest of my days in a luxurious place like this.’

  Clementina had never thought of the tower house as being luxurious. Indeed with its lack of curtains, bare walls, echoing wood floors and spartan furnishings it was not luxurious, except of course in comparison with Rhona’s damp comfortless room in Blackwood village.

  She was glad Rhona had enjoyed herself so intensely and made sure her new friend paid further visits. On each occasion she gave her a blouse, a hat, a petticoat, a pair of stockings or even just a handkerchief—and on each occasion Rhona accepted the articles with a kind of furtive pleasure like a jackdaw collecting stolen treasure.

  By mutual agreement and understanding the visits were kept secret. It was not that either girl was lacking in the courage to stand up to the disapproval and wrath of Clementina’s mother, but facts had to be faced. Clementina had no right to insist on bringing people into her mother’s house of whom her mother would disapprove and whom she would forbid to enter.

  ‘If you were married and it was your own place, it would be different,’ Rhona said. ‘Although then you’d have a bloody husband to contend with!’

  If her habit of dropping the occasional swearword into her conversation was meant to shock Clementina, it failed. It did shock Clementina’s friends however, especially Agnes. And Eva had more than once told Rhona that using such words only proved that the speaker had a limited vocabulary or a limited self-control or both. But Rhona just flashed them a smile as if she found keen enjoyment in shocking them and rousing their criticism.

  ‘I’ve no intention of getting married,’ Clementina informed her and Rhona had hooted sarcastically.

  ‘Oh no, you don’t care a fig for him who keeps chasing after you. A bloody lord, no less!’

  Clementina had flushed with anger. ‘No, I do not. His title may impress you, as it certainly seems to impress everyone else, but it doesn’t impress me in the slightest—any more than does the man himself. It’s not my fault that he keeps turning up at any social function I attend. And you have no idea of the pressure I am under from my mother. Everybody in the family—even the family solicitor, would you believe—is trying to persuade me to succumb to the infuriating man’s advances.’

  ‘Well, I’ve seen his lordship a couple of times when he’s been going through Bathgate in his carriage and—’

  ‘Oh, he has a certain magnetism,’ Clementina conceded. ‘I’m not denying that. That’s no reason, however, for throwing myself into his arms.’

  Rhona laughed, tossing back her head in the careless uninhibited way she sometimes had.

  ‘I don’t see anything to laugh at,’ Clementina protested.

  Rhona shrugged. ‘You always get so hot under the collar when you speak about him.’

  ‘The reason for that is quite simple. He makes me angry!’

  ‘It strikes me,’ Rhona said, ‘that you’re more angry at yourself than him.’

  There was some truth in this. Clementina would never admit it to Rhona or any of her friends, but Douglas Monteith disturbed her in a way that was sometimes quite frightening. And she was angry at herself for feeling frightened, of being prey to emotions over which she seemed to have so little control. She never failed to muster some self-discipline when she found herself in his company, but even these efforts had been undermined by him.

  ‘Relax,’ he commanded. ‘I’m not going to eat you.’

  ‘Are you suggesting I am afraid of you, Lord Monteith?’ She tried to intimidate him with her formal address and her unblinking jewel-hard stare. ‘Because I’m not.’

  ‘Of course not,’ he said. ‘Perish the thought!’

  And still there was the mockery in his eyes and voice that refused to be intimidated away. Indeed, the stronger line she took with him, the stronger and more forceful his attitude became. It was like a test of strength of which he was determined beyon
d all doubt to win. Even when he turned on the charm, and could when he liked, he infuriated her.

  He had spoiled the soirée at Agnes’s house as far as Clementina was concerned. Normally this was a very enjoyable and relaxed affair. Agnes looked quite angelic playing the harp and was usually teased good-humouredly about this. Millicent had a marvellous memory for recitations. Clementina always contributed to the evening by singing a couple of songs and accompanying herself on the piano. On the last occasion however, she had been quite distracted by Douglas standing close beside her, supposedly to turn over the pages of her music. The nearness of him, especially when he bent across her, made her voice tremble as she sang and she became quite tense—indeed she was so furious at her own weakness that she could think of nothing else the whole night.

  To bring relief to her pent-up feelings, she told Rhona how Lord Monteith kept forcing his attentions on her. But Rhona had been no comfort at all, had seemed quite bitter in fact.

  ‘Poor little you!’ she had sneered. ‘Being courted by a wealthy aristocrat! My heart bleeds for you.’

  Rhona wasn’t a very likeable person at times, yet Clementina was becoming more and more aware of a bond between them. Trying to analyse her feelings, she had wondered if it was because she had always been looked after by poor people when she was a child—even Miss Viners had been as poor as a church mouse—and that was what gave her the strange affinity with the working-class girl. She had not the deep affection for Rhona that she felt for her other friends. Apart from anything else, she had known Millicent and the rest for years and years, whereas she hardly knew Rhona at all. She was beginning to see, however, that despite resentment, sneers and at times, Clementina suspected, even hatred, Rhona had acquired a grudging respect for her.

  In many ways, Clementina returned that respect.

  But of course Rhona didn’t understand about Douglas. Even if he had no title, she would have still regarded him as an enviable catch simply because he was wealthy. Clementina was fast coming to the conclusion that at rock bottom Rhona was only capable of thinking in terms of money. Those who had money and those who had not. Rhona spoke about money and material things a great deal and with such a hunger in her eyes that Clementina had once said, ‘Sometimes I think you would sell your best friend if you were offered enough.’