Light & Dark

by Margaret Thomson-Davis

  Then the companionable silence was broken by Baxter, who opened the door and announced that Gilbert and Malcolm and their wives had arrived.

  Lorianna went forward to greet them warmly and bring them from the shadows of the doorway to the brightness of the fireside and the oil-lamps. The women preceded the men on a waft of perfume and with much rustling of petticoats.

  ‘Hilda, you are wearing your new gown. How lovely! And Mary Ann, you’re looking sweet and pretty as usual, my dear.’

  Lorianna always found comfort in these family gatherings. They had a strengthening and stabilising influence on her life; she could cope with them. She knew where she stood with Gilbert, Malcolm, Hilda and Mary Ann. It was the same with John. With such loving and understanding company for dinner she would be able to forget, for a short time at least, the cuckoo in the nest upstairs.

  As it happened, Clementina was not upstairs in the tower house at that moment—she was cycling over the hills to Blackwood village. It was a blustery night and trees on the horizon were like candle flames in a draught, blown so often by the wind that they had become fixed in that shape. Clementina too had become used to this high and exposed part of the countryside and was wearing a long scarf over her hat, tied firmly in a bow under her chin. It was hard going and her leg muscles were screaming for her to stop and rest. With stubborn determination, however, she pedalled on—skirts flapping noisily, loose coat ballooning out at her back and hundreds of leaves whirling down from the trees and dancing along the road all around her.

  She was trying not to think of birthdays which wasn’t easy because, apart from anything else, it was Rhona Lindsay’s birthday and she had invited Clementina to have supper with her. Clementina could imagine what an effort this meant to Rhona in both financial and energy terms. After working a long day in the factory what the girl needed was a rest, not to start preparing a meal for a visitor. The little money she earned was barely enough to feed herself.

  However, Rhona had her pride and Clementina knew it would be considered an insult if she refused or, worse still, invited her to a birthday meal at Blackwood House instead. And so the invitation had been accepted.

  The wind was battering at her, retreating with a rush only to return, howling, to buffet her again. She was glad of the temporary shelter of a wooded area, where she dismounted for a time to recover her breath. The wild red deer rutted at this time of year and the old stags guarded their groups of hinds against the attacks of the young stags. She could hear their roars, hoarse and deep, ringing through the woods.

  She walked for a time on a carpet of orange and yellow, and fine coffee coloured leaves. The ground was also strewn with twigs broken in the wind and they cracked under her feet.

  Over the hill now she cycled and down towards the village with its empty street lit by dismal gas-mantles puttering feebly within their glass lamps.

  As soon as Rhona opened the door, Clementina saw that she, and indeed all the neighbours, had gone to a great deal of trouble to make the very best they could of the occasion. Obviously everyone had contributed something that they treasured. There was a green plush chair with a circular wood back of darkly polished mahogany which Rhona proudly invited her to sit on after she had helped her off with her coat. There were brightly coloured rag rugs, obviously newly washed, on the floor and one in front of the fireplace. The fire was lit and sparked and crackled cheerily, its rosy glow reflecting in Rhona’s cheeks. She was quite out of breath—either with excitement or the rush to get everything ready, or both. Her thick curly hair was escaping from its pins and tumbling down and her violet eyes were wide and wild-looking as she dragged a small table, ready set, in front of the fire.

  ‘Shall I help you?’ Clementina asked, half-rising.

  ‘No,’ Rhona said sharply. ‘Sit down. I can manage.’

  ‘Everything looks lovely,’ Clementina said, peering at the table when it was placed in front of her, resplendent with a fawn-coloured crocheted cloth and odd pieces of china cups, saucers and plates. ‘And I’m so glad of this warm fire! It was really cold coming over the hills; the wind was cutting right through me.’

  ‘I’ve got soup!’ Rhona announced breathlessly. ‘That’ll heat you up as well.’

  She squeezed around the other side of the table to stir a black iron pot that was balanced precariously on top of the coals and Clementina could see a pulse racing in her neck. Sweat glistened on her face, making her blouse cling damply to her body and revealing full thrusting breasts and pointed nipples.

  ‘I have a present for you,’ Clementina said, placing the package she had brought at Rhona’s side of the table. ‘Happy birthday!’ She paused. ‘Aren’t you going to open it?’

  Rhona attempted, not very successfully, to look cool, calm and collected. ‘After I dish the soup.’ It splashed over the rim as she was handing Clementina’s plate across. ‘Damn!’

  ‘It’s all right,’ Clementina assured her. ‘It just went on the tea plate, not on the cloth or my dress.’

  She noticed that there was a matching tea plate propped up on the mantelshelf as an ornament and a green tin tea-caddy with gilt lettering, also one brass candlestick well-polished and topped with a newly-lit candle. The flat-irons that had previously sat on the mantelshelf had obviously been hidden away somewhere. Another candle guttered on the window-sill and there was an unlit one on the table. Before she sat down opposite Clementina, Rhona lit the table candle and its flame was reflected in her eyes.

  Clementina said, ‘This soup smells delicious. Hurry up and open your present, Rhona, so that we can start.’

  With eager fingers Rhona tore the package open. Inside was a dark purple box and when she opened it and saw the earrings it contained, she gave a squeal of joy so intense that Clementina felt uncomfortable. Rhona could be emotional almost to the point of madness at times. Once at one of their house meetings in the village, one of the women’s husbands had burst in—drunk—to drag his wife off, and to hurl filthy abuse at Clementina and Kitty who were conducting the meeting. Rhona had flung herself at the man like a crazed animal, spitting and scratching and nearly blinding him.

  It was said of Rhona that despite the fact that she was a fine figure of a woman, she would never get a husband because no man would ever have the nerve to take her on.

  ‘Oh, my God!’ She skipped from the table and across to the cracked mirror on the window-sill. Fumbling impatiently, she put the earrings on and then held up the mirror to admire herself and shake her head about to make them swing and sparkle and her hair tumble down.

  Clementina said, ‘They’re not real amethysts, but they look beautiful on you.’

  ‘Beautiful!’ Rhona echoed. ‘Beautiful! I’ll wear them tomorrow to Edinburgh.’

  She came back to the table and began greedily supping her soup. Clementina had never seen her look so elated and happy. Between sups and without looking up she said, ‘Thanks.’

  ‘We must all look our best tomorrow,’ Clementina said. ‘There will be crowds lining the streets to watch the march and photographers from all the papers.’

  ‘I’m going to wear that mauve hat you gave me last month and my black coat.’

  ‘I do hope it doesn’t rain.’

  ‘It won’t! It mustn’t!’ Rhona said passionately. ‘It’s going to be a great day. A day we’ll remember all our lives. I just know it!’

  50

  ‘The Athens of the North’, Edinburgh was called. Clementina remembered from her visit with Miss Viners years before how it was a city that seemed to be hanging on the edge of the world, a city of unexpected heights and chasms, a crush of buildings in a wild place of hills and yawning ravines. The main thoroughfare, Princes Street, stretched from west to east, cutting the city in half. At the west end and on the south side of the street beyond the statues and gardens, rose a high rocky cliff on top of which towered the ‘Castle in the sky’. Behind and beyond it, clinging to the steep hill, was the Gothic Old Town, gaunt and perpendicular, a labyrinth
of a place, a stony forest of ancient tenements and dark closes, giving the effect of one vast castle.

  On the north side of Princes Street, behind the line of shops, stretched the elegant squares and Georgian terraces of the New Town, with streets that dipped steeply down to the silvery Forth.

  But it was the formidable mass of the Old Town that meant Edinburgh to Clementina. Peaked, gabled and spired, its thousand windows, reeking chimneys, and the dark Castle solitary on its shadowy rock, fired her imagination and hurled her back to the heightened sensitivities of her childhood. Days of danger and adventure into the unexpected. Nights of ghosts and ghoulies and the strange unknown.

  The turnpike stairs and narrow wynds where gloom hung all the year round reminded her of the tower in Blackwood House. Even on the sunniest day she had only to turn off the High Street, or the Canongate, to see people walking in shadow and disappearing into entries of impenetrable darkness to live in rooms where it was always night.

  But it was not only the gloom that gave the Old Town its ghostly atmosphere. Because of the peculiarities of its architecture, much of the time it was shrouded in haar. Clementina had once asked Alice Tait what a ghost was like and she had replied, ‘It’s like a man made of haar.‘

  Haar was white and clammy and continually moving. It filtered down between buildings and through windows with small panes and heavy wooden frames. It drifted into dark closes and stairs. It appeared in houses. It came, wraithlike, towards you.

  The only thing that could dispel the haar was Edinburgh’s east wind. It had been said that Edinburgh was an ‘east-windy, west-endy city’ and certainly there could be no denying the ‘east-windy’ part.

  On one visit to the city Clementina had seen a four-wheeled cab blown upside down. People walked with a forward tilt, faces tensely set and teeth gritted against the cutting edge of the wind—and a bitterly cold wind it was when Clementina and her friends arrived at Waverley Station. Hanging frantically on to their hats and skirts, they made their way up the Waverley Steps on to Princes Street.

  Because of Agnes’s fragile build and Eva’s delicate constitution, it had been decided that they would not carry the banner that awaited them at the gathering place. That task fell to Clementina and Betsy. Agnes earnestly assured them that she was perfectly willing and able to take her turn, but Clementina and Betsy wouldn’t hear of it. Agnes had never been lacking in courage and spirit and they respected and loved her for it, but there was no getting away from the fact that she was as petite and fragile as a china doll and would be liable to sink under the weight of a banner pole, no matter how hard she struggled to keep it up.

  ‘But it’s not fair, Clementina,’ Agnes said worriedly. ‘You and Betsy will get tired. I am especially concerned about you, Clementina. You’re the youngest, dear—I think we all tend to forget that and expect too much of you at times.’

  ‘She’s as strong as a horse,’ Betsy laughed. ‘And as tough as old nails!’

  Clementina laughed too, but she said, ‘Not very complimentary, is it? I hope I don’t look like that. I went to a lot of trouble with my appearance today.’

  ‘If Betsy and Clementina get too tired,’ Kitty burst out excitedly, ‘Milly and I will take over, won’t we, Milly?’

  ‘Yes, of course. There’s no need for you to worry, Agnes.’

  ‘Oh, isn’t it absolutely thrilling?’ Kitty gazed around, flushed and saucer-eyed. ‘Look at the height of that monument over there. I’d love to run all the way up to the top. What a fantastic view you must get over the whole of Edinburgh, right over the hill at the back to the Old Town and down over the New Town at the front and straight out to sea.’

  Agnes put a gentle restraining hand on Kitty’s wildly gesticulating arm and whispered close to her, ‘Don’t point and wave your arms about, dear. It’s not very ladylike.’

  Eva said, ‘If you ran up all the steps to the top of the Scott Monument, Kitty, you wouldn’t just be breathless, you’d be gasping with a heart attack. I know I would, anyway. I’d just die!’

  ‘It is a fascinating place though,’ Millicent agreed. ‘All those monuments and ancient pillared buildings on one side of the street, not to mention the Castle perched up above them, and on this side such modern shops.’

  The wind had dropped and it was not nearly so cold by the time they reached the gathering point. In fact it was unusually pleasant for the time of year.

  ‘And to think,’ Kitty gave a rapturous sigh, ‘that we’ve the best part of the day still to come!’

  Already both sides of Princes Street were lined with people waiting to get a good view of the suffrage demonstration and more people were adding to their numbers every minute. By the time the girls were nearing the west end they could only crush forward with great difficulty. Clementina, who was not much taller than the gentle little Agnes, pushed a path ahead for her friend with strength born of sheer stubbornness and determination.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she assured the uncomplaining Agnes, ‘we’re nearly there. Look, there are some Bathgate women! And yes, I can see the Blackwood village crowd now.’ She waved enthusiastically. ‘There’s Rhona Lindsay. Doesn’t she look smart?’

  ‘My word!’ Millicent said. ‘Look at that fur hat and cape Effie Struthers-Brown is wearing.’

  ‘Yes, it is rather smart,’ Agnes agreed. ‘And she looks very pretty in it. But have you seen the hat and cape that Lady Alice Cunningham wears? I have never seen anything so chic’

  ‘Or expensive,’ said Betsy. ‘You’d better watch out, Clementina! Lady Alice has been seen rather a lot recently with your friend Lord Monteith.’

  Clementina shrugged. ‘It’s no concern of mine who Lord Monteith keeps company with.’

  ‘Oh? I thought you were madly in love with him!’

  Agnes’s soft voice came to Clementina’s rescue with a gentle reprimand. ‘Betsy, you can be tactless at times, dear. What Clementina feels or does not feel for Lord Monteith is her own private business. It’s not for us to make pronouncements about it, especially in a public place like this.’

  ‘Sorry!’ said Betsy cheerfully.

  ‘Are you all right, Eva?’ Agnes turned her attention to her other friend, who was beginning to sound slightly breathless.

  ‘Yes, I’m fine. At least, I will be when I get out of this crush.’

  Eva was wearing a long chiffon scarf in a pretty shade of pale blue; it was swathed over her wide-brimmed hat and down over her cheeks to tie in a big bow under her chin. Unfortunately, however, it seemed to accentuate the lack of colour in her pinched features and she looked as if she was positively shrinking with cold. But she insisted she felt fine.

  Clementina caught up with Rhona. ‘You look really beautiful in those earrings, Rhona.’

  Rhona’s face was ablaze with pride and excitement. ‘Thanks! You’re looking great yourself. A right smart turnout altogether, eh? How do you like the Blackwood village banner? Bloody marvellous, eh?’

  The various groups were beginning to organise themselves into lines behind their local banners, but it was a national demonstration and people had come from every section of the suffrage movement from one end of the country to the other. There was a buzz of eager voices and brave cheers as banners were heaved high. For miles back it seemed as if the streets had exploded into glorious life—a sea of rippling, dancing colour.

  Kitty was almost skipping in a frenzy of excitement. Agnes tried to calm her by laying a hand on her arm. ‘Sh! Sh! Kitty. You’ll get so overwrought, dear.’

  The pipe band, made up of members of the Men for Women’s Suffrage League, burst into sound. The march began to move forward in closely packed sections spaced out with some yards in between. Eventually it came the turn of the West Lothian Justice for Women’s Group to move and they went forward with Clementina and Betsy holding the Bathgate banner high, with Kitty, Agnes, Eva, and Millicent walking alongside them.

  Clementina felt proud. It was true what Rhona had said; it was a smart turnout altoget
her, but none smarter than the members of their own WLJWG, including the Blackwood Village branch which although made up of some of the poorest people in the county was neat and tidy and respectable looking. By this time the whole length of Princes Street was ten or twelve deep with spectators on either side and heads were bobbing up and down to make sure of a good view of the procession.

  Everything went well until they reached the High Street and Parliament Square. A crowd of rough-looking men was waiting there, obviously eager to start making trouble. But there was also a group of police and Clementina hoped the presence of the blue uniforms would deter any troublemakers. However, when members of the Women’s Social and Political Union began getting ready the carts on which they climbed to address the marchers, some of the men began shouting at them to come down or they would drag them down. Other men began pushing women roughly aside to get nearer to the carts. Because of the way the march had snaked into the Square, Clementina and her friends found themselves at the back of the vehicles and quite near to them. There was a tight crush in the square and surrounding area now and suddenly the commotion became worse instead of better when a policeman ordered the women to climb down. They indignantly refused, saying it was a perfectly peaceful and legal demonstration and not only had they every right to address the marchers, but they were entitled to police protection to enable them to do so.

  Then suddenly, to Clementina’s astonishment, the policeman and some of his companions dragged down the women and flung them roughly on to the cobbles. No sooner had they done so than several other women climbed up. Again the police hurled them to the ground and this time some rowdies gave them a kicking as they lay screaming and helpless on the ground.

  Still more women struggled forward. Then the rowdies, seeing that no opposition was forthcoming from the police, became even rougher and began manhandling every woman within reach. Terrified women were punched and had their clothes ripped from their bodies and their arms twisted behind their backs.