Light & Dark

by Margaret Thomson-Davis

  ‘I can’t marry you, John.’

  ‘Of course you can and you will. I shall have a minister come and perform the ceremony in this bedroom if necessary.’

  ‘It’s no use, I can’t marry you.’

  ‘But why not? What has made you change your mind? Is it something I have said or done?’

  Tears welled up in her eyes. ‘No, it’s something I have done.’

  ‘Tell me,’ he said with quiet persistence. ‘There must be no secrets between us.’

  ‘Oh, John!’

  ‘Tell me what it is that’s worrying you so much. Then I can help and advise you.’

  She began to tremble violently and he had to grip her with both arms in an effort to quieten her.

  ‘You are all right, I’m holding you. You have nothing to be afraid of.’

  ‘But you will leave me when you find out. You won’t want to have anything to do with me any more.’

  ‘Lorianna, what nonsense! I love you! But apart from that, I am an honourable man and not in the habit of breaking my word. I have said we are going to be married and we will be married.’

  He waited as she visibly struggled to find courage. ‘Gavin …’

  ‘Your late husband, yes?’

  ‘Gavin was not what everyone thought. He was not an honourable man, John. He was… . He was dreadful. For years he made my life a misery. Then one day …”

  ‘Go on,’ Stirling encouraged quietly.

  ‘I came in and found him …’ She closed her eyes, trying unsuccessfully to blot out the scene. She even remembered the colour of the ornament: it was a large fat vase made of Indian brass with a pattern of dark reds, greens and blues round its golden centre. She felt its stiff coldness in her hands once again and smelled its metallic bitterness as she swung it high. She heard it echo and crack against Gavin’s skull when she brought it down. His blood made new patterns, quick and vivid against the glittering brass.

  ‘Lorianna?’ Stirling said.

  She took a long quivering breath. ‘I found him trying to rape Clementina.’

  ‘Good God!’

  ‘She was screaming and screaming, I heard her all the way up the stairs and when I went into the study and saw … and saw what he was doing to her … I lifted an ornament and smashed it down on his head.’

  There was silence for a long minute. Then Stirling slid his arms away from her and stood up.

  ‘Oh, John,’ Lorianna wept. ‘I told you, you would want nothing more to do with me.’

  ‘Hush!’ he said, beginning to slowly pace the room. ‘I am trying to think, to get everything straight in my mind. You killed him—is that what you are saying?’

  ‘Yes. But I didn’t mean to do it. It was such a shock and it all happened so quickly.’

  ‘I can understand that. But how could you allow that man—what was his mane—Kelso? Robert Kelso, wasn’t it? How could you allow him to be executed for a crime he didn’t commit?’

  ‘Oh Robert, Robert,’ she thought. ‘How could I?’ Aloud she said. ‘Mrs Musgrove sent for him and persuaded him to get rid of the body and he eventually agreed to make it look like an accident. She said they would hang me if he didn’t. Then afterwards she said there was nothing I could do to save him. I tried, John. I swear I tried, but she had given me so much laudanum that I was in a daze and hardly knew what I was doing or what was happening. She kept assuring me that everything was going to be all right. They would never hang him, she said.’ Lorianna moaned with the pain of the memory. ‘And by the time I found out, it was too late!’

  ‘How dreadful!’ Stirling said. ‘My poor Lorianna, to have lived with this terrible secret and this terrible burden of guilt all those years!’

  Lorianna raised a tragic, tear-stained face to him. ‘You don’t hate me?’

  ‘No, I don’t hate you, but I certainly understand a lot more now. About that woman, for instance.’

  ‘Mrs Musgrove?’

  ‘She has been administering drugs to you again.’

  ‘It’s to keep me calm and to give me some peace from myself, John. You don’t understand.’

  ‘I think I am beginning to. Has she been blackmailing you, Lorianna?’

  ‘I could still hang, couldn’t I, John? If she told anyone?’

  ‘She won’t tell anyone.’

  ‘Sometimes I think I don’t care any more. Sometimes I feel it would be a blessed release to die. But it’s Jamie, you see. He mustn’t suffer. He loves me and I couldn’t bear it for him to know.’

  ‘He is not going to know. No one is going to know.’

  ‘But John, how can you be so sure of that. Mrs Musgrove …’

  ‘My dear, Mrs Musgrove is, to say the least, an accessory after the fact. Indeed, it seems to me that she is the one who bears the most responsibility, certainly for Kelso’s death. She is in no position to say anything to anyone and I shall point this out to her in no uncertain terms.’

  ‘I don’t know …’ Lorianna’s eyes strayed vaguely away from him. ‘I still feel uncertain, afraid …’

  ‘Lorianna, trust me. I will deal with this woman. She will leave Blackwood House immediately and you’ll have no more trouble with her.’

  ‘Oh, but John.’ Lorianna turned back to him in distress. She was wide-eyed and trembling uncontrollably. ‘She has done so much for me. I can’t dismiss her after all those years. This house and my needs have been her whole life. She has been absolutely devoted to me and I’ve depended on her so much. She has to be strong, you see, because I’m so weak …’

  ‘Hush, Lorianna, you’re becoming overexcited. From now on you will have me to depend on. I’ll arrange for a quiet ceremony by special licence to be held here immediately. I’m making the decisions now and you must abide by them, do you understand?’

  Gradually, helplessly, she relaxed back against the pillows. ‘Yes, dear,’ she said, but her nerves remained keyed-up, apprehensive.

  ‘Good!’ He stretched over for the bell-pull. ‘What is it for your maid? I don’t want the housekeeper to come—I’ll deal with her in another room.’

  ‘One.’

  He gave the cord one pull and in a few moments there was a knock at the bedroom door and Lizzie entered.

  ‘Stay here with your mistress. Don’t leave until I return,’ he told her and then to Lorianna, ‘I’ll speak to Mrs Musgrove. Then I shall have to go and attend to other business. There are the wedding arrangements and also the business about Clementina to straighten out.’

  A startled expression leapt into Lorianna’s eyes.

  ‘Now, don’t worry,’ Stirling said quickly. ‘She got herself into a bit of trouble again and they’re detaining her in Edinburgh, in case you’re wondering where she has got to. But I’ll soon have her home again. Everything’s going to be all right, I promise.’

  She managed a tremulous smile.

  After he had left she lay listening intently but could hear nothing but the spasmodic sparking of the fire and the rapid tic-tic-tic of the little jewelled clock on the bedside table.

  ‘Is there anything I can do for you, madam?’ Lizzie asked.

  Lorianna impatiently shook her head. ‘Sit down, Lizzie!’

  ‘Yes, madam.’

  Quietness again, her heart racing the clock. Then, at last the door opened and Mrs Musgrove came in.

  ‘You can go now, Lizzie.’ The voice was like cold water trickling down Lorianna’s spine. She couldn’t move, didn’t have the strength to draw up any sound to her throat.

  Lizzie’s thin face strained with anxiety and she hesitated. ‘Mr Stirling said—’

  ‘Get out!’

  Without another word, the maid hurried quickly away.

  Another silence, like the silence in the room after she had committed the murder. A silence full of terror and horror and utter helplessness. A silence in which she knew her life would never be the same again.

  She began to weep, quietly at first and then in loud abandoned sobs.

  ‘Well may you weep
,’ Mrs Musgrove said.

  ‘I am grateful for all you’ve done for me—truly I am, Mrs Musgrove.’ Her voice sounded high and childish, not like her own at all. ‘Please try to understand.’

  ‘Oh, I understand all right.’

  ‘He’s going to look after me. I shall be all right.’

  ‘He will cause you trouble and unhappiness, just like the last one.’

  ‘No, no. You’re wrong. He’s different.’

  ‘But you’re the same!’

  ‘I don’t understand you.’

  ‘Time will tell.’

  ‘You’re just trying to frighten me.’

  Mrs Musgrove’s mouth tilted into a ghost of a smile.

  ‘Oh no, madam. You frighten yourself.’

  Lorianna shrank further into the pillows as the older woman bent over her. The glittering eyes seemed to hypnotise her as the big black mittened hands cupped her face.

  ‘I shall always be ready to return when you need me. And you will. Then everything will be as it has been before.’

  To Lorianna’s horror the sallow face came closer. Hard lips pressed down on her brow and the coldness of the kiss seemed to move through her veins until it reached her very soul.

  58

  After she had managed to clean herself up and struggle into her clothes, Rhona crawled over to a dry part of the loft, collapsed again and eventually drifted into an exhausted sleep. It was dark when she awakened and the smells of horse-sweat, manure and hay-dust were hot and sticky in her nostrils. From somewhere she heard the squeaking of rats. She still felt too weak to get up and make her way out of the place. Anyway, there was nowhere she could go, especially in the middle of the night. She lay stiff and silent, praying that the rats wouldn’t come any nearer and at the same time straining to gather all her strength to overcome the horror of what she had been through the previous day.

  She had had no idea that she was pregnant. Having always been irregular, she had thought nothing of it when she had missed a couple of months. She supposed it was lucky that she had had the miscarriage; she ought at least to feel thankful for that. She might have been burdened by an unwanted child that she could not have afforded to keep. Wealthy Mr Blackwood would have helped her neither financially nor in any other way, of that she could be sure. Hatred brought steel into her soul. She didn’t need his help. She’d get over this. But she’d never forget, by God, she wouldn’t!

  Her mind concentrated on Blackwood. She imagined him sleeping peacefully beside his wife at this very moment in a luxurious bed in their mansion house. In the nursery quarters his children, Gordon and Giselle, would have been safely tucked in bed by their nanny. She wished ill to each and every one of them, drawing on every drop of her gipsy blood to come to her aid and concentrate her curses on them. She didn’t want them to die through illness or an accident—their destruction must be much more complicated and long drawn-out. And it must be brought about by herself alone. She jealously embraced the right to this pleasure, hugged it to herself, looked forward to it, drew strength and purpose from it until, satisfied and almost happy, she fell asleep.

  Rhona was awakened eventually by the clatter and scrape of metal-shod boots floating up through the oppressive blackness as the farm labourers went about their early morning chores. She waited listlessly for silence to return to the bleak windswept yard before crawling painfully and with great care towards the stairway. Then, struggling to her feet, she stumbled down the stairs. It was still dark, but the moon lit up the tack and tools that hung at random, breaking up the solid shape of the massive oak beams that loomed sombrely overhead. Rain wept quietly down the windows, echoing the emptiness inside her as she lurched through the deserted stable to where the heavy timber door lay slightly ajar.

  Gagging at the brackish, metallic taste in her mouth, her first thoughts turned to the immediate task of finding something to drink. She dragged her unwilling feet step by painful step through the scum-rimmed puddles of the yard to the old stone drinking trough where she sank down gratefully, her hands clutching at its slimy, lichen covered sides. Then she lowered her parched lips to its dark surface and took masochistic delight at the cold knifing into her cheeks and numbing her teeth.

  Her main thought now was survival. She had to get help from someone, somewhere. It was then that her mind turned to Clementina again. She still had no idea what had happened to her, but surely she would be back home by now? She splashed some of the icy water over her face, then dried it on her skirts before tidying herself down, straightening her hat and making her way cautiously, gingerly from the farmyard.

  The rain had stopped, but wind was still maliciously gusting across the countryside as if intent on searching her out to knock her off-balance and make her progress as difficult as possible. Her coat and skirts kept flapping violently to one side, dragging her with them so that she wove a jerky, zig-zag path. Determined not to lose her much-treasured mauve hat, she stopped several times to make sure it was safely secured by pins and all the time kept a firm hold of its brim—until eventually the wind sighed away to nothing and she was able to relax a little.

  It took her a long time and it was daylight before she reached the five-bar gate that led into the garden of Blackwood House. Only sheer determination and willpower got her there and she kept the picture of the gate firmly in her mind as she moved slowly along. She had no eyes for the mounds on which rabbits were creeping and nibbling the grasses, the flock of wood-pigeons which had settled in an oak across the ploughed field, or the chaffinches and larks that rose up from the furrows and floated in the cold, clear air.

  Sometimes she stumbled and fell on the deep grooves and waggon tracks and had to carefully clean her hands and skirt before going on. Sometimes she wept. Sometimes she felt utterly exhausted and defeated, but she never failed to milk a reserve of strength from her hatred of Blackwood. Occasionally, incongruously, she thought of her mother and father. She remembered as a child being dangled on her father’s knee and being told what a beautiful little girl she was and her mother saying, ‘Aye, and more’s the pity that one day she’ll be ground down and ruined by the mill the same as the rest of us.’

  Rhona wanted to reassure her mother and father, to tell them that this wasn’t going to happen to her—she would not allow it. Her life was going to be different from theirs, and from everyone else’s in Blackwood village. She was different, and one day she would prove it. Prove it in a big way, moreover. One day she would be better off than Gilbert Blackwood or any of the Blackwood clan. She would see to that. Nothing and no one would stand in her way.

  One day … one day… . The words helped to push her on.

  The five-bar gate creaked open, juddering against the lumpy earth at its base. Only a few yards to the house now and the side door.

  Maids hastened along the corridor and up the stairs, some lugging coal-scuttles, some brooms, some piles of linen so high they could barely be seen peering over the top. Rhona made her way slowly along towards the stairs, but was suddenly stopped by Clementina’s personal maid, McGregor, who appeared from the kitchen and said, ‘Oh, it’s you! Have you not heard? Miss Clementina is not here.’

  Cook called from the kitchen, ‘Who’s that, Flora? A friend of Miss Clementina’s?’

  Rhona went into the kitchen, nearly swooning at its warmth and pungent smells of food. She did in fact stagger a little and Mima, the kitchen-maid who happened to be hurrying past, caught her with a squeal of panic.

  Cook said, ‘Well, don’t just stand there squealing like a stuck pig. Bring her over here by the fire and sit her down. My God, you look as if you’ve seen a ghost. Didn’t you know about Miss Clementina? How about a nice cup of tea?’

  Rhona nodded gratefully and Cook rattled on. ‘Well, pour her a cup then, Mima. See that girl? She’s no use to either man or beast, far less a cook. Could you go a piece of this buttered toast? I was just enjoying a bit myself.’

  Rhona accepted the toast and tea and ate and drank greedily.


  ‘You needed that, didn’t you? The colour’s coming back to your cheeks already. Mima, don’t just stand there gawping. Take these dirty dishes through to Janet. Aye, Miss Clementina’s back in the Calton Jail. Did you ever hear the likes of it? God knows when they’ll let her out this time.’

  Bitter tears of disappointment pricked Rhona’s eyes. She had been depending on being allowed upstairs to rest and recover properly on Miss Viners’ bed.

  ‘Och, don’t worry too much about Miss Clementina,’ Cook said. ‘She’ll survive all right, she’s a right tough wee character. Always has been. I used to call her “wee ruffian”. Always getting into trouble, she was. I’ve never seen anyone like that child for getting into trouble. We all thought she’d grow out of it, but not a bit of it!’

  Rhona sat by the fire as long as she could, but Cook sent her packing eventually because she had lunch to start and no more time to spare. Leaving the house, she made her way slowly down the drive and then along the lane and out on to the Drumcross Road. Automatically her feet took her in the direction of Bathgate, although she had no idea what she would do there or where she could find shelter.

  She felt bitter at Clementina for not being there when she needed her. Her and her bloody useless Cause! She felt bitter at Bathgate when she saw the smug snug cluster of it down in the valley. There was not one person there who cared whether she lived or died—not one person who would give her a second glance as she wandered the streets with nowhere to go.

  But she would show them. She would make them look at her all right, she’d shake them out of their smug self-righteousness. They had no right to have so much when she had so little. It was so bloody unfair. But she’d soon make them sit up and take notice.

  59

  Clementina thought he would come. Sitting in the corner with hair tucked in the coarse cap, hands clasped primly on the lap of the apron that tied round the waist of the cold prison frock, she realised that she had been depending on him to come. But there had been no one these past nightmare nights and days except the lawyer Mr Stirling. He had seemed so out of place in the dark stagnant prison with his silvery fair hair and his elegant light blue morning suit and fresh pink flower in his buttonhole. He had been coldly angry and wanted to know if she was determined to worry her poor mother to death. Things were going to be different from now on, he warned her. He and her mother had been quietly married by special licence and now, as the head of Blackwood House, he would stand no nonsense from his stepdaughter. ‘When you get home, you will behave like a civilised and law-abiding member of the family,’ he told her. ‘You will eat all your meals with us in the dining-room, where I can keep my eye on you, and you will remain with us in the sitting-room in the evenings so that we know where you are and can see at all times exactly what you are doing.’ She had asked him for news of all her friends, including Rhona. Millicent, Kitty and Eva were apparently still in solitary confinement like herself. Both Betsy and Agnes had had to be taken to hospital with injuries they had received on the night of the meeting. No, he had no details of what the injuries were or how they were progressing. But he had no doubt they would survive to cause trouble another day. As for Rhona, he categorically forbade her to have anything more to do with the ex-mill-girl.