Primrose Square

by Anne Douglas

  A Selection of Recent Titles by Anne Douglas

  CATHERINE’S LAND

  AS THE YEARS GO BY

  BRIDGE OF HOPE

  THE BUTTERFLY GIRLS

  GINGER STREET

  A HIGHLAND ENGAGEMENT

  THE ROAD TO THE SANDS

  THE EDINBURGH BRIDE

  THE GIRL FROM WISH LANE *

  A SONG IN THE AIR *

  THE KILT MAKER *

  STARLIGHT *

  THE MELODY GIRLS *

  THE WARDEN’S DAUGHTERS *

  PRIMROSE SQUARE *

  *available from Severn House

  PRIMROSE SQUARE

  Anne Douglas

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author's and publisher's rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  First world edition published 2012

  in Great Britain and in the USA by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

  9–15 High Street, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM1 1DF.

  Copyright © 2012 by Anne Douglas.

  All rights reserved.

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  Douglas, Anne, 1930-

  Primrose square.

  1. Edinburgh (Scotland)–Social conditions–20th

  century–Fiction. 2. World War, 1914-1918–Social

  aspects–Scotland–Edinburgh–Fiction. 3. Love stories.

  I. Title

  823.9'14-dc22

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-199-6 (ePub)

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-8115-1 (cased)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-84751-406-6 (trade paper)

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being

  described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this

  publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons

  is purely coincidental.

  This ebook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

  Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland.

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  A Selection of Recent Titles by Anne Douglas

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  Chapter Sixty

  Chapter Sixty-One

  Chapter Sixty-Two

  Chapter Sixty-Three

  Chapter Sixty-Four

  Chapter Sixty-Five

  Chapter Sixty-Six

  One

  On a fine June morning in 1913, two maids were upstairs in the Edinburgh Primrose Club, making beds. Downstairs, country members who’d stayed overnight – all women, for this was a club for women only – were taking breakfast in the dining room facing the square. Porridge, bacon, kidneys, scrambled egg and kedgeree. Oh, yes, Miss Ainslie, the club manageress, provided excellent food, and Mrs Petrie, the tyrant in the kitchen, cooked it. Though upstairs, Mattie MacCall, one of the maids, shaking a billowing sheet, was betting the ladies wouldn’t be eating it.

  ‘Och, no, it’s too hot, eh? Did you see ’em, Elinor, all going down the stair in thin blouses and skirts? I heard ’em saying it was going to be a scorcher later on today.’

  ‘They’re right, then.’

  Elinor Rae, helping to spread Mattie’s sheet, smiled wryly. Tall, with dark hair and wide-apart dark eyes, she was nineteen years old and striking. Even in her grey uniform dress, with white apron and white cap, there was something unusual about her. An inner strength, perhaps, or energy? Hard to say but, beside her, the blonde, round-faced Mattie, only a year younger, seemed like a child.

  ‘What’ll the weather matter to the members, anyway?’ Elinor asked, as the two girls finished making the bed, tucking in the top sheet, plumping pillows, smoothing the coverlet. ‘If it’s hot, what’ll they do? Sit in the gardens till lunchtime? ’Tisn’t as though they need to do any work.’

  ‘Some do a bit of charity work, I’ve heard,’ said Mattie, dabbing at her moist cheeks with a hankie from her apron pocket.

  ‘I was thinking of working for a living.’

  ‘Oh, well, they needn’t do that. They like writing and reading, though. Sit in the Quiet Room at the desks, writing letters, reading books. Makes my head ache to see ’em!’

  ‘Writing and reading,’ Elinor repeated. ‘Oh, very hard work, eh? And before that, they’ve to clean out the grates and do the black-leading? Do the dusting and sweeping, scrub the front steps and clean the brass, run upstairs and make the beds?’

  ‘Ah, now you’re teasing, Elinor! You know ladies don’t do any of that!’

  ‘Because that’s what we do. And that’s what I call work. What wouldn’t I give if I could sit in the Quiet Room and write a few letters and read a nice book?’

  ‘That’d no’ be for me. I was never one for reading.’

  ‘I was.’ Elinor’s face suddenly relaxed and she gave a smile that sent the sunshine to her face. ‘I’m sorry, Mattie. I do go on a bit, eh? It’s just that it sometimes comes over me, the different lives folks lead. You see it, when you’re in service.’

  ‘I know what you mean. But it’s the way things are, Elinor, there’s no point trying to change ’em.’

  Elinor opened her mouth to speak, then closed it again and, giving a last tweak to the bed coverlet, moved to the open window.

  ‘It’s so stuffy this morning, I think I’ll just push this up a bit. Need some more air.’

  ‘Get on with you!’ cried Mattie, laughing. ‘Saying it’s stuffy! You j
ust want to look out at the square the way you always do.’

  ‘Do I?’ asked Elinor softly. ‘Well, maybe I do.’

  While Mattie, humming to herself, began rubbing the marble-topped wash stand, Elinor stood, her arms folded, looking down at the square below.

  There it was. Primrose Square. The finest, largest square in Edinburgh’s West End. A great oasis of greenery, a piece of countryside in the city, where there was rolling grass with trees, flowers in the spring – yes, real primroses – and elegant railings with a gate only to be opened with a key. Tall houses, set back over pavements, muffled the noise of the streets beyond, even from Princes Street, with its trams and carriages, horses, crowds and brand-new motor cars, so that here in the square was peace and calm.

  Ever since she’d first seen it, when she’d arrived for her interview two years before, Elinor had never ceased to be struck by that peace. And the space, the overwhelming feeling of greenness; the solace that wrapped round her. She had no key, she couldn’t open the gate and walk within, but she could look, she could feel she was in the country. She could know she wasn’t in Friar’s Wynd, which was her home.

  Today the square, in the midsummer sunshine, was looking particularly beautiful, but the thought of home, her father’s rented cobbler’s shop in the midst of towering tenements, brought a little cloud to her brow. Hastily pulling up the window to allow more air, she turned aside.

  ‘I’ll just brush the carpet,’ she called to Mattie. ‘And then we can do the dusting before we start on the landing.’

  ‘I’ll do the wardrobe,’ Mattie answered. ‘And miss out the top. Will you look at all that shopping Miss Whats-her-name has piled up there?’

  ‘That’s something you didn’t mention about the members and what they like to do,’ Elinor remarked with a laugh. ‘Shopping!’

  Two

  Cleaning the long landing, working as diligently as she always did, Elinor’s thoughts returned unwillingly to Friar’s Wynd. As she had said to Mattie, she couldn’t help but notice the difference between the club members’ lives and her own, and had to admit it brought out the envy in her, which was sinful according to the Kirk, but natural in her view. All she wanted to do, really, was even things up, so that if some people could find life easy and comfortable, others didn’t have to exist in Friar’s Wynd. She’d been lucky; she’d escaped. How many were left behind?

  Her mother, Hessie, for one. Cormack, her brother, always known as Corrie, for another. How wonderful it would have been if they could have been with her, if they could all have lived together where there was light and fresh air and something green to see. Even to move to another street of tenements where the houses were not so tall and didn’t block the sky would be an improvement. And there were some streets in the old town like that where, even if the tenants were poor, they saw the sun.

  But Walter Rae, Elinor’s father, who made a precarious living mending shoes in a wee shop in Friar’s Wynd, would never move. Why should he? There were pubs to hand, weren’t there? What matter if the Wynd had a terrible night-time reputation, with regular fights and drunken bouts? What matter if the buildings towered so high that the sky retreated in despair, and any sunlight that filtered through was so weak it was not like sunlight at all?

  Best not to dwell on it, Elinor told herself, polishing a side table with all her strength to relieve her feelings. She would just keep on going home once a week to see her folks, and continue to hope for a miracle.

  After all, she’d got away. First to service with a lawyer’s family, which had not, to be honest, been a happy experience, but then to the Primrose, where if Mrs Petrie, the cook, was a bit of a dragon, Miss Ainslie was kind and all the other maids were her friends and where she shared a room with only Mattie and Gerda and had the use of a bathroom. Grand! Best of all, outside the house, any time she wanted to see it, was her own piece of countryside – Primrose Square.

  As a smile curved her lips at the thought of what could make her happy, Mattie, who had been brushing the stairs, came up to say that she’d just finished in time. Ada and Gerda were clearing away breakfast, the ladies would be coming up any minute – should she and Elinor go for their cup of tea?

  ‘Aye, we’d best get downstairs,’ Elinor replied, peeping over the banisters into the hall. ‘Miss Denny’s at reception and the front door’s open. Come on, time to go.’

  ‘Just hope Mrs Petrie’s in a good mood,’ Mattie murmured, as they clattered down the back stairs, for of course they only rarely used the little passenger lift or the front stairs.

  ‘Talk about wishful thinking,’ said Elinor.

  And then they were greeting Gerda and Ada, down with their trays from the dining room, all keeping a weather eye on Mrs Petrie, as Vera, her assistant, made the mid-morning tea.

  While the Primrose maids gathered in the kitchen, city members of the club were arriving in the front vestibule where, after signing in at Reception, supervised by Miss Denny, the slim young assistant manageress, they drifted off to occupy themselves. Some to the Quiet Room, for the reading and writing that so impressed Mattie; some to the square, to sit in the garden, (they all had keys); some to the Drawing Room, to chat, or read the morning papers, before the coffee already brewing in the kitchen would be served.

  The house in the square, opened as a ladies’ club some years before by an enterprising company, was ideal for its purpose. A joining of two grand houses, once owned by families, as so many of its neighbours still were, it had lent itself well to conversion, with the new electric lighting already fitted, vast and elegant public rooms and good upstairs bedrooms for the country members, as well as attics for the maids and, in the double basement, store rooms, sculleries and Mrs Petrie’s kitchen.

  And then, of course, it had its access to a garden and a fine position for all that the members might want to visit – galleries, concert rooms, shops of every kind. It was little wonder that the Primrose was very popular with the ladies of Edinburgh and its outlying districts, who had no access to professional clubs and wanted somewhere to meet and talk away from their homes – just as gentlemen did.

  Husbands might laugh at the idea of their wives going out ‘to their club’, but then many of the Primrose members were not married, the younger ones only having to persuade their fathers to pay the subscription, the older ones with financial independence gladly doing as they liked. The true test of success for the club was that there was always a waiting list for those who wanted to join, and no shortage of young women who wanted to work there.

  Oh, yes, as a place to work, the Primrose was a good one. They just had to put up with Mrs Petrie, and even she was not always in a bad mood. Though on that June morning, when Gerda and Ada laid down their trays filled with uneaten breakfast dishes – oh, heavens, wasn’t her face like a thunder cloud then?

  ‘Take cover, girls,’ Elinor whispered.

  Three

  Mrs Petrie, less than five feet tall and thin as a stick, was red in the face and practically fizzing with displeasure over those terrible trays. ‘Like a firework about to go up,’ as ginger-haired, unruffled Gerda had once said of her – and everyone always hoped that they wouldn’t be around if she ever did.

  Today she was bemoaning the waste – of her food, of her time – as she wrung her bony hands over the handsome plated dishes of unwanted food.

  ‘Would you credit it? All that good bacon left, and best kidneys, ma lovely kedgeree and all? When you think about the poor bairns that’d give the world for food, could you no’ burst into tears? Och, I could cry like a babby, so I could!’

  She didn’t, though, only ordered anxious Vera and her kitchen maid, young Sal, to start transferring the uneaten breakfasts to the larder, while pouring herself another cup of tea and fanning herself with an oven cloth.

  ‘Aye, and you lassies’d better hurry up and drink your tea now,’ she told the maids sitting round the kitchen table. ‘Time’s getting on, and there’s the morning coffee to do. Vera, just check t
he pots on the stove, eh? And put some shortbread out and soda scones. See if the folk up the stair will eat my baking!’

  Still simmering, but a little calmer, she sat at the head of the table, directing operations. An efficient little woman, long a widow for, unlike many cooks of the day who were given the courtesy title of ‘Mrs’, Sarah Petrie had once had a husband. It was only after his death that she’d taken up cooking again, and had come to rule over the Primrose kitchen after being appointed by Miss Ainslie, who was said to regard her as a treasure. Well, it was true, she was a very good cook, and if Miss Ainslie knew she had a temper, she never let on. Good cooks were hard to find.

  ‘It isn’t the first time the ladies have left stuff when it’s hot weather,’ Elinor ventured, after a moment. ‘Maybe they’d do better with just toast?’

  ‘Toast?’ cried Mrs Petrie, her pale green eyes bulging. ‘Just give ’em toast? With my reputation to think of? Everybody knows this club’s got the best food in the city. It’s what Miss Ainslie wants and what I want and all. Where’d you get such a daft idea, Elinor?’

  Elinor shrugged. ‘Just thought, if it was hot, it’d save the waste.’

  ‘Aye, well that food’s no’ going to be wasted. You lassies can have it for your dinner. I’ll heat up the kedgeree and chop up the bacon, do some more eggs and it’ll be fine.’

  ‘Porridge and all?’ Gerda asked cheekily, at which Mrs Petrie’s cheeks flamed again.

  ‘Any more lip from you, my girl, and that’s just what you’ll get! No, I’ll have to let the porridge go this time, but you just watch your step, eh? I’ve enough to do without putting up with impertinence!’

  ‘Mrs Petrie,’ came a cool, clear voice as a light tap sounded on the kitchen door. ‘Sorry to disturb you and the girls – just wanted a word.’

  ‘With me, Miss Ainslie?’ asked the cook, as she and the maids scrambled to their feet, but the manageress of the Primrose was shaking her neat dark head.

  ‘With the maids, really. No hurry. Finish your tea, by all means.’ She looked around the watching faces. ‘Just come to my office before you return to your duties, if you please.’