Wild Heritage

by Wild Heritage (retail) (epub)

  ‘You can make good money in the mills,’ said David grimly.

  ‘You make more in the church or the law,’ Tibbie reminded him.

  ‘But that’ll take too long. I want to make money fast so’s I can get my own house and take Marie to live with me. I want us to be independent. We’ve been living on other folk’s charity long enough!’ His tone was vehement.

  Tibbie looked at him with sorrow. ‘Nanny never thought of it as charity… and neither do I.’

  He shook his head. ‘Maybe you don’t but other folk do. They say we’re foundlings taken in to save us going to the Poors’ House. When I’m rich all the people who look down on us now will admire us. I’m going to get rich for Marie as well as for myself’

  He waved a hand at his sister who was listening wide-eyed.

  ‘I’m sorry you won’t go to college like Nanny planned,’ Tibbie told him. ‘If it’s money you’re worried about, don’t, because I’ve more than I can spend. It would be a pleasure to educate you with it.’

  He shook his head. ‘We’re not your kin any more than we were Nanny’s. You can’t spend money on us. I’m going to find work. I know the foreman of Henderson’s weaving mill in Maddiston. He’ll get me a place there and as soon as I can I’ll take my sister to live with me. And when I’m working I’ll pay you for looking after her.’

  ‘Oh dear, that won’t be necessary,’ said Tibbie, but she knew she was wasting her breath. Nothing would ever change this boy’s grim determination or deflect him from his purpose.

  ‘Marie must still go on learning, though. I want her to be a lady,’ he said.

  ‘Camptounfoot has a good school,’ Tibbie told him. ‘The old master, Mr Anderson, died last year and we’ve a new one now, young Mr Arnott. Folk talk well of him.’

  David nodded and said solemnly, ‘That’s good. Marie’s only been taught by Nanny so she might be a bit behind. Nanny wasn’t able to teach much after she got sick.’

  It was obvious that he saw himself as his sister’s provider and protector, the one who took all decisions concerning her. Already he was mapping out their future together and was setting himself to achieve his dream. Heaven help us all if things don’t work out the way he wants, thought Tibbie with disquiet.

  When they reached the corner by the Camptounfoot general store its door flew open and a child dashed out almost beneath their feet. Bob, the shopkeeper, emerged too, face red and yelling, ‘That wee besom! Stop her. She’s been stealing again!’

  Tibbie did not seem surprised. ‘Is it Kitty?’ she asked.

  Bob glared. ‘Who else? It’s aye Kitty. This time she’s off with a chunk of cheese as big as a doorstop. The little thief that she is.’

  ‘Tell her granny on her,’ advised Tibbie.

  ‘That’ll no’ get my cheese back, she’ll have it all eaten by now. I don’t think they feed her but that’s no excuse for stealing,’ said Bob righteously.

  ‘Sometimes it can be,’ Tibbie told him.

  Chapter Two

  Kitty Scott was more like a wild animal than a child. Where other children had homes and families, no matter how poor, Kitty was a solitary; where they shivered in cold weather and sweated in the heat, she took the seasons in her stride and without any change in the rags she wore. Her feet were always bare, her wild hair matted, and her eyes and ears were not turned towards the games and chatter of other children but were alert for changes in the mood of the weather or for little signs that told her a strange bird or animal would soon cross her line of vision. She knew places in the village where none of the other children had ever been or which were forbidden to them, like the walled orchard behind Townhead farmhouse.

  It was her favourite playing place because it was as impossible to keep her out as it would have been to ban the blackbirds. She made her way in through a low arched gap in the twelve-foot-high wall that had been cut long ago to allow the passage of a stream. She took good care, however, that no one ever saw her bending double and wriggling like an eel through the aperture, for she knew the two women who lived in the farmhouse had a neurotic fear of being spied on, and would have barred the stream hole against her.

  Like an animal, from the time she was weaned she learned to forage for herself and at noon when the other children in Camptounfoot school went home to eat their main meal of the day, Kitty stole food wherever she could find it, before going to her favourite hiding-place in a thick hawthorn hedge that ran alongside the railway line at the back of the village. There, in a hole dug in the sandy soil, she secreted apples, crusts of bread, cold potatoes or raw turnips pulled from the farm’s field. She kept all her finds till they became mouldy or smelt too bad to eat because she never knew when the day would come that she would find nothing for her dinner and she was always ravenously hungry.

  What she liked best, because there was an element of danger in it, was to slip into Bob’s shop while he was occupied with a customer and steal something, anything, from the counter. If he saw her he yelled, ‘Get oot o’ here, you wee besom!’ but she usually managed to get away with a trophy of some kind. Perhaps it would be a handful of brown sugar from the big open bag that stood near the shop door, or a bit of raw bacon whipped off the counter under his nose. If she couldn’t stomach what she’d taken – raw rice or dry barley was inedible without a fire and a cooking pot – she scattered it around her hiding-place for the birds to eat, sharing her spoils with them. In return the birds and animals showed her where the brambles were first ripe and which of the hazel trees had nuts, because she watched where they went and followed them.

  On the day she stole the cheese, she sat in the shadow of the hedge and happily wiped her nose on her forearm as she stared out over her native village. She was nine years old but tall for her age with strong bones and broad shoulders, which was surprising because since birth neither her mother nor her grandmother had bothered to see that she was properly looked after, but Kitty had a strong instinct for self-preservation and quickly learned to be a good thief. The only place where she heard homilies about how children were expected to behave was in the schoolroom and she listened to these pieces of advice as if to a fairy story. Real life, she knew, was different.

  Her career of crime in Camptounfoot, however, was badly handicapped by the fact that she was so conspicuous. It was difficult not to be noticed when you had bright red hair that flamed like a fire and a cheeky freckled face that caught the eye in any crowd. Kitty was also noticeable because she was dirty. No, not just dirty – very, very dirty. Her long thin legs were brown from lack of washing; her hair so tangled that it looked like wire wool and her clothes ragged and faded till it was impossible to guess what colour they had been originally. Once seen she was not easily forgotten and very easy to describe.

  Her lack of fine clothes and her passing acquaintance with soap did not bother her, however, and on the day she bit into the hard yellow cheese she was happy. It would provide three meals at least.

  Chewing, she relived the taking of it, how she’d slipped her hand up onto the counter from a crouching position on the floor while Bob was talking to Mrs Rutherford. Then she’d run out and almost bumped into Tibbie Mather… She’d had two young folk with her… Who were they?

  Kitty’s greatest interest was in knowing everything that happened to the families of the village. She turned in her hiding-place and stared out across the field. The place where she sat was a snug little den at the base of intertwined hawthorns and small beech trees with immensely thick trunks. The branches had grown into and through each other, forming an impenetrable tangle that shielded her from prying eyes, but she could see Tibbie’s cottage, the last in a line of higgledy-piggledy houses overlooking the field that lay between them and the hawthorn hedge.

  It was the prettiest cottage of all, she thought, because the garden had two low-branched apple trees and was full of flowers all summer long. It was closed in behind a stone wall with a gate in the middle, but the wall was low enough for sharp-eyed Kitty to have a clear
view of the windows. She spent a lot of time staring into them because Tibbie was one of the few adults in the village who bothered to pass a kind word with her when they met in the street and, from time to time, even handed her a farthing or something to eat.

  In the distance she heard the ringing of the school bell. Mr Arnott was summoning his charges back to their lessons but Kitty gave a shrug and decided to take the afternoon off. She’d had enough schooling for one day. Perhaps she’d slip into the orchard and play imaginary games among the ancient apple trees which had not been pruned or cut back for half a century and whose branches interlinked like friendly arms. Some of them were dying back and had become covered with pale grey lichen that made them look as if they were eternally gripped in ice.

  If she did not do that, then she’d slip like a fox through the village alleys and see what was going on… Her curiosity about the lives of the villagers was as voracious as her appetite. She liked the idea that she was a pair of hidden eyes, watching everything.

  A flurry of unusual activity at Tibbie’s back door caught her attention. The two strangers she’d seen in the street came out with plates in their hands and sat down to eat in the sunshine. She regarded them with disfavour. They were both yellow-haired and very prim-looking with neat, tidy clothing and white faces. The sort of people who drew back from navvy bastards.

  Tibbie came out next with a breadboard on which rested a loaf and a bright yellow square of butter. Kitty’s mouth watered and suddenly the meal of cheese lay on her stomach like lead. She watched enviously as they ate.

  When the meal was finished the boy went into the cottage and re-emerged carrying the brass cage containing Tibbie’s parrot. Many times Kitty had peered at that wonderful bird through the cottage window when its owner was out but she had never been inside to speak to it. With all her heart she envied the strangers who were standing by the cage watching the parrot which sat with its head cocked and its feathers fluffing out in the warmth of the sun.

  Tibbie peeled an apple and cut it in chunks, giving a piece to each of her guests who proffered them to the parrot. Something furious exploded in Kitty’s head. These strangers were taking over Tibbie, worming their way into her affections so effectively that they were even allowed to feed the precious parrot! Fury filled her. She groped around on the earth and found a large lump of coal that had fallen out of the tender of a passing train. Like an avenging fury she stood up, took aim and threw it like a cannonball into Tibbie’s garden.

  Marie and David were enchanted with Bonaparte, who was eyeing them speculatively and making little muttering sounds under his breath as he accepted the bits of apple they held out to him.

  ‘He’ll say something in a minute,’ Tibbie told them a few seconds before a lump of coal came whizzing through the air, missed David’s head by inches and clattered against the bars of the cage. The bird gave an outraged screech and spread his brightly coloured wings wide.

  ‘Devil, devil, devil…’ he squawked in a marked French accent, fixing a furious eye on David, whom he thought was the perpetrator of this outrage.

  Tibbie, however, was not under the same misapprehension. She ran to the garden gate and shouted across the field towards the hedge. ‘Are you there, Kitty Scott? What do you think you’re playing at? You could have killed somebody

  There was strange silence and stillness in the hedge which told her that it harboured a hidden listener, a surprised listener too because Kitty had thought no one knew about her secret place. Even the field birds stopped chirping as if they were curious to hear what was going on.

  Tibbie shouted again. ‘Come out this minute. Ifyou don’t, I’ll go and get your granny.’

  There was a distant rustling, the long branches on top of the hedge began swaying and a bedraggled figure emerged.

  ‘Aw dinna tell my granny, Mrs Mather… I didnae mean to hurt anybody,’ it shouted.

  Tibbie was furious. She gestured with her hand and called, ‘Come here at once.’

  Kitty came trailing reluctantly over meadow grass spangled with yellow buttercups, bright pink clover and big white daisies with brilliant orange hearts.

  Tibbie stood with arms crossed watching her approach. ‘Why did you do that? You know it’s dangerous to throw rocks about, don’t you?’ she asked.

  The red head hung down. ‘Aye. But it wasnae a rock, it was a bit of coal.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter what it was. Why did you do it?’

  ‘I dinna ken.’

  ‘You must know. Think… Were you trying to hit my parrot?’

  Kitty did not look up, only scraped in the dirt with a bare foot till words came from her. ‘No, I didnae want to hurt the bird. I just felt angry. It sort of came over me when I saw you all there… You’ll no’ tell my granny, will you? I’ll no’ do it again, I promise.’

  As she listened Tibbie’s face softened. Now she felt pity instead of rage for the stone-thrower. There was something about Kitty that always touched her heart.

  ‘You’ll have to learn to keep a hold on yourself,’ she said in a more gentle tone and lifted a half-peeled apple which she handed to the child on the other side of the gate. ‘There, take that. You look hungry. Shouldn’t you be at school? Hurry up or you’ll get the strap for being late.’

  Without another word Kitty took the apple and ran like a deer across the field, over the railway line, up into a wood on the side of the hill. Tibbie’s face was sad as she watched her go.

  ‘Poor wee soul, there’s not much hope for that one, I’m afraid,’ she said half to herself and half to her companions.

  ‘Who is she?’ asked David.

  ‘Her name’s Kitty Scott. Her mother and grandmother are bondagers on the farm at the end of the village. Her mother’s called Wee Lily and she’s a bit simple because she was dropped on her head as an infant. Big Lily, the grandmother, is cruel to Kitty. I don’t think she’d care if the bairn lived or died.’

  Marie sighed. ‘But hasn’t she got wonderful hair? I’ve never seen hair that colour before. It’s like a fire.’

  Tibbie frowned. ‘It would look better with a wash and a comb. When you go to school in the village, stay away from Kitty. She’s not very clean and might give you lice. You’ve bonny hair and we don’t want to have to cut it all off.’

  The subject of their discussion did not go back to school but hid in the orchard until evening came. When dusk was about to gather she crawled out along the burn bed and headed down the slope towards the River Tweed, which twisted in a huge silver loop along the valley floor beneath the cliff on which the village perched.

  On a steep gravelly bank where rabbits frolicked in the setting sun, she found black-clad Jo, the village undertaker, looking like a tall heron as he stood in the water fishing for trout.

  She sat down behind him and watched without speaking, though she knew he was aware of her presence. Most of the village children were terrified of Jo because he was associated with death in their minds, and their mothers used the threat of getting Jo to them if they did not go to bed. When they were older they avoided him, for Jo was a strange bachelor, given to wandering the village at night, peering into folks’ windows. Sometimes, gripped by a kind of religious mania, he preached sermons full of words like ‘salvation’, ‘fornication’, ‘adultery’, ‘damnation’ or ‘redemption’ outside the houses of people with secrets they would rather not have talked about.

  Kitty rarely went to church but she liked to hear Jo shouting in the early hours of the morning when the world was dark and silent. The solemn sound of his utterances pleased her ear, though she did not know what the words meant.

  He and she were friends because they shared a love of gossip. Kitty told him everything she found out by her assiduous watching and he supplied her with stories about the villagers’ past peccadilloes, most of which would be condemned as unsuitable for a child’s ears by Mr Arnott if he heard them. Jo’s memory of the antecedents of the folk of Camptounfoot went back through at least four generations,
which made many of them afraid of him but Kitty was not. In fact, she was afraid of very little because her lack of parental guidance meant that she had never been warned about dos and don’ts, rules of behaviour and etiquette, pitfalls to watch out for or things to avoid. She learned by her mistakes.

  Now she asked in a friendly way, ‘Caught anything yet?’

  ‘No,’ he said, reeling in the line. ‘They’re not biting tonight.’

  ‘Dinna stop. You’ll catch something soon and then I’ll make a fire and we can cook it,’ she said.

  Jo knew she was always hungry so he offered, ‘I’ll gie you a penny and you can go up to Bob’s for a bag of sweeties if you like.’

  She pulled a face. ‘He’ll no’ let me in. I stole some cheese from him at dinner time.’

  Unlike most adults, Jo viewed this as perfectly acceptable behaviour and shrugged. ‘Oh well, you’ll just hae to do without the sweeties in that case,’ he said.

  Silence fell over them again for a little while till Kitty threw a stone into the river and said, apparently idly, ‘Tibbie Mather’s got two strangers staying with her.’

  Jo did not let her down. ‘I ken who they are. They’re the two who lived with Nanny Rush in Rosewell. Their father was a navvy on the railway line and their mother was found up there on the hill with her heid bashed in. She was murdered…’

  Kitty stared at him wide-eyed. ‘They’re awful proper-looking to be a navvy’s bairns.’ All her life she’d had the insult ‘navvy’s bastard’ thrown at her and knew it meant the lowest of the low.

  ‘Aw well they’ve been lucky, no’ like you,’ said Jo sympathetically.

  Seeing that he was well disposed to talk, which he was not always, she seized her chance to ask more questions. ‘Who murdered their mother?’ she asked.

  Jo looked sharply at her over his shoulder. ‘They never really found out but folk thought it was the same man as fathered you.’