Wild Heritage

by Wild Heritage (retail) (epub)

  She stared at him with wide brown eyes that told she was genuinely shocked, and Kitty was hard to shock. Jo was sorry that he’d sprung it on her like that.

  ‘They never really found out. It was just what folk thought at the time,’ he backtracked.

  ‘How could they think that?’ she asked.

  Jo always talked to her as if she were grown up, so he said, ‘She was his woman. She lived with him in the navvy camp. He used to knock her about and one day she disappeared. Then they found her up on the hill.’

  Kitty shook her head in disbelief. ‘And the two with Tibbie look that respectable!’

  ‘Nanny Rush did a good job wi’ them,’ said Jo.

  ‘When did it happen? When was she found?’ asked Kitty who was still recovering from the shock.

  ‘Before you were born.’

  Kitty had always known that she was the child of rape. Her grandmother flung it in her face, taunting her that she was unwanted because she’d been conceived in violence and borne with reluctance. She’d been told it so often that she accepted it as a fact of life and even had a lingering sympathy for the man who fathered her because he was awarded the same scorn by Big Lily, her grandmother, as was Kitty herself.

  ‘What was my father like? Did you know him?’ she now asked Jo, who was pulling in his line and preparing to go home.

  ‘I boxed him,’ he told her shortly and she was familiar enough with his parlance to know he meant he’d put her father in his coffin. It was the first time she’d heard that and her heart thudded because she sometimes secretly hoped that one day her father would come back to make amends for raping Wee Lily and take his child away with him. If he was dead, however, that dream would never come true.

  ‘What was he like?’ she asked again. That at least she wanted to know.

  ‘Reed-headed, reed as you, and big, well over six feet. He had a chest on him like a barrel. I needed an extra-large box for him,’ said Jo. He sounded impressed.

  Kitty felt no sorrow over the death of this colossus, only curiosity.

  ‘If he was so big and strong, what did he die of?’ was her next question.

  Jo glared at her with a strange shifty look in his eye and went secretive. ‘You’re asking too many questions. I dinna remember.’

  She stood up and stamped a foot in anger. ‘You do, you remember everything. I ken fine you never forget anything that’s happened in this village.’

  But she had run up against village secrecy. Not for nothing was Camptounfoot built like a honeycomb, with each house walled off from its neighbour, linked by alleys lined with walls so high it was impossible to see over them. Camptounfoot folk made a fetish of keeping their secrets and Jo, who knew most of them, could not be forced into talking when it did not suit him or when the story reflected on his community.

  ‘I dinna remember what he died of. Ask your granny about him,’ was all he would say.

  Townhead farm, where Kitty lived with her mother and grandmother, was the last cluster of buildings in the village. The tall, bleak farmhouse stood at the eastern end of the main street and looked as if it had once been a guardhouse or a watchtower, for its wall marked the edge of the carriageway and the only windows on that side were set high up like watching eyes staring suspiciously out across the surrounding countryside. The entrance to the house was at the rear, facing the orchard, and its only gate, a wooden door set in the wall, was guarded by a vicious old sheepdog which snarled at every stranger.

  For centuries Townhead farm had been owned by the Scott family, but the current head of it, Craigie Scott, was an absentee, languishing in an Edinburgh prison and unlikely ever to be released. For over ten years he had been shut up for murder and only escaped hanging because he managed to persuade the judge that he was insane. The villagers never talked about Craigie’s crime for it was one of their closely guarded secrets. Kitty knew he’d killed someone but had never been told the identity of his victim and she accepted that, just as she accepted the vagaries of the weather, and rarely gave it a thought.

  Craigie’s two sisters, Helen and Joan, still lived in the farmhouse looking out into the enchanted paradise of an orchard. They never picked the fruit that was so abundantly produced by the trees that grew there and apples lay on the grass till they rotted because neither would they give anything away. Their greed was only exceeded by their terror of the outside world, which had grown worse since their brother was taken away to Edinburgh.

  Across the street from the farmhouse were two cowsheds, a grain store, some sheds and a bothy, as well as a dairy which supplied the villagers with milk, cream and butter.

  The Misses Scott, in spite of the turn in their fortunes, still had pretensions to grandeur, and kept apart from the rest of the villagers, thinking themselves superior to ordinary folk. They did no work apart from pocketing the money paid by the customers at their dairy and all the actual labour was done by two bondagers, Big Lily and her daughter Wee Lily, with the inadequate assistance of a lumbering simpleton called Jake, who received no thanks and the minimum of wages for their loyalty.

  When Kitty returned to the farm after her evening on the riverbank with Jo, she found her grandmother alone in the dairy. Big Lily was a massive woman with broad shoulders and huge pendulous breasts, her face was brown and weather-beaten beneath the saucer-shaped black straw hat she always wore except when she was asleep in bed at night. Her spatulate hands were gnarled and marked on the back by ridges of raised veins like the hands of a working man.

  ‘Where’ve you been?’ she asked without looking up from some task she was performing with a bone-handled knife in a tangle of rope.

  ‘Fishing with Jo.’

  ‘Humph, you’d better watch out for him. He’s funny about lassies.’

  It was the first time Big Lily had ever warned Kitty against anything or anyone and she was surprised. ‘Jo’s all right,’ she protested.

  ‘No man’s all right. The likes of you wouldn’t be here if they were,’ grunted Big Lily, slicing the rope in two with the sharp blade of her knife.

  Jo’s advice to ‘Ask your granny,’ came into the child’s head and encouraged by the fact that Big Lily was at least speaking to her, a rare occurrence in itself, she ventured, ‘Jo was telling me about my father.’

  Big Lily stopped cutting and stood perfectly still. Then she turned slightly and stared at the child beside her. Her eyes were red-rimmed and deeply pouched like the eyes of a tired dog.

  ‘Was he noo? I’m surprised he hasn’t better things to talk about than that bastard. What did he say?’

  ‘He said he was tall and had red hair like mine.’

  ‘Huh, don’t I know it. He left that mark behind at least,’ said Big Lily sourly, beginning her cutting again, but there was a lack of intensity about it that told Kitty her grandmother was abstracted and listening to her.

  ‘What was my father’s name?’ she asked.

  Big Lily threw the knife down on a wooden shelf and snapped, ‘He didn’t introduce himsel’ to your mither when he raped her. We could have done without you. You werenae wanted. Tibbie Mather tried to get rid of you with medicine but it didn’t work… you hung on like the thrawn little besom that you are. You were asking his name. He was called Bullhead and that tells you what he looked like – like a red polled stirk!’

  Kitty fled and for a few minutes stood in the cobbled yard with her legs shaking beneath her, knotting her fists impotently. She hated her grandmother. Big Lily was cruel, always ready to administer beatings or verbal torments but never a kind word or an embrace.

  There was a faint light glimmering through the unglazed window of the bothy behind the cowshed which was the bondagers’ home and she ran towards it, knowing that while Big Lily was occupied in the dairy, her mother would be alone and less afraid of showing her child some affection. When Big Lily was present, she always acted as if it was shameful to be kind to her daughter.

  The splintered wooden door was ajar and she pushed it open to reveal a d
ark, cavernous room with a fire of logs burning in a hearth at the far end. Smoke had blackened the rough stones above it for there was no chimney, only a hole in the ragged thatch. The walls were unplastered and unpainted; the floor trodden-down earth that turned to mud in wet weather; the furniture was two rough wooden chairs, a table, an iron bedstead that the bondagers shared and a pile of rags in the corner which was Kitty’s bed.

  Wee Lily, as tall as her mother but much thinner and surprisingly graceful, was standing by the fire with a wooden spoon in her hand and when she saw Kitty she cried out, ‘Aw, bairn, are you hungry? Come on in and I’ll gie you some broth. Hurry up and eat it before she gets back.’

  She ladled out a plateful of steaming soup and laid it on the table, pointing at it with her spoon. ‘Hurry up,’ she said anxiously, fearful of her mother’s return. The child did as she was told, gulping the soup down, although it was very hot, while her mother watched.

  ‘Was it good?’ she asked innocently when the plate was empty.

  ‘Aye, very good, Mam,’ said Kitty.

  Wee Lily gave her a quick hug. ‘You’ll no’ tell my ma, will you?’ she asked. She always talked to her child as if they were the same age although, in fact, Kitty was more intelligent and worldly-wise than her mother. From as far back as she could remember she had always felt Wee Lily’s senior and not the other way around.

  She pressed her face in at her mother’s waist, loving the soapy smell of the apron, for in spite of their neglect of Kitty, both of the bondagers were excessively clean and particular about their appearance. It was a miracle how they managed to turn themselves out so well because they were cripplingly poor and lived in primitive conditions, but they made their own soap, washed and bleached their clothes, blackened their boots till they gleamed and repainted their black hats every time the gloss wore off. It was as if they were saying to the world, ‘We may only be farm workers but we’re clean and decent.’

  Kitty would have liked to stay in her mother’s close embrace for ever but a sound outside the door made Wee Lily pull away. When she did so the child looked up at her and said, ‘Jo was telling me about my father…’

  Wee Lily froze, spoon upraised over the pot on the fire. Her voice was panic-stricken when she said, ‘I dinna remember onything aboot it. It was terrible. Dinna ask me about it, bairn, just dinna ask.’

  Kitty turned away and sat down in the wooden chair nearest the fire. All right, I won’t, but it isn’t my fault that I was born,’ she said defiantly.

  Wee Lily spread out her arms and cried, ‘I know that. I dinna think it was your fault but my mither says I wouldn’t have carried you if I hadnae… if I hadnae enjoyed it. That isnae true. I hated it. I thought he was going to kill me.’

  Kitty sank her head in her hands; she didn’t want to hear any more, not now, not ever. She wished she’d never opened this can of worms. ‘All right, Ma, all right. I don’t want to know,’ she said.

  But Wee Lily could not stop. She walked towards her daughter saying urgently, ‘It wasnae my fault Craigie shot him. It’s no’ my fault Craigie’s in the jile but my ma thinks it is.’

  Kitty looked at her in horror. Her mouth felt dry and her ears were pounding. ‘Craigie shot who?’ she asked.

  ‘That Bullheid. It wasnae my fault they took Craigie awa’.’

  A sour taste of vomit filled Kitty’s mouth. She wanted to be outside, away from those awful words… Craigie Scott shot her father… her father had killed a woman and raped her mother… Too much awful knowledge was being forced on her at an age when she should have been hearing fairy tales.

  ‘I’m going to be sick,’ she gasped and rushed for the door, and did not stop running till she was safe in the heart of the orchard. No one came looking for her and she stayed there with hunting owls and little animals going about their business around her till morning.

  Chapter Three

  Next morning an unusually subdued Kitty turned up late at school and found the pupils all chattering together while Mr Arnott, the schoolmaster, talked to Tibbie Mather who was holding the girl with the yellow hair by the hand.

  The school was just one big, wooden-walled room with a large potbellied stove standing in the middle and benches arrayed round it. Mr Arnott sat at a high desk by the door surveying his charges with what he hoped was a stern eye. In fact he was rather unsure of himself, having only graduated from college in Glasgow a year before and this was his first post. He had been chosen to succeed old Mr Anderson who had been the much-respected dominie at Camptounfoot for over forty years until his death.

  When Kitty slipped in, Tibbie was introducing herself because Arnott did not yet know all the inhabitants of the village as Mr Anderson had done, having taught most of them.

  ‘I’m Mrs Mather from up the street and this is Marie Benjamin who’s come to live with me. I’d like to enrol her in the school please,’ she said in her most polite voice.

  Arnott saw to his relief that the child was clean and neatly dressed, as was her escort, so he held out his hand saying, ‘I’m delighted to have another pupil. How old is she and where’s she been at school before?’

  ‘She’s eleven but she’s not had a lot of schooling because she was in the Rosewell dame school and the mistress there wasn’t doing much teaching for a long time. She was ill,’ explained Tibbie.

  ‘I’m not very good at counting,’ whispered the girl and Tibbie encouraged her with, ‘But you’re a good reader, Marie, and you do the loveliest drawings.’

  Arnott came down from his perch, put a hand on top of Marie’s head and looked around the class for an empty seat. The only one he could see was at the side of Kitty Scott, who moved along a little as if to make room for the newcomer. Tibbie saw this movement too and flashed the schoolmaster a warning look which he immediately understood, so he pointed a finger at a rough-looking little boy and said, ‘Willie, come and sit in the front beside Kitty. Marie can have your place.’

  When he saw Tibbie to the door, she said softly to him, ‘Thank you for not putting her beside Kitty. I’ve nothing against the bairn but she’s not very clean and she’s as wild as heather. She chucked a stone at my parrot yesterday.’

  He looked scandalised. ‘But that was very dangerous.’

  Tibbie felt she’d betrayed Kitty and wished she hadn’t said it, so she hurried to add, ‘It was a mistake I think and it didn’t do any harm. She missed and the parrot’s fine.’

  ‘More by good luck than good judgement, I’ll be bound,’ said the disapproving Mr Arnott.

  Back in the classroom he clapped his hands to call the chattering pupils to order and said, ‘We’ll do arithmetic now.’ Taking up a piece of chalk he scrawled some figures with a flourish on the blackboard. His eye fell on the newcomer and he asked, ‘Can you add those numbers together, Marie?’

  She blushed and stumbled… ‘Thirteen and fourteen is – twenty-six, is it?’

  He shook his head. ‘No. Can anybody tell me what thirteen and fourteen is?’ A forest of hands shot up, all eager to show their superiority over the stranger. He looked around. One hand was not up. Kitty Scott was sitting staring into space as usual so it was her he chose to answer. ‘What’s thirteen and fourteen, Kitty?’

  ‘Twenty-seven,’ she said shortly.

  ‘Why didn’t you put your hand up if you know the answer?’ he snapped, disappointed at being foiled in his plan to make a fool of her.

  ‘There was plenty others wi’ their hands up,’ she told him insolently.

  Soon it was mid-morning and time for a break. Bella Ferguson, the spoilt and petulant daughter of Bob who kept the shop, was the most important girl in the school and the others, with the exception of Kitty, followed her lead, so when she walked towards the newcomer with a smile on her face, they did the same. Because Marie was well dressed and politely spoken, Bella took her arm and said, ‘Sit with me when we go back in and we’ll be friends.’

  Marie, who had never had the company of more than two girls at any one time,
because female pupils were rarer than boys in the dame school, was overwhelmed by this apparent friendliness. Only Kitty Scott stayed away from her, staring in a hostile way from the farthest corner of the schoolyard, but when the bell rang to summon them back to lessons, Marie found herself in front of Kitty in the queue and turned to say in a friendly way, ‘I wish I could count like you.’

  Kitty was won over a little and her brown eyes flashed through her tangled fringe. ‘It’s easy. The answer just comes. I like figures. They’re all different colours you see,’ she said.

  Bella, at Marie’s side, pulled on her arm and whispered, ‘You shouldn’t be speaking to her. She’s just a tink.’

  At midday, when she served dinner, Tibbie was pleased to see how well Marie seemed to have settled in at school, for she’d been worried that the shy girl would not be able to cope without the protection of her brother, who, that same morning, had walked three miles to Maddiston in search of work and had not yet returned. Marie, however, was bright and happy, eager to go back for the afternoon session and at one o’clock she disappeared out of the door with a happy wave.

  When she got back to school things were different, though. Hostility, as palpable as a wave of cold water, met her as soon as she stepped through the school gate. Bella was standing in the middle of her friends and, at the sight of Marie, pointedly turned away. Miserable and confused, Marie trailed into school alone when Mr Arnott rang his handbell. Just before the door closed, the red-haired rebel came squeezing in behind her.

  During the afternoon reading lesson Marie had her moment of glory because she was asked to read a poem from a book which Mr Arnott handed to her. There were some hard words like ‘dungeon’ and ‘meteor’ but she managed without faltering and even infused some meaning into the lines. When she was finished the teacher held up his hand and said, ‘Well done, very well done. That was Byron’s poem about the Prisoner of Chillon. Did you understand it, class?’

  The last question was answered by murmuring sounds of assent and once more Marie was told, ‘You read very well.’ A glow of pleasure still filled her when the children tumbled out into the yard, shouting and scrapping among themselves. Bella, her plump pink face set hard, was waiting for Marie.