Wild Heritage

by Wild Heritage (retail) (epub)

  ‘You speak awfy fancy for a navvy’s bairn,’ was her first accusing remark.

  ‘Why shouldn’t I?’

  ‘I’d have thought you’d speak Irish like some of the other tinks who come through here in the summer.’

  Marie blushed bright red, for she was unused to hostility, and wished David was with her. In a hurry to escape she tried to push her way through the little crowd but Bella held her back. There was worse to come. ‘And that’s not an Irish name you’ve got – Benjamin. What sort of name is that?’ she demanded.

  ‘It was my father’s name. He was called Benjy,’ said Marie innocently.

  Bella sniggered. ‘That’s what my dad said. It was his first name – like mine’s Bella and my father’s called Bob. If I called myself by my father’s first name I’d be Bella Bob!’ The other girls giggled at this sally but Bella’s blue eyes were hard and unamused. ‘I didnae ken you were a navvy’s bairn like that one over there,’ she said, pointing across to where Kitty stood watching what was going on. ‘Now we’ve got two of you.’

  Marie was angry now. ‘What’s wrong with having a navvy for a father? Mine died of consumption in the camp.’

  ‘Oh, aye, so he did – and what happened to your mother? Do you ken anything about her? I’ll tell you. She was a whore, a bad woman, that’s what she was.’ The terrible word was hissed out like a curse in a sibilant whisper in case Mr Arnott should hear it being bandied about.

  Tears sprang to Marie’s eyes. ‘That’s not true, that’s not true!’ she cried, but Bella stepped nearer and whispered, ‘It is true. When I went home at dinner time I told my mother and father that you’d come to the school and they told me that your mother gave you and your brother to Nanny Rush before she went off to live with another man when your father died. They said she wasnae properly married to your father either… and you know what that makes you! There was a lot of that kind of woman in the camp when the navvies were here. It was a scandal. So you needn’t act so grand. We know what you are! You’re a navvy’s bastard like Carroty Kate.’

  The words were hardly out of her mouth when what seemed like a human cannonball came bursting through the crowd of onlookers. Head down, Kitty charged at Bella’s middle, making her double up with a gasp. Then Kitty’s balled fist hit her full on the nose and a fountain of blood spurted out and splashed scarlet drops onto her immaculate white pinafore. Her friends set up a chorus of screaming that could have been heard in Rosewell and had the effect of bringing Mr Arnott rushing to the classroom door. When he saw what was happening, he waded in through hysterical girls and grabbed Kitty by the tail of her ragged dress, pulling her away from the screaming Bella.

  ‘What in heaven’s name is going on here? It’s you is it, Scott? And you, Bella! This isn’t like you,’ he shouted.

  Through hands spread over her face his favourite wailed, ‘She hit me, she hit me, she’s broken my nose. Oh look at all the blood! My dad’ll get the polis to her.’

  Arnott shook the struggling Kitty hard. ‘Why did you do this?’ he asked.

  ‘She shouldnae call folk bastards,’ shouted Kitty angrily.

  ‘As far as I’m led to believe you are a bastard – and you certainly behave like one,’ was his rejoinder. Kitty looked at him with scorn. ‘Not me, her! She called her a bastard.’ She was pointing at the new girl who’d read Byron so well. He looked from Kitty to Marie and then to Bella who was wiping her face with her pinafore and sobbing copiously.

  ‘Is this true?’ he asked Marie who nodded and said softly, ‘Yes, she did.’

  He did not want to enter into an argument about the rights and wrongs of this so he turned back to Kitty and shook her again. ‘Even if she did, there’s no need for you to fight other people’s battles. You’ve hurt Bella badly.’

  Kitty struggled out of his hold. ‘Och no I haven’t. She’s just got a bloody nose. It’ll do her good.’ Then she dashed like a hare for the school gate and disappeared.

  She knew she wouldn’t get away with it, of course. Though she hid in the orchard till it was dark, she had to go home eventually and when she did, Big Lily was waiting for her, sitting in her chair by the fire with a stick across her knees and her face red and glowing with sweat and emotion.

  ‘I’ve had Bob from the shop here,’ she announced as soon as Kitty stepped inside the bothy.

  Wee Lily was hovering in the background, wringing her hands and moaning, ‘Aw, Ma, dinna be too hard on her, aw, Ma, she’s only a bairn.’

  Big Lily didn’t look at her daughter but said out of the side of her mouth, ‘If you dinna want to watch, get away out. You’re far ower soft on her, always have been. That’s half the trouble.’ Wee Lily shrank back into the corner and said nothing more.

  Big Lily glared at Kitty again and pronounced solemnly, ‘Like I said, Bob’s been here. He says you’ve split his lassie’s nose and ruined her peeny. The bloodstains’ll never come out apparently. He wants me to pay for it or he’ll go to the polis. And he said the schoolmaster told him that you’d been chucking stanes at Tibbie Mather’s parrot. Have you gone out of your mind altogether?’

  As she spoke she stood up, rearing like a giantess above the child. A strong smell of sweat came off her and there were stains like half-moons on her blouse under her arms. She was obviously highly charged with fury and excitement. Kitty stood her ground and said nothing. There wasn’t any point.

  ‘Why did you do it?’ asked Big Lily, flexing the stick between her hands so that it arched.

  Why? wondered Kitty. All she could remember was the red rage that swept over her when she heard Bella jeering about navvy bastards. That and the fact that the blonde-haired newcomer needed a protector against the hard-eyed girls who had turned against her. She could not explain all that to her grandmother, however, so all she said was, ‘I dinna ken.’

  ‘You dinna ken much, do you? But you’ll ken about this,’ yelled Big Lily and whacked at the child’s bare legs with the stick. Even though she expected it, the pain stung so badly that Kitty leapt in the air and gave an anguished yell. Her mother in the corner groaned, ‘Aw, Ma, dinna hurt her…’

  These reactions seemed to fuel Big Lily’s rage and she stepped closer to the cowering child, slashing at her with the stick. Her eyes bulged and she grunted as if she were possessed. ‘You’re like that man that fathered you – a deil on legs. I’ll learn you, I’ll learn you…’ As she spoke, Big Lily was continuing to beat Kitty who had backed into a corner, attempting to shield herself from the furious blows with arms crossed over her head, but there was to be no respite. Big Lily was out of control, glorying in cruelty, shouting as her arm flailed up and down, ‘I should hae put you out on the hill when you were born… You wouldnae be any loss.’

  A particularly vicious blow caught the child across the back and she gave a terrified whimpering cry. ‘Oh dinna, dinna, I’m sorry…’

  ‘Sorry! I’ll make sure you’re sorry. You’ll no be able to walk when I’m finished wi’ ye.’ The stick crashed across Kitty’s shoulders and she sank to her knees on the floor. There was blood in her mouth and it tasted sweet as she swallowed it. She closed her eyes and wondered if she was going to die.

  When she saw the child fall down Wee Lily ran forward and tried to pick her up but Big Lily hit her too and yelled, ‘Get oot o’ there or I’ll let you have it as well.’

  ‘Ma, Ma, you’ll kill her. She’s only a bairn,’ pleaded the child’s mother but to no avail. Big Lily was bending over Kitty and still belabouring her. Wee Lily ran for the door and disappeared out into the darkness. Through mists of faintness Kitty thought that her last hope of salvation had deserted her.

  Wee Lily knew what to do, however. She ran over the courtyard, down the lane, and across the road to Tibbie Mather’s cottage. Though it was late and there was no light in the window, she hammered frantically on the knocker, crying out, ‘Tibbie, Tibbie, come and save my bairn.’

  Tibbie, who had been in bed, answered the door in her nightgown and gaspe
d in amazement when she saw the frantic bondager weeping in the street.

  Wee Lily reached out and pulled her into the open, gabbling, ‘Oh, Tibbie, my Ma’s killing Kitty because she bloodied Bella’s nose and threw stones at your parrot. Come and stop her. She’ll listen to you.’

  It was common knowledge in the village that Big Lily was brutal to her daughter’s unwanted child and Tibbie did not linger but grabbed a shawl to pull over her nightdress and ran to the bothy in the wake of Wee Lily, who was sobbing frantically as she went, ‘Dinna let her kill my bairn.’

  When they got there, Kitty was sprawled on the floor, fighting no longer, arms spread like a broken doll, Big Lily bent over her with the stick in her hands. If the child had moved, she would have started beating her again.

  Tibbie strode up purposefully and ordered, ‘Give me the stick. You should be ashamed, a woman your size hitting a bairn.’

  Big Lily grunted, ‘She’s no’ a bairn. She’s that navvy’s seed. We should have got rid of her at the time.’

  Tibbie knelt down beside the half-naked child. White skin shone pathetically through the slashed cotton of her dress and her eyes were shut. There was blood on her face, matted in her hair and red weals from the stick marked her legs and arms.

  ‘Kitty, Kitty, can you hear me?’ she whispered, cradling the redhead in her arms. She wished with all her heart that she had not told the schoolmaster about Kitty throwing the coal at Bonaparte.

  There was no response from the slumped body and Wee Lily gave an anguished groan. ‘She’s deed. I know she’s deed. Oh, Ma, you’ve killed my bairn!’

  Big Lily, apparently uncaring, strode over to the fireplace and sat down heavily in her chair without speaking. Tibbie stroked Kitty’s face and held a hand to her lips before she looked up at Wee Lily and reassured her by saying, ‘She’s not dead. She’s still breathing. Have you any whisky or brandy in the house?’

  ‘No, but we’ve got ale,’ said Wee Lily.

  ‘That’s no good. She needs more than that. Go to my house and you’ll find a bottle of brandy in the cupboard by the kitchen fireplace. Bring it here.’ Tibbie spoke with firm authority and Wee Lily did as she was told without as much as a glance at her mother, who was still staring fixedly into the fire.

  When the brandy bottle was pressed to the child’s white lips, she managed to swallow a little. Then she sighed, her eyelids fluttered and she moved her shoulders. When consciousness returned, Tibbie asked, ‘Can you move your arms and legs? Is anything broken?’

  First one arm moved, then the other. After that, with a wincing expression, Kitty moved each leg. ‘Everything hurts,’ she whispered.

  ‘That’s only the cuts. They’ll heal. As long as nothing’s broken,’ said Tibbie with relief in her voice.

  Then she looked over the child’s head and addressed Big Lily. ‘You’re lucky. She’s going to be all right. But don’t ever do it again or by God I’ll fetch the polisman to you myself. No decent person would beat a dog the way you’ve beaten this bairn.’

  The woman in the chair was unrepentant. ‘A hiding’ll do her good. It’ll knock some of the cheek out of her. She’ll no’ be throwing stones at your parrot again anyway,’ she said.

  Tibbie looked angry. ‘I didnae want you to hear about that. She’s just a child. Folk do daft things when they’re bairns. You must have been daft yourself once.’

  Big Lily’s eyes were bleak. ‘I was working in the field when I was her age,’ she said.

  Tibbie knew this to be true, for Lily had been born and brought up in the bothy and was sent out to the fields with her mother when she was old enough to toddle. A realisation of the barren cruelty of the other woman’s existence silenced any more protests. Tibbie knew that Big Lily herself was a bondager’s bastard, fathered by the farmer who employed her mother and gave the child his surname but nothing else.

  That farmer was also the father of Craigie Scott, who, in his turn, had fathered his own child on Big Lily.

  No wonder Wee Lily’s simple, thought Tibbie as she bent down to lift up the third generation of that unfortunate family and put her to bed.

  As the child lay in her arms she looked down at the white, heart-shaped face beneath the tumbling hair. Poor little soul, she thought, fathered by a brute, mothered by a simpleton, grandchild of a bitter woman and Craigie Scott who was shut up in prison for shooting the man who’d raped her mother. She hoped that no one would ever tell Kitty the secrets of her family, for they were very dark indeed.

  ‘Where does she sleep?’ she asked, looking around the cavern-like room.

  ‘On the floor,’ was Big Lily’s indifferent reply as she indicated a dark pile against the wall near the door.

  Tibbie looked shocked. ‘Doesn’t she even have a blanket?’ she asked, for Kitty’s bed was only a collection of tattered rags on dried bracken.

  ‘No,’ was the hard reply.

  ‘Then I’ll get her one,’ said Tibbie, laying the child down on the rags before she went out of the door. When she came back she was carrying a white woollen blanket taken from the well-filled linen chest beneath her own bed.

  ‘There, Kitty, cuddle into that,’ she said, tucking up the child. Then she walked across to Big Lily, who sat by the fire smoking a clay pipe as if nothing had happened.

  ‘Listen to me, Lily,’ said Tibbie sternly. ‘You’ve got to treat that bairn better. It’s not her fault she was born.’

  ‘I don’t know why you’re so bothered about her,’ was Big Lily’s sullen reply, but there was a shamefaced note in her voice that told Tibbie the murderous rage had left her.

  ‘It was me helped to deliver the poor wee soul if you remember,’ Tibbie snapped.

  ‘It would’ve been better if you’d let her die. She’s nothing but trouble and expense,’ grunted Big Lily.

  ‘Some expense. You don’t waste any money on her. She’s a disgrace to you. You should be ashamed of putting her out in rags,’ was Tibbie’s angry rejoinder.

  This stung Big Lily who glared back. ‘I’m too old to start wi’ bairns again and her mother’s no’ able, so why should I bother? It’s that yin’s fault Craigie’s where he is and all the work of the farm falls on me. His sisters don’t do anything.’

  She carried a heavy load. The only help given to her and Wee Lily was from lumbering Jake who slept in the outhouse and was paid a pittance. Jake’s mother had come to the farm some twenty years before as a potato picker but died of consumption leaving her three-year-old son behind. He never left and had grown into a big, doltish man who could neither read nor write and found it hard to follow the simplest instructions.

  The Scott sisters ruled their workers by fear, always threatening to send them away, a threat which terrified them, for they had never lived anywhere but on Townhead and the thought of facing the outside world was too frightening to contemplate.

  ‘I don’t know why you stay here. You could easily find yourself another place. You and Wee Lily are good workers,’ said Tibbie, but Big Lily stared at her in astonishment.

  ‘Leave here? I’d never do that. I was born in this bothy and I want to die here. This is my place as much as it’s the sisters’.’

  Tibbie softened slightly. ‘I know it’s hard for you but try to be kinder to that poor bairn.’

  ‘Aye it’s hard for me and having that navvy’s brat to raise hasn’t made it easier. My lassie didnae even have the sense to miscarry it!’ Big Lily’s face was a mask of misery as she spoke.

  Tibbie sat down on the chair facing her and asked softly, ‘But weren’t you forced too, Lily?’ She’d always thought that Craigie must have forced himself on his bondager.

  She was in for a surprise, however, because Big Lily looked up and glared with eyes that glittered like steel with unshed tears.

  ‘Me, forced? I was never forced. I loved Craigie. I love him still and I promised I’d stay here when he was taken awa’,’

  This was hard to comprehend for Craigie was not a man to inspire love in any
woman as far as Tibbie could see, but Big Lily obviously thought differently. She was staring into the fire and saying, ‘I was glad to have his bairn. They say a woman willnae carry a child when she’s raped unless she wanted the man to take her. I carried Craigie’s bairn and Wee Lily carried that navvy’s.’

  Tibbie was shocked. ‘Lily, Lily, you mind as well as me what state Wee Lily was in when we found her after that man had his way with her. Don’t you remember how hurt she was, how she cried? It was just bad luck that my medicine didn’t work and she carried the child.’

  ‘I think she wanted it,’ said Big Lily bleakly and Tibbie realised that this was the major grudge in the older woman’s mind against her daughter’s misbegotten child. Big Lily was jealous, jealous of the love between Wee Lily and Kitty. The emotions that ran among the three of them in that dark hovel were deep and complicated.

  Suddenly she felt very tired and stood up, pulling her shawl over her shoulders. ‘It’s long after midnight. I’m going back to bed. Don’t you dare touch that bairn again because I meant it when I said I’d report you to the polisman if you do,’ she warned.

  As she was going out she bent down and looked at the sleeping child. ‘You’ll be sore tomorrow, Kitty,’ she said softly.

  In that case she’ll no’ do it again,’ came Big Lily’s unrepentant voice, but Tibbie knew she’d frightened her and that Big Lily would think twice before she administered another brutal beating to her granddaughter, for she was mortally afraid of falling foul of the law. A police case might give Craigie’s sisters an excuse to get rid of her.

  When Tibbie reached her own cottage she found Marie and David up and waiting for her in the kitchen because they had been wakened by the frantic comings and goings. ‘What’s wrong?’ asked Marie anxiously when Tibbie came in.

  ‘Big Lily beat Kitty and nearly killed her. I just got there in time to stop it,’ she sighed.