Kitty looked hard at him, her brown eyes brooding beneath the pale lemon brim of her straw hat.
‘I ran away from home because I stabbed somebody,’ she heard herself saying and for a moment his façade slipped and his eyes revealed startled surprise but again he hid it quickly.
‘I knew you looked dangerous. That’s what I first liked about you,’ he told her, grinning.
She did not smile back and he knew that she was sad so he asked, ‘Where’s home? I come from a village near Waterford. What about you?’
‘From Scotland. A village too. It’s called Camptounfoot and it’s in the Borderland but no one’s ever heard of it. It’s very quiet and very beautiful.’
‘And you were the local bad girl,’ he said jokingly.
She nodded in agreement. ‘Yes, I was. They called me a bondager’s bastard because my mother was made pregnant by an Irish navvy. She didn’t even know his real name.’
‘I knew you were an Irish girl. It’s that hair, pure Irish!’ cried Freddy.
‘I used to hate it. The other girls called me Carroty Kate,’ she told him. It was difficult to understand why she was revealing herself to him in this way but he seemed to be drawing her secrets out of her.
They were silent for a bit and as he drove the mare along, he glanced at her from time to time and she felt his regard moving over her face like a touching finger.
Then he said softly, ‘It’s lovely hair, not the colour of any carrot I ever saw. It’s the colour of amber with the sun shining through it. You and I have things in the past that we want to forget, don’t we? Let’s live for today and not look back. Let’s be friends.’
‘All right. Friends,’ she said. ‘And I’ll not look back.’
It was almost evening by the time he delivered her back at the Excelsior and Mrs White was adding up her own account books but amazingly she did not say a single word of protest or ask where Kitty had been. Freddy Farrell could, apparently, get away with anything he wanted.
The courtship of Kitty Scott and her Irish jockey was exciting and tumultuous. Every day when he was not racing, he came to the Excelsior Club and besieged her with gifts and lover-like words. Sometimes she was sweet to him and sometimes cutting. He never knew what to expect.
He pleaded with her to sleep with him. ‘Haven’t you heard what they say about jockeys being good lovers and since I’m a better jockey than the others, it would be a pity to miss what I can offer,’ he said, leaning over the table in Mrs White’s hall.
‘I can manage to live without it, I think,’ she said teasingly, for she enjoyed the cut and thrust between them, though she had already decided that she would give in to Freddy one day.
He laughed. ‘You don’t know what you’re missing.’
‘Then I’ll not care, will I?’ said Kitty. She was secretly glad that he refused to be rebuffed. He worked on the principle that water dropping steadily on stone gradually wears it away.
All through that late summer and autumn he plied her with compliments, took her out driving in the parks when her work was finished, and insisted on buying her many presents in spite of her protests.
One bright winter afternoon he arrived, bunch of flowers in hand, with a smart new dogcart pulled by a bobtailed chestnut cob and said, ‘It’s not a pleasure outing today. I need your help. I’ve decided to take a bigger set of rooms in London and want you to look at the ones I’ve found.’
She raised her eyebrows. ‘But what about Camden Town?’
‘I’ve not lived there for a long time. I got tired of Peg’s cooking. I’ve a place in Newmarket because I have to go up to try out horses but I need a smarter base in London now that I’m making big money. I want a place with some style and who better to tell me what’s stylish than you, my beauty.’
‘I’m thinking of moving on myself,’ she said sweetly.
‘Where to? Let me move in with you or come with me,’ was Freddy’s reply.
She looked innocent. ‘I was thinking of going back to Scotland actually.’
This time he was the one who laughed. ‘No you weren’t. You’d be like a fish out of water up there now and anyway, you can’t leave me. I’m meat and drink to you. If you went away, you’d miss me something terrible. Who’d you be rude to every day? Who’d you treat like a lapdog if you didn’t have me?’
‘Some lapdog. More like a fighting mastiff,’ was Kitty’s reply. Then she asked, ‘What exactly do you want? I’ve work to do even if you don’t.’
‘I told you. I want you to come and look at a suite of rooms off the Strand that I’ve been offered. I want you to run your woman’s eye over them and put the fear of God into the landlady. You know me, I’m far too soft with women,’ he wheedled.
‘I’ve work to do,’ repeated Kitty but she was intrigued by his suggestion because in spite of the game they were playing, she knew that she and Freddy would eventually become lovers. He was wearing her down, not that she had ever been really averse to the idea of sleeping with him, but she sensed that the more difficult she made it, the more Freddy would appreciate her once their affair began.
The point of decision was near because she was far too shrewd not to know that he wouldn’t dance on the end of a string for ever. Besides, she had been abstinent for too long and was longing for love. Blood and passion ran strong in Kitty Scott’s veins.
‘Forget the work. I’ve spoken to Cora. She said I could borrow you for an hour,’ he whispered in her ear.
The sun was out but there was a brisk, cold breeze so she wrapped herself in a beautiful iridescent shawl that he had given her and topped it with a big hat that she had to hold on with her hand as they bowled off down the street together, pursued as usual by the cries of Freddy’s admirers.
He proudly held her hand – and she did not draw it away – when they walked into the imposing doorway of a large block of newly built flats in a narrow road leading down to the river from the south side of the Strand.
The landlady, Mrs Dawkins, was waiting to take them on a conducted tour through the rooms she had on offer; a luxuriously furnished bedroom with a vast half-tester bed, which Kitty deliberately did not allow her eyes to rest on, and a long parlour crammed with fussy bits of furniture, a bathroom, a kitchen and a little boxroom for a servant.
The nicest thing about the rooms was the outlook from the parlour, like a Canaletto painting of the Thames on which barges floated in slow and stately procession.
Mrs Dawkins knew who Freddy was and could not contain her delight at having such a famous person as a tenant, but she was not so sure about Kitty. Towards her she behaved with strained politeness, which much amused Freddy, who realised she had been mistaken for a tart. He played up to this and wasted no opportunity to caress her hand, kiss her cheek, and display her as if she were a trophy of war.
At last Mrs Dawkins could contain herself no longer and asked, ‘When are you and Mrs Farrell thinking of moving in?’
‘Oh,’ said Freddy, ‘there’s no Mrs Farrell. This is my friend, Miss Kitty Scott.’
He turned to Kitty and asked, ‘Do you like this place, my dear?’
She glared at him and snapped, ‘What does it matter if I like it? I won’t be living here.’
In fact, the apartment with its view of the river entranced her although the finicky little tables and low chairs got in her way wherever she turned.
Freddy looked at Mrs Dawkins and raised an eyebrow as much as to say, ‘She doesn’t want you to know the situation between us.’
Then they discussed the rent, which seemed extortionate to frugal Kitty, who longed to intervene and knock down the venal landlady’s price, but she had precluded herself from the discussion and was furious at having done so.
After they’d been shown everything for a second time, including a luxuriously fitted bathroom with a deep white bath surrounded by intricate brass piping out of which jets of water spurted and made both of them widen their eyes in surprise, Freddy ushered the landlady out into the hall say
ing, ‘Thank you, Mrs Dawkins. Could we have a look round by ourselves before we make up our minds?’
As soon as the door closed behind her, he advanced on Kitty with his arms widespread and whispered, ‘Did you ever see a bath like that in your whole life? I can’t wait to get into it. Come on, my beauty, let’s christen this place properly.’
She laughed and threw her hat onto the bed like a quoit as Freddy bent down and pulled off his boots. Giggling they struggled out of their clothes — Freddy’s white silk shirt and tight breeches; Kitty’s skirt, boots and high-buttoned blouse.
Laughing and whispering, for they knew that Mrs Dawkins probably had her ear pressed to the door, they stripped each other naked. Hand in hand they ran to the bathroom and turned on all the brass taps. Water spurted out in all directions, hitting the ceiling and splashing over the tiled floor, as they clambered into the deep bath. It deluged over their heads, trickled down their backs and their legs, jets pelted off their flanks as they stood kissing and caressing under the flow.
Freddy had a brown, sinewy, tightly muscled body and his skin was very silken. Passion rose in Kitty as she pressed against him and ran her hands down his back to the neat, tight buttocks. She felt his penis, hard and long, against her groin. His hands were incredibly gentle, skimming over her, lighting here and there like little kisses.
When he entered her standing up, she threw her head back so that the long wet curls stuck to her back and moaned aloud in ecstasy. His mouth was against her shoulder and his teeth biting into her skin; his hands under her buttocks pulling her into him. She closed her eyes and gave herself up to making love.
They did not know how long it was before they ended up on the parlour floor, still wet, rolling in passion on the carpet with little tables crashing around them.
When he finally raised himself on his hands and looked down at her, Freddy groaned, ‘Oh God, I hope Dawkins hasn’t got her eye fixed to the keyhole. She’ll have had an eyeful if she does.’
The sun streaming through the windows was gleaming golden on their skins by the time they were spent and lying side by side with their faces close together. Freddy’s wonderful hands were stroking Kitty’s long thighs and lifting the wet tresses of her hair as he whispered, ‘You’re every bit as exciting as I thought you would be. You’re wonderful, Kitty Redhead. Come and live with me here and we can do this every day.’
‘We’d kill ourselves with exhaustion,’ Kitty told him, putting her hands on his tousled hair.
He kissed her. ‘Not a bit of it. We’d get better with practice. Say you’ll come Kitty and then I’ll go out and tell Mrs What’s-Her-Name that we’ll take this place. It’ll be hard to find another bath like that. I’ll never feel the same about a tin tub in front of the fire again.’
Kitty laughed, pulling him down onto her. ‘Come on, Freddy. I think we should try out the bed before we decide whether this place is suitable for us or not.’
They moved into their new home the next day. Kitty gave up her job with the Excelsior Club but agreed to Cora’s suggestion that she go back once a week and bring the account books up to date. For that, she’d be paid the same wages as she’d received before.
Now that she was officially his mistress, Freddy took over her wardrobe. He liked her to look colourful and flashy, so he took her to the expensive shops of the West End where he picked out trailing cloaks of velvet or fur, gowns of vivid colours, and matched them with huge, outrageous hats loaded with ostrich feathers and artificial flowers many times larger than life.
‘I can’t wear that,’ Kitty sometimes cried as Freddy made his selection, but when she was persuaded to put on the clothes and looked at her image in the long glass, she felt magnificent, for he was always right and the clothes he picked out made her look like the Queen of Sheba.
They stopped the traffic when she walked out with him and that was what he liked. The only flaw in their domestic life as far as Kitty was concerned was that Freddy was not happy unless he was accompanied by an army of flatterers, and every now and again the slatternly Peg and her bedraggled family would make a foray from Camden Town and settle themselves in at the flat on the Strand for the afternoon, eating, drinking and making a good deal of noise. They never seemed to annoy Freddy but they annoyed her very much indeed.
She was so taken up with her lover that she did not often think about Camptounfoot, but now and again she woke with a start in the middle of the night and found that she’d been dreaming she was back there. In her dream she was always in the orchard with the lichen-covered branches. Then she’d shiver and press herself against his back. She didn’t know whether her dreams of home made her sad or happy.
Chapter Seventeen
Everything happened very quickly for Marie after the painting exhibition.
It seemed that she had embarked on a runaway scheme that she was powerless to stop or control. All the decisions were taken by Mrs Roxburgh, who decreed that the girls should go to France as soon as possible in order to have three months’ tuition before Paris went quiet at high summer. They would then return home and decisions would be made about whether they should go back again or not.
‘I don’t know if I’m doing the right thing,’ Marie said to Tibbie when a letter arrived from Edinburgh giving details of travel arrangements. When she held this programme in her hand, it struck her that she was about to embark on a momentous adventure.
Surprisingly it was stay-at-home Tibbie, who had become much bolder after her trip to Edinburgh, who urged her on.
‘Of course you should go. You’ll enjoy it. It’s a big opportunity for you and you might never get another chance,’ she said encouragingly.
As her contribution to this momentous event, she took Marie to the best costumier and outfitter in Rosewell and bought her travelling clothes.
‘You’ve been a good child to me and I don’t want you going out into the world in old rags,’ she said, though Marie had never worn rags in her life.
Marie, who was always ultra-cautious, was worried about money. ‘I wish I could have sold the snow scene,’ she said as she counted her takings from the exhibition and piled the money carefully on Tibbie’s kitchen table. It was as if a good fairy were listening to her because next day a letter arrived from Professor Abernethy saying that the snow scene had found a buyer at last. He would give Marie the money when she came up to Edinburgh to join Amy for the start of their trip.
Saying farewell to Tibbie and her friends at Camptounfoot was hard. Bethya had gone back to London so Marie wrote a letter to Berkeley Square promising to write again when she got to Paris. After that she went round the neighbours – the Rutherford family; Tibbie’s brother the blacksmith and his family; and the bothy where Big Lily and Wee Lily stared at her with astonishment when she told them she was going to Paris. Wee Lily’s baby boy was growing big and lusty, a greedy child who howled with frustration if denied anything he wanted. Tibbie shook her head when she talked to Marie about him.
‘I doubt he’s no’ all there. There’s something funny about him. He should be standing up and saying something by now but he’s not,’ she said.
As always the sight of the misery in which the bondagers lived depressed Marie and she did not stay with them long, but when she was halfway down the lane, she heard someone running behind her and Wee Lily came panting up.
‘Oh Marie, Marie,’ she gasped, ‘if you see my lassie tell her I send my love and kisses. Tell her I miss her.’ To Wee Lily, Paris was part of the big outside world into which Kitty had disappeared. She had no idea of distance. Paris might be as far away as Timbuktu or as close as Falconwood but she was sure that everyone there knew everyone else just as they did in Camptounfoot. She held her hands out in supplication to Marie who caught hold of them.
‘If I see Kitty, I’ll certainly tell her that,’ she promised.
On her last night at Camptounfoot Tibbie asked, ‘What are you going to do about David?’
‘What do you want me to do?’ asked Marie.<
br />
‘I think you should go to see him and tell him you’re going away.’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t want to. He’ll try to stop me and I’ve made up my mind now. I don’t want to have to argue about it or even think about it any more. I’ll write him a letter and tell him what’s happened. By the time he gets it I’ll be on my way and he won’t be able to stop me.’
Tibbie shook her head sadly. ‘I always think it’s best to do hard things face to face, lass.’
Marie protested, ‘I can’t. I’m afraid of him, afraid of what he’ll do. I’d rather write.’
The letter she composed was short, saying that she was going to study painting for three months in Paris and would contact him as soon as she came back again. She sent her love and asked him to keep in touch with Tibbie.
Next morning when they rose in the grey mist of dawn Marie’s resolution had weakened. She and Tibbie clung to each other and she wept. ‘I wish I wasn’t going. I wish I hadn’t said I’d go to Paris.’
Wiping her eyes Tibbie said reprovingly, ‘Now don’t be daft. You’re getting the chance of a lifetime, don’t waste it. Everybody wishes you well and we’re sure you’ll be famous one day. Do it for us, lass.’
She had asked Jo to harness his pony and trap to carry Marie’s bags to the station and in the grey dark they heard him draw up outside the front door, so they ran out to load the baggage onto the flat top of the cart and climbed up beside him. There they sat holding hands while Jo drove, making occasional gloomy comments about the weather.
At the station forecourt, he hefted the bags down and said to Tibbie, ‘I’ll wait for you, Tib, and tak’ you hame again after the lassie’s awa. See and do weel in Paris, and dinna forget Camptounfoot, Marie.’
Neither Marie nor Tibbie could speak as they waited on the platform and when the train arrived they clutched each other and sobbed but there was no backing out now. The die was cast.
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