Daughter of the Tide

by Leah Fleming

  Now she must rise at dawn and walk down the white sandy tracks to the grey stone house that glowered out of the early morning mist, a stern old granite keep softened by a fancy front full of windows to catch the sun. It was turreted like a fairy castle, but she must take the back gate of the Crannog, keeping out of sight of the front windows and garden path just in case Lady Rose might catch a glimpse of a rough servant at her chores spoiling her view.

  ‘No more of such devil’s talk! It is the will o’ the Lord that he places you where he wills you to do his duty.’ Her mother lifted rough hands together in prayerful thanksgiving. ‘Let us thank Him for His mercy that he places you safe amongst us as a dutiful servant to your betters. You will learn fine manners and they’ll give you your daily bread and it’s one less mouth for me to feed from our small pot. Mind… You’ll speak English to your betters and we can hold our heads in the clachan here. So be a good girl, attentive to your mistress. Don’t lose your chance of betterment.’

  It was one of those days when Mother was speaking like a Bible so Minn shrugged her shoulders and sighed. There was no changing her fate. It was only what she deserved, but she would not give in without a fight.

  ‘It’s no betterment! This back-breaking, rough work with chapped hands, fingers pickled like vegetables and aching legs from stretching on tippy toe,’ Minn argued.

  If only she was taller, prettier or cleverer. It was not fair that her friends could go to the mainland for an ‘eddy-cashun’. Then Minn paused in full flow, thinking of her only true friend lying in the graveyard, and shuddered. This must be her punishment so she must make the best of it.

  For months Minn saw only the scullery and the kitchen range, the pantry and the outhouse, the laundry and the backyard where she fed the scratting hens and put Lady Rose’s smalls to blow dry in the gale. There was the endless steeping and boiling, starching, ironing, all to be done to Mistress Lamont’s strict instructions. The skeleton staff had many extra jobs: the annual stocktaking, spring cleaning and preparations for any summer visitors, who thankfully brought their own staff to see to them.

  When there were strangers in the house there was such rivalry and much tut-tutting from the English maids, who found life on Phetray no picnic, girning about the weather, the wind, the lack of gas and electricity, telephones and wirelesses, whatever they were. Sometimes they would leave behind magazines with pictures of their ladies in the season, at the Court balls and the races. Minn would drool over the beautiful clothes and ballgowns with jewels and sumptuous fur wraps.

  There were pictures of the little royal princesses with their nanny. How she longed to go to London to see it all for herself. Everyone gossiped about the good old days before the Great War when servants were two a penny and the house rang with laughter. There had been shooting parties when Lord Struther’s coterie of cronies landed for the season in a motor car that was hoisted off the steam packet on a crane and driven up to the Crannog in a sandstorm of white dust.

  Then the war took the Phetray men away to sea, to watery graves far from their homes. The few that came back to tell their tales wanted more for their sons than service. The widows and mothers struggled to keep the croft fires burning. Young Lord Struther was killed early in the war. His wife caught the Spanish flu in London and only his sister, Lady Rose, returned from her ambulance driving, with a bunch of wild harum scarum women who wore no corsets and cropped their hair like men.

  Some had been in prison and were exhausted, sickly, and for a while the place echoed with their girly chatter. There were rumours flying around the island of strange goings on at midnight when they gathered in a circle trying to speak to their long dead. Mistress Lamont whispered with a sniff that they were tempting the very devil himself!

  Later the Crannog fell silent for months on end, boarded up, covered with dustsheets until Lady Rose returned in 1930 to live permanently in seclusion.

  It was rumoured that she had been disgraced at Court but no one knew the details and there was no one left to care. She lived among the hebes and the red hot pokers in the high-walled garden that stood firm against the worst of the westerly winds, writing her memoirs and reliving lost joys.

  Minn grew accustomed to the ways of the household, so different from life on the seashore. She got used to having a bath and brushing her fair hair until it shone, tying it back in a bun, mending her uniform, pressing it firmly into shape. She no longer needed the footstool as her legs lengthened and her shape filled out with all the leftover plates of food she wolfed down. Sometimes Mistress Lamont trusted her to poach the salmon, stir the sauces and prepare the afternoon teas neatly on the butler’s tray with a starched cloth and gleaming silver teapots while she dozed in her armchair by the range.

  Then came that fateful day when Effie Brown was sick and there was no maid to see to Lady Rose. Minn was ordered into the cotton print day dress with a broderie anglaise apron and sent upstairs to see to her mistress.

  She slid up the staircase silently with her wooden tray to prepare the fires in the bedroom, counting the portraits on the wall slowly, dour faces peering out of wigs with haughty expressions knowing full well that she was novice.

  She was to see to the rooms while no one was in the house but a shrill voice called from the bedroom.

  ‘Brown? Is that you?’ Minn froze. Should she disappear and ignore the summons or reveal herself? Curiosity got the better of her fear and she tapped on the door.

  ‘Brown is sick, Lady Rose. I’m Macfee.’ Minn bobbed. This was her first task upstairs.

  The voice shouted from behind the bed curtains. ‘Fill a bath for me.’

  Minn knew about hip baths and bringing up jugs of hot water to the outer door but had never had the honour of seeing to the whole palaver before. ‘Straight away?’ she queried.

  ‘Of course, Brown, in front of the fire.’

  Minn scuttled down to the kitchen to check with the cook. Mistress Lamont was too busy to fuss over her.

  ‘Just make sure the bath is on the mat or you’ll shoot her over the polish like a curling stone.’

  Up and down Minn rushed, trying not to slop the water over the floor. The bath was dragged on to the mat and the fire stoked up to provide some warmth, the screen placed discreetly while Lady Rose flopped on her high bed in a silk peignoir reading a book.

  How Minn wanted to soak in a warm tub herself after all her exertions. There wasn’t even a hefty man about the house to help with the carrying.

  Lady Rose did not lift her eyes as she wafted her away. ‘That’ll be all… stay upstairs in case I need you.’

  Minn hung at the top of the stairs watching how the rain spatters made patterns on the vaulted dome window above her head. Each pane was edged with blue and gold stripes of stained glass.

  She could hear the sound of splashing and a thin reedy voice attempting some tune. There were no warm towels airing on the fender. She dashed into the linen press and brought out a set of face, hand and bath towels, knocking gently once more. ‘I’m just going to warm your towels, my lady.

  ‘Good girl… while you’re here see to the commode in the dressing room.’

  Minn saw to her task and opened the dressing room door, trying not to retch as the stench of a full pan hit her nostrils. There was a slop bucket with a lid, tucked discreetly away, and scattered around the floor were pieces of dirty toilet paper left for the maid to pick up. Could a lady not dispose of her own dirt? Picking up each sheet she held her breath with disgust.

  Lady Rose was not an invalid but a lazy lay-a-bed who seemed incapable of doing anything for herself. How could she expect someone else to… But I’m not someone else, I’m just invisible… a nobody, a dogsbody servant at the beck and call of anyone who demands my services. It’s no fair! Suddenly her cheeks were on fire with indignation and humiliation. I won’t do this, she screamed inwardly. I can’t… Is this going to be my life for ever, trapped on Phetray? There’s got to be a better way than this drudgery, but what?

&nbs
p; Minn stuffed the dirty papers into the pail and closed the lid sharp. She flung the scattered clothes back on to their hangers and wiped around the commode. Whatever I do, I shall need a good reference, and I need better English, better manners; so use what’s here to better your chances, she thought.

  She flung up the window sash to let the sweeter air scour the smells, and gazed out at the sea view.

  ‘Shut that blasted window! Do you want me to catch my death, Brown?’ She still hadn’t noticed that there was a new maid.

  ‘Sorry, ma’am,’ she said, trying not to smile.

  ‘Bring me a towel and you can rub me down,’ came the order. ‘Then lay out my clothes in the right order.’

  Minn lifted the towel as the old lady rose out of the water, standing like a lump of wet plaster, her skin hanging from her bones like rolls of dough. Minn had never seen such ugly nakedness before, such old skin like cooked apples.

  ‘I’ve not done this before,’ she confessed.

  ‘So I noticed. Just pat my back for me and fetch the powder. You can do my feet between my toes, And not so rough. You’ve a lot to learn.’

  ‘Yes, Lady Rose,’ she stammered, hardly daring to raise her eyes. Now she must collect the clothes from the closet drawers: underwear, chemise, corselet, silk stockings, drawers and petticoat. There were so many dresses in the wardrobe to choose from: day dresses, tea dresses, house coats and wraps, skirts and tweeds, woollens with a softness of lamb’s wool. Everything was so beautifully lined and finished, so expensively tailored, laid down under the canopy of the four poster bed with its eiderdown pillows and satin counterpane.

  Minn thought of her own mother’s one Sunday dress, tough heavy wool woven coarsely into scratchy tweed the colour of the dark earth, her sackcloth apron, black skirts, peat-stained boots and coarse hand-knitted underwear with stockings to the knee.

  This was a world away from their humble living by the seashore in stone houses smelling of stinky rotting fish bones and cow dung fires, with dampness creeping into every nook and cranny of their thick walls. They stood like grey tombstones on the edge of the machair facing east, backs to the wind.

  ‘That’ll do, leave me now. I can see to the rest,’ the lady dismissed.

  Now the bath must be emptied and the linen changed, the soiled clothes removed, the bed made, the fires stoked again, up and down all morning while Lady Rose breakfasted in the morning room. All this effort just to give one person a bath! Tomorrow it would have to be repeated if Effie Brown did not return to work. If this was life above stairs, sniffed Minn, you could keep it!

  *

  When Effie Brown left to get married Minn was promoted from tweeny to parlour maid. Lady Rose was ill and the nurse engaged to see to her nursing left after only a few months of the island winter. She found herself used as nurse companion and lady’s maid to her frail employer. Lady Rose grew eccentric and dabbled in clairvoyance and other such ‘devilments’; much to the minister’s dismay, it was whispered.

  On her good days the invalid would dress and be helped to the fireside where she sat gazing into the flames. She said she could read fortunes in the flames. Minn dared to ask her once for her own fortune, praying it would not be to marry some fisherman, raise six bairns and look like her mother before she was thirty.

  Lady Rose pointed with a bony finger towards the fireplace, ‘I see you are a water sprite, ruled by the tides, happiest close to the shore but never far from the sea.’ This made no sense to the maid and she turned to draw the curtains. She had turned her back on the sea since Agnes drowned.

  Sometimes Lady Rose would take herself slowly to the piano and finger out some tune. ‘Do you know this one, Macfee? Sing it to me!’ There were no wirelesses on Phetray just the fiddle music of the ceilidh bands so Minn knew nothing of the mainland music. She shook her head sadly.

  Sometimes the old lady would smile and go to the gramophone and place the black circle on the turntable, her eyes far away dancing to ‘The Peanut Vendor’.

  Minn had to wind it up tight and gently lift the needle on to the surface. ‘Don’t scratch it, girl!’

  From out of that box came the most wonderful sounds from far away places. Lady Rose would point them out on the round label and give her the names of the composers: Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, waltzes from Vienna and tangos from South America, ballet music from Russia and military two steps, highland reels and jigs.

  ‘This is what you do…’ Lady Rose would open her arms and hold her stick, tottering and swaying with an imaginary partner.

  It was rumoured down the back stairs that Miss Struther once was engaged to some handsome viscount who died of cholera in India.

  Minn pretended she was in the arms of Rudolph Valentino, whose picture appeared in the glossy magazines strewn about the guest bedrooms.

  Once his image appeared on a sheet on the wall of the church hall in the moving picture show. His romantic antics had shocked the worthies of the kirk and the film had been quickly whisked away, replaced by a film on African elephants. Try as she might to recapture his picture, the only gentleman’s face that danced before her was that of the darkeyed son of the manse, Ewan dubh, who had grown tall and broad since he went away to college, who never passed her by without a nod.

  They never spoke of Agnes Mackinnon’s drowning. The two survivors exchanged only glances over the years. The minister was always curt in his greeting when he called at the house and she sensed she was still blamed for her friend’s death. It was hard, for Minn could rake up no memory of the incident and wondered why it was she who was ‘saved for a purpose’ not Agnes. It was like an invisible yoke bending her back.

  Sometimes she took wild flowers to Agnes’s grave and sat on the grassy mound to tell her news of all the children in their class. Minn sensed she was just talking into thin air.

  Agnes was lost as a little girl and knew nothing of the grown-up world Minn must inhabit, but it was the least she could do to keep her informed. Everyone said there was a war coming soon and that worried her.

  Once she met Ewan Mackinnon standing by the headstone. He looked as if he was about to speak to her, hovering for a second and then moving on. Cook said that he was sweet on Johanna Macallum, who was training to be a teacher in Glasgow. He still spent most of his holidays in a canoe paddling across Loch Beag at great speed, like Hiawatha in the poem, or helping the fishermen at the harbour. Ewan was growing tall and straight and handsome in his cadet uniform, far too grand now to mix in Minn’s humdrum world.

  On bad days Lady Rose only wanted to hear sad ballads and Gaelic laments. Tears would roll down her crinkled face and she sniffed into a lace handkerchief when Minn sang for her the lament ‘Griogal cridhe,’ about a widow weeping for her beheaded husband whilst singing to her baby.

  ‘You’ve a fine voice, girl, and a good ear. A good song gives wings to the spirit. I shall have to teach you to accompany me.’

  To cheer her up Minn would mimic the old waulking songs that the spinners and weavers would sing when waulking the cloth to shrink it. Often the words were lewd and suggestive but Lady Rose had no Gaelic and just tapped along with the rhythm. ‘Do that again!’ She clapped her hands like a simple child.

  When Lady Rose was smiling, it was like sunshine through the dark clouds, for she taught her servant to play cards and finger tunes.

  Minn’s own English was improving, too, for she was blessed with a parrot’s ear for mimicking accent and vowel sounds. She was copying the educated voice of a high born lady. Her vowels were round and distinct. She had decided long ago if she was going to speak English in public then it must be the best sort without the usual Highland lilt to it.

  In the record collection on the bookshelf was one with actors and actresses speaking plays and poems in perfect English, and she would sneak down when Lady Rose was asleep to listen and rehearse their sounds over and over again. She swallowed their sounds, projecting the words back in a perfect rendition of the original.

  Some days Lad
y Rose grew restless and wanted all her porcelain figurines out of the glazed cabinets to be washed and dusted. Each one was lovingly inspected and the hallmarks underneath explained in detail. Soon Minn could recognize the Sèvres from the Rockingham, the Royal Worcester and the Chelsea from Meissen by their distinguishing marks and the colour of their glazes.

  She absorbed the information as if she was back in the schoolroom, squirrelling it away into a drawer inside her head. To be a lady she must know all these things. How to select the right cutlery, how to play the piano and dance gracefully, how to wear jewellery and recognize good pearls or serve tea from a silver pot without spilling it everywhere. Lady Rose was an excellent instructor.

  Then came those grim days when her mistress lost grip on reality screaming and lashing out at Minn and the household as if she did not know them. The doctor was summoned and she was put to bed out of harm’s way until she slept off her thrashings in a drugged sleep.

  ‘What’s the matter with the mistress?’ Minn asked her mother as they sat by the smoking dung fire carding sheep rovings into rolls of raw wool for their spinning.

  ‘They say all the Struther family go that way in the end: too much high living and inbreeding on the brain, but I am saying it’s an ancient curse on that place when the old laird sent his poor lover across the open sea to her death. No Struthers have prospered here.’

  ‘Will she die?’ asked Minn, fearful of her own prospects.

  ‘Sure as death comes to all of us, so mind your own ways. No prancing to the devil’s tunes. I’m after hearing what you get up to in the Big House. If I catch you warbling on the Sabbath again… you’re not too old for a skelping! Haven’t we corncrakes enough to rattle us awake without you screeching to high heaven,’ answered Eilidh, her eyes sharp as flints.

  ‘I can play a tune on the piano now and make chords,’ Minn boasted.

  ‘How many times must I tell you, music is the curse of the Macfees. I will not have it in the house, do you hear? It is bad enough you pretending to be some milk white loaf when the whole island knows you’re nothing but an oatmeal bannock. It’ll all end in tears.’