Catherine's Land

by Anne Douglas

Genres: Sagas

Synopsis

Madge Ritchie moves into Catherine's Land with her three young daughters when the death of her husband leaves her in reduced circumstances. By 1920 she cannot imagine life without the hurly-burly of the tenement. Two of her girls, however, dream of something very different.

Release date: February 7, 2013

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 432

Sample

A merchant built it in 1701. A fine six-storeyed tenement on the site of an older house in Edinburgh’s Lawnmarket. Not so tall as some of its neighbours, but spacious and grand. There were twelve apartments, two to each floor, all opening off a common stair, and Matthew Kerr, with an eye to the tenants he hoped to attract, had seen to it that everything was of the best quality. Woodwork, plasterwork, glazed windows – no expense had been spared.

Edinburgh at that time was small and overcrowded. Because of attacks in the past, mainly from the English, building had never extended beyond the old city walls. People of all classes – titled ladies, lawyers, doctors, wigmakers, milliners, lamplighters, grocers – all lived together in the ‘lands’, the tenements built high, though naturally the quality took the best rooms. The Lawnmarket, where Matthew had fitted in his new house, was at the top of the Royal Mile, below the Castle. Cloth had been sold there in the old days, and maybe country wares, but it was now considered a desirable place to live and Matthew had no trouble letting his apartments. The middle floors went to the gentry so that they might avoid the noise and smells of the street, while the remaining flats went to the less well-to-do and the ground floor was let to shops. Matthew himself lived on the second floor with his wife and family. So pleased was he with the success of his property venture, he decided to give his house a name.

‘Now, madam, what do you think I should call it?’ he asked his wife, a proud lady who had borne him seven children, all living.

‘Why, Master Kerr, I should think it obvious!’ she retorted, ‘am I not named Catherine and is that not the finest name you could find?’

‘Catherine’s Land it shall be, then,’ declared Matthew. And so it was.

In due course, Catherine’s Land passed to Matthew’s eldest son, then to his grandson, then to strangers. As landlord followed landlord, the house changed, as Edinburgh itself changed. Scotland had formed a union with England, the fear of attack had faded, the city was free to expand. All the land beyond the Castle became available, the Nor’ Loch was drained, the New Town laid out. Down the Mound created by the excavations flitted the gentry and the middle classes to the fine new streets and crescents below, while the Old Town above was left to the poor. Decline was inevitable. Like its neighbours, Catherine’s Land became a slum.

So it remained throughout the nineteenth century, until in 1905 new owners carried out a programme of restoration and modernisation. The roof was repaired, the windows replaced, kitchens, lavatories, gas and water systems were installed. By 1907, when a widow named Jean Ritchie rented one of the upper rooms, Catherine’s Land had once again become a respectable place to live.

‘Mind, there’s still fights, there’s still noise, and nobody cleans the stair,’ Jean Ritchie wrote to her only son and his wife in Southampton, but she was happy enough. Until Will Ritchie, a merchant navy man, was killed in an accident on the docks.

After the funeral, Jean sat with her daughter-in-law, a sweet-faced girl named Madge, in the parlour of the little house Madge could no longer afford. Jean spoke of Catherine’s Land.

‘It’d no’ be what you’re used to,’ she declared. ‘But it’s no’ so bad, it’s no’ like some o’ the places in the Old Town. And it’d be somewhere for you to live, somewhere to bring up Will’s girls.’

The two women in their mourning looked at the three little girls in their black frocks and pinafores, Abby, nine, Jennie, five and Rachel, four. Madge, picking up a piece of sewing, sighed and said nothing.

‘Now, Madge, you’ve no kin and no money,’ Jean went on, ‘you tell me how you’re going to manage!’

‘I’ve my dressmaking,’ Madge said after a pause.

‘Aye, but what you need is family. You need support, you ken that’s true. Now, if you came up to Catherine’s Land, you’d have me. You could have two nice big rooms with your own WC and all your own things. The rent’s no’ much and I’ve a bit put by, I could help you till you settle.’ Jean’s dark eyes were steady. ‘Come on, now, what do you say?’

Madge looked again at her girls, who sat quite still, watching.

‘I don’t know, Gramma Ritchie, I don’t know.’

Jean let out a long sigh and sat back, folding her arms across her narrow chest. ‘Och, I’ll say no more,’ she muttered. ‘Come if you’ve a mind, Madge, I’ll leave it to you.’

Madge threaded her needle. ‘I’ve a mind,’ she said, quietly, ‘thank you, Gramma Ritchie.’

The three little girls looked down at their button boots.

That was in 1912. By 1920, after so many years in Catherine’s Land, Madge could imagine no other life. Two of her daughters, though, dreamed of something very different.

Dusk had come early to the city that October afternoon. Standing at the darkening windows, Madge Ritchie said, ‘Seems like it’ll be night before we’ve had our tea. Let’s close the curtains, Abby.’

Now seventeen and tall, Abby had the Ritchies’ dark good looks and a quick intelligent gaze. She was in service in Edinburgh’s West End. This was her afternoon off, but she could never leave her place before two and had to be back by seven; it wasn’t long. Joining her mother, she looked down from their third floor flat to the Lawnmarket below. The shops closed for Sunday were in darkness. Only the streetlamps, newly lit, shone through the gloom.

‘Yes, let’s shut out the night,’ Abby agreed and drew the curtains.

Someone on the stair outside stumbled and fell against Madge’s door. A voice swore, another laughed. The footsteps thundered on.

‘Oh, dear, the Kemp boys coming home,’ Madge murmured, ‘or else the Rossies.’

‘What a racket!’ Abby said crossly. She had always hated the noise of Catherine’s Land.

‘You should hear them on Saturday nights,’ called twelve-year-old Rachel from the table where she was covering grocer’s paper with drawings of squares and triangles. She lifted a delicately pretty face to her sister. ‘You don’t know how lucky you are, Abby, to be away.’

‘I don’t know that I’d call it lucky to be in service,’ Abby retorted.

‘No indeed!’ cried Madge. She was still sweet-faced, with wide blue eyes and fair hair worn in a loose knot. At thirty-six, she looked younger, at least when she was happy, as she always was on Sundays when Abby came home. Only Jennie her second daughter was like her. As Jennie came in now and began to argue with Rachel about clearing the table for tea, Madge quietly touched Abby’s arm.

‘You know I never wanted you to be a housemaid, Abby. It was only Gramma who was so keen. I mean, knowing Mrs Moffat, saying it was such a good place.’

‘Oh, I know.’ Abby gave a wry smile. ‘Two print frocks and two black, all my food and twenty-nine pounds a year. What more could I want?’

‘Oh, Abby!’ Madge’s face crumpled. ‘I blame myself, I do. You were worth something better. Always so clever at school, such lovely reports!’

‘Ma, please don’t go on. It doesn’t matter now.’

‘But you know how it was – Gramma’d been so good …’

They were both silent, remembering.

‘What we’d have done without her, I don’t know,’ Madge murmured. ‘I’ll never forget what she did for us when your dad died. But she’s gone now, and you don’t have to stay on at Glenluce Place, Abby, you could find something else.’

‘Not what I want, though. I’m not ready to move yet.’

‘Not ready? What do you mean?’

‘Well, I’m studying, Ma. When I can. I’m teaching myself book-keeping.’

Madge’s face lightened. ‘Book-keeping? Why, Abby, that’s wonderful! You’ll be able to get an office job!’

Abby shrugged. ‘Maybe. I’ll get something better than housework, anyway.’ She moved purposefully towards her sisters. ‘Rachel, come on now, let Jennie have the table. And you might help to set it yourself. I’d like some tea before I go.’

‘Oh, Abby, I wish you didn’t have to go at all!’ cried Jennie. ‘Only one afternoon a week, it’s not much to spend with us.’

‘Why, Rachel here thinks I’m lucky to be away,’ Abby said, lightly. ‘Isn’t that right, Rachel?’

Rachel, moving her drawing papers and pencils with bad grace, threw back her dark ringlets and said over her shoulder, ‘I only meant you were lucky to be out of Catherine’s Land.’

As Madge bit her lip and went out to fill the kettle at the sink in the passage, Abby shook Rachel’s shoulder hard.

‘Rachel, don’t upset Ma! It’s not her fault we have to live here.’

‘I know it’s not.’ Rachel squirmed out of Abby’s grasp. ‘But I don’t have to like it, do I?’

‘I like it,’ Jennie put in, ‘I’ve always liked it. Why are you two always complaining?’

‘I’m not,’ Abby replied. ‘At least, not to Ma.’

Everything was ready now for Sunday tea – the table set with one of Madge’s good cloths, the bread and butter cut, the jam in a dish, the teacakes and currant cake sliced. On the black-leaded range, the kettle sang and sputtered and Jennie called, ‘Ma, shall I make the tea?’

‘Yes, please,’ Madge answered. As they took their places at the table, she gave a contented sigh. This was what she liked, this was all she wanted, for them to be together. But how quickly the time was going by! The hands of the old cottage clock over the range seemed to be whizzing round and then tea was over and cleared away, and Abby was putting on her hat in the bedroom she had once shared with her sisters but which was now theirs alone. Madge hung her clothes there but slept in a curtained recess off the living room, which was not ideal but quite common practice in the tenements.

One of these days, thought Abby, studying herself in the spotted mirror over the chest of drawers, I’ll get Ma a house again, where she can have her own room and somewhere to put her things, and a garden with an apple tree, like we used to have. And that’s a promise! she told the dark-eyed girl in the mirror, but the girl did not smile.

‘Who’s coming with me to the tram?’ Abby cried, when she was ready.

They all came, clattering down the twisting stair and out into the Lawnmarket, a name which had intrigued them until they realised it was just another street, even if it was part of the Royal Mile. But the Royal Mile was certainly something special. There weren’t many streets that stretched from a castle at one end to a royal palace at the other. ‘With a’ the history of Scotland in between,’ Gramma Ritchie had told them,. ‘no to mention a’ the troubles.’ By which she meant not only the drinking in the pubs and alehouses of the High Street and Canongate, but the long cavalcade of fights and hangings and riots that belonged to the old stones. Nothing had fascinated the girls so much in their early days in Edinburgh as Gramma’s stories. Of Mary, Queen of Scots and the Palace of Holyroodhouse, of John Knox and Bonnie Prince Charlie, of the old Tolbooth prison, now marked only by stones in the road in the shape of the Heart of Midlothian, where, believe it or not, Gramma said they might spit! ‘As if we would!’ they had cried, but Gramma said you did it for luck and never got fined.

‘Aye, you’ve got no history like this in England,’ Gramma once remarked with satisfaction. To tease her, Madge had said, ‘Yes, but we’re all one nation now.’

Gramma had given her an astounded look and cried, ‘Niver in this world!’

Sometimes they talked of the Catherine who had given her name to Catherine’s Land, and wondered what she would think if she could come back and see her husband’s house still standing after so many years.

‘Gramma,’ Jennie once asked, ‘do you think Catherine’s Land will always be here?’

‘Aye, I do,’ Gramma said firmly.

Sighing, Abby and Rachel thought she was probably right.

‘Goodnight, Frankie!’ Abby called now to a young man with curly dark hair, who was standing at the door of one of the ground-floor shops as they left the house.

‘Goodnight!’ he called eagerly, then melted away into the darkness.

‘I think Frankie was waiting for you, Abby,’ Rachel said, with a mischievous look. ‘Maybe he’d like to walk you to the tram,’

‘Frankie?’ Abby only laughed.

‘Well, didn’t he used to walk you to school?’

‘That was a long time ago.’ But Abby remembered holding Frankie’s hand all the way down the Canongate, and the humbugs and toffees he used to bring her from his mother’s sweetie shop. When she went into service he had moved to Glasgow to find work, but now he was back, playing the piano in pubs and cinemas. And still watching out for her on the stairs.

‘Here comes my tram,’ Abby murmured as they reached the stop on the Mound. ‘Bye, everybody, see you next week!’

They watched and waited as she climbed into the swaying, lighted vehicle, then waved as she waved and saw her borne away.

‘Come on, Ma,’ Jennie whispered, taking Madge’s arm, ‘she’ll only be gone a week, you know!’

‘I know, I’m foolish.’ Madge shook her head and smiled. ‘It’s just that I look forward so much to Sunday afternoons and they’re always over so quickly.’

‘And Sunday evenings are awful,’ Rachel muttered. ‘Nothing to look forward to but Monday and school. Jennie, don’t you dare say you like school!’

‘You know I don’t. I can’t wait for next year when I leave.’

They hesitated for a moment, looking out over the lights of the city lying below the dark outline of the Castle. Then they turned and walked back up the Mound to Catherine’s Land.

Young Annie Lossie was putting on lipstick (strictly forbidden during working hours) in Mackenzie’s Bakery, and Madge was putting on her hat. It was after six on Monday evening. They had had a long day on their feet and were late away as usual, because of the city clerks crowding in at the last moment to buy up unsold buns and bread. You could hardly turn them away, said Miss Dow, the manageress, but, och, they got on her nerves, holding everybody back, and she with the cash to do as well! But Annie liked to laugh with them and so did Madge, even if they did tease the Hampshire accent she had never lost.

‘One or two of they clerks is sweet on you, Madge,’ Annie said, keeping her voice down, ‘d’you ken that? I mean the older ones, of course.’

‘Of course,’ Madge answered, smiling. She buttoned up her coat and checked to see she had put her Mackenzie’s loaf and a teacake in her shopping bag, where she already had a packet of sausages bought in her dinner hour.

‘I’ll bet if you gave ’em half a chance, they’d ask you out.’ Annie combed her short red hair and pulled on a beret. ‘And I think you ought to go.’

‘They have asked me out,’ said Madge.

‘No!’ Annie’s round eyes sparkled. ‘Madge, what did you say?’

‘I said I’d rather not, if they didn’t mind.’

‘Oh, Madge, why? Your Will’s been gone for years. Is it no’ time you were thinking about someone else?’

Madge glanced at Miss Dow, busy with the cash. She said in a low voice, ‘If I met the right one, maybe.’

‘Might wait for ever for him! You should just go out, Madge, have a bit of fun.’

‘I’ve got my girls, they’re all I want.’

Annie shook her head. ‘They’ll grow up, you ken. They’ll no’ always be with you.’

Madge said quietly, ‘I know that.’

‘Have you two no homes to go to?’ cried Miss Dow, rattling coins on the counter. ‘Come away, now – I’ll lock up.’

‘Poor old Miss Dow,’ Annie whispered, as she and Madge faced the mist of Thistle Street together. ‘She’s forty-two, you ken. No’ much hope for her, eh?’

By the time they reached Princes Street, the mist had thickened into fog. They could scarcely make out the street lights or the Castle on its rock, and Annie’s tram was almost at the stop before she could read the number.

‘That’s me!’ she cried, moving forward with the queue. ‘Goodnight, Madge. Will you be all right, walking? At least, it’s no’ far.’

That was true. Catherine’s Land wasn’t far from Princes Street. Just up the Mound, through Lady Stair’s Close and into the Lawnmarket. But it was another country.

The lights of the little ground-floor shops were shimmering through the fog as Madge emerged from the short cut of Lady Stair’s Close and turned towards home. Frankie’s mother, Mrs Baxter, a dour widow in her forties, was reading the evening paper in her sweetie shop, while Mr Kay the grocer was still at work weighing out sugar, and Archie Shields the tailor was still cutting cloth.

Archie, a small, dapper man, had been keen at one time for Madge to do stitching for him, but his airless premises that smelled of sweat and scorched pressing cloths did not appeal. She had made the excuse that she only wanted to sew for ladies, which was true, even if no ladies seemed to be requiring her services. Though she had her machine all set up, no one came in answer to her little cards in the stationer’s and she had ended up serving in Mackenzie’s. It wasn’t too bad, she got on well with Miss Dow and Annie and could buy bread and cakes at reduced prices. She supposed she should consider herself lucky to have a job at all, with so much unemployment about. Peace, it seemed, was not as profitable as war. But sometimes, she didn’t feel so lucky.

She sighed, looking up at the house Matthew Kerr had built so long ago, or as much as she could see of its six storeys through the wreaths of smoking fog. He had built well. It still seemed solid enough in spite of its years, the stonework crumbling in places but on the whole strong, the carvings over the windows still in place, the rescued roof intact. Below the shops were basement rooms for storage, a wash house with a copper to heat the water, a massive mangle, and pulleys for drying.

My turn to wash tonight, thought Madge, drearily, for she could have done with putting her feet up, but she must take her turn or miss it. How she hated Mondays! Rachel was right about Sunday evenings. Nothing to look forward to but work for her followed by a struggle with wet sheets. If it had been summer, she might have hung them on the lines on the green at the back of the house, but they’d never dry there this weather. Or even at the high windows of the tenement, where washing sometimes flew like tattered banners in the wind.

Madge’s eyes found her own window and saw there were no faces looking out to catch sight of her coming home. The girls must have drawn the curtains against the fog. But they would be up there, waiting. Putting aside the barefoot Irish children playing in the passageway, waving to Mrs Finnegan, standing with the latest baby at her door, Madge ran up the stairs to the third floor, ready to cry, ‘Girls, I’m home!’

In Madge’s eyes, her flat was pleasant enough. She had two large rooms, off which were cupboards for coals and storage, a sink and a lavatory. Gramma Ritchie always used to say she’d been lucky to have one of the middle floors for they’d been intended for the quality and had higher ceilings and longer windows than the rest of the buildings. There was a black-leaded range for cooking and heating and all her things from the cottage had fitted in somehow, the couch and the rocking chair, the sewing machine and her mother’s little piano. Madge’s mother had been a village schoolmistress before her marriage and had given Madge her love of music and reading which she had tried to pass on to her daughters. All the girls played the piano, but the tenants of Catherine’s Land were more impressed by the sewing machine. Though Madge took no money, she often ran up things for her neighbours, much to Gramma’s disgust in the early days. ‘No’ sewing for they Finnegans again, or they Rossies?’ she would scold. ‘They’ll take the skin off your back, if you let ’em, Madge!’

‘They certainly haven’t got much on their own backs,’ Madge serenely replied. ‘I don’t mind sewing for them.’ Indeed, she sewed for anyone, the Rossies, the Kemps, the Muirs, the Erskines, Lily MacLaren, and Sheena. It was a pleasure to sew for Lily, so slim and beautiful, with her cloud of dark hair and her grey eyes clear as water, young Sheena the same. Everyone knew that though Lily called herself Mrs MacLaren, she had never had a husband and Sheena, now thirteen, was a love-bairn, but there was nothing unusual in that. Even Gramma Ritchie, pillar of the Kirk, made allowances. ‘I’m no’ one for judging,’ she told Madge, who smiled secretly at Gramma’s idea of herself, ‘but it was a soldier, they say, and her only fifteen, you canna judge poor Lily.’

‘No,’ Madge agreed fervently, ‘I’d never judge her.’

All the same, she was not too pleased to see Lily swinging in the rocking chair that evening, with Sheena lolling against her shoulder.

‘Why, Lily,’ Madge murmured, kissing Jennie and Rachel and taking off her coat, ‘what brings you here?’

‘Can you spare a drop o’ milk?’ asked Lily. ‘Save me going to Kay’s?’

Which is just down the stair, thought Madge, vexed, but she unpacked her shopping bag and said, yes, she’d milk to spare and seeing as they were already there, Lily and Sheena might as well stay for their tea. She had been hoping to keep back a few of the sausages for the next day, but at the look in Sheena’s eye, put them all into the pan Jennie had brought her.

‘Madge, we couldna do that,’ said Lily, making no move. But Sheena cried, ‘Mammie, we could, we could!’

‘I’ve got the range hot,’ Jennie said softly, ‘and I’ve peeled the tatties.’

‘Potatoes,’ Rachel corrected. ‘Ma says potatoes, Jennie. You sound just like a Scot.’

‘Never mind what we call them, let’s get them on to boil,’ said Madge, tying on her apron. ‘Oh, you know, I think first I’d love a cup of tea.’

‘Aye, that’d be nice,’ said Lily.

Though Madge’s oval face was white and her blue eyes shadowed with weariness, Lily stayed on and on. When the girls had washed up and retired to the bedroom to talk and giggle, she made yet another cup of tea and settled herself back into the rocking chair, Madge’s chair, for another nice long ‘crack’.

‘I was thinking about your Will,’ she remarked. ‘He must’ve been a very special feller. I mean, for you to stay a widow so long. Is it no’ eight years since he went?’

‘Yes, it’s eight years,’ Madge agreed stiffly.

‘Have you niver thought of getting wed again? There’d be plenty want you, Madge.’

‘Oh, Lily …’ Madge stirred her tea and looked away. First Annie, now Lily. She didn’t want to talk about herself or Will, especially not to Lily.

‘Have you no seen that new feller who’s moved in on your stair?’ Lily persisted. ‘He’s a house painter, they say. And a widower.’

‘Mr Gilbride? Yes, I’ve met him. He’s got two sons.’

‘Malcolm and Rory. Rory’s the handsome one, like his da. Do you no’ think Jim Gilbride’s good-looking?’

‘Lily, I’m not interested in Mr Gilbride.’

‘He’d be just right for you, Madge, I can tell. And what’s the poor man to do, then, wi’ no wife to look after him? They say she died of the Spanish influenza, like your ma-in-law.’

Madge kept her eyes down, feeling again the stab of grief. Two years on, she still couldn’t believe she would never see again the tall figure of her mother-in-law, see the dark eyes so like Will’s, so like Abby’s, the head of coarse black hair scarcely touched with grey and swept up high with pins and combs that never dared to loosen. For months after Gramma had gone, Madge kept thinking she could hear her light step on the stair, her voice at the door, ‘Madge, here’s a bit pie, mind the gravy!’ ‘Madge, I’ve made you girdle scones, put the kettle on!’ ‘Lily, d’you mind?’ Madge suddenly rose to her feet. ‘It’s my turn for the copper, I have to get my sheets in.’

‘Oh, you shoulda said!’ Lily unwound herself from her chair. ‘Sorry, hen.’ She gave Madge one of her lovely smiles. ‘Sheena, let’s away! Say thanks for your tea, now.’

Poor Lily, thought Madge, watching her make her way slowly up the stair with her jug of milk, Sheena following. How does she manage, then? There was a cleaning job which Lily herself, knowing her style of cleaning, said was a bit of a joke and it certainly didn’t bring in much, but she did other things. A bit of pressing for Archie Shields, a bit of ironing, this and that. If Madge had her own ideas what the this and that might be, she never expressed them. Lily never brought a man back to Catherine’s Land.

As Madge was about to close her door, she saw Mr Gilbride coming up the stair and felt embarrassed as he said good evening. After what Lily had said she scarcely dared to look him in the eye, but his own brown eyes which had a fiery glaze to them did not mind resting on her. He knew she was a widow, of course; no doubt he felt the same sort of sympathy for her as she felt for him.

‘No’ so bad, eh?’ he remarked, taking off his cap to reveal a head of thick brown hair. ‘No’ so foggy.’

‘Oh? That’s good, then.’

The gas jet on the stair shone down, lighting their pale features, two people, bereaved. Then Mr Gilbride replaced his cap and opened his door and Madge, drawing back, closed hers.

It was strange, but after that meeeting with Mr Gilbride on the stair Madge found she couldn’t seem to get him out of her mind. She might be putting teacakes into paper bags or giving change or doing her work at home, and suddenly she would see again the tall, erect figure coming up the stair, the good-looking face with its straight nose and high cheekbones, the brown eyes that seemed to burn as they rested on her, and she would feel curiously excited and at the same time dismayed. She had scarcely looked at the man, yet here was his image constantly appearing and reappearing, why should that be? It was all Lily’s fault, embarrassing her with her matchmaking. It was only because of what Lily had said that her new neighbour had entered so much into her thoughts. Even so, she never opened the street door without wondering if she would see his straight back in front of her; she never came out of her door without thinking he might be coming out of his. Sometimes she did see his sons, the plain and clever Malcolm, the handsome Rory, but it wasn’t until a fine golden Sunday towards the end of October that she saw Jim Gilbride again.

It was such a beautiful afternoon they had decided to meet Abby coming from the West End and walk with her through Princes Street Gardens. As soon as the Sunday dinner was washed up and cleared away, they joined the crowds promenading down Princes Street.

‘Supposing we miss her?’ asked Rachel. ‘She’ll come home and find we’re not there.’

‘She never gets away before two o’clock and it’s only that now,’ Madge replied. ‘I’m sure we’ll see her at Maule’s Corner.’

Maule’s department store at the West End of Princes Street was a great meeting place and also a good vantage point; Madge knew that if they reached there before Abby, they would see her coming along Queensferry Street on her way from Glenluce Place.

‘I see her!’ cried Jennie, before they needed to cross to Maule’s. ‘She’s talking to someone.’

‘It’s that old parlourmaid,’ said Rachel, narrowing her fine dark eyes, ‘Miss Whatsername.’

‘That’s no way to speak of Miss Givan,’ Madge rebuked. ‘Mind your manners, Rachel. Poor soul, I feel so sorry for her. Abby says she has no family, never has anywhere to go on her afternoon off.’

But the girls were not interested in Miss Givan, who had turned away, they only wanted to see Abby, who was speeding towards them.

How tall she was, thought Madge, how like her grandmother! In her Sunday skirt and jacket, with a brimmed hat pulled over her dark hair, Abby seemed to have grown prettier, even since last week. Seventeen. It was a lovely age. If only she had not had to spend it as a housemaid.

‘You’ve come to meet me!’ Abby exclaimed, ‘I was just thinking how nice it would be if we could all walk back through the gardens!’

‘Far too warm to stay indoors,’ said Jennie, winding her arm round Abby’s, as Madge asked quietly, ‘How’ve things been, dear?’

Abby’s face darkened and she shrugged. ‘Madam’s thrown one or two of her little rages, Mrs Moffat’s thrown three or four. Apart from that, everything’s been fine.

‘Oh, Abby—’

‘Don’t worry, Ma. I told you, didn’t I, I’ve got my plans? As soon as I can, I’m going to get out of Glenluce Place.’

‘How?’ asked Rachel. ‘How will you get out?’

‘By qualifying myself for something better, that’s how.’

‘You mean studying?’ Rachel made a face. ‘How awful, Abby!’

At which, Abby’s face cleared and she laughed.

They moved down a flight of steps to the formal gardens that had been laid out on the site of the old Nor’ Loch, drained so long ago. Above them, the Castle on its volcanic rock, basked in the autumn sunshine. All around them people of the city, so starved for the sight of green, walked the paths between the flowerbeds or sat on benches, revelling in the rare warmth. Madge suggested they too should sit down for a while, but Abby had her eye on the ice-cream seller who was doing a good trade. ‘Let’s get cornets!’ s