Chapter Sixteen

Two Heartbeats

O, wha my babie-clouts will buy?

 O, wha will tent me when I cry?

 Wha will kiss me where I lie? –  

The rantin dog, the daddie o’t! 

Not long after Jean came back from Paisley, one of the town midwives, Agnes Sloan, came to the house, summoned there by Mary Armour. Jean was so very big and Mary, with plenty of experience of childbirth, was worried. Her daughter had been adamant that the baby wasn’t due until late August or early September, if she was counting the months correctly. Mary wondered whether she could be counting right. Perhaps the child had been conceived earlier than Jean was admitting. After all, she seemed to have been meeting up with Rab throughout the whole winter and seeing him during the preceding summer – for far longer, in fact, than she had ever admitted to her parents. Mary didn’t want any unwelcome surprises. But there were preparations to be made, and since this was Jeany’s first (and, it was devoutly to be hoped, last) baby until she was a safely married woman, Mary thought it prudent to summon the midwife to take a look at her daughter.

Agnes had delivered more babies than she could count, many safely, some disastrously, but then childbirth was a dangerous business and sometimes there was nothing you could do but pray for a good outcome. Jean looked like a strong young woman who would have little trouble in pushing an infant into the world, but you could never be sure.

She looked shrewdly at Jean, frowning. ‘When d’you think you’re due, lass?’

‘Late in August, maybe September. I cannae be certain.’

‘As late as that? Your mammy’s right. You’re gey big.’

‘I’ve been big all along.’ Jean shifted uncomfortably. Agnes and her mother had made her perch on the box bed where Mary and James slept. She could smell the sour scent of her father’s working clothes on the blankets.

‘I would have thought late July, early August from the look of you.’

Jean was alarmed. ‘So soon?’

‘Maybe. Weans come when they’re good and ready, and there’s nothing we can do to help or hinder them. Well, no so very much anyway. There are ane or twa things to bring a baby on more quickly, but some are very inadvisable.’

She cast a quick glance at Mary. Mary’s babies were sometimes late, and certain measures had been taken in the past: castor oil, one or two herbal preparations. Vigorous lovemaking also worked, if the husband and wife could be persuaded to it without too much embarrassment. But it looked to her as though Jean wouldn’t need any such assistance, even though the father might have been willing, knowing his reputation in the town. She gazed at Jean’s belly, drawing her brows together as though something had just occurred to her.

‘Lie down, lass,’ she said. ‘Lie back and loosen your clothes.’ She had brought a battered leather bag with her, the one she carried about the town whenever she was called to attend a birth, and now she drew a narrow wooden trumpet out of it, very neatly turned in beech wood. ‘Does the wean move much?’

‘Aye it does. Especially at night, but all the time, really. It only quietens when I’m walking, but my fingers and my ankles are swelling up that much and I cannae walk very far. The heat is driving me half daft, Mistress Sloan and that’s the truth.’

The elderly woman placed the wider end of the trumpet on Jean’s belly and bent down to put her ear over the narrower end, an expression of intense concentration on her face. Mary hovered anxiously in the background. Agnes moved the trumpet, listened again, and then again.

‘Can you hear the heart beating?’ asked Jean, afraid that something might be wrong. Agnes was still frowning. ‘Wheesht,’ she said. ‘Let me listen.’

There was a moment’s silence. Then her face cleared. She raised her head, put the trumpet away. She was smiling.

‘Well,’ she said, thoroughly enjoying her moment of triumph. ‘Well, well, Jean Armour.’

‘What?’ asked Mary, alarmed.

‘There’s twa!’

‘Twa?’ Jean echoed her. ‘What are you saying?’

‘Twa heartbeats, and twa weans. That’s why you’re so big, lass. Your dates are likely right enough. And you’ll get bigger yet. Twins. They say they run in families. But you’ve had nae twins, Mary, have ye?’

‘No. I havenae.’

‘Maybe the father then.’ She turned to Jean with a wicked grin.

Jean blushed. ‘I don’t ken.’

‘Maybe you should ask him, eh?’

‘Agnes Sloan, you ken fine well she cannae ask him,’ Mary spoke, severely.

The midwife chuckled. ‘I thought he might be happy about it. It’s weel kent Rab Mossgiel is fond of his weans. He might appreciate twa at the one go. Mary, I’ll tak a wee drappie of whatever you have in the house before I go.’

Jean wanted to see the back of the woman, but they had to keep her sweet. Otherwise the news that Jean Armour was expecting Rab Mossgiel’s twins would soon be all over the town, and Rab would be among the first to be told. But there was small hope of buying the woman’s silence with whisky or even the excellent cheese and bannocks that Mary set before her. Agnes ate and drank her fill and only went away when it was clear that no more whisky would be forthcoming.

‘Your dates are probably right enough, Jean,’ she said as her parting shot. ‘I’ll come in again and see you afore your time. Make sure you lie down in the day if you can, put your feet up when your ankles swell, if your mammy will let you. And try not to excite yourself. You have twa weans to think about now!’

Jean could have cried, but there seemed no point in weeping. A certain excitement was warring with the panic inside her, and again there came that unholy desire to laugh. What next, she wondered. In the name of God, what next?

They had been right not to trust to Agnes’s silence. The news was soon all over the town.

‘Jeany Armour’s carrying twins. Have ye heard? Jeany Armour’s carrying Rab Mossgiel’s twins.’

It was far too good a tale not to be told again and again, in change houses and shops. Within half a day, it had spread to the four corners of the town and out as far as Mossgiel with Catherine Govan’s nephew, Willie. His aunt had grown very fond of Jean, felt guilty about her own role in the affair, and was genuinely concerned that the father of the babies should be made aware of what was in store for him as soon as possible.

Even Rab was shocked into uncharacteristic silence, while his family crept about him, not knowing how to respond. Jean had her penitence before her, and he knew that the kirk session minutes would soon be amended to ‘children’ rather than child. Robert Burns’s children. And then even the few people who might have remained in ignorance would be sure to know all about it.

* * *

She had to see him, to speak to him. But for a little while, she was at a loss as to how she could contrive a meeting. Then, one afternoon, Nelly and Betty Miller, daughters of the proprietor of the Sun Inn, came visiting. She remembered Rab’s song about the Mauchline belles, in which he had described her as the jewel of them all. She doubted if she could be described as a jewel now. More like a ship in full sail. She noticed that both young women had that self-satisfied and faintly smug look of having escaped Jean’s fate and done rather better for themselves. But their sympathy for her was genuine enough. James was away from home and Mary Armour saw no harm in allowing Jean some visitors, especially respectable young women like the Miller sisters. Somewhere at the back of her mind was the unsettling knowledge that Nelly had begun walking out with Dr John Mackenzie, and he was a friend of Rab Mossgiel. But if you couldn’t trust a doctor, who else could you trust? And Jean needed some kind of diversion from the uncomfortable prospect of giving birth to twins without any husband to support her or any establishment of her own.

Of the two sisters, Betty was naturally more sympathetic, and perhaps more well disposed towards Rab too. Nelly had found him a handsome lad to be sure, but she could not stand what she thought of as his idleness, his bookishness and love of poetry. Give her a man of science like Dr Mackenzie any day of the week, aye, and a good provider too. Nelly had the uneasy feeling that if you were married to Rab Burns, books would come before anything else in the house, even food on the table. Books and lassies. Who would want to be married to a lad like that?

When her mother had occasion to go to the house next door, leaving them alone for a few minutes, Jean seized her chance, took hold of their hands and said, ‘Nelly, Betty, will you do something for me?’

‘What?’

‘Can you see Rab for me?’

‘We see him most days in the town.’

‘No. I mean, will you speak to him for me? Tell him I must see him. Privately. Tonight, it must be tonight. The sooner the better. You must say that I beg him to speak to me. To find a way.’

‘But why? We thought that was all by, Jeany.’

‘It is all by, but there’s something I must tell him. It’s about my parents. It’s for his own good, not mine. Not on my behalf at all. You can tell him that, if it helps you to persuade him.’

Betty shook her head. ‘But how is he to speak to you, Jeany? You are never out alone these days, and your mother would not let him near you. She would bar the door to him again. Besides, he’s making plans to go to the Indies.’

Nelly nudged her sister.

‘It’s all right,’ said Jean. ‘I ken all about it. You mean that he’s planning to go off with May Campbell.’

‘Well, to be fair, nobody is very certain about Rab Mossgiel and May Campbell. We all ken fine it’s Jamie Montgomerie she loves. They say Rab has been writing to her, but that’s all they say.’ Nelly looked from her sister to Jean. ‘But Betty’s right. How is he to speak to you?’

‘Can you not give him a message from me?’

‘A letter?’

‘No. Not a letter. They keep all the paper in my father’s desk in the house next door. It would be too dangerous. Just tell him … tell him the usual place. He’ll ken fine what you mean. The place I might be able to get to. Tell him to wait for me. Tell him I’ll be there if I can. And if I cannae, then he must find some other way himself. Tell him that he must. For his ain good. Tell him that it’s for his ain sake, not mine.’

Jean was still clutching at Betty when they heard Mary Armour coming back in. She sat back, composed her features and began to talk about the latest fashion in bonnets. Taking their cue from her, Nelly and Betty joined in, until it was time to leave.

The sisters walked homewards through the sunny afternoon, nudging one another, giggling a little, enjoying the drama of it all, to be sure, but glad that they were on the outside looking in. They had caught something of Jeany’s fervour, nevertheless, and they agreed that they must give Rab the message. They decided that Mossgiel itself might be the best place for seeing Rab alone. It was not late, and so they kilted up their skirts to keep them out of the mud, and walked out to the farmhouse. There they found Rab chopping wood, all by himself, looking sullen and handsome, so they were able to pass on the message in comparative privacy and with not a little excitement at the sight of him. He gazed at them for a moment, thanked them, asked them to say nothing of this to anyone else, and went back to his chopping with renewed vigour. They took a good deal of pleasure from the whole enterprise. The intrigue was exciting and they were caught up in it. It was like something from one of their novels. How could life ever be dull when Mauchline held Rab Burns and his affairs of the heart?