CHAPTER 8

Reflections of Mrs Hair

GALBRAITH BROUGHT DISTURBING news, but it was not unexpected. MacLeod was dead.

‘It was not an accident, madam. They say it was murder.’

Mrs Hair dropped her quill, spilt a little ink. She never spilt ink. She dismissed Galbraith. She needed to think, alone. She waited until he had closed the door.

Galbraith was reliable if unimaginative, she thought. In an office, you needed all kinds of folk, dull and passionate, reliable and forgetful, quick and slow, bringing balance so the place might function efficiently. MacLeod was one of the passionate ones, perhaps too passionate. He had been useful to her, if not entirely trustworthy. He was passionate for his own interest. However, he had a good head for business, perhaps the only thing they had had in common, and knew the value of Highland land. And now he was dead.

She turned to look at the sky through the window. Business was the only thing that made her forget. Business vanquished the painful thoughts that haunted her every day. Business pushed the little faces out of her mind, the tiny beautiful faces of her five dead bairns. Five dead bairns. She had given birth to them all. It seemed so long ago, like another world, as if they were born from another woman. Five times she had experienced the agony of childbirth and then watched them fade to nothing. She had prayed with all her heart for God to preserve each one. Each was taken for some reason she could not fathom, only known to God himself. She had asked many times how He could allow such suffering for nothing. How He allowed the deaths of so many innocents. Was it because she had sinned? She admitted to herself, although to no other, she had sinned. She was a sinner, as were all God’s creatures. Was that the reason they were taken from her? But it was divine Providence; God’s business, not hers. They had all died, but she lived on. She had survived two dead husbands. There would be no more of them. That was as certain as death. She’d had enough of men, lying with them as bedfellow, being told what to do in bed and business. They were taken from her as well. Her grief for them was nothing compared to the burning grief for her bairns. She did not know if she had loved either of her husbands. She had certainly not loved the first, although she had grown fond of the second. The first had been her father’s choice. She would never have chosen such a grotesque man. He seemed ancient when she had first seen him, although he was only in his thirties when they married. She had feared disagreeing with her father. She had gone along with it without complaining, although she had privately shed tears with her mother. There were many more tears after she had first seen the repulsive creature and smelt the reek of him that she had never gotten used to. The early days of her first marriage were torture. But, thank God, he was taken from her.

Her second husband was much less disagreeable to look at. He was handsome. She was attracted by his good looks. He was little more than a boy when they married. She led him to her bed, rather than a lamb to the slaughter like the first time. Yes, with her second marriage, she had made sure that she was in charge. At least there was pleasure with the second, a little recompense for all the suffering and humiliation of her first marriage, a little recompense for the years that had tasted like flint.

She had found, unexpectedly, that she had an aptitude for business. After her first bedfellow had left her in so much debt – he was a fool with money – she was forced to learn quickly or sink. Her second husband had been more careful and was led by her advice. They had prospered together; he as a druggist and she as a moneylender.

When her second husband died, she was left with a capital fund of her own, not a fortune, but enough to get by. She was free of debt with capital that she controlled. She established an office in her own name. By that time there was a book of loans. She could live off the interest if she was cautious. She became a merchant lady in her own right, one of the few in the city of Edinburgh, and thrived. She became her own woman for the first time since leaving Garlet House as a girl. She would never again be ruled by men. She would never marry again. She had no more need of men, they only wished to rule her and obtain her wealth. She had had suitors in the years following the death of Mr Hair. She thought of a few of them: Dunlop and Slight and Corse. All were repulsive to her. She knew they were not attracted by her tiny body, it was her money they were after. She felt a burning hatred for all the men who had crossed her over the years. She had risen by careful management. She found she was good at business, much better than the fools who called themselves merchants, or the money men who were supposed to understand the direction of the Exchange, but always bought or sold at the wrong time. And now they were begging her for funds. Now they wanted money and she possessed it, so the price she charged for it rose. She could not deny such power gave her pleasure, the most pleasure she had experienced in a long life of pain. It made life bearable, but it was no real antidote to the small faces crowding her mind, especially in the evenings when she sat alone at the fire. They were like small birds in the nest seeking the food of love. They were her constant travelling companions in the journey of life. Would she meet them again in the afterlife, her little darlings? And what kind of creatures would they be? Stillborn bairns or full-grown souls? The question accompanied her waking hours. She could not make any sense of it. God did not provide assurance for her. What was the nature of the afterlife? Would she still be a woman there? Or would her soul be free of the constraints of sex? Would God allow her this? She prayed with all her heart it would be so. In her dreams, she was with them again, their tiny bodies cuddled against her, seeking her breast across eternity. In her dreams, she played with them in the summer sunshine in the garden at Garlet House and told them stories after tucking them into bed.

Her thoughts returned to MacLeod and business, once more. She knew what the good merchants of Edinburgh really thought of her. They were her inveterate enemies. They had opposed her at every turn through the years. She had learned from an early stage what she needed to survive as a merchant maiden: news was vital. Knowledge was power. She paid for intelligence about her competitors, whilst they knew nothing about it. She had built up a long list of informants over the years. Some were now on their last legs themselves, much older than her. Some still inhabited the drinking dens she never entered. They soaked up news from the city and offered it to her. The process always started with a little chat around town, before a deal was completed. Then they came back to her to provide snippets of news. She would never pay a huge amount for the news, but just enough to make it worth the informants’ while, so they came back to her first. She was surprised to learn some men dealt solely in the business of others. There was always dirt clinging to men. There was always clart on a merchant’s shoes. She was always surprised by how often those appearing holy in public were driven by perversions. Hypocrisy was like the wind in Edinburgh, waiting around every corner. When she was ready, she would challenge them. She would have revenge upon them and they would never know she was responsible. The thought passed through her mind that she might be killed by one of them. She had feared it more than once in a long career as merchant maiden. She had almost desired it in her days of acutest grief. But she rarely had to use force in her years of money lending; only once or twice in thirty years had she hired a strong arm. The threat was usually enough. If she was slain, it would not be a man who benefitted anyway. Her testament would ensure it. She had formed a plan that she had shared with few, a great plan to establish an educational institution in the city in her name, funded by her legacy. It would ensure girls were educated as well as boys. The place would help daughters of the city, a legacy worth fighting for, allowing them to rise like she had done, but with a helping hand as she never had; a sisterhood of educated women who might free themselves from the grasping hands of men. She would have done some good for the weaker vessel in the eyes of God, and her reward might be to join her lost bairns in the next life. She hoped for this with all her heart.

Thinking of MacLeod again, she mused that he had been useful to her. His death was not unexpected – she had thought, when they had first met, that he would either rise high or fall early. She had spotted his usefulness from the outset. She had overheard him in conversation on the High Street. He was already a canny operator despite his youth. He had political connections and a sharp mind. She was sure he was a Jacobite. She knew the names of other conspirators in the city. She knew the times and places they met. She knew he had other unsavoury contacts. He courted the dregs of the town. They too could prove useful. She wondered if he had pushed one of them too far, one of the figures who operated in the shadows, in the underworld beyond commerce, law and church. If only he had kept his hands away from Betty.