A MUFFLED BLAST ROCKED THE GROUND beneath Helen’s feet as she skirted the edge of Hallglen Farm, lugging her sack of laundry on her back. A mile or so away, the canal navigators were making their way through near on half a mile of solid rock under Prospect Hill, and all because the landowner at Callendar didn’t want to see the canal from the windows of his great house. He wrote to all his rich friends across the country, and they took up his case, for all he was nothing but a jumped-up coppersmith from Aberdeen. Now he was dead but still the canal must be hidden from view, no matter how many lives of Highlanders or Irish that might cost, to spare the feelings of his brats. Helen’s father said they were dirt, the Forbes’, just coves squatting on the lands of the rightful Earl, who had lost it all a century ago after leading his men into battle at Sheriffmuir.
The blasting was always going to take an age and so, spotting an opportunity – or perhaps a worse fate if he didn’t act – the farmer at Hallglen had let the navvies erect huts and other shelters on his lower rigs. Some of these were snug enough, and built to stand a season or two, but many looked like to collapse at the first gust of wind, little more than rotted straw held together with a stick or two of wood and a length of twine. Some men had their families with them, but others were bunked in together, three or four six-foot men snoring and farting in a shelter not big enough to serve as a pigsty.
The roughest of the men had no want for Helen’s services, but there were plenty who sought to keep their linens in as good order as they could, and Helen made the trip twice each week to pick up their dirty sarks and shifts and return them clean. She charged well enough, the navvies were well paid, and there was the chance to pick up cobbling jobs too, carrying the boots home for mending and bringing them back in a day or two with the linens.
The walk out from home was pleasant, this early in the summer, but the return was harder, the weight of the washing made worse by the fact it was so very noisome. Helen was glad indeed when the one-room cottage she shared with William came into sight.
Despite all her fears, William had not left his Nelly at the end of that harvest season in Redding in the year of James MacDougal’s death. Instead, he had asked her to travel on with him, as his wife, when he went to sign up as a navvy on the Union Canal. The work would be hard, he said, but his back was strong, the money good and the food plentiful. Of course Helen agreed, she would have agreed to go to the moon and live on green cheese so long as William would be with her.
In fact, the canal-digging life turned out not to be for William. The navvies were great, strapping men who dug muck by the ton come rain, hail or shine, slogging their way through clay and rock and mud, armed only with picks and shovels. The work of field and harvest was nothing by comparison, and William’s health did not stand up to the hard labour in the rain and slime and cold. His high spirits left him, and Helen saw she would have to find a way to persuade him he could leave the camp without losing face and come with her back to Redding to recover.
‘We don’t need much to get by,’ she said. ‘We could go on the tramp, hawking goods, maybe; you have a silver tongue, William, you’ll charm the pennies out of those farm wives. And my father will always help us find work at the harvest or the tatties or the berries.’
It was nighttime, and Helen was helping William change a mustard plaster on his chest by the poor glow of a rushlight. William said nothing, and it seemed to Helen that he didn’t want to meet her eye.
‘Oh, Nelly,’ he said at last, ‘I have more than myself to keep.’
Helen frowned, not understanding.
William blushed red. ‘I have a wife,’ he said.
‘I know,’ said Helen. ‘Me.’
‘No, Nelly,’ William said. ‘Another wife. In Ireland. And two children. I send them money from my wages.’
Helen stared at him for a moment, and he grew redder still. Then she blew out the rushlight and lay down beside him in the dark, hearing her heart beat fast.
‘Margaret,’ she said. ‘Is that her name? I’ve heard you say it in your prayers.’
‘Aye,’ William said. ‘Margaret Coleman.’
Helen felt hollow, as she had in the days after Maisie had gone in the fire. ‘Will you go back to her?’ she asked. ‘And your children?’
‘No, Nelly, no!’ William exclaimed, and he took hold of her, smearing a mess of mustard on her shift. ‘We went our separate ways years back.’
‘Why?’ Helen was not reassured, not yet.
William let out a deep sigh, triggering a fit of coughing. When at last he got his breath back, he wheezed out an account of a fall-out with his wife’s father over a piece of land that was in her dowry.
‘She took her father’s side,’ William said. ‘We married too hasty, when I left the militia, and after that she came to be disappointed in me. They thought I had more than I did. I’m well spoken, you see, but that’s because I spent some time as manservant to a minister of religion. You know me, Nelly, I always have an eye to the main chance and I paid attention to the preacher and learned to speak fine and mind my manners. So ould man Coleman thought my father had money, and when he understood he did not, he tried to refuse me Margaret’s portion.’
‘Surely that would hurt his daughter as much as you,’ Helen said.
‘He said he’d keep her himself,’ said William. ‘He preferred to keep his wee parcel of land all together, you see. It makes more money that way.’
‘So what happened?’ Helen asked.
‘I left,’ said William. ‘I had to get away, a man cannot live in his father-in-law’s house under such conditions without losing his respect for himself. I wrote to Margaret to ask her to come, but she said no.’
Helen was struggling to sort it out in her mind. This Margaret Coleman had had everything – a piece of land meant for her, a strong and decent man for a husband, and bairnies – but she had chosen to turn her back on it all and remain in her father’s house. Meanwhile, Helen had never had any tocher whatsoever, her man was a brute who beat her, her bairnies were all dead or taken away, and even though she had need of it, there was no place for her with her father. The only piece of luck she had ever had was meeting William.
Well, she thought then, if she is so careless as to lose such a man, why should I scruple to take him for my own? She felt anger warm in her chest and she raised her chin.
‘You would have kept her if she came,’ she said, ‘and she chose not to, but instead she is with her father, and they have the bride portion that was owed to you. Why should that not keep her? How can you send money home when you don’t have it?’
William looked thoughtful.
‘Perhaps you’re right, Nelly,’ he said. ‘I’ve always reckoned myself an honourable man, but it may be that I have been played for the fool.’
Mollified, Helen began again on her project to persuade him away from the navvy life, and William seemed relieved now to agree.
They did go on the tramp, for a bit, after that, buying clothes and other necessaries in the town of Falkirk, used but serviceable, and selling them round the farms and navvy camps. But then Helen’s father, taking liking to William, said he would apprentice him as a cobbler and then he would have a more certain trade. They took a one-room cottage at Maddiston, a few miles from Peter’s own, and for all it was a small and sooty and a tumble-down sort of place all together with a great lump in the wall where the chimney had slumped in, it was well situated by a spring and Helen saw that she could take in laundry too, work she liked well enough though many others hated it.
William went most days to Peter Gaff’s to learn the cobbler’s trade and Peter professed himself well pleased with him; he was a quick learner, he said, with quick, strong hands. Peter was able to take in a wheen more work, and there was plenty demand, what with the navvies getting so close now and all their families and followers, although enough of them went barefoot most of the year. There was enough to pay William an apprentice’s wage, although Helen’s brother John was put out, there had been no apprenticeship for him when he was of age, for all he had wanted it. John couldn’t stay sore at William long, though, William was too good a companion, and the two men took to drinking and carousing on the occasional evening. Peter Gaff wouldn’t have approved of course, he was a fell religious man, but Helen and William lived at enough of a distance that he need know nothing of it. William was a good reader and writer, and soon Peter was asking him to read from the Bible and say the Grace, for William had a fine way with words and remembered well his time with the minister in Ireland. After a while, William seemed to take a liking to the business, and Peter gave him his own Bible. Secretly, he congratulated himself on saving the soul of a heathen, Helen thought, although she didn’t say as much to William, she had learned he had a high opinion of himself and she didn’t want to drive a wedge between him and her father.
William’s Bible was not there, that afternoon when Helen returned from Hallglen with her washing, which likely meant he had taken it to Father’s, perhaps meaning to go out among the men to share a psalm or a lesson when the day’s cobbling was done. There were plenty that liked that well enough, missing their home places and home kirks, and William was popular amongst them for his fine voice and ready smile. He wrote letters for them, too, taking a coin or two for payment; many of those boys would never see their mothers and fathers again, William’s price was nothing when you thought how it kept those heartstrings connected, all the way across the sea to Carlingford or Carrickfergus. Not that all of the navvies were Irish, by any means – a great many were Highlanders or local men, although William said the Irish got the worst deal of it by far, most likely to be cheated by the foremen and blamed for any trouble that blew up within twenty miles. Helen knew that was true; listening to some of the village women you’d think the Irish were responsible for all the woes of the world, even as their own men took the briefest of pauses from beating them senseless or drinking themselves stupid to take their own chance at the wages and beef and beer the navvies got. They were as quick with their fists as any other, and careless with it, so that many came home with limbs missing, or stood charges for violence on a body.
Helen began to sort through the washing, taking care to empty each sack into its own pile so as not to muddle the garments on return to their owners. Then she fetched water from the spring, stirred the fire to life and filled the great pot that hung from the chimney by its chain. She dragged the washtub into position – this was just a barrel William and father had cut down for her and set into a sort of stand, with a cork she could take out to empty it – and fetched lye soap and her paddle while the water heated. She swung the pot out, tilted it on the chain, careful not to scald herself with any splashes, and set to. By the end of the day she had the lot washed, wrung out and hung up to dry, some on frames in the house and some on the lines outside.
William had still not returned and so Helen heated herself some stew and had just settled down to eat it when there came a knock at the door. It was a young lad, his eyes huge in his face and his breath coming short with the speed at which he must have been running.
‘Mistress Burke?’ he stammered out.
‘Who’s asking?’ said Helen.
‘Will you come to the camp at Hallglen?’ he asked. ‘There’s been a terrible accident. Three men are dead. Mrs Lynch is asking for your help.’
‘Is it her man?’ Helen asked, throwing a few items into a sack and pulling her shawl about her.
‘No,’ the boy said, ‘it’s her lad.’
He set off like a hare with the hounds at his heels, and Helen was red-faced and panting before they’d gone half a mile. By the time they arrived at the camp, she thought her heart might burst. There were people milling around everywhere, a strange mix of anger and fear in the air, and yes, excitement too; plenty folk enjoyed any drama going, the gorier an accident the better. Helen paused for a moment to catch her breath, her hands on her knees, and when she straightened and stepped forward, she walked smack into a man.
‘I’m sorry,’ she stuttered, stepping back, but the man waved her apology away.
‘You can run into me any time, my darlin,’ he said.
Helen didn’t know how to respond to this levity in the midst of disaster, but at last she decided a quick smile would do. She knew the man, an Irishman like William, but there the resemblance ended. Where William was broad and fair and smiling, this creature was sleek and sly and quick to temper. He was well known among the teams, his anger always simmering just below the surface until something might come along and cause offence. His weaselly face bore the ghosts of many past quarrels, with a badly healed scar on his brow and another skittering down the margin of his eye; he was lucky not to have lost it by the look of things.
Helen had never liked this man and tried to steer clear, but it seemed she had judged her response correctly, he made an exaggerated bow and waved her towards the Lynches’ shelter. Once she stepped inside, the navvy was forgotten.
Edward Lynch had been broken as if he were a doll thrown on the floor by a child in a pet. His limbs lay at odd angles, the skin bloody and torn and one hand quite gone. The angle of his head was not natural, and everywhere were burns and cuts, dark and clotted with blood and dirt and gravel. Someone had begged trestles from somewhere, and he lay on the board they’d used to carry him down, his mother standing over him, keening. When Helen spoke her name, she threw herself into her arms.
Helen soothed the woman as best she could and then she spoke firmly to her. ‘Cloths, and straw, and water,’ she said. Then she raised her voice and spoke to the others. ‘Leave us be for now,’ she told them. ‘We will see to him.’
The mourners filed out and the poor mother shuffled back with cloths and water and straw. Helen put her in a seat and poured her a cup of whisky. Then she set to and began to clean the lad, straightening his poor limbs as best she could, although they had begun to grow stiff. She rolled him this way and that to get the shroud under him, wrapping him with the missing hand under his good one. By the time she was done, he looked more peaceful than she could have hoped.
Just as she finished her task and began to clear up the straw for the fire, the sacking over the door was pulled back and William came in. The poor mother raised her head and began her sobbing anew at the sight of another friendly face.
William sat on a tree stump they were using as a stool and patted the woman’s hand. ‘A day of lamenting,’ he said. ‘A great day of lamenting indeed.’ He brought his Bible out from a satchel, opened it, and began to read.
‘For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him. For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.’
The woman stood then and crossed to look on her lad, quiet now and drawn into herself. William took Helen’s arm and they moved towards the entrance of the hut.
‘We’ll give you a moment alone, Nora,’ he said, ‘and then we’ll send in the others.’
The woman nodded, and Helen and William stepped out through the low opening. A man with tear tracks in the dirt of his face stepped up and clapped William on the back, handing over a purse of coin before stepping back and bowing his head. William nodded and took Helen’s arm to leave.
It was a sombre walk home. Neither Helen nor William had much to say. It was cold in the house, the fire gone out, but they fell into bed and clung together until they were warm.
‘Poor lad,’ Helen said. ‘I never saw the like of it. What happened?’
‘An accident with the blasting,’ William said. ‘Three of them were in there when a charge went off early. He wasn’t the worst of them, if the foreman was to be believed. He said he threw up when he saw what was left of the frontmost man, and he’s a coarse devil himself, it would take much to shock him.’
Helen shuddered.
‘Still, we gave them comfort, Nelly,’ William said. ‘We’re a good team, are we not? I think we should start making plans for our future. I’m near finished learning the cobbling, we could go to my brother in Edinburgh and make our fortune.’ He kissed her neck and moulded himself around her back. Within a moment he was snoring.
The next day Helen dallied about the house. There was no point taking the laundry to the camp, no one would be seeking it today. Instead, she decided to walk to her father’s and see the bairns.
When she arrived, she saw she’d been beaten to it by a neighbouring wife, a biddy she couldn’t stand. The woman was breathless with excitement, leaning over William as she shared the juicy tidbit she’d had from the camp that morning.
‘Clean gone,’ she said. ‘Not the young lad, his family were keeping watch, but the others had no one, or the watchers were gone in drink, you know the Irish—’ She blushed, realising her blunder, but in a moment she got past it, the news was too good not to share. ‘Aye,’ she said triumphantly, ‘the bodies were gone! The resurrection men had had them, what do you think of that?’
Peter Gaff blew out his breath so his cheeks puffed up. ‘The longer I live,’ he said, ‘the less I understand my fellow man.’