HELEN’S FIRST, DAFT, THOUGHT on meeting Margaret Logue was that the woman had a conker in the socket where her left eye should be. Looking twice, she saw that it was a shiner, but swollen so badly that it had come up shiny and round, and bruised a purple so dark it looked almost brown. The other eye was normal, almost, except for a line of bruising underneath it, a darker ghost of the lines that appear when a body goes without sleep for too long.
Helen’s heart went out to the woman then, for she knew well what it was to be beaten so. She smiled, and bobbed her head, and then she raised her hand and touched it to her own cheek with a grimace, to show she pitied her.
Margaret Logue stared at her blankly, then nodded briskly.
‘William says you need a place to stay,’ she said. ‘He’s been a good friend to me, and he vouches for you, too.’
‘We do,’ Helen said, after a second’s pause to sort out her Williams. The woman meant William Hare.
‘We have rooms here,’ Margaret Logue said. ‘I can’t drop the price, my man won’t let me. Unless . . .’ She looked at Helen appraisingly. ‘Are you good with babbies?’
‘Aye,’ Helen said, although she felt her cheeks colour. It was true enough, she thought, the only trouble she had ever had was Maisie’s accident, and now she knew to be on the lookout when bairnies went too close to the fire.
‘I take them in,’ Margaret said. ‘When their mothers can’t care for them. They pay me, so they do. Some pay me to keep them from week to week, some pay me to keep them forever. I’m well suited to it, and it’s a fine trade, I turn a fine profit at it, so I do. But the wee demons never seem to lay off their crying and fussing, it drives me to distraction.’
Helen hadn’t heard of this trade before and doubted that Margaret really was well suited to it, if crying bothered her, but she thought it wise to say nothing.
Margaret clicked her tongue and went on. ‘You could help me with them,’ she said. ‘That way we could take a few more in. Some of them are only here till I find a better place for them, and between the two of us we could manage double easy enough. I could drop your rent, if that suited. A shilling off a week.’
Helen nodded, although she had no idea if this was a fair bargain or not. She wished William hadn’t gone off into the kitchen to drink with Hare.
‘That’s settled then,’ said Margaret. ‘We’ll drink on it.’ She made to usher Helen out of the room, but then she stopped. ‘Can you read?’ she asked. ‘I could use a reader to help with the adverts. For places for the babbies.’
‘I can,’ said Helen, ‘though I’m a poor writer. But William writes a fine hand.’
Margaret smiled and held the door open for Helen to make her way to the kitchen where the fire was lit and William and William Hare were sitting with Logue, all already halfway in their cups. They finished a bottle, and then a second, and by then it seemed it was agreed that William and Helen would move to Tanner’s Close in a month’s time.
In the intervening weeks, Helen went over a time or two to help Margaret with the babies in her care. There were three on the first day, a tiny newborn girl Helen fed with milk from a spoon, and twins of around half a year. Then there were four, the first three joined by a bonnie, tousie-haired lad who seemed set on taking his first steps, hauling himself around by the chairs and table-legs and grinning proudly at Helen all the while. Margaret tutted at that, though, and tied him to a seat by a tape at his wrist so that he fretted and fussed and rubbed his chubby wee arm raw. Helen helped clean them and feed them and dose them with a syrup Margaret said she swore by, it soothed all sorts of colics and coughs, and bought her a moment’s peace from the whining. Sure enough, even the big lad conked out a few minutes after he had his dose, though Margaret still left the poor wee scone tied to the chair.
The next time Helen went, there were only two again; Margaret said the baby girl had taken a fever and died of it, and the sturdy yearling had been adopted by an elderly couple from out by Haddington. They had never had children of their own and they were fair delighted to take such a strong, curly headed lad home. For Margaret’s part, she said, she was delighted to be shot of him, he was a right menace and had driven her near distracted.
‘Where’s his own mammy?’ Helen asked, thinking Margaret really had no notion of bairnies, the child had been a charmer.
Margaret laughed. ‘Out making her living, as must we all,’ she said. ‘But she’ll be back to dump another on me before the year is out, you mark my words.’
‘Have you ever had any of your own?’ Helen asked.
‘No,’ said Margaret. ‘I saw to it that I never did and I pray I never will. William says you’re barren. Have you never had any?’
‘I have,’ said Helen. ‘I have two daughters living. With my father. In the country.’
‘Well then,’ said Margaret, ‘you’ll understand these hoors better than me, Helen. You’ve left your babbies too.’
She straightened the lace cap she wore over her curly hair and walked out of the room, leaving Helen to blink at the sting of her words.
That night, Helen tried to say to William that she didn’t want to go to Tanner’s Close after all.
‘What? Why not?’ he asked. They had both been drinking, Helen had needed a glass or two before she had the courage to say anything.
‘I can’t say, exactly,’ she said. ‘It’s Margaret and those bairnies. I don’t . . . I get a funny feeling off her.’
‘Ach, Nelly, you and your “feelings”,’ William said, without rancour. ‘If we listened to your gut, we’d never do anything. We’d still be out in the country eating dandelion roots and pignuts.’
‘One of them died,’ Helen said. ‘A wee lassie. Just a scrap of a thing.’
‘Well now, that is very sad,’ William said, ‘and I’ll remember her in my prayers tonight. But babbies die, Nelly, it happens all the time. Sure, didn’t you lose enough of them yourself, in your time?’
Helen sighed. It was true enough, what he said, bairnies did die. But still she couldn’t shake the feeling that Margaret Logue gave her, as though she was a snake and Helen a fat, stupid hen with a gaggle of chicks behind her, and even if Helen somehow managed to shepherd the wee ones away, there was Hare, the fox, waiting in their path with his sly smile and sharp teeth.
Suddenly, she became aware that William was watching her.
‘What on earth ails you, Nelly?’ he asked. ‘You just did the strangest thing, like you were a hen hiding something beside you. You brought your elbows up like this’ – he mimed wings, held back defensively – ‘and then you looked around as though there was a big tomcat there!’ He roared with laughter. ‘Oh Nelly,’ he said, ‘don’t go daft on me now. I’d not want to send you off to Bedlam to join the poor lunatics there!’ He began to clown about, rolling his eyes and howling like a dog, and in the end, Helen had to laugh and cuff him about the ear, whereupon he pulled her onto his knee and began to kiss her soundly.
Helen had meant to bring up the subject of not moving the next morning, but in the event she had no chance. Sometime before the dawn, there came a knock at the door and William hauled himself from his bed with great groans and swearings to answer. Helen’s head was pounding and she buried her good ear in the pillow in hope of sleeping on a while longer, but then William was back, shaking her awake.
‘It’s Hare,’ he said. ‘Logue died in the night. Margaret’s asking me to go over there and say a prayer.’
‘What? What happened?’ Helen raked on the floor for a shawl and pulled it round her, peering at the door, but it seemed William Hare had disappeared as fast as he had come.
William shook his head as he fastened the stock around his neck.
‘I have no notion,’ he said. ‘I’ll come back as soon as I can.’ He kissed Helen on the forehead and rushed off into the dark. Helen lay back down in the bed and tried to sleep.
It seemed it was an apoplexy, William told her, when he returned later in the morning; Logue’s face had been all twisted, with bulging eyes and the tongue hanging out. Helen shuddered. She had spent the morning skulking about the cold room half-heartedly mending a jacket, she was in no mood to hawk her wares around the street with her head pounding and the sour taste of last night’s gin in her mouth. She asked how Margaret was bearing up, and William shrugged.
‘I can’t say she seemed over sorry,’ he said. ‘There was little love lost between them, I don’t think.’ He smiled at Helen. ‘You would miss me if I were gone, would you not, Nelly?’
‘I suppose I would,’ said Helen. ‘But then you don’t raise your hand to me like he did to her. I’ve never seen a shiner the like of thon one she had the first day I saw her.’ A thought crossed her mind. ‘What about the bairnies? Were they there?’
‘Just one wee lass,’ William said, ‘a real wee dote, so she was, but Margaret says her mother will be back for her before Logue is buried.’
‘She’ll not be wanting us now,’ Helen said, trying to keep the relief from her voice. ‘I wonder where she’ll go.’
But William shook his head. ‘She’s not going anywhere,’ he said. ‘Everything Logue had is hers now. And she’ll want us more than ever. It won’t be easy for a woman on her own.’
‘She’ll not be alone, though,’ Helen said.
William cocked his head. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Well . . .’ Helen thought it was obvious. ‘Her and William Hare . . . I mean, there’s a fondness between them, is there no?’
William’s brow creased in thought, and then he chuckled. ‘I suppose there is, when you put it like that, Nelly. Maybe Hare has fallen on his feet after all. Sly dog.’
‘Are you sure it was a natural death?’ Helen said. The question took her by surprise, she hadn’t really known she was thinking such a thought before it was out her mouth.
William didn’t seem shocked at all, though, almost as though he had wondered the same thing himself. ‘I think so,’ he said. ‘I’ve seen him take a turn before, so I have. He came round that time, but he had the same look on his face for a moment, and I thought he was a goner.’ His sunny face turned dark for a moment, but then he seemed to shrug the thought off, like a dog shaking water off its coat.
‘Come on, Nelly,’ he said, ‘let’s walk out for a bite to eat. They’ll bury Logue on Thursday, and we needn’t think more on them till then.’
Logue’s burial was a stingy affair, no mortcloths or other niceties, and afterwards Margaret had such mourners as there were back to the lodging house for a mean feed of oysters and penny pies. William said some bonnie words and sang a hymn, and then the drinking started, and with stomachs barely lined, it wasn’t long before the grousing and argy-bargy followed. Helen and William sat to one side, out of the main throng, but if Helen had hoped they’d go unnoticed, she was disappointed. As the drinking reached its height, Hare sidled over and sat down beside them, a glint in his eye that promised no good.
‘A sad day,’ said Helen, for the want of anything better coming to mind.
‘No, a happy one,’ said Hare. ‘You can be the first to congratulate me, Helen. Now Logue is out of the way, I can marry Margaret at last. I’m the happiest man you ever did see.’
Even William looked a bit shocked at that. ‘Should you not wait a bit?’ he asked. ‘Out of respect for the man’s memory?’
‘Respect?’ Hare repeated, incredulous. ‘The man was a brute. Sure you saw Margaret’s face manys a time when he took his fists to her.’
Takes a brute to know a brute, Helen thought, but she knew better than to open her mouth.
‘Still and all,’ William said. ‘You should wait a bit for the look of the thing.’
‘Three weeks,’ said Hare, ‘till the banns are called. Then you’ll stand up beside us in the kirk and see us wed. There’s no man I’d rather have by my side.’
There wasn’t a lot that William could say to that, so they drank to it, although Helen could see it sat ill with William still, to toast a widow’s betrothal at her own man’s funeral.
Later in the evening, when most folk had left and those still there were half-cut or asleep, Margaret came to sit with them. She was well gone by then, raising her cup with some care to tap it off theirs.
‘You gave your man a fine send-off,’ William said.
‘Better than the bastard deserved,’ Margaret replied, taking a draught of whisky. ‘Do you know what it cost me to bury him?’ She didn’t tell them, but she wasn’t finished with her grousing. ‘It’s a scandal,’ she said. ‘Not even a holy man to say a word over the grave. Should have sold him to the anatomists, so I should.’ She snorted and took a long pull of her drink.
William Hare scratched his nose. ‘Damn if that’s not a good idea, Margaret,’ he said. ‘Shame you didn’t think of it sooner.’
‘I didn’t lick it off the stones,’ Margaret said. Helen had no idea what that meant, but by then there was no chance of finding out, Margaret and William Hare were laughing and William seemed asleep, or near to it.
‘We’ll have a fine time together when you move here to the close, won’t we, Nelly?’ said William Hare.
Helen hated him using that name – it was William’s name for her, a pet name – but she tried to smile, raising her cup and drinking to this thing she didn’t want, but couldn’t see a way of escaping, a stupid hen shut up in her coop with a fox.