THE CHURCH was a seething mass of humanity. It buzzed, chattered, shuffled, wriggled, pushed and threatened to burst at the seams. Ladies and gentlemen, lairds and merchants packed into the seats, peacock tails of colour in their fine clothes. Tradespeople and servants, men, women and children, and barking dogs trampled the earth and bones of the long dead deeper into the floor. The beadle roared commands for the dogs to be removed before the minister climbed the high pulpit. Some of the dogs were chased and kicked between a forest of legs. Others were heaved up and passed over heads.
Ramsay sat leaning forward, both hands resting heavily on his cane. Next to him Annabella kept her back straight and her head tipped high. Her mittened hands grasped her fan on her lap. Her face, normally pink-cheeked with the glow of health, had an unusual pallor. She had not slept well the night before, partly for thinking about her brother and the anguish he must have been suffering to have committed such a terrible act; partly because her father kept calling out and, although Big John was with him, she felt she had to dash through to his bedroom on each occasion to try and soothe away his nightmares. She had tried to persuade him not to come to church this morning but he had said,
‘I’ve never missed a Sunday in God’s house in my life, Annabella. Never missed a Sunday.’
He sounded bewildered and confused and possessed none of his normal fire or aggressiveness and the change in her father shocked her almost as much as her brother’s death.
The Reverend Gowrie climbed the pulpit, his presence freezing the rabble into a silent shiver of expectancy. He was a giant of a man with coarse pocked skin, a huge beak of a nose and lips like lumps of steak. Glittering eyes stabbed this way and that and he reached forward and gripped the edge of the pulpit with such vehemence, his fists bunched up the green cloth with the gold fringes that covered it.
‘A crime of the deepest dye has been committed in this town,’ he thundered. ‘And it becomes those who would declare the whole counsel of the Lord to bear public and solemn testimony.
‘A sin has been perpetrated against God. A man of this parish has taken into his hands the decision to abandon without leave the station in which he was placed. This is an unequivocal rebellion against God, a direct opposition to His Providence, an attempt to escape from His control, an ignoble breach of fidelity to a rightful sovereign.’ The black eyes narrowed, the lumps of steak under the eagle beak writhed and twisted.
‘Coward! Poltroon! Deserter! That is what I say of such a man. He has put an end to every opportunity of repentance and reformation.
‘Child of perdition! Death will land thee in still greater misery …’
Annabella struggled to control the panic of grief and distress that was threatening to engulf her. If only the tirade had been aimed at herself, she could have coped in her normal pert and self-assured manner. To hell with the Reverend Gowrie, she would have thought, and a pox on the whole town. But she did not know how to cope with such an attack on her brother. She felt shattered by the tragic occurrence of his death and was experiencing a terrifying vulnerability. She tried not to listen to the minister’s diatribe but it continued to slash through her defences.
‘Oh, guilty man, did you not know that “No murderer hath eternal life abiding in him”?
‘The just judgement of God will increase your agonies and horrors, will banish you forever from His presence, will doom you to suffer eternal penalties without mercy and without hope …’
Hearing a sound at her side, Annabella glanced round and was horrified to discover her father sobbing. His shoulders were heaving and tears were spurting down his lowered face.
‘Papa, don’t. Please don’t.’ She put a hand on his arm.
‘Poor Dougie. The lad never meant any harm.’
‘I know, Papa.’
‘He was always a harmless kind o’ lad.’
‘I know.’
She prised one of his hands off the cane, squeezed it between her own, then held it and patted it on her lap.
‘But we must try and have courage, Papa. Douglas would not have wanted us to be unhappy and upset like this.’
Ramsay just kept sobbing and shaking his head. And the minister roared on and on and on until Annabella was nearly fainting with desperation to be free of his voice; away from the mob, away from the gloomy coffin of a building with its black stone walls and sickening stench of unwashed bodies.
At long last the conclusion of the sermon released her. The Reverend Gowrie raised his eyes and clasped hands heavenwards.
‘May God in His infinite mercy preserve us from an infatuation so deplorable, from a crime of such complicated malignity! Let me die the death of the righteous and let my end be like His!’
For a minute or two Annabella thought she was not going to be able to stand up. Her legs were so weak they did not seem able to take her weight. Only by summoning every last vestige of will-power did she manage to rise and also to assist her father to his feet.
‘We’ll soon be home, Papa, and we’ll have a hot toddy and we’ll be all right. Come now, take my arm. Lean on me.’
Keeping her head high, she pushed a path towards the door. Outside on Trongate Street she thankfully took a big breath of fresh air. It was then she saw Letitia and Phemy and Griselle. Griselle looked dishevelled; her eyes were wide and staring and her tight mouth hung loose and out of control.
‘Annabella,’ she called, hurrying nearer.
As she watched her approach, Annabella thought, ‘You monstrous murdering pig of a woman. You are the one who is to blame for all this. You and your cruel tongue. You and your selfish stupidity. You killed your son, your own flesh and blood. Now you’ve killed my brother!’
‘Annabella,’ Griselle repeated on reaching her. ‘I have been so agitated. Indeed my agitation is all but overwhelming me.’ The eyes stretched enormous and the mouth, like a smudge of jelly, could barely shiver out words. ‘Oh, Annabella, I was … I was … nice to him, wasn’t I?’
Without hesitation Annabella said,
‘Of course you were, Grizzie. Of course you were. And Douglas loved you dearly. You know he did.’
Tears tumbled down Griselle’s face.
‘Yes, he often used to say … he used to say …’
‘Tuts,’ said Letitia, ‘this is a fine kettle of fish! Folk are gawping at you, mistress. Pull yourself together and come away home. The dinner will be getting ruined. Food costs money and if there’s one thing I canna thole it’s good sillar being wasted.’
After they had gone, Annabella made slow progress along Trongate Street. Her father leaned heavily on her, sometimes stopping to stand looking down at the ground with an absent-minded faraway expression on his face. She felt sick with worry. It was so unlike him to behave like this.
The sun dappled the buildings on either side, sparkled window panes into diamonds, gave a golden glisten to battlements and played hide and seek among the arches of the piazzas, bathed the street in a warm amber glow that did not seem to touch Annabella and her father. It was as if they were no longer part of the scene but struggling along in a terrible no-man’s-land. She felt cold.
Thankfully she turned into the close at Saltmarket Street, then climbed the tower stair. Once in the house, she helped her father off with his coat.
‘Sit down now, Papa. I will go and make a hot toddy.’
When she returned he was sitting staring at the floor but after a few sips of the hot, sweet whisky he said,
‘It’ll have to be a private funeral. No one else will come. We’ll have to bury him ourselves, too. The church won’t allow him in consecrated ground.’
‘Well, we shall have a private funeral. And we will bury him ourselves. Mr Cunningham will help us, Papa. He is calling again this evening. And there is Griselle’s manservant. And there is Big John.’
‘Where will we … where can we … ?’
‘There is a field at the back of the house in Westergate. We will put him to rest under one of the trees there.’
‘Put him to rest?’ Ramsay’s face threatened to disintegrate. Muscles helplessly sagged and shook. ‘There’ll never be any rest for that poor lad. Why did he do such a terrible thing, Annabella? Why did he do it?’
‘It serves no useful purpose to talk like that, Papa. Drink your whisky and try to think and talk of other things.’
‘There was always a hard bit about you. Aye, you were always a hard lassie. You were my favourite, though. Oh, aye, you were my favourite. But, och, I was fond o’ Douglas as well.’
‘I know, Papa.’
‘But did Douglas, I wonder?’
‘Of course he did. You were always kind and generous to him.’
Ramsay sighed.
‘Aye, so you said.’
‘This monstrous time will soon be over, Papa. You will be moving to the Westergate and the change of scene will do you good. You will feel better, I promise you.’
He nodded but did not speak and soon his shoulders drooped and he drifted into remoteness again. She sat with him for a time, stitching a piece of linen, glancing up occasionally to see if there was any change in his appearance. But he remained hanging helplessly inside his clothes without moving a muscle.
When supper time came he refused to eat anything and instead went early to bed. She was alone in her room trying to concentrate on her sewing when Carter Cunningham arrived. She rose to greet him with a welcoming smile and her hand gracefully outstretched for his kiss.
He held it tenderly against his lips. Then he asked:
‘How are you, dear lady?’
‘As well as can be expected in the circumstances, sir. I am prodigiously concerned about Papa, though. He is deeply dejected. It was damnable what that scoundrel of a preacher made him suffer today. I confess, sir, I was mightily distressed myself.’
‘Annabella.’ He took her in his arms and she hid her face against his shoulder. ‘My dear, sweet girl, what can I say? Except I love you and want to look after you and make sure that you are never unhappy again.’
‘Every time I think of him lying in that house alone …’
‘Do you want to be with him?’
Still with her face pressed close to his shoulder, she said,
‘Why should he be alone? Why should he not have a wake? I cannot bear to think of him lying alone in that house tonight. Griselle has gone to her mother’s.’
‘Then we shall go straight away and keep an all-night vigil beside your brother. Have you a key to the house?’
She nodded against him and he dropped a kiss on the top of her head.
‘Then put on your cape. We shall go now.’
Words could not express her gratitude to Cunningham for his kindness and understanding, so she kept silent as they walked down Saltmarket Street to Gibson’s Land. But her silence was a warm, companionable thing. It could not be compared with the cold desolation that met them when they opened the door of her brother’s house. It was like stepping into the grave. The aloneness of death was so real, so cold, so silent around her, she felt horrified and oppressed by it.
Douglas was lying in a coffin propped on top of two chairs in the middle of the bedroom. Wrapped in a dead-cloth, only his head and face showed, grey and small-looking without either wig or paint.
Annabella said,
‘How could Grizzie be so cruel? How could she?’ Flinging off her cape, she swirled into sudden action. ‘The fire is set. Will you put a light to it, please? And light every candle you can see. I’m going to find Douglas’s wig and his face paint. My brother said face paint was the height of fashion and he set great store by it. I know he would not wish to go anywhere without it.’
‘Annabella,’ Cunningham said gently.
‘Light the fire and the candles, sir. I wish to paint my brother’s face.’
Afterwards they sat beside the coffin drinking whisky and eating burial bread. Sometimes they talked, occasionally they dozed off to sleep, until the sun came up again and flickered over the paintings in their heavy gilt frames and the four-poster bed and the high-backed chairs, and the coffin, and Douglas with his powdered wig and white and strawberry-coloured face.
Big John arrived, half-carrying her father who looked like a bent and feeble old man. Letitia and Phemy and Griselle arrived too, accompanied by their servants. Little attempt was made at conversation but Letitia briskly poured out drinks and passed round cake and said:
‘You’ll come round to my place after the burial. I’ve a good meal ready. You too, Mr Cunningham. You must give us all the gossip from Virginia. I don’t hear so much of it since my gudeman passed to the other side. Tuts, would you look at the corpse. I suppose that was your doing, mistress?’
‘And why not?’ Annabella said. ‘He always wore it.’
‘Aye, he did a lot o’ things he shouldn’t have done. Hurry up and eat your cake and drink your whisky. It’s time we were getting him under the clay. If we wait much longer the whole town will be out and gawping.’
‘Let them gawp.’
Letitia ignored her.
‘Big John, nail him down. Come away, Ramsay. Are you going to put a shoulder to the coffin along with the other men? Grizzie, stop your snivelling. You too, Phemy.’
They carried him, not without some difficulty and jostling, down the stairs and into the waiting carriage. The women hailed sedan chairs and followed in single file up Saltmarket Street, along Trongate Street to the Westergate. Then in the open countryside beyond it, they chose a place under a rowan tree and buried him there.
‘Come away now. Come away,’ Letitia said, swishing her skirts over one arm and signalling to the chairmen. ‘It’s time we had a meal inside us.’
Annabella was thankful to be away. She felt harrowed and exhausted and did not wait long at Letitia’s house. Her father decided to stay until evening and she left him drinking steadily along with Letitia and Griselle and Phemy and the old Earl of Glendinny. She doubted if he would be fit to return to his own place by evening. But Big John would either carry him back or make sure that he was comfortably settled in Letitia’s for the night.
Mungo was being looked after by Betsy and Annabella was glad of the chance to relax when she reached her bedroom.
Cunningham, who had escorted her home, untied the ribbons of her hat and helped her off with her cloak.
‘You look tired, Annabella. I think you should go to bed.’
‘Don’t leave me.’
‘My dear …’
‘Stay with me. Hold me close.’
‘I want you to be with me for always. I want to take you back to Virginia as my wife.’
She shook her head
‘No, I couldn’t leave Papa. Not now.’
‘I refuse to take no for an answer.’
‘I am afraid, sir, you have no alternative. In a few weeks’ time I am moving with Papa to his new house in the Westergate.’
‘If you cannot or will not marry me, I will come again next year. By that time your father will be properly settled and recovered from the grievous shock of your brother’s death. You will have no excuse for refusing my offer.’
‘I cannot look that far forward. I can only offer you tonight.’
He took her hand and kissed it.
‘It will be a memory I shall treasure, dear lady, during the lonely year ahead.’
They moved into Mungo House at the earliest opportunity and, as Phemy said, it was a blessing that they had the house to move to and all the work the moving entailed.
‘It has been the saving of both of you,’ she insisted. ‘The colour has come back to your face, Annabella, with all your exertions and running around. And even your father is more like his old self.’
Certainly her father had regained much of his strength and was back working as usual in his counting-house. Yet he had aged. Once his back had been like an iron rod. Now the iron had melted, causing him to stoop a little and to use his cane more for support than display. His face, once dour and rigid in its expression, now had creased into lines that gave it a look of fatigue and suffering. He was still a stern taskmaster as his clerks at the counting-house well knew and he still insisted on a God-fearing routine in his home of readings and prayers.
But he drank a lot more than he used to and it was a common occurrence now for Big John to have to carry his master home from the tavern. And he did not seem to have as much strength of will or even interest in thwarting many of Annabella’s ploys and plans. For instance, she had managed to purchase a spinet and have it installed in the drawing-room of Mungo House with surprisingly little trouble. Already she was taking lessons and practising diligently and with much enjoyment.
The gentleman who had kindly agreed to teach her was a most refined and accomplished personage by the name of Mr Craig. He was a leading connoisseur of the fine arts and played the fiddle as well as the spinet. He had made a visit to Italy and had the rare accomplishment of being able to speak a little Italian. He had assured her that she had a natural talent for music and that she was able to master difficult pieces with incredible speed and ease. She looked forward to the day when she would be able to entertain guests to a musical interlude, perhaps to a duet with Mr Craig playing the fiddle. As yet, she had not managed to do any entertaining. Apart from the fact that it was too soon after her brother’s death for her to feel like gay parties, there was still such a lot to do to the house.
They had moved in before the painting and decorating was finished and she had had to wait until that job had been done and the paint was dry before beginning to put up the curtains. In the living-room she had hung rust-coloured curtains to match the two new upholstered chairs. The other chair was her father’s old winged arm chair from their Saltmarket home. Her red silk velvet easy chair she had put upstairs in her bedroom because it didn’t match the living-room colour scheme and she wanted everything new in the drawing-room. The living-room walls were panelled up to the window sill and the rest of the walls and the ceiling were painted a restful beige, and the centre of the polished wood floor was covered with a beige and rust and brown coloured carpet. She had put her little tea-table with its scalloped corners for candles in this room and the mahogany highboy with the gold handles on the drawers and a slope-fronted desk. The japanned pier glass with its raised figures of peacocks and flowers was on the opposite wall from the window and reflected the rust curtains and glimpses of the colourful sedan chairs in the keeper’s yard across the narrow road at the front of the house.
It was not a large room but it was comfortable and homely. Both she and her father could relax there in the evening; he could read his Bible at the open desk or sit by the fire with a newspaper and she did embroidery or other sewing, or she wrote letters.
During the day when her father was out at work she liked to go upstairs and sit at the spinet in the drawing-room. She had furnished this room with a tall clock, a cherry red settee and chairs and gold damask curtains. Although it had the same size of window, it was a bigger room than the living-room and had white wood panelling with raised ovals decorated with the beautifully painted landscapes that were her pride and joy. She adored this room and never tired of admiring its artistic elegance.
When she wasn’t admiring the interior of the house, she was gazing happily out of the window. From her bedroom she had a peaceful view of the little garden in which she had already planted herbs and roses. Then there were trees and banks of yellow broom and rolling green fields as far as the eye could see. Sometimes she could hear the cowherd’s horn and the distant mooing of cows, but otherwise it was a scene of rural peace and quiet. From the living-room or dining-room windows the front looked peaceful too. There were occasional movements and sounds from the sedan-keeper’s yard but the lilting Highland voices of the keeper and his chairmen proved little disturbance. Some days there would be a horse and rider gallop by, or a clanking coach and whinnying team of horses, but they were exciting diversions in an idyllic scene.
In the two cottages that flanked Mungo House lived elderly couples, respectable folk who eked out a living by selling the vegetables they grew in their back gardens. Annabella sometimes passed the time of day with them when she was out tending her herbs. It was very pleasant to potter in the garden in her wide-brimmed straw hat with the smell of flowers sweet in her nostrils and the buzz of bees and the song of birds keeping her happy company.
And of course she could be in the centre of town in no time at all if she had a fancy to do a bit of shopping or to visit Phemy or Griselle. That is, if she went by horse or sedan. By foot it was not so easy and took much longer.
Griselle had given up her house in Gibson’s Land and was back in Trongate Street living with her mother. She had, by all appearances, completely recovered from her initial distress over Douglas’s death and looked cheerful and well. Annabella told Phemy that she wouldn’t be surprised if Griselle married again within the year. She had continued her connections with the landed gentry and still attended the games of cards and stayed overnight in the stately homes of Lord and Lady Knox and others.
She had introduced Annabella to various members of the gentry and Annabella was very excited at being included in the next weekend on the Kibbold estate.
Griselle said she was trying to persuade Letitia to agree to having a mansion built for the Halyburton family. Her brother Andrew was willing but Letitia was a stubborn woman.
‘Tuts, there’s nothing wrong with the home that you and Phemy and Andra were brought up in,’ she kept saying. ‘I don’t know what’s got into young folks nowadays. Your father and I were gey proud of this place when we got married and moved into it.’
‘Times change, Mama,’ Griselle explained. ‘Everyone who is anyone now is leaving the tenements and building mansions. We’ll simply need to move eventually.’
‘Would you listen to that?’ their leathery old maid, Kate, croaked. ‘Oor Grizzie’s getting above hersel’. What she’s needing, if you ask me, is a skelpet bum.’
‘Oh, be quiet,’ Grizzie snapped irritably. ‘Nobody’s asking you.’
‘Aye, and I’m no’ too old or frail to skelp your bum either. I’ve done it before when you were a wee bairn and I can do it now if I’ve a mind to.’
‘Mama, will you tell her to be quiet?’ Grizzie appealed. ‘This is the sort of thing I mean. There’s just no peace or privacy in a cramped flat like this.’
‘Tuts, Kate,’ Letitia scolded, ‘will you hold your havering tongue? The quicker you’re away to the other side the better.’
‘I’ll go and meet my Maker when I’m good and ready, mistress, and no’ one meenite before.’
Letitia snapped open her fan.
‘Is it no’ terrible what folk have to suffer from vexatious servants?’
Annabella agreed.
‘I have prodigious problems with Betsy. The lazy good-for-nothing creature simply refused to wash. The other day I chased her all the way to the burn, knocked her in and flung a ball of soap after her. You might have heard her howls and yowls in the town.’
Phemy and Griselle tittered behind their fans but Letitia said,
‘Tuts, Annabella, you’ve always had terrible wild ways. Age has done nothing to mellow you or douce you down.’
‘Heaven forbid!’
‘It’s time you were marrying again. Has your Papa anyone in mind?’
‘Mistress Letitia, I’m a mature widow woman and I’ll choose my own gudeman this time.’
Phemy said,
‘Oh, Annabella, I hope you’re not planning to leave us again. And your lovely mansion too. You’re not still thinking of your Virginia planter, are you?’
‘Mr Cunningham?’ Annabella sighed. ‘He is a charming man and I am catched by him, of course, but I made him no promises and I doubt if I ever will. If he resided here in Glasgow …’ She sighed again. ‘Who knows? I dare swear I would not be able to resist him. But, as it is, I am wondrously happy the way I am.’ She suddenly giggled. ‘Did you see the way my Lord Gilmour ogled me the other day?’
Old Kate, the hunchback servant who was still leaning on the bedpost listening intently to the conversation, let out a sudden cackle.
‘That birkie’s got a head like a turnip and just as thick.’
‘Kate,’ Letitia snapped, ‘will you stop that clitter-clattering tongue of yours and away and make the tea.’
Kate shuffled from the room muttering darkly.
‘I’m no’ the only one with a clitter-clattering tongue, if you ask me.’
‘I’m thinking of having a dinner party soon,’ Annabella announced. ‘A housewarming party, you could call it. You must all come, of course. Don’t forget to tell Andrew.’ She giggled again. ‘Tell me, what other men can I invite?’
Letitia’s drawstring mouth tightened.
‘This isn’t a respectable way to go about things. It should be left to your father to invite the men. You’re asking for trouble, m’lady.’
‘Fiddlesticks!’ Annabella said.