1916 Glasgow
The two women sat huddled together in the small carriage,
looking around them in dismay, staring at the filthy,
closed-in street, the drunken old man sprawled in one of
the doorways, the tall tenements ugly and bleak and
perilously ill-kept. There was no grace here, only an air
of despondency and gloom and poverty.
"It's a horrible place!" one said at last. She was the
elder, but not by much. They were both young and very
frightened.
"Are you quite sure this is the street we want? I can't
believeรฏยฟยฝ" Her companion, the reins lying in her lap, let
the words die.
In answer, the passenger dug in her purse for the tattered
piece of paper, pulled it out, and read it again. Her lips
were trembling, and she felt cold, sick. "Look for
yourself. Ohรฏยฟยฝ" The paper slipped from her fingers, and she
caught it just before it tumbled into the fetid running
gutter beneath the wheel.
It was the street and the house they had searched over an
hour to find.
There was silence, only the rain and the whistle of a
train somewhere in the distance making any sound at all.
The horse waited patiently.
"You'll remember, won't you?" the older woman went on
breathlessly. "I'm Mrs. Cook. And you're Sarah. My mother
had a housekeeper called Mrs. Cook. And a sewing woman
called Sarah. That makes it easier for meรฏยฟยฝ" She stared at
the house. "It's a cursed place, dreadful."
"I only have to remember who you are. And I've called you
that all day. Mrs. Cook. Don't fret so รฏยฟยฝ you'll make
yourself ill!"
"Yes." She smoothed the rug across herknees, felt its
dampness.
The horse blew, shifting uncomfortably in the rain.
Finally the older woman squeezed her companion's hand and
said, "We must go in, Sarah. We're expected. It must be
nearly time."
They climbed stiffly out of the carriage, two respectable
young women looking as out of place here as they felt. The
stench of bad sewers and boiled cabbage, overlaid with
coal smoke and dirty streets, heavy in the dampness,
seemed to wrap itself around them. A miasma of the city.
They made their way up to the door, stepping over old
newsprint and brown sacking that had been turned to the
consistency of porridge by the downpour. Lifting the
latch, they could just see down a dark, awful tunnel that
was only a rubbish-littered hallway but seemed like the
final path to hell.
The door they were after was the second on the left, a
barely discernible Number Three on a grimy card marking
it. Someone shouted "Come!" to their tentative knock, and
they found themselves in a bare, high-ceilinged room with
a half-dozen broken-down chairs and no windows. It was
cold with damp, smelled of cigars and stale beer, and to
their fastidious eyes hadn't been cleaned in years.
They could hear someone crying in the next room beyond a
second door.
The older woman caught her friend's hand and said, "F รฏยฟยฝ
Sarah รฏยฟยฝ I'm going to be sick!"
"No, it's only fright. Here, sit down." She quickly found
the best chair and brought it forward, then took another
one for herself. It wobbled, one leg uneven.
A nondescript paint, peeled from the walls and ceiling,
gave the floor a dappled look, and the old brown carpet in
the center seemed to be woven of all the hopelessness that
had been brought here.
The older of the two began to tremble. "I'm not
frightened รฏยฟยฝ I'm terrified!"
"It will be all right รฏยฟยฝ wait and see." It was a comforting
lie, and they both recognized it for what it was.
They sat there for a time, not speaking, their hands
gripped together, their faces blanched with the thought of
what must lie ahead. The crying went on and on, and
overhead there was the sound of furniture being shifted,
first this way, then that, an endless screech that seemed
half human, half demon. Somewhere in the hallway a man's
voice shouted, and they both jumped.
Watching the inner door, they could feel the minutes drag
into the half hour. "Sarah" found herself wishing it would
open, then dreading that it would. They'd been here a very
long time รฏยฟยฝ why had no one come out to speak to them? They
had been expected at two sharpรฏยฟยฝ
If only the crying would stopรฏยฟยฝ
Suddenly the older woman stood up. "No, I can't do it!"
Her voice was thick, unnaturally loud to her own ears.
"You must! He'll kill you if you don't!"
"I'd rather kill myself. Oh, God, I can't carry the memory
of this place around with me for the rest of my life, I
can'tรฏยฟยฝ! It was a mistake, I want to go home! Sarah รฏยฟยฝ take
me home, for the love of heaven, take me home!"
Her friend, compassion in her eyes, said, "You're sure?
It's not to be done again? I can't borrow the carriage
again without questions being asked."
"No, just take me home!" She was shaking in earnest, cold
with dread, cold with fear, cold with the decision she
knew she dared not make. Her friend put an arm around her
shoulders, and in the hallway, she was sick, leaning there
for several minutes in such pain that she seemed to
collapse in on herself, frail and helpless. Weak to the
point of fainting, her breath a sob, she pressed her
forehead against the drab, dirty paint, grateful for its
coolness.
They could hear voices behind the other doors, barely
muffled รฏยฟยฝ children crying, a man swearing, a woman singing
something mournful and off-key. A cat meowing impatiently,
pans banging, and thumps, as if somewhere someone was
beating a carpet. But mercifully no one came out into the
hall. Still รฏยฟยฝ they might รฏยฟยฝ at any momentรฏยฟยฝ
"Can you walk as far as the carriage?" her companion asked
softly.
"I must tryรฏยฟยฝ" The older woman straightened herself with an
effort and pressed a handkerchief to her lips. "I wish I'd
never come here รฏยฟยฝ I wish I'd never heard of this place,
much less seen it! If I died, how would I have faced him,
with this place on my soul!"
"He would understand. He would. It's what made him
special, poor man."
"Yes." They linked arms for comfort and walked unsteadily
back to the outside door. It swung open as they reached
it, and a man smelling strongly of sweat and too much beer
grinned knowingly at them for an instant, eyes raking both
of them. The tenants here must be aware of what went on in
Number Three. "Sarah" felt herself flush with
embarrassment. But the man held the door wide and let them
pass unmolested.
It was all the older woman could do to climb back into the
carriage. Once there, she slumped to the side, clinging to
one of the braces that held the top in place. Her
companion gently wrapped the damp blanket around her and
looked pityingly at her.
What were they to do? What were they to do?
She took her own seat, remembered she hadn't untied the
horse, and climbed down again. Several people were coming
down the street now, hurrying past, heads bowed, their
shoes splashing in the puddles. Three children, grubby-
faced and thin, stopped to stare at her, knowing her for a
stranger, before running on. A sudden gust of wind sent
skirts whipping, and two houses away a man's hat blew off,
to roll down the street like a top. The rain began in
earnest and she barked her shin climbing back to her seat.
Close to tears herself, she lifted the reins and spoke to
the horse. "Walk on."
It was a very long drive back to where they'd come from.
Long and cold and wet and dreary. She glanced at the other
woman from time to time, saw that she was silently crying
with her eyes closed, her lower lip caught between her
teeth. Her pale face reflected misery and exhaustion.
I don't know how I'd feel, "Sarah" said to herself
despairingly. In her shoes. Bleak of heart. Afraid. But
I'll think of something. God help me รฏยฟยฝ I must think of
something! We can't come back here again. We haven't the
strength!
It was very late when they reached their destination. The
town was dark and still, a dog howling somewhere, the wind
whispering around the church tower and swooping among the
gravestones of the churchyard รฏยฟยฝ as if confiding the latest
news, "Sarah" thought, turning the old horse toward his
stable.
I'm so weary, I'm imagining things.
She glanced for the hundredth time at the woman beside
her. Her eyes were still closed, but she wasn't asleep.
"We're home," she told her friend gently, trying not to
startle her. They were wet through, hungry because they'd
been reluctant to stop along the way at the rough pubs or
places where decent travelers stayed. They had been afraid
of being seen, of being recognized. Of someone remembering
that they'd been on the road from Glasgow, where they
weren't supposed to be.
"Yes." She opened her eyes, saw the churchyard, and
shuddered. The cold white stones seemed to be pointing
fingers. "I wish I were dead too!"
Following a path through the stones with her eyes, the
younger woman murmured with infinite sadness, "So do I."
2
1919 Duncarrick
The letters began to arrive in the middle of June, hardly
more than a few words scribbled in cheap ink on cheap
paper.
Fiona never discovered who had received the first of them.
Or even รฏยฟยฝ in the beginning รฏยฟยฝ what had caused the coldness
toward her. It seemed over the course of the month that
one by one the women who were her neighbors found excuses
not to hang out their laundry or weed their gardens when
she worked in the inn yard. The friendly greetings across
the fence, the occasional offer of flowers for the bar
parlor or a treat for the child, stopped. Soon people no
longer nodded to her on the street. And failed to speak in
the shops. Custom fell off at the bar. Men who often came
in for a pint in the long summer evenings avoided her eyes
now and hurried past the inn door. The coldness frightened
her. She didn't know how to fight it because there was no
one to tell her what lay at the bottom of it. She wished,
for the hundredth time, that her aunt were still alive.
Even Alistair McKinstry, the young constable, shook his
head in bewilderment when she asked him what she had done
to offend. "For it must be that," she told him. "Someone's
taken a word wrong, or I neglected to do something I'd
promised. But what? I've tried and tried to think of
anything!"
He had seen the looks cast her way behind her back. "I
don't know. Nothing's been said in my hearing. It's as if
I'm shut out as well."
He smiled wryly. Half the town must know how he felt about
her. "It may be a small thing, Fiona. I'd not take it to
heart." Which was no comfort at all. She had already taken
it to heart, and wondered if that was the intent, to give
her pain. But why?
On the first Sunday in July, the old woman who invariably
sat in the back of the church hissed at her as she came in
with the little boy, leading him to their accustomed
place. The single word was lost in the first hymn, but she
knew what it was. Wanton. It made her flush, and the woman
grinned toothlessly in grim satisfaction. She had meant to
hurt.
The shunning had been supplanted by attack.
The sermon that morning was on Ruth and Mary Magdalen. The
good, faithful woman who had kept her place at her mother-
in-law's side and the wanton whose sins Christ had
forgiven.
The Scottish minister, Mr. Elliot, made no bones about
which he'd have favored, in Christ's stead. His harsh,
loud voice made it clear that good women were jewels in
the sight of God. Humility was their shibboleth รฏยฟยฝ such
women knew their place and kept their hearts clean of sin.
It would take Christ Himself to forgive a sinful woman รฏยฟยฝ
they were beyond redemption, in his personal view.
You'd have thought, Fiona told herself, that Mr. Elliot
knew better than God Almighty what ought to be done about
sinnersรฏยฟยฝstone them, very likely! He had a very Old
Testament view of such matters, a cold and self-righteous
man. She had never been able to like him. In three years,
she had not found an iota of generosity or compassion in
him, not even when her aunt was dying. He had thundered at
the ill woman, demanding to know if all her sins had been
confessed and forgiven. Reminding her that Hell was full
of horrors and demons. In the end, he had had no comfort
to give. Fiona had simply shut him out. She found herself
wondering if Mr. Elliot had forgiven her for doing that.
As he warmed to his theme now, she felt eyes moving toward
her surreptitiously, a merest glance cast from under the
brim of a hat or from under pale lashes. She knew what
they were thinking. The point was being made publicly that
in Duncarrick she herself was Mary Magdalen. A wanton.
Because of her child?
That made no sense: they'd all been told when she brought
the boy here that she had lost her husband in the war.
Even her aunt, a stickler for propriety, had held her and
cried, then taken her around the town to meet everyone of
consequence, lamenting the tragedy of a lad growing up
without his father, and the wicked fighting in France that
had killed so many good men.
Fiona wasn't the only young widow in the town. Why had she
been singled out in this fashion? Why had people suddenly รฏยฟยฝ
and without explanation รฏยฟยฝ turned so strongly against her?
She'd never so much as looked at another man since 1914.
She had never wanted another man in place of the one lost.
On the following Monday morning, outside the butcher's
shop, someone shook a letter in her face and demanded to
know what Fiona meant by walking boldly amongst decent
folk, putting all their souls in danger.
Managing to reach the letter in the red, waving fingers of
the woman who did washing for a living, she took it and
smoothed it enough to read it.
Have you taken in her washing? The sheets soiled by her
wickedness and the linens that have touched her foul
flesh? Have you no care for your own soul?
It wasn't signedรฏยฟยฝ
The shock turned Fiona's heart over in her chest. She read
the lines again, feeling sick. Mrs. Turnbull was watching
her, something avidly nasty in the set of her face, as if
she relished the pain she'd caused.
"You don't do my laundryรฏยฟยฝ" Fiona began, bewildered, and
then realized that it didn't matter.
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