THE WHITE APRON

CHRISTINE EYRES

Description

Born on a farm outside Edinburgh in the mid-nineteenth century, Agnes Watt is embraced by family, community and tradition. Her youthful hopes and dreams are quashed but she falls in love and marries William Miller, a Gordon Highlander. Life spirals into dark places as the couple becomes ensnared in the nightmare that descended on the Scottish working-class during the industrial revolution.The triumphs of the great Victorian era came at an appalling human cost and Agnes fights against disease and grinding poverty. She tries to keep her family safe as tragedy stalks them in an age known in Glasgow as 'the slaughter of the innocents'. The friendship of other women and her unshakable belief in education strengthens her resolve. Will she endure to rise above the cruellest blow of all?

Sujets

• Historical fiction

Informations

• Publié par: ROLEYSTONE ARTSPACE
• Date de parution: 13 août 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781912643783
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

THE WHITE APRON
by Christine Eyres
© 2018 Christine Eyres
Launching by Christine Eyres
Christine Eyres has asserted her rights in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
Published by ROLEYSTONE ARTSPACE
First published in 2018 2018
ISBN: 9781912643783
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the Publisher.
All names, characters, places, organisations, businesses and events are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
For Mary who told stories And Christina who remained silent.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Glossary
Prologue October 26, 1909
Warriston Farm 1858
A Weary Dream
Frae the Friends
I’m O’re Young
A Tune Played Sweetly
Adieu O Soldier
The Lawn Market
Blackfriar’s Wynd
Paper Promises
The Long and Dreary Night
The Tempest’s Lour
Glowing Dawn of Future Day
Shy Happiness
For Promis’d Joy
Bend the Naked Tree
Bell Street
Three Times Crowdie in a Day
The Keekin’ Glass
A Day in the Sun
Lammas
A Galling Load
Had I A Cave
Moonlight Flit
Outdoor Relief
Soor Mulk
Life is a Faught
Being Independent
Time Winds
The Girdle Rang
I Dream’d I Lay
Thro’ Gentle Showers
Craiglockhart
Back to Chalkieside
Return to Glasgow
Catch the Moments
A Thirsty Dog
Washerwoman
Thine Angry Howl
Black the Night
Room at the Inn
To Say the Grace
Fare Thee Well
Epilogue October 26 1909
GLOSSARY awfy very agin against backland area behind the tenement buildings with lavatories and middens bannocks unsweetened flat cakes made of oats or barley, fried on a griddle bessom derogatory term for a woman or girl blether, blethering talk, talking blootered drunk braw good burn a small river or stream cannae can not, can’t charabanc long, bus-like vehicle drawn by horses (later motorised) choochter or teuchter– a Gaelic speaking highlander close the front entrance of a tenement building. clearances During 18th and 19th centuries the clan system crumbled and crofters are evicted to make way for sheep that produced wool for the factories. cockapentie sycophant croft a highland farm – originally part of an estate to which rent is paid. crofters the farmers who had tenure over the land. daft silly , crazy, half witted dinna don’t (don’t do – present tense) doesnae does not, doesn’t doitit senile donner walk dram a shot of whisky dreich cold, wet, misty and miserable dry stain dykes dry stone walls farthing a quarter of a penny feart afraid greetin’ crying girnin’ whinging, complaining hadnae had not, hadn’t ha’penny a half penny hen pet term for a woman or girl hot toddy, whisky heated with a little water idjut idiot keekin’ glass looking glass, mirror Lang may your lum reek Long may your chimney smoke. (long may you live) lights lungs of an animal maw stomach of an animal mealie pudding sausage made of minced offal, oatmeal, onions, herbs muckle big nowt nothing paraffin kerosene piece a piece of bread (usually with jam) pease-brose lentil soup retting the softening and separating of flax fibres scunnered irritated, disgusted shargar a lean, faded, or stunted person single-end a one roomed tenement dwelling sclaffer clumsy person sclim climb sclum climbed scutching the combing of flax fibres shunkey lavatory slainte vhar (pronounced slanjevar) cheers, good health sno sniffing around as in poking nose like a dog steamie communal wash house soor Mulk Sour milk - a yoghurt-like drink sumph stupid person, simpleton tea the evening meal thruppence three pennies toff a wealthy person tuppence two pennies wasnae is not weans children winching courting
PROLOGUE October 26, 1909
T hey drifted down again today, the leaves, in the churchyard after the service that saw Christina, my youngest, married – the only one of my seven children. I can’t see the two boys marrying … the others, och, but I shouldn’t be thinking of all that now. I need to rouse myself out of this chair, stow my good shawl in the kist, with the lavender bags, away from the moths and the memories. But when I look upon the shawl, with its colours spilling over my lap, it beckons me to bide a while and sends the recollections coursing through my blood like elderberry wine.
Christina is happy, and that’s what matters now. Still, it’s hard not to miss them all. At times, I thought I wouldn’t miss William. What sort of wife says that? But it’s true. He led me a merry dance, and now I wonder if I should have been stronger. I followed him from the squalor of Blackfriars Wynd in Edinburgh after the army used him and then discarded him. Away from my family, he took me, to Airdrie. Airdrie was a happy enough place until tragedy stalked us and we moved again, this time to Glasgow. Never have I seen a dirtier, more degraded, more overcrowded place than Glasgow. By the time we arrived, the potato famine in Ireland had forced the Irish here in droves. As well, the highland clearances brought people scrambling for work in the factories and steel mills that defiled the city with grime and misery.
Today the sun shone, despite winter’s icy breath biting cheeks, making noses run. A happy day, and those last coloured leaves, with memories still clinging, floated from the oak tree like confetti as everyone gathered outside the church. I took them for granted on the farm – the leaves. I kicked them aside without a care in the world. A child never thinks of a world without leaves, but they’re a rare sight around the tenements of Glasgow. In the churchyard today, I saw them falling again, red, yellow and orange onto Senga’s coffin. Again, I felt them drawing me down to be beside my bairn until I became aware of Christina shaking me and dragging me away to talk to the others.
There’s just me now, floating around in this house on the edge of the city. It’s too big – and empty. I’d like to fill it again. Molly would have said I’m too old. And I’ll tell you when I see sights like the motorised carts in Argyle Street, I think maybe she’s right. The world has become a place I hardly recognise, with machines for doing everything, on the farms as well as the towns. Oh, I miss Molly something fierce. The kindness of women like Molly was like the air that I breathe. In all the places I lived they were there to hold me up. We held each other up through the struggle of life with births and too many deaths. Night is falling. I need to light the lamp and stoke the fire, not sit here wrapped in my shawl and the past. But when I look down at the embroidery, at the richness of layer on layer, scene upon scene, faces, places long gone, it makes me smile. At times my life was a threadbare cloth. Holes full of pain that have mended slowly. But I’ve been luckier than many a soul born in this city. It was the farm on the outskirts of Currie and my school, and even Alder Lodge, where I worked as a maid that gave me the dreams and the skills that sustained me through the years.
At the wedding today, I drifted to the Curry Kirk with the dear wee schoolhouse standing on the other side of the ancient bridge from the village. I was remembering the Christmas of 1858 when I was thirteen-years-old. Snow always seemed to mantle the village on Christmas morning. Aggie, they called me then. I had thought God wanted everything clean and bright for his special day. Now, far away in this grey city, I can still hear the gossip of the villagers gathered on the frozen grass and see myself following Mam and Janet to our usual pew among the families in the main body of the church. Light always streamed through two large plain windows at the front of the building. No stained glass and other decoration in a Scottish church, just the warmth of the oak walls and pews. Through those windows, I can still see the monuments in the graveyard and the ancient yew tree where the fairies lived. Abide with Me. I hear it now as I sit here with my eyes closed, I hear the organ and I find myself humming while the rough skin of my fingers catches the embroidered church.
After that Christmas, I started to bleed and my childhood ended.
WARRISTON FARM 1858
The lav’rock in the morning she’ll rise frae her nest, And mount i’ the air wi’ the dew on her breast, And wi’ the merry ploughman she’ll whistle and sing, And at night she’ll return to her nest back again.
Robert Burns
T he morning I woke with a churning pain in my belly and blood between my legs, I thought of the night the twins arrived. Blood clung clotted to lambs and calves when they were born, but it was the dark red smell of it that brought back the birth of the twins. That night Da’ had shaken me from a deep sleep with one finger pressed to my lips.
‘Wake up, hen,’ he’d whispered.
The alarm in his eyes and voice chased away the grogginess of sleep. Mam needed me. The baby had decided to come early and he’d sent the boys to the hayloft. He was taking the wee ones to Big Aunt Marion’s and he would bring my aunt back to help. I pulled aside the curtain that divided the small room. Mam lay askew on the rough wooden bed. Her hair, usually caught in a neat bun, was a ravel. A tangle of bedclothes had slipped to the floor. She tried to smile, saying she was sorry, I was too young to be doing this, but now that our Janet has gone to work in the village inn … Her head dropped back on the pillow, her breath came in short pants.
I’d spent my whole life on the farm.