Later that afternoon, she hurried towards home through the bitterly cold streets. Tall, austere buildings lined either side of the road, all made of the same dull sandstone that blended into the constant greyness of the sky. She could see by the layered light of the gas lamps that a heavy fog was descending on the city. She was weary, having spent the afternoon visiting sick parishioners – both those on her own list and those on her mother’s. To her dismay, when she’d arrived at the front door of a tenement block on Queen Charlotte Street, she’d found that Mrs Monkton, a dear old lady whom Father swore had fornicated and drunk herself into poverty, had died the day before. Despite her father’s comments, Kitty had always looked forward to her weekly visits with Mrs Monkton, although trying to decipher what the woman said, due to the combination of a lack of teeth and an accent one could cut with a knife, was a task that took considerable concentration. The good humour with which Mrs Monkton had taken her slide into penury, never once complaining about the squalor she lived in after her fall from grace – Aye, I was a lady’s maid once, ye know. Lived in a reet grand house until the mistress saw the master had set his sights o’ me, she’d cackled once – had provided Kitty with a benchmark. After all, even if the rest of her own life continued along the same narrow track, at least she had a roof over her head and food on her table, when so many others hereabouts did not.
‘I hope you are in heaven, where you belong,’ whispered Kitty into the thick night air as she crossed Henderson Street to the manse on the other side of the road. As she neared the front door, a shadow crossed her path and Kitty stopped abruptly to avoid colliding with its owner. She saw that the shadow belonged to a young woman who had frozen in her tracks and was staring at her. Her tattered scarf had slipped from around her head to reveal a gaunt face with huge haunted eyes and pallid skin framed by coarse brown hair. Kitty thought the poor creature could only be about her own age.
‘Do excuse me,’ she said, as she stepped awkwardly aside to let the girl pass. But the girl did not move, just continued to stare at her unwaveringly, until Kitty broke her gaze and opened the front door. As she entered the house, she felt the girl’s eyes boring into her back and she slammed the door hurriedly.
Kitty removed her cape and bonnet, doing her best to divest herself of that pair of haunted eyes at the same time. Then she pondered the Jane Austen novels she’d read and the descriptions of picturesque rectories sitting in the middle of delightful gardens in the English countryside, their inhabitants surrounded by genteel neighbours leading similarly privileged lives. She decided that Miss Austen could never have travelled so far up north and witnessed how city clergymen lived on the outskirts of Edinburgh.
Just like the rest of the buildings along the street, the manse was a sturdy Victorian four-floor building, designed for practicality, not prettiness. Poverty was only a heartbeat away in the tenement buildings near the docks. Father often said that no one could ever criticise him for living in a manner above his flock, but at least, thought Kitty as she walked into the drawing room to toast her hands by the fire, unlike others in the neighbourhood, the manse’s inhabitants were warm and dry.
‘Good evening, Mother,’ she greeted Adele, who was sitting in her chair by the fireside darning socks, resting them and the pincushion on her small bump.
‘Good evening, Kitty. How was your day?’ Adele’s soft accent was that of Scottish gentility, her father having been a laird in Dumfriesshire. Kitty and her sisters had loved travelling south each summer to see their grandparents, and she had especially delighted in being able to ride horses across the sweeping countryside. She had always been perplexed, however, that her father had never accompanied them on their summer sojourns. He cited the need to remain with his flock, but Kitty had begun to suspect that it was because her grandparents disapproved of him. The McBrides, although wealthy, had come from what Kitty had heard termed ‘trade’, whereas her mother’s parents were descendants of the noble Clan Douglas, and frequently voiced their concern that their daughter lived in such reduced circumstances as a minister’s wife.
‘Mrs McFarlane and her children send their best wishes, and Mr Cuthbertson’s leg abscess seems to have healed. Although I have some sad news too, Mother. I’m afraid Mrs Monkton died yesterday.’
‘God rest her soul.’ Adele immediately crossed herself. ‘But perhaps it was a blessed relief, living like she did . . .’
‘Her neighbour said they’d taken her body to the mortuary, but as there are no relatives and Mrs Monkton hadn’t a farthing to her name, there’s nothing for a funeral or a decent burial plot. Unless . . .’
‘I’ll speak to your father,’ Adele comforted her daughter. ‘Although I know church funds are running low at the moment.’
‘Please do, Mother. Whatever Father said about her descent into sin, she had definitely repented by the end.’
‘And she was delightful company. Oh, I do so hate the onset of winter. The season of death . . . certainly around these parts.’ Adele gave a small shudder and put a hand protectively across her belly. ‘Your father’s at a parish committee meeting this evening, then out to take supper with Mrs McCrombie. He’s hoping she will once more see her way clear to giving our church a donation. Heaven knows, it needs it. It cannot run on eternal salvation alone.’
Or on the promise of something we cannot even see, or hear, or touch . . .
‘Yes, Mother.’
‘Perhaps you would go upstairs to your sisters, Kitty dear? Bring them down to see me when they’re in their nightgowns. I feel so weary tonight, I simply cannot climb the stairs to the nursery floor.’
A surge of panic ran through Kitty. ‘You are still unwell, Mother?’
‘One day, my dear, you will understand how draining pregnancy can be, especially at my age. We two shall eat at eight, and there is no need to dress for dinner, as your father is out,’ she added.
Kitty climbed the interminable stairs, cursing the double blight of being a minister’s daughter and the eldest of a brood of four, soon to be five. She walked into the nursery and found Martha, Miriam and Mary squabbling over a game of marbles.
‘I won!’ said Martha, who was fourteen and possessed a temperament as stubborn as Father’s religious beliefs.
‘It was me!’ Mary retorted with a pout.
‘Actually, I think it was me,’ put in Miriam gently. And Kitty knew it had been her.
‘Well, whoever it was, Mother wants you to complete your ablutions, dress in your nightgowns, and go and kiss her goodnight in the drawing room.’
‘Go to the drawing room in our nightgowns?’ Mary looked shocked. ‘What will Father say?’
‘Father is out having supper with Mrs McCrombie. Now,’ Kitty said as Aylsa arrived in the nursery with a washbasin. ‘Let’s see the state of your faces and necks.’
‘D’ye mind sorting them out, Miss Kitty? I must see to the supper downstairs,’ Aylsa pleaded with her.
‘Of course not, Aylsa.’ As their only housemaid, Kitty knew the girl was utterly exhausted by this time of night.
‘Thank you, Miss Kitty.’ Giving her a grateful nod, Aylsa scurried out of the nursery.
When all three of her sisters were in their white muslin nightgowns, Kitty marched them downstairs to the drawing room. As her mother kissed them goodnight one by one, Kitty decided that at least her early experience of childcare would stand her in good stead when she had children of her own. Then, looking at her mother’s burgeoning stomach and the fatigue plain on her face, she thought that perhaps she wouldn’t have any at all.
Once her sisters had been despatched off to bed, Kitty and her mother sat down in the dining room to eat a supper of tough broiled beef, potatoes and cabbage. They discussed church business and the coming festive season which, for the McBride family, was the busiest time of the year. Adele smiled at her.