Her Sister's Gift Page 6

  “I’ll need tae think aboot it, Miss Crail. I thank ye for yer time,” and he shook her hand.

  As he thought about it he wasn’t sure it was the right thing. Isa seemed to be coping better, and Margaret and Chrissie were happy, so he decided to leave things be. However, months later, in August 1914, shortly after Isa’s fifteenth birthday, world events contrived to force his hand, when it was announced that Great Britain was at war with Germany and all able-bodied men were being encouraged to enlist in the forces. Although foundry workers were a reserved occupation, John found himself drawn to the idea of getting away from all his troubles and using his strength to defend his country. His volatile drunkenness was not good for the girls and perhaps looking after the family had been too big a burden for Isa. Domestic-service training might be a way for her to build a life more suited to her ambitions. It would be a new start for all of them.

  5

  Isa was not at all sure about her father’s plans. She did not like the idea of Margaret and Chrissie being sent to the home. She and her father had taken them there and seen them settled in the room of little beds, each with a side locker for their things and a laundry basket at the end of the bed for each day’s dirty apron and the weekly wash. Although they were both quiet and stood almost woodenly by the beds, holding each other’s hands, there had been no tears, both accepting this was what their father had organised. Told they would have to be brave, do as they were bidden and not let their father down, they held in their anxiety as Isa hugged them each goodbye and promised she would see them soon when she had time off. But she felt a strangeness in them as she held them. Isa did not like leaving them, and yet she felt Miss Crail was a good woman who wanted to help children who had fallen on hard times. Many of the other residents were orphans with no parents, whereas Maggie and Chrissie had her and her father and all their relatives. Why had none of their aunts offered to take them in? In fact, why was her father leaving for the war and abandoning them to strangers? But she could not let any of them know she was thinking like this. She told herself that the home would take good care of them.

  As she travelled with her father in the train carriage to Glasgow, she was unsure about his arrangements for her. If truth were told, she was frightened about going in amongst students she did not know in an unfamiliar city. She worried about how clever the others would be and that she would appear to be stupid. As they approached the city she could not believe its size. A vast sprawl of factories, foundries, shipyards and tenements appeared in the windows looking most uninviting, the brick and sandstone blackened with soot.

  Her father escorted her to the college entrance hall and was allowed no further. Their parting was tense and brief. Isa felt numb. She watched him head through the door and set off to a war everyone said would be over by Christmas. Perhaps they would all be together again in a few months. Somehow she just had to get on with things.

  After registering she was shown up to her dormitory, a long, well-lit, wooden-floored room with tall windows along one side, hung with thick black curtains. Each cot bed had a pair of clean sheets, two rolled blankets and a pillow laid on it in a pile, ready to be made up by each girl. A small locker by each bed had a set of drawers in which folded clothing and personal items could be stored. No one else was in the room. The timetable said to report for the first lesson at two, so Isa quickly unpacked her small suitcase into the locker at her bedside.

  The Glasgow and West of Scotland College for Domestic Science had been set up with the aim of teaching young girls and older women already married with children how to cook for their families using fresh, cheap, nutritious ingredients. Filling soups with barley, peas or lentils, stews using cheaper cuts of meat, cooked slowly with vegetables, and milk puddings such as rice and semolina were all designed to provide vitamins, calcium and protein in the cheapest form possible. It was intended to improve people’s health in the slums. Isa, however, had been producing these basic meals for four years in her father’s home. Her six-week course was to prepare young girls like herself to work in domestic service in the big houses, where the cooking would be more demanding, as would the standards of housework. Most of it would be learned on the job.

  She tidied her hair, put on a clean apron and headed through to the first class. The door was open and she came in to a long, wooden-floored room with tall windows facing the door. To her left was a series of raised steps with desks and benches. Ahead of her under the windows were sinks and ranges and in the centre of the room were big wooden tables like her grandmother had in the farmhouse kitchen. To her right stood the teacher’s podium, desk and blackboard. Isa felt her spirits rise. She was back in a classroom again. There were some other girls sitting at desks already, somewhat stiff and unsure in their starched aprons. Each desk had booklets, pens and ink ready for each student. Isa found a seat beside a rosy-cheeked, dark-haired girl who sat upright on the bench. She smiled at Isa and introduced herself as Bettina Gray.

  “But awbody caws me Betty,” she whispered. “Isn’t this excitin’? I’m right glad to be here, awaw frae hame for a bit. I dinna ken hoo ma maw survives. Four wee yins there is the noo and my next oldest sister is just twelve and nae that strang. Still. Whit about you? You’re nae frae roond here.”

  “Naw. Ah’m frae Falkirk,” Isa said hesitantly. The places were filling up around them.

  “Weel. Tell us about yer faimly, then.”

  So Isa briefly outlined her situation, not mentioning Eliza or the stillborn brother. It was hard enough to voice the fact of her mother’s death, her two sisters put in a home and her father away at the war. As the words came into her mouth to tell this stranger about her life, they felt all wrong.

  “Oh,” said Betty, “That’s awfy hard on yez all, so it is. Ah’ve a big brother awaw in the war but ma da’s in a reserved occupation wi’ the railway. So he’s still at hame wi’ us.”

  Before Betty could prise anything more out of her, the door swung wide open and in came the teacher, her dark skirts rustling over the wooden floor. The girls all stood to attention at their desks.

  “Good afternoon, girls. My name is Miss Mackenzie. This afternoon we will be making baked custards. Please copy the recipe and method from the board.” She turned away from them and picked up a piece of chalk and began writing on the board. Isa and Betty picked up their pens, dipped them in the inkwells and began to copy their first lesson into their books.

  After they’d written down the ingredients and the method, Miss Mackenzie then came forward to one of the big kitchen tables and proceeded to demonstrate just how to prepare the custards, calling their attention to the eggs being at room temperature, the glass dishes being placed in a deep oven dish and the eggs whisked with a specific wrist action to avoid the mixture becoming frothy. Then it was their turn. In pairs they came down to the tables, assembled the ingredients, measured them out and followed the teacher’s instructions. The oven dish was then filled with an inch of boiling water and the dish of custards carried carefully to the ovens to bake. While this happened, the girls tidied up the tables and took their places at their desks again. Meanwhile, the teacher told them some variations on the recipe, such as how to make the custards savoury rather than sweet and how to flavour them differently, with vanilla, nutmeg or cheese. Miss Mackenzie also informed them that the custards were nutritious light meals suitable even for young children or invalids. This may prove useful to them if helping in the nursery in their employer’s home.

  Then it was time to check them. Each pair had to fetch their dish of custards and stand beside them while Miss Mackenzie came round to check them. She inserted a clean knife into a sample on each tray and if the knife came out clean they were done. Some had been done with too heavy a hand and had sunk. Others had not set right because the measuring of ingredients had not been accurate. When she came to Isa and Betty she pronounced theirs perfect. Isa was glowing inside. She just knew this was the place for her. She was going to love it here.

  Over the six
weeks there were lessons on etiquette towards their employers: how to curtsey, keep their gaze low, how to address their employers – Ma’am, Sir, or even Your Lordship or Ladyship if they worked for those so titled. Isa and Betty practised curtseys and bobs with bowed heads and a “Yes, Your Ladyship”, “No, Your Lordship”, and even, in fits of giggles, “Why, of course, Your Highness”, just in case.

  Other sessions were held on cleaning. The everyday kitchen cleaning Isa knew inside out but it was new to some of the girls from homes where not much attention had been paid to scrupulous scrubbing. Of course, Isa’s grandmother had to have high levels of cleanliness on her dairy farm and this meant her mother’s routines had been thorough too.

  Some lessons focused on cleaning and polishing of finer furniture and ornaments and on various recipes for cleansers and rubs. Isa used some of these already: white vinegar and salt to clean kitchen surfaces and baking soda to clean the zinc bath. She was intrigued with the mix of lemon juice, olive oil and warm water to polish wooden furniture. It smelled so good. She also loved the tip to remove stains on wallpaper by rubbing bread over the stain to lift off grease and dirt.

  Isa began to realise how capable her mother and grandmother were, as she had already learned so much from watching them. She began to feel capable herself, receiving good reports and compliments from her tutors. Freed of the extra responsibility of looking after Margaret and Chrissie, and the emotional burden of her father’s bouts of sadness and drinking, she was discovering herself as a person distinct from her father and sisters. She met other girls who had had similar experiences. None had seen a sister die in the way she had, but none were untouched by death, illness and flawed families. She found again the camaraderie she’d had at school.

  Occasionally she had a letter from her grandmother telling her about the farm and asking her about her lessons. Isa wrote back with her news about what she was learning and about her new friendships. She also began to write to Margaret and Chrissie, hoping the letters would be read to them although she was sure Margaret would be getting good at reading now. She was coming up for nine and Chrissie nearly seven. So she kept letters short and simple and not too personal, including little funny stories she hoped would make them laugh. She imagined their two heads together on the bed carefully deciphering the words and could hear Chrissie’s infectious giggle as she wrote of the day when another girl had taken her soufflé out of the oven. When the girl reached in for it, the soufflé had been perfectly risen and fluffy, but when she laid it down on the cold, marble-topped pastry board, the coolness in the surface transferred into the dish and the soufflé collapsed in on itself. All this happened before the tutor was able to see the fine specimen it had been on first leaving the oven. The girl was crestfallen. She couldn’t understand what had happened. She had just turned her back on it to shut the oven door and when she turned round her perfect soufflé had been replaced, by someone jealous of her success, she claimed! The class soon put her right and the tutor showed her where she had left the dish. She was all apologetic and was very careful about the surface she laid her baking on after that.

  They were given a holiday late in September and Isa headed off to get a train into Stirling to visit her sisters in Whinhill Home. She had never travelled on her own before and was terribly nervous. She checked over and over that she had her ticket, her money, her gloves and the cake she’d baked the day before in class. She had asked the tutor if she could take it to her sisters. Miss Munro knew about her situation and was especially fond of her pupil, who had clear talent. She felt for Isa, alone with no mother or father around to guide or protect her, and she admired her mature concern for her young sisters left in the home, so of course she agreed Isa could take the rich fruit cake and even found a tin and extra greaseproof paper to wrap it in. Many of the tutors were keen philanthropists, trying to do something to help people trapped in poverty improve their lives. That was often what attracted them to work in the college. They understood and had compassion for the young girls and did everything possible to support them.

  The train was busy and Isa had to walk along the platform, staring into carriages to see if there were any seats. Finally she saw one, opened the carriage door and climbed in. She greeted the other passengers briefly and sat down with her cake tin on her lap. The journey to Stirling was not long – under an hour – and she amused herself looking out the window at all she passed: the backs of tenements with washing strung out on pulleys were followed by the factories and mills with their tall brick chimneys belching smoke into the grey dusty air. There was the occasional park surrounded by trees and then the posh, three-storey villa houses of the wealthy, where she might eventually be employed, and then Glasgow was behind them and the fields began.

  Isa was lulled by the swaying train and the steady clicking of its passing over the rails. She was concerned about how she would find Margaret and Chrissie when she arrived. Would they be much changed? She was excited to be heading there now to see them face to face. She had written to arrange it all and she was going to be able to take them out. Her father had left an allowance for them and she would use this to give them all a treat.

  Stirling was approaching. The young man nearest the door opened it when the train came to a halt and they all descended politely one after the other, the men offering the ladies a hand to step down on to the platform. Isa was shy when the young man near the door offered her his hand as she was used to her father or mother doing this for her, but she accepted it graciously and felt very grown-up doing so.

  The home was situated on a hill on the edge of the town and Isa set off to walk there. Carrying the cake tin was quite awkward and she constantly shifted it from one side of her body to the other. When she and her father had accompanied Margaret and Chrissie here a month ago, she had been too concerned about the girls themselves to notice much about the home itself. Now as she came through the gate, she realised what a huge amount of land there was around it. There was an orchard over to the left, lots of grass on all sides, and vegetable plots round the back where she could see some people digging. The house itself was a stout, square-built sandstone building, with bay windows on the ground floor and sash windows on the three upper floors. There were mature beech and elm trees along the drive and everything looked fresh and tidy, as though the house felt a need to take a pride in its appearance. Isa was almost intimidated by it all but she stepped forward bravely, clutching the cake tin and the letter confirming all the arrangements she had made.

  She climbed the front steps, rang the bell and waited, her heart pumping loudly in her chest. A maid in a black dress and white cap and apron answered the door and showed her a seat in the lobby, asking her to be so good as to wait for Miss Crail, who would be with her shortly. It was not long before Miss Crail arrived to greet Isa warmly and lead her into a room immediately off the lobby. It was furnished with a dark-green and gold patterned carpet, a desk and chair at the window and several gold upholstered armchairs facing the desk. Isa was beckoned to sit down on one of them, where she perched a little nervously.

  “Isa, I am so glad you managed through. Did you have a pleasant journey?”

  Isa was aware she had to present herself in the very best light and so she was careful to speak correctly, as she had taken to doing with her tutors in college.

  “Yes, thank you, Miss Crail. How are Margaret and Chrissie?”

  “Both very well, as you shall soon see. I sent Frances to fetch them. They have settled well and are no trouble at all. I think it helps that they have each other. And how are you, my dear? I hope the college treats you well?”

  “Yes, thank you. The tutors are very kind and helpful. I have a cake here I made that they allowed me to bring for Margaret and Chrissie,” and she proffered the tin.

  “How lovely, my dear. I shall see they get this for treats. And are you enjoying the course?”

  “Very much. It suits me well, I find.”

  “I am so glad. I did think having kept house
for your father and sisters would stand you in good stead for the course. Ah, here they are,” she broke off, as there was a knock at the door. Isa rose from her chair, heart racing.

  Frances opened the door and led in Margaret and Chrissie, holding each other’s hands and beaming smiles when they saw her. Then they ran to her and hugged the parts of her they could reach, burying their faces into her in joy. Isa bent down to hug them back with tears in her eyes.She felt relaxed and at peace. This was home, this was her family: the three of them together.

  “Now girls, I expect you want to head off for your outing. Have a lovely time and we shall see you at tea time.” So saying, Miss Crail shepherded them to the front door and waved them off. Isa took each of them by the hand and squeezed tight, then they set off down the drive into Stirling. Chrissie and Margaret were desperate to tell of all their exploits and had so much news; there was no end to their chatter. Isa loved it. She felt so much more assured than when she had left them here a month ago. It was good to be their big sister.

  “Isa, Chrissie is so clever. You wouldnae believe how often she has her haund up in class or in church ready to answer questions. This Sunday she was answerin’ sae mony that Miss Crail had to ask her to not put her haund up for a bit to gie ithers a chance to answer the minister’s questions.”

  “Gosh, I hope she wisnae tellin’ ye off.” Isa did not like the idea of anyone else finding fault with her little sister, especially not the founder and matron of the home.

  “Naw, Isa,” smiled Chrissie. “She tellt me she was prood o’ hoo weel Ah wis answerin’. It was jist to let ithers hae a chance in case they kennt the answer tae. So noo I wait a bit, in case. And sometimes someone else can answer. So that gies them the chance to be praised too.”