Page 25 of The Pearl Sister
Kitty thought this was extremely unfair on poor Miriam, who had always struggled with her numbers and whose nervous personality was overshadowed by her more confident sister. Miriam was Kitty’s secret favourite.
‘So, Mary, as you have beaten your sisters to the answer, you may choose which parable I will tell.’
‘The Prodigal Son!’ Mary said immediately.
As Ralph began to speak in his low, resonant voice, Kitty only wished he had taught them more parables from the Bible. In truth, she was very weary of the few he favoured. Besides, no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t understand the moral behind the tale of the son who disappeared for years from his family’s table, leaving another son to take on the burden of his parents. And then, when he came back . . .
‘. . . bring the fatted calf and kill it. Let us feast and celebrate!’ Ralph decreed for her.
Kitty longed to ask her father if this meant that anyone could behave just as they liked and still return home to a joyous welcome, because that was how it sounded. She knew Ralph would tell her that their Father in heaven would forgive anyone who repented of their sins, but in reality, it didn’t sound quite fair on the other son, who’d stayed and been good all along, but didn’t get the fatted calf killed for him. Then Ralph would say that good people got their reward in the kingdom of heaven, but that seemed an awfully long time to wait when others got it on earth.
‘Katherine!’ Her father broke into her thoughts. ‘You’re daydreaming again. I said, would you please take your sisters up to the nursery and organise their morning studies? As your mother is too unwell to give them lessons, I shall come up to the nursery at eleven and we shall have an hour of Bible study.’ Ralph smiled benignly at his daughters, then stood up. ‘Until then, I will be in my study.’
* * *
When Ralph appeared in the nursery at eleven, Kitty ran to her bedroom to retrieve the books she intended to return to the public library before she embarked on visiting her mother’s parishioners. Descending the stairs to the entrance hall, she hastily pulled her thick shawl and cape from a peg, eager to escape the oppressive atmosphere of the manse. As she tied the ribbons of her bonnet beneath her chin, she entered the drawing room and saw her mother sitting beside the fire, her pretty face grey and exhausted.
‘Dearest Mother, you look so tired.’
‘I confess that I am feeling more fatigued than usual today.’
‘Rest, Mother, and I shall see you later.’
‘Thank you, my dear.’ Her mother smiled wanly as Kitty kissed her and left the drawing room.
Stepping out into the bracing morning air, she made her way through the narrow streets of Leith and was greeted by numerous parishioners, some of whom had known her since she was no more than a ‘squalling bairn’, as they often liked to remind her. She passed Mrs Dubhach, who, as usual, asked after the reverend and gushed over last Sunday’s sermon, to the point where Kitty began to feel quite nauseous.
After bidding farewell to the woman, Kitty boarded the electric tram heading for central Edinburgh. After changing trams on Leith Walk, she alighted near George IV Bridge and headed for the Central Library. She glanced at the students who were chatting and laughing as they walked up the steps to the vast grey-brick building, lights shining out from the many mullioned windows into the drab winter sky. Inside the high-ceilinged main hall it was barely warmer than outside, and as she set her books down at the returns desk, she hugged her shawl tighter to her as the librarian dealt with the paperwork.
Kitty stood patiently, thinking about one particular book she had recently borrowed: Charles Darwin’sOn the Origin of Species,first published over forty years ago. It had proved to be a revelation for her. In fact, it had been the catalyst that had caused her to question her religious faith and the teachings that her father had instilled in her since childhood. She knew he would be horrified to think she had even read such blasphemous words, let alone given them any credence.
As it was, the reverend only grudgingly condoned her regular visits to the library, but for Kitty, it was her haven – the place that had provided the bulk of her education in subjects that went far beyond what she learnt from Bible study or her mother’s basic English and arithmetic lessons. Her introduction to Darwin had come about by chance, after her father had mentioned that Mrs McCrombie, his church’s wealthiest benefactor, was considering a visit to her relatives in Australia. Kitty’s interest had been piqued and, knowing next to nothing about the distant continent, she had browsed the library shelves and had stumbled uponThe Voyage of the Beagle,which chronicled the young Darwin’s adventures during a five-year journey around the globe, including two months spent in Australia. One of his books had led to another, and Kitty had found herself both fascinated and disturbed by the revolutionary theories Mr Darwin espoused.
She wished that she had someone she could discuss these ideas with, but could only imagine her father’s apoplexy if she ever dared to mention the word ‘evolution’. The very idea that the creatures which populated the earth were not of God’s design, but instead the outcome of millennia spent adapting to their environment, would be anathema to him. Let alone the notion that birth and death were not His to bestow, because ‘natural selection’ determined that only the strongest of any species survived and bred. The theory of evolution made prayer seem rather arbitrary because, according to Darwin, there was no master beyondnature,the most powerful force in the world.
Kitty checked the clock on the wall and, having completed her business with the librarian, she did not linger among the shelves as she normally would, but made her way outside and caught a tram back to Leith.
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 howcityclergymen 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.’
