The Curse of the Clan

Chapter One ~ 1822-1

Chapter One ~ 1822“It’s very pleasant to see you here again, Mr. Falkirk.”

“It has been a long time, Mrs. Barrowfield. Let me think now, it must be at least six years.”

“Seven to be exact since you last paid us a visit. But, as I always says, I never forget a face or a friend and I’ve always looked on you as a friend, Mr. Falkirk.”

“I am honoured, Mrs. Barrowfield.”

The Scotsman gave the large blowsy woman a slight bow and then, clearing his throat as if he intended to get down to business, he began,

“You must wonder why I have called on you today.”

“It did cross my mind,” Mrs. Barrowfield replied with a laugh. “After all I could hardly flatter myself it was to see me bright eyes. Nevertheless we must celebrate.”

She rose as she spoke from the ancient creaking chair at the side of the hearth and crossed the room to open a cupboard.

From it she brought out a bottle of port and two glasses and, setting them on a round tray, brought them towards her visitor. She placed them beside him on a table, which he looked at anxiously as it seemed decidedly unsteady.

The room where they were sitting was poorly and sparsely furnished and badly in need of a coat of paint.

However, it was littered with cheap knick-knacks such as middle-aged women collect and the brightly burning fire gave it some semblance of cosiness.

“Will you play host, Mr. Falkirk?” Mrs. Barrowfield asked with just a touch of coquetry in her words.

He picked up the bottle of port, glanced at the label apprehensively and poured Mrs. Barrowfield a full glass and himself a little over a quarter.

”You’re very abstemious,” his hostess remarked.

“In my position it’s essential to keep a dear head,” Mr. Falkirk replied.

“That I can understand,” Mrs. Barrowfield conceded, “and how is His Grace?”

There was a little pause before Mr. Falkirk replied,

“It’s on His Grace’s instigation that I am here.”

“His Grace’s?” Mrs. Barrowfield raised her eyebrows. “I was hoping you’d come on an errand of mercy from the Duchess.”

Mr. Falkirk looked surprised and Mrs. Barrowfield explained,

“His Grace’s mother, Duchess Anne, took a great interest in the Orphanage, as I’m sure you remember. We received turkeys at Christmas and seldom a year passed that she did not entrust me with extra money to be spent on improvements. But with her death all that came to an end.”

“I must admit her contributions to the Orphanage had escaped my notice,” Mr. Falkirk remarked.

“I thought perhaps they had,” Mrs. Barrowfield replied with a note of reproach in her voice, “but I’d hoped that the new Duchess would carry on the tradition.”

Mrs. Barrowfield took another sip of port before she added,

“After all, it’s very much in the family, isn’t it? The Orphanage was started when Duchess Harriet, His Grace’s grandmother, found that one of her kitchen maids was ‘in the family way’ and rather than turn her out into the snow, built ‘The Orphanage of the Nameless’.”

She laughed.

“Those were the days, Mr. Falkirk, before the War when there was plenty of money and generous hands to dispense it.”

Mr. Falkirk shook his head.

“Things are not so easy now, Mrs. Barrowfield, as I am sure you are aware.”

“You don’t have to tell me that,” Mrs. Barrowfield said sharply. “I pinch and save, save and pinch, it’s nothing but endless cheese-paring. The income that the Orphanage receives is just the same, but prices have gone up. Food is double what it was when I was a girl.”

“I am sure that’s true,” the Scotsman murmured.

“When I came here to help the Matron I was fifteen and already had three years’ experience in another home. I thought I was bettering myself.”

Mrs. Barrowfield laughed raucously.

“I assure you, Mr. Falkirk, I had no intention of spending the rest of my days in this place, but this is where I be ended up and now I am Matron and with little or no help because we can’t afford it.”

“I had no idea that things were so difficult, Mrs. Barrowfield,” Mr. Falkirk said. “Why have not the Guardians of the Orphanage written to His Grace?”

“Them!” Mrs. Barrowfield exclaimed rudely. “They’re either dead or don’t care!”

She saw the surprise on Mr. Falkirk’s face and explained,

“Colonel McNab died three years ago, Mr. Cameron has been in ill health and is nigh on eighty. Lord Hirchington lives in the country and I haven’t seen a sight or sign of him since Her Grace died.”

“I can only promise,” Mr. Falkirk answered, “that I will bring your position to the notice of His Grace as soon as I return to Scotland.”

“I’d be very grateful if you would,” Mrs. Barrowfield said in a different tone. “Do you know how many children I have here at the moment?”

Mr. Falkirk shook his head.

“Thirty-nine!” Mrs. Barrowfield cried. “Thirty-nine and practically no one to look after them except myself. It’s not right, that it’s not! I’m getting on in years. Things aren’t as easy for me as they used to be.”

She drank down her glass of port and reached for the bottle.

Looking at the high colour of her face, the puffiness under her eyes and the two or three extra chins that had developed since he last saw her, Mr. Falkirk guessed that Mrs. Barrowfield consoled herself constantly.

And if it was not the cheap port with which he had no intention of ruining his stomach, he thought it would be gin, which was quite rightly, in his opinion, known as ‘mother’s ruin’.

But nothing of what he was thinking showed itself in his calm expression as he sat in an armchair facing the Matron of the Orphanage and thinking that it was time he came to the point of his visit.

He was a tall well-built man and had in his youth been outstandingly handsome.

With his hair greying at the temples and with a trim figure without an ounce of extra flesh, he looked extremely distinguished and as the Duke of Arkcraig’s Comptroller was much admired.

“I will certainly put your problems in front of His Grace,” he repeated, “but what I came to ask you – ”

He was interrupted before he could go further by Mrs. Barrowfield saying,

“You can tell His Grace that we’re losing our reputation for supplying strong healthy apprentices for those who need them. Only last week the owner of several tailoring shops came to see me and said, ‘I want two of your best lads, Mrs. Barrowfield, and none of that knock-kneed anaemic rubbish you gave me last year! What happened to the boys I let you have?’ I asked. ‘God knows!’ he replied. ‘Always ailing and snivelling, they were no use to me. I turned them off and without a reference!’”

Mr. Falkirk looked grave.

“That is certainly something that should not happen, Mrs. Barrowfield, from an Orphanage which has been under the direct patronage of His Grace’s family for over thirty years.”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying to you, Mr. Falkirk,” Mrs. Barrowfield said. “It’s an aspersion, as you might say, on His Grace’s reputation and even though you lives far away from us we have a great respect for Scotland and its Noblemen.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Barrowfield.”

“That’s why I was hoping,” Mrs. Barrowfield continued, “that you could persuade the new Duchess to visit us.”

“The Duchess is dead!”

“Dead?”

Mrs. Barrowfield’s mouth opened and she looked, Mr. Falkirk thought, not unlike a surprised turkey c**k.

“Yes, dead,” he said quietly. “Her Grace died a few weeks ago in France.”

“Well, I never! You could knock me down with a feather! And her little more than a bride. Let me see now, she and His Grace couldn’t have been married for more than a year.”

“Ten months to be exact,” Mr. Falkirk said in a dry voice.

“And now, poor lady, she has gone to her maker! It seems a crying shame, it does really! And I never so much as sets eyes on her.”

There was silence.

Then, as if he feared that Mrs. Barrowfield was about to ask a number of questions, Mr. Falkirk said,

“His Grace has gone North and he asked me when I followed him to bring with me one of your orphans.”

“One of my orphans?” Mrs. Barrowfield exclaimed. “I suppose His Grace wants one of the lads to work in the kitchen or in the pantry. Let me think – ”

“No, that was not His Grace’s instructions,” Mr. Falkirk interrupted. “He requires one of your girls, but she must be over sixteen.”

“Over sixteen? You must be joking!” Mrs. Barrowfield cried. “You know as well as I do, Mr. Falkirk, we don’t keep them a day over twelve, if we can help it. Push them out younger, if we can.”

She paused before she went on,

“And, although I says it as I shouldn’t, the girls from here are noted as having good manners. At least they know how to speak with respect for their elders and betters, which is more than you can say for most young people today.”

“That is true enough,” Mr. Falkirk agreed, “but His Grace was quite certain that you would be able to supply him with the type of young girl he needs.”

“I always understood from the Duchess Harriett that you had all the young people in Scotland you needed,” Mrs. Barrowfield said. “Her Grace took two of my girls once when the house in London was open. Very pleased I believe she was with both of them.”

She smiled with an excess of self-gratification and went on,

“One of them came back to see me years later. She’d married a footman. Pretty bit, she was. I always thought she’d get herself married if she could find a man who’d overlook the unfortunate circumstances of her birth.”

“You are quite certain that you have no one of the right age?” Mr. Falkirk insisted.

“Quite certain!” Mrs. Barrowfield answered. “The children here now are mostly very young and Heaven knows it’s difficult enough looking after them and keeping them clean. What I’d do without Tara I don’t know.”

“Tara?” Mr. Falkirk asked. “Is that the girl who let me in?”

“Yes, that’ll be her. She looks after the little ones. Spoils them, I always say, but you can’t put an old head on young shoulders.”

Mrs. Barrowfield gave another of her loud laughs.

“It was very different with the old Matron. She believed in birching the children to keep them quiet. Good, bad or indifferent, she beat them all and I must say that I often think her methods were better than mine. I’m too kind, that’s the trouble with me.”

“I am sure the fact that you are merciful to these unfortunate children is in your favour, Mrs. Barrowfield,” Mr. Falkirk said, “but we were talking about Tara.”

“I was just saying – ” Mrs. Barrowfield began and then she stopped. “You’re not suggesting – you’re not intending – ”

She put her empty glass down on the table with a bang.

“No, Mr. Falkirk, I’ll not stand for it, that I won’t! You are not taking Tara from me. She’s the only person in this place I can rely on. Who else do I have coming in? A couple of decrepit old women who can’t get work elsewhere and are more trouble than they’re worth and I’m hard put to pay them as it is. You can take any of the children you like, the whole lot if it suits you, but not Tara!”

“How old is she?” Mr. Falkirk asked.

“Now let me see. She must be nigh on eighteen. Yes, that’ll be right. It was 1804 when she came here, a year after hostilities started up again with that devil Napoleon. I remember it because a terrible winter it was and food went up with a jump. Coal was double the price!”

“So Tara is nearly eighteen,” Mr. Falkirk said. “I am afraid, Mrs. Barrowfield, that if there is no one else I must follow His Grace’s instructions and take her with me to Scotland.”

“Over my dead body!” Mrs. Barrowfield erupted violently. “I’ll not have it, Mr. Falkirk. I’ll not be left with thirty-nine screaming unruly children, many of whom cannot even look after themselves.”

She drew in her breath and became so crimson in the face that the Scotsman watching her was afraid that she might have a stroke.

“If Tara goes – I go. You can put that in your pipe and smoke it!”

As if her legs would no longer hold her, she sat down in the armchair to fan herself with a piece of paper she picked up from the table.

“I am sorry, Mrs. Barrowfield, to upset you,” Mr. Falkirk said, “but you know as well as I do that I have to obey His Grace’s instructions.”

“It’s not fair!” Mrs. Barrowfield replied in a voice that was suspiciously near to tears. “It’s not fair! I’m messed about and put upon and nobody cares what happens to me! His Grace has enough girls in Scotland without taking the only one that’s any use from the Orphanage dedicated to the memory of his dead grandmother.”

Mrs. Barrowfield’s voice broke and hastily Mr. Falkirk poured out another glass of port and put it into her hand.