Leggatt Respectability
Emmeline was fluttered and took some pains to make Martha presentable. The girl herself had not much interest in her outfit. She was so much accustomed to her own dowdy appearance that she accepted it as in the nature of things and made no effort to alter it: but the visit itself was an excitement. Here was she a traveller, at last; though the travel carried her only twenty miles. And it thrilled her immoderately to climb a stair to her bedroom. She had never slept upstairs before and never had a bedroom to herself. She sat on the edge of a chair, when she had said goodnight and shut the door, and clenched her hands together to keep within measure the waves of excitement that washed over her. So new the world was! When the door opened gently and she looked up with a start, she was prepared for any unaccountable vision to meet her eyes.
The vision that met her eyes gave account of itself at once.
‘It’s just the Syrup of Figs,’ Aunt Leebie was saying, creeping across the carpet with her shapeless figure hunched together. ‘Yer Aunt Jean aye gars the bairns tak’ a dosie the first nicht they come.’
She was standing above Martha, struggling with the cork, the spoon thrust by the handle in her mouth while she fichered. Her dim and anxious eyes searched the girl, noting the bones that protruded at her throat, the shadows round her eyes. Leebie was a kindly body. Taking her cue from Jean, she was ready to translate her relenting even more liberally than she had formerly translated her disapproval.
‘A sup cream wad dae ye mair gweed,’ she was moved to say. ‘But yer Aunt Jean. … Whan the bairnies comes − ye wunna ken aboot the bairnies?’ She shot off at a tangent, glad of the excuse. Mrs. Corbett’s elder son was married; the two children came frequently to stay with their grandparents. Castor-oil, Aunt Jean believed in. That was the thing when she was young and her bairns after her.
‘But their mither, she has notions o’ her ain. Nae castor-oil for her littlins. She’s a prood piece,’ said Leebie confidentially to Martha, edging up until the Syrup of Figs was almost at her nose.
‘Terrible ful, an’ aye wears a tailor-made.’
In spite of her kindliness, Aunt Leebie was inexorable over the Syrup of Figs. The tilt of Aunt Jean’s chin had commanded.
Leebie, it was plain, was spokesman. The weather being wet and the ground soft, Martha could never return from a walk, or from picking, between showers, the black currants in the garden, but Aunt Leebie, mounted dragon over the immaculate fleece of the carpets, would be meeting her at the door:
‘Noo clean yer feet, aifter a’ that muck. We’ll hae a hoose nae common.’
Martha grew to have a fondness for Aunt Leebie; though her reprimands pursued her. She liked the funny soft giggle in which her sentences ended. Round-shouldered, wrapped always in a grey Shetland shawl that was matted by frequent washings, she watched the girl’s every action, and found fault with many. On washing day it was Martha who carried out the rugs and beat them on the green. She paused for breath, too soon.
‘That’s nae the way,’ cried Leebie from the window. ‘Startin’ aff like that at a bicker an’ then haein’ to stop.’
The aunts had undertaken Martha’s domestic education with more thoroughness than consorted with holiday. She made beds under supervision and learned how silver should be laid away and the due and proper method of buying and storing yellow soap. They talked as though she knew nothing.
‘But I’ve stayed with Aunt Josephine,’ she said, ‘I’ve seen …’
Leebie sniffed. ‘Josephine does a’thing by instalments.’
And Aunt Jean added, in one of her rare bursts of eloquence,
‘Josephine will dee by instalments.’
On the last evening of her stay they called her into Leebie’s room. The half-drawn blinds, the starched Nottingham curtains, the dressing-table with its swivel mirror set straight across the window, made the room dark: Aunt Jean, sitting very upright on a cane-bottomed chair, made it portentous. Leebie sorted her parson-grey Shetland shawl. ‘It’s aye slippin’,’ she complained, ending on her soft giggle. And pulling it closer to her throat, she moved up to the bed. ‘Come richt in,’ she ordered Martha over her shoulder.
On the bed was laid a lustre frock − ivory, that had deepened with age. Its voluminous skirts billowed over the quilt.
‘Ye’ll try it on,’ Leebie said.
Fingering the folds while Martha took off her blouse and skirt, ‘It was richt gweed stuff,’ she muttered; and pouncing, at sight of Martha’s underclothes,
‘The Lord preserve’s, look at yer slip-body − that’s yer safety-pins. Pinnin’ yer skirt up!’ (‘It won’t keep without,’ Martha pleaded.) ‘Canna ye wear stays, like a Christian body?’
She dropped the gown and with her hands explored the leaness of Martha’s haunches.
‘There’s naething there to support a skirt. Ye maun get a pair o’ stays.’ She continued to fumble with her hands at the girl’s hips, muttering, as though she had a personal grievance in the make of her lanky figure. Then she lifted the lustre gown and fitted it upon her grand-niece. The full skirts sprang from the waist, covering her thinness, and at the back trailed slightly on the floor. Aunt Leebie struggled with the fastenings of the bodice, dragging Martha round, pulling her from point to point in the room to catch a clearer light. The bodice was fitted to a shaped lining, that fastened down the front with close-set alternating rows of hooks and eyes.
‘It’s some grippit in at the middle,’ she complained in the aggrieved tone she had used with which to talk of stays. ‘But ye cud sort that.’ And again she giggled softly.
Martha perceived that the frock was given to her.
She wondered vaguely what she could do with it. No room at Wester Cairns for frocks like that − hardly room to store it! And as for wearing it −! Of course it could be remade − there were yards of stuff: but plainly that was not Aunt Leebie’s purpose. Sort the waist, shorten the skirt a little, and there you were! Martha gave a gulp of sheer panic at the thought of wearing the gown; and she was no facile needlewoman, to transform it for herself. Shirts, underclothing, yes: but when it came to the tricksey wiles of fashion … she remembered Dussie’s frocks and felt that she would rather die than snip and alter at this ancient dress till it was wearable.
But what was it that Aunt Leebie was saying? − She must make some sign of gratitude; and plunging she said,
‘I could wear it when I’m capped.’
Her graduation was so infinitely remote − two whole years away. One could make rash promises for two years hence.
‘I’ll keep it for then,’ she said. And fearful that her gratitude had not been warm enough, she put her arms round Aunt Leebie’s neck, rubbing upon the parson-grey Shetland shawl, and kissed her. ‘But where am I to keep it?’ she was thinking.
Aunt Leebie was pleased. She helped Martha to take off the gown and lay it carefully across the back of a chair.
‘Ye
