Josephine Tey Read online

  Colin’s oldest sister Mary was also contributing, having gone back to work as a domestic servant, but this meant that her son needed care. Perhaps this job fell to Colin’s mother, leaving Colin in charge at the shop. Colin’s brother John, the closest to him in age, did not help at the shop. John had been apprenticed to a butcher, but was currently unemployed. Over time, Colin found that working with his two youngest brothers, Murdo and Dan, was to become difficult, and John perhaps anticipated this: perhaps he did not want to do what Colin told him, and maybe he disliked the move away from a crofting lifestyle to the town, because John decided to look elsewhere for work.7 In the 1890s there was a recruitment drive for Highlanders to become shepherds in Patagonia in South America: Highlanders were thought to have the right temperament and skills, and John took up this opportunity, emigrating from Scotland, where he was not to return for twenty years.

  Not all of this family history would have been known to the young Elizabeth MacKintosh, though she may have learned more of it as she grew older, particularly when she returned to Inverness as an adult. There are glimpses in her novels of her knowledge of the West Highlands and Gaelic, but these are always spoken of in a derogatory tone. There is little indication that she came from a family whose beginnings in Inverness were fuelled by poverty and relentless hard work, and certainly no mention of a cousin who was illegitimate (though perhaps Brat Farrar’s experiences abroad are reminiscent of her uncle, the Patagonian shepherd).

  The general perception is that Elizabeth MacKintosh and her father Colin did not have a very easy or close relationship, but I think that Colin has had a particularly bad press. If he was a strict father, it was because he knew what his own childhood had been like, and did not want his daughters to have the same experience – he wanted them to live in a nice house, and have good jobs, and he certainly did not want them to have children out of marriage like his sister Mary. Colin took on the financial responsibility for his family – his mother, father and siblings – at an early age, and he continued to support them all for many years. This shaped his character and influenced the way he chose to bring up his own children. Colin’s experience of his mother setting up the shop also shows another side to his character. He certainly never treated his daughters as second-class because they were not sons – in his family, the women worked just as hard, and were given just as much respect, as the men. It is perhaps significant that Colin chose to name his eldest daughter Elizabeth after his mother. Colin also gave to his daughters his own ambition: he was living proof that if you worked hard and aimed high, you would be rewarded.

  Colin MacKintosh and Josephine Horne married on 1st February 1894. Josephine was twenty-three, and Colin almost eight years older, about to turn thirty-one. Colin had been working in the family fruit shop now for about seven years, was well known to his customers, and was making enough money to start supporting a family of his own. He had already expanded his business into bigger premises, renting number 57 Castle Street as well as number 55.8 Josephine was working as a teacher. She had worked her way up as a pupil-teacher, beginning her training aged thirteen or fourteen, first receiving extra coaching at school and teaching elementary work to other pupils under supervision, before continuing an apprenticeship over about five years.9 The apprenticeship of a pupil-teacher had rigorous standards, with regular assessment from school inspectors, and was one way into the teaching profession. Josephine’s attitude to hard work mirrored Colin’s, and, like him, she had an interest in and love of education and reading. They were well matched, and their marriage was to be a happy one.

  Photographs of Colin and Josephine taken around the time of their marriage show a serious young couple. Josephine was held to be very like her eldest daughter Elizabeth, but in the photos of her as a young woman, the likeness is not so marked: she appears less dark than Elizabeth, with a resemblance to her own mother, the redoubtable Jane Ellis. Josephine is dressed as befits a teacher, with her hair up and the demure clothes of the day: a long skirt and a top with long sleeves, buttoned up to the neck. Colin, despite the ten years he could give Josephine, almost looks younger: there is still a glimpse of the child, small for his age, who made that long walk from his home in Shieldaig to Lochcarron. Colin and Josephine were neither of them tall, and Colin still has some of the gangliness of a young man, with his ears just a little prominent. He was not yet the secure businessman of photos of later middle age. For a posed portrait of the young couple, however, Colin wore all the trappings of a successful man: a dark suit, handkerchief tucked into his top pocket, watch chain just seen going into his other pocket, and a white collar. Colin’s hair and small moustache were as dark as his daughter Elizabeth’s hair was to be – that west coast of Scotland look that Elizabeth sometimes described in her stories. She even used the phrase ‘black man’ in its old Scottish sense of meaning someone very dark.10 As was the fashion in photography, the couple gaze into the distance, not looking at each other or the camera. One can almost sense the hopefulness of a young married couple, together for the first time.

  A charming souvenir of the marriage has been passed down the generations: the beautifully designed wedding invitation cards which Josephine and Colin sent out. Small pieces of card, rectangles of less than 10x6 cm when folded up, they are decorated on the front with the initials of the couples’ surnames: M & H. Inside, the text reads ‘Mr & Mrs Horne request the pleasure of [your] company at the marriage of their Daughter Josephine to Colin MacKintosh’. The Hornes were delighted to see their spinster daughter married to a man with prospects, and both families wanted it to be a memorable occasion. Little matching thank-you cards were also made up for any gifts the couple might receive, ‘With Mr & Mrs MacKintosh’s Compliments’. The wedding was held at the Palace Hotel, on the banks of the River Ness in Inverness. The Palace, still an impressive building, looks over the water to Inverness Castle, and had been built only four years earlier, in 1890. It was the new and fashionable place in town to marry, and the ornate lettering on the delicate, tiny invitation cards reflects that sense of occasion. The impressive dining room would have looked very spacious to the Hornes and MacKintoshes, used to their small houses. Holding the wedding in a hotel, rather than a church, also avoided any concern over the Horne’s strong religious beliefs – Colin and Josephine were married by a minister from the United Presbyterian Church. Interestingly, both Colin and Josephine chose friends to be witnesses, rather than any of their numerous siblings. Donald Gill, an apprentice grocer, probably knew Colin through work, and Christine Gibb lived close to Josephine, so it’s easy to speculate that they were school friends. This inclusion in the ceremony of friends as well as family was a first indication that the young couple wanted to set up on their own. Although Elizabeth was born into a large, extended family, Colin and Josephine gradually drew away from their relatives. Friendships, as well as family ties, were always very important, not only to Colin and Josephine, but also to their daughter Elizabeth.

  Colin and Josephine MacKintosh moved into Norwood Villa, on Midmills Road. It was close to both Josephine’s family on Crown Street, and Colin’s family and business on Castle Street, but Colin and Josephine gradually moved on to larger houses in better neighbourhoods. Biographical sketches of Josephine Tey have emphasized the fact that she and her family lived in the Crown, a pleasant, middle-class part of Inverness on a slight hill (the name comes from the fact that it was originally Crown land, not that it is on the crown of a hill). In fact the real picture is a little more complex. The big Victorian mansions in Crown, where the MacKintoshes did eventually move, are not quite the same as the little cottages on narrow streets where Josephine had grown up. Although Josephine’s family home on Crown Street is linked to the best area of town by its name alone, Invernessians sometimes refer to this area as the Hill. It is Crown, but not quite Crown. It’s all a matter of how the families living there want to present themselves. Colin and Josephine definitely wanted to emphasize their aspirations.

  Josephine
left her work as a teacher to help in the fruit shop, work that she particularly enjoyed. A near-contemporary description exists of the MacKintoshes, which describes how Josephine worked together with her husband; Colin’s chatty, friendly demeanour with his customers; and Colin’s accent, which still retained its Gaelic inflections:

  [T]he mouth-watering fruit shop owned by the parents of the late Gordon Daviot, the playwright. Here on occasion Gordon’s mother – not unlike her illustrious daughter, but rather smaller – attended to one’s wants, a running commentary coming from her husband all the time. I always felt I travelled the world in this shop – for no sooner were apples chosen, than Mr MacKintosh’s husky voice regaled us with – ‘All the way from Canada, these’; oranges ‘from sunny Spain’; bananas ‘from the Tropics’; dates ‘from Africa’; and glorious melons ‘from Salonika’.

  The same customer insisted that the fruit Colin’s shop sold was exceptional: ‘Often after I grew up, I met people who insisted that no fruiterer in Britain could vie with Mr MacKintosh for quality and selection.’11 In fact, Colin got some of his fruit from local growers, while some of it was sent up to Inverness on the night train from the markets in Covent Garden, London.

  Josephine, after growing up with five brothers, had been a bit of a tomboy, and she loved the challenge of working in a new place and the process of the young couple establishing themselves. She was less keen on the housekeeping and domesticity that came with married life, but, after a year or so, she was pleased to fall pregnant with her first child. When they found out Josephine was pregnant, Colin and his wife moved to a new rented flat at 2 Crown Terrace, on the east side of Ardconnel Street. With four rooms, this was a bigger place than either of them was used to, and shows how well the fruit shop was doing.

  Ardconnel Street is above Castle Street, and it’s easy to imagine Colin walking to his shop down the little side streets and narrow steps of Raining’s Stairs. Both sets of parents, the Hornes and the MacKintoshes, were nearby, and Colin and Josephine’s brothers and sisters also lived within easy walking distance. Of particular comfort to Josephine was the fact that her older sister Mary – there were four years between them – was living close by at 4 Crown Street and was also pregnant. Mary was married to a man called Robert Jeans, who worked alongside her brother Peter, and it was to be Mary and Robert’s fifth child. It must have been a very happy time for the two sisters Mary and Josephine. They were both married to men who were doing well in their careers, living close to a supportive family network, and they were going through the exciting experience of pregnancy with each other’s support. It is a measure of not only how close the sisters were, but also how happy Josephine was in her marriage and how Colin had been accepted by the Horne family, that when Mary’s child was born in December 1895 she called her ‘Josephine MacKintosh Jeans’, using her sister’s new married name.

  Josephine gave birth the following year, and Elizabeth MacKintosh was born on the 25th July 1896.

  Chapter Two

  Bessie

  Colin and Josephine MacKintosh settled into married life with their new baby. Two years after Elizabeth was born, Josephine was pregnant again. Her sister Mary was again pregnant at the same time – though this was now Mary’s eighth child, as she had had a son the year before. Elizabeth MacKintosh’s new baby sister was born on 8th September 1898, again at the family home on Crown Terrace.1 She was named Jane Ellis MacKintosh, after Josephine’s mother. It was also important to Mary to preserve her mother’s maiden name, and she called her child Elizabeth Ellis Jeans. With so much repetition of names, the cousins became used to using nicknames and short pet names to distinguish between everyone, and perhaps Elizabeth MacKintosh’s love of pseudonyms and different pen-names began here. Colin and Josephine began to call their eldest daughter Bessie, while their second daughter was known as Jean.2

  Bessie was part of a large extended family, with many Horne and MacKintosh cousins across town. Her mother Josephine was close to Mary, and the strong relationship between cousins is something that is frequently mentioned in Josephine Tey’s novels, while large families are a feature of much more of her writing than people assume. Josephine Tey is often remembered for her portrayal of strong, independent, single women, but she also wrote about the large Ellis family in The Expensive Halo, and the convincing family arguments over breakfast that open Brat Farrar. There were some differences opening up in the family though, the beginning of the process that would see the young Bessie grow into the ‘lone wolf’ that the adult Beth MacKintosh was perceived to be.3

  However close Josephine was to her family, Colin had begun to make choices that would emphasize the difference between him and his siblings. His two younger brothers, Murdo and Dan, no longer worked with him as his assistants in the fruit shop. Across town, his brother Murdo was finding a new path in life. He married a woman called Jane, and had two daughters (also called Elizabeth and Mary). Murdo and his family lived on the other side of the river on Tanner’s Lane, near the cathedral (and the Ragged Boys School), and he had found work as a cab driver, meaning, of course, that he drove a horse and cab.4 Pictures of Inverness cabmen of the time show serious men with flat caps or bowler hats, and fancy moustaches. The normal method of getting around Inverness at this time was walking, but cabmen could earn a living working for local businesses, and, particularly, from waiting at the train station to collect visitors. Murdo, by choosing to work in this different profession and live across town on the other side of the River Ness, showed that there were many different choices available to Colin and his siblings. Murdo was younger than Colin when the MacKintosh family moved to Inverness and perhaps, as the younger sibling, he felt less of the ambition and family responsibility that drove Colin on. On the side of the river where Murdo lived, people were poorer, and there was more Gaelic spoken. Colin, by moving further and further into the upmarket Crown district, and staying close to his wife Josephine’s English-speaking family, and not raising his daughters to speak Gaelic, was making conscious choices. There was a significant Gaelic-speaking population in Inverness at the time, but they were never the elite: English was the language of education, and, as Colin saw it, the key to success. Even his sister Mary’s illegitimate son Donald was encouraged to always speak English.5 As Colin prospered, the contrast between him and his siblings became greater, and relations became more strained. Colin’s daughters remembered their uncles Murdo and Dan as the relatives who bothered their father, trying to borrow money and, on one memorable occasion, coming to blows with Colin, fighting in the back of the shop.

  Colin wanted to improve his station in life, and to have the best for his family. One of the very real and pressing reasons for this was the state of medical care at the end of the nineteenth century. Disease was more prevalent, cures were not as advanced, and healthcare was not free. Common childhood ailments could be fatal. On 7th August 1899, Bessie MacKintosh’s cousin, her mother’s namesake the little Josephine MacKintosh Jeans, died of bronchitis.6 She was only three years old. Colin wanted the best for his daughters because he knew exactly what the worst could be. More bereavement was to follow.

  About a year later, on 19th July 1900, Colin’s father John died. There are almost no surviving photographs of Colin’s family, and a family myth grew up that Colin’s parents John and Betsey had disliked having their photograph taken for the old superstitious reason that a photograph might have trapped their soul, but this perhaps says less about John and Betsey than it does about the way Colin presented his family to his daughters. Nevertheless, one photograph of a very elderly John MacKintosh does survive. It looks as though it is taken straight out of a book about the west coast and its heritage, showing a man in a rough jacket and trousers with a traditional working-class round bowler hat on his head, a cane in his hand, and his feet planted squarely in front of him as he sits and faces the camera with a challenging expression.7 Between the hat and a long white flowing beard, his eyes are just visible. John was seventy-two when he died,
and had worked as a manual labourer. He had managed to move his family from Applecross to Inverness for better prospects, and had seen his four sons and his daughter Mary grow up, find work, marry and give him grandchildren.

  For his final years, Colin had been supporting his father, paying the rent on his home. After John’s death, Colin continued to support his mother, his sister Mary and his nephew Donald by paying the rent on their flat in Castle Street, but he was also able to expand his business. Colin now started renting number 53 Castle Street, as well as numbers 55 and 57. Number 53 had previously been a baker’s shop, and it was owned by a different landlord to numbers 55 and 57, making Colin’s business dealings more complicated.8 Castle Street was still peopled with little shops, like a baker’s, confectioner’s and a spirit merchant, all with flats above them, packed with tenants. There were plenty of people around to buy fruit, and Colin’s business was becoming an important landmark on the street. He also aimed for the top end of the market, selling high-quality fruit to the big houses in town, to landed gentry, and to their visitors who came to stay on the big Highland estates. The shops on Castle Street have now changed considerably, and out-of-town supermarkets mean there are far fewer small food shops. The building that used to house numbers 55 and 57 has been demolished, with a pool hall and bar now standing in the spot where they once were. However, there are some shops in town that represent the world that Bessie MacKintosh grew up in: Duncan Chisholm and Sons, Highland Dress Outfitters, now based on Castle Street, has been an established business since the 1800s, providing a link with the retail world the MacKintoshes knew, while the indoor Victorian Market hasn’t changed out of all recognition from its heyday. A number of other family businesses still exist in town, such as Duncan Fraser’s the butcher, which the MacKintoshes would have known. The traditional markets of Colin and Josephine’s time, where Nairn fishwives sold their wares wearing long skirts, Shetland shawls and knitting needles in a special pouch around their waist, are long gone.