On Renfrew Street, Day Five

You’re American, by the sounds of it. Why are you travelling to Scotland?

Three days after her farewell party, the day came. Ellen boarded the SS Furnessia at Chelsea Piers. The sky above was a bright, hard blue, the sun glinting off the Hudson River. Excitement lit a fire in her as she went up the gangplank, carrying her reticule and hat box. The last few days in New York had been thrilling, but also a little bit lonely, taking her meals in the boarding house in Gramercy Park and visiting the shops on Fifth Avenue’s Ladies’ Mile.

She was glad to start this next part of her adventure and she kept her head high, her gaze taking in all the details of the second-class common rooms as a porter led her to her cabin.

The woman she would be sharing with was already in the cabin, having taken the bed by the porthole and arranged her things on the bureau and vanity.

“Well, it’s not much, is it?” the woman sniffed when the porter had left. She’d introduced herself as Florence Worth and she was a broad, bustling matron dressed in bottle-green bombazine.

“They’re retiring this ship next year,” Miss Worth continued. “I must say, I’m not surprised. Some of the furnishings are downright shabby.”

A strange species

Ellen made a meaningless response, not wanting to agree or disagree. After spending her last ship’s journey in third class, she found her accommodation pleasing, and she had no wish for Florence Worth to diminish her pleasure in the second-class offerings.

Fortunately she managed to avoid the complaining Miss Worth, except for meals and bedtime, and on the second day of the voyage Ellen met another woman travelling alone. She was writing letters in the library.

“We’re a strange species, aren’t we?” she said, after introducing herself as Letitia Portman. “The women travelling alone! No-one knows what to do with us.”

Ellen gave a small smile, for she was slightly intimidated by Letitia’s frank and confident air, the humour and intelligence sparkling in her eyes. She was a handsome woman, perhaps a few years older than Ellen, with light brown hair loosely dressed and a smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose.

“Where are you bound?” she asked after Ellen had sat down on a settee across from her. “Glasgow – well, the Glasgow School of Art.” “Oh, you’re an artist! I do admire any kind of ability in that direction. I’m utterly hopeless.”

“I don’t know if I’d call myself an artist,” Ellen said cautiously, and Letitia wrinkled her nose. “Well, you’re going to art school, aren’t you?” “Yes, to learn. I’ve never had a proper lesson before.”

Letitia shrugged dismissively.

“Artists are born, not made, I suspect.” “Perhaps,” Ellen agreed. She wished she had half the confidence of Letitia. She didn’t feel like a proper artist at all, and she was afraid someone – Henry McCallister, perhaps, or Francis Newbery himself – would tell her they’d made a mistake and there wasn’t a place for her after all.

“What about you?” she asked Letitia. “You’re American, by the sounds of it. Why are you travelling to Scotland?”

“I’m taking a place at the University of Edinburgh’s medical school,” Letitia answered. Ellen was suitably impressed.

“You’re studying to be a doctor?”

“That’s the hope,” Letitia answered cheerfully. “I had a devil of a time finding a school that would accept a woman.”

Ellen had never met a lady doctor before, yet she could believe this vibrant, self-assured woman capable of anything.

Nervous?

For the rest of the voyage Letitia took her under her wing, arranging for them to have meals together, take turns round the deck, and even taught her how to play bridge, a terribly complex card game that Ellen felt she was quite hopeless at. By the time they were nearing Glasgow, Ellen felt she’d made a firm friend.

“Are you nervous about starting university?” she asked the morning they were to depart.

Ellen had worn her new hat, which hadn’t seemed all that grand in the shop but now felt ridiculous with its feather and ribbon band, next to Letitia’s practical, efficient plainness.

“Nervous? No,” Letitia said firmly. “I’m looking forward to it. I’m twenty-three, you know, and I’ve been applying to medical schools for two years.” She turned to Ellen with one of her frank smiles. “What about you?”

“I suppose I am, a little.”

“Well, you shouldn’t be,” Letitia said briskly. “You’ve been away from home before, when you went to nursing school.”

“Yes, but that was only Kingston.”

“And you’re from Glasgow originally,” Letitia continued. “You know where you’re going.”

“But Springburn is worlds away from art school,” Ellen protested. “And anyway, I’m not nervous about being in Glasgow, or being so far away from home.” Letitia raised her eyebrows.

“What, then?”

“Just school, I suppose.” She was finally pursuing her dream, her passion, and that terrified her more than anything else. What if she failed? What if she wasn’t any good at all?

“We ought to go,” Letitia said. “Otherwise it’ll be ages before we can get off this tub!” She clapped a hand on Ellen’s shoulder. “You’ll be fine. And the first free day we both have, I’ll take the train over to Glasgow. It’s not all that far.”

“That would be lovely.”

“Well, then. Off we go!”

At first, as Ellen stepped on to the gangplank that led down to Glasgow’s dock, she was conscious only of the smell of Scotland: sea and soot, a smell that seemed both achingly familiar and now terribly strange. Then, as she came down, she was conscious of something else. Henry McCallister, the trustee she’d met on the train to Chicago, was waiting for her with a smart carriage.

“Mr McCallister,” she said faintly as she came down to meet him.

Henry McCallister swept his hat from his head and executed a courtly bow, his eyes twinkling.

“Miss Copley! You don’t know how pleased I am that you’re finally here.”

Strange meeting

I’m pleased to be here,” Ellen said, staring at Henry McCallister in both surprise and some concern.

She was glad to see him, of course; he’d encouraged her to apply to Glasgow School of Art last spring, when they’d met on the train to Chicago.

Yet she also felt a bit wrong-footed and embarrassed, for she doubted that one of the school’s governors usually met new students individually off the ship, and she could feel her new friend Letitia’s curiosity like a palpable thing.

“Please let me introduce my friend from the passage,” she said, willing her flush to fade. “Miss Letitia Portman.”

Henry swept a gallant bow. “Charmed, I’m sure.” “Miss Portman is about to start medical school,” Ellen continued, determined to bring a normality to this strange meeting. More tomorrow. On Renfrew Street was previously a serial in The People’s Friend. For more great fiction, get The People’s Friend every week, £1.30 from newsagents and supermarkets.

Artwork: Dave Young