The Journey of the Trollop

By Vicki Kelly

In The Journey of the Trollop, Isabella is the embodiment of resilience and transformation. Mastering the art of reinvention, she fiercely guards her narratives, bending truths to preserve her crafted reality. With an unwavering spirit, she demonstrates that adversity is merely a challenge to overcome. Fearlessly diving into the depths of hardship, Isabella emerges time and again, proving that from nothing, one can create everything.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Dec 8, 2023
• ISBN: 9781035834563

Vicki Kelly

Vicki Kelly lived the first part of her life in New Zealand before moving to the UK in 2004. She has previously worked as a teacher, a farmer, a gardener, a caterer and holds a master’s degree in environmental law. She has four grown-up children, half a dozen grandchildren and a Jack Russell terrier. She is married to Peter Watson.

Book preview

About the Author

Vicki Kelly lived the first part of her life in New Zealand before moving to the UK in 2004. She has previously worked as a teacher, a farmer, a gardener, a caterer and holds a master’s degree in environmental law. She has four grown-up children, half a dozen grandchildren and a Jack Russell terrier. She is married to Peter Watson.

Dedication

To my sister, Fay, easily the nicest person I know.

Copyright Information ©

Vicki Kelly 2023

The right of Vicki Kelly to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781035834549 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781035834556 (Hardback)

ISBN 9781035834563 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published 2023

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd®

1 Canada Square

Canary Wharf

London

E14 5AA

Acknowledgement

Leeann deWitt for encouragement and honesty.

Gillian Ward, author of Tragedy and Heroism at Kopuawhara (2019).

Friends and family and especially Peter. Thank you all.

Isabella McWilliam McKewney was, by any acceptable standard, a gifted and comprehensive liar. Her creativity with the truth was infinitely flexible when it came to accounting for her actions—and those of others. ‘A wee fibber is what you are,’ her father had said, with an indulgent smile as, at the age of three, pretty little Isabella had first begun to hone her craft to her own advantage. She had found the arrival of the first of her younger sisters to be beyond vexatious and, when Maryann revealed herself as a tattle-tale even before she learnt to talk, Isabella had been forced to develop effective and credible tactics in order to avoid her mother’s slaps, swiftly and freely given as they tended to be. For all her precision and delicacy with a sewing needle and for all her apparent meekness and sweetness with her clients, Mrs Isobel McKewney (Dowd, as was),when it came to her daughters, had the quick temper of a natural born redhead and a strong right arm to support it.

So, after eighteen years, you would have thought that, by now, her eldest daughter should probably have known that a disagreement on today’s scale would only see her mother more determined than ever to impose her point of view—by whatever means.

‘New Zealand? I’m no’ going to New Zealand!’ Isabella wailed. ‘Wha’s New Zealand anyway? Honest, Ma, I’ll behave. I’ll no’ get into trouble again. Promise. Gi’ us a chance. I’ve got a new job that I like fine. The waitressing’s alright.’ Isabella knew that she was whining and blubbing like a bairn but right now, she really didn’t care.

A year ago, she would have turned her nose up at a waitressing job but a couple of small errors of judgement (as she saw it) meant she was now quite grateful for the opportunity. She had only just arrived back in Aberdeen and she had no interest in being packed off to some other godforsaken backwater of a village, wherever it might be. Three months in Little Dunkeld had confirmed that she was, beyond doubt, a city girl. Fresh air and wide-open spaces were, for sure, not for her.

‘Ye can stop your greeting right now or I swear I’ll gie ye something to greet aboot! Ye’re a disgrace, is what ye are. And I’ll nae ha’ ye under my roof a minute longer!’ Another slap—the third to punctuate this particular conversation—landed without warning on Isabella’s already stinging cheek.

It was the third slap that finally shut her up. After the third slap, Ma usually reached for the rolling pin—or whatever other weapon might come to hand—to make her point more clearly. Isabella, by spotting the exact moment when the best option was to back down, in spite of her natural inclination to keep pressing her point, had so far avoided the fractured bones and missing teeth that her younger sisters had had inflicted upon them over the years by their loving mother, in her ongoing quest to raise her daughters in a way that would allow her always to feel measurably superior to her own sisters. To date, she had been reasonably satisfied with the outcome. To date. Reminded of Isabella’s most recent transgression, Isobel practically snorted with rage as she reached for the rolling pin.

‘Alright!’ shouted Isabella, stepping quickly backwards, just in case. ‘Alright! I’ll go! Wherever it is, I’ll go!’ She crossed her fingers, hoping she wasn’t being sent to England; she didn’t think she’d been that bad. Anyway, these things usually blew over in time, in her experience. ‘And I hope you’ll be happy never to see me again. For I’ll no’ be comin’ back!’

‘Aye, well, that bit’s true enough,’ her mother replied tartly, returning to the scones she was rolling out on the scrubbed kitchen table. Mrs McKewney, while not herself entirely sure of the exact whereabouts of New Zealand, was reasonably confident that the distance would be sufficient to preclude any visits from her wayward daughter, at least for the foreseeable future. The journey apparently involved a boat trip, after all. ‘Now, make yourself useful for a change and sew those wee roses on. Mrs Bruce will be coming for it this afternoon.’ Isabella sighed dramatically but obediently picked up the beribboned corset and set to work.

‘I hope I live to see the day when women can stop wearing these bloody things,’ she muttered as she threaded her needle, squinting into the murky November light seeping weakly through the small kitchen window. ‘I fairly hate them, summer and winter and every moment in between.’

‘Are you insane?’ snapped her mother. ‘Are you out of your mind? Just get on with the sewing, will you? That day will never come and ye ken it well! You’d have every woman looking like the wee trollop ye’ve become ye’self.’ The dough had taken such a pummelling during their argument that Isabella knew the scones would be as tough as boot leather once they were finally cooked. She ducked her head over her sewing and hid a smirk. Her own scones always came out of the oven high and light and fluffy and just crisp enough and lightly browned enough on the outside to look as good as they tasted. Never over-handle the dough: that was the secret. And use sour milk—but not too much—and make sure the oven was properly hot when the scones went in. Isabella tied off her thread and picked up another of the tiny silk roses.

It was her scones, she remembered, that had caused Mr Ben Wallace to notice her in the first place. ‘My word, Alice,’ he had commented happily to his wife over the tea tray, ‘you should get the new girl to make these more often.’ His wife, twelve years older than her husband, had smiled and ignored him, as she tended to do these days. Alice felt she had enough on her plate with the baby coming and the constant sickness and eternal nausea, both of which she tried stoically, but not always successfully, to hide.

Alice was not comfortable with either the pregnancy or with the intimacy it implied. She was a dutiful wife but prayed daily that the child would be a boy, a healthy boy, and she could retire permanently from childbearing and from its distasteful, messy precursor. There was also the worry of her age—which she also tried to avoid mentioning. Thirty-six was quite old for a first baby. One of her best friends was about to become a grandmother, for heaven’s sake! The smugness of the woman!

Alice had recently taken on the new maid in the hope that the girl could also help in the nursery after the birth of Charles Tristan Arthur Benjamin Wallace (or Henrietta). At least the girl could speak in sentences. And, apparently, make scones. Alice, at the time, had felt too exhausted to go through the rigmarole of advertising and interviewing and checking references. She had been quite grateful when the reliable, efficient and sober Maryann had mentioned that her older sister was available. ‘Thank you, Maryann. Please let your sister know she can start as soon as she likes—the sooner the better, in fact, so she can settle in before the baby comes.’

‘It has all gone very smoothly,’ Alice wrote to her mother.