A Scots Quair (44 page)

Then she fell in a dream as she heard them talk, the rooks were cawing up in the yews, and you thought how they'd fringed your pattern of life—birds, and the waving leafage of trees: peewits over the lands of Echt when you were a bairn with your brother Will, and the spruce stood dark in the little woods that climbed up the slopes to the Barmekin bend; snipe sounding low on Blawearie loch as you turned in unease by the side of Εwan, and listened and heard the whisp of the beech out by the hedge in the quiet of the night; and here now rooks and the yews that stood to peer in the twisty rooms of the Manse. How often would you know them, hear them and see them, with what things in your heart, in what hours of the dark and what hours of the day, in all the hours lying beyond this hour when the sun stood high and the yew-trees drowsed?

But she shook herself and came out of her dream, back to the table and the sun on the lawn, daft to go prowling those copses of night where the sad things done were stored with the moon. Here was the sun, and here was her son, Ewan, and Robert, the comrade of God, and those folk of Segget she had yet to know, and all the tomorrows that waited her here.

but that night she had slept in fits and in starts, waking early in that strange, quiet room, by the side of Robert, sleeping so sound. Then it was the notion had suddenly arisen, to come up to the Kaimes, as here she was now, watching the east grow pale in the dawn.

Pale and so pale: but now it was flushed, barred sudden with red and corona'ed with red, as though they were there, the folk who had died, and the sun came washed from the sea of their blood, the million Christs who had died in France, as once she had heard Robert preach in a sermon. Then she shook her head and that whimsy passed, and she thought of Robert—his dream just a dream? Was there a new time coming to the earth, when nowhere a bairn would cry in the night, or a woman go bowed as her mother had done, or a man turn into a tormented beast, as her father, or into a bullet-torn corpse, as had Εwan? A time when those folk down there in Segget might be what Robert said all men might be, companions with God on a terrible adventure? Segget: John Muir, Will Melvin, Else Queen; the folk of the grisly rees of West Wynd—

Suddenly, far down and beyond the toun there came a screech as the morning grew, a screech like an hungered beast in pain. The hooters were blowing in the Segget Mills.

CROSSING THE steep of the brae in the dark, by the winding path from the Manse to the Kaimes, Chris bent her head to the seep of the rain, the wet November drizzle of Segget. Then she minded a wall of the Kaimes still stood, and ran quick up the path to stand in its lee. That gained, she stood and panted a while, six months since she'd been up here in the Kaimes—only six months, she could hardly believe it!

It felt like years—long and long years—since she'd worked as a farmer's wife in Kinraddie. Years since she'd felt the beat of the rain in her face as she moiled at work in the parks. How much had she gained, how much had she lost?—apart from her breath, she had almost lost that!

She felt the wall and then leant against it, wrapped in her ulster, looking at Segget, in its drowse of oil-lamps under the rain. Safe anyhow to go home this time…. And she smiled as she minded last time she had climbed to the Kaimes, and Segget had seen her go home—by the tale they told all Segget had seen her and stared astounded, a scandalled amaze——

BUT INDEED, IT
was only Ag Moultrie that morning, as ill-luck would have it, who saw her go home. She had gone out early to the school to redd up, she went heavy with sleep and her great mouth a-agant, as you well might believe, though she didn't tell that. Folk knew her fine, all the Moultries forbye, Rob Moultrie had once been the saddler of Segget, his shop lay down by the edge of the Square. And as coarse an old brute as you'd meet, was Rob Moultrie, though a seventy years old and nearing his grave. 'Twas only a saddler's shop in name now, the trade
had clean gone this many a year. There was still a britchen or so in the shop, and a fine bit bridle Rob Moultrie had made in the days long syne when he still would work. But his trade had gone and his sweirty had come, he was never a popular man in the toun; he couldn't abide the sight of the gentry, or the smell of the creatures either, he said, and that was why he was Radical still. And if he went on a dander somewhere, along the road and he'd hear a car, toot-tooting behind him, would he get off the road? Not him, he'd walk on bang in the middle, dare any damn motorist try run him down. So sometimes he'd come back to Segget from a walk, step-stepping cannily along the bit road, with a two-three motorists hard at his heels, toot-too ting like mad, and the shovers red-faced. Mrs Moultrie would be looking from the window and see, and cry as he came,
Losh, Rob, you'll
be killed!
And he'd stop and glower at her with his pocked old face, and his eyes like the twinkling red eyes of a weasel, and sneer, the old creature, shameful to hear.
Ay, that would
be fine—no doubt you'd get up to your old bit capers. Get
out of my way!
And he'd lift his stick, maybe more than do that, syne hirple over to his armchair, and sit there and stare in the heart of the fire or turn to the reading of his old bit Bible.

For he'd never forgiven Jess Moultrie the fact that more than a forty years before, when he'd met her and married her, she'd been with a bairn. She told how it was before she would marry, and he'd glowered at her dour:
More
fool that I am. But I'm willing to take you and your shame
as well
. And he took her, and the bairn was born, young Ag, no others came and maybe that was why he still kept up the sneer at his wife. But she would say nothing, she was patient and bowed, little, with a face like a brown, still pool; and she'd say not a word, getting on with her work, making ready the supper for Ag when she came. She cleaned out the school and the hall and such places, did Ag, and in winter made the school broth, as nasty a schlorich as ever you'd taste. She looked like a horse ta'en out of a plough, and her voice was a neigh like a horse's as well, and she'd try to stand up for her mother with old Rob.
Don't speak that way to my mother!
she would cry,
and he'd look at her dour,
Ay, ay, no doubt she's precious
in your sight. You had only one mother, though three or four
fathers;
and Ag more than likely would start to greet then, she wasn't a match for the thrawn old brute, though a good enough one for most other folk. And faith! she'd a tongue for news that was awful. Ake Ogilvie called her the Segget Dispatch, she knew everything that happened in Segget, and a lot that didn't, but she liked best to tell of births and funerals and such-like things; and how the daughter of this or that corpse no sooner looked on the dead than broke down—
and fair roared and grat when she saw him
there
. So folk called her the Roarer and Greeter for short.

Well, then, it was her, to get on with the tale, as she blinked her way in that morning in May, saw a woman come down the hill from the Kaimes, and stopped dumbfoundered: Who could she be?

Ag was real shocked, for the Kaimes was the place where spinners and tinks of that kind would go, of a Sabbath evening, and lie on the grass and giggle and smoke and do worse than that—Ay, things that would leave them smoking in hell, as the old minister said that they would. So no decent folk went up there at night, this creature of a woman was surely a tink. And Ag gave a sniff, but was curious forbye, and crept canny along in the lithe of the dyke that hemmed in the lassies' playground from the lads'. So she waited there till the woman went by, hurrying, bare-headed, with a stride and a swing and a country-like gait. And then Ag Moultrie near fainted with joy, though she didn't tell you that when she told you the story, she saw that the woman was Mrs Colquohoun, the wife of the new minister of Segget.

Well, afore the day was well started all Segget had heard that the wife of the new minister had been seen by Ag Moultrie up on the Kaimes, she'd been out all night with a spinner up there, Ag had seen them cuddling and sossing in the grass. Folk said,
By God, she's wasted no time; and
who would the spinner have been, would you say?
Old Leslie heard the story in the smiddy and he said the thing was Infernal, just. Now, he minded when he was a loon up in Garvock—And the sweat dripped off him, pointing
a coulter, and he habbered from nine until loosening-time, near, some story about some minister he'd known; but wherever that was and why it had been, and what the hell happened, if anything ever had, you couldn't make head nor tail if you listened; and you only did that if you couldn't get away. Old Leslie was maybe a fair good smith: he was sure the biggest old claik in Segget. He'd blether from the moment you entered his smiddy, he'd ask how the wife and the bairns all were, and your brother Jock that was down in Dundon, and your sister Jean that was in a sore way; and your father that was down with the colic or the like, and your grandfather, dead this last fifty years. And syne he'd start on your cousins, how they were, and your uncles and aunts and their stirks and their stots, their maids and all that were in their gates: till your hair would be grey and your head fair dizzy at the thought you'd so many relations at all. And his face would sweat like a dripping tap as he hammered at the iron and habbered at you and then he'd start some story of the things he'd done or seen or smelt when a loon up in Garvock, and the day would draw in, the night would come on, and the stars come out, he'd have shod all your horses and set all the coulters and you near were dead for lack of some meat; but
that
damned story wouldn't have finished, it would be going on still with no sign of an end, he'd start it the next time he saw you or heard you, though you were at the far side of a ten-acre field—unless you took to your heels and ran.

Well, about the only soul that couldn't do that was his son, Sim Leslie, the policeman of Segget. He had joined the police and had been sent back to Segget, and still bade with his father, he was used to the blether: and folk said if he listened with a lot of care, for a twenty years or so at a stretch, he at least might find out what really
had
happened that time when his father was a loon up on Garvock. Folk called him Feet, Sim Leslie the bobby, he'd feet so big he could hardly coup, there was once he was shoeing a horse in the smiddy, an ill-natured brute from the Meiklebogs; and the creature lashed out at him fair and square and caught him such a clour on the chest as would fair have flattened any ordinary man. But young
Sim Leslie just rocked a wee bit, his feet had fair a sure grip on Scotland.

Well, Feet heard the story of Mrs Colquohoun, from his father, as the two of them sat at dinner. And he kittled up rare, there was something in this, and maybe a chance of promotion at last. So he went and got hold of Ag Moultrie, the sumph, and pulled out his notebook with his meikle red fingers, and asked was she sure 'twas the minister's wife? And Ag said
Ay
, and Feet made a bit note; and then he seemed stuck, and he said;
You're sure?
And Ag said
Ay
,
I'm as sure as death
. Feet made another note, and scratched at his head, and swayed a bit in his meikle black boots.
It
fair was her?
and Ag said Ay; and by then it seemed just about dawning on Feet it really was her and nobody else.

But Ag was real vexed, as she told to folk, she hadn't wanted to miscall a soul,
God knows I'm not a body to
claik;
and she said when she'd finished with Feet and his questions she went home and sat down and just Roared and Grat, so sorry she was for the new minister. And she'd tell you some more how the woman had looked, her face red-flushed, with a springy walk; and if you were married you well could guess why all of that was—damn't, man, 'twas fairly a tasty bit news!

That night Feet went up and prowled round the Manse, with his bull's-eye held in his hand and his feet like the clopping of a Clydesdale heard on the ground. He didn't know very well what he was there for, or what he would say if Mrs Colquohoun saw him; but he was awful keen on promotion. And he said he was fine at detective-work, like, and if honest merit were given its reward, they'd make him a real detective ere long. And Ake Ogilvie said in his tink-like way
A defective, you mean? God, ay, and certificated!

Well, Feet had prowled round to the back of the Manse, and had stopped to give his head a bit scratch, when sudden the window above him opened and afore he could move there came a bit splash and a pailful of water was slung down his back. He spluttered and hoasted and his lamp went out, when he came to himself he was shaking and shivering, but the Manse was silent and still as the grave. He thought for a while of arresting the lot—ay, he would in the morning,
by God; and turned and went home, running home stretches to change his bit sark, in case he might catch a cold from his wetting.

And, would you believe it, next day as he sat in his office writing up his reports, his mother said,
Here's a woman to
see you
. And Feet looked up and he knew the quean, Else Queen, the maid at the Manse it was; 'twas said she'd been brought up as a lassie in Segget, though her father had moved to Fordoun since then, now she was fair a great brute of a woman, with red eyes and hair, and cheeks of like tint. And she said,
Are you Feet?
and Feet reddened a bit.
I'm Simon Leslie the policeman of Segget.——Well, I'm the
person that half-drowned you last night; and I've come to tell
you when you want the same, just prowl round the Manse at
such a like hour
.

And she didn't stop only at Feet then, either. She made for Ag Moultrie and told her the same, she would have her sacked from her job at the school; and Ag broke down and just Roared and Grat, she said she'd never said an ill word of any, but what was the minister's wife doing on the Kaimes?
Looking at the hills and the sunrise, you fool. Did
you never hear yet of folk that did that?
And Ag said she hadn't; and who ever had? Folk shook their heads when they heard that tale, if the woman at the Manse wasn't fair just a bitch, damn't! you could only suppose she was daft.

DITE PEAT HEARD
the story and fair mocked at Feet.
What, you that were once in the barracks?
he said,
and lived
in Dundon, and can't manage a woman?
And he told a story, 'twas down in the Arms, about how once when he was living in London, he'd come there, he said, on a leave from the Front, he hired a bit lodging near Waterloo.——And old Leslie that was standing by said
Eh? Would that be
the place the battle was at?
and Dite Peat said,
Oh, away to
hell
, a coarse way to speak to an old bit man.——Well, Dite had put up in his London room, he saw the landlady was a gey bit quean, fair young and fair sonsy, her man at the Front. And he tried this way and that to get round her, keen for a woman but not a damn fool like some that came back on leave from the Front, they'd spend all their silver
on whores, but not Dite, he wanted a gratis cuddle and squeeze. Well, he waited and waited about for a bit, and half-thought of getting the woman at night, she was only English and they're tinks by nature, it wasn't as though she was decent and Scotch. But she locked up her door and went early to bed till there came one night that he heard her scraich, and he louped from his bed and he went to the door, and there she was standing down in the hall, in her nightgown, the tink, and white as a sheet. She'd a telegram held in her hands as she stood, and was gowking and gobbling at the thing like a cow, choked on the shaws of a Mearns swede. And Dite called down
What's wrong with
you, then?
and she laughed and laughed as she looked up at him, she was young, with a face like a bairn, a fool, white, with no guts, like the English queans. And she said
Oh, it's
just that my husband's dead
, and laughed and laughed, and Dite licked his lips, it fair was a chance, he saw it and took it. Well, she wasn't so bad, but far over-thin; and God! she was fair a scunner with her laughing, every now and then she would laugh like an idiot, he supposed that the English did that in their pleasure. So he took her a clour or so in the lug, to learn her manners, and that quietened her down. Oh ay, she was tasty enough in her way.