Bury Her Deep (43 page)

‘I do,’ said Mr Tait, and a rich chuckle burbled up from deep inside him. ‘You were right enough, my dear. Their wives wouldn’t have turned a hair at cards or drinking, but this  . . . !’

‘What?’ I said, leaning forward in my seat.

‘It started when Jock Christie came,’ said Mr Tait. His tone was sepulchral, but I could tell he was teasing me. ‘He’s lured them all in one by one and now they’re planning something big. Utterly in thrall to it, they are.’

‘“It” being?’ I asked, smiling back at him.

‘The “new ways”,’ said Mr Tait. ‘They’re clubbing together to buy a tractor. And a potato sorter and a steam thresher. That young Christie and his college ways have turned their heads completely.’

‘The more I hear, the less I can believe it,’ I said. ‘Mr Hemingborough and Mr McAdam embracing science? I thought they were such stick-in-the-muds.’

‘Now, wherever did you get that impression?’ said Mr Tait, his eyes very wide. For once, he did not seem to be teasing.

‘I don’t really know,’ I said, casting my mind back over the case trying to remember. ‘Aha! That’s it. It was because they taunted Miss Lindsay about setting up the Rural. It seems odd, somehow, that they should be so down on new ideas for women if they’re so keen on new ideas for men. But they shouted names at her in the street, you know.’

‘I wouldn’t go that far,’ said Mr Tait. ‘There was an altercation, certainly. And names were used. But you’ve got the thing entirely about face, my dear. They were berating Miss Lindsay for the wasted opportunity, you see. They thought the Rural could achieve great things, wanted their wives to join and learn some modern ways. Bessie McAdam has a cousin whose Rural has had talks on “incubators for poultry farmers” and “the Education Bill”.’

‘So what were the names?’ I asked.

‘Well, I believe it was the night of the home-made hair tonics and egg-cosies from four continents that made Tom Hemingborough see red in the end. He called Miss Lindsay a feather-brain and a coquette.’

‘A coquette? Morag Lindsay?’ I was laughing again now.

‘Och, he’ll have heard it on the pictures,’ said Mr Tait. ‘He probably doesn’t know what it means. So you see, it’s all of a piece, really. The wind of change must sweep through every farm and through the Rural too, if those five men have anything to say about it.’

‘And you think they really feared to tell their wives about their plans?’ I said.

‘For sure!’ exclaimed Mr Tait. ‘My own dear wife was the same. Nothing altered, nothing new, nothing different, everything as it always was. Mrs McAdam, for one, will be much more disturbed by the tractor than she was by the Howies’ goings-on. And if Mary Torrance knew that Drew was planning to sort his tattie crop with a machine, instead of having the tinkers down from Tayside as her father always did, she would be shocked to her core.’

‘Speaking of shocking to the core,’ I said, ‘here’s something I always wanted to ask, but never could. What on earth happened at the Rural in July, Mr Tait? You invited that Wisconsin preacher into the place, so it should by rights be you who has to tell me.’

Mr Tait always did a lot of laughing, but at this he clutched his ample frontage and shook all over.

‘Oh my, oh my,’ he gasped. ‘I wasn’t there, of course, but I got caught up in the aftermath. Pastor Ammon showed me everything, appealing for my support. Oh my, oh my.’

‘But what
was
it?’ I said.

‘His wife,’ said Mr Tait, sighing and catching his breath, ‘was supposed to talk on the subject of “The Modern Family”. And so she did. It turned out, though, that what makes a family truly modern in Wisconsin is well-spaced children and not too many of them.’

‘No!’

‘It was a cataclysm, my dear Mrs Gilver. Not only a lecture, but enormous diagrams and  . . .’ Here Mr Tait lost the power of speech again briefly. ‘ . . . sample appliances! Marie
Stopes
would have blushed. And then it came out afterwards that Mrs Ammon had gone to tea with the Howies the day before, and realising – rather late in the day – that she had better make sure her material was suitable, she had asked Vashti and Nicolette for their opinion.’

‘And they egged her on then came along to watch the explosion?’ I was giggling a little, but my overwhelming feeling was relief that I had not been there to see it. I was surprised at Mr Tait too. He seemed, not only for a minister but taken against the population at large, to be absolutely unshockable.

‘I can imagine what the devotees of the old ways made of that!’ I concluded at last. ‘Not to mention your even more staid parishioners.’ Then I went back to attacking another little corner of what was still a mystery to me. ‘Speaking of how people take what befalls them,’ I said, ‘the villagers in general had what we might call a normal reaction to the dark stranger – they were scared stiff and made sure they never got in his way again – but if the farmers’ wives believed it was an angry spirit, as you say, why were they so wiling to put themselves in harm’s way?’

‘They thought it was their due just to let her do what she would, for she had clearly been wronged.’ Mr Tait’s chuckles had evaporated and he spoke sombrely again.

‘Ah.’ I understood at last. ‘What’s for you won’t go by you.’

‘They believe so,’ he said. ‘The good you do and the harm you do: both will come back on you threefold. Or on your daughter or your daughter’s daughter or whoever it is that’s there to be paid back when the time comes.’ He drew a hefty sigh. ‘Those farms have always passed down from mother to daughter, always.’

‘All the daughters of Luckenlaw.’

‘Quite so,’ said Mr Tait. ‘I daresay that’s where the belief began. The belief that for all to be well there must be five daughters around the law, that harm followed because there were only four.’

‘What’s wrong with four?’ I said.

‘Nothing,’ said Mr Tait. ‘But five is a good number, so they say, those who follow the old ways. Another thing those silly Howies got wrong. Three might be powerful, but five is best. All the years that Luckenheart stood empty, after my wife’s mother died, the other four women tended the place and kept it in good heart, but they always felt the strain of it, with someone missing.’

‘And now they’re back up to strength with Lorna anyway,’ I said, and then I seemed to hear what I was saying and I stopped to stare at him. Mr Tait’s sombre frown deepened and his eyes glistened as though with sudden, unshed tears.

‘I’ve tried so hard for so long,’ he said. ‘Tried to keep a balance, tried to keep everyone in this place happy enough so that no one rocks the boat and we can all muddle on together somehow. Tried, more than anything, to keep Lorna away from it all.’

‘Does she know?’ I said.

Mr Tait shook his head.

‘I never told her. But she’s young and strong and she’ll learn. And besides, I’ve always asked myself about my wife, you know.’

‘What about her?’

‘If maybe she would be here today if she hadn’t left her home. She never thrived up there at Kingoldrum, and when I brought her back, I think it was already too late.’

There was such a weight of sadness in his voice that I could not bring myself to jolly him out of these strange things he was saying.

‘And when you get right down it,’ he concluded, ‘it isn’t for me to choose Lorna’s life, is it? That’s another thing they believe. They do not approve of casting spells and trying to influence others, but they do believe this: if it harms no one, do what you will.’

‘In other words,’ I said, ‘play bonny.’

‘It’s time for me to let Lorna make her own life.’

I nodded, rather uncertainly.

‘You’ve done a remarkable job of bringing her up alone,’ I said.

‘I’ve had a lot of help,’ said Mr Tait. ‘And would have had more, if I hadn’t been so set on some of
my
ways getting a look in too.’

‘She has not gone short of love, even for a motherless girl,’ I assured him. ‘Why, last month she even thought you were organising a secret party frock for her.’ Again I stopped, thunderstruck by a new idea. Mr Tait waited, smiling. ‘You never took that girl to another minister to be buried, did you?’ I said. He shook his head. ‘She was in your wife’s bedroom and they all came to pay their respects.’ He nodded. ‘Then what?’ I said. ‘After she was in the bedroom. She’s not there now.’

‘You tell me,’ he said. ‘You’re nearly there. I’ll give you a clue. When was it? Ask yourself when and you’ll know what.’

I thought hard for a moment and then smiled.

‘The full moon,’ I said. ‘The dark of the moon is a time for dark deeds, but they were doing good by her. That’s why none of your farmers’ wives were at the Rural meeting last month when the stranger came for me. They were busy putting things right on the perfect night to do so.’

‘And where is she?’ said Mr Tait. He was teasing me again, but so gently I did not mind it.

‘She’s where she belongs,’ I said. ‘On top of the law? In a good place?’ He was nodding. ‘Would she have been a witch?’ I hazarded. He nodded again.

‘That’s the common name for it, although hardly a kind one,’ he said. ‘Killed by the mob and left like an animal,’ he added softly, sounding sorrowful. ‘And even the five daughters of the Lucken Law, whoever they were all those years ago when it happened, couldn’t save her.’

‘And so their descendants believed that when she was let out of the chamber she hit out?’

‘She visited threefold harm upon them – girls, brides and women – and they had to grin and bear it.’

‘Except she didn’t. It was Vashti and Nicolette mucking about with flower garlands and lucky loaves of bread, playing at spells. I should have guessed really, because they were quite open about their interest in folklore and their seasonally themed parties and it all makes sense in its own terms if you try hard enough to look at it that way. Almost all, that is. Except this. It’s what you keep saying about five, Mr Tait. I was sure there were five of them on the law the night that Vashti had Lorna there. Five figures in grey.’

‘There are only four daughters just now,’ said Mr Tait.

‘I know. Mrs Hemingborough, Mrs Palmer, Mrs McAdam, Mrs Torrance. But I’m sure someone else was there too. Who was it?’

‘Jock Christie was there and Captain Watson.’

‘I don’t mean them,’ I said. ‘There were five stone angels. Five  . . . witches, shall we call them.’

‘You were not yourself that night,’ Mr Tait told me. ‘You could never have known if it was four or five.’

‘But could good have come from four?’ I insisted. ‘Would the same people who thought that having
four
around the farms instead of five had brought all their troubles have even tried with four? And that other night – would
four
have laid her to rest on top of the law and expected peace to follow?’

‘Don’t worry about it,’ said Mr Tait.

‘I’m not worried,’ I assured him. ‘
I
don’t believe it.’

‘None of it?’ said Mr Tait, giving me one of his amused looks.

‘Of course not!’ I exclaimed. He nodded slowly.

‘I see,’ he said. ‘You never felt anything  . . . odd  . . . up at Luckenheart Farm, for instance?’ I hesitated, remembering. He swept on. ‘No, of course you didn’t. It’s just harmless old stories and sayings, nothing in it at all.’

‘Well, whether I believe it or not,’ I said, colouring slightly, ‘I’m puzzled at the behaviour of those who do. And besides, I’m sure there were five. Four swooped down on Vashti and one – the biggest one – tended to Lorna. I know I was confused, but I remember that clearly.’

‘My advice is not to fret about it,’ said Mr Tait, and then he said what he had said before: ‘All shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well.
All
manner of things, Mrs Gilver.’

‘Where in the Bible is that?’ I asked him. ‘It’s lovely but I can’t place it.’

‘It’s not from the Bible,’ said Mr Tait. ‘It was Julian of Norwich who said it.’

‘Who was he?’

‘She,’ he told me. ‘She. A woman of God.’ He sighed. ‘I always think she’d have finished up as the Pope if she’d been a man.’ He shook his head, but not sorrowfully this time. ‘Wouldn’t the world be a simpler place, Mrs Gilver, if a woman could be a priest and a man could be  . . .’

‘A what?’ I asked him. He only looked back at me, with those kindly dancing eyes.

‘Oh Mr Tait!’ I said at last as, finally, I got it. He chuckled. ‘Please can I ask an enormous favour?’ I begged him. ‘Please can I be there if you ever tell Hugh?’

Topographical Note

Kellie Law and Largo Law are real, but the Lucken Law and the village of Luckenlaw are entirely from my imagination. Fife is a real place but none of this could ever have happened there.

I would like to thank:

My mother, Jean McPherson, who gave me
Jam and Jerusalem: a pictorial history of the WI
by Simon Goodenough and Wendy Bellars, who gave me
The Wee Book of Calvin
by Bill Duncan. These two together lit the spark.

Nan, (the spirit of) Jack, Grandad Hugh, Colin, Brian, Andrew, Ian, Elaine, Douglas, Aly, Mig, John, Gail and George for their Fifishness, the cadence of their voices and the gallows humour (I don’t think you even know you’re doing it). Thanks too to Ann and Elaine for the flavour of Aberdeen, which, of course, is even more so.

More thanks than usual to Lisa Moylett for steering everything through a difficult year and making it look easy and to Nathalie Sfakianos for the incisive comments on the first draft.

I am enormously grateful to Alex Bonham for her editing. This is a far better book than the one she first saw. Thanks too to Imogen Olsen, who has once again licked her hanky and wiped the face of the manuscript until it shines.

Finally, and most of all, I would like to thank my husband, Neil McRoberts, my favourite Fifer.

Table of Contents

Cover

The Dandy Gilver Series

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication