Bury Her Deep (6 page)

Sister MacAllister of the Victoria soon damped that flame. She took a scientific view of infant nutrition, all calorie values and protein metabolism with not so much as a mashed banana to bring it down to earth. I listened until I heard her say that ‘the coagulation of human milk in gastric juice is much more loose and flocculent than that of cows’ milk and therefore  . . .’ and then I tried very hard not to hear any more. Clearly, Sister MacAllister was going to furnish me neither with recipes to take home to my nursery nor with a template for a successful talk on the Household Budget in a month’s time, and I felt that anyone who used the words ‘gastric’ and ‘flocculent’ (whatever it meant) in the same sentence and straight after tea did not deserve my attention. I peeped at Miss Lindsay just to check that she was not about to faint and then closed my ears and tried to think about the case.

That there were thirty-odd women here tonight in spite of everything was a sign, I thought, that no one really believed the tales. Only of Vashti and Nicolette could I think the prospect of being mauled by a dark stranger might be an enticement to come along; they were possibly young enough to have caught the current fashion for greeting almost anything in life as a ‘scream’. One heard oftener and oftener that a friend of a friend had been arrested, drunk in charge of a motor car or swimming in a public pond, and always there came with the story an unspoken demand for one to find the whole thing a ‘scream’; my inability to do so made me feel elderly sometimes.

The other women of the Luckenlaw Rural would certainly take a very different view, I was sure. If any of their number actually encountered the stranger, she would scream holy murder, retell the tale with sundry embellishments at every opportunity for months and pester the doctor for tablets and tonics to help with her nerves for the rest of her life. In short, she would turn a nasty moment into something Wagnerian and utterly without end. I could safely assume, then, that none of them really believed in a dark stranger, out there right now waiting to catch them.

So, perhaps the task before me was the equally ticklish one of trying to find out who had started the story and why and why she had been joined by others backing it up. But who to ask? I had not been introduced to any of the women and none of the names I heard in passing had chimed with those on Mr Tait’s list; neither Miss McCallum, Miss Lindsay nor Mrs Hemingborough had reported an encounter with the stranger. I let my gaze drift around the room, wondering which of these women it was who had. They all looked so very stolid sitting there, some nodding in the warmth as Sister MacAllister’s lullaby washed over them, some grimly upright, some gaping with boredom. Nicolette and Vashti were sprawled in their seats like delinquent schoolgirls, making no effort at all to hide their feelings as the voice droned on and on, and looking at them I found my own legs begin to twitch as they had not done since the days of German dictation, so that I longed to slide from my seat and roll about on the floor. I caught the eye of a young woman sitting beside Vashti and looked quickly away. The next face I noticed was looking at me too and as I darted glances all around the room I began to perceive that all eyes were upon me and that Sister MacAllister was in her seat, shuffling her papers and with a look of satisfaction at a good job well done shining upon her face.

‘Mrs Gilver?’ said Miss McCallum, and her tone told me it was not the first time she had said it.

‘Ah yes, of course,’ I said. ‘Sorry, I didn’t catch the last thing you said, I’m afraid. Stupidly, I didn’t bring a notebook and I was, um, trying to commit Sister MacAllister’s vitamin list to memory while it was still fresh in my mind.’ A tremendous snort from the corner convinced me that one of the Howie ladies at least had seen through me, but Miss McCallum only beamed.

‘I was saying it’s time for our social half-hour. What would you like to propose? Songs around the piano, perhaps?’

Nothing would have persuaded me to plump for songs around the piano in the present company; I should have given no odds at all that the Luckenlaw women knew a great many woeful ballads all with twelve verses and I should not put it past the Howies to dredge up something from a revue just out of sheer mischief. General chat would be ideal if it could go on long enough to let me get around the room and give me time to work the conversation up to the point each time, but half an hour was pitifully short for that. Only one sensible possibility presented itself to me.

‘I’d like stories,’ I said. ‘Good old-fashioned stories. What could be more fun?’

There were a few groans from the younger girls but most of their elders were clearly equal to the challenge.

‘And on what topic?’ said Miss McCallum.

‘It can be anything at all?’ I asked.

‘Except party politics and sectarian religion,’ chorused Nicolette and Vashti as though they had said it many times before. There was a slight embarrassed titter.

‘Well, yes,’ said Miss Lindsay, ‘although I’m sure Mrs Gilver would not have dreamed of that.’

Actually, Mrs Gilver had dreamed of something much worse. My heart was knocking at the thought of my temerity, but it was irresistible.

‘Since it’s almost Hallowe’en,’ I said, ‘let’s have ghost stories. We must all tell a story – a true story, mind – that begins “One dark night, I was all alone and  . . . ”.’

There was a blank silence and a few of the polite smiles around the room began to falter.

‘When I was a girl we always used to love to tell ghost stories,’ I said. ‘Just for fun, you understand.’

‘Aye well,’ said a voice, calmly. I did not look to see who it was who spoke. ‘That’s down there for you.’

As though things were not bad enough, in the silence which followed this leaden pronouncement, a girl who had been coughing quietly throughout the evening and had blown her nose repeatedly, suddenly let out an explosive sneeze and instead of the usual bless you, her neighbour said loud and clear: ‘Sneeze on a Monday.’ She bit it off short, but everyone in the room carried on in thought: kiss a stranger.

‘Or poems,’ I said, trying very hard not to sound frantic. ‘Everyone must know a poem.’

And so it came to pass that I let myself in for listening politely to half an hour’s worth of the most torrid Scotch poems imaginable: drowned maidens, duelling swains, doomed soldiers and even, I was irritated to note, a fair sprinkling of ghosts.

4

Lorna, the soul of diplomacy, would never have mentioned my faux pas, but as we made our way back up the lane to the green the Howies’ motor car slowed beside us and Vashti stuck her head out of the window and hailed me.

‘Such a hoot, your ghost story idea,’ she said. ‘Just the breath of fresh air this place needs. In fact, if you’re staying overnight at the manse, do come round in the morning. You too of course, Lorna darling.’ She withdrew her head as Nicolette ‘revved’ the engine and they roared off, leaving Lorna and me in awkward silence.

‘I must apologise,’ I said at last. ‘One forgets, even after all these years, what might cause offence up here in Calvin’s stamping ground.’ I remembered, too late, that Lorna’s father was a minister of the very church that was Mr Calvin’s legacy. ‘Not that I’ve anything against  . . .’ but I could not continue. How could one not have at least
something
against some of it?

‘Oh, it’s not that,’ said Lorna. ‘Gosh, no. Luckenlaw is just as in thrall to a good spooky story as anywhere. You’ll have heard about the locked chamber?’

‘A little,’ I admitted.

‘Well, you wouldn’t believe the superstitious stories about
it.
Except that it’s rather mean to call it superstition, my father always says. Folklore, he says, is just history without the books. Or is it history that’s just folklore written down? Well, anyway,’ she concluded and in the cold glare of the moonlight I could see her beaming smile.

The women had come up the lane in a clump but were now splitting into small groups and pairs and setting off in their various directions, up to the green, down the lane to the road, through gates into the fields. No one seemed to be striking out alone, as I was relieved to see since I had not managed to attach myself to a likely victim, and no one seemed exactly what one would call anxious. There were no high spirits to be sure, but the cold air and the prospect of a long walk home might have been enough to account for that and I suspected too that the drawing to a close of this interval of camaraderie and a resumption of duties towards husband and home might be responsible for the downward droop of some of the shoulders and for the hefty sighs I heard being heaved on all sides.

Mrs Hemingborough, lugging her basket and accompanied by a young woman in a rather threadbare coat, walked with Lorna and me as far as the manse gate and carried on.

‘Have they far to go?’ I asked Lorna, gesturing after the pair. ‘I could always get my motor car.’

‘Oh no,’ said Lorna. ‘Only a step. Mrs Hemingborough is at Hinter Luckenlaw Farm and Jessie – she’s married to their cowman – has a cottage on the way.’

I was satisfied. Young Jessie was safe and the doughty Mrs Hemingborough with her strong hands was as likely to come off best in a tussle with the stranger as she was
un
likely to be the object of his peculiar affections.

Anyone who has followed my short career, or indeed spent an afternoon with me I am afraid, will not be surprised to learn what happened next. Mr Tait and I were sitting before the fire minutes later, sipping our cocoa and already beginning to think of bed – Lorna had disappeared into the kitchen quarters with an apology and a muttered word about the next day’s menu – when we heard a hammering at the front door. Mr Tait put down his cup and rose to his feet and I was just thinking that he was taking this late-night rumpus suspiciously calmly, when he said to me:

‘Please excuse me, Mrs Gilver. It sounds as though some poor soul is in extremis tonight.’

At that moment, Lorna appeared through the connecting door into the dining room – a short cut from the kitchen, I guessed – and her father nodded at her. ‘Lorna will take care of you,’ he said. ‘Sleep well and I will see you in the morning.’

‘Poor Father,’ said Lorna once he had gone.

‘Yes indeed,’ I said. ‘I should have thought that being summoned to deathbeds in the night might make him regret those naughty little boys at Kingoldrum even if nothing else did.’

‘He does miss them sometimes,’ she answered, ‘but Luckenlaw called and my mother was very happy to come home again, I think.’ She looked as though she were about to say more, but at that moment Mr Tait hurried back into the room.

‘Mrs Gilver,’ he said. ‘I wonder if I could trouble you for a minute of your time.’

‘Father?’ said Lorna, half rising from her chair.

‘More unpleasantness, I’m afraid, Lorna,’ he said. ‘More of the same.’

She made as though to follow us out – I, of course, had leapt to my feet as soon as he spoke – but he raised his hand to stop her.

‘No, my dear,’ he said. ‘I don’t want you mixed up in this.’

‘But Father, our guest?’ she protested.

‘Was a nurse in the war,’ said Mr Tait. ‘You don’t mind, Mrs Gilver, do you?’

Between remembering that Lorna did not know that
I
knew what more of the same unpleasantness would be, and making sure to look suitably puzzled as a result, and also trying not to think about what I might be just about to witness, as well as trying to contain my eagerness to get at it, whatever it was (within reason), I could neither assemble a sensible expression nor summon a sensible response, and so I simply squeezed Lorna’s hand and left the room after her father, at a trot.

In the sitting room across the hall, horribly cold now hours after the teatime fire had begun to die down, Jessie the cowman’s wife was perched on the edge of a chair hugging her arms and trembling slightly either from fright or from chill.

‘Oh, my goodness,’ I said, guilt washing over me. ‘Oh my poor dear girl.’

Mr Tait was at that moment taking possession of a blanket and a steaming cup of something which a maid had brought to the room. He handed the cup to Jessie and wrapped the blanket around her shoulders with the tender dexterity the father of an orphaned daughter might be expected to show. She lifted the cup to her chin, breathing in the steam, and slowly her shivering began to ease. She was no more than twenty-five, at a guess, getting careworn – the wife of a farm worker has no easy time of it – but still young enough for the sweet steam from a teacup to turn her face instantly bonny and pink.

‘Now, my dear,’ said Mr Tait, with infinite patience in his tone. ‘You must tell Mrs Gilver everything. She’s here to help.’

‘It was jist like they said,’ said Jessie after another stiff swig of her drink. ‘A dark stranger.’

‘Start from the beginning,’ I told her. ‘You and Mrs Hemingborough left Lorna and me at the gate, and then what?’

‘We kept on up tae the corner,’ said Jessie, ‘and turnt into the farm road. My wee hoose is halfway along and the farmhoose is at the end, so I got hame first and Mrs Hemingborough carried on. I should have gone straicht in, but  . . . I dinna ken, maybe because it was such a lovely nicht with the moon and a’ that  . . . anyway I jist stood at my gate a while.’

‘You weren’t frightened?’ I said.

‘I was not,’ said Jessie. ‘I didna believe in this stranger, to be honest. Pardon me, Mr Tait, but it’s the truth.’ Mr Tait inclined his head graciously. ‘I always thocht that believin’ in all-what-have-you was for them as had a big wage and a wee family and no’ the other way on. I’ve been that proud and that sure o’ myself.’ She began to look white again and gently I tried to urge her back to the story.

‘What happened then? While you were standing at your gate.’

‘I saw somethin’ in the field,’ Jessie said. ‘It was movin’ richt fast, running across towards the lane, and before I got a chance to shout oot, I saw it lowp over the dyke and I heard Mrs Hemingborough.’

‘Mrs Hemingborough?’ I echoed. ‘It wasn’t coming for you?’

‘Oh no,’ said Jessie. ‘Thank the Dear. It made a beeline for Mrs Hemingborough and I ran to see could I help.’