The Good Provider (4 page)

‘Where do you think you’re goin’?’ his mother asked.

‘Up the hill to wring the truth out o’ that dirty bastard.’

‘Easy, son.’ Bob put a hand on his son’s shoulder. ‘No point courting trouble because of the likes o’ Duncan Clegg.’

‘Do
you
not believe what Kirsty told us?’

‘Och, aye, I believe her. She’s got no reason to lie. But throttlin’ Duncan Clegg’s no’ the answer.’

‘Don’t go there, Craig, please,’ Kirsty sobbed.

Craig hesitated, then dropped his boots to the floor.

‘What
can
we do, then?’

‘Sleep on it,’ Bob Nicholson advised.

‘What about Kirsty?’

‘She can bide here the night,’ Bob said.

‘No, she cannot,’ Madge said. ‘Let her go back where she belongs.’

Craig said, ‘If Kirsty goes, I go too.’

Madge Nicholson’s eyes were full of suspicion. ‘What’s been goin’ on between you two that I don’t know about?’

It was Kirsty who blurted out, ‘Nothin’ like that, Mrs Nicholson, I swear.’

‘Am I expected to take the word of a Baird Home brat?’

Craig shouted, ‘Believe what you bloody like, Mother. Either Kirsty stays or we both go.’

‘You’re upset, Craig. You don’t know what you’re sayin’.’

‘I know fine what I’m sayin’,’ Craig retorted. ‘I’m sayin’ straight out that I intend to marry Kirsty just as soon as I’m able.’

Madge Nicholson swayed and sat down hard on her husband’s chair. Her heart-shaped face seemed puffed up and her plump cheeks turned a fiery red.

‘God! Oh, God! You can’t marry
her
!’

Like the Nicholson children Kirsty said nothing. She did not dare intrude upon the crisis which had flared between mother and son, even if she was the cause of it. Even Bob was rendered speechless by his son’s announcement, the empty whisky glass in his fingers like a talisman that had lost its power to protect.

Quietly Craig said, ‘I mean it, Mother. I mean what I say.’

For over a minute Madge Nicholson sat motionless, spine straight, hands in her lap. The lick of coal flames sounded loud and the whirring of the clock, prior to striking the hour, made Kirsty start. At length Madge drew in a breath, clapped her hands to her knees and pushed herself upright. She did not so much as glance at Bob or Craig or at the intruder who had thrust her way into her life.

She said, ‘We’ll discuss it tomorrow in a calmer frame of mind.’

‘What about Kirsty?’ said Craig.

‘Oh, she’d better stay, I suppose. Find her a place in the barn.’

‘Not the barn,’ Craig said. ‘Lorna’s room.’

A strange dry glance passed between mother and son. The woman almost smiled but it was not a sign of amusement or of capitulation.

She said, ‘I’ll fetch blankets,’ and without another word left the kitchen.

Craig sighed. He took off his jacket and draped it on the back of a chair while Bob Nicholson, still with the empty whisky glass in his hand, seated himself in his chair by the fire as if he had weathered the full term of the latest little storm. He scratched his ear-lobe then, without a trace of humour, said, ‘Did it not occur t’ you, Craig, that maybe the lass doesn’t want you for a husband?’

Craig swung round belligerently, challenging Kirsty.

‘Well, do you?’

She answered softly, ‘Aye, I do.’

‘Are ye sure you mean it, lass?’ Bob Nicholson said.

‘With all my heart,’ Kirsty answered.

Wrapped in a blanket on boards in the slot by Lorna Nicholson’s bed, Kirsty listened to the soft shallow breathing of the child. Lorna had been eager to chat, to put all manner of questions after the door had been closed and they were left alone. But Kirsty’s mind whirled with too many questions of her own to indulge the young girl and she had pretended that she was very sleepy, too sleepy to talk.

Some time about eleven Mrs Nicholson had entered the tiny back bedroom and had stooped over her daughter to kiss her and tuck her in. Kirsty had kept her eyes closed until the woman had gone off again and then she had come awake once more, shiningly awake, lit by all that had happened that day and, most of all, by Craig’s astonishing promise.

Marriage had never been mentioned between them, not even as a remote possibility. Their courtship had been restrained but not dour. They had been to each other whimsical and teasing by turns in the short hours of meeting, not serious at all. School seemed far back into the past. There they had been chums, as close as a boy and girl could be without incurring the opprobrium of classmates to whom male and female were still natural enemies, like dogs and cats. Kirsty could not bring herself to accept that Craig meant what he said, that the promise he had made was other than a display of anger. She tried to be sensible, to tell herself that she could not hope to escape so easily from Hawkhead and that this night spent under the same roof as her sweetheart would soon be no more than a memory.

She had no idea what time it was when the bedroom door creaked and, out of the darkness, Craig whispered her name.

Blinking, she sat up.

He had brought a lamp with him. He lighted it now and left it by the doorpost where its quivering rays would be too low to disturb his sister.

‘Kirsty, are you asleep?’

‘No.’

‘Are you cold?’

‘No.’

Over his nightshirt Craig had pulled on a threadbare coat. He knelt by the made-up bed on the floor, one arm bridging her legs, his face close to hers. Blanket held to her breasts, Kirsty sat upright. She felt wicked being here with him, wicked but not guilty.

‘Pay no heed to Mam,’ Craig whispered. ‘She’ll come round in due course.’

‘I doubt that, Craig.’

‘It’s her hard luck, then.’

‘Did you mean what you said – about marriage?’

‘Aye, every word. Unless you’d prefer to stay with old man Clegg.’

‘Please don’t make a joke of it.’

‘Kirsty, I’m sorry it had to happen like this.’

Locks of dark hair, soft and curled, bobbed on his brow. It was all Kirsty could do not to stretch out her hand and touch them. There was nothing girlish in the set of his mouth, though, or in the squareness of his jaw and when he clasped her hands in his she could feel the strength in him.

She said, ‘What’ll happen to me, Craig?’

‘I mean it, damn it. I will marry you.’

‘But – when?’

‘You can stay with us for a while. Mr Sanderson’ll find you day work at the Mains, I’m sure. Come autumn, we’ll be wed, I promise.’

Kirsty said nothing. In delay she saw a risk of losing him. She could not play tug-of-war with Craig’s loyalty to his family.

‘If I hadn’t come here tonight,’ Kirsty said, ‘would you have courted me?’

‘I’ve always wanted you, Kirsty. That’s the truth.’

He was trembling. She longed to put her arms about him and draw him down under the blankets with her, to hold his strong muscular body against hers. She drew back a little, pressing her shoulders against the side of the bed.

‘I want you too,’ she whispered.

Craig sat back on his heels, widening the gap between them. He was tense and formal all of a sudden. ‘I’d better go. It’s late and I’ve a hard day’s work ahead of me.’

‘Craig, wait.’

She crossed a forearm over her breasts and leaned forward, upward, offered him her pursed lips.

He hesitated then kissed her on the mouth, swiftly, and then left.

Bob Nicholson and his sons were late out of bed, late to the breakfast table and, by a good half hour, late starting along the road that would lead them to the cross gates where their ways would part. From there Craig would head up to the high acres and Gordon and his father would cut across the pasture to Bankhead. Craig would be planting grain seed all that day if the milky frost melted from the ground and if not he would be mending fences. For Gordon and Bob Nicholson it would be byre work since Jim Fry, the cattleman, was sick with a quinsy throat.

Kirsty and Lorna had been dead to the world when Craig peeped in at them. Lorna did not have to be up till a quarter to eight and Mam assured her son that she would not ‘fling Kirsty out’, not until the matter had been properly settled, though neither Craig nor his father had had the temerity to enquire what properly settled might mean. Craig assumed that Duncan Clegg would have to be told of Kirsty’s whereabouts, the Baird Home too. He was unclear about legal obligations now that Kirsty was over the age of sixteen. In the meantime he was delighted that she was to stay on at Dalnavert. With the optimism of youth, he believed that his mother would come around to liking Kirsty, would soften, relent and bless a marriage between them.

It was almost half past seven before the Nicholsons emerged from the door of the cottage. The sky was light with the promise of sunshine and the cloudscape away over the Straiton hills might have been painted with a fox brush, russet tipped with cream.

No sooner had the boys passed out of the yard than Gordon said to his brother, ‘Hoi! Where were you last night, eh?’

‘In bed, of course.’

‘Whose bed?’

‘My own bed.’

‘Aye, for ten minutes, before ye slipped away. I heard you, you dirty sod.’

‘One more word, sonnie, an’ I’ll punch your ear.’

‘You were in the back bedroom, weren’t you?’

‘What of it?’

‘Did ye get what you went for, Craig, eh?’

‘I went to see if Kirsty was warm enough, that’s all.’

‘Warm enough? That’s a good one.’ Gordon skipped away as Craig lunged at him. ‘Was she
waarrrm
enough for
looooove
?’

Bob Nicholson walked with an unhurried gait just ahead of his sons. He seemed oblivious to their horseplay. Already he had a pale odour of whisky about him and a glowing spot on each cheek which gave the impression of rude health. The pipe in his mouth sparked like the chimney of a new-lit fire. But Bob was more alert than he appeared to be and when he drew to an abrupt halt at the roadside his sons piled into him like dazed bullocks.

Bob pointed the wet pipe stem. ‘See what I see?’

Craig followed the direction and saw at once the figure of a man waddling down the sheep track from the west.

‘Bloody Clegg!’

‘Wonder what he wants,’ said Gordon.

‘Can you not guess?’ said Craig grimly. ‘Wants his slave back, I expect.’

‘He’s got gall, I’ll say that for him,’ Bob Nicholson remarked and then, to his sons’ surprise, climbed the fence and set off across the grassland to meet the farmer from Hawkhead.

‘Well, I’d love to linger an’ watch the fireworks,’ said Gordon, ‘but we’re damned late as it is. I’ll report to Mr Sanderson while you go up there an’ give Dad moral support.’

‘I’ll kill the wee pig, that’s what I’ll do.’

‘Keep your fists in your pockets, Craig. Let Dad do all the talkin’.’

Gordon slapped his brother fraternally upon the shoulder and went on his way down the road towards the Mains, while Craig, simmering, hopped over the fence and loped across the grazings after his father.

Clegg made no move to avoid the Nicholsons. On the contrary, he changed tack and came to a meeting with them in the middle of the pasture. He wasted no time at all on explanations or apologies.

‘My lass, where is she?’ he snarled.

‘She’s not your lass, Mr Clegg,’ Craig answered, his brother’s advice forgotten at the sight of the man who had dared to lay hands on Kirsty.

‘She is mine. Damned if she’s not.’ From his jacket pocket Clegg dragged out a wad of papers which he waved above his head. ‘I’ve got written proof of it.’

‘Articles!’ said Bob scathingly.

Clegg cried, ‘Mine until she’s eighteen. Months yet. Near a bloody six-month, in fact. Send her back or I’ll have the constabulary on you all.’

‘What exactly do you want wi’ her?’ Bob asked. ‘You’ve hardly enough doin’ at Hawkhead to justify a servant.’

Duncan Clegg did not seem to hear. He shouted, ‘Whatever she told you’s a bloody lie. I never touched her. I never laid a bloody hand on her.’

‘Nobody said you did, Mr Clegg,’ said Bob Nicholson.

‘Did she not—?’

‘I don’t doubt the validity of the documents you’re waggin’ about,’ said Bob Nicholson.

‘Give her back, then.’

‘Can’t give what I don’t have,’ Bob Nicholson said.

Craig bit his lip. His father’s guile, and the lie, took the wind out of Clegg’s sails. He stopped waving his arms and stuck the documents into his jacket again, puffed and huffed for a moment, then said, ‘Where else would she go but your place?’

Craig said, ‘Has she run away, then?’

‘Aye, is that what you’re tryin’ to tell us, Mr Clegg?’

‘She’s a wilful, spiteful, ungrateful
bitch
.’