The Observations (48 page)

Try as I might I could not fathom what had happened. I knew missus didn’t really like the Reverend but it was incredible that she would have belted him with a shovel, even in her present state of mind. My only thought was that perhaps he had tried to stop her running away and she had attacked him as a way of escaping.

Just as I got to the edge of the village, a horse came scuddering out the mist behind me and overtook me at a gallop. It was master James, with Hector mounted behind him. As they sped on towards the Cross, Hector turned and blew me a kiss. I made a point of ignoring him and hurried on, arriving at the fountain a few moments later. The place was heaving, with people standing about in various groups. Master James had just dismounted. He left Hector to tie up the horse while he went to speak to Alasdair who was stood on the platform, organising folk into search parties. It would not be dark for a few hours yet but a number of villagers were running back and forth, bringing lamps from their cottages. Somebody was handing out bread and AP Henderson the old nip-cheese had not missed a trick, he had set up a barrel on a table and was selling ale to them that wanted refreshment. Of the Old Bollix no sign. Presumably by this time he had been took home to rest. I noticed that master James and the doctor were now talking to a woman I didn’t recognise, a toaty wee woman in a blue shawl.

Flemyng was hovering in the background. I caught his eye and just for badness gave him a saucy wink and a wave. A look of alarm crossed his face and he leaned in towards master James and the doctor, and pretended to be engrossed in their conversations. Sicken him.

I had hoped to get a message somehow to my mother but it looked as though the search parties were ready to move off any minute. There was a small boy just in front of me about 7 years old. He had a pencil in his hand and was running about to no purpose as small boys are wont to do, sometimes aiming his pencil at people as though it were a musket and at other times arguing with himself in badgering voices as though he were an entire company of soldiers.

I called him over and showed him a farthing that I took from my pocket. “Do you know the Railway Tavern?” I says to him.

He nodded, the eyes on him never once leaving the coin in my hand. I tellt him he would get the farthing—and another on top—« he went to the Railway Tavern and gave a message to a lady by the name of Mrs. Kirk. Then I took the pencil off him and used it to write a message on the handkerchief master James had give me for Christmas. It was difficult to make marks on the cloth and my mother was no great shakes at the reading so I kept the note short.

Am delayed. Sorry. We can go tomorrw. Yrs Daisy.

How strange to be writing my own name, the first time in months I had used it, but I supposed I should get used to it once more. I tucked the snoot-cloot into the boys pocket and gave him his pencil and the farthing, telling him that he would get the other when he had delivered the message and found me again. He lit off at full tilt and once I’d checked that he was heading up the Station road sure enough, I began to make my way towards the fountain to be told what to do.

I had not took but two steps when who accosted me but Hector. Into my path he jumped and began to dance at me, trotting this way and that like a pony with the head staggers. Over his shoulder I noticed master James on the platform, still talking to the wee woman in the blue shawl.

“Whell now,” says Hector. “Hif it’s not Miss Hoity-Toity.”

“Flip away off,” I says, trying to elbow past him. “Or I’ll ottomise you.”

Hector grabbed my shoulder and held me at arms length. He looked offended.

“Now fwhat’s the matter fwhith you?” he says. “Come on now! I greased the way in there hallready. Fwhun minute your thingumbob is biting your arse for it, the next you fwhant to be left halone.”

(And you can be sure he did not say “thingumbob‘).

He pinched my waist and tried to get his arms round me. But I twisted out his grasp and turned to face him.

“All right, mundungus,” I says, as if I didn’t care. “But you have to pay for it.”

“I beg your pardon?” says Hector.

And it’s 5 shillings.“

At this, he looked as though his hat might blow off with astonishment.

“Fife shillings!”

“That’s right,” I says. And while he was still chewing on that morsel, I jerked my thumb towards the platform. “Who’s your wee woman talking to master James?”

“Eh?” He glanced over, his mouth hanging open. “Och that’s Missus Bell,” he says. “She’s the fwhun that seen Missus Reid hit the minister. Fife shillings? Are you haffing a choke fwhith me?”

“That’s what it costs,” I says. “From now on. So think about it. You better start saving up so. Either that or away and fetch mettle.”

And I left him scratching his head and staring after me, betwattled.

I was in one of the last search parties to be formed so I was and thank God Hector was put in another. We were about twelve of us in our group and our task was to walk in line around the perimeter of the trees, beginning at the Free Gardeners Lodge and then heading east and then south and so on, clockwise through the fields and around the woods until we returned to the village. It was thought that missus had been hiding somewhere in the trees but that the noise of the search parties crashing about in the undergrowth might have flushed her out like a gamebird. We took a few lamps and torches against the fog. Alasdair had tellt us to keep at an even distance from each other, with the stretch of two arms or thereabouts between each pair. The party was mostly made up of weavers and some wives and a couple of mop-squeezes like myself. The only folk I recognised were the two miners that I’d seen in The Gushet but since they had never noticed me hiding behind the door I kept my trap shut.

The women on either side of me lived right by the Cross and by Jove they could talk to beat Banagher, so they could. They were more than happy to tell me about all what I had missed during the day. I was very curious about what Mrs. Bell had seen from her window. Apparently she’d heard missus getting on at the minister. This was the part I was interested in. Getting on at him about what? I wanted to know, but even though they both had tongue enough for two sets of teeth neither of the women could tell me. They were most impressed to hear that I worked at Castle Haivers but I didn’t want them asking too many questions so I tellt them I was a farm servant and had never seen Mrs. Reid except at a distance. If only they knew!

After a while the talk died out and we paced the fields in watchful silence. Sometimes in places where the fog was thinner, the odd light became visible, flickering among the mist and trees, where other search parties were looking. Sometimes we heard a voice call out, or a sudden burst of laughter. And once, my heart went sideways when a shadow bolted across our path, but it was only a deer, with a skitter of hooves and her white tail bobbing until it was swallowed by the mist. I wondered what would have happened had it been missus. Would somebody have given chase and brought her crashing to the ground? I didn’t like to think of her being hunted down like an animal. But neither did I want her to freeze to death under a bush. I imagined her huddled somewhere, or perhaps fleeing ahead of her pursuers, darting wild-eyed from tree to tree. The thought of her in distress made me want to boke.

It took about an hour and a
1/2
to walk the circuit of the woods. By the time we straggled back to the Cross, it was getting on for twilight. A great bonfire had been lit at the side of the road and somebody had strung up lanterns on the fountain. A few of the search parties had already returned and were taking a break before being sent out again in another direction. Some people were drifting off towards their homes, I wasn’t sure they would be back. It was a cold day, after all, to be traipsing the countryside. Those that were left had congregated around the fire.

A group of old women were doling out tea from a big pot that they had brought from one of the houses. I wasn’t thirsty but I took a jar to warm my hands. Then I went over to the bonfire. Alasdair was stood a little way off, by the fountain, talking to Hector and Biscuit Meek. There was no sign of master James at first but as I peered about me this way and that, I seen his horse emerge from the direction of the trees. He cantered up to his men and jumped down to talk to them. Presumably he’d been riding between search parties to see if anything had been found.

Just then, I near leapt out my skin as an armful of wood landed with a clatter on the flames beside me. I glanced round and seen that it had been thrown by the wee woman in the blue shawl that I’d noticed earlier talking to master James. Dear sake, she was that small if you put a pigeon on her shoulder it could have picked a pea out her arse.

“Mrs. Bell?” I says.

She smiled up at me. Her face was plump like a belter of a scone, with her eyes dark and small as currants.

I says, “It was my missus you seen earlier, with the minister.”

“Oh dear,” she says and gave me a look like she felt sorry for me. It made me want to defend missus.

“Normally she wouldn’t hurt a fly,” I explained. “Not in the usual way of things. Only she’s not been well of late, with her nerves.”

Mrs. Bell nodded and patted my arm.

I went on, encouraged. “Somebody says she was shouting at the minister. Did you hear what she said?”

Mrs. Bell frowned. “Well aye,” she says. “Afore she hit him she wanted to know where somebody was. Some woman.
Where is she?
she kept saying.
Where is she?”

Now by this did missus mean Nora, I wondered? Or the imaginary Mrs. Gilfillan? And did it mean that she had mistook Reverend Pollock for the henchman MacDonald or whatever his name was, the supposed master of disguise?

Mrs. Bell went on. And then she started warning him to keep his hands aff somebody.
You can’t have her,
she kept saying.
You can’t have her.
She was demented, poor dear.“

“What else did she say?”

“It was mostly calling him names. Did she huv a temper, your missus?”

“Not really.”

“She kept saying something was all his fault. He should never have done it, she says. She wasnae in her right senses, dear. It was getting a bit confused by that point. And all his wee leaflets had fell oot his pocket, poor man, and they were lying scattered aboot the place. He looked like he was trying to pick them up.”

Him and his scutting tracts. Only a fool would be taken in by al that nonsense. I thought of Nora, her box and the many tracts in there. I could just see her all prim and proper, sat in her room, reading them by candlelight. And then in a flash, I remembered the day I had bumped into the Old Bollix in Bathgate and the invitation he made me, to visit him. For—what had he called it—tract elucidation? The old sly boots, he did not fool me for a second. But he might have fooled Nora. All those notes in the margins of her tracts—what was that but elucidation?

Of a sudden, I was convinced that she must have got the tracts from Pollock and had been to visit him—more than once, given the amount of tracts in her box. And then I thought back to what Muriel had said about the Reverend and “Wandering Hand Trouble‘. He was such an arsepiece the very thought of it turned my stomach. But right enough, he was a handsome man for his age. And those tub-thumpers can be persuasive. If he had got Nora alone in a room, over the course of a few weeks, who could say what might not have happened? The poor girl. She might even have been stupid enough to fall in love with him.

All at once, I thought I knew the secret behind Noras death. Everything made sense now, why missus had attacked Reverend Pollock, even why she had went mad with grief.

I glanced around to see if master James was still there. I wanted to tell him what I thought right away, for if the truth came out it might help missus get better. To my relief, I seen that he was still standing with Alasdair beside the fountain.

I was about to head over and speak to him when a man came running down Main Street, from the Glasgow direction. A young man he was, dressed in working clothes, in a jacket but no overcoat. He clutched his hat in his hand, perhaps because it would have fell off his head as he ran. A few folk looked at him as he passed but nobody paid much heed at first because any news about missus was expected to come from the woods.

When he seen master James he started yelling. “Mr. Reid! Mr. Reid! They’ve found her!”

And then everybody turned to .watch him, as he ran up to the group of men by the fountain and blurted out a few more words, pointing over the rooftops of the village, not to where he had come from exactly, but more towards the north-west.

Mrs. Bell touched my arm. “What’s he saying?” she asked me.

“Shh!” I tellt her. “I can’t hear.”

But something was wrong. Master James was stood stock-still, his face turning pale and stricken as he listened to the man. I seen Alasdair put a hand on his shoulder, as if to give him courage. Then of a sudden a few of the men in the group began pelting down West Main Street. Another leapt up on a cart and grabbed the reins. The doctor jumped up on his trap. Panic had broke out. People started running, mostly in the same direction, down the Great Road. A few others headed up towards the Station. Master James stood in the centre of it all, like a statue. It was only when McGregor-Robertson leaned down and spoke to him that he seemed to will himself into action. He swung up beside the doctor and then the trap sped away up Station road.

I shouted to one of the men as he raced past us. “What’s happened? Where is she?”

The man stopped running and turned back. “They found her body up on the railway line! She was hit by a train!”

So help me God, I believe I may have laughed out loud. But it was a short laugh, and one that came from shock. I know that now, having since seen the same thing happen a few times. The laughter died on my lips, and still I could not make sense of his words. They echoed inside my head but they had no meaning. Train. Railway line. Body. This last, in particular, confused me. Mr. Levy, curled up on the Turkey carpet, cold and still.
That
was a body. Or Nora, lying in her eternity box. Body.