Dear Hugo

by Molly Clavering

  “Remember me to them when you see them,” she said, and with a final: “How clean your house is!” took herself and husband off.

  As soon as their enormous grey car had purred away, I was stricken with remorse for not insisting on their staying to lunch, though I didn’t quite know what they would have eaten; but comforted myself by remembering what a very much better meal they would have at the first really expensive hotel they came to on the road, with cocktails for a start!

  This totally unnecessary call seemed to me a waste of time which I could have spent much more profitably in the garden. I said as much to Mrs. Keith when I walked over to Ladymount to have tea with her the same afternoon. She can’t get about much now that the colder weather makes her arthritis more acute, and she had summoned me to come and have what she calls “a crack” with her.

  “You have the satisfaction of knowing that she considers your house clean, at least,” was all the consolation I got. Mrs. Keith always has some slightly astringent comment to make which is very good for one in a self-pitying mood.

  She is a dauntless old lady, with no pity to spare for herself or for anyone else’s imaginary trials, though I suspect that in real trouble or sorrow she would prove a friend indeed.

  When tea had been brought in by a retainer not much younger than herself, she commanded me to tell her how I liked the Whitburns.

  “I hardly know them,” I protested. “They seem to be pleasant people—”

  “H’m,” said Mrs. Keith. “Well, of course Joan isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but I should have thought Lawrence was easy enough to like. Have a scone. They’re hot.”

  I took a scone in silence.

  Mrs. Keith remarked in a sort of general way as if addressing an unseen audience that the art of conversation was dead.

  I laughed. I couldn’t help it; and I repeated: “I really hardly know them, Mrs. Keith.”

  This time she pounced. “Then why should you dislike them?” she asked, quick as a hawk. I looked at her thin brittle old hand holding the tea-cup, and remembered my grandmother when she must have been about Mrs. Keith’s present age, saying pensively: “From what one is told, there will be no gossip in Heaven—and what a miss it will be!”

  “I don’t dislike them,” I began. “But—well, I’ll tell you.” And out came the whole ridiculous tale of my meeting with Lawrence Whitburn, and his sister’s version of the episode on the moor. It was rather a relief, once I’d begun, to tell Mrs. Keith, but it did sound an absurd fuss about nothing, when I heard it spoken aloud, and I was not surprised that her comment was:

  “Rather childish, my dear.”

  “Of course, I know that! If only I hadn’t lost my temper—”

  “What you must do,” she went on, “is to tell Lawrence yourself, the first opportunity you get. He has probably guessed it already—Lawrence is no fool—but if you tell him, don’t you see it puts everything right.”

  I didn’t see it, but by this time I was too muddled to trust my own judgment.

  “Very well, I will,” I promised.

  Suddenly she began to laugh. “It is all so ridiculous!” she gasped, wiping tears of mirth from her eyes with a wisp of white lawn handkerchief. “You silly, silly girl!”

  Well, it is pleasant to be called a girl when one is forty, and I daresay it was good for Mrs. Keith to have something to laugh at. What I couldn’t explain was that I came to Ravenskirk because Ivo knew and loved it, and I wanted to become a part of the village life here and be liked more for his sake than my own, not to fall foul even of an old eagle like Miss Bonaly, and certainly not to make a fool of myself in the eyes of more pleasant people!

  “You haven’t taken the huff, as they say, have you?” asked Mrs. Keith.

  “Of course not. I was only thinking—”

  “Stop thinking, then. It makes you frown. Tell me all about Atty, and how Madge is getting on—”

  There is nothing easier to talk about than Atty; I have to be very strict with myself when people ask for him, in case I become one of those women who are tediously verbose on the subject of their children’s amusing sayings and scholastic attainments. As I haven’t the excuse of being a parent, I must take all the more care.

  Apparently Mrs. Keith finds the detailed description of Atty’s “out Sundays” enthrallingly interesting. Any one would serve as a pattern for all, because they each follow the same monotonous course of drifting from one enormous meal to the next with second helpings of everything, until the exhausted waiters are tottering on their feet, and I feel that no tip is adequate to repay them. In vain do I write every time begging Atty to make up his mind what he would like to do. He is always completely vague about it when asked, unless I suggest something, and then it is inevitably something that he doesn’t want to do.

  Admittedly there is very little choice of entertainment on a Scottish Sunday; and no doubt the school authorities picked Sundays in order that their charges should be in no danger of infection from visiting theatres or picture-houses. There is still the Zoo, and there are the museums; on a fine day the Botanic Gardens; but what Atty and his young friends like best is to sit in a stuffy hotel lounge, pointing out to me various other boys (all with the slightly glazed look which comes of over-eating) and telling me how horrible they are, though in much more vivid terms.

  I always return them to their establishment convinced that the outing has been an utter frost, but am always assured that they have had a wizard, or smashing, or keen, or whatever revolting adjective is in vogue at the moment, time.

  Quite evidently Mrs. Keith agrees with them, and on this occasion she made me enumerate, dish by dish, the astounding luncheon consumed by Atty and his bosom friend, a deceptively cherubic person whose name is Charles Playfair.

  “They say they are starved at school,” I ended. “And to watch them eat is enough to make one believe it, but they look so well-fed that I don’t suppose for a moment it is true.”

  “Amazing creatures, boys,” said Mrs. Keith. “Do they drink ginger-beer, or what?”

  “Coca-cola,” I told her. “Quarts of it, even at tea. Think of hot buttered tea-cake and coca-cola!”

  “Thank you, I’d much rather not,” she answered with a shudder.

  Suddenly she leaned forward and patted my hand. “You are making a very good job of looking after that boy, Sara,” she said. “A very good job indeed. Now tell me, how is your other responsibility doing?”

  “My other responsibility? Do you mean Pam?” I glanced at the little dog lying quietly sleeping on the rug in front of the fire, replete with the milk he had been given.

  “Tchah!” said Mrs. Keith. (That extraordinary sound that she makes, of contempt or impatience or both together, can’t really be reproduced, but ‘Tchah’ comes nearest to it.) “I do not mean the dog! I am talking about Madge Marchbanks.”

  “Oh!” I said rather blankly. “Madge is all right. She breaks things, but she really does her work very well on the whole—”

  “I’m talking about her morals, not her scrubbing!” retorted Mrs. Keith.

  “But I don’t think I am responsible for her morals. After all, she has her aunt—”

  “Nettie is a decent soul, but she can’t manage Madge. She never has been able to,” said Mrs. Keith. “I’m certain that you have far more influence over the girl.”

  “But what has Madge been doing?” I asked, annoyed. It seemed to me that far too many people busied themselves about poor Madge and her humble affairs.

  “Going over to Loganhead where they have those cheap Saturday night dances,” said Mrs. Keith. “And that means bicycling home six miles after midnight. With or without company, but most probably with, if I know Madge.”

  “Oh!” I said. I didn’t much like the sound of it. There are a lot of fairly tough types at Loganhead just now, men working on a big pipe-line connected with a new reservoir up in the hills. I could see Madge having an uproarious time at those dances.

  “You think it over, an
d don’t call me a meddlesome old woman to yourself. It’s better I should tell you than Miss Bonaly,” said Mrs. Keith.

  “Much better,” I agreed. “Though I don’t quite know what I’m to do about it.”

  “Think it over,” Mrs. Keith repeated.

  I was still thinking it over as I walked back through the windy dark, with Pam, who doesn’t like night noises and queer shadows, on the lead and keeping very close to me. There had been rain earlier, but a wind had blown the sky clear of cloud, and now the stars were shining coldly down, reflected from every puddle in the road. The night wind sighing through the black branches of the leafless trees brought with it the fresh scent of upland air, still smelling of moss and heather, late in the year though it is. I am sure that people from this hilly Border country must long for the keen strong air when they are away from home, almost more than anything. Even after a single day in Edinburgh, the first thing I notice when I get out of the train at Riggs is the lovely air, and I stand on the platform breathing it in, great gulps of it, and looking no doubt like a fish out of water, but feeling like one which has just been restored to its native element.

  This evening I realised how dear and familiar the invisible country all about me has grown even in the few months I have lived here. I knew just where the sharp nick marking the top of Windy Gans breaks the long shoulder of ridge, though I could not see it; I could picture the shapes of the round-backed hills, and the dark blur of trees marking the course of Piper’s burn. I wonder if you sometimes shut your eyes to your more brilliantly coloured surroundings at Fort Cecil, Hugo, and see instead this landscape of quiet half-tones, the greys and duns and browns and the bloom of the bare hawthorn hedges like smoke along the hollows, or the snaky lines of dry-stone dykes climbing up and over the hill-crests? I know that Ivo used to think of Ravenskirk when he was at sea, until he could actually smell the heather and warm grass in spite of the salt water blowing in spray over the bridge. . . .

  Madge had slipped to the back of my mind, until the cluster of lights with the wreath of smoke above them, showing pale against the dark sky, brought her sharply back again. Mrs. Keith had said: “Think it over.” That was all very well, but I could not think what I was to do. I could hardly forbid a woman of almost thirty to go out of an evening, more especially as it must be very dull to sit at home with Aunt Nettie reading or knitting. I reached the cottage without having come to any decision, and was putting my key into the keyhole to unlock the door, when a dim figure loomed up suddenly beside me, frightening me almost out of my wits and making Pam utter his puppy growl, and a woman’s voice said, rather breathlessly: “I am so sorry to bother you, but could you lend me some bread? I’ve run out of it.” I had no idea how one could “lend” bread, but I answered:

  “Is it Mrs. Kilmartin? I think I can let you have some—not a whole loaf, I’m afraid—”

  “Oh, I just want a slice or two,” she said, following me in and waiting while I fumbled for the light switch.

  When I found it, and we were blinking in the sudden brilliance, dazzling to eyes that had become accustomed to the night outside, I saw that she looked pale and upset. I had barely seen her until now, having only caught glimpses of a slender figure flitting in and out of Wallace Cottage in a canary yellow jersey and a red skirt, but I realised that she was a good-looking woman, or would be when she tidied her hair and put on a little make-up.

  “Do come into the sitting-room beside the fire while I get you the bread,” I said, but she said no, thank you, and trailed at my heels towards the kitchen, rather like a lost dog, unwilling to trust one but afraid to let one out of sight.

  “You—you haven’t any white, I suppose?” she asked, as I took up the bread-knife to cut my brown loaf in half.

  “I’m afraid not. I always eat brown bread,” I said, a little irritated. It did seem to me that she was looking a gift loaf in the colour!

  “Oh dear! You must think me most ungrateful,” she murmured. I must admit that I did. “But Ronald, my—my husband—doesn’t like brown bread.”

  I should have liked to follow a famous historical example and suggest that he could eat cake. What I said was that perhaps Mrs. Kilmartin might try one of the nearer cottages in the village, where they would almost certainly have white bread.

  She shrank from this suggestion at once. “Oh, no! I couldn’t possibly do that! If I had flour, I daresay I could make him some scones—”

  “I can let you have flour,” I said.

  Mrs. Kilmartin flushed, an ugly red staining her pale drawn face. “I haven’t been able to get to the village for supplies,” she said.

  I remembered the dreadful little man who had pestered me about an unpaid bill, and wondered if the Kilmartins owed money to the shops in Ravenskirk. It wasn’t pleasant to think of people who were neighbours being short of necessary food.

  “Will flour be all you need? Have you got margarine?” I asked.

  She stiffened a little. “Yes, thank you. It was just carelessness that left me short. I am very grateful for the flour and the bread. Of course I’ll pay it back to-morrow.”

  “That will be all right,” I said, and on impulse added: “Won’t you come in and have a cup of tea with me one day soon? Or morning coffee?”

  “I’m rather tied—very busy—” she said. “Good night, Miss Monteith.”

  She went flitting like a moth out into the gloom and across to her own cottage, from which no light was showing, leaving me puzzled and oddly uneasy. For she had spoken as if her husband were at home, and if so, why was he sitting in total darkness?

  It’s none of your business, I told myself, and shut my own door firmly. Perhaps Mr. Kilmartin had weak eyes. Perhaps he had fallen asleep beside the fire. Perhaps he was out, after all. . . . There were plenty of sensible reasons, yet the black oblong and pointed gable-end of Wallace Cottage, looming a more solid blackness against the dark of the night, had a sinister look.

  Pam nudged me with his nose, and yawned delicately, as a gentle reminder that it was supper-time for dogs, never to mention missuses, and my common-sense asserted itself. It was ridiculous to stand in the cold passage brooding over the Kilmartins, whom I did not know.

  “Come on, then, and I’ll give you your supper,” I said, and he pattered after me into the kitchen. I must have come more quickly and quietly than usual, for as I switched on the kitchen light there was an ominous rustling of paper in the vegetable box.

  Mice! Hugo, I am terrified of mice. I’d sooner meet a panther in the kitchen, but on this occasion I lost my temper. Instead of beating a womanly retreat I grabbed the vegetable box—it is a wooden one with slatted sides—picked it up, and shook it hard. . . .

  Out poured a cascade of mice through the slats onto the floor. I must have disturbed a mouse dinner-party at least, for there must have been five or six of the horrid little monsters! As I shrieked, they scuttled out into the passage, darted between Pam’s legs, and rushed into a hole in the wall beside the back door.

  Pam fled to the dining-room and sprang into the arm-chair with all his feet tucked up under him like a Victorian miss!

  “You’re a lot of use!” I said to him severely. “I shall have to block up that hole and get Madge to set a trap—”

  Mention of Madge’s name of course reminded me of Mrs. Keith and her warning about my too malleable “help”. I still hadn’t a clue as to what I could do (there’s a little rhyme for you, Hugo!) It seemed to me that there is a good deal to be said in favour of some of your natives’ simple customs. I should have liked to threaten Madge with a witch-doctor’s attentions if she didn’t behave sensibly. Turning it over in my mind, I had fed Pam and stopped up the mouse-hole with a lump of Atty’s plasticine covered with a strip of adhesive tape, when the telephone rang.

  It was Miss Marchbanks, Madge’s Aunt Nettie, speaking from the public call-box near her house. Her voice held that note of half-horrified delight which I knew meant bad news, and my heart sank. Had these wretched dances at Lo
ganhead done their work already?

  “It’s Madge, Miss Monteith—”

  “Yes, Miss Marchbanks. What’s the matter?”

  “Madge has broken her leg, both the bones in it. I doubt she’ll not be able to work for a good while,” said Aunt Nettie with gloomy zest.

  “Oh, poor Madge! I’m so sorry—” (but she won’t be able to cycle to dances either, praise be!)

  “How did it happen?”

  “She was white-washing the kitchen ceiling and fell down off the ladder—an’ oh, the mess on the floor! There’s a whole pail o’ whitening splashed about the place!” Miss Marchbanks sounded more concerned for her kitchen than her niece, but of course, she would have to clean it all up, while the niece would be lying in hospital with her leg in plaster! “I’m real vexed, and so’s Madge, that she’ll not can come to do for you—to-morrow’s her day, too,” Miss Marchbanks continued.

  “Oh, but you mustn’t bother about that. I’ll be able to manage,” I assured her.

  She gave her little deprecatory cough. “I was wondering would you like me to come in Madge’s place, just till she’s able for it again? With wee Helen at the school there’s nothing to stop me.”

  “If you would, Miss Marchbanks, that would be splendid,” I said thankfully.

  And so it was arranged. My firebrand was out of harm’s way for some weeks to come, and I was provided with a more than adequate substitute.

  I ate my supper—soup and a poached egg on toast, in case you imagine I subsist on tea and cookies when alone—with hearty appetite, and have spent the evening finishing off this letter to you. Now I am so sleepy that the pen is falling from my hand, so good night, Hugo.

  CHAPTER VII

  LATE NOVEMBER, 1951

  Some of us have been practising carols this evening to sing at the W.R.I. December meeting, and all the way home in the wind and rain I have been singing them “out loud in to myself” as we used to say when we were children. Everybody will join in the old favourites: The First Nowell, The Holly and the Ivy, While Shepherds Watched, led by the choir, says Mrs. Currie, affording a perfect example of the triumph of hope over experience. The choir—I am one of them—is to render other less well-known carols by itself—or themselves. We are all tremendously keen, far keener than mustard, and if we are a trifle lacking in the finer shades of musical interpretation, we make up for it in verve. Each soprano has one aim, and one only, to out-sing all the rest, and the volume of sound they produce is terrific. I am modestly piping among the altos, and their part is not made any easier by Miss Garvald’s mulish insistence on singing the version given in her own carol book, while the remainder of us are using a totally different one. But as Miss Garvald sounds like a she-bear growling, on the principle that so long as you sing low enough you are “singing seconds” I don’t suppose it matters very much. In any case I expect that stage-fright, to which every member of the choir announces with pride that she is addicted, will probably tone us down a bit on the night.