Mrs. Tim of the Regiment

by D. E. Stevenson

  The little white croft upon the hill is sheltered from the north by a grove of trees. In front is a cobbled yard, and a large green tub of rain water stands by the door. A faint reek of peat smoke rises from the chimney and fills the air with its attractive smell.

  ‘Hullo, hullo! Are you there, Alec?’ shouts Tony as we approach.

  The door flies open, and a man appears, a tall, broad-shouldered man. He has the brown weather-beaten face and far-sighted eyes of one who spends his time upon the sea, and the earth-engrained hands of a farmer – for Alec is both.

  ‘Och, Major!’ he cried. ‘Is it yourself ? It’s welcome you are.’

  They shake hands firmly. ‘Och, well now!’ he says, beaming with happiness. ‘This is a fery good day.’

  Tony now introduces me, and I am included in the welcome. ‘Och, indeed now I would be remembering the captain (or will he be major now?), and it’s a proud day for me to be welcoming his lady to my home.’

  ‘Oh, of course,’ Tony says. ‘I’d forgotten you had met Tim Christie.’

  ‘But I had not forgotten,’ Alec replies, with a smile. ‘It would be a strange thing if I would not be remembering him, for we were all together in the worst place I ever was in.’

  ‘That farm near Festubert,’ puts in Tony. ‘Yes, it was a tight place. Tim Christie was there, was he?’

  ‘He was indeed,’ nods Alec. ‘I could be telling you at this moment all the people that were there. Perhaps I have more time for remembering than other people, for when I am out at night in my boat at the fishing I will be thinking again about all the things we would be doing at that time, and all the good times we would be having – for there were good times as well as bad.’

  ‘We didn’t have much of a time at that farm,’ says Tony grimly.

  ‘Och well, and I don’t know, Major. I wouldn’t have missed it now; for it’s a grand thing to be thinking about it all, and you safe in your bed, or sitting by the fire, and the wind roaring round. There’s times I feel sorry for the young men who are knowing nothing of it all, for it’s half alive they are, and not knowing their luck to be that.’

  ‘That’s one way of looking at the war!’

  ‘Och well, it’s my way,’ he says. ‘I would often be thinking of the adventure of it all, and the foreign lands, and the strange things that I would be seeing those times – ’

  ‘That German soldier you met in the communication trench, for instance,’ suggests Tony smiling.

  ‘That one,’ says Alec with an answering grin. ‘It was a funny thing that. We were both of us frightened of the other one, not expecting to meet each other in that place. A young man he was, with a pleasant face – och, I’d like fine to be meeting him now, that one, and standing him a drink and laughing over the pair of us crawling along that place and bumping into each other – and we scared to death! But what am I doing to be keeping you standing out here? If you would be coming into my house – ’

  We follow him into the tiny living room, which is spotlessly clean and shining. The walls are whitewashed, and a kettle is singing on the open fire. A small child of about four years old is playing on the hearthrug with a battered wooden train; he gives one loud shriek when he sees us and flies for his life.

  ‘Mrs. Christie must forgive him,’ Alec says, setting chairs for us. ‘He sees nobody here, and he is shy. It is a lonely place and – ’

  ‘I suppose you will want another war for him in twenty years or so,’ suggests Tony.

  ‘The Major would be laughing at me,’ replies Alec, smiling. ‘But no, I would be wanting no war for him. It is only that I am glad now there was one for me. I was not glad at the time, no, not altogether glad. Wars are bad things, and we want no more of them – but there is good in them for the lucky ones.’

  ‘I believe you are right,’ says Tony gravely.

  Mrs. Macdonald now appears, and greets us shyly. She is a pretty young woman with dark hair and quiet eyes. Alec enquires after his son, somewhat anxiously.

  ‘He will have gone to speak to the pig,’ replies his mother lightly. ‘There is no need whatever to be troubling ourselves about that one.’

  So we cease to trouble ourselves about young Macdonald, who has bad taste to prefer the pig’s conversation to ours, and settle down to a comfortable chat. I am amazed to find my host so well-informed as to affairs. These people are far from civilisation, and cut off from the outer world, yet, in spite of this, Alec can hold his own with Tony, and gives his opinion on current topics – holding to his opinion with respectful firmness when Tony differs from him. They discuss the effect of tariffs, unemployment, and disarmament, while Mrs. Macdonald makes tea, and sets out large plates of scones and crisp homemade oatcakes on a snowy cloth. When all is ready the younger Alec is retrieved from the pigsty, and placed upon a high wooden chair to have his tea. But the tears roll down his cheeks whenever he looks at us, and at last I can bear it no longer and beseech his parents to take pity on him. ‘Couldn’t he have his tea somewhere else?’ I suggest.

  ‘Och, he is a foolish boy!’ says his mother. ‘He does not know when he is well off.’

  ‘He is not used to taking his tea with company present,’ adds his father.

  ‘It’s proud and happy he should be to be taking tea with a grand lady and gentleman,’ says his mother. But the younger Alec is so obviously neither proud nor happy that, at last, he is permitted to retire under the table to finish his meal. Alec is full of excuses for his offspring, but Mrs. Macdonald is quite unperturbed, and, having given him his mug of milk warm from the cow and provided him with a large, jammy scone, she forgets all about him.

  We leave the menfolk to their barren discussion anent disarmament, and discourse together about the more important matters of every day. I am interested to hear about Mrs. Macdonald’s life, and she is interested in telling me. Gart-na-Druim is ten miles from the nearest village (or clachan) and the butcher only calls twice a week. Fortunately the farm is practically self-supporting; they have their own butter and eggs, of course, and plenty of fish when Alec can get time to catch them. Yes, it’s lonely in the long dark winters she comes from Oban way, and found it very quiet at first – sometimes the farm is cut off from the outer world for weeks at a time. There was a big snow three years ago, and they ran out of oil and candles. That wasn’t very nice, Mrs. Macdonald says, because it was dark at four o’clock, and they just had to go to bed. Wee Alec was a baby then, and everything was very difficult. ‘But there was fun in it too,’ she adds, with a twinkle in her eye. ‘Alec took a bite of soap in the dark, he was thinking it was cheese – och, I’ll not forget that in a hundred years! I could not be seeing his face, but I could be hearing what he was saying well enough. Well, after that, I am laying in a store of candles every winter.’

  ‘It must be lonely, when Alec is out all day,’ I suggest.

  ‘Well, it is, then,’ she agrees. ‘It is lonely in the winter, but the summer is very nice. Alec’s sisters come for their holidays – Alec’s sisters are in good positions in Glasgow, they are very nice – and it is a wonder how the time will be flying past with all there is to do. It is just one thing and then another all day long. And wee Alec is a very nice companion now it is not often he is foolish like today.’

  The men are still deep in talk, so Mrs. Macdonald offers to show me round the farm.

  ‘Don’t be long, Hester,’ says Tony as he sees us depart. ‘We must start back in half an hour or Mrs. Loudon will be sending out a search party.’

  I follow my hostess out of the door, and she shows me round with an air, half-deprecating and half-proud, which I find very attractive. She is indeed an attractive creature, with her dark hair and milky complexion. Her voice is low and soft, and she knows when to speak and when to be silent.

  I feel that she is a little shy (from being so isolated from her kind) but there is no awkwardness in her manner. She is both simple and dignified, with the reserve of a great lady and the friendliness of a child.

  ‘
This is a great day for Alec,’ she says, as we inspect the dairy, a small but spotlessly clean shed in the shadow of an overhanging rock. ‘I’ll not be hearing the end of this day for long.’

  Small Alec follows us timidly; he is a beautiful child, and I am able to praise his looks to his mother with an easy conscience.

  ‘Och, he’s well enough,’ she replies, looking down at her son with adoring pride. ‘He’s well enough if his father would not be wasting him the livelong day. His father is thinking there’s no child in the world but him, and it’s trouble enough I have with the two of them, so it is.’

  My efforts to speak to Alec, the younger, meet with blank looks, and I conclude that he is still too frightened of me to reply to my blandishments.

  ‘Do not be troubling about him, Mrs. Christie,’ says his mother. ‘He is not very good at the English yet; it is the Gaelic we do be speaking to him.’

  I try him with a bar of chocolate, which I discover in the pocket of my coat, and find, to my delight, that he seems to understand this quite easily and to know exactly what to do with it.

  The cows are grazing on a steep piece of pasture land upon the hill, but we inspect their byre. We then move on to another shed, from whence issues a strange smell of burning and clouds of smoke. Mrs. Macdonald opens the door, and reveals rows of fish hanging on lines across a smouldering fire – it is here that she cures the fish ready for the market in the city. I have often eaten kippers and smoked fish, of course, but I never realised that this was the way they were prepared – I never even wondered how they became kippers and smoked fish, though I suppose I must have known, if I had thought about the matter seriously, that they could not have come out of the sea in that condition.

  The pigsty is our next stop. There is something about the pink nakedness of a pig that revolts me. I could never extend my friendship to a pig, however sweet its disposition might be. But little Alec is of a different mind. He speaks to it in fond accents quite unintelligible to me, and the pig (obviously a Celtic pig) lifts its ugly snout and grunts back at him.

  ‘Indeed she is all but human,’ says Mrs. Macdonald indulgently, and I realise, quite suddenly, that this is one of the reasons I don’t like her.

  It is now my turn to be informative, so we sit down on a log of wood in the warm sunshine, and I try to answer Mrs. Macdonald’s questions about life in the army. I tell her about the married families and their communal existence, and how they move from place to place as they follow the drum. I tell her about India – the heat, and the hordes of native servants and the great troopships packed with women and children. She listens with wide eyes, and sometimes she says: ‘That would be very nice, so it would,’ and sometimes she says, with a little cry of horror, ‘Och, that would not be nice at all!’ So the time passes very pleasantly, and wee Alec plays round the yard, and falls down and hurts himself and is comforted with strange soft words, and runs off to play again.

  Tony and Alec are now seen approaching, and I realise that it is getting late. With great difficulty we refuse more tea – this time with kippers Mrs. Macdonald declares that she could have it ready in a moment. Fortunately, Tony is clever enough to refuse it without hurting our hostess’s feelings, and I feel not for the first time that Tony should have been an ambassador; his diplomacy has been wasted as a mere major in His Majesty’s Army.

  We tear ourselves away, and big Alec walks down the hill with us to see us start. He is going out fishing tonight, for the gulls diving in the bay are indicative of a shoal of fish; he points out his boat, which is rocking lazily in a small cove at the mouth of the burn.

  ‘A good night for it,’ Tony says. ‘I wish I could come out with you, Alec.’

  ‘I wish you could then, Major,’ replies Alec fervently.

  Once more the sea has changed, and long rollers are coming in from the west, long lazy rollers, with the sun glinting on their glassy slopes. The sky is blue, tinged with palest mauve, and far away behind the islands there is a bank of purple cloud.

  ‘It’s blowing up,’ Tony says.

  ‘It is, then,’ agrees Alec. ‘I will be trying for them off the Black Rock tonight you will be remembering the Black Rock, Major?’

  ‘We always got a basket there.’

  ‘Och, those were days! I would like wee Alec to have days like those ’

  Tony says: ‘Well, good luck to the fishing, Alec.’

  There is a deep undercurrent of feeling beneath the bald simplicity of their words. They understand each other these two as only those who have shared pleasures and hardships can understand each other. Memories, grave and gay, bind them together in a comradeship which needs no words, no outward expression; a comradeship more faithful than love, more lasting than life.

  Soon we are breasting the steep hill, leaving behind us the sea, the white sands, and the cluster of dark pines. I look back and wave to Alec a dwindling figure on the white road with the sun shining on his bared head then we pass over the crest of the hill, and the valley disappears.

  Today has revealed still another Tony the Tony that Alec knows and worships – perhaps this is the real Tony at last.

  Twelfth June

  It is a hot, stuffy, thundery sort of afternoon too hot to do anything except lie in a deck chair. The ladies have retired to their rooms saying they had letters to write, but I feel convinced they are both dreaming peacefully upon their beds. Only Betty seems to have any energy. She declares her intention of bathing in the loch, and hops off, followed by the faithful Annie bearing bath towels.

  Guthrie is reading the Sunday paper, which has just arrived I look at him, and marvel that anyone can find the affairs of the world so important on a hot Sunday afternoon. Papers are tiring things to read at the best of times, they make your arms ache, and you can usually pick up the most interesting pieces of news from the general conversation.

  ‘ “Organdie has come into its own,”’ reads Guthrie solemnly. ‘How interesting that is! Who or what is organdie, Hester? “Lady Furbelow wore a charming frock of Old Tile, with a partridge cowl” good heavens, is it a woman or a bungalow they’re describing? “The Honourable Mrs. Killjoy had chosen ginger lainage with chestnut trimmings for her ensemble” makes me think of Christmas. “The Countess of Nockhem was gowned in foam” – how cold she must have been! – “She carried an afternoon pochette in Nile rayon. Her daughter was charming in Mallard crêpe with a Sahara cape and gauntlets” – In other words she was a duck in the desert – “Mrs. Deff Mewte chose sage” – but not onions – “how lucky she is to be a true platinum blonde!” ’

  I can’t help laughing feebly at his disgusted expression.

  ‘But really, Hester,’ he says seriously. ‘Who on earth writes tripe like that? They ought to be drowned. It’s simply awful, and on the next page you read “Young Girl Murdered on a Yorkshire Moor, Doctor’s Examination Reveals – ” Ah, hum, yes – very sad–’

  I make horrified noises; it is really much too hot to argue with Guthrie. The sun blazes down. Silence falls. Presently the paper, with its curious items of news, slips on to the ground with a soft rustle Guthrie is asleep and I am not far off it.

  Suddenly I open my eyes and see Jean coming towards us across the lawn, followed by a large bulgy figure in white lace for a moment I think that I am dreaming, but only for a moment. Mrs. McTurk is too substantial to be the figment of a dream. I have only time to kick Guthrie on the shin perhaps rather harder than I intend before composing my face into a false smile and going forward to greet her.

  Guthrie leaps to his feet with a muffled curse – it is extraordinary how quickly he wakes – and gazes about him in bewilderment.

  ‘Naughty, naughty,’ says Mrs. McTurk, wagging her finger at me in a skittish manner as she totters up to me on her spike-like heels. ‘You’ve been here ten days and never come over to see us. Mr. McTurk is quite hurt.’

  Guthrie is still in a dazed condition, and evidently imagines that this is one of my bosom friends. ‘I’m sure if Mother had
known – ’ he says, offering her his chair. ‘I’m afraid we’ve been very selfish with Hester – fishing and all that – we’ve kept her all to ourselves. But you must stay to tea. Mother will be down quite soon, and she will be delighted to see you. We must arrange something – fishing or – or something.’

  Mrs. McTurk beams at him. ‘And you must all come to dinner at the hotel with Mr. McTurk and I,’ she says hospitably. ‘Mr. McTurk will order a special dinner for you – it doesn’t matter to us how many of you there are.’

  This wholesale invitation takes Guthrie slightly aback. He looks at me for guidance, whereupon I immediately signal ‘washout,’ still smiling brightly at our unexpected visitor. This signal has proved most valuable to Tim and myself on similar occasions, and I can only hope that the same code of signals obtains in the Senior Service.

  ‘That’s very kind,’ Guthrie says. ‘Very kind indeed, only Mother scarcely ever goes out to dinner nowadays – and we have an old cousin staying with us now,’ he drops his voice confidentially, ‘a widow, you know – so sad – ’

  ‘But you will come – er – Captain Loudon,’ says Mrs. MacTurk persuasively. ‘You and Mrs. Christie, and any other young people that you like. Mr. McTurk will send the Rolls for you any evening. We’ve got to know some cheery people at the hotel, and it really would be a cheery evening. Mr. Stuart Thompson is a real comic – you should see him take off the head waiter, and we can have Miss Baker too – I know she’s a friend of yours.’

  It is at this moment, when Guthrie and I are at our wits’ end for some plausible excuse, that Mrs. Falconer appears upon the horizon. She looks fresh and bright, and has, quite obviously, had a refreshing snooze. We signal to her like shipwrecked mariners, and she comes towards us, tripping lightly over the grass.

  ‘Oh!’ she exclaims. ‘How very interesting to meet you, Mrs. MacTaggart! I wonder if you are related to some perfectly delightful people great friends of my parents who used to live at Brighton. They had a large estate in Scotland, of course, but he was rather a delicate man and the doctors advised Brighton. We used to call upon them whenever we went there – which was pretty frequently because Mama found the air so beneficial to her asthma. Mama was not very strong, and was quite unable to chaperon us girls to the balls, so we used to go with Mrs. MacTaggart and her daughters. We were all so amused on one occasion when a gentleman came up to her and asked if we were all her daughters. “There is a great family resemblance, Madame,” he said. How we laughed! For of course we were not related to her at all. It is so strange that nowadays girls do not require chaperons. I often wonder how they have the courage to walk into the ballroom by themselves. I heard a very ridiculous story the other day about a chaperon and a curate. I can’t remember what it was she said to him, but he replied something about a dodo – comparing her to a dodo. Probably her appearance reminded him of the picture of the dodo in Alice in Wonderland. It was an excellent story, we all laughed heartily, I remember. Papa always used to say “laugh and grow fat” I dare say you are fond of a good laugh, Mrs. MacTaggart,’ says Mrs. Falconer, with an eye on our guest’s ample proportions.