Well, Feet had prowled round to the back of the Manse, and had stopped to give his head a bit scratch, when sudden the window above him opened and afore he could move there came a bit splash and a pailful of water was slung down his back. He spluttered and hoasted and his lamp went out, when he came to himself he was shaking and shivering, but the Manse was silent and still as the grave. He thought for a while of arresting the lot—ay, he would in the morning, by God; and turned and went home, running home stretches to change his bit sark, in case he might catch a cold from his wetting.
And, would you believe it, next day as he sat in his office writing up his reports, his mother said, Here’s a woman to see you. And Feet looked up and he knew the quean, Else Queen, the maid at the Manse it was; ’twas said she’d been brought up as a lassie in Segget, though her father had moved to Fordoun since then, now she was fair a great brute of a woman, with red eyes and hair, and cheeks of like tint. And she said, Are you Feet? and Feet reddened a bit. I’m Simon Leslie the policeman of Segget.——Well, I’m the person that half-drowned you last night; and I’ve come to tell you when you want the same, just prowl round the Manse at such a like hour.
And she didn’t stop only at Feet then, either. She made for Ag Moultrie and told her the same, she would have her sacked from her job at the school; and Ag broke down and just Roared and Grat, she said she’d never said an ill word of any, but what was the minister’s wife doing on the Kaimes? Looking at the hills and the sunrise, you fool. Did you never hear yet of folk that did that? And Ag said she hadn’t; and who ever had? Folk shook their heads when they heard that tale, if the woman at the Manse wasn’t fair just a bitch, damn’t! you could only suppose she was daft.
DITE PEAT HEARD the story and fair mocked at Feet. What, you that were once in the barracks? he said, and lived in Dundon, and can’t manage a woman? And he told a story, ’twas down in the Arms, about how once when he was living in London, he’d come there, he said, on a leave from the Front, he hired a bit lodging near Waterloo.——And old Leslie that was standing by said Eh? Would that be the place the battle was at? and Dite Peat said, Oh, away to hell, a coarse way to speak to an old bit man.——Well, Dite had put up in his London room, he saw the landlady was a gey bit quean, fair young and fair sonsy, her man at the Front. And he tried this way and that to get round her, keen for a woman but not a damn fool like some that came back on leave from the Front, they’d spend all their silver on whores, but not Dite, he wanted a gratis cuddle and squeeze. Well, he waited and waited about for a bit, and half-thought of getting the woman at night, she was only English and they’re tinks by nature, it wasn’t as though she was decent and Scotch. But she locked up her door and went early to bed till there came one night that he heard her scraich, and he louped from his bed and he went to the door, and there she was standing down in the hall, in her nightgown, the tink, and white as a sheet. She’d a telegram held in her hands as she stood, and was gowking and gobbling at the thing like a cow, choked on the shaws of a Mearns swede. And Dite called down What’s wrong with you, then? and she laughed and laughed as she looked up at him, she was young, with a face like a bairn, a fool, white, with no guts, like the English queans. And she said Oh, it’s just that my husband’s dead, and laughed and laughed, and Dite licked his lips, it fair was a chance, he saw it and took it. Well, she wasn’t so bad, but far over-thin; and God! she was fair a scunner with her laughing, every now and then she would laugh like an idiot, he supposed that the English did that in their pleasure. So he took her a clour or so in the lug, to learn her manners, and that quietened her down. Oh ay, she was tasty enough in her way.
Some folk in the Arms asked what happened next, did he bide there long? Dite said Damn the fears. I nipped out next morning, afore she awoke. She might have tried on to get me to marry her. And he went on to tell what tinks were the English, they’d rob right and left if you gave them the chance. He gave them damn few, but once out in France——
That fair was a sickener, you put down your glass, or finished the dram and rose up and went out; and Will Melvin looked mad as he well could look, Dite sitting and telling a story like that, sickening customers away from their drinks. But you couldn’t do much with a billy like Dite, a dangerous devil when he got in a rage. He looked a tink though he kept a shop, he and his brother, wee Peter the tailor, hadn’t spoken for years, though they lived next door. His father had lived with Dite till he died, Dite saw to that dying, some said helped it on. The old man had been one of the road-mender childes, he worked with old Smithie and that fool John Muir, he’d come back with his wages at the end of the week and maybe he’d have spent a shilling on tobacco. And soon’s he saw that Dite Peat would fly up and take him a belt in the face, most like, and send him to bed without any meat; and as he lay dying the old man cried to see his other son, wee Peter, the tailor. But Dite snapped Be quiet, damn you and your wants. You’ll see him in hell soon enough with yourself. That was hardly the way to speak to your father, him dying and all; and some folk stopped then going to his shop, spinners and the like, they said Dite should be shot; and collected below his windows one night and spoke of taking him out for a belting. But Feet, the policeman, came up and cried Now, you’ll need to be moving if you’re standing about here; and the spinners forgot the thing they’d come on, and took to tormenting the bobby instead, they carried him down the Drumlithie road and took off his breeks and filled him with whisky; and left the poor childe lying drunk in the ditch; and went back and fairly raised hell in the Arms, the Blaster and Blasphemer near scraiched herself hoarse, the spinners had new got a rise in their pay.
Ah well, that was how Dite Peat had escaped, spinners and their like wouldn’t trade with him now, though most other folk weren’t foolish as that. You went on as before and waited the time when he and Ake Ogilvie would yet get to grips, Ake hated Dite Peat as a dog hates a rat.
CHRIS FOUND IT took nearly a fortnight to settle, the whole of the Manse wanted scrubbing and cleaning, she and Else Queen were at it all hours, Robert laughed and locked himself in his room. But he came out to help rig the curtains on rods, both he and Else were handy and tall, they spent the most of one long afternoon tacked up to the walls like flies in glue; and Chris handed up rods and curtains and pictures, and this and that, and hammers and nails; and Else and Robert would cling to the walls, by their eyebrows sometimes, or so it would seem, and push and tug and hammer and pant. Else was willing and strong and enjoyed it, she’d poise on the edge of a mantel and cry Will that do, Mem? and near twist her neck from her shoulders to catch a look at some picture or other. Chris would cry Mind! and Else: Och, I’m fine! and nearly capsize from her ledge, and young Ewan, watching below, give a yell of delight.
But at last all things were trig and set neat. That evening, with Ewan bathed and to bed, Chris found Else yawning wide as a door, and sent her off to her bed as well. Chris felt she was almost too tired to rest as she sat in a chair in Robert’s room; and Robert knew and came and made love; and that was nice, and she felt a lot better. In the quiet and hush of the evening below you could see the touns drift blue with their smoke, as though it was they that moved, not the smoke. Robert sat in his shirt-sleeves, smoking his pipe, planning his campaign to conquer Segget, as Chris supposed, but she closed her eyes. In a minute she’d get up and go to her bed.
But Robert jumped up sudden and picked up his coat. I know! Let’s go and see Segget at night.
Chris thought If it wasn’t that I am in love—Goodness, how far I could tell him to go! But she said not a word of that, but went down, and he groped in the dark and found her coat, and she his, and next they were out on the shingle, it crunch-crunched under the tread of their feet, the moon had come and was sailing a sky, lilac, so bright that the Manse stood clear as they turned and looked back, the yews etched in ink, beyond them the kirk that hadn’t a steeple, set round with its row upon row of quiet graves, the withered grass kindled afresh to green, in long, shadowy tufts that whispered like ghosts.
An owlet hooted up on the hill and through the quiet of the night round about there came a thing like a murmur unended, unbegun, continuous, the hum of the touns—and that was queer, most folk were in bed! Chris thought a thought and put it from her mind—an awful woman to have wedded a minister!
The she slipped her arm in Robert’s, beside him, Segget stood splashed in the light of the moon like a hiddle of houses a bairn would build. Their feet were quiet on the unpaved street, they smelt the reek of the burning wood, and Robert said sudden, his voice not a whisper, It’s like walking a town of the dead, forgotten, a ruined place in the light of the moon. Can you think that folk’ll do that sometime, far off some night in the times to be, maybe a lad and his lass, as we are, and wonder about Segget and the things they did and said and believed in those little houses? And the moon the same and the hills to watch.
Chris thought it most likely they would find these enough, the hills and the moon, and not bother about Segget, that lad and that lass in the times to be. So they passed quiet down through the wind of East Wynd, over to the right the hiddling of lanes where the spinners bade, nearer the road and black in the moon the school and the schoolhouse set round with dykes. They passed a joiner’s shop to the left, Chris peered at the name and saw alec ogilvie, then came to a place with shops all around, a grocer’s shop with d. peat on the sill, fat lettering over a shoemaker’s— hogg; and a narrow little front that barked peter peat. Beyond, to the right, a lane wound down to the post-office kept by MacDougall Brown, so Chris had been told, she hadn’t been there.
East Wynd to the left was now bare of houses, beyond its dyke was the garden of Grant. And once they heard through the night a crying, some bairn frightened or waked in the dark, and a voice that called it back to its sleep, all in a drowsy hush through the night. There’s honeysuckle somewhere, said Chris, and stopped to smell, as they came to the Square, over here by the saddler’s shop.
But Robert was giving no heed to smells, he had stopped and he said My God, what a slummock! And Chris saw the thing that had now ta’en his eyes, the War Memorial of Segget toun, an angel set on a block of stone, decent and sonsy in its stone night-gown, goggling genteel away from the Arms, as though it wouldn’t, for any sum you named, ever condescend to believe there were folk that took a nip to keep out the chill…. Chris thought it was fine, a pretty young lass. But then as she looked at it there came doubts, it stood there in memory of men who had died, folk of this Segget but much the same still, she supposed, as the folk she had known in Kinraddie, folk who had slept and waked and had sworn, and had lain with women and had lain with pain, and walked in the whistle of the storms from the Mounth, and been glad, been mad, and done dark, mad things, been bitter for failure, and tender and kind, with the kindness deep in the dour Scots blood. Folk of her own, those folk who had died, out in the dark, strange places of earth, and they set up this to commemorate them—this, this quean like a constipated calf!
Robert said May God forgive them this horror! And look at the star on its pantomine wand. But still it’s a star; not a bundle of grapes. Folk’ll think it a joke when we’ve altered things, this trumpery flummery they put up in stone!
His dream again he could alter things here! But what kind of change, Robert, what can you do? Things go on the same as ever they were, folk neither are better nor worse for the War. They gossip and claik and are good and bad, and both together, mixed up and down. This League of the willing folk of Segget—who’ll join it or know what you want or you mean?
He leaned by the angel, looked down at her, smiled cool and sure of his vision to-night. Chris, if ever we’ve a child, you and I, and when it grows up it finds that that’s true—what you’ve said—then I hope it’ll come here with Ewan, and a host of others of their own generation, and smash this Memorial into smithereens for the way that we failed them and left God out. Change? It’s just that men must change, or perish here in Segget, as all over the earth. Necessity’s the drive, the policeman that’s coming to end the squabbling stupidities of old——
Then he laughed. What, sleepy as that? Let’s go back.
HE FAIR HAD plenty on his hands that summer, Feet, the policeman, as the days wore to Autumn. First, ’twas the trouble in the roadman’s place, old Smithie and the hay he nicked from coles and carted home at night to his kye. His house stood side by side with John Muir’s, both under the lee of the kirk and the Manse, their back doors opened out on the land that stretched east under the scowl of the hills to the lands that were farmed by Meiklebogs. Muir kept no stock and he bought his milk, but old Smith on the chap of dawn would be out, up out of his bed and round to the byre, where his cows and his two young calves were housed, none knew where he bought the fodder to feed them; and that wasn’t surprising, he stole the damned lot.
He’d look this way and that, he’d a face like a tyke, thin, and ill-made, with a bushy moustache; and then, as swack as you like he would loup, canny and careful in over a fence, and make up a birn of somebody’s hay; and be back and breaking his stones as before when the next bit motor appeared on the road. Syne at night he would load the lot on his bike and pedal canny without any light, and nip up through Segget as the Arms bar opened and folk had gone in for a bit of a nip, none out to see; and syne he was home, and the cows, as hungry as hawks, would low, old Smithie would give a bit low as well, and stuff them with hay and pat at their shoulders, daft-like, he near was crack about kye, he liked the breath of the creatures, he said.
Folk said that the cows couldn’t be so particular, else they’d fair get a scunner at his bit breath. For he liked a dram and he took what he liked, he’d no more than peek round the door of an evening (though the house was his and all the gear in it) than his daughter would cry Here’s the old devil home! and her bairns, the bairns of Bruce the porter, would laugh and call him ill names as they liked. And he’d smile and stand there and mumble a while, though he wasn’t a fool in the ordinary way; and syne he’d go down to the Arms in a rage and swear that before another night came he’d have Bruce and his birn flung out of his doors, he was damned if he’d stand their insultings longer. Well, damned he was, for he kept them on, folk would once kittle up with excitement when they heard old Smithie get wild and say that, they’d ’gree with him solemn and say ’twas a shame for a man of Segget to stand what he did; and they’d follow him home when the Arms closed down and stand by the door to hear the din. But all that they’d hear would be Ellen his daughter, fat as a cow at the calving time, cry Feuch, you old brute, and where have you been? And Smithie would just mumble and gang to his bed.
He’d another daughter as well as his Ellen, he’d slaved to give her an education; and faith! so he’d done, and made her a teacher. She lived in Dundon and never came south. And the only thing Smithie said that he’d gotten, for all his pains and his chaving for her, was one cigarette: and that wouldn’t light.
Well, that Saturday afternoon in July, old Smithie was wearied with chapping at stones, and instead of stealing some hay outbye and rowing it home strapped over his bike, he got on the bike and pedalled near home, till he came to the new-coled hay of Meiklebogs. And old Smithie got off and lighted his pipe and made on he’d got off for nothing but that. There wasn’t a soul to be seen round about, the park was hidden, and old Smithie was quick, he nipped in over and pinched some hay, and was back with the stuff strapped on to his bike—so quick that you’d fair have thought it a wonder that his corduroy trousers didn’t take fire. But no sooner was he gone than Dalziel jumped up, he’d been hiding all the while in the lee of a cole; and he ran to the close and got his own bike, and followed old Smithie and shadowed him home. Then he went down the toun and collected Feet, and they came on old Smithie as he entered the byre, the bundle of stolen hay in his hands.
And Feet cried out Mr Smith, I want you; and old Smithie looked round and near dropped the birn. Ay, do you so? he quavered, and syne the old whiskered creature fairly went daft, he threw the birn in Meiklebogs’ face. Take your damned
stuff, I wouldn’t poison my kye with such dirt!
Feet said, Well, I doubt this’ll be a case, but old Smithie was dafter than ever by then. He said, Make it two, and to hell with you both! and went striding into his house as he hadn’t, striding that way, gone in for years. His daughter, that sumph that was Mistress Bruce, fair jumped as she heard the bang of the door, she cried You nasty old wretch, what’s the din? Old Smithie was fairly boiling by then, he said, Do you know who you’re speaking to, Ellen? and she said, Ay, fine, you disgrace to Segget; and at that old Smithie had her over his knee, afore she could blink, she was stunned with surprise. She gave a bit scraich and she tried to wriggle, but she’d grown over fat and old Smithie was strong. And damn’t! if he didn’t take down her bit things and scone her so sore she grat like a bairn, her own bairns made at old Smithie and kicked him, but he never let on, just leathered his quean till his hand was sore, not so sore as her dowp. That’s a lesson for you, you bap-faced bitch, he said, and left her greeting on the floor, and went down to the Arms, and near the first man that he met there was Bruce, old Smithie by then like a fighting cock.
Bruce was a dark and a sour-like childe, but he looked near twice as sour in a minute when old Smithie took him a crack in the jaw. What’s that for? Bruce cried, and Smithie said Lip, and came at him again, the daft-like old tyke. Well, you couldn’t expect but that Bruce would be raised, he was knocking Smithie all over the bar when Mistress Melvin came tearing in. She cried in her thin Aberdeen, What’s this? Stop your Blasting and Blaspheming in here. Bruce said, I haven’t sworn a damn word, she said That’s enough, take your tink fights out, sossing up the place with blood and the like. If you’ve any quarrel to settle with your relations, go out and settle it where folk can’t see.
A Scots Quair Page 36