Jock Cronin said sneering-like, Could you so? Could you show me five shillings? and the childe turned red, he hadn’t even that on him at the time, it had been no more than an empty speak, and he felt real mad to be shown up so. So he took John Cronin a crack on the jaw, by God it sounded like the crack of doom. Jock Cronin went staggering back among the spinners, and then the spinners and ploughmen were at it, in a minute as bonny a fight on as ever you saw in your life at Segget Show. You’d be moving off the Show-ground quiet with your quean, till you saw it start and then you’d run forward, and ask what was up, and not stop to listen, for it fair looked tempting; so you’d take a kick at the nearest backside, hard as you liked, and next minute some brute would be bashing in your face, and you bashing his, and others coming running and joining; and somebody trotting to Melvin’s tent and bringing out Feet to stop the fight.
He was well loaded up with drink by then, Feet, and he’d only a bit of his uniform on. But he ran to the fighters and he cried Hold on! What’s all this jookery-packery now? Stop your fighting and get away home.
But the coarse brutes turned on poor Feet instead, it was late that night when he crawled from the ditch and blinked his eyes and felt his head, the moon high up in a cloudless sky, the field deserted and a curlew crying.
ALL THE FOLK had gone long ere that, even the youngest and daftest of them gone, home from the Segget Show in their pairs, there were folk at that minute on the Laurencekirk road, a lad and his lass on their whirring bikes, the peesies wheeping about in the moon, the childe with his arm around the quean’s shoulder, the whir of the wheels below their feet, the quean with her cheek against the hand that rested shy on her shoulder, so, home before them but still far off; and the dark came down and they went into it, into their years and to-morrows, they’d had that.
Some went further in business, if less far in mileage. Near Skite a farmer went out to his barn, early next morning, and what did he see? Two childes and two lasses asleep in his hay. And he was sore shocked and went back for his wife, and she came and looked and was shocked as well, and if they’d had a camera they’d have taken photographs, they were so delighted and shocked to see two queans that they knew in such a like way, they’d be able to tell the story about them all the years that they lived on earth; and make it a tit-bit in hell forbye.
Cis Brown had asked her father MacDougall if she could stay on late at the dance; and he’d said that she might, his favourite was Cis; and so she had done and at the dance end she had looked round about and had blushed as she wondered would any one ask her to walk home to Segget? She was over young, she supposed, for all that, a college quean with her lessons and career, and not to waste her time on a loon. And she wished that she wasn’t, and then looked up and saw a spinner, a boy, beside her, about the same age as herself, she thought. He was tall like a calf, and shy and thin, he looked at her and he didn’t look—Are you going up home?
She said she was and she thought as she said it, What an awful twang those spinners speak! She was half-ashamed to walk home with one. But so they got clear of the stamash of the fighting, saying never a word as they went through the grass. Then the boy gave a cough, Are you in a hurry? and Cis said No, not a very great hurry, and he said Let’s go down by the Meiklebogs corn and home through the moor to the Segget road.
So she went with him, quiet, by the side of the park, the path so narrow that he went on ahead, the moon was behind them up in the Mounth, below them stirred the smell of the stalks, bitter and strange to a quean from Segget, she bent and plucked up one in the dark, and nibbled at it and looked at the boy. Behind them the noise of the Show grew faint: only for sound the swish of the corn.
Then the path grew broader and they walked abreast, he said sudden, but quiet, You’re Cis Brown from MacDougall’s shop, aren’t you? Cis said Yes, not asking his name, he could tell her if he liked, but she wasn’t to ask. But he didn’t tell, just loped by her side, long-legged, like a deer or a calf, she thought, leggy and quick and quiet They heard as they passed in that cool, quiet hour the scratch of the patridges up in the moor, once a dim shape started away from a fence with a thunderous clop of hooves in the dark, a Meiklebogs horse that their footsteps had feared.
Syne they came to the edge of the moor, it was dark, here the moon shone through the branched horns of the broom, the whins tickled you legs and Cis for a while couldn’t find her way till the boy said Wait. I know this place, I often come here. And his hand found hers and she felt in his palm the callouses worn by the spindles there, he’d some smell of the jute about him as well, as had all the spinner folk of the mills.
Water gleamed under the moon in a pool. Cis stopped to breathe and the boy did the same, she saw him half turn round in the moonlight and felt suddenly frightened of all kinds of things—only a minute, frightened and curious, quick-strung all at once, what would he do?
But he did not a thing but again take her hand, still saying nothing, and they went through the moor, the low smoulder of Segget was suddenly below them, and below their feet sudden the ring of the road. She took her hand out of his then. So they went past the Memorial up through The Close to the door of the house of MacDougall Brown; and Cis stopped and they boy did the same, and she knew him, remembered him, his name was Dod Cronin. And he looked at her, and looked away again; and again, as on the moor, queer and sweet, something troubled her, she had never felt it before for a soul—compassion and an urgent shyness commingled; sixteen herself and he about the same, daft and silly to feel anything like this! He slipped his hand slow up her bare arm, shy himself, he said something, she didn’t know what. She saw him flush as she didn’t answer, he was feared, the leggy deer of a loon!
And she knew at once the thing he had asked. She put up her hand to the hand on her arm, and next minute she found she was being kissed with lips as shy, unaccustomed as hers. And a minute after she was inside the door of MacDougall’s shop, and had the door closed, and stood quivering and quivering alone in the dark, wanting to laugh and wanting to cry, and wanting this minute to last forever.
ELSE QUEEN OF the Manse had held home with Dalziel. As they gained the road he turned round and said, with a canny glance back to where folk were fighting: Would you like to come ben the way for some tea? Else was still in a rage, she didn’t know why, or with whom, or how it began, so she snapped: No, I wouldn’t, then. Do you know what the hour is? Meiklebogs looked shylike—she knew that he did, she could guess the soft-like look on his face, she felt half inclined to take it a clout—and said: Oh ay, but I thought that maybe you would like to slocken up after the dancing about.
She might as well do as the old fool said, even though there’d be no one else at Meiklebogs. Oh ay, she had heard the gossip of Segget, about Dalziel and his various housekeepers, though he did his own cooking now, as folk knew: It was said that two hadn’t bidden a night, two others had come to the Meiklebogs alone and left in their due time, each with a bairn, a little bit present from the shy Meiklebogs. Well, that didn’t vex Else, the stories were lies, old Meiklebogs—he was over shy ever to find out what a woman was like, unless it was out of a picture book, maybe: and even then it was like he would blush the few remaining hairs from his head. And even were there something in the Segget gossip she’d like to see the cretaure alive that would take advantage of her—just let him!
So she nodded, All right, I’ll come up for a cup. Meiklebogs said Grand, and the two went on, the moon was behind them, in front was the smell from the coles out still in the hayfield, tall, they’d had a fine crop that year of the hay. As they came near the house there rose a great barking, and Meiklebogs ‘meikle collie came out, Meiklebogs cried Heel! and the beast drew in, wurring and sniffing as they passed through the close. In the kitchen ’twas dark and close as a cave, the window fast-snecked, the fire a low glow. Meiklebogs lit a candle, Sit down, will you, Else? I’ll blow up the fire and put on the kettle.
So he did, and Else took off her hat, and sat down and looked at the dus
ty old kitchen, with its floor of cement and its eight-day clock, ticking with a hirpling tick by the wall; and the photo of Lord Kitchener that everyone had heard of, over the fireplace, a dour-looking childe. ’Twas back in the War-years that Meiklebogs had got it, he’d cycled a Sunday over to Banchory, to a cousin of his there, an old woman-body: and she’d had the photo new-bought at a shop. Well, Meiklebogs had fair admired the fine thing, he thought it right bonny and said that so often that the woman-body cousin said at last he could have it. But it was over-big to be carried in his pouch, and the evening had come down with a spleiter of rain. But that didn’t bog Meiklebogs, faith, no! He took off his jacket and tied the damn thing over his shoulder with a length of tow; and syne he put on his jacket above it. And the cousin looked on, and nodded her head: Ay, the old devil’s been in a pickle queer places. But I’m thinking that’s the queerest he’s ever been in.
The dresser was as thick with dust as a desert, Else bent in the light of the candle above it, and wrote her name there, and Dalziel smiled shy. Will you get down two cups from the hooks up there?
Else did, and brought saucers as well, he gleyed at them: Faith, I don’t use them. I’m not gentry, like. Else said: Oh, aren’t you? Well, I am.
He poured the tea out and sat down to drink it. And faith! he found a good use for his saucer, he poured the tea in it and drank that way, every now and then casting a sly look at Else as though he were a mouse and she was the cheese. But she didn’t care, leaning back in her chair, she was tired and she wondered why she’d come here, with this silly old mucker and his silly looks; and why Charlie had made such a fool of himself. Meiklebogs took another bit look at her then, she watched him, and then he looked at the window, and then he put out a hand, canny, on to her knee.
It was more than the hand, a minute after that, he louped on her as a crawly beast loups, something all hair and scales from the wall; or a black old monkey; she bashed him hard, right in the eye, just once, then he had her. She had thought she was strong, but she wasn’t, in a minute they had struggled half-way to the great box bed. She saw once his face in the light of the candle, and that made her near sick and she loosed her grip, he looked just as ever, canny and shy, though his hands upon her were like iron clamps. She cried You’re tearing my frock, he half-loosed her, he looked shy as ever, but he breathed like a beast.
Ah well, we’ll take the bit thing off, Else.
ROBERT HAD GONE to moil at his sermon; Chris heard the bang of the door upstairs. Ewan was in bed and already asleep, hours yet she supposed ere Robert came down. The kitchen gleamed in the light of the moon, bright clean and polished, with the stove a glow, she looked at that and looked at herself, and felt what she hoped wasn’t plain to be seen, sticky and warm with the Segget Show. She’d have a bath ere she went to bed.
The stove’s red eye winked as she opened the flue, and raked in the embers and set in fresh sticks; and on these piled coals and closed up the flue. In a little she heard the crack of the sticks, and went up the stairs to her room and Robert’s, and took off her dress and took off her shoes, not lighting a light; the moon was enough. The mahogany furniture rose red around, coloured in the moonlight, the bed a white sea, she sat on the edge and looked out at Segget, a ghostly place, quiet, except now and again with a bray of laughter borne on the wind as the door of the Arms opened and closed. Far down in the west, pale in the moon, there kindled a star that she did not know.
She stood up and went over and looked in the glass, and suddenly shivered, cold after the dancing; and drew the curtains and lighted the lamp, and took off her clothes in front of that other who watched and moved in the mirror’s mere. She saw herself tall, taller than of old, lithe and slim still with the brown V-shape down to the place between her breasts, she could follow the lines of the V with her finger. And she saw her face, high cheekboned and bronze, quiet and still with the mask of the years, her mouth too wide but she liked her teeth, she saw them now as she smiled at the thought her mouth was too wide! She loosed the pins in her hair and it fell, down to her knees, tickling her shoulders, faith! it was worse than a mane, a blanket, she’d cut it one day, if Robert would let her. She caught it aside and suddenly remembered a thing she’d forgot, forgotten for years, and looked for the dimple she once had had, and found it, there still, and saw her face flush faint as she minded, now that she thought of the thing at all, she’d been told that first night two years ago that the dimple was there—
Funny and queer that you were with a man! You did this and that and you lay in his bed, there wasn’t a thing of you he might not know, or you of him, from the first to the last. And you could speak of these things with him, and be glad, glad to be alive and be his, and sleep with your head in his shoulder’s nook, tickling his chin, you supposed, with your hair—you could do all that and blush at the memory of a daft thing said on your wedding night!
Then she remembered she’d wanted a bath. She seemed to have stood there dreaming for hours, and found her dressing-gown and her slippers, and went down the stairs and turned on the taps. The water came gurgling out with a steam, she saw her face in the shaving glass, and stared at it—something happening to-night?
She splashed for a little thinking of that, the water about her stung quick at first; she saw herself fore-shortened and fragile, but fair enough still, so she supposed—yes, she would think that if she were a man! She lifted an arm and the water ran down it, little pellets, they nested under her cheek; and ’twas then she thought of the thing she would do. Yes, she would do it this very night! … And because that wouldn’t bear thinking about, here, she splashed herself and got out, Robert’s mirror blinded in a cloud of steam. She opened the bathroom door and listened, there was no one to hear or see for this once, she caught up her gear and ran quick up the stairs, in the moving pattern of splashed moonlight high from the window set in the gable, and gave a gasp as she felt a hand on her shoulder, the arm came tight, she was kissed. Robert coming down had seen the light splash as she opened the bathroom door.
She struggled away, I’ve no clothes on!
He said that he’d half suspected that, teasing her a minute, then let her go. Then he said he’d go down and get ready their supper, and went lightly down the stairs as a lad, it was Chris who now stood still and looked down, high in her breast her heart beating fast. She would, and this very night she would, in spite of what he had told her and taught her!
She dressed and went down through the quiet of the Manse, Robert popped his fair pow round the edge of the door, Supper in the kitchen, or shall we be grand? She said she would like the kitchen as well and pushed him into a chair as she spoke, and took off Else’s apron he’d draped on his trousers, and set to the making of supper herself. He sighed and stretched out and lighted his pipe, and drew at it, looking out of the window. There’s something in the night—or is it in you? He stood up and walked to the window and peered, and came back and looked at Chris for a while; and put out a finger upon her forearm. Funny to think that was once monkey-hair!
She said that it wasn’t, whatever his ancestors had been, hers were decent, like Hairy Hogg’s, hers (they’d both heard the story). Robert chuckled over that as he sat down again, the only result of his sermon so far to drop a blot on the Provost’s escutcheon. Hopeless, the Provost, and most of the others, Geddes, poor chap, had mislaid his guts; but he’d form that Segget League even yet, wait till this young Stephen Mowat came home!
Chris asked when that was but Robert didn’t know, he thought very soon, then grew puzzled again. Funny, there really is something about, and Chris said Maybe, and keeked at him sly, as he sat there and puzzled, and restrained herself from suddenly and daftly cuddling him tight. When she opened the kitchen window wide there came a faint scent on the tide of the wind, from the garden, the jonquils and marigolds glowed faint and pale in the light of the moon.
Then Chris set the table and they both sat down, it was fine to work in her kitchen untrammelled, good though Else was as a gene
ral rule, if it wasn’t for the fact that the Manse was so big they could have done well without a maid here. She said that to Robert, he said Yes, I know, I feel that way myself—for to-night! As though I could turn our Segget myself into Augustine’s City of God …. Something in the night that’s making us like this, and stopped and stared, Why, Chris, you look different!
She said he was silly—or ’twas maybe the bath! Then she felt herself colour with his eyes upon her. He shook his head, An unusual bath!——A mental one? They’re uncommon in Segget.
He said That’s the first time I’ve ever heard you bitter, and she said she didn’t feel bitter, she was fine; and they washed up and dried in the moonlight quiet, together and content and yet more than that, once he brushed her shoulder as he went to and fro, carrying the dishes over to the dresser; and he stopped and scowled, sore-puzzled upon her, It must be that monkey-hair that’s electric!
And then they had finished and a mood came on Chris. Let’s go out in the garden. And they both went out in the honey-dark shadows that the hedgerow threw, warm, a little mist crept up from Segget, under the nets in the strawberry patches the berries were bending their heads full ripe, Chris knelt by a bed and found one that was big, and ate half herself, Robert the other, seeing it waiting there on her lips. And, as he laughed and kissed her for that, something caught them both to a silence, foolish and quiet by the strawberry beds. The rooks chirped drowsily up in the yews as they passed beneath to the sheltered wall where love-in-a-mist and forget-me-nots bloomed blue and soft even now in the night, under the wall that led to the kirkyard, just low enough for Chris to look over.
And so for a little she stopped and looked, that third Chris holding her body a while, how strange it was she stood here by Robert, so close that the warmth of his body warmed hers—when in such a short time she would die down there on a bit of land as deserted and left. They were gone, they were quiet, and the tears that were shed and the folk that came and the words that were said, were scattered and gone and they left in peace, finished and ended and all put by, the smell for them of forget-me-nots and the taste of a strawberry eaten at night and the kiss of lips that were hard and kind, and the thoughts of men that had held them in love and wondered upon them and believed in God. All that had gone by, now under the gold of the moon the grass rose from those bodies that mouldered in Segget, the curlews were calling up in the Kaimes, the hay lay in scented swathes in the parks, night wheeled to morning in a thousand rooms where the blood that they’d passed to other bodies circled in sleep, unknowing its debt. Nothing else they had left, they had come from the dark as the dustmotes come, sailing and golden in a shaft of the sun, they went by like the sailing motes to the dark; and the thing had ended, and you knew it was so, that so it would be with you in the end. And yet—and yet—you couldn’t believe it!
A Scots Quair Page 40