A Scots Quair

by Lewis Grassic Gibbon

  Well, old Leslie finished his bit of repast, and got up, though he hadn’t near finished his story, about Garvock, but he never yet had done that, though you’d known him fine this last fifty years. But it was getting fell late-like by then and he thought he’d better go take a taik home, Mrs Brown had gone to her bed, and Maybull, and the fine lass Cis had gone as well. MacDougall showed him out to the door, and cried good-night, and banged it behind him; and old Leslie was standing sucking at a crumb that was jooking about in an old hollow tooth, when what did he see round the end of the dyke that sloped to the back of MacDougall’s shop, but a body slipping over in the dark.

  Old Leslie wondered who it could be, and stepped soft in the dark down the lithe of the dyke. Near to the end he stooped and stopped, and heard the whisp-whisp of some folk close by. And he knew one voice, but not the other, ’twas the voice of Cis Brown and he heard her say Not to-night—Mabel is sleeping with me. The voice that the smith couldn’t put a name to said Damn her, why doesn’t she sleep with the cuddy? Cis laughed and sighed and syne Leslie heard the sound of a kiss, disgusting-like, he himself had never all his married life so much as pecked at his old wife’s face: and once when she saw him without his sark, he’d been changing it, careless-like, by the fire, she nearly had fainted, and so near had he, they’d never been so coarse as look at each other, shameless and bare, in their own bit skins…. Well, where was he now with this story of Cis?—Ay, her slobbering her lad by the dyke. In a little bit while they were whispering again, and the smith tried hard to hear what they said, they spoke over low, the tinks that they were, to make an old man near strain off his neck from his hard-worked shoulders to hear what they said. Syne that finished and Leslie heard footsetps coming and dodged in the shadow of the post-office door. And who should loup over the wall and go by but that tink Dod Cronin, that had so miscalled him, him it had been that was kissing Cis Brown!

  But folk said that that was just a damned lie, Cis Brown was as douce and sweet a quean as you’d find in the whole of Segget, they said—old Leslie telling the tale in the Arms was nearly brained by Dite Peat himself. Dite said he liked a bit lie fell well, just as he liked to soss with a woman, especially a woman he’d no right to, but he wasn’t to hear that kind of a speak of Cis Brown, he was fairly damned if he was. And others cried, Ay, that’s right, that’s right! and Feet, the policeman, said to his father You’d better away home. Off the old smith went, the coarse old brute; still habbering his lies and swearing he’d seen Dod Cronin and that fine quean Cis together.

  CHRIS HEARD THE tale, but she paid it no heed, with long months of resting her strength had come back, she was out in the garden of the Manse each dawn, digging and hoeing as the Spring came in. Funny to think ’twas nearly a year since she’d walked this garden, her child in her body, and stood over there and looked in the kirkyard, and thought of the folk that had once been bairns, and died, and nothing of them endured. And now she herself walked free and young, slim as of old, if her face was thinner, but warm and kind, warm blood in her body, she could see it rise blue if she looked at her hands loosen their grip from the shaft of the graip, and her hair was alive, that had gone a while dead, and crackled its fire as she combed it at night, long hair that still came near to her knees. And the baby she’d brought in the world last year—

  But she’d not think of that, not here in the sun, the rooks a long caw out over the yews, sailing, sun-winking, dots in the sun, the clouds went wind-laden down through the Howe, all the Howe wakening below them to hear the trill and shrill of the springs of Spring. So busied Chris was as the days grew warm, she’d found in a garden what once in the fields, years before, on the windy rigs of Blawearie, ease and rest and the kindness of toil, that she saw but little or nothing of Robert—no loss to him, with his bittered face, and no loss to her now, they went their own ways.

  Ewan was shooting straight as a larch, narrow and dark, with a cool, quiet gaze, and a sudden smile that came seldom enough, but still, when it did— Else said she could warm her hands at that smile. He was out all hours of the day, was Ewan, still at his flints, he’d raked half the Howe, he ’d been down by Brechin and Forfar for flints. He was known in places Chris never had seen, the dark-faced loon from the Manse of Segget, that would ask if he might take a look at your fields, and would show the arrows and such-like of old that the creatures of hunters had used in their hunts. And the farmers would say, Faith, look if you like, and Ewan would thank them, charming and cool, a queer-like loon, not right in the head, folk that were wice weren’t near so polite.

  Some times, as the light of the Spring days waned he’d come back from school and find bread and milk, and bring them out to the garden to eat, and set them down by a bed or a drill and take the hoe or the fork from Chris, and start to work with quick, even strokes, the down of a soft, fine hair on his cheeks, Chris would sit with her knees hand-clasped, and watch him, the ripple of his smooth, dark skin, he’d long lashes as well, that were curled and dark, he worked with a cool and deliberate intent at digging the garden as he did at all else. Once Chris asked him, one of those evenings in April, what he would do when he had grown up.

  He stopped at the turn of a drill and looked at her, he was leaving school and going to Dundon, up to the college in the summer term. He said I’d like to be an archaeologist, but I don’t suppose that I’ll ever be that. Chris asked Why not? and he said that he thought it unlikely you could be that without lots of money. He would just have to face up to things as they were, jobs scarce, and all the world in a mess.

  Chris wondered what were his thoughts on the mess, he had read nearly every book in the Manse, had he read the books on Socialism yet? She asked him that and he said that he had, indifferently saying it, one of the books—by a Ramsay MacDonald, all blither and blah. Charlie Cronin, who had now left the school was a socialist, the same as MacDonald, they were both very muddled, they had no proofs and they hadn’t a plan, it was spite or else rage: OR BECAUSE THEY WERE FEARED.

  Chris looked at the fairy featherings of clouds that went south on the hurrying wind of the Howe, the green of the hedges trilled low in its blow, you could feel in your body the stir of the blood as the sap stirred sweet in the hedge, you supposed. Spring and the time of young folk and dreams, following cloud-pillars as they sailed the Howe! … And maybe Ewan was doing no more in that he refused all clouds and all dreams!

  She said What are you going to do with the mess? and he put down his cup and said Oh, nothing, and started to weed in the strawberry patch: Unless I just must, and he whistled to himself, calm and cool, with his dark, cool face, he whistled and hoed in the evening light. And Chris felt for him a tenderness, queer, not as though she were only his mother but as though he were all young life in an evening of Spring—thinking the world would dare hardly intrude in their lives and years, but would stand back and bow, and slip to one side to let them go by…. She held out a hand—Help me up, son, I’m stiff. Growing old, I suppose; he stopped and looked at her, his gravity suddenly drowned in that smile. I thought just now you looked like a girl. There are some at the school who look older than you.

  But he gave her his hand and she jumped to her feet, light enough still, and they looked at each other; and Chris put up her hand to his throat, making on that the button there needed re-sewing, it didn’t, but she wanted to touch that cool throat. He let her, standing there quiet and alert, like the deer she had seen come down from the haughs, with brindled pelts, in the winter-time—not feared and not shy, cool, quick and alive, under her fingers a little vein beat as she fastened his collar, and Ewan said Thanks, and went on with his weeding, Chris went to the house and looked at the clock and made tea for Robert.

  HE WAS OFF at Stonehaven, a meeting of ministers, called together to discuss the reason why every kirk in the Howe grew toom, a minister would sometimes rise of a Sunday and preach to a congregation often, in a bigging builded to hold two hundred. So Robert told Chris as he wheeled out his bike, that morning, under
the peep of the sun; and Chris had said Well, they surely know why? Do they need a meeting to find out that?

  Robert had looked at her withdrawn, remote, the brooding anger not far from his eyes. Do you know the reason? Chris had said Yes, the reason’s just that the times have changed.

  His unchancy temper quite went with him then, By God, he sneered, isn’t that profound? Chris flushed, with an angry retort on her lips; but she bit it back, as so often she did, and turned indoors as he wheeled down the Wynd—what a fool she had been to say what she’d said! Like telling an angry blind man he was blind…. She would keep to herself, she was nobody’s serf.

  But sometimes she ached for kind eyes and kind hands. One night she had turned to him, kissing him then, and he’d shrugged away from her—Not now, Chris, not now. She had said in her hurt, And maybe not again—when you would again, and had turned her back and pretended to sleep, but had wept a little instead, like a fool. Spring was here, she supposed it was that, daft to desire what no one could give except with a flame of desire in the giving.

  So she waited this evening, with pancakes new baked, they might live poor friends, with love and lust by, but she still ate his meat and she owed him for that. Else had the day off to go down to Fordoun, her baby bade there in its grandmother’s care. In the cool of the kitchen Chris stood for a while and watched Ewan kneel to a thrawn-like weed, and saw him twist it up ruthlessly, sure; she sighed with a smile at herself for that sigh. Were she sure of herself as Ewan of himself, she might go her own way and not heed to any, have men to lie with her when she desired them (and faith, that would sure be seldom enough!), do and say all the things that came crying her to do, go hide long days in the haughs of the Mounth—up in the silence and the hill-bird’s cry, no soul to vex, and watch the clouds sailing and passing out over the Howe, unending over the Howe of the World; that—or sing and be glad by a fire; or wash and toil and be tired with her toil as once she had been in her days on a croft—a million things, Chris-alone, Chris-herself, with Chris Guthrie, Chris Tavendale, Chris Colquohoun dead!

  She lighted the lamp as she heard Robert come and carried it through to the hall for him to see to hang up his coat and his hat. He said You look very sweet, Christine, there with the lamp, and held her a moment, lamp and all, Chris felt her heart turn, with gladness—then, queerly, she felt half-sick….

  He loosed her and followed her into the room, soft happed in shadow in the loglight’s glow, she put down the lamp and looked at him again. There was something about him that wasn’t him at all—a filthy something, she thought, and shivered. He said Not cold? and smiled at her kind—robert with eyes like a kind much cow!

  She went in a daze and brought in the tea, they sat and ate by the open window, the world all quiet out and about, except, sharp-soft in the fading light, the click and scrape of the tools of Ewan as he redded and bedded by the kirkyard wall. And again, as she looked at Robert, Chris shivered—What’s ta’en you, Robert—Robert what is it?

  He raised up his head and she saw his eyes smile. Just something you’ll think is quite mad when you hear….

  And he told her then of the thing that had come as he rode from the minister’s meeting at Stonehaven, grinding his bike through Dunnottar’s woods, he had looked once or twice from the road to the woods and saw them green in the April quiet, the sunset behind him—very quiet, Chris. He had ridden up there till the way grew steep, the old bike was near on its last wheels now: and just as he gained the near edge of the woods he got from his bike and looked back at Stonehaven, in that corridor of trees the light fell dim, a hidden place, no sun came there. And, as he stood there and breathed in the quiet, he saw the Figure come slow down the road.

  He came so quiet by the side of the road that Robert hadn’t heard His coming or passing, till he raised his head and saw Him quite close, tired, with a white strange look on His face, no ghost, for the hair blew out from His head and he put up His hand to brush back the hair. And Robert saw the hand and the pierced palm, he stood frozen there as the Figure went on, down through the quiet of Dunnottar’s woods, unresting, into the sunset’s quiet, a wood-pigeon crooned in a far-off tree, Robert heard the sound of a train in Stonehaven, he stood and stared and then leant on his bike, trembling, suddenly weeping in his hands.

  OUTSIDE, THE NEXT day broke quick with wind, a grey quick drive that was bending the trees, blowing its blow in the face of the sun, Chris went to her room and dressed in short skirts, the rig she’d once worn—it seemed years before—that day she and Robert climbed up the Mounth. She’d no fancy at all for that walk to-day, she found a stick and went down through the shingle, and looked back as she passed in the whisp of the yews, Εwan. in his room; he stood near the window, some everlasting flint in his hands. She waved to him, but he didn’t see, then at the turn of the dyke the wind caught at her breath and her skirts and her hair.

  Ake Ogilvie looked from his shop as she passed, and gave her a wave and bent over his desk, his poetry maybe, Robert said it was awful, the angry sneerings of a poet born blind…. But Chris hurried on from the thought of Robert, swinging her stick, the wind in her face, the Sourock’s wife looked out as she passed, and stared after the creature, that Mrs Colquohoun, like a slip of a quean she was, not decent, her that had had her two bairns, one dead the other upgrowing and nearly a man. She said later on she was black-affronted as Mrs Colquohoun reached the bend of the Wynd, the wind blew up the creature’s short skirts, all about her, and instead of giving a bit scraich and blushing to the soles of her feet, as she should, she just brushed them back and went hastening on—what was her hurry, no hat on her head, and her fine silk breeks and nought else below?

  (And folk said What, had she nothing else below? and the Sourock’s wife said Not a damned stitch, fair tempting the childes, half-naked like that, not to mention tempting her death with cold.)

  Past the shop of Dite Peat and Hairy Hogg’s front, Alec, the son of the Provost, stood there, he had lost his job in Edinburgh, Alec, Chris liked him better than when she first met him, she cried How are you? and he raised his cap; and Chris sped on, Alec said that night when he looked in on Else, that Mrs Colquohoun looked more of a boy than a grown-up woman who had a fine son. Else said She both looks them, and makes them, my lad, whatever she meant by that, if she knew; but she kept him at sparring distance, did Else.

  Down at the edge of the Moultrie shop, where Jim the roan had had such an ill end, Chris found herself in the lithe of the dyke that shielded the plots of the gardener, Grant. It was here she nearly ran into Cis Brown, running, with sober face and blown hair, Chris held her and laughed and they steadied themselves, Chris asked And how are things at the college? Cis coloured up sweet, she said they were fine. She loitered a moment and Chris looked in her face and caught there the glimpse of a desperate trouble.

  Something (what Chris of them all?) made her say I’m off for a long walk down through the Howe, I’m restless to-day, would you like to come?

  AT NOON THAT day they stopped at a place, a little farm high in the Reisk, over-topped by the wave of its three beech trees, standing up squat in the blow of the wind that came in a shoom from the Bervie braes. They were given milk there, and new-baked cakes, and rested a while, Chris glad of the rest, Cis lying back in her chair with her face flushed to colour from the walk they had come. They had come down the Howe from the Segget haughs, past Catcraig, out on the Fordoun road, Fordoun a brown, dull lour to the north, and so swung on down past Mondynes, Kinraddie to the left, and then reached the brig, Chris stopped and peered in the water below and minded how once she’d done that, long before, in a summer, and seen the school-bairns plash, naked and dripping, in the shadowed shallows. Now the water flowed under, free and unvexed, east, to twine to the Bervie mouths, Cis leaned beside Chris and stared down as well, and then said There is something I want to tell you.

  And Chris had said, gently, I think I know what. Cis flushed up a moment and bit at her lip, she wasn’t afraid, only troubled, C
hris saw. And she said We’ll go on, to the right, I think; and so they had done, and climbed up the brae to the Geyrie’s moor, and looked back from there and saw all around the steaming teams a-plod in the parks, shoring the long red drills of clay. Up in the hills the mists had come down, as they watched they saw a rain-cloud wheel out, down from the Mounth on the roofs of Drumlithie, white-shining there on the road to the South. Back and still back, line on line, rose the hills, the guardian wall of the Mearns Howe, it came on Chris as she stood and looked she’d never been beyond that wall since a bairn. The peewits were flying in the parks outbye, in the wind that came racing up from the east was the smell, a tingle that tickled your nose, of the jungle masses of whins that rose, dark as a forest, on the Geyrie’s moor.

  Chris said that she thought they might take that way, Cis said Is it safe? she had heard it was nearly impassable with bog, holes in the earth where a cart could lair, they sat on a gate and looked into its stretch, dark-brown and green in the hand of Spring. And Cis’s shyness and constraint had gone, she was calm and young, they smiled one at the other, and Chris said suddenly, Oh, we’re such fools—women, don’t you think that we are, now, Cis? To worry so much about men and their ploys, the things that they do and the things that they think!

  Cis said But what else is there to do? They count for so much—and sat and thought, grave, shy and sweet as a wing-poised bird. Or maybe they don’t as much as they think, but there wouldn’t be children without them, would there? Chris laughed at that and jumped down from the gate. I suppose there wouldn’t, but still—we might try! Let’s go through the moor: and so they had done.

  There they saw the cup of the Howe rise up to the Barras slopes that led to Kinneff, on their right, dark-mantled, lost in its trees, Arbuthnott slept on the Bervie banks, clusters of trees, with the sudden gleam in the wind and the sun of the polished gear, bridles and haimes, on the straining shoulders of the labouring teams. Like going back into your youth, Chris thought, and sighed at that thought and Cis asked why, and Chris said Because I am getting so old, and Cis said That’s silly, I sometimes think you’re the youngest of all the folk in Segget. And was shy, Please don’t ever cut your hair, though I’ve had mine cut: it’s lovely, your hair.