Another Time, Another Place

by Jessie Kesson

  ‘You’ve got to laugh,’ Kirsty insisted. ‘Rain or shine. The same old waterproof. And rain or shine. She never bothers to button it up. You’ve got to laugh . . .’

  Kirsty, almost devoid of laughter herself, was always urging it on to the young woman. Leaving her puzzled, in serious search of laughter’s source. There was nothing funny in the aura of dignity that Elspeth always carried within herself. An inde­pendence lacking in the young woman and her neighbouring cottar wives. But then there was a fundamental difference between them. Elspeth worked her own small acres of land, although whiles having to eke out her livelihood by helping with the seasonal jobs on the farmer’s large acres of land.

  Elspeth, as she often claimed, could ‘pick and choose’, could remain unmoved by Finlay’s moods and demands, and be unafraid of telling him ‘exactly where he gets off’. The young woman envied Elspeth’s liberty of choice, her freedom of utterance.

  * * *

  ‘You’re redding up,’ Elspeth stared round the bare, dust-filled bothy. ‘The pigman’s bothy, you’re red­ding it up.’

  ‘For prisoners-of-war,’ the young woman said.

  ‘For Italians,’ Kirsty contradicted. ‘Foreigners. Did you ever hear the like?’ she demanded.

  ‘Italians,’ Elspeth echoed, turning to the young woman. ‘And you are redding up the bothy for them. For Italians.’

  ‘I refused,’ Kirsty claimed. ‘When Finlay asked me, I just refused. Point blank.’

  ‘Just odd jobs, Elspeth.’ Aware now of some inexplicable need to apologise, the young woman heard herself plunging deeper into explanation, felt herself falling deeper into disfavour. ‘Little jobs just, getting the grocer’s van, a bit of washing some­times, things like that.’

  ‘Ah well.’ Taking a last look round the bothy, Elspeth turned on her heel to go. ‘That’ll be worth a bob or two in your pocket.’

  ‘It’s only because I live next door,’ the young woman pleaded to Elspeth’s retreating back. ‘That’s all, Elspeth, only because I live next door.’

  * * *

  ‘Elspeth gave you short shrift,’ Kirsty remarked, as they watched her making her way back up the hill. ‘Not that you can blame her,’ she reflected, ‘with her Callum missing in Italy. Enough to put you off Italians for life. And another thing . . .’

  Stifling an impulse to rush up the hill after Elspeth, the young woman let Kirsty’s tirade flow over and round her. She hadn’t found it easy to com­fort Elspeth on the day that Callum was reported missing. Her attempts at consolation had sounded too facile to be true. Even to her own ears. ‘But Callum’s not dead yet, Elspeth. He’s not dead . . .’ Words out of context. Running away with her. ‘Callum could still be found. He could still turn up. That sometimes happens. I read about that once. In a book . . .’

  How much more difficult it would be to find words for an offence that had neither been committed, nor specifically defined.

  She would miss Elspeth’s friendship. Elspeth who had tried to initiate her into the strange ways of this new life. Who had taught her to bake. Con­juring up a living entity out of a raw ingredient. ‘Lightly now—lightly. That scones will never rise. Thumping away at the dough like that. Leave it now. Let it alone. For the love of goodness. Give the dough a chance to breathe . . .’

  * * *

  ‘What,’ Kirsty began to wonder, as the young woman’s husband dipped down into view from the high ridge and led the horse and cart into the turnip field, ‘what will he have to say about the Italians?’ Kirsty knew what her man would say about that, she claimed. Only she hadn’t given him a chance.

  The day that had started out this morning on its everyday course was beginning to take on some new and threatening dimension in the young woman’s mind. Leaving her without concrete reply to Kirsty’s half-articulated reflections.

  Her man, she knew, wouldn’t have very much to say about the Italians. Not in words. Always on his own, as a cattleman, and working apart from his fellow farm-workers, he had got out of the way of using words. Sometimes, sometimes she felt he had grown out of the need of words at all. She was learning though to interpret by look and mood. The way her man, himself, could interpret each need and nuance of the dumb beasts he worked amongst.

  * * *

  Watching him from a distance, as he topped and tailed the turnips, bending down and straightening up, he seemed to the young woman like a man performing some simple exercise to an easeful rhythm of his own composing. Unlike winter, she remembered, when an agonised tussle, an eternal tug-of-war, waged between himself and a reluctant crop held fast to earth. But the frost had not yet fixed its grip on the days, nor on the crop. Nor on the image of his deftly moving hands.

  ‘I’ll get you a turnip for the pot,’ she said at last, in reply to Kirsty. ‘I’ll get it when Alick comes down with his load. Before the frost gets at them.’

  * * *

  ‘Prisoners-of-war. Italians.’ Her man stood on the doorstep of the bothy, digesting her information. ‘But I thought they were going to bide in the camp over, and just coming here to work—day-to-day.’

  ‘Not this three. They’re going to bide in the bothy.’

  ‘And you’re going to look after them, like?’

  ‘No.’ She shook her head, uncertain herself of the demands of her role as ‘next door neighbour’. ‘I’m just redding up the bothy for them.’

  ‘But why you? What about Kirsty and Meg? Have they refused?’

  ‘Kirsty and Meg have got bairns,’ she pointed out. The look, tightening up her man’s face, setting her off on the wheedle, hating herself for the use of it, and momentarily hating the man, who was the instrument of its use. ‘According to Finlay, it’s something or nothing. Scrubbing out the bothy, once in a while. Getting the odd bit message off the grocer’s van. Just things like that. It’ll mean a bit extra for us,’ she persuaded, ‘to save in the tea caddy. A bit to put by. That’ll please you.’ She could hear the resentment beginning to sound in her voice. ‘You’re always on about “something to put by”.’

  * * *

  ‘Your man didn’t seem sore pleased with your news,’ Kirsty shouted across from her doorstep. ‘No more would mine. If it was me.’

  ‘My man,’ she retaliated, her resentment blowing up into positive anger, ‘my man wouldn’t mind if I got down on my knees and cleaned up horses’ dung. Not if it would give him “something to put by”.’

  And that was true, she assured herself, slamming the bothy door behind her, in confirmation of a fact.

  Certain facts though, she realised, even before she reached her own door, certain facts were out of context. And not for utterance. Shamed by the realisation, and aware of Kirsty’s shocked silence, she turned back with her offering. ‘Here’s a neep for your broth, Kirsty. The frost hasn’t got at it yet.’

  Kirsty’s wordless acceptance reaffirmed an opinion gathered from experience. Peace offerings by themselves were never enough. Explanation was always an essential accompaniment. ‘My man isn’t really like that, Kirsty, it’s me. It’s just me.’

  * * *

  Me.

  Her image, reflected in the looking-glass above the sink, gazed back at her. Assessing each other, before breaking into a wide smile of recognition. Absolved by confession, sudden lightness of heart overtook her.

  ‘One morning I rose

  And looked in the glass’

  she sang to the smiling reflection, that mouthed along with her.

  ‘Said I to myself

  I’m a handsome young lass

  I’ve plenty of money

  To dress me so braw . . .’

  ‘They’re here,’ Meg shouted, as herself and Kirsty flashed past the window. ‘Your new neighbours. The Italians.’

  * * *

  They stood, the prisoners, as she had seen the bairns stand this very morning, as if struck to stone by the sudden strangeness of their situation.

  ‘This is Mistress Ainslie,’ Finlay elbowed her towards them. ‘Your neighbo
ur, next door.’ Rapping on her door in an attempt at interpretation. ‘She’ll keep an eye. Rat-tat-tat. Grocer. Food. Eat. Knock wall. Rat-tat-tat.’

  It was hard to tell whether the Italians understood Finlay’s frantic miming, or whether they were simply reluctant to bring such a fascinating performance to a close.

  Kirsty did that for them. ‘Good God, Finlay,’ she shouted from the gale end of the Row. ‘Good God, man, but you should have been on the stage.’

  The laughter of the watching farm-hands swirled up and round, leaving the young woman standing beside the Italians within the circumference of their own unease, for what the Italians had understood was that she had been thrust upon them. And was in some way involved. Neither acceptance nor rejection revealed itself in the blank eyes of their appraisal. Leaving her with the urgent need to appraise herself. And, in the doing, she became suddenly conscious of her mud-splattered welling­tons, of the bag apron that gave no hint of the small waist hidden within it. Sharply aware that she stood neuter and sexless. Clad in the garments of renunciation.

  * * *

  The young woman stood envying Kirsty’s busyness, the cluck of her hens and the clatter of her pails. The normality of it. She would be glad when the weather settled down into its own season again. When each day had its yoking beginning. And its lowsing ending.

  ‘You’d be better uprooting that muckle clump of rhubarb,’ advised Meg, leaning over the gate of Kirsty’s yard. ‘Spreading all over the place like that. Once it gets inside the ree, it will poison all your hens.’

  The moment for advice of any kind was inopportune. And Kirsty rejected it. She would, she declared, as soon dig up her grandmother as uproot the clump of rhubarb.

  There was no real acrimony in the exchange be­tween her two neighbours. It was part of a pattern they wove together to relieve the tensions of their long years of proximity.

  She, the young woman realised, had become part of the pattern too, leaving her neighbours puzzled by, and pondering upon, a shape and colour that had appeared, as if by accident, amongst them, and was not of their design.

  The texture of her own life now seemed to hang suspended by the uncertainty of her new, undefined responsibilities. Shy of intruding on the Italians next door, anxious lest she should miss out on a knock on her wall, yet apprehensive of responding to it, since that first time it happened.

  * * *

  ‘Buona sera, signora,’ Luigi, alone in the bothy, had greeted her. ‘Buona sera.’

  ‘Hello.’ She smiled, recognising the sound of salutation. ‘Parla italiano?’ She shook her head. ‘No parla italiano.’

  ‘French,’ she heard herself claiming, starting to dredge words up out of schoolday memory. ‘Je parle la langue française.’

  ‘Français. Similar italiano.’ Luigi flung his arm round her shoulder. ‘Similar! Posseeble speak.’ But not possible to communicate, she realised, her thoughts lingering on half-forgotten irregular verbs . . . Je suis. Vous êtes. Nous sommes.

  The transformation the Italians had worked on the bothy took her mind off the frustrations of communication.

  ‘Madonna!’ Luigi said, following her gaze, fixed on the blue poster above his iron bed. Bowing, crossing himself as he moved forward to lay personal claim on the Mother and Child that gazed down on them both. ‘Madonna Mia . . .’

  His apartness, excluding her from some mystery, allowed her time to resort to fantasy . . . ‘That’s the Madonna,’ she would point out to Kirsty and Meg, when she invited them in for a quick look-see at the bothy, which had once belonged to the pigman. ‘The Madonna,’ she would emphasise, knowing that Kirsty would just think it was the Virgin Mary. She too would bow and cross her­self, her explanation of such a performance would be as casual as tongue could sound it. ‘That’s what Catholics do, Kirsty. That’s what she’s there for . . .’

  ‘Mama Mia. You like?’

  None of the quick words of appreciation—true or false—but always necessary in such circumstances, came to her aid. ‘You like? Mama Mia?’

  ‘Yes.’ She nodded. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Yes.’ Luigi lunged at the word. ‘Yes! Si! Si! Yes!’

  ‘Si.’ She had uttered her first word of Italian. ‘Posseeble?’ His grip tightened on her shoulder, as if all obstacles to communication had been swept away. ‘Posseeble you like the jiggy-jig?’

  She had never before heard the word jiggy-jig. But instantly understood it. But it was the lack of outrage, of affront, which she had felt such a stark suggestion should have aroused within her, that surprised herself.

  ‘No posseeble me like.’ A tone of apology sounding in her voice, as if she had simply rejected an invitation to supper.

  ‘PERCHE no posseeble? Perche no posseeble you, the jiggy-jig?’

  ‘Husband me.’ She explained. Twirling the wedding ring around her finger to prove it. ‘Married me.’

  She was relieved when the door of the bothy swung open. Grateful for the arrival of Paolo and Umberto. Yet suddenly guilty in their presence. A guilt they themselves seemed to fling over her, as they flung their raincapes over the chairs. Their wordlessness sounding their suspicions.

  ‘You’ve got an odd lot in there,’ Meg greeted her, when she closed the bothy door behind her. ‘Not one word of Scots between them.’

  ‘Nor English,’ she agreed, turning to stare across the firth. The wind was beginning to blow itself out. The fields on the other side of the water were thrusting themselves into view again. Tomorrow, maybe, they might make a start to the stooking.

  ‘And not before time,’ Meg grumbled. Nothing, she claimed, got herself so down in the mouth as rain. ‘Dinging on and on like this.’

  She was right, was Meg. Weather, the young woman was beginning to learn, was never an event. It was always an emotion.

  * * *

  ‘What are they seeking now?’ her man demanded. For the knocks from the bothy were becoming more frequent, and had begun to irritate him.

  ‘Maybe it’s their tilley lamp again. They haven’t got the knack of it yet.’

  ‘It’s high time they did, then,’ her man said. For he’d never seen anybody so slow to pick up the knack of things as the Italians.

  They had other ‘knacks’ though, the young woman had discovered. Paolo, carving wood that was dead into shapes that became alive under the flick of his knife and the curve of his fine brown fingers. Umberto, teaching children in a small village school. The tremendous respect the farm-workers had for teachers was never reflected on Umberto. Luigi. O, Luigi. A barrow-boy from the streets of Naples. She knew instinctively from memories of her own early street-spent, barefoot childhood, how it was for Luigi. Cocking a snook at the whole wide world.

  Sometimes, sometimes she wished that a magic carpet would whisk all the farm-workers away to Italy, and set them down in an alien place. They wouldn’t have the ‘knack’ of it either!

  Even Finlay, her man was saying, was beginning to lose patience with them. The little patience he did have. For he never had very much of it. He’d set them in the morning to patch up the old sacks for oats. And had come back after dinner to find they’d glued all the sacks together! The language that was on Finlay when he found out was something terrible, just! The memory of Finlay when ‘the language was on him’ filled the young woman with laughter.

  ‘It was yalla and purple

  And violet and blue’

  she sang, grabbing her man to dance him round the kitchen.

  ‘Neath the boughs of a rowan tree shady’

  ‘You’d better see what they’re seeking next door,’ he warned her, disengaging himself, ‘or they’ll be knocking on that wall all night. One of these days,’ he prophesied, ‘they’ll pump that tilley lamp up so hard they’ll blow themselves and all the rest of the world up with it. Though they shouldn’t be needing the lamp, it’s not nearly lighting up time yet.’

  * * *

  Neither it was, she agreed, when she got out into the night. For they had not yet finished st
ooking the sheaves. But then the harvest was late this year. The wild ducks were already beginning to take their leave of the land. Soon, the wild geese would go honking through the night. That, she remembered, was a sound for a real dark night. Dropping invisible down upon you. Turning in at the bothy, a rabbit started up at her feet, as silently as if one of the little shadows on the road had suddenly picked itself up, and flitted away.

  * * *

  Luigi and Paolo were crouched on opposite sides of the fireplace when she reached the bothy.

  ‘Come!’ Luigi commanded. ‘You hear? TIC -A-TIC-A-TIC-A. Che cosa? Che cosa? TIC-A-TIC!’

  ‘It’s only your clock, Luigi,’ she laughed, pointing to the alarm clock on the mantelpiece, ‘only your clock.’

  ‘No clock!’ Grabbing the clock to himself, Luigi scurried to the other end of the bothy. ‘No clock!’ he insisted. ‘You hear now?’

  ‘A beetle, Luigi,’ she assured him, straightening up from the wall. ‘Just a beetle. Lives inside wood in wall. A death watch beetle,’ she added, as if some extension of her words would help comprehension. ‘Morte,’ she remembered a word that might be universal.

  ‘Morte! Che? Che morte? Che . . . ?’ The alarm in Luigi’s face confirmed her feeling that death, like jiggy-jig, could be understood in any tongue.

  ‘Nobody morte, Luigi, nobody. Just name we speak.’

  It was nothing, she told her man. ‘I could have got a rabbit for the pot,’ she remembered, smiling. ‘If only I could have catched it.’