Another Time, Another Place

by Jessie Kesson

  ‘Che? Che cosa . . . ?’

  She could find no answer to Luigi’s query. No word of reply to the questions asked by his gesticulating hands.

  Advice began to pour thick and fast from all airts of the corn yard.

  ‘Back her up, man! Round with her. Round a bit yet! Too far. Too far. Back a bit. Forward!’

  Unnerved at last by the contradictions sur­rounding him, the ‘devil’ leapt out of the traction engine.

  ‘Where the hell do you want the bloody thing?’

  ‘I could tell you,’ Finlay snapped. ‘But I’ll keep that bit pleasure till next year, when we get our combine harvester.’

  ‘Non capisco,’ Luigi confided, sidling towards her. ‘Me non capisco . . .’

  ‘Me neither,’ she assured Luigi, ‘me neither.’

  * * *

  The strap that held the knife for cutting the ‘bands’ that tied the sheaves together had begun to cut into her wrist. It had to be tight, Finlay explained, when he fastened it on to her wrist. ‘Else, slack, it will fly off and cut all our throats. It’s as sharp as that.’

  It needed to be sharp to cut the strong straw ‘bands’ fast enough to satisfy the ‘devil’ who fed them into the gaping maw of the threshing mill. Its haste and appetite inexorable. A malevolent creature. Crying out for corn. Its cry changing to a whine the moment she slackened pace, to straighten her back.

  ‘Come on. Come on. Move yourself, quine. Move yourself,’ the ‘devil’ bawled in her ear. ‘Keep her going. Keep her going.’

  ‘Fling a stone in her, quine!’ Beel shouted from the top of the corn stalk. ‘That will slow the bugger down. That will give us a breather.’

  Leaping up and out from his mill hole, the ‘devil’ spurted across to the edge of the mill. ‘Try that!’ he snarled to Beel. ‘Just you try that, my mannie, and you’ll blow the whole caboodle up. Yourself along with it!’

  * * *

  The forkers, beginning to tire now, were flinging the sheaves across to her at random, their sharpness catching at and cutting her face. Half-blinded with the yavins attacking her from all directions, her rising anger became the only proof of her humanity. Alive only in the mechanical way the threshing mill itself was alive.

  ‘Keep it clear! Keep it clear!’ she could hear Finlay urging on the Italians, stumbling blindly around, struggling to clear the windblown chaff.

  ‘Keep it clear, lads. Keep it clear!’

  The pity she was beginning to feel for herself extended to, and encompassed, the Italians, setting her apart with them, from all the other workers, who seemed to be so lucky. Moving and living and having their being in a way of life that was familiar to them.

  * * *

  ‘You didn’t come home for your dinner, then?’ her man greeted her, when she got in from the threshing mill.

  ‘I couldn’t, I couldn’t move to go anywhere. I just sat at the bottom of a corn stack, hoping to God I’d manage to rise up when the mill started again.’

  That, her man pointed out, was just because it was her first time at the threshing mill. She would, he prophesied, find it easier the morn.

  Times like these, she couldn’t trust her own voice. Obscenities, known and unknown, would have risen up from their deep dark places to blacken out the world. Times like these, fantasy would come to her aid.

  Fish of the sea

  Come listen to me

  For I would beg a boon of thee

  Gold?

  Aye. All the gold in the world.

  Quiet, she would be, when she scattered all the gold in the world at her man’s feet.

  Here it is. Gold. All the gold in the world. You never need be anxious about money again . . .

  ‘You’d be the better of a cup of tea,’ he suggested. ‘I’ll put the kettle on. There’s no need,’ he turned at the scullery door, hesitant, as if in search of words that could penetrate the armour of her silence, ‘there’s no need to go back to the threshing mill the morn, if you’re not feeling up to it. We’ll manage. We’ll manage fine.’

  ‘It wasn’t too bad,’ she heard herself assuring him. Disarmed. Pleased and surprised by his rejection of all the gold in the world. ‘Finlay was pleased with me. He said I’d the makings of a good lowser. Nearly as good as Elspeth,’ she added, as an afterthought. That wasn’t quite true, but she would have liked it to have been true.

  * * *

  Released at last from the pains and perils of the threshing mill, the young woman squeezed her­self onto the wooden form, in a state of expectant euphoria.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen! Order please!’

  Beel, in his new role as master of ceremonies, stood stiff in his Sunday suit with its white starched ‘dickey’, attempting to bring to heel the workers wan­dering around, criticising or condoning—accord­ing to their frame of mind—the transformation that had changed the familiar barn into the venue for the annual harvest home.

  ‘If that’s the band,’ Kirsty said, drawing their attention to the fiddler and accordionist hovering together by the barn door, ‘it’s some band! You would have thought they could have risen to a piano.’

  The entrance of the farmer with his own personal guests lagging behind him brought an order to the barn that Beel, unaided, hadn’t managed to achieve.

  ‘Take your partners!’ he commanded, with the confidence of one who now had authority behind him. ‘Take your partners for the Grand March and Circassian Circle.’

  ‘We’ll never hear the end of that!’ Kirsty hissed as the farmer, stepping forward, offered his arm to Finlay’s wife to lead off in the Grand March. ‘She’ll be bragging about that for months,’ Kirsty concluded.

  ‘It’s the custom,’ Meg pointed out. ‘She’s the foreman’s wife. He leads her off every year.’

  ‘Custom or no custom,’ Kirsty insisted, ‘she’s never got over it. She’ll be on and on about it till next year.’

  ‘March! March!

  Ettrick and Teviotdale

  Why my lads dinna ye

  March forward in order

  March! March!

  Eskdale and Liddesdale . . .’

  The martial music, and the marchers, stumping around the barn stirred the young woman into action. ‘Come on, Kirsty,’ she pleaded. ‘You and me. Come on. Let’s get ourselves in amongst them.’

  The young woman, Kirsty declared, declining the proposed partnership, could make a fool of herself if she liked. That was up to her. But she, Kirsty, had no intention of doing likewise, not with ‘everybody looking’.

  Nobody was ‘looking’. They should have gone through life invisible, Kirsty and Meg, their fear of attracting attention to themselves was so deeply rooted.

  Even on social occasions like this, neither frill nor ribbon put forth a frivolous claim, no innocent coquetries, no small vanities. It was as if the whole chapter of their youth had been torn from their book, and they had turned the page from childhood to middle age.

  Even so, the young woman was beginning to feel that maybe she was over-conspicuous in what had been her choice from Kirsty’s catalogue, described as ‘a frock in which to go forward into autumn. In a shade that blends with this most colourful season’.

  * * *

  The marchers, having finished applauding themselves, now scrambled around trying to reclaim their former places on the forms. For it was by no means certain that having given up your place you could claim it again. Which was why, Meg pointed out, as they listened to territorial disputes rising up around them, they had been wise to have simply sat on their backsides, and held on to their places.

  ‘To give you all a chance to get your wind back,’ Beel announced, ‘I will now call for a song. On our good neighbour, Mistress Fraser. A song, Kirsty. If you please!’

  ‘ “The Barley Riggs”, Kirsty,’ the workers urged. ‘Come on, Kirsty. Give us “The Barley Riggs” ’—starting up the chorus themselves, to encourage the song of their choice.

  ‘One singer, one song,’ Beel reminded them sharply, tur
ning towards Kirsty. ‘Right then, Kirsty. Is’t to be “The Barley Riggs”?’

  ‘ “The Rowan Tree”!’ Rising to her feet, Meg made Kirsty’s mind up for her, momentarily depriv­ing Beel of ceremonial authority. ‘Kirsty, Mistress Fraser, will render “The Rowan Tree”!’

  ‘Thy leaves were aye the first o’ spring

  Thy flooers the summer’s pride

  There wasna sic a bonnie tree

  In a’ the countryside . . .’

  Strange, now that everybody was looking, Kirsty seemed unaware. Maybe you could face the whole world, and its stares, when you could do something to perfection. The young woman hadn’t known that Kirsty could sing. Not as she was singing now. Her voice, clear and sweet, rising up through the stillness that had come over the barn. If Kirsty and me could just sing to each other, she thought. Instead of speaking. We’d never contradict each other again.

  ‘So fair wert thou in summer time

  Wi’ a’ thy clusters white

  How rich wert thou . . .’

  There had been a rowan tree at the gale of her grandmother’s house. And a bourtree at the back of it. As a city child, come to visit, she couldn’t tell the difference between the two trees, in summer, their white flowering time. But to Grandmother, the rowan tree had been ‘special’, guarding the house within it from evil.

  Strange, that Grandmother, who said prayers every night, and believed in them, had just as much faith in the rowan tree, at the gale end of her house. Maybe not so strange after all. The shadow of paganism. And its substance. Grandmother, suspended between Heaven and earth, had been making sure of both worlds . . .

  ‘How rich wert thou in autumn dress

  Wi’ berries red and bright . . .’

  ‘She used to sing all by herself in the kirk,’ Meg whispered, as Kirsty made her way back to them. ‘She did that. My, but Kirsty could sing.’

  ‘ “Corn Riggs and Barley Riggs”!’ Dave Smollet shouted, crashing through the blank that Kirsty’s song had left behind. ‘No excuses now. You all know the words.’

  ‘Corn riggs and barley riggs

  And corn riggs are bonnie’

  Swaying together along the forms, stamping their feet, they sang as if in a sudden burst of release.

  ‘I have been blithe wi’ comrades dear

  I have been merry drinking

  I have been joyful gathering gear

  I have been happy thinking

  ‘But of a’ the pleasures e’er I kent

  Tho’ three times doubled fairly

  That happy nicht was worth them a’

  Amang the riggs wi’ Annie

  ‘Corn riggs and barley riggs

  Corn riggs are bonnie . . .’

  ‘Now that that lot are making themselves scarce,’ Meg confided, as the farmer and his guests turned at the barn door, raising their arms in a wordless gesture that could have been one of benediction, or farewell, ‘we’ll see some fun! The flasks will be whipped from the men’s hip pockets. And Beel will be legless before the night’s out.’

  ‘On your feet!’ Finlay had now stepped swiftly into the role of mine host and master of ceremonies. ‘Take your partners for an eightsome reel. You too, Meg! And you, Looeeshee! You can give Meg a birl or two . . .’ For the first time the young woman became aware of Luigi, hovering on the threshold of the barn, as if unsure of his reception. As a fellow-worker, or as a prisoner-of-war.

  She would dance now, despite Meg, despite Kirsty. With her man. But she would dance. For the joy of displaying her new frock. For the pride of ‘showing off’ her ‘steps’. For the appreciation of Paolo.

  ‘The cheek of Finlay,’ Meg was protesting. ‘Thinking I would dance with the Italian, and the cheek of the Looeeshee one. Forcing himself here in the first place. I’ll say that for the other two Italians. They know their place.’

  Strange, for once, and suddenly, she felt in agreement with Meg. A feeling of dislike for Luigi, standing grinning in the doorway, took hold of her. He wasn’t Paolo.

  ‘Come on, quine. On your feet. We’ll show them.’ Mellowed by the contents of the flask in his hip pocket, Finlay advanced towards her, ‘We’ll show them, quine!’

  * * *

  ‘And you showed them right enough,’ Kirsty accused, as the three of them walked back together to the Cottar Row. ‘Your petticoat flying above your head, flinging yourself about the barn like yon.’

  ‘It was Finlay’s fault. You saw that for yourselves. He was trying to birl me off my feet.’

  ‘He wouldn’t have danced with one of us,’ Kirsty pointed out, ‘if he hadn’t had a good dram inside of him.’

  * * *

  She should have said it, she reminded herself, as she watched Kirsty and Meg disappear round the gale end. She had meant to say it, wanted to say it . . . O Kirsty, but you sang right bonnie the nicht.

  Wi’ a’ thy clusters white

  How rich wert thou

  In autumn dress

  The sound of laughter drifted across from the bothy. Bicycles, slanted against its walls, proved that Paolo and Umberto were celebrating the end of harvest in their own way, with their own kind from the main camp. Stiffening at the sound of approaching footsteps, the young woman, preparing to confront and dismiss Luigi, turned at the sound of her man’s voice . . .

  ‘That was a real good night. Finlay and Beel were in fine form.’

  ‘Aye,’ she agreed, making no mention of the fact that Paolo hadn’t set eyes on a frock that ‘vied with the colours of autumn’.

  * * *

  ‘That’s that, then. For another year.’ The finality of Kirsty’s observation held within it a tone of regret, as they stood together, watching the men clearing out the barn after the harvest home. Sounding to the young woman as if the whole of their year could be concentrated into the essence of a single day.

  ‘There’s Christmas,’ she ventured, in an effort to salvage something out of the bleak prospect.

  But Christmas, as Meg pointed out, wasn’t the same. Except for the bairns.

  ‘Hogmanay, then.’

  ‘You can keep your Hogmanay,’ Kirsty snapped, rejecting Hogmanay as if the young woman herself had invented that festival. As far as Kirsty was concerned, Hogmanay ‘just makes work for the wives. And beasts of the men’.

  ‘Sing horse. And you’ll get corn,’ Meg advised Finlay as he came into sight. Weaving from one side of the grass verge to the other, examining pot-holes in the road that led to the loft.

  ‘That damned lorries again!’ he grumbled, turning into the field. ‘They’ll have no bloody road left!’

  That, as Kirsty explained, was ‘the bee in Finlay’s bonnet’. For a constant war waged between Finlay and the lorry drivers from the town. No quarter given, no battle either won or lost. The weight of the lorries, and the speed of their drivers, churning up the stones and howking great holes in the road, leaving the task of filling them up again to the men on the farm. A task never to their liking. And one they considered, and rightly in Kirsty’s opinion, outwith their particular territory. There would, she prophesied, ‘be hell to pay now that the lorries would be coming with winter feed for the cattle. And here comes the first of them!’

  ‘You stupid-looking bugger!’ Finlay shouted, waving his fist under the nose of the driver whose lorry slanted precariously between the ditch and the bend of the road, ‘I’ve gotten a mind to put my foot up your backside and getting you down into filling up this road. My men have better things to do than kirn about with holes in the road. They’re not bloody navvies. You stupid . . .’

  ‘Bugger! Stupido . . .’ Darting out from amongst the men, Luigi had come to Finlay’s support. ‘Bugger! Stupido!’

  ‘That’s it, Looeeshee. Go on. You tell them.’

  ‘Bloody wop!’ Stung into retaliation by the intervention of Luigi, the driver leapt down from his cab. ‘Italian bastard!’

  ‘Put a finger on that man,’ Finlay warned the driver. ‘Just one finger and you can say fareweel to
that damned lorry of your. For it’s an ambulance you’ll be needing, my mannie.’

  * * *

  There would be no lifting of the tatties today, nor the morn, not if the rain kept dinging on like this. But the real storm, the furious conflict between the wind and the rain, was being waged high over the firth. For the earth itself never put up a fight against the vagary of such weather, but laid itself down, flat and desolate, in submission.

  It had upset Kirsty, her bairns ‘let off’ school to help with the ‘lifting’ . . . ‘In and out amongst her feet’.

  ‘Keep away from that bothy!’ Her voice rose in warning to the bairns. ‘I’ve told you before. And will not be telling you again. Keep away from the Italians!’

  Bird-like, the bairns seemed to the young woman. Hopping cautiously but curiously up to peep through the bothy window. Fluttering away in a startled group as their mother’s threats became louder.

  ‘This weather,’ Kirsty confided to the young woman, ‘will suit the Italians. Nothing to do but sit on their backsides in the bothy. It will fair suit them.’

  * * *

  It suited the terns, taking up its challenge, scudding high across the firth, wheeling defiantly round in the teeth of the wind, filling them out with white pride, like pictures the young woman had seen of sailing ships in olden times. Hard to tell whether the crying of the terns sounded distress or delight. Delight, she liked to think, as she watched them zooming down and rising high. Like fighter planes, across the firth.