‘Nothing for look,’ Luigi lamented, when she went into the bothy with their milk, where he stood gazing out of the window to the rain-blurred hill. ‘In Scotland, nothing for look. Tatties and turnips. Wind and rain. Wind. The bloody wind.’
They said that pigs could see the wind. Whiles, the young woman had the feeling that Luigi could ‘see’ the wind, the feud between himself and the wind becoming almost personal. This she could understand. Time and again the wind had sent herself and Kirsty and Meg on a futile search for the towels and pillowslips it had filched from their washing lines. To be found again, an autumn away, hidden and discoloured beneath the bramble bushes. You must never, she remembered, pick the brambles when the Devil spits upon them . . .
But it was the grapes that Luigi was crying out for now. Mourning their loss . . . ‘No-one get grapes for Mama mia. No vino. No sun. No divertimento. Plenty grapes, Napoli. Molto, molto. Plenty sun. Plenty vino. Plenty, plenty, Napoli.’
She was almost tempted to let her mind linger in his sunlit wine-drenched land, but her voice rose in defence of her own countryside. ‘Not always wind, Scotland, Luigi. Not always rain. You wait!’ she urged. ‘You see! You look on hill when heather comes. September . . .’
She had not yet learned to avoid the pitfalls that could send Luigi pacing the floor in a gloom of anger, had not yet learned to avoid pinpointing time, bringing its passing to his attention.
‘Settembre. Quando? Quando? Quando? Quando finita la guerra? Quando? Quando? Mama Mia!’
She could sense the wordless reproach of the others. The rustling of the pages of Umberto’s book. Paolo’s renewed attack on his blocks of wood.
‘You make, Paolo. You finish?’ Moving towards him, she stretched to touch the wooden figure in his hands. The way she might reach out at passing jetsam, after a shipwreck. ‘You make, Paolo. Beautiful. . .’
‘Paolo stupido,’ Luigi accused, diverting his anger. ‘Molto stupido. Make for bambini. Not for sell. Friends camp. Giovanni. Giuseppe. Plenty make. The rings. Brooches. For sell. For money, for play cards. For cigarettes. Paolo? No. No sell. Stupido. . . ’
* * *
The weather had settled itself at last. Dry with a touch of frost. Promising fine for the tattie howking Another landscape lost, the young woman realised, staring down on a field of withered tattie shaws. Her eyes had become accustomed to the purple blaze and yellow bloom of the tattie field in flower. She would miss that.
‘Tatties,’ she shouted to Luigi, as he trundled past in the bogie. ‘Tatties for ever!’ It was one of their jokes, bridging the difference between their staple diets. God alone knew how the Italians could stomach macaroni, Meg always declared. Since she herself ‘couldn’t stomach the stuff!’ An avowal that puzzled the young woman, since Meg frankly boasted of never having tasted it.
Maybe God did have something to do with it, she remembered, the memory smiling her. They liked cheese, the Italians, but not calfie’s cheese, the cheese she herself made from the first yield of the cow’s milk after calving. ‘Che cosa? Che?’ Luigi would query, gazing down in bewilderment on her blood-red offering. Crossing himself as he gazed. A ritual that seemed to her not only a recognition of the presence of God, but a protection against potential Evil.
* * *
Kirsty and Meg, shaking the mats outside their doors, emptying their ash around the shrubs in their yards, were not yet ready to set off for the tattie field. The unreadiness of reluctance to leave their homes and housework behind.
Their bairns were on their way, though. Banging on their pails as they raced past her door. Grabbing up her own pail, the young woman ran to catch up with them.
O we can play on the big bass drum
And this is the way we do it!
Bang! Bang! Bang!
On the big bass drum
And this is the music to it!
She would have little breath for singing, Kirsty informed the young woman when herself and Meg got down to the field, Aye, would she. By the time this day was done. They had better things to do, herself and Meg, than caper around with the bairns. Or to fash, putting curlers in their hair for tattie howking. She couldn’t even sleep in the things, Meg declared, she just turned and tossed all night. Still, Kirsty concluded ominously, they knew what all the palaver was in aid of. They weren’t born yesterday.
So. They knew. They had noticed. Strange that the young woman could still delude herself, that the changes coming over her had not been apparent to others.
‘Bella,’ Luigi greeted her, as she walked towards the tattie pit. ‘Bella. Bella.’
Paolo, squatting on his upturned pail, was oblivious to her presence. All her preparation, her keen anticipation of the early morning, fell away from her. Appreciation, like the rising wind, was coming from the wrong direction.
Reeshling through the tattie shaws to the pit, Kirsty and Meg now arrived at the point of debate. The sight of the Italians sitting at ease sent them straight into the attack.
The riddling of the small tatties for next year’s seed had hitherto been Elspeth’s job. Now that there was no Elspeth on the ‘squad’, it was but right that it should fall to one of themselves, since it was, after all, ‘a woman’s job’.
‘Or a bairn’s,’ Beel reminded them, backing his tractor away from the pit.
There were times, right enough, when Beel got all above himself. This was threatening to be one of them. They would, Kirsty reminded him, ‘see what Finlay had to say about that. Him being the boss.’
His authority confirmed, Finlay put it to immediate purpose.
The best thing, he suggested, the squad could do was just to get hold of their pails. And get themselves to the top of the drills. As fast as maybe.
‘When the digger’s ready,’ Kirsty pointed out with some degree of satisfaction. ‘By the looks of it, it will never be ready.’ An observation which passed unchallenged. For it was true. And it was familiar. No matter, no matter how much time and work was spent in getting the mechanical machinery ‘right and ready’ for their seasonal tasks, they seemed to rear themselves up in objection the moment they were confronted by their tasks.
They could, the women agreed regretfully, as they eased themselves down amongst the straw, prepared for a long wait, have had their washing out on the line, on a good day like this. Not much drying in it. But the wind was still rising, with that touch of frost in it that always seemed to whiten the sheets.
‘That’ll be my new catalogue,’ Kirsty claimed, when they spied Postie leaning her bicycle up against the dyke. ‘You can save Postie’s legs for her,’ she shouted to the bairns, brandishing the withered shaws as they chased each other round the pit. ‘You can get my catalogue.’
‘Posseeble me!’ Luigi had leapt to his feet, stumbling through the tattie shaws. ‘Posseeble lettera ME. Posseeble . . .’
Never expectant of letters herself, the young woman had taken no notice of the coming of the mail, until the Italians came, finding herself now looking for letters, through their eyes.
‘Domani, Luigi,’ she would try to console in the long, letterless days. ‘Letter domani. Maybe letter domani.’
‘Domani. Domani. Sempre domani!’ He was right about that, her habit of holding out a vague promise of tomorrow, for the certain disappointment of today.
‘No lettera. No lettera Mama Mia. One month, two month, five month. No lettera. Maybe morte. Mama Mia . . .’ Directing his emotion from herself to the Madonna on the wall, a source of more powerful consolation, with a greater capacity to bear the brunt of the blame . . .
‘Nobody get vino for Mama Mia. No for mangiare. Nobody for work for Mama Mia . . . Quando, QUANDO finita la guerra? . . .’
Times like these, Paolo huddled on his stool, Umberto hidden behind a book, it seemed as if Luigi had deprived them of all their emotion, had grabbed it to himself, and shook it fist-high in the face of Heaven and of the Madonna.
* * *
The digger in working order at last, Finlay loped towa
rds them, where they stood determined at the tattie pit. What ailed them all then, what was the trouble now, he demanded. ‘The riddling,’ Meg said. ‘A woman’s job. Not right that the Italians should have it.’
‘The Italians,’ Finlay assured her, ‘don’t want your bloody jobs. The Italians, poor buggers, couldn’t tell the difference between a tattie shaw and a tattie tuber, never mind wanting to riddle the rooshac tatties.’ The Italians would do just as they were told, Finlay confirmed, his patience beginning to desert him. And so would the women, he prophesied, if they wanted to keep their jobs, that was. And lucky to have jobs at all, with land girls springing up all over the place, just waiting for the chance to jump into their shoes.
‘That’ll be right,’ Kirsty muttered, as they scrambled to collect their pails. ‘No land girl on this earth would work under Finlay.’ And if she did, Kirsty concluded, she would be as daft as they themselves were.
‘Bless them all
Bless them all
The long and the short
And the tall’
‘I hope you’ve lifted that drill clean,’ Finlay shouted, as the young woman sang past him, on the way to the top of the field to start on a new rigg.
‘Clean as a whistle, Finlay,’ she assured him.
‘Just you get yourself back here,’ Finlay commanded, ‘and give Meg and Kirsty a hand to finish their drills.’
She had forgotten. In the release of spirit that had overtaken her, she had forgotten the unwritten rule, made by themselves, for themselves, to help each other to keep up the same working pace. A mutual insurance against days when they ‘didn’t feel up to it’, against the threat of old age, and the ailments it brought in its wake. She had forgotten. Old age seemed so far away from herself. And tiredness was still something outwith her ken.
‘We’ll manage, Finlay,’ Meg shouted from her drill. ‘We’ve managed before by ourselves. We’ll manage again.’
* * *
It always took a little time to work your way back into the fold, to get on friendly terms with Meg and Kirsty again. Sometimes, sometimes the young woman felt that she had to humour the whole wide world. Her man. Kirsty and Meg. The Italians. Delving within herself for words that might atone for her breach of the Rule, she could feel the loss of her own identity.
‘They didn’t break their backs the day,’ she said, as Paolo and Umberto mounted their bicycles, and went freewheeling past them down the road.
‘Whiles,’ Meg reflected, as they watched the Italians disappear, ‘whiles, I feel it’s me, myself, that’s the prisoner. Hardly ever getting away from the place. The Italians, now, they’re always on top of the road. Always going somewhere. If it’s not off to Mass, as they call it, it’s up and away to confession. But, no doubt, they’ve got plenty to confess.’
‘You should become a Catholic then, Meg,’ the young woman suggested teasingly. ‘Then you could be up and off.’
If, Meg said, firmly rejecting the suggestion, if she ever had anything to confess, her tone implying that was highly unlikely, she would go straight to her Maker to do so. Not to some Popish priest who was only a man, after all.
* * *
‘It’s not dinner time yet,’ the young woman warned, as Luigi huddled past her door. ‘It’s not nine o’clock yet.’ Another ‘off day’ for Luigi.
She was beginning to read the signals that brought them on. Mist as thick as a wall had closed itself around the farm, which took its mood from the weather, just as it took its colour from the passing seasons. The fog had kept the sun from setting, and the moon from rising, holding it, white and startled, suspended in the sky. Only the dull and distant hammering of the men repairing the fences gave witness to a world that was still inhabited. An ‘odd job’ day. Neither here nor there. With neither positive beginning nor satisfying ending.
‘Me sick. Soffrire me,’ Luigi mumbled over his shoulder. Turning at the bothy door to assure her that he had Finlay’s permission to get off work, his state of mind sounding in the defiance of his voice. A defiance that found its echo in the anger beginning to rise up in herself, as she waited for the knock that was sure to come.
‘Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels’, she remembered. For she had always liked to hear the minister expounding on that, though all she wanted now was a down-to-earth working knowledge of Italian, so that she could berate Luigi in his own tongue: ‘You are cunning. You get off work to get at me alone. You think I am vulnerable, sorry because you didn’t get a letter. You are cunning . . .’
She didn’t know the word for sly or cunning, when the knock came. ‘No possible’ was all that she could find to say. All that Luigi could understand . . .
‘No possible.’
‘Me sick. Me soffrire. Too much soffrire me. One time. One time posseeble?’
‘No possible, Luigi. No one time possible.’
‘Paolo posseeble! Posseeble Paolo. Paolo you like.’
Left without words in any language at all, she realised that her feeling for Paolo was transparent.
* * *
‘What about the Italians’ milk?’ her man was asking. ‘Are you not taking it in to them then?’
‘In a minute. They can wait. Surely to God they can wait a minute!’
Her outburst was not against her man, taken unaware, but a protest against fear. A fear that was almost physical. Like a thin, yellow worm, beginning to crawl around inside her. Her own man, her own kitchen, had taken on a sudden safety that she felt reluctant to leave.
* * *
Luigi’s ‘off day’ had infected the bothy, as she knew it would.
‘Too much sick Luigi.’ Vehemence, rare in Paolo, took her by surprise, although not directed at herself but intended for Luigi. ‘Me sick,’ he claimed. ‘Umberto sick. Everybody sick. Me work. Umberto work. Sick similar.’
His resentment would never reach Luigi, would never penetrate. Despair had taken on the tangible form of a man lying face downwards on a bed, hidden by blankets.
‘Domani Luigi work. Domani Luigi joke. Plenty joke. Domani,’ Paolo informed Umberto as they went to the table. ‘Today. No joke. No work.’ Two prisoners sat down together at the table. They had eliminated the third.
A lack of mutual compassion was an aspect that was new to the young woman struggling to find words to overcome it. She knew them all right. Surely. Surely since you are all in the same boat. Surely . . .
But she hadn’t forgotten the Italian for that.
‘Domani. Luigi OK today. No like. Me no like. Umberto no like. Soffrire similar . . .’
Shoving his plate away from him, and clattering his knife and fork on the table, Paolo leapt to his feet, and retreated to his stool by the fire, cupping his down-bent head in his hands. ‘Me too. Me soffrire.’
‘Eat, Paolo.’ She tried to persuade him. ‘Mange. Eat, Paolo.’
Maybe, maybe compassion had another side to itself. Not just an understanding of suffering, but an involvement with it.
Luigi had gone beyond captivity. Umberto, eating calmly at the table, held himself aloof from it. There were only two prisoners in the bothy now.
But she wasn’t a prisoner, not a real one. All she had to do was just turn around and walk out. It was her legs that refused to take her to freedom. She needed the password for that. She hadn’t got it, but knew it was necessary. The knock on the bothy wall ended her search. ‘Husband,’ she said. ‘Married me. Knocking for me.’
* * *
‘There should never be three,’ she reflected when she got back to the safety of her kitchen. ‘Never three.’
‘Three what?’ her man asked, puzzled.
‘Three prisoners. Three of anything.’
Nobody knew that better than herself—the whole cottar world knew that—they always disliked to find themselves in a Cottar Row of three houses. For there was always one left out . . .
Come to think of it though, where would Meg and Kirsty be in those times when they ‘fell out’ with each other i
f they hadn’t got herself as the go-between. The recipient of their ‘honest opinions’ of each other. The ultimate bearer of the olive branch, which both wanted to extend but for which each claimed that she had ‘too much pride’. Maybe, maybe three in such confined, close-knit circumstances was essential after all. A buffer was needed. She was beginning to recognise Umberto, the schoolteacher’s role.
Now is the hour
That we collect our pay
The young woman sang out as herself and Kirsty waited for Meg, kirning about amongst the shrubs at her door. Meg was always like that, Kirsty complained, always pretending that she was in no hurry for her wages. All put on, just. Pretending that she wasn’t as hard up as the rest of them.
If she had one regret, Meg confided, when they got to her door, it was this jasmine bush. Always in leaf. Never in flower. Her one wish, that she should have remembered to take the jasmine from her last cottar house. She had grown it herself, from a cutting no bigger than her finger. But then, you knew yourselves what ‘flitting’ was like. By the time she’d got her bit sticks furniture loaded up on the cart, the mare was fit to bolt with all the clang and clatter going on around her. That was her one wish. For she never had jasmine that bloomed like yon. Never before, nor since.
Another Time, Another Place Page 5