8
ONE MORNING Rhoda had seen James off as usual and as usual had returned to the breakfast-table to finish her coffee. James had taken some sandwiches with him, so he would not be home until teatime, if then. She had a whole day before her, a whole long empty day. She was sitting and thinking about it — and wondering if she would ever get used to it — when a tiny flower fell onto her plate.
This was no miracle of course, the explanation was simple, Rhoda had picked some sprays of viburnum fragrans in the kitchen garden. She had gone out yesterday morning to pick brussels sprouts and had been beguiled by the tiny pink flowers growing upon the black leafless twigs. She had brought them in and arranged them in a bowl and placed them in the middle of the table — there was no more to it than that. Rhoda was about to brush the flower from her plate when suddenly the perfection of it struck her … one tiny flower-head but quite perfect. It was so small and insignificant that she herself who had picked the sprays and arranged them (and incidentally prided herself somewhat upon her percipience) had not noticed the beauty of it. As all artists Rhoda looked for beauty but she had been bold in her painting, she had gone for effect, she had not thought of looking for beauty in so small and insignificant a thing; a thing which, to be properly appreciated, required the aid of a magnifying glass.
Of course Rhoda had certain duties to accomplish (she could not sit and look at a tiny flower-head all morning like an Indian Yogi) but, although she moved about and made the bed and talked to Flockie about food, the thought of the small insignificant thing with its perfection of beauty remained with her and gave her happiness. The floweret had dropped onto her plate. Look, it said. Here I am — and there are millions like me — and each one of us is perfect — perfectly beautiful. Here’s your world. It’s full of beauty. Be happy in it.
When Rhoda had finished discussing food with Flockie she went back to the dining-room and taking up the bowl of viburnum fragrans she carried it upstairs to the studio. Her fingers had begun to tingle.
Mamie had been asked to tea at Boscath; she arrived at the appointed hour but on hearing that Mrs. James had been shut up in the studio all day — except for a hurried and extremely perfunctory lunch — she refused to allow Flockie to disturb her.
“We mustn’t ever disturb her when she’s painting,” explained Mamie in muted tones. “She’s a wonderful painter, you know, and Mr. James is very, very anxious that she should not give it up.”
“Of course,” agreed Flockie. “I tell you what, Mrs. Johnstone, I’ll make you a pot of tea and you can have it comfortably in the sitting room. There’s a nice fire there and a new Vo-jew for you to look at.”
“What? Oh yes, of course,” said Mamie with a glance at the shiny copy of Vogue lying upon the table. “Yes, that sounds very nice but I’d rather come into the kitchen and have tea with you, Miss Flockhart.”
“Just as you please,” said Miss Flockhart inhospitably.
Mamie was not in the least put off by the luke-warm welcome; she had not expected shouts of delight. She was not even put off by the unsmiling countenance of her prospective hostess. Miss Flockhart might have a poker face, schooled to show no pleasure at the prospect of entertaining Mrs. Johnstone to tea, but her expressive eyes gave her away.
The kitchen was cosy and spotlessly clean. Miss Flockhart placed a chair for her guest and laid the table and soon they were sitting down together eating ambrosial scones, drinking strong tea and talking their heads off. They were in complete accord. Mamie thought there was no couple in all the world as good and beautiful as her nephew and his wife. Miss Flockhart shared this view.
The subject lasted for some time and was succeeded by others. Miss Flockhart explained her arrangements about supplies for Boscath and Mamie approved of them.
“If only the river would behave itself!” said Mamie with a little frown.
“The river,” nodded Miss Flockhart. “But we’ll not starve with flour and eggs and milk and butter and tins to fall back on. What I always say is, God sends the weather and it’s not for us to grumble. There were times at Tassieknowe when we were snowed up for weeks …” and she told Mamie all she had done and how she had warded off starvation.
Mamie could not help wishing that Lizzie were more like Miss Flockhart, not only in her attitude towards inclement weather but also in herself. Mamie was very fond of Lizzie and she was pretty certain that Lizzie was fond of her, but never in all the years that Lizzie had been at Mureth had she and Mamie talked like this. They had run the house together, they had cleaned and baked and weathered all sorts of domestic storms, but they had never had a heart-to-heart talk. Lizzie was taciturn, she was inarticulate, her views on things in general were locked up in her own breast and although Mamie had searched for it she had never found the key.
Her first introduction to Lizzie had taken place at the school-house in Drumburly where three bus-loads of women and children had arrived from Glasgow as evacuees. They had been distributed to the hospitable houses and farms in the district in a haphazard sort of manner; Lizzie had come to Mureth and, unlike the other women, she had stayed. What had been Lizzie’s history before she came to Mureth? Mamie had tried to find out from Lizzie but without much success. All Mamie knew was that Lizzie’s husband had been a sailor, and that Lizzie had lived in a flat in Clydebank — a flat that had been completely demolished by a bomb.
Lizzie had nobody belonging to her but her children, and for this reason alone one might have expected them to be precious to her, but Lizzie seemed to have little in common with her children. To begin with they were quite unlike her in appearance, dark-haired and dark-eyed and slender in build, and whereas Lizzie was rather a stupid woman the children were clever — or so it appeared from their school reports. Lizzie treated them in a detached sort of way as if they did not really belong to her at all and she often grumbled about them; about the way they wore out their clothes and the mess they made coming into her kitchen with dirty boots. She was especially impatient with Duggie who was now of an age to resent his mother’s constant nagging. Mamie often felt sorry for Lizzie’s children (she was fond of children and it was a great grief to her that she had none of her own); she had tried very hard to make friends with them but she had found it extremely difficult. It was difficult not only because the children were shy and refused to co-operate but also because Lizzie kept them in the background and indeed behaved as if she were slightly ashamed of them. Mamie had managed to win Greta’s confidence with the present of a black doll, which she had made herself; and Greta no longer fled from her as if she had the plague. Duggie was a different proposition and so far Mamie had found no way of making contact with him.
The only echo from Lizzie’s mysterious past was a certain Mrs. Crow who had lived on the same stair and had been with Lizzie in the air-raid shelter when their homes were blown to pieces. Lizzie sometimes mentioned Mrs. Crow in connection with various recipes and household duties. “Mrs. Crow always put a wee pinch of salt in her puddings,” Lizzie would say. “Mrs. Crow cleaned her windows with a wee drop of vinegar in the water.” “Mrs. Crow always changed the beds on a Friday.” Sometimes Mamie thought well of Mrs. Crow’s ideas and sometimes not but it was useless to question her dicta for in Lizzie’s opinion the woman was omniscient.
Mamie found this annoying. “Where is Mrs. Crow now?” enquired Mamie one day when her patience had become exhausted.
“How would I know?” replied Lizzie answering question with question in her usual exasperating way.
“You were friends, weren’t you?” pursued Mamie but Lizzie remained silent.
Having failed to elucidate the mystery Mamie decided that Mrs. Crow was a second Mrs. Harris, there was “no sich person,” and gave up the struggle. Apart from the legendary figure of Mrs. Crow, Mamie knew of nobody and of nothing in Lizzie’s previous existence; Lizzie and Duggie and Greta were a sort of flotsam, cast up by the storm of war.
How different was Miss Flockhart! How much more interesting! In
ten minutes or a quarter of an hour Mamie had learnt more about Miss Flockhart than she had learnt about Lizzie in ten years. She had heard all about Miss Flockhart’s relatives, about her sister-in-law, Janet, and the children and the far from satisfactory manner in which they were being brought up.
“Not like we were,” declared Miss Flockhart sipping her tea in a genteel manner. “We were very strictly brought up. It was church twice on Sundays and there had to be some good reason if any of us wanted to get off — and I tell you what, Mrs. Johnstone, if we’d spoken to our father the way Tom and wee Andrew speak to theirs we’d have got our head and our hands to play with!”
Mamie nodded sympathetically. She was interested to observe that Miss Flockhart had caught the infectious gambit. “I tell you what” had sounded quite natural upon the lips of Mr. Flockhart but seemed out of place upon the lips of his sister.
“Now take Duggie,” continued Miss Flockhart. “He’s a nice boy, that. He knows the way to behave. He gets a bit of cake when he brings my messages and he never forgets to say thank you.”
Mamie was glad to hear it. “Does he talk to you at all?” she enquired.
“Well, I wouldn’t say talk,” replied Miss Flockhart reflectively. “He’s a silent kind of boy, you can never tell what he’s thinking, but I’d rather have that than impudence any day of the week.”
9
DOUGLAS FAIRBANKS Smith — to give him the title which was written in the list of pupils at Drumburly School — was an enigma to most people with whom he came in contact. In appearance he was small and dark-haired with slender hands and feet. He had no friends at school, nor did he consort with the other children at the farm, his only companion and confidante was his sister, Greta. It was to Greta that he showed his first attempts at drawing and Greta admired them. Greta saved up her Saturday pennies and bought him a box of chalks and with these Duggie worked away industriously. He was happy when he was making pictures. When they were finished he was pleased with them, and Greta was pleased too. But when he started having drawing-lessons at school he discovered that his ideas were different from those of the drawing-master and this led to trouble. The drawing-master was there to teach drawing and was annoyed when Duggie argued with him and refused his advice.
Somehow the discovery that drawing was a lesson and must be done at certain hours and in a certain stereotyped manner took all the pleasure out of it and Duggie put his chalks away and made no more pictures. He missed the pastime of course and for a time he was at a loose end, bored and miserable and incidentally a great trial to his relatives and his friends … and then, quite suddenly, he discovered a new pastime and life was once more worth living.
Duggie was eleven years old when he discovered the joys of reading. Before then he had imagined that reading was an exercise performed at school — you did as little of it as you could, it was dull and troublesome — but when he started reading for pleasure it became a positive mania. The library in Drumburly was open on two evenings a week and supplied books to suit all tastes. Duggie had no tastes nor anybody to advise him and, as a matter of fact, the reading bug soon got hold of him so firmly that it did not make much difference what he read. He would choose a book from the shelves at random and be off with it, hot-foot. In this way Duggie learnt a good many curious things about the Big Wide World beyond the encircling hills — or at least he learnt about a whole host of extraordinary people whose conditions of life were quite different from his own — and having no background, no standard of comparison, his mind became a very strange jungle.
The Adventures of Dickson McCunn, Adam Bede, Eric or Little by Little, these and many others, old and new, good bad and indifferent were grist to Duggie’s mill. He found a novel by Rhoda Broughton entitled Not Wisely But Too Well and read it all through. He read an abridged version of Robinson Crusoe, and Under Two Flags and Coral Island with equal concentration. He read Little Women and Wuthering Heights. Cheyney he found difficult, for the people seemed to speak an unfamiliar language, but he struggled on manfully all the same.
Needless to say Duggie did not understand one half of what he read. He took his reading like a drug; he absorbed it as a drunkard absorbs whisky, and the everyday world became dream-like and unreal. Unfortunately he had little peace at home to pursue his passion, for if his mother found him reading she would rout him out and give him some sort of job to do. She would set him to peel potatoes or to scrub the wash-house floor, which in her opinion were more useful exercises than reading. This being so Duggie was forced to find a refuge and after some search he found an admirable one, it was a little cave high up in the rocks of the quarry from which Mureth House had been built. There was a rowan tree growing upon the ledge in front of the cave which screened it from view. Greta knew of the cave, of course, he had no secrets from her, and sometimes she would follow him to his lair and sit beside him nursing her black doll and thinking dreamily.
At first Duggie confined his reading to holidays and to weekends when he was free from school, but soon he became dissatisfied with these poor snippets of time and began to play truant. The school bus which fetched the children from the valley stopped every morning at Mureth Farm and sometimes if he and Greta were ready early he found it possible to slip away and hide (Greta, who would do anything he wanted, would say he had a cold and was at home in bed). Then, when the bus had disappeared down the road, Duggie would be up and away to the hills and the quarry.
One day when Duggie was playing truant in this reprehensible manner he was discovered by Daniel Reid, or rather by Gyp the sheep-dog who was questing about in search of stray sheep. The dog barked and Daniel climbed up the face of the quarry and found him. Duggie would have escaped if he could but there was only the one way up to the cave so he was fairly trapped.
“I’m doing no harm,” said Duggie defiantly.
“I never said you were,” replied Daniel. “It’s a nice wee cave. I knew it when I was a lad no older than yourself. Me and my brothers used to play smugglers in it. Why are you not at school, Duggie?”
Duggie’s face took on a mulish expression, but he said no word.
“Umphm,” said Daniel nodding. “So that’s the way of it. You’ve learnt to read. Maybe you’re too stupid to learn any more.”
“I’m not stupid. Mr. Greig says I could be in a higher class if I worked harder.”
“Then you’re stupid, my lad,” declared Daniel. “You’re not making the most of your powers and your opportunities. That’s stupid.”
“But, Mr. Reid —”
“Now listen,” said Daniel gravely. “Just you listen to me and I’ll tell you something worth remembering. When we’re young we make our beds and when we’re older we have to lie on them. I’d make myself a comfortable bed if I were you — straight and tidy with the blankets well tucked in at the foot — then it’ll not come adrift when you lie in it. If a bed’s not properly made at the start the blankets’ll maybe fall off in the night and you’ll wake up shivering.” He nodded to Duggie in a friendly manner and away he went with his dog bounding gracefully beside him. Duggie watched him until he disappeared.
Daniel Reid’s homily had its effect upon Duggie but it is doubtful whether the effect would have been lasting if another interest had not come into Duggie’s life.
It was a Saturday, a few days after his encounter with Daniel Reid, and Duggie had been commissioned to take two loaves of bread and a basket of groceries to Boscath; he went to the back door as usual but Flockie was out and Rhoda answered his knock. Rhoda had heard about Duggie from Flockie and was interested in him, she was even more interested when she saw him. Good bones interested Rhoda and this boy’s face, though maned by a slightly sulky expression, was well constructed. It was not a child-like face, there were no half-formed contours, no chubbiness of boyhood in Duggie’s face. His face would grow larger but it would not change, for already it had taken on maturity. Models were scarce at Boscath and here was one to her hand; she took Duggie upstairs to the studio, gave
him a large piece of cake to keep him quiet and proceeded to make a charcoal drawing of his head and shoulders. It did not take long for Rhoda was a quick worker and Duggie was a good model, he sat perfectly still eating the cake with obvious enjoyment and gazing out of the window. When she had finished Rhoda invited her sitter to come and look at his portrait.
“Jings, that’s me!” exclaimed Duggie in amazement.
“Yes,” agreed Rhoda. “Of course it’s you. Who did you think it would be?”
“I thought it would just be a picture of me,” explained Duggie.
Shoulder the Sky (Drumberley Book 3) Page 6