‘Well, it takes a long time to clean the flat and queue for rations. It’s hard to keep everything nice when he won’t let me into his study to clean.’
‘He won’t let you in his study?’ repeated Sylvia. ‘All top secret and hush-hush, eh?’ She bit into another cheese pie.
‘I don’t really mind. I am very busy. I grow my own vegetables and I keep a snare on the Blackford Hill for rabbits.’
‘Do you really?’ she exclaimed.
‘A veritable Diana,’ said a deep voice behind me, and I turned to see Douglas standing there. He bent and kissed my hand. Suddenly I didn’t feel like my dress was second-hand any more. ‘A vision,’ he said, brushing the stole at my shoulder, and moved to kiss Sylvia on both cheeks.
‘Our one-man Bannockburn,’ she laughed. ‘Any date for the appeal?’
‘July the ninth,’ he said.
‘Any hope of a defence?’
‘Watertight, of course. You know me. Jeff has been helping me research it but I am going down the line of the sheriff acting ultra vires in view of the statutes of 1369 and 1371. The 1707 treaty never gave him more authority than he had before that date, ergo he can’t enforce edicts like conscription in a Scottish court when that edict originated in England. And the Crown is not above the law here, a principle established in the Declaration of Arbroath to keep Bruce in his place.’
‘Well, I don’t know where you dug up your dusty statutes but I hope they serve you well. The war isn’t looking too good what with this Northern Front in Norway. The Free Norwegians are cobbling together boats here.’
‘I salute their Viking spirit,’ said Douglas, ‘but the fight against Nazism can come when we have home rule, or at least a Scottish army under our control.’
‘Well, let’s hope there is time,’ replied Sylvia, and as she spoke I imagined the Nazis stamping down the hill to Tollcross, even nearer the castle. ‘We need people like you, Douglas. I don’t want to see you locked away in some dungeon for treason,’ she added.
‘It’s all mod cons at Barlinnie, Sylvia,’ he laughed.
He didn’t seem to notice the tears in her eyes from his great height. Someone tapped on a glass with a spoon and everyone moved towards the seats, which were upholstered in blue velvet. Jeff was standing on the podium two rows away, but I was more aware of Douglas’ warm thigh against mine. Even though I tried to hold my leg away from his without moving my foot, every time I relaxed I felt him next to me.
‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ began Jeff. He had insisted on wearing a dinner suit with a white tie as ladies were present, but I didn’t see that it mattered. I must have been away in a dwam, or perhaps it was the sherry, because Douglas nudged me and nodded towards the podium. Jeff had started speaking.
‘It is an honour and a privilege to be present tonight as a caretaker for the Scottish Dictionary while its prospective editor is exiled in Beith.’
There was a smattering of applause. ‘While I don’t expect the war to last long enough to get the work finished, I hope to contribute more than a little to the letter “C”. In the meantime, I propose to speak to you tonight about the declension of Scots verbs in the German model, using those active words which might be said to take a Middle High German root.’
Douglas got out a small pen and paper. ‘Prepared for any eventuality,’ he said.
Jeff took a deep breath. ‘The verb “to go”,’ he said. ‘Past tense, imperfect, as we have it from Burns, and the Scottish vernacular, “ging”. Perfect, from the German perfect tense as we know it today, “ich bin gegangen”. We drop the auxiliary verb “bin” and the prefix “ge-”, and the suffix “-en”, and arrive at “gang”. “I gang”, meaning, “I went”.’
I was looking at the clasp of river pearls in Millie’s hair in front of me when I realised that Jeff was adding, ‘As any native speaker might say intuitively, without a full understanding of the origins of their speech – a speaker such as my lovely wife, Agnes.’
‘Aye,’ I said, standing up, and then the room laughed. I sat down.
‘Very good,’ applauded Douglas, but I wasn’t being funny. Millie turned round and whispered, ‘Spoken like a true native,’ and her red, red lips split open like a wound. I felt a tear spring to my eye. I never used to cry in Galloway. Mother always said I had a smile for the world.
Jeff talked for a long time and Douglas made occasional notes – ‘Ich meine: I mind: loosely, I remember’ – shaking his pen over the floor to get the ink flowing. Then, with a sigh, he took a pencil out of his pocket. ‘Sometimes the simplest solutions are the best,’ he said.
Jeff continued with his long list. ‘Common misunderstandings of Scots words by our English neighbours, who believe them to be a corruption of their own tongue rather than coming from a different root: “man” meaning husband, from the German word “Mann” as in, “Mann und Frau”, man and wife; “coo” from the German “Kuh”, k–u–h, not a mispronunciation of the word “cow”.’
Jeff was getting very heated and paused to take a drink. I heard Millie whisper, ‘Rather obvious,’ to her neighbour. Then Jeff leafed through his papers to find what he called his interesting aside. I turned to Douglas, whose eyes fell on the moth hole on my shoulder strap.
‘May I?’ he smiled and reached towards the corsage over my left breast. He unpinned it with his bear’s paw and delicately pinned it over the hole. His fingers felt huge against my skin as he pulled the satin up to fasten the pin. ‘Make do or mend. That is the real choice. Mend – never make do.’
‘Thank you, Mr Grant,’ I said. Millie’s head turned a fraction. The pearl drop in her ear swung like a tiny pendulum on its silver chain. She reminded me of Mrs MacDougall listening through the wall, as if there could be no secrets in the world. ‘Please excuse me,’ I said.
I stood up as quietly as I could, but the room that had seemed so large suddenly seemed very small, and I had to squeeze past three other people to get out. Jeff stopped talking for a moment, which made everyone turn to look at me. I mimed drinking a glass of water and he started talking again. There were too many words in the room, coming so fast they all fell over each other and lost their sense. Jeff should have slowed down and given them space so that I could try to understand what he was talking about, but they came at breakneck speed as if he was challenging his colleagues to keep up. I pulled the heavy, wooden door shut behind me, only releasing the handle at the last minute so it wouldn’t make a noise. The hall was cool and I wanted to lean my hot forehead against the windowpane, but the blackout blind was down. I didn’t dare lift it in case some light escaped, so I stood there waiting for Jeff to finish. I longed to walk back across the Meadows by myself, to see the stars and smell the cool, night air, but for the first time in my life, the big, open spaces seemed dangerous, as if a German plane might drift over from the Forth on owl wings, and the silver necklace at my throat felt like the rabbit snare I had left on the hill.
Douglas stayed with us again that night, but apart from asking if the moths had been issued with the appropriate ration cards before hanging his jacket in the cupboard, we never spoke. I fell asleep to the sound of his laughter in the kitchen and the low murmur of my husband answering him.
8
Jeff was happy all week after his talk and insisted I come to the next Party meeting and see the Bannockburn rally, although it was out of town. Stirling was much smaller than Edinburgh and there weren’t so many signs of the war. Only the station was sandbagged. We paused by a newspaper stand while a man checked our tickets. It read, ‘1,000 bombers leave Bremen blazing’. The headline wriggled under the criss-crossed wire in the breeze, trying to escape. I wondered where Bremen was.
As we walked up the hill below the castle, I could see the Ochils in a long line and Jeff pointed out the Witches’ Craig at the foot of Dumyat. The hills were soft and round, and the Wallace Monument stood out against them with its craggy hat on. ‘It is God’s own country,’ he said.
Smartly dressed old men, and a few w
omen were also walking up to the Miners’ Welfare Institute at the Craigs, and some carried rolled-up flags and banners. There was a sign outside which read, ‘SNP Special Conference’. We had to queue to get in. At the far end of the hall there was a platform with a long table, draped with the Saltire.
All the blethering in the room tailed off when the Convenor stood up to welcome everyone. When they stopped rummaging in bags for sweeties, and turning round to say hello to people, he begged leave to remind them that, on this occasion, Stirling Council had not seen fit to allow them to march through the town with a pipe band in honour of Bannockburn. Someone shouted, ‘Shame.’
‘I regret to inform you, ladies and gentlemen,’ he continued, ‘that a certain councillor and the baillies of this small but once glorious place are of the mind that a pacifist organisation, as they choose to call us – heavily influenced by the press, I might add – cannot claim to represent the fighting spirit of Robert the Bruce. The recent election of Douglas as Chairman has persuaded some misguided people to share this view.’
There was a gasp from the audience. Jeff jumped up and shouted, ‘No one can stop us flying the flag for Scotland.’
The Convenor rose to his feet and patted down the uproar. ‘There will be an opportunity to unfurl all the banners you want at the Bannockburn rally itself in the King’s Park tonight at 7pm. We must accept their assertion that we have been rebuffed on the grounds of traffic control and, in the meantime, I am obliged to ask you to respect the wishes of the local community, or at least their representatives. Let us demonstrate the good discipline of our Party for the greater good.’
‘Down with the baillies!’ shouted a lone voice.
‘Freedom from tyranny!’ shouted another.
‘Order, please, gentlemen. I give you our new Chairman.’
Douglas bowed. He looked tired. ‘My dear friends, despite the recent reports of a split in our Party, we know that we remain true to Scotland’s interests. We are fighting for her rights and freedom, just as England fights for hers against the Nazis, but we have another yoke to lay off; the yoke of English oppression – oppression of our industry, our trade, and our young women, who are transported as mobile labour to war factories down south.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Let us not forget the sad case of Jessie, who was forced under threat of imprisonment to leave her dependent and disabled mother and travel to England to work.’ His voice rose. ‘We need to bring the defence of Scotland home. If the British government can transfer the defence of Ireland and Iceland,’ he paused to look round the room, ‘to the United States, then why can’t they transfer the defence of Scotland to a Scottish government?’
There was applause and a rumble of feet stamping on the floor.
I wasn’t really in the mood for all this tub-thumping again, so I squeezed out to help the women in the kitchen. They were cutting sandwiches and preparing tea in great, big metal pots. A baby was drinking tea from a bottle held in place by a nappy tied round his chin. Someone pulled a pinny round my waist to protect my blue dress and I felt happy as I cut the bread. The girl next to me said she wouldn’t mind starting a revolution with that Douglas Grant and everyone laughed.
Three hours later, we were on our way to King’s Park. The houses were very big with tidy lawns, and had shiny, brass knockers on the doors that Mrs McDougall would have waxed lyrical about. She always made out she was born to better things than keeping a dusty Edinburgh stair, but Jeff said it was all nonsense as her mother was in service. He was a bit Morningside about these things.
At the park, we stood in the crowd with the Trossachs lying across the horizon behind us. Jeff pointed out the blue tip of Ben Lomond away in the west. Sheep were grazing on the golf course to keep the grass short while the men were away fighting. I wondered if we could go to one of the tents for another cup of tea before the speakers got on stage, but Jeff wanted to be near the front. The first speaker sounded very tinny, as if the microphone was chewing up his words, so I gazed at the castle on its rock above the knot garden where Jeff said Queen Mary used to play when she was a bairn.
Applause started as Douglas appeared on the stage with a man dressed as Robert the Bruce, carrying a great, long sword. Douglas waved at Jeff, who had stuck a wee Saltire in his hatband, although I thought it looked daft. And then Douglas nodded at a man standing near us. He was all dressed in black and he raised his hat to the stage very politely. His voice was English, just like the ones on the wireless, and the man next to him began to write the things Douglas said in a wee notebook. He wrote very fast in a kind of squiggly writing when Douglas spoke about not sending the lassies away, or not transferring German spies to London when they were caught here in Scotland. ‘Reject conscription. We will fight for a Scots army led by Scotsmen,’ he roared, and the crowd shouted back, ‘Long live the Bruce,’ but in such a big park it all sounded no louder than the sheep bleating. The branch banners were up now, hiding the view to the hills. Douglas said he commended his February article in the Scots Independent to us if we wished to read more on the subject. Everyone cheered again, and Jeff nudged me, so I cheered, too. I was annoyed that he put so much money in the bucket that went round for the Scottish Mutual Aid Committee. As I passed it on, I noticed that the man in the black hat had gone.
I was anxious to ask Jeff about conscription and the letter. I knew he would be fit enough to fight as he was always up on the Braids playing golf, but I didn’t know how to raise it because he got so crabbit last time. At the station, he said, ‘You are very quiet, Pip,’ but he didn’t wait for a reply. He started blethering on about how great the meeting had been and how good Douglas was. I sat in the compartment, beside two old ladies who were knitting, and watched his jaw going up and down as he kept talking. The sun shone on the bristles on his cheek and I wondered why he never noticed that I was bored rigid and just nodded to look polite. He fell asleep outside Falkirk and the sun shone in my eyes as it got lower. Jeff became a sort of hazy shadow against the light. How could he sleep when the Nazis were spreading everywhere like ants? As we drew into Waverley, Jeff stretched and blew me a kiss. He reached for my hand as he stood up.
Waverley was very busy and men were crowding onto the platform for Southampton to go and fight. A woman was greetin’ so hard that she bumped into Jeff and then she said, ‘Sorry, son, are you going for this train?’ and sort of held open her arm as if to guide him onto it, but Jeff shook his head. She looked a bit confused before stepping aside.
‘They are no better than sheep,’ he said to me, and we had to push through the crowd to get up the steps to Princes Street. I felt like we were going the wrong way and when I said so, he replied, ‘This is the right way. We are going home.’
I said, ‘That’s not what I meant.’
A muscle in his jaw began to twitch. I tried to ignore him until the tram came, and then I looked out the window or down at my bag. A corner of the leaflet I got from the rally was trapped in the clasp, and I opened my bag to push it further down inside.
‘I am not signing up, Agnes,’ Jeff said in a whisper, and he got off the tram early, leaving me on my own. He said he wanted to walk home to clear his head, but I arrived well before him and had forgotten my key, so ended up sitting on the wall outside the flat. The blossom was dead now and it rustled at my feet in shrivelled heaps that smelt foostie as the wind whipped them up. When Jeff finally got home he opened the door, but didn’t hold it for me.
The range was on its last puff when we got in and there wasn’t much coal left. I made some pancakes and we ate the last of the broth, but my spoon sounded very loud in my bowl and Jeff went to his study instead of reading the paper to me as I washed up. I was singing Come awa’ wi’ me to Gallowa’ when Jeff came in and asked me to be quiet. ‘I am writing something important,’ he said, ‘and you are making a racket. Mother always had more consideration.’
I looked at the bubbles on my hands and then over at him. He was like someone I had never seen before, so pernickety and crabbit. No
t cheery like Douglas.
‘I wish I had never left the farm,’ I said and, although I wanted to go to him, and have him hold me to make things better, it seemed too far to walk. I noticed the lino was cracked. When I looked up he was gone and I didn’t feel like singing again anyway. I sat on the window seat and looked out at the deserted mansion. Jeff was still typing when I went to bed after my bath, and the snap of the letters hitting the paper was like distant gunfire, which bothered me even when I put my head under the pillow.
9
Jeff left for a meeting in Glasgow early the next day and said I could phone him at the Scottish Home Rule Association if I needed him. He left the number on the phone table and I looked at his beautiful writing for a long time after he had gone. Each letter was so carefully formed.
After some porridge, I walked out onto the Blackford Hill to check my snare because it would have been wrong to leave an animal to suffer in it, but there was nothing. The little silver ‘O’ was like an empty promise and could hardly be seen against the grass. I felt sad as I walked back empty-handed. My feet skited on the gravel on the way down the path and when I reached the street, the concrete seemed to smother the land.
After lunch, to try and cheer up, I was polishing the brass on my front door, to be more like the bonny houses in Stirling, when the phone rang. I wiped my hands on my pinny and said, ‘Morningside 4125,’ like Jeff taught me, and he said, ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Agnes. It’s me.’
He sounded as if he had been running and said that something very bad was happening. I was to take the key to his desk from under the plant pot and burn all the letters in the first three pigeonholes on the left. I was to be quick because there was not a minute to lose, and he was going for the train at Queen Street now, and would be home as soon as possible.
Capital Union, A Page 4