‘Aye. What was Jack Black wanting?’
‘You didn’t see him?’
‘No, but that old horse of his left us a present.’
Colin stood up. ‘I didn’t notice. I’ll away and put it on your sister’s flowers. Jack was asking the two of you to a dance at the Kirk Hall.’
‘I’m not going to any dance.’
‘Aye, you are, for your sister wants to go and, also, Robin’s going.’
‘Robin?’ Ian looked around the room as if his sister might be hiding under a cushion. ‘Where’s Mairi?’
‘Away to the schoolhouse with some soup for Mistress Morrison.’
‘Away to plague Robin more like. I’ll away then and get my tea.’
*
Mairi was unsure of her motive in taking soup and scones to the school teacher’s wife. Since she had left the small country school she had had little contact with the Morrisons. Ian and Robin had remained friends when they had gone on to secondary school in Arbroath and, even after Robin had won a scholarship to a boarding school, the boys had continued to see one another, at least when Robin was at home. But Mairi resented Robin who was having the chance that she knew her brother deserved. Sometimes she felt that, had the Dominie tried harder, her father might have relented and allowed Ian to continue his formal education. But Mr Morrison had accepted the status quo and Ian had left school on his fourteenth birthday. His sole contact with books and learning seemed to be Robin’s periodic visits but Mairi suspected that the Dominie loaned her brother books and discussed them with him whenever there was an opportunity. For most of the year there was no time for long chats but in the winter when there was little light for working, as long as the inbye animals were fed and watered and their bedding changed regularly, Colin had no objection to his son’s visits to the schoolhouse. But Mairi had no reason to visit her former teacher and, until tonight, no intention of doing so.
She walked carefully up the farm road, taking time to admire the beauty of the briar roses and the honeysuckle twining in the hedges. She was conscious of the indescribable and ethereally beautiful Scottish summer evening light when a lilac blueness seems to hang over everything and, if she had not been carrying a pail of soup in her hands, she would have raised them in supplication to the self same sky to show her awareness of her oneness with the world around her.
‘How can he say he wants to leave this? How could anyone ever want to live anywhere else?’
Mairi was well aware of the struggle for survival that her father and brother fought almost every day of their lives. She had seen them return from the fields too tired from hours of back-breaking labour even to eat. She knew too that Colin had never considered living in any other way. Ian loved the land; he saw beauty in an unfolding leaf, the innocence in the play of a young animal. Had he not written poem after poem to those same delights and yet, when he spoke at all about himself, it was always to say how much he wanted to get away, away from the things he loved.
How strange. Mairi loved the land and her love made her want to cleave even closer to it. How was it possible to love something and to want desperately to go away from it?
The Dominie was in his garden and, as he stood up from his hoeing, his face expressed his delight and surprise at seeing her.
‘Soup, Mairi, how very thoughtful of you. Mrs Morrison enjoys lettuce soup but just hasn’t had the energy for cooking this summer.’
‘Goodness, Dominie, it cooks itself. I’ll take it into the back kitchen.’
He put down his hoe, obviously glad of an opportunity to rest. ‘No, no, lass. Let me take you in the front door, Mrs Morrison will be overjoyed to have a visitor and, as for me, a wee crack with a former star pupil is always a delight. You’re enjoying being the mistress of the farm? Your brother tells me you rule with a rod of iron.’
Mairi blushed to the roots of her hair and vowed silently to make Ian regret his flippancy. She made her menfolk do only what was good for them. ‘Ian’s a blether. Hello, Mrs Morrison. I hope you don’t mind, but I made too much soup for the three of us.’
Lizzie Morrison rose with a smile of welcome and Mairi had to stifle a gasp at the difference a few months had made. The Dominie’s wife had always been slim, but now she was almost emaciated. Her face was thin and pale and her great eyes looked too big for their sockets. Her hair, which had always curled around her head in soft feathery curls, was dry and lifeless. Her voice, too, was lifeless but she did try to make it bright and there was no doubt about the warmth of her welcome.
‘Oh, Mairi, how very kind of you. We have missed seeing Ian this past summer. The Dominie misses Robin so much and Ian is almost as dear to him. But come, my dear, sit down and tell me what you are doing.’
Mr Morrison, with a murmured, ‘I’ll move the kettle onto the fire,’ took the pail and the plate of scones and went off to the scullery and Mairi was forced to sit down. She felt stupid and awkward. What had she been doing? Nothing. Nothing but washing, ironing, cooking, cleaning. What was there of interest in that?
‘I grew roses this summer,’ she said, ‘Bourbons and gallicas . . .’
Mrs Morrison sniffed, her eyes closed. What a strange way for a grown woman to behave.
‘Oh, I can almost smell them, Mairi,’ she said, ‘and what else did you grow?’
‘Canterbury Bells and Hollyhocks.’
‘I should like to see your garden, Mairi. I suppose you have no need to grow vegetables?’
‘But I do, to get them young and sweet. Even potatoes.’
‘Your father keeps us in potatoes and cabbages, carrots and turnips in season. He’s a fine man and Ian is very like him.’
‘Ian? But Ian is nothing like our father, Mrs Morrison. Why, Ian is a . . . a poet.’
‘And your father isn’t? I think all men who work with the land are poets, Mairi, especially the big, gentle ones like your father.’ For a moment she looked embarrassed but was saved by her husband’s entrance.
‘Have you made us tea, Euan? And here’s a poet can make a cup of tea, Mairi.’
‘But not scones, my dear. The scones are Mairi’s.’
Mairi looked up and her eye was caught by a sepia portrait of Robin, so starched, so formal. He did not look like the boy who had plagued her in the playground. Or had he ever plagued her? Was it not Ian who had said, ‘Go away, Mairi. This is a boys’ game.’
‘How is Robin?’ she asked politely. ‘I hear he is enjoying the university.’
‘He is a very new student, my dear,’ said the Dominie, ‘and like many new students has made his share of mistakes but he ended his first year well and, having managed to just scrape through his examinations, is vowing to do better next year.’
‘And what will he do with this fine education?’ asked Mairi and surprised herself by the bitterness in her voice.
If the Morrisons noticed, and probably they were too innocent and gentle to believe they had heard it, they said nothing except, ‘Well, here is his mother who would like to see her son a doctor or a lawyer, but would you believe, Mairi, our Robin wants to teach.’
‘To teach?’ Mairi almost screeched. ‘Not here surely?’
‘He has fallen in love with our magnificent capital city. Perhaps his future lies there, but he will start in Angus, probably in Arbroath since that is where the nearest secondary school is. Robin will teach Latin and Greek. There is little need for Latin and Greek here.’
‘Latin and Greek. I would have liked fine to learn those languages, Dominie. One day, I’m thinking, farm girls will learn them.’
The Morrisons laughed politely and Mairi, a picture in her head of herself reciting Homer to a milk cow, laughed with them.
‘Pigs might fly, as Bridie O’Sullivan is always saying,’ she said, and stood up to go.
‘Wait, child. I’ll put the soup into a pot and give you back your pail.’
‘No matter, Mrs Morrison, I’ll drop in when I’m passing.’
‘Or Robin could bring it over some
evening when Ian is at home,’ suggested Mrs Morrison.
‘Aye, he could do that. Ian’s in most nights and if he’s out, he’s lying by the burn with a book, probably one of yours, Dominie.’
They saw her to the gate and Mairi turned when she reached the entrance to Pansy Lane. They were standing watching her, the Dominie’s arm around his wife.
Aye, thought Mairi again. That’s the kind of marriage I want, and she raised her arm in salute before picking up her skirts and running like a child down the path to the farm.
CHAPTER THREE
The band was ready: Edith on the piano, George Trace on the fiddle and Maggie McLeod on the accordion. Maggie looked a bit awkward, she so wee and the accordion so big, but nobody laughed because everyone in the Kirk Hall had seen her throw bags of tatties on to her father’s cart. A feisty wee soul was Maggie and it was a brave man who would meddle with her.
Mairi McGloughlin found her toes tapping in anticipation and she had no idea how her vitality and eagerness transmitted themselves to the watching farm boys. She had made her dress and she was pleased with the soft frill around her throat, at the end of each narrow wrist-length sleeve, and around the whirling hem. Green was a colour that suited her burnished auburn curls and large green eyes, and well she knew it.
‘You’ll save a dance for me, Mairi,’ and there was Robin.
If only he had asked properly and humbly like the rest of the boys – except Ian – in the hall.
‘I don’t know that I have a space left, Robin Morrison.’ He laughed. ‘Duty done, Mairi,’ he teased and sauntered off over to where Ian stood awkwardly, obviously wishing he were anywhere else.
Mairi tossed her curls with vexation. Robin was not quite so good-looking as Jack but he was a better, more courteous dancer and, what was more, he seemed unaware of his attractiveness. All the girls in the room wanted to dance with him.
‘Only because he’s a good dancer,’ said Mairi angrily to herself, ‘and a girl who hasn’t had too much practice looks better when she’s dancing with someone who knows what he’s doing.’
‘Don’t tell me I heard you turn down Robin Morrison, Mairi?’ Edith, released from the piano for a moment, was at her elbow. ‘You must be daft. He is the best dancer in the hall, apart from our Jack and I can’t imagine why anyone would want to dance with him.’
Mairi looked over to where Robin and Ian were standing, their faces animated with their interest in each other and in their discussion. She tried to see them objectively. Robin was too tall, too thin, and his too-long dark hair hung dejectedly around his ears. Ian was his father’s son, with the strong legs and broad shoulders of a working farmer. His skin was weatherbeaten and his eyes shone out a brilliant blue against the tanned skin. They were fine-looking men, Robin perhaps a slightly poetic, Byronic figure, although she would die a thousand deaths before she would let him know she thought so. Ian looked . . . trustworthy, capable, kind: fine-looking young men, both of them. A girl could count herself lucky to attract either one of them.
‘And doesn’t Robin know it?’
She turned and looked across the hall to where Jack was sitting, one girl, who should have known better, on his lap and another sitting in a chair gazing at him as if every word that fell from his lips was gold.
‘We don’t see our brothers the way other girls see them, Edith. Your Jack is very handsome.’
‘Oh, he’s not on a par with your Ian, or Robin. Robin’s beautiful, don’t you think?’
‘I think he looks as if he could use a few plates of stovies,’ said Mairi disparagingly. Ian was a big man and every inch on him solid muscle. No one would ever say Mairi McGloughlin didn’t know how to feed her men.
Edith looked hopefully at the clock on the wall and sighed. ‘It’s too early for supper. You’d better get a dance or two first.’
‘Unfortunately girls have to be asked.’
‘Goodness, Mairi, you’re not one of those awful modern women who think they should do the asking?’
‘I don’t care who does the asking; it’s having to smile sweetly and say yes to every corrie-footed farmer who asks that bothers me.’
Edith looked at her and laughed slyly. ‘I didn’t notice you smiling sweetly at Robin.’
‘Och, he’s not a man . . . well, I mean it’s different with Robin and I didn’t exactly say no, I just said maybe.’
He would not ask again, she knew that. She knew too that even if he did ask, something in her would make her say no.
Mairi McGloughlin was beginning to wish that she had stayed at home.
‘I’d better get back to the piano. Pity you can’t play, Mairi. Boys love it and, besides, I’m dying to dance.’
For years, sitting in the schoolroom, Mairi had envied Edith with a longing that was almost palpable. Imagine being able to sit in front of a piano, look at a page of funny little black squiggles, and begin to make music, music that could make you dream, music that could make you cry, music that could make you dance. But, yes, if you were sitting up there at the piano, you could hardly be whirling and twirling around on the floor. She smiled and the smile caught at Jack Black’s notoriously unselective heart. He dumped the girl from his knee, crossed the floor and presented himself to Mairi.
‘I’m sure you said yes to Broon’s Reel, Mairi. Let’s get ourselves into a decent set.’
Mairi went, conscious that most girls were looking at her with envy and completely unconcerned about the young man whose name was already on her card. To give her her due, she had not looked at her card and had forgotten completely about him.
Sinclair, the minister’s son, saw Mairi’s rejection as just one more cross on his troubled way and would have accepted it. Not so Violet, Mairi’s one-time best friend.
‘Sinclair, did you not say you had this dance with Mairi McGloughlin?’
Her young clear voice carried across the hall. Mairi stopped in mid-step and blushed to the roots of her hair but Jack laughed and, grabbing her arm, whirled her around in a proprietary way that annoyed Ian. Everything about Jack Black annoyed Ian.
He walked across the hall to Sinclair. ‘Did she promise this dance, Sinclair?’
Sinclair blushed like Mairi. ‘It’s not worth making anything of it, Ian. She forgot, that’s all. Can’t expect a beautiful girl like Mairi to—’
‘My father would expect his daughter to dance with Billy Soutar if she’s given her word. I’ll stop the dance.’
Robin, who had followed his friend across the floor, put a restraining hand on Ian’s arm. ‘Don’t make a scene, Ian. She’s thoughtless; that’s hardly a crime.’
‘My father spoils her but he’d not allow her to be rude.’
‘Would he prefer his son embarrass her in front of a roomful of people? Sweet little Violet has already done that.’
‘Embarrass her? Our Mairi?’
‘She’s desperately sorry.’
‘That’s why she’s dancing like one of them dervishes with her skirts flying higher than any decent girl’s should?’
‘Exactly and why not, she’s only a lassie. Leave her alone and she’ll apologise to Sinclair. If you do the big brother routine she’ll stick her heels in like Carrie Kennedy’s old goat and not be moved for love nor money.’
Ian looked at his friend and then back at Sinclair. ‘Is that enough, Sinclair? Will I leave her to say she’s sorry?’
‘I’m so surprised she agreed to dance with me anyway. I can understand her preferring Jack.’
‘For God’s sake, man, stand up for yourself.’
Sinclair winced at his language. ‘I’ll stand up for what I feel is important, Ian, like taking the Lord’s name in vain.’
Ian looked down and had the feeling that subtly Sinclair had changed and then, before he could analyse the change, the feeling was gone and once more timid, harmless Sinclair was there.
He turned away. ‘Let me know if she doesn’t apologise.’
Followed by Robin he walked back to their chai
rs against the wall. ‘Look at her,’ he fumed as he watched his sister sail, like a beautiful yacht, down the length of the hall, her energetic steps allowing her to keep pace easily with Jack’s longer strides.
Robin was looking and what he saw was confusing him. ‘She’s grown up, Ian. When did your wee Mairi grow up?’
Ian looked at his friend in disgust. ‘For Heaven’s sake, Robin, it’s just Mairi, Anyone would think you were St Paul on the road to Damascus with your tongue hanging out like an old dog needing a drink. Come on outside for a while.’
‘I want to ask Mairi to dance.’
‘You did.’
‘I know but I didn’t really mean it and now I do.’
‘And you think she’ll say yes? You’ll never learn about women, Robin. Mairi can’t abide you. And even if she did, she’d die rather than dance with you now.’
Robin looked at his friend in stunned silence. Mairi disliked him? He had known that she resented the times when he had beaten her beloved brother, but that she disliked him . . . No, surely not. Well, she would never know how much her dislike hurt him.
‘You know Edith will be taking a break in a while and she’s got awfully pretty, don’t you think?’
‘Well, she’s certainly prettier than Maggie McLeod.’
‘You are turning into an old grouch, Ian. Why on earth did you come to the dance if you’re not going to enjoy yourself?’
‘I came to see you,’ said Ian angrily, and then added the second truth. ‘My father made me come to look after our Mairi. I doubt he could, the mood she’s in.’
‘Well, there’s the end of the dance. I’m away to talk to Edith.’
Ian stood angrily and watched his friend cross the hall. He saw the way everyone, boys and girls alike, smiled and nodded as the Dominie’s son passed them. He had always been popular, his position as the teacher’s son and brightest pupil rarely held against him. In fact, everyone in the world, with the exception of Mairi McGloughlin, recognised the worth that was Robin.
*
‘I’ll thank you not to make a talking point of my sister.’ The words were out before Ian thought. His fist connected with Jack’s jaw before the other boy had even had a chance to protect himself. In amazement, horror, and some pride, Ian looked down at the sprawled figure of his sister’s dancing partner. But not for long. With an oath that easily drowned out the squeals of excitement from various young ladies and words of encouragement from several farm boys, Jack had jumped again to his feet and thrown himself at Ian.
The Crofter's Daughter Page 3