‘Ach, women forced by circumstance, lassie, and that end up more man than woman. I’ll not have my wee lassie knocked about by life, not while I can help it.’
Jack took his courage in both hands and pressed Mairi’s hands into her lap. ‘I’ll make sure life delivers no blows either,’ the pressure and his smile said and Mairi found herself getting warmer and wishing, for the first time, that Colin had not met them at the station.
‘The fire’ll need a shovel of coal,’ said Colin as he jumped down from the trap at the door of the farmhouse. ‘I’ll away and tend to it and then I’ll put the horse away.’
Suddenly shy, they watched him walk into the house.
‘It was a lovely . . .’ they began together.
‘I really enjoyed the play, Jack,’ said Mairi. ‘It was kind of you to buy the tickets.’
‘You don’t really want to be an actress, do you, Mairi?’
‘It must be a lovely glamorous life. Staying in hotels, having all your meals cooked, and people bringing you flowers.’
‘I’ll bring you flowers,’ he offered, and pressed his lips to hers.
Miss McGloughlin was surprised but not frightened; she had expected to be kissed at least twice before. Since she did not struggle and, in fact, returned some of the pressure, Jack became a little more demanding. He had kissed girls before. Mairi sensed that he was no amateur and the effect he was having on her was not unpleasant, so she cooperated.
‘I’ll away and untack the horse,’ they heard Colin bellow from the house in warning. Mairi laughed. There was no one in the house – Ian was at the schoolhouse for his weekly meeting with the Dominie – but Jack drew away from her just as she was prepared to become even more enthusiastic. Regrettable, but there would be another time.
For the first time she sensed her power. Oh yes, there would be another time.
By the end of the year everyone knew that Mairi McGloughlin and Jack Black were walking out. He had even been seen buying a bouquet in the town’s flower shop.
‘Perfect for Mairi,’ said the neighbours. ‘Jack’ll inherit that farm and Mairi’ll be near her father. Who could ask for anything more?’
Mairi herself asked that question more than once. When Jack was with her she was excited and happy. His kisses set her body in a whirl of sensations and it was he and not she who put limits on their experimentation. But when she was alone in the house, doing her chores, preparing vegetables, washing clothes, completing one of the thousand tasks that had to be done every day, she would sometimes find herself full of a longing for something she could not understand.
‘I want . . . more,’ sighed Mairi, but more of what she did not know.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Snow fell. Mairi stood in the silence and let the weightless flakes melt on her hands. Such incredible beauty, but what chaos it caused. The school was closed. No children could walk through that relentless accumulation. Colin and Ian worked for hours clearing paths to the animals and as soon as they had cleared a way another fall mocked their attempts to master the elements.
‘Where’s it coming from?’ an exhausted Colin asked no one in particular, but his son said Russia and was told to keep his smart remarks to himself.
Unlike many of their neighbours, the little family were snug and warm in their kitchen. Ian had cut logs in every spare minute for months past and there was a huge pile keeping dry under an old canvas just at the back door. The cellar still had some good lumps of coal and plenty of dross that could go on the back of the fire to keep it in during the longest and coldest nights.
‘They’ll be struggling at the schoolhouse,’ said Ian. ‘I cut logs for them and I know they had half a cart of coal the last time the boat came in but the place is that draughty.’
‘How is Mrs Morrison?’ Mairi asked, suddenly mindful of her promise to Robin.
‘She never complains and she wouldn’t let me tell Robin. Nothing is to disturb his chance of a good degree.’
‘If his mother dies this winter, what are his chances of finishing?’ asked Colin and Mairi, stricken, looked from one to the other.
‘She’s not dying, is she?’ she asked. ‘I promised Robin I’d make sure you told him, Ian.’
‘I wish you’d spoken to me, Mairi. I wrote to him just before ne’erday with her usual story that she was fine.’
Guiltily, Mairi remembered how absorbed she had been and still was in her meetings with Jack. ‘I’ve been . . . busy,’ she said. She got up and went to the window and looked out at the snow-covered fields. So beautiful. So dangerous.
‘I think I’ll walk over to the schoolhouse and see how she is. I promised Robin and I haven’t kept my promise.’
‘You’re going nowhere in weather like this, Mairi,’ said Colin from the fireside. ‘Some drifts could swallow up a wee thing like you.’
‘I’ll go with her, Dad, and see to the cattle when we get back.’
Colin looked at them steadily for a moment and then turned back to the fire. ‘See if they’re needing anything we can help them with, and don’t let your wee sister fall in the burn.’
‘He always has to have the last word,’ said Mairi to her brother as, well wrapped up against the cold, they set off for the schoolhouse.
Ian glanced at her but said nothing. If he said what he was thinking she would only yell at him, little shrew that she was. He pushed her gently as if to knock her off balance and she picked up some snow and threw it at him and together they began to run or wade as quickly as they could through the drifts towards the school road. Mairi’s face was soon rosy with cold and effort and she felt so hot that she unwound the thick scarf she had wrapped around her neck.
Ian examined her critically when she was so involved with keeping her feet that she had no time to wonder what her brother was thinking.
‘Why, our Mairi is pretty,’ Ian thought to himself. ‘Her eyes are sparkling like the frost on the burn and the sun is turning her hair to copper.’ Then he spoiled it by deciding that his sister looked about ten years old.
‘You’re seeing an awful lot of Jack these days, Mairi, what with the dancing and the theatre.’
‘So?’
‘Nothing. Just that it’s hard to think of you being married to someone and not being at home with Dad and me.’
‘Married? Who said anything about being married?’
‘It’s what usually happens around here when people walk out together.’
‘Does it happen because it’s expected by the neighbours? I certainly won’t do anything just because that’s the way it’s done. Jack and I are . . . friends.’
‘Is that all? I mean, do you let him kiss you?’ asked Ian bravely. ‘I hear he’s kissed every girl in Angus.’
‘Is that so?’
Colin recognised danger but had no idea how to extricate himself from it. ‘There’s been talk,’ he began and he would have done better to keep quiet.
‘He’s told me all about it, Mr Perfect. Just because a man is handsome and his father owns his own land . . . girls chase him, Ian, and it’s not fair. That girl was no better than she should be and was walking out with two of their men. No doubt one of them is the father.’
Ian blushed. ‘You shouldn’t speak of such things.’
‘Oh, what hypocrites men are. Jack told me before he asked me to walk out with him. He said it was only fair and it’s only fair that he should be judged innocent until someone finds him guilty and, as far as I know, he’s never even been accused . . . out loud that is, by the girl herself, or her family.’
Since it was rumoured in the countryside that Jack’s father had withdrawn a great deal of money – over a hundred pounds – on the day the servant girl left his wife’s employ, Ian said nothing. Arguing against his sister’s involvement with the young farmer seemed only to make her more anxious to defend him and, to be fair, Jack had been a model of decorum since he started courting Mairi McGloughlin. He was pleased that the difficulty of walking made it
easy to remain quiet, involved in the business of putting one foot in front of the other and pulling it out again. Several times Mairi stumbled and would have fallen but for his strong arms and although she pushed him away and told him roundly what she thought of men who considered women weak, helpless creatures to be cosseted, she was smiling.
‘Women,’ he thought. ‘Just when you think you’ve got their measure they change completely.’
They had reached the schoolhouse where a slender column of grey smoke showed that someone was trying to keep a fire alight.
‘They’re a handless pair,’ said Ian. ‘They fall apart when Robin’s not here. I think they’re only beginning to realise just how much of the practical work he did around the house.’
‘It’s a son’s place,’ said Mairi. She would find no praise for Robin Morrison.
The Dominie greeted them at the door with his usual charm and with obvious delight at seeing them.
‘Come in, come in,’ he said. ‘What a great pleasure. Mrs Morrison will be delighted. She’s not too well, you know, but you two are the tonic she needs.’
They followed his gaunt figure into the front room where Mrs Morrison was sitting in a chair by the fire whose feeble flame tried to do battle with the cold and damp of the old house.
‘It’s not drawing very well, Dominie,’ said Ian. ‘When was the chimney swept last?’
‘The school board takes care of things like that, Ian. They’re very good, you know.’
‘Well, let me see if I can get a better blaze for you.’
‘And you sit by me, Mairi, while Euan makes us a nice cup of tea. You bring the sun into a room with you, child. Is it just that burnished head or is it personality too?’
Embarrassed, Mairi took refuge in laughter. She well knew that she had never been a great favourite of Robin’s mother. She must indeed be sick to find Mairi McGloughlin a welcome tonic.
‘I’m glad we’ve had such a fall, Mairi. Euan needs a rest. The school takes all his energy and then he has to come home to a useless wife. We have enjoyed today, sitting together and talking. He’s been reading to me.’ Her eyes fell on the book turned upside down on a chair. Euclid.
She actually likes Euclid, thought Mairi and wondered a little about the life of these two people in this cold, inhospitable house, so much grander than the farmhouse but so much colder. But there was a warmth, an atmosphere, and when Mairi saw the sick woman smile at her husband as he came in with a tray of ill-assorted cups and saucers, weak tea, and stale biscuits, she realised that the warmth was love.
‘They don’t notice the cold and the damp, not when they’re together. They probably sit here, read Euclid to one another, and talk about Robin,’ she thought.
‘Have you heard from Robin recently?’
‘Oh yes,’ the Dominie answered. ‘He writes every week. Can you believe, Mairi, that he is in his final year? In June he graduates with a Masters degree.’
‘That’s what I’m waiting for,’ smiled Mrs Morrison. ‘June, when all the roses are out, we will take the train to Edinburgh to see our boy become a Master of Arts, just like his dear father.’
‘That will be a lovely day,’ said Mairi but she saw the look that passed between husband and wife and knew that though they hoped for a fine June day, they were almost sure that only one of them would see it.
She was quiet as they walked home, retracing their own footsteps in the bright moonlight. When they reached the farm, Ian turned to go off to feed the cattle.
‘You’ll write to Robin tonight, Ian.’
‘She looked better as we were leaving.’
‘She knows she’s dying and she wants her son. She’ll not see the spring flowers, never mind the roses.’
‘I’ll write.’
She heard a sob as he turned and stumbled to the byre and, for the first time, Mairi wondered if her brother remembered their own mother.
‘He must remember; he had been old enough. Poor Ian and now poor Robin.’
Ian wrote the letter and, next morning, he walked through the snow to Arbroath to post it.
*
Robin and another, even fiercer, snowstorm arrived together.
The McGloughlins were in their front room; the fire blazed brightly, sending odd shadows dancing and gyrating on the walls.
‘Remember when we were wee,’ Mairi spoke into the silence. ‘You used to make up stories about the shadow men, scary ones.’
Her brother did not answer and she looked at him. He sat in his chair with his head cocked like a pointer dog.
‘Can you hear something?’
‘If Robin came in on the train he’ll get lost on the way from Arbroath.’
‘He’ll hardly have got your letter yet.’
‘He wouldn’t wait for the weekend, Mairi. He would come as soon as he read the letter. I have an awful feeling.’ He jumped up. ‘I’m going to walk to Arbroath to meet the train.’
‘You’re out of your mind, lad. This is not a night for a dog to be out.’ Colin stood up as if he would physically prevent his son from going out into the snow.
‘I’ll take a lantern, Dad. Robin has no sense of direction, never has had. If he steps into a ditch he’ll lose his way.’
‘You’re an idiot, laddie. You’re going out to walk five miles to meet someone who is probably sitting on his backside by his fire in Edinburgh reading one of they great books.’
‘If he’s out there, he’ll die.’
Colin reached for his coat. ‘Stoke up the fire, lass, and keep it going all night if you have to. I’ll need to go with him. He’ll start thinking how beautiful the moonlight is on the snow and freeze to death in a ditch while he’s thinking on a poem.’
Mairi said nothing. She looked from one to the other as they wrapped themselves up. She believed that Ian’s instincts were right. Robin Morrison was out there in the storm. Whether Colin believed or not, she could not tell, but something was telling the older man to go.
‘We’ll take the dog,’ said Colin, ‘and the crook to fish your daft brother out of the drifts and then I’ll belt him with it when we get home. Cat got your tongue, lassie? It’s got my brains, both of them.’
The door closed behind them and Mairi ran to the window and pushed aside the curtain. She could see two large huddled shapes and a small bobbing light and she watched them until they disappeared into the swirling snow.
‘I’ll make soup. I can’t sit by the fire and imagine them out there. Oh, Robin Morrison, if anything happens to them because of you . . .’
She forced herself to concentrate on cutting woody carrots and turnips meant for the cattle into perfect shapes. She would not think, she would not.
And outside in the storm Ian and Colin struggled together unerringly towards Arbroath. The dog followed in their footsteps. He did not question, merely accepted, as always, the strange conduct of these gods who ruled his life. If he was called upon to die for them he would do so without thinking. They were the reason for his existence and although he would have been more comfortable by the fire, he was happier here.
‘I couldn’t manage without you, Dad,’ said Ian as his father’s strong arms pulled him from a drift again. Colin had walked this way for over forty years in every weather. He knew where they were by the feel of the stone of a wall, by the texture of the gnarled trunk of a tree. He thought his son was a fool and he looked forward, with pleasure, to telling him so when they got home. Imagining the words he would use almost made him smile as he wiped the freezing snow from his eyes. But there was no time to smile, time only to struggle on, to keep the boy on the path, to pray that the snow would stop.
‘Where is it coming from?’ he asked as they helped one another up after losing their balance once more in a drift that looked a few inches deep and turned out to be at least three feet.
Exhausted they clung together, too tired even to push themselves apart.
‘Canada?’ croaked Ian and was delighted to hear his father’s laugh.
What if Robin wasn’t out here? What would his father say if Robin was snug and warm in his Edinburgh boarding house?
‘He’ll kill me,’ he said as he had said a thousand times through his childhood and then he realised that his father would say nothing. He wished he could say, I love you, Dad, but he never had said it before and during a snow storm when they had to fight for their lives was hardly the time to start.
They reached what passed for a main road and the way was clearer because there was some shelter from an avenue of trees. Colin stood for a moment to get his bearings and then, unhesitatingly, pressed on and Ian and the dog went with him. Because the going was easier they both became aware of how wet and cold they now were. More than once each had stepped up to his waist in a drift and the snow now made itself felt as it invaded every inch of the material that covered the lower half of their bodies.
‘We’ll have to go all the way into town,’ thought Ian. ‘Otherwise we’ll never know if we’ve missed him.’ For a moment he lifted his head to look before him into the swirling snow instead of at the road just ahead of his feet. ‘I have no idea where I am. It must be worse for Robin. Is he out here somewhere?’
At that moment Colin plunged up to his neck in a drift and Ian turned swiftly to pull the older man up.
‘I’m sorry, Dad, I’m sorry; this is madness.’
‘Aye, but the right kind, laddie,’ gasped Colin and, shaking off his son’s hand, he went on. He was happy, unbelievably happy. He had worked with his son in all weathers and they had shared a kind of companionship but this, this struggle with the elements, was different. He had the greater guile; the lad had the greater strength. ‘Comes to us all, to take a back seat to our own lads.’ He wished he could tell the boy, say, We’re a great pair, but he didn’t know how.
They found Robin less than a mile from the town. He had fallen into a ditch and lost, not only his balance, but also his sense of direction and had, in fact, just realised that he was struggling back into the town. The snow had taken pity on him and had, for a moment, abated to show the lights of Arbroath.
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