by Jane Duncan
This day, though, as we plodded through the wet heather, there were no stories and no clowning, and we did not mark many trees, either, from the can of red paint we had with us. After all, there were three of us, all capable of thinking up excuses as to why this tree and that one should not be marked. In the afternoon, when we came out after dinner to have a go at the west end of the moor, we were holding a debate about the very first tree when the dogs put up a fine young hare from his lie under some juniper bushes, and, one way and another, in the excitement of heading the hare off and eventually catching it I fell over the can of paint and it all sank into the wet moss of the moor, so then George gave the can a kick with his big boot which stove in its bottom, and Tom said: “To hell with the danged pent whateffer! If Sir Torquil wants us to mark trees for his sawyers, he’ll chust have to be giving us another puckle pent.” He gathered all four feet of the hare together and tied them with a string from his pocket. “Janet, you’ll have to be taking this brute down to Leddy Lydia—she’ll eat them everlasting. Chugged hare, the cook calls it, although why people will be putting a hare in a chug is something I’ve never understood right.”
“What will we tell Granda about the paint?” I asked, for, after all, I was the one who had spilled it.
“Ach, we’ll chust not be mentioning it at a-all,” said George.
“A-also, forbye and besides,” said Tom, “what a person doesna know canna hurt them.”
After that we spent a pleasant, wet afternoon on the moor and caught another hare and three rabbits, but as we neared the house in the dullness of the evening my conscience began to rear its ugly head on several distinct counts. We had marked no trees, we had spilled the paint, destroyed the can and we had, in general, been guilty of the sin of wasted time. I slipped round to the rear of George and Tom, being wise to their caper of wheeling smartly into the barn and leaving me to take the first shock of my grandmother’s attack, but today, by a special providence, this manoeuvre was unnecessary, for the Poyntdale trap was standing in the yard and the pony was in the loosebox. My two companions in crime stopped dead at the moor gate.
“Will Sir Torquil be here, think ye?” said Tom.
“I wouldna be sure.” George looked over his shoulder at the serried ranks of fir trees with no red paint on them. “Janet, just run down to the house like a clever lass——”
“I will not, George Sandison! Besides, it’s the governess cart that’s in it and Sir Torquil says he wouldn’t trust his backside in that bloody washtub for all the whisky on Speyside.”
“Janet Sandison! What kind of words is that to be using?”
“It was Sir Torquil that used them.”
“When?”
“Down at Poyntdale one day.”
“It’s hard,” said Tom, “for a man to believe the ears that bairns have and the memories that’s in them. Well, we better be going down to our tea.”
“You have nonbusiness,” said my uncle virtuously, “to be imitating Sir Torquil’s way o’ speaking.”
“And you’ve got no business kicking his paint can!”
“Hold your tongue, you blethering little limmer!” said George.
We took off our wet coats and boots in the passage and put on our slippers, and when we went into the kitchen Lady Lydia and Mrs de Cambre were just finishing tea with my grandmother, my grandfather, my mother and my aunt. My father was not yet home from Poyntdale.
“There you are!” said Lady Lydia, rising. “We really came to see Janet for a moment and we want to get home before dark.”
“How do you do-do, Janet! Ah brought you-ou a li’l somethin’.” And she put a big cardboard box into my arms. “Open it!”
“Thank you,” I said, and laid the box on Lady Lydia’s chair.
Now, you may not believe this, and I had never seen such a thing in my life before, but when I opened that box there was a baby inside it—a baby, sound asleep, in a long white gown, a white woollen jacket and a white woollen bonnet.
“It’s yours, Janet,” said Lady Lydia when I drew back from it in admiration. “Pick it up.”
I could not believe it. Babies came like calves, and mothers who got them never gave them to other people, never, never, and the cows cried for days when you took their calves away.
“No,” I said.
“But it is yours.”
“From Mrs de Cambre,” said my mother.
It must be all right. If my mother said that Maddy Lou was giving this baby of hers away to me, then I could have it. I picked it up carefully, with a hand behind its woolly bonnet, for you always had to be careful of the heads of young things like calves or babies, and then I put my face against its cheek. It was cold. Its face was ice cold. It was DEAD.
“It’s dead!” I shouted. “It’s a dead baby!” and the dresser tilted sideways before my giddy eyes, the bones of my arms melted with terror and the dead baby fell to the floor. . . .
The lifesize doll’s head struck the steel fender and broke into a thousand pink-and-white splinters of china, while the eye mechanism rolled into the ashpan.
I do not remember any more of what happened that evening, but Lady Lydia and Mrs de Cambre came to see us all the next day. My mother had explained to me in the morning about little girls sometimes having imitation babies that they called dolls to play with, and how Mrs de Cambre had been kind enough to think that I might like one, and she showed me the little clothes and the little bootees that the doll had worn. But I knew it was not a doll. I had seen dolls in the village, and they were made of cloth, stuffed with sawdust. I felt haunted.
“Where is it?” I asked, shuddering.
“Dad buried it.”
“That’s right,” I said.
“Mrs de Cambre says that you can have another doll now that you understand. Would you like that?”
“No, Mother.”
“Then, when she comes to see us today, just tell her No, thank you, and ask for something else instead. She wants to give you a present and it is very, very kind of her.”
“All right, Mother.”
When Lady Lydia and Mrs de Cambre arrived I felt shamed and dreadful and guilty at first for not wanting the doll that they thought I ought to like, but Mrs de Cambre was so smiling and kind that I soon felt better and she said: “It’s only silly kids that play dolls anyways. When Ah go to Invahue-ess nex’ week, yuh kno-ow what Ah’m gonna do?”
“What, please?”
“Ah’m gonna buy the bigges’ book for readin’ an’ the bigges’ book for writin’ dial they got in that town, would you-ou like that?”
“Yes, please.”
I felt fine now. Who would not prefer real reading and writing books to an imitation, unreal baby? The next week I received a complete set of the works of Louisa M. Alcott and two big books full of white paper, and along one side of each page was a row of holes so that you could tear the sheet out neatly and send it to someone if you wanted to. In the parcel there was also a pencil with a little hat to protect its point, a big rubber, a bottle of ink and a queer black pen which, after my father had read the paper in its box, could be filled with ink and write for weeks without having to dip it.
“That,” said Tom, “is a most wonderful invention, fountain-pen, is it, they call it? A very remarkable contrivance, that’s what it is.”
I had to write a proper letter of thanks for this magnificent present, which I did on the first tear-out sheet of my first new book, beginning ‘Dear Mrs de Cambre’ and ending ‘Yours sincerely, Janet E. Sandison’, but my mother allowed me to add at the very bottom: ‘P.S. Bonnie Maddy Lou Lou, I thank you-you.’ And the other thing that I remember about all this is that with ‘pennies’ earned by myself—and the first I had ever spent—I was allowed to buy a King’s picture, called a stamp, at the Post Office, put it on the letter, carefully watched by Tom to see that ‘His Machesty was sitting square with his head the right way up’, and post it in the red slot in the wall.
The dismal ‘tattie holidays’
came along, and the schoolchildren spread over the farms for a fortnight to help gather the crop, but we did not have extra children at Reachfar, for my grandfather, Tom, my aunt and I could manage by ourselves, and we had some of my aunt’s admirers, in the form of four sergeants from the Army Depot, to give us a hand, which, of course, resulted in my grandmother’s decree that ‘with all that men in the field, you’ll have to send Kate into the house to help with the cooking’. It was enough to drive a person out of her head, this sort of thing, I thought, as I hurled potatoes into the wire basket. My grandmother would end up by making an old maid out of my aunt, the way she would hardly ever let her even speak to any nice young men.
Towards the end of the potato-lifting, which all of us at Reachfar were agreed was the worst crop of the year and the only one we actively disliked, we were all cheered, far and wide, by the news that the coal boat was coming after all. She was late, but she was coming, and all we had to hope now was that there would not be a gale at the time of her visit. We schoolchildren were cock-a-hoop, because we had already had the ‘tattie holidays’ and there would be another clear break for the coal boat.
The day of her arrival dawned frosty and clear, with a light breeze and no more coming north-easterly from the sea, but cold enough to make you prefer walking to riding behind the horses in their spotless carts. We set off with the Reachfar string before it was light, and Dick was inclined to caper on the way down to Poyntdale. He danced on the stony road until the sparks flew from his shoes, arched his neck and tossed his head in the dawn breeze and would hardly wait for us to open the field gates. I was coming second, holding Betsy’s bridle, and at the bottom of the Long Field Tom pulled Dick aside and said: “Go you first with Betsy, Janet, and I’ll put this ould boogger’s head in her cart and see will he behave himself.”
My grandfather, coming behind with Dulcie, agreed, and I took Betsy round into the lead. Betsy, if anything, was worse than Dick had been now that she had the open road in front of her. She danced, she side-stepped, she threw her head up into the wind with me swinging on the bridle rein, and at the march dyke between Reachfar and Poyntdale my grandfather called a halt.
“What the devil’s in them the-day, Tom? The wee mare back here is at it too. . . . Is there weather in it?”
They both looked away across the Firth, then west to the Ben, then back to the horses.
“I’m not smelling weather, Reachfar. Are you?”
“No-o. But I don’t like this capers for the County Road. Neither you nor me is fit to hold that brute Dick, Tom, if he takes badness in his head.”
I could see the whole great day in jeopardy. “Wait a minute!” I said, and climbed out on the tram of the cart and on to Betsy’s shoulders before they could, protest. “Let’s try now—up, Betsy!” She walked sedately now, with no side-stepping or dancing, but she was still tossing her head and sniffing the breeze, and I could feel that she was restrained from dancing only by the long training of ‘going canny when the bairn was up’. Every muscle, every drop of blood, every hair of her hide was pulsing with the desire to run wild.
“I’ll speak to Duncan at Poyntdale,” said my grandfather. “Maybe he can lend us a man.”
The last part of the road down into the Poyntdale Farm Square was very steep and the horses behaved more quietly as they picked their way down, but perked up again on the smooth Poyntdale road, and as we rounded the corner by the cattle courts into the Square, and Dick saw the Poyntdale string of horses lined up, he decided to show these soft plainsmen what the hill folk were made of. He pulled out sharply from behind Betsy and me and went off at full gallop across the cobbles of the Square, the sparks flying from his shoes, his harness glittering in the morning sun, Tom standing in the cart, his feet braced and all his considerable weight pulling back on the reins. Dick was not bolting, he was simply having fun, and when he reached the other end of the Square he stopped, blew out a cloud of steam and looked back along his side at Tom.
“Ye bliddy ould limb o’ Satan!” Tom bawled, and lashed the rein ends down on his shiny rump.
Dick merely shook his head as if a fly had brushed him, poised one fore-foot on the point of its shoe like a ballet dancer and stared at the Poyntdale string in an insolent way. The Poyntdale horses, spirited people all, did not care for this at all, and began a little nonsense of their own so that the men at their heads had difficulty in holding them. My father, a calm-tempered man as a rule, was looking unusually flustered, and when my grandfather asked if he had a horseman to spare he barked: “Coming in here with that capering brute! As if this bliddy lot wasna bother enough the-day!”
“It must be the weather,” Sir Torquil said. “What was the Ben like from the hill, Reachfar?”
“I wouldna say there was weather in it——” my grandfather began, and, at that moment, round the corner came the Dinchory string with my uncle at the head of the first horse, a big black with white feet, whose nostrils were wide and whose big eyes rolled over the Poyntdale string with a glare of insolent disdain.
“God be here!” said my harassed father. “Look at that brute Jet!”
He sprang into Dick’s cart. “Tom, get in with Janet and give Dick to me—I’ll go first.” He was driving out of the Square before he had finished speaking.
“Reachfar and I will go next,” said Sir Torquil, jumping into Dulcie’s cart. “You come in line next, Janet.”
The other carts fell in, and from Betsy’s shoulders I could see, back along the line, my powerful uncle having a fine old tussle with big Jet from Dinchory, while my equally powerful father out in front had all he could do to hold the cavorting Dick. But everyone was at least reasonably safe now, for Jet and Dick, the ringleaders, were in control, my grandfather had Sir Torquil, one of the best horsemen in the county, to help him, and Tom had me, with my blackmailing long relationship with Betsy. Still, it must have been a nerve-racking drive for my father and George, knowing all the horses in the strings as they did, and knowing also the weaknesses among their men, most of whom were a little too old or a little too young—the best-aged men being at the war—to hold a horse that had the devil in him. Every animal was a highly-trained, intelligent individual, but as we made our way along by the Firth, where the ships were lying in the deep channel, their hulls pale grey in the morning sun, there was a queer feeling of uneasiness in the air. Dick was still capering out in front, I could feel the strange excitement emanating from Betsy into my legs and buttocks, and, as Dulcie was behaving better than most, Sir Torquil spent his time in the main on foot, going up and down the long string.
“We won’t take them on the pier, Duncan,” he called up to my father out in front.
“Not this devil, anyway, for a while,” my father called back, not moving his eyes from Dick’s tossing head.
“What’s in them, Tom?” he asked next as we passed him.
“God knows, Sir Torquil.—Ach, it’s that big devil of ours. He chust upset the whole lot with his capers.”
The boat was there, just drawing in to the pier as we came round the bay into Achcraggan. The tide was still, filling and we should have a good day, I thought, and have all the clean cargo off before dinner-time, if only the horses would settle down and behave themselves. I was very fond of Betsy, but I could think of many more amusing things to do at the coal boat than sit on her shoulders in the biting wind that was striking my bare knees like a whip-lash and blowing the short, pleated, tweed skirt up round my face, exposing my matching tweed knickers to all and sundry, who would not know that I had clean white ones on underneath.
Everybody, as usual, was at the coal boat, including the policeman from ‘west the country’, the outpost of whose district was Achcraggan, and who came there about once a month on his bicycle. He always chose an occasion when there might be a drink going to pay his visit, for which he could not be blamed, when you consider that Achcraggan pier was about fifteen miles from his village station.
“ ’Morning, Campbell,” Sir Torquil said
to him.
“Good morning, sir.”
“I’m glad you’re here. I don’t want any women or children on the pier this morning—the horses are a little fresh.”
Betsy, Tom and I were already on the pier, for my father had taken Dick into the field beside the Plough and was galloping him round and round, cart and all, while my grandfather stopped at the pier-head for a moment to talk to Captain Robertson.
“What about that craitur, sir?” the policeman asked, pointing at me.
“Janet Reachfar? Don’t be a fool, Campbell! She’s in charge of a horse. Children playing, I mean.”
Poop to Sir Torquil, and Constable Campbell, too, I thought, for now I did not dare to climb down from my perch on Betsy’s back.
“And wha-at, sir,” said the policeman, “apout the leddies what iss on the poat?”
“Ladies on the boat? What the devil d’ye mean, Campbell?”
“I haf to report, sir, that there iss quite a fair puckle leddies on poard the poat,” said Campbell officially.
“Great God!” Sir Torquil looked wildly round him and saw the captain climb over the rail and jump on to the pier. “Ah, there you are, Captain Greig! Very pleased to see you here again. ... But, what’s this I hear about you having women on board?”
“Moo ur ye, Surr Torkull, surr?” said Captain Greig from Glasgow. “Weemen? Weel, Ah’ve seen weemen an’ weemen in ma time. Ah’m a sea-gaun man.” He took-his pipe out of his mouth and spat sadly into the lapping water. “If they yins ye see forrit therr is weemen, maybe Ah’m a mermaid masel’. Aye.” He spat again. “Therr’s lower o’ them.”
“Four?” said Sir Torquil and looked at the boat. “Holy suffering cats!”
Up in the bows of the boat were four Miss Boyds, giggling and cackling and nudging each other while two of the deck hands worked self-consciously with a rope.
“Cats is richt,” said Captain Greig, looking into the dark and noisome bowl of his pipe. “An’ gey skinny auld tabbies at that. Ah’m awa’ up tae the Ploo’.”