by Jane Duncan
“Dang it!” I said to her cocked head. “Two more!” I waved a hand at the long slope and off she went, down and round by the spring. She came back with only one ewe, chased it through the gate and then began to jump about and bark, I had to follow her out into the teeth of the wind after closing the gate and she led me away down the slope to the moor’s edge. The sleet thinned a little and I saw the last ewe, her wool hopelessly entangled in the barbed wire of the fence. Fly lay down while I pulled my coat up against the tearing wind and got out my knife. It did not take a second to free the ewe and she galloped away, gladly and of her own accord, up to the gate, and then, carried on the wind and mingling with it, coming from the little hollow beyond the boulder by the spring, I heard the bodach’s sad, keening song. For a moment Fly and I stood rigid in the freezing wind, and then I saw the edge of a blue coat by the boulder. Bodachs did not wear blue coats. Fly and I crept forward and looked over the top of the big stone, and there sat Miss Violet, nursing a dead rabbit which she had wrapped in what looked like a woollen jumper. Her hands were as blue as her coat, and her hair, which was decorated all over with sprigs of withered heather, hung round her face in wet, lank rat-tails.
Measles or no, this was no place for a person to be sitting when my grandmother was smelling snow.
“Good day, Miss Violet,” I said.
She gave me her queer, closed-mouth smile, looked down at the rabbit and began to sing the bodach’s eerie song to it, rocking it a little and patting it with her right hand.
“Baby, baby,” she said then in a funny, high voice and began to sing again.
Some of the girls at school played at ‘babies’ in the dinner-hour with their rag dolls or even pieces of stick to be the babies, and would be feeding them with their dinner pieces and all that sort of capers. It was funny for a grown-up person to be playing babies, but there you were—you never knew what these Miss Boyds would be at next.
So “It needs its dinner,” I said, just to see what would happen.
She nodded at me in a pleased way, sprang to her feet and pushed me roughly in the direction of the gate where the ewe was waiting. I felt a little frightened now, because she looked so odd and wild, and I said in a shaky way: “It needs milk for its dinner.”
“Home!” she said. “Milk! Baby!” And gave me another strong, rough push.
I knew now that she was sick or something, and apart from that I wanted my mother, my grandmother and my family, so I said: “Yes, milk for the baby! Come!”
She followed me docilely, carrying the rabbit, stumbling now and then on the rough ground, and after each stumble she would sing a little and pat her ‘baby’. The sheep scattered away in the shelter of the trees, and Fly, Miss Violet and I followed the shortest route back to Reachfar.
When I opened the door of the big warm kitchen where my aunt was baking and my mother and my grandparents were drinking a ‘fly cup’ of tea, I had never been so pleased to see my family in all my life.
“I brought Miss Violet,” I said, and ran to stand beside my mother.
It was not my Grandmother but my granny who rose slowly from the chair beside the fire, her fine old eyes fixed on the cold, rain-streaked, white face. “My, it’s myself that is pleased to see you, Miss Violet,” she said, and then she looked at the dead rabbit. “And you brought the baby to see me too! My, that’s fine. Come, then, to the fire and be warming yourself.”
“Come, Janet,” my mother said, and took me away through to the parlour where she kneeled down and lit the laid fire although it was only Saturday and not Sunday.
“Mother, is Miss Violet sick?”
“Yes, Janet. She is sick in her mind.”
“Is that why she thinks that rabbit is a baby?”
“Yes. . . . Now, I am going to get you a drink of milk and a scone, and then you’ll have to go to the West Moor and get Tom. We’ll have to put a message down to Achcraggan.”
Fly and I found Tom among the hillocks of the West Moor and told him about Miss Violet and her rabbit baby, and we came back to the house, and my mother brought oatcakes and butter and cheese and tea to Tom in the parlour. Then I had to go to his room and get his other working boots and a pair of dry socks for him. It was very funny to see Tom taking his wet, muddy boots off in the parlour—I had never seen such a thing in all my Born Days—and then my mother said: “And now I am going to put Janet’s oilskins on her, Tom, and you will just take her with you for company and to hold Dulcie and things for you.”
“That will be right handy,” said Tom.
I was delighted to go with Tom, for the kitchen was not very nice with poor Miss Violet and her rabbit baby sitting at the fire and I did not want to be left alone in the parlour on a Saturday, either, for that was far too odd a thing for comfort. I would far rather be out in the rain with Dulcie and Tom.
“And, Tom,” my mother said at the door, “just you stop at Poyntdale and tell Duncan about Miss Violet, just in case you miss the doctor at Achcraggan. If the news gets round that he’s wanted at Reachfar somebody will stop him on the road.”
Tom and I went away along the yard to the stable to harness Dulcie, and as we passed the kitchen window we could hear Miss Violet singing another little eerie song to her rabbit baby, and the voice of my grandfather telling her what a bonnie bairn she had.
When we were in the trap, under the cover that was a leopard-skin on one side and leathery, waterproof stuff on the other, I got close to Tom and put my hand in his pocket the way I had not done since I was very, very small and not at school yet, and we drove through the sleet down the hill to Poyntdale.
When we drove into the Square I climbed down and ran to the big threshing barn which was the likeliest place to find my father on a wet winter day, and, sure enough, he was in there talking to Sir Torquil and Lady Lydia and I told them what my mother had said.
“Duncan,” said Lady Lydia, “ask them to yoke the old brougham.” My father called a man who was sewing bags of oats and gave the order.
“And she—she’s nursing a dead rabbit for a baby, Dad, and—and, since she came in to the fire, it’s starting to stink.”
“Wheesht, lassie!” my father said.
“Never mind, Janet,” Lady Lydia told me. “I’ll get a better baby for Miss Violet. You run to Tom now and go on to Achcraggan.”
I ran away into the sleet again and Tom and I went on to the village and the Miss Boyds’ house. We had an awful job with the Miss Boyds. They were not people like my family and Lady Lydia and Sir Torquil, who could always tell Tom and me what to do. Oh no. we had to tell them what to do, and Tom and I were not used to that. Only the two old ones and Miss Annie were there and I was glad there were no more of them, with the running about and crying and wringing their hands they went in for. At last Tom got quite impatient and rude to them and said: “For God’s sake, stop your fecklesness, leddies! Miss Annie better come with us and you two stop here until we are coming back and get her bed ready and be boiling a kettle or something!”
“Yes, yes!” they said, and one of the old ones grabbed a kettle, the other took it away from her, then they dropped it altogether and ran and got two coats and started to put both of them on Miss Annie, but at last we had her in the trap and we set off for the doctor’s house. We could see the doctor and Mrs Mackay and Alasdair at their dinner through the rain-streaming window, and when the doctor saw us he jumped up from the table and ran out to his front porch.
“Something wrong with the Reachfar people, Tom?”
“Well, not ecksactly, Doctor,” said Tom, and then told him about Miss Violet and her rabbit baby.
“Uh-huh! I see. All right. Come in for a minute, the lot of you, till I get my bag.” He went into the hall, bellowing: “Hey, Dougal! Yoke the trap. Mother, give Tom a dram. God sake, what a day! Alasdair, go up the stair for my big, old waterproof—the fishing one. . . . Let me see now . . .”
He disappeared into his surgery. I stood in the hall eating biscuits while a pool formed ro
und me, while Tom, standing in another pool, drank his big dram of whisky and water.
“Put this on you,” Mrs Mackay said to Miss Annie, and made her put a great big oilskin on top of her own coat. “It will be cold on the hill today, and you are not like this hardy little Highland garran, and she patted my wet sou’wester and gave me another biscuit.
The doctor came out of his surgery. “Expect me when you see me, Mother. Behave yourself, boy! . . . Tom, you and Janet go first. You come with me, Miss Boyd.”
This was better. Much relieved, Tom and I got in under our leopard-skin behind Dulcie and set off for home, happy, in a selfish way, that poor Miss Annie, so frightened, was no longer sitting between us, but we did not talk much. The sleet came down in a steady, steely slant, everything was grey and dripping wet, and all the houses were shut tight against the weather, making the out-of-doors lonely and sad.
When we got to Reachfar I ran to the house and let myself quietly into the passage, and my mother came out to help me to take off my wet clothes.
“Miss Violet has been asking to see you,” she said gently. “Don’t be frightened of her, pet. Just talk to her canny and gendy as you do when I have a headache. Come.” She opened the kitchen door and said: “Here’s Janet back from school, Miss Violet.”
Miss Violet gave me her beautiful, happy, closed-mouth smile—quite different from her former sad one—and then bent her head with a curious humble pride to the big doll—just like the one Maddy Lou had given me and I had broken—that she was holding in her arms. Then she looked up at me and smiled again. Lady Lydia and my granny were sitting beside her and nodding in the happy way they always nodded when they went to see somebody’s new baby.
“Miss Violet!” I said. “My, what a bonnie baby!”
It was Awful to be talking to a Grown-up Person in this pretending way, but my mother smiled as if it were all right, so I bent towards the doll and talked a bit more, just as if it were real.
“Everybody is coming to see the baby,” my granny said, “Sir Torquil and Doctor Mackay and everybody!”
Blissfully, Miss Violet smiled at us all again and then looked back at the doll. I wanted, dreadfully, to get away back out into the rain with Tom, but just then they all came in—George, my father, Sir Torquil, Tom, the doctor, everybody all in a heap, and my mother held Miss Annie back in the passage.
They all, just as if it were a real baby, admired the doll, and Sir Torquil gave Mass Violet a silver sixpence for it for luck, as he gave to all the new babies, and then my granny said: “And Annie is here to take you and the baby home.”
The brooding happiness left the face, the head reared up, the eyes flashed wild, and she gathered the doll close with a fierce protectiveness. I was frightened of her, but not my granny. More my granny than ever, she bent close over the doll and said in her soft, West Highland, crooning voice—so different from the voice that issued the endless orders around Reachfar—“Och, come now, Miss Violet, lovie. Let your poor sister see your bonnie, bonnie baby. Annie, did you ever in your life see a baby as bonnie as that?”
“But we must go home, though, and get it to bed,” said Miss Annie in a frightened, trembling way.
“Och, take your time, woman!” said the sudden voice of my grandmother. “Sit here beside your sister and see the baby and we’ll all have a droppie tea before you go. . . . Kate, make a droppie tea. Janet will help you.”
I began to feel that if I did not hold on to all my senses they would have me believing that that was a real baby before they were done, but, anyway, the doll was better than that half-rotten rabbit that had been lying in some snare or another for days, most likely. I laid out the cups and saucers, and then Doctor Mackay came over to the table with a little brown bottle in his hand, and my aunt, after he whispered something to her, deliberately took a matching saucer from under a cup and put one that did not match in its place. Then the doctor put something out of the bottle into the cup. He had just put the bottle into his pocket when Miss Violet took one of her funny notions, took a piece of the heather out of her hair and, with a gentle smile, handed it to him. He thanked her, tickled the doll’s cheek with his finger and, coming back to the table, put the piece of withered heather in his buttonhole. Then he said something that sounded very beautiful, like the last notes of Danny Maclean’s fiddle fading away on a summer evening. I said: “I beg your pardon?” for I wanted to hear it properly. But he only smiled and said: “Never mind, Janet. Maybe one day I will tell you, if you will remind me.”
Tom and I had potatoes and meat with our tea because we had missed our dinner, and Miss Violet let my mother hold the doll while she drank her tea and ate her cake, but when Tom and I had not nearly finished eating my father said: “Come on!” and jerked his head at the passage through to the parlour. Lady Lydia, my aunt and everybody was already filing out, and my mother, my granny and the doctor were standing round Miss Violet. She was leaning back in her chair fast asleep! My father took Miss Annie by the arm and led her to the parlour, and I was just behind them.
“Now, Miss Annie,” Sir Torquil said, planting himself on the rug with his back to the fire, “what have you and these sisters of yours done with the child, huh?”
My goodness, but Sir Torquil was angry, as angry as he was on the day that the second coachman got drunk and drove the greys against the barbed wire.
“Just you make up your mind, madam, that that child is to be fetched back here to Achcraggan. You understand? We’ll all help you and your sisters in every way we can, but that child comes back.”
“Sir, I always wanted the baby!” wailed Miss Annie. “It’s my sisters——”
“Damn and blast your sisters! I WILL COME DOWN AND SEE THEM MYSELF!”
I think I would have taken root in the parlour carpet with terror if Tom’s big hand had not reached in through the door and grabbed me by the back of the neck.
“Come on up the stair!” he hissed. “I stole the plate o’ cake off the table when your granny wasna looking!”
So Tom and I went up and got under the blankets on Tom’s bed to keep warm and had a fine picnic on the cake, except that George came up before we had properly started and went off with three big lumps although he had not been to Achcraggan in the rain or anything. However, ‘what a friend will be getting is not lost’ as Tom said, and by the time the three of us had discussed a few odds and ends of things we just got to the window in time to see the coachman bring the brougham to the door, saw my father lift Miss Violet, still sleeping, into it, then Miss Annie got in with the doll and then Doctor Mackay. Then, oh dear, Sir Torquil got in too and the door closed.
“Poor little craitur,” said George.
“Craiturs, you mean,” I said. “There’s two of these Miss Boyds down there and Sir Torquil is awful wild.”
“Aye, and weel he might be!” said Tom, in just as vicious a voice as I had ever heard My Friend Tom use in all my Born Days.
“George!” my father called up the stairs, “Would ye drive the doctor’s pony back to Achcraggan for him?”
“Aye, surely,” said George.
We three went downstairs and I asked to go in the doctor’s trap.
“Not your foot-length!” said my grandmother. “What would you be doing going away there in the rain?”
Not a word about herding sheep in the rain this morning. Oh no. Not my grandmother. She only noticed the rain when it danged well suited her, “And take that thrawn look off your face—how you got to be as thrawn as you are, it’s me that does not know. Tom, you’ll have to drive Leddy Lydia down in a little whilie.”
“Thank you, Tom, I’ll be grateful.” Lady Lydia turned to my mother. “Elizabeth, my dear, I wonder if you notice it, but I see Janet getting very like her granny as she gets older.”
“Yes, Lady Lydia. I’ve noticed it,” said my mother with her secret, gentle smile.
“Like me?” said my grandmother. “Capers and nonsense! She is the spit of her mother!”
“In f
act, I agree,” Lady Lydia smiled.
My grandmother glared at me. I glared back. “Please, Granny, can I get to go to Poyntdale, then, with Tom and Lady Lydia?”
I did not see anything to laugh at, but Lady Lydia began to laugh—like a hyena, I would have said, if it wasn’t Lady Lydia—and then my mother and my aunt and Tom and George all joined in too. My grandmother looked round sternly at them all, and then at my grandfather in his big chair by the fire.
“Och, aye. Och, aye,” he said peaceably to nobody in particular and went on smoking his pipe.
“Iphm!” said my grandmother, tight-lipped, and turned to me. “All right, be off to Poyntdale! It’s no use my telling you to do anything or not do it, I see. So I’ll tell you no more.” I ran to the door. “Come back here this minute!” she commanded, “If you are going to walk back from Poyntdale in this rain put on your moor boots.”
I started to put on my boots and they all sat around laughing as if they were crazy. There were times when I thought that the only two people in the world that had any Real Sense were my grandmother and me—we saw nothing to laugh at in the amicable settlement of an ordinary piece of household business.
During the next few days nobody seemed to want to talk very much about Miss Violet thinking that that doll was a real baby, and it was nasty to go to bed at night in my attic bedroom and hear the November wind howling, because it made me remember that eerie song on the East Moor and then finding her there with the dead rabbit, and I wondered if she sat down at the Miss Boyds in Achcraggan and sang like that to the doll. Then, with the wind and the rain on the roof and everything, it would get so that I could hear the song, and I would start to think that maybe she was wandering out there on the moor with the doll in her arms in the wet cold. Even reciting all my Latin nouns and verbs and all my school poetry and all my home-made songs did not help—I just could not go to sleep because of that eerie song being sung to that unreal baby. After several nights of being very frightened, I held on to my mother when she was going downstairs after seeing me to bed, which was a thing that only little bairns did and Shameful in someone who was nine years old, and I said: “Mother, what about Miss Violet?”