by Jane Duncan
“Now, now, George, man!” said Tom uneasily, with a look south-easterly over his shoulder in the direction where the churchyard lay. “There was times when there was no telling with the Ould Leddy. No. There was times when she chust wasn’t canny with the things she would be knowing. I think myself that the Sight was in her, right enough.”
“So do I,” said Maddy Lou positively.
“And was Granny a poet too?” Twice enquired.
“No,” said Tom solemnly. “No, I wouldna say she was a poet. No. Indeed, she had very little time for the poetry. It’s George and Janet and me that would be at the poetry, when we was oot aboot, oot o’ sight o’ the hoose, like. Aye, we had some right fine ones.
From Reachfar and looking east, you see the big North Sea,
And from Reachfar and looking west the Moor of Dinchory.
From Reachfar and looking north, you see the Firth and Ben,
And from Reachfar and looking south, you see the Home Moor Glen.
And in between the compass points there’s plenty things to see,
Like flowers and birds and animals and George and Tom and me.
That’s the one we made when we was learning the points of the compass.”
“Ain’t that cute, Henry?” said Maddy Lou.
“Och, yes. We was great hands at the poetry,” said Tom. “Twice, chust ask the chentleman to be bringing us another droppie of what everybody would care for and to be helping himself to one at the same time. . . . Mind you, I wouldna be saying but the Ould Leddy would be knowing about the poetry a-all the same. There wasna much that she didna know when you think on it.”
“Not very much,” George agreed. “Between them, Leddy Lydia and herself knew everything in the parish and further, when I think on it.”
“Aye, they was the terror o’ all the weemen in the countryside,” said Tom. “And how is her leddyship, madam?”
“She is we-ell, but very lame. . . . You should come and visit with her a li’l sometimes.”
“Thank you, madam. It’s George and me that would be real pleased, and Duncan too, if her leddyship would like it. Av coorse, we a-always call on her at the New Year, but if she would like it George and me being retired now can take a run down to Poyntdale any time.”
“She’d jus’ love it! She misses Torquil. She speaks about the ol’ days a lot of the time.”
* * * * *
When we had parted outside the Plough I had in me that remote quiet sadness that comes with nostalgia, that comes with the knowledge that, happy as the past time was, one cannot go back, coupled with the knowledge that one would not go back even if one could. What was past was past, and the happiness or sadness of these past days was now an integral part of all of us, grafted on to us, fed and given its quality by the stock on to which it had grown. As I watched the eternal water of the Firth flowing against the old stone of the long, sloping pier, I was thinking of my own good fortune. All that had stayed with me of those days of which we had spoken was happiness. Those days had come forward through life with me, a permanent background, clearly outlined in the brilliant northern light, that had influenced—and for good, I thought—every new experience that slid on to the stage of life in front of it. The light from that background had, for me, illumined everything; the restful shadows of its ‘Thinking Place’ had dulled the sharp edges of many harshnesses, and the sunlit songs of the Strip of Herbage had, in the Old Testament words, often quoted by the Reverend Roderick, ‘made the rough places plain’.
“Deaf as a post, Twice!” said my aunt’s voice. “Gawping about her, as Granny called it. Janet, Twice says we might as well have our dinner here since we are so late, and the hotel gentleman says he can manage us.”
“Oh,” I said. “Yes. Yes, that’s fine——”
“I have to go back up the village afterwards, anyway. I forgot to get that paint your father wanted.”
“George, I said, as we sat down at the table in the old stable of the Plough which had been turned into a pleasant dining-room, “how are the Miss Boyds?”
“Ach, much the same as ever, poor craiturs. Iris is terrible cripple and Annie is dafter than ever, still thinking that Andra will be in for his dinner any minute.”
“It’s a queer thing that, and him been away for years. Maybe he is dead for a-all anybody knows, but poor Annie will never believe it,” Tom said.
“But I saw him last night!” I said.
“Andra? Where?” my aunt asked.
“Right here in the Plough!”
“Ach away, for God’s sake!” said George. “It’s dreaming you were—or else fou’. Andra has never been seen in Achcraggan since back before the war! Besides, how would you know him? You hardly ever saw him in your life!”
“I knew him all right,” I said.
“I never saw a person here last night that I didna know, and none o’ them was Andra Boyd,” said Tom. “When was you seeing him, Janet?”
“In the bar, just before we left, standing by the pillar.”
“It’s the Sight that’s in her, like the Ould Leddy!” said Tom.
“The Sight be damned!” I said. “Twice, you saw him! The spiv you asked about.”
“Oh, the spiv? Is he this Andra Boyd? He was there all right, George. Drove away in that big green Panther—you know, the car that was beside ours when we came out.”
“Car? Andra Boyd? Away ye go, Janet! You’re not right in your head. It couldna be Andra. Where would he have a big car? . . . The ould craiturs down in the housie there have all they can do to make ends meet.”
“It was Andrew Boyd,” I persisted. “Want to bet on it?”
“Not me!” said Tom. “I’d as soon bet with the Ould Leddy hersel’ as bet wi’ you. But if it was Andra you saw, it is a very, very surprising thing indeed, that’s what it is.”
“I never thought to see him back.” George was still unbelieving.
“No, nor me neither,” said Tom.
When we had finished our lunch we left the car at the Plough and walked the short distance up the street to the shop of Mr Dickson, Ironmonger and Seed Merchant, where Miss Dickson was still smiling with the teeth she had ‘grown’ forty years ago and which were rather a loose fit now. She told us, among other things, that we could not buy paint ‘without a special Government paper permit-thing since the war’, but added: “Chust go out and round the back, George, and tell Davie what you are needing and that I said to cover it up in a baggie or something for you.” She then turned back to Tom. “What I will be saying is that what the Government doesna know canna hurt it.”
“Aye and me too, forbye and besides, Miss Dickson,” Tom agreed.
“And was you hearing the news?” she asked next. “Andra Boyd is back. It seems he has done very well away south about Sheffield or London or some place down that way and him driving in a big car and a-all. Aye. He was at Young Lewie the Joiner the-day to be giving him an estimate to be sorting the roof o’ the hoosie for the Miss Boyds. Is that not a wonderful thing when ye think on it?”
“My, it is that,” said Tom.
“I was chust saying to Annie Gilchrist—it was sad about Teenie, the gossiping ould craitur, how she went so sudden in the end, wasn’t it?—that I aye knew that Andra wasna a bad laddie at heart. And there he is, minding on his old aunties and a-all they did for him, the craiturs.”
“Old hypocrite!” I said to Twice in the background. “She and all the rest of them hated the very sight of Andra. As for his heart——”
Twice grinned. “He didn’t look as if it took up a lot of room,” he agreed. “But a spiv has to bury his excess profits somewhere and Achcraggan is nicely out of the way but looks like turning into a tourist resort.”
“That’s about it,” I said.
Still, as Tom had said many times in my hearing, ‘People is very very peculiar and interesting craiturs,’ and we can never know all that is in them, or actuates them or otherwise causes them to ‘live and move and have their being’, for, when w
e left Miss Dickson and came out into the street, whom should we meet but three Miss Boyds, accompanied by the spiv, who was more flashily dressed than ever.
“Well, well. Good day! Good day!” said Miss Annie, who was leaning on Andra’s arm, while the crippled, bent Miss Daisy was leaning on Miss Iris on one side and on a stick on the other. “Andra’s just had his dinner and then he was for us to come out for a bittie, so——” She turned to me in a most business-like way. “If you’ve brought the eggs, Janet, the back door is open and just go in and leave them in the bowl on the dresser for me. That’s a clever girl. And how is your mother?”
“She is very well, thank you, Miss Annie.”
“And how are ye yourself, Miss Annie?” George enquired.
“Och, I’m fine, thank you, Mr George. I’m busy, though, with Iris, poor soul, and her so lame, and Daisy is not much use.” The younger sisters let this pass with a smile. “We had a drive round in the car with Andra this morning and that makes things brighter for them. You’ll come back for a droppie tea with us?”
“Not today, Miss Annie, thank you,” said my aunt firmly. “We have to get back up the hill.”
“That’s so. It is a long way. Och, well, there will be another day.”
Andra, who had not spoken a word, was obviously restive, and Twice, George and Tom were restive too, for they could not think of a word to say to him. He looked as foreign as if a back alley from Soho had been transplanted with him into Achcraggan village street.
“And where are you off to now, Miss Annie?” I asked, feeling that if something was not done we would all be frozen there for all time.
“Mercy! I was nearly forgetting—my memory isn’t what it was. We are going to Teenie Gilchrist’s, the Draper, and she’ll be away to her tea if we don’t look smart. Yes. Andra is going to buy hats for us, for a present. We’ll have to go now. Good day! Good day!” They moved slowly away from us up the uneven pavement. There seemed to me to be in the air a faint echo of a giggling, a nudging and a fluttering, a small stirring of a fidgeting with ghostly frills, as they passed on, the three old women, and the flashily dressed man in the dark overcoat that was too wide at the shoulders and too narrow at the hips.
“I don’t know how you knew him, Janet,” George said. “He’s quite different from when he was a laddie.”
“And you never saw much of him then, whateffer,” Tom accused.
“By Jock Skinner,” I said.
“He’s no more like Jock Skinner than I am!” said my aunt scornfully.
“It must be the Sight,” Twice said mischievously.
I did not say anything, because it would have been too difficult to explain my belief that we all have our own ‘Sight’, which is conditioned by the things we have seen in the past. They had not seen, through my eyes, the things I had seen forty years ago. They had not been in the Miss Boyds’ kitchen that first morning when Jock Skinner pushed his ferrety face with its sharp little eyes round the lintel of the door and announced: “I’m always glad to oblige the leddies,” and I had stared at the spot where the face was until it disappeared like the face of the Cheshire Cat. They had not been sitting in the bar of the Plough last night, precisely where I was sitting. They had not seen, with my eyes, influenced by my memory, the ferrety face by the pillar at the bar; They had not seen it fade away from sight like the face of the Cheshire Cat.
While I had been thinking of these things, my family had been giving Twice the history of Andra in so far as they knew it, and it was Tom who spoke the final sentence as the car pulled in to Reachfar: “Och, aye. Quite a time of it, George and I had with them ould maids one way and another in the ould days.”
My father came out of the house and opened the door of the car: “Well, you had a right day of it the-day, Tom! Had your dinner?”
“Och, yes, man—a grand dinner in the stable at the Plough.” “And who was you seeing in Achcraggan City?”
“Man, Duncan, you will chust be hard put to it to be believing it! Andra Boyd is back!”
“No!” said my father.
“Aye, but so! We was speaking to him in the street, him and his aunties—Janet’s friends, the Miss Boyds!”
Bello:
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Jane Duncan
Born in Scotland in 1910, Jane Duncan spent her childhood in Glasgow, going for holidays to the Black Isle of Inverness. After taking her degree at Glasgow University she moved to England in 1931, and when war broke out she was commissioned in the WAAF and worked in Photographic Intelligence.
After the war she moved to the West Indies with her husband, who appears as ‘Twice’ Alexander in her novels. Shortly after her husband’s death, she returned to Jemimaville near Cromarty, not far from her grandparents’ croft which inspired the beloved ‘Reachfar’. Jane Duncan died in 1976.
Copyright
First published 1959 by Macmillan
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