A Scots Quair (18 page)

The kye were in sight then, they stood in the lithe of the freestone dyke that ebbed and flowed over the shoulder of the long ley field, and they hugged to it close from the drive of the wind, not heeding her as she came among them, the smell of their bodies foul in her face—foul and known and enduring as the land itself. Oh, she hated and loved in a breath! Even her love might hardly endure, but beside it the hate was no more than the whimpering and fear of a child that cowered from the wind in the lithe of its mother's skirts.

AND AGAIN THAT
night she hardly slept, thinking and thinking till her head ached, the house quiet enough now without fairlies treading the stairs, she felt cool and calm, if only she could sleep. But by morning she knew she couldn't go on with Uncle and Auntie beside her, they smothered her over with their years and their canny supposings. Quick after breakfast she dressed and came down and Auntie cried out, real sharplike,
Mighty be here, Chris, where are you going?
as though she owned Blawearie stick and stone, hoof and hide. And Chris looked at her coolly,
I'm away to Stonehaven to
see Mr Semple, can I bring you anything?
Uncle Tam rose up from the table then, goggling, with his medals clinking,
Away to Stonehive? What are you jaunting there for? I'll
transact any business you have.
Their faces reddened up with
rage, she saw plain as daylight how near it lay, dependence on them, she felt herself go white as she looked at them.
I'll transact my own business fine
, she said hardly, and called
Ta-ta
from the door and heard no answer and held down the Blawearie road and ran over the parks to the station, and caught the early scholars' train that went in to Stonehaven Academy.

It was crowded fell close, there were three-four scholars in the carriage she got in to, she didn't know any, they were learning French verbs. And she'd wanted to go back to things as silly!

They were past Drumlithie and the Carmont then, you could smell the woods of Dunnottar and look out at them from the window, girdling Stonehaven down to its bay, shining and white, the sun was out on the woods and the train like a weasel slipped through the wet smell of them. And there was Stonehaven itself, the home of the poverty toffs, folk said, where you might live in sin as much as you pleased but were damned to hell if you hadn't a white sark. She'd heard Chae Strachan say that, but it wasn't all true, there were fell poor folk in Stonehaven as well as the come- ups; and douce folk that were neither poor nor proud and had never a say when Stonehaven boomed of its braveness. And that it did fair often, the Mearns' capital, awful proud of its sarks but not of its slums; and it thought itself real genteel, and a fine seafront it had that the English came to in summer—daft, as usual, folk said, hadn't they a sea in England?

Because it was early in the day and the lawyer's office still shut Chris loitered on the road in the tail of the hasting scholars, the little things they were, all legs and long boots, funny how they tried to speak English one to the other, looking sideways as they cried the words to see if folk thought them gentry. Had Marget and she been daft as that?

But the sun was out now on the long Stonehaven streets and Chris went past the Academy down to the market, still at that hour with just a stray cat or so on the sniff around, genteel and toff-like, Stonehaven cats. Down through a lane
she caught a glimmer of the North Sea then, or maybe it was the sunlight against the sky, but the smell of the sea came up. And she still had plenty of time.

So she went down to the shore, the tide was out, thundering among the rocks, not a soul on the beach but herself, gulls flying and crying, the sun strong and warm. She sat on a seat in the glow of it and shut her eyes and was happy. Below her feet the ground drummed and trembled with reverberations from that far-off siege of the rocks that the sea was making out there by the point of the bay, it was strange to feel it and be of it, maybe folk there were who felt for the sea as last night she had felt in the rain-drenched fields of Kinraddie. But to her it seemed restless, awaiting and abiding nowhith- er, not fine like the glens that nestled and listened high up the coarse country, or the parks sun-heavy with clover that waited your feet at evening.

She fell asleep then, she slept there two hours in the sun and woke feeling fresher than she'd done since father's funeral. So hungry also she felt she couldn't wait the ending of the business she'd come on but went into a tea-house up in the square, two women kept it, old bodies they were that moved backward and forward the room, slow and rheumatic. One looked like the cats she'd seen in the square that morning, sleeked and stroked, the other was thin as a lathe, their tea-room looked scrubbed and clean and their tea had a taste to match. They were sharp and stroked and genteel, Chris thought for the first time then in her life how awful it would be to grow old like them, old maids without men, without ever having lain with a man, or had him kiss you and hold you, and be with you, and have children of his, or the arm of a man when you needed it, kind and steadfast and strong. If she'd lived her plan to train as a teacher she'd have grown like them.

She might grow so still! she thought, and daft-like suddenly felt quite feared, she paid for her tea in a hurry and went out to the square again, thinking of herself as an old maid, it wouldn't bear thinking about. So she hurried to the office of Simple Simon and a little clerk asked her business,
perky-like, and she looked at him coolly and said her business was Mr Semple's. And then she minded the old maids, was she herself one by nature? And in a cold fear she smiled at the clerk, desperately, with her lips and eyes, it was fine, the boy smiled also and blushed and thawed, and said
Sit down, this is fine and comfortable;
and pulled out a padded chair for her; and down she sat, light-hearted again. Then the clerk came back and led her through a passage to Semple's room, he looked busy enough, with a telephone beside him and heaps of papers, and rows of little black boxes round the shelves. Then he rose and shook hands,
Well, well, it's Miss Guthrie come up; you've been thinking of
the will, no doubt?

She told him, Yes, just that; and she was going to live on at Blawearie a while, not roup the gear out at once, could he see to that with the factor?

He stared at her with his mouth fallen open,
But you can't
live there alone!

She told him she'd no such intention, couldn't he get her some woman come live with her, some old bit body who'd be glad of a home?

He said
Oh God, there are plenty of them!
and began to chew at his mouser.

She told him it mightn't be for more than a month or so, till she'd made up her mind, just.

He said absent-like,
Just? Hell, a woman's mind just!
and then pulled himself up right sudden as she looked at him hardly and cool. Then he argued a bit, but Chris hardly listened, father's will had said she could do what she liked.

And presently, seeing she cared not a fig for him, Semple gave in and said he'd settle up with the factor, and he knew an old widow body, Melon, he'd send down to Blawearie the morn.

So Chris said
Thank you, good-bye,
and went out from the office, cool as she'd come, the sun was a fell blaze then and the streets chock-a-block with sheep, great droves of them, driven in to the weekly mart. Collies were running hither and yon, silent and cocked of ear, clean and quick as you'd wish,
paying heed to none but shepherd and sheep. Drovers and beasts, they took a good look at Chris both, as she stood in her black clothes watching them; and just as she wondered what she'd do next, walk down to the sea and sit on a bench till it neared to dinner-time in the hotels, or go up to the station and take the 11.0, a gig going by slowed down of a sudden, a man jumped down and cried back to the driver.

The man that had jumped was the foreman at Upperhill, Ewan Tavendale, the driver old Gordon himself, he looked in a rage about something. And he cried
Mind the time then!
and gave Chris a sore glower and drove spanking away.

And then Ewan had crossed the pavement and was standing in front of her, he lifted his cap and said, shy-like,
Hello!
Chris said,
Hello,
and they looked at each other, he was blushing, she minded the last time, she didn't like him half as she'd done at the funeral. He said
Are you in for the day?
and she mocked him, not knowing why she did that, it wasn't decent and father new dead,
Och ay, just that.
He blushed some more, she felt cool and queerly giddy in a breath, looking at the fool of a lad, folk were glowering at them both they were later to learn, not Gordon only but Ellison: and back the two of them went to Kinraddie and told every soul it was a sore shame there wasn't somebody about to heed to the Guthrie girl from the hands of that coarse tink brute, Ewan Tavendale.

But they hadn't known that and mightn't have cared, suddenly Chris felt herself hungry again, happy as well, not caring about Ewan himself but not wanting either he should leave her and go on to the mart. She said
I'm going up to the
Inn for dinner,
and he looked at her, still shy, but with a kind of smoulder in the shyness, his eyes like the smoulder of a burning whin–
Maybe we can eat together?
And she said, as he turned by her side,
Oh, maybe. But what will Mr Gordon
do?
And Ewan said he could dance a jig on the head of the mart with sheer rage, for all he cared.

So in they went to old Mother White's, not that they saw the old body herself; and there was a fine room to eat in,
with white cloths set, and a canary that sang above them, the windows fast closed to the dust and dirt. And they'd broth, it was good, and the oat-cakes better; and then boiled beef and potatoes and turnip; and then rice pudding with prunes; and then some tea, Ewan found his tongue as they drank the tea and said to-day was his holiday, for he's worked all the last Sunday on a job libbing lambs. And Chris said, it was out of her mouth before she thought,
So you're in no hurry
to be back?
and Ewan leaned across the table, the smoulder near kindled to a fire,
Not unless you should be! What train
are you taking up to Kinraddie?

AND THEN HOW IT
all came about, their planning to spend the day together and their walk to Dunnottar, Chris never knew, maybe neither did Ewan. But half an hour later, Stonehaven a blinding white glimmer behind, Dunnottar in front, they were climbing down the path that lead to the island. The air was blind with the splash of the incoming tide, above you the rock rose sheer at the path wound downwards sheer; and high up, crowning the rock were the ruins of the castle walls, splashed with sunlight and the droppings of sea-birds. Gulls there were everywhere, Chris was deafened in the clamour of the brutes, but quiet enough in the castle it proved, not a soul seemed visiting there but themselves.

They paid their shillings and the old man came with them from room to room, a scunner to Ewan, Chris guessed, for his eyes kept wandering, wearied, to her from this ruin and that. In walls little slits rose up, through these it was that in olden times the garrisons had shot their arrows at besiegers; and down below, in the dungeons, were the mouldering clefts where a prisoner's hands were nailed while they put him to torment. There the Covenanting folk had screamed and died while the gentry dined and danced in their lithe, warm halls, Chris stared at the places, sick and angry and sad for those folk she could never help now, that hatred of rulers and gentry a flame in her heart, John Guthrie's hate. Her folk and his they had been, those whose names stand graved in tragedy:

But Ewan whispered,
Oh, let's get out of
this
, though it was he himself that had planned they come to Dunnottar. So out in the sun, at the shelving entrance, they stood awhile in the cry of the gulls; and then Ewan said
Come down to the sea:
I know a nook.

And they climbed down and then up again, along the cliff-edge, it made you dizzy to look over and down at the incoming wash of froth, and sometimes, far under their feet, there rose a loud
boom!
like a gun going off. Ewan said that the rocks were sometimes hollow and the water ran far below the fields, so that ploughmen ploughed above the sea and in stormy weather they'd sometimes see their furrows quiver from that storm that raged under their feet. So they came to a crumbling path, it seemed to fall sheer away, a seagull sailed up to meet them, and Ewan with his feet already out of sight turned back and asked,
You'll be dizzy?
And Chris shook her head and followed him, it seemed to her between sea and sky, down and down, and then Ewan was gripping her ankle, she swung almost loose for a moment, looking down in his face, it was white and strained, then her foot and hand caught again, Ewan called that it wasn't much further; and they got to the bottom and sat and looked at each other on a ledge of sand.

The sun poured in there, the tide whispered and splashed and threw out its hands at them on the sand, but it didn't
come further up. And Chris saw that the place was closed in, you couldn't see a thing of the coast but the rocks overhanging, and only a segment of the sea itself, a mile or so out a boat had tacked, it flashed its wings like a wheeling gull; and Εwan was sitting beside her, peeling an orange.