A Scots Quair (29 page)

Young Ewan took little to strangers, most, not frightened but keep-your-distance he was, but he made no try to keep distant from Chae, he sat on his knee as Chris spread them supper and Chae spoke up about things in the War, it wasn't so bad if it wasn't the lice. He said they were awful, but Chris needn't be feared, he'd been made to stand out in the close by Kirsty and strip off every thing he had on, and fling the clothes in a tub and syne get into another himself. So he was fell clean, and God! he found it a change not trying to reach up his shoulders to get at some devil fair sucking and sucking the life from his skin.

And he gave a great laugh when he told them that, his old laugh queerly crippled it was. And Ewan asked what he thought of the Germans, were they truly coarse? And Chae said he was damned if he knew, he'd hardly seen one alive, though a body or so you saw now and then, gey green and
feuch! there's a supper on the table!
Well, out there you hardly did fighting at all, you just lay about in those damned bit trenches and had a keek at the soil they were made of. And man, it was funny land, clay and a kind of black marl, but the French were no good as farmers at all, they just pleitered and pottered in little bit parks that you'd hardly use as a hanky to wipe your neb. Chae didn't like the French at all, he said they were damned poor folk you'd to fight for, them, meaner than dirt and not half so sweet. And Ewan listened and said
So you don't think that I should join up, Chae?
And Chris stared at him, Chae stared at him, young Ewan stared, and they all three stared till Chae snorted
There are fools enough
in the fighting as it is
. Chris felt something holding her throat, she'd to cough and cough, trying to speak, and couldn't, and Ewan looked at her shamed-like and blushed and said
Och,
I was asking, only.

Chae went round all Kinraddie on his leave that time and found changes enough to open his eyes, maybe he was fell
wearied with the front, folk thought, there was nothing on there but their pleitering and fighting. And the first change he saw the first morning, did Chae, lying down in his bed for the pleasure of it and Kir sty at the making of his breakfast. And Chae sat up in his bed to reach for his pipe when he looked from the window and he gave a great roar; and he louped from his bed in his sark so that Kirsty came running and crying
What is't? Is
'
t a wound?
But she found Chae standing by the window then, cursing himself black in the face he was, and he asked how long had
this
been going? So Mistress Strachan looked out the way he looked and she saw it was only the long bit wood that ran by the Peesie's Knapp that vexed him, it was nearly down the whole stretch of it, now. It made a gey difference to the look-out faith! but fine for Kinraddie the woodmen had been, they'd lodged at the Knapp and paid high for their board. But Chae cried out
To hell with their board, the bastards, they're ruining my land,
do you hear!
And he pulled on this trousers and boots and would fair have run over the park and been at them; but Kirsty caught at his sark and held him back and cried
Have
y
ou fair gone mad with the killing of Germans?

And he asked her hadn't she got eyes in her head, the fool, not telling him before that the wood was cut? It would lay the whole Knapp open to the north-east now, and was fair the end of a living here. And Mistress Strachan answered up that she wasn't a fool, and they'd be no worse than the other folk, would they? all the woods in Kinraddie were due to come down. Chae shouted
What, others?
and went out to look; and when he came back he didn't shout at all, he said he'd often minded of them out there in France, the woods, so bonny they were, and thick and brave, fine shelter and lithe for the cattle. Nor more than that would he say, it seemed then to Kirsty that he quietened down, and was quiet and queer all his leave, it was daft to let a bit wood go vex him like that.

But the last night of his leave he climbed to Blawearie and he said there was nothing but the woods and their fate that could draw his eyes. For over by the Mains he'd come on the
woodmen, teams and teams of them hard at work on the long bit forest that ran up the high brae, sparing nothing they were but the yews of the Manse. And up above Upperhill they had cut down the larch, and the wood was down that lay back of old Pooty's. Folk had told him the trustees had sold it well, they got awful high prices, the trustees did, it was wanted for aeroplanes and such-like things. And over at the office he had found the factor and the creature had peeked at Chae through his horn-rimmed glasses and said that the Government would replant all the trees when the War was won. And Chae had said that would console him a bloody lot, sure, if he'd the chance of living two hundred years and seeing the woods grow up as some shelter for beast and man: but he doubted he'd not last so long. Then the factor said thay must all do their bit at a sacrifice, and Chae asked
And what sacrifices
have you made, tell me, you scrawny wee mucker?

That wasn't fair to the factor, maybe, who was a decent childe and not fit to fight, but Chae was so mad he hardly knew what he said, and didn't much care. So when he fell in with old Ellison things were no better. For Ellison'd grown fair big in the mind and the pouch, folk said he was making silver like a dung-heap sourocks; and he'd bought him a car and another piano; and he said
Ow, it's you, Charles lad!
Are you home for long?
and he said
And I'll bet you want back
to the front line, eh?
And Chae said that he'd be wrong in the betting, faith ay!
Did you ever hear tell of a body of a woman
that wanted a new bairn put back in her womb?
And Ellison gowked and said
No
. And Chae said
And neither have I, you
gowk-eyed gomeril
, and left him at that; and it was hardly a kindly remark, you would say.

But it seemed the same wherever he went in Kinraddie, except at the Mill and his father-in-law's: every soul made money and didn't care a damn though the War outlasted their lives; they didn't care though the land was shaved of its timber till the whole bit place would soon be a waste with the wind a-blow over heath and heather where once the corn came green. At Cuddiestoun he came on the Munro pair, they were rearing up hundreds of chickens that year and they
sold them at great bit prices to the Aberdeen hospitals. So busy they were with their incubators they'd but hardly time to take notice of him, Mistress Munro snapped and tweeted at him, still like a futret, and the creature wrinkled its long thin neb:
Ah well, we'll have to get on with our work. Fine
being you and a soldier, Chae, with your holidays and all. But
poor folk aye have to work
. Munro himself looked shamed at that and coloured all over his ugly face, poor stock, but he'd hardly time to give Chae a dram, so anxious he was with a new brood of hens. So Chae left him fell quick, the place got on his stomach, and syne as he held through the parks he came bang on Tony, standing right mid-way the turnip-field. And his eyes were fixed on the ground and God! he might well have stood there for days by the look of him. Chae cried out to him
Ay, then, Tony man
, not expecting any reply, but Tony looked up and aside
Ay, Chae, so the mills of God
still grind?

And Chae went on, and he thought of that, a real daft-like speak he thought it at first, but further up the brae as he held by Upprums, he scratched his head, was the thing so daft? He stopped and looked back, and there, far below, was the Tony childe standing, glued to the ground. And Chae shivered in a way, and went on.

So Chae wandered his round of Kinraddie, a strange place and desolate with its crash of trees and its missing faces. And not that alone, for the folk seemed different, into their bones the War had eaten, they were money-mad or mad with grief for somebody killed or somebody wounded—like Mistress Gordon of the Upperhill, all her pride gone now because of the Jock she had loved and aye called John. But it was Jock she called him when Chae sat with her in the parlour then, and she told him the news of her blinded son in the hospital in England. He wouldn't ever see again, it wasn't just a nervous trouble or anything like that, he'd drawn back the bandages when she went to see him and shown her the great red holes in his head; and syne he'd laughed at her, demented like, and cried:
What think you of your son now,
old wife? — the son you wanted to make a name for you with his
bravery in Kinraddie? Be proud, be proud, I'll be home right
soon to crawl round the parks and I'll show these holes to every
bitch in the Mearns that's looking for a hero
. He'd fair screamed the words at his mother and a nurse had come running and soothed him down, she said he didn't know what he said, but Mistress Gordon had never a doubt about that. And she told Chae about it and wept uncovered, her braveness and her Englishness all fair gone; and when Gordon came into the room he looked different too, shrivelled up he was, he'd taken to drink, folk said.

So Chae went out across the parks to the Bridge End then and half-wished that he'd missed the Upperhill. But across the nethermost park below the larch wood he ran into young Maggie Jean, her that Andy the daftie had near mischieved, grown a gey lass, and he hardly knew her. But she knew him fine and smiled at him, blithe and open.
It's
Chae Strachan! You look fine as a soldier, Chae! And please
can I have a button?
So he cut off a button from his tunic for her and they smiled at each other, and he went out across the fields with a lighter heart then, she was sweet as a sprig of Blawearie 'suckle.

Bridge End he found with Alec away, he'd gone selling sheep in Stonehaven. But Mistress Mutch was there and she sat and smoked at a cigarette and told him that Alec was still a fell patriot, he'd enrolled in the volunteers of Glenbervie and every other night went down to Drumlithie for drill, a sight for sore eyes, the gowks, prancing about like dogs with diarrhoea, that's what they minded her of. And she asked Chae when the War was to end, and Chae said
God only knows
and she asked
And you still believe in
Him?
And Chae was real shocked, a man might have doubts and his disbelief, you expected a woman to be different, they needed more support in the world. But now that he thought of God for himself he just couldn't say, there was more of his Enemy over in France, that minded him now he must give the Reverend Gibbon a look up at the Manse. But Mistress Mutch said
Haven't you heard, then? Mr Gibbon's gone, he's
a colonel-chaplain in Edinburgh now, or something like that
;
and he wears a right brave uniform with a black hanky across
the neck of it. His father's come down to take his place, an old
bit stock that drinks German blood by the gill with his porridge,
by the way he preaches
.

At Pooty's Chae knocked and knocked and got feint the answer. And folk were to tell him that wasn't surprising, old Pooty had taken to locking himself in nowadays, he got queerer and queerer, he said every night he heard men tramping the roads in the dark, chill hours, and they crept off the roads and slithered and slipped by the hedges and fields, and he knew who they were, they were Germans, the German dead from out of the earth that had come to work ill on Scotland. And even in the daytime if you but looked quick, right sharp and sudden between the bending of a bough or the bar of a gate, you'd see a white German face, distorted still in the last red pain, haunting the Scottish fields. And that was queer fancying well you might say.

But Chae knew nothing of the business, he near knocked in the door of the little house ere he gave it up and went ben the road to Long Rob's. And Rob saw him coming and turned off the Mill and ran to meet him; and they sat and argued the rest of the day, Rob brought out his bottle and they had a bit dram; and then Rob made them their supper and they'd another long dram, and they argued far to the wee, small hours. And Chae swore that he still believed the War would bring a good thing to the world, it would end the armies and fighting forever, the day of socialism at last would dawn, the common folk had seen what their guns could do and right soon they'd use them when once they came back.

And Rob said
Havers, havers. The common folk when they
aren't sheep are swine, Chae man; you're an exception, being
a goat
.

Well, it was fine enough that long arguing with Rob, but out in the dark by the side of Chae as they walked along the road together Rob cried
Oh man, I'd go back
with you the morn if only
—and the words fair seemed to stick in his throat. And Chae asked
If only what, man?
and Rob said
If only I wanted to be easy
—
easy and a liar. But I've
never gone that gait yet and I'm damned if I'll begin for any
bit war!

And what he meant by that Chae didn't know, he left him then and held over the moor land towards the Knapp under the rising moon. And it was there that a strange thing happened to him, maybe he'd drunk over much of Long Rob's whisky, though his head was steady enough as a rule for thrice the amount he'd drunk. Ah well, the thing was this, that as he went over an open space of the vanished Standing Stones he saw right in front of him a halted cart; and a man had got out of the cart and knelt by the axle and looked at it. And Chae thought it some carter billy from the Netherhill taking the near cut through the moor, and steered out to go by and cried
Good night, then!
But there wasn't an answer, so he looked again, and no cart was there, the shingly stones shone white and deserted under the light of the moon, the peewits were crying away in the distance. And Chae's hackles fair stood up on end, for it came on him that it was no cart of the countryside he had seen, it was a thing of light wood or basket-work, battered and bent, low behind, with a pole and two ponies yoked to it; and the childe that knelt by the axle had been in strange gear, hardly clad at all, and something had flashed on his head, like a helmet maybe. And Chae stood and swore, his blood running cold, and near jumping from his skin when a pheasant started under his feet with a screech and a whirr and shot away into the dimness. And maybe it was one of the men of old time that he saw there, a Calgacus' man from the Graupius battle when they fought the Romans up from the south; or maybe it had only been the power of Long Rob's Glenlivet.