A Scots Quair (32 page)

Next morning they looked out from Blawearie and saw Rob's horse and sholtie at graze in a park of the Mill, and Long Rob himself, a dot in the sunlight, making slow way to the moor land he'd wrought at so long. And as they looked they heard, thin and remote, the sound of a song Kinraddie had missed for many a day. It was
Ladies of Spain
.

SOON MAYBE THE
War would end, Chris had dreamt as she listened to that singing, and they all be back in Kinraddie as once they had been, Chae and Long Rob and her dark lad, Ewan himself. So she'd dreamt that morning, she'd never grow out from long dreamings in autumn dawns like those. And fruition of dream came soon enough, it was a telegram boy that came riding his bicycle up to Blawearie. Chris read the telegram, it was Ewan that had sent it,
Home on leave
tonight before going to France
. She stared at it and the lad that had brought it, and he asked
Any reply?
and she said
Any
what?
and he asked her again, and she said
No
, and ran into the kitchen and stared at the writing in the telegram. He was going to France.

It lingered at the back of her mind, dark, like a black cat creeping at the back of a hedge, she saw the fluff of its fur or the peek of its eyes, a wild and sinister thing in the sunlight; but you would not look often or see those eyes, how they glared at you. He was going out there, where the sky was a troubled nightmare and the earth shook night and day, into the lands of the coarse French folk, her Ewan, her lad with his dark, dear face and that quick, blithe blush. And suddenly she was filled with a weeping pity in her heart for him, a pity that brought no tears to her eyes, he must never see her shed tears all the time he was with her, he'd go out to the dark, far land with memories of her and Blawearie that were shining and brave and kind.

So all that forenoon she fled and bustled from room to room, brightening the place, she brought out fresh sheets and pillows for the bed she had found so lonely, she sent out young Ewan to gather roses and honeysuckle to set in a jar on the ledge above the bed. And she hung new curtains there
and brought out Ewan's clothes and brushed them, he'd want to get out of his uniform, they were sick of the khaki the men that came back. Then she made a great baking against his coming, so much that she'd hardly time to make dinner for young Ewan and Brigson, but they didn't care, they were both excited as herself. She knew the train he would come by, the half-past five, and she swept and dusted the kitchen and set his tea, and punched a great cushion ready for his chair, and dressed herself in the blue he liked and young Ewan in his brave brown cords. John Brigson cried
This is hardly the
place for me with your man come home, I'll away to Bervie then
for the night
.

Off he set, Chris waved to the old, kind childe as he bicycled down Blawearie brae. And then she ran back, ben to the parlour to look at herself in the mirror again, in the long glass her figure seemed blithe and slim even still, she'd be fine to sleep with yet, she supposed—oh, Ewan! Her face hadn't changed, it was flushed and fair, the eyes maybe older, but shining and bright. And she finished with that looking and went over the close to stand by the side of young Ewan, looking down the hill for his father coming up. The sun flung the long shadows of Blawearie and the beeches far in the east, and across the Den, high in the fields of Upperhill, a lost sheep baaed in the whins.

SHE HAD HARDLY
been able to believe it him, lying awake after he slept, he slept with a snoring breath and fuddled mumblings, bulging out against her so that she had but little of the bed and less of the blankets. She closed her eyes and pressed her knuckles against her teeth that the pain might waken her, that she might know Ewan hadn't come home, was still the same Ewan she'd dreamt of in the silence of the night and her own lonely bed. But he moved, flinging out an arm that struck her across the face, she lay still below it, then it wabbled away. She took her knuckles from her mouth and lay quiet then, no need for her to hurt herself now.

Drunk he had come from the station and more than two hours late. Standing at last in the kitchen in his kilts he'd
looked round and sneered
Hell, Chris, what a bloody place!
as she ran to him. And he'd flung his pack one way and his hat the other and kissed her as though she were a tink, his hands on her as quickly as that, hot and questing and wise as his hands had never been. She saw the hot smoulder fire in his eyes then, but no blush on his face, it was red with other things. But she smothered her horror and laughed, and kissed him and struggled from him, and cried
Ewan
,
who's this?

Young Ewan held back, shy-like, staring, and just said
It's father
. At that the strange, swaying figure in the tartan kilts laughed, coarse-like,
Well, we'll hope so, eh Chris?
Any supper left—unless you re too bloody stand-offish even to
have that?

She couldn't believe her own ears.
Stand-offish? Oh, Ew
an!
and ran to him again, but he shook her away,
Och, all
right, I'm wearied. For Christ's sake let a man sit down
. He staggered to the chair she'd made ready for him, a picture-book of young Ewan's lay there, he picked the thing up and flung it to the other side of the room, and slumped down into the chair.
Hell, what a blasted climb to a blasted place. Here, give
us some tea
.

She sat beside him to serve him, she knew her face had gone white. But she poured the tea and spread the fine supper she'd been proud to make, it might hardly have been there for the notice he paid it, drinking cup after cup of the tea like a beast at a trough. She saw him clearer then, the coarse hair that sprang like short bristles all over his head, the neck with its red and angry circle about the collar of the khaki jacket, a great half-healed scar across the back of his hand glinted pu- trescent blue. Suddenly his eyes came on her,
Well, damn't
,
is that all you've to say to me now I've come home? I'd have
done better to spend the night with a tart in the town
.

She didn't say anything, she couldn't, the tears were choking in her throat and smarting and biting at her eyelids, pressing to come, the tears that she'd sworn she'd never shed all the time he was home on leave. And she didn't dare look at him lest he should see, but he saw and pushed back his chair
and got up in a rage,
God Almighty, what are you snivelling
about now? You always were snivelling, I mind
. And out he went, young Εwan ran to her side and flung his arms round her,
Mother, don't cry, I don't like him, he's a tink, that soldier!
She'd pressed back the tears then,
Whist, Εwan, never say that
again;
and got up and cleared off the supper things and went out to the close and cried gently
Εwan!

He cried back
All right, all right!
still angrily; and at that some anger kindled within herself, she didn't wait for him to come back but turned and took young Ewan in her arms and climbed the stairs and put him to bed, he was vexed and troubled about her, kissing her as he lay there.
Sleep with me
to-night, mother
. She laughed at him, she was sleeping with his father to-night, he must be good and sleep himself, quick and quick, there'd be such fun with father the morn. He said
I'll try
, and closed his eyes and she went down the stairs, it was dark there, getting on for eight. She thought Ewan was still outside but as she made for the lamp something stirred in the chair, she thought it a cat, it was Ewan. He caught her and pulled her on to his knees and said
Be stand-offish now if
you can, what the devil do you think I've come home for?

It had been like struggling with someone deep in a nightmare, when the blankets are over your head and you can barely breathe, awful she should come to think that of Ewan. But it wasn't Ewan, her Ewan, someone coarse and strange and strong had come back in his body to torment her. He laughed as he fought her there in the chair and held her tight and began to tell stories—oh, he was drunk and didn't know what he said, terrible and sickening things, he'd had women when he pleased in Lanark, he said. And he whispered of them to her, his breath was hot on her face, she saw the gleam of his teeth, he told her how he'd lain with them and the things he'd done. Sickened and shamed she had felt and then worse than that, stopping from struggling, a shameful, searing desire come on her. And he knew, he knew at once, he said
Well, now that you know you can get!

She had picked herself up from the floor and in a dream went out to milk the kye, leaving him there. When she came
back he had gone from the kitchen, she was slow to finish sieving and skimming the milk and go up to the room she'd made ready that morning, singing she had made it ready. And up there he waited her, lying in the bed, he'd carried up a lamp from the kitchen, they who'd always gone to bed in the darkness and thought it fine to lie in each other's arms in the night-glimmer from the window. But now he grumbled
For God's sake hurry up!
and when she made to put out the light—
I'll do that, come on!
And she lay beside him and he took her.

She remembered that now, lying in the darkness the while he slept, why he had left the lamp alight; and at memory of that foulness something cold and vile turned and turned like a wheeling mirror inside her brain. For it had been other things than his beast-like mauling that had made her whisper in agony,
Oh Εwan, put out the light!
The horror of his eyes upon her she would never forget, they burned and danced on that mirror that wheeled and wheeled in her brain.

SO THAT WAS
Ewan's homecoming on leave and the days that went by were the same as that first night foreshadowed. He had gone away Ewan Tavendale, he came back a man so coarse and cruel that in place of love hate came singing in the heart of Chris—hate that never found speech, that but slowly found lodgement secure and unshaken. For often it seemed to her that a tortured, tormented thing looked out from Ewan's eyes while he told them his foulest tale, ill-used old Brigson and jeered at him, came drunken back to Blawearie night after night—that tortured thing that was the lost lad she had married. But the fancy wilted and vanished as the days went by. He stayed five days, had his breakfast in bed, and never got up till dinner-time; he never looked at the parks or stock or took notice of young Ewan; he dressed in his khaki and kilts alone, and to Chris's suggestion that he wear a suit—
What, me dress up like a bloody conchy? I'll leave that
to your friend, Rob Duncan
.

Every day he went swaggering down the road and was off to Drumlithie or Stonehaven or Fordoun, drinking there.
Before he went he'd ask for money, Chris gave him all that he asked, not saying a word, but he'd fancy a reluctance and sneer at her. Wasn't he entitled to what was his own? Did she think him still the young fool he had been, content to slave and slave at Blawearie—
without as much as a dram
to savour the soss, or a quean or so at night to waken your
blood—nothing but a wife you hardly dared touch in case you put
her in the family way, eh Chris?

He would say this at dinner-time, sneering and boasting, old Brigson would colour and look down at his plate and young Ewan stare and stare at his father till Ewan would say
God, what a damned glower! Eyes like your mother and a
nature the same;
and he'd swear at the bairn, it was shameful to hear that. He'd made friends with Mutch, him that once he could hardly abide, and with him he went driving each night on their drunken sprees. As he went to bed John Brigson would look at Chris with trouble in his kind old eyes, but she didn't dare say a thing to him, he'd go stamping slow up above her head the while she sat down to await Ewan's return and have the hirpling note of the clock stamp each second in her heart, hating him home, wanting him home.

For after that first night he had ceased to touch her, she would lie beside him, quivering and waiting. And he'd lie quiet, she knew him awake and knew that he knew what she waited; and it was as though he were a cat that played with a mouse, he would laugh out after a while and then go to sleep, she herself to lie tortured in the hours thereafter. The last night she refused the torment, she got up near three o'clock and kindled a fire and made herself tea and watched the morning come down the hill passes—a fine summer morning, yellow and grey and lovely with its chirping of birds in the beeches. And suddenly then, as always these changes took her, she was calm and secure, putting Ewan from her heart, locking it up that he never could vex her again, she was finished with him, either loving or hating. And at that release she rose and went slow about her work, a great load had gone from her then, John Brigson coming down in the morning heard her sing
and was cheery himself, cheery with relief, but she sang her release.

At nine o'clock Ewan cried down from his room
When
the hell are you bringing some breakfast?
She took no notice of that, but she sent young Ewan out to play and then went on with her work. And at last she heard a clatter on the stairs, and there he stood at the kitchen entrance, glaring at her
Have you gone clean deaf?
She answered him then, raising her head and looking at him,
If you're in need of a
breakfast—get it
.

He said
You bitch!
and he made to strike her. But she caught up a knife from the table, she had it waiting there near by, he swore and drew back. She nodded and smiled at that, calm, and put the knife down and went on with her work.

So he made his own tea, grumbling and swearing, a fine send-off this for a man that was going to France to do his bit. And Chris listened to the catch-phrase, contempt in her heart, she looked at him with a curling lip, and he saw her look and swore at her, but was frightened for all that, always now she knew she had known him the frightened one. And a queer, cold curiosity came on her then that so she should have slaved to tend him and love him and give him the best, body and mind and soul she had given, for a gift to the body of a drunken lout from the plough-stilts.