A Scots Quair (56 page)

By now you'd got to the end of East Wynd, to the Square where the War Memorial stood, the angel that looked like Miss M'Askill, Miss M'Askill had eyes that would lift up that way when she found something dirty drawn on a slate. In lower East Wynd of a winter morning half the lane was frozen to a slide, you took a long run from Peter Peat's shop and shot down the Wynd on the frozen slide that came from the leaking drains of Segget. By the Moultrie shop you'd to plan your turn, else you'd batter yourself on the wall of their house, as you'd done your second winter in Segget, the whole of Segget seemed fallen upon you, and your face had shifted, you sat on the ground and thought you had lost it and felt it all over, it still was there, grown bigger than ever, growing bigger and bigger every moment, it seemed. It was while you were sitting there, licking the blood, it trickled from your lips and tasted salt, and that old Mrs Moultrie came out and found you, she'd heard the bang as you struck the wall, she said to Chris when she took
you home she thought that it was a cart and horse. But you liked her in spite of clyping to Chris, her face, brown, old, and tired and quiet as she bathed you and
whished
as though you were a baby, till you sat up and said
I'm
fine. Many thanks
. Old Moultrie was sitting in his corner, glaring, reading a Bible, and you said
Good day
.

He'd taken no notice at all before that, he glared some more, but you didn't mind, you saw he really was awfully shy underneath all the hair and the horns, so you said, while Mrs Moultrie went out for a towel,
Do you like the Bible?
There's a lot of rot in it
. He stood up, shaking all over, funny, and asked,
And you're the minister's bairn?
And you shook your head,
Oh no, I'm not. Robert's only my stepfather, didn't
you know? My father was a crofter down in Kinraddie. Much
better than being a minister, I think
.

Funny, he was friendly enough after that, and started telling stories of Segget, when there weren't so many of the gentry dirt sossing about with their motor-cars. And you listened, polite, because he was old, a pity besides that he was so shy. But Mrs Moultrie said to Chris that you were the only soul in Segget he'd treated to a civil word for years.

There was the Arms, not worth looking at, you threw a stone at a cat in the Square and watched the dog up against the angel, funny that dogs were so fond of that. They really couldn't
want to
, so often. Every day that dog of Newlands came down, as you turned in the Square to go up the Close, and did that against the Memorial stone, you'd once told Robert, and he'd laughed and laughed and said that the dog was a pacifist, maybe. But one morning you stood and watched for the dog and sure as anything along it came, and stopped, and relieved itself by the angel; and the door of the Arms opposite opened, and Mrs Melvin came out and said that you were a dirty little brute to stand and look at a dog doing that— Weren't you black burning ashamed of yourself? She was soft in the head, why should you be ashamed? Maybe she was drunk, but you didn't say anything, just looked her all over, from top to toe, to see if she'd fallen while she was drunk, and then raised your cap and went on to school.

Round by here you could see the Mills, in the big, glass
windows across the field the whirr of the wheels as they caught the sun, the spinners at work in the dust and the smell; but you liked the Mills, you'd been down there twice, with Charlie, he said the folk in New Toun were daft to speak of the folk in the Mills as only spinners, there were foremen and weavers, and a lot more besides; but they all
looked
like spinners.

To the right, in the Spring and most of the year, as you passed up The Close you would see in the park the donkey that was kept by MacDougall Brown. If you whistled one note, high up in your throat, you'd found that the donkey would bray every time. So nearly every day as you passed you whistled that note and the donkey brayed, and you laughed, and he'd bray some more and come trotting and push his long nose through the fence and snuffle, but he never bit you as once Mabel Brown. Mrs Brown spoke funny, and she called her May-bull, and had a long story how the donkey once
bat May-bull
when she went to play in the park.

There was the smiddy and it once was great fun, when you were a kid, to lean up by the door and look at old Leslie blowing the bellows, he'd turn round and sweat,
Ay man,
is that you?
He'd called you
man
, but he blithered a lot, you would hardly heed at all what he said—about Chris, was she ill-like of late, would you say? and
The minister'll
be gey fond of her, eh?
and
D'ye mind your own father that
was killed out in France?
And you said you didn't know to all of these questions, because you couldn't be bothered with them, and he said,
Eh man, when my father died I just
roared and howled—ay, loon, I'd a heart. And you said Like
the Roarer and Greeter, Miss Moultrie?
And he stopped and stared with his mouth fallen open, and muttered that you were an impudent get.

You'd take the West Wynd through the Old Toun then, with its crumbling white houses and its washing to dry, there was always washing to dry, never dried. You knew a lot of the kids in West Wynd, they'd be finishing porridge and pulling on boots, and they'd cry
Wait, Ewan!
but you'd never wait, except for young Cronin, he'd come slouching out and say
Ay, Ewan
, and you'd say
Hello, Charlie
, and go
on together, not saying a thing till he'd ask, as always,
Have
you done your sums?
Then you'd know that he hadn't done his and would bring out your book so that he might copy.

Funny that he couldn't do things like sums, you could nearly do them with both eyes shut, and lean back and go off on a think on flints while the other scholars were finishing theirs; and Miss M'Askill would cry out,
Ewan! Have you
finished already? Show me your sums
. And you'd show them to her, she'd stand over close, with an arm around your shoulder, like so; and you'd move away, though as slow as you could; and she wrote in your report to the Manse that you were brilliant, but you hadn't enthusiasm; you supposed because you hadn't enthusiasm for cuddling.

It had been different in the first two years, the youngest room with Miss Jeannie Grant, Miss Grant was pretty and laughed at you, and at everyone else, and kept her cuddles for Charlie's brother, or so you supposed. She was going to be married some time to him, Jock Cronin, that was only a railway porter, Chris said that job was as good as another. But you didn't think much of John Cronin, yourself, he didn't believe what he himself said, he just said things and then tried to believe them—you knew that well while you watched him sit, with Robert, up in a room at the Manse, and talk of Segget and socialism coming—it was all a fairy-tale, and he knew it, why didn't he say the things that he thought?

You said that to Chris and she took your two shoulders, and shook her head and looked at you, strange,
Oh Ewan,
you're hard and cool as—grey granite! When you too grow up
you'll find facts over much—you'll need something to follow
that's far from the facts
. And she said something else, about a pillar of cloud, and was suddenly angry,
Don't stare at me
so! And you said I'm sorry, and she shook you again.
So
am I, Ewan—but oh, you're so cool!

Well, you saw nothing to make you excited, except now and then a broad-flake flint. It was worth reading history to get at these people, the makers of flints and their lives long ago. Though most of the histories were dull as ditchwater, with their kings and their battles and their dates and such muck, you wondered how the people had lived in those
times. But especially before the history-book times you wanted to know how men had lived then and had read all the books you could find in the Manse, and got money from Chris to send and buy others, the lives of the people ere history began, before the Venricones came to the Mearns. And young Cronin would listen and say
What's the use?
Father says that the only things we should learn are how to fight
the ca
pit
alists
. You didn't know about them, you asked who they were, and Charlie said
Folk like that mucker Mowat
.

Mr Mowat lived sometimes in Segget House, but most of the time he was down in London, sleeping with whores, Charlie Cronin said. You asked what whores were and he told you about them, what they did, how they slept for money with men. You said that you didn't see why they shouldn't, and Charlie said you'd a dirty mind, and would soon be doing the same as Mowat. That was rot, you hadn't any use for girls, they could only giggle and drift along roads, with their arms twined, and screech about nothing. Or they played soft games in their own playground, once you'd run through there for a cricket-ball and the bigger girls were playing a game,
When will my true love come from the sea;
and the silly fools pulled you in the middle and kissed and slobbered you one after the other, you stood it as long as you could, then pushed out, you didn't want to hurt the fools and you didn't; but you had felt almost sick in their hands. You told Chris that when she heard about it, she laughed and said
All lassies aren't fools, and they think you
a good looking lad, I believe
. So you said that you didn't care about that, could you have a piece now and go up to the Kaimes?

You went often up there to seek round for flints; when they dug the Kaimes they must have dug deep, in a squatting-place of the ancient men, and mixed the flints with the building-earth. You had nearly thirty specimens already, properly labelled in a press in your room, and each described on a ticket near. And you had a catalogue, fairly complete, with diagrams of the ripples, hinge-fractures, the ovates and such, and a drawing of the best, a tortoise-core from the Leachie bents. Most of the stuff was late Bronze Age, when the hunters in Scotland had still only flints.

Dinner-times you went home by the near way, quick, stopping to throw up a stone at the rooks. Robert would sometimes be there at the table, and sometimes was out and about the Mearns, trying to raise his fund for the miners, and raising little but temper, he said. Chris never went with him at the dinner-hour, she would stay at home and help Maidie at work, Maidie couldn't cook a dinner for toffee.

Sometimes Chris would be out at night when you came back from the school for tea. So Maidie would give you your tea, like a mouse, and you'd have it and help her to clear and she'd say,
Oh, Master Εwan, I'll do it myself
, but you took no notice, just went on and helped, not heeding her blether you should do your lessons, any fool could do the lessons in ten minutes. Then you'd climb to your room and look in your press, and dust here and there that tortoise-core, and a fabricator-cone you had gotten near Brechin, and take them out and turn them with care, the light waning and dying in from the window as the day waned west from the slopes of the Howe. And sometimes you'd raise your head and look up, when the sun grew still on the peaks of the Mounth, by the glens and the haughs you had searched for flints, and think of the men of ancient times who had made those things and hunted those haughs, running naked and swift by the sunlit slopes, fun to live then and talk with those people. Robert said that they hadn't been savage at all, but golden hunters of the Golden Age.

And once Chris came up as you stood and looked at a new ripple-flake you had newly found, a summer night ere you went to bed, you'd taken everything off, to be cool, and stood by the window and traced out the whorls on the red and yellow of the antique axe. Chris opened the door, and you felt the air waft, and turned and looked at her, her standing so still. You asked was anything wrong, she said
No
, giving a laugh as though wakening up.
Only you
looked like a hunter yourself, strayed and lost from the Golden
Age!

And Else went by, and looked through the door, and suddenly flushed and ran up the stairs; that was just a week ere she went from the Manse.

FAITH, THAT HAD
fairly set folk agog, when that coarse quean Else was sacked from the Manse. It just showed you the way that the world was going, dirty spinners that gave you their lip, work hard to get, so many sweir—and ministers that couldn't look after their queans. Folk said they'd been at it a year and a half, her and Dalziel of the Meiklebogs, afore that Sabbath night in July when Mr Colquohoun came in on the pair, right bang in the Manse's own kitchen it was, Meiklebogs in the way you'd expect a man in, Else Queen in a way that no quean should be in, with a two-three bits of her rig laid by. The minister had said
This won't do, Else
, fair mad with rage at old Meiklebogs, for he himself had slept with his maid, and was over-mean to share the lass out.

Some said that that was all a damned lie, the minister had nothing to do with the quean, she'd left the Manse of her own free will. The Reverend Mr Robert Colquohoun wouldn't bed with an angel sent down from heaven, let alone a red-faced maid in his house, he was over decent and fond of his wife. But you shook your head when you heard that, faith! it clean took the guts from a fine bit tale. If he wasn't the kind to go to bed with any bit quean could you tell a man why he was chief with the Cronin dirt, socialists that said you might lie where you liked and didn't believe in morals or marriage?

And if some childe said that that wasn't true, you knew right well that he was a liar, you'd seen it all in the
People's Journal
, what the coarse tinks did in Russia with women—man, they fair had a time with the women, would you say 'twould be easy to get a job there?

Well, whatever the thing that took place at the Manse, and well you might wyte it wasn't just prayer—with that scowling brute, the minister himself, and his wife with her proud don't-touch-me face, and that meikle red-haired bitch of an Else—whatever happened Else left the Manse and took a fee at the Meiklebogs. And what the two of them did when alone, with the night in about and the blinds pulled down, you well might guess, though you didn't ask. All but Dite Peat, and he said one night, when Dalziel came talking into the Arms, with that shy-like smile pon his unshaved
face, and the yellow boots that he wore for scuddling,
Ay,
Meiklebogs, you'll sleep warm now. She's a well-
happèd quean,
Else Queen, I should think
. Dalziel said nothing, just smiled like a gowk and drank at his dram and syne had another, he hadn't a yea or a nay to say, it showed you the coarse old brute that he was, and you nearly bursting your bladder to know.