A Scots Quair (66 page)

Ake Ogilvie told that he saw him go by, like a Valkyr
riding the wings of the storm—whatever that fool of a joiner meant. But the next thing that happened for sure was that Smithie got off at the door of his house and went in. His goodson Bruce sat canny by the fire and hardly looked up as he heard Smithie's step. Then Smithie said
Just a minute, you,
the sweir swine there, and I'll deal with you!
and Bruce looked round and there was old Smithie, with a bottle upended, sucking like mad. And then he had finished and flung off his coat, the daft old tyke, and let drive at Bruce, and near knocked him head first into the dinner that was hottering slow on the swey by the fire. Well, Bruce got up, he would soon settle this, and his wife, old Smithie's daughter, cried out
Crack up his jaw—don't spare the old tink!

But God! she nearly died at what followed. Old Smithie had fair gone mad of a sudden, he didn't heed the bashings of Bruce, not a bit, but took him a belt in the face that near floored him, syne kicked him right coarse, and Bruce gave a groan and caught at himself, and as he doubled up old Smithie took him a clout in the face with a tacketty boot, and for weeks after that it looked more like a mess in a butcher's shop, than a face, that thing that the childe Bruce wore. Bruce was blinded with blood, he cried
Stop—I can't see!
But old Smithie had gone clean skite, what with his wrongs and the Benny Dick Tine.
Oh, can't you? Well, then, you can damn well
feel!
And he took Bruce and swung him out through the door, and kicked him sore in the dowp as he went, and threw a chair at him, and Bruce had enough, he ran like a hare, half-blind though he was, and the Muirs all stood next door and gaped, Mrs Muir and Tooje and Ted, all but John, he sat indoors and gleyed quiet up the lum.

The next thing the Muirs saw was Mrs Bruce herself, kicked out like her man and running like him, and syne the bairns, and syne they heard sounds inside the house like a wild beast mad. Then old Smithie started to throw out the things that belonged to his daughter and his goodson Bruce, a sewing machine and their kists and clothes, a heap in the stour outside the door. Bruce had cleared his eyes by then and come back, but old Smithie saw him and chased him away, with a bread-knife, and came back and danced on the gear, he looked like the devil himself, said Ake, who had come up
to see what the row was about—if you could imagine the devil in whiskers raising worse hell than was usual in Segget.

Well, he closed the door next and after a while some folk went over and chapped at the door, but they got not a cheep, and waited for Bruce, he'd gone to the smiddy to borrow an axe. He came back with a fair-like crowd at his heels, Feet the bobby came with him as well, and just as they started in on the door Ake Ogilvie cried
No, damn't! that won't do
. And he said to Bruce
Is this your house, or his?
Bruce told him to mind his own mucking business, and was raising his axe to let fly at the door when Ake Ogilvie said,
All right,
then, all right. It's up to you, Feet. You're supposed to defend
the law here in Segget. Here's a man that has locked himself up
in his house, and you're standing by and aiding and abetting a
burglar trying to get into the place
.

That hadn't struck folk afore, now it did, they cried,
Ay,
that's right
, and Bruce glared around; and Feet scratched at his head and took out his notebook. And he said to Bruce that he'd maybe best wait, he himself would call on old Smithie for a change, to open the door in the name of the Law. But all that they heard after Feet had cried that were the snores of old Smithie asleep on his bed.

He wasn't seen in Segget till the Sunday noon, when he crawled out to give some meat to his kye. But he never left the house but he locked up the door, the Bruces got tired of trying to dodge in, they said they couldn't bear the old brute, anyhow, him and his stink, and they flitted to Fordoun, and Bruce got a job on the railway there; and old Smithie at last had his house to himself, thanks to the lorry-man's Benny Dick Tine.

And what all this clishmaclaver led to was Alec Hogg getting the job on the road that had once been Bruce's, and the seat by the fire in old Smithie's house that was Bruce's as well. For young Alec Hogg was a skilly-like childe, right ready and swack and no longer polite, he called a graip by its given name. As for looking around for slop-basins these days, he'd have eaten tea-leaves like a damn tame rabbit, and munched them up with contentment, too. And he said to old Smithie as they mended the roads there was nothing like a damn good taste of starvation to make you take ill with ideas
you'd held, he had starved down south when he lost his job, and near starved when he managed to get back to Segget, his father, the old mucker, would glunch and glare at every bit mouthful he saw his son eat—
his
hands had never held idleceit's bread. He'd sneer at the table, the monkey-like mucker,
And what have your fine friends, the Fashers, done for
you?
And it was but the truth, they had done not a thing; as for Fascism's fancies on Scotland and Youth—well, starvation's grip in your belly taught better. Scotland and its young could both go to hell and frizzle there in ink for all that he cared.

And old Smithie thought that a fell wice speak, and so did John Muir, and they'd sit and crack, the three of them by the side of the road, and watch the traffic go by to Dundon, the cars with gentry, the buses with folk. And John Muir would gley
Ay, God, and that's sense. I was once myself a hit troubled
about things—fair Labour I was, but to hell with them all.
Poor folk just live and die as they did, we all come to black flesh
and a stink at the end…. And like fools we still go with the
soss, bringing grave-fodder into the world. For I hear that you're
courting Else Queen, are you, Alec?

Alec reddened up a bit and said maybe he was; and John Muir said Well, and he might do worse, since women there were you'd to bed them sometime. And he asked when Else and Alec were to marry, and Alec said
Christ, I haven't an
idea—we've no place to bide though we married to-morrow
.

And 'twas then that old Smithie said
Have you no? You're
a decent-like childe and I like you well. Let you and your wife
come bide in with me
.

ELSE CAME TO
Chris and told her the news, Chris said she was glad—
and I know you'll be happy
. Else tossed her head,
God knows about that. There are worse folk than
Alec—at least, so I hear. And as for being happy — och,
nobody is!

Chris laughed at that and said it wasn't true, but she wondered about it in the fresh-coming Spring, maybe it was Else had the sense of the thing—not looking for happiness, madness, delight—she had left these behind in the bed of Dalziel; only looking to work and to living her life, eating
and sleeping and rising each dawn, not thinking, tiring by night-time and dark—as Chris did herself in the yard of the Manse. And Chris raised her head as she thought that thought, and heard the trill of a blackbird, shrill, and saw the spirt of its wings as it flew, black sheen of beauty, across the long grass: and the ripple and stilly wave of the light, blue sunlight near on the old Manse wall. And she thought that these were the only glad things—happiness, these, if you found the key. She had lost it herself, unlonely in that, most of the world had mislaid it as well.

She minded then as she worked at that tree, an apple tree, and set smooth the earth, and reached her hands in the cling of the mould, that saying of Robert's, long, long ago, the day he unveiled the new-hallowed Stones up by the loch on Blawearie brae—that we'd seen the sunset come on the land and this was the end of the peasants' age. But she thought, as often, we saw more than that—the end forever of creeds and of faiths, hopes and beliefs men followed and loved: religion and God, socialism, nationalism—Clouds that sailed darkling into the night. Others might arise, but these went by, folk saw them but clouds and knew them at last, and turned to the Howe from the splendid hills—folk were doing so all over the world, she thought, back to the sheltered places and ease, to sloth or toil or the lees of lust, from the shining splendour of the cloudy hills and those hopes they had followed and believed everlasting. She herself did neither, watching, unsure: was there nothing between the Clouds and the Howe?

This life she lived now could never endure, she knew that well as she looked about her, however it ended it could not go on; she was halted here, in these Segget years, waiting the sound of unhasting feet, waiting a Something unnamed, but it came. And then—

She stopped in her work and looked down at herself, at her breast, where the brown of her skin went white at the edge of the thin brown dress she wore, white rose the hollow between her breasts, except where it was blue-veined with blood; funny to think that twice in her life a baby had grown to life in her body and herself changed so to await that growth, and still she looked like a quean, she thought,
breast, hips, and legs, and she liked her legs, even yet, as she looked at them with a smile, at the line of herself as she squatted to weed, nice still to cuddle spite her sulky face! Had she lived in the time of the golden men who hunted the hills by the Trusta bents there would have been cuddles enough, she supposed, fun and pain and the sting of the wind, long nights of sleep in a heath-hid cave, morns shining over the slopes of the hills as you stirred by your man and peered in his face, lying naked beside you, naked yourself, with below the Howe just clearing its mists as the sun came up from an alien sea—the Howe, unnamed and shaggy with heath, with stone-oak forests where the red deer belled as the morning grew and the Bervie shone; and far over the slopes of the Howe you could see the smoke rise straight from another cave, and know your nearest friends a day off; and you'd not have a care or a coin in the world, only
life
, swift, sharp, and sleepy and still, and an arm about you, life like a song, and a death at the end that was swift as well—an hour of agony, or only a day, what woman feared death who had borne a child? And many enough you'd have borne in the haughs and been glad enough of their coming in that day, undreaming the dark tomorrows of the Howe that came with the sailing ships from the south….

And, kneeling and cutting at a wallflower clump that had grown over-large for its portion of earth, Chris smiled as she thought of her talk with Else on this matter of humankind itself growing over-large for
its
clump of earth. Else had stood and listened with red-tinted ears, and stammered and blushed, it was funny and sad, Chris knew how she felt, she had once felt the same. Else said
Oh, Mem, but I couldn't do
that—it wouldn't be right to do anything like that!
Chris said
It's surely better to do that than have the bairns that you
can't bring up?
Else shook her head,
They'll just come, and
we'll manage. But I couldn't do things to myself like that
.

Robert had overheard Chris as she talked, he had heard the talk through the kitchen door, coming down the stairs in his silent way. And when he and Chris were alone together, he said
You shouldn't have said that, Christine
, gentle and quiet and even of speech. Chris had shivered a little and drawn further away.
Why not?
she asked, and he said
Because
we have no rights in these matters at all. We have meddled
too much with our lives as it is; they are God's concern, the
children who come
.

For a minute Chris hardly believed what she heard, she had stared at him, at his maskèd face; they themselves had done this thing he denounced….

ALL THE NEXT
afternoon, as it seemed to Chris, she heard the rumour and hum of the wedding, down in the hall of the Segget Arms. It had turned to a day sun-blown and clear, the earth was hard as she weeded the beds, clumps of begonias under the dykes, back of the Manse the chickens of Muir were deep in a drowsy scraiching, well-fed. Chris went and looked over the wall and watched, and laughed a little at the courting play of an over-small cock with a haughty, shamed look, as though it thought mating a nasty thing, but yet was right eager to make half a try. There were lots of folk who had minds like his!

Robert and Ewan were both at the wedding, Robert returned as soon as he might, Chris heard him climb up the stairs to his room. The noise went on far into the night, stirring in sleep towards the Sunday morning Chris heard the light step of Ewan go by. Next morning he wasn't stirring as usual, and she carried a cup of tea to his room, and knocked and went in and he still slept fast, lying straight, his dark hair thick as a mop, she stood and looked at him and tickled his arm, and he woke up lightly, as he always woke.
Oh, it's
you, Chris!
and stared a moment:
I'm sorry, Mother!

She said
Oh, I'm Chris as well, I suppose
, and sat on the side of the bed while he drank, the morning growing in the yews outside, promise of another day of summer yellow on the ivied walls of the Manse. She asked how the wedding had gone, and he yawned, so grown-up, and stretched while she caught the cup; and he said that the wedding had gone off fine, except that folk were afraid of Robert, he'd changed so much, with never a laugh. Ewan had heard Dite Peat say of Robert—

Chris said
Yes, what did he say of Robert?
and Ewan lay and looked at her, calm and cool.
He said that Robert had
lain with Else, he knew bed-shame in a man when he saw it
.

Chris said
You didn't believe that, did you?
Ewan yawned again,
I don't know; he might. Though I shouldn't think it
likely, he has you to sleep with: and you must be very nice, I
should think
.