A Scots Quair (77 page)

He woke late that evening to hear a commotion in the next-door bedroom, empty till then. Low talk and quick steps, Mrs Cleghorn, Chris, then a shivering bang, silence, a cough. Then Ma Cleghorn whispering
Will that have waked
Ewan?

His own door was opened a minute later and Chris came in, walking pussy-foot, she stood and listened till he called out soft, '
Lo, Chris. What's all the row next door?

She said she was sorry they'd woken him up, a new lodger was coming in a hurry, late, and they were making her up a bit bed.

Ewan said he saw. What was she like?

Chris didn't know, a lass up from Dundee, the new
schoolteacher at the Ecclesgriegs Middle—English, she'd heard, though she hadn't yet seen her—

Then she saw with a smile that Εwan was asleep, human beings were never of much interest to him.

Taking up tea to Ma Cleghorn next morning Chris found the meikle creature already out of bed, getting into her stays like wool into a bottle.
God, Chris, just give a pull at they
points, I'm getting a wee bittie stout, I'm half-feared
.

Chris put down the tray and pulled at the tapes, the house a drowse in the Saturday quiet, she asked why Ma'd got up so early, and Ma asked if she'd forgotten the new lodger-lassie, was Chris herself to do all the work? Chris said
Well, unless
she's so awful big, she'll make no difference to me, I hope. What's
she like?
and Ma gave a bit of a snort:
A stuck-up looking bitch
from a school in Dundee. Schlimpèd and English and thin as a
sparrow, I never could abide the stuck-up kind
. Chris said
Some
folk say that I'm stuck up
, Ma said
So you are, and so's your bit
Ewan. I'll maybe thole two of you about the house but I'll be
danged to a cinder-ash afore I bear with another of the brew
….
Och, lassie, go away, I'm in bad tune this morning. Take the
teacher creature her cup of tea
.

So Chris did, and went up and knocked, a cool voice said
Come in
, in she went, the lassie lying in the double bed Chris and Ma Cleghorn had put up yestreen, window wide open, curtains flying, Chris lowered her eyes to the quean herself and saw her trig, neat, in a flowered nightie, slim like a boy, like Ewan almost, short black hair and blue deep eyes, great pools going down into darkness. She sat up and took the cup and nodded:
You Mrs Cleghorn's partner?

Chris knew for certain then what was wrong, the English lass was shy as could be but carrying it off with a brassy front, the kind of cool courage Chris always had liked. And as Chris smiled the brassiness went, the quean flushed sweet as they looked at each other, was suddenly neat and demure and forlorn, no more; like a prize pussy-cat, Chris thought, with that faint line of down on her upper lip that one liked the look of, most folk didn't.—
I'm Mrs Colquohoun and you're Miss
Johns
.

—
I say, you're different from what I expected
.

—
You're a wee bittie different yourself
, Chris said, and carried down the tray and went on with her work, nice to have had a nice quean like that for one's own sometime: as well as had Ewan. But that was just dreaming—she wouldn't have been one's own any more than was Ewan, the pussy-cat, wave of nice black hair by her smooth, soft cheek and that funny down and that youngness—oh, but they made one feel like an old trauchled wife, the young folk here in Duncairn!

And suddenly, washing the breakfast things, there came a waft of stray wind through the window, a lost wean of the wind that had tint itself in play in the heights of the summer Mounth, Chris nearly dropped the cup she was drying. Ma Cleghorn louped:
Steady on, lass! Mighty be here, have you
seen a ghost?

Chris said
Only smelt one
, and then, on an impulse,
Ma, I
want the day off. Can you spare me?

Ma said
If you like: you're hardly my slave
, Chris said she knew that, but would Ma manage herself? Ma said she'd managed a good fifty-five years, off and on, and as far as she kenned at the moment she was neither a cripple nor had brain-concussion. So Chris laughed and said
I'm off to the
country
.

And she ran up and knocked at Ewan's door and went in and found him not in bed, up, naked, a long, nice naked leg and that narrow waist that you envied in men, lovely folk men, he was standing and stretching, stark, the bandage gone from his head. No shyness in Ewan, just a cool disinterest, he turned and grinned
I'm feeling my feet. Too hot
to lie in bed. Chris: let's take a holiday out in the country!

She said
I was off for one on my own
, his face fell a little, then he nodded
All right. Have a good time.—
But aren't you
coming? — Not if you want to be on your own
. And Chris said that was daft, she would always want him, and he said that was nice, and meant it, with a sudden glint of a grey granite smile nipped across to where she stood and cuddled her, funny to be cuddled by a naked man, she made out she was shocked, for fun, and he didn't see that, said
Oh, sorry
, and
went back to his clothes. A minute Chris stood with the queerest feeling of lostness, staring at him, fun was beyond Εwan.

Then, because she knew that couldn't be helped, daft to expect him other than he was, she said
Be ready in half an
hour
, and went down to her room and changed, looked at her clothes and found a light frock, took off all she wore and looked at herself, as of old, with cool scrutiny, seeing mirrored her face with the broad cheekbones, seeing the long white lines of thigh and waist and knee, not very much need to envy men.
The queer years that I've been with you!
she said to the earnest thing in the mirror, and the shadow-self smiled back with golden eyes, shadow and self no longer woe, light-hearted suddenly as she dressed in haste to be gone for a day from Duncairn and herself.

She went into the sitting-room for a book, the place half in darkness, half the blinds drawn against the sting of the sun without. And the place wasn't deserted as usually it was, Miss Johns was sitting in the biggest chair, on her heels, not reading, chin in hand looking out through the window, a little lost pussy-cat Chris thought, with her trim black hair and her lobeless ears. She smiled up at Chris with that fenceless smile that came when the brassy shyness went: and Chris was moved to an impulse again.
I'm going for a jaunt to
the country today. Would you like to come—if you've nothing else
to do?

She hesitated a minute, flushed, demure:
I'd love to.
Terribly. Only—I've no money
. And in a sudden rush of confidence was telling Chris she'd come dead broke from Dundee and wouldn't get an advance until Wednesday, she'd nothing till then and had settled herself to mope the weekend in Windmill Place. Chris said that didn't matter, she'd pay, and Miss Johns could pay her back some time; and the pussy-cat was shyer than ever, and Chris asked her name, and she said,
Oh, Ellen. Helen really, you know, but when Dad came down
from London to work in Dundee I went to High School and they
mis-spelt me Ellen
…. And Chris had almost expected that, she couldn't have been anything else but an Ellen!

She was dressed and down in the sitting-room a short minute before Εwan came down. Chris said
Ellen Johns—
Ewan Tavendale. He's my son—sometimes. Ellen's coming out
with us on our jaunt
. And Ewan, un-boylike, wasn't shy a bit, he said that would be nice, grey granite eyes on Ellen Johns as though she were a chapter on phosphor bronze, they were much of the same straight height and look, both dark and cool, Ellen cool as he was, no blush now, indifferently polite to each other. And a queer unease came on Chris that minute as she looked from one to the other: as though she were sitting in a theatre-stall and watching the opening of a dark, queer play.

But that fancy was lost in the hours that followed. The three went down to Mercat Cross and found an Aberdeen bus waiting there, ready to leave in a minute or so, crossing the Slug into Banchory, down by Deeside and Dunecht to Aberdeen, turning about and so back again. And they got in the bus, the two pussy-cats polite, not wanting either to sit by the other, manœuvring each to sit by Chris. Chris said
I think
I'll sit by myself, right at the front
, and went and sat there, the other two on the opposite seat, Ellen by the window, hatless, hair braided, curling long lashes and secret face, Ewan hatless as well, cool and composed, staring about him as the bus moved off. Once he leaned over and asked where they were going, Chris didn't know, they'd get out at some place they liked.

In a minute, themselves near the only passengers, the bus was climbing Duncairn Rise up to the heights where the men of Montrose had marshalled three hundred years before, suddenly, on a Sunday, over-awing Duncairn and pouring down to a Sabbath of blood. Chris turned in her seat and looked down and saw the white sword gleam of Royal Mile, the haze that lay on the lums of Footforthie, shining boats dipping out to sea in the pelt and shine of the morning tide. And then the road wheeled up and around and paused: there below the Howe of the Mearns, crowned, shod, be-belted in green and gold, silver chains where the Mearns burns wound
and spun to the Forthie's flow, Stonehaven forward, Bervie behind, far off the shimmer where the Grampians rode, the farms gleaming below the bents, haugh on haugh, tumbling green long corn-swaths under the wind. And syne the bus stopped and took on a farmer, thin and mean-looking, he starved his men and ate sowans to his meat, never cuddled his wife except on Sundays and only then if he'd been to kirk. And like a great squat beetle the bus crept on, oh, they were cutting the hay in a park, the smell in the bus, drifting, tingling—Blawearie's night and days, hush of the beeches in a still July, pastures sleeping around Segget Manse with Robert beside you as you drowsed on the lawn—Robert that you looked at, and he hadn't a face—

And Chris shook that woe dreaming away from herself, let nothing spoil the sun and the hay and the goodness of being alone and alive, peering through lids at July unfold, birring, up the blossoming Howe, deep-honeysuckled ran the hedges, in parks out bye the gleg-vexed kye were tearing about with tails a-switch, some eident body would have sour milk the night. Ewan and Ellen at last were speaking to each other. Ewan had turned his head and Chris saw the English quean looking up at him, cool, like a virtuous panther-kitten exchanging tail-switchings with a black-avised leopard.

The next thing she knew they were through Stonehyve, windy, guarded by Dunnottar Woods, and were climbing up the heath of the Slug, no hay-smell here but the guff of the heather billowing up to the quivering heights. And there came a sudden memory to Chris—a winter night twenty- three years before when father and mother and Will and herself and the loons long-lost and the twins that died had flitted across these hills in a storm, with battered lanterns in the on-ding of sleet … twenty-three years before. Back and back through the years as the bus climbed the Slug, years like the rustle of falling leaves, dreams by night and dim turnings in sleep, and you were again that quean in the sleet, all the world and living before you unkenned, kisses and hate and toil and woe, kisses at night when the byre-stalls drowsed, agony in long deserted noons, hush of terror of those
moon-bright nights when you carried within your womb seed of men—for a minute they seemed no more than dreams as you drowsed, a quean, in the smore of the sleet….

But now below, creeping out of the heat, the Howe left behind, came Banchory shining in its woods and far away the long flicker of the ribboned Dee that went down through the fine lands to Aberdeen. On the sky-line the mountains marched snow-covered, lifting white faces to the blink of July, in great haughs the fir-woods bourouched green, red crags climbed the northwards sky to peer, hands at their eyes, at Aberdeen. Sometimes a body would get off the bus, sometimes it would stop by a tottering gate and a slow, canny childe climb grinning aboard, or a sharp-faced woman, Aberdeen, thin-voiced, thin-faced, with a quick ferret look around, from Chris to Εwan, Εwan to Ellen, syne to the driver, syne up to the roof, syne out of the window, syne folding her lips and her hands, the world well and respectable and behaving itself. And Chris sat and watched the comings and goings, happy and happy and sweir to the bone.

Then at last here was Ewan shaking her:
Chris. Where are
we going?—to Aberdeen?
She said goodness no, she didn't hope so, though the tickets were for there and 'twas a pity to waste them. And then she looked out and saw flash by a word white-painted on a cross-roads sign, a word and a place she had long forgotten.
We'll get out at Echt and wait the bus back
.

So they did, Echt snoozing white in its stour, bairns playing about the doors of the houses, Ewan went into a shop and bought pieces, Chris went to help: loaf, butter and milk, some cakes and a knife, they looked loaded down for a feast or a famine, or tinks on the road, fair shocking Echt. Ellen showed her bit English mettle at once, no pride, she caught up the loaf and the bottles, some of the bairns cried after them, she laughed and didn't mind, kitten not cat. Then Chris led them off on the ploy she'd planned.

The Hill of Fare towered high in the sun, scaured and red, the flow of heather like a sea of wine, leftwards, dark, the Barmekin haunted even in July's sun-haze. Chris cried
Oh,
wheesht!
to the others and they stopped, looked at her,
listened, and heard through the sun, lonely, unforgotten, never-stopping that plaint, the peesies flying over Barmekin. Twenty-three years and they never had stopped…. And Chris thought half-shamed, in a desperate flyting:
Losh, but
their throats must surely be dry!