A Scots Quair (68 page)

Then her mind switched away to what he was saying, she thought
And the thing is happening again
—all over the world the Ice was coming, not the Ice-time that ended the Golden Age, but the Ice of want and fear and fright, its glacier peaks on the sky by day, its frozen gleam on the sky by night, and men looked out bewildered to see it, cold and dank, and a dark wind blew, and there was neither direction, salvation, nothing but the storming black lour of the Clouds as the frosts and the fog of this winter came….

Ewan had twisted around, he said
Mother!
sharp, and jumped to his feet and shook her. Chris came to herself with a start, and stared.
What's wrong?
she asked, and he said
You looked— fey
.

She seldom heard a Scots word from Ewan, he brushed them aside as old, blunted tools, but the word had come on his lips as though sudden he'd sought in English and English had failed. She laughed and said
Did I?
and ruffled his hair, and he grinned at her, quiet, he'd been quick, but not feared—he'd do strange things yet in the world, Ewan,
who hadn't a God and hadn't a faith and took not a thing on the earth for granted. And she thought as she held him (he endured that, polite) he was one of the few who might save the times, watching the Ice and the winter come, unflustered, unfrightened, with quiet, cold eyes.

And she smiled at that and her prideful dreamings for the child of her womb, an idle woman's pride: and bade Ewan good-night and went down to the kitchen to leave it neat for the morning's work. 'Twas then that there came a knock at the door and Else Queen that was now Else Hogg stamped in, with the washing she did each week for the Manse, she cried
Well, Mem, have you heard the news?

Chris asked
What news?
and Else sat down and gasped,
I fair had to run to tell you. It's about Mr Mowat—but surely
you've heard?

The story, she said, was all over Segget, Mr Mowat was ruined and hadn't a penny, the whole of Segget mortgaged to the hilt. The last time he came back from London he'd tried to raise a bit loan at any damn price; and he'd gone to his Dundon bankers and tried, and they'd said they must see the jute in his mills. So they sent a man down, Mr Mowat met him and dined him and wined him up at the House, it minded old Sinclair, the last of the servants, of the good old days when young Jahly Mowat would come back with a half dozen whores in his car. Ah, well, the banker childe was fell canny, he drank but little, and that with suspicion; but Mr Mowat soaked like a drouthy fish, and then said
Right O,
we'll go down to the Mills
.

There were two main storage sheds at the Mills, one was near empty, said young Mr Mowat, the other well filled with new bales of jute. And Mr Mowat showed the first of the sheds, there was only a bale or so in the place, but when they came to the other bit shed, and the sliding doors slid back in their slots, there were the bales packed up to the roof, so tight they nearly bulged through the door.
You see,
we've a Jahly good stock at the Mill
, said Mr Mowat, and the bank man agreed.

So the bank childe went back to Dundon and reported, and they loaned Mr Mowat a five hundred pounds. And the creature vanished, none knew where he'd gone; and this last
week or so the bank grew suspicious. It sent a man down to Segget yestreen, and he went to the Mills and what did he find, down there at the shed that had seemed so packed? That there was no more than a curtain of bales, stacked up to the roof at the shed's near end, the rest of the shed was as toom as your hat, Mr Mowat had swindled the bank to the end: and now the bank had ta'en over the Mills.

Chris asked what that meant and Else didn't know, except that all the folk left at the Mills had been sacked that evening and the Mills closed down. And folk were saying they never would open, it wouldn't be worth it, with trade so bad; and nobody knew what the spinners would do that had waited for years for their jobs to come back.

And the winter was coming. Down in the Old Toun a weary indifference lay on the wynds, they paid no heed to the new Election, Chris herself didn't bother to vote—were the liars and cheats called Labour or Tory they'd feather their own nests and lie to the end.

Rain held the sky at November's end, she saw the streaming parks of Dalziel lift and move under the freezing haze that sailed and swam by the base of the Mounth, the curlews had ceased to cry on the Kaimes and of nights the sounds of the trains came blurred, those nights that the great lighted buses would lighten, suddenly, firing the walls of the room where she lay by the side of Robert unsleeping, him sleeping so sound that he sometimes seemed dead. How to sleep, how to sleep, when your mind took hold, in the dark, of the plight of the Segget wynds?

They had brought in a thing they called the Means Test, spinners who had had the dole over long were told that their relatives must keep them in future. Chris had stopped by the door of Ake Ogilvie's shop, and he told her that things were black in Old Toun, the Wilsons had been cut off the dole altogether because their old grannie had the Old Age Pension—the three of them to live on ten shillings a week. How could they pay their rent on that? Since the Mowat creditors took over the place they were forcing payments right through the nose, they'd already had Feet up at the eviction of a two-three families out of their houses, if houses you could call them—they smelt like pig-rees. Old Cronin
had been cut off the Bureau as well because young Charlie was fee'd up at Frellin, and stayed at home to look after his father: and how could they live on the pay of a loon? And there were worse cases than these, far worse, God damn't! you had never much liked the spinners, but the things that were happening near turned you sick, it was kicking in the faces of the poor for no more than delight in hearing the scrunch of their bones.

Chris said
They won't stand it, there'll be revolution
, and Ake sneered
Revolution? They'll starve and say nothing. Or
‘
Come walk on my face and I'll give you a vote!
'

Then the news went round that old Cronin was dead, found dead in his bed by his young son Chae, Chae blubbered the old man had no firewood for days, and nothing but a pot of potatoes to eat. Folk wouldn't believe that blither at all, it couldn't be true, for it made you shiver—no, no, 'twas only another damned lie, that kind of thing never happened in Segget. Would you find that news in the
Μearns
Chief?
—you wouldn't, so you knew that it couldn't be true, the
Chief
said week by week we were fine, and Scotland still the backbone of Britain, and the Gordon Highlanders right gay childes, not caring a hoot though their pay was down, and Progressives just the scum of the earth that planned to take bairns out of the slums and rear them up in Godless communes, and a woman Naomi Mitchison coarse, for she said not a word about Christ in her book…. Ay, the
Mearns Chief
was aye up-to-date, and showed you a photo of Mrs MacTavish winning the haggis at a Hogmanay dance.

That son of old Cronin's, Jock was his name (you surely minded when
he
was in Segget?) had done right well for himself, folk said. He was now a National Labour supporter, one of Ramsay's new men down in Glasgow, and would likely get into the Parliament soon: and he was starting on a lecture tour—
The Country First, Parties Must Wait
. By that, of course, he meant the political parties, not the kind he would hold in his Glasgow house—he spoke and acted the gent to the life.

But Charlie said his old father had seemed to shrivel up when he heard of the tour; and the last time Charlie had been to his father he hardly had spoken a sensible word,
just muttered over one of his socialist books, by Ramsay MacDonald, till the light grew dim, so faint that he couldn't have seen to read.

He told that to Ewan when he came to the Manse to arrange the burial in Segget kirkyard, he and Ewan hadn't met for a long time past, chief enough though they'd been at the school together. And Charlie was shy and he said to Ewan,
I hear,
Mr Ewan, you've clever at college
, and stood and shuffled his great glaured boots, and his hands were heavy and calloused and cold, holding the clumsy cap in his hands. Ewan said
I'm all right. Sit down. Like some tea?
and went ben to the kitchen where Chris made a cake.
It's young Charlie Cronin,
and mother, he's hungry
. Chris said she'd bring some food on a tray, but Ewan said
No, you see he would guess I knew he
was hungry and that would offend him. I'll take in some and
we'll eat it together
.

So he did, though he'd only new-finished his dinner, Chris peeped at the two of them, sitting and talking, with a twinge of pride and wonder for Ewan, and a twist of pity in her heart for his friend, with his shy red face and his clumsy hands. Then she went back to her work, and they ate; and when Charlie Cronin at last went away she heard Ewan make a dive for the bathroom and be suddenly, exceedingly, very sick there. She took him a glass of water to drink, and he smiled and drank and said that was better: white-faced and black-haired, but still cool enough. Chris thought at the time 'twas because of the food he'd eaten to keep the Cronin lad company; but she wasn't sure later, for she found out that Charlie had told him black tales of the things in Old Toun.

And that night she went up to his room and found Ewan, staring out at the fall of sleet, a pelt and a hiss in the moving dark, his head in his hands, not reading as usual. She touched him, quiet, and he started a little.

Oh, nothing
, he said,
I'm fine, don't worry. I was trying to
remember old Cronin's face
.

He was turning to look in the face of Life.

THAT WAS THE
Sunday; on Monday folk woke to a blinding pelt of rain-sheets on Segget and down and across the
steaming Howe where the churned earth lay with its quag- mired pools, the hills corona'ed dark with their clouds. Robert went early up to his room and Chris was making the dinner in the kitchen when she found John Muir at the kitchen door. He looked stranger than ever she had seen him look, John Muir, and forgot to call her Mem. He said a gey thing had happened last night; and gleyed at her queer and gave a queer cough.

Chris said,
What's happened? Sit down, you look queer
. And he sat and told her the unco-like tale.

SHE HAD HEARD
of the Kindnesses? Well, they were folk that bided down in Segget Old Toun. At least they had done till a three days back, Kindness himself was an ill-doing childe, and weeks behind with his rent, folk said. His wife was a lass from Kinraddie way, she'd a bairn only a three weeks old, and had near gone daft when the landlord's folk came down to the house to turn them out. Sim Leslie had gone to see it was done, and thought nothing of it, he was used to that now.

Well, out they'd been turned, their bit gear in the streets, you minded that Saturday streamed with sleet, and the house they'd been in was at Segget's tail end, and few folk saw the thing that went on, or cared to be out in weather like that, and Kindness himself was a surly brute. He got sacks and happed up the most of his gear, and prowled Segget for hours to look for a place. But he wasn't well known and he wasn't well liked, so he came back at last somewhere about midnight, and broke in a window and put his wife in, she had stood in the lithe all those hours in the sleet with her bairn in her arms and must near have been dead. She sat in the kitchen the rest of the nignt, Kindness himself had brought in a chair, then he prowled some more, for he couldn't sleep.

But worse was to come with the Sunday morning; the policeman, Sim Leslie, that folk called Feet, came on them early and miscalled them for tinks, and took Kindness's name in his little note-book, as though the fool didn't know it by now, and said there would a court-case about this. Syne he turned them out and boarded the window, and went off and left them, and a neighbour nearby took in the wife and bairn
for a while. But she hadn't an inch of space to spare, and at last, as the night came, Kindness came back and said he'd gotten a place where they'd bide, he didn't say more, a surly bit brute.

Well, his wife went with him through the pelt of the sleet, and got to the end of Old Toun to the place, and that was an old deserted pig-ree, from the time when folk in Segget bred pigs, long ere the Mills or the spinners came. You could get inside if you got down and crawled, Kindness had taken a mattress in there and a stump of a candle and some of their things. Mrs Kindness was feared at the dark and the sounds that the old ree made as the night wore on, but they put out the light at last, fell tired, and went to sleep in the sound of the rain.

It must have been somewhere near morning they woke, Mrs Kindness woke up with her bairn screaming, not just the cry of a bairn in unease but a shrill, wild cry that near feared her to death. She tried all she could to comfort its wail, then the light began to peek in the pigsty and they saw the reason for the bairn's screams, the rats in the night had gnawed off its thumb.

JOHN MUIR CRIED
Mistress, don't take on like that!
and caught Chris's arm and put her in a chair. And then as he straightened up from that he saw the minister stand in the door, he'd come quietly down as he came these days, and he looked like Chris, he had heard it all. But he only said
John, where are they now?

Muir skeughed and said that he didn't well know, he'd heard that folk had ta'en meat to the ree, and Kindness was off for a doctor, 'twas said, walking all the way to Stonehive. Robert said
Walking?
—his face looked queer—walking
? Chris, I'll go for those folk. Will you
get a room ready before I come back?

She worked as quick as she could when he'd gone out into the shining pelt of the rain. But it nearly was noon ere Robert came back, the woman looked only a slip of a quean, Robert carried the bairn, it had ceased to cry, whimpering and weeking soft like a kitten. The woman stopped and looked at Chris with the shamed, strange eyes of a frightened
beast, Chris squeezed her hands for a moment, just, and was rough, and told her where her room was, and was rough that she mightn't break down and weep. And she took the bairn and bathed the torn thumb, though it nearly turned her sick as she worked; and the bairn weeked like kitten hurt. Then she carried it up to its mother, waiting, in the spare bedroom with the blazing fire.