A Scots Quair (81 page)

She was thinking of that when the postman chapped, Ma Cleghorn went paiching out to the hall and silence followed till Ma cried up
A letter for you, Mrs Robert Colquohoun
.

When Chris got down to the hail there she stood, turning the thing this way and that, all but tearing it open and reading, Chris nearly laughed, she was used to Ma.
It's from
Segget
, Ma said, and Chris said
Is't now?
and took the thing
and opened it and read, Ma giving a whistle and turning away and dighting with a duster at the grandfather clock, making on she was awful ta'en up with her work. And Chris read the long straggle of sloping letters and was suddenly smelling, green and keen, sawdust, sawn wood—queerly and suddenly homesick for Segget:

We've a new lodger coming on the Monday, Ma. A man that I
used to know in Segget, Ake Ogilvie the joiner, he's gotten a job as
a foreman up at the Provost's sawmills
.

Chris started awake. The fog had re-thickened, blanketing Duncairn away from her sight as she stood here dreaming like a gowkèd bairn. Her hair felt damp with the pressing mist veils and the weight of the bag on her arm was lead—funny this habit she aye had had of finding some place wherever she bade to which she could climb by her lone for a while and think of the days new-finished and done, like a packman halting hill on hill and staring back at the valleys behind. She minded how above the ploughed lands of Blawearie this habit had grown, long syne, long syne, when she'd lain and dreamed as a quean by the loch in the shadow of the marled Druid Stones, and how above Segget in the ruined Kaimes she had done the same as the wife of Robert. Robert: and Ake Ogilvie was coming from Segget with his long brown face and his rangy stride. How would he take with a place like Duncairn? How had he gotten the job with the Provost?

Autumn coming down there in the fog, down in the days you no more could glimpse than the shrouded roofs of Duncairn at this hour…. And Ewan—what was happening to Ewan? Once so cool and cold, boy-clear, boy-clever, a queer lad you'd thought would never be touched by any wing of the fancies of men, grey granite down to the core—and now?

In the mirror she saw her face, dim in mist, and smiled at it with a kind dispassion. And what to herself?—just the trauchle of time, the old woman she'd believed herself at first in Duncairn—as she still did sometimes at moments of
weariness—or that other quean that refused to die, that moved and looked and stole off her thoughts, and dreamed the daftest of old, lost dreams, blithe as though twenty, unkissed and uncuddled?

Well, time she went into those mists of the future. There was ten o'clock chapping from Thomson Tower.

AS THE DAY awoke great clouds had come out of the North Sea over Duncairn, with them the wind rose and rose, snarling at the gates of the dark, waiting to break through with the first peep of light. And now as that peep came glimmering, far off, beyond the edge of the Mounth, the storm loosed itself over the toun, sheeting down a frozen torrent of water. Sometimes the sleet was a ding-dong fall, and again the wind would whirl and lift, pitching great handfuls into your face though a minute before you had been in the lithe. The Windmill Steps were sheeted in slush, twice Chris slipped and nearly fell as she ran for the shelter of the mirror ledge, low below a first shrouded tram wheeled, moaning, and took the road to the Mile, the lights were going out one by one as the winter morning broke on Duncairn.

In the lithe of the mirror Chris stopped and panted and beat her frozen hands together, hatless still but muffled in a scarf to the ears for that last silly journey down to the doctor's. She'd finished with him, done everything proper, and now there was surely nothing else. And she felt—oh, she could sleep for a month—like a polar bear, with the sleet for a sheet—

Her hair faint-sprayed by the sleet that went by, not touching the rest of her, she raised her eyes and saw it, half in the dark, half in the light, strange, a strange blind glister and drift high in the lift, a bannered attack going by in silence though you heard the shoom of the spears far down. Stamping her feet to bring them to warmth, she rested a minute, closed her eyes, yawned over-poweringly and achingly, and ceased from that to stare sombre-eyed down at
the breaking of the sleet-hunted light. Whatever next? Whatever next?

How could she have known that day in July when she rested here and wondered on things that
this
would come, that she'd stand here appalled, that she wouldn't know which way to think or to move? Her mind shrank in a passion of pity a minute, strangely linked with a desire to laugh…. And she shook herself, no time to stand here, with the house above wakening and waiting her—

Oh, let it wait, let it rest awhile while she caught her breath and tried to make out where she'd mislaid that security hers and her own only a short six months before:

Long-mousered, green-eyed, with his ploughman's swagger, it had seemed to Chris six months before that Ake Ogilvie's coming had brought to Duncairn something clean and crude as the smell of rain—crude and clean as she herself had been once before a playing at gentry enslaved her, like turning round in a lane at night and meeting one's own lost self and face, lost a long fifteen years before, smiling with cool and sardonic lips. Not that Ake had anything very young about him, or old-like either, he was one of the kind that seem to stick to one age all their lives, swagger and pipe and clumping feet, met on the stairs as he carried up his kist that Monday morning from the taxi below.

Ay, Mrs Colquohoun, you look bonny as ever
. And Chris said that was fine, but why was he carrying the kist? The cabman would surely have given him a hand. And Ake said he'd just had an argy with the billy and sent him off with a flea in his lug, by God he'd wanted a whole half-crown for bringing them up from the Central Station.

Chris said that was awful, cabmen were like that, but Ake wouldn't be able to carry up the kist on his shoulder further, the stairs drew in. So he lowered it down and syne shook hands and looked her all over with his swagger green glower.
Ay, you've fairly ta'en with Duncairn. D'you miss the Manse?
Chris said
Not much. Shall I give you a hand?

Ake looked a bit doubtful, he thought of her still as the
wife of Robert in Segget, she saw, genteel and neat and fine and frail—she said
Come on!
and took hold of an end and Ake did the same, up they went to his room, made ready, and put down the kist in the corner for't. Syne Ake looked round and out at the roofs:
A hell of a place for a man to bide, the toun,
though the room looks canty enough. You'll be gey busy here, no
doubt then, mistress?

Chris nearly cuddled him, calling her that, so long since a soul had called her mistress:
I've a lot to do, same as other folk.
But we'll have a crack on Segget some time.—Ay, faith we will
. He had turned away, no frills or unnecessary politeness with him:
I'll be in to my tea, but not to my dinner. I've to gang up and
see the Provost man
.

Chris said that she hoped he'd get on fine, and he said
No
fear of that. Ta-ta
.

He made himself at home from the first, sitting arguing in the sitting-room with Mr Neil Quaritch, thin, with his little tuft of a beard and his Douglas Scheme (that Ewan called the Bourgeois Funk-Fantasy), Ake beside him looking like a shorthorn bull taking up its spare time on a gossip with a goat. He looked over-real sometimes to Chris to be real as she'd meet him coming in at the door, slow and yet quick, throwing down his feet with a fine and measured stride, the earth's his, yielding the wall to none in Duncairn. And he'd clump up the stairs and into his room without a sideways look or a thought, he'd paid his fee and the room was his, would he creep up quiet for any damned body?

Chris never saw him at ease in his room. Rousing the first morning after he came she'd thought to make him a cup of tea and take it to him the same as to others. But while she was moving about with the cups and the kettle was singing and Jock the cat purring away for dear life by the range and the caller air of the August dawn coming up the Steps and into the house, she heard a pad of feet on the stairs, and there was Ake at the kitchen door, his mouser fresh-curled, in his waistcoat and breeks, no slippers, his kind never did have slippers Chris minded back to her farmhouse days:
Ay, mistress, I thought it would maybe be you. This'll be your
kitchen place, no doubt.
Chris said it was
—Come in and sit
down.

And in he came and sat by the fire and gave the cat Jock a bit of a stroke, and sat and drank the tea that she poured him, not offering to help her as Quaritch would have done, God be here it was a woman's work, wasn't it now, who'd ever heard of a man who sossed with the cups? And Ake drank the tea through his curling moustache, and wiped that, and nodded
Ay, that's a good brew. I think I'll taik down every morning for
one
. Chris said
There's no need to do that, Mr Ogilvie, I take up
cups to the folk that want them
. And Ake said Oh to hell with that, he wasn't a cripple and could come for his own. Besides, he was used to getting up with the light and hadn't a fancy for stinking in bed. Chris thought
And suppose I've no fancy for
you sitting about in my way in the kitchen?
But she didn't say it, just went on with her work, watched by Ake sitting smoking his pipe—Ay, God, she looked a bonny lass still, a bit over-small for her height, you would say, but a fine leg and hip, a warm bit quean. She'd fair set a-lowe and burned up Colquohoun in her time, you wouldn't but wonder; and maybe had never yet had a man to handle her as she needed handling.

So he got in the way of coming to the kitchen and sitting drinking his tea every morning, Ma Cleghorn heard and said to Chris that she'd better look out, for they weren't to be trusted, childes with curling mousers like yon. And then sighed:
Though, God, there's no need to warn you, I keep
forgetting you're gentry yourself, a minister's widow, not for
common folk
. Chris asked what Ma wanted her to do with him—or thought he was likely to do with her? And Ma said that if Chris couldn't guess about that there were other folk than the Virgin Mary had had their immaculate conceptions, faith.

Chris laughed and paid her but little heed, Ake as far (she knew) from such thoughts as herself, funny in a way to have him about, it wiped out the years, all the gentry in her, she was back in a farm kitchen again and the man sitting douce and drinking his tea and she getting ready the meat for
him…. And Ake would give his bit mouser a curl and tell the latest tale of the Provost.

Chris asked how he'd gotten the job and Ake said by the skin of the teeth and the will of the Lord, he'd been at school with the laddie Speight a thirty-five years or so back, they were both of them of Laurencekirk stock. Well, he'd been a gey dreich and ill-favoured loon, and Ake had ta'en him a punch now and then to kittle him up and mind him his manners. The result was he'd fair ta'en a liking to Ake and would follow him about like a cat a fish-cadger, right through their schooldays and a wee whilie after, when they'd gotten long trousers and cuddled their bit queans. Syne they'd tint one another, Ake had gone drifting south as a joiner, to the feuching stink of the Glasgow yards, to that windy sods' burrow, the capital, Edinburgh, syne drifted up to the Howe again, he'd never felt much at home, as you'd say, outside the cloud-reek and claik of the Howe. And that was how he had come to Segget, not near so dead in those times as now, the joiner's business with still enough fettle to brink a man a bit meal and drink.

So he'd settled down there, as Mrs Colquohoun knew, till the place was fairly all to hell, with unemployment and all the lave; and after her good man died and so on Ake fair got sick of sitting about in his shed and looking for custom to come, scribbling a wee bit of poetry the while, and glowering up at the Trusta heuchs and wishing to Christ that something would happen.—And Chris said
Oh yes, I mind your poetry.
You still write it, do you?
and Ake said
Ay. Bits. It would hardly
interest you. Well, as I was saying
—and went on to say that one day he was having a bit look through the paper and what did he see there but that young Jimmy Speight, him that he'd gone to school with long syne, had been made the Lord Provost of Duncairn toun. At first Ake could hardly believe his own eyes, he'd thought that talent must be fairly damn scarce to make Wabbling Jimmy a Lord Provost, like. He'd heard about him afore that, of course, how he'd been ta'en into his uncle's business and heired when the old uncle wore away a fine sawmill and a schlorich of silver. But he'd never
much bothered about the creature till he read this notice of him being Provost.

Well, damn't, that fairly moved Ake a bit, if Wabbling Jimmy was all that well off he'd surely scrounge up a job for a body. So Ake locked up his place and put on his best suit and got on the morning train for Duncairn, and took a tram to the Provost's house, out in Craigneuks, a gey brave-looking place with fal-lal ornaments forward and back and a couple of towers stuck on for luck like warts on the nose of Oliver Cromwell. A servant lass came tripping and held the door open,
What name shall I say to the Provost, please?
And Ake said
My name's Ake Ogilvie, tell him, and ask if he minds the
time in Lourenkirk when I gey near drowned him in a stone
horse-trough
. Well, the lass went red and gave a bit giggle, as a young quean will, and went off with the message, and into the room in a minute came Jimmy, gey grand, but dreeping at the nose as ever. And damn't, he'd come in fair cocky-like but syne a funny thing happened to him, it just showed you what happened when you were a bairn—if you got a rattle in the lantern then you might build a battleship in later life and explore the North Pole and sleep with a Duchess, but you'd never forget the lad that had cloured you, you'd meet him and feel a bit sick in the wame though it was a good half-century later.

Well, something like that came on Wabbling Jimmy, he dropped his politeness and his hee-haw airs, and Ake took his hand and cried out loud:
Ay, Jimmy lad, you're fair landed
here, with all these queans to see to your needs, at door and table
and no doubt in your bed
. And the Lord Provost went as yellow's a neep:
Wheesht, Ake, wheesht, the wife's on the
prowl
. And Ake said he didn't know that he'd married—
d'you mind what happened to Kate Duthie long syne?
…

Now, that had been just a kind of blackmail, as Ake knew right well but didn't much care, in a minute poor Wabbling Jimmy was ready to offer him half his worldly possessions if only Ake would keep quiet on the subject of Kate. Ake said that he was on the look for a job, what about this sawmill that Jimmy owned? and Jimmy said he seldom interfered, he'd a
manager, and Ake said he hardly wanted
his
job, though he'd tackle a foreman's he'd manage that fine. So Jimmy in a stew howked out his car and in they got and drove to the Kirrie, a fine sawmill, and they weren't there long afore the manager came over to ask if Jimmy had yet ta'en on a new foreman in place of a childe that had gotten the sack. And at that what could poor Jimmy do but go a bit blue about the neb and say
Ay, I have; and this is him
.

So that's how he'd collared the Duncairn job, not that he was over-keen on the thing,
D'you ken now, mistress, what I've
aye wanted?—Losh, a job on a ship at sea, the fine smell and the
pelt of the water below you, there's fine carpentering work to be
done on ships
. And Chris, with the teacups cold on the tray, said she thought it a shame he'd never got it, maybe he'd get a job like that yet. Ake nodded, fegs, and he might, not likely, better to hang on the Provost's tail, old Wabbling Jimmy that was feared at his past.
Not that poor Jimmy's an exception in
that: We're all on leading strings out of the past
.

For days you couldn't forget that scream, tingling, terrified, the lost keelie's scream as that swine Sim Leslie smashed him down. Again and again you'd start awake, sweating, remembering that from a dream, Duncairn sleeping down Windmill Steps, all the house in sleep, quiet next door, that kid Ellen Johns not dreaming at all. Luck for her and her blah about history and Socialism: she hadn't a glimpse of what either meant….