The Burry Man's Day (9 page)

I drove us, directed by Buttercup, threading through the estate on grassy tracks and glimpsing Cassilis House as we passed. (A boring Georgian box, Buttercup had called it, and it was short on the architectural furbelows and tassels which adorn many houses in the Scotch baronial style, but since her precious castle was three medieval cubes one on top of another, I could not quite see her objection.) Within minutes we had arrived at a pair of cottages sitting in some woodland about a mile away. Buttercup hesitated at the gate, clearly unsure which cottage was the one we were after, but a glance at the washing lines criss-crossing the gardens showed one teeming with little shirts and pinafores neatly arranged in order of size while the other line held only three men’s vests and a tablecloth. Furthermore, a row of bright red heads – the owners of all the shirts and pinnies – popped up at a window in the left-hand cottage to watch us and so, hazarding a guess, we negotiated the path to the one on the right. Buttercup squared her shoulders, heaved the basket high up in front of her like a breast shield and knocked on the door.

It was answered by a sturdy woman in her forties, with sleeves rolled past the elbow and a cloth tucked into her skirt waist as a makeshift apron. Her ruddy, mottled face was fierce and grimly set at the jaw. She glared at us and shook her head even as she stood back to let us enter.

‘Chrissie’s in there,’ she growled and jabbed a finger at an open doorway. I was at a loss to explain our transgression, but when we entered the kitchen-livingroom of the cottage she gave just the same look to Mrs Dudgeon and then to the crockery she was busy drying and I realized that her outrage encompassed us all. It was not too hard to understand – grief and shock settle quite readily into indignation in those whose personality is predisposed that way – but one can imagine that it does not make for the most suitable atmosphere in a house of mourning. Mrs Dudgeon, sitting upright and pale with misery in a hard chair, one hand clenched around a crumpled handkerchief, looked uncomprehendingly into the fierce face then lowered her eyes.

Buttercup, predictably, boggled and shifted her feet and so it fell to me to sit down beside the woman and lay my hand over hers. The handkerchief was quite dry but as soon as I spoke – no more than saying her name – quantities of tears began at once to course down her cheeks and splash into her lap.

‘There, there,’ I said, thinking what an ineffectual little phrase that was, as Mrs Dudgeon spread out her handkerchief, pressed her face into it and wept with abandon.

‘Where might I put these things?’ said Buttercup in a panicked voice.

‘Aye, come away through the scullery,’ said the fierce companion. She put down the cooking pot she was drying, slammed it down actually, amongst the others still draining by the sink and led Buttercup out of the room. Mrs Dudgeon continued to sob and I continued to pat her shoulder and shush-shush uselessly.

I looked around the room as I did so, as though not to gawp at her shaking shoulders would afford her some dignity. It was a typical cottage kitchen-livingroom, more prosperous than some I had seen with its thick rug and good mahogany sideboard, but quite typical nonetheless. The range in the hearth was gleaming as was the kettle atop it, and on either side of it sat two comfortable chairs of the Windsor type, their seats adorned with cushions in knitted covers. Between them was one of the tiny wooden stools they call creepies in Perthshire, which I have always liked and long wished I could insinuate into my own sitting room somewhere. Another knitted cushion sat on this and, imagining the many evenings Mr and Mrs Dudgeon must have spent in these two chairs sharing the creepie stool between their four tired feet, I could quite see why she was perched comfortless at the table now. It would have been as unthinkable to sit in her chair and look at the emptiness opposite as it would be to sit in his chair where, if cottagers were like the rest of us, she would never have rested for a minute in her life. I withdrew my eyes from the morose tableau the armchairs made but, looking up at the mantelpiece, found no respite from the sorrow. I had forgotten what Mr Dudgeon had said last night, but there was the photograph of the young man, stiff although beaming, in a uniform so new that the sleeves and breeches’ legs stuck out like the paper clothes one cuts for dolls. Beside the picture was a spray of rosebuds tied with a ribbon of Black Watch tartan and below it little flat case, resting open, which I was sure would hold his medal. I looked away as a hard lump, impossible to swallow like one’s twentieth walnut, formed in my throat.

At last, Mrs Dudgeon’s sobs turned hoarse and dry and eventually stopped with a gulp. She raised her head and tried a small smile with trembling lips. It was not successful.

‘What must you think of me?’ she said, blowing her noise tremendously on the sodden handkerchief. I offered my own and she took it and wiped her eyes, which were spongy with weeping. I smiled at her.

‘I think what a man your husband must have been and how you must have loved him,’ I said.

I realized as soon as I had made it that this remark, honest as it might be, was hardly more helpful than grumpy housework in terms of comfort. It sent Mrs Dudgeon off into such a storm of weeping that I feared the dish-drying woman might come back and box my ears. What were she and Buttercup up to anyway? And yet, I do not know, for when Mrs Dudgeon finally raised her head from my shoulder again she did at least look cried out. She glanced at me and then looked beyond me to the window and out into the woods.

I heard movement from beyond the scullery door; Buttercup and the woman were returning.

‘Is there anyone we could fetch?’ I asked Mrs Dudgeon quickly, before I could be overheard. I only just managed not to say ‘anyone
else’.

‘No, no,’ she said, still looking out into the fading light. ‘My sisters
-'
she began, then broke off as the door opened.

‘Very well, then,’ I said with one last pat on her hand, before settling back in my seat to a more normal social distance. Her sisters must be on their way, I thought. Much the best thing. They would soon see off the stop-gap.

Buttercup seemed mysteriously emboldened when she reappeared and started by assuring Mrs Dudgeon that the next day’s Ferry Fair was to be cancelled. The widow would not hear of this.

‘It’s not fair on the bairns,’ she said. ‘And Robert would never have wanted it.’

Perhaps encouraged by such doughtiness Buttercup then launched into relaying Inspector Cruickshank’s message, but at the news of the post-mortem and even more so at the news that her husband’s body was to be kept from her, Mrs Dudgeon’s store of courage ran out.

‘They can’t,’ she said faintly. ‘They cannot do that. I must have him back with me. I must have him here.’ As she spoke she looked at the picture on the mantelpiece and I wondered about her son’s final resting place. If he were one of the thousands who lay somewhere in France in a row of graves, I could see why Buttercup’s news could cause such anguish.

‘It won’t be for long,’ I told her. ‘He’ll be brought back just as soon as can be. You’ll have him here before you know it.’

‘But they can’t . . . I don’t want them . . . interfering with –’ She stopped and her face suddenly drained of colour. For a moment I thought she was about to faint but she stayed upright, rigid and still, just her eyes darting around.

‘Don’t dwell on it,’ I said, thinking how unbearable it would be to imagine a post-mortem being carried out on a loved one. Mrs Dudgeon said nothing and did not seem to have heard me and, since Buttercup was jerking her head towards the door in a disgustingly unsubtle signal, I thought the best I could do was go. I gave a murmured goodbye, a last squeeze of her arm and quite a fierce look of my own at her friend, and we let ourselves out of the front door at last.

‘Phew,’ said Buttercup on the doorstep. I saw what she meant but hoped fervently that Mrs Dudgeon had not heard her.

As we made our way back to my motor car, the door of the other cottage opened and three little children – three of the redheads we had seen before – burst out and shot down the path overtaking us easily.

‘Wheesht yerselves,’ a voice hissed behind us, and we turned to see a girl with a baby on her hip and a toddler held firmly by the arm. She looked to be about twelve or thirteen, her own flaming red hair still loose down her back although she was well grown and strong. The toddler keened after its siblings, who were now vaulting or scaling the garden gate according to their age and agility and clustering around the Cowley.

‘Get away in the woods before you make a single sound now,’ their sister said, still in her stage whisper. ‘Or I’ll be after you and then you’ll be sorry.’ She turned to us and gave a sheepish half-bob. ‘I ken it looks bad,’ she said, ‘but I cannae keep the wee so-and-sos quiet another minute, and I thought it would be worse for Auntie Chrissie to hear them whining and bickering if I tried.’

‘Oh quite,’ I said. ‘One can’t stop children playing. I shouldn’t worry.’

The girl looked a little relieved as she hauled back the whimpering toddler and shut the door.

‘Missus! Missus!’ said the largest of the three children as we approached them. ‘Can we get a hurl in your wee car, missus?’ The other two joined in with the pleading; none too quietly and I could see their sister standing at the cottage window shaking her fist, although not liking to rap on the glass and cause a disturbance of her own.

‘Do you know who I am?’ said Buttercup, nonplussed I think by their complete lack of bashfulness, confronted by their liege lady.

‘Aye,’ said the smallest child, a girl whose copper-red hair and ice-blue eyes were ruined by a pink ribbon which clashed and by a runny nose. ‘You’re the wifie from the castle what’s married to a Red Indian.’

Buttercup hooted with laughter at this and so to get her, as much as to get the red-haired terrors, out of poor Mrs Dudgeon’s earshot, I opened the back door of the motor car and shooed them all inside.

They were momentarily awestruck by the wonder of its interior – as overwhelmed at finding themselves in my little Cowley as I should have been upon entering an aeroplane – and I managed to get the thing started, manoeuvre it around on the track and set off for home before they found voice again.

Around the first bend we passed a group of village women dressed in black, all ages, shapes and sizes and all carrying parcels.

‘Thank goodness,’ I said to Buttercup. ‘These must be the sisters at last. Now then, children, where are you off to? Where shall we let you down?’

‘We’re goan in the woods to kill the demon,’ was the startling answer from the youngest, which met with furious shushing from the others.

‘Shut up, Lila,’ said an elder brother. ‘We’re jist playing at monsters, missus, in the woods.’

‘You said we were gonny catch the d–’

‘Shut
up,
Lila,’ said big brother again. ‘Or we’ll drop you doon a shell hole for the ghostie soldiers to eat you.’

‘Good Lord in heaven,’ said Buttercup under her breath, and I quite agreed.

Soon we passed out of the trees and into the open parkland surrounding the new house, where I drew up and parked.

‘Out you get,’ I said. ‘Run around on the grass and play catch. Or hide and seek. And don’t put your little sister down holes. Now, off with you.’

‘I’m not sure I’d encourage them to rampage around the parkland,’ said Buttercup mildly as we watched them roar off.

‘Oh my dear, no, of course, I didn’t think,’ I said, ashamed of myself, for the various ragged little warriors of Gilverton do not have any such privilege. ‘Well, it’s a special case tonight, isn’t it? But if they keep at it you can tell Cad to buy some ornamental cows. Ones with great big horns. Or stags even.’

‘Who would you fancy, darling, between a poor defenceless cow and those savages?’ said Buttercup. We watched the children throw themselves into the ha-ha and emerge from it again on the other side, red hair almost pulsing with light as the setting sun caught it.

‘Very fair point,’ I said. ‘Do you think there really are shell holes? Has Cadwallader mentioned any?’

‘Oh Dandy,’ said Buttercup. ‘I think we can class the holes with the demons and the ghosties, don’t you?’

I shivered.

‘I’ve never known a place like it,’ I said. ‘Did I tell you? A child watching the greasy pole this evening – quite a tiny child – declared to all around that the Burry Man lived in the swamp and got to and from it on a ghostie pony. And the grown-ups simply laughed fondly and ignored it.’

‘The swamp I can see,’ said Buttercup. ‘I mean the Burry Man
is
rather fungal, isn’t he? But whence the ghost horse for him to ride on?’

‘Although, if you imagine riding in a suit of burrs,’ I said, ‘our side-saddle torments would be as nothing.’

Buttercup giggled along with me. ‘Yes, a
ghost
horse would be de rigueur, when you think about it.’

I quelled my laughter.

‘Rather nasty to be making jokes about it,’ I said. ‘We’re as bad as the children.’

‘Hm,’ said Buttercup. ‘Come on, I need another drink.’

‘
Another
drink?’ I said.

Buttercup giggled again.

‘Yes, Isobel and I did a bit of sampling while you were chatting to Mrs Dudgeon,’ she said.

‘Chatting! Buttercup, you’re impossible. And I’m surprised at “Isobel” too. A taste for strong drink is hardly the norm amongst her sort.’

‘Oh heavens, no,’ said Buttercup. ‘She stuck most resolutely to the tonic pick-me-up – apparently Mrs Murdoch’s bottles of tonic are quite renowned. But actually I’d have said, from the smell of it, that it could knock the cherry brandy into a cocked hat.’

‘Well, who knows,’ I said. ‘Friend Isobel can’t have got that complexion from barley water, can she?’

‘And there’s to be no escape from Ferry Fair day,’ said Buttercup as we reached the castle and ascended to its door, the engine whining slightly at the slope. ‘I must say Cad’s and my year in charge of the thing is hardly likely to go down in the annals as a classic!’

Shocking as it must sound, I too had been hoping that one faintly silver lining in the monstrous cloud of Robert Dudgeon’s death would be that festivities would be suspended as a mark of respect and I would thus be able to avoid the unwanted and unwelcome duty that hung over my head. Mrs Dudgeon’s stoic insistence that Robert would have wanted things to go ahead as usual, however, left me facing the bonny babies with nowhere to hide.