The Girl with the Creel (38 page)

But she needed her full concentration to keep going, and carried on until she was almost sure that she had lost her way and would have to turn back. Then, taking a brief rest, she glanced around and nearly cried out with relief at the welcome sight of a familiarly-angled smoking chimney away to her right. Everything was all right! It was the farmhouse of Easter Duncairn, her first call.

Keeping her head down against the biting wind which held the first flakes of what promised to be a bad storm, she trudged on, but the sky was darkening ominously, the snow doubled in intensity, and she stood for a moment debating whether or not to go on. If she didn't, she would have to throw away her fish – she had no means of cooking any for her own use – and she couldn't buy any tomorrow. She had to carry on.

Her strength was giving out; she could see nothing through the raging blizzard, and the going was so difficult that she had to halt every few steps to get her breath back. She did not realize that she had wandered off the road, and she would have missed her first set of customers if the snow hadn't eased briefly and given her another chance to see the smoking chimney, now to her left and slightly farther away. She turned towards it thankfully, and found herself, some twenty minutes later, at the front of the farmhouse. Searching for the back door, she tottered round the side of the building.

Her fingers had no feeling, and she held her creel out when the door was opened in answer to the tap she made with her foot. Meggie seemed surprised to see her, but went back inside for a plate to hold the fish she would be buying. ‘You'll be charging the earth for them the day,' she remarked, sourly, when she returned, ‘but I suppose I'll just have to pay up or do without.'

The tantalizing smell of baking made Lizann long for something to eat, but the housekeeper didn't offer her anything and took quite a time to choose what she wanted. ‘Well,' she demanded when she lifted out two large haddocks, ‘how much d'you want for them?'

Lizann gasped out her price through chattering teeth, and the woman dropped the coins into her moneybag, muttering, ‘If I was you, I'd go hame afore the storm gets ony worse.'

Lizann shook her head and staggered off. At the time of the harvest, when all the workers had been involved in getting the grain in as long as the weather was dry, she had been hailed by several of them as she went past, had been allowed to share in what the wives took out for them to eat, had felt at one with the rough, laughing, red-faced men whose muscles rippled under their browned skins. They had made her welcome, it had been a friendly place … but now there wasn't a soul to be seen, not even an animal she could cosy up to for warmth.

Already chilled to the bone, she had started to feel really queer. Her head was spinning and there were pains in her chest – but some invisible force impelled her forward. Every now and then her feet were swallowed up in a snowdrift and she wasn't conscious of making the effort to pull them out. She inched on stubbornly despite having lost all sense of direction, until a high-pitched buzzing started in her ears. She shook her head vigorously to dispel it, but that only made her feel dizzier, so she stopped and put her hands to her head in despair. For several seconds she stood swaying on her feet, then her senses left her altogether. Her body made no sound as it hit the cushion-soft whiteness of the ground, the falling creel spewing its contents around her head in a wide arc.

And the snow kept falling relentlessly.

Martha Laing looked up in surprise when her brother came out of his room wearing his heavy oilskin coat, his white hair tousled but a look of determination on his lined face. ‘You're not going out in that blizzard, Adam?' she burst out.

‘The beasts need fed whatever the weather,' he replied, sitting down to pull on a pair of well-worn rubber boots.

‘But Mr Fordyce wouldn't expect you to …'

‘It's what I'm paid for,' Adam said, stubbornly. ‘I'm not fit for much else nowadays, and he's been good enough to keep me on.'

Martha said no more. Adam was an obstinate old man, had been obstinate even when he was a young man, and there was no point in arguing with him. She rose to put some more coal on the fire so it would be burning better for him coming back. It was good of Mr Fordyce to let him keep his job. She had been afraid, when old Duncan died, that his son would make a clean sweep and she and Adam would have to get out of the tied house, so it had been a great weight off her mind when he said he was keeping on all the farm hands. Of course, he likely had no idea that Adam was wearing on for seventy, but it was a godsend just the same, for where could they have gone if they'd had to leave?

Adam had been at Easter Duncairn since he was about thirty, not long after he'd got married. Most farm servants moved on every six months, but Peg had liked this place so much she'd made Adam stay put. When she died, coming up to fourteen years since, it had been like he'd lost his purpose in life, so that was why Martha, fifty-eight at the time and still a spinster, had offered to come and keep house for her young brother. They got on well and never an angry word had passed between them, though they had their little differences.

She shouldn't have let him go out just now, not with his bad chest. If he got soaked he could land with pneumonia, and Mr Fordyce wouldn't put up with a man who wasn't pulling his weight. Martha gave her head an impatient shake. Och, she was just a worrying old woman! Adam had on his boots and his oilskin coat, what harm could come to him? He would be back in no time, and she'd best heat some fresh underwear for him.

After hanging a clean linder and drawers over the string under the mantelpiece, Martha sat down again to weigh up what they would lose if Adam was sacked. The cottage was a bit bigger than most cottar houses, with a kitchen and two rooms downstairs – one meant as a parlour, but when she moved in, Adam had said she could have it as her bedroom: his daughter Margaret likely hadn't wanted to share her attic room. All the rooms were a fair size, and old Duncan Fordyce had got water piped in about six years ago, so they could have a sink with a cold water tap in the kitchen. And a lavatory had been built on at the back, with its door put in under the stairs. What a boon that had been, Martha mused. She used to hate trailing away up to the far end of the backyard to the dry lavvy in the dark winter nights. She had put off going, and gone through agony till her bladder had been at bursting point.

Her eyes took an admiring glance round the kitchen, and she couldn't help thinking how much better it looked now than when she'd first seen it. Adam and his young wife hadn't long been married at the time, and they'd only had a few bits of furniture, but it hadn't taken Peg long to make it into a proper home. As she used to say, ‘It's the love that's in it that makes a home.' She'd been a right one, had Peg, a hard worker who hadn't been afraid to scrimp in order to save for the things she wanted. She'd had her heart set on a moquette suite she had seen on one of her rare visits to Banff, and though it had taken her years, she had eventually managed to buy one which was very similar. The armchairs were a bit worn after so long, but they were still comfortable … once you knew where the loose spring was. If you didn't, you soon found out!

The couch, being less sat upon, still looked brand new … almost. Only an area on the right-hand side, slightly lighter than the rest and with a tinge of pink to it, showed where Peg had scoured off the ochre Adam had spilt on it when he first painted the kitchen walls. That was in the days when wallpaper was too costly for cottar folk, and only available in shops in the towns, anyway. So it had been a case of ochre – a sickly yellow or an equally sickly dark pink – or whitewash. Being houseproud, Peg had opted for whitewash after the fiasco, and it had certainly made the room look brighter, even if the least little mark showed. Give her her due, though, she had never once complained about the extra work it gave her.

Martha suddenly recalled her mind to the present. Adam was taking an awful long time, over an hour, but he'd likely be finding it difficult to cross the fields in this weather. And he'd likely stay a while with the beasts once he'd fed them, for he liked to speak to them, to gentle them as if they were bairns. And he did look on them as bairns, she supposed – his bairns.

Another hour passed before Adam appeared, by which time his sister was imagining that he had fallen into a snowdrift and couldn't get out, but her relief was tempered with dismay when she saw that he was holding his chest. ‘Are you all right?' she asked.

‘Give me a minute to come to myself,' he puffed.

She filled the teapot while she was waiting, but forgot about it when he said, ‘I'll need you to come outside and help me.'

Puzzled, but asking no questions, she put her shawl round her head and flung her coat round her shoulders before following him out. ‘Leave the door open a wee bit,' he ordered.

She wasn't prepared for what she saw in the slim shaft of light that sneaked out from the kitchen lamp, and clutched at her breast in horror. ‘Heaven help us! Is it a man or a woman?'

Not bothering to explain how he knew, Adam muttered, ‘It's a woman and I'd say she's at death's door, so we'd best get her inside.'

The woman wasn't heavy, but it still took them some time to lift her rigid body off the barrow and through the doorway. They laid her on the sofa, and while Martha went to get something to cover her, Adam looked down on the prostrate figure with critical eyes. ‘She looks like a gypsy to me.'

Coming in, Martha said thoughtfully, ‘I'm not sure I want a gypsy in the house, she could put a curse on us.' But she tucked the blanket all round the woman's legs. ‘Her coat's frozen solid,' she murmured, then, recognizing the black garment, she peered at the bloodless face. ‘It's the lassie that comes round with the fish! Oh, the poor soul!'

She lifted the blanket and held up one of Lizann's legs. ‘Look, she's had to tie bits of canvas round her shoes.' Without undoing the strings, she pulled canvas and shoes off together, then, going down on her knees, she gently massaged the almost black toes poking through the holes in the stockings. ‘I hope she hasn't got frostbite. You'll have to fill a pig for her, Adam.'

She was rubbing the hacked hands when her brother came over with the earthenware hot water bottle, and she put it between the layers of the doubled blanket. ‘It would be agony for her if her feet touched it.'

For the next fifteen minutes, Martha did her best to coax her patient back to life while Adam stood helplessly beside her. At last, the young woman gave a low moan and moved her head. ‘She's coming round,' Martha said jubilantly.

‘Thank God!'

At the sound of their voices, Lizann opened her eyes and looked from one hopeful face to the other in strained wonderment. Martha took her hand. ‘Just rest there a while.'

Her mission accomplished, she rose to fill the kettle again, and when she was setting it on the fire, she motioned to her brother to join her. ‘It was a close thing,' she whispered. ‘If you hadn't …'

‘Aye,' he nodded. ‘God knows how long she could have lain there.'

‘How did you find her?'

‘I was coming back from the byre, and I tripped over something … I thought it was a stone off the dyke … and I bent down to shift it … in case somebody else fell and hurt themselves … but it wouldn't move.'

He stopped for breath, but Martha urged him on. ‘The snow melted with the heat of my hands … and I saw it was a head … so I raked about till I got an arm and there was still … a pulse. So I went for the old barrow, though I'd an awful job getting her on … and I took her here … it was nearer than the farmhouse.' He leaned back on his chair, exhausted by saying so much.

Martha gave a humourless laugh. ‘Meggie Thow wouldn't have thanked you if you'd taken her there.' The kettle on the boil, she poured out the tea she had infused before and made fresh.

Going over to Lizann, she slid one arm under the girl's head and held the cup to her lips. When it was empty, she said, ‘I'm going upstairs to make a bed ready for you.'

Always uncomfortable alone with females other than his sister, Adam sat down by the fire, but in a few minutes Lizann croaked, ‘Was it you … that took me here?'

Embarrassed, he bobbed his head a few times, but when she attempted, unsuccessfully, to put her feet on the floor, he burst out, ‘Bide there till Martha comes back.'

‘Your wife?'

‘My sister.'

When Martha appeared again she said, ‘Are you feeling better, lass?'

‘She's not fit to walk,' Adam observed.

‘The bed's made up, but I'll …' She looked at Lizann apologetically. ‘I'm sorry, lass, I'll have to wash you first. We thought you were a gypsy, your face is that ingrained with dirt.'

‘I'd nowhere … to wash myself.'

Martha felt even more pity for her. ‘I'll soon have you clean. Get the bath through, Adam, and make it ready for her.'

‘Oh, no!' Lizann protested, weakly, glancing at the man.

‘He'll bide in his room till we're finished,' Martha said, firmly.

The bath filled, Adam helped to move Lizann to the fireside before he left the kitchen, then Martha stripped her and took her weight till she sat down in the warm water. ‘I'll leave you to soak,' she said, and went through to Adam. ‘Her underthings are just in rags, so go into my chest of drawers and get one of my vests for her, and a nightgown … and a pair of knickers, I'll come for them when she's ready.'

Returning to Lizann, she set about getting her clean, which turned out to be quite a difficult task because, embarrassed at being seen naked, she persisted in trying to hide her intimate parts. ‘Modesty's all right in its place,' Martha muttered, ‘but we'll never be done at this rate.'