I gather Lady Mary didn’t last the course, but I had no choice. Aunt Ethel had got better, but despite Mrs Fraser’s encouraging remarks she was still pretty frail. I was frightened – terrified even. If my serving time with Mistress McNiven would enable me to keep her alive, I’d do it.
Actually, I’m exaggerating – not about Mistress McNiven, nobody could exaggerate about her – but that sergeant-major crack was unfair. Mistress McNiven didn’t bellow, she didn’t need to. She had that indefinable air of command that secured obedience – even from me. And she was an excellent teacher. She knew exactly what she wanted you to learn, and she showed you precisely how to learn it.
There was only the one way of doing things – the McNiven—Butterfield way. I kicked at first. ‘But why don’t you black-lead the grate before you sweep the ceiling cornice – ?’ She would promptly tell me why not – at considerable length.
I soon stopped asking, but it was too late. Having at last found a girl who was, as she put it, ‘intelligent enough to ask questions’, she couldn’t resist answering them anyway. ‘Now Eve, you’re no doubt wondering why—’ Oh stupid, stupid Eve!
For the first month I spent the mornings in the kitchen, learning to make a different basic dish for each day of the week. Some of them turned out pretty peculiar – Mistress McNiven was too good a teacher to stop you making instakes. No, she let you make them – and then you had to eat the results. She was game enough to do the same, and the minister’s mind was so firmly fixed on his Gaelic poetry he probably didn’t even notice the difference.
But I was always sent home to Aunt Ethel carrying some dainty dish suited to her delicate state of health, prepared by Mistress McNiven herself – though even the basic and initially far from perfect pies and puddings, stews and custards that I cooked were like ambrosia after those tins.
Mistress McNiven came up to the croft one day herself – she said it was to call on Aunt Ethel, but I knew the real reason: Duggie’s mother had told her about the tin cupboard. She peered hopefully round the kitchen. ‘And what about your larder arrangements, Eve?’ I flung open the doors of the tin cupboard and she stood in front of it, sorrowfully shaking her head. ‘Tins – tins!’ In the tone of voice she’d have used if I’d shown her rows of rat poison. I said defensively, ‘People use tinned food in India.’
‘India! She closed her eyes for a moment before shaking her head and saying, ‘If the Good Lord had meant us to cross the seas he would have given us fins.’ Mistress McNiven was not interested in my tiger stories.
But although she was a good cook her true metier was housework – which every afternoon I learnt to perform according to the McNiven-Butterfield system. Annie Butterfield had written a book: ‘The Manual of Household Work and Management.’ It was the manual, alright, it contained everything – from how to lure cockcroaches out on to the kitchen floor at night – strew freshly cut scraps of cucumber peel: ‘They find this delicacy most tempting, and since the cockroach has so little sense of self-restraint they may be found there the next morning in a state of sated stupor’ – and stamped on, (Chapter VII ‘Prevention and Extermination of Household Pests’), to ‘Hints on the Care of Infants’, Chapter XXXI. (Presumably you never left them out on the kitchen floor when there were any loose cucumber peelings around.) But Mistress McNiven was less interested in that later section – her forte was more in the realm of ‘Daily and Weekly Work’, which contained such gems as ‘Rules for Dusting’ and ‘Care of Sinks and Drains’ – all the jobs pertaining to which, and the order in which they were to be performed being laid down in numbered points, thus: ‘Weekly Turning Out of Sitting Room’:
Assemble your apparatus and proceed to dust all small ornaments. Then place them on a tray and remove from room.
Take antimacassars and table covers out into the open air, shake, told, and then deposit in a safe place.
Any strong cushions may then be beaten gently with a cane carpet beater…
I won’t go on to what you have do to weak cushions – I think you’ve got the idea. As I soon did, since I was allocated a portion to be learnt by heart each night, which then had to be recited like a catechism to Mistress McNiven the following morning – before the picking up of our brushes and beaters for the next day’s tasks.
The boys thought it all terribly tunny when I told them about it – I still had my Saturdays free, thank goodness. But I noticed that when they came round to the manse back door to leer at me they faded rapidly into the undergrowth the minute they caught sight of Mistress McNiven at the kitchen window. Obviously she never took boys for training – but somehow there was always this feeling that just perhaps, one day… Yes, definitely the army’s loss.
Meanwhile, I bent my head before the yoke – and was rewarded for my submission, because Aunt Ethel did begin to improve – really improve. ‘It is so nice to be warm, Eve – and so much better for my books.’ She held her blue-veined hands out to the glowing peat.
I loved the pungent reek of peat, but when it came to cooking over it – well, that’s a craft of its own. I could roast potatoes in the ashwell or bake oatcakes on the griddle, but when I swung the iron swey over the fire and tried making a stew in the cauldron suspended from it I just couldn’t seem to get it right. I’d been spoilt by being able to practice on Mistress McNiven’s double-evened Zeus kitchener with every modern convenience: damper rods, sliding hot-plate – it even had a thermometer fitted to each oven door. That range of hers was the envy of every woman in Helspie.
Meanwhile, I gave up on the peat and went back to Aunt Ethel’s primus stove – which was as old and erratic as she was. Duggie found me wrestling with it one Saturday morning. He kicked it for me. I said, ‘I’ve done that already – it just won’t stay alight.’ We both stood there looking at the wretched thing – then he suggested, ‘Why don’t you get a Juwel, like Uncle Fergus?’
Whyever hadn’t I thought of that? So I bought a JUWEL Paraffin-Gas stove – which according to the leaflet I’d sent for cost 9s 6d and would: ‘BOIL HALF-GALLON of water in less than FOUR MINUTES, at a cost of ONE FORTY-EIGHTH PART OF A PENNY.’ lt did, too. Best of all, for a further 5s 6d you could purchase a three-pot stand to go over it and so cook a stew and two veg – all together. Yes, I’d definitely gone off tins, by now.
Having once begun my spending spree I dipped into my petticoat again and bought a stout tweed skirt, a pair of boys’ boots and some new corduroy breaks for the winter poaching season – I’d grown taller over the summer. Then I invested in a really good penknife. Taller, yes – more feminine, no.
After Hogmany Mistress McNiven announced that my initial training period had been accomplished and my sentence could now be reduced to three days a week – for which she would pay me 1/- a day. Riches!
With an income in prospect I invested more of my petticoat in six pullets and a secondhand hen house. They came into lay and Aunt Ethel and l were thoroughly enjoying our breakfast eggs – until one morning I went out and discovered a massacre. A fox had got them, every single one. I wouldn’t have been so angry if he’d eaten them all, but he hadn’t. Just taken one and wantonly bitten the heads off the others and left them lying there. They’d all had names, too.
I showed the scene to Duggie. ‘Look at it – just killing for killing’s sake.’
He shrugged. ‘Aw, Eve – foxes are like that.’ He bent over the hen house door. ‘Latch looks stout enough – are you sure you fastened it properly last night?’
No, I wasn’t sure; not sure at all. I told Aunt Ethel, ‘It was all my fault – if only I’d not been in such a hurry—’
‘What’s done is done, Eve. Don’t waste time on useless regrets – that was the mistake I made.’ She added firmly, ‘It’s much better simply to get on with the next task.’
Which was plucking and drawing five headless hens, cooking two and giving the others to Mrs Fraser, Mrs MacAlister and Mistress McNiven.
I had another task in hand too, by then – milking Dancie Gord
on’s cow whenever he was away from home. Payment was in kind, this time – dancing lessons. Dancie Gordon was an itinerant dancing master: country, Highland, ballroom – though some of the boys were not so keen on this last, so taller girls had to dance the male part. Dancie Gordon was energetic and fierce – playing the fiddle, teaching the steps and hitting us over the head with his fiddle bow if our attention wandered. Not that mine ever did, I love dancing – that’s why I’d offered my services to him as soon as I heard he needed a new milkmaid. ‘Do you know how to milk a cow, Eve Gunn?’ he asked me. To which I replied, ‘I’ve never milked a cow before’ (true). ‘In India a lot of the milk comes from buffaloes.’ (Also true). He engaged me.
I went rushing round to Mungo’s sister Jessie and asked her to show me how to milk. ‘You’re a fly one, you are, Eve Gunn – you shouldn’t have said you could.’
‘I didn’t, Jessie. Anyway, I did have a go at milking a goat – once.’ She sniffed – but she showed me how.
Notice those ‘Eve Gunns’. Living at the Gunn croft as I did, wrth Miss Etheldreda Gunn, I was automatically awarded the Gunn surname. Mistress McNiven got it right, of course, but even the minister addressed me as Eve Gunn – when he noticed me, which wasn’t often, because, as I said, he was inclined to absent-mindedness when it came to everyday affairs.
So I became Eve Gunn, a Helspie girl. Except that I wasn’t. Oh yes, I spoke the Gaelic, climbed the Gob, burnt the peat. I watched the boats sail in, helped bait the lines for the white fishing, and ran wild with the boys of a winter weekend.
The people of Helspie had taken me into their midst, made me welcome, come to my aid in time of trouble, taught me the skills I needed to live on that bleak, windy coast – but I didn’t belong, not truly. Every so often there was something so obvious that I didn’t know – because for all that I had Gunn blood in my veins and had been given the Gunn name, I wasn’t a Gunn. I hadn’t been born and bred there. My childhood had been spent half a world away, in India.
And the longing would come for India – a longing so fierce and sharp I could hardly bear it, there, in the gloomy darkness of winter in Caithness. November in Almora. November, when Apa and I would set out on tour. November, always so bright and clear, with the snow peaks glowing rose-pink in the rising sun, and plunging into their cold blue night at its setting. The mountains, my mountains. There, always there – and I’d lost them. I tried to talk to the boys about the glory of the Himalaya – but it was beyond their imagination. They were born of the harbour, and the sea, and the herring.
So I talked to them in Gaelic of those things, and at night, in the dark of winter I remembered India – and Apa, always Apa. But I did not weep. There was no point.
Chapter Thirteen
And I learned not to think.
There were so many skills I was taught in Scotland, but that one I had to learn for myself. I’d already made a start those early weeks at the croft, when Aunt Ethel didn’t want me, but that first winter I honed my non-thinking to a fine art.
Remember India, yes. Remember Apa – oh, yes, yes. But don’t think about the future, Eve – the future without Apa, the future with Aunt Ethel who was already so very old, the future when – . No, don’t think.
But the past could be dangerous, too. Apa himself had warned me of that – ‘You can’t forget the bad times, Eve – but learn not to dwell on them, or the memory of them will destroy you…’ So that first winter I learned not to dwelt on them. I learnt not to think. And as so often before, it was Apa who helped me to do that, with his insistence on living for the day, for the hour, for the minute – living in that minute, and no other.
Mistress McNiven and Annie Butterfield helped, too. They gave me something to concentrate on: a task in hand which must be performed, a task which must be thought about. And those thoughts excluded the others. So when I wasn’t at the manse or out with the boys, I diligently cooked pies and puddings, and equally diligently cleaned the croft.
But when it was spick and span, and Aunt Ethel had returned to her room and shut herself in with her books, and a long, dark winter evening lay ahead – what then?
Well, I did have Watt.
Sir George Watt’s ‘Dictionary of the Economic Products of India’, Calcutta, 1889-96. We’d had a copy in Almora – all six volumes – except there were really nine because Vol. VI was in four parts. I’d always enjoyed dipping into Watt – but now I clung to it as though it were a life belt. And so it was.
I didn’t have all of it – in the confusion before I left India some of Watt had been sold along with Apa’s forestry books, so I only had Vols I, V and VI/3: ABACA to BUXUS, LINUM to OYSTER and SABADILLA to SILICA. So as you can see I’d lost DEER (which included dogs, wolves and jackals), along with DRAGON’S BLOOD and the ELEPHANT – all in my favourite Vol III. And although I had BEES I didn’t have the BIRDS, because they were all under their individual names – so no peacocks. Still, Vol V offered some highlights: MANGO, MYRISTICA FRAGANS (nutmeg), NARCOTICS, OTTERS and OXEN – oh yes, and the all-important MANURES (animal, vegetable and mineral). This tends to be animal in Kumaon, where every village has its precious dung-heap – most unusual for India, where cow pats are generally burnt as fuel.
And VI/2, though mostly SUGAR and SALT, did offer SALTPETRE, SHEEP (plus goats), and that vital provider of railway sleepers, the sal tree (SHOREA ROBUSTA). I wasn’t too upset about having no VI/3, SILK and TEA – which was practically all about silk and tea! But the loss of VI/4, TECTONA to ZYGOPHILLUM, deprived me of TEAK, TIGERS, WHALES (including porpoises, dolphins and dugongs) and finally, ZYGOPHILLUM itself, a plant that smells so awful no animal except the camel will eat it. (They love it, apparently – which as Apa used to say tells you all you need to know about camels!)
Still, however much I missed the missing volumes, three Watts were infinitely better than two, or one – and none? It doesn’t bear thinking of. Each evening I drew one of the wooden armchairs up to the hearth, wrapped myself in my Bhotia blanket, turned up the oil lamp on its bracket above me, and read Watt. And didn’t think. Except about ABBIAS WEBBIANA, the Himalayan silver fir, which is sometimes exported to Tibet for roofing shingles, while its dried leaves can be turned into a stomach tonic, or used with its twigs as fooder for cattle. ‘This tree is called wúman, or wumbusing, by the Bhotias, but in Kumaon rágha, rao, ransla or raisalla…’ No, I didn’t think – but I did remember. Only sometimes the memories merged into thought – and then they became more than I could bear.
I read and worked all through that first long winter – but there was something else I did, too. When, just occasionally, the wind from the sea dropped and the temperature was not too cold on my hands, then I would go out and climb the Gob. Up – and down. And warm myself from a memory that had no edge of sadness to it: the memory of my triumph, and of the clapping, and of that voice, darker and more powerful than Apa’s calling, ‘Well done, youngster – well done!’
When I’d reached the bottom of the cliff again I would turn to face the sea, drop a curtsey to my imaginary audience, and then go cartwheeling off across the sands.
So I spent the winter diligently practising my new household skills and reading Watt. Then spring arrived at last and I put away my Watt and my diligence and danced at the cross-roads of an evening, or roamed with the boys practising the tiger calls to taught them – or those rather more useful skills Uncle Fergus had taught us.
With the outside world so enticing now I didn’t want to waste time cooking pies or haggis. Instead I boiled up a big pan of potatoes every third day on my Juwel, and we ate them cold with herring, rabbits, salmon, venison – living off the sea and off the land. Someone else’s land, usually.
Our other needs were supplied from the crate of oranges, the seemingly inexhaustible tin cupboard – and the porridge drawer. Every Monday I would make a huge cauldron of porridge and pour it into the grease-proof-paper lined top drawer of the dresser. Aunt Ethel and I would then cut ourselves a slice every morning
. She was most admiring of my ingenuity, ‘Such a clever idea, Eve.’ I modestly disclaimed all credit. Mrs Fraser had given me that idea by talking of Uncle Fergus’s porridge drawer – in tones of horror… Such horror that I swore Aunt Ethel to secrecy over the existence of ours.
That was something else I learnt in Scotland – to be secretive. With no Apa to listen to my daily doings I began to keep them to myself – and to be much more selective in what I did tell people. Especially once the poaching season intensified, for as Uncle Fergus – who never parted with any information unless it was absolutely necessary – used to say, ‘You never know.’ So I led two different lives, and lived in two different worlds. The open, innocent world where I was Miss Gunn’s niece, Mistress McNiven’s part-time housemaid, Dancie Gordon’s occasional milkmaid – and that other, twilight world inhabited by ‘the Gunn boy with plaits’: the secret, lawless life of the poacher.
Aunt Ethel, who knew of both my worlds, applauded my daring. But then, she hadn’t succeeded in travelling all round China by always keeping to the rules. Apa had taught me to think for myself, and not to accept unquestioningly the rules of others, but Aunt Ethel and Uncle Fergus took matters much further than that. Especially Uncle Fergus, who saw no necessity for rules at all; a most attractive philosophy for a girl of my age and temperament. Apa would not have approved – but Apa was dead. I had to make my choices unaided now. And I did.